Detective Comics #556: Moench and Colan/Smith continue their story from this month's Batman. It's very much set under the red skies of the Crisis, but it's not labelled as a crossover. We find out, as Night Slayer keeps murdering them, that the False Face Society leftovers hadn't actually been working with Nocturna yet--but as of this issue, she takes command.
Robin tries to tell her how he feels and lean on her for support, but Nocturna is preoccupied with what's happening to the night skies. However, when Batman tracks her down after an encounter with Night Slayer, she makes time for a kiss. Meanwhile, Bullock reveals to Commissioner Gordon his theory that the current Robin isn't the original (something Gordon had noticed as well) but is actually Nocturna's son!
In the Green Arrow backup, we get back to the story by Cavalieri and Moore that had been left dangling. Ollie agrees to help Onyx battle Lars, a renegade monk at the monastery where Ollie himself once trained, who has killed the Exalted Master and taken over. Ollie recalls a run in he had with Lars when they were both students, where the guy confided that he sought a "wisdom key" that would unlock the power of an ancient book. As soon as Green Arrow and Onyx arrive at the monastery, they are confronted by Lars's goons.
All-Star Squadron #51: A Crisis crossover, but that bit only amounts to a cameo, really. The Thomases and Clark/Jones/Coletta have the passing of Harbinger and Firebrand give Mr. Mind a way to find Earth--or at least an Earth. That leads to the events of this issue, where Hourman and Dr. Fate arrive at the JSA brownstone to find most of their team members missing and Hawkgirl a captive of a group of former JSA-member villains banded together as the Monster Society of Evil. This group is the brainchild of Mr. Mind, who came to Earth to meet his hero Charlie McCarthy only to find out he was just a puppet. He then decided to meet his other heroes the JSA, and when he could find them, he decided to be a super-villain.
Hourman, Dr. Fate, Hawkgirl, and late arriver Sandy battle the likes of Oom the Mighty, Ramulus, Mr. Who and Nyola. Unfortunately, they're going to need more help to defeat them. Elsewhere, Liberty Belle and Johnny Quick have apparently fallen through the reverse of the portal Mr. Mind came through and find themselves facing Captain Marvel.
Nathaniel Dusk II #2: MacGregor and Colan pick up just at last issues cliffhanger. Dusk survives the falling unicorn statue, but the gunman who shot at Cranston gets away. As Dusk continues his job of trying to keep Cranston out of trouble, he gets the idea that the older man knows who is trying to kill him and is playing some dangerous game. Amanda's stepfather leans on Dusk to drop the case, and her husband takes him flying. He gets another piece of the puzzle when he finds out Cranston borrowed a camera from Amanda and that he visited her new family on the one day he slipped Dusk's surveillance.
Before he can put any of this together, a drive-by with a tommy gun seems to take Cranston's life. This leads to one of those (for me) jarring aspects of the story, where it moves from conventional detective story to 80s action. Dusk pursues the shooter. The getaway car gets wrecked, and the shooter takes a bus. The issue ends with Dusk on top of the bus as the shooter blows holes in the roof trying to ventilate the detective, too.
Omega Men Annual #2: Klein and host of artists (including McManus, Colon, Smith, Giffen, and O'Neil) give us Primus's backstory, the events leading up to his marriage to Kalista and the founding of the Omega Men, his apparent death in the Spider Guild war, and how he came to be bonded with Artin. When she has heard the whole story Kalista accepts that this being is indeed her husband (at least in part) and the two reconcile. This issue pretty much closes the gap between the previous run and the time jump when Klein took over.
V #10: After all the setup and schemes last issue, it resolves pretty quickly. The mayor reveals herself to our heroes as one of the Visitors but tells them she is actually a triple agent and on their side. She gives them a device that can extend the New York winter, keeping the red dust active and at least postponing a renewed invasion. They're overheard, though, and the mayor is captured, interrogated, and executed. Still, the resistance has the device. Big, bad Walter sent to kill Donovan, gets in a fight with him, but before things resolve he's killed by friendly fire from an overzealous Visitor fighter. The device works, spring is forestalled, and our heroes return to L.A., presumably assuming the nascent New York resistance they were starting up can take care of itself.
World's Finest #321: Cavalieri and Delbo pit our heroes against the Atom villain, Chronos. Coerced by the mysterious Powerbroker, Chronos uses time travel in a plot to destroy Batman. After sending Superman off chasing bombs in the timestream, Chronos forces Batman to journey to the past and watch his parents get murdered--or save them and alter history. Batman resists the temptation to save his parents, using the experience of again reliving their deaths to strengthen his crimefighting resolve, and he's rescued by Superman. Chronos, in a desperate attempt to evade capture, uses his time machine to become one with the timestream.
6 comments:
I was surprised to see Vince Colleta's name in the credits for All-Star Squadron 51. I thought he'd be gone from DC by this point. Looking online I see he was there up to issue 60.
The only thing I got out of this batch was Nathaniel Dusk II out of some sort of misguided effort to buy more 'mature' comics. The art in this second series looks pretty good as I recall. The first series suffered from bad reproduction of the pencils and flat colors.
Yeah, I think this second volume looks better than the first.
Might just be mood or coincidence but Nocturna and Mr Mind seems to have similar energy here . . . despite very different presentation and pursuits they both succeed in making it all about themselves. That Detective cover in particular is Colan playing to his own wheelhouse and makes me wonder if we shoud read the book as a secret continuation of the horror anthologies (and so a Vertigo precursor, goth ladies sell copies) instead of straight bronze age cape comics.
But who knows! Having Green Arrow's dojo years come back makes me want to rework that stuff into a lost decade hanging around with hare krishnas and such trying to figure out meditation as well as zen archery, not to mention the platonic ideal of vegan chili. This would not be portrayed anything at all like young Bruce Wayne's global quest for martial arts but the two could cross over along with a time-traveling Karate Kid (closing the loop by introducing future-style khund boxing into the past so it is available when he needs to learn it later) and even Count Dante himself. This would be the first test of your wuxia theories in western comics.
I feel like if this era of Batman had been a 90s or 00s comic, we might have gotten a sort of theme issue (maybe on Halloween) where Nocturna played horror host to a series of shorts starring other characters.
It's interesting that the Bat-books (and Wonder Woman) are bathed in Crisis red at this time while the Superman books mostly ignore it and retreat into the Silver Age.
Makes me wonder if the real DC 50 revolution is really a gentle coup against the Schwartz office . . . we could construct a secret timeline where the disappointments of Superman III and Supergirl required an editorial scapegoat and while Julie was too deeply entrenched to remove they pivoted the line around him in such a way that much of the legacy superfamily IP is deprioritized like Marvel pivoting to the Inhumans when they can't make money on the x-rights any more.
Anyhow, red skies for DC. Clear skies for the Schwartz books, out of the loop and counting down to retirement anyway.
Is Julie editing anything besides Superman and Action at this point? DC Presents maybe? I know he continues to edit Ambush Bug whenever that pops up prior to his death.
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