Category: Miscellaneous Superhero

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Mighty Love


By Howard Chaykin, with Don Cameron, Kurt Hathaway & Dave Stewart (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-56389-930-2

Don’t let the outfits fool you: it’s not just another kinky love story…

Oddly released under the DC rather than Vertigo imprint, this is a story about crime in the big city and of the compromises individuals must make to achieve their purposes.

Delaney Pope is a rough, tough cop on a corrupt force who is fed up with seeing the scum she arrests get away with murder – or worse. Lincoln Reinhardt is a slick, liberal defense lawyer constantly thwarting the frames and set-ups of those cops. He often clashes with Pope in the course of his job. They both loathe each other with a passion.

Unbeknownst to either they both assuage their work-day frustrations by putting on masks and costumes to beat the crap out of criminals (with or without badges) in the commission of their crimes – where there are no doubts about guilt, innocence or mitigations.

The thrill of these nocturnal forays inevitably lead to a meeting of “Skylark” and “Iron Angel”, and a tenuous, teasing team-up when separate cases bring them together against the city’s first criminal mastermind. Not knowing each other’s real identity, but afraid to unmask and lose that so-tantalising tension, the pair have to decide what’s most important, the actual or the promised…

This delightfully fizzy adult romp prods all the fetishistic trappings of superhero storytelling as the brassy and whimsical writer/artist (with computer effects by Cameron, lettering from Hathaway and colours by Stewart) blends riffs from The Shop Around the Corner, The Thin Man, Pat and Mike and even Adam’s Rib with a plethora of crime caper movies to produce a costume drama in the unmistakable Chaykin manner.

Clearly the pilot for an unrealized longer series, Mighty Love is a fast and stylish little oddity that reads well and looks great – so if all you want is a good time; Baby, look no further…
© 2003 Howard Chaykin, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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The Shield

AMERICA’S 1ST PATRIOTIC HERO

The Shield

By Irving Norvick, Harry Shorten & various (Archie Comics)
ISBN 1-879794-08-X

In the dawning days of the comic book business, just after Superman and Batman had ushered in a new genre of storytelling, many publishers jumped onto the bandwagon and made their own bids for cash and glory. Many thrived and many more didn’t, remembered only as trivia by sad blokes like me. Some few made it to an amorphous middle-ground: Not forgotten, but certainly not household names either…

The Shield was an FBI scientist named Joe Higgins who wore a suit which gave him enhanced strength, speed and durability, which he used to battle America’s enemies in the days before the USA entered World War II. Latterly he also devised a Shield Formula that increased his powers. Beginning with the first issue of Pep Comics (January 1940) he battled spies, saboteurs, subversive organisations and every threat to American security and well-being, and was a minor sensation. He is credited with being the industry’s very first Patriotic Hero, predating Marvel’s iconic Captain America in the “wearing the Flag” field.

Collected here in this Golden-Age fan-boy’s dream are the lead stories from Pep Comics #1-5 and the three adventures from the spin-off Shield-Wizard Comics #1 (Summer 1940). Raw, primitive and a little juvenile perhaps, but these are still unadorned, glorious romps from the industry’s exuberant, uncomplicated dawning days: Plain-and-simple fun-packed thrills from the gravely under-appreciated Irving Novick, Harry Shorten and others whose names are now lost to history.

Despite not being to everyone’s taste these guilty pleasures are worth a look for any dyed-in-the-woollen-tights super-hero freak and a rapturous tribute to a less complicated time.

© 1940, 2002 Archie Publications In. All Rights Reserved.

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Tom Strong, Book Six

Tom Strong, Book Six 

By various

(America’s Best Comics) ISBN 1-84576-385-8

Alan Moore once again surrenders his writer’s role to a selection of top creators for an intriguing medley of tales from his own private universe in this the final collection of Tom Strong adventures.

First is The Black Blade of the Barbary Coast by Michael Moorcock and Jerry Ordway, wherein The Man of Science goes both trans-temporal and trans-dimensional in a quest to save the multiverse, with pirates, dinosaurs and the odd guest star from Moorcock’s own formidable pantheon of fantasy characters.

The Journey Within from Joe Casey and Ben Oliver features Strong’s steam-powered associate Pneuman, whose increasingly erratic behaviour proves to be less decrepitude and malfunction, and more infection and civilisation. Steve Moore and Paul Gulacy provide a dark oriental fantasy that examines the nature of fiction and reality in The Spires of Samakhara, and we see the final fate of a Science-Villain in Cold Calling from Peter Hogan, Chris Sprouse and Karl Story.

The volume — and indeed the series — ends with the appropriately apocalyptic-sounding Tom Strong at the End of the World, written by Alan Moore, who ties in the event with the ending of the Promethea series. In an introspective and contemplative turnabout the characters all transmigrate to a typically different Valhalla beautifully rendered by Sprouse, Story and colourist Jose Villarrubia.

All in all this collection (reprinting issues #31-36) is a fine end to a genuinely different take on the conventions of super-heroics, and a sad loss to the breadth and variety of the comic medium. I suspect we shan’t see its like for many a year.

© 2005, 2006 America’s Best Comics, LLC. All Rights Reserved