Thursday Comics: DC, October 1981 (wk 1 pt 1)

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! I'm a day later than my usual Wednesday post, but I'm looking at the comics at newsstands on the week of  July 9, 1981. 

Arak Son of Thunder #2: Thomas and Colon/DeZuniga pick up the story with the Son of the Thunder washing up, well, somewhere in Europe, where he meets Corinna, the beautiful daughter of Lord Hessa, and runs afoul of the mute knights that protect her. He's taken to the castle, where Hessa takes a dislike to him and has him thrown in the dungeon--but not before Arak discovers the knights are merely armor animated by magic. In the dungeon, Arak meets Malagigi a sorcerer serving Carolus Magnus. Before Malagigi can clue Arak in on what's going on, the not suspicious at all Corinna frees our hero and gets him to run away with her into the forest. It turns out Corinna isn't daughter but mother to Hessa. She made a pact with a devil, and she's used Arak to help her escape. In the end, she goes willing with the devil to Hell, as revoking his gift makes her age rapidly, and she can't take it. Malagigi and Arak set out for Charlemagne's court. Setting-aside, a rather Conan-y story, which makes sense and it works.

Batman #340: Conway/Thomas and Colan/Gonzales have Batman take on another one-shot villain, the Mole. The mole has been mutated by exposure to toxic chemical into a humanoid mole (which is convenient as mutation goes, since his nickname was "the mole" before), and he's getting gruesome revenge on the people he thinks are responsible. Batman puts a stop to it, of course. This story has a bit more of a horror angle than your average Batman story, but it's otherwise unremarkable.

DC Comics Presents #38: I've read this Pasko/Heck Superman and Flash team-up before in the DC Showcase trade for DCP. Anyway, Superman and Flash find the world around them frozen in time--just when they both need to rescue someone from a deadly situation (Jim and Fiona, respectively). It's all due to the machinations of an alien tyrant, but she tricks our heroes into thinking the other is to blame so they fight each other. The thing I find most interesting about this story is that some of it takes place at a location 102 miles from Central City and 322 miles from Metropolis, which might help in locating the two. Or might not.

The "What Ever Happened To..." backup by Wein and Saviuk is about the Crimson Avenger, the first costumed superhero to appear in Detective Comics. Lee Travis, feeling forgotten, is dying of an incurable condition. Seeing a boat in trouble in the harbor, he rushes to the rescue as the Crimson Avenger, stopping to save a young boy along the way. The boat is carrying chemicals and ready to explode, but he guides it away from the city, but dies in the blast. No one on the boat knew who he was, so it appears he will be forgotten, but he told his name to the mother whose boy he saved and she and the boy remember. A simple story, but the sort of thing this strip was meant for.

Flash #302: Finally the identity of the villain impersonating Barry's dad is revealed, and it turns out to be the Top, which, no offense to all you Top stans, but I find sort of anti-climactic. Anyway, most of this issue is the Flash dealing with the Top's accomplice, the Golden Glider. In their first skirmish, she mesmerizes him somehow, and the smitten Flash lets her go. And man, the people of Central City turn on him quick for that. In their second clash, he's onto her tricks and relieves her of the hypnotic gem that made him fall for her. 

In the Firestorm backup, Ronnie is visiting the home of his girlfriend Doreen Day. He's trying to figure out the connection the Hyena has to their family. He decides to snoop in Doreen's sister Summer's diary, but the Hyena appears on the window seal and they do battle. Firestorm winds up in the middle of the Harlem River.

G.I. Combat #235: In the first Haunted Tank story, it seems that since now that the crew is in a Sherman tank, the ghost of General Sherman shows up to take over and Stuart is given the boot along with his Confederate emblem. He flashes back to the H.Q. in the Sky, where Alexander the Great first ordered him to look at the tank crew. Hans von Hammer was there to, in case you are interested, suggesting that Enemy Ace was dead by World War II. Anyway, eventually after we get several pages of how callous Sherman is, Stuart is back. 

The second story is much better than that nonsense, and is sort of Twilight Zone-esque, with the crew picking up a soldier with a head wound, who keeps asking about whether Stein is still alive. The crew assumes Stein was his body, and they are unable to stop the G.I.'s reckless search, but eventually it kills him. His dogtags reveal he was Stein.

Rounding out the issue, with got an O.S.S. story with Vera trying to get an art book that supposedly carries a message to Control out from under the nose of Goering as she tries to escape his castle. Then there's "P.F.C. Snafu" by Kashdan and Vicatan where a G.I.'s screw-ups in an artillery squad wind up being their lucky break. Finally, in a "Woman at War" story by Laurie and Trinidad, a M.A.S.H. nurse in Korea, refuses to take the life of a Chinese soldier who had spared hers, even though the Chinese forces had killed her twin brother.

Ghosts #105: Better than last issue, but that may be damning with faint praise. The highlights: A Kanigher/Carrillo story set in 18th Century Sicily where a French soldier seduces a local girl with promises of marriage, leading her to commit suicide but after vowing that he will be with her even if in death. Sure enough, years later on the day he is to marry another girl, an earthquake sends him fleeing into the graveyard, where he winds up falling into a chasm around the dead girl's grave and being buried alive. A Haney/Zamora story of graverobber has Digger Duggan agreeing to take a drug that will make him appear dead provided by the doctor he works for. He's buried alive, but dug up by a competitor who mistakes him for dead, but ultimately winds up on the vivisection table.

Less good is the Allikas/Spiegle tale of a child custody battle that gets really ugly when the recently deceased dad tries to convince his daughter to drown to be with him forever. He has a change of heart, though, when she appears willing to do it. The less said about the Snyder/Estrada story about a farmer who complains so much to the ghost in a wishing well, the ghost strangles him and steals his body, the better.

Jonah Hex #53: In true cliffhanger fashion, this issue reveals Hex was not in the cabin when it blew up last issue. He pursues the kidnappers and succeeds in getting the kid, Petey Foster back and returning him to his family. Unfortunately, He returns home to find a note from Mei Ling saying that has left him and taken the baby. In the meantime, Mei Ling seeks a shelter in the house of Hiram and Ruth. Hex proceeds to get drunk and starts seeing illusions from ghosts of the past including his abusive father and his old enemy El Papagayo.

In the mostly charmless Tejano Ranger backup by Cohn/Mishkin and Veitch/Yeates we are introduced to Antonio Ramirez, a Hispanic Texan, who sides with the colonists from the U.S. against the Mexican central government, serving as a ranger. He faces prejudice from the gringo Texans, and ends up facing the spears of General Rojas' cavalry, as he is captured by Mexican forces.

Salvage in Space

We played the first session of a "rockets and rayguns" pulp sci-fi game using a modified version of Rocket Age for 5e. The characters were:

Jones: human, ex-soldier
Lor' el-Am: Hadozee engineer
Mitchell: another human and ex-Space Marine
Trzkt: Vrusk scientist

All were marking time in Ziszkhar, a minor spaceport and domed city of Marva, when Trzkt was approached by another Vrusk named Niszk Zrnn, who was acting as an agent for an insurance claims for a big New Terran shipping insurance firm. The firm was interested in hiring a crew for a salvage mission in the Belt. Niszk thought Trzkt might know a suitable group. In fact, she did, and they agreed to meet the insurance agent.

Arlik Taine told them that his company was preparing to pay out a significant amount on the Aurora Queen, a new luxury spaceliner that had mysteriously disappeared in the Belt, just days from Marva. It's inaugural cruise with only a small group of passengers had been a cruise out to Kronion's moons. It was coming back when contact was lost. A prospector in the belt had a caught a glimpse of a derelict in the distance that might by the Queen, so Taine was willing to pay to have it checked out.

He added that there was a famous archeologist on board, Dr. Brennan Carter, who was returning from an expedition to one of the nameless moons of Vurania, with a treasure in exotic gems.

The crew was outfitted with an aging but serviceable cruiser, and they set out for the Belt, to the coordinates extrapolated from the prospector's sighting. They find the ship, powerless and tumbling through space. Attaching themselves with a magnetic grapple, they went inside. There was evidence of some bloody conflict in gruesome stains on walls and doors, but no bodies. In the ship's control room they found the bleeding and concussed officer in the uniform of the line, Captain Cyril Falconer. He tells them there is an invisible monster on the ship that has been slaughtering the crew and passengers!

My Favorite Comics Character Revamp Series

 In the post-Crisis era, revamps of characters became common. Perhaps too common. But for all the ill-conceived ones and ones done for no good reason, there have been a number of good ones, they really did something interesting with the character. Here are a few of my favorites, roughly chronological particular order:

Blackhawk: Blood & Iron (1988)

Chaykin's masterful and historically rooted take on the Blackhawks. Chaykin has brought this sort of approach to other characters (The Phantom Eagle, Dominic Fortune, and the Young Allies) but never as effectively or as beautifully rendered as here.

Hawkworld (1989)
I suppose this could be considered part of the 80s-early 90s "grim and gritty" wave, but Truman's art (abetted by Alcatena) does gritty so well! Thanagar is dystopian and Katar Hol is a murderer and a drug addict--at first. Still, the themes of inequality and class remain as relevant as ever.

The Adventures of Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty (1991)

This isn't technically a revamp, but it's something more than a retelling. A refinement or streamlining perhaps? Nicieza's story in Kevin Maguire's art (on the first two issues, then Kevin West on the last two) is the best Captain America origin movie Joe Johnston never got to direct.

Blaze of Glory: The Last Ride of the Western Heroes (1999)

Ostrander brings all of Marvel's Western characters together for a Magnificent Seven-esque last stand. Manco's art is gorgeous if you can excuse his very Young Guns design sensibilities regarding the the characters.

Martian Manhunter: Identity (2019)

I would have also included the DeMatteis/Badger 1988 Martian Manhunter limited series on this list, that overturned the Silver Age Planetary Romance version and set the template in part for all portrayals to follow, but it has criminally never been collected. This 2019 "maxi-series" by Orlando and Rossmo takes the 1988 series' ideas, but in some ways moves it back in the direction of the Silver Age version--while giving it a fresh, science fiction veneer. Never has Mars seemed so alien, but also had a series made you feel the death its civilization so keenly. Like many of the best Martian Manhunter stories, this one mixes detective work with an exploration of how outsiders from society can stop being on the outside.

West Coast Avengers: The Last Resort

 

I've got interested in trying Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, the years out-of-print game based on the Cortex Plus system, and we were between games in one of my groups so it seemed a good time to give it a try. As MHR is geared to playing characters in the Marvel Universe, I decided to adapt a module from TSR's old Marvel Superheroes game, and since I could find MHR stats for all the characters online, I went with possibly the only MSHRPG module I ever played, The Last Resort by Kim Eastland, which stars the West Coast Avengers--a team I have some nostalgia for, since I subscribed to their comic. 

Paul, Aaron, and Andrea were the group or the season playing Hawkeye, Wonder Man, and Tigra respectively. The stats, unfortunately, weren't period perfect, being based on the versions of the characters from 30 years later, but that's to be expected and only mildly offends my sense of nostalgia, really. 

The story involvements Iron Man and a group of Boy Scouts going missing during the hero's appearance at a Jamboree in Idaho. The other Avengers must investigate, and of course, discover nefarious doings.

I'll reserve my full judgements for both the system and the adventure until we've completed the latter, but some initial thoughts on both: I liked MHR on my read through of it, and so far it has held up well in play, moving fairly fast despite our lack of familiarity with it, but for the simplicity of its base mechanic it does have a lot of exceptions and options to keep track of. The module is silly in concept and detail, and not silly in a way that is congruent with what would be likely to occur in the comics, but it has thus far served its purpose of allowing us to test out the system.

Power Scale in Superhero Comics

 Superhero rpgs often wrestle with the scale of super-power characters. This typically manifests itself in attribute benchmarks like in FASERIP-derived games or Mayfair's DC Heroes, but some games like Mutants & Masterminds have "levels" or even a separate scale trait. In all cases, it's some means of separating the capabilities of more normal heroes from cosmic or godlike ones.

There's another factor that could be called scale that is observable in superhero comics. It is not an "in-world" element; the characters aren't aware it exists, but its existence presents a barrier to superhero rpgs being able to emulate the comics (if that's something you care about), and I think its existence is just sort of an interesting observation about superhero universe comics storytelling in general.

It's pretty noticeable when you look at Batman.

In Batman's solo stories he is often given a hard time or gotten the better of by his rogue's gallery (most of whom are not superhuman and seldom as proficient in combat as him) or street thugs and the like. In Batman's team-up appearances or in his appearances as a member of the Justice League, he is far more formidable. He holds his own or triumphs against very powerful foes. Batman in his solo stories is almost a costumed, pulp vigilante in the vein of the Shadow or the Spider, but Batman in the Justice League is a superhero.

Spider-Man is sort of like this, too. The Enforcers given him a hard time in his own comic, but then in Secret Wars #2 he makes the X-Men look like amateurs, at least briefly.

Superman and Supergirl (and I think Thor and Iron Man) work in the opposite way. In Bronze and Silver Age comics, a Kryptonian can do almost anything the plot requires. Supergirl kicks the moon out of orbit in Superman Family #204...

...but she seldom seems that powerful in team-ups or crossovers.

The narrative reasons for these shifts, I think, are pretty clear. If Superman can solve any problem himself, what does the Justice League do? The type of stories that are classically told with Batman or Spider-Man as solo characters require them to be more vulnerable.

I'm not sure these sorts of "scales" in portrayal exist for all characters but they are certainly pretty common.

Could something approaching this be implemented in a supers game? Sure, in some sorts of rpgs. Marvel Heroic already has "Affiliation" (Solo, Buddy, Team) which doesn't do the same thing, but it could. Still, unless a campaign was going to include a lot solo character adventures as well as team adventures, I don't know that it would be particular necessary.

Still, I think it's interesting.

Wednesday Comics: DC, September 1981 (wk 2 pt 2)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around June 18, 1981. 

Detective Comics #506: This whole issue has a bit of a (comics code approved) giallo vibe, I think. In the main story by Conway and Newton/Mitchell, 10 months ago, Batman saves a woman from a burning car. The woman is horribly burned, but alive. The car seems to have been bombed. In the present, men in the fashion industry are being killed, and Bruce Wayne winds up in an altercation in a dance club with a woman with immense strength who snaps the neck of a fashion designer with one hand. The woman, the Manikin, removes her coat and mask and appears incased in an articulated, full-body, metal outfit. The clothes she leaves behind are designer and not of the commercial produced variety. Batman goes to question the designer of the garment in question, but the Manikin attacks again. She is too strong and fast for the Batman, and eventually tricks him and knocks him out. To be continued.

In the Batgirl backup by Burkett and Delbo/Giella, the hunchback killer believes he's killed Batgirl, so he leaves her alone when she is merely unconscious. Noticing the hands of a cellist at a concert, Batgirl realizes that the hunchback is a musician of a stringed instrument due to his calluses. Guessing he is a mandolin player, she manages to track his likely identity by checking music stores in the areas the hunchback has operated. She gets lucky and discovers the hunchback look is merely a costume worn by the musician who believes his Muse only speaks to him after he kills. Slipping on a page of sheet music gets Batgirl captured again, he plays his haunting music for her, but then kills himself.

Legion of Super-Heroes #279: We reach the conclusion of the Grimbor story. With most of the LSH neutralized or captured by Grimbor, Princess Projectra and Karate Kid try to take out the energy chains with the Kid's weakness locating abilities, while Reflecto takes on Grimbor. Our heroes triumph, of course, and Reflecto is revealed to be not Ultra-Boy as the story has been leading us to think but Superboy! Thomas gets solo writing credit on this one, Conway having moved on, I guess.

New Adventures of Superboy #21: Bates and Schaffenberger present a pretty rare situation outside of Kryptonite: Superboy being uniquely susceptible to something. In this case, it's the tone frequencies of the voice of a wheeler-dealer business man named McKay. He gets Superboy in a contract that has him performing "charity" benefits weekly. Meanwhile, there's some sort of semi-corporeal creature in a lake whose touch turns things to crumbling mineral. In the end, Superboy returns the creature to space where it belongs, and Pa Kent points out Superboy is a minor and couldn't enter into the contract with McKay, voiding it. In the backup, Superboy builds a ship with the help of his slug sapient friends and escapes the planet under a red sun.

Sgt. Rock #356: In the first story (in a pattern not uncommon in this book), a by-the-book lieutenant learns a thing or two from Rock after he forces the sergeant to stop taking point all the time. They have to go into a French town overrun by Germans to get back the soldiers that got sent ahead instead. In a story by the Veitch brothers, three green and somewhat frightened troops are sent on a mission with a corporal famed for his bravery. When he is captured, they find their courage to rescue him, and also choose to keep his memory untarnished by not revealing he cracked under torture. In the last story, Rock recalls a nameless loner in Easy who nevertheless died making a heroic sacrifice for the unit.

We have no issue of Super Friends this month. That's because last month's was the final issue, and I forgot to note it at the time.

Unexpected #214: No Johnny Peril this issue (in fact, the Johnny Peril revival is over. Outside of Who's Who he won't be seen again until the 1990s), and the issue is better than average. In the first story by Kashdan and Panaligan, an archeological swindler gets buried in the fake tomb he had built by angry native peoples. In the cover story by Kelley/Bissette and Gonzales, a prizefighter is booked to fight a minotaur in a Greek cave by his avaricious son. Then there's a nonhorror pseudohistorical bit of nonsense about Teddy Roosevelt in the old west. The last story, written by Mishkin and Cohn with art by Gonzales/Colletta, is an atypical werewolf yarn. A tagger with dreams of making a name for himself as a graffiti artist instead becomes a hero when a well-placed spray can spray thwarts a subway werewolf.

Unknown Soldier #255: Haney and Ayers/Tlaloc continue the Soldier's adventures in China with his new lady friend, the pirate Lady Jade. Their beached ship is overrun by the troops of the Warlord Chang. Chang intends to use the artillery the Soldier was taking to the Chinese fighters to breach the citadel of Ur Jal. On the festival of Ching Ming he's got to sweep the tomb of his family. That works out ok because Ur Jal is exactly where the Soldier intended to go as the Japanese are using it as a munition depot. They breach the Citadel and Chang sweeps the tomb--before the Unknown Soldier blows the fortress up to destroy the munitions. Jade returns to her piratical ways, and the Unknown Soldier heads off to his next mission.

The Captain Fear story has a pirate fighting a ninja, which is pretty much all the comics reading youth of the early 80s could ask for, I think. The conflict is over the scroll Fear captured last installment where a samurai clan requests the help of the British in overthrowing the Shogun in return for helping fund the war against Austria. Fear doesn't know this though because he can't read, but a Spanish governor and ninja in the service of the Shogun want the scroll for themselves. The art by Simonson is great here.

The last story is a Dateline: Frontline story by Burkett and Estrada. Things are getting desperate in Bataan, with low food and high numbers of sick and wounded. The U.S. general surrenders, and it seems there may be worse things to come.

Warlord #49:  Read about this issue here. In the Claw the Unconquered backup by Harris and Yeates, Claw does battle with the demon his demonic hand originally came from. The battle seems to be a stalemate until Shalieka, the woman he met last issue, suggests she can perform a ritual to return their hands, though one will die. They agree, but Claw double-crosses the demon, cutting off his human hand and casting him into the maw of the Lord of Death. Claw enters the city the conquering hero, but a robed figure watching suggests Shalieka's actions have all been in the service of the Lords of Shadow. We never find out to what end, as this is the last Claw the Unconquered backup.

World's Finest Comics #271: Superman Thomas, Harris, and Bridwell write the sort of continuity heavy story Thomas is known for with art by Buckler/McLaughlin. Superman dreams of a masked man that shoots him with Kryptonite beams, and weirdly, that happens the next day as Atoman is released from a coffin. In trying to determine the identity of Atoman, Superman and Batman remember all the times they met for the first time (in their alter egos, etc.). Finally, they figure out Atoman is from Earth-Two. The defeat him there with the assistant of Superman and Robin from that world.

The F.R.E.E. Lancers Cinematic Universe

"The idea was to bring together a group of of remarkable people to see if they could become something more. To see if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could."

- Nick Fury, The Avengers

I figure at least some of you remember F.R.E.E. Lancers, the Top Secret/S.I. setting supplement from 1988. The game takes place in a fractured America of 1998 with where low-powered supers exist powered by cybertech, biotech, and psychic powers. It's the sort of idea that was kind of in the Zeitgeist of the era, with Marvel's New Universe, Misfits of Science, and some direct market comics offering up low-powered supers, realistic supers, or the like.

It's not an approach much in vogue today, but it isn't a bad one.

An interesting thing I noticed about F.R.E.E. Lancers the other day, the breakdown of the U.S. Federal government began when a politician tried to build a wall along the border with Mexico. In this case, it was a fictional governor of Texas and the year was 1994, but it got me thinking: one way to update F.R.E.E. Lancers would be to make it an alternate present. 

Of course, it would need an update in some ways. Computer tech, the internet, smartphones. Technological advances since that time would have made some of the "superhuman" characters seem all the more plausible:

Other things like psi powers would still remain in a more fantastical realm. I think it would be an interesting mix.

Of course uniforms/costumes would be updated to the current "realistic" style of superheroic movies and tv shows.