A super-guest appearance, the return of a concept already dated in 1988, and some mad mystical monsters!
Doom Patrol 10, New Teen Titans 45, Spectre Annual 1, Swamp Thing 74, The Weird 4, Young All-Stars Annual 1
We close out March of 1988 on DC: A New Dawn with a few team books, a pair of annuals, and the conclusion of an oddball mini-series. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover, so let’s dive right into the action!
Doom Patrol #10 by Paul Kupperberg, Erik Larsen, and Gary Martin
As we work our way through the second half of Kupperberg’s run on the team, this issue once again brings him into the orbit of his friend John Byrne. Much like Checkmate’s debut in Action Comics, this issue is made as a tie-in to the ongoing Superman issue, which it will play out in a few weeks. Even the cover features a guest inker in Adventures of Superman artist Jerry Ordway who definitely gives a different look to Erik Larsen’s art. It’s quite a nice combination. But enough of what’s to come. Let’s cover how they get there.
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The book opens with Robotman testing out the new components for his newly rebuilt body. Everything seems to be in working order. At the same time, his ranch in California is attacked by another mysterious metal figure. It’s Metallo and he’s looking for components for his body, components that are now inside Robotman!
Outside Doom Patrol Headquarters in Kansas City, a group of citizens have gathered to protest their presence in the city. At the same time, Larry Trainor has reached Belle Reve Penetentiary where he gets a meeting with a figure he thinks can cure his radiation sickness: Reactron. (This is another old Supergirl villain created by Kupperberg that he’s reviving in the new continuity.)
While the young heroes are in a training session, Joshua Clay distracts Valentina with another declaration of love. She’s drawn to him as always, but angry that he won’t let the love affair go as she can never remove her bandages.
Metallo reaches Kansas City and uses his ability to control his components to take over Robotman. Cliff yells that he cannot control himself as he smashes out of the team’s base and heads across the city. The rest of the Doom Patrol follow, only to run into Metallo and an army of robots made from his components. They’re outnumbered but continue to fight.
Meanwhile, Superman is in Smallville visiting Lana Lang (more on that in the near future) when he hears a radio call about the fight. With Metallo being one of his villains, he rushes off to Kansas City. He arrives to find the Doom Patrol unconscious and beaten with Metallo nowhere in sight.
This is a solid if unremarkable issue of Doom Patrol yet again, elevated from mediocrity mostly by the fun early Erik Larsen art. The one complaint that I can make about the issue is how little he gets to draw Superman with the character only popping up in the last couple of pages of the story. Still, it’s a solid effort by all involved and offers an interesting look at what might have been if DC put more effort into keeping the young up-and-comers working on their titles rather than letting Marvel poach them all.
New Teen Titans #45 by Marv Wolfman, Eduardo Barreto, and Romeo Tanghal
Issues like this make me a bit sad that Eduardo Barreto’s time as Titans artist is very nearly at an end. He’s pouring himself into his work here which seems rather insane when he’s drawing a story reviving plot points from old “Dial H For Hero” stories.
The book opens with former H-dial owner Chris King on the run through a New York subway tunnel. He’s in trouble as a villain pursues him. He makes it out of the tunnel just before a train comes. He momentarily thinks his pursuer died, until water rises up off the tracks and forms into the shape of a woman. Chris runs for the surface as the water woman nearly reaches him. The Titans arrive just in time to come to the rescue.
The Titans aren’t able to defeat his attacker, but they do rescue Chris. They return him to Titans Tower where he explains his history with the H-dial. His pursuer is Vicki Grant, the other former owner of an H-dial and his ex-girlfriend. Something has driven her over the edge and she seems to want Chris dead.
Vicki hears voices wherever she has gone to recover. They push her to transform again (by spelling O-R-E-H instead of H-E-R-O) and pursue Chris. She turns into Diamond, a superbeing completely impervious to harm. She starts walking towards Titans Tower, ready to cross the bottom of the sea as she cannot drown in this form.
Cyborg says his farewells to Sarah Charles as she prepares to leave for San Francisco. He’s still stubbornly ready to give up the relationship when it’s long-distance despite the fact he’s on a team with a supersonic jet at their disposal. He encounters Diamond just before she steps into the water, but she is too much for him. She rips off his arm and leaves him beaten on the ground before stepping into the water.
Diamond rips through the walls of Titans Tower upon her arrival. She proves to be more than the Titans can easily handle. She succeeds at capturing Chris and leaving, mentioning that she serves a group that calls themselves the Children of the Sun.
We leave the book with that cliffhanger with a promise that the story concludes the next issue.
The Spectre Annual #1 by Doug Moench, Jim Baikie, Gordon Purcell, and Doug Hazlewood
I’m not sure this series really needed an annual in any form, though I still yearn for the days that a forty-eight-page Baxter paper issue only sold for two bucks. Whether it’s necessary or not, it does at least give us a chance to see Arthur Adams draw both Spectre and Deadman on the cover.
Demons in hell gather the bones of the worst of the worst and form a womb from which hatches a demon child. They created it to hunt down the Chosen from Millennium. (Eemember them?) They send the demon child to New York first as a way to increase its power.
Taking inspiration from a horror movie, the demon transforms a man into a werewolf and sends him out to kill. Deadman sees this and fails to stop him, but Spectre arrives just in time to save the would-be victim.
The demon realizes what’s happening and attacks Corrigan to get at the Spectre. The Spectre has been outside of Corrigan for over a day, weakening him and threatening to kill him should he stay seperate for two days. This trope gets too much play in this book, especially since it seems like Spectre only needs to rejoin Corrigan for a few minutes to rejuvenate. Already weakened, the Spectre becomes almost insubstantion when Corrigan is hurt.
Deadman possesses Madame Xanadu and goes full Rambo in her body as she and Kim go rescue Corrigan, but by this time the Spectre has fallen into another trap. Deadman possesses Spectre to keep him alive until Xandu and Kim can bring Corrigan there. Once they merge again, both heal quickly.
The Spectre and Deadman go to hell for a final battle with the demon child, one which sees Spectre almost become corrupted by the evil below. He survives the temptaton and they leave with the demon child forced back into hell to serve penance for its failure.
Jim Baikie is always a solid if unspectacular artist and he remains so here. Everyone looks on model, but it’s never anywhere as exceptional as the cover or the early issues by Colan. He still has a better handle on the horror elements than Gray Morrow had on the regular series, but this won’t lead to more work for him on the character either.
A “Private Lives” back-up features Kim as she mistakes a demon egg for a jawbreaker. Her mouth causes the egg to hatch as soon as she drops it. It causes havoc around her apartment until the Spectre arrives to stop it.
The backup is at best weird, and at worst, a gross adult joke about the creature “incubating” in her mouth. Gordon Purcell and Doug Hazlewood do a capable job on the art side, but it’s otherwise unspectacular.
This book as a whole doesn’t really feel like anyone is putting forth a lot of effort, but that’s been the feel of the entire series since about issue four. We will see if the title can recover any momentum in the second half of its run.
Swamp Thing #74 by Rick Veitch and Alfredo Alcala
After months of Wild Thing driving around Roy Raymond and Lipchitz in a limo, this issue finally brings his story to an end as the confluence of events caused by Sprout’s continued individuality converges to endanger Abby.
Swamp Thing is still in outer space, hopping from meteor to meteor on his way to Mars. He leaves the essence of the t-rex-like Swamp Knucker on the planet, where it starts to develop new life there.
He returns to Earth to find Constantine seriously injured. (In a rare bit of continuity connecting the Hellblazer book to the greater DCU, he stepped off a train accidentally in the previous issue of his series.) Swamp Thing combines his essence with Constantine to walk him to medical treatment, but the connection allows Swamp Thing to see the visits that Constantine made to gather information over previous issues, including the image of Abby, Constantine, and a baby.
Meanwhile, Wild Thing chases Abby and Sprout deeper into the swamp. Wild Thing forces them into a spot where they are surrounded by flames, a clear idea that Abby and Sprout might finally join. Swamp Thing arrives just in time to spare them this fate. Wild Thing lashes out to attack them both, but Swamp Thing destroys the half-living creature. The members of the Parliament of Trees held within the monster confront Swamp Thing (though they remain unmoving.)
He sends Abby away while he deals with them. Sprout reaches out to Abby and heals her burns, a clear sign that its mind isn’t completely lost. Swamp Thing communes with the Parliament members and they all disappear into the sky. We learn he explained to them how to planet hop as he had and they all decided to travel out into space to sow life elsewhere rather than return to the Parliament.
He retrieves the Sprout from Abby as he contemplates what to do about it. Abby seems concerned he might destroy it as he leaves to think about his next move for Sprout.
This issue was at least eventful even if I’m still of the opinion that Veitch stretches the Sprout storyline far too long, especially as its events are supposed to be causing worldwide issues which in no way play out in other DC titles. Thankfully, we’re moving closer to the end of this arc as we will see over the next couple of months.
The Weird #4 by Jim Starlin, Bernie Wrightson, and Dan Green
It’s time to wrap up Starlin and Wrightson’s foray into the greater DCU and with a hero in danger of exploding at a level that will destroy the Earth, it pretty much has to end with a bang.
The issue opens with Batman slapping the Weird awake. We pull back to see the rest of the heroes on site are in the midst of a battle with Superman and Nuklon. Both show powers that aren’t normal for them. Weird reveals this is because they are possessed by Macrolatts as seen in the previous issue.
The Weird fears a fight with the Macrolatts as he’s spent his entire existence as a slave to their race. The two possessed heroes make short work of the heroes and The Weird appears to bend his knee to them in exchange for their safety.
The Weird lures them both high into the atmosphere to protect everyone and tries to talk down the Macrolatts. They see him as insolent, acting above his station as a slave to them.
But this is all a ploy. When they near the Weird, he simply goes immaterial and reaches into the chest of both heroes. He pulls the Macrolatts from their bodies. His appreciation for humanity makes him saddened that he had to kill Jason in the previous issue, but he feels no such qualms for the energy beings that once enslaved him. He crushes them in his hands.
In the aftermath, the Weird only has a few short days to live. He builds a small island as a shrine to both his existence and that of Walt Langley, the body he now possesses. The other heroes bring Billy to him and he says goodbye to the boy and explains the tiny monument is meant for him. Martian Manhunter flies the boy away as Guy Gardner and Superman take the Weird into space. They guide him to an empty planetoid and wait until The Weird explodes in the distance.
The book ends with a somber full-page shot of the island, as The Weird fades into DC history.
The book is beautifully written and illustrated. It shows a distinct sign of the kind of cosmic encounters that Starlin would soon bring to both Marvel and DC with Cosmic Odyssey and Infinity Gauntlet. It also marks it as something outside Wrightson’s usual wheelhouse, much like the Hulk and Thing graphic novel that brought them together in the first place.
Looking at an original of this issue, it’s clear that Michelle Wrightson had mastered her limited color palettes as well as the registers look much better here, similar to their appearance in the Mystery in Space trade that ultimately collected this story. (That series also brought The Weird’s return, two decades after this issue.)
The Weird will always remain a fun little oddity in late eighties comics, a marker of two amazing talents coming together and telling a fun superhero story. It will never carry the legacy of their net collaboration (and their final work together at DC.) But we will talk more about that one in just over a month as Batman: The Cult comes hot on the heels of this issue.
Young All-Stars Annual #1 by Roy and Dann Thomas, Mike Gustovich, Joe Kubert, Brian Murray, Tony DeZuniga, and Malcolm Jones III
This issue is all about Mekanique and Per Degaton’s attack on the All-Star Squadron. We start with their approach to the Perisphere which leads to the first of several guest pages featuring Degaton versus the Justice Society by Joe Kubert.
The team has been gathered to discuss the disobedience of the young heroes during the previous storyline. (It also inserts Miss America into the role of JSA secretary, establishing her in this period as the replacement Wonder Woman, just as she is in Infinity Inc.)
The combined heroes take a vote to consider whether to reduce the teens back to probationary members. Iron Munro takes away their need for a decision, as he quits the team rather than fall under their authority for what he considers was the right thing. The rest of the Young All-Stars follow his lead.
Outsider, the team considers their next steps. We also get several full-page shots of each team member, marking the last work by Brian Murray on the series, as we focus on what each one wants for the future.
At the same time, Mekanique assaults the main team, exposing them to a gas that shrinks them all down. They are dropped into the miniature she has made of the Periscope where she attacks them just as seen in Fury’s vision from months earlier. The Young All-Stars rush back to the Perisphere and face down with her still at full size. With the help of Robotman — who helped repair her — they exploit Mekanique’s weak spot and destroy her. With the enemy vanquished, the older members admit they may be wrong about the young heroes and invite them back into the fold.
Degaton watches from the shadows with plans of his own still waiting to be hatched, a sure sign of what is to come in the final Infinity Inc annual.
The “Private Lives” backup feature focuses on Dan the Dyna-Mite as he travels home to his rich ambassador father’s home. He learns that he’s supposed to fly with his parents to his father’s new job in the South American country of Rioguay. He falls asleep after his flight but wakes up to learn his parents left without him due to the dangers of Nazis in the country. He never even gets to see them. As he heads back to the team, he’s thankful that he has a second family that cares about him in ways his parents clearly never will.
Young All-Stars seems to vary wildly between truly great and truly mediocre. Unfortunately for this issue, it’s far closer to the latter than the former. After months of buildup, the threat of Mekanique only takes about eight pages to beat inside an extra-sized issue. She’s ultimately one of the least worrisome threats the team has faced in their last year of publication. It’s especially strange as this mostly serves to set up the threat for Infinity Inc. in the future, even though that team’s book is already on the chopping block. Nothing here makes a lot of sense for the book that still has a future.
Overall, it’s a better-than-average week of comics even though the greatest of the comics aren’t going to truly wow anyone. It closes out a month with one big debut with Manhunter and the return of Power Girl in her own limited series. It’s a much quieter month than our next one, which brings the debut of Action Comics Weekly and the return of the Atom to the DCU in two different comics. But that coverage will kick off in the coming weeks.
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