Green Lantern vol. 2 #115 – Flash Back Review

By: Denny O’Neil (writer), Alex Saviuk & Dave Hunt (art), Ben Oda (letters) & Adrienne Roy (colors)

The Story: Hal Jordan, Green Arrow & Black Canary face off against the terrible might of the Crumbler!

What’s Good: For a reflection of how times have changed in the “business” of comics, consider the publication history of Green Lantern.  I’m not a long term fan of GL, so in trying to figure out which publication volume this April 1979 issue came from I had to check a few online resources and found something funny that would never happen today.  GL volume 1 ended in 1972 with issue #89 and GL volume 2 was relaunched in 1976 and they just restarted with issue #90.  Ahhh… How naive those folks at DC were back then.  I say this tongue-in-cheek, but they should have relaunched with a NEW #1 ISSUE and then renumbered the series back to its original numbering for the 100th ANNIVERSARY ISSUE!!!!!!!

Onto the story itself, this was a semi-random grab out of my LCS’s two dollar box specifically to get some material for these Flash Back reviews.  I’m not a huge DC reader now, but have a passing familiarity with Green Lantern, so when I read a comic like this, it is always with an eye towards whether I will be tempted to start buying back issues.

Let’s just say that the unintentional comedy factor is pretty strong here as Hal and Oliver (with Canary in tow) fight some obscure villain called The Crumbler (so obscure that he has no Wikipedia page…..I checked) who has a special glove that can…….wait for it……”crumble” objects like bridges into dust.  As the issue opens, Hal is running around with his head wrapped in white bandages like he’s wearing a white dew-rag or hair net.  This is to let the reader know that our hero has a concussion!  Gotta love that medical science of the 1970’s: “Wrap his head in a bandage!  That’ll protect his brain just fine while it recovers from being bruised by being bashed against the inside of his skull.”

For me, though, the best unintentional comedy was when Arrow and Canary take off after the Crumbler in an orange 1970’s VW bus.  Could a DC fan let me know if this was always Arrow’s ride of choice?  And why did Canary’s parents let her hang out with a dude who drove a van (if you know what I mean)?  A close second in terms of comedy is seeing the Crumbler flashing back to his childhood where his Dad destroys his science experiments and berates him for wasting his time with science because he should earn an honest living down at the construction site with Dad.  And people wonder why China and India kick the US’s butt in science?

The Human Fly #1 – Flashback Review

By: Bill Mantlo (writer), Lee Elias (art), Marie Sev. (colors) & Joe Rosen (letters)

The Story: We’re introduced to a new hero, The Human Fly, who is immediately called into action to save a hijacked airliner.

What’s Good: When reviewing a comic of this era (1977) you always have to be a little precise about what you mean as “good”.  Do you mean “good for 1977” or do you mean “good for present day” or do you mean “worth collecting?”  I always do these reviews as a present day item with an eye towards: Will this issue cause me to compulsively dig through back-issue boxes or search eBay for more issues?

Let me start by saying that I wish more comics of today had artwork this tight.  Elias does a great job with something that many artists struggle with: drawing both superheroes AND people wearing clothes.  What do I mean by that?  Well, most superheroes (in their tight clothes) are really just nudes that have bodypaint for a costume (which is kinda dumb when you think about it).  But a lot of superhero artists today tend to draw their civilian characters the same way: They start with a nude and then hang clothes on them like they are playing with paper dolls and it looks about as good as paper dolls sometimes.  Elias’ non-super characters look like you’d expect them to look (and not like someone painted their clothes onto them).

This issue also has a collecting tidbit if you’re into Spider-Man.  As Human Fly is saving this plane full of people, it turns out that one of the passengers is none other than the webslinger himself.  I guess those people bemoaning Wolverine or Deadpool showing up in too many comics should feel better knowing that using guest stars to sell weaker titles wasn’t a practice invented in the 1990’s

Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #1 – Flashback Review

By: Jim Shooter (writer), Michael Zeck (pencils), John Beatty (inks), Christie Scheele (colors) & Joe Rosen (letters)

The Story: The Beyonder spirits a select group of Marvel heroes and villains away to do battle.

What’s Good: This was THE comic event of my early comic collecting life.  Back in this day, Marvel had Secret Wars and DC had Crisis and that was about it for awhile.  Not like today where the X-franchise has had three events in the last 18 months (Messiah War, Necrosha & Second Coming).  This is one instance where I do miss the good old days.  Secret Wars was also a bit odd for Marvel in that it got a little out of continuity.  I was reading Uncanny X-Men at the time and the entirety of Secret Wars takes place between two issues of Uncanny: In one issue they are whisked away and they are back the next issue.  Then, they spent the next 12 issues of Uncanny vaguely alluding to what happened and in a remarkable bit of editorial control, they didn’t spoil anything.  This approach was mostly noteworthy because at this time Marvel otherwise exercised pretty tight continuity among their titles.  If a worldwide snowstorm struck in Thor in April, by God it was snowing in all the Marvel titles that month [ * along with a helpful footnote that explained why it was snowing and what issues of Thor you could read if you wanted to know more].

Getting on to the issue, there was no earthy way that this could not be awesome.  On the good guy’s side you had the X-Men (sans Kitty Pryde who had to go sleep at the New Mutants house), the Avengers, the FF & Hulk… and Magneto.  Opposing them you had Ultron, Enchantress, The Absorbing Man, Wrecker (and his crew), Kang, Lizard, Doc Ock, Molecule Man, Dr. Doom, Galactus.  Just the initial character line-ups were very interesting.  Magneto on the side of good?  Back in this era, Marvel hadn’t really dug into Magneto much but Secret Wars was the beginning of his (first) redemption.  Even the X-Men were a bit of an odd choice because they were such outcasts at the time.

Nightcrawler #1 – Flashback Review

By: Dave Cockrum (writer/artist), Paty (colors) & Jim Novak (letters)

The Story: Everyone’s favorite blue-furball mutant gets transported through the Well at the Center of Time to a parallel dimension full of swashbuckling pirates in airships!

What’s Good: I never see this 1985 four-issue miniseries from Marvel get any respect, but it is really a pretty hot little number if you don’t want to take your comics too seriously.

Written, penciled and inks by the late/great Dave Cockrum (who was a co-creator of Nightcrawler), this miniseries finds Nightcrawler (and Lockheed the dragon) entangled in a Danger Room mishap that zaps him into a parallel dimension that is somewhat reminiscent of the fantasy world that Kitty Pryde told of as a fairy tale in Uncanny X-Men #153.  This is a world full of swashbuckling pirates and maidens-in-distress.  Perfect for the noble, but impish, Nightcrawler as he finds himself enjoying being cast among a group of pirates (and teaching them to play poker) before being captured by the shark-like Shagreen the Sorcerer who becomes the villain for the miniseries (why has he never been used again???).

Throughout the story, all the characters who see Nightcrawler refer to him as “Boggie” and Lockheed as “his frumious bandersnitch”.  Just what are Boggies and bandersnitches?  Well, you have to read the rest of the series to find out.

In some ways, this miniseries is also a team-up/buddy-caper for Nightcrawler and Lockheed.  Remember, Lockheed was still a somewhat new character and at this point and was still being written as spunky and overly-self-important tiny dragon who was always breathing fire all over things twice his size.  It’s just a different team up than seeing Nightcrawler with Wolverine and it is/was fun partially because Lockheed is only partially committed to the team-up.

Planetary / Batman: Night On Earth – Flash Back Review

By: Warren Ellis (writer), John Cassaday (art), David Baron (colors) & Wes Abbott (letters)

The Story: An investigation takes the Planetary gang into Gotham City.  Guess who they’ll run into?

What’s Good: This one-shot from August 2003 is a mixture of two things that I really like: Planetary and Batman.  But, as we all know, many team-up or cross-over comic titles don’t really work out.  Sometimes the writer clearly understands one of the characters, but completely misses the boat with the other side or there is an editorial failing that allows the writer to trample on an important item of continuity for one of the universes.  Even when those things don’t happen, you usually put the book down with the feeling that the cross-over was fun, but it is hard to take seriously because it was SO obviously an elseworlds-type tale that it clearly doesn’t “matter”.

What makes Planetary/Batman soooooo good is that this cross-over really could happen in either of the two universes.  Part of the entire fun of Planetary was that it explored recognizable alternate versions of super/pulp-heroes that we all know: Fantastic Four, Lone Ranger, Doc Savage, Green Lantern, etc.  In the comics review world, we like to talk about things that “pull us out of the story” like bad art or implausible concepts that make it impossible for us to enjoy an otherwise pretty good story.  You really could see that it made sense that the Planetary gang would run into a masked vigilante dressed as a Bat.

The Uncanny X-Men #187 – Flash Back Review

By: Chris Claremont (writer), John Romita, Jr. & Dan Green (art), Glynis Wein (colors) & Tom Orzechowski (letters)

The Story: Storm has lost her powers due to a weapon designed by Forge (a man she thought she might have loved).  Forge based the gun’s design on the neutralizer of none other than ROM – Spaceknight, making him a target for the dreaded Dire Wraiths.

What’s Good: If there were a carbon-dating system for comic book fans, it would be: Did you read ROM – Spaceknight?  I LOVED ROM as a kid in the early/mid-1980’s but after his ongoing series ended, the character has been so completely tied up in an intellectual property Gordian knot that there has never been, nor will there ever be (probably) a collected edition of ROM.

So, it was with some fun that I stumbled up an appearance of ROM in this issue of Uncanny X-Men from November 1984.  Granted ROM only appears as a hologram created by Forge to distract the Wraiths, but it was cool to see the silver guy and remind myself that putting together a collection of ROM is definitely on the “to-do” list.

From a story standpoint, as it features a all-out battle between a depowered Storm, Forge and his father-figure, Naze, and a mess of Wraiths and their minions.  It is great as Storm is at her street-fighting best, using the skills that Wolverine taught her that she never thought she’d have to use (including shooting a gun…. gasp!).  Forge at this point in time was Tony Stark without the armor, but he sure had a sophisticated defense system in his penthouse.  And Naze is doing his best Wolverine impression as the tough old guy who strikes from the shadows (but with a shotgun instead of claws).  By the time Rogue and Colossus show up at the end, this issue had already been a lot of fun.

I know that some people aren’t wild about the way Romita, Jr. draws now, but if you need an example of why the dude has been around for 30+ years in comics, this is a pretty good issue to look at.  I remember his Dire Wraiths giving me the creeps as a kid and they’re still pretty impressive today.  We also get a masterful inking job by Dan Green who had to do a LOT of detailed inking on several scenes of Storm fighting Wraiths in the snow and rain (guess the temperature outside changed during the issue or something).

Uncanny X-Men #159 – Flash back review

By: Chris Claremont (writer), Bill Sienkiewicz (pencils), Bob Wiacek (inks), Glynis Wein (colors) & Tom Orzechowski (letters)

The Story: Dracula wants Storm for his bride…

Flash Back Review: As any comic fan knows, the X-Men are currently having a bit of a problem with vampires.  I’ve seen a lot of moaning on message boards about how tacky this is of Marvel and how it’s obviously an attempt to jump onto some of the current popularity of vampires (see: True Blood and Twilight).  That may be true, but this is hardly the first time the X-Men have had to deal with vampires.

I’d ask you to take a trip down memory lane to Uncanny X-Men #159 which was published in July of 1982.  Comics were still 60 cents, the #1 song in the United States was “Don’t you want me” by the Human League (which is now stuck in my head) and Chris Claremont still had his 98 mph fastball (instead of the old junkballer he has become).  In terms of the X-Men, this was early enough for them that Rogue was still a bad guy and they had never encountered the Brood.  In short, it was a long time ago.

This issue tells a self-contained story of the X-Men venturing into the city so that Kitty could hang out with her parents for the weekend and the plan was that the X-Men would crash at Misty Knight’s pad for the weekend.  Of course, being the X-Men they travel in full costume and blast into Misty’s place in style: Nightcrawler “bamfs” in, Kitty phases through the wall and Wolverine has his claws popped.  After Misty’s startled roommate changes her pants (just kidding….there is no spoiling of pants in this issue), Kitty and Storm change into street clothes and head off into the night.

Of course, the night doesn’t end well for Storm as it appears that she is mugged and has her throat slit after leaving Kitty with her parents.  Claremont lets this mystery swirl as we get page after page of Storm becoming a creature of the night: light sensitive, aversion to religious symbols, wearing a scarf from an “admirer” with a big “D” monogram… Hmm…What sort of mugger could it be?

Not only was it a vampire, it was Dracula himself!  Once the true evil is revealed, what follows is a pretty standard effort by the X-Men to save Storm from this psychological hold that Dracula holds over her.  However, Dracula is not defeated by the might of the X-Men, instead he bows out after being so impressed by the sheer nobility of Storm that he cannot force her to become his bride against her will.  The end!

This is far from the best story of this era.  A few issues earlier, and we have the classic Days of Future Past storyline.  A few issues later and we get the Brood saga that holds a place in my heart because that was when I started buying Uncanny at the gas station.  Then again, the Days of Future Past single issues are going to set you back $40+ each whereas you can buy Uncanny #159 for about five dollars.