Everybody Loves Kryptonite

Yes, the original is in here.

Showcase Presents World's Finest featuring Superman and Batman Volume 3: written by Edmond Hamilton, Jim Shooter, Leo Dorfman, Cary Bates, and Bill Finger; illustrated by Curt Swan, George Klein, and Al Plastino (1965-67; collected 2010): An often gloriously loopy example of DC's superheroes in the late Silver Age. Superman and Batman team up, often with Robin and Jimmy Olsen along, to face a variety of menaces that range from the sinister to the ridiculous.

The great Curt Swan, for many people The Superman Artist, draws all but one of the stories collected here, giving even the craziest of events a grounding in reality. Edmond Hamilton, a science-fiction writer who started his career in the 1930's but also wrote a ton of comics for DC in the 1950's and 1960's, writes about the first half of the book. It's Silver Agey super-science and sketchy characterization throughout. And comics were for kids, so that's fine.

Superman and Batman get a little more psychologically complex once the young, Marvelesque Jim Shooter starts contributing scripts, along with long-time-to-be Superman scribe Cary Bates and Leo Dorfman. The heroes show more doubt and have more problems, sometimes to a ridiculous extent. The final story in the volume features an astonishingly underwhelming villain who nonetheless figures out the location of the Bat-cave in about two minutes...and gets inside. It also features Batman and Superman telling a Q&A group what villains they most fear and why. Really? This is not a particularly good thing to get all carey and sharey about!

The 1950's and 1960's were also a period when everyone on the planet seemed to have several pounds of Kryptonite lying around the house. It's a good thing these were stories for children -- otherwise, Superman would have died a thousand times over. One can see by the rote use of Kryptonite by every bloody criminal on the planet why the editors tried to wipe the Kryptonian menace out during the soft Superman reboot of 1970.

Or John Byrne's hard Superman reboot of 1986, for that matter, which initially reduced the amount of Kryptonite on Earth to one fist-sized chunk. Having learned nothing from 63 years of Superman history, the producers of Smallville re-introduced Kryptonite in mass quantities and upped the ante by having it give human beings super-powers as well. Because as Bizarro-Superman (who also appears here) would say, Hollywood am smart!

In order to introduce non-Kryptonite-centric drama, the creators of World's Finest resorted several times in the three years spanned by this collection to two recurring story models. One is the 'Imaginary Story', in which out-of-continuity events such as Bruce Wayne being adopted by Jonathan and Martha Kent and being raised as Clark Kent's brother could occur. These Imaginary Stories often represented the best DC stories (for adult readers, anyway) of the 1950's and 1960's, as people could actually change and even die in them.

The other old stand-by involved the magical pair of transdimensional tricksters Mr. Mxyzptlk and Bat-Mite getting up to magical shenanigans to test the character of Superman and Batman. Because the effects of their magic -- up to and including mass death -- would cease to exist once they were banished back to their magical other-dimensional worlds, their stories could also involve a lot of danger and humiliation for the World's Finest team. Cartoonist Evan Dorkin took the Bat-Mite/Mxyzptlk stories to their logical conclusion in 2001's World's Funniest, which I thought was pretty funny.

All in all, this volume is a weird delight. Is it sophisticated graphic entertainment for adults? No. But it's more fun than a barrel of Kryptonite. And barrels of Kryptonite must be fun because everyone's got one! Also, King Arthur and his knights had super-powers in the DC Universe at this point! And the Superman of the 30th century can be brought low by... sea water, all of which is now deadly radioactive! Because Kryptonite wasn't pervasive enough! Highly recommended.

Against the Sun-Eater

Legion of Super-heroes: The Life and Death of Ferro Lad: written by Jim Shooter; illustrated by Curt Swan and George Klein (1966-67; collected 2010): Once upon a time in the 1950's, a group of 30th-century, super-powered teenagers invited the 20th century's Superboy to join their super-team, the Legion of Super-heroes. The rest was history. Future history.

The Legion quickly acquired a relatively vast number of heroes, especially for superhero comics of the time, reaching more than a dozen members by the early 1960's when new-born teams like the Avengers or the Justice League were puttering around with six or seven. Due to their roster size and the future milieu they inhabited, the Legion heroes soon also acquired a rogue's gallery that might have given any other team, teen-aged or adult, pause.

And then...well, and then, a 13-year-old kid decided in the mid-1960's that he could write comic books. So he sent off some stories to the editor of the Legion at DC Comics. And lo and behold, at the age of 14, Jim Shooter became the regular writer of the Legion in 1966. Marvel's surge in popularity among teenagers at the time probably contributed to the hiring decision -- certainly, Shooter's Legion was far and away DC's most Marvel-like book, except actually written by a teenager. Most refreshingly, it offered a surprisingly vulnerable Superboy. The enemies the Legion faced were so powerful that even the Boy of Steel needed help.

This volume collects most of the Legion stories that featured one of the characters Shooter created when he first took over the book, Ferro Lad. Like the later Colossus of the X-Men, Ferro Lad could turn into metal when the need arose -- in his case, solid iron that nonetheless remained mobile and super-strong. Perpetually masked because of a facial disfigurement that came along with his mutation (yes, Ferro Lad was a mutant -- one of DC's first so-named, as far as I remember), Ferro Lad fought the good fight for a year before the apocalyptic events that introduced both the members of the Fatal Five (the worst super-criminals of the 30th century) and the Sun-Eater (exactly what it sounds like) to the DC universe.

The depleted Legion's desperate battle against the Sun-Eater is just one of the pleasures of this volume. We also see Earth under siege by the villainous Khund empire, a glimpse into the Legion's future as adults, and a threat to the Legion from what seems to be the ghost of one of its fallen members. Shooter's writing is fun and pulpy and melodramatically epic.

Curt Swan's art is terrific, managing the difficult feat of portraying both the ridiculously over-scaled (the Sun-Eater can engulf entire suns, after all) and the intimate and human. His Legion actually look like teenagers, while the design of the members of the Fatal Five was instantly iconic and endured for decades. Swan was Superman's quintessential artist for decades, but he was also the defining artist for the Legion. No one was ever better than he was in the 1960's on this book. Highly recommended.

Mr. X-Men

Mr. X by Peter Straub (1999): Very much a transitional novel for Straub between his particular form of literary horror and a much more postmodern, self-reflexive mode of weirdness that persists in his fiction to this day. While there are scenes of graphic violence early in the novel, they eventually give way to an increasingly loopy narrative involving doppelgangers, psychics, superpowers, time travel, jazz, precocious children, and the enduring appeal of the supernatural fiction of H.P. Lovecraft.

Straub's novels since the late 1980's have been preoccupied with serial killers, for the most part in full pop-culture Omnipotent, Omniscient Killer Mode. Mr. X does play with that model to good effect at points, especially towards the end of the novel, as assorted secrets are revealed -- offering a mirror image to the hyper-competent serial killers of so many of Straub's previous and subsequent novels.

The narrator, who is (probably) not the eponymous serial killer, is an engaging fellow. There's a gigantic, never-explicitly-stated 'secret' to the characters in the novel which you may pick up as you're reading it, or if you consult interviews about the novel. I think the 'secret' causes more problems than it solves while also causing the novel to sidestep exploring the many ramifications of that secret, at least one of which actually needs to be addressed for the novel to fully make sense. It's a choice that's at once too clever by half and half as clever as it needs to be.

Other than that, readers may find that things get a bit twee as the novel progresses. Or a lot twee. There's a child character who is probably in the top ten of 'Most Annoying Peter Straub Characters Ever,' and a few eccentric aunts who come close. Your results may vary.

But if you want narrative closure, you should probably read another novel. As with so many of Straub's novels after this one, closure is not on the table, or certainty. We're questioning identity here, not resolving it. Recommended.

　

Harbinger: Children of the Eighth Day: written by Jim Shooter; illustrated by David Lapham and John Dixon (1991-92): Now that a rebooted Harbinger has been back in the comics marketplace for a year-and-a-half, it's interesting to look at Version 1.0. Created by ousted Marvel Comics EIC Jim Shooter as a theoretically more realistic riff on Marvel's X-Men, Harbinger is an odd mix of dense dialogue and sudden breakneck action.

One of the problems here, corrected in the reboot, lies with the antagonist, Harada, and his evil Harbinger Foundation, which among other things collects and trains people with super-powers ('psiots' in the terminology of the Valiant universe). We're told he's bad, and we get a couple of pro forma superhero battles between the 'Renegades' who are the protagonists and Harada's forces, but that's about it.

And suddenly, rather than developing the ongoing battle between the Renegades and Harada, the book suddenly takes off for a superhero battle with aliens on the Moon in issue 3. Then the group breaks up and reforms in the space of an issue.

Events move so quickly that characters, and their decisions, become weightless. It doesn't help that the Renegades, all of them teenagers, are neither written nor drawn as such. They're pretty much your standard squabbling superhero group, one of dozens. They just use words like "slut" and "hosebag" a lot more than the X-Men ever did, and tell a lot more fat jokes at the expense of one of the characters. Recommended for historical purposes only.

Legion

Showcase Presents Legion of Superheroes Volume 4, written by Jim Shooter, E. Nelson Bridwell and Cary Bates; illustrated by Curt Swan, Win Mortimer, Dave Cockrum, George Tuska, Jack Abel and others (1967-1972; collected 2010): The fourth Legion of Superheroes (LSH) Showcase volume takes us through a period of transition for DC's group of super-powered teenagers in the 30th century (and Superboy and Supergirl).

Artistic great Curt Swan leaves for full-time pencilling duties on the Superman books, and World's Youngest Comic-book Writer Jim Shooter follows a year or so thereafter. Legion stories shift from Adventure Comics to Action Comics to Superboy, losing pages every time. But Superboy would become Superboy and the Legion of Superheroes soon after the stories collected here. Dave Cockrum, one of the best artists the Legion ever had (and a pivotal co-creator of Marvel's new X-Men a few years down the road) pencils his first few stories here.

The best story here is the opening two-parter by Shooter, Swan and inker Abel, in which a handful of Legionnaires flee to 20th-century Smallville with the forces of Mordru the Mystic close behind them. Mordru's powerful enough to defeat the entire Legion by himself (Superboy is as vulnerable to magic as anyone else), and the two-parter is a mini-masterpiece of suspense.

One of the things the Legion did for Superboy was regularly place him in situations of real peril that didn't always have to involve Kryptonite. While the Superman books of the 1960's seemed perpetually stuck with a nearly omnipotent Man of Steel, the Legion books gave us a Superboy who could be hurt and even killed by the villains he faced. It made for a lot more drama.

After Shooter left, things got a lot less interesting, though the end of the volume brings young writer Cary Bates and the aforementioned Cockrum onto the stage, hinting at better days to come. One of the icons of early comic-book fandom, the Legion also looked forward to the dizzying array of superheroes that would come to characterize Marvel's 1980's super-hit X-Men: Legion members included such bizarrely gifted heroes as Matter-Eater Lad (who could eat anything), Bouncing Boy (who could bounce really well), and Chemical King (who could speed up chemical reactions).

Unlike later X-heroes and X-villains, the Legion members had helpfully descriptive names: one could actually tell what their powers were just by knowing their names, a far cry from characters with names like Holocaust, Marrow and Apocalypse. So it goes. Long-time artist Win Mortimer's art on the Legion here is better than I expected, partially because Jack Abel's inking gives the whole thing that peculiar weight and darkness that was Abel's trademark. Long live the Legion! Recommended.

10

Comics:


Tom Strong's Terrific Tales Volume 1 by Alan Moore, Steve Moore, Paul Rivoche, Alan Weiss, Art Adams and others (2002-2003):This anthology title puts Tom Strong, his family and friends, and far-future crime-fighter Jonni Future through a variety of adventures. Highlights include the tales of Tom Strong as an orphan growing up on tropical island Attabar Teru with the helpful Otu tribe, pretty much Moore's homage to the youthful Tarzan flashback book Jungle Tales of Tarzan (or if you want to go back to Tarzan's inspiration, Mowgli in The Jungle Book). Jonni Future, a 20th-century woman, uses the Time Bridge to battle evil 4 billion years in the future with the help of her leopard-like Paraman companion, a spaceship shaped like a Coelacanth, and a pair of the largest breasts in comic-book history.


Tom Strong's Terrific Tales Volume 2 Alan Moore, Steve Moore, Alan Weiss, Art Adams and others (2003-2005): The anthology title draws to a close with this collection of issues 7-12. Probably only Alan Moore could get artists like Peter Kuper, Jaime Hernandez, Peter Bagge and Sergio Aragones all working on what amounts to a superhero title, which is why Alan Moore is God. Maybe not the God, but definitely a God. Jaunty and fizzy, but with a surprising hit of poignance at the end as Tom leaves Attabar Teru (and, unbeknownst to him, future wife Dhalua) for Millennium City in the early 1920's in the final tale. But he'll be back. Highly recommended.


Legion of Superheroes: Enemy Rising by Jim Shooter and Francis Manapul and others (2007): Jim Shooter is one of the two most celebrated writers DC's 30th/31st-century super-hero teen team the Legion of Superheroes ever had (the other is longtime LSH scripter Paul Levitz), having helped make the Legion a cult favourite back in the 1960's, when Shooter became the youngest writer of a mainstream comic-book in, probably, ever (he was 13 (!)). Those 60's Shooter-scripted stories are still a delight today. Here, DC tries to catch lightning in a bottle again, bringing Shooter back to the book for the first time since a brief stint in the mid-1970's.

The result is actually pretty enjoyable, especially with the revelation in a whole other, later miniseries (Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds by Geoff Johns and George Perez) that this Legion is not the 'classic' Legion that once had Superboy as a member. No, this Legion, somewhat bizarrely, is the Legion of what is nominally 'our' world in the DC Universe, Earth-Prime. This at least explains all the Silver Age DC Comics Phantom Girl keeps reading.

Shooter develops an epic main plot (mysterious aliens attacking worlds throughout the galaxy) and copious melodramatic subplots with flair, though the results are a bit busy at times. Manapul's art is a bit too manga-influenced for me, but it goes down relatively smoothly, if occasionally a bit cutesy. Recommended.


Legion of Superheroes: Enemy Manifest by Jim Shooter and Francis Manapul and others (2008): Jim Shooter and the most-recent-until-three-months-ago Legion title go out together as the year-long "Enemy" storyline wraps up (and a bunch of subplots, like Princess Projectra's secret perfidy, do not). The ending seems a bit rushed, probably due to that whole cancellation problem, but overall it's a pretty nice ride. Recommended.


Doctor Who Classics Volume 3 by Dave Gibbons, Grant Morrison, Steve Moore, Steve Parkhouse, Bryan Hitch, John Ridgway and others (1981-89): A nice selection of original stories of the 4th, 6th and 7th Doctors from the B&W British Doctor Who magazines of the 1980's by some of the leading lights of British comic books. Nothing too fancy, though one possible origin story for the Cybermen is offered almost as a throwaway. Recommended.


Tom Strong Book 4 by Alan Moore, Geoff Johns, Chris Sprouse, Peter Hogan, Jerry Ordway and others (2003-2004): The alternate universe 'Tom Stone' three-parter is the centerpiece of this collection, as Moore's Doc Savage/Tarzan/Superman mash-up is shown a glimpse of a universe where he never was -- and where things initially seem to be much better than in the universe he lives in. The other stories in the volume are a bit more light-hearted. In the alternate universe in which Alan Moore never had his falling out with DC Comics, one imagines this is what Moore might have ultimately tried to do with Superman. Highly recommended.


Tom Strong Book 5 by Alan Moore, Mark Schultz, Brian K. Vaughan, Ed Brubaker, Shawn McManus, Duncan Fegredo and others (2004-2005): "The Terrible True Life of Tom Strong" by Brubaker and Fegredo is the high point of this collection. It almost out Alan-Moores Alan Moore as Tom Strong realizes that the dismal reality he thinks he exists in is an illusion because nothing could be as awful as, well, something that looks a lot like our world. Which is one of those points Moore makes from time to time. Tom's real, real world, a high-tech, lost-jungle-city wonderland comprising pretty much every comic book and pulp story ever written, is the sunshiney yin to the broody yang of Moore and Kevin O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Highly recommended.


What If? Secret Wars by various (2008-2009): A bunch of up-and-coming writers and artists create new endings for a variety of Marvel Event Books, including The Death of Captain America and the 1980's Secret Wars miniseries. About as good as the What If? titles ever were, which is to say interesting, uneven, and prone to kneejerk bleakness.Sort of recommended, sort of not.


Supreme: Story of the Year by Alan Moore, Joe Bennett, Rick Veitch and Alex Ross (1995-96): Supreme, a Superman knock-off created by the much-reviled Rob Liefeld for his portion of Image Comics, gets the superduper metafictional treatment here from Alan Moore and a number of artists, including Rick Veitch in full homage/parody mode. Supreme discovers that his universe is prone to periodic revisions, revisions which mimic the changing styles of comic books from the 1930's to the 1990's. In the 'present' he tries to adjust to the Earth after having been away for decades; to do so, he reminisces about the 'past', rendered by Veitch and written by Moore to resemble various eras and genres throughout the history of comic books.

The lines between homage, parody, commentary and plagiarism are often razor-thin here, as a number of the flashback stories are modelled on specific stories from Superman's past (one which riffs on a late 1970's/early 1980's Jim Starlin Superman/Spectre team-up from DC Comics Presents is especially jarring in this regard -- it might as well BE the original story). One gets the feeling Moore was trying to write Superman out of his system. The result is enjoyable and occasionally frustrating, but now looks like a necessary transitional book between Moore's work for DC and his much later metafictional epics in Tom Strong and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Recommended.


DC vs. Marvel by Ron Marz, Peter David, Dan Jurgens, Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, Kevin Nowlan and others (1996): Continuity is the great ball-and-chain dragging down this 'epic' DC-Marvel crossover event from the mid-1990's. Fans voted on how various confrontations would turn out (Superman vs. Hulk, Batman vs. Captain America, and so on, and so forth), but the unwieldy machinery of the plot makes the various battles an afterthought. The book huffs and puffs to get the two universes together. Frankly, the 'crossover Earth' of earlier DC/Marvel events was a lot less unwieldy and had the added advantage of explaining why so few DC superheroes live in New York (because that's where the lion's share of Marvel superheroes live!).

The secondary miniseries spawned by this crossover -- The Amalgam Age of Comics, in which various heroes and villains were 'amalmagated' into new configurations (Captain America + Superman = Super-Soldier; Batman + Wolverine = Dark Claw) -- was a lot more interesting than the main event. Kurt Busiek and George Perez would later do this sort of epic mishmash a whole lot better in JLA/Avengers. For completists only, though the combination of Garcia Lopez on pencils and Nowlan on inks on Dr. Strangefate is surprisingly lovely: those two should team up a lot more often. Not recommended.