Morgan Edge: the media magnate of Metropolis, not to be confused with Tal-Rho

Who is Morgan Edge, the media magnate of Metropolis

Morgan Edge is a businessman, and that is his particularity in the gallery of Superman's adversaries: no laboratory, no costume, no lost planet. A television group and a board of directors. He enters in Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #133, cover dated October 1970, an issue written and drawn by the creator of the Fourth World, inked by Vince Colletta and edited by E. Nelson Bridwell and Murray Boltinoff. The same episode sets Jimmy Olsen on the trail of Intergang.

In the trade he is nicknamed The Smiling Cobra — a label the DC files attach to Superman #267 and to Superman Family #195. His post-1986 file has nothing extraordinary about it: 1.88 m, 107 kg, blue eyes, auburn hair. The DC databases attribute no power to him: nothing but a businessman's skills, starting with running a company. He remains one of the most awkward enemies of Metropolis, for a reason no other can claim: he is the employer of Clark Kent.

Galaxy Communications: Morgan Edge's television empire

His weapon is a media group. Galaxy Broadcasting System, become Galaxy Communications, owns the station WGBS-TV and its news broadcast, a publishing subsidiary named Galaxy Publishing, cable and telephone in Metropolis. The headquarters is at 75 Governor's Plaza, and the historic competitor is Sam Tanner's United Broadcasting Company. The group also faces WLEX-TV, the LexCorp channel, and LexCom, its news site: that places the relationship between Edge and Lex Luthor, rivals and never partners.

Galaxy buys the Daily Planet and makes it a subsidiary. The consequence fits in a single issue: Superman (vol. 1) #233, cover dated January 1971, written by Dennis O'Neil and drawn by Curt Swan. Clark Kent becomes the anchor of WGBS's evening news. Lana Lang joins him as co-anchor only nearly seven years later, in Superman #317, cover dated November 1977. The studios move into the newspaper's building, and in March 1971 the globe on the roof is taken down in favor of the Galaxy sign. Perry White is no longer at the top of the chart: above him there is a television group.

The Evil Factory clone, the trap of the pre-Crisis Morgan Edge

This is the point almost every summary misses. The Morgan Edge who appears in Jimmy Olsen #133, founds Intergang, and works for Apokolips is not the businessman: he is a clone. The real Edge was kidnapped and duplicated by Simyan and Mokkari at the Evil Factory, on the orders of Darkseid. The double receives his memories and a subliminal order to obey. Ordered to execute his model with a bullet in the neck, he refuses and locks him in his own suite, behind a one-way mirror.

The revelation falls in Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane #118, cover dated January 1972; another source points rather to Jimmy Olsen #139, published in 1971, so the exact issue stays debated. Meanwhile the clone runs Galaxy, founds Intergang, and buys the daily. His first mission for Apokolips is to send Jimmy Olsen to investigate the Mountain of Judgment with a bomb hidden in a camera. He dies in #152, cover dated September 1972, disintegrated by accident by an Intergang killer once Darkseid is warned of his disobedience.

Morris Edelstein: the pre-Crisis origin, erased since

Action Comics #468, cover dated February 1977, written by Cary Bates and drawn by Curt Swan, tells where he comes from. He is born Morris Edelstein into a poor Jewish family on the lower east side of Metropolis, a laundress mother and a union-representative father. A merchant seaman, he wins at poker a television station in Albuquerque valued at sixty thousand dollars; an antisemitic insult thrown just before the fight that follows decides him to change his name legally in order to break into television.

Caution, though: that name and that childhood belong only to the pre-Crisis continuity, and the post-1986 file writes Morgan Edge plain, with no trace of Edelstein. On Earth-One, his run goes from November 1971 to May 1986: an ambivalent press boss, filed as neutral rather than evil, whom Crisis on Infinite Earths sweeps away with the rest of that age of the character.

Vincent Edge and the guilty post-Crisis Morgan Edge

After the 1986 overhaul, no more clone, so no more alibi: this is the version that justifies his place among the enemies. He reappears from Superman (vol. 2) #13, cover dated January 1988, signed by John Byrne, first as an unidentified silhouette, then fully recognizable in #16, cover dated April 1988. The sources diverge on which of the two counts as the first appearance, one keeping #13, the other #16 on the grounds that #13 shows only a shadow.

His childhood is rewritten in Superman (vol. 2) #35, cover dated September 1989, written by Jerry Ordway and drawn by Kerry Gammill. Morgan is there the beaten son of a magnate named Vincent Edge. One day when his father corrects him in the street, his mother steps in; in the scuffle, Vincent pushes her under a bus and she dies. The evening the child screams his hatred at the sky, Darkseid appears to him and promises to make him strong. As an adult, Morgan takes the presidency of Galaxy, pushes his father into retirement, and builds with Apokoliptian technology the network that becomes Intergang. Vincent is a predator too, but Intergang is not his.

Intergang and the hand of Apokolips: where his real strength comes from

Intergang is the criminal network of Metropolis. It appears in the same Jimmy Olsen #133 of October 1970, and it comes from the same hand as its founder, Kirby's. What makes it dangerous is not its headcount, it is its supplier: weapons, Boom Tubes, Parademons, everything comes from Apokolips, from Darkseid first and then from his torturer DeSaad. Without Apokolips, Intergang would be just one more mob. And it is not Edge who ends up at its head: the organization's other bosses are called Bruno Mannheim and Boss Moxie Mannheim.

The intention attributed to Kirby lights up the character: to show organized crime taking root in corporate America. It is his production assistant Mark Evanier who reports it, quoted by the magazine Back Issue!; the formula is his and not Kirby's. The result is clear. Edge is not a costumed superman like Brainiac or Mongul, but a criminal nobody stops because he is perfectly legitimate.

Morgan Edge's fall comes from an article, not a fight

The most interesting part of his file is the way he falls. Edge had hired Catherine Grant to inform him from inside the newsroom, in June 1989. She is the one who turns: Cat Grant becomes the source for Clark Kent, then for Lois Lane. Warned of the investigation, Darkseid sends the machine Turmoil to kill Lois Lane; the device becomes uncontrollable and ravages everything. Superman stops it, then confronts Edge, who collapses from a heart attack — two issues cover-dated July 1989.

What follows is a long fall. In the coma, the Black Racer leads his soul toward a «Darkseid» who turns out to be DeSaad in disguise, come only to watch him suffer. When he wakes, Vincent has taken Galaxy back by a board vote. Then Edge is arrested and Bruno Mannheim inherits Intergang, in September 1990. In prison he writes an autobiography titled On the Edge that splashes Cat Grant and his own father, then he escapes in June 1996. Final irony: Vincent will be ousted in turn when his harassment of Cat Grant is made public.

The first Superman Revenge Squad, built to fail

At the start of 1997, Edge gathers a team: Maxima, Riot, Barrage, Misa, and Anomaly. Supporting players he knows will not work together — and that is the whole point of the maneuver, since the failure is to be laid at Lex Luthor's door while he carries on quietly. The team appears in Adventures of Superman #543, cover dated February 1997, created by Karl Kesel and Stuart Immonen; Edge's hand is exposed in Superman: The Man of Steel #65, cover dated March 1997. The sources do not agree on which issue carries what, hence the caution: early 1997.

The second squad follows the same logic, with Baud, Barrage, Rock, and Parasite. This time Edge shows himself, to make people believe he was not behind the first. A new failure, escape by Boom Tube, and LexCorp hardware left on the scene — including a fingerprint reader bearing Luthor's prints — to incriminate him during his trial. Luthor gets out of it, and will even end up settling into the White House. Edge's last appearance in this continuity is Superman #694, cover dated January 2010.

Morgan Edge in Smallville: Rutger Hauer then Patrick Bergin

It is Smallville that gives him his best-known role with the general public. Morgan Edge is there the first crime boss of Metropolis, affiliated with Intergang, and above all Lionel Luthor's childhood friend: teenagers in the Suicide Slums, the two killed Lionel's parents with a bomb for the insurance money, which financed LuthorCorp on one side and a criminal career on the other. Rutger Hauer plays him in «Exile», on 1 October 2003, and «Phoenix», on 8 October: he hires a runaway Clark who calls himself Kal to steal a sample of his own blood from Lionel's safe, then takes Martha Kent and the series' Jonathan Kent hostage. Hit by Lionel's security, he is left for dead in the water.

Patrick Bergin takes up the role in «Shattered», on 19 November 2003: Edge has survived and had his face redone to escape Lionel. He wears a string of kryptonite beads in case he crosses Clark again, then allies with Lionel to break the mind of his son Lex. Lex shoots him, and Clark stops with his bare hands the runaway car heading for Lex. The real reason for the change of actor is prosaic: Hauer had a scheduling conflict, and the episode was rewritten around cosmetic surgery, the rest of the cast staying in place.

Supergirl and animation: the name kept, the trade changed

In Supergirl, Adrian Pasdar plays him from «Girl of Steel», aired on 9 October 2017. He is neither a media boss nor a man of Metropolis, but National City's leading real-estate developer, CEO of Edge Global, who wants to raze the waterfront and buy CatCo from the series' Cat Grant. He is arrested after the recording of his confession, on 29 January 2018, and jailed for lead poisoning and an attempted murder of Lena Luthor.

On the animation side, a single appearance: «Secret Society, Part I» of Justice League, aired on 22 November 2003, where Brian George lends him an uncredited voice. And the trade changes again, since this Morgan Edge is a black-market collector settled on an island absent from the maps, who keeps Clayface siphoned into drums. The inventory of Superman series finds him no other, and there is no film appearance to this day, neither live-action nor animated.

Morgan Edge and Tal-Rho: two characters for one name

The most widespread trap comes from Superman & Lois, whose pilot airs on 23 February 2021. Adam Rayner is credited «Morgan Edge / Tal-Rho / Eradicator». This character is not an Earth press boss: he is a Kryptonian, son of Zeta-Rho and of Lara Lor-Van, therefore Superman's maternal half-brother, sent to Earth as a child, where he lands in England before his younger sibling. «Morgan Edge» is only a cover identity taken in adulthood; he reveals himself to Superman on 8 June 2021 and sets out his origin the following episode. It is the series in which Elizabeth Tulloch plays Lois Lane.

The companies do not match either: Tal-Rho is the majority shareholder of Galaxy Holdings and CEO of Edge EnerCorp, never Galaxy Communications, never Intergang. He buys the daily and fires Clark Kent, exploits the X-kryptonite of the Shuster mine, and uses a device he calls the Eradicator — an apparatus that has nothing to do with the Kryptonian entity of the same name. The rule fits in one line: the Morgan Edge of the comics is a human with no power, in every version, and has no link to Krypton.

The New 52 version remains. In Superman (vol. 3) #1, cover dated November 2011, George Pérez and Jesús Merino make him a Black media magnate, CEO of Galaxy Communications. The sources diverge on which newspaper he owns; in August 2016, Lex Luthor buys the title back from him.

Conclusion

Morgan Edge remains one of the most unusual adversaries in the file: he does not fly, he does not hit, he does not wear a cape. He signs contracts. That is precisely what makes him interesting, since he lastingly changed Superman's civilian life and he falls by an article rather than by a punch. His power is a signature at the bottom of a check, and his supplier is called Apokolips.

And if you hear that Morgan Edge is Superman's Kryptonian brother, you now know the sentence mixes two characters: the one in the comics is human, the one in Superman & Lois is called Tal-Rho. To go on, the ranking of Superman's enemies puts each one in his place, and the portrait of Melissa Benoist lights the other corner of the universe where the name Edge was used again.