The suburban life of a superhero and the invasion takes new twists
Animal Man 7, Doom Patrol 18, Mr. Miracle 1, Plastic Man 3, Superman 27
This time, we reach the second ongoing series launched by J.M. DeMatteis in the last two months, as Mister Miracle spins out of Justice League International with his second-ever series. It isn’t a comic DeMatteis would stick with for long, but it is part of a gigantic expansion of his workload at DC that would see him move from just scripting JLI to working on four different titles for several months.
But before we get to that, we have more Invasion! tie-in issues to cover, plus a look at one of the heroes who didn’t bother to make a comeback for the second half of the series.
Animal Man #7 by Grant Morrison, Chas Truog, and Doug Hazlewood
I’ve seen this issue referenced as the point where Grant Morrison stopped trying to write a straight-forward superhero comic and started to move the book in the weirder direction they would become known for. While a unique and interesting issue, I’m not sure I can agree with that, especially after the weirdness of the Looney Tunes-inspired issue five.
With the invasion over and the cleanup underway, Animal Man is working his way back to his family. But he lands in Miami as this issue starts, only to be attacked by a strange group of old-time robots that crumble without much of a fight. He tracks the robots to their master, a late forties super-villain called Red Mask.
The villain seems poised to jump off a building when Buddy Baker arrives. The Red Mask reveals his power (a death touch) before explaining his history as a super-villain. He first gained his powers as a young man, starting out his career alongside a ghostly ally named The Veil. They battled an actual DC-owned character, the late forties hero Captain Triumph. Originally published by Quality and acquired by DC in the late fifties, Triumph made a single appearance on the cover of All-Star Squadron #1 before popping up in these flashbacks. But his appearance was at least enough to convince some fans that the Red Mask was a true golden age villain.
The Red Mask reveals he has cancer and is dying. He came to the rooftop to end his life rather than succumb to a slow, painful demise. Buddy tries to talk him out of suicide, promising to hook him up with his friends in California who might allow him to tell his tale to the world. But the rampaging robots draw Buddy’s attention back into the fray. After his departure, Red Mask decides to jump anyway, still wishing he had received flight powers instead of a death touch. We see him thinking about how he’s finally flying for just a moment before the next panel, where he’s just a red splat on the sidewalk far below.
Animal Man defeats the rest of the robots and plans to fly back home, but the sky turns black as it has in so many titles, even those like this one that didn’t get the invasion tie-in label.
This run receives a lot of praise, but I still cannot help but feel it’s just darkness for the sake of edginess. Morrison is still developing as a writer, but he’s emulating all the wrong traits of Alan Moore with his plots for the series. Perhaps he will grow a bit more into the writing as the series continues, but right now I still find Animal Man more off-putting than anything else.
Doom Patrol #18 by Paul Kupperberg, Graham Nolan, and Tim Dzon
With the second part of the book’s Invasion! tie-in, we also reach the ending of Paul Kupperberg’s run with the characters. For over a decade, Kupperberg had been the key creator interested in developing adventures for the “new” Doom Patrol that he created in 1977 with Joe Staton. With the leader of that unit Celsius already dead (and the mystery of her relationship with Niles Caulder left forever open-ended), he starts to build the groundwork for the drastically different direction coming in the next issue, one which would alter the series’ trajectory forever.
The team returns from the battle against the invaders to their Kansas City headquarters. The city is excited to see the planet’s saviors now after months of treating them as a danger. The team splits with Garguax (whom they teamed with in the previous issue.) The Chief is well aware that their alien foe will strike quickly in an attempt to score a victory in the chaos.
We get a few character moments, the most prominent being Scott divulging his cancer diagnosis to Lodestone. This seems like a plot point designed for others to build upon, but neither of these characters will receive particularly good treatment from the new creative team.
Garguax sends his Sirens to attack the Doom Patrol again. Like the cover illustrates, they actually seem more than ready to beat the team. The Chief uses his connections with the President to take control of the “only operational” Strategic Defense Initiative satellite (which was known as the “Star Wars Program” at the time.) He uses the space laser to destroy Garguax’s ship, killing his enemy once and for all. The Sirens retreat in the aftermath. Their headquarters destroyed, the team faces an uncertain future.
The team, joined quite randomly by former guest star Dorothy Spinner, bury Celsius. As they finish saying their farewells to their fallen teammate, the sky goes black as seen in the rest of the books this month, with no indication that the danger will be far greater for this team than any other hero or villain in the DC Universe.
I still feel bad for Kupperberg about this book. He worked hard to usher in a new era for this book. And while Grant Morrison’s upcoming run would truly define the characters for decades to come, they do so by brutally tearing apart everything we’ve seen in this series so far. We will talk about just how that happens next month.
Mr. Miracle #1 by J.M. DeMatteis and Ian Gibson
After nearly two years as a member of Justice League International, that book’s scripter spins off Mister Miracle into his second ongoing series with Big Barda and Oberon along for the ride. He does so with an interesting premise: husband and wife Scott and Barda trying to start a normal life in the town of Bailey, New Hampshire.
The issue actually follows Oberon for much of the first half. He’s not happy with a boring normal life, which isn’t a surprise as he’s a normal human who chose a life on the road with an escape artist. Scott tries to explain that a normal life outside of his JLI work is what both he and Barda want, with Barda even planning on attending a local community college. Oberon isn’t buying it, but plans to let them try for a few weeks before he pushes for another tour for the world-famous escape artist.
Barda is invited to dinner by nosy neighbors Ed and Kathleen Ferbel. After some afternoon delight between Scott and Barda, Scott goes to check in on the fix-it shop that he plans to open in a few short days. He’s attacked by a group of robot Animates, which have taken over every electronic in the shop. They tangle Mister Miracle in their cords, even as he identifies his enemy as Doctor Bedlam. Bedlam is nowhere in sight, warning in a psychic communication that he has business elsewhere.
We learn exactly where his business lies in the final pages. As Barda and Oberon arrive at the Ferbels, they’re greeted by their old “family doctor,” none other than Bedlam himself!
It’s an incredibly solid setup for the first issue of the new series. DeMatteis lays out a strong core idea for the series, but it will be one that comes to an end far too quickly. It will become very clear within a few months that DeMatteis was stretching himself too thin, and he would be done with Mister Miracle after only a half dozen issues. The core premise that launched the series would end with him. While the book continued, I’m not sure it ever struck the right tone again, even though artist Joe Phillips rose to prominence with some truly amazing work on the title.
Artist Ian Gibson is a bit of a strange artist for the series. A 2000 A.D. mainstay in the United Kingdom on characters like Judge Dredd and the underappreciated RoboHunter, his DC work was mostly just inks on Millennium. Nor would he stick around long for this run, leaving before even DeMatteis (though he would return for one issue much later in the run.) His later American-published work included Marvel UK’s The Chronicles of Genghis Grimtoad and work on both Droids and Boba Fett for Dark Horse’s Star Wars line. Most of his later work continued on 2000 A.D. before he passed away in 2023.
This run of Mr. Miracle holds a special place for me. While I didn’t pick it up off the stands, it was an early series that I decided to collect after the fact. I built up a run of its first year through the mid-nineties, back when back issue bins and mail order catalogs were the only way to find old issues. This built a fondness for the short, wonderful run by DeMatteis and Gibson, so I look forward to looking back at it again over the coming months.
Plastic Man #3 by Phil Foglio, Hilary Barta, John Nyberg, and Doug Rice with Kevin Nowlan
This issue of Plastic Man both firmly plants the hero in DC history while also taking him in even zanier directions than the previous two issues. Plas sends Woozy Winks to deliver the bag that’s full of their earnings to the bank. He’s distracted by a cult that he almost immediately joins, giving them the money. Plastic Man tracks him down and learns this, but Woozy is already on his way to California with the Followers of Ramalama.
Plas confronts the leader of the cult, Ramalama himself, but cannot convince the obvious con man of anything. Ramalama claims to be a wizard, but Plas meets another mysterious wizard who also challenges their enemy. Even though they retrieve Woozy, the wizard explains that Ramalama plans to destroy his followers. He demands they dance for days atop a faultline, hoping that they will destroy California and that he will take all the life insurance they signed over to him.
The final fight sees an earthquake occur, and the wizard reveals his actual magical abilities to enhance Plastic Man’s powers to hold the state together. We learn that the wizard is actually Arion V,I and he’s required to defend the state of California as it is actually the remaining above-ground land mass of Atlantis. (DC had routinely placed the island in the Pacific Ocean for reasons only understood by them.)
This book continues to play mostly for laughs, right down to the cult’s love for bells. They conveniently ring them after their leader’s name is said, leading to pages and pages of Ramalama followed by “Ding Dong” as a recurring gag. It’s a fun and strange limited series, but one that will leave Plas as an underused character in the DCU.
Superman #27 by Roger Stern, Kerry Gammill, and Brett Breeding
This was one of several random Invasion! tie-in books I purchased as a child, and one that blew my mind with just how awesome both Gangbuster and the Guardian were. I’ve felt both characters have been underutilized for decades since, even if much of that stems from my ten year old self thinking they were really freaking cool.
Superman is still in Australia as the story starts. He lands near a downed alien ship and helps local special forces break into it without setting off an explosive. From there, he flies back home to Metropolis. As Clark Kent, he turns in a news story about the events in Australia after “flying down there with a friend to get the story.” Supporting a five o’clock shadow and looking tired, Perry sends Clark home to get a shave and some rest. Clark does just that, passing out shortly after the first half of that task.
The second half of the issue returns the action to Gangbuster. He breaks into LuthorCorp as Lex discusses a plan to research all the abandoned alien weaponry for the United States government. Gangbuster declares Luthor the true threat behind all the city’s ills and seems prepared to murder him. With the room cleared, Braniac strikes at Gangbuster. He tries to tear apart the vigilante’s mind, but Gangbuster’s will is too strong and sends Brainiac into a catatonic state. Brainiac’s prying does succeed at confusing Gangbuster, and he cannot bring himself to kill Luthor in the aftermath.
Gangbuster runs from the building. As he streaks across several city rooftops, he’s confronted by The Guardian. Guardian thinks Gangbuster means well, but wants to talk about his methods. Gangbuster isn’t interested in conversations and tries to fight Guardian off. This leads to a chase with Gangbuster ultimately diving at Guardian and flying off a rooftop into a dumpster several stories below. Guardian is shocked, assuming he just saw a man die. He climbs down to investigate, only for Gangbuster to climb back out seemingly unharmed. The two heroes face off, and Guardian takes a swipe at Gangbuster with his shield. He cuts open the Kevlar chest piece of the armor. He’s shocked by what he sees underneath, but we are not yet privy to the reveal, as a blurb promises the answers in Adventures of Superman #450.
As a ten-year-old, I was super excited to see what came next. Sadly, I wasn’t able to get a copy of Adventures of Superman #450, but I did get to flip through it and was blown away by the epic reveal on its first pages, in no way aware of how much work the creators of both books put into the clues along the way. Whether you’re aware of that reveal or not, we will look at it in the next DC: A New Dawn.
This week featured not a single bad book in the bunch, even if none of these titles could be argued as “fine literature” of any kind. I would still recommend anyone check out this run of Mister Miracle, a true favorite of mine as I still consider it well worth the price of admission.
What are your thoughts on Mister Miracle, the Gangbuster mystery, or the other titles we’ve covered?