My mission: to read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis. This week, I'm looking at the comics that were at newsstands in the week of December 6, 1984.
The "Meanwhile..." column in these issues discusses upcoming limited series. A Frank Miller Batman story, and a pitch by Alan Moore originally involving the Charlton characters, which Giordano declined to let be used, so instead it will use new characters.
Vigilante 15: Cullins is on pencils this issue with Maygar/Kesel inks. Wolfman is trying to put distance between the position of Vigilante and the more bloodthirsty vigilante Electrocutioner, so we get the story of a circus clown who resorts to bankrobbery to pay his wife's medical bills. The sympathy his case generates gets him acquitted, which Chase (and Vigilante) thinks is justice done, but the Electrocutioner sees him as another criminal let loose be a corrupt system and goes after him. Vigilante and the other circus performers intervene to save the clown's life.
Funny Stuff Stocking Stuffer #1: Funny Stuff was a DC funny animal comic that ran from 1944-1954, at which point it became Dodo and Frog and went another 3 years. In this special, Engel and Tiefenbacher (with some additional scripting from Kupperberg) bring back a number of these characters (including Frog and Dodo) is a story involving the Ground Hog trying to usurp Christmas for his own. Thanks to the Captain Carrot series, some of these characters had been retconned on to Earth-C, so I guess that's where this story takes place.
Superman: The Secret Years #2: Another Frank Miller cover. Rozakis and Swan/Schaffenberger continue the story of Clark's college years in Metropolis. In the wake of Ducky's accident, Clark is having nightmares about that as well as his parents' deaths. As Superboy, he investigates the Bermuda Triangle and discovers a space-warp that leads to an island where people lost in plane and ship accidents have created a peaceful existence, and don't want to go back to their former homes. Clark Kent meets and begins dating Lori Lemaris, and gets a new roommate and friend in the former of Billy Cramer. Ultimately, Clark reveals his secret identity to him.
Atari Force #15: Baron and Barreto have Scanner One land on a planetoid and find themselves beset by a swarm of tenacious and tough insectoid creatures that impair the ship. They must resort to sending Babe out of on a mission to get them free. Meanwhile, Morphea discovers that Blackjak has some remnant of something evil within his head.
In the backup by Helfer and Chen, we get a solo Pakrat story. On a job to steal some diamonds, he just may have met his match in a female Markian thief.
DC Comics Presents #79: To alien gamblers duplicate Superman so that one duplicate can be Clark Kent and one can be Superman at a time to wager on the outcome. It takes the Supermen/Clarks a bit to figure out what's going on, but then they play good cop/bad cop (with Clark the bad cop) to get the aliens to undo what they have done.
Fury of Firestorm #33: The Conway/Kayanan team is back together, and they pit Firestorm against Flambeau and his terrorist group who hope to force the government to release Plastique by threatening to burn Manhattan. Firestorm almost stops them but accidentally touches off at least a smaller conflagration accidentally. Meanwhile, scientist Lorraine Lincoln, haunted by nightmares regarding her former friend Crystal Frost, pushes her team to recreate the experiment which went wrong to produce the original Killer Frost, probably with the same result, but we'll find out next issue.
Justice League of America #236: Conway and Patton/Maygar bring their initial introductory arc to an end, with a confrontation between the League and Overmaster and the Cadre. The Overmaster claims to be millions of years old and responsible for the previous mass extinction events on Earth, and he's itching for another one. The new League is almost defeated, but Gypsy shows up with Dale Gunn. She's able to get to the mysterious glowing jewel floating about the head of a slumbering giant alien the League found, and apparently this leads to the villains being enveloped in a bright light and vanishing. Heading home, the group theorizes that the giant was the source of Overmaster's power with the latter being some sort of parasite with delusions of grandeur who created the Cadre to make his dream come true. As they watch, the mountain they escaped reveals itself to be a space vehicle as it rockets away from Earth.
New Teen Titans #6: Wolfman and Jurgens/Tanghal have the Titans receiving the adulation of the citizens of New York City after their defeat of Trigon. The Titans are still dealing with the traumatic fallout from what they experienced, though, and no one knows where Raven is. At Terry's suggestion, the Titans again go on a camping trip to give them a chance to talk and share their emotional burdens.
No comments:
Post a Comment