I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! Today, I've got the comics at newsstands the week of March 10, 1983.
Omega Men #3: Slifer, Giffen, and DeCarlo introduce Lobo, though as with many of comics character introduction, he really isn't much like hit character he'll become in the 90s. The Citadel is trying to conquer Euphorix (the last world standing against them), but they thwarted by its shield. Enter Harry Hokum, a human who claims he can help them. Presumably, at Hokum's urging, the Citadel sends out a false message that Euphorix's shield has fallen and it is under attack. Kalista takes the mothership rushs there, not waiting for Primus and the others to return. It's a trap, of course, and Lobo and Bedlam defeat the crew and take Kalista captive.
Hokum, Lobo's employer, interrogates Kalista, demanding the secrets of Euphorix's defenses. He exposes Kalista to a telepathic creatue, the greeshagurt. The greeshagurt begins to physically merge with her, absorbing her bodily and mentally.
Saga of the Swamp Thing #14: Yeates is still on the cover, but there's a new team on the interior: Mishkin and Bo Hampton/Scott Hampton. This was the first issue of Swamp Thing I ever read, and my brother and I read (and re-read) this issue and the next many times in our preteens. It's structured, really, more like a Phantom Stranger story more than a Swamp Thing story. Nathaniel Broder, a genius working with a new electronics technology, transforms his body into a mass of living silicon crystal. Despite the parallels with Swamp Thing, they aren't the same. Broder seems corrupted by his power and turns both Swamp Thing and the Phantom Stranger into crystal.
Batman #360: Moench takes over as writer. His run on Moon Knight will be coming to an end in a few months, but his long run on the Bat-titles is beginning. This issue really feels like it could have been a Moon Knight story: a knifing-wielding killer with a horribly scarred face, the Savage Skull, is killing cops--and Batman figures out Gordon is next on his list. It turns out the killer is a disgruntled former cop out for revenge. It's perhaps not a great issue, but it has several good attributes: it's got a nice gritty vibe, making Batman distinctly "street-level" and has him actually being a detective.
Flash #322: Continuing from last issue, the Reverse Flash is back and out for revenge, and Barry and Fiona seemed to moving (remarkably quickly) toward marriage. All of this feels like Bates building toward Zoom killing another spouse or at least almost spouse which seems really lazy storytelling. In fact, having Reverse Flash back from the dead seems sort of lazy to begin with. It hasn't been that long. Does the Flash have other worthy rogues? Granted, we haven't seen reverse Flash since 1980, so it's been a few years, and Bates may be going to swerve. We'll see. Anyway, Flash is caught between the Sabre-Tooth (or the Sabre-Tooth's apprentice, the issue suggests both) and the Reverse Flash, but isn't yet aware Zoom has returned.
The Creeper backup has Patton on art, and it looks amateurish. Cuti is now the writer. Everybody's passing this storyline around like a hot potato! Anyway. the Creeper invades the Kraken Clinic (the name's a bit on the nose, even for comics) to try and stop the spread of the monster drug and runs into more patients who become monsters.
G.I. Combat #254: The conceit of this issue is that it covers all the wars from World War I to Vietnam. The two Haunted Tank stories deal with Craig's service in the first World War and its relationship with the second, and they're okay. In the other two stories. dealing with Korea and Vietnam, Kanigher strikes a sour note. First off, there are a lot of racial slurs against Asians. Maybe this could be defended as authentic--maybe. But the stories fail to humanize the North Korean and Viet Cong forces. In fact, the point of the Vietnam story seems to be best to treat civilians as enemies because you can't trust anybody. This from the writer who has given us numerous "honorable Nazi" antagonists in other stories. I don't recall previous stories by Kanigher dealing with Asian wars to know if these are anomalies, but they aren't great.
New Teen Titans #32: Two costumed youths calling themselves Thunder and Lightning wreak unexplained havoc in the streets of St. Louis on an urgent, but mysterious mission to find someone. The Titans respond and try to diffuse the situation, but wind up having to fight. Eventually, it's discovered that the brothers are from Vietnam and are looking for their father, because they believe he is the key to controlling their elemental powers. Wonder Girl tells them their father is dead (which isn't true, but he is missing) and promises to get them help at STAR Labs, ending the crisis.
Thunder and Lightning seem weird to me. I mean, I can explain their actions within the story, but why their costumes, why did this particular background and story seem the way to go? I suspect the answer is "Vietnam" seemed a much more dramatically laden concept in 1983 than it does today.
A lot of this issue is team drama in the usual X-Men-ish fashion. Wolfman isn't adequately articulating whatever angst Robin is suffering, so it makes him come off looking bad, and I can't help but view it as just a means to an end to debut Nightwing. The Titans TV show had a similar problem making Grayson's angst sympathetic instead of annoying, but at least it made it understandable.
Superman #384: Bates and Swan/Hunt continue their reshaping of Superman, and in this issue that means writing out Steve Lombard. Some sympathy is cultivated for the generally Flash Thiompson-esque jerky jock, Steve, as he is fired by Morgan Edge after being pummeled by his old college roomie has built a belt to get super-powers. The old roomie comes back to kill Steve, but Superman intervenes. Steve finally lets Clark know that he values his friendship before walking out of the book.
4 comments:
Omega Men #3: There's nothing quite like digging out images of Lobo's early tangerine-and-violet costume when you need to deflate some edgelord prattling about how cool the character is. And don't forget the space cowboy biker he was partners with, he really just adds to the overall lameness of the character.
The psychic parasite critter in this was fairly horrifying, though. Much more menacing than Lobo ever has been, that's for sure.
Saga of the Swamp Thing #14: My first Swamp Thing was the Wein & Wrightson issue with the Batman crossover. Really effective story, with an amusingly quick finish to the inevitable fight between Bruce and Alec, and some nice actual detective work throughout. Good wind-up too, very fitting end to the actual villain of the story. Never been able to think of Swamp Thing as not having more connections to Gotham than he really does, which say a lot about how impactful that creative team was on me.
Superman #384: I recall hating every appearance of Steve Lombard I ever read, and this story didn't improve my opinion of the character much. At least he was gone afterward, and has mostly stayed gone under future writers.
New Teen Titans #32: "I mean, I can explain their actions within the story, but why their costumes, why did this particular background and story seem the way to go? I suspect the answer is "Vietnam" seemed a much more dramatically laden concept in 1983 than it does today."
The vaguely "Asian" costumes are meant to be suggestive of their heritage, as they're the children of an unnamed Vietnamese woman who was abandoned by the father, a theoretically human American GI. He actually turns out to be an alien, but that won't come out until later, leaving their first appearance feeling a bit random.
Vietnam was very relevant in 1983, and overall situation (two kids looking a runaway dad) was a pretty clear commentary on one aspect of its aftermath. The war had ended only eight years beforehand and by '83 quite a few mothers who'd been abandoned (willingly or otherwise) by GIs were showing up looking for support and citizenship for their children. News coverage was pretty steady for a while, and there were period detective novels written about some PI being hired to track down a missing GI father, and action novels about trying to find a Vietnamese spouse/girlfriend who'd gotten left behind unwillingly.
The comic's just jumping on that bandwagon with a superhero twist.
OMG Harry Hokum! The Harvey Mudd of space!
Yeah, Robin's brooding here reads like the most adolescent thing going on in these issues, which is ironic when he tended to set himself up as the most adult of all, the serious role model. Looking back I actually wonder if he might be the youngest except for Gar . . . the new characters are all young adults with their own 20-something problems, Donna is completely liberated, even Wally is at least moving in the right direction to grow up. This might be one of the spots where the "teen" in the title actually carries its weight. I like the way the TV show handled Grayson by introducing us to their serenely, spookily detached version of Old Man Wayne.
I have to hand it to Steve Lombard for voting with his feet in a week that probably would have strained my relationship with DC beyond repair. I was already a year into my secret affair with the X-books and there were omens and threats that Dark Phoenix was back. Good times! Luckily Omega Men was so poorly distributed in my part of the world that I never saw an issue . . . thought it was direct only. It's weird though how Bates already feels like a relic on an increasingly irrelevant Flash.
Zen Wayne is definitely one of the best Bat Universe interpretations ever.
Regarding Flash, slipping into irrelevance is probably true, but it also surprises me (at times) in being pretty well done and more "modern" than I expected. I guess my Flash expectations were calibrated to "Silver Age" having never read any Bronze to Modern Age Flash, so it's in some ways better than I expected.
I like with the Batman cover how the center skeleton's head lines up with the Batman head. Nice touch. That "Main Man" definitely does look different from the later version.
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