G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero Pt. 2

Welcome back! Today I'll continue working my way through the first 50-issue chunk of Marvel's 1982-1994 G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero series via Image Comics' G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero Compendium One. As with the half-dozen issues covered in the previous post in what is no doubt going to end up being a very long series, all issues here are written by Larry Hama unless otherwise noted.

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #7 (1983)
Plot by Herb Trimpe

Art by Herb Trimpe and Chic Stone

•Well, it sure looks like this is the end of G.I. Joe ...and their Soviet equivalent, The October Guard. The dozen or so soldiers have thrown down their weapons, they are surrounded by a large contingent of Cobra forces—including a couple of helicopters—and Cobra Commander has just ordered them killed. I mean, the only way out of this particular situation would be if Cobra Commander did something really, really dumb. Like, comic book supervillain dumb.

•Guess what? Rather than having the Joes and Guard gunned down instantly in front of him, the Commander says that he will leave two specialists "to tie up loose ends", since they have "both the skill and imagination to prolong the amusement." 

And so rather than watching his enemies to make sure they are killed, the Commander and all but two of the Cobra soldiers leave with the captured Rought Terrain Vehicle containing the downed experimental aircraft the three teams were chasing. 

Also, I'm no charismatic leader of a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world, but if it were me, I would have left more than two guys to slowly kill a dozen guys; I mean, if the Joes and Guard all rushed the Cobras at once, they might be able to overwhelm them, right...?

Anyway, the two gunmen conveniently wait until the rest of their forces are far away before they begin taking shots at our heroes. "I want to watch them sweat for a little while," one them says, by way of excuse for this.

•Oh, Cobra Commander names the two soldiers he leaves behind, too. They are Rattler and Copperhead. Both are proper nouns that will be familiar to G.I. Joe fans, of course. The Rattler is the name of the Cobra airplane, the toy for which wouldn't be released until 1984. Copperhead is the name of the guy who piloted the Cobra Water Moccasin vehicle. That too was released in 1984, and the Copperhead figure came packaged with the Water Moccasin. 

These guys look like your standard Cobra soldiers, though. Trimpe and/or Hama seem to have just chosen two random snake-related names to give the usually nameless Cobra soldiers here for some reason.

•Clutch saves the day. It turns out he has a hand-held remote control for the guns on the VAMP (Vehicle Attack/Multi-Purpose) hidden on him ("Didn't you guys ever wonder how I fired those things without ever touching 'em?") which he turns on the two Cobra soldiers and kills them in a hail of gunfire.

There's two pages of discussion of what to do next, with options including continuing the Joes vs. Guard fight where they left off before Cobra interrupted, or following orders and contacting Hawk for an evacuation since they have failed in their mission. Stalker and Guard commander Colonel Brekhov come up with a third option: Join forces to take on Cobra and then, when it comes to determining which team gets to keep the prize, well, team leader Stalker suggests "let's cross that bridge when we come to it and hopefully we won't have to burn it down behind us..."

•Scarlett is not completely on board. She calls the Guard "lousy Reds" and announces "I don't wallow with pigs." The ever-sensitive Clutch announces that Scarlett is "just a tad high strung."

•As the two teams clamber aboard the VAMP and the Guard's vehicle, they drive for hours, following a homing device Breaker put in the RTV containing the plane. At one point, they cross the Iranian border and find an Iranian border patrol blocking their path.

"What are you going to do?" one of the Joes asks Stalker. "Promise to give the Shah back?"

"How about asking for room and board at the embassy?" another chimes in. 

There's a brief firefight, during which one of the Joes asks, "Who the heck fired the first shot?", a line I imagine was included to absolve our heroes from initiating an attack on a sovereign country's military (Or at least providing a degree of ambiguity on the matter). Ultimately, the VAMP plows through them, with the Guard vehicle behind them ("Keep going, Amerikanskis! The Oktober Guard will mop up this rabble!"), and we see about a dozen bodies on the ground where the Iranian border patrol stood, several others kneeling and another standing among them.

"Well, so much for the Iranian-American relations..." one of the Joes quips, while one of the Guard responds, "Another example of American imperialist aggression!"

•Yes, it's surreal reading a jocular action scene in which American soldiers gun down Iranian soldiers while we're currently at war with Iran.  

•As the Joes and Guard prepare to assault the Cobra stronghold, Clutch takes a moment to harass Scarlett: "If you want to touch up your eye-shadow, I'll let you use my rear-view mirror--"

She snipes back: What for, exhaust-breath? There's nobody out here worth impressing..."

•The stronghold is full of traps that the Joes must navigate, and the entire sequence reminded me quite a bit of the cartoon.

•There's a four-panel epilogue which puts the entire adventure in a new context. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #8 (1983) 

Written by Herb Trimpe

Art by Herb Trimpe

•Herb Trimpe, pulling triple duty as writer, pencil artist and inker on this issue, has a pretty complicated set-up for what ends up being another done-in-one story. Cobra is operating from a giant, mobile, undersea base, and plan to create a network of such bases all over the world. From these bases, they will launch orbital missiles by the hundreds, each armed with a warhead "poised to strike any place on the planet." Untouchable in their underwater bases and able to attack anywhere they want, Cobra will rule the world...maybe more! For, as Cobra Commander explains, "We will dominate the earth and the sky! It will be our first step in pulling the cosmos itself!"

The United States may yet stop them, though, as they plan to launch a special satellite capable of locating and destroying the underwater bases from space. Therefore Cobra plans to attack and destroy the Kennedy Space Center, space shuttle and satellite included.

•As an adult, I've been curious about Cobra's ideology, as they seem to be founded on and held together by a kind of generic desire to rule the world, rather than any sort of religious faith or deeply-held political beliefs of the sort that animate real world terrorist groups. 

So, a line of dialogue from The Baroness caused me to perk up a bit here. 

During Cobra Commander's presentation to the Cobra leaders, here still just a bunch of guys in cobra uniforms with red face masks and blue helmets, she says, "But, due to fifth columnists and capitalist lackeys within our own ranks, the Americans know that we are here!"

"Capitalist lackeys"...? Is Cobra anti-capitalist? Are they a socialist organization, or...? 

•At the end of the passage, the assembled Cobra members salute the Commander, and rather than the straight arm salute we've seen in earlier issues, here they make a fist and hold it near their hearts. The Baroness, facing them, gives the more familiar straight arm salute back to them.

•At this early point in the toy line's existence, no Cobra vehicles have yet been introduced (The first of them will be released later in 1983, though). So the various vehicles that appear in these comics are still straight from the imagination of the creators. 

Here Trimpe introduces a rather neat-looking vehicle: The Cobra SEA Legs ("SEA" standing for Surprise, Engage and Attack). Seemingly inspired by the Martian vehicles from War of the Worlds or, maybe more likely, the Imperial Walkers from The Empire Strikes Back, these looks like attack subs perched atop tall, thin, mechanical legs that cause them to tower above the Joe vehicles, which they shoot down at.

•This is a particularly action-packed issue. In addition to the fight with the SEA Legs, there's a scene where Hawk stands on the scaffolding holding the shuttle and must shoot down an oncoming missile during the countdown, another in space where the Joes on the shuttle have to deal with Cobra's orbital missile and then the Joes land atop the sea base which is floating at the surface for another fight with Cobra forces.

•The Joes defeat the Cobra soldiers atop the base, and the latter surrender. Meanwhile, Cobra Commander has announced that the base will self-destruct. As the Joes plan to flee in rafts, their prisoners refuse to join them.

"You can shoot us--but we will not leave!" One of them announces, doing the stiff-armed salute and the fist over the chest salute simultaneously. "We serve Cobra Commander to the end! We have failed and will stay to meet our fate!"

See, that's the sort of fanaticism that would seem to need a strongly held ideology to support it, right? 

It also doesn't make any sense in this particular context. Like, if they were prepared to die in service to Cobra, why would they surrender during the fight with the Joes, rather than fighting them to the death?

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #9 (1983)

Written by Steven Grant

Art by Mike Vosburg and Chic Stone

•This issue's story, entitled "The Diplomat", is the first in the series written by someone other than Hama or Trimpe. It's a particularly strong done-in-one, heavy on action movie-style action, while providing perhaps the most compelling portrait of the character of Cobra Commander to date and providing a hint of insight into the various byzantine plots he's always hatching.

•This issue's mission involves a Cobra assassination attempt against Brian Hassell, a state department diplomat involved in talks with the fictional "Persian Gulf nation of Al-Alawi" that, if successful, "could swing Al-Alawi into the U.S. sphere of influence." Stalker and Snake-Eyes are tasked with finding someone who can confirm the plan, while Clutch and Scarlett are assigned to guard Hassell as he makes his way to the talks.

After the briefing, Scarlett approaches Hawk. "Do I have to team up with Clutch?" she asks him. "Isn't there anyone else?"

An angry-looking Hawk, perhaps unaware that Clutch had hit on her during a previous mission and has continued to "rib" her since, responds simply: "You have your orders, soldier."

Sounds like this daring, highly trained special mission force could use an HR department. 

•At one point, Scarlett is wearing a robe over a bikini, as her and Clutch were guarding Hassell at a beach, and is in the passenger seat of a speeding convertible driven by Clutch. They've just rescued the diplomat from a bomb in his hotel room, and are fleeing. 

"Excuse me while I change into my fighting clothes," she says, reaching for a bag, while pointing at a smiling Clutch, "And you keep your eyes on the road!"

She changes off-panel, of course, so two or three panels of Vosburg drawing Scarlett in a bikini are about it for cheesecake in the issue, although even those images aren't that cheesecake-y.

•Stalker and Snake-Eyes follow a lead to what appears to be a brothel in Amsterdam, although if a kid hasn't seen very many movies featuring brothels, I guess they wouldn't recognize it as such.

•There's a bit of a twist to this, as in the two-parter from issues #6 and #7 and, combined with another surprise and Cobra Commanders, it makes for a quite effectively satisfying read. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #10 (1983)

Art by Mike Vosburg and Chic Stone

•I think this issue marks something of a turning point in the series. It introduces the city of Springfield, which will prove important to the G.I. Joe comics for quite a while going forward, as well as the character Billy (although he's not actually named in this particular story). It also provides the first real background on what exactly Cobra is, beyond "the guys that G.I. Joe fight", and their basic modus operandi of infiltrating everyday American society.

This is also one of the last done-in-one stories...although much of what is here will be returned to and followed-up on later. Within a few more issues, the book will start telling extended, serial narratives, what we might now think of as story arcs.

Oh, and this is the last issue to feature the original cast from the first issues. Starting with the next issue, new Joes and new Cobra agents will start getting introduced at a fairly steady clip, as the toy line began expanding rather significantly in 1983, and the first cartoon mini-series dropped that same year (The second one, The Return of Cobra, followed in 1984, with the full series starting in 1985).

•The Baroness takes a trio of Joes captive during a mission in New York City. Scarlett and Zap awake behind bars in a Cobra dungeon with a little boy, who future issues will reveal is named Billy. Scarlett immediately starts tripping balls: "Why is Zap melting like a candle?...My hands...turning into claws! And...bats! Bats! Bats-- --No...gargoyles!"

"Sure has been a lot easier to maintain security around here since Dr. Venom started drugging the prisoners with hallucinogens!" a nearby Cobra guard says to his partner, thus explaining to readers what's going on.

•The third Joe who was captured is Snake-Eyes, and we find him in a lab, strapped into a weird, rather Kirby-esque device which, based on his twisted posture and gritted teeth, must inflict a high degree of pain. The lab belongs to new guy Dr. Venom, a character original to Hama's comics (Cobra mad scientist Doctor Mindbender wouldn't be introduced until 1986). Despite the colorful name, he looks like a more-or-less generic scientist, a middle-aged white guy with a receding hairline, dressed in a shirt and tie under his long white lab coat.

Venom explains the contraption to Cobra Commander and The Baroness at length. Essentially, after it has "amassed a personalized vocabulary of the subjects thinking patterns" and then reversed the pattern, it will allow Venom to "read" Snake-Eyes' mind, projecting his thoughts visually onto a monitor. His plan is to do so in order to find the exact location of G.I. Joe's secret headquarters. 

•Snake-Eyes' time in the machine give readers our first hints of his mysterious origins, including mundane things like his first job and that he attended his school prom as well as traumatic events from his past. Apparently, he uses the latter in an attempt to "block" his own thinking of The Pit under Venom's questioning.

So here we learn of a helicopter explosion that results in his disfigurement, his family having been killed in a car accident and the first intimation that he has trained as a ninja. 

By the way, Snake-Eyes is maskless throughout this whole process, but his face is only shown in silhouette; the white of his gritted teeth the only feature we see. 

•The little boy is able to help Scarlett and Zap escape, showing them how to burn the chemicals out of the water they are given via the heat of the cell's light bulb. He gives them a little tour of Springfield, an entire town that is secretly a front for Cobra.

"It looks so--ordinary!" Scarlett says when they get to the surface and drive around in a hot-wired car. 

"That's the way it used to be around here...real ordinary," Billy responds. "Until the soap people came to town."

I'm going to quote his explanation at length, as this is the first real discussion of where Cobra might have come from:

Yeah, it was one of those pyramid schemes...They got you to sell household cleaning products for extra money, and encouraged you to get others involved.

Weekly "sales meetings" soon escalated into "leadership indoctrination", and pretty soon the ball was rolling beyond control.

They were very convincing. They made it seem "un-American" not to want to get involved.

Anybody who resisted was boycotted by the rest. And by that time the 'rest' was the majority...

Persistent resisters simply disappeared and kids started turning in their parents!

They started building secret back-rooms into all the buildings and lots of underground complexes...

So, Cobra is a money-making pyramid scheme using faux patriotism to recruit members and cult tactics to enforce their compliance, and they managed to take over an entire small American town as their base of operations. It's a pretty paranoid fantasy, one that sounds a little like mid-twentieth century fears regarding Communists infiltrating and taking over America.

Even ten years ago, I would say a whole American city gradually embracing a fascist organization led by a charismatic leader, a movement that uncomfortably echoes the trappings of Nazi Germany was completely unrealistic. 

Today, I know that a good one-third of Americans, and a shocking number of business and political leaders, are either willing to embrace such a movement, or at least tolerate it, if it rewards them with power and/or profits, so I don't know. 

Maybe Larry Hama's G.I. Joe #10 belongs on the shelf with George Orwell's 1984 and Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here as speculative fiction that's become less and less speculative in the era of Trump.

•While Scarlett and Zap attempt to rescue Snake-Eyes from Venom's lab and end up fighting an arcade full of Springfeilders, Snake-Eyes seemingly dies (Just before he does so, though, we see on the mind-reading screen a masked man saying he will explain the secret ninja technique "whereby you may still your breath and heartbeat to the semblance of death itself!")

No sooner is the "dead" Snake-Eyes unstrapped by Dr. Venom than he punches out a Cobra soldier ("THWACK!") and hits Dr. Venom with the butt of a gun ("THOOM!"). Luckily, he seems to have a spare mask on his person, as he then masks back up. Eventually, the three Joes hijack the same weird flying Cobra vehicle that flew them to Springfield to fly them to safety, with Billy electing to stay behind, as he and his family are part the underground resistance there working to thwart Cobra.

•An unlikely series of events, including a storm blocking visibility, the death of their Cobra pilot and Snake-Eyes accidentally shooting out all the navigation equipment, means that the Joes don't actually know where exactly Springfield is. Too bad they didn't ask Billy what state they were in!

•When they come out of the storm clouds and parachute out of the ship, which they aim to crash-land in a nearby body of water, Scarlett lands on top of The Hulk. Well, a guy in a Hulk costume, hired by Marvel for the grand opening of the Bayonne Mall. I believe this is the first time we've seen anything in the series that could only be there if it were a Marvel book. That is, Image, Devil's Due or IDW obviously wouldn't have included those panels.

In the last panel of the issue, we learn that "a Marvel booking agent was nice enough" to loan the Joes bus fare home. 

But when the driver sees Snake-Eyes, he shouts, "Hey! No weirdos on my bus!" 

The fact that Snake-Eyes is drawn with a long gun slung over his shoulder goes unmentioned. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #11 (1983) 

Art by Mike Vosburg and Jon D'Agostino

•The 1983 expansion of the toy line is reflected in this issue, wherein the first new Joes are introduced, Destro makes his first appearance (although Hama and Vosburg play coy, keeping his name unspoken and his face off-panel) and a bunch of vehicles from the toy line are employed: The Joe's Polar Battle Bear skimobile and Falcon hang glider and Cobra's HISS tanks ("HISS" stands for "HIgh Speed Sentry) and Viper hang glider.  

•Cobra's plot here is so complicated, I don't think I ever quite understood it, but it involves an Alaskan oil pipeline, a deadly plague weapon and nuclear material stolen from a nuclear power plant. God bless Hama for being able to think up on capable of supporting all these elements from the toys though, particularly the specialties of the various Joes included in the issue.

•The "old" Joes are pinned down and in the middle of a firefight when they get their reinforcements, delivered in a helicopter by pilot Wild Bill, who is here drawn sans his opaque sunglasses, and thus looks a bit off. These are Snowjob and Gung-Ho. Also arriving is Doc, the team's first medic, who busies himself tending to everyone's wounds (and gets a gun pointed in his face when he reaches for Snake-Eyes' mask to check his face for signs of frostbite). 

•Rock 'N Roll is immediately skeptical of Gung-Ho, who arrives in the snow wearing the same outfit his toy and cartoon equivalent wears: Hat, vest, pants and boots, with no shirt. 

"Hawk, it's five below zero and that maniac gyrene is runnin' bare-chested just so we won't miss his 'corps tattoo," he says. 

Later, when paired with Snow Job, Rock 'N Roll asks, "Whataya know 'bout this Gung-Ho character? Is he from Flake-City or what?"

This sets up a running gag that won't see it's payoff until the last panels, when Rock 'N Roll gets a bit of comeuppance, and Snow Job's codename is explained. That is, they don't call him that just because he's the Joes' arctic trooper.

•I had to look up "gyrene". It's a portmanteau of "G.I." and "marine" and the term apparently originated in World War II. Comics are educational!

•I knew Gung-Ho was supposed to be Cajun, but I was still quite surprised to hear his dialogue, which Hama writes in such a way that Gung-Ho sounds like Gambit throughout. I guess I was so used to his voice from the cartoon, where he has a bit of a Southern accent, that I wasn't expecting lines like, "Mais oui...But making it back, she is another story, no?"

•He gets a cool scene where he rushes out of a building where the Joes are pinned down, raising his gun like a club and swatting a trio of Cobra soldiers setting up a surface-to-air missile with a single blow.

"This here crazy Cajun gyrene fella ain't tryin' ta prove nothin'!" he shouts over his shoulder. "--They say the proof's in the puddin', no? And I be makin' puddin' outta these Cobras' faces!"

•One more new Joe makes his first appearance here. That's Airborne, who flies in on a hang glider to engage a couple of Cobras on their hang gliders.

When Snow Job picks him up on the Battle Bear, he introduces himself: "Howdy. Call me Airborne. Real name's Talltree, Franklin E."

"Talltree," Snow Job responds. "That an Indian name?"

"No. It's Native American. What kind of name is 'Snake-Eyes'?"

"Don't ask."

•Much is made of Destro's introduction, which will actually play out over the course of the next several issues. Walking down a hall with The Baroness, Cobra Commander refers to a new specialist, "A man with infinite finesse and a clear tactical mind...If I am the counterpart of G.I. Joe's General Flagg, then this man is the counterpart of Hawk."

In the first panel, we just see his butt, a gun strapped to his thigh and metal gauntlets at his side. 

"Baroness, may I introduce--" the Commander starts, but she cuts him off.

"We've already met, Cobra Commander." 

While they whisper, the unnamed figure, now seen from the torso down, a plane obscuring his face, starts talking business. 

Throughout the rest of the issue, his dialogue balloons will mostly come from off-panel, only his gauntlets or part of his body ever being depicted. 

•On the last page, Rock 'N Roll confronts Snow Job about a story he fed him earlier, and the two bearded Joes share a panel in which they are face to face. It reminded me of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's weird meeting with all of the generals in which he railed against lax grooming standards and declared "No more beardos." 

Where would G.I. Joe be without its beardos?

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #12 (1983)

Art by Mike Vosberg and Jon D'Agostino

•This issue kicks off an "arc" that lasts nine or ten issues, depending on where exactly one wants to draw the line. 

•The story opens in San Francisco with a car chase, the Joe's VAMP pursuing a van labeled "Naja Hanna Video Corp" driven by Cobra troopers through the street, and both vehicles firing at one another, seemingly heedless of bystanders. That gives way to a foot chase, and after five pages of comedic, action movie-like shenanigans, a uniformed Cobra agent with a scar in his face gets away with briefcase.

Examining the wreckage of the Cobra van, our heroes find "missile guidance chips" buried among a bunch of video game circuits, and a crate addressed to "South American banana republic" Siera Gordo, which is obviously a fictitious country. (It also says "Att. Senor K. Winn", a name that might sound pretty familiar to anyone who read G.I. Joe #2).

•In the Pentagon, Flagg tells Hawk about the military importance of "computer 'chip' technology," and suggests the Joes investigate what Cobra is doing in Sierra Gordo, which is currently having a revolution.

Hawk decides to send in Breaker, "the only one who got a good look at that scar-faced Cobra courier" and Stalker go in undercover, with Gung-Ho and Snake-Eyes backing them up. 

•Breaker and Stalker prove to be pretty bad at undercover work. They pose as an investors who want to buy video games from the address on the packing crate. Dr. Venom, whom neither of them have ever met, opens the door, but tells them he has no games to sell them.

Stalker argues, "I happen to know that you received a shipment of over one hundred games less than a month ago."

Venom responds, "Well now, isn't that interesting? The only way you could possibly be privy to taht bit of information is if you were working for either Cobra or G.I. Joe..."

To this, Stalker replies, "Ummm..."

And Breaker adds, "Uhhh..."

•A Cobra vs. G.I. Joe gunfight soon breaks out, and more players enter the drama immediately. Snake-Eyes, observing from the tree line through binoculars, recognizes Venom and rushes in. 

Following him, Gung-Ho runs into a guy in a poncho and sombrero with a distinctive scar—the Cobra courier from San Francisco. 

And then the "Senor K. Winn" from the packing label makes his dramatic entrance. This is, of course, Kwinn, the indomitable Inuit mercenary that Snake-Eyes and some of the other Joes met in G.I. Joe #2. He is now dressed in a matching khaki shirt and shorts with an apparently new weasel skull necklace. And he is currently employed by Cobra.

With the Joes captured, Venom pulls the bound Snake-Eyes aside to berate and pistol whip. 

"You made a fool of me in Spingfield," he tells Snake-Eyes:

Cobra Commander was beside himself with displeasure. But the true apex of your folly, the ultimate indignation, was when you raised your hand against me--

--and struck me with your filthy fist!!

Dr. Venom seems to be misremembering. Snake-Eyes struck him with the butt of a rifle. I posted the panel in which he does so above, so you could consult it and see so for yourself.

Granted, maybe he struck Venom so hard that he doesn't remember what, exactly, hit him. And being mute, Snake-Eyes is unable to correct the record. 

•Kwinn interrupts the beating, but it is too late. A Cobra trooper informs Venom that Snake-Eyes has no respiration or pulse. "This man's dead," the trooper says. "We'll leave him in the warehouse..."

Venom and Kwinn argue, with Venom reminding Kwinn of his contract with Cobra and Kwinn telling Venom, "You know Kwinn never reneges on a deal...but it is you who will face me when my contract expires!"

Meanwhile, Snake-Eyes' "dead" body is dragged into the warehouse, which is then put to the torch. 

Venom watches the smoke rise and the flames break out from a riverboat as it drifts away, and it only slowly, very slowly dawns on him that Snake-Eyes had studied at a ninja temple, where he had learned to control his heartbeat and breathing. And, in fact, he had done this particular trick the very last time he had encountered him.

For a genius, Venom is a little slow on the uptake.

•Snake-Eyes revives in the burning building, kicks the door out and runs still bound and engulfed in flames, plunging into the river.

The scene is evocative of the origins of both Swamp-Thing and Man-Thing, but, of course, Snake-Eyes doesn't rise as any kind of swamp monster, as there was no secret plant formula involved here. 

•When he finally does come out of the water, he scares the bejeezus out of a local, who screams "AIIIIIEEE!!! A river demon!!" and jumps overboard his own boat upon seeing Snake-Eyes' face.

We only see the back of his head here. His hair is colored black. In later a later panel in this issue, he will appear to have no hair, but his scalp looking as burnt as his face must be, and in one after that, he will appear to have blonde or red hair, complete with matching eyebrows. 

While his face is kept in shadow or pointed away from the reader, he can't be that disfigured; I mean, from what we've seen so far, he still seems to have a working mouth and two normal eyeballs. He would seem to be a burn victim then, with scarred skin, but the way people react to him, you would think he was an unspeakable horror.

•By the last pages, Venom has met The Baroness and the scar-faced courier at a little Cobra bunker on a little island upriver and handed them a test tube containing virus he has concocted, and the pair take off in an airplane, leaving Venom behind (As for what Cobras' up to, with the computer chips and the bio-weapon here, I admit that their plot, like the oil pipeline one in the previous issue, is so complicated that I lost track of the specifics. At any rate, it will be several issues before the bio-weapon Venom has created comes into play and, again, I got a little lost regarding what Cobra's true plan for it is). 

•Stalker, Breaker and Gung-Ho manage to escape their bonds and commandeer the river boat, but the Baroness' plane swoops towards them to fire a missile, and the Joes fire their guns futilely up at her. 

"The only guy who can knock an airplane with a sub-machine gun is Sgt. Granite of Difficult Company!" Breaker says while shooting anyway. 

He's apparently referring to the Distinguished Competition's Sgt. Rock of Easy Company, using a recognizable but legally distinct name for the comic book character.

I wonder why he didn't go with Sgt. Fury? Has Nick never shot down a plane with a sub-machine gun in any of his comics...? 

•Left behind on the island, Venom was in the process of sneaking up behind Kwinn with a gun, when he is attacked by an angry Snake-Eyes. 

He is in the midst of beating Venom (now with his fists), when The Baroness turns her plane around and fires a missile at the island to tie-up the loose ends of Snake-Eyes, Kwinn and the now "expendable" Doctor Venom. 

Whether or not the trio actually dies in the resulting explosion is left as a cliffhanger, but given that Snake-Eyes is among them, I think it's safe to assume they make it out, the big red "KA-BOOOOOM!!!" that fills a whole panel aside.

A Month of Wednesdays: March 2026

 BOUGHT: 

DC Finest: The Demon: The Birth of the Demon (DC Comics) As a long-time DC reader, I've long been acquainted with the character of Etrigan, The Demon, a more-or-less constant presence via guest-appearances and various event series, even when he's not starring in his own series or miniseries. That said, I had never actually read the character's original series, which writer/artist Jack Kirby and inker/letterer Mike Royer produced 16 issues of between 1972 and 1974. It was well before time; so much so, that I wasn't even born yet. 

So I was excited by this particular installment of DC's DC Finest collection, its 530 pages containing the entirety of the original series as well as the character's first appearances by hands other than Kirby's, taken from the pages of The Brave and The Bold, Batman Family, Detective Comics and Wonder Woman. 

What I found most remarkable about Kirby's Demon run was the extent to which so much of what I know of the character, from Alan Grant and company's 1990-1995 series and the Etrigan appearances in the 30 years to follow, was right there at the beginning. 

Kirby's original character design, apparently borrowed from Hal Foster's Prince Valiant* before being Kirby-ized, has barely changed over the decades, the only real changes being how big different artists might drawh is ears or horns or fangs, and whether his cape is scalloped around the edges or not (Kirby drew it both ways, first with the scalloping and then quickly abandoning it). Jon McCrea added some spikes to Etrigan's armbands in 1993, although their presence would depend on the artist. 

And as for the cast, were all Kirby's creations, and present in the earliest issues. There's the immortal Jason Blood, currently a Gotham City-based demonologist, who shares a body with Etrigan, The Demon, the result of a spell Merlin cast during the time of Camelot. There's Jason's friends, Harry Matthews and Randu Singh, the latter of whom has psychic powers. There's love interest Glenda Marks. There's villains Morgaine Le Fey and Klarion The Witchboy (and his cat Teekl, who is here male, although when Klarion transforms Teekl into a humanoid form during their second appearance in book, Teekl seems to be part cat and part woman).

I was surprised that the comics also contained the disturbing little white, monkey-like monster The Kamara, which figured in Alan Moore and Stephen Bissette's Etrigan story from 1984's Saga of The Swamp Thing (and I had always just assumed was the creation of Moore and Bissette) and The Howler, which appeared in Alan Grant and Val Smeiks' 1992 The Demon #23, the first issue of that series I had ever read (thanks to the Robin Tim Drake appearance on the cover).

The other surprise, for me at least, was how self-contained the book is. Maybe that shouldn't be surprising, given how singular a talent Kirby was, how much latitude DC seemed to be affording him and how relatively little connectivity there was between various DC books in the 1970s, but the first 16-issues are completely self-contained and cordoned off from the DCU. The fact that much of it is set in Gotham City is really the only indication that this is a DC comic at all, and Kirby never really exploits the setting in his book (Jason, Etrigan and company never encounter Batman, Robin or Commissioner Gordon, for example...at least, not in Kirby's original stories from the pages of The Demon). 

As for the character's most distinct trait, the fact that he speaks in rhyming dialogue, well, he doesn't seem to have started doing so in Kirby's series, nor anywhere else in the first decade or so of his fictional life. 

Kirby does have just about every single spell that is cast throughout the book written in rhyme, and so Jason Blood and/or Etrigan mostly only rhyme when reciting some version of the still somewhat fluid transformation spell, in which "Etrigan" apparently rhymes with "man." There are a few other points where Etrigan uses magic, and thus speaks in rhyme, but it's clear that he only does so when casting spells (I also noticed that Kirby's Demon neve breathes fire, another thing I've long since come to associate with the chracter, but only shoots it from his hands).

Though the original series might not have lasted long, Kirby obviously created something pretty potent ad compelling, given that Etrigan and company are still around today and now thoroughly embedded in the shared setting of the DC Universe. Oh, and DC is set to launch a new Demon ongoing, the character's fourth, in the very near future. 

There's a rather charming sense of making it up as he goes along to Kirby's comic. Though it is supposedly about the occult, its somewhat Incredible Hulk-like hero a demonologist in his secret identity and a literal demon when in his "superhero"/monster form, Kirby didn't exactly seem to have spent a second researching the occult himself. There's a sort of extremely safe, Saturday morning cartoon version of Satanism about everything here, with Etrigan and the various demonic entities he encounters all being pulled directly from Kirby's imagination, and seem like, if they were scaled up slightly, are the sort of things one would find in a pre-Fantastic Four Marvel monster comic rather than medieval Christian legend.

In the first issue, Jason Blood and a one-armed police officer encouter a strange creature, and officer screams, "LOOK-! BEHIND US!--- Is it a beast? ---or man---or BOTH?" Blood sizes up the orange creature, which looks like it could have stepped off a flying saucer to fight Thor in the early sixties, and declares, "The Gorla! A watchdog for witches!" Uh, if you say so, Jason.

Likewise, Kirby engages in no real world-building beyond what he must have done when originally putting the series together. There's certainly no sense of a consistent Heaven, Hell or afterlife, or of the entities that might hail from such places. Rather, they are all random monsters, and realtively few of them seeming all that infernal (Asmodon from The Demon #10, who looks like a highly Kirby-ized version of the traditional cartoon Devil and seems to be able to be called upon and bargained with, is a rare exceptin.)

The book open with Merlin clutching his Eternity Book in a flaming tower during the fall of Camelot. A turn of the page reveals a two-page splash in which Morgaine Le Fey's forces assault Camelot; the designs and renderings looking so purely Kirby that they evoke his work on the New Gods more than any other vision of King Arthur and company a reader might have seen. During the battle, Merlin summons his demon, Etrigan and then, with a sweep of his hand, Merlin "wondrous Camelo thundered, trembled and departed from the pages of history!!" Etrigan walks away from the ruined city, transforming as he does so into a man...and a man he would remain for centuries. (Unlike later version of the Demon's story, here it seems to be suggested that Etrigan became Jason Blood and, eventually, can switch back and forth, rather than being a demon from hell bonded by magic to an extant human being; also, Blood seemed to live all of those years as Blood, never once becoming Etrigan again, nor even knowing that he could transform).

We then jump to 1970s Gotham City, where Jason Blood is a dashing young demonolgist, living in a swank apartment full of all the crazy occult objects Kirby can imagine, and practicing martial arts with his friend Randu Singh, who works for the United Nations and possesses ESP, while their friend advertising executive Harry Matthews looks on.

The immortal Morgaine Le Fey's quest to restore her youth, beauty and power will eventually lead her to the Eternity Book, and thus call forth Etrigan to defend it. After two completely stuffed, action-packed issues, Blood will become aware of his own origins and start to settle into his new life, that of a man who can become a powerful demon after reciting a short rhyme.

Kirby then pits Jason, Etrigan and friends against a cult that can devolve humans into their past selves to control them, the Kamara and its masters, The Howler and Klarion (twice), while riffing on The Phantom of the Opera and Pygmalion/Galatea in one story and Frankenstein in another (There is nothing subtle about either of these stories, either; the Frankenstein riff, for example, features a doctor figure named Baron von Evilstein and a man-made monster at least twice as tall as a man with gigantic electrodes protruding from it). 

The final issue wraps the story up, with Morgaine Le Fey returning (and being drawn with a lot more va-va-voom than is typical for Kirby's female characters) and Glenda finally learning the truth of Jason's double-life, a secret Randu and Harry had worked to keep from her throughout the series. 

Interestingly, the final issue ends with an all-text panel suggesting we've seen the last of Etrigan: 

This ends the adventures of The Demon...but not the efforts toward great and intriguing reader entertainment... See your dealer for a new and exciting comic from the DC Kirby-works! Coming very soon!

Obviously, this was very much not the end of the adventures of The Demon, which like so many of the characters Kirby created or co-created for Marvel and DC, continue to this day. 

In fact, this very volume includes about 100 pages of comics featuring Etigan from after the cancellation of his series. Here are the other comics included:

•The Brave and The Bold #109 (1973) The first creators other than Kirby to tackle The Demon were Bob Haney and Jim Aparo, in the Batman team-up title. This is also Etrigan's first and only appearance outside of the pages of The Demon before the character's home book would be cancelled. This is also the first time the fact that Batman and The Demon are both based in Gotham City is exploited, as Haney doesn't have to do all that much to bring the two characters together. 

A strange monster of sorts has clambered out of Gotham City Harbor where a new bridge is being built, and begins targeting seafaring men—or, in the case of Harry Matthews on his way to his yacht, men who look the part. A killing spree in which one of Jason's friends is almost a victim is enough to get both heroes involved. 

They cross paths when Batman catches Etrigan in a net meant for the killer, and then Randu, Harry and Jason immediately explain Jason's bizarre double-life to the Caped Crusader, something that even Glenda doesn't know at this point. Together, Batman and Etrigan figure out the supernatural backstory of the killer and defeat it.

Like much of Haney's Brave and The Bold, his take on The Demon feels a bit...off, most notably in the narration and dialogue, which repeatedly refers to the character as simply "Demon," no "the" before it, as if "Demon" were his name. Aparo's take on the character honors Kirby's design, and makes Etrigan look far more realistic, resulting in a stiffer, less dynamic, less idiosyncratic hero.

•The Brave and The Bold #137 (1977) Some three years after the cancellation of The Demon, Haney brought Etrigan back in the Batman team-up title, this time working with the art team of John Calnan and Bob McLeod. Batman is in Gotham's Chinatown to take a youth gang called The Savage Dragons (What are the chances that a young Erik Larsen read this issue, do you think?), but the supernatural threat of Chinese god Shahn-Zi from a previous issue of the series has returned. 

Luckily Batman bumps into Jason Blood ("In the well-stuffed flesh, old friend!") and Glenda, who he introduces here as his fiancee (Congratulations to the young couple, I guess...?). They were in the neighborhood for "the superb Peking duck in Lum Fat's establishment," Jason says, although Glenda adds, "Jason's here to observe the new year--hunting spooks as usual."

Before the issue is over, Shahn-Zi will turn Etrigan into a fly and Batman into a vampire bat, while Etrigan will ask Merlin to grant him the power to change shape like Shahn-Zi himself does. He can only use the new power once though, and when the Chinese deity turns himself into a huge cobra, Etrigan becomes a mongoose to defeat him.

•"There's a Demon Born Every Minute" from Batman Family #17 (1978) This is the Man-Bat/Demon team-up by Bob Rozakis and Michael Golden that I posted about fairly recently; in terms of the Jason Blood/Demon, I think it's probably most interesting in regards to Golden's highly-stylized art. Rozakis does bring Morgaine Le Fey back from the state in which Kirby left her...only to leave her in a similarly permanent-ish state of defeat at the end. Jason's square, paperweight-like Philospher's Stone plays a role as well.

•Detective Comics #482-485 (1979) When Etrigan next surfaces, it's in another Batman book. Writer Len Wein has a weird-looking sorcerer named Baron Tyme, apparently previously seen in a Man-Bat story, employ a magically-created creature to steal Merlin's Eternity Book for him. Etrigan gives chase, and the pair end up at Merlin's tomb beneath Castle Branek in the European city of Wolfenstag. The first chapter is again drawn by Golden (and, on its opening splash, includes several visual call-backs to foes Blood and Etrigan fought in Kirby's series), while the remainder are drawn by Steve Ditko. 

Their styles don't match up in the least, but both are great. It's particularly fun to see Ditko, the other artist who helped build Marvel Comics, tackling a Kirby creation. His Etrigan has an off-kilter, ape-like gait, and seems to always be half-crouching. Tyme is afflicted with a weird state of being that seems tailormade for Ditko to draw, and there are lots of gorgeous and unusual depictions of magical powers and other dimensions...as one might expect from the guy who created Doctor Strange.

The 46-page epic includes a panel in which Etrigan rhymes upon his entrance—"Thunder calls me from the sky-- --to save the book which dare not die!!"—and for a moment I thought maybe this was the point at which Etrigan's dialogue would start to all rhyme, but he drops it afterwards.

Oh, and Randu is suddenly blind for some reason in this story. It's not until the second installment that an editorial note points us to where it happened, in an issue of the short-lived Kobra series. 

•Wonder Woman #280-282 (1981) Etrigan would next surface in the pages of Wonder Woman, of all places. The story is written by Gerry Conway, while Jose Delbo and Dave Hunt handle the art. (Len Wein, meanwhile, is the editor; I wonder if he was enough of a Demon fan to have suggested Conway use Etrigan here...?)

A black mass summons a demonic entity named Baal-Satyr from a netherworld (the word "Hell" is never used here) that claims Etta Candy as a sacrifice, taking her back to his realm, where it seems he's going to cook her in a pot. A fortune-teller sends Wonder Woman to Jason Blood, and soon the demonologist summons The Demon, who takes her to Baal-Satyr's realm for an adventure. Once they successfully return, they find a man who has done a deal with Klarion the Witchboy. He serves Klarion in order to regain the ability to walk again, but there's an unforseen side-effect to the cure: It turns him into a minotaur. 

At the climax, Klarion transforms Teekl into a were-cat in order to fight Wondy, and once again Teekl's humanoid fom is female presenting. The script doesn't use any pronouns to refer to Teekl in this story at all. 

Will DC produce a second DC Finest volume, picking up with Etrigan where this one leaves off....? If so, that would seem to take us to the character's appearances in Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, Blue Devil, a John Byrne story in his Action Comics run, an issue of The Spectre, Matt Wagner's four-issue Demon mini-series and then we'd be into Alan Grant's tenure on the character, which started with a feature in Action Comics Weekly, a Batman team-up in Detective Comics (The first Demon story I ever read, and still one of my favorites, thanks to Grant and pencil artist Norm Breyfogle's take on the character as a mad demon and how he sees his reflection in Batman) and then the second The Demon series, which Grant would write for about 40 issues (minus Dwayne McDuffie's four-part 1992 arc, "Political Asylum" and Matt Wagner's one-issue fill-in). 

With the exception of that Detective Comics arc, I don't think any of Grant's Demon comics—from the pages of The Demon or elsewhere—have ever been collected, so I would love to see DC's keep publishing DC Finest: The Demon trades until they get to 1993's The Demon #39 (Garth Ennis would take over the title with #40, and his much shorter run has been collected in a pair of trades).

BORROWED: 

Batgirl Vol. 2: Bloodlines (DC Comics) I wasn't overly enamored with Tate Brombal and Takeshi Miyazawa's first collection of their new Batgirl series (reviewed in this column). 

On one hand, the art was great, Brombal obviously did his homework on the character's history and the creative team did an impressive job on conveying the unusual way in which Cassandra Cain sees the world, with body language being her native language, and verbal communication something of a secondary one. But on the other, Brombal had Cass making a couple of out-of-character, maybe even dumb decisions, apparently to meet the needs of the plot, which of course through me out of the story (Specifically? First, after being warned by Shiva that they were in too much danger to go to Batman and company for help without risking their lives, Cass instead goes to a civilian she knows, and that civilian is then immediately, predictably killed. Second, the book ends with Shiva telling Cass to flee while she holds off a bunch of deadly ninjas she seemingly has no hope of defeating, essentially sacrificing herself to buy Cass time to escape; Cass unheroically runs, letting her mother die for her...although, we all know Shiva isn't really did, right?)

The second volume is, I'm afraid to report, similarly uneven. Technically, it's very well-written and the art remains great, but I find myself questioning Brombal's decisions, which here include rather radically revamping the history/continuity of some long-lived if relatively minor characters. 

The first two issues are a short arc entitled "The Book of Shiva". These are drawn by guest artist Isaac Goodhart, and they are gorgeous. Somewhat shaper and with a more solid line that Miyazawa's art, I think I actually preferred these issues visually to those drawn by Miyazawa. I was much less interested in the story, though. It's basically the secret origin of Lady Shiva and, while reading, I was reminded a bit of Marvel's 2001 Wolverine: The Origin. That is, sometimes keeping a character's origins mysterious is preferable, if the backstory you come up with them is ultimately kind of boring.

The story finds Cassandra on a train, apparently following her mother's command to find Ben Turner, while reading Shiva's life story in a book the master assassin had written for her daughter (Helpfully, Shiva also recorded herself reading it aloud, given that Cass is, traditionally, not the strongest reader, although writers Becky Cloonan and Michael Conrad had transformed her into something of a bookworm during the course of their 19-issue, 2022-2023 Batgirls series). 

Between scenes of Cass reading and listening in her train seat, Lady Shiva's life story plays out on the panels, starting with her girlhood. She had a sister she was very close to, her parents were murdered by ninjas, they were adopted by monks in a remote village and trained in the martial arts, etc. It's part two where it becomes interesting, as the now adult sisters are now touring the U.S., fighting challengers for money as "The Deadly Woosan Sisters." It's in Detroit's Chinatown that they take on a pair of fighters Ben Turner and "Richie." 

As is quickly revealed, these are the future Bronze Tiger and Richard Dragon. In this half of the story, the four become close friends, traveling the world together and having martial arts adventures in which they fight for good and justice. At some point, Ben and Shiva's sister become lovers, while Richie expresses interest in Shiva. The quartet eventually break up when David Cain murders Shiva's sister, part of his apparently rather long-term plan to use her for breeding stock. 

Now, Denny O'Neil's 1970's Richard Dragon, Kung-Fu Fighter, the book from which Dragon, Bronze Tiger and Shiva all originated, was well before my time, and I'm mainly familiar with Bronze Tiger from John Ostrander's use of the character in Suicide Squad, while I've probably read less than three comics featuring Dragon (One of which was the 2004 Chuck Dixon/Scott McDaniel series, which I now see was a reboot). But this all sounded...wrong to me. So, after I finished reading the book, I went to Wikipedia to read the articles on Richard Dragon and Bronze Tiger. (As a general rule of thumb, if a comic script compels a reader to visit Wikipedia, then that script could probably use a little more work.)

It turns out that a) Richard Dragon and Ben Turner's histories are far, far more complicated and confusing than those of a couple of kung-fu guys from the seventies should be, including several contradictory continuity reboots and b) Brombal is rebooting elements of their history again here, adding at least one big revelation that reorients the character dynamics between the characters mentioned here.

Oh, and also? Due to DC's policy of messing with their continuity in cosmic events every couple of years now, I have no idea what counts and what doesn't. When it comes to a comic like this, for example, I find myself more inclined to just throw my hands up and walk away, rather than just go with the flow, as it seems Brombal has carte blanche to do whatever he likes with the characters he's using...and that whoever writes them next is just as likely to discard Brombal's version and start over again.

Miyazawa returns to illustrate the last three issues in this collection, which comprise the arc "The Three Swords." Set entirely at the Dragon Ranch in Whitefish, Montana, it finds Batgirl—arriving in full costume and astride a horse—confronting Bronze Tiger, telling him that Shiva is dead, that her mom sent her to him and asking about "The Jade Tiger."

Ben is reluctant to share anything, but when Batgirl gets physical with him, The Jade Tiger reveals himself, coming to his dad's defense. That's right, the Jade Tiger is the Bronze Tiger's son, and his mom? Well, that's—spoiler alert!—the one-time Jade Canary, Lady Shiva. 

I was here reminded of the first story I had ever read in which Lady Shiva appeared. It was the "A Death in the Family" arc from Batman (which I read via a trade paperback collection, one of the first trades I had ever bought). Part of the 1988 story involves then-Robin Jason Todd seeking out his birth mother and, for some reason, the Dynamic Duo suspect it might be Shiva. When Batman asks her if she's eve had a baby, she laughs:

Certainly. I've had dozens of babies!! 

I've dropped litters in every corner of the globe!!

Well, I don't know about whole litters, but that's at least two kids she's had now...! (Interestingly, Batman says he expected her to be uncooperative and thus injects her with "sodium pentothal--truth serum." He then asks her again if she's eve had a baby, and she answers with simple "No".)

Ben explains everything now that the meeting has been forced, and, oddly, at one point the boy, Tenji Turner, reveals that he has long known that his sister Cassandra was Batgirl, and that he admired her. Which seems...weird, given that when he sees a girl in a bat-costume in his kitchen, he doesn't even suspect it might be Cassandra, even questioning why she is dressed like a bat during their fight.

More fighting follows, as a trio of assassins—the "three swords" of the title—arrive at the ranch, seeking Batgirl's head. The second of these a member of The Blood, the group of ninjas that killed Shiva's parents, drove her and her sister from the village where they grew up, and to which Shiva (and thus Cass and Tenji) seem to belong (Hence the title of this collection).

They're not just regular ninjas, though, they also have a super-power, which they gained by having "forged deals with dark spirits of the spirit world". They have the ability to manipulate their own blood as a weapon; the Blood assassin Cass fights at the climax of "Three Swords", for example, apparently cuts herself, and uses her blood a little like a Green Lantern might use their ring, making various simple constructs (Mostly lashing tentacles and spiky balls, though, and not boxing gloves or baseball bats).

I do hope Batgirl doesn't learn to unlock this power to use herself. I think she's cool enough (and powerful enough) with her martial arts mastery and her ability to "read" her opponents' next moves. She certainly doesn't need a new super-power, and I'm not a fan of giving Bats powers (I think The Signal developing ill-defined vision powers, for example, was to the detriment of the character).

So that's two volumes in a row of a comic starring one of my favorite comic book characters that I've found well-made but full of frustrating choices. Will I read a third? I'm honestly not sure at this point. 

Fire & Ice: When Hell Freezes Over (DC) This sequel to the 2023 miniseries Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville is bit of a weird one, as returning writer Joanne Starer and new artist Stephen Byrne are both quite skilled and handle most aspects of the book quite well, and yet it's overall a rather disappointing effort, and oddly formless limited series that seems to be filling pages rather than telling a story. 

Starer writes with a sharp wit. Most of the many, many jokes being told—this is, like the previous miniseries, a superhero comedy that is more comedy than superhero—are effective and the patter is snappy without feeling too affected. The style is a pretty good fit for JLI alums like these two characters, as the general tone is similar to some of the old Giffen/DeMatteis stories, but more modern—less Abbot and Costello, more Parks and Recreation. 

And Byrne's art is a great fit...at least for much of the book (We'll get to where it doesn't fit quite so well in a bit, as there's a somewhat schizophrenic tone shift near the end of the book). It's stripped down and simple and clear as a bell, easily communicating the cartoonishness of the situations Starer cooks up for him to draw.

So, what's wrong?  

Well, I just mentioned Parks and Recreation a moment ago, and while I'm not expert on that particular show, or, um any TV show really**, there's something very modern TV show about When Hell Freezes Over. It's not just the sitcom premise, carried over from the previous series, of the two best friends and former premier Justice Leaguers moving to a small town to open a hair salon (The why of which wasn't exactly sold all that well in the first place; here I suppose it's worth noting that much of the action is spent in the new town of New Kooey, Kansas rather than Smallville). 

No, it's also that Starer has a whole cast of characters beyond the title heroines and pre-existent DC characters like L-Ron and Martha Kent, including Tamarind and Honey, who work at the salon (and the latter of whom has a minor super-power), hunky bar owner Charlie, Gorilla Grodd's little sister Linka and returning minor super-villain Smarty Pants (a joke character whose central joke isn't that funny), plus newcomer Mo, Smarty Pants extremely annoying brother. 

Obviously, these characters help make the setting more filled-out and lived in, and, of course, they give Fire and Ice people to talk to (and banter with) other than one another. Weirdly though, Starer seems to treat them like characters played by real human actors on a TV show, and thus each needs their own plotline, their own running gags and their own screen time, or, um panel time. As the book progresses, and Fire and Ice leave Kansas for another realm (the one in the title), the book continues to feature all these characters, jumping back and forth from their doings to those of the heroines. 

It's admirable that Starer wants to flesh out the characters and give them all an equal amount of lime light, but it also feels a bit off in a superhero comic. I mean, imagine a Batman comic that every few pages cuts from the Dark Knight's latest case to check in with what shenanigans Alfred might be getting into back at Wayne Manor, for example. Worse, though, is that the supporting cast's light-hearted shenanigans are so totally tonally different to what Fire and Ice are doing while they are way: Travelling to Hell itself, where they face the various traumas of their lives and are emotionally tortured by demons. 

The book opens with a two-page spread in which Fire and Ice fill us in on what happened in the first series and what's happened in between them, and there are busts of most of the supporting characters, labeled with their names and a few details. I was pretty thankful for this, as it's not like the first series was burned into my brain or anything.  As for what happened in between, it's basically just a panel or so from the end of Absolute Power: When Amanda Waller's squadron of superpower-stealing super-Amazos returned the heroes of the DCU's powers to them, some characters got the wrong powersets. 

That happened to Fire and Ice, who now have one another super-powers...and, as we see here, neither is adept at using the other's powers (Beyond the existential problems this causes; as Starer has a character point out, the pair are defined by their powers so much that they are literally named after them). In the recap and later, it's sort of implied that their mixed-up powers are why they are back in Kansas rather than living on the Watchtower with the rest of Justice League Unlimited, which they are now part of (In other words, as Fire desperately wanted in the first series, they are once again Justice Leaguers). 

Apparently not content to wait for The Atoms to figure out their Atom Project (that is, getting the right superpowers back to the right superheroes) as is detailed in Justice League Unlimited and the risible Justice League: The Atom Project (although the fact that anyone is working on fixing this very problem is never alluded to in this book), Fire invites some other lady Leaguers to town for a karaoke night (Dr. Light, Black Canary, Zatanna and Zatanna's cousin Zachary Zatara, who Zatanna brought along even though it's supposed to be a girls' night).

Zatanna, whose super-power is basically that she can do anything as long as she phrases her wish backwards, tells Fire she can't help solve their problem magically but, while she and Zachary are busy singing, Fire fishes around Zatanna's magic top hat until she eventually pulls out a monkey's paw and makes a wish to give her and Ice their original powers back (As Greg Burgas notes in his review of the trade, this plot-driving impetuousness on Fire's part calls for her to, first, recognize a monkey's paw as a magical artifact that grants wishes, but, second, not also know that those wishes always go wrong, which is...weird. But, again, necessary to the plot!)

The result is that Fire and Ice are then Freaky Friday-ed, with Fire's mind going into Ice's body and Ice's mind into Fire's. So, each mind has access to the right powers, but now they are in the wrong bodies. After an issue or so of dealing with this, Fire makes things worse by making another wish, this one causing a bunch of the supporting cast members to get similarly Freaky Friday-ed. 

Zachary explains that because it was chaos magic that caused the problem, the only way to fix it is with the forces of Order-with-a-capital-O, as in The Lords of Order. The exact artifact needed is a magic ring previously created by Nabu, but getting it won't be easy, as it is in Hell.

So our heroines go to Jason Blood (who Byrne gives black hair instead of red), who then transforms into a somewhat off-model Etrigan (Byrne gives him a mouthful of big teeth but, more weirdly, a pair of red shorts that stretch towards his knees and, weirder still, bare feet). Etrigan opens a portal, and then our girls spend about four issues in Hell, facing their demons...and literal demons, of course.

Here is where I think the book really started to fall apart, as it separates the heroines from their supporting cast but, like I said, continues to follow that supporting cast, and as we jump back and forth between scenes, we go from stuff like, say, Smarty Pants and Mo planning to rob the vault of a casino that won't even be built for years yet to Beatriz confronting her father, who trained her how to assassinate people when she was still a young girl and accuses her of belonging in Hell with him (While I knew Bea was a government operative at one point, I don't recall these specifics, so I guess that's a pretty deep cut on Starer's part; Starer does repeatedly refer to the characters' previous adventure in Hell, in 2005's JLA Classified #4-9...over 25 years ago, now...! I can't imagine that story is all that easy to find at this point if a reader new to these characters wanted to consult it.)

It's in Hell that Byrne's art no longer seems all that appropriate, either. It is basically presented as a big, empty desert with dark red skies, without much of interest to look at...and thus, conveniently, to draw. It's populated by fairly generic demons, with skull-like faces, horns and batwings. 

Starer's depiction of Hell is similarly barren of interest, although I did like two aspects of it. First, when Etrigan first gets the girls to Hell, he's still rhyming as usual, and Fire complains about his dialogue. 

"I don't think he can help it," Ice tells her. "You shouldn't make fun!"

To which Etrigan replies, "Oh, I do it to irritate. I am a demon, after all."

As I've been reading DC Finest: The Demon: The Birth of the Demon, I've been thinking a lot about Etrigan lately. And this is a fun explanation for the rhyming (I also liked the bits about his rhyming in Silent Knight Returns that Jeff Parker offered). Unfortunately, he does acquiesce to Fire's wishes, and quits rhyming for the rest of the adventure, although she still complains about his dialogue ("Over there. Just say over there," she says, when he refers to something being "yonder", for example).

The other fun bit, I thought, was the small role played by Beelzebub, presented here as a humanoid fly, and speaking in dialogue that has lots of buzzing in it ("Beelzzzebub, at your servizzze," he introduces himself). Basically, he looks like a supervillain named Man-Fly, rather than the titanic fly he's previously been portrayed as in DC Comics). 

Meanwhile, Gorilla Grodd, sporting the amped-up super-powers and the weird-looking tiara he has in We Are Yesterday, shows up in Kansas to reclaim his little sister Linka, only for Superman to appear and fight him for a few pages before they both leave as quickly as they came. It's so random as to feel weird, especially since Linka's connection to the character seems like it would be a more organic plot for her and the other characters to deal with, as opposed to the sillier Smarty Pants and Mo plan (It's so random, I wonder if the editorial might have insisted upon it and it was a late addition, or if Starer had more planned for Grodd, but editorial wouldn't let her do much given that he was spoken for in Justice League Unlimited or...what). 

All in all then, the book has its moments, and it is fun seeing Fire, Ice and L-Ron again, and in a comedic book, but this When Hell Freezes Over isn't a very satisfying read, it's "And then this happens and then this happens" plotting feeling like a story told by an excited little kid, in contrast to how solid Starer's dialogue and individual scenes might be.

Oh, and that's two mini-series in a row now in which Fire doesn't do a damn thing to update her horribly outdated costume...although at least one character makes fun of her for it (When Fire tells Tamarind she shouldn't judge someone until she's walked in their shoes, Tam replies, "Those shoes went out of style before I was born.") They do give one another's costumes a brief, temporary redesign when they are in one another's bodies though, with Tora covering Bea's body with a big, bulky green sweater, and Bea exposing Tora's mid-riff. 

Zom 100: Bucket List of The Dead Vol. 18 (Viz Media) The gang is still stuck on a power-less space station, a handful of zombies floating in the gravity-free environment proving an additional threat. To power up the station and get back to Earth, a couple of them will need to perform a risky maneuver during a spacewalk, one that leads to what seems like certain death for a character at one point....and then certain death for another when he seems to sacrifice his life to save the first. 

I'm impressed that, at this point in writer Haro Aso and artist Kotaro Takata's narrative, they are still able to surprise me, pulling off suspenseful sequences in which their characters' lives are endangered and in which there seems to be no way out for them.

Significantly, this volume includes a revelation of the original source of the series' zombie plague and how it came to Earth (although not every mystery about it is revealed yet) and briefly checks in with various characters that Akira and friends have met throughout their travels.

Therefore, this volume seemed to suggest that the narrative might be beginning to wind down. I hope it doesn't do so too quickly; the last volume of Komi Can't Communicate has just been released, so I'm already losing one of the manga series I've been following...

Oh, also of note? The very first volume of the series saw Akira trapped in his apartment, cleaning it and binge-watching TV, while a deadly pandemic raged outside. That was released in the U.S. during the Covid shutdown, and made the manga seem both of the zeitgeist, and even a bit prescient. This latest volume, which concludes our heroes' two-volume adventure in space (the eight-installment "Outer Space of The Dead" story arc), is available just as the U.S. is performing its first major moon mission in decades, and astronauts and space travel are in the news again.

REVIEWED: 

Fusktuk (Penguin Workshop) Robert Mgrdich Apelian's rich and engrossing family drama set in a fantasy version of the Middle East is both a great comic and one that's unlike any I can remember reading before. I'd highly recommend it. More here. 

Skating Wilder (Flying Eye Books) Writer Brandon Dumas and artist AJ Dungo imbed a history of skateboarding and passages that read like they might have come from a Skateboarding 101 textbook into a memoir, presenting something of a comics Bible to the hobby/sport/lifestyle. I briefly skated a bit in the late '90s—one of my best friends and only friends still in my hometown at the time was a skater, and as I found myself spending a lot of time hanging out in parking lots at night watching other people skate, I figured I might as well give it a shot myself—and that part all rang quite true to me. Additionally, some of the history was familiar from the 2001 documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys and the 2005 feature Lords of Dogtown. There was a whole lot in here that was brand new to me, though, and I especially appreciated the passages about the present of skateboarding, as, while I'll still see the occasional kid on a skateboard now and then, the whole culture seems completely foreign to me now, and learning how the Internet and smartphones have impacted skating was completely fascinating to me. More here. 

Tough Times (Harper Alley) If you're reading Every Day Is Like Wednesday, then you are not part of the target audience for Raul the Third's El Toro & Friends and "World of Vamos!" books. But you almost certainly like comics, great art, colorfully costumed characters, cool monsters and superior character design, so chances are you're going to find a lot to like in his early reader graphic novels about fantastical luchadores. Tough Times is the latest in the series, and you can read a bit more about it here; I plan to devote a post to the series as a whole in the near future, maybe sometime next week. 

*Although Foster seems to have been inspired by another source as well, that of a 1922 silent film. 

**Aside from Mystery Science Theatre 3000, Beverly Hills, 90210 and assorted '80s cartoons based on toy brands, I guess.