Guest-starring Congorilla and Dr. Phosphorus

Showcase Presents Superman Volume 3: written by Jerry Siegel, Edmond Hamilton, Bill Finger, and others; illustrated by Curt Swan, Wayne Boring, Al Plastino, and others (1961-62; collected 2007): Superman's Silver Age adventures move forward into more absurdity, cosmic happenings, and classic tragedy. 

The last is thanks to an Imaginary Story written by Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel and illustrated by the great Curt Swan, who drew Superman adventures in five decades. It's The Death of Superman, and it puts all other stories about the Man of Steel's death on the back-burner. But it's Imaginary -- it didn't really happen, dear reader!

We also get non-Imaginary stories featuring the Man of Tomorrow battling the mischievous 5th-dimensional imp Mr. Mxyzptlk, arch-enemy Lex Luthor, and various forms of Kryptonite. Ah, Kryptonite. Invented for the radio show back in the 1940's and meant to give Superman a weakness, by the early 1960's it had metastasized into a Krypton-sized headache. There seems to be more Kryptonite on Earth than actual Earth elements, and every two-bit hood has at least one chunk stashed in his pocket. Honestly, it's amazing that every issue wasn't The Death of Superman.

As a bonus, Krypto the Super-dog teams up with Titano the giant, Kryptonite-eye-beam-wielding gorilla back in dinosaur days because Why Not? Lois Lane tries to learn Superman's secret identity on a number of occasions. Superman reveals Supergirl's existence to the world after several years as his 'secret weapon.' 

The citizens of the Bottle City of Kandor, a Kryptonian city shrunk by Superman villain Brainiac and now housed in Superman's Arctic Fortress of Solitude, help out Superman on numerous occasions. And in the final story of the volume, Superman believes he's dying for real in a tale that heavily influenced Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's All-Star Superman and Alan Moore and Rick Veitch's Superman/Swamp Thing team-up, "The Jungle Line." Highly recommended.

Batman: Strange Apparitions: written by Steve Engelhart and Len Wein; illustrated by Marshall Rogers, Walt Simonson, Al Milgrom, Terry Austin, Dick Giordano, and others (1977-78; collected 1999): This Batman reprint volume spans the entire tenure of 1970's Batman greats Steve Engelhart and Marshall Rogers on Detective Comics. And it really is great. And unlike other previous and subsequent reprints from this run, it starts with Engelhart's arrival and ends with Rogers' departure, neither of which were synchronized. Thus, Walt Simonson does the penciling chores early and Len Wein writes the last two issues included.

Despite the shortness of both their tenures (the whole volume spans about a year's worth of issues), Engelhart and Rogers generally get ranked as one of the top-five Batman creative teams of all time. And I think I agree. Engelhart writes Batman as a sympathetic hero who's not completely bonkers and not an absurd control freak (as he would become in the 1980's). 

And he gives us fresh takes on Batman villains mainly old -- in some cases really old. Engelhart brought back Deadshot, unseen for nearly 30 years and redesigned by Rogers with a costume that's pretty much used verbatim now in stills from DC's upcoming Suicide Squad movie. He also resurrected Professor Hugo Strange, unseen also for decades and one of the early Batman's pulpiest mad-scientist foes.

We also get nifty takes on old foes that include the Penguin back before movies and TV and comics started portraying the Penguin as a character only slightly less insane than the Joker. And the Joker himself appears in a great two-parter about... copyright law? Rogers and Engelhart nod to various Batman tropes throughout, most notably the Giant Versions of Ordinary Household Objects beloved by the late writer (and uncredited Batman co-creator) Bill Finger.

The art of the late Marshall Rogers was almost never better than it was here. I prefer this more realistic (though eminently stylized) Rogers to his later, more cartoony stuff. Moreover, Rogers' attention to the details of Gotham City is second to none. And in a full-page panel that may have imprinted upon a young JJ Abrams, Rogers throws in... a lens flare. Oh, that Rogers! 

The work in which Engelhart and Rogers aren't paired isn't quite up to the same standard, but it's still solid stuff. Len Wein and Rogers' legacy villain Clayface (III) is one of the most horrific creations in Batman's Rogues Gallery, beautifully and occasionally grotesquely rendered by Rogers and inker Dick Giordano. Terry Austin inks the rest of Rogers' run, and he's a perfect, sharp-edged complement to Rogers' style. Highly recommended.

Posthumous Collaborations

Comics:


Jack Kirby's Galactic Bounty Hunters Volume 1 by Lisa Kirby, Mike Thibodeaux, Karl Kesel, Steve Robertson, Richard French, Scott Hanna, Mike Royer and Jack Kirby: The 'Jack Kirby's' part of this title from the early oughts pretty much approximates the 'Gene Roddenberry's' in the titles of Earth: Final Conflict and Andromeda. The great Kirby -- co-creator with Stan Lee of such characters as the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, the Hulk and the Mighty Thor -- who died in 1994, didn't really create this book -- it's instead extrapolated from unused character sketches and ideas, primarily from his early 1980's Pacific Comics title Captain Victory. One of Kirby's daughters, Lisa, worked with others on the writing, while 1980's and 90's Kirby inker Mike Thibodeaux handles the majority of the pencils.

The basic premise here is that a seemingly boring comic-book writer artist with a wife and two kids -- one, Garrett, a teen-aged boy with an all-consuming magic hobby -- turns out to be a member of the 'Galactic Bounty Hunters' whose adventures he chronicles in his famous comic-book of the same name. The son only learns this after he's been kidnapped by an old foe of the now-retired Bounty Hunters. The father gets the band back together, and they rush to save his son.

The creative team does a decent job of approximately late-period Kirby sci-fi wonkiness, dialogue and tendency to break stories down into very short chapters, each with its own title and blurb. Some of this approximation comes from what amounts to posthumous self-plagiarism -- an amusement park for criminals here is pretty much the amusement park for criminals there, over in Kirby's 1970's OMAC title. Given that Marvel Comics has been living off rewritings and recombinations of Kirby characters and concepts for years, I don't see this as a problem.

The father and mother in the book are super-heroic homages to Kirby and his wife Roz, while budding magician Garrett recalls both Kirby's super-magician Mister Miracle and the real-life inspiration for that character, comics writer/artist and escape artist Jim Steranko. I had fun, anyway. Recommended.



Essential Avengers Volume 6 by Steve Engelhart, Gerry Conway, Roy Thomas, Rich Buckler, Sal Buscema, George Tuska, Joe Staton and others: In many ways, I found this collection of about two years of early 1970's Avengers stories the most satisfying Essential Avengers volume I've read (and I've read all of them up to this volume). Marvel's superhero group with an ever-changing line-up doesn't have Captain America around for most of these adventures, but it does have Thor and Iron Man to accompany lesser-knowns like Hawkeye, the Scarlet Witch, the Vision, Mantis and the Swordsman.

The success of this volume rests to a great extent on the shoulders of writer Steve Engelhart, who looks more and more to me like a great and underappreciated master of superhero shenanigans on books like Avengers, Green Lantern, Silver Surfer, Captain America and Batman in Detective Comics. A large portion of this book is taken up by the Celestial Madonna saga, an occasionally loopy epic (the climax involves a woman marrying a plant) that nonetheless seemed a lot more satisfying to me than the much-more-beloved Kree-Skrull War Avengers storyline of a few years earlier.

Editor Roy Thomas's love of obscure continuity questions makes its mark here, as the Vision is revealed to be the original Human Torch and villains Rama Tut, Kang the Conqueror and Immortus are revealed to be the same person at different points in his (time-travelling) timeline. But Engelhart makes it all fly, and wraps it up the appropriate melodrama, superheroic self-sacrifice, and Avengers infighting that the Avengers book at its best is all about. There's a giant, period-specific dollop of Eastern Kung-Fu mysticism thrown in, primarily through the character of Mantis, a mysterious woman with killer martial arts skills and a murky past. All of this goes down nicely.

Artists come and go on the Avengers, as always, to greater and lesser effect. The pairing of Sal Buscema and Joe Staton (known more for his pencilling) is an especially nice one here, as is one issue pencilled by John Buscema and inked by the late Dave Cockrum. Highly recommended.