John McCrea's Ragman in 1999's Day of Judgment Secret Files and Origins #1

As I happen to have read a few Ragman appearances lately and discussed the way the character was drawn by Kelley Jones and Michael Golden, I thought it might be worthwhile to linger on the way he appears in "The Destiny Dilemma", the lead story in 1999's Day of Judgment Secret Files and Origins special. The story was written by Scott Beatty and, more relevant to our discussion here, drawn by John McCrea (Andew Chiu shares the "inkers" credit with McCrea, and Tom McGraw handled the colors, although I should probably note here that I'm not sure they were reproduced 100% faithfully by the library scanner I used for this post). 

McCrea hails from Ireland, and his earliest work was in the British comics industry, including work on Judge Dredd and related characters in the early '90s. It was on one such story that he first collaborated with Irish writer Garth Ennis, with whom he would develop a long and fruitful partnership.

By the year this story was published, McCrea had collaborated with Ennis on 18 issues of the writer's 1993-1995 run on The Demon, and the pair were about four years into their five-year run on Hitman, which I still think is both one of the best comics DC has ever published and one of my favorite comics they have ever published. Ennis and McCrea had also published a four-issue mini-series from Caliber Press called Dicks. 

What all of those comics have in common, aside from McCrea and Ennis, was that they were all rather unique genre stories, ones that celebrated their genres while simultaneously taking the piss out of them. The DC work, at least, was delicately balanced, so that those comics were full of serious character work and parodic comedy elements. A single issue of, say, Hitman might have heart-wrenching drama, gut-busting gags and superior action telling, while also managing to riff on superhero comics tropes and one or more of Ennis' favorite oddball films. (Dicks, on the other hand...well, let's just say I wouldn't use the words "delicately balanced" to describe it.)

So, this story was interesting not just because it was an opportunity to get an extra 22 pages of McCrea's art, but also because it gave us American readers a then-rare opportunity to see McCrea drawing a script from someone other than Ennis (he would go on to do plenty of great work without Ennis in the 21st century, of course) and because here McCrea was drawing a DC super-comic that was completely straight, with no real humor elements to it.

He, of course, knocked it out of the park. 

As bad as that scan of two-page spread above is, what with the line down the middle of image, distorting Madame Xanadu's lovely face, you can see how good his art is here. We're going to concentrate on Ragman in this post, of course, but do note his massive, intimidating version of Blue Devil, and the menace and mystery of his Phantom Stranger, a single white dot on his shadowed face for an eye, and even the hint of menace about Zatanna's half-shaded face, a bit of visual foreshadowing for a twist I will soon spoil. (Oh, and while it's not quite apparent here, he also draws Sentinel, who by this time had lost his unnatural youth and vitality to resume something closer to his biological age of a man in his seventies, as an old man. Sure, this Alan is still handsome and stands up quite straight, but he also has a visible paunch and wrinkles, and his muscles weren't straining to break out of his costume.)

That double-page splash accounts for pages two and three of the story. Sentinel Alan Scott has awoken in a field and he soon stumbles upon the so-called Sentinels of Magic: Doctor Occult, Ragman, Madame Xanadu, Zatanna, Blue Devil, The Phantom Stranger, Faust and the new Doctor Fate, Hector Hall. It's a rather weird group, full of vastly different characters designed by different artists from comics throughout DC's history, but I think it's worth noting that even among a group of such unusual figures, McCrea's Ragman still stands out as particularly strange.

He certainly looks the scariest of the bunch, about as tall as Blue Devil, but thin and awkward looking, seemingly all hood and cloak, with only shadow where his face or much of his body might be. One thing I really like about McCrea's take on Ragman is that, in many of the images, it looks as if Ragman might be all suit and no body; that is, in many panels he looks like a living suit of rags, rather than a living person wearing a suit of living rags. You can see it here in his exaggerated thin-ness, the length of his limbs, and the way his gloves look far too big for his hands (Speaking of thin, check out Zatanna's legs; her ankles look like they belong to a bird rather than a woman. Certainly, McCrea's art has a cartooniness to it, even in this, a serious story). 

These heroes have been gathered for a mysterious purpose, but standing in their midst is the Spear of Destiny, the legendary weapon that once pierced the side of the dying, crucified Jesus, was passed down from conqueror to conqueror and, in the DC Universe, was used by Hitler to keep America's superheroes at bay during World War II and is now both cursed and the only weapon capable of hurting The Spectre.

As The Spectre had just gone on a rampage that threatened the world and the afterlife and then received a new, perhaps unreliable host, these heroes have to decide what they should do with the spear. 

During their discussion, Ragman's rags—which, remember, are each evil souls and their job is to seek out more evil souls to add to their number—are pulled towards the spear.

Our heroes decide on a course of action, and they begin to unite their magics to deal with the spear. Note Ragman's huge, melodramatic gesture there. 

There is a complication, though. That's not really Zatanna, but a villain who took her form to infiltrate the group. Alan Scott identifies the villain as The Wizard. There's an interesting bit where The Wizard essentially rips out the Zatanna shape, a rather weird bit of imagery, given that The Wizard is apparently a bit bigger than that super-skinny Zatanna McCrea had drawn. 

The villain uses the spear to battle the heroes for a bit, but ultimately Faust, whose lack of soul makes him immune to the spear's curse, snatches it from him, Blue Devil punches him out and then Ragman's rags go into action:

Here, Ragman's rags suck The Wizard bodily into his suit, as opposed to how this very process is shown playing out in the later Day of Vengeance, wherein Ragman sucks the soul out of a victim's body, leaving a desiccated corpse behind.

Now, how does this square with 2005 JLA arc "Crisis of Conscience", in which The Wizard is very much not a rag in Ragman's suit of souls? (And I think he had some JSA-related appearances between these this story and "Crisis of Conscience" as well?). Don't ask me; I am not a DC Comics editor. 

Anyway, with The Wizard finally dealt with, the heroes continue with their plan, using their magics to bind the spear and throw it into the sun, where it can only be retrieved if all seven of them gather again and agree to do so.

Then they all put their hands together like a high school sports team right before a game as Alan shouts "Sentinels of Magic!" (as seen in the previous post on Day of Judgment), and that's about the last we see of McCrea's Ragman, aside from his very distinct silhouette as he walks toward a glowing portal created by Doctor Fate. 

In the last four panels, we see The Spectre Hal Jordan debrief with The Phantom Stranger, and Hal explains that he had gathered the Sentinels here to give his friend Alan the means to destroy him, if need be, as a fail-safe. 

Review: Batman: The Joker's Last Laugh

Oracle and Nightwing have feelings, in a few panels drawn by Walter McDaniel

Reading the recent The Joker: Death of the Family collection, which contained the hundreds of pages worth of tie-in material to the Joker-centric Scott Snyder/Greg Capullo "Death of the Family" arc in Batman, my mind repeatedly wandered back to Joker's Last Laugh, a previous crossover story that filled hundreds of pages of DC comics with stories of the Joker taking on a large swathe of the publisher's heroes.

The two storylines/events were quite different from one another, of course, with "Death" being smaller in scale and scope, and darker and more serious than "Last Laugh" was, but both feature The Joker fighting characters other than—or, more accurately, in addition to—Batman, and both feature The Joker using his chemical expertise to "Joker-ize" various characters.

"Last Laugh" was a 2001 event/story that ran through a six-issue miniseries entitled Joker: The Last Laugh, and took over single issues of pretty much every comic in DC's DCU line at the time, although most of those comics—i.e. those not prominently featuring Batman or a member of the Bat-Family—had rather little to do with the main story, and were simply showing how the heroes of those books were dealing with their particular front on the war against Joker's poisoned army.  I don't think DC ever attempted to collect all of the tie-ins, and, now that I think about it, I wonder how many actually made it into any collections, as those issues tended to have little to do with the story arcs preceding or following them. They did collect the main series itself into the trade Batman: The Joker's Last Laugh, and that's the book I went to when I wanted to revisit the book in light of my recent Joker reading.

It was written by Chuck Dixon and Scott Beatty, the former one of the more prolific and influential Batman writers of the 1990s and early 00s, the latter his occasional collaborator on such excellent books as Batgirl: Year One and Robin: Year One. Each issue had a different art team (I want to say it was a weekly series) and, had you asked me about a week ago who drew it, the only artist I would have been able to remember working on it would have been Rick Burchett, who pencilled the last issue. That stuck with me for this dozen years or so because of how great Burchett's art was (it was the best in this series, for sure, even though I don't think he's the best artist to contribute to it) and because of how unusual the style was. Known at the time for his work on the comics based on the Batman cartoons (based on the comics), Burchett devised a sort of compromise style when drawing this issue, so certain characters had a hint of their "animated" selves about them (Harvey Bullock looked like cartoon Harvey Bullock around the eyes and mouth, for example), but were otherwise in a smoother, cleaner, DC Universe style. It was a great looking comic, and it had boggled my mind ever since that I didn't see Burchett get a monthly gig on a Batman book after that.

The other pencil artists involved were Pete Woods (whose work isn't even recognizable as that of the same Pete Woods working today), Marcos Martin (whose work wasn't quite as stylized as it would become, but, even here, the figure work looks like that of Martin), Walter McDaniel, Andy Kuhn and Ron Randall. All are good (well, I didn't care for McDaniel's work here), and several have rather compatible styles, but the book ends up looking like one drawn by six different guys (and inked by five additional guys; McDaniel, Kuhn and Randall inked themselves). It's pretty unfortunate, but at least most of the characters wear costumes through most of the book, so it's easy to tell who is who. The art style changes radically now and then, but it's always readable, so there's that.

The story eventually gets pretty silly at points—this is an incredibly cartoony Joker, and one prone to using props—but it has some solid character work, and represents some big moments in the ongoing character arcs of characters Batman, Nightwing and Barbara Gordon regarding their relationships with The Joker (It probably goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway: None of that matters anymore, as this storyline and those character arcs were rebooted out of existence with The New 52; that's one advantage this has over "Death" though; here, the characters all have history with The Joker, whereas in "Death" we're told they have history between assurances that they don't really).

The premise is this. After his last crime spree (Perhaps after the events of 2000's "Emperor Joker," a Superman storyline featuring The Joker as its main antagonist), The Joker graduated from inmate at Arkham Asylum to genuine supervillain, and is incarcerated along with all of the super-powered super-villains in The Slab, DC's super-max supervillain prison at the time (Now that would be Belle Reeve again). There, a doctor attempts to play a joke on The Joker, either out of spite or to try and shock him into not being such a maniacal mass murderer: He convinces The Joker that he has an incurable, inoperable brain tumor, and hasn't long to live.

Rather than mellowing The Joker out, it inspires him to to instigate his own Crisis-level crime. By manipulating the various chemicals that the screws at The Slab use to inhibit the super-powers of their inmates and control them, The Joker "Joker-izes" them all, so now there's an army of super-villains that have his sense of humor, and also have bleached white skin, green hair, red rictus grins and behave more-or-less like Joker knock-offs.

That's a pretty great idea, providing that alteration-on-the-familiar that we superhero comics fans so adore (see the success of Blackest Night, where various characters got various Lantern-inspired costume makeovers), although sadly the makeovers stopped at the physical (none of the villains started sporting purple, Joker-esque versions of their regular costumes, for example) and the available villains weren't exactly the cream of the crop of DC villainy; of the members of The Legion of Doom from Super Friends, for example, I think only Luthor, Solomon Grundy and Gorilla Grodd appeared Jokerized (and none of 'em in the main series), and the characters appearing in here tend to be minor ones. The Joker's right-hand henchman, for example, is Rancor, a Neo-Nazi character created especially for this series. Other Joker-ized villains prominently featured in this trade included the likes of Hellgramite, Mammoth, Copperhead, Warp, Psimon, Black Mass, Spellbinder II and Doctor Polaris. Not exactly the A-List. Heck, not exactly the J-List.

So, The Joker stages a break out of The Slab, unleashing a small army of super-powered Jokers on the DC Universe (And this is where most of the many tie-ins come in; each tie-in featured the hero of the book dealing with a Joker-ized villain. So in JSA, Stargirl and Jakim Thunder dealt with a Joker-ized Solomon Grundy; in Orion, Orion dealt with the Joker-ized Deep Six, and so on).

Marcos Martin

Meanwhile, Dick "Nightwing" Grayson had prevailed upon his then-girlfriend Barbara "Oracle" Gordon to go on a mini-vacation with him, in an act of extremely bad timing, keeping her from monitoring The Joker's cell, something she always does. They argue over the morality of killing The Joker, even before the escape gets underway: "It's not revenge so long as you don't kill? Funny, I'm the only one who joined this party without an axe to grind...And look how that turned out," she snaps at Grayson in one scene.

One by one, Black Canary, Blue Beetle II and, belatedly, Nightwing and then Batman try to break into The Slab to stop The Joker from making his escape, but they all fail, and barely escape before The Joker gives new meaning to the term prison escape, sending the entire, mostly emptied facility into a black hole created by Black Mass.

From there, the narrative splits into several different threads, most of which are picked up to some degree in some of the many tie-ins not included here. Inside the prison were Shilo Norman, the one-time protegee of super-escape artist Mister Miracle (who Grant Morrison would make the only Mister Miracle during his Seven Soldiers event a few years later), an federal Marshal Dina Meyer (a minor character Dixon introduced in Birds of Prey), and they have to figure out a way to get themselves back into reality with the help of Multi-Man and Mr. Mind (Dixon and Beatty write a great Mr. Mind), before they are devoured by the few remaining Joker-ized villains in the prison.

Rick Burchett

Oracle and her agents frantically try to track down The Joker and find a cure for his venom, and this includes many side-missions like rescuing Harley Quinn (who The Joker has decided he wants to impregnate before he dies), having Robin Tim Drake infiltrate Arkham Asylum and so on.

Meanwhile, The Joker keeps escalating his plans, eventually having some of his new super-powered followers create a "crazy rain" weather phenomenon, in which Joker venom falls from the clouds—President Lex Luthor retaliates by declaring martial law and declaring war on The Joker.

It all comes to a head in Gotham Cathedral, where Nightwing beats Batman to the final confrontation, intent on finally doing what Barbara has convinced him they should have done all along—kill The Joker. He actually does so, at least technically, but Batman is able to resuscitate The Joker, in what has to be the ultimate example of Batman going out of his way not only to not kill The Joker, but to save The Joker's life.

Much of the Joker's actions in this book are downright silly, and he does little himself in terms of hands-on evil, violence or mayhem, generally directing his army while wearing a variety of silly costumes.

The Shilo Norman bits, on the other hand, are all pretty entertaining, and given the way the book ended, with Norman becoming the temporary warden of The Slab, Multi-Man and Mr. Mind given slightly relaxed punishment and The Slab relocating to Antarctica, where The Joker is completely isolated, watched only by a single computer monitor (because without an audience, he's powerless, Norman says), it's sort of surprising this wasn't shortly followed up by a new series called The Slab.

As for the Bat-Family, it was interesting to see Oracle and Nightwing playing the leads, while Batman is himself something of a supporting character (at least in this series within the larger event), not getting any more panel time than, say, Robin or The Huntress. Like any good crossover, it allowed the spotlight to shine on relatively little-seen corners of the DCU and dust off some under-used characters. It also ended with things not being exactly the same, with not only the status quos of some of the characters changed, but their opinions and thoughts changed. In other words, it didn't start and stop at Point A, nor did it simply set up the next crossover, it was a more-or-less complete story—or at least as complete as the miniseries trunk of a tree-shaped crossover event story can ever really be.

Now let's look at some art, shall we?

First, here's Orca, the whale woman, delivering the only line she gets in the book:

Martin

Created by Larry Hama and Scott McDaniel in 2000 (and killed about six years later during James Robinson's "One Year Later" arc "Face the Face" in Batman and Detective, and not resurrected in The New 52 yet, to my knowledge), I'm pretty sure she's Tom Spurgeon of The Comics Reporter's all-time favorite Batman villain, based on how often he mentions her (Which isn't that much, but certainly more than he mentions, like, Mister Freeze or Clayface or The Penguin or whoever).

(Hey, did Orca show up in that Beware The Batman cartoon? Because Orca would certainly fit the bill of "a Batman villain who has never previously appeared in a Batman cartoon").

Here she is again, with the other "man-eaters" from the Aqua-Level of The Slab. I like this gigantic version of King Shark:

Martin again; I have no idea who the tentacles belong to, or who the sucker-faced guy is.

He plays a very small role in the story, essentially just chasing Shilo and Dina around, but it's pretty remarkable how each artist draws him radically different, his size varying from, like, 20-feet-tall to 5-feet-tall.

I thought this particular panel, in which The Joker is wearing one of the many costumes he puts on throughout the story (He's dressed like Elvis during his battle-to-the-death with Nightwing, for example), was interesting in that it sort of prefigures what he wears throughout "Death of the Family," a sort of carpenter/handyman/repairman get-up:

Ron Randall

Finally, the series was originally published about two DC logos ago, and so they still had a variation of their "bullet" logo, which is spherical enough that it works in this image by Brian Bolland, in which The Joker is tossing it up and town like a ball:

But when the trade was put together, DC had changed their logo to the new, more stream-lined bullet, which is smaller, sleeker and less ball-like, and thus doesn't quite look right, when DC swapped it into the Bolland image to replace the previous bullet:

Not sure how they'd incorporate the current logo, if they published a new edition of this someday...