My mission: to read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to the end of Crisis. This week, I'm looking at the comics that were on stands in the week of May 9, 1985.
Warlord Annual #4: This was the first Warlord Annual I bought off the stands, because it has a map of Skartaris in it, which will appear again in Who's Who. I reviewed this issue here.
Atari Force #20: Baron and Bareto/Villagran give the Martin Champion and by extension the rest of the Atari Force their day in court on New Earth. Thanks to Morphea and Targg the court gets a good look at the malevolence of the Destroyer through his psychic residue. Though they are exonerated, there are still powerful forces in New Earth society arrayed against them, so Champion and friends choose to use a device to jump to a new universe to see what else is out there. There's also another humorous Hukka story by Fleming/Giffen/Kesel.
Helfer tells us in the editorial that Atari Force isn't getting canceled because of sales (it's a middling seller) but because it was decided this was the right ending for the characters. I have to say, I'm a little skeptical. I buy it's middle of the pack on sales, but it is a licensed book. Surely a middling wholly DC owned book would be better for the company than having a publishing slot taken up by a licensed book? I do think, though, that the creative teams they've put on the book couldn't figure out anything more to do with the characters. Conway's later issues and Baron's entire run have mostly relied on them being on the ship but not encountering much interesting. No "strange new worlds and civilizations" here. The only mystery is why they didn't have anyone would better ideas, particularly when they were giving the book great artists?
Crisis on Infinite Earths #5: Wolfman and Perez/Ordway open with the Antimatter a bit confused. He thought he destroyed Earth-One and Two, but he hasn't gotten the victory he should have gotten. He lets Psycho-Pirate play the Flash while he investigates. Earth-One and Two have sort of merged and different eras in time are bleeding over. Harbinger and Alexander Luthor assemble a group of heroes to explain what is happening: the Monitor gave his life to power a transfer of the Earths to a netherverse to hide them from his Adversary, but now they now are trying to occupy the same space which will destroy them anyway. The only choice is to re-integrate them as a single universe as it was in the beginning.
We get a lot of cameos, and Travis Morgan, the Warlord, even gets some dialogue.
The Adversary adapts to these developments, though. He takes control of Red Tornado (In a limited series on sale now! Or then, I mean.) and transforms the android for his own purposes. Flash briefly breaks free of the Psycho-Pirate, and we get a glimpse of the shadowy Adversary's face, and he names himself as the Monitor, though he doesn't look like the Monitor we have seen.
Fury of Firestorm #38: Conway and Kayanan/Akin/Garvey have Stein arriving at Vandermeer University in Pittsburgh to start a new position only to find the campus afraid and under siege due to mysterious and vicious killings of facility members. Stein is in danger of becoming the next victim as he is attacked by the Weasel in his apartment. The Weasel keeps ranting about once he kills Stein, he'll be out of danger. Ronnie is out for a date with Doreen where Cliff accuses him of cheating, thanks to his uncharacteristically good grade on a test, when he is summoned to form Firestorm.
Thanks to poor vision and bumbling, both Stein and Raymond are captured by the Weasel and put in a deathtrap with molten steel about to pour on them.
Jonni Thunder #4: Thomases and Giordano bring this detective story/superhero hybrid to a conclusion. First, Jonni has a confrontation with "Slim" Chance which she only wins by wielding the power of the Thunderbolt without the idol. Then after some uncertainty and romantic tension with Harrison Trump, the rival PI, they are ambushed by Red Nails and her crew. Luckily, Jonni has now figured out that the power is in her, not the statue, which gives her the element of surprising, keeping them alive along enough for Detective Sanchez to swoop in with the police. The series ends with a hope for more Jonni Thunder adventures. We'll see how that goes.
Justice League of America #241: The Tuska/Machlan combination on art doesn't do this issue any favors, but mostly it's tough to get back into the New League after the disruptions. A conversation with Vixen prompts Aquaman to head out without telling anyone to find his estranged wife, Mera. Vibe agrees to let Steel date his sister then gets a new less garish (slightly) costume. Then the team under J'onzz's leadership heads off to Canada where Amazo is on a rampage. J'onzz splits the party, and he and Dale are almost immediately attacked by the android.
Tales of the Teen Titans #56: Wolfman and Patton/DeCarlo bring Raven and the Fearsome Five (minus 1!) into the story. Agents of Gizmo assault STAR Labs to steal Neutron who has been brought in in a containment capsule. Raven shows up and deals with them ruthlessly, but when she realizes what she's doing, she instead uses her power to heal the patients there. Meanwhile, Gar greets Jericho and his mom at the airport to bury the hatchet, and Cyborg undergoes surgery to replace his obviously mechanical limbs with more natural looking ones. The rest of the Titans deal with an attack by the Fearsome, uh, Four, and are defeated in two engagements. The Fearsome Folks make off with a another encapsulated super-being from Tri-State Prison.
Vigilante #20: Wolfman/Kupperberg and Smith/Maygar reveal that giving up the Vigilante identity may not prove so easy for Chase. The Vigilante is still in the streets, more violent than ever, including killing a cop. Meanwhile, Chase seems like he's having a nervous breakdown as he is tormented by nightmares where he is the Vigilante committing these acts. He wonders if he might somehow have lost his mind and actually be responsible. Nightwing fights with the murderous Vigilante in the streets, but winds up getting thrown off a bridge. Later, he crawls in through Chase's window to confront him.
10 comments:
I would have gotten Atari Force, Crisis and Titans out of this bunch, with Justice League as a back issue at some point. Atari Forces goes out with a whimper - surprising to me that going from the late (and sometimes great) Gerry Conway to Mike Baron was a downgrade, but Conway's AF was a lot more fun. (Also see Baron replacing Jim Shooter on Archer & Armstrong.)
I see the Warlord Annual is drawn by Pat Broderick which is an interesting choice. I really liked his cartooniness on Firestorm who is a kinda cartoony character. Not sure how well that would work in a sword and socrcery and super-science book.
I think he works fine on Warlord. He also drew fantasy stuff at Marvel (a Weirdworld story where he's no Ploog or Buscema, but then most aren't!) and did a grittier, sci-fi hero in the Captain Atom reboot at DC.
I'd buy a DC Finest Capton Atom covering the Bates/BRoderick era. I slept on that when it came out.
That Firestorm book was one of the first of his franchise I bought off the rack (I hunted down the surrounding issues shortly after), and even my wee self thought The Weasel was such a weird creation.
Murderous, chatty, Olympic-level loon in clawed fur-suit skulks in the background of his first two appearances. Then, when finally ready for the big show, attacks helpless Stein for two issues before getting promptly subdued by a dude with godly atomic powers.
Then shows up in a Suicide Squad annual as a feral, barely-verbal beastman who gets brain-blasted to oblivion. (I adore Ostrander as a writer, but he was notoriously mean to Firestorm villains, and his interpretation of The Weasel was an outright dud. Then again, I can see being at a loss as to what to actually *do* with the furry freak.)
All in all, The Weasel had about two "legit" appearances.
In the decades after, though, he appeared more as a zombie (in another Squad issue, plus various Blackest Night books); seriously had about three times as many appearances as a walking corpse than he did alive.
And now, thanks to Gunn, ol' Weasel is a comedy relief oddball based on that one Ostrander appearance.
Funnybooks, y'all.
It's unfortunate how comic writers (even good ones) tend to deal with characters they don't care about. I real liked Robinson's Starman, but I didn't like the way he kills off Blue Devil just to make his new villain seem dangerous.
If I'm reading where Conway is going with the Weasel correctly (and I may not be!) it seems more interesting than another animalistic character.
I, too, dislike the "animal-themed villain turned into outright beast" trope. Seems to happen to most of 'em.
Killer Croc (another Conway creation!) from terrifying mob boss to dim sewer monster is one of the most egregious.
And don't get me started on Killer Moth / Charaxes. Blechh.
And, come to think of it, I think Chuck Dixon is responsible for both, at least in comics. (Croc was a dim sewer monster in Batman: The Animated Series, so that may have come first given necessary lead times and such.)
Yeah, Conway's Croc was Bane before Bane. But of course, now Bane isn't even that original cunning and planful but strong Bane.
"Gar greets anyone at the airport to bury the hatchet" is not a sentence that normally ends well. I need to go back to this issue of Crisis in particular, it sounds wilder than I remember . . . head canon now is that the "adversary" here is only retroactively the Antimonitor, at the time he was supposed to be deadly reality-warping android The Fury from Marvel UK, which makes his attraction to poor Red Tornado obvious.
Oh I forgot
AMAZO!
I freaking LOVE an AMAZO RAMPAGE
There is a lot more "explained" in this issue of Crisis than I recalled, though it has a technobabble vibe to a degree.
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