Superman Treasury 2025: Hero for All

Dan Jurgens draws eight pages of his second treasury format Superman comic, having written and laid-out the entirety of 1999's Superman / Fantastic Four (with deeply compromised finished art by Art Thibert.) It's inked by Brett Breeding, and while the continuity is garbled by some lousy Rebirth-period flourishes, it is mostly a testament to the 1990s "triangle number" era. Anyone who read the books in the period surrounding "Reign of the Supermen" would be forgiven for feeling nostalgic. There's been online discourse since Standards Manual's rerelease of the 1982 DC Comics Style Guide that other artists draw a version of Superman, but only José Luis García-López draws Superman. That's particularly fair if you grew up with the Christopher Reeve movies and surrounding merchandise, but García-López rarely provided complete art for Superman stories-- mostly just the early issues of DC Comics Presents. Jurgens came up in the late Bronze Age, shared influences with García-López, and produced interior and cover art for nearly a hundred Superman comics. Jurgens was likely the closest fans ever got to a more substantial García-López run, which may help to explain why he was to many the Superman artist of his generation.

At least, that's how I can best rationalize it, because man, I am never going to "get" the appeal of Dan Jurgens to those people. To me, he'll always be a technically proficient journeyman, who was never the most appealing or interesting artist drawing Superman at any given point. He succeeded Jerry Ordway on Adventures of Superman in 1989, working alongside Kerry Gammill on Superman. A few months in, George Pérez returned Superman to Action Comics, when it was reclaimed from the experimental weekly anthology format. By 1992, Jurgens had taken over the core Superman title, but Tom Grummett had replaced him on Adventures, while Jon Bogdanove had launched Superman: The Man of Steel. I would favor every one of those artists on any given book over Jurgens. I've liked a few Superman stories written by Jurgens, but on a monthly basis, I usually preferred other writers as well (though he had good runs of The Mighty Thor and Tomb Raider.) And yet, DC always runs back to Dan Jurgens when they've had a "come to Jesus" moment in screwing up the Man of Steel... like when they killed off the New 52 incarnation and replaced him with Jurgens' Superman: Lois and Clark version, which gave us their son, Jon Kent.

I thumbed through the new treasury, otherwise drawn by Bruno Redondo, out of curiosity. Obviously this was put together to exploit enthusiasm for the 2025 Superman movie, as well as readers "of a certain age" with the disposable income to pay the premium on a publication format largely abandoned since the 1970s. I do like Redondo's art, as well as the coloring of Adriano Lucas, which often digitally replaces solid blacks with more animation-style cel coloring. Having come up in the Bronze and Chromium Ages, I've been spoiled by a level of rendered detail never before or since seen in comic book art, which could make the most of being printed at near to the scale of the original art board. I'm not even confident that the art in this book has a physical manifestation beyond the printed edition, and while attractive, the colors have a better claim of making use of the treasury dimensions than the line art. So if it's not an art book, that leaves it up to the story to justify the indulgent scale. This is a Dan Jurgens script. The odds were never in its favor.

The whole reason that I was primed to write this post was because I saw a lot of Martian Manhunter action in this book during that toss. I stopped partway through, once I'd committed to reading the thing. So of course, that stopping point for me was also more or less the stopping point for the Manhunter from Mars in the story.

A giant robot attacks Metropolis, prompting an evacuation of the city. Ma and Pa Kent are tasked with taking a still-adolescent Jon Kent out of town. I assumed that meant the story took place before Brian Michael Bendis squatted down to release his "embellishments" on Superman lore, but that crap was referenced later in the all-Jurgens sections. For all I know, they've de-aged Jon Kent in recent months. I gave up on following DC continuity a year or two into the New 52, so finer points like that would be lost on me. Superman has a surprisingly easy time taking out the robot, and then we're randomly(?) presented with a Smallville flashback deploying Ben Day dots. We see Pa Kent die in a tornado, ala Snyder's Man of Steel, and it occurred to me that the guy I saw with Ma earlier had a bit of Dale Gribble about him. Maybe she caught another feller as a widow in the modern(ish?) continuity? The '90s stunt implant Kenny Braverman was present in the flashback, as was young ginger Lex Luthor, which I'm aware was a Silver Age element returned to continuity in the Birthright mini-series (bought cheap used; yet to read.) A young adult Luthor was present for another flashback.

At the in-story present, alien invaders destroy the JLA... satellite? Watchtower? I don't know what they're calling it these days. Both Superman and Batman are initially missing from the action, but fellow super-heroes step up to defend a variety of global flashpoints in the invasion. This would be "the Martian Manhunter part." The actual invaders were semi-generic anime mech troopers in pale orange and green. They're like a very boring redesign of parademons. As best as I can tell, their main advantage is taking out Earth's communication technology. The Alien Atlas appears to battle the baddies on the Golden Gate bridge, and he is treated as the key to uniting Earth's metahuman protectors, via a massive telepathic network. There's also lots of token appearances by members of the JLA, JLI, Teen Titans, etc. A big deal is made out of Aquaman delivering the U.S. President and Congress to safety underwater, as though that was a relevant and beneficial action to the world order of 2025. Positively provincial.

As anyone familiar with how Martian Manhunter appearances in Superman comics go, J'Obber J'Onzz's off-panel defeat at the invaders' hands marks the end of the world's effective resistance to the aliens. It is here that the ultimate threat is finally revealed... Lady Maxima! And... um... the Cyborg Superman? See-- Dan Jurgens created Hank Henshaw as an analog for Reed Richards, who had to watch his astronaut family slowly die from horific deformities similar to those of the Invisible Woman, Human Torch, and The Thing. Instead of elasticity, Mr. Fauxtastic merged with machinery, which is how he survived. Using genetic material from Superman, he grew a partial clone body, with compensatory cybernetic elements. I don't know that it was ever explained why he couldn't clone a whole-ass Superman body, or at least doctor-up a completely human face, instead of looking like a T-800 Terminator wearing 9/10ths of a Superman body. The Cyborg Superman has been destroyed many times, but always seems to return to this SuperMetallo form. He was of course one of the ersatz Supermen during "Reign," was in at least one of the Doomsday revival mini-series Jurgens did, and was even a big part of Superman / Fantastic Four, owing to his being a Reed Richards rip-off. In this context though, he's only here as a life-sized "marital aid" for an alien queen who could never seal the deal with her Man of Steel.

Maxima's purpose here was to punish Superman for choosing Lois Lane over her, and making a baby with her. Now, Maxima was killed off in the 2001 Superman event "Our Worlds at War," but a revamped version arrived three years into the New 52, and then more or less reverted to a more faithful version in 2017. Jon Kent debuted as a decade-old in 2015, and was up-aged to 17 to serve as Superman's replacement a few years later. All this is to say, it's a bit rich that Maxima would react this strongly to a long-elapsed, rarely/never-expressed grudge from multiple continuities ago. While powerful, Maxima never seemed to work at this scale before, and I'd guess her usage as the villain was in honor of the still-tender passing of her co-creator, George Pérez. But also, Maxima was a member of the version of the Justice League that Dan Jurgens wrote, and Cyborg Superman is one of his pet creations, so... this.

Batman shows up mostly to prevent the killing/capture of Lois Lane, and to explain who Maxima and Cyborg Superman are to Superman's life partner. Some alien albino gal named Glyanna shows up to prevent the killing/capture of Jon Kent. Except that character was created in 2023, and Jon is back to being a boy, so I don't get this continuity. I do get the Ben Day dot "flashbacks" where Clark Kent never developed powers, became editor-in-chief of The Daily Planet, but watched Lois Lane become the twice-over babymama of Lex Luthor. See, this is Jurgens ripping off "For the Man Who Has Everything," badly, and never explaining why an illusion meant to placate a captive Superman (who never actually escaped from the giant robot's trap-body) instead catalyzed his jailbreak. Just as it's never explained how a couple of second-tier Superman villains and random alien invaders defeated all the metahumans, although somehow Steel and armored Lex Luthor have among the best showings of anyone. Simply, the key explanation is that Dan Jurgens was rarely a notable writer, and got by on telling Superman fans that theirs was the bestest boy! That's what we have here, yet again.

I didn't go wild for the James Gunn Superman movie, because it was a sloppy mess of comedy bits and fan service that crowded a post-1986 version of Superman that I've never fully embraced out of his own eponymous movie. I had the opposite reaction here, of loathing the Jurgens-era SuperDuperMan who rendered the entire DC Universe as mere supporting players in his stories. I know this will always be J'Onn J'Onzz's role, especially in Superman stories, but giving the business to Wonder Woman and other God-tier DC heroes is part of why I hated Superman events during the Triangle Number Era. I don't feel like most modern writers can tell compelling Superman stories, and there's a subset that try to make up for it by elevating Superman so far above his peers that every other hero may as well be Jimmy Olsen. Any time I feel bad for the contempt I hold against Dan Jurgens, I recall lame, derivative, condescending mediocrities like this, and feel validated in my decades of disdain.

Warner Bros Store DC Heroes Lithograph by Mike Deodato Jr.

I've been saving this one for a rainy day/few months/whenever I could find more details on it. I think I stumbled upon it at an auction site, and swiftly downloaded the jpeg, but can't find it again. The best information I could Google was on a 2015 Legion of Super Bloggers post about a different DC Universe art print that made the rounds in the late '90s, which I'm confident was by Dan Jurgens and Jerry Ordway. As a side bit of business, they offered a tiny scan from a WB Store catalog and a larger black & white version of the Deodato print with their http branded over it. Given the featured line-ups, both pieces were probably produced in the late '90s, but maybe offered in the early 2000s? The Jurgens/Ordway one is very post-Zero Hour, which makes sense because they're the art team on that mini-series, and for all I know it was a spread within the book (but I'm probably confusing it with a more packed but also more pedestrian scene where the extended cast all show up in Metropolis.) J'Onn J'Onzz is also in that one, and just (lower) left of center, but also only a head peek out over Connor Hawke. It's a total cheat not to have the Alien Atlas a full head taller, with exposed Martian Man-boobs/cape/etc. It's also dull as dishwater, which is why I was in no rush to cover it here.

I was always a bigger Mike Deodato Jr. fan than I was for either of the other print's artists, having appreciated how his Wizard-certified hot Image-style supercharged my favorite run of the Wonder Woman title. I mean, he also kind of ruined that title by turning it into a bad girl t&a book, but his earlier issues were much more story-dense. But more importantly at the time, Deodato finally got fans to take the Amazing Amazon seriously as a contender at DC Comics, rather than the annoying little sister that only had a title to lock in merchandising rights. It was sometime around this period tht DC finally bought all of the rights off the Marston Estate and began promoting the concept of a DC Trinity with their whole chest, and I felt that Deodato played a role in that. Plus, I was simply excited by his Chromium Age style, and bought a bunch of lousy Caliber Comics reprints of his old Brazilian work (in a much different art style) with hacked out new covers (plus "his" Thor run, which was probably more a product of the Deodato Studio.)

The hierarchy of power in the DC Universe is more status quo in the Deodato piece, with a huge Batman & Superman trailed by a considerably smaller Wonder Woman, though she is catching up. Instead of accursed Zauriel (so very Post-Zero Hour,) this one has the short-lived gestalt Hawkman with large wings spread right behind Diana. I adore the Atom sliding down the Batline. There's still a tiny pre-angel armor Zauriel deep in the background, plus a No Man's Land Batgirl and mix of Titans that leans hard into 1999 specifically. I'm tempted to call it on this blog post, but will hold back in hopes of future confirmation.

I got to the WB Store whenever I could in this period, and figure I'd have bought this if I'd seen it. That said, stuff giclée were crazy expensive, and I didn't have a vehicle for most of this period, so my access was limited. Still, there's a full body Deodato Sleuth from Outer Space dead center on this image, so I think I'd have at least remembered seeing it before. If you have more information, please leave a comment, and I'd also maybe be interested if you're selling one (but not at a crazy giclée price?)

Superman: Space Age (2022-2023)

Clark Kent's rocket from Krypton landed in Smallville, Kansas a bit later than in real life, offering a late teen debut of Superman in 1963 as part of an atomic age second act of the Cuban Missile Crisis. As with David Goyer's cinematic take, Pa Kent is averse to his son using his powers in any way, much less ever leaving home to do so, and warns him about unintended consequences with the story of his accidental wartime killing of a child. The flying farmboy in overalls nonetheless inserts himself into a moment of geopolitical panic that's ultimately responsible for the fiery death of the citizens of Coast City, California. Cue a rapper monotonously and repetitively intoning "this is the remix."

Clark Kent stumbled upon the Fortress of Solitude and begins training to become Superman, plagued by imposter syndrome over the recent circumstances, and his failure to live up to the hologram of Jor-El's minimum expectations of his child's development. The following year, Clark moved to Metropolis, where he took over Lois Lane's old "kooks" beat after she leveled-up to full reporter. It was here that he met Pariah ("this is the remix, uh-huh uh-huh") and was given a prediction of multiversal doom that will hang over the entire mini-series. Elsewhere, Bruce Wayne further develops a rejected pitch to the military into his Batman arsenal, jet fighter Hal Jordan downs Abin Sur's starcraft, and Lois Lane investigates the great events of the times, including the story highlight of spending time in jail with the Freedom Riders. Lex Luthor creates another missile crisis so that he can rule over the ashes, but is captured by Batman, and the actual nukes are redirected by the arrival of Superman. The characterizations mostly fit the Tom Mankiewicz mold, so you'd be forgiven for hearing the voices of Reeve, Kidder, Cooper, Beatty, and especially Gene Hackman while reading. The outliers are at Wayne Manor, as you'd more rightly hear Sam Hamm as read by Keaton and Gough, including the complete absence of a Robin. A month later, Wonder Woman is dropped into the U.N. to state the need for Amazonian intervention in any future crisis, and joins Green Lantern and the World's Finest at the new Hall of Justice. You can use whatever voice you want to while reading Princess Diana, because she's little more than an obligatory visual presence throughout this story.

Book Two leaps to 1972, and concerns itself with the impotence of colorful heroes maintaining the status quo in troubled times, within a story that is itself almost entirely bereft of non-whites, aside from stereotypical pimp and hos in the opening sequence. Maxwell Lord ("uh-huh uh-huh") takes over Wayne Enterprises, and runs it with such sociopathic criminality that Batman has to burn it all down in the end. Despite being the liberal voice of the Justice League of America for a generation, the appearance of Green Arrow, along with Aquaman, is purely token-- leaving the handwringing to the Dark Knight and Man of Steel. The Flash gets more attention, but in an already media-indebted work, painfully takes his cues from Ezra Miller's atypical ADHD neurotic. Clark Kent drops the ball on Watergate and is scooped by Lois Lane, who is constantly reinforced as his professional and moral superior. Kent does make a big show of finally acknowledging this, seemingly unlocking Lois' chastity as they finally embrace romantically, then marry, then procreate. It's a remarkably conservative trajectory, even for a Superman comic. The back third of this edition of an exceeding long trilogy of self-important 80-page tomes dispenses with the social concerns in favor of a lengthy Brainiac battle that sets the stakes of a final reckoning with the Crisis, along with the abrupt demise of Hal Jordan. Again though, nobody in this book really matters except Clark, Lois, and Bruce.

As with the Zack Snyder Murderverse, I'm more put out by the late inclusion of the Martian Manhunter than I would have been his total omission. It's explained by a contrivance of the story that no aliens are publicly known before the arrival of Brainiac, except Superman, and also readers saw Abin Sur and the Jor-El hologram, but whatever. He is joined by Green Lantern John Stewart, the Hawks, Black Canary (previously at Jordan's funeral,) Red Tornado, the Atom, and... Swamp Thing?!? Stewart gets the job of a Guardians of the Universe-informed exposition dump on the Anti-Monitor, and the insermountable Crisis coming in its wake. This is furthered by a multiverse of Brainiacs trying to recruit a multiverse of Superman...ses... after destroying their individual Earths for... natural resources, or something? It's a dumb play for such a bunch of... you know. In another straight lift from multimedia, Superman is girded into expanded action by the death of his terrestrial father by heart attack. Superman decides 19 years into the narrative to finally embrace hologram Jor-El and his inherited intellect to... take a few years off to master the human genome so that he can analyze every living being to create a pill that cures whatever ails them? It's ahh-- rather convenient-- and continues the telegraphing of the final resolution begun with one particular multiversal Superman at the top of Book Three.

In a nauseating turn that I'm thankful I read before the election, an Alan Dershowitz stand-in exonerates Lex Luthor for mass murder, allowing him to rebuild LexCorp, undermine Superman, and hire a rather Ledger Joker (complete with a Moore-biting origin story) to kill Batman... in an exhaustingly overlong tangent within an already tediously overwritten yet undercooked work that took me seeming ages to finish in one sitting... in a hospital waiting room, to boot. Trust that I was looking for a good distraction here. I had other books with me, but this thing ate up all the hours available for reading. Plus, the whole thing is just a set-up for a gag where Luthor claims victory just as the Crisis begins in earnest and he's forgotten entirely. Whomp-whomp. Here's hoping life imitates art. All I want for Christmas is a Big Mac-fueled coronary.

In a totally unobtrusive sequence where Allred definitely does not draw himself, friends, and family in as bystanders, most of the Earth perishes in lava as the planet breaks into pieces. For once, we don't actually see J'onn J'onzz die by fire, though he almost certainly burns. Just to twist the knife, Swamp Thing uses his stretching powers to save people in the final panel to bother with the props that were the JLA in this tale. Everyone dies, but Superman made a crystal that he stuffs through a hole in the multiverse made by the Brainiacs to land on an Earth where only a Superman survives. He uses it to repopulate everyone from the Space Age Earth as clones, including Lois and Jon Kent, who wonder why he made a golden statue in honor of himself. "That's not me, " the other Superman explains to extras from the forgotten 2005 Michael Bay thriller The Island. The End. So now you can't ask "Whatever Happened To...?" And I believe that I used every available Manhunter image in this blog post.

"Space Age" was by Mark Russell & Michael Allred, credits I copied & pasted from Mike's Amazing World of Comics, who it pleased me to realize was still with us long enough to catalog the book. I haven't had much experience with the writer, but was bowled over by his Superman meets Jesus Christ series Second Coming, which left me on the lookout for more. The artist I've enjoyed since buying the original Tundra Madman #1 in 1992, although I've mostly admired from afar.

Superman was one of my first super-heroes, as would be common for children "From the Thirties to the Seventies." Among my earliest exposures was the Superman #1 Treasury Edition, reprinting the initial Siegel & Shuster stories, so my perspective on the character may be a bit different from most. I don't think the Superman comics of my childhood were very good, and while my key periods of faithful reading were 1987-88 & 1993, I don't hold that material particularly dear. As a fan and retailer, I kept up with the Triangle Number period through heavy skimming and odd reads until it ended, and have dipped in from time to time, but ultimately firmly rejected the Post-Crisis interpretation of the character that persists to this day. My taste in Superman is informed less by the comic stories that I've read and more by the idea of him-- heavily informed by the Donner films, the Animated Series, and references/second hand recollections. I like the Kryptonian Superman-- the one who is more Kal-El than Clark Kent-- as seen in the Golden and Silver Age comics. On pure concept, as metaphor, and at the peak of popular cultural relevance, give me the 1950s Weisinger Man of Tomorrow. I think the further he's drifted from that ideal, with an ever greater corruption by acolytes of Stan Lee's heroes with feet of clay, the less Superman has had to say in distinction from any other idiot that wears their underwear on the outside. It's right there in the "Man of Steel" moniker that the emphasis should be on the super, man!

Russell struck me as a big idea type, and Allred loves playing in a groovy oddball mid-century space, so I really thought that this mini-series would finally serve me the alien intellectual Superman that I've been longing for. There is a little bit of that, mostly toward the end, but it slipped my mind that one of Allred's biggest influences was the foundational Spider-Man artist Steve Ditko, and that Russell's overt humanism lent itself more to Denny O'Neil than Otto Binder. I was crushingly disappointed to realize that Space Age was pretty much the exact opposite of what I'd hoped for, and would trod well worn deconstructionist ground. Thanks to its setting and style, it strongly recalls Darwyn Cooke's The Final Frontier, but undermines its heroes and exposes the underbelly of the nation instead of celebrating the progress made in that era. I now understand that the relatively muted response to this piece is probably because it's so similar to and so pale against other efforts. It was sort of a Justice League story with no interest in the team, a Superman story that gave most of the victories to Lois Lane or Batman, aimed for profundity with bumper sticker platitudes, was a Bronze Age Marvel story with Silver Age DC characters, used the fall of Camelot as an arch and unnecessary allegory for modern sociopolitical concerns, and was a comic book largely dependent on characterization from outside media, reading like pro-fic pitched directly at Walter Hamada's Warner Brothers. But most importantly, as with Snyder, it fundamentally misunderstands the icons it toys with, and the nature of their metafiction. Laura Allred's colors are a beauty to behold on her husband's delightful pencils, but it's all in service to a story that I hold in contempt, and was such a chore to get through that I'll only ever take it off my bookshelf to look at, never again to be read. What I don't need in this moment is a downer yarn about the Superman that failed.

1986 FPC DC Comics Calendar Poster

Fellow children of the '80s likely longed for this swell looking calendar, featured in ads across various DC titles. It looked like a normal calendar, with 12 rectangular images of swell characters by top talents, incorporating the monthly calendar. There was a couple of cheats, in that the George Pérez New Teen Titans image was "zoomed in," obscuring six other partially visible sections, and obliterating a second. Further, all of those other images were barely more than postage stamps, and all of them were in black and white. It was a tantalizing tease though, including a Joe Kubert Sgt. Rock & Easy Company, a Gil Kane Sword of the Atom (featuring Princess Laethwen,) Keith Giffen Christmas with Ambush Bug & Cheeks, plus a very licensing on-model Superman (Ross Andru?)

It was produced by FPC, or The Federal Publishing Co. Pty. Ltd., who distributed black & white DC Comics reprints in the Down Under. In fact, the ad running, in the original U.S. comics, added the unusual shipping penalty of $1.50 extra outside Australia-- which is, y'know, all of us buying the original North American editions. Like, almost everybody on Earth is somewhere besides Ozzieland, which has less than 27M population, only 0.33% of the global population. I live in the state of Texas, with nearly 31M, and that's only one (admittedly populous) of 50 United States, and these things went to Canada, too (40M.) At $6.50 in 1985 dollars, that's $19.00 today, including shipping, which actually isn't that bad when I consider it. But it's pretty hefty for something expected to be thrown out on a year, which might be why I've never seen one in the wild. But also, it's a one-sheet poster, not a flip calendar, with the Marshall Rogers Batman & Robin crowding into four of the other images (molesting a small portion of the previously unobscured Titans portion.) Other characters revealed in the final release are Blue Devil & Amethyst by Paris Cullins, and... wait... that's it? A twelve month calendar with only eight images, because several months do double duty, and one triple. What a rip-off.

The image that I haven't discussed yet is maybe my favorite, though not without serious competition. Green Lantern John Stewart, Firestorm, Hawkman, Wonder Woman, and Martian Manhunter, drawn by Luke McDonnell and inked by Jerry Ordway! Wooo-we! That is quite the collection of choices cuts for ol' Frank-- enough for me to let my Texas (or at least my Slim Pikins) out just now. I really wish this art existed outside a sloppy, mangled sheet of paper. And it kind of does, as the original art is nominally available for trade or purchase. I'd miss that lovely Greg Theakston painted color, though I could overlook it wth those characters and that linework. But see, the seller doesn't actually post prices, and the listing is so old that for all I know it's part of the dead internet. I have enough trouble getting art and quotes from people face to face with me at conventions. I can't manifest the energy for "email me bro," so one of you can pursue it with my full blessing. I reserve the right to envy, however.

Detective Comics #557 (December, 1985)

During the Crisis on Infinite Earths, a multi-year storyline involving Nocturna drew to a close. She was a homeless orphan teenager, informally adopted by a criminal, until he was killed. Then she took up a romance with his adult son, and the pair turned to burglary to support their lifestyle. Nocturna had the incident that drained her of pigmentation, leading her to entanglements with the Wayne Foundation. For two years across two titles, Nocturna romanced the Batman, and became a surrogate mother to his young ward, Jason Todd. However, Batman was already involved in an ongoing relationship with Catwoman, causing violent conflict. Further, Nocturna had used and discarded her prior lover, the son of her initial benefactor, and left him to rot in prison. When he got loose, he adopted the guise of Night-Thief, and started stabbing all of their mutual associates to death on his way toward slaying Nocturna.

In this specific story, Batman was in the hospital watching over Selina Kyle after she'd been struck by Crisis Red Sky lightning. An exhausted Robin returned alone to the Batcave, where he received a transmission from the Martian Manhunter and the Justice League. "Nothing new to report on the bizarre weather phenomena, Robin-- just checking in to tell Batman to remain on alert-- and ready for action. Until this is cleared up, none of us can afford a moment's rest." This entirely random interaction convinced Robin that he was acting like a wimp, and needed to act in his mentor's absence to protect Nocturna and, if possible, stop Night-Thief. He couldn't, as Night-Thief beat on Robin, and nearly killed Nocturna, before Batman and a revived Catwoman intervened. That was mostly in the next issue of Batman, where Robin put the severely injured Nocturna in a hot air balloon, which seemed to get blown up by Crisis energy. Don't ask me "why?" It's all too messy to get into.

I wasn't reading Batman comics in these years, but some of my friends had copies that I'd toss through on occasion. I was always intrigued by that alabaster goth girl, but nobody in my circles to this day ever brings her up, and I rarely feel the need to cross the Crisis boundary on DC icons. These comics were selling less than 70K a month, an attainable number even today, and this interminable soap opera couldn't have helped. I've read biography pages on Nocturna several times, but my eyes always glaze over at the twists and turns, the finer details soon forgotten. Only the Psycho-Pirate could remember all this junk, which is probably why we don't talk about Nocturna. But boy, somebody really should reprint those Green Arrow & Black Canary back-ups with the Jerome K. Moore art. They're worth recollecting.

"Still Beating" was by Doug Moench, Gene Colan, & Robert Allen Smith.

Action Comics #595 (December, 1987)

Silver Banshee walked the streets of Metropolis, killing men indiscriminately as she searched a series of local bookstores. After one policeman under Maggie Sawyer's command was killed, and another nearly so, Superman finally showed up... only to die himself. Various parties, including members of Justice League International, mourned his loss. Black Canary and the Batman believed that someone should address the situation, while the Manhunter from Mars insisted, "Something must be done!"

Lying in state, Superman's ghost lifted from his glass encased body, stating "I have been cut down before my work was done! I must finish what I set out to do. Only then can I rest. Beware, Silver Banshee! Your time of judgment is at hand!" Jimmy Olsen had trailed the villainess to another bookstore, and nearly doomed himself when Spectral Superman showed. Once her powers failed to effect his immaterial form, she blew herself up trying to destroy him with her Banshee cry. Only after did a living Superman reveal himself, while his "ghost" resumed his nat-- er-- typical Martian form.

The Sleuth from Outer Space had deduced that there was a visual component to the Silver Banshee's powers that prevented her from killing someone that she couldn't accurately identify. The Kryptonian form held up better than human victims, but Superman was still placed in a deathlike coma state until the Aien Atlas jumpstarted his brain with undefined "mental powers." It's a huge stretch that doesn't stand up to scrutiny, since she'd killed multiple unidentified dudes, but Perry White lampshades it with "Well, I guess that's a satisfactory explanation... at least it'll have to do if that's all we're going to get." Still, they played fair by announcing J'Onn J'Onzz's presence earlier in the story, and allowing him a showcase for his detective skills.

"The Ghost of Superman" was by John Byrne, with Keith Williams. Crisis on Infinite Earths had ended with 1985, but it took until June of the following year for "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" to wipe the board clean of Pre-Crisis Superman. Then another four months later, John Byrne used the oldest but "spare" of his two Man of Steel titles to continue the team-up format of the recently canceled DC Comics Presents, beginning with #584. I'm fuzzy on when I started picking the title up, but most probably it was with this issue, so it would have been nice to already be familiar with Martian Manhunter for the reveal. It was apparently the first appearance of Silver Banshee as well, though I could have sworn she'd made an earlier one. Obviously she was super cool, and a fairly strong addition to the rogues gallery, so it's disappointing that she's been more or less relegated to a second hand Supergirl foil. Kal-El's so powerful and so visible that he really can't spare someone so formidable, just because neither Banshee or his cousin possess a y-chromosome.

Doctor Fate #1-4 (July-October, 1987)

Doctor Fate is sort of like if you combined Merlin with Lancelot for the super-hero set, as the wizard/knight battles the forces of capitol-c Chaos from the Golden Age to the present. However, the toll has prematurely aged the human host of the Lord of Order, Nabu. Kent Nelson is dying, his wife Inza is already dead, and the other Lords of Order have decided to write-off the current existence to speed up the cycle of waxing darkness eventually turning back to light. Nabu refuses to comply, and has already picked his next host. As with Kent Nelson, Nabu has prepped a preternaturally mature and mystically adept 10-year-old boy for the role. Things debatably go awry for Eric Strauss, who is insta-grown into an adult, but captured and institutionalized by bad guy Typhon and his own human host, Doctor Benjamin Stoner. It does serve his stepmother Linda well though, as she'd felt "demented" over her romantic feelings toward the boy-turned-man, and that had led her to team-up with Kent Nelson to rescue the now strapping young lad. The experience also made Eric finally ready to embrace his new role (though not yet his-- er-- mama? In the '70s jive sense?)

The connection to Justice League International is modest, and takes place in the third issue. The Helm of Fate was compromised, and donned by Stoner as he created barely elaborated upon global havoc in service to Chaos. The Phantom Stranger aims to address the matter of this "Anti-Fate," using JLI members Batman, Green Lantern Guy Gardner, Mister Miracle, and Martian Manhunter as pawns against the new, evil Dr. Fate. The front half of that line-up appeared to die violently in the attempt, but Martian telepathy knew otherwise, and urged Mr. Miracle to relent in further pursuing the matter. Before being teleported away, the Sleuth from Outer Space assured, "We haven't failed. We're doing what we're supposed to do." Spoken like a career jobber. The Phantom Stranger served similarly, seeming to perish while biding time for Eric, Linda, Kent, and especially Nabu to get their acts together. Eventually, a gestalt entity of the Strausses is required to form a new Doctor Fate, who reclaims their mantle, and exorcises Typhon from Stoner. Kent Nelson moves on to the afterlife, but Nabu retains use of the body, to mentor the Strausses.

Without doing any research, my guess is that Doctor Fate was given a mini-series mostly as a "bold new direction" spin-off from Legends, with a side benefit of supporting and expounding upon the Justice League relaunch (arriving between #'s 3-4.) My first significant exposure to both Fate and Keith Giffen was in a back-up from The Flash #308, the only issue of that volume that I bought new, owing heavily to the novel parallel narrative of the lead feature (with wildly enhancing inks of the little-remembered Dennis Jensen over the usually repellent Carmine Infantino.) My uncle was a big Doctor Strange fan who'd left me dozens of his non-Brunner/BWS issues, so it was kind of neat seeing that type of metaphysical action rendered in a style owing more to Kirby than Ditko. Not enough to get me back for more, but I did buy the Super Powers Collection action figure with its own mini-comic. Doctor Fate is one of those characters that DC sees no inherent appeal in, despite the original version having a lot going for it, so they've spent most of my life selling me lesser variations on the basic premise. I certainly count this incarnation under that heading, despite a very different incarnation of Giffen's involvement-- more or less my favorite version of Keith. David Hunt's inks are fine for the most part, but leave something to be desired at times. J.M. DeMatteis would continue solo into an ongoing series, ditching the more ominous quality here to be a quirky companion title to JLI. I'm glad to have finally knocked this one out after all these years of putting it off, and it was quite easy compared to The Weird, but neither are staying in my collection now. I did like Giffen's visual take on the Alien Atlas, though.

The Weird #4 (July, 1988)

The Weird was aroused by Batman, who was looking for a way to stop Superman; who was laughing off being double-teamed by Martian Manhunter and Doctor Fate; and Nuklon; who was taking on everyone else (including Guy Gardner, whose head will apparently be wrapped in gauze for 75% of this mini-series.) As one would expect in a Starlin book, The Weird recaps the prior issues of the mini-series, which offers the Dark Knight no clues as to how to defeat the Macrolatts that have possessed his super friend, and also Nuklon. So that's 7 pages of 38 down. The duo of possessed metahumans defeated the rest of the present heroes and lay waste to just enough of Metropolis to look like something out of Akira, but somehow not enough to rate any future mention or leave any trace that won't be cleaned up by the next Superman comic. Also, The Weird had a big speech about how the only way to save this reality was to prevent the Macrolatts from ever reaching it, so The Weird won't waste the remainder of his existence (measurable in hours) on a futile gesture. The Caped Crusader chided, "You may look like a man, Weird. But you've got a lot to learn about actually being one."

Page 16. The Weird kneels before the Macrolatts, speaking to the error of his ways and promising to tell his masters of potential threats to them in this realm. If there were any actual threats, they weren't shared with Batman, so we'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he played indignant before being slapped down by the Weird to help sell the lie. The Macrolatts are so arrogant as to be offended by the idea that anything could threaten them, and smack the Weird around before he fully surrenders, ostensibly to allow them to drain him of all his knowledge and power, ending on a twelve panel page of the possessed heroes slowly reaching toward Weird. Pages 22-24: The Weird reaches into Superman and Nuklon's chests with his variable density powers, pulls out a Macrolatt in each hand, and destroys them both. Well... that was a swift and convenient reversal of the story as told.

Oh, there's still 16 pages to fill? Super studies show that nothing can be done to save The Weird. He spends three pages building a small island as a monument to himself. Superman flies Billy Langley to the island across one page, and it's revealed in the opposing splash. Kind of looks like a sailing ship. Walter Langley's son is somehow meant to make it to this small personal island to play on a mostly barren rock whenever he feels lonely. The proposed logistics of that are the weirdest thing in The Weird. They hug, and then Martian Manhunter is stuck with the thankless task of flying this sobbing child back home to the mother that refused to visit, but was totally cool with allowing her son to fly off with Superman to parts unknown. I do wonder if there was some symbolism in the roles, but most probably J'Onn just got the **** detail, so Superman and Guy Gardner could fly off to unpopulated space to watch The Weird explode. I'd like to say Guy was the only Green Lantern dumb enough to risk it, but they're all so "confident" in their power rings, aren't they? The Weird does blow up a significant distance away, so I guess that explains why an energy bubble wouldn't have contained it. Superman, the Kevin Smith of super-heroes, sheds a tear at his passing. Even Guy looks a bit choked up, or maybe it's like how someone puking makes you want to puke, and Guy is just worried for his tear ducts. The final page is a somber distance shot of the island at sunset.

"...Armageddon" was by Jim Starlin, Berni Wrightson, & Dan Green. Well... that sucked. I liked Batman: The Cult when I got it a few years later, and almost ordered the new edition that's coming out, but I didn't like the production work on display. I mention that because I'm a lifelong Starlin fan, and I'm glad that he produced a script worthy of collaborating with Wrightson at some point, but this wasn't it. All the stuff with the father and son was unearned, because instead of developing that relationship to have any independent weight, they Zarolatted and punch-faced us. I can't remember if they bothered to name the wife/mother, but obviously the story didn't care any more about her than we did once it was done. This feels more like an outline than a complete narrative, and at least twice as many pages of art were produced than were needed to tell this basic of a story. Frankly, it was too obvious and unadorned to even earn its given name. The Lame would have been more honest. At least I got to see Wrightson draw the Alien Atlas, I guess?

The Weird #2-3 (May-June, 1988)

Smarmy TV news reporter undermines heroes and wonders aloud about The Weird. The remains of Walter Langley show off "his" powers for "his" son, then explains the basic cosmology of the story. Macrolatts are oppressive energy vampires who seek to expand their empire to our reality. Zarolatts are passive beings who are fed upon unto nonexistence by Macrolatts. Going straight from one reality to another means destruction, so the Macrolatts seduced homicidal narcissist loser Jason Morgan into transforming into a being capable of creating a bridge that would allow them safe passage. The Weird's proximity to these events while being fed upon gave it access to these events and a means of escape through the initial bridge, and its growing power is in service to its conviction toward the newly learned concept of freedom. Returned home, Billy Langley keeps all this from his mother.

"The Jason" found his failed businessman father's body hanging when he was four. His mother turned to the bottle and maybe prostitution before Jason found her body in bed after one of her gentleman callers took a razor to her. Despite being an impoverished orphan who was academically lax and had no prospects, Jason's belief that he was better than everyone else held fast despite his poor social skills, being an incel, living on the streets, doing a stint in prison for the violent assault of a woman, and eventually ending up a garbageman. He was primed to turn on humanity, ready to believe anything the Macrolatts told him if it meant power, and using it to take murderous advantage of at least one woman victim. Although held captive for a time, The Weird eventually freed himself, and at great personal distress, determined that the only way to stop The Jason was to snap his neck.

The Weird played hide & seek with Superman for fourteen continuous pages in one issue. The Justice League looked on throughout a couple of issues as The Weird had entanglements with other, more powerful beings. "Unbelievable! Not even J'Onn J'Onzz's incredible strength seems able to put a dent in that barrier." Nor Captain Atom's quantum energies, not Green Lantern Guy Gardner's power ring, nor Doctor Fate's mysticism, et cetera. Even after witnessing The Jason's execution, they mostly offer disapproving glares. Well-- that and an order from the Dark Knight to the green one. "It was just as you predicted, Batman. My powers of invisibility caught him completely by surprise." Unable to adapt in time, The Weird took two blows and a hard tumble. Unfortunately, two Macrolatts had escaped to possess Superman and... Nuklon? I guess for his variable density abilities, but yeah, not the guy you'd expect when you have all these powerhouses in Metropolis and Infinity Incorporated is all the way on the West Coast. Also, there was a whole bit about how The Weird had taken over a corpse rather than displace the life energy of a host, so by the rules laid out in the story, both these guys should have died.

"Questions" & "Confrontation" were by Jim Starlin, Berni Wrightson, & Dan Green. These single word narrative direction story titles speak to the reductive nature of the mini-series. Each issue has a few points to check off on a predictable agenda, and the rest is just vamping to fill out space. The art has its moments, but I think everyone involved would have benefited from the space being cut in half. It reminds me of when George Pérez quit Infinity Gauntlet midway through because he was sick of drawing fight scenes where a bunch of people gang up on Thanos and lose. So much of this series involves powerhouse DC heroes floating impotently outside energy fields or getting slapped around by what ultimately prove to be nothing characters, for clout more than narrative necessity. It's all so cheap, pointless, and passionless-- a purely commercial venture that nonetheless can't conceal its distaste toward its own existence. Anyway, I got through the second issue after coming home from HeroesCon, realized the Alien Atlas wasn't in that one, and decided we'd just double up on issues for the following week. This would keep, especially since I have to do my own scans on this thing.

The Weird #1 (April, 1988)

A fit blond white man with roughly half his physical form replaced by a jagged green crystalline substance sat cross-legged on the bathroom floor in his apartment and conjured an atomic energy form. This was an intended "bridge" for his "friends." A red gem of similar coarseness to his own body began to form in midair, but then an energy escaped it, leaving the gem to crumble away. The man, Jason Morgan, was shocked and dismayed.

The small energy ribbon hovered in the sky above Metropolis, and Superman investigated. The energy had no atomic structure-- no mass-- but when the Man of Steel passed his hand through it, he was knocked back three miles. By the time he flew back, J'Onn J'Onzz and Captain Atom had arrived to observe the energy. An hour later, there was a military cordon and a No Fly Zone, then the new Justice League were on the scene. Examinations through varied disciplines were attempted, including a science team on The Bug aircraft consisting of Blue Beetle, Batman, Black Canary, and more. When Doctor Fate's mystics were stymied, Green Lantern Guy Gardner attempted to probe deeper with his Oan Power Ring. An energy surged knocked out Gardner and blacked out the Bug and city as a whole.

Two probes were fired off by the energy ribbon in opposite directions. One was pursued by Superman, as it passed immaterially through a genetics lab's fluid beakers and into its complex computers. The other was followed by Manhunter to a funeral parlor, where the Martian met repeated resistance in contrast to the immediate aid and trust conferred upon the Kryptonian. The energy went into a service in progress, and caused the body of Walter Langley to vanish as mourners looked on in shock and horror. The probes reunited with the core energy, and the gathered heroes watched as the borrowed elements slowly coalesced into a new physical body of a lanky adult male in a queer red and black garb. Super senses detected that this being was not quite right, a sort of cosmic Frankenstein made up of misfit parts that were not quite human. The being collapsed into unconsciousness from the effort, and was taken to S.T.A.R. Labs for testing. Super senses determined that the Weird being, as dubbed by Blue Beetle, was molecularly unstable to a degree that its energies threatened a detonation that could destroy the Earth.

The Weird awakened and assisted upon attending to tasks that "he" refused to take the time to explain to the super-heroes, who attempted by failed to detain him/it by force. The Weird had its vibratory patterns thrown off by the proximity of the super-beings during its maturation period, which had altered the form in unexpected ways. This allowed The Weird to unintentionally push the Alien Atlas across a room, although the Manhunter fared better in a follow-up physical altercation than most of the rest of the League with their varied abilities. Regardless, the Weird at least briefly laid low everyone but Batman, while Superman had left prior to the fight to correct a compromised passenger jet's flight elsewhere.

The Weird sought out "The Jason," the half-crystal man that had been conjuring earlier, but found only his empty apartment. It/he declared the Jason to have a "dark and twisted nature" that would see him pursue world domination. However, a misalignment of the harmonic vibrations in the apartment would prevent Jason Morgan from attempting another inter-dimensional bridge for 18 hours, so the former Walt Langley had some time to kill, The Weird retained some of Langley's memories and motivations, causing him to visit Walt's former home. His widow, Eva, bemoaned his fatal mugging and the scene at the funeral parlor. "I don't care what the police say, I'm sure it's all the doing of that terrible green man." Meanwhile, in the back yard, young Billy Langley recognized his visiting father, even in this altered form...

"Conception" was by Jim Starlin, Berni Wrightson, & Dan Green. Following by introduction to Justice League International with their eighth issue, my reintroduction to the Man of Tomorrow via John Byrne, and a broader exploration of the Post-Crisis landscape moving out from the Millennium event series, I was a target audience member for The Weird house ads. However, I don't know when I had access to individual issues, and do know that I only read the first issue at some point after the final one. Neither experience was satisfying, and I won't know if I ever bothered with the meat of that story sandwich until I move on to covering the second installment. One quarter of "The Studio" and the crown prince of cosmic comics were long time friends who would prove a formidable pairing... on Batman: The Cult. This excessively long warm-up session noodles for 38 pages of heroes impotently watching stuff, then getting trashed by the second in a series of very powerful but rather boring sci-fi/magical Mister Spocks based on the visual template of Syzygy Darklock. I do like though that both Starlin and Wrightson are clearly a more comfortable fit on the Sleuth from Outer Space over Superman. Wrightson seems to relish his dark, exaggerated features over an off-model Man of Steel, with a broad flat nose and thick lips suggesting a less Caucasoid interpretation of the Manhunter, with the strongly implied prejudice that goes with it. I do wonder if Grant Morrison was influenced in his views of J'Onn J'Onzz here (and I think that's the only name he's been referred to in the issue.) Also, Wrightson's horror background gives the takedown of the heroes a more ominous quality than the story would seem to dictate, a sort of accidental element of interest in what otherwise feels more akin to a Radio Shack rudimentary science edutainment giveaway. The issue is way too long to accomplish so little, and I do wonder if this was initiated as a prestige squarebound mini-series for more niche audiences that was either determined not to rate the expensive ask, or was diverted to take advantage of the JLI's building heat on the newsstand.

Martian Manhunter Annual #2 (October, 1999)

"In the early years of my residence on Earth, I traveled to Africa, took the form of a gorilla and lived as one of them among a tribe in the wild." Though he was treated as one of the lowest status, J'Onn J'Onzz was at least tolerated, and even embraced as a friend by some. When human researchers came to study the apes, the G'Orilla studied them back. Then the poachers came while the Martian was elsewhere, slaughtering scientist and gorilla alike in pursuit of valuable... novelties. Severed heads. Ashtrays fashioned out of paws. The Sleuth from Outer Space tracked the poachers, and used his telepathy to force them to turn themselves in to authorities. He mused that the savage beast assumptions regarding gorillas was more a projection of human's own aggression and avarice than what he had seen amongst the tribe.

Even the various assaults and forced conversions during JLApe: Gorilla Warfare could all be understood as repercussions of the assassination of King Solovar-- but by whom? Who stood to gain? After purging his recent gorilla hybrid-form from his "shape-memory matrix" and restoring his super-hero default, J'Onn J'Onzz traveled to the JLA Watchtower to collaborate with The Batman on this impenetrable mystery. Following Green Lantern Annual #8, "The Morphic Resonance Array was destroyed, but not before a significant portion of the world's population had been transformed into gorillas. Chaos currently reigns. In response to your earlier comments, I'd like to point out that Green Lantern's condition was the reason for my hasty departure from the U.N." [JLA Annual #3 (September, 1999)]

Despite The Dark Knight Detective's constant condescension and dimminishment of his abilities, The Sleuth from Outer Space had also deduced the identity of the mastermind behind this incident, but felt the need to build a case in order to understand where to locate and how to defeat the culprit. To this end, private investigator John Jones, and other alien alter egos, interviewed known associates like Bobo T. Chimpanzee, Monsieur Mallah, Sam Simeon, and William "Congo Bill" Glenmorgan for insights. Sam fanboyed over the Manhunter from Mars, asking him to pose for a sketch.

While John Jones was playing Simian Team-Up, the JLA were doing real stuff, like averting nuclear catastrophe and joining Grogamesh in evacuating Gorilla City as a precaution. It was here that the Sleuth solved Cluedo, explaining that it was Gorilla Grodd in the coup with the assassination. Envy was the motive, and thanks to having absorbed all the mental energy of the gathered gorillas and neo-simians globally, Grodd had the power of a god to blast Martian Manhunter, who reverted to his natural form. However, fully ascending to a deity seemingly meant Grodd being stripped of his identity, and when the Martian pointed this out while "worshiping" the Super-Gorilla for his sacrifice, Grodd recoiled and collapsed. This was done in a sequence of three double-page spreads, joining the many Image-style visuals for big annual storytelling that did thankfully help the pacing on these thickish books. A babbling, vegetative Grodd was locked away in an asylum, and Ulgo sought to normalize relations between Gorilla City and the human world.

"Fear and Loathing on the Planet of the Apes" was by Len Kaminski, Gus Vasquez, & Mark Propst. As I was suffering discontent about a year into the run of the 1998 ongoing series, I especially enjoyed this, the final ever Martian Manhunter/Magnificent 7 JLA solo annual. Which I largely lay at the feet of Ostrander/Mandrake, but that's an admittedly minority opinion. Kaminski was a writer that I always tended to enjoy, who should have had a better career, and who I thought had a really good handle on the Alien Atlas. He and fill-in writer John Arcudi were the guys I kept hoping would take over the series when Ostrander was done with it, only for the title itself to give out after three years. But it was so good, the DC Message Board lectured me. Here, I loved stuff like J'Onn inserting himself into non-human Earth populations, and I really appreciated the trend of pitting J'Onn against Grodd. He's best known as a Flash villain, but the mental powers and outsider perspective made their pairings natural. Obviously it would have been even better if these Silver Age revivalists had, y'know, revived actual Silver Age Martian Manhunter villains, but that's asking too much. Grodd's one of my favorite DC villains, going all the way back to Challenge of the Super Friends, so bring him on.

Vasquez has a rubbery quality that suits J'Onn in a way it wouldn't any other JLAer, and I felt it was more of a piece with the popular style of Howard Porter on JLA broadly and Don Hillsman III very specifically on the Martian Marvel in this time period. I especially liked his Natural Form Martian, which I digitally "cut out" in one of my first forays into Microsoft Paint, to post on my late '90s Web-TV site, so we go way back. For the artist, it was mostly just back-ups and one-offs going forward, though he was still kicking around as late at the 2010s. Kaminski did some more JLA work here and there, but was mostly out of comics after the turn of the century, and I understand is currently committed to a wheelchair in a nursing home against his will. That certainly puts things in perspective. But hey, sorry for the delay in wrapping up this coverage. It's been a lot of apes for a long time. Despite generally liking this storyline, I had misgivings about taking it on in the blogging medium, especially once I felt compelled to look at each book for my different venues. Well founded misgivings, hence the delay.

JLA Annual #3 (September, 1999)

After finally opening diplomatic relations with the U.N, and revealing the existence of Gorilla City to the world, King Solovar was assassinated. His nephew and successor, Prince Regent Ulgo, then blamed humanity and launched a counter-offensive. But also, Ulgo was secretly a member of the Inner Circle of the Simian Scarlet Cultural Purity Movement, an extremist faction of super intelligent gorillas. Other members included the mobster Grimm, General Zolog, Admiral Trafalgo, and the sorceress Abu-Gita, but they were all dancing on the strings of Gorilla Grodd.

Martian Manhunter received a request at the Watchtower from Gorilla City to send a diplomatic envoy of JLA members to help mitigate the damage. Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Dark Flash were openly deployed, while an invisible Alien Atlas followed along in secret. Before reaching Gorilla City, the party was ambushed, and exposed to a gas that turned the lot into gorillas. Worse, some form of mind control was exerted over them, causing them to turn on the "hu-mans." However, the Martian Manhunter retained his wits, if not his form, and used his telepathy to mostly restore the JLA's more human instincts. Back at the Watchtower, Green Lantern Kyle Rayner thought that he was being hazed by the more veteran members of "JLApe." Batman and the Martian Hu-Manhunter worked together on a cure for the "Gorillabomb," but the Simian Sleuth from Outer Space had to pursue help from Animal Man, who was disoriented by troubling memories of a "Coyote Messiah" and the like. Recognizing "I'm important to the plot," Buddy Baker helps J'Onn J'Onzz understand how to use the morphogenetic field to restore the team.

In his absence, the male JLApes began posturing for dominance to court Wonder Woman as a mate, and the Manhunter had to reassert their identity matrices telepathically. Unfortunately, Ulgo then deployed gorillabombs at the United Nations, transforming the entire body while adding Green Lantern to the apes. The intended cure was used to restore the U.N., but the JLA were still trapped in gorilla form. The JLA divided their forces to address various fields in play in the conflict with Gorilla City, while Batman couldn't shake the nagging suspicion that J'Onn was hiding something.

"Gorilla Warfare" was by Len Kaminski, Jason Orfalas, and Jordi Ensign. Aside from poor work-life-podcasting balance this month, my ambivalence toward covering this event (and its scale/page count) contributed to my low productivity this month. I needn't have hesitated, because this was a fun and relatively brisk read with a bunch of puns and two-page spreads (one of which was interrupted by a fold-out ad for a video game about monkeys and bananas, appropriately enough. I'm not wild for the artist's Semeiks-influenced humans, but his apes strongly reflect the Arthur Adams covers, which is surely a welcome sight. If you're interested, the recent podcast Dial F for Flanger - Episode 24 covers the issue in greater detail.

DC Power 2024 (March, 2024)

If you haven't been following the story so far, Raphael Arce gained empathic powers during the Lazarus Planet event, which led him to a confrontation between Martian Manhunter and the psychic ghost of Doomsday that caused his corpse to be pressurized into a blood gem of sorts. Later, around the same time Supergirl and the Alien Atlas were dragged to the metaphysical Hell to again deal with Doomsday, we learned the infernal realm also hosted the lost soul of Raphael Arce. However, in the afterlife Arce had taken on the identity of Bloodwynd, with a new array of abilities. He was at this point in the Fifth Circle of Hell, and had to use a demon in each circle as a "passport" into the next. He was apparently working his way through the circles in pursuit of The Devil himself, and had randomly been assigned the role of "A Superman for Hell," whatever that means. Bloodwynd was sidetracked by an adventure outside Hell alongside the actual Superman and Etrigan the Demon. He then returned to Hell, where we rejoin him in the Eighth Circle: Fraud.

Raphael was meant to be tormented by "his" personal Hell, invoking the Arce surname and images from the career of the original Bloodwynd. But also, Raphael learned the history of the actual Blood Gem, crafted by antebellum slaves to slay their cruel master and gain infernal power from the act. The Blood Gem had been handed down through the ages, and passed through the hands of Raphael's mother. Returning to Bloodwynd, even Raphael was surprised to learn that he was a distinct entity from J'Onn J'Onzz, rather than an assumed identity of the Martian. Felix Faust eventually consigned Bloodwynd to the pit, which I wasn't aware of, and may be an invention of this story.

The demon assigned to torture Bloodwynd confirmed that he was a blood relative of Raphael, and that any who die while wearing the family's Blood Gem are immediately damned to Hell. Raphael claimed Bloodwynd was a hero who saved lives and served with the Justice League, and so fought the demon to liberate his soul. Bloodwynd finally declared himself Quintus Arce, the brother of Raphael's mother, who together faked his death so that her son might be spared the curse of the Blood Gem. Instead, they were both temporarily incarnations of Bloodwynd, until Raphael drained all vestiges of the mantle to allow Quintus access to Paradise. Quintus made Raphael promise to be a better Bloodwynd than he had managed, and to tell his sister that he loved her before vanishing. Finally, the new, sole Bloodwynd grabbed his uncle's demonic tormentor to grant him access to the Ninth Circle, to confront The Devil...

"Pit Stop" was by Lamar Giles, Sean Damien Hill, & Anthony Fowler Jr. I think the 8-pager is the best of the new Bloodwynd stories, which admittedly isn't saying much, but it did make sense, engaged me, and sorted out necessary details. It doesn't make it any less misguided, though. In the early days of the internet, Bloodwynd got picked up by African-American comics catalogers and touted as a high level powerhouse deserving of more exposure. However, in all my years of following the character as peripheral to Martian Manhunter and as a Black super-hero, I never heard of anybody who had a legitimate affection for him. It was all utility-- the abilities, the visibility, not being a "street-level" stereotype. But fans? Not really.

The main reason Bloodwynd is still a recognized quantity is that he was high profile during the Death of Superman, and strong enough to be one of the only Leaguers still standing after trading blows with Doomsday. Bloodwynd was created by Dan Jurgens, for his League book that was a key tie-in to the Doomsday arc, who got a splash page with Ice in Superman #75. It was by design, but Jurgens never actually put the character over, and abandoned him in the rushed wrap-up of said Justice League America run. Sure, he's on the big funeral for Superman poster, with the foul play red herring of J'Onn J'Onzz also appearing separately, but he's sort of like Dan Ackroyd at the "We Are The World" recording session. Bloodwynd is a Where's Waldo-- a "who is that and what was he doing there" geek drink night trivial pursuit answer. No matter what else you try to do with him, the very name of Bloodwynd in disqualifying. Bloodwynd isn't an heroic identity, but a gastrointestinal disorder. What do you call two Bloodwynds? A pair of Arces. A Bloodynd is when you fart so hard that you explosively rupture a hemorrhoid. A Bloodwynd is like racing stripes in your underwear, but it gets up the crack and looks like spray paint splatter from being kissed directly by the pucker. Bloodwynd is when you queef while on the rag. No good comes from a Bloodwynd.

And despite all this lip service, if DC cared so much, why have they passed Raphael Arce around from book to book and across multiple creative teams? Why saddle him with such a lame sub-New Bloods/gene bomb/"so you just got powers from an event book" origin story? Now that DC barely publishes anything not directly related to their Trinity, do they really have room to explore a multi-hero Bloodwynd dynasty, especially when the mysterious and slightly sinister old Bloodwynd has given way to a plain Jane goody-two-shoes model? There are ten stories in this book, most spotlighting a single hero or villain of African descent. There are three different variant covers spotlighting different groupings of these characters. The main cover offers eight characters, a variant has seven, and then there's a Far Sector one with about a dozen. Bloodwynd made none of these covers. He's not one of the five who got a Who's Who bio page, either. Nobody actual cares. This is trademark management personified, that will get killed off in a different crossover event down the line, until we get a third case of Bloodwynd... like Montezuma's Revenge.

Action Comics 2023 Annual #1 (February, 2024)

Thy foes sought slaves, to scrape and kneel.
Not fighting men of hell and steel.

I swear, you bring The Demon Etrigan into a story arc to spout a couple lines of doggerel and then get taken out by a super-kid with a sword? What are you even doing? And I have to cop to not knowing, because I only grazed the first three chapters of this serial to make sure that I wasn't missing any other Bloodwynd content. Like for instance, I though Blue Earth were just domestic super powered xenophobes, but are they from an actual Earth-Blue in the multiverse? I mean, this book starts on "Earth Al Ghul," a quasi-medievel fantasy setting and the base from which the "Empire of Shadows" conquered countless worlds in the "Dark Multiverse." I put quotations not because these aren't real things in the current DC continuity, but to speak of them mockingly from a place of ignorance, as elders do. All you nerds to brayed about how you weren't confused by multiple Earths before the Crisis? I hope you're lapping at this like a pig in slop. Then as now, you can have at it. I have always, will always, side with the Anti-Monitor on this anti-matter. That's a pun, son. Y'see, stories should matter, but when there's infinite variations on the same old crud, it's the opposite of mattering. Get it? You're a lost cause, boy.

Superman, Bloodwynd, and Etrigan saved a family from execution for defying the bad guys, hence the pull quote. Then Bloodwynd and Superman ran interference against the evil forces while The Demon advanced to the castle to save The Man of Steel's adopted daughter from being corrupted/possessed by the alternate universe granddaughter of Ra's al Ghul. *sharp inhale* But see, Etrigan stabbed in the back with Cloud Strife's ridiculously outsized sword (that's a Final Fantasy VII reference, dear child. This dumb visual had a clear cultural origin point.) by *checks Wiki* Otho-Ra. It's a lousy name, but don't worry, they recite the same Kryptonian fable twice here after having done it last issue and I saw at least once before with full visuals in a prior issue to let us all know her handle will be Starchild and her twin brother's Red Son by the time this is all over with. Nothing like completely exhausting a trademark. Just ask Strange Visitor.

There's a bit in here where Otho-Ra's arms are wrapped in chains that are said to be formed of links derived from each fallen foe, which I guess is where the new Bloodwynd also gets it from, since he's vaguely tied to Janan al Ghul's access of Earth-Zero via Hell. I didn't realize Earth-Zero was the new Earth-One, or Earth-Prime? I can't even keep track of something as basic as which Earth the name brand heroes are supposed to be on anymore. Thanks DC. It's like how I don't know if Blue Earth is an actual Earth, because those guys were also in the first three issues of the new Power Girl series starring a Gen-Z author-insert with no personality traits in common with the character I used to know, and I'm not checking for Bloodwynd there. What I do know, is that the chains hurt the minimalist Space Ghost indebted design that is arguably the best thing about the Bloodwynd concept. Kind of like how being a brash feminist with over the shoulder boulder holders was Power Girl's trademark, rather than crippling insecurity. These clouds aren't going to shout for themselves.

Giant energy portal in the sky unleashed massive space vessel flanked by faceless invaders and Man-Bats, in case things weren't already Marvel Phase Four enough around here. Blue Earth saw their two-faced leader Laura Ingraham "Norah Stone" was really Sister Shadow, and rather than doubling down by buying merch under the new branding, were convinced to repel the actual invaders alongside the Superman Family. Least realistic story element, based on our current political hellscape? After contributing little more than poor rhymes, Etrigan and Bloodwynd-- like-- gestured at the portal and made everything incoming on our side of it burst into flames? Maybe lead with that, guys. Also, The Demon claimed Janan al Ghul's soul for Hell, because something something her portal had left her indebted something infernal. Also, Bloodwynd and Etrigan stopped appearing at this point. I don't know what their deal was in this story, overall and specifically at this point.

Again, I skimmed most of the story line, so I don't know if I'm supposed to know who the construction worker who used to be a super-villain and his son are supposed to be, except the guys who tell us how awesome the Superman Family is as a capstone to the lauded recent run of the title. Which based on what I just read, was either well past the point of ending on a high note, or the kind of people willing to pay $4.99 for a monthly comic are so beaten down that this junk rates. You guys, am I just too old for corporate super-hero comics? Am I the one who needs to leave?

"New Worlds: Part Five: The Conclusion" was written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson with art by Max Raynor. It's funny how for decades artists lusted after paper quality that would allow for true blacks, and today they happily turn them back into limp grays with lame digital effects meant to make up for their inability to properly ink their own work. The visuals are otherwise fine, though necessarily a comedown from a relatively name talent like Eddy Barrows, big enough to rate actual embellishment by other hands. One thing I do find deeply annoying about both creators' work though is a tendency toward double page spreads... of narrative. Double splash pin-ups were a nuisance in the '90s, but this is horizontal multi-panel narratives throughout the books. Since it bridges writers and artists, I have to assume this comes down to editorial, or maybe a trend in the mainstream comics I don't read anymore. There's a lot of this in Rogue Sun, an Image title I was following, so maybe the latter. I hate it, because it leaves everything on a flat, narrow plane like a newspaper Sunday strip. I think they're shooting for Hitch-style "widescreen," but it has the exact opposite effect. Nothing pops, there's no surprises, plus I have to read into the staples. It's anti-comics, seemingly made for a sideways slung tablet, and even then that shrinks the image. I want nothing to do with any of this. Too much exposition and running snark this time, so no room to discuss Bloodwynd II's vague red energy zapping abilities and general pointlessness. Next week, then...