Superman: – The Silver Age Dailies 1959-1961


By Jerry Siegel, Curt Swan, Wayne Boring &Stan Kaye with Otto Binder, Robert Bernstein & Jerry Coleman (IDW Publishing Library of American Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-6137-7666-7

It’s indisputable that the American comicbook industry – if it existed at all – would have been an utterly unrecognisable thing without Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster’s Superman. Their unprecedented invention was fervidly adopted by a desperate and joy-starved generation and quite literally gave birth to a genre if not an actual art form.

Spawning an impossible army of imitators and variations within three years of his 1938 debut, the intoxicating blend of eye-popping action and wish-fulfilment which epitomised the early Man of Steel grew to encompass cops-and-robbers crime-busting, socially reforming dramas, science fiction, fantasy, whimsical comedy and, once the war in Europe and the East sucked in America, patriotic relevance for a host of gods, heroes and monsters, all dedicated to profit through exuberant, eye-popping excess and vigorous dashing derring-do.

In comicbook terms Superman was master of the world. Moreover, whilst transforming the shape of the fledgling funnybook industry, the Man of tomorrow relentlessly expanded into all areas of the entertainment media.

Although we all think of Cleveland boys’ iconic creation as the epitome and acme of comicbook creation, the truth is that very soon after his debut in Action Comics #1 Superman became a fictional multimedia monolith in the same league as Popeye, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes and Mickey Mouse.

We parochial and possessive comics fans too often regard our purest and most powerful icons in purely graphic narrative terms, but the likes of Batman, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, X-Men, Avengers and Superman long ago outgrew their four-colour origins and are now fully mythologized modern media creatures instantly familiar in mass markets, platforms and age ranges…

Far more people have seen or heard the Man of Steel than have ever read his comicbooks. The globally syndicated newspaper strips alone reached untold millions. By the time his 20th anniversary rolled around at the very start of what we know as the Silver Age of Comics, he had been a thrice-weekly radio serial regular, starred in a series of astounding animated cartoons, two films and a novel by George Lowther.

He was a perennial success for toy, game, puzzle and apparel manufacturers and had just ended his first smash live-action television serial. In his future were three more shows (Superboy, Lois & Clark and Smallville), a stage musical, a franchise of blockbuster movies and an almost seamless succession of games, bubblegum cards and TV cartoons beginning with The New Adventures of Superman in 1966 and continuing ever since.

Even superdog Krypto got in on the small-screen act…

Although pretty much a spent force these days, for the majority of the last century the newspaper comic strip was the Holy Grail that all American cartoonists and graphic narrative storytellers hungered for. Syndicated across the country – and perhaps the planet – with millions, if not billions, of readers and generally accepted as a more mature and sophisticated form of literature than comic-books, it also paid better.

And rightly so: some of the most enduring and entertaining characters and concepts of all time were created to lure readers from one particular paper to another and many of them grew to be part of a global culture.

Mutt and Jeff, Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, Buck Rogers, Charlie Brown and so many more escaped their humble tawdry newsprint origins to become meta-real: existing in the minds of earthlings from Albuquerque to Zanzibar.

Most still do…

So it was always something of a risky double-edged sword when a comic-book character became so popular that it swam against the tide (after all weren’t the funny-books invented just to reprint the strips in cheap accessible form?) to became a genuinely mass-entertainment syndicated serial strip.

Superman was the first original comicbook character to make that leap – almost as soon as he was created – but only a few have ever successfully followed. Wonder Woman, Batman (eventually) and groundbreaking teen icon Archie made the jump in the 1940s and only a handful like Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian have done so since.

The daily Superman newspaper comic strip launched on 16th January 1939 and was supplemented by a full-colour Sunday page from November 5th of that year. Originally crafted by such luminaries as Siegel & Shuster and their studio (Paul Cassidy, Leo Nowak, Dennis Neville, John Sikela, Ed Dobrotka, Paul J. Lauretta & Wayne Boring) the mammoth task soon reqired the additional talents of Jack Burnley and writers like Whitney Ellsworth, Jack Schiff & Alvin Schwartz.

The McClure Syndicate feature ran continuously until May 1966, appearing at its peak in more than 300 daily and 90 Sunday newspapers, boasting a combined readership of more than 20 million. Eventually artists Win Mortimer and Curt Swan joined the unfailing Wayne Boring & Stan Kaye whilst Bill Finger and Seigel provided the stories, telling serial tales largely separate and divorced from comicbook continuity throughout years when superheroes were scarcely seen.

In 1956 Julie Schwartz opened the Silver Age with a new Flash in Showcase #4. Soon cosumed crusaders began returning en masse to thrill a new generation. As the trend grew, many companies began to experiment with the mystery man tradition and the Superman newspaper strip began to slowly adapt: drawing closer to the revolution on the comicbook pages.

As the Jet age gave way to the Space-Age, the Last Son of Krypton was a vibrant yet comfortably familiar icon of domestic modern America: particularly in the constantly evolving, ever-more dramatic and imaginative comicbook stories which had received such a terrific creative boost as super heroes gradually began to proliferate once more. Since 1954 the franchise had been cautiously expanding and in 1959 the Caped Kryptonian could be seen not only in Golden Age survivors Action Comics, Superman, Adventure Comics, World’s Finest Comics and Superboy but now also in Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen, Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane and soon Justice League of America.

Such increased attention naturally filtered through to the far more widely seen newspaper strip and resulted in a rather strange and commercially sound evolution…

After author and educator Tom De Haven’s impassioned Foreword, Sidney Friedfertig’s Introduction explains how and why Jerry Siegel was tasked with turning recently published comicbook tales into daily 3-and-4 panel continuities for the apparently more sophisticated and discerning newspaper audiences. This meant major rewrites, frequently plot and tone changes and, in some cases, merging two stories into one.

If you’re a fan, don’t be fooled: these stories are not mere rehashes, but variations on an idea for an audience perceived as completely separate from kids’ funnybooks.

Even if you are familiar with the comicbook source material, the adventures gathered here will read as brand new, especially as they are gloriously illustrated by Curt Swan and latterly Wayne Boring at the very peak of their artistic powers.

As an added bonus the covers of the issues those adapted stories came from have been added as a full nostalgia-inducing colour gallery…

The astounding everyday entertainment commences with Episode #107 from April 6th to July 11th 1959.

‘Earth’s Super-Idiot!’ by Siegel, Swan & Stan Kaye is a mostly original story which borrows heavily from the author’s own ‘The Trio of Steel’ (Superman #135, February 1960, where it was drawn by Al Plastino) detailing the tricks of an unscrupulous super-scientific telepathic alien producer of “Realies” who blackmailed Superman into making a fool and villain of himself for extraterrestrial viewers.

If the hero didn’t comply – acting the goat, performing spectacular stunts and torturing his friends – Earth would suffer the consequences….

After eventually getting the better of the UFO sleaze-bag, our hero returned to Earth with a bump and encountered ‘The Ugly Superman’ (July 13thSeptember 5th, first seen in Lois Lane #8 April 1959, written by Robert Bernstein and illustrated by Kurt Schaffenberger).

Here, the eternally on-the-shelf Lois agreed to marry a brutish wrestler, and the Man of Tomorrow, for the most spurious of reasons, acted to foil her plans…

Episode #109 ran from September 7th to October 28th 1959 and saw Superman reluctantly agree to try and make a dying billionaire laugh in return for the miserable misanthrope signing over his entire fortune to charity.

Some of the apparently odd timing discrepancies in publication dates can be explained by the fact that submitted comicbook stories often appeared months after they were completed, so the comicbook version of Siegel’s ‘The Super-Clown of Metropolis’ didn’t get published until Superman #136 (April 1960) where Al Plastino took the art in completely different directions…

‘Captive of the Amazons’ – October 29th 1959 to February 6th 1960 – combined two funnybook adventures both originally limned by Boring & Kaye. The eponymous equivalent from Action #266 (Jul 1960) was augmented by Bernstein’s tale ‘When Superman Lost His Powers’ (Action Comics #262) detailing how super-powered alien queen Jena came to Earth intent on making Superman her husband. When he refused she removed his Kryptonian abilities, subsequently trapping now merely mortal Clark with other Daily Planet staff in a lost valley of monsters where Lois’ suspicions were again aroused…

Episode #111 ran from 8th February – 6th April. ‘The Superman of the Future’ originated in Action #256 (September 1959, by Otto Binder, Swan & Kaye) and both versions seemingly saw Superman swap places with a hyper-evolved descendent intent on preventing four catastrophic historical disasters, but the incredible events were actually part of a devious hoax…

Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #10 (July 1959 by Siegel & Schaffenberger) offered up a comedy interlude as ‘The Cry-Baby of Metropolis’ (April 7th to May 28th) found Lois – terrified of losing her looks – exposing herself to a youth ray and rapidly regenerating into an infant, much to the amusement of arch-rival Lana Lang and Superman…

Episode #113 May 30th – July 2nd featured ‘The Super-Servant of Crime’ (by Bernstein, from Superman #130, July 1959) which saw the hero outsmarting a petty crook who had bamboozled the Action Ace into granting him five wishes, after which ‘The Super-Sword’ (4th July to August 13th and originally by Jerry Coleman & Plastino for Superman #124, September 1958) pitted the Kryptonian Crimebuster against a ancient knight with a magic blade which could penetrate his invulnerable skin. Once more, however, all was not as it seemed…

Siegel, Boring & Kaye’s epic ‘Superman’s Return to Krypton’ from Superman #141, November 1960) was first seen in daily instalments from August 15th to November 12th 1960, telling a subtly different tale of epic love lost as an accident marooned the adoptive Earth hero in the past on his doomed home-world. Reconciled to dying there with his people, Kal-El befriended his own parents and found love with his ideal soul-mate Lyla Lerrol, only to be torn from her side and returned to Earth against his will in a cruel twist of fate.

The strip version here is one of Swan’s most beautiful art jobs ever and, although the bold comicbook saga was a fan favourite for decades thereafter, the restoration of this more mature interpretation might have some rethinking their decision…

Wayne Boring once more became the premiere Superman strip illustrator with Episode #116 (November 14th – December 31st), reprising his and Siegel’s work on ‘The Lady and the Lion’ from Action #243 August 1958, wherein the Man of Steel was transformed into an inhuman  beast by a Kryptonian émigré the ancients knew as Circe…

Siegel then adapted Bernstein’s ‘The Great Superman Hoax’ and Boring & Kaye redrew their artwork for the Episode (January 2nd – February 4th 1961) which appeared in Superman #143, February 1961, and saw a cunning criminal try to convince Lois and Clark that he was actually the Man of Might, blissfully unaware of who he was failing to fool.

Then February 6th to March 4th had Superman using brains as well as brawn to thwart an alien invasion in ‘The Duel for Earth’ which originally appeared as a Superboy story in Adventure Comics #277 (October 1960) by Siegel & George Papp.

Superman #114 (July 1957) and scripter Otto Binder provided Siegel with the raw material for a deliciously wry and topical tax-time tale ‘Superman’s Billion-Dollar Debt’ – March 6th to April 8th – wherein an ambitious IRS agent presented the Man of Steel with an bill for unpaid back-taxes, whilst Episode #120 (April 10th – May 13th) introduced ‘The Great Mento’ (from Bernstein & Plastino’s yarn in Superman #147, August 1961): a tawdry showbiz masked mind-reader who blackmailed the hero by threatening to expose his precious secret identity…  

The final two stories in this premiere collection both come from Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane – issues #24, April and #26, July respectively – and both were originally crafted by Bernstein & Schaffenberger.

In ‘The Perfect Husband’ (15th May to July 1st), begun and ended by Boring but with Swan pinch-hitting for 2 weeks in the middle, Lois’ sister Lucy tricks the journalist into going on a TV dating show where she meets her ideal man, a millionaire sportsman and war hero who looks just like Clark Kent.

Then ‘The Mad Woman of Metropolis’ finds Lois driven to the edge of sanity by a vengeance-hungry killer, a rare chance to see the girl-reporter and shameless butt of so many male gags show her true mettle by solving the case without the Man of Tomorrow’s avuncular, often patronising assistance…

Superman: – The Silver Age Dailies 1959-1961 is the first in a series of huge (305 x 236mm), lavish, high-end hardback collections starring the Man of Steel and a welcome addition to the superb commemorative series of Library of American Comics which has preserved and re-presented in luxurious splendour such landmark strips as Li’l Abner, Tarzan, Little Orphan Annie, Terry and the Pirates, Bringing Up Father, Rip Kirby, Polly and her Pals and many of the abovementioned cartoon icons.

If you love the era, these stories are great comics reading, and this is a book you simply must have.
Superman ™ and © 2013 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Teen Titans: Ravager – Fresh Hell


By Sean McKeever, David Hine, Yildiray Cinar, Georges Jeanty & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2919-1

Deathstroke the Terminator is a flamboyant cover identity for mercenary/assassin Slade Wilson who was treated with an experimental serum whilst serving as an American Special Forces soldier. He was invalided out but later developed fantastic physical abilities that augmented his military capabilities.

He debuted in the second issue of the New Teen Titans in 1980, assuming a contract that had been forfeited when neophyte costumed assassin The Ravager died trying to destroy the kid heroes. The deceased would-be killer was actually Grant Wilson, a very troubled young man desperately trying to impress his dad.

Slade’s other children would also be the cause of much heartache and bloodshed over the years…

After years he tracked down his illegitimate daughter Rose Wilson Worth. The child already had severe daddy-issues but after abducting, brainwashing and torturing her with the serum that created him he turned her into something even he couldn’t predict.

Doped and delirious, she gained physical abilities ands regenerative power like his but, in a moment of madness, cut out her left eye in a manic attempt to become just like dear old dad.

She was saved by Dick Grayson in his Nightwing persona and began a long, not entirely successful, attempt to throw off Wilson’s dire influence and sadistic parenting. After the events of Infinite Crisis she joined the Teen Titans, but found them an extremely poor fit…

This exceeding dark chronicle details Rose’s mounting struggle to come to terms with her killer instincts and conflicting determination to be nothing like her sire, gathering the one-shot Faces of Evil: Deathstroke #1 from March 2009, Teen Titans volume 3, #71 and the short back-up serial from #72-76 and #79-82 (July 2009-June 2010), beginning with ‘The Beginning’ from the aforementioned Deathstroke special, courtesy of writer David Hine and illustrators Georges Jeanty & Mark McKenna.

Following a rare defeat and well-deserved, life-threatening beating, Slade Wilson is somehow failing to recuperate in super-penitentiary Belle Reve. In his traumatic delirium he triggers a security lockdown and the harassed authorities call in Rose to save hostages and tackle her dad, the deadliest man alive…

Typically, their savage rehashing of old times ultimately frustrates the heartsick and agonised Ravager and only allows Deathstroke a chance to spectacularly escape…

With readers by now fully clued in to Rose’s ghastly past, the main event opens as ‘Fresh Hell’ (Sean McKeever, Yildiray Cinar & Julio Ferreira) opens with ‘Homecoming’ and Ravager’s return to Titans, concealing her growing addiction to adrenaline substitute Epinephrine – which gives her a kind of combat precognition – and growing dissatisfaction with the judgemental attitudes of child-heroes who have never experienced episodes of genuine “kill-or-be-killed”…

When a misunderstanding leads to bloody battle with atomic ace Bombshell, a meeting is called to discuss Rose’s future but the action junkie decides to jump before she’s pushed…

The Terminator’s daughter has finally shaken off her father’s malign influence and joined the forces of good, but almost nobody seems to believe her so she gets on her bike and heads north and away…

Some time later, the hallucination-wracked rider is robbing a pharmacy for more Epinephrine, plagued by a conscience which manifests as her preachiest ex-partners (such as Wonder Girl and Miss Martian) and desperately outracing pursuing cops. Even with the drugs her clairvoyance is diminishing and now she’s also suffering from rather inconvenient blackouts…

She snaps awake in a frozen wilderness, having crashed. Trekking over uncounted icy miles, she eventually reaches a small town filled with the unfriendliest men she’s ever met and has to break a few heads and limbs just to get a meal. However at the height of the battle she just keels over…

Slowly regaining consciousness, she’s informed by the local medic of Angelsport, Northwest Territories that his examinations have uncovered a cruel fact: all the adrenaline she’s been snorting has wrecked her heart and other organs to the point where not even her serum-based regenerative capabilities will fix them if she doesn’t stop.

Will the barman is slightly friendlier than the rest of the town, but even he is hiding something. So when she beds down in the cabin he’s provided, Rose is waiting for a next move.

It comes in a massed attack of gunmen using rocket-propelled grenades…

Despite explosively escaping and despatching many assailants, Rose is forced to run: chased by the surviving ambushers who send her to a watery grave in the frozen ocean…

They’ve grievously underestimated the Ravager, and when she follows Rose discovers the reason for the town’s hostility. The entire place is a smuggling port and former spy Will is a ruthless entrepreneur using contacts in Russia and a submarine to provide highly profitable, illicit merchandise: weapons, drugs, underage girls…

Rose is utterly determined to end him and his business and rescue the stolen children but she’s never faced a foe like Will, and before her mission is over she will have to decide if she’s a shining champion and protector or just a bloody, red-handed avenger…

With covers by Cinar, Ladrönn, Joe Bennett, Jack Jadson & Guy Major, Fresh Hell is a nasty, violent and extremely dark blend of superhero drama and real world criminal depravity that will satisfy Fights ‘n’ Tights fans with a penchant for the raw underbelly of action/adventure.
© 2009, 2010 DC Comics Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Wonder Woman: The Twelve Labors


By Martin Pasko, Elliot S. Maggin, Cary Bates, Len Wein, Curt Swan, John Rosenberger, Irv Novick, Dick Dillin, Kurt Schaffenberger, Dick Giordano, Jose Delbo & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3494-2

The Princess of Paradise Island originally debuted as a special feature in All Star Comics #8 (December 1941), conceived by polygraph pioneer William Moulton Marston and illustrated by Harry G. Peter, in a calculated attempt to offer girls a positive and forceful role model and, on forward thinking Editor M.C. Gaines’ part, sell more funnybooks.

She catapulted into her own series and the cover-spot of new anthology title Sensation Comics a month later. An instant hit, the Amazing Amazon won her own eponymous supplemental title a few months later, cover-dated Summer 1942.

Once upon a time on a hidden island of immortal super-women, American aviator Steve Trevor of US Army Intelligence crashed to Earth. Near death, he was nursed back to health by young, impressionable Princess Diana.

Fearful of her besotted child’s growing obsession with the creature from a long-forgotten and madly violent world, Diana’s mother Queen Hippolyte revealed the hidden history of the Amazons: how they were seduced and betrayed by men but rescued by the goddess Aphrodite on condition that they forever isolated themselves from the mortal world and devoted their eternal lives to becoming ideal, perfect creatures.

However with the planet in crisis, goddesses Athena and Aphrodite instructed Hippolyte to send an Amazon back with the American to fight for global freedom and liberty and, although forbidden to compete, Diana clandestinely overcame all other candidates to become their emissary Wonder Woman.

On arriving in the Land of the Free she purchased the identity and credentials of lovelorn Army nurse Diana Prince, which elegantly allowed the Amazing Amazon to stay close to Steve whilst enabling the heartsick care-worker to join her own fiancé in South America. Diana soon gained a position with Army Intelligence as secretary to General Darnell, further ensuring she would always be able to watch over her beloved. She little suspected that, although the painfully shallow Steve only had eyes for the dazzling Amazon superwoman, the General had fallen for the mousy but supremely competent Lieutenant Prince…

That set up enabled the Star Spangled Siren to weather the vicissitudes of the notoriously transient comicbook marketplace and survive the end of the Golden Age of costumed heroes along with Superman, Batman and a few lucky hangers-on who inhabited the backs of their titles.

She soldiered on well into the Silver Age revival under the canny auspices of Robert Kanigher, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito, but by 1968 superhero comics were in decline again and publishers sought new ways to keep audiences interested as tastes – and American society – changed.

Back then, the entire industry depended on newsstand sales and if you weren’t popular, you died.

Editor Jack Miller and Mike Sekowsky stepped up with a radical proposal and made a little bit of comic book history with the only female superhero to still have her own title that marketplace.

The superbly eccentric art of Sekowsky had been a DC mainstay for nearly two decades, and he had also scored big with fans at Gold Key with Man from Uncle and at Tower Comics in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and on war title Fight The Enemy!

His unique take on the Justice League of America had cemented its overwhelming success, and now in 1968 he began stretching himself further with a number of experimental, young-adult oriented projects.

Tapping into the teen zeitgeist with Easy Rider style drama Jason’s Quest proved ultimately unsuccessful, but with the Metal Men and the hopelessly moribund Wonder Woman he had much greater impact. He would subsequently work the same magic with Supergirl.

The big change came when the Amazons were forced to leave our dimension, taking with them all their magic – including Wonder Woman’s powers and all her weapons. Now no more or less than human, she opted to stay on Earth permanently, assuming her own secret identity of Diana Prince, dedicated to fighting injustice as a mortal, very much in the manner of Emma Peel and Modesty Blaise.

Blind Buddhist monk I Ching trained her as a martial artist, and she quickly became embroiled in the schemes of would-be world-conqueror Doctor Cyber. Most shockingly her beloved Steve was branded a traitor and murdered…

Sekowsky’s root and branch overhaul offered a whole new kind of Wonder Woman (and can be seen in the magical quartet of full-colour collections entitled Diana Prince: Wonder Woman) but as I’ve already said fashion ruled and in a few years, without any fanfare or warning, everything that had happened since Wonder Woman lost her powers was unwritten.

Her mythical origins were revised and re-established as she returned to a world of immortals, gods, mythical monster and super-villains with a new nemesis, an African (Greek?) American half-sister named Nubia…

Such an abrupt reversal had tongues wagging and heads spinning in fan circles. Had the series offended some shady “higher-ups” who didn’t want controversy or a shake-up of the status quo?

Probably not.

Sales were never great even on the Sekowsky run and the most logical reason is probably Television.

The Amazon had been optioned as a series since the days of the Batman TV show in 1967, and by this time (1973) production work had begun on the original 1974 pilot featuring Cathy Lee Crosby. An abrupt return to the character most viewers would be familiar with from their own childhoods seems perfectly logical to me… By the time Linda Carter made the concept live in 1975 Wonder Woman was once again “Stronger than Hercules, swifter than Mercury and more beautiful than Aphrodite”…

But as Diana returned to mainstream DC continuity the fans expected her to fully reintegrate, leading to this early and impressive example of a comics miniseries which ran in Wonder Woman #212 to 222 (cover-dated July 1974 – March 1976) and detailed how the Amazing Amazon rejoined the JLA.

Scripter Len Wein and artists Curt Swan & Tex Blaisdell got the ball rolling with ‘The Man Who Mastered Women!’ as the Hellenic Heroine thwarted a terrorist attack at New York’s United Nations building where Diana Prince worked as a translator. In the aftermath she surprisingly met old friend Clark Kent.

Over the course of the conversation she realised her memories had been tampered with and suddenly understood why her JLA colleagues hadn’t called her to any meetings… she had resigned years ago…

Although her former comrades begged her to re-enlist, she declined, fearing that her memory lapses might endanger the team and the world. After much insistent pleading she relented enough to suggest that the League should covertly monitor her next dozen major cases – in the manner of Hercules’ twelve legendary tests – as she proved herself competent and worthy, for her own peace of mind if not the JLA’s…

Once they grudgingly agreed she left and Superman began the surveillance, observing her flying to Paradise Island in her Invisible Plane. Correctly deducing that she had been subject to Amazonian selective memory manipulation, she confronted her mother and learned of her time as a mere mortal and of Steve’s death.

Although the past had been removed by her well-meaning Amazon sisters, Diana now demanded that every recollection excised be returned…

Back in Man’s World a crisis was already brewing as costumed crazy The Cavalier began exerting his uncanny influence over women to controlling female Heads of State, but his powers proved ultimately ineffectual over Wonder Woman…

As a result of that case Diana Prince changed jobs, going to work as a troubleshooter for dashing Morgan Tracy at the UN Crisis Bureau, and her first mission wasn’t long in coming…

Wonder Woman #213 was crafted by Cary Bates, Irv Novick & Blaisdell as an alien robot landed and removed all aggression from humanity in one stroke. As the Flash helplessly observed however ‘The War-No-More Machine!’ also quashed all bravery, determination, confidence and capability and the species faced imminent – if long and drawn out – extinction.

Happily Diana, a teenaged girl and a murderous criminal were all somehow immune to the invader’s influence…

Elliot S. Maggin, Swan & Phil Zupa then disclosed Green Lantern Hal Jordan‘s undercover observations after a lost Amazon gem in unwitting, unscrupulous hands almost started World War III and the Princess of Power had to avert a nuclear holocaust triggered by a ‘Wish Upon a Star!’

The superb and vastly undervalued John Rosenberger pencilled Cary Bates’ tale of the ‘Amazon Attack Against Atlantis’ (inked by Vince Colletta) as Aquaman watched Wonder Woman unravel a baroque and barbaric plot by Mars, God of War to set Earth’s two most advanced nations at each throats, after which #216 found Black Canary uncovering the Amazon Sisterhood’s greatest secret in ‘Paradise in Peril!’ by Maggin, Rosenberger & Colletta.

The tale concerned an obsessed multi-millionaire risking everything – including possibly the collapse of civilisation – to uncover exactly what would happen if a man set foot upon the hidden Island of the Amazons…

One of Wonder Woman’s oldest foes resurfaced in ‘The Day Time Broke Loose!’ (by Maggin, Dick Dillin & Colletta) and Green Arrow was caught in the crossfire as the Duke of Deception attacked the UN with temporally torturous images and hallucinations designed to create madness and death on a global scale.

Issue #218 was produced by Martin Pasko & Kurt Schaffenberger and offered two short complete tales. Firstly Red Tornado reported on the ‘Revolt of the Wonder Weapons’ as an influential astrologer used mind-control techniques to gain power and accidentally undermined Diana’s arsenal, after which The Phantom Stranger stealthily observed her foiling a mystic plot by sorcerer Felix Faust which animated and enraged the Statue of Liberty in ‘Give Her Liberty – and Give Her Death!’

This was a time when feminism was finally making inroads into American culture and Pasko, Swan & Colletta slyly tipped their hats to the burgeoning movement in a wry and fanciful sci-fi thriller.

Thus issue  #219 found Diana preventing a vile incursion by the dominating males of Xro, a ‘World of Enslaved Women!’ with stretchable sleuth Elongated Man secretly traversing the parallel dimensions in Wonder Woman’s wake.

With the epic endeavour almost ended, regular scripter Pasko added a patina of mystery to the affair as the Atom watched Diana tackle ‘The Man Who Wiped Out Time!’ Illustrated by Dick Giordano, Wonder Woman #220 found temporal obsessive Chronos eradicating New York’s ability to discern time and time pieces: a plot foiled with style and brilliance by the on-form, in-time Power Princess.

The only problem was that during that entire exacting episode Hawkman had been watching Diana tackling another potential disaster hundreds of miles away…

The Feathered Fury’s report detailed how Crisis Bureau operative Diana Prince had been targeted by Dr. Cyber and Professor Moon – old enemies from her powerless period – who combined a hunger for vengeance with a plan to steal a UN-controlled chemical weapon in ‘The Fiend with the Face of Glass’ (illustrated by Swan & Colletta).

How she could be in two places simultaneously was revealed by Batman, who wrapped up the twelve trials in ‘Will the Real Wonder Woman Please… Stand Up Drop Dead!’ (art by Jose Delbo & Blaisdell), detailing how a beloved children’s entertainment icon had been subverted into a monster feeding off people and replacing them with perfect duplicates…

With covers by Bob Oksner, Nick Cardy, Mike Grell, Dick Giordano & Ernie Chan, this is a spectacular slice of pure, uncomplicated, all ages superhero action/adventure starring one of comics’ true all stars.

Stuffed with stunning art and witty, beguiling stories, this is Wonder Woman at her most welcoming in a timeless, pivotal classic of the medium: one that still provides astounding amounts of fun and thrills for anyone interested in a grand old time.
© 1974, 1975, 1976, 2012 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Batman: Bruce Wayne – The Road Home


By Fabian Nicieza, Mike W. Barr, Bryan Q. Miller, Derek Fridolfs, Adam Beechen, Marc Andreyko & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3081-4

At the climax of a harrowing and sustained campaign of terror by insidious cabal The Black Hand and following an all-out invasion by the New Gods of Apokolips, the original Batman was apparently killed.

The world at large was unaware of the loss, leaving the superhero community to mourn in secret whilst a small, dedicated army of assistants, protégés and allies – trained over years by the contingency-obsessed Dark Knight – formed the Network to police Gotham City in the days which followed: marking time until a successor could be found or the original restored…

Most of the Bat-schooled battalion refused to believe their inspirational mentor dead. On the understanding that he was merely lost, they eventually accepted Dick Grayson (the first Robin and latterly Nightwing) as a stand-in until Bruce Wayne could find his way back to them…

This companion volume to Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne features eight one-shot specials depicting how after the original Dark Knight (marooned in the corridors of history by Darkseid) got back, he created a new identity to scrutinise just how his absence had affected the friends and deputies who soldiered on without him in the urban hell-pit he called home.

Collecting the outrageously tongue-twisting octet Batman: Bruce Wayne: Batman & Robin #1, Batman: Bruce Wayne: Red Robin #1, Batman: Bruce Wayne: Outsiders #1, Batman: Bruce Wayne: Batgirl #1, Batman: Bruce Wayne: Catwoman #1, Batman: Bruce Wayne: Commissioner Gordon #1, Batman: Bruce Wayne: Oracle #1 and Batman: Bruce Wayne: Ra’s Al Ghul #1 from December 2010, the drama begins with ‘Outside Looking In’ by Fabian Nicieza & Cliff Richards and a covert scrutiny of Bruce’s son Damien Wayne and Grayson – the triumphantly innovative new Batman & Robin…

As these Partners in Peril are foiling an attack on Mayor Hady by super-assassins the Hangmen, former star reporter Vicki Vale is nailing down the story of her life.

She has spent months assiduously gathering snippets of information, following hunches and piecing vague suspicions together and is now convinced that she has identified the secret identities of all Gotham’s Bat guardians – and that her old boyfriend Bruce is Batman.

All she needs is proof, and when she finds a bat-bug placed on her by Dick, she has it…

As the Dynamic Duo follow the last Hangman, they are unaware that they are in turn being tracked by an enigmatic armoured figure whose all-encompassing bodysuit mimics the many powers of the Justice League…

Elsewhere caretaker patriarch Alfred Pennyworth enacts a desperate plan to deceive Vicki, blackmailing Tommy Elliot – the villain Hush, who had turned himself into a perfect duplicate of Bruce – into again impersonating the missing playboy, but the canny journalist is not fooled…

Elsewhere the enigmatic Insider rendezvous with Tim Drake AKA Red Robin.

The third Boy Wonder already knows who is inside the super-suit and tentatively acknowledges the necessity of keeping the return a secret, but comes bearing critical new information. He has discovered the abortive scheme to murder Hady was only part of a concerted international effort by cadres of assassins to eradicate city leaders across the globe…

With a live case going global Bruce is forced to adapt his reconnaissance assessment mission on the fly…

The saga continues in Batman: Bruce Wayne: Red Robin #1, where ‘The Insider’ (Nicieza Ramon Bachs & John Lucas) sees Tim head for Amsterdam and a confrontation with killer cabal The Council of Spiders. The battle leads to a reunion with unpredictable erstwhile companion Prudence, a former member of the League of Assassins and devout follower of immortal conqueror Ra’s Al Ghul.

She claims to serve Tim now but the lad has his doubts…

Even together they are barely a match for the arachnoid assassins, but then the Insider appears…

In Gotham Alfred plays his final card and tells Vicki everything she’s compiled and deduced is true. While she’s reeling he then swipes her only piece of evidence…

Back in Holland Insider, having infiltrated the Spiders, uses their initiation assignment to test Tim’s combat skills in a no-holds barred rooftop battle, having discovered the planet-wide contract on city leaders is part of a mystery manipulator’s vast, inexplicable Tournament of Death…

When Batman’s methods clashed with the JLA’s scruples, the Dark Knight formed his own superteam. Eventually he dumped them, only occasionally reuniting with Geo-Force, Halo, Looker, Katana and the rest.

Now in Batman: Bruce Wayne: Outsiders #1, (‘Inside Interference’ by Mike W. Barr, Javier Saltares, Rebecca Buchman & Walden Wong) the returned crusader travels to European kingdom Markovia to find his former followers in the midst of civil unrest with their current leader targeted for death…

Having sorted that crisis with a little inside help, Bruce confronts his forth sidekick Stephanie Brown…

Daughter of C-list bad-guy Cluemaster, she began her costumed crime-busting career as the Spoiler, secretly scotching Daddy Dearest’s schemes before graduating to a more general campaign against the city’s underworld.

Eventually, she undertook a disastrous stint as the fourth Robin: a tenure which provoked a brutal gang war which devastated Gotham and ostensibly caused her own demise under torture at the red hands of psychopathic mob boss Black Mask.

When Stephanie returned to Gotham after months in self-imposed exile, she overcame incredible obstacles – the greatest of which was the Bat-family’s deep mistrust – and inherited the role of Batgirl from Cassandra Cain, a former assassin who had revived the role after her own predecessor was crippled and forced to retire…

Batman: Bruce Wayne: Batgirl #1, ‘Batgirl’ by Bryan Q. Miller & Pere Perez sees the Insider directly assault the flamboyant, cocky teen tornado, simultaneously testing her fighting skills and deductive abilities even as elsewhere the undaunted Vicki Vale attempts to push original Batgirl Barbara Gordon into an unguarded admission…

Selina Kyle had taken Bruce’s death hard, aligning herself with known felons Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy. In Batman: Bruce Wayne: Catwoman #1, ‘Lifting the Vale’ by Derek Fridolfs, Peter Nguyen & Ryan Winn, the former thief and her new gal-pals save Vicki from disaster when she invades an underworld auction. It’s all a scam however as the feline fury only wants to copy all the journalist’s findings for Bruce…

The most impressive chapter here is the stark and shocking ‘Gotham’s Finest’ (Adam Beechen & Szymon Kudranski) from Batman: Bruce Wayne: Commissioner Gordon #1. In it the Tournament of Death takes a personal turn when Vicki becomes the target of The Penguin‘s metahuman mercenaries and Gotham’s top cop has to fight his way out of his own HQ with her, whilst every bent officer on the force tries to kill them.

With the Insider almost too late Jim Gordon proves just why he’s the man Batman respects and trusts the most…

Police Commissioner’s daughter Barbara became computer crusader Oracle after her career as Batgirl ended when the Joker blew out her spine during one of his manic kill sprees. Although trapped in a wheelchair, she still hungered for justice and found new ways to make a difference in a very bad world.

Reinventing herself as a cyber-world information gatherer for Batman, she became an invaluable resource for the entire superhero community, before putting together her own fluctuating squad of crimefighters – the Birds of Prey.

With the grudging acceptance of stand-in Dark Knight Dick Grayson, she mentored Stephanie as the troublesome teen attempted to combine undergraduate studies with her compulsive mission to save lives and help the helpless…

In ‘Oracle’ by Mark Andreyko & Agustin Padilla (Batman: Bruce Wayne: Oracle #1) Babs makes the missing connections and works out who’s behind the massed assassin squads around the world… and how it impacts the entire Bat Network.

However with the legendary Seven Men of Death moving to silence Vicki – now revealed as the ultimate target – Oracle sets the Insider to guard the journalist while she activates all her available Birds (Man-Bat, Hawk & Dove, Ragman, Manhunter and Batgirl), but even their massed might is insufficient to prevent the reporter being abducted by Batman’s hidden foe: a man who will let nothing sully the pristine reputation and myth of the only person on Earth worthy of his respect…

With a cover gallery by Shane Davis & Barbara Ciardo, the sprawling, explosively absorbing saga concludes with the inevitable confrontation between the resurgent Bruce and his polar opposite as Batman: Bruce Wayne: Ra’s Al Ghul #1, (by Nicieza, Scott McDaniel & Andy Owens) details the final fate of Vicki in ‘A Life Worth Saving’…

Fast, furious, complex and enticing, this is a spectacular and accessible yarn that stands on its own merits, so even the freshest newcomers and the very antithesis of Batmaniacs can enjoy the helter-skelter thrill-ride in perfect confidence of a great read.
© 2010, 2011 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Superman: the Man of Steel volume 7


By John Byrne, Jerry Ordway, Karl Kesel, John Beatty, Keith Williams & Leonard Starr (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012- 3820-9

Although largely out of favour these days as the myriad decades of Superman mythology are relentlessly assimilated into one overarching, all-inclusive multi-media DC franchise, the stripped-down, gritty, post-Crisis on Infinite Earths Action Ace as re-imagined by John Byrne and marvellously built upon by a stunning succession of gifted comics craftsmen produced some genuine comics classics.

Controversial at the start, Byrne’s reboot of the world’s first superhero was rapidly acknowledged as a solid hit and the collaborative teams who complemented and followed him maintained the high quality, ensuring continued success.

That vast, interlocking saga has been collected – far too slowly – over recent years in a more-or-less chronologically combined format as the fabulously economical trade paperback series Superman: The Man of Steel and this seventh volume (revisiting Superman #13-15, Action Comics #596-597 and Adventures of Superman #436-438 from January – March 1988) features the Kryptonian corner of DC’s third annual inter-company mega-crossover event.

After Crisis on Infinite Earths and Legends came Millennium, which saw writer Steve Englehart expand on an iconic tale from his  Justice League of America run (#140-141) as well as his tenure on the Green Lantern Corps.

Billions of years ago the robotic peacekeepers known as Manhunters had rebelled against their creators. The Guardians of the Universe were immortal and desired a rational, emotionless cosmos – a view not shared by their own women. The Zamarons abandoned the Guardians on Oa at the inception of their grand scheme but recently, after billions of years, the two factions had reconciled and left our Reality together.

Now they had returned with a plan to midwife a new race of immortals on Earth, but the Manhunters – who had since infiltrated all aspects of every society throughout the universe – were determined to thwart the plan, whether by seduction, connivance or just plain brute force.

The heroes of Earth were summoned by the reunited immortals and subsequently gathered to see the project to completion but were continually confronted by Manhunters in their own private lives… and their own comics.

DC Comics third braided mega-series was a bold effort intended to touch all corners of their universe, introduce new characters, tie-in many titles and moreover to do so on a weekly, not monthly, schedule. In addition to the 8 weekly issues of the miniseries itself, Millennium spread across 21 titles for two months – another 37 issues – for a grand total of 44 comicbooks, and those Superman-related episodes make up the majority of this titanic tome.

The crossover craziness begins here with ‘Toys in the Attic!’ from Superman #13, courtesy of Byrne & Karl Kesel, wherein elderly British craftsman Winslow Percival Schott opens a campaign of murder and wanton destruction targeting billionaire Lex Luthor, the Yank who ruined his little company and forced him to become the murderous Toyman.

No sooner had the Man of Tomorrow intervened in that fracas than he was drawn back to sleepy hometown Smallville in ‘Junk’ (Adventures of Superman #436, scripted by Byrne, illustrated by Jerry Ordway & John Beatty) to discover trusted confidant Lana Lang was an agent of the Manhunters.

In truth the insidious mechanoids had been watching the Last Son of Krypton since before that world had died, but botched capturing the baby when he first arrived on Earth. As a back-up plan, the Manhunters then replaced local practitioner Doc Whitney who subsequently turned every child born since into a mind-controlled sleeper agent.

Now with ClarkKent a key factor in the Millennium, Whitney rallied his forces to capture Superman but utterly underestimated the power and resourcefulness of the Man of Steel…

Although victorious, Superman’s triumph was tainted by tragedy. In defeat all Whitney’s unwitting agents – two generations of Smallville’s young folk – keeled over dead…

The story continued in ‘Hell is Where the Heart Is…’ (Byrne & Keith Williams from Action Comics #596) as Ghostly Guardian The Spectre is drawn to the catastrophe and facilitates Superman’s odyssey to the Spiritual Realms to rescue all the recently deceased…

Superman #14 features an action-packed team-up with Green Lantern Hal Jordan wherein Emerald Gladiator and Man of Tomorrow chase colossal super-Manhunter Highmaster through uncanny dimensions as the mechanical maniac seeks to attack the sequestered and enervated Guardians and Zamarons in ‘Last Stand!’ by Byrne & Kesel, after which events take a far more moody turn in Adventures of Superman #437, a twinned tale by Byrne, Ordway & Beatty.

‘Point of View’ simultaneously reveals how Luthor attempts to seduce one of the Millennium candidates to his evil side even as Lois Lane helplessly watches the brutally crippling struggle of merely mortal vigilante Jose “Gangbuster” Delgado against Lex’s hyper-augmented cyborg warrior Combattor…

The repercussions of that clash are examined in ‘Visitor’Action Comics #597- wherein Byrne, Leonard Starr & Williams impishly referenced the Silver Age catfights between Lois Lane and Lana Lang, whilst the story itself established the false premise that Superman had been raised as Clark’s adopted brother to throw off Lois’ growing suspicions…

With the Millennium complete, Superman #15 returned to regular wonderment and Superman was asked to find Metropolis Police Captain Maggie Sawyer‘s missing daughter Jamie just as the city was hit with a rash of flying bandit children. ‘Wings’ (by Byrne & Kesel) introduced repulsive monster Skyhook – a horrific bat-winged Fagin who beguiled and mutated runaways whilst concealing even greater ghastly secrets…

This stunning selection of Fights ‘n’ Tights fun concludes with Adventures of Superman #438 and Byrne, Ordway & Beatty’s re-imagination of ‘…The Amazing Brainiac’.

A trip to the circus disastrously coincides with drunken mentalist Milton Fine developing uncanny psionic abilities and going wild. Despite the mental assaults being particularly effective against the Man of Steel, Superman eventually overcomes the furiously frantic performer, but was the beaten man simply deranged by his own latent abilities, or are his ravings about being possessed by an alien named Vril Dox of Colu somehow impossibly true…?

The back-to-basics approach lured many readers to – and crucially back to – the Superman franchise at a time when interest in the character had slumped to perilous levels, but it was the sheer quality of the stories and art which convinced them to stay.

Such cracking superhero tales are a high point in the Man of Tomorrow’s nearly eight decades of existence and these astoundingly readable collections are certainly the easiest way to enjoy a stand-out reinvention of the ultimate comic-book icon.
© 1988, 2013 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Batman: the Return of Bruce Wayne


By Grant Morrison, Chris Sprouse, Frazer Irving, Yanick Paquette, Georges Jeanty, Ryan Sook, Lee Garbett & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3382-2

At the climax of a harrowing and sustained campaign of terror by insidious cabal The Black Hand, immediately followed by an all-out invasion of Earth by the hordes of Apokolips, the Batman was apparently killed – slain by Darkseid‘s lethal, time-rending Omega beams.

Although the larger world was unaware of the tragedy, the superhero community secretly mourned and a small, dedicated army of assistants, protégés and allies – trained over years by the contingency-obsessed Dark Knight – formed a “Network” to police GothamCity in the days which followed: marking time until a successor could be found or the original returned…

Most of the Bat-schooled battalion refused to believe their inspirational mentor dead. On the understanding that he was merely lost, they eventually accepted Dick Grayson – the first Robin and latterly Nightwing – as a stand-in until Bruce Wayne could find his way back to them…

That fantastic voyage was detailed in the 6-issue miniseries Batman: the Return of Bruce Wayne (July-December 2010), scripted by Grant Morrison and following the indeed alive Wayne as he leaped through the eons, gradually getting closer and closer to his home, each chapter a different era illustrated by all-star creators…

It begins with ‘Shadow on Stone’ (limned by Chris Sprouse & Karl Story) as a hunting party of the Deer tribe discover a gleaming fallen “sky-cart”. The object is in fact a time capsule from our time and nearby Bruce Wayne is slowly adapting to being marooned in Palaeolithic times. His gradual acceptance by the awestruck cavemen is interrupted by the attack of marauders from the Blood tribe, led by the immortal killer the future calls Vandal Savage.

Despite valiant resistance the Deer warriors die, until only the bat-draped stranger and a lone cave boy remain. Badly wounded and taken for sacrifice, Batman is later rescued by the lad who brings trinkets from the time capsule and the time-lost hero’s utility belt. As an eclipse covers the sun, Man of Bats routs the Blood Mob and defeats Savage, before plunging into a pool and vanishing…

Only the boy remains and he is met by gods. Superman, Green Lantern, Booster Gold and Rip Hunter are tracking Batman through time and arrive just as he vanishes. They are determined to stop him returning to the 21st century at all costs…

Even as the amazed boy begins to record the stories of the mysterious Bat warrior, Wayne resurfaces in Puritan New England, saving a woman from a hideous tentacled demon…

Illustrated by Frazer Irving ‘Until the End of Time’ relates how, even with his memory failing, Wayne impersonates a witch-hunter and befriends shunned spinster Goodwife Annie Tyler in the failing colony of Gotham. As Brother Mordecai he is a most unconventional witch finder, ignoring obvious signs of Satan and solving a murder with unseemly observational tricks…

Vanishing Point is a fortress-university at the End of Time and here, as Reality counts down its final minutes, a quartet of costumed time-travellers quiz the Biorganic Archivist AI, hoping to track Batman’s erratic course through the time-stream. They’re all painfully aware that cruel, subtle Darkseid has turned their friend into a weapon to destroy Earth if the Dark Knight ever reaches his home time…

Superman meets and almost stops him at Vanishing Point, but Wayne has already slipped back into the time-stream, having instituted his own ingenious survival plan…

Tragically the paranoia of 16th century Gotham and Mordecai’s waning influence won’t spare Annie, especially as the time-monster Batman initially drove off is still haunting the woods around the settlement and chief inquisitor Nathaniel Wayne is sworn to eradicate all vestiges of the unholy.

The pious Puritan earns Annie’s dying curse for his entire line as he hangs her, but his roving descendent cannot hear. He has fallen centuries ahead and – more memories eradicated – landed at the feet of legendary reiver Blackbeard Thatch…

‘The Bones of Bristol Bay’ (art by Yanick Paquette & Michel Lacombe) finds the amnesiac mistaken for heroic third-generation buccaneer the Black Pirate and forced to lead the murdering corsair Thatch through the winding, yet strangely familiar cave system beneath Gotham County.

In search of buried gold the murderers encounter instead the deadly traps of the unspeakably ancient Miagani: troglodytic native tribesmen known as the Bat-People…

In the 21st century, the Justice League hold a war council, heatedly debating how to stop their indomitable comrade from returning and setting off Darkseid’s ultimate booby trap. Tim Drake has searched old records and interpreted 40,000 years of myths and legends following his mentor’s trail through history, but Red Robin is only there as an advisor and cannot make the adults listen to him…

With Blackbeard beaten, the memory-challenged wanderer examines the sacred relics of the Bat People – a battered cape, trinkets, a fragile yellow belt of many pockets – and something stirs in his clouded mind…

Georges Jeanty & Walden Wong then illustrate a violent stopover in 1870s Gotham as ‘Dark Knight, Dark Rider’ initially shifts focus to the hereditary guardians of the records and artefacts left by grateful folk who have encountered the Bat over unceasing centuries.

One such family is slaughtered by outlaws working for undying but cancer-ridden Monsieur Sauvage, and their surviving daughter taken to explain the secret of the box with a bat-shaped lock…

Katie‘s abductors have been remorselessly stalked by a bat-garbed stranger who doesn’t carry a gun. The silent avenger has tracked them back to boomtown Gotham, mercilessly depleting their numbers, but the immortal Frenchman is confidant that his tame medicine man Midnight Horse and debased Barbatos-worshipping doctor Thomas Wayne can make the girl talk before the hunter finds them.

Even if he does, his newly hired gunfighter Jonah Hex should even the odds…

The stranger rescues the girl and foils the villains but not before the bounty hunter gut shoots him…

He wakes in a Gotham of recent vintage, a place of glitz and glamour but one morally broken and irredeemably corrupt.  ‘Masquerade’ – with art by Ryan Sook, Pere Perez & Mick Gray – sees the memory-wiped hero hired from a hospital bed by Martha Wayne‘s best friend to prove that the tragic socialite was murdered by her husband Thomas, who faked his own death and abandoned their young son Bruce…

Illustrated by Lee Garbett, Perez, Alejandro Sicat & Wong, the intricate machinations of Darkseid grow closer to fruition as the hero, stripped of everything but innate deductive instinct, uncovers a sinister, bloodthirsty plot by new criminal organisation the Black Hand. His instinctive struggle against the schemers won, the time-nomad makes the final short hop to the now where his arrival will instantly trigger ‘The All-Over’ …

Batman, of course, is the most brilliant escape artist of all time and even whilst being struck down by the New God of Evil had devised an impossibly complex and grandly far-reaching scheme to beat the devil and save the world…

With a covers-&-variants gallery by Adam Kubert, Sprouse, Irving, Paquette, Cameron Stewart, Sook, Garbett & Bill Sienkiewicz, this grandiose, gripping and astonishingly complex epic odyssey is a devious delight that will delight modern fans and casual visitors alike and this sterling compilation also includes the revelatory 15-page art feature ‘Back in Time: The Return of Bruce Wayne Sketchbook’ by Morrison, Kubert, Sprouse, Irving, Paquette & Sook.
© 2010, 2011 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

The Flash: The Dastardly Death of the Rogues – a Brightest Day tie-in volume


By Geoff Johns, Francis Manapul, Scott Kolins & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3195-8

In the aftermath of the intergalactic Zombie Apocalypse known as Blackest Night, a number of heroes and villains were mysteriously resurrected. Just prior to that, Barry Allen, the second Flash and scarlet herald of the Silver Age of American comicbooks, also returned from the dead to play a pivotal part in the long-prophesied Crisis.

Once back, however, his life became increasingly complicated…

This first volume of his post-revival exploits collects The Flash volume 3 #1-7 (June-December 2010) and portions of The Flash Secret Files and Origins 2010, revealing how the hero’s desire to return to a normal life proves a forlorn hope in a world still reeling from a swift succession of cosmic upheavals…

The high-octane rush begins in the six-part ‘Case One: The Dastardly Deaths of the Rogues’ by Geoff Johns & Francis Manapul, as Barry returns to his old job as a CSI at Central City‘s Crime Lab.

His old friend Captain Darryl Frye is happy he’s back and believes the returnee’s claim that he’s been in Witness Protection, but is far too busy to chat. Recently the City’s been swamped with nuisance crimes committed by the costumed crazies of Flash’s Rogues Gallery as well as lesser, more pedestrian felons …

Barry knows all about it: his trip to the office has already been interrupted stopping a bank job by the new Trickster…

Before he has a chance to settle in, and already missing his old lab partner Patty Spivot, Barry is then dispatched to examine a body in East Park. Apparently somebody has murdered the Mirror Master…

As his wife Iris joins the Press-pack behind the police tape, Barry makes a disturbing discovery: the ravaged corpse is neither of the two criminals to have operated as the Reflective Rogue but a mysterious unknown third…

This cadaver apparently appeared in a blaze of light and, when a second flare occurs, the Scarlet Speedster suits up and races across town to be greeted by five more strangers tricked out as his greatest foes…

The second issue finds Flash reeling at an incredible accusation. The costumed newcomers – Commander Cold, Weather Warlock, Top, Heatstroke and Trixster – are from the 25th century; a special law-keeping unit dubbed The Renegades come back in time to apprehend him for the murder of Mirror Monarch – an act he will commit in eighty-four days hence…

The team have been trained to tackle their own era’s greatest menace – Professor Zoom, the Reverse Flash – and have no qualms about testing their tactics on his 21st century inspiration. Moreover, reasoned debate and the fact that he is still innocent of any crime are wasted on the future cops. The ensuing cataclysmic clash sees the Vizier of Velocity drive off his attackers, but only at the cost of an entire apartment building…

After diligently rebuilding the dwelling, Barry talks things over with Iris and decides to check on Zoom, currently incarcerated in the forbidding Iron Heights super-penitentiary, where at that very moment Digger Harkness – one of the dozen dead metahumans resurrected in the aftermath of the Blackest Night – is being confronted by the true Rogues.

Captain Cold and Co. have decided not to free their old ally, preferring to see if Captain Boomerang still has the necessary grit and class to be one of them…

At the harassed, stressed and over-worked Crime Lab, Barry has just annoyed his boss by reopening a cold case nobody has time for, when DNA evidence comes back that irrefutably proves that he is the murderer of the anachronistically expired Mirror Monarch…

Pressure mounts in the third chapter as Barry is understandably accused of contaminating a crime scene. His worry however, is that perhaps he is – or will be – the actual killer…

When Boomerang discovers he has returned to life with a new and deadly super power he murderously busts out of prison, arriving back in Central City just as the Renegades attack Barry and Iris.

Whether out of mistaken identity or sheer bloody-mindedness, Harkness joins the blockbusting battle, targeting the tomorrow cops and leaving Flash to frantically save the endangered bystanders…

Despite the bad odds and mounting chaos, Barry is subduing the riotous Rogue and Renegades when Top delivers a chilling warning and ultimatum. Unless Flash surrenders, Iris will die and the rest of the Rogues will unleash a horrific menace from the Mirror Dimensions…

Afetr Top apparently switches sides, the speedster is propelled into an all-out attack on Captain Cold’s crew. The battle is soon wildly out of control but is interrupted when Boomerang is contacted by the White Entity responsible for bringing back the Dead Dozen…

His response ends the street war in an unpredictable manner which allows Flash to divine the true nature and target of all the time shenanigans – and stop the real architect of all his present woes.

…At least he would have, if the Renegades hadn’t used that moment to shanghai him into the future to face trial for murder…

The epic encounter concludes with the resurgent Scarlet Speedster deducing the reason for all the temporal turmoil, foiling his secret foe and heading home to Iris, utterly unaware that a mystery rider from the unknown is heading for him bearing a warning of a coming splintering time stream and an oncoming “Flashpoint”…

The Flash #7 shifts focus to Captain Boomerang as ‘What Goes Around, Comes Around’ (with art by Scott Kolins) reveals the origins and offers career highlights of the Ozzie outlaw, culminating in portentous meeting with the incalculably dangerous Zoom and an ominous confrontation with Captain Cold’s Rogues…

Perhaps narratively parked in the wrong place, ‘Running to the Past’ – also illustrated by Scott Kolins – then offers insights into Barry Allen’s troubled past as the hero dreams again of his mother’s murder and rededicates himself to one day closing that particularly painful cold case, before being welcomed back to the fold of his Speed Force Family, whilst across town the Rogues find the final legacy of Sam Scudder, the original Mirror Master…

Also included are a 2-page preview teaser for upcoming publishing event Flashpoint (inked by Paul Neary), a selection of wry and pithy Flash Facts (‘How Does a Boomerang Work?’, ‘How Do Captain Boomerang’s Boomerangs Work?’, ‘How Does a Mirror Work?’ and ‘How Do Mirror Master’s Mirrors Work?’) plus a mesmerising covers-&-variants gallery by Manapul & Brian Buccellato, Tony Harris, Ryan Sook, Greg Horn, Kolins & Michael Atiyeh, Fernando Pasarin, Joel Gomez, Randy Mayor & Carrie Strachan, Alé Garcia, Sandra Hope & Alex Sinclair and Darwyn Cooke.

The Flash has always been the epitome and paradigm of Fights ‘n’ Tights comics adventure and this blistering – if short-lived – iteration offers so much more than the requisite dose of thrills, chills and spills to satisfy the craving of every tension tripper, suspense junkie and (super) speed freak. Catch it if you can!
© 2011 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Golden Age Doctor Fate Archives volume 1


By Gardner F. Fox, Hal Sherman, Stan Aschmeier & Jon Chester Kozlak (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1308-0

One of the most interesting aspects of DC’s golden Age superhero pantheon is just how much more they gripped the attention of writers and readers from succeeding generations, even if they didn’t set the world alight during their original “Glory Days”.

Many relatively short-lived or genuinely second-string characters with a remarkably short shelf life through the formative years of the industry have, since the Silver Age which began in 1956, seldom been far from our attention and been constantly revived, rebooted and resurrected.

After The (Jay Garrick) Flash and The Spectre, probably the most revered, revisited and frequently revived is Doctor Fate, who first appeared in 1940, courtesy of writer Gardner F. Fox and the uniquely stylistic Howard Sherman.

Although starting strong, he was another incredibly powerful man of mystery who failed to capture the imaginations of enough readers to build on the chimeric tone of the times: undergoing a radical revision midway through his initial run and losing his strip even before WWII ended.

Since his Silver Age revival however Fate has become a popular cornerstone of more than one DC Universe…

Following the historically informative and laudatory Foreword by big-time devotee fan and Golden Age Keeper of the Flame Roy Thomas, this monumental 400 page full-colour deluxe hardback (representing the entirety of Doctor Fate‘s run from More Fun Comics #55-98 (May 1940-July/August 1944) introduces the potentate of peril in a 6-page parable wherein he combats ‘The Menace of Wotan’.

During those simpler times origins and motivations were far less important than plot and action, so this eerie yarn focuses on a blue-skinned Mephistopheles’ scheme to assassinate comely lady of leisure Inza and how her enigmatic, golden-helmed protector thwarted the plot. The hero dealt harshly with the nefarious azure mage, barely mentioning in passing that Fate possessed all the lost knowledge and lore of ancient civilisations.

That’s probably the biggest difference between the original and today’s Fate: back then he was no sorcerer but an adept of forgotten science (a distinction cribbed from many Lovecraftian horror tales of the previous two decades of pulp fiction): a hair-splitting difference all but lost on the readers.

In #56 – which sported the first of eleven cover spots for the Wielder of Old Wisdoms –‘The Search for Wotan’ saw Fate carry Inza up the Stairs of Judgement to Heaven where they learned their foe was not dead and was preparing to blow up the entire Earth.

Foiling the plan but unable to permanently despatch the big blue meanie, Fate was forced to bury his enemy alive at the centre of the world…

In ‘The Fire Murders’ in #57, certified doom-magnet Inza was targeted by mystic arsonist Mango the Mighty before her guardian Fate quickly ended the campaign of terror, whilst in the next issue a modern mage recovered ‘The Book of Thoth’ from its watery tomb and unleashed a wave of appalling, uncanny phenomena… until the Blue-and-Gold Gladiator stepped in.

The self-appointed bulwark against wicked mysticism flew out of his comfort zone in More Fun #59 to repel an invasion by ‘The People from Outer Space’ but was firmly back in occult territory for #60 when he destroyed ‘The Little Men’ employed by a legendary triumvirate of colossal Norns to crush humanity.

Behind #61’s striking Sherman cover, ‘Attack of the Nebula’ pitted the Puissant Paladin against a cosmic cloud and wandering planetoid summoned by an Earthly madman to devastate the world, then saw him crush a deranged technologist’s robotic coup in #62’s ‘Menace of the Metal Men’ and save Inza from petrification by ‘The Sorcerer’ in More Fun #63.

Like many of Fox’s very best heroic series, Doctor Fate was actually a romantic partnership, with Inza (after a number of surnames she eventually settled on Cramer) acting as assistant, foil and so very often the target of many macabre menaces. In #64 she and Fate – who still had no civilian identity – shared a pleasure cruise to the Caribbean where a slumbering Mayan God of Evil wanted to utilise her unique psychic talents in ‘The Mystery of Mayoor’.

She got a brief rest in #65 as Fate soloed in a bombastic battle to repel an invasion of America by ‘The Fish-Men of Nyarl-Amen’ but played a starring role in the next episode when Fate exposed a sadistic crook trying to drive his wealthy cousin to suicide by convincing her that she was ‘The Leopard Girl’…

A year after his debut, More Fun Comics #67 (May 1941) at last revealed ‘The Origin of Doctor Fate’ telling how the boy Kent Nelson had accompanied his father Sven on an archaeological dig to Ur in 1920.

Broaching a pre-Chaldean pyramid, the lad awakened a dormant half-million year old alien from the planet Cilia, accidentally triggered security systems which killed his own father. Out of gratitude and remorse the being known as Nabu the Wise trained Kent to harness the hidden forces of the universe – levitation, telekinesis and the secrets of the atom – and after two decades sent him out into the world to battle those who used magic and science with evil intent.

That epic sequence only took up three pages, however, and the remainder of the instalment found time and space for Fate and Inza to turn back a ghostly incursion and convince Lord of the Dead Black Negal to stay away from the lands of the living…

Fate then graduated to 10-page tales and held the covers of More Fun #68-76, beginning a classic run of spectacular thrillers by firstly crushing a scientific slaughterer who had built an invisible killing field in ‘Murder in Baranga Marsh’, before gaining a deadly arch-enemy in #69 when deranged physicist Ian Karkull used a ray to turn his gang into ‘The Shadow Killers’…

In #70 the shadow master united with Fate’s first foe as ‘Wotan and Karkull’ built an arsenal of doomsday weapons in the arctic, but were still too weak to beat the Master of Cosmic Forces, whereas rogue solar scientist Igorovich would have successfully blackmailed the entire planet with ‘The Great Drought’ had Inza not intervened…

With involvement in WWII now clearly inevitable, the covers had increasingly become more martial and patriotic in nature, and with More Fun Comics #72 (October 1941) Fate underwent an unexpected and radical change in nature.

The full face helmet was replaced with a gleaming metallic half hood and his powers diminished. Moreover the hero was no longer a cold, emotionless force of nature, but a passionate, lusty, two-fisted swashbuckler throwing punches rather than pulses of eerie energy. His previous physical invulnerability was countered by revealing that his lungs were merely human and he could be drowned, poisoned or asphyxiated…

The quality and character of his opposition changed too. ‘The Forger’ pitted him against a gang of con-men targeting Inza’s family and other farmers; altering intercepted bank documents to pull off a cruel swindle, whilst a far more rational and reasonable nemesis debuted in #73 as criminal mastermind ‘Mr. Who’ used his body-morphing, forced- evolution Solution Z to perpetrate a series of sensational robberies.

Despite a rather brutal trouncing – and apparent death – the brute returned in #74 as ‘Mr. Who Lives Again’ saw the sinister scientist use his abilities to replace the City Mayor, whilst in #75 ‘The Battle Against Time’ found Fate racing to find a killer who had framed Inza’s best friend for murder…

Underworld chess master Michael Krugor manipulated people like pawns but ‘The King of Crime’ found himself overmatched when he tried to use Inza against Fate, after which #77 saw a welcome – if brief – return to the good old days as ‘Art for Crime’s Sake’ found the Man of Mystery braving a magic world of monsters within an ancient Chinese painting to rescue young lovers eldritchly exiled by a greedy art dealer

Issue #78 featured clever bandits who disguised themselves as statues of ‘The Wax Museum Killers’ whilst #79’s ‘The Deadly Designs of Mr. Who’ revealed how the metamorphic maniac attempted to impersonate and replace one of the richest men on Earth, and in #80 innovative felon ‘The Octopus’ turned a circus into his playground for High Society plunder.

In More Fun #81 cunning crook The Clock used radio show ‘Hall of Lost Heirs’ to trawl for potential victims and easy pickings whilst in the next issue Fate exposed the schemes of stage magician/conman The Red Sage who was offering Luck For Sale!’ after which ‘The Two Fates!’ – fortune tellers who used extortion and murder to bolster their prognostications – were stopped by the real deal…

In #84 the energetic crimebuster braved ‘Crime’s Hobby House!’ to stop thieving special effects wizard Mordaunt Grimm using rich men’s own pastimes to rob them, before big changes for Kent Nelson occurred in #85.

Here the society idler quickly qualified as a surgeon and medical doctor, embarking on a new career of service to humanity. Additionally, his alter ego ditched the golden cape, becoming a more acrobatic and human – if still bulletproof – crimebuster, exposing a greedy plastic surgeon helping crooks escape justice as ‘The Man Who Changed Faces!’

The medical theme predominated in these later tales. ‘The Man Who Wanted No Medals’ was a brilliant surgeon who feared a crushing youthful indiscretion would be exposed after which #87’s ‘The Mystery of Room 406’ dealt with a hospital cubicle where even the healthiest patients always died whilst in ‘The Victim of Doctor Fate!’, Nelson suffered crippling self-doubt when he failed to save a patient.

Those only faded after the surgeon’s diligent enquiries revealed the murderous hands of Mad Dog McBain behind the untimely demise…

Charlatan soothsaying scoundrel Krishna Das was exposed by Fate and Inza in #89’s ‘The Case of the Crystal Crimes’ after which ‘The Case of the Healthy Patient!’ pitted them against a fraudulent doctor and incurable hypochondriac before Mr. Who used his chemical conjurations to shrink our hero to doll size in #91’s ‘The Man Who Belittled Fate!’

The Thief of Time struck again – whilst still in jail – in More Fun #92 as ‘Fate Turns Back The Clock!’ and Hal Sherman ended his long association with the strip in ‘The Legend of Lucky Lane’ wherein an impossibly fortunate felon finally played the odds once too often…

As the page-count dropped back to six pages Stan Aschmeier illustrated the next two adventures, beginning with 94’s ‘The Destiny of Mr. Coffin!’ with Fate coming to the aid of a fatalistic old soul framed for being a fence whilst ‘Flame in the Night!’ saw a matchbox collector targeted by killers who thought he knew too much…

With the end clearly in sight Jon Chester Kozlak took over the art beginning with More Fun Comics #96 and ‘Forgotten Magic!’ as Fate’s Chaldean sponsor was forced to remove the hero’s remaining superhuman abilities for a day – leaving Fate to save trapped miners and foil their swindling boss with nothing but wits and courage.

Then the restored champion exposed the spurious bad luck reputed to plague ‘Pharaoh’s Lamp!’ and ended/suspended his crime-crushing career with #98 by sorting out a case of mistaken identity when a young boy was confused with diminutive Stumpy Small AKA ‘The Bashful King of Crime!’…

With the first age of superheroes coming to a close new tastes were developing in the readership. Fate’s costumed co-stars Green Arrow, Aquaman and Johnny Quick – along with debuting concept Superboy – moved over to Adventure Comics leaving More Fun as an anthology of cartoon comedy features.

Initially dark, broodingly exotic and often genuinely spooky, Doctor Fate smoothly switched to the bombastic, boisterous, flamboyant and vividly exuberant post war Fights ‘n’ Tights style but couldn’t escape the changing times. Now however, both halves of his early career can be seen as a lost treasure trove of tense suspense, eerie enigmas, spectacular action and fabulous fun: one no lover of Costumed Dramas or sheer comics wonderment can afford to miss.
© 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Seven Soldiers of Victory Archives volume 2


By Joe Samachson, Ed Dobrotka, Pierce Rice, Jon Small, Maurice Del Bourgo & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1308-4

After the actual invention of the comicbook superhero – for which read the Action Comics debut of Superman in 1938 – the most significant event in the industry’s history was the combination of individual sales-points into a group. Thus what seems blindingly obvious to us with the benefit of four-colour hindsight was proven: consumers couldn’t get enough of garishly-hued mystery men and a multitude of popular characters would inevitably increase readership.

Plus, of course, a mob of superheroes is just so much cooler than one (…or one-and-a-half if there’s a sidekick involved…).

It cannot be understated: the creation of the Justice Society of America in 1941 utterly changed the shape of the budding industry. Soon after the team debuted, even All American Comics’ publishing partner National wanted to get in on the act and created their own squad of solo stars, populated with a number of their proprietary characters who hadn’t made it onto the roster of the cooperative coalition of AA and DC stars.    Oddly they never settled on a name and the team of non-powered mystery men who debuted in Leading Comics #1 in 1941 were retroactively and alternatively dubbed The Law’s Legionnaires and The Seven Soldiers of Victory.

They never even had their own title-logo but only appeared as solo stars grouped together on the 14 spectacular covers, the second quartet of which (by Mort Meskin, Jon Small, Maurice Del Bourgo and a sadly unidentified artist) preface each collaborative epic in this spectacular sequel of Golden Age delights.

The full contents of this bombastic deluxe hardback barrage of comicbook bravado were originally presented in the quarterly Leading Comics #5-8, spanning Winter 1942/1943 to Fall 1943 and, following an incisive discourse and background history lesson from comics historian Bill Schelly in his Foreword, that war-time wonderment resumes with the heroes’ fifth adventure.

The sagas all followed a basic but extremely effective formula (established by Mort Weisinger in their first case), and here the warped mastermind challenging the Legionnaires was The Skull, who devised ‘The Miracles That Money Couldn’t Buy!’ (illustrated over all seven chapters by Ed Dobrotka but again the work of a writer time has forgotten and sketchy records have not yet revealed – but most probably the amazing Joe Samachson…).

The drama began when publisher Lee Travis tips off his pal Oliver Queen to an imminent prison break in his bailiwick.

Green Arrow and Speedy are too late to stop vicious Bill “Porky” Johnson‘s escape via skull-painted mystery-plane and that soon-to-be-executed convict’s feat is repeated four more times across the country, leaving a handful of Death Row inmates beholden to a strange old man dubbed who has found that, for all his wealth, there are still things money cannot buy.

However, for an unscrupulous businessman unwilling to get his own emaciated hands dirty but with the right criminal specialists, they can be stolen…

The Seven Soldiers meanwhile have briefly convened and now stand ready to face their specified nemeses as soon as they rear their scurrilous heads…

In ‘The Case of the Criminal Vigilante’ rustler and horse thief Bronco Slade steals Spinaway – the fastest racehorse on Earth – by impersonating the Vigilante, with the true Sagebrush Centurion helpless to stop him, and indeed even taken prisoner beside his hapless, interfering biggest-fan Mr. Meek…

‘The Diamond of Doom!’ finds jewel thief the Sparkler targeting the fabulous, reputedly cursed Koram Diamond. Even though Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy are unable to bring the bandit to justice, a spookily fatal fate befalls him.

A similar outcome ends hijacker Bull Corbin after he outfoxes the Crimson Avenger and Wing whilst purloining a prototype spaceship. However rather than a clean getaway all that awaits the thief is a grim and final ‘Destiny among the Stars!’

‘A Knight without Armor’ reveals how the Shining Knight‘s magic mail-coat is too tough a target for shifty Matt Grieder, but the thug’s subsequent attempt to pass off fake metal-wear ends in near-death for Sir Justin and execution for the villain, after which the Emerald Archers finish their hunt for Porky Johnson when the fugitive’s successful attempt to obtain a rejuvenation ray for the Skull prematurely rings down the curtain for The Murderer Who Couldn’t be Hanged!’

The untitled ‘Conclusion’ then shows how getting everything you want might not make you happy – or keep you breathing – as the Vigilante busts free just as his Legionnaire allies storm the triumphant Skull’s fortress…

Leading Comics #6 was also probably scripted by Samachson, but this time the penciller is unrecorded. At least we know he or she was inked by Maurice Del Bourgo…

‘The Treasure That Time Forgot!’ is a grand hunt for the hidden gold of the Incas. Archaeologist Mr. Milton publicly calls upon the Seven Soldiers to follow his old map and find Pizarro‘s lost treasure hoard the plan is to bolster America’s war-chest by a billion dollars…

Said map, sketched by an explorer named Burton, comes with cryptic verses and false trails, so the archaeologist’s assistant Scrivener suggests the heroes split up to save time. They could even make a competition of it…

‘Crimes by Proxy!’ finds Green Arrow and Speedy clashing with Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy deep in the Andes as a hidden hand attempts to murder both teams using the weaponry of the other; a tactic repeated when Shining Knight and Vigilante discover a lost city and are tricked into conducting ‘A Duel to the Death!’

Their cataclysmic clash ends as an enigmatic and heavily disguised manipulator surfaces, confident the heroes have cleared all obstacles and booby-traps, only to fall foul of avian horrors in ‘Winged Masters of the Mountains!’

‘The Gold that Failed to Glitter!’ finds the man-&-boy teams still mistakenly battling each other until the late-arriving knight and cowboy forcibly restrain them. Soon after, aged Mr. Milton mysteriously turns up to help, but only succeeds in spreading further suspicion when the combined party discovers the legendary treasure vault… emptied!

Meanwhile the Crimson Avenger and Wing have followed ‘The Third Treasure Trail!’ and met the last of the Incas – as well as their real enemy – and everybody collides in the explosive conclusion which solves all the mysteries at ‘Trail’s End!’

Issue #7 – pencilled by Pierce Rice – takes the heroes on a similar fund-raising quest as War Bond Drive performers, but the tour is a scam by a strange individual who is an emissary of ‘The Wizard of Wisstark!’

He implores the Legionnaires to travel to his fantastic kingdom and liberate the Antarctic hidden city from the threat of invasion…

The Wizard is actually an elderly American stage conjuror who fell into the position of chief but now his peaceful, super-scientific subjects are being threatened by real magicians from the rival polar city of Stanovia…

The fight back begins when Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy travel to ‘The Land of Giants!’ hoping to enlist the colossi in the struggle. Sadly the brutal hulks are already engaged in a struggle with a tribe of equally savage dwarves, but the boy genius has an idea and takes a few movie pictures before leaving…

‘The Wizard Archers and the Wizards!’ sees Green Arrow and Speedy strike to the heart of the matter and boldly invade Stanovia, where they discover a few intriguing secrets about the triumvirate of “mages” who rule the city…

Wing and the Crimson Avenger stayed with the Wizard in Wisstark, in case of fifth column attacks. They are unfortunately captured by ‘The Invisible Men!’ who have been despatched to sow disorder and terror. Whilst being taken to Stanovia, however, the mystery men discover a shocking secret about their foes…

Whilst that was happening the Vigilante made his own contribution to the cold war-effort, catching a Wizard doppelganger attempting to infiltrate the palace in ‘Double Trouble!’, before Shining Knight, patrolling the skies on his winged steed Victory, recruits timber-clad warriors to counterattack Stanovia in ‘The March of the Wooden-Armored Soldiers’…

With their pre-battle preparations completed, the Seven Soldiers reunite for the final ‘Battle of the Wizards!’, much-heartened by the conclusion each has individually reached regarding the truth about the Stanovian sorcerers…

This second classic collection concludes with a stirring time-travel, super-villain mash-up as Leading #8 sees the heroes ambushed and reduced to ‘Exiles in Time!’ (illustrated by Jon Small & Del Bourgo) by old enemy The Dummy.

The diminutive demon of destruction subtly lures his foes into a cunning ambush which catapults the crusaders down the corridors of history, before turning his attention to plunder and mayhem, not realising that heroism is found in every era, such as 17th century France where the Three Musketeers ally with Green Arrow and Speedy to solve the theft of ‘The Queen’s Necklace!’…

Crimson Avenger and Wing re-materialised in China but were utterly unable to determine when. Deductive investigation finally paid off as Japanese invaders trying to stop the completion of the Great Wall pointed to 225BC, when and where the time-travellers were happy to train the peasantry in how to fight them by displaying ‘Courage in Canton!’…

‘Voyage of the Vikings’ found Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy deposited on a lost and ice-gripped dragon-boat, struggling for survival with their newfound comrades as they desperately sought solid ground. How astonished they all were when bold Leif Ericsson dubbed his discovery Vineland and he patriotic mystery men realised they had been part of the first discovery of America…

‘Friends, Romans, Countrymen’ saw Vigilante land in Rome and recognise a brace of 20th century mugs. Trailing the hoods to the house of super-rich Crassus, the Western Wildcat realised the criminals were using the Dummy’s device to plunder historical treasures but even after foiling their plans, he was still stuck in the past…

‘The Legend of Leonardo’ revealed how the Shining Knight came to the aid of the legendary Da Vinci and was rewarded with a quick trip on the master’s own recently completed time machine. Back when he started from, the Arthurian paladin then began toppling some temporal dominoes in the ‘Conclusion’, allowing his time-tossed companions to return and deal with the diabolical doll-man in the appropriate manner…

These raw, wild and excessively engaging costumed romps are amongst some of the best but most neglected thrillers of the halcyon Golden Age. Happily, modern tastes too have moved on and these yarns are probably far more in tune with contemporary mores, making this a truly guilty pleasure for all fans of mystery, mayhem and stylish superteam tussles…
© 1942, 1943, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Superman/Batman: Supergirl

New Revised Review

By Jeph Loeb, Michael Turner & Peter Steigerwald (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-4012-0347-7

In a shock of sheer horror, I realised over Christmas that I’ve been doing this for over 20 years: firstly in magazines like Comics Forum and books like Slings and Arrows, then as an online critic for the Comics Creators Guild website, before starting the independent Now Read This! in 2007.
Moreover many of those early efforts weren’t particularly fair or good – a side-effect of being literally bombarded non-stop with volumes one wouldn’t generally pick to read.
Thus in a probably futile effort to be less judgemental I’ve been going over older reviews, rethinking some previous pronouncements and will be making amends over the months to come.
What’s really worrying is how many I haven’t changed my mind about…

For many years Superman and Batman worked together as the “World’s Finest” team. They were best friends and the pairing made perfect financial sense as National/DC’s most popular heroes could cross-sell their combined readerships.

When the characters were redefined for the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths 1980s, they were remade as cautious but respectful co-workers who did the same job whilst deploring each other’s methods. They preferred to avoid contact whenever possible – except when they were in the Justice League – but then, the character continuity of team titles has always been largely at odds with heroes at home in their own titles…

After a few years of this new status quo the irresistible lure of Cape & Cowl Capers inexorably brought them together again with modern emotional intensity derived from their incontestably differing methods and characters.

For decades DC really couldn’t make up their minds over Supergirl. I’ve actually lost count of the number of different versions that have cropped up over the years, and I’ve never been able to shake the queasy feeling that above all else she’s a concept that was cynically shifted from being a way to get girls reading comics to one calculated to ease young male readers over that bumpy patch between sporadic chin-hair outbreaks, voices breaking and that nervous period of hiding things under your mattress where your mum never, never ever looks…

After a few intriguing test-runs she debuted as a future star of the ever-expanding Superman pocket universe in Action Comics #252 (May 1959). Superman’s cousin Kara Zor-El had been born on a city-sized fragment of Krypton, hurled intact into space when the planet exploded. Eventually Argo City turned to Kryptonite like the rest of the detonated world’s debris and her dying parents, observing Earth through their vision-scopes, sent their daughter to safety as they apparently perished.

Landing on Earth, she met Superman who created the identity of Linda Lee and hid her in an orphanage whilst she learned of her new world and powers in secrecy and safety.

Her popularity waxed and waned over the years until she was earmarked for destruction as part of the clearout of attention-grabbing deaths during the aforementioned Crisis on Infinite Earths.

However as detailed in scripter Jeph Loeb’s introduction ‘On the Roller Coaster or, How Supergirl Returned to the DCU for the First Time’, after John Byrne successfully rebooted the Man of Steel, non-Kryptonian iterations began to appear – each with their own fans – until early in the 21st century the company Powers-that-Be decided the real Girl of Steel should come back… sort of…

Thus this visually intoxicating version (reprinting Superman/Batman #8-13, May-October 2004) resets to the original concept and has a naked blonde chick arrive on a Kryptonite meteor, claiming to be Superman’s cousin…

Written by Loeb with captivating art by Michael Turner & Peter Steigerwald, the action commences in the aftermath of Superman/Batman: Public Enemies wherein a Green Kryptonite asteroid crashed to Earth. Now in ‘Alone’, as a quarantined Superman chafes at enforced detention, the Dark Knight explores a section of the meteor submerged in Gotham Bay.

The JLA have all been active, clearing away the deadly fragments, but this last one is most disturbing. As Batman quickly grasps, it’s a ship but its single passenger is missing…

Soon the Gotham Guardian is tracking a wave of destruction caused by a seemingly confused teenaged girl with incredible powers and only Superman’s unwise early intervention stops the mounting carnage. Their subsequent investigations reveal the comely captive to have all the Man of Tomorrow’s abilities and she claims – in fluent Kryptonian – to be the daughter of his long-dead uncle Zor-El…

The mystery further unfolds in ‘Visitor’ as a deeply suspicious Batman and ecstatic Superman continue their researches, arguing their corners as the most powerful girl on Earth becomes increasingly impatient. Fuelling the Dark Knight’s concern is superdog Krypto‘s clear and savage hostility to the newcomer and Kara‘s claims that she has amnesia…

Then as Clark Kent endeavours to acclimatise his cousin to life on Earth, on the hellish world of Apokolips vile Granny Goodness and her Female Furies are ordered by ultimate evil space-god Darkseid to acquire the pliable naive newcomer…

Before they can strike, however, an attack comes from an unexpected source, as former ally Harbinger, ruthless hunter Artemis and beloved ally Wonder Woman ambush the Kryptonians. …

Princess Diana has acted arbitrarily nut from necessity: kidnapping Kara and bringing her to the island home of the Amazons to be trained in the use of her powers as a ‘Warrior’. Superman’s growing obsession has rendered him unable to see her potential for destruction, despite a cryptic message on her space ship from Zor-El, and Wonder Woman decided to strike first and ask later…

With tempers barely cooled, Dark Knight and Man of Steel are invited to observe Kara’s progress weeks later, just as the tropical Paradise is assaulted by an army of artificial Doomsdays manufactured on Apokolips…

The wave of slaughter is a feint, but by the time the horrors are all destroyed, the Female Furies have done their work, slaughtering Kara’s only friend and stealing her away…

In ‘Prisoner’, DC’s superheroic high trinity enlist the aid of Apokolyptian émigré Big Barda and stage a devastating rescue mission to Darkseid’s homeworld, but not before the Lord of evil apparently twists the innocent Girl of Steel into his tool: a ‘Traitor’ to the living…

The Master of Apokolips has never faced a foe as adamant as Batman and the quartet are unexpectedly victorious, but after returning Kara to Earth and announcing her as the new Supergirl, the heroes discover that they are not safe or secure, and in ‘Hero’ Darkseid horrifyingly returns to exact his ultimate revenge…

This hardcover collection also includes a covers-&-variant gallery by Turner, Steigerwald, Jim Lee & Scott Williams, assorted roughs and a wealth of production Sketches, and a nifty 2-page translation key for the Kryptonian Alphabet.

For me, the most intriguing aspect of this sometimes overly-sentimental tale is Batman’s utter distrust and suspicion of Kara as she is hidden from the world while she assimilates, but there’s plenty of beautifully rendered action (plus oodles of lovingly rendered girl-flesh and titillating fetish outfits jostling for attention amidst the lavish fight-scenes and interminable guest-cameos) and enough sheer spectacle to satisfy any Fights ‘n’ Tights fans.
© 2004, 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.