Polite Dissent

Action Comics #366 “Substitute Superman!”
Leo Dorfman, writer
Ross Andru, penciler

This comic¹ is the conclusion of the Virus X Saga, though only the first few panels are actually spent curing the disease. The rest of the comic consists of Superman trying to determine who has been masquerading as the Man of Steel while he’s been away from Earth.

As I speculated², the cure for Virus X did rest with the red and white kryptonite thrown in his path by the Bizarros. Well, the white kryptonite actually. I’ll let Superman explain:

Obviously, the Virus X which gave me the Kryptonian Leprosy, was a form of plant life, like bacteria! And white kryptonite is deadly to all plants!

Great answer Superman, only it makes absolutely no sense. Viruses are not plants; they are bits of DNA (or RNA) in a protein shell. Bacteria are not plants either; they are an entirely different type of organism. I’ll admit that at one point, bacteria were thought to be plants, but by 1968 when this comic was published it was well accepted that bacteria were neither plants nor animals but belonged in a kingdom of their own. This has been a long winded way of saying that white kryptonite would have no effect on Virus X³.

Superman then returns to Earth and discovers that someone has been pretending to be him while he was gone. After some quick detective work, he determines that the members of the Justice League of America were taking turns pretending to be Superman⁴. What friends! But I wonder what if Superman had really died? Would the JLA have been able to keep it up for the next few decades?⁵

The Virus X Saga is like Huckleberry Finn: it starts off great but then it’s clear the author had no idea how to end it, so was just throwing stuff in for padding. Only Mark Twain never confused viruses, bacteria and plants.

¹ Many thanks to Mike and Ralph’s Comic Corner for tracking down this book for me at a very reasonable price.
²…and Dave remembered.
³ Maybe it was Bizarro-white kryptonite that affected everything BUT plants.
⁴ Except Wonder Woman. Her “tracts of land” would probably have given away the fact that it wasn’t really Superman.
⁵ I propose an Elseworlds based on this idea. I call it Superman: Dead Son.