Comic Reader Résumé Podcast #3

Temping (Summer 1982)

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ré·su·mé [rez-oo-mey, rez-oo-mey] noun 1. a summing up; summary. 2. a brief written account of personal, educational, and professional qualifications and experience, as that prepared by an applicant for a job.

In Comic Reader Résumé, I use Mike’s Amazing World of Comics to travel back through time via his virtual newsstand to the genesis point of my lifelong collecting of comics. From there, I can offer a “work history” of my fandom through my active purchasing of (relatively) new comic books beginning in January of 1982, when my interest in the medium went from sporadic and unformed to routine on through compulsive accumulation. To streamline the narrative and keep the subjects at least remotely contemporaneous, I will not generally be discussing what we call back issues: books bought long after their publication date. Sometimes, I will cover a book published on a given month that I picked up within a year or so that date, and I give myself an especially wide berth on this aspect in the first couple of “origins” episodes. We’ll get more rigidly on point as my memories crystallize and my “hobby” spirals out of control into the defining characteristic of my life (eventually outpacing squalor and competing neuroses.) It’s part personal biography, part industry history, and admittedly totally self-indulgent on my part. This episode offers a look at my scant purchases sometimes around the summer of '82, including Batman Annual #8, Atari Force #1, 3, & 5, and a few others, as well as Remco action figures and various kid stuff.

“Transcripts”

• Comic Resume: Anj's Origins
• Anj's Resume Pt 2: From Fan To Collector
• Siskoid's Comics Recollected
• Summer, 1982
• Twitter
• Facebook
• rolledspinepodcasts@gmail.com
• Comment on Résumé page or Rolled Spine Podcasts.

1984 Green Arrow Postcard by George Pérez

The Emerald Archer is former millionaire, now crusading newswriter, Oliver Queen. He possesses a quiver filled with specially designed arrows-- created for every conceivable occasion.

Mortimer Weisinger was the Rob Liefeld of the 1940s. A bullying, abusive editor, Mort had a hand in the creations of the Sub-Mariner knock-off Aquaman, the Flash riff Johnny Quick, the Superman swipe Martian Manhunter, and the ersatz Marvel Family formed around Superman. When Errol Flynn was box office gold as Robin Hood, the comics filled up with archers. Mort's contribution was Green Arrow, around the time the film adaptation of the book The Green Archer was in cinemas. Mort's "innovation" was marrying the movie to a naked lift of Batman and Robin, simply trading bats for bows. Green Arrow and Speedy followed an arrow signal in their Arrowcar or Arrowplane to swing into battle against a Jokeresque foe called Bull's Eye. When other heroes folded tents with their companies in the late '40s bust years, Green Arrow just kept on trucking at DC as a mediocre also ran (although Jack Kirby had a regarded run in the 1950s.) When Batman wasn't allowed to play with the Justice League of America in its early days, Julie Schwartz just got Green Arrow.

Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams revamped the character in the late '60s and early '70s. That's where I was first introduced to Oliver Queen as a left wing ladies man with a rockin' Van Dyke and a turtleneck. Basically, everything I wanted to be when I grew up. I loved his devil may care attitude and groovy choice of weapon. Turning Speedy into a recovering heroin addict was a bold move, and the art was so dang pretty. I wanted more, so I bought a Brave and the Bold team-up involving the Penguin, and ended up hating the art and the story. As the '80s progressed, Green Arrow became a direct sales only, mature readers series. Since I was still buying off the newsstand, that meant my awareness of the character was dependent on house ads with sweet Mike Grell art.

Finally, in the early '90s, I started catching up on the Emerald Archer through back issues and reprints. I had no idea how stupid, simplistic and shrill those old O'Neil/Adams Green Lantern/Green Arrow were when read as a collection in a modern light. Grell's The Longbow Hunters was mean-spirited, and seemed like a watered down version of Jon Sable with some stupid Eastern elements tossed in. Worse, it was at this point Queen quit using his Batman-style trick arrows. That meant he was running around like a hoodie ninja shooting people with regular arrows. It's one thing to continue employing a World War II era fad as your m.o., since comics are forgiving like that. However, a grim and gritty "realistic" series about an archer in the age of the Punisher? Even if I could suspend my disbelief over his continued survival, that wouldn't make it interesting, no matter how many C.I.A. conspiracies you try to drag into it.

By the mid-90s, Oliver Queen was a wimp in a drab book few people read who had been divorced from the DCU for years. DC jazzed things up using the Knightfall method: develop a supporting character, then ditch the original hero and push the successor model. It got me to jump back on the book, and I found I vastly preferred Ollie's illegitimate son Connor Hawke to Queen. Actually, I preferred Speedy, ex-girlfriend Black Canary, and Marvel's Hawkeye by that point. I followed Connor's book until the end, when it was cancelled to make way for Kevin Smith's planned revival of Ollie. That took a few years to materialize, and while it gave Green Arrow his most relevant comic run ever within the industry, I resented this over the hill douche for spearheading DC's great whitewashing of the '00s.

Aside from getting a kick out of Mike Barr and Trevor Von Eeden's early '80s mini-series, I've found Green Arrow to be one of the most irritating and frustrating characters that I've had the misfortune to read. However, there may be some small redemption. When the producers of Smallville couldn't get the rights to feature Batman on the show, they used Green Arrow in his original role as an obvious proxy. A quasi-spin-off show is upcoming, which will only emphasize the Dark Knight over the Emerald Archer. It's a tired posture in comics, but still better than the self-righteous sleazy hypocrite he's been for decades...

1988 Justice League International Postcards: Icemaiden

Art by Kevin Maguire and Joe Rubinstein

ICEMAIDEN™
Singrid Nansen of Norway has absolute power over ice and snow. She uses that power in her adventures with the Global Guardians as Icemaiden!

The above card had the weakest, least assured art of the set, which was produced so far in advance of the character's being established in the book that they didn't get either of her names right.

Icemaiden was a blue-skinned super-heroine created for the Super Friends comic in the 1970s to represent the people of Norway amongst the Global Guardians. A decade later, the Justice League was short on girls, so they turned the Green Flame and Icemaiden into the infinitely more generic but duo-monicker-friendly Fire & Ice. The new Ice, Tora Olafsdotter, had honky-colored skin, and was a naive Pollyana protected and pressured by virtual "big sis" Fire.

Readers took to Ice because of her sweet nature, her undercutting of Fire's overbearing tendencies, and her effectiveness as a foil for the violent braggart Green Lantern Guy Gardner. Tora's willingness to find the goodness in a thoroughly loutish character and find love elevated both parties, and poo-pooing it gave Fire something to do. Unfortunately, once the International League went from funny adventures to outright terrible "seriousness," Ice tried to better deal Guy with Superman. When that didn't pan out, creators decided it was time for Ice to step out of everyone else's shadow and allow her to be a more fully empowered and proactive heroine. The thing about ice is that it tends to hold up poorly in direct sunlight. Readers hated the new, "colder" Ice, so she got whacked in a crossover, and became the Barry Allen of third rate gimmick characters with breasts.

In the aftermath, somebody noticed that Ice had been completely different from Icemaiden, and retroactively assigned that concept a new life, personality and League membership. Screwing up and killing Tora might have played a tiny little part in Sigrid's return and characterization, mind. For years, Fire had been a reflection of Ice more than her own character, and Sigrid Nansen mirrored this dynamic with Bea. A weak, insecure, and almost cowardly being, Sigrid tried to redefine herself by assuming the responsibilities of Tora, including overreaching by trying to initiate a lesbian relationship with Fire. Even with sales of the Justice League books reaching their nadir, it was still a daring adventure in sexual politics for a mainstream book in the mid-90s. Of course, as a queer heroine, Nansen was inevitably dispatched as brutally as possible, skinned alive by a villainess intent on stealing her powers.

Tora was eventually resurrected, after a lot of moaning and hand-wringing, but the damage couldn't be wholly undone. You can't have an innocent, meek heroine once you make her trifling, put her through a Dark Icicle Saga, throw a haughty cape on her, and drag her out of the freezer after a universe had moved past her. More recently, she received a new origin as a Popsicle Rogue. Her glory days were past before her death, and the aftermath has seen her mostly standing around, propping up male characters and filling internal quotas. I kind of liked Tora for what she was in her time. Today, I'd rather see Sigrid sewn up and the DCU move past old tropes and homophobia to offer an alternative heroine, instead of a simple base competent in the team formula.

1988 Justice League International Postcards: Green Flame

Click to Enlarge

Art by Kevin Maguire and Joe Rubinstein

GREEN FLAME™
Once a member of the Global Guardians, Beatriz DaCosta of Brazil is able to breathe hot or cold flame, as well as create illusions with sparks radiating from her eyes as the beautiful and deadly Green Flame!

I started out reading DC Comics, but didn't keep up with them very well in the latter half of the Bronze Age. In the early '80s, DC Comics pretty much were still just for kids, and something like the Super Friends tie-in comic was for really little kids, like Spidey Super-Stories. That's where the Green Flame made her debut, joining the Global Guardians, an Up With People for the cape set. Maybe those guys would have amounted to something if the token Super Powers like Apache Chief, Black Vulkan, Samurai, Pharoh, and El Dorado had ended up there. As it was, I didn't know they existed until after Keith Giffen had begun disbanding and deconstructing them in the wake of the Justice League going International. The JLI had already lost the new Dr. Light (or more frankly, never really wanted her in the first place,) and Mike Grell was about to force Black Canary into a brief retirement. DC was light on available heroines to keep the League from becoming a total sausage factory, so Giffen and DeMatteis took the minor Global Guardians Green Flame and Ice Maiden, made them best friends, and rebranded them as the duo Fire & Ice.

Beatriz da Costa went through a few different silly origins and names, but mainly, she ran around in ugly costumes breathing fire. DC took advantage of the Invasion! crossover to amp her up into the Human Torch with a more bodacious body. Mostly, she was defined by her being a counterpart to Ice. Bea was extraverted, flirty, quick to anger, worldly and pseudo-stylish. Adopting the worst excesses of the glammed-up, hair metal decade, Fire eventually ran around in torn skintight jeans, bare midrift, denim jacket and bandana. As with many DC teams of the time, the JLI had its designated females. Bea stayed with the team through several incarnations, until her home book was finally cancelled (see also: Donna Troy, Jade, Vixen, half the cast of the Outsiders.) I don't know that people really cared all that much about Fire as a character. I know I sure didn't. You just expected her to be there and accepted it, like fries with a combo. After Ice was turned into a bitchier version of Fire, so that people actively disliked the change, she was killed off in a crossover. DC just gave Bea another, variant version of Ice that was created mostly because Giffen and DeMatteis had so thoroughly altered their Ice from her original incarnation. Fire became a thoroughly sad character, existing not of her own volition, but as someone to mourn Ice, to reject the sapphic advances of a second Ice, or to sleep with Ice's ex-boyfriend because they were so lonely without Ice. In one particularly regretable appearance, Fire devolved into Charro, fronting coochie-coo and broken English while whining about the Martian Manhunter being more popular in her homeland than she was.

One of Fire's origins involved her being a spy, so she eventually joined Checkmate and moped about the passing of happier days, a shameful past in black-ops, and being in a doomed book like Checkmate. Ice was eventually resurrected, renewing Fire's primary purpose in life as the character's "big sister," and they both joined a new JLI distinct from the old by not being distinct from any other damned second-to-third tier super-team. It suits her. Fire's been a businesswoman, a secret agent, a fashion model, a Valley Girl, a saucy Latina, a mourner... whatever the writers decided they needed, Fire got plugged into. For a while, she was supposed to be the strong female in a buddy team, but that was all heated air. If you Google "Fire" without any additional qualifiers, the character turns up eighteen pages later. That about says it right.

1988 Justice League International Postcards: Captain Atom

Art by Kevin Maguire and Joe Rubinstein

CAPTAIN ATOM™
When a 1968 experiment to create protection against a nuclear blast went awry, Captain Nathaniel Adam was catapulted nearly 20 years into the future, where he arrived as an energy being! Now, though secretly working for the government, he is known to the world as the super-hero Captain Atom!

I'm not sure if my first exposure to Captain Atom was my brother's brother's copy of Americomics Special or Crisis On Infinite Earths, but either way, there was something distinctly "off-brand" about him. Down to the very name, Captain Atom seemed funky and generic, while not really being memorable enough to be outright bad. Blue Beetle and the Question each had solid Steve Ditko designs that translated well into their 1980s revivals, but Atom had an ugly, busy costume that was also strangely quaint and retro. Thanks to early exposure to Pete Morisi's stuff, I could forgive Peter Cannon his bare legs and booties, but Captain Atom's randomly colored limbs and tunic were all over the place.

A vastly different and much improved Captain Atom came out of DC's new continuity, and we were reintroduced in the seventh issue of either Justice League International or Atom's solo series. Crossing Captain America and the A-Team with the Silver Surfer seemed pretty novel at the time, even if Cary Bates was something of a Johnny Come Lately on the jock of the western zeitgeist. Nathaniel Adam was a soldier in Vietnam accused of a murder he did not commit. In order to avoid prison and a lengthy separation from his young family, Adam submitted to becoming a guinea pig in a secret government experiment to test an alien metal. One explosion later, Nathaniel Adam quantum leapt twenty years in time, gaining incredible powers in the bargain. For the record, this actually predated the "Quantum Leap" TV show by years, and it was interesting to see the hero-out-of-time premise applied to someone for whom the chronal shift had meaning. Nathanial Adam lost his wife forever, and had a struggle getting back into the lives of his children (who were nearly the same age as himself) because of their having been raised by his nemesis, General Wade Eiling.

I picked up a batch of the solo series cheap at my first ever local comic shop in Texas before moving to Nevada. The plus side was that Vegas newsstands were a lot more welcoming to DC comics than Houston's, but the down side was that the lack of direct market access meant I stopped collecting Captain Atom with #12. I found that one on a spinner rack at a school fundraiser. Still, the character benefited by "staying golden" in my mind, leaving my acquaintance with the introduction of Major Force. As it turned out, Captain Atom never had much of a rogues gallery, with some serious losers upcoming. By the second year, the series lost its main draw in the spectacularly detailed art of Pat Broderick, and Cary Bates began transitioning out of comics not long after.


Art by George Pérez & Dick Giordano

I managed to keep up with Captain Atom somewhat through Justice League Europe and guest appearances, but he really faded off my radar without the solo series. I still thought he was cool, but messes like Armageddon 2001 and his being recast as a militaristic reactionary in the '90s really soured the brand. Need I mention Extreme Justice, or the chromium mullet? Unlike most characters, Captain Atom never really escaped the excesses of that era, and seems to bounce from heel turn (Monarch) to wimpy redemption (The Alien Agenda/Armageddon/etc.) without anything resembling a purpose beyond trying to please. stop. sucking.

I've continued to enjoy Captain Atom in the new millennium by ignoring modern comics as much as possible. Captain America is possibly my all time favorite super-hero, but I haven't read his book for more than one year's worth of consecutive issues since the first Waid/Garney run in the mid-90s. I have such a clear ideal conception of who "my" Captain America is that I choose not to bother with runs that stray too far from the essential core of the character. While I hold Captain Atom in considerably less esteem, and he's a far less rigidly defined character, my approach to being a fan of the character is much the same. Even though it was a bit simplistic, I appreciated the integrity and conviction of Captain Atom as a super-soldier who follows orders to the bitter end during his appearances on the Justice League Unlimited cartoon. It echos the politely nationalistic original interpretation of the character I've discovered through archival reprints of the 1950s & 60s stories.

From an artistic standpoint, I understand why creators ran as far away from Alan Moore's take on the Charlton heroes as they could manage. However, since Moore had only really updated and darkened the characters as they were conceived, this also meant distancing the heroes from what they were meant to be. Ditko & Gill's Captain Atom was a brilliant, mild mannered demigod of the nuke, where as much as I liked Bates & Broderick's work, their Atom was mostly a chrome Firestorm with more horse sense. It also doesn't help that at Charlton, Captain Atom was a Superman amongst "Action Heroes" more akin to Iron Fist and Daredevil. DC Comics historically abuses any character they purchase that was the juggernaut of another line, because any threat to the eminence of the Man of Steel must be castrated as publically (and somehow, as often) as possible. I call it getting Shazamed. Meanwhile, Captain Atom finds no respite even in old gang reunions, because he never fit in with the largely non-powered Dick Giordano edited Charlton characters. Maybe he needs to form a new clique with Son of Vulcan? Captain Atom has received another title of indefinite length as part of Septembers DC: The New 52, but the creators seem more fit for Johnny Mann than Allen Adam, and will probably try to tap the Dr. Manhattan vein with the precision and finesse of a turkey baster.

To my mind, Captain Atom as envisioned by his creators was a magnificent representation of the Mad Men era. Satellites and martinis and the apex of the American century. I wish he could have been kept in that period, since I think it would give him a killer hook, like it did the Martian Manhunter in the '90s. I really do think Captain Atom should be the confident conservative hero of the DC Universe. Pro-military, believes in a free market, perhaps somewhat moralistic, but without losing his pragmatism and compassion. Let him butt heads with guys like Superman without diminishing him through a shameful defeat. Like Lex Luthor, there could be less losses and more stalemates, substituting conniving with the recognition that these are two good men with conflicting ideologies. Such potential can be mined from Captain Atom, but not before he quits being a wimpier, dumber, U.S.-bound Silver Surfer with bad hair.

1984 Superman Postcard by George Pérez

The Man of Steel, the last son of Krypton! He started it all, and he's still the best.

That line pretty much says it all, but perhaps not in the manner intended. These DC postcards from 1984 usually offered a very brief take on the featured hero, offering a bit of origin, motivation, and/or powers. Nothing of that sort here, because Superman is a gateway super-hero; one of those characters you know before you know virtually anything about anything. I probably had Superman's origin memorized before I could write my own name. One of my earliest coloring books starred Superman and featured art by José Luis García-López and perhaps, if memory serves, Jerry Ordway. I remember seeing Superman: The Motion Picture with my mother in 1979, and again on our crumby little black and white television when ABC ran the network broadcast premiere (for which I stayed awake past the helicopter rescue.) I used to watch George Reeves in The Adventures of Superman, and I bought my share of comics.

Therein lay the beginning of the problem. Action Comics and Superman got poor distribution in Houston, so the Superman comic I bought the most was DC Comics Presents. I loved The Brave and the Bold because of its jazzy Bob Haney scripts and snazzy Jim Aparo art, plus Batman was pared off with cool, obscure heroes. DC Comics Presents featured art by whoever needed a paycheck that month, and no more dedication on the scripts. The team-up characters didn't seem to have much pop, either. You'd think I could find solace in World's Finest Comics, but even as a kid I found Superman and Batman unpalatable as partners, and the stories seemed even worse than DC Comics Presents. I couldn't even catch a break on cartoons, as Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends absolutely shamed any of the Superman animated shows. Hell, even The Incredible Hulk, a cartoon I'd just as soon skip, was still superior.

My last major hurrah as a Superman fan was during the big John Byrne revamp of the late '80s. I came on around the twelfth issue of the new Superman, also pulled the team-up version of Action Comics monthly, and even got pissed at Maury Povich for making a sarcastic comment about my shortly-revisited favorite hero on an episode of A Current Affair. That all ended sometime around the 18th issue, which featured a cover of some Otto Octavius looking mad scientist controlling a robot to attack Superman. I realized in all the months I'd read the book, the only villain I had liked was the Silver Banshee. Action Comics #600 was only interesting because of Wonder Woman, and truth to tell, I couldn't figure out what I had really dug about the books beyond the art of John Byrne.

For several years, I had no interest in reading Superman comics. He never got his Dark Knight Returns, and while the quality had improved from my early days, Superman seemed to just tread water every month. I jumped back on the bandwagon for Reign of the Supermen, because the resurrection of an all-new, modernized Superman or four for the 1990s was too intriguing a notion to pass up. I came to really like John Henry Irons, and hate the rest. I hung in for six months or so after the end of the story arc revealed the sum total of Superman's bold new direction to be a particularly ridiculous mullet and some terrible new villains. They could have at least had the decency to finally get rid of those stupid red trunks.

I read various Superman comics throughout the decade as an extension of my fixation on following the DC Universe as a whole. It was during this time I was taught to hate Superman. The same tired creative team across four monthly books and a quarterly seemed like tent evangelicals preaching the superiority of Superman by way of making other super-heroes look bad in his presence and offering no villains who could pose a consistent threat. Superman was clearly the most powerful and unsinkable hero in all of comics, killing any drama and undermining any realistic characterization. Superman may have been everybody's first super-hero, just as everybody loves their family when they're children, but at some point you grow up and realize the flaws you were too young to understand. With parents, you see a reflection of your own frailties, and they turn from idols to friends. Superman was like the overbearing parent who still tries to push you around when you have a family of your own, never turning a critical eye inward.

"He's still the best" like the Fantastic Four was "the world's greatest comic magazine," because a publisher dogmatically tries to will it so with mere words. The truth is that Superman is a developmentally stunted man-child and his creative teams are at best stifled, at worst muzzled. Superman is to super-heroes what those moral majority types are to politics: anachronistic throwbacks to the illusion of a simpler time defined by its injustice against all but a lucky few.

It makes me mad, because a still have most of a thoroughly read and seriously battered 1970s treasury edition of Superman #1 where the Man of Steel was an idealized social crusader for the common man and the most universal Judeo-Christian values. I remember the good-natured guardian Superman of the '50s TV show and a couple of good movies. I see in the fans of Smallville people with middling taste but the best intentions when it comes to super-heroics on the small screen. I miss having the opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by Superman. It seems he's so busy being the best, he forgot how to be worth a damn.

Plastic Man Postcard by Ethan Van Sciver

Looking back on my childhood memories, I do believe Plastic Man was the first super-hero I actually hated. In fact, I wasn't even 100% sure he was a "real" super-hero at first. You see, I loved almost all the super-hero cartoons featuring Batman, Spider-Man, Captain America, Superman and so forth. Those guys were very much in the comic book mode, especially the '60s Marvel ones where they literally cut up and barely animated actual comic book art. Then there were all those tongue-in-cheek pretenders the cartoon studios trotted out, like the Blue Falcon, Atom Ant and the rest of those big fakers who were still riffing on Batmania over a decade after it died. I made allowances for the ones who took the work seriously, like Space Ghost and Birdman, even though I knew they weren't proper comic book adaptations. Like Jules Feiffer, I resented super-heroes that got too cheeky, as though they were mocking myself and the other kid viewers who wanted legit super-hero action, and Plastic Man was the biggest traitor of the bunch.

You see, even though it would be years before I read a Plastic Man comic book story, the cartoon made it clear that he was in fact a DC Comics character, and it also made it plain that he sucked. Like a one man Impossibles, Plas could basically become anything, was never in physical danger, and generally employed wimpy non-violent methods of fighting crime. While regular super-heroes had a decent supporting cast, Plastic Man had that klutzy idiot Hula-Hula that was never not annoying. His girlfriend Penny's primary charm was lost of a prepubescent, not that she would be my type even now, and boys only have so much tolerance for incessantly distressed damsels. Plastic Man had the worst villains, and then they went and added Baby Plas, because kids love watching shows about new fathers and the trouble their super-powered infants get up to.

The Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Show was an anthology like Space Stars, and while I was never a huge fan of The Herculoids or the Galaxy Trio, they were still alright. Not only was the Plastic Man cartoon itself terrible, but it was "supported" by absolute crap like Rickety Rocket, Fangface and Mighty Man & Yukk. However, even taking all that into consideration, the very worst aspect of the show was the live-action inserts in which a smirking, smarmy, terribly unfunny actor played Plastic Man as the show's "host." That guy made the Nicholas Hammond Spider-Man look like the George Reeves Superman.

Probably the first Plastic Man stories I read were in Adventure Comics, and they weren't much better than the show. Plas would turn up here and there over the years, but I think it says something that even when Justice League was desperate for name characters in its post-Legends relaunch, nobody bothered with Plas. There have been numerous attempts at "funny" Plastic Man specials, mini-series and even an ongoing, and speaking as a guy who loved Ambush Bug and Blue Devil, I just couldn't see the appeal. Those books were all bland sitcoms masquerading as comics, like adapting the tired television super-hero parodies back into the books themselves.

I did buy a Plastic Man Super Powers Collection action figure, but only because it was so cheap for so long in the discount bin, I finally took pity on it. He was useful when other toys needed someone to beat up. I was always losing action figures to thieving kids in my neighborhood, but no one ever stole Plas. He was still in my collection until my brother lost every single one of my figures at some camp for juvenile delinquents he went to. I bet some pre-teen kleptomaniac looked at that Plastic Man and realized he must have a serious problem if it had come to this.

In the late '90s, someone finally decided the character was historically significant, and then Grant Morrison went and added him as the "trickster god" in his vision of a pantheistic JLA that pretty much marked the point where his run started limping. Morrison thought it would be brilliant to recast Plas in the Jim Carrey mold, problem because he was really high during an Ace Ventura: Pet Detective/The Mask double feature. Plas became the gratingly obnoxious ass intended to offer "comic relief," which was usually related to ancient Warner Brothers sight gags and the sexual harassment of super-heroines. In searching the internet for art to go with this piece, I came across no shortage of both, and I feel the twenty-fifth image of a partially disrobed Wonder Woman choking a perverted Plas really drove home how pathetic the character has become.

My history with Plastic Man was toxic, and one punishing comic appearances after another stoked that earliest childhood hatred across three decades. A funny thing happened in 2001, though. I was convinced by solicitation copy to read Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to Their Limits by Art Spiegelman. The book was part biography of the creator, part history of the character, plus classic reprints and a look at cultural impact/artifacts, all of it presented through the graphic design artistry of Chip Kidd. The whole production was outstanding, and completely changed my perspective on Plastic Man. I followed that up by reading old school essays on Plas by guys familiar with the original material, and then made sure to sample Jack Cole's work myself, and realized why it's considered one of the high points of the Golden Age.

I now realize that Plastic Man is one of the truly under-appreciated gems among super-heroes, with classic stories potent enough to outlive most of his '40s contemporaries, making it a month into the Silver Age before his publisher sold out to DC (who in turn sold out the character.) I don't hate the Plastic Man, only DC's inability to write the character remotely correct. You see, Plastic Man is not an all-ages goofy character. He's the straight man with a kinky body meant to navigate a thoroughly crooked world. The old comics are filled with dark humor and dirty deeds committed by delightfully wicked n'er-do-wells. Plas is himself an ex-crook who still pals around with the opportunistic Woozy Winks and busts gun-runners, sweatshops run on child labor, diabolical entities, and so forth. Plastic Man is relevant, sexy, and cool in hindsight, and it's only the minds of his writers that got small.

There's a reasonable amount of decent art of cartoony Plastic Man on the internet, both geared for kids and arrested development cases. However, I went to the trouble of coloring and otherwise enhancing an Ethan Van Sciver convention sketch for this "postcard" because he seems to be the only illustrator out there who "gets" the character. Plas may be malleable, but there's handsome heroic features and an underlying anatomy in Van Sciver's interpretation. The Pliable Paladin needs someone who can bring back the serio-comic elements of Cole's awesome comics. I can't think of any writer better than Gail Simone to join Van Sciver in playing up the contrast between the necessary humor of Plastic Man with the darkness and complexity of his world, the latter having been completely forgotten over the years. Rumors have placed both creators on a prospective project in some dim future, and if there's any justice in this industry, it'll be Plastic Man.

1984 The Elongated Man Postcard by George Pérez

Deriving his powers from the elixir of Gingold, he's the Stretchable Sleuth. When there's a mystery afoot, Ralph Didney, with his famous twitching nose, and his socialite wife, Sue, make an unbeatable team.

I believe one of the first times I ever saw the Elongated Man, not to mention the whole of the Justice League (as opposed to "Super Friends,") was on George Pérez's magnificent cover to 1983's Justice League of America #217. I noticed this stretchy guy flinging his neck about in the background, and my response was, "oh, another one." Like most people, I never particularly liked super-heroes with that particular power, and am never pleased when Martian Manhunter shows similar plying inclinations. What respect I have for Mr. Fantastic comes from his superior intellect. I've had to make a conscious effort to unlearn decades of Plastic Man hate based on his cartoon show and lousy modern comic appearances. Turns out the Jack Cole originals are some of the best comics of the Golden Age.

Leading the discussion back to Elongated Man, I'm already fighting the urge for another tangent. Ralph Dibny was an okay guy, and I liked Sue quite a bit. That doesn't change the fact that as far as I'm concerned, the only interesting thing Elongated Man did in 2 1/2 years of Detroit League service was to pown Vibe in his final outing. His time with Justice League Europe was similarly misspent-- the hero most obviously suited to be in a "funny" League that never pulled any laughs. When your non-powered, unadventurous wife outshines you simply by providing decent supporting work to other characters, you should have your hero card revoked. The only time Elongated Man ever worked for me was as a straight detective, but he was rarely shown in that light, and that was Plastic Man's original territory to boot!

Poor Elongated Man. So little love for you. Many heroes gain a soul with their passing, but even in death, Sue Dibny upstaged him...

1984 The Martian Manhunter Postcard by George Pérez

THE MARTIAN MANHUNTER
Brought to earth by the ill-fated Professor Erdel and unable to return to Mars, J'onn J'onzz adopted human form. His powers include telepathy, super-strength, flight, and invisibility. His only weakness: vulnerability to fire.

I'm not 100% sure how I was introduced to J'Onn J'Onzz. I suspect it was either DC Comics house ads circa 1984, or my having bought a heavily discounted Super Powers Collection action figure. I loved that toy, and was given a more thorough feel for the character through his appearance in Crisis on Infinite Earths #7. A saleswoman at Waldenbooks thought I was just too cute in my raggedy Houston Oilers jacket, and gave me the comic for free just before I went on a trip to Colorado Springs. Not only did the Martian Manhunter come off well in the double-sized issue, but in my mind he would always be at his coolest when drawn by the master himself, George Pérez. Also, Supergirl died, but that stuff never takes.

There must be something about the nomadic Martian, because a dinged copy of Justice League International #8 was one of the last comics I read in Texas, and a guest appearance in Action Comics #595 was among the first comics I bought when I arrived in Nevada. I'd tried Martian Manhunter#1 in 1988, and was not amused, so I tended to discount any further J'Onn J'Onzz solo reading. I followed the Martian Manhunter's appearance irregularly for years after that, mostly as a result of being a Justice League fan. Alternately, I started buying Justice League Task Force for its Nightwing appearances, and the post-Zero Hour J.L.A. for Wonder Woman and Hawkman.

Despite lots of good stories and nostalgia for my action figure, I didn't truly become a diehard fan until 1996, through Mark Waid, Fabian Nicieza, Darick Robertson & Jeff Johnson's Justice League: A Midsummer's Nightmare mini-series. It was like a therapy session had unearth repressed memories. Something about the moment where J'Onzz's family is taken from him again hit me with a tidal wave of emotions related to years of accumulated stories. I was an old lady sitting on the bus sucking humbugs, finally realizing I was a Rider on the Storm. I was a J'Onzz Fan, man!

JLA and my introduction to the information superhighway soon followed, and upon learning there were no Martian Manhunter fan sites on the internet, I resolved to one day build the first. It took me a couple of years to get started, by which time a few sites had emerged, but they're long gone now. My Martian Manhunter: The Rock of the JLA lasted a couple or three years, and was a major learning experience. Three years ago, inspired by Rob Kelly's The Aquaman Shrine, I decided I would reconstitute my old site material into a daily blog. The Idol-Head of Diabolu has, to this day, barely touched any of the old material. This is one part because I'm a dimwit masochist, another part due to my becoming a better writer, and yet another part due to the format freeing me to go into both deeper and broader exploration of the character than I would have otherwise considered.

Above is one of my favorite images of the Manhunter from Mars, a lovely postcard I picked up on eBay about a decade ago. I used to feature it prominently on my old site, along with the two articles Who is the Martian Manhunter? and J'Onn & Me, neither of which have been restored to the net.

1984 Zatanna Postcard by George Pérez

I probably saw Zatanna for the first time just like this, drawn by George Pérez in the costume he designed for a Justice League of America cover or somesuch. I didn't know then how hard DC was trying to turn her into their own Scarlet Witch at the time, but I do know it never took. I bought her two part guest appearance in early issues of Blue Devil, and like most readers before and since, was more impressed by her girl-next-door approachable quality than the Marvel character's traumatized drama queen style. Unfortunately, DC's never stopped trying to saddle poor Zee with neurosis. They killed off her father before her eyes, subjected her to a magical quasi-rape, sent her off for a time with her assailant, massively reduced her powers, dumped her at Vertigo... it just never seemed to stop.

As a result, I try to follow Zee's appearances, but not compulsively, attempting to pick the gems from the junk. I don't care near as much about what she can do as how she handles what comes, but it would be nice if someone could figure out the right balance for once. Folks tell me good things about Paul Dini's handling in her new solo series, and I'm pleased to see DC is finally responding to Zee surprisingly large fan base. With Scarlet Witch irreparably damaged, there's a place for too sorceress in comics Zatanna could fill. Further, she has the pedigree of a legacy character, but is actually much more famous than her father. Zatanna is a contender for independent icon status, and I'd love to see her go all the way.

1984 Green Lantern Postcard by George Pérez

Absolutely without fear, the Emerald Crusader, Hal Jordan, was given the magnificent ring of power. Green Lantern serves the Guardians of the Universe as one of the famed Green Lantern Corps, fighting evil in all its forms.

Green Lantern Hal Jordan was one of the first super-heroes I ever encountered, but he had about the least presence of them all. He was a Super Friend, and I would catch one of the old ‘60s Justice League of America shorts every now and again, but it’s not like he had his own cartoon like Aquaman. The earliest comic I saw Hal Jordan in was from the Hard-Traveling Heroes days, involving a generic cult that kidnapped Green Lantern, but his ring had managed to reach Green Arrow. It was a gorgeous looking comic, and even though Jordan was the jobber of the tale, I didn’t hold it against him that time.

When his Super Powers Collection figure came out, it was instantly my favorite. Hal was too barrel-chested, and his lantern jaw too similar to Superman’s, but the glorious costume design of Gil Kane rendered in three dimensions could not be denied. The simple color scheme of green, black and white came off as so much more refined than the standard hero fare, and a domino mask has an air of sophistication about it. Most heroes had black hair, and quite a few were blond, but brown was a unique shade reserved for a select few (with heavy hitters Peter Parker and Bruce Banner also so graced.) I think my favorite part was that drop of emerald jewelry amidst the negative space of Green Lantern’s white glove that only hinted at the incredible power resting on his finger.

I’m sure I encountered Hal sometime in the interim, but my next strong memory was from the mid-80s, in an issue of Green Lantern with the Javelin as the featured villain. I believe the character was designed by Dave Gibbons, and he looked good, but what really stuck with me was how a dude with a hollow javelin filled with yellow paint had managed to place Green Lantern in a life or death situation. Hal‘s vulnerability to a color was already a joke to me by then, and his diminishing presence in the DC Universe didn’t help. John Stewart seemed to handle his ring with much greater competency, and Guy Gardner had loads more personality than either of them. Hal would pop up here and there, like in Millennium tie-ins, but he had already become my third choice and falling in the role of Green Lantern. In fact, it kind of ticked me off that Stewart’s wife was killed because he was among the majority of GL corpsmen who lost their rings at decade’s end, excluding Hal, who was written as a total douchebag in his Action Comics Weekly run. I gave Hal several more tries in the years that followed, which only led to several more fails on Jordan’s part.

The first comic book professional I ever met was Bill Willingham, who turned up at a convention shortly after drawing a chapter of “Emerald Twilight.” I told him Hal Jordan didn’t mean that much to me, but I thought it was wrong that fans had invested over thirty years into a hero before having him become a mass murdering madman. If I recall correctly, Willingham was either diplomatic or simply agreed with me, so we moved on to discussing The Elementals and how nice Terry Austin’s inks looked over a Huntress short story he’d done in a recent Showcase.

I continued to irregularly follow Green Lantern in the late ‘90s, because that book was always having guest stars over that I found more interesting than Kyle Rayner. I also went back and read Denny O’Neil’s work in the ‘70s, as well as Steve Englehart’s in the ‘80s, and came to the conclusion Hal‘s going nuts was actually foreseeable. Jordan was indecisive and open to suggestion, was prone to erratic behavior, made colossally stupid decisions in dramatic fashion without regard for the consequences, and basically was a screw-up with more power than he deserved. Fans fought over the new status quo, but for a decade DC insisted that Hal Jordan was and would always be the very evil Parallax, which I accepted. Even when Hal sacrificed his life to reignite the sun and eventually became the Spectre for a time, I was alright with it. Only when DC announced that Hal Jordan would be reborn as Green Lantern did I have reservations. There were plenty of theories as to how this could be done, my personal favorite being that evil Hal had been a clone created in a Guy Gardner story right before going nuts as Parallax, but things played out different. The real Jordan had done all that evil, only under the influence of an extraordinarily powerful alien entity. Now see, heroes get possessed by evil all the time, and Kyle Rayner specifically would be in this creature’s thrall a few years later. However, like most heroes in those circumstances, Rayner had regained his autonomy after a few issues, not a dozen years following a massive body count. Even that was slowly retconned, with Coast City, Kilowog and even Arisia (killed by Major Force in a completely unrelated story) brought back to life in as arbitrary a fashion as possible. What they were selling, I wasn’t buying.

Here we are in 2010, with next summer promising a big budget Green Lantern motion picture that I personally have little interest in seeing. For the second time in the Geoff Johns era, John Stewart has been promised a co-starring role in an ongoing series, only to become a bit player supporting a boring honky lead. In fact, Twitter was all atwitter about why a white guy was playing Green Lantern after a generation of fans had been turned on to the character outside of comics by a black GL in the Justice League cartoon. DC Comics spent most of my life cultivating a hatred of Hal Jordan, and I’m afraid it will take a lot more than Warner Brothers throwing millions of dollars at a Ryan Reynolds vehicle to change my opinion.

Captain Comet "Postcard" by George Pérez

It's been a while since I did one of these "postcard" reminiscences, and about as long since I've covered Captain Comet, so how about we kill two topics with one post? Working without the benefit of an actual postcard, I've altered a panel from 1986's History of the DC Universe #2, inked by Karl Kesel, to fabricate one. If you've ever read the comic adaptation of Logan's Run, tell me Pérez's take on Adam Blake isn't the spitting image of the sandman Francis...

CAPTAIN COMET
A mutant born one hundred thousand years ahead of his time, Adam Blake left Earth to explore space, aided by his incredible mental and physical abilities. He returned twenty years later to battle the Secret Society of Super-Heroes with his evolved strength, speed, intelligence, stamina, telekinesis and telepathy.

Captain Comet was in the mid-80s house ad for DC Challenge, but with his nondescript red costume turned mostly toward the back, I mistook him for a generic sci-fi character. Truth to tell, I wasn't so far off, as Comet started his life as a curious hybrid of bland pulp speculative fiction and a last gasp for the super-hero genre between the Golden and Silver Ages. I want to say my next exposure was thumbing through Secret Society of Super-Villains back issues around 1987, more intrigued by the titular concept, but curious about exactly who this sole unknown hero tasked with battling a host of bad guys was. I learned from somewhere (Who's Who?) that he was the first comic book mutant, predating the X-Men. Besides the Martian Manhunter, Captain Comet was the only official DC super-hero of the 1950s "gray period," and with his vast (and similar) powers, I was fascinated by what he must have gotten up to in an era (almost) all his own. I continued to stumble upon Comet over the years, most notably in his '90s revival series, L.E.G.I.O.N. Even with all his potential, Comet just played straight man to the unethical brilliance of Vril Dox, the amoral mayhem of Lobo, and the more high strung Stealth. Imagine Jim Dial in tights.

I skipped following Comet in his most recent appearances from Mystery in Space, because I was peeved DC broke the mini-series' collection up into two volumes, the first foisting The Weird mini-series onto me in a fairly expensive reprint. I still think there's massive amounts of untapped potential in the character, and feel he's interesting enough to merit his own (long threatened) mini-blog, which is just the sort of thing this venue was designed for.

Bronze Tiger Postcard by Sal Velluto

Benjamin Turner trained for years to become one of the greatest living martial artists. The League of Assassins wanted his skills, so they brainwashed him into becoming the Bronze Tiger. Ben fought to regain control, and now uses his expert fighting abilities only for good.

I've enjoyed the little walks down memory lane I've taken while discussing George Pérez's 1984 DC Comics postcards, and have decided to continue without the benefit of actual postcards. I'll just make up my own and ramble on. This time, the art comes from Justice League Task Force #6, extracting an extended panel/partial splash by Sal Velluto and Jeff Albrecht, coupled with doctored clip art and a logo.

By the mid-80s, I’d near given up on DC entirely. The line was too conservative and kiddie for my taste, and outside of a handful of titles, newsstand distribution in Houston was rather poor. I could pick up any New Universe title I chose off the 7-11 racks, and even esoteric stuff like Strikeforce: Morituri or some of the Epic line, but forget about much DC beyond Tales of the Teen Titans. I still managed a view through house ads, so I may have been exposed to Bronze Tiger’s wanted poster in the initial Suicide Squad promotion, but my first recollection is toward the end of the title’s first year. A second half page ad could be found featuring Bronze Tiger and Vixen, both dressed somewhat like the popular Wolverine, along with a bunch of geeks like Punch and Jewelee. Growing up in a slum transitioning into a barrio, I was well versed in Marvel’s black characters. The only colored folk I knew at DC were Black Lightning, Tyroc and Cyborg, with only the latter from actual exposure to stories. I don’t believe this unfamiliar Squad couple was named, but they looked interesting, so I made a mental note to check into them.

I found my first real neighborhood comic shop in 1987, but moved to another state not long after. I was lucky enough to buy a bunch of fairly recent, slightly scuffed DC titles on the cheap from them on my way out, so Suicide Squad came along for my ride. Once in Las Vegas, I found much broader distribution of DC titles, and followed the book into the Millennium crossover, which proved a great jumping off point. I was still too young to appreciate the politics and moral ambiguity of Suicide Squad. While I liked the stories well enough, I was cool on the characters. The book seemed to me about an impressively hard core fat lady, her uptight soldier boy subordinate, and a bunch of villainous dorks like the Penguin and Slipknot who kept disobeying orders and getting body parts blown off. Bronze Tiger was some kind of handler for the idiot/self-destructive super-crooks, but I didn’t get much of a personality off him. The title was preoccupied with Deadshot, Privateer, Karen Grace, Duchess, and seemingly anyone but the black couple that first caught my attention, though this "Wall" chick was seriously boss.

My interest in Bronze Tiger was reignited a few years later by a back issue of Detective Comics I picked up in Denver where he beat up on Batman twice and helped kill the Silver Age Batwoman. That put the Tiger right on my radar, but I couldn’t find much else about the guy to impress. I think in the dozen years since that high water mark, he might have fought a past freshness Kobra, but his standing otherwise seemed a fluke. Regardless, I still thought the guy had potential, and his too brief appearances in Justice League Task Force bore that out. I came to like Ben Turner, and tried to keep up with him, but he kept leading me down dead ends like the two Richard Dragon series. Now there was a guy I had no use for, so seeing that Dick position Bronze Tiger in the sidekick role was infuriating.

A few years back, Bronze Tiger was at the forefront of a Suicide Squad revival, and has worked well in that capacity. Ben Turner has some pretty well documented mental disorders due to the brainwashing that first turned him into the League of Assassins’ Bronze Tiger, but his ties to major DC martial artists like Lady Shiva and Cassandra Cain have helped maintain his respectability, if not his profile. I think Bronze Tiger is bad ass, with lots of juicy back story to be exploited. Maybe next time DC tries to make its line more ethnically diverse, instead of shoving a minority into the role of a legacy b/c-lister, they’ll remember the original Bronze Tiger has been waiting thirty-five years for his turn in the limelight.

1984 Firestorm Postcard by George Pérez

Visit the Irredeemable Shag's Firestorm Fan for more on this postcard!

It’s always possible I caught Firestorm in a house ad from the few DC books that found their way to me as a kid, but the character didn’t make an impression until the 1983 DC Sampler. The book was a teaser for upcoming and ongoing projects, back in the days when companies would commission brand new promotional material. The Fury of Firestorm, the Nuclear Man was awarded a two page spread by the dynamic Pat Broderick, fresh from Marvel and quite the feather in DC’s cap. I developed a love for Jim Starlin early on, and Broderick had once drawn his version of Captain Mar-Vell. My favorite heroes back then were the intensely driven, highly capable hero’s heroes who defended big concepts and fought for colossal stakes. The Broderick image showed a determined Firestorm exhibiting enormous power alongside a member of his own burgeoning super-family, Flamebird. It was obvious Firestorm was not some dated character, but a product of our time, yet impressive enough to stand beside the greats of previous ages. I later learned the Nuclear Man had taken on the entire Justice League once, and could generate kryptonite at will. Dang, did I want to read his book!

I read Firestorm’s book all right, but he fell far short of a magnificent bastard. Gerry Conway was one of my favorite Bronze Age writers, but on this title he came off lame, and Broderick had left the book early on. Painted broadly, Ronnie Raymond was a Peter Parker type, the “hero that could be you” with feet of clay. However, Spider-Man was a hell of a lot smarter than Ronnie, and what Firestorm could do was usually dictated by an “old” man who lived inside Firestorm’s head and was part of the gestalt being. That idea was novel, but I didn’t much care about either Raymond or his Professor Martin Stein. Further, Firestorm’s awesome powers came with all sorts of limitations, like an inability to effect organic matter. Also, Firestorm had one of the worst rogues’ galleries possible, fighting were-hyenas, guys who performed rope tricks, and guys who could separate into ever tinier duplicates of themselves. Firestorm looked increasingly less like a cosmic Starlin champion, and more like a bumbling parody along the lines of the Greatest American Hero.

Firestorm looked neat, and he hung out with guys like Blue Devil that I was cool with, so I wanted to like him. Later in the decade, Firestorm had a traumatic experience and merged with a Russian super-hero, leaving him a spooky blank-eyed enigma. Around the same time, another Bronze Age favorite, Cary Bates, had come out with a revival of Captain Atom. The art was by Pat Broderick, and the book stole one of Firestorm’s few good villains, Plastique. Captain Atom had quantum powers that were visually arresting and quite formidable, and his military background gave him the focus to use them well. Captain Atom and Firestorm began meeting irregularly as frienemies, but even though the Nuclear Man was the more experienced hero Post-Crisis by yards, Atom’s maturity made him seem like the veteran. Since Captain Atom was everything I had always wanted Firestorm to be, I kept up with his book and dropped the other.

Firestorm writer John Ostrander must have been a big Alan Moore fan, because he seemed to want to write Swamp Thing so bad he turned the Nuclear Man into that character by proxy. Suddenly, there was this soft spoken Fire Elemental getting tangled up in mystical forces around the globe, and Firestorm took on a whole new flavor of disinterest to me. Laying low for a few years, the old Ronnie Firestorm resurfaced in the ‘90s, even less responsible and adept with his powers than ever. Once Firestorm became a drunken lout, I’d had it. I figured whatever potential Ronnie Raymond had as a hero was long squandered, and that he should steal back from Captain Atom by turning into a villain. Firestorm’s overwrought history would support the move, and maybe then he could actually use his dang powers to the fullest. Even the flaming visuals worked, as evidenced by Dr. Light’s lifting of the basic look for one of his failed salvage jobs in the ‘90s.

The aughts brought the death of Ronnie Raymond and the invention of Jason Rusch. As a proponent of more (and more powerful) African-American heroes in comics, I fully supported the change, plus Rusch’s skin tone was a better compliment to Firestorm’s red and yellow costume. Unfortunately, the new book came out at the height of decompressed storytelling, so it took forever to go anywhere. Rusch’s origin was tied to a drug deal, which made me wince, and the character was much too passive to carry a title. I dropped the book for a couple of months, until the return of Raymond and a shaking of the status quo was teased. That run ended on a high note, but the promised changes were stretched out for months thereafter, pushed back repeatedly by one sales humping crossover tie-in after another. Finally, Rusch was merged with not one, but two successive white characters, another cliché that haunts books with black leads. After 2 ½ years of waiting for this new Firestorm to get it together, I finally gave up, right before DC did the same through cancellation. Rusch later turned up in other books as a member of the Justice League, and he showed more personality, but he was still the guy getting beat-up by villains and hanging from the sidelines.

I still want to like Firestorm, but I think for the most part his moment has passed. The Nuclear Man was ahead of his time in the ‘70s, created as a reflection of the closing days of the Cold War, the fear of Three Mile Island/Chernobyl/etc., and the hope for a new generation of heroes. Today, Firestorm is hopelessly dated, a child of the ‘80s, and even Jason Rusch felt like a ‘90s revamp with his Prince sigils and armored portions. Maybe if Firestorm were played period, or if he were part of a team where he mattered, I could truly become a fan. Certainly, I still get excited when an artist draws him well, or when a writer offers the promise of a new direction for the character. Until Firestorm finally finds his place though, he’ll remain just another nostalgia piece among many, waiting for Alex Ross to show love to the Super Powers Collection.

1984 Hawkman Postcard by George Pérez

I've had a conflicted relationship with the Hawks. I can't recall a time when I wasn't aware of their existence, and Hawkman had one of the finest action figures in the Super Powers Collection. I salivated over the house ad for The Shadow War of Hawkman, but had to settle for guest appearances and team books to get any kind of fix. Not only were the Hawks mostly exiled from the newsstand, but when Hawkman did appear, he was portrayed as a self-righteous, pushy jerk.

I don't think I got serious about the character until the early '90s, when I took a crash course in Thanagarian studies. I picked up a trade paperback of the earliest Silver Age stories from The Brave and the Bold by Gardner Fox and Joe Kubert, the Hawkworld collection "As Above, So Below" by Tim Truman, the Tony Isabella/Richard Howell mini-series and special, and even completed runs of Hawkworld and the 1992 series.

There was so much to like about the Hawks, but also much to hate. In the '60s and early '70s, Hawkman was a mild-mannered space cop-- likable enough, but too milquetoast and narrow to live up to his looks. I preferred the easygoing and clever Hawkgirl/woman, as available. Hawkworld turned Shayera Hol into Shayera Thal, a knee-jerk ballbuster. However, if you could overlook the murder and drug addiction, Katar became more introspective and reserved. Hawkman eventually began to use his medieval weapons as expected, and Hawkwoman's temper was tempered, but any personality they had kind of fell by the wayside. The Golden Age Hawks came into the mix, and the continuity became so toxic, the whole premise went on a shelf for half a decade. I tried the 2002 relaunch, but it didn't do the job. Despite lovely Rags Morales art, an off-game Geoff Johns put me off.

At this point, I have a hard time getting excited by Hawkman and Hawkwoman. Unlike most DC characters, I'm not even sure who they are. Brightest Day indicates a return to the Bronze Age characterizations, but that still leaves Katar a hyper-reactive jerk and Shayera stuck in mild-mannered peacemaker mode. Can't win for losing, I suppose. I respect the characters' history, but it's tough to claim to be a fan anymore.

1984 Black Canary Postcard by George Pérez

P6199

With her sonic Canary Cry and her martial arts skill, Dinah Lance fights crime and injustice.

I believe I first encountered Dinah Lance while thumbing through my visiting uncle's copy of Green Lantern/Green Arrow #84. That would have been around 1983, when he paid us a visit after having left the states to live in Hawaii. I remember our visiting a friend of his with a comic collection that filled bookshelves, and being quite envious, even if a lot of it was head comix and Howard the Duck.

This particular issue stuck with me because of the gorgeous Neal Adams/Bernie Wrightson art. Up to that point, I don't recall having seen drawings that were so lifelike, especially the lovely ladies and little details like Ollie's beard and turtleneck. I also wasn't familiar with super-heroes that came across as helpless as Green Lantern after a disguised Black Hand had slipped him a mickey. I haven't even seen a reprint of that story in over a decade, but my mind readily conjures images from the book as I recall them nearly thirty years past.

Of course, this all has little to do with the Black Canary. Like Clea in the stack of Dr. Strange comics my uncle left me, Dinah was just the girlfriend, sometimes in a costume, but rarely more than a few steps above damsel in distress. I didn't much regard Dinah before Justice League International, and even then she was just a straight for the goofier characters to bounce off of. Dinah was gone inside a year, so that she could be victimized and de-powered in Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters. If I had to guess, I'd say her serial in Action Comics Weekly was the first time she registered as worthy of notice, in part because she'd burnt the terrible replacement costume that reared its truly ugly head in the early-to-mid '80s. I gave her points for sheer audacity, plus the serial was drawn by Randy DuBurke, whose long forgotten style merged Paul Gulacy with Bill Sienkiewicz. This led to my buying her four-issue mini-series, and even a few issues of the ongoing that followed, but the scripts by Sarah Byam left me cold.

As I became more invested in the DC Universe after ditching Marvel in the speculator years, I learned the history of Black Canary. I respected that she was one of the longest active comic book heroines, with membership to major super-teams, and had even been retconned into a JLA founder. Still, I struggled with my respect for what Black Canary represented and the character's shoddy treatment as a hanger-on for decades.

Finally, Chuck Dixon and Gary Frank crafted the first Birds of Prey special, and even though it was Oracle who had brought me to that party, it served as a vehicle for elevating Dinah's regard. Over a hundred issues of the estrocentric team book were fueled by Black Canary, and the premise ran out of gas once she was removed. All in all, I still vastly prefer the original Batgirl and her Earth-2 counterpart the Huntress, but I've always wished Dinah the best, though she rarely gets it.