The Comics Rack

MEN OF MYSTERY SPOTLIGHT SPECIAL #1

   Another new book from AC Comics is up for review, this one entitled Men of Mystery Spotlight Special #1 and it features The Nedor Heroes.
   In size and content, this volume has more in common with AC's "Golden Age Greats" series (a series we suspect is now defunct). There are nine stories reprinted here, along with an overview of the history of Nedor comics, a complete listing of all the Nedor heroes and a listing of all the Nedor stories that have been reprinted by AC.
   The book features a lot of good material. Robinson and Meskin are featured on a "Fighting Yank" episode and Ruben Moreira, my favorite chameleon artist, does an episode of "The Black Terror" in the style of Robinson and Meskin. Other highlights include an early George Tuska "Doc Strange" adventure, a "Miss Masque" adventure illustrated by Bob Oskner and Ralph Mayo (a pairing I do not remember seeing before) and an appearance of "The Woman in Red" a character that Black speculates may have been the first female costumed adventure character in the history of comics.
   Aside from the comic reprints, the other features are also of interest. The history of Nedor is well researched, although it seems rather short and the hero histories are informative, but they are unintentionally humorous (It is one thing to read the adventures of a character and another to see their origin, powers, and adventures laid out in black and white. Without the pictures, the fantasy is destroyed.).
   All in all, another excellent package from AC except for one thing: reprints. Of the 9 stories contained in this volume, 4 have been reprinted in AC books before, and two of those reprints have been quite recent. Now, I realize this is quibbling, but as a long time AC Comics collector, I have a very large amount of AC material and it really bothers me to pick up a "new" book from AC that has no warning that the material inside has been previously reprinted. A simple disclaimer in the indicia, or on the inside cover, or even in the opening editorial would suffice. For my money, I think I deserve a little bit better treatment. (And as an aside: I would have bought the book anyway, based on its contents, even if I had known it contained previously reprinted material.)
   So, reprint issues aside, you should pop on over to the AC Comics website (you can find them on our links page) and get a copy of this one. Excellent reproduction, informative articles, and good stories to boot! Price is $14.95.

MEN OF MYSTERY DIGEST SPECIAL

   Men of Mystery Digest Special is a big 128 page comic that reprints a generous helping of super-heroes, including Bulletman, Rocketman, Cat-man, and The Avenger with art by Bob Powell, Bill Ward, Charles Quinlan, Irwin Haasen, and others. As with all AC books, the art reproduction is excellent and Black has changed the layout of the pages on many stories to make them fit the proportions of the digest.
   My major complaint would be that much of the material included in this book has already been reprinted by Black in some of his earlier publications (for the record they are, according to the AC Store, Cat-man Ashcan #2, Avenger Ashcan #0, and Rocketman Ashcan #1 & 2). Since I bought this one at a comic store and there is no indication in the book that any of this material has appeared since its initial appearance, it would have been kind of nice to know that I had most of the material already, especially considering the $15.95 price tag.
   Other than that complaint, this is a real good batch of reprints. The first 2 appearances of Cat-man are included (although the first two pages of the second appearance are not included) and it is quite interesting to see how the early character was quite limited, as his having nine lives, and losing them one by one, was a major feature in the early days of the strip. The weird and distorted anatomy on Rocketman when drawn by Ruben Moriera is fun and, the commie menace theme featured in The Avenger is always good for a laugh. For those of you who have not been following AC Comics, this one is worth picking up, since there is a real good chance that you haven't seen these stories before and probably never will. Although the $15.95 price tag is a bit steep, I think you will find it is money well spent.
   You can reach AC Comics through the links page of the Comics Rack. Click here.

THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS

   "For the last ten years, no one has seen or heard from him...that is until now..."
   With this phrase, Frank Miller opens The Dark Knight Returns and I thought it would be interesting, with all the hoopala surrounding DK2, to read the original work and see how it holds up some 25 years later.
   Although many of the images and situations in The Dark Knight Returns (known for the rest of this review as TDKR) are now familiar, the entire work still stands up quite well. Miller approached the work as a novel with all the twists and turns one would expect from a great work of fiction(as oppossed to a comic book). There are sub-plots, characterization, and a sense of drama that holds the attention of the reader, without resorting to any of the usual comic book cliches (*gasp* what if they know my secret identity). You must remember that when TDKR first appeared, it was so far removed from the mainstream of comics that it caused an instant sensation. At the time, super-heroes were all done in bright colors and were, for the most part, involved in adventures of a rather mundane sort. The Marvel characters tended to be involved in cosmic adventures with Negative Zones and alien races, while Superman was off fighting Braniac for the umpteenth time. Batman was either a detective or a guy in a funny looking bat-suit, who battled rather comical villains. Often the greatest challenge facing any hero of the time was whether to remain a hero or retire.
   Miller's Batman, as protrayed in TDKR, does not worry about his identity, and is embroiled in a battle beyond mere crimefighting, since he is battling not only society, but also the slow enroachment of age on his abilities (something I can really relate to now, more than when the book was first printed). Batman is distanced from the reader by his nearly manic obsession to succeed and yet, he seems more human as a result. Batman has a distinct personality in the book, as does Commissioner Gordon, as does Superman (the separate sections of Superman soloquies are stunning), as does Robin. The villains, Two-Face and The Joker, have their own motivations and react in different ways. Even the mutants have differing personalities and this depth of characterization prevades the entire book. The bottom line is that this is a story told on "adult" terms. The characters seem real, or at least as real of costumed super-heroes can get, and the diversity of characterization is one of the book's strongest points.
   The artwork of TDKR is also strong. Miller's approach to Gotham City owes a lot to Ridley Scott's view of Los Angeles in Bladerunner and there is a dark and forbidding look to most of the city. The Gotham of the future has lots of shadows and grime and grit. The characters are exaggerated, as they should be, but, just as with the characterization, each character in the book has a distinct look. The coloring of the book also adds to the story, as the colors at the beginning are muted with very few primary colors. When Batman "returns", the colors brighten. Once Superman enters the story, the colors start to brighten and, by the end of the book, the colors are brighter, a nice dramatic, and symbolic, affect.
   I must confess that I when I decided to re-read TDKR, I had some trepidation. After all, Batman is now called "The Dark Knight" on a regular basis and the ugly and apocalyptic future that Miller portrayed in the book seems to have become a blueprint for most of the comics on the stands. As mentioned above, however, the book reads very well and Miller's work on TDKR is as close as the comics medium has come to actual mainstream fiction outside of some of Alan Moore's work. TDKR is still available in hardback and tradepaper from DC, or, if you want to be a completist, you can find The Complete Frank Miller Batman from Longmeadow Press (which includes the complete Batman: Year One by Miller and Mazzuchelli) floating around on eBay for about the same price as the single hardback TDKR from DC. It definitely belongs on your bookshelf, not so much for Batman, but because it is a darn good piece of work.
(ADDENDUM: Just after finishing this piece, I received news that the 3rd issue of Miller's DK2 series is being delayed. This is almost deja vu all over again, as the same thing happened to Miller once before. While Miller was working on the original TDKR, he had also promised Marvel that he would produce a series to be called The Elektra Saga which would take the Elektra storyline from Daredevil and, along with new artwork, put the Elektra material into one long story without the subplots that involved Daredevil. Of course, when TDKR #1 hit the stands, Miller was an instant hit and Marvel, never one to let an opportunity slip by, told Miller that they would enforce their contract with him to produce the Elektra books, sue him out of house and home if he didn't deliver the books on time and that TDKR, and DC, could go fly a kite.
   Sure enough, Miller had to delay work on TDKR in order to deliver the Elektra books and there was an extremely long wait for issue 3 to hit the stands. (Hmmm...I've always wondered if that is why the Oliver Queen portion of TDKR seems kind of forced.)

   "In Elseworlds, heroes are taken from their normal settings and put into strange times and places-some that have existed, and others that can't, couldn't or shouldn't exist. The result is stories that make characters that are as familiar as yesterday seem as fresh as tomorrow."
   This Batman certainly conforms to the above explanation. Take Batman and place him into a '40s film noir situation and you have a good sense of what will happen.
   Selina Kyle has allegedly been murdered and Batman is out to find who perpetrated the crime. No matter that Selina is black in this version; she was very tight with Bruce Wayne and many of the other supporting characters.
   Dick Grayson, "The Boy Wonder" only in name only from his early flying days in the circus, is an ex-cop turned private eye. He has no love for either Bruce Wayne or The Batman. He once had Selina as a client before she severed the relationship, one that he was far too involved in... He is supposedly the key to a secret that the bad guys in Gotham are out to unearth.
   The Players are many with familiar names. Harvey Dent is a high priced lawyer with a reputation for shady dealings. He flips a coin, but he is not a disfigured villain as he is in the comics. He somehow is Wayne's lawyer but not a loyal one.
   For the most part, all the villains in this piece have familiar names as well, but not the comic appearance we are so used to. Gone is the comic look of the Joker...he is a small time down and out card shark with only the name of "Jack." He makes living by running the oldest floating high stakes table, with a bad hair day. Mr. Freeze is a gangster hit man working for Mister Cobblepot/The Penguin who by day runs multiple apparel concerns...hence he dresses in the tux-penguin suits. By night, he operates a powerful cartel of matrimonial enterprises that are subject to suspicion at best. Edward Nigma is a chief accountant of a large bank in Gotham and is only being strung along by Selina for money when she was between boyfriends. He discovers that he is being outclassed by Cobblepot and Wayne.
   And so it goes...Clayface is a nickname given to a bad guy who has had too much plastic surgery...Killer Croc is a circus freak...Barbara Gordon works for Dick Grayson in his PI office against her father Commission Gordon's wishes. Plot lines twist and turn all through this book and everyone involved seems to have had something to do with the key character of Selina Kyle.
   The book is one series of avenues run down by Batman and Grayson, who form a sort of uneasy alliance to find out the truth. When finally that truth as to what happened to Selina Kyle is revealed, you will be surprised. If you are a fan of the forties detective films, then this book should be right up your alley. It paints a dark picture of the Batman and Gotham City. Batman's Batmobile is old, but yet new...awesome and ferocious. You will either love or hate this one depending on your grasp of the characters. I, for one, really enjoyed it.
Tom Mason
April, 2001

THE SPIRIT ARCHIVES VOL. 4

   The Spirit Archives Vol. 4 continues the DC Archives reprinting of all of Will Eisner's Spirit stories, this time covering the period of January 4 - June 28 of 1942. To the best of my knowledge, these stories have not been reprinted in recent times and, as always, DC is to be commended for making classic comic material available to those of us who are tired of the poor art and story that are currently the mainstay of comics in general.
   This volume answers a couple of questions I left hanging in my review of the previous volume. It appears, at least from publication dates, that Eisner was working about 4 weeks in advance of actual publication, since the first mention of the entrance of the US into WWII is found in the Jan. 18 section. In this story, the Spirit encounters a fifth-columnist known as "The Squid" and is enlisted into Army Intelligence. From this story on, the war, and the Spirit's standing as a secret agent becomes a background element in many of the remaining stories. (A Digression: It is odd to speculate on the symbolism of some of Eisner's villains. Here, during the war years we have the Squid. After the war, Eisner introduced the Octopus. Both names reflect creatures with many tentacles, meaning that they have a long reach into many different areas.)
   The rest of the volume has the mixture of stories that made the Spirit a great strip: Dolan runs for mayor; Ellen tries to get the Spirit to marry her; Ebony comes up with a get rich quick scheme; and the Spirit, even though not the main focus of each story, is the dominant character throughout, fighting crime in all its guises. There is also a direct mention of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in the story for February 1 and the episode for May 3 features the first appearance of Eisner as a character in the strip, as he waits for the Spirit to bring details of his new adventure.
   The major low point of the volume is in the lack of art and story credits for the strip. The "official" version of the Spirit credits is that Eisner did all the writing and pencilling of the strip up until the time he entered the service in May of 1942. DC's version of the this is to give a blanket credit to everyone who ever worked on the strip with Eisner. Whether this is to mollify Eisner, or whether the true facts are not really known is a mystery. However, there is a definite change in the art style beginning with the February 8 episode, leading me to believe that other hands were working with Eisner, either to help with the deadlines, or as auditions for taking over the strip with Eisner's induction looming on the horizon. All of the characters begin to look different and the panel layouts also change becoming, at times, incredibly crowded, and not at all like the cleaner layout of the earlier stories. I, for one, think it would be in DC's best interests to try and set the record straight as to who did what when (for a lengthier view on artist credits, take a look at Huh? # 6).
   The quibble over credits aside, this is again a volume you should have on your bookshelf and although the price is a bit steep, it is well worth it.
   The Spirit Archives Vol. 4 retails for $49.95, but can be found for less if you shop around.