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Reading the November solicitations for products from DC, I am given pause amidst the usual eye-rolling and “this looks fucking idiotic,” etc., by the following:

SUPERMAN #705
Written by J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI
Art by EDDY BARROWS & J.P. MAYER
Cover by JOHN CASSADAY
1:10 Variant cover by YANICK PAQUETTE & MICHEL LACOMBE
“Grounded” part 5 brings The Man of Steel to Des Moines, Iowa! A chance encounter, however, suddenly thrusts Superman back in time. So somehow he’s Superboy again, the world is on the brink of nuclear Armageddon, and it’s all his fault! (Emphasis mine.)

I mean, in general any reference to my home state by national media is relatively rare enough (outside of caucus season) to grab my attention for at least a second. Mention of the state’s capital and my home of five years, in a comic book context, is just about unthinkable.

“Mainstream” American comics, i.e. superhero comics, rarely leave the east coast. Nearly all of Marvel’s comics are based in New York; DC has its characters distributed among multiple, mostly fictional, cities, but even those are almost all on the coast. The concept of “flyover country” seems to apply just as much to those who soar through the sky under their own power as those who glide back and forth in jet planes. When an inland city does turn up in a major superhero story, it’s typically either a cheap joke or a source of anonymous bodies to show off some bad guy’s plague bomb or whatever.

But apparently Superman’s walk-across-America-to-reconnect-with-people storyline (as noted above, “this looks fucking idiotic” is kind of my standard reaction to the bulk of DC’s and Marvel’s offerings) is taking him to my old stomping grounds. At least, before he gets sent back in time and the idiocy ensues.

I guess if any big-time superhero were ever to turn up in Des Moines, Superman would actually be a fairly likely candidate, come to think of it; dude grew up in “flyover country” after all. (And what must metropolitan do-gooder journalist Clark Kent think of his home state’s aggressive redness, eh? Guy must look forward to family gatherings about as much as my friend from St. Louis who went native in northern California does.)

Des Moines is still a surprising choice, though. I can’t help wondering whether another American literary figure’s stop at the junction of the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers on his cross-country oddyssey influenced the choice.

I also can’t help hoping that Superman will veer off to the southwest, next, for a presumably-inevitable visit to his home state. (The need to protect his secret identity might argue for avoiding the Sunflower State, I guess, but then it would probably also argue for a better disguise than a pair of glasses.) Just so long as Des Moines gets to one-up its evil twin just across the border in Nebraska.

In any event it will definitely be tempting to grab this issue as a souvenir. And to scour it for opportunities to mock the accuracy (or lack thereof, rather) in the creators’ depiction of a city which I by contrast know quite well.

Grab a tenderloin for me, Superguy; no one in Ohio even understands the concept.