DC Versus Marvel: The Amalgam Age Omnibus Pt. 1: DC Versus Marvel/Amalgam Comics

After resuming inter-company crossovers in 1994 and publishing a handful of 48-page specials, DC and Marvel initiated the big one in 1996: A big "crisis"-style crossover that would imperil both universes and star both publishers' line-ups of characters (or, at least, the most popular ones), with 11 champions from each publisher battling one another to decide which universe would live and which would die. 

In other words, it would essentially be an official version of a sort of game comic fans were forever playing, who would win in a fight between so-and-so and whoever.

The comic would play out across four over-sized issues in a special mini-series, plus a suite of 12 special tie-in one-shots. To encourage fan interest and engagement, the publishers would even have five of those 11 fights decided by popular vote.

I can't tell you how DC Versus Marvel (every other issue of which was technically entitled Marvel Versus DC) went over for the comics shops at the time, as I was only about 17 at the time, but it definitely worked on me. A teenager still new-ish to comics, I bought the main series and a handful of the tie-ins, despite my then complete ignorance of and disinterest in Marvel Comics. (At the time, my experience with Marvel characters was basically limited to what I had seen on the X-Men cartoon and childhood memories of a pair of Spider-Man cartoons.)

In assembling the creators, the co-editors—Marvel's Mark Gruenwald and DC's Mike Carlin—chose writers and artists from each publisher's talent pool, so there would be a pair of writers switching off on each issue, and two different art teams, with these changing every eight pages.

The DC writer was Green Lantern's Ron Marz (although he had written for both publishers, including runs on Thor and Silver Surfer for Marvel), and the Marvel writer was long-time Incredible Hulk writer Peter David (who was, at the time, also writing DC's Aquaman). 

Both seem to have done a fine job, although there doesn't seem to have been too much room in the overall plot's construction to matter overmuch who was actually writing the comics; the broad mechanics of the story seem to have already been determined by the editors, and then there was, of course, the fact that fans would be determining the winners of many of the battles, leaving the writers to only come up with the hows for those bouts with fan-picked endings.

Which isn't to suggest that the writers' jobs must have particularly easy on this obviously big assignment, of course. In addition to moving the story from plot beat to plot beat, Marz and David also had to write all the characters so that they felt and sounded like themselves and stick to the continuity of the time while simultaneously being as welcoming to new readers as possible. 

In this, both Marz and David seem to have succeeded...although I suspect the book might have been better served by having a single writer rather than two, if only for a slightly more consistent tone. (Re-reading it today, David's tendency to insert humor in his stories is definitely more noticeable in his sections of the series, with the various characters all cracking wise. It is perhaps most notable in his scenes featuring a particularly chatty, quippy Aquaman, who sounds more like Spider-Man than his usually grumpy himself (Odd, really, since, again, David was writing Aquaman at the time).

As for the artists, according to Marz's introduction in the DC Versus Marvel Comics: The Amalgam Omnibus, which of course collects the series, the first choices were Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and John Romita Jr., "both understandably seen as emblematic of each publishing house." 

That...that would have been awesome. 

That pair of artists do indeed represent the characters of each universe well in their particular styles, but, beyond that, both were (and are) phenomenal artists. Their styles are so different that I don't think they could have overcome the main problem with the two-art team approach to the book, though, which was the distracting visual inconsistency...one that was only emphasized by how often the pencil artists handed the baton back and forth. But still, Garcia-Lopez and JRJR on DC Versus Marvel would certainly have been a book to see...!

For whatever reason though, Marz said both had declined. (Garcia-Lopez would contribute pencil art to the Marz-written Amalgam Comics tie-in, Dr. Strangefate, which gives us an idea of how his DC Versus Marvel pages might have looked, at least). Thus the publisher sought out different options (No mention of whether or not George Perez, who was, at the time, the ideal artist for the assignment, was considered or approached). 

Ultimately, it was decided that Dan Jurgens would be the DC artist and Italy's Claudio Castellini would be Marvel's artist.

Jurgens was, of course, a solid choice. His work on the Superman titles and its various "event" stories like "Panic in the Sky!" and the "Death of Superman" cycle (not to mention his early '90s Justice League America run and 1994's Zero Hour) meant that he had drawn pretty much the entirety of the DC Universe at that point...many of the characters repeatedly. I don't know that I would say that the DC Comics of 1996 had much in the way of a house style, but a glance at Jurgens' art sure looked like DC Comics, especially at that time. 

Castellini was more of an unknown quantity, his only American work at the time seemingly being a 1996 one-shot with Marz, Silver Surfer: Dangerous Artifacts, as well as some Marvel covers. 

One thing is certain though: Their styles did not match up well at all, and were, in fact, so different it was actually quite jarring to see every time they would trade off on art duties, which was, of course, quite often. 

Jurgens, inked by Josef Rubinstein, created solid figures with more realistic shapes and builds, usually grounding them in recognizable backgrounds (Having so recently re-read parts of Zero Hour in the new DC Finest collection, in which Jurgens was inked by Jerry Ordway, I think I prefer his work under Ordway's pens far more than I did here). 

Castellini's art looked much more of the moment than Jurgens', which is to say it was more '90s...a fact that many readers might now consider a drawback more than a virtue. It was definitely more dynamic, though, his characters always seeming poised and ready to move, if not already engaged in some act of running, punching, jumping or flying.  

They were also all incredibly muscular and statuesque in build, which could actually often make them look "off", especially when compared to Jurgens' versions of the same characters (Castellini's Superboy and Spider-Man, for example, were towering bodybuilders, rather than, say, a typical if well-muscled teenager and a slimmer, acrobatic type).

Castellini also had a tendency for cheesecake, his female heroes all having the sort of '90s default "babe" proportions of a Jim Balent figure, sometimes paired with huge size and musculature, as in his Wonder Woman. 

Where it is most noticeable, however, is in his drawings of Lois Lane. While Jurgens would draw her in business attire, Castellini would give her short, skin-tight dresses that look more appropriate for the club than the office. In one odd sequence (Page 18 and 19 of issues #2), the blazer she's wearing over her dress even disappears between panels. 

Castellini, who also had a much thinner line than Jurgens and tended to eschew backgrounds altogether in many instances, was inked throughout by Paul Neary. Castellini is obviously a good artist, and I thought he handled both publisher's diverse array of characters well enough; in 1996, teenage Caleb would have even told you he was the better of the two artists. 

But the vast gulf in styles made the book something of a mess visually, and hard to ever really lose oneself in. The obvious solution would have been to find a single artist equally adept at the look and feel of both superhero publishers'' lines (which is why I thought of George Perez); I think either Jurgens or Castellini would have been a fine choice to pencil the series, but both of them? Not so much. 

The first issue, which was written by Marz, begins with a Jurgens-drawn splash page of Spider-Man (or a Spider-Man, I guess), swinging through a rainy big city. He's not in his classic suit, but one he was apparently wearing in 1996. Marz writes in his introduction that there was some consideration given to whether or not the creators should use the original, classic (and thus more recognizable) versions of the characters, or keep their portrayals consistent with the comics being published at the time. They had decided on the latter, as the whole idea was to interest new and lapsed readers into picking up other comics from DC's and Marvel's respective publishing lines.

For the DC characters featured, I don't think that matters all that much; they were in 1996, for the most part, as they always were and would mostly always be, with a few minor tweaks. Superman's hair was still being worn long, for example, and Batman was in an all-black costume akin to that of his movie. But Captain Marvel, for example, was wearing what he had been wearing since the 1940s. In all, I think only the bearded, hook-handed Aquaman and the presence of then-new Green Lantern Kyle Rayner really stand out as particularly 1996 versions of themselves.

With the Marvel characters, though, Thor seems to be costumed particularly egregiously, The Hulk is in one of his "smart Hulk" phases, and then there's Spider-Man. I didn't really pick up on this back in 1996, but it felt far more glaring re-reading the series today: I had no idea what was going on with Spider-Man, and whether this was a Spider-Man or the "real" Spider-Man. 

Not only is the costume a different one than that of the original cartoon or Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends that I knew Spidey from, but, when he introduces himself to Clark Kent and Lois Lane, he does so thusly: "It's really Ben Reilly, but my professional name is Peter Parker, so I guess that's what you can call me." 

And in the little character profiles in the back of the first issue, Spider-Man's lists his "Real Name" as "Peter Parker" and, under "Other Current Aliases" it says "Ben Reilly." (Under "Hair" it says "Brown (dyed blonde)", but colorist Gregory Wright has it as brown throughout the book.) 

So I honestly had no idea if this was really the real Peter Parker, or if it was Ben Reilly...and if the Spidey used throughout the series was a clone or not. Turning to Bluesky for help after just rereading the series in the new omnibus collection, I got an answer, I think: This was Ben Reilly, the clone of Peter Parker, although at the time he thought he was the real person, and the real Peter Parker was the clone...? Is that right...? (I just looked up "Clone Saga" on Wikipedia but had to stop reading the synopsis in order to preserve my sanity.)

Anyway, whoever he really is, Spider-Man soon meets The Joker on a rooftop, and the Clown Prince of Crime recognizes him as Spider-Man, presumably because they had recently-ish met in the pages of 1995's Spider-Man and Batman. (Which, um, shouldn't be possible, as that story would have been non-canonical, if the very premise of this series, which is that the DC and Marvel Universe are two separate and inviolable universes within the multiverse, is to be believed.) 

From there, much of this first issue is devoted to page-long sequences that introduce the various characters shown on the cover and then have them disappear in bursts of light. Eventually, there's the beginnings of various crossovers, like Bullseye holding Robin hostage in the Batcave and J. Jonah Jameson and Ben Reilly/Peter Parker showing up as new employees at The Daily Planet. (Which, while fun, doesn't make a lick of sense; Spider-Man, and apparently Jameson, find themselves transported to an entirely different universe than their own, and the first thing they do is...apply for new jobs in their field...?)

There are also a rather rapid-succession of mini, one-panel team-ups and battles—Daredevil vs. The Riddler, Batman vs. Venom, The Punisher vs. Deathstroke, Etrigan vs. Ghost Rider—that won't be expanded upon in any future scenes (In a relative rarity, a panel showing Bane punching Captain America's shield will get explored in a future issue, though). 

The gist of it all is that characters from the two universes are bleeding into one another's realities, an event that a strange old man in an alley with a glowing cardboard box seems to be trying to prevent. So too are The Spectre and The Living Tribunal. 

In the second issue, written by David, we see more of the characters interacting with one another—Wolverine fighting Killer Croc and then joining Gambit to steal the Batmobile, for example, or Marvel and DC's villains both named The Scarecrow teaming up to kidnap Lois—before the premise of the series gets explicitly spelled out for the characters and the readers. 

Each universe is represented by a god-like cosmic entity, one of two "brothers" that look a little like Jack Kirby-inspired space knights, one red and one blue. The pair have apparently just become aware of one another and are coming into conflict. They will combat one another by choosing 11 heroes from each universe to participate in fights for the sake of their home universe. When one opponent is defeated, which can be as simple as "pinning" them immobile for a few seconds, the match ends. Whichever brother/universe/publisher loses, their universe will cease to exist entirely.

The chosen combatants are, for the most part, the very ones readers and fans have long debated and argued about, regarding who is stronger, smarter, faster, a better fighter, etc. Again, it's basically who would win in a fight between so-and-so and whoever. 

And so speedsters The Flash and Quicksilver will face off, as will power-houses Superman and The Hulk, and water-going Kings of Atlantis Aquaman and Namor. Some of the matchups are fairly odd, though, and seem to exist mainly to give a popular character from one publisher a reason to be featured. 

Wolverine, for example, is paired with Lobo, despite the fact that the Dc character vastly overpowers him, and is more in Superman's weight-class than that of the mutant scrapper's. ("Who is meaner?" the back cover of the first issue asked of this particular pairing, their attitudes apparently accounting for their being chosen to fight one another...?)

Or, for another, in order to get Robin involved, the writers needed the Marvel equivalent of a premiere sidekick...of which the then sidekick-less Marvel had none, and so they went with teenage X-Man Jubilee, who, during the decade, was sometimes portrayed as something of Wolverine's sidekick.

And then there's Wonder Woman. While I would have chosen Marvel's Hercules or Thor (who is actually pitted against DC's Captain Marvel) to pit against her, or maybe Wonder Man, Ms. Marvel, Rogue or She-Hulk, Marvel apparently went with its most prominent original female character at the time, resulting in the X-Men's Storm facing her.

The fights, which then occupy most of the second and third issues, are all short, lasting between two and four pages and, I should note, fairly predictable. 

In the six whose outcomes were chosen by the writers, there's usually a clear winner on paper (Like, The Flash being much faster than Quicksilver, for example, naturally leads to his victory), or an easily plausible way for the ultimate victor to win (Thor's storm powers disrupting Captain Marvel's magic lightning, for example). 

The one that felt wrong or off to me in 1996 (and again in 2025) was Aquaman's defeat of Namor; I was obviously a DC partisan, and liked Aquaman more than Namor, but with the latter's superhuman strength and ability to fly, it seemed like he would easily best Aquaman. Not so, as Aquaman writer Peter David had the hero use his ability to communicate with sea life to summon a whale to jump on Namor and pin him. But it was just a killer whale; surely Namor could have lifted that off himself easily, right? 

As for the five fights chosen by fans, well, in most cases the more popular character was also either the more powerful and/or more experienced hero, and so who would really question Superman out-punching The Hulk, for example, or a Spider-Man besting the new Superboy, who had only been around about three years at the time?

The two that felt most forced to me were, of course, the Lobo/Wolverine and Storm/Wonder Woman fight. In both instances, the X-Men characters won. 

As I said, Wolverine, as unkillable as his healing factor might make him, shouldn't have had the strength to go too many rounds against a guy who could uppercut him into orbit. Marz, who had to write the scene, seems to have been aware of the fact it would be hard to write a Wolverine victory in such a way that would please fans, and so the characters' extremely brief fight happens off-panel, the pair tumbling behind a bar for two panels before a hand reaches up, grabs a cigar and takes a puff. 

In the published book, it was, of course, Wolverine who did so (Marvel heroes were still allowed to smoke in the '90s). The omnibus does contain alternate art that would have been used had the fights gone the other way, though, and so there is, later in the collection, a page in which it's Lobo who takes up the cigar. (There are similar pages showing alternate results for each of the voted-upon fights.)

And as for Storm, as powerful as her weather powers are, they just don't seem a match for Wonder Woman's various goddess-given strengths. In their fight, Wondy is essentially just zapped with lightning and crumbles. (In the alternate scene revealed in the unused art, where Wondy wins, she does so by blocking the lightning bolts with her bracelets and then punching Storm out.) 

In his intro, Marz writes that the Wonder Woman/Storm fight was the only one of the voted-upon matchups that they weren't really sure of how it would play out and, as it turns out, it actually ended up being the closest vote. (He also says in passing that fans should get over the Lobo/Wolverine fight ending as it did.)

Anyway, the results of the fights are 6-5 in Marvel's favor, and so that would seem to spell doom for the DC Universe...were it not for the actions of that old man in the alley, an apparent guardian who keeps the worlds separate from one another, and the newly deputized Axel Asher, who gets a snazzy red and blue costume and the superhero codename Access (along with some various super-powers, the most notable of which would ultimately be the ability to travel between the DC and Marvel Universes).

Because of Access' efforts—not to mention those of the old man, The Spectre and The Living Tribunal—there's a very unexpected, last-ditch effort to save both universes. This is, of course, by creating a third, shared universe that would combine the DC and Marvel universes into a single new universe. 

The result? Amalgam Comics, a new line of comics presented as if they had always existed (and DC and Marvel Comics never had), featuring amalgams of various DC and Marvel characters. 

So, for example, there was no longer a Captain America or Superman, but there was a Super Soldier, who was a combination of them both. Just as Logan never became Wolverine, but instead the dark, caped guardian of Gotham City, whose adventures played out in the pages of Legends of the Dark Claw. 

There were a dozen of these special one-shots produced, all of which featured a "#1" on the cover, but all of which also presumed an imaginary past and future, editorial boxes referring to events in comics never published, next issue boxes hinting at futures that would never be and even letter colums in the back of each book.

It was, as I have said, weird, wild and, at least for me in those days, completely unexpected, maybe the last thing one would expect DC and Marvel to do if they had 12 22-page tie-in comics to produce as part of the DC Versus Marvel event series. 

I think, for me at least, this idea really seemed to redeem the whole event, which was otherwise pretty predictable and not all that fun or engaging, with many of the attendant crossovers and interactions between the different groups of characters limited to either single panel suggestions of stories, or short, often unsatisfyingly executed fight scenes. 

(The main exception? The unexpected but fun star-crossed romance between Robin and Jubilee that played out throughout DC Versus Marvel; not only were they forced to fight when they would rather be making out, they came from two entirely different universes...! I always regretted we didn't get a full Romeo and Juliet-inspired Batman/X-Men crossover exploring their doomed attraction, although Marz would prominently feature the pair in DC Versus Marvel's first sequel series, DC/Marvel: All Access.) 

From what Marz and co-editor Mike Carlin wrote in their introductions to the omnibus, it seems to be editor Mark Guenwald who came up with the Amalgam concept, including some of the specific amalgams.

Now, in 1996, back before I had an actual job and thus money to waste on things as frivolous as comics, I had only read a pair of these: Karl Kesel, Mike Wieringo and Gary Martin's Spider-Boy (featuring an amalgamation of the '90sSuperboy and Spider-Man) and Larry Hama, Jim Balent and Ray McCarthy's previously Legends of the Dark Claw. 

(Remember what I said about never having read an entire crossover event series in its entirety before, in discussing the opportunity that the DC Finest: Zero Hour collections offered?  Well, I guess this omnibus does present the same opportunity, on a much more manageable scale, as there are far fewer Amalgam issues than Zero Hour tie-ins).

Something of a feat of editing and coordination, the new, temporary Amalgam Universe necessitated a degree of world-building to make for a cohesive whole and keep the writers from re-using different characters in different amalgams (I noticed a few mistakes, here, though. There are two Huntresses, one named Barbara who appears in Bruce Wayne: Agent of SHIELD and another named Carol Danvers who appears in Dark Claw. Catwoman seems to have been a component in both Bruce Wayne's Selina Luthor and Assassins' Catsai. And while Jimmy Olsen is the editor of the Daily Planet in the pages of Super Soldier, there's a red-headed, freckled reporter named Jimmy Urich in Assassins).

While some simply mashed two characters together (Or, in the case of the title characters of Speed Demon and Dr. Strangefate, three characters), some had bigger, weirder takes. 

Chief among these is Karl and Barbara Kesel, Roger Cruz and Jon Holdredge's X-Patrol, which combined the X-Men and the Doom Patrol (which, at their start, anyway, were both about men in wheelchairs assembling teams of outsiders to serve as heroes), and was full of weird composites that actually kinda sorta worked, like Beastling (Beast + Changeling), Dial H for H.U.S.K. ("Dial H for Hero" + Husk) and Shatterstarfire (Shatterstar + Starfire). With Cruz drawing them in a high-90's X-Men style, it was delightfully weird. 

And then there was John Ostrander, Gary Frank and Cam Smith's Bullets and Bracelets, starring Amazon Princess Diana, in her short-lived biker-shorts and bra look, and The Punisher Trevor Castle fighting The Hand and the forces of Thanoseid's Apokolips to save their kidnapped son. 

I actually rather enjoyed most of this suite of comics, with Mark Waid and Dave Gibbons' Super Soldier (Confession: I didn't actually know who either of those men were in 1996, or I probably wouldn't have skipped it) and Spider-Boy being particular standouts. 

There were two I was a little iffy on during this reading via the omnibus, though.

The first of these was Chuck Dixon, Cary Nord and Mark Pennington's Bruce Wayne: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., which had a fantastic logo, but didn't really sell me on the idea of a Batman-ized S.H.I.E.L.D. or do too much with the concept beyond the requisite action scenes. 

And then there was John Byrne and Terry Austin' Amazon, which starred a new version of Wonder Woman, who is literally, unimaginatively named "Wonder Woman" (which seems counter to the whole Amalgam narrative, doesn't it?). This is basically just Storm in a Wonder Woman-ized version of her own costume. Here, she's a young girl who was lost at sea and rescued by Hippolyta, who raised her alongside her own daughter, who would of course end up growing up to be the Diana from Bullets and Bracelets. The story is an extremely wordy affair that weaves Storm-as-Wonder Woman's origins into a conflict with the god Poseidon. It was honestly something of a chore to get through.

With the 11 fights between DC and Marvel characters all fought and the Amalgam books published, there's relatively little for David and the artists to do in the fourth and final issue, aside from the process of putting the toys back in their respective boxes and returning things to the status quo (Unlike DC and Marvel's individual crossover event series, there's little pretense here that this story will change either universe forever; indeed, the only real lasting change seems to have been the creation of Access, who could potentially provide an ongoing rationale for future DC/Marvel crossovers...although, as we've seen from the crossovers collected in the first DC Versus Marvel Omnibus, those comics mostly ignored him...and the two separate universes premise in general). 

David and the artists do use the space in this issue to offer up scenes of the heroes who were forced to combat one another now cooperating and taking on various villains, with Elektra and Catwoman facing The Abomination, Flash and Quicksilver getting stuck in Venom's goo, and a whole mess of heroes tackling Thanos and Darkseid. 

Ultimately the universes are separated again through the efforts of Access and his new powers, with the help of Batman and Captain America, who seem to have impressed the universe brothers with their personal resumes enough that the cosmic giants call off their conflict and shake hands. 

And then everything returns to normal. 

The ending seems a bit of a let-down after the fights and the Amalgam Universe, and, rather curiously, the conflict is ultimately resolved with fairly minimal participation from the DC and Marvel heroes (Batman and Cap excluded, of course). 

While many of the heroes do make mention of the fact that they should be working together to solve the problem instead of fighting like pawns throughout the series, they never actually do all band together to save their universes. Instead, they basically spend the entirety of the crossover engaged in small scale fights, unknowingly leaving the issue of the warring universes to Access and the old man to fix for them.

Access, a character jointly owned by DC and Marvel, was, of course, the biggest new thing to ultimately come out of this story, and he would reappear almost immediately in the same-year sequel, DC/Marvel: All Access, a series that was smaller in scale, but did manage to explore more interesting character interactions than DC Versus Marvel, and bring with it another round of Amalgam comics. 

But that will be the subject of the next post.

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A few other things of note...

•I sort of mentioned this in passing when I included the DC Versus Marvel: The Amalgam Age Omnibus in January's "A Month of Wednesdays" column, but it was quite striking just how white, male and straight both the DC and Marvel Universes come across in this series today. Certainly compared to what the shared settings look like right now, or would have looked like ten years ago, or even 20 years ago.

The participating heroes are overwhelming male. Of the 22 heroes participating in the 11 matches, there are five women: Wonder Woman, Catwoman, Elektra, Storm and Jubilee. And, as discussed above, those last two X-Men seem to be there mainly because there weren't any better choices for Marvel characters to throw at their chosen opponents, Wonder Woman and Robin.

Few other female characters even appear throughout the pages of the series, though. Supergirl and She-Hulk both share a single panel, Jean Grey and Psylocke both appear once apiece in panels featuring other X-Men, a blonde X-Men member I didn't recognize appears alongside Jubilee in one panel (this was Husk, according to Bluesky), and that's about it for female heroes in the main DC Versus Marvel series. 

Superhero girlfriends Betty Ross and Tanya Moon briefly appear alongside The Hulk and Superboy, but the female character who is most prominent throughout the entire series was Lois Lane. 

She gets the most panel time and the most dialogue of any other woman, by far. Her portrayal isn't necessarily all that flattering, though, as she needs to be rescued from the Scarecrows by Ben Reilly/Peter Parker.

And Ben/Peter will later, erroneously think to himself, "Jeez...I think she wants me!" He'll eventually even ask her out and get shot down, when she flashes him her ring and tells him she's engaged, at which point a giant Clark Kent appears to loom over Ben/Peter. 

As for characters of color, there are hardly any, and they are mostly limited to the X-Men Storm and Jubilee again. They are the only heroes of color among the 22 in the multiversal matchups, and about the only ones who so much as cameo.

Steel appears briefly, seen fighting The Absorbing Man in two panels and then flying alongside Iron Man in a massive, character-filled two-page spread. That same spread also features a tiny image of then-Green Arrow Connor Hawke, who is of mixed race (including Black and Korean ancestry), although he is there colored pretty white.

And that's it, really. No Black Panther (which seems crazy in 2025), no Luke Cage, no Blade, no Falcon and no War Machine. Not even Bishop, in this X-Men heavy tale. On the DC side, we don't see any of their more prominent black characters either, like Cyborg, Black Lightning, Vixen, Bumblebee or John Stewart. 

Finally, as for gay characters, I don't think either publisher had terribly deep benches in the mid-90s, with Marvel's Northstar and DC's Obsidian being the most high-profile gay characters at the time. Neither even cameos in the story, though. (Wait, was Obsidian officially out in 1996? Now that I think of it, he may not have been...)

•Rereading it in 2025, it was rather weird to see who wasn't in this crossover, which really demonstrates how much the Ultimates-inspired Marvel Cinematic Universe did in raising the profile of the Avengers characters in the years since the late '90s.

Completely absent from the main series are the previously mentioned Black Panther, as well as Scarlet Witch and The Wasp. Black Widow, The Vision and Ant-Man only appear in one panel apiece. Hawkeye and Iron Man appear in two panels each. 

Dr. Strange—who, like Black Panther and Iron Man is now a staple of Marvel's line-wide event stories—is also mostly absent, only appearing in a single panel. Also MIA, somewhat surprisingly, were Mister Fantastic Reed Richards (no battle against Plastic Man...or even The Elongated Man?) and Invisible Woman Sue Richards. (The other half of the Fantastic Four, The Human Torch and The Thing, only appear in a single panel, facing off against Firestorm and Martian Manhunter.)

And then there's Carol Danvers, who would of course be promoted to Captain Marvel in the 21st Century. She doesn't so much as cameo either. 

Granted, I have no idea which Marvel characters were retired, dead, in comas or in alternate universes at the time, so maybe all of the above had very good excuses for not being featured or even making cameos. But after having read so many line-wide Marvel event series in the last 25 years or so, it was striking how greatly the players differed in the '90s. 

•So if DC Versus Marvel were published today, who do you think the main "champions" from each universe forced to fight one another would be, aside from the absolute certainty of a Harley Quinn vs. Deadpool matchup? 

I thought about this off and on while reading, as it is certainly the case that Lobo and Superboy would not be participating were the event held in 2025...or at any point in the 21st century, probably. 

On Marvel's side, it's fairly certain Storm wouldn't be involved; she mainly seems to have been chosen to give Wonder Woman a similarly high-profile woman to fight and, in 1996, that's probably the closest Marvel had to a Wonder Woman of its own (Today, I'm sure they would pit Wondy against Captain Marvel Carol Danvers). 

And, as I said, I think Jubilee was mainly involved because Robin needed an opponent.

Otherwise, of the five main fights that readers could vote on, I think the other participants are mostly as popular today, and/or seen as the preeminent in their respective universes, as they were in the late '90s: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, Spider-Man, The Hulk and Wolverine. (Maybe they would have replaced Hulk with Thor in a fight against Superman, were one held today, though? I'm not sure what sales or fan esteem for Thor and Hulk are at the moment, of course, but I've obviously seen much more of Thor in various Marvel events and team books than I have The Hulk in the 21st Century).

As for the six undercards, I think we'd definitely see some of those same matches repeating, like speedsters Flash vs. Quicksilver and Atlantean monarchs Aquaman vs. Namor. Others I'm not so sure about. 

If we saw a Robin today, it wouldn't be Tim Drake, but Damian Wayne, and I would therefore be surprised if Jubilee showed up at all. I think DC and Marvel would now be more likely to pit a Green Lantern against a Nova (instead of the Silver Surfer). And with both universes filled with more female characters, I don't know that a Catwoman vs. Elektra fight would even be included. 

With Green Arrow Oliver Queen now alive and well and Hawkeye more prominent, I imagine we would get an archer showdown, just as I assume Black Canary and Black Widow would be pitted against one another.

At any rate, I have to assume were the crossover published today, Marvel's participants would be tilted more toward the Avengers than the X-Men than this one was. 

Next: 1997's DC/Marvel: All-Access/Amalgam Comics

Review: Blue and Gold

A comic book series teaming Booster Gold and Blue Beetle is something that I've heard fans asking for since about the time I started reading comics. For some reason, DC finally decided to pull the trigger on it in 2021, launching Blue and Gold by writer (and Booster Gold creator) Dan Jurgens and artist Ryan Sook.

It apparently proved to be the wrong time, as the book lasted only eight issues. (By way of contrast, Jurgens' last Booster Gold series, which launched in 2007, lasted 47 issues, until it was canceled as part of the New 52 initiative.) That means DC must have decided to axe Blue and Gold around the time the first issue or two were being released.  

This makes the last issue particularly interesting. The two characters are sitting around talking to their friend and partner Terri Collins (Originally Trixie, from the first, 1986 Booster Gold series). The subject is the new endeavor that they've been trying to get off the ground, a crowd-funded personal superhero service for people who need help but can't get Superman or Batman's attention, but it sounds pretty clear they're talking about something else. 

"They believe in your mission and contributed," Terri tells Beetle of all their fans. "But to sustain an expensive operation like this, we need the kind of money they don't have."

"A great idea like ours should have worldwide support!" Booster laments. "So where is it?"

"Sometimes, great ideas die because they're ahead of their time or people don't understand how to manage them," Beetle says. "We gave it our best shot, Booster."

So, what went wrong? Honestly, having just read the book's entire run in a surprisingly hard to find trade paperback (more on that later), I don't really have any good theories. 

Jurgens' plotting isn't exactly original, and I personally found at least one aspect of it pretty irritating, but he obviously gets the characters just fine, indulges in the expected nostalgia service to fans and presents a perfectly decent superhero comic, of the very same sort he did with the previously mentioned 21st century Booster Gold comic. 

While Ryan Sook's art isn't necessarily to my liking (its sense of realism gives off uncanny valley vibes to me), he's a talented and well-liked artist. He doesn't draw all of the book, of course (He handles five issues, and parts of a sixth), but all of the guest artists are great ones (Cully Hamner, Phil Hester, Paul Pelletier and a strategically deployed Kevin Maguire plus Jurgens himself). 

And it plays nice enough with the DCU, featuring an appearance by the then-current Justice League in the first issue (That would be the Brian Michael Bendis one, which I never read any of; maybe a League prominently featuring Naomi and Black Adam isn't the sales-booster that other Leagues have been?), appearances by Batman and Guy Gardner (both in the present as well as in flashback), guest-star Jamie Reyes (in an issue with a nice cover) and connectivity to ongoing continuity. (Although I must confess I have no idea how it is that Blue Beetle came back to life after his death in 2005's Countdown to Infinite Crisis; was he resurrected via time travel shenanigans in the pages of Booster Gold and I simply forgot about it, or just rebooted back to the land of the living through DC's series of continuity reboots between the New 52 and Dark Nights: Death Metal...?)

So, I guess I'm just going to assume it was a matter of timing, and that the market and the fans just weren't ready for a nostalgia-driven, comedy-infused superhero book featuring a pair of characters best known for a decades-old run on the Justice League franchise. At least, not on an ongoing basis. 

Jurgens kicks the book off with a Justice League adjacent story, which is more than appropriate given the fact that most readers most associate the leads with their time on the League...as well as the fact that a Justice League appearance is usually a pretty good way to ensure a certain number of eyeballs (It certainly got me to check out 1997's Resurrection Man #1!).

The League has been defeated and are currently being held captive aboard a huge alien spaceship, which is about to leave Earth orbit with them. A live-streaming Booster Gold  intervenes (seen by viewers on "Instaslam Live," one of the many, many mentions of off-brand, DCU answers to real-world social media that pepper the book), but his suit's powers prove no match for the ship's defenses.

With Booster on the ropes, Skeets recruits Ted Kord to help, and before long his beetle-shaped ship makes the scene. Together, the heroes are able to infiltrate the ship, and Skeets and Beetle manage to hack its computers, saving the League.

Afterwards, Booster is confident the League will offer them membership (Not a crazy assumption, given this line-up has Hippolyta, Naomi and Black Adam), but when Booster is out of earshot, they instead offer membership to Beetle only, not accepting the pair as a package deal. Beetle declines, later telling Booster they didn't want either of them. 

As for that actively irritating bit, Jurgens includes little narration boxes in many of the panels featuring Booster's social media followers commenting on the action, adding another, very busy narrative thread to that of the art and dialogue for readers, and it makes for panels so dense that I honestly stopped reading these at some point, as they come and go throughout the book. 

(To make them somewhat more interesting, two of the commenters appear to be Bibbo Bibbowski, whose handle is "b-bo" and who spells Superman the same way he pronounces it for some reason, and Guy Gardner, whose handles is "gg." Two other frequent commenters, each a young, female superfan of one of the leads, will appear in person later in the book.)

After a bit of status quo readjusting—Ted is fired from Kord Industries, cutting off his access to their tech and, more importantly, their funding—the pair turn to crowd-funding for their new venture. This is a social media-driven, store-front superhero business they call "Blue and Gold Restoration" (which really sounds like they fix houses), one that promises easy access to their customers and help in areas often overlooked by League-level heroes, from rescuing cats from trees to investigating haunted houses to dealing with alien abduction.

This may sound a bit familiar, as it's not too far removed from their venture with other JLI alum in Formerly Known as The Justice League and "I Can't Believe It's Not The Justice League", and reminiscent both of Marvel's original Heroes for Hire concept (which Jurgens has a reporter at a press conference mention) or even what Fire and Ice were up to in their recent miniseries, which actually followed the cancellation of Blue and Gold). 

If that concept seems intriguing to you, don't get too excited. It's mostly confined to the background of the goings-on, a goal our heroes work towards as they are constantly interrupted by fallout from their defeat of the alien ship in the first issue. An alien princess named Omnizon has come to Earth to claim it as a possession of her home planet, as they planted the high-tech equivalent of a "flag" on it and claimed it as their own 70,000 years ago, well before any modern governments had formed or there were any superheroes around to oppose them.

This conflict will fill most of the first six-issues, which, honestly, wouldn't have been a bad miniseries, setting up a new status quo for the two heroes, and giving them a point from which Jurgens and other creators could launch further miniseries or anthology shorts, or have them guest-star in other books. 

Joining our heroes are a Kord-invented, female-voiced floating robot personal assistant named "Buggles" that gives him his own Skeets (and gives Skeets someone else to talk to), and Rip Hunter, who Jurgens established an important, if secret, connection to Booster during the character's second ongoing. (In fact, Rip basically saves the title characters from Omnizon and her people, rather undercutting their efficacy as superheroes.)

Probably the highlight of these half-dozen coulda-been-a-miniseries issues is issue #4, "Spllittin' Image," which provides the most direct shot of nostalgia. Sook handles the "present day" art, depicting Booster and Beetle during a live televison interview about Blue and Gold Restoration. 

When the subject rolls around to how they first became friends, they each tell their own version of the same story, in which they battle Blackguard shortly after Booster joined the Justice League. Kevin Maguire, the artist most associated with what we now refer to as the JLI era, draws the seven pages or so that depict Beetle's version of the story (which also includes Guy, Batman and a group shot of the team), while Jurgens himself draws those devoted to Booster's version (with the same guest-stars).

Ultimately, Guy Gardner crashes the interview ("Time to set the record STRAIGHT", the social media account belonging to "gg" says just before Guy appears), and tells the real version, in which Batman sends him in to rescue Blue Beetle and Booster both from Blackguard (Maguire and Jurgens split the art duties on Guy's version of the story). 

As for the last two issues, these read more-or-less like Jurgens starting a new arc and then wrapping it up more quickly than expected, establishing the characters' new status quo in a way that is more sustainable than their trouble securing funding from their fans and/or having DC continue to publish their book would suggest. 

Guest artists Pelletier and Hester split art duties on issue #7, while Sook pencils the entirety of #8. New Blue Beetle Jamie Reyes (the Blue Beetle with the most recent solo titles and a live-action movie) comes to visit Blue and Gold and is attacked off-panel by a mystery villain who turns out to be The Black Beetle, a time-travelling villain from Jurgens' most-recent Booster Gold series with a mysterious connection to our heroes. That connection is revealed as he's defeated and, after some hang-out time, the title characters meet with Terry and discuss their failure.

At the last minute, the DC hero with the biggest back account swoops in to save Blue and Gold Restoration with a pretty massive donation, allowing our heroes' free superhero services to apparently carry on beyond the pages of this book ("Definitely Not... ...The END!" a last-panel tag reads, although I don't know that we've seen the heroes since, have we...? As with a similar tag in the last panel of Gail Simone and Adriana Melo's Plastic Man, that seems to have been an aspirational promise of future adventures, rather than a promise from the publisher).

Of course, in the real world, there was no benevolent billionaire to continue to fund Jurgens, Sook and company's work, and thus Blue and Gold didn't last beyond that issue. 

As to why I am reading this trade in 2025, after having passed on both the serially-published comics and the trade's initial release (So, um, as a fan of the characters who didn't buy any of their comics, I suppose I'm part of the reason the book didn't make it), well, I was reminded of its existence after reading Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville last October.

I was surprised to find out that the consortium of libraries that the library I work at shares materials with (which is based in Cleveland and is comprised of over 40 library systems all over northeast Ohio) didn't have any copies of the trade at all. 

So instead, I turned to my hometown library. They didn't have a copy either, but the consortium they belong to had a single copy, at Way Public Library in Perrysburg, about two hours away. I reserved it last fall, and it just now became available.

So Blue and Gold apparently didn't prove too terribly popular with Ohio libraries either, I guess...

DC Versus Marvel Omnibus Pt. 15: Superman/Fantastic Four #1

Despite their place of honor as Marvel's First Family and theirs being the original comic book that kicked off what would quite quickly become the Marvel Universe, the Fantastic Four had yet to appear in a DC/Marvel crossover as the 20th century was drawing to a close. Not even the 1996 DC Versus Marvel series, which seemed to feature everyone, had made any real room for them, with The Human Torch and The Thing sharing only a single-panel cameo in all of its pages, and the other half of the team not even getting that much space.

Perhaps that was simply because their number made them harder to pair with DC characters. Maybe it seemed like with four of them, there were just too many of them to meet up with DC's traditional crossover stars Superman or Batman, and yet there was also too few of them to battle against and/or team-up with a whole DC team, like the Justice League, Titans or New Gods. DC did have a couple of quartets in their character catalog, in the form of the Doom Patrol and Kirby-created Challengers of the Unknown, but perhaps neither was considered a good fit for the FF and a high-profile book like an inter-company crossover.

Whatever the reason, they seemed pretty low on the DC/Marvel crossover priority list, not being featured until they shared this 1999 book with The Man of Steel (Who, like the FF, was the first character in what would grow into a whole superhero universe).

It seems to have been writer/artist Dan Jurgens—who had at that point long been associated with DC Comics and Superman in particular but had more recently branched out to work for Marvel on Sensational Spider-Man and Thor—who found some connective tissue between the two franchises. 

He drew a line between Superman as the Last Son of Krypton and the FF's planet-destroying opponent Galactus, and further involved his own creation and pet character Cyborg Superman, whose own origin was so clearly based on that of the Fantastic Four. 

The resultant comic, officially entitled "The Infinite Destruction", would differ from most of the other DC/Marvel crossovers in two ways.

First, while it's not obvious from its collection in the DC Versus Marvel Omnibus we've been reviewing our way through, the book was published at the same bigger, 10-inch by 13.5-inch "treasury format" that the first three DC/Marvel crossovers of the late '70s and early '80s were.

This was no doubt a great showcase for Jurgens' art, which is here finished by Art Thibert and colored by Gregory Wright. Even at the smaller size, it looks good; cleaner and smoother than usual. (Although, having seen so much of Jurgens' '90s art of late, I still think it looks best inked by Jerry Ordway in 1994's Zero Hour: Crisis in Time). 

The cover is pretty cool, too. You can't really tell from that bum image at the top of my post, but it was by Alex Ross, painting over Jurgens' pencils, and no doubt instilling the image with an epic sweep that flattered the book. 

Second, in terms of its premise, Superman/Fantastic Four was one of the few such stories in which the DC and Marvel Universes were treated as separate and distinct dimensions within the greater multiverse, their barrier breachable only under certain conditions. 

This was, of course, the case with the1996 Green Lantern/Silver Surfer: Unholy Alliances and Silver Surfer/Superman and, obviously, that same year's DC Versus Marvel, which established a regular means for traveling between the universes going forward in its character Access, who would go on to star in the DC/Marvel: All Access and Unlimited Access, both of which involved Superman travelling to the Marvel Universe (Though he never met the FF on either occasion). 

Here, the people in the Marvel Universe seem to know Superman quite well, but in a way similar to that in which the people of our universe know him: He has a cartoon show that Franklin Richards and Ben Grimm both watch, and Franklin has a Superman toy he carries around with him, apparently occasionally peppering his mother with questions about the DC Universe's hero.

When Superman receives a Kryptonian communication crystal that projects a hologram of his father Jor-El that tells him that Krypton's destruction was actually hastened along by a feeding Galactus, the Man of Steel notes aloud that he has "heard whispers of his existence from the heroes of the other universe." Realizing that if Galactus is able to enter into Superman's own universe, then he could potentially pose a threat to his Earth someday, and he flies off to find experts on the dangerous cosmic entity.

"And to find them...I need Access," he says.

Superman apparently finds him off-panel, and through his powers makes his way to the Marvel Universe, where the story picks up with Superman arriving at the Fantastic Four's then-base, Pier Four. No sooner does Superman arrive though, then villains attack. 

Hank Henshaw, the Cyborg Superman, emerges from the Kryptonian crystal (he had apparently seen it arriving in Earth orbit and hitched a ride) and he immediately possesses the FF's computers and defenses and uses them against the heroes. 

Meanwhile, Galactus arrives, abducts Superman, infuses him with the power cosmic and makes him his new herald, which involves a bit of a makeover: Superman's cape disappears, and his skin and costume both turn a shiny gold color.

Galactus teleports his new herald aboard his ship, with Reed wrapped around him, and then sets off to resume his planet-eating lifestyle.

Meanwhile, the remaining Fantastic three strike a bargain with Cyborg Superman: If he will help them track Galactus through space, using the Kryptonian crystal, then they will release him from Sue's forcefield cage. He agrees, largely because he wants to become Galactus' all-powerful herald (That is, after all, why he had been hiding in the intercepted crystal after all). 

What follows is an adventure through space, as the FF try to stop Superman and Galactus from finding and eating new, inhabited planets. This involves the FF fighting Superman and Galactus. But as Superman is in his new, souped-up herald form—Reed calls him the second most powerful being in existence, presumably behind only Galactus—they're even a less of a match for him then they would usually be.

It will eventually take Reed's smarts and Franklin reminding Superman of his true self to free the Man of Steel from Galactus' thrall, thwart the planet-eating giant, and reach a sort of detente with him that resolves the conflict long enough to end the book. 

There's not much more to it, really, and it turns out to be not necessarily that great of a Fantastic Four story, which was perhaps inevitable, given its main contributor being such a longtime Superman creator. That is, it's not that difficult to imagine this story existing without the FF in it at all; it can certainly be seen as a Superman/Galactus story more than a Superman/Fantastic Four story. 

As for concerns that Jurgens here irrevocably changes Superman lore by putting Galactus at Krypton as it dies, it turns out that story was an invention of the Cyborg Superman, who had over-written and altered the contents of the Kryptonian crystal when he possessed it. 

Thus, things go back to normal for all of the characters involved at the end of the crossover, as is ever the case. Although Franklin does get to keep Superman's cape as a souvenir.

At this late date, the crossovers were winding down, with only three more to go before they officially ceased. One of these—in fact, the very next one—would again feature Superman, and end up being perhaps one of the better, if not the all-around best, of the DC/Marvel crossovers.

Next: 1999's Incredible Hulk vs. Superman

Well, what do you know...

DC Comics and Archie Comics—and, more precisely, Dan Jurgens, Ron Marz, Tom King, Dan Parent and about eight other creators—got me to set foot inside a comic shop for the first time in...I don't remember how long...? Probably the early days of Sophie Campbell's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles run, when I was still struggling to read it monthly, and constantly butting up against the vagaries of direct market and local comic shop ordering and shipping problems. 

How did they manage it? An appeal to nostalgia was certainly a factor, as Zero Hour 30th Anniversary Special #1 paired creators and characters from what might be my favorite decade of the publisher's output for an 80-page tie-in to a favorite crossover story from my youth.  

But, more important than even that, I think, is the fact that, in these two instances at least, the publishers decided to publish individual, standalone comic books, rather than miniseries or series that a consumer could be quite confident would eventually end up in trade collections, which has now become my favorite way to consume comics (In part because it's easier and cheaper, and, in even larger part, because I just have way too many damn comic books in way too many damn long boxes, and I need not add any more to the fantastic comic book midden that is now actively factoring into life choices I make.).

In other words, I had to buy these comic books, as they were sold, rather than waiting for trades to buy or borrow from the library, as, in both cases, they did not seem like they would ever be collected (The former is an 80-page giant, and is practically already a trade, with a spine of its own, while the latter is a simple 20-page gag strip, apparently created so the writer, an Archie fan, could add an Archie comic to his bibliography). (Contrast these with two one-shot specials from IDW Publishing I was extremely excited about, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 40th Anniversary Comics Collection and Godzilla's 70th Anniversary, both of which had solicitations for deluxe versions listed on Amazon before the direct market books were even released in comics shops). 

Should comics publishers do this sort of thing more often, then...? I mean, personally, I hope they don't (see that bit about my not wanting to buy any more new comic books to add to my already too-big collection), but I thought it worth observing that one way a publisher could sell more comic books is to focus on publishing comic books rather than chapters for future collections of comics...at least now and then, anyway.

As to what I thought of these comics, I'll have a review of one in my next monthly(-ish) review column on the 6th of the month, and the other will likely appear at Good Comics for Kids in the near-ish future. Can you guess which is which?

Review: Superman and The Justice League of America Vol. 2

As I had previously noted, packaging writer/artist Dan Jurgens' brief 18-ish issue 1992-1993 run on the era's main Justice League book as "Superman and Justice League America" made a lot of sense if you're trying to sell these comics in trade form in 2016...at least until you get to volume two, as Superman dies in the first of the monthly issues collected here (his Justice League encounters Doomsday before Superman does), is mourned in the next one and then is completely absent for the rest of the run.

I was a little surprised by the actual contents of this collection though, as it opens not with Justice League America #66 (the League vs. Doomsday issue that tied into the "Death of Superman" storyline in the Superman books of the time), but with Justice League America Annual #6. That gives us another 58-pages of the Justice League America comics featuring a still-living Superman.

That annual is from the "Eclipso: The Darkness Within" crossover event storyline that ran through all of DC's annuals that year. As with similar events of the time, the relevance of each tie-in varied considerably from instance to instance, but this one is a great deal more relevant than, say, any of the Batman-related ones.

Jurgens is merely credited with "Dark Design," which I suppose could mean either plotting, or lay-outs or both, although it doesn't look like he designed the pages themselves. Dan Mishkin writes, while Dave Cockrum pencils and Jose Marzan Jr. inks. Dr. Bruce Gordon and a few other heroes join Superman and the League at their headquarters–including Wonder Woman and Metamorpho–as they strategize about the threat of Eclipso. This is relatively early in the villain's attack, but he manages to possess Maxima and send her to Nevada to cause destruction on a scale that draws the League there, while he himself stalks and battles Blue Beetle throughout the team's headquarters. In the end, his plan is only advanced a step or so, as he gets another "eclipsed" soldier for his army, but it's pretty remarkable how much action the longer page-count offers. These days, an annual is generally only slightly longer than a regular issues, maybe twice as long if you're lucky, but this is just shy of three times the length of an ordinary issue, allowing the scenes to be drawn out much longer. You sure got a lot more punching and blasting back in the day!

Of course, there's no real resolution to the story, as this was just one of the 20 parts of the storyline, and the collection jumps ahead to JLA #66 from there. I personally missed this annual the first time around, as I was a teenager with little money to waste on comics, cheap as they were, back in 1992. Looking now, I see that I've actually only read about a half-dozen of the 20 discrete chapters of the story. It was designed so one need only read the first and last chapters Eclipso: The Darkness Within #1 and #2, with few of the issues in-between being all that relevant, but there sure was some cool stuff in there, as when pretty much all of the un-eclipsed heroes had to fight an eclipsed Superman. I wouldn't mind reading a collection of this entire storyline, but like similar annual events Armageddon 2001 and Bloodlines, collecting it into trade would prove challenging, based on its size alone.

The next issue is also one that occurs mid-storyline. Doomsday takes on Guy Gardner, Booster Gold, Blue Beetle, Bloodwynd, Maxima, Fire and Ice and has pretty much torn them apart by the time Superman arrives on the last page. And that's that issue (Spoiler alert: Superman and Doomsday kill one another in a brawl that continues all the way into downtown Metropolis. They both get better and come back to life about a year later though).

And then it's time for the "Funeral for a Friend" tie-in issue, where the superhero community convenes at New York City's JLA HQ to mourn Superman, and Oberon passes out the black arm-bands with the S-shield on them. From here on, the collection tells a cohesive ongoing story...albeit a rather rocky one that must have seemed entirely unexpected at the start of Jurgens' run.

In the "Funeral for a Friend" issue, the League takes stock after their battle with Doomsday: Fire is powerless, Ice decides to quit, Booster Gold's costume was destroyed rendering him powerless and Blue Beetle is still in a coma. These characters are still the focus of the issue, but Jurgens lavishes attention on the many guest-stars, each of whom get a few lines about Superman and/or death, and each of whom is introduced in a dramatic action pose. Reading it now, it's actually a bit of a surprise that DC resisted the temptation to just launch a new team of their biggest heroes right then and there. With Superman dead, there was certainly an in-story rationale and motivation for the "old" Justice Leaguers, who the publisher was for whatever reasons resistant to use more than one or two of at a time on a League roster, to form a new, all-star League of the sort we wouldn't get into Grant Morrison, Howard Porter and John Dell's JLA.

The first to arrive? The Flash, Aquaman, Batman and Robin, Green Lantern and Hawkman–that's six right there. They are followed immediately by Starfire and Nightwing, then Green Lantern Alan Scott, The Flash Jay Garrick, Power Girl, Elongated Man, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow and Black Canary.

The actual make-up of the League that follows the Doomsday-damaged one is a little more interesting, and they are formed by the end of the next issue: Maxima, Guy Gardner and Bloodwynd are joined by new recruits Agent Liberty, The Ray, Black Condor and new leader Wonder Woman. They...don't last long. At that point, there are only two story arcs left in Jurgens' run: The fairly epic five-part "Destiny's Hand," and then a two-parter finally resolving the issue of Bloodwynd.

With "Destiny's Hand," Jurgens at least gets to use many of the classic Justice Leaguers that merely cameo-ed in the "Funeral" issue. Classic Justice League villain Doctor Destiny returns, and essentially merges a nightmare version of a fascist, world-ruling, near-future version of the Satellite Era Justice League, with the "real world" of the real Justice League.

And so Jurgens' League finds itself up against evil versions of The Flash (in black!), Hawkman, Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern Hal Jordan, Firestorm, Green Arrow, Black Canary and The Atom. It's a precursor of sorts to the "Justice Lords" episodes of Justice League Unlimited and the video game/comics of Injustice: Gods Among Us, which gives Jurgens the opportunity to draw the Satellite Era league, his League, some classic villains and bring his apparent favorite character The Atom Ray Palmer into the pages of his Justice League America.

The ending of this book, and thus of Jurgens' run, seems pretty abrupt, and some of the characters introduced seem to have barely been there at all. Agent Liberty, for example, has few lines after he's officially recruited to the team. Looking ahead, this was the start of a pretty chaotic period for the franchise. Dan Vado takes over as writer for a little bit, adding a few characters to the extant line-up (Captain Atom and Garrick), then there's the controversial "Judgement Day" crossover story with the other Justice League titles of the day, the "Zero Hour" crossover that introduced Triumph and, finally, Gerard Jones takes over for an almost-two-year run that brings the series to its conclusion, making way for the previously mentioned Morrison, Porter and Dell JLA.

I will be curious to see if what follows gets collected at all and, if so, how (Maybe as Wonder Woman and The Justice League of America...?). The "Judgement Day" and "Zero Hour" are easily collectible as standalone trades (the former can have Mark Waid's name splashed across it, the latter, which is a three-part story and might need paired with other material, can have Christopher Priest and Phil Jimenez's names highlighted), but given that the Vado and Jones runs aren't terribly well remembered as anything other than the stuff between the Giffen/Jones JLI era and the Morrison JLA era, demand is probably limited only to committed fans like me who would rather own trades that back-issues at this point.

They are still a lot better than a bunch of other Justice League comics that have been collected though! Like, almost everything since Identity Crisis, maybe...?

Review: Dark Horse Comics/DC Comics: Superman

This 400-page collection is the latest big, fat, book of crossovers between DC characters and those owned or licensed to Dark Horse Comics. I can't quite figure out how they are organized. For example, this collection includes two Superman/Aliens crossovers, which seem like they could have just as easily appeared in the previously published DC Comics/Dark Horse Comics: Aliens (which did include the Superman/Batman/Aliens/Predator crossover), and the upcoming DC Comics/Dark Horse Comics: Justice League will include two Superman stories. I imagine it has something to do with which publisher technically publishes which collection–note the way the order of which publisher is named varies from book to book–but regardless of the behind-the-scenes organizing principal, these books include a bunch of harder-to-find-then-I'd like crossovers of the past couple decades, many of them quite good comics.

This particular volume features comics from 1995-2002, three of which are in Superman continuity (or in continuity as it existed at the time), with the fourth and final one being an Elseworlds story. Let's take them one at a time, shall we...?

Superman/Aliens by Dan Jurgens, Kevin Nowlan, Gregory Wright and Android Images

This three-issue, 1995 miniseries is among the best of the DC/Dark Horse crossovers, and one of the better inter-publisher crossovers I've ever read. Much of that is due to the skill that went into crafting it, but more still is due to the amount of care that writer/artist Dan Jurgens put into the book.

The Aliens, like the Predators, have become such frequent participants in crossovers due to their extreme flexibility–they're basically just cool monsters to fight–that such comics can often read as extremely lazy. Jurgens, however, brings a real sense of occasion to this story.

He manages to make the story almost as much of an Aliens story as it is a Superman story, and while the superhero is the protagonist of the story, Jurgens carefully sets it up in such a way that the Aliens and their horrifying life-cycle aren't just backdrops to a Superman beat 'em up. Rather, he evokes the sort of lonely setting and the horror/suspense mood that are so prominent in the film franchise, and even uses the single, female protagonist that powered the earlier films...although here she is, of course, teamed-up with Superman.

More remarkably still, not only does Jurgens handicap Superman in such a way that the Aliens pose a real threat to him–most of the story is spent far from Earth, so his solar-based powers are waning like a dying battery throughout, and he must struggle with his refusal to take a life, even the lives of the Aliens–but he instills about as real a sense of danger that can exist in a Superman comic.

At no point did I think Superman was going to die in this comic, but when the near-powerless Superman has an Alien implanted in his no-longer invulnerable chest cavity, I did find myself wondering how exactly he was going to survive (My guess, that he would plunge himself into the sun, burning out the embryo while restoring his own powers, as soon as he returned to the solar system, turned out to be wrong; the reality was much grosser).

Oh, and Jurgens sets this story firmly within Superman's post-Crisis, pre-Flashpoint continuity–inter-company crossover or no, this is canon guys–reflecting not only the status quo of the Super-books circa 1995, but also referencing a handful of previous stories from this continuity. Most of these aren't terribly important, although they are referred to in dialogue and asterisked editorial box, but one does play a big role: Superman's early career execution of the pocket universe Kryptonians, as that was when he swore never to kill again, an oath frequently tested by the Aliens (His first fight with a single Alien is actually kind of funny, as he keeps trying to communicate with it while it tries eating his face.)

Reporters Lois Lane and Clark Kent are covering LexCorp's space-division as they recover an alien probe and take it to their orbiting space-station. It's a distress pod of some kind, asking for help, and Superman recognizes the language it's using as Kryptonian. He insists that he and he alone find and help the people who sent it, with the help of LexCorp, who provides him with the space ship to do it in.

The destination? Argo City, a domed city in deep space (far from a yellow sun) and peopled with too-few Kryptonian-speaking humanoids. Superman loads some injured, unconscious residents into his ship and sends it back to the station, asking them to send it back for him (as otherwise he would be stranded here). Sure, his powers are slowly starting to wane, but how dangerous can the place be...?

Pretty dangerous, it turns out, as its swarming with Aliens, and, worse still, the unconscious people he sent back to the space station, where Lois is, are of course harboring gestating Aliens in their chests. At the end of the first issue, Jurgens provides a pretty big shock for his readers at the time: The blonde teenage girl who speaks Kryptonian and is fighting for her survival on Argo City tells Superman that her name is...wait for it...Kara.

That would have been a pretty big deal in 1995, as that would make her the only other survivor of Krypton in the post-Crisis continuity, it would also make her a new version of the original (read: real) Supergirl. The one in DC Comics at the time was the weird sentient protoplasm from a pocket universe one whose back-story just got more and more confusing until DC just let Jeph Loeb restart Supergirl's origin in Superman/Batman a decade or so after this saw publication).

As the series progresses, we learn whether or not this Kara is the Kara, but, more importantly from the stand-point of making a good Superman/Aliens crossover, Jurgens has effectively split the action into two settings, both evocative of the first two Aliens movies. On the space station, the hatched and escaped Aliens stalk Lois, LexCorp's Dr. Kimble and the rest of the much more expendable cast, while on Argo City, Superman gradually loses all of his powers and must face a series of blows to his confidence and optimism: That he can't just punch out the millions of Aliens, that he sent a ship-full of them towards a space station containing Lois and orbiting Earth, that no ship is coming to retrieve him and, ultimately, that he and Kara both have Aliens gestating in their chests.

As unlikely a pairing as the two multi-media franchises may be–seriously, pause and compare the films Superman and Superman II to Alien and Aliens in your mind for a moment–Jurgens makes them fit naturally, and manages to deliver a story that honors the attributes of Aliens while cutting to the core of what makes Superman such a great, aspirational, noble and heroic character.

You know what else is an unlikely pairing? Jurgens and Kevin Nowlan. Jurgens pencils the book, while Nolan inks it, but based on the results, it looks like Jurgens provided fairly full lay-outs and Nowlan finished them. It's a great collaboration, as it looks at once like the art of Jurgens and the art of Nowlan, two very distinctive, very prolific artists whose work is easily recognizable at a glance.

There are therefore a lot of the familiar lay-outs and heroic poses of Jurgens' Superman comics–having drawn Superman as long as he has, Jurgens' work often suggests the "real" Superman in the way that, say, long-time Batman artist the late Jim Aparo's Batman poses and expressions often seem genuine in a way that those of other artists don't–but here the art is all more detailed and smoother, with thicker, bolder black lines.

I enjoy the work of current Superman artists Doug Mahnke and Patrick Gleason, but honestly, I can't remember the last time I read a Superman comic where I enjoyed the artwork this much.

(I suppose it's also worth mentioning how odd it is to read this story after reading Geoff Johns and Jim Lee's first story arc of Justice League in 2011 and early 2012, the story in which Superman and his League allies so cavalierly kill Parademons without a second thought. This story is a good illustration of why that was so strange to see. Here Superman tries to communicate with an Alien before even striking it, and resolutely refuses to pick up a gun and destroy one even at his most hopeless, because a life is still a life. In Justice League, he was tearing apart Parademons that were, until recently, normal human beings, without even stopping to consider what they were.)

Superman/Aliens II: God War by Chuck Dixon, Jon Bogdanove, Kevin Nowlan and Dave Stewart

As is so often–too often–the case, the sequel is not nearly as good as the original. This 2002 miniseries, which retains only inker Kevin Nowlan from the first Superman/Aliens crossover, is as much a New Gods comic as it is a Superman or Aliens comic...in fact, Superman and the Aliens both seem like guest-stars in a New Gods comic.

Writer Chuck Dixon has Superman visiting New Genesis, just sort of hanging out with other humanoid super-aliens who can fly and are invulnerable and dress as colorfully as he does, when Darkseid launches a horrible attack. Having discovered the Aliens, Jack Kirby's god of evil impregnates a battalion of his warriors and sends them to attack New Genesis, essentially using them as trojan horses carrying the real weapon, the Aliens themselves.

During the course of the battle, which includes Lightray, Barda and Forager but no Mister Miracle, Orion gets an Alien implanted in his chest. Knowing his time is limited, he decided to go straight for Apokolips, with Superman tagging along. Meanwhile, Barda and her forces try to stave off the invasion of the Aliens that Darkseid rained down on them.

It is, in other words, everything the original Superman/Aliens was not. Here the Aliens are just cool-looking, dramatic monsters appearing in a Superman beat 'em up, but Superman is only one of several heroes doing the beating. If one wonders how Orion survived, I'll spoil it for you, although it should be noted that he should be invulnerable enough to survive in a manner more similar to that of Superman in the original. Basically, Darkseid shows mercy on his son, and uses the Omega beams to destroy the growing Alien. His long-term plan, he explains to lackeys like Desaad, is to instill a sense of indebtedness to his biological son, so that Orion may someday side with him over Highfather.

And, in the stinger ending, if not, well, Darkseid still has a hidden vault full of warriors with face-huggers on them, apparently in stasis to pull out when needed.

The only real pleasure I took in this particular story was the art. I like both Jon Bogdanove, a one-time constant presence on the Superman family of books, and Kevin Nowlan alot, although their styles seem even further apart from that of Jurgens and Nowlan.

Weirdly but understandably, Bogdanove seems to have attempted to town down the Bogdanovicity of his pencil work in an attempt to draw more Kirby-esque, and Nowlan followed his lead. The results are...weird. The New Gods characters all look extremely Kirby-esque, with some panels looking like Kirby himself drw them. Superman is a strange mixture of the thick-torsoed Silver Age Superman with flashes of a primal, angry Kirby face and Bogdanove's normal Man of Steel, and the Aliens look like, well, Aliens.

Dixon's Superman was so changed by his first meeting with these creatures, that he doesn't have any of the moral compunctions about seeing them exterminated that he originally had, and, even if he did, he spends much of the time fighting either alongside Barda or Orion, so it's not like it matters; he's not about to fight Orion to the death to stop the dying New God from turning massive Alien hives into pools of acidic blood.

Other than picking apart the various influences and letting one's eyes surf along the curious braiding of various art styles, there is still some pleasure to be had in the artwork. Dixon and company provide a few interesting images, particularly the scene that follows the mass-birthing of the Aliens from Darkseid's invasion troops, where we see a panel in which the just-born, snake-form of the baby Aliens cover the ground like a carpet.

It's a disappointing read, but then, it hardly matters in this particular collection, as it is but one of four stories, and it is sandwiched between two such great ones.

The Superman/Madman Hullabaloo by Mike Allred and Laura Allred

The second Aliens crossover is followed by Madman creator Mike Allred's three-issue, 1997 miniseries in which his signature creation meets the original and greatest superhero.

Allred was one of the greatest superhero comics artists of the time, and he remains as such–if anything, he's gotten better. His style is the sort that no longer seems as sought after by the Big Two as perhaps it should, but he he has a great line, and produces work that is clean, simple, just-flat-enough and classic-looking...more timeless than nostalgic. When I close my eyes and imagine "comic book art," its Allred's style that immediately springs to mind.

While the artist has long since done a great deal of work for both DC and Marvel, this was a rare and early example of Allred drawing non-Madman, non-Allred creations, and it is pretty glorious.

The plot finds Superman and Madman both aiding their respective bearded scientist friends in researching some weird energy at the same time, the result being a sort of cosmic collision in which they pass through one another and then materialize in one another's dimension.

Superman is in Madman's body, with an amalgamated costume (Allred is one of the great costume designers, and would have been up their with Alex Ross and Darwyn Cooke if I were Dan DiDio and I was trying to decide which artist to let redesign the whole DC Universe for The New 52; DiDio, obviously, went with Jim Lee instead), lands in Snap City. Madman, in Superman's considerably handsomer and more powerful body, lands in Metropolis, also with an amalgamated costume (here somewhat resembling a leather jacket-less '90s Superboy, but with more prominent yellow, and a strip of Madman-mask, so we'd recognize him).

While messing around on one another's Earth and meeting one another's supporting cast (Lois Lane and Professor Hamilton both get pretty big roles, while pretty much everyone from the Madman comics of the time show up), they figure out what's going on and how to fix it. Meanwhile, the collision dispersed bits of Superman's powers throughout both universes, so once restored the pair and their pals must track down individuals exhibiting super-strength and suck those powers out of them with a mad science device.

The root of all this madness? Mr. Mxyzptlk (Here pronounced "Mix-Yez-Pittle-Ick" rather than "Mix-Yez-Spit-Lick," as it was pronounced by Gilbert Gottfried on Superman: The Animated Series, which is how I've been pronouncing it since.)

While technically "in continuity," Allred's Superman and Lois are perfectly classic in their look and characterization, so that with only minor alterations to their clothing they could be Bronze Age, Silver Age or maybe even Golden Age Superman and Lois, or from various media. It's amazing what a good handle Allred had on the characters' essence, and the way he's able to boil them down so perfectly.

There's a neat scene where Madman asks Superman about God, and even a bit of a moral as Mxyzptlk challenges Madman to a magic-free challenge that can only be won physically. It's...well, it's pretty great.

The comic ends with a "The End?!" a gag referring to Dr. Flem's use of Madman as a sort of living crash-test dummy, but it's actually kind of disappointing that it did indeed turn out to be the end. At least we've since gotten to see Allred draw much of the DC Universe in his issue of Solo, and Metamorpho in the pages of Wednesday Comics and so many characters from the original Batman TV show on the covers of Batman '66 and...

Superman/Tarzan: Sons of The Jungle by Chuck Dixon, Carlos Meglia and Dave Stewart

The 2001 three-part miniseries Superman/Tarzan: Sons of The Jungle adhered to the popular (to the point of default) formula for Superman Elseworlds stories of the time: What if the rocket that carried baby Superman from the exploding Krypton to the planet Earth landed in some other place or some other time? Here the rocket crashes not only in late 19th Century Africa, but into the pages of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan origin story.

So just as the mutineers were about to strand Lord Greystoke and his pregnant wife Alice on the coast, they see a fireball from the sky and take it as a sign not to do so, instead taking them to the next port. The fireball was, of course, Superman's baby rocket. And so it is Kal-El rather than Tarzan who is discovered, adopted and raised by the apes, while the-man-who-would-have-been-Tarzan is born in English society, although he becomes a mopey, Byronic figure, aware that something's wrong, that he's not where he's supposed to be, and so he travels the world in a funk, looking for his place.

The characters' stories are too powerful to be altered for long, however, and the original Superman and Tarzan narratives gradually but inexorably reassert themselves. When Greystoke joins a aerial zeppelin expedition of the ruins of a lost city in Africa, an expedition covered by Lois Lane of the Daily Planet and her assistant Jane Porter,
they are shot down by Princess La and her people.

Superman, decked out in a leopard-skin loincloth with a red "S" drawn on his bare chest, comes to the aid of the white-skinned people who fell from the sky. Along the way, Lois falls for this powerful man of action, while Lord Greystoke and Porter ultimately decide to stay behind in Africa, Greystoke finally having found what he was missing there.

So, at the end, Superman becomes Superman (albeit a bit earlier than usual, and thus the costue he wears for a single panel at the end in Metropolis looks much more Flash Gordon than superehro, and Tarzan becomes Tarzan.

Of particular interest is a prose piece entitled "Sons of the Jungle?" written by Robert R. Barrett, identified as "Edgar Rice Burroughs archivist." He recounts the relationships between the two heroes who would eventually both become stars of prose stories, comic strips, comic books, film and television animation, highlighting Superman co-creator and writer Jerry Siegel's overture to Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1934, which included a treatment for a John Carter of Mars adaptation in "cartoon-form," to run alongside the Tarzan Sunday strips. Burroughs, as per policy, never even read the letter. Barrett also address Burroughs' reaction about bringing Tarzan from his jungle setting to the modern, civilized , urban world, which would of course have made him into more of a Superman-like figure, to which Burroughs objected, saying that if Tarzan could not "out-superman Superman...he might suffer by comparison."

As interesting as all this is, I particularly like the paragraph devoted to this comic book series, in which he says that Dixon's "quite...entertaining" story is "interestingly illustrated by the team of Carlos Meglia and Dave Stewart."

"Interesting" is certainly one way to refer to Meglia's art, which is unlike any generally applied to either Superman or Tarzan. Highly cartoony and animated, to the point that the static characters sometimes appear to lurch or launch across the panels, Meglia's arwork is exaggerated as it can be while still being readable. I like it–although I'm not so sure about his obsession with drawing individual strands of hair on a man's arm or chin–but it's certainly not what I would have thought to apply to a crossover of these two characters. I can't help but imagine what a Superman/Tarzan comic drawn by the likes of Joe Kubert circa 2001 might have looked like, for example.

Review: Superman and Justice League of America Vol. 1

I used to have a great deal of sympathy for Dan Jurgens, who took over DC's Justice League franchise–or at least half of it–after Keith Giffen and J. M. DeMatteis' five-year run as its writers. Not only was their run perhaps the most distinct in the history of Justice League comics, but it proved extremely popular for quite a long time, and they expanded the brand into a multi-book franchise, as Justice League International became Justice League America and Justice League Europe (both of which they wrote), and then there were the annuals and even a quarterly. Not only were they going to be a hard act to follow, but Jurgens had the even more unenviable task of following them after their massive 15-part finale "Breakdowns," which revisited and wrapped up just about every aspect of their run. It was pretty much a textbook example of a run.

In 2016, I feel all the more sympathetic for Jurgens, as his run was soon followed by that of Grant Morrison, who completely redefined the Justice League (and DC super-team comics), for years to come. While Jurgens wasn't the only whose run happened to fall between two of the best (and best-loved) runs on a Justice League comic–Dan Vado, Gerard Jones, Christopher Priest Mark Waidand a few others would follow Jurgens on Justice League America, Justice League International, Justice League Task Force and (sigh) Extreme Justice in the years after the Giffen/DeMatteis run but before the Morrison one, he was the first and definitely most prominent. And he is the first of those writers from the tumultuous years between to have his run finally collected into trade paperback, with Superman and Justice League America Vol. 1.*

So, how does it hold up? Well, clearly DC wasn't taking any chances, then or now. They allowed Jurgens to add Superman to the team, and they're titling this series of collections Superman and Justice League America. That might be in order to differentiate it from the other collections of that decade's Justice League comics, collected under the titles Justice League International (the Giffen/DeMatteis run) and JLA (the Morrison run), but more likely is simply meant to advertise Superman's presence and move books (I do like that new hybrid logo).

The collection begins with 1992's Justice League Spectacular #1, a 48-page special by Jurgens, "Gerry" Jones, Ron Randall, Rick Burchett and Randy Elliot that shows the origin of the two new Justice League squads. A bunch of diplomats are visit Disney World analogue Funny Stuff Park, and The Elongated Man and Sue Dibny are along for security. When they are all taken hostage by the new Royal Flush Gang, the remnants of the disbanded JLI–Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, Fire, Ice, Green Lantern Guy Gardner, Power Girl and Metamorpho–try to affect a rescue, but are all felled by the surprisingly effective arsenal of the Gang.

Superman is about to fly down to Florida, only to find Batman lurking atop the Daily Planet building (the first of several oddly daylight appearances by Batman in this volume). Superman says that "With the Justice League disbanded I'm next in line to take on The Royal Flush Gang," which I found amusing, the idea that the superheroes have their own little mental charts about which characters fights which villains, and even a descending order of who should fight said villains if the first choice is unavailable.

Batman is there to try and sell Superman on the idea of not only joining the League, but leading it, and Superman refuses, telling Batman he works better alone, another pretty amusing scene, as we get to see the Dark Knight arguing the virtue of teamwork to Superman (ironically, the "loner" Batman has always worked with partners, and, at this point in post-Crisis, pre-Flashpoint DC history, was much more involved with the Justice League than Superman ever was), and we get to hear some of Superman's super-arrogant thoughts ("I understand Batman's point, but a group would slow me down! How would some of those nonpowered heroes keep up with me?").

Superman doesn't fare much better than the old ex-Leaguers did, and so Ice uses an unconscious Guy's GL ring to try and call for help. Hal Jordan receives her signal, and picks up a rather a random assortment of heroes–The Flash Wally West, Aquaman, Doctor Light and Crimson Fox–before joining the battle.

By page 48, the day is saved, and the characters all agree that there should be a new Justice League, two in fact. Who ends up on which team is determined by a splash page; Superman ends up leading the team that keeps the core of the JLA. Two new characters would join in short order, the Jurgens-created Maxima (from his work on the Superman comics) and the brand-new Bloodwynd, a mysterious sorcerer with one of the most '90s of superhero names and horribly over-accessorized costume (the colors are bold and striking, and the costume might not be so bad were it not for the goofy spandex non-mask that covers much of his head except his face, but then he's got all this jewelry, including a golden, gem-encrusted band around his thigh, for some reason).

Jurgens, perhaps under the influence of Jones in the first chapter, is seems to be hewing rather closely to what came before, not only in terms of the Justice League America cast–which includes Max Lord and Oberon, so that Superman is the only new official addition until a few issues in–but also in the book's tone. Jurgens and Jones aren't as good at the sitcom pitter-patter between characters, but some effort is made to make the characters and their interactions funny (most effectively, perhaps, when Blue Beetle and Booster Gold get in a fight, and Beetle offers a list of long, elaborate mean names, each of which Booster responds to simply with "Jerk!").

Structurally, these first few issues are full of call-backs to the early issues of the Giffen/DeMatteis team, with Lord trying to manufacture an international incident to force the Justice League back together, the involvement of the Royal Flush Gang (who Booster Gold fought upon joining the League for the first time) and a direct homage to the opening of the Giffen/DeMatteis run on the first page of Jurgens' first issue of Justice League America (Guy sitting at a meeting table, with his foot on the table, thinking about how he's going to lead the new team).

Aside from his new additions, Jurgens doesn't mess with any of the characters who were in the book before he arrived too drastically. Fire tries out a few new costumes and Guy's three-issue miniseries that gives him his first post-GL costume and Sinestro's ring occurs off-panel during these issues, but for the most part the characters only get one additional concern or characteristic a piece–Ice is infatuated with Superman, Blue Beetle is suspicious of Bloodwynd, etc. It's not until Vado and other writers take over the various League books that these poor bastards start really feeling the effects of the the prevalent trends of 1990s super-comics, with Booster getting dark and a dumb new costume, Ice going bad and dying and so on. At least in these earliest issues of Jurgens' time on the book–#61-68, so a volume two might be able to finish off his run with #69-#78–the book is pretty carefully calibrated to give a slightly more Jurgens-ized version of what came before.

The writer/artist–Rick Burchett and a few others handle the "finishes" of Jurgens art–also has a great interest in wider Justice League history, finding ways to fit elements of it in wherever he can, and establishing this post-Crisis League as the inheritors, worthy or not, of the original League.

So the very first villain they face is a new version of Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky's Weapons Master (who fought the nascent League in a pre-Justice League of America issue of The Brave and the Bold in 1960), and the cover of his first issue of JLA is an homage to 1960's Justice League of America.

Their next major opponent is Starslayer, who directly references his past encounter with the original League, and The Atom Ray Palmer shows up for a few issues, considering joining the Justice League, but ultimately being chased away by Guy (You might try Justice League Europe, Ray; your former colleagues Hal, Arthur and Ralph are all on that Team).

This is Jurgens at perhaps the height of his popularity–the next few issues of the series will feature the League fighting Doomsday and mourning the loss of Superman–and his art is a rather strong selling point. Jurgens' figure work is strong, and he does a particularly fine job on Batman, in whose two appearances, as well as Beetle, who is usually posed in Spider-Man-esque, bug-like postures, and Guy, who he gives a sharp, mean face that conveys the fairly one-dimensional take on the character given here. The women are mostly interchangeable save for their hair and clothes (and Maxima is a head taller than everyone else).

I'm glad DC finally collected these comics, and I sincerely hope they finish off Jurgens' run in a volume 2 and/or 3 (Not sure if they will collect the 1992 annual, part of that summer's "Eclipso: The Darkness Within" crossover, as all Jurgens provided was the cover), although as the series progresses, Superman and Justice League America will seem a less and less apt title.

As I said, the next two issues feature the League fighting (and failing to stop) Doomsday while the eventual killer of Superman rampages towards Metropolis and then this badly hurt League mourning Superman. Then there's an issue introducing a new team to take over while these guys recover–Wonder Woman! Black Condor II! The Ray II! Agent Liberty!. And then Superman is out for the rest of the run, which features the "Destiny's Hand" arc (the League vs. an evil version of the Satellite Era League) and the two-part origin/explanation of Bloodwynd, which you've likely already heard spoiled, whether you read it or not. So Superman and Justice League America Vol. 2 is going to be very light on the Superman, and heavy on the Justice League America.



*But hopefully not the last! Jurgen's JLA was maybe the more important of the two, but the Gerard Jones-written Justice League Europe, which was being published simultaneously, was the better of them. I would hope that Christopher Priest and Mark Waid's run on Justice League Task Force gets considered at some point. After about a year or so as a sort of anthology book with a rotating cast and rotating writers, Waid and Priest stabilized the book to feature a regular cast telling a single, often quite good ongoing storyline. The premise, Martian Manhunter training young heroes The Ray, Gypsy and Mystek, plus Triumph and L-Ron-in-Despero's boy (don't ask), somewhat pre-figured that of the Young Justice TV show (at least broadly).