On 1992 miniseries Armageddon: Inferno

If you happened to find a copy of 1992's Armageddon: Inferno 2001 #1 in a back issue bin today, you would have no idea that the story it would begin, one that would span four monthly issues, was a fairly pivotal one in the history of the first superhero team, the Justice Society of America.

The logo and title link it to Armageddon 2001, DC's1991 crossover event storyline that spanned some dozen annuals and two bookend issues and centered on the new hero Waverider travelling back in time to try to determine which superhero would become a despotic masked villain in his future.

And, of course, the image on the cover of the first issue prominently features Waverider...as does the corner box, a sure indication of who a book's star is meant to be. The Justice Society, meanwhile, wouldn't make the cover until the fourth and final issue.

Even once one starts reading the series, it doesn't seem like it's meant to be any sort of Justice Society story.  They are briefly mentioned in the second issue, when Superman suggests to Waverider that their old headquarters is no longer in use, and thus could make for a good place to host a gathering of superheroes. Other than that, they don't appear until the third issue.

Rather, the focus of the book seems to be to gather a whole bunch of DC's most popular characters, as well as some fan-favorite ones who might have been out of the spotlight for quite some time, and a murderers' row of artists to draw them. 

In fact, that seems to be the major selling point of the book, and the JSoA's return from the limbo they had been stuck in for a half-dozen years or so is somewhat incidental.

Writer Jon Ostrander and primary pencil artist Luke McDonnell spend only nine pages setting the whole adventure up, moving quite fleetly to introduce the premise. 

Waverider follows a disturbance in the timestream to a strange ritual in a Wyoming desert, where a dozen diverse people summon an extra-dimensional entity they call Abraxis. A bolt of lightning seems to split the sky, but rather than fading, it remains, and the slit of energy opens into a titanic staring eye. This is, a voice in a red-rimmed, tail-less dialogue balloon declares, Abraxis.

Abraxis plans to conquer this dimension by transforming his twelve supplicants and empowering them as his "daemen" servants. He will then send them in groups of three to four different points in time, where they will build for him giant "simulacra" which he can then inhabit. To aid them in their work, he will give them armies of "husks", hordes of all-black figures that evoke the shadow demons of Crisis on Infinite Earths. 

Realizing that his own time-travelling shenanigans—in either Armageddon 2001 or its sequel mini-series Armageddon: The Alien Agenda—seems to have allowed Abraxis to breach the wall between dimensions, Waverider realizes that means he can also stop him.

Using his time powers, he finds the locations in time and space the daemen have went to and then finds the precise heroes he will be able to send to these battlegrounds without causing irreparable harm to the time stream.

They turn out to be about whom you would expect, many of the primary heroes of the DC Universe circa 1992, including the most popular heroes, although Ostrander also includes various period heroes from the past, characters that don't turn up all that often in DC Comics, and a couple of oddball choices, current heroes from points in their own past or, in one case, the future.

The adventures of each of the four teams, which are essentially just fight scenes against the daemen and husks, are each drawn by a different artist, including some big names that one might think would have been featured a little more prominently on the cover, but then, maybe in 1992 comics were still more event-driven and character-driven than artist driven...? (Or DC thought so, at least...?)

Each team is announced on a full-page splash by the artist who will be drawing the sequences featuring them, which I'll scan and share here.

First, there's Arthur Adams drawing present-day heroes Superman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, The Flash (Wally West), Power Girl (here wearing her worst costume, the yellow and white one) and Donna Troy (Here going by "Troia", and rocking the shorthair and short skirt look). This team is being sent to a future that I think appeared in a Superman comic I never read. (You know, this line-up wouldn't make a half-bad Justice League if you gave them one more hero to hit the magic number seven...)

Second, Michael Netzer draws World War II-era heroes Sgt. Rock and Easy Company, Johnny "The Navajo Ace" Cloud, the team of Gunner, Sarge and Pooch (although on first mention "Gunner" is spelled "Gunnar") and the modern day Thanagarian Hawkman and Hawkwoman (here outfitted in what I believe are their Hawkworld costumes). This team will fight their battle during World War II, so it's a short commute for most of them.

Third, Walt Simonson draws Orion, Lobo, Green Lantern Guy Gardner, Enemy Ace (!!!) and Starfire in dinosaur times (As you stare in appreciation of Simonson's take on these various characters, do note the zig-zag of reddish orange in the lower left corner; that too is part of Starfire's weird hair trail). 

And, finally, Tom Mandrake draws Batman, The Spectre, a plainclothes Jo Nah/Ultra Boy from the Legion of Super-Heroes, a Firestorm "from his earlier years" and The Creeper "from the recent past"; this team is sent to the recent past. 

The second half of this first issue features Mandrake's sequence, which lasts 11 pages. Its event will be repeated in each of the other three sequences not drawn by McDonnell.  

1.) The heroes will gather. 

2.) Ostrander will do a decent job of introducing most of them in a way that feels quite natural to them. (Case in point, Starfire is in the midst of using her energy bolts to keep Lobo and Guy Gardner from fighting one another when Orion boom tubes in with the line "I have the word--it is battle!" And then Hans Von Hammer appears, dueling with a huge pterosaur while brooding about "the killer skies"; Enemy Ace doesn't really interact with the superheroes at all and, interestingly, thinks they and the bad guys and the prehistoric reptiles are all part of a nightmare he's having).

3.) They will fight the daemen, each of which Ostrander seems to have done far more work on than was probably necessary, given that this series is the only place they will ever appear, as he gives them each a civilian name, backstory and motivation for selling their souls as well as a new, demonic name and a super-power of some sort that makes them a threat to the heroes they face. I suspect the designs for each of these villains was likely provided by the artists, given how much they seem to reflect the stylistic sensibilities of whoever is drawing them (My favorites are Mandrake's Zhazor, who looks vaguely  Nazgul-like and throws bolts of flame; Netzer's Feth Sudol, who can transform himself into groups of different scary black animals; and Adams' Arquol, who can transform into a variety of cool vehicles; Adams' Inztuk has a somewhat generic eye-beam power, but his design, featuring a Styracosaurus head atop a humanoid body, is pretty cool). 

4.) Abraxis will inhabit the simulacrum. (Abraxis is also a pretty great design, which every artist draws the hell out of; he's a black-colored giant with diabolical horns and fangs that looks a little like Chernabog from Fantastia's "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence blended with a Thanos-like supervillain). 

As you can probably imagine, each of these extended fight sequences are great, and it's hard to overstate how fun it is to see these particular artists drawing these weird groupings of characters, most of whom seem to have been chosen by asking the artists which characters they might most like to draw (In fact, I wonder if that's how Ostrander went about assembling the characters to be featured). 

By the third issue, The Spectre sends a duplicate of himself to confront Waverider in the timestream to tell him the plan doesn't seem to be working, and suggest that they throw another group of heroes at Abraxis in his home dimension, thus stretching the demon/supervillain's attention across five conflicts in two different dimensions to further weakine him.

When Waverider says that he has already recruited all of the heroes he can without endangering the timestream, The Spectre volunteers a group of superheroes who area already outside of time and space: The Justice Society of America, who are still in some limbo dimension fighting Ragnarok from the events of 1986's Last Days of the Justice Society of America. 

Ostrander also writes a sequence from the point-of-view of one of the natives on Abraxis' home world, a hairy hominid that looks like he could be an ancestor to modern homo sapiens. Because Abraxis feeds on souls, he basically treats the native population of his world as cattle, their reproduction providing him with new souls. They are ruled by their most base instincts, and have no real concept of things like bravery, selflessness or heroism...at least, not until the Justice Society appears and awakens a light within them.

Dick Giordano pencils the Justice Society sequences in the fourth issue, so there's one more name to add to the who's who of this particular art team. 

That final issue includes four more splashes from Adams, Mandrake, Netzer and Simonson, each showing their assigned team of heroes battling Abraxis and his minions. These echo the splashes from the first issue, but each is a little stronger, I think, as it shows the heroes in triumphant action, rather than simply posing for a group shot. 

They are all great, but this one's my favorite:

As I noted on Bluesky when I was rereading this, I love that image of Orion manhandling the poor daemon's face. And Abraxis' melodramatic, operatic posing. And, especially, Guy's boots. I don't think anyone has ever drawn Guy's old giant boots better than Simonson does here. 

Naturally, the good guys win, and Abraxis is defeated, never to threaten the DC Universe again (Which is maybe unfortunate, given what a cool design he has). The modern-day heroes are all debriefing in the JSoA's old HQ, where they had met prior to embarking on this mission, when Superman laments the fate of the Justice Society, and Flash says, "Jay--all of them--deserve better!"

"You're correct, Flash," a voice says from off-panel. It belongs to Waverider, who appears suddenly, and the Justice Society materializes right behind him.

"It would be small thanks to such heroes as they to consign the Justice Society back to limbo," Waverider says. "That is why the daemen now fight the eternal battle of Ragnarok and the Justice Society is here instead."

The last panel is a big one, filling most of the last page, and in it, McDonnell draws all the modern day heroes from the series chatting with the newly returned Justice Society. Ostrander pens four narration boxes, the last of which reads, "Every once in a while, the good guys actually win."

The very next month, DC would launch a new ongoing Justice Society of America series by writer Len Strazewski and pencil artist Mike Parobeck, though it would only last ten issues before being cancelled. That book has never been collected, and I've never been able to find it in back issue bins, so I've never actually read it (and I keep hoping DC will collect it at some point). 

As for Waverider and the Armageddon-branding, well, the character would remain a mainstay in the DC Universe, but never got his own series again, and was mostly employed when a narrative called for time-travel or a character to explain time travel. Following the previously mentioned Armageddon 2001 and Armageddon: Alien Agenda, this was the last time DC used that title and/or logo. Inferno has never been collected...and neither have those other Armageddon books.  I know I've said this repeatedly before, but I hope DC will eventually collect Armageddon 2001 into a couple of DC Finest collections...maybe they can throw the sequels into one of them. 

DC Versus Marvel Pt. 5: Marvel and DC Present Featuring the Uncanny X-Men and the New Teen Titans #1

While I was quite enthusiastic about the DC Versus Marvel Omnibus, it was more so about the collection as a whole, and of finally having access to all of the comics within it, rather than genuine excitement for each and every story contained within. In fact, some of the stories I wasn't really looking forward to at all, and I ended up approaching them with the same sense of anticipation that I used to have for doing homework. 

One of those particular crossovers was Marvel and DC Present Featuring the Uncanny X-Men and the New Teen Titans #1, a 1982 special produced in-house at Marvel that would bring together the two publishers then quite popular team of young-ish heroes. 

Why the reluctance on my part? Well, while the teams and their respective comic books may have been pretty popular with the readers of their time, they weren't popular with me personally, as I wouldn't even start reading comics for about another decade after this was published (I was only five years old in 1982).

I have of course read some X-Men runs in the years since, but only ones that tended to try and reinvent the concept and reach new readers. Think the millennial Ultimate X-Men and Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's New X-Men and then, later, Jeff Parker and company's X-Men: First Class and Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men. I made a few attempts in the early years of the new millennium to get into the classic, Chris Claremont iteration of the team, via an Essential volume and other comics borrowed from the Columbus Metropolitan Library, but I just couldn't do it, and so much of my understanding of X-Men epics and various tropes came secondhand, filtered through the 1997 cartoon and the various films.

Similarly, I've never read any of the Marv Wolfman-written, George Perez-drawn Titans comics; I am far more familiar with and affectionate for the weird-ass, post-Zero Hour Arsenal-lead team that Wolfman was writing in the pages of New Titans #0-#130 (of which I wouldn't mind a trade of, by the way!) in the late '90s than of the previous iterations. Certainly DC has done a decent job of keeping those Wolfman/Perez comics available to new readers over the years—there's a DC Finest collection of The Judas Contract scheduled for a February release—but I never felt the urge to pick any of them up.

Basically, both teams are somewhat unfamiliar and unwelcoming to me, so the thought of them teaming up in one comic didn't do much for me personally.

You know what that means, of course. My expectations for the book were quite low going into it, and therefore I had managed to set myself up nicely to be quite pleasantly surprised. The story, unimaginatively titled "Apokalips...Now" (But maybe it was the first to make that particular allusion...?), and weirdly, almost randomly featuring Darkseid as the villain of the piece, turned out to be a quite well-made comic book.

In the end, it didn't matter that I wasn't a fan of any of the characters, or that I wasn't clued in on the various ongoing soap operas that I associated with the two teams. Their crossover was accessible and ultimately enjoyable, expertly drawn by the great Walt Simonson, here credited as penciler "Walter Simonson", with Terry Austin credited as "Finisher".

As to how Simonson got the job, it sounds like there may have been a wee bit of nepotism involved. The writer was Chris Claremont, one of the two most obvious choices for the gig given the fact that he was then currently writing one of the two starring teams. In his introduction to the story, written like so many of these for the pages of 1991 collection Crossover Classics and reprinted in the new omnibus, Claremont said he was in the middle of explaining his idea for the story to editor Louise Simonson when Walt, Louise's husband, poked his head into the office and said, "Did somebody mention Darkseid?" He followed that up fairly quickly with another question, "Need an artist?"

And so Marvel had its assignment to bring the two teams together, the outline of a plot and its creative team all lined up.

What did they come up with? 

Well, as mentioned a few times already, Claremont chose to use Darkseid as his villain. This was not an obvious or even likely choice. Though Jack Kirby had created the character and made him into one of DC Comics' most potent and compelling villains in his 1971-launched suite of comics which would come to be known as his Fourth World saga, he was far from a Titans villain. 

Even almost a decade after his creation, he hadn't yet met the Titans or any of their members, who don't seem to have any experience with the forces of Apokolips here, being confused by the appearance of a detachment of Darkseid's Parademons.

Darkseid faced off against the Justice League in a three-issue arc of their title in 1980 after a 1977 Gerry Conway-written revival of Kirby's New Gods storyline, but it would be a few more years before he appeared in kids' television sets as part of 1984's Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show. In 1982, then, he was still very much a New Gods, Justice League or maybe Superman villain, rather than the sort of all-purpose DCU villain he would eventually become, as Kirby's mythology became more and more ingrained in the DC Comics line. 

Regardless, he was a cool character, and one Claremont apparently wanted to write badly enough to include him here, that inclusion being somewhat justified by the cosmic nature of the plot. After all, the X-Men villain chosen was, as seen on the cover above, was the Dark Phoenix, here resurrected via Darkseid's otherworldly technology.

Claremont did of course include a more traditional Titans foe in the proceedings, with Darkseid hiring mercenary Deathstroke, The Terminator to lead his Parademons on their mission.

After reading the story, I do wonder to what degree it was Darkseid's presence that drew Walt Simonson into the project. An obvious Kirby fan, one of the most notable works on his resume was his years-long run on Thor, which he began relatively shortly after this book was published and, of course, in 2000 he would write and draw a short-lived Orion ongoing series for DC.  Of the many artists to follow in Kirby's footsteps, drawing the characters, worlds and technology that Kirby originated, Simonson is undoubtedly one of the best, and Claremont's tale gives him plenty of opportunities to offer his own spin on Kirby staples.

The book opens, in fact, with the tiny, almost microscopic Darkseid and Metron on a small asteroid before the Source Wall, which fills much of the page, the former speechifying, "Behold the Promethean Giants--"

It's a great page, and it's really too bad that though this is the fourth official DC/Marvel crossover, it is also the first to not be printed in tabloid or "treasury" format but was instead a regularly sized comic book (albeit a longer, 64-page one). In addition to those New Gods and the Parademons, Simonson would get to draw Boom Tubes, several splashes of the Source Wall, the Omega Effect, dog soldiers and Apokolips itself, as seen from space.

That's all in addition, of course, to the Titans/X-Men business.

After striking his bargain with Darkseid, Metron attempts to pierce the Wall, leaving his throne-like flying chair (which Charles Xavier has claimed on the cover), floating behind while Darkseid makes a fist and fills a panel with big, red "HA HA HA"s. 

On Earth, we meet the X-Men at Professor Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, while Colossus, Wolverine and Nightcrawler train in the Danger Room (and Simonson draws a great fastball special, with Wolvie attaining a pretty perfect sphere shaped). Kitty Pryde, Cyborg and Storm are all introduced in quick succession, with Claremont and Simonson demonstrating each of their superpowers in the process.

That night, a mysterious figure with a strange apparatus on his gloved hand appears in each of their rooms, extracting thoughts of the late Jean Grey from each. Kitty wakes up in the process, glimpsing a grinning Darkseid above her and screaming, and the various pajama-clad X-Men all rush into action, with Cyclops ultimately being visited by an apparition of Jean. 

Meanwhile, no one's resting all that easy at Titans Tower, either. Oh, by the way, this is yet another DC/Marvel crossover that just assumes that the various characters' adventures take place in the same world, our own, and that they have just never crossed paths before. Claremont, like Shooter in the second Superman/Spider-Man team-up, even has a character remarking on it, as when Cyborg swings by skyscraper that "got trashed by the X-Men" and he thinks to himself, "I wonder why the Titans have never tangled with 'em?"

Anyway, Raven wakes up Starfire and Changeling in the tower when she has a nightmare about a giant cosmic bird of flame, which Starfire recognizes as the entity Phoenix, a danger to all life in the universe (Coming from outer space, she's apparently familiar with it). An emergency meeting is called, and the various other Titans introduced: Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Cyborg and, lastly, Robin, who is unable to answer the summons after discovering a "Para-Demon" and briefly fighting Deathstroke. (Yes, there's a hyphen in Parademon here, and there seems to be one on every instance of the word.)

The Titans decide to start their search for the Phoenix with the X-Men, as "a woman code-named Phoenix used to be affiliated with them." They storm Xavier's school but are soon attacked by a contingent of Parademons and captured. 

Meanwhile, the X-Men visit Jean's parents, who also saw an apparition of her, and then visit sites where Jean had previously exhibited her Phoenix powers, running into Deathstroke and another contingent of Parademons there. They too are beaten and captured. (If you're wondering who would win in a fight between Wolverine and Deathstroke, they have a two-panel fight here, wherein Wolverine knocks him down but not out; Wolvie is eventually felled by a Parademon-thrown "toxi-cloud grenade.")

Both teams of hostages are Boom Tubed to a floating piece of rock before the Source Wall, where they are put in an elaborate machine, and Darkseid reveals what he's been up to with gathering the essences of Phoenix, ultimately resurrecting her and then taking her hand. He monologues for about a half-dozen panels about how he plans to use her and her power to create a new, second Apokolips out of Earth. He will do so using her vast cosmic powers for...manual labor, I guess, as she will be tunnelling through the Earth to form fire pits (Claremont uses the term "Apokolips Pits") to kickstart the Apokolipsification of the world. 

While the bad guys split and leave our many heroes in outer space to perish, the two teams wake up, free themselves, set eyes on one another and...completely fail to come to blows. Instead, there's a splash page where the two teams face one another, Robin and Cyclops shaking hands. "I suggest an alliance," Cyclops says. "My sentiments, exactly," Robin responds.

That's...unusual, and not what we've come to expect either from the standard superhero team-up, or the cross-company ones we've gotten so far. After some working together, which seems to include Kitty and Changeling flirting ("She seems very attracted to Changeling-- I did not think that would upset me so," Colossus thinks to himself), they find Metron's Mobius Chair and Xavier realizes it can be controlled telepathically.

Soon, they arrive on Earth, and travel underground for their big showdown with the bad guys. It's a pretty fun, well-drawn sequence, and it was genuinely kind of shocking to see the various characters dogpiling Darkseid, who is so far out of...well, all of their weight classes, really. 

The battle is finally resolved when Dark Phoenix starts to dissipate and takes a physical form by possessing Cyclops: "Come my once and former love-- --Embrace your destiny!" she says as she flies into him, and his costume transforms, gaining a Phoenix sigil on its chest.

Ultimately, the Phoenix-possessed Cyclops whips off his visor and fires a huge ruby-colored bird of flame at Darkseid, who stands there with his hands behind his back. There's a terrific explosion, and then both he and the Phoenix are gone, the giant bird streaking into space with a tiny Darkseid in her talon. 

He'll end up embedded in the Source Wall with the Promethean Giants...and not for the last time, though it is a fitting "final" fate for the character...and it certainly seems like that is exactly what it is here. 

Meanwhile, the two teams get a few panels of quiet hang-out time. 

They were apparently destined to meet again. Marv Wolfman wrote in his 1991 Crossover Classics  introduction to "The Heroes and the Holocaust" from Marvel Treasury Edition #28 that he was slated to write a second Titans/X-Men team-up, "but just before we were supposed to go into production, DC and Marvel decided to end the crossovers for the foreseeable future."  

What happened, exactly? It doesn't seem like it was because "Apokolips...Now" was a bad story, certainly not that I could tell from reading it some four decades later, so it was presumably something behind the scenes, and, one can intuit from a prose piece Mike Carlin contributes to the omnibus about the resumption of the inter-company crossovers almost a decade later, it had to do with the leaders at the respective publishers in 1982 and their "us vs. them" mentality.*

It's kind of too bad, as not only would it have been interesting to see what Titans writer Wolfman could have done with the X-Men characters, but his collaborator on New Teen Titans was slated to draw it. Together with the proposed and aborted Justice League of America/Avengers crossover, that makes two DC/Marvel super-team crossovers with Perez art we almost got. (Unlike the JLoA/Avengers project, though, Perez apparently never produced any art for the X-Men/Titans one.)

Whatever happened exactly, it was the end of a brief era for DC and Marvel. But not the final end. Thirteen years later, in 1994, the crossovers would resume, with the very, very weird pairing of Marvel's Punisher with DC's...Jean-Paul Valley, the guy filling in as the new Batman...?

Next: 1994's Batman/Punisher: Lake of Fire #1

*It doesn't take too much Googling to turn up information on why cooperation on crossovers from the two publishers fell apart around that time. I don't want to provide any links, because the last thing I want to do is get involved in any such conversation about disagreements that publishing executives, editors and comics creators might have had while I was in kindergarten, but from what I've read, it certainly appears to be a matter of the publishers not being able to come to an agreement on the Justice League/Avengers comic in a timely enough fashion to save it when things started going wrong.

Review: Indestructible Hulk Vol. 2: Gods and Monster

That's a great page, the final one of one issue of the Mark Waid-written Indestructible Hulk title, a cliffhanger that leads into the very next issue. As any Marvel comics reader can tell you, no one can pick up Thor's magic hammer, no matter how strong they are—and The Hulk is, as he likes to remind everyone, the strongest one there is—unless they are deemed worthy of doing so, which pretty much means "just Thor" (I think both Wonder Woman and Superman picked it up during DC Vs. Marvel and JLA/Avengers,  respectively though, and that Storm and Captain America were among the Marvel Universe folks to be able to lift it).

That sort of cliffhanger, in which Hulk is seemingly violating the firmly and long-established rules in a comic written by Mark Waid—a writer, if ever there was one, who knows all the old superhero rules—is of the sort that I bet it drove a lot of readers a little crazy, as Jeph Loeb regularly did when he was writing (Red) Hulk. And, had you read the issues serially, that's 30 days of wondering how on earth Hulk picked up Thor's hammer (For me, reading in trade, it was a few minutes).

When the next issue/chapter opens, we see Hulk flying through the air with mjolnir, smashing apart Frost Giants. It's not until a few pages in that it becomes clear what's what: Hulk just so happened to reach for the hammer at the exact same time Thor was calling his enchanted weapon back to him, so Hulk didn't pick it up so much as it picked him up, and took him for a giant-smashing ride on its way back to its master's hand.

That was pretty cool. (The only way that scene could have been improved? If, perhaps instead of "HRRAAARGH!", Waid had Hulk say "WHEEEEEE!")

The Thor team-up that gives the second collected volume of Indestructible Hulk its sub-title accounts for 3/5ths of the book, the rest of it being a team-up with Daredevil, a hero Waid is writing in his other (and better) Marvel monthly. For the first team-up, Marvel was lucky enough to get Walter Simonson, probably the artist most associated with the character after creator Jack Kirby, to draw it, and a quirk of the plotting even allows Simonson to draw a Thor with the costume he used to draw him in, rather than the newer, closer-to-the-film-version costume he wears.

See, Bruce Banner's team of super-scientists invent a portal to the dimension of the Frost Giants in order to search for exotic metals that could potentially be mined, but it's also something of a time machine, so when they end up in Eiderdurm, not only do they find themselves facing angry, giant ogres made of sentient ice, they also find a Thor who has not yet met Bruce Banner or The Hulk (though Banner is familiar with Thor). It allows for a more classic Marvel style team-up, as the characters are more-or-less meeting for the first time (The Hulk's relationship with Thor isn't exactly too terribly nuanced, you know?).

Chris Eliopoulos gets the only lettering credit in the collection, so I'm assuming John Workman did not letter the Thor story, but I think it worth noting that some panels of Simonson art without Workman art look wrong, and some look as if Workman had indeed lettered them, so I wonder if Eliopoulos perhaps was imitating Workman through some of the story, or if Simonson himself had not drawn his own KAKAROOMs and SKRAKOOMs into the panels himself.

The Daredevil team-up features nice covers by Paolo Rivera and nice artwork by Matteo Scalera. It too is a pretty straightforward team-up, although not quite as straightforward as the Thor storyline. The plot is pretty simple: SHIELD is using The Hulk as a battering ram in a raid to secure some super-science weapons on a ship outside New York City, and Daredevil shows up to help. When one of the weapons goes missing, the pair go looking for it, and find it about to be sold to Baron Zemo, who has a whole arsenal of super-weapons, including a few of the Hulk-hurting variety.

Beyond the action, the story is devoted to explaining Bruce Banner's usage of Matt Murdock as his lawyer, a layer of insurance against SHIELD ever screwing him, as Murdock also has whatever dirt on them that Banner has.

It actually reads more like an issue of Daredevil than one of Hulk, perhaps because Waid has been writing the former longer than the latter (and I'm more used to his DD than his Hulk), and perhaps because his Hulk run hasn't had a consistent artistic partner or visual style the way his Daredevil has.

It lacks a scene as awesome as his Hulk picks up Mjolnir—or does he?! scene from the first arc, but I enjoyed the one where Ol' Hornhead walks into a bar full of tough guys, and, instead of having to beat the hell out of them until he's able to intimidate them into providing information, The Hulk does the heavy-lifting by simply being there:

The collection includes 22 whole pages of not-terribly-interesting process material, which seems to be the Marvel collection-putter-together's solution to not having to put six issues' worth of comics in collections, but having them end up being about the same size as they would have been if they did.

Review: Hawkgirl: Hath-Set

Hawkgirl: Hath-Set collects Hawkgirl #61-#66, and thus completes the three-trade collection of writer Walter Simonson's short-lived Hawkgirl monthly, a 2006-2007 book I think has some relevance to some important (or at least important-ish) discussions of mainstream, superhero comics today for a couple of reasons.

First, because it's "One Year Later" launching point looks, in retrospect, like a sort of smaller-scaled, practice run at DC's 2011 "New 52" initiative, which similarly reinvented the entire DCU line at once. Secondly, because it was a pretty honest attempt at getting another comic with a female, headlining protagonist on the stands that didn't quite take, and that the publisher could then use as an example to justify not trying other ones like it in the future (I don't think DC has done that in the intervening years, though). Thirdly, it was a pretty honest attempt at a "trans-media" approach of making one of their paper comics better reflect their animated properties, with Hawkgirl being part of the seven-hero ensemble starring in the Justice League cartoons (In general, and to this day, DC Comics generally only publishes special tie-in comics that reflect the characters or contents of their the TV shows and movies based on their comics, and continues to do whatever they like with their DCU line).

And, finally, it was at its conception at least, a modern comic book by two talented, old-guard pros, veterans of the comics industry with massive bodies of great work behind them who, for whatever reason, don't command the same amount of market force they once did, and age-ism and this particular publisher's occasional reluctance to hire vets has become something of an online conversation, thanks to the efforts of Jerry Ordway. Here's a particular example from the very recent past of DC hiring guys with Ordway-like resumes, and it didn't really work out for anyone, did it? (Although if DC had put Ordway on Hawkgirl when Chaykin left after six issues, maybe it would have lasted longer? Arlem's contributions could not have helped the book. Similarly, I can't help but imagine what a New 52 Hawkman by Ordway might have been like, if they hired him to remake the character instead of Tony Daniel and Philip Tan and then a rapid succession of ever-changing creative teams).

This final volume is all Arlem, save for the guest-star filled issue #64, which features art by Dennis Calero. The rest of the book is done in the tedious, lazy style Arlem demonstrated on Hawkman Returns and that undreadable Freedom Fighters miniseries he "drew."

The artwork hasn't improved any.

Here's an image of Batman, wearing his old, blue cape and cowl for some reason, swinging above Gotham City:

Looks alright, right? Look a bit closer, though. Why is Batman swinging horizontally over the city like that, as if the end of his bat-rope was tied to a rotating helicopter blade or something? Could Arlem not find a non-aerial photograph of a cityscape to drop into the background? Or could he not be arsed to draw Batman in a more vertical position?

Here's a particularly lazy example of Arlem's work.

The cliffhanger ending of one issue, a splash page, no less:

And the first page of the following issue, also a splash:

Talk about picking up where you left off!

I could scan almost any image from this and point at it to demonstrate how lifeless and obviously pieced-together using photo-reference Arlem's artwork is here. It's particularly galling in the opening chapters of this volume, however, as that's when Simonson's script calls for the introduction of various Fourth World characters and concepts.

The first issue opens with a pair a Parademons on a satellite orbiting Apokolips, and the entrance of The Female Furies. Arlem draws them all with the same supermodel body and face, and only their costumes suggesting who they are supposed to be. If you've ever seen The Female Furies, you know how weird and wrong that is.

Here, for example, is a Kirby drawing of Bernadeth, and a Byrne drawing of the same character:

And here's Arlem's version:

His Mad Harriet is also particularly off-model, her crazy, bestial face and knotted muscles disappearing, replaced by a particularly toothy grin on the same face on the same head on the same body and her fellow Furies (Stompa, the biggest and most distinctly-shaped of the Furies, is MIA).

In this volume, Simonson seems to be doing a bit of a last hurrah, taking a victory lap that allows him to play with some DCU toys before bringing the Hawkgirl (and Hawkman) vs. Hath-Set conflict that's been running throughout his time on the book (and was actually introduced by Geoff Johns in JSA and the Hawkman monthly that Hawkgirl spun out of) to a climax, with the Hawks finally defeating their reincarnating warlock foe for the final time.

So: The Female Furies come to Earth to recover a cosmic weapon that ended up in ancient Egypt (It's a weapon that grows a giant Hawkgirl robot, which lead to an awesome cover so awesome I remember buying the serially-published issue it was on simply because of that cover.

Then Hawkgirl goes to Gotham City, where she fights a mind-controlled Batman in a burning museum.

Then she goes to Metropolis, where she teams up with Superman and then Oracle (Oracle was then living in Metropolis; if I remember correctly, that move and the addition of a rotating third teammate joining Huntress and Black Canary in the field was the "One Year Later" change of direction for Birds of Prey) (UPDATE: Please see comments for clarification on the actual "One Year Later" changes to Birds of Prey, by someone with a much better memory than I).

Then she's taken to a pyramid in Egypt in a coffin on a boat—which necessitates her wearing a bandage bikini for one scene—where she and Hawkman battle with Hath-Set and his many mummified sons.

Then the pyramid collapses and we get one of those egregiously shitty pages Arlem is so fond of assembling, the ones that make it clear he's not really intersted in drawing comics at all—

—and the title ends, with the super-couple flying off to live happily ever after.

I forget what happens next, exactly. I think the Hawks don't show up again until they get killed in Blackest Night, and become part of the ensemble cast of Brightest Day. And then DC New 52-boots the DCU, Hawkman appears in the almost-but-not-quite-as-quickly-canceled Savage Hawkman and Hawkgirl is relegated to an alternate dimension version of herself in James Robinson and Nicola Scott's Earth 2 title.

Review: Hawkgirl: Hawkman Returns

The seventh issue of 17-issue existence of Hawkgirl, the one that makes up the first chapter of the second collected volume, is where the series started to crumble visually, as that's the point at which artist Howard Chaykin the interiors, never providing anything more than cover art for the rest of the series' short run.

Why did Chaykin leave after only one arc? Was the book not selling well enough that DC could afford to pay someone of Chaykin's stature the page rate he demanded and/or deserved? Did the return of Hawkman mentioned in the second collection's title threaten fewer opportunities to draw the title character fighting crime in her lacy black bra? We may never know.

Well, I suppose we could ask Chaykin or someone, but that would assume we care to go to the trouble, and we don't. The fact of the matter is, Chaykin left after six issues, and the quality (as well as the noteworthiness of Hawkgirl as a 21st century super-comic by two legendary creators of the 1980s) took a swan dive.

For issues #7 and #8, 52 contributor Joe Bennett took over art chores (Bennett would later be one of the several artists drawing Hawkman in the just-canceled New 52 Savage Hawkman series), and then Renato Arlem would take over art chores for the remainder of the book. This second collection also features artwork by Simonson himself, however; sandwiched between issues of Hawkgirl are two issues of JSA: Classified written and drawn by Simonson, dedicated to following what exactly Hawkman was up to in outer space while he was MIA from this book (Short answer? Space stuff).

Visually, this collection is all over the map, then: 44 pages of Bennett, 22 pages of Arlem, 44 pages of Simonson and then another 22 pages of Arlem. Additionally, much of that artwork is fairly terrible.

Simonson's clearly the best pencil artist and the best visual storyteller of the three. His figures are big and muscular and always in movement; even in conversation, they're tilting or at least emoting like crazy. It's the sort of over-the-top artwork that makes for pages of story that could be just as easily read were all of the dialogue and narration boxes stripped from them, with nothing but the characters' actions and expressions to go on.

His action scenes are naturally explosive, full of big, violent John Workman sound effects and whirls, whorls and diagonal lines shooting across the pages as explosions, beams, rays and arcs of energy.

I'm not terribly fond of Bennett's work, but there's nothing terribly wrong with it, either. I think it's perfectly acceptable super-comic art, getting the job done without calling much attention to itself either positively or negatively.

Arlem's art on the other hand...

It's not impossible to envision how an editor might have looked to Arlem as a decent replacement for Chyakin. Like Chaykin, Arlem uses a lot of photo reference and seems to incorporate photos and/or filtered versions of photos into his work to add texture to it. Arlem goes much, much further than Chaykin though; while Chaykin draws his figures and uses effects occasonally for their clothing, or to, say, put the bricks on a brick wall or the grooves on an ancient column, Arlem uses such effects for everything, and the characters and figures look like altered photos themselves.

Look at this panel, of Kendra "Hawkgirl" Saunders having dinner with a friend:

Nothing in the whole image seems to have been drawn by human hand, and using photos and computers doesn't even seem to have gained anything in terms of versimilitude—it actually looks less real. See those "drawings" of glasses in the foreground...?

I don't really like comic book art that uses all these little tricks or shortcuts, but Arlem compounds that by using them badly and, apparently, extremely lazily.

Here's a climactic scene from this volume, where Kendra tells Hawkman they are never ever getting back together again (because of an ancient curse generated by their foe Hath-Set, who murders them each time the two constantly reincarnating lovers find one another in new lives):

Hawkman's in four panels, but Arlem only had to draw him twice! Hawkgirl's in five, but Arlem got away with only drawing her three times. He got a lot of use out of that first panel; by cropping it differently, he used it three times on the same page. So what if it implies that Hawkman was frozen in a single gesture for the entire length of a conversation?

Arlem keeps Chaykin's sexualization of Hawkgirl going, but, like everything else about his art in this volume compared to Chaykin's in the first, it looks lazier and less elegantly.

For example:

Did he draw some somewhat saucy cheesecake, or Google Image "lady with not pants," cut-and-pasted a favorite result and have her butt colored green and throw in some shading...?

Simonson's plotting remains fine, but now that we get to the solution part of the "Where's Hawkman?" riddle, it gets a bit more needlessly complicated and confused. This volume is mainly about problems form outerspace visiting Kendra in various ways.

Blackfire, the evil sister of former Teen Titan Starfire, sics a Thanagarian killer on Hawkgirl and, when our hero kills her would be killer, Blackfire arrives herself, wearing Hawkman's wings and boasting that she's killed Hawkman and will do the same to Hawkgirl!

Then we backtrack to the JSA: Classified issues, and learn that Hawkman's been hanging out on Rann, trying to get enough legal proof that Blackfire is evil to present to some space cops or whatever and bust her, and then he rejoins Hawkgirl on Earth to finish off Blackfire (Well, they let her live, but Hawkman depowers her).

The final chapter is the talky one, in which the Hawks have conversations with the supporting cast and one another, essentially deciding who will continue to star in the book, which used to be called Hawkman but was changed to Hawkgirl as part of DC's "One Year Later" promotional effort. There's also a bit of set-up of a conflict that will come into fruition in the third and final collection of Hawkgirl: A Parademon from Apokalips escases to ancient Egypt with a weapon of mass destruction, which Hath-Set puts in a jar and then forgets about.

The third volume, Hawkgirl: Hath-Set, features guest-stars galore—Batman! Superman! Oracle! The Female Furies!—and has lots of full-on crazy superhero madness, but even more poorly drawn than this volume (It's all Arlem, save for about an issue's worth of Dennis Calero art). We'll discuss that tomorrow night, though.

Review: Hawkgirl: The Maw

It was so odd, so unusual and so brief that it seems a little like a dream: Did DC Comics really have Walter Simonson writing and Howard Chaykin drawing a Hawkgirl monthly series? The answer is, of course, yes; but only briefly.

It began in May of 2006, during a one-month, line-wide gimmick/promotion that, in retrospect, looks like one of several earlier attempts at a reboot that current co-publisher Dan DiDio had made on the road to fall of 2011's "New 52" reboot. This one was dubbed "One Year Later," and the idea was that after the multiverse-shaking events of Infinite Crisis, all of DC's books would jump one year ahead in time, giving creators an opportunity to do something fresh and new (and not dependent on the fallout of the just-completed crossover storyline) and readers the opportunity to jump on to any book in the line without worrying about joining a story already in progress.

For the most part, this meant new creative teams, new costumes, new team line-ups, new status quos, and so on. The Hawkman monthly received one of the most dramatic overhauls: It's title would be changed to Hawkgirl (although the numbering would start with #50, the month after Hawkman #49), it would now star Hawkgirl, the aforementioned creative team of Simonson and Chaykin would take over for the departing Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti and Chris Batista, and as Hawkman's exact whereabouts would be a mystery; he was simply MIA after the events of Infinite Crisis).I read the first issue, maybe first two issues, and then abandoned it.

I remembered liking it okay, but I was trying a lot of DC comics that month, and it didn't strike me as one of the better ones. But given the rather quick cancellation of the latest Hawkman title, the New 52's The Savage Hawkman, which lasted only 20 issues, I thought I might revisit the series in trade paperback, given that it was almost as successful as the last Hawkman series, despite not starring Hawkman an not having the unprecedented PR push that The New 52 received (Hawkgirl lasted 17 issues).

What is immediately apparent about Hawkgirl, what differentiates it from Hawkman comics before and after, and from most of what one could find on the stands in terms of super-comics in 2006 was, of course, the presence of Chaykin's artwork. His big, expressive, cartoony faces, his blocky figures often half-frozen in hulking, Kirby-like poses, his obvious delight in rendering textures to the point of rarely letting a scene go by without including black lace in it somewhere...Hawkgirl had it's own, distinct visual look and hook.

Chaykin also drew his title character with clearly visible, apparently hard nipples straining against the fabric of whatever top she was wearing almost constantly, which seems like it must have been been pretty daring in DC's pre-rating system, 2006 line—hell, it's rare one see the outline of a nipple or the shapely bulge of a superhero's crotch through a costume in the T+ or M-rated books of 2012 or '13, this despite the fact that so many panels of so many comics seem composed around a female character's mostly-exposed, clothed only in spandex or silk breasts (I'm thinking specifically of New Guardians, at the moment).

Chaykin draws Hawkgirl Kendra Saunders as a cheesecakey heroine, and it works. Simonson's narrative is as pulpy as any involving the Hawks I can recall—she battles cultists, mummies and Lovecraftian space-gods, she explores hidden temples and shares panels with Egyptian deities. She sleeps in tiny, black lace nightgowns...

...takes showers...

...sometimes has her top torn off in battle...

...and wears a uniform so form-fitting it reveals her nipples. The sexual nature of Chaykin's artwork compliments rather than conflicts with Simonson's scripts.

One could argue if that's the best direction to go in with Hawkgirl, who as a star of Justice League Unlimited was, like Green Lantern John Stewart, a better known hero than the one she was technically a derivation from, and also a potential gateway hero for young would-be DC readers, but it's not a wrong direction, either and, unlike, say, Ed Benes' run on Justice League of America around the same time, he wasn't violating the spirit of the script with cheesecake.

That script finds Kendra Saunders working at the Stonechat Museum in St. Roch, Louisiana (which is to New Orleans as Gotham City once was to New York City), which she protects by night as Hawkgirl. In both identities, she has dealings with handsome men, like a museum co-worker (the son of the institution's director) and a police detective.

Some particularly brutal killings are afflicting the city, committed by a huge warrior woman covered in ritual tattoos and wearing only brass breast petals and whatever the crotch equivalent, something weird is going on in the basement of the museum and Kendra's not getting much sleep, which makes it difficult to determine what's real and what's not.

Meanwhile, Hawkman is still lost in space somewhere, and she's torn between holding a candle for him—something that makes her uncomfortable, because they were lover's in past lives, which he remembers more clearly than she does—and the attention of that handsome detective.

The immortal bad guy who is always hounding the Hawks is hanging around, and there's a e thingee in the basement that wants to devour her.

It's pure, unambitous genre stuff, but it's successful, and it all looks really great. Without Chaykin, this could easily prove tedious—as later volumes, collecting issues from after Chaykin's short run, will demonstrate—but for this volume at least, Hawkgirl is effective pulp heroine as old school superhero. Good writing, good art, good comic.

My best guess?

So DC Comics is going to "out" a pre-existing, previously heterosexual character as a gay man in a storyline next month. As for the clues, the character will be a "major iconic" one, and will apparently be one hasn't appeared in the "New 52" books.

Well, there's no DC character more iconic than Icon, is there? It's right there in his name!

Today's secret word is...

So for the rest of the day, whenever someone says the secret word, scream real loud!



(The above panel was written by John Ostrander and drawn by Walt Simonson, and can be found in Armageddon Inferno, the very best Enemy Ace/Lobo/Starfire/Guy Gardner/Orion team-up story ever told)

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.