Another battle with Shrapnel, the end of the Corps, and things get Weird-er
Adventures of Superman 440, Doom Patrol 8, Green Lantern Corps 224, Infinity Inc 50, New Teen Titans 43, Swamp Thing 72, The Weird 2
The end of January of 1988 continues a trend I’ve noticed in the fourth week of DC monthly releases as the weirder books in the line tend to fall into this week. Right now, it’s quite obviously so with a book literally called The Weird out every month!
Let’s take a look, though we start with a more normal title.
Adventures of Superman #440 by John Byrne, Jerry Ordway, and Dennis Janke
This issue feels very much like the plans for Action Comics #600 were well in place before Byrne took over the writing duties on Adventures of Superman. With last week’s Superman ending with the phone call that set up their date, this issue essentially covers Superman killing time before the big moment.
His errands start with a check-in with Professor Emil Hamilton about the failed Superman robot from last issue. He heads from there to Gotham City where he meets with Batman to discuss the mystery scrapbook he received. Batman doesn’t have any leads but admits that he knows Superman is Clark Kent. He promises to say nothing, to which Clark says he would never tell anyone that Batman is Bruce Wayne either.
On his way to Smallville, he stops a gunman who inadvertently hits a tanker truck. He has to put the tanker out which burns much of his cape, damaging the scrapbook. But when he gets home, Martha reveals the scrapbook is hers, although who took it and mailed it to Clark remains a mystery. From there, he flies off to meet Wonder Woman. The two heroes kiss as the issue comes to a surprisingly quick end.
Doom Patrol #8 by Paul Kupperberg, Erik Larsen, and Gary Martin
This issue is mostly built around developing character conflicts between members of the team, starting with a disagreement between Cliff Steele and Celsius about whether they should assist the Kansas City police in investigating shrapnel. Cliff wins out and we get a Doom Patrol mission not focused on finding the Chief in any way. Tempest starts by analyzing a piece of Shrapnel that was left behind, finding the strange metal to be organic in nature, a part of the villain’s actual body.
Meanwhile, Shrapnel is annoyed because his arrival in the city was too obvious and makes it harder to carry out his mission, a hit on someone out of his past. Even with the police and the Doom Patrol on the lookout for him, he still manages to complete the job. Security and police slow him down enough for the Doom Patrol to arrive.
The team proves to have a hard time against the villain with Celsius taking the worst of it. Ultimately they bring a building down on him thanks to Karma’s powers, but he somehow escapes in the aftermath, never to be seen in these pages again.
Kupperberg seems to have a whole backstory in mind for the villain, but none of it will come into play in this series. Instead, Shrapnel will become one of a handful of ultra-generic DC villains popping up to battle a variety of heroes over the next few decades of continuity.
The rest of the issue devotes time to subplots between Valentina and Larry as well as Karma and Cliff, who has been tipped off that Karma might be a wanted murderer. Karma makes it clear that he didn’t kill anyone but his criminal history would mean no one would believe him. Cliff seems ready to shield him after this.
I have no idea if that will come into play in the remaining issues Kupperberg will have on the book from here. I do know Larsen’s art will bring bigger stakes and crazier villains that better fit his art style on the road to Invasion! and the end of this era of Doom Patrol to make way for a far more famous one.
Green Lantern Corps #224 by Joey Cavalieri, Gil Kane, and Mark Farmer
One might expect the ending of the original Green Lantern series in an extra-sized issue to feel like an event. Instead, it’s a mess. I suspect Kane plotted and drew this, a move that would be akin to having Steve Ditko take over Amazing Spider-Man in 1990. He’s out of place here and I’m not sure that he’s even aware that this is supposed to be a team book. This is a Hal Jordan story with the rest of the team merely serving as set dressing.
With the rings falling apart around them, for some reason, Hal’s maintains its power. While the rest of the team deals with the escaped prisoners, Hal is assisted by Flodo Span into flying into the central battery.
Inside, he does battle with Sinestro who is siphoning off all the powers of all the Green Lanterns in an attempt to destroy everything with him. He starts to do the same to Hal as he reaches the central yellow impurity. The battle between the two seems to go in Sinestro’s favor. Appa arrives and helps seal the core again, as Hal forces Sinestro out of the battery (or so it would seem at least.)
This stops the immediate threat and Hal returns with Appa to reality. Badly damaged, the central battery can now only support a handful of Green Lanterns. For the safety of those not present, those are the ones still elsewhere in the galaxy. Everyone on Oa except Hal Jordan has lost their powers. (We will learn John Stewart still has at least some soon.)
This leaves Hal to return everyone else to their homes. Salaak finds Ch’p and we learn that he is one of the Lanterns that still has powers. Though not shown, one can assume Guy Gardner does as well.
The book ends with a blurb for Green Lantern’s place in Action Comics Weekly but fails to mention the Green Lantern Special that will drop between this series and the arrival of the weekly format title. Thankfully, the creators responsible for this mess will not get to touch these characters much longer.
Infinity Inc #50 by Roy and Dann Thomas, Vince Argondezzi, Michael Bair, and Tony DeZuniga
The contents of this extra-length issue make the best argument that this book has gone on far too long I could possibly read. It’s clear the Thomases have run out of directions to take these characters, although it’s unclear whether they were aware they were being canceled just yet.
While Skyman is still suffering from visions of fairytale creatures crying out for his help, the team plans and throws a surprise birthday party for him. This includes an encounter between his two love interests over the years, Jonni Thunder and Power Girl.
At the same time, Hector Hall explains how he’s taken the place of Garrett Sandford, the previous Sandman after he went mad and committed suicide. Brute and Glob pulled Hector into the Dreamstream and made him the new Sandman, though one without all the authority of the last one (or the real one, but that’s still over a year away.)
Skyman’s visions are proven to have a place in reality when a local amusement park is attacked by goblins. The Infinitors rush to the rescue. They pursue the fleeing goblins through a door in the sky (as seen on the cover) and end up in Grimmworld. They find the Wizard is still alive within, teaming up with an evil queen from that world.
From here, the Thomases break down a complicated history of Grimmworld, connecting to both a 1947 Justice Society story and the second issue of Justice League of America in 1960. It’s all quite unnecessary and does nothing to make the silliness of the situation seem like the threat Roy wants it to be.
Sandman and Nuklon use the Dreamstream to reach the heroes in Grimmworld. Hector’s powers work to stop the villain and they free the heroes. Sandman returns to Lyta and she decides to travel back to his dream world with him as the issue ends, a seemingly happy ending of sorts.
The entire issue is a mess and just serves to show that even Roy Thomas seems to have grown tired of his creations. While the Infinitors have some truly great heroes among them, there’s no confusion as to why this book will soon come to an end.
New Teen Titans #43 by Marv Wolfman, Curt Swan, and Romeo Tanghal
It seems like an odd choice to have Curt Swan doing a New Teen Titans fill-in for the same month that Superman: The Earth Stealers releases, but here we are. I suspect this was a planned month-off for Eduardo as this issue is effectively a Raven solo story while the rest of the Titans are off enjoying time with family and loved ones.
It also features a return by George Perez to covers, an omen of things to come.
Raven ends up in pursuit of Phobia. Phobia’s murdering her way across New York on an assignment from the Brain, but we learn that her own fears haunt her. She manages to kill several targets before she’s sent to confront the final one: her father.
We learn a lot about Phobia’s history here, including a real name: Angela Hawkins. More importantly, we learn that the trauma from her own fears helped shape her into her super-villain role. She blames her father for the trauma, but he responds that it was her own actions that pushed her family away from her, not the other way around. Phobia breaks down as Raven helps to calm her emotions and ease the pain she feels. Her father agrees to care for the broken Phobia, leading Raven to mark the Titans file on the villain closed.
It’s nothing exceptional, although, like Ordway on The Earth Stealers, Tanghal knows how to make Swan’s art look more modern.
Swamp Thing #72 by Rick Veitch and Alfredo Alcala
It is perhaps at this point in the history of the Sprout that we’re learning that it’s dangerous to stretch a story out for too long. This issue is very similar to the last two in structure as Swamp Thing decides on his next step for the Sprout while Constantine goes in search of the next subject.
Alec explains to Abby the fate of the three hundred dead in the plane crash and the failure of the Sprout to find a new host because of his interference. He worries about the mental state of the Sprout while considering if it might not be best for him to get out of the way and retire to the Parliament of Trees.
Constantine works his way through the same mystic contacts we saw in previous issues, getting signs of what’s coming. But the shaman and his paintings offer something different: the image of a pregnant Abby. He doesn’t have time to contemplate how that might work, instead heading back to the always-evil Sunderland Corporation where a man named Alder Hollandaise prepares for his next big presentation.
Hollandaise is in charge of a new fertilizer, one that uses radioactive waste. He’s covered up those tracks and is ready to send it onto the market with little care for the damage it will do. His coworkers have sought to sabotage his rise by ordering a hundred bags of fertilizer instead of one and filling his office with it.
John appears and Hollandaise thinks that he’s a corporate headhunter seeking to offer him a job. Instead, Constantine offers him a lighter. When Hollandaise flicks on the flame, it consumes him, burning him to death before whatever greater disaster might have caused him to become the next elemental. Content that a corporate monster wouldn’t take up the mantle of Swamp Thing, Constantine leaves.
We get a few subplots as well with the false Swamp Thing (a.k.a. Wild Thing) still driving Roy Raymond and company around and the Parliament of Trees summoning one of their oldest for the next step, likely in the next issue. Overall, this story feels very light compared to previous issues.
The Weird #2 by Jim Starlin, Bernie Wrightson, and Dan Green
After an entire first issue devoted to the creation of the Weird to start this series, this issue mostly plays out as a conversation between the Weird and the young boy who was the son of the body he now inhabits. Through this conversation, we learn the origins of our book’s lead.
The Weird shows off the extent of his powers to Billy Langley, including strength and speed comparable to Superman. He also can control energy patterns that he’s in contact with. He also reveals that he’s from a dimension of pure energy where he was originally called a Zarolatt. The Zarolatts are a servant race to the Macrolatts which slowly drain energy from the Zarolatts until they die. But the Weird discovered that the Macrolatts had created a portal to our dimension. They planned to use the portal to make their way into a new universe and drain the energy there.
Unable to maintain their form in the material world long, they reached out to Jason Morgan — referred to by the Weird as the Jason in phrasing that feels very much like cartoon Starfire—as he was willing to betray his race to aid the Macrolatts. The bridge they would create could endanger the entire planet and maybe the entire universe.
The Weird’s initial arrival broke up the bridge, but Jason is already working to recreate it. The Weird knows he’s the only one who can stop Jason, even if his current unstable form needs to leave the planet as soon as possible. He comes to that realization just as Superman arrives. The two alien beings duke it out with neither able to do much against the other.
The Weird comes into contact with a reporter we’ve seen already in the issue, amusingly named Lance Armstrong well before that name had any other meaning. Armstrong learns of the danger the Weird could be and confronts Superman about why he couldn’t catch a danger to the very planet as the issue ends.
I switched from the original issues to the collected version of this story from the mid-aughts in Mystery in Space Volume 2 and the newer edition does a far better job of representing the actual colors of the book. The book is weird and very out there, but the muddy colors in the original issues made it incredibly hard to read.
It feels like Starlin has a lot of ground to cover in the second half of this book, but I’m game to see it as Wrightson seems to be enjoying himself drawing big superhero battles here. Everything still has a tinge of horror, which makes him perfect for this book.
That wraps up January of 1988 and the purge of several titles from the DC calendar, leading into a light February thanks to all the replacement titles being licensed properties: King Features’ Phantom by Peter David and Joe Orlando and Flash Gordon by Dan Jurgens. We will kick off our coverage of all the mainline DC titles for that month in one week.
More duds in this bunch than winners. Too bad the ending series didn't get better send-offs.