There's only one reasonable explanation.

If you've read any of my past posts in which I excitedly blogged my way through certain episodes of the Batman: The Brave and the Bold cartoon, then you know I'm a pretty big fan of the series.

In addition to being a really fun, really funny, really well voice-acted cartoon seemingly aimed at both little kids and the most obsessive adult DC Comics fans, the show consistently marries the particular design skills of many of the great artists to work for DC over the decades (particularly Dick Sprang and Jack Kirby) into a seamless, consistent whole while retaining the individual artists' personal aesthetics. It also seeks out the weirdest and most obscure DC-owned characters available as guest stars, demonstrating how contrary to popular fan opinion even the wackiest characters have modern resonance and potential kid-friendly commercial appeal. It presents a Batman we haven't really seen in any non-comics media since the seventies or so, a life-loving, wise-cracking Bob Haney-style Batman who is nevertheless the ultimate bad-ass, know-it-all detective and obsessed crime fighter we've come to know and love since the mid-eighties or so.

There was a point during the first episode I saw—in which Batman teamed up with Plastic Man to fight Gentleman Ghost, and then crash-landed on Dinosaur Island where Batman got turned into a gorilla, that I wondered if maybe they weren't just making the show just for me. How else to explain the disproportionately large roles given to Plastic Man and Aquaman, two of my favorite superheroes, who aren't exactly at the top of many fans' Favorite Superheroes lists?

That suspicion eventually passed, when I realized how many other folks out there love the show just as much—if not more—than I do.

I haven't been watching it too regularly, as I lack cable and I'm not much of a TV person—90210 and Dancing With The Stars excepted—and I just recently caught up with the second season.

Now I know they weren't making this show for me. Instead, I apparently found a magic lamp at some point during the past few years, and accidentally rubbed it, unbeknowest to me releasing a wish-granting genie. Since I released it unawares and thus didn't actually make a wish, the genie must have read my mind, and then went off to Hollywood, got a job in animation and helped developed Batman: The Brave and The Bold's second season in an effort to duplicate my un-asked for, unconscious desires.

How else to explain a run of episodes that included
Plastic Man's pal Woozy Winks,


Captain Marvel fighting a Dr. Sivana that looks like he leapt right out of a C.C. Beck comic (oh, and the Sivana kids and Black Adam, too),


Aquaman packing Mera and a sullen Arthur Jr. (wearing his dad's 1986 miniseries costume!) going on an RV vacation of the surface world,


The Teen Titans as little kids,


Batman flying the killer skies with Enemy Ace,


The Batman of Zur-En-Arrh (!!!),


Batman wearing Plastic Man as a giant boot...in order to kick a Bigfoot in the face...in the middle of a fight scene against an entire gang of Bigfoots,


Batman wearing the Metal Men as a Batman costume...


...allowing him to use their fantastic metallic powers to do battle with their foes,


and Doc Magnus undercover as a space pimp (wearing his Metal Man Gold as false gold teeth)

And that's before we even get into in what is perhaps the greatest episode of anything on TV ever, "Death Race to Oblivion," in which someone—probably that genie I was talking about—had the great idea to splice DC super-comics with Wacky Races and Death Race 2000, resulting in an episode in which Mongul eschews the whole forced gladiatorial combat thing for an every person-for-themself road race between various superheroes and supervillans in their various super-vehicles.

So you've got Batman and Joker in the Batmobile and Jokermobile (respectively), Green Arrow in his Arrow Car, Gentleman Ghost in a souped-up hearse, Steppenwolf in a monstrous polluting tank thing, The Huntress on a purple motorcycle, Black Manta in a big War of the Worlds-looking manta crab walker thing, Green Lantern Guy Gardner in a ring-generated muscle car,


Woozy Winks driving Plastic Man in the form of a race car,


and Catwoman in her Catmobile, with cat-scratching action!

Who wins? Who loses? And how do the heroes defeat Mongul? Well, it involves Batman transforming the Batmobile into a giant robot battle suit and, oh my God,Batman in a Batmobile that is also a Transformer!

Thank you mind-reading, wish-granting genie in the animation industry! Keep up the good work!

Review: Enemy Ace: War Idyll

A creation of the post-Maus/Watchmen/Dark Knight Returns Comics Aren’t Just For Kids Any More period, 1990 original hardcover Enemy Ace: War Idyll (DC Comics) is a very much a product of its time.

Certainly it’s noteworthy when looking at the recent history of its publisher, as the fully-painted book would have begun being created in the late eighties, and it would have seen release in the pre-Vertigo imprint days, making one of a handful of bridge books between DC’s more mature and sophisticated comics set in the publisher’s shared superhero universe and the coming suite of mature audience genre comics.

It’s also noteworthy for it’s ambition. George Pratt both wrote and painted the entire 128-page story (Willie Schubert lettered it), the subject of which was about as broad as one could get (war) and the plot of which was two soldiers from two vastly different wars meeting and sharing their experiences with one another. Each chapter—it is broken into chapters—begins with a quote about World War I from a combatant and/or writer.

It was rather strange reading this is in 2010 and trying to imagine what it would have been like reading it in 1990, as its publication and my reading of it weren’t merely separated by 20 years, but also by a still-building graphic novel boom. Painted comics, original graphic novels with quotes and chapters and sketch galleries, mature takes on characters created to entertain juveniles…all of this is now old hat, but in 1990 it would have been a much more special book.

I feel inclined to be quite generous with it then, to try to assess it in its proper context. Because the story is quite certainly rather ham-handed, wooden-mallet-to-the-knuckles-obvious or, put another way, no different from any of the many original Enemy Ace stories of the mid-sixties. (The main difference between War Idyll and the Our Army at War back-ups is that it is set in more modern times, with the World War I portions told in flashback).

In fact, the original Enemy Ace stories were perhaps a great deal more subtle, as Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert always spoke about war in general, commenting rather pointedly on the wars that followed WWI, without ever leaving that setting; they were repetitive pot-boilers, but they did count on the readers to make connections between the characters and events experience of their comic book version of WWI and WWII, The Korean War, the Cold War and, eventually, Vietnam.

But then, perhaps Pratt’s decision to make the connection between Vietnam and WWI literal is a clever intentional bit of metacommentary; his story is set during the Vietnam war, and has the Enemy Ace being interviewed, and comparing his experiences with those of a Vietnam vet.

It’s 1969, and a young man named Edward Mannock visits a frail old man lying on his deathbed in a dark room in the Isle of Fohr in West Germany. The former claims to be a reporter, but is actually just trying to get close to the legendary soldier to hear his thoughts on war, in order to help him deal with the horrors he witnessed during his time fighting in Vietnam. The latter is, of course, Baron Hans Von Hammer, The Hammer of Hell—a German flying ace who was an unbeatable, honorable, Byronic killing machine. A sort of super-Red Baron.

Over the course of a few meetings, the two men talk of their wars and war in general, with Von Hammer talking in great detail about a time he was shot down over No Man’s Land, and experienced the horrors of the war in the mud, face-to-face with his enemies, rather than from his more comfortable position soaring above the fray, jousting with the skilled pilots of the other side.

As much as I tried to imagine reading this in 1990 instead of 2010, I also tried to imagine reading it as if it were my first Enemy Ace story, and wondering whether or not it would make as much sense. Pratt ticks off all of the elements that Kanigher, Kubert and others used like refrains in the old stories, and some of these must stand out as rather curious. Particularly Von Hammer’s friendship with a giant wolf, the only living thing that he feels really gets him, whom he hangs out with in the woods with all night. That’s a detail that’s seemingly here because it was in the comics, but doesn’t have much to do with anything in the book itself.

If I found myself reading and assessing Pratt’s story on a curve, his artwork doesn’t need any such favors. Admittedly it was rather jarring to see Von Hammer drawn by someone who wasn’t Kubert, as the veteran artist’s linework and the grim, world-weary eyes he gives so many of his characters were such a large part of what drew me to the character and how I came to understand it.

Pratt’s work, being painted—I’m no good at identifying materials, but the painting looked a bit like water color; actually, it looks more substantial and far darker than most water color work I’ve seen, but it bled like water color—naturally looks nothing like Kubert’s, or like the work of anyone else whose done Enemy Ace before or since.

It sure is something, though. As perfect a line as Kubert can draw, his air battles could never look as gorgeous as this, because one can’t drawn a perfectly blue sky with pencil and ink and old school comics coloring the way one can paint a blue sky, and the battle scenes here are quite remarkable, the pristine blue sky contrasting with the gun-baring death machines smashing into one another in it a striking contrast.

The opening scene, a silent one presented as a dream or memory of Von Hammer’s, is the most prominent example of this clash, but Pratt finds plenty of textures in the battle scenes that follow, some in the snow, some on the black and brown ground full of corpses, rubble, barb wire and, in one scene, poison gas. The muzzle flashes of the guns have a kind of potent beauty about them too, as streaks of bright white rip up the darker colors of the panel around them.

War Idyll can be eye-rollingly cheesy at times, particular the final scene, which nearly caused my eyes to roll clean out of their sockets, but then I suppose there’s some cheese inherent in the character and premise at the very conceptual level—a Vietnam Era-created perfect warrior who espouses the virtues of peace while entertaining readers with exciting war stories.

Oh well. When I wasn’t rolling my eyes at some scene, they were generally agog at Pratt’s artwork, and I appreciate any book that can give my eyes such a strenuous workout.

I sure hope Geoff Johns' Black Lantern Corps will include the following:

Pa Kent!


Pantha!


The Rainbow Raider!


Porm!


Arthur "Aquababy" Curry Jr.!


Dr. Thomas and Martha Wayne!


The Red Bee


...and his prize bee, Michael!


Baron Hans Von Hammer, The Enemy Ace!


And President William Howard Taft!

Auf Wiedersehen, Dinosaurier!

This week, DC will release the first issue of The War That Time Forgot, a new, 12-issue limited series dealing with the 1950s WWII G.I.s versus dinosaurs premise of Robert Kanigher’s. Judging from the solicitations, the dinosaurs won’t be the only time-lost combatants in the book, as the cast seems plucked from various times as well.

So not only will we be seeing WWII soldiers versus dinosaurs, a concept that is entertaining for at least 500 pages, but we’ll be seeing Firehair, Tomahawk and Viking Prince fighting dinosaurs. And, of course, Hans Von Hammer, The Enemy Ace.

Enemy Ace versus dinosaurs, is there anything more exciting in the world of comics? No, no there’s not. (But please don’t get too excited; it’s being written by Bruce Jones, the guy who wrote a Hulk-free Hulk comic and some of the worst Nightwing comics ever written which, considering the low standards of Nightwing comics, is an incredible accomplishment).

Now, I know what you’re thinking (or at least I know what I like to imagine you’re thinking)— World War I flying ace in a rickety old tri-plane versus the gigantic killers of the Age of Reptiles? How can even the Hammer of Hell hope to prevail in such a situation?

Just by being himself, a born killer who, once in the cockpit of his blood-red Fokker Dr.I, is completely unstoppable.

Besides, it’s not like this is his first dinosaur rodeo. According to my longboxes, Von Hammer has come up against dinosaurs on at least two previous occasions, and he totally killed the fuck out of them.

Let’s take a look, shall we?

Let’s start in 1992, which is when the earliest Enemy Ace vs. dinosaurs comics I have in my collection were published. I refer to four-part miniseries Armageddon Inferno which, despite its name, didn’t really have anything to do with Armageddon 2001, aside from prominently featuring that previous event's protagonist, Waverider.



This book is not available in trade, something that is at once a little bewildering and also completely understandable. See, as far as DC events go, this is a pretty huge one—this is the story in which the Justice Society of America escape their post-Crisis status quo, trapped in a Valhalla-like dimension forever fighting off the forces of Ragnarok to keep the end of the world forever in check. That is, after being taken off the table for so long, this is the story in which they get put back on it, leading to a pretty good (but under read) Justice Society of America monthly by Len Strazewski and Mike Parobeck.

On the other hand, it’s not very good or terribly well-written, as I discovered upon rereading it (This was actually a bit of a shock, since 15-year-old Caleb loved it). However, as bad a comic as it is, it’s one of DC’s best not-very-good comics, due in large part to the art, and the unusual nature of how it was doled out.

The story, by John Ostrander, involves a monstrous nigh omnipotent entity known as Abraxis transforming a small group of followers into “daemons,” each with a supervillain name and often rather cool power. Abraxis is attacking the world in a rather unusual way, building himself giant bodies in several different time-periods.

To defeat him, Waverider must call on different bands of heroes from throughout history, but he’s limited in who he can send when without completely destroying the timestream. The end result is a four-front war between Abraxis’ daemons and DC heroes from various time-periods, each drawn by a fan-favorite and, frankly, awesome artist.

Luke McDonnell handles the framing sequences and those involving Waverider solo and, as much as I’ve liked McDonnell’s work elsewhere, these are kind of weak. However, that could be simply compared to whose work his work appears next to.

So we’ve got Batman, Firestorm, The Spectre, The Creeper and plainclothes Ultra Boy of the Legion of Superheroes, as drawn by Tom Mandrake, a guy with plenty of Batman and Firestorm experience, who would go on to draw the best Spectre stories ever.


We’ve got World War II heroes Sgt. Rock and Easy Company, Navaho Ace Johnny Cloud, Gunner, Sarge and Pooch and the Thanagarian Hawks of the early ‘90s, all as drawn by Mike Netzer.


We’ve got the super-powerful superhero squad Superman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, The Flash, Power Girl and Donna Troy (in her least terrible costume ever), drawn by Art Adams (Who does some pretty incredible design work on his daemons).


And, most relevant to the discussion of Enemy Ace vs. dinosaurs, we get a team consisting completely of people-who-you-would-not-want-mad-at-you: Starfire, Green Lantern Guy Gardner, Lobo, Orion and, of course, Enemy Ace, as drawn by Walter Simonson.

Now, Simonson’s best-known in superhero circles for being the guy who best made good comics out of Jack Kirby’s cosmic mythology concepts. So no surprise that he does a really good Orion (and, about a decade later, would base a series around the character which fellow Best Shots @ Newsarama.com contributor Michael C. Lorah tells me is the greatest DC comic in, like, ever).

But who knew Simonson could do so much with an essentially silly character like Lobo, and his giant-ass skull cycle? Or Guy Gardner; this is probably my favorite Guy Gardner ever. Or the subject of this post. I love how rigidly straight the wings on the plane are.

So, each of these specially assembled strikeforces are sent to a different point in time to destory the giant Abraxis statue monster things before they can be animated. Simonson’s squad is sent back to dinosaur times, giving Von Hammer the chance to discover if he truly is the deadliest killer to ever fly the killer skies:


Take that, giant pterodactyl thing!

The other Enemy Ace vs. dinosaur comic in my longboxes is also a four-issue miniseries from the nineties, but it has a much higher quotient of Enemy Ace vs. dinosaur scenes, as the focus of the series is on dinosaur-fighting.

It’s 1998’s Guns of the Dragon, written and illustrated by Tim Truman, master of the two-fisted pulp tale of manly action.


This manly action is set in 1920s Singapore, where aged, roguish cowboy Bat Lash has fled due to some disagreements with some folks in the U.S. He’s set up a bar there, where he employs Slam Bradley’s brother Biff Bradley as his bouncer, and, one fateful night, ends up serving drinks to one Baron Hans Von Hammer.

The trio of adventurers are hired to visit the island that would eventually become known as Dinosaur Island to retrieve a pair of swords and a living dragon to fulfill a prophecy about ruling China or the world or something. They make for a pretty sweet team, but they’re only part of the cast. You’ve also got Blackhawk characters Miss Fear and Chop-Chop, plus the immortal villain
Vandal Savage, looking better under Truman’s pen than just about anywhere else I’ve ever seen him,
Chiang Kai-Shek and
Mao Tse Tung? Really? Wow.

Lash, Bradley and Von Hammer race for the prizes against Fear, a band of Japanese ninja were-creatures and Savage’s crew, with dinosaurs constantly complicating matters.

Here’s the Enemy Ace taking advantage of the distraction provided by a Tyrannosaur to get into his plane. But his noble conscience refuses to allow him to leave the ninjas to be eaten alive by a dinosaur, so he does what he does best:





Man, this new War That Time Forgot series is going to have to try awfully hard if it wants to top Guns of the Dragon, which features Enemy Ace machine-gunning a dozen ninjas and a Tyrannosaurus Rex to death in the space of a single page.

Later, Von Hammer is fighting a sword-wielding ninja were-rat with the biggest wrench in the German air force as a flock of a pterosaurs close in on his plane. One flies a little too close to the propeller, leading to the best propeller-generated gore jokes in comics history:




And while those are among the better Enemy Ace scenes with dinosaurs in Guns of the Dragon, they’re not even the best part of the series (I think that’s probably the part where Biff Bradley rides a rampaging Triceratops straight into Vandal Savage's chest).

Sadly, Guns of the Dragon hasn’t been collected in trade yet either, but hopefully DC will get around to it now that there seems to be more interest in these characters and the island full of dinosaurs, thanks in large part to their Showcase reprints and, of course, this new War That Time Forgot series.

Garth Ennis did not write this scene

(despite the fact that he has written multiple scenes of people being killed by falling into airplane propellers.)





This fight to the death between Hans Von Hammer and The Bull was written instead by Robert Kanigher, and constitutes but one of the Enemy Ace's many acts of black-and-white bad-assery available in Showcase Presents: Enemy Ace Vol. 1.

The Killer Skies claim their cutest victim

German air ace Baron Hans von Hammer, nicknamed “The Hammer of Hell,” was one of the most accomplished pilots of World War I. In his custom crimson tri-winged Fokker Dr.I, von Hammer was virtually unstoppable in the air, a human killing machine responsible for over 100 confirmed kills in a four-year period.

On the ground and outside of his cockpit, however, Von Hammer’s reputation haunted him. The pilots that served under him in his Jagdstaffel kept their distance, whispering about their emotion-less leader from afar. The pride of his personal valet and his people had in his exploits irritated him. The women who would dare to get close to him would become overcome with fear, chilled by the very touch of his lips.

His only friend in the world was a large black wolf that prowled the Black Forest at night, another lonely born killer.

By all accounts, he was an extremely dark, cold, brooding man.

What made him like this? Was it the fact that he led so many young men to their deaths, yet he himself always seemed to survive? Was it the number of noble, skilled pilots he himself gunned down, simply because they happened to fly under another flag? Was it simply the deleterious effect of war on the noble soul of a noble man?

Perhaps. Or perhaps it’s because in the middle of this brutal war he had to bury his puppy.


It happened in Star Spangled War Stories #148, in a story entitled “Luck is a Puppy Named Schatzi!” by the original Enemy Ace creative team of Bob Kanigher and Joe Kubert (Conveniently collected in Showcase Presents Enemy Ace Vol. 1, one of the best collections in the series so far).

As you can see by the cover image, this is a seriously dramatic story. Not only is our dark, tragic, Byronic protagonist getting all shot to hell high above the earth in a fragile, upside down airplane, but he’s dropped his puppy! His injured puppy! Jesus!

The tale begins on the Jagdstaffel of Rittmeister von Hammer, where a curious, hungry stray puppy is curiously inspecting the parked airplanes. Suddenly, out of the sky swoops Von Hammer and his pilots, coming in for a landing.


The puppy runs for cover, but, alas, not fast enough. Yes, this is a story which begins with a puppy being run over. And things are only going to get worse from there.

Von Hammer doesn’t spot the puppy until its too late, and dives out of his plane to find the little animal beneath one of his wheels. He’s overjoyed to find that, though wounded, it lives.


This is only the third page of this story, but it’s the 317th page of the Showcase Presents collection. And I’m pretty sure it’s the first time Von Hammer has cracked a smile in the whole thing.

The other pilots are just as surprised to see Von Hammer happy:


"Schatzi," by the way, is German for sweetie, sweetheart or honey which, obviously, doesn't sound like the sort of name one would expect the Hammer of Hell to come up with for a pet.


He takes Schatzi to his quarters, bandages his leg, and even takes him to bed with him.


The following morning, he addresses his men on the runway, informing them that Schatzi will be accompanying them on their mission to take on a battleship off the coast of Cuxhaven. They take on a trio of British Sopwith sea-planes, a battle which costs him his young pilot Kurt, who was only on his second patrol, then buzzes a battleship, luring the British planes into smashing into their own ship and blowing it to blighty.

Schatzi tries his best to be as brave and determined-looking as his new master. I love these panels, which are exactly like the scores of other panels of the grim Enemy Ace that Kubert has filled these stories with, except, of course, the presence of a puppy in each of them.







After touching down, the soldiers rush to congratulate him on his victory, but Von Hammer cuts them short as usual, reminding them of the cost of such a victory…

…before grinningly widely and leading his new little friend off to meet his only other friend.


Despite what Von Hammer says here about them being three of a kind, I’m not so sure I buy it.


It’s not just solitude that unites the wolf and the Enemy Ace, after all. It’s also the fact that they’re born killers. Still, I love this panel of the trio striding side-by-side through the forest (For some reason, I hear this song in my head when I look at that panel).

Schatzi, all tuckered out from his long day of air-battles and wolf-meeting, falls asleep in Von Hammer’s arms, and the two killing-machines part ways.



But back at the Jagdstaffel field, an urgent message has arrived, ordering Von Hammer and his pilots to provide air support for the German infantry driving into France.

The baron tucks his little friend into the collar of his coat and flies off into the rain, telling him there’s no crying in World War I.


At this point, you can kind of see that Schatzi is beginning to realize what he’s gotten himself into. I mean, look at that “oh shit” look on his face in that last panel there.

As soon as the storm clouds part, a storm of lead replaces it, driven on by British fighters.

Schatzi finally proves himself a good co-pilot, warning Von Hammer of an enemy plane just in time to save his life.



And then it happens:


Nnnneeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnn!!!!!!!!

Can even the Enemy Ace pull off the aerial acrobatics necessary to somersault below the plunging pup and catch him?

No, no he can’t. The cute little puppy totally falls to his death.

All Von Hammer can do is freak out for a few panels


and then, then, then... if you thought fighting against Enemy Ace on a normal day was scary, you should see him after he loses a puppy. He-- well, let's let Kanigher take it from here...

“Like a madman, the Hammer of Hell tears into battle—wreaking a terrible havoc…

“He is everywhere at once… Sending his spandaus’ bullets crashing into any object caught in his target-sights…

“Four…five…SIX planes wrapped in flames fall victim to his murderous, withering fire…

“Like a blazing-red fireball his Fokker streaks across the sky…leaving a trail of billowing smoke and ravaging flame…”

The carnage ends only when the baron runs out of ammunition, and the few surviving combatants limp back to their bases. But not Von Hammer.

Back at his Jagdstaffel, his men wonder wehre he has gone. One says that “he flew like an Avenging Angel of DEATH!” and then landed “amidst the dead below! It—it was horrible! Like something out of Dante’s Inferno! Perhaps… he landed to confirm kills!”

But no, he has landed in the graveyard of No Man’s Land, picking through the dead until he can find the body of Schatzi, and gives his fallen friend a true pilot’s burial.


The skies are truly the killers of us all, and, in war, no one is safe! Not even puppies!