Sunday, May 2, 2021

DC, June 1980 (part 1)

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands on the week of March 13,1980.


Batman #323: Cat-Man puts Batman and Catwoman in an almost 60s TV show death trap, which they escape. Cat-Man's potentially magical cloak seems to heal Catwoman's fatal-at-any-moment illness no one ever seemed to name. Weak sauce, Wein and Novick! Nice Aparo cover, though.

DC Comics Presents #21: In a story by Barr and Dillin, we get an appearance by Captain Comet, comics' first identified mutant superhero (as far as I know). Another mutant tries to steal Captain Comet's powers out of jealousy in an elaborate plot.

Flash #283: This issue is like a Silver Age throwback complete with a title page and a silly villain like the Rainbow Raider. The Flash triumphs by using his power creatively, though, which is kind of cool.

Ghosts #86: Three sort of novel ghostly stories of revenge. These stories drive home how much the ghost story (at least as DC does it) often involves the murderer dying in the same way as their victim. The Kashdan/Yeates story "The Phantom's Last Act" has the twist of the killer acknowledging the ghost's existence, but not being afraid of it due to its incorporeality, then panicking when it threatens to reveal his secret in a halogram display, and getting himself killed.


G.I. Combat #220: One thing I've noticed about these Haunted Tank stories: the ghost of J.E.B. Stuart shows up less than you might think from the name of the strip. In these 3 stories written by Kanigher and grittily rendered by Glanzman, the crew play host to a no-nonsense Soviet Major who happens to be a woman, they are forced to haul a big gun for the Germans to keep Belgian hostages safe, and they run into Rock and Easy Company on the way to Bastogne. There are a lot of cameos in these war books. In other tales, Kanigher puts a plug in for the indigenous people of a Pacific Island (if with a cringeworthy portrayal) as a warrior gets the better of both the Japanese and American invaders, and Haney and Caliva tell the life story of a G.I. canteen.

Jonah Hex #34: Fleisher gives us another story of Hex's Civil war past, this one revealing how he was the one that killed Stonewall Jackson in a friendly fire incident at Chancellorsville. The only problem is Fleisher told us a couple of issues ago that Hex left the Confederate Army right after the Emancipation Proclamation, and so shouldn't have even been there.

Justice League of America #179: Conway's creation, Firestorm, gets to join the JLA. He immediately gets into trouble crossing a disco super-model vampire, the Satin Satan!


Secrets of Haunted House #25: A criminal and a vampire (who apparently doesn't know how her powers work in some crucial ways) try to make it across some really hostile wilderness in a weird story by Catherine Barrett Andrews, Stuart Hopen, and artist June Lofamia. The second story was written by famous letterer Todd Klein and has art by von Eeden. It's one of those typical "trying to escape Destiny only leads you to do the exact thing you were supposed to do" yarns.

Superman #348: Conway and Swan deliver a pretty nonsensical tale of an old Native American who summons an extradimensional storm monsters with some sort of alien artifact. Neither the monster or the artifact are ever explained, but hey, Superman tosses them both into another dimension where they're somebody else's problem, I guess, and gives the old guy a regular rock as a replacement. Problem solved!

Weird War Tales #88: Fleisher and Ocampo deliver a problematic story about the Seminole Wars where the U.S. can't defeat the tribe because they have the fountain of youth to keep their people young and healthy. It all ends in tears though as a would-be white savior you turned on his unit gets killed by his commander who then destroys the sacred waters, dooming the Seminole. Alligators get him in the end, though.

Wonder Woman #268: Animal Man is still guest staring, but now they're in France fighting some ridiculous assassins. 

3 comments:

Dick McGee said...

Only one I remember owning out of these was the Flash issue. It did feel very much like a book from 20 years before, but that's a fairly common trend with Flash in the 80s. Hard to make a serious story when your villain is named Roy G. Bivolo and has a hate boner for fine art. Why the guy didn't just paint in black & white or take up sculpting or something instead of making a try at supervillainy is beyond me.

Even more confused as to how he managed to (posthumously) inspire an equally idiotic (albeit somewhat more powerful) team of rainbow themed supervillains later on. I suppose it doesn't matter since the entire Rainbow Raiders team committed suicide in an attempt to become Black Lanterns, which not only didn't work, it seems to be a rare case of death sticking.

JB said...

Man, I had that Flash that introduced the Rainbow Raider...one of the first Flash comics I ever owned/read. I *loved* that guy (the colorblind super-villain)!

But what 7 year old doesn't love rainbows?
; )

Cross Planes said...

Bronze age comics are so weird. In the 70's you had monsters, devils, vampires, heroin-addicted sidekick, and the President committing suicide on the White House Lawn. The stories that would lay the work for Alan Moore, Chris Claremont, Marv Wolfman, John Byrne, Walt Simonson, Frank Miller, etc.

And the 80s were huge because toy companies and comic companies marketed hard to kids.

I LOVE all of it.