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 840: Action Comics #553, March 1984

This has been a very strange adventure (pun intended), in that there's very little action. A lot of this story has been people talking to one another about action, or about the problem facing the team and Superman, but the actual steps taken to stop the problem happen in literally 2-3 pages of this second issue.

And not much is really revealed or solved, aside from Superman no longer spreading prehistoric seeds across Metropolis.

In terms of Animal Man's development, we're beginning to see the limitations of his power set - in order to be useful, he's really only good if he's around animals that might have useful powers. Though "usefulness" is an aspect of the powers that is fully explored in his series, it's not really delved into here. Buddy is sent back to Brazil, where he by some random chance has seen a jaguar (and anyone who's walked around forests full of wild animals knows just how often you happen upon one by chance), and so can use those powers to defeat the government officials guarding the mysterious temple. The expansions his powers undergo in his eponymous series, from sensing animals around him to tapping into the morphogenetic field exponentially raise the level of his powers, making him into a remarkably powerful character in the end. And perhaps it's this overcoming of the limitations of his powers that finally allows Animal Man the shot at having his own series. Indeed, much of the early part of Morrison's run is about Animal Man discovering the true extent of his powers.

But we'll get there eventually. The end of today's story leaves the audience with the possibility of Superman not having survived his encounter at the beginning of time. We might take a quick detour into the next issue of Action Comics, just to see what happens, and then we'll pick up with Animal Man again in DC Comics Presents.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 839: Action Comics #552, February 1984

Four years pass between Animal Man's appearance in Wonder Woman and his next one in Action Comics. This is very much a set-up piece, gathering together a group that, briefly, come to be known as the Forgotten Heroes, who have all had adventures that have led them to a strange temple, the knowledge of which brings them into conflict with the American government. Concurrently, Vandal Savage unleashed a plan against Superman that, one can only imagine, is connected to the temple and the Forgotten Heroes' adventures.

Animal Man expresses some surprise here that someone else knows his secret identity. It's the first time I've seen reference to the secret identity issue from Animal Man, as his identity is, as far as I know, a public one through most of his self-titled series. His characterization is also a bit odd...his dialogue sounds to me like Hawkeye's from his early 60s Avengers appearances. Using words like "figger" and such. What I come to realize though is that I read every single Animal Man appearance through the lens of his own series, even those that come before that series happens. It's an odd phenomenon, and one that can really only occur in serialized fictions like these, though with the caveat that they are serialized fictions whose creative teams change regularly. Until someone defines a character like Animal Man, his personality is going to be in flux across his appearances. And then once he's been established, prior appearances might not gel with what is now canonical. Where things get interesting is with a group like the Doom Patrol, who I also read from a particular perspective, yet whose personalities were long ago established in their first series. In such a case, perhaps we can see the shifts in character as growth and development of those characters, rather than being a personality in flux.

The Forgotten Heroes do manage to get a few adventures in, even making a brief appearance in Crisis on Infinite Earths, but it's a scant four years until Animal Man gets his own series, and the DCU gets its first taste of the madness of Grant Morrison. Once this happens, Animal Man is no longer forgotten, and this motley crew of adventurers falls by the wayside.

Will the Forgotten Heroes and Superman actually meet up next issue? It seems likely, but you never know.

To be continued.