My ongoing mission: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands on the week of August 4, 1983.
Vigilante #1: Vigilante is a very 80s character in a way that it would have been hard to recognize in the 80s. His mission brief, as laid out here by Wolfman, is that he goes after criminals who escaped the law due to "a technicality"--a frequent 80s complaint, but what we now would term "due process." Anyway, Vigilante has got a tricked out, improbably huge RV, and a sidekick who is a tech expert. I'm struck by how much this setup reminds of where the Punisher winds up when he gets his on series (no RV, but a cool custom van). I can't blame Punisher's writers from cribbing from Vigilante, because Vigilante's stark, black and white suit (excepting a blue strip) and origin seem inspired by the Punisher, who I will note, was featured in 1982 in a character-re-popularizing 3 issue arc of Miller's run on Daredevil. The costume as rendered by Pollard and Giordano is pretty snazzy, though.
Anyway, after a criminal, Quilt, who Chase has long had his eye on, gets off thanks to a corrupt judge, Vigilante agrees to help a widow with a secret. Quilt has got a henchman named Brand who dresses all in white, has a white curly mohawk, and uses (guess!) a "B" branding iron as a weapon. There's a big fight scene at Coney Island and a climatic struggle on a roller coaster.
All-Star Squadron Annual #2: One thing I've discovered in this read through is that the comic tradition of large-scale team-ups with subgroups squaring off against villains that I so enjoyed is a kid, mostly winds up with me skimming pages of fights when I'm reading more than 6 comics a week for these reviews! This weeks Justice League is a such a comic, and Thomas and Ordway deliver the same sort of thing here. With extra pages! Which is not to say, in isolation, that it's bad. Finally, the heroes have rallied enough to be on the offensive against Ultra and his goons and this overlong storyline comes to a reasonable conclusion. The 1942 Ultra is seemingly blown up in Cyclotron's self-destruction (perhaps creating a paradox given he's alive in '83) and Infinity, Inc. get to team up with the All-Stars/JSA. Amazing-Man reveals he did make a heel-face turn, but was just playing along with the bad guys.
Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld #7: Mishkin/Cohn and Colon have Amethyst go on the offensive, crashing the wedding of Prince Topaz and Princess Sapphire to make sure that the nuptials do not come off, thwarting the plans of Dark Opal. She begins recruiting for her coalition to defeat the tyrant. There's a lot of Comics Code approved Game of Thrones-esque lord and lady intros and hints of political intrigue. It could all no doubt seem darker rendered by another hand, by it's all pretty breezy in Colon's cartoony style, and I kind of like it.
Blackhawk #264: Blackhawk pursues the Nazi assassin known as De Morder and they are both forced down in the remote Alps where they find a sort of European Shangri-La: a city of near immortal pacifists with telekinetic powers. Blackhawk and De Morder are forced through a trial to see which of the two men of violence is actually evil. In the end, De Morder's villainy is revealed, and Blackhawk is allowed to take him into custody. Meanwhile, the other Blackhawks attack Merson's recently discovered secret laboratory, but the evil inventor releases a swarm of trained bats fitted with explosive vests to down their planes.
In the solo story backup by Evanier and Meugniot, Chop Chop is in Switzerland breaking up a meeting between Japanese arms dealers and an amoral American arms exporter. The Japanese try a double cross using a giant robot. Chop-Chop defeats the robot and saves the American but she doesn't change her ways.
Arak: Son of Thunder #27: The Thomases and Randall pick up where last issue left off in the hippodrome of Byzantium. Arak recognizes the woman in the cage who can change into a tiger as the sister of the priestess Dziewona (who he met back in the Warlord preview). Risking his own life, Arak frees the woman. The empress orders their deaths, and it looks like the soldiers will bear down Arak and Satyricus through weight of numbers but the woman, Dyanna, calls down the power of her goddess. It's manifest as a solar eclipse and the animation of a pair of bronze horse statues. Arak follows Dyanna out of the city riding one of the horses.
In the backup with art by Randall/Yeates, we catch up with what Valda and Malgigi are up to on their way back to Frankland. Mostly, this means a flashback to Valda's training as a young knight and an incident which began when Creston, the Knight All in Scarlet, dying, whispered to her the name of the Archangel Michael.
DC Comics Presents #63: Mishkin/Cohn and Saviuk/Colon go for some synergy this week and have Amethyst team-up with Superman. Carnelian has come to Earth and is causing trouble, using Kryptonite as a source of magical power. The issue has a clever structure in that part is on Earth where Amethyst is just a kid, but she has useful information to help Superman, and the second half is on Gemworld where Amethyst takes the lead, but Superman's powers, unfamiliar to Dark Opal and his crew, allow the heroes to win the day.
Flash #327: Fiona is still in the hospital thinking any guy with a vague resemblance to Barry is him, but the Flash thinks that's better than revealing himself. Members of a street gang harassing a homeless guy inadvertently re-awaken Gorilla Grodd, who regains his true form. Meanwhile, the Justice League summons the Flash to the satellite for a vote on his continued membership given the charges. The way the votes go down doesn't map to my conception of the characters, but this was also 41 years ago. Firestorm, Green Arrow, and Elongated Man are for letting him stay, while Hawkman, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman vote to expel him. Superman arrives and will cast the tie-breaking vote.
Fury of Firestorm #18: Taking up where last issue left off, Conway and Tuska/Rodriguez reveal Hewitt's knew inelegant supervillain identity--Tokamak. He can shoot "quantum rings." First, he fills Merkyn, the former Enforcer, for failure, then he gives the Enforcer suit to Mica Love before he goes after Lorraine Reilly in the hospital. Firestorm, whose been trying to figure out the connection between all these events, is jolted into action to protect her. We learn Hewitt is working with some organization called the 2000 Committee.
Justice League #220: Thomas and Patton complete the JSA/JLA team-up, revealing the true origin of Black Canary, and it has real "One Last Day" energy, in the since that it's pretty dumb, but it was a means to an end. Evil Earth-One Johnny (we're never given any backstory on his villainy) and T-bolt reveal that Dinah and Larry Lance had a daughter who was cursed by an evil Wizard to have a really loud cry (or sonic scream), so Dinah calls a guy who used to crush on her to see if he will get his genie to help. The genie can't do anything but take the baby away and let her grow up in isolated, suspended animation. Problem solved! Except the parents get radiation poisoning and die, but the Dinah's dying wish is to let her now-grown but mentally a black slate daughter continue for her by making her a mental clone. And Superman knew all this, but never told Black Canary or the JLA. Thomas thanks Wolfman for the idea, which seems to me to be a way of sharing the blame.
Anyway, the JSA and JLA defeat the villains, and Black Canaries youth and super-powers are explained.
Wonder Woman #309: Mishkin and Heck conclude the story started last issue, with the Roma woman, Zenna, whose mind is in Black Canary's body, explaining how the sadistic Nazi Schlagel has continued his experiments and has been using Roma children with psychic gifts to power a machine so that he can have the power to challenge the U.S. military. Our heroes free Black Canary, but Zenna jumps to Diana's body in her quest for vengeance, so now Wonder Woman is in Zenna's body as they race to stop Schlagel from launching missiles. In the end, Wonder Woman in Zenna's body is prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice, but the real Zenna jumps back in at the last second.
The Cavalieri and Burgard/Rodriguez Huntress backup reveals a new villain, the sewer-dwelling Earthworm, who I recognize from his half-page in the DC Who's Who. He's apparently the supplier of this baby-snatching ring, but we don't get the details just yet.
5 comments:
All-Star Squadron Annual #2: Have to admit, even in my fifties I still like a Big Dumb Fight comic now and then. Possibly because supers RPG feature so many of them rather than solo or duo conflicts. Or maybe its the other way around and I like supers RPGs because I like Big Dumb Fights?
Fury of Firestorm #18: What's inelegant about Tokamak? I mean yeah, the real turned out to be a major disappointment in the 80s after much hype, but when you're the Nuclear Man your Rogues Gallery really ought to have some nuclear-physics themed villains, and its better than (say) Toroid or something. And it makes way more sense than Hyena for a Firestorm foe.
Blackhawk #264: "...trained bats with explosive vests..." Have I mentioned how weird comics can be? Also, has Bruce heard about this? Maybe not explosives, but little kryptonite leg bands for the next time there's a major Phantom Zone jailbreak seem like his kind of thing. "It's all in the prep time, Zod!"
As drawn here, Tokamak sort of has a barrel-shaped midsection. He looks tubby. It's a fine concept.
There is precedent for Batman using bats as a weapon (Year One).
I pre-emptively subscribed to Vigilante figuring Marv Woilfman could do no wrong. That was a mistake, Vigilante was OK at best, except for those two Alan Moore issues.
I know I bought All-Star Squadron and the JLA out of this bunch. The Black Canary thing is one of the dumber more convoluted retcons.
I know I bought Fury of Firestorm but might have been tuning out by then. I remember the Annual fight against Tokamak to be underwhelming, if that's a word.
That Flash cover is the Infantinoest cover ever.
I think the real winners here might be Amethyst and Blackhawk, neither of which I bought at the time.
Ah, I looked up the original character design for Tokamak and I see your point. He might as well be wearing an innertube - and the big T on his belt buckle makes him look like an A-Team super-fan to boot.
To put it mildly, his modern look has been changed quite a lot. Currently looks more like that Hellboy character made of ectoplasm stuck in a containment suit, if you mixed him with neon and lit him up.
Heh. Tokamak's current status is fairly amusing. Apparently after being beaten by the Jason Rusch Firestorm he was languishing in prison until Gorilla Grodd broke him out. Instead of offering him a position with the Legion of Doom, Grodd just wired him into their HQ as a power source. Sounds about his speed.
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