Wednesday Comics: DC, November 1982 (week 1)

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! Today, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands on the week of August 5, 1982. 

Adventure Comics #493: This digest gives us one new story along with the reprints: Challengers of the Unknown by Rozakis and Tuska/Mushynsky. This is a retelling/updating of their origin complete with the plane crash and "living on borrowed time" but seems to suggest that the crash was an accident. We'll see next issue.

Wonder Woman #297: Nice cover here by Michael Kaluta. Mishkin and Colan/McLaughlin introduce a new menace in the form of Aegeus. He's a Greek terrorist looking to establish a utopian community on an island but discovers an ancient ruin where he is given the thunderbolts of Zeus and the winged horse Pegasus. He attacks a group of U.S. military jets bringing him to conflict with Wonder Woman. In the end, he kidnaps Steve Trevor.

A new writer, Joey Cavalieri, joins artists Staton and Trapani on the Huntress backup. Helena takes a position as a liaison between the D.A. and the Police Comissioner's office, but Harry isn't exactly happy to be working more closely with his girlfriend as it reminds him of her superhero activies he worries about. That evening, Huntress is preparing to confront a gang running a protection racket, when she's startled by a Batman-like shadow. A new hero, Blackwing, joins the fray, but promptly knocked out and unmasked by the gang. It's Charley Bullock, intern from Cranston, Grayson, and Wayne.

Arak Son of Thunder #15: Arak and Satyricus are in the port city of Thessalonika trying to find out where Valda was taken. They run afoul of the Byzantine soldiers and find out Valda has been taken east as a prisoner, but they also hear that the town has been beset by a ghost or invisible monster. Arak learns that the invisible creature is actually an invisible hydra or the ghost of a hydra summoned by the tavern keeper to rid the city of the foreign soldiers. 

Racing to the docks to try to get a ship to follow Valda, Arak has to fight the monster. The tavern keeper's daughter is killed by a collapsing wall, so he learns a lesson, I guess. Arak then continues his quest to find Valda and Malagigi.

In the backup by the Thomases and Colon, Valda awakens as a captive of the Hun priest Chelchak, he of the horse-had mask. Valda killed the hun leader's prize mare and is now scheduled to be sacrificed. Chelchak has taken a shine to her and attempts to get her life spared. When the Kagan will have none o it, the priest transforms into a horse and carries Valda to freedom. At the river, Valda is reunited with Malagigi who shows her that all the horses of the frank army have mysteriously died. Valda realizes that it was Chelchak's spell which killed them. Without the horses, Carolus Magnus cannot continue the war against the Huns.

Blackhawk #252: Evanier and Spiegle have the Blackhawks tasked with the recovery of Professor Merson, a scientist and inventor who has been nabbed by the Germans. They receive intelligence which places the professor, an avid gambler, is at a casino in Beldorf. Flying over South Belgium, the Blackhawks are delayed when they spot a destroyed town. Survivors claim that a giant War Wheel was responsible, and the Blackhawks suspect that this is one of Merson's inventions.

At the casino in Beldorf, Blackhawk meets Domino, a specially trained female assassin tasked with killing the team. She gets the drop on Blackhawk, but then departs. The other Blackhawks have located Merson and separated him from the Gestapo guards, but it turns out that Merson is willingly working with the Nazis for financial gain. After capturing him again, Blackhawk interrogates him, and figures out a way to stop the War Wheel with an electric shock. Still, before Blackhawk can get Merson back to the Allies, he's again ambushed by Domino, who again chooses not to kill him, despite her orders. Blackhawk smugly muses to his team later that he must have been the kiss they shared in Beldorf.

I like this book, reading it today and when I read it the first time, perhaps 3-4 years ago, but I don't know if it would have appealed to me in '82.

 

DC Comics Presents #51: At least 3 issues this week have a Masters of the Universe preview by Kupperberg and the not ideal art team of Swan and Hunt. As this is one of them, it's as good a place as any to talk about that story. Zodac shows up at the royal court and demands that He-Man be brought to him so that he may take him from the world forever. This leads to a lot of fighting between Zodac and He-Man. Meanwhile, Skeletor is trying to get into Grayskull with the Power Sword and Superman is somehow transported from Earth and starts fighting him. (They fought previously in DCP.) He-Man finally makes it to help Superman and appears to have been killed by Skeletor, but survives. Zodac shows up to say essentially "well, it worked out ok. So, my works done." Cosmic beings, am I right?

In the main story, a Superman/Atom team-up by Mishkin and Saviuk, the Atom goes back in time by dipping in the Time Pool (which we last saw in those Atom backups in Action #522-523) to the 19th Century, sees Superman apparently killed battling aliens in the American West. Back in the present, he tries to see if he and Superman can avert the Man of Steel's seeming destiny. This involves Var-El, the ancestor of Superman whose old lab Superman and Hawkgirl visited back in issue #37. The aliens are technology thieves and Var-El--still alive in the 19th Century--has been fighting them. Superman doesn't die, of course. Instead, what the Atom saw was Superman shrinking himself Atom-style. The heroes are unaware that Var-El is still alive in the past, so that's a dangling thread for another issue. 

Fury of Firestorm #6: Conway and Broderick/Rodriquez have Firestorm escape the Pied Piper-controlled masses from last issue by creating a firehose and blasting the Piper. Defeat by Firestorm is the least of the villain's problems, though, as he finds himself being turned into a satyr by the power of the Pan's Pipes he stole. Firestorm visits the Piper in the hospital. He can't tell the hero the current location of the pipes, but Firestorm learns that a dealer in Greece named Pandrakos sold the pipes to Senator Reilly. 

Firestorm flies off the Greece and discovers Pandrakos is really Pan! The god has taken command of a ship and transformed all of the ship's crew into satyrs. He has his pipes again and uses the music in an effort to hypnotize Firestorm, but our hero traps him in a metal box and dumps him in the sea. When his music can't be heard, it's effects disappear, and everyone turns back to normal.

Justice League #208: The "Crisis on Earth-Prime" continues. The All-Stars and the JLA, meeting for the first time in 1942, fight for a bit as superheroes do, but then team-up and answer the call of FDR. He's received a mysterious piece of electronic equipment (from 1982, it turns out) and they all get to hear the ultimatum Per Degaton delivers to all the world's major powers. He's got ICBMs and he will demonstrate them tomorrow at dawn. 

Meanwhile, in Earth-Prime's October 1982, the JSA must contend with mutated survivors. They discover that the Cuban Missile Crisis went hot in this world, thanks to some missiles disappearing. The more mystically inclined suss out who's behind this: Per Degaton.

Back on Earth-Two, aboard a Royal Navy warship, the All-Stars and Leaguers stand by to observe Degaton's demonstration. Aquaman warns all sea life to flee. On schedule, an ICBM drops into the area and goes off. Zatanna shields the assembled vessels from the shockwave and other destructive effects. Then, appearing out of the center of the blast zone, a transparent flying bubble appears, carrying five unconscious JSA members. The heroes regroup on the flagship's deck and get to work on making a plan.

All-Star Squadron Annual #1: In Roy Thomas fashion, this story seems to exist to plug some continuity headscratchers. It provides an explanation (that no one was clamoring for) for the excess of champion boxing trainers in Golden Age comics--1 each for the Guardian, Wildcat, and the Atom--with a "split personality" angle. It also references the retcon regarding the relationship of the Earth-Two Green Lantern to Earth-One's Guardians of the Universe. Still, it's not a bad story, and the Gonzales/Ordway art works well for it.