Barda To The Bone!

She's awesome! Big Barda hit the comic book landscape in the pages of Mister Miracle #4 and her presence immediately transformed the comic's direction and scope. Suddenly out quaint comic about a mysterious young man who adopts the role of a show biz escape artist becomes something larger, a mythic battle on the grandest landscapes and it a love story as well. The relationship between Scott Free and Barda is among my favorites in all of comics. I don't know its current state (and don't care) but their romance which quickly developed into a marriage felt like it was legit. We know Barda was a bombastic figure and also inspiration for many comic book artists to come over the years. Here is a gallery of some of their interpretations of the Female Fury from Apokolips.

(Cautionary note: The final image in this gallery is a little bit racy, so a NSFW label might be appropriate. Scroll with care.)

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Justice League Companion!

Just wanted to give a shout out to a resource I've been relying upon while I plow into the earliest Justice League stories - the Justice League Companion. I picked this Twomorrows publication up somewhere several years ago. Sadly it is not as densely packed as many of the tomes from that group, but it does offer some good interviews with past talents who have worked on the venerable series such as Murphy Anderson, Joe Giella, Denny O'Neil, Mike Friedrich, and others such as Jerry Bails and Roy Thomas on the origins of the team.

The cover is by Bruce Timm, a direct homage to the classic cover for issue forty-eight of The Justice League of America by Mike Sekowsky and Murphy Anderson.

Unused Alternate Dick Dillin & Joe Giella Cover to JLA #66.

There's quite a bit of artwork, fan stuff and alternate covers and whatnot scattered around on the pages of the book. It also offers up issue checklists with some behind-the-scenes details for the earliest issues in the run, which is what I've been checking after I read each installment. Michael Eury is the editor of Back Issue, and this book is akin to that magazine. Often I find Back Issue a bit thin and this tome follows suit, but it does have value, especially now that I'm using as title suggests, a "companion". There have not been any further volumes in the series, so I suppose sales were not brisk.

Actual cover to JLA #66 by Neal Adams - His first for the title.

To take a closer look at the book check this out. 

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Demonology Extra - The Demon Lives!

The Demon returned off and on over the decades.

The first and the only one I followed other than the original Jack Kirby run was in the pages of Detective Comics.

Drawn by up and coming superstar artist Michael Golden, this was a pretty successful translation of the series, with a whisper of Wrightsonian style added to the bombast of Kirby's original designs. Golden was a perfect choice as artist at the time, as he somehow successfully blended these two disparate styles in one delicious hybrid.

I no longer own these stories and cannot read them again alas, but I do remember liking them mightily at the time they came out. The Demon lasted only a few issues in the dollar-sized Detective Comics format.

Since then, DC has trotted him out several times in limited series and ongoing ones as well. Growing out of his appearances in Swamp Thing, he even got a run in Action Comics Weekly, a cover for which (see above) was the last time Jack Kirby drew his creation for publication.

He seems to have found some level of success as some of the runs have been impressive, at least in terms of numbers. I cannot speak to quality as I've never read any of them at all.

Here are some of the debut covers.

The Demon has even made it to television. Simplified, but effective, the classic Kirby design holds up well in the animated look.

Heck there are even toys. Sheesh, that would look pleasant under the Christmas tree. Aargh.

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The Eternals - Scintillating Sersi!

Arguably the most successful of the Eternals is the vivacious Sersi. First introduced in the third issue of the series, she is in fact the legendary witch who confronted Odysseus and his men on their long journey and she lives a life of relative ease in New York City's more affluent regions. Her flirtatious nature and stunning beauty make her a standout creation. But we do learn she is an Eternal in need of an audience, as her abiding relationship with  Dr.Samuel Holden indicates. Sersi needs to be appreciated, and definitely thinks she's worthy of that admiration.

When the series ended, the Eternals lapsed into limbo. Eventually characters and concepts were revived and more properly integrated into the larger Marvel Universe. No character from the series more successfully integrated than did Sersi. She was tapped to join the Avengers and had a long and fascinating career with the Assemblers.

For a time, she and the Black Knight (Dane Whitman) not only had a romance, but also formed the core of a storyline which dominated the series for a few years.

Sersi is a powerful character, a strong female hero and I'm sure she's not done.

Of all the Eternals, Sersi is the least likely to be forgotten. She'd approve of that.

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