Back To The Golden Age

A few thoughts on recent comics.
Captain Midnight: By Dark Horse, Captain Midnight has been mostly a way to do a revival right. While clearly based on the history of the old radio and comic character (not "pulp"), the comic is also modern storytelling. The Captain is brought forward through time and finds that his villains have not been idle over the years. Also, his own tech seems to have been corrupted by others over the years. The writers manage to tell their Captain America/SHIELD over arcing long story without sacrificing telling smaller stories and keeping the hero heroic and active force. There were a couple of mis-steps in the Skyman issues as with the character of Skyman, they did everything they didn't do with the character of Captain Midnight. They went out of the way to make the character derivative of CM by completely ignoring Skyman's own rich history and motivations (the truth is that the Skyman owed more to Spy Smasher than Captain Midnight, especially as this version of Midnight is based on Fawcett's version, who they re-worked as being more like their character Spy Smasher). The character of Skyman is not the original but some patriotic zealot thug and made to look ridiculous by seeing his hair sticking out from under his cowl. Then to add insult to injury, in the upcoming Skyman comic, he's replaced by a minority character AND given a new, kewl costume while making making fun of the original costume!

Doc Savage: Two issues in, Dynamite's Doc Savage is a bit of a surprise. One, it is keeping so far halfway close to the actual pulp character. Two, the artwork in the second issue is the same as in the first issue, and mostly solid if not exceptional. Three, it is a tighter, stronger and in character driven story than the writer's attempt in "Masks". The second issue thankfully does not live up to the advertised hyperbole, that Doc would have to choose between his mission or his cousin's life. No such decision is made here. There's even hope that the writer is coming up a way to bring Doc and crew both to the present day without actually sidelining them by death or infirmity of age. The story of the second issue only has one real flaw. It states that when Doc is at his fortress, that his men call in help and that help is Pat Savage. This is necessary for the sake of the story, but it doesn't fit with what we know of Doc's men or of their relationship with Pat. Pat is a capable character, but she's not super-capable, no more capable than they are. Plus, the text states that she formed her own crew of adventurers, which would make some sense as Doc and crew tended to try to keep her out of trouble, but after stating that, instead of seeing some of them, we get Monk and Ham! Kinda disappointing.  If Doc's men were calling in help, might have been interesting to see another Lester Dent or Street & Smith character ala Click Rush, Blond Adder or Nick Carter, Cash Gorman, the Avenger...

I give Roberson credit by dealing with the Crime College and NOT writing it up as if Doc was lobotomizing the bad guys and removing all sense of free will.

The biggest drawback so far really is the art. It's clear and straightforward, detailed where it needs to be, not overly colored. What it cannot do is really distinguish Doc and his men. Long Tom, Renny, and Johnny all have the same build and face, nothing distinguishing about them. Doc is not drawn taller than those around him. Monk doesn't look shorter than the others and doesn't look homely as much as just perpetually angry. Characters are identified not by who they look like, but because they look less like anyone else.

The Invaders: A strong first issue by Marvel and James Robinson that comes as a bit of a surprise. There are two cannon fodder deaths, one belonging to a Shi'ar Imperial Guardsman and the other a golden-age hero. Although, given the nature of the particular hero's power and who killed him, it is not something that is necessarily permanent. Although, it does raise the question as to why he was on the mission and not Captain America and hopefully, there will be an in-story explanation.

The plot concerns the Kree after a device that the Invaders discovered in the 40s being used by Strucker. It could control gods and the original Human Torch, Namor, and Bucky divided it up and hid it. Namor's piece was found and they are after the Torch's piece. The Torch has been living the quiet life in a small town as a mechanic when they come calling. A pitched battle, things go badly for him, and then at the end Superpro and Nomad show up.

There's a few places that make little sense beyond the story needing it to be that way. Such as if the Human Torch is retired and keeping a low profile, why is he wearing his costume under his clothes? Even more to the point, why is he wearing a new, cool version of his costume? As he's a synthetic human, if he's trying to pass as normal, why wouldn't he eat a whole pie or drink a whole cup of coffee? Presumably, he could actually process the food as energy just as a normal person. It's there to drive home that he's not human, but it doesn't really make sense from a character point of view. Since, the Invaders divided the pieces to hide, why would Namor and NOT the Human Torch hide his piece in the middle of the desert? One might guess that Namor would hide a piece in the desert if he is the one that had to hide all three, who would look for a piece there. But, since they divided it up, the desert is no longer a reach for a hiding place as the other two could conceivably hide it there. So, it simply makes no sense other than being a cool moment.

The artwork is top notch. Clean and clear storytelling, actually looks better on print than online. The only drawback is in a few flame effects and the explosion behind Superpro-Cap and Nomad-Bucky are obviously digitally created.

The biggest problems for me in continuing with the book are things mostly coming from outside this specific issue. For example, I don't like the idea of Winter Soldier. We see Bucky in the past and he's mowing people down with his gun, his new default personality. I also lost faith with James Robinson as a writer some time ago. We get an indication of that with the cannon fodder deaths that he's using to kick off his series. He plans on making changes to Toro's powers (because somehow another fire-based character is redundant, even when he's one of the first ones). Then there's Cap's movie inspired costume that is one of the ugliest ideas to come down the pike. Where's the idea that he is an acrobatic and martial artist styled fighter under all of that padded gear? The idea that it's supposed to be a superhero costume? 

Scooby Doo Team-up: A comic that actually captures the fun. The first issue was the gang teaming up with Batman and Robin to take down Man-Bat. The second has Batman and Robin but also Slam Bradly, Mystico, Jason Bard, Roy Raymond, Dr. Thirteen, Angel O'Day and Ace, the Bat-hound. And, manages to keep in character with the various characters... well, as long as you consider in-character does not have to do with the nu52.

Aquaman #0: If you don't like Geoff Johns' current style of writing, this won't change your mind. Not only are there three consecutive pages of nothing more than landscaped panels of Aquaman swimming... no text or words or thought balloons giving internal thoughts, there's also a couple of pages of him pretty much silently fighting a huge shark and then a string of coincidences that'd be worthy of Edgar Rice Burroughs - Aquaman is looking for Atlantis. In a moment of kewl display of super-strength he rescues a couple of American boaters who just happen to know a man who lives in Norway that might know where Atlantis is, and are presumably able to give Aquaman accurate directions. He finds this man (Vulko) who is conveniently just got back home since he had been away looking for Arthur since his existence was made public. At least Paul Norris gets creator credit for the character.

To add insult to injury, the comic ends on a cliffhanger. That's right, this ZERO issue in addition to interrupting the flow of the monthly story in progress, is nothing more than an introduction to a whole new story arc that has yet to appear in the regular series. Guess people at DC need some counting lessons. The issue # that follows 0 is 1, not 13, 14, or whatever the Ocean Master storyline will be starting on. We now have a comic that can neither be filed numerically as it doesn't belong before issue 1, or by date since it isn't part of the ongoing storyline and delivers nothing new or relevant for it. All we need is a couple of fish-jokes and a gratuitously graphic death scene and this would be a complete pastiche of bad Geoff Johns writing. Only really written by Johns.

The art team of Ivan Reis, Prado and Rob Reis (who deserves probably more credit than he gets on the colors of this book) should take one of the Silver-Age Aquaman Showcases, break several of the stories back down into scripts and re-illustrate them. I think modern fans' minds would explode at seeing just how much is really being carried by the art team here and seeing stories that aren't decompressed but full of creativity and yet complete reads.

Talon #0: According to the "logic" of the reboot, I shouldn't get this comic. After all, I don't buy any of the Batman books so the only continuity of the character and concept underlying it is what I can gleam from the previews/blurbs of the Batman books that I've read. But a couple of things going in, 1) this is more of what I'd expect or want from something like the reboot, which is actual new characters and not retreads of pre-existing ones. 2) I was struck by the artwork in the previews. With Joe Kubert's death still a recent memory, the art here looks a lot like Kubert's. Close enough to be mistaken as being done by one of his sons, only a lot better than they have been recently. Enough to over-ride that I really hate the costume he wears on the cover. Guillam March is a name that's worth keeping an eye out for.

Even the colorist deserves an 8/10 score. His subtle colors often mimic brush work more than obvious computer filter gradients. The only place he really falls is that the modern style of coloring doesn't allow for just solid flat color, or solid white. Imagine if Alex Toth, the master of balancing white space with blacks was colored by today's colorists. Every open shape would be filled with colorized texture, undoing what he achieved through contrast, space and negative space. There are places, most notably backgrounds where relatively simply defined shapes or spaces, the colorist has taken to add color with texture and in those places, it sticks out like a sore thumb. March's linework is so lush and capable at providing depth, shadow and weight, it doesn't need the colorist trying to fill in the places where he left space open and kept it simple. Don't fight the artist, follow his cue.

Despite having a backstory, I'm not privy to, the comic actually delivers everything you need to know in-story. See, continuity and history does not have to be a detriment to good storytelling. Other than a passing reference to Haley Circus and the Flying Graysons, there's nothing in the comic that links to Batman or that this concept has appeared before. It's a set-up for a series, but it also tells a story. We see the growth of the character Calvin Rose from boy to trained escape artist to talented recruit to the Court of Owls to his disillusionment with the organization and escape. Told from Rose's point of view, we get into his head, we get what he's feeling and going through at all times, his frustration, despair, and growing resolve. A refreshingly dense read.

The story isn't terribly original when you think about it. We've seen the same story in Kirby's Mr. Miracle and Big Barda (part of it even seems directly inspired by that story), Azrael, the Nolan Batman trilogy and even the Bourne movies of the recent years. It wouldn't have been too hard to not create the Talons and the Court of Owls and just used the League of Assassins or the Order of St. Dumas and make this a Richard Dragon/Bronze Tiger/Shiva/Azrael story instead, take your pick. Heck, I would have LOVED to see this as a Richard Dragon book. But, the familiarity doesn't subtract from that it is still very well done and that character of Calvin Rose makes for an interesting protagonist.

The only place the story really falls is his big moment of conversion (out of The Bourne Identity), when he decides to not kill his targets but instead to help them escape. By this point, the Court is so well set up in their single mindedness and capability, one has to wonder how much he actually was able to help them. Because we know the Court would send other Talons, near as good as he is. It is imperative from their point of view that this mother and child are history. He does not have the resources to really help them escape beyond their reach. From the start we see he cannot even avoid them finding him.

Despite getting the zero issue, I probably will only being getting this book in trade (paperback, please, very few comics are deserving of hardback treatment and cost). See, what drove me from the Batman family titles years before DCnu 52 is still in place. You cannot buy one Batman or one Superman title. Eventually, not if but when, a single story will cross the whole family, no matter how distant the relation. War Games was the story that ultimately killed my interest in Birds of Prey and Catwoman. A year into the reboot, and it already has happened with Batman with the very Court of Owls storyline, crossing over into even the Jonah Hex comic. And, the current previews promises to do pretty much the same with Death of a Family story. So, as much as I like this comic and it being pretty much exactly what I would want from a comic and nuDC, I know it's not worth it to get as a monthly because DC hasn't really changed in the ways that they operate.

Reboots vs Continuity: since I touched on this a little bit, there's a fallacy behind the whole idea of the reboot and many of the defenders of nu52 seem to preach it as if gospel. That is the idea that the reboot was needed because continuity was too complex for new readers and this allows them to all be on the same page.

That's not really what DC has done though. If that was true and really embraced by DC, there would have been no Justice League book in the first roll-out, much less THREE of them. No Teen Titans. No Red Hood and the Outlaws. Zero issues after a year wouldn't be needed to explain the gaps. Batman and Green Lantern wouldn't continue as if nothing really happened. In fact, neither of those characters have ever truly been rebooted. We have never seen in the main continuity a new Bruce Wayne becoming Batman, meeting the Joker for the first time, training Robin etc presented as if it was happening just now. We've gotten flashback minis and stories giving us the retcon version of events, but significantly, they don't change what was happening in the book at the time. The closest was when Jason Todd was given a whole new origin, and previous couple of years of Batman titles was rendered a bit conflicting. Despite the new origin, somehow Killer Croc was still in continuity. So a few stories obviously didn't happen the way we saw them, but Batman himself was still the same guy as before and still operated as before. And, some of those Jason Todd stories still worked, it didn't matter too much that his background had changed.

What DC has done is not start continuity from scratch so that readers can get in on the ground floor, but replaced the continuity with another one. A new reader picking up the Red Hood and the Outlaws is going to have the same problem as before. These aren't new characters. Despite the changes, in some way they are still predicated on there being name recognition for them to be relevant and a draw. He's still going to be facing a book with characters and history he doesn't know as before. The differences being that this time it's intentional and there's no reason to go to back issues or ask the store owner or another customer or even some of the writers. They don't know either! The comics are no more accessible to new readers than they were before. What they are is equally inaccessible to established readers! They cannot lift the new readers up, so they throw the existing readers down so that everyone is on the same page, the same boat.  If continuity was too complex and was keeping people away, how will a NEW and SECRET continuity actually attract new readers and not drive the existing fans away? I don't know. The crazy thing is that somehow this translated to good numbers starting out as if everyone got the same kool-aid.

The Dark Knight Rises

Been a point of view of mine for some time that if you are going to go off model, make sure that your version, your vision is strong enough and compelling enough to warrant it. When Ditko did something decidedly different with the Blue Beetle from what went before, his Ted Kord creation was that much better than what was being done by Charlton before. When Denny O'Neil and Denys Cowan did The Question it was very different than what Ditko had created, but they ended up like Ditko creating a series that was unlike anything else at the time.

Nolan's Batman films are along the same lines. Much of the character is still there, still recognizable under that padded armor. In some ways, his Batman is an outgrowth of Tim Burton's. The suit, the sci-fi look of the vehicles. Yet the difference in the storytelling makes it as different from Burton's as Burton's was from the 60s television show. Nolan sees and wrings out real story from the mythos. The characters are fleshed out, each having their own story, their own point of view. More importantly, he never loses sight as to whose movie this is.

So, I can forgive the liberties taken from the comics, because while watching I am fully vested into the story. I am impressed with how this movie ties into the other two, making them all feel as one narrative yet each one still stands well enough on its own. At almost three hours in length, other than the needed bathroom break, it didn't feel that long. There was just that much story going on.

Unfortunately, it's after getting out of the theater and thinking about it that the problems do come to mind. Where the themes that movie espouses on one hand are completely undercut by the movie itself. The one flaw that comes to mind while watching the movie is the ridiculousness of the suit. He is so armored that the flimsy cape is obviously a completely different material and looks out of place. Imagine Iron Man painted gray and then someone puts a cape of gauze and you get the general idea. The armor interferes with movement and having any really good choreographed fight scenes and then when he really needs armor... he is very easily stabbed.

I don't like guns but I will use cannons. A lot. He makes a point to Selina Kyle that he doesn't use guns. But, he in fact uses them quite a bit as all of his vehicles come equipped with deadly offensive weaponry and we see them getting used a lot. He even has weapons that look like guns, they just don't fire bullets.

Batman is a symbol. Anyone could be Batman. Providing they have access to millions and weapon prototypes. Tony Stark could be Batman. But, hardly anyone else. Special fighting skills not really required. Yeah, a recurring problem with the movie is that there's a lot of Batman using and fighting from vehicles. He mentions several times and the ending plays out the idea is for Batman to be a symbol, to inspire people to take up the good fight (not necessarily to become Batman themselves per se). But, for most of the movie, his being Batman is because of the cool toys he has, toys that he won't share. This is further underscored near the end when comes back after being sent away by Bane and he has lost his fortune, vehicles and weapons. This would have been a prime time for Nolan and Batman to prove what he's been saying: that he puts together a costume, one of cloth and simple leather and still fights back and wins the day. Instead, luckily Lucius had a few spare items for him and his flying vehicle is parked on a roof where no one has been able to see through the camouflage that doesn't look anything like what's around it.

Bane: I must break Batman physically and spiritually even though he's already broken. Maybe Nolan liked this theme so much, that's why it's in there twice. Bane makes a big spiel about beating Batman, not just physically but spiritually. He busts Batman's back and sends to the hell-hole of a Middle-Eastern prison that he's from. The problem with this is the movie starts off with Batman already broken. His leg is busted, he's been a recluse for years as both Bruce Wayne and Batman. He's a man just waiting to die. For the most part Bane defeated a man that was already defeated. In reality, his escape from the prison isn't about him escaping from the prison Bane sent him to but the one he already was in. This kind of lessens Bane as a villain though. He doesn't defeat or arrange a defeat of Batman at the top of his game, he doesn't really push Batman into a place he wasn't before.

 I am the world's dumbest detective. He seems oblivious to many things and has to be told about them as opposed to figuring them out for himself. A couple of revelations would have worked better if we were shown Bruce Wayne figuring them out as opposed to being told to him, one while a knife was in his back.

Ok, they have references to Selina Kyle being referred to by the press as a thief called the "Cat" but nowhere is that really explained. In fact, about the one type of thieving she doesn't commit in the movie is cat burglary. The movie also has her friend, Holly Robinson, but I don't recall the character being called by name once during the movie. Something that is increasingly becoming a pet peeve, characters with names in the credits but never named in the actual film. But, how they can get her costume pretty close and hugging every curve, not at all realistic for a cat burglar and Batman is heavily armored and padded. Beyond her being a gorgeous woman.

Another area where the film kept me guessing to the end was Joseph Gordon-Levitt's role as the policeman named Blake. Incidentally, what's up with IMDB having spoilers to one character's story arc in the credits but not another? The problem here is that there's a character named Blake that is part of the Batman comics already ie that's the real name to Catman. Someone, somewhere should have pointed out that his name needed changing. The final revelation was a bit stupid, a little too cutesy in a movie that otherwise stayed away from such stuff. Hire a woman and make the character Montoya. Or keep Levitt and name him Bradley, Corrigan, Harper, Richards, Garrett, Bard, or something. But, his being named Blake was almost as much of a distraction as recognizing so many of the supporting actors popping up in roles and trying to place them such as Burn Gorman (no relation). I kept expecting that there to be a reason for him to be named "Blake".

All in all, this is a very good movie that's close to being great. Many of the problems were easily fixable just by making the costume closer to being something a person could easily move in and have Batman do a bit more hand-to-hand and less from a cockpit.

A neat little nod, or maybe it was just me, but the logo and mascot to Gotham's football team? A dead ringer for the Shadow only with a  yellow scarf instead of red. The plot itself of Bane taking over the city, criminals holding court against cops and ordinary citizens? Straight out of several Spider novels to the point that at times I felt like I was watching something that would almost work better as a treatment for the Spider.

Halloween equals good comics

I am finding that October and the time of Halloween is a time for some good comics. It's been perfect time in past years for dipping into the back-issue trades and picking up some of the Horror-hero characters from Marvel such as Essentials starring Ghost Rider, Doctor Voodoo, the Living Mummy, and the Scarecrow. This year there is a nice smallish volume featuring some of the b/w magazine stories featuring their various vampires including Morbius (one of my favorites, especially when done by Gil Kane). There is also a hardcover sampling of Dick Briefer's Frankenstein stories, a series that ran the gamut of being straight forward horror, to a supervillain, to an almost cuddly affable monster ala Herman Munster, years before that series ever did it.

Angel vs Frankenstein II: John Byrne returns this Halloween to Angel & Frankenstein. As with the first one, the only real drawback is that it could use another issue or two to really bring out the tension and horror as there is so much for one issue to do. It's a period piece, so it has to establish both the physical place but also the status quo and supporting cast and make us care for them and worry about them. Byrne manages in a few short pages to introduce various characters, some with secrets, relationships and pasts all of their own and make them compelling enough that a one issue story just seems too short for them. His version of the Frankenstein Monster is in keeping with the classic novel. He's bizarre and scary looking and presented as a sociopath and not some misunderstood Romantic Hero. The story presents about as definitive a death scene as you can possibly get when dealing with a creature that seems too tough to die.

Batman: Hidden Treasures: Most new fans think of horror comics and they no doubt think of the likes of the dark fantasy of Neil Gaiman or Alan Moore's Swamp Thing. Older fans will think of the works of Tom Sutton, Mike Ploog and the legendary Berni Wrightson. Berni is one of those creators like Steranko, Barry Windsor Smith, Dave Stevens and Neal Adams, men who don't have many lengthy credits or long stretches of work to their name, but the little they have done was game changing and influential on so many levels. Wrightson's name is inextricably linked to Swamp Thing, but he's proven to be a great Batman artist. This book presents two Batman stories, one previously unpublished and one that has been published many times when he and Swamp Thing first crossed paths.

The first story part prose and part pin-ups as Batman investigates a serial killer of homeless people and it leads him to Slaughter Swamp and comic's first swamp monster, Solomon Grundy. The prose of the story is a little confusing at first as the identity of the narrator is kept purposely obscure until the end. However, I spent considerable time in the first two pages trying to figure out the point of view of the story, who the narrator was as it doesn't make it clear that the narrator is not supposed to be a witness to the events of the story. It's only by the tone that you first rule out Batman and then Commissioner Gordon and after that point, I was sufficiently hooked into the story to not care. In fact, when the revelation did come, it just seemed a bit too cutesy and I really no longer cared.

Wrightson's art is excellent and strong enough that Kevin Nowlan's usually overpowering inking was kept to a minimum annoyance. Most of the time I could forget Nowlan was the inker until certain panels with people's faces and his habit of going cubist on straight on head-shots of characters by making their mouths look like they are being viewed by an extreme angle, at odds with the rest of the face. It tends to give all his faces this puckered or constipated expression. Plus, his line is often thin and inorganic, something I wouldn't think to match up with an artist like Wrightson whose art is practically synonymous for being natural and organic. However, for the most part the pairing works surprisingly well.

The second story is the reprinted "Night of the Bat" by Lein Wein and Wrightson from Swamp Thing #7, first series. The story has obviously been re-colored which makes its presence known in several places, such as putting a leaf pattern in Swamp Thing's thought balloons. I miss this version of Swamp Thing, when he really was Alec Holland and before he went all supernatural and elemental.

JSA 80-Page Giant 2010: This is one of those books that if I looked at it first I would have returned it. It was a JSA book so it got put in my bag automatically and I did not realize it was not the regular monthly title since it had the Justice Society of America title logo in the usual place. Instead it's just a big book focusing on the legacy characters in short story bits with varying degrees of lameness. The Obsidian story contained the overpowering and scratchy inks of Bill Sienkiewicz in a story that was little more than the writer recapping Obsidian's lifestory and homosexuality, reinforcing his total misinterpretation of Obsidian's story in the JLA. And, as the plot is about Obsidian and his boyfriend trying to adopt and thus the regaling of his life-story, it's lame in that we don't get a reason they are turned down. Especially as the most logical conclusion of him being a superhero is denied. Told what it's not, but not what it is. The Jesse Quick story was passable with nice art but otherwise unforgettable. Mr. Terrific's story was confusing as it starts with a guy in a coma, I at first figured everything after that was meant to be a flashback on how he got to be in a coma. Instead, it was supposed to be about him coming out of the coma. A pity the artist drew him asleep then. And, we see Mr. Terrific now flying with some kind of jet-boots? Cyclone's story reinforces her contradictory nature. In many ways she's annoying and she's meant to be and yet I find her all the more likable and fresh for that. The best thing about the Wildcat and son story was that for once his son didn't annoy me in a bad way too much and the artwork was far better than I had seen by Williams in JSA All-Stars. Sand and Dr. Fate were just boring, to the point that I kept nodding off in between word balloons in mid panel. Then there's the whole idea that the latter story is telling readers it's ok to commit suicide in order to be reunited with the ones you love.

Magnus #2: A solid comic that updates the future of Magnus for modern sensibilities but still has enough of the style, themes and background to be familiar with the other versions. The artist at times seems a little overwhelmed at times in depicting the action scenes or small things like a character's hairstyle. As the story concerned itself with white slavery and exploitation of women, the comic veers close to being too adult and prurient when it doesn't really need to be.

We get signs that in the future, there are other threats other than just the robots, including cyborgs and what appear to be aliens that consider human meat a delicacy. This brings a needed variety to Magnus' future world. Even more development of that world is needed, though. The book was originally created in the 1960s, we could use a book that is more multi-cultural, with more strong female characters other than Leeja who offers herself up as victim-bait this issue.

Warlord of Mars #1: Calling the book "Warlord of Mars" and I'd expect that ideally, John Carter would be on Mars by the third page. I don't think you need to drag out his past, it's not really that important. However, this is a Dynamite book so I don't really expect to see John Carter get to Mars until the fourth issue, they like their decompression too much and dragging out the origins of the characters.

Surprisingly, it didn't bother me too much with the first issue in that they decided to tell a dual story giving us the backgrounds of both Carter and Tars Tarkas so we see still get quite a bit of Mars. I think the backdrop at least gives us an idea of what kind of man John Carter is, fiercely loyal and quick to fight if the situation demands it. What is missing is the idea from the books that Carter is some kind of immortal with little memory of his past but always finding himself embroiled in conflict and battles.

Sadowski delivers on the art and it's not so colored that the pencils are lost. However, the story is a bit confusing as Union Soldiers are colored to be wearing grays, the short-hand identification of the Rebels. Maybe the colorist didn't know that the bad-guys in the story were supposed to be the Northerners and not the South for a change?

Multiple covers, so I chose the Joe Jusko one myself. Reminded me of when I first discovered John Carter, Deja Thoris and Tars Tarkas and those paperback covers.

Comic reviews and musings

Batman/Doc Savage Special: Despite all the indications of Azzarello not really getting it, this is a decent one-shot. It involves Doc, early in his career (actually would be contemporary with the events of the first Doc pulp story, "Man of Bronze".) Avoiding some unpleasant business, he decides to investigate the actions of the Batman of Gotham City and a possible murder committed by him. Much of the story explores similar tropes of the Batman-Superman relationship or the crossover storyline several years back of Doc Savage and the Shadow in DC's last time licensing of the comic.

The cover has the wonderful feel of being Bama influenced and the interior artwork is adept at storytelling. However, the style lacks solidity, looking more like animation cels, a feel that grows as the story progresses, being very ephemeral looking by the end.

While the story is decent, it underscores the problem with the concept. As noted, the Doc-Shadow crossover did the same thing better, telling a story with a villain that suited the strengths of the characters and their style. Batman feels almost shoe-horned into the story, made to fit a role that he's not suited for.

Then, there are the end-notes about other characters appearing as part of this "First Wave". It's more of Didio's New Earth style madness. Instead of going with the purer aspects of characters, it's seen as a chance to make judgments and arbitrary changes of characters. So, instead of a chance seeing the GA Black Canary free of 40 years of retcons, we have the character being re-cast as an Asian American. The Blackhawks are now a second generation team, the original Blackhawks being mostly dead. Why? The whole idea behind this pulp-Earth was to make characters like Doc Savage and the Blackhawks work. Instead, we get a Blackhawks team that is less pulp-like and completely at home in modern DCU. Azzarello apparently doesn't think Ebony can work unless as a cliched sassy African American woman. Except that Cooke made the character work completely well in his Spirit series. Ugh.

To the point that it seems that they have a better handle on the pulp characters than the others, though it still seems like they are adding and changing complexities and dynamics than working with what's there. There is quite a bit of interest to the Avenger and the original stories. Such as the efforts of the creators to make the characters more racially enlightened (one of his chief aides, Smitty was originally meant to be African American judging by the artwork and eventually he did get two African American aides that played up their intellect and society's pre-judging the characters). Despite his and his team's personal losses to crime, they DON'T actually kill criminals, he goes out of his way to not personally kill them. However, he does set things up that criminals often kill themselves through their own ruthless actions. The books also often have a fatalism about them, how the Justice, Inc crew expect this profession to kill them one day.

Likewise with Doc. While Monk will kill though Doc chooses not to, Monk always feels a bit guilty about it, usually making excuses. On the other hand, Renny has killed if he thought that was the only way and without excuse. The books don't suggest Monk and Ham as Doc's enforcers with Ham keeping lease on the pit-bull. I guess just being best friends isn't edgy enough. Lastly, Azzarello sees Renny as being an ugly man. Did he not actually read the stories? Dent gave all the characters specific physical looks and other than Ham and Doc himself, none are described as being actually good looking. But, the books are consistent in describing Monk as being incredibly homely NOT Renny. It's the creator re-casting the characters to fit his agenda than actually working with the characters.

The Black Coat: Ok, there is obvious stupidity here in the numbering. This issue is listed as being Two Issues, 1 & 2 of 4 (the next issue will be 3 & 4). Man, zero issues were bad enough of gimmicks.

Beyond that, it's a wonderful two-chapter comic, very pulpish story of a costumed hero in the days of colonial America (not too dissimilar to the Disney adaptation of Dr. Synn in "The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh") mixed with some of the occult stylings of Mignola. The publishing of Black Coat has been very sporadic, the long gaps in this little known title making you wonder if that's the last to be seen of the title, that it will just fade away like Xenozoic Tales, then, bam, a new issue comes out.

The story of this 2/4 parter begins with the death of the Black Coat and his resurrection and occult menaces that aren't flesh eating zombies as well as the menace of a traitor in his organization against the backdrop of the American Revolution. The artwork of the first half is Francesco Francovilla who has a wonderful old school illustration style, full of cross-hatching and atmosphere and making a name for himself on Dynamite's Zorro book. The second half is by Dean Kotz, a name unfamiliar to me but whose style is similar to Brett Blevins' and appropriate to the feel of this book (his cover is gorgeous by the way).
Black Terror #5 (picking up the numbering where the mini ended): The comic spins off into its own owngoing of a sorts, though the concept of Project Superpowers doesn't really lend itself to ongoings at this point in time. Hester shows himself to be a capable writer and focuses on a small story against the big picture. While most of the heroes went into the urn, the American Crusader apparently did not. When the heroes returned, they found zombie like beings in black wearing the Crusader's symbols and having a modicum of his power. The opening arc of this story goes into the background, establishing a friendship between the Black Terror and the American Crusader in the days of the War and making AC into a perfect martyr character ala Barry Allen crossed with Captain America. It's very well done, perfectly setting up the twist at the end. Especially considering that American Crusader was in many ways a very generic character, a variation of Nedor's basic template and often with art that was crude even by their standards. The most notable thing about him is metafictiona, one of the earliest patriotic heroes and the first to use atomic power as a basis for an origin, but he's generally overshadowed by the likes of the Fighting Yank, Black Terror, Doc Strange, Captain Future and even American Eagle.

The artwork is the weakest part. It's actually hard to judge the pencils as the coloring is extremely dark and completely overwhelms the artwork. To the point that if you weren't aware of the American Crusader was supposed to be a patriotic hero by his name, you really wouldn't get it from the art as it looks like he's wearing red & black and not red & blue (admittedly, on the covers of the 40s, his cowl and cape does look black with blue highlights).

JSA vs Kobra #6 of 6: After a very solid story of a team of heroes fighting a super-villain terrorist, the mini ends with whimper as it just ends without resolving anything after all of the set-up. As if the powers that be lost the resolve to go where the story was taking them, that the heroes are not allowed a clear cut win. At the end, the status quo is the same as where it was at the beginning of the book, the very definition of a bad story, the central conflict has resolved nothing. If the reader wasn't paying attention, one could expect another issue or two to go. Tacked on is that Mr. Terrific's girlfriend is cured of her ill-defined techno illness. But, other than a mention in the first issue, her plight and what it means to Mr. Terrific is not dealt with or touched on the rest of the mini, this isn't an ongoing theme of the story or a central motivation or struggle on the behalf of Mr. Terrific. So, her curing is just an afterthought, an attempt to give the story a feel of some kind of resolution, but is forced as it has nothing to do with what the story or characters have been about, her condition is a minor footnote for all that it has meant.

The sad thing is the artwork is good and there are some great panels and scenes scattered throughout. But, it's a case of when in the end, all is said and done, more is said than done.

Fred Gaurdineer

One of the unexpected joys of working on this project about the publisher Centaur was finding in many of the text stories art by Fred Guardineer, often nice big images really showing off his attention to detail and strong illustrative sense.

Guardineer is not a name you hear very often when people talk of the golden-age greats unless it's about the golden-age magician characters. While he worked on almost every type of story for many of the companies of the day, Guardineer made a name for himself on working on magicians. He did art for Zatara at DC, Tor and Merlin at Quality, Marvelo at Columbia, and Mr. Mystic for the Spirit supplement. And, many of them tended to follow Zatara's magic casting at some point by saying words backwards.

It's a shame he doesn't garner more interest. Even with his earliest art, he had a solid command of illustrating, layout and style. Every line or lack of line is deliberate and serves to define a shape, or texture or pattern. Patterns and textures play off of each other. The pic here is of Dan Hastings, a character that hopped from one publication and company to another, specifics changing back and forth. In this case, Dan for some reason is colored as a brunette, most images have him as a blond. It has been re-colored for publication purposes and reasonably accurate, but the real star is Guardineer's linework.

Website:
Yes, my website is down. When yahoo announced it was shutting down its free sites, it had mentioned that the plus account holders would be able to transfer at that date. When I started my site, it was a plus account but apparently had not been for awhile (though I still operated with all the benefits of a plus account). What it means is I have to find a new home or start a new account with an actual domain name.

I had been thinking about changing the name anyway, the Cash Gorman moniker being a bit problematic in that it's not public domain though not like the owners are doing anything with the character right now. Although with recent events of them finally okaying the reprinting of Doc Savage, the Shadow AND the Whisperer and Avenger as well as DC using Doc and others for a pulp-Earth, it's possible that Cash Gorman might just have a small comeback. All the more reason to at least change the name of the site. With the name changed, I also wanted to update the layout and design of the site, including the beginnings of a page devoted to the Quality characters. When I chose the name for my yahoo email address, I didn't really anticipate it expanding into having an identity of its own (or having to explain where the name comes from, a few times explaining that it's not really my name.

But, I've been busy with other projects and just not been able to move on it yet. Although, I had lots of updates of information to transfer. And it means having to re-do all those links too. sigh. Sadly, this means that unless he's moved them elsewhere, some of Jess Nevins' sites are also lost as well as copperage's where the micros came from. double sigh.

Reviews
Abe Sapien: The Haunted Boy: A wonderful one shot story of Abe investigating a simple haunting. Perfect for Halloween, it's a tightly told horror story centering around human pathos and grief. It misses a few beats as the big twist hinges on the writer and artist firmly establishing visible differences between the two boys, so the a-ha moment isn't as strong as it should be. Regardless, it has more of that feel of what the Hellboy books or shows like Buffy/Angel/Supernatural were before continuity and ongoing plots became more important.

Angel vs. Frankenstein: I can understand some people not liking how Byrne's art has changed and developed. I think his figures have lost a bit of that iconic feel, that sense of epic proportions and action to the point that it's jarring when he's working on superheroes. I found this to be true first when he was working on Wonder Woman where all too normal looking everyday characters looked out of place standing next to someone like Wonder Woman or Superman. Yet, when he's working on projects like Angel (and the late Demon series), what's been gained is texture and nuance that are perfect for horror titles or books featuring all too human characters even if they are vampires, psychics and monsters. He knows when detail is important and when the action should take front-stage, a master of storytelling in each panel.

I got so caught up in reading the story, I briefly forgot that it was a book featuring Whedon-verse characters and was a bit upset that the vampires turned to dust immediately when stabbed with a stake but then remembered that's the rules this book has to operate under. The monster is beautifully rendered and characterized, his whole book summed up in a few pages. He's both tragic and horrific in his ruthless nature, a perfect anti-hero to pit against Angel when he was less than sympathetic as well.

If there's any flaw, it's the story has a lot going on for just one issue, would have loved to have seen this paced out into two issues, to really get to know some of the poor citizens that get caught in the battle between the two characters, and to wince at their sudden violent deaths. Maybe we'll see the Frankenstein monster spin off into its own series. Meanwhile, Byrne has in the works a new Angel story, one taking place in the current day.

Astro City: Astra #2: The cover alone has that great feel of a glossy magazine cover ala Omni. To the point, that I didn't at first recognize the two heads kissing. By this point, I guess Brent Anderson must find the book a joy to work on as he's still doing it. I could see some artists getting frustrated, "you want me to draw what?" He must draw the ordinary alongside the cosmic, and make the fantastic look both fantastic and everyday. Which is what the text is going for as well, as Astra is showing her boyfriend other worlds and cosmic goings on and finding that a place populated by aliens from all over with fantastic science, she fits in as being "normal" because different and strange is normal in a sense that it's not in Astro City where the two co-exist in large quantities but still segregated. It is a bittersweet tale about our culture's fascination with celebrities and celebrity news over real news, how we chew up the celebrities and spit them up and the fascination of reality shows and the voyeurism they provide. Busiek continues to provide a mature superhero books with mature storytelling without sacrificing what originally drew so many of us to superheroes to begin with. And, it's still more "all ages" accessible than most of the mainstream superhero books out there.

The Brave and the Bold #28: This has been reviewed online elsewhere and they pretty much all hit the mark in that the comic doesn't. I'll give JMS credit in that he's trying to tell stories with meaning, that are about something. However, he doesn't really know how to do it without preaching, he isn't able to pull it off through metaphor and themes. Part of that is the format of single issue stories doesn't allow him much room to explore thematic elements.

The other part is that once you get past the purty pictures and the surface story, it's just full of bits and pieces that don't make much sense. It's a team-up of the Flash and the Blackhawks in WWII. This is the second appearance for the Blackhawks in this title and nowhere are their planes in evident. Nor are their varied characters identified or explored much. There's no reason for them to be the Blackhawks vs Sgt Rock and Easy Company or even the crew of the Haunted Tank. I'm not caught up on the planes angle, the Blackhawks were more than pilots, they are one of the earliest non-powered costumed teams, providing the template for many that followed. But, their use here doesn't really give them much to do.

Next, the Flash is stranded in the past via a broken leg. We are told that. It keeps him from running at superspeed. However, what it doesn't do is apparently give him any pain, hinder him standing, walking, etc. I've sprained my ankle worse than the Flash's broken leg for all the trouble it gives him. And, why not contact the JSA to send him back to his own time? Of all characters, Barry Allen would know that Green Lantern, Johnny Thunder, Dr. Fate or the Spectre would be able to do so.

Then we have the moralizing part. The Flash sees himself as a symbol that doesn't kill, a superhero must stand for something after. Ignore that the character's last big story before Crisis on Infinite Earths and his recent rebirth was about him killing the Reverse Flash and standing trial. Now, part of the conceit of the genre of superhero fiction is we are willing to cede that heroes with guns never accidentally kill or wound innocent bystanders, that all the fisticuffs and knockouts don't result in accidentally killing or permanently injuring their opponents, etc. However, when you raise this issue as a story point, that the Flash does not want to use a gun to kill enemy soldiers, it draws attention to the incongruity and nonsense that his idea of a better non-lethal solution is a barrage of bricks thrown with super-speed! Seriously? After all, to quote the tv Flash, "it's not guns that kill people, it's these little hard things!"

And, then the Blackhawks are upset that the Flash managed to incapacitate the enemy in a few seconds instead of killing them through a protracted gunfight? Might be different if his waffling or solution took more time and actually put their lives at risk, but it was more efficient than their method AND somehow, miraculously, didn't kill anyone. It makes the Blackhawks just seem needlessly bloodthirsty.

Doom Patrol: Haven't been getting this since the first issue, but judging from pages pasted online and quick perusal at the store, I have to ask has anyone been getting this and enjoying it? Every issue seems designed to make each member of the team thoroughly unlikeable and pathetic as characters and make you long for the days when they were blown up and martyrs. Last issue, Mento and this issue the Chief. It further compounds it by making the dead "New" Doom Patrol with Celsius, Tempest et al as being the more likeable and less issue laden team. AND, they retcon Tempest's powers? The dude is dead and being referenced in a flashback, so WHY? Cannot bother to do a character in character for just a couple of panels? For $3.99 a month, why would anyone bother getting this book?

Justice Society of America #32: The book progresses along its way with little change from the previous issues. As the investigation continues into who betrayed the team, important points are brought up, important enough that it could be argued they should have been addressed earlier. Despite that, there's no real new development or progress, it almost feels like a bit of filler between the beginning and end. Sorta like how in the old movie serials, about 2/3 of the way through the storyline, you have a chapter that just kind of sums up all the pertinent details and storyline to that point. Still no clue as to who half the villains are or what they can do. Likewise, it pains me a bit that we don't really see who many of the JSA really are either. They all come across as superheroes full-time without real outside lives.

A good time to address the previews, in this book is the preview of Batman/Doc Savage. The art looks good. However, the way Batman is blasting away with guns... sure, it's a more pulpish world and Batman originally did use a gun on occasion. However, when that's Batman's first recourse, to go in with guns in each hand blasting, you don't have Batman, you have the Shadow, a character that this world is supposed to already have. Why bother with Batman at all?

Meanwhile, online is a preview of the JSA: All-Stars. Reinforces my plan on not getting it. Didn't care for the art, half the team is who I'd like to see booted anyway, AND the writing in just a few pages has two stupid moments. One, Magog seems surprised to discover his foes are cyborgs to the point that he mistakens them for robots. Of all the JSA, who's the one character that is cybernetic? Magog. Then, Power Girl gives the order for the JSA not to hold back since they aren't humans in suits but cyborgs? Maybe, she doesn't know the definition of the term, that they are still living people? Not like discovering they are undead zombies or something.

Marvels Project #3: A decent issue, following up on several threads introduced. As the story is progressing, the narrative itself is not as strong. This plagued JMS on The Twelve as well, starting off with a strong narrative voice, but the story being told was much bigger than what could be contained or told via that narrative. Thus, the Angel's narrative at times is barely oblique commentary. The scene with the Ferret seems completely incongruous, having little to nothing to do with anything else going on in the book at this point. Maybe, it'll play in later but right now it's just wondering what it was all about other than to be a minor character cameo. Epting's art is a bit of a disappointment there as well. He does a good job at setting up the office and all but his Ferret pretty much just looks like the Angel.

The Angel himself comes off as being thuggish, his method of investigating being hitting people til they talk as opposed to doing some detective work. It seems a bit contrary to the way he's been portrayed up to this point as someone extremely capable and smart. There's a couple of leaps in storytelling logic as well. The Angel seems to take the death of the Phantom Bullet very personally. He's never met the man in either identity, no reason the two even really knew of each other this early in their careers, yet he calls him "comrade". And, while I can see investigating the guy's death and his most recent cases, is there anything to indicate that he wasn't just killed while stopping a mugging or commission of some other crime, that it was an intentional murder? But, the Angel in his questioning isn't asking who killed the Phantom Bullet, who's been taking credit or talking about it, but about who would WANT to kill him, which implies that the killing was a planned and intentional act and not a spur of the moment opportunity. None of it read right, it comes off as being the easiest way to get from point A to point C, without spending the pages of actual writing it would take to do it logically.

Project Superpowers: Chapter Two #4: The storyline is moving along and a hero seemingly falls. After the big reveal of last issue, nothing concerning it is touched on other than it seems as if the Supremacy has ways to get inside information with each group. Makes you wonder how Tim "healed" his face after the rather sizable cut that left him noticeably a fake.

Project Superpowers: Meet the Bad Guys... Dagon #3: This issue is pretty much undercut by the previous one. Here, Samson is alive and well and there's a lot of talk about him suffering a crisis of faith and the villain played up as a rather personal threat, only to have Chapter Two render it all kind of moot. Again, there's the usual feel of a Casey script that seems to indicate that he thinks readers can read his mind and thus he can leave out all sorts of background, motivations and relevant information that would actually give his story any meat and help it make some kind of sense. The villain looks cool, and who thought we'd see Hydroman as a serious hero this day and age (only he's called Hydro these days). Otherwise, there's a lot of talk as if something is going on, but it's all sound and fury.

The Torch #3 of 8: Toro finally breaks out of his funk and fights back, we see a bit of Jim Hammond inside the revived Human Torch and the Thinker exits stage left. The story is still very linear and it makes you wonder just how it's going to be more than 4 issues, what are the rest of the issues going to be about? Still, an enjoyable romp.

Witchfinder #5 of 5: In the end, the book falls in the category of many of the Hellboy minis, best to be savored as a trade and read in one sitting. I found myself picking it up and really not recalling many of the details and characters and by the time I remembered, the story and the book was done. It is better than the modern BPRD books have been in having that gothic feel of dread and horror with unholy beasts, magic, mystical objects and secret brotherhoods though. A good creepy book for cold dark stormy nights.

Comic Reviews and Doc Savage musings

Astra #1: Astro City and Kurt Busiek are exceptions to the rule for me in regards to the longer stories. Instead of feeling like he's stretching things out, he seems to pack more things in whether its character development or plot twists. He takes advantage of the longer story arcs to flesh things out but without forsaking the thrill of telling a story with superheroes. The longer stories are just denser and more layered instead of simply padded. Each issue is a satisfying read even if it leaves you hanging. The problem has been it has just taken so long between issues, but now there seems to be a renewed commitment to making Astro City more regular. The other thing is Busiek doesn't just tell the long big stories, but also the small short ones. Such as this, the first of issue of 2. It's more light-hearted than the recent storyline of Astro City, but it still manages to capture the times and cultural references, in this case the today of Hannah Montanna, Paris Hilton, celebrity tabloid journalism. Brent Anderson continues to excel at being a realistic artist with an organic line while still being able to capture the outlandishness and gosh-wow of a Jack Kirby designed world and make it all fit together seamlessly.

The Brave and the Bold #27: JMS delivers a fairly strong story with excellent art by Jesus Saiz (other than the cover with Batman's utility belt pouches being ridiculously big and out of place looking). Most of the story mines the human interest personal angle that Busiek does so well in Astro City. Sadly, the story ultimately fails in the end as it has to lessen the heroic nature of Robby Reed, that he was willing to let someone else die in his place and Batman just lets him off the hook.

Justice Society of America #31: Dissension in the ranks of both heroes and villains, the story moves forward with little character bits all the way around. Magog makes good arguments but only because it IS stupid to have the heroes just blindly allow people to walk right in without any type of clearance checks. Although it's one of those things like characters using the toilets. It's so obvious that I don't need to see the heroes do it in order to reassure me that they aren't all seriously constipated. If something is a completely logical and natural thing that any normal person would do, it doesn't really need to be shown unless it actually serves a plot point. What is stupid is that no one replied to his arguments pointing out that superhero teams aren't just about being armies, but also police force and rescue personnel.

JSA vs Kobra #4: Proving to be an excellent mini. Of course, part of that is this is how the JSA and JLA should have been treated all along, with them actually investigating and fighting villains, showing them off to be heroes. The focus is a little too much Mr. Terrific as if he's the only smart guy and the leader of the JSA, but otherwise a strong story. Thing is, this story could have easily been told with the original JSA as well since it's not a story ABOUT continuity but more of an action-thriller that superheroes naturally are and thus a natural fit to spotlight and show off any superhero team. Instead of Mr. Terrific, you'd actually have Hawkman showing up to be the tactician and leader that he was supposed to be, that carried the team for 40 years and Kobra being the world-threat that he always should be. Tell stories like this with the original JSA and no one would be wondering if the team was past its prime.

Marvel Mystery Handbook: I almost didn't pick it up as I don't normally get the handbooks, but there were so many characters I barely knew by name in there which made me just have to pick it up. Chock full of information and artwork.

However, the book is schizophrenic in just what it was trying to be and how it was to present the information. Just the format alone, in the first half of the book, there are power grids, ranking the powers using bar graphs., then for the shorter entries in the second half, it was decided the grids were too big and presented just the numbers for the scale of the powers. From a graphic design perspective, on projects like this consistency is the key. Keep in mind that reference books like this are not required to be read from front-to-back so a consistent approach is all the more important. If the grids are too big for some of the entries, chuck them entirely. Use the same format for each entry. Likewise, keep in mind that some people don't read all of the handbooks, so in the beginning should be an explanation as to what the power grids and numbers actually mean. How does a normal person have an energy projection of one and not zero?

Likewise, if you are going to divide a book like this into two sections so the entries are NOT in absolute alphabetical order, some kind of table of contents is required!

This is carried through with the artwork. Some pieces have art from the original stories, others have modern artists' takes on the characters. Some artwork is cited, others are not. Again, how the main artwork is cited in the longer entries in the first half is different from the second half. Again, there is reasoning based on the page layouts, but there should be consistency throughout the book. If the smaller entries require it to be alongside the pictures in the margins, then it should be that way throughout the book. If the artist is unknown, that should be mentioned instead of left blank. Settle on a single format and be consistent throughout the book.

One could argue that the reasoning behind some having art from the original stories as the main illo and others not is because of the difficulty in getting a good enough scan of the original art or an image from the one appearance that would be appropriate. Except when you get to the Namor entry. His main illo is of him with a modern look as done by a modern artist. There is NO WAY THAT A DECENT IMAGE BY EVERETT OR EVEN SCHOMBURG COULD NOT BE FOUND TO BE USED. Heck, even the small John Byrne pic would have been better since that was at least more consistent with the way he originally looked.

Which gets at the core of the other problem, what is the purpose of this book? Ostensibly, it's to celebrate the heroes who first appeared in 1940 and prior of Marvel Comics. That's fine. No Captain America, no All-Winners Squad, no Union Jack, Dominic Fortune, Two-Gun Kid, etc. Yet, the book is a big failure in that regard. It's full of modern continuity and retcons and does not distinguish between information found solely in the original stories and what is part of modern continuity. Thus for Namor, we get as his main illo artwork that is nowhere close to how he originally was presented. The same is true for Red Raven, Thin Man, Mastermind Excello and the Eternal Brain. The first sentence of the entry of Mr. E is retcon information from The Twelve, a mini-series not even done yet. While the Phantom Reporter leaves out interesting tidbits actually in his original story (his mask seemed to glow and he had another identity of a rich playboy with a different name). That's just wrong. At this point, you're not celebrating these characters from 70 years ago, you're celebrating modern continuity and too worried over how they fit in the scheme of things today.

The biggest example of this is the entries for Hurricane and Mercury. They don't have one. Instead they are a small part of an entry for Makkari. It's a prime example of why I don't like that retcon, it completely subverts the original characters for a much later one. He does not deserve an entry, much less a two-page one in a book about GA heroes. He was created in 1971 and his GA ties are retcon ones. If his retcon adventures qualify him, then they should qualify EVERY character whose stories take place 1940 and before including all the Atlas Western heroes, the medieval Black Knight, Freedom's Five and the WWI Union Jack, etc. This is a handbook of the GA characters that were introduced 70 years ago (or a little prior as the case of Ka-zar) and that's the history that it should celebrate. The retcons and modern continuity should take a backseat to the originals. It's as I always said about making the characters Mercury/Hurricane part of Makkari's identity, we lost them as characters. They are now footnotes of the Eternal's character, it's two pages of information that has nothing to do with the actual GA characters where he deserves no more than a sentence in their entries. And, this just highlights that fact. The one place where they could be given to shine and stand as equals among the other heroes created at the same time, they are treated as less than Leonard McKenzie. I'd rather have seen two short entries, and used the space to highlight some villains. Likewise, Namor's entry could have just ended around his revival in the FF and the role he played in the revival of Captain America and just a summation sentence that he was still active today instead of going on. And on. And on. Red Raven who appeared in ONE Golden-age story has a two page entry!

It's just too full of retconned and modern history without any clear-cut demarcation between how the stories were originally and what they mean in modern continuity. As a true golden age reference book, it's not very useful except for the few characters that haven't been touched by modern hands.

The Ka-zar entry is the way I would have preferred all of them to be, focusing on information found in the original stories, with little to no mention of modern-day continuity. Of course, it makes him a contradiction as well. Judging from the other entries, one would expect that we'd have just gotten the history of the modern-day Ka-zar as his appearance pretty much negates the GA Ka-zar stories as they relate to Marvel continuity.

Lastly, I would have loved to have seen more villains and other colorful characters and less of the secondary characters such as Professor Horton and Namor's parents. Seriously, how does McKenzie rate a full page entry when everything needed to know about him is covered in the Namor bio? Ditto on Horton. How big of a role is he as a character in the actual GA Human Torch stories? Almost all of the information is from stories decades after the fact. Did we really need to have separate entries on Zog and Electro? Less waste and less focus on all of the modern continuity, we could have possibly gotten EVERY GA Timely character that held his own strip in a book not much larger than this, maybe even a timeline of characters' appearances and history from a strictly Timely perspective.


Project Superpowers: Chapter 2 #3: Chapter 2 continues to be an improvement over the first mini, though it's still stuck telling basically one long drawn out story. At least, there's a feeling of progression as lots of things happen and most of them not good for the heroes involved. Although, the revelation concerning the Black Terror's kid partner Tim is very reminiscent of the fate of Tim in the Terra Obscura minis. Overall though, the over arcing meta story is really kind of boring and a tired concept.

Surprise, surprise, I even approve (or at least understand) of the small change to Skyman. In this day and age, a character using that name just because he pilots a specialized airplane just isn't going to.. um.. fly. So, it makes a bit of sense to actually have him be able to fly. Although, by jet-boots? It doesn't really work with the look of his character.

Project Superpowers: Meet the Badguys #2: Joe Casey manages to make the most out of the rather non-sensical status quo of the Fighting Yank in this "story". I also find it interesting that the Revolutionary has on his chest a ring of stars as that's the look of Roy Thomas' retcon character Spirit of '76, distinguishing him from the Fighting Yank who he was visibly based on.

Sadly, that's all that recommends this book. As per Casey's habit, the character the book is supposed to be about is not explained at all. No motivation for any of his actions. No backstory. No explanation of just what are his powers or the source of them. Like almost every story I've read by him, it's all set-up and no actual story. He seems to be trying to paint him as a possible hero or anti-hero and the fact that the seems a cross between Lobo, Ghost Rider and a cracked mirror reflection of the Yank is enough for the readers to know. As we have no motivation for his anarchic behavior and willingness to use potentially lethal force, we don't know why he is supposed to be considered a possible hero. Also, these are supposed to be the "bad guys" yet this issue and the last remove the teeth from the characters they introduce. It seems to be more of showing the feet of clay of the heroes vs the more pure if violent anti-heroes. Are they villains or not? And, when you have your heroes set up to be terrorists, what exactly makes these guys the bad guys?

The artwork is painted prettily in places but is bad at sequentially illustrating a story. Pages are often too dark while simultaneously being just unclear as to what actions they are supposed to be depicting. Of course, so is Casey's script, so in that regard they are a perfect marriage.

Sherlock Holmes #5: A bit anti-climactic in the ending as it's just a quick and easy trial, with little real drama as Holmes pretty much reveals that he already knew everything. Some things seem a little unexplained as issue 4 built up a master mystery thief but that goes nowhere other than to serve as part of the frame job of Holmes. Overall, not a bad story but a little bland.

The Torch #2: Great cover. The story is decent too in that we see what makes the Thinker a formidable foe. But, it's not really going anywhere either. Two issues into the story and all we really have is the original Human Torch revived as a weapon. Too much of the story is too busy being about continuity and explaining the continuity and not the actual title characters doing anything. At this pace, it's going to be an 8 issue mini that could have been done in three.

The problem is that writers today don't really know how to pace out story lines and subplots. A more talented writer would have found a way to have Toro in the main story being active fighting villains and finding his place in the modern world of heroes and as a civilian, while having the Thinker, his research and fan-boy need to over-explain every little thing serve as a sub-plot or second tier to the main story, building to a head. What we got is mostly boring and do we really care about this fine detail of why Toro catches on fire too? Is there going to be a big enough payoff in the relevancy of these details that has taken two issues to detail in such a dull way? Because, right now, it's not the story that's carrying the book or the title characters, it's the personality of the Thinker. Other than his characterization, it's not hard to see that this is largely the same creative team behind the above Superpowers book.

Witchfinder #4: Continues to be an excellent creepy and eerie book, a throwback to what made the Hellboy books so entertaining before they became about their own continuity. A shame that the timing couldn't have made it be a complete read in time for Halloween.

Pulp Matter:
An interesting synchronicity of pulp stories lately. At a recent trip to a local used bookstore, I came across a Bantam Doc Savage double reprint I didn't own. I think it may be the last of my holes with the doubles, now it's just hunting down a couple of the omnibuses. The two stories are "The One-Eyed Mystic" and "The Man Who Fell Up". Both are excellent stories with wonderful "impossible" occurrences drawing Doc into the action. In the pulps, only Doc and Monk actually have their hair color mentioned, so it's interesting that in the "Mystic" story we find out that Renny's hair is not red as that is his hair color in the DC comics from some years ago.

In "Mystic", Renny is on his way flying out for a vacation when he gets into an argument with a mystic on the plane. He falls asleep and wakes up as a two-bit crook, even looking like him when he looks in a mirror. He finds out that while he is this crook, there is evidence linking his real body to a murder that he knows nothing about. When knocked unconscious, he wakes up again as his old self in the town he was heading to. The mystery is compounded when later Doc has trailed the mystic aboard another passenger plane and under the cover of smoke while in flight, the mystic completely vanishes off the plane and is replaced by someone who insists he never boarded the plane.

Meanwhile, in "The Man Who Fell Up" the story centers around a body that falls out of a skyscraper only to fall up instead of down, a mysterious green fog, and strange attitudes by Monk and Ham.

While originally, these stories were written years apart, it's no coincidence they are paired together in this double. Despite wildly different beginnings, the inventions behind the actions of the bad guys are remarkably similar. There are other familiar tropes and storytelling choices that are cliched if you read many of these, so it's not too terribly hard to figure out who some of the bad guys are.

Meanwhile, Sanctum Books has released the second two-story reprints of the Avenger, reprinting the stories "The Sky Walker" and "The Devil's Horns" (as well as a Whisperer short-story "Boulevard of Death"). While The Avenger pulps advertised as being by the creator of Doc Savage, "Kenneth Robeson", the reality was that Robeson was just a house name for other writers. Lester Dent who wrote the majority of the Doc novels and had a hand in most of the ghosted ones, had little to do with the Avenger written by pulp writer Paul Ernst However, "The Sky Walker" involves a jet made of transparent materials, something that Will Murray ruminates about a bit in an article in the book. According to Murray, Dent apparently wrote a short-story involving a similar plot device early in his career but never published. Murray doesn't go into any more detail than that about this short-story. Even if not true, the plane in "The Sky Walker" still pre-dates Wonder Woman's by some years. What's not mentioned is Dent did get around to using that idea eventually. In the Doc Savage story "The Man Who Fell Up", Doc has a mostly invisible jet. Like "The Sky Walker", everything is invisible except for the engine. To aid the invisibility aspect, in the Doc story, the engine is painted to mimic the sky on the bottom and the ground on the top. It even mentions the one drawback, it doesn't take long for soot and all to gather on the otherwise transparent aircraft. And, like many of Doc's planes, it doesn't last 5 pages before it gets blown out of the sky, in this case by a man falling up. As far as I know, it's not mentioned again, presumably Doc saw it as a failure and by that point Wonder Woman was zipping along everywhere in her not too original Invisible airplane. It does give credence to Murray's wondering if there was at least some collaboration between Ernst and Dent though, especially if there's that unpublished short story out there somewhere. Maybe, we'll see it see print some day too.

Good Old-Fashioned Comics

Avengers-Invaders #8: Well, cannot complain about this issue's cover being too dark. The art by the two teams are stronger this go around as well, although the switch between the two is haphazard. I really do enjoy Sadowski's rendering of Namor.

The two plotlines are apparently resolved but seem to raise more questions than answers. Ultron is behind the LMD uprising, that somehow his possession of them and their drinking of what passes for Hammond's blood will give him life. What also doesn't make sense is how he took control of the LMD's, how he knew Hammond had returned from the past and ultimately he already knows Hammond's body inside and out, he used it to create the Vision.

Likewise, the revelation that D'Spayre was only using the cube (as I had surmised) and wasn't responsible for it bringing the Invaders to the present, it means that the cube had pretty much just zeroed in on one random person's desires to make a reality. Huh? Imagine a world where a random nutso anywhere could cause an atomic bomb go off just by wishing it and increase the danger exponentially. If the cubes were that easily taken control of, Marvel U. would have reality constantly shaping and reshaping itself. The inclusion of the GA Vision is a nice nod, but it doesn't really make much sense or add anything to the story.

Amazing Spider-Girl #29: The penultimate issue before the series cancellation and it will continue for awhile in Spider-man Family. For how long though? DeFalco has recently mentioned on one of the news sites that he thinks his time at Marvel may be nearing an end as calls go unanswered and there's no new work coming in. Not a surprise though. His style isn't really in keeping with the books Marvel writes these days. They are too straight-forward without having a self-deprecating self-mocking tone such as Slott writes, and not cynical enough of heroes and superheroes as the rest of the Marvel faire. It has been a great ride though.

BPRD: Not normally a fan of Kevin Nowlan's artwork, but this is a wonderful eerie and fantastical cover. I often complain about the modern colorists and coloring in books. Yet, take a look at BPRD or Hellboy or the work by Tom Smith. The coloring works with the art, it doesn't overpower it. Your attention isn't grabbed by photoshop effects. Here the artwork supports the story, the scenes in the snow are colored subtly with cool colors as opposed to the moody and dark colors of the interior temple. It all works together and upholds Guy Davis' pencils.

Captain Britain and MI13: Then here we get where stuff is over-colored, colors are too intense. In some places it works, such a the scenes on the moon. But the pub scenes, everything is too saturated, all of the faces look as if they are glowing as the artist tries to give everyone a 3-D painted look in the coloring. It doesn't work, it's too much. I like the idea of Dracula having an army and him becoming a major bad guy/super-villain. It works in the context of the Marvel U. He'd make a good player among the arch-villains. The book continues to suffer from uneven writing, stuff included because it comes across as being cool but that ultimately doesn't work, text claiming one thing but actions and subtexts something else. Such as what is this book really about. The title says Captain Britain, but he's hardly in the book at all, a figurehead at best, constantly upstaged by whatever other character he's playing off of.

However, I read the discussion with Doom several times and frankly, the conversation doesn't flow well or make much sense such as Doom accusing Dracula of racism. What did he say that was actually racist? His parting comment to Doom was more of a challenge, that would make more sense if he was playing on Doom's undying need to prove his superiority than if he was trying to broker a treaty with him. And, then I got to thinking about the whole conversation and Dracula on the moon. I can understand Doom walking around on the moon and I like the scenes of him exploring the lunar module. But, how are they talking? Specifically, Dracula. Sure, he's magical and already dead and doesn't need air to breathe, but talking does require certain physical laws to be operating. And, then I started thinking about the moon in general and how it doesn't work that Dracula would have a base there. See, on the side of the moon they are on, it's daytime 24-7. It is getting unfiltered sunlight, it just doesn't have that glow because there's no atmosphere. Dracula being on the moon is the exact opposite than what one would first think if you give it five minutes of thought. We end up with a kewl scene that is not well played and completely ludicrous as you linger over it.

The pub scenes. Funny, but despite the central character being called Captain Britain, he's hardly the coolest or central character to the book. Constantly being upstaged by Peter Wisdom, a character I still don't have a handle on. Just as this version of Spitfire remains a mystery to me she really doesn't seem like any version from before just as no version before ever had her being part vampiric. There doesn't really seem to be any reason for this character to BE the Spitfire of old in terms of characterization. It's almost the Geoff Johns style of characterization, write the character as you need it to be to serve the plotlines and not letting the character itself suggest storlines.

I had given up reading Black Panther some time ago, but this issue does reconcile the fact that Hudlin had a completely different Black Knight with an ebony blade running around. And, simply done as well. I like that. However, the conversationg between Dane and Faiza in the plane, again there seems to be a subtext to it that isn't coming across. What was Faiza hoping for as being a steward from Dane, a romance? She starts off complaining that being a steward seems to cast her in being a subserviant role and ends up by suggesting that there's more to their relationship.

Ok, we see what happens to Dane's plane, but what causes Captain Britain's car explode?

Doc Savage: The Lost Radio Scripts of Lester Dent. A nice hefty book. Cover by Bob Larkin who did some of the later covers as well as some painted covers for Marvel in the 80s. There are some wonderful interior illustrations by a pulp fan and artist ironically named Tom Roberts. I wonder if these were originally in color or in color in the hardback edition.

I'm a bit of a nut over copyrights and copyright law. Old Time Radio was/is an interesting loophole. Back in the day of the original broadcasts, your general public had no way of copying shows and no one really thought there'd be interest in them after initial broadcasts, so radio broadcasts were not covered (a state of affairs that remained true until about the time that tape recorders became commercial commodities). The only way to copyright a radio show was to actually copyright the script, not something always done. The Shadow often had further copyright protection in that some of the radio broadcasts were worked into the novels or vice-versa. It's part of the reason why the Shadow pulp was created, his radio show was so popular that people were asking for it on the stands and anyone could have come out with a Shadow magazine if Street & Smith didn't do so first.

So, getting the book, one of the first things I checked was the copyright information. So, it's curious that they are actually copyrighted in 2009 by the Estate of Norma Dent. I'm not sure how that works legally. These things were written over 70 years ago, it doesn't seem right that they can copyright them NOW. And, then there's the whole matter that they were written as "work for hire" and thus would first be the property of Conde Nast. Even if uncopyrighted, the fact that they were actually used in the broadcasts would mean that the scripts were already paid for.

Green Arrow & Black Canary #17: A well done story following on the heels of last month's, so we see more of Merlin, the new crazy villain on the block (although she seems a little too much in the vein of Joker crazy or the demented villains that Gail Simone writes so well). The backup gives some ominous foreshadowing for the happy couple and hinges a little too much on implying that Black Canary is not really in control of her powers as there's a new villain in the works an innocent by-stander of her using more power than the situation demanded. Bad superhero writing there, one of the conceits that make superheroes work is that there are no innocent bystander victims due to the direct action or mis-use of power by the superheroes. Gwen Stacey dies because she's thrown from the roof by the villain, not because Spider-man accidentally knocks her off while fighting the villain. The writer has set up a huge task for himself, this is the leader of the Justice League directly responsible for a crippling injury, there has to be more ramifications than just giving motivation for a new supervillain. This is more than Lex Luthor losing his hair while Superboy saves his life.

Hellboy: The Wild Hunt #3: See above about the use of color and storytelling. Duncan Fegredo is a natural substitution for Mignola on the art chores of Hellboy, a lot of the same feel but not as abstract. And, we have the wonderful Guy Davis on the back-up story. I would love to see these guys tackle some of Robert E. Howard's stuff. Or characters like Carnacki and Jules de Grandin. I have been tempted to just get these in trades, to have the whole stories in single volumes. Might still do that to weed out the comic boxes.

Masquerade #1. Best of Dynamite's Superpowers books, looking at the character formerly known as Miss Masque as well appearances by Black Terror, Fighting Yank, Green Lama, and Pyroman. This mini chronicles the events and her career leading up to her imprisonment in the urn, BEFORE she got the lame disguise powers and was still known as Miss Masque. Nice character bits that define her as a woman that would become a mystery woman. A few mis-steps along the way, a twelve year old girl is able to completely bite off a man's thumb in one bite? The Black Terror is portrayed in a less than sympathetic light as he is completely dismissive of Miss Masque without her guns and Tim suggests they are all glory-hounds, and the little cutesy ending.

I opted for the Cho cover on this one. One thing about Alex Ross, his women tend to look very man-ish, like Kathleen Turner on testosterone or steroids. The interiors - well this is a good example of much of Dynamite's line it seems, the painted colors overwhelm what is otherwise solid artwork. On-line glimpses showed this to be the strongest of the Superpower books art-wise, but this style of coloring just muddies everything up from the pencils to the layouts so that you have to study each panel just to understand what's going on.

Men of Mystery Ahh, the first casualty of Diamond's new policies and there's a notice inside the book explaining it all. A few titles being canceled. Bigger page count, but a hefty price increase too. This issue features reprints of several Fawcett characters: Spy Smasher, Minute Man, Bulletman as well as non-Fawcett heroes Man O'Metal and Music Master (if there ever was a truly bizarro lame GA hero, this one takes the cake).

The Phantom #0. A thin retelling of the Phantom's origin, serving as a relaunch of the series. Why? No idea.

The Spirit #26. Found this to be a marked improvement writing wise over recent issues. Artwork while a bit cartoony in places at least doesn't feel bound parody Eisner's caricaturistic style. A good, done in one story. And a wonderful Brian Bolland cover.

Vixen #5. This has been a great read, refocusing the character and her heritage. You get a story that works for the character and refines her. It seemed a bit strange to have this mini doing pretty much the same thing that McDuffie was doing in the Justice League, recentering the character. But, where his story was making her into something cosmic, a pawn of some god while fixing her powers, this story was more personal focusing more on her as a character. This melds the plot and story more fully. The only sad part of this mini is if you didn't read McDuffie's tale, the last page probably makes no sense as it doesn't really tie into anything revealed in these pages. It should have been left out, let Vixen have an uncompromised victory.

The painted style here works, giving the book a lush and open feel while letting the power of the artwork stand through.