Action Comics Weekly #609: A new feature and the book’s most iconic cover!
This week: Black Canary, Deadman, Secret Six, Superman, Wild Dog, and Green Lantern
After eight full weeks of the same serials week after week, this issue brings the first change in Action Comics Weekly’s rotation. Black Canary’s debut comes with easily one of the best covers of these forty-two weekly issues with Brian Bolland bringing the character to life, even as she rids herself of her infamous “jazzercise” costume.
This issue also marks the first time I ever read an Action Comics Weekly, picking up this and the subsequent couple of issues through one of those famous comic three-packs available at so many dollar stores of my youth.
“Bitter Fruit Part 1” by Sharon Wright, Randy DuBurke, and Pablo Marcos
Black Canary’s first solo feature of the modern era picks up from her place in the ongoing Green Arrow series. Following the events of The Longbow Hunters, she has been inactive as a superhero, focusing on her flower shop. Even in this story, the only thing related to Black Canary that Dinah Lance does is burn her old polyester costume in the fireplace. That event comes on page six of an eight-page story, as the first five pages are focused on other things entirely.
We actually open with two Mexican illegal immigrants working on a farm in California. From there, we check in with an immigration official named William McDonald, concerned about dangerous criminals coming across the border in the aftermath of recent immigration reforms. We also check in with a young woman named Rita who previously appeared in Green Arrow. Her brother Luis is attacked on the street, just before she has to meet with Dinah for a job offer. She shows up to meet with Dinah at the story’s end with clear bruises on her face.
The new tale isn’t paced well for the first chapter of a serial as it gives us very little to go on. Sharon Wright gets the writing credit here in her second-ever credited work (the first being the aforementioned issue of Green Arrow where Rita was introduced and Black Canary returned to action.) She was married to that book’s creator Mike Grell and had written before this, ghosting much of the last two years of Grell’s time on The Warlord. But this tale reads like she wasn’t thinking about serialization at all.
Randy DuBurke was also new to comics here having previously done a Bonus Book and that same aforementioned Green Arrow issue. His style is very influenced by Paul Gulacy which works quite well on a book with espionage overtones. But even he can’t make this setup feel complete, so we’re left wondering what’s to come in the coming weeks.
“Faux Pas” by Mike Baron, Dan Jurgens, and Tony DeZuniga
We left Deadman as he’s in an uncomfortable situation, possessing the CIA director, and he’s being confronted by his mistress Lynn. After trying to talk her down for a bit, he gives up and tells Lynn that the man has two other mistresses before jumping from the body in search of the Devil.
He finds the Devil possessing Mikhail Gorbachev. He stops before possessing the man next to him, Ronald Reagan, unsure if he should possess the President. Quipping that he wouldn’t be depriving the country of leadership, he takes control of Reagan. We get another quip as he does so:
They trade a few jokes with one another, but the Devil admits the Americans are far more decadent than the Russians. They agree to leap to other bodies, with the Devil possessing Nancy Reagan and Deadman taking Raisa Gorbachev. (You’re forgiven if you didn’t remember the Soviet premier’s wife’s name. I certainly didn’t.) They ultimately come to blows, but Raisa-Deadman only takes one hit before retreating. She returns to the room with the alien gun in her hand as the chapter ends.
This chapter is played with laughs, poking a lot of fun at the world politics of the era. Baron seemed to have no trouble mocking anyone here, while Jurgens and Tony DeZuniga provided excellent art to the story.
“Canned in Boston” by Martin Pasko and Dan Spiegle
Much of this issue deals with the fallout of Vic’s return to Boston. His fisticuffs with Gary, his ex-wife’s new husband, lands them both in jail. his wife Melanie makes it clear that she’s not leaving her new husband for him. Nor will she let him see Stephanie, a daughter we learn about here just in passing.
Meanwhile, two goons find Di Rienzi before the team can. They wallop him with a blackjack and stuff him in a catering cart to take him to Mockingbird.
The team preps for their next mission, breaking into a meat-packing facility to determine if the facility is processing bad meat or if they’re poisoning the meat at the facility. Tony and Ladonna replace two reporters heading into the scene, while Vic takes the spot of a meat packer. (Their special effect man clearly has some next-level prosthetics. Maybe he knows the Human Target.) We leave it there as the chapter ends, once again failing to give us anything resembling a satisfying single chapter of a serial.
“And there will be a sign!” by Roger Stern, Curt Swan, and John Beatty
The shadowy figure at the end of the strip was Clark Kent. He tells the police that he wants Bob’s story. They release him with Clark. Clark tries to get answers about Bob’s ties to Culpepper or his business. He also wants details about Bob’s seeming worship of Superman. Bob doesn’t want to trust the reporter, so Clark casually uses his heat vision to scrawl “Trust Kent” in a nearby wall.
“Red Pencil” by Max Allan Collins, Terry Beatty, and John Nyberg
The Legion of Morality breaks into the museum art exhibit with guests present. They immediately gun down several of them. Meanwhile, Jack beats up his guard and demands their location, but the man left behind is given no information.
Despite those words from the Legionnaire, Wild Dog arrives just at the Legion is leaving the sight. They’ve planted bombs and plan to detonate them with the patrons of the museum still inside. Layman orders his men to “Shoot him down like a dog,” but Wild Dog just drops to the ground and opens with a steady spray from his SMG. He kills all six of Layman’s men in seconds.
Layman calls him a madman and asks what he’s done. Wild Dog calls it his own form of censorship, and “there’s plenty of lead in his red pencil.” (Another outdated reference as no one uses red pencil for editing corrections anymore.)
Wild Dog hits Layman alongside the head. When the zealot awakens, he’s strapped to a chair with one of the Legion’s explosive belts around his torso. Wild Dog holds the detonator and demands the location of the explosives. They call them into the police bomb squad, but Wild Dog refuses to give his location as he has to watch Layman. Once the bombs are defused, he gives up Layman.
The next day, Jack meets with Flint. He learns that the police were forced to release Layman as they didn’t have enough evidence to hold him. But he also informs Jack that one of the three people he gunned down was the son of Helen Scournt, the woman he used as his alibi. In the final two panels of the story, we switch to her home as she approaches Layman reading in her bed, a knife in her hands and madness in her eyes.
That’s quite the dramatic finish to the first Wild Dog serial with the character’s return promised for issue #615. Wild Dog has been one of the stronger serials in the book, so it’ll be interesting to see how well his replacement, the Phantom Stranger, can measure up.
“Cutting Remarks” by Peter David, Tod Smith, and Danny Bulanadi
Green Lantern gets the final spot this week, which I would argue probably should have happened more frequently in this title as his “anchor” role really does seem to drag the book down.
Peter David’s second chapter opens with a random man in a sword shop. He examines a katana, testing its sharpness with his own hand, and then kills the shopkeeper who calls him crazy.
At Oprah’s studio, the audience questions whether a lack of fear is sane and whether or not Green Lantern can be called a hero if he never has to overcome his fear. Another one questions how he can compare himself to a police officer when they don’t have magic rings to keep them alive.
As she’s mentioning her husband Joey, the donut shop he’s in gets attacked by a sword-wielding crazy man. She’s delivering the line “it’s in his blood” about his history as a police officer just as the page is colored red from his evisceration. (Another reminder this isn’t a code approved book.)
Green Lantern leaves the studio questioning everything about himself. He flies down when he sees the swordsman, but before he approaches the man he takes off his ring as a seeming test of whether he’s truly fearless or not. We leave it on that somewhat understandable notion, albeit one that doesn’t make sense when he’s confronting a man surrounded by dead bodies.
With no letters quite yet and nothing to promote, the two pages devoted to mailed missives instead present numerous old letters from modern comic scribes, including Roy Thomas, Mark Evanier, Joe Staton, Bob Rozakis, and E. Nelson Bridwell. It’s a simple, fun diversion. Perhaps more interestingly, the end of the column is already promoting an upcoming Shazam series by Thomas (that never happened), Staton moving away from the just-debuting New Guardians to draw The Huntress (a book still eight months in the future), and Rozakis’ future Hero Hotline limited series, which hadn’t even seen its debut yet… in the pages of Action Comics Weekly.
This issue isn’t the strongest by any means with Black Canary’s first chapter not delivering enough to go on and Green Lantern still feeling directionless. As other stories wrap and yet others begin, we will see if we can build the average quality of this book up a little higher.