Studies in Crap: The day Radio Shack controlled Superman’s brain

Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.

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Superman: The Computers That Saved Metropolis

Author: Cary Bates, words; Jim Starlin (!) and Dick Giordano, art

Date: 1980

Discovered at: My parents’ attic
The Cover Promises: “Compliments of Radio Shack”? “Starring the TRS-80 Computer Whiz Kids”? Ah, shit.

Representative Quotes:

“Please, Superman, can we have a race? My TRS-80 against your super-brain?”

It’s bad enough that this one-off story turned the paragon of truth, justice, etc., into a shill for the world’s most overpriced supplier of printer cables. His mission: to convince kids to drop $499 on a “microcomputer.” Even worse, though, this taught children of the ’80s the lesson that Superman Returns confirmed 25 years later: Earth’s yellow sun has increased exponentially the great Kryptonian’s power to bore.