A new hero for a new era of DC, plus the return of Brainiac!
Adventures of Superman 445, New Teen Titans 48, Power of the Atom 3, Starman 1, Swamp Thing 77
We wrap up the comics released in June of 1988 with this look at the debut of a new DC hero, the beginning of Jerry Ordway’s full run as a Superman writer as well as artist, and the aftermath of last month’s rather unique Swamp Thing issue. Let’s dive into our stories!
Adventures of Superman #445 by Jerry Ordway and Dennis Janke
The pos-Byrne era begins with a story that picks up a ton of plot threads already established in earlier issues of Adventures. This shows that a lot of those subplots were likely why Ordway received plotting credits on his issues with Byrne. This run continues things nicely, but Ordway doesn’t really tell a story the same way that Byrne did.
This is far more of a Jimmy Olsen story than a Superman one, as the Man of Steel doesn’t even show up until nearly halfway through the story. Jimmy’s homeless friend has gone missing and he’s adamant he’ll find him. We open with a bit of his working story and a discussion about it with Perry who sends him off to speak with Inspector Henderson. Cat Grant also shows up for work at midday and is clearly hungover. She hits on Jimmy again before he leaves.
Jimmy gets in touch with Henderson and learns some bad news. They found a body matching his friends and it’s been stabbed by a needle in the neck, drained of spinal fluids. The police and Jimmy tie the crimes to the escaped Milton Fine, better known as Brainiac. They have done so correctly, although Fine’s mind has totally been subsumed by the will of Vril Dox.
We finally check in with Superman who sits in the dark in his old bedroom. He’s still processing his actions in the pocket dimension. His father offers to listen, but Superman decides to shoulder his trauma on his own. (It’s a foolish choice, but it would have been the expected one in 1988. Few people — especially men — talked out their emotional problems. To do so, meant something was “wrong” with you.)
An inebriated Cat stumbles on Brainiac as he seeks another victim. Running late to her invitation, Jimmy catches the madman abducting her. He gives chase, but Brainiac easily captures him as well.
Brainiac increases the power of the signal watch telepathically. It strikes Superman just as he’s returned to Metropolis. He rushes to his friends’ aid, only to find out it was Brainiac that summoned him. Brainiac and Superman throw down with Brainiac’s mental powers still a match for Superman’s wide variety of powers. But Brainiac notices the dark side of Superman’s anger raging forth. It allows the Man of Steel to gain a foothold, even as Jimmy helps Cat from the building.
Shortly after he reaches Maggie Sawyer and the SCU, the building explodes behind Jimmy. Superman walks out with the injured Brainiac. One of the officers says to Superman, “you could have killed him.” This clearly triggers the PTSD that the hero faces, even as the cop makes it clear that he should have killed him because Brainiac will just escape again. It’s with that happy note the issue ends.
We do get a bit of a subplot with Lois and Jose Delgado, the still crippled Gangbuster. He receives an offer for a potential repair of his spinal damage, although we’re shown the offer comes from an employee of Lex Luthor. That plot point will play out significantly over the next few months.
Ordway’s story isn’t as strong as “The Supergirl Saga” but it does a very good job of establishing the direction that the Superman titles will take over the next few months. That’s why it’s a bit strange that it isn’t featured anywhere on DC Universe Infinite. This issue and the five after it aren’t featured at all, leaving a hole in the book’s coverage until after Invasion! That includes a rather monumental decision made in Adventures of Superman #450 so it’s pretty mystifying they aren’t there.
New Teen Titans #48 by Marv Wolfman, Eduardo Barreto, and Romeo Tanghal
This and the next New Teen Titans issue are bittersweet for me. While it is clear that Wolfman needed something to spike his creativity on the series (which will come with issue fifty) this also marks the final two-issue arc by Eduardo Barreto as the regular artist. He’ll never draw another DCU series full-time. Instead, he will focus on special projects after his upcoming run on the out-of-continuity Shadow Strikes.
This issue brings back two members of the Soviet team the People’s Heroes, Hammer and Sickle. They open the book, attacking a metahuman research facility in their native country that is part of an experimental scientific exchange program with the United States. They kill everyone there.
The Titans remain in San Francisco still as they watch the same tests performed by Sarah Charles at STAR Labs. They start with a man named Eric Forrester who possesses perfect recall as well as amazing good looks. He also has the attitude to go with it, hitting hard on the women of the team.
The next test subject is why the Titans stayed over, former member Red Star. Red Star hadn’t appeared with the team since the eighteenth issue of the first New Teen Titans series and his attitude has him focused only on service to the Soviet Union. He’s rather standoffish to the rest of the team.
When Hammer and Sickle attack the facility, he takes their arrival as a cancellation of his mission in the United States. He accompanies them from the facility without a fight, even after they attack and knockout Starfire, taking her as a hostage. He doesn’t know they were sent to the United States to kill him against the Kremlin’s orders, as they are working for a faction that wishes Glasnost to fail.
They escape in an unmarked van. Cyborg catches them leaving (as he had been moping around the city) and hops onto the back of the van as the issue ends.
The Soviet Union has decidedly played too large of a role in DC Comics at this point, mostly because it ruled the nightly news at the time as well. Wolfman does a better job than some writers at giving us a tight plot around Soviet heroes and villains, while Barreto makes Red Star (still dressed mostly in green), Hammer, and Sickle look better than just about anyone else can. We’ll see how much more he can do with them in his final New Teen Titans issue next month.
Power of the Atom #3 by Roger Stern, Dwayne Turner, and Keith Wilson
In this issue, Ray Palmer seems to spend a lot of time trying to figure out what to do with his life. It feels like a direct line from the mind of Roger Stern who I don’t think came into this book with any plan of what to do with the character. This series was penciled into the DC line without a creative team attached to it originally, as Sword of the Atom writer Jan Strnad was once offered it and turned it down. The book is horribly directionless, but Stern does try to remedy that by upping the presence of the CIA in this issue.
The Atom’s sudden return last month has left the people of his life surrounded by reporters, including Jean Loring, who enters the book with her current husband at last. She learns of her ex-husband’s return from the reporters but doesn’t quite know what to do with the information.
Atom visits his old professor Alpheus Hyatt to discuss what the future might bring for him. They don’t get far, as his public arrival draws the interest of a small-time super criminal named Strobe. He wants to make a name by attacking Ray, but Ray is able to stop him by shrinking into Strobe’s armor and shutting it off.
In the aftermath of the battle, the CIA offers Ray a full-time job with the agency.
There’s a subplot here that seems to indicate Chronos is returning as a major villain for Ray, but this book is just terribly directionless. It’s especially confusing as the very next comic we will cover shows Roger Stern launching a different title in a much stronger way.
Starman #1 by Roger Stern, Tom Lyle, and Bob Smith
I could play at objectivity when it comes to Will Payton’s debut appearance here, but it would be false. I found the character cool from his very first appearance, even if his launch pales in comparison to the solid superhero stories to come.
We open with a scientist named Harold Melrose who is using a satellite to harness cosmic energy. He plans to use it to empower six subjects with abilities so they can become the patriotic heroes the United States needs after the Justice League went international. Something strikes the satellite and sends the beam elsewhere.
We switch to that elsewhere — the mountains of Colorado — as two hikers find the body of Will Payton atop a charred piece of ground in the middle of nowhere. Despite weighing far more than he should, his body is taken to the morgue to figure out how he died. He wakes up just as they’re about to get to work, with Will figuring out he can fly in the process. He also figures out he is nearly invulnerable, has great strength, and can radiate a burst of light. He uses these powers to stop a bank robber but flees when the police connect him to the missing body from the morgue.
He returns to his hometown of Phoenix, Arizona. He meets with his sister Jayne and informs her of what happened. With her help, he starts to rebuild his life after figuring out he lost over a month of time in the mountains. She creates his costume, which he uses when a construction worker is trapped in an accident. Based on the design of his costume, the city dubs him Starman.
Will isn’t sure he wants to be a hero, especially when he can’t even figure out what to do for a job. But word of his actions reaches Harold Melrose, who is still continuing his work to make super-soldiers. He connects that Starman must be the recipient of the powers he created and sets out to find him.
The premise is solid and straightforward with Roger Stern and Tom Lyle building a twenty-six page launch that gives us what we need to know about Will’s powers, the threat he faces for having them, and the first steps he takes to rebuild his life. The book gives about a page to Marie Payton, Will’s mother, who clearly doesn’t like him either. This will certainly also be a major ongoing plot point of the series.
First issues are difficult. It can be nearly impossible to establish a character’s powers, introduce their supporting cast, reveal the threats they face, and make fans want to read the book all in one comic. Starman isn’t quite a perfect example of how to do it, but it’s very close. (Perhaps a bit ironically, Tom Lyle’s next space-powered hero, The Comet with Mark Waid, might do an even better job.)
Lyle is nearly an unknown at this point in his career. The extent of his work consisted of about a year of Skywolf backups on Eclipse’s Airboy as well as a three-issue spinoff limited series that was still ongoing when this issue debuted. Yet again, DC puts a ton of faith into an indie comics artist. Lyle rewards them by not missing a single issue of his twenty-five month run. He will only step away when it comes time to launch one of the biggest comics of 1990, the first-ever Robin mini-series.
I’ve read chunks of Starman over the years, but I’ve never had the fortune to read the full forty-five issue run from beginning to end. Believe it or not, this was one of the catalysts for starting DC: A New Dawn, working my way to this series’ launch and the era we are now at, where I was taking my first baby steps into the DCU.
Swamp Thing #77 by Jamie Delano, Tom Mandrake, and Alfredo Alcala
This issue of Swamp Thing apparently takes place in the middle of the recent Hellblazer #10, and is guest written by that book’s Jamie Delano. Like that series, this feels peripheral to anything else going on in DC, including the rest of the Swamp Thing run.
Abby needs space after the events of the previous issue when she was impregnated by Swamp Thing in Constantine’s body. She’s still processing her feelings after the event for both Alec and Constantine, a man she finds reprehensible at best.
She heads back into Houma where she runs into Constantine who still hasn’t left town. They end up going out for a drink. (This sounds terrible now, but in the eighties, it was still conventional wisdom that drinking early in pregnancy wasn’t an issue. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome had only been named in 1973.) They both get very drunk as they discuss the issues between them. They stumble into a hotel nearby because neither can travel.
Abby wakes up next to Constantine in bed and freaks out about what they did. Constantine pulls off the covers to reveal that she’s still fully dressed, even wearing her shoes.
At the same time, Swamp Thing seems to have a temper tantrum in the swamp, growing humanoid figures and tearing them apart. They reunite at issue’s end with any divisive feelings seemingly behind them, ending an uneventful issue.
In a series that already felt like it had stretched its plot for months too long, this feels like unnecessary and pointless filler. Next month will also feature a guest writer, as Stephen Bissette again returns to the character with Mandrake continuing over on the art side for a second month.
A pretty solid work with a great debut, a very good post-Byrne launch of the Superman titles, and a beautifully illustrated New Teen Titans tale. While the Atom and Swamp Thing’s adventures aren’t quite as impressive, it’s still a very good way to close out another month’s worth of DC releases. We start the rotation again next week with the beginning of comics from July of 1988, with the handoff of writing duties on New Guardians and the penultimate chapter of Batman: The Cult!
What did you think about the debut of Starman or the passing of the torch on the Superman titles?
I remember hearing a lot of buzz about Starman at the time. I even tried out one of his books (#3 where he fought Bolt), but it just never did it for me. I guess I wasn't all that interested in the "Gee, I don't-know-if-I-want-to-be-a-hero-or-not" trope. It struck me more like a soap opera trying to masquerade as a superhero comic.
Maybe I'd feel different now. Like I said, I never purchased another issue...so maybe I just had a dud.
Throwback time: Inspector Henderson appeared as a regular on the George Reeves- starring "Adventures of Superman" TV show in the 1950s.