Superman #234

Superman #234 (On Sale: December 15, 1970), has a cool cover by Neal Adams.

We begin this issue with Superman in "How to Tame a Wild Volcano" by Denny O'Neil, Curt Swan, and Murphy Anderson. Clark Kent is sent to an island in the Pacific where a volcano named Boki has begun to erupt. Superman wants to evacuate the island, but the island's owner Boysie Harker will not permit it. Harker forbids Superman from trespassing on his property.

Unable to intercede directly, Superman tries to stop the volcano from underground. Unbeknownst to him, a duplicate of himself made of sand and possessing his powers enters the area. The arrival of the sand creature weakens Superman preventing him from stopping the eruption. He is able to delay it instead by diverting a nearby storm.

Superman is then weakened again and falls from the sky. He lands on Harker's ship just as the businessman was preparing to fire on United Nations rescue ships. Superman finishes helping with the evacuation. Harker is arrested. The mysterious sand-created Superman figure rests within the heart of the volcano, molding himself further into the likeness of the Man of Steel. This story was reprinted in Superman: Kryptonite Nevermore HC (2009).

The back-up World of Krypton story is "Prison in the Sky" by E. Nelson Bridwell and Curt Swan. Tron-Et wins the election to the Kryptonian Science Council and proposes that overcrowding in prisons be alleviated by using his dissolver-ray to execute condemned criminals. Jor-El and others oppose the death penalty, and Jor counter-proposes using a suspended animation gas of his own discovery on such prisoners and shooting them into space in capsules, to be brought back to Krypton when their sentences are over.

In reality, Tron-Et is secretly the boss of a criminal organization and wants to silence crooks who know his secret by executing them before they can betray him. He stages an "accident" which makes it seem as though Jor-El's first experimental subject, Nali-Ilv, has gained super-powers after his capsule crashes.

But Jor-El deduces that the prisoner's twin brother Ed-Ilv has hoaxed "powers", using a concealed anti-gravity belt and captures him. The prisoner exposes Tron-Et as his boss, and, after confessing, Tron-Et is sentenced to suspended animation in another capsule as Jor-El's proposal for punishment is accepted. This story was retold in World of Krypton #1 (1979).

Edited by Julius Schwartz.