Blog 2.0

Finally, we reach the number-one spot on the list of Golden Turkey villains created by Gardner Fox to threaten the Justice League of America.

So far, we’ve taken a look at super-villains who had the brains and the power, but fell woefully short in the strategy department.  Guys like the Lord of Time and Headmaster Mind, who left holes in their plans big enough for the entire JLA to charge through.  And then there were fellows like Pete Ricketts and Joe Parry, who suffered from terminal stupidity.  When luck dropped nearly invincible power into their laps, they showed themselves to be so inept that it was almost an embarrassment that it took the JLA to defeat them.

So what does that say about the villain who stands in the number-one spot, the very worst of this line-up of losers?

Before I reveal the JLA foe whose performance places him as the lamest of the lame, let’s look at the factors which earned him that dubious distinction.

■  A genuinely menacing villain possesses the raw power, either innately or in the weapons at his disposal, to potentially overcome and eliminate the Justice League.

The Lord of Time, and even Pete Ricketts and Joe Parry, could claim this.  The others on the list had, at least, a good enough gimmick to have given a single JLA member a tough time.  Not so for the Number One spot-holder.

■  A true JLA foe is playing for high stakes.  We’re talking fate of the Earth, or the universe itself, in the balance.  At the least, there’s the threat of crime on a major scale.

Of all the villainy attempted by this list of losers, the crime attempted by the baddie I’ve rated as Number One was the most mundane---a routine matter for the police department, not the World’s Greatest Super-Heroes.

■  An evil-doer challenging the Justice League is willing, even eager, to destroy the super-heroes.

For all their other failings, the other villains who made the list were more than ready to do this.  But not the Number One.  Oh, no---he wanted no part of the JLA and only fought when he was cornered.  That made him smarter than, say, Johnny Marbles.  But it hardly fills the reader with a sense of dread when the bad guy spends most of the issue trying not to get found.

It boiled down to this:  of the elements that a threat should have to justify the involvement of the Justice League of America---or even only five or six of the members, per Fox’s later formula---this particular criminal lacked them all.  Ace, the Bat-Hound could have caught this guy.

And, so, the countdown ends with . . . .

1.  “Bullets” Jameson  (JLA # 62 [May, 1968])

Like many of Gardner Fox’s scripts, “Panic from a Blackmail Box” is intricately plotted.  In this case, Fox weaves several different motives into one tight knot.  It’s smartly done, but younger readers of the day probably had a difficult time keeping the threads straight.

It begins with a splash-page flashback to 1945 and a man in a motorboat.  A sudden, violent squall overturns the craft, plunging the man into the cold depths of Lake Michamaw.  He clutches a metal box, refusing to let go of it, even as it drags him to a watery death.  Twenty-three years later, a fisherman’s hook snags the handle of the box and brings it to the surface.

Fast-forwarding to the present, we learn that two men residing in Lakeside City suddenly have had their lives upended.  One, Harold Loomis, wealthy C.E.O. of the Loomis Electronics Corporation, discovers that he is actually the son of Leo Locke, a notorious gangster killed twenty-five years earlier.  The other man is noted archæologist Homer Gridley, whose earliest historical discoveries have been uncovered as frauds, committed by Gridley himself to establish his reputation.

Both men receive the news from reporters for the Lakeside City Tribune.  The newsmen show Loomis and Gridley photocopies of documents which unmistakably establish the truth.

Things get worse for Harold Loomis, in particular.  A few days after the Tribune publishes both stories, the morning mail brings Loomis an unsigned message---a red bullet!  Loomis has checked up on Leo Locke, the man he now knows was his father.  A quarter of a century ago, the Mob had put out a contract on Locke and his family.  They got to Locke’s wife and Locke himself died in an accident.

The Mob had been unaware that Locke had had a son---until the Lakeside City Tribune published the story about Harold Loomis.  The scarlet slug is a message to Loomis that the contract is still open.  Determined to get revenge on the informer who sent the damning evidence to the newspaper, Harold Loomis reaches into his desk drawer for a gun.

On the other side of town, Harold Gridley, bitter over the ruin of his career, has the same goal.  He reaches for a pistol as well.

That night, as Tribune editor Marley Thorne walks home, someone fires at shot at him from the shadows of a near-by alley.  The attacker is startled when he sees a second gunman also take a shot at Thorne.  Both slugs narrowly miss their target and the terrified editor flees for his life.

Right about now, a reader might have been wondering what all of this had to do with the Justice League of America.  He was about to find out.

Thorne, it develops, is the brother-in-law of Barry (the Flash) Allen.  Barry and his wife, Iris, are visiting the newsman, who excitedly blurts out the details of his brush with death.

Now, if this were an issue of The Flash, Barry would have told Thorne that he was going down to the drug store for some ice cream, then once out the door, he would have changed into the Fastest Man Alive, and wrapped up this case before the letter column.

But since it’s an issue of Justice League of America, instead Barry simply studies recent issues of the Tribune.  Then, the next day, after the conclusion of an uneventful regular meeting of the Justice League, the Flash chats it up with the members who haven’t gone home, yet.  He suspects Harold Loomis and Homer Gridley of having something to do with the attack on his brother-in-law.

Not exactly a Batman-level deduction.

The Scarlet Speedster and the other lingerers---the Atom, the Batman, Green Lantern, and Hawkman---are about to break up when their police-band radio reports that a gang called the Pyrotekniks has just robbed a Lakeside City Bank.  Batman and the Atom and Hawkman take interest because the same gang has also hit their respective cities, as well.

They decide to accompany the Flash back to Lakeside City.  Green Lantern figures, “Oh, what the hell,” and goes along with them.

In Lakeside City, while the other Justice Leaguers go over the details of the Pyrotekniks’ bank hold-up, the Flash consults with Marley Thorne.  The Crimson Comet asks to see the metal box that contained the information indicting Harold Loomis and Homer Gridley.  That’s when Thorne discovers that the box has been stolen from his office safe.

Before the Flash can ask, “Hey, Batman, what do you make of this?”, word comes that the Pyrotekniks are in the middle of a jewel heist.  The JLA rushes off to intercept the criminal gang.

The Pyrotekniks are well named.  The crooks hit the approaching heroes with multi-colour blasts from their peculiar side-arms.  The discharges have a strobe-light effect and disorient the JLAers briefly.  Their worst effect is to render Green Lantern unconscious.

Not that the other four Leaguers have any real problem with the gang.  The pyrotechnic blasts jolt Our Heroes’ minds and bodies a bit, but nothing they can’t shake off.  Still, it’s a bit off-putting (and shows that Gardner Fox was padding the story) when the Justice League---who had readily dealt with such fearsome menaces as the Demons Three, Starro the Conqueror, and the Crime Syndicate---take a whole five pages to take out a half-dozen ordinary crooks carrying tricked-out flashguns.

Still, it sets us up for the big surprise.  The leader of the Pyrotekniks is---Leo Locke!

You may have noticed, gang, that we’ve nearly reached the end of the first half of the adventure, and there hasn’t been a glimmer of Bullets Jameson in the picture, yet.

Patience, friends.  We’re about to get to him.  Well, a mention of him, at least.  You see, Bullets Jameson wasn’t the kind of villain to take the spotlight in a major criminal production.  He’s just a simple mobster trying to do his job the best he knows how.  In fact, Bullets would have been just as happy if the Justice League had gone home and forgotten his name.

Behind bars, the very-much-alive Leo Locke ties together several of the dangling ends for the JLAers.

“Twenty-five years ago, I tried to take over this territory from Bullets Jameson and his Bulleteers gang by ratting on them to the police!  They escaped the trap---and put a death-curse on me and my family!  Although they got my wife, I managed to sneak away with my son---whom I left at the doorstep of the rich Loomis family, figuring that since they had no kids, they might adopt him!”

Locke goes on to explain that he staged his own death in an accident.  Then, he formed his own gang, which eventually became the Pyrotekniks.  He and his minions were ready to wipe out the Bulleteers and take over their territory, like he had planned years ago.  Until Locke and his men were caught by the Justice League.

Our Heroes are curious as to why the hardened gangster is so talkative.  It’s because Locke needs their help.

Not too long ago, Locke was fishing in Lake Michamaw and his line snagged a metal box.  Inside the box were documents dated 1945, obtained by a private investigator.  These were the records that named Harold Loomis’ true father and exposed Homer Gridley’s first successes as fraudulent.  (Here, Gardner Fox’s frequent reliance on convenient coïncidence appears.)

Locke was the one who sent the documents to the Lakeside City Tribune.  He couldn’t have cared less about Homer Gridley, but he deliberately exposed his own son’s identity in order to draw Bullets Jameson to Lakeside City---where Locke and his Pyrotekniks could kill him!

Now, with Locke and his boys in jail, there’s no-one to protect Harold Loomis from Jameson.  He begs the JLA to save his son.

Part Two opens with the Justice Leaguers discovering that neither Harold Loomis nor Homer Gridley have been seen for days.  Hawkman throws together a Thanagarian gizmo which enables him to track Loomis’ unique “body radiations”.  They pick up Loomis’ trail at the Tribune safe from which the metal box had been stolen and follow it to a cave in near-by Lakeside Mountain.

Here, the JLAers find Loomis and Homer Gridley, working out their next move.  What Our Heroes don’t know is that a couple of the Bulleteer mobsmen have also found the cave.  The crooks drive off to inform Bullets Jameson of Loomis’ hiding place.

Fortunately, the Batman intuits that, if the Justice League could find Loomis, then so could Bullets Jameson.  The super-heroes scour the region just outside the cave and find the footprints and tyre tracks left by Jameson’s men.  With the help of Green Lantern’s power ring, the JLAers follow the tracks down a country road that leads to an abandoned stone fort---the hide-out of Bullets Jameson!

Jameson has no desire to tangle with the JLA; he knows he’s not in their---er---league.  He and his five underlings huddle in the heart of the fortress, hoping that the death traps Jameson installed for protection will stop the approaching super-heroes.

They don’t, of course.  In fact, the only casualty suffered by the Leaguers occurs after they penetrate the central chamber---when a gimmicked ceiling tile conks Green Lantern on the noggin, knocking him cold.  Here, on page 19, Bullets Jameson makes his first appearance on stage.  With no place to run, their backs against the wall, he and his gang draw their guns, hoping that slugs will stop the advancing Justice Leaguers.

Yeah, right.

The Bulleteers scarcely make a show of it.  It only takes eight panels for the four JLAers still on their feet to put them down for the count.

The story would be over---except for the fact that Jameson had the foresight to booby-trap the room where he kept his stolen loot.  A low-level explosive device triggers, blasting Batman, Hawkman, the Atom, and the Flash into unconsciousness.

Jameson and his boys grab their guns and prepare to pump hot lead into the fallen super-heroes.  Before they can do so, Harold Loomis and Homer Gridley interrupt with their own weapons drawn.  The odds are six-to-two against Loomis and Gridley, but their guns are both aimed at Bullets.  No matter what happens, Gridley points out, Jameson won’t make it out of there alive.

This, naturally, inspires in the gangster a moment of personal reflexion.

While Jameson considers his options, Green Lantern, unnoticed, recovers from his bump on the head.  The Emerald Gladiator then ends the Mexican standoff by melting all of the guns with a burst from his power ring.

That brings us to page 23 and the usual smiles-all-around JLA ending.

It’s probably occurred to you that Gardner Fox wrote a corker of a mystery.  I agree; he did.  He even employed one of Lester Dent’s favourite plot devices in his Doc Savage novels, of having two criminal outfits working against each other.

Yes, it’s a great case---for Perry Mason or Rip Kirby or Joe Mannix.  But as a Justice League adventure, it’s underwhelming.  It lacks the Earth-shattering threat or overarching evil that one expects to be present in a case that requires several super-heroes banding together to defeat.  There’s no cosmic drama here.  It’s a crime novel, with the Justice League jammed in place of the usual detective hero.

And that’s why Bullets Jameson is the lamest of all the JLA’s Silver-Age foes.

It’s not that he was ludicrous, even slightly---like Nameless Nutt or Headmaster Mind.  Nor was he stupid, like Johnny Marbles. 

He just wasn’t a JLA-level villain.  Not even a little bit, for those times when only a handful of members participated in the case.

No super-powers.  No highly advanced intellect.  No laboratory full of death-dealing creations.  He didn’t even have a super-weapon fall into his lap, like Pete Ricketts and Joe Parry.  All he had was a gun.

The Earth certainly wasn’t in any danger from Jameson.  World-domination wasn’t on his to-do list.  He wasn’t even building a massive criminal empire; he was having a hard enough time just holding on to his Lakeside City territory.  Bullets was a run-of-the–mill gangster, going about doing typical crook business.  Commissioner Gordon wouldn’t even light off the Bat-signal for that.

Pitting the Justice League of America against Bullets Jameson was like calling out a S.W.A.T. team to tackle a litterbug.

In a letter to the JLA Mail Room appearing in JLA # 65 (Sep., 1968), David Lewin, of Lomita, California, commented on “Panic from a Blackmail Box”.  In criticising the lacklustre threat posed by Bullets Jameson and his Bulleteers, he said it best:

“I just hope that the next issue doesn’t find the JLA overpowering little Johnny who forged his parents’ signature to his report card.”

Unfortunately for Bullets Jameson and his standing as the most unworthy Silver-Age JLA foe, Gardner Fox never wrote a story about little Johnny.

By Andrew A. Smith

Scripps Howard News Service

April 24, 2012 -- Shooters is a new graphic novel that puts the emotional journey of its warrior protagonist at the center of the story. As such, it’s a “war book” that takes us into places few other war books ever have.

Shooters (DC/Vertigo, $22.99) follows Terry Glass, a chief warrant officer serving with U.S. forces in Iraq in the early 2000s. A dedicated soldier, Glass’s world explodes – literally – in a way that wipes out most of his unit and leaves him terribly injured. We follow a traumatized Glass during his rehabilitation, during which his marriage disintegrates and the rest of his life falls apart. He even resigns from the military, for reasons I will not spoil.

Which makes him a ripe recruit for a private military contractor named Steel River (read: Blackwater). We all know Blackwater did a lot of things in Iraq, but we’re all a bit fuzzy on exactly what. Authors Eric Trautmann (Checkmate) and Brandon Jerwa (G.I. Joe) do us all a favor by taking us into this world, and even though Shooters is fiction, their view inside Blackwater feels eerily plausible, even likely.

But, despite all the jargon and detail, Shooters isn’t a military procedural. Nor does it stand on a soapbox; it neither glorifies war nor decries it. It takes no positions on the politics of the war. The Iraq War – it really could be any war – is simply the environment in which Glass’s character is forged.

So Shooters is, very specifically, Chief Warrant Officer Terry Glass’s story. And it is a hard story about a hard war and a hard man who has to come to grips with that war has made him. It is a painful story of conflict, but not just the outer conflict that shapes Glass. It is the story of Glass’s conflict with war, the military, PTSD, injury and recovery, his wife, his own emotions. As his name implies, he reflects all these conflicts so that we may see them, just as he furiously deflects them away … until the climax, where he must face them all at once.

Is that a war story? I think it is, although it bears almost no resemblance for what passed for war stories in comics for a long time, like Sgt. Rock or The Haunted Tank. There’s a place for jingoistic war books, one where the super-competent American always wins, or one that dwells on the cool equipment and jargon to the point of fetishism. I’ve read more than a few of those myself.

But for me, the best war comics are the ones that focus on the human element, like Harvey Kurtzman’s 1950s stories for EC’s Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat, or Garth Ennis’ current Battlefields for Dynamite. Shooters falls into this paradigm, and it’s a powerful story, even though the ending was pretty much what I expected. The trip to get there is worth it.

Strangely, I was less impressed with the art, although I generally love Steve Lieber (Whiteout). Lieber seems to be going for a minimalist approach here, which is usually the sign of a maturing artist. But here it had the effect of looking rather bare and plain. Still, Lieber’s storytelling is impeccable, and he never resorts to any tricks or effects – his work is smooth and clear.

At first, I wasn’t sure I liked Shooters – I didn’t know what to make of it. But the fact that I was still thinking about it the next day is a testament to its emotional impact.

Also with guns:

Dark Horse has given us the Crime Does Not Pay Archives Volume 1 ($49.99), which is the first in a series reprinting the entire run of the most notorious crime comic book in American history. But let me warn that what was scandalous in 1942, when the four issues reprinted in this book first appeared, is pretty weak tea for today’s audiences. Secondly, the comics’ claim of “all TRUE crime stories!” is manifestly false; whatever truth there is in these stories is wildly exaggerated to maximize violence and sexual titillation. And my third warning is this: This is a book for the hard-core fan who wants the whole series, like me. For those who just want a sample, let me steer you back to Dark Horse’s first plunge into these waters, Blackjacked and Pistol-Whipped: A Crime Does Not Pay Primer, which contains the best of the CDNP stories.

Contact Andrew A. Smith of the Memphis Commercial Appeal at capncomics@aol.com.

Art

1. Shooters is the story of a U.S. serviceman's emotional journey. Copyright DC Entertainment.

2. Crime Does Not Pay Archives Volume 1 reprints the first four issues of the notorious comic book from 1942. Copyright Dark Horse Books.

30 DAYS OF NIGHT ONGOING #7

ACTION COMICS #9
AGE OF APOCALYPSE #3
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #685 ENDS
AMERICAN VAMPIRE TP VOL 02 (MR)
ANIMAL MAN #9
ANIMAL MAN TP VOL 01 THE HUNT
ART OF JAMES HOTTINGER SC (MR)
AVENGELYNE #8
AVENGERS ACADEMY #29 AVX
AVENGERS ART OF AVENGERS HC SLIPCASE
AVENGERS BLACK WIDOW STRIKES #1 (OF 3)
AVENGERS KREE SKRULL WAR HC
AVENGERS VS X-MEN #1 (OF 12) 2ND PTG
AVENGERS VS X-MEN #3 (OF 12) AVX

BART SIMPSONS PAL MILHOUSE #1
BATMAN & ROBIN TP V3 BATMAN ROBIN MUST DIE
BATWING #9 (NIGHT OF THE OWLS)
BELA LUGOSI TALES FROM GRAVE #2 (RES)
BLUE ESTATE #11 (MR)
BOYS #66 (MR)
BULLETPROOF COFFIN DISINTERRED #4 (OF 6) (MR)

CONNIE TP UNSEEN AVENGER (RES)

DAREDEVIL #12
DEFENDERS #6
DETECTIVE COMICS #9 (NIGHT OF THE OWLS)
DIAL H #1
DOCTOR WHO CLASSICS SERIES IV #3 (OF 6)
DOGS OF MARS TP (MR)
DOROTHY AND WIZARD IN OZ #6 (OF 8)
DOROTHY OF OZ PREQUEL #2 (OF 4)
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS FORGOTTEN REALMS TP VOL 3

EARTH 2 #1
EPIC KILL #1
EXILED #1

FANBOYS VS ZOMBIES #2
FURY MAX #1 (MR)

GARFIELD #1
GFT MYTHS & LEGENDS #16 (MR)
GI COMBAT #1
GI JOE A REAL AMERICAN HERO #178
GIRLS ON TOP PIN UP ART OF MATT DIXON TP (MR)
GODZILLA KINGDOM OF MONSTERS TP VOL 03
GREEN ARROW #9
GRIMM FAIRY TALES TP VOL 11 (MR)

HACK SLASH #15 (MR)
HEAVY METAL MAY 2012 (MR)
HOWARD LOVECRAFT & UNDERSEA KINGDOM GN
HULK SMASH AVENGERS #1 (OF 5)

INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #516

JUSTICE LEAGUE #6 2ND PTG
JUSTICE LEAGUE HC VOL 01 ORIGIN
JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL #9

KIRBY GENESIS SILVER STAR #5

LOCKE & KEY TP VOL 04 KEYS TO THE KINGDOM

MARKSMEN TP VOL 01
MARVELS AVENGERS AVENGERS INITIATIVE
MIND THE GAP #1

ONE TP (GG STUDIO) VOL 01

PIGS #7 (MR)
PLANET OF THE APES TP VOL 02

RED LANTERNS #9
RED SONJA #66
RED SONJA WITCHBLADE #3
RICH JOHNSTONS THE AVENGEFULS #1
RICHIE RICH TP VOL 01 WELCOME TO RICH RESCUE
ROGER LANGRIDGES SNARKED TP VOL 01

SANDMAN TP VOL 09 THE KINDLY ONES NEW ED (MR)
SHOOTERS HC (MR)
SKELETON KEY COLOR SPECIAL ONE SHOT
SMALLVILLE SEASON 11 #1
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #236
SPAWN #219
SPIRIT WORLD HC
STAR TREK CLASSICS TP V3 ENCOUNTERS
STAR TREK ONGOING #8
STORMWATCH #9
SUPREME #64
SUPURBIA #3 (OF 4)
SWAMP THING #9
SWEET TOOTH #33 (MR)

TEEN TITANS ANNUAL #1 (THE CULLING)
THE LONE RANGER #5
THREE STOOGES GN VOL 01 BED BUGGED
TOY STORY #3 (OF 4)

ULTIMATE COMICS SPIDER-MAN #10

VALKYRIA CHRONICLES SC VOL 02 WORLD ARTWORKS
VENOM #17
VESCELL #7 (MR)
VOLTRON YEAR ONE #2

WOLVERINE AND X-MEN ALPHA AND OMEGA #5 (OF 5)
WORLDS FINEST #1

X-FACTOR #235
X-MEN #28
X-O MANOWAR (ONGOING) #1

YOUNG LOVECRAFT GN VOL 01
YOUNG LOVECRAFT GN VOL 02

This list is a copy of the list at memphiscomics.com. Arrivals at your LCS may vary.

Andrew A. Smith

Scripps Howard News Service

April 17, 2012 -- My review pile is overflowing with books that are part of what has become a huge revenue machine for publishers: reprints. But this tsunami of old comics, some not seen for 70 years, raises a new question: Which are really worth reading?

That wasn’t asked in decades past, because prior to the avalanche of hardcover reprints, not much was available. Fans and pseudo-historians like me were able to buy whatever reprints came out, because there just weren’t that many. And, of course, those few were generally the cream of the crop.

Now, though, one must make choices. Let me help with a few examples:

* Hermes Press is reprinting the material originally published by now-defunct Gold Key in the 1960s and ‘70s that was licensed from television shows. Some of it is vaguely interesting because the shows these comics were based on were pretty good, like Dark Shadows, Land of the Giants, The Time Tunnel and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. But now comes My Favorite Martian: The Complete Series: Volume One ($49.99), mediocre comics based on a mediocre TV show. This series isn’t worth a volume one, much less however many more are planned, unless you’re an MFM completist. If such a thing exists.

I don’t want to kick Hermes, though, because it’s also reprinting The Phantom comics published at various times by Gold Key, King and Charlton in the 1960s and ‘70s, a project long overdue. These comics aren’t the finest ever made, but they never get worse than pretty good. Several artists that later hit the big time started here, like Jim Aparo and Don Newton. And The Phantom is such a seminal character in adventure fiction – the first hero to wear a costume, predating Superman – that I will buy every book, plus the reprints of the comic strip that Hermes is reprinting simultaneously.

* Last week I savaged Showcase Presents: Young Love (DC Comics, $19.99) for romance stories from the early 1960s that are so misogynistic that they affront conscience and so idiotic they insult intelligence. But that doesn’t mean all romance stories are terrible, as evidenced by Young Romance: The Best of Simon & Kirby’s Romance Comics (Fantagraphics, $29.99).

Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, the marquee team of the early days of comics, pioneered the romance genre in 1947 with this title, and as you’d expect from the creators of Captain America, Young Romance wasn’t bad.  It had its fair share of melodramatic tear-jerkers, and occasional forays into misogyny (stupid women who need a man to teach them how to live), but Simon & Kirby also flirted with social issues like class distinctions and religious conflicts. And they didn’t restrict themselves to small towns or big cities, like most romance stories, finding romance out West or in the Korean War. Young Romance offers 21 of the best of Simon & Kirby’s romance stories, and that’s probably just the right amount.

* I truly appreciate comics historian Blake Bell’s efforts to codify the careers of early comics creators, especially the Steve Ditko Archives (up to Volume 2, waiting for 3). But Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives Volume 1 (Fantagraphics Books, $39.99) was a disappointment. There’s no information in here about the creator of Sub-Mariner that I didn’t already glean from Bell’s 2010 Fire and Water: Bill Everett, The Sub-Mariner and the Birth of Marvel Comics (Fantagraphics, $39.99). Which isn’t surprising, since the primary purpose of this book is to reprint rare, old, non-Sub-Mariner stories by Everett. But that is a problem in itself in that A) Everett’s early work is pretty amateurish, and B) excluding Sub-Mariner means excludes the writer/artist’s best early work. Oh, well, maybe Volume 2 will be better.

Finally, I have to mention Sugar and Spike Archives Volume 1 (DC Comics, $49.99). I’ve heard all my life how terrific this 1950s comic book was, which starred two toddlers with their own baby speech adults could not understand, written and drawn by the legendary Shelly Mayer. But, to tell you the truth, I couldn’t make it through this book. It seemed to have only one joke – the Look Who's Talking joke – and the misadventures the kids share are both bland and faintly familiar, as if Mayer was replicating every TV show and movie he’d ever seen.

So there are some warning signs about recent reprints, brought to you by Captain Comics. My motto: “I read the crap so you don’t have to.”

Contact Andrew A. Smith of the Memphis Commercial Appeal at capncomics@aol.com.

ART

1. My Favorite Martian: The Complete Series: Volume One reprints comics that probably don't deserve the hardback treatment. Copyright Hermes Press.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been reading all of the X-Men comics in historical order. Along the way, I picked up a few odds and ends that I hadn’t purchased the first time around.

The project itself has been a blast. I’ve enjoyed reading so many of my favorite stories over again, whether it’s Roy Thomas and Neal Adams, Joe Madureira and Scott Lobdell or Joss Whedon and John Cassaday.

The side project- buying the mini-series I skipped the first time- has been interesting as well, although for different reasons. For the most part, these supplementary series have been predictably mediocre. I have a good sense of my own taste- and I like to think I have a good sense of quality- so there are solid reasons why I skipped these series in the first place.

Even though these odds and ends have been mostly mediocre, I don’t feel bad about reading them. I was able to pick up most of them for a dollar so I’m a little more tolerant than if I was paying cover price. They can be interesting as historical artifacts. Plus, they’re the X-Men so I’m always going to like them a little bit.

However, every once in a while, a comic surprises me by being better than I expected. Those previously undiscovered gems are the one of the real joys of this reading project.

I recently read Magneto’s second and third mini-series from 1999 and 2000. The second series, Magneto Rex, was predictably awful. In the X-Men comics of the time, the United Nations had handed the island of Genosha over to Magneto so that he would relent from re-aligning earth’s magnetic field. It was a dumb idea at the time and the mini-series doesn’t make it any better. U.N. representatives and SHIELD agents are constantly second-guessing the reasons for giving the mutant terrorist Magneto a nation of his own. Huxley’s defenses fall flat. They fail the answer the problem behind the basic premise of the story. The Magneto side of the story is pretty boring, too, with as many boardroom scenes as anything else.

After reading Magneto Rex, I had incredibly low expectations for the third mini-series, Dark Seduction. But I figured I’m committed to this reading project and I might as well see it through. I’m glad I did. Fabian Nicieza impressed me with a surprisingly strong story. First of all, he set aside the problem with the premise. The question isn’t “How did Magneto gain control of Genosha?” The real question is “What will Magneto do now that he has it?” Whether Magneto received the country as a gift or invaded of his own accord was immaterial to the issue of subduing opposition, establishing order and rebuilding a nation wracked by war.

Second, Nicieza smartly focused on the main characters. He reduced the roles of Philip Moreau, Jenny Ransome and even Huxley. The story centered upon the relationships between Magneto, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch and Polaris. Their family struggles took center stage. Dark Seduction was a personal affair as much as it was a geopolitical crisis. Later stories, like House of M and Jeff Parker’s Exiles, wisely followed Nicieza’s lead. The underlying problem of the premise is still present in Dark Seduction, but Nicieza allows it to fade into the background while he focuses on more interesting issues like filial resentment, familial rivalry and lust for power.

I also read a couple of mini-series about Domino. The 1997 series was another clunker. It was one of the most laughably poorly plotted stories I had ever read. Domino was in Brazil when she received a warning that her former lover Milo was in trouble back in the United States. Meanwhile, Lady Deathstrike steals Milo from his prison for unknown purposes. When Domino arrives at the prison, the guards are lying slumped on the floor and Lady Deathstrike is standing in his cell. Milo, however, is long gone, having been shipped to a secret facility in Alaska. That’s right. In the time in which Domino flew from Brazil to the U.S., no one cleaned up this super-secure prison or even noticed that it had been infiltrated. And, oh yeah, Lady Deathstrike had apparently been standing around for hours while other characters traveled across continents but then she expresses surprise that Domino found her before she made her escape. This wasn’t supposed to be a comedy series, but I had a good laugh anyway.

Once again, I had pretty low expectations going into the second Domino series. But the 2003 series was a marked improvement. Brian Stelfreeze gave us a taut spy thriller. Domino is a mercenary and thief for hire. However, we soon discover that her payment isn’t money. It’s information about her long-lost mother. Domino is quickly caught up in a web of intrigue that leads her from one location to another. One ally betrays her. One enemy assists her. And the secret weapon she thinks she’s looking for turns out to be something completely different. By the end, Domino finds her mother and, in a poetic moment, makes one of the same choices her mother did when she was young.
One of the best moments is actually a little one. At one point, Domino realizes she’s in over her head and she does something we rarely see in solo superhero comics: she calls a friend. However, Cable is tied up with his own adventures and chides her to handle it on her own. It was a quick moment, but it answered several questions while simultaneously raising the stakes.

This wasn’t a perfect comic. There is a small editorial mistake early on when Stelfreeze can’t remember if Domino is fighting five or six goons in a room. But those little mistakes can be easily forgiven when the tone is right and the story is compelling.

ABE SAPIEN TP VOL 02 DEVIL DOES NOT JEST
ACTIVITY #5
ADAM WARROCK WAR FOR INFINITY AUDIO CD
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WOLVERINE WOLVERINE'S REVENGE TP

X-MEN LEGACY #265
X-MEN WAR MACHINES PREM HC

The Golden Age of Reprints and Back Issues

I Complain Not

By Andrew A. Smith

Contributing Editor

March 2012: Regular readers of this column are familiar – probably too familiar – with my belief that this is the Golden Age of Reprints. But it’s also the Golden Age of Back Issues, and all credit goes to that beautiful series of tubes, the Interwebs.

Younger fans might very well ask what has changed since the Pre-Internet days, except that younger fans believe the world began when they were born and don’t really care what happened before that. Or maybe they don’t ask because some Crotchedy Old Fart Fan (COFF) will buttonhole them at the local comic shop and tell them anyway.

I complain not. The way of things, it is. [/Yoda]

But please, younger fans, allow this COFF to wander down Memory Lane and describe the bad old days. Don’t worry, I won’t go far, and if I get lost I’ll hit my MedicAlert bracelet. It’s more or less necessary to inform my answers to editor Brent Frankenhoffenstein’s questions below. If it gets too boring, you can go get a burger, and come back before I’m through. Onward:

Millions of years ago – well, before 1980 or so – the only places you could get back issues were from A) advertisements in the comics themselves (raise your cane if you remember the name Howard Rogofsky), B) flea markets, and C) trades with other kids. All of these options, for various reasons, were frustrating and unsatisfactory. But the main reason is that it was a rare thing indeed to find the exact book you most wanted. Usually you bought what was available, regardless of where those comics actually fell on your priority list. This is why I have a complete run of Captain Action but don’t have the first six issues of Amazing Spider-Man. If I’d had broader purchasing choices back in the day, I wouldn’t have wasted money on the second-tier books I saw everywhere, and instead snatched up the books I really wanted (that would today finance my retirement).

Oh, how things have changed. With the Internet, retailers no longer hold single-town monopolies, and must compete in price with every other online retailer – bringing back-issue prices to the lowest level I have ever seen. And, of course, the buyer can “shop” nationwide without ever leaving his or her La-Z-Boy. Today I get what I want, when I want it, and often at a reasonable price.

With that information under our belt, let’s address Frankenhoofenpfeffer’s questions:

1. Where do you buy your back issues?

Wherever I can find the highest grade for the lowest price. That includes online retailers, my local comic shops, and auctions.

Yeah, that’s kinda obvious, but re-read what I said about the miserable past above. Before the advent of the Internet, my options were few. The only good thing that can be said about living through the Dark Ages is that it taught me patience.

So now if I’m looking for Captain Phlegm #0, I check various places online and locally for the best book at the cheapest price, and if I’m unsatisfied I just wait it out. Eventually someone, somewhere, will price their entire Captain Phlegm run to move and I’m waiting right there in my La-Z-Boy with my credit card at the ready. Also, I can snack.

Just the other day, because of the new Earth-2 Huntress series, I bought online the issues I was missing of the old Earth-2 Huntress series (by Joey Cavalieri and Joe Staton, 1989-1990). It cost me less than a dollar apiece and about three minutes on Google Shopping. While I was at it, I finished off my El Diablo run (by Gerard Jones and Mike Parobeck, also 1989-1990), just to spend enough to get free shipping.

The next time someone says something about “the good old days,” slap them with a rolled-up issue of Captain Action.

2. What's your favorite find?

Before comic shops, comics were brought to various retail outlets by magazine distributors. This had various consequences, among which were A) not all comics were available at all outlets, and B) sometimes old comics were accidentally left on spinner racks at some locations far past their sell-by date.

For an example of B, I once found about 20 issues of Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandoes #33 (“The Grandeur that Was Greece!”) about four years after it had been poublished, at a 7-11 where my family had stopped for gas on a vacation in Florida. (I’m guessing some employee found a stack of comics in a storeroom that some previous employee had failed to put out on display, and just threw them on the spinner rack.) It was weird – but as it happened I had missed that issue (perhaps they had all been sent to Florida?) and promptly bought it.

But my favorite find was a combination of A and B. I usually bought my comics at the Rexall Pharmacy at Summer and White Station in Memphis, see, but sometimes I went on a circuit of all the convenience stores and mom-and-pop shops within bicycle range of my house when I realized I was missing something. And I came to that realization when I saw Green Lantern #82 (Jan 71) on sale at the Rexall. I was floored.

Not just because of the gorgeous Neal Adams artwork, although that was stunning. But because I had assumed Green Lantern had been canceled sometime during the Gil Kane era, because that’s when Green Lantern stopped showing up at the Rexall. (Yes, younger fans, back then you only knew a title had been canceled when you could no longer find new issues. Strange but true. Also, we had no toys, and had to play with rocks.)

I immediately hitched up old faithful – my Schwinn Stingray – and set out on a miles-long foray to dozens of stores in search of old Green Lanterns the distributor might have failed to replace. And, amazingly, I found the entire Neal Adams run of Green Lantern to that point! In one day, I bought Green Lantern #76-82 at places as diverse as B&F Market, Stop-N-Go, and Walgreens!

They were stolen later that day, but that’s not the point. I still remember that magic afternoon.

3. What's your Holy Grail?

Back when dinosaurs ruled the earth, the third issue of a new series had the lowest print run, and were therefore the hardest to find. For more than a decade, my Holy Grail was Conan the Barbarian #3 (Feb 71). After finding that, my Grail became Amazing Spider-Man #11 (Apr 64), because I had every Amazing Spider-Man from #7 on (except for #11), and I got tired of saying “I have every Amazing Spider-Man From #7 on (except for #11).” But I found that one, too. Now my Grail is whatever I’m looking for that I think is overpriced. Currently that’s All-Star Western #10 (Mar 72), which I failed to buy when it was reasonably priced and in the last year has inexplicably shot through the roof in price.

4. If you sell or have sold comics, where have you sold, how do you sell, what advice would you give to a seller starting out?

Buy low, sell high? Caveat Emptor? A penny saved is a penny earned? Sorry, I’ve always been a buyer, not a seller.

5. What's your biggest regret in either buying or selling comics or both?

That’s easy: Not buying early Silver Age comics back in the 1960s, before they escalated astronomically in price.

Which is not to say I really had much opportunity to do so. As noted above, the books I really wanted were hard to find in podunk Memphis, Tenn. (Especially Golden Age books, which were non-existent.) But occasionally I did find some, and managed to complete a number of Marvel series – Avengers, X-Men, Daredevil – and flesh out some long-running DC titles back to 1960 or so (Superman, Action, Flash).

However, the books that draw headline prices today were pretty pricey back then, too. To put it another way, a $100 book I couldn’t afford in the 1960s is today a $1,000 book – which is still too much for a middle-class kid to justify spending on a comic book. As always, those kinds of books remain juuuuust out of my reach.

I’m a level-headed kind of guy, and vaguely proud that I’ve never been a spendthrift. But sometimes I kinda wish that once, just once, I’d splurged on a Fantastic Four #1 or something back then. Just for bragging rights, you know?

Andrew “Captain Comics” Smith has been writing professionally about comics since 1992, and for Comics Buyer’s Guide since 2000.

What's Your Favorite Spider-Man Era?

From the "Coffee Bean Years" to "Spider-Island"

By Andrew "Captain Comics" Smith

Contributing Editor

February 2012: In the words of Maggie Thompson, “the Golden Age of Comics is age 10.” That being the case, a character that’s been around for 50 years like Spider-Man has had a lot of Golden Ages – each one unique and specific to each unique, specific reader.

When I web-swing down Memory Lane, my Golden Age is what I call “the Coffee Bean years,” which roughly correspond to when John Romita, Sr., was drawing the character (Amazing Spider-Man #39-119, Aug 66-Apr 73). There are a lot of reasons for that, which I’ll get to later.

Because, as I sat down to write about my own Golden Age, I began to wonder what eras other fans loved most about the wall-crawler. I set the proposition before the Legion of Superfluous Heroes on my website, fully expecting to be chastised for not swooning over the Lee-Ditko period, which everyone knows is the greatest, wonderfullest, awesomest, and amazingest. Right?

Well, no. To my delight, fans offered love for virtually every Spider-era. Sure, as often as not, Legionnaires favored their own Golden Age. But not always.

First, they gave Ditko his due. “As a fan of the Silver Age,” wrote Rich Steeves of Bridgeport, Conn., “I heard so much about the ‘Master Planner’ arc, and especially [Amazing Spider-Man] issue #33. I finally tracked it down (well, in Masterworks form) and read it. Quite often, these ‘epic’ stories which are over-hyped don’t live up to the legend. But that sequence with Peter under the machinery might be the best spread of pages I’ve ever read.”

George Poague of Clarksville, Tenn., agreed. “Douglas Wolk described that as the comics equivalent of the Odessa steps sequence in the movie Potemkin. It seems to have had an impact on everyone who’s read it, and to have influenced everyone who’s drawn comics since. Who knew a mere comic book could provoke such emotions? Thank you, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.”

Thanks indeed! Here at CBG we usually note the importance of the Master Planner Saga by simply referencing Peter David’s column where he opined that after Amazing Spider-Man #33, no more Spider-stories need ever have been written. It was that issue, David says, in which the adolescent Peter Parker completed his “hero’s journey” and became a Spider-Man.

Following Ditko and Romita Sr., the next major Spider-era was largely defined by artist Ross Andru, never one of my favorites. Nevertheless, Legionnaire Philip Portelli of College Point, N.Y., rose mightily in defense.

“While I fully appreciate the Ditko and Romita eras as truly ‘amazing,’ I started reading Spidey after his Bronze Age began,” he wrote. “Funny, it began with Harry [Osborn ] as the second Green Goblin and ended with the third Green Goblin (#136-180, Sep 74-May 78), with mostly Gerry Conway and Len Wein stories and Ross Andru artwork. Still, in my mind, Andru was THE Spider-artist. The villains were there, the controversies were there, and the silliness was there. Spider-Mobile? Doc Ock marrying Aunt May? JJJ falling in love? Clones, weddings, deaths, returns, soap opera, crime drama. It was all there and I loved every issue.”

Once he got rolling on his Andru-Mobile, Portelli was hard to stop.

“Spidey’s supporting cast truly supported the book and was just as important as Peter. There were guest stars (Nova, Nightcrawler, The Punisher), old villains, new villains, and twists at every turn. Also I would add Marvel Team-Up [which began in 1972] as a wonderful addition to the Spidey saga, especially #38-51, and the first 20 issues of Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man [which began in 1976]. Not to mention I was reading Marvel Tales, too!

“When you look back, Spidey didn’t have that many ‘down’ times. I’m sure I’ll be gently mocked for my pick, but I stand by it, and those great Spidey tales!”

I agree with everything you say until the last, Philip – I won’t mock you, and anyone who tries will have to deal with me! As noted, I was no fan of the work Ross Andru and inker Mike Esposito did on Spidey, probably because I had grown so accustomed to them over at DC, where they had been mainstays on Wonder Woman, Metal Men, and the war books, and they just looked “wrong” to me at Marvel in 1973. But Andru had actually drawn the web-spinner as early as Marvel Super-Heroes #14 (May 68), which ranks him among the very few that drew Spider-Man in the swingin’ ‘60s. How he looked to the adolescent Captain shouldn’t keep him off the Spidey Mt. Rushmore, if anyone ever builds such a thing.

Meanwhile, Legionnaire Jason Marconnet of Tallahassee, Fla., brought us closer to the present with an artist who went on to “Ultimate” fame:

“My favorite era would be the mid-‘90s, right up to the clone era,” Marconnet posted. “I’m a big Mark Bagley fan, and he was the main artist during this time.”

And speaking of the present, Chris Fluit of Penfield, N.Y., came way out of his own Golden Age to praise what we might call the “Dan Slott era,” for today’s most prominent Spider-writer.

“I’m enjoying Spider-Man now more than ever,” he wrote. “Although I grew up with the David/DeFalco/Stern Spider-Man, and it will always have a warm place in my heart, I love what’s happening with the title right now. I love the playfulness and wit. I love the fast-paced action. I love the way in which Peter uses his scientific mind to further his work as Spider-Man. I love the frequently changing status quo. I love the supporting characters. I love the mix of new villains and old ones. For my money, Amazing Spider-Man has been as consistently entertaining as it has ever been.”

Speaking of writer Roger Stern (which Fluit did in passing), his era was the biggest winner, even in comparison to the Romita Senior years.

The long-running Legionnaire Kelvin Childers said, “I can only say the ‘best’ era of Spider-Man was … in the ‘80s. I hold the warmest regard for the Roger Stern/John Romita Jr./Jim Mooney stint, as well as Peter David’s run, which included “The Death of Jean DeWolff.”

Steeves chimed in again with “my favorite period had to be the Roger Stern Hobgoblin period. The twists and turns of that saga blew my pre-adolescent mind. I thought the storytelling was fantastic and I couldn’t wait month to month to see what each new development brought me.

“I have been lukewarm on the character for most of the last 20-25 years or so,” he continued, “but I bring out those back issues from time to time. The way the storyline ended did not live up to my expectations, but I loved it as it happened.”

Mark Stanislawsky of West Haven, Conn., kept it short and sweet: “Roger Stern’s run on Amazing and Spectacular is a classic … which, of course, includes the two-part Juggernaut story. I’ll never tire of reading those!”

I remember the Juggernaut story as a gem, too, Mark – especially the clever way Spidey stopped the unstoppable villain. (Spoiler: It involved lots of cement!) Meanwhile, Legionnaire Lee Houston, Jr., also has a couple of specific favorites from that era:

“I didn’t start reading Spider-Man comics until Amazing #180, so I have to lean towards Marv Wolfman, Roger Stern, and Peter David as writers, as well as Keith Pollard as artist. I was even there for the starts of Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man and Web of Spider-Man [1985]. The Spidey Marvel Team-Ups with Red Sonja and the Not Ready for Prime Time Players are forever etched in my memory.”

Speaking of fondly remembered stories, two Legionnaires brought up one of the most famous: “The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man” (Amazing Spider-Man #248, Jan 84). Doc Beechler of Indianapolis, Ind., fondly remembers thanking Stern in person for “Kid.” And Kirk G. of Athens, Ohio, had a heart-warming anecdote:

“I read this story onto audio cassette for a blind comic fan when it came out, and I admit I started to cry when I got to the last panel,” he wrote. “My voice cracked as the cassette ran out, and he heard the emotion. His comment on the return tape was that it was the most moving thing he had heard … but I wasn’t sure if he meant my reaction, or the plot and the big reveal.”

I won’t spoil the story here, but no one who ever read “Kid” will ever forget it.

Meanwhile, others joined the Captain in his applause for the Romita Senior era. One of which will be mighty familiar to readers of this magazine:

“It’s hard to vote against Ditko and how his vision helped set the foundation in place, but for sustained excellence, it’s hard to pick against Romita’s run,” wrote Craig "Mr. Silver Age" Shutt, who took time from his own column to chime in here. “The fact that his Spidey is the one that’s usually merchandised indicates that lots of people agree.

“I have to say that Romita took over on the best issue possible, with a lot of dramatic turns to work with,” he continued, referring to the shocking “How Green Was My Goblin!” in Amazing Spider-Man #39, where hero and villain learned each other’s identities. “And I seriously doubt that MJ would’ve been quite the jackpot she turned out to be on the final page [of Amazing Spider-Man #42, Nov 66] without Romita.”

As I recall, my reaction to earlier Ditko cameos of Mary Jane was “What a huge caboose!” Maybe her derriere just seemed large because of those 1950s-style flower-print or polka-dot sundresses Ditko put her in. Regardless, I must agree, MSA: Former romance-book artist Romita was a much better choice to depict MJ’s face and full figure for the first time, as I never, ever found a single Ditko woman attractive.

Meanwhile, Doc Photo of Rochester, Mich., added: “As time has passed, I have come to appreciate Ditko’s run, but as a young comic reader it was Romita’s arrival on the scene that made me a regular reader of Amazing Spider-Man. Romita brought a bright, more open look to the character and his world which was quite different from Ditko’s more brooding approach. It might seem like sacrilege, but as someone who was reading DC Comics almost exclusively at the time, Romita brought a DC-like look to Spider-Man that made him much more appealing to me than the previous rendition.”

Legionnaire Poague was of like mind: “The Romita Senior era, which included some terrific fill-ins by Gil Kane, was my favorite,” he wrote. “I missed the Ditko era and had to catch up with it through reprints. It’s great, great stuff, but I don’t have the emotional connection to it that I have with the Romita issues, which I read as they were coming out. Romita’s art was prettier and more accessible than Ditko’s (and Romita could draw beautiful women, which Ditko couldn’t). Under Romita, Amazing Spider-Man became Marvel’s best-selling title. I doubt that would have happened if Ditko had remained.”

Once again, I have to nod in unison. As noted above, the boy Captain found Ditko’s work to be genuinely unattractive. Not just the women, but everything in New York seemed a bit old-fashioned, a little dated, somewhat shabby and shopworn.

To some degree this adds verisimilitude to the early Spider-Man stories, where Peter and his aunt lived from one Social Security check to the next. Everything they owned should have looked a decade old and on its last legs.

But why would the offices of Now Magazine look like they were from 1952? Why would all military equipment look like Korean War surplus? Why would cars still have fins in the 1960s, and why would women’s clothing look more appropriate for Rosalind Russell than Twiggy?

Ditko fans will no doubt argue with me vehemently, but to the Li'l Captain it appeared that Ditko’s style wasn’t keeping up with the world. When Romita arrived, it seemed like Spidey’s New York burst into the 1960s – and that pretty women were allowed out in public for the first time (and quickly did a lot of shopping for hipper clothes)!

But having said all that, I don’t think those are the main reasons I look back on the Romita years with such nostalgia. I think primarily it’s because, like my own college years, those days are gone and can’t come back.

Of course, Peter Parker doesn’t age like we do. But his status quo has shifted profoundly since Romita Senior was on the book, in ways that can’t be revisited today.

One of the hallmarks of Spidey’s college years was the best supporting cast in comics (and I even include Riverdale when I say that). Not only was each character interesting in his or her own right, but they were all interconnected in a (cough) web of social links. Even the Green Goblin was part of the gang, in a way.

Peter was dating Gwen, whose father was retired police Captain Stacy, who was hanging out with Robbie Robertson, the pair coming close to figuring out Spider-Man’s secret ID in a nerve-wracking subplot, while Robbie worked for J. Jonah Jameson, for whom Peter worked as well, as did Peter’s ex, Betty Brant, who was dating Ned Leeds, who also worked for Jameson and had an uncomfortable relationship with Peter, who, despite dating Gwen, whom Flash Thompson once tried to date and was trying to date again, was in an evolving romantic triangle with Gwen and  Mary Jane Watson, who was dating Peter’s roommate Harry Osborn, who was very much noticing this, and whose behavior was becoming more erratic, reminiscent of his father Norman, who had been the Green Goblin until he lost his memory, but that memory was clearly coming back, leaving a cloud of foreboding over every Coffee Bean get-together, pleasant social exercises with delicious pools of lust, resentment, and jealousy seething just beneath the surface.

Also, Spider-Man fought crime.

This was an enormous amount of fun at the time, because the readers (and from later interviews, Stan Lee) really had no idea how any of this was going to play out.  But in the end, nothing played out. Instead, the writers – which included beloved scribes like Lee, Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway, and Roger Stern – went on a murder binge. Most of this stellar cast was simply killed off – often, it seemed, to achieve nothing more lasting than a shocking cover (Captain Stacy) or a lame twist ending (Leeds). Gwen’s fate is famous, but reflects to me a failure of authorial imagination as to what to do with her (and the romantic triangle). And while both Osborns managed to escape their graves, they were gone long enough for their positions in the Parker social hierarchy to be filled by other characters or made moot.

Heck, even Professor Warren – who taught Pete and Gwen at Empire State University – went crazy, became a super-villain, cloned everybody, and got killed off. He wasn’t even a very important character in the Coffee Bean years, but he was the only ESU professor whose name we knew!

The result for me is warm nostalgia for a thrilling theme-park ride I remember but can never take again, and also a poignant sense of “what if” for the plot twists, dramatic confrontations, and resolutions that never happened. Also, just like in real life, I feel a sense of loss for the “friends” – the life stories – cut short by the Reaper.

Which is probably also connected to the fact that my Golden Age (of 10) occurred sometime during the Romita years. And that’s something all Spidey fans can understand!

Andrew “Captain Comics” Smith has been writing professionally about comics since 1992, and for Comics Buyer’s Guide since 2000.

I thought it was about time I started posting my Comics Buyer's Guide stories and columns here. Here's the first one published this calendar year, from CBG #1687 (May 12)

More Depth and Breadth

The Growth of Reprints

By Andrew "Captain Comics" Smith

Contributing Editor

January 2012: I’ve written before about the Golden Age of Reprints, and I’m about to again – because it’s grown deeper and wider.

And wouldn’t you know it, a recent arrival squares neatly with our cover feature: Michael Barston’s Agonizing Love: The Golden Era of Romance Comics (Harper Design, $29.99).

Let’s be clear right off the bat: Agonizing Love presents no threat to Michelle Nolan’s Love on the Racks: A History of American Romance Comics (2008, McFarland & Co.). Nolan, a CBG contributor, has set the bar insurmountably high for comprehensive lists and analysis. Racks is the gold standard for historical works on romance comics, and is in no danger of losing the crown any time soon.

In fact, Barston admits early in his book, “it would seem there are about 5,500 issues I still need to make any claim to thorough knowledge of this delightful genre.” Which is not to say the book doesn’t have its charms. Barston has a light writing style that occasionally elicits a smile, and his organization is clever. He arranges his reprints in five sections by content: “Bliss,” “Jealousy and Revenge,” “Despair,” “Marriage Hell,” and “Class Struggles.” This arrangement is not only amusing, but it also demonstrates the repetitive nature of these stories, which followed predictable patterns.

That brings me to my own “love confession”: I confess that I remain curious about romance comics, because I still don’t understand them. What was the appeal? Perhaps if I had been female in the 1950s it would be obvious, but lacking that advantage I can only try to absorb as many of these books as I can in the hopes that I will develop a gestalt of the era, the social mores and whatever forbidden thrill these books conveyed.

Which doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy reading old romance comics. I do. But not for the reasons they were created; I find the outdated gender roles and overwrought dialogue hilarious (which this book emphasizes). And, of course, I’m interested from a purely historical perspective.  

So that’s three reasons for me to read the stories reprinted in this book. If you share them, Agonizing Love might be for you.

Coincidentally, Agonizing Love has a Jack Kirby romance-comic illustration on its cover, which will soon have competition. Fantagraphics is shipping Young Romance: The Best of Simon & Kirby’s Romance Comics ($29.99) this month, which reprints 21 such stories as selected by animation artist Michael Gagné.

Meanwhile, I’m merrily plowing my way through all the Marvel Masterworks, Marvel Essentials, DC Archives, DC Chronicles, and DC Showcase collections. And I don’t mean Silver Age and Bronze Age stuff.

Oh, I love that material. But, frankly, I already own it in various formats. And if I didn’t, it can be had cheap, even as back issues of regular-sized comic books (See: Marvel Tales). No, that stuff is dime-a-dozen.

What excites me is the material from the 1940s and 1950s. When I started collecting comics in the 1960s, back issues from those mysterious decades were already out of my price range and, of course, are even more pricey today. So it’s been a decades-long dream of mine to read that material someday, and lo, the Big Two have answered my prayers.

DC has already finished reprinting all of the Dr. Fate and Justice Society stories from the 1940s, although I haven’t seen many other Golden Age collections lately. I won’t mind too much as long as they continue archiving Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, which they are (slowly). Meanwhile, Marvel just finished the All-Winners run (with volume 4), and is plugging away on other Golden Age titles, from the major (Marvel Mystery Comics, Captain America) to the minor (Young Allies, U.S.A. Comics).

DC is hit and miss when it comes to 1950s comics, and I’ve snatched up what they’ve offered: Mad Archives, Atomic Knights, Viking Prince, some Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen here and there.

But Marvel is going big guns. As you’d expect, they’re archiving titles that lasted into the Silver Age as fast as they can, with Marvel Masterworks: Atlas Era Journey into Mystery, Strange Tales, Tales of Suspense, and Tales to Astonish all nearing the end of their pre-superhero runs. To my delight, Marvel has also reprinted the entire 1950s runs of Captain America, Black Knight, Human Torch, Marvel Boy, Sub-Mariner, and Yellow Claw, plus the complete Amazing Adult Fantasy and Menace. They’ve already begun experimenting with war books, Westerns, jungle titles, and the impossible-to-pigeonhole Venus, which they can’t reprint fast enough to suit me.

Meanwhile, publishers without 70-year histories are finding ways to cash in on the reprint boom.

One of the biggest players is Dark Horse, which has cut deals with companies who were around decades ago and is aggressively reprinting their best stuff. DH has already collected complete runs of Gold Key’s Dr. Solar, Magnus, and Mighty Samson; Sparks’ Green Lama; Dell’s “Brain Boy,” and ACG’s Herbie, Magicman (from Forbidden Worlds), and Nemesis (Adventures into the Unknown).

And they’re banging way on Gold Key’s Brothers of the Spear, Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery, Dagar the Invincible, Doctor Spektor, and Space Family Robinson, plus Dell’s Tarzan and Turok, Son of Stone. They’re also grinding away on Warren’s Creepy and Eerie (Dynamite is doing Vampirella), everybody’s Flash Gordon, plus the amazing Archie Archives, reprinting all of the Riverdale gang’s adventures chronologically. And if that’s not enough, the Crime Does Not Pay Archives begins in April!

IDW and comics historian Craig Yoe have combined to collect the work of early horror artists; so far they’ve done Dick Briefer and Bob Powell, with Basil Wolverton in the works. Dynamite has collected the first six issues of the Golden Age Green Hornet. Hermes Press seems to have snagged most of Gold Key’s licensed work, reprinting that publisher’s runs of Dark Shadows, Land of the Giants, My Favorite Martian, Time Tunnel, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

Fantagraphics deserves their own paragraph, just to highlight the favor they’re doing us all: The Carl Barks Library, which began a few months ago with Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: “Lost in the Andes.” They’re also reprinting Floyd Gottfredson’s Mickey Mouse work. And they’re doing collections of artists rather than titles, with Setting the Standard: Comics by Alex Toth 1952-54, and Blake Bell’s Steve Ditko and Bill Everett archives.

You’ll note that only occasionally have I cluttered this list with an opinion. You can tell I’m thrilled with the Archive Archives, for example, and grateful for the Carl Barks Library.  But a lot of this material I don’t have much to say about because … well, it’s awful.

That may seem like an odd thing to say when I’m devoting an entire column to the subject. Especially when I’ve admitted I’m buying all these things.

But a lot of 1940s material is just plain old drek (I’m looking at you, Daring Mystery). A lot of post-Code 1950s material is just now being reprinted because it wasn’t any good the first time around, and time has done it no favors. Even some 1960s material, like the first volumes of Dark Shadows and Space Family Robinson, are almost unreadable.

However, I accept that as the price for gaining a comprehensive understanding of our little hobby. It’s fascinating to understand, for example, that at the same time Mac Raboy was setting new standards with Green Lama, U.S.A. Comics was setting new lows. It’s eye-opening to see all the places Jack Kirby showed up (and how much better he was than his contemporaries). It’s engrossing to see how an artist like Syd Shores goes from Captain America in the 1940s to … well, Captain America in the 1960s.

Seriously, even the worst material is educational to some degree. It’s all part of our heritage, and I accept that the bad comes with the good, and is instructive in its own way. So I spend a lot of money embracing good and bad both.

I also spend a lot of money on the flood of comic strip collections, which – for the most part – need no apologies. I don’t have room to list them all, but here are my favorites:

• “Forever Nuts”: This series from NBM Publishing has produced three hardbacks reprinting the earliest “Mutt & Jeff,” “Happy Hooligan,” and “Bringing Up Father.” I enjoyed them all, for historical reasons if nothing else, but “Bringing Up Father” was a revelation. For a strip with one central joke – Maggie beaning Jiggs with a rolling pin – George McManus kept the strip fresh and exciting day after day. And the art! While Jiggs remained a cartoon, McManus’s women were drawn in photo-realism style, and beautifully modeled the elaborate fashions of the time. All of this took place in a meticulously rendered Art Deco milieu that is a joy to behold.
• “Blondie”: I’ve never taken a survey, but I imagine not many people are aware that the long-running “Blondie” strip had unique Roaring ‘20s origins. In the beginning, Dagwood was from a filthy rich family, with a robber baron for a father, while Blondie was from a poor family and dressed in flapper fashions. The crux of the strip was the efforts by Dagwood’s snooty parents to prevent him marrying Blondie, whom they regarded as blue-collar trash. This is all covered in the first volume of IDW’s collection of the strip, Blondie: The Courtship and Wedding: 1930 to 1933, which ends (as the title indicates) with the nuptials. This also results in Mr. Bumstead –who’s a dead ringer for J.C. Dithers, who would come along years later – cutting his son off from the family fortune, forcing Dagwood to seek employment for the first time in his lazy life. I’m looking forward to more surprises in volume two this month, which promises (in the subtitle) From Honeymoon to Diapers & Dogs.
• “The Phantom”: Like “Captain Easy” (which Fantagraphics is reprinting in beautiful, oversize collections) the early “Phantom” strips are really charming – they’re sort of a cross between a screwball comedy and movie serials. In fact, the tone is that of gleeful, barely controlled chaos, a feeling the Indiana Jones movies captured so well. “Captain Easy” is only up to volume two – I suspect sales haven’t been good – and I fervently hope it will continue. Meanwhile. collected editions of “The Phantom” dailies are up to volume four as of this month, with the first collection of Sundays coming in February. And if, like me, your introduction to the Ghost Who Walks was comic books, fear not: Hermes has scheduled hardcover collections of Phantom comic books originally published by Gold Key, King, and Charlton, all in the 2012 pipeline.
• “Peanuts”: Fantagraphics has been doing a beautiful job reprinting Charles Schulz’s masterpiece in chronological order, and will be for some time to come. They publish two books a year, which you can buy singly or wait a bit and get them both in a slipcase. Currently the series is up to the early 1980s, so the strip is at its peak, with popular but latecomer characters like Woodstock and Peppermint Patty already regulars. Do I really need to tell you how good this is?
• “Flash Gordon”: This series has never been neglected; currently the Alex Raymond daily strips are available from both Checker and Kitchen Sink. But the Sundays haven’t been reprinted as often, and never in their original size – until now. IDW has begun a four-book series reprinting both “Flash Gordon” and its companion strip “Jungle Jim” in full newspaper broadsheet size. I’ve received the first, and it’s spectacular. Titan Books is also beginning a reprint series of Sunday “Gordon” strips in 2012, but it’s hard to imagine how they could top IDW.
• “Prince Valiant”: When Fantagraphics began publishing the famous Hal Foster strip in a series of trade paperbacks in the 1980s, I bought them all. It’s a testament to how good Fantagraphics’ new collection of that material is – it’s oversize and hardback – that I’m buying it again.
• “Mandrake the Magician”: I don’t think anybody’s ever collected Lee Falk’s second-most-famous strip before. Points to Titan Books for doing just that, starting in July.

After all the above, is there any wonder why I call this the Golden Age of Reprints?

Believe me, it wasn’t always like this. Decent collections were hard to come by until the Archives and Masterworks series kicked off the current glut, and were virtually non-existent in the Silver Age.

So what changed? I don’t have a definitive answer, but I’d guess a confluence of events, including the availability of cheap Chinese printing, Baby Boomers recapturing their youth, and publishers looking for new revenue streams.

Regardless, we live in a time when there’s a market for a Brain Boy Archives. And how can that be a bad thing?

Andrew “Captain Comics” Smith has been writing professionally about comics since 1992, and for Comics Buyer’s Guide since 2000.

I’ve been fascinated by adaptations for a long time.

Long ago, I composed the philosophy that the primary duty of the adaptor is to make a great film (or depending on the outlet, a great television series or comic book). That philosophy is at odds with many fans who would hold up faithfulness to the text as the primary virtue. Yet a good director recognizes that each medium is a unique platform with its own strengths and weaknesses.

Most of the time, an adaptor has to decide what to leave out. A novel is typically longer than a movie script so the adaptor has to trim it down. For The Hunger Games movie, that meant compressing the early chapters before Katniss is taken to the games. That decision disappointed some fans who were sad to see a supporting character, Madge Undersee, eliminated from the story. For the Game of Thrones television series that meant curtailing the presence of many tertiary characters. Old Nan, for example, is only given two scenes and Jon’s friends in the Watch, like Pyp and Grenn, are mostly relegated to the background.

Yet those two recent adaptations also made the interesting and intentional decision to add scenes. I think they did so for the same reason. In each case, the book is the beginning of a longer series: The Hunger Games is the first book in a trilogy and A Game of Thrones launches a series that is five novels long and counting. The additional scenes set up characters, situations and themes that will grow in importance in the later volumes. The adaptors were subtly laying the groundwork for their future stories. In addition, they were able to do this because of the differences in medium. 

The Hunger Games novel follows Katniss Everdeen as its primary character. Author Suzanne Collins doesn’t use a first person perspective yet her third person narrator follows Katniss exclusively. Everything we see as a reader, we see through her eyes. The movie also follows Katniss as the primary character. In most cases, supporting characters are reduced in order to keep the focus on Katniss. We see less of Haymitch, Peeta and Cinna in the movie than we do in the book. And, tertiary characters, like Cinna’s team of stylists, are practically eliminated.

However, The Hunger Games movie takes advantage of its art form to occasionally depart from Katniss. Unlike the book, we actually witness a few scenes in which Katniss doesn’t appear. First of all, we’re shown a number of scenes behind the scenes of the Hunger Games. We watch Seneca Crane and his crew direct the games. Plus, we witness confrontations between Seneca Crane and President Snow concerning the direction of the games. These scenes build up Seneca and Snow as villains. I think we gain a greater understanding that the real threat is not the other tributes fighting in the games, but the people like Seneca and Snow who run the games. Furthermore, these scenes establish Snow as a villain, giving the audience a reason to come back for the second and third movies. In a way, the movie does a better job of this than the book itself, as the last shot in the movie is of Snow coldly watching Katniss on TV.

The other additional scenes in The Hunger Games are comprised of the reactions of people watching the games. The novel follows Katniss exclusively, and we don’t really know how she’s being regarded until later. The movie is able to break away from Katniss’ story for quick reactions in a way that would have been cumbersome in a book. In this way, we are able to keep better tabs on Gale, Katniss’ hunting partner and love interest back home. We also see the start of the uprisings that will become the focus of the later books. By jumping back and forth, the movie builds up the romantic triangle and the rebellion against tyranny.

That isn’t to say that the movie does everything better than the book. They are different media, with different strengths and weaknesses. This is no slight to the quality of the performances, but a movie will never be able to get into the mind of a character as well as a book. As one reviewer remarked about The Hunger Games movie: “The movie can show you how it happened; the book can tell you why.”

The Game of Thrones television series similarly invents a number of new scenes. In this case, I attribute the additions to the natural progression of the novels themselves, collectively known as A Song of Ice and Fire. Author George R.R. Martin rotates his point of view character from chapter to chapter. The first novel, A Game of Thrones, predominantly follows one family, the Starks of Winterfell, and they account for 6 of the 8 viewpoint characters. However, as the series progresses, Martin slowly adds other viewpoint characters and the Starks are outnumbered by the fourth novel. In this way, A Song of Ice and Fire evolves from the story of one family to the story of a nation whose intrigues encompass the entire globe.

The producers of the television know about this progression and I think they wanted to prepare their audience for it. The Lannisters, the Starks’ main rivals, are given equal billing from the beginning. We watch a scene featuring the twins, Cersei and Jamie, before they travel north to meet with the Starks. They are more than foils for the family Stark; they are compelling characters in their own right.

The producers also prepare us by giving additional scenes to characters who will increase in importance in later books. Theon Greyjoy doesn’t become a point of view character until the second novel yet he’s given a number of independent scenes in the first season of the television show. Varys and Littlefinger, members of the king’s council and masters of intrigue, are given
additional scenes including a few short stand-offs between them. Finally, the king’s brother Renly, who rises to prominence in the second novel, is given several scenes of his own including one with his lover. In this way, the television series creates interest in these characters before they step into the spotlight.

I think it’s a good choice for the television series, smoothing the transition in the novels from the story of one family to the story of a nation. That choice will help sustain audience interest despite changing focus, the loss of some characters and the introduction of others.

It’s not a question of right or wrong. It’s a question of what works for each medium. For me at least, it’s interesting to contemplate the differences and why they were made. John Howe, an artist who worked on The Lord of the Rings movies, shared a wonderful insight: “We now have two ways to enter this world, the book and the movie.”

Andrew A. Smith

Scripps Howard News Service

April 10, 2012: Perhaps it’s all the talk of women’s right on the news, but I just read two comics collections that provide a history lesson on the subject.

The first is Blondie: From Honeymoon to Diapers & Dogs: Complete Daily Comics 1933-1935 (IDW Publishing, $49.99). This is the second and last of IDW’s collections of the earliest Blondie strips. The first volume told the story of Blondie and Dagwood’s courtship and subsequent marriage, while this one collects their days as young marrieds. Many of the elements we associate with Blondie debut, including Mr. Dithers, Dagwood’s boss; Herb & Tootsie Woodley, the next-door neighbors; and the “Dagwood sandwich.”

What struck me about this book was that, despite its age and the era it comes from, Blondie herself comes off very well. Originally presented as a blue-collar bubblehead, she evolves into the brains of the family in this volume (while still retaining her showgirl looks and goofy personality; it’s the upending of expectation that’s funny). Dagwood, who had in the first volume the unearned confidence (and incompetency) of someone who grew up in a cocoon of wealth, remains incompetent in this volume, but without the riches and confidence – and therefore becomes the butt of most jokes. This is essentially the model for the strip for the rest of its run, not to mention virtually every dad in every sitcom on every TV show ever produced. Blondie may not be anyone’s idea of a feminist, but feminists should approve: She is clearly the smart one – and the boss.

Keep in mind that this takes place only a few decades after the Victorian age, when the “angel of the house” model for women prevailed. Sure enough, all the women in Blondie are housewives. But Blondie also takes the position a woman continues to be the head of household even after her husband comes home. This “hand the rocks the cradle” concept is still popular today, and it makes me wonder if it was popular in the 1930s, when these strips ran, or if Blondie more or less invented it.

Whatever the sociology, these strips remain very funny, 80 years later. And that’s what’s important.

Meanwhile, I had the opposite reaction to Showcase Presents: Young Love (DC Comics, $19.99). This collection reprints Young Love #39-56, more than 500 black-and-white pages of material originally published in color from 1963 to 1966.

Frankly, you don’t have to be a feminist to be absolutely appalled by these stories. Aimed at pre-adolescent girls, Young Love featured helpless, emotional basket cases whose only purpose in life was to please – and eventually marry – a man. Notwithstanding that all their men are insufferable jerks, without any responsibilities in the relationship whatsoever. No, these pathetic, self-loathing women set their cap on a fellow, then tearfully abase and humiliate themselves in scene after scene until these selfish men, for some reason, decide to marry them.

Even the girls of yesteryear eventually rejected this philosophy, with romance comics dying out in the 1970s. For my part, I could only digest Young Romance in small chunks. And the only way I got through it was that every time kissing was involved, I pretended the writer meant “sex.” The stories actually make a lot more sense if you do that, because these girls are absolutely fixated on the act of kissing, going wobbly in the knees at the thought of it.

There is one highlight: “The Private Diary of Mary Robin, R.N.,” described in every issue as an “exciting new feature of the life and loves of a beautiful young nurse in a great metropolitan hospital.” It’s just as stupid as the other stories – this supposedly professional nurse swoons over every male in sight – but the art is terrific. “Diary” was drawn by John Romita Sr., the guy who took over Amazing Spider-Man in 1966. He was the first to draw Mary Jane Watson’s face and full figure, and it was this training in romance books that made you believe MJ’s signature line, “Congratulations, tiger, you’ve just hit the jackpot!”

Most of the art – and virtually all of the stories – are unsigned (I’d guess for career preservation). But there are a couple of bright spots, including art by Don Heck, Gene Colan and Bernard Sachs. Mike Sekowsky, not usually one of my favorites, does the best work of his career here.

As for our history lesson, remember this: Blondie continues to last after 80 years, while Young Love got canceled in 1977. Which model do you think women prefer?

Contact Andrew A. Smith of the Memphis Commercial Appeal at capncomics@aol.com.

ART

1. "Blondie" Volume 2 reprints the strips from the first two years after the couple's marriage. Courtesy IDW Publishing

2. "Showcase Presents: Young Love" reprints romance comics DC published from 1963 to 1966. Courtesy DC Entertainment

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SHADOW #1 25 COPY ROSS VIRGIN INCV
SHADOW #1 50 COPY CHAYKIN BLOODY VIOLENT INCV
SHOOTERS HC (MR)
SHOWCASE PRESENTS ALL STAR SQUADRON TP VOL 01
SIMPSONS COMICS #189
SIX GUNS TP
SIXTH GUN #21
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG SELECT TP VOL 05
SONIC UNIVERSE #39
SPAWN ORIGINS HC VOL 06
STAR WARS DAWN O/T JEDI FORCE STORM #0 (3RD PTG)
STAR WARS DAWN O/T JEDI FORCE STORM #1 (3RD PTG)
STAR WARS DAWN O/T JEDI FORCE STORM #3
STEED AND MRS PEEL #4 (OF 6)
STITCHED #4 (MR)
STITCHED #4 GORE CVR (MR)
STITCHED #4 WRAP CVR (MR)
SUICIDE SQUAD #7 2ND PTG
SUPER DINOSAUR #10
SUPERGIRL #8
SW DARTH VADER SILICONE TRAY
SW MILLENNIUM FALCON SILICONE TRAY
SW OBI-WAN KENOBI ARTFX STATUE FINAL BATTLE VER
SW STORMTROOPER SILICONE TRAY
SW X-WING FIGHTER SILICONE TRAY

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES MICRO SERIES #4 LEONARDO
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES MICRO SERIES #4 LEONARDO 10 COP
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES MICRO SERIES #4 LEONARDO 25 COP
THUNDER AGENTS VOL 2 #6 (OF 6) (NOTE PRICE)
THUNDERBOLTS #173
TRANSFORMERS CLASSICS TP VOL 03
TRANSFORMERS MORE THAN MEETS EYE ONGOING #4

ULT COMICS SPIDER-MAN TP VOL 04 DOSM
ULTIMATE COMICS AVENGERS BY MARK MILLAR OMNIBUS HC
UNCANNY X-FORCE #24
UNCANNY X-FORCE #24 AA APPRECIATION PAREL VAR
UNDYING MONSTERS MAGAZINE #4

VAMPI OMNIBUS TP VOL 01
VAMPIRELLA #16
VENOM #16

WALKING DEAD #96 (MR)
WITCHBLADE #155 CVR A CHRISTOPER
WITCHBLADE #155 CVR B BERNARD & BENES
WOLVERINE AND X-MEN #9 AA APPRECIATION MALEEV VAR AVX

WOLVERINE AND X-MEN BY JASON AARON PREM HC VOL 01
WONDER WOMAN #8
WONDER WOMAN #8 VAR ED

X-FACTOR #234
X-FACTOR TP VOL 13 HARD LABOR
X-MEN #27
X-MEN FATAL ATTRACTIONS HC
X-MEN HIDDEN YEARS TP VOL 01

YOUNG JUSTICE #15
YOUNG LOVECRAFT GN VOL 02

ZOMBIES A-Z SC
ZOMBIES VS ROBOTS THIS MEANS WAR PROSE SC

This list is a copy of the list at pittsburghcomics.com. Arrivals at your LCS may vary.

By Andrew A. Smith

Scripps Howard News Service

April 3, 2012: Sometimes a graphic novel arrives that is more important for what it teaches than how it entertains. Such is the case with Best of Enemies: A History of U.S. and Middle East Relations Part One: 1783-1953 (SelfMadeHero, $24.95), coming in May.

The title sounds a little like a college textbook, and sure enough, I read several books with similar titles when I was in graduate school. And, boy, I sure wish Best of Enemies had existed before my midterm in History of the Modern Middle East – it sure would have made studying easier!

That’s because Best of Enemies breaks down a complex and morally messy history into a clean and easily absorbed narrative. It begins with the fledgling U.S. military dealing with Barbary pirates in the early days of the country (the conflict that put “to the shores of Tripoli” in the Marine anthem) and ends with the CIA orchestrating a coup that put the shah on the throne of Iran in 1953. Every U.S.-Middle East connection in between is recounted, from American naval officer Alfred Mahan coining the term “Middle East” in 1902, to FDR’s meeting with King Ibn Saud during World War II to cement the oil-for-security relationship we have with Saudi Arabia to this day.

The press release accompanying the book says the authors “draw striking parallels between ancient and contemporary political history,” but I don’t think they do (except for a whimsical prologue comparing current events to the Epic of Gilgamesh). Jean-Pierre Filiu, a world-renowned expert on the region, takes a strictly “just the facts” approach, which is rendered by graphic novelist David B. in the same clear, cartoony style he used for his award-winning Epileptic. Whatever political or historical lessons the reader derives is entirely up to him or her.

Which is not to say there isn’t plenty of meat here to chew on, even if you’re not a history buff or political junkie. In fact, our history with the Middle East is one wildly at odds with our self-image, which alone is food for thought. (We like to think of ourselves as Humphrey Bogart’s Rick Blaine in Casablanca when it comes to places like Morocco, when we’re really a lot more like Sidney Greenstreet’s Signor Ferrari.) And, yes, it’s pretty clear why Iran considers us the “great Satan” – after you see what we did in 1953, it’s a wonder they don’t hate us even more.

The only flaw, if you can call it that, is that the book focuses on U.S.-Middle East relations to the exclusion of broader history as a whole. We get a glimpse of great historical events when they directly impact on the Middle East’s relations with the U.S., but that omits huge chunks of the area’s history. For example, there’s very little mention of the Crusades; the Shiite-Sunni schism; the Ottoman Empire implosion; the formation of Israel; or England, France and Russia carving up the region for two hundred years or so. Those things inform the Middle East’s current societies, religions, governments, relationships – and especially its borders.  It makes one hope that Best of Enemies sells well enough for this team to conspire on a History of the Middle East graphic novel.

In the meantime, Best of Enemies is invaluable for the U.S., because as a country we are broadly ignorant of what our political and corporate leaders have been doing for the last 200 years in the most volatile region on Earth. It has me hoping that “Part One” in the title isn’t just wishful thinking, and that a post-1953 history is in the works.

Elsewhere:

Speaking of history, EC Comics made history in the early 1950s when writer/artist Harvey Kurtzman essentially created an entirely new genre with Mad, the satire-slash-parody in comics form. As soon as Mad made money (with the fifth issue), a host of other publishers jumped on the bandwagon, copying not only Kurtzman but his top artists, Jack Davis, Will Elder and Wally Wood. They all were canceled quickly.

Comics historian John Benson (Romance Without Tears) has collected the best stories from Mad wannabes like Crazy, Eh!, Flip, Get Lost, Madhouse, Nuts, Riot, Whack and EC’s own spinoff, Panic. But I can’t recommend this collection, The Sincerest Form of Parody: The Best 1950s Mad Inspired Satirical Comics” (Fantagraphics, $24.99), to anyone except historians, because all it demonstrates is why all these copycats were canceled quickly. In short, they were terrible.

Contact Andrew A. Smith of the Memphis Commercial Appeal at capncomics@aol.com.

ART

1. Best of Enemies: A History of U.S. and Middle East Relations is invaluable to historians, students and comics fans. Courtesy SelfMadeHero.

2. The Sincerest Form of Parody: The Best of 1950s Mad Inspired Satirical Comics may be the best of 1950s Mad imitators, but it's not very good. Courtesy Fantagraphics Books.

Continuing the countdown of the most insipid Silver-Age bad guys to tackle the Justice League of America . . . .

By 1963, the ranks of the JLA had expanded to nine super-heroes.  It’s quite a task, coming up with villains formidable enough to threaten that many heroes at once, especially when a plot wasn’t padded over a multi-issue arc, as is common to-day.  JLA writer Gardner Fox had to come up with a new menace every issue.  Sooner or later, the well had to run dry.

To offset the problem, Fox employed a new plotting formula, beginning with JLA # 23 (Nov., 1963).  It was a format in which half the team membership would be sidelined from the main action.  Contrivances were found to get four or five of the JLAers out of the way early on, or else, bring them in at the end, cavalry-style.  For most of the adventure, the other half of the group dealt with the big bad on their own.

After several months, Fox honed the formula further by simply omitting many of the Justice League members from the story completely, under the excuse of “being tied up on urgent cases of their own.”  From 1965 on, it was a rare thing for the entire JLA membership to be involved in a case.

This approach had two benefits for Fox’s scripting.  If it was a truly Earth-shaking threat, then the sense of drama was heightened by the fact that only five or six super-heroes were on hand to confront it.  The other plus was that, now, every villain didn’t have to be a world-beater.  Fox could drop down to the minor leagues and throw a second-tier baddie at the JLA and still get a decent yarn out of it.

Unfortunately, for him---and fortunately, for this Deck Log entry---on a few of those, Fox scraped barrel-bottom.  This usually happened when, instead of going with an established super-villain, he opted for putting a super-weapon in the hands of a small-time operator.

That’s how the next three losers made the list.

4. and 3.  “Nameless Nutt” and Johnny Marbles  (JLA # 53 [May, 1967])

Numbers Four and Three on the list both appeared in the adventure, “Secret Behind the Stolen Super-Weapons”, taking on the Justice League separately, but stumbling over each other to do it.

The tale’s opener presents us with two mysteries.  At the Midway City Museum, while curator Carter (Hawkman) Hall is preparing to attend this month’s regular meeting of the Justice League, his wife, Shierra, shows him an imperfect counterfeit of a rare ancient coin.  Somehow, the phoney had been substituted for the genuine article, without opening its display case or setting off the special Thanagarian alarm-system installed to protect the exhibits.

Carter notes that several other art galleries and museums across the country have suffered similar thefts.

Later, at the secret sanctuary, for once, it’s an uneventful JLA meeting.  There’s no old business, no new business, nor even any requests for help in the mail.   Snapper Carr reports that the absent Green Lantern and J’onn J’onzz have sent word that they’re---say it with me, gang---tied up on urgent cases of their own.

With nothing official to discuss, the heroes talk shop.  The Green Arrow mentions that, earlier in the day, he was confronting some armed bandits and discovered that his famed trick arrows had, somehow, been mysteriously replaced by non-working duplicates.

An astonished Wonder Woman reports that she recently experienced something similar, when she rounded up a band of foreign spies and found out that her magic lasso had been unaccountably exchanged for an ordinary golden rope that resembles the real thing.

Ever the worrier, the Batman checks out his utility belt and finds that, while it looks like his belt, the gadgets it holds are worthless.  Hawkman draws a connexion between the stolen super-weapons and the puzzling coin-swap at the Midway City Museum.

While the Leaguers put their heads together to address the situation, the scene shifts to a cave stuffed with antiquities and rare treasures.  In a gloating soliloquy to no-one in particular, the mastermind responsible for the looting brags about being “the greatest thief in the criminal history of the world!”

You see, he has invented a matter transporter.  The device can instantly transport any object to his cavern hide-out and leave in its place, a reasonable, but inexact copy---“an operation made necessary by the law of the conservation of matter and energy . . . .”

Actually, that’s not too bad, as villains go.  Certainly, he might give the Atom or the Batman or Hawkman a hard time in their own magazines.  But a couple of things put him on the list.  First, his over-inflated ego, which eventually leads to his undoing from an unexpected quarter.

Second, it’s just hard to take him seriously as a bad guy---or anything else.  Appearance-wise, he looks like he just stepped off the set after playing the lead in an episode of Dr. Who.  And he conducts himself with all the high-camp exaggeration of a Special Guest Villain on Batman---which explains the two full pages spent talking to himself about his master plan and how great he is.

Incidentally, writer Gardner Fox never bothers to give this dandified do-badder a name.  In a letter of comment about this story that appears in a subsequent JLA Mail Room, fan Leonard Rosenberg, of the Bronx, New York, makes note of this.  The evil collector, says Mr. Rosenberg, “for all I know, was called Nameless Nutt . . . .” 

Meanwhile, back at JLA HQ, Hawkman has made use of a Thanagarian detector.  The Winged Wonder aims the gizmo at the counterfeited art objects from the victimised museums and picks up a radiation signature that he can trace.  The three JLAers who had their weapons substituted ask the other members to sit this one out, while they and Hawkman get first crack at the hidden mastermind.

In short order, the Justice League quartet tracks down the secret cave.  Startled by Our Heroes’ appearance, Nameless Nutt (if it’s good enough for Leonard Rosenburg of the Bronx, it’s good enough for me) pulls out another gadget.  With it, he animates some of the stolen statuary and sends it on the attack.  The stunt gives each of the four JLAers a page to strut his stuff---and an opportunity for polymath Fox to show off his knowledge of obscure folklore in four lengthy editorial footnotes.

It doesn’t take long for the Leaguers to reduce the giant bric-a-brac to so much rubble, but it delays them enough for ol’ Nameless to make a run for it.  The heroes give chase, but when they catch up to him, they find the crooked inventor lying unconscious. 

“He must have tripped and fallen---knocking himself out!” concludes Green Arrow.

The JLAers confiscate the gadget in N.N.’s hand, then turn him and his stolen booty over to the authorities.

That’s the last we’ll ever see of Mr. Nutt, but the story is far from over.

When JLA foursome rejoins the others in the secret sanctuary, they realise that there are still a couple of pieces missing from the puzzle.  For one thing, there was no sign of Batman’s real utility belt in Nameless Nutt’s cave.  Nor Green Arrow’s shafts or Wonder Woman’s lasso.

Next, the device they took from N.N. is simply an ornate metal shell, with no inner workings whatsoever.  There’s no way it could have been used to commit the thefts.

Before Our Heroes can look into it further, Batman, Hawkman, and the others who tackled Nutt in his cave suddenly keel over in their council chairs and turn invisible.  By feel, the others can tell that the sticken members are still alive, but their pulses and breathing are growing weaker by the minute.

The unaffected JLAers deduce that this is an after-effect resulting from the four heroes receiving too much exposure to the radiation emanating from the real tele-transporter.  And there's going to be fatal consequences---unless they can find the genuine device and, somehow, reverse its effects. 

Then it’s Good News/Bad News time.

The Good News:  They can track down the real transporter using Hawkman’s radiation detector.

The Bad News:  Hawkman’s radiation detector turned invisible when he did and they can’t operate it.

The Good News:  If Hawkman has a radiation detector, then so will Hawkgirl.

The Bad News:  Hawkgirl isn’t a Justice League member; they don’t know how to reach her.

The Good News:  Yes, they do---the Atom knows Hawkman and Hawkgirl’s secret identities.  (An editor’s note helpfully reminds the readers that the Tiny Titan and the Winged Wonders exchanged knowledge of their true identities in Hawkman # 9 [Aug.-Sep., 1965].)

Leaving Aquaman behind “in case our stricken members recover consciousness,” (and because Fox couldn’t think of anything else to do with him), the Atom, Superman and the Flash super-speed to Midway City and Shierra Hall.  Strapping on her wings and grabbing the spare radiation detector and a handy mace, Hawkgirl leads the Justice Leaguers straight to . . . .

Mobster Johnny Marbles and his gang!

Gardner Fox often wrote convoluted plots, but this one was so byzantine that, when I first read this issue forty-five years ago, I had to go over it twice before it finally made sense.  It didn’t help that the explanation came from Johnny Marbles himself, who talks like a gangster from a 1930’s B-movie.

In regular English, here’s what happened:  Marbles suspected that the art thefts were being committed by someone with an unbeatable gimmick.  Figuring that the best way to put the finger on this somebody was to sic the JLA on him, the gangster ordered his underlings to secretly steal the weapons used by Batman and Green Arrow and Wonder Woman and substitute them with imitations.  It’s never explained how the thugs accomplish this; all we find out is that the effort resulted in most of Marbles’ men winding up in the jug.

Since Marbles doesn’t seem bright enough to know which end of a pencil to use, the notion that his henchmen could succeed in relieving three super-heroes of their personal gear is a huge honkin’ pill to choke down.  For that matter, the whole scheme seems beyond him. Maybe one of his captured men was the real brains behind the operation. That would explain a lot.

As Marbles hoped, the heroes assumed that the same mastermind robbing the museums was also behind the thefts of their weapons, and when they tracked him down, Johnny and his boys were following close behind.

They lied in wait until Nameless Nutt made his run for freedom.  Before the pursuing heroes could round the corner, the hoods waylaid the flamboyant robber and took his tele-transporter, leaving a fake in its place.

Now in possession of the transporter, Marbles tests it out on the front door to his apartment.  He just happens to activate the device just as the Justice League members and Hawkgirl come bursting in.  Instantly, the four super-heroes are frozen shock still.  (“There must have been an element of kryptonite in that thing to have it affect me,” says Superman later, trying to save face.)

Instead of doing something smart like, oh say, running for the hills, Johnny Marbles ignores the petrified super-heroes.  He’s more interested in teleporting the entire gold reserve of Fort Knox right there into his living room.  He orders his men to move the furniture out of the way, not stopping to think that materializing over five thousand tons of gold on a simple hardwood floor is going to give the people in the apartments directly below quite a surprise.

Before the gangboss can flip the switch, the tele-transporter is slammed out of his hands---by Hawkgirl’s mace!

Her radiation detector absorbed the energy holding her paralysed, and now free to move, she tackles the hoodlums with gusto.  Marbles and his remaining two lackeys grab for the Justice Leaguers’ weaponry that they stole earlier, to make a last stand of it, but all they manage to do is foul each other up.  The Female Fury takes them out, neat as you please.  Aquaman could’ve done it.

Once Superman and the Flash and the Atom are unfrozen, they zip back to the secret sanctuary and, reversing the polarity of the transporter, restore the dying JLAers to health and visibility.  Then it’s smiles all around, as Hawkman gives his wife a big hug and promises to do the dinner dishes every night for a week.  (O.K., I made that last part up, but I bet he did.)

2.  Joe Parry  (JLA # 31 [Nov., 1964])

“Riddle of the Runaway Room” is remembered principally for being the story in which Hawkman joined the Justice League of America.  The Winged Wonder’s induction into the League is the best part of the tale, and it’s over by page 6.

While that happy event was taking place in the secret sanctuary, the issue’s villain, Joe Parry, was carrying out his “master scheme”---robbing a bank.

Not that Joe himself was doing the dirty deed, mind you.  He sent some gun-toting friends to do it.

But, to be fair, there was a little more to it than that.

Joe Parry, like Pete Ricketts, was a penny-ante crook who lucked upon a weapon of tremendous power.  In Joe’s case, it was a pancomputer from the planet Pthisthin, a monochromatic world in which everything was coloured yellow.

Resembling a Chinese lantern with a handle, the Pthisthinian device was capable of drawing material from another dimension and creating anything which its operator wished.  It had lied buried after a Pthisthinan spaceship had crashed on Earth, thousands of years earlier.  Until an earth tremour delivered it to the surface and into Joe Parry’s hands.

After accidentally discovering how the machine worked, the first thing Joe asked for was money.  Lots of it.  The pancomputer complied, showering him with cash.  Cold, hard, yellow Pthisthin cash.

Realising that the alien machine could only create things in terms of its home planet, Parry sought a way to capitalise on the immense power in his grasp.  When it came to plotting, however, Joe made Pete Ricketts look like Lex Luthor.   Joe’s grand scheme was to rob a bank.

He recruited three of his lowlife buddies.  Then he asked the pancomputer for something which would protect them from all harm.  It responded by producing a set of “time-field hoops”, worn by Pthisthian space-explorers to protect them from harm.  The hoops hovered around the wearer’s waist and surrounded him with a “time-field”.  Anything that entered the field was projected ten minutes into the future.

Parry sent his three knuckle-dragging pals, thus armed, off to near-by Shore City to rob a bank.

Meanwhile, back at JLA headquarters, after the cake and punch, half the Leaguers duck out early, to get back to important cases they’re working on.   This leaves Batman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, and rookie member Hawkman to answer a police-band announcement of the Shore City bank robbery.

“If crooks have a weapon that unusual,” says Batman, in response to reports of the mysterious time-hoops worn by the bandits, “we’d better look into it.”

The super-heroes arrive in Shore City just as the crooks are leaving the bank.  Swooping in, Green Lantern finds his power beam useless against the crooks.  When the beam enters the time-field, it gets sent ten minutes into the future, and the hoops themselves are yellow.

But nothing else the JLAers try works, either.  Super-speed whirlwind, magic lasso, or plain old fists, they all disappear as soon as they enter the time-field around the crooks.  The Justice Leaguers can only watch helplessly as the hoods get into their car, also protected by the time-field, and drive off.  Ten minutes later, when the effects of their efforts materialise, Our Heroes figure out what’s going on.

Now that they know the secret of the hoops, the group overtakes the getaway car and use the time-shunting gimmick against the crooks.  Green Lantern’s power ring discovers that the robbers’ minds have been wiped clean of any knowledge of the hoops or how they got them.  And the time-hoops themselves have been rendered inert.

The Justice Leaguers head back to the secret sanctuary to dope out the mystery.

Back in his beachhouse, Joe Parry panics.  He’s seen the whole thing on a pancomputer-provided monitor.  He orders the device to kill the Justice League members before they can track him down.  Unfamiliar with the physiology of Terrans, the machine asks Joe to tell him how Earth people die.

“Die?  Why—er---“ Parry replies.  “We die when we stop breathing!”

Gotcha, says the alien gadget.  The next thing the JLAers know, the mountaintop of their secret sanctuary explodes and the section of flooring containing Our Heroes around the council table blasts upward into space.

Naturally, this is only a moment’s pause for the super-heroes.  Once they catch their breath, the Emerald Crusader power-rings a protective air canopy over them, while Hawkman reverses the controls of his anti-gravity belt to drop the broken sanctuary flooring back to Earth.  As a bonus, the Winged Wonder tells his new teammates that the special contact lenses built into his headgear have detected an “invisible yellow force beam”.

Once back on Earth, Hawkman, with the other members in tow, follows the invisible yellow beam to Joe Parry’s shack.  In desperation, Joe orders the pancomputer to create an amalgamated being consisting of Wonder Woman’s head and magic lasso, Batman’s torso, Green Lantern’s arms and power ring, the Flash’s super-fast legs, and Hawkman’s wings.  Joe dubs his creation “the Super-Duper” and sends it out to destroy the oncoming JLA heroes.

Incredibly, the hodge-podge creature gives the Justice Leaguers a thorough drubbing, until only Hawkman is left standing.  The Super-Duper trains its power ring on the Pinioned Paladin at point-blank range.

Let’s review here for a moment.  The Super-Duper was created by a yellow pancomputer from the planet Pthisthin, where the only colour in existence is yellow.  Everything created by the pancomputer is yellow and it even gives off invisible yellow energy.

And what do we know about the colour yellow and Green Lantern’s power ring, hmmm?

Despite the other members’ long association with the Emerald Crusader, only Hawkman tumbles to the fact that a power ring created by a yellow force will not work.  (Gardner Fox was clearly giving Hawkman centre stage in his JLA debut.)

The Winged Wonder takes advantage of his deduction and plays possum to lure Joe Parry out of hiding.  One clever stunt later, and Joe is decked by the Justice League’s newest member.  When they get their hands on the Pthisthinian machine, the JLAers discover that it has run out of power and the Super-Duper fades from existence.

Like Pete Ricketts, Joe Parry was done in, more than anything else, by his own ineptness.  Parry had at his control a device of almost unlimited capability and the best plan he could come with was a simple larceny.  His thinking on the fly was even worse, as shown by his half-baked doom-traps for the League.  In the end, even Joe himself knew it.

“The trouble with me was I wasn’t smart enough to use that machine to my best advantage!”

“Cheer up, Joe!” replies the Flash.  “You don’t have to be smart---in jail!”

Next time out, the countdown ends with the all-time lamest Justice League foe of the Silver Age . . . .

Any guesses?

The True Horror of the Apocalypse

Or: Don't worry about the zombies, it's the insects that will eat you

An exchange on a thread about AMC's The Walking Dead about what was or wasn't an implausible coincidence in the season finale reminded me of one of my favorite hobby horses: the errors one finds in most post-apocalypse stories.

To put it simply, in a world where electricity, manufacturing, water treatment plants and plain old gas stations were a memory, life would be hugely different -- mainly in the "dangerous" and "difficult" departments, but also including "unhygienic," "diseased" and "really unpleasant." And that's not even counting whatever dangers result from whatever caused the apocalypse, from atomic radiation to zombies.

But those changes are often ignored or glossed over in post-apocalypse stories, and The Walking Dead is as guilty as any. Here's a few of them:

When there's no electricity, life stops at sundown. Seriously, even with candles, there's just not much you can do when it gets dark in a world without artificial light. In the modern world, we don't realize it but we see pretty well on overcast nights because lights from the city are reflecting off clouds. But after the apocalypse, there won't be any city lights, or street lights, or anything -- all we'd have is what our ancestors had, the moon and stars, which ain't much most of the time. Maybe during a full moon there'd be sufficient light to move with some confidence, but that's only a few nights a month ...

... And not in the woods. When Shane, Rick, Glen and Daryl were wandering around in the woods looking for Randall in "Better Angels," I had to put my suspension of disbelief in a quiet room to protect it. Because, folks, I was a Boy Scout. And I've been in the woods in the dark. AND YOU CAN'T SEE ANYTHING. The moon can't get through the canopy, the stars can't be seen. It's absolutely pitch black. Even with flashlights, you're constantly tripping or getting caught in vines and you have to move really slowly. Mostly, you try not to move any more than you have to. Plus, there are nocturnal things in the woods you'd really not like to run into, especially when they can see and you can't.

So, let's review: Wandering around in the woods after dark is a BAD IDEA. It's also impossible without flashlights, and only Glen was shown to have one. Plus, it's suicidal when there are zombies in the woods, who can track you through sound and smell (or your flashlight), and don't care about injuring themselves, or you injuring them, and will blindly attack in utter darkness. Blundering around in the dark is going to get you hurt in our world, and in Zombieworld it's going to get you dead.

The roaches will inherit the earth: A world with millions of unburied corpses -- albeit quite a few still moving around -- is going to be a huge buffet for insects. Not to mention millions of abandoned households with rotting food just sitting around to be eaten, or to lay eggs in, or whatever. The air would be swarming with flies, the ground a carpet of roaches and other offal-eating insects. Daytime would be a misery and night would be worse. Serfs in the middle ages were crawling with lice, bedbugs and other creepy crawlies, and that's with corpses buried and food kept safe. So multiply that by a factor of 100 after the apocalypse.

... and the rest: Digest what I said above, and then think about rats, who don't multiply as fast as roaches but still do pretty well. And everything else that man keeps in check would multiply quickly as well. Not only would kudzu take over the South in a season, but all animals would increase exponentially. Granted, in a zombie apocalypse, large animals (like cattle and horses) would be eaten by zombie herds. But anything too small and fast to catch, like rats and squirrels*, would multiply in awesome numbers. And with Man so diminished, would large swarms of rats even fear him ... or just eat him? The air would be full of birds, who also would no longer fear us, and the sea full of ... well, everything that lives in the sea. The biggest -- and just about only -- large predator on the planet would suddenly be gone. Who's going to occupy that niche at the top of the food chain? And how low will we fall?

* My wife and I are still debating whether dogs would survive in The Walking Dead scenario. I think the larger ones would be dinner, but the smaller ones might survive, if they escaped into the woods and didn't get trapped in the dead ends of city streets and fenced-in yards. But competition for food would be scarce, and they'd have to somehow overcome their instinct to bark at things to scare them away. That would just be a dinner bell to a walker.

Injury or sickness is a death sentence: Just like in caveman times, there would be nothing to retard infection if you cut yourself. Anything beyond a minor scrape would likely result in gangrene or sepsis. A broken leg or any other injury that precludes traveling means the tribe has to leave you, or everybody dies when the herd catches up. Foraged antibiotics would only last so long and then, like the insects, microscopic life would thrive.

Ka-BOOM: For the first year or so, the night would be punctuated by things exploding somewhere. If nothing else, every refrigerator that still had some kind of seal would eventually explode as the gases from decomposing food expanded in an enclosed space. There would be inexplicable fires for the first few months also, as unattended chemicals, coolants, cleaning fluids and so forth spontaneously combusted.

Impassable streets: Everywhere a car stopped during civilization's final days, MANY cars behind it would perforce stop as well. Then after everybody's dead, there would be cars clogging the streets everywhere, and even if you had a working tow truck, it would take you several lifetimes just to clear a mid-size city like Memphis.

I groaned aloud when Will Smith was charging around in his sports car in Manhattan in I Am Legend. I can't imagine anyplace on earth that would be MORE clogged with abandoned vehicles than Manhattan. Even if a few streets were somehow clear, or he somehow cleared them, why would he risk injury or death turning blind corners at 40 mph where there could be fallen masonry, broken-up streets, fallen street lights or signals or, yes, an abandoned car or two blocking the way? And besides, how do you shoot a deer and drive at the same time? Idiocy.

It made for a nice poster in The Walking Dead showing all those abandoned cars clogging the exits from Atlanta, with all the roads leading into the city ominously empty. But in reality, everybody would use every road possible to get the hell out of Dodge, and all roads everywhere would be clogged with abandoned cars. Somehow Rick & Co. have only found one such "roadblock" -- and even that didn't make sense, with people having somehow died quietly at the wheel.

Also, I know Rick's crew is siphoning gas, but that won't last forever, and has anyone in a post-apocalypse story ever dealt with the problem of getting gas from gas stations? Without electricity to get gas up to the pumps, it might as well be on the moon. I suppose you could rig a generator to do that somehow, but I haven't the slightest idea how, and I doubt many other people do, either. Which brings me to:

We're all idiots: Let's face it, most of us don't know how to hunt. Or tan skins. Or make candles. Or do the hundred-and-one other things our ancestors knew how to do before the industrial revolution removed all that labor from our lives. Rick's TV crew is lucky enough to have Daryl, but in the comics they somehow survived for many issues by foraging. I think that would work for a while, but you're only one bad week -- foraging in an area where others beat you to it -- before starving to death. And where are you going to get fresh water when the taps don't work? You'd have to stick by running water -- stagnant water is death -- which means you couldn't stay on the move. And if you don't stay on the move  the zombies eventually find you and you either move away from the water or stay and die. It's quite the pickle, and I can't remember too many post-apocalypse stories dealing plausibly with simple survival when you can't turn on the tap or drive to the grocery store. Let's hope that Rick's world still has some libraries with actual books in them to show them how to do things, and they get to those books before mildew and the insects do.

There's more, but y'all can think of them as easy as me (and I encourage you to do so, and append your ideas below).

Also, I'm not actually complaining about these things -- well, maybe a bit -- because many of them would be boring or unpleasant to film. Do we really want to see Rick and crew as dirty, unshaven and chewed up by bugs as they'd really be? Do we want to see them fighting rats, or see millions of roaches pour out when one of them opens a barn door? Do we want to see feral, rabid dogs and cats? Do we want to see everyone slowly die because they don't know the simple hunting skills of a Cro-Magnon? Well, maybe we do, but I can see how filmmaker would want to skip over most of that.

Still, next time, Walking Dead: No more wandering in the woods after sundown, OK? And maybe Rick's crew could try to be a little quieter? Geez, they're practically hog-calling the walkers with all the clamor they make.

Captain Canuck: The Complete Edition

by Richard Comely and George Freeman
(collecting Captain Canuck #1-15 and Summer Special, 1975-1981)

Captain Canuck isn’t a superhero. I know he looks like one, with the red and white costume and the symbol of Canada on his forehead. I know he sounds like one, with his codename and secret identity. But those are only external trappings. Captain Canuck is a different kind of hero. He’s a government agent and adventurer, more like James Bond than Superman.

Captain Canuck’s adventures are set in the near future- or 1993, which was the near future for a book that debuted in 1975. That allows the stories to add a small dose of science fiction, such as jet packs and cybernetic eyes. Again, these advances are similar to the ones presented in spy films. Other than that, Captain Canuck doesn’t do much with the futuristic setting. On the one hand, it’s refreshing to read about a hero who is a blend of James Bond, Buck Rogers and Captain America. On the other hand, it seems like there was a lot of unexplored potential in the near future setting.

The volume has a rough start. Richard Comely is the co-creator of the character and the original series artist. Unfortunately, his art is amateurish. That’s not entirely surprising considering the series’ humble origin but I didn’t expect it to be quite so crude.

The art gets a lot better about 50 pages in. That’s when George Freeman takes over with issue 4. Freeman has a much cleaner approach. He doesn’t overcrowd his panels. His characters are distinctive and polished. Although he’s not in the same class, I even see a little of Barry Windsor-Smith’s influence in Freeman, especially in his women.
The story gets better too. The pace is top-notch as Captain Canuck runs from one adventure to the next. There’s also a better use of supporting characters. Other agents like Kebec and Stardance accomplish important tasks on the side. We meet the Captain’s twin brother and a potential love interest. Plus, Comely and Freeman develop a more complex political scene, as the interests of national and worldwide agencies don’t always align. There are still a few hiccups. The nurse who helps Captain Canuck escape from a hospital remarkably happens to have espionage experience. But those are minor flaws in an otherwise enjoyable stretch of comics.

The story really picks up near the end of the volume with the epic “Chariots of Fire.” The futuristic setting comes to the fore with an alien menace that brings the series’ tension to new heights. The resolution of that story results in a very different direction as Captain Canuck is hurtled into the past, in time to witness the Viking discovery of the New World in an intentional homage to Prince Valiant. Then, the Captain is brought forward to the present (1981) instead of his near-future home. The sudden shifts in status quo were exhilarating. You didn’t know what to expect next and that created excitement and anticipation.

It should be noted that, despite the title, this is not the complete Captain Canuck. The volume does collect the entire first series yet later mini-series such as Reborn, Unholy War and Legacy are not included.

Strange Worlds of Science Fiction
by Wally Wood
(collecting various stories from 1950-51)

There are two things to review about this trade paperback: the stories that are collected and the package that contains them.

The stories are a mixed affair. Wally Wood is a brilliant artist who would go on to fame at EC, Marvel and Tower Comics. These are the stories that got him noticed and led to his opportunity at EC. This volume collects his science-fiction work from 1950 and ’51, mostly for Avon but also a couple for M.E. or Lev Gleason.

You can certainly see Wood’s talent. His women are beautiful. His men are muscular. His aliens are interesting. Yet due to the standard format of the time- multiple square panels on every page- the art is sometimes cramped. Characters seem like they’re bending down in order to fit onto the page. In other places, huge dialogue boxes practically squeeze the art out of the panel.

Characterization and plots are inconsistent as well. Wood does a good job with recognizable characters like Captain Science, Space Ace or Space Detective. They have well-established traits and relationships. However, when he takes on an anthology story, the new character is usually poorly defined. Some of the stories are interesting, multi-faceted affairs with unexpected twists and changes of the direction, especially those with multiple chapters. Others are straightforward and unsurprising. One story, a supposed cautionary tale set in the past, failed to follow through on its stated purpose.

Strange Worlds is an interesting read for all of that. As noted above, you can see Wally Wood’s talent, though it’s unrefined at this point. You get a sense of an artist figuring out his craft, even if the quality of the actual stories varies widely.

I can’t be as kind to the package. I suspect that Vanguard knew they weren’t giving us Wally Wood at his best. They include a cover gallery with his later work for EC and the Spirit as well as the stories printed in this volume. The insets between stories all feature art from his later EC days rather than from the stories actually printed. It’s almost as if Vanguard is saying, “We’d much rather reprint Wood’s EC work but we don’t have the license for that so we’re giving you this instead.” The back cover even features the EC and Spirit work that isn’t included in this volume. Quotes about the quality of those stories are misleading considering that they don’t appear in this book.

The volume claims that this is the most extensive collection of Wood’s work to date. It isn’t. It’s an interesting collection of his early work and I would have appreciated it a lot more if it was presented as such.

100 BULLETS HC BOOK 02 (MR)
68 SCARS #1 (OF 4) (MR)

ADVENTURE TIME #3
ALABASTER WOLVES #1 (OF 5)
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN HOOKY #1
AMERICAS GOT POWERS #1 (OF 6)
ARTIFACTS #16
AVENGERS ASSEMBLE #2
AVENGERS COMING OF AVENGERS #1
AVENGERS HAWKEYE SOLO TP
AVENGERS VS X-MEN BY JIM CHEUNG B POSTER
AVENGERS VS X-MEN BY RYAN STEGMAN POSTER
AVENGERS VS X-MEN ITS COMING TP
AVENGING SPIDER-MAN #6

BATGIRL #8
BATMAN AND ROBIN #8
BATMAN ARKHAM UNHINGED #1
BATMAN INCORPORATED DELUXE HC VOL 01
BATMAN NO MANS LAND TP VOL 02 NEW EDITION
BATWOMAN #8
BIONIC WOMAN #1
BLACK PANTHER MDMA KINGPIN OF WAKANDA TP
BODYSNATCHERS #4 (OF 6)
BRODYS GHOST BOOK 03
BTVS SEASON 9 FREEFALL #8

CARNAGE USA #5 (OF 5)
CAVEWOMAN FEEDING GROUNDS #2 (MR)
CAVEWOMAN MUTATION #1
CHARMED TP VOL 03
COBRA ONGOING #12
CONAN THE BARBARIAN #3
COURTNEY CRUMRIN ONGOING #1

DANGER GIRL REVOLVER #3 (OF 4)
DAREDEVIL SEASON ONE PREM HC
DARK MATTER #4 (OF 4)
DEADPOOL #53
DEATHSTROKE #8
DEMON KNIGHTS #8
DOLLHOUSE EPITAPHS TP VOL 01
DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS FORGOTTEN REALMS 100 PG

EPOCH #5 (OF 5)
ESSENTIAL AVENGERS TP VOL 08
EXTINCTION SEED #2 (OF 6)

FANTASTIC FOUR #605
FORMIC WARS SILENT STRIKE #5 (OF 5)
FRANKENSTEIN AGENT OF SHADE #8

GFT ALICE IN WONDERLAND #4
GLORY #25
GORE #5 (OF 12) (MR)
GREEN LANTERN #8
GREEN LANTERN THE ANIMATED SERIES #1
GRIFTER #8
GUILDED AGE TP VOL 01

HALO FALL OF REACH INVASION #3 (OF 4)
HAUNT #23
HELLRAISER ANNUAL #1 (MR)
HITMAN TP VOL 06 FOR TOMORROW

I VAMPIRE TP
INFESTATION 2 #2 (OF 2)
INFINITE HORIZON TP

JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #636

KEVIN SMITH BIONIC MAN #8

LEGION LOST #8
LEGION OF SUPER HEROES WHEN EVIL CALLS TP
LOBSTER JOHNSON THE BURNING HAND #4 (OF 5)
LORD OF THE JUNGLE #3 (MR)

MARVEL UNIVERSE AVENGERS EARTHS MIGHTIEST HEROES #
MEGA MAN #12
MIGHTY THOR #12.1
MISTER TERRIFIC #8
MMW CAPTAIN AMERICA HC VOL 06

NEW AVENGERS #24 AVX
NEW MUTANTS TP UNFINISHED BUSINESS VOL 04
NORTHLANDERS #50 (MR)

OMEGA EFFECT BY ADI GRANOV POSTER
ONE #7 (OF 10)
ORCHID #6 (MR)
OZ TREASURY ED
OZ WONDERLAND CHRONICLES JACK & CAT TALES #3 (OF 3)

PETE AND MIRIAM GN (MR)
PETER PANZERFAUST #3 (MR)
PUNISHERMAX FRANK TP

RESURRECTION MAN #8
RICH JOHNSTONS IRON MUSLIM #1
RICHIE RICH GEMS #46
ROUTE DES MAISONS ROUGES #7 (OF 7) (MR)

SAGA #2 (MR)
SAUCER COUNTRY #2 (MR)
SCARLET SPIDER #4
SECRET #1
SECRET AVENGERS #25
SECRET SERVICE #1 (OF 7) (MR)
SEVERED HC (MR)
SHADE #7 (OF 12)
SHOWCASE PRESENTS THE LOSERS TP VOL 01
SMOKE AND MIRRORS #2 (OF 5)
SPONGEBOB COMICS #8
STAN LEE TRAVELER TP VOL 03
STAR WARS AGENT O/T EMPIRE IRON ECLIPSE #5 (OF 5)
STAR WARS KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC WAR #4 (OF 5
STEAMPUNK SKETCHBOOK ONE SHOT
STRANGE TALENT OF LUTHER STRODE TP VOL 01 (MR)
SUBCULTURE WEBSTRIPS VOL 02 DIE HARDER
SUICIDE SQUAD #8
SUPERBOY #8

TALES FROM NEVERLAND TP (MR)
TEEN TITANS PRIME OF LIFE TP
THIEF OF THIEVES #3

ULTIMATE COMICS X-MEN #10
UNCANNY X-MEN #10
UNWRITTEN #36 (MR)

VAMPIRELLA MASTERS SERIES TP VOL 07
VAMPIRELLA VS DRACULA #3

WINTER SOLDIER #4
WOLVERINE #304

X-MEN LEGACY LOST LEGIONS TP

This list is a copy of the list at memphiscomics.com. Arrivals at your LCS may vary.