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

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! I'm a couple of days later than my usual Wednesday post, but I'm looking at the comics at newsstands on the week of  February 5, 1981. 

Batman #335: Wolfman's "Lazarus Affair" storyline comes to a close. Batman agrees to join Ra's to save the lives of his friends, but nobody believes it, including Ra's. He shows Batman the Lazarus Pit and explains who it brings immortality. Again, al Ghul asks him to join him, but Batman refuses and a fight breaks out. Al Ghul's hulkish goons bring Batman down, and Ra's sends him to be converted into one of those goons. Meanwhile, the other heroes and Talia break loose. They arrive in time to rescue Batman. Talia is shot by one of al Ghul's minions. She's placed in the Lazarus Pit. Once she's saved, Batman and the Demon's Head have their one-on-one combat, and the others (except Talia) leave them to it. Ultimately, al Ghul tumbles into the pit, but he comes out on fire and still looking to fight. Batman knocks him into the pit again. He and Talia escape in a helicopter as the island explodes behind them. Looks like Ra's stays dead until July of '82.

DC Comics Presents #33: It's Conway's turn to get script help from Roy Thomas. They team Superman up with Captain Marvel with Buckler/Giordano on art. Superman finds his powers and costumes switched with the Big Red Cheese. Both heroes have to go through their day coping with having different powers. Mxyzptlk is to blame, and in the end it's revealed that he's in cahoots with Mr. Mind. 

The "Whatever Happened to.." backup  features a Star Hawkins story by Tiefenbacher and Saviuk. Star solves a big case and retires with a large reward. He marries Stella Sterling, and Ilda marries Automan, who makes a guest appearance.

Flash #297: Bates gives us a weird story here, sort of made weirder, I think, by Infantino's art. Captain Cold has reformed and is fighting crime, but the Flash doesn't trust him. It turns out Cold's change is genuine; he reformed for his new actress girlfriend. When he discovers that girlfriend is using his outfit and gun to commit crimes for which he'll get blame, he goes for a murder/suicide thing--maybe. Somehow, he ties them both up (seems fishy to me) and hangs them inside rings of "cold fire" to quick freeze them for eternity. The Flash shows up and rescues them. In the B plot, Barry Allen's parents come to town. As his Dad is expounding on how "tough love" led them to ignore their widowed and grieving son's entreaties to visit until he had made peace with Iris's death, they get in a car accident and fall over a cliff. With his mother in a coma and likely to be hospitalized for a while, his Dad comes to leave with Barry. His father's thoughts reveal he's in Central City to "end the Flash" in "the most horrible demise imaginable." Now that's a cliffhanger!

The Firestorm backup has the hothead clashing with Multiplex, who is able to create duplicates. Interestingly (and unlike most duplication powers) Multiplex's duplicates get smaller if he creates a lot of them, so he also has kind of a shrinking power.

Ghosts #100: I hoped you liked the "Ghost Gladiator" from last issue, because that guy is all over this! All the stories feature him except the last one, and all the stories are written by Kashdan, with only the non-gladiator story drawn by Bright instead of Carillo. A archeologist is haunted by the gladiator in the ruins of Pompeii, but it turns out his assistant has promised the ghost release in return for the haunting. The archeologist frees the ghost and deals with the assistant. In WWII, the ghostly gladiator helps the Allies defeat Germans planning to destroy Pompeii's ruins. In the final gladiator story, the spirit saves the great-granddaughter of the archeologist in the first story when a thief threatens her while trying to steal Pompeiian artifacts from a museum.

In the last story, the leader of an outlawed democratic movement faces death in a caricature Middle Eastern country. First though, his hands are cut off. That night, the evil ruler is strangled to death by spectral hands. Probably just a coincidence.

G.I. Combat #229: The first Haunted Tank story has Jeb and crew trying to fulfill the wish of a dying Italian and his granddaughter that he be able to hear the bell of the Abbey on Mt. Cassino one last time before he dies. This involves driving into German occupied territory being bombed by the Allies. In the end, a dying German sniper falling from the bell tower gives the old man his wish. In the O.S.S. story by Kanigher and Cruz, an O.S.S. agent and a Norwegian woman, Ingrid, are sent to Norway to make contact with her brother, a resistance fighter named Lars, and together take out a German jet field. When the Germans are on to them at every turn, the agent believes Lars is a traitor, but it turns out Ingrid is. She dies with the destruction of the German air field. 

Kasdan and Barcasio tell a story from the perspective of a pair of binoculars. In Kashdan's second effort with Vicatan, a captain climbing up to a Nazi-occupied castle substitutes the corpse of a German soldier on his climbing line to make good his escape. In occupied France, the resistance kills the occupying troops with poisoned meat in a yarn by Allikas and Sangalang. The final ridiculous and possibly offensive Haunted Tank story has the crew encountering a shambling, malnourished group of men in hospital clothes--but they're willing to pick up guns and kill Nazis like anyone else. The crew gives them some candy and follows them to their destination: a psychiatric hospital.

Jonah Hex #48: An old friend from Hex's scout days shows up to request Hex help him deal with the Crow on his trail who want to kill him. Back in the day, Hex saved the man from torture by the Paiutes who had wrongly blamed him for the death of a young girl. It turns out that Hex is also acquainted with the Crow chief who reveals his friend isn't so innocent in this case and has committed murder. Faced with turning his friend over for torture, Hex instead shoots and kills him himself. 

In the backup, we've said good-bye to Scalphunter and hello to El Diablo, by Skimmer and Andru/DeZungia, who hasn't appeared since 1976. El Diablo's thing is that he's Lazarus Lane, who was nearly killed by a gang of thieves and left in a coma, but a Native American shaman, Wise Owl, revived him to a sort of sleepwalking Old West avenger, El Diablo. In this story, a robber follows El Diablo home and tries to make Wise Owl give "control" of Lazarus to him, but that doesn't work out so well in the end. Nothing special, but I like it better than Scalphunter.

Justice League of America #190: Conway's story opens with the uncontrolled Leaguers getting the grim message from an admiral that the government intends to destroy New York City to contain Starro. They go into action to prevent that from happening. Meanwhile, Red Tornado, who has only been feigning Starro's control makes a break for it. As the League infiltrates the city and tries to keep Starro's forces from escaping, we find Flash and Zatanna are still in turmoil over their attraction, and Zatanna has the added issue of having some trouble with her spells. The little boy from the prologue last issue has accidentally discovered that the cold weakens Starro's control. The League uses this information to free their friends, and Firestorm and Green Lantern team-up to freeze Starro. Buckler's art is uneven here, which I blame on Smith's inks, but the Brian Bolland cover (only his 6th for DC) is great.