The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1901: Wally Wood's T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #5, October 1986

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T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, like it's most famous creator Wally Wood, has sort of lurked at the edges of my comic book consciousness. I really didn't know much about the team, so I did a bit of research before reading today's issue, and got an idea of the weird publication history of the characters. I actually seem to recall a bit of the kerfuffle around the team and its ownership, and I'm not even remotely surprised to see that Rob Liefeld was involved somehow. That guy and his business decisions!

The comic itself is nicely put together. It features a lead story about the team and then a few short pieces focussing on members of the team. Though each story (there are 4) is short, the comic doesn't feel like it's cheated us of content - the lead feature is intriguing and action-packed, and the solo features do a nice job of advancing stories for their respective characters outside of the job of being a T.H.U.N.D.E.R. agent. Plus each story is written and drawn by stellar creators.

This series, I think, would make a very interesting comparison to Jim Lee's Stormwatch, as both are about teams of super-powered individuals working for the U.N. The idea of superhero as day job is cool - are their identities still secret? And if not (as one of today's stories seems to imply), how does anyone protect their loved ones?

D is for Deluxe

And a battle on the moon

But with this final issue 

The story ends too soon.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1808: Invasion Book Three, 1988

The final issue of Invasion isn't so much about the invasion itself, but about the aftermath of a rogue Dominator trying to destroy Earth's superheroes. One of the ways in which this crossover, though not a great crossover, succeeds where the Arrowverse version doesn't quite is the scope. There are very few large-scale crossovers in comics that follow only a small group of heroes. There are, rarely, any "main characters" in such crossovers. Instead they tend to give glimpses of the events from throughout the shared universe, with the more specific adventures happening generally in the team or character's own title. Even when there is focus on a particular group, that group does their job and then the focus shifts to another character or team of characters. As such, and even with the recent Crisis adaptation, it doesn't quite communicate the scope of the event when we are focussed on a single group of heroes throughout the crossover. It might almost have made more sense for there to be individual episodes of each series between the crossover episodes, in order that we might see the more personal stories, but not have them intrude upon the larger-scale storytelling that the event precipitates.

Aside from that, this issue is significant for the death of yet another Doom Patrol character. Poor Scott Fisher, whom I have numerous times said deserves better, passes away as a result of complications from the Gene Bomb and his recurring leukemia. I'm fairly certain, like Garguax yesterday, that Fisher hasn't shown up in the DCU since. One thing that is a bit odious about his death, and something that speaks to the tangential nature of these kinds of crossovers, is that he is the only casualty of the Gene Bomb, a device that puts the majority of Earth's heroes in mortal jeopardy. Had a couple of others dies, Scott's death would be more affecting, I think. But instead we see it as a token effort to show the seriousness of a device that, in the end, doesn't turn out to be that serious.

Done with the Patrol for the time being. More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1806: Invasion Book Two, 1988

To be honest, this was a pretty decent superhero war comic. It really read like the old war comics from DC's past, and actually kind of combined the B-Movie alien invasion aesthetic that was popular in film at the same time that war comics flourished. Not sure if that's a calculated move on Mr. Giffen's part, but it works quite nicely.

On the other hand, it's fairly propagandistic, really. Somehow North America is the only continent to avoid catastrophic damage, forcing the rest of the world to rely on America. Again, this echoes the war comics of old, but it rings pretty hollow in the Reagan-era Cold War. I think by this point in time, people were becoming a lot more suspect about the glories of war. This one doesn't really address the horrors that, in the background, appear to have been perpetuated.

In terms of comparison with the Arrowverse crossover, this is the big superhero throw-down that the CW just couldn't afford to do. First, they don't have nearly enough heroes, and second I don't imagine they have the budget for large-scale space warfare effects. Though the Dominators' reason for attacking Earth remains the same, the emergence of high-power metahumans, their methods are decidedly different on screen. A pity, but an understandable one.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1804: Invasion Book One, 1988

80 pages is a lot to get through in one sitting. But when the 80 pages are a Keith Giffen/Bill Mantlo/Todd McFarlane production, it's not such a bad thing.

I originally picked up Invasion because it crossed over with Animal Man. The eventual outcome of the alien plan really messes with Animal Man's powers, and spurs a very cool story line in which everything we thought we knew about Animal Man turns out to be wrong. That sort of thing happens to him frequently.

In a lot of ways, and much more so than when I first read the series, I can see the aliens' point of view. Here's Earth, this insignificant little world that keeps churning out individuals of incalculable power, sometimes presenting a cosmos-wide danger. And, by and large, they're a pretty violent bunch. Imagine a creature like that became capable of intergalactic travel. They're right to be scared.

But there's also something deeply disturbing about the fact that all of the aliens (an important word) look exactly the same, and have no genetic variance. Further, they are identified by a single trait that characterized their race. And it's only humanity (and, let's be honest, North American humanity) that presents this strange diversity of genetics and potential.

Which is all to say that, as a part of my Doom Patrol read-through, the Doom Patrol don't appear in this issue. Only Adam Strange makes an appearance, and an ill-fated one at that. Instead, as the title of this volume attests, we witness the formation of the Alien Alliance. It's actually a remarkable bit of storytelling, in that it's basically a prologue to the crossover. It seems to me that this is a crossover that might have used its tie-in issues very well, in that the actual first strike on American soil takes place in the pages of the individual titles, as discrete events. When we come back next issue, those events have happened, and we're on to the next phase. I'm not explaining this right. The crossover series is designed to provide context to the events of the individual tie-ins. As such it is useful regardless of which series you are following it through, nor do you need to read all of the tie-ins.

At least, that's what it looks like at the moment.

In terms of comparison to the Arrowverse crossover, this similarly functions nicely as a prologue, but, honestly, the only similarity is the Dominator head design. I understand, of course, that it would have been too expensive to have all of the alien races present, but we've seen enough humanoid ones that there could have been at least a small alliance. What the comic crossover does that the television one doesn't is give us the reason for the Dominators' invasion. In the Arrowverse, they're just aliens there to experiment on human beings - it's more of a secret invasion than an invasion. Watching the television crossover from the perspective of the Dominators fear of metahumans is going to be interesting, though if I'm to be completely honest, I don't remember how the TV one all turns out, so things might change by next issue.

I am feeling a bit spacey today. Can you tell?

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1183: Action Comics #563, January 1985

We come to the end of our Action Comics reading today with an amusing issue, the pro- and antagonists of which you can see on the cover here. It's really a showcase for the three in the foreground, with Superman popping in and riding herd on the chaos that ensues.

There's mention in the letters pages of these issues of a switch in format which must have come slightly before this run of issues, and I think it's referring to the division of stories in the title, as well as the tone of those stories. Everything's a bit more light-hearted than contemporary Superman tales. And while there seem to have always, or almost always, been multiple stories in Action Comics, these stories all feature either Superman or members of his supporting cast, rather than B-listers like The Atom or the Human Target. I'm torn as to whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. I'm finding the Superman stories to be less-compelling than the ones that were being told in the more anthology-style issues from about 10 years earlier. This line of thought definitely looks ahead to the weekly anthology that starts in issue 601, which we'll get to eventually.

It's been nice getting back into Superman, and I imagine I'll hit him up a bit more once July rolls around. I have a big project in mind for June, but until then we've got a few days of random bits and pieces from the collection to look at.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1180: Action Comics #560, October 1984

I think that despite our mutual love of the Doom Patrol, Kieth Giffen and I have very different senses of humour. I just don't get Ambush Bug. I was thinking about this before sitting down to write, and it feels to me like every Ambush Bug story I read, at least the Giffen/Fleming ones, are set in a strange parallel version of the DCU, though AB's presence on Oolong Island in Giffen's Doom Patrol suggests otherwise. Though, with the Doom Patrol, you never know.

Today's lead story was an interesting one-off (unless John Doe every returns, I guess), most notably because we see a scene of the super-villain buying weapons from the Monitor. I wish I'd been following comics at the time, to see the build up through these titles to Crisis on Infinite Earths, but alas I wasn't even reading comics regularly (not superhero ones, anyway) at this point. And certainly not DC stuff. I was a dyed in the wool Marvel fan in my early youth.

What makes this appearance of the Monitor doubly interesting is that this issue of Action was not written by Marv Wolfman, so we see insertions of the Crisis lead-up in other titles by other writers. This has got to be one of the earliest instances of cross-continuity story telling by numerous writers. And for someone who's interested in how these universes grow and evolve, that's a pretty bit thing.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1086: Vext #6, August 1999

So, having spent 20 years or so searching for Vext, what is my final verdict?

It was, of course, worth the wait.

There's the obvious comedy of a deity who is Murphy's Law personified. But so much more comes of Vext's obliviousness to humanity. He doesn't know how to human, so to speak. Unlike many of his divine cohorts in the DCU, Vext appears to have spent little or no time in the human world. And rightly so - it's hard to imagine anyone worshipping a god of misfortune. What would a rite even look like? Successful only if it didn't go according to plan, perhaps?

There are, of course, the obligatory jokes about the series' cancellation being inevitable, and this raises for me an interesting idea: perhaps the series was only ever intended to run 6 issues, and all of the cancellation talk was merely set dressing. It wouldn't be the weirdest thing Keith Giffen has done. Regardless, Vext is well worth your time if you can track it down.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1085: Vext #5, July 1999

This is the one that I couldn't find, and now I've found it! Colleen finds out that Vext is a displaced god...just in time for the title to be cancelled next issue.

One of the great injustices of 90s DC, really.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1084: Vext #4, June 1999

You'll have to forgive me for the next few days. My wrist pain is not getting better, so typing is a bit more difficult than usual. I'll have to be brief. This was a good comics. Funny.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1083: Vext #3, May 1999

A word or two about the art of Vext. The series is very much in line with DC's house style of the mid-to-late nineties, inaugurated in such titles as JLA and Flash. I like the 90s DC style - it reminds me of the Marvel house style of the 80s that I've so recently looked at in Avengers, but with a slightly more sophisticated production quality. There's more bells and whistles you can add thanks to the assistance of computers.

I don't have a lot of Mr. McKone's art in the collection, a few pieces scattered here and there. I'm curious to see how his style translates to Marvel's less-iconic universe. Marvel's colour palette is very different from what we see in Vext, being somewhat dimmer, so it'll be neat to compare the relatively flashy look of Vext to his work with Mark Waid on Spider-Man, for example.

In today's issue, Vext, inevitably, eats a burger laced with a genetically engineered intelligent bacterium - that is digested fully by his god-like stomach, thus averting the worst viral outbreak in human history.

These things happen.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1082: Vext #2, April 1999

Spoiler warning!


The bad guy in this issue is a guy whose rage at Vext's excessively slow driving actually causes him to mutate and fuse with his car into a man-car hybrid full of anger at slow drivers.

A bit too close to home.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1081: Vext #1, March 1999

The cover date for this comic is March 1999 - I finished the series about 2 weeks ago.

It only ran 6 issues.

For the longest time, I was unable to find issue #5 of Vext. I would check every comic store I went to, every convention I attended, but few people had heard of the series, much less had any.

And yes, as my brother suggested, I could have easily found the fifth issue online somewhere, but that wouldn't have been any fun. As much as I love reading comics, hunting for them is fantastic as well. I mean, it's not called "collecting" comics for nothing. That thrill of the chase, searching for that one comic, be it expensive or not, that will satisfy a particular need, fill a particular gap in the collection. It's wonderful. I feel like getting the issue online would have been cheating.

So, since it's a relatively obscure title, here's the sitch: when his realm is closed due to lack of worship, Vext, god of misfortune and mishap, is relocated to Earth. He's basically the embodiment of Murphy's Law. There's some excellent jokes in this issue, a visit from Superman and Zauriel, and many, many demonstrations of Vext's particular influence on those around him. This series is really excellent, and at the time, cancelled after only 6 issues, I was quite angered that such a novel series was not being given the chance it needed. And this was in one of my favourite eras of DC. I think the title would fare much better now, perhaps as part of DC's Young Animal line.

Anyone know how I can get in touch with them?

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1032: Ambush Bug Stocking Stuffer #1, 1986

Sooo...I'm not a huge fan of Ambush Bug - he's one of those characters who seems tailor-made for my take on superheroes, but something about him just turns me off. I appreciate the breaking of the fourth wall, the completely surreal nature of his existence, even the very, very silly costume. I think what gets me is the lack of narrative progression in anything I've ever read him in. It just seems like one bizarre panel after another, with little to link them together, sometimes. With today's comic, I do feel like there was a lot of context laid down in his mini-series, and much of the humour relied on that context. I liked the zombie dolls storyline, and the hunt for Brother Power was pretty neat and I thought that's what the comic would be about, but it wasn't...well, it sort of was, but not really?

Anyway, it was a Christmas comic that I read today. Then I had a nap.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1028: Extreme Super Christmas Special #1, December 1994

What do I even say about something this ridiculous? Troll has to collect each of the groups mentioned in the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas" before Circe, of mythic fame, turns every man on the planet into a pig. It's typically silly early Image, and early Extreme/Maximum/Awesome Studios stuff - but actually sort of works a little better than most of that stuff because it's refusing to take itself seriously at all. Interestingly, what happens is that you now have a tenor that fits the vehicle, so to speak. The art has always been slightly ridiculous, but the stories have tried to be super serious and gritty. This one isn't. It's the early Image equivalent of yesterday's Archie Christmas special.

And it works really nicely.

The only thing that bothers me these days when I read this old Image stuff, and specifically the Extreme Studios stuff, is thinking about it in terms of the future presented for most of these characters in the recent Prophet series. Knowing how things turn out for Troll in the future makes today's comic a little strange. But not in a bad way.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 237: 52 #4, May 31, 2006

One of the things that's always struck me as I read 52 is trying to figure out which of the writers wrote each section. I'm sure that it's been broken down somewhere, but I think it's far more fun, and more indicative of one's immersion in the medium, to be able to pick a writer out by considering the situations and dialogues each of the characters takes part in. I'm pretty sure Rucka writes the Question and Renee Montoya stuff, but only because I've read subsequent treatments of these characters (and Batwoman, who'll be debuting in one of these issues eventually) by him. I imagine Waid writing the Steel sections, but he and Morrison have very similar superhero storytelling aesthetics, so it's a bit tricky there. I'm going with Johns for the Booster Gold stuff, mainly because Booster seems to be a character from the era of superheroes that Johns privileges. And, and I hate to say it because I've enjoyed some of his writing, but the Booster stuff is the stuff I enjoy least in this comic. I'm not sure about the Ralph Dibny stuff - perhaps Morrison, by dint of the fact that Ralph is enmeshed, at the moment, with a cult that has grown up around Superboy. Again, though, both Morrison and Waid have treated this idea in their own separate writings. I don't know about the Black Adam stuff. I'm also going to ascribe it to Johns, as he's a far more brutal storyteller than the others, and Black Adam has, so far, been fairly violent.

Let's have a look online, and see what we can find.

Just a sec. Gotta google this stuff.

Apparently, there's no real consensus. Most assume that Morrison wrote the Animal Man stuff that will come later, and that Rucka did the Question stuff. Keith Giffen provided layouts, and there's some conjecture that he contributed to the storytelling, most likely Booster. But it really looks like they may have bounced the characters around, depending on the situations within which each character finds him or herself. Which makes sense, really, given that each writer has a different forte.

That's the first chunk of 52 that I'm going to look at. Tomorrow I'll either return to early-eighties Canada with Alpha Flight, or pick up the AD&D comics again, since I've just procured enough of the issues I was missing to continue with that. We'll find out on the morrow. See you then!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 236: 52 #3, May 24, 2006

Rather than give a general overview of this comic, I'm going to instead focus on a couple of panels. In literary studies, we're often told that a whole analytical paper can be hinged upon a particular sentence, or even word, in an imaginative work. I have, in my undergrad, actually written on individual words and the ways in which we might interpret a whole work or section of a work based on that interpretation. This is called, or is a facet of, close reading, the fundamental tool of the literary critic.

Close reading in a comic is slightly different, because we have to look at both the narratological qualities of the art and words and also the semiotic qualities of the form. I'm going to look more at the former than the latter today.

Here's the first panel I want to consider:

Thus far in the series (as short a distance as that is), all we've seen of Booster Gold is a money-hungry, endorsement-seeking, future-mining dick. He's always been one of my least favourite heroes in the DCU, mainly for the above-stated reasons. Here, however, we see him taking a slightly more serious approach to things. When his information about the future starts to prove itself unreliable, rather than whining and moaning, he realizes that there's a good chance that something has gone wrong with time. In the wake of a universal crisis, such an assumption is not an unfair one to make. It's smart of the writers to give us a little more depth in Booster at this point, especially considering he's one of our focal characters for the series. The more prevalent characterization would have worn thin had it not been tempered by this side of the character. There's a reason he's been on the Justice League, and a reason he hasn't been shut down by any of the other heroes: he does actually care. It's just that the caring is buried deep, deep, deep beneath a shiny capitalist veneer.

Here's my favourite panel in the whole issue:

Continuity-wise, it's often difficult to say what adventures have happened to this point, and which have been retconned out of existence. Steel is, as far as I know, keenly aware of Luthor's criminal dealings. He was a member of the Justice League (during the Morrison years) when Lex was involved with the Injustice League, and thus knows that the act of caring President is just that with Lex. Their whispered exchange, the tacit acknowledgment of one anothers true feelings, is a lovely little moment. Neither can act on their true feelings, but that doesn't mean that neither can't make those feelings known. At least to each other.

52, as I've repeatedly called it, is an experiment. As the series progresses, I feel like the creative teams take the results of the early parts of the experiment and apply them to the later parts. My recollection is that the later parts of the series are far better, that the creators realize what they can do with the format, and what they don't need to do with the format. I suppose we'll see. So, that's a tiny little close reading, not terribly in depth, but what I was feeling like talking about today. See you tomorrow!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 235: 52 #2, May 17, 2006

One of the problems with telling a weekly, long-form story is that, in some instances, you have to tell stories that aren't really stories, but just he mundane things of life. While there are certainly superheroics in this issue, they're the stuff of life for these characters. The little revelation of the spray-painted S-shield on Sue Dibny's grave was intriguing, but the Booster stuff was lame, and the Montoya stuff just seemed gritty for the sake of being gritty. I really love Renee and Charlie's relationship later in the series, but this cloak and dagger-y stuff they do at the beginning is less interesting to me.

Just a short review today. What's interesting about the backup feature in this issue is that while ostensibly being a fictional narrative about the DC Universe, it's actually the real-life story of the DC Universe, in that it talks about all the reboots the continuity has undergone that were reflected in the publishing decisions of the company.

That's all for today. #2's are always a bit of a letdown. See you tomorrow for #3.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 234: 52 #1, May 10, 2006

I actually picked up the next issue of Alpha Flight this morning, and was about 4 pages in when I remembered that I'd decided to take a break from that comic. And what better way to pass a week than with DC's first foray into a weekly comic, 52.

52 picks up right after the events of the ridiculous clusterfuck that was Infinite Crisis. I call IC this because, rather than a nice, compact, followable event series, Infinite Crisis was a series of mini-series and one-shots and preludes and hints dropped in every comic leading up to it that, unless you were buying every single title DC was publishing at the time, made no sense whatsoever. I'm a strong proponent of the notion that an event series ought to tell a coherent story, and if there's crossovers or ancillary series, those series should enhance the story, but not be necessary to the enjoyment of the main title. Infinite Crisis did not do this. It's the same as with Marvel's Secret Invasion, which would have made absolutely no sense if I wasn't already reading the Avengers titles that crossed over into it.

Anyway, after the events, whatever they were, of IC, all DC comics jumped ahead one year. 52 is the story of what happened that year, week by week.

This issue gives introduces us to the six main characters with whom we're going to take this year-long journey. They're all B-list heroes (though Booster Gold certainly does not see himself that way), so it's kind of a cool ground-level look at the aftermath of one of these world-shaking crises. Steel's sections, helping with rescue efforts in Paris and chatting with the rescue workers, is particularly well-handled, as is Ralph Dibney's story. Dibney, it should be noted, is still reeling in the aftermath of the Identity Crisis mini-series, and the revelation that his wife Sue turned out to be a murderer. Of all the stories in 52, Ralph's is by far the most poignant, and probably the most well-realized. Though, having said that, the Renee Montoya/Question storyline is really pretty great too.

I admit, I only ever really picked up 52 when it came out because of the creative team. Though I'm not a big fan of Geoff Johns' subsequent mangling of the DCU, at this point he was riding high on a pretty fantastic run on Green Lantern. Grant Morrison, Mark Waid, and Greg Rucka are all amazing writers, and really any one of them on a title is reason enough to read it. All three? Sold. Add Keith Giffen on layouts, and you've got what promises to be a truly solid piece of work.

I guess over the next little while, we'll see if that promise is fulfilled. I've re-read 52 in its entirety only one other time, aside from when it was coming out, and I don't actually remember my reaction. I think the plan, at least for the foreseeable future will be to do a week of 52 and a week of Alpha Flight. The runs I have of both are quite lengthy, so this'll be a nice way of breaking them up. I know I said I was going to dive into the pile of "to read" comics sitting on my floor, but 52 called out to me, and I answered.

So. Week one sees Booster's knowledge of the future proved false, a bit of a crisis for him. Black Adam asserts his command and vision for Khandaq. Renee drinks a lot, Ralph wants to kill himself, Steel is heroic, and The Question commandeers the Bat-Signal for his own mysterious purposes. What will next week bring? Find out tomorrow!