Target operates on the unlikelihood that an expert scientist would foster an unhealthy schoolboy crush and divert his expertise towards an irrational geeky revenge fantasy. Though the key element in a paranoid tale of systematic assassination, one that oscillated between finely tuned plot details and hilarious histrionic camp extravagance, Lytener served no function beyond that of an object of derision, which the self-flattering audience is expected to find endlessly pathetic. His closest kin so far in the DCAU (though several worthier candidates are to appear in Batman Beyond) is the toy-store owner in Beware the Gray Ghost, another maniacal dweeb driven to villainy by irrational obsession. The difference is that the toy-store owner, as a caricature of Bruce Timm, is both self-deprecating and intended as satire of the kind of mean-spirited cynicism that ever so slightly rears its ugly head in Target.
Robert Goodman delivers Lytener from the torment of Bader’s mockery and fashions a linear villain-of-the-week story flooded to the brim with pseudo-science and master plans and sneering super-villainy. Coming up after a sizeable handful of self-reflexive comedies, the classicism of Solar Power, dependent on all the archetypal English-class basics of the hero narrative—Superman at his weakest and Lytener, now going by Luminus, fully engaged to hi-tech villainy and a revenge scheme exempt from the pitiful romantic despair of his last—emerges triumphant as a playfully inventive slice of old-fashioned heroism prevailing in the face of insurmountable odds, a power-drained Superman going toe-to-toe with a manipulative light physicist.
It is precisely in deviating from comic book conventions that Goodman shrinks Solar Power down to the most elementary tenets of what it is to be heroic, as he attempted to do in Identity Crisis. Luminus has commissioned in space a network of refractory prisms that filters out all of the sun’s light except for the red beams, and without healthy sun radiation to fuel Superman’s unique Kryptonian cell structure, the Man of Steel is left in a disadvantageous position. That Luminus can wreak havoc from a distance cooped up in an invisible abandoned satellite station means that it is in Superman’s best interest to strategize carefully and tread cautiously, and such counter initiatives, usually dictated by narrative conventions, can be found in previous episodes like Prometheon and Blasts From the Past. Furthermore, it is often a writer’s ploy to have Superman show up decked out in Kryptonite protective wear or equipped with some other accoutrement before being disarmed and forced to rely on his wits and instincts. In Solar Power, he is in the middle of preliminary strategizing with Professor Hamilton when Lois and Jimmy are kidnapped, and unable to disregard his heroic impulses, he enters the arena unarmed and without a backup plan.
Once Superman enters the satellite station he finds himself stuck in a dreamlike traversal of evocative places, a Western saloon, murky train yard, and schooner set against a blazing red sky, each of which is a large-scale holographic construct. Each time Superman enters a new zone, it is a result of stumbling defeat instead of progressive action, and it is only when he thinks to make a circular incision in the sky itself that he takes control and makes his way to reality. Goodman and director Curt Geda spend the entire show making a point of Superman’s weakness and exhaustion, that when the first rays of the reinvigorating sun finally fall upon him, it is not without vicarious feeling on the part of the audience, who can finally take delight in Superman’s effortless and much-deserved victory.
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