The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1317: Action Comics #1000, June 2018

I've fallen a bit behind on my current comics, so I though that in order to catch up on the new Brian Bendis Superman stories, I'd read them for the project. We'll start here, with Action Comics #1000, and see where he takes us.

What more can I say about Superman, though? There is actually something I have to try to work out. It's my understanding that Frank Miller is going to be writing a Superman series in the near future. I can't wrap my head around the idea of a right-wing nut job like Miller breathing life into Superman. Miller's politics seem antithetical to everything I believe about the Man of Steel. But that's the thing, isn't it? Superman's not real - he's a fictional character that can come to be representative of anything. This means he can come to be representative of things that I might not agree with. Not that I think you can push the character too far, unless you want a repeat of the original run of Supreme. There is always something of the socialist in Superman, right from the beginning. But if Superman is indeed for everyone, then he has to be for right- and left-leaning readers. Perhaps Miller's take will satisfy that other demographic.

As far as Mr. Bendis' work on the Big Blue, it's hard to say, thus far. He provides us with a nice little in media res prologue, and drops the bomb that Krypton's destruction may not have been what it seemed. Intriguing, but it's the handling of the characters that I'm more excited to see from Mr. Bendis. His gift for dialogue is virtually unparalleled in contemporary comics.

So, more Superman to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1178: Action Comics #523, September 1981

A very silly story about an alien that convinces Steve Lombard that they're brothers in order to steal Steve's athletic prowess.

I'm not even kidding a little.

As I noted a couple of days ago, Superman faces some very, very strange menaces. I think it's because most writers recognize that if they used the kinds of challenges that are usual for other superheroes, Superman would fix the problem immediately. But when you go to the stranger side of things, antagonists can have very weird and specific powers that baffle, but never quite defeat, the Man of Steel.

More Action to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1177: Action Comics #484, June 1978

Have to say I'm becoming quite taken with Action Comics. I think we're going to stick with it a little while. I'm in the process of tracking down Marv Wolfman's run on the title, but we'll be reading stuff from throughout the recent history of the run, though not quite into New 52 or Rebirth territory.

This is a great story, the story of the original Superman (at this pre-Crisis moment still living on Earth-2) and his wedding to Lois Lane. I always thought that what happened to them in Infinite Crisis was absolutely criminal, and I'll admit that it's what turned me off of Geoff Johns's writing. Taking away a happy ending from the original superhero is almost as bad an idea as joining the DC and Watchmen universes....oh, yeah.

Today's issue also gives us an interesting interpretation of what Clark would be like if his super side was sublimated. He's far less unassuming in this version of himself, channeling his innate desire to do right into his reporting, becoming something of a newsman action hero. This is the Clark that Lois falls in love with, and it's actually quite heart-wrenching when she realizes she's been right about Clark being Superman all along, and thinks that when his mind is healed, he won't want her for a wife anymore. Superman, of course, does the exact right thing, and joins with her in a Kryptonian ceremony.

Also, can I just say, Lois is looking absolutely smoking on that cover. Well done, Mr. Garcia-Lopez.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1176: Action Comics #479, January 1978

I've never actually seen the cover of this comic. I have in my collection a fair number of coverless comics that have found their way into the boxes over the years. I'm not picky about this sort of thing. Though the covers are wonderful works in and of themselves, I'm more particular about the story being complete, rather than the comic itself. I'm more inclined to not include a comic in my collection if the center pages have come loose, and there is thus story missing. This is the case with many of my Archie comics, and, sadly, one of my old Animal Man Strange Adventures issues.

But today's story is intact, if coverless. Superman faces a foe that only he can see, which makes for some kind of hilarious panels of the big guy doing what looks like those instructional dance photographs that you might find in an old disco album.

(Tell me there's someone out there who gets that comparison...)

It's a competent story, and indicative of the Superman stories we see in this era, pre-Crisis, pre-gritwash. Writers appeared to just throw the most outlandishly powerful and weird villains at Superman to see what he would do. The random bad guys he faces in the 70s remind me of the weirdos the Doom Patrol fought a decade earlier. That's a strange lineage to trace, but I think that Superman is often far more weird that we give him credit for. Consider the wackiness of the 50s and 60s, much like that of Batman - I think in a lot of ways that surreality has never really left the Man of Steel. It's not just that he's equipped to deal with villains that are strong, but also those that are strange. The super human is not only physically superior, mentally superior, but also conceptually superior, able to intuit about alienness. Which Superman does very, very well.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 843: DC Comics Presents #78, February 1985

(A busy day today, so I'll get to blogging this tomorrow. But the coolest thing is that it's literally a direct prologue to Crisis on Infinite Earths. The last page basically starts off the Crisis series.)

So, as I say up there, this is quite literally the opening pages of Crisis. The story itself is a bit mediocre, though if we consider it in terms of what starts in the final pages, it's actually a bit of a tribute to characters that writer Marv Wolfman probably knows for sure are not going to survive the reboot of the DCU. The trouble is that I don't think the story takes advantage of the premise it sets up nearly enough. Basically we have three wizards, one in the past, one in the present, and one in the future (and the future one is a magic-using planet called Yggardis) to gain control of the universe (can anyone tell me what that would even look like - how do you control something infinite?). The time travel angle is not exploited to its utmost, and the fact that these three magicians are manipulating reality but not causing any paradoxes for one another is really interesting. It says something about the nature of time as a whole, as a 4th dimensional solid that exists all at once, but that can't be perceived in that way by humans.

This said, Mr. Wolfman was probably preoccupied by the twists and turns of the Crisis series he was navigating, and perhaps could not pay closer attention to the cool spacetime playground he established in this story.

The end of the issue, however, is a half-page dialogue between the Monitor and Lyla (soon to be Harbinger), a conversation that leads directing into the opening pages of Crisis and the destruction of Earth-3. I wonder if these little bits and pieces were reprinted in the Crisis collections that have come out. Probably not, though this one seems to be to be quite important.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 842: DC Comics Presents #77, January 1985

The Forgotten Heroes return, having held a press conference to announce their presence as a superhero team to the world. Sadly it seems the name they choose becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, as this adventure, spanning this comic and the next, is the team's last appearance. There's a brief Crisis cameo by a few members, and then that's it.

It seems to me that the reason this kind of team fails ultimately, and why the characters themselves are not particularly memorable, is because they're very limited. Rick Flag is a typical Army special forces character. Cave Carson explores...well...caves (though I haven't read his current series, which sounds very weird). Dane Dorrance, the Sea Devil is even more water-bound than Aquaman, and lacks the powers. Congo Bill is kind of geographically limited. And Immortal Man can be killed. Remember Mr. I from the Great Lakes Avengers? This is an attempt at a serious take on him. Or Mr. I is a parodic take on Immortal Man. Anyway, the only two characters that have enough breadth of conception to carry a story are Dolphin and Animal Man. I'm pretty sure Dolphin becomes part of Aquaman's supporting cast, and we all know what happens with Animal Man. This breadth of conception is key for a superhero. Yes, Spider-Man has a limited set of powers based on his origin, but it doesn't limit the kinds of adventures he can get into. With a team like the Sea Devils, though, the audience is going to expect a particular kind of adventure, and then tire of it very quickly, I would think.

Once a character has this potential, it's simply a matter of exhausting all of the easy stories (i.e., stories to do with animals, or animal-based characters for Animal Man), and then take the character out of their comfort zone and start doing interesting things with them. The Animal Man series vacillates on this front, but for the most part steers away from telling easy stories.

Today's comic is good, and an interesting preceding piece for Morrison's final story in Animal Man, wherein he reunites Animal Man with some actually forgotten heroes in the realm of Limbo. This comic also features one of the many times Superman is transformed by a villain, this time becoming a fire-breathing dragon that is ultimately defeated by everyone's favourite orange-clad character with animal powers.

We'll finish up this story tomorrow, and then see where things go. To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 832: Wonder Woman #219, August-September 1975

The last of my "Trials of Wonder Woman" issues, and another clumsy, but well-intentioned, look at Feminism. Various feminist women are vanishing from Earth, sometimes from plain view, while other women are exhibiting strange reactions to being saved from perilous situations. In her role as member of the U.N. Crisis Bureau, Diana is asked to keep an eye on a number of famous American Feminists who are due to speak at the World Conference of Feminist Women - a job her boss describes as "a pretty hefty job for just a woman." Diana's response, thought but not spoken, is a little tamer than it might really need to be, but the fact that we're seeing an ironic depiction of her boss here speaks to the way that writer Martin Pasko presents his understanding of the concerns of Feminism.

It's really great to see that Diana has been attached to this ideology for such a long time. It's pretty much common knowledge that her earliest appearances were articulating Feminism quite forcefully at a time when it was certainly not a popular way of thinking, so to see that thread be one of the common ones through her history makes the recent film seem like something of a realization of everything she's stood for all along.

Perhaps I'm being a bit over-celebratory, but we have to take the victories where we can get them, right?

To be continued.

(This post seems a bit scattered to me. I've very tired today.)

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 371: Secret Origins #46, December 1989

I don't know why I was convinced that the Morrison story in this issue was the Legion one, not the JLA one.

Yesterday I said we'd be looking at an indie comic short, but the issue of A1 that I was planning on reading was quite long, and I ran out of time, so we're looking at this one instead.

Technically, this is one of the earliest Grant Morrison Justice League stories, though his issue of Animal Man that featured the JLE might have come slightly earlier. I honestly have no idea whether or not the elements laid down in this story are ever picked up again - the basic premise is that the mountain that housed the original Justice League's headquarters is sentient, and contains a record of its entire history that is activated by sound. Morrison's iteration of the Doom Patrol briefly takes up residence here, but there is certainly no sentient mountaineering in that series, even though it would have fit the Doom Patrol's aesthetic very well.

The other stories of headquarters in this issue are quite good. We are given a look into Cyborg's memories of his father, who built Titans Tower. I'm not overly familiar with the Wolfman-era New Teen Titans, and whether or not Cyborg ever articulates the feelings he has when entering the tower the way he does in this story. It's a nice touch, and inflects Cyborg's character quite nicely. The Legion story in this issue is excellent, telling the tragic tale of Fortress Lad, who turns into a fortress to protect those around him - sadly, after transforming to protect the Legion, he has his memory erased, and simply becomes the Legion headquarters. Again, I'm not sure that this ever comes up again, but it certainly adds an interesting element to all of those old Legion stories and that big yellow building.

That's all for today. I'm very tired, and feel like everything I'm writing is awkward. We'll finish of Morrison Week tomorrow with A1 #3. Onward!