Wednesday Comics: DC, April 1982 (week 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 January 14, 1982.

Batman #346: Two-Face escapes from Arkham by hypnotizing the guards with a special coin. While Batman searches for him, Gordon worries about Mayor Hills promise to get rid of him, Dick frets over his mysterious new girlfriend, Dala, and Vicki Vale becomes ever-more suspicious that Bruce Wayne is Batman. Conway is juggling a lot here! In the end, Batman tracks Two-Face down and overcomes numerous traps but is captured anyway.

In the Catwoman backup by Jones and von Eeden/Marcos, Catwoman discovers that the detective who hired her is really an ex-Nazi searching for an h-bomb formula hidden on the train. H wants revenge on her because her father killed his father. He ties Catwoman to the railroad tracks and he explains how he made the trains disappear with an underground tunnel and made everyone believe in ghosts with holographic images. Catwoman gets free and uses his own holograms against him.

Flash #308: Bates and Infantino/Smith have actress Daphne Dean seeking out the help of her childhood friend Barry Allen. It seems she's been getting increasingly more creepy letters of love from Lance Basilla, their childhood bully. Lance has been participating in some sort of sleep study and while he has dreamed his fancies are given physical form. A mummy monster from his mind challenges the Flash in an attempt to get Daphne. In the end, lightning thwarts the monster, and Lance seems to give up his obsession.

In the Dr. Fate backup, The Lord of Chaos Malferrazae (who has masqueraded as the god Totec) has sent a creature to destroy Fate. Only after the combat has gone on for sometime, does Fate discover the creature is borne of Inza's jealousy. If Fate manages to destroy the monster, Inza will die, devastating Kent Nelson's and destroying his will to serve as Doctor Fate, allowing Malferrazae to cause the fifth massive extinction on Earth! But if he doesn't destroy the monster, Malferrazae still wins.

G.I. Combat #240: There's a note in the letter column of this issue that they've had to cut back on pages. In Kanigher's and Glanzman's first Haunted Tank tale is more fantastic than most, with our heroes going up against a robot tank crew. When they are defeated by quicksand, Hitler executes the inventor in a fit of pique in true super-villain fashion. Kashdan and Matucenio deliver an ode to a hardworking truck. In the O.S.S. story, the metal plate on an agent's head gives a signal for the bombers to follow to destroy a German radar installation. Kashdan and Redondo present a story about a really by the book sargeant--who ultimately uses that manual to leave a paper trail for rescues to follow when he and his men are captured. 

The issue is rounded out as always by the Haunted Tank. With his tank busted and his men injured, Jeb has to go for help, but runs into a German death squad. His crew comes to the rescue at the last minute in a captured German armored car.

Jonah Hex #59: DeZuniga's cover for this issue is completely misleading because it just depicts the events of a nightmare Jonah has. Meanwhile, Wu Gong Phat, who claims to be a merchant from Nanking, sets a trap for Hex. Mei Ling receives a mysterious letter and rides off. The issue ends with Hex apparently being loaded on a boat in the San Francisco harbor.

The El Diablo backup by Cohn and Ayers has a traveling hypnotist arrive in town. After a seemingly innocuous show of his abilities, he gets the subjects he demonstrated on to rob a bank. All except Lazarus Long who becomes El Diablo and brings the wrongdoers to justice. Something El Diablo does leaves the hypnotist a jibbering madman.

New Teen Titans #18: Wolfman and Perez bring back the original Starfire. When his son is killed by Americans in El Salvador, a Soviet official seeks revenge by sending his secretary, Maladi Malanova, to America ostensibly as a courier--but she's also carrying a deadly disease. Learning of the plot, the Soviet government dispatches Starfire (the Russian one) to the U.S. to stop her. This being a superhero comic, the Titans mistake Starfire for the plague-carrier, and they fight. Then, they fight some more when they find out he intends to kill Maladi who is incurable. The Titans fight Starfire to a stalemate and Maladi is finally taken to a hospital to die in peace. Kid Flash condemns Starfire for his callousness, but the hero ultimately reveals that Maladi was his fiancée, and he had only volunteered for the mission to spare her the pain of a tortuous death.

Superman #370: Wein and Swan present "Better Living Through Chemo-stry!" Chemo returns to Earth and somehow merges with a laid-off factory-worker whose animus for his old employers drives Chemo to attack their factories. Superman succeeds in separating the two.

In the retro-topical "Superman: The In-Between Years" backup by Rozakis and Schaffenberger, Clark Kent learns that his roommate Tommy Lee's parents in South Viet Nam are endangered by the Communists and goes to help them as Superboy.