Bookshelf #7

This week's bookshelf is probably pretty self-explanatory, given how apparent the organizing principle for it is, and how big and clear the spines are.

To the left is, obviously, various Fantagraphics Disney books, most of which come from their Complete Carl Barks Disney Library series, of which I'm missing a lot. There are also the two Lewis Trondheim and Nicolas Keramidas books (Walt Disney's Mickey and Donald: Mickey's Craziest Adventures and Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Donald's Happiest Adventures), a pair of books from the Complete Don Rosa Library (of which I am also missing many volumes yet), a pair of Disney Masters books and the first volume of the Floyd Gottfredson Library (I'm more of a duck fan than a mouse fan, personally).

Perhaps the most interesting of these Disney books from Fantagraphics though is The Return of Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs, as it's such an outlier.

Also, there's one non-Fantagraphics books I stuck among the others, as it's Disney-related, even if it's just a little too long for this particular shelf and juts out in a way that is unsatisfying to look at (Although you probably can't tell from this picture). That's Walt Disney's Christmas Classics, a 2017 release from IDW that collected 33 special daily comic strips produced between 1960 and 1997 that were offered to newspapers to run during the holiday season. 

Because Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck had their own comic strips already, these strips tended to feature characters from Disney feature films and unusual crossovers. I reviewed it for Good Comics for Kids when it was released, if your curious about its contents. It's definitely an interesting book.

Then, on the right of the shelf, we have a handful of works from Osamu Tezuka: Unico, Princess Knight, The Mysterious Underground Men and Triton. Shelving Tezuka side by side with Disney seemed to make sense at the time, but, as you can see from the latest Donald Duck volumes being stacked atop the older ones, I've run out of space, and will have to eventually find a new place for the Tezuka books to make room for the rest of the Disney books...especially if I manage to fill in all the holes in my collection of Barks' duck books. 

A Month of Wednesdays: November 2025

 BOUGHT:

Dracula Book Two: The Brides (Dark Horse Books) The first installment of writer Matt Wagner and artist Kelley Jones' epic Dracula series, originally crowd-funded before being republished by Dark Horse last fall, focused on the origins of the character, dwelling on how he learned his black magic and became the first of a new breed of blood-sucking undead. All of this was extrapolated from a few, relatively short passages of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, the creators' philosophy apparently being to add to the character's backstory without contradicting anything from Stoker's story. 

This second volume is, in some ways, even more challenging, as it must bridge the ancient past, when the character was the ruthless Voivode of an eastern European kingdom warring with the Ottoman Empire, to the late 19th century, when he would arrive in England as Count Dracula.

That is a time that spends hundreds of years and, despite his relative immortality, would take Dracula from a still-vital young man, involved in the day-to-day activities of ruling his small chunk of Europe and its people, to an aged old man who looks near death (but still looks pretty good for 400!), haunting his crumbling castle. 

The throughline Wagner focuses on is right there in the title: Dracula's three brides. There, he seems to have no more to go on than he did in depicting the first volume's Scholomance, his tutelage under Satan, and his becoming a vampire. The brides have only brief but memorable scenes in the novel, and almost 130 years of adaptations and extrapolations have done little to suggest a way to turn them into actual characters. More often than not, they are almost identical, completely interchangeable monsters lurking in Dracula's castle, a threat little different than a particularly scary group of guard dogs.

The book opens with Dracula feeding, telling us how the blood of a young woman is the best blood, and then disposing of the remains of his victims, lest they rise as the sort of shambling revenants that we met in the first volume, strigoi, which seem more zombie than true vampire. 

The increasingly lonely Dracula longs for some form of companionship, but doesn't yet know how to make more creatures like himself. He eventually turns to the magical mirror he gained at the Scholomance, which offers a cryptic clue, and he sets about trying to create a bride.

Most of the book is devoted to his brides; how he meets them, how he makes them his (which is more and more difficult with each one) and how he turns them. In each case, he gradually becomes disillusioned with them before setting his sights elsewhere. 

While there is a degree of sexual interest and even romance between Dracula and his brides (the acquisition of the third involving the longest attempt at "courtship" before he resorts to trickery), his pride, aristocratic nature and vision of himself as a lord above all (and probably the chauvinism inherent in the era) leads him to treat them as something between children and pets...sometimes unruly ones which must be chastised and punished.

By the end of the book, he finds that his life pretty much revolves around "maintaining" them, hunting on their behalf, as finding new victims becomes increasingly hard, many of his followers having moved on and the neighboring population growing increasingly superstitious and wary of him. In fact, this weird, gothic domesticity, in which Dracula has become something of a hen-pecked husband toiling on behalf of his wives, seems to be what drives the saga on to its next novel-like installment, as he looks to England as a new challenge to be conquered (and a much-needed new hunting ground). 

As was evident in the first volume (and is repeated more or less verbatim in some of the blurbs on this volume's back cover and flaps), Wagner's Dracula biography is the comics story that Kelley Jones was born to draw. It's rare to find a character and story so perfectly suited for the artist drawing them. 

In addition to Dracula, at various ages and attitudes and in various monstrous forms, with his ever swirling, billowing cloak and blank red eyes below a furrowed brow (eyes given an unsettling light by colorist Jose Villarrubia), Jones get to draw wolves, bats and rats, ghosts and a werewolf, multiple strigoi, and more gore and violence than one usually sees in vampire narratives, images that would probably prove truly upsetting if they weren't drawn in Jones'  highly expressive, usually exaggerated style, which is more cartoonish grand guignol than modern cinematic torture porn. 

The settings are likewise perfect for Jones, including a castle in which the artist draws each and every brick in each and every wall, and the spooky forests full of skeletal trees that surround it.

Given the particular subject matter of much of this volume, Jones is also called on to draw a lot of women, often nude or in states of undress, and the drawing of beautiful women and sexual content is not something I usually associate with Jones' work, perhaps given how much of it has been devoted to corporate, mainstream comics like Batman. Still, he acquits himself well, here.

The erotic nature of a vampire feeding is prevalent throughout, and there are certainly sexual scenes involving Dracula and/or his brides (one licking the blood from another while gently caressing her breast, for example, another on her knees sucking blood from Dracula's extended fingers for another), but there's no sex-sex. Indeed, although there are a couple of panels showing Dracula lying next to a naked bride or two, it's unclear if Wagner and Jones' vampires can have or are even the least bit interested in literal sex, as they are so focused on the metaphorical sex of feeding on blood.

As with all of Jones' comics work, the book is full of striking, memorable images. The bricks really stood out to me, given this era of mainstream artists taking technologically assisted shortcuts. There was one example late in the book, where Dracula stood posing on what looks like a pile of rubble, his courtyard in the background, Jones seemingly having inked in hundreds of books. I paused to marvel at the remarkable image, and then turned the page, only to be confronted by a two-page spread of the castle, some four times the size of the panel that had originally stopped me cold with its great detail.

There's a climatic sequence in which villagers storm the castle, holding aloft their church's cross, intent on putting an end to the monstrous Dracula once and for all, in which he unleashes his sorcerous powers, and the wild imagery contains shock after shock: Lightning from the sky tearing chunks of the castle and dropping them on victims, a mass of rats pouring like a loathsome avalanche over the invaders (there are some real squirm-inducing panels in this sequence which, again, if drawn in a more realistic style than Jones, would likely prove nauseating) and a swarm of bats, one of which tears a woman's face apart.

And then there is an image of red-eyed wolves in the foggy forest, the top of their heads breaking above the surface of the mist, like crocodiles peeking above the water.

Unsurprisingly then, the book is full of potent imagery.

On the last page, Dracula, preparing for his move to London, thinks of what the modern, English equivalent of "Voivode" might be, and settles on "a title of rank and consequence."

"And thus I became...COUNT DRACULA", those final two words lettered by Rob Leigh in big, ornate gothic font.

If that weren't enough to clue readers on what to expect next, there's the last page, reading "The blood drenched history of the vampire lord continues in Dracula Book Three: The Count...Coming Soon."

Not soon enough for me. I think the next book might be the most challenging for Wagner yet, if it indeed covers the events of the novel. In these first two books, he had to fill in big, blank areas, spanning centuries. Next, he will have to contend with the opposite problem, of retelling a story so often told, where in there is hardly much blank space in which to play. It will be interesting to see how Wagner and Jones approach it...and if Count Dracula is so easily dispatched as he was in the novel, given the show of power that comes at the climax of The Brides...

The Spectre by John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake Omnibus Vol. 1 (DC Comics) Given the quality of the past comics of writer John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake I have read, and how good the handful of issues of their 1992-1998 series The Spectre that I had previously read were, I was assuming that this collection would be pretty great.

I mean, you would have to be under that assumption in order to drop $125 on an 800-page hardcover, right?

Still, I was surprised at just how good the book actually was. I don't think the word "masterpiece" is too strong a word to apply to it, and I would include it among the best DC Comics ongoing series I've ever read, like Swamp Thing, Sandman, Hitman, Hourman and maybe Grant Morrison's JLA. 

As I said, I had read some issues of the series before. Looking at the cover gallery on comics.org, I see that I had previously bought #1, #8, #13, #0 and #51 new off of the rack. And I picked up some issues from various discounted back-issue bins, usually because I liked the covers so much (#22, #26, #31, #54, #56). And this year I bought electronic copies of #54 and #62, in order to revisit the origins of Mister Terrific Michael Holt, who a lot of people were meeting for the first time this summer, thanks to the new Superman movie.

Still, knowing that Mandrake is a great artist whose spooky, ink-heavy style is absolutely perfect for The Spectre character, or that Ostrander could turn out strong individual scripts, didn't prepare me for the scope and sweep of the story when it's read in order, chapter by chapter, all in a single sitting (or two or three or maybe even four sittings; this collection was 800 pages). 

A unlikely fusion of the horror, crime and superhero genres, the book reads at once like a Vertigo mature readers book that imbues a long-lived lesser DC property with more sophisticated, literary stories for adults while also keeping a foot firmly planted in the DCU setting (Superman and Batman will guest-star, for example, and the book participated in the various crossover events, like the post-Zero Hour zero month, Underworld Unleashed and Final Night, though those latter crossovers come later than the comics collected herein). 

I fairly raced through the volume, finishing it in record time for a book quite so big. The drama was often intense, and the suspense such that it wasn't always an easy book to set down. For example, one major storyline in this particular volume involves The Spectre/Jim Corrigan's newfound friend Amy Beitermann, who fortune teller Madame Xanadu says is doomed to die under the knife of a serial killer—is her destined fate set in stone, or can the almighty Spectre change it? 

Another story arc involves The Spectre mulling over whether or not to destroy all of humanity, a threat made all the more serious after we see him pass judgement on an entire (fictional) country riven by civil war, by killing every man, woman and child that lived there. 

Full of difficult moral and ethical dilemmas and various debates on such broad, abstract subjects as justice, vengeance, guilt, sin, faith, grief, crime and atonement, this Spectre collection can be heavy stuff, but it is always related to the core concept of the character—an all-powerful spirit tasked with avenging the murdered dead by heaven.

It also deals quite a bit with the cosmology of mythology of the DC Universe, an almost unique setting whose Heaven, Hell, afterlife and the beings that populate such places have been gradually built up over the course of, by the 1990s, some 50 years of stories by dozens of creators. (I say "almost unique" because the Marvel Universe is similar in its gradual construction over time by many hands.)

And the visuals are uniformly spectacular, given the title character's limitless powers and previously established habit of transforming his body and/or his victims to deliver ironic punishments. 

For example, in the very first issue, Corrigan witnesses a drive-by shooting by a drug-dealing gang. His response? We see the gigantic head of The Spectre rising out of the pavement as if he were emerging from water, open wide his mouth and swallow the gang's getaway car. Then we see the giant Spectre, the fingers on his right hand replaced with the upper bodies of four victims (not unlike that memorable image of Felix Faust on the cover of 1962's Justice League of America #10). In his other hand he holds aloft a syringe, filled with fire, and plunges it into his arm, pushing down the stopper so that the flame flows though his vein, and burns the men alive, flaying off all of their flesh until they are just screaming skeletons.

Later, in one of my favorite visual sequences, gunmen target a victim and shoot hundreds of rounds at him. A tiny little Spectre appears between the intended victim and the first bullet, which he stops in mid-air. He does so for all of the other bullets, too, and then re-directs all of the bullets like a swarm of angry bees, knocking aside the shooters and then raining the deadly bullets down like hail on the car in which the man who ordered the killing was waiting.

It's hard to imagine such images in other media. Surely computer-generated imagery would make such scenes possible in a live-action film, for example, but there they would look weird and likely fake. But in comics? It all seems perfectly natural. 

The book collects the first half of Ostrander and Mandrake's Spectre series, which means 32 individual comic books, the first 31 issues of the series and August of 1994's #0 issue, which fell between issue's #22 and #23. Remarkably, Mandrake pencils and inks almost all of them himself, and he also provides seven of the covers which, more often than not, are provided by a who's who of artists (Among those collected here are covers from Simon Bisley, Dan Brereton, Glenn Fabry, Michael Wm. Kaluta, Alex Ross, Charles Vess and Matt Wagner and others...Joe DeVito's is a particular favorite of mine, for the obvious reason).

There are a handful of fill-in artists, though, the most noteworthy being pencil artist Jim Aparo, an artist who has drawn plenty of Spectre comics before, who is here being inked by none other than Kelley Jones. It's an incredible pairing that really needs to be seen to be believed, and a perfect treat for Batman fans who may, like me, find themselves lingering over each panel and parsing which artist drew which line (I thought this pairing of artists with incredibly disparate styles similar to the comics in which Bill Sienkiewicz inked Aparo that same decade, examples of which Mike Sterling posted on his blog a while back). 

In addition to all of those comics, DC offers plenty more to make buying this omnibus—and you should buy it, or at least ask your local library to purchase a copy of it so you can borrow it from them—worth the significant amount it costs.

There is a brand-new introduction by Ostrander, a reprint of the introduction Ostrander wrote for a 1993 trade collecting the early issues of the series (trades being much rarer back then, DC only published two collections prior to this omnibus) and, most rewardingly, seventeen pages of original commentary by Ostrander, in which he talks about the book, issue by issue.

Finally, there's about 20 pages of behind-the-scenes art, including the sketches of the principal characters by Mandrake that were included in the original pitch (Interestingly, in his original sketch of the lead character, Mandrake gives The Spectre his traditional collar with buttons, which he would lose by the time of the first issue). 

Oh, and if you're wondering if the omnibus' cover might glow in the dark, as the covers for a handful of issues of the original series did, let me assure you that not only does the cover, a new original image, glow in the dark, but so does the image on the back (taken from the cover of 1993's Spectre #8) and the logo and images on the spine.

Now I realize this makes about 20 paragraphs devoted to the book, which is plenty long enough for a review but, um, well, I still have a lot to say about it. Given the length of the collection—again, 32 issues and some 800 pages—I plan at discussing it at greater length in a future post. Actually, two posts, as there's a particular aspect of the book, I also want to spend some time on. So, look for those in the near future, I guess...

BORROWED:

Justice League: The Atom Project (DC Comics) I went back and forth with myself a bit over whether or not I should even write about this book, given just how bad it is. At this point in my life (and in my comics-writing-about "career"), I'd really prefer to focus on good comics, suggesting things I think readers might enjoy, rather than on bad comics, and warning potential readers away from them. 

And I would certainly warn you against reading this; it is easily the worst comic book I've read in recent memory. Not just poorly conceived or somewhat problematic in its plotting, not simply lacking here or there. Rather, I found every single page hard to force myself through, and the overall package careless in its production. 

At various points I found myself marveling that a professional editor approved of the work that was turned in, and that any publisher would go ahead and publish it, let alone DC Comics, one of the two biggest names in superhero comics and one of the biggest forces in the North American comic book direct market.

This is mostly the fault of the art, and perhaps I shouldn't have bothered reading it at all given what I saw on the cover, or during a quick flip-through, as it certainly didn't look good (You may note that Captain Atom is off-model on the cover that DC chose to use for the trade paperback collection; the artist or colorist forgot to include his gloves and boots).

But I thought Justice League Unlimited Vol. 1 was if not really a great comic, a well-made one with an interesting premise, and so I was interested in seeing how its spin-offs might use that premise to tell different stories. 

Mike Perkins is responsible for the art on the book. Chances are you have encountered the British artist's work before, as he's been professionally making comics for over 30 years now, for 2000 AD, Caliber, CrossGen, Marvel and DC. Reviewing his bibliography, I imagine he's now best known for his work on Captain America, as he was drawing portions of Ed Brubaker's seminal run (along with artist Steve Epting).

I've read some of his past work, but I don't recall it being...like this. In The Atom Project, Perkins doesn't merely rely on photo reference for his art, but he seems to incorporate it into his art, ala Greg Land. So, every single panel appears to be a photograph imported into a computer program and manipulated, with, say, superhero costumes drawn over the source images. The backgrounds—settings, cars, rubble, even background figures—don't seem so much manipulated as simply dropped in, a form of visual "sampling", I guess. 

The result is a comic book that looks like a rather rushed, extremely careless photo-collage, rather than something a human being might have drawn with their hands. 

Had Perkins been exacting in his reference/source material, then I think his work here—colored by Adriano Lucas—might have worked better, but there's no consistency in the imagery at all. The main character, The Atom Ray Palmer, might look like Matthew Smith's Doctor Who in one panel and like Hugh Grant on the next page. I swear I saw Bill Pullman in The Atom's costume at one point. Basically, as photorealistic as the art might be, it's completely fluid. Ray Palmer is a white guy with brown hair; every other characteristic about his face differs panel to panel (The same goes for the other major character, The Atom Ryan Choi, who usually looks like a younger Asian man with black hair...but his face changes panel to panel too).

Now, the pages are broken into panels and one can read those panels and the dialogue balloons and narration boxes as sequential art is usually read, but the individual pictures in those panels? They're just barely sequential, and if it weren't for the colorist and the fact that superheroes wear such distinct costumes, it would be impossible one wouldn't be able to read it in the way one normally does comics art at all. 

The script is written by Ryan Parrott and John Ridley, and the book's premise is rather odd. This seems to be a six-issue miniseries specifically commissioned to resolve a dangling plotline from Mark Waid's earlier Absolute Power event series—specifically, that when the superheroes got their stolen super-powers back, the proper powers didn't always end up with the proper person—but then, that plot point was sort of tacked on to Absolute Power's ending, as if Waid had written it just to set up a follow-up like this one (That is, the plot point wasn't left dangling, but a dangling plot point was grafted on). 

It is, as we have previously seen in the pages of Justice League Unlimited, up to The Atom Ray Palmer and his one-time successor-turned-colleague The Atom Ryan Choi, a pair of super-scientists, to solve the problem and make sure that the right people end up with the right powers. 

In this series, it doesn't go at all as smoothly as it did in JLU, though. In the second issue of that series, we see The Atoms restore Atom-Smasher Albert Rothstein's lost powers to him in the space of a few panels, and though he complains about the process being excruciating, it seems to work. But in The Atom Project, Al in being kept in a cell on the Watchtower by The Atoms, and he's seriously deformed, his size-changing abilities resulting in a hideously over-grown right arm and an Elephant Man-like head. 

Parrott and Ridley divide the story into two timelines and jump back and forth between the two throughout. One is set in the present, wherein The Atoms are hunting Captain Atom, as is the U.S. Air Force and, eventually, a third party. In the other timeline, set in past, we see what led to the conflict between the heroes.

The split timeline isn't necessary, of course, but it does allow for the sort of in media res opening that comic books have long been fond of, and it help keeps one interested, perhaps even invested, in the first half or so of the story.

The book opens with a conversation between two unseen characters, their dialogue appearing in two sets of narration boxes, one red and one blue, as they comment on the action, which involves Nathaniel Adam on the run from the military, eventually being confronted by Palmer, who floats down from the sky somehow, as if he could maybe fly now...? 

One might assume that the two speakers are Palmer and Choi, given what we know about The Atom Project from JLU, what we see on the cover of the trade, and the fact that both characters used to wear red-and-blue costumes. But it is not them. The actual identity of the speakers won't be revealed until issue #5; during the first 100 or so pages, the mysterious voiceovers will come and go and are often accompanied by the presence of a weird-looking, sometimes green-ish fly.

Here is what is happening. Captain Atom never regained his powers back at the end of Absolute Power and has turned to The Atoms on the Watchtower for help (The Watchtower is here eerily dark and devoid of other heroes. While scenes set there in JLU and Titans showed backgrounds full of cameoing DC heroes going about their business, here the only hero we see aside from Captain Atom and The Atoms is Dr. Light. Ray talks to an off-panel Red Tornado at various points and, in the very last issue, The Question and Mister Terrific put in appearances, but throughout a majority of the series, it's just Atom, The Atoms and their human lab rats).

Meanwhile, The Atoms have been tracking down various civilians who have gained stray super-powers, apparently as a result of the events of Absolute Power, although the exact mechanics of all this aren't really clear (Palmer and Choi refer to "meta-energy" a few times, and even though we know the origins of the powers of every hero in the DCU is more or less unique, here they are treated as if they are all, at their root, the same thing. That's fine; a degree of hand-waving is likely necessary. I mean, the way Amanda Waller stole all the powers in the first place was via Amazo technology, so we're talking about Silver Age comic book science from 1960 here). 

I suppose I should here note that neither Atom much looks like they originally did upon their comic book introductions, nor like they have traditionally been drawn. Gone is the dynamite red and blue costume that Gil Kane designed for Palmer, and the pretty-much-the-same version of it that Choi wore. 

Now Ray wears a black version of that costume with red boots and gloves, and a white layer over his torso. He's also got shoulder pads for some reason. It's not as good as his original costume but, as Dan Mora drew it in the pages of JLU, it didn't look that bad...I mean, it wasn't as bad as The Flash's new costume, at least.

Choi, meanwhile, wears a costume that seems to be inspired by the goofy armor-like one the CW gave Brandon Routh in the "Arrowverse" TV shows, complete with shoulder pads, a helmet and visor. It's mostly blue and black. 

These costumes are not Perkins' fault, at least, not as far as I know; the characters showed up dressed like that in the Mora-drawn JLU first. 

The Atoms perform painful experiments on Captain Atom, trying to restore his powers, while presiding over cells full of maybe a dozen or so other civilians who have gained unwanted powers, civilians they hope to remove the powers from. Oh, and poor, deformed Atom-Smasher.

Eventually, they track down Cap's missing powers, restore them, and then Captain Atom develops or discovers a new ability, I guess. Somehow, he is able to "take" powers from others the way that an Amazo robot can and add it to his own power set. Later we will see that he is then able to gift copies of those superpowers to others.

And so, Captain Atom becomes something of a superpower battery/superhero factory, able to grant powers to others at command. 

And General Wade Eiling, who is apparently no longer in a shaven Shaggy Man body and is back to being an Air Force general does so command (I suppose one benefit of DC doing something like a half-dozen continuity reboots in a decade or so means that nobody knows what actually "happened" before, and so writers are free to ignore any developments they like when using many characters). He tells Cap to bestow super-powers to various Airmen serving under Eiling, which he does, since he feels compelled to follow orders (I guess Captain Atom is still an active miliary man? The writers nod in the direction of this weirdness by having Captain Atom tell Choi, "My status has always been a bit...fuzzy.")

Obviously feeling conflicted about cranking out super-soldiers for Eiling, Captain Atom goes on the run...and The Atoms team-up with the U.S. military to capture him, so that he can keep making them super-soldiers. This, needless to say, seems a little...fraught, and the sort of thing one might imagine someone else in the Justice League might have something to say about (Again, though, I don't know if we're meant to remember Eiling's actions from, say, Grant Morrison and company's JLA run. But still! One might think Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman would maybe want to have a meeting about giving the U.S. a bunch of super-soldiers). 

Eventually, Eiling calls in Major Force and, to complicate things further, two hooded, cloaked figures from the "super-terrorist" organization Inferno, which was introduced in JLU, also show up to take Captain Atom for their own purposes. 

Great lengths are taken to keep these hooded figures' identities hidden for a bit, to the point of being a little silly. The one with pink hands wearing a yellow ring on his finger, for example?  He doesn't use his normal powers, which would reveal his identity; instead, the pair seem to use high-tech forcefields and weaponry, even when they're trying to kill their foes.

Okay, I am now going to spoil the identity of Inferno, which was previously revealed on the last page of the Justice League Unlimited Vol. 1: Into the Inferno trade (and thus I think I spoiled it previously on here), so stop reading if you haven't yet read that book and want to be surprised.

Inferno is actually just The Legion of Doom...but! In a twist, they are a Legion of Doom from the past, specifically from when Waid's Batman/Superman: World's Finest series is set (So, the pre-Crisis 1980s, our time). (They also, incidentally, include a new villainess I didn't recognize. Her name is used once, and when I looked her up later, I learned she is apparently a new character.)

The time travel doesn't really come up here, though. The two cloaked figures, and the two voices that we heard talking about Captain Atom in the very first scene of the series? They were Lex Luthor and Sinestro. 

With help from Choi, Captain Atom battles his way out of The Legion's clutches (and then the villains and their headquarters relocate, as detailing the real fight with them is actually taking place in the pages of JLU, I'm not entirely sure why they are in this series at all) and Palmer belatedly decides to stand up to Eiling regarding the manufacturing of super-soldiers. 

Fortuitously, in the closing pages everyone learns that Captain Atom's newfound ability to grant others super-powers is actually temporary—that is, the powers he gives others soon fade away—resolving the book's core conflict just as suddenly and randomly as it began. 

(I should perhaps note that over at Atomic Junk Shop, Greg Burgas said of this book that "It's fine" and "mildly entertaining, but that's it," and that "Perkins does nice work on the art," so perhaps your mileage may vary on how readable the art actually is? Maybe my revulsion to is a Caleb problem more than a Mike Perkins problem?)

Justice League Unlimited/World's Finest: We Are Yesterday (DC) I've been reading Mark Waid and company's Batman/Superman: World's Finest collections by borrowing them from the library. But I bought the first volume of Waid's Justice League Unlimited...and was planning on buying that series in trade going forward. But the second and next JLU trade is actually a crossover with World's Finest, which meant I had to decide whether to borrow it, as I do with World's Finest, or buy it, as I had with Justice League Unlimited. 

As I am always leaning towards not spending money rather than spending it, I opted to borrow this, so I guess I'm done buying JLU in trade already...?  You just lost a trade sale, DC!

As to why these two books are crossing over at all, other than the fact that Waid writes both of 'em, I'm not entirely sure. Given that they are set in two different time periods, with World's Finest seemingly set somewhere in the early 1980s/late Bronze Age and JLU set in the present, it's not a terribly natural crossover, and thus necessitates a time travel element.

Now the mysterious "super-terrorist" organization Inferno, which vexed the new iteration of Justice League throughout the first volume of JLU (and part of the Justice League: The Atom Project miniseries), were revealed at the end of that volume to be a Gorilla Grodd-led iteration of The Legion of Doom. As we learn, though, this Legion isn't a modern one, but one from the past. 

Why? I don't know. It's possible Waid went that route because it makes the involvement of the heroes of World's Finest, past versions of Superman, Batman and Robin Dick Grayson, relevant, and that choice was therefore made specifically to allow for this crossover. 

The in-story reason, though, is articulated by the present-day Grodd in this trade as he considers a plan to take on the new army of superheroes that make up the League: 

Suitable partners are scarce. 

Alas, those who once formed our "Legion of Doom"--Luthor, Joker, Manta, others--are equally useless to me.

Some have reformed. Some have degraded. Still others are now too psychotic to be allies.

I'd need evil in its prime. 

This will lead to a plan that he forms in the first JLU issue included, and the second chapter of this trade.

But first, the past! In this first chapter, set in the time of World's Finest, Waid and artist Clayton Henry has the title team, Flash Barry Allen and a ring-less Hal Jordan (There's a funny moment in which Bruce Wayne learns that Hal doesn't wear his power ring when piloting) thwart an attempt by Grodd to take over Gorilla City. It has nothing to do with "We Are Yesterday" really, but serves as a decent prologue, and one that introduces Grodd and his basic deal to anyone who might be unfamiliar.

In the Travis Moore-drawn present of the second chapter, at which point Waid is joined by co-writer Christopher Cantwell for the rest of the proceedings, Grodd comes into possession of some of Martian Manhunter's free-floating mental powers, boosting his own (This follows a weird plot point in Waid's own Absolute Power, wherein superpowers stolen by Amazon robots are lost or swapped). This gives the super-gorilla a little rainbow-colored, butterfly-shaped crystalline-looking tiara for some reason.

He then manipulates young Leaguer Airwave into thinking the League is bad, spying on them for him and, ultimately, allowing him to travel back in time to the pages of World's Finest to gather the Legion from that time and bring them back to the present, where, armed with "time guns", they will storm the Watchtower satellite in pursuit of a power source introduced in All In, one capable of transforming Gorilla Grodd into the Gorilla God. 

No, seriously, he says that:

Then we get an issue of Dan McDaid drawing Grodd's recruitment of the past Legion and their attempts to siphon energy from various time travel devices, leading them to battle with World's Finest's Superman, Batman, Robin, Green Lantern Hal Jordan, The Flash, The Atom and Plastic Man.

(I suppose we should here pause to consider this Legion. It's...not one that I am sure actually ever existed back then but do correct me if I'm wrong. It's basically that from the Challenge of the Super Friends cartoon, the "Banded together from remote galaxies are thirteen of the most sinister villains of all time" Legion, minus Brainiac, Giganta, The Riddler, Solomon Grundy and Toyman, and with The Joker and a new, original character added. I'm not 100% on why the line-up is smaller than that of the cartoon that inspired the team, but perhaps the cartoon line-up was just too many characters to juggle? Which is ironic, given how many characters are on this version of the League, I guess). 

At one point, the World's Finest of World's Finest get flip-flopped in time with their modern-day selves, so that the younger versions of the heroes stumble into the present-day DCU (and fight similarly time-travelling villains), the older versions get lost in the timestream and, at the climax, Airwave uses his powers to summon an army of heroes from various timelines to fight the Legion in the defeated League's stead. 

And here we get the likes of '90s Aquaman, Batman Beyond's Batman, The Terrifics, New 52 Harley Quinn, "Zero Year" Batman and "Year One" Barry Allen, among others. And then the League returns. And there's a big, huge fight with tons of characters, all drawn, in this final issue/chapter, by Dan Mora. 

In the end, the heroes win and the villains lose, as one might assume, but there seem to be some interesting repercussions, as Superman tells the time-lost heroes like Jonah Hex, Ultra the Multi-Alien and company that they seem to be stuck in the present and, on the last page, two cosmic beings discuss how time in "this universe" is coming to an end. 

Perhaps that was the reason for including time-travelling villains from the past rather than the modern villains, then, to add to the screwing-around-with-time element enough to signal a major crisis...?

In addition to Waid's titles, some of this will surely come into play in the upcoming event series DC KO, as the copy of the trade I have sitting in front of me right now, unlike the image above taken from Amazon, has the words "The Road To DC KO" on the cover near Luthor's fingertips. 

While both World's Finest and Justice League Unlimited might seem like toybox comics, allowing Waid to play with characters from two distinct eras of DC Comics publishing history, this particular crossover storyline multiplies that element by a factor of ten, so that, by the end, there's an avalanche of DC IP on the page.

It's a pretty chaotic story arc, and I confess I have already lost track of some of the players, but it's a fun kind of chaotic, and there are few creators better suited to playing with DC toys like this than Waid and, in the last chapter anyway, Mora. 

Let This One Be a Devil (Dark Horse Books) I have read a lot of the prolific writer James Tynion IV's DC super-comics work, which I always found to be good-enough if unremarkable. Because of that, I never felt moved to check out any of his other creator-owned work, but I have been excited about his recent works on the outré like 2023's Blue Book (about the 1961 Betty and Barney Hill UFO abduction saga), 2025's True Weird anthology (some stories of which were back-ups from Blue Book), and now Let This One Be a Devil, which, if you know much of anything about the Jersey Devil, is obviously about one of America's most famous monsters.

As a long-time comics reader who is also interested in cryptozoology and monster folklore, a series about the Jersey Devil is one of those occasional works that I feel was made just for me. Quite coincidentally, I had just finished James McCloy and Ray Miller Jr's The Jersey Devil (Blue River Press, 2016), a slim volume recounting much of the lore of the monster, last week, so when Let This One Be a Devil showed up at the library, I was pretty primed for it. 

For this book, which was originally a four-issue miniseries, Tynion is working with co-writer Steve Foxe and artist Piotr Kowalski. I'm not familiar with the previous work of either, but Kowalski is certainly a revelation. His style is highly realistic; his panels filled with lots of ink in the form of delicate linework. It's quite well-suited to the book, most of which takes place in 1909, the year of the biggest flap of Devil sightings, although there are plenty of flashbacks (and one flash-forward). 

Interestingly, Let This One... is both an original drama involving The Jersey Devil and an overview of the phenomena, a blend of fact, fact-with-a-question-mark and fiction. The book therefore tells a story of the Jersey Devil as well as the story of the Jersey Devil, the two narratives briefly intersecting in a ten-panel climax that reads as somewhat mystical and somewhat metafictional. 

As for the original story, bespectacled, highly educated young man Henry Naughton has moved back home to a farmhouse on the edge of New Jersey's Pine Barrens, intent on helping his recently widowed mother. His hard-working 15-year-old brother, who is taking his father's place at the factory, is resentful of Henry. This dynamic is highlighted when the farm gets an unusual visitor one night: A winged, goat-headed creature raiding their chicken coop.

This is the "main" Jersey Devil of the book. Kowalski's design for it is fairly far removed from most newspaper reports of the creature from the early 20th century, but it still incorporates elements of some sightings, so this devil is at least a plausible source for many of them. It's also quite a deal scarier (If, perhaps, not as scary as the carnivorous goat monster that artist Max Fiumara drew on the cover above).

Essentially humanoid in shape, Kowalski's Devil has the head of a goat with long, curling horns, hooved legs, a large pair of bat-like wings and a long, rat-like tail. He will draw many other Devils throughout the book, as whenever Henry hears a story of the Devil, Kowalski will draw that story's version of the Devil in the panel illustrating the story, so we also see Devils that look a little like large owl with horns and red eyes, or a dragon, or a smaller, less menacing winged goat man.

In town, Henry finds a newsboy hawking papers with a story of the devil (leading to a flashback of its 18th century birth, which is of course where the title comes from) and consults an amateur historian, who, hearing about the "hoofprints in the snow", has laid out a bunch of Jersey Devil material on a desk, just waiting for someone to ask him about them.

This leads to a section on the Leeds family, the controversial almanacs of Daniel Leeds and Benjamin Franklin's weird feud with Titan Leeds, and some of the most famous historical Devil sightings, like that of Joseph Bonaparte (brother of Napoleon). 

It's a tightly written eight pages or so but seems to cover the bases fairly well. Reading this bit, I was curious if Tynion and Foxe had read Brian Regal and Frank J. Esposito's The Secret History of The Jersey Devil: How Quakers, Hucksters, and Benjamin Franklin Created a Monster (John Hopkins University Press; 2019), as that book spends quite a bit of time on 18th century politics and almanacs, and the association of the Leeds family name with devils. (If you want to read more about the Jersey Devil, by the way, this is the first book I would recommend; it's about as thorough and definitive a work on the subject as one can imagine).

Later, we will check in on a dime museum in Philadelphia, where unscrupulous men are exhibiting the Jersey Devil...which is really a rented kangaroo, wearing something of a devil costume and kept in a dark enough cage that a gullible visitor might mistake it for something fantastic (Here Kowalski does a fine job of showing us the creature as visitors might have seen it, in a shape not unlike the "real" Devil that Henry saw at the chicken coop, and then revealing it for what it is).

As the book reaches its climax, young Roy and his friends take up rifles to hunt the Devil at night, against the advice of a man we see telling a crowd not to, as they are more likely to shoot one another in the dark than to bag a monster, and Henry rushes out in an attempt to save his brother.

This leads to that climax I referred to earlier, and a woods that is at once full of devils, and also completely free of devils...and then a little coda, wherein we return to the/a story of the Devil, a story that lives on as a story, regardless of what the Naughton boys (or anyone else) might actually think.

I liked this book a lot, and I hope Tynion continues to make comics on Fortean subjects and with such interesting creators. Especially comics about cryptids, although there is probably no monster as woven into American history and the American psyche than the Jersey Devil, not even Bigfoot, really. 

REVIEWED:

Angelica and The Bear Prince (RH Graphic) In his afterword, cartoonist Trung Le Nguyen explains that he wanted his follow-up to his (masterful) The Magic Fish (which I reviewed here) to be less personal and less emotionally heavy, given that he now knew he would have to be talking about his work, like, constantly. 

That likely explains why much of Nguyen's second book, despite still having a teenage child of immigrants for a protagonist and still having fairy tale inspiration, feels so much lighter and fluffier, and even has at least one dumb coincidence (There's a point where the characters are distressed by a particular turn of events, despite the fact that we have already been introduced to a particular character whose hobby is fixing the exact sort of problem before them, which I realized immediately, but it takes them some time to remember, apparently).

In fact, aspects of the book reminded me a bit of a Hallmark holiday romance, only with a teenage couple at the center of the narrative (Perhaps it's more typical of YA romance, although I wouldn't know, as I've never read any prose YA romance). Still, as Nguyen himself admits, he failed at the vapidity he was striving for, and the book ends up tackling some tougher subjects, particularly grief and mourning.

It's also noteworthy for its representation, I think, with an Asian lead, a popular best friend who is of a bigger build than such characters usually are and, I think, a trans character in a major role...although that character is presented in such a they-just-so-happen-to-be-trans way that there's only a single line that makes me think they are supposed to be (the character mentions choosing their name), so do correct me if I'm wrong.

Anyway, it's a very good comic, and, like all of Nguyen's work I've seen so far (he's also done some superhero stuff for the Big Two between books), it's gorgeously drawn. More here. 

Go-Man: Champion of Earth (Union Square Kids) Cartoonist Hamish Steele's new graphic novel series is a mélange of various bits of Japanese pop culture: Ultraman, giant monster movies like Godzilla and Gamera, Super Sentai, giant robot anime, there's even a bit of Astro Boy and Sailor Moon, the last as a magical girl cartoon that exists within the world of Go-Man. Despite the many and varied influences, Steele blends them all well, presenting a perfectly cohesive and original whole. I liked it a lot and I look forward to the second volume. More here. 

Another Mothman

If you're reading this blog, then you are almost certainly an adult, in which case you are not the target audience for writer Heather Alexander and illustrator Sam Kalda's Haunted USA: Spine-Tingling Stories from All 50 States (Wide Eyed Editions; 2025). But if you, like me, appreciate great art and spooky stories, you will probably enjoy flipping through it and reading the entries that strike your fancy. 

As the title says, it's a collection of scary stories from each of the 50 states (plus one for Washington, DC), presented in two-page spread, a three-to-five paragraph story on one page, a gorgeous illustration of that story by Kalda on the facing page. Most of these are ghost stories, an aspect of the paranormal which I am not particularly interested in, and that includes the Ohio story (That of a "Racer Boy", a ghost said to appear on the tracks of a roller coaster at Kings Island).

 A few of the stories involve cryptids though, a subject which I am quite interested in. What grabbed my attention was the appearance of Mothman in the upper left corner of the cover. 

(You can't tell by looking at a picture online, but the cover has shiny silver elements on it, including the creators' names, the spots on Mothman's wings, the cat's whiskers and so on).

The story of Mothman is the West Virginia's entry in the book. Alexander's five-paragraph retelling includes the first sighting as that of the gravediggers who saw something large with wings and the most famous one, that of the Scarberrys and Mallettes in the TNT area, which lead to the newspaper report that seemingly kicked off the flap of sightings and its media coverage. 

The only mistake I noticed was in this sentence: "Some locals wondered if the Mothman was living in the nearby nuclear power plant, but police found no evidence of the creature or anyone there." West Virgina does not actually have any nuclear power plants, nor has it ever. Alexander probably meant the TNT area, a series of World War II-era concrete, igloo-like structures in which explosives were once stored. It is now the McClintic Wildlife Management Area, a locale Alexander mentions when telling the story of the Scarberry/Mallette sighting. 

But what we're most interested in here is the image of Mothman. As you can see, Kalda leans on the "moth" in the name, as so many artists do. Note the moth-like wings and the long, fuzzy antennae-like structures on its head. In this, Kalda seems to be following in the footsteps of Frank Franzetta, who painted a moth-man of a Mothman on the cover of High Times, and sculptor Bob Roach, who created the shiny statue of the cryptid that now stands in Point Pleasant.

No witnesses actually reported anything moth-like about Mothman, of course, aside from wings and nocturnal habits. Despite the spots, Kalda does get the creatures two most notorious features into his image: Big, black wings and staring red eyes (I like also the way he depicts Mothman as essentially face-less, no witness ever being able to articulate what its face might have looked like).

I also like how Kalda gives his Mothman such long, creepy fingers...and even long toes. It's a really gorgeous image.

The other handful of crytpids covered, each of which is also beautifully rendered, are Alaska's humanoid otter creatures the Kushtaka (Alexander's clever title? "Otterly Terrifying"), Massachusetts' Pukwudgies, a handful of different lake monsters from Michigan and Missouri's hairy humanoid Momo (who looks a bit like a cross between Chewbacca and Cartoon Network's Brak, I thought).

The Pukwudgie image is particularly potent, and I can imagine it scaring the hell out of me had I encountered it as a little kid, monsters scraping their claws on my bedroom windows being a particularly vivid fear of mine (elicited by the sound of utility wires creaking against the tree branches outside my window).

Perhaps also of note is Iowa's chocolate-eating ghost, star of an urban legend in which, if one leaves a candy bar on a particular bridge at a particular time, the chocolate will disappear, leaving only an empty wrapper. Though presumably a ghost, Kalda's brilliant illustration suggests a sort of red-eyed giant monster...while simultaneously looking like it might just be the shape of the trees and shadows on the bridge. 

Anyway, next time you're in the library, do take the time to check this book out. You can see more of Kalda's work on his website and his Instagram account. 

 

 

Review: 1997's The Spectre #51

While DC editorial was able to get it together well enough to schedule the Spectre as a guest-star in the pages of Batman and Batman in the pages of The Spectre in January of 1997, they didn't necessarily get the details right. 

On the second page of John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake's The Spectre #51, Batman is swinging from a New York City rooftop, thinking about how he has come in pursuit of The Joker. 

"This is the second such trip made here recently," the Dark Knight thinks, "Last time brought me up against The Spectre.*"

The asterisk refers readers to "Batman 450-451." But, as we know because we just read those issues, Batman did not make a trip to New York City in them, bringing him up against The Spectre. Rather, the New York City-based Spectre journeyed to Batman's Gotham City, where the two clashed...at least in words, if not physically.

Odd.

That aside, this issue, one of the handful of issues of the series I had read off the rack when it was still being published serially, is just as I remember it: A fairly strong done-in-one in which the two caped heroes argue about sin and punishment regarding The Joker, with a terrifying moment in which the madman gets ultimate power (as he apparently occasionally does*) and the villain ultimately being defeated in the same way he will soon be in a JLA story. 

Having just read the Batman crossover, I of course wanted to read this issue, which will presumably be collected in a future The Spectre by John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake Omnibus 2. Luckily, DC included it in their 2019 collection The Joker: His Greatest Jokes, which my library had a copy of (Interestingly, this issue of The Spectre is the only story included from a book that isn't one of the Batman line of books. You would think they would have included a Joker vs. Superman story in there, at least...)

It's a tightly-written 22-pager, with no time to waste on anything but the central conflict, only a few lines of dialogue really devoted to what's going on in the pages of the book at the time (Jim Corrigan really is, as he seemed to be in those issues of Batman, on the police force again, and partners with Nate Kane. Apparently, he has recently been injured by the Spear of Destiny again and is hiding out inside Nate's body. Oh, and there's a passing reference to the events of the previous fall's line-wide crossover, Final Night...which I'd love to see DC collect into a DC Finest volume or two...I remember it being one of the better such crossovers). 

The Joker is already in New York City as the book opens, and Batman has obviously already shown up too. Kane takes a report on the Batman foiling a mugging from his superior, thanks to Corrigan/The Spectre temporarily controlling his body.

Both Batman and Kane have the same concern about The Spectre meeting The Joker. "Based on our last meeting, if Spectre encounters The Joker first there won't be much of him left to return to Arkham," Batman thinks to himself. "Moonface, there better be someone left for me to question when I get there," Kane shouts after The Spectre, as the spirit flies off toward the sight of The Joker's attack. 

As for that attack, it too seemed familiar to me at this point. Someone in the city had the bright idea to open up a Joker-themed nightclub, where all the patrons dress up like The Joker (an off-hand remark by a club-goer makes this sound a bit like a comic book world's version of a goth club, where patrons dress a bit like vampires). It's kind of remarkable to read this and realize it was written almost 30 years ago, given how often the last few decades of comics have presented us with various iterations of the fans-of-The Joker or Joker-as-charismatic-figure stories. 

The story I immediately thought of, though, wasn't a comic book one at all, but an episode of the original Batman: The Animated Series, wherein a casino owner opens up a Joker-themed club called Joker's Wild, drawing the attention and the wrath of The Joker himself (For what it's worth, that episode of the show, also called "Joker's Wild", aired in 1992...that said, I suppose it's possible it was based on an older Batman comic I never read, as many episodes of the show were inspired by comics storylines).

Here an emcee announces The Joker on stage and is nervously taken aback when the Clown Prince of Crime seems less than flattered by the club's existence. "You mean, the idea of bedwetting little twits turning me into a fad?" Joker says, reaching to shake hands with the emcee. "What's not to like?"

The Joker then proceeds to electrocute his victim with a deadly joy buzzer ("They also know better than to fall for that in Gotham!" he laughs), and he then turns to spray the club with gas, his henchmen having welded the doors shut and filing in wearing gas masks.

That's when Batman shows up. The Joker immediately sics his fans-turned-victims on the Dark Knight. And then The Spectre appears, materializing out of the gas being shot by The Joker. 

Spec makes short work of The Joker's men in his own inimitable way—

—much to the delight of The Joker. 

Honestly, if you made a Venn diagram, The Spectre's sense of humor and The Joker's sense of humor probably overlap more than a little. Both seem to like dark jokes that end with someone violently dying. 

Before The Spectre can do something like turn The Joker into a giant playing card and rip him in half, though, The Batman makes a case for sparing him.

"The Joker himself is some kind of unholy innocent--a sociopath!" Batman argues. "He has no real concept of good and evil!" He argues that The Joker is sick and needs treatment, and, perhaps appealing to The Spectre's sense of mission, he says that if God created The Joker in this way, how can The Spectre punish him for being that way?

It's only a few panels, but it's an interesting little comic book debate, and with the characters bringing in God, making for a slightly more nuanced than the usual "executing killers makes you no better than them" sorts of arguments Batman can get into with characters who use deadly force (See, for example, his brief fight with The Punisher in 1994's Punisher/Batman: Deadly Knights #1 over how to deal with The Joker).

To get to the truth of the matter, The Spectre enters The Joker's eyes to investigate his mind in person, something we've seen him do repeatedly before, with characters alive and dead, in the pages of The Spectre. Of course, when he does so, he loses the upper hand, the person whose mind or soul he is visiting having the ultimate home court advantage.

This time it goes disastrously wrong. From the other side of the glass in a funhouse mirror within his mind, The Joker tells the Spectre, "Love the cape. And the hood. Mind if I try them on?"

And just like that, The Joker switches places with Corrigan, and the madman is suddenly in control of The Spectre's powers, appearing as a white-skinned grinning giant with a flower on the "lapel" of his giant green cape.

I was at this point rather struck by potentially how big a threat The Joker-with-The Spectre's-powers would be to not only Batman and the city, but to the whole world. Not for the first time while reading Ostrander's Spectre this month, I realized that Ostrander had come up with a plot that could very easily be an epic story arc or even big crossover event, but it was instead just used for an issue or three in the pages of the book. (The other Spectre plot it's easiest to imagine DC having exploited is the conclusion of the arc in which the United States seeks a Spectre counter-measure, ultimately arming Superman with the Spear of Destiny and sending him to confront the Spectre, leading to a sequence in which Superman fights the whole DC Universe and declares himself a sort of king of the world—where have I heard that before?—although much of it is a sort of fantasy that The Spectre presents, Ghost of Christmas Future-style, to Superman.) 

And so, the giant Joker uses Spectre's powers to attack Batman and/or anything within striking distance, the Dark Knight trying to keep the now god-like Joker's attention on him rather than on any other possible victims. 

Meanwhile, Corrigan explores the inside of The Joker's head, where there are a bunch of labeled electrical power boxes in a dilapidated maintenance shack behind a fun house. Just as Batman said, the one labeled "Conscience" isn't hooked up at all, and Mandrake draws it empty but for a crumbling skull.

Corrigan notes that, when it comes to conscience, "I got that in spades," and then he proceeds to stick a handful of glowing electrical cables into his open mouth, essentially hooking up The Joker's mind to Corrigan's conscience. (These scenes occurring in the mind, the sets, props and actions are all visual metaphors, of course.)

"Have a taste, Joker!" Corrigan shouts, his own head now enveloped in electric blue light. "Here's what a sense of right and wrong feel like!"

This has the desired effect as, over the course of a page and a half or so, The Joker is forced to think about and truly understand what he's done in his lifetime of killing:

Oh no!

OH NO!

All those lives! All those precious lives...!

DEAR GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE?!

As The Joker freaks out, Mandrake draws a crowd of faces, apparently those of his countless victims, washing over his own screaming face like a wave. While they mostly appear to be just random civilians, one is quite recognizable as Robin Jason Todd. 

The Spectre leaves The Joker's body, and the villain collapses into a fetal position. 

"He has tasted his own guilt and it has proven too much for him," The Spectre explains to Batman. "He has slipped into catatonia."

Thus, The Joker's threat has been stopped, and Spectre concedes the argument over properly judging the maniac killer to Batman, the Joker expert.

As I alluded to earlier, this turn of events being a bit familiar to something that happened in Grant Morrison's JLA. 

In 1998's JLA #15—so well after this issue of Ostrander and company's Spectre—in the concluding chapter of the "Rock of Ages" story arc, The Joker gets his hands on the philosopher's stone/the Worlogog, a four-dimensional map that gives whoever bears it control over time and space**. So yet again a DC writer has put power over reality itself in the hands of The Joker. 

He doesn't get much of a chance to play with it, though, as the Martian Manhunter uses his mental abilities to telepathically order the information in The Joker's brain, forcing him into a temporary sanity, during which The Joker realizes he's done terrible things. 

I don't think Morrison necessarily swiped this brief scene from Ostrander, any more than I think Ostrander was inspired to create his Killing Joke club by Batman: The Animated Series, but it's interesting to note how often these stories rhyme one another, as various writers over the decades all might come to similar ideas. Like, for example, how scary would it be if a crazy villain like The Joker had god-like powers? 

In a fun little stinger of an ending, The Spectre turns to face the crowd of clubgoers who had dressed up like The Joker and had been patronizing The Killing Joke club. A few weeks later the club has reopened under the name The Wrath of God, a sort of BDSM club with naked people dressed in hooded green cloaks and green underpants, one of them apparently spanking others with a rod and preaching of sin and punishment. 

*In 1997's DC Special Series #27, better known as "Batman vs. The Incredible Hulk", the Shaper-of-Worlds grants The Joker his reality-writing powers at the climax (I wrote at length about that crossover here). And in the 2000 "Emperor Joker" crossover in the Superman line of books, The Joker gained access to Mr. Mxyzptlk's nigh omnipotent powers to alter reality. Those are the stories that immediately leapt to my mind, but perhaps there are others...?

**I read "Rock of Ages" when it was originally released in 1997 and 1998, when I was still in college, and thus relatively early in my exploration of the comics medium...and the DC Universe and its history. I had always just assumed that Grant Morrison had created the Worlogog, as it sure seemed to be of apiece with the sort of big, crazy ideas that punctuated his JLA run. 

It wasn't until 2018 or so that I was reading the collection of Jack Kirby's 1984 Super Powers series that I realized that Kirby had actually created the Worlogog. I practically fell out of my chair when I read the word in that comic. 

I have long since realized that much of which seems big and crazy in Morrison's super-comic writing is basically just old-school comic book craziness—especially that of the Silver Age—repurposed into the more sophisticated, more realistic presentation of more modern comics. (Which I don't think is a bad thing! In fact, it's a great strength, that Morrison doesn't just take characters or plot points from DC history like other writers but also manages to imbue his comics with the spirit of those past comics.)

Oh, and speaking of the Worlogog, it also showed up in the 2019 Teen Titans Go Vs. Teen Titans cartoon crossover, of all places, where it was part of the mechanism allowing for the two universes to intersect. There's even a brief musical number based around its pronunciation.

Bookshelf #6

This week's shelf is my Marvel shelf, containing various Marvel trades (and one hardcover) I had acquired between 2012 and 2024 or so. This is around the time that I started buying fewer and fewer serially published single issues and then stopped altogether. 

It's probably harder to tell exactly what exactly is on this shelf compared to some of the past posts of this sort, given how Marvel often has all of their trade spines look alike, no matter what book it is, hence all those all-white spines with the red Marvel logo at the top facing you here. 

On this shelf you will find the entirety of Ryan North, Erica Henderson, Derek Charm and company's Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (a dozen trades plus an original graphic novel), Rainbow Rowell and company's Runaways, the first five volumes of Ms. Marvel, five Secret Wars tie-ins and some various Avengers books (two volumes from Mark Waid's All-New... run, the first three volumes of Jason Aaron's run, the first volume of Kelly Thompson's West Coast Avengers and something called Avengers Mech Strike, which I think I bought specifically to review at Good Comics for Kids...well that, and because it was the Avenges piloting giant robots).

The rest of the books are more-or-less random ones, purchased either because I liked the characters, or the creators or, ideally, both. 

You'll note that despite the relative uniformity of Marvel's trades here (only The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up the Marvel Universe juts up a bit), there are also some smaller, digest-sized books on the far right. 

These are more kid-friendly comics that Marvel published during that time: Marvel Rising (Squirrel Girl! Ms. Marvel! Ryan North! Devin Grayson! G. Willow Wilson! A Gurihiru cover!), Spidey: Freshman Year, The Unstoppable Wasp: G.I.R.L. Power (so good, and with superior art by the great Elsa Charretier)...and one that is actually an IDW book, Marvel Action: Spider-Man: A New Beginning, from that weird time in which Marvel was farming out their kid-friendly comics to a different publisher for some reason. 

As for that stack of books on the far right that are laying down on their backs, those are Image trades purchased during that time. But, because I ran out of good bookends, I didn't have a way to stand them up spine out. 

I'll temporarily do so just so you can seem 'em though:

It's a particularly random assortment, all purchased because I liked the artist (some of my all-time favorite artists are represented here, including John McCrea) or because someone recommended them to me (as in the case of Maneater and those Rat Queens volumes). 

Seeing Chynna Clugston Flores' Blue Monday there reminds me that I never bought the rest of the collections of it (looks like there are four total). I have all of her Blue Monday comics in singles, of course, but I like the book enough that I wouldn't mind having a more easily accessible version of it too. (Oh, and writing this post also reminded me that I never bought the future volumes of The Black Panther by Christopher Priest: The Complete Collection, having stopped after acquiring the first. Maybe I shouldn't be doing these posts at all, doing so is only adding to my to-buy list...)

Review: 1997's Batman #540-541

It's been a while since I revisited any comics from the 1995-1998 Batman run by Doug Moench, Kelley Jones and John Beatty, but my recent reading inspired me to do so. First, I've been reading a lot of Kelley Jones comics, thanks to that huge collection of all of his Swamp Thing comics from October and this month's Dracula Book Two: The Brides. Secondly, The Spectre has been on my mind a lot, thanks to the Spectre by John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake Omnibus Vol. 1, which collects the first half of their 1992-1998 series.

Jones drew the Spectre in both Swamp Thing and The Spectre collections, albeit it briefly in both. 

All that got me thinking of the first time I had seen Kelley Jones' Spectre...as well as curious to see how Doug Moench might have handled a conflict between Ostrander's vengeful, killer ghost and the never-take-a-life Batman. 

The Spectre appeared in a two-part story in 1997's Batman #540 and #541, and DC made a little event out of it at the time. Just as The Spectre was appearing in the pages of Batman, Batman was appearing in the pages of The Spectre; though being published simultaneously, they were two distinct stories (If I recall correctly, the Spectre issue had the two heroes in conflict over whether or not to kill The Joker, and the villain ultimately, temporarily gaining control of the Spectre's powers). 

To re-read these issues of Batman, I turned to an electronic copy of Batman by Doug Moench and Kelley Jones Vol. 2, available through my library (I hate trying to find particular old comics in the 20-ish long boxes I have upstairs now). 

I was a little surprised to find that, while these issues were indeed a Batman/Spectre story, with the latter appearing on both covers (the second one, unencumbered by the logo and text, is above) and his name even appearing along the top of the covers so that they read "The Spectre & Batman", there's actually a lot of Bruce Wayne content in these issues.

So much so, in fact, that there's a bifurcated plot running through the issues.

One half of that plot deals with Batman and The Spectre's intersecting criminal investigations that lead to their collision and, given their differences on how to deal with criminals, conflict. The other deals with Bruce Wayne romancing his then new love interest, late night radio host Vesper Fairchild (Who, like so many of Batman's girlfriends over the years, would eventually meet a bad end; here they seem to be meeting for the first time and having their first few dates, though). 

The former plot, obviously, plays to Jones strengths more than the latter. To dispense with the Bruce Wayne plot first, it features various listeners around Gotham City hearing Vesper's show, on which she announces Bruce will be an upcoming guest; Batman is one of those listeners and has to hurry to change and get there in time.

Apparently, Alfred had booked the interview, trying to get Bruce to dust off the rich playboy/Gotham philanthropist persona after a relatively long absence. Things get out of hand when Bruce seems genuinely interested in Vesper, though—Jones draws an image in which Alfred, hearing Bruce hit on Vesper over the air, is sweating as profusely as a stool pigeon Jim Corrigan/The Spectre was working previously—and they have a couple of dates, which Alfred isn't all that thrilled about ("But sir, if you'll recall what happened the last time with Shondra Kinsolving..." he says at one point, bringing up another Batman girlfriend who met a bad end).

Anyway, Bruce Wayne does an interview with Vesper Fairchild, they go to a diner after, and then set up a lunch date for the following day, which requires Bruce to visit his office for the first time in about a year-and-a-half, and lets Moench write the faux-fop version of the character we don't see all that often. 

The scenes between Bruce and Vesper are almost all banter, with the pair lobbing lines back and forth like they were playing tennis. Like much of Moench's Batman writing at the time, it feels somewhat stagey and unrealistic, but it suits the melodramatic tone of Moench and Jones' vision of the book (The Spectre and Batman will banter rather similarly, although obviously less flirtatiously).

As for the portions of the story involving muscular guys in capes, Jim Corrigan—who here seems like he might actually be a police officer again?—and Spectre supporting character Nate Kane are at the scene of a deadly arson, which they believe to be the work of Tony "Sparks" Weal. In an interrogation room, Corrigan uses the Spectre to scare info of Weal's whereabout out of an informant: Weal has apparently gone to Gotham City, to meet with the lieutenant of the Black Mask Gang.

Batman, meanwhile, is busy busting that same lieutenant, one Damon Shugrue, which he does during a pretty great fight in a pool hall (Jones' Shugrue, by the way, is an amazing design, looking like the sort of stereotypical criminal that Jack Cole might have drawn; a big, hulking guy with beady little eyes and an almost Frankenstein-shaped head).

Because Batman showed up at the meet instead of Weal, Shugrue thinks Weal must have tipped off the Dark Knight, and so he sends three of his soldiers to kill Weal. Just before they gun him down, one of them says, "Relax, Sparks--we just came to deliver a Gotham welcome... and three more kisses from the Batman."

Okay, it's a bit purple—Moench's writing in this title so often is—and it is perhaps a strained way to make Weal think Batman has something to do with his killing but, well, Moench needed something to send The Spectre after Batman, right? 

The spirit of vengeance finds Weal in Gotham, but not until after he had died. And so, he enters his corpse through the eyes, and visits his soul in Hell, where it is secured to an x-shaped cross amid flames. During questioning, Weal says it was Batman who had him killed, and so the Spectre turns his hands into a big green bellows to fan the flames and then makes for Wayne Manor.

There's a whole series of great images of The Spectre in Gotham. As a semi-transparent giant creeping around the corner of the morgue, dissolving into a cloud to enter and exit Weal's body, streaking out of the morgue like a comet, descending from high above the manor with an impossibly long cape trailing behind him and, ultimately, appearing as a giant face pushing through the stalactites to accuse Batman in the Batcave. 

I kind of love how cool, calm and collected Batman remains when a giant, screaming ghost face emerges from his ceiling, but then, I guess this is just, like, another Tuesday for Batman (Well, another Wednesday, I guess, this being comics). 

Satisfied by Batman's denials, The Spectre leaves and the two conduct separate, parallel investigations, ending at an abandoned night club where the three men who gunned down Weal are in hiding, protected by other Black Mask gang soldiers.

Batman has to fight his way in, giving The Spectre, who just magically appears before the killers, time to kill them all. He appears with his hands in the form of giant Swiss army knives with which he impales one, he turns his hand into a chainsaw to cut down another, and, in the most spectacular killing, he calls them cowards for wearing masks and says "And so it is time to face-- --the wrath behind my mask!"

Here The Spectre pulls apart his own face and out slithers a snake-like projection that is all teeth, gums and spine, looking vaguely Giger-esque (and resembling elements of the bizarre alien creatures Jones drew in 1990's Swamp Thing #94, collected in that Swamp Thing by Len Wein and Kelley Jones book mentioned earlier). Do note the evocatively specific sound effects Moench came up with, and letterer Todd Klein brings to gorgeous life. 

The bad guys thus either colorfully exterminated by The Spectre or beaten up by Batman, the two heoes have a brief, banter-y argument. It is noteworthy, I thought, for Batman talking, ever so briefly, of elements of his own beliefs and faith, something that doesn't come up too often in Batman comics, but which Batman fans seems to have a lot of opinions about.

Their argument, which spans a couple of pages, goes about just as one might expect given the particular vocations and crimefighting practices of the characters. The Spectre ultimate leaves, telling Batman that he reminds him of his friend Amy (This is Amy Beitermann, Corrigan/The Spectre's kinda sorta love interest in the early issues of The Spectre; she gets killed off surprisingly early...but given how much the book deals with aspects of the afterlife, she still shows up in various capacities for a while). 

My favorite part here is how the relatively tiny Batman's ears go back as he points at The Spectre. One of the many, many things I have always loved about Jones' Batman is the way he draws Batman's ears as if they are a literal part of his body, and they thus sometimes move as if to reflect his feelings.

The most interesting part of the entire story is what happens next, though. 

As you can see on the bottom of that page, Batman calls for The Spectre to wait as he's in the process of leaving, seemingly jumping backwards through the ceiling.

Noting that The Spectre said he spoke to Weals in Hell, Batman then asks if that means there's really a Heaven too, and Spec is equivocal in his answer: "I have seen such a place...but whether in reality or illusion, I know not."

Batman says that, while he himself doesn't need, as The Spectre puts it, "the crutch of such a promise" of Heaven in order to live his life well and do good, there were two people that he cared about who were murdered, and Spectre then guesses what it is Batman wants to ask him.

"And you wish to know if they are at peace in Heaven," Spectre says. He then cuts Batman off before he can name them, but readers will know that he is of course talking about his parents:

Preserve your mind and soul where they belong, mortal--in the misted struggle between doubt and faith.

...

What I know is not yours to know. 

Besides, I am far more familiar with the denizens of Hell...than the geography of Heaven.

The Spectre then takes his leave on this, the penultimate page. I found the conversation sort of fascinating, as it's one of the relatively few instances in comics where I can recall Batman's encounters with various spiritual or magical entities or brushes with the afterlife including the obvious, his questioning of what he sees or learns might mean for the souls of his parents.

Another tack Moench might have taken here is questioning if The Spectre had avenged the death of the Waynes or, perhaps, if he has such vast powers, why he doesn't prevent murders, but instead only avenges them after the fact. (Questions, by the way, that John Ostrander deals within the pages of The Spectre, but, of course, Batman doesn't know that). 

I also find this exchange kind of interesting because surely this isn't the first, second, third, fourth or fifth time that Batman has crossed paths with The Spectre, and so surely he has had previous opportunities to chat with him about the afterlife during, say, one of those social gatherings between the annual JLA and JSA (although perhaps many of those were no longer meant to be canonical post-Crisis...?) or during some other team-up (although, again, The Spectre's meeting with Batman in the pages of The Brave and The Bold would have predated Crisis On Infinite Earths).

But perhaps Batman wasn't previously convinced that The Spectre was who he said he was, or perhaps he didn't necessarily know that The Spectre could visit the afterlife...?

*********************

The other comics featuring The Spectre that I've read in the last year or so were in the DC Finest collections of the Golden Age All-Star Comics, DC Finest: Justice Society of America: For America and Democracy and DC Finest: Justice Society of America: Plunder of the Psycho-Pirate. 

In those stories, it's clear that The Spectre is the ghost of a dead man and, like his fellow Society member Doctor Fate, his powers seem more or less unlimited, as he's able to do completely crazy things like, for example, deposit a criminal on the surface of Pluto (Although, more often than not, The Spectre, like Doctor Fate, takes on criminals using only his fists). 

The idea of The Spectre transforming his body into outlandish shapes or using his powers to sentence evildoers to harsh, ironic punishments doesn't seem to have been part of the character's depiction yet back in the 1940s. 

One element of these stories I found particular surprising though, and the reason I bring them up in a post about Batman and The Spectre at all, is that the writer Gardner Fox repeatedly referred to The Spectre by the nickname of "The Dark Knight"...which, these days, we associate with Batman, rather than The Spectre.