The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1880: Judgment Day Aftermath, March 1998

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It's hard to gauge when particular issues from Awesome came out, as the cover dates aren't always the dates upon which, or even near to the dates, they were published. For example, today's comic seems to have come out 8 months after the previous issue in the series, but whether either of them came out when they are purported to have is difficult to answer. The reason I'm ruminating on this is that, aside from this issue, most of the characters represented here never make any other appearances in the Awesome U. Spacehunter has this one story, as do the Allies and the new Conquerors/New Men. Youngblood and Glory get a bit more, but only 2 or 3 issues. And Maximage, whose story is very intriguing, vanishes after this. It's a pity, as this gives us, more than many of the other comic published by Awesome, a clear idea of Moore's vision for the universe. From the bare evidence here, I'd guess that the stories Moore had planned around Glory and Maximage became Promethea. There's just too much evidence otherwise. Everything else? I'd be unsurprised to find that most of those story ideas went into Tom Strong. Except maybe the Spacehunter one. That one kind of stands on its own.

Much as I like the idea of metatextual comics, this one is a bit on the nose. Artist Gil Kane actually appears as "Kane, the Imagineer" in the story, and the characters are referred to as characters by Kane in the comic. Moore establishes here a precursor to the Immateria of Promethea, though rather than that realm of dream and fantasy, this imaginary realm is manipulated to influence the material realm of the Awesome Universe. Given his final Supreme story, I wonder if Moore had plans to expand this concept had the Awesome U not imploded.

That finishes off Judgment Day. Today's Youngblood story takes place directly after the prologue story in the Awesome Holiday Special, and then we dive right into the series proper. Well, sort of. We've got one premium comic with a tiny bit more prologue in it, and then we get to the series. If one can call 2.5 issues a series. (I'll explain when we get there.)

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

I've read a bit more Gil Kane for the project. I think I like his older stuff better.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1275: Strange Adventures #184, January 1966

I just love Animal Man. I don't really know what it is about him. And I've thought about it. I think what it is is that when I started buying his eponymous title, I'd already read his first adventure in an old Blue Ribbon digest of secret origins that I had. I've since lost that comic, but I remember reading, over and over, "The Man with Animal Powers," amongst others (Hal Jordan was one, I think). He was also the first "mature" title that I ever bought - being a very mature 13 year old when the series came out - but that also meant it was one of the first really thoughtful comics I read.

Of course, there is the fact that Grant Morrison's writing is magic.

But these old Animal Man, even pre-Animal Man adventures, they're so strange. And not just because of the comic they inhabit. I can see Buddy and Ellen and Roger in these characters, but it's like they're caricatures of themselves. I'm reading this comic through the lens of the future.

Actually, let me adjust that. I can't see Ellen in the caricature in this story. She's literally there as a prop for Buddy.

Gil Kane's art is really great, unsurprisingly. His enlarged tiger/cat creature is quite uncanny, and the giant pink alien looks as natural as such a beast can. You can see why Gil Kane is revered, even in silly little stories like this one. The shots of Buddy flying are fantastic, and the tumble of his body when he's levitated with an entire lake is entirely believable. I don't have a lot of really nice examples of classic DC art, but I think this one definitely counts.

Speaking of, I actually only bought this comic today. I'd decided a little while back that I was going to start trying to get some more of the key issues I'm interested in, and I happened upon this one for a mere $38 today. And it's in lovely condition.

More to come...

(Oh, and the back-up was about a guy who flies into hurricanes for the weather service running afoul of modern-day sky pirates in a cloud-swathed dirigible - and he has some really real moments flashing back to flying in the Korean War. Weird, well, Strange, I suppose, story.)

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 841: Action Comics #554, April 1984

Isn't it strange that we can forget things that seem like they would have made an impression upon us? I remember this comic and the basic premise, but going back to it today, I find that it speaks to so many of the ways I've been trying to conceive of the superhero for so many years now.

This brings up some interesting ideas. The golden pyramids that we encountered with Superman and the Forgotten Heroes over the last couple of days turn out to be structures placed by an alien race that, once activated, erase the violent impulse from a species' development. As such, humanity has no myth, no tales of heroism or of overcoming obstacles. It's not the most factually solid of foundations as far as the development of the species goes, but we should recall that the tale is talking to us about the power of imagination, of myth, of the hypotheticals that we envision in our stories. In the wake of this removal of heroic myth from humanity's development, the planet is rife for conquering by the race that left the pyramids in the first place.

Except for two young boys, Jerry and Joe, who conceive of a "super man" who would be able to stand up to the invaders. And they manage to believe Superman back into existence. The salient point here is that, despite the fact that Superman defeats the alien armada, it is the power of belief in this figure, the faith that the two boys have in a character they created themselves, that provides the tool with which to remove the shackles of slavery within which humanity finds itself. Honestly, that's my dissertation right there. Marv Wolfman and Gil Kane said it in words and pictures when I'd just turned ten years old.

Which brings up another idea - the intersection of fan/professional scholarship and thought with that of academic scholarship and thought. I was on a panel a couple of weeks ago for the local Panel One comics festival, and we spoke at length about comics scholarship and the links to the greater comics community. Comics are one of those kinds of fandom that have, since the beginning, encouraged the kind of high-level thinking we often only associate with post-secondary education. The difference between someone who is a FanAc (Fan Academic) and a scholarly academic is that scholarly academics have a particular, and precise, set of tools, concepts, and words to talk about specific aspects of the medium that FanAcs might lack. But the breadth of knowledge of the medium, and how it works, are not solely the purview of the scholar. In many cases, in fact, the FanAc, free of the restrictions of the academy, will have much more broad knowledge and ideas of comics. It's important to recognize this kind of knowledge, and to work with it. Which is what I try to do.

We'll get back to Animal Man tomorrow, but this comic is a great favourite of mine, and I'm glad I took the time to read it and finish off the story of the golden pyramids. Belief in a thing can make it real. That doesn't mean it's not still a fiction. It's simply that it's become a fiction that has measurable effect in "the real world."

Whatever that might be.

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.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 753: Justice League of America #200

A lazy Sunday morning in bed reading an oversized Justice League comic and having a bowl of cereal. While outside, it looks like it might actually be Spring (I fool myself, but sometimes we have to).

Today's comic follows in that long tradition of comics about superheroes fighting superheroes. I'm not sure where this particular subgenre comes from. Sometimes I think that it has a lot to do with why diverse religions have battled one another over the course of human history. We place our faith in something and can't possibly understand how someone else could place something so important and vital in something different. Everyone has a favourite superhero, one that we place our faith in, so it's natural (?) to want to know who'd come out on top. My god is stronger than your god, I suppose.

On the other hand, it might just come from the idea that we want to see the cool characters duking it out with one another. Yeah, when they fight a villain, it's cool. But villains, by their nature in these kinds of comics, will always lose. If it's heroes fighting one another, who's the villain? Who's going to lose? Such contests offer a bit more suspense.

That aside, this was a fairly standard early 80s DC comic. The artists jam on the issue was pretty sweet, bringing together some of the truly great DC artists of the last few decades. It was also a nice hearkening back to the original JLA case from The Brave and the Bold, though how it would fit in with Mark Waid's retcon in JLA:Year One, I'm not sure. Though I'm fairly certain that's not canon anymore anyway. Well, given DC's propensity for multiverses, it's canon somewhere, I'm sure.

To be continued.