On Punisher: Confederacy of Dunces

I didn't realize that Marvel was going to be publishing a new collection of "Confederacy of Dunces", the story arc that ran through the last five issues of Garth Ennis' 2001-2004 The Punisher ongoing series, until I saw it waiting to be shelved at the library.  

It was the cover that caught my eye (as covers should). I noticed the big "PUNISHER" and skull logo in the middle of the cover, the odd assortment of characters and the very distinct art of John McCrea, who has long been one of my favorite comics artists. The previous collection of the arc, 2004's Punisher Vol. 6, used series cover artist Tim Bradstreet's cover for The Punisher #37. It was a nice enough cover, a highly realistic, portrait-style image of The Punisher, but it looked like all of Bradstreet's coves for the series, featuring as it did a weathered-looking Frank Castle among recurring elements like skulls, guns and bullets.

 Like so many Marvel covers of that period, Bradstreet's cover eventually became a sort of visual white noise, offering no indication of what might be occurring within that particular comic, or how it might differ from the issue before or the issue after it (Here, scan this gallery of Bradstreet's covers, for example; how would you choose one over another? Some indicate that Spider-Man or Wolverine guest-star within, sure, but there's nothing in the covers for the five issues that make up this arc to indicate that Spider-Man, Wolverine and Daredevil all guest-star in them, as the three team up with one another to take on Castle).

This new collection, released in 2026, has a far better cover then, I think, as it features all of the characters involved and is also drawn by the same guy who drew the interiors. But I think it goes a little too far. For example, The Hulk is on the cover (and the copy on the back cover also mentions "things go from bad to worse when the Incredible Hulk shows up!"). 

This is a pretty major spoiler for the story, after all, revealing a plot point which Ennis quite carefully keeps from the reader until a double-page splash at the end of the penultimate issue. The arc involves The Punisher busting up an unusual auction taking place among the various factions of the New York criminal underworld, the prize being a little naked guy lying unconscious in the back of a van...and a videotape revealing who the guy is. 

As said guy has amnesia (and McCrea draws him sans glasses), no one except The Punisher knows that this guy is actually Bruce Banner until Castle forces him to transform into The Hulk and points him in the direction of the trio of heroes who have decided enough is enough and it is time to bring down The Punisher once and for all.

Well, there's that, and the fact that the new cover is a composite of figures from three different panels; someone apparently chopped up McCrea's interior art and rearranged it rather awkwardly on the cover. They probably should have just commissioned McCrea to draw a new, original cover. 

As I said before, this was the last arc of Ennis' first Punisher ongoing, which followed he and pencil artist Steve Dillon's 12-issue, 2000-2001 maxiseries, which has since been collected as Welcome Back, Frank (Most recently in a "Marvel Premier Collection" for just $14.99). Dillon and inker Jimmy Palmiotti followed Ennis onto the ongoing as well, and that was the team for much of the 37-issue run, with some fill-ins. 

McCrea, who of course worked with Ennis on DC's The Demon and Hitman, took over as series pencil artist at the very end, drawing the last five issues, the "Confederacy of Dunces" arc. (Previous to this, Ennis and McCrea had also collaborated on a pair of Marvel projects in 2001: The Tangled Web arc "The Thousand" and that the miniseries Hulk Smash). 

Obviously, McCrea knew how to draw an Ennis script as well as anyone at that point, and he was a perfect artist for Ennis' particular take on The Punisher character, a sort of black comedy that juxtaposed the absurdity of superhero comics with the single-minded, sociopathic killer of a protagonist and reveled in the friction that doing so produced. (That, and Ennis, Dillon, McCrea and others seemed to delight in the relatively slack chain that the Marvel Knights imprint and mature readers rating gave them to present Castle as an ultra-violent mass-murderer; the stories were often quite silly, sure, but, in their way, also took the idea of a vigilante with The Punisher's astronomical body count more seriously than the previous decades' worth of Punisher comics ever had.)

Also, Ennis and company's Punisher comics were all set firmly in the Marvel Universe, which meant Daredevil and Spider-Man and others might pop by now and then. Ennis' next Punisher ongoing would be a "Max" series, and thus non-canonical (And, outside of the Marvel Universe, they tended to be a lot more realistic and a lot more violent...and, if you ask me, a lot less fun. Is a guy who has colorfully, creatively killed hundreds of people, even if they were all bad guys, someone who should be cheered for? Or recoilded from?).

Anyway, "Confederacy of Dunces" was basically the grand conclusion of Ennis, Dillon and company's take on The Punisher, that which was staked out in "Welcome Back, Frank." The "dunces" of the title, which was borrowed from John Kennedy Toole's 1980 novel, are, of course, the Marvel heroes seen on the cover and already mentioned: Daredevil, Spider-Man and Wolverine.

Despite that title, Ennis and McCrea treat Daredevil and Spider-Man more or less seriously, whereas it is Wolvie who is presented as a clown: Rather silly-looking and always talking in goofy tough-guy cliches (McCrea draws Wolverine sans costume, as he wasn't really wearing one at the time, and his hair looks like an exaggerated version of how Hugh Jackman's Wolverine hair looked in the live-action movies; that is, like a more-or-less normal head of hair, with two "ears" rising out of it for some reason. The "ears" here, however, are long and pointy, more Batman-like than wolfman-esque).

Now, Marvel's heroes deciding that they really should do something about the fact that there's a killer vigilante in New York City, where most of them live and operate, makes sense; especially since, as this story tells us, Castle has killed "thousands" and has been doing so for "thirty years." (I'm not sure what to make of that timespan; debuting in 1974, The Punisher had been around for 30 years at that point, but that's assuming Marvel characters aged in real time. Like, I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to believe that Spider-Man is in his late fifties and Daredevil in his early sixties in this story, even if the young, fit-looking Castle is supposed to be a veteran of the Vietnam War.)

As for why it is these three heroes in particular and not, like, The Fantastic Four and The Avengers, well, obviously Spider-Man and Daredevil run in the same circles as Frank, but, in the context of this series, all three had previously guest-starred and, as Daredevil says when he summons the other two to propose the mission to them, they all got "put through the ringer." 

In Daredevil's case, the "ringer" was mostly a moral and emotional one, whereas Frank used Spider-Man as a human shield during a rematch with The Russian, and Wolverine...well, Ennis had Frank exploiting Wolverine's by-then amped-up healing factor by subjecting him to cartoonishly over-the-top acts of violence. Like running him over with a steamroller ("An' then--th' final iggomininny!" as Wolvie tells it here, "The dirty frikker drives a steamroller over my head!")

Had there been a story previous to this one where various Marvel heroes decided to treat The Punisher as the supervillain he essentially is...? If so, I had never read or heard of it.

Anyway, because these three had such recent history with Frank, with The Punisher getting the better of them each (And of course he did; it was his book they were appearing in), their appearances in this arc make for various callbacks, and give Ennis' final arc on the series a real sense of climax. 

Surely, no reader would have much concern if Frank found himself facing off against any number of armed criminals, but facing off against a group of superheroes determined to finally take him down? Well, that's suspenseful ("Any one of these three could dismantle me in about a second," Frank tells himself during the first of three rounds he fights against the trio).

The arc isn't just one big fight scene, of course. The Punisher is going about his regular punishing while Daredevil proposes the alliance to the other two, and, once he gets wind of the big underworld auction, he of course wants to be there. Not because he cares about what is being auctioned, but because he wants to gun down everyone present for the bidding (This he starts to do in a big double-page splash; on the previous page, bad guys notice him arriving and shout from off-panel "NO!" and "God! No!!", while Frank's thoughts are an almost sexual response of "Yes. Oh yes."

Having killed all of the attendees, he ends up in possession of the amnesiac Banner, who he keeps locked away and feeds stew with suspicious insistence...another aspect that will only be explained at the climax.

And then there are subplots involving characters Dave, a kid and neighbor of Frank's from "Welcome Back, Frank", and Soap, an unlucky, pathetic, sad-sack police officer who was assigned to The Punisher Task Force and has been acting as Frank's kinda sorta Commissioner Gordon throughout the series. Both of them get send-offs in this arc as well. 

As for the Punisher vs. the superheroes conflict, as I stated above, it basically consists of three rounds. 

In the first, Frank manages to outsmart them and make his escape by distracting them (which he does by doing the opposite of what one might think he might do when challenged to a fight), sparking a berserker rage in Wolverine that forces the other two to focus on stopping their teammate rather than him.

In the second, he plans ahead and has come up with ways to neutralize Spider-Man and Daredevil, while poor Wolverine takes a rocket from a rocket-launcher to the gut, skeletonizing much of his body until he can grow his "meat" back. (Frank still gets the shit kicked out of him by Daredevil here, though, ultimately only defeating him through some lucky circumstances. Wolverine aside maybe, Ennis does play "fair" in the conflict, coming up with plausible reasons for how Frank might actually triumph over guys who are more skilled and/or more powerful than him.)

And, in the final, he wields the rampaging Hulk like a weapon against them, not entirely unlike the way he famously weaponized some polar bears against foes in "Welcome Back, Frank" (Here, Wolverine gets punched all the way to Boston, where he lands claws first on a poor duck in a pond).

As the conflict winds down, Ennis has The Punisher try to explain to a pinned and helpless Daredevil why it's useless for them to try to bring him to justice anyway: 

Look at the lengths I've had to go to not to kill you.

This fight you've picked wastes everybody's time. Let this be an end to it. 

Once and for all. 

...

I understand.

You want to stop me murdering criminals by taking me off the streets. That's stupid. Send me to prison and I'll just kill everyone I meet.

There's only one way to stop me. You know that.

If you haven't got it in you to do it, don't waste my time.

Will that argument convince Daredevil? One would assume not, and that the pair would thus be locked in an eternal struggle of sorts. But because Frank makes this little speech in the last issue of the series, well, it's not Ennis who will have to deal with the question of why Marvel's heroes don't stop The Punisher. 

The last four pages feature a sort of coda, one that intentionally echoes the events of "Welcome Back, Frank." In that story, Ennis and Dillon had Frank rather famously throw a criminal to his death of the Empire State Building. 

Here he hauls another criminal to the top of a building and throws him off, staring intensely at the falling figure until we get a big, red sound effect of "SPLAAAT" to let us know the poor bastard has hit the bottom. 

Interestingly, the section features The Punisher thinking about the events of 9/11, Marvel's in-comics reaction to which were...varied, to say the least (Twenty-five years later, it is John Romita Jr's drawing of Doctor Doom shedding a tear at Ground Zero that I remember most strongly).

"Four years ago," Frank says to himself in a narration box, referring to 2001, when "Welcome Back, Frank" was completed...and Al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center (Again, Ennis suggests that time passes in the Marvel Universe at the same rate it does in ours). "The view was different then," he says, and continues:

I remember the day the Towers came down, not for all the sound and fury, not for the streets awash with smoke, but for the looks on the faces of the people.

The stricken horror of innocence killed stone dead. 

See? I thought.

See now? 

See what the world is really like?

The City, now, it knew. 

It had known all along.

For a moment I seem to hear it talking.

Frank, it says: Don't ever go away again.

But I'm not going anywhere. 

I need you, Frank. Says New York City.

Here Ennis seems to suggest that, as The Punisher sees it at least, 9/11 was to New York City what Frank's family being gunned down to criminals was to him, and now the city (perhaps the country?) was ready to embrace the remorseless killing of killers, to excuse the suspensions of such niceties as trials and human rights in the pursuit of a just vengeance.

Was he right? I'm not happy to report that Ennis' Punisher maybe got America's number there. 

Despite Frank's promise not to go anywhere, he would eventually go away again...although that seemed to have more to do with Marvel struggling to find a way to keep the character relevant while simultaneously distancing The Punisher and they themselves from all the bad people who had co-opted his iconic skull symbol in the real world. Many of whom tended to be...well, not people that a comic book publisher/business of any kind would want to associate with.

There were some attempts to replace the skull symbol on his chest with other logos and, as I understood it, he was even given a weird "ending" to his story at one point.

At the moment, I have no idea where The Punisher is in the Marvel Universe. If he's alive or dead, active or temporarily retired. But Marvel did publish this trade, so it's not like they've abandoned him. And he did play a prominent role in this summer's Spider-Man: Brand New Day, one of the most successful movies of the year and, if I understand it correctly, ever. 

So perhaps Frank is right. He's not going anywhere...and, even if he does seem to disappear for a while now and then, he'll be back sooner or later.

**********************

While rereading this story arc, there were a few things that caught my eye as worth talking more about—some dialogue that I don't think Marvel would have published in 2026 even if they allowed it in 2004, some questions about how Spider-Man's spider-sense actually works—that didn't quite fit into this post, so we'll return to this story arc (and maybe Ennis' earlier Punisher stories in general) again next post. 

More words than anyone could possibly want on 2025's Nightwing Vol. 1: Bludhaven (collecting the 1995 miniseries and the first eight issues of the ongoing)

While I read a lot of Batman comics in the '90s, I sat out Chuck Dixon and Scott McDaniel's Nightwing ongoing series. I mean, as a teenager and college student with limited income, I had to draw the line somewhere, and that seemed like a good place to draw it. 

I had obviously read a lot of Dixon, and while he was not a particularly colorful nor imaginative writer, he was great at coming up with new crimes and heists on a monthly basis, and penning comics that read like mini action movies that happened to have a superhero in them. I wasn't familiar with McDaniel at all. I imagine if the book had been drawn by Norm Breyfogle or Tim Sale or Vince Giarrano or Jim Balent, I might have snapped it up, but it was not (I am now trying to imagine the book drawn by any of the above and can't quite see it).

Also, I remember balking at the very existence of Bludhaven, the fact that Gotham City happened to have a neighboring big city that was even more corrupt and crime-ridden that no one had ever mentioned before. That was too much for Teenage Caleb's suspension of disbelief (Grown-up Caleb doesn't care and, in fact, I now see it was completely integral to making the Nightwing ongoing interesting; having Dick as Batman Lite fighting crime in Gotham City just wouldn't have worked).

So why am I reading it now, especially given the fact that the reputations of the series' creators are now so, as Travis Hedge Coke pointed out on my Bluesky post about it put it, "tarnished"...? Well, as I explained a few posts back, my teenage nephew is starting to get into comics, and  he said he liked Nightwing. I ordered this particular trade paperback online for him and, when it arrived, I noticed that not only did it collect the beginning of the monthly, but also a four-issue 1995 miniseries penned by the late Denny O'Neil. 

That was of particular interest to me, as not only had I not read the miniseries, but I don't think I had ever even known it existed. Released when it was, the mini, penciled by some guy named Greg Land and inked by a Mike Sellers, would have slotted in between the events of "Prodigal", the multi-book event storyline during which Dick Grayson temporarily became Batman after "KnightsEnd", and the launch of the Nightwing ongoing.

So, after giving my nephew a brand-new copy for his birthday ("Can you pose like that?" his mother asked after he unwrapped it, trying to strike the pose Nightwing did on McDaniel's cover for the trade), I ordered a copy from the library to read for myself...and, of course, blog about.

Having now read the four-issue miniseries, I'm not entirely sure why it was published (Pretty great Brian Stelfreeze cover though, right? Unfortunately, it has Dick in his previous costume, and probably wouldn't have worked for the collection cover; Stelfreeze also drew the cover of the second issue, and McDaniel provided those for issues #2 and #3, neither of which are quite as strong, and McDaniel covered the fourth and final issue).

It's not exactly that nothing happens, but not much of real consequence does. The plot provides a couple of potential big, life-altering events for the Dick Grayson—he decides to quit superheroing and try out life as a civilian, he meets a new love interest and he learns a secret that might mean he was wrong about who actually killed his parents—but, by the fourth issue, all of those things are resolved in such a way that he's pretty much right back where he was at the beginning of the series, albeit it wearing a new costume. 

If the point was simply to get him into a new costume, DC probably didn't need to a publish a 90-page story. Surely that could have happened in Nightwing #1...or simply off-panel. I wonder if perhaps the reason DC published a Nightwing miniserires was to test the waters and gauge market interest in a Nightwing ongoing series.  DC had just published a one-shot—Nightwing: Alfred's Return—a few months previous, and the monthly launched about nine months after the mini concluded.

Regardless of the why of it, let's discuss the what of it.

The opening scene finds Nightwing, still wearing the costume seen on the cover above, atop a rooftop at night, looking down on a quartet of very large men in an alley, one of whom is about to execute a young woman with a pistol. He intervenes, chattily beating everyone up and saving the girl...but not before the leader of the gang forcefully drives her face into a brick wall, knocking off her glasses and knocking her out.

"Without her glasses, she's beautiful," Nightwing thinks, and then follows that up with "I can't believe I thought that.

For reference, here she is with glasses:

And here she is without: 

Jeez, what does Dick have against glasses...? If he went to the high school in She's All That, I suppose he would have thought Rachael Leigh Cook was some sort of hideous monster before Jenna Malone gave her a makeover. 

Ironically, the last I knew, Dick was in a relationship with Barbara Gordon, who famously wears glasses.

Anyway, Batman shows up and the two glare at one another as if they are about to fight, but, instead, they chat a bit about what just happened.

The girl is Miggie Webster, she had been kidnapped and the cops were unable to crack the case...but Nightwing was able to find and rescue her in the nick of time. The former Dynamic Duo talk about their history over the course of a few pages of climbing a wall, swinging from extremely thick ropes that get all McFarlaney below where they hold them and running across rooftops.

At the end of the scene, Dick says he's going to quit the hero business, and hands Batman his old costume: "Put it in a trophy case. Give it to the Salvation Army. Burn it."

The next day, Dick goes to see Miggie in the hospital, and gives this weird-ass explanation:

You probably don't remember me...My name is Dick Grayson. I was there--in the alley a couple of hours ago... I have a friend who was one of the paramedics... Anyway, I was in the neighborhood and I thought I'd see how you are--

I found this amusing because not only does Nightwing have a relatively small mask (It's not like it might disguise his facial features the way that Batman or Daredevil's masks hide theirs) but at this point he also has a very distinct, flowing blue-black mullet. I mean, if you encounter two such young, fit guys with that same exact hairstyle in a matter of hours, you might be a wee bit suspicious, no...? I think of this hairstyle a little like I've always thought of Oliver Queen's distinct goatee; it's just a little too distinct to successfully pull off a double identity with.

I don't know if Miggie does recognize Dick as Nightwing or not. As he's leaving, she says, "I feel I owe you something...a cup of cappuccino?"

If she knows he's Nightwing, sure, that makes sense. He did save her life. The least she can do is take him out for coffee. But if he was just some guy in the alley with his friend, what does she owe him for...? For checking on her the next day...?

Well, whatever. Dick returns to his dusty, grocery-less Gotham apartment and lays atop his blanket-less bed in a tiny pair of red and blue briefs.

(A little something for the ladies, from Greg Land and Mike Sellers.)

The next morning, Alfred, who Dick's narration tells us is his best friend (Take that, Wally!), arrives with a plate of pancakes, a thermos of coffee and a bunch of papers, in order to feed Dick and talk about how happy he is that he's considering a life beyond vigilantism. (Dick is considering law school, he says).

Among the papers, however, is something that will fuel the events of the rest of the series. A threatening letter written in yellow scrript—what, did the writer use a highlighter?—addressed to his parents, mere days before their deaths. It reads:

If you say anything about what you saw, they will kill you and your whole family.

Be warned.

Pickles The Clown

It was in an envelope postmarked from the Principality of Kravia, one of those little fake countries that must make the maps in the DC and Marvel Universes so much more complicated than those in ours. Apparently, Haly's Circus visited there shortly before the Flying Graysons were killed, and now Dick is questioning whether it was really Tony Zucco who killed his parents all those years ago...or someone from Kravia.

Just when he thought he was out of the hero game, he finds himself pulled back in...!

Kravia is ruled by a rather ridiculous looking dictator named Prince Balsik, who wears a blue, green, purple military uniform with lots of medals, shoulder cords and a sword. His face is badly scarred with big, thick scars that look like a wild animal had mauled him. 

His soldiers wear orange and yellow armor and helmets that looks like something out of a video game...or, perhaps, the future, and though their guns fire bullets, Land draws them more like laser guns. 

When Grayson starts making inquiries, the prince sends an assassin after him, but between meeting the assassin and then having the first of two fights with him, Dick manages to go on a date with Miggie, who seems oddly desperate to spend time with Dick (This is, for the detectives at home, Clue #2 that Miggie's life isn't as perfect as Dick, who spent his childhood training under the World's Greatest Detective, assumes it must be).

Eventually, Dick visits the Batcave, gets a briefing from Oracle, whom he just refers to as "Oracle" (no mention of how she looks in glasses) and, now regretting his decision to give Batman his superhero outfit, is in need of something to wear.

Enter Harold, "Batman's chief mechanic, computer whiz and all 'round genius...not to mention costume maker!"

It is Harold who is responsible for Nightwing's new costume, the simple, mostly-black one with the stylized blue "V" over the chest that runs down his arms. I'm pretty sure this is the very best of all of Nightwing's costumes (and, notably, all of those that followed it over the course of the next 30 years have mostly just been slight variations of it). While Harold is responsible for it in-comic, I wonder which real-world artist designed it.

Anyway, here's Dick's first appearance in it:

For some reason, Land gave him long, claw-like nails on two of the fingers on his right hand and, amusingly, once Dick puts his hair into a ponytail, it seems to be about five times as long as it was when he was wearing it down. Did Harold also give Dick extensions...?

From there, Dick infiltrates Kravia, and does so during Prince Baslik's first night of an ethnic cleansing. In a rather grim scene, one that prefigures that one gag from Family Guy, Baslik hands a subordinate a light brown card and asks, "Your men have copies of this card, Colonel?"

When he responds affirmatively, the prince follows up with, "They understand they are to terminate anyone whose skin is darker than this?"

Dick's not there to save the country or end Baslik's rule, but he inadvertently does so, in the process fighting lots of those weird futuristic-looking soldiers, discovering a very dark and melodramatic secret about the Kravian leadership, escaping a particularly scary-sounding deathtrap, deciding whether or not to kill someone who might have had his parents killed and ultimately learning the truth behind Pickles The Clown's threat to his parents.

As I said earlier, after his little adventure, Nightwing's status quo reverts to where it was on page one, the only real change aside from his costume being his acknowledgement or acceptance that Batman and Alfred had given him a good childhood after all. "You and Alfred gave me a home and you gave me what we don't mention," Dick tells Batman on the penultimate page. "The L word." (Unfortunately, Scott Pilgrim ruined the moment for me.) 

I've shared enough imagery above that you probably have a good sense of what the miniseries looked like. It's always interesting to see Land's work from this early in his career, when it seems to have genuinely been created by Land putting pencil to paper...something that can't be said of his work in the 21st century.

I mean, I have no idea exactly how he creates his artwork, but, when I think of Land, I think of images like this now, images so obviously photo-referenced that it seems as if he is finding photographs and then digitally manipulating them to add on superhero costumes...and not even with much care, so that, say, Reed Richards or Sue Storm's face may look like those of completely different people from panel to panel.

I honestly don't get it, as that seems just as tiresome to me as drawing would. (But maybe easier on the hand?)

 There are a few examples of...well, let's say shortcuts in this series, published 31 years ago.

Here, for example, is an image of Batman and Nightwing swinging through the night together:

And here, on the very next page, is Batman and Dick-as-Robin swinging through the night together:

Obviously, the point is that the images should be similar, demonstrating how Dick has changed even if his partnership with Batman hasn't, but jeez, if Land was going to repurpose the Batman pose, couldn't he at least have changed up the exact weird tangling of the ropes, or the angle of his wrists, or which foot is visible or something...? Like, gestured towards making them look different...? Colorist Cathi Bertrand did a little bit more work in distinguishing the two images of Batman, making his costume seem a bit bluer in the second image.

(Again, these images appear on consecutive pages; in fact, there are only five panels between them). 

Here's another, more obvious one, in which Dick punches the assassin four times in the mid-section in four panels, although Land only drew two panels and then repeated them:

A pre-cursor of what was to come, perhaps...

With the miniseries now out of the way, the rest of the trade is devoted to the first eight issues of Dixon and Beatty's ongoing, which was inked by Karl Story. 

That's a pretty hefty chunk of comics there, twelve issues total, in a $19.99 trade paperback. Pulling up the calculator on my phone, that works out to $1.66 per issue...a pretty solid value, really. 

Now, while the miniseries isn't really necessary, and doesn't really come into play at all in the events that follow, those first eight issues of the ongoing do all belong together, as they are all more-or-less a single storyline. 

In it, Batman sends Nightwing to Bludhaven in order to find out who was responsible for killing 21 men in a very particular fashion (Their heads were all turned around backwards and they were thrown in the water, eventually floating into Gotham), and Dick spends those eight issues trying to get to the bottom of that particular mystery...which involves the city's kingpin of crime Angel Marin going missing, and some unknown player seemingly assuming his role in secret.

It's only in the later issues that Dixon and McDaniel start to hint at the new kingpin of crime (and yeah, I'm using "kingpin" on purpose, as the title seems less Batman Lite and more Daredevil Lite, including having a very large villain in the suit in the antagonist role). 

Fist he's just a voice, then a figure in the shadows, and then a civilian name being bandied about and, ultimately, on the very last page of the seventh issue, hie revealed visually and his supervillain identity spoken aloud (In a very dramatic lead-up to that splash, McDaniel draws three consecutive panels of Nightwing addressing him, gradually falling under a shadow as the gigantic crime boss apparently stands up in front of him).

Now, these comics are from 1996, so, chances are you already know who this mysterious villain is. I mean, I did, and, as I said, I didn't read Nightwing back then...I just knew Dixon had made use of the character via osmosis I guess, seeing issue of Nightwing on the new comics racks and, eventually, reading about it on the Internet. 

If the comics weren't 30 years old, I'd be hesitant to name the character at all here, but, well, they are 30 years old, so I guess I will name him eventually, so I guess you can stop reading now if you don't want his identity spoiled.

The book isn't presented as a mystery—that is, there are no suspects, and Dixon doesn't provide the reader with enough clues to guess at who the crime boss might be—but it is mysterious, and Dick spends seven issues trying to get to the bottom of it as he feels out the local criminal underworld.

It seems unusual to me as it is essentially a single, eight-issue story arc, with the mysterious villain revealed at the end and, while the conflict isn't resolved, it is only at that particular point that the book's premise is finally unveiled and the hero gets a new status quo. 

The hopelessly corrupt city lacks anything approaching a hero and is portrayed a lot like Frank Miller presented the Gotham City that Batman returned to in the Batman arc "Year One" (Although Bludhaven lacks a Jim Gordon and a Harvey Dent to help Batman do his work) and, realizing all of this and the fact that it is in the clutches of an honest-to-goodness supervillain, what started as a mission for Dick becomes his vocation.

Just as Batman has his Gotham City, then, here Nightwing gets Bludhaven.

While I said these eight issues basically constitute a single storyline, this isn't any sort of Bendis-ian decompression...in fact, was there decompressed storytelling in mainstream comics circa 1996...? Dixon breaks the eight-issue story into smaller chunks, one-issue stories and short arcs, even if they are all part of the same story (Outside of the big crossover events, I'm having a hard time thinking of a Batman arc from the '90s that went on quite as long as this; that is, Nightwing #1-8 weren't advertised as an event, but the story was more event-sized than most comics from the Bat-office at the time).

Each issue has a big action sequence and features Nightwing foiling some kind of crime. In some cases, these are the work of "Reynard", a member of Gotham gangster Black Mask's False Face Society who wears a fox mask; in other, they involve Nightwing going after pressure points in Marin's organization in an attempt to find out where he is and who it is that is replacing him.

Along the way, Dick rents a seedy apartment in a terrible neighborhood, an act that introduces a running gag and, I assume, a potential love interest. The building's super is a woman named "Clancy" with an Irish accent that seems to always be behind a closed door or somehow covering her face when Dick tries to talk to her (washing her hair in the sink, carrying a stack of boxes, etc.) She turns out to be of Chinese descent (Though she was adopted by an Irish family, which is where she picked up the accent, before moving to the states).

Dick also takes a job as a bartender at a local cop bar, which he hopes will provide him with a source of intel.

Oh, and he loses the ponytail during his first encounter with Reynard and Black Mask's gang.

Dixon and McDaniel thus stock the book with brand-new supporting characters, although familiar faces do pop up. There's a page in the first issue, in which Batman charges Nightwing with the murder investigation and Bats later checks in via computer. Oracle and Wally West literally phone-in appearances. And Robin Tim Drake guest-stars in issue #6, where, during some downtime in crime-fighting, they discuss how different the pair are when it comes to the role of Robin.

Ah, the simpler days, when there were only ever three Robins, and one of them was totally dead forever...!

The creators also introduce the first of several new villains created for the series: Lady Vic, a British aristocrat/assassin who fights with various bladed weapons. McDaniel gives her an interesting look, although I have to admit it's one of those designs that doesn't quite look right when someone else draws it (And thus probably isn't the best of designs). I think it's the mask/helmet that does it.

As for the major villain, that is of course, Roland Desmond AKA Blockbuster. The second Blockbuster, to be precise, although he was basically just like his brother, the fist Blockbuster: A big, strong, simple-minded engine of destruction. 

During 1995 event Underworld Unleashed, he had sold his soul to the devil Neron, and in exchange was given brains to match his brawn (visibly signified by his huge, swollen head, from which dangled a skullet). He menaced Manchester, Alabama in the Impulse tie-in issue to the event series before Dixon decided to use him as a Wilson Fisk-like giant, super-strong crime lord in Nightwing.

Earlier in the post, I mentioned that it was hard to imagine this series being drawn by some of my favorite Batman artists of the '90s, and that was largely because of how distinct it was visually. Yes, the cover of the trade that my sister made fun of isn't that great (That of the first issue, or #7 might have been better choices), but the art inside is much better.

McDaniel is a completely original artist, to the point that, looking at his art, I can't really see who might have influenced him, nor can I think of other artists with whom to compare him. His art is instantly recognizable and, although I wasn't a big fan of it back then, I've come to appreciate more and more. 

His page layouts are all quite dynamic, but his art doesn't necessarily look animated or invigorated on a panel by panel (or panel to panel) basis. Many of his static images nevertheless seem to violently fly off the page at you; there's a real in-your-face quality to much of the action, particularly when it involves Nightwing leaping, which he does a lot of.

A signature technique that McDaniel employs, and the thing I think of when I think of his art, is to draw multiple images of Nightwing in the same panel to indicate how much and how fast he moves. It's an old comics trick, although I find it notable that McDaniel doesn't accompany the multiple figures with speedlines, nor does he draw the "past" images of Nightwing as less substantial than the "current" one...he'll just draw 3-12 Nightwings in a panel or splash, inviting the reader to follow the character as he jumps and flips and swings around.

It is, of course, a great trick for a character known for his athletics and acrobatics—and the sleek, cape-less character design makes it easier to pull off than it might for a character like Batman—and it allows a reader to appreciate how Nightwing moves. 

It's also pretty effective in fight scenes, as it gives one the impression that Nightwing is everywhere all at once (One thing I always liked about Breyfogle's art is how he would pose Batman so that he was fighting multiple opponents at once. So that, for example, he might be standing on one leg while he kicks one guy in the face, his right hand might be smashing a second guy's face against a wall or table, and his left hand extended in a throw, as a batrang whizzes across the room at a third guy. Sometimes when McDaniel draws Nightwing fighting a group, he does so by drawing four Nightwing figures in the panels executing different moves against different guys).

It looks like the previously linked-to cover for Nightwing #7 is the first time we see McDaniel's multiple Nightwings on a cover. Inside the book, it's on the tenth page of the first issue, wherein he leaps from a rooftop onto a speeding truck below:

Later, there's a fight atop a speeding train going through a tunnel, and McDaniel draws Nightwing doing what looks like a combination of an acrobatic routine and a live-action game of Frogger as he jumps off the train before it enters the tunnel, crosses the traffic on the overpass while thet train is passing through the tunnel, and then lands back on the roof of the train right behind his opponents, who used the more traditional strategy of guys on top of a train when it's about to go through a tunnel and ducked.

This is probably my favorite example, though, as Dick Grayson leaps back and forth between buildings in a way that suggests the old Ninja Gaiden videogame to me:

So yeah, I passed on this book in the '90s and, given the reputations of the creators of late, I hadn't felt any urgency to check it out, but I'll be damned, this is a pretty good action comic about a vigilante fighting crime and, thanks to McDaniel's idiosyncratic work—which often I appreciate more than I necessarily like—I can't think of another book that looks anything like it. (Other than, maybe, other McDaniel-drawn books, of course). 

The pair certainly did their job with these first eight issues too, as I now kind of want to know what happens next...

Bookshelf #45

This week's bookshelf—my last bookshelf!—is another one devoted to DC Comics. It contains some of the earliest comics I ever bought, certainly some of the oldest collections, some of which were purchased long before the publishers regularly collected their serially published comics.

The organization of this particular shelf makes perfect sense...at least to me. I suppose anyone else would be hard-pressed to find a particular book on this particular shelf.

First, there are the oversized books: JLA: Heaven's Ladder (the only JLA story that the post-Morrison/Porter team of Mark Waid and Bryan Hitch collaborated on; fill-in artists were needed for all of Hitch's arcs on the monthly series), the various Paul Dini/Alex Ross specials (Batman: War on Crime, Shazam: Power of Hope, Wonder Woman: Spirit of Truth, JLA: Secret Origins, JLA: Liberty and Justice...I guess I never bought the Superman one, although I know I've read it) and that How To Draw DC Comis Super Heroes book that I mentioned on Bluesky a while back. 

Next are the hardcovers: The Complete Frank Miller Batman (complete as of 1989, anyway), The Joker: Stacked Deck, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Kia Asamiya's Batman: Child of Dreams, Batman: Broken City, Batman: Ego and Other Tails (Darwyn Cooke!), Catwoman: Selina's Big Score (More Darwyn Cooke!), JLA: Earth 2, JLA/JSA: Virtue and Vice, Bizarro Comics and Bizarro World (A lot of Batman, as you can see). 

From there we move on to the trade paperbacks, and the rest of shelf is organized by hero, in the order of what I consider their importance. 

So first there's Batman: Batman In The Forties, Batman In the Eighties, Batman: A Death in the Family, The Many Deaths of The Batman, Batman: Hush Vol. 1 (Not sure why I have this or where it came from, as I also have those issues in singles), Batman & Dracula: Red Rain, Batman: Crimson Mist, Batman: Bloodstorm, The Dark Knight Strikes Again #1-3 (these could probably have gone in a long box, actually, but they had spines, so I guess they ended up here, I guess; you'll see a few other series of "prestige format" books on this shelf), Robin: A Hero Reborn and Catwoman: Nine Lives of a Feline Fatale.

Next up? Superman, of whom the only trades I have featuring him here are Superman: Panic in the Sky, Superman: The Amazing Transformations of Jimmy Olsen and the Elseworlds book Superman: Secret Identity. 

Then there's Wonder Woman, of whom I only have two books here: Wonder Woman Vol. 2: Challenge of the Gods and Wonder Woman Vol. 3: Beauty and the Beasts.

And then some Batman and Superman team-ups, which I suppose should have come before the Wonder Woman books, Batman & Superman: World's Finest and the ridiculous Superman and Batman Vs. Vampires and Werewolves, and then a Batman/Supeman/Wonder Woman team-up, Matt Wagner's Trinity.

Then we get into heroes who I have relatively few collections of. There's the four issues of Jeff Smith's Shazam: The Monster Society of Evil, Plastic Man: On the Lam (I have these issues in singles too, but I bought the trade because I liked the design so much; Kyle Baker draws the cover so as to suggest that Plastic Man himself has disguised himself as this trade and is hiding on your bookshelf), Green Lantern: A New Dawn, Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters, two volumes of Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams' classic Green Lantern/Green Arrow comics, Tim Truman and company's Hawkworld, Jack Kirby's New Gods, Jack Kirby's Mister Miracle, all of Starman (which I missed in singles, but went back and read in trade due to the critical acclaim), a Hitman collection (Which I bought because it included Tommy Monaghan's first appearance in The Demon Annual #2, which I had not read at that point...also, that's a pretty great cover, isn't it...?) and three volumes of Marc Andreyko's Manhunter (but not, curiously, volume 2).

Finally, there are team books (Justice League of America Hereby Elects... and Challengers of the Unknown Must Die!), crossovers (Cosmic Odyssey, Zero Hour: Crisis in Time, Villains United, Rann-Thanagar War, Day of Vengeance) and Elseworlds (DC's Greatest Imaginary Stories, The Golden Age and Justice League of America: The Nail).

Oh, and then a couple of random books, only a few of which take place in the DCU: Doctor 13: Architecture & Morality, DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore, Space Ghost and Icon: A Hero's Welcome (I would like to read the rest of Icon, but I'm not sure if it was collected in an accessible format like this first chunk of the series was).

Later, I came back and stacked more books atop those on the shelf, and these are all mainly random ones, although all DC...except for The Immortal Iron Fist: The Last Iron Fist Story. Not sure how that one got in there...

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero Pt. 10

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #40 (1985)
Art by Rod Whigham and Andy Mushynsky

•This issue, entitled "Hydrofoil", involves a couple of introductions from the toy line, including one I have been waiting for. That would be the introduction of Shipwreck, one of my favorite characters from the cartoon (That was where he first appeared, in 1984's "Revenge of Cobra" mini-series, and then Hasbro released him as an action figure in 1985). Here we see his first appearance, and he seems awfully grumpy, seemingly annoyed at having to work with "landlubbers." He's aboard a ship that is transporting the Transportable Tactical Battle Platform; it will be picked up and flown out into the Gulf of Mexico by helicopter.

That battle platform was a playset from 1985 and looked a little like those oil platforms you see in the ocean sometimes. My best friend had it, and I remember it being a lot of fun to play with. 

Another Joe making his first appearance here is Barbecue, the Joe team's new fire fighter.

"Fireman? This is a combat unit!" Shipwreck growls after Barbecue hands him a copy of his orders. "We don't need a fireman!"

 Barbecue cooly responds, "That's what everybody says... ...until their house is on fire!"

•But wait, there's more...! Also making their first appearance in this issue are the Cobra Hydrofoils, or Morays. These were red boats that came packaged with a driver action figure, codenamed Lamprey. Cobra Commander inspects them above. Interestingly, Hama had just used Cobra hydrofoils in issue #36, but those seem different than these, as they were colored standard Cobra blue.

•Much of the issue revolves around Hama playing with the new toys. There's talk about the sea base and scenes of it being put together, and then there's a battle against the Hydrofoils that pretty much totals it, as these new Cobra vehicles are so fast that they are hard for the Joes to hit with standard weapons. 

And, as it turns out, the Joes did need a fireman, as Barbecue suits up and uses his fire axe to chop off burning bits of the base. 

"Those blasted Cobras are tearing my base apart!" Shipwreck shouts at one point, and once again Barbecue is ready with a rejoinder. 

"No," he says while hacking at another piece of burning base. "They're shooting holes in it and setting it on fire...I'm the one who's tearing it apart."

•Aside from a battle involving the new toys, what's going on here is a little complicated. Inside a Cobra sub in the gulf are Cobra Commander, Tomax and Xamot, Zartan and a man Zartan refers to as "the master planner of this venture, the mysterious Crimson Guardsman with the daughter who wears the bear suit!" (That's Candy's dad, of course). They dock in a secret base within a sunken ship.

Meanwhile, there's another underwater Cobra base, a heavily fortified bunker that the Joes are unable to even scratch with the armaments aboard the investigating WHALE and SHARC. But they have to destroy it, and do so fast, as it is transmitting a wavelength through the water that is killing all marine life...if that bunker isn't taken out soon, it could kill all the fish in the Gulf! The situation is so urgent that the Pentagon is contemplating dropping a tactical nuke on it. 

•Oh, and by the way, Cobra Commander refers to the Crimson Guardsman who had come up with this whole plan, Candy's dad, as "Professor Appel." Which means Candy's name full name is "Candy Appel."

•It is Doc who comes up with an alternative to deploying a tactical nuke, as he points out that the explosive power of a nuke could be matched by conventional explosives...provided they just use enough of them. And so, rather than dropping a nuke, a bunch of Skystrikers take off from the nearby USS Flagg on a bombing run targeting the Cobra base...which sits on a fault line...which is disturbed by the explosions....exactly as Cobra planned. 

What's going on here...? We'll have to wait until the next issue to find out, but Cobra is pretty happy about it. I mean, look at the Commander's fist pump there...

•And what of the professor's daughter, Candy Appel, still being held for questioning at The Pit...? Well, things aren't going great for her. She has a chance meeting with the captured Dreadnok Buzzer, who calls her "Candykins", "My little sweet potato" and offers to sweep her away to New South Wales. Then, after the Joes receive orders from the Pentagon to relocate the pair, both Candy and Buzzer are being transferred from the Pit into the custody of the Army's Military Police...when Buzzer hijacks the bus, taking her captive...!

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #41 (1985)

Art by Rod Whigham and Keith Williams

•What do you notice about Mike Zeck and John Beatty's cover for this issue...aside from the fact that the Joes pictured are wearing a lot of bandages...? Did you notice Snake Eyes' mask? Zeck has drawn the character's "new" mask, the one with the knight-like visor worn by the second, 1985-released action figure, rather than his original mask, which looked more like a ski mask with goggles over it. The comic book version of the character will eventually adopt the mask on this cover (and a new and somewhat different costume), but not yet; indeed, in the few interior panels in which he appears in this issue, Snake Eyes is wearing his original costume and mask.

•So, what, exactly, was Crimson Guardsman Appel's plan in the Gulf of Mexico? Apparently, it was to trick the United States military to attack a precise point on a fault line with sufficient force to shift a section of the sea floor and, in the ensuing geological upheaval, raise it above the surface, creating an entirely new land mass. 

Is this plan scientifically sound...? Could an explosion of a big enough magnitude at just the right place create an island in the Gulf of Mexico...? Well, I wouldn't think so, but I certainly don't have the scientific background to rule it out. Nor, do I imagine, did many of the little boys reading this comic in 1985. 

Personally, I'm a little suspicious such a plan would work—and worked so perfectly, as the emerging island carries Cobra's secret base in a sunken cargo ship up to the surface with it!—but it seems well within the bounds of comic book science, and G.I. Joe is a comic book. Certainly, it was far more realistic and grounded than Marvel's superhero line, but, at the end of the day, it's still a comic book from the people who regularly tell stories about the likes of Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men and Thor.

•Creating the island was just step one, of course. Step two? Plant a flag on it and have the already-positioned lawyers stride into the Capitol building in Washington D.C., the United Nations building in New York City and government buildings in Mexico City and Havana, Cuba. And, before you know it, Cobra's new island becomes the officially recognized nation state of Cobra Island...!

•But such legal maneuvering takes time, and while awaiting recognition, Cobra unloads ASPs, HISS tanks, FANG copters and Stingers from within the tanker base to defend the new land mass. After surviving the massive tidal wave caused by the rise of Cobra Island, the Joe team in the Gulf quickly gets its shit together and attacks. 

A small team of Joes aboard The WHALE hovercraft land on the beach (With Ace in the Skystriker, having made a seemingly impossible takeoff from the listing USS Flagg, providing air cover). They do remarkably well, and have Cobra Commander, Zartan and Professor Appel cornered by the end of the issue.

•This issue's vocabulary word? "Enfilade."

•What the Joes lack in numbers, they make up for in jokes. 

Now remember, Barbecue, the guy making the joke in those last two panels, is a fireman, and his role on the team is to fight fires. The axe he carries (and that his action figure was packaged with) was specifically to chop down doors of burning buildings and, as we saw in the previous issue, cutting loose burning parts of enflamed structures.

But, having used the axe for that purpose already, Hama does what surely every kid who had the toy version of Barbecue had him do with it: Attack people. 

•Duke and his team have just about won the day, when Hawk radios in new orders, informing the team of Cobra Island's new sovereign status. 

Do note Cobra Commander's declaration in that last panel above. "What a great system!" he declares. "If you have enough money and you can hire the best lawyers, you can do anything you want!"

What comic book character do you think is most emblematic of American values? Superman? Wonder Woman? Captain America? Maybe Scrooge McDuck (as Chris Sims once made a convincing argument for)...?

I don't know. Sometimes I think it might actually be Cobra Commander. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #42 (1985)

Art by Rod Whigham and Andy Mushynsky

•It's Billy. The silhouette with the question mark over it that Storm Shadow seems to be about to strike on the head with his sword on Mike Zeck's cover? That is totally Cobra Commander's young son and, of late, Storm Shadow's apprentice Billy. And the cover is a fake out, as Storm Shadow isn't actually going to cut him down; this is just part of a training exercise. 

•There's an awful lot going on in this issue. In fact, there are five distinct narrative thread (two of which intersect in this issue). All but one of them involve a road trip of one kind or another. I'll break it down if you're invested in the ongoing G.I. Joe story but, um, not so much that you've actually picked up the G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero Compendiums and started reading it for yourself. 

1.) Hawk and company go to Washington, D.C. General Austin is in the middle of "a private reading of the riot act" to Hawk over some kind of video monitor, complaining that the Joes weren't able to defeat Cobra on the new island in the Gulf fast enough, and now Cobra Island is an official country, with diplomatic immunity, printed money and so on. In mid-sentence, he has a heart attack. Hawk has Snake Eyes and Stalker take him to see Austin in D.C. in a VAMP Mark II (released in '84 although the one in the comic is colored green rather than tan and is missing the toy's missile rack). While Hawk's at the hospital, the pair go visit the Vietnam Memorial and, while discussing how everyone else in their unit beside Storm Shadow were killed in action, they notice a name missing: Wade Collins. They thought he was dead, but if he's name's not there, perhaps he survived after all...?

2.) Crimson Guardsman Fred II follows them. He is in bed with a fever, the result of being dumped in the drink while fighting Snake Eyes and Scarlet on the ferry in #36. His doctor advises him to stay in bed (Doctors still did house calls in 1985...?), but he disobeys and goes to drive around. He happens to drive by Hawk and company's VAMP, and he then follows them to D.C. He confronts Stalker and Snake Eyes at the memorial, pulling a gun on them and making a shocking revelation: "Wade Collins isn't dead at all! Cobra gave him a new face, a new life and a new name!" It turns out that Fred II is Wade! Gee, what a small world...

3.) Buzzer and hostage Candy Appel are still on the run. Candy is continually trying to escape, and she eventually makes good when she gets her hands on a shotgun, dumping Buzzer on the side of the road and taking off in the truck he had stolen.

4.) The Soft Master is hitchhiking to Springfield. He takes a ride from an obnoxious reckless driver who sips from a thermos of coffee laced with brandy while driving (Don't hitchhike, kids!). He's eventually dropped off in Springfield, to the surprise of the driver, who says there's something not quite right about the city. "I'm not intending to stay for long," The Soft Master says, "Just taking care of some old business, family business." He forgets his suitcase in the back seat, which seems significant, as they show us a silent panel of the suitcase in the back seat as he leaves.

5.) Storm Shadow continues to train Billy. They are in Stormy's New York City water tower base, and Billy is blindfolded and hanging upside down from a trapeze as Storm Shadow swings his sword at him Billy is able to catch the blade, take it, dismount from the trapeze and throw the sword at Storm Shadow, who is able to catch it in the scabbard on his back. Again, Billy is a fast learner; it apparently doesn't take long at all to become a pretty decent ninja. Later they do a different variation of this, one that more closely comports with what we see on the cover. 

•Ripcord (spelled "Rip-Cord" above) was wounded in the battle of Cobra Island, but the more serious injury is that to his heart. Not only did Candy dump him a few issues back, but now she's somewhere on the road with Buzzer, and it's unclear if he has taken her hostage or if she went willingly, as they suspect she might be a Cobra agent, like her dad. 

Here he mentions letting his sadness wear off naturally. I'm...not entirely sure if that works, but then I guess sadness is different than depression, and while I've dealt with both, I've never been in Ripcord's exact circumstances before. 

•At the Springfield police station, The Soft Master says he needs access to their computer system and they rebuff him. The series push past the officer in charge anyway, at which point the officer sics a trio of others on him. Note their names in the second panel.

This is interesting in 2026, now that I know Hama's lifelong comics writing ambition is to write Uncle Scrooge comics. And now Marvel, which is owned by Disney, is publishing Scrooge comics! Let Larry Hama write Disney duck comics, dammit!

No idea what's all over The Soft Master's tie there. 

•After beating everyone up, The Soft Master and the original officer are alone, and the officer threatens to shoot him. "You've already tried to shoot me five times and missed," The Soft Master says. "What makes you think you can hit me with your last shot?"

After he indeed misses a sixth time, The Soft Master hands him a card reading "Hard Master." At least, I like to imagine that it was an old business card of his brother's.

•Finally, Billy leaves a Dear Storm Shadow letter, in which he expresses his desire that he could have had a cool ninja for a dad rather than a terrorist leader.