Ever watch Zardoz, John Boorman’s 1974 attempt to apply the tropes of “new wave” sci-fi to an art-directed “head” flick? If so, did you come away from that cinematic exercise in self-indulgence thinking that Sean Connery’s curiously costumed character would make an excellent addition to Superman’s supporting cast?
Cary Bates must have, because how else could one explain the conundrum in hot pants that is Vartox, the Hyper-Man?
The Overcompensating Champion of Valeron made his debut in Superman #281 (November 1974). Following the mysterious death of his wife, Vartox discovers that she was “bionically twinned” with an Earth woman. When the woman is brutally murdered by a petty criminal, the Tomax-Xamot relationship between the pair causes Vartox’s wife to die as well.
If that wasn’t galling enough, the imperfect legal system of our little backwater planet allows the killer to dodge the murder rap on a technicality, which compels Vartox to lace up his thigh boots and deliver a little transgalactic justice on the guilty party. Though his quest brings him into conflict with the Man of Steel, Supes eventually cops wise to Vartox’s scheme and allows the alien lawman to extradite the murderer to Valeron to have six decades of his life leeched from him. (Being a comics writer in the 70s meant never having to sweat the creepy plot implications.)
Vatrox and his porn ‘stache went on to become a semi-regular fixture of the pre-Crisis Superman supporting cast. His dozen or so appearances over the following decade tended to adhere to a fixed formula which involved…
…sexing up Lana Lang (first in his secret identity of Vernon O’Valeron, then as his raw leather-vested self)…
…and using his psychic “hyper powers” (which amounted to whatever the writers needed to move the plot forward at a given moment) to tussle with Superman over some petty misunderstanding.
While it would be easy to blame Vartox’s mental instability and history of bad decisions to the horror of losing both his wife and (eventually) his entire world to forces beyond his control, there’s also a certain…other…aspect to his relationship with the Last Son of Krypton which manifests, time and time again, in their personal interactions.
It’s like he’s….the recently divorced and laid off college pal that repays your support by turning clingy and relentlessly colonizing your personal space. (Yeah, I know where you think I was going with that, but it was too damn easy and this isn’t Superdickery.)
Vartox was one of the many Super-franchise barnacles scraped off during the mid-Eighties Man of Steel reboot. Given the genre’s tendency to stripmine its own past, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that he has since been reintroduced to the DC Universe, most recently as a retro-lothario male counterpart to Maxima with amorous designs on Power Girl…
Nice try, DC, but it’s going to take more than a quick coating of synthetic campiness to rescue the snappiest dressed hero in the Sombrero Galaxy from the damp basement realm of Nobody’s Favorites (and now I’m wondering how things would have turned out if Bates bought a ticket to see A Boy and His Dog instead.)