Wednesday Comics: DC, September 1981 (wk 1 pt 2)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around June 4, 1981.

G.I. Combat #233: I'll say this for Haunted Tank: for a kids comic, it doesn't skimp on the everyday grimness of war. In the first story, the crew is given a tank that they have just pulled the bodies of the previous crew out of. Their ghosts haunt Jeb and the boys until they get the German plane that killed them. The second story plays on the "honor among soldiers" thing Kanigher likes to get into from time to time. A German nurse threatens to blow up the Haunted Tank with a bazooka to save the wounded men in her charge. Instead of leaving them to die, Jeb and his crew transport them back to German lines. They are about to be executed, but the nurse argues for letting them go. The German tank commander appears prepared to take them prisoner, but instead escorts them back to the front and lets them go.

The O.S.S. story is the first appearance of the agent, Fleur, who claims to be the daughter of Mata Hari and appears to be working for the Germans, but then reveals herself to be a double agent. Drake and Tlaloc a story called "The Dummy G.I.s" where three illiterate and probably disadvantaged soldiers prove their worth. Kanigher and Henson tell the story of a heroic Gurkha fighting for his colonial rulers in various places, but he loses the use of his legs in Burma.

Justice League of America #194: Several members of the JLA have encounters (which they lose) with characters based off of Tarot card Major Arcana, leaving them all hobbled in some way. Zatanna (though blinded by her encounter with Devil) is able to cast a spell to lead them them to the cards' creator, Amos Fortune. Fortune unleashes the final card, Death, on them, but the League defeats him and they are returned to normal. Fortune tries to escape using his magic cards but only succeeds in getting himself trapped in the world of the Tarot deck. Another solid Conway/Perez installment.

Krypton Chronicles #1: This sort of thing is the closest we got to stuff like Marvel Saga or the History of the DC Universe until, well, we got those things. Bridwell and Swan have Morgan Edge deciding with the popularity of Roots and Shogun, they need to do a tv mini-series about Superman's Kryptonian roots. He tasks Clark with writing the articles that they will turn into a book and then a TV show. Clark realizes he doesn't know much about his family tree, so he and Supergirl head to Kandor to get some info from Supergirl's dad (Superman's uncle). In the House of El's Vault, they hear stories about their prestigious family line. While they do, a shadowy foe sneaks up and releases a Kryptonian yargrum with which our heroes must prepare to do battle.

New Teen Titans #11: Gar was critically injured by the Terminator, so the team is flying him to Paradise Island to save him with some Amazonian super-science. Before they can do that, Hyperion, Titan of the Sun, busts out of Tartarus and throws some mind control on Wonder Girl to make her fall in love with him. He whisks her away to free the other Titans. Starfire and the Amazons ride to her rescue, but Wonder Girl herself asks them to stand down. Then, a mysterious someone else appears. I know Greek myth has always been a part of the Wonder Woman mythos, but this story gives real Marvel vibes to me with its emphasis on supers versus mythological beings.

Secrets of Haunted House #40: Not great. In the first story by Wessler and Tanghal/Smith, a hag leaves her baby on a doorstep, because she's too poor to support the infant and her brother. And the baby looks "normal" so the family will take her in. The elderly couple does, but the baby's abnormality quickly becomes apparent. Soon the hag comes back for her, but the old woman doesn't want to give the child up and invites the hag and her soon to stay. Soon, the hag is ordering the couple around, and when the husband stands up to her, she threatens to turn them into the police for kidnapping. Ultimately, the couple is forced to move into an old shack on their land and the hag's family gets the house. Then there's a story by Harris and Rodriquez that has the shards of a crystal ball predict the fates of the cops that took it from a fortune teller--and seem to show the fates of their grown kids, who ultimately discovered a demon is responsible, but it's weakness is it's tied to the crystal ball.

The Mr. E story by Rozakis and Spiegle barely has Mr. E in it. Instead, the guy he met last issue and E's assistant, Kelly O'Toole, deal with a dog that turns into a monster. It's no werewolf but a witch-dog! It's all rather silly.

Superman #363: Bates and Swan continue the story from last issue. Lana and Lois are dying of the same infection that killed the Kents, though Superman is the only one who knows it. Superman thinks about sending them to the Phantom Zone until a cure can be found, but the vindictive Phantom Zone criminals overload the projector so he can't. Next he goes to Luthor to help. Luthor points out Superman could coerce him, but infecting Luthor, too, but he know Superman won't. Luthor laughs at him cruelly as he refuses. Finally, Superman travels to the future (the 88th Century) to find a cure, but the they won't give it to him, citing potential disruption to the future. They do tell him that someone in his time will soon discover a cure. Supes realizes since he is immune he can pass the immunity in his blood. He saves Lana and Lois and the future folks muse on whether it was cruel not to tell Superman that he was one to discover the cure. The basic story was only so so, but I like Bates characterization of Luthor and he does a good job of giving Supes conundrums he can't punch his way out of.

The backup by Rozakis and Bucker is a another Bruce Wayne: Superman story. Wayne marries Barbara Gordon. She eventually makes him give up crimefighting in favor of putting his scientific talents to use finding medical cures. He's cured headaches and he's working on the common cold, when Barbara gets word her father was gunned down by a criminal. She turns vigilante and Batgirl and Superman team-up to bring Lew Moxon to justice.

Weird War Tales #103: Every one of these War That Time Forgot stories makes it abundantly clear that Kanigher is no paleontologist and neither is Bob Hall. This story features a giant (like big enough to carry a WWII sub), orange carnosaur that encounters a U.S. submarine while submerged, then carries it on land and defends it from a bunch of other monstrous dinosaurs.

Jones and Sutton present a story than seems inspired by Twilight Zone episodes and is the strongest of the issue. An astronaut awaiting rescue watches ants develop civilization and destroy themselves in nuclear war after consuming the brain nutrient leaking from his damaged rocket. It turns out he's on Earth and his rescuers don't believe what he saw, but the detritus of the ant civilization remains. 

Allikas and Tuska present a weak story about a German World War I holdout locked in a tower. The remaining story by Newman and Yeates has a White Knight championing fighting for the Christian forces in the Outremer. It turns out the knight is an illusion created by a minstrel with hypnotic powers, but then the Knight takes on a life of his own.

Wonder Woman #283: Conway's and Delbo's story is much less interesting this time around: no Demon or Klarion. Instead we get international intrigue with the Red Dragon trying to restore feudalism to China. The only interesting twist is that the Red Dragon is revealed to be an actual dragon.

The Huntress backup by Levitz and Staton/Mitchell backup wraps up the arc with the Huntress taking down the Joker after he's flushed out of hiding by the supposed return of Batman (whose actually deceased). The Huntress had intended to pull this trick, but Dick Grayson returns to Gotham in this story and beats her to the punch. 

Rockets & Rayguns

Most of my gaming group got together (virtually) for a character creation session for the pulpy science fantasy thing in 5e. I've been blogging about the setting here which borrows from Star Frontiers, Spelljammer, and assorted works of the pulp era of science fiction. The mechanics are the pertinent bits of Rocket Age 5e on top of regular 5e.

Anyway, so far the the party has a Hadozee Explorer, a Vrusk Scientist, a Human Soldier, and a Plasmoid Scoundrel. 

I'll probably be posting some of the material I wrote up or that in an abbreviated form, and certainly the session reports will show up here.

Weird Revisted: An Assortment of Faeries and Spirits

The Denham Tracts (1846-1859) on folklore contain a list of fairies and other creatures of the North of England. The list is supposedly based on alist given in Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) but is much expanded (in some cases, by duplication). In fact, the Tract contains beings not otherwise attested, suggesting Denham may have invented them.

Of course, that's not particular bar to their use in-game. Here's the complete list to start statting from:

"ghosts, boggles, Bloody Bones, spirits, demons, ignis fatui, brownies, bugbears, black dogs, spectres, shellycoats, scarecrows, witches, wizards, barguests, Robin-Goodfellows, hags, night-bats, scrags, breaknecks, fantasms, hobgoblins, hobhoulards, boggy-boes, dobbies, hob-thrusts, fetches, kelpies, warlocks, mock-beggars, mum-pokers, Jemmy-burties, urchins, satyrs, pans, fauns, sirens, tritons, centaurs, calcars, nymphs, imps, incubuses, spoorns, men-in-the-oak, hell-wains, fire-drakes, kit-a-can-sticks, Tom-tumblers, melch-dicks, larrs, kitty-witches, hobby-lanthorns, Dick-a-Tuesdays, Elf-fires, Gyl-burnt-tales, knockers, elves, rawheads, Meg-with-the-wads, old-shocks, ouphs, pad-foots, pixies, pictrees, giants, dwarfs, Tom-pokers, tutgots, snapdragons, sprets, spunks, conjurers, thurses, spurns, tantarrabobs, swaithes, tints, tod-lowries, Jack-in-the-Wads, mormos, changelings, redcaps, yeth-hounds, colt-pixies, Tom-thumbs, black-bugs, boggarts, scar-bugs, shag-foals, hodge-pochers, hob-thrushes, bugs, bull-beggars, bygorns, bolls, caddies, bomen, brags, wraiths, waffs, flay-boggarts, fiends, gallytrots, imps, gytrashes, patches, hob-and-lanthorns, gringes, boguests, bonelesses, Peg-powlers, pucks, fays, kidnappers, gallybeggars, hudskins, nickers, madcaps, trolls, robinets, friars' lanthorns, silkies, cauld-lads, death-hearses, goblins, hob-headlesses, bugaboos, kows, or cowes, nickies, nacks, waiths, miffies, buckies, ghouls, sylphs, guests, swarths, freiths, freits, gy-carlins, pigmies, chittifaces, nixies, Jinny-burnt-tails, dudmen, hell-hounds, dopple-gangers, boggleboes, bogies, redmen, portunes, grants, hobbits, hobgoblins, brown-men, cowies, dunnies, wirrikows, alholdes, mannikins, follets, korreds, lubberkins, cluricauns, kobolds, leprechauns, kors, mares, korreds, puckles, korigans, sylvans, succubuses, blackmen, shadows, banshees, lian-hanshees, clabbernappers, Gabriel-hounds, mawkins, doubles, corpse lights or candles, scrats, mahounds, trows, gnomes, sprites, fates, fiends, sibyls, nicknevins, whitewomen, fairies, thrummy-caps, cutties, and nisses, and apparitions of every shape..."

Wednesday Comics: DC, September 1981 (wk 1 pt 1)

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! I'm a couple of days later than my usual Wednesday post, but I'm looking at the comics at newsstands on the week of  June 4, 1981. 

This month is notable as we have 2 new series. These are the first new series from DC since New Teen Titans debuted with a November 1980 cover date.

Arak Son of Thunder #1: Thomas and Colon/DeZuniga present a partial origin of the 8th Century Native American, Sword & Sorcery hero. He's picked up afloat in the Atlantic in a canoe and adopted into a group of Vikings. As an adult, he's at odds with the leader's bloodthirsty nature. He battles a sea monster that's in the service of the sorceress Angelica, then sets off for the court of Charlemagne. In a sea of off-bramd Conans, Arak is certainly a bit more original in concept that the usual comics S&S fare.

Batman #339: Conway and Novick/Mitchell bring back Poison Ivy, not in her later, plant-controlling eco-terrorist mode, but doing her original femme fatale with plant toxins conception. Here she kisses a number of prominent men in Gotham (the board of Wayne Enterprises as it turns out) on one pretext or another and puts them in her thrall--including Bruce Wayne. She calls them all together and has them sign a document giving her control, and forbids them to tell what has happened. As Batman, Bruce confronts her, but using some vines to strangle him, she makes her escape. Batman is afraid he won't be able to stop her, and is unable even to tell the police what she is doing thanks to the suggestion.

The Conway/Novick Robin backup has him still performing with the Hill Circus. He reflects on how he was shaped by two fathers: his biological one and Batman. His quick thinking saves him from plummeting to his death when his distraction harms his performance.

DC Comics Presents #37: Starlin and Thomas present a sort of off-beat team-up with Hawkgirl. When a Kryptonese inscription is found in an archeological dig, Hawkgirl calls in Superman. They discover the site used to be a laboratory for Supes' grandfather, Var-El. He found a way into an "X-Dimension" where the expended energy of suns is pooled. While exploring, Superman falls into a vortex toward a red sun. Hawkgirl flies in to rescue him, dodging the weird bird creatures that live there and having her wings catch fire to save the Man of Steel. This is the sort of quirky but throwaway story typical of team-up books from the Big Two, but the characterization of Hawkgirl is pretty good for the era.

Flash #301: Barry Allen gets fired for missing work all the time, because he can hardly tell his boss what's really been going on. But when his boss goes for a pacemaker tune-up and gets kidnapped, the Flash runs to the rescue. He also figures out that the kidnapping was a ruse to turn the guy's pacemaker into an atomic bomb. Meanwhile, the villain masquerading as Barry's dad seems to be getting closer to revealing his plan (finally). 

In the Firestorm backup by Conway and Cowan/Smith, Hothead is still dealing with the Hyena, and the mystery of the hyena's alter ego. All signs point to a member of Day household, possibly Doreen's sister.

Ghosts #104: Dr. Paul Geist, Dr. 13's in-story mentor and the guy whose files all these stories are supposedly from, is out in favor of Squire Shade, a more conventional horror host who looks like the Gentleman Ghost put on a few pounds. He's not off to a great start.

The first story by Kanigher and Silvestri is about a brutal, Stone Age guy, who is convinced he's being haunted when he seems is own shadow in bright light and runs right into his comeuppance at the hands of a mama triceratops. The next (by Kanigher and Bender) is about a stuntman turned director who is getting spectacular, Oscar-winning stunts in his films by making sure the stunt performers die. The table's are turned when the ghosts of two of them ensures the director dies performing a stunt. 

The last is almost a 2000AD sort of tale, again written by Kanigher, but with suitably grotty art by Giffen and Beatty. In the distant future following a nuclear war, a cruel but wealthy man falls into the hands of all the robots he's tortured and mistreated, who remake him in their image and vow to replace his parts as they wear out so their vengeance can go on forever.

Jonah Hex #52: Mei Ling leaves their son to be watched by Jonah and the young boy from last issue while they are working on the farm, but the baby gets stung by a scorpion. Hex tries to suck the poison out, but the baby still mounts a fever and Mei Ling is furious. The fight turns to his inability to give up the gun over these past few issues, and she doesn't want to hear his excuses. When the mother of the boy who was helping him shows up to say her son has been kidnapped by men out for revenge on Hex, Hex takes up his guns to ride out and save him. Mei Ling warns him that if he leaves she won't be here when he gets back. Hex tracks the kidnappers down, but walks into a trap in a shack rigged with dynamite.

The Bat Lash story picks up where the last installment left off: a bunch of soiled doves have guns on Lash. The entrance of a blundering customer allows Bat Lash the chance to escape, but conflict between him, the woman who robbed him, and her henchman, wind up with the social club burning down and the Confederate gold melting and running down the street. Lash saves the woman, and she just might be starting to warm to his charms, but then she notices he stole her horse.

Weird Revisited: The Room At The End of the Hall

This post first appeared in May of 2012. It didn't make it into Weird Adventures...

 

An ominous door at the end of a hall in a cheap tenement somewhere in the City.  You step over the drunk sleeping it off outside.  Behind the door you find:

1. Two sets of men's clothes in puddles of goo.
2. A roiling, red-tinged fog that seems to pulsate as if with the beating of a heart.
3. A well-dressed man from nowhere.
4. Walls bare but for peeling paint.  The faint sound of a child sobbing.
5. A group of 1d6 hobogoblins gathered around table watching two men play Russian roulette.
6. A single bed with a large constrictor snake curled upon it with a ominous bulge.
7. Smears of blood on the floor; a naked hanging lightbulb swinging, as if recently disturbed.
8. A nest of bugbear hatchlings and their strange birthing machinery.
9. A hillybilly giant in a gingham dress sitting on a bed and sobbing into her hands.
10. The grim reaper seated at a table with a chess board.
11. The complete skin of an elderly man draped across a bed as if in repose.
12. Pulp magazines stacked almost ceiling high and forming a veritable maze.

The Moons of Wanaxar

Art by TerranAmbassador

There are eleven moons of the gas giant Wanaxar. At least four of the moons are habitable due to their large size, the heat from their primary, and the churning of their molten cores. 

Ivo (Wanaxar I): Mud world, third largest of the major moons. It's oceans are kept muddy by the tug of Wanaxar, both it's gravity and the effects of its magnetic field on the metals in the mud. There are no intelligent inhabitants but mini-submarines adapted to its sludgy seas sift mineral wealth from it. There are some ruins in the highland regions and it has been suggested that this was the original homeworld of the Giff.

Halia (Wanaxar II) Fourth largest of the major moons, it is overwhelming covered by ocean. It's inhabitants are an intelligent invertebrate species known as the S'sessu, who look something like a cross between a earthworm and a salamander. The S'sessu do not appear to be native to Halia but don't discuss their origins with other species. S'sessu are widely disliked by members of other species owing to their extremely competitive and self-centered natures, but they pay well with radioactive isotopes from Halia's depths, so merchants from other worlds are willing to overlook their faults.

Ganameen (Wanaxar III): Largest known moon in the Solar System, Ganameen is a volcanic, world, mostly covered by cool forests. There are ruins on Ganameen relating to an advanced precursor civilization, but the main draw is its port, through which most of the goods of the Wanaxar system pass. Ganameen's native race are the dwarfish, hairy anthropoid Ifshnit. They are tolerant and easy-going, but not overly social. They let humans engage in most of the operation of the port, while they take a share of the profits.

Sallista (Wanaxar IV): Second largest of Wanaxar's moons, it was once the home of an advanced civilization, but now it is a scared, toxic ruin. Sallista is home to the Scro, a militaristic humanoid species with gaunt features. It is unknown if the Scro colonized Sallista after the destruction of its previous civilization (perhaps even having caused it) or if they are the mutated descendants of that people. Generally, Sallista is avoided, but the government of New Earth has taken the unprecedented step of using Scro units as troops in its operations in the outer system.

Wednesday Comics: DC, August 1981 (wk 2 pt 2)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around May 21, 1981. This weeks entries will be a bit abbreviated as our internet's out and I'm doing this via my cellphone, but here goes:

Legion of Super-Heroes #278: Grimbor is threatening to crush Earth's atmosphere with his cosmic chains and the Legion has only one hour to stop him. In this issue, they aren't doing so great a job as he appears to outthink them at every turn. Reflecto shows up to save Shrinking Violet from drowning, and the team has to fight him, well--just because. And he beats them too. The story ends with several of the Legionnaires other taken out or captured by Grimbor.

New Adventures of Superboy #20: Bates and Schaffenberger have Superboy kidnapped by aliens who wish to add them to their collection and use a sort of mind control to keep him from leaving, but Superboy ultimately does and ends their coercive ways after saving them from an invasion. In the backup, a lost (and younger) Superboy winds up on a planet under a red sun and befriends some slug-like natives.

Sgt. Rock #355: Easy Company meets a group of 3 black WWI vets who stayed in France after the war, but are eager to to defend their adopted home with Sgt. Rock and his crew. They take to the bazooka well, but one of him winds up giving his life in this new war.

Kelley and Veitch present a story of a French professor in a runaway balloon who manages to strike a blow against the Germans and escape alive. Kim DeMulder gives us a sci-fi story of scientists testing a weapon on presumed subhuman creatures only to fine the creatures have similar designs on them. The "Men of Easy" feature is about a chess fan that likens war to chess, until Rock shows him the infantry aren't pawns.

Super Friends #46: This is a whole Green Fury-centric issue. We get her origin and the Justice League helps her battle a wicked shaman (grandson of the one who foretold her powers at birth) in the Amazon. Who knew Fire got so much "screen time" before the post-Legends Justice League?

Superman Family #209: Supergirl is welcomed in New York, while as Linda she is praised for her acting in the soap opera--and she gets a date with a guy who seems to prefer her to Supergirl. He may prefer baseball to her, though, but at least that gives her time to intervene in the mysterious violence breaking out at the game. Somehow, sports announcer Fred Fox is behind it, but the story's continued.

In the Mr. and Mrs. Superman feature, George Taylor (their old boss at the Daily Star) claims to have discovered Superman's secret ID, but he's killed by mobsters before he can reveal it, giving Clark a chance to doctor the evidence and catch Taylor's killers. In "The Private Life of Clark Kent" Clark thwarts a city bus hijacker secretly so a brave bus driver gets credit. In the  Conway/Oksner/Colletta Lois Lane story, Lois has to get rough with some mobsters who are threatening a family in witness relocation. Finally, Jimmy Olsen and his date find a diamond ring in a theater which involves them with drug dealers operating out of a novelty toy company.

Unexpected #213: Barr and von Eedon/Smith conclude the Johnny Peril story. Johnny manages to give the police the slip and seeks out his psychic friend from the previous story to help him get to the bottom of the mystery. He's able to full the would-be thieves from last issue with a smoke bomb and his friend posing as the mysterious woman into leading him to her. The woman is indeed the woman in the painting, cursed with immortality. She wants to die, but needs a dagger in the possession of the man that hired Peril to do so. The police arrive and try to convince Peril that the woman is crazy while his psychic friend urges him to give her the dagger. Ultimately, Johnny does so, and the woman stabs herself and ages to dust before their eyes.

Kashdan and Florese have a guy visiting a warlock to get a new appearance and identity so he can fake his death to escape liability for faulty school construction he did, but when his wife is accused of murdering him, he tries to get his identity back to save her. In the end, he and the warlock come to ruin as you would expect. In the last story by Kashdan and Mandrake, an anthropologist uncovers a fanged human skull--that bites him! The next day the the skull looks entirely human, but then the murders start. The professor has been turned into a werewolf by a prehistoric werewolf skull bite!

Unknown Soldier #254: Haney and Ayers/Tlaloc have the Soldier taking a junk down the Yang-Tze smuggling guns to help the Chinese against the Japanese invaders. They haven't reckoned on river pirates led by a beautiful captain, Lady Jade. Once the Soldier is captured, he appears to be falling for her charms, but he's still got a mission to complete.

Micheline and Simonson greatly revise Captain Fear and put the Carib pirate captain in the middle of some intrigue that connects the War of Austrian Succession with Japan.  In Dateline: Frontline by Burkett and Estrada, Wayne Clifford risks a lot to sneak into Bataan right before the Japanese overwhelm the U.S. forces.

Warlord #48:  Good issue. Read more about it here. The backup switches to Claw the Unconquered by Harris and Yeates. Claw's demon hand offends him, so he cut it off, only to have it crawl back and reattach itself. He complains to the Lords of Light, so they give him a magic sword and shield, and say "go forth and conquer, you big whiner." So, he rides out and into a battle where he befriends a warrior woman who's mail shirt suggests she fears not for the safety of her underboob, and meets the leader of the demonic horde--who has one human hand! 

A second backup from Thomas and Colon/DeZuniga introduces Arak, Son of Thunder. Arak is a Native America who has somehow come to Dark Ages Europe. In this story, he encounters a woman who is the "goddess" of an ancient temple. When viking raiders try to sacrifice her to some monster which hides in a drove of amber, Arak rescues her. A rather Conan-ish story to introduce Arak to the world.

An Old New Universe: A Comics Counterfactual

In another comic book counterfactual, I want to take a look at what might have been if Marvel's New Universe had been created in period where the Silver Age of comics was becoming the Bronze. Why? Well, I feel like there's a kernel of a good idea in some of the New Universe stuff but it's not always a good fit for the "world outside your window" concept. Just imagine...

Nightmask: A young adult gets the power to enter dreams through the actions of a villain that killed his parents. The high concept pitch for this is Spider-Man meets the 70s Sandman. Steve Ditko would be the ideal artist, but maybe Starlin takes over as it moves into the 70s.

Star Brand: Blue collar guy becomes a powerful superhero. Works well enough in a more standard superhero context. He'd need a different costume, though.

DP7: Another easy one. A little bit X-Men, a little bit Doom Patrol.

Kickers, Inc.: This title says Jack Kirby to me. Sort of if The Challengers of the Unknown were football pros. They need to fight monsters. Like, a lot of them. Probably still only gets a short run before cancellation.

Spitfire and the Troubleshooters: Jenny (called "Spitfire" due to her notorious temper) and her friends are a group of smart, prankster college students, who are forced to get serious when her inventor father is nearly killed by the bad buys. Donning his experimental suit of powered armor, Jenny (with the help of her friends) decides to bring them to justice. Its female lead and assemble cast would be an attempt to branch out beyond standard superheroics.

Justice: A knight from another dimension. The concept already pretty much fits the era, though the execution would be different. The name isn't great though.

Mark Hazzard: Merc: A bit less Commando and a bit more Sgt. Fury, Hazzard would be a "mercenary" like the A-Team, where he only takes on virtuous jobs. 

Wednesday Comics: DC, August 1981 (wk 2 pt 1)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around May 21, 1981.

Action Comics #522: A nutty professor with a life long love of Baum's Oz builds his own ticktock man. The robot helpfully tries to keep his absent-minded master by on time, but that leads to the creation of a time tornado, as these things do. Superman has to stop him, naturally. 

Speaking of nutty professors, in the Atom backup by Rozakis and Saviuk, Dr. Hyatt has built a device that can steal and store the energy of a hurricane, which he plans to send back to 1931 to hurricane season. When the Calculator shows up to still it, the Atom gets thrown into the time vortex too.

Adventure Comics #484: At this point, Wolfman is pretty much asking fans to come up with most visual details of this book. In addition to coming up with heroes and villains, he now asks for fans to decorate Chris's families new home and dress Chris's and Vicki's school peers. This leads to things like the really ugly costume on the Bounty Hunter in the first story here, and the weird design on his companion, The Pupil, who looks like a giant eyeball in a mortarboard hat. Of course, the Dial H kids defeat these clowns. There's a running gag with a grumpy homeless guy continuing to be in the way of the ongoing conflict, which pays off in the second story when he develops broadcast depression super-powers (thanks to a radioactive exposure in the first), and becomes a pied-piper leading the townsfolk to suicide attempts. Again the Dial H kids save the day. It seems an odd story for a kids' book, but hey, it was the 80s when you could play depression, homelessness, and attempted suicide in a light way.

Brave & the Bold #177: Barr and Aparo team Batman up with another detective, Elongated Man. When members of the charitable Hangman Club are being murdered, the two Leaguers are on the case, but the murderous Hangman seems to stay one step ahead, even hanging the Batman using Elongated Man as a noose and rope at one point, which is sort of gross. Anyway, the two ultimately realize the Hangman is actually killing the Club members to cover his real goal: killing his own wife. I like the way the issue shows the detective chops of both protagonists.

Detective Comics #505: Little Angela Lupus is dying of leukemia and needs a bone marrow transplant from her brother, Anthony Lupus. The problem is Lupus has disappeared. What Batman knows that the Lupus family doesn't is that Anthony was a werewolf, and after their first encounter, he may be dead. Turns out Batman may be wrong about that last part, as there seems to be an Anthony Lupus doing illegal hunting in Alaska. Batman manages to track down Lupus who is still a werewolf and capture him. Batman assures Lupus he can find a cure for his condition. Conway and Newton provide a sequel to the story in Batman #255 (1974). 

In the Batgirl backup by Burkett and Delbo, Batgirl is on the trail of hunchback killer who has terrorizing women all over Gotham. Batgirl plays lure to get the hunchback to attack, but in the struggle she drops the knockout gas pellet she was going to use to subdue him, and they both get knocked out.

House of Mystery #295: In the I...Vampire story we learn the secret origin of Bennett's elderly side kick Mishkin, who started hunting vampires with him as a boy after his mother was turned. Sutton's art is nice on this one. It's downhill after this story. The next story is about alien's targeting earthling by selling them fancy new cars in only red or blue. I don't get it. 

Then, Post and Henson deliver the typical cautionary tale about a kid who removes a mysterious woman's turban on a dare and is horrified by the monstrous face he sees on the back of her head. The last story by Jones and Craig is a bit "Living Doll" from the Twilight Zone and "Amelia" from Trilogy of Terror. Harry is trying to marry Isadora or her money, but her daughter Lilah sees through him, and eventually locks him in the attic with a Zulu fetish doll he wouldn't let her buy.

Green Lantern #143: The "backdoor pilot" for an Omega Men series continues. Hal spends most of the issue strapped down with his ring warding off attempts by the forces of the Citadel to take it away. Meanwhile, Carol (and the reader) get to here a number of monologues from Auron. The value/importance Wolfman puts on this character eludes me, other than he winds up being the deus ex machina to secure GL's, Carol's, and the Omega Men's escape.

Sutton and Rodriguez/Mahlstedt continue the Adam Strange backup. Strange returns to Rann only to find that Sardath and the Rannian people blame him for Alanna's death. A detail on her lifeless, crystalline form, reveals that it's a trick. Hoping she's still alive he heads out for a rematch with Alva Xar.

World's Finest #270: My brother and I had this issue as kids so I have fond memories of it. In the Superman/Batman story by Conway and Buckler, Metallo has busted out of Superman Island and now has a Black Hole as a power source. Once the heroes track him down, Metallo uses the intense gravitation to take out Superman, but Batman smashes his control board, and Metallo gets sucked into his own Black Hole. 

In the Haney and von Eeden/Smith Green Arrow story, Count Vertigo is back and uses his vertiginous powers to force Green Arrow to acquire the crown of Vlatava. GA does so, and Vertigo smashes it with a sledgehammer! To be continued. In the Hawkman/Hawkgirl story by Rozakis and Saviuk/Rodriguez, Hawkman has been cured but a Thanagarian invasion fleet is leaving the planet, headed for Earth, and Hawkgirl has got to deal with the Shadow Thief before she can do anything about it.

In the Red Tornado story by Conway and Delbo, Reddy takes on Robot Killer a luddite with a homemade (but snappy) costume. Finally, in "Our Son, the Monster" by Bridwell and Newton, Captain Marvel has to help the son of a neighbor who has been transformed into a chubby green creature, by aliens' misguided efforts to reward him with good-looks.

It was enjoyable to revisit this issue, and I think that it's one of the better issues I've read of the title since I started this review.

Weird Revisted: Spectacular Losers

The original version of this Weird Adventures post appeared in May of 2011... 

For every adventurer that achieves fame and fortune there are a dozen who have short careers and die pointless or bizarre (or sometimes both) deaths in cramped spaces underground. The successful ones get celebrated at Munsen’s Museum. The losers have their own shrine on the boardwalk of Lapin Isle: Jago’s Museum of Death in the Depths. Here’s a sampling of the stories to be found there:

“Sweet Tooth” Artie Gaff: Lost his life in a macabre freak accident after a roll of the hard candies he habitually carried became tainted with a droplet from an ooze he and his party had defeated earlier.  The "sugar slime" that grew from the remainder of the candies required the action of the Exterminators to stop it.

Nellie Eastpenny: Supposedly crushed under the boot of a giant. It has been of little solace to her grieving family that scientists have since proven that a giant of that size is an impossible violation of physical law.

Smiling Dave Delgroot: Contracted a peculiar wasting disease from a plague-carrying undead creature. His facial features were the first thing to go.

Janice Doppelkin: Was executed for her crimes. The jury at her trial was unanimous in their verdict of guilt, but divided as to whether her crime was better termed “double murder” or “murder/suicide.” After three days on a delve, Miss Doppel returned to find her man en flagrante with a duplicate of herself, apparently created after she looked into a magic mirror on the first day of the expedition.

Wilbert Vrockmorton: Died more indirectly from delving than most of his fellow unfortunates in the museum. After a successful expedition, Vrockmorton was drinking with his fellows at a City saloon. A challenge from Zanoni (born Theron Astley) lead to his consumption of a bottle of wine brought up from the underground. Upon downing a glass, Vrockmorton disappeared--whether by disintegration or some sort of teleportation no one could say.  Occasionally, a magic item turns up in the hands of various dealers in the City: A glass eye called the Eye of Vrockmorton--said to impart protection against inebriation if carried.

Augie "the Mace" Munce: Decapitated by the bite of a monstrous humanoid, probably a troll--a creature Munce had turned his back on after presuming its defeat.  In certain adventuring quarters, the verb "to munce" is used to refer to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Wednesday Comics: DC, August 1981 (wk 1 pt 2)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around May 7, 1981.

Justice League of America #193: This continues the Red Tornardo/T.O. Morrow story from the previous issue. Morrow can't seem to replicate Reddy, so he's going to take him apart to figure out why. Aquaman plays Batman and busts through a window to save him, but Morrow takes him out easily. The JLA attacks Morrow as a group, but the Tornado Tyrant has been unleashed and defeats them all but (Conway creation, I'm sure that's no accident) Firestorm. Firestorm meets the relatively small Tornado Champion and hears its origin and by extension the origin of Red Tornado. I have no idea if there are any retcons here as this is the version I know from Who's Who. Anyway, Firestorm helps the Champion reintegrate with the Tyrant with Firestorm's help so they can revive Red Tornado, even though that means the Champion will again lose his memory/identity.  Firestorm is now the only one that knows Reddy's true origin story. 

Then there is an All-Star Squadron preview by Thomas and Buckler/Ordway. This is basically set-up but pretty interesting. It's December 6, 1941, and FDR is trying to get in touch with the JSA, but they're all off doing other stuff--and running into villains that they don't know but who know them, implying they are time displaced. Degaton is at the root of all this, and Pearl Harbor is about to occur without the heroes to help. This is a solid issue, I would have no doubt read and re-read as a kid.

New Teen Titans #10: Terminator is back and HIVE wants him to steal stuff from Project: Promethium, which Terminator does, but he plans to auction off to the highest bidder. A lot of the issue is taken up by "slice of life" character stuff with the Titans before Terminator's machinations draw them in. In the end, HIVE betrays the would-be bidders, Terminator betrays HIVE, and the Titans trick Terminator who thought he had killed them in his demonstration of a "Promethium bomb." The competency of the creative team is clear, but this story feels like treading water between better stuff, though clearly since this is the second issue with it, Wolfman is more enamored of Promethium as a MacGuffin than I am. Also, this title has a bit of a 80s cartoon feel in that HIVE and Terminator have been such recurrent villains over this first year.

Secrets of Haunted House #39: Another lackluster issue, though a couple of stories here are just odd. In the Seegar/Patricio opener, a woman (named Taaro of all things) finds an injured man in an alley and brings him back to her place and kind of lets him move in. She shows him her wall full of memorabilia: photos from her modeling career, the cast she recently had removed and the crutch she used. Ignore the weirdness of this wall, because this is essentially a Chekov's gun moment. Romance doesn't bud, but the guy does kill her rival for a commercial gig-- 'cause he's a vampire. Then he gets jealous of her and a guy that offers he a job. He reveals he's a vampire and menaces her, but she stabs him through the heart with the handy crutch. 

The last story is by Drake and "Magpie-o" (Magpayo). A man escapes from psychiatric hospital and abducts his daughter (presumably) for a trip to Mexico. He encounters a reclusive but locally famous silver artist called Caballo, who wears something like Aztec get-up and long gloves all the time. The guy thinks all of this doesn't add up. He hears about Xotoka, a god who had a silver touch, and he reads about a ritual in an old book he took from Caballo's. He performs the ritual, and receives a burn on his forehead, but now everything he touches becomes silver. One afternoon, he returns to the hotel and his daughter is gone. He races to Caballo's for a show down, convinced the artist is trying to protect the secret of the ritual, but it turns out Caballo doesn't have that power--he's just a murderer that dips people in silver--including the man's daughter!

The Mister E story by Rozakis and Spiegle has E in Boston dealing with two dogs that work for witches. And this is ill-conceived yarn has a second part.

Superman #362: Lana and Lois both fall ill from a mysterious illness, which causes a great deal of distress for Superman, who realizes its the same illness that killed Jonathan and Martha Kent. A lot of the issue is consumed by that flashback, which is maybe new here, I don't know. It's continued next issue.

The backup is an "In-Between Years" story by Rozakis and Schaffenberger. Clark arrives at college in Metropolis only to find the campus on alert due to a bomb threat by Vietnam protestors. I figured this was going to be some criminal ploy blaming the protestors, but nope they are indeed responsible. However, a group of criminals does try to fake bomb scares after the real bombers are apprehended, but they are stopped by Superboy.

Weird War Tales #102: I'm surprised the Comics Code let DeMatteis and Carillo get away with this Creature Commandos story with a bunch of brainwashed kids shot up with some sort of super-soldier formula by the Nazis. The creatures (as is common in this strip) show the most humanity, viewing the children, however murderous, as more victims of callous science--not unlike themselves. In the end, the kids turn on their creator just before the unstableness of their condition kills them. 

The other stories aren't as strong, but two-thirds are okay. In the Fleisher/Zamora story a G.I. gets the ability to predict another soldiers death by seeing their dog tags glow, and winds up trading out dog tags with his buddy to save his friend's life. In a best-forgotten tale by Kashdan and Celardo a genii fulfills the wish of an ambitious officer to to lead an army of fierce soldiers, so the genii shrinks the guy to the size of an ant so he can command ants. The last story by Mishkin/Cohn and von Eeden/Ordway is a bit like The Last Starfighter (3 years away) where a kid playing a video game frees an alien people and is honored by them.

Wonder Woman #282: This is probably the best installment of this Etrigan team-up arc, but I still don't like Delbo's rendition of the Demon. Conway's script actually handles him pretty well, though. Anyway, the Demon and Wonder Woman escape the Netherworld and manage to bring Etta Candy home. Wonder Woman realizes Diana's and Etta's landlord--ex-Senator Abernathy is the one that set them up as potential sacrifices. When confronted, he admits it and says he was being blackmailed by Oscar Pound of Delphi. Wonder Woman again infiltrates Delphi only to find the Demon is already there and has fallen under the control of Klarion. Before she handles that, Diana has got to deal with Pound who has been turned into a Minotaur as Klarion's cruel way of fulfilling his promise to make him walk again. Etrigan refuses to kill Wonder Woman who he calls his friend and breaks free of Klarion's control. He seems to destroy Klarion but tells Wonder Woman that such a creature can't truly die. Pound is human again, but also unable to walk. They leave him for the police.

In the Huntress backup by Levitz and Staton/Mitchell, our hero is trying to find the Joker by looking for the source of his Joker venom tracing precursor chemicals. She comes up empty until she gets an idea. She heads back to Wayne Manor, which she hasn't visited for years, and the Batcave. Which makes we wonder why she as the heir doesn't do something with it? Aren't the taxes on the place killing her? Anyway, we cut to the Joker who sees a report of a sighting of Batman, swinging through Gotham. The Joker is overjoyed: he didn't want the Batman dead until he kills him. The last caption tells us that the Joker thinks the Batman is back, and we readers think it's the Huntress in disguise, but we are both wrong.

The Spider's Web

 Our Land of Azurth 5e game continued last night with the part heading out for Subazurth, and then to journey through its subterranean highways to the the mysterious domed city of Yai. Along the way to the road, they learn a bit about the history of the local kingdom of Subazurth: How the deposed Rorquar the Gnome King was an enemy of Queen Desire but his son, Gheode, the current king is her ally. The the "gnomes" of this area are Earth faeborn, mostly with a crystalline appearance. 

In Subazurth they are met by Captain Malachite:

He has prepared a cover story for them as "fungus hunters" and has a giant pillbug drawn wagon to give them. He also providers a star-shaped compass that will allow them to navigate to the northern Noxia border. 

They head out beneath Virid to the Virid-Noxia border. The route is pretty easy going. The road has paving stones and the way is lit by phosphorescent fungi on most of the walls. Passing through one outpost, though, they are stopped by a salty veteran of the Subazurth Rangers who tells them the passage is closed for some distance ahead due to a monster infestation. He welcomes them to stay a week or so while he hires a group of adventurers to clear the way.

The party responds that even though they are humble fungus hunters, they will give it a shot. The ranger agrees to let them try. Half a day in, they pass an alcove for a waystation that is full of spider webs. They roll on, but remain vigilante overnight in the next alcove. Dagmar things she sees something at the edge of the light, but by the time she summons Shade, whatever it might have been is gone.

The next day, they again head out, only to be attacked by the breath weapon of some sort of dragon-spider hybrid. It gives the party quite a time, and Kully goes down, but they are able to slay the creature in the end, and take it's head to present to the ranger. They also, of course, search its lair and recover its meager treasure.

Modest reward for their efforts acquired, they again head northeast

Strange New Worlds

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds debuted on the Paramount+ streaming platform this past week. For anyone that hasn't heard of it, it follows the adventures of Captain Christopher Pike and his crew on the Enterprise--the group we saw in the original Star Trek pilot, "The Cage."

Pike and Spock played important roles in Discovery season 2, so in a way this is a spinoff of that show. A such, we unfortunately, don't get a retro-aesthetic like the Mirror Universe two-parter on Enterprise or even a straight modernization of the TOS aesthetic like Abrams' Star Trek, but rather something that moves Discovery looks in a modernization of TOS direction. The uniforms here, though, are much better than the one's shown for the Enterprise in Discovery S2, being something like a combination of elements of the Star Trek (2009) and Star Trek Beyond uniforms.

Anson Mounts' Pike isn't like Jeffery Hunter's but then we only saw Hunter play him pre-The Cage. Those events no doubt impacted him, but the biggest thing Mounts' Pike is dealing with is the aftermath of Discovery. It's a minor spoiler, but Pike is now aware of the fate that awaits him where he ends up in the sad condition we see him in in "The Menagerie." Mount isn't playing another version of Kirk here, which is good.

Ethan Peck's Spock is likewise good, but doesn't quite nail the Nimoy vibe in the way Quinto does. However, "The Cage" pilot was before Nimoy and the writers really made Spock the character we know, so that's okay. The other "recast" characters (Number One, Nurse Chapel, Dr. Mbenga, April) didn't have so much development in the serious previously that a new actor seems like a change. Indeed, all of these actors are good in their roles. Young Uhura likewise seems reasonable to me or that character.

That does bring up one of the (minor) problems with the series for me. In their eagerness to throw in character callbacks, they aren't really respecting continuity. Mbenga appears to be Chief Medical Officer here, yet he is at most second in command to Dr. McCoy by the time of TOS. Maybe McCoy got brought in an outranked him, but that would explain why he looks pretty much the same age as here as he does in TOS with seven years supposedly separating the shows. Indeed, the actor in TOS is a decade younger than the one that played him in SNW.

Also, Uhura stellar communication's officer (at least as far as the "extended universe" of the novels and comics tell us) is one her first cruise here here, but has only made it to lieutenant 7 years later? Maybe that's possible, but it just feels like they didn't think it through.

Those fannish quibbles aside, I like the show. I like the episodic nature of it, which moves it back in the direction of older Trek after the very serial Discovery and Picard. I like that we're getting an Andorian on the ship, if the trailer is accurate. I'm hoping will get more tie-ins to older Trek lore than Discovery's over-arcing plot allowed.

New Terra

New Terra is uncannily like humanity's world of origin in terms of size and atmospheric composition. Even the native plant and animal life proved mostly compatible with the biochemistry of organisms from Old Earth. It made an ideal new home for the refugees from across the stars.

The technology that allowed humankind to make the journey in great arks has now been lost. Humans may have left the Earth behind, but they could not flee the worst parts of their nature. Wars for territory began soon after their arrival and in them much knowledge was lost.

Something like two centuries have passed since that time. An international governing body was formed to ensure peace, and it did so for a time. Corruption and entanglements on other worlds led an economic depression. The previous government was ousted by popular vote in favor of the New Earth Order party under it's charismatic leader, Hastor Trask. 

New Earth Order blamed most of New Terra's woes on undue influence of aliens, and has proscribed the travel of nonhumans on Earth, while pursuing a military build-up and expansion of New Terran hegemony into the Belt and beyond.