Laughing His Way Into Cancellation - The Joker 9

The Joker #9 (September/October 1976)
"The Cat and the Clown"
Elliot S! Maggin-Irv Novick/Tex Blaisdell

Doug: There might be a reason this was the last issue of The Joker. Or, maybe the story was written as is because the creators already knew. So who killed what is perhaps moot -- this still isn't what you'd call a Bronze Age gem. And it should be -- the cover is great, and darned if Mike W. Barr, Alan Davis, and Paul Neary didn't have some fun with this same concept. Not so much here.

Maybe we've had this discussion before -- over seven years, I'm guessing that we have -- but let's start with it here. It is very difficult to publish an ongoing series where the protagonist is a mass murderer or some other evil-doer preoccupied with world conquest. In my mind, the only way to make it work is to feature a hero as foil to the bad guys. Had the DC Implosion not occurred, Secret Society of Super-Villains might have succeeded. It was genius to take a character largely unknown to then-current readers (Captain Comet) and make him the steady hero throughout most of the series. It also seemed a nice decision to include various heroes as team-ups, including Kid Flash and Hawkgirl. But this Joker-headlined comic seemed a tougher sell. The bad guys who populated SSoSV were more bent on outwitting their primary nemesis (in most cases, the Flash) and less on widespread property destruction or loss of life. One cannot say that about the Joker. In this issue, the last in the series and pretty goofy all the way around, at least three deaths are featured and the last of them is of a quite malicious nature. Even Catwoman's appearance, and she's much more sympathetic, does not soften what's gone on once you sit back and think about it. And obviously this title could not have featured any of the Bats in that foil role, as that would have made it just another Bat-book.

100-Word Review:Benny Springer is a Hollywood legend for playing Buster Keaton-type comedy roles. Just as popular as Springer, however, is his cat Hiawatha. The two are to star in a new motion picture, “The Clown and the Cat”, but Springer is knocked unconscious by a disguised Selina Kyle. Little did she know, though, that she’d captured the Joker masquerading as Springer. Already confused? The Joker leaves a trail of bodies on his way to Catwoman’s lair, where he ends up fighting… himself? Springer becomes the Clown Prince’s doppelganger and the two clowns fight nearly to the death. Of course the bad guys lose.

The Good: I've always felt that Irv Novick was an able penciler of all things Batman. I liken him to Aparo and Adams, but a few steps below. Perhaps a more apt comparison would be to Dick Giordano. We primarily think of Giordano as an inker, but when you've seen his pencils of Batman... similar to Novick's in my mind's eye. I cannot speak much to the inks of Tex Blaisdell. We've encountered his work before over Dick Dillin and Bob Brown. A far cry from "lush", he's in the Vinnie Colletta camp; maybe not that feathery, though. So while I seem to be making excuses for these creators (if you like that, then you'll like this, only not as much), there was merit to the pictures. It's just that they didn't have much to go with because...

The Bad: Elliot S! Maggin's script. As I said above, it's like everyone knew (and I'm sure they did) that this book was on its way out the door. This story seems cobbled together quickly and with not much care. I've argued, maybe unfairly at times, that Silver and Bronze Age DCs were written for 10-year olds. Having been one of those myself (and this would have been on the stands right around the time I turned 10), I don't know if I'd have liked this story. First of all, it's really confusing near the front when Catwoman kidnaps Benny Spencer. At the same time, the Joker is impersonating Spencer, and we see Catwoman out of costume (assaulting Springer... er, the Joker in disguise) and in costume (kidnapping Springer and his cat from the movie studio's screening room). How did this shake out? I read it three times, for detail, and couldn't get it down. No way I'd have made sense of it as a youngster. NOTE: In fact, on the fourth read while preparing the scans, I'm not sure now if it was Selina Kyle who ambushed the Joker. But if it wasn't, then that plot point is even more vague. What's more, the intentions of both the Joker and the Catwoman are pretty lame: Catwoman kidnapped Spencer and his cat (emphasis on the cat as part of the crime) in order to hold them for ransom. The Joker wanted Spencer out of the way so that he could impersonate the actor and then star in a movie. Yeah, OK...

 Additionally, and also as I mentioned above, there's a body count in this book. Two studio guards and a captured henchman of the Catwoman's all succumb to the Joker's laughing death serum. What's more, they all die on screen. That gives me pause, as I'm back to the "written for a 10-year old" notion: Did DC's editorial staff think that was OK? It's certainly not in line with Marvel's "flat of the blade", which we've also discussed. If the deceased died with a smile, does that mean the Comics Code was bypassed? These are legitimate questions that I have.

One knock on the art is that Catwoman only once appears drop-dead (haha) gorgeous. She seems like a character who should always be drawn as beautiful. She also is written with some pretty clunky dialogue. During the "battle of the Jokers", she sits to the side and watches the skirmish play out. She thinks to herself, using words like "interesting", "most fascinating", "absolutely wild", and "far out"... those just seemed like odd choices for her.

The Ugly: Overall, this book is not very good. I really thought the cover implied a fantastic adventure inside. What I got was farcical at best. It wasn't horrible, in that I don't think I'd have requested a refund of my three dimes. But it certainly didn't advance my love of the Batman mythos. And there were just enough stupid plot points that added to my displeasure, notably during the story's climax when Springer said he gave his cat a signal to behave a certain way. You'd have to read it -- the situation was quite complex, in that the cat would have had to ignore all his instincts and behave in a counter-intuitive manner. I wasn't buying it. 

In the interest of ending on a positive note, please see my review of The Joker #4, where I go on in a sunshiney light about Elliot S! Maggin's storytelling. Which further makes this issue disappointing (oh, shoot -- I did end on a negative.).

Guest Writer - In Appreciation Of Weird Heroes

Edo Bosnar: This is another one of those great 1970s projects tailor-made for us comic geeks. Dubbed the “New American Pulp” by writer/editor Byron Preiss – a big fan of the pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s – this was an attempt to spur a pulp revival in the 1970s. However, he didn’t just want to produce pastiches of the work by the old pulp writers; instead, he wanted to create something very modern (well, 1970s modern) and forward-looking.

In some of his introductions to the various volumes of the series, Preiss pointed out that unlike the older pulps, this new series would encompass, or perhaps better stated, emphasize other genres outside of the standard action tales best typified by the Doc Savage and Shadow stories. Thus, there’s more fantasy and science fiction in WH. Also, at several points he stressed that he wanted his heroes to resolve their problems and/or overcome their adversaries without depending too much on violence (and surprisingly, some – but not all – of the contributors did seem to make an effort to adhere to this dictum). What makes these books particularly interesting to comic fans are the illustrations, often done by fan-favorite artists, like Jim Steranko, Neal Adams, Estaban Maroto, Alex Nino, P. Craig Russell, Tom Sutton, Howard Chaykin…
The series consists of eight books, which all came out from 1975 to late 1977, i.e., periodically, like the old pulp magazines. Four of them, volumes 1, 2, 6 and 8, are anthologies featuring stories by a number of different writers, while the other four are full-length novels. Some of the contributions were made by notable writers in the SF field at the time, like Philip Jose Farmer, Harlan Ellison, Michael Moorcock, Ted White and Ron Goulart, as well as a few names familiar to us comic fans: Archie Goodwin, Steve Englehart, Elliot Maggin and Marv Wolfman.

Back in the day (as they say), I only had one of these, the first volume, which I bought for about 50 cents at our local church’s charity flea market in 1980 or so. The cover caught my eye immediately, and I recognized a few of the names listed on it, like Archie Goodwin and Jim Steranko. (By the way, my favorite story in that first volume, then and now, is Goodwin’s contribution, almost the only one in the entire series that features a character most like the old pulp heroes: Adam Stalker, a scruffy Vietnam vet who works as a PI in Tulsa, OK.) I recall coming across one or two of the later volumes in used bookstores when I was a teen (I specifically remember seeing volume 8), but I never bought them, mainly because – quite stupidly – I thought I had to have the intervening volumes (yep, the completism bug to which us comic fans often succumb can be a rather silly and limiting disorder).

I apologize for the quality of these images, and for the lack of any of the illustrations found inside. Most of my current copies of these books, while intact and not falling apart are nonetheless pretty old and well-read, and I worried about doing any additional damage to the spines by shoving them into a scanner. However, Pete Doree, over at the Bronze Age of Blogs, did a post on volume 6 earlier this year which includes some of the excellent interior illustrations.

 

Like so many of these experimental projects undertaken by Preiss in the 1970s, this one never really got wings to become a long-term, sustainable venture. And for the most part, none of the characters that were introduced in these volumes ever took on a life of their own, with the notable exception of Ben Bova’s Orion, who appeared in an entire series of novels – the most recent one came out just a few years ago.

Other, less successful spin-offs included J. Michael Reaves’ Kamus of Kadizhar, a detective on a world where science doesn’t work but magic does, who appeared in a book called Darkworld Detective, which collects the two stories from vol. 8 of Weird Heroes, plus two new ones, and then in a later novel that wasn’t written by Reaves; Preiss also published an illustrated novel called Guts, starring the character of that name from the first volume.Besides that, Philip Jose Farmer’s three rather humorous stories about modern-day zeppelin pilot Greatheart Silver were later collected and published in a separate book, and the novel from volume 5, The Oz Encounter (featuring Ted White’s character Doc Phoenix – introduced in volume 2 – but written by Marv Wolfman), was reprinted in what I’ve been told is an attractive hardcover edition in 2005.

Otherwise, in the early 2000s Preiss reprinted the first volume in a new edition, apparently with plans to republish the entire series. Unfortunately, his untimely and tragic death in a traffic accident in 2005 basically put an end to this.

Some characters who never appeared again, but definitely should have, include Goodwin’s Adam Stalker, as mentioned above, as well as Ron Goulart’s Gypsy and the wonderful Nightshade, from volume 4. Gypsy is a mysterious character – a cyborg or possibly even an android – who time-shifted from the mid-‘70s to the early 2030s (in a dystopian, anarchic Europe) and knows nothing about his past, his true identity or why he has some amazing powers. He appears in two novels (in volumes 3 and 7 – beautifully illustrated by Alex Nino) and the second has a bit of an ambiguous ending that leaves a lot of questions unresolved.

Nightshade is very much like a classical pulp character in the tradition of the Shadow, the Domino Lady or the Green Ghost. She’s a brilliant stage magician, who, as a master of disguise and skilled martial artist and so forth, secretly goes on missions to fight evil-doers – although instead of dealing with mob bosses or evil scientists like her pulp-era predecessors, she takes on a multi-national corporation bent on world dominance by manipulating politicians and events in other countries (a topic as relevant today as it was back then). When I finished reading that book I was clamoring for more, but authors Beth Meacham and Tappan King never revisited her.

Needless to say, I highly recommend these to everyone here: they’re fun, light reads for the most part, and in some cases just the lovely illustrations make these worth tracking down.

Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez's Clown Prince of Crime - Joker 4

The Joker #4 (November/December 1975) (cover by Ernie Chua)
"A Gold Star for the Joker!"
Elliot S! Maggin-Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez/Vince Colletta

Doug: Last December we discussed and praised the release of the trade paperback collecting the mid-70s Joker solo series. As many of us have remarked (notably Karen) over the past few years, we truly are living in the golden age of comic book reprints. To have this material, probably minor in the entire landscape of the Bronze Age as it was, is still pretty special. Today I've chosen to review an issue smack dab in the middle of the run (The Joker lasted nine issues), due mostly to the art team and the guest stars. Last autumn I ran a 3-issue Superman series of reviews featuring the art of Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez. You'll notice that he's on the pencils today, with fan-fave (ha!) Vinnie Colletta doing the erasing embellishing. And we get comments about Green Arrow every now and again. He's along for the ride today, and the beauty you see hoisted above the Joker's head is none other than the Black Canary. But enough introductory gibberish -- let's check this out!

Doug: I'm going to start this one on a negative note. I've commented in the past that Bronze Age DCs often contained a feature story that was only 18 pages long; of course, there may also have been a five page back-up tale. However, I'm certain that this particular issue had no such bonus. My point is, to include a splash page that virtually mirrors the magazine's cover seems like a waste. Now we're dealing with a 17-pager, and when compared to Marvel's 20-21-page stories in the same era I feel like I would not have received as much bang for my quarter.

Doug: We open with a yellow bus crossing a bridge into the colonial harbor town that became Star City. I know many of our readers like DC's fictional metropoli, but I so wish the authors and editors who first penned these tales would have (in this case) just said "Boston". It would have made life for this guy so much easier in terms of geographic placement of our heroes and their nemeses. The bus is empty, except for the driver -- a tall, wiry guy with some serious male pattern baldness. He pulls up to a beautiful brunette walking along the street and addresses her as she stops to unlock the door to a flower shop. We are told this is Dinah Lance, aka the Black Canary, and our bus driver is definitely making a pass at her. He asks if he can come inside; Dinah is reluctant, saying she was going to tidy up first. She relents, and he enters. He wants to buy 11 roses -- she of course tells him that he must mean 12. He says "no", and then tells her what he wants on the card.  "These eleven beauties, held next to you, surely make a lovely dozen!" She calls him a romantic, and then he says that they are for her!

Doug: Our driver exits the flower store and hops on his bus. He drives it to a terminal, where he intentionally crashes it! He tells other drivers on site that he borowed it from their outlet in Gotham City, and that it might be easier to ship it back in pieces! He then runs, vaults, and runs some more to get away. Once on a rooftop we see our mystery hack emerge from his disguise as the Joker! And while he leans against a railing, pining for Dinah, we switch back to the flower store. Oliver Queen has arrived, in his best 70s civvies, and is not happy that Dinah had a suitor. She tells him it was nothing, that the guy was sort of a kook. That rings a bell with Ollie, and he asks about the guy's height and weight -- which is suspiciously like that of some loon who intentionally crashed a bus earlier in the day. At that very instant police bulletins begin coming over the radio in droves.  Ollie switches to his "work clothes" and heads off to the action. We relocate to the roof of the shop, where the Joker sits. He is the one who overrode the radio frequency and broadcast those now-phony reports! He looks over the side of the building, waiting for it to empty out. Dinah steps outside, and she's immediately snatched up in a net -- now the prisoner of the Clown Prince of Crime!

Doug: Green Arrow returns to the shop to find one of Dinah's customers lying on the sidewalk, his face stretched into the hideous Joker-grin. Knowing what he's now dealing with, GA hustles to the local police precinct. Meanwhile, the Joker talks to one of his henchmen, who reports that he is rolling into Star City at that moment. At the police station, a report comes in that one of the bridges is shaking -- GA's off to investigate. On the bridge, the Joker pulls up alongside a semi, which opens to reveal the Joker Car.  Dinah and her captor jump in, and away they go. There's a great conversation that takes place between the two -- the Joker makes no bones about his lack of mental wellbeing; he in fact states that his official residence is an asylum. As the Joker cackles maniacally, the Emerald Archer arrives. Full of bravado, GA first tells the Joker that he's playing out of his league, and then proceeds to show off his prowess with the bow and his fantastic arsenal of arrows. Alas, it's his piercing of a small bomb tossed his way that does him in -- laughing gas brings our hero to his knees and allows the Joker to escape with Dinah.

Doug: So here's my beef, and maybe it just goes again to my ongoing posit that DCs were forever written for 10-year olds: why didn't Dinah ever use her Canary Cry to throw the Joker off-balance? If it was solely to protect her secret ID, then I say "that's stupid!"  She was in the clutches of one of the most dangerous killers in history, and I'm thinking getting out of Dodge as fast as possible would have been a prescription for success. At the least, and even bound, she could have used her extensive knowledge of the martial arts to at least kick the clown out of the car.

Doug: The Joker's goal is to steal the star that is mounted to the Archway Bridge and greets visitors to Star City. Arriving on the bridge, he tells Dinah his plan. His goons are mounting a fake star to the bridge, one that will emit radiation that will kill drivers passing near it. Those drivers will in turn crash their vehicles, thereby creating a huge pile-up. The police station nearest the Museum of Art will be affected, and no police will be able to get to the Museum to prohibit the Joker from stealing a priceless display of porcelain clown figures! Got that? So in a scene that seems torn right from the pages of Amazing Spider-Man #121, the Joker takes the bound Dinah to the top of the Archway Bridge. But Green Arrow is there waiting, and another brouhaha breaks out. Dinah's bindings are immediately cut, and now she uses a leg lock to take down the Joker. Sheesh -- earn yer superhero union card, lady! But the Joker, as we've seen over the years, is so crazy that he's no easy victory. He's able to release a spray from his boutonniere, which gags Dinah. With GA distracted, the Joker grabs the bow and bumrushes Ollie off the bridge. However, GA is able to right himself and get off a rope arrow, allowing himself to swing to safety. Once on his feet, he shoots across to Dinah, a line now taught right at her feet. But c'mon... anyone who thinks the Joker is going to stand for that is... well, insane! Pulling a short blade, our baddie cuts the line -- he'd said he'd hoped to marry Dinah Lance so he wouldn't have to kill her. But GA fires off another rope arrow, which Dinah is able to grasp. She's now safe and out of the Joker's reach. And what of the Clown? He loses his balances while dancing disgustedly and falls off the bridge. Falls laughing, all the way to the water below.

Doug: I liked this story. It was the first issue from the run that I'd ever read. How many antagonists have ever had their own book? Marvel tried it with Dr. Doom twice, and DC did it here and with the Secret Society of Super-Villains. Are there others? You know what the best part of the story was?  The Joker seemingly died at the end. And there was a next issue. For me -- no explanation required. Just a cool trope. I don't have a lot of experience with the work of Elliot S! Maggin, but I thought his script was fine. I'm always amazed at how many words appear in a Bronze Age comic. While no Don McGregor, Maggin certainly filled the word balloons. And in spite of my criticisms of Black Canary being wasted for 95% of the story as a stereotypical damsel in distress, she did prove pivotal in the outcome of the tale. Characterization for the Joker and for Green Arrow seemed to be handled nicely. And the art -- very, very nice. Of DC's bullpen of Bronze Age pencilers, Garcia-Lopez really stands out. Sure, he emulates the Adams/Giordano house style, but man does he do it well. And Vinnie does make women look pretty, doesn't he? I thought the art was pretty detailed, so perhaps Mr. C. had run out of erasers while inking this one. But overall, low page count notwithstanding, this was a fun read.

BAB Two-In-One: Clark Kent - Bumbling Superstar and Funky Drac

Doug: Throwin' more Distinguished Competition at ya today, friends. And, hopefully after this review, we won't be enemies!

Today I've chosen Superman #267 from September 1973. There are two stories in this book, as was typical of DCs of this era. The lead is "World Beneath the North Pole"; however, I've chosen to look at the back-up tale, "The Private Life of Clark Kent: The Man in the Public Eye!" It was created by Elliot S! Maggin, Curt Swan and Bob Oksner. I bought this early in the summer, and got a good deal on a batch of Bronze Age goodies -- just for you! Here we go --

Back in the day, Clark had moved from the Daily Planet to anchoring the WGBS News in Metropolis. He worked for media mogul Morgan Edge. Edge was sort of a Donald Trump character, maybe with a little Ted Turner tossed in for good measure. I say that, knowing that this saw the light of day years before either of those men became household names in the States. But anyway, Edge watches Kent's broadcast one night and decides that it's a bit dull. So, in an effort to spice up the ratings, Clark will move beyond the anchor chair and become somewhat of a George Plimpton. For those who don't know, Plimpton was an everyman author who experienced several professional sports and wrote about it in first-person stories. He was often featured in Sports Illustrated. This is the assignment on which Clark is forced to embark.

His first foray into the pro athlete arena is a sparring session against Jim Fawcett, the reigning heavyweight champion. This is really funny, as the entire time I was reading this I just saw Christopher Reeve bumbling about as Clark, all serious at the same time he was the super-klutz. Curt Swan just did a great job here, varying the camera angle and really showcasing the "Clark" personality of Superman. Of course, at the end of the session, the champ tries to get a publicity shot with Kent and unwittingly knocks himself out!

Clark goes on to hit the furthest home run ever at Metropolis Stadium, to beat an Olympic-caliber swimmer, and skydive. It's in the latter experience that he gets to save a life -- 'cause that's what Supermen do! Clark notices (with his telescopic vision -- the only superpower that he uses in this tale) that the cameraman filming the dive is wearing an improperly-packed parachute. Maneuvering himself away from his dive partner, Clark bumbles his way up to the cameraman and lurches fo rthe guy's chute -- of course this terrorizes the cameraman, but Clark is able to rip the chute out, saving the man's life. However, in one last bit of comedy, Clark's chute doesn't deploy until he's only 120 feet from the ground! Of course he's unscathed, but Morgan Edge demands bed rest for his new media darling -- and Clark is put under the care of a home healthcare nurse!

This was a really fun story and FAR exceeded my expectations! I'll be frank -- I stayed away from the first story. You take a look at that cover, and no matter how finely rendered it is by Nick Cardy, it still looks stupid. So I opted for the back-up tale and am mighty glad I did!!

Karen: It's October, with Halloween looming ahead, and so this month I am going to focus my solo reviews on Marvel's monsters. Although I had a few issues of Tomb of Dracula back in the day, I never really got into the series. In the years that have passed, I've heard so much praise for the Wolfman/Colan stories that I've really wanted to read them. But the back issues are expensive, and so was the Omnibus. And I can't read the Essentials - just can't handle the black and white. Finally, Marvel has put out a TPB of the first 12 issues. It was pretty reasonably priced, so I purchased it. Now I'm hoping they'll hurry up and put out more, because I enjoyed what I read.

Karen: The first six issues were written by a number of bronze age mainstays, and to be honest, were not all that interesting. As you can imagine, with all those different writers, it was hard to get a solid direction going for the book. That would change when Marv Wolfman came aboard as writer with issue 7. Artist Gene Colan was with the book from the beginning, and brought a suitably dark and dramatic look to the title. I decided that issue 10 (July 1973 ) would be a good place to start with my reviews. "His Name is Blade!" has the feel of a 70s horror/blaxploitation film right from the very start. We are thrown into the action as some of Dracula's vampire minions go toe to toe with Blade, in his first appearance.

Karen: If you're only familiar with Blade from the movies, you'll be surprised at his look. Here, Blade has more of a resemblance to Shaft or Jim Kelly than to Wesley Snipes! With his big afro and bright green coat, he is one fly dude! Unlike the cinematic Blade, this one carries wooden knives, which makes a whole lot of sense when you think about it. He pretty easily dispatches the vampire goons, and then runs into Quincy Harker, who has a bit of a Professor X vibe, as he is a mastermind in a wheelchair. Harker has been fighting Dracula all his life. He is frustrated because Blade has killed all of the Count's minions - apparently he had planned to use them to locate the head honcho himself. Blade couldn't care less -he says Harker hasn't managed to stop Dracula in 60 years. He'll do things his way -"dig"?

Karen: Meanwhile, we switch our attentions to an ocean liner filled with hedonistic movie stars and the filthy rich. Dracula appears before them and gains their sympathy by telling them vampirism is just a disease. He's not ancient, he's not a killer- just an afflicted man. They eat this up. Drac's plan, it seems, is to put them under his control and use their influence to gain greater power. But of course, he also plans to bite a few of them, starting with the young, ditzy starlet he met earlier in the evening.

Karen: After his little snack, Dracula proceeds to take over the captain and the ship, and demands "tribute" from the passengers. Unknown to the Count however, our pal Blade has put on some scuba gear and infiltrated the vessel. The two go at it, although with Dracula's vast abilities, including the power to turn into a mist, Blade seems definitely out-classed.

Karen: But who should come to the rescue, but the starlet Dracula had bitten? She wanders in, glassy-eyed, momentarily disrupting the fight. The sun is beginning to rise, so Dracula makes his exit -but not before informing Blade and the passengers that the boat is filled with explosives! Transforming into a large bat, the Count wings off to safety, as Blade and the rest jump into the ocean, only moments before the ship is destroyed.

Karen: It's a fun story, but of the last three issues in the book (10-12), this story is probably the weakest of the three. But it is our introduction to Blade, and has a strong 70s feel. I don't think Jack Abel is a suitable inker for Colan; his lines are too thin, and Colan's gift for shadows and lighting is diminished by the inking. However, with issue 12 Tom Palmer comes on board, and boy does that look sweet!

BAB Two-In-One: Failure is Good and Cybernetic Circuses

Doug: OK, so admittedly we've had a mixed bag with our DC reviews. Karen liked a Justice League story she read, and I told you how great Detective Comics #400 was. However, then I had to punish you (and me... whoo-boy!) with that super-lame Brave and the Bold yarn. I'm going to take another stab at it with an 8-pager that ran in Superman #257 from September 1972. I'm pulling this one out of the hardcover The Greatest Team-Up Stories Ever Told (c. 1989) and can honestly say I've never read this story. Let's see how we feel about "The Greatest Green Lantern of All!" by Elliot S! Maggin (off a Neal Adams plot) and Dicks Dillin and Giordano.


Here we go -- Green Lantern Corps member Tomar-Re is nearing retirement and is summoned before the Guardians to be told a secret about a planet of his sector, the only time Tomar-Re failed to save a world: the doomed planet Krypton! The title of the story, then, refers not to any of the Green Lanterns we know, but to what might have been had the offspring of Jor-el and Lara been enlisted in the Corps!


Flashing back, we see a meeting of the inner council of the Guardians where debate rages over making the Corps independent. The major discussion centers on whether or not there is a ringbearer in the universe qualified to lead such a transition to independence. In a few panels that evoke Marvel's Watchers, the Guardians look to the future of potential offspring of the just-married Jor-el and Lara of Krypton. Allegedly genetically perfect, they would produce a child "of an incomparable nature". The Guardians are aware that Krypton will soon explode, and so dispatch Tomar-Re to slow the process until Jor-el (like an alien Noah) can ferry all Kryptonians to safety.


We are reminded that Jor-el created not only a Space Ark, but the technology to shrink Kryptonian cities. We also see that Brainiac hijacked the Bottle City of Kandor. Little Kal-el is born in this sequence, and we see Jor-el pleading without results to the Science Council. In the meantime, Tomar-Re is in a race against time to pack the guts of Krypton with a stabilizing element called Stellarium. However, in his haste to gather the mineral, he neglects to sense a nova and is temporarily blinded by the yellow radiation of the exploding star.


The next two pages are quite exciting, as Tomar-Re uses the ring to guide him to Krypton with his next payload of Stellarium. We see interspersed panels of Jor-el and Lara with the rocket that can carry Lara and Kal-el to safety; Lara of course elects to stay with her husband. Tomar-Re's vision begins to come back to him and as he says "I think I can almost see... Krypton!" the planet explodes. He is nursed back to health by the Guardians and they discuss whether or not saving the planet would have been worth more than the outcome -- Superman's life on Earth and his maturation into the universe's greatest champion.


Hot dog! We got a winner here! This was a really interesting story, easily compared to a Marvel of the same time. The art was great – very polished. Giordano’s inks easily swung Dillin’s pencils toward Neal Adams – definitely evoked Adams’ Superman work of the era. And Maggin’s script was nice – not dopey like so many DC’s of the Bronze Age.

Karen: Hey kids, I'm back with the next issue of the original Deathlok run, Astonishing Tales #27 (circa December 1974). This time around Rich Buckler and Doug Moench are credited as co-plotters, but Buckler is credited with art and story, so I guess he actually scripted it. The last time we saw our zombie-cyborg pal Deathlok, he was trying to find his war buddy Mike Travers. He tracks him to the Statue of Liberty, fights his way through a bunch of goons, and then opens a door to reveal his nemesis Ryker, along with a bizarre cyborg werewolf that Ryker calls the War Wolf. Ryker says that the War Wolf is actually Mike Travers, and this creates a dilemma for Deathlok: he can't kill his best friend. However, as Deathlok appears to be on the ropes, Ryker, for some reason, decides to tell him that the War Wolf isn't Travers after all; Travers died on the operating table. Why do villains always seem compelled to do stupid things like this? This of course gives old D-lok a big boost and he battles back, defeating the War Wolf, in particularly brutal fashion.

Deathlok, now leaking 'life fluids', decides to get the heck out of Dodge and then makes a rather poorly thought out decision to go see his wife, Janice. She freaks out when she sees him - it's not really clear that she recognizes him as her former husband - and right before he's about to enter his son's room, Deathlok realizes what a terrible idea this was. He runs outside and in his despair tries to shoot himself in the neck, but his computer makes suicide impossible. He realizes that he can't escape the life he's in, and he can never return to the life he had.

This is a pretty good issue, although I get the feeling reading this (and other issues as well) that Buckler was so bursting at the seams with ideas for Deathlok that sometimes concepts and terms are thrown into the book willy-nilly, without much thought. There's a whole page of Deathlok symbolically hanging on a cross, where we discover that the third voice he had been hearing (the one neither Luther Manning's nor the computer's) was actually an implant Ryker had been using to track the cyborg. Then there's some talk about him feeling persecuting and Ryker trying to make a god machine - honestly, it seems sort of crammed in there. I know what Buckler is going for here but it seems a bit ham-fisted.

Ryker is also a difficult character to take seriously, as he is so over the top and manic in every scene. His motivations are vague; at one point he says, "I use people to create the future. My ultimate goal is to gain mastery over life...and finally, death." Well, that's a fairly vague statement that probably would work for some villains, but in a more realistic series like this one it just comes across as almost lazy. It doesn't help that he just seems (and looks) like a crazy cybernetically obsessed Thunderbolt Ross!


The last negative I'll mention, and this is an odd one, is the lettering. I almost never even notice lettering in a book, but the job done in this issue is very poor. Desmond Jones is credited as the letterer and I don't recall his name at all. In any case, it's very light and inconsistent.


On the good side, the fight pages are pretty well done, although much more violent than most of the comics of that time. But the best part of the book is towards the end. The sequence with Deathlok returning to his former home is just gut-wrenching. The loss that Manning feels is palpable and really helps to make him more sympathetic to the reader. An interesting aside: Manning was a Caucasian, and his wife Janice is black. There are so few inter-racial couple in comics, and this was certainly the first time I can recall seeing one.

The attempted suicide is also moving. To see him, our protagonist (I can't quite call him a hero) turn his laser gun on himself is still shocking today.