Return of the Drinking-Age Comics

Once again we take a little trip down Memory Lane with some comics that are old enough to serve in the military and drink. Three of the comics below are from my various field trips to flea markets where great comics can be found for practically pennies. In this economy, you gotta love cheap entertainment.

The first mini-review is from a series I’ve actually managed to keep a hold of since I bought them way back when. While I’m not usually a hoarder of comics, the Badger series always held a special place in my black heart.

Normally when I run mini-reviews I go for five, but it’s been a busy week at Casa de Teehan so this week we’re just doing four--but they’re four good ‘uns.

Let’s roll.


The Badger, #13
July 1986
“Musical Dimensions”
by Mike Baron
First Comics

The Badger was always a favorite of mine and I always thought it a shame that First Comics folded in 1991 as I thought they had a lot of potential and something both entertainingly different and interesting to offer the comic book world. The series features Norbert Sykes, a Vietnam vet with a strong case of multiple-personality-disorder (the psychology of the series isn’t what one could call spot-on) whose dominant personality is that of masked vigilante The Badger.

Badger is a world-class martial artist and has the apparent ability to talk with animals. His grasp on reality is a little off, but that doesn’t seem to stop him from being fairly successful stomping bad guys and teaching manners to the ill-behaved of Madison, Wisconsin. When not getting in trouble via his masked identity, Badger works for Ham--a displaced 5th century Druid who uses his skills to amass financial gain and mystical power.



In this issue, Ham’s former sponsor, Lord Weterlackus, is out for blood, but Ham uses the Badger’s personality shifts to distract the demon lord and escape into another dimension. Meanwhile, as Norbert’s Badger personality recedes, out comes Pierre--a serial killer personality. Dairy, the on-staff psychiatrist/secretary brings the Badger personality back to the forefront and Norbert--as the Badger--goes on to defeat Lord Weterlackus by beating him with a stick and feeding him to vermin.

While all this is happening, Ham finds himself traveling dangerous dimensions until he finally ends up falling into the salad of one Judah Maccabee in the pan-dimensional city of Cynosure. Judah, a furry pro-wrestler who usually appears in the Nexus comic (also from First), befriended Badger in a previous issue, so Ham and Judah strike up a bargain in which Judah will help Ham return to the 20th century if Ham will then send Judah back to the 26th. The pair travel back in time and land in Badger’s lunch. Judah and Badger reunite and go on a beer run before Ham fulfills his part of the bargain and sends Judah back into the future.

Sadly, Ham’s aim is a bit off.

This issue showed a lot of the humor typical of writer Mike Baron’s Badger series. The artwork by Bill Reinhold is nice and clean, and there are a lot of great little details in the background that really add to the overall book.

This issue is backed up by an installment in the Zoomtown series, also by Baron.


Secret Origins, #25
April 1988
Legion of Super-Heroes: “The Dreams of Youth” by Paul Levitz, Rick Stasi, and Dick Giordano
The Atom by Roy Thomas, Mike Clark, and Bob Downs
DC Comics

This post-Crisis series run of Secret Origins was created with the purpose of presenting the new official origins for DC characters whose backgrounds might not have been very clear given the big reboot of the entire DC comics line in 1985.

In this doubled-up issue, we’re first given the origins of the infamous Legion of Super-Heroes. I was a big fan of the comic back in the late 70s and early 80s and I knew their origins pretty well (at least once a year we got the origin story somewhere). Not too much has changed. The three original members are still Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad, and Cosmic Boy and are sponsored by wealthy tycoon RJ Brande.

This new Origins issue uses Brande’s sponsorship and creation of the Legion like a hammer in taking care of the little problem that Legion membership required that an individual’s power had to be utterly unique from their race.


Both Cosmic Boy and Saturn Girl would not be eligible for membership under this rule, normally, but Brande decides that ability, heroism and character is more than enough to justify some memberships. And for those who remember RJ Brande’s big secret from pre-Crisis days, and his mysterious relationship with one of the later Legionnaires, Chameleon Boy--you get a nod. That little detail hasn’t been changed by the Crisis.

In the Atom’s story, we’re not getting Ray Palmer--but the All-Star Squadron version of the Atom, Al Pratt. Al is a short, sad-sack of a guy and his story is like something out of one of those Charles Atlas cartoons that often showed up in these older comics. Al Pratt is pushed around and shoved around. He ends up befriending a washed up old boxer named Joe Morgan who trains Al to become a heavily muscled fighting machine. After a lot of hard work and grunting under Morgan’s expert tutelage, Al Pratt becomes a guy no one pushed around. Unfortunately, Al has a bit of pent-up anger from his years as a shrimp, but Morgan helps direct this rage into other directions, and when it comes down to saving a girl from gangsters--the Atom is born.

Both stories were interesting just to see how they handled the DC reboot, but both stories also suffer from a lot of convenient plotting. Storywise, I wonder how much better they would have worked had each origin story had a whole issue’s length to have more believable plot and character developments. Still, I’d recommend the issue at least for the Atom storyline. You don’t see much coverage of those Golden Age characters much, so this was a pretty nice read.


Mister Miracle, #7
August 1989
“Just Another Day”
by JM DeMatteis and Len Wein
DC Comics
Ah... Blue and Gold! That is to say, this issue features a visit from Mister Miracle’s fellow Justice Leaguers Blue Beetle and Booster Gold. Beetle and Booster were DC’s answer to Laurel and Hardy. They’re well-meaning goofballs (who happen to be superheroes) who decide to drop in, with pizza and beer, on Mr. Miracle in his civilian identity of Scott Free.

Unfortunately, nothing involving Blue and Gold is ever simple, easy or peaceful. When Beetle’s bug flies over Free’s hometown of Baily, it is spotted by both Free’s wife, Big Barda, and former JLA nemesis Professor Ivo...well, several Professor Ivos who happen to be sharing a room at a local motel. The sight of the bug sends both Barda and the Ivos into a frenzy. Booster and Beetle visit Free, who is less than happy to see them disrupting his quiet civilian life, and all hell breaks loose as one of the Ivos appear at Free’s fix-it shop.



The predictable brawl ensues as Free and Barda hang back to protect their secret identities and leave Blue and Gold to handle the murderous Ivo. After it’s revealed that Ivo isn’t the original Professor Ivo, but an android, Blue and Gold pull of the gloves and quickly dispatch the android--just in time for the rest of the Ivo androids to descend on the fix-it shop. This time, it doesn’t look like Barda and Scott Free will be able to avoid their alter egos of Big Barda and Mister Miracle anymore.

The Mister Miracle series had a lot of humor--unsurprising given DeMatteis’s similar use of humor in the concurrent run of Justice League of America. There’s a very amusing scene in which Beetle has been thrown by the android Ivo and, because the crowd’s attention is elsewhere, Barda catches him with one hand and tosses him back into the fray, commenting, “Nice tush.”

It’s a light-hearted issue which serves to lull us into a false sense of security before the storyline gets darker a few months later as Free and Barda end up battling the forces of Darkseid.


The Saga of the Swamp Thing, #7
November 1982
“I Have Seen the Splintered Timbers of a Hundred Shattered Hulls”
by Marty Pasko
DC

Following the Swamp Thing movie, DC decided to revive the Swamp Thing in comic book form in 1982. It would be a Alan Moore would take over the writing and turn Swamp Thing into the DC classic we all know and love, so the storylines aren’t as sophisticated yet, but one sees the seeds of the future Swamp Thing in there somewhere. But they’re just seeds--not even sprouted yet. Swamp Thing still thinks he’s Alec Holland and has no inkling as to his true heritage nor the scope of his powers. Meeting Constatine is still a long way off.

In this issue, Swamp Thing is aboard a boat owned by the Sunderland Corporation to rescue Elizabeth Tremayne from not only a tentacled virus beast and a bunch of people turned into monsters. It turns out that the tentacle beast is a conglomeration of aliens that crashed into the ocean and was then infected by toxic waste (in the form of an experimental herpes virus) courtesy of the Sunderland Corporation.


Now grown larger, and infecting other humans it comes across, it drags ships down to dismantle them to build a vessel in which it can go home. Unfortunately, the threat the alien beast poses to other ships means it has to be stopped, so Alex, Elizabeth, and Dennis Barclay create a pesticide which defeats the monster and the virus-infected humans aboard the ship.

It was an okay issue. Knowing Swamp Thing’s future makes seeing this version of the Swamp Thing a little interesting. The comic is backed up by a Phantom Stranger story in which a woman is haunted by a series of ghost soldiers with a special connection to her.


And that’s it for now. Look for future reviews of classic comics in future columns. And hey--if you got a longbox in your attic you want to get rid of--lemme know. I might even give you a fin.

Cheers!


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.