Wednesday Comics: DC, September 1983 (week 4)

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics on the newsstand on June 23, 1983.

Sword of the Atom #1: After Ray Palmer discovers his wife Jean cheating on him with her new legal partner, he takes a trip to the Amazon jungle to give them some time apart in search of a White Dwarf Star Fragment. Unfortunately, the pilots of the plane he charters are also cocaine smugglers so when his explorations get too close to their facilities, they attack him. He fights them off as the Atom, but the plan crashes and he's stuck in his 6-inch size. Luckily, He meets a tribe of similarly sized, yellow-skinned people, citizens of the hidden city of Morlaidh. Unluckily, he takes the side of the condemned Taren, and is also condemned to death by rats. Meanwhile, in Ivy Town, Jean hears that Ray's wedding band has been discovered in the plane wreckage in Brazil and assumes her husband is dead. Strnad and Kane remake the Atom as a Lost World/Planetary Romance sort of hero, which is a combo Kane was born to draw.

Ronin #2: The samurai reborn in a cybernetic body in the 21st century spends most of the issue looking for a sword, encountering Miller's phantasmagorical underbelly of future Manhattan. He final gets one, and violence ensues. Well, there was violence before that, but now the samurai is getting his licks in. Meanwhile, an AI catches a corporate security leader up on everything that went down last issue, she sends her men to start looking for the samurai. The demon is lurking in the background, also. It's inhabiting the body of the corporation's CEO. Again, while the similarities to Miller's later work like Dark Knight Returns is clear, I'm struck by how much this seems like something that could have been serialized in Heavy Metal.

Action Comics #547: Rozakis, Kupperberg and Swan/Colletta/Marcos complete the Planeteer story arc. Superman keeps flying around the world, rescuing the kidnapped world leaders and unknowingly doing exactly what the Planeteer wants to power him up to Superman(ish) power levels. It isn't enough though, and after a goofy but not unappealing combat where they keep punching each other around the globe into landmarks (the Redwood of California, the Great Wall of China, the Sphinx), Superman defeats him at the North Pole. 

All-Star Squadron #25: Thomas and Ordway/Machlan add some new complications to the Ultra-Humanite arc. The JSA splits up as they are wont to do and encounter duos of new powered beings (the Infinitors from the future, it turns out, but you'd only know that from the cover) who seem convinced by Ultra that the JSA are working with the fascists. These combats end with a number of the JSA disappearing mysteriously. Meanwhile, Amazing Man has decided with work with the All-Stars to save Detroit as his parents are there. Infinitor Brainwave, Jr. wakes up and realizes he may be too late to stop his friends who are inadvertently going to cause a catastrophe.

Arion Lord of Atlantis #11: Moench and Duursema/Mandrake work in some stuff borrowed Blavatsky. An reveals an underground passageway beneath the palace, leading to the ruins of an ancient city of the Rmoahals. Arion and friends discover a being encased in a block of ice, and they bring tit to the surface for study. Ar

Arion is training with Calculha's crystals to try to reclaim his magic, but the psychic energy awakens the creature trapped in ice. It's a mutant created by the Rmoahals to remove their need for traditional food, as it feeds on psychic energy. After rampaging for a bit, the creature targets Mara who has the most powerful energy. She changes form into a chimera with doesn't have the level of mental energy the creatures needs and fights it tooth and claw. Arion then arrives and kills the creature who actually wishes to end its existence with a sword.

Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew #19: The cover proclaims Thomas and Hoberg as the creators, but the actual credits list Shaw as the plotter and Cavalieri as the scripter. The Zoo Crew goes on a cruise and once again encounter Frogzilla who is in cahoots with a shady landcrab real estate speculator. Cavalieri's scripting as opposed to Thomas's or Shaw's is decidedly less pun heavy, which seems to me a bit of an improvement. 

Detective Comics #530: Moench and Colon/Giordano continue the story of Nocturna from this month's Batman. The Thief of Night is in custody after his last encounter with Batman. Justice is swift in Gotham because he's about to get his day in court, except Batman convinces the DA to hold it at night so he can show up to testify. Before that, however, Jason Todd who's running away to return to the circus happens to encounter Nocturna. She actually advises him to stick with his foster parent. She makes a good point, but Jason ultimately decides to go through with his plan.

Nocturna attends the hearing in disguise, then attacks the transport van taking Thief of Night to prison using her hot air balloon and some weaponized jewelry. Batman foils the escape attempt and captures both criminals.

All the time this has been going on, Bruce has been absent from his relationship with Vicki Vale. Fed up, she asks for an assignment out of the country and plans to leave town.

In the Green Arrow backup by Cavalieri and Gonzales/Magyar, the Russian embassy in Star City is attacked by 1983 topical right-wing paramilitary nuts led by the Survivalist. Ollie happens to be there for his paper, so Green Arrow is able to stop the attack, but he can't do anything about the suspicious the Soviets have that the U.S. government was behind events. GA shows one of their captured weapons to a General at the local army installation, who confirms it's of an advanced type, not a standard issue. They're interrupted by an attack by the Survivalist and his followers, who are using a device to start raising nuclear missiles from their silos. Their plan is to precipitate a nuclear war as they feel they will be prepared to take over in the aftermath.

Legion of Super-Heroes Annual #2: Giffen is still involved as co-plotter here with Levitz, but he hands off art chores to Gibbons, which isn't as good as I might have thought. Gibbons just doesn't seem to have a real handle on some of the character designs. Anyway, the Projectra and Karate Kid are married in a ceremony unmarred by super-villain attack. The only wrinkle being that several of the Legionnaries got accidentally marooned in the past where they encounter Durlans masquerading as the Greek gods and have to rescued. It's an odd interlude, but not a bad issue.

Jonah Hex #76: Another nice cover, this one by Jim Aparo. Emmylou is back she issue, so I guess Fleischer hasn't forgotten her. She's still traveling with Jonah (and still dressed in Native American garb) though she's once him to settle down, and Jonah frets he's misleading her, because he isn't in love with her. Turnbull has hatched another plan for revenge on Hex. Does it have something to do with the governor requesting Hex undertake a secret mission going undercover in the territory prison? Hex's cover has him branded a criminal (and Mei Ling sees the charges in a newspaper), and things are pretty grim in the prison thanks to a sadistic and corrupt guard.

New Adventures of Superboy #45: A change in the art time this issue as Saviuk is on pencils and Schaffenberger inks. Despite everything going on in Smallville with Clark now dating Lisa, his father being asked to run for political office, and some sort of shennanigans at the local paper, Superboy finds time to head to Japan to help the authorities against Sunburst, a tokusatsu movie hero who apparently has real super-powers and seems to be behaving like a villain. We're left with a cliffhanger.

In the Dial H backup by Bridwell/Rozakis and Bender/Jensen, Chris and Vicki tell Nick Stevens about how they got the dials and he wants to see the mysterious box in Chris' attic himself.  They figure out a way to witness a past battle between the Master and a super-hero called the Wizard which leads to the creation of the dials and allows Nick to get over his mental block in drawing a sketch of the Master's appearance.

World's Finest Comics #295: This one is from a plot by Kellogg and script by Kraft with art by Moore/McLaughlin. With a setup that would seem strange with the "creature of the night" Batman post-Crisis, Batman is called to Cape Canaveral to investigate the possibility of sabotage of a new space weapon satellite. Batman has only begun to consider suspects, when there's an attack by the Moon Dancers, a very 70s Marvel Two-in-One team of themed adversaries. They manage to escape by incapacitating Batman with a gas bomb which turns out to contain a deadly alien virus. Superman strives to save his friend, and after traveling all over space finds the cure in the burning heart of a comet. (Yes, I know comets don't have burning heats. Tell Kellogg and Kraft!) 

Batman is cured, but this turns out to (amazingly) by exactly what the mysterious mastermind behind the Moon Dancers intended, because it involves Superman making a device with the cometary energy source. He sends the Moon Dancers to steal it, and Batman is too weak to fight them off. Superman shows up, and the heroes track the thieves down, discovering that NASA scientist Nakamura is the mastermind. A survivor of the atomic bombing of Japan he wanted to end the nuclear threat forever. The Moon Dancers wanted the same end, but were in the dark in regard to his means. The heroes defeat Nakamura and the Moon Dancers repent--in fact, the heroes just let them get away, despite their crimes. 

Superman III (Superman Movie Special #1): Weirdly, although the title on the cover is Superman III: The Official Adaptation of the Movie, the indicia for the book says the title is "Superman Movie Special, Vol. 1, No. 1." I wasn't able to get ahold of a copy to read, but I remember the movie and there's a review of adaptation here with some sample pages.