| ||||||
| | | | | | |
 | ||
| | |
The House of Mystery #267. April, 1979. A beautiful cover by Michael W. Kaluta. Atmospheric and mysterious. The demons and ghouls that frame two sides of the portrait bring an intriguing sense of horror to the scene. What distracts the reader from Kaluta's fine work is everything else: The large House of Mystery logo with its offsetting purple hue filling the letters in "Mystery," the DC symbol, the All New banner, and the dreadful and for the most part unnecessary UPC symbol in the bottom left hand corner (has anyone ever had a comic scanned for its UPC symbol? I never did). My point is, wouldn't it be great if DC collected the best of its horror/mystery covers in a book that focused only on the artwork itself? Justice League of America #104. February, 1973. DC Comics. "The Shaggy Man Will Get You If You Don't Watch Out." Writer: Len Wein. Artists: Dick Dillin and Dick Giordano. Editor Julius Schwartz. Most longtime Justice League fans have that special 'era' of the team that they're particularly fond of. My favorite period is the satellite years of the early 1970s when there were nine official members: Superman Batman, The Flash, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Hawkman, The Atom, and Aquaman. Justice League of America #104 was the last issue to feature the "noble nine." With #105 the League would begin to expand (beginning, appropriately enough, with the Elongated Man). JLA #104 featured all nine superheroes in battle against the Shaggy Man (in only his second appearance). But the story had so much more than that. It had a lighthearted premise, with the JLA cleaning their orbiting satellite headquarters. It had the superheroes pairing up as cleaning crews. The feuding Hawkman and Green Arrow made for a humorous duo, yet ironically they proved quite effective against the Shaggy Man's assault. The story had Green Lantern coming in at the end to save the plummeting JLA satellite from crashing on Earth and then beat the Shaggy Man, which was fine with me because GL has always been my favorite superhero. There was also Len Wein's rapidly paced script, complemented by splendid Dillin and Giordano artwork. Yet what's really nice about this comic after all these years (just as it was then) is how non-threatening the tale is. Even Hector Hammond, the villain behind the resurrection of the Shaggy Man, doesn't want to kill anybody, he just wants to defeat the League and his arch-foe, Green Lantern. When lives are actually threatened, Hammond goes out of his way to protect the heroes from fatal harm. You don't read these kind of stories in comics anymore, where now it's all about death, death, death, cripple, maim, disfigure, brutalize, rape, ad nauseum. There was a time when the villainous threats were fun and the adventures thrilling in a positive, satisfying way. Now that concept is sadly missing, for the most part, from today's superhero comics. Metal Men #45. April-May, 1976. DC Comics. "Evil Is In The Eye Of The Beholder." Writer: Steve Gerber. Artist: Walter Simonson. Editor: Gerry Conway. Over the years, this has become one of my favorite comic books. I don't know how DC was able to get Steve Gerber to write the first original all-Metal Men story in over five years, but to have him on "loan" from Marvel for one issue was good enough. The years since events in Metal Men #41 had not been very good to the robot band. They had resorted to the college lecture circuit to earn money to survive, and their creator, Doc Magnus, had been institutionalized and undergoing therapy in Washington, DC. Magnus' hatred for the Metal Men had also reached epic proportions, and when he was given the opportunity by the U.S. government to build another metal man, he transferred much of that hatred into the new robot's responsometer (the miniature device that gave Magnus' robots control over their forms and almost-human consciousness). What the Metal Men had to contend with was the awesome threat of the Plutonium Man! But there is so much more to this comic: flawless characterization, biting social commentary, strong ties to previous continuity, and a revealing examination of the grey areas between good and evil (on two levels, natch). Accompanied by Walter Simonson's sterling artwork, this is unarguably one of the Metal Men's finest stories. And while Gerber carried on with that funky fowl over at the House of Ideas (from a talking duck to thinking, feeling robots; Gerber was certainly versatile), writers Gerry Conway and Martin Pasko and artists Simonson and Joe Staton would continue to keep Metal Men a quality, quirky title. But if you're only going to read one Metal Men comic from the 1970s, make it #41. It's the gold standard. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | | | | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | ||
| | |
