DC One Million checklist

DC One Million is about the only gigando crossover I would consider collecting. For a fabulous explanation why, check out the nifty essay "DC One Million and What Makes Crossovers Good".
Part 1: The Main Story Arc
Chronos #1,000,000
DC One Million #1-4 (collected in the JLA: One Million trade)
Man Of Steel #1,000,000
Superman #1,000,000
Superboy #1,000,000
Shadow Of The Bat #1,000,000
Nightwing #1,000,000
Detective Comics #1,000,000
Impulse #1,000,000
Starman #1,000,000 (collected in the JLA: One Million trade)
JLA #1,000,000 (collected in the JLA: One Million trade)
Batman #1,000,000
Catwoman #1,000,000
Robin #1,000,000
Wonder Woman #1,000,000
Power Of Shazam #1,000,000
Flash #1,000,000
Green Lantern #1,000,000
Martian Manhunter #1,000,000
Action Comics #1,000,000
Adventures Of Superman #1,000,000
Man Of Tomorrow #1,000,000 (collected in the JLA: One Million trade)
Resurrection Man #1,000,000 (collected in the JLA: One Million trade)

Part 2: Issues Incidental to the Main Story
Young Justice #1,000,000
Green Arrow #1,000,000
Legionnaires #1,000,000
Azrael #1,000,000
Chase #1,000,000
Creeper #1,000,000
Supergirl #1,000,000
Young Heroes In Love #1,000,000
Lobo #1,000,000
Hitman #1,000,000
Legion Of Super-Heroes #1,000,000

a Big Book education

Starting around 1994 or so DC published a series of maybe a dozen and half "Big Books" under the Paradox Press imprint. These books really are big. They measure around 8 1/2 inches by 11 inches with a 200+ pagecount. Every volum I've seen is sharp black and white on good quality paper, with excellent art and great writing. Basically, these books are non-fiction anthology titles covering a variety of weird or underground topics. The four pictured above sit on a bookshelf in my gameroom. I count them among Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe as some of the most fun and informative books I've ever read.

I really can't speak for the other titles in the line, such as The Big Book of the Weird West or The Big Book of Losers. Except to say that I wouldn't pass up an opportunity to pick them up cheap. I think DC stopped publishing this line around 2000 or so. As far as I can tell the last Big Book to be released was The Big Book of the '70s.

That Cage is one bad mother...

In issue 38 of Luke Cage, Power Man, Bill Mantlo devotes a hefty chunk of pages to our man throwing down with a superpowered punk named Chemistro. Luke eventually wins not due to his superstrength or unbreakable skin, but because of pure willpower. He refuses to be taken down by some chump in a costume just because the dude has total control over physical matter.

That's sheer awesome in and of itself, but what happens next is even cooler. Chemistro surrenders and agrees to cooperate with Cage's investigation of criminal mastermind Big Brother.

"Don't you ever mess with Luke Cage again! Dig??"

Holy crap, that's awesome! Not only does Cage threaten to kill this mofo, he waits until it's clear the fight is over and then wallops the poor schmuck one more time. Just to make the point that nobody messes with Luke Cage and gets away with it.

This issue has everything that makes me a Power Man fan. And then the big reveal at the end of the issue freaked me out:

Man, I gots to get me issue 39.

Who needs action when we've got exposition?

Today my daughter and I went to the book store. She got Green Eggs and Ham and I got Simpsons Super Spectacular #4. In the sequence below the Sciencester relates the events of 'Infinite Annihilation of Heroes' to Kid Queasy. In one fell swoop these three panels neatly illustrate both why I love superhero comics and why I loathe big crossover events.

(Click for a larger, more legible version.)

Flu bad, Groo good.

I'm finally showing some signs of recovery today. I felt good enough this morning that I wanted to try to go to work but my wife stopped me. She is wise. An hour later I was absolutely miserable and would have had to come home anyway. Still, I am making some progress. I even felt good enough to read a few issues of Groo the Wanderer that I recued from a local dollar bin a couple weeks back. This stuff is golden. I got into Groo only recently but as a kid Sergio Aragones was one of my favorite Mad artists. That guy can tell the most wonderful, human stories with little or no dialogue. I'm no expert on the ins and outs of Groo, but the basic schtick is that he's a dunderheaded nincompoop who also happens to be an unstoppable killing machine. He wanders a vague pseudo-Hyborian fantasy world, getting into lots of trouble. In other words, he acts a lot like pretty much every D&D player character I've ever met. Issue 37 pictured above is pretty much a one joke story, but Aragones spends 22 pages slowly and lavishly telling it. It's glorious.

Quote of the Day

Dude, shot by a sniper on the steps of a public building? Again?

Cap died in 1969, shot to death by HYDRA in front of witnesses. Had a big funeral where people talked about his great importance. (Captain America #111)

Cap died in 1992, shot to death on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial by the Punisher, who used a sniper rifle. Had a big funeral where people talked about his great importance. (Punisher and Captain America: Blood and Glory #1)

Cap died in 1996, when his body gave out due to the deterioration of the Super Soldier Serum. Had a big funeral where people talked about his great importance. (Cap #445 or so)

Cap died in 2002, blown up by a collection of aged Nazis in New Jersey who had an ICBM. Had a big funeral where people talked about his great importance. (Cap vol. 3, #50)

Cap died in 2005, shot by a random jackass in Harlem. Got better before there was time for a funeral. (Captain America and the Falcon #13)

The character lives to be martyred so people can talk about How Tragic It Is That America Is Dead, and Woe Is Us.

Man, they need to come up with better uses for the guy. Seriously, this is embarrassing.

I love Cap. Stop killing him, fer cryin' out loud! He's died enough!

-Harvey Jerkwater posting on Kevin Church's blog

Why you should be reading Dinosaur Comics, in one panel.

(Click the pic to be taken away to a magical world were dinosaurs are even more awesome than usual.)

Return of the creep

This post is a follow-up to Audience participation time, wherein I challenged everyone to rate three comic book panels in order of increasing creepiness. Thanks to all the usual suspects for participating in my silly little game. In the comments to the original post my buddy Pat suggested that I was not doing the Ms. Marvel panel justic by cropping it down to just the kiss with MODOK. So below you can find the entirety of page 30 of issue 7 of Ms. Marvel. The whole page takes place entirely in Ms. Marvel's mind. MODOK and his AIM goons have captured her and subjected her to his brainwashing "mindripper" device. This page is meant to illustrate her internal struggle with the dominating effects of the mindripper.

(Click the pic for a bigger version.)

I find this page extremely effective in conveying how unnerving it is to lose one's power of self-determination. In one quick transition Ms. Marvel goes from mentally kicking MODOK's ass to re-imagining him as both god to be worshiped and idealized mate to be loved. Ewww.

On one hand I find the MODOK-smooching to be a very effective way of depicting the horrors of mind control. On the other hand I'm just a bit disappointed. The rest of the comic is a pretty gender-neutral story of superhero asskickery. You could redo the rest of this tale for a male super with very little alteration. Only with a superheroine on the field would mind control be depicted as swapping spit with MODOK. Maybe nowadays some enterprising writer would try to pull off a male/male kiss with MODOK. I dunno.

It would be interesting to compare this sequence to contemporaneous examples of female villains mindcontrolling males. Like maybe some superhero falling under sway of the Enchantress. (Was Nekra active in the 70's?) I don't really have the collection to undertake such a project.

two awesome pics

My friend Pat sent me this picture. It's a screencap from a cartoon, but I forgot the website. I'm sure Pat'll share the URL next time he's online.



I don't normally play clerics, but I'd totally sign on to turn undead in the name of this guy:

Oh. My. God. (no, seriously)

I never thought I'd say this but if this project ever got off the ground I would totally find myself buying a Rob Liefeld comic book. Click the pics to check out larger versions of Liefeld's Old Testament!!!

I paid 50 cents for what?!

Shopping at the comic store Saturday was tricky, as both my daughter and my nephew were with me. Elizabeth immediately picked up a comic that had Superman fighting a gorilla on the cover. She then proceeded to wander about the store, unintentionally walking out of my field of vision something like 800 times. Meanwhile Cameron was completely overstimulated by all the colorful comics and just couldn't pick anything out. I ended up getting him a handful of Transformers back issues I stumbled across while riffling through the 50 cent bin. Between the bargain bin search and trying to keep track of the kids and half-listening to an argument my sister was having in the game store (which shares space with the comic shop) I ended up getting a tad bit distracted. So when I got home I found that in addition to JLU, Transformers, Young Heroes in Love, Groo the Wanderer, and a bunch of crappy bronze age Marvel mags, I had unintentionally purchased this:


Man, this thing is like a time machine. Extremely wordy narration boxes, Liefieldian pencils, a villain with ill-defined but world-shattering powers. It's like half the comics I bought in college distilled down to one book.

But it's the cover that kills me. In particular, Nightcrawler. When Spider-man does that spread legs thing it works, because his costume isn't designed like Borat's swimsuit. That pose and that costume work together in perfect harmony to emphasize Nightcrawler's package, or rather his comic code-approved lack of package. Which only confuses me more. It's like this cover is trying to remind me that Nightcrawler has no genitals.

Audience participation time!

The name of the game is Creepy, Creepier, Creepiest. Take the three scans below and put them in increasing creep-out order. Justify your answers in the comments section. There are no winners or losers in this game, just fellow victims all wallowing in joint misery.

Scan number 1 comes from issue 10 of The Occult Files of Doktor Spektor, published in 1974 by Whitman. Here we have Lakota, Dr. Spektor's Native American secretary/love interest/damsel-in-distress, dressing up for a costume ball. Note her choice of costume: sexy injun squaw.



Contestant number 2 hails from the ninth issue of Teen Titans Spotlight (copywright 1986, DC Comics). In this issue for no apparent reason Beast Boy goes to the zoo and starts flirting with a lioness.



Finally, we have Ms. Marvel #7 (1977), wherein we find a picture of Carol Danvers making out with MODOK!



So now that I've scarred you all for life, tell me which scan is merely Creepy, which is a bit Creepier, and which one is Creepiest.

P.S. #1: Don't try to tell me the green dude's name is Changeling. He's Beast Boy on the cartoon and that's all that matters to me.

P.S. #2: This issue of Teen Titans Spotlight is the first time I've read a story with Robotman in it. And let me tell you, he is rad to the max. Cliff Steele spends the whole issue acting like Ben Grimm, only he's a robot instead of a rock monster. Is he that awesome all the time?

Sweetie, let go of the comic long enough for daddy to scan this one panel.

I usually get my daughter a comic when I hit the store. Scooby-Doo is one of her favorites, but she also likes Teen Titans Go! and Justice League Unlimited. None of those were on the shelf last time I visited the shop on campus, so I pulled a Transformers book out of the dollar bin. Turns out it was a reprint from the original series. And an awesome issue, too. Dig it:


That's Predaking, the robotic Predator of the Transformers mythos, hunting the most dangerous game, Megatron. Wicked cool!

Nextwave has ruined me

The same comic that got me back into buying new comics has also spoiled me on new comics. I've tried following the new Midnighter and Iron Fist series, but it is just not working. It's not that those are bad comics. They both feature guys in ridiculous costumes beating up bad guys, one of my favorite comic genres. And they're skillfully written and drawn. Heck, a while back I did a little piece of fan art for those two books.

But this new decompression depresses me. This 'written for trade' style is an abomination unto the Lord and I will not tolerate it. If a writer can't advance the plot arc and simultaneously provide a good, complete, action-packed freak-out, then I say ditch the plot arc. Or better yet, bring in a writer than can deliver both a larger story and a fast-paced sinlge issue.

So here's the deal. I'm done with buying new monthlies until someone can approach the undiluted awesomeness of Nextwave. Otherwise I'll be sticking to trades, shitty old back issues, and graphic novels. I'm not paying three bucks for one sixth of a story where I have to wait six months for the big dramatic payoff. Not when that same three bucks will get me 6 issues of random Mantlo or Gerber or whatever from the fiddy cent bins.

Maybe I'll get some new indy stuff or the new Conan comics. Maybe not. I'll keep following the Invincible Super-Blog and Bully and other comics blogs, watching for the next thing that may light my jets. Until then, there's a wild world of back issues and reprints waiting to be read.

Random comics...

...found over my lunch hour at a used book store for a buck apiece.

Every time I see Neptune in a DC comic he's going on about someone swiping his stuff. He's worse than that leprechaun with the cereal.

Until today I had no idea that the X-Men had their own reprint title.

Everything I know about the Titans I learned from the cartoon. When I first glanced at this cover I thought the grey dude was the Changeling.

The Hulk is a friggin' racist

In issue 2 of the original Defenders our heroes are in the Himalayas all of three panels when the Hulk starts breaking this shit out:


So what the hell is going on here? Is this the result of years of being constantly reminded of his (freakish) green skin? Is Bruce Banner a closet racist, and what we see here is the Hulk as Banner's unmitigated id? Is writer Steve Englehart off his rocker?

Fathoming this whole situation is complicated all the more by the odd coloring Asians could end up back in the day.

Justice League 5k: The Big Four (and Robin)

In the year 5000 Venus is home to a matriarchical society. Wonder Lad hails from the one Venusian city that practices gender equality. After some initial mistrust the inhabitants of the planet have accepted him as their champion.



Bat Lass and Robin patrol the crime-infested, industrialized asteroid belt. Why is Robin a cigar-chomping midget with a green mohawk? Because it's the future, that's why!

The Super Twins, Super Lad and Super Lass, are this era's heroes from the House of El. They are the sworn protectors of Earth, but are young and inexperienced. Superboy and Supergirl as siblings is what I was shooting for with these two.

These heroes are the founding members of the Justice League of the Solar System. Wonder Lad and Bat Lass are recognized as the seniormost members, but at the heart of the team is the charisma and cache of the Super Twins.

Justice League 5000: The Prelude

I don't normally read big crossover events. The original Secret Wars was important to me. It and the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe were the comics that made me a big Marvel nerd as a kid. When I got back into comics in the early 90's I bought the Death of Superman story arc in trade and followed the Rise of the Supermen story that followed. I really dug the Amalgam experiment and bought all those issues in floppy or trade. I only own one comic with the words "Civil War" on the cover, and that would be Nextwave #11. A few years back I stumbled across the DC One Million trade paperback. I had missed this crossover the first time around, but the trade looked interesting, so I picked it up.

The basic deal witht the series is that the Justice League (kicking it in full iconic membership mode) met and interacted with the Justice League of the far future. How far in the future? One million issues of Action Comics in the future, hence the name of the series. That works out to more than 80,000 years.

This is a fun, wild ride of a comic story, so much so that I have considered tracking down the issue not compiled in the trade. One of my favorite parts is from one of the Superman books, IIRC. Superman is in the year 80K or whatever, and tracks down Platinum of the Metal Men, who is still alive in the distant future. She gives Supes a broad outline of the history of the House of El, the superhero dynasty he will one day found. One basic theme of her tale is continuity. The superheroes of the future will be legacy figures of the iconics of the present.

From those couple of pages of background exposition came my idea for a sci-fi superhero adventure: Justice League 5000AD. Think basically along the lines of the Superfriends in space, in the future. The project never made it out of the brainstorming stage, but I designed a lot of characters for it with Heromachine. I don't think I'll ever run JL5K. I'm not very good at supers games and inexperienced with sci-fi. The project seems to play to my weaknesses. So instead, I'll share with you all the character designs. Feel totally free to steal this stuff for your own gaming, should you feel so inclined.

When one panel is enough.

From the Sunday funnies:

Mr. Adams should have stopped right there. That panel is hilarious and the rest of the strip was pretty much a downhill race to grind the punchline into the ground. I read just this panel to my wife yesterday. She laughed out loud. More importantly, she assumed I was reading the punchline, not the strip opener.

Which leads me to this idea: maybe when a comic strip gets tired and saggy, one way to re-energize it might be to switch to a one-panel format. The fans all know the characters from Garfield, Dilbert, and many other newspaper strips. Why not take advantage of this familiarity by chopping the comic back to one punchy panel? Since the players are all well-grounded in years of past characterization, you can even do character-based gags in one line.

To put it another way, how many comic strips do you read that seem padded, even though they're only a few panels long?

Make Mine Mantlo!

I did a search on comics.org for all of Bill Mantlo's writing credits. I compiled the data and took out all the foreign language reprints. I'm sure this list isn't complete, but I know I'm not the only comic fan on the internet who might like to see this information.

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The Mantlo List!

Alpha Flight 29-67, Annual 1 & 2
Amazing Adventure 1
Amazing Adventures 33, 38
Amazing High Adventure 4, 5
Amazing Spider-Man, 181, 222, 237, Annual 10, 11, 17
Astonishing Tales 32-35
Avengers 188, 206, 210 Annual 9, 12
Battlestar Galactica 8, 9
Bizarre Adventures 30
Captain America 191, 256, 291
Captain Marvel 47
Champions 3, 4, 8-17
Cloak & Dagger 1-4 ('83 mini), 1-11
Creepy 109 (Warren)
Daredevil 140
Deadly Hands of Kung Fu 7-27, 29-32
Defenders 30
Eerie 17 (Warren)
Epic Illustrated 5
Fantastic Four 182-183, 193-194, 216-218, Annual 13
Fear 29-31
Frankenstein 18
Ghost Rider 16
Howard the Duck ('76) 30-31
Howard the Duck ('79) 1-9
Human Fly 1-19
Incredible Hulk 245-313 Annual 10-13
Incredible Hulk vs Quasimodo 1
Inferior Five 3 (DC!)
Invasion 1-3 (DC!)
Iron Man 46, 78, 86-87, 95-115
Jack of Hearts 1-4
John Carter Warlord of Mars Annual 2
Last Starfighter 1-3
Man from Atlantis 1-7
Marvel Chillers 1-2
Marvel Classics Comics 15 (Treasure Isand), 18 (The Odyssey)
Marvel Comics Presents Spider-Man
Marvel Comics Super Special 25, 31, 33
Marvel Fanfare 7, 16, 19, 25, 27, 28, 43, 47, 56-58
Marvel Fumetti Book 1
Marvel Graphic Novel 14
Marvel Magazine 2
Marvel Masterworks 11-12
Marvel Premiere 26, 28, 31, 40, 44
Marvel Preview 4, 7, 10, 22, 24 (at least some of these are text-only pieces)
Marvel spotlight 9-11, 27
Contest of Champions 1-3
Marvel Super-Heroes 383 (81 series), 15 (90 series)
Marvel Super-Heroes Magazine 1
Marvel Tales 228-229, 235-236, 239, 245, 247-248, 262
Marvel Team-Up 38-56, 72, 134-135, 140, Annual 1, 6
Marvel Treasury Edition 25
Marvel Two-In-One 11-12, 14-24, 47-48, 99
Micronauts 1-58, Annual 1-2
Micronauts Special Edition 1-3
Might World of Marvel 9-16
Power Man 25-29, 38-39
Questprobe 1
Rawhide Kid 1-4
Red Sonja 5-7
Rocket Racoon 1-4
ROM 1-75, Annual 1-4
Savage Sword of Conan 110
Sectaurs 1-8
Sectaurs: Warriors of The Symbion
Skull the Slayer 5-8
Son of Satan 8
Spectacular Spider-Man 6, 9-10, 12-15, 17-40, 42, 53, 61-89, 104, 120 Annual 1, 4
Spider-Man and Daredevil Special Edition 1
Strange Tales ('87) 1-7
Super-Villain Team-Up 4, 9-14
Swords of the Swashbucklers 1-12
Tarzan 20-29, Annual 2-3
Team America 2, 5-8
Thor 240-241, 309
Transformers Comics Magazine 1
Vision and Scarlet Witch 1-4
Warlock 5
Web of Spider-Man 11
What If? 21, 31, 36, 52-53, 55
X-Men 96, 106
X-Men and the Micronauts 1-4

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That's quite a body of work. I totally need to get myself a copy of Savage Sword of Conan #110 to see Mantlo's take on the hardest working Cimmerian in show business. Swords of the Swashbucklers looks right up my alley as well.

Turns out that as a kid I owned at least two comics scripted by Mantlo. Both were issues of The Incredible Hulk and the only Hulk comics I owned. Hulk #268 was a tale from the Weird West, featuring a skeletal cowboy called the Pariah. He carried this golden stone that had an Indian curse placed on it. Eventually Hulk got sick of this chump talking about curses and death and stuff. So what does the Hulk do? He smashes the glowy magic rock. End of story. That's one of the things I love about superhero comics. So many problems can be solved with punching and smashing.

Hulk #277 starts out with the U-Foes (an evil Fantastic Four) having already captured Bruce Banner. As you can see on the cover, this one starts out with Bruce Banner in his shredded purple pants crucified on some sort of high tech device that prevents him from hulking out. That's a pretty mind-blowing way for a comic to open. And more to the point, the U-Foes plan on executing Bruce Banner on live national television. And the rest of the heroes watching can't find where the baddies are broadcasting from, because of the yellow and orange dude's super-powers.

Of course Dr. Banner is freed and goes green. The Hulk, equipped with Banner's mind in this issue, then methodically destroys the U-Foes in probably the most brutal fight sequence I had seen in comics until the 90's era of splattergore supers. At one point Hulk's grappling with Ironclad, the silvery guy on the cover and the team powerbrute. Vapor, whose power is to turn into any gas she chooses, makes herself into a cloud of acid and tries to envelop Hulk. The big green machine pulls a quick counter on Ironclad and drops him into Vapor's acid. And the dude starts to melt. It was rad.

The final foe the Hulk tackles is Vector, the team leader and the cool-looking yellow guy on the cover. Vector's superpower is telekinetic repulsion, he gestures and things fly away from him. There's this great sequence where he's repulsing stuff at the Hulk, trying to push him away. But the Hulk just keeps on coming. Vector starts out sending whatever stuff is at hand, but eventually throws all of Gamma Base at the Hulk! Slowly walking through a swirling tornado made of everything Vector throws at him, the Hulk is an unstoppable engine of vengeance. Finally the Hulk grabs Vector's hands. "You grabbed my hands?!? No one should be able to grab my hands!!!" Then what comes next flipped my lid. The Hulk just squeezes until Vector's hands are crushed! The dude crumples to the floor. I swear you can almost hear guitars wailing as the Hulk just demolishes these chumps.

Man, I really need to track down that issue.

There is only one Mantlo and Chris Sims is his prophet.