A night in the life of Batman and Supergirl takes on Superman!
Batman 423, Firestorm 75, Justice League International 17, Secret Origins 30, Superman 21, Young All-Stars 16
Watching the drift of titles over the months I’ve covered these books is interesting. Batman has lost a week here or there while Firestorm has now been pushed back two, likely due to lateness from either penciler or inker. Neither has particularly affected the quality of the book, although the latter sees an art change over the next few issues, starting here.
Batman #423 by Jim Starlin, Dave Cockrum, and Mike DeCarlo
The big get for this issue was a cover by the legendary Todd McFarlane, here just months into his Amazing Spider-Man run. It likely was a bit of a disappointment for fans once they opened the issue though, as they found art by the far less flashy Dave Cockrum.
This issue feels like one designed to plug in as needed with three narratives from three different cops as they discuss encounters with Batman the previous night.
The first found a jumper on the Gothamsboro Bridge. He tried to talk him down, but the kid wasn’t hearing it. Batman arrived, but couldn’t stop the kid from jumping. Batman throws himself after the boy, catching him in midair while tethered to the bridge above, saving them both. He drops the boy into a police boat and promises him that life is always worth living.
The second officer talks about a hostage situation where three rejects from The Warriors are trying to escape their robbery. They are ready to execute one of their hostages when Batman swoops in. He makes short work of the three men, brutally beating them down.
The third cop joins them a moment later. He was pursuing two kids when Batman swooped in. The cop and Batman learn the children are only five and seven and have been surviving on the street for weeks, all because social services wanted to separate the boy and girl. Batman says that his friend Bruce Wayne would be happy to take the children in until a caretaker willing to take them both was found.
The first two cops don’t believe the third one’s story, but the book ends at Wayne Manor with Bruce Wayne again checking in on the orphans as Alfred makes clear that he will start finding them a new home the next day.
It’s a straightforward story but continues to show Starlin’s usual need to make Bruce a human behind the facade. This is still a far cry from the driven obsessive he would become in just a few years, arguably as the fallout to a tragedy Starlin would bring to him in just a couple of issues.
Firestorm #75 by John Ostrander, Joe Brozowski, and Sam DeLaRosa
I grew up in the era when every twenty-fifth issue was a giant-sized anniversary, so it feels strange to have just another issue of Firestorm appear. But this issue does solve one mystery of sorts for the book, giving it at least the feel of a more important issue.
After Ronnie’s sudden reaction to the appearance of Martin Stein as the Sand Demon, Firestorm loses stability in form. The two components break up and head back to their previous location. Unfortunately for Ronnie, his father and stepmother were taken hostage by Vegas crime boss Charles Harsh.
The Sand Demon attacks Harsh and destroys his house. Harsh recognizes the Sand Demon as Eddie Slick, a criminal who Ronnie and Martin met twenty-plus issues earlier and who looked almost exactly like Martin. The mess allows Ed and Felicity to escape. Ed distracts Harsh while Felicity runs for help. She reaches Ronnie and tells him the Sand Demon is Slick. Ronnie reforms Firestorm to save his father, but Firestorm and Mikhail both determine the Sand Demon to be the greater threat.
Without Ronnie’s interference, they make short work of the Sand Demon, transmuting him into glass. They arrive in time to save Ed Raymond from Harsh, threatening the criminal with death should he ever do anything to Ed.
After Firestorm separates, Ed and Felicity take Ronnie to where they wanted to all along, a mental health clinic where a John Doe matching Martin’s specifications was taken. He doesn’t remember anything about his past and suffers prolonged blackouts, but he is clearly Stein. The man shows happiness that Ronnie gives him a name, even if he cannot remember the boy. They talk for a bit as the issue ends.
The revelation of Martin Stein’s survival seems unnecessary here, but it is a bit of catharsis for Ronnie before heading into the book’s next major arc. Brozowski is nearing the end of his time on the book. While he’s a capable artist, he makes a lot of strange decisions here including making Stein look quite different than he had in the past.
Justice League International #17 by Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis, Kevin Maguire, and Al Gordon
We left things last issue with the Queen Bee murdered Hajarvti and taking over Bialya. This time around we start with Batman, now disguised as Maxwell Lord and Green Flame3 forced to escape as they and the other foreign dignitaries are kept imprisoned. They meet with the separately held Blue Beetle and Booster Gold (a plot point that will be important in several more months), but their escape is interrupted by the mind-controlled Wandjina!
Meanwhile, Captain Atom is furious about being sidelines, leading to some disagreements between him and Oberon back at the embassy. He flies off.
Just as the rest of the team seems completely overpowered, Captain Atom arrives in Bialya to find them. He is able to stand toe-to-toe with Wandjina, ultimately defeating and frying the former Champion of Angor. Queen Bee allows the Justice League and others to return, content that the world knows the power of Bialya now.
In space, L-Ron figures out Mister Miracle is from New Genesis, so the Cluster sets out to sell him to Apokolips. Big Barda uses her power rod to fuel the Justice League’s craft in order to go to warp and follow them.
This is the first issue that really feels like the JLI I grew up on. As you can see above, the plot is fairly straightforward, but the book really shines in the character beats between the heroes and their enemies. This allows the book to deal out both comedy and drama as needed, working magic to give this book its own unique feel.
Secret Origins #30 by Gerard Jones, Ty Templeton, and Grant Miehm / Roy Thomas, Stephen DeStefano, and Paul Fricke
DC’s twin stretchy heroes share this issue, but the Elongated Man takes a particularly somber tone as he returns to his hometown of Waymore, Nebraska, for the first time in years.
He and Sue are there for his thirtieth birthday party, but no one seems interested in him on his arrival. Wally West is also in attendance after a trip home to nearby Blue Valley, so he and Ralph leave to talk. They discuss Ralph’s origins and how Barry didn’t always appreciate Ralph’s drive to be famous as a clear factor in his decision to be a hero.
The chat and a second one with Sue make Ralph understand that he’s done a lot of good in the world. A third chat with his brother makes it clear that his town is proud of him, but they do think he’s weird. His brother asks him to try to have a normal conversation at the party and people will respond better.
Ralph and Sue return to the party and blend it better than before, although we do leave things with him being asked about the Cardinals and going into a discussion about Catholic succession, so he isn’t quite there yet.
This marks the very first DC work of the talented writer Gerard Jones. Unfortunately for us in modern context, Jones made some reprehensible life choices that have forever tarnished his reputation. It also marks the second penciling work at DC for Ty Templeton. Both have futures with the Justice League franchise coming within the next few months.
The second feature is for Plastic Man. Roy Thomas writes a fairly straight retelling of the original Jack Cole origin here, albeit with a framing sequence starring Plas and Woozy Winks. But the real star is artist Stephen DeStefano. The former Mazing Man and future Hero Hotline artist packs every single page with visual gags. That’s the key selling point here, especially considering we’re only a few months away from his forties-era origin being contradicted by his next appearance.
Whatever the case, it’s a fun piece to look at and I would recommend it just for DeStefano’s solid work.
Superman #21 by John Byrne with John Beatty
With this isssue, we start the three-part “Supergirl Saga” that will end Byrne’s run with the Superman books (although his final issue of World of Metropolis technically comes out a few weeks after the conclusion.) This also marks my first attempt at consistently buying any DC title. In my post Superman IV: Quest for Peace fervor, I wanted to check out the “modern” Superman and I wasn’t disappointed with this tale.
Byrne drops all his sub-plots except one for this issue, a one-page sequence where Jimmy Olsen convinces Perry White to send him and Lois Lane to Ireland to learn more about Silver Banshee. Beyond that page, we open the issue with Superman face-to-face with Supergirl. Only now, Supergirl has the very familiar face of Lana Lang.
She reveals her powers came from Lex Luthor which confuses Superman as Lana had already been targeted by Luthor. They do battle for a brief period, with a force blast sending Superman down to the ground.
Superman burrows through the ground back to Lana’s house. He finds Lana and his parents tied up there and Superman begins to put the pieces together. He confronts Supergirl again and leads her to Metropolis. There he introduces Supergirl to his Lex Luthor who she clearly doesn’t recognize.
After they leave, he explains that he knows from where this Lana came. Her origins are in the Time Trapper’s pocket dimension where the Superboy of the Legion of the Super-Heroes originated. She says that Superboy disappeared a decade earlier, leading Superman to guess time moved differently in that plane than this one. As he tries to figure out more, a portal drops down over them, bringing Supergirl and Superman back to the other dimension. He meets that universe’s Lex Luthor, dressed in the same armor and with similar hair to the one we first met in Crisis on Infinite Earths.
The book stops at that point, leaving a lot of mystery open. But this book is more fun and better written than a lot of what Byrne has produced over the last year. I have fond memories of being totally intrigued by this book at age ten. I’m happy to report that my excitement after reading it this time hasn’t dimmed. This is a really fun start to a very entertaining arc.
Young All-Stars #16 by Roy and Dann Thomas, Michael Bair, and Malcolm Jones III
I didn’t read this series until many years after its original publication, but I was introduced to Neptune Perkins in the pages of the 1988 Update of Who’s Who in the DC Universe. That issue covered the storyline starting in this issue, finally detailing the origins of Neptune Perkins. And like with Iron Munro, the Thomases delve into literary references to tell his back story.
The book opens in the Arctic as a group of Nazis invade a strange facility hidden in the ice. They have to kill several of the beings that live there, eight-foot chalk-white giants like the woman seen in the middle of the above cover. They take captive the giants’ apparent leader, a blonde human called Argor. But his companion transforms into a bird form and flies away in order to summon help.
Her name is Kalla and she makes her way straight to the headquarters of the All-Star Squadron. She slips past Gernsback because she’s a bird, but as soon as she finds Neptune, she returns to her original form. Flying Fox detects something mystic about her as they gather to listen to her story.
She tells the tale of Arthur Gordon Pym, a man she met when he was lost in the Arctic decades earlier. Pym lived with her race — the Dyzan — for some time, but ultimately left them after learning the secrets of many of their powers. He returned to the mainland, but was disillusioned by the governments of the world. He used Dyzan technology to build a super-submarine and took on the identity of Captain Nemo to attack ships around the world.
Neptune rescues both tales as extrapolations from the work of Edgar Allen Poe and Jules Verne, but Kalla reveals those “novels” were just slightly edited versions of the truth. She also reveals that Arthur, who was called Argor by her people, fathered a son who traveled with him through much of his later life. The son, Ross Perkins, turned against his father when he became Nemo and used what he learned from the Dyzan to father a special child with his wife Miriam. That child was Neptune whose unique physiology is the result of Dyzan science.
We also learn why the Nazis found the Dyzan as Pym connected with the German government years earlier in order to build a sub greater than even the Nautilus called Leviathan. It is this craft that the Nazis want now and with it, they would have enough power to win the war. This makes it clear to the Young All-Stars (as well as Wildcat who is supervising them) that they must act to stop the Nazis’ control of the Dyzan and free Pym.
It’s hard to do justice to everything the Thomases cover in this story. They are diving deep into the well of “Wold-Newton” storytelling where literary characters are connected into a shared universe. While he did a lesser version of this by making Iron Munro the son of Hugo Danner, this clearly shows more complicated links than Munro’s origin. Thomas has always been an expert at drawing together ideas into a linked whole even if it doesn’t always work. Here it works perfectly to setup one of the longest sagas in this title’s history.
It’s a bit interesting that they choose to give this story to Perkins however, as he is one of the few historical characters in the book, dating back to a first appearance in 1945. But outside a short appearance, he had almost no history at that time, so it’s interesting to see the Thomases finally fill it out.
This was a very solid week of comics with even the often weaker books offering some strong stories.
This week did see two other books with at least ties to the DC books we’re covering, but a bit outside of our normal purview. Detective Comics Annual #1 by Dennis O’Neil and Klaus Janson crosses the Dark Knight Detective over with The Question in a three-part annual event designed to connect Batman with the two mature readers vigilante books, The Question and Green Arrow. In the pages of Hellblazer #9, John Constantine deals with the repercussions of his actions while the Swamp Thing tries to get in touch with him after the events of Alec’s last issue. Neither tale has anything significant to the ongoing tales of other titles, but I wanted to mention them because of their at least peripheral involvement in the greater DCU.
Next time around, we will wrap up the month of May 1988. See you then.
I had no idea Neptune Perkins was that old as a character! I just assumed he'd been invented in the 80s for the Young All-Stars book!
"Jones made some reprehensible life choices that have forever tarnished his reputation...."
His non-fiction books, particularly "Honey, I'm Home" and "Men Of Tomorrow", have been extremely helpful to me. What happened?
"They are diving deep into the well of “Wold-Newton” storytelling where literary characters are connected into a shared universe." This, of course, was the doing of the late great SF writer Philip Jose Farmer, whose catalog is full of stories and novels of revisionist fictional history like this. I am a great admirer of that fiction and it has strongly influenced me.