Back Issue #98 by TwoMorrows Publishing

DC IN THE ’80s ISSUE!

August

2017

N$o8..9958

82658 00101

and

Behind-the-scenes looks at

DC CHALLENGE • ELECTRIC WARRIOR • SUN DEVILS • THRILLER with David • Evanier • Grell • Jurgens • Von Eeden • Waid & many more

THE RETRO COMICS EXPERIENCE!

Edited by MICHAEL EURY, BACK ISSUE magazine celebrates comic books of the 1970s, 1980s, and today through recurring (and rotating) departments like “Pro2Pro” (dialogue between professionals), “BackStage Pass” (behind-the-scenes of comicsbased media), “Greatest Stories Never Told” (spotlighting unrealized comics series or stories), and more!

Go to www.twomorrows.com for other issues, and an ULTIMATE BUNDLE, with all the issues at HALF-PRICE!

DIEDGITIIOTANSL

UT! SOLD OONLY! L DIGITA

BL AVAILA

BACK ISSUE #86

BACK ISSUE #87

BACK ISSUE #88

“Marvel Bronze Age Giants and Reprints!” In-depth exploration of Marvel’s GIANT-SIZE series, plus indexes galore of Marvel reprint titles, Marvel digests and Fireside Books editions, and the last days of the “Old” X-Men! Featuring work by DAN ADKINS, ROSS ANDRU, RICH BUCKLER, DAVE COCKRUM, GERRY CONWAY, STEVE GERBER, STAN LEE, WERNER ROTH, ROY THOMAS, and more. Cover by JOHN ROMITA, SR.!

“Batman AND Superman!” Bronze Age World’s Finest, Super Sons, Batman/Superman Villain/Partner Swap, Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane go solo, Superman/Radio Shack giveaways, and JLA #200’s “A League Divided” (as a nod to Batman v. Superman)! Featuring work by BRIAN BOLLAND, RICH BUCKLER, GERRY CONWAY, JACK KIRBY, GEORGE PÉREZ, JIM STARLIN, and more. Cover by DICK GIORDANO!

“Comics Magazines of the ’70s and ’80s!” From Savage Tales to Epic Illustrated, KIRBY’s “Speak-Out Series,” EISNER’s Spirit magazine, Unpublished PAUL GULACY, MICHAEL USLAN on the Shadow magazine you didn’t see, plus B&Ws from Atlas/Seaboard, Charlton, Skywald, and Warren. Featuring work by NEAL ADAMS, JOHN BOLTON, ARCHIE GOODWIN, DOUG MOENCH, EARL NOREM, ROY THOMAS, and more. Cover by GRAY MORROW!

(100 FULL-COLOR pages) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95

(84 FULL-COLOR pages) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84 FULL-COLOR pages) SOLD OUT! (Digital Edition) $3.95

UT! SOLD OONLY! L DIGITA BACK ISSUE #89

BACK ISSUE #90

BACK ISSUE #91

BACK ISSUE #92

BACK ISSUE #93

“Bronze Age Adaptations!” The Shadow, Korak: Son of Tarzan, Battlestar Galactica, The Black Hole, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Worlds Unknown, and Marvel’s 1980s movie adaptations. Plus: PAUL KUPPERBERG surveys prose adaptations of comics! With work by JACK KIRBY, DENNY O’NEIL, FRANK ROBBINS, MICHAEL W. KALUTA, FRANK THORNE, MICHAEL USLAN, and sporting an alternate Kaluta cover produced for DC’s Shadow series!

“Eighties Ladies!” MILLER & SIENKIEWICZ’s Elektra: Assassin, Dazzler, Captain Marvel (Monica Rambeau), Lady Quark, DAN MISHKIN’s Wonder Woman, WILLIAM MESSNER-LOEBS and ADAM KUBERT’s Jezebel Jade, Somerset Holmes, and a look back at Marvel’s Dakota North! Featuring the work of BRUCE JONES, JOHN ROMITA JR., ROGER STERN, and many more, plus a previously unpublished cover by SIENKIEWICZ.

“All-Jerks Issue!” Guy Gardner, Namor in the Bronze Age, J. Jonah Jameson, Flash Thompson, DC’s Biggest Blowhards, the Heckler, Obnoxio the Clown, and Archie’s “pal” Reggie Mantle! Featuring the work of (non-jerks) RICH BUCKLER, KURT BUSIEK, JOHN BYRNE, STEVE ENGLEHART, KEITH GIFFEN, ALAN KUPPERBERG, and many more. Cover-featuring KEVIN MAGUIRE’s iconic Batman/Guy Gardner “One Punch”!

“Bronze Age Halloween!” The Swamp Thing revival of 1982, Swamp Thing in Hollywood, Phantom Stranger team-ups, KUPPERBERG & MIGNOLA’s Phantom Stranger miniseries, DC’s The Witching Hour, the Living Mummy, and an index of Marvel’s 1970s’ horror anthologies! Featuring the work of RICH BUCKLER, ANDY MANGELS, VAL MAYERIK, MARTIN PASKO, MICHAEL USLAN, TOM YEATES, and many more. Cover by YEATES.

“All-Captains Issue!” Bronze Age histories of Shazam! (Captain Marvel) and Captain MarVell, Captain Carrot, Captain Storm and the Losers, Captain Universe, and Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers. Featuring C. C. BECK, PAT BRODERICK, JACK KIRBY, ELLIOT S. MAGGIN, BILL MANTLO, DON NEWTON, BOB OKSNER, SCOTT SHAW!, JIM STARLIN, ROY THOMAS, and more. Cover painting by DAVE COCKRUM!

(84 FULL-COLOR pages) SOLD OUT! (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84 FULL-COLOR pages) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

TwoMorrows. The Future of Comics History. BACK ISSUE #94

BACK ISSUE #95

BACK ISSUE #96

BACK ISSUE #97

“Indie Super-Heroes!” NEAL ADAMS Ms. Mystic interview, Continuity Comics, BILL BLACK Captain Paragon interview, Justice Machine history, STEVEN GRANT/NORM BREYFOGLE Whisper “Pro2Pro” interview, and the ’80s revivals of Mighty Crusaders and T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. Featuring BUCKLER, DEODATO, ELLIS, GRINDBERG, GUSTOVICH, ISABELLA, REINHOLD, ORDWAY, PÉREZ, and more. Cover by NEAL ADAMS!

“Creatures of the Night!” Moon Knight’s DOUG MOENCH and BILL SIENKIEWICZ in a Pro2Pro interview, Ghost Rider, Night Nurse, Eclipso in the Bronze Age, I…Vampire, interviews with Batman writer MIKE W. BARR and Marvel’s Nightcat, JACQUELINE TAVAREZ. Featuring work by BOB BUDIANSKY, J. M. DeMATTEIS, DAVE SIMONS, ROGER STERN, TOM SUTTON, JEAN THOMAS, and more. SIENKIEWICZ and KLAUS JANSON cover!

“Marvel Fanfare Issue!” Behind the scenes of the ‘80s anthology series with AL MILGROM, interviews and art by ARTHUR ADAMS, CHRIS CLAREMONT, DAVE COCKRUM, STEVE ENGLEHART, MICHAEL GOLDEN, ROGER McKENZIE, FRANK MILLER, DOUG MOENCH, ANN NOCENTI, GEORGE PÉREZ, MARSHALL ROGERS, PAUL SMITH, KEN STEACY, CHARLES VESS, and more! Cover by SANDY PLUNKETT and GLENN WHITMORE.

“Bird People!” Hawkman in the Bronze Age, JIM STARLIN’s Superman/Hawkgirl team-up, TIM TRUMAN’s Hawkworld, Hawk and Dove, Penguin history, Blue Falcon & Dynomutt, Condorman, and CHUCK DIXON and SCOTT McDANIEL’s Nightwing. With GERRY CONWAY, STEVE ENGLEHART, GREG GULER, RICHARD HOWELL, TONY ISABELLA, KARL KESEL, ROB LIEFELD, DENNY O’NEIL, and others! Cover by GEORGE PÉREZ.

(84 FULL-COLOR pages) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, NC 27614 USA 919-449-0344 E-mail:

store@twomorrows.com

Order at twomorrows.com

Volume 1, Number 98 August 2017 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow DESIGNER Rich Fowlks

Comics’ Bronze Age and Beyond!

COVER ARTIST Romeo Tanghal (Commissioned illustration from the collection of Rodolfo Payro Balboa.) COVER COLORIST Glenn Whitmore COVER DESIGNER Michael Kronenberg PROOFREADER Rob Smentek SPECIAL THANKS Todd Klein Jim Baikie Paul Kupperberg Rodolfo Payro Paul Levitz Balboa Elliot S. Maggin Mike Baron Brian Martin Mike W. Barr Dan Mishkin Terry Beatty Doug Moench Rick Burchett Michael A. Burstein Alex Nino Luigi Novi Ed Catto Chuck Patton Gerry Conway Amanda Powers Denys Cowan Tom Powers Peter David Bob Rozakis DC Comics Beau Smith Mark Evanier Anthony Snyder Russ Garwood Dan Spiegle Mike Gold Joe Staton Grand Comics Roger Stern Database Len Strazewski Alan Grant Rik Sunn Steven Grant Robert Greenberger Rick Taylor Roy Thomas Mike Grell Mark Verheiden Heritage Comics Trevor Von Eeden Auctions Mark Waid Dan Johnson Greg Weisman Kelley Jones Marv Wolfman Dan Jurgens Barbara Kesel

If you’re viewing a Digital Edition of this publication,

PLEASE READ THIS: This is copyrighted material, NOT intended for downloading anywhere except our website or Apps. If you downloaded it from another website or torrent, go ahead and read it, and if you decide to keep it, DO THE RIGHT THING and buy a legal download, or a printed copy. Otherwise, DELETE IT FROM YOUR DEVICE and DO NOT SHARE IT WITH FRIENDS OR POST IT ANYWHERE. If you enjoy our publications enough to download them, please pay for them so we can keep producing ones like this. Our digital editions should ONLY be downloaded within our Apps and at

www.twomorrows.com

FLASHBACK: Their Lives Were an Open Book: Secret Origins (1986–1990). . . . . . . . 2 New takes on old stories, with recollections from the series’ five editors BEYOND CAPES: Thriller. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 DC had high hopes for this offbeat title. Why did it fail? PRO2PRO: Gerry Conway and Dan Jurgens’ Sun Devils . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 The writer-artist team in an exclusive interview revisiting this sci-fi maxiseries FLASHBACK: DC Challenge: It Sounded Like a Good Idea at the Time. . . . . . . . . . . 34 Bob Greenberger, the project’s editor, explores this quirky round-robin series with many of the series’ creators PRINCE STREET NEWS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Cartoonist Karl Heitmueller, Jr. tackles continuity conundrums OFF MY CHEST: The Prestige Format. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Former DC production guru Bob Rozakis’ guest column about the development of DC’s upscale format INTERVIEW: Does Doug Moench Still Dream of Electric Warrior?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 An intimate portrait of the Electric Warrior writer, with commentary from artists Jim Baikie and Denys Cowan and editor Barbara Kesel FLASHBACK: Action Comics Weekly. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Nineteen creators take us behind the scenes of DC’s ambitious weekly late-’80s anthology BACK TALK. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Reader reactions

BACK ISSUE™ is published 8 times a year by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: BACK ISSUE, c/o Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief, 118 Edgewood Avenue NE, Concord, NC 28025. Email: euryman@gmail.com. Eight-issue subscriptions: $73 Economy US, $88 Expedited US, $116 International. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Cover art by Romeo Tanghal. Nightwing and Robin TM & © DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2017 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows Publishing, except for Prince Street News, TM & © Karl Heitmueller, Jr. ISSN 1932-6904. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 1

There is a school of thought that the origin story is a necessary evil, hardback was published in 1976 as a response to the hit Origins of a preamble to get out of the way before the real fun begins. There’s some Marvel Comics volume of 1974. Significantly, 1977’s DC Super-Stars #14 truth in that, particularly in an age when endless film and comics reboots abandoned the reprint model for a new trio of stories featuring superseem concerned with nothing but origins at the expense of moving villains. It was followed in short order with a pair of similarly original forward. And yet, there’s an almost primal need on the part of superhero specials keyed to heroes (1977’s DC Super-Stars #17 and 1978’s DC fans to know how their favorite character started out. Lee Falk realized Special Series #10). Secret Origins returned to its…well, origins in 1979 that early in his 1930s Phantom newspaper strip, introducing a concise, with the first of several reprint digests (DC Special Series #19) alternately oft-repeated recap of the hero’s roots “for those who came in late.” keyed to either heroes (DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest #5, 9, and 22) or At DC Comics, the Spring of 1948 seems to have been the point villains (Best of DC #10; DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest #15). Bonus new when the publisher realized that such things might have commercial stories devoted to Wonder Woman, Zatanna, and the Penguin appeal. Batman #47 and Superman #53 each cover-featured opened the earliest editions. “the origin of…” their respective leading men, expanding and revising details from the late 1930s’ accounts. During SECRET ORIGINS, REVISITED the 1950s, “origin” stories—i.e., tales actually using By the summer of 1984, the last of those digests was more than two years old and writer-editor Roy Thomas that word—also popped up at other publishers, was formulating a new take on the old title. “While on a but none did more so than DC. It seems to have been writer-editor Robert Kan6000-mile drive with my wife Dann around the western igher who decided those episodes could be spun in half of the US,” he wrote in The All-Star Companion #4 (2009), Thomas wondered, “Why couldn’t we redraw a more sensational way. Hence, the “Secret Origin of Wonder Woman” in WW #105 (Apr. 1959), a provocative and re-dialogue—and even, where necessary, re-think— title that almost commanded kids to pick up the issue those fabled stories from the 1930s and 1940s? That so that they, too, could be privy to facts known to would avoid the stigma associated in some readers’ minds with simply reprinting old stories.” no one else. A scant four months later, “secret origin” There was also the fact that several of those early was used again on the cover of All-Star Western #108’s roy thomas costumed heroes never had origins at all, instead Johnny Thunder reboot. © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. DC cemented its association with the phrase in debuting fully formed with no explanation of how they 1961 when it published Secret Origins #1, a gloriously over-stuffed got there. Thomas was, in fact, working on a story that was a virtual 80-page collection of reprints featuring the likes of the new Flash, prototype for what he envisioned for the new Secret Origins. Noting that the new Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, the Superman/Batman team, Starman had debuted in 1941 with no real backstory, Thomas built on and more. Kids of the day ate it up and a sequel—“More Secret details that had taken place back in Adventure Comics #61, added a retroactive sequence involving Phantom Lady, and plotted a proper Origins”—eventually followed in 1965’s 80-Page Giant #8. Secret Origins returned late in 1972 as an ongoing reprint book, origin that ran in All-Star Squadron #41 (on sale in October 1984). one that benefited considerably from having DC expert E. Nelson Managing editor Dick Giordano and DC’s higher-ups approved the Bridwell as its editor. Supplementing the vintage material, Bridwell also proposal with one revision. Despite the success of Thomas’ World War IIincluded a text page in each issue that briefly laid out the history of based All-Star Squadron title, the reality was that period books were a the sometimes-obscure characters featured in its pages. A nationwide tougher sell to young readers than books set in the 1980s. Consequently, paper shortage prompted the title’s cancellation after seven issues, every third issue of Secret Origins would feature a Silver or Bronze Age hero. To that end, Thomas decided on Adam Strange and the Elongated but the name was far from retired. Limited Collectors’ Edition #C-39 (1975) and C-45 (1976) were each Man for his initial post-1940s heroes and respectively assigned Gerry devoted to “Secret Origins of Super-Villains,” while a hero-centric Conway and Mike W. Barr to write the scripts. 2 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

by J o h n

Thomas otherwise intended to spotlight Golden Age heroes in the order in which they first appeared… with a few exceptions. Although he’d been preceded by the long-lost Dr. Occult, Superman was the unquestioned choice to launch the new Secret Origins. In an inspired touch, Thomas approached the long-retired Wayne Boring to pencil the story. The 80-year-old artist had originally been a ghost artist for Superman co-creator Joe Shuster before becoming the defining illustrator from the late 1940s through the 1950s. In Secret Origins #1, Boring’s work was given a modern polish courtesy of inker Jerry Ordway (who also revised Superman’s “S” shield throughout to match the classic early 1940s design). “I think Boring liked the idea of doing Superman again,” Thomas remarked to Jim Amash in Alter Ego #100 (Mar. 2011). “In addition to inking, I had Jerry fix up the Earth-Two ‘S’ on Superman’s chest. Boring’s didn’t come out quite right. But I’m real proud of our retelling of the origin of Superman.” An expert in the art of the adaptation (including multiple Robert E. Howard characters), Thomas hewed close to the original material in Action Comics #1 (June 1938) and Superman #1 (Summer 1939) but sharpened dialogue and plot points throughout. That was also the case in his follow-up, the retelling of the original Captain Marvel’s birth (from 1940’s Whiz Comics #2). “All I tried to do is some re-dialoguing and to get inside the head (heads?) of Captain Marvel and Billy Batson with an eye toward the future as well as the paradoxes of the past,” the writer noted in Secret Origins #3. Striking a different tone than the original, Jerry Bingham illustrated the adventure in a more realistic style than C. C. Beck’s cartoony original. Like the Superman tale, the Captain Marvel episode violated Thomas’ chronological plan, a concession to Dick Giordano who specifically requested an early appearance by one of the 1940s’ most successful properties. By the time both stories were published in early 1986, much about the plans for Secret Origins had changed.

GOLDEN AGE GREATS AND DC TIE-INS

Rather than devoting every third issue to a non-Golden Age hero, DC now insisted on doing so in every even-numbered issue. Moreover, those more contemporary heroes needed to be characters who were prominent in DC’s mid-1980s line. “At this stage, it just didn’t make sense anymore for me to edit the whole series,” Thomas wrote in Secret Origins #1, “so it was decided that each

Wells

hero’s origin would be edited by the person who edited that hero’s regular mag.” Consequently, Julius Schwartz—nominally the editor of the new Blue Beetle title—oversaw Secret Origins #2’s Gil Kane-illustrated history of Ted Kord and his predecessor Dan Garrett. Scripted by Len Wein, the story established the underpinnings of the ongoing Beetle title that premiered in March 1986 and represented a secondary function of the new title. On several occasions during its run, Secret Origins became a promotional arm for the DC Universe, kicking off new series, tying into crossover events, and setting up situations that would pay off in other titles. There was none of that in Secret Origins #4’s Firestorm spotlight, but the story did provide a challenge for writer/co-creator Gerry Conway. Since the Nuclear Man’s debut in 1978, Conway had already done two lengthy origin recaps (1980’s Flash #289–290 and 1984’s Fury of Firestorm #22). Virtually all of them, though, had been told from the point-ofview of teenager Ronnie Raymond, so Conway took a fresh approach and made SO #4 all about the background of Firestorm’s other half, Professor Martin Stein. Although George Tuska penciled the origin itself, Firestorm co-creator Al Milgrom also contributed to the issue via an original cover. Up to this point, the material presented in Secret Origins was also culled largely from earlier issues, but issue #5 marked a notable departure. The Crimson Avenger was one of those heroes referenced earlier, a masked vigilante who was already in business when he premiered in Detective Comics #20. It was up to Roy Thomas and his wife Dann to come up with his origin, adding real-world background to soon-to-behero Lee Travis and adding depth to his Chinese partner Wing. “When I learned that the cover date of the Crimson’s first appearance was October 1938, I had no choice,” Roy declared on issue #5’s text page. “That was the date of the famous/infamous Orson Welles ‘Invasion from Mars’ broadcast that panicked half a nation and I felt compelled to set the Crimson’s origin in that context, even though the October-dated book, then as now, would have gone on sale at least a couple months before October.” Atmospherically illustrated by Gene Colan and Mike Gustovich, the story won raves from fans and critics alike, so much so that a 1988 miniseries was later greenlit to continue the story. A more immediate sequel appeared in issue #7, though, where the Crimson figured into the origin of the Sandman. Once again, the Thomases worked up an origin where none had existed before, this time built around the DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 3

All covers and characters TM & © DC Comics.

Direct Currents This purple-toned re-presentation of Jerry Ordway and Wayne Boring’s cover art heralded the coming of the new Secret Origins monthly in DC’s promo flier, DC Releases #23. Unless otherwise noted, images in this article are courtesy of John Wells. TM & © DC Comics.

thematic similarities of the suit-clad mystery men. Set at SO #6, already had Batman with Marshall Rogers art, so the 1939 New York World’s Fair, the Mike Bair/Steve we could go a little softer on the second feature, which Montano-illustrated tale was peppered with cameos by led to shining the spotlight on Halo [from The Outsiders] future members of the All-Star Squadron. with Mike W. Barr.” The story also ushered in a new Only half-a-year old, Secret Origins was already look for the heroine when she adopted a new costume being retooled. Marketing was “somewhat alarmed at on the last page. “From there,” Greenberger concludes, how noncommercial some of the characters or “it was just a matter of seeing who else in the line creative teams appeared—especially so early needed the love.” in the new title’s run,” Robert Greenberger As noted, Halo shared the issue with tells BACK ISSUE. “Someone, either Batman, but not the version she’d worked Bruce Bristow in marketing or Paul Levwith in the Outsiders. This was the itz, decided to protect Roy and bolster original Earth-Two Batman, and Thomas the title’s chances of survival by makfound room to play even after incorpoing it a double-sized book [to ensure rating material from the Dark Knight’s that a modern-day character would 1939 debut and origin (Detective Comics be cover-featured every month], which #27 and 33). The formative Bruce Wayne had the benefit of accelerating Roy’s had a fiancée named Julie Madison, but no chronological run and allowing us to one had ever explored the background support it with characters who needof that relationship until SO #6. The ed to be reintroduced post-Crisis on budding romance of college students robert greenberger Infinite Earths. Bruce and Julie added a fresh, human “As with all things involving the touch to the traditional Batman origin. new continuity at the time,” Greenberger continues, Thomas also scored a coup by reuniting the acclaimed “I seemed to be the go-to guy, so Dick [Giordano] invited Marshall Rogers/Terry Austin art team—best known for me to take half the book and work with Roy. He had their work with Steve Englehart in 1977’s Detective Comics Greg Weisman as his NY-based assistant editor, so we #471–476—to draw the story. only talked schedules and creative teams. Dick and I Englehart himself led off issue #7, demonstrating banged around some characters, figuring our first issue, that he—like Thomas—had a knack for weaving strong stories out of earlier plot threads. In this case, the subject was Guy Gardner, the adversarial Green Lantern whom Steve and penciler Joe Staton had revived to great success in 1985. Joined by artists Ernie Colón and Rodin Rodriguez, Englehart built on Gardner’s handful of earlier appearances to create a more sympathetic portrait of a character that contrasted with his mid-1980s bad-boy image. In terms of background detail, Paul Levitz had even less to work with than Englehart when it came to detailing who Tasmia Mallor was before she became the Legion of Super-Heroes’ Shadow Lass. Consequently, SO #8’s backstory—illustrated by Tom Mandrake—was largely new, but LSH writer Levitz regularly sifted that series’ rich history for story hooks and details to build on, among them Tasmia’s cousin Grev. Elsewhere in Secret Origins #8, Roy Thomas penned his first adaptation of a hero from Quality Comics, a major publisher of the 1940s–1950s whose heroes were now owned by DC. Quality was well known for the—ahem— quality of many of its artists, and its heroes won the adulation of teenagers who soon broke into the industry themselves. Indeed, Thomas found himself lobbied by two veteran artists—and unabashed fans—when it came time to do the adaptations. “Both Gil [Kane] and Murphy [Anderson] loved Lou Fine and Reed Crandall and Will Eisner,” Roy remarked in Alter Ego #100. “They each wanted to draw all their heroes’ origins, so I divided them, with Murphy getting Uncle Sam and Doll Man and Black Condor, and Gil doing Jack Cole’s Spirit clone Midnight [and Firebrand] and the Ray. I had the impossible task of keeping two great artists happy.” Anderson certainly seemed happy about the SO #8’s Doll Man story, even adding a short love letter to the Quality heroes on the last page. The plot itself largely followed the events of 1939’s Feature Comics #28, including the detail that Darrel Dane’s girlfriend Martha Roberts knew that he was Doll Man. In the 1940s, she apparently “forgot” and rediscovered the secret nearly a decade later. Anyone reading the 1986 account could assume that Martha had known all along and that might well have been the case. In the aftermath of Crisis on Infinite Earths, anything was possible.

4 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

SECRET ORIGINS IN CRISIS

That maxiseries had not been kind to Roy Thomas. All-Star Squadron was a World War II-era account of DC’s Golden Age heroes on the world of Earth-Two, but Crisis had rendered all such alternate realities null and void. In the singular new timeline, duplicate characters like the 1940s Superman and Batman no longer existed. Their origins and that of Captain Marvel had been allowed to kick off the series, but any further stories involving exclusively Earth-Two heroes were off the table. That specifically put the kibosh on a story about the Earth-Two Aquaman that Thomas had plotted with Jean-Marc Lofficier. “I acquiesced in the no-Aquamanorigin thing,” Thomas tells BACK ISSUE, “but then included the Earth-Two [version] in one of the last issues of All-Star Squadron that starred the group, just to show that there had, indeed, been a WWII Aquaman. I recall hearing that some people at DC were not happy with this, but no one tried to change anything in that Squadron issue… probably because the mag was ending soon anyway.” Rather than abandon his and Lofficier’s concept entirely, Thomas reworked elements of it for the origin of Neptune Perkins in Young All-Stars #16 (Sept. 1988). Launched in March 1987, Young All-Stars was a refocused version of All-Star Squadron that continued the story of DC’s wartime heroes in the post-Crisis universe. Before it ended, though, the original Squadron book had become virtually a companion title to Secret Origins. Over the course of All-Star Squadron’s last seven issues in 1986, Thomas devoted five of them to origin spotlights on Liberty Belle (ASS #61), the Shining Knight (ASS #62), Robotman (ASS #63), Johnny Quick (ASS #65), and Tarantula (ASS #66). The Liberty Belle episode, in fact, predated Secret Origins and was one of two standalone stories that Thomas commissioned back in 1984 as inventory to be used for a deadline crunch. The other tale starred the Golden Age Flash and wound up in SO #9, illustrated by George Tuska and Jerry Acerno. Like several of the other 1940s origins, the story was framed as a personal recollection of Jay (Flash) Garrick that was being recorded by Jonathan (Tarantula) Law for a book on wartime heroes. Thomas noted in Alter Ego #100 that Silver Age Flash artist Carmine Infantino would have been a fitting choice to draw the story, but that George Tuska had specifically been looking for work when the script was finished. “Since it was easy to do that one in a hurry because the story already existed, I gave it to him.” Thomas also admitted that his first choice to draw issue #11’s Hawkman origin—ultimately done by Luke McDonnell and Tony DeZuniga—had been either Adam or Andy Kubert since their famous father Joe was so closely associated with the Winged Wonder. It wasn’t to be, though. Secret Origins #9, incidentally, had been a Roy Thomas double feature since its modern half—the Star-Spangled Kid, a.k.a. Skyman— was a member of the present-day Infinity, Inc. The Kid and his old

…In a Single Bound! The Metropolis Marvel in action. Original art from SO #1, courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). TM & © DC Comics.

partner Stripesy had their roots in the 1940s, however, and the Tom Grindberg/Mike Gustovichdrawn account recreated their origin from 1943’s Star-Spangled Comics #18. (The duo had actually debuted in 1941’s first issue, but no one got around to explaining their backstory for a year and a half.) Roy sat out the following issue but not by choice. “It was presented to me as a fait accompli,” he tells BACK ISSUE, “which did not endear my fellow comics producers to me. I would have been amenable, but I strongly disliked what I felt was a high-handed attitude toward the guy who had, after all, launched the new series.”

HIGH CONCEPTS AND RETCONS

Secret Origins #10 was, in fact, the series’ first concept issue. By October 1986, DC’s newest crossover series—Legends—was underway and one of its featured players was the Phantom Stranger. Part of the character’s mystique was the fact that no one actually knew who he was or how he came to be. In an inspired touch, SO #10 maintained that aura of mystery by presenting four distinct origins without endorsing any of them as binding. Mike W. Barr and Jim Aparo’s opener depicted the Stranger as the mythical Wandering Jew, Paul Levitz and José Luis GarcíaLópez portrayed him as an ancient barred from Heaven, and Dan Mishkin and Ernie Colón imagined the character as the last survivor of an old universe. Joined by veteran artist Joe Orlando, the red-hot Alan Moore closed the issue with an account that claimed that the Stranger was an angel stripped of his wings and left on Earth. “As we were brainstorming Legends tie-ins,’ Robert Greenberger tells BI, “it was Paul Levitz who suggested we do the four origins of the Phantom Stranger. Once we approved the notion, I got to assemble the creative teams giving me my one and only shot to work with Alan Moore. The entire package came with one of Ed Hannigan’s best cover designs,” brought to life by Jim Aparo. Having published its first choose-your-own-origin edition, the book broke more new ground in issue #11 with its first replacement origin. The subject was Power Girl, a heroine created in 1975 to be the Supergirl of Earth-Two. In the new world order, Superman was emphatically the sole survivor of Krypton and there was no way that the blonde Kara could be his cousin. In the 1986 account, the heroine learned that she’d actually been transported from the distant past and was really the granddaughter of Arion, Lord of Atlantis. A small detail revealed that Kara had left behind a brother Khater, whose name was a fusion of Khufu and Katar. The subtle in-joke suggested that the boy DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 5

Bat-team Supreme In issue #6 (Sept. 1986), fan-favorites Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin reunited for Roy Thomas’ Golden Age Batman origin. TM & © DC Comics.

might have been reincarnated as Prince Khufu, who was eventually reborn as the star of the issue’s co-feature: Hawkman! “Since Gerry Conway created her,” Robert Greenberger explains, “he was the logical person to handle it and was present during an editorial discussion where it was decided to shift her from Kryptonian to magical origins and from there, tie her to Arion. By the time we were ready to do this, Gerry and DC had pretty much come to a parting of the ways so someone else needed to write it. Paul Kupperberg became the natural choice, which then led to her 1988 miniseries. I had loved Steve Dillon’s Laser Eraser and Pressbutton and wanted him for the art. Again, when the time came, he was preoccupied so I recruited Mary Wilshire, whose work at Marvel was very impressive. I initially wanted her for that same miniseries but alas, that was not to be (which was good news to Rick Hoberg).” Secret Origins #12 addressed another post-Crisis conundrum, the fact that Infinity, Inc.’s Lyta (Fury) Trevor was the daughter of the Earth-Two Wonder Woman. Unlike Power Girl, the original WW no longer existed at all, and that obligated Roy Thomas to create a replacement. Tying into the present-day Infinity, Inc. #35, the mythological Furies encountered Lyta in Greece and related the story of a war orphan named Helena Kosmatos who was brought to the United States in 1942 by John (Johnny Quick) Chambers. Like Lyta, the teenager was also known as Fury and possessed enchanted strength as well as the fearsome ability to channel the Blood Avenger known as Tisiphone. Penciled by Tom Grindberg, the story was tweaked at the inking stage when Tony DeZuniga incorporated the Michael Bair armor that Fury would wear in the forthcoming Young All-Stars series. Issue #12’s other feature was also a setup for a prospective comic book, albeit one that never came to pass. Writer Mark Evanier had discussed a possible Challengers of the Unknown revival with Dick Giordano and penned an origin—illustrated by Chuck Patton and Bob Oksner—that showed his approach. Generally based on the team’s Jack Kirby-created debut (1956’s Showcase #6), the story followed the lead of Bob Rozakis’ 6 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

1982 revival (Adventure Comics #493) by uniting the soon-to-be Challs for a That’s Incredible!-type TV show rather than the original radio broadcast. Fittingly, Evanier had once been a writer on the real TI! program. Following the one-issue digression with a new Golden Age character, Secret Origins #13 returned to the genuine 1940s for Thomas-scripted recaps on two other heroes from Flash Comics #1: Johnny Thunder (drawn by Mike Clark and Dave Hunt) and the Whip (art by Mike Gustovich). Both were faithful accounts with one notable exception—the latter’s Rodney Gaynor became Rodrigo Gaynor, retroactively revealed to have had a Mexican mother before he assumed the persona of the legendary Spanish hero known as the Whip. Bolstering the admittedly limited commercial appeal of Johnny and the Whip, the issue led off with Nightwing in an origin retelling that covered Dick Grayson’s history as Robin (with recent events in New Teen Titans as a framing sequence). Published simultaneously with Frank Miller and David Mazzuccelli’s “Batman: Year One,” the story (by writer Dan Mishkin and artists Erik Larsen and Mike DeCarlo) became—in retrospect—a placeholder for an authentic post-Crisis Robin origin. SO #13’s account included references to the peaceful transfer of the Boy Wonder’s persona on Earth-One that were rendered non-canonical only months later when a new version of Jason Todd’s origin ran in Batman #408–411. By contrast, Secret Origins #14’s full-length, 38-page spotlight on the Suicide Squad was quite definitive. Robert Kanigher had created the team as a quartet of Atomic Age adventurers—led by Rick Flag— in The Brave and the Bold #25–27 (1959) and B&B #37–39 (1961), but sales never justified a series pick-up. Instead, the writer-editor applied the Squad name along with that of Task Force X to a succession of military men who fought dinosaurs in a Star Spangled War Stories’ feature. In 1987, a reconceived Squad—now boasting supervillains as members—was on the schedule following their origin in the justcompleted Legends miniseries. Robert Greenberger—who spearheaded the new book—declared that “giving SO #14 to reframe the original Suicide Squad in support of the new title was a no-brainer.” Scripted by John Ostrander (with art by Luke McDonnell and Dave Hunt), the story added considerable new content, not only involving the freshly created leader Amanda Waller but also the team’s background. In this account, there were two Rick Flags, one of them retroactively revealed to have been the leader of the World War II strike force that stormed Dinosaur Island. Dying on an early 1950s mission to stop the Blackhawk menace known as the War Wheel, Rick, Sr. left his namesake son to be raised by former Haunted Tank commander Jeb Stuart. In contrast to the Suicide Squad issue, Secret Origins #15 was partly a continuation of a well-received 1986 Deadman miniseries by Andy Helfer and José Luis García-López that revealed that the Sensei—the ghostly hero’s aged nemesis—was inhabited by a spirit himself. Helfer’s script for SO #15 (drawn by Kevin Maguire and Dick Giordano) put new details like that in context as it retold Deadman’s Strange Adventures #205 origin (1967) from a different perspective. Issue #15 was nicely thematic, also featuring as it did the 1940 Jerry Siegel/Bernard Bailey creation known as the Spectre. Roy Thomas adapted the first three episodes of the series from More Fun Comics #52–54 into a single story with art by Michael T. Gilbert. The latter also drew a cover for the issue that was rejected in favor of an Ed Hannigan/ Dick Giordano piece that featured both the Spectre and Deadman. In contrast to the well-defined backstory of the Spectre, Thomas had little to work with when it came to Hourman, his subject for Secret Origins #16. Essentially introduced full-blown in 1940’s Adventure Comics #48, Roy built a largely new origin for Rex Tyler (with art by Michael Bair and Mike Gustovich) that fed into the first published story. The Hourman tale contrasted wildly with the other two episodes in the issue. The Warlord lead story mostly preceded Travis Morgan’s plunge into the lost world of Skartaris, instead looking at his earlier life from

the perspective of schoolyard bully and traitor Danny Maddox. Scripted by Michael Fleisher and drawn by Adam Kubert, the Maddox plot thread picked up eight months later in 1998’s Warlord #127. Sharing a third of SO #16’s cover but only one page within, Bob Rozakis’ and Stephen DeStefano’s ’Mazing Man had enjoyed a year-long run in his own comic book (1985–1986) but never garnered big sales. The charming feature had a passionate fan base, though, and Robert Greenberger included the short feature in the issue as a show of support for the ’Mazing Man Special that ran the same month in April 1987. Described as “the closest thing to a secret origin,” it told how Siegfried Horatio Hunch III found his “M” helmet.

THE FIRST ANNUAL

One month later, Secret Origins Annual #1 threw its support behind another launch, this one a revival of Doom Patrol slated for July 1987. Paul Kupperberg “was the natural writer,” Greenberger notes, “and he brought in John Byrne [to draw it] so that was a surefire hit.” The presence of former X-Men artist Byrne called to mind the Doom Patrol’s longstanding, if coincidental, parallels to Marvel’s mutants, and that suggested a fitting co-feature. Joined by artists Ron Harris and Bruce Patterson, Roy Thomas retold the story of DC’s own original mutant superhero Captain Comet in an adaptation of 1951’s Strange Adventures #9–10. Benefiting from a higher profile following a late 1986 appearance in Alan Moore’s hot Swamp Thing title, space hero Adam Strange shared the spotlight in Secret Origins

#17. Scripted by Gerry Conway, the adaptation of 1958’s Showcase #17 was one of the first things that Roy Thomas had commissioned for the title when he believed he would be sole editor. In an inspired touch, Thomas assigned the pencils to Carmine Infantino. Regarded as the feature’s signature artist in the Silver Age, Infantino hadn’t drawn the pilot issues of Showcase and the 1987 retelling belatedly gave him a chance to illustrate Adam’s origin. Adam shared the issue with Dr. Occult, an obscure pre-Superman creation of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster who first appeared in More Fun Comics #6 (Oct. 1935). Aware that DC editor, writer, and general continuity cop E. Nelson Bridwell was a big fan of the character, Thomas invited him to co-plot the story, incorporating established details like the demonic Koth and the supernatural Seven to craft an origin where none had existed before. Tragically, the story was Bridwell’s last published credit. He died of lung cancer on January 23, 1987 at the age of 55 and was memorialized by Dick Giordano on the inside back cover of Secret Origins #17. “By that point, it was decided to give the entire package to Roy and Greg [Weisman] to run,” Robert Greenberger recalls of his exit from the series. “I wasn’t privy to the conversation but I certainly had other things

A Golden Age Wonder Woman Roy was kept hopping in Secret Origins by post-Crisis continuity changes. Courtesy of Heritage, here’s the Grindberg/ DeZuniga splash for the Golden Age Fury’s origin, from issue #12 (Mar. 1987). TM & © DC Comics.

Action Figure Splash page to issue #8’s (Nov. 1986) Doll Man origin, illustrated by the late, lamented Murphy Anderson. TM & © DC Comics.

DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 7

Sea King and Nightwing (top) The yellow-gloved Golden Age Sea King was largely left in limbo, but managed a walk-on in All-Star Squadron #59. (inset) Portions of the intended Secret Origin of the Golden Age Aquaman were reworked into Neptune Perkins’ history in Young All-Stars. (bottom) The origin of our cover star, Nightwing, was revealed in Secret Origins #13. Original Erik Larsen/ Mike DeCarlo art courtesy of Heritage. TM & © DC Comics.

8 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

to work on.” (Those things included editing The Spectre, Star Trek, Suicide Squad, and Warlord.) Already serving as Thomas’ assistant on Infinity, Inc. and Young All-Stars, Weisman was the obvious SO successor. Weisman’s tenure was notable for an expansion of the supplementary material in each issue’s letters column. Like E. Nelson Bridwell before him, Thomas had included capsule publishing histories of each Golden Age hero from the start of the Secret Origins relaunch, but no one was performing similar honors for the contemporary heroes. That changed when comic-book scholar Peter Sanderson came aboard with issue #20 to handle those chores. The first story released under Weisman’s aegis was issue #18’s origin of the Creeper, whom co-plotter-penciler Keith Giffen was simultaneously featuring in Justice League #5 (on sale in June 1987). The cartoonist had first laid claim to the garish hero in 1983 with plans for an unrealized miniseries, and this new tale (with scripter Andy Helfer) suggested where he might have gone with it. Loosely based on the first Steve Ditko story from Showcase #73, the plot featured a Creeper who was less an alter ego of Jack Ryder than an unhinged split personality. Issue #18’s co-feature was comparatively reverent as Roy Thomas and George Freeman reprised the emergence of the Golden Age Green Lantern. Along with material from 1940’s All-American Comics #16–18, they also worked in retroactive revelations that linked Alan Scott to the Silver Age Guardians of the Universe. Secret Origins #19 delivered a rare Golden Age double feature that told the stories of Quality Comics’ Uncle Sam and DC’s Guardian and the Newsboy Legion. Thomas only wrote the latter, combining the plot of the original Simon and Kirby tale (1942’s Star-Spangled Comics #1) with new details he’d added in 1982’s All-Star Squadron Annual #1. In a nice touch, Jack Kirby himself drew the Guardian figure on the cover while one of his final inkers— Greg Theakston—embellished Arvell Jones’ pencils with a Kirby-esque flourish on the interior story. “My main pleasure on Secret Origins was putting the covers together to combine the two heroes in interesting ways, as opposed to the split cover where they don’t interact at all,” Greg Weisman tells BACK ISSUE. “Our amazing cover editor Ed Hannigan came up with a cover sketch showing the Guardian bursting out from the traditional Uncle Sam ‘I Want You!’ poster. “I had this brilliant idea to turn it into a jam-cover by the two characters’ respective creators, Jack Kirby (whom I had never met) for Guardian and Will Eisner (whom I had met once at a DC function) for Uncle Sam. I called both. Talked to neither. Roz Kirby, Jack’s wife, was very sweet, and said that Jack would be happy to do it. Pete Eisner, Will’s brother, said no. I tried to explain what I was trying to accomplish by putting together these two titans of the industry. The answer was still no. I asked to talk to Will. The answer to that was no, also. greg weisman “So I went to Murphy Anderson. © Greg Weisman / via Twitter. Murphy was dying to ink the Kirby part. He told me he still felt guilty about redrawing Kirby’s Superman heads back in the Fourth World days. He saw inking Kirby faithfully on this cover as something of a recompense. I asked him if he was also willing to pencil and ink the Uncle Sam portion. He was happy to do that, too. (In general, Murphy was just a joy to work with.) He did a truly fantastic job on Uncle Sam and was very faithful to the Guardian figure that Jack sent in based on Ed’s original sketch. The overall cover still thrills me. I do wish we had gotten Will Eisner, but I can hardly be upset with the results. “I wanted to purchase the original art from both Jack and Murphy,” Weisman reveals. “I called the Kirbys again. Again, I talked to Roz, who happily agreed to sell me Jack’s portion for nothing but a token fee, mostly because I insisted on paying something. I likewise insisted on purchasing the cover from Murphy, as well. But he just wouldn’t take

any money from me for it under any circumstance and insisted on making it a gift. It still hangs, framed, on my office wall after all these years.” Len Wein’s great affection for National Comics hero Uncle Sam prompted him to lobby to write the origin, something Thomas—not particularly invested in the character—agreed to. As noted earlier, Murphy Anderson’s desire to draw as many Quality Comics heroes as possible resulted in him getting the assignment. Anderson was back in issue #21 to draw the origin of the Black Condor, this time with Thomas. Although he strived to adhere to the fidelity of the hero’s origin from Crack Comics #1 (1940), the writer couldn’t quite “accept the idea that a young boy raised by condors in the Himalayas could learn to fly.” “I hope purists will forgive me,” he continued in SO #21’s text page, “for tossing in that glowing meteor. On the other hand, perhaps such pseudo-scientific trappings will make the story a wee bit more palatable to those who otherwise would throw up their hands in horror at the whole shebang.”

CONTINUITY MATTERS

In the 1980s, though, fans seemed to be more concerned with matters of continuity than scientific accuracy. Such was the case with the aforementioned “Batman: Year One” arc that included the birth of future Commissioner Gordon’s son but made no mention of his adult daughter Barbara… a.k.a. Batgirl. The situation was particularly problematic since Barbara was slated to appear in the forthcoming Killing Joke graphic novel.

Enter Barbara Randall [now Kesel], who’d broken in as a DC writer on the final episodes of Detective Comics’ Batgirl solo feature in 1982. Robert Greenberger also returned as editor for the occasion, noting that “Barbara and I knew we needed a revised origin to paper over both Frank Miller and Denny O’Neil overlooking Barbara Gordon.” Their solution was to make Barbara the adoptive daughter of Jim Gordon after her natural parents died. Illustrated by Rick Leonardi and Dick Giordano, the story in Secret Origins #20 otherwise hewed fairly closely to pre-Crisis continuity save for making Babs a bit younger. (The issue had a “creature of the night” theme, incidentally, with Dr. Mid-Nite as the co-feature. Roy Thomas adapted 1941’s All-American Comics #25 with artists Mike Clark and Jerry Acerno.) Greenberger was also present as editor on issue #21’s Jonah Hex origin. “My memory says it was commissioned before the handover,” he tells BACK ISSUE, “but may not have been completed in time.” By this point, the venerable Western hero was in comic limbo after Hex, a last-ditch science-fiction reboot, failed. Scripted by Jonah’s longtime writer Michael Fleisher, the story made passing reference to that digression but was generally a sequel to the infamous 1978 story that revealed that Hex had been killed in 1904… and stuffed as an exhibit in a Wild West museum. Gray Morrow drew this latest macabre chapter. By now it was September 1987 and the latest DC company crossover was about to begin. Released on an accelerated weekly schedule, Millennium focused on the emergence of several enhanced human beings on Earth

Spirit of the Past, Power of the Present (left) Splash page to Secret Origins #28’s Midnight tale. Looks like artist Gil Kane snuck in his own caricature on the background billboard. (right) Keith Wilson’s cover (over a Mike Carlin cover sketch) for the Atom’s origin, in issue #29 (Aug. 1988). Both courtesy of Heritage. TM & © DC Comics.

DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 9

as the millennia-old Manhunters attempted to put a stop to things. There had been several variations on the Manhunter name over the years, including DC and Quality heroes with the same name during the 1940s. Roy Thomas was delighted with the prospect of tying their histories together and put together a full 38-page chronology for Secret Origins #22 (penciled by Howard Simpson). Thomas sat out Secret Origins #23, a second Millennium crossover that spotlighted key players: the Guardians of the Universe (by Todd Klein, Jonathan Peterson, and Al Vey) and the Floronic Man (by Rick Veitch and Brett Ewins). It’s worth noting that the latter, despite being groomed to become a force for good in the post-Millennium New Guardians title, was the first villain to be showcased in the 1980s Secret Origins title. As Millennium ended, so did Greg Weisman’s short association with Secret Origins. He moved on to grad school at the University of Southern California while continuing to co-write Captain Atom with Cary Bates. Taking his place was self-proclaimed “boy editor” Mark Waid, whose deep knowledge of DC history would serve him well on the book. His first issue (SO #24) began with a light touch, spotlighting Blue Devil in a story written by creators Dan Mishkin and Gary Cohn with sprightly art by Ty Templeton. Picking up where the lighthearted hero’s recently canceled series had left off, B.D. was still living in the House of Weirdness and his history was recounted by caretaker Cain (late of the House of Mystery). The issue’s bigger draw, though, was its Golden Age co-feature. As one of the few Justice Society members not relegated to limbo, Dr. Fate was being groomed for his own book, albeit with a younger new persona recently introduced in a 1987 miniseries. Roy Thomas, Michael Bair, and Bob Downs’ story went back to the beginning in 1940’s More Fun Comics #56–57 and 1941’s #67. Thomas had actually recapped Fate’s origin in All-Star Squadron #47 (1985), but this account included the new wrinkle

that young Kent Nelson had been mystically aged to adulthood in moments by the mage Nabu. There were no real changes in Thomas, Mike Clark, and Bob Downs’ Golden Age Atom story for SO #25, but it did end with an update on Al Pratt’s major life events after 1940. Secret Origins #25 led off with a spotlight on a series near and dear to Mark Waid’s heart—the Legion of Super-Heroes—although it had been initiated before he took over the book. John Byrne’s declaration that the post-Crisis Superman had never been Superboy had dealt a severe blow to the Legion’s history, culminating in a 1987 plotline that explained away the team’s Boy of Steel as the product of a “pocket universe.” Joined by artists Rick Stasi and Dick Giordano, longtime LSH writer Paul Levitz penned the latest account of the team’s origin—narrated by Legion financier R. J. Brande—with the recent revision that they’d been inspired by the mere legend of Superboy. The story also kicked off DC’s 30th anniversary celebration of the group, continuing a week later with the premiere of the Waid-edited Who’s Who in the Legion of Super-Heroes. The star of another team book—the recently canceled Outsiders— headlined the first issue of 1988 (SO #26) when Black Lightning took the stage. Greg Brooks’ art evoked the look of Outsiders artist Jim Aparo, but the most notable detail about the episode was the fact that it was written by Tony Isabella. Although he created the hero in 1976, Isabella hadn’t actually scripted a Lightning story since he left the series in 1978. Joining Black Lightning in the issue was a frankly obscure heroine whose brief Golden Age run consisted of 1941’s Military Comics #1–7. In a revised DC Universe without a Golden Age Wonder Woman, though, the red, white, and blue-costumed Miss America took on greater importance in Roy Thomas’ plans for both All-Star Squadron and Infinity, Inc. In a rare development for a book typically composed of standalone stories, Thomas and Grant Miehm’s tale ended on a cliffhanger that led into Young All-Stars #12 and set the stage for Miss America to replace Wonder Woman in the post-Crisis Justice Society of America. Roy hadn’t entirely changed his mind about the previously introduced 1940s Fury filling that role, but he now envisioned Miss A. as the adoptive mother of the 1980s Fury after her natural parent vanished.

MAGICAL MAYHEM

Family was also the subject of Secret Origins #27’s full-length coverage of father-daughter magicians Zatara and Zatanna. Roy Thomas worked on the former’s origin story while French husband-and-wife team Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier plotted a larger sequence—penciled by Tom Artis— around it that not only featured Zatanna but also E. Nelson Bridwell creation Dr. Mist and Golden Age villain Wotan. Although Grant Miehm did breakdowns for the Zatara sequence, the finisher was Fred Fredericks… an inspired assignment since he was the current penciler of Mandrake the Magician, the comic-strip hero who inspired DC’s own mage in the 1930s. Unfortunately, such “inspiration” no longer sat so well, as Mark Waid detailed in 2007 in BACK ISSUE #24. “The story was written plot-first and, not long after it was drawn but before it was dialogued, [the Lofficiers]— who had a reputation for sneaking in ‘homages’ of non-DC characters and concepts in their scripts and endangering the careers of more than one DC editor—had gotten busted yet again by the DC legal department. Something had left house and been printed in a high-profile book, and the humiliated editor swore (convincingly, I believe—and, no, it wasn’t me) they didn’t realize that these writers (who had been warned to knock it off) had once more been ‘inspired’ by a somewhat-obscure outside source. At the next editorial meeting, the editor-in-chief—as angry as I’d ever seen him—made it abundantly clear that the next editor who allowed these writers to slip something like this past them would be fired on the spot. And I liked my job. So, terrified that these guys would sneak in some little-known (but actionable) ‘homage’ into the Zatanna script, I cut them loose and asked my friend Robert Loren Fleming to dialogue (and heavily rewrite) the story, in which we substituted Felix Faust for Wotan (in retrospect, a bad call on my part, but an 11th-hour one— as I say, it had to be heavily rewritten to ensure its originality).”

It Mayer May Not Be an Origin… Golden Age pioneer Shelly Mayer returned to comics for this Ma Hunkle tale in Secret Origins #29. TM & © DC Comics.

10 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

“I never heard anything about any of that at the time,” Roy Thomas responds to BI in 2017. “If so, I was lied to by DC—a not unusual occurrence at that time. I was told that changes were made for one reason and for one reason only: that it had been decided (by whom it wasn’t said) that Dr. Mist should not be allowed to be so powerful a character in the DC Universe, and that was the alleged reason for re-doing the synopsis. I don’t recall Jean-Marc (who was ‘R.J.M. Lofficier’ to all intents in these stories, since Randy wasn’t really involved) being told, or telling me, that he was being removed for any other reason— nor was any hint as to any other reason ever given to me. “As you can see by the ‘consultant’ tag laid on me on the splash page of the main story,” Thomas continues, “I was involved with that story from the beginning, having commissioned Jean-Marc to do it. I can’t speak as to the truth of Dick Giordano being upset by previous Lofficier ‘homages,’ but I do know JeanMarc was in the habit of doing that. Still, that could have been watched—by a combination of Waid and myself, if need be—without the need for yanking them off the story without any consultation with me (and I still held a ‘story editor’ position in the Secret Origins title) and without telling me the truth about the reasons for Jean-Marc being removed. Under those circumstances, a disgusted Jean-Marc removed his name from the story and, primarily because of the tall tale I was told about the alleged reasons for the changing of the plot, I refused to dialogue the Zatara story I had plotted.” Mercifully, Secret Origins #28 came off without incident, highlighted by a long overdue reunion between Thomas and his one-time Marvel collaborator Gil Kane. Like Murphy Anderson, Kane was passionate about the vintage Quality Comics heroes and he snagged the assignment to draw an expanded origin of Midnight, a Jack Cole variation on Will Eisner’s Spirit who first appeared in Smash Comics #18 (Jan. 1941). Robert Greenberger returned in the front half of the book, this time as writer. His subject was the Charlton heroine Nightshade, a character that he’d championed to be integrated into the DC Universe as a regular in Suicide Squad. She’d originally fought alongside Captain Atom but that part of her backstory didn’t jibe with Cap’s post-Crisis history. Instead, Greenberger substituted DC spy King Faraday into a few flashbacks that originally involved Atom along with setting the stage for a Nightshadecentric story in Suicide Squad #14–16. The episode was also notable as the first published DC story—as opposed to spot art and covers—by an artist who would loom large in the 1990s comic-book scene: Rob Liefeld. Another new face at DC was at the front of Secret Origins #29 but he had a long list of credits behind him. Breaking from Marvel in 1987 after more than a decade, writer Roger Stern arrived at DC to pick up a variety of high-profile assignments. Those included Power of the Atom, a revival of the shrinking superhero who’d most recently been relocated to the Amazon in the Sword of the Atom miniseries and Specials. Joined by artists Dwayne Turner and Keith Wilson, Stern aimed to return Ray Palmer to the United States and used the Secret Origins episode to establish the Atom’s history beforehand. The issue was neatly timed to go on sale a week before POTA #1. Elsewhere in SO #29, Roy Thomas and Mike Harris documented the history of Mr. America. First seen in 1938’s Action Comics #1 as adventurer Tex Thomson, the character transitioned to a costume in issue #33 (Feb. 1941) and eventually took the alternate name of the Americommando.

Should FDR Be in Who’s Who? From the Justice Society origin by Roy Thomas, Mike Bair, and Bob Downs, from Secret Origins #31 (Oct. 1988). TM & © DC Comics.

Thomas hit most of the high notes to that point, including Tex’s friend Bob’s own ill-advised turn as Fatman. Fittingly, the issue also featured another Golden Age hero who was played for laughs… but not the way Thomas had expected. The creations of comic-book pioneer Sheldon Mayer had included a send-up of mystery-men called the Red Tornado (secretly housewife Ma Hunkel) and Roy had hopes of running a two-page recap. “I was delighted to learn from editor Mark Waid that Mr. Mayer had recovered sufficiently from a recent illness to write and draw it himself,” Thomas detailed in SO #29. “Never mind that the story became a three-pager… or that Shelly wound up drawing a story that isn’t even an origin at all! …It’s still a great little story about a great bunch of characters, drawn by one of the great originals of comics—and if that doesn’t belong in a mag called Secret Origins, nothing does!”

THE FASTEST MEN ALIVE

That sentiment also applied to Secret Origins Annual #2, on sale in May 1988. The subject of the issue was the Flash— two of them, in fact—and who better to draw the origin of Barry Allen than the man who did it originally in 1956: Carmine Infantino. Joined by one of his most popular inkers (Murphy Anderson), the veteran cartoonist had an entirely different script to draw this time around, albeit with the same title as Showcase #4: “Mystery of the Human Thunderbolt.” Robert Loren Fleming’s plot added a hostage scenario into Barry’s fateful transformation and ventured further into the Flash’s career in succeeding chapters. The final twist came in a reprise of the hero’s death in Crisis on Infinite Earths #8 (1985) and the revelation that the Flash had burst through time to become the lightning bolt that started his career in the first place! Human thunderbolt, indeed. Given grandiose details like that, one can understand why present-day Flash Wally West’s own origin in the issue (by William Messner-Loebs, Mike Collins, and Frank McLaughlin) was set in a psychiatrist’s office as he struggled with insecurities and compared himself to his predecessor. Tying into a contemporary Flash subplot where Wally had lost his speed, the story offered thoughtful reinterpretations of the Silver Age events that took place when he was Kid Flash. Back in Secret Origins #30, another face from the Silver Age Flash book finally got his day in the sun. The Elongated Man had been one of Roy Thomas’ first selections for the title when he was sole editor, but it took more than two years to happen. Nor did Mike W. Barr write the script as originally intended. “I’ve never actually heard that,” Mark Waid tells BACK ISSUE. “Mike, if you’re out there and I poached your gig, I apologize. Gerard Jones was a writer I’d had a long relationship with from my days as the editor of Amazing Heroes, and I knew he’d pull it off.” At that point, Jones had recently written the historical tome The Comic Book Heroes (1985, with Will Jacobs) and had a well-established reputation in publications like National Lampoon and his and Jacobs’ own The Trouble with Girls (for Malibu Comics). In his first DC assignment, DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 11

MM Good... (left) From Mister Miracle’s origin in SO #33. (right) Title page to the Martian Manhunter’s story in SO #35. TM & © DC Comics.

Jones brought an appropriately light touch to the story of Ralph Dibny The post-Crisis version of the nascent team was minus two members— (supported by Ty Templeton and Grant Miehm’s art), delivering a character Batman and Superman—and that presented a particular problem in the study interspersed with scenes from the Stretchable Sleuth’s career. case of the latter. The Man of Steel had saved President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “One thing about that story that no one knows is that I bungled life from a spear in Levitz’s account. Who saved him this time? No one, as it turned out. In Thomas’ revision (drawn by it badly,” Waid reveals. “Ty Templeton was the perfect penciler, Michael Bair and Bob Downs for the full-length Secret but through no fault of his own, Grant Miehm was a bad Origins #31), FDR was actually killed! This time around, combo with him—the lines were very heavy, the whole job was very dark. Again, that wasn’t Grant’s fault—that the ghostly Spectre defiantly interceded with his celestial was on me not taking his style into account. But to his host to restore the president to life. He succeeded but eternal credit, when I talked with Grant about it, he was cautioned that the leader “shall fall in the very took it upon himself to re-ink the entire job on vellum moment of triumph, forbidden like Moses from entering overlay at no cost and with no prompting from me, the promised land of peace.” As Thomas tells BI, “that prophecy was fulfilled in real history, since FDR died and I’ve never forgotten that act of professionalism shortly before the Third Reich totally collapsed. Hitler above and beyond the call.” learned of FDR’s death while he was crouching down in Waid had dubbed this edition a “special Rubber Band his Berlin bunker.” issue” and Ty Templeton’s cover showed the Elongated Man tangled up with the stretchable hero who started Similar challenges arose in Secret Origins #32’s it all: Plastic Man! The original account of Plas’ origin companion issue, which dealt with the birth of the mark waid from Police Comics #1 had been relatively serious but post-Crisis Justice League (plotted by Keith Giffen, © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. Thomas and artists Stephen DeStefano and Paul Fricke scripted by Peter David, and drawn by Eric Shanower). cranked up the comedy in the retelling to reflect what the series ultimately The intent was to follow the established account (1961’s JLA #9) wherein became in the hands of creator Jack Cole. Although not present in the the soon-to-be members came together to fight aliens from Appellax early Plas stories, sidekick Woozy Winks was prominent in a framing but Giffen and editor Waid had to deal with a certain Big Three. The thensequence, as was another bizarre Cole creation named Burp the Twerp. current Superman team initially declared the Man of Steel off-limits, and since his team-up with Batman in the ’61 origin had been a minor detail, the Dark Knight sat out the revision, too. JUSTICE FOR ALL Throughout the run of Secret Origins, Roy Thomas had strived to release Wonder Woman had been more prominent in the classic origin but the various Golden Age tales in the order that the heroes original she didn’t show up in the current DC timeline until the recent past. appeared. There were occasional exceptions—starting with Superman Inspired by the recent Miss America origin, Waid suggested using an and Batman—but he mostly adhered to the rule. Issue #24’s letters older version of that heroine as a substitute… but having her die at the column even ran a chronological list of Golden Age debuts, which gave end with the Justice League of America named in her honor. That idea a hint of what was to come. After 30 issues, the origins of every was abandoned once Roy informed him that Joan Dale Trevor (a.k.a. charter member of the Justice Society of America had been retold, and Miss A) was still alive in contemporary Infinity, Inc. stories. now it was time to cover the birth of the team itself. The creative team “briefly discussed the idea of simply leaving a female The JSA never had an origin during the 1940s, though, so Paul Levitz member out of the original JLA but eventually dismissed the idea,” Waid belatedly came up with one for 1977’s DC Special #29. It detailed how wrote in issue #32’s text page. “Not only was the League never really a ten American heroes came together to thwart Adolf Hitler’s invasion of ‘boys’ club’ but there was something more substantive and—oh, gosh— England in November 1940… and formed an enduring team in the process. just more ‘leaguish’—about a five-member team… which is how Black 12 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

Canary ended up being the fifth ‘mystery’ member of the Justice League of America.” The decision—suggested by Giffen—also enriched the post-Crisis Black Canary in general, establishing her as a second-generation heroine with expectations and life experiences quite different from her pre-Crisis counterpart. There would have been more revelations about the revised DC Universe had early plans materialized. In 1988 Amazing Heroes #133 reported that the contents of SO #31 and 32 were originally intended for Annual #2. “A special eight-page backup feature [would have told] the complete post-Crisis rundown of all the JLA/JSA team-ups.” It was not to be.

GOODBYE TO THE GOLDEN AGE

Readers who expected Secret Origins to return to its familiar dual format following the JSA/JLA issues were in for a surprise. Golden Age heroes were officially off the table and Roy Thomas was gone. “I can’t say, in the context of a family magazine, what my feelings were when I got that news,” Roy informs BACK ISSUE. “I felt, and feel, that there was no reason not to continue the Golden Age origins, and that the move was a power grab, pure and simple. I had a good relationship with Dick Giordano, and I feel that, if sales alone had been the reason, Dick would have discussed that with me as he did many other things. There were things going on under the table that Dick was probably too busy to notice, so I got screwed.” For his part, Waid asserts, “It wasn’t anything nefarious on my end. Dick Giordano simply decided that we’d run out of most of the even-remotely recognizable Golden Age heroes and suggested we move the book away from them. That, coupled with the fact that it was very hard to find artists who were good, available, and who fit Roy’s aesthetic sense brought the Golden Age origins to a close.” Thomas disputes that, asserting that “two of the stories left on the shelf by the no-more-Golden-Age decisions had been already penciled by Gil Kane, hardly a second-rater… and no attempt was made to shoehorn them in, then or later. Far as I could tell, little or no attempt was ever made on the NYC side to ‘help’ me get good artists. I had to scramble to line them up myself if I was going to get any.” Seguing from the JSA/JLA issues, Secrets Origins #33–35 offered up a three-issue event (with linked covers by Jerry Ordway) that featured characters from the popular Justice League International book. “I was always looking for ways to tie the book in with whatever else might be selling well in the DC Universe proper,” Waid notes, “which is what led to the triptych of Justice League International origins, as well as the Justice League of America origin.” The collective nine stories were notable for their mix of different approaches to relating backstories and included the following lineup:

Secret Origins #34: Captain Atom (by Cary Bates and Greg Weisman, Alan Weiss, and Joe Rubinstein): Cap’s Charlton Comics history had technically been erased in his 1980s reboot but it was exhumed here to provide detail to his cover story that he’d operated in secret in years past. Rocket Red (by William Messner-Loebs, Irv Novick, and Joe Rubinstein): Along with detailing the recent history of the Rocket Red Brigade from Green Lantern Corps, this episode also told how RR #4 came to leave Russia to join the JLI… and made a deal to get his sister and brother-in-law out of the country. G’nort (by Keith Giffen and J. M. DeMatteis and Stephen DeStefano): An appropriately cartoonish quality accompanied the backstory of the goofy Green Lantern introduced in JLI during its Millennium crossover. Secret Origins #35: Booster Gold (by Dan Jurgens and Tim Dzon): A year after his comic book was canceled, the transplanted 25th-Century hero was reunited with creator Jurgens as he recapped his history for new best friend Blue Beetle.

“Ty” This On for Size Boy editor Mark Waid’s affectionate throwbacks to pre-Crisis Superman family continuity— such as Ty Templeton’s Legion of Substitute Heroes tale in SO #37 (Feb. 1989)— generated friction in DC’s offices. TM & © DC Comics.

Secret Origins #33: Mister Miracle (by Mike Carlin, Don Heck, Klaus Janson, and Arthur Adams): The emergence of Jack Kirby’s escape artist hero ran across the top of each page, paralleling the formative years of future Earthly pal Oberon across the bottom. Green Flame (by Tom and Mary Bierbaum, Chuck Austen, and Gary Martin): In a departure from her original history in Super Friends, the Brazilian heroine received a new origin as a super-spy. Icemaiden (by Gerard Jones, Jim Valentino, and Ed Barreto): A newly revealed origin established the heroine as a relative innocent from a lost colony in Norway. When asked by Jones if the character had a civilian name, Waid said no, forgetting that she’d been referred to as Sigrid Nansen in her Super Friends debut, a Who’s Who entry, and the recent JLI postcard set. Jones’ new “Tora Olafsdotter” name stuck, though, and eventually the Sigrid Nansen name was applied to the JLI member’s predecessor. DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 13

Wild Things From Heritage’s archives, Michael Wm. Kaluta’s fabulous original cover art to Secret Origins #39 (Apr. 1989). TM & © DC Comics.

Martian Manhunter (by Mark Verheiden and Ken Steacy): Rendered in caption boxes with three large panels on most pages, a sensitive origin retelling was framed in J’onn J’onzz’s old friendship with a police officer. Maxwell Lord (by Keith Giffen and Robert Loren Fleming and Ed Barreto): Details of the JLI’s shady benefactor’s history had been doled out during the book’s first two years, but the origin put the information in one place as Max told all to Oberon. Thanks to the JLI event, nearly every major member of the current team had been covered in Secret Origins, so issue #36 (on sale in November 1988) looked back on a charter member of the original group. Hal (Green Lantern) Jordan was at an odd point in his career, having lost his own book to serve as a headliner in the experimental Action Comics Weekly [chronicled later in this issue—ed.]. Writer James Owsley’s script (plotted with penciler Mark Bright) tied into that series, introducing an African-American man named Chip who became Hal Jordan’s new best friend and his boss at an aircraft firm.

(Hal’s old best friend Thomas Kalmaku, incidentally, received his own origin in the same issue, a short Gerard Jones/Joe Staton six-pager that made a nod to the current New Guardians book.) In an inspired touch, the Owsley/Bright tale opened with the famed three O’Neil/Adams panels from Green Lantern #76 (Apr. 1970) wherein an old man asked the Emerald Crusader what he had done for “the black skins.” The tweak here was that a younger Chip had actually witnessed that fateful conversation and been inspired by it. Ironically, scheduling resulted in the story appearing out of order… two months after Chip first appeared in Action #622. Indeed, he was seen only one more time after SO #36 when Owsley wrote him back out of the feature in 1989’s Green Lantern Special #2. The timing was better on the issue’s other feature, a spotlight on Batman villainess Poison Ivy by Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham that included elements from the Gaiman-scripted Black Orchid miniseries that premiered earlier in November. The story referenced bits of Ivy’s pre-Crisis history—including her 1966 debut in Batman #181—but dismissed most of it, notably her 1978 origin and supposed real name. “I make stuff up sometimes,” she laughed in Gaiman’s script. “I never expected anyone to believe it.”

POST-CRISIS REVISIONS

Nearly four years into the existence of the post-Crisis DC Universe, the approach to its history was changing. Exceptions like Superman, Wonder Woman, or Captain Atom notwithstanding, there was still an overall view that the Earth-One origins for most characters still applied. As the Poison Ivy tale showed, that attitude was beginning to change. Indeed, Keith Giffen and Robert Loren Fleming conceived an entirely new backstory for Aquaman, abandoning the Silver Age tale of a lonely lighthouse keeper and his Atlantean bride. Their alternative owed more to the legends of Mowgli and Tarzan with its account of an Atlantean baby left for dead on Mercy Reef and raised by sharks. Originally scheduled for Secret Origins #30 (opposite a Roy Thomas/Gil Kane Ray story), the story— beautifully illustrated by Curt Swan and Eric Shanower— was so well received in the DC offices that the decision was made to release it as a standalone Aquaman Special. On sale in March 1989, the one-shot was followed by a miniseries a month later. [Editor’s note: There’s an Aquaman issue of BI coming late next year.] The transition toward brand-new backstories “was more organic than calculated,” Waid observes. “I’m a nut for continuity, but for some of the more minor characters, the stories seemed too good to pass up, particularly given that we could always wave the phrase ‘post-Crisis!’ around.” Consequently, Secret Origins #37 offered a different history for a prominent Silver Age bad guy, rejecting a retroactive tale that had appeared in 1977’s DC SuperStars #14. “We changed Dr. Light’s established origin because the one given before didn’t make any sense in DC continuity,” Waid explains. This time around, Doc had started out as the heroic persona of scientist Jacob Finlay but his jealous partner Arthur Light killed him and used the identity for evil. Finlay didn’t go quietly, though, hanging on as a ghost who mocked Arthur after each increasingly embarrassing defeat. An attempt was made to change the villain’s real name to the less on-the-nose Arthur Smith, but Robert Greenberger pointed out that his Arthur Light alter ego had already been confirmed in post-Crisis continuity. The “Smith” name still managed to show up in a few panels that Waid failed to re-edit. 14 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

Finlay’s demise aside, the story was delivered with a light touch by writer Craig Boldman and featured lively pencils from an artist destined to be revered before his death at much too young an age: Mike Parobeck. The tale was, in fact, the cartoonist’s first published assignment and Waid credited fellow editor Brian Augustyn for making it happen: “He and Mike were pals, and Mike was gearing up for El Diablo and suggested I find a place for him. Happy to do so. That guy was a genius.” [Editor’s note: We remember Mike Parobeck in a commemorative article in the next edition of BACK ISSUE.] The Dr. Light story was paired with an even more comical account of the Legion of Substitute Heroes. It was, the first page noted “adapted more closely than you’d think from a story by Edmond Hamilton and John Forte” in Adventure Comics #306 (Mar. 1963). “My favorite story in the whole run is Ty Templeton’s Legion of Substitute Heroes tale,” Waid declares. “I’d known Ty for years and I asked him at [the 1988] Chicago convention to do the story, and he said yes. Now, with Ty, I knew it was going to be flawless, so when I opened up a package and got not a script or some pencils but, rather, an entire inked, lettered, ready-to-print story that I knew nothing about ahead of time, I was delighted. My bosses were less delighted. ‘Didn’t you see a script?’ ‘Didn’t you check the pencils before they were inked?’ I got a lot of that because I didn’t follow protocol, but it was Ty Templeton, for God’s sake. It was fine. Even though it accidentally had two page 17s and I had to cut a page out of the 19-page Dr. Light script to make room for both.” Waid dubbed the collective Subs/Light package as an “All-Feeb Issue” in issue #36’s coming attractions box. “Let’s leave all this grim, gritty crap behind for one short issue— comics as you know them won’t collapse into ruin.” Grim was certainly the word for much of Mike Grell’s contemporary Green Arrow title, a book whose more adult content was available at comic-book retailers but not on newsstands. Secret Origins was available to that wider, Comics Code-approved audience and Grell took that into account when detailing GA’s emergence in Star City for issue #38. Illustrated by Hannibal King, Dick Giordano, and Arne Starr, the tale had a lighthearted quality that nonetheless felt like it starred the same character in the regular GA book. Complementing the story was Elliot S. Maggin, John Koch, and John Nyberg’s coverage of Speedy, not only recapping his 1959-vintage origin but also following more recent events like his drug addiction and single fatherhood. Another comic shop-only feature came to Secret Origins when Animal Man took co-billing in issue #39. Surrounded by the requisite present-day framing sequence (by writer Grant Morrison and artists Tom Grummett and Doug Hazelwood), the story faithfully recounted the events of 1965’s Strange Adventures #180 and 184, wherein an alien visitation transformed a young man named Buddy into “the man with animal powers.” That was only the beginning, though, and the last page pointed toward Animal Man #10, where Morrison began deconstructing the Silver Age origin to reveal how Buddy Baker really got his powers. Industry legend Michael Kaluta made a rare return appearance to DC to unite Animal Man with Man-Bat on the issue’s cover, while writer Jan Strnad and artist Kevin Nowlan chronicled the origin within. Details from the original two Frank Robbins/Neal Adams Man-Bat stories from 1970’s Detective Comics #400 and 402 were broadly adapted into a plot that also revealed significant new facts from earlier in the life of Kirk Langstrom. Those tantalizing flashbacks implied that the younger Langstrom had twice indirectly influenced Bruce Wayne, starting when the former was lost in a cave full of bats. Did young Kirk really tell that hair-raising story to equally young Bruce just hours before Thomas Wayne died? And—years later—was it an escaped, sonar-impaired bat from Kirk’s lab that wound up smashing through the window in a now-adult Bruce’s study? There were no definitive answers. Despite his paucity of appearances in the 1980s, Man-Bat had been the character most requested by readers for coverage in Secret Origins, so that episode was very much “by popular demand.” Mark Waid added in that issue’s letters column that Shade the Changing Man was runner-up, but was off the table since he was in development for an ongoing series. When Shade finally premiered in May 1990, very little remained of Steve Ditko’s original 1977 creation.

SECRET ORIGINS GOES APE

Absolutely no one was asking for the contents of issue #40, which Waid captioned “Because I Demanded It!” This was the all-ape edition of Secret Origins, a callback of the sorts to the days when DC executives believed that a gorilla on the cover was guaranteed to make sales go up. Those higher-ups also held that a purple background or fire or dinosaurs or motorcycles or a hero crying or a question to the reader were surefire ways to a reader’s heart… so Waid loaded up his cover with all of them! Bernie Mireault, Ty Templeton, and Ty’s fiancée Lisa Riediger all pitched concepts, but Bill Wray’s vision won the day. Ignoring a retroactive 1977 origin (DC Super-Stars #14), veteran Flash creators Cary Bates and Carmine Infantino (joined by co-writer Greg Weisman and inker Mike DeCarlo) came up with a new origin for Gorilla Grodd. In the 1989 account, he and the denizens of Africa’s Gorilla City were evolved by an alien artifact. A whimsical Detective Chimp tale echoed that ever-so-slightly as it explained how another alien visitation granted human intelligence to the lead character. With a plot assist from Andy Helfer, Waid himself scripted that one (using the pseudonym Rusty Wells) while Mark Badger brought things to manic life. In between, writer Tom Joyner and artists Fred Butler and Keith Wilson offered a dark

Feats of Clay (top) Steve Purcell’s Clayface script for SO #44 was rejected by the Bat-office. (bottom) That story was finally completed and printed in 2005 in Batman Villains Secret Files and Origins. TM & © DC Comics.

DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 15

Long Before DC’s Batman ’66… …Neil Gaiman’s Riddler tale from Secret Origins Special #1 (1989) recalled villains from the campy TV show. Art by Mireault and Wagner. TM & © DC Comics.

Mark Waid, who just taken the editorial reigns of LSH for a forthcoming reboot, noted in SO #42’s lettercol that he and fans alike saw the team being underserved in Secret Origins. “The current plan is not only to feature more Legionnaires in these pages, but to make up for lost time and lost opportunity as well. You’ll be seeing Legion members in Secret Origins on a semi-regular basis from now on.” What readers would not be seeing was more Golden Age characters. Issue #42 unexpectedly featured the origin of Sensation Comics #1’s Gay Ghost (Jan. 1942), albeit under a name revised in the 1970s— the Grim Ghost—that bowed to changing times. Illustrated by Michael Bair, the story was one of several left in inventory by Roy Thomas but the last that actually saw print in the title. After a few issues of going its own way, the book reconnected with the present-day DC line when Secret Origins #43 (on sale in June 1989) spotlighted the Hawk and the Dove. Thanks to a successful miniseries in 1988 with a new male/female partnership, the duo had earned an ongoing series in April 1989 (as detailed last issue). Series writers Barbara and Karl Kesel (with artists Trevor Von Eeden and John Koch) recapped the story from Steve Ditko’s Showcase #75 (June 1968), but they also added considerable new details about the nature of the Hawk and Dove’s magical origins, content that paid off down the road in the pair’s home book. The other features in SO #43 were considerably more esoteric. Bob Wayne and Timothy Truman’s Cave Carson episode featured the minor Silver Age explorer of Earth’s inner realms, doling up new background as a prequel to Wayne’s Time Masters miniseries that premiered in December 1989. Meanwhile, Chris KL-99—star of a short-lived strip that began in 1950’s Strange Adventures #1— was revisited in a closing eight-pager. Like the original, it starred the first human born in out of space but the visuals and other specifics were otherwise completely reimagined. take on the origin of Congorilla, loosely based on a story from 1958’s Action Comics #248. Secret Origins #41 owed a more substantial debt to the Silver Age with its full-length spotlight on the Flash Rogues’ Gallery (beneath a Mike Mignola image that paid homage to Carmine Infantino’s cover for 1967’s Flash #174). Dan Mishkin and Gary Cohn’s plot found an amnesiac bald man showing up at the costume shop of Paul Gambi, certain that he was one of the villains for whom the tailor had once made costumes. A parade of artists recalled the origins of the Trickster, the Pied Piper, Captain Cold, Heat Wave, Captain Boomerang, and the Weather Wizard before the truth came out. The mystery man wasn’t any of them! Rather, recalling a 1960 story, he was a rogue seen in Secret Origins just one issue earlier: Grodd! The Silver Age also influenced Secret Origins Annual #3 (on sale in April 1989), which was a virtual love letter to the Teen Titans. Scripted by George Pérez (joined by more than a dozen artists), the 66-page story covered the history of team from its birth through the present-day series via the member who’d seen it all: Dick Grayson. The original stories were reinterpreted for post-Crisis history, of course, with some characters ignored (Mr. Jupiter, Gnarrk) and others revamped (Mal, the Bumblebee, Golden Eagle). The original, pre-Barbara Gordon Bat-Girl was even reborn as Flamebird. Her new origin and those of others appeared in Who’s Who pages at the end of the issue. DC’s other preeminent teen team—the Legion of Super-Heroes— figured into Secret Origins #42, using the elements of romance and betrayal in Adventure Comics #316’s (Jan. 1963) story as a framing sequence to drive the origin of Phantom Girl. Much of the tale’s core was new, as Tom and Mary Bierbaum built on what scant details they could find in old LSH episodes. Beloved 1970s team illustrator Dave Cockrum joined them as penciler, with inks by Jim Sanders and Larry Mahlstedt. 16 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

FROM THE DARK STREETS OF GOTHAM

Secret Origins #44 took a much more direct part in current DC events, laying the groundwork for a story wherein all four versions of Clayface— 1940’s Basil Karlo, 1961’s Matt Hagen, 1978’s Preston Payne, and 1987’s still-unidentified female incarnation—were united against Batman in a four-part Alan Grant/Norm Breyfogle story entitled “The Mud Pack” (Detective Comics #604–607). “I didn’t initiate the Mud Pack issue exactly,” Mark Waid recalls, “but I did come up with the name ‘Mud Pack,’ which is about as clever a day as I ever had. Dan Raspler and I were talking about the four Clayfaces as an upcoming Batman arc, I shot off the name, we both laughed, and then I immediately starting putting together a tie-in Secret Origins issue.” Preston Payne’s co-creator Len Wein returned to write his new origin (drawn by Tom Grummett and Gary Martin) while Mike W. Barr, Keith Giffen, and Al Gordon adapted the debut of Basil Karlo (with a cameo by Barr’s new female Clayface in the framing sequence). And then there was the Matt Hagen story. As written by Sam & Max: Freelance Police’s Steve Purcell and penciled by Mike Mignola, it was one of the more faithful adaptations in the book’s history. Alas, Purcell used so much of Bill Finger’s dialogue from 1961’s Detective #298 that the tale came off feeling like a campy episode of the mid-1960s Batman TV series. In an era when fans and pros alike fretted about comic books—and Batman in particular—not being taking seriously, that simply wasn’t acceptable. Consequently, Waid was forced to kill the tale, replacing it was a more straightforwardly comedic version of the origin by Dan Raspler, Bernie Mireault, and Denis Rodier. “Batman editor Denny O’Neil, who I love and revere and have nothing but respect for, just got out the wrong side of the bed that day,” Waid declares. “He read the finished pages, hated them, and dictated we do something else. His assistant, Dan Raspler, stepped in with his own story at my behest, and even though Dan’s story was even goofier, because he

was a Bat-editor, it was sort of blessed by the Bat-office in a way and Denny didn’t have an issue with it.” The original penciled pages sat in limbo until the 21st Century when a conversation between Mignola and a new Batman editor inspired them to actually finish the story and publish it. The artist had grown so much in the intervening years, though, that he couldn’t bring himself to complete it. Instead, he approached Kevin Nowlan, who’d been slated to ink the pages originally, and happily agreed to the assignment. After a 16-year wait, the alternate Clayface origin finally saw print, albeit buried in the middle of 2005’s Batman Villains Secret Files and Origins. The mid-1989 hypersensitivity and the “Mud Pack” serial were both rooted in that summer’s release of the hugely successful Batman feature film (with Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson). In support of the movie, DC wanted plenty of product on racks during the summer. Batman and Detective Comics each got an accelerated twicemonthly schedule even as the Dark Knight made prominent appearances in several other titles. Among them was Secret Origins Special #1, on sale in August 1989 and boasting an all-star lineup of talent beneath its Brian Bolland cover. The idea was to spotlight three Batman villains beyond those seen in the film. Neil Gaiman—less than a year into his acclaimed run on Sandman—tied the individual pieces together with a Mike Hoffman/Kevin Nowlan-drawn framing sequence about a TV news crew doing a story on Gotham City’s notorious bad guys. An Alan Grant/ Sam Kieth story painted an unusually dark portrait of the Penguin, indicative of DC’s struggles to find a new angle on a once-comical character. Elsewhere, Mark Verheiden, Pat Broderick, and Dick Giordano took a thoughtful look at Two-Face through the eyes of his estranged wife. The issue’s best-remembered story, though, was Gaiman’s origin of the Riddler, well served by Bernie Mireault and Matt Wagner’s cartoony style. It was less a backstory, though, than a lament for the days when heroes and villains weren’t so utterly grim. Defiantly referencing characters unique to the 1966 Batman TV show and even wearing the suit and hat that was then unique to the series, the Riddler gasped at one point, “The Joker’s killing people, for God’s sake! Did I miss something? Was I away when they changed the rules?” There were no answers, certainly not in the next issue of Secret Origins (#45) that featured another DC hero now geared toward more adult audiences. Howard Chaykin’s 1987 Blackhawk reboot hadn’t actually covered the origin of Quality Comics’ World War II pilot and his squadron, though, so Martin Pasko, Grant Miehm, and Terry Beatty went back to fill in the details. Geared toward Secret Origins’ more general newsstand audience, the story drew on the 1941 issues of Military Comics that introduced Blackhawk with tweaks to reflect current continuity. (Quality Comics fan Murphy Anderson, by the way, got to draw the cover.) Sharing the issue was El Diablo, a Hispanic hero who was starring in a critically acclaimed (if low-selling) new title by Gerard Jones, Mike Parobeck, and John Nyberg. In SO #46’s text page, Mark Waid made no secret of his intentions. “While the series is new, it deserves whatever additional boost exposure in these pages can give it; it’s one of the wittier and more refreshing titles produced here these days.”

THE END IS NEAR

Elsewhere on the page, Waid delivered a bit of bad news when he reported that Secret Origins was being reduced to a bimonthly frequency. It had nothing to do with declining sales, he insisted. “It has more to do with the nightmare of putting out a double-sized book every month, and rather than change format to become a standard 22-page $1.00 monthly, we’ve elected not to lose the flexibility that 38 pages every issue gives us.”

It was a good argument, one that permitted something like Secret Origins #46’s novel All-Headquarters Issue. Of the book’s three stories, only Marv Wolfman and Vince Giarrano’s Titans Tower origin reflected pre-Crisis continuity. Grant Morrison, Curt Swan, and George Freeman’s account of the Justice League’s cavernous Secret Sanctuary was conceived expressly for the issue. And then there was the story of the Legion of Super-Heroes Clubhouse. Waid commissioned a charming story by Gerard Jones, Kurt Schaffenberger, and Ty Templeton that theorized that the Legion’s original inverted rocket headquarters was actually a sister craft to the vessel that sent the infant Superman to Earth. “When the Superman editorial office vetoed [the story] because it made reference to the Pocket Universe of Superboy,” Waid recalled to Chris Companik in The Legion Companion (2003), “the entire thing had to be scrapped.” At a loss for a replacement, the editor was receptive when fellow editor KC Carlson made a joke about Fortress Lad. “At that point, I was both too amused and too desperate to let the idea go,” Waid continued to Companik. “Jones was game, so he turned around a new script based on KC’s joke in no time flat. And the upside to it was that by then, Curt Swan was available to pencil.” The published

Back in a Flash Grant Morrison, Curt Swan, and George Freeman combined their talents to produce for Waid the origin of the JLA’s mountain HQ in Secret Origins #46 (Dec. 1989). Signed original art courtesy of Heritage. TM & © DC Comics.

DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 17

Origin Unseen Courtesy of Mark Waid and John Wells, the title page from the scrapped LSH Clubhouse origin intended for SO #46. TM & © DC Comics.

story revealed that the Legion headquarters was actually a living entity, an alien teen who heroically transformed into an impervious metal structure to save the unwitting Legionnaires. It was as endearingly oddball as some of the stories actually during the series’ original era. Waid cited that issue’s cover—a collection of blueprints by Eliot R. Brown—as his favorite from his run, tied with that of the All-Ape issue. “For all my faults, I’m a strong visual thinker,” he observed, “and I designed a lot of the early ones myself. I especially liked the Black Lightning/ Miss America one and the Zatanna/Zatara one. I’d do rough sketches (or, in the case of issue #29, Mike Carlin sketched) and then turn to artists who’d do tighter, more professional roughs in case anything needed tweaking.” There was more Legion goodness in Secret Origins #47, albeit with a much more somber tone. This was the Dead Legionnaires issue, a concept suggested by fan Nelson Jimenez that focused on members who died in the line of duty. The lineup consisted of Ferro Lad (by Mike W. Barr, Curt Swan, and Mark Badger), Karate Kid (by Tom and Mary Bierbaum, Mike Parobeck, and Paul Fricke), and Chemical King (by Robert Loren Fleming, Chris Sprouse, and Al Gordon). The latter was a particularly moving piece,

18 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

detailing how Invisible Kid befriended and mentored Chemical King only to perish himself. Never overcoming his grief, Chem ultimately died a hero (per 1976’s Superboy #228). Asked if there were any unrealized concept editions, Waid remarks, “I did love the theme issues, but I don’t remember if I had any more ready in the chamber, so to speak. I think one of the best ones, in terms of quality of the stories, was the Dead Legionnaires issue. People still talk about Robert Loren Fleming’s Chemical King story (as they should).” A series retrospective appeared a month later in January 1990, when a Secret Origins of the World’s Greatest SuperHeroes trade paperback reprinted material featuring Superman (The Man of Steel #6), Green Lantern (SO #36), the Martian Manhunter (SO #35), the Flash (SO Annual #2), and the JLA (SO #32). A new 16-page Batman origin by Denny O’Neil and Dick Giordano sweetened the package, assembling details from the Dark Knight’s post-Crisis backstory along with adding previously unrevealed facts. Following the recent theme issues, Secret Origins #48 was comparatively eclectic. William Messner-Loebs and Trevor Von Eeden joined forces on a warm expansion of the origin of 1950s Western heroes the Trigger Twins. Meanwhile, Gerard Jones, Paris Cullins, and Gary Martin came up with a brand-new backstory for Rex the Wonder Dog that turned him into a canine Captain America. Writer-penciler Phil Foglio (inked by Keith Wilson) brought a different perspective to the Silver Age Stanley and His Monster strip, retaining its humorous tone but adding darker elements from the version of Hell seen in Swamp Thing and Sandman. All three stories stood behind Keith Giffen and Robert Loren Fleming’s origin of Ambush Bug, featured on the Kevin Maguire/Al Gordon cover with a campy, TV-style Batman and Robin scaling the side of a building. The story itself did much more than tweak the nose of the stodgy Dark Knight. “Because the whole point of Ambush Bug was to be taboo and push boundaries,” Waid told Christopher Irving in Comic Book Artist #3 (2013), “I did the smart thing and sent only the most innocuous pages to the letterer. Most of the rest of the script, I ran past the legal department. And then I made the mistake of being out the next day, and it went Full Death Star. In my absence, the legal department had come down to my boss Karen Berger’s office to holler about the pages in question, and Karen didn’t know what was going on and wasn’t prepared, and she called the letterer to make sure he hadn’t done any work, and all he knew was that I’d sent him a handful of non-combustible pages, so he said, ‘Yes, I’ve started,’ and that sealed my doom.” The following morning, unable to convince Berger and Dick Giordano that it was all a misunderstanding, Waid was fired. “I don’t think Karen was right not to listen,” he added, “but I eventually became sympathetic to her position and to her perception of me.” Forced to reinvent himself as a writer, Waid went on the far greater things, propelled by early successes like his run on The Flash and the Kingdom Come miniseries. “In retrospect,” he told Irving, “being fired was the best thing that ever happened to me.” Waid’s officemate, BACK ISSUE’s own Michael Eury, unexpectedly found himself the new editor of the book. “When Mark left DC’s staff,” Eury says, “that dropped the Ambush Bug origin, which needed to be redone, into my lap, anointing me as the second Ambush Bug editor, after Julie Schwartz. Luckily, my getting along well with the Bug’s buggy creative team of Keith Giffen and Bob Fleming opened the door for the Ambush Bug Nothing Special two years later.” With a large body of stories already solicited, Waid’s fingerprints were still all over Secret Origins and issue #49 was, if anything, even more diverse than the preceding edition. Ty Templeton opened with a funny two-page

Fortress Lad Pages 7 and 9 from the published Legion Clubhouse origin, featuring the would-be Legionnaire who looked like a walking hot-water heater. From SO #46. TM & © DC Comics.

origin of Bouncing Boy before writer-artist Karl Kesel whipped up a of writing the new Batman origin, Denny O’Neil tackled the original delightful tribute to Jack Kirby’s D.N.A. Project concepts from his Robin, this time in prose with spot illustrations by George Pérez. Jimmy Olsen stories (1970–1972). Thanks to the revival of Kirby’s The remaining two stories spoke to another of Secret Origins’ longNewsboy Legion and Guardian in recent Superman stories, Kesel convinced standing traditions and addressed the histories of characters that played Waid to run a story involving the merry band. out very differently in the post-Crisis universe. Silver Age Flash Barry Allen, Writer Jan Strnad and artists John Koch and Gary Martin closed the for instance, had originally met his Golden Age counterpart Jay Garrick issue with a look back at one of the heroes from the 1950s Brave and the when he accidentally vibrated onto the latter’s Earth-Two (1961’s Flash Bold book. The Silent Knight had traditionally not spoken so as not to #123). In the streamlined continuity, parallel worlds no longer existed so betray his identity as teenage Brian Kent but this new telling added a more Grant Morrison (with artists Mike Parobeck and Romeo Tanghal) came up specific reason. “Jan Strnad’s idea of having the Silent Knight be with a different story. In the new account, Jay’s Keystone City had silent because his secret identity stuttered is about the best been catapulted into limbo in the 1950s, forgotten by the retcon I’ve ever heard,” Waid declares. outside world while the residents within didn’t age a day. “My editorial stint on Secret Origins,” Eury observes, “was Accidentally landing in the invisible sister community to sort of like being asked to turn on the stove and finish his own Central City, Barry quickly awoke his predecessor cooking the dinner after the master chef had prepped the and they united in awakening everyone in Keystone. courses but had to abruptly leave the kitchen. Most of the Finally, there was Black Canary. Originally, she’d been material in those last three issues was initiated by Mark a Golden Age heroine who was revived in the 1960s on Waid. I managed the lettering, inking, and coloring of Earth-Two before moving to Earth-One to join the Justice League. In 1983, it was revealed that the original had several of the origins, and shepherded them through production, hence the ‘Waid and Eury’ editorial credit on actually died in 1969 and her memories were transferred some of the stories. Others, like #49’s Bouncing Boy into the body of an adult daughter who had essentially been comatose since she was a toddler. Needless to say, and Silent Knight origins, were already in the drawer.” that scenario didn’t transfer over to the post-1985 DC Two months later in June 1990, Secret Origins returned michael eury with a gala 100-page super-spectacular for its 50th issue. history, but no one had really dealt with what did happen It was also the last. Discussing the book’s fate in the letters to Dinah Drake Lance and her offspring Dinah Laurel during column, Michael Eury emphasized as Waid had that the problem wasn’t their earlier days. A fan of the handful of rich, character-driven stories that sales. “Editorially, DC decided that it was becoming increasingly more Alan Brennert had written for DC early in the 1980s, Mark Waid approached difficult to find headlining stars worthy of commanding Secret Origins issues the novelist and screenwriter about tackling the question. Brennert said no. and after a healthy and long run including three annuals, a trade paperback, On reflection, however, he realized that there were two Black Canaries and a Bat-villains special, we felt our creative and editorial staff would best in the new DC timeline and began forming the idea of what it might be served by removing the title from the regular schedule.” have been like for a little girl to grow up in an atmosphere where her Fittingly, the finale straddled the breadth of the DC Universe, extending mother’s friends were all superheroes. A particularly haunting moment from the 19th-Century Western exploits of Johnny Thunder (by Elliot S. came when Ted (Wildcat) Grant told young Dinah of the horrifying Maggin, Alan Weiss, and Dick Giordano) to the 25th-Century repository incident when his infant son was kidnapped by an old enemy and never seen again. That, he explained, was why so many Justice Society known as Space Museum (by Gerard Jones, original series penciler Carmine Infantino, and inker George Pérez). Richard Bruning, Steve Bové, and Keith members never had children… and were so protective of Dinah. The framing sequence took place at the bedside of the elder Dinah Wilson revisited aquatic heroine Dolphin, picking up 22 years (in real time) after her debut in a 1968 one-shot published in Showcase #79. On the heels Lance, now dying of cancer, but not before the Spectre arranged a DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 19

Origins Canceled, Origins Collected Page from SO #50’s heralded Black Canary origin, by Brennert, Staton, and Giordano. (inset) Secret Origins of the World’s Greatest Super-Heroes was the official title of this late-1989 trade paperback featuring this glorious Brian Bolland cover. TM & © DC Comics.

deathbed reconciliation between her and her daughter. “At the end I got to put in more seditious stuff,” Brennert told Rob Kelly in 2015 in BACK ISSUE #84, “implying that the souls of everybody from Earth-Two still existed. Some of this got edited out after Mark Waid left his editorial position at DC, but I think there’s enough of it still there that you get the idea.” Illustrated by Joe Staton and Dick Giordano, the 24-page story was another high point in Secret Origins’ history. “Issue #50’s Black Canary origin is a bittersweet memory for me,” Eury admits, “and probably for Mark, too. Mark had worked closely with writer Alan Brennert on the story, but by the time I took over Secret Origins it was still being drawn, lettered, and colored. It should’ve, at best, been credited to ‘Waid and Eury’ as editors, but due to my youthful hubris I took the editorial credit and gave Mark a ‘special thanks’ nod. It was after the fact that I realized my blunder, as that published credit angered Alan and upset Mark. I’ve since made my peace with them, but I want to go on the record by stating that the Black Canary story—a DC classic, if you ask me—could not have existed without Mark Waid’s wizardry.” Secret Origins may have been canceled, but its name and concept was too iconic to go away. It was reimagined as a series of Secret Files one-shots during the 1990s and early 21st Century that mixed origin recaps and flashbacks with Who’s Who-style entries. Facsimile editions of the original two 1960s books were reprinted in 1998 and 1999 (inspiring two further faux collections in that style) while two new giants— one featuring Young Justice, the other, supervillains—were released during the same period. History even repeated itself after DC rebooted its history in 2011. A Secret Origins book was eventually relaunched in its wake, detailing the backstories of the company’s major players in the new timeline. This 2014–2015 incarnation ultimately had a much shorter run than its 1986–1990 predecessor, ending after 11 issues. 20 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

“I grew up adoring Secret Origins,” Robert Greenberger tells BACK ISSUE, reflecting on his editorial tenure, “so this was a short but fun run of stories to edit. It certainly allowed me to work with a number of fine creators, many of whom became friends. Later, during my second stint at DC, I was very happy to create the faux Even More Secret Origins and Weird Secret Origins collections” (2003–2004). Mark Waid takes pride in “having the opportunity, with an anthology book with a constant turnover of talent, to give so many people their first gigs at DC (and in some cases, their first pro gigs): Chris Sprouse, Tom Grummett, Mike Parobeck, and others. Getting a cover out of Mike Kaluta. Retconning Silent Knight’s origin (seriously, I love that character). Getting Sheldon Mayer out of retirement to do one last story, the Red Tornado one (even though he didn’t really make it an origin story, who cares? It was Sheldon Mayer!). Putting together the Secret Origins Special with the excellent Neil Gaiman Riddler story. “That book didn’t just teach me how to edit, it taught me how to write,” Waid continues. “I had scripts coming across my desk every month from the best writers in the business, and reading them was a crash-course in storytelling. I learned more in two years editing SO than I would have in ten years on my own.” Although he remains justifiably angry about having the title he initiated taken away from him, Roy Thomas can nonetheless point with pride to several of his favorite moments from Secret Origins: “Getting Wayne Boring to draw the Superman origin, and Rogers and Austin on Batman. Jerry Bingham’s nice art on Captain Marvel/ Shazam!, with a chance to do a different take on Cap’s personality, even if some purists didn’t like it (including most vocally C.C. Beck, who denounced it roundly). The Crimson Avenger origin, to which Dann contributed greatly… though I’ll admit my favorite part was my notion to integrate bits from the Orson Welles broadcast and the surrounding milieu. Working out a historically grounded origin for Firebrand with Gil Kane, utilizing notions suggested by Dann… for a story destined never to be published. And, perhaps most of all, the climax of the JSA origin revamp, in which the Spectre makes a bargain with God to save FDR’s life… although, like Moses, FDR will never live to enter the promised land (in this case, of war’s end and peace). “I could think of others,” Thomas concludes, “especially some of the other artists who brought their own unique visions to the origins, like Michael Bair and Michael T. Gilbert, the artist of Plastic Man.” It was those distinctive visions of both artists and writers that ultimately made the series so memorable. For those who read the title at the time, it’s no secret: Secret Origins was a highlight in DC’s 1980s lineup. JOHN WELLS is a comics historian specializing in DC Comics who has served as a resource for projects ranging from Kurt Busiek’s The Power Company to Greg Weisman’s Young Justice animated series. He is the author of the TwoMorrows books American Comic Book Chronicles: 1960–1964 and 1965–1969.

SECRET ORIGINS NEVER TOLD For an anthology title like Secret Origins, there were inevitably a star James Robinson. According to Robinson (via Mark Waid), Tim number of stories that were assigned or proposed ahead of time. Burgard’s pencils for the tale were stolen from the DC offices, Letters columns and fanzine articles reported several of these tales, killing any chance of publication. but Mark Waid notes that many never got past the pitch stage. Another lost story featured a prominent representative of Charlton’s Case in point, a Dial “H” For Hero episode by Ken Steacy. “We talked Action Heroes that DC did not own the rights to: Peter Cannon– about it, as Robby Reed is my favorite Silver Age character,” Waid Thunderbolt. Creator Pete Morisi had cannily retained ownership of says, “but nothing came of it, sadly. I was at least able to later do the property but was amenable to permitting DC to continue with a Robby justice in the Silver Age crossover as well as an issue of The new series proposal that Waid was working on with writer Robert Brave and the Bold. Loren Fleming. Morisi no longer wanted to draw a series fulltime but “I felt like we should hit the war genre,” Waid continues, “and he happily agreed to reintroduce the hero via a story in Secret Origins. I want to say someone on staff had actually pitched an idea for a Written, penciled, inked, and lettered by Morisi, the tale sat in modern Haunted Tank to go with the original as a theme issue, limbo as the new Thunderbolt series stalled. By the time a Peter Cannon but I don’t recall who.” book finally appeared in 1992, writer-penciler Mike Collins was attached A Mon-El origin was “scuttled by the Superman office” and a to the project [see BI #79—ed.] and Morisi’s intro was forgotten. AnothGeo-Force/Terra double feature (written by Marv Wolfman and er 20 years passed before Dynamite Entertainment acquired the rights Mike W. Barr) was “another theme issue that never got off the to the feature and included the lost origin in Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt ground, so to speak.” Details from an uncompleted Red Tornado #1 (Sept. 2012), complete with an introduction by Mark Waid. origin were referenced in There were also several partially Firestorm #92 and 93 (Dec. completed Golden Age origins 1989 and Jan. 1990), which scripted by Roy Thomas. Episodes revealed that the android featuring Firebrand (illustrated by hero began life as the infant Gil Kane), Hawkgirl (by Howard son of T. O. Morrow. Also Simpson), the Ray (by Gil Kane), abandoned were stories the Sandman and Sandy (by Howfeaturing Swamp Thing, ard Simpson), and Wildcat (by the Space Canine Patrol Greg Brooks) were discussed by Agents (written by William Thomas in The All-Star Companion Messner-Loebs), and Ultra vol. 4, while others involving the Multi-Alien (by John K. Mister Terrific (by Frank Travellin), Snyder and Jay Geldhof). Sargon the Sorcerer (by Mark “With all of these, I think Beachum), and the Vigilante (by we just ran out of time once Gil Kane) were mentioned in we were told we’d be ending period fanzines. “To the best of my memory with issue #50,” Waid notes. “We already had plenty of nearly 30 years on, the Gil Kane inventory.” stories were all in rough, uninked Michael Eury also recalls form,” Mark Waid says, “and one that got away. “The big when I say ‘rough,’ I mean that missed opportunity for me they were just outlines done came when Neil Gaiman, with magic marker, so no consideration was given to then the author of the relatively new Sandman handing them over to inkers. title, was visiting the DC We were just waiting for Gil to have time to finish them. offices and dropped by to pitch to me a potential “Wildcat was, I believe, Secret Origins story. He finished, but wise heads decided regaled me with the after Greg’s conviction for manfascinating tale of Darkseid slaughter that it should be shelved. as a child—a despicable lad, The only other story I remember he!—and I had to tell Neil being half-completed was the that Secret Origins was being Sargon one, and there was no way we were ever going to run that. I canceled. Soon thereafter, when I took over New Gods love Mark, but he loves drawing from Mike Carlin, I enterscantily clad women, and there tained the notion of offering were plenty of them on every the book to Neil and even page—despite the fact that Sargon’s origin takes place on a asked Sandman editor Karen Berger for her blessings to deserted island!” “I have photocopies of Greg do so. But my DC career Brooks’ pencils for Wildcat,” Roy started to veer into Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt TM & © Peter A. Morisi estate. Thomas adds. “As the writer and management at that time and I never pursued this… which is a regret. Can you imagine Neil editor of that story, I’d probably have learned if some version of Gaiman writing The New Gods, circa 1990–1991?” the story was ever inked. Far as I know, nobody ever even sent me Sadly, one of the stories that was completely scripted and penciled copies of the completed work of Mark Beachum’s Sargon origin, was a Dinosaur Island origin that represented the first sale of future even though that was supposed to be in my bailiwick.”

DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 21

New book by MICHAEL EURY, editor of

HERO-A-GO-GO!

Welcome to the CAMP AGE, when spies liked their wars cold and their women warm, good guys beat bad guys with a pun and a punch, and Batman shook a mean cape. HERO-A-GO-GO celebrates the camp craze of the Swinging Sixties, when just about everyone—the teens of Riverdale, an ant and a squirrel, even the President of the United States—was a super-hero or a secret agent. BACK ISSUE magazine and former DC Comics editor MICHAEL EURY takes you through that coolest cultural phenomenon with this all-new collection of nostalgic essays, histories, and theme song lyrics of classic 1960s characters like CAPTAIN ACTION, HERBIE THE FAT FURY, CAPTAIN NICE, ATOM ANT, SCOOTER, ACG’s NEMESIS, DELL’S SUPER-FRANKENSTEIN and DRACULA, the “Split!” CAPTAIN MARVEL, and others! Featuring interviews with BILL MUMY (Lost in Space), BOB HOLIDAY (It’s a Bird … It’s a Plane … It’s Superman), RALPH BAKSHI (The Mighty Heroes, SpiderMan), DEAN TORRENCE (Jan and Dean Meet Batman), RAMONA FRADON (Metamorpho), DICK DeBARTOLO (Captain Klutz), TONY TALLARICO (The Great Society Comic Book), VINCE GARGIULO (Palisades Park historian), JOE SINNOTT (The Beatles comic book), JOSE DELBO (The Monkees comic book), and many more!

(272-page FULL-COLOR TRADE PAPERBACK) $36.95 • (Digital Edition) $12.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-073-1 • NOW SHIPPING!

TwoMorrows. The Future of Comics History.

TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA

Advertise With Us! ALTER EGO • BACK ISSUE DRAW • COMIC BOOK CREATOR JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR

AD SIZES: COVERS: 8.375" wide x 10.875" tall trim size, with an additional 1/8" on all sides for bleeds. FULL-PAGE: 7.625" x 10.125" live area (bleeds OK). HALF-PAGE: 7.625" x 4.875" live area (no bleeds). QUARTER-PAGE: 3.6875" x 4.875" live area (no bleeds).

Phone: 919-449-0344 E-mail: store@twomorrows.com Web: www.twomorrows.com

SALE 70% OFF! CLEARANCE LAST CHANCE FOR THESE TITLES

Don’t miss the 70% OFF CLEARANCE sale on select items at www.twomorrows.com! Many of these items are nearly sold out, so don't delay! It’s your last chance to get print editions of:

Back cover: $800 ($700 for two or more) Inside front or back cover: $700 ($600 for two or more) Full-page interior: $600 ($500 for two or more) Half-page interior: $300 ($250 for two or more) Quarter-page interior: $150 ($125 for two or more)

Star•Reach Companion - regular $27.95, only $8.39 Grailpages - regular $15.95, only $4.79 Comics Gone Ape! - regular $16.95, only $5.09 Teen Titans Companion, Vol. 2 - regular $26.95, only $8.09 Comic Book Artist Collection, Vol. 3 - regular $24.95, only $7.49 Comics Above Ground - regular $19.95, only $5.99 SIGNED Modern Masters: George Perez DVD - reg. $29.95, only $15 Modern Masters: Michael Golden DVD - regular $19.95, only $5.99 Best of Alter Ego, Vol. 2 - regular $19.95, only $5.99 Plugged In - regular $16.95, only $5.09

Call or e-mail for frequency discounts!

& 45% OFF the final slightly dinged copies of:

Send ad copy and payment (US funds) to:

Comic Book Artist #23 (Mike Mignola) - regular $6.95, only $3.82 Jack Kirby Checklist: Gold Edition - regular $14.95, only $8.22

FULL-COLOR Ad Rates:

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, NC 27614 919-449-0344 fax 919-449-0327 E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com

We accept check, money order, and all major credit cards; include card number and expiration date.

These rates are for digital ads supplied (PDF, JPEG, TIF, EPS, InDesign, or Quark Xpress files acceptable). No agency discounts apply. Call for BrickJournal ad rates.

This offer good while supplies last! Go to www.twomorrows.com and click on the CLEARANCE SALE link at the top left of the page to order. If ordering by mail, please list alternates & include $2 per item for US Postage.

TwoMorrows. The Future of Comics History. TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA 919-449-0344 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com Order at www.twomorrows.com

by E

d Catto

You’d think that a 1984 visit to a warehouse full of comics would have excited a young comics fan-turnedprofessional like Mike Gold. It was a business trip and he was representing independent publisher First Comics. They were touring the warehouse of an industry distributor, Capital City. But there was one part of that visit that was particularly depressing. Mike recalls that their Madison, Wisconsin, warehouse was a cavernous place subdivided into many smaller rooms. One room was referred to as the “Thriller Room” because it was filled with unsold copies of the DC Comics maxiseries Thriller. Capital City had wildly over-ordered, expecting it to be a big hit. Thriller had been marketed with great expectations, but fans and retailers quickly rejected it. “Seriously,” Gold remembers, “it couldn’t have been more depressing if bats were flying out of the room. We all made a bunch of cheap jokes at everybody’s expense, but the reality was that there was a lot of money on that floor and I’m sure that didn’t help anybody.” There were lots and lots (and lots) of copies of the early issues of Thriller in that room. Most were still packaged in their original boxes from the publisher. How could it all have gone wrong? Thriller burst onto the comic scene with great promise and bravura. In 1983, there was a vibe of experimentation and an expectation that the clever new series would change comics as we knew it. That’s exactly what would soon happen with The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen. But just before those titles debuted, the industry in general and DC in particular was ramping up with precursors like Camelot 3000 and Ronin. Thriller was billed as a new reading experience that would combine the robert loren fleming best of the old pulp heroes, new superhero teams like the X-Men, and Photo by mgrabois. tomorrow’s headlines into a “must read” that would be fresh and different. Fresh new talent was celebrated in Thriller. It was their time to take center stage and show the world how it was done. Robert Loren Fleming was the writer and creative visionary. He was a novice writer recently published. Trevor Von Eeden was the artist. He was one of DC’s first African-American illustrators, having been recruited as a teenager to work on Black Lightning a few years earlier. His style had evolved to a point where his previous work on a Batman Annual and Green Arrow miniseries exploded with creative risks, non-traditional storytelling, and impactful compositions. Not a Michael Jackson Tie-in The DC marketing machine let the world know that Trevor Von Eeden’s mind-blowing premiere cover to writer Robert Thriller, the title character, “had seven seconds to save the world.” That sense of urgency was part of the series’ DNA Loren Fleming’s revolutionary series, Thriller, issue #1 (Nov. 1983). from the start. Fleming’s writing and Von Eeden’s art TM & © DC Comics. amplified this urgency to a fever pitch. Fans would soon DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 23

Meet Angie Thriller (left) Double-page title spread from Thriller #1. (right) Trevor Von Eeden posted this photo on Facebook, commenting, “At work (on ‘vacation’ in a hotel room)—on THRILLER #3—1983. While waiting for the women to get dressed, I tried to sneak some work in, and got busted! (I don’t normally work in sunglasses.) This is the only photo ever taken of me at work, during my entire DC career! Figures I’d be working on THRILLER…” TM & © DC Comics.

“Thriller” ostensibly referred to the lead character of the series. But as the entire world was the stage and the title character was essentially a goddess, it made sense for the series to employ a large ensemble cast. The Shadow had set a precedent for Thriller’s basic structure. In the Street & Smith pulp stories, scribe Walter Gibson provided the Shadow with a rich network learn that the tagline’s “seven seconds” of agents. Often the story would focus was a double entendre, but that didn’t on one or more agents as they each minimize the excitement and suspense. played a role in solving the mystery or This was not a casual reading trevor von eeden frustrating the antagonist. Alternately, experience. This was clearly something the Shadow was often depicted as a intentionally different. The problem Courtesy of Comic Vine. was—would anyone like it? mysterious “boss” undertaking tauntingly indiscernible actions. Despite an incredible cast of characters, prescient This became a standard formula for many pulp heroes storylines, cutting edge art, and fantastic printing, Thriller including Doc Savage and the Avenger, and by 1983, a is a forgotten footnote of ’80s comics. recent pulp revival (with both prose story reprints and How did the brilliant experiment go horribly awry? comic adaptations) had reintroduced this paradigm. How did it disappoint and scare away fans? What made But Thriller would have more than agents. It would distributors place big orders and why couldn’t retailers have family. Fleming, as a guest columnist for one of sell it? What went right and how did it go so wrong? Dick Giordano’s “Meanwhile…” columns, promoted Thriller, not by explaining the premise, but by wisely THE THRILL RIDE focusing on the ensemble cast. He reiterated that Thriller was story about a family, In the early ’80s, the comic industry was infused with creativity and new thinking from all quarters. And the concluding his pitch with a quip to reinforce the branding. establishment wanted to be a part of it. “Hey, I know they’re weird. That’s family for you.” DC created a first wave of mature titles. Executive editor Dick Giordano gave longtime freelancer and mail- THE THRILLER FAMILY room clerk Robert Loren Fleming a chance and offered The title character was Angeline Marietta Salvotini Thriller. to greenlight his Thriller concept. Angie, as she was called, had “died” and become a Fleming, in turn, recruited young artist Trevor Von pseudo-ghost spirit, manifesting herself by controlling Eeden. They had recently collaborated on a short horror inanimate objects. Her visual appearance was striking, story. Von Eeden bought into the grand vision presented as she would make her hauntingly lovely face visible to by Fleming, and immediately cemented the deal with the characters as a floating vision in the clouds, as a Giordano so that no other artist would be assigned. pattern in broken glass or imprinted, Escher-like, “Robert Loren Fleming was working in the DC Comics on medical bandages. Von Eeden’s energetic artwork mailroom when he bumped into me in the hallway of the made her long tresses swirl in an enthralling hypnotic DC offices, and asked for a few minutes to pitch me his way, despite the static nature of printed comics. idea,” recalls Von Eeden to BACK ISSUE. “That’s all it took Fleming would frequently write that Angie Thriller to impress me enough to take him straight down the hall was a cross between Jesus Christ and his mom. Dan Grove was a direct descendant of the Shadow’s to then-editor-in-chief Dick Giordano’s office, and do something I’d never done before—interrupt his business to ask most trusted agent, Harry Vincent. In the very first for a few minutes of his time. Being as graciously obliging adventure, the Shadow recruited Vincent in his first to me as he always was, Dick listened to Bob’s pitch—and printed adventure. Both readers and Vincent were soon in a remarkably short while, the Thriller series was a reality!” introduced to the secret network of the mysterious The title itself broadcast the series’ genre. It was going Shadow, now his boss. Vincent served as both the proxy to be, first and foremost, a fast-paced thrill ride. Set in hero and as instrument of exposition and introduction. Readers met Thriller’s Dan Grove with a creative bang. the near future, Thriller embraced a cinematic feel, eschewing thought balloons and captions long before In Thriller #1 (Nov. 1983), he’s on location in Mecca as a that became the norm. It told the story of an extended video cameraman. He plays second fiddle to his on-camera, family of world-saving adventurers. Surprisingly, it was charismatic twin brother, Ken. And it only gets worse when also essentially divorced from the superheroes of the day. we first meet Dan; he films his brother’s live decapitation.

24 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

After this horrific event, a depressed Dan was about to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge (just like Harry Vincent). He was saved and recruited to become one of Angie Thriller’s Seven Seconds. This character was a good idea with excellent pedigree, but even with Dan along for the ride, readers found the first issue confusing. Dan Grove was positioned to remain center stage as a device for exposition, but that wasn’t meant to be. Amidst the frantic jumble of characters and ideas, the narrative pushed him aside. He would become a sort of a pesky younger brother who tries, futile though it may be, to be part of an older brother’s gang of cool kids. Once Dan agrees to be part of the team, Angie Thriller declares she has her “Seven Seconds.” And readers come to realize that this phrase refers to a team as well as the breakneck pace of the storytelling. Though never stated as such, these agents are reminiscent of a second in a duel. In some duels, a second would take the place of the primary dueling combatant if he were unable to complete his task. Each of the Seven Seconds comes with such a fascinatingly rich backstory. It was as if there had been several proposals for different series, but DC’s management demanded they all be included in just one comic. Dan soon meets is Data, who is, as you would guess, an information specialist. Data, who’s real name is Freddie Martin, is a grossly obese man who lives in his Rolls Royce. The self-driving limo operates with an ’80s version of Siri taking his commands. To add another layer of complexity, Data’s father is the President of the United States. Like Dorothy on her way into Oz, Dan next meets Janet Valentine. This blonde beauty is as close to a traditional superhero as the series gets. Code-named White Satin, she wears a wispy translucent costume with matching go-go boots. Trevor Von Eeden would later admit that Stevie Nicks inspired her look. White Satin has a superpower, too: she can influence and persuade men with her fingertips. The first among equals is Anthony Salvotini, called Salvo. He’s sort of a Punisher-with-aconscience type of character. As an expert marksman, he can ensure that even the most absurd and difficult gunshot will be right on the mark, but the wrinkle is that he won’t kill. Salvo also comes complete with his own catchphrase, “Only flesh wounds… only outpatients. I won’t kill a fly so don’t ask me.” He’s White Satin’s lover, but lives in the shadow of her deceased husband. And it is through Salvo that we quickly learn that Thriller is, in many ways, the story of an Italian-American family. Salvo is the twin brother of Angelina Salvotini Thriller. Their family backstory is layered and disturbing, but serves as the narrative center for all the other characters to orbit. Beaker Parrish is a clever character. His backstory was ahead of its time and he resonates in real-world issues of today. Beaker is a synthetic man gone wrong, with an overwhelming, enormous physical presence—he’s nine feet tall with orange hair, streaked with a shock of inky black. And unlike most comic heroes, he has chosen to become a Roman Catholic priest.

The last two members of the Seven Seconds get squeezed into the initial story pretty quickly. Robert (Proxy) Furillo is a master-of-disguise character that readers had seen before in everything from TV’s Mission: Impossible to Spider-Man’s archenemy, the Chameleon. Since this is Thriller, there are a few innovative twists. For example, Proxy’s face has a propensity to melt. Nonetheless, surrounded by the abundant cast, Furillo is clearly the weak link. Crackerjack gets a brief intro as the team’s “Honduran Houdini” and looked, to the readers in 1983, like Hadji from the Jonny Quest cartoon. Crackerjack would grow quickly as a character, and develop a strong affinity for Data. Their little brother/big brother relationship was refreshing and fun. By the penultimate issue, Crackerjack would have a totally different look and even earn the right to be featured exclusively on the cover of Thriller #11. You’d think that would be enough characters. Overflowing ideas was both a strength and a weakness of Thriller. Here’s a brief look at some of the supporting cast: • Scabbard, the quintessential terrorist, is the villain of the first story arc, and he’s a doozy. When he’s not using his sword to decapitate his foes, he keeps it in a flesh scabbard that is grafted to his back. • Malocchia, Scabbard’s lover, is a beautiful woman who is able to enthrall men with undefined hypnotic powers. Breaking from comic tradition (SPOILER), both she and Scabbard meet a grisly and unequivocally final fate at the conclusion of the first story arc. • Kane Creole is a clone, but a secondgeneration clone, of Elvis Presley. After the first four-part story arc, the adventure featuring this absurdly wild character was a breath of fresh air. Readers are introduced to him as he sings rockabilly during a bank hold-up. Through the course of Kane’s two-issue story arc, he meets “his father,” the first-generation clone of Elvis, and has a change of heart. • Edward Thriller is Angie’s “widowed” husband and serves the role of an establishment figure and a tragic love interest. • Moses Lusk, the head of Start Corporation, assumes the role of the big baddie in the last arcs. • Quo is seen fleetingly, as he’s officially dead, but his existence lives on. And in the hyper-connected world of Thriller, he was married to White Satin. • The Italian matriarch is Marietta Salvotini. She is the mother to the twins, Angie (Thriller) and Tony (Salvo). Her husband, Peter, was a working clown who died in a house fire, and we learn that young Tony had set the fire. And in the last part of the series, we learn she had a dark secret. Driven by a need for cash and pregnant with Tony, she had been paid by Moses Lusk as part of an experiment. He impregnated with her with a second child, Angie. This gave title character a creepy connection with the series final antagonist.

Innovative Cast (top) Thriller’s everyman Dan Grove, coverfeatured on Thriller #3 (Jan. 1984), and (bottom) tough guy Salvo, shown in combat with the murderous Scabbard on the cover of issue #4. Both covers by Von Eeden. TM & © DC Comics.

DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 25

THE URGENCY OF THRILLER

All Shook Up (top) Salvo draws aim on the cover of Thriller #6 (May 1984), while the background’s poster teases (bottom) the issue’s appearance of Elvis clone Kane Creole, seen in rockabilly-ing action on this interior page from that issue. Script by Fleming, art by Von Eeden. TM & © DC Comics.

That tagline about Thriller having Seven Seconds to Save the World was, in one way, a throwback to that old spy-movie trope referring to a race against time. Readers knew there was something else going on, but as everyone involved soon found out, they weren’t ready for it. Von Eeden’s art propelled the reader forward in new and uncomfortable ways. The fluid layouts and sketchy style urged the reader to consume the narrative at a breakneck pace. “Move it! Move it!,” the comic screams. Traditional panel layouts with pristine white gutters, where the reader’s eye would usually enjoy a restful pause, are few and far between in the early issues. Each page exuded a deceptive simplicity. At first glance, it appeared scratchy or unfinished. Were they advertising storyboards or finished comic pages? The demanding adventure in Thriller had no time to offer lovingly rendered details or contemplative scenes. The very nature of the story and art lived up to its name. Fleming and Von Eeden created a compelling narrative that made the reader feel as if he or she were an eyewitness speeding by in a car. You knew it was important, you knew it was a big deal—but it was quick and blurred and you didn’t want to blink for fear of missing what was happening next. By the end of the first story arc, even Von Eeden seemed exhausted. Dick Giordano, the original editor, was brought on board to ink the Kane Creole story, providing a stately veneer and polished level of sophistication to the art. In Thriller #6, Von Eeden tried something new again—he drew the pages at actual size. The inks by Giordano tighten it up— but was Von Eeden’s head still in the game? “I drew issues #6–8 actual size due to some behind-the-scenes issues,” Von Eeden admits. “I had begun to feel disillusioned and depressed working on the series, and wanted to leave. I agreed to stay on until issue #8 only if I could draw the pages actual size (approximately 6” x 9”) instead of regular size (approximately 10” x 15”)—which I thought would mean spending less time at the drawing board. At this point in my life, the creative joy I’d found in my work had severely diminished—it was becoming a chore to draw, rather than an opportunity for spiritual exploration and expression, which was the source of that joy. The problem that neither I nor my editors anticipated is that part of the ‘look’ of comics art comes from the compression of linework that results from the reduction of the original 10” x 15” images to 6” x 9” form—the lines become stronger, sharper, tighter, darker, and the forms and shapes they depict become more sharply defined, and with a better sense of volume. This reductive effect is part of the ‘professional’ look of comics art—but without compensating for that shrinkage, the linework in Thrillers #6–8 seemed rawer, looser, less controlled, and the forms less defined when printed, than it really should have, or was intended to be.” The final sequence remains impactful, and Von Eeden thinks so, too. “I still kinda like the final montage, with the Elvis Presley clone Kane Creole’s lyrics accompanying the visuals,” Von Eeden says. “I think that works very well, narratively. Heck, I even like the lyrics themselves! Once again, Bob’s scripts and ideas inspired me to at least try to do my best, regardless of the emotional and psychological doldrums that I was in. It was a pleasure to be able to focus my thoughts on something worthwhile and rewarding during that dark and depressive time, at least for a little bit.” For a passion project like Thriller, it seemed unthinkable, but the creative team wouldn’t last much longer.

THE STAIRSTEP LOGO

Everything about Thriller was about risk taking and trying something new—even the logo. Todd Klein, the longtime master of comics lettering and logos, already had an impressive resume when he designed the Thriller logo. Ever the enthusiastic fan, he blogs about the current comics he’s reading and offers thoughtful analysis of logos from all different types of comics. Klein offered up his thoughts on Thriller: “I haven’t written about the Thriller logo on my blog mainly because I don’t have a good copy of it. The logo was done in two layers with the letters on one and the drop shadow on another. I only have a rather poor Xerox of the drop shadow. This was the 26 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

only way to create a non-outline logo with two colors at the time. Registration marks were there to help keep the two layers lined up, and the two layers meant extra work for the production person putting the covers together, most likely Bob LeRose, but everyone seemed to like it. “I don’t remember a lot about doing the logo, but I think I worked mainly with editor Dick Giordano and writer Robert Loren Fleming, who asked for something suggesting crime pulp magazines of the 1940s. That led to the letter forms I chose. It was my idea to stairstep the letters at each end and add the zig-zagged bottom line to insert a little more energy. The logo is symmetrical in general, with mirrored stairstepped letters at each end. I think I did one sketch, it was approved, and I went on to the final version.” It’s interesting that the letters column, entitled “Filler,” also used Klein’s stairstep design. There were several references by Alan Gold, who took over from Giordano as the book’s editor with Thriller #3, about the need to change the letters column’s title. He felt that Filler never felt right for the letters column name. Several times a new column title was promised. By issue #8, Gold seemed resolute. He wrote: “Oh, yes, one last point. As a number of letter writers have noted, ‘Filler’ has become an inappropriate name for this ongoing forum of ideas. The joke has worked a little thin. So next month’s column should have a new title.” But in the next issue, there was this note from Alan Gold: “Oh, yes, I announced prematurely last issue that the name of this column would be changed. To be honest, I haven’t come up with yet with a name I like enough to commission a new logo for. So keep watching this space for Gold’s Latest Brainstorm—next month.” The change never came.

GLIMPSES BACKSTAGE

Like a reporter at the scene of a traffic accident, Thriller letters columns provide an ongoing commentary. They offer evolving clues to fans’ initial enthusiasm, subsequent confusion, and eventual abandonment of the series. The early issues showcase letters that offer a mix of enthusiasm and consternation. By issue #5, a reader could feel the writer’s frustration. He started the letters column with this salutation: “My name is Robert Loren Fleming, and I’ve got a gripe. Editor Alan Gold asked me to take over this page, but it’s awfully difficult to put a together letter column without… letters!” Fleming went on to implore readers to send constructive letters—not overwhelmingly filled with praise (because we already know what we are doing right) and likewise not filled with hate. He clearly had read enough of each of those types. He was imploring fans to tell him what they liked and didn’t like in an effort to learn how to improve. That same column featured a letter from Beau Smith of West Virginia, who would become a comic writer himself and create the series Wynonna Earp, now an ongoing television series on the Syfy Channel. In his letter, addressed to original series editor Dick Giordano, Smith positively observed, “Hey, this Thriller comic is not bad at all! I think that you guys have found a reader for this series.” Smith’s letter also included a backhanded compliment, alluding to the confusing nature of the series. “Please give the creative staff my best for a job not yet done. (And I hope that it never ends.)” He ended his letter with the friendly admonishment, “Stay outta trouble.”

Thriller in Transition (left) With issue #8 (July 1984), Fleming’s creation was taken over by writer Bill DuBay. (right) Page 22 of Thriller #8 shows Von Eeden’s frenetic, cinematic storytelling… too bad it was Trevor’s last issue. TM & © DC Comics.

DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 27

New Thriller Artist Alex Nino proudly displays his detaildrenched, Salvostarring cover of Thriller #10 (Sept. 1984) in this photograph snapped and submitted by Ed Catto. Fleming pretentiously responded: “Beau, we can either change the way comic books are going or stay outta trouble. As long as we are doing the former, certain people will be shaking our latter.” I reached out to Beau Smith, who offers his current thoughts on Thriller with a perspective of more than 30 years of professional experience. “I really enjoyed the series, Thriller,” says Smith. “I thought it was very innovative of DC Comics to do at the time, both in story and especially with art and the formatting of the book. (Special paper and such.) When you think about it, the art and the story were done in a style that was unique for the time. It was pioneering in the fact that it wasn’t ‘business as usual’ with storytelling. I don’t think Thriller has ever gotten the critical acclaim that it is so deserving of. Part of me also believes that the series was so groundbreaking for the time, that the reading audience for mainstream comic books at the time were in shock, and didn’t quite know how to view this series until years later. Was it the best comic-book series I had ever read? No, but it had my admiration on a creative level and most important, I was entertained.” Alan Gold had taken back the letters page responsibilities in issue #7, and he really came clean. Gold ended the letters page by writing that he regretted to inform the readership that this issue, #7, would be Robert Loren Fleming’s last Thriller. It was all very polite, promoting Fleming’s next DC assignment and explaining just how well new writer Bill DuBay meshes with artist Trevor Von Eeden. And then he candidly explained, “Concerning direction, I’ll admit, Thriller has been a rather leisurely outing so far—possibly developing too slow for its own good.” He then promised that, “starting with issue #8, things really pick up.” Then Gold complained about the fan feedback and candidly wondered about the series: “One last concern that has been on my mind since letters first started coming in on Thriller #1. Two kinds of letters were received: the first asked good-naturedly, ‘What the heck are you up to?’ The second sang our praises: ‘I love it, it’s so confusing I have to re-read it twenty times and I still can’t figure out what’s going on.” Both these responses are disappointing to me. If Thriller is so rich that you can read it twenty times and receive new insights and other pleasures with each reading, that’s great. But if Thriller is a muddle and twenty readings still leave the well-intentioned reader in the dark, that’s awful.”

THE THRILL IS GONE, BABY

The latter half of Thriller’s run is still enjoyable, but it’s clear the air was out of the balloon at this point. And the last few issues certainly didn’t fulfill the great promise of the series. Fleming, despite publicly stating he’d be on the series until he died, left the series with issue #7 and Von Eeden followed with issue #8. “Bob and my phone conversations ended a little while before the series did, so I have no idea what his particular problems with DC were, 28 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

but I realized he’d left when I received the script for ish #8, written by someone else,” reveals Von Eeden. “Right then, I knew the party was over. Even Alan Moore couldn’t write a Thriller script the way that Robert Loren Fleming could—and probably still can. After all, Angie was his baby, and you never stop loving your babies…” Original editor Dick Giordano suggested the new team of Bill DuBay and Filipino artist Alex Nino to editor Alan Gold. Both were competent creators, and Nino has a unique creativity that is still celebrated today. But it’s hard to imagine that Gold could not foresee that any remaining fans who had been sold on the initial, overstuffed innovations would be underwhelmed by this new creative team. Like mismatched toys scattered around a toybox, there we so many characters and ideas that DuBay and Nino couldn’t get their arms around them. In a letters column, Gold spoke about a refocusing of purpose, and they were off the to races. Alex Nino reflects fondly upon his time on Thriller. He loved working on the series. He was so very grateful for the opportunity as this was all during his immigration to the United States. Nino credits Thriller with making his move all the more manageable. Thriller #7 (June 1984), Bill’s debut issue, provided a tight story, but by issue #9, with secret Russian protoplasm monsters, it had all skidded off the rails. “Seven Seconds to Armageddon” in Thriller #10 tried a new narrative trick—the city of New York was destroyed and then reconstituted by Angie Thriller. The last two of issues tied it all up in bow while creatively complicating Angie Thriller’s backstory. Still, everyman Dan Grove, who helped readers start their journey, ends up as a newsman again. The narrative had come full circle.

THE FUTURE OF THE PAST

One way that Thriller succeeded was in its depiction of the near-future. At that time in the world of comics, “the future” was usually depicted in one of two ways. Some chose to represent a drastically different future. Unlike the movies, comics enjoy an “unlimited budget” and the only limiting factor was imagination. So DC fans were very used to the often-apocalyptic futures of the Atomic Knights, Kamandi, or Hercules Unbound. Of course, the astounding future world itself was the focus of series like these. On the other hand, many DC stories would opt to present a more understated vision of the future. This might be used to show the aging of a character or simply to provide some elbowroom from the real-time world or current character’s continuities. This light touch approach would oftentimes be used in Superman or World Finest Comics stories. Curt Swan was skillful at modifying clothes and fashions just enough to signal to the readers that the world had changed. After the election of 2016, every political analyst would eagerly agree with the truism that it’s hard to predict the future. And it’s hard for comic creators to predict it as well. Some stories set in the future, like Batman #300, would weave future predictions into the narrative. This comic included a memorable but casual notation of the four-day workweek. That may have seemed like a “safe” prediction at the time, but we’re still all waiting for that one. Thriller’s creators chose to use this second approach. Their future was not one of drastic changes, but rather based on the logical extrapolations of the early ’80s. Some things they got so very right. Their focus on terrorism, extremist Islam, the dominance of the news cycle, bio-engineering, and the resurgent Cold War give the series a very believable vibe today. For example, when Data uses voice activation to control his car, it combines the best of Google voice and self-driving cars in a way that seems ripped from next month’s headlines. The antagonism between the USSR and the US may have seemed like a poor choice to depict in the future in the years subsequent to publication. But with renewed tension between the global superpowers, the Cold War vibe of Thriller is prescient. The art style works effectively represents the future. The inherent, frenzied sketchiness of Von Eeden’s art and the loose slickness of Nino’s art don’t force fit imagined fashion or style details.

Back in the ’80s, few may have realized the high-quality paper that the series is printed on stands the test of time exceedingly well. Thus, readers thumbing through back issues of the series don’t get taken out of the story by yellowed paper. If not for the ads in the comics (do you remember Power Lords?), a reasonable person could thumb through an issue of Thriller and think that it was written recently. On the other hand, there are several inevitable glitches that even the most forward thinking futurists could not have clearly predicted. These elements will be jarring for today’s audiences. For example, a sequence with a bank teller seems archaic simply because bank tellers have been replaced by ATMs. Likewise, cellphones changed the world. When Thriller characters use landlines, it’s awkward and quaint. Thriller must be applauded for foreshadowing storytelling trends. The large cast in the series is so much like the cast of TV shows like Lost or even the CW’s Legends of Tomorrow. And while the extended use of TV news screens in the opening issues didn’t start with Thriller, they were used effectively in this series before Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns would all but anoint this tools as a staple of modern-age storytelling.

PACKAGED THRILLS

The cover art of Thriller worked and didn’t work. Even from a vantage point of 30 years later, the comics are gorgeous packages. The covers of the series reflect the turbulence of the behind-the-scenes drama. Trevor Von Eeden’s early covers are bold and exciting—with clever composition that draws the reader into the action. Thriller #1 showcases Angie Thriller’s haunting and seductive face rendered without the traditional black trap lines. She’s peering down from the heavens on Dan with a sparkling sky filled with purple and pink hues. Von Eeden follows up with several innovative cover layouts. Issue #2 shows a burning house from the POV on someone breaking through a picket fence, while Thriller #6 crops the main figure off the page. Thriller #7 is adds a new artist to the mix. The cover showcases the work of Mark Beachum, with inks by Dick Giordano (he just couldn’t stay away), with a traditional composition of static figures and faces. Angie Thriller appears as a face amongst the sunset, but due to some unfortunate color choices, she looks like some sort of alien tiger-woman. By issue #8, Von Eeden’s last cover is a confusing jumble of figures and gunshots, echoing the complaints of readers of the series. Alex Nino provided the covers for the last four issues. Thriller #10 is especially striking. Salvo, in greytones and surrounded by a sniper’s target icon, aims his gun at the reader. A woman is held at gunpoint by terrorists in the foreground, all bathed in a chalky yellow monotone. The background is a jumble of pastel flowers combined with what seem to be, upon deeper study, creepy monster organs. It’s a risky cover that dares the reader to take a chance and make the effort to read the cover. The last two covers are pedestrian. Klein’s impressive Thriller logo stoically presides atop with a stately non-judgmentalism, but everyone knew the jig was up. The series was canceled with issue #12 (Nov. 1984).

New Thriller Artist From the archives of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com), production art for the cover of Thriller #11, the penultimate issue, with this amazing Alex Nino cover featuring cast member Crackerjack. TM & © DC Comics.

THE THRILL THAT ALMOST CAME BACK

Thriller wasn’t quite forgotten by the DC editors either. BACK ISSUE’s own Michael Eury stumbled across two pages from a planned miniseries starring Thriller’s own expert marksman, Salvo. The pages appeared to penciled by Pat Gabriele and inked by John Beatty. Writer Steven Grant was assigned to create and script a spin-off series. Although Grant jokes that he hadn’t thought about it in 25 years, he offers up some fascinating revelations and remembrances: “Michael Golden had [been hired] as an editor at DC Comics and taken over the Impact line as well as The Shadow Strikes, Sgt. Rock, and maybe a couple other things,” Grant says. “I wrote some stories for him for The Web and The Shadow Strikes that have unfortunately never seen print, as he left within a year and his titles were summarily canceled following his departure, so all that stuff was shelved. “I don’t know whether Michael pitched them the idea or DC came to him with it, but the company had noted Marvel’s success with the Punisher and decided the gun-toting marksman Salvo character from Thriller could possibly fill that sort of niche for them. Not sure either where my name came into it, but Michael asked me if I could write a Salvo series for him. “It was essentially the same character but not directly related to Thriller, and Michael felt the whole ‘grim ’n’ gritty’ thing was already being overplayed (I did not disagree with him) and maybe we should do it a little more tongue-in-cheek. Not slapstick or comedy, exactly, but more in tune with the Simon & Kirby’s Fighting American than with the Punisher.” Grant recalls that this new series was to be set in the modern day, as opposed to Thriller’s future setting. “No connection to Thriller that I remember, or any other characters from the series. Again, I’m a little shaky, but I believe Salvo was coming off some sort of dark fairly high-profile incident; I wouldn’t say it was haunting him but he was trying to keep a low profile, living in his mother’s basement in an old Italian neighborhood called West Naples in some big, unnamed city, not Gotham or Metropolis, and freelancing as a bodyguard/investigator/adventurer with a dicey relationship with the cops and a penchant for trouble he had to shoot his way out of.” As Thriller was so innovative, I asked Grant if he felt this series might have been ahead of its time. “I would say outside its time rather than ahead of,” he explains. “Like I said, we were going for a lighter touch. It wasn’t a parody per se and it certainly didn’t get to Deadpool extremes, but we weren’t taking the concept of a wild gunman shooting off guns in the middle of cities very seriously. Lots of trick shooting, I think. We were using the later Simon & Kirby Fighting American as a model; tongue-in-cheek but still with lots of action. The only story I remember involved Salvo (intentionally) DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 29

Greatest Spin-Offs Never Told Two unlettered original art pages from the aborted Salvo series scripted by Steven Grant, penciled by Pat Gabriele, inked by John Beatty, and edited by Michael Golden. Art photocopies courtesy of Anthony Snyder (anthonyscomicbookart.com). TM & © DC Comics.

walking into a hostage standoff at a grocery store, ostensibly because he needs ingredients for dinner and it’s the only one within walking distance of his house, and takes down a number of armed gunmen with a can of tomatoes. That description’s kind of guaranteed to get a ‘Huh?,’ but the story outlined his neighborhood and delineated his rather cavalier view of authority, his habit of wanting to immediately deal with any bad situation he runs across and his M.O. of confounding other characters’ expectations. That was what I found entertaining about writing the character, his congenital refusal to do what other characters expected of him, especially the villains. “But it wasn’t exactly cosmic material. I had six issues written and one, maybe more, drawn by Pat Gabriele when Michael left. His titles came under review after he left and Paul Kupperberg took over and, is often the case during editorial changeovers, unpublished projects were largely chucked. “My Salvo run with Mike and Pat was scrapped,” says Grant. “But Paul [Kupperberg] asked me to write a new #1, unrelated to the old series, with a more serious tone, which I did. Paul Kupperberg confirms Grant’s recollections. “I was handed the project when I was in Mike Gold’s Development Group in the early-1990s, but other than some art samples, penciled I believe (but don’t hold me to it) by Pat Gabriele. I have no memory of the direction the series took, or how far it had gotten,” recalls Kupperberg. “Ultimately DC decided to go in another direction, as they say,” continues Grant, “and that was the end of that. “I’m not terribly surprised DC passed on them,” Grant continues. “A lot of the silliness was rather obscure, like Latino heroes Tango Hombre and One-Ton Romero. That’s what I remember from the series; I don’t remember the plots at all. It’s one of those ‘neither fish nor fowl’ things that comics steven grant readers tend to take a dim view of. And there’s pretty much no ‘vigilante gunman’ series that isn’t a parody now, intentionally or not. “By the way, as far as I know the series didn’t have Robert Loren Fleming’s or Trevor Von Eeden’s blessing, if they were consulted or even knew about it at all,” adds Grant. “At one point I did ask if I could name the romantic interest Lauren Fleming—it was meant only as a nod, honest—and was told that was probably a very, very bad idea…”

WAS IT WORTH IT?

Trevor Von Eeden is very clear about how he views Thriller. “Frankly, I’m thrilled beyond measure that this particular series, which has so much of the best and the worst of my own psyche—my own artistic soul—is, for better or for worse, the one job of my entire 41-year career that the fans have fondly and consistently remembered since it first appeared,” he says. “There’s a lot in the later issues of the series that I still can’t look at without being reminded of a most painful time in my life and career—a creator’s appraisal of his progeny is always mostly a subjective one—but it makes me very happy to know that whatever its flaws, in the 30+ years since the series was first published, the fans seem to have really loved Thriller—warts and all. And that makes me very happy.”

THE MEN IN THE ARENA

Was Thriller a success that was ahead of its time? Or a beautiful idea that became a challenging, undisciplined mess? It’s all a matter of opinion, but Thriller’s promise and subsequent flame-out are both part of what makes it memorable and enduring. Teddy Roosevelt’s famous The Man in the Arena quote, from a 1910 speech, could have been explicitly written for Thriller’s creative team. He speaks to the man who is actually “in the arena” and realizes that if he fails, at least he fails by daring greatly. Thriller dared greatly. ED CATTO is a marketing strategist with a specialty in pop culture. As co-founder of Bonfire Agency, Ed is dedicated to connecting brands with the “Geeks of the World” in innovative and authentic ways. And as a “retropreneur,” Ed leads a team specializing in rejuvenating brands (including Captain Action) for today’s audiences.

30 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

by D a n

Johnson

ary interview conducted Janu

2017

The ’80s were a wonderful time to be a DC fan. The company was starting to explore new presentation styles for their comics, including the prestigious Baxter paper format and the concept of the maxiseries. DC was also beginning to take advantage of the new opportunities that the direct sales market presented. Alas, this decade was also the last one where DC was willing to venture into different genres outside of superheroes on a regular basis. The ’80s were the last decade that DC regularly published war, Western, funny animal, and horror titles… but before closing the door on the science-fiction genre, DC and gave its readers something truly out of this world: Sun Devils by writer Gerry Conway and artist Dan Jurgens. This 12-part maxiseries, published between July 1984 and June 1985 (cover dates), followed the adventures of a space-born group of adventurers led by Rik Sunn who fought the good fight against the dread Karvus Khun, the leader of the Sauroid Empire. It was a rousing SF story presented by Gerry and Dan. In this BACK ISSUE Pro2Pro, we get the behind-the-scenes scoop on this maxiseries, straight from the men who sent us into orbit. – Dan Johnson DAN JOHNSON: How did the idea for Sun Devils first come about? What inspired the maxiseries? GERRY CONWAY: I was a fan of space opera, and particularly, a fan of the kind of space opera [DC editor] Julie Schwartz used to publish back in the 1950s and early ’60s in comics like Mystery in Space and Strange Adventures. It was also the era of Star Wars, and I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a major influence. JOHNSON: I was going to mention that at the time Sun Devils came out, science-fiction movies were huge. We had the last Star Wars film being released and Star Trek getting underway as a franchise. I was curious if that box-office success played a role in DC greenlighting the Sun Devils series. DAN JURGENS: I’m sure [the early-’80s SF craze] played a role in DC wanting to do it. CONWAY: I assume so! JURGENS: In a way, I found it to be a bit frustrating, because trying to capture the feel of ships moving through space on paper can be a very hard thing to do. It’s sort of like trying to do a car chase in comics. It just doesn’t have the same impact as it does on film, no matter what you do. JOHNSON: Roy Thomas is credited as a creator of this series. What was his role in the origin of Sun Devils? CONWAY: Roy and I talked over the idea as a possible film project, I think. That was the springboard, and Roy may have coined the name of the group. Or it could have been me—I was a fan of the Sea Devils comic, so “Sun Devils” sounds like something I might have come up with as a sly tribute to that book. Honestly, I don’t recall the specifics. Roy and I were collaborators in screenwriting at the time and did a lot together. Supposedly I helped create Captain Carrot and the Zoo Crew, but I don’t remember making much of a contribution, if any at all, so who knows, really? JOHNSON: That is fascinating. I remember that you and Roy had worked on screenplays together in the early 1980s, and that you wrote Fire and Ice and Conan the Destroyer together. JURGENS: Don’t forget that the original name [of Sun Devils], Gerry, as you and Roy presented it to me, was Star Birds. I’d forgotten about that until I unearthed some old notes. JOHNSON: Dan, how did you come to be picked as the artist on Sun Devils?

’80s Space Opera The 12-issue run of DC’s Sun Devils (July 1984 through June 1985), featuring interlocking covers by then-emerging artist Dan Jurgens. TM & © DC Comics.

DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 31

Star Warriors Dan Jurgens kindly submitted this 1983 unpublished promotional art (with inks by Rick Magyar) which reveals the team’s second name: “Star Devils.” (Sun Devils was conceived as “Star Birds.”) Sun Devils TM & © DC Comics.

JURGENS: I was in New York visiting the DC offices, along with a few other writers and artists. I think this was late ’82. In any case, both Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway were there, and I got to chatting with them a bit. Somewhere along the line, Gerry and Len Wein asked me if I’d like to draw a couple of Gerry’s Batman stories. I jumped at the idea, and those ended up being Detective Comics #525 (Apr. 1983) and Batman #359 (May 1983). CONWAY: I’d seen samples of Dan’s art and enjoyed what he did with Mike Grell on Warlord. Even his early work showed a terrific sense of design and storytelling, very important for a book set in a futuristic environment. JURGENS: Gerry and I enjoyed working together and after we were done with those [Batman stories], he asked me if I’d be interested in drawing a new 12-part series he and Roy had conceived of called “Star Birds.” We got to talking about various ideas, and before long, I jumped in with both feet. It went through a couple of name changes before settling in with Sun Devils.

32 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

JOHNSON: From what you have each suggested, this was very much a team book from the beginning, in more ways than one. What do you each feel was the greatest strength that the other brought to the table, in regard to creating Sun Devils? JURGENS: One of the great things about working with Gerry is that he was very open to ideas and suggestions, very willing to listen to what his artists had to say, and tremendously encouraging at the same time. He sent some character descriptions—general ideas of what they might look like—and then I took the ball and ran with it. We went back and forth over various concepts and ideas as to who they might be and what they might look like until we settled on the final cast. CONWAY: Also, through his storytelling, [Dan] greatly influenced the pace and emotional strengths of the stories. JURGENS: It was a great working experience and I learned a lot about the importance of treating the work process as a team approach. JOHNSON: Tell us what the creative process was like, in regard to putting the initial issues together. JURGENS: Gerry and I worked “Marvel style” on the book. He’d give me a call gerry conway and we’d talk about the overall plot for each issue, especially after we got past the first few issues. Those [first few] started with written, more structured plots. Eventually, we were talking about the story and I was jotting down notes about the basic framework of the story and would then go draw. JOHNSON: Dan, where did you draw inspiration in creating the look of these characters and their universe? JURGENS: Ideas come from everywhere. At one point, Gerry had said something like, “Think of them as Blackhawks in outer space!” Well, that certainly helped influence the look of the ships and hardware, not to mention their uniforms. JOHNSON: Dan, what was the biggest challenge you faced as the artist on Sun Devils when creating the look of this new universe? JURGENS: I’d say the biggest problem was the fact that I was really quite new to the business. Anything I’d done before, like Batman and Warlord, were preexisting characters. So, to a certain extent, it wasn’t just a matter of creating the look for a book. It was also a matter of figuring out my working methodology on a new series. For example, I came up with the idea of doing connected, triptych covers, which ended up being very hard to pull off. Those required a lot of work—way more than I ever could have suspected. JOHNSON: Gerry, being the writer and editor on a book is something we don’t see anymore in the industry. I’m curious to know what the advantages were to being your own editor on this maxiseries. CONWAY: The advantages and disadvantages are the same—you get to tell the story you want to tell the way you want to tell it, without direct oversight. Obviously, that’s both good and bad. JOHNSON: What prompted DC to make Sun Devils a Baxter format book instead of going the newsstand route? CONWAY: I have no idea. Most of the publishing decisions DC made during those days seemed pretty random to me. I was happy to have a book like Sun Devils published in any format, delighted it would be published in a better printing format than the regular books. JOHNSON: Gerry, what prompted you to eventually turn over writing duties on Sun Devils to Dan? [Editor’s note: Paul Kupperberg dialogued Conway’s plot for issue #7, while Dan Jurgens dialogued Gerry’s plots for #8 and 9 before taking over as writer with issue #10. Conway remained editor of the series throughout its entire 12-issue run.]

Meet the Cast “It took courage for me to bring these [this model sheet and the promo art] into the light of day,” Dan Jurgens admits to BACK ISSUE… and while Dan’s art has certainly matured since this 1983 illustration, we’re in his debt for allowing us to peek into the earliest stages of his career. Sun Devils TM & © DC Comics.

CONWAY: I was writing too much and needed to let go of some assignments. Dan had proven himself as a storyteller, and I’ve always been eager and willing to give people a shot when they want to do something outside the artificial limits placed on them. JURGENS: When Gerry had to step away from the scripting ends of things he simply said, “Do you want to take a crack at it?” I believe that came from the working style we’d already established. Plus, it’s dan jurgens quite likely that I’d already let him know of my desire to be a writer as that was always in the back of my mind. CONWAY: I had an intuition Dan would be a good writer. Turned out I was right. JURGENS: Thanks. The point is that we’d already established a dialogue between us in terms of working on each issue. I remember writing dialogue notes in between the panel borders, but I honestly can’t remember if Gerry used much of it. JOHNSON: Dan, as your first time as a writer on a book, did you have any hesitation about taking on this new role? JURGENS: Nah. I was young and stupid! Seriously, I really didn’t even know what I didn’t know, which can be a great advantage and great liability, all at once. But I was quite eager to give it a shot and found it to be very liberating. I value the opportunity to this day and can’t thank Gerry enough for giving me the chance. JOHNSON: Dan, you later incorporated the star of this maxiseries, Rik Sunn, into your Superman run, in a story called “The Last Sun Devil” that appeared in Superman #86 (Feb. 1994). Did you have any other plans to work him or any of the other Sun Devils characters elsewhere into the bigger DC Universe? JURGENS: From time to time, yes. I had a couple of thoughts on how to work them into Booster Gold [the second volume], but never got around to it. Plus, I always got a kick out of the fact that Geoff Johns mentioned them on Rip Hunter’s blackboard. I thought that was great fun. JOHNSON: Were there ever any plans for a follow-up maxiseries? Is there a Sun Devils story we never got to read? CONWAY: That’s probably the other reason I let go of the writing—I felt I’d told the stories I’d wanted to tell. JURGENS: It really was conceived as a finite story with a beginning, middle, and end, and I’d say that’s what we did. As for future stories, well… every character has stories waiting to be told. The Sun Devils are no different! DAN JOHNSON is a comics writer whose work can be found in Cemetery Plots from Empire Comics Lab. His other notable comics work includes Herc and Thor for Antarctic Press and several books for Campfire Graphic Novels. He is also a gag writer for the Dennis the Menace comic strip.

Need a Hand? Original Dan Jurgens/Dick Giordano cover art to Sun Devils #7, courtesy of Heritage. TM & © DC Comics.

DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 33

“Can you solve it before we can?” That was certainly an interesting dare, one tossed before an unsuspecting comics readership in late 1985 when the much-ballyhooed DC Challenge was finally released. A 12-issue maxiseries, it was a round-robin featuring DC Comics’ biggest writers and artists, delving deep into the company’s character library, and in some ways, a palette cleanser of gonzo fun just as the very same creators helped disassemble the familiar DC Universe in the concurrent Crisis on Infinite Earths.

A CONVENTION CONCOCTION

It started, innocently enough, on the Executive Hotel’s roof as Len Wein, Mark Evanier, Gerry Conway, Bill Warren, and Bill Rotsler escaped a stifling Marvel Comics party during the 1983 San Diego Comic-Con. Marv Wolfman was separated from his friends and entered the elevator by himself, thinking he’d find his pals in the lobby, but somehow he wound up on the roof. With a perplexed look on his face, he studied his friends and asked what just happened. That moment of incongruity was a flash of inspiration to Evanier, who suggested the DC talent roster team-up for a round-robin story. “It was just one of those ideas that comes out of nowhere,” Evanier tells BACK ISSUE. “I have a lot of them and usually, ‘nowhere’ is where they should stay. I mentioned this one aloud to the writers around me and they all jumped on it.” Different creative teams would be selected, and each would write one issue of a longer story following only a handful of rules, then hand it off to the next writer with just a handful of plot threads and a kickass cliffhanger to work with. The next team would have to solve the immediate danger and propel the story forward, handing it off to the next mark evanier team. And so on, until it wrapped up. © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. The company’s top 11 writers would be recruited, along with a dozen artists, with the plan being the 11 would collaborate on the concluding chapter. Everyone’s eyes lit up at the notion, and Conway coined it the DC Challenge and its marketing slogan. “I recall a lot of predictions that it would not do well sales-wise and that it would screw up production on other DC titles because we’d be yanking artists off other books,” Evanier says. As the posse ran into some of the very writers they needed at the con, everyone fell in love with the idea and agreed to participate. It was Roy Thomas who cautioned that while DC Challenge was a great idea, they needed executive editor Dick Giordano to bless it and get the project approved by Jenette Kahn, DC’s president and publisher, and Paul Levitz, the company’s manager-business affairs. By then, it was after 1:00 a.m., and since Dick was a notoriously early-to-bed guy, it would have to wait until morning. No sooner had Wein left an urgent note for Dick to join him for breakfast did the beloved artist/editor/executive walk into the hotel, up past his bedtime. The group whisked Dick up to the rooftop to set the stage, and maybe it was the late hour or the collective enthusiasm, but Giordano, normally a rational man, agreed to the project. Marv Wolfman recalls, “For some reason we decided to keep the answers to our cliffhangers to ourselves; the idea being like me in the elevator, nobody else would know the answer to how I got there. So writer A would set up a cliffhanger and writer B, not knowing what writer A had intended, had to

Tag… You’re It! A puzzle montage from the 12 covers for one of the most offbeat DC series of the ’80s—heck, of any decade— the writers’ round-robin maxiseries DC Challenge. TM & © DC Comics.

34 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

by R

obert Greenberger

come up with their own solutions, then stick it to writer C to solve writer B’s These completed stories were sitting in inventory, which meant money cliffhanger, etc. I seem to recall the cliffhangers had to have real solutions was spent without a solid plan for recouping the expenses. the writer planted in their story; they just couldn’t come up with something Shortly after writing his script and the arrival of a fifth from Mike W. totally absurd. The idea was to challenge us, the writers, as well as the Barr, Paul put on his management hat and instructed this new editor to readers. It meant we had to figure out what another writer had set up prove that the project was still viable. I had to get three scripts (issues without having the foggiest idea what they intended. We tried to #6–8) written in a month or he’d scrap the entire maxiseries. use all the writers at DC that we could, and if memory serves >Gulp!< I made a quick series of calls to the writers who all everyone we approached thought it would be fun, too. said it could be done and sure enough, Levitz had three “I had done something like this previously in a vouchers to pay in time to keep the DC Challenge alive. crossover at Marvel between [Amazing] Spider-Man That was Summer 1984, and then it became a matand Nova where my Nova story had set up clues to a ter of getting things penciled, inked, lettered, and death and the Spider-Man writer had to figure out marketed. Design director Neal Pozner helped me come up with a cover treatment centering on the who the bad guy was based on those clues then write a story solving the murder.” Question Mark surrounded by that issue’s main players. Evanier adds, “When Dick Giordano okayed the It was a no-brainer for me to recruit Jerry Ordway, too idea—which he did in about ten seconds once he heard busy with Crisis to participate otherwise, to produce the it—he said that I, as the originator of the idea, had first cover. Todd Klein supplied our fine logo. By then to go first. There were several other writers present, it was decided that each issue’s letters column would so they were all included. Then someone made a list have the previous issue’s author share how he would marv wolfman have resolved the cliffhanger. and said, ‘So-and-so will be upset if he’s not included,’ and before long, we had a working list. A few names As it was, the publishing schedule didn’t really open went on and off it later due to availability. It was kind of a group decision.” up for something like this until late Summer 1985, so we definitely had Evanier spelled out the rules in the first issue’s letters column, some breathing room. We arrived on August 29, the same week as including the cliffhanger portion: Crisis #9, which I think is emblematic of the line’s flexibility back then. What follows is an issue-by-issue breakdown with commentary from as “That Writer must have a solution planted somewhere in his many of the creators involved as time, memory, and circumstance allowed. chapter, but the next Writer need not use that particular solution. You also have to end your chapter by naming the next chapter. The major characters of your chapter must not be any characters that you currently write for DC. The story can go anywhere in the DC Universe, but you cannot solve a story problem by declaring something a dream or a hoax or a hallucination. In other words, no cheating. “You must forward the plot and you must tie up some story threads left by those who have gone before as well as leaving new story threads for those who follow you.” Evanier recalls, “Selecting the artists was another group decision of whoever was present. We made up a list of artists and then I tore up some paper into scraps, wrote one artist’s name on each, and we had a drawing with proxies drawing for the writers who weren’t present. Later, a lot of that had to be adjusted because of schedules. I recall George Pérez wanted very badly to draw the last issue but that was not possible because of other things he was doing for the company.” The initial lineup included artists Joe Kubert and Don Newton, with the former unavailable as his turn drew close, and sadly, Newton passed away before his turn.

A PUBLISHING CHALLENGE

At the time, I was at San Diego on behalf of Comics Scene, and the following morning I ran into some of the perpetrators at breakfast and they were so giddy with excitement that I was sworn to secrecy and told all about it. It certainly sound ambitious and fun, just what they wanted to hear. Fast-forward 18 months. I was now now on staff at DC, and while sitting in Giordano’s office I saw the first issue of the Challenge on his desk, half-buried under other projects, memos, budgets, and submissions. He explained that work had begun with him as editor and he was swamped, barely paying attention to it. A month or two later, there were more papers atop the story, but by then, a second issue had been produced and work was underway on a third. As had become clear, I had time on my assistant-editor hands, so Dick asked me to help him with it, which rapidly became my taking it on to edit. I sat with the completed issues, and the notes that existed on issue #3 and realized months had gone by without much work getting done. Issue #4 was to be written by Paul Levitz, the keeper of the budget.

No Comic Shop Nearby? This mail-order house ad enabled DC’s newsstand readers to purchase the direct-market DC Challenge. TM & © DC Comics.

DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 35

DC CHALLENGE #1 (Nov. 1985)

by Mark Evanier, Gene Colan, and Bob Smith Cover by Jerry Ordway While Evanier had been writing Blackhawk at the time, he hadn’t written much with DC’s heroes, giving him free reign in DC Challenge, especially with introducing into the storyline the company’s Big Three [that’s Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, for you Marvelites reading this issue—ed.]. Wisely replicating the elevator incident that started everything, Evanier starts his tale with Daily Planet copy boy Floyd Perkins taking an elevator in the wrong direction, finding an alien meeting with some strangers. He leaves the room and runs into Humphrey Bogart. The first hero we meet is Superman, coming to the scene of a demon rising from some person’s body. Jimmy Olsen runs into Groucho Marx and Superman busily investigates the demon’s victim, James Hoyt, while the Riddler leaves a fresh mystery for Batman to unravel. Before the issue ends, Adam Strange comes looking for Superman at the Planet while Diana Prince is assigned to track down a missing nuclear device the size of a paperback. The Caped Crusader’s investigation brings him to a turbaned alien who announces the Riddler’s clue was a videotape designed to trigger the nuclear explosion in… eight seconds. “My idea, which I never discussed with others, was that since it was the DC Challenge, the core should be Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman… and then each writer should add one (and only one) new character into the mix, and I just arbitrarily picked Adam Strange,” Evanier says. “Later, I think

the storyline got way too cluttered because folks added in too many players.” Still, Mark went beyond that by working in the Riddler and a Humphrey Bogart doppelganger while also tossing in Groucho Marx. “That was kind of the fun of it… you could just add in an element to see what someone else would do with it,” Evanier says. “As I said, I think too many of the writers added too many, but if I hadn’t gone first, I probably would have done the same thing.” Paired with Gene Colan, Evanier was rather pleased with the artwork provided. “I remember a very nice phone call from Gene asking me questions about the plot to make sure he was drawing what I wanted… and I just kept saying, ‘Whatever you do will be fine,’ and it was.”

DC CHALLENGE #2 (Dec. 1985)

by Len Wein, Chuck Patton, and Mike DeCarlo Cover by Patton and DeCarlo This one opens with Len Wein and Chuck Patton recapping issue #1 in a nice meta touch. They solve Batman’s cliffhanger, keeping Gotham from exploding in a nuclear blast, and bring in new characters, including Jonah Hex, Congorilla, and B’wana Beast. Artist Chuck Patton tells BI, “Len asked me to come by his office one day and soon as I stepped in he said, ‘Guess what, we got this DC Challenge book coming and you’re doing it with me!’ “Since I hadn’t been in the business that long and owed my start on JLA mostly to him, I wasn’t going to argue. Besides him being both my editor and mentor, I was already a huge fan of his writing, and he was guiding me editorially on JLA while I went through multiple writers until Gerry [Conway] came back to the book with a new direction. “But this was going to be our first real collaboration as writer and artist, and I was very excited and hungry to get a real education in plotting and story construction from a master storyteller,” Patton adds. “Little did we know that once we heard the rules of what was expected on this Challenge, that those words of a ‘mess’ became more real than joke!” Once the pair dispatched with the cliffhanger, they moved ahead by transporting Jonah Hex from the 19th Century to the then-present day, checking in on Mike (B’Wana Beast) Maxwell and Congo Bill, and watching chuck patton Aquaman collapse in the Sahara Desert, all while the Man of Steel battled Mongul on the Moon. The cliffhanger this time has Hex in the backseat of a limo, driven by the turbaned alien, being taken to who knows where by Peter Lorre. He dispatches his captors, but is left in a vehicle he doesn’t understand as it barrels towards two nuns and a group of school children in a busy intersection. “At the beginning, it was exciting as hell,” Patton beams. “This was what I came into comics for and I thought it was going to be just wicked fun, despite finding out that the whole plot was a long mystery puzzle with different clues laid down to be solved and then reset from team to team. Now, I wasn’t very versed in mystery stories like this, and so I felt pretty intimidated, but Len declared we were going to have a romp. He then had lunch sent in, deliberately locked us inside his office, and we spent the next six hours hammering out our plot, including what characters we wanted and every twist we could come up with. “Yeah, I was having a ball since I’ve been a major DC fan all my life and Len knew I would go ‘outside’ the box for my choices. It helped that the Big Three and the other known heroes were already taken to

Don’t Be Stumped! Amazing Heroes #79 (Sept. 15, 1985) went behind the scenes of DC Challenge, with this great Chuck Patton/ Dick Giordano cover. Characters TM & © DC Comics. Amazing Heroes © Fantagraphics.

36 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

start the first Challenge. So we went the opposite direction and dove into DC’s rich back history of characters— especially for the oddest but still memorable ones that were either barely used or ignored. Len wanted Congorilla, I always loved the outrageousness of B’Wana Beast, and Jonah Hex just fit perfectly with the cliffhanger ending we came up with.” As for the meta opening, Patton says it was Wein’s idea of “drawing of the two of us at the start and end of the story and I admit, I got into drawing myself more than I imagined—like a time capsule of the way we were. “I liked what we had done—but unfortunately, it was the story points and puzzle setups we inherited from the previous team that disappointed me most, and I think also the other artists and eventually, the fans. It just felt so all over the place and didn’t come together at all except to serve up the next riddle. That’s my only criticism about the series, yet I’m still glad I participated.” In #2’s lettercol, Evanier noted that the mysterious numbers Batman found scrawled on a wall at the end of the initial chapter stumped Wein, but he swore they meant something.

DC CHALLENGE #3 (Jan. 1986)

by Doug Moench, Carmine Infantino, and Bob Smith Cover by Eduardo Barreto Doug Moench had been writing for DC only a few years when he got roped into participating. He was happy to do so, and when handed the title “Viking Vengeance,” it became obvious he was going to use the Viking Prince. All these years later, Moench struggles to come up with detailed memories of this one-off tale, admitting, “I don’t remember much, given all that was going down at the time. It was a cool idea, but in concept only— theoretically fun, but I suspected the reality would be a nightmare mess, and so it was. It had been done before, in science-fiction circles and elsewhere, and the results had never been Growing up, Moench loved Infantino’s pretty. Given the very nature of such work on The Flash, but by this point, it things, how could it be otherwise? was clear the artist was bored, rushing “So no, I was not looking forward out the pages and not putting his usual to digging in and only participated to thought into the drawing. As a result, doug moench avoid being a spoilsport.” the writer was disappointed with the finished work. Fortunately, the Viking Prince and Hawkman, two Joe Kubert designs, were among Moench’s favorite DC heroes, so using them was a DC CHALLENGE #4 personal delight. In keeping with Evanier’s celebrity (Feb. 1986) theme, Moench’s first page has the Prince in action with by Paul Levitz, Gil Kane, W. C. Fields, who shows up with alien technology. After and Klaus Janson a recap, Hex manages to avoid the nuns, Superman Cover by Kane discovers a stylized “D” in a moon crater, Batman Paul Levitz was in San Diego brings a tablet to Carter and Shiera Hall for deciphering, when all of this was and Aquaman imitates Conan in order to survive the proposed and expressed desert (the very solution Wein envisioned). Meanwhile, his displeasure at being left Hawkman is hit by a Zeta Beam and winds up on off the roster of writers. Rann, uniting with Adam Strange, not seen since Wolfman had explained issue #1. We journey with Adam back to Earth, ready they didn’t think it fair to to meet the next beam, when he encounters Batman list him, thinking it was a and a wingless Hawkwoman dangling from a cliff, bribe to get the executive threatened by a green monster. to sign off on the book.

Monkeying Around Some second- thirdfourth-stringers like B’Wana Beast got a shot in DC Challenge’s pages. This original art page, drawn by Carmine Infantino and Bob Smith, hails from writer Doug Moench’s issue #3. Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). TM & © DC Comics.

DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 37

With One Magic Word… Notice how Captain Marvel bites his tongue when naming his mage mentor. Script by Mike W. Barr. Original Dave Gibbons/Mark Farmer art from DCC #5, courtesy of Heritage. TM & © DC Comics.

After a conversation and some “threats,” Levitz was Issue #4 opens with the most obscure DC character inserted in the cleanup spot. dredged up for use in this book: Darwin Jones, a shortDiscussing it recently, Paul admits his memories of lived scientist feature from Strange Adventures. the project are fairly fuzzy. Thankfully, he wrote He is talking to one of the most beloved about it in the letters column for #5, where characters from the same era, Bobo the he said, “In some ways the Challenge was Detective Chimp, who had a feature in the toughest assignment I’ve had at DC Rex the Wonder Dog (there is a special in years, at least since I retreated to the charm to ’50s DC comics that has safe corridors of the Legion headquarters never been replicated). He goes from in 2985 A.D. where I never have to their recap to a gymnastic rescue by worry about any other writer messing Strange, who shoves Batman and around with my continuity. After that Hawkwoman into a Zeta Beam, so we luxury, having to put together a story now have Hawkman, Hawkwoman, Batthat picked up where three obviously man, Adam Strange, and the Viking maniacal writers had gone before was Prince on Rann, soon to be joined by Superman, who has been doing a true act of masochism. the majority of the detective work so “On the one hand, it was more fun paul levitz than I’ve had at DC in years. Never having far. Jones and Bobo, meanwhile, go had much of a gift for humor, I’ve stuck © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. investigate the strange things found with writing heroic characters, and in comics, that means in the Daily Planet building from issue #1, where writing terribly, seriously intense people. The chance to dimensional portals are discovered while genuine work on a collection of DC’s misfits in a storyline that was printer’s devils publish a page-one story revealing full of patently absurd elements was too good to miss.” Superman’s secret identity. Jimmy Olsen meets up with Dr. Thirteen and they head to New York, where Superman, Supergirl, Starfire, Martian Manhunter, and Jemm, Son of Saturn are about to be publically executed by invading aliens. Jones and Bobo try to stop the dimensional threat, aided by Deadman at the last instant. Gil Kane was assigned as artist and Levitz says, “The issue I did was the only job I got to do with Gil, I think, and I valued it for that. I forget whether the characters were required under the rules, or just me having fun (always liked Gil’s animals). I almost certainly did some sort of flow chart as a plotting tool… still a default technique for me.” Kane was ill at the time and the deadline was a problem, so editorially we spoke about the assignment and I gently suggested we get an inker, and after a slight hesitation, he reluctantly agreed. Klaus Janson, though, was thrilled to have this rare opportunity. “I don’t think I ever had high hopes for [DC Challenge] commercially, but it was the sort of ‘show the fans we’re fans, too’ project that I usually felt enhanced the brand and the line, as long as it didn’t lose money,” Levitz adds. “I think it probably achieved that.”

DC CHALLENGE #5 Mar. 1986)

by Mike W. Barr, Dave Gibbons, and Mark Farmer Cover by Gibbons This issue brings in Dr. Fate, Captain Marvel from Earth-S (where there’s a parallel alien invasion to the one on Earth-One is happening), the Blackhawks, Thunderbolt, Uncle Sam, Captain Comet, and the long-forgotten AntiMatter Man. It was quite the change of pace and feel, thanks to writer Mike W. Barr, who shares with BACK ISSUE the following recollection: “My involvement with the DC Challenge began at a comic convention—probably the San Diego Comic-Con of (from what Chairman Greenberger says) 1983. I returned to my hotel room one night to find a note slipped under my door, inviting me to breakfast the next morning with diverse DC personnel, which climaxed with the tantalizing teaser—‘important information about your characters.’ Intriguing. 38 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

“Too few hours later (I am not a morning person), with DC VP for issue #6, detailing these grievances, as well as a rather harsh Dick Giordano (comics’ ultimate morning person) presiding, the critique of #6, which editor Greenberger decided not to publish. concept of the Challenge was presented to me and a bunch of I swore off any further participating in the Challenge, including the other freelancers, probably all writers: a 12-issue series, to be group-plotted #12. distributed on the newsstand, in which a sort of free-range round“Despite all the angst over the Challenge as a whole,” Barr concludes, robin story would be tossed from one creative team to another, “the recollection of writing #5 still brings a grin. But I’ve never read the last six issues of the series—are they any good?” with a few interesting restrictions: the story would be To be fair to Mike, I don’t recall his text piece, but my totally out of continuity, no writer could use his regular guess is I chose not to run it because it went against the characters, and every writer would end his issue with spirit of fun the maxiseries was designed to project. a cliffhanger which the following writer would be And Moench didn’t include Batman but was handed charged to solve. Mark Evanier, whose idea it was, the character, and so had to include him, although he would write the first issue and provide supervision. downplayed the Dark Knight. I believe we drew numbers to determine in what In 1985, Dave Gibbons was a man in demand, order the first 11 issues would be written (and by whom). I drew—by which I mean was assigned— with his waking hours mostly devoted to Watchmen. issue #5. It was planned that all 11 writers would The only way to keep him involved was to recruit co-plot and -write #12. Mark Farmer, who did such a good job inking him “With the possible exception of trying to committeeon Green Lantern. Farmer flew in for a visit, bringing plot #12, it sounded like fun. I especially liked the the pages, and I recall having lunch with him and idea of the unresolved cliffhangers, which was only Dick Giordano as they talked art, leaving me to mike w. barr sip iced tea. a little different than being challenged to solve a whodunit, just on a grander scale. “A couple of years later (according to Bob), the project got under- DC CHALLENGE #6 (Apr. 1986) way. If it did take two years to initiate, I’ve no idea why. I probably by Elliot S! Maggin, Dan Jurgens, received copies of the scripts and art as the series progressed, so I could and Larry Mahlstedt Cover by Jurgens and Mahlstedt stay current with the fun. And then it was my turn. “I had already decided I would use my issue of the Challenge This is the issue in which Elliot S! Maggin to script some of my favorite DC characters, most of whom I hadn’t brought in Albert Einstein to fix all the had a chance to write. And since all the great DC characters had weirdness that had developed over the been created before 1962, I recruited Adam Strange, Captain past five issues. Maggin didn’t really Comet, Captain Marvel, Dr. Fate, Dr. Thirteen, Uncle Sam, Blackhawk, resolve anything; he just sort of used and, of course, all-time fave Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt (who was Einstein to wave his hands and end all the created after 1960, but who was not actually a DC character—more developing plotlines without resolution. on that later). Unfortunately, I was unable to find a way to work To be fair, this was the first of the scripta detective character like Doc Thirteen into the increasingly cosmic a-week assignments to save the project, story, so he went by the wayside, despite the fact that the Grand and its haste may have led to the emphasis Comic Database lists his involvement in #4. There’d be other on recap over advancement. chances, right? And Peter Cannon was not owned by DC, but no Maggin, a powerhouse writer in the one realized it until years later. (T-Bolt creator Pete Morisi later 1970s, wasn’t doing much DC writing at this time, so he had no told me he very much enjoyed my take on his creation.) I also characters that were off-limits. Like his peers, he was a child of the included Anti-Matter Man, a character from the fourth of the famous Silver Age and delighted in using Adam Strange, the Silent Knight, Justice League/Justice Society crossovers, from JLA #46–47. That story and Rip Hunter, along with Einstein. introduced me to the concept of anti-matter, which I found fascinating. Dan Jurgens, a rising talent as a storyteller at this time, has strong (After reading it, I peppered my eighth grade science teacher with memories of his participation. “There were several challenges,” questions about anti-matter, to which she responded grudgingly, he informs BACK ISSUE. “The first was just trying to accept working doubtless wishing she could return to the lesson plan which would in the wake of the artists that were on the first six issues. Gene Colan, show the class the glories of science by teaching us how to magnetize Chuck Patton, Carmine Infantino, Gil Kane, and Dave Gibbons did paper clips.) the first five issues. If that isn’t a Murderer’s Row, I don’t know “Dave Gibbons was assigned my plot and did a wonderful job of what is. As a relatively young artist, you want to do whatever is catching the mood of every character. And when it comes to inkers, possible to fit in. you can’t do better than Mark Farmer, which he once again proved “In other words, in a lineup like that, you don’t want to go down here. And for the Captain Marvel sequences, letterer John Costanza, looking at a called third strike while everyone else is ripping a double at my request, used the caption style utilized in the Fawcett titles. off the wall. “Elliot wrote a full script, which I believe we had to make a couple (I had thought John was related to longtime Fawcett and DC artist Pete Costanza, but I was wrong.) Overseer Mark Evanier objected to Gibbons’ of changes to in order to match up with what had come immediately depiction of Blackhawk aide Chop-Chop, but Dave’s version appeared before and what was being put together for the issue after us. Such is the nature of a story in that format.” in print, unchanged. Given DC Challenge’s time travel, space teleportation, interdimensional “But the wheels had already started to come off. Batman scripter Doug Moench included the Caped Crusader in issue #3, despite travel, and alien technology, it would take someone like Einstein to try the rule that no writer could use his regular characters. The plot and sort it all out. Maggin had Einstein recap and theorize, adding in to #4 contained no cliffhanger; scripter Paul Levitz told me he had Rip Hunter–Time Master and the Silent Knight to add to the mix of simply forgotten that requirement. And while the initial concept players. He then left Jimmy Olsen on a Nazi-controlled Earth while of the Challenge was to have been a comic distributed on the Batman was falling into a volcano. Jurgens ultimately enjoyed drawing the story, but “I think I wanted newsstand, a big, splashy story top-heavy with costumes and fight scenes that probably would have sold pretty well, DC management more Batman! Doing the Anti-Matter Man was definitely a highlight, had decided the title would be distributed only to the direct market, but I think I would have liked a little more overall Justice League or published on Baxter paper at a higher price, effectively disqualifying Legion of Super-Heroes action.” Dan was happy working with Mahlstedt after having partnered the book from any chance of royalties. (After all, man does not with him on a few Who’s Who pages for me. “I definitely enjoyed what live by fun alone.) “With all these spoilers, participating in the Challenge had he did, especially given the amount of time we had,” Jurgens adds. “As I become far less fun than it was cut out to be. I wrote a column recall, it was a real rush job. Again—that was the nature of the beast.” DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 39

Has Anyone Seen Bat-Mite? The Darknight Detective gets a hand from Superman’s arch-pest, Mr. Mxyzptlk, in DC Challenge #7. Script by Paul Kupperberg, art by Joe Staton and Steve Mitchell. TM & © DC Comics.

but the rules had gotten really murky. I mean, the idea was to set up challenges for the next writer to tackle, but I think we all got caught up in the fun and no-holds-barred mentality of the story and figured we’d let the editor (sucker!) sort it out later. “And, let’s face it, no matter what the writer before us did, in the end we were all more interested in telling our idea of that part of the story than in continuing the other guy’s part. [Bob Greenberger] printed a letter in #7 from Maggin, who wrote the chapter before mine, saying how surprised he was at the direction I took his dangling plotlines, expecting me to follow up in the way he imagined, but in the end, each writer was going to end up pushing most of what had happened into the background and concentrating on our own bits.” One of the things we could all count on was Staton being fast, efficient, and nevertheless endlessly entertaining. His work here was fun-filled and fast-paced, just what the project needed at the midpoint. “Joe Staton is, without question, the best,” joe staton Kupperberg says. “I’ve had the pleasure of working with Joe more times than I can count since that first time on Doom Patrol [in Showcase] in 1977 and I’ve never been less than overjoyed with our collaborations [the latest one appearing in Paul Kupperberg’s Secret Romances #2 from Charlton Neo Comics, Summer 2016].” While using Plastic Man and Woozy Winks was perfect given Staton’s work on those characters in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Kupperberg indulged himself with Mr. Myxztplk and Space Cabby. “I probably would have used Plastic Man no matter who the artist was,” Kupperberg admits. “The fact that it was Joe was just icing on the cake. Jack Cole’s Plastic Man is my all-time favorite Golden Age series, so I was thrilled to get to write him. Mr. Myxztplk was a plot contrivance, plain and simple; I’d never have dreamed of inserting a DC CHALLENGE #7 (May 1986) deus ex machina like him in a straight superhero story (‘Mr. Myxztplk? by Paul Kupperberg, Joe Staton, and Steve Mitchell How conveeeenient!’), but with its everything-and-the-kitchen-sink Cover by Staton and Mitchell approach, I figured, what the hell.” The second rush script, #7, was largely Staton adds, “Love Plas and Woozy whenever I get a chance to get back to them. I remember that much of the chapter dealt with plotted by phone between Paul Kupperberg, Adam Strange and Alanna. I’m always looking for anything from the Joe Staton, and me. We discussed what had to be resolved and then brainworld of Julie Schwartz SF. I got to do Space Ranger and Cyril in Green stormed, and I asked Joe what he wanted Lantern, so that’s cool.” to draw. He was open to anything other Since Kupperberg loved Schwartz’s line of science-fiction titles than horses, which put Comet the Superfrom the 1950s, using characters culled from Strange Adventures Horse off-limits. and Mystery in Space was appealing. “Space Cabby was a cool, Staton explains, “Well, I’m not much old character that I loved from the olden days, so I just tossed use after all. The thing with horses comes him into the mix where I thought he could be useful,” Kupperberg from a new Doom Patrol series Paul K. and says. “I mean, this is a story where the Joker is addressing the reader throughout… and even has an exchange with Woozy Winks I did for Showcase. Valentina Vostok fought a giant Cossack who flew on a robotic winged horse. PK made as the Joker is serving as the omniscient narrator to what’s happening much fun of my attempt to draw the horse, and other people around to Woozy. I figured this story was more about having fun than the office joined in. So I try to avoid the public humiliation that making sense.” At the midway point, DC Challenge was beginning to feel like comes from my attempts to draw horses, flying or otherwise. Otherwise I’m game for anything.” an unwieldy mess—at least to me. We needed so much space Paul Kupperberg recalls, “I don’t recall the rush to completion, devoted to the writer recapping then solving the cliffhanger and but I was a pretty fast writer in those days so a fast turnaround then trying to move things forward. Did everyone adhere to the probably wouldn’t have fazed me. The biggest challenge was rules? Sort of. Should I, the editor, have been tougher on the teams? operating half-blind, writing my chapter off the outline of #6, Maybe, but then again, it was a rolling train by the time I was written by Elliot Maggin. I think the story started to drift early on, invited aboard and I had to rush three stories in a month to keep with writers picking and choosing the ‘rules’ that had been set up the thing alive. There were definitely moments where writers felt that they would stick to, so by the time it got to me, midway that trying to play it straight had ceased being an option and just through the run, the thing hadn’t gone completely off the rails went gonzo. 40 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

Kupperberg says, “I think I had the Joker speak for me on pages DC CHALLENGE #9 (July 1986) one and two as he did the ‘what came before’ spiel: ‘All these by Roy Thomas and Don Heck Cover by Denys Cowan guys and gals are trying to figure out what that means—and Of all the creators involved, the so, no doubt, is the poor fool left to write this thing.’ But I went ahead with what I could and introduced least enthusiastic writer may new and baffling elements, like revealing that the have been Roy Thomas. All Joker is the leader of the alien invaders, for the next these years later, he admits, guy. The name of the book was ‘DC Challenge,’ “Don’t recall anything, exwasn’t it?” cept that someone—mayLooking back, Kupperberg both smiles and winces be Dick—told me they’d fixed it so I could use Son at the finished work. “DC Challenge was never meant to be taken seriously as continuity or canon, just a of Vulcan. I really liked the year’s worth of goofy, go-crazy fun. On that level, I idea of a roundthink it was very successful. As for holding up, I robin story in general… I have this idea that Gerry think it does for our generation of fans, but I can’t Conway and I had previimagine readers of today looking at this with anypaul kupperberg ously kicked around a similar idea ourselves, though I thing but abject confusion: ‘Where’s all the angst? don’t recall if we ever voiced the idea to Dick.” Where are the dismemberments? Where’s the uni- © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. During the Silver Age, Thomas entered a Charlton Comics contest and verse-changing event?’ ” Staton was overall happy with his contribution and adds, “I have won, allowing him to write an issue of Son of Vulcan prior to working for been very pleased with Steve’s inks. I probably asked for him. He did DC and Marvel, so revisiting that Charlton Action Hero in DC Challenge was a “minor satisfaction.” At the time—and by now we’re in the Summer or a really nice on my run of Huntress backups in Wonder Woman.” early Fall of 1985, with the book scheduled—Thomas was so busy with his DC CHALLENGE #8 (June 1986) regular workload that he recruited Jean-Marc Lofficier to plot the DC Challenge by Gerry Conway, Rick Hoberg, installment. Lofficier had ghosted a number of comics for writers during this and Dick Giordano period, in addition to his work with wife Randy for Starlog. While reserving Cover by Hoberg and Giordano his ’80s DC enthusiasm for All-Star Squadron, Infinity, Inc., and Arak, Son of Thunder, everything else during this period “was just a job.” The final writer in the one-month race It did allow Thomas to work with Don Heck, but even here he is was perhaps the speediest of the bunch and someone intimately knowledgeable unenthusiastic. “Don was a good artist, but by this point he was about the DC Universe. Gerry Conway’s pretty burnt-out, because he felt his instincts just hadn’t protected his situation in comics.” issue could not have come at a better time. Fortunately, he was no longer After a page of introduction and a resolution of the Plastic Man writing Batman when his turn arrived, so cliffhanger with the timely arrival of Johnny Mann (secretly the Son of Vulcan), we get a splash page with Metron and the Guardians of Oa. he could open with the World’s Greatest It is with this issue that plot threads start being pulled together and Detective sifting through seven issues’ sense is made of all the chaos we have seen before. We discover that worth of threads, problems, and red the aliens led by Bork wish to resurrect their dead, as their souls end herrings, all in an attempt to wrap up up possessing otherworldly demons after they die. The aliens (same stuff and move the series ahead. We open with Batman finally figuring out the numbers from race) led by Kaz are trying to stop this. Believe it or not, this explains issue #1: radio frequencies that, if put into operation simultaneously, everything we’ve seen up until now. And the issue jumps to the past could destroy the Earth. As Batman rushes to Metropolis where and the present, as the mysterious tablet is explained: it is the Mordorh there was the strongest concentration of demon activity, Deadman Formula that will allow Bork to merge Earth or Rann with the possesses Blackhawk in order to stop the attack on Woozy Winks, Netherworld, thus resurrecting the dead and traced. setting up a chance meeting with Hans Von Hammer, the Enemy New to the melee are Prince Ra-Man, the Challengers of the Ace. Dealing with the previous issue’s revelation that the Joker was Unknown, and more members of the JLA, plus some Teen Titans. behind everything, we learn that the Clown Prince of Crime betrayed Thomas has the Guardians take credit for Einstein—a construct, humanity to deliver the world to the turbaned alien in exchange and has the Oans recruit Kaz to stop Bork. The final page looks as if Bork’s victory is “ineluctable” (as he says). for being named King (foreshadowing the Emperor Joker storyline And the issue ends with some great dialogue, perfectly illustrating the by decades). Conway thankfully lets the alien reveal the details of Project nature of this round-robin series: X: the disruption of physical reality as Earth was to be merged Metron: “All, right, Guardians… I believe I understand what is with the Netherworld. Earth and Rann are focal points where the going on now, at least up to a point. Now, what is our next move?” Guardians: “Frankly, Metron, we haven’t the slightest idea. If we interdimensional barrier had weak points, it seems, and Kaz, the turbaned alien, is actually trying to protect the world for his did have… do you think we would have called on you??” enemy, Bork (unrelated to the one from Power Company), who has developed a Probability Disruptor, intended to eradicate the DC CHALLENGE #10 (Aug. 1986) protective barrier between the twin realities. Earth was being by Dan Mishkin, Curt Swan, attacked from a Disruptor located on the Moon, finally explaining and Terry Austin Cover by Swan and Austin all the lunar threads. From here, Conway explains a lot and then moves things Looking back, Dan Mishkin recalls to BACK forward as the New Gods, who he wrote back in the ’70s, arrive ISSUE, “For my issue, at least, the winces to stop Bork’s Disruptor on the Moon, saving Space Cabby and and smiles tend to collide. The story is defeating Mongul. In Metropolis, Bork’s minions attack Batman just so jam-packed that it takes on an until the Outsiders arrive—but as the issue ends, the Dark Knight, eyes-glazed-over quality in places; yet at his former Outsider teammates, and Dr. Thirteen watch Metropolis the same time, I’m impressed that I found crumble around them. ways of making those scenes make any kind Hoberg and Giordano’s clean art allowed things to look good, of sense at all. And there were some lines matching Conway’s fairly straightforward and tightly plotted story. of dialogue I enjoyed quite a bit.” Given this was issue #10, it was time He handed things off to his frequent collaborator in a story that had to be entitled “All this and World War, Too.” to start tidying things up so events could DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 41

Hand of Fate The goldenhelmeted Golden Age mage in supernatural combat, from DC Challenge #11. Art by Keith Giffen and Dave Hunt. TM & © DC Comics.

build to a climax worthy of the final collaboration. “Yes, I definitely wanted to try to resolve a bunch of threads, and therefore gave up on some ideas of characters I would have liked to bring in (in the text page for the following issue, I wrote about wishing I could create a band of deceased members of the Legion of Super-Heroes, the Legion of Dead Legionnaires). I think that beyond the ‘tidying things up’ impulse, the approach I took also owed to the fact that my ideal for a round-robin story like this would have been to radically shift the direction of the narrative every issue—resolving the bulk of the previous issue’s plot threads along with the cliffhanger, and doing so in a way that pointed somewhere new and exciting. I would have loved it if I could have written an issue #10 that, when put alongside issue #1 (or issue #8, for that matter), did not

appear to even be part of the same series, and that except for the cliffhanger could be read as a standalone story. But that’s me.” Still, Dan had fun with the wide variety of characters already in the mix, from the Green Lantern Corps, the JLA, Titans, and Outsiders, among others. Interestingly, it was the galactic warriors that intrigued him the most. “For reasons that could probably only be untangled by a good therapist, I’m a huge fan of Tomar-Re (now that I think of it, I wonder why I never pitched a Tomar-Re miniseries), so giving him a few panels was a kick,” Mishkin says. “Same with Deadman, although my love of the character is probably easier to understand, given that his original run in Strange Adventures was a masterpiece. Also, who could resist the opportunity to put Enemy Ace and Woozy Winks in the same panel, or the chance to put Changeling in the role of Toto to Starfire’s buxom Judy Garland?” How do you keep Earth and Rann from being merged with a netherworld dan mishkin of demons? Use the shadow Nazi-Earth © Luigi Novi / created a whole lot of issues ago as an Wikimedia Commons. anchor instead. That Earth is unstable, and so the netherworld collapses back onto itself, thus saving the two planets. Curt Swan hated books like this with so many characters, and if given a choice would have preferred avoiding it. Still, he had just come off decades on Superman, and this was an opportunity to revisit old friends, so he graciously accepted the opportunity. “I adore Curt Swan’s work, so while I was initially disappointed not to get paired with an artist I’d never teamed up with before, I sure couldn’t complain about having one more go at seeing him bring a story of mine to life,” Mishkin says. “He did a wonderful job bringing narrative coherence to the seven- and eight- and 11-panel pages I forced him to tackle. And Terry’s inks were great, of course (though, as always, seeing even the best inking job on Curt’s pencils makes me thing about how beautiful those pencils were and how much the comics-reading world would have loved to see what his pre-inked pages looked like).” If you use the Green Lantern Corps, writers seem to feel obligated to use Sinestro, so that rogue GL shows up in time for the cliffhanger. As the story ends, we have “planet Earth in the wrong solar system! Sinestro’s killer world where good old Earth used to be! A headless Superman about to commit murder! A lot of bruised and confused heroes, some of them stuck in the Plane of Holes!”

DC CHALLENGE #11 (Sept. 1986)

by Marv Wolfman, Cary Bates, Keith Giffen, and Dave Hunt Cover by Giffen You would think that after writing Crisis on Infinite Earths, Marv Wolfman would be so exhausted from stories like this he would have begged off. Instead, he gamely stepped up to the plate and did his best. Today, though, he admits to not 42 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

remembering the experience at all. Part of the reason can be attributed to his only plotting the issue and letting Cary Bates handle the dialogue. The mysterious numbers pop up again, as someone finally figured out (or told the creative team) that the numbers are a clue to the name Eli Ellis, a scientist who showed up back in issue #1. Page 11 of this story implies that Ellis is the true father of Floyd, the copyboy who started the whole story by being accidentally whisked to the roof of the Daily Planet building. However, this thread gets ignored completely by the last issue. On the other hand, we get another cool scene of the Spectre straddling worlds (again), and the true villain of the whole series turns out to be Darkseid. Of course, it was Darkseid. Who else? Again, we open with Batman trying to make sense out of the maxiseries. As things are explained, theorized, or advanced, we add Supergirl and Huntress to the fun, along with cameos from Blue Beetle and even ’Mazing Man. In the text pages, I ran a script from Bob Rozakis featuring ’Maze trying to figure out the Challenge. Like Barr and Thomas before him, Wolfman hasn’t gone back to reread the series. “I do smile at it because that sort of free-for-all just isn’t done anymore,” Marv says. “There is no fun for fun’s sake story as everything’s gotten so serious. Comics need to be fun. Smart fun. But fun.”

It did require an extra-sized final issue to tie things together, though. I was fairly certain I could get approval on that, so after we talked the plot, he wrote it up to share with the others. Meanwhile, it was Spring and the book was coming out the week of July 24th, meaning we had to have it written and drawn by June. As a result, rather than go back to artists who previously contributed, I went into “warm body” mode, mixing veterans and recent graduates of the New Talent Showcase program—people who I knew and trusted to get the job done. While Evanier recruited his longtime cohort Dan Spiegle, I gathered the rest of the troops and as script sections arrived, they went out with a ton of reference to the first artist I found. Not an ideal way to wrap up an event or even a normal comic, but once more we were playing beat the clock. I did decide it felt right to bookend the series with a second Ordway cover, and Jerry came through, altering the question mark motif to an exclamation mark. The Phantom Stranger narrates the opening, explaining the whole background of the story that developed,

Da Ordster’s Exclamation! From Heritage’s archives, Jerry Ordway’s original cover art to the 12th and final issue of DC Challenge. TM & © DC Comics.

DC CHALLENGE #12 (Oct. 1986)

bt Mark Evanier, Dan Mishkin, Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Dan Spiegle, Denys Cowan and Rodin Rodriguez, Luke McDonnell and Rick Magyar, Stan Woch and Jan Duursema, Steve Lightle and Gary Martin, Ross Andru and Frank McLaughlin, and Tom Mandrake Cover by Jerry Ordway The notion of all 11 writers collaborating on the conclusion may have sounded wonderful, but by spring 1986, reality had intruded and Evanier had to step in and tie things together largely on his own. He had been reading the books as they came out but was never taking notes, figuring he’d be part of the group discussion to conclude the series, which had grown so unwieldy I feared I had let things get out of hand. “I don’t think it was bad editing at all, because part of the premise was that we were just going to see where this thing went,” Evanier notes. “I did think some writers could have done more to advance the story rather than to complicate it and stick the next guy. I haven’t read it again since we first did it and I might feel different now. I do recall thinking that Gerry Conway understood the idea well and did a good job mopping up some of the problems in his chapter. “The big challenge in wrapping things up was page count,” Evanier adds. “There were just too many things dangling to tie up in the space we had. Given twice as many pages, we could have made it make twice as much sense.” I fondly recall trying to work from home a day here and there to help out in the weeks after my first child, Kate, had arrived. I was pacing the kitchen, avoiding making noise to disturb the slumbering child, as Evanier explained the plot, using a very satisfied tone, by phone. He had sifted through all 11 issues and thought he had it figured it. He went so far as to figure out which short chapters could be handled by some of the other writers. DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 43

In the final letters column, I noted that Amazing Heroes called us exploitive, and a review in The Comics Journal said the maxiseries didn’t make sense. I contest the first assertion and somewhat agree with the second. It was released at a time when DC Comics was in transition as superheroes were undergoing re-evaluation and evolution. The talents who contributed here were also making transitions as Wein left staff and relocated to California, followed soon after by Wolfman. They left behind a changed DC Universe that was giving rise to fresh takes on the Big Three, while off in a corner, Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing was opening the doors to what else could be done in comics much as his and Gibbons’ Watchmen and Frank Miller’s Dark Knight made comics cool in a brand-new way. As a result, in many ways, this maxiseries was a last gasp for an older way of comics, coming at a time where it didn’t necessarily fit with the rest of the line.

Round-Robin for the King In the spirit of DC Challenge, in 2017 DC is commemorating the 100th birthday of Jack “King” Kirby with another round-robin series featuring one of Kirby’s greatest creations, Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth. TM & © DC Comics.

and offering important advice: “History is but a prologue for the rest of your life. Understand it… use it… and never let it be a prologue for the end of your life.” Eli Ellis shows up, but seems to be a demon, and the connection between him and Floyd that was established in the previous issue is ignored. The superheroes save the day by working together, and provide this important lesson to the whole world: Batman: “…working together, each of us supplying help and knowledge to the other…” Metron: “…you were able to destroy the evil. Remember that, my friends… for that is the lesson all mankind could learn. To cooperate there is strength… and only in division can mankind be destroyed.” And the tag is a joke that calls back to the opening of the series, where Floyd, who discovered famous dead celebrities brought back to life in issue #1, runs screaming from a theatrical agency office that supplies celebrity impersonators. Did it make sense? Enough, I suppose. “Personally, I don’t think it worked as well as it could have,” Evanier contends.

44 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

DC Challenge is an interesting footnote from the company’s most explosive decade and one that remains uncollected and forgotten by most readers—but not all. For whatever reason, the series has been fondly recalled by some. Why? I can’t put my finger on it, so I turned to the creators. For Mark Evanier, who first conceived the idea that became an event, “I was told it was a sales success, doing significantly better than the early projections. Insofar as content is concerned, I have mixed feelings. I don’t think some of the participants developed the story so much as they just kept it going. Looking back, I wish we’d set a few more rules… like each writer could only add one new established character into the mix and each writer was assigned to not only solve the cliffhanger that was left for them but also had to resolve one dangling subplot for each one they introduced… or something like that. We should have imposed a bit more order to the proceedings.” Chuck Patton says, “I think the fans who did enjoy it did so because they got to see that the participating artists were also having fun doing the books, and the art showed. Most of us were doing characters we wouldn’t had gotten to draw normally, so that alone was a joy. But I think although the concept was a great idea, the overall story arc suffered from that damn puzzle gimmick in the long run. Maybe if it had a real story structure with a single, pre-determined mystery to solve, rather than being made up as you went along, the series would’ve came off stronger.” Not everyone thinks it has endured. Roy Thomas says, “I never hear any references to it. I think it’s been pretty much forgotten… and after all, even at the time, it was just a stunt. But then, so are a lot of comics series, in every era.” Paul Kupperberg theorizes, “I think I has its fans, and while I’m not inundated with tons of fans wanting me to sign their copies at cons or signings, I can always count on seeing one or two copies at just about any appearance.” “God knows,” Marv Wolfman admits, “it was big and dumb and we were having fun, but it was big and dumb so I’m not sure why anyone else liked it. Glad they do, however.” Follow writer/editor/educator R O B E RT G R E E N B E R G E R a t bobgreenberger.com.

AN INTERVIEW WITH THE DC CHALLENGE’S #1 FAN: AWARD-WINNING SCIENCE-FICTION WRITER MICHAEL A. BURSTEIN everything. I was a fan of Einstein’s, too, and my dad actually met him once when Einstein was hosted by my grandfather in their apartment. I enjoyed Maggin’s characterization of Einstein and liked watching as Einstein froze everything and tried to return everyone to normal reality. I did find it odd that he stranded Jimmy Olsen and Adam Strange on Earth-X, though, as he didn’t seem to care. (Of course, in a later issue we find out that Einstein was not really ROBERT GREENBERGER: What was the appeal of the project? who he appeared to be, but in issue #6 it did seem out of character.) MICHAEL A. BURSTEIN: There are many things that were appealing However, despite how much I liked the issue, I have to say that about the DC Challenge series, apart from the initial round-robin Maggin made the mistake of not actually resolving any of the conception. To be honest, as a teenage reader of the book at the time, plotlines. I was glad when in the next issue, Paul Kupperberg I was less interested in the handoff from one writer-artist team to restored everything else that was going on. From what I’ve another than I am today, now that I’ve gotten to know more heard, Maggin really did mean for the series to start over, about the creators. What appealed to me was the use of but as a reader, I tell you that that would not have the many characters, some rather obscure, from the made any sense. There was a similar attempt to rich history of the DC Universe. I’d always been a fan resolve the perceived problem of too many of DC Comics from as far back as I could remember, characters, too much plot when one writer tried to but it was often more difficult to get ahold of older bring in Sinestro and change the rest of the series issues with characters that were no longer being to a Green Lantern battle. The writers needed to used as often. DC Challenge allowed me to learn understand that in a series like this, you had to about these characters and enjoy their exploits, even resolve as many plot threads that were laid out from if the series was eventually declared out of continuity. the start; you couldn’t just throw them away and In fact, I first encountered one of my favorite expect the audience to be satisfied. DC characters, Dr. Thirteen, in the pages of DC GREENBERGER: Which characters surprised you Challenge. I had never heard of this character before, the most? but his appearance in the series quickly made him michael a. burstein BURSTEIN: I had never heard of B’wana Beast or a character I wanted to learn more about. Congorilla before this series was published, so I Another thing to keep in mind was that DC guess I was surprised by them when Len Wein brought them into issue Challenge was being published at approximately the same time as Crisis #2. I’ve since heard that some of the other writers thought these on Infinite Earths (COIE). Because the entire point of COIE was to take characters were ridiculous. But again, for what I loved about the apart the multiverse and create a new universe, it was a rather dark series—a loving romp through the DC Universe—it worked for me. series. Characters died, worlds died, and nothing would be the same GREENBERGER: Were there characters you missed? anymore. At the time, as excited as I was to read COIE, I also saw it as a BURSTEIN: If by missed, you mean were there characters I would story that was taking away my childhood and forcing me to grow up, have liked to have seen in DC Challenge, yes. The Inferior Five. If you as hokey as that sounds. But DC Challenge was different. Even thought think about it, this would have been the perfect showcase for them. the storyline led us to places like the Nazi-dominated Earth-X and the GREENBERGER: Does it hold up to rereading three decades later? question of the souls of aliens ending up in demons, the book itself was at heart a romp. I could read it out of sheer enjoyment and not worry If so, why? BURSTEIN: For me, absolutely. I can pick it up at any time, read it from about what it meant for the lives of the characters I had come to love. beginning to end, and still enjoy it as much as I did when I first read it. Finally, there was the cliffhanger ending of each book that I’m not sure how current readers who were not steeped in the let me try to guess what would come next, and the humor that 1970s–1980s DC Universe would view it. However, I expect they pervaded the series, even when it got serious. It was, and would find it as delightful as I do. One of the nice things about a continues to be, a fun read. series like DC Challenge was the need to assume that the readers Oh, and the numbers! How could I forget the numbers? knew almost nothing about the characters. I think anyone could The whole “calculated risk” riddle, which no one could figure out, pick it up and get a feel for who the characters are and what’s which led to those numbers taking on so many different, bizarre going on, even if they don’t have the same nostalgia I did. meanings… until someone figured out (or was told) to add them GREENBERGER: Does your favoring this series over far superior up and got the name Eli Ellis, a minor character from the first titles make you question your own sanity? book. So we find out Ellis is the key to the whole thing, but then BURSTEIN: Ha! No, it doesn’t. In fact, let me turn the question there was that business where an alien says he was doing this for around. As much as I also enjoy and appreciate titles such as his son, Eli Ellis… and then that never got explained. I think that’s Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, or The Killing Joke, in what the one thing I would fix in the whole series if I could. way should these be considered superior to DC Challenge? I do There was also the fact that the series was published on think those three titles are brilliant and moved superhero storytelling higher-quality paper than most other comics at the time. into incredible new directions. But those titles are also brutal, That made it seem like it had to be special. grim, and depressing, and pushed superheroes away from family In short, there was a lot to make this series appealing. entertainment and more into the sphere of adult fiction. I would GREENBERGER: What did you expect from it? suggest that someone who “enjoys” The Killing Joke more than DC BURSTEIN: I’m honestly not sure what I expected from it when I Challenge is the person who needs their sanity questioned. picked up the first issue. I think I was hoping for a lot of team-ups One final thought about this series. If any comic-book series of characters I liked. I was not disappointed. needed a strong editorial hand, DC Challenge was it. As much as GREENBERGER: Did it deliver? you might view the series as one of your lesser accomplishments, BURSTEIN: Absolutely, it delivered. The comic was fun and I think DC Challenge displays your incredible strengths as an editor enjoyable to read. in keeping a cohesive storyline together with a project that at its GREENBERGER: Do you have a favorite issue or creative team? very core was designed to, if I may use the word, challenge the BURSTEIN: As a budding physicist at the time, I was delighted by concept of a standard plot and narrative. issue #6, in which Elliot S! Maggin brought Albert Einstein in to fix I’ve known Michael A. Burstein for quite some time now. He’s an accomplished science teacher and science textbook editor in addition to being a Hugo- and Nebula Award-nominated author. He specializes in short stories and is a major comic-book fan. What I could never put my finger on was why he loved DC Challenge so much, so I decided to finally confront him.

DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 45

46 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 47

by B

60# Pub Web Gloss. 12pt C1S. Perfect-bound. We called it the “Dark Knight Format” and later changed it to the “Prestige Format.” I think Marvel had another name for it. And some others may have called it the “Squarebound Format.” But when I was talking to the people at Ronalds Printing, it boiled down to the specs for the interior paper, the cover, and the binding. None of these specs were brand new to the printing of comic books. The interior pages were on virtually the same paper that was used for comic-book covers. The cardstock cover, glossy on the outside and uncoated on the inside, had been used on the small assortment reprint collections that had appeared over the years. And the “perfect” or square-back binding was familiar to readers who recalled DC’s early Annuals and the 100-Page Super Spectaculars. But the first time we put all three together was for The Dark Knight Returns, and that’s how the format got the name. I could go into a long story about how this format was one more step in the sophistication of the printing of comic books. How, after half a century of printing them on letterpresses with their “giant” (60 dpi) dots and very limited palette, the industry discovered offset printing and the ability to double the number of colors and halve the size of the dots. The “Baxter Format” and the “Mando Format”—those first forays into better printing of regular comic books—were the first steps that led to the upscale look of The Dark Knight Returns and the many books that followed it. This combined with earlier work with painted color and “full-process color separations” (as opposed to the “hand-separations” that were the mainstay of the industry for 50-plus years) on Ronin, which allowed Frank Miller and Lynn Varley to refine their skills and maximize the look of the material. I could tell you about meetings with color-separation companies and paper manufacturers and countless discussions with the folks at Ronalds about how to get the look we wanted for each new project that utilized the format, but, frankly, it’s not all that interesting. The printed results speak for themselves; rest assured that there was a lot of effort behind the scenes that got them to look that way. So, what to talk about instead? Some amusing anecdotes? Printing at Ronalds was a 24/7 operation. They did not just print comic books in the plant; there were plenty of magazines, advertising materials, and the like that ran on their presses. You would think, then, that if I was going there to do a press okay on a job, that I had a pretty good shot that it would be during normal waking hours. Somehow, that was rarely the case. It always seemed like I was in the plant in the middle of the night! As a result, I became good friends with Larry, the press foreman of the night shift. Larry’s voice and cadence always reminded me of Yogi Bear— with a French accent—and I would make jokes about bringing back the proofs and a pic-a-nic basket.

The “Dark Knight Format”? Frank Miller’s heralded miniseries not only revolutionized Batman and superhero comics, it also gave birth to a new format for graphic literature. TM & © DC Comics.

48 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

ob Rozakis

Where standard procedure was for the customer to wait in the lounge for Larry to bring samples that he had already reviewed, I was standing next to him at the press, “noodling” the colors. (“A little less yellow here; pump up the cyan a bit there.”) Larry loved the term. One time when one of the upper-echelon execs came through and saw me, he asked Larry, in French, what I was doing there. “Noodling,” Larry replied with a laugh. Frank Miller and Lynn Varley were the first creators who came on a press okay. Not surprisingly, the press run started in the evening. The three of us sat in the lounge and Larry brought in proofs to review. Since the presses ran at high speed and could turn out many thousands of 16-page sections an hour, okaying the color quickly was very important. Since Lynn had devoted many hours to painting the pages, I let her spend time with Larry, making minor adjustments to one spot here, another spot there. Larry was enjoying it and so was Lynn. Frank, on the other hand, was exhausted and, as the hours went by and Lynn and Larry continued to fiddle with the colors, he just wanted to go to the hotel and go to sleep. Finally, at about 2:30 in the morning, Lynn announced that the pages were perfect. “That’s good,” I told her, “because the press run is almost done.” “What do you mean?” Lynn asked, aware that we had a print run of hundreds of thousands for the book. “I okayed the color hours ago,” I said. “We’re not throwing out all those sections that are printed. But I’ll have Larry mark what’s coming off now to be used for the copies of the book you and Frank get.” One of the things you should realize about printing is that every color you see on the page is a combination of dots of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. Those four colors are the only true solids (unless a custom fifth color—a fluorescent green or metallic gold, for example— is used). Any paint or dye that a colorist uses is scanned and separated into some combination of the four primaries. After the printing of the first issue of Dark Knight, Lynn was concerned because some of the grays she was using were not reproducing as she had painted them. To help her, I had her put together a paint sample palette with all the colors she was using. I had the color separator scan it, then had the folks at Ronalds print it. Lynn got a color chart that enabled her to see how the colors would print and painted the rest of the series with an eye towards what would come off the press. Another thing that Frank and Lynn became aware of was how the printing of one page affected another. The books were printed in 16-page sections and the positioning of each page on the sheet had some significance. They realized that if Lynn wanted to adjust the tone of a gray on page 2, she would also be affecting the colors on page 15. To minimize the effect, Frank asked for and received the page layout for the press and deliberately paced DK #4 so that the scenes with specific colors would be side-by-side. After the printed books arrived at the DC offices, I was discussing the story with one of the other staff members. “Did you notice,” he asked, “that the pacing in the last issue seemed a little odd?” “Yes,” I said. “Frank did it to follow the press configuration so Lynn could get the colors she wanted.” My late nights in the Ronalds plant were not only when we were printing issues of Dark Knight. As we expanded the use of the Prestige Format, more and more books required press okays. (This was not the case with the regular comics; they were limited to three sizes

BobRo’s Home Away from Home

of dot—25%, 50%, and 75%—and solid. As I would tell creators who asked why I wasn’t doing a press okay on everything, “If the 25% dot prints as a 25% dot, everything is right.”) Few of these books, however, had long print runs, so the press okays would be three or four hours apart. My Ronalds counterpart, Angelo Messina, and I would come to the plant, do a press okay, get something to eat, and come back for the next one. As I said earlier, these press okays were more often than not in the middle of the night and there weren’t many places to go. There was, however, a Tim Horton’s Donut Shop, and every time we went the same woman was behind the counter. We would come in, order coffee and donuts, then sit and talk till we got a call from Larry to come back. Then we’d bounce up, get a dozen donuts to bring back to the guys in the plant, and be on our way. One time, Rick Taylor filled in for me on a trip to Montreal and ended up on the late-night trip to Tim Horton’s. When they walked in, the woman said something in French to Angelo and he replied. She then said something else to him while giving Rick the once-over. “What was that about?” Rick asked. “She thinks Bob and I are spies because we’re always here in the middle of the night. She asked me, ‘Where’s the other guy?’ I told her you were his replacement and she told me to be careful.” Doing a press okay for one of the Prestige books was not easy. We would do our best to match original painted art, but within those parameters came the realities of printing on paper. In most cases, we would be matching the printing against the proofs provided by the separators. In a couple of cases, we brought the original art to the plant and used that as our basis for matching. Most of the artists were quite understanding that I (or Rick or whoever did the okays) would do the best we could to match the originals. On a few occasions, I met with the artist before going to Montreal to get an idea of what he or she felt was most important to the overall look of the page. There was one time that the artist insisted that one particular shade of light blue, in one panel, was the most important part of the page. “I don’t care what you have to do to the rest of the page,” I was told, “as long as I get that blue!” And so, with Larry saying, “But the other colors…,” that’s what we went for.

And then there was the artist who was so upset with how his book printed that he called Jenette Kahn and Paul Levitz and insisted the entire print run be trashed and reprinted. “It looks nothing at all like my originals,” he raved. I was summoned to Paul’s office and questioned about doing the color okay. “I have no idea whether it looks like the originals,” I told them, “because I’ve never seen them! We matched the separator’s proofs, which were done from a set of slides.” Levitz was puzzled. “He didn’t want to trust his original art to the mails, so he had some friend of his take photos of all the pages. That’s what he sent us, that’s what we separated, and that’s what we matched. If it doesn’t look like his originals, maybe he should have gotten a better photographer… or sent us the art!” As you might have guessed, we did not trash the print run. Possibly my worst late-night visit to the printing plant was the time I worked a full day in the office, took an evening flight to Montreal, checked into the hotel at about 7:30, slept for a couple of hours, checked out of the hotel at midnight, and spent the rest of the night doing press okays. Then I took a 7:00 a.m. flight back to New York and went to work. At about 1:00 that afternoon, I was talking with Paul Levitz and realized he was staring at me with a perplexed look on his face. “I’m not making any sense, am I?” I asked. He shook his head and said, “You need to go home and go to sleep.” Over the years, we changed paper stocks from time to time; there were some artists who wanted a “flat” look rather than the glossy appearance that was common to the format. One time, I even had the ink manufacturer create a set of “semi-gloss” inks so we could get a look midway between glossy and flat. After that book came out, I got a call from Alison Gill, who was then my counterpart at Marvel, saying that she had an artist who wanted the same look for one of his projects. When I told her to call Angelo and say she wanted the semi-gloss inks, she said, “You’re kidding, right?” “Not at all,” I replied, “and when you win a printing award for how it looks, just remember who came up with the idea.” They did. And she did.

BOB ROZAKIS, former production director of DC Comics, is also a former DC editor and writer and is the co-creator of ’Mazing Man and Hero Hotline. He is beloved among Bronze Age readers as DC’s “Answer Man.” Bob will return to our pages in BI #100 with his recollections of driving the DC Comicmobile. All photos in this article are courtesy of Bob. Special thanks to Rick Taylor for assisting with photo IDs.

DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 49

Photo by Sammi Rozakis.

(top) DC’s Pat Caldon and Bob Rozakis at a ceremony in Montreal, where they picked up some of DC’s 100-plus awards for printing excellence, most of which came from Prestige Format books and graphic novels. Photo by Maurice Vezinet. (center top) Bob Rozakis cutting the ribbon in 1992 as Quebecor began using a new press dedicated to printing comics. Photo by Pierre Vidricaire. (center bottom) Gabe Sauro and Angelo Messina of Quebecor flank Rozakis at the proofing table next to one of the presses in a picture taken the same day as the ribbon cutting above. “I spent plenty a night there,” Bob reveals. Photo by Pierre Vidricaire. (bottom) Rene DuAusoleil, Bill Godfrey, Pat Caldon, and Stephanie Bailey examine one of the presses. Photo by Bob Rozakis.

Electric Warrior, a DC Comics publication that spanned a brilliant yet brief 18 issues, is one of those rare and overlooked science-fiction gems that could easily be rediscovered by a larger contemporary audience through a reprinting of the series. Doug Moench, a Bronze Age icon, is the caliber of writer whose major works for Marvel and DC (Master of Kung Fu, Moon Knight, Batman) still set the standard for superior comic-book writing. Together, this comic and its writer offer texts that are complex, nuanced, and most definitely intertwined. For the uninitiated, Electric Warrior is set in the future on a planet that may be Earth. One of the lead characters is Derek Two-Shadow, who escaped from the City years earlier to stay in the Wilderness, where the people who live there, the Primmies, have shunned the use of all technology. Meanwhile, 9-03, the other lead, is a Lek, a robotic warrior who defends the City for the Elites and finds himself suddenly gaining consciousness when he meets and falls in love with the elderly Zig woman known as Kinsolving, who lives below the City in the Warrens. In the first eight issues of the series, one watches the twin conflicts of Derek and 9-03 unfold until their storylines coalesce with issue #9 (Jan. 1987). With this plot refresher (or primer) in mind, please be sure to dive into your many long boxes and dig out those Electric Warrior issues (or visit your LCS and pick them up) as you prepare to read a tale that will provide you with greater insight into this daring comic book and its unique writer.

ELECTRIC LINES OF CONNECTEDNESS

Synchronicity—roughly speaking, psychoanalyst Carl Jung defines it as an acausal series of connecting events, or meaningful coincidences, that are not as random as they may initially appear to the person who experiences them. In Doug Moench’s view, the less you go looking for synchronicity to occur, the more it happens in your life, and I definitely agree with him as I feel like some sort of mystical energy field has connected me to this article. In other words, I believe that I was always destined to write it, starting several years ago during a challenging summer of doctoral coursework at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, when I curiously picked up all 18 issues of Electric Warrior at a nearby comic-book store. Immediately, I became enthralled with Doug and artist Jim Baikie’s story involving a robot who learns he has a soul, a longhaired dreamer outcast from the City, fearsome Genetrix mutants, pointy-headed Zigs, pretentious Elites, and terrible medical experimentations to create a cybernetic warrior who will supposedly protect them all from a mysterious otherworldly threat. Today, I realize that I was not only working on papers for my courses but prepping for this very article as well… Flash-forward several years later, and I am contacting Doug via the safe distance of email to request an interview. He soon agreed to a telephone conversation. However, when I saw his number, I recognized a local area code. Although I had heard years ago that Doug had lived somewhere in my area, I was still amazed to consider the fact that the man who wrote the poignant tale of Lek 9-03 and Derek Two-Shadow could exist so impossibly close to me. Feeling ambitious yet tentative, I asked Doug for a live interview, but he politely wrote back that he couldn’t grant me one right away as he and his wife Debbie were recovering from a serious bout with the flu. As I waited several weeks to contact him again, the synchronicity

Machine Man Jim Baikie’s electrifying cover to Doug Moench’s ’80s sci-fi saga, Electric Warrior. TM & © Doug Moench and Jim Baikie/DC Comics.

50 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

by T o m

Powers

continued between Doug and me as fellow comic-book fans told me, on several different occasions, that they personally knew Doug, went to high school with his son, or even gave him a helpful car ride once. Most notably, everyone said he was quite a lively, energetic, and eccentric guy, so one can imagine my excitement (and heart rate) rising as I contemplated what a face-to-face interview with the man himself concerning a complex sci-fi comic such as Electric Warrior would entail. Fortunately, Doug and I finally set a date for the interview, and, on one sunny, late December 2016 Friday, my wife Amanda and I took a pleasant afternoon drive to his house, navigating down country-like Pennsylvania back roads while munching on a bag of homemade Christmas cookies all the way to his beautiful residence. Talk about something out of Lord of the Rings, but Doug’s home is the type of dwelling where you would think a genius writer would be inspired to compose his wonderful stories: a mid-19th-Century farmhouse that he and Debbie have lovingly restored and expanded. Outside their home, Debbie greeted us with a kindly smile, welcomed us inside their delightful residence, and guided us to Doug, who was waiting for us in his study. Amanda and I then shyly stepped into that massive, warmly sun-lit room, which was filled with furniture and books, and we found Doug sitting in a quintessential writer’s pose while he was thoughtfully reading a book in his comfortable recliner. He then led us past his spacious kitchen, where he has a leather booth roomy enough to hold a party of ten, and brought us into another impressive room. In the center of that area, we all sat down upon his large brown leather couch, before which, appropriately enough, sits a glass table that is held up by twin stone gargoyles. And then there were the books: thousands of them, meticulously alphabetized along the many shelves surrounding us in Doug’s rec room, and the second floor, to which one can ascend to peruse even more books via his gorgeous spiraling oak staircase. Think of the dancehall scene in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast or the immense library in the Doctor’s time machine, as seen in the Doctor Who episode “Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS,” and you can begin to picture the immensity of Doug’s well-amassed collection that would put any reputable bookstore to shame. By the way, all of this comfortable splendor was developed by an architect working according to Doug’s inspired vision for the space. Certainly, he has crafted an area of knowledge, literature, and countless worlds to which one can escape, the type of setting that Kinsolving herself once worked when she was a librarian, as revealed in Electric Warrior #11 (Mar. 1987). In a relaxed fashion, a blue jeans and moccasinwearing Doug began lighting up the first of which would prove to be an endless array of cigarettes and began to live up to his reputation as a mighty raconteur. He then confirmed to us that this is the very home in which he wrote the entirety of Electric Warrior and where he and Jim Baikie discussed initial ideas and sketches for the comic. On this note, Doug revealed the backstory of how he first met Jim, who had traveled to New York from Scotland in order to visit the DC Comics offices. As they first talked, Doug found himself really liking Jim, appreciating his enthusiasm to make it into American comics and connecting with him on the fact that Doug’s mother is Scottish and he had spent time in that country when he was younger. Doug told us, “Since we were hitting it off, I invited him to leave the hotel where he was staying and come over to my house for several days, selling him on the prospect of it being a great adventure. At first, Jim was timid about staying at my place, but he came over anyway, and he was blown away.” As Doug swept up his arm toward

Eclectic Warrior (top) Doug Moench, as sketched by Amanda Powers, wife of this article’s writer, during the Powers’ December 2016 interview at Casa Moench. (bottom) Electric Warrior gets the cover spot on the May 1986 DC Releases comicshop newsletter. TM & © Doug Moench and Jim Baikie/DC Comics.

DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 51

JIM BAIKIE’S THOUGHTS ON ELECTRIC WARRIOR At the time when Electric Warrior debuted in 1986, Jim Baikie had what was one of the movies he loved watching. It was Koyaanisqatsi—which means ‘life out of balance.’ Jim thought already gained a British fan base through working with Alan it had a futuristic feel. Philip Glass’ music for this mesmerizing Moore on the 2000 AD science-fiction strip Skizz, which offered film is very repetitive, but with the visuals, it works very well.” a touching, street-level lost alien story comparable to the film In regard to his subsequent collaboration over E.T. Soon afterward, Jim was introduced to an American the course of the series, Jim added, “My creative comic-book audience when the pair collaborated process with Doug was a close one done over the on a two-part Vigilante story (“Father’s Day”) for phone (no computer in those days).” With any issues #17 and 18 (May–June 1985). It is no given issue of Electric Warrior, one can see that surprise, then, that when it came to artistically this comic is both a fully realized later-1980s realizing the amazing world of Electric Warrior science-fiction world that offers both a more and all of Doug Moench’s ambitious concepts, egalitarian approach to gender relations and a Jim’s pencils (and inks for the first five issues; scathing criticism of social inequalities. On this Pablo Marcos, Dan Adkins, and Dennis Janke topic of Electric Warrior’s diverse cast of characters, inked the rest of the series) were the perfect fit Jim revealed, “My favorite characters were with his highly detailed rendering of robots, Quintana and the Zigs. The first because I like futuristic architecture and hardware, and, of drawing women, and, at that time, comics course, spaceships. On this note, Doug said to Headline jim baikie had very few women in them, and she was me, “As I saw Jim’s pages for Electric Warrior Filler type for more modern looking than the Charlie’s come in, I wrote toward those strengths.” placement Angels females I had been drawing. The Zigs because they Through ouronly. online correspondence, Jim, via the generous were a threatened group, and I side with the underdog.” assistance wife Wendy, was able to share some of his Final copy of to his come. Moreover, in terms of his approach to illustrating Electric memories of working on this comic. Responding to my Final copyofto come. Warrior, Jim explained, “Once Doug had given me the first question how he became Doug’s collaborator on Electric script, I knew what he wanted it to look like. My imagination Warrior, Jimtosaid, “In 1986, I won a Winston Churchill Final copy come. is what drives me to draw, but basically I just watched movies. traveling scholarship to study the comics industry in the US. Final I tend to start with an ordinary boat or plane reference and I metcopy Dougtoincome. DC’s New York offices, and he invited me to then just keep adding stuff to it until it looks unique.” his home, where we ©2016 ??? discussed future projects. We watched Additionally, Jim provided insight into his illustrative several movies together. I can’t remember which ones, but all process for the comic: “I remember that I changed from had a futuristic feel.” During my interview with Doug, working with a pen to a brush and got a real lift from that.” I showed him Jim’s comments, and he remarked, “I know

the large windows behind him, where we could see his fantasy-forest backyard, he added, “Jim loves this house. This is funny story: He was showing me photos of his home, which is located on the Orkney Islands, and how he is proud of his one tree. Since he came from that type of environment, when he saw my trees, he was in awe of them!”

AN EMIGRATION TO DC AND THE BIRTH OF ELECTRIC WARRIOR

When I asked Doug how he came to create Electric Warrior, he first provided the details concerning his departure from Marvel circa 1983: “When I quit Marvel, I hated leaving Moon Knight and Master of Kung Fu, but Jim Shooter drove me to it. He didn’t think I’d leave, but I did.” In particular, Doug relayed an anecdote of how Shooter wished for him to kill off Shang-Chi and replace him with a ninja character, a request that he vehemently opposed, specifically for the logical reason that Master of Kung Fu is about a Chinese character, not a Japanese one, which this questionable revamp idea would have entailed. Doug subsequently embraced an excellent opportunity with DC Comics. He leaned forward to explain, “We worked out this thing where I would mostly create new properties for DC that were creator-controlled and semi-owned. In the meantime, as I developed those ideas, I had to keep writing to pay the bills. So when DC showed me a wall of their comics that were being published and asked me, ‘What do you want to write in terms of our existing books?’ I told them Batman and World’s Finest.” Although Doug wrote the latter comic for a short stint (issues #289–292, Mar.–June 1983), he claimed, “I hated the idea of World’s Finest because Batman and Superman together just doesn’t work. Denny O’Neil once said to me that Superman is the only one who can destroy the world by listening hard. For me, the idea is that Batman has a better brain, and so it’s harder to come up with excuses for how he can get himself out of a predicament.” He continued, “Then I received a phone call from a woman saying, ‘Doug Moench, this is Hollywood calling: Please hold.’ So I got sidetracked into 52 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

writing screenplays and TV shows. Afterwards, everything for DC got delayed as I was sucked into more Batman and Hollywood.” In 1986, Doug at last presented two new original creations from his fertile mind to a DC Comics readership: Electric Warrior and Lords of the Ultra-Realm. For the former, according to the letters page for issue #1 (May 1986), he put together a 23-page proposal. Doug elaborated, “When I finally found time to do the original thing at DC, the first comic I worked on, I believe, was Electric Warrior. I wrote up a proposal just so they would know what was planned to keep the reader constantly surprised by its ever-shifting storyline. The metamorphosis of the characters were in that original write-up.” He added, “It was designed to be one mind-f*ck after another. And yes, I was doing it to myself, too. I keep telling myself, ‘I’m going to pull the rug out from under the reader while maintaining consistency.’ That’s what Dick Giordano loved about it. Most proposals were just one page or two. In fact, he made 50 copies of mine and showed everyone, bragging, ‘This is what a proposal looks like!’ ” Doug believes that his decision to structure Electric Warrior with a series of game-changing radical twists was the right way to write the book, for he admitted, “I clung to the hope and notion that these choices would increase the readers’ intrigue rather than have them think, ‘This is going too far.’ ” He added, “The proposal didn’t explain how long the mise en scéne would take before shifting to something else. I probably didn’t know at the time what would be good for three issues versus three pages. A lot of it never got done.” For Doug, meticulously crafting such an extensive storyline for Electric Warrior was mostly beneficial to him. To explain, he told us about how he often composed his comic-book scripts according to the organic process of automatic writing. With a complexly plotted book such as Electric Warrior, which is filled with substantial character development, plot twists, and story arcs, however, Doug revealed that in order for the work to stay true to his original vision, he had to stick to his pre-self-ordained structure—even if it meant killing off sympathetic characters such as

Rektek, the Primmies’ leader, in issue #6 (Oct. 1986). Regarding this choice, he commented, “When it came time to kill off Rektek, I asked myself, ‘Do I have to do this?’ I was very interested in his character, but since the plot had been pre-planned, I knew killing him off was the right choice for the good of the comic. I was into automatic writing but also enslaved to the plotline.” Upon hearing this, I asked Doug if he found himself to be like the ultimately combined yet conflicted Derek Two-Shadow/9-03 in dealing with this internal writer’s struggle, and he agreed to this comparison with a knowing smile. Sticking with this chord of discussing Electric Warrior’s bold plot developments, I brought up the subject of Doug destroying 9-03 in Electric Warrior #7 (Nov. 1986), asking him if he feared the fans would react adversely to this narrative twist. He replied, “No, because I knew it would be a big shock but also the right choice since the comic was about radical things occurring. I clung to the hope that this decision would increase the readers’ intrigue rather than having them think, ‘This is going too far.’” I then remarked to him that, in many ways, Electric Warrior #9’s depiction of the 9-03-Derek Two-Shadow amalgamation truly felt like “the real first issue” of the series, as promised by that issue’s cover, and he replied, “When I was writing that story, I thought to myself, ‘Wait until the readers find out what this will come into!’ ” As for Doug’s intended audience for Electric Warrior, he explained, “The comic doesn’t have ‘Suggested for Mature Readers’ on its cover. It’s for older readers, yet there is nothing in the comic that would be bad for younger ones.”

I then cheekily brought up the fact that it is suggested on pages 21–22 of Electric Warrior #1 that Quintana is visibly turned on (and potentially committing an autoerotic act) by her Holocorder’s images of Derek Two-Shadow and Amber Brightstar making love, but Doug nonchalantly responded, “If a ten-year old is not going to be corrupted by that ambiguous scene, then it’s okay.” Speaking of controversial imagery appearing in Electric Warrior, I must point out that at a later point in our quite fluid conversation, we were flipping through some issues of the comic, and Doug specifically paused at the image of a flayed Derek Two-Shadow being horribly transformed into a cybernetic warrior on page 15 of issue #9. In reaction, he mischievously uttered, “Uh-oh, I did the crucifixion.” After he relayed a hilarious story to us about how his 12-yearold self caused his Episcopalian confirmation minister to question his faith as a result of Doug’s insistent questioning of religious dogma, we returned to that loaded image. Doug then remarked, “Look, if there were a real Jesus, then there is no one I would aspire to be more like. I just don’t think that there was that person. I have nothing against Jesus except when he is perverted by hardcore people waving guns.” This comment inspired me to ask him, “Does this image mean that Two-Shadow is Jesus to you?” “Yup,” Doug succinctly replied before adding, “For this page, I probably told Jim Baikie to look up religious works, but it’s also influenced by the fact that I was in the hospital for spinal surgery when I was young. I remember the board on which they stretch out your arm to stick things in it and that, if you stretch out both arms, it makes a crucifix.”

Holocorder Turn-On From issue #1, pages 21–22, Quintana connects with her viewing choice. TM & © Doug Moench and Jim Baikie/DC Comics.

DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 53

Sparks Unplugged Behind the scenes of Electric Warrior, as penned by Doug Moench in this two-page lettercol from issue #1, featuring character developmental art by Jim Baikie. TM & © Doug Moench and Jim Baikie/DC Comics.

WHAT’S IN AN ELECTRIC WARRIOR CHARACTER’S NAME?

As we talked for timeless hours and Doug’s cigarette smoke deeply permeated the air with its rich, seductive toxicity, our conversation evolved into an exhilarating discussion about his thought process behind the names of Electric Warrior’s diverse group of characters. Regarding Derek TwoShadow, I first asked Doug, “Where did the Two-Shadow name come from?” and he replied, “Foreshadowing for what he will become—an amalgamated electric warrior with 9-03.” He added, “Derek Two-Shadow is an extension of myself and my own beliefs. When I was a kid playing cowboys and Indians, I always insisted on being the Indian. They were so much cooler with their long hair in contrast to the cowboys’ short hair, their bows instead of six-shooters, their feathers and moccasins instead of boots, and their fringe on leggings instead of blue jeans—although I loved the latter. So Derek and all the people living in the Wilderness definitely represented the Native Americans for me.” Then we chatted about 9-03. For the first digit in the character’s name, Doug commented, “I don’t know if was in my mind when I was coming up with 9-03, but John Lennon talks about the number nine all of the time. I believe it was the address where his aunt lived. He also had the song ‘Revolution 9’ on the Beatles’ White Album.” The “03” part of the Lek’s name, however, proved to be more elusive, as we prompted Doug to recall what the numerals represented. He started to remember that it had something to do with the three parts of the character’s gradual development in Electric Warrior. With this clue in mind,

54 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

we easily pegged the first part as referring to 9-03’s original mode as an automaton Lek. Gradually, we saw the second phase as him gaining consciousness when he fell in love with Kinsolving, which led to us concluding that the third part of the numeral foreshadowed 9-03’s shared existence with Derek Two-Shadow. As we cracked Doug’s memory codes during this enlightening part of the interview, I experienced a dualistic perspective on the moment. The part of me who is genuinely a diehard fan of Electric Warrior felt ecstatic to learn about these hitherto unrevealed elements of Doug’s conception for the 9-03 character. Simultaneously, I knew I had to maintain a quasijournalistic head in copying down the details and eventually relaying them to you, my fellow BI reader. When we next pondered the meaning of Kinsolving’s name and her function in Electric Warrior’s narrative, Doug mentioned, “Her name is about solving the mystery of kin and genealogy. She’s old enough that she isn’t as devolved as the rest of the Zigs.” Furthermore, in regard to 9-03 and Kinsolving’s May-December romance (or the reverse if one considers that 9-03 is actually a few hundred years old), Doug commented, “I had probably seen something about African or Japanese culture where they revere their women while Americans make them a hag. So, in the case of Kinsolving’s advanced age, I said to myself, ‘Let me correct that for my fellow Americans.” We next discussed Quintana, and Doug said, “There is a place in Southeastern Mexico called Quintana Roo. It’s the kind of name that sticks in your ear. I might have been thinking about that, and it came through in the

naming of her character.” Upon hearing this, I commented to Doug that it appears that he often came across many distinct ideas through reading, and he remarked that he would indeed often read about something, and it would stick in his head for him to use later in his own writing. I subsequently said to Doug that Quintana apparently starts out as a strong character in Electric Warrior, yet she gets sidetracked by the narrative in that she loses her mind, but she later gets better. Doug responded that she was “unsympathetic and then becomes sympathetic.” He added, “Quintana turns out to be the bad guy, and then it turns out she’s not really bad. You actually should be interviewing my son,” he added with a laugh. “He’s read the comic five times.” Regarding Doug’s son, Derek, having a strong affinity for Electric Warrior, the author gradually revealed that the character is actually named after him. Derek was only three years old when Electric Warrior debuted, and so Doug believes that the comic helped to shape his son’s identity. In fact, Derek often says to Doug, “Dad, every time I read Electric Warrior, I find out how great it is!” Currently, Derek, like Derek Two-Shadow, has long hair, and he is teaching English and writing in Portugal, where he lives with his Swedish wife, who is a professional cellist. Doug remarked, “It’s synchronicity that my son turned out the way he did because he read the comics. He reveres all life. Derek’s wife started him on vegetarianism. Now he’s converted, and when she wants to eat fish, he gives her a look. He wears no leather products. Heaven, if there’s a mosquito in his home, he lets it out! And he’s obsessed with ’80s synth sounds, so as he builds his customized electronics, he’s becoming this tech guy even though he was a nature guy.” As I listened to these points about Derek, I pictured Derek Two-Shadow himself experiencing them in the pages of Electric Warrior, thinking that the son’s lifestyle proves the adage that truth is indeed stranger than (or, in his case, shaped by) fiction. In regard to Magistrate Marder, the City’s morally questionable leader, Doug revealed that his name contains a paradoxical meaning relative to his character, as one can either view him as a “martyr,” in that he makes many sacrifices for the so-called survival of his world, or as a murderer, since he commands the Leks to kidnap many of the Primmie males from the Wilderness in order to subject them to the Synthoid Project’s experimentations to create cybernetic warriors, which results in mutilating or even killing them. Yet there is also his sympathetic side as he refuses to give into a pleading Amber Brightstar’s request on pages 9–10 of Electric Warrior #16 (Aug. 1987) to turn her into a cybernetic warrior so she can be with the dramatically transformed Derek Two-Shadow. On this choice, Doug commented, “Marder doesn’t want Amber to be corrupted as he had been, and he is trying to be selfless by not hurting her the way Derek had been hurt.” He added, “The man is nonetheless indicative of the hierarchy of elite societies. The elites are always on top. In Electric Warrior, the Elites are literally on top as they live in the high-rises of the City. Consequently, I got accused of being a commie for writing this!” As for Amber Brightstar, Derek Two-Shadow’s oft-suffering lover, Doug said, “She was probably born when there was a bright star. That’s a decent comicbook name. Subconsciously, ‘bright’ is always a good thing. As for ‘star’— why not?” We last talked about Simon Soaring, Derek’s rival in the Wilderness, and Doug commented, “The ‘Simon’ part is Anglo-Saxon in tone. ‘Soaring,’ which is Native-American sounding, was ironic for the character because he’s doing the opposite. There’s also the instances of him taunting Amber and Derek in earlier issues. Maybe he wants to soar but ends up failing.”

CROSSED CIRCUITS OF CREATIVITY

When I asked Doug if he saw any similarities occurring between Electric Warrior and the film Robocop, which came out the following year, in July 1987, he responded, “Robocop is actually Deathlok, but it doesn’t mean they stole the idea when it came out. At the same time, one of the screenwriters has admitted to reading comic books.” Doug subsequently revealed, “I have seen things since then that have been stolen. They aren’t even hiding it anymore! There’s that long dialogue scene in The Matrix where Agent Smith is talking about how humans are the disease and they are the cure. When I saw that, I said to my wife, ‘Boy, that’s familiar. I think I wrote that.’ My brain wouldn’t let go of it. I finally discovered that I wrote it in League of Batmen. I found the word balloons and learned that they practically stole it verbatim from that comic.” Since Doug was the co-creator of Deathlok with Rich Buckler in 1974, I asked whether he wanted to return to some of that comic book’s themes with Electric Warrior over a decade later, and he replied, “It turns out that I stole stuff, too, but I didn’t consciously know it. The band T.Rex have an album called Electric Warrior, which I had to have seen at one time. I later found the album, bought it, and found out that ‘Bang a Gong,’ which I always liked, was one of the songs on it. It never really sank in.” He added,

BARBARA KESEL ON CO-EDITING ELECTRIC WARRIOR While Doug Moench served two roles working on Electric Warrior as writer and editor, he depended on the strong efforts of associate editor Barbara Kesel (nee Randall). Barbara told BACK ISSUE how she became involved with the comic: “I was associate editor under Marv Wolfman, which made me the de facto utility infielder in-house person for most of DC’s writer/editor titles. I have to say I loved working with Doug. He brought strong ideas and creative flexibility to the project: he’s both hands-on and laid back.” Concerning Doug’s proposal for comic and his subsequent collaboration with Jim Baikie, Barbara said, “I thought that, as usual, Doug was going to try to do something that pushed the boundaries of mainstream comic-book content and he’d manage to talk DC into letting him do it. It wasn’t a ‘superhero’ book. It didn’t have a mainstream style. It had a strong ’80s vibe to the title, but not a fad element in the story. I’d worked with Jim on Vigilante and already loved his art (and his stories about the trees on his island!), so I was happy to work with him again.” On sharing the editorial responsibilities for Electric Warrior with Barbara, Doug confessed, “I enjoyed being my own editor because no one could tell me what to do or barbara randall kesel not do. It’s about control. All I needed was someone to walk down the hall in the DC offices and turn the work in. That became Barbara. I was glad to have her as my associate editor as she was real efficient, but I felt guilty for sticking her with the scuff work where she couldn’t do anything creative. She would always say she liked the latest issue, but I’m not sure if she had ideas and didn’t want to share.” Concerning the exact nature of her editorial contributions to Electric Warrior, Barbara revealed, “For Doug and many editors, I was the robot hands in the office, moving the physical pieces around, keeping the schedule going, and adding my two cents to every step. I’ve never been shy about giving my opinion, but the editor was the one with the final say. Depending on which editor and which project, I did many tasks—from doing everything to just opening the packages. For Electric Warrior, I think (can’t remember for sure) that it was my idea to bring in Denys Cowan as a sub for issue #9. There were many young, new, or underused artists I was trying to promote at the time, so I’m pretty sure that assignment was one of my ideas.” In closing, Barbara commented, “This isn’t a book where I had a single favorite character. This was just one that was fun to help bring to life. I always enjoyed working on the projects that are one step off-center.” DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 55

Electric Company Distant cousins of Doug and Jim’s Electric Warrior: T.Rex’s iconic album Electric Warrior, and Marvel’s Deathlok the Demolisher—originally written by Moench— who debuted in Astonishing Tales #25 (Aug. 1974). Deathlok cover by Rich Buckler and Klaus Janson. T.Rex Electric Warrior © Rhino Records. Deathlok TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

“I did not think about Deathlok until someone mentioned it. That comic’s about another person being made into a machine. Without consciously realizing it, I was doing so much stuff. Most of it was a form of automatic writing, which is what the spiritualists would call it. I would scribble away, and a whole thing would come out. The worst part about writing that way is that I eventually cut back, and I had time to think about what the next thing could be. It was hard once I was trying to start again. If your conscious mind gets in between that mode of creating, you struggle to get back.”

COVER STORIES

At another point, we floated into a discussion about some of Electric Warrior’s covers, and Doug explained, “Not to take anything away from Ed Hannigan (who worked on cover designs for DC at the time) or Jim Baikie, but Ed would call me every month as for what to do with the cover. It was a collaboration, but many of the covers originated from my ideas, and then Jim did a great job with them.” I subsequently pulled out the striking cover to issue #1, which shows a headshot of 9-03, and this prompted Doug to say, “The robot warrior’s design for the metal hat is meant to look like a headdress. The warrior part of the image came from the Native-American thing, while the electric part came from the future thing. It seemed to fit so perfectly. But, again, I definitely was not consciously stealing the imagery from T.Rex!” We then looked at issue #11’s cover, which features an image of Derek Two-Shadow, 9-03, a flayed Derek, and the Two-Shadow/9-03 hybrid walking upon the roof of a building that is an endless staircase that goes round in an obvious homage to Dutch artist M. C. Escher. On this image, Doug exclaimed, “I love Escher. I remember telling Ed about the idea for the cover based upon an Escher print I had seen, and he said, ‘I think I’ve seen that one,’ so we were able to incorporate the imagery into the design.” I next asked him what the blood was about, and he responded, “It’s a cool image.” When we looked at a final cover, issue #12 (Apr. 1987), which utilized a design scheme of 36 small panels to illustrate Derek Two-Shadow/9-03 angrily lifting up Marder in a central image that is surrounded by scenes depicting past and present moments from Electric Warrior, Doug explained, “Comics are panels, so my idea was, ‘Let’s put comics on the cover by dividing it into panels.’ ”

ELECTRIC WARRIOR’S POLITICAL AND SOCIAL MESSAGES

At another point in our conversation, since I wanted to know Doug’s political leaning during the period he was writing Electric Warrior, I brought up the image of the joint US-USSR ships that shockingly appear at the end of issue #12. In particular, I commented that it is intriguing that he would imagine a future where friendly relations exist between the two rival nations, especially in 1987, which was 56 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

situated at the tail end of the decades-long Cold War. I then asked Doug if this reflected an optimistic mindset on his part, but he replied, “A world dominated by the USSR and America? That would be terrible!” He then explained, “I wrote it that way because, at the time, that was probably the last thing that you could think would be possible. The two of them trying to perpetuate the human species in any way possible led to this nightmare world experiment. I don’t [remember] if the original proposal has more on this, but I would assume there are other planets where this kind of experiment is happening.” Enjoying Doug’s fiery political commentary, I next asked him if, in light of recent media rumblings concerning President Donald Trump being on good terms with Russian President Vladimir Putin, that this image could be viewed as prescient in terms of predicting the 2016 presidential election and current domestic and global politics. This question resulted in him exclaiming, “Oh, boy. Don’t blame it on me! Three counties in three states decided the whole thing. And you know, if 20,000 people voted the other way, we wouldn’t be going through this nightmare.” Although I did not exactly receive the answer I wanted, I must admit that I found it interesting to witness an author dealing with one of his extrapolative sci-fi concepts becoming a form of reality. Returning to his thoughts on the USSR at the time when he was writing Electric Warrior, Doug added, “I never saw the Soviet Union as being truly communist since everyone at the top got everything, and everyone at the bottom got the scraps. I am not a communist. It’s kindergarten. Share and share alike, but it’s not going to work because human nature won’t allow that. It’s probably great for survival, but you would hope that you could be reflective enough to keep selfishness in check and be nice to each other.” In addressing Electric Warrior’s social commentary, I presented to Doug page 17 of issue #10 (Feb. 1987), whose central illustration depicts Derek Two-Shadow/9-03 sitting upon the head of the City’s Statue of Technology and consuming parts of its bearded face in order to process the material into energy via his Omni-Fuel Converter. Regarding this image, which is packed with a loaded criticism of technology, patriarchy, and power, Doug explained, “It involves animism, in which a person eats his enemy’s heart to devour the soul. Worshiping animals and nature is one part of animism. The other is the attributes associated with the certain body parts that give you those elements.” Continuing with the theme of the comic’s subversive messages, I asked Doug if the Leks represented his position on the American military in the later 1980s, and he responded, “They’re more like law enforcement than the military in the fact that they are robots who have no agency.” Our discussion turned to the subject of the Warrens’ downtrodden dwellers, the Zigs, and their misshapen heads, which I remarked reminded me of the ancient Chinese custom of foot binding. Doug then shared

his thoughts on the Zigs’ process for binding the heads of their young: “An unbound skull stops them going through holes in the Warrens. Trust the kid who went through the bent bars at school and one day got too big and got stuck trying to get through. Anything else can get through, but the skull is what stops you. The Zigs themselves have a certain freedom in having nothing. In Two-Shadow’s case, the Primmies in the Wilderness might not have accepted him if his mom had bound his head. He would have been other, and it’s hard to get over that.” I then asked Doug about what happens to the Zigs in terms of their cognitive development, and he replied, “It probably develops or affects the brain.” As for this process explaining why many of the Zigs were prostitutes, Doug responded that they were sexual workers not by choice but because of their lowly social standing. He likewise told me that their unique language patterns were a product of his automatic writing approach to the comic.

THE ONCE (AND FUTURE?) ELECTRIC WARRIOR

In many ways, Electric Warrior was easily 20 years ahead of its time. Today, if such an ambitious and imaginative comic book were being published by Dark Horse, Image, or IDW, then Doug’s arc-storytelling would not only be ready-made for the wait-for-the-trade crowd but also the perfect type of material that could be nicely adapted into a television show. On the note of his creator rights for the work, Doug revealed, “Jim and I co-own Electric Warrior, but DC and, therefore Warner Bros., have the right of first refusal. Yes, if there is a movie deal, we get the money, but they have the first chance to make the film.” At this point, one could only image how such an adaptation would be realized, whether it were a Netflix or SyFy show or even an Adult Swim cartoon (when one considers the book’s more vividly grotesque elements). Regardless, the first step in ensuring that a present-day audience (and TV producers) is exposed to Electric Warrior would be for DC to reprint the work and enthusiastically promote it. Doug himself is surprised that this personal work has not been yet reprinted. Hopefully, in the future, he will be happy to see a thoughtful trade paperback reprint of Electric Warrior gracing the walls of his mighty book collection. In regard to the comic ending with issue #18 (Oct. 1987), Doug explained, “Electric Warrior could have continued for 60 issues easily. But it would have been breaking a precedent that affected other freelancers. For whatever reason, DC thought it was cool to get me away from Marvel. They offered me things that weren’t offered before. For example, a $5000 upfront bonus for turning in a proposal that they liked. Then they gave an extra percentage on royalties. As we approached the 18th issue, Paul Levitz said to me, ‘Electric Warrior is doing better than expected. If you go back to regular royalties, then we’ll keep it going.’ For me, this meant that I would be making money even if the book was not breaking even. Yet I didn’t want to backstab my fellow freelancers. I would have been okay, but then I asked myself, ‘Are you going back on gains you pioneered? Oh, gee, I shouldn’t do that.’ ” Even though I am the writer of this article that ostensibly serves as an overview of Electric Warrior I am also still a huge fan of the book. Whenever I reach the end of issue #18, although I am satisfied to see Derek Two-Shadow on his way to the real Earth, a final plot revelation for the comic that Doug calls “the ultimate rug pull,” I am left with a feeling of unease, particularly since he admitted to me, “I remember being rushed at the end with this issue and had to come to a natural conclusion where it could feel satisfying.”

For instance, what does this future Earth now look like since Derek Two-Shadow left it ten years earlier, and how will he relate to this type of society that embraces prolonged life via cybernetics? What happens if he encounters his estranged wife whom he ironically rejected for artificially prolonging her existence with cybernetic enhancements? (Incidentally, on this scene that occurs via flashback on pages 9–10 of issue #18, Doug commented, “If she were my wife, and I were in Derek Two-Shadow’s position, I’m not saying I would forbid her having the operation, but I’d be like, ‘That’s a pretty big thing you’ve just done. We can’t even have normal sex now!’ ”) Similarly, will Derek ever return to the other Earth and be reunited with Amber Brightstar? How has that multilayered society progressed in his absence? These are the lingering questions that fans of Electric Warrior are left pondering after reading this extraordinary series. At the same time, the beauty of Doug’s writing in tandem with Jim Baikie’s pencils for this series guarantees that the book can live on in readers’ heads as we can image our own further adventures of Derek Two-Shadow/9-03.

“Future Frankensteins” Page 15 of Electric Warrior #9 (Jan. 1987). (background) Cover to issue #9. TM & © Doug Moench and Jim Baikie/DC Comics.

DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 57

ONE LITTLE PIECE OF ELECTRIC WARRIOR stories for Electric Warrior, Doug revealed the reasoning behind A delightful curiosity for Electric Warrior can be found with it: “Jim Baikie couldn’t draw 28 pages in a month. “Just Another Little Piece of His Heart,” the eight-page Yet he was one of the better guys with deadlines. backup strip for issue #9, which was guest-penciled It reaches the point that, unless you are Jack Kirby, by Denys Cowan and inked by Steve Montano. you can’t keep up. Six more pages in a month For the tale, which delineates how a small means adding six days to the month. Twentymetal piece of the destroyed 9-03’s body gets two pages were the norm at the time.” As for passed around the Warrens in an amusingly the story’s title, Doug confirmed that the complicated way, Doug and Denys deftly Janis Joplin song “Piece of My Heart” applied silent storytelling on pages 4–5 to influenced him. When I later shared a scanned relay one unfortunate Zig’s failed attempt to version of this backup story with Cowan via steal the piece from the tent of another man, email, Denys jovially reacted, “Wow. Unfortunately, who reacts in a deadly fashion. On these pages, I have no recollection of drawing this story, Doug commented, “I think a good comic can but it looks like I did layouts for it among tell the story with the bubbles and silent DENYS COWAN many other jobs I was doing at the time. storytelling. That’s the essence of comics. At any rate, it was a one-shot for me. I do It’s not that the words hurt, but it’s just that the silence tells you what comics are capable of doing.” After I remember having Jim’s artwork for reference. I tried to copy it… not very well I’m afraid, LOL.” remarked that I wish he had written more of these backup

“Just Another Little Piece of His Heart” Two mostly silent pages from EW #9’s backup, illo’ed by Denys Cowan and Steve Montano. TM & © Doug Moench and Jim Baikie/DC Comics.

58 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

She Sings the Body Electric Amber Brightstar makes an unusual request of Marder in Electric Warrior #16 (Aug. 1987). Words by Doug Moench, art by Jim Baikie and Dennis Janke. TM & © Doug Moench and Jim Baikie/DC Comics.

THE MAGNIFICENT MISCELLANY OF MOENCH

Toward the end of our awesome conversation, I asked Doug why he doesn’t write that much anymore. Half tongue in cheek, he replied that the healthy royalty checks he receives for co-creating such memorable Batman villains as Bane and Black Mask have provided him with a comfortable sense of living to the extent that he does not have to write to survive as he did when he was younger. Doug explained, “When the money started coming in, I was like, ‘Well, jeez, I still have 20 years at most. Am I ever going to have spare time? I bought all these books. Will I ever read them?’ I almost do nothing. It’s part of my addictive personality. When you become addicted to goofing off, that’s all you do. I guess I’m just an indolent old man since my whole life at this point is reading and eating good meals.” Yet he also later said something profound to us: “Sometimes in the middle of the day when I’m reading on my recliner, my cat will crawl up into my lap, and I’ll start petting her. I then I realize that I fell asleep and a half an hour has gone by— these are the moments I now cherish.” I must add that since BI editor Michael Eury in good faith commissioned me to write this article about Electric Warrior, it would be more than irresponsible for me to digress into too many tangents (as if I haven’t done so already…), but, as I wind down this piece, I would regret not mentioning Doug’s various entertaining asides during our hours-long discussion. I could easily write an alternate article about such personal tales as his anecdote involving interviewing the Who and how he gave band member Roger Daltrey, who was working on a rock opera at the time, the idea for the work’s lead character: a dumb, deaf, blind kid who plays pinball! Alternatively, I could talk about Doug’s alien abduction story from when he was a boy and how his experience and knowledge of “screen memories” helped my wife and I better understand our own encounter on the edge of a park with a freakishly white deer-like creature. Or, if I wanted to provide a Moench-ian anecdote that would warm the hearts of many a comic-book fan, I would go into vivid detail—as Doug did for me and my wife—in order to describe the fantastical story of how Stan Lee himself helped him secure a mortgage for his wonderful fairytale-like home. The bottom line is that, with my interview with Doug Moench— or any such stimulating experience—time, so they say, will inevitably grant one a different perspective. In this case, however, Amanda and I still joke (or truly feel) that we are still sitting on Doug’s cozy leather couch, listening to his incredible yet true stories, ones which were expressed to us by a natural teller of tales who is just as vivacious, detailed, and exciting in the flesh as he has been for decades on the printed comic-book page. Although the fully realized sci-fi world of Electric Warrior is filled with the requisite technological trappings of this genre, I can understand, more so than ever, why Doug insisted on creating the nature-filled Wilderness and the gentle Derek-TwoShadow character, for he is deeply attuned to the mythic sounds of creation and eternity, as one of his ilk and storytelling ability is wont to do since he has helped to warm the hearts and minds of his fellow tribespeople—all of us, his many fans and admirers…. TOM POWERS, a college writing instructor, authored Gender and the Quest in British Science Fiction Television: An Analysis of Doctor Who, Blake’s 7, Red Dwarf and Torchwood (McFarland, 2016).

DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 59

60 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

by B r i a n

Martin

All covers and characters TM & © DC Comics.

It must have felt like a homecoming. Or at the very least the return to a familiar place. When comics began, most titles were anthologies and contained lots of pages. So when Action Comics underwent a metamorphosis with issue #601, it was really just going back to its roots. The difference was, this was 1988, not 1938. There were not a lot of superhero anthologies around in America, and not a lot of comics with this many pages (48 for $1.50, in this case). And none of those were published weekly. “At the time ACW was proposed, all we had was New Talent Showcase as a recent example of an anthology,” begins Bob Greenberger, one of the team of editors on the project. “It didn’t really count considering its mandate to introduce and hone new talent.” DC executive editor Dick Giordano was certainly interested in the anthology concept. In fact, “Dick and I tried a weekly comic for the Charlton characters and we did a dummy issue, while many weeks of certain features had already been written and drawn,” confides Greenberger. (The title was to be Comic Cavalcade Weekly, and was covered in BACK ISSUE #79.) The weekly anthology idea remained of interest to Giordano, however, and gained another proponent when editor Mike Gold arrived at DC. After the success of the weekly Millennium crossover miniseries, Gold was instrumental in convincing DC’s powers-that-be that it was time to explore the idea of a weekly comic. Over time, the idea metamorphosed into Action Comics Weekly. Almost. The idea itself was “an experiment,” according to supervising editor Gold, but it could have had a different title. “Originally, it was supposed to be Adventure Comics and ad-free,” reveals Gold. “Action was having deadline trouble, so the publisher thought it best to switch over to ACW. I still wish we went with Adventure. Action Comics carried certain expectations and had a certain weight.” Once the decision to begin was made, “I distinctly remember Brian Augustyn, Barbara Kesel, and I being called into Dick’s office with the news that Action was going weekly and would contain multiple features,” recalls Greenberger. “It was clear we’d all be editing stories for the book but spreading the wealth so no one editor was overwhelmed.” Greenberger then did some research into a venerable British weekly comic. “I took a big stack of 2000 ADs and did an analysis,” Bob tells BACK ISSUE. “I determined how their lineups worked, including cover slots. Given my broad range of artist contacts via Who’s Who, Mike Gold asked that I take on [editorially managing] the covers.” Gold adds, “Bob and I would get together and toss around ideas based upon which feature was up for cover treatment, with preference given to new launches.” For Greenberger, the assignment for the first issue was a simple one. “Dave Gibbons was always getting the first cover since he did the Charlton dummy cover for me [for Comic Cavalcade Weekly] and I felt I owed him something higher profile,” Bob states. “We began prioritizing which characters got which covers, going obviously with the most recognizable first.” The character most associated with Action, the big “S,” would have to wait a bit, “so as not to confuse readers with the previous incarnation of the title.” The title also pulled another idea from across the pond. When writing letters to the book, readers were asked to rank the features as well. Mike Gold liked the idea since it was “an old comic and pulp tradition that I think 2000 AD did for a while as well.” Bob Greenberger doesn’t feel the rankings were ever taken as gospel, but “more of a scan to get a feel for what people responded to and which ones were not connecting.” Content-wise, there were several what could be considered experimental features in Action Comics Weekly. The choosing of those features came down to Mike Gold. His criteria? “My whim. Totally. I wanted a variety and to spotlight new

things as they came on board.” When it came to those “new things,” it was announced in the text page of #601 that there would be a series-within-the-series called “Showcase.” These were to be four-issue previews of an upcoming series or miniseries. As the weekly schedule began, the editorial team even knew what the first Showcase feature was. After that… well, we’ll see how that worked out a little later. As with most experiments, there had to be a control element or two. In the case of Action Comics Weekly, those controls would come in the form of proven stars Superman and Green Lantern, even though GL’s career had its ups and downs. One final thought on content: Action Comics Weekly was an early mainstream title published without the Comics Code seal. “Dick Giordano and I had a real commitment to ignoring and destroying the Code,” says Mike Gold. “I just didn’t like the Code, so I took the opportunity to bypass it. I was still reeling from a fight I had with the Code in the 1970s about why Swamp Thing didn’t wear pants.” Now that we’ve achieved lift off, let’s take a look at how each individual feature fared. To keep things neat and tidy, we’ll look at each feature in the order it first appeared. With the exception of Superman. There has to be some reward for being there first!

AT THE CENTER OF THE ACTION

Bronze Age. At first, Stern was sorry to learn that Beatty was leaving the strip, saying, “That was too bad, because John had been doing a nice job and I hated to lose him.” Roger’s consternation was shortlived, though, because, “[Superman editor] Mike Carlin said that Murphy was going to be taking over, and I started doing the happy dance. (Sorry, John. No offense, but we’re talking Murphy Anderson here.) As a team they couldn’t be beat, and for several months I got to write for that team.” The Superman story begins in #601 (May 24, 1988) and continues all the way until #638 (Feb. 7, 1989), and commences with our hero rescuing a man from what appears to be a mob hit. Things get more complicated when the assailants would rather die than be captured. The crux of the story comes to light when the intended victim, Bob Galt by name, reveals that he is a member of a cult that worships Superman as a god! A graphic depiction of this adulation (and Superman’s reaction to it) adorns the cover of issue #606. As Superman investigates this turn of events, he gradually uncovers the roots of the cult, and the extent of the reach of their enemies. He also finds out that Bob has some extraordinary powers himself: He can project any scene he has witnessed. Bob believes this power is a gift from Superman himself. Around this time, Stern ran into a bit of a snag. He tells BACK ISSUE, “Midway through the run, my schedule was getting more and more frantic. At one point I was writing three books a month—Superman, Starman, and Power of the Atom—and was scripting Steve Ditko’s Speedball [at Marvel]. I was younger then, but even so, I was starting to run a little ragged.”

Since its very inception, Action Comics always had Superman as its centerpiece. It only took him until the 19th monthly issue to take over the cover spot permanently. When the title went weekly, the Man of Steel took that “centerpiece” designation literally. Throughout the weekly run, Superman was featured in a two-page spread that was almost always placed mike gold just after the middle of the magazine. This presentation was reminiscent of the comic-book format’s comic-strip origins. (Superman’s first-ever appearance was made up of repositioned pages from a proposed newspaper strip.) The Action feature’s writer, Roger Stern, would soon begin writing the regular Superman title, taking over for John Byrne. This weekly series was a bit different, though, but Stern came in with his eyes open. “That was the assignment I was offered—two pages of Superman per issue,” Stern tells BACK ISSUE. “I don’t recall whose idea it was that we should do it as a two-page spread, but it worked out well. I just did my best to emulate the Sunday comics of my youth.” (As an aside, a two-page Superman strip was to have been featured in the aforementioned Comic Cavalcade Weekly, though for that magazine it was planned to be a reprinting of the World’s Greatest Superheroes newspaper strips, not original stories.) Tapped to pencil these stories was Curt Swan, THE Superman artist of the Silver and Bronze Ages, just two years after entrusting the character to John Byrne and Jerry Ordway. Roger Stern describes working with this legend: “It was absolutely wonderful. He was always so damn good. Curt took everything I wrote for him and made it better. His Superman, of course, was wonderful—but he was also a master of depicting everyday people. Visually he created a very real world for all the people in the story to inhabit.” Swan also proved to Stern that he was more than just a wonderful artist. “One of the biggest highlights of my career came just a few weeks after I had been writing the strip,” Roger reveals. “Curt called to tell me how much fun he was having drawing the story. Hearing that left me momentarily tongue-tied. I had always loved Curt Swan’s Superman, and now Curt was telling me he liked my Superman. I don’t recall my exact words, but I managed to stammer out something about how fantastic he was making the series look, and how much I’d always loved his work. The series made us co-workers, but his call made us friends as well.” John Beatty inked the first 12 episodes, but with #613, Murphy Anderson took over, reuniting the iconic “Swanderson” team of the

Step Aside, Superman DC’s Direct Currents newsletter, touting Action’s new weekly format. TM & © DC Comics.

DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 61

Swanderson Reunited The Bronze Age Super-team of Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson were paired again during the newspaper comic strip-like Superman serial in ACW. Swanautographed original art from issue #628 (Nov. 29, 1988) courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). TM & © DC Comics.

So what was Stern’s solution? “I called upon young Tom Peyer to FOR THE DARK THINGS CANNOT STAND THE LIGHT give me a hand. I’d known Tom for several years, liked his work and Green Lantern was the other anchor of Action Comics Weekly for most of his imagination, and knew that he knew from deadlines.” its run, appearing in issues #601–635. Though a major character, GL did Since Stern already had the plot basically worked out, “We would have his ups and downs. (Details of his Bronze Age history can be found get together periodically to go over my notes,” he recounts. “Tom would in BACK ISSUE #45, 64, and 80.) Even so, DC probably felt confident in then rough out the strip for the next few weeks. I’d take Tom’s draft and having him in their experimental title. Besides that, it served to keep GL in make a final pass, writing the finished draft.” Working this way, “We never the public eye until he was ready to helm his own book again. (For indepth synopses of the Green Lantern stories that appeared in Action, missed a deadline, and I never had to miss a night’s sleep.” please see Jim Kingman’s excellent article in BACK ISSUE #80. We’ll Back in the story, Superman and Bob Galt travel to the try not to repeat too much as we examine the feature here.) cult’s home base in California. Along the way Superman discovers that those out to eliminate the cult possess Former GL writer Denny O’Neil drew the editing assignment some very potent weapons, while the rest of the cult and gave the series to Jim Owsley, a former Marvel assistant members all have some extra abilities, again supposedly editor-turned-writer, and paired him with original Silver thanks to Superman. Age GL artist Gil Kane on a story wherein Carol (Star A final confrontation between the two groups leads Sapphire) Ferris proceeds to cause great pain to both Hal to the discovery of the secret mastermind behind the Jordan and John Stewart, to the point of killing John’s escalation of the conflict—Darkseid! It seems he wife, Katma Tui. John is last seen being arrested for the murder of Ferris, while Carol, actually still alive, is spirited discovered the two groups, and through subtle away by a mysterious alien, not to reappear until Green manipulation as well as increasing the power levels of both, conducted a “science experiment” meant to Lantern #21 (Feb. 1992). That story encompassed test ways to enact his future plans to conquer the Earth. #601–606, and after a two-issue coda illustrated by Tod Smith, Owsley was spirited away as well. Superman manages to drive off Darkseid, and roger stern hopefully diffuse the cult’s idea that he himself is With Owsley’s departure, the writing chores were a god. Things might not have ended that way taken on by Peter David. “I was pretty much thrown originally, though. Stern notes, “The story was originally supposed to into it with no preparation,” David remembers. “The deadline pressures last a full year. That changed when it was decided to turn Action back were insane, but getting put onto a book and discovering that you’re into a monthly Superman comic. Luckily, Tom and I had time to pull late right out of the box is really quite common.” everything together and wrap the story early.” David, who would team with artists Smith and then Richard Howell, Stern did not forget those worshippers, though. “They appeared begins with a storyline in issue #608 that asks, “Can a man really be shortly after the Death of Superman, turning up to worship at his tomb born without fear?” Appearing on the Oprah show, GL reveals that he in fact was fearless, and the audience laughs at him. He later queries in Action #690 (Aug. 1993).” Issues #639–641 contain a serialized six-page story in which his ring, and it informs him that when Abin Sur chose him, he had Superman interrupts a hate crime targeting a man of Quraci origin. little fear, but Sur wanted someone with none. So the ring merely Superman points out that he himself is an immigrant in hopes of “rearranged your psychic profile.” preventing any future situations. “I studied his history and origins,” David tells BACK ISSUE. “I thought, “That one was a little tricky,” according to Stern. “We were told ‘He’s a man without fear? That really makes no sense at all. The only that someone in editorial had miscalculated when the weekly would person with no fear is someone who is basically brain dead. Heroism end. So, all of a sudden, they needed three more strips from us. [laughs] is about having fear but overcoming it.’ And I started to really wonder if maybe the ring had somehow affected him.” It’s funny now, but it wasn’t at the time.” 62 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

Immediately after Hal instructs the ring to allow him to feel fear again, he responds to a call for help that requires him to fly. He promptly experiences fear and plunges from the sky until he regains enough control to save himself. Strange thing is, this scene in #614 exactly mirrors George Pérez’s cover image from issue #602, yet both Peter David and Bob Greenberger, who commissioned that cover, say there was no connection at all! David’s second and final storyline runs from #615–620 and is a fair bit more lighthearted than what had come before it, as GL confronts a group called the Freak Show that contains members with names such as Runaround Sue and Incinderella. After some heavy subjects, readers were probably happy to get a less serious adventure. But not everyone felt that way. “I had been doing ‘grim and gritty’ for Marvel and decided to take a totally different approach for GL,” begins David. “Unfortunately, what I did not know was that Dick Giordano had wanted exactly that ‘Death of Jean DeWolff’ [from Spectacular Spider-Man]-type of story for GL, and was not pleased with the stories I was doing, and that led to the end of my tenure on the series.” Not long before Peter David ended his run, Green Lantern Special #1 (1988) appeared on the stands. The story inside was by the team of Jim Owsley and Tod Smith and finally resolved the John Stewart subplot left up in the air in issue #604. Bob Greenberger believes “the Special was to test the waters to see if GL could sustain his own title once more.” With issue #621, Owsley was back writing the series, this time with Mark Bright and Jose Marzan, Jr. illustrating. Along for the ride was a new supporting cast for Hal, a group of design consultants called the Gremlins. Thing is, they are introduced as a fait accompli. There was a story that introduced them, but it did not appear until three months later in Secret Origins #36 (Jan. 1989), where the story of their recruitment of Hal served as the framework for a retelling of his origin. Mark Waid, editor of SO, says the timing was just a scheduling issue since, “Secret Origins wasn’t planned out as far in advance as Action.” [Editor’s note: For an in-depth look at the Secret Origins series, you can read peter david John Wells’ article in this very issue.] In the story running through #621–625, Hal stops an alien war with the assistance of another alien, a former Green Lantern who goes by the appellation Priest. This creature reveals to Hal that his ring need not be recharged every 24 hours with his power battery. Further, there are hints that there is more to the mystery of the Green Lantern that patrolled the sector Hal has had to aid, as well as the being called Priest. Hal encounters a strange ship on his trip home in #626 and spends until #631 battling the powerful creature within. Alongside GL for most of the battle is Captain Atom, even though they spend almost as much time battling each other since they disagree on how to handle the threat. In the end, the being simply chooses to leave Earth. Our hero takes off in pursuit as #632 begins, but after following it into a space warp, ends up… somewhere else, a mostly dark area of space with one lonely star and planetary system. After meeting a member of one of the races he Yeah, Sure Ya Are… prevented going to war in #625, Hal is sent to see Lord Malvolio, a large man with a resemblance to the Golden Age (top) Oprah’s audience finds a fearless crimefighter a Green Lantern and claiming to come from Earth. laughing matter in ACW #608’s Green Lantern tale. In the course of the subsequent battle between the two, we learn Malvolio has been imprisoned where he is by Priest, (bottom) Mark Bright’s version of the Emerald Gladiator Hal has his ring destroyed, and Malvolio has seemingly been killed, (and Captain Atom!), from the splash of ACW #630. Bright only to rise with ominous pronouncements after Hal leaves. And that is where Green Lantern’s residence in Action Comics would go on to great acclaim as the Green Lantern artist. Weekly ends. Green Lantern Special #2 that followed soon after cleared up some, but not all of the plot threads left hanging. TM & © DC Comics. DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 63

Some of them have never been resolved. Significantly, at the end of issue #635, Hal has a different power ring than he began the adventure with. He has confiscated Lord Malvolio’s. The story in the Special mentions the possibility of Hal being corrupted by Malvolio’s ring, but that idea again was never followed up on. Just imagine, in an alternate universe, that might have been used to explain Hal’s descent into madness years later! As a closing thought on the ring-slinger, as mentioned, his final batch of Action tales began Mark Bright’s stint on the character, a run that would turn out to be a fairly important one. After drawing GL’s last appearance in Action, Bright returned with Special #2, then moved on to the two Emerald Dawn miniseries. Emerald Dawn returned Green Lantern to prominence and subsequently his own title. That definitely qualifies as a win for Action Comics Weekly.

Debuting in his own four-issue miniseries in 1987, Wild Dog was successful enough that DC would have liked Collins and Beatty to continue with a regular series. Unfortunately, the creators did not have time in their schedules to produce one. Enter Action Comics Weekly. The Dog’s first story runs from #601–609 and focuses on a theme that was probably near and dear to a lot of readers’ hearts: censorship. The Legion of Morality and its chairman Dr. B. Lyle Layman have very strong views on what they consider pornography, and the steps they arre willing to take to eradicate it, steps that do not preclude burning down a comic-book store with people inside it. “They were Max’s notion,” Beatty tells BACK ISSUE. “That comes out of his personal feelings about certain uptight pro-censorship organizations that were active at the time.” To make the point even clearer, members of the Legion were dressed in either all white, or all black. In the end, Wild Dog manages to discredit the organization in the WILD IN THE STREETS Around the time Action went weekly, the effects of Alan Moore and Quad Cities where he lives, if not nationally. Unfortunately, he is unable Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns to prove that Layman had anything to do with their crimes. Fortunately, were beginning to permeate comics. Anti-heroes such as the Punisher, at story’s end, Karma is about to take its revenge on the doctor. introduced in 1973, and DC’s own Vigilante, who arrived in A return engagement for Wild Dog occurs beginning with 1985, were in their ascendancy. #615, running until #622. In this story, a woman slasher is loose, DC’s next entry into the genre was Wild Dog. Created killing men with a knife. While involving himself in the invesby writer Max Allan Collins and artist Terry Beatty, Wild tigation, our hero runs across a few other situations which Dog was an urban vigilante who sported camo pants, require his attention, and inspires a follower he would a sports jersey, and a hockey mask. When asked about much rather not have had. Witnessing Wild Dog foil a the specific influences that went into the character’s convenience-store robbery, young Danny decides to creation, Terry Beatty reveals, “We certainly had the emulate his hero and becomes—Wild Pup! Not so much Punisher and other characters like that in mind— a comment on society at the time, Terry Beatty feels the boy was “just our take on the kid sidekick notion.” but also Chuck Norris-type action heroes in the movies— and, believe it or not, the Lone Ranger.” By following the news, Danny manages to track Wild Dog, involving himself in his idol’s confrontations, and almost getting them both killed in the process. When Wild Dog manages to track down the slasher, terry beatty Wild Pup tackles her and gets stabbed in the process. Fortunately he not only survives, but the incident causes his assailant to visit him in hospital. Wild Dog confronts her there, finding out that she had a promiscuous past that affected her later life and was taking revenge on her earlier conquests in hopes of finding the one responsible for her heartache. The fact that she has injured a child forces her to take a hard look at the consequences of her actions and turn herself in. Wild Dog’s final Action appearance takes place in issues #636–641. In this story, he tackles urban crime by taking out a local crack ring, following the trail to the top. Along the way he must deal with the realization that his allies Lou Godder and Andy Flint may be subject to a few human prejudices themselves. The character seemed popular, having three story arcs in the time Action was weekly, but after #641, the wild one’s only appearance was a Special in October 1989, and that was the last time the dog was set free in comics. Reappearing in the extended DCU, Wild Dog has appeared on the Arrow TV series, starting in 2016. [Editor’s note: Wild Dog, along with the Vigilante, are among the “Mercs and Anti-Heroes” headlining BACK ISSUE #102.]

THE SECRET IS OUT

A car careens along a road until it crashes through a billboard, then off a cliff. A scene in a Hollywood action film? Not really. It is actually the beginning of the Secret Six comic. And that was just the cover! The original Secret Six series began with issue #1 (Apr.–May 1968), and the cover also doubled as the first page of the story! Talk about experimental. The series was created by writer E. Nelson Bridwell and artist Frank Springer and ran for seven issues. Yes, it would have made things a lot more symmetrical if it only ran six, but what can you do?

Thank You for Smoking Crime-crushing is a gas for “Fire Inspector” Wild Dog on this page from Action Comics Weekly #638. Signed original art by Terry Beatty, courtesy of Anthony Snyder (anthonyscomicbookart.com). TM & © DC Comics.

64 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

Listen to the Mockingbird Title page from “Blind Impulse,” the Martin Pasko/ Dan Spiegle Secret Six adventure in ACW #608 (July 12, 1988). Mr. Spiegle died on January 28, 2017, as this issue was in production, making this among his last interviews. R.I.P., sir. TM & © DC Comics.

The Secret Six were six people with various problems ranging from an incurable disease to being on the run from the mob. A mysterious figure known only as Mockingbird had some kind of a hold on each of them, and basically blackmailed them into performing missions. The real kicker to the series was that one of the Six was actually Mockingbird! This meant that whatever hold he or she supposedly had on that person was probably a sham. Even early on, writers to the Secret Six letters page wondered how long readers would put up with Mockingbird’s identity remaining a mystery. Mockingbird’s identity was still unrevealed when the series was canceled, though Bridwell knew the truth, giddily telling DC staff newcomers until his passing in 1987. Unfortunately, no one I spoke to remembers who Mockingbird was. Consisting of one continuous story by writer Martin Pasko, the Six’s feature in Action ran in issues #601–612 and #619–630, with artist Dan Spiegle on the first arc and artists Frank Springer and Frank McLaughlin on the second. As the story begins, time has passed for the Six pretty much as it has in the real world, and they are now six aged figures who get together once every five years to reminisce. This year they receive their first mission from Mockingbird since they split up all those years ago: they are to travel to San Francisco to train their successors. The new Six each suffer from a physical disability. These include blindness, deafness, and epileptic seizures among others, and Mockingbird has provided the Six with technology to help them overcome them… provided they do his bidding, of course. Artist Dan Spiegle recalls, “l didn’t know much had no life beyond this series, and though it was dan spiegle always near the bottom of Action Comics Weekly about the [original] Secret Six series, though I did enjoy doing it.” Dan does not know who designed readers’ polls while it ran, readers of the original series the new team’s uniforms, just that it wasn’t him. Since Martin Pasko surely appreciated finally discovering Mockingbird’s identity. As for who Mockingbird was in the original series and who took over wasn’t available for an interview, maybe we’ll have to ask Mockingbird. At the start, everything sounds just great. A new group to be trained by the role this time… I’m not telling. As mentioned, if you were a fan of their experienced predecessors. All going according to plan. Until the plane the original series, I’m sure you’ve read this story. If you weren’t, well, flying the originals to San Francisco crashes into the side of a mountain. part of the fun is the mystery, so I’ll leave it up to everyone to search out From there, Mockingbird sends his new troops, initially unaware of back issues. That is the name of the magazine you’re reading, after all. their predecessors’ fate, on missions to discredit a few corporations that are up to no good. First is a chemical company that may have BRING OUT YER DEAD killed the population of a small town to demonstrate a new product. Deadman was no stranger to anthologies when he arrived in Action Next is a meat packer suspected of selling contaminated meat. Comics Weekly, having been a regular feature in Adventure Comics when All the while, the son of one of the original Six is trying to find out that title experimented with the anthology format in issues #459–466 why their plane went down. Unbeknownst to Mockingbird, he hooks in 1978 and 1979. up with the new operatives. Written by Mike Baron and drawn by Dan Jurgens and Tony These new Six soon begin to realize that all of their missions are DeZuniga, the first Deadman story in Action appears in issues #601–612 connected, leading toward one ultimate goal. That goal turns out to be and features an ancient Mayan deity, CIA machinations, spaceships, directly related to the mystery of who Mockingbird was in the original and the Devil himself. Setting-wise, it travels from the jungles of series, and brings the group into conflict with a covert government Belize through the halls of Washington, D.C. then into Hell and back. agency. They also discover that this agency engineered the crash of the The plot revolves around Deadman’s attempts to thwart the plans of the various antagonists and escape the traps and dangerous situations original group’s plane, but that one of the group survived that crash. Tracing the path through the intricate connections, the group they involve him in. discovers that the Mockingbird who has been leading them is not the You would imagine a plot this intricate would require significant original, but that the original did begin the process that led to their creation, forethought, but Mike Baron recalls that was not the case. “My method today is nothing like it was back then. Back then, I was a hip-shooter. intent on righting some wrongs connected to the original group. The new Six manage to track down the new Mockingbird and find That’s one of the big differences between now and then. I wouldn’t out the history of both Sixes while putting an end to the nefarious dream of starting even an eight-page story today without an outline.” In the course of this adventure, we discover that the devil in this government group and their plans. In the end, all secrets are revealed and all plot threads are tied off. tale is really an insane alien being who can inhabit other bodies the Seemingly never meant to continue, this incarnation of the Secret Six same way Deadman can. “The Merk in Nexus [Mike Baron and Steve DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 65

Dead Again Deadman’s journey took a new direction in Action Comics Weekly. Original Dan Jurgens/Tony DeZuniga art from issue #601, courtesy of Heritage. (opposite page) Artist Kelley Jones’ spooky version of Deadman redefined the character’s appearance. From ACW #618. TM & © DC Comics.

tell the story while also adding aspects of my own approach to storytelling.” Kelley Jones, the other penciler to team with Baron on Deadman, tells BACK ISSUE, “I loved them and thought it was very liberating in a way. The stickfigure approach was easier for me than a copy-heavy or non-visual script.” One thing left solely to the ACW artist was all of those location changes over a short time span. “It’s up to the artist to make a clear visual narrative even though the environment changes,” Dan Jurgens begins. “The more abrupt and jarring it is, the tougher it can be to make things clear. However, I think we were successful in doing so.” And mike baron really, what could be more jarring than a trip through Hell and back? The second story ran in issues #618–621, then #623– 626, and is much more straightforward, involving a pair of spirits that possess two young girls with the intent of bringing a zombie apocalypse to Earth. Yes, the idea has been around for a while. Baron returns as writer, while this storyline introduces the aforementioned Kelley Jones’ interpretation of the Deadman character. Where all previous artists had shown the character looking exactly the same as he had in life as Boston Brand, Jones’ depiction took a distinct left turn at Albuquerque as his Deadman looked like a human skeleton wrapped in the familiar costume. Regarding his approach to Deadman, in BACK ISSUE #48 Jones was quoted as saying, “How do you compete with Neal Adams? You don’t.” Instead, Jones considered the mental state Boston Brand must have been in and came up with his visual conception. The problem was, Kelley wasn’t sure that the powersthat-be at DC, including his editor Barbara Kesel, would be enthusiastic about this new visualization. “The first installment I sat on just as long as I could,” Jones tells BACK ISSUE, “feeling that if they saw a page or two and hated it, I would then be made to change my approach. If they saw ten or 12 pages, they might warm to it.” The first feedback Jones received was from his writer. “A letter from Mike Baron came with one of the scripts. It only said, ‘Kelly (Mike misspelled it, everyone does)… your pencils are pisser.’ I had to call some friends of mine to ask if this was a compliment or complaint! I was told Rude’s long-lived character spotlighted in BACK ISSUE it was the former.” Jones was soon to learn that “Barbara Kesel wasn’t a #9] is also an insane alien,” recalls Baron. “The idea of an incomprehensible philosophy guiding our actions is fan of my stuff (in the least!), but a proponent of it.” That support encouraged Jones and “I felt her honesty appealing from a dramatic point of view.” From a graphic point of view, the shadow of Neal and suggestions were exactly what I needed to be Adams looms large over the character of Deadman. myself. She called one day, saying she couldn’t speak When it came to illustrating the ghostly guardian, Dan too long so for me to just listen. She said, ‘Go farther Jurgens felt, “I don’t think an artist at that time could with my style and do more of whatever I felt worked, have helped but be influenced by Neal’s Deadman.” and she’d protect me.’ She hung up and I was stunned. Not wishing to just copy another artist’s vision, though, I was living alone with my cat, Knuckles (he being famous Jurgens says, “I took the approach of being aware of as the model for ‘Dream of a Thousand Cats’ in Sandman Neal’s look, but not be enslaved by it. Every artist has #18, Aug. 1990). We celebrated with a steak for me and to find their own visual voice.” a can of Fancy Feast for him!” Besides Deadman’s physical look, Jones also reimagThat visual voice has another timbre to it when you are dealing with writer Mike Baron. The author ined the visual of Deadman possessing someone. Previhas a reputation of supplying artists with stick-figure ously he would touch someone and they would develop drawings instead of typed scripts. “Everybody loved a glow around them. Jones had a sort of a cloud appear those stick drawings,” comments the author. “I was as they were possessed. “I felt him possessing someone just good enough to indicate the story. They could needed a more frightening visual, more like the Thing see everything—my sh*tty layouts, all the dialogue, in John Carpenter’s movie but with ghosts. Sinking into descriptions, and captions.” someone, like if you entered quicksand.” Of course, if you’re not going to be a slave to the In crafting a tale to accompany this more horrific iconic visual of a character, “I generally adapted it the style, Baron states that he tailored it to fit his new artist, best I could,” Jurgens remarks, “using [the script] to stating simply, “I wrote to Kelley’s strengths.”

66 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

Those strengths are what actually got Jones work at DC in the first Singapore brothel to track him down! His team scattered to the four place. While illustrating superheroes for Marvel, the artist’s penchant winds, Blackhawk takes the proffered job, one that involves stealing a for dramatic lighting got him into some hot water. “Oddly, Len Wein load of gold from a bandit known only as the Red Dragon, a bandit noticed this in me then, and wanted to have me do a Swamp Thing we soon find out is a prototypical femme fatale. “The script did mention that the character was based on Milton Special with him in 1985 when Bernie [Wrightson] dropped out,” reveals Kelley. “I only found out later when we did the [never-published] Caniff’s Dragon Lady,” reveals Burchett. “But the only description Mike Hangman at Archie in 1989 that he thought I had the ‘gift’ he said. gave was that she was half Chinese and had red hair.” Horror comics are different in approach than superheroes, and he could After falling afoul of the Dragon’s second-in-command, and see that in my scrawls at Marvel.” falling into bed with the Dragon, Blackhawk learns the real reason As the end of Deadman’s run in Action Comics Weekly, it was for his mission. It seems his employer is actually a nun, and becoming apparent that there were many people who while the hoard of gold is real, her main concern is a religious icon contained within. Using some of the backenjoyed the stories Baron and Jones were crafting. To ground information he had collected, Mike Grell recapitalize on this, DC was preparing to do a Deadman veals, “There was actually a cache of gold that went Prestige Format miniseries. “John Totleben was to do missing after World War II,” though the icon came it with Mike but had health issues arise,” says Jones. straight from his imagination. Still championing his approach, Jones was told by Luckily, before leaving on his mission, Prohaska Barbara Kesel that “[art director] Richard Bruning was sent word to the rest of his team. Though it takes a editing [the Deadman series], and she was going to while for the messages to reach the other Blackhawks, sit on Richard’s desk until he called and gave me the in true heroic style, they arrive just in time to pull their job.” In addition, Jones feels “in both cases, Action and leader’s fat from the fire. the Prestige series, I wasn’t the first choice and feel Grell penned only the single story, noting, “I left that was the biggest blessing. I had to live up to better talent, and so that kept me in my place.” because I was probably beginning to do my kelley jones After Jones received the call from Bruning and development work on Shaman’s Tears [a series he accepted, he went on to collaborate with Mike Baron © DC Comics. would write and draw for Image].” That doesn’t mean he on a pair of two-issue Deadman series, Love After Death and Exorcism, didn’t have more ideas for the series, though (see sidebar on next page). proving that some of Action’s experiments were downright successful! Mike’s ideas were almost MIA before the series even started, although according to Burchett, “It was a weekly book and everyone was to start HAWKS AND NO DOVES their strip at the same time and turn in eight pages a week. Under This was not your father’s Blackhawk. normal circumstances this wouldn’t have Mark Evanier and Dan Spiegle produced been a problem. At the time I had a day job as an art director at an ad agency a well-respected 1982–1984 Blackhawk run with issues #251–273 of that title, and did my comics work at night.” but Howard Chaykin upped the ante, No problem so far, right? giving the characters a slightly more “At the time Mike Grell was on an cynical worldview in his 1988 Prestige extended tour of Asia,” Rick continues. Format miniseries. That tone was continued “He would dictate his scripts into a tape and allowed some freedom due to the recorder and send the cassettes to DC lack of the Comics Code seal when the in New York to be transcribed. When characters appeared in Action. the tape for the Blackhawk script got to Running from #601–608, the first story this country, US customs lost it. And was written by Mike Grell, with Rick Burchett they couldn’t find it for six weeks! So and Pablo Marcos illustrating. Grell himself while everyone else was busily working had not experienced the Blackhawks in away on their weekly stories, I was a while, but had been a fan, saying, cooling my heels anxiously awaiting the “When I was a kid, back in the ’50s, it was arrival of my script.” Blackhawk returned in Action #615– always one of my favorites.” Grell so enjoyed those comics that he 622 with a new writer, Martin Pasko, and set his Blackhawk story in Southeast Asia Rick Burchett ascending to full art chores. in 1947. To add authenticity to the story, This made for a significant change in the look of the art. Rick reveals, “Up until that he got some expert help. “The inspiration for my Blackhawk stories came from a time I had worked as an inker or inked friend who is the smartest man I ever met,” my own pencils. I had never penciled for begins Mike. “His name is Bill Guthrie and someone else to ink, and frankly, I wasn’t among other things he had a great deal of very good at it. Pablo was saddled with some pretty rough pencils because I pencil knowledge about the world as it existed very loose and do most of my drawing in the time between World War II and the during the inking phase.” Korean War. I phoned Bill up and said I would like to have you call me back in a On the full art, Burchett developed week and give me a one-hour bonehead his own touchstones for each character. lecture on the subject.” Armed with this “One of the things I focused on was how knowledge, Grell set out to tell his story. they wore their caps,” reveals the artist. “Chuck’s was always on the back of his Artist Rick Burchett had a little preparation to do himself before the head. Andre’s and Chop-Chop’s were series began. “We were set in a particular era,” begins Burchett. tilted at a rakish angle. Olaf and Hendrickson wore theirs pretty much “While many of the readers wouldn’t be familiar with the period, there squared away, and Blackhawk’s was cocked a little. I used this as a visual would be some who knew it well.” He believes that “the reader can indicator of the character’s personality.” One further visual aid Rick tell whether or not you’ve done your homework, because getting things developed was, “I also spent time working on different walks for the guys so you could tell who it was if they were in silhouette.” right can help sell the believability of the story.” In this tale, the team once again embarks on a mission only to find Janos “Blackhawk” Prohaska has fallen pretty far when we find him—so far, in fact, that his prospective employer has to travel to a out later that they have been given a false story. A man named Leslie DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 67

Flying High Retail poster for ACW #606’s Blackhawk serial by Grell, Burchett, and Marcos. Courtesy of Russ Garwood. TM & © DC Comics.

MIKE GRELL’S UNUSED BLACKHAWK PLOT Mike Grell tells BACK ISSUE, “I had specifically asked Bill Guthrie for the political and military situation in that part of the world at the time. Among other things we talked about was the French being pitched out of Vietnam after Dien Bien Phu in 1954, which was catastrophic for them. “This was to be the basis for the unwritten Blackhawk story. During WWII, the Japanese were in control of Vietnam and like so many places they took prior to and during the war, they were pretty brutal to the local people. So at the end of the war, the French, who had been eager to reclaim their interests in the rubber plantations, moved in and basically said to the Japanese, ‘Okay, you’ve turned in your guns, the war is over. But we have a problem.’ The problem they had was how to maintain French control over Southeast Asia. So they basically turned to the Japanese and said, ‘You did a great job maintaining order, so now you’re going to work for us.’ So they basically gave them back their guns and left them in charge of the people they had been brutalizing for most of the decade, and that’s what caused the problem with the Vietnamese people and the French. “At which point there was a schoolteacher who was very vocal, and he was making a lot of noise about his opposition to the situation as it was developing. He became such a pain in the ass that the French, not wanting to act on their own, went to what at the time was called the OSS, soon to be renamed the CIA, and said, ‘This guy is causing a lot of trouble for us. We would like him gone.’ So the OSS agreed to help them out and they plotted to kidnap this schoolteacher, drag him off somewhere into the jungle, and put a bullet in his head. But their plot failed. The schoolteacher escaped, moved to Hanoi, and changed his name to Ho Chi Minh. “My take on it would have been Blackhawk, being a mercenary at the time, would have been initially involved in that plot by the OSS, and he would have realized what was going on and would have been the one who helped Ho Chi Minh escape to the North.” 68 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

Richardson hires them to investigate a plane that crashed in Sumatra, killing all aboard. Richardson’s wife was the pilot and is blamed for the crash. He doesn’t believe this and employs the Blackhawk team supposedly to find evidence to clear her name. But Leslie is not his real name, and the pilot was actually his sister. The Blackhawks, of course, find out too late that they have become involved in a covert government operation and their mission is actually to recover a “microwave generator” that the crashed plane was endeavoring to locate. Complicating things are the provisional governor of the region and an erupting volcano. The team manages to rescue the woman, Marcia, a survivor since the plane crash was a ruse to begin with, but the generator is destroyed when the volcano erupts as the Blackhawks escape in a hail of gunfire. The third storyline, presented in issues #628–634, picks up just moments after the second one ended with Marcia lying in the back of the plane, riddled by bullets and near death. Her fate leads to a few more complications and altercations for the team when they return home. Before things can get too quiet, the team receives a summons to the White House to meet President Harry S. Truman and begin a mission to recover a supply of LSD. And this wasn’t even the 1960s yet! During the course of their mission, the ’Hawks run afoul of Nazis, a beautiful but acerbic pharmaceutical company heiress, and another femme fatale, while also being exposed to the wonder drug. All is worked out in the end as the team successfully completes the mission, though not without complications and a few casualties. As a subplot, while the Blackhawks perform their mission, Natalie, the former Lady Blackhawk from Chaykin’s series, is chased through the streets and kidnapped by a number of men. Of significance is the fact that we will not see her again in Action Comics Weekly. From the start, the black-clad aviators finished near or at the top of every ACW readers’ poll, and in issue #630 it was made known that Blackhawk was graduating to its own series. That meant that there was no need to tie a neat bow on the series when the run in Action ended. Besides the fate of Natalie, other plot lines from the Action run were carried over when Blackhawk #1 appeared, cover-dated March 1989, with the same creative team. That series would run 16 issues and an Annual, definitely another successful Action Comics Weekly experiment.

ALWAYS A BRIDE’S MAID...

Black Canary always seemed to have quite a fan base, but she never managed to make it mike grell to A-list status. Still, she was a bankable character that was well suited to the experiment that was Action Comics Weekly, and those fans must have been quite pleased when they found out she would debut in #609. Too bad the love affair didn’t last. The Blonde Bombshell was the first character after the initial group to show up in Action, with her first tale running in issues #609–616. Both her appearances were written by Sharon Wright, with art by Randy DuBurke and Pablo Marcos. DuBurke was a graduate of DC’s Bonus Book program, kind of a continuation of New Talent Showcase except the Bonus Books were bound into existing DC titles. Doom Patrol #9 (June 1988) first showcased Randy’s talent. Right from the start it is determined that, at least visually, this was your father’s Black Canary, as the cover to Action #609 shows our heroine burning the new costume she had adopted in Detective Comics #554 (Sept. 1985). Thing is, that image is mostly symbolic since Ms. Lance doesn’t wear her old costume at all in this story. Instead, she adopts a fairly plain and certainly more functional outfit when she is in costume. For a lot of the story she is merely Dinah Lance. The tale itself is a fairly dense plot that involves a crop duster suing a former employer and a family of illegal immigrants trying to take advantage of a government amnesty program. The link between the two is a chemical the crop duster and the patriarch of the immigrant family have both been exposed to. The star of the feature becomes involved when the daughter in the family, an acquaintance of Dinah’s,

Ace Artists Blackhawk cover art by two legends, (left) Alex Toth, on ACW #616, and (right) Joe Orlando, on #621. Shown here is Tom Ziuko’s color guide for #621. All courtesy of Heritage. TM & © DC Comics.

shows up at her door after a fight. Canary has to unravel the connection between the two while sinister forces try to eliminate both men. The fact that there are not any superheroics in the story, coupled with the denseness of the plot, may have derailed its chances at success. Whatever the reason, fans did not treat the story kindly. After a middle-of-the-pack start, the last half of the story placed at the bottom of the readers’ poll every week with lettercol comments reinforcing that position. People had issues with the art, as DuBurke’s style was not conventional for superheroes. The story was also cited as being hard to follow as it introduced a number of new characters, and that is where the weekly format probably worked against it. Fans probably read each installment as it came out, and rarely revisited the previous segments. Rereading the story for this article, it holds together quite well and probably would do much better in a collected edition. Unfortunately, at the time, Black Canary’s first ACW story was an experiment that didn’t quite meet fan expectations. Dinah’s return engagement ran from issues #624–634. This story focuses on a group of men who were involved in theater production a few years before and are now helping Dinah with a contract to arrange flowers for window displays at a major department store. The problem is, those few years ago, one of the men had an affair and contracted AIDS. He took revenge by blackballing the woman he contracted the disease from. Now it appears she is taking deadly revenge on the entire group of men. As the story continues, doubts are cast as to the true identity of the killer. The infected man’s wife eventually becomes just as likely a suspect. In the end, Dinah discovers the truth, but not before a number of not-so-innocent people pay the ultimate price. In retrospect, the story is not that different in tone and execution than the first BC story, but was received more warmly. Though the ranking table had disappeared from the letters page by this time, letter writers were much more complimentary. Though some still cited some difficulty following the plot, it appeared most had become used to Wright’s style. The fact that Dinah appeared in her costume more in this story probably didn’t hurt either. Equally enjoyable upon rereading, it is clear that at the time most fans found this bird to not be a feather in Action Weekly’s cap.

WHEN A STRANGER CALLS

As a mysterious stranger who came and went like mist and only appeared when needed, the Phantom Stranger was certainly well suited for the role he played in Action Comics Weekly. In 1987 Paul Kupperberg and Mike Mignola had fashioned a four-issue miniseries pitting our hero against Eclipso (BACK ISSUE just covered this series in issue #92), but for a lot of his Action Comics Weekly appearances, the Stranger was back in his familiar role. The thing is, that role may well have applied to the strip as well as the character. The dark-garbed Stranger stepped into the light in issues #610, 613–614, 617, 623, 631–634, 636, and 641, and all of his appearances in Action were written by Kupperberg. “It was more or less an unwritten rule in those days that the last creator and/or editor to handle a character had dibs on it,” Paul relates. “So I was essentially the go-to guy for the Stranger.” It was good that the Stranger tended to step in where needed, since as things progressed, Action Comics Weekly needed him. When the weekly format was conceived, it was structured so that the Showcase feature could be used to fill in any gaps that occurred when an existing feature ran short or ran late… but you know what they say about the best-laid plans. “As the company expanded in the wake of the success of Crisis, it became clear we didn’t have that many Showcase characters to work with,” begins Bob Greenberger. “Paul Kupperberg’s take on the Phantom Stranger lent itself to the bridge slot. So Mike [Gold] commissioned a series of one-shots and later, the four-parter.” Those Phantom Stranger one-shots allowed Kupperberg the chance to work with a number of different artists, some well established, some new. Illustrating these stories were Kyle Baker, Tom Grindberg with Dennis Janke and Brett Breeding, Joe Orlando, José Luis García-López, Fred Carillo, and Andy Kubert. Kupperberg remembers, “Except for the Fred Carrillo arc, I never knew who was going to end up drawing the scripts, but I really was lucky with the lineup of artists assigned.” Those scripts dealt with the Stranger combatting foes that included a computer-based demon, the Mayan lord of death, plus a couple of child adversaries, all of them magical in nature. “The Stranger is a mystical character who goes up against mystical threats,” Kupperberg feels. “Really, the heart of the character is right there in his name: ‘stranger.’ He moves in mysterious ways and is an unyielding force for good.” DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 69

Phan-Favorites (top left) Jim Starlin’s Phantom Stranger cover art for ACW #631, courtesy of Heritage. (top right) Kupperberg’s PS ACW tales were graced with stellar artists, including Andy Kubert (from ACW #636) and (bottom left) José Luis García-López (from ACW #641). (bottom right) Penciled page from a Dennis Janke-drawn PS tale that went unfinished and unpublished after the end of Action Comics’ weekly format. Scans courtesy of Paul Kupperberg. Phantom Stranger TM & © DC Comics.

70 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

All of the single-issue tales, as well as the two-issue story, dealt with one-off threats. Not so with the four-part tale. This story brought back old-time Stranger villains Tala and Tannarak as well as former girlfriend Cassandra Craft and the Stranger’s old foil Dr. Thirteen, in a story that centers around the evildoers’ attempt to turn the Stranger into a conduit through which their masters, the Lords of Chaos, can arrive on Earth. “I’d deliberately distanced the Phantom Stranger in the miniseries and the Action run from the previous incarnations to shift it more into the mainstream of the DCU,” Paul reveals. “But I was still a big fan of the character in the 1960s and 1970s. So when I heard that Fred Carillo, a ‘classic’ Stranger artist, was going to be doing some of the stories, I thought it was a great opportunity to pay homage to those older stories and bring back some of those villains and supporting characters.” Kupperberg remembers pitching another series for the character but it never materialized, so after doing his part in ACW, the character went back to being a Stranger.

WHEN THE BAT’S AWAY…

The first feature to appear under the Showcase banner, Catwoman had been around since Batman #1 (Spring 1940), and over her career had been both a villain and a hero. For her appearance in Action #611–614, writer Mindy Newell and artists Barry Kitson and Bruce Patterson made her… a little of both. After stealing a priceless brooch, Selina gives the jewelry to her friend Holly as a gift—as long as Holly doesn’t open it. Unfortunately, Holly does open the package, and her husband, not the most principled individual himself, decides he can have the brooch and his mistress as well—he just has to get rid of Holly. He manages to kill Holly, blowing her up along with their home. The bad news for him is that Catwoman survives and decides to take her revenge. As promised in #601, this Showcase feature was merely a prelude to the Newell-written Catwoman miniseries that followed soon after in 1989. [Editor’s note: BACK ISSUE covered Catwoman in issue #40.]

SIDEKICKS NO MORE

Ever since taking on the identity of Nightwing in the enormously popular New Teen Titans, Dick Grayson seemed to have a fan base clamoring to see him in solo action. Giving up the mantle of Robin seemed to signal that the character had finally grown up and was worthy of his own starring role. Despite fan demand, a recapping of his origin in Secret Origins #13 (Apr. 1987) and a starring role in Teen Titans Spotlight #14 (Sept. 1987) were the best Nightwing could do before Action Comics Weekly came calling. The first Nightwing story encompassed #613–618 and was written by Marv Wolfman, with art by Chuck Patton and Tom Poston. Dick Grayson is asked by his friend and former fellow Titan Speedy to assist him on a mission for the C.B.I., the agency he works for, to stop the villainess Cheshire from assassinating diplomats involved in negotiating a peace treaty. As they attempt to track Cheshire, she always seems to be one step ahead of them and kills a number of her targets. Part of the problem is that Speedy has his own agenda. It was revealed not long before in the Titans’ own comic that Speedy and Cheshire at one time had an affair—an affair that, unbeknownst to Speedy, left Cheshire pregnant. He had since learned that he had a daughter, and now seems most concerned with getting to see her. As it turns out, Speedy had no official sanction to fight Cheshire and only involved Nightwing because he believed he would need help with his true mission. “Roy [Harper, a.k.a. Speedy] had been an addict and fixated on his own needs,” Marv Wolfman tells BACK ISSUE. “Although this was all about family and wanting to see his daughter, his character had to still motivate him as to how to accomplish his goal.” This also pretty much held true for Wolfman. “The Speedy/Cheshire daughter

story was the one I was interested in. The action stuff was to get people reading it.” Wanting to tell that particular tale may be why for most of the story Nightwing and Speedy are basically co-stars even though Dick gets sole cover-billing. Despite all of the skullduggery, by story’s end Cheshire is in jail, and Roy now has custody of their daughter, Lian. The duo return for issues #627–634, and it doesn’t take very long for dramatic changes to take place. Tom Mandrake is now the artist, and after co-plotting the first three chapters, Wolfman leaves the writing duties to his co-plotter Cherie Wilkerson. “I was in the midst of a writer’s block,” Marv concedes. “I found it harder and harder to write anything. Cherie was a friend as well as a fellow animation writer and I asked her to take over because I wasn’t able to do it on my own, but I still wanted some of my ideas to continue.” Surely even more jarring to fans, after Chapter Two (appearing with Chapter One in #627), Nightwing leaves the story, not to return until Chapter Seven, even though he was still the only one billed on the covers. Speedy, returning to Ireland where his family came from, is trying to discover his roots and hence plant some for his daughter. On the boat trip over, he and Nightwing become embroiled in a drug-smuggling plot and Irish terrorists. While Nightwing heads back to the US to track leads there, Roy stays to explore his Irish past. Unfortunately, he remains involved with the smuggling plot and two connected groups, the Friends of the Empire and the Sanas, while befriending two children who have occupied his ancestral home in Ireland. The children become endangered as a result of Roy’s investigation. Nightwing returns as the plot threads eventually lead the pair back to the US, and they discover the connections that reach into the C.B.I. itself. The pair exposes the illicit dealings, and most of those involved are suitably punished. Of course, one highly ranked official scores a book deal, but hey, you can’t win them all. With that, Nightwing was done in Action, but his series was a hit with fans. Eventually he would make it to the big time and is the star of his own title to this day, so Action gets a star there. As for Speedy— keep reading….

WE NOW PRESENT OUR HALFTIME SHOW EXTRAVAGANZA!

The next feature we’ll look at appeared in issue #622 (Oct. 18, 1988), pretty much halfway through Action’s life as a weekly comic, so this is a good place to examine how the series was doing. Bob Greenberger remembers no issue threatening to ship late. “Scheduling was tweaked as serials changed length or people ran into deadline issues, but not that often,” Bob says. “It helped that as major series wrapped a story, we could adjust before the next cycle was ready to run.” Mike Gold adds, “ACW was no later than the average title.” When it came to handling the weekly deadline, overall Bob feels that “most of the writers I worked with delivered batches of scripts once we had an approved outline. They’d write two or four chapters at a shot to get it off of their desk.” Writing stories in seven- and eight-page sections seemed no bother, either. “Writing six- or seven-page episodes was second nature for me,”

A Selina Showcase It’s bad news for gal pal Holly in this tearful sequence from Mindy Newell’s Catwoman tale in ACW #613. Art by Barry Kitson and Bruce Patterson. TM & © DC Comics.

DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 71

comments Alan Grant, who wrote the Demon for Action Comics Weekly. “I wrote or cowrote thousands of stories for the British weekly comics 2000 AD, Eagle, Scream, Tiger, and others.” The benefit of this for Alan was that “Action Weekly was nothing new for me.” Paul Kupperberg echoes those sentiments and feels this series was easier than some. “I wrote short stories for DC’s mystery books, and writing eight-pagers featuring an established character and cast is even easier than writing a one-off for an anthology title because that’s less time you have to spend introducing and establishing the characters.” That feeling was shared by most of the writers that worked on the series, especially since many of them, like Kupperberg, began their careers writing short stories that appeared in House of Mystery and other spooky anthologies. Through the course of the series, and especially toward the end of the weekly run, hints were given regarding future plans for the characters and the format. Mentioned was a Deadman graphic novel, which everyone agrees morphed into the two Prestige Format series, a “massive” Green Lantern Corps Prestige series, as well as a series for Speedy and— get this—five proposed weekly series! What became of all of these ideas? Bob Greenberger notes, “As with so many ideas back then, it sounded good, but execution, schedule, budget, or something else derailed it.” One last comment on those plans: In #632 (Dec. 27, 1988), the letters page mentions one upcoming project was to involve “the most exciting new writer in years.” Alas, all anyone remembers about who that might have been is Mike Gold, who says, “No recollection. Sarah Byam, maybe? She was a damn good writer.” Ah, well. Hopefully whomever it was proceeded to dazzle us in the years that followed. Finally, a revelation from those letters pages: Almost anyone who read DC comics in the 1980s was familiar with ubiquitous letterhack TM Maple. It just so happens that “The Mad Maple” chose Action #615 to finally reveal his real name, Jim Burke.

A BRIEF SHINING LIGHT

Almost right in the middle of the series, we have a bit of an anomaly. Starman was featured in his own book every month, but here he was starring in a seven-page story in Action #622, produced by his regular creative team of Roger Stern and Tom Lyle. How did this story come about? Greenberger remembers, “I was editing Starman and we needed a one-off in inventory, so I commissioned the story and lo and behold, we needed it.” See, wasn’t that easy? It was not quite so easy for the creative team. Roger Stern remembers them being a little pressed for time, saying, “Tom Lyle and I turned that story around in about a week, for which we were thanked profusely.” Stern gives the genesis of the tale as “just a little something I’d been mulling over at the time. If I hadn’t used it in that ACW strip, I probably would have eventually worked it into the Starman book.” This simple little tale involves the television broadcast of an interview show where author Vincent Garvey espouses his anti-superhero stance, while Starman combats a supervillain and his sister Jayne saves a man having a heart attack. The story juxtaposes Garvey pontificating that superheroes have a detrimental effect on society against exactly the opposite we are observing through the actions of Starman and his sister. Stern observes, “There were a few of my fellow writers who admitted to having trouble accepting that people with superpowers would ever do the right thing. Some of these folks couldn’t conceive of someone acting more heroically than they would. Needless to say, I disagreed.”

WITH ONE MAGIC WORD

The four-part Shazam! story in Action #623–626 came about because “Roy Thomas was promised a Shazam! series as part of his deal with DC,” relates Bob Greenberger. In reality, there were a lot of problems with that series. Thomas himself chronicled all the behind-the-scenes details in an article in Alter Ego #9 (July 2001).

It’s Time for Nightwing (left) Dick Grayson as Nightwing, deliciously rendered for the cover of ACW #613 (Aug. 16, 1988) by Michael Wm. Kaluta. Courtesy of Heritage. (below left) Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson illustrated this iconic Batman and Robin image as a 1966 pinup, but it’s since been repurposed several times, including its use as the cover of this beloved Bronze Age collected edition, Batman from the 30’s to the 70’s. (below right) It’s also been reimagined—many times— including this Nightwing and Speedy cover to ACW #618, penciled by Jon Bogdanove and inked by Mighty Murph. TM & © DC Comics.

72 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

While waiting, the Action tale was “make-work for Roy until something could happen with the series—which never did,” according to Bob. In a story drawn by Rick Stasi and Rick Magyar, Captain Marvel accidentally kills a man during an armed standoff. Discovering the man was a part of a hate group called the Sons of Valhalla, Billy Batson goes undercover to expose the truth about the group. While there, he discovers a plot to poison San Francisco and meets the latest incarnation of Captain Nazi. At the end of the tale, that monthly Shazam! series is promised. Thus this tale fit into the Showcase format initiated when Action went weekly, but that Alter Ego article will give you all you need to know about what happened next with that. Otherwise, the character has maintained a presence in the DCU pretty much ever since. [Editor’s note: For more on the original Captain Marvel in the Bronze Age, see BACK ISSUE #93.]

One-Issue Departure Verheiden and Barreto’s extra-length crossover in ACW #635 was a brief reprieve from the title’s multiple-short-story format. TM & © DC Comics.

were buying a transplanted Justice League story, a member of the Blackhawks played a pivotal role in the proceedings. Weng Chan, no longer going by “Chop-Chop,” is C.E.O. of Blackhawk Express. His board of directors assign him a special mission to deliver a package to South America. This is, of course, more than a simple delivery, and the plane he is flying with his co-pilot and an R&D man HAIL, HAIL, THE gets shot down over GANG’S ALL HERE Sumango, a country run by At the end of issue #634 Colonel Diaz who is, to put (Jan. 10, 1989), most of the it mildly, not a nice man. features ended their current Verheiden remembers storyline. As early as issue that he was instructed #617, the letters page which characters to use mentioned that a number for the story, but from of new features would there, “I definitely wanted premiere in #636, replacing a few of the previously promto avoid any Asian stereotypes and make Weng Chan a more three-dimensional character. It struck me that inent features. “One of the lessons we learned from 2000 a guy who flew around with the Blackhawks would, AD was that every now and then they turned over the by definition, be a very capable man.” package to freshen it,” Bob Greenberger tells BACK ISSUE. “We felt we needed that because by the time #617 went Chan was so integral to the story that he is the to press, we were already examining the first dozen issues’ narrator of the tale. “This was actually the first story I worth of sales. We recognized we needed more than a wrote for any company that involved superheroes. new feature every now and then to jolt reader interest.” (The American for Dark Horse was basically a guy in a suit. Same for The Phantom and Speedy.) I wanted When #636 hit the stands, it might well have jolted mark verheiden to keep this story as grounded as possible. Plus I felt readers with the number of changes. There would be a Photo by Gage Skidmore. little breather before that change, though. that characters like Chan were often given short shrift Issues #635 and 642 reprise one of the most important experiments in the shadow of the superguys.” It would have been very easy to have him lost, too, since the delivery in comics history. The first two issues of All-Star Comics were pretty standard anthology comics. With #3 (Winter 1940), editor Sheldon they were trying to make consisted of a prototype energy collector that Mayer and writer Gardner Fox tried something that changed the course allows Sumango’s dictator to control a giant version of himself composed of superhero comics forever. They took the heroes who were appearing entirely of energy. The superheroes of the piece become involved because separately in the book and put them all together in one story. Calling the R&D man on Chan’s flight happens to be Clay Kendell, an old themselves the Justice Society of America, they ushered in the concept acquaintance of Hal Jordan’s from Len Wein’s run on Green Lantern. of the superhero team, and comics have never looked back. When the heroes are unable to beat Diaz’s construct, Chan manages to That experiment being so important, it’s no surprise that Action snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by simply… pulling the plug. Comics Weekly utilized the concept. The first of the two issues came The story ends with Chan reporting to his superior who, throughout about right before the introduction of the new features. “It was to make the tale, only appears as a shadowy image on a TV screen. “I reviewed noise,” mentions Greenberger. “Mike [Gold] suggested we do the jam my script for the book and that character isn’t ID’d there either,” Verheiden reveals. “I’m guessing I was asked to set something up for before the soft reboot and handed me the assignment.” Illustrating the story was Eduardo Barreto, while Mark Verheiden the future in an oblique way.” Greenberger confirms this was at Gold’s was assigned the writing chores since, according to Bob, “I was already request for the future of Blackhawk in the modern day post-Crisis DCU. working with Mark on The Phantom, and we were getting along so With the next issue, #636, the reshuffle made its appearance. well, I figured, keep it going.” Superman continued his two-page spread, Wild Dog returned, and After all of those seven- and eight-page stories, this one weighs Phantom Stranger had another single-issue tale. Two completely new in at 29, with Superman and Green Lantern’s regular gigs taking up features debuted, with a third added in #637, while the book’s sixth the rest of the issue. The length of the story was a break for Action star was half of one of the earlier features. at the time, but also for Verheiden. Mark tells BACK ISSUE, “My main memory is of being slightly intimidated by the page length, since this BACK UP TO SPEED was the longest single story I’d ever done to that point. It was also the Speedy aimed to have things all to himself when he returned to Action. first true superhero book I’d ever written.” Issues #636–640 were written by Mark Verheiden with art by Louis The story was set in the present day, and Superman, Green Lantern, Williams, Frank McLaughlin, and Frank Springer, and featured Speedy and Black Canary were pressed into service. Just so no one thought they looking for work to support his daughter. DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 73

Rhymin’ and Slimin’ Demon The poetic Bronze Age monster-hero as presented by the Grant/Pacella/Wray team. From ACW #638. (inset) That same issue’s Bronze-a-licious cover, penciled by Demon creator Jack Kirby and inked by Terry Austin. TM & © DC Comics.

BETTER THE DEMON YOU KNOW…

A creation of Jack Kirby, Etrigan the Demon lasted 16 issues (Aug.–Sept. 1972–Jan. 1974) in his own title, but reentered fan consciousness when Alan Moore wrote him in issues #25–27 (June–Aug. 1984) of his celebrated run on Swamp Thing. From there, the now-rhyming Demon was featured in a miniseries by Matt Wagner (who was interviewed about the series in BI #15) and played a role in Cosmic Odyssey (examined in BI #9). This is the point in his history where Etrigan joins the ACW cast. Alan Grant was chosen to scribe the Demon stories that appeared in issues #636–641, with Mark Pacella and Bill Wray illustrating. From the start, Grant was familiar with the roots of the character, telling BACK ISSUE, “I was a big fan of Jack Kirby’s original series, and I’d read Matt Wagner’s take on things.” When it came to writing the rhyming dialogue the character now affected, Grant felt it was “never a chore, though often a challenge. But I’ve got a pretty active right brain that likes playing with words.” Rereading the stories before answering my questions, Alan found that “I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was impressed with my own rhyming!” Grant’s story begins with Jason Blood being asked to help a possessed child, something he is loath to do after his recent experiences in Wagner’s miniseries. The exorcism does not go easily and Jason must call on Etrigan for help. While this takes place, Blood’s girlfriend Glenda receives a vision of Tintagel castle and Morgaine Le Fay, hereditary enemy of Etrigan. Fearing someone will free her from the statue state she was trapped in the last time they met, Blood sets off into danger again. This is a bit of a step down from superhero action, He tracks down Le Fay and the witch is indeed but according to Verheiden, “I don’t remember if that was an editorial suggestion or something I returned to life, only to be quickly dispatched by Etrigan— pitched. But making him a grounded, adult character a bit of a quick departure for a foe so integral to the alan grant Demon mythos. Grant recalls, “I think the editor may sure sounds like something I’d embrace.” have asked me to use her. I was happy to use her, as I’d Finding employment with a private investigator, Speedy’s first case involves a man who wants his missing brother spent a vacation a few years earlier driving around the ancient places of found. As per any mystery worth its salt, there is more to the story the British Isles—including all the ones I ended up using in Action.” than first appears. Back home, Glenda and Jason’s other compatriot, Randu, have It turns out the man is missing because he wants to be. He has continued to receive messages regarding Jason’s situation and against contracted AIDS and lost his job and home because of it. Once Speedy his orders have decided to follow him, intent on providing their aid. discovers this, he is much easier to track down. Along the way, “I bore the original Kirby setup in mind,” reveals Grant. “So they weren’t though, he meets up with the brother who hired him, a man who just bit players, but almost a necessary part of the ensemble.” happens to be Hollywood’s hottest action star. He becomes angry They arrive and walk into a trap. Meanwhile, Etrigan reveals to Jason because he believes Speedy is trying to smear his name and ruin his that he has sourced Morgaine’s power back to the arch-demon Asteroth, career. At that time no action hero could have a gay sibling and also the being who has captured Glenda and Randu. To be continued…. remain popular. He eventually comes to his senses and sees his That’s how the Demon portion of issue #641 ends. The experiment of brother in the hospital. Action Comics as a weekly anthology was over. Where did that leave the Speedy’s history with drug use suggests that the plot came first Demon? (Not to mention Glenda and Randu?) Alan Grant believes he was and the character was worked in, but “it was a Speedy story first,” not aware that the sixth episode would be the last, stating, “I don’t think offers Verheiden. “Given Speedy’s drug abuse and the fact that I love I’d have written a six-parter that ended ‘To Be Continued.’ I’m pretty sure the Denny O’Neil/Neal Adams Green Lantern/Green Arrow run, it felt that the editors at the time didn’t know there would be a monthly Demon more or less natural.” comic.” And his knowledge of such a thing? “The first I would know is The junior archer changed his name to Arsenal shortly after that, when I got a phone call to say, ‘Hey, can you write a new Demon series?’ ” but has always remained more of a team player than a solo star. The story did actually continue in a regular series, though the strange As mentioned, there were thoughts about a solo series, but they thing was that it did not begin until a year and a half after the last never came to fruition until a Special in 1996 and a miniseries in episode in Action! Why such a delay? “Lining up talent, getting 1998 after the name change. something approved for the schedule, and then getting it into production,” 74 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

relates Bob Greenberger. The series did continue the storyline, but you have to wonder how long some people had to search to find where the lead-in stories had appeared. Other than Green Lantern, Etrigan can probably be considered the most successful Action alumnus since the resulting series ran a whopping 58 issues.

helmet, and the series combined heroics on a small neighborhood level with a healthy helping of humor (see BI #15 for more about ’Maze). Those same sensibilities informed the pair’s contribution to Action, Hero Hotline. Appearing in issues #637–640, “Hero Hotline was intended as a different spin on superheroes, putting characters with minimal powers into a more realistic world,” remarks Rozakis. “I referred to it as ‘Hill Street Blues with costumes.’ ” THAT WAS NO (PHANTOM) LADY… The character Phantom Lady had been around for a long time—long To further the police analogy, the premise of the series is that a enough that she was one of the targets of Dr. Frederic Wertham in his group of superheroes have set up a service where anyone can call and infamous witch hunt Seduction of the Innocent. Now owned by DC, get in touch with a hero. “I took the idea that people with minimal powers would need actual jobs rather than secret identities,” Phantom Lady in ACW was a new version. “I read some of the Golden Age stuff,” begins series writer Len Strazewski, “but states Rozakis. “What better way to earn a living than by I wanted to do my own thing, a modern character.” using those powers? And wouldn’t it be great if, instead of calling the police, you could call an 800-number and Appearing in issues #636–641, the new Lady was get a superhero to solve your problem?” Dee Tyler, daughter of the US attorney general. In the course of four chapters of seven pages each, “That would give her access to Washington society,” notes Strazewski. “That was something I liked about the Heroes manage to solve quite a number of problems. the Golden Age character… she was a society heroine.” They rescue a missing female country singer, stop a liquor-store robbery, take down a man with a squirt Her repertoire of weapons consists of holograms and gun full of gasoline, free a dog from an “impregnable” a taser rather than the black light of her namesake. box, and, of course, that old superhero staple, rescue a “The black light was great, but the idea that there were cat stuck in a tree. so many other light-based effects that could be created Not all goes perfectly, though. In a series that by the same technology was something I wanted to play with a little bit,” Len feels. seemed very humorous, Rozakis and DeStefano len strazewski Dee graduates from a very exclusive school that injected realism when one of the heroes inadvertently causes the liquor-store bandit to shoot himself. Len says “created essentially heroic, spy-like females.” Returning home, she stumbles across a plot to blackmail her father and “I never intended that the series would be straight comedy,” reveals decides to help him using her new skills as well as those weapons which Bob. “There were serious bits throughout.” Harkening back to the Showcase premise, Hero Hotline graduated to its are made for her by a childhood friend. The art on the feature was by penciler Chuck Austen and inker Gary own six-issue miniseries in 1990. “The first issue of the miniseries was already Martin and was done in a playful, done when the decision was made cartoony style. “I liked Chuck’s style,” to do the four-parter in Action,” Strazewski tells BACK ISSUE. “I knew Rozakis tells BI. “Since it was coming out ahead of the mini, I decided it would be cartoony, and his females to go backwards in time, so the were very sexy.” Strazewski’s script four-parter was really an issue #0.” also embraces that lightheartedness. Phantom Lady foils the plot and learns about the incident from her FANCY MEETING father’s past that led to the blackYOU HERE mailing. The series ties up neatly, but Christopher Chance debuted in includes a teaser foreshadowing fuAction Comics #419 (Dec. 1973) as a man who would take the place of ture episodes. Len recalls, “We didn’t a client who feared their life was in know if we were going to do any more, so I wanted to wrap things danger, thereby making himself the up but set up a platform. If we Human Target. After that debut, came to do more stories, we’d esChance was an occasional backup tablished who the key players would feature in Action and later, in The be, what they were about.” Brave and the Bold (see BI #10 for Never again a star in her own more Human Target history). The Human Target returned for feature, Dee Tyler did pop up in the DCU from time to time with Strazeone lonely story during Action’s time wski scribing two appearances in Flash as a weekly. How did this tale end up in issue #641? “I had the five#29 (Aug. 1989) and Starman #36–38 (July–Sept. 1991). The part Speedy story wrapping up,” character met her end in Infinite begins Bob Greenberger. “We had Crisis #1 (Dec. 2005). a spare slot, so Mark Waid came up with the Human Target, [story edWHO YOU GONNA CALL? itor] Brian Augustyn loved it, and Bob Rozakis wrote a lot of stories for we were off and running.” DC in the ’70s, but by the middle of the ’80s he found himself with less Dee Tyler, Robot Fighter time for writing. Bob tells BACK ISSUE, “I was devoting a lot more time and Chuck Austen and Gary energy to my production director Martin’s bouncy artwork duties by that time, including exploring computer coloring.” brought to life Len He did find time to produce a Strazewski’s new Phantom series with Stephan DeStefano that is fondly remembered, though. ’Mazing Lady. From ACW 638. Man was a critical darling that featured a small man in a large TM & © DC Comics. DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 75

Running might be the operative word there since, Waid remembers, “I personally chose the Human Target because he was and is one of my favorite third-stringers at DC.” The downside? “I had to write the story literally overnight.” Illustrated by Curt Swan and Dick Giordano, “The Pow! Zap! Wham! Contract” had Chance standing in for the star of the Courageous Man TV show when malfunctioning props convince the actor that someone has it in for him. Beyond the title, an homage to the iconic wall-climbing scenes indicate this story was influenced by the Batman TV show of the 1960s… even though it didn’t have a cliffhanger to be continued next episode.

OKAY, WRAP IT ALL UP!

Everything came to an end, anthology-wise, with #641 (Mar. 7, 1989). All the features except that pesky Demon story tied things up— not always with a bow, but enough to consider their arcs complete. Before closing up shop, though, Action Comics Weekly had one tale left to tell—though it took a couple of tries to get it right. Issue #642 finishes things off with a tale written by Elliot S! Maggin. The genesis of this story was not quite as smooth as it may have seemed. When asked how quickly the story was required, Mark Waid recalls, “My memory is that we had less time to get a new script in than it took you to type that question.” (Remember that “new script” comment for later.) Art-wise, there were a number of contributors with some interesting pairings including Steve Ditko and Art Thibert, Carmine Infantino and Kevin Nowlan, and others. Waid tells BACK ISSUE, “Co-editor Brian Augustyn and I made a point of pairing veterans, classic pencilers with newer inkers, and I still like a lot of the results.” But writer Maggin “had no idea who was to be drawing the book. I was all excited when I heard Steve Ditko was going to draw a segment. I had never worked with him before. And Gil Kane, of course, whom I had worked with quite a bit.”

To send off the weekly format, Maggin recalls that the editors “gave me a rough idea of what they wanted in terms of an ‘untold’ Green Lantern story—something about the details of how Abin Sur settled on Hal as his successor.” Elliot’s tale posits that originally the ring chose someone different: Clark Kent. This idea was not new to Maggin since he had written a story in Superman #257 (Oct. 1972) where the Guardians had originally considered having Kal-El lead the entire GL Corps! Unfortunately, in this instance the ring demands a native of the planet, so Kent’s memory of the incident is erased and Hal Jordan is next in line. We pick up the story in the present day as GL-Hal Jordan gets involved with some missing fissionable nuclear material… and ends up getting shot! This causes his ring to search out possible replacements, most of which are the same candidates that it considered to replace Abin Sur. Brought to the scene of Hal’s predicament, the candidates include Guy Gardner and Clark Kent, but also a labor organizer in Europe, a bishop in the Southern Hemisphere, a retired Secret Service agent, a hostage negotiator, Deadman, and finally, Dick Grayson. Some of these people are obvious choices for their bravery as well as the fact that they had been stars of Action Comics Weekly. But a few of the others seem to ring a bell too, don’t they? Elliot gives us the lowdown on their secrets: “The guy in Eastern Europe who worked in the factory was Lech Walesa. The retired Secret Service agent was modeled after a real guy named Rufus Youngblood who actually jumped on top of Lyndon Johnson to shield him when he first heard gunshots in Dallas in 1963. The priest was Desmond Tutu, who presided over the South African Peace and Reconciliation Commission, and the hostage negotiator was Terry Waite, the Englishman who used to walk into hostage situations and spent a lot of time as a hostage himself.” Now, who says comics don’t teach you anything? In the face of all these heroes, Hal’s ring asks him if he wants to turn over his ring to one of these individuals with less willpower. The revelation of his superior will is the impetus Hal requires to heal himself. Green Lantern sends these people back where they came from, but each is imbued with a measure of ring energy that helps resolve the sticky situation they were in when they were spirited away. GL then proceeds to take care of his own business. And that was it. Five months later, George Pérez and Brett Breeding were the creative team when Superman reasserted his control over the entire book with Action #643 (July 1989). Was Action Comics Weekly a success or a failure? Certainly there were successes. A number of features that had not been soloists for quite some time went on to star in their own books, while others had their careers revitalized. Fan reaction, which we can really only judge by the letters pages at this late date, was probably about what was expected. Predictably, early respondents were concerned about the price, but most felt they would get a bang for their buck. Also mentioned was the fact that they might have to buy some stories that did not interest them to get the ones that did. In general, though, most writers felt the time had come for this type of experiment.

Holy Hazards, Courageous Man! Original Curt Swan/Dick Giordano art (courtesy of Heritage) from the Mark Waid-penned Human Target episode in ACW #641. Besides the story’s obvious Batman ’66 TV pastiche, Courageous Man’s costume was also Waid’s sly wink to (inset) a Silver Age two-part imaginary story in World’s Finest #178 and 180, where a powerless Superman adopted this costume and the crimefighting moniker of Nova. TM & © DC Comics.

76 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

As the book progressed, fans’ comments were generally standard operating procedure for letterhacks. They asked for different characters, they stated why they would not be buying the title anymore, and some asked for more anthologies. Finally, when it became clear the experiment was ending, most printed letters lamented the fact. Sales-wise, Bob Greenberger recalls, “ACW never caught on and the sales weren’t there. DC liked anthologies but always struggled to make them work commercially.” (As recently as the late 1970s, DC’s Dollar Comics experiment— examined in BI #57—had anthology comics as about 75% of its output.) Despite that, Mike Gold remembers, “each and every issue of ACW made a profit.” Part of the problem might have been that “retailers bitched at the weekly, concerned over ordering four at a time before knowing how previous issues performed,” relates Greenberger. The idea of a weekly comic has certainly had a long life, especially from DC in recent times, the difference being they generally star big-name characters or are major crossover events and not anthologies, thereby hedging their bets. One exception, albeit as a planned, short-term special project, was Wednesday Comics, which ran for 12 weeks from July to September 2009. Its main focus was to explore comic books’ comicstrip roots within the format of a newspaper-tabloidformatted weekly anthology. Overall, the experiment that was Action Comics Weekly probably did not perform as well as its creators had hoped, but if you judge it simply by the number of successful graduates that left its halls, it did all right by itself.

OA, ONE LAST THING…

The last issue in the weekly format appeared with a date of March 14th, 1989, and that seemed to be it. Until something strange happened in 2000: a book called Green Lantern/Superman: Legend of the Green Flame appeared on the stands. In the introduction to this Prestige Format book, writer Neil Gaiman revealed that the story therein had been intended for… Action Comics Weekly. The story that was eventually published here was the reason that Elliot S! Maggin had to write Action #642 so quickly. Asked to write the final ACW issue, Gaiman was instructed to include as many characters from the weekly run as possible. Neil wrote the script in a week, turned it in, and everyone loved it. Well, not everyone. It seemed the Superman editorial team felt Kal-El’s secret identity was known by too many characters, and they didn’t want Hal Jordan to be in on the secret. The problem was, Gaiman’s story depended on that relationship. Unwilling to change his story, Gaiman elected to let the story die. But this is comics, where nothing is ever truly and finally dead. When DC was assembling a collection of Gaiman tales to be called Midnight Days, the subject of that old script came up. The editorial stance had changed, and the story was now acceptable. This spurred DC to get the ball rolling and get the story illustrated and published. By then Gaiman’s name alone was enough to make it commercially viable, so a number of artists were lined up and the book came to be. The story itself draws on a Superman/Green Lantern meeting earlier in ACW as well as the Last Days of the Justice Society Special from 1986 and features appearances by a number of the characters that featured in Action’s

weekly run. Hal and Clark run afoul of the magic that powered the Golden Age Green Lantern’s ring as it tries to convince Hal to take up the magical Green Flame of the title. The duo are led through a number of afterlives until the Phantom Stranger intervenes and the magic force’s desires are foiled. Reading the story in concert with the weekly issues of Action, it is plain to see the intricate connections that were made, and it is wonderful that it was finally published. Of course, it negates what would have been a legendary “Greatest Stories Never Told” in BACK ISSUE, but, hey, you can’t have everything. It would be unwieldy to list all of my thank-yous for this article, so rest assured, if you are quoted at all, you have the author’s sincerest thanks. BRIAN MARTIN’s day job is as an office manager. He lives in Oakville, Ontario, Canada, still reads comics with action in them, and some without, and still buys them weekly.

Man of Steel without Fear Title splash to the Maggin/Kane Green Lantern/Clark Kent epic from the last weekly issue, Action Comics Weekly #642. Original art courtesy of Heritage. (inset) The 2000 Neil Gaiman one-shot originally scripted for ACW #642. TM & © DC Comics.

DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 77

Find BACK ISSUE on

DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS

Regarding The Saga of the Swamp Thing (BI #92), the memory of Martin Pasko, the first writer of that title’s Swamp Thing stories, fails him in one respect. On the subject of sales, Marty says: “My ST stuff was done before the days of royalty statements, so I was never privy to sales figures.” As the writer of the “Phantom Stranger” backups in Saga #2–8, I received monthly statements of the book’s circulation until sales dropped below the threshold of royalties—in that day, 100,000 copies. – Mike W. Barr

PRAISE FOR PASKO AND YEATES’ SWAMP THING

BACK ISSUE #92 was another interesting reading experience, especially the cover-feature articles on Swamp Thing and the Phantom Stranger. The first 19 issues of SOTST, by Pasko and Yeates, are often overlooked, so I was glad to see you give them some love. The backup series with the Phantom Stranger was also a good read. Just an addition to the Martin Pasko interview: A few months before Saga of the Swamp Thing came out, Pasko wrote a Batman/ Swamp Thing meeting in The Brave and the Bold #176, with a beautiful cover by Michael Wm. Kaluta. – Scott Thiel

As always, an interesting issue [BI #92]. Couldn’t help but notice in the article on the “Super Hero Trademark” the terms copyright and trademark were used interchangeably, when in fact they are two very different things. One cannot “copyright” the term “super hero,” or any other word/term as is suggested in the first paragraph on page 31. One can trademark such things. For instance, DC owns the trademark “Superman” and the copyright to their character with that name, but they could not stop anyone from using the name Superman for a clearly distinguishable character as long as they aren’t using the Superman trademark to sell or promote it. Otherwise, it was a very interesting article. – Matt Celis I shared your message with John Cimino, the article’s writer, who responded: It was an honest mistake. When I was doing research for the article I came across both words “trademark” and “copyright” so many times that I managed to jumble them up when I wrote it. So in the first and fifth paragraph where I write “copyright,” it Batman and Harley Quinn TM & © DC Comics. BACK ISSUE TM & © TwoMorrows.

78 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue

NO DUMMY, THAT MUMMY

Just finished reading issue #92, and I must say, I enjoyed reading the article on the Living Mummy. I read this as it was coming out when I was in high school and I was the only one reading it. I could not say that it holds up today, but the idea of an African hunter being the mummy and the character’s background were very radical for the time. Could something like this appear in today’s readership? My response is yes, as I do find that the only limits in this field are an author’s imagination. The creativity in the market today is amazing. In my opinion, in looking at James Robinson’s Starman, I remember looking at the original stuff, thinking: “A guy with a rod and star on his chest? Boring…” But look what has been done with the concept. Do I even need to point out Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, who are 75 years old? I digress… I love your magazine, as it points out gems I had forgotten about, and I love looking at the validity of the concepts from yesterday to today. – Bill Broomall Next issue: BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES’ 25th ANNIVERSARY! Featuring a BTAS oral history and episode guide, a look at BOB “Commissioner Gordon” HASTINGS, a Harley Quinn history, DC’s Batman Adventures and Animated Universe comic books, and a tribute to the late, great artist MIKE PAROBECK. Featuring KEVIN ALTIERI, BRIAN AUGUSTYN, RICK BURCHETT, KEVIN “Batman” CONROY, GERRY CONWAY, PAUL DINI, MARTIN PASKO, DAN RIBA, ANDREA ROMANO, LEN STRAZEWSKI, BRUCE TIMM, and many others! With a heart-stopping Harley Quinn cover by Timm. Don’t ask—just BI it! See you in thirty! Your friendly neighborhood Euryman, Michael Eury, editor-in-chief

Send your comments to: Email: euryman@gmail.com (subject: BACK ISSUE) Postal mail: Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief • BACK ISSUE 118 Edgewood Ave. NE * Concord, NC 28025

should state “trademark.” Hey, I’m just glad it didn’t take away from the overall quality of the article. But to continue with the story, on May 26, 2016—after BI #92 was in production—it seemed that the trademark wars may have started up again. A British businessman by the name of Graham Jules stepped up to the “supposedly” invincible barrier Marvel and DC have over the “SUPER HERO” trademark. While many books since the 1990s had to change their names from using the word “SUPER HERO” in their titles due to Marvel and DC’s strangleholds on the word and their corporate “bully tactics” to keep it that way, Jules didn’t back down—HE WENT TO TRIAL! With his knowledge on “intellectual property” laws and experience from his past battles with the two comic-book publishers, he knew he could defend his book Zero to Superhero (2014) and win. Remarkably, his bravery paid off. Four days before the planned hearing, Marvel and DC backed down for “commercial reasons.” Jules (and others) felt the legitimacy of Marvel and DC’s claim to the word would fail in today’s world, and I’m assuming their lawyers did as well since they didn’t want to go to trial. By dropping the case and showing a “kink” in their armor, Marvel and DC could be in for a world of hurt when other companies come out in full force in using the word “SUPER HERO.” Only time will tell how powerful their grip on the trademark will last and also how their relationship with each other will turn out. Maybe a new Secret War has just begun…

Celebrate JACK KIRBY’s 100th birthday!

THE PARTY STARTS WITH

KIRBY100

TWOMORROWS and the JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR magazine celebrate JACK KIRBY’S 100th BIRTHDAY in style with the release of KIRBY100, a full-color visual holiday for the King of comics! It features an all-star line-up of 100 COMICS PROS who critique key images from Kirby’s 50-year career, admiring his page layouts, dramatics, and storytelling skills, and lovingly reminiscing about their favorite characters and stories. Featured are BRUCE TIMM, ALEX ROSS, WALTER SIMONSON, JOHN BYRNE, JOE SINNOTT, STEVE RUDE, ADAM HUGHES, WENDY PINI, JOHN ROMITA SR., DAVE GIBBONS, P. CRAIG RUSSELL, and dozens more of the top names in comics. Their essays serve to honor Jack’s place in comics history, and prove (as if there’s any doubt) that KIRBY IS KING! This double-length book is edited by JOHN MORROW and JON B. COOKE, with a Kirby cover inked by MIKE ROYER. (The Limited Hardcover Edition includes 16 bonus color pages of Kirby’s 1960s Deities concept drawings) All characters TM & © their respective owners.

(224-page FULL-COLOR TRADE PAPERBACK) $34.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-078-6 • (Digital Edition) $12.95 (240-page LIMITED EDITION HARDCOVER with 16 bonus pages) $45.95 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-079-3

2017 RATES

SHIPS AUGUST 2017 SUBSCRIPTIONS ECONOMY US Alter Ego (Six 100-page issues) $65.00 Back Issue (Eight 80-page issues) $73.00 BrickJournal (Six 80-page issues) $55.00 Comic Book Creator (Four 80-page issues) $40.00 Jack Kirby Collector (Four 100-page issues) $45.00

EXPEDITED US $83.00 $88.00 $66.00 $50.00 $58.00

PREMIUM US $92.00 $97.00 $73.00 $54.00 $61.00

INTERNATIONAL $102.00 $116.00 $87.00 $60.00 $67.00

DIGITAL ONLY $29.70 $31.60 $23.70 $15.80 $19.80

URGENT WARNING FOR OUR READERS! DON’T MISS YOUR FAVORITE MAGS! We are experiencing huge demand for our recent magazines. Case in point: Back Issue #88 & #89 and Alter Ego #141 are already completely SOLD OUT, with other issues about to run out. Don’t wait for a convention or sale— order now!

BACK ISSUE #99

ALTER EGO #149

ALTER EGO #150

ALTER EGO #151

ALTER EGO #152

Showcases GIL KANE, with an incisive and free-wheeling interview conducted in the 1990s by DANIEL HERMAN for his 2001 book Gil Kane: The Art of the Comics— plus other surprise features centered around the artistic co-creator of the Silver Age Green Lantern and The Atom! Also: FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), MICHAEL T. GILBERT, and BILL SCHELLY! Green Lantern cover by KANE and GIELLA!

STAN LEE’s 95th birthday! Rare 1980s LEE interview by WILL MURRAY—GER APELDOORN on Stan’s non-Marvel writing in the 1950s—STAN LEE/ROY THOMAS e-mails of the 21st century—and more special features than you could shake Irving Forbush at! Also FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), BILL SCHELLY, and MICHAEL T. GILBERT! Colorful Marvel multi-hero cover by Big JOHN BUSCEMA!

Golden Age artist FRANK THOMAS (The Owl! The Eye! Dr. Hypno!) celebrated by Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt’s MICHAEL T. GILBERT! Plus the scintillating (and often offbeat) Golden & Silver Age super-heroes of Western Publishing’s DELL & GOLD KEY comics! Art by MANNING, DITKO, KANE, MARSH, GILL, SPIEGLE, SPRINGER, NORRIS, SANTOS, THORNE, et al.! Plus FCA, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

Unsung artist/writer LARRY IVIE conceived (and named!) the JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, helped develop T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS, brought EC art greats to the world of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and more! SANDY PLUNKETT chronicles his career, with art by FRAZETTA, CRANDALL, WOOD, KRENKEL, DOOLIN, and others! Plus FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

(100-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 • Ships Oct. 2017

(100-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 • Ships Dec. 2017

(100-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 • Ships Feb. 2018

(100-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 • Ships April 2018

BACK ISSUE #100

BACK ISSUE #101

BACK ISSUE #102

BACK ISSUE #103

BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES’ 25th ANNIVERSARY! Looks back at the influential cartoon series. Plus: episode guide, Harley Quinn history, DC’s Batman Adventures and Animated Universe comic books, and tribute to artist MIKE PAROBECK. Featuring KEVIN ALTIERI, RICK BURCHETT, PAUL DINI, GERARD JONES, MARTIN PASKO, DAN RIBA, TY TEMPLETON, BRUCE TIMM, and others! BRUCE TIMM cover!

100-PAGE SPECIAL featuring Bronze Age Fanzines and Fandom! Buyer’s Guide, Comic Book Price Guide, DC’s Comicmobile, Super DC Con ’76, Comic Reader, FOOM, Amazing World of DC, Charlton Bullseye, Squa Tront, & more! Featuring ALAN LIGHT, BOB OVERSTREET, SCOTT EDELMAN, BOB GREENBERGER, JACK C. HARRIS, TONY ISABELLA, DAVID ANTHONY KRAFT, BOB LAYTON, PAUL LEVITZ, MICHAEL USLAN, and others!

ROCK ’N’ ROLL COMICS! Flash Gordon star SAM J. JONES interview, KISS in comics, Marvel’s ALICE COOPER, T. Rex’s MARC BOLAN interviews STAN LEE, PAUL McCARTNEY, Charlton’s Partridge Family, David Cassidy, and Bobby Sherman comics, Marvel’s Steeltown Rockers, Monkees comics, & Comic-Con band Seduction of the Innocent. With MAX ALLAN COLLINS, JACK KIRBY, BILL MUMY, ALAN WEISS, and others!

MERCS AND ANTIHEROES! Deadpool’s ROB LIEFELD and FABIAN NICIEZA interviewed! Histories of Cable, Taskmaster, Deathstroke the Terminator, the Vigilante, and Wild Dog, plus… Archie meets the Punisher?? Featuring TERRY BEATTY, MAX ALLAN COLLINS, PAUL KUPPERBERG, BATTON LASH, JEPH LOEB, DAVID MICHELINIE, MARV WOLFMAN, KEITH POLLARD, and others! Deadpool vs. Cable cover by LIEFELD!

ALL-STAR EDITORS ISSUE! Past and present editors reveal “How I Beat the Dreaded Deadline Doom”! Plus: ARCHIE GOODWIN and MARK GRUENWALD retrospectives, E. NELSON BRIDWELL interview, DIANA SCHUTZ interview, ALLAN ASHERMAN revisits DC’s ’70s editorial department, Marvel Assistant Editors’ Month, and a history of PERRY WHITE! With an unpublished 1981 Captain America cover by MIKE ZECK!

(84 FULL-COLOR pages) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships Aug. 2017

(100 FULL-COLOR pages) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 • Ships Sept. 2017

(84 FULL-COLOR pages) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships Nov. 2017

(84 FULL-COLOR pages) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships Jan. 2018

(84 FULL-COLOR pages) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships March 2018

BRICKJOURNAL #48

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #17

KIRBY COLLECTOR #71

KIRBY COLLECTOR #72

KIRBY COLLECTOR #73

THE WORLD OF LEGO MECHA! Learn the secrets and tricks of building mechs with some of the best mecha builders in the world! Interviews with BENJAMIN CHEH, KELVIN LOW, LU SIM, FREDDY TAM, DAVID LIU, and SAM CHEUNG! Plus: Minifigure customizing from JARED K. BURKS, step-by-step “You Can Build It” instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK, BrickNerd’s DIY Fan Art, & more!

The legacy and influence of WALLACE WOOD, with a comprehensive essay about Woody’s career, extended interview with Wood assistant RALPH REESE (artist for Marvel’s horror comics, National Lampoon, and undergrounds), a long chat with cover artist HILARY BARTA (Marvel inker, Plastic Man and America’s Best artist with ALAN MOORE), plus our usual columns, features, and the humor of HEMBECK!

KIRBY: OMEGA! Looks at endings, deaths, and Anti-Life in the Kirbyverse, including poignant losses and passings from such series as NEW GODS, KAMANDI, FANTASTIC FOUR, LOSERS, THOR, DEMON and others! Plus: The 2016 Silicon Valley Comic-Con Kirby Panel, MARK EVANIER, STEVE SHERMAN & MIKE ROYER panel, WALTER SIMONSON interview, & unseen pencil art galleries! SIMONSON cover inks!

FIGHT CLUB! Jack’s most powerful fights and in-your-face action: Real-life WAR EXPERIENCES, Marvel’s KID COWBOYS, the Madbomb saga and all those negative 1970s Marvel fan letters, interview with SCOTT McCLOUD on his Kirby-inspired punchfest DESTROY!!, rare Kirby interview, 2017 WonderCon Kirby Panel, MARK EVANIER, unpublished pencil art galleries, and more! Cover inked by DEAN HASPIEL!

ONE-SHOTS! We cover Kirby’s best (and worst) short spurts on his wildest concepts: ANIMATION IDEAS, DINGBATS, JUSTICE INC., MANHUNTER, ATLAS, PRISONER, and more! Plus MARK EVANIER and our other regular panelists, rare Kirby interview, panels from the 2017 Kirby Centennial celebration, pencil art galleries, and some one-shot surprises! BIG BARDA #1 cover finishes by MIKE ROYER!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships Oct. 2017

(100-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 • Ships Winter 2018

(100-page FULL-COLOR mag) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 • Now shipping!

(100-page FULL-COLOR mag) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 • Summer 2017

(100-page FULL-COLOR mag) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 • Ships Fall 2017

REED CRANDALL Illustrator of the Comics

From the 1940s to the ’70s, REED CRANDALL brought a unique and masterful style to American comic art. Using an illustrator’s approach on everything he touched, Crandall gained a reputation as the “artist’s artist” through his skillful interpretations of Golden Age super-heroes DOLL MAN, THE RAY, and BLACKHAWK (his signature character); horror and sci-fi for the legendary EC COMICS line; Warren Publishing’s CREEPY, EERIE, and BLAZING COMBAT; the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS and EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS characters; and even FLASH GORDON for King Features. Comic art historian ROGER HILL has compiled a complete and extensive history of Crandall’s life and career, from his early years and major successes, through his tragic decline and passing in 1982. This FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER includes NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN PHOTOS, a wealth of RARE AND UNPUBLISHED ARTWORK, and over EIGHTY THOUSAND WORDS of insight into one of the true illustrators of the comics.

(256-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $49.95 • (Digital Edition) $13.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-077-9 • SHIPS JULY 2017

It’s

GROOVY, baby!

Follow-up to Mark Voger’s smash hit MONSTER MASH!

From WOODSTOCK to THE BANANA SPLITS, from SGT. PEPPER to H.R. PUFNSTUF, from ALTAMONT to THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY, GROOVY is a far-out trip to the era of lava lamps and love beads. This profusely illustrated HARDCOVER BOOK, in PSYCHEDELIC COLOR, features interviews with icons of grooviness such as PETER MAX, BRIAN WILSON, PETER FONDA, MELANIE, DAVID CASSIDY, members of the JEFFERSON AIRPLANE, CREAM, THE DOORS, THE COWSILLS and VANILLA FUDGE; and cast members of groovy TV shows like THE MONKEES, LAUGH-IN and THE BRADY BUNCH. GROOVY revisits the era’s ROCK FESTIVALS, MOVIES, ART—even COMICS and CARTOONS, from the 1968 ‘mod’ WONDER WOMAN to R. CRUMB. A color-saturated pop-culture history written and designed by MARK VOGER (author of the acclaimed book MONSTER MASH), GROOVY is one trip that doesn’t require dangerous chemicals!

(192-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-080-9 • DIGITAL EDITION: $13.95

SHIPS OCTOBER 2017 • Free preview online now!

TwoMorrows. The Future of Pop History. TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA

Phone: 919-449-0344 E-mail: store@twomorrows.com Web: www.twomorrows.com

$6$ ",52!9$) 3#3

7(%.3#)&)25,%$4(%%!24(

5.2!4%$

./7/.",52!9

7" #/- 7!2.% 2!2#() 6%

4(/53!.$3/&&) ,-3 46-/6) %3 3%2) %3$) 2%#4&2/-4(%345$) /6!5, 43 Ú 4 U R N E R % N T E R T A I N ME N T #O A N D7A R N E R " R O S % N T E R T A I N ME N T ) N C ! L L 2 I G H T S2 E S E R V E D

PRINTED IN CHINA

7(%.$) ./3!52325,%$4(%%!24(