Action Comics #531: Wolfman is joined by Staton on this one. The Daily Planet is in danger of being taken over by a publisher who wants to turn it into a tabloid, but when apparitions out of 18th and early 19th century literature (including Frankenstein's Monster) start appearing, he changes his mind. It turns out the ghost of a printer's devil who really loves the Planet is responsible.
In the Atom backup by Rozakis and Saviuk, Ray and Jean are in Curaçao, Venezuela, for a physicists' convention, the Atom thwarts the theft of a nuclear bomb that must be deactivated, but his power has been doing weird things since last issue, creating tiny nuclear reactions nearby when he uses it--what will it do to the bomb?
All-Star Squadron #9: It's New Years Eve 1941 and the All-Stars are at a party with Roosevelt and Churchill where Steel is the hero of the hour. Unfortunately, when he was captured at near a concentration camp while on a mission, Steel got the Manchurian Candidate treatment and has been brainwashed to kill Churchill by Baron Blitzkrieg. When the signal is given, the other All-Stars have to fight him to a standstill. Ultimately, though, Blitzkrieg's own PTSD around the scarring of his face with acid is his undoing as a blast of fire breaks Steel from his mental control.
Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew #3: Thomas and Shaw/Smith borrow a sort of classic JLA plot style, where the Zoo Crew split up into duos to battle agents of A.C.R.O.S.T.I.C which are spread out across the country. The issue culminates with a battle with an animated statute from the Linkidd Memorial in the capital. This comic makes me wonder who the intended audience was? Younger readers, maybe? Or did they think there was an untapped market for furry animal humor books, so long as they were supers?
Detective Comics #514: Wein and Newton open this one in media res as Batman pursues Maxie Zeus who has just escaped from Arkham through the snowy mountains "north of Gotham." Road conditions lead to Batman wrecking the Batmobile, and his unconscious body is found by mysterious guy named Haven who lives in an isolated cabin and is a friend to animals. Haven is a pacifist and tries to convince Batman so stay with him until the storm is over, but Batman stubbornly insists on going out to look for Zeus. He almost immediately has to fight a bear (a lot of wilderness north of Gotham!), and Haven finds him and brings him back to cabin.
When they arrived, they are greeted by Maxie and his goons who were also stranded by the storm. When Maxie kills a bird, Haven gets enraged and attacks, but the goons shoot and kill him. Batman takes them down, except for Maxie who runs away, but the bear from earlier attacks him, and Batman has to save him. On his deathbed, Haven reveals that he came to live in isolation in the mountains after he killed another man in anger. Haven dies of his wounds and Batman buries him out back.
In the Batgirl backup by Burkett and Delbo, a carnival is in Gotham, and Batgirl investigates it after reports that a guy was attacked by a vampire. It's no vampire, but a fanged snake woman, Lady Viper!
New Adventures of Superboy #28: When "salesman-supreme" Huey B. McKay again tries to open a Superboy park, criminal mastermind Alex Traynor tries to make it a trap for McKay and Superboy with a bomb in a giant Superboy statue.
In the Dial H for Hero backup by Bridwell/Rozakis and Bender/Giella Chris and Vicki as Tar-Man and Miss Hourglass take on the Disc Jockey, who flies around on a giant record with an arm and needle attached. The story ends as a cliffhanger with Chris, reverted to his nonsuper form, thrown from the flying record by the Disc Jockey.
Unexpected #222: This is the last issue, and it's hardly uh--unexpected since the horror titles have been going deceased this year. Like last issue sci-fi predominates, but there isn't much here to recommend. Drake and Infante having a bitter widower discovering that his strange child is actually an alien. It supposedly has a happy ending as the aliens take the kid and present the guy with a clone of his wife as a "sorry your original wife died in childbirth." Pasko and Silvestri bring us a vampire story with not one but two twists: The vampire turns out to be the brother of the cop hunting him, and also a former priest. The longest story is by Kanigher and Giffen/Mahlstedt and has a guy stealing the coin to pay Charon from the mouth of Alexander the Great's corpse so that the conqueror is denied ferrying across the Styx. His ghost gets revenge on the thief, but he still doesn't get his coin and so his soul sinks into the river.
Unknown Soldier #263: Ayers and Talaoc give us perhaps the most ridiculous visual in history of this book: the Unknown Soldier as a scuba diver with the same old bandages on his face. Haney delivers the usual high concept with an abandoned U.S. sub that's really part of a Japanese attempt at biowar as the beer inside has been contaminated with the bubonic plague. The Unknown Solider blows it and its infected crew to hell before it can reach a U.S. port.
In the Tomahawk backup by Haney/Delbo, our hero is tried and convicted for the assassination attempt against George Washington. While he's awaiting execution, he and his rangers discover that the prosecutor is really his old enemy Lord Shilling in disguise. In the Balloon Buster story by Kanigher and Spiegle, the maverick Steve Savage is in trouble with his command, particularly after the Enemy Ace flies over and drops a personal message and trophy for him. That doesn't stop Savage from stealing a plane to fly a French boy to Germany to get surgery to cure his blindness. He calls in a favor from von Hammer to get the boy to the surgeon and back.
World's Finest Comics #279: Burkett and Pollard/DeCarlo have Batman and Robin tangle with a group of C-list villains who General Scarr has brought together because their noms de guerre all contain military titles: Major Disaster, Colonel Sulphur, and Captain Cutlass. They're out to kidnap Bruce Wayne. Green Arrow investigates a new cult called Harmony to help a reporter at the Daily Star get his daughter out courtesy of Cavalieri and von Eeden. He finds out that the cult and the deprogrammers supposedly working against them are in cahoots.
Rozakis and Saviuk send Hawkman to hyperspace on a quest to find Shayera, but instead he finds a motley band of space pirates. In the Captain Marvel story, Bancroft Fisher may be the worst rich person ever as he incentivizes doctors to find a cure for his condition by setting missiles to launch and destroy life on earth if he dies. Kid Eternity summons Asklepios to heal him. Bancroft reveals he was just bluffing, and he called the Marvel's specifically so they would stop the missiles. Instead of Bancroft getting beat to a pulp by the Marvels, we get the reveal that Kid Eternity is Captain Marvel, Jr.'s brother.
5 comments:
A lot of detail beats going on in here. The contents of the last Unexpected might not be memorable but that cover sure is striking! Gets me to notice the WHERE THE ACTION IS badge in what becomes the direct sales box . . . sort of a sad assertion for DC to make in 1982 and I didn't even know they had separate branding for non-newsstand that early. Makes me want to get out my subscription copies and compare.
The wild hills north of Gotham are clearly an early hint to support the recent fan theory that the city is "actually" based on Portland Maine, where crime runs unchecked and drugs are more plentiful than free parking.
Shamefully I guess I was still in the Captain Carrot audience in mid-1982. The charm for me was similar to the All-Star Squadron . . . a fairly deep dive into a new but familiar "parallel earth" super continuity now that I had a pretty good handle on all the Earth One trivia. But looking back, wonder if in the right hands a sharper satirical MAD approach would have hit better with older tweens tired of Batman.
I was 9 years old, so I definitely read some Zoo Crew, but not a lot. So maybe it was younger readers?
I hadn't heard the Portland Maine theory, but the way you lay it out makes sense.
"Where the Action Is" I would view as less sad and more aspirational. They are faking it until they make it! And they do have New Teen Titans and Swamp Thing by this point, so the heat is ever so slowly rising.
In retrospect Roy's output in this era feels incredibly indulgent, like the opposite of the way they treated Kirby a few years earlier. But if there was any commercial motive behind the Zoo Crew, maybe it was somebody's cynical effort to drive just one more Richie Rich or Gold Key title off the rack. Maybe in that light Arak also had a clear goal of getting in the way of the Conan franchise.
Good point about '82 being a real turning year. They're doing it but the process is painful.
And yeah, we get our ice cream in a town called "GoRham" so I almost believe the theory.
That has a ring of truth to it.
All-Star Squadron does not read as well to me now as it would when I first encountered it (which would be a year or more from this point). Perhaps Thomas settles into it, but there's just too much now. Too much historical reference, too many characters. The indulgence, you mention.
Arak is perhaps the most successful of these, but there is the undeniable whiff of "I'll do what I did with Conan" to it. There's a post at some point on the DC fantasy titles here and how they late to the era, but I can't quite connect the dots yet.
Even as someone who quite liked Arak, I can't imagine it even mildly impacting Conan sales. For me the appeal was in the differences from Conan anyway - notably the much more historical setting (albeit with strong fantasy elements).
I remember thinking Captain Carrot was a cute concept but best used sparingly.
Giving him his own ongoing left me cold - but I was sixteen at this point, so neither young enough to appreciate what was a pretty mediocre funny animal book (compared to, say, Carl Barks work, which holds up at any age) and not old enough to feel a nostalgic fondness for the sheer absurdity of the book. In some ways it feels like early Silver Age silliness, only coming fifteen-twenty years too late.
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