Plot summary: Superman becomes entangled with Volcana, a pyrokinetic thief on the run from a mysterious government agency.
Notes and Trivia
Episode: 42 (S3.E1)
Original Air Date: September 19th 1998
Directed: Curt Geda (14)
Written: Hilary J. Bader (10)
Animation: Koko Enterprise Co., LTD & Dong Yang Animation Co., LTD. (26)
Music: Harvey Cohen (7)
This episode seems to borrow heavily from Stephen King’s Firestarter. Both feature a pyrokinetic child being used as a government weapon. And a secret agent with an eyepatch.
Speaking of which, it seems the shadowy agency are modelled on S.H.I.E.L.D., as they are not only led by a man wearing an eyepatch, but there are agents patterned after Dum Dum Dugan, Gabriel Jones and Jasper Sitwell.
Conversely Volcana is an original creation of the show. Firefly was finally given the green light in The New Batman Adventures around this time due to relaxed network rules, so I assume they decided what’s good for the goose Bat is good for the gander. Or something.
Recap
A sultry pyrokinetic flirts her way into an exclusive regatta where she proceeds to start a huge fire so she can steal priceless nautical antiques. Seems a risky way to grab highly flammable things, but okay!
Superman rescues a bunch of the attendees and puts out the fire, but gets a chest full of flames when he thinks our femme fatale needs saving too, and she escapes in the chaos.
Returning later as Clark, our hero is shooed away from the scene by a suspicious agent and then tailed. Clark turns the tables and pulls a disappearing act, following the agent to a secret entrance below an unusual facility.
‘Volcana’ struggles to sell the stolen goods due to their niche appeal, so plans another job as she’s desperate to get out of town… but her fence is grabbed by yet more shady G-men as soon as the call ends.
Clark investigates The Center for Paranormal Studies (aka ‘The Institute’), a school for the gifted, full of kids with whacky sci-fi powers, learning they receive significant government funding.
Plied with root beer floats, the lead doctor eventually confesses a young pyrokinetic girl was one of their patients a decade ago but government agents confiscated her, gave her the codename Volcana, and used her for their nefarious deeds.
Volcana tries to steal the god damn Bill of Rights, on loan to a Metropolis museum, but Superman intervenes and tries to talk her into giving up her life of crime. Naturally she declines.
Getting away with a ring, she goes to her criminal contact but is immediately set upon by agents with fancy fire extinguishers. This causes enough ruckus for Jimmy to talk about it at work the next day… within earshot of Clark.
Interrogating agents for the location of the Firestorm facility, Superman is set upon by many lasers and in the process Volcana is freed from her cruel containment and sets the place ablaze.
Clark stops her from murdering the project director, and we later see her ‘imprisoned’ on a tropical island where Superman brings her food and flirts with her while she sunbathes.
Best Performance
Peri Gilpin was theoretically a perfect ‘get’ for Volcana, wielding her trademark raspy voice with great aplomb. They wanted feisty and sultry but with undertones of feeling trapped to the point of despair and that’s exactly what they got. I just don’t think the character is well written enough for her to do much beyond the elevator pitch. She also falls a tiny bit flat when angrily recanting her history of being passed around, which is intended to be her passionate highpoint. She is good at the flirting though, that’s undeniable, and I really liked her responding to the claim she’s been bad with “You’ve been worse” in a subtle sing-song manner.
But I think this is one of Tim Daly‘s strongest episodes, so I’m going with him instead. They may be onto something with this whole ‘let him do his day job as a focal point of the episode’ thing, as it turns out Daly is really good at conducting investigative interviews and poking holes in obvious lies. Establishing Clark is really sharp along with being so damn nice and so damn powerful enriches his civilian identity, and it makes sense the doctor would seek asylum with him. Plus he’s really good at the calm shakedown of the agents, even if that moment ends up veering too far towards Batman tactics.
Always nice to hear from William H. Macy, as the unnamed doctor. That’s it. It’s nice.
Episode Ranking
There are lots of fun little artistic flourishes here, including the almost greyscale look given to the character models amidst the opening blaze, Supes’ creative firefighting solution, and Clark pretending to clean his glasses to catch sight of the agent following him. The suspenseful music in that scene was great too, as well as the subtle Bond vibes in the secret facility near the end. I’m also a sucker for the spycraft stuff with the disguises, secret phone booth entrance to the facility and constantly emerging from the shadows with crazy experimental weapons. Plus Clark looks smart for poking holes in their cover story at the yacht club. Though I would say it gets a little bit messy with the doctor fleeing from Clark to the agents and then fleeing from the agents to Clark. I get what they were going for, but I think it’s trying a smidge too hard to be clever.
In fact that gets to the heart of the problem with the episode more generally; There’s simply too much going on and it doesn’t come together in an elegant fashion. Trying to give time to Volcana, The Institute and The Agency – with the latter two being filled with quirky supporting characters – all while Clark does the second most investigative journalism in the show to date (following that time where he ‘died’ of course) is just too much for 20 minutes. And that’s before you get into the bizarre decision to put the Bill of Rights in the episode for 30 seconds. It leads to clunky stuff like Superman having to follow a lead from Jimmy Olsen sharing scuttlebutt with Lois, the weird ending and the aforementioned toing-and-froing with the doctor. I say the doctor, because he doesn’t even have a name. Likewise most of the agents don’t get names at all and their leader is just called ‘Kurt’ and that’s weak. They could probably have merged these two entities or dropped one entirely. Either she’s an escapee of a clandestine government agency who are now hunting her, or she’s a former test subject/patient (unclear what the exact deal of that place, which is another part of the problem) who has turned to crime as an adult, with the winning side getting more fleshed out. My recap section being so difficult to follow is a huge red flag; It’s a struggle to succinctly explain what happened in this episode.
At first I thought it was cool they chose to portray the doctor at the institute as a little person, given such people are typically exclusively deployed for stereotypical roles in cartoons (and to be honest pop culture in general)… but then making him ‘magical’ kind of ruins it. Like he can’t just be a doctor? Icky. Speaking of which, I also didn’t love Jimmy Olsen being a little pervert and snapping pictures of Volcana for his “private collection,” but it did set up the nice touch of her subtly melting his film to cover her tracks. We don’t get enough Jimmy in the show so it’s unfortunate for one of his biggest moments to date is being creepy.
Overall the episode is too messy to overcome its good ideas and wonderful sense of style (the art, animation and music are working overtime) and it brings everything down to just above the truly bad/boring ones. I think a second or third pass on the script could have fixed things through streamlining. Not an auspicious start to Season Three.
- The Late Mr. Kent
- Brave New Metropolis
- Apokalips… Now!
- World’s Finest
- Livewire
- Double Dose
- Fun and Games
- Warrior Queen
- Father’s Day
- Little Girl Lost
- The Hand of Fate
- The Last Son of Krypton
- Ghost in the Machine
- Stolen Memories
- Action Figures
- The Prometheon
- Tools of the Trade
- The Main Man
- Mxzypixilated
- Blasts from the Past
- Target
- The Way of All Flesh
- Solar Power
- Where There’s Smoke [NEW ENTRY]
- Protoype
- My Girl
- A Little Piece of Home
- Feeding Time
- Speed Demons
- Two’s a Crowd
- Identity Crisis
- Heavy Metal
- Monkey Fun
- Bizarro’s World
Rogues Roundup
Volcana (Peri Gilpin) (first appearance)
‘Villain with fire powers’ is as generic as it gets in the realm of superheroes, but she’s a pretty fun ‘one of those.’ For instance I really enjoyed her ostensibly going full Human Torch mode only to dissipate on contact with Superman… revealing she conjured the entire thing from the ground to distract him. Neat subversive use of her powers. Plus the moment with Jimmy’s film at the start and her little flame kiss to Supes at the end.
Locking her up in a weird lab and threatening to suffocate her to death helps make her more sympathetic, in addition to all the ‘hunted by shadowy agents who robbed her of her childhood’ stuff. I also like a good flirty villain as I’ve made abundantly clear throughout these hundreds of reviews.
Plenty to like here, just not enough to crack the top tier.
Project Firestorm (Peter Gallagher/Dennis Haysbert/Gregg Berger/John Mariano) (first appearance)
I’m sure most wouldn’t rank these shadowy government agents in their STAS Rogues Gallery but I guess I’m just built different. The loving homage to S.H.I.E.L.D. is cute, and the memetic imagery of G-Men snatching people from the shadows allows them to take a shortcut towards a more compelling presence. But they sure do burst in from the ceiling with fire extinguishers to neutralise Volcana, and that is goofy as fuck.
Yet I still like them. There’s not much character to any of them (only one of them gets a name, and it’s just ‘Kurt’,) but their designs are suitably different from one another, and you get the sense they’re a true network of operatives rather than just a mouthpiece and some generic grunts. I particularly liked the guy who tried to threaten Superman and pejoratively calling him “alien.”
Plus they lock Volcana in a weird little oxygen-free orb to prevent her starting any fires and that’s grim. It’s even worse when you learn it’s all just to make a cheap buck by selling her to a foreign power for dissection, misusing government funding in the process as Project Firestorm stopped being sanctioned years ago. Sometimes a really fucked up motive can get you far in this category. Or at least to the middle of the pack.
- Livewire
- Darkseid
- Lex Luthor
- The Joker
- Toyman
- Queen Maxima
- Metallo
- Parasite
- Karkull
- Brainiac
- Mr. Mxyzptlk
- Harley Quinn
- Granny Goodness
- Kalibak
- Volcana [NEW ENTRY]
- Lobo
- Luminus
- Project Firestorm [NEW ENTRY]
- The Female Furies
- DeSaad
- Detective Bowman
- Bruno Mannheim (and Intergang!)
- Steppenwolf
- The Preserver
- Kanto
- Mala & Jax-Ur
- Mercy Graves
- The Prometheon
- De’Cine
- Corey Mills
- Earl Garver
- Titano
- Bizarro
- Weather Wizard
The Matt Signal 
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