My mission: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around March 17, 1983.
Legion of Super-Heroes #300: It's an anniversary issue, so Giffen and Mahlstedt share art duties with a number of Legion artists from the past: Schaffenberger, Staton, Bender, Swan, Sherman, and Cockrum. The whole Legion of Super-Heroes assembles for an anniversary ceremony, but there are some other things going on as they do. Mon-El and Shadow Lass (with a new look) destroy a giant Khund spaceship in humanoid form. Much of the issue is taken up by Brainiac 5 and Rond Vidar working to cure the psychosis of Douglas Nolan, brother of the late Ferro Lad. He experiences a number of alternate timelines (providing the stories for the guest artists to illustrate). Ultimately, they allow the tortured Nolan to physically escape into an alternate timeline in which he replaces his dead brother in the Legion.
I suspect this is an issue that is more enjoyable the more you are steeped in Legion history.
Night Force #11: Wolfman and Colan start a new storyline. In a mansion in Maine in the 1930s, a cabal of occultists uses their power to help bring Hitler to power, only to be betrayed and murdered by him (also sealing his own fate). Decades later, a wealthy couple buys the house and finds it haunted. They are assaulted by the spirits who brand "666" on the husband's head. The couple turns to Baron Winter for help and for a large sum, he agrees. He and Vanessa prepare in open a door in his home and step out into the 1930s. After a stop in a soda shop to have an egg cream (priorities I guess) the Baron contrives to set up a meeting with the cabal.
This seems a bit more standard fare than the last two arcs, but it's just the first installment so there may be twists to come.
Brave and the Bold #199: Barr and Andru/Hoberg team up Batman and the (Earth-One) Spectre in the penultimate issue of this title. It's got a nice setup: Jim Corrigan (the Spectre's host) disappears while a moving train while the Spectre is out of his body, so the ghost goes to the Dark Knight Detective to solve the crime. It turns out the sorceress Kalindra is trying to get a bad for spirit of her lover, banished to the Astral Plane by a cruel and vengeful wizard centuries ago. Batman tries to deal with the powerful Kalindra, while Spectre and the lover's spirit fight to the Astral Plane. Spectre wins quickly and then helps Batman by releasing Kalindra of her spell, ending her life. In the aftermath, Batman is angry at the unnecessary death, but the Spectre explains that the lovers' souls were due in the afterlife long ago, and now they are reunited there.
Daring New Adventures of Supergirl #8: Kupperberg brings in his creation from 1977 (though they were last seen in '82), the new Doom Patrol. Reactron, an atomic-powered foe of the Doom Patrol, is lured into the open by the Patrol's gambit of offering Negative Woman as bait--and Linda Danvers happens to be a bystander! She's shooed away from the scene by Tempest, who doesn't know she's Supergirl. Cheryl and Daryll, who have accompanied her to the park, take her back home, and Linda has to watch the battle with her super-vision. Reactron escapes and later appears on the university campus, drawn by the emanations of a secret, experimental nuclear reactor, and Supergirl gets her chance to confront him.
Green Lantern #165: Barr and Pollard/Adkins bring back John Stewart to team-up with Green Arrow. The Guardians contact Stewart to deal with the threat of the alien warrior, Krystayl. The creature was a weapon created on the planet destroyed millennia ago by the combined willpower of the Green Lantern Corps, shattering the monster to shards. This also killed all the people he had absorbed, something the Guardians deemed as acceptable losses. The fragments drifted through space, until one of those shards arrived on Earth and awakened, continuing his lethal orders.
The first encounter between the heroes and the monster doesn't go so well. Some civilians are absorbed, and Ollie's arm gets encased in crystal. Freeing Ollie's arm gives them the idea of finding the crystal's weak point, and they use that trick to shatter Krystayl, freeing the people he absorbed. Green Arrow invites John to get some chili.
In the epilogue, Green Lantern Galius Zed confronts the supposed traitor Eddore and takes his Globe of Power. However, when looks into the globe, he instead joins with Eddore and declares they must tell their fellow Green Lanterns about the Guardians' betrayal.
The Tales of the Green Lantern Corps backup by Klein and Gibbons continues the story from issue 163. After showing Hollika Rahn a vision of what might happen if she shirks her responsibilities as a Green Lantern, a Guardian reveals that her friend Mikkin has strayed into Scientist and gets captured by some taken to the Ministry of Science. The Guardian shows Hollika Mikki's location, and she heads to the rescue.
House of Mystery #317: In "I...Vampire," Mishkin and Cullins/Sutton have Bennett, Deborah, and the fictional Mishkin (Dmitri) battling the forces of the Blood Red Moon led by Mishkin's mother, Dunya. They are trapped in the former Mishkin family home as the sun comes up. While the vampires sleep, Deborah tries to find the hiding places of the Blood Red Moon forces laying siege and kill them to even the odds. When night falls, Dunya's vampires attack. Deborah is about to shoot Dunya with a solar gun, but Dmitri leaps in front of the blast to save his mother. He begs her to finally love him, but she scorns him once again. As Dunya is about to bite Deborah, Dmitri stakes his mother from behind, killing her. He dies of his injuries in Bennett's arms, realizing at last that his mother was long dead.
The other story by Mayer and Zamora is sort of clever. In a magic-based analog to the 20th Century, a couple is aghast to learn their son has been practicing science in the basement. They are visited by the magical authorities, but the son uses his renegade science to save his family, then casts a powerful spell that transforms the world in our technological one, with only him remembering how things were and retaining magical power.
Sgt. Rock #377: The main story, "The Worry-Wart," is one of those introduce a new Easy Company member with a distinct (usually eccentric) trait yarns that forms a significant part of Kanigher's repertoire. This is the variant where the newbie learns something that makes them a better soldier and doesn't die.
The two backup stories are weird and feel like maybe they were rush jobs or inventory pieces. Both are about the ironies of war, even in the future. The first is a space opera-ish text piece illustrated by Sid Wright. The second is a post-apocalyptic tale with amateurish or underground-looking art (or both) by Brian Bilby, who's only credit are short's (2 of them humor) in 3 issues of Sgt. Rock.
Warlord #70: In the Barren Earth backup by Cohn and Randall, The Harashashan and humans are cooperating on setting up a serious of aqueducts, but the prejudices run deep and it isn't easy. It gets even harder when the fungoid Mulge attack. They are repelled, but not before they kidnap Skinner. I reviewed the main story in this issue here.
No comments:
Post a Comment