Wednesday Comics: DC, October 1982 (week 3)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around July 15, 1982.

Batman Annual #8: If I didn't know the publication date, this annual would make me think it was from a few years later. Maybe 1984 or even '86. Von Eeden's art seems much more of that time period when he inks himself than the other stuff I've seen by him up to this point. Barr's portrayal of Batman is what I remember from a lot of comics from my earliest days of being a concerted reader of them. He's pretty taciturn and no nonsense, but to the point where it seems less a flaw or pathology rather than just a trait; and he still calls Robin "chum" on occasion. This is not the Batman of Barr's earlier stories so much, but the one found in Barr's later work like Batman and the Outsiders and his run in Detective starting in 1986 with Alan Davis. It's a bit of a "middle path" Batman between the late 70s-early 80s good guy and the grim crusader of the night that was going to come back into vogue. 

Anyway, a masked, terrorist cult leader destroys a town by reducing its populace to charred skeletons and there are only 2 survivors, but that's enough for Batman and Robin to unravel the mystery and determine the causitive agent is in the drinking water. Ultimately, the masked mastermind is revealed to be Ra's al-Ghul and the dynamic duo foil his plans. As that thumbnail might suggest, this is a pulp story harkening back to the lurid menaces and mysteries of pulp heroes like Doc Savage and the Shadow.

Brave & the Bold #191: Mishkin/Cohn and Aparo present the unlikely team-up of Batman and the Joker. After the Penguin is apparently murdered on live TV by the Joker, Batman goes on a manhunt, but the Joker calls him in, declaring his innocence and wanting to enlist Batman's help. Apparently, the Joker is also a bit fond of Penguin and doesn't want his murderer to get away. There's a lot of silliness here as the Joker keeps falling back into old habits and trying to kill Batman with surprise attacks or traps before remembering their allies, and Batman just puts up with it. In the end, it's revealed that Penguin faked his death and pinned it on the Joker as part of some elaborate plan to kidnap a cardinal and get a ransom from the Vatican, but the Joker and Batman foil his plans. It's definitely Bronze Age silliness that wouldn't fly in the Modern Age, but it's not bad.

Nemesis still limps along in the backup. I honestly have a hard time keeping track of where he's at in his battle against this organized crime conspiracy. There's something to be said for colorful costumes and over-the-top villains in making comics stories memorable. Anyway, Nemesis tries to turn this guy Carl Sheffield against the Council.

Legion of Super-Heroes #292: Levitz and Giffen/Mahlstedt present Chapter 3 of the Great Darkness Saga. Chameleon Boy arrives on Takron-Galtos with his trial looming. On Earth, a group of horrified Legionnaires discover that the Master of Darkness cloned Superman and a Guardian of the Universe to make a couple of his servants.

Two Legion cruisers arrive at the Sorcerer's World of Zerox to find it embattled by the forces of Darkness. The Master sets his sites on Daxam, while the Teacher's of Sorcerer's World summon help in the form of...an infant. The Legionnaires make what may be their last stand on Teacher's Island. The Master shatters their defenses--but leaves them all alive so that they can witness his ultimate triumph.

Green Lantern #157: Barr gets new artistic team: Keith Pollard on pencils and Mike DeCarlo on inks.  Green Lantern finds himself attacked by his asteroid home and he's forced to blow up the whole rock. After that weirdness, Hal notices a glowing rock that looks familiar, but it hits him with a blast, leaving him unconscious in space. The rock is drawn to Earth by Hector Hammond who's behind all this. It's the sort of substance that hyper-evolved Hammond and can cure his immobility, and he's been using his mind to search space for it, until he (conveniently) found it inside Hal's asteroid. restored, he breaks out of prison and rushes out for a confrontation. Fighting Jordan seems to drain Hammond's power, though, threatening to shrink his head until his a normal, 20th Century man. He'd rather give up mobility, so he returns to Earth.  Jordan sends an energy form to check on Hammond, but also visit Carol Ferris to remind her that he loves her. 

In The Green Lantern Corps backup by Kupperberg and Novick, we check in on Charles Vicker (a former TV star turned Green Lantern of Sector 3319 (who first appeared in Green Lantern #55 in 1967). Vicker finds it hard to cope with the alien lifeforms of his sector, with not a single planet similar to home he could settle in. He's built his own house on a little planetoid, which only served to make him miss Earth more. When he saves the inhabitants of Axelbob III from disaster, the xenophobic folk run away from him when he tries to be friendly. Still, he keeps on, saving various worlds, each one with weirder and weirder inhabitants. Then, the Guardians of the Universe order him to assist the planet Ftl'yl XI...

House of Mystery #309: Kaluta's cover looks nice, but its Prince Valiant looking Bennett suggests our hero is back in Medieval times when the story actually seems to take place in the late 18th-early 19th Century. Well, the witch hunters seem a throwback, so maybe it's unclear. Anyway, while in the past seeking Mary, Bennett is impersonating his younger, pre-vampire self. Bennett uses his powers to rescue a girl from being murdered by witch-hunters. He goes to the costume party as planned, but the girl he dances with is the vampiric Mary who has also replaced her past self. Suddenly the witch-hunters burst in led by the girl, searching for the monster that saved her. Young Andrew Bennett also shows up to denounce the vampire one. Before vampire Bennett can killed by the mob. Mary accidentally reveals herself, as she's forced to rescue her past self to secure her own existence. The mob turns on vampire Mary who is unable to use her ring, but Bennett slips away to the future.

The other two stories are an EC style riff told from the perspective of a guy who had some horrible accident (turns out it was a failed suicide attempt) who is now a brain in a jar being tormented by his cruel wife, and then in the last one, aging, wealthy business men are stealing the bodies of their young subordinates, but the mustachioed protagonist escapes because a cat gets in the way and becomes the recipient instead.

Night Force #3: Baron Winter is forced by events to accelerate his efforts and coerces Jack Gold into joining forces with Donovan Caine by causing him to lose his job. We learn that Vanessa is the granddaughter of Abraham Van Helsing who was a real person, though the events of Dracula aren't what happened in reality. Does Wolfman just really like Dracula or is he trying to sneakily tie in Night Force to his work at Marvel? Anyway, it's Russian agents that kidnapped Vanessa, and Caine and Gold follow them to London there they meet and elderly antiquarian bookstore owner who had a thing with Winter, and she says he was an older man. Then they are shot at by goons in a car so they jump into the Thames where they are shot at by goons in a hydrofoil!

Sgt. Rock #369: I read this issue as a kid or at least I saw it in my cousin's collection. Easy gets a new recruit who thinks things are too tough. Rock (in typical Kanigher storytelling mode) reminds him as they face challenges and trials that "dying is too easy." Contrary to a lot of those stories, the new guy doesn't die at the end. This is a followed by a downer story with art by Arata about a soldier who dives to rescue a drowning German pilot at Dunkirk only to have them both die a little later as the Luftwaffe sinks the boat they are on fleeing the battle. In the last story by Kelley and Mandrake, a big game hunter is forced to use all his skills to survive and overcome a rival who has joined the Nazis. 

Warlord #62: I reviewed the main story in this issue here. In the Kupperberg/Duursema Arion backup, Caculha shoots across the Astral Plane in an effort to reach Arion, who has become ensnared by a being of energy. Caculha's way is blocked by the very annoying at this point chaos avatar Chaon. The two battle and Calculha is victorious. This story promises to be continued in Arion #1. I hope they do something to make it more interesting than these backups have been.