Wednesday Comics: DC, January 1984 (week 3)

My mission: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics on newsstands around October 20, 1983.

Thriller #2: Scabbard wants the President of the U.S. dead, and he's coercing Salvo to do it by kidnapping his mother and putting a bomb under her skin. Scabbard's holding a train on the LA-New York route hostage unless the President surrenders himself. He also wants Dan Grove to join him on the train for some reason. Dan isn't thrilled about this, but the team isn't giving him much choice, and a visit to Beaker's confessional where he revisits his father's death helps a bit. Meanwhile, Proxy is already on the train in disguise, and the rest of the Seven Seconds prepare to go into action.

Power Lords #2: Fleisher and Texiera/Dee continue the story from last issue, and we discover that Arkus's blast didn't destroy Adam and Shaya, it merely sent them to the Dimension of Doom where they will be imprisoned forever. There, they meet the boastful, orange, sauroid Sydot who knows of a way out through an interdimensional cavern guarded by monsters. They make it out, but all this battling has drained Adam's power gem, so they go looking for a means of recharge. They try the Toranian power crystal, as one does, but it has been destroyed by Arkus. They have no choice but to seek the Wellspring in a distant dimension. After some trippy scenery, they arrive at the place. There's a guardian that resembles a golden, child buddha. The Extraterrestrial Alliance is also there, and a fight breaks out. When the fight is over, the villains are revealed as illusions. The guardian reveals the power was in Adam all along. Our heroes fly out to confront the villains in the final issue.

Batman and the Outsiders #6: Barr and Aparo start this one off with the Outsiders settling into their civilian lives in Gotham: Halo starting school, Katana and Black Lightning starting jobs, and Geo-Force and Metamorpho visiting Dr. Jace in the hospital. Then, there's an attack by a new villain, the Cryonic Man, who tries to steal an artificial kidney that's supposed to go to a young girl who is a patient at the hospital. While the Cryonic Man talks to his family who seem to have been in suspended animation for decades, the Outsiders lay a trap for him. He takes the bait, and it leads to a fight on a Gotham City highway. In the end, the Cryonic Man takes Katana hostage and manages to freeze the rest of the team in liquid nitrogen.

Green Lantern #172: The new creative team of Wein and Gibbons take over, and they waste no time dispensing with the detritus of the old storyline. Jordan flies up to Oa, greets his friends, and has his hearing in front of the Guardians. They allow him to return to Earth, and he gets back in time to reunite with Carol and manage to fight some earthly crime. The spaceship he bought and has been traveling in for several issues is never mentioned, and poor old Dorine who has been his companion for the last few stories is only mentioned in a line of dialogue (telling us Hal dropped her off on her homeworld).

In the Tales of the Green Lantern Corps backup by Klein and Gibbons, a professional scavenger Metalfinder on a distant world finds an unconscious Green Lantern, the Green Man, and salvages his ring and power battery. When the Green Man wakes up, he tries to warn the villagers about the threat from the Spider Guild, they but won't return his stuff. When the Spider Guild does arrive, he suggests they can keep the metals from the ship if they help him, and they agree. The plan works and the village is now metal-rich, but the Metalfinder is now out of a job and about to leave town! He asks Green Man to take away the riches of the other villagers so he can be their supplier again, but the Green Lantern refuses.

Legion of Super-Heroes #307: Levitz and Giffen/Mahlstedt begin the teasing reveal of a new menace. A group of Legionnaires investigating a destroyed planetoid encounter and are forced to flee from something so powerful they namecheck Darkseid in categorizing it. Meanwhile, Elemental Lad can't believe he was elected chairman. With another group of Legionnaires on a difficult diplomatic mission to Khund, we find out Saturn Girl is pregnant. The mission is interrupted by the arrival of the menace to Khundia. The Legionnaires hear the Prophet proclaim Khundia's coming destruction!

The story juggles a lot of characters, action, and character bits nicely. It's a bit exhausting in this era of decompression, but I think I like this approach a bit better in some ways than the Claremont/X-Men style of handling big casts. Giffen's art here straddles his Kirby-influenced past and the simplification and packed grid layouts that are coming, showing both styles.

Sgt. Rock #384: The main story by Kanigher/Redondo has Easy in Sicily where they encounter a fatalistic old farmer and his recalcitrant mule. After a firefight in a cemetery, the paisano has a change of heart and goes off to join the partisans. 

For the first time (at least that I've noticed), the other two stories are reprints. Friedrich and Thorne present a story about war in the trenches not ending just because there's an armistice from Our Army at War #227 (1971). Glanzman clues us in to how liberties work on WWII era naval vessels in a piece from Our Fighting Forces #138 (1972).

Supergirl #15: Kupperberg and Infantino/Oksner reveal Blackstarr's origin, and sure enough she is Mrs. Berkowitz's daughter who got separated at Aushwitz. She came to feel abandoned by her mother and when taken in by the camp commandant and his wife, begins to identify with their ideology and view her own people as weak. She kidnaps Berkowtiz, trying to decide whether to kill her. Supergirl intervenes and their fight that takes them to the center of the universe. When Blackstar manipulates gravity around her to reduce Supergirl to atoms, Supergirl rushes towards her. The overwhelming gravitation draws close two black holes which rip Blackstarr apart. Supergirl returns to visit Berkowitz, and wordlessly shares with her a sad smile before flying off. Ultimately, this arc seems to have abandoned its themes (such as they were) for a superhero fight.

Swamp Thing #20: This is Alan Moore's first issue as writer of this title, and he's joined by artists Day and Totleben. I don't think this issue was included in the original, first trade paperback of Moore's run, and there's a reason. As the title suggests it's tying up "Loose Ends" rather quickly. After defeating Arcane, Sunderland Corporation comes for Swamp Thing and his allies. Liz and Dennis, whose relationship seems to be over just as it seems to have been starting, luckily escape a bomb left in a motel room for them and are forced to go on the run. Abigail is like Liz, disenchanted with her partner, though perhaps for better reasons. Matt is drinking still, but his broadcast hallucinations/demons appear to be better. Perhaps they are just under his control. Swamp Thing spends a lot of the issue brooding about his place in the world before he is shot dead (apparently) by Sunderland goons.

Warlord #77: I covered the main story here. In the Barren Earth backup by Cohn and Randall, some unknown technological power is notified of the re-activated battleship Jinal found last issue. She's barely had time to show off a few of its wonders, before someone takes remote control and causes it to be destroyed. Jinal and friends decide to seek out this hidden power.

New Talent Showcase #1: This is an anthology book to (as the title says) showcase "new" talent. I'm not sure if the talent was responsible for the creation of the characters as well as the stories, but it's interesting that there are no straight-up superheroes among them. The first, "Forever Amber" by Margopoulos and Woch/Maygar, tells the sort of origin of a biracial young woman in Southeast Asia who gets powers from Kali after a gem she stole from a Dacoits Temple becomes embedded in her palm. She plans to find and confront her American father who she believes abandoned her mother and her.

Skydogs by Kellog and Mandrake is a swashbuckling romp with the twist that the titular rogues have a ship, Moonjammer, that flies via a balloon (I think). Hawke and his mate Ndemba find themselves embroiled in magical doings after the rescue (I guess) of a princess of India. "Rock of Ages" is a oneshot involving a timeloop by Tod Smith. Klein and Scott Hampton present their sci-fi Class of 2064 strip. A virus is stolen from a lab on Mars. Later, a group of high school kids are traveling to Earth on a school trip, and Pern meets a young girl who is secretly carrying the virus with her.