Batman: A Death in the Family
Not the current "Death of the Family" storyline, but the one way back in 1988/89 that saw Jason Todd killed off by the Joker. Apparently Jason wasn't very popular with the readers. Too soon perhaps, or just before his time? He'd have fit in well in the 90s anti-hero trends. In any case, Jason Todd was an orphan, and when he gets a clue to his real mother's whereabouts, he takes off. Bruce follows, and in one of those darn coincidences, Jason's mother did something bad once and the Joker is able to blackmail her. He beats up Jason with a crowbar and leaves him locked in a warehouse that's set to be blown up. There's no last minute save here. Jason dies and all Batman can do is mourn him.
Of course, the hits keep coming. The Iranians recruit the Joker to be their ambassador to the UN, so he can release nerve gas and kill everyone. Hmmm. Thankfully Superman is there to stop that from happening, while Bruce makes an effort to deal with the Joker, who appears to die. But of course, there's no body, and Batman being the genre-saavy crimefighter that he is, knows that means things are unresolved.
Analysis: A mix of strong drama and hard to swallow coincidences. The Joker just happens to be in the same part of the world as Jason Todd's mother, at the same time that Jason and Bruce happen to be there. Weird how that happens, right? And would any amount of diplomatic immunity protect the Joker? Not likely. Though it is funny to see the Ayatollah Khomeni turn up to recruit the Joker and to see the Joker freaked out by the whole thing. Batman punches Superman in the jaw and almost breaks his hand, which is amusing. "If I hadn't rolled with that punch, you could have broken something."
Still, despite its flaws, the story had a permanent effect on Batman. Killing off a major character like Robin was rarely done in those days, and it affected Batman to this day as his "greatest failure". It cemented the Joker as his worst enemy. For all of the above it stands out as one of the more memorable Batman stories in the character's history.
Retro Comics are Awesome
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andersonh1
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Re: Retro Comics are Awesome
"A Death in the Family" is very uneven. I agree that it has some great moments, but the plot is held together with far too many contrivances. The "stare down" between Wayne and the Joker at the UN remains one of my favourite moments between the two characters. (I always kind of regretted that the Joker surived the end. It would have been a good death for him.)
And, I always loved how people complained about Jason's characterization, (and how it has stuck even now), when he was simply being written as a normal teenager. (I suppose that effectively makes the current Red Hood a complete loser.)
Galactic Storm (volume 1):
The basic plot of "Galactic Storm" is that two alien species (Shiar and Kree) are at war and Earth is caught dangerously in the middle. The selling point on the back cover is "super heroes from 3 galaxies fight", (Hey, if we are going to buy in for the idea of superhumans, why not super aliens? When this story was first printed (all 19 parts of it), ~20 years ago, it was one of my favourites. Being much younger, the early chapters were enough to hold my interest. And, being so young an unformed, I found myself waffling on the questions of the later chapters.
The first volume covers the Avengers' initial skirmishes in the war up to the launch of the McGuffin Bomb and the debut of the Kree Star-Force. The early chapters make for passable action sequences. During the last two chapters, the tone starts to shift from "this is a comic book" to "this is what comic can be".
"Galactic Storm" was written by another generation of writers, at a time when the industry was struggling to adapt and modernize. In some cases, the stuggle to make the necessary changes is obvious. DeFalco and Gruenwald are firmly stuck in the Silver Age, with their writing styles demonstrating many of the worst elements of that sort of writing, complete with tedious narration boxes and/or bloated thought balloons where the characters are narrating what they are seeing/doing. (Frankly, it reads like shit.) Suprisingly, Thomas (I believe the oldest of the involved writers) puts in an effort that would not seem out of place in today's market. The much maligned Bab Harras puts in a much stronger effort than I would have expected of him. And, I have a new respect for Jones. (I held him in some contempt for comments he made about the industry in the in the mid 90s. And, I had since forgotten about his strong showing on "Wonder Man".)
-Oddity: A number of characters, including Captain Atlass, have no trouble breathing on the Asteroid where Captain Marvel is buried. But, Rick Jones is unable to breath. However, later, Atlass is established to vulnerable to hard vaccuum. Um....
As each chapter is written and illustrated by a different team, there are inevitable shifts in tone and quality. Some of the worst excesses of the 90s are clearly visible in the art. There are a few examples of female characters being traced, or at least strongly inspired by, swimsuit magazines. (Seriously, in one panel, it looks like She-Hulk is vamping while she is being thrown in to a wall. And, the less said about Mockingbird's obvious shaving habits the better.) And, for some reason (never fully explain in story), the female Avengers sent to the Kree homeworld need to wear those oh-so stylish leather jackets that were popular in the 90s, while the (less powerful) male characters do not need coats to protect them from the cold.
Grade: B/C
And, I always loved how people complained about Jason's characterization, (and how it has stuck even now), when he was simply being written as a normal teenager. (I suppose that effectively makes the current Red Hood a complete loser.)
Galactic Storm (volume 1):
The basic plot of "Galactic Storm" is that two alien species (Shiar and Kree) are at war and Earth is caught dangerously in the middle. The selling point on the back cover is "super heroes from 3 galaxies fight", (Hey, if we are going to buy in for the idea of superhumans, why not super aliens? When this story was first printed (all 19 parts of it), ~20 years ago, it was one of my favourites. Being much younger, the early chapters were enough to hold my interest. And, being so young an unformed, I found myself waffling on the questions of the later chapters.
The first volume covers the Avengers' initial skirmishes in the war up to the launch of the McGuffin Bomb and the debut of the Kree Star-Force. The early chapters make for passable action sequences. During the last two chapters, the tone starts to shift from "this is a comic book" to "this is what comic can be".
"Galactic Storm" was written by another generation of writers, at a time when the industry was struggling to adapt and modernize. In some cases, the stuggle to make the necessary changes is obvious. DeFalco and Gruenwald are firmly stuck in the Silver Age, with their writing styles demonstrating many of the worst elements of that sort of writing, complete with tedious narration boxes and/or bloated thought balloons where the characters are narrating what they are seeing/doing. (Frankly, it reads like shit.) Suprisingly, Thomas (I believe the oldest of the involved writers) puts in an effort that would not seem out of place in today's market. The much maligned Bab Harras puts in a much stronger effort than I would have expected of him. And, I have a new respect for Jones. (I held him in some contempt for comments he made about the industry in the in the mid 90s. And, I had since forgotten about his strong showing on "Wonder Man".)
-Oddity: A number of characters, including Captain Atlass, have no trouble breathing on the Asteroid where Captain Marvel is buried. But, Rick Jones is unable to breath. However, later, Atlass is established to vulnerable to hard vaccuum. Um....
As each chapter is written and illustrated by a different team, there are inevitable shifts in tone and quality. Some of the worst excesses of the 90s are clearly visible in the art. There are a few examples of female characters being traced, or at least strongly inspired by, swimsuit magazines. (Seriously, in one panel, it looks like She-Hulk is vamping while she is being thrown in to a wall. And, the less said about Mockingbird's obvious shaving habits the better.) And, for some reason (never fully explain in story), the female Avengers sent to the Kree homeworld need to wear those oh-so stylish leather jackets that were popular in the 90s, while the (less powerful) male characters do not need coats to protect them from the cold.
Grade: B/C
Re: Retro Comics are Awesome
Galactic Storm (volume 2):
Volume 2 covers the Nega Bomb's trip to the Kree Empire to the aftermath of its detonation. Additionally, the second volume includes a reprint of the obligatory (at the time) "What If....?" issues referencing (then) recent comics.
The tone of the second volume is significantly heavier than the previous. The Jones written chapter, featuring Wonder Man and Vision delivers the "should they or shouldn't they" conflict. And, the Harras written chapter of "Avengers" carries that them as well, making a point of showing non-Kree being killed in the Nega Bomb's explosion.
The art is, unfortunately, pure "Revlon Era". In a few places, the base art and page layouts are bad enough to make the story nigh incomprehensible. Some it proves that Deodato's infamous run on "Thor" was not an isolated case. (Some of the facial expressions and reactions shots of the Avengers as they see the Nega Bomb go off would be laughable if they did not completely ruin was was meant to be a hugely important scene.)
Bob Harras deserves special mention here. Back in the 90s, during the "Revlon Era", bashing Harras was nearly as fashionable as bashing on Liefeld. Marvel fans were, not without reason, unhappy with the direction of many of their favourite books. Image fans bashed on Harras because McFarlane and co did not like Marvel. And, DC fans bashed on Harras being working at Marvel. But, I can honestly say that Harras delivered the goods. The Harras written chapters of "Galactic Storm" were not only readable, they perfectly balanced plot and concept. And, for all of the problems with "Revlon Era" Marvel, the company did some things right. 90s Marvel made an aggressive push to get away from some of the lazy habits of comic writers, such as excessive narration boxes. Harras makes use of omniscient narration, but did so sparingly. His descritions of the end of the Kree Empire still carry weight, even 20 years later.
(The downside to this is that the Kree were almost immediately restored to pre-"Galactic Storm" spec during either Busiek's or Waid's fannish runs on "Avengers".)
On a related note, as much as I like Gruenwald, I cannot give him a pass on being self-indulgent. One of the "Aftermath" issues of "Captain America" involves a transparent example of Gruenwald using Captain America to editorialize about the comics industry as a whole. I recall this happening more than once in the 90s on Gruenwald's watch. It was bad form then, and it looks no better now. (Between this and some other things I have read, I am sadly wary of going back and rereading an significant amount of Gruenwald's run because I am afraid to see one of my idols fall.)
In general terms, reading reprints from 20 or so years ago puts a complaint about modern comics in perspective. It is common to hear fans whining about how comics are "written for the trade". (This is despite the fact that single issue stories have not been standard since the 1970s.) In the 90s, comics had multiple plots that continued over several issues, and said plots did not begin and end at the same time. During the course of "Galactic Storm", there are several points (largely in Gruenwald written chapters) where the secondary plots are given attention, interrupting the main plot. Depending on how one reads it, it either makes the compilation seem incomplete or unfocused.
The "The What If...?" chapters are barely worth considering. In general terms, the two part story showed "What If...?" at its laziest. "Bad thing happens, and most everybody dies." Some of the character deaths are not shown on page, or even mentioned. (Captain Marvel and LIving LIghtning are assumed to have died....somewhen.) Normally I am pretty forgiving on this sort of thing. But, given that this sort of "What If ...?" story had little more going for it than "everybody dies", leaving out a character death is bad form. To add insult to injury, a number of pages in the first chapter are printed out of order. This may or may be a carry over from the original comics. Either way, it makes a basic story that much more difficult, and less worth the time, to read.
Grade: C
"Galactic Storm" has some notable and worthy points. But, given its sheer size and some glaring flaws, it is not worth clearing one's reading schedule for.
Dom
-enjoyed it much more 20 years ago.
Volume 2 covers the Nega Bomb's trip to the Kree Empire to the aftermath of its detonation. Additionally, the second volume includes a reprint of the obligatory (at the time) "What If....?" issues referencing (then) recent comics.
The tone of the second volume is significantly heavier than the previous. The Jones written chapter, featuring Wonder Man and Vision delivers the "should they or shouldn't they" conflict. And, the Harras written chapter of "Avengers" carries that them as well, making a point of showing non-Kree being killed in the Nega Bomb's explosion.
The art is, unfortunately, pure "Revlon Era". In a few places, the base art and page layouts are bad enough to make the story nigh incomprehensible. Some it proves that Deodato's infamous run on "Thor" was not an isolated case. (Some of the facial expressions and reactions shots of the Avengers as they see the Nega Bomb go off would be laughable if they did not completely ruin was was meant to be a hugely important scene.)
Bob Harras deserves special mention here. Back in the 90s, during the "Revlon Era", bashing Harras was nearly as fashionable as bashing on Liefeld. Marvel fans were, not without reason, unhappy with the direction of many of their favourite books. Image fans bashed on Harras because McFarlane and co did not like Marvel. And, DC fans bashed on Harras being working at Marvel. But, I can honestly say that Harras delivered the goods. The Harras written chapters of "Galactic Storm" were not only readable, they perfectly balanced plot and concept. And, for all of the problems with "Revlon Era" Marvel, the company did some things right. 90s Marvel made an aggressive push to get away from some of the lazy habits of comic writers, such as excessive narration boxes. Harras makes use of omniscient narration, but did so sparingly. His descritions of the end of the Kree Empire still carry weight, even 20 years later.
(The downside to this is that the Kree were almost immediately restored to pre-"Galactic Storm" spec during either Busiek's or Waid's fannish runs on "Avengers".)
On a related note, as much as I like Gruenwald, I cannot give him a pass on being self-indulgent. One of the "Aftermath" issues of "Captain America" involves a transparent example of Gruenwald using Captain America to editorialize about the comics industry as a whole. I recall this happening more than once in the 90s on Gruenwald's watch. It was bad form then, and it looks no better now. (Between this and some other things I have read, I am sadly wary of going back and rereading an significant amount of Gruenwald's run because I am afraid to see one of my idols fall.)
In general terms, reading reprints from 20 or so years ago puts a complaint about modern comics in perspective. It is common to hear fans whining about how comics are "written for the trade". (This is despite the fact that single issue stories have not been standard since the 1970s.) In the 90s, comics had multiple plots that continued over several issues, and said plots did not begin and end at the same time. During the course of "Galactic Storm", there are several points (largely in Gruenwald written chapters) where the secondary plots are given attention, interrupting the main plot. Depending on how one reads it, it either makes the compilation seem incomplete or unfocused.
The "The What If...?" chapters are barely worth considering. In general terms, the two part story showed "What If...?" at its laziest. "Bad thing happens, and most everybody dies." Some of the character deaths are not shown on page, or even mentioned. (Captain Marvel and LIving LIghtning are assumed to have died....somewhen.) Normally I am pretty forgiving on this sort of thing. But, given that this sort of "What If ...?" story had little more going for it than "everybody dies", leaving out a character death is bad form. To add insult to injury, a number of pages in the first chapter are printed out of order. This may or may be a carry over from the original comics. Either way, it makes a basic story that much more difficult, and less worth the time, to read.
Grade: C
"Galactic Storm" has some notable and worthy points. But, given its sheer size and some glaring flaws, it is not worth clearing one's reading schedule for.
Dom
-enjoyed it much more 20 years ago.
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BWprowl
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Re: Retro Comics are Awesome
The Freedom Fighters, particularly Uncle Sam, are a group I have an inordinate fondness for. The idea of the symbol of the country manifesting in an actual physical form, then getting a team of superpeople together and going out heroing is amusing and interesting in and of itself, and allows for some fairly unique stories. The original Uncle Sam stories DC did, with Sam and the team on an alternate Earth, fighting for American values in a WWII that never ended, exploited this, literally showing that the spirit of the country could never truly die. When modern DC’s favorite edgy writing duo, Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray brought back Sam with a new team of Freedom Fighters post-‘Battle for Bludhaven’ (a story itself that I think gets a worse rap than it deserves), the first volume they put out was a surprisingly true-to-form tale of the spirit of the country returning, taking back the defenders of the nation from a corrupt leadership with an agenda, and doing their best to make things better in the face of the always-acknowledged-to-be-fucked-up state of the world in the DC setting (which is generally better about recognizing such a thing about its universe than, say, Marvel). Sure, it was infused with a whole lot of Palmiotti and Gray’s trademark edginess (including an absolutely horrible character named, I shit you not, ‘Gonzo the Mechanical Bastard’), but the point of the story still shone through, and the revival more or less worked. DC apparently liked it as well, so they greenlit a second volume of new Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters comics, collected here in ‘Brave New World’, which was sent to me by Dom some time ago as filler in a trade.
Presumably he did this because he remembered me mentioning that I had dropped this series halfway through due to how incredibly, unbelievably, irredeemably shitty it is.
Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters - Brave New World:
‘Brave New World’ is, without delving too much into hyperbole, one of the absolute worst comics I have ever read. Every component of it is an unmitigated disaster, each portion flowing like Palmiotti and Gray were making it up on the day of the deadline, with no idea of what they were going to do next or how they were going to continue the story for eight consecutive issues. It opens in media res with the Freedom Fighters, having been assigned as the US Government’s official Metahuman Ops group in the previous series, fighting some alien bugs in a meteor that’s headed for Earth. They win thanks to Red Bee speaking…alien bee language (get ready, this whole series operates under some seriously bizarre entomology, apparently assuming that all bugs operate exactly the same, including giant insectoid aliens that likely wouldn’t really be considered ‘bugs’ when you think about it), and then they all teleport out of the meteor to where the White House was, which was of course destroyed during Amazons Attack, which had ended right about when this series started. When your comic basically *opens* with a tie-in to one of the most deservedly poorly-received events in the publisher’s history, you know you’re in for a ride. This leads into the first of many disparate directions Palmiotti and Gray decide to take this book, with the on-edge US Government wanting to repurpose the Freedom Fighters as a kind of metahuman Gestapo. Sam and about the half the team sensibly decline the notion, pointing out that it was the ENTIRE PLOT of the previous series, while the other half of the team spontaneously develop extreme political ideologies that they’ve never exhibited before (helpfully explicated by pseudo-researched attempts at mature political infodumping that can only be nicknamed ‘politibabble’) and decide to stay with the government and give being secret police a try! And by ‘secret’, I mean ‘celebrity’, as Red Bee becomes the ‘face’ of the group, and the remainder of the opening issue is her going around on talk shows and red-carpet affairs before her goofy alien bee pheromones go all wacky and she collapses into a giant cocoon! Oh noes!
Then just the second issue shoves all that development and plotting to the side for a bit to focus almost entirely on Phantom Lady basically being what would happen if you gave Kim Kardashian super-powers and put her on the government payroll. It’s a mildly interesting idea, and has always been the compelling angle of the current Phantom Lady’s characterization (though she was at least a bit more professional back in the first series), but doing it so early after all that setup in the first issue stalls the pacing something fierce. At the end she attempts suicide, which has…very little bearing on the plot as a whole, so. The only relevant thing that comes out of this portion is that Phantom Lady’s *hilarious* dismembering of a ‘for-show’ supervillain on national TV prompts the operations leader Robbins (who is DEFINITELY not evil!) to come up with a plan to kill off the current Freedom Fighters and replace them with a more palatable super-group (oh wait guess he is evil).
So that plot goes on in the background, introducing the generic guys who are apparently being set up as this replacement team (the leader of which gets a little time on a talk show to opine the old message-board arguments about how Superman could *really* make the world a better place, with a bunch of her own politibabble). Red Bee pops out of her cocoon and starts getting studied/imprisoned by Robbins, and Uncle Sam and Doll Man investigate the tiny hostage-taking of the Vice President, which just happens to have been carried out by the original Doll Man (who was not-conspicuously-at-all name-dropped at the beginning of the chapter noting that no one knew where he currently was), who explains that being tiny makes him go CRAZY sometimes, to the point that he and his mini-henchmen are attacking Uncle Sam and Doll Man on one page, then calmly explaining the situation on the other, hello pacing! While Uncle Sam and Doll Man go to Doll Man’s wife to try to start experimenting with a way to enlarge all the other tiny guys, Red Bee manages to figure out that Robbins is up to no good, and goes after him, dragging the remaining Freedom Fighters into a fight with Robbins and the replacement guys. This is abruptly brought to a halt when, somehow, Robbins mind-messing with Red Bee unlocks crazy alien-bug-mind-fuckery that had been present since they were in that meteor back at the beginning, and she starts going on about making the planet her hive and producing super-powered-bug-children and shit. So the other Freedom Fighters (plus the new guys who had been freed from Robbins’ mind control) try to restrain her, and there’s a big fight that breaks out, then…you turn the page and all of a sudden the whole group is just bowing down to Red Bee. Apparently she was able to mind control them? It’s so goddamn abrupt, you’re left wondering when the change occurred or how she activates the mind-control in the first place. So that offers a sudden resolution to the Robbins/replacement Freedom Fighters plot, not to mention functionally killing the ‘split up Freedom Fighters plot’ (which hadn’t really been a thing since it was allegedly established in the first issue) and goes straight into what’ll take up the last HALF of the story: Red Bee trying to fuck and eat everyone. We get a solid several pages of Red Bee getting into some barely-censored sex with Human Bomb, wanting him to fertilize her with explosive alien bee babies (…however that’s supposed to work), letting Miss America absorb his explosive energy that he apparently built up from getting too hot and heavy, then sending her to go explode out in space, restraining the other Freedom Fighters in a ridiculous-looking cocoon thing so they can be eaten by said explosive alien bee babies, and generally watching everyone calling her a crazy bitch, trying to stop her, and failing because MIND CONTROL. What really tears this is the apparent B-plot that over in the Pentagon (which might just be a few floors above where the Freedom Fighter base that Red Bee has taken control of is, it’s never really made clear) Doll Man and his wife are still working on a plan to cure all the tiny people! Despite the fact that he hasn’t been contacted by any of the team in who knows how long, and that Uncle Sam had originally ran out panicking about ‘everyone being in danger’, Doll Man makes no attempt to contact them and see if they’re okay! It’s not made clear how much time passes during these events, Red Bee’s antics seeming to take place over the course of at least a few days, but it’s ridiculous that Doll Man seemingly forgets about the whole team (not to mention no one on the team captive by Red Bee asking “Where’s Doll Man right now?”).
This is about where I just dropped the series when it was coming out in single issues, just gave up on it. With what happens afterwards, I’m not sorry, as I didn’t miss anything.
So Uncle Sam taps his ace in the hole, astral projecting to the original Ray and sending him to go find Neon the Unknown, a short-term Freedom Fighter from the original stories that pretty much everyone forgot about. Neon drank some magical oasis juice that turned him into a light-wielding superhero, but also basically made him Dr. Manhattan, and he just DOESN’T CARE that all the Freedom Fighters are about to become chow for sexy exploding ant babies. So Ray does the only thing he can think of, drinking some of the magic oasis juice and getting the EXACT powers he needs to bust in, resist Red Bee’s mind control, and draw out the alien mites that are driving her to be all crazy and evil (there’s that wacky entomology again, claiming that ALL insects are universally, irresistibly drawn to ultraviolet light, including alien brain-mites.) That plot about Red Bee abruptly resolved (so, did all that fucking with Human Bomb ‘not’ get her pregnant with exploding bee babies, after all?), we quickly go back to the Doll Man thing, where a miscalculation by his wife, instead of restoring him and the others to normal size, fuses them all into a horrible, mind-melded-man-monster! Which does nothing but waste time as Doll Man’s wife calms the thing down and brings them back to try to fix/separate them, then it goes berserk AGAIN, then they restrain it again, and all the people are effectively restored OFF-PANEL! Then the last issue rolls around, there’s two MORE asteroids just like the one from the beginning headed towards Earth, the Freedom Fighters go to fight the alien space bugs, and it plays out in utterly pedestrian fashion. Seriously, this last issue is the stupidest one of all, as everyone’s back to the status quo they were at the very beginning, none of the ridiculous and bizarre events that drove the rest of the series leading up to this are really referenced, and it’s just a big fight between superheroes and giant bugs for the duration of it, with quippy dialogue and simple resolutions (Miss America pulls herself together with, uh, plot powers and blows up one of the asteroids in one go, just one page after the rest of the team was expressing concern over having to fight *another* one). Then the book has to end somehow, so since Doll Man is a big boy now and Phantom Lady doesn’t want to be Phantom Lady anymore, the Freedom Fighters decide that having TWO less members mean it’s time to call it quits! That’s right folks, because the original dispute at the beginning of the story was between working for the government or for the country, they decide to just do NEITHER because deciding is TOO HARD. It’s the American Way! And the spirit of the country will never die, or something!
Seriously, this book has no clue what the fuck it wants to do. Its plot-concept shifts gears almost every issue, going from a look at a team split in their loyalties by political beliefs, to the effect of public scrutiny on a heroic figure that wants to live more as a tv-celebrity, to the Government manipulating opinion of superheroes for their own power play, to dropping ALL of that for a story about a sexy subjugating alien-possessed bee-woman, to just giving up and dues ex machnina-ing the plot into a last-issue punch-fest with bugs in a rock. And then just ending on “Wow! It’s fucking nothing!”. I don’t know what vague ideas Palmiotti and Gray had going into this, but they clearly got lost in them continuously having to shove these things out month-to-month, before they just throw their hands up and go “Look, we got nothing, okay? Bee people!”. It’s a daisy chain of shaggy dog stories, with each dog shooting the one behind it once its turn rolls around.
But as absolutely pointless, as grievously poorly-paced, and as lazily-plotted as the story is, it’s not my least favorite thing about the series. Let me talk about the art now, because this was a major factor in my dropping of the series originally. This is probably THE worst art I have EVER seen in a comic book. I don’t think it even counts as art. It appears photo-referenced, or more likely, actual photos ‘shopped within an inch of their life and then sloppily dressed up in the superhero costume elements (extremely visible in the case of the replacement heroes, who all just wear skintight bodysuits with no external defining bits, meaning fabricating them for their appearances in the book must’ve been a snap). Being heavily photo-based like this means you run into the usual caveats with the practice where characters’ expressions and poses don’t really work with the content on the page, and end up looking awkward and shitty (there’s a really telling panel late when Doll Man’s wife initially accidentally fuses all the tiny people, and she’s all “Oooooh nooooo!” and the look of the character on the page doesn’t really convey that sort of desperation at all), but it gets worse. Apparently just photoshopping pictures wasn’t easy *enough* for this artist, so he didn’t even use enough pictures for the whole series! Stills of characters are CONSTANTLY reused across multiple panels, usually in a row, on a page, making it blatantly obvious, even zooming in and out on them and flipping the models to the side in a pitiful attempt to bring ‘variety’ to this shamelessly lazy ‘style’. Hell, there only seems to be one or two models the guy uses for all the characters, considering ALL the female characters wear only slightly different variations on the same low-neckline dress. There are several pages that are just the same character, in the same pose, slid around on a background with new word bubbles added! The backgrounds, speaking of, are just as bad, being overly-filtered, once-again-photo-based, grimy messes of generic backdrops that just make it more obvious when the character cutouts are sloppily laid on them. Even the covers aren’t safe, sporting amateurish coloring work, and a few cases of a blatant lack of effort (the Human Bomb cover of issue...5, I think, is one of the laziest covers I have ever seen, and played a large role in me dropping the series).
So this series is hideous to look at, has plotting that will give you whiplash in addition to a migraine, and will generally just leave you embarrassed to have spent any time reading it. Not only will you get nothing out of it, you’ll probably lose a few things along the way. Like your last shred of respect for Palmiotti and Gray, or your belief that there’re any more story concepts to be mined out of Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters. I could have forgiven some of the shortcomings, some of the more questionable concepts, if it had looked like anyone involved with the book had even TRIED. Instead, this thing has all the earmarks of a shoddy attempt turned in by a procrastinator at the last minute, and can be completely disregarded as such. The only contribution it has made to any industry is that it can helpfully serve as a perfect benchmark for what constitutes ‘lazy’ writing.
In the end, I apologize for the length of this review. Dom sent this to me some time ago with the intention of looking forward to a review, so I figured I might as well deliver in full force. While I’m not normally one to do detailed story recaps like that either, I figured that asking an audience to try to look up MORE information on this series would just be cruel and unusual, so it would just be better to outline everything here. Thanks for sticking it out, you can think yourself a stronger person now.
Presumably he did this because he remembered me mentioning that I had dropped this series halfway through due to how incredibly, unbelievably, irredeemably shitty it is.
Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters - Brave New World:
‘Brave New World’ is, without delving too much into hyperbole, one of the absolute worst comics I have ever read. Every component of it is an unmitigated disaster, each portion flowing like Palmiotti and Gray were making it up on the day of the deadline, with no idea of what they were going to do next or how they were going to continue the story for eight consecutive issues. It opens in media res with the Freedom Fighters, having been assigned as the US Government’s official Metahuman Ops group in the previous series, fighting some alien bugs in a meteor that’s headed for Earth. They win thanks to Red Bee speaking…alien bee language (get ready, this whole series operates under some seriously bizarre entomology, apparently assuming that all bugs operate exactly the same, including giant insectoid aliens that likely wouldn’t really be considered ‘bugs’ when you think about it), and then they all teleport out of the meteor to where the White House was, which was of course destroyed during Amazons Attack, which had ended right about when this series started. When your comic basically *opens* with a tie-in to one of the most deservedly poorly-received events in the publisher’s history, you know you’re in for a ride. This leads into the first of many disparate directions Palmiotti and Gray decide to take this book, with the on-edge US Government wanting to repurpose the Freedom Fighters as a kind of metahuman Gestapo. Sam and about the half the team sensibly decline the notion, pointing out that it was the ENTIRE PLOT of the previous series, while the other half of the team spontaneously develop extreme political ideologies that they’ve never exhibited before (helpfully explicated by pseudo-researched attempts at mature political infodumping that can only be nicknamed ‘politibabble’) and decide to stay with the government and give being secret police a try! And by ‘secret’, I mean ‘celebrity’, as Red Bee becomes the ‘face’ of the group, and the remainder of the opening issue is her going around on talk shows and red-carpet affairs before her goofy alien bee pheromones go all wacky and she collapses into a giant cocoon! Oh noes!
Then just the second issue shoves all that development and plotting to the side for a bit to focus almost entirely on Phantom Lady basically being what would happen if you gave Kim Kardashian super-powers and put her on the government payroll. It’s a mildly interesting idea, and has always been the compelling angle of the current Phantom Lady’s characterization (though she was at least a bit more professional back in the first series), but doing it so early after all that setup in the first issue stalls the pacing something fierce. At the end she attempts suicide, which has…very little bearing on the plot as a whole, so. The only relevant thing that comes out of this portion is that Phantom Lady’s *hilarious* dismembering of a ‘for-show’ supervillain on national TV prompts the operations leader Robbins (who is DEFINITELY not evil!) to come up with a plan to kill off the current Freedom Fighters and replace them with a more palatable super-group (oh wait guess he is evil).
So that plot goes on in the background, introducing the generic guys who are apparently being set up as this replacement team (the leader of which gets a little time on a talk show to opine the old message-board arguments about how Superman could *really* make the world a better place, with a bunch of her own politibabble). Red Bee pops out of her cocoon and starts getting studied/imprisoned by Robbins, and Uncle Sam and Doll Man investigate the tiny hostage-taking of the Vice President, which just happens to have been carried out by the original Doll Man (who was not-conspicuously-at-all name-dropped at the beginning of the chapter noting that no one knew where he currently was), who explains that being tiny makes him go CRAZY sometimes, to the point that he and his mini-henchmen are attacking Uncle Sam and Doll Man on one page, then calmly explaining the situation on the other, hello pacing! While Uncle Sam and Doll Man go to Doll Man’s wife to try to start experimenting with a way to enlarge all the other tiny guys, Red Bee manages to figure out that Robbins is up to no good, and goes after him, dragging the remaining Freedom Fighters into a fight with Robbins and the replacement guys. This is abruptly brought to a halt when, somehow, Robbins mind-messing with Red Bee unlocks crazy alien-bug-mind-fuckery that had been present since they were in that meteor back at the beginning, and she starts going on about making the planet her hive and producing super-powered-bug-children and shit. So the other Freedom Fighters (plus the new guys who had been freed from Robbins’ mind control) try to restrain her, and there’s a big fight that breaks out, then…you turn the page and all of a sudden the whole group is just bowing down to Red Bee. Apparently she was able to mind control them? It’s so goddamn abrupt, you’re left wondering when the change occurred or how she activates the mind-control in the first place. So that offers a sudden resolution to the Robbins/replacement Freedom Fighters plot, not to mention functionally killing the ‘split up Freedom Fighters plot’ (which hadn’t really been a thing since it was allegedly established in the first issue) and goes straight into what’ll take up the last HALF of the story: Red Bee trying to fuck and eat everyone. We get a solid several pages of Red Bee getting into some barely-censored sex with Human Bomb, wanting him to fertilize her with explosive alien bee babies (…however that’s supposed to work), letting Miss America absorb his explosive energy that he apparently built up from getting too hot and heavy, then sending her to go explode out in space, restraining the other Freedom Fighters in a ridiculous-looking cocoon thing so they can be eaten by said explosive alien bee babies, and generally watching everyone calling her a crazy bitch, trying to stop her, and failing because MIND CONTROL. What really tears this is the apparent B-plot that over in the Pentagon (which might just be a few floors above where the Freedom Fighter base that Red Bee has taken control of is, it’s never really made clear) Doll Man and his wife are still working on a plan to cure all the tiny people! Despite the fact that he hasn’t been contacted by any of the team in who knows how long, and that Uncle Sam had originally ran out panicking about ‘everyone being in danger’, Doll Man makes no attempt to contact them and see if they’re okay! It’s not made clear how much time passes during these events, Red Bee’s antics seeming to take place over the course of at least a few days, but it’s ridiculous that Doll Man seemingly forgets about the whole team (not to mention no one on the team captive by Red Bee asking “Where’s Doll Man right now?”).
This is about where I just dropped the series when it was coming out in single issues, just gave up on it. With what happens afterwards, I’m not sorry, as I didn’t miss anything.
So Uncle Sam taps his ace in the hole, astral projecting to the original Ray and sending him to go find Neon the Unknown, a short-term Freedom Fighter from the original stories that pretty much everyone forgot about. Neon drank some magical oasis juice that turned him into a light-wielding superhero, but also basically made him Dr. Manhattan, and he just DOESN’T CARE that all the Freedom Fighters are about to become chow for sexy exploding ant babies. So Ray does the only thing he can think of, drinking some of the magic oasis juice and getting the EXACT powers he needs to bust in, resist Red Bee’s mind control, and draw out the alien mites that are driving her to be all crazy and evil (there’s that wacky entomology again, claiming that ALL insects are universally, irresistibly drawn to ultraviolet light, including alien brain-mites.) That plot about Red Bee abruptly resolved (so, did all that fucking with Human Bomb ‘not’ get her pregnant with exploding bee babies, after all?), we quickly go back to the Doll Man thing, where a miscalculation by his wife, instead of restoring him and the others to normal size, fuses them all into a horrible, mind-melded-man-monster! Which does nothing but waste time as Doll Man’s wife calms the thing down and brings them back to try to fix/separate them, then it goes berserk AGAIN, then they restrain it again, and all the people are effectively restored OFF-PANEL! Then the last issue rolls around, there’s two MORE asteroids just like the one from the beginning headed towards Earth, the Freedom Fighters go to fight the alien space bugs, and it plays out in utterly pedestrian fashion. Seriously, this last issue is the stupidest one of all, as everyone’s back to the status quo they were at the very beginning, none of the ridiculous and bizarre events that drove the rest of the series leading up to this are really referenced, and it’s just a big fight between superheroes and giant bugs for the duration of it, with quippy dialogue and simple resolutions (Miss America pulls herself together with, uh, plot powers and blows up one of the asteroids in one go, just one page after the rest of the team was expressing concern over having to fight *another* one). Then the book has to end somehow, so since Doll Man is a big boy now and Phantom Lady doesn’t want to be Phantom Lady anymore, the Freedom Fighters decide that having TWO less members mean it’s time to call it quits! That’s right folks, because the original dispute at the beginning of the story was between working for the government or for the country, they decide to just do NEITHER because deciding is TOO HARD. It’s the American Way! And the spirit of the country will never die, or something!
Seriously, this book has no clue what the fuck it wants to do. Its plot-concept shifts gears almost every issue, going from a look at a team split in their loyalties by political beliefs, to the effect of public scrutiny on a heroic figure that wants to live more as a tv-celebrity, to the Government manipulating opinion of superheroes for their own power play, to dropping ALL of that for a story about a sexy subjugating alien-possessed bee-woman, to just giving up and dues ex machnina-ing the plot into a last-issue punch-fest with bugs in a rock. And then just ending on “Wow! It’s fucking nothing!”. I don’t know what vague ideas Palmiotti and Gray had going into this, but they clearly got lost in them continuously having to shove these things out month-to-month, before they just throw their hands up and go “Look, we got nothing, okay? Bee people!”. It’s a daisy chain of shaggy dog stories, with each dog shooting the one behind it once its turn rolls around.
But as absolutely pointless, as grievously poorly-paced, and as lazily-plotted as the story is, it’s not my least favorite thing about the series. Let me talk about the art now, because this was a major factor in my dropping of the series originally. This is probably THE worst art I have EVER seen in a comic book. I don’t think it even counts as art. It appears photo-referenced, or more likely, actual photos ‘shopped within an inch of their life and then sloppily dressed up in the superhero costume elements (extremely visible in the case of the replacement heroes, who all just wear skintight bodysuits with no external defining bits, meaning fabricating them for their appearances in the book must’ve been a snap). Being heavily photo-based like this means you run into the usual caveats with the practice where characters’ expressions and poses don’t really work with the content on the page, and end up looking awkward and shitty (there’s a really telling panel late when Doll Man’s wife initially accidentally fuses all the tiny people, and she’s all “Oooooh nooooo!” and the look of the character on the page doesn’t really convey that sort of desperation at all), but it gets worse. Apparently just photoshopping pictures wasn’t easy *enough* for this artist, so he didn’t even use enough pictures for the whole series! Stills of characters are CONSTANTLY reused across multiple panels, usually in a row, on a page, making it blatantly obvious, even zooming in and out on them and flipping the models to the side in a pitiful attempt to bring ‘variety’ to this shamelessly lazy ‘style’. Hell, there only seems to be one or two models the guy uses for all the characters, considering ALL the female characters wear only slightly different variations on the same low-neckline dress. There are several pages that are just the same character, in the same pose, slid around on a background with new word bubbles added! The backgrounds, speaking of, are just as bad, being overly-filtered, once-again-photo-based, grimy messes of generic backdrops that just make it more obvious when the character cutouts are sloppily laid on them. Even the covers aren’t safe, sporting amateurish coloring work, and a few cases of a blatant lack of effort (the Human Bomb cover of issue...5, I think, is one of the laziest covers I have ever seen, and played a large role in me dropping the series).
So this series is hideous to look at, has plotting that will give you whiplash in addition to a migraine, and will generally just leave you embarrassed to have spent any time reading it. Not only will you get nothing out of it, you’ll probably lose a few things along the way. Like your last shred of respect for Palmiotti and Gray, or your belief that there’re any more story concepts to be mined out of Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters. I could have forgiven some of the shortcomings, some of the more questionable concepts, if it had looked like anyone involved with the book had even TRIED. Instead, this thing has all the earmarks of a shoddy attempt turned in by a procrastinator at the last minute, and can be completely disregarded as such. The only contribution it has made to any industry is that it can helpfully serve as a perfect benchmark for what constitutes ‘lazy’ writing.
In the end, I apologize for the length of this review. Dom sent this to me some time ago with the intention of looking forward to a review, so I figured I might as well deliver in full force. While I’m not normally one to do detailed story recaps like that either, I figured that asking an audience to try to look up MORE information on this series would just be cruel and unusual, so it would just be better to outline everything here. Thanks for sticking it out, you can think yourself a stronger person now.
Re: Retro Comics are Awesome
Yeah...uh, that about sums it up.
Dom
-still dreading retribution.
Dom
-still dreading retribution.
Re: Retro Comics are Awesome
Avengers (2005) #7-10:
You know that embarassing moment where you buy comics that you already have....because you forgot what you have in your collection?
Yup. I actually have these in a compilation somewhere, along with some other stuff. But, I did not actually read the compilation and failed to realized my mistake until I got home. On the other hand, I got these in a "super saver" pack at my local comic shop, so I am only out $4 and some change.
This story sets up for Bendis' run with the Sentry, establishing his relationship to the Void as well as the almost Morrisonian tone of the character over-all. While the first chapter has a lenghty digression featuring several members of the team fighting the Wrecker, that actually does tie back in to the prison break from the previous arc which makes it reasonable to include. Bendis' typcially strong ear for dialogue is evident throughout. And, it shows that Bendis was writing from ideas, rather than for the sake events, before "Secret Invasion".
Grade: B
Dom
-is a huge Sentry fan.
You know that embarassing moment where you buy comics that you already have....because you forgot what you have in your collection?
Yup. I actually have these in a compilation somewhere, along with some other stuff. But, I did not actually read the compilation and failed to realized my mistake until I got home. On the other hand, I got these in a "super saver" pack at my local comic shop, so I am only out $4 and some change.
This story sets up for Bendis' run with the Sentry, establishing his relationship to the Void as well as the almost Morrisonian tone of the character over-all. While the first chapter has a lenghty digression featuring several members of the team fighting the Wrecker, that actually does tie back in to the prison break from the previous arc which makes it reasonable to include. Bendis' typcially strong ear for dialogue is evident throughout. And, it shows that Bendis was writing from ideas, rather than for the sake events, before "Secret Invasion".
Grade: B
Dom
-is a huge Sentry fan.
-
andersonh1
- Moderator
- Posts: 6440
- Joined: Fri Jul 18, 2008 3:22 pm
- Location: South Carolina
Re: Retro Comics are Awesome
I've got to put a plug in for the two modern day Justice Society series, JSA and Justice Society of America. I've almost collected the entire run of both series. For those of you who haven't read either, the books take the three remaining original Justice Society members who were still alive and active and built a legacy team around them and their adventures. The book really was the lone representative of DC's Golden Age characters in the modern day, and it gave the impression that these men and women had made a difference in the world with all they had done, and that others had been inspired to follow in their footsteps. Children and grandchildren and former kid sidekicks of the original characters stepped up and took the place of the original JSA members, which made for a great combination of characters to read about. One reason I disliked Earth-2 so much is that it jettisoned all of this.
The two series had their ups and downs, and really ended on a low note with the awful combination of Mark Guggenheim's writing and Scott Kolins art, but by and large the two Justice Society series were consistently good over their combined 12 year run. I had recently picked up volume 1 to read again and was reminded just how much I enjoyed this series, and how much I miss reading it every month.
The two series had their ups and downs, and really ended on a low note with the awful combination of Mark Guggenheim's writing and Scott Kolins art, but by and large the two Justice Society series were consistently good over their combined 12 year run. I had recently picked up volume 1 to read again and was reminded just how much I enjoyed this series, and how much I miss reading it every month.
Re: Retro Comics are Awesome
Iron Manual:
I waffled on posting this in the regular comics thread. But, it more or less meets the rough criteria I have for being a retro comic.
It is ~5 years old (having been released as part of the run up to 2008's "Iron Man" movie). It would have come out around the time of "Secret Invasion" (well before the "Heroic Age" and the current "Marvel NOW!"). And, aside from some promotion for the first movie, most of the material consists of (fairly comprehensive) charactger entries and some material reprinted from the early 90s.
Despite being published to hype the movie, and the cover using a picture of the movie armour (and armour shop), the "Iron Manual" focuses mostly on the comics. The source-book entries as particularly interesting by virtue of being comprehensive. Marvel is not above compressing longer entries. But, in this case, the entries inlcuded more or less full histories, even including some of the lower and more obscure points, such as "the Crossing" and "Force Works". There articles reprinted from "Marvel Age" are a good indicator of how Marvel was branding Iron Man in the run up to the movie, which of course led to Marvel being able to launch a "Marvel" movie franchise (which would have been unthinkable even a few years earlier).
Grade: A
Worth picking up, particularly for a newer fan.
Dom
-notes that Marvel included Cold War era characters, but not Arno Stark.....
I waffled on posting this in the regular comics thread. But, it more or less meets the rough criteria I have for being a retro comic.
It is ~5 years old (having been released as part of the run up to 2008's "Iron Man" movie). It would have come out around the time of "Secret Invasion" (well before the "Heroic Age" and the current "Marvel NOW!"). And, aside from some promotion for the first movie, most of the material consists of (fairly comprehensive) charactger entries and some material reprinted from the early 90s.
Despite being published to hype the movie, and the cover using a picture of the movie armour (and armour shop), the "Iron Manual" focuses mostly on the comics. The source-book entries as particularly interesting by virtue of being comprehensive. Marvel is not above compressing longer entries. But, in this case, the entries inlcuded more or less full histories, even including some of the lower and more obscure points, such as "the Crossing" and "Force Works". There articles reprinted from "Marvel Age" are a good indicator of how Marvel was branding Iron Man in the run up to the movie, which of course led to Marvel being able to launch a "Marvel" movie franchise (which would have been unthinkable even a few years earlier).
Grade: A
Worth picking up, particularly for a newer fan.
Dom
-notes that Marvel included Cold War era characters, but not Arno Stark.....
-
andersonh1
- Moderator
- Posts: 6440
- Joined: Fri Jul 18, 2008 3:22 pm
- Location: South Carolina
Re: Retro Comics are Awesome
Sparky and I have been debating Green Lantern and how much it has changed (or not) over the years, so it's time to dig into my back issue collection and see if my memory holds up or not. Yeah, there are huge gaps in my collection, and it's been years (if ever) since I've read some of these, so it will be interesting to review these old comics in light of the just-completed Geoff Johns era. There's some good and bad in his run of comics, but there's no doubt that he's raised the profile of Green Lantern to the point that it's one been one of DC's most successful lines for a number of years now.
I'm going to read through my collection chronologically. I do have one Silver Age issue that for some reason isn't with the others, otherwise it would have been first on my re-reading list. It's a Hal Jordan/Alan Scott team-up that actually got a sequel story in an issue of Green Lantern Corps Quarterly in the 90s, so it's interesting to me that I ran across it in the back issue bins a few years ago. But I'll start with the next issue in my collection.
Green Lantern/Green Arrow #92 – December 1976
The Legend of the Green Arrow - Written by Denny O’Neill, with art by Mike Grell, who is definitely channeling some Neal Adams at times.
Pretty typical bronze age wackiness, though surprisingly readable despite the florid writing. The issue carries on from the previous one with GL and GA having captured Sinestro and taken his ring. But being the crafty fellow that he is, Sinestro has a second ring hidden in his belt, and he escapes. GL pursues him and brings GA along, and they all encounter the “Silver Twist”, a mysterious space phenomenon that sends the three off to a dimension (that may or may not exist, the narrator informs us) where Robin Hood plays out in a slightly different form, with Green Arrow (of course) as Robin Hood. The evil Prince John equivalent character has a device in his tower that suppresses all power (these other dimensional medieval types having electricity, you see) so GL and Sinestro’s rings don’t work. That makes the guy who shoots a bow more useful than he has a right to be in a comic featuring Green Lanterns, and he is able to climb the tower and take out the bad guy, singing to himself as he wrecks the joint. And Sinestro reluctantly creates a diversion by dressing up as a court jester. Seriously. After saving the day, the three leave and exit the Silver Twist, which sends Sinestro off to parts unknown.
Where can I start? The difference between a comic like this and modern day comics is almost as large as the gulf between Shakespeare and a modern novel. The prose has a very distinctive voice and style which plays as large a part in telling the story as the visuals do. There’s a ton of plot crammed into this one issue, with no decompressed storytelling in sight. And the art is a lot better than I would have expected, though once I saw that it was Mike Grell on pencils it wasn’t surprising. I mainly remember him later on from Green Arrow and the Longbow Hunters. If you’ve read any of the collected Denny O’Neill/Neal Adams Green Lantern/Green Arrow stories, this one feels much the same in tone and voice, only without the same amount of period slang.
Green Lantern/Green Arrow #96 – August 1977
How Can an Immortal Die? - Written by Denny O’Neill, with art by Mike Grell
Katma Tui crashes to Earth after having been attacked, and she’s pursued by another Green Lantern. It turns out that he’s the attacker, and that the Corps have been compromised and mind-controlled. Hal doesn’t get the message since Katma is delirious, so he heads off to Oa to investigate without first getting the message that the Guardians are also under mind control. And somewhere along the line he’s picked up a little starfish looking creature named “Itty” that rides on his shoulder and which he keeps talking to. Hmmm. And being Mr. Exposition, when GA mentions Oa, Hal has to mention that it’s the home of the Guardians and base of the Green Lantern Corps (just in case the reader didn’t know). But that appears to be standard writing for the time, or at least for O’Neill.
The subplot with Black Canary feeling jealous about Ollie’s attempts to protect and look after Katma Tui is hilarious just because of her dialogue. “I do believe I’m feeling jealous!” she thinks at one point. I hate to single out any particular dialogue because very little of it in any of these books sounds like something a real person would say, but some stands out as more amusing than others.
One of the reasons I decided to break out the old GL comics and re-read them is because of my discussion with Sparky Prime about the nature of the Guardians and how they’ve changed over time. And there’s a prime example in this issue and the next. Hal encounters the possessed Green Lanterns and after a fight manages to escape. He goes to the Guardians for help, and they agree and ask for his ring. Hal’s comment? “Sure, if I can’t trust you, who can I trust?” Of course, the Guardians are also under mind control and they attack Hal, who fights back, flinging one of the little blue guys right into the path of some attacking Green Lanterns, and the Guardian is killed. That shocks everyone back to their normal selves, with no clue about what they’d just done, and Hal wonders how it’s possible for an immortal to die. When suddenly, mocking laughter rings out! Gasp! Cliffhanger!
It’s impossible for me to read these old comics without the more modern ones in mind, and what a contrast in how the characters act, and how they interact with each other. Things have changed a lot, clearly. All the familiar elements and characters are present, but written in a largely different way. However when it comes to Hal Jordan, he's still a little cocky and too sure of his abilities, and he still jumps in feet first, so that much is consistent from the 70s until now, making the character recognizable.
Green Lantern/Green Arrow #97 – October 1977
The Mystery of the Mocker - Written by Denny O’Neill, with art by Mike Grell
They really knew how to hook the reader in with covers back in the day. There’s still some silver age influence visible in the cover of all three of the issues I read, with some impossible dilemma or situation and a character commenting on it, on the cover. It’s a practice we rarely see in today’s comics, just as thought balloons have vanished. Almost every cover is an example of “how are they going to get out of that one?” or “what IS going on here?” In the case of this issue, Hal is about to charge his ring on the main power battery while a Green Arrow made entirely of glowing yellow energy is climbing out of it and aiming his bow at Hal. I’m immediately associating that with Sinestro (it’s not him though) or Parallax (who hasn’t been created yet), but it’s someone else entirely who has invaded the central battery. No points for guessing it’s the “Mocker” of the title. He’s not revealed until near the end of the issue when Hal goes to charge his battery. Yes, surprisingly the scene on the cover actually happens in the issue! The issue ends on another cliffhanger, with the Mocker sending Hal back to Earth with the mystery of who he is and how he infiltrated the Corp left unsolved. Though we do learn that the "Guardian" who was killed was a alien in disguise and not a Guardian at all.
On Earth, more of the GA/GL sensibility creeps into the storyline as we get some terrorists discussing those evil rich Americans and how they need to pay. Naturally Green Arrow is there to confront and stop them. I laughed out loud when the guy introduces himself. “I’m so and so the terrorist, son of so and so the terrorist! Perhaps you’ve heard of me?” (both names have escaped me). Hey, at least he’s honest about who he is! There are a few lines of dialogue from a doctor treating Katma Tui about how he’d like to study the alien life form, but GA’s having none of that! No sir!
Speaking of Katma, she has a few rips in her GL uniform from her fight prior to last issue. Two rips, and guess where one is? It’s no Power Girl boob window, but it accomplishes the same thing. Prince John had two scantily clad babes fanning him back in issue 92. It makes me wonder if O’Neill put those touches in the script or if Mike Grell added them himself. It seems like an odd mix of tone to add some touches of male-gaze sex appeal in what is otherwise a pretty innocent and kid-friendly comic. I guess it shouldn't be, because after all Wonder Woman's been fighting evil in the same star-spangled bathing suit since the 40s. It still seems like a weird mix of tone though.
And I have to point out a caption near the start where the narrator describes the Green Lantern Corps as “dedicated to the preservation of all life” and the Guardians as “wise, compassionate and benevolent”. All I can say is: how things have changed!
I'm going to read through my collection chronologically. I do have one Silver Age issue that for some reason isn't with the others, otherwise it would have been first on my re-reading list. It's a Hal Jordan/Alan Scott team-up that actually got a sequel story in an issue of Green Lantern Corps Quarterly in the 90s, so it's interesting to me that I ran across it in the back issue bins a few years ago. But I'll start with the next issue in my collection.
Green Lantern/Green Arrow #92 – December 1976
The Legend of the Green Arrow - Written by Denny O’Neill, with art by Mike Grell, who is definitely channeling some Neal Adams at times.
Pretty typical bronze age wackiness, though surprisingly readable despite the florid writing. The issue carries on from the previous one with GL and GA having captured Sinestro and taken his ring. But being the crafty fellow that he is, Sinestro has a second ring hidden in his belt, and he escapes. GL pursues him and brings GA along, and they all encounter the “Silver Twist”, a mysterious space phenomenon that sends the three off to a dimension (that may or may not exist, the narrator informs us) where Robin Hood plays out in a slightly different form, with Green Arrow (of course) as Robin Hood. The evil Prince John equivalent character has a device in his tower that suppresses all power (these other dimensional medieval types having electricity, you see) so GL and Sinestro’s rings don’t work. That makes the guy who shoots a bow more useful than he has a right to be in a comic featuring Green Lanterns, and he is able to climb the tower and take out the bad guy, singing to himself as he wrecks the joint. And Sinestro reluctantly creates a diversion by dressing up as a court jester. Seriously. After saving the day, the three leave and exit the Silver Twist, which sends Sinestro off to parts unknown.
Where can I start? The difference between a comic like this and modern day comics is almost as large as the gulf between Shakespeare and a modern novel. The prose has a very distinctive voice and style which plays as large a part in telling the story as the visuals do. There’s a ton of plot crammed into this one issue, with no decompressed storytelling in sight. And the art is a lot better than I would have expected, though once I saw that it was Mike Grell on pencils it wasn’t surprising. I mainly remember him later on from Green Arrow and the Longbow Hunters. If you’ve read any of the collected Denny O’Neill/Neal Adams Green Lantern/Green Arrow stories, this one feels much the same in tone and voice, only without the same amount of period slang.
Green Lantern/Green Arrow #96 – August 1977
How Can an Immortal Die? - Written by Denny O’Neill, with art by Mike Grell
Katma Tui crashes to Earth after having been attacked, and she’s pursued by another Green Lantern. It turns out that he’s the attacker, and that the Corps have been compromised and mind-controlled. Hal doesn’t get the message since Katma is delirious, so he heads off to Oa to investigate without first getting the message that the Guardians are also under mind control. And somewhere along the line he’s picked up a little starfish looking creature named “Itty” that rides on his shoulder and which he keeps talking to. Hmmm. And being Mr. Exposition, when GA mentions Oa, Hal has to mention that it’s the home of the Guardians and base of the Green Lantern Corps (just in case the reader didn’t know). But that appears to be standard writing for the time, or at least for O’Neill.
The subplot with Black Canary feeling jealous about Ollie’s attempts to protect and look after Katma Tui is hilarious just because of her dialogue. “I do believe I’m feeling jealous!” she thinks at one point. I hate to single out any particular dialogue because very little of it in any of these books sounds like something a real person would say, but some stands out as more amusing than others.
One of the reasons I decided to break out the old GL comics and re-read them is because of my discussion with Sparky Prime about the nature of the Guardians and how they’ve changed over time. And there’s a prime example in this issue and the next. Hal encounters the possessed Green Lanterns and after a fight manages to escape. He goes to the Guardians for help, and they agree and ask for his ring. Hal’s comment? “Sure, if I can’t trust you, who can I trust?” Of course, the Guardians are also under mind control and they attack Hal, who fights back, flinging one of the little blue guys right into the path of some attacking Green Lanterns, and the Guardian is killed. That shocks everyone back to their normal selves, with no clue about what they’d just done, and Hal wonders how it’s possible for an immortal to die. When suddenly, mocking laughter rings out! Gasp! Cliffhanger!
It’s impossible for me to read these old comics without the more modern ones in mind, and what a contrast in how the characters act, and how they interact with each other. Things have changed a lot, clearly. All the familiar elements and characters are present, but written in a largely different way. However when it comes to Hal Jordan, he's still a little cocky and too sure of his abilities, and he still jumps in feet first, so that much is consistent from the 70s until now, making the character recognizable.
Green Lantern/Green Arrow #97 – October 1977
The Mystery of the Mocker - Written by Denny O’Neill, with art by Mike Grell
They really knew how to hook the reader in with covers back in the day. There’s still some silver age influence visible in the cover of all three of the issues I read, with some impossible dilemma or situation and a character commenting on it, on the cover. It’s a practice we rarely see in today’s comics, just as thought balloons have vanished. Almost every cover is an example of “how are they going to get out of that one?” or “what IS going on here?” In the case of this issue, Hal is about to charge his ring on the main power battery while a Green Arrow made entirely of glowing yellow energy is climbing out of it and aiming his bow at Hal. I’m immediately associating that with Sinestro (it’s not him though) or Parallax (who hasn’t been created yet), but it’s someone else entirely who has invaded the central battery. No points for guessing it’s the “Mocker” of the title. He’s not revealed until near the end of the issue when Hal goes to charge his battery. Yes, surprisingly the scene on the cover actually happens in the issue! The issue ends on another cliffhanger, with the Mocker sending Hal back to Earth with the mystery of who he is and how he infiltrated the Corp left unsolved. Though we do learn that the "Guardian" who was killed was a alien in disguise and not a Guardian at all.
On Earth, more of the GA/GL sensibility creeps into the storyline as we get some terrorists discussing those evil rich Americans and how they need to pay. Naturally Green Arrow is there to confront and stop them. I laughed out loud when the guy introduces himself. “I’m so and so the terrorist, son of so and so the terrorist! Perhaps you’ve heard of me?” (both names have escaped me). Hey, at least he’s honest about who he is! There are a few lines of dialogue from a doctor treating Katma Tui about how he’d like to study the alien life form, but GA’s having none of that! No sir!
Speaking of Katma, she has a few rips in her GL uniform from her fight prior to last issue. Two rips, and guess where one is? It’s no Power Girl boob window, but it accomplishes the same thing. Prince John had two scantily clad babes fanning him back in issue 92. It makes me wonder if O’Neill put those touches in the script or if Mike Grell added them himself. It seems like an odd mix of tone to add some touches of male-gaze sex appeal in what is otherwise a pretty innocent and kid-friendly comic. I guess it shouldn't be, because after all Wonder Woman's been fighting evil in the same star-spangled bathing suit since the 40s. It still seems like a weird mix of tone though.
And I have to point out a caption near the start where the narrator describes the Green Lantern Corps as “dedicated to the preservation of all life” and the Guardians as “wise, compassionate and benevolent”. All I can say is: how things have changed!
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Sparky Prime
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Re: Retro Comics are Awesome
So where is said prime example? Considering the Guardians are under mind control or was an alien in disguise as a Guardian, I'm not seeing how this works as an example of the Guardians themselves...andersonh1 wrote:One of the reasons I decided to break out the old GL comics and re-read them is because of my discussion with Sparky Prime about the nature of the Guardians and how they’ve changed over time. And there’s a prime example in this issue and the next.