Action Comics Weekly #635: It’s a bad sign when a new writer can provide better stories than the regulars

This week: The Crash of '88, Superman, and Green Lantern

Eighty percent of this issue of Action Comics Weekly is occupied by an event story that crosses over characters from four different serials: Black Canary, Blackhawk, Green Lantern, and Superman. Yet the work provided by the creators of that story shows a sharp improvement over some of the drawn-out nonsense we’ve seen in those characters’ serials.

Art by Eduardo Barreto. All art in this article is owned by DC Comics and used for review purposes.

“The Crash of ‘88” by Mark Verheiden, Eduardo Barreto, and John Nyberg

Our story opens with Weng Chan, the formerly junior member of the Blackhawk team, as he pilots a plane over the nation of Sumango. They are shot out of the air, but he and his co-pilot Susan Sullivan manage to save the craft. Unfortunately, they are surrounded by the local military forces who capture them and take the secret super-weapon their plane carried.

Weng is understandably annoyed. He’s the CEO of Blackhawk Express, but the mysterious board of directors sent him on the mission. (It seems likely that this “board” is the same government contacts from their proto-CIA work in the late forties.) Their passenger Clay Kendall is also captured, which will play a key role in involving other heroes in our story.

Hal Jordan has dinner with Dinah Lance. Hal is struggling with the direction of his life, but his relationship with Oliver has been too strained for him to confide in his best friend. Dinah chastises Hal for thinking Oliver is his only friend. She convinces him to look up an old friend from his Ferris days, none other than the aforementioned Clay Kendall. They learn that his plane went down a few days ago, which sends Green Lantern and Black Canary to Sumango to investigate.

As soon as they find the plane, they are attacked by a giant magenta energy being. Canary saves civilians from the monster, but Green Lantern’s powers prove to be no match for it. Before he passes out, he sends his ring off to find the one hero he thinks might have a chance. Canary and the unconscious Hal are imprisoned alongside Clay, Susan, and Weng.

The ring finds its way to Clark Kent. He follows it back to Sumango, but is forced to stop and fight the giant monster. He finds even his powers might not be a match for the monster’s near endless energy.

Weng and Canary plot a breakout, leaving Susan to guard Clay and the still unconscious Hal. They find a facility from which the nation’s dictator Colonel Diaz is generating and controlling the energy monster. They confront him, weakening the monster and allowing Superman to finally fly toward them.

Green Lantern wakes up when his ring returns and he uses it to save Clay and Susan from the guards. Superman arrives just as the colonel summons the monster again. Weng ultimately saves the day by simply pulling the plug on the dictator’s machine, shutting down the energy projection.

The tale here is relatively straightforward, but it gives a few nice character moments for all three superheroes in the story. Meanwhile, it does a solid job setting up the modern Blackhawk Express concept, one which DC would rarely ever use for reasons I cannot quite fathom.

While Barreto and Nyberg are DC regulars, this marks Mark Verheiden’s first DC work after writing both The American and the first-ever Aliens mini-series for Dark Horse. He was also already a screenwriter, having provided the script for a barely remembered action film named Terror Squad. He brings a solid storytelling prowess here, which we will see more of in this book as he takes over the Speedy feature in the next issue.