Byrne goes Jurassic!

John Byrne currently has two mini-series out. One, the continuation of his independent series a while back Next Men. The other is a mini set in the Jurassic Park universe titled Jurassic Park: Devils in the Desert. While the latter naturally has dinosaurs, the former also featured a down covered Tyrannosaurus Rex who has eaten one of the central characters of the series! With the second issue of both out, Byrne reveals a talent that doesn't manifest itself very often: dialect.

I talked last time how in Spider-Girl we had a writer not only having Johnny Storm and Reed Richards talking in the same voice but used the exact same words! Byrne isn't one I normally associate with strong dialogue. Generally the opposite actually. His heroes often have a tendency to talk in a universal formally educated dialect of stilted dialogue. But, in the second issue of JBNM, we have the African American woman Tony thrust into the Civil War South, Nathan finds himself among soldiers of WWII, Jasmine is in Elizabethan England, while Jack is a priest some decades in the future. Not only does Byrne nail the atmosphere in the artwork, but he establishes each group with believable speech idioms and dialects. In "Devils in the Desert", the differences are a bit more subtle as almost all of the characters are from the same area of the American West. Indeed, there's even a clunky expositional "As you know, Bob..." type speech as the Sheriff explains his relationship and personal past to a deputy who should already be privy to the information unless one or the other is new to the area. Overall, though various characters show individual characteristics through the way they talk. It's no Coen Brothers film, but it's refreshing nonetheless.

Interesting to note, with the second issues of both comics, I had to wait a week to get a copy. As I moved, I go to a new store to pick up any comics I decide to get. With JBNM, they sold out, with "Devils in the Desert" they claim to have been shorted in their series. Might hold more weight with me if I hadn't on another occasion overhearing the owner talking with a customer, disparaging Byrne, his fans and his forum with half-truths and exaggerations.

In "Devils in the Desert", he includes a Native American deputy. Made me think that a comic featuring the modern American West with a Native American hero would be interesting. America is a big country and its different regions are micro-cultures amongst the larger landscape. Factor in Indian tribes and traditions, there could be fertile ground with the right writer and artist. Imagine Pow Wow Smith mystery series for DC or Red Wolf for Marvel. It was one of the neat things about Gerard Jones and Mike Parobeck's short-lived series El Diablo featuring an Hispanic-American hero in Texas that seemed to faithfully get across the sense of place and culture, something as important in that type of series as it is in a D&D fantasy story. Maybe moreso since you cannot simply make it up.

Black Terror by Dynamite is one of the last hanger-ons of my collecting. Partly because rumors of it being canceled. Plus, it has either been improving or the rest of the comics have denigrated so much, it's a mostly enjoyable series. The art has definitely improved somewhat. There's still stupid or bad writing. With issue 12, he gets a new sidekick called Parrot. Who or what she is, is unclear as she seems to be some sort of by-product of the flying pirate ship. Seriously, the pirate motif is way over-done, especially considering how wrong-headed it is to begin with. It obviously springs from what the creators want his costume to symbolize over the character's actual background and history. He wears the skull and crossbones because he was a pharmacist and it's the symbol for poison. Expanding on the character should build on that, not from what we associate Skull and Crossbones with and is all the rage right now.


The writer does seem to have plans on moving the character to center. Since the beginning, he's been angry and belligerent but in the last two issues we see there's a Dr. Bob Benton also walking around, maybe he's a fractured soul (though issue 13 calls him Benson several times even as the character is sporting a name-tag to the contrary). We also get several Nedor Villains appearing although substantially changed from their GA appearances: Red Ann, Lady Serpent, a Nazi Torchman, and Electru. The writer doesn't do much to flesh them out though, they are just hirelings. All new guys? Old ones somehow still around? It's a shame because the original Red Ann wasn't really a villain and is one of the better written and drawn GA Black Terror stories. Should be noted that only Red Ann and Lady Serpent were Black Terror villains. Electru faced Doc Strange and the Nazi Torch I think was an American Eagle villain. Also, the Nazi Torch has a flame thrower attached to his forehead. Terror cuts it off and chides him for having it as his nose? I know he hangs around with superheroes and not normal people all the time, but seriously, how many people does he know with noses above their eyes? Another bit of writing that makes no sense, the Black Terror meets up with a character calling himself Black Satan. Terror recognizes him as being someone he met during the War, only that guy was a hero. Thing is, the original Black Satan looked nothing like this guy, this guy looking like an all black devil complete with pitchfork while the original wore a loose fitting white shirt, tight red pants and sported a domino mask. Nothing particularly black or Satan abut him. Terror might recognize the name, but he wouldn't find the guy looking familiar at all. I think they have gotten so caught up in re-designing and re-imagining characters willy nilly, they forget that at one time, these guys are supposed to have looked and acted like they did in the comics originally.

There are also cameos of sorts of a lot of characters we haven't seen since the early issues of the first "Superpowers" mini: Airman, Man O'Metal, Flintman, Martan (I think), Amazing Man, etc.

Hester seems to be the go-to guy to take over series that star-creators start but don't stick with. He's taking over for Kevin Smith's Green Hornet series, JMS' Wonder Woman, of course picking up the Black Terror from Alex Ross and Jim Krueger.

Time Masters: Sadly, my last DCU comic for the foreseeable future had to be the final issue of this mess of a mini-series. It started off with a mediocre premise but with some classic Silver Age and Bronze Age characters looking pretty nifty that it over-rode my internal warning bells, thinking there could be something fun in this. Should have listened. The art was inconsistent, looking like a bad Jurgens impersonation over the course of the series, there was no real central plot or story despite the premise (which wasn't really the plot or story, just the device to get the heroes together).We get an explanation of sorts that makes no sense in the final issue as to motivations of the the Black Beetle but there is still no story to it. And, all the talk about the destruction of Vanishing Point over the first half of the mini is solved by sci-fi magic as if no big deal all along. Even Rip Hunter's exposition seems to acknowledge that this was just a big waste of time. Oh, and there's a big reveal at the end that you can tell was supposed to be a surprise, but no effort was really made to set it up beyond the final issue.Oh, and the whole purpose of the Reverse Flash the last issue and this was so this could lead into/tease the next big event. If it didn't cost me money, I'd just mail the issues to DC with a note saying I didn't want them stinking up my collection and I don't want simply my money back, but the money spent on gas driving to the store and the time wasted reading it.  If you are going to produce such a waste of non-story, at least follow the example of DCU Legacies and put some top creative artists on some of the issues to make the pictures nice to look at.

Comic thoughts drive-by

Wow, it's been a while. December kept me hopping. Between the holidays occurring mid week, I had a small operation at the beginning of the month, my girlfriend a small check up procedure at the end of the month, it's safe to say I spent most of the month away from home and my computer. I did get a lot of reading done, a few of them pulps and I hope to cover those soon: Doc Savage, the Shadow, the Black Bat.

Got quite a few comicbook and superhero related stuff this year. The first two volumes of The Complete Peanuts, two collections of Alaskan cartoonist Chad Carpenter's Tundra, dvd's of an early movie serial The Sign of the Wolf (a weird then modern/old West mixed with the Middle East/Indian mysticism, a different type of Cowboys and Indians movie), and movies The Dark Knight, and Chandu (one of the earliest superhero magicians, his adventures were on radio and predated all those comicbook ones).

A couple of drive-by comicbook thoughts...

The death of the Wasp was fairly senseless, but Hank Pym becoming the new Wasp in one of his ugliest costumes yet? I had some hopes for Slott's Avengers, but that really killed it there.

Spider-man and Obama... yeah, pretty much a classic screw-up. I can understand why Larsen might be a bit peeved though, since there was nowhere near this fanfare when he put him on the cover of The Savage Dragon. To be fair though, that was BEFORE he was elected President and the Dragon is not Spider-man. The best Larsen can hope for is that some savvy comic store owners might direct some of the customers to Larsen's book as well. Won't be any more money directly into Larsen's pocket, but it might generate some future interest in his title and comic line.

Darkhawk is returning to star in a series. Cool. I actually enjoyed Darkhawk and Sleepwalker and felt they deserved a bit more exposure. I didn't care for the concept of The Loners so I didn't pick it up, but I'll definitely have to give this a look see.

After a long even driven story through the Bat titles, titled RIP yet that wasn't about Batman dying. Instead, that actually occurred in Final Crisis. This has been pretty much the rumored ending for almost a year, so it is pretty much a non-event. And, thanks to all the events lately, a cynical readership has developed, no one really believes that this will remain the status quo.

Interestingly, it's comics and stories like this that probably prompted Willingham's comment about getting back to superheroes fighting supervillains and having heroes acting like heroes. Where's the sense of fun in the DCU when every few months another character is being killed off? Ted Kord at the hands of one of his best friends, the Martian Manhunter, the Freedom Fighters, Elongated Man and his wife. Heroes becoming villains and villains cast in the roles of heroes, or at least more sympathetic as they are honest about their nature.

Phil Hester talks about the upcoming mini-series Masquerade over on comicbookresources.com. Masquerade is the third spin-off from Project: Superpowers and this times concerns the masked heroine formerly known as Miss Masque. Like most of the non-powered characters in Superpowers, Krueger had given Miss Masque some super-abilities. Don't know why. Hester had a really curious thing to say though:

But even with a singular focus on Masquerade, Hester promised that the character won't be alone in her debut miniseries, and fans can keep their eyes peeled for both villains and heroes to drop in. “Miss Masque had nothing in the way of a rogue's gallery, and all the cool Nedor and Gleason villains are spoken for, so I was forced to make up some bad guys, which is always fun," he said.

The first part is right. In the handful of her adventures that have been reprinted by Bill Black and others, there has not been much evidence of a rogues gallery. She fought a few crooks that did wear a colorful costume (one was at a costume party after all), but none that could really be considered memorable.

But the last part, that "all the cool Nedor and Gleason villains are spoken for" ought to raise some eyebrows. One, the concept of Project: Superpowers is that all the public domain heroes are part of it as are their villains. But, this infers that ONLY two company's characters are available. Two, unless there are a lot more big projects in the works, I don't see how all the cool villains are spoken for, even if just the Nedor and Gleason characters. Unless his definition of "all the cool" means the Claw. Because that is the only villain from those two companies that has made any kind of appearance.

Because, the biggest theme of Project: Superpowers has been heroes vs. heroes. Dynamic Man has been turned into a villain. Most of the villains of the heroes have been completely absent other than the Claw and he has been on screen once and referred to a couple of times. And, we know he's being used in Death Defying Devil. The Black Terror mini has him fighting the President who so far is not any GA villain I'm aware of though he's part of a secret cabal that is made up of some GA villains, none of whom were part of Nedor or Gleason. But, it does have him fighting a bunch of patriotic superheroes who were duped/brainwashed/or somehow else compromised and those do include some Nedor heroes.

I'd love to know, what list of villains did Hester want to use that he couldn't? Where are they spoken for? Because, I've categorized hundreds of available GA villains, some more interesting than others. And, some of them are from Nedor and Gleason. I don't flatter myself in thinking that he's or Dynamite have heard of my website, but I do know that a simple online research into some of the characters would pull it up if not some of the many Nedor reprints available online.

Never give a Dynamic Man an even break

Superpowers #1 (Dynamite): We’ll start with this little press release blurb from Dynamite: This powerful series is overseen by Alex Ross who has designed every hero within these pages; scripted by Jim Krueger with art by Carlos Paul, this is the most powerful comic book event of the year!

Excuse me? Tweaking the Black Terror's costume, does not constitute designing the hero. The basic original design is still there. And frankly, looking at the changes, I cannot say any of them are necessarily an improvement on the originals, they're just different. His Green Lama “design” is basically the Lama's original look on the pulp covers. The rest of the heroes that appear in costume, from the sketches in the back and the Flame and Dare-Devil on the back cover are all the original designs.

Just to work ourselves through the story, the art and coloring work better together this go around. Maybe part of that is that I’m not familiar with the original pencils so I’m not seeing everything that was lost.

Page 1: Dynamic Man and un-named woman. There’s a reason for Dynamic Man’s aloofness and comments here to be revealed later on. His referring to Dr. Moore, the doctor figured prominently in his origin. In the bottom panel among all the gray statues, we see a golden urn, Pandora’s Box.

Pages 2 & 3: Bruce Carter III (Fighting Yank) & the American Spirit. Carter is speaking figuratively in calling his ancestor Benedict Arnold and striking me as being a bit hard on him, the Spirit just a little less so. It seems to me that Carter the First was as mislead as Carter III was.

Page 4: Tsarong was Jethro Dumont’s manservant dating back to the pulp incarnation.

“Jet” Right away we get into the little things that bother me. This is not the character hating the name Jethro but the creators and imparting their will over the context. The very fact that he was introduced to us with the name of Jethro whether it be in the pulps or his various comic incarnations tells us he doesn’t dislike the name. The original writers introducing us to the character under the name is the same as the character telling us what they prefer to be called. It’s why the id’s of the Blue Beetles are DAN Garrett and TED Kord and not Danny or Daniel and Theodore or Teddy. If he preferred to be called Jet or by his middle name, then that’s what we would have been told his name was at that point in the original stories and not 60 years later.

Page 6: The Green Lama works great as a robed hero here, not an easy look for a comicbook artist to pull off really. We have another reference about him only recently being aware of the “Meta-Natural World” or in other words, the supernatural. This might have worked if the Green Lama we saw last issue was the pulp version who was philosophical and meditative but otherwise used science. However, we saw that the Green Lama was fully the Mac Raboy one who gained super-strength, flight, and invulnerability when chanting his Buddhist phrase. I really like how GL plays a major role and his characterization for the most part, but the execution with him is shoe-horning him into a role that he doesn’t fit.

Such as pages 7 & 8 where we see that he’s become a mystic able to travel through space via greenery. While this makes an interesting counterpoint to the Flame who picked up a similar trick studying in Tibet only with flame while Hydroman does it with water (only through science and not mystical abilities). But, this is pretty much changing the very nature of the Green Lama to fit the story instead of letting the story be directed by the characters involved. For a history of who and what the Green Lama is and has been in the past, I’ll direct you to an older post: The Mighty Return of the Green Lama.

Page 10: The Dynamic Family again. The mask that lets the Fighting Yank see evil, that was given to him last issue, not a power he had in the forties. However, if he always had this mask, wouldn’t he have realized that imprisoning the heroes in the urn didn’t work, that it didn’t make any difference in the supernatural realm in ridding the world of evil?

Pages 11 & 12: The Dynamic Family is beginning to show their true colors, but the motivations are unclear

Pages 14 & 15: The Green Lama shows that he still has some of the powers he had before. Dynamic Man is along the lines of the Golden-age Superman himself (Wayne Boring even worked on the character some).

Page 16 & 17 spread: I already talked about my feelings about the Black Terror re-design but here’s another inconsistency of the story. The Black Terror went into the urn in his original costume and been trapped there. Yet he emerges in his Ross-tweaked costume. I guess you could say the art in the last issue was “wrong” and he was in reality wearing this costume, but then the flourishes that Ross gave the gloves and mask would be anachronistic for the 1950’s.

Pages 18 &19: I always thought that the Yank’s cloak was magical because it was imbued with the ghost of his ancestor. No ghost would imply no powers. The Black Terror in the 40’s was one of Nedor/Standard/Better’s generic powered heroes aka super-strong and bulletproof. Except when done by Mort Meskin and Jerry Robinson where he didn’t exhibit any powers . He wasn’t really as bloodthirsty as portrayed here, assuming the time in the urn didn’t help any. But, every revival of the character has portrayed him as being a darker character than he was originally. Tim also known once as Kid Terror in his one solo outing wore an identical costume as the Black Terror and helped him fight crime.

Page 21: Dynamic Man is revealed as a robot. Android really. The Doctor Moore referred to on page one had built him. He and the Timely Dynamic Man appearing in THE TWELVE are basically the same character with just a few minor changes. However, the Chesler Dynamic Man eventually picked up a kid brother with identical costume and powers and no explanation that I know of was ever given. The implication here is that he built his “brother” like he built all of these Dynamic Family members. Now, whether JMS is likewise holding on to reveal THE TWELVE’s Dynamic Man as an android to explain his also odd behavior or will retcon out that origin we’ll have to wait and see. Personally, I’d have revealed that the Chesler Dynamic Man was alive all along only with amnesia induced by Moore’s experiments and only thought he was an android. And let Marvel keep the android origin.

War Journal pages
Dynamic Man and Family: Curt Cowan is Timely’s Dynamic Man. Don’t know if the Chesler version went by that name but by the time he gained a kid brother, he was going by the name Bert McQuade and he’s called Bert elsewhere in the story.


Sketches Pages:
Hydro (Hydroman): 1940, Re’glar Fellers Heroic Comics 1-29 (Eastern Color Printing). One of Bill Everett’s several water based heroes. A friend of Bob Blake’s develops a serum and antidote that allows one to dissolve into liquid, appear from various liquid sources (once materializing out of an ink pen). Bob allows himself to be injected with it, thinking it’d help him fight forces of evil. He must’ve decided he might need a little more of an edge and also made a bulletproof outfit.

Fighting Yank we know.

Silver Streak: 1940, Silver Streak Comics #3 (Lev Gleason). A racing enthusiast swami is suspicious of drivers’ deaths caused by giant insects. After a man he hypnotized to race for him is killed, the swami resurrects him and instructs him to track down the killer. The driver now has the power of super speed.

Captain Future (2): 1940, Startling Comics #1 (Better). Scientist Andrew Bryant experiments with gamma and infrared rays, discovering that "crossing" them gives him superpowers. He decides to fight crime. His girlfriend is Grace Adams, a detective of the Agatha Detective Agency. Future has superstrength and fires lightning-like bolts from his hands. NOTE: The first Captain Future is a pulp sci-fi space hero from the same publisher. That Captain Future made it into comics called Major Mars, while Bryant co-opted the name for his superhero id.

Woman In Red: 1940, Thrilling Comics 2-18, 20-22, 24-30, 34, 35, 38, 46 (Better). Police Detective Peggy Allen, aka the Woman in Red, helped the police solving tough crimes. The police commissioner was aware of her dual identity. As the Woman in Red, Peggy carried and used a gun. I’m guessing she was a fan of Wilkie Collins’ WOMAN IN WHITE. Woman in Red is one of the first of comics’ first female superheroes, depending on your criteria and whether you consider Fantomah a superheroine or require superpowers for the character to be considered such (which would then kick Batman out of the genre).

Target & the Targeteers: 1940-49, Target Comics vol 1 no 10. Niles Reed invents a bullet proof costume and recruits friends Dave Brown and Tom Foster to help clear his brother’s name and avenge his death. They wear identical costumes except where Niles’ I s yellow, theirs are red and blue. There was briefly early on a Female Targeteer. Of interesting note, some of the non-War years adventures were written by Mickey Spillane.

Cat-man: 1940, Crash Comics 4 & 5, Cat-Man Comics 1-32. 1940. David Merryweather was one of the many heroes who got his start when his parents were killed while in the jungle leaving the orphan to be raised by animals, but one of the few to actually adopt a costumed identity. Early in his career, he had all the attributes of the cat: agility, night vision and nine lives. Eventually, he joins the army and gains a ward, Katie Conn, who dresses in an identical outfit and calls herself Kitten (1941, Cat-Man Comics #5). Katie's parents were killed in a trainwreck and was already a trained acrobat. She also worked with other side-kicks as part of the group Little Leaders. By war's end, Kitten is depicted as pretty much a full-grown woman.

The Owl: 1940, Crackajack Funnies #25 (Dell). One of my favorite characters, I like the simplicity of his costume for one. He’s Nick Terry, a special investigator, who takes up the costumed identity when he feels the law is a bit too restricting in dispensing justice. He eventually confides his identity to his newspaper columnist girlfriend Belle Wayne who shortly takes up a similar costume to help him out as Owl Girl.

Strongman: 1940, Crash Comics #1 (Tem Publishing). Playboy Percy van Norton is given a book of “yogi” which he studies until it gives him a body and mind of a superman (putting him on par with Dynamic Man in the strength and stamina department though Strongman cannot fly). As Percy he pretends to be meek and unadventurous, a playboy Clark Kent to his Strongman Superman.

Major Victory: 1941, Dynamic Comics #1 (Harry “A” Chesler). A soldier is killed and is then brought back to life as the superpowered Major Victory by “Father Patriot”.

Dynamic Man and Dynamic Boy: already went into the history some of Dynamic Man. HOWEVER, this is the wrong Dynamic Boy. See, Chesler also recycled that name and in addition to Dynamic Man’s brother and sidekick, they had two Dynamic Boys that were solo acts, Kent Banning is Dynamic Boy in Dynamic Comics 2 & 3, pre-dating Dynamic Man’s partner and then another one in Dynamic Comics #13 (according to the GCD). I guess the argument could be made is they all are constructs by Dynamic Man, his earliest Dynamic Family. Unless the contradiction is addressed in-story though, it’s still an error.

One of the things missing so far is a sense of fun. It is falling into the same tropes that Alan Moore’s Terra Obscura issues of TOM STRONG and the following two mini’s did by Paul Hogan. The same thing doom that looms over THE TWELVE. And the same thing that helped drive me from the mega crossovers from the companies of late. It’s all about heroes vs. heroes. Heroes cannot be noble, there have to be darker sides to them. The villains are bad, but at least they aren’t hypocritical thus they gain a measure of nobility and respect. To their ownselves, they be true.

It’s especially frustrating when I maintain a site that shows just how many colorful and interesting golden-age villains existed. They weren’t all spies and gangsters. Even I was surprised by just how many I have discovered. In Fox Comics alone where we got the likes of the heroes Blue Beetle, Samson, and the Flame, we had villains with their own strips: the monster creating Dr. Mortal, the Gorilla (a gorilla whose brain was swapped out with that of a conniving scientist), the Sorceress of Zoom who ruled a whole magical city.

Instead, we are still getting watered down versions of Alan Moore Watchmen where superheroes aren’t to inspire us to be better but to warn us against becoming monsters ourselves.

Other books this week, real quick.
JLA: CLASSIFIED #53. The penultimate issue to Roger Stern and John Byrne’s arc and it has been a lot of fun, full of superhero action and a truly worthy villain. The comic has been plagued with coloring issues though. This time out, when the JLA get realized as the gods they could be, Black Canary is colored as if she’s Wonder Woman who’s not in this issue. It’s really confusing when on panel she’s called Black Canary and you see someone that looks like Wonder Woman attacking some perps along with some birds. My first thought was that Black Canary had been turned into some birds and then I realized that WW isn’t in the flashback scenes.

STAR TREK: ALIEN SPOTLIGHT: ROMULANS: Another John Byrne comic and a hoot at looking at the Romulan people in the days of the original tv show. There’s a few flaws in that while JB nails the costumes and designs when drawing from the show, but the designs of the buildings and other space vehicles are more his style which really sticks out. The lead character of the honorable Romulan chosen to captain the first Bird of Prey with the cloaking device and charged with starting a war sets up a nice conflict of personal honor vs duty to one’s government and family.

JSA: CLASSIFIED: Wildcat takes the ring in what looks to be an interesting story as he investigates some suspicious goings ons at one of his old gyms. I could do without the guest-star at the end, but it looks to be a great tale. Based on this one issue so far, I’d love to see them handle a Wildcat ongoing.

JSA: Interesting to note that both JLA:Classified and JSA feature powerful supervillains that see themselves as god-killers. Yet, Stern and Byrne’s been good old-fashioned superhero storytelling and non-stop action and will be complete in 5 issues and Geoff Johns’ story has been building for 13 issues and will continue for a few more. This issue does manage to do what Johns does best which is character moments. As much as I loathe Jakeem Thunder, Johns does a good job with him here and the Kingdom Come Superman paying a visit to the Daily Planet is almost as powerful as JMS’ handling of Captain Wonder in THE TWELVE. Makes me wish Johns was on something like the original Secret Six or Challengers of the Unknown.