The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1869: Fighting American:Rules of the Game #3, March 1998

For information on stopping the spread of COVID-19, and on what to do if you are quarantined, have a look at the World Health Organization site.

The series ends with an appearance by another couple of old FA villains, Double Header and the Buzz Bomber, as Flagg and S.P.I.C.E. (whose name I'm getting sick of typing) make their way to the mastermind behind the bounty on FA's head, Round Robin. The final fight is a bit anticlimactic, but it serves the purpose of convincing John Flagg that Fighting American is needed back in the world.

Which is what his military bosses had hoped would happen when they hired Robin in the first place.

I think that if the Awesome Universe had continued, I'd have loved to see some interactions between FA and Supreme, or Doctor Night. This universe had so, so much potential, which is, I think, why I'm so obsessed with getting all of their titles, even the ones that are kind of sub-par. Which is not really a fair thing to say, because the really good titles are really, really good, so even the sub-par ones are pretty fantastic comics.

Fighting American, in this incarnation, is a very interesting character, and I think having used the retirement story line for Captain America could have been cool. We see it to a certain extent in the MCU - after Civil War, Steve Rogers really isn't Captain America again, aside from being in the costume at the end of Endgame. I'm sure there's other moments, but even if he's in the costume, he's not really Cap again. Really, he ceases to be Captain America when America ceases to support him. It's the old argument about the character, really. Does he represent the U.S. as it is now, as a patriotic hero that embodies what the country is at the moment, or does he represent what the U.S. could have been if it hadn't been bogged down by corruption, white nationalism (accidentally typed "shite" there!), and capitalism? For me, Cap, at his best (see Gruenwald's work in the 80s), is the dream of America, rather than its reality, and those are always the best stories to tell with him, the ones that question where things went wrong, and whether or not that spirit of freedom and innovation can survive in the urban sink that America has become.

I wonder if perhaps a book on Captain America is about due, given the awful, awful turn the country has taken in the last few years.

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

For more on the writer of this series, have a look at the other Jeph Loeb comics I've read.

I wrote a piece for Sequart on Steve Gerber's Captain America that I'm pretty proud of too.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1868: Fighting American:Rules of the Game #2, January 1998

For information on stopping the spread of COVID-19, and on what to do if you are quarantined, have a look at the World Health Organization site.

I'm not sure exactly who a battle between a septuagenarian and an adolescent girl is appealing to, but it ain't this guy. I'm not exactly a fan of superhero vs. superhero battles at the best of times (the Civil War series being an obvious exception, though not the mediocre film of the same name) - it's trite and cliched and moves the story along in ways that could have easily been accomplished without resorting to violence. So at the end of yesterday's comic, when S.P.I.C.E. turns on Fighting American, I rolled my eyes and got ready for an annoying read today.

It was still kind of an annoying read, thanks to S.P.I.C.E.'s hackneyed dialogue (what 90s teen calls someone "Pops"?), but was mitigated somewhat with the reveal that she had been taken over by another of FA's old foes, Invisible Irving. I still don't like her character, but at least she wasn't taking on Fighting American out of some misplaced need to boost her superheroic ego.

This issue manages to make Fighting American distinct from his patriotic forebear in one very important way: he is totally fine with killing his opponents. Hotsky Trotsky gets a shield-spike through the chest, and Irving is fried by a joint attack by FA and S.P.I.C.E. It's probably for the best, as they were Russian stereotypes perhaps most wisely left in the 50s with the original run.

There was a flip comic in today's issue, a 5-page preview for a series called SWAT!. From what I can tell, it's two normal teens with lots of hardware store equipment who are hoping to take on supervillains in their town. Or something. And it seems to have never materialized as a series, if the GCD is to be believed. Again, it's probably for the best, as the lead male character, Lee, espouses some attitudes toward women that would be more at home with FA's enemies in the 50s than they would be in the more progressive (somewhat) 90s.

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

Rob Liefeld's business practices have made his movement through publishing companies something of an industry joke. He starts out with Extreme Studios, as part of Image Comics.

After this, he founds Maximum Press, the direct precursor to Awesome Entertainment.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1867: Fighting American:Rules of the Game #1, November 1997

For information on stopping the spread of COVID-19, and on what to do if you are quarantined, have a look at the World Health Organization site.

As FA only lasted 8 issues with Awesome, I figured I'd just read them all. The great thing about today's comic is it's one of the earliest collaborations between Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuiness, who go on after Awesome folds to write a really, really good run on Superman in the early 2000s. McGuiness' art has a kinetic feel to it that works very nicely with the acrobatic maneuvers of both FA and S.P.I.C.E.

Who is a character I dislike immensely. She's meant to be a snarky 16-year old, or is programmed to be, anyway, and she definitely acts like it. The problem is that unless they're quite mature, a 16-year old girl isn't really the best choice for a superhero. And that word there, choice, is the key. Who in their right mind would create an android that is a, and I quote, "weapon of mass destruction that is built like a sixteen year old girl"? Is there some thinly-veiled teen angst rearing its head here? And even if one built such a device to look like a girl, why oh why give it the personality of one. I know that it's an attempt to link a character who is from a different time with the time within which the stories are set, but there must be better ways.

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

I haven't read a lot of Captain America for the blog, but I have had a few thoughts.

And here's some stuff about comics from the era in which Fighting American was first published.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1500: Superman #167, April 2001

Day 1500! Quite a landmark, and now getting to that point where I can't really conceive of what the amount of comics I've read looks like. 1500 is probably about 6 long boxes, which is a huge amount of comics. Can't wait to see what the next 1500 are like.

One thing we have to deal with in Superman comics from the early 90s to the early 2000s are the diamond numbers in the top corner. At some point in the 90s, after the strange experiment that was the weekly run of Action Comics, DC's Superman editors decided that they could tell larger stories if the 4 main Superman titles were interrelated. So yesterday's Adventures was diamond number 2001-11, meaning it was the 11th issue of Superman titles that year, and should be read in that order. You'll note that today's comic is 2001-14. Numbers 12 and 13, then, would have been issues of Action Comics and Superman: Man of Steel.

To me, it's a very odd system, and for a long while it kept me out of Superman comics. I resented the idea that I had to buy 4 series, plus assorted specials, in order to keep up with a single character I loved. There's no way I could afford to buy one Superman comic a week and try to keep up with my other favourites. So for a long time I didn't read any Superman comics unless I knew I wouldn't be required to get every other Superman comic in order to understand them. Of course, once my store came along, that ceased to be a problem. For a little while, at least.

Which brings us to today's comic, only a day into my Joe Casey Adventures read-through, and we're at the flagship title under the exceedingly capable hands of Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuiness. This is another run of 2000s Superman I might track down. McGuiness' art is phenomenal, and Loeb, I think, is at the top of his game with this run. That aside, we're going back to Krypton, or a strange version of the planet that exists inside the Phantom Zone. And Superman #167 is where the adventure starts.

There's a couple of moments where Lois talks about actually meeting one's parents when they were young, and the difference between hearing about it and seeing it. She notes that being able to meet these younger versions of our progenitors would likely save so many people so much therapy. She's not wrong. But even that moment (and I remember it with my own son) where a child learns that their parents are just people, just as screwed up as any other person, is vital and important, and signals a significant shift in such relationships. And with Superman's fantastical, and tragic, past, the shift in his personality, if such things were possible in comics really, should be marked. I guess we'll see over the next few weeks.

"Hey, I figure if you can get me to wear this outfit, the rest is cream cheese."