Wednesday Comics: DC, June 1981 (wk 2 pt 2)

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. 

Detective Comics #503: I feel like Conway's best DC work in this era (such as it is) is probably on Batman. Here he teams up with Newton on a Scarecrow story. Batman, while on patrol, is shot with a dart that makes him start producing pheromones that cause people, even his friends and allies, to have a fear response to him. It falls to Batgirl and Robin to track down Scarecrow, but they get captured, and Batman has to go in for the final confrontation. Scarecrow gets overdosed with his own drug and winds up in Arkham, afraid of himself.

New Adventures of Superboy #18: Moosie slips over from frenemy to villain by teaming up with Kator, the android antagonist Superboy built for himself last issue. After Superboy destroys Kator, the android has his powers transferred to Moosie. The envious guy wants the Boy of Steel out of the way so he can ask out Lana. Superboy defeats Kator II, too, but we're told that Moosie will grow up to be the villain Master Jailer. 

The backup by Rozakis and Schaffenberger has Superboy trying out a yellow costume, but that doesn't work so well because the costume reflects the yellow sunlight that empowers him.

Sgt. Rock #353: Kanigher and Redondo give Easy a new C.O. in the form of a Major with something to prove. In the end, he leads from the front and earns the men's respect. Kelley and DeMulder present a story of a Roman soldier getting played by an Egyptian woman who turns out to be Cleopatra. The next story with art by Thomas Mandrake, "Red Devil" really isn't a war story at all, but the weird (but true) story of the "Red Ghost." The last story is a "Men of Easy" spotlight on Wildman by Kanigher and Randall.

Super Friends #45: Bridwell and Tanghal team the Justice League up with a group of Global Guardians. In Silver Age fashion, they divide up in mixed sub-teams to free a group of villains captured by the mysterious Conqueror. It all turns out to have been a gambit to gain possession of the villains powerful weapons/tools.

The Plastic Man backup by Pasko and Staton has Plas getting involved when actor Rhienhold Slaschenhacker is kidnapped from the set of Carnage the Barbarian (a film by Jon Militant) by villains Rubberneck and Puttyface. That's really all you need to know about that one.

Unexpected #211: Drake and Catan open this one with the story of a gourmand actor with a taste for exotic foods who meets his end when he attempts to get peacock tongues and the birds peck him to death. In the next story, the domineering wife of a fisherman convinces him to attempt to prove he's a descendant of the Man in the Iron Mask. The ghost of Marchioly instead takes its vengeance on her as a descendant of the Bourbons. Drake's back again with Garcia and a story about a spaceship crew's response to a distress signal that winds up being from a hungry planet. 

Finally, Barr and von Eedon/Breeding bring the Johnny Peril storyline to an overdue close. The Master of the Seven Stars reveals the stars are a beacon to bring Lovecraftian alien horrors to Earth. I don't know how everything he was doing up until this point makes sense with that plan, but I also admit I haven't been reading too closely, so maybe it's airtight. Anyway, Peril and his friends triumph, the end.

Unknown Soldier #252: In a story by Haney and Ayers/Tlaloc U.S. bombers are unable to take advantage of the "Bomber's Moon" because the crews keep being struck by a strange madness mid-flight. The Unknown Soldier joins the crew of the Buckle Down Winsocki and discovers the malady is cause by music broadcast in Holland. The Unknown Soldier parachutes in and takes out the church being used as a broadcast point in a story that hits all the Low Country highpoints: a Dutch boy with the requisite hair cut, tulips, windmills, ice skating, and dikes.

In the Enemy Ace backup by Kanigher and Severin, Hans Von Hammer does a lot more ruminating about the nature of honor and war and his role in it, still trying to find a way to get a message to the downed English pilot's sister. He discovers the young woman he met at the party in the last issue using a flashlight to signal allied pilots.

Warlord #46:  Read more about it here. The OMAC backup is not credited, but Mike's Amazing World of DC Comics says it is still LaRocque and Colletta, and I believe it as it looks like the same style, but it is even worse than last issue. I can't believe DC published this. The story is OMAC being naïve and getting duped in the corporate controlled future, so same old stuff.