Five Comics Old Enough To Drink: Mini-Reviews

I love flea markets.

Back in the day I used to cruise for pieces to add to my retrocomputer collection. These days I find they’re a great source for old geek ephemera.

Case in point, at a recent flea market I came across a table with some longboxes of comics--fifty cents apiece. Most were titles from the 80s which (along with the 70s) covers my favorite period for comics.


I snapped up a good handful (and will be going back for more), but this week I’m going to treat you fine, fine folks to five mini reviews of comics that are old enough to drink. You might call it random, I call it a fun little nostalgic trip.


So in no particular order...

Suicide Squad, #1
May 1987
“Trial By Blood”
by John Ostrander, Luke McDonnell & Karl Kesel
DC

Take a bunch of relatively minor supervillains and put them on the chain gang. Kind of. Mistress of Machiavellian schemes Amanda Waller reforms the legendary Suicide Squad by pulling such villains as Captain Boomerang, Plastique, Deadshot, The Enchantress, and Mindboggler out of jail, fitting them with explosive bracelets, and putting them to work for the US government as the ultimate black ops organization. If they do well, they get paroled early. If they do poorly, they may not survive the mission. Lead by Rick Flag and Bronze Tiger, the team’s first mission is to go up against their soon-to-be regular nemeses, The Jihad, a super-terrorist organization based out of the fictional middle Eastern nation of Qurac.

This era of DC comics started to feature a lot of baddies based on folks like Hussein and Khadafi. The Soviets just weren’t sexy as villains anymore. This was also a great series to read at the same time as the Giffen-DeMatteis version of Justice League as the relationships between Amanda Waller and Max Lord made for some interesting behind-the-scenes machinations in the world of DC's superheroes.

Ad in the back: Captain Olympic offers me cash and prizes for selling cards and gifts to my friends and neighbors out of their free catalog. Was Captain Capitalism busy?


Power Man and Iron Fist Vol 1, #123
May 1986
“Getting Ugly”
by Jim Owsley and Mark Bright
Marvel

While the story in this issue was pretty good, I was disappointed that it didn’t include Iron Fist. Instead, Luke Cage teams up with the Falcon and Detective Sergeant Tyrone King as they hunt a glowing white super-powered individual who only attacks black victims. It’s a racially charged issue with accusations of police indifference because they can’t do much to catch the racist killer, and toward Luke Cage--implying that he’s turned his back on the black community. Because of all this, the hunt for the killer becomes very personal--although Sergeant King points out that a killer is a killer and that race shouldn’t enter into it at all. Falcon seems to be along for the ride more because he’s a black superhero than for anything else. When they find the glowing-white supervillain, he’s eventually beaten into submission and it’s discovered that underneath the white glow, the person beneath is also black! Suddenly it’s an issue of a psychotic killer while the earlier race issue dissolves as far as the protesters and news commentators are concerned. The comic ends with Falcon, Cage, and King sitting on a couch watching the shift in news coverage, then shutting off the TV for some reflection.

Power Man and Iron Fist was a title big on social commentary--this issue being a bit more obvious about it than most. The biggest problem with the story was that it hinged on a guy banging on a computer to get the correct data about the bad guy.

Yeesh

Ad in the back: Power Pack and the Amazing Spider-Man talk to kids with tips on preventing sexual abuse.


The Phantom Zone #1
January 1982
“The Haunting of Charlie Kweskill!”
by Steve Gerber
DC

This was an odd little book, but I’d like to find the rest of this series to see how it develops. It starts out with an ace paste-up man at The Daily Planet, Charlie Kweskill, having some sleep problems due to strange dreams he’s been having. He gets sent home for the day and the story moves into his dreams of far-off, destroyed Krypton and the invention of the Phantom Zone projector by Superman’s father, Jor-el. There is then a long bit of narrated history concerning the great criminals of Krypton and their various sentences to the Phantom Zone, all the way up to the time of the planet’s destruction. We learn, then, that Charlie Kweskill was actually a former inmate of the Phantom Zone with no memory of his past due to exposure to gold kryptonite. Superman helps him get the job at the newspaper, but now suspects that something suspicious is behind Charlie's odd behavior of late--and that there might be a connection between Charlie and some odd technology-related thefts around Metropolis. Apparently, criminal shades from the Phantom Zone (led by General Zod) manipulate Charlie into creating a device which not only frees them, but traps Charlie and Superman into the Phantom Zone--powerless to stop Krypton’s greatest criminals from running roughshod over Earth.

There’s a bit of a mix of classic Superman with a touch of House of Secrets which works surprisingly well. While the extensive use of flashbacks make for a slow pacing for most of the story, it sets up the larger story well.

Inside ad: NBC’s Super Star Saturday POW! featuring The Flintstone Comedy Show, Smurfs, The Kid Super Power Hour with Shazam and the kids at Hero High, Space Stars, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, The Daffy/Speedy Show, and Bullwinkle!


Justice League of America, #219
October 1983
“Crisis in the Thunderbolt Dimension!”
by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway
DC

During the annual Justice League/Justice Society reunion (a tradition from pre-Crisis on Infinite Earth days), the enigmatic pink thunderbolt controlled by the Justice Society’s Johnny Thunder goes rogue and starts attacking and taking down those heroes who were specifically born on Earth-One (Flash, Firestorm, Zatanna, et al)--but leaving those from Earth-2 unharmed (Black Canary, Red Tornado, Hour Man, et al). Meanwhile, the Crime Champions from Earth-2 start attacking various places on Earth-1. This sends most of the heroes off to combat the supervillains while Black Canary and Starman investigate the mysterious actions of Johnny Thunder’s Thunderbolt by following its energy path back to its home dimension. There they discover the architect of all the recent trouble--Earth-1’s counterpart to Johnny Thunder!

It’s an action-packed issue that makes for a fun read. It’s another one of those storylines I’d like to see how it’s resolved.

(on the JLA satellite)
Black Canary (to Huntress and Power Girl): ...oh it’s about this long, and as wide around as a marking pen.
Power Girl: Tell Oliver I’m impressed, Dinah. I didn’t think you could make an arrow that size...never mind that it would fly.

(What? Did you think she was talking about something else? Get your minds out of the gutters, kids.)


Tales of the Teen Titans, Vol. 1, #44
July 1984
“The Judas Contract: Book Three - There Shall Come a Titan!”
by Marv Wolfman and George Perez
DC

This was an interesting little find. My vision of the Titans these days has gotten so warped by the cartoon show that I sometimes forget how great the actual comics were way back when. This was a particularly interesting one as it features three pretty major things in the Teen Titan world. First, it’s the first appearance of Dick Grayson in his new persona as Nightwing. Gone are the shorty-shorts and brightly-colored cape. Let someone else play boy-hostage. Nightwing it is. Second, we have a detailed origin story for long-time Titan foe Deathstroke the Terminator. We learn about his military past and his special training. We learn of the experimental procedures he went under and his time in Vietnam, followed by his switch to mercenary/assassin work. And we learn about his family and how he came to be responsible for the disfigurement of his son--who is our third special introduction in this issue--Deathstroke’s son and new Titan member--Jericho. We also meet Deathstroke’s wife (who is the one responsible for Deathstroke missing an eye), and we learn more about the betrayal of the team by Terra.

As far as issues go, this was a pretty significant one. While there is very little action in this issue--it being mostly taken up by backstory, the backstory is interesting and the first appearance of Nightwing and Jericho make it a real find.

Not bad for fifty cents.

And the back has an ad for Atari’s Moon Patrol game. Anyone remember that?


So there you have five reviews of comics that are as old or older than perhaps half our readers. Or maybe not. It's amazing how much has changed with these titles and their characters over the years--and how much has stayed roughly the same.

But in just about all cases--it's a very welcome revelation that the stories still hold up fairly well, and their entertainment value remains solidly intact.

Let's hear it for the classics!

Enduring!

For information on how to get your book, comic, movie, whatever reviewed on Falling Off the Shelf, or to send hate mail, feel free to contact me at john (at) johnteehan (dot) com.