Category: Black Canary

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DC Finest: Super Friends – The Fury of the Super Foes


By E. Nelson Bridwell, Denny O’Neil, Ramona Fradon, Kurt Schaffenberger, Ric Estrada, Alex Toth, Joe Orlando, Bob Smith, Vince Colletta with Dick Giordano, Curt Swan & Geoge Klein & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-79950-316-3 (TPB)

This book contains Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Evergreen Superhero Sagas For All… 9/10

Once upon a time comics were primarily created with kids in mind. Whilst I’d never advocate exclusively going back to those days, the modern industry has for the longest time sinned by not fully addressing the needs and tastes of younger fans these days. By that I mean less tie-ns and more accessible standard stoires like Marvel Adventures material or this stuff here.

Happily, DC has latterly been rectifying the situation with new and – most importantly for old geeks like me – remastered, repackaged age-appropriate gems from their vast back catalogue.

A superb case in point of all-ages comics done right is this tome celebrating the joys of childhood when comics and TV shows were interchangeable in kids’ head. It was all one great big dangerous fun world to save or conquer…

DC Finest: Super Friends:- The Fury of the Super Foes gathers comic book tales spun off from a hugely popular Saturday Morning TV Cartoon show: one that, thanks to the canny craftsmanship and loving invention of lead scripter E. Nelson Bridwell, became an integral and unmissable component of the greater pre Crisis on Infinite Earths DC Universe.

It was also one of the most universally thrilling and satisfying superhero titles of the period: featuring the smart, witty, straightforward adventures people my age grew up with, produced during a period when the entire industry was increasingly losing itself in colossal continued storylines and bombastic, convoluted, soap opera melodrama.It’s something all creators should have tattooed on their foreheads: sometimes all you really want is a smart plot well illustrated, sinister villains well-smacked, a solid resolution and early bed…

TV show Super Friends ran (under various iterations) from 1973 to 1986; starring primarily Superman, Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and a brace of studio-originated kids as student crimebusters. The cast was supplemented by guest stars from the DCU on a case by case basis. The animated series made the transition to print as part of the publisher’s 1976 foray into “boutiqued” comics which saw titles with a television connection cross-marketed as DC TV Comics.

Child-friendly Golden Age comic book revival Shazam!- the Original Captain Marvel had been adapted into a successful live action series and its Saturday Morning silver screen stablemate The Secrets of Isis consequently reversed the process to become a comic book. With the additions of hit comedy show Welcome Back Kotter and animated blockbuster Super Friends four-colour format, DC had a neat outreach imprimatur tailor-made to draw viewers into the magic word of funnybooks.

At least that was the plan: with the exception of Super Friends none of the titles lasted more than ten issues beyond their launch…

This massive mega-extravaganza collects Super Friends #1-26 (spanning November 1976 to November 1979), includes promo comic Aquateers Meet the Super Friends and reprints material from Limited Collectors’ Edition #C-41 and C-46.

The fun begins a crafty 2-part caper by the wondrous E. Nelson Bridwell and illustrators Ric Estrada, Vince Colletta & Joe Orlando. ‘The Fury of the Super Foes’ finds heroes-in-training Wendy & Marvin – and their incredibly astute mutt Wonderdog – studying at the palatial Hall of Justice, even as elsewhere, a confederation of villains prove imitation is the sincerest form of flattery… if not outright intellectual theft. Having auditioned a host of young criminals, The Penguin, Cheetah, Flying Fish, Poison Ivy and Toyman are creating a squad of sidekicks and protégés to follow in their felonious footsteps. Now Chick, Kitten, Sardine, Honeysuckle and Toyboy are all ready and willing to carry out their first caper…

When the giant “Troubalert” screen informs our heroes of a 3-pronged attack on S.T.A.R. Labs’ latest inventions, the team split up to tackle the crises, but are thoroughly trounced until Wendy & Marvin break curfew to help them. As a result of the clash, Chick and Kitten are brought back to the Hall of Justice, but their talk of repentance is a rascally ruse and they secretly sabotage vital equipment. Thankfully, Wonderdog has seen everything and quickly finds a way to inform the still-oblivious good guys in issue #2, but too late to prevent the Super Friends being briefly ‘Trapped by the Super Foes’…

Aided and abetted by inker Bob Smith, the incomparable Ramona Fradon (Aquaman; Metamorpho the Element Man; Brenda Starr, Reporter) became penciller with #3, as ‘The Cosmic Hit Man?’ sees 50 intergalactic super-villains murdered by infernal Dr. Ihdrom, who then blends their harvested essences to create an apparently unbeatable hyper-horror to utterly overwhelm Earth’s heroic defenders. However, he falls victim to his own arrogance and Wendy & Marvin’s logical deductions…

‘Riddles and Rockets!’ sees the Super Friends overmatched by new ne’er-do-well Skyrocket whilst simultaneously seeking to cope with a rash of crimes contrived by King of Conundra The Riddler. Soon a pattern emerges and a criminal connection is confirmed…

Author Bridwell (Secret Six; Inferior Five; Batman; Superman; The Flash; Legion of Super-Heroes; Captain Marvel/Shazam!) was justly famed as DC’s Keeper of Lore and top Continuity Cop thanks to his astoundingly encyclopaedic knowledge of its publishing minutiae and ability to instantly recall every damn thing! ‘Telethon Treachery!’ gave him plenty of scope to display it with a horde of near-forgotten guest-stars joining the heroes as they host a televised charity event. Sadly, money-mad menace Greenback lurks in the wings, awaiting his moment to grab the loot and kidnap the wealthiest donors. Then The Atom (Ray Palmer) plays a crucial role in stopping the depredations of an animal trainer using beasts as bandits in ‘The Menace of the Menagerie Man!’ before a huge cast change is unveiled in #7 (October 1977) with ‘The Warning of the Wondertwins’…

You all know TV is very different from comics. When the next season of Super Friends aired, Wendy, Marvin & Wonderdog were abruptly gone, replaced without explanation by alien kids Zan & Jayna and their elastic-tailed space monkey Gleek. With room to extrapolate and in consideration of fans, Bridwell explained the sudden change via a battle to save Earth from annihilation whilst introducing the newest student heroes in memorable style. At the Hall of Justice Wendy & Marvin spot a spaceship hurtling to Earth on the Troubalert monitor and dash off to intercept it. Aboard are two siblings from distant planet Exor: a girl able to transform into animals and a boy who can become any form of water, from steam to ice. They have come carrying an urgent warning…

Superman’s alien enemy Grax has resolved to eradicate humanity and devised a dozen different superbombs and attendant weird-science traps to ensure his victory. These are scattered all over Earth and even the entire Justice League cannot stretch its resources to cover every angle and threat. To Wendy & Marvin the answer is obvious: call upon the help and knowledge of hyper-powered local heroes…

Soon Superman and Israel’s champion The Seraph are dismantling a black hole bomb whilst Elongated Man and titan-tressed Godiva perform similar service on a life-eradicator in England. Flash (Barry Allen) and mighty-leaping Impala dismantle uncatchable ordnance in South Africa before Hawkman & Hawkwoman join Native American avenger Owlwoman to crush darkness-breeding monsters in Oklahoma, whilst from the Hall of Justice Wendy, Marvin and the Wonder Twins monitor the crisis with a modicum of mounting hope…

The cataclysmic epic continues in #8 with ‘The Mind Killers!’ as Atom and Rising Son tackle a device designed to decimate Japan, and in Ireland Green Lantern Hal Jordan and Jack O’Lantern battle multi-hued monstrosities before switching off their technological terror.

In New Zealand, time-scanning Tuatara tips off Red Tornado to the position of a bomb cached in the distant past whilst Venezuela’s doom is diverted through a team-up of Batman, Robin and reptile-themed champion Bushmaster. And in Taiwan a melding of sonic superpowers possessed by Black Canary and the astounding Thunderlord harmoniously saves the day…

The saga soars to a classic climax with ‘Three Ways to Kill a World!’ in which the final phases of Grax’s scheme fail thanks to Green Arrow & Tasmanian Devil in Australia, with Aquaman & Little Mermaid sorting out the embattled seas off Denmark and Wonder Woman & The Olympian preserving modern Greece.

Or at least, they would have if the Hellenic heroes had found the right foe. Sadly, their triumph against Wrong-Place, Right-Time terrorist Colonel Conquest almost upsets everything. Thankfully, the quick thinking hero-students send an army of defenders to Antarctica where Norwegian novice Icemaiden dismantles the ultimate booby-trap bomb.  However, whilst the adult champions are engaged, Grax invades the Hall of Justice seeking revenge on the pesky whistleblowing Exorian kids. He’s completely unprepared for and overwhelmed by Wendy, Marvin & Wonderdog, who categorically prove they’re ready to graduate to the big leagues…

Thus with Zan & Jayna enrolled as latest heroes-in-training, Super Friends #10 details their adoption by Batman’s old associate – and eccentric time travel theoretician – Professor Carter Nichols, just before a legion of alien horrors arrive on Earth to teach the kids that appearances can be lethally deceiving in ‘The Monster Menace!’ In #11, ‘Kingslayer’ pits the heroes against criminal mastermind Overlord who has contracted the world’s greatest hitman to murder more than one hundred leaders at one sitting…

Another deep dive into DC’s past resurrected Golden Age titans T.N.T and Dan, the Dyna-Mite in ‘The Atomic Twosome!’ These 1940s mystery men had been under government wraps ever since their radioactive powers began to melt down, but when an underground catastrophe ruptures their individual lead-lined vaults, the Super Friends are called in to prevent potential nuclear nightmare. Then the subterranean reason for the near tragedy is tracked to a monstrous mole creature, and leads to the introduction of eternal mystic Doctor Mist, who reveals the secret history of civilisation and begs help to halt ‘The Mindless Immortal!’ before its random burrowing shatters mankind’s cities. From here, Bridwell would build a fascinating new team concept that would support decades of future continuity…

Super Friends #14 opens with ‘Elementary!’; introducing four ordinary mortals forever changed when possessed by ancient sprits. Tasked by Overlord with plundering the world, Undine, Salamander, Sylph & Gnome are defeated by our heroes yet retain their powers and so become crimefighting team The Elementals. Also on view is a short back-up illustrated by Kurt Schaffenberger & Bob Smith. ‘The Origin of the Wondertwins’ at last reveals they are Exorian genetic throwbacks (despised outcasts on their homeworld) who fled from a circus of freaks and uncovered Grax’s plot before taking that fateful voyage to Earth.

Big surprises come in ‘The Overlord Goes Under!’ (Fradon & Smith) as the Elementals begin battling evil by joining the Super Friends in crushing the crook. All those superheroes are blithely unaware that they are merely clearing the way for a far more cunning and subtle mastermind to take Overlord’s place…

‘The People Who Stole the Sky!’ in SF #16 is a grand, old-fashioned alien invasion yarn, foiled by the team and the increasingly adept Wonder Twins whilst ‘Trapped in Two Times!’ has Zan & Jayna used by the insidious Time Trapper to lure their adult mentors into deadly peril on Krypton in the days before it detonated, and future water world Neryla in the hours before it’s swallowed by its critically expanding red sun. After rescuing the kids – thanks largely to Superman’s legendary lost love Lyla Ler-Rol – the Super Friends employ Tuatara’s temporal insight and Professor Nichol’s obscure chronal methodologies to hunt the Trapper in a riotous yet educational ‘Manhunt in Time!’ (art by Schaffenberger & Smith), by way of Atlantis before it sank, medieval Spain and Michigan in 1860CE: all to thwart a triple-strength scheme to derail history and end Earth civilisation…

SF #19 sees an encore for Menagerie Man in ‘The Mystery of the Missing Monkey!’ (Fradon & Smith) as the animal exploiter appropriates Gleek: intent on turning his elastic-tailed talents into a perfect pickpocketing tool, before Denny O’Neil (as Sergius O’Shaugnessy) teams with Schaffenberger & Smith for a more jocular turn. Here, chaos and comedy ensue when the team tackles vegetable monsters unleashed after self-obsessed shlock-movie director Frownin’ Fritz Frazzle uses Merlin’s actually magical Magic Lantern to make a “masterpiece” on the cheap in ‘Revenge of the Leafy Monsters!’…

Bridwell & Fradon bounce back in #21 where ‘Battle Against the Super Fiends!’ has the heroes travelling to Exor to combat super-criminals who can duplicate their power-sets, after which ‘It’s Never Too Late!’ (#22, O’Shaugnessy, Fradon & Smith) reveals how time bandit Chronos subjects the Super Friends to a chronal-delay treatment rendering them perennially too late to stop him… but only until Batman and the Wonder Twins out-think him.

The Mirror Master divides and banishes teachers from students in #23 but is ultimately unable to prevent an ‘SOS from Nowhere!’ (Bridwell, Fradon & Smith) to the Flash. This episode also spends time fleshing out the Wonder Twins’ earthly alter egos as Gotham Central highschoolers John & Joanna Fleming…

With O’Shaugnessy scripting, ‘Past, Present and Danger!’ sees Zan & Jayna’s faces found engraved on a recently-unearthed Egyptian pyramid. Upon investigation inside the edifice, the heroes awaken two ancient exiles who resemble the kids, but who are in truth criminals who fled Exorian justice thousands of years previously. How lucky, then, that the kids are perfect doubles that the villains can send back with the robot cops surrounding the pyramid – once they’ve got rid of all those busybody Earthling heroes…

Enjoying promotion through treachery, habitually harassed Underling has seized power at last in Bridwell’s ‘Puppets of the Overlord’, and then employs forbidden technology to mind-control adult and junior heroes. Happily, international champions Green Fury (later Fire), Wonder Woman’s sister Nubia, Tasmanian Devil and Seraph can join Green Lantern and Queen Mera of Atlantis in delivering a liberating solution, after which this splendid selection of super thrills pauses with SF #26 as Bridwell, Fradon & Smith bring back some old friends and enemies for ‘The Wondertwins’ Battle of Wits!’ when a scheming former Bat-foe enacts an infallibly murderous plot…

Rounding out the frenetic fun is a features section that includes the Alex Toth cover from Limited Collectors’ Edition #C-41  and new material from sequel C-46. These include a comic strip collaboration with Bridwell on introductory tale ‘Super Friends’ which was a star-studded framing sequence for a big reprint issue of Justice League classics. The wonders are further augmented by Toth’s comprehensive pictorial essay on creating ‘TV Cartoons’ (with contributions from Bob Foster), plus his ‘The JLA on TV’ model sheets, and designs of ‘The Hall of Justice’ by Terry Austin. As you of course know, comics legend Toth was lead designer on the characters’ transition to TV animation…

The extras include mini-comic Aquateers Meet the Super Friends – a 1979 promotional giveaway included with every purchase of Super Friends Swim Goggles. An uncredited framing sequence (which looks like a Continuity Associates project that Dick Giordano & Frank McLoughlin had a hand in) segues into ‘The Greatest Show on Water’ – an Aquaman short by Fradon originally published in Adventure Comics #219, (December 1955).

The bumper fun wraps with Alex Ross’ painted cover from 2001 book collection Super Friends!

With covers by Fradon, Smith, Schaffenberger, Colletta, Ernie Chan and more, this hopefully initial compendium is superbly entertaining, masterfully crafted and utterly engaging. It offers stories of pure comics gold to delight children and adults in equal proportion. Truly generational in appeal, they are probably the closest thing to an American answer to the magic of Tintin or Asterix and no family home should be without this tome.

Sadly, this masterful mystery megamix is not yet available digitally, but we live in hope. In the meantime, if you prefer your cartoon crimebustng computer collated you could access 2020’s Super-Friends: Saturday Morning Comics volume 1.
© 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 2001, 2025 DC Comics, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1697, Willam Hogarth was born. Notionally adding to the comics lustre and significance, in 1918, Howard Purcell was also added to the planet’s roster, as was Neil Gaiman in 1960. In the exit column for today, in 1993 we lost astounding illustrator Alberto Breccia, and in 2006 immortal sci fi writer Jack Williamson. All those other guys you can find in old posts here, but I particularly recommend Beyond Mars – The Complete Series 1952-1955.

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Vixen: Return of the Lion


By G. Willow Wilson & CAFU, with Bit, Josh Middleton & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2512-4 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Welcome to Black History Month UK 2025. The theme this year is “Standing Firm in Power and Pride” and nobody ever accused us of being subtle…

In 1978 fashion model Mari Jiwe McCabe nearly became the first black woman to star in her own American comic book. Sadly, the infamous “DC Implosion” of that year saw the Vixen series cancelled before release. She eventually premiered three years later in Action Comics #521’s ‘The Deadly Rampage of the Lady Fox’ (by creator Gerry Conway and Superman mainstays Curt Swan & Frank Chiaramonte) and thereafter remained, lurking around the DC Universe until she joined a re-booted JLA (latterly dubbed “JLA Detroit”) in Justice League of America Annual #2.

A classic team-player, over intervening decades working within assorted JLA rosters, Suicide Squad, Ultramarine Corps, Checkmate and the Birds of Prey, Vixen’s origin has changed a lot less than most. It even remained mostly un-meddled-with when she made the jump to TV as part of the DC Legends of Tomorrow show.

Mari Jiwe comes from a line of warriors blessed by animist Trickster god Kwaku Anansi. The mythical creator of all stories claims to have designed her abilities – and those of fellow bestial hero Animal Man – allowing Vixen, through use of an arcane artefact dubbed the Tantu Totem, to channel the attributes and signature abilities of every animal that has ever lived.

As a child in M’Changa Province, Zambesi, Mari’s mother was killed by poachers and her missionary father murdered by his own brother over possession of the Totem. To thwart her uncle, the orphan moved to America, eventually becoming a fashion model to provide funding and cover for her mission of revenge…

At first a reluctant superhero, Vixen became one of the most effective crusaders on the international scene and was a key member of the Justice League (the one just before the New 52 Reboot). Previously, when her powers began to malfunction she was forced to confront Anansi himself (for which tales see Justice League of America: Sanctuary and Justice League of America: Second Coming).

Scripted by author, essayist, journalist and comics scribe G. Willow Wilson (Cairo, Air, Ms. Marvel, Wonder Woman) and illustrated by Carlos Alberto Fernandez Urbano AKA CAFU (Action Comics, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, Imperium, Unity), Vixen: Return of the Lion was originally seen as a 5-part miniseries in 2009. We open here with ‘Predators’ wherein a League operation uncovers a plot by techno-thugs Intergang to fund a revolution in troubled African nation Zambesi.

Amongst impounded files is a record “proving” that 15 years earlier, Vixen’s mother was actually killed by Aku Kwesi, a local warlord working with the American criminal organisation. When Mari learns this truth, not even Superman can stop her from heading straight to her old village to find the man responsible. Africa is not America, however, and the lawless settlement has no time for a woman who does not know her place – even if she does have superpowers. When Kwesi appears, Vixen’s abilities are useless against him and she escapes with her life only because the warlord’s lieutenant Sia intervenes…

In ‘Prey’, broken, gravely wounded Mari is dumped in the veldt by Sia and staggers her way across the war-ravaged plain, battling beasts and hallucinating – or maybe meeting real ghosts – until she is attacked by a young lion and rescued by a holy man.

Alarmed at Vixen’s disappearance and further discoveries connecting Kwesi to Intergang, the JLA mobilise in ‘Sanctuary’ as lost Vixen slowly recuperates in a place where the constant conflicts of fang & claw survival are suspended. Here, saintly Brother Tabo offers Mari new perspective and greater understanding of her abilities. Her JLA colleagues, meanwhile, have exposed Intergang’s infiltration but fallen to a power even Superman could not resist…

As the League struggles against overwhelming odds, ‘Risen’ sees a transcendent Vixen flying to the rescue, and picking up some unexpected allies before facing her greatest challenge in shocking conclusion ‘Idols’, wherein more hidden truths are revealed and a greater mystery begins to unfold…

Featuring a gallery of stunning covers by Josh Middleton, this is an exceptional and moodily exotic piece of Fights ‘n’ Tights fluff to delight devotees of the genre and casual readers alike, and one long overdue for re-release and inclusion in the growing library of environmentally-beneficial digital comics and books. This gem isn’t even available digitally and that’s just a crime against comics consuming nature…
© 2006, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1940 was the birthday of groundbreaking comics auteur Richard Corben, creator of Den, although we rather liked his Haunt of Horror: Lovecraft. It also marks the first appearance of Zack Mosely’s Smilin’ Jack newspaper strip, and the passing of Golden Age great Bob Powell, who we most recently lauded via Bob Powell’s Complete Cave Girl.

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Superman: Phantom Zone


By Steve Gerber, Gene Colan, Rick Veitch, Tony DeZuñiga & Bob Smith (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-4051-6 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Today would have been Steve Gerber’s 78th birthday. For no appreciable reason, he would have found that to be quite funny. You should go read more comics by him. Here’s some many people don’t immediately think of when listing his so-many sublime star turns…

Once upon a time for fans and comics creators alike continuity could be a harsh mistress. When maintaining a faux-historical cloak of rational integrity for made-up worlds we inhabited was paramount, the greatest casualty of semi-regular reboots and sweeping changes, often meant some terrific tales suddenly never happened. Everything goes now of course, thanks to parallel world-ery, but way back whenever, it was a most painful time for me…

Many examples of this wholesale binning of entire charm-drenched mythologies happened but the convergent growth of graphic novels fortunately provided a sanctuary of sorts, such as this paean of pictorial praise for the mythology had evolved around Superman in the wonder years between 1948 and 1986.

Thankfully DC has always understood that a good story is worth cherishing. This slim, trim spectral selection gathers superb 4-issue miniseries The Phantom Zone (originally appearing from January to April 1982) and includes the very last pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths Zone yarn as first seen in DC Comics Presents #97 (September 1986). It also simultaneously celebrates the stylish and enthralling scripting of unique comics voice Steve Gerber and his most ardent collaborator Gene (Howard the Duck, Stewart the Rat) Colan.

Gerber was a uniquely gifted writer who combined a deep love of comic book continuity minutiae with dark, irrepressible wit, incisive introspection, barbed socio-cultural criticism, a barely reigned-in imagination and boundless bizarre surrealism. His stories were always at the extreme edge of any mainstream company’s intellectual canon and never failed to deliver surprise and satisfaction, especially when he couched his sardonic sorties as thinly-veiled attacks on burgeoning cultural homogenisation and commercial barbarity.

This riotous recapitulation of all that lost Man of Tomorrow ficto-history begins in ‘The Haunting of Charlie Kweskill!’ as the eponymous Daily Planet paste-up artist collapses at work. The solitary little dweeb has been sleeping badly, plagued by nightmares of a life on long-gone planet Krypton. His dreams detail how brilliant scientist Jor-El devised a non-lethal way to deal with Krypton’s most incorrigible criminals: human monsters such as Jax-Ur, Professor Va-Kox, Dr. Xadu, sadistic psycho-killer Faora Hu-Ul, potential dictator General Dru-Zod, and even Jor’s own bad & crazy cousin Kru-El…

Many lesser menaces like psionic aberrants Az-Rel and Nadira were also banished to the misty twilit realm, as well as stranger outcasts like callous biological experimenter Nam-Ek, but the one who most catches Charlie’s attention is fraudster Quex-Ul; a Kryptonian who appears to be Charlie’s doppelganger…

Of course, the dreams are all true: telepathic broadcasts beamed at Charlie by Zone inmates from within the plane of timeless intangibility. Quex-Ul had been one of them, surviving long after Krypton died, but was innocent of his crimes. He had been framed and mind-controlled by a mastermind who had deservedly perished when the Red Sun world detonated. Once Superman corrected the injustice and released the poor dupe, Qwex-Ul had saved the Man of Steel from a Gold Kryptonite trap, thereby losing his inherent Kryptonian abilities and memory in the process. The grateful, heartsick Action Ace had found the amnesiac a job at the Planet and almost forgot his alien origins in the years since. Charlie’s former fellow inmates had not…

Their telepathic onslaught turns Kweskill into a somnambulistic slave, unknowingly spending his nights breaking into labs and stealing high-tech components. Superman, slowly putting the puzzle pieces together, is just too late to thwart the stealthy scheme, and as he bursts into Charlie’s apartment a hastily cobbled together Phantom Zone projector hurls him and the hapless mind-slave into the ghostly region, whilst simultaneously freeing a legion of the cruellest and most bored criminals in existence…

The saga expands with ‘Earth Under Siege!’ as Superman and Charlie helplessly watch Zod, Jax-Ur, Va-Kox, Faora and Kru-El immediately undertake the next stage of their plan, leaving passively nihilistic Az-Rel and Nadira to negligently torture monstrous Nam-Ek with their psychic talents when not mocking the ranting liturgies of religious zealot Jer-Em, whose manic bigotry and fundamentalist isolationism caused the death of every person in Argo City…

Superman’s cousin Kara Zor-El had been born on the city-sized fragment of Krypton, hurled intact into space when the doomed world detonated. Eventually, Argo turned to Green Kryptonite like most of Krypton’s detonated debris, and her dying parents, observing Earth through their scopes, sent their daughter to safety as they perished. On Earth, the teenager met the Man of Steel who created for her the identities of Linda Lee and Supergirl, concealing her from the wider world whilst she learned all about her new home… and how to use her astounding new abilities in secrecy and safety.

As the emotionally disconnected, disaffected and doubly alienated youths laconically saunter through Metropolis; casually slaughtering cops and citizens, Zod’s more motivated cronies have reached Superman’s Fortress of Solitude and destroyed the only means of returning them to their extra-dimensional dungeon.

The next move is attacking the Justice League satellite, hurling it and occupants Flash, Red Tornado, Zatanna, Black Canary, Elongated Man, Firestorm & Aquaman on a non-stop trajectory out of the Solar System. Rampant Kryptonians destroy Earth’s communications satellites and trigger a mass launch of nuclear missiles, leaving Wonder Woman and Supergirl to narrowly avert atomic Armageddon whilst the frantic Man of Tomorrow can only watch in horror…

Not every Zone inhabitant is a criminal. For instance, Daxamite Mon-El was exposed to common lead in ‘Superboy’s Big Brother’ (by Robert Bernstein & Papp in June 1961’s Superboy #89) when his lingering, inexorable death was only forestalled by depositing the dying alien in the Zone until a cure could be found. Now, as Green Lantern faces the Zod Squad on Earth only to be soundly beaten and have his Power Battery stolen, Mon-El informs Charlie and Superman of a possible back way out of the realm of hellish nullity…

On Earth, as Wonder Woman subdues Nam-Ek, Supergirl checks in with Batman, desperately trying to ascertain where Superman has gone. As the Dark Knight heads to Metropolis to investigate, Kara returns to the Fortress and is ambushed by Kryptonian escapees and beaten near to death…

With no other choice, Charlie and Superman reluctantly pass through a dimensional portal even the obsessed villains were too scared to risk, encountering surreal madness in ‘The Terror Beyond Twilight!’…

Back in the physical world of touch and time, Supergirl saves herself from ghastly atomic disintegration as Charlie and Superman pass through stormy turbulence and a tedious waiting-room-realm before arriving on a peculiar plane where they are confronted by luscious sirens with impossible riddles and exploding heads. Their narrow escape from the Priestesses of the Crimson Sun only leads to Kryptonian wizard Thul-Kar who magicked himself into the Zone in ages past and now slavishly serves an erratic, malevolent sentient universe named Aethyr. It wants to consume Charlie and Superman but only by passing through it can they reach the physical world again…

On Earth, chaos reigns. Batman is utterly unable to pacify extremist Jer-Em, who deems the planet impure, unclean and unholy. He would rather die than soil his Kryptonian purity here.

… And high above the world, other freed villains have their own plan to fix the situation: a gigantic Phantom Zone Cannon to inexorably and eternally banish Earth into the twilight dimension in the course of one full rotation…

The drama comes to a tragic conclusion in ‘The Phantom Planet!’ as Az-Rel and Nadira, having found kindred spirits amongst Metropolis’ disenfranchised Punk Rock counterculture – before killing them – encounter Jer-Em in martyr mode. The now-suicidal cleric is quite keen on taking the rest of the apostate Kryptonians with him…

As the world turns into intangibility, in France, Faora has briefly resumed her passion for murdering males (before they’re all gone) whilst in Aethyr’s universe an appalling sacrifice enables Superman to return to physicality just in time to lead a last desperate charge, saving the day and putting the villains back where they belong… those still alive, that is…

The remainder of this fantastic collection recounts the tying up of all those intriguing concepts and loose ends in a spectacular sidebar to the end of DC’s original universe.

In 1986 the company celebrated its 50th year with groundbreaking Crisis on Infinite Earths: radically overhauling a convoluted multiversal continuity and starting afresh. All Superman titles were cancelled or suspended pending a back-to-basics reboot courtesy of John Byrne, allowing for a number of very special farewells to the old mythology. One of the most intriguing and challenging came in the last issue of DC Comics Presents (#97) wherein ‘Phantom Zone: the Final Chapter’ by Gerber, Rick Veitch & Bob Smith offered a creepy adieu to a number of Superman’s greatest foes.

Tracing Jor-El’s discovery of the Phantom Zone through to imminent multiversal annihilation, this dark yarn built on Gerber’s landmark miniseries and revealed that the dread region of nothingness was in fact a sentient echo of a dead universe which had always regarded the creatures deposited within it as irritants and agonising intruders.

Now as cosmic carnage reigns Aethyr, still served by Kryptonian mage Thul-Kar, causes the destruction of the Bizarro World “Htrae” and the deification/corruption of Fifth Dimensional pest Mr. Mxyzptlk, as well as the subsequent crashing of Argo City on Metropolis. As a result Zod and fellow immaterial inmates are freed to wreak havoc upon Earth – but only until the now-crystalline pocket dimension merges with and absorbs the felons, before implausibly abandoning Superman to face his uncertain future as the very Last Son of Krypton…

Superman has proven to be all things to all fans over his decades of existence and Gerber’s takes on these timeless tales of charm, joy and wholesome wit are unique and more necessary than ever: not just as a reminder of great tales of the past but as an all-ages primer of wonders still to come…
© 1982, 1986, 2013 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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DC Finest: Team-Ups: Chase to the End of Time


By Bob Haney, Cary Burkett, Martin Pasko, Dave Michelinie, Len Wein, Cary Bates, Steve Englehart, Paul Levitz, Jim Aparo, José Luis García-López, Murphy Anderson, Curt Swan, Dick Dillin, Joe Staton, Rich Buckler, Don Newton, Romeo Tanghal, Frank McLaughlin, Frank Chiaramonte, Dick Giordano, Jack Abel, Bob Smith & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-79950-082-7 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times

Here’s another stunning and timely compilation comprising the best of vintage comics; one more astounding and epic DC Finest edition. These weighty, full colour treasure troves are chronologically curated themed tomes highlighting past glories from the company that invented superheroes and so much more. Sadly, they’re not yet available digitally, as were the last decade’s Bronze, Silver and Golden Age collections, but we live in hope…

As you’ve probably noticed, a big part of superhero fiction involves interacting – if not always uniting – with other costumed stars. Every producer, purveyor and publisher of Fights ‘n’ Tights fare employs and exploits the concept of allied action and chums in conflict, with apparently every consumer insatiably coveting them and more of the same. With The Man of Steel and a whole bunch of super-suited & booted associates happily and profitably cavorting across big screens everywhere now, let’s look at a few of his past collaborations… and while we’re at it, peek at some of his best pal’s other playmates at the same time…

From the moment a kid first sees his second superhero the only thing he/she wants is to observe how the new gaudy gladiator stacks up against the first. From the earliest days of the comics industry – and according to DC Comics Presents first editor Julie Schwartz, it was the same with the pulps and dime novels that preceded it – we’ve wanted our idols to meet, associate, battle together (and if you follow the Timely/Marvel model, that means against each other) far more than we want to see them trounce their archenemies in a united front…

The concept of team-up comic books – an established star pairing or battling (usually both) with less well-selling company characters – was far from new when DC awarded their then-biggest gun (it was the publicity-drenched weeks before the release of Superman: The Movie and Tim Burton’s Batman was over a decade away) a regular arena to share adventures with other stars of their firmament, just as Batman had been doing since the middle of the 1960s.

The Brave and the Bold began in 1955 as an anthology adventure comic featuring short tales of period heroes: a format mirroring contemporary movie fascination with historical dramas. Written by Bob Kanigher, issue #1 led with Golden Gladiator, the Silent Knight and Joe Kubert’s now legendary Viking Prince. From #5 the Gladiator was increasingly alternated with Robin Hood, and manly, mainly mainstream romps carried the title until the end of the decade when the burgeoning costumed character revival saw B&B transform into a try-out vehicle like sister publication Showcase.

Brave and the Bold #25 (August/September 1959) debuted Task Force X: Suicide Squad, followed by Justice League of America (#28), Cave Carson (#31) and Hawkman (#34). Since only the JLA hit first time out, there were return engagements for the Squad, Carson and Hawkman. Something truly different appeared in #45-49 with science fictional Strange Sports Stories before B&B #50 triggered a new concept that once again truly caught reader imaginations.

It paired superheroes Green Arrow and Martian Manhunter in a one-off team-up, as did succeeding issues: Aquaman and Hawkman in #51, WWII wonders Sgt. Rock, Captain Cloud, Mme. Marie and the Haunted Tank in #52 and Atom with Flash in #53. The next team-up – Robin, Aqualad & Kid Flash – swiftly evolved into the Teen Titans. After Metal Men/the Atom and Flash/Martian Manhunter, new hero Metamorpho, the Element Man debuted in #57-58. Then it was back to superhero pairings with #59, and although no one realised it at the time this particular conjunction (Batman & Green Lantern) would be particularly significant. Soon the book would become a vehicle for Batman team-ups…

With the 1978 release of Superman The Movie it was time to reward the Man of Tomorrow with a similar dedicated publication, although in truth, the Action Ace had already enjoyed the sharing experience once before, when World’s Finest Comics briefly ejected the Caped Crusader and Superman paired with a coterie of heroes including Flash, Robin, Aquaman, Teen Titans, Vigilante, Dr. Fate and others (i#198-214; cover-dated November 1970 to October/November 1972) before the traditional status quo was re-established.

This superb all action collection intriguingly re-presents the first 14 star-studded monthly DC Comics Presents releases and the equivalent contemporary issues of The Brave and the Bold – #141-155). These together collectively span May/June 1978 through October 1979. We open with B&B and resident creators Bob Haney & Jim Aparo, so before the off here’s some background.

Robert Gilbert Haney, Jr. was born on 15th March 1926, growing up in Philadelphia listening to radio dramas and serials, and reading newspaper strips like Prince Valiant and Flash Gordon. Higher education at Swathmore College led to service in the US Navy. He was one of the lucky ones to survive The Battle of Okinawa relatively unscathed.

Follow up studies at Columbia University led to a Master’s degree, after which Haney began a prolific storytelling career by writing a slew of popular novels under a number of noms de plume. In 1947, he moved sideways into comic books, beginning with racy tale ‘College for Murder’ in Harvey Comics’ Black Cat #9 (cover-dated January 1948). From then until 1955 he freelanced for various publishers like Fawcett, Hillman, Standard and St. John on genre tales packed with action, grit and wit.

When anti-comics witch-hunts in the 1950s led to a bowdlerising, self-inflicted Comics Code, Haney shifted gears and began an almost exclusive position as a scripter at DC/National Comics, initially for the war comic division. His first sale was ‘Frogmen’s Secret’ in All American Men of War #17 (January 1955), and he scripted the very first Sgt Rock story in 1959, and countless more for all the combat titles.

Immensely versatile, he wrote for every genre division from licensed to humour, western to superhero and for titles including Blackhawk, Adventures of Rex the Wonder Dog, Sea Devils, Tomahawk, Challengers of the Unknown, Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen, My Greatest Adventure, Doom Patrol, Aquaman, Hawkman, Space Ranger, Green Arrow, Deadman, The Unknown Soldier, and the very first Batman team-up in The Brave and the Bold #59. For decades the book would be his personal playground and where he delivered his take on most of the company’s vast pantheon…

Haney co-created the Teen Titans, Metamorpho, Eclipso, Enchantress (in Strange Adventures), Aquagirl, Cain of The House of Mystery and the Super-Sons, but ultimately his style began to clash with DC’s changing teen demographic. Happily, he had also been working in animation since the mid-1960s, scripting episodes of The New Adventures of Superman and The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure TV shows; and in the 1980s, DC’s loss was cartoon kids’ gain. Haney worked extensively on new shows including Karate Kat, Silverhawks and ThunderCats, as well as producing books of general fiction and consumer journalism. Ultimately, rapprochement with a new DC management saw Haney return to comics for nostalgia-tinged titles including Elseworlds 80-Page Giant #1 (August 1999); Silver Age: The Brave and the Bold #1 (July 2000); and – posthumously published –Teen Titans Lost Annual #1 (March 2008).

Haney died on November 25th 2004, in La Mesa, California.

Taking his cues from news headlines, popular films and proven genre-sources, Haney continually produced gripping yarns that thrilled and enticed, with no need for more than a cursory nod to an ever-more-onerous continuity. Anybody could pick up an issue of B&B and be sucked into a world of wonder. Consequently, these tales are just as fresh and welcoming today, their themes and premises just as immediate now as then. Moreover, Jim Aparo’s magnificent art is still as compelling and engrossing as it always was.

James N. Aparo (August 24th 1932 – July 19th 2005) was a true but quiet giant of comic books. Self-taught, he grew up in New Britain Connecticut, and, after failing to join EC Comics whilst in his 20s, slipped easily into advertising, newspaper and fashion illustration. Even after finally becoming a comics artist he assiduously maintained his links with his first career. For most of his career he was a triple-threat, pencilling, inking and lettering his pages. In 1963 he began drawing Ralph Kanna’s newspaper strip Stern Wheeler, and three years later was working on a wide range of features for go-getting visionary editor Dick Giordano at Charlton Comics. Aparo especially shone on the minor company’s licensed top gun The Phantom. In 1968 when Giordano was lured away to National/DC he brought his top performers (primarily Steve Ditko, Steve Skeates and Aparo) with him. Aparo began a life-long association with the company where legends live illustrating and reinvigorating moribund title Aquaman – although he also continued with The Phantom until his duties grew with the addition of numerous short stories for the monolith’s burgeoning horror anthologies and revived 1950s supernatural champion The Phantom Stranger.

Aparo went on to become a multi award-winning mainstay of DC’s artistic arsenal, with stellar runs on The Spectre, The Outsiders and Green Arrow, but his star was always and forever linked to Batman’s.

In B&B #141’s ‘Pay – Or Die!’ that relationship and the artist’s versatility shines as Black Canary helps Batman quash The Joker’s byzantine extortion scheme.

Fast-paced, straightforward, done-in-one dramas almost by definition, these quick treats were perfect introducer tales and seldom carried over, but in #142, ‘Enigma of the Death-Ship!’ sees Aquaman and wife Mera battle the Dark Knight to suppress a family secret, before the sordid trail of a covert Gotham drug lord leads to the most respected man in America in the next issue, with Cary Burkett collaborating with Haney for conclusion ‘Cast the First Stone’ as manic crime-crusher The Creeper confronts his mentor and finds even the most esteemed hero can have feet of clay…

The brave, bold portion of our entertainment pauses here to allow the Metropolis Marvel his moment to shine with a debut 2-part thriller from DC Comics Presents #1 & 2 (July/August & September/October 1978), featuring Silver Age Flash Barry Allen, who had also been Superman’s first co-star in that aforementioned World’s Finest Comics run. ‘Chase to the End of Time!’ and ‘Race to the End of Time!’ by scripter Marty Pasko & utterly astounding José Luis García-López inked by Dan Adkins, rather reprises that selfsame WF tale. Here warring alien races trick both heroes into speeding relentlessly through the time-stream to prevent Earth’s history from being corrupted and destroyed. As if that isn’t dangerous enough, nobody could predict the deadly intervention of the Scarlet Speedster’s most dangerous foe, Professor Zoom, the Reverse-Flash, but the heroes sort it all out in the end…

In B&B #144 Haney& Aparo deliver a magical mystery tale of ‘The Arrow of Eternity’ as Caped Crusader and Emerald Archer head back in time to Agincourt and foil a wicked plot by time-tamperer the Gargoyle, whilst in DCCP #3, David Michelinie’s tantalising pastiche of classic Adam Strange/Mystery in Space thrillers results in a modern masterpiece for García-López to draw and ink in ‘The Riddle of Little Earth Lost’. Here Man of Two Worlds and Man of Steel foil the diabolical cosmic catastrophe scheme of deranged ex-tyrant Kaskor to transpose, subjugate and/or destroy Earth and light-years distant planet Rann.

Courtesy of Haney & Aparo, The Phantom Stranger and Batman face ‘A Choice of Dooms!’ pursuing voodoo crime lord Kaluu in B&B #145 whilst DCCP #4 welcomed Len Wein to script the superb ‘Sun-Stroke!’ for García-López, as Man of Steel and madly-malleable Metal Men join forces to thwart solar-fuelled genius I.Q. and toxic elemental menace Chemo after an ill-considered plan to enhance Earth’s solar radiation exposure provokes a cataclysmic solar-flare…

Haney and guest artists Romeo Tanghal & Frank McLaughlin switch worlds and times in B&B #146 as the Batman of World War II assists faceless superspy the Unknown Soldier in stopping Nazi assassin Count von Stauffen from murdering America’s top brass and greatest scientists to sabotage the nation’s most secret weapon project, whereas modern day Sea King Aquaman is embroiled in ‘The War of the Undersea Cities’ (by Wein, Paul Levitz & Murphy Anderson) in DCCP #5.

This time, Superman must step in after Aquaman’s subjects in Poseidonis re-open ancient hostilities with the mer-folk of undersea neighbour Tritonis, home of the caped Kryptonian’s college girlfriend Lori Lemaris. Fortunately, cooler heads prevail when the deadly Ocean Master is revealed to be meddling in their sub-sea politics…

Supergirl enjoyed her first ever B&B Bat team-up. She had previously paired with Wonder Woman in #63, in the outrageously-dated and utterly indefensible ‘Revolt of the Super-Chicks!’ but here in #147 however, Burkett & Aparo’s ‘Death-Scream from the Sky!’ sees her and the Gotham Guardian save the world from extermination by satellite and shady surprise super villain Dr. Light…

A DCCP two-parter opens with ‘The Fantastic Fall of Green Lantern’ (Levitz, Curt Swan & Francisco Chiaramonte) in #6 which sees the Man of Steel briefly inherit the awesome power ring after Hal Jordan falls in battle against his female antithesis Star Sapphire. Although triumphant against her, “Green Superman” is subsequently ambushed by warriors from antimatter universe Qward leading to ‘The Paralyzed Planet Peril!’ (#7 by Levitz, Dick Dillin & Chiaramonte) wherein those bellicose aliens seek to colonise Earth… until robotic AI hero Red Tornado swirls in to the rescue.

Back in B&B, Good Cheer mingles with Drama as ‘The Night the Mob Stole X-Mas!’ delivers seasonal fluff by Haney pencilled by Joe Staton, with Aparo applying his overpowering inks to a tale of cigarette smugglers and aging mafioso, with Plastic Man helping to provide a mandatory Christmas miracle. The disbanded Teen Titans briefly reform in #149 for Haney & Aparo’s ‘Look Homeward, Runaway!’ to help Batman hunt and redeem a kid gang moving from petty crime to the big leagues after which in DCCP #8, ‘The Sixty Deaths of Solomon Grundy’ (Steve Englehart & Murphy Anderson) teams Swamp Thing with Action Ace. At this time the bog-beast still believed he was a transformed human and not an enhanced plant, and Alec Holland searches the sewers of Metropolis for a cure to his condition, only to stumble onto a battle between the Man of Steel and the mystic zombie who was “born on a Monday”…

Anniversary event The Brave and the Bold #150 was celebrated with a pairing that was both old hat and never seen before. Haney & Aparo’s ‘Today Gotham… Tomorrow the World!’ commemorates the landmark anniversary with an extended tale of Bruce Wayne’s abduction by terrorists and the undercover superhero who secretly shadows him. No hints here from me…

In that other caped crimebuster’s book, Pasko returns to script Staton & Jack Abel’s ‘Invasion of the Ice People!’ in #9, wherein Wonder Woman assists in repelling an arctic assault by malign disembodied intellects whist in B&B #151, The Flash becomes prey and appetiser for a predatory haunt feeding off patrons at Gotham’s hippest nightspot… and Batman barely breaks the spell at the ‘Disco of Death’ (Haney & Aparo). Another 2-part tale commences with DCCP #10’s ‘The Miracle Man of Easy Company’ (Cary Bates, Staton & Abel), as a super-bomb blasts Superman back to WWII and a momentous if amnesia-tainted meeting with indomitable everyman soldier Sgt. Rock. However before the Caped Kryptonian returns home to battle a brainwashed and power-amplified Hawkman in #11’s ‘Murder by Starlight!’ (Bates, Staton & Chiaramonte) there’s an intriguing interruption. B&B #152 splits the saga as Haney & Aparo reveal ‘Death Has a Golden Grab!’. Here mighty mite The Atom helping the Gotham Gangbuster stop a deadly bullion theft.  Chronologically #153 – courtesy of Burkett, Don Newton & Bob Smith – then sees Red Tornado help Batman survive old school greed and the hi-tech ‘Menace of the Murder Machines’ before DCCP #12 arranged a duel between the Man of Steel and New God Mister Miracle in ‘Winner Take Metropolis’ by Englehart, Richard Buckler & Dick Giordano.


B&B #154 finds Element Man Metamorpho treading ‘The Pathway of Doom…’ to save former girlfriend Sapphire Stagg and help Batman disconnect a middle eastern smuggling pipeline, prior to the brave, bold portion of our entertainment coming to a close with #155’s ‘Fugitive from Two Worlds!’ as Haney & Aparo detail Green Lantern Hal Jordan clashing with the Dark Knight over jurisdiction rights regarding an earthshaking alien criminal.

Closing this perfectly curated portion of comics history is another two-part tale spanning centuries as Levitz scripts an ambitious epic limned by Dillin & Giordano that begins with ‘To Live in Peace… Nevermore!’ When the Legion of Super-Heroes visit the 20th century they must prevent Superman saving a little boy from alien abduction to preserve the integrity of the time-line. It doesn’t help that the lad is Jon Ross, son of Clark Kent’s oldest friend and most trusted confidante. Furious and deranged by loss, Pete Ross risks the destruction of reality itself by enlisting the aid of Superboy to battle his older self in ‘Judge, Jury… and No Justice!’, but achieves only stalemate and a promise from the Man of Tomorrow to somehow make things right…

This titanic tome offers a tantalising snapshot of combined A-lister capers and demonstrates the breadth of DC’s roster of lesser stars in punchy, pithy adventures acting as a perfect shop window and catalogue of legendary fascinating characters – and creators. It also delivers a delightful variety of self-contained, satisfying entertainments ranging from the merely excellent all the way to utterly unmissable. DC Finest: Team-Ups is an ideal introduction to the DC Universe for every kid of any age and passport to Costumed Dramas of a simpler, more inviting time.
© 1978, 1979, 2025 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Superman: The Many Worlds of Krypton


By E. Nelson Bridwell, Denny O’Neil, Cary Bates, Marv Wolfman, Elliot S. Maggin, Paul Kupperberg, John Byrne, Murphy Anderson, Dick Giordano, Gray Morrow, Michael Kaluta, Dave Cockrum, Dick Dillin, Marshall Rogers, Howard Chaykin, Paul Kupperberg, Mike Mignola, Rick Bryant, Carlos Garzon & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-7889-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

For fans and comics creators alike, continuity can be a harsh mistress. These days, maintaining a faux-historical cloak of rational integrity for the made-up worlds we inhabit is paramount, and the worst casualty of the semi-regular sweeping changes, rationalisations and reboots is great stories that suddenly “never happened”. A most painful example of this – for me at least – was the wholesale loss of the entire charm-drenched mythology that had evolved around Superman’s birthworld in the wonder years between 1948 and 1985.

Silver Age readers avidly consuming Superman, Action Comics, Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane, World’s Finest Comics and Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen (not forgetting Superboy and Adventure Comics) would delight every time some fascinating snippet of information leaked out. We spent our rainy days filling in incredible blanks about the lost world through the tantalising and thrilling tales from those halcyon publications.

Throughout the 1970s, The Fabulous World of Krypton was a back-up feature in Superman specifically revealing intriguing glimpses from the history of that lost world. But during Crisis on Infinite Earths and it’s in its wake that was all unmade. Happily, however, these days a far wiser DC has opened the doors to all those lost moments with a more inviting and inclusive definition of continuity, so a “yay them” all around!

Throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s – and an issue of giant-sized anthology Superman Family – the peripatetic feature delivered 27 “Untold Tales of Superman’s Native Planet” (and is long overdue for a complete archival collection; perhaps as a DC Finest edition?) by a host of the industry’s greatest talents all further exploring that defunct wonderland. A far-too-small selection of those are re-presented in this beguiling commemoration, taken from Superman #233, 236, 238, 240, 248, 257, 266 and Superman Family #182, to augment a brace of miniseries World of Krypton #1-3 and World of Krypton (vol. 2) #1-4. These collectively span 1971-1988 and, following enticing scene-setting introduction ‘The World (of Krypton) According to Paul (Kupperberg)’, kick off Chapter 1: Fabulous World of Krypton with E. Nelson Bridwell (always the go-to guy for any detail of fact, or trivia concerning the company’s vast comics output) & Murphy Anderson’s trendsetting, groundbreaking yarn ‘Jor-El’s Golden Folly’.

Follow-up tales would alternate between glimpses of historical or mythological moments in the development of the Kryptonians and tales of the House of El, such as this astoundingly concise and tension-soaked drama which in seven pages introduces Superman’s father, traces his scholastic graduation and early triumphs in anti-gravity physics & rocketry and reveals how he met his bride-to-be, trainee astronaut Lara Lor-Van. The story also reveals how she stows away on a test rocket, crashes on the (luckily) habitable moon Wegthor and survives until her infatuated suitor finds a way to rescue her…

This a superb adventure in its own right and, set against what we fans already knew about the doomed planet, augured well what was to follow…

The remaining tales in this section concentrate on non-Jor-El episodes – presumably in lieu of what follows – so the next fable comes from Superman #236 with Green Arrow & Black Canary hearing their Justice League colleague recount the story of ‘The Doomsayer’ (by Denny O’Neil & Dick Giordano). This eco-terror tale reveals how scientist Mo-De detected mounting tectonic pressures at the planet’s core but was silenced by modern day lotus eaters who didn’t want to hear any unpleasant truths…

In the guise of a Kryptonian kindergarten class story time session, Cary Bates & Gray Morrow devised a hard science creation myth for Superman #238 as ‘A Name is Born’ details how two marooned – and initially mutually antagonistic – aliens crashed on the primeval planet and joined to birth a new race together…

Bates & Michael Kaluta united in #240 for a cunning, irony-drenched murder mystery as ‘The Man Who Cheated Time’ details the unexpected consequences of an ambitious scientist who stole from and slaughtered his rivals only to pay for his crimes in a most unexpected manner. Then, Kryptonian archaeologists unearth a lost moment in planetary history as ‘All in the Mind’ (Marv Wolfman & Dave Cockrum from #248) discloses how war between ancient city states Erkol and Xan resulted in a generation of mutants. If only the parents had been more understanding and less intolerant, those super-kids could have saved their forebears from extinction…

Superman #257 (October 1972) generated a timeless instant classic wherein Elliot S! Maggin and illustrators Dick Dillin & Giordano celebrated ‘The Greatest Green Lantern of All’. Here avian GL Tomar-Re reports his tragic failure in preventing Krypton’s detonation, unaware that the Guardians of the Universe had a plan to preserve and use that world’s greatest bloodline – or at least its last son…

Maggin, Dick Dillin & Joe Giella then emphasised a long-hidden connection between Earth and Krypton in #266 as ‘The Face on the Falling Star’ reveals how, in eons past, two Kryptonian children were saved from doom by a strange device fallen from the sky: a machine sent from a lost civilisation on pre-historic Terra…

Wrapping up this section is Paul Kupperberg, Marshall Rogers & Frank Springer’s ‘The Stranger’ as first seen in Superman Family #182: an analogue Christmas fable explaining how four millennia past a holy man named Jo-Mon sacrificed his life to liberate the people and end the depredations of tyrannical despot Al-Nei…

The second section – Chapter 2: The Life of Jor-El – reprints a pioneering miniseries that referenced many of those 27 vignettes, as well as the key Krypton-focussed yarns of the Superman franchise. In 1979 – when the first Superman movie had made the hero a global sensation once more – scripter Paul Kupperberg and artist Howard Chaykin (assisted and ghost-pencilled by Alan Kupperberg) plus inkers Murphy Anderson & Frank Chiaramonte, synthesised many scattered back-story details into DC’s first limited series World of Krypton.

Although never collected into a graphic novel, this glorious indulgence was resized into a monochrome pocket paperback book in 1982, supervised by and with an introduction from much-missed, multi-talented official DC memory E. Nelson Bridwell. That enchanting, magical celebration of life on the best of all fictional worlds remains a grand old slice of comics fun and forms the spine of the new composite compilation.

It opens on ‘The Jor-El Story’ with Superman reviewing a tape-diary found on Earth’s moon: a record from his long-deceased father detailing the scientist’s life, career and struggle with nay-saying political authorities whose inaction doomed the Kryptonian race to near-extinction. As the Man of Steel listens, he hears how Jor-El wooed and won his mother Lara Lor-Van despite sinister and aberrant efforts of the planetary marriage computer to frustrate them; how his sire discovered anti-gravity and invented the Phantom Zone ray; uncovered lost technology of a dead race that provided the basis of Kal-El’s escape rocket, and learns his father’s take on Superman’s many time-twisting trips to Krypton…

In ‘This Planet is Doomed’ the troubled orphan feels his father’s pain when android marauder Brainiac steals the city of Kandor, reels as rogue scientist Jax-Ur blows up inhabited moon Wegthor, and is revolted as civil war almost crushes civilisation thanks to deranged militarist General Zod – and how and when his own cousin Kru-El forever disgraced the noble House of El. The countdown to disaster continues until ‘The Last Days of Krypton’, as political intrigue and exhaustion overwhelm the distraught scientist and – all avenues closed to him – Jor-El takes drastic action…

Heavily referencing immortal classics such as ‘Superman’s Return to Krypton’ (Superman vol. 1 #141, November 1960), Fabulous World of Krypton mini-epics ‘Jor-El’s Golden Folly’, ‘Moon-Crossed Love’, ‘Marriage, Kryptonian Style’ and a host of others, this epochal saga from simpler and more wondrous times is still a sheer delight for any fan tired of unremitting angst and non-stop crises…

Final section Chapter 3: The World of Krypton is John Byrne, Mike Mignola, Rick Bryant & Carlos Garzon’s dark reworking of the myth, depicting a radically different planet which came with the reordering of reality. In 1985, when DC decided to rationalise, reconstruct and reinvigorate their continuity via Crisis on Infinite Earths, they used the event to regenerate key properties at the same time. The biggest gun they had was Superman and it’s hard to argue that the change was not before time. This new Superman repurposed the hero into a harsher, more uncompromising hero who might be alien in physicality but completely human in terms of feelings and attitudes. As seen in Man of Steel #1 (not included here), ‘From Out of the Green Dawn’ traced the child’s voyage in a self-propelled birthing matrix to a primitive but vital and vibrant world. He had escaped from a cold, sterile, soulless and emotionally barren planet barely glimpsed before it was gone in a cosmic flash.

As the reconfigured hero’s new adventures became a sensational success, his creators felt compelled to revisit his bleakly dystopian birthworld. It was however, now conceived of as a far darker and more forbidding place and 1987’s 4-issue miniseries opted to reveal how that transformation came about.

Scripted by Byrne, it all begins in ‘Pieces’ (art by Mignola & Bryant) as an indolent hedonistic scientific paradise comes crashing into ruin after the age’s greatest moral dilemma boils over into global civil war. For 10 thousand generations, Kryptonians enjoyed virtual immortality thanks to the constant cultivation of clones to use for medical spare parts. The rights of the clones had been debated for centuries, but recently resulted in sporadic violence. The situation changes after ultra-privileged Nyra is exposed as having stolen one of her supposedly braindead clones for an act of shockingly aberrant social abomination. Her exposure leads to murder, suicide and a rapidly escalating collapse of social cohesion…

Centuries ‘After the Fall’, technologist Van-L wanders a planet shattered by devastating war technologies, surviving only because of his nurturing war suit. The grand planetary society is gone, replaced by constantly warring pockets of humanity, but Van needs allies, be they former lovers or despised foes. He has learned that the original instigator of the collapse still lives and plans to assuage accumulated shame and guilt by blowing up the planet…

For the third issue, the scene shifts to millennia later as young scholar Jor-El immerses himself in a traumatic ‘History Lesson’. This distant descendant of Van-L obsessively probes the last days of the conflict and the nuclear annihilation scheme of terrorist cell Black Zero, but his compulsion causes him to almost miss a crucial social obligation: meeting his father and the grandparent of Lara, selected by The Masters of the Gestation Chamber as his ideal DNA co-contributor to what will be the first Kryptonian allowed to be born in centuries…

Carlos Garzon steps in to finish Mignola’s pencils for concluding chapter ‘Family History’ as, in contemporary times, Superman agrees to an interview with Daily Plant reporter Lois Lane. The subject is how Krypton died, and why…

Recapping the intervening millennia of history and stagnation, the Last Son of Krypton reveals how his own birth-father uncovered a shocking secret, rebelled against his moribund, morbid and repressed culture, and found brief comfort with perhaps the last kindred spirit on his world. Kal-El then tells of how they ensured his survival at the cost of their own…

Celebrating the many and varied Worlds of Krypton, this is a magnificent tribute to the imagination of many creators and the power of modern mythology: the ever-changing evolution of a world we all wanted to live on back in the heady Days of Yore(-El)…
© 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1976, 1977, 1979, 1987, 2008, 2018 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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The Joker: The Clown Prince of Crime


By Dennis O’Neil, Elliot S! Maggin, Martin Pasko, Irv Novick, Dick Giordano, José Luis García-López, Ernie Chan, Vince Colletta, Tex Blaisdell, Frank McLaughlin & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-4258-9 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

There are many comics anniversaries this year. Some of the most significant will be rightly celebrated, but a few are going to be unjustly ignored. Therefore, I’m again abusing my privileges to carp about another brilliant vintage book criminally out of print and not yet slated for revival either physically or in digital formats…

HEY! THERE’S A CLOWN! MUST BE A PARTY SOMEWHERE!

An old adage says that you can judge a person by the calibre of their enemies, and that’s never been more ably demonstrated than in the case of Batman. Moreover, for most of his near century of existence, but most especially ever since the 1970s, the position of paramount antagonist has been indisputably filled by the Clown Prince of Crime: The Joker! He celebrates a major milestone this year having originally hit newsstands in Batman #1 cover-dated Spring and officially on sale from April 25th 1940. That’s 85 exploding candles and poisoned cakes and he’s still totally lethally crazy after all these years…

In the late 1960s superheroes experienced a rapid decline in popularity – presumably in reaction to global mass media’s crass and crushing overexposure. Batman’s comic book franchise sought to escape their zany, “camp” image by methodically re-branding the character and returning to the original 1930s concept of a grim, driven Dark Avenger. Such a hero demanded far deadlier villains and with one breakthrough tale Denny O’Neil, Neal Adams & Dick Giordano reinstated the psychotic, diabolically unpredictable Killer Clown who scared the short pants off readers of the Golden Age Dark Knight. ‘The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge’ from Batman #251 (September 1973) was a genuine classic which totally redefined The Joker for my generation (and every one since) as the Mirthful Madcap became an unpredictable utterly ruthless psychotic exponent of visceral Grand Guignol. Terrifying and beautiful, for many fans this was the definitive Joker story…

Within a year and a half of that breakthrough revision the Harlequin of Hate was awarded his own series. Titles starring villains were exceedingly rare and provided quite a few problems for writers and editors still labouring under the edicts of the Comics Code Authority.

The outré experiment practically ended after 9 issues (spanning May 1975 to October 1976 plus one late published digital issue in 2019) having utilised some of the most talented creators in DC’s employ and remained a peculiar historical oddity for decades. Now, in these less doctrinaire times those strange tales of the Smirking Slaughterman have a fairer shot at finding an appreciative audience through this full-colour trade paperback collection.

The murderous merriment commences with ‘The Joker’s Double Jeopardy!’; wherein fellow Arkham inmate Two-Face arrogantly escapes, pinking the Felonious Funnyman’s pride and compelling the giggling ghoul to similarly break out thereby proving he’s the greater criminal maniac. Their extended duel of wits and body-counts only lands them both back inside.

The “revolving door” security at Arkham eventually leads to the firing of much-harassed guards Marvin Fargo & Benny Khiss in ‘The Sad Saga of Willie the Weeper!’ However, as the again-at-liberty Lethal Loon attempts to bolster the confidence of a lachrymose minor-league larcenist (for his own felonious purposes, naturally), the defrocked jailers determine to restore their honour and fortunes. Astoundingly, they actually succeed…

Written by O’Neil with art by Ernie Chan (nee Chua) & José Luis García-López, ‘The Last Ha Ha’ then details a burglary and the kidnapping of superstar cartoonist Sandy Saturn by a green-haired, cackling crazy. Witness accounts lead the cops to the ludicrous conclusion that The Creeper is the culprit. Cue lots and lots of eerie chortling, mistaken identity shenanigans and murderously manic explosive action…

The ethical dilemma of a star who’s arguably the world’s worst villain is further explored in ‘A Gold Star for the Joker!’ (Elliot S! Maggin, García-López & Vince Colletta) wherein our Perfidious Pagliacci inexplicably develops a crush on Black Canary’s alter-ego Dinah Lance and resolves to possess her or kill her. Typically, even though she’s perfectly capable of saving herself, Dinah’s current beau Green Arrow (see what I did there?) is also a possessive aggressive kind of consort…

‘The Joker Goes Wilde!’ (Martin Pasko, Irv Novick & Tex Blaisdell) finds the Clown Prince in a bombastic competition with similarly playing-card themed super-thugs The Royal Flush Gang to secure a lost masterpiece, but even as he’s winning that weird war, the Harlequin of Hate is already after a hidden prize. More force of nature than mortal miscreant, the Pallid Punchinello meets his match after assaulting actor Clive Sigerson in #6. Famed for stage portrayals of a certain literary detective, Sigerson sustains a nasty blow to the head which befuddles his wits and soon ‘Sherlock Stalks the Joker!’ (O’Neil, Novick & Blaisdell); foiling a flood of crazy schemes and apprehending the maniac before his concussion is cured…

We learn some surprising facts about the Clown Prince of Carnage after he steals the calm, logical intellect of Earth’s most brilliant evil scientist. Naturally the psychic transference in ‘Luthor… You’re Driving Me Sane!’ (Maggin, Novick & Frank McLaughlin) is two-way and, whilst the newly cognizant Clown becomes ineffably intelligent, Lex Luthor is now a risk-taking maniac unphased by potential consequences and determined to have fun no matter who dies…

The eighth outing for The Joker featured a clash with Gotham’s self-acclaimed Master of Terror as ‘The Scarecrow’s Fearsome Face-Off!’ (Maggin, Novick & Blaisdell) saw the top contenders for scariest guy in town (not counting Batman!) stealing each other’s thunder whilst vying for that macabre top spot, before the villainous vignettes of this captivating chronicle conclude with a claws-out clash as ‘The Cat and the Clown!’ (Maggin, Novick & Blaisdell) sees an aged comedian and his million-dollar kitty targeted by rival rogues Catwoman and the Joker.

Unhappily for the crooks they had both underestimated the grizzled guile of their octogenarian victim…

Latterly in Fall of 2019 the unpublished tenth issue was released digitally and hopefully one day a truly complete collection will be released including it, although it does appear in the monolithic, print-only and rather inaccessibly expensive The Joker: The Bronze Age Omnibus (Collected). For the sake of full disclosure, Pasko & Novick’s tale ‘99 and 99/100% Dead!’ involves a deal with the Devil (AKA “Lou Cipher”) and scheme to murder Earth’s greatest heroes that doesn’t quite come about and end on a cliffhanger…

With covers by Dick Giordano, Chan & García-López, this quirky oddment offers slick plotting, madcap malice and lunatic larks and a lesser degree of murderous mayhem than most modern fans might be comfortable with, but also strong storytelling and stunning art to delight fans of traditional Fights ‘n’ Tights sagas.
© 1975, 1976, 2013 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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DC Finest: Justice League of America – The Bridge Between Earths


By Gardner F. Fox & Mike Sekowsky, Denny O’Neil, Dick Dillin, Frank Giacoia, Joe Giella, Sid Greene, George Roussos, Neal Adams & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1779528377 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

This stunning compilation is part of the first tranch of long-awaited DC Finest editions: full colour continuations of their chronolgically curated monochrome Showcase Presents line, delivering “affordably priced, large-size (comic book dimensions and generally around 600 pages) paperback collections” highlighting past glories.Whilst primarily and understandably concentrating on the superhero character pantheon, there will also be genre selections like horror and war books, and themed compendia such as the much anticpiated gathering of early ape stories (brace yourself for DC Finest: The Gorilla World in July!).

Sadly, they’re not yet available digitally, as were the lst decade’s Bronze, Silver and Golden Age collections, but we live in hope…

Keystone of the DC Universe, the Justice League of America is the reason we still have a comics industry today. The day the first JLA story was published marks the moment when superheroes truly made comic books their own particular preserve. Even though the popularity of masked champions has waxed and waned a few time since 1960, and other genres have re-won their places on published pages, in the minds of America and the world, Comics Means Superheroes and the League signalled that men – and even a few women – in capes and masks were back for good…

When Julius Schwartz began reviving and revitalising the nigh-defunct superhero genre in 1956, his Rubicon move came a few years later with the uniting of his reconfigured mystery men into a team. The JLA debuted in The Brave and the Bold #28 (cover-dated March 1960) and cemented the growth and validity of the revived subgenre, consequently triggering an explosion of new characters at every company publishing funnybooks and spreading to the rest of the world as the decade progressed.

Spanning June 1966 to June 1969, this first full-colour paperback compendium of classics re-presents issues #45-72 of the epochal first series with scripter Gardner Fox and illustrator Mike Sekowsky eventually giving way to new wave Denny O’Neil and Dick Dillin with inkers Joe Giella, Sid Greene, George Roussos seemingly able to do no wrong. While we’re showing our gratitude, lets also salute stalwart letterer Gaspar Saladino for his herculean but unsung efforts to make the uncanny clear to us all…

The adventures here focus on the collective exploits of Superman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, J’onn J’onzz – Manhunter from Mars, Green Arrow, The Atom, hip and plucky mascot Snapper Carr, latest inductee Hawkman and a few unaffiliated guest stars as the team consolidated its hold on young hearts and minds whilst further transforming the entire nature of the American comic book experience.

The volume encompasses a period in DC’s history that still makes many fans shudder with dread but I’m going to ask them to reconsider their aversion to the “Camp Craze” that saw America go superhero silly in the wake of the Batman TV show (and, to a lesser extent, the Green Hornet series that introduced Bruce Lee to the world). I should also mention that comics didn’t create the craze. Many popular media outlets felt the zeitgeist of a zanier, tongue-in-cheek, mock-heroic fashion: Just check out episodes of Lost in Space or The Man from U.N.C.L.E if you doubt me…

Without pause or preamble we plunge straight into the fun with Justice League of America #45 (cover dated June 1966) with Fox, Sekowsky, Frank Giacoia & Joe Giella for the witty monster-menace double-feature ‘The Super-Struggle against Shaggy Man!’ A wisecracking campy tone was fully in play with the next issue, in acknowledgement of the changing audience profile. It was the opening part of the fourth annual crossover with the Justice Society of America and this time the stakes were raised to encompass destruction of both planets in ‘Crisis Between Earth-One and Earth-Two’ and #47’s ‘The Bridge Between Earths!’ Here a bold – if rash – experiment pulls the two sidereal worlds into an inexorable hyperspace collision, whilst making matters worse, an antimatter being uses the opportunity to explore our positive matter universe.

Peppered with wisecracks and “hip” dialogue, it’s sometimes difficult to discern what a cracking yarn this actually is, but if you’re able to forgive or swallow dated patter, this is one of the best plotted and illustrated stories in the entire JLA/JSA canon. Furthermore, the vastly talented Sid Greene signed on as regular inker with this classic adventure, adding expressive subtlety, beguiling texture and whimsical humour to the pencils of Sekowsky and Fox’s increasingly light, comedic scripts. The next issue was an 80-Page Giant (reprinting Brave and the Bold #29 and Justice League of America #2 and 3, represented here by its stirring Sekowsky/Murphy Anderson cover, to be followed by ‘Threat of the True-or-false Sorcerer’ in which a small team of the biggest guns (Batman, Superman, Flash & Green Lantern) must ferret out a doppelganger Felix Faust before the mage inadvertently dissolves all creation.

There’s no excessive hoopla to celebrate the fiftieth issue but ‘The Lord of Time Attacks the 20th Century’ is another brilliantly told tale of heroism, action and sacrifice that -uncharacteristically for the company and the time – references the ongoing Vietnam conflict. With “Batmania” in full swing, editor Schwartz also deemed it wise to include Robin, The Boy Wonder with regulars Aquaman, Flash, Green Arrow, Wonder Woman, Snapper Carr & Batman. Issue #51 concluded a long-running experiment in continuity with ‘Z – As in Zatanna – and Zero Hour!’, in which a young sorceress concluded a search for her long-missing father with the assistance of a small group of Leaguers and guest-star Ralph “Elongated Man” Dibny.

Zatarra was a magician-hero in the Mandrake mould. In the 1940s he fought evil in the pages of Action Comics for over a decade, beginning with the very first issue. During the Silver Age Fox had Zatarra’s young and equally gifted daughter, Zatanna, go searching for him by guest-teaming with a selection of superheroes Fox was currently scripting (if you’re counting, these tales appeared in Hawkman #4, Atom #19, Green Lantern #42, and the Elongated Man back-up strip in Detective Comics #355). Thanks to a very slick piece of back writing the roster included the high-profile Caped Crusader via Detective #336’s ‘Batman’s Bewitched Nightmare’. For that full story you could track down Justice League of America: Zatanna’s Search…

Experimentation was also the basis of #52’s ‘Missing in Action – 5 Justice Leaguers!’, a portmanteau tale showing what happened to those members who didn’t show up for issue #50. Hawkman – plus wife and partner Hawkgirl – Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter and Superman reported their solo yet ultimately linked adventures, whilst The Atom referred them to his time-travelling escapade with Benjamin Franklin from the pages of his own comic (The Atom #27 ‘Stowaway on a Hot Air Balloon!’). Batman still managed to make an appearance through the magic of a lengthy flashback, showing again just how ubiquitous the TV show had made him. No editor in his right mind would ignore a legitimate (or even not-so much) chance to feature such a perfect guarantee of increased sales.

‘Secret Behind the Stolen Super-Weapons!’ saw Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow & Hawkman – again with Hawkgirl guest-starring – deprived of their esoteric armaments and in desperate need of the Atom, Flash, Aquaman & Superman whilst card-carrying criminals returned in ‘The History-Making Costumes of the Royal Flush Gang!’: a taut mystery-thriller with plenty of action to balance the suspense, and fed into another summer-spectacular team-up with the JSA.

Boasting a radical change, the Earth-2 team now starred an adult Robin instead of Batman, but Hourman, Wonder Woman, Hawkman, Wildcat, Johnny Thunder & Mr. Terrific still needed the help of Earth-1’s Superman, Flash, Green Lantern & Green Arrow to cope with ‘The Super-Crisis that Struck Earth-Two!’ and ‘The Negative-Crisis on Earths One-Two!’

This cosmic threat from a dying universe was in stark contrast to the overly-worthy but well intentioned ‘Man – Thy Name is Brother!’ in #57, where Flash, Green Arrow & Hawkman joined Snapper Carr in defending human rights and equality via three cases involving ethnic teenagers: a black kid, a native American/Apache (and if that modern phrase doesn’t indicate the necessity and efficacy of such stories in the 1960’s then what does?) and an aid-worker in India. Morepver, although it’s all beautifully drawn and obviously heartfelt, I still ponder on the fact that all the characters are male…

Eventually comics would confront even that last bastion of institutionalised prejudice….

Another Eighty-Page Giant cover – by Infantino & Anderson – follows as #58 reprinted Justice League of America #1, 6 & 8, which is followed by the extremely odd conceptual puzzler ‘The Justice Leaguer’s Impossible Adventure!’ wherein the heroes battle beyond realty to prevent raw evil poisoning the universe before another “hot” guest-star debuted as JLA #60 featured ‘Winged Warriors of the Immortal Queen!’ and pitted the enslaved and transformed team against DC’s newest sensation: Batgirl.

However, by 1968 the new superhero boom looked to be dying just as its predecessor had at the end of the 1940s. Sales were down generally in the comics industry and costs were beginning to spiral, and more importantly “free” entertainment, in the form of television, was by now ensconced in even the poorest household. If you were a kid in the sixties, think on just how many brilliant cartoon shows were created in that decade, when artists like Alex Toth and Doug Wildey were working in West Coast animation studios. Moreover, comic-book heroes were now appearing on the small screen. Superman, Aquaman, Batman, the Marvel heroes and even the JLA were there every Saturday in your own living room…

It was a time of great political and social upheaval. Change was everywhere and unrest even reached the corridors of DC. When a number of creators agitated for increased work-benefits the request was not looked upon kindly. Many left the company for other outfits. Some quit the business altogether.

The remainder of this collection increasingly reflects the turmoil of the times as the writer and penciller who had created every single adventure of the World’s Greatest Superheroes since their inception gave way to a “new wave” writer and a fresh if not young artist.

Kicking off the fresh start is ‘Operation: Jail the Justice League!’ by Fox, Sekowsky & Greene: a sharp and witty action-mystery with an army of supervillains wherein the team must read between the lines as Green Arrow announces he’s quitting the team and super-hero-ing!

George Roussos replaced Greene as inker for ‘Panic from a Blackmail Box!’, a taut thriller about redemption involving the time-delayed revelations of a different kind of villain, and ‘Time Signs a Death-Warrant for the Justice League’, where the villainous Key finally acts on a scheme he initiated way back in Justice League of America #41. This rowdy fist-fest was Sekowky’s last pencil job on the team (although he returned for a couple of covers). He was transferring his attentions to the revamping of Wonder Woman (for which see the marvellous Diana Prince: Wonder Woman volume 1 ).

Fox ended his magnificent run on a high point with the 2-part annual team-up of League and the Society. Creative to the very end, his last story was yet another of Golden Age revival of the kind that had resurrected the superhero genre. JLA #64 & 65 featured the ‘Stormy Return of the Red Tornado!’ and ‘T.O. Morrow Kills the Justice League – Today!’ with a cyclonic sentient super-android taking on the mantle of the comedic 1940s “Mystery Man” who appeared in the very first JSA adventure (if you’re interested, the original Red Tornado was a brawny washer-woman/landlady named Ma Hunkle, who fought street crime dressed as a man).

Fox’s departing shot saw the artistic debut of veteran Blackhawk artist Dick Dillin: a prolific draughtsman who would draw every JLA exploit for the next 12 years, as well as many other adventures of DC’s top characters like Superman and Batman. His first jobs were inked by the returning Sid Greene, a pairing that seemed vibrant and darkly realistic after the eccentrically stylish, almost abstract late period Sekowsky.

Not even the heroes themselves were immune to change. As the market contracted and shifted, so too did the team. With no fanfare Martian Manhunter was dropped after #61. He just stopped appearing and the minor heroes (ones whose strips or comics had been cancelled) got less and less space in future tales. Denny O’Neil took over scripting with #66, opening with a rather heavy-handed satire entitled ‘Divided they Fall!’ wherein defrocked banana-republic dictator Generalissimo Demmy Gog (did I mention it was heavy-handed?) used a stolen morale-boosting ray to cause chaos on a college campus. O’Neil was more impressive with second outing ‘Neverwas – the Chaos Maker!’: a time-lost monster on a rampage. However, the compassionate solution to his depredations better fitted the social climate and hinted at joys to come when the author began his legendary run on Green Lantern/Green Arrow with Neal Adams.

‘A Matter of Menace’ featured a plot to frame Green Arrow by daft villain Headmastermind , but is most remarkable for the brief return of Diana Prince. Wonder Woman had silently vanished at the end of #66 and her cameo here is more a plug for her own de-powered adventure series than a regulation guest-shot. This is followed by a more traditional guest-appearance in #70’s ‘Versus the Creeper’ wherein the much diminished team of Superman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern & Atom battle misguided aliens inadvertently brought to Earth by the astoundingly naff Mind-Grabber Kid (latterly seen in Seven Soldiers and 52) with the eerie Steve Ditko-created antihero along for the ride and largely superfluous to the plot.

Eager to plug their radical new heroine, Diana Prince guested again in #71’s ‘And So My World Ends!’: a drastic reinvention of the history of the Martian Manhunter from O’Neil, Dillon & Greene which, by writing him out of the series, galvanised and reinvigorated the character for a new generation. The plot introduced the belligerent White Martians of today and revealed how a millennia long race war between Whites and Greens devastated Mars forever.

Closing down this outing, ‘Thirteen Days to Doom!’ offers a moody gothic horror story in which Hawkman was turned into a pillar of salt by demons, precipitating another guest-shot for Hawkgirl, but excellent though it was, the entire thing was but prelude to O’Neil’s first shot at the annual JLA/JSA team-up in issues #73 and 74.

For which you’ll need a different volume…

With iconic covers by Sekowsky, Dillin, Carmine Infantino, Neal Adams, Joe Kubert & Murphy Anderson, these tales are a perfect example of all that was best about the Silver Age of comics, combining optimism and ingenuity with bonhomie and adventure. This slice of better times also has the benefit of cherishing wonderment whilst actually being historically valid for any fan of our medium. Best of all the stories here are still captivating and enthralling transports of delight.

These classical compendia are a dedicated fan’s delight: an absolute gift for modern readers who desperately need to catch up without going bankrupt. They are also perfect to give to youngsters as an introduction into a fabulous world of adventure and magic. Although an era of greatness had ended, it ended at the right time and for sound reasons. These thoroughly wonderful thrillers mark an end and a beginning in comic book storytelling as whimsical adventure was replaced by inclusivity, social awareness and a tacit acknowledgement that a smack in the mouth doesn’t solve all problems. The audience was changing and the industry was forced to change with them. But underneath it all the drive to entertain remained strong and effective. Charm’s loss is drama’s gain and today’s readers might be surprised to discover just how much punch these tales had – and still have.

And for that you need to buy this book…
© 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 2024 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Birds of Prey volume 1


By Chuck Dixon, Jordan Gorfinkel, Gary Frank, Jennifer Graves, Matt Haley, Sal Buscema, Stefano Raffaele, Dick Giordano, Greg Land & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-5816-0 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Truly groundbreaking at the time, the exploits of the Birds of Prey recount the missions and lives of a rotating team of female crimefighters led by Barbara Gordon, the computer genius and omega level coder known to her inner circle as Oracle. Child of Gotham City Police Commissioner James Gordon, her own career as Batgirl was ended when the Joker blew out her spine during a terrifying kidnap attempt. Trapped in a wheelchair, she hungered for justice and sought new ways to make a difference in a very bad world…

Reinventing herself as a covert information-gatherer for Batman’s clique of avengers and defenders, she made herself an invaluable resource for the entire superhero community, but in the first of these collected tales Babs undertakes a new project that will allow her to become an even more effective crusader against injustice…

This volume contains the numerous one-shots, specials and miniseries that successfully introduced an eye-popping, mindblowing blend of no-nonsense bad-girl attitude and spectacular all-out action which finally convinced timid editorial powers-that-be of the commercial viability of a team composed of nothing but female superheroes. Who could possibly have guessed that some readers would like effective, positive, clever women kicking evil butt, and that boys would follow the adventures of violent, sexy, usually underdressed chicks hitting bad-guys – and occasionally each other? Or even eventually spawn their own TV series and sub-genre?

Gathered here, Black Canary/Oracle: Birds of Prey #1, Birds of Prey: Revolution, a pertinent section of Showcase ’96 #3, Birds of Prey: Manhunt #1-4, Birds of Prey: Revolution #1, Birds of Prey: Wolves #1 and Birds of Prey: Batgirl #1 (collectively spanning cover-dates June 1996 through February 1998) comprise a breathtaking riot of dynamic, glossy crimebusting, heavily highlighting the kind of wickedness costumed crusaders generally ignored back then: white collar and thoroughly black-hearted…

Opening tale ‘One Man’s Hell’ is written by Chuck Dixon and illustrated by Gary Frank & John Dell: set at a time when veteran martial arts crime-crusher Black Canary (AKA Dinah Laurel Lance) was slowly going to hell after the death of her long-time lover Oliver Queen. Of course, he got better a few years later (don’t they all?).

Broke, uncontrolled and hellbent on self-destruction, the increasingly violent, adrenaline-addicted heroine is contacted by a mysterious unseen presence and dispatched to a third world country to investigate a series of “terrorist attacks” that always seem to profit one unimpeachably benevolent philanthropist. With nothing left to lose, the Canary undertakes a tragically brutal mission and gains an impossibly valuable prize: purpose.

Peppered with an intriguing array of guest-stars and villains, this socially-conscious high-octane thriller established the Canary as one of the most competent and engaging combatants of the DCU and a roving agent of conscience and retribution more than capable of tackling any villainous scum clever enough to stay below regular superhero radar: a reputation enhanced in the sequel ‘Revolution’. Here Dixon, Stefano Raffaele & Bob McLeod craft a superbly compelling tale from a time when Oracle is no more than a rumour to everybody but Batman and Dinah Lance – and even they only get “intel” and advice from an anonymous voice over phone, by text or via radio-jewellery in a mysteriously provided new combat Canary uniform. Here Dinah and her silent partner track a human trafficking ring to failed state Santa Prisca and stumble into a dirty campaign by American interests to topple the standing dictator. Not for long…

When the venerable Showcase try-out title was revived in the 1990s it was as a monthly anthology highlighting old, unemployed characters and tapping into events already originated, rather than offering wholly new concepts. It swiftly becoming a place to test the popularity of DC’s bit players, with a huge range of heroes and team-ups passing through its eclectic pages. This made it a perfect place to trot out the new team for a broader audience who might have ignored the one-shots with girls on the cover…

Showcase ’96 #3 cover-starred Black Canary and Lois Lane, featuring a frantic collusion between the reporter, the street fighter and the still “silent partner” Oracle in a tale scripted by series editor Jordan B. Gorfinkel, laid out by Jennifer Graves and finished by Stan Woch. ‘Birds of a Feather’ sees Superman’s then Girlfriend and the Birds taking out a metahuman gangmaster who enslaves migrant workers to work in Metropolis’ secret sweat shops. Punchy and potent, the tales led to a 4-issue miniseries introducing a new wrinkle in the format – pairing Oracle and the Canary with an ever-changing cast of DC’s women warriors.

‘Manhunt’ has Dixon again scripting a breakneck, raucous thriller which begins ‘Where Revenge Delights’ (illustrated by Matt Haley & Wade Von Grawbadger) wherein the Birds’ pursuit of a philandering embezzler/scam-artist leads them to heated conflict and grudging alliance with The Huntress – a mob-busting vigilante even Batman thinks plays too rough…

She also wants the revoltingly skeevy Archer Braun (whom she knows and loathes as “Tynan Sinclair”) but her motives soon seem a good deal more personal than professional…

The two regular agents cautiously agree to cooperate, but the mix gets even headier after Selina Kyle invites herself to the lynching party in ‘Girl Crazy’ (enjoying additional inking from John Lowe). Over the strident objections of the never-more-helpless and frustrated Oracle, Canary consents. Braun, it seems, is into bigger, nastier crimes than anyone suspected and has made the terminal error of bilking the notorious Catwoman…

Fed up with Babs shouting in her ear, Canary goes offline, subsequently getting captured by Braun, ‘The Man That Got Away’ (inked by Cam Smith) and clearly a major threat. He might even be a secret metahuman…

Shanghaied to a criminal enclave in Kazakhstan for the stunning conclusion ‘Ladies Choice’ (with art by Sal Buscema, Haley & Von Grawbadger) Canary is more-or-less rescued by the unlikely and unhappy pairing of Catwoman & Huntress, but none of them is ready or able to handle Braun’s last surprise – Lady Shiva Woosan – the world’s greatest martial arts assassin.

Birds of Prey: Revolution (#1, February 1997, limned by Stefano Raffeale & Bob McLeod) then switches locale back to Caribbean rogue state/playground of the evil idle rich Santa Prisca, where the Canary trusts the wrong allies but still manages to shut down a human trafficking ring and drug-peddling general with delusions of grandeur.

Cover-dated October and illustrated by Dick Giordano & Wayne Faucher, one-shot Birds of Prey: Wolves #1 sees long-festering tensions over suitable targets seemingly split the core duo. However, after separately stopping Eastern European mobsters and a gang of high-tech home invaders, the heroes realize that flying solo is for the birds and they are better together, before the action and adventure pause after the long-awaited Birds of Prey: Batgirl #1 (February 1998, with art by Greg Land & Drew Geraci). The launch proper offers a baffling mystery, with a somehow fully physically functional Batgirl battling beside Black Canary to end the threat of the mindbending Mad Hatter and a host of Batman’s most vicious foes. All is obviously not as it seems, but the true nature of the spellbinding threat is almost too much for cerebral savant Oracle. Almost…

To Be Continued…

These rollercoaster rides of thrills, spills and consistently beautifully edgy, sardonic attitude finally won the Birds their own regular series. It quickly became one of DC’s best and most consistently engaging superhero adventure series of the nineties and Noughties and has manifested some type of team for readers ever since. This opening salvo is both landmark and groundbreaking and is still a fantastically fun adventure to delight any comics Fights ‘n’ Tights follower.
© 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2015 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Green Arrow/Black Canary: Till Death Do They Part


By Judd Winick, Cliff Chiang, Amanda Conner, Mike Norton, André Coehlo, Wayne Faucher, Rodney Ramos, Patricia Mulvihill, Paul Mounts, David Baron & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-77950-929-1 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic and comedic effect.

Green Arrow is Oliver Queen, a cross between Batman and Robin Hood and one of DC’s Golden All-Stars. He’s been a fixture of the company’s landscape – often for no discernible reason – more or less continually since his debut in More Fun Comics # 73 in 1941. In those heady days origins weren’t considered as important as image and storytelling, so originators Mort Weisinger & George Papp never bothered, leaving later workmen to fill in the blanks. France Herron, Jack Kirby and his wife Roz crafted one that stuck in ‘The Green Arrow’s First Case’ at the start of the Silver Age superhero revival (Adventure Comics #256, January 1959), and variations of it still impact modern iterations.

As a fixture of the DC Universe GA was one of the few costumed heroes to survive the end of the Golden Age, consistently adventuring in the back of other heroes’ comic books, joining the Justice League during the Silver Age return of costumed crusaders before eventually evolving into a spokes-hero of the anti-establishment during the 1960’s period of “Relevant” comics, courtesy of Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams. Under Mike Grell’s 1980/1990s stewardship he became a gritty and popular A-Lister: an urban hunter dealing harshly with corporate thugs, government spooks and serial killers rather than costumed goof-balls.

…And then he was killed and his son took over the role.

…And then the original came back…

Black Canary was one of the first of relatively few Golden Age women crimebusters in DC’s universe, following Wonder Woman, Liberty Belle and Red Tornado (who actually masqueraded as a man) and predating Merry the Gimmick Girl. Bullet Girl, Phantom Lady and Mary Marvel all began their careers in the same time frame but only joined the DC pantheon after the Golden Age officially ended, snapped up in canny acquisitions that are still paying dividends. The Black Canary (Dinah Lance nee Drake) was created by Bob Kanigher & Carmine Infantino, debuting in Flash Comics #86, August 1947. She derived from a surge in femme fatales (mostly criminals or simply misunderstood) debuting due to equivalent exemplars appearing in gritty film noir B-features, but disappeared with most of the other print superdoers at the end of the Golden Age. However she was one of the first to be revived with the Justice Society of America in 1963.

Originally an Earth-Two crimefighter transplanted to our world, BC has been ruthlessly retconned over and again, but most often now Dinah Laurel Lance is the daughter of an earlier, wartime champion. However you feel about the character, two consistent facts have remained since her reintroduction/assimilation in Justice League of America #73-75 (see Crisis on Multiple Earths vol 1 please link to July 9th 2022 and The Justice League Hereby Elects  please link to September 15th 2017): she has vied with Wonder Woman herself for the title of premiere heroine and she has been in a stormy romantic relationship with Green Arrow ever since.

The tempestuous affair – which actually began during the Summer of Love – finally reached a dramatic culmination some years ago when the couple at last named the day, with this fearsomely dramatic and cripplingly funny tome gathering those unforgettable moments in a celebratory chronicle to warm the hearts and chill the souls of sentimental thrill seekers everywhere.

Reprinting Green Arrow and Black Canary Wedding Special and issues #1-14 of the monthly Green Arrow and Black Canary comic book that sprang from it, the saga begins with a hilariously immature retelling of the path to wedlock from scripter Judd Winick & Amanda Conner. Here the first cute-meet, passion, spats and tender moments are reviewed culminating in riotous hen-nights, rowdy stag-parties and a tremendous battle as a huge guard of dishonour – comprising most of the villains in the DCU – attack the assembled heroes when they’re utterly off-guard…

Naturally the bad guys are defeated, the ceremony concludes and the newlyweds head off to enjoy their wedding night.

And then – in circumstances I’m not going to spoil for you – Green Arrow dies again…

Obviously it doesn’t end there. The dramatic moment acts as springboard for a major restart. In the first issue of the new series Winick & Cliff Chiang’s ‘Dead Again’ only shows Ollie Queen in flashbacks as the Black (Widow) Canary goes on a brutal crime-crushing rampage.

‘Here Comes the Bride’ finds her slowly going off the rails. Only Ollie’s son Connor Hawke – heir to the Arrow mantle – seems able to get through to her where friends and allies like Green Lantern, Superman, Oracle and even Ollie’s old sidekicks Speedy and Red Arrow urge her to move on. As usual it takes the ultra-rational Batman to divine what really happened on the wedding night and send the grief spiral into useful new territory…

In ‘The Naked and the Not-Quite-So-Dead’ Dinah and latest Speedy Mia Dearden infiltrate the secret island paradise of the sinister miscreants who secretly abducted and imprisoned Green Arrow (notice how vague I’m being; all for your benefit?) and find where Ollie is currently; and constantly proving to be more trouble than he can possibly be worth. Conner is also on hand, but whilst attempting to spring his wayward dad also falls captive to uniquely overwhelming forces…

‘Hit and Run, Run, Run!’ ramps up the tension as the heroes all escape – but not before one of their number is gravely wounded by a mystery assailant, prior to ‘Dead Again: Please Play Where Daddy Can See You’ turning the tables and revealing that it’s Ollie’s turn to fall apart as his son and protégé fights for life…

With André Coehlo illustrating, heart-warming reverie ‘Child Support’ (another sequence of poignant flashbacks) describes Green Arrow’s history with his family and the extended team Arrow coterie of sidekicks. Soon, however, Dinah must drag Ollie back from the brink of utter despair when brain dead Connor is abducted from the hospital and life-support machines keeping him breathing…

Cliff Chiang returns for ‘Haystack – First Needle’ as the hunt goes global and felons from Prague to New Jersey to London, England learn that the green team don’t act like heroes when one of their own is imperilled.

Illo 2 here please


Limned by Mike Norton & Wayne Faucher ‘Greetings from Faraway Lands’ introduces super tech thief Dodger. As the team stalk the mastermind behind the botched hit on Ollie and abduction of dying Connor, this lovable rogue slowly graduates from an initially unwilling ally into something far more for one naively impressionable archer. With dubious intel now targeting global threat Ras Al Ghul as their foe and his League of Assassins as the murder weapon, ‘Haystack part 3: the Needle’ – by Winick, Norton & Rodney Ramos – exposes even more duplicity and misinformation as a rushed rescue mission successfully liberates a covert captive hero long gone but somehow unmissed…

Sadly for Ollie & Dinah, it’s the wrong one and a semi-delirious Plastic Man joins the expanding cast of hunters for new story arc ‘A League of Their Own’. Winick, Norton & Faucher’s opening chapter ‘Rubber and Glue’ introduces an alternative/impostor League of Assassins with their own outré agenda and incredible resources but as Team Arrow ‘Step Up to the Plate and Swing Away’ in ever stranger locales, it becomes increasingly clear that ‘The Man Behind the Curtain’ is not someone they regularly face.

In fact ‘The Son of the Father, the Father of the Son’ exposes a friend not an enemy behind the plot; albeit one motivated by tragedy and desperation and trapped in the vile manipulations of a true mad scientist mastermind’s vengeance-tinged plot and opportunistic attempts to build a super-powered slave army…

Unexpectedly defeated by the valiant acts of Team Arrow, the malign malefactor gets his comeuppance and a vastly changed, amnesiac but mostly cured Connor  rejoins his family in ‘Home Again, Home Again’ and as father and son seek to bond as they never could before, Oliver Queen realises that always ‘One Door Closes, Another Opens’…

To Be Continued…

The book concludes with a stunning and often hilarious variant cover gallery by Ryan Sook, Cliff Chiang, and Amanda Connor, reminding us that Green Arrow and Black Canary are characters who epitomise the modern adventure hero’s best qualities, even if in many ways they are also the most traditional of “Old School” champions. This witty and wild ride is a cracking example of Fights ‘n’ Tights done right and is well worth an investment of your money, time and emotional commitment.
© 2007, 2008, 2009, 2021 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Kingdom Come – New Edition



By Mark Waid & Alex Ross, with Todd Klein & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-9096-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

With documentary The Legend of Kingdom Come out and another commemorative edition scheduled for early next year, it’s time to revisit this modern classic once more and prep for all the furore to come. It’s also a damn fine read to amble into the festive season with…

In the mid-1960s a teenaged Jim Shooter wrote a couple of stories about the Legion of Super-Heroes set some years into the team’s own future. Those stories of adult Legionnaires revealed hints of things to come that shackled the series’ plotting and continuity for decades as eager, obsessed fans (by which I mean all of us) waited for the predicted characters to be introduced, presaged relationships to be consummated and heroes to die. By being so utterly impressive and similarly affecting, Kingdom Come accidentally repeated the trick decades later, subsequently painting the entire post Crisis on Infinite Earths DC Universe into the same creative corner until one of the company’s periodic continuity reboots unleashed possibility and uncertainty again…

Envisaged and designed by artist Alex Ross as DC’s answer to groundbreaking epic Marvels, Kingdom Come was originally released as a 4-issue Prestige Format miniseries in 1996 to rapturous acclaim and numerous awards and accolades. Although set in the future and an “imaginary story” released under DC’s Elseworlds imprint, it almost immediately began to affect the company’s mainstream continuity.

Set approximately 20 years into the future, the grandiose saga details a tragic failure and subsequent loss of Faith for Superman and how his attempt to redeem himself almost leads to an even greater and ultimate apocalypse. The events are seen through the eyes and actions of Dantean witness Norman McCay, an aging cleric co-opted by Divine Agent of Wrath the Spectre after the pastor officiates at the last rites of dying superhero Wesley Dodds. As the Sandman, Dodds was cursed for decades with precognitive dreams which compelled him to act as an agent of justice.

Opening chapter ‘Strange Visitor’ reveals a world where metahumans have proliferated to ubiquitous proportions: a sub-culture of constant, violent clashes between the latest generation of costumed villains and vigilantes, all unheeding and uncaring of the collateral damage they daily inflict on the mere mortals around and in all ways beneath them. The shaken preacher sees a final crisis coming, but feels helpless until the darkly angelic Spectre comes to him. Taken on a bewildering voyage of unfolding events, McCay is to act as the ghost’s human perspective whilst the Spirit of Vengeance prepares to pass final judgement on Humanity.

First stop is the secluded hideaway where farmer Kal-El has hidden himself since the ghastly events which compelled him to retire from the Good Fight and the eyes of the World. The Man of Tomorrow was already feeling like a dinosaur when newer, harsher, morally ambiguous mystery-men began to appear. After the Joker murdered the entire Daily Planet staff and hard-line new hero Magog consequently executed him in the street, the public applauded the deed. Heartbroken and appalled, Superman disappeared for a decade. His legendary colleagues also felt the march of unwelcome progress and similarly faded from sight.

With Earth left to the mercies of dangerously irresponsible new vigilantes, civil unrest escalated. The younger heroes displayed poor judgement and no restraint, with the result that within a decade the entire planet had become a chaotic arena for metahuman duels.

Civilisation was fragmenting. The Flash and Batman retreated to their home cities and made them secure, crime-free solitary fortresses. Green Lantern built an emerald castle in the sky, turning his eyes away from Earth and towards the deep black fastnesses of space. Hawkman retreated to the wilderness, Aquaman to his sub-sea kingdom whilst Wonder Woman retired to her hidden paradise. She did not leave until Armageddon came one step closer…

When Magog and his Justice Battalion battled the Parasite in St. Louis, the result was a nuclear accident which destroyed all of Kansas and much of Iowa, Missouri and Nebraska. Overnight the world faced starvation as America’s breadbasket turned into a toxic wasteland. Now with McCay and the Spectre invisibly observing, Princess Diana convinces the bereft Kal-El to return and save the world on his own terms…

In ‘Truth and Justice’ a resurgent Justice League led by Superman begins a campaign of unilateral action to clean up the mess civilisation has become: renditioning “heroes” and “villains” alike, imprisoning every dangerous element of super-humanity and telling governments how to behave, blithely unaware that they are hastening a global catastrophe of Biblical proportions as the Spectre invisibly gathers the facts for his apocalyptic judgement.

In the ensuing chaos, crippled warrior Bruce Wayne rejects Superman’s paternalistic, doctrinaire crusade and allies himself with mortal humanity’s libertarian elite – Ted (Blue Beetle) Kord, Dinah (Black Canary) Lance and Oliver (Green Arrow) Queen – to resist what can only be considered a grab for world domination by its metahuman minority. As helpless McCay watches in horror, Wayne’s group makes its own plans; one more dangerous thread in a tapestry of calamity…

At first Superman’s plans seem blessed to succeed, with many erstwhile threats flocking to his banner and his doctrinaire rules of discipline, but as ever there are self-serving villains with their own agendas. Lex Luthor organises a cabal of like-minded compatriots – Vandal Savage, Catwoman, Riddler, Kobra and Ibn Al Xu’ffasch (“Son of the Demon” Ra’s Al Ghul) – into a “Mankind Liberation Front”. With Shazam-empowered Captain Marvel as their slave, this group are determined the super-freaks shall not win. Their cause is greatly advanced once Wayne’s clique joins them…

‘Up in the Sky’ sees events spiral into catastrophe as McCay, still wracked by his visions of Armageddon, is shown the Gulag where recalcitrant metahumans are dumped. He also witnesses how it will fail, learns from restless spirit Deadman that The Spectre is the literal Angel of Death and watches with growing horror as Luthor’s plan to usurp control from the army of Superman leads to shocking confrontation, betrayal and a deadly countdown to the End of Days…

The deadly drama culminates in a staggering battle of superpowers, last moment salvation and a second chance for humanity in a calamitous world-shaking ‘Never-Ending Battle’…

Thanks to McCay’s simple humanity, the world gets another chance and this edition follows up with epilogue ‘One Year Later’ ending the momentous epic on a note of renewed hope…

This particular edition – released as a 20th Anniversary deluxe hardback, a standard trade paperback and in digital format – came with an introduction by author and former DC scribe Elliot S. Maggin, assorted cover reproductions and art-pieces, an illustrated checklist of the vast cast list plus a plethora of creative notes and sketches in the ‘Apocrypha’ section, and even hints at lost glories in ‘Evolution’: notes, photos and drawings for a restored scene that never made it into the miniseries. We will have to see what Kingdom Come DC Compact Comics Edition additionally offers when it’s released next May…

Epic, engaging and operatically spectacular, Kingdom Come is a milestone of the DC Universe and remains to this day a solid slice of superior superhero entertainment, worthy of your undivided attention.
© 1996, 2006, 2008, 2016, 2019 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Because Quality Counts …9/10