My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around March 19, 1981.
Action Comics #520: Conway and Swan don't bring in yet another alien menace, at least. Eric Burton, some superstar tech-entrepreneur, has his sights on Lois Lane, and he's using his money and technology to make sure Superman is distracted by every event on Earth that might need his intervention. Burton isn't causing the events, he's just making sure Superman knows about them, and the Man of Steel can't resist helping. In the end, Lois needs help and Burton shows his cowardice while Superman saves the day. Not a great story, but I think there's a kernel of something interesting here regarding Superman's sense of duty.
The Aquaman backup by DeMatteis/Heck comes to an end (that's even the title). Aquaman and the robot Poseidon with his dad's mind go to confront his crazy mom. She throws a bunch of robots at him in the form of his foes, highlighting how obscure most of Aquaman's rogue's gallery are. In the end, her sister shows up and reveals Aquaman isn't the prophesized one. Atlanna sees the error of her ways and says she's sorry, then destroys herself and the robots. Aquaman opines that as far as he's concerned, this parents were gone a long time ago, practically stating outright that this storyline will be ignored in the future.
The Aquaman backup by DeMatteis/Heck comes to an end (that's even the title). Aquaman and the robot Poseidon with his dad's mind go to confront his crazy mom. She throws a bunch of robots at him in the form of his foes, highlighting how obscure most of Aquaman's rogue's gallery are. In the end, her sister shows up and reveals Aquaman isn't the prophesized one. Atlanna sees the error of her ways and says she's sorry, then destroys herself and the robots. Aquaman opines that as far as he's concerned, this parents were gone a long time ago, practically stating outright that this storyline will be ignored in the future.
Adventure Comics #482: The villains come and go pretty quick in whatever town Vicky and Chris live in! Well, I guess the first one, Interchange, is attacking Washington, D.C., but that still puts 2 super-villians in their at-best medium-sized city. There's Silversmith (with the power to coat things in silver), and the H.I.V.E. assassin Blademaster. Various rookie mistakes bring Chris's cop dad ever closer to figuring out the two are someone related to the superheroes that all show up only once.
Brave & the Bold #175: Batman teams up with Lois Lane to fight Metallo with Jim Aparo on art. Lois might not be the perfect partner to take on a villain with a Kryptonite heart, but they get the job done in the end. Not a bad issue, but far from standout.
In the Nemesis backup by Burkett and Spiegle, Nemesis teams up with the Scotland Yard guy as they figure out the bad guy is playing a chess game with all his kidnappings, and his ultimate target is the Queen.
Green Lantern #141: Wolfman and Staton introduce the Omega Men. Jordan and Carol Ferris go for a campout since they've both lost their jobs at Ferris with her father's return to a more active role. In the woods, they run across the Omega Men. These guys are played more antagonistically in this first encounter than I'm used to seeing them. Also, I never really thought about it, but most of this initial group have an animal-based schtick: tiger, reptile, and bird.
House of Mystery #293: I..Vampire is back by DeMatteis and Sutton. Bennett and his sidekicks are still on the trail of the Blood Red Moon and attend a rally by racist politician Q.B. Stonewall. He's denounced by a Black Senator, Olive, whose house is later set on fire by the KKK. Bennett is sure Stonewall is a vampire (though he doesn't see the red crescent mark on Olive), but Stonewall is dead. It turns out his assistant is the vampire, but before Bennett can strike, his friend Dmtri stops him. The assistant is his mother!
In the opening story by Conway and Tuska/Celardo, a dead man's dog pesters a gravedigger until the man follow's the dog. He hear the deceased's son confess to the dog's master's murder. The dog was guided in these actions by his master's ghost. "The Senior Sin!" by Ms. Charlie Seegar and Tenny Henson has two young hoodlums who like to prey on the elderly getting cursed by the people whose deaths they've cause to age prematurely, then they are murdered by other young punks.
Legion of Super-Heroes #276: I'm embarrassed today say, I didn't catch the hint regarding the villain of this issue in the title "Lord Romdur's Castle." Conway has the team on of those Medieval worlds the 30th Century seems to have, and they go to check out this villainous Lord Romdur who turns out to be Mordru! (See, Romdur is an anagram for Mordru.) The art by Ditko and Chiaramonte seems mostly phoned in. The cover by Buckler and Giordano is the best part of the issue.
Why is Batman acting like green kryptonite radiation is killing him? I mean, it'll maybe give you cancer eventually, but he's not Superman. The dangerous part of facing Metallo for Bruce is the super-strong cyborg body, not the guy's glowing power source. Nice to see Lois getting to do some action stuff after that super-clingy damsel in distress stuff on the Action cover. Think I've seen that one on Superdickery back in the day.
ReplyDeleteRomdur/Mordru does seem a bit on the obvious side, yeah. Reminds me of the redrum thing in the Shining - which always struck me as being off, since a lot of the deaths in that hotel were suicide, not murder. Harder to make a catchy word by scrambling the letters in the former though. U Is Dice?
That's a plot point in the story. Metallo is shooting his kryptonite beams through some regular radioactive material or something.
ReplyDeleteThat Action Comics plot is interesting. The villain is genre savvy enough to know the tropes of a Superman story and attempt to weaponize them against him.
ReplyDeleteWhat's more, usually a "run the hero ragged, then hit him when he's down" plot will involve a boss criminal using a lot of underlings to commit more crimes than usual. Kingpin does it to Daredevil, Bane does it to Batman.
But this guy, if I understand correctly, doesn't increase the amount of crime or natural disasters or other dangers in the world, he just makes sure Superman hears about them. His plan might as well be "Found CNN and get Superman to watch it" or "Invent Twitter and get Superman to doomscroll."
Usually Superman's background as a newsman is portrayed as a good thing, because it gives him access to the information he needs. This guy turns Superman's news consumption into a weakness, just by giving him too much of it.
His weapon is attention.
This is a story that anticipates the difficulty of our contemporary media landscape, and predicted it, say, 30 years early.
I don't know how well it was executed, but conceptually, this is a diamond in the rough.
The "keep Superman busy with endless emergencies" thing strongly reminds me of an Astro City story from years later where we see a day in the life of Samaritan (essentially Clark, but even more of an altruistic do-gooder). The poor guy is literally on the go stopping crime, disasters, etc, etc something almost 24 hours a day nonstop, with about ten minutes a day free to crowd in some sleep - where he dreams of being able to just enjoy flying peacefully through the sky, going nowhere. He can't bring himself to do less - and Superman played more realistically would be in the same boat. He doesn't really need a tech mogul to tell him what's happening across the globe, his super-senses should make it impossible to find a moment to himself.
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