America vs. the Justice Society #2: The Thomases and Blair/Alcala start the Justice Society hearing, and it's mostly a recitation of old stories likely harmonized into a (more) cohesive continuity, but without knowing the old stories like Thomas does, it's hard to tell. It does highlight the absurdity of this sort of story where the members of Congress are forced to take the word (or not) of masked individuals regarding time travel, magic, and ghosts. In fact, the Spectre crashes the hearing to offer his old friends sanctuary on another world, and to sort of threaten their accusers. Wonder Woman also does some threatening when they impugn her honesty.
The first round goes pretty good for the JSA despite that, but there's someone in the background out to get them for the death of his father, and he's got the Wizard set to testify.
V #1: Bates and Infantino/DeZuniga get tapped for the comics tie-in with the series follow-up to the successful TV mini-series. The series premiered on October 26, 1984, so the comic was hot on its heels. I watched some of it, I know, but I don't remember much about the regular series. The comic, with the human rebels fighting a resistance against the Visitors, strikes me as pretty similar to what the series was probably like, though it has a higher special effects budget, as I don't think the Visitors had soldiers with jetpacks on TV. The art really looks like DeZuniga drew it from Infantino breakdowns; his inks hide most of the Infantino-ness, besides poses of the characters maybe.
Action Comics #564: Kupperberg and Saviuk bring back that now obscure but common in the early 80s villain, the Master Jailer. He's got a device from the Monitor that induces amnesia in Superman, making him believe he's a warehouse worker named Mike Benson. The Monitor warns the Jailer that the amnesia may be broken if Superman encounters things that remind him of his real life in the next 48 hours. While Master Jailer commits crimes wearing Superman's costume as armor under his outfit, Mike Benson goes about his day, accidentally avoiding things that would trigger his memories, until he's asked to don a Superman costume for a children's benefit. Superman recovers his memories and captures the Jailer.
In the second story by Boatner and Bender/Hunt, Superman is in Philadelphia and attacked by an other-dimensional slaver (of a species that looks like humanoid geese) searching for his escaped slave on Earth. Superman helps the escapee, who was drawn to Earth after learning of the Underground Railroad, defeat his pursuer, and hopes Earth can become a stop on an interdimensional Underground Railroad.
Arion Lord of Atlantis #28: Kupperberg and Sherman-Tereno have Arion find a scroll that he thinks might allow him to restore his magic. When he performs the ritual the magical being it summons seeks to trick him, and Arion's life is only saved by the intervention of a kid. In the end, though, Arion does get some magic again.
In the conclusion to the Lady Chian backup, she defends the young girl Lyla from the father the has fled, who intends to give her over to slavery. Chian is reminded of her own childhood in which her own father gave her up as a ritual offering to a warlord. Chian wins the fight, with the girl's father and her own past, and chooses not to kill the man but leaves with the girl.
All-Star Squadron #42: Thomas and Jones/Collins continue the story from last issue. The now-conscious Starman recounts how, the night before, he had an encounter with Japanese planes over the coast that were able to turn invisible. Soon, the All-Stars headquarters is invaded by Prince Daka and his and his invisible minions, Sumo, Tsunami and Kung, who were on those planes. The All-Stars present are defeated, and Daka claims Starman's cosmic rod.
Detective Comics #547: Moench and Broderick/Janson continue the Night-Slayer Batman story. While Bruce Wayne in the Night-Slayer outfit sits on top of a building and makes a pyramid from pebbles, Anton Knight as Batman is on a crime spree. Mayor Hill, who has been trying to frame Batman for attacking him, views Batman committing real crimes as some kind of trap, so he sends his goons to investigate. The blind woman Knight had stayed with finds his buried loot and realizes he wasn't tht real Batman. Robin and Nocturna set out to find Bruce but run into Anton Knight, who Nocturna wounds with a throwing star, but he escapes.
The fake Batman then meets accidentally with the tailor who provided Mayor Hill with the fake bat-glove for his framing attempt. After the encounter, the man starts thinking maybe Hill might be right about Batman. While he's contemplating this, he encounters the "Night-Slayer" who gives him a helping hand.
Jonah Hex #89: While Jonah is recovering from getting shot by Emmy Lou at the stern Mrs. Crowley's boarding house, the amnesiac Adrian Sterling continues to serve drinks under the name of Temple Starr, and Emmy Lou is still with the outlaw gang, believing she killed Jonah.
Hex has got further problems, because Jeremy Ashford, the son of the Gray Ghost, has just located him, having vowed to fulfill an oath to his father to kill the bounty hunter. The young Ashford begins to have second thoughts have Hex saves his life. He confronts Hex, revealing his identity, but Jonah convinces the boy that murder isn't in his nature. Ashford seems to agree, leaving Hex alive but choosing to commit suicide.
There's a house ad in the letter column proclaiming "Jonah Hex's new horse" showing Hex riding a motorcycle. It's "coming in June."
Spanner's Galaxy #3: This issue, Spanner and his sidekick Gadj arrive on the swampy planet of New Okeefenokee, where a family of researchers are under frequent assault by the native Okees, who have mysteriously turned aggressive recently. Spanner's arrival is the catalyst that allows secrets to be revealed: the daughter of the researchers is actually a native orphan the couple adopted and were using drugs and technology to make appear human with the hope of taking her off world. An Okee ritual reveals the truth, and the daughter chooses to stay with her people but promises to keep in contact with her adoptive parents.
Sun Devils #8: Rik and Annie fight Khun’s prime assassin, Draken, amid the wreckage of their ship. The fight ends with Rik's helmet shattered. Meanwhile, the rest of the team discuss the evidence of a traitor amongst them, before we get a better more of Scylla's backstory, and she and Shikon head out on a mission to retrieve the neutronium they need for the superweapon.
Supergirl Movie Special #1: Cavalieri and Morrow adapt the not well-received movie. We get a José Luis García-López cover which is pretty cool. Though, not of course, in continuity, this winds up being the last appearance of Supergirl before the pages of Crisis.
Tales of the Legion #320: Levitz plots here with Newell on script and Jurgens/Kesel on art. A master thief called Magpie penetrates the Legion's headquarters to steal some valuable items on behalf of the Monitor--or so he believes. The Monitor has really engaged him in the service of Universo. Magpie is stopped by Dream Girl and Sun Boy. Meanwhile, Colossal Boy, his wife, and Gigi Cusimano, conspired to teach the womanizing Sun Boy a lesson.
World's Finest Comics #312: Cavalieri and Woch/Alcala introduce the previously teased Network. During the opening of a new disco in Gotham City, Bruce Wayne is there as the guest of Lilane Stern (and smoking a pipe, which I haven't seen him do in decades), and Clark Kent is reporting on the event, because apparently new clubs in Gotham are newsworthy in Metropolis. The place is attacked by the Network, a group of super-villains who each have a TV or radio related schtick. Despite the intervention of Superman and Batman, the villains warp out the discotheque into another dimension using their combined powers.
While Superman investigates this "white noise" dimension, Batman goes to the record company that had previously employed this group. During his investigation, Batman finds that the Network is blackmailing the president of the company before the Network sends him to the white noise dimension.
3 comments:
Feels like a lot going on this week underneath the "business as usual" representation in the books themselves . . . only a couple core Earth 1 titles that could almost be throwbacks, a lot of Earth 2 and indie style SF, some historicals. Not sure this is DC on autopilot or what but the details stack up higher than the sum of the parts.
America vs JSA was not something I read (and still have not read) despite years obsessed with Earth 2. It just looked like homework. Roy might have had the outline of an interesting story here but someone else could execute it better today as more of a deep period piece. What would Ken Burns do?
If Master Jailer wasn't such a thing in those days someone like Grant Morrison would have invented him by now as a psychological expression of where constraints come from, which makes it really interesting that he's working with the Monitor to test Superman by taking his identity away. Basically a dry run for "The Jungle Line."
All-Star Squadron with the invisible planes makes me wonder how (not "if") Amazon Island aeronautics get conflated with ufo lore and to what extent rogue amazon cells were working with man's world institutions to leak their technology. Exploring this could have given Wonder Woman the generational bridge narrative she needed to reconnect with the golden age weirdness. Similar arc in Detective with the notion of specialized (fetish) costume shops, a secret history of high-tech tailors.
Jonah Hex on a motorcycle is obviously an Armchair Comics reference, or should be!
Bringing up the failure of the Supergirl movie here gets me to realize why they set their hearts on eliminating the character. I wonder if it was more humiliating for them than they let on. On the other hand Bruce Wayne with a pipe has such a Hef vibe that it's probably better that they phased that out>
The idea of the Monitor working "for" Universo is wild unless we follow the theory that these pre-crisis cameos are a kind of experimental laboratory testing various DCU expectations. Evidently this one didn't work out so well for Universo because he wasn't tapped as a key character in the crisis: he failed. Since this is all about the time viewer I can't help feeling that this was part of the Monitor's plan for the whole 30th century front . . . but because we know a bad connection with the 20th century ends up dooming the Levitz legion it's at best a sacrificial move, but really interesting. Maybe they should've let Universo get access to the main plot even if it meant cutting ties with the core DCU. Would Levitz have preferred that?
Maybe Wolfman had an idea of what the Monitor was all about from the beginning, but I suspect they were making it up has the went along. They knew an outcome, sort of, but I suspect the actual story of Crisis was a late invention. And if the writer and editorial didn't know, how could they coordinate the Monitor's appearances elsewhere?
It's interesting that Earth-2 was having such a moment here right at the end. If only Thomas had come to DC before the implosion, it might have amounted to more.
Not having read much of Jonah Hex before jumping on board with Hex when it arrives, I was unaware how much the title had perhaps been treading water since the nonsuperhero titles started to disappear over the years between '80 and '85. Unlikely the fantasy and sci-fi titles that seem to be trying for something, Jonah Hex seems to have inherited a bit of the "closing of the Frontier" feeling from its genre. The scarred face bounty hunter will escape, though, and leave it behind.
Watching the rediscovered Image Era interview with Perez that's going around really makes me wonder how much of it came as a surprise to the Wolfman when he got the penciled pages back. People assume that because they were at DC they worked DC style but since they both came out of Marvel and the co-plotter credit shows up early it's tempting to wonder what emerged like Wonder Girl fully formed from George's crazy head.
TLDR yeah what's amazing about the Crisis is how shambolic it is. Meanwhile all these strips like Jonah Hex give me such a sense that the only thing keeping them going was sheer orneriness and corporate inertia: it would cost more to shut them down (as you point out the implosion is still a fresh wound) than keep printing and pulping every month. But with the direct market looming you can't recoup your paper costs in the same way. Ah, Jonah Hex. If only I had appreciated you more.
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