This is the 63rd episode of Adventures of Superman that I have reviewed for Multiversity Comics. In this season alone, I’ve seen episodes about time travel, an anti-superstition society, and Perry White thinking that he’s seeing the actual ghost of Caesar. Yet none of that could have prepared me for “Flight to the North.”
1. Just read the description
A man named Sylvester J. Superman answers a woman’s ad to deliver a pie to her fiance working in Alaska.
Because this season is 13 episodes long, I was planning on spotlighting one of the last three episodes on their own, and having read this description, I knew it had to be this episode. As you will come to see, I chose wisely.
2. Sylvester J. Superman
There is nothing funnier to me than people with silly names. In college, there was a realtor that had a name that, when you looked quickly at his signs, looked like “Anthony D. Lobster,” which of course I read in Kermit the Frog’s voice, “Hi-ho, Anthony The Lobster here,” and it made me laugh every time. So someone’s surname being “Superman” already has me excited for this episode.
Then, we meet the illustrious Mr. Superman, and he’s a hulk of a dude, quite tall and strong, but also the very stereotype of a dumb hick. He brings his mule everywhere with him – into a hotel lobby, on an airplane – and he has clearly never heard of Superman, the hero, and so presumes whenever anyone is talking about Superman, they are talking about him.
This leads him to read an ad in the paper asking for Superman’s help, and him answering the ad, surprised that word of his arrival in Metropolis was already known to people. The character is incredibly innocent/ignorant, and impossible to get mad at, as it appears he has no guile whatsoever. But even the dumbest person alive would realize what is being asked of him is insane. It doesn’t dip him off that she gives him a wad of cash ‘for charity,’ nor does the fact that she wants him to fly to Alaska raise any suspicions whatsoever.
3. PIE
In case you forgot since reading the first bullet point, the reason that S.J. Superman’s services are needed is because Margie wants Superman to fly her lemon meringue pie to her fiancé who is serving the Air Force in Alaska. This is already a ridiculous plot point, but it is made doubly more ridiculous by the fact that there are two Supermans both thinking they are the ones to help with this job. It is made triply ridiculous by the fact that her pie is so good that a crook who used to mow her lawn still remembers it ten years later, and bets a friend of his twenty five thousand dollars that her lemon meringue pie is better than his pal’s Aunt’s pie. So, the crook, Louie, not only attempts to get Margie to bake him a pie (no can do, she promised she’d only bake it for one man), attempts to bribe S.J. Superman for it, but even charters a plane to Alaksa to steal it from her Air Force man.
This is, of course, after S.J. Superman flies on a plane to Alaska to deliver the pie themselves. Naturally, he brought the mule.
4. New flying sequence, who dis?
There was a new Superman flying sequence this episode that had him flying in at a steeper angle than usual. It appeared that the sequence was at least partially animated, as both his cape and face looked touched up by animation. This is only really notable because it seems like there were no technical improvements made to any of the special effects from season one yet, aside from this one. It wasn’t exactly seamless, but it works.
5. The best kind of dumb
Look, I don’t come to Adventures of Superman, especially in 2020, for great scifi or thrilling action. I come for hilarious shit like seven different people treating lemon meringue pie as something infinitely more important than it actually is. The kicker here is that Louie is so crestfallen by the whole experience, as well as frostbitten by it, that he goes legit. So, the moral of the story is this: lemon meringue pie, when done right, can inspire literally anything.
