Detective Comics

Why “flagship”? Well, there’s the name thing — “DC” comes from, yes, “Detective Comics” — and the fact that it’s the oldest continuously published comic in the US, with a first-issue cover date of March, 1937, over a year before Action #1 (although, of course, the Caped Crusader himself didn’t show up until issue #27, dated March, 1939). Just looking through the covers is a capsule history of comics trends, from the pulp-influenced ’40s (seen here in the menacing Joker-with-guns pose from issue #69) through the toned-down Comics-Code-influenced silly-sf ’50s (check out the “captive planet” cover for issue #256, which looks like it wandered in from an issue of Strange Adventures) to the “New Look”/back-to-detective-basics ’60s, where the transition from the stupid-aliens cover in #326 to the Infantino mystery in #327 sums up the extreme change in style nicely. The ’70s might be the most fondly-remembered decade for many fans; it starts with the January, 1970 issue, the first Detective with a Denny O’Neil/Neal Adams interior story and winds through a few more years of occasional Adams work, the 100-Page Giants from issues #438-445 (many with the Archie Goodwin/Walt Simonson Manhunter serial, plus lots of Silver and Golden-Age reprints, and lead stories by Adams and, in the pictured #442, Alex Toth), and, from issues #471-476, the Steve Englehart/Marshall Rogers run that some of us would argue is the post-’40s Detective high point. Not only that, but issues #481-495 mark the transition from 1979 to 1980 with a 64-pg. $1 format that sees lead stories featuring Batman, plus Robin/Batgirl stories, plus other, rotating back-ups starring characters like Commissioner Gordon and Steve Ditko’s Odd Man.

None of these are sitting on the discount racks, of course, but many issues from the ’50s up are now restocked and available on the main floor, with the more key issues (like this, this, this and this) also on display. The bulk of the bargains start after issue #500, in the early ’80s, and for 99 cents each there’s a lot of cool Bat-reading; for one thing, at this point Gene Colan comes over from Marvel, fresh from his work on Tomb of Dracula, and settles in for a long Detective run — issues #510, 512, 517 (part of a great Batman-vs.-vampires crossover with Batman), 523, and most of #s 528-567 — although issues #547-552 have art by Pat Broderick instead, which is a considerable step below Gentleman Gene (to make up for it, #549-550 have an Alan Moore-scripted Green Arrow back-up story with art by Klaus Janson). Most of the non-Colan issues from #500-526 have art from Phoenix’s own Don Newton, so they’re worth checking out, too — especially #526, an anniversary issue (Batman’s 500th appearance in Detective, with a 56-page story by Newton). Writer Doug Moench starts on the title with the next issue, #527, and he and Colan provide a well-regarded couple of years on the book, involving the early Jason-Todd-as-Robin issues, love interests Nocturna and Catwoman (who practically becomes a co-star for awhile), a reinvigorated Catman as antagonist, Harvey Bullock as comic relief, and a tight continuity with the Batman comic, as stories frequently cross over, requiring readesr to follow both books. Moench’s last issue is #566, while Colan’s last issue, #567, boasts his art over a script by Harlan Ellison; after that, Mike Barr and Alan Davis are the regular team for a while, through #574, after which Todd McFarlane contributes three issues. Barr stays on through issue #581, and then there’s a fallow period, mostly with Alan Grant scripting and Norm Breyfogle drawing, enlivened by a three-parter in issues #598-600 by Batman movie scriptwriter Sam Hamm and art by Denys Cowan (although, truth be told, that story seemed considerably more worthwhile at the time then it does in retrospect).

The early 600s — and the early ’90s — are similarly flat; a John Ostrander three-parter with covers by legendary Batman artist (and Arizona resident) Dick Sprang in issues #622-624 is fun, and Marv Wolfman and Jim Aparo team up for a while in issues #625-628 (over Michael Golden covers). Then, Peter Milliogan comes on board, and the scripts get both stranger and more intriguing; he and Aparo are in #s 629-632, with Tom Mandrake art in #633, and then after some other creative teams Milligan and Aparo are back in issues #638-640 and #643; Aparo also draws #s 641-642 over Alan Grant scripts. After that, Chuck Dixon, who pretty much defines competent-but-generic, is scripter with a number of artists.

The next story of import occurs in #659, and it’s one getting a lot of interest this year: it’s part two of the “Knightfall” serial, which begins in Batman and crisscrosses through the Bat-titles for almost a year, leading to both the (temporary) end of Bruce Wayne as Batman, and the inspiration for this summer’s much-anticipated Batman movie. Jim Balent (of Catwoman and Tarot fame) does the art chores in #660, part four of the crossover, and Dixon continues as writer (with Kelley Jones supplying most of the covers) through the aptly-numbered issue #666, the last issue of Detective before “Knightfall” and and another character takes over the Batman cape….

…but that’s a good place to stop, since those are all the issues that are on the discount racks for now. That leaves 20 years of Detective to go, though, so buy them while you can, create some rack space, and come back in two weeks to see how the Dark Knight fared in the rest of the ’90s and the ’00s.

Dr. Strange

Dr. Stephen Strange is the “other” Marvel mainstay created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko (after Spider-Man, of course), and first appears as the back-up story in Strange Tales #110, in 1963. He has a typical Stan Lee fairy-tale, there’s-a-lesson-here origin: he’s a world-renowned surgeon, arrogant and uncaring, but then gets in a drunken car wreck that damages his hands, and makes it impossible for him to do surgery any more. Bitter and depressed, he schleps around the globe, eventually ending up at one of those hidden-temple Shangri-La Far East outposts, where he encounters the Ancient One, a magician/guru, and his disciple, Baron Mordo. Strange accidentally discovers that Mordo is really a villain, who’s learning the Ancient One’s arts for evil, and, revealing his buried heroism, risks his life to warn everyone about it and stop Mordo’s plans; Mordo ends up banished, and Strange becomes the Ancient One’s new disciple. All of this is rendered with imagination and grace by Ditko, whose ability to draw weird other dimensions, and make mystical powers like “bolts of bedevilment” seem both realistic and trippy/cool, turns the origin, and the tales that follow it, into ’60s hippy classics. Ditko leaves the book in 1966, with issue #146, but Strange soldiers on — drawn by, among others, Bill Everett, Marie Severin, Dan Adkins and Jim Steranko — and eventually takes over the comic, as Strange Tales becomes Dr. Strange with issue #169, in 1968. In issue #172, he receives his second great artist, Gene Colan, who draws him through the end of the book’s run, with issue #183, in 1969.

Strange is relegated to guest-star status for a while after that, but returns to his own stories in 1972, in the try-out title Marvel Premiere. His first appearance there, in issue #3, is written by Lee and drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith, and is a small masterpiece of mood and cool art (Strange, with his mystical and fantasy elements, has always attracted good artists). Lee only writes the first issue, and Smith only stays around for the next one, #4; there’s some flailing around after that, but in issue #9 the team of Steve Englehart and Frank Brunner takes over, and quickly makes the book a cult favorite, by doing things like killing the Ancient One, and having Dr. Strange travel to the beginning of the universe and meet God; after Marvel Premier #14, in fact, the book proves popular enough to get its own title again, and Dr. Strange #1 appears in June, 1974, still by Englehart and Brunner. That artist leaves after issue #5, but his replacement is Gene Colan, and he and Englehart, during the next year, deliver one of the best sustained Marvel runs of the ’70s: Dr. Strange #s 6-18, among other things, destroy the world and remake it, have Dr. Strange fight Dracula (in a two-parter that crosses over with Colan’s second title, Tomb of Dracula), and send Dr. Strange to Hell. Only a few of these issues are on the discount racks, but they’re surprisingly cheap, and available in the regular back-issue boxes for $5 or less each; if you’ve never read them, you’re missing some wonderful, influential work.

Unfortunately, just when the book is at its peak Englehart gets into a dispute with Marvel’s new editor-in-chief, Gerry Conway, and leaves the company; that leaves the book to try to pick up the pieces, and it goes into musical-creator mode for awhile. Part of the problem is that not all writers are compatible with the Doctor — Marv Wolfman and Chris Clarement, among others, try and mostly fail — but there are some interesting moments: Jim Starlin writing issues #24-26; Roger Stern and Tom Sutton on #s 27-30; Claremont and Colan on #s 38-45 (Claremont doesn’t add much, but the Colan art is worth a look). The next really decent run, though, starts with issue #47, as Roger Stern (who does prove to be a great Doc writer) teams with Colan for that issue, and then with Marshall Rogers from #48-53,  Michael Golden in #55, and Paul Smith in #56. Stern stays on with some lesser artists (although there’s another battle with Dracula in #s 60-62 that banishes all vampires from the Marvel Universe for awhile that’s pretty good), but then Smith returns in issue #65, and he and Stern have a nice little set of stories through issue #73. Both leave at that point, though, and the book only lasts a few more months, ending with issue #81 in February, 1987.

Strange’s third volume begins about a year and a half later, in November, 1988, and is titled Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme; the initial writer is Peter Gillis (who’d been the scripter for the last few issues of the previous series), with art chores by Richard Case (who’d eventually go on to DC Vertigo titles like Doom Patrol); that team only stays for the first four issues, though, and then is replaced by Roy Thomas (with, as co-writer, his wife Dann) and Jackson Guice, an association that proves fruitful enough to last for two years, through issue #24 (although there are a few fill-in artists: Richard Valentino in #17, and Gene Colan in #19). The most notorious issue of this run comes, not from any plot or character development, but from a cover: on issue #15, Guice swiped an image from one of Christian singer Amy Grant’s albums, and Grant, upset at both the theft and the fact that it was used on a “demonic” character’s cover, sued Marvel, who eventually settled out of court. The Thomases stay on after that, but with a series of undistinguished artists (Geof Isherwood being the most long-lived); even the plots become less memorable, because this is a period – the early ’90s — when Marvel is heavily into cosmic crossovers — Infinity Gauntlet, etc. — and Dr. Strange keeps tying into them, sacrificing any individual story for the larger mega-event. Thomas leaves with issue #47, and when scripter Len Kaminski replaces him the descent into mediocrity is complete. There are a couple of glimmers — in issue #60, a big crossover with the other Marvel occult titles like Morbius and Spirits of Vengeance (they’re all part of the group of books that Marvel marketed as the “Midnight Sons”) takes place, and Dr. Strange gets broken into three different beings; this story, by David Quinn and Melvin Rubi (at first), starts promisingly but then lasts through what seems forever, and sends Strange through so many makeovers and changes that the reader gets exhausted trying to keep it all straight. Points of note are issues #70-73, with art by Peter Gross; #75, by Mark Buckingham; #76, introducing a long-haired version of Strange by Gross that looks eerily like the older Tim from his Books of Magic series at DC Vertigo; #s 78 and 79, by Marie Severin; #80, featuring another new look for the character, this one written by Warren Ellis and drawn by Buckingham; #82, half by Buckingham and half by Gary Frank; and #s 84-90, drawn by Buckingham and with a story by J.M. DeMatteis — and that ends the series, in January 1996, and is the last time that Dr. Strange has had his own ongoing title.

That’s not to say that the character hasn’t been around, of course. There’ve been the occasional mini-series (J. Michael Straczynski and Brandon Peterson did the six-issue origin reboot Strange in 2004, while Mark Waid and Emma Rios contributed the four-issue Strange in 2010), and the Doctor has been a member of the Avengers (well, the New Avengers) during most of Brian Michael Bendis’s tenure on that book, as well as appearing in the current revival of The Defenders. Will audiences ever warm to him again? Sure: if comics history has proven anything, it’s that, with the right writer and the right artist, any character can rise from the comics graveyard. Given his past, the Master of the Mystic Arts is a better candidate than most.

Question for the Professor:

I have Marvel comics from the late ’70s thru the mid ’80s.  There are variations in the top left symbols and UPC (when UPCs were introduced). In my youthful exuberance I had both a subscription (brown wrapped comic) and went to the news stand, so I have two of the same in a number of cases, with different top left corner and UPC (UPC or, say, Spidey face) that seems to be the diff possibly. Could you shed some light? Is there really any diff regarding pricing/collectibility?

Well, Greg, there are actually a couple of things going on with cover variations: first, and earliest, in the mid-’70s Marvel test-marketed price increases (from 25 to 30 cents in 1976, and from 30 to 35 cents in 1977) in a few cities before instituting them nationwide, and so a couple of issues of the Marvel books have price variants; the rarer, “higher” prices go for about 2.5 times the “regular” prices. Those variants, though, apply only to the price; the rest of the cover, including the UPC box, remains the same.

Another variant comes from the “Whitman three-packs”: the Whitman company, which distributed Gold Key comics (that’s an oversimplification of a tangled corporate relationship I’m not going to get into here), contracted with Marvel in the late ’70s to market bagged sets of Marvel comics in places like K-Mart. Those came three to a bag, and can be distinguished by an altered upper-left box and a blank UPC code. Note the picture here of two copies of Thor #275, from September 1978: one issue is the “normal” copy, and the other is the so-called “Whitman variant.” The Whitman variants, when out of the bag, are usually the same price as the “normal” books, although unopened three-packs can go for more — roughly twice what the three books inside the bag would go for in their “regular” incarnations.

The biggest and most long-lived cover variant, though, came about because of the rise of comic book stores in the late ’70s. This “direct market” for comics developed a different wholesale arrangement with Marvel than the regular newsstand distributors did: the comic book stores got a bigger discount on the comics, but, unlike newsstand books, they weren’t “returnable”: owners couldn’t tear off the covers of unsold books and send them back in for credit. What sometimes happened, though, was that an unscrupulous comic store owner could sell his unsold books to a newsstand owner, who then could send the covers in for credit. To prevent this, Marvel, in the summer of 1979, starting putting slightly different covers on books sold to comic book stores. Look at Thor #285, from July 1979: the newsstand comic has the “regular” cover, while the comic book store issue has a slash through the UPC code, plus a partially-darkened upper-left price box. Copies of this cover were not returnable, while the “regular” covers were.

Over time, Marvel changed the ways the covers differed: by Thor #296 (June, 1980) the familiar Spidey logo appears in the comic store copies, while the newsstand copies have the UPC code. Other variations followed: for a while, each series had individualized icons (so Thor’s hammer was in the box on his books instead of the UPC code), and special issues sometimes played around with the box, too. Over time, however, as comics stores got bigger and wanted to track their inventory better, they wanted to be able to scan those UPC codes just like the newsstands. By the ’90s, Marvel had standardized the difference (and made it a lot more boring) by just using a “direct market” designation in the comic store copies, along with the same UPC code as in the newsstand variations.

Is there any difference in price? The Overstreet Price Guide has never noted one (arguing that the insides are identical, both covers are printed at the same time, and the differences are minor); in the 23 years I’ve worked at AABC, only two collectors have ever indicated a preference: one wanted only newsstand copies of his ’70s and ’80s books, and the other wanted only the direct-market copies. In terms of scarcity, at the beginning, in 1979, the direct market editions numbered a lot less than the newsstand copies, but by the ’90s that ratio had reversed: the direct market had practically taken over, and it was the newsstand books that were scarce; today, of course, those sales on most titles are almost nonexistent. AABC’s backstock tends to have a lot more of the direct copies (because that’s how we bought the books originally) than the newsstand ones (which have only come in through our buying collections from other people) — but, again, since no one seems to care, the prices have never been any different either.

Doom Patrol

The original version of DC’s “World’s Strangest Heroes” ran from 1964 to 1968, and featured three characters who were outcasts: race-car driver Cliff Steele, whose body was destroyed in a wreck but whose brain was transferred into a metal body, making him Robotman; Rita Farr, whose stretching powers made her Elasti-Girl; and Larry Trainor, whose radioactive body required that he be wrapped in bandages for the protection  of others, but who had the ability to project a flying, negative-image “energy being” out of his body (but only for a few minutes at a time; otherwise, he’s die). The three were led by the wheelchair-bound Niles Caulder, a brilliant scientist who took the bitter misfits and molded them into a superhero team. In one of those weird coincidences in comics history, the book first appeared about three months before X-Men #1, which also featured outcasts led by a brilliant guy in a wheelchair. The Doom Patrol was cancelled in 1968, in what was then, for comics, an unusual way: the team died in the last issue, blown up by bad guys.

The next incarnation of the series (and the first one that matters to us, since they’re the first ones we have discount issues of) appeared in 1987. It was revealed that only Robotman had survived the explosion (although, comics being comics, over the years the other three characters have all turned up, too), and he was paired with new characters Tempest (who could project energy blasts from his hands, one of those visual-but-generic powers that comics creators love), Negative Woman (a Russian astronaut who’d encountered the negative energy being that had been in Larry Trainor, and absorbed it), Celsius (heat and cold blasts, plus she was the wife of the presumed-dead Niles Caulder, and the reason the new team got together), Lodestone (magnetically-enhanced strength), Karma (psychic defensive powers) and Scott Fischer (heat projection from his hands). This team hung around for the first 18 issues of Doom Patrol volume 2, written by Paul Kupperberg and drawn, first, by Steve Lightle and later by a young Erik Larson. The episodes are mostly generic mid-’80s superhero storytelling, and largely forgettable (at least, I forgot most of them; I read the issues when they came out, but needed Wikipedia and a quick flip-through of the comics to recall any of it).

However, with issue #19, in 1988, things suddenly became more memorable: new writer Grant Morrison took over, accompanied by artist Richard Case, and they immediately supercharged the book. Morrison got rid of all the characters except for Cliff (Tempest stuck around as the team doctor, the Negative Being left its host and ended up being Larry Trainor again (sort of — don’t ask), and Lodestone was in a coma; everyone else was either dead or wandered off, never to return), and added two others: Dorothy, a simian-featured little girl with “imaginary friends” whom she could control, and Kay Challis, called “Crazy Jane,” a traumatized woman with 64 multiple personalities, each with a different superpower.

Comics fans are used to the Morrison brand of weirdness now, but 23 years ago it was brand-new, and a revelation after the standard antics of the previous team: there were the Scissormen, who could cut people out of reality; Red Jack, who tortured butterflies to survive and thought he claimed to be the reincarnation of Jack the Ripper; the Brotherhood of Dada, who were led by Mister Nobody, featured The Quiz, who had “every superpower you haven’t thought of yet,” and had a magical painting that led to dimensions based on types of artistic criticism — and that was all in the first year! That year ended with one of the best single issues of the series — Doom Patrol #30, wherein Cliff travels into the mind of Crazy Jane, who’s catatonic, and meets most of her personalities, while discovering what fractured her personality in the first place. It’s a haunting tale, told cleverly and subtly, and with images — Jane’s mind as a subway station and her personalities as different stops; Cliff, told that “no man” can enter a particular stop, standing and spreading his robotic hands and saying “Look at me. I’m not a man” — that linger long after the reader is through with the book.

Morrison stayed on the book through issue #63, mostly accompanied by Case (with a few exceptions — Kelley Jones in #36, for example, and Mike Dringenberg in #42, cover-featuring “Flex Mentallo,” a character based on the strongman in the old Charles Atlas ads that ended up getting DC sued by Atlas himself); special mention should also be made of the painted covers, often by Simon Bisely, starting with issue #26, which gave the book a distinctive identity on the comics racks. Almost every issue’s worth reading — and completists shouldn’t miss 1992′s Doom Force Special, a one-shot by Morrison and a number of artists that’s a satiric, vicious takedown of Image comics in general, and Rob Liefeld in particular — all the way up to the last book of the Morrison era, #63, wherein Crazy Jane is trapped in “our” world, institutionalized and subjected to electroshock therapy, leading to a poignant, perfect ending, half-optimistic and half-despairing (depending on whether you’re Jane or the reader).

Morrison’s departure wasn’t the end of Doom Patrol, though — writer Rachel Pollack took over with issue #64, and managed to keep the weirdeness percolating nicely, if not quite with the spice supplied by Morrison. Case stayed as artist for four issues, replaced by some interesting choices thereafter: Linda Medley (of Castle Waiting) in issues #68-74, and Ted McKeever in #s 75-79, 81, 82 and 84-87 (with the Pander Brothers in #80), which represented the end of the run.

The next version of Doom Patrol came along in 2001; as with the previous version, its only connection with the others was Cliff Steele. The writer was John Arcudi (known for Dark Horse series like The Mask and a number of Mike Mignola-related titles), while the artist was Tan Eng Huat, who brought a quirky, cartoony style that meshed well with Arcudi’s tongue-in-cheek, arch scripts (in this incarnation, Cliff was the mentor to a group of teen and twenty-something outcasts who bicker and bond like an MTV Real Worlds season). Arcudi and Huat stayed for all 22 issues of this volume, with two notable exceptions: #s 13 and 14 are by Seth Fisher (the idiosynchratic artist known for his obsessively-detailed, oddly-appealing manga-esque style (Fantastic Four: Big in Japan; Flash: Time Flies and Vertigo Pop: Tokyo), who died at the age of 33 in 2006 after falling from the rooftop of a nightclub in Tokyo), and issues # 20 and 21 are by Rick Geary, known mostly for his small-press titles focusing on true-life murder stories and on Victorian life.

Volume four of Doom Patrol followed very quickly, in 2004, and was a John Byrne production. It started strongly (it was led into by a vastly-hyped, six-part JLA crossover by Byrne and Chris Claremont), but was a reboot, erasing all the previous history of the team and starting over with the original cast of Robotman, Negative Man and Elasti-Girl. It had the typical Byrne advantages of clean, lively art and plotting, but quickly gradually lost both steam and sales, ending after 18 issues.

The most recent comic called Doom Patrol, volume five, started in 2009 and ended last July, after 22 issues; it had scripts by Keith Giffen and featured the three original members, although there were callbacks to previous versions of the team too — issues 3 and 4 are Blackest Night tie-ins, and feature the dead, Black Lantern-animated characters of Celsius, Negative Woman and Tempest, while issue #5 has the Negative Spirit reflecting on its previous host bodies, and has cameos from practically everyone who was ever in a Doom Patrol comic. Matthew Clark and Ron Randall supply most of the art for the run, although Giffen himself draws #16. Issue #19 has the second installment of a crossover with the Secret Six comic, and the final issue, #22, has a typically-Giffenesque ending, as Ambush Bug appears, to whisper to the bad guys that the book has been cancelled, pending the DC Flashpoint reboot; that said, everybody strikes the set and walks away, leaving the heroes to wonder what’s going to happen next. That’s where they are today — is there a place in the new DCU for the World’s Strangest Heroes, especially considering that their history is, again, set back to square one, and that they’ve had three failed relaunches in the last ten years? Only time, and reader interest, will tell….

Fantastic Four Part Three

Before we finally make it to the quinultimate letter “E,” let’s wrap Marvel’s Fantastic Four:  last time, we got through the Mark Waid/Mike Wieringo years; now, there are four quick runs to cover:

(1) J. Michael Straczynski and Mike McKone, FF #527 – 541

This encompasses Civil War, and while there’s some forcing of characters and situations into that uber-story, Straczynski does OK; he’s always got a couple of good ideas, or little character-revealing lines of dialogue, or clever bits to keep things moving, even when he’s forced by circumstance to put Reed on the “wrong” side and try to justify it. McKone provides quietly competent, clear art; there’s nothing wrong with this run, but it never takes off, and fades out after a little over a year.

(2) Dwayne McDuffie, FF #542 – 553

McDuffie’s reign is short, but features a lot of good stories; McKone (for the first few issues) and then Paul Pelletier provide the art, and they seem to be having a good time, as McDuffie brings in the Black Panther and Storm to replace a second-honeymooning Reed and Sue, and we get cosmic hijinx with the Silver Surfer, a chilling battle with the Frightful Four, and an alternate-future Dr. Doom; all three four-issue stories are classically constructed, clever, suspenseful and moving; these 12 issues put McDuffie in the top tier of FF writers.

(3) Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch, FF #554 – 569

This is a dream team on paper, but… the books themselves, like Straczynski’s, prove perfectly readable but never show the spark you’d expect from the creators. They sure are pretty to look at, though, and if the stories don’t soar (McDuffie turns out to be a hard act to follow), they’re never dull.

(4) Jonathan Hickman, FF #570 – 588; FF #1-11; FF # 600

Dale Eaglesham does the art for #s 570-578; Neil Edwards is in #s 579 – 582, while Steve Epting covers #s 583 – 587, the “death of the Human Torch.” Hickman’s got ideas to burn, although he reminds me of the DeFalco years in the way he ends up juggling so many story balls for so long that the reader finds it hard to keep track, and starts losing interest. We’ll see…

And now… the letter “E”: Indy Titles

Those discount Fantastic Fours are now all at the east end of the store (the Central Ave. side); in the back, in the regular cover-price rack, we’re featuring two long-running independent “E”-books that started in the ’80s:

Elementals

This series, written and drawn by current Fables creator Bill Willingham, has a lot going for it, and was even hot for a while back in the Reagan era. Its view of superheroes is somehow both level-headed and quirky, as is the art; the books in the first series, at $1.50 each, are especially worth their cover price. The second series is a buck more expensive and is OK up through the middle of the long “Oblivian War” arc, when the whole thing just kind of sputters out. Willingham contributes the script, but no art, for the later of these, and when he leaves for good there’s no reason left to buy the comic.

Elfquest

This tale about a tribe of elves who’ve bonded with wolves and have psychic powers, set in a two-mooned world of prehistoric humans, is fast-paced and, like all good fantasy, provides a vast, well-thought-out world for its readers. Wendy and Richard Pini, the co-creators (Wendy’s the artist, too) started this as a black-and-white magazine back in 1978, and parlayed it into a passionate fan base and a long series of spin-off comics and graphic novels. Rule of thumb: the stuff by the Pinis is canon, with both art and story passionate about the characters and fun, and everything else is forgettable (although New Blood, the long-running anthology title, has a couple of John Byrne stories, and a few other surprising artists, when it isn’t being dominated by the vaguely creepy, sparsely-backgrounded art by Barry Blair).

Green Lantern #40 from 1965 So this is one of the first crossovers between Earth 1 and Earth 2. It’s… interesting. This gives an entire origin to the Guardians that involves a character named Krona. They basically punished Krona for trying to figure out where they came from. Basically, they banished him from existence for trying to learn about history. The Guardians have always been a bunch of a-holes, even going all the way back to the 1960′s! I’m not quite sure how the Earth-1/ Earth-2 stuff worked, and I can honestly say I have no idea how Alan Scott got to Hal Jordan’s world. But who cares? This was a fun comic with heroes you can recognize. More info can be found HERE

Green Lantern has four(!) separate titles running right now. The obvious one is Green Lantern, which focuses on Hal Jordan and Sinestro. There’s New Guardians if you’re looking for Kyle Rayner, Green Lantern Corps for John Stewart and Guy Gardner, and Red Lanterns if you like weird stuff. Alan Scott is off the table right now, but a JSA comic is coming down the pipeline, so he’ll be back soon.

Fantastic Four #76 from 1968 Well, the entire first section of this book involves “shrinkage” and since I”m a 10-year-old, I couldn’t stop laughing at that. Silver Surfer is stuck in what is essentially the microverse, but does he really want to leave? At first the answer is no, then the FF get attacked by some weird creature created by the Psycho-Man (love that guy), but the FF manage to stop him. However, Silver Surfer has no intention of leaving that universe, so how are the Fantastic Four going to be able to save the world? Well that’s going to be answered in the next issue! So yeah, as always with the FF, it’s a continuing story in the “Mighty Marvel Manner.” More info can be found HERE

The Fantastic Four are still around, but they replaced a Human Torch with a Spider-Man. There’s the FF title, and Fantastic Four is coming back for the big 600th issue event. Check it out, there will be about 47 different covers to choose from…

G.I. Joe #2 from 1982 Much like Transformers, G.I. Joe is just out of my age group. I know that this is a well made comic from a long running critically acclaimed comic series, but I just find myself not caring. Didn’t Larry Hama write almost every single issue of this title? Because that’s pretty cool. This issue is all about the Joe team trying to stop Cobra in the snow. The Joes are literally in the snow to go after one operative, so to me that feels like a bit of a waste of time, but again, this isn’t my style. To me it’s just a doofy 80′s comic that I’m not even going to remember that I’ve read. More info can be found HERE

G.I. Joe is still being written by Larry Hama, albeit it’s now published by IDW. From what I’ve heard, it’s still the same quality. If you’re looking for the back issues, we have a fair amount, or there are trade collections of at least the first 50. And that’s the week! I’m going back to football! “The” Dan Jacka

Fantastic Four — Volume One

The FF was Marvel’s first Silver Age superhero book, of course, and for quite a while was their flagship title.  Spider-Man took over that slot in the late ’60s, and the X-Men took it in the late ’70s, but there’s no denying that the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby team from, oh, FF #39-40 (Daredevil guest-starring against Doctor Doom, as a blind FF “Battle for the Baxter Building”) through #65-66 (the origin of Him/Warlock) offer one of the great runs in comic history, a burst of creativity that births the Inhumans, the Silver Surfer, Galactus, the Negative Zone and the Black Panther… and that’s just during nine issues in the middle of the run.

Unfortunately, none of those comics are being offered on the discount racks, so let’s pass over that part of the FF’s oevre, and concentrate on their somewhat-later years, after Kirby has left with issue #102 (replaced by John Buscema) and Lee leaves for good with issue #125. Roy Thomas takes over through issue #133, and then Gerry Conway settles in for almost two years, through #152; Buscema leaves around issue #141, and Rich Buckler takes his place for most of the rest of Conway’s tenure. Thomas comes back as scripter with issue #156, with (mostly) Buckler on art through #164, when a young George Perez takes over from there through #172, is replaced by Buscema for three issues, and then comes back from #176-178; these Thomas/Perez/Buscema efforts are decent romps involving the Impossible Man, Counter-Earth (and its own version of Reed Richards), Galactus, and a Thing who’s been turned into Ben Grimm, gets replaced in the FF by Luke Cage, and then ends up in a Thing exoskeleton for a while before inevitably turning back into his rocky self. After #179, it’s musical-chairs creators for awhile, with Perez art in 184-188 and 192-193. Finally, with issue #195, Marv Wolfman as scripter and Keith Pollard as artist settle in for an 11-issue term; with issue #209, Pollard is replaced by another new artist, but one who’ll end up having deep ties to the FF: John Byrne.

Byrne might not be the most obvious choice as a Jack Kirby acolyte; his sleek, controlled style seems far from the King’s energy-bursting primitivism. Underneath, though, Kirby’s nowhere near as primitive as he might seem at first, with a surprisingly fine line that helps to contain all that power. The more you look, the more it’s clear that Kirby is one of Byrne’s major influences; he and Byrne share a penchant for both the small, telling human moments and the big cosmic reveal, and they always know precisely where to place a line for the greatest effect. In FF #209-214, Wolfman gives his new artist a lot to play with: a galaxy-spanning epic involving a rapidly-aging FF (thanks to a Skrull ray) involved with Galactus, Terrax, the Sphinx and various cosmic remnants from Wolfman’s recently-cancelled Nova series. The conclusion, with a determined Human Torch in over his head and fighting to figure out a way to save his teammates, is a fondly-remembered and note-perfect finish. The Wolfman/Byrne team stays on for another three issues, plus a Bill Mantlo/Byrne collaboration in #218 and a Byrne solo two-parter (originally done as a soft-drink promo comic, but shelved after the deal was cancelled) in #220 and 221. Issues #219 and 222-231 are an interesting but failed experiment: Doug Moench and Bill Sienkiewicz, fresh off an acclaimed run on Moon Knight, try their hand at the FF but mostly fall flat, their moody style not a good fit for the FF’s bright and shiny world.

That sets the stage for a new era, though: FF #232, the first with Byrne as both writer and artist. He’ll go on to stay through issue #293, a 61-issue run that’s the second-best in FF history. This first effort is a good example: in 22 pages, Byrne introduces all of the team, establishes their powers, characters and relationships, pits them against interesting adversaries (courtesy of a familiar but not overused bad guy), and shows how their teamwork and sense of family let them win the day. It’s a compressed tour de force that, today, would cover six issues (Yeah, Justice League #1, I’m looking at you), and it’s just the start: subsequent issues prove just as skillful. Issue #236, a 20th-anniversary tribute, is a high point: a 40-issue story that hits every high point a reader could ask for — two major villains, an origin recap, a what-if-it-had-never-happened scenario, a clever trap, and numerous character beats, especially with Reed and Ben — and does it with grace and pizzazz. It’s one of the very few non-Lee/Kirby issues that can stand with them, unashamed.

The rest of the run never quite hits that sustained high again, but there are frequent great moments: a battle with Galactus that drags in many of the New York-based heroes; a fight with Gladiator wherein Byrne gets to try out a few Superman theories that he’ll use on his move to DC years later; a long trip to the Negative Zone (including the all-sideways #252) that lets Byrne show off his love for Star Trek; the machinations of Dr. Doom and his ward, Kristoff;  Reed’s galactic trial for saving Galactus’s life; Sue’s pregnancy (and her, and later the Thing’s, replacement by She-Hulk); She-Hulk’s unauthorized centerfold; the frequent focus on just how powerful Sue is, culminating in her transformation into the badass Malice… it’s a five-year, high-quality cavalcade of comics storytelling that any fan should have in their collection.

And, for you? A buck each, on the discount racks at the west end of the store. Trust us: these are some of the best deals we’ve ever offered, in terms of sheer entertainment for the dollar. If you don’t already own the books, here’s your chance: just in time for Hallowe’en, you’re in for a treat.

The Flash Volume One

Discounted issues from Volume One of the comic don’t come up a lot here — there are a few dozen lower-condition books below issue #300, and a few more than that from #300 up to the end of the title with issue #350. Many of those latter issues involve the “Trial of the Flash,” an over-two-year-long storyline wherein Barry has “killed” the evil Professor Zoom, and gets put on, yes, trial for murder in Central City. I was reading comics regularly when this story appeared, in the early ’80s, and even in those pre-Internet days it was widely derided, in letters pages, fanzines and the like, for its length and lack of logic (the mass-murderer from the future gets killed during a battle, and the guy who stops him from slaughtering more innocents gets indicted for it? Really?).  Looking back at the issues now, it’s a better read than it seemed at the time: writer Cary Bates keeps plots and subplots spinning deftly, uses the Flash Rogues Gallery well, and is clever about the ins and outs of the trial itself; meanwhile, old Flash hand Carmine Infantino, in the twilight of his career, is cutting some artistic corners but still providing very smooth, eye-pleasing visuals to the character whose adventures he’d then been drawing for over 25 years. Yes, it’s long (long enough that DC just released a Showcase paperback of just those issues), and the courtroom antics sometimes recall a particularly bad Law and Order episode (although “bad Law and Order episode” is probably redundant), but, in this modern era of decompressed storytelling and writing for the trade, it holds up well; maybe the Flash, ever an accomplished time-traveller, was just ahead of his time.

Flash Volume Two

Barry Allan walks into a future-era sunset with his true love at the end of the first Flash series, #350, cover-dated October 1985, but his retirement is, even for a speedster, remarkably short-lived; just a month later, in the November, 1985-dated Crisis on Infnite Earths #8, he meets his death at the hands of the Anti-Monitor. That doesn’t end the character’s publishing history, though, because less than two years later, in June 1987, Barry’s nephew (and former Teen Titan) Kid Flash, Wally West, puts on the costume, becoming the first DC sidekick to make a permanent transition to the major leagues.

Since AABC was around in full force in 1987, we have a lot of issues from this era available on the discount racks right now, and most of them are solid, above-average superhero tales. This volume of Flash had remarkably good luck with writers, and it’s easy to divide it into four chapters, based on four long scripting runs:

Mike Baron

Baron had made a name for himself as the creator of the ’80s alternative books Nexus and Badger, and worked at both DC and Marvel (where he had a distinguished stint on the Punisher) in the ’80s. His Wally West Flash marks a sharp change from the Barry Allen Silver-Age one; for one thing, he’s considerably slower, able to run maybe 700 miles an hour: fast, but nowhere near the lightspeed, molecule-vibrating ability of his Uncle Barry. Too, Baron’s more-realistic physics means that moving fast takes a physical toll: after a run, Wally has to eat like a horse to replenish his energy levels. In other changes, he’s a “known” hero, so there are no secret-identity shenanigans, and in the first issue he’s scrambling for money, going so far as to use his speed to take on a courier job for a hospital for pay. Baron makes all of this fascinating and fun reading, stirring in recurring villains like Vandal Savage and the machine intelligence Killg%re, and adding love interests, Russian speedsters, the massive teleportation mutant Chunk, and other new characters to the supporting cast. He starts out teamed with artist Jackson Guice, then adds a few issues with Mike Collins before bowing out with issue #14, having put this new version of the Flash on a firm footing.

William Messner-Loebs

Loebs had built a reputation as a solid storyteller with his early-American frontier series Journey, and takes over Wally’s adventures with issue #15, with art by Greg LaRoque; minus a few fill-ins, that team stays on the title through issue #59. That almost-four-year run features Messner-Loeb’s trademark human characters (even the bad guys are, typically, not completely bad, and the supporting cast is filled in and deepened so that they’re as fun to read about as Wally himself), as Wally loses his speed and gains it back, gets involved with cults, aliens and assorted mobsters and hangers-on, and encounters older Rogues Gallery adversaries like Captain Cold, the Turtle, Gorilla Grodd and others; probably the highlight here is issues 48-50, wherein Vandal Savage kidnaps all of Wally’s friends to force a final showdown, and kills him (!) only to see him bounce back and end up with both a newly-designed costume and the enhanced-speed powers that his Uncle Barry had always had. Messner-Loebs is especially good at satisfying, self-contained, one-issue stories: something of a lost art today.

Mark Waid

Waid is yet another writer who established his mainstream credentials on Wally and company: he comes on board with a “Year One” four-parter, drawn by LaRoque, in issues #62-65, and then settles in for a very long tenure, all the way through issue #159. Laroque continues through a nothing-is-as-it-seems “Return of Barry Allen” story in issues #75-79, after which Mike Wieringo, Waid’s future partner on a long and well-regarded Fantastic Four run, comes on board for a year, from issue #80 through the introduction of Impulse in #92. Next up are Carlos Pacheco and Salvador Larroca, who provide art for the six-part “Terminal Velocity” that ends in issue #100, and sees Waid setting up the Speed Force as a sort of universal super-speed conduit that’s been part of the Flash mythos ever since. After that, Oscar Jimenez provides art on most issues through #116; by #118, Waid is co-writing the book with Brian Augustyn, with Paul Ryan as the main artist through #129. Issue #130 sees a high point: a Grant Morrison/Mark Millar collaboration, still with Ryan art, that lasts through issue #138 — although Ron Wagner takes over the art chores for the last few issues of that period. Then, Millar solos on the book from issue #139-141, and the Waid/Augustyn team come back for the wedding of Wally and his longtime love, Linda Park, in issue #142. They stay on the book through issue #159 (with art mostly by Paul Pelletier), after which Waid finally bows out. Not to worry, though, because there’s one more new writer set to make his name with Wally and company:

Geoff Johns

While Baron and Messner-Loebs provided an ’80s Flash, and Waid stewarded him through the ’90s, Johns is most responsible for bringing him into the 21st century, starting with his debut in issue #164. He does this through strengthening various elements of the character: making Central City (and neighboring Keystone City) feel more like actual places, for example, by establishing them as tough, hard-working Midwestern cities like Pittsburgh, and by giving the Flash his own Arkham Asylum, in the form of Iron Heights, the grim prison (with its even grimmer warden), where most of the bad guys end up. He also updates the Rogues Gallery, adding new villains to it and creating new versions of old ones like the Trickster and, most importantly, Professor Zoom, who receives a brand-new origin and becomes the same kind of nemesis for Wally that previous versions had been for Barry Allen. The two artists who help the most with this project are Brian Bolland, who provides gorgeous covers from issue #164 through #187, and Scott Kolins, who begins work on the interior pages with #170 and stays all the way through issue #200; the only problem with this early Johns era is that the books have relatively-low print runs, and values high enough that very few of them are on the discount racks. Over issue #200, when Johns is still writing but other artists, like Alberto Dose and Howard Porter, are drawing Wally, is another matter: most of these issues are out at cover price up through Johns’s last one, #225.

Newer Issues

The recent publishing history of the Flash gets complicated, so try to follow this: Volume Two ends with issue #230 (March 2006), but then Volume Three, titled Flash: The Fastest Man Alive and featuring Bart Allen/Impulse in the costume (Wally having retired) runs for 13 issues from August 2006 through August 2007, after which Bart “dies” (cause of death being the Rogues, with low sales as an accomplice), and DC gets Mark Waid to come back on board for a revival of Volume Two with issue #231 (dated October 2007) and a return of Wally West, now with two kids who also have super-powers. This iteration lasts through issue #247 (February 2009), after which Johns gets Barry Allen re-established in the DC Universe with the mini-series Flash:Rebirth, from June 2009 through April 2010, and then a regular-series fourth Flash volume (the “Brightest Day” one) begins in June, 2010, with Johns back as scripter and Allen in the costume. That gets to #13, and kicks off the just-finished Flashpoint mini-series, ending the volume and paving the way for yet another new Flash #1, volume five, which will begin this month. Got all that? Good, because if you need to catch up on any of those issues, most are now out at cover price. In addition, the Flash original art pages that I talked about here, along with the key Silver Age Flash books that we still have in stock, will be in the display case back at the west end of the store for another week or so; check them out, if you haven’t already.

Ghost Rider

This was part of the early-’70s horror boom, which saw vampires, zombies, werewolves and other creatures of the night all suddenly popular, and all jostling for comics-rack space (not to mention magazine-rack exposure, as Marvel’s black-and-white horror line competed with the Warren horror titles like Creepy, Vampirella, etc.). The cliche is that horror gets popular during times of economic or political uncertainty: Frankenstein, Dracula and Wolfman movies in the ’30s, EC and other comics in the early ’50s, and the similar success of Twilight, Walking Dead, etc. today all fit the pattern too. That may or may not be true (you can just as easily argue that it’s just a rough 20-year cycle, since the early ’90s also saw a smaller spike in such titles), but the recurring fascination with the supernatural is definitely there, and it sold a bunch of comics 40 years ago.

Ghost Rider is interesting because it was one of the few new ideas, not just another old standby like vampires or zombies or werewolves, and benefited from a great visual: a ghostly, skeletal motorcycle rider with a flaming skull, roaring through the midnight streets and doling out vengeance to bad guys.  The character first appeared in Marvel Spotlight #5 (August, 1972), written by Gary Friedrich with help from Roy Thomas, as small-time circus stunt rider Johnny Blaze, distraught over the impending death of his father, makes the spectacularly poor decision of trying to save him via a deal with… could it be… Satan? Yeah, those always work out well, and this one’s no exception: the old man still dies, and Blaze, saved from being dragged to hell by the love of his pure-in-heart girlfriend Roxanne, is nevertheless cursed to transform into a flaming skeleton whenever the sun goes down. The first four issues of GR’s Spotlight run were helped considerably by the art of Marvel horror mainstay Mike Ploog, whose carefully-detailed style and sense of caricature made the various circus roustabouts and hangers-on fun to watch, and whose solid design skills made the cool image of the main character’s flames, skull, leathers and bike a mainstay for tattoo artists, van painters, and other purveyors of redneck kitsch, even today. Tom Sutton took over the art chores in the final three issues of the Spotlight era, and if he was a degree of magnitude less than the stellar Ploog, he still had the horror chops and shadowy sense of menace that the series required.

Ghost Rider Vol. 1

After seven issues in Spotlight, sales warranted a solo title, and Ghost Rider #1 appeared in the summer of 1973, kicking off a ten-year, 81-issue run. Friedrich and Sutton continued as the creative team for the first issue, with Jim Mooney (who’d been inking Sutton’s pencils) becoming the main artist with issue #2, and Tony Isabella taking over the writing chores from Friedrich with issue #7. Isabella stayed on through issue #19, only to leave after Marvel editorial screwed up the ending of a two-year storyline (Isabella, who started as a comics fan and then turned pro, has been writing about comics and comics history, including his own, for over 40 years. He’s recently started a new blog here, and it’s worth checking out; it’s likely that he’ll retell his GR tale there at some point).  Mooney stayed on through issue #9, replaced by a series of artists after that, most notably Frank Robbins in issues #12 and 17-19, and John Byrne in issue #20. From then on, it’s mostly mid-level creators (or less), artists like Don Heck, Don Perlin, Jack Sparling and the like, with writers like Roger McKenzie and Michael Fleisher; Fleisher and Perlin have the longest stint together, and manage some decent stories. Futire Marvel EIC Jim Shooter writes issues #23-27, and Jim Starlin writes and (mostly) draws #35, but otherwise it’s a long, gradual decline in interest for the character through the end of the series, with issue #81.

Ghost Rider Vol. 2

The GR revival came in 1990, with a new mortal — Danny Ketch — transforming into the Ghost Rider, and a more focused idea (based on the last few issues of the first volume) of GR as being a separate demon entity, a Spirit of Vengeance. Howard Mackie was the initial writer, with Javier Saltares and Mark Texiera on the art, and they made this incarnation of the character much darker than the original, with a lot more blood, death and suffering; it’s a very ’90s book, and proved a surprise hit (in tone and fan reception, it’s a lot like the X-Force book — now Uncanny X-Force — which debuted a few years ago to a lukewarm critical reception but became a fan favorite, with early issues rising on unexpected reader demand). It helped that Mackie and Texiera stayed on the title together for the first two years — through issue #25 — and established a consistent tone. Probably the most fondly-remembered issue in this run is #15, which boasted a glow-in-the-dark closeup of Ghost Rider, an image that glowed through the night in a lot of 12-year-olds’ bedrooms (and which appears at the top of this column). Issues 28 and 29 feature an X-Men crossover with pencils by Andy Kubert (and inks by his father Joe), a team that stays on the title through issue #31. Later issues (still written by Mackie) have artists like Blet Bevins, Ron Garney and Salvador Larroca, and tie closely into Marvel occult continuity as part of the Midnite Suns imprint, along with Dr. Strange, Spirits of Vengeance, Morbius and a few other titles. Mackie finally leaves by issue #70 (replaced by Ivan Velez, Jr), and, like its first volume, the series then limps to a quiet end with issue #93, in February 1998 (in 2007, Marvel produced GR #94, with the art meant for the series’ final issue, left orphaned after it was cancelled).

Ghost Rider mini-series

Over the last decade, there’ve been a couple of readable limited-series stories involving our flaming-skulled fiend; Devin Grayson and Trenbt Kaniuga contributed a six-issue one in 2001 that brought back Johnny Blaze as the GR host, while fan-favorite writer Garth Ennis offered two: a six-issue one painted by Clayton Crain in 2005, and Trail of Tears, another six-issue story set in the Old West, featuring an earlier incarnation of the character, in 2007. Both feature Ennis’s unique blend of satire, adventure and extreme physical violence, a good fit for the franchise.

Ghost Rider Vol. 3

The third GR ongoing series launched in 2006; written at first by Daniel Way, it brought back the Saltares/Texiera art team from the early days of Volume Two, and was a modest hit. It’s probably best known now for serving as an early showcase for writer Jason Aaron, who came on with issue #20 and quickly attracted attention with his Ennis-like combination of pulp and gleeful grindhouse-movie influences. He stayed on the title through its end (issue #35, July 2009) and the subsequent mini-series Heaven’s on Fire, which concluded the storyline. The fourth GR ongoing series is just starting up now, as part of the Fear Itself crossover event; we’ll have to wait and see how it matches up with the early incarnations of the character. Whatever happens, respect needs to be paid: a (so far) 40-year run is no small thing in comics, and speaks to the Ghost Rider’s ongoing appeal to readers. Browse all the discount issues available this week, enough to fill both sides of the cover-price rack back near the west-end cash register at AABC!