Wednesday Comics: DC, May 1981 (wk 2 pt 1)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around February 19, 1981.

Action Comics #519: A deep sea listening station in the desert is the site of a conflict between an alien hunter and a monster that destroyed his world. Again Conway provides story free of an real sense of peril and whose action seems staid under Swan's pencils.

The Aquaman backup by DeMatteis/Heck continues. Here we get the strange history of Aquaman's mother, which I suspect was ignored after this story, from the Poseidon android who has a replica of the mind of Aquaman's father. Atlanna was one of the original survivors of Atlantis. She became immortal thanks to a serum of her creation. After her supposed death following Aquaman's birth, she apparently went crazy. She hates the Atlantis that exiled her, and now wants to kill her own son who is prophesized to be it's savior.

Adventure Comics #481: More stories of heroes (and villains) submitted by the readers. This issue has a series of stories connected by the escalating machinations of an aquatic alien species looking to conquer Earth. A flood hits the city, but Goldman, Goldgirl and Alchemiss are there to help. Chris' father, a cop, begins to become suspicious of the new heroes. Then, Chris and Vicki have a near-romantic moment interrupted by an attack by the Destructress, a delusional young woman turned into a super-villain by the aquatic aliens. They become Sixth Sensor and Dimension Girl to stop her. Finally, the aliens send Largo the Conqueror. Volcano and Stellar defeat him and send the aliens packing. I'm not usually a fan of Infantino's art in this era, but his rendering of Largo is good.

Brave & the Bold #174: Batman, Green Lantern, and the Guardian arrive on Maltus, the ancient home of the Guardian's ancestors. There, GL is reunited with Appa Ali Apsa (though he isn't named this issue) who was made mortal by the Guardians as punishment. They bring the "Old Timer" back with them to Oa to help them discover which of the Guardians is Sinestro in disguise. Ultimately, Sinestro's temper unmasks him. While Batman and Old Timer avoid him, Green Lantern marshals the Corps to defeat the renegade and the Guardians he's using as a battery. Conway is pretty good at these team-ups, and Aparo's art is an added bonus.

In the Nemesis backup by Burkett and Spiegle, Nemesis escapes from the police officer trying to take him in and continues to try to foil Chesterton's plot. He figures out the kidnappings are chess themed, but things are complicated by Valerie getting into trouble. 

Green Lantern #140: Wolfman, Staton and Mitchell finish up their storyline regarding the kidnapping of the Ferrises. Either it's a trait of Wolfman's or a trait of how comics were written in this era, but the "arc" doesn't have any particularly big payoff. The kidnapper who's trying to ruin the Ferris family is Bloch, an old business partner who believes Ferris stole the business from him. Later, he was horribly burned in an attempt to sabotage a Ferris experimental jet. Aiding him are his sons, one of whom is a sleazy Congressman. None of these folks are particularly significant or compelling adversaries for Green Lantern as yet. Bloch dies for his efforts, but his son in Congress vows vengeance. 

The Adam Strange backup is passable planetary romance. Strange succeeds in helping the mer-person queen stop the automated battleship that was menacing her people. It turns out the robot they met last issue was a little boy wearing power armor. I kind of like that Sutton doesn't explain who the boy is or how he got there, though does have Strange pose those questions in the story.

House of Mystery #292: I..Vampire is nowhere to be seen this issue, but we get better than average anthology tales. The first story by Cavalieri with art by Mark Silvestri (his first for DC or anybody) and Tony DeZuniga is probably the weakest, but only due to unexploited potential. A general plans to use an orphaned child with the ability to manipulate reality a weapon against the U.S.'s enemies, but when the child seems poised to smash a globe in a temper tantrum, it could mean the end of the world instead. There's the gesture at a subplot here involving a doctor taking care of the boy having lost her son in Vietnam, but it goes nowhere.

"The Wendigo" by Kelly and Estrada has some interesting art, particularly in the creature design. A young boy living in a rural area befriends a Wendigo and uses it to get rid of people who've angered him. After depopulating the nearby town, he sends it to the big city following a skeptical reporter. "Hair Apparent" by Conway and Spiegle has the scion of the Briarly family breaking with family tradition and marrying someone besides a cousin. When the familial lycanthropy curse hits, his new wife uses a spell to turn herself into a werewolf rather than live without her husband.

Unknown Soldier #251: Haney and Ayers take us first to the snowy Pyrenees with the Unknown Soldier caught between Spanish fascists and Nazis Then he has to fight a bear. He's there to bring back a German Abbot form a remote monastery whose brother is a resistance fighter the Allies wish to get out of Germany. They need the Abbot to help them get to the brother, who otherwise might think it was a trap. Sneaking back into Germany proves difficult, and the Abbot and the Soldier are separated for a while, but reunite in time to meet the brother in a bombed out German city. It turns out the Soldier is actually there to kill him as the Allies believe he has already turned traitor--but it turns out the Abbot was replaced while they were separated by an SS officer! Then the real Abbot shows up and has to decide whether to side with family or ending the Nazi tyranny. In the end, he breaks his nonviolent code and shoots his brother to save the Soldier. In return, the Soldier later retrieves the statue of Mary the Nazis had plundered from the monastery.

We get the first installment of a Enemy Ace backup by Kanigher and John Severin. I like Enemy Ace, but this issue the story is mostly introducing the character and his rigid honor as a Knight of the Air. He takes on the request of a dying enemy to get a bracelet to his twin sister. Unfortunately, the pilot died before he could even say her name. The final story is a short where downed enemy pilots in the Pacific don't fall to each other but to the "eternal sentinel"--a shark.