"One day, Grant Emerson was just an ordinary teenager—until he suddenly discovered that he possessed explosive powers that he could barely control [...]. Now Grant uses his amazing powers as the super-teen DAMAGE!"

Damage was a 1994-96 ongoing comic series, part of what was a bit of a "super-teen" boom at the time (e.g., Impulse, The Ray, &c.). I have only read one previous issue of it, its contribution to the Siege of the Zi Charam crossover, which also involved The Darkstars. My impression was not very flattering: I had the vibe that it was one of those Imageesque 1990s comics, lots of "attitude" and explosions and bulging muscles. I would never have read it if it wasn't for a comment on my review of The Young All-Stars, where the mysterious CE of Collected Editions asked if its Iron Munro appearances "address or tie up anything from Young All-Stars." Iron Munro appearances!?, I asked. And it was duly added to my ever-expanding reading list. (This series of posts has just about ended its second year, and is on its twenty-fourth regular installment; I currently estimate it will run at least twenty more!)

The series opens with some pretty typical teen superhero stuff: Grant feels awkward in school, mostly because his parents move around a lot for work (his dad works for the Symbolix Corporation*), so he's never in one place for long. There's a mean jock, a nerdy friend, and a hot girl all in his supporting cast. Then he discovers he has superpowers... and then his parents are killed... and then he learns they weren't his parents at all, but raising him as an experiment for Symbolix. Soon Grant inadvertently blows up his high school, plays a key role in Zero Hour: Crisis in Time, gets exiled from Atlanta, learns he's the result of a genetic experiment by Vandal Savage, and joins the Teen Titans! The seeming Spider-Manesque premise of the opening couple issues is nothing but a feint.

Unfortunately, I think I would have enjoyed the feint more than I did the actual direction of the series. It becomes too much about what Grant's origin was... a question that really does not matter to him as a character! I mean, once you know he was a genetic experiment from Symbolix, does it matter what character was his natural-born parent, or who his genetic donors were? Ultimately, we find out that he was the child of the Al Pratt, the Golden Age Atom, and his wife Mary; Mary died in childbirth and Vandal Savage spirited away the child Al never knew he had and infused him with the DNA he'd collected from about twenty other members of the JSA and JLA. This takes two different storylines to figure out, but it's totally irrelevant. Like, does it matter if he has Martian Manhunter DNA? How could it? Especially given Al Pratt died during the Crisis in Time, so Grant will never know his real parents.

On top of that, the origin is pretty distasteful in the way it disposes of Mary Pratt, turning her into a female victim to give angst to its male lead. This is something the series excels at, because Grant's would-be girlfriend is brutally murdered to give him something more to angst about. I was like, "Wow, this is textbook fridging"... and then a couple issues later Kyle Rayner turns up to commiserate about his girlfriend was brutally murdered to give him something to angst about! Don't worry, though, by the end of the series Grant has hooked up with her hot college-age sister! (The nerdy friend is also brutally murdered.)

I did like the character of Wyldheart, another Symbolix experiment who is implied to be a foundling from New Genesis, but she vanishes after issue #8. (The DC wiki tells me she will pop up over a decade later in a JSA All-Stars story, but that's it.) The last few issues have Damage having visions of a mysterious figure, but who this is is never explained. There was obviously a lot of stuff this series wanted to do that it never got to in its twenty-one issues.

Too much of the series is given over to long fight scenes, which I quickly found dull. There's also a confusing proliferation of mediocre 1990s "xtreme"-style villains. You know the type. I just ultimately found little in this series that interested me, despite a promising start. The issue I liked the most was #7, "Control...", where Grant is put on trial for the destruction he caused in his opening story arc. It's one of the few times this series slows down and examines Grant as a person and lets us see how events are actually affecting him without incessant boring fight scenes. I also liked the issue where Grant visits his (adoptive) uncle in prison... who turns out to be the supervillain Doctor Polaris! Again, we get some nice conversations that focus on the characters. More like these, and I would have liked this series a lot more.

As for Iron Munro, Arn Munro of The Young All-Stars? In the opening story arc, he's based in Tampa (where I live!), working as an agent for the U.S. government. He gets involved in Damage's problems, and Grant briefly thinks he might be the child of Iron Munro and the original Phantom Lady, who we learn eventually became romantically. (No mention is made of any of Arn's teammates, not even Helena "Fury" Kosmatos, who he was romantically involved with last we saw.) Both characters ran afoul of perennial All-Star Squadron and Golden Age Wonder Woman foe Baron Blitzkrieg, which was a nice callback. For a few issues, Iron Munro even gets a cover feature! I was pretty amazed that five years on, anyone remembered him enough to use him, even if just as a red herring. Given he's fifty years older than last we saw him, though, he's a pretty different person. It is a nice touch that his files are code-named "Gladiator."

* Not, as I thought based on the lettering in the first couple issues, the Symboux Corporation. A sloppy handwritten "LI" can easily look like a "U"! I figured they were French.

This post is twenty-fourth in a series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers The Justice Society Returns! Previous installments are listed below:

1. All Star Comics: Only Legends Live Forever (1976-79)
2. The Huntress: Origins (1977-82)
3. All-Star Squadron (1981-87)
4. Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume One (1983-84)
5. Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume Two (1984-85)
6. Showcase Presents... Power Girl (1978)
7. America vs. the Justice Society (1985)
8. Jonni Thunder, a.k.a. Thunderbolt (1985)
9. Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 7 (1983-85)
10. Infinity, Inc. #11-53 (1985-88) [reading order]
11. Last Days of the Justice Society of America (1986-88)
12. All-Star Comics 80-Page Giant (1999)
13. Steel, the Indestructible Man (1978)
14. Superman vs. Wonder Woman: An Untold Epic of World War Two (1977)
• Wonder Woman: Earth-Two (1977-78)
15. Secret Origins of the Golden Age (1986-89)
16. The Young All-Stars (1987-89)
17. Gladiator (1930) ["Man-God!" (1976)]
    
18. The Crimson Avenger: The Dark Cross Conspiracy (1981-88)
19. The Immortal Doctor Fate (1940-82)
20. Justice Society of America: The Demise of Justice (1951-91)
21. Armageddon: Inferno (1992)
22. Justice Society of America vol. 2 (1992-93)
23. The Adventures of Alan Scott--Green Lantern (1992-93)
    

The Adventures of Alan Scott--Green Lantern by Roger Stern, Ron Marz, Dusty Abell, Jim Balent, Andrew Pepoy, et al.

While reading Justice Society of America vol. 2, I learned from the lettercol that at the same time, Alan Scott had his own feature in the short-lived Green Lantern Corps Quarterly series. I don't necessarily track down every solo appearance of every JSA member, but these seemed to have some focus on Alan's family life, which meant appearances by Jade and Obsidian of Infinity, Inc., plus Alan's marriage to the original Harlquin, also an Infinc concept. So I went ahead and tracked it down. (I skipped the final issue, #8; it featured Lobo, so it goes for $20 at least these days. No thanks.)

GLC Quarterly was an ongoing anthology comic about various members of the Green Lantern Corps; each issue had 54 story pages. Typically, there was a short frame story, an eighteen-page lead story about a new Green Lantern character, a twelve-page Alan Scott story, a twelve-page G'nort story, and a short story either about a preexisting character ("Whatever Happened to...?") or a previously unknown Earth Green Lantern ("The History of Sector 2814"). Issue #7 switches things up somewhat, and features two Alan Scott tales. (In issue #8, the Alan Scott story is actually a flashback tale, so I feel justified in excluding it.)

from Green Lantern Corps Quarterly #3
(script by Roger Stern, art by Dusty Abell & Mark McKenna)

The first four stories are written by Roger Stern, and mostly feature art by Dusty Abell and Steve Mitchell. Roger Stern is one of those comics writers who I wouldn't call "great" but you can depend upon to turn in a satisfactory story, in my experience, and that's exactly what he does here. Across his four tales, we get an origin recap, a family reunion, a visit to the grave of Dinah Drake Lance (the original Black Canary), a battle with Solomon Grundy, and a visit to Doiby Dickle's adoptive home planet.

This is solid stuff. I always like seeing a superhero's family, and though twelve pages don't leave a ton of room for it, we get a good sense of the affection Alan has for his found family. The best story was, to my surprise, the Doiby Dickles one, which treats this goofy character with enough affection that I found myself charmed: Alan and Molly visit his new planet, and discover that he's remade it into a tribute to the place and time he's left behind. Dusty Abell is an artist I don't have much experience with—I do remember a solid turn on the "Five Years Later" Legion of Super-Heroes—but he proves himself well-suited to the classic heroism of a Golden Age character. All in all, enjoyable stuff. I was pleased also to see the whole JSA paying tribute to Dinah, who died while they were in limbo; it's a nice touch that keeps these characters feeling real.

from Green Lantern Corps Quarterly #7 (script by Ron Marz,
art by Mark Tenney & Wade Von Grawbadger)

With issue #4, though, Jim Balent and Andrew Pepoy take over the art, and with issue #5, Ron Marz takes over the writing. The result is an immediate, jarring change in style and tone: overwrought, angsty, verging on the 1990s "xtreme" aesthetic stuff. There's a new Harlequin taunting Alan; later, Alan is de-aged, and in issue #7, we learn this is because of the power of the Starheart, the ejected magic core of the Power Batter on Oa that gave Alan his powers. Alan becomes the new "Sentinel," abandoning his Green Lantern identity. It was all rather rushed and under-explained, even though issue #7 gives us two Alan Scott stories, and makes his story the frame narrative.

This is all because, I think, of the impending Emerald Twilight storyline, the end goal of which was to make Kyle Rayner the only Green Lantern in the universe; if Alan was to go on, he needed a new superhero identity. I am not a fan, but I guess I'm glad he wasn't killed off. However, this material doesn't feel rooted in the life and history of Alan Scott like Stern's; it's much more generic action-adventure with a dose of darkness that feels gratuitous.

I thought the Harlequin here was the same new one who bedevilled Infinity, Inc. back in the day, Marcie Cooper, but the DC wiki tells me that she's a new character who only appeared in two more issues a few years later (Underworld Unleashed #1 and Green Lantern vol. 3 #71), and who we never really learn anything about. It seems to me it would make more sense for her to be Marcie, based on what she knows about Alan's personal life.

This could make a nice little trade if anyone was ever so motivated, but I doubt anyone ever will be. Still, the first four issues are worth picking up if you are into the JSA legacy elements, and I assume the last three will be important for understanding future Alan Scott stories if nothing else.

(It's not my focus here, but I did read all the stories in this title. Some were quite good! There's a charming Mark Waid/Ty Templeton collaboration in issue #2, I really liked the story of the woman who turned down the Guardians in issue #4, Elliot S! Maggin has a neat one-off about an alien GL in issue #5, and so help me, I even liked the G'nort feature at times.)

The Adventures of Alan Scott--Green Lantern were originally published in issues #1-7 of Green Lantern Corps Quarterly (Summer 1992–Winter 1993). The stories were written by Roger Stern (#1-4) and Ron Marz (#5-7); pencilled by Dusty Abell (#1-3), Jim Balent (#4-6), Darryl Banks (#7), and Mark Tenney (#7); inked by Steve Mitchell (#1-2), Mark McKenna (#3), Andrew Pepoy (#4-6), Terry Austin (#7), and Wade Von Grawbadger (#7); lettered by Bob Lappan (#1-3), Bob Pinaha (#4-5, 7), and Albert DeGuzman (#6); colored by Anthony Tollin (#1), Matt Webb (#2-5, 7), and Stuart Chaifetz (#6); and edited by Kevin Dooley (#1-7) and Eddie Berganza (#6-7).

 

This post is twenty-third in a series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers Damage. Previous installments are listed below:

1. All Star Comics: Only Legends Live Forever (1976-79)
2. The Huntress: Origins (1977-82)
3. All-Star Squadron (1981-87)
4. Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume One (1983-84)
5. Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume Two (1984-85)
6. Showcase Presents... Power Girl (1978)
7. America vs. the Justice Society (1985)
8. Jonni Thunder, a.k.a. Thunderbolt (1985)
9. Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 7 (1983-85)
10. Infinity, Inc. #11-53 (1985-88) [reading order]
11. Last Days of the Justice Society of America (1986-88)
12. All-Star Comics 80-Page Giant (1999)
13. Steel, the Indestructible Man (1978)
14. Superman vs. Wonder Woman: An Untold Epic of World War Two (1977)
• Wonder Woman: Earth-Two (1977-78)
15. Secret Origins of the Golden Age (1986-89)
16. The Young All-Stars (1987-89)
17. Gladiator (1930) ["Man-God!" (1976)]
    
18. The Crimson Avenger: The Dark Cross Conspiracy (1981-88)
19. The Immortal Doctor Fate (1940-82)
20. Justice Society of America: The Demise of Justice (1951-91)
21. Armageddon: Inferno (1992)
22. Justice Society of America vol. 2 (1992-93)
    

Review: Doctor Who: Supremacy of the Cybermen by Cavan Scott & George Mann, Ivan Rodriguez, Walter Geovanni, et al.

Collection published: 2017
Contents originally published: 2016
Acquired: September 2018
Read: May 2021

Doctor Who: Supremacy of the Cybermen

Writers: Cavan Scott & George Mann
Artists: Ivan Rodriguez & Walter Geovanni, with Alessandro Vitti & Tazio Bettin
Colorists: Nicola Righi with Erica Eren Angiolini

Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

Event Teasers Art by Dan Boultwood, Andrew Pepoy & Jason Millet, Mike Collins, Blair Shedd, Simone De Meo & Arianna Florean, Stephen Byrne, Simon Myers, Lee Sullivan & Luis Guerrero, and Rachael Stott & Marcio Menys

Like Four Doctors the year before it, this crosses over all of Titan's ongoing comic series, which now includes the ninth Doctor in addition to the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth. It takes a very different structure, though; while Four Doctors had its three Doctors meet up by the end of the first issue and then treated them like a team, the four Doctors in Supremacy of the Cybermen never actually meet. Instead, each is involved in a parallel adventure of the Cybermen taking over the universe with Time Lord technology: the ninth Doctor, Rose, and Captain Jack battle them on the Powell Estate; the tenth Doctor, Gabby, and Cindy encounter them at war with the Sontarans; the eleventh Doctor and Alice discover them in the Silurian era; and the twelfth Doctor visits Gallifrey to discover the root of the problem.

The issue this causes is that since each Doctor gets a totally separate story, they in effect each get just one issue of story. Only that one issue of story is spread across five issues, making it feel like nothing is actually happening, because when you finish an issue, each Doctor has experienced just one-quarter of an issue of events. The end result is a five-issue collection where nothing happens: the ninth, tenth, and eleventh Doctors each have very simple battle with the Cybermen; the twelfth Doctor resets it all. The end. Even though it reads fast, I quickly came to dread reading it, so little did I enjoy it.

(Weird that when the Cybermen take over Gallifrey again in "Ascension of the Cybemen," the Doctor doesn't mention that she just went through this!)

from Doctor Who: The Fourth Doctor #4
(art by Lee Sullivan)

Titan also did one-page preludes for the pre-ninth Doctors, showing what happened to each of them in the aberrant timeline where the Cybermen took over the universe. These set the stage for the main story... but for some reason the collected edition puts them all at the back! One of the cool things about reading in PDF is that I just moved them all to the front and read them first, as was clearly meant to be. They are fine, mostly noteworthy because Titan gets in some good artists for them, especially Mike Collins and Lee Sullivan.

I read an issue of Titan's Doctor Who comic every day (except when I have hard-copy comics to read). Next up in sequence: The Ninth Doctor: Official Secrets

Faster than a DC Bullet: All-New All-Different DC, Part IV: Manhunter: Origins

Comic trade paperback, 222 pages
Published 2007 (contents: 2005-06)
Borrowed from the library
Read January 2017

Manhunter: Origins

Writer: Marc Andreyko

Pencillers: Javier Pina, Diego Olmos, Stephen Sadowski, Sean Phillips, Shawn Martinbrough, Rags Morales
Inkers: Fernando Blanco, Andrew Pepoy, Sean Phillips, Shawn Martinbrough, Bob Petrecca
Colorists: Steve Buccellato, Jason Wright
Letterers: Travis Lanham, Pat Brosseau, Phil Balsman

I feel about this volume a lot like I did about the previous one: the pieces are there for greatness, but the book isn't achieving it.

Part of this is that it isn't capitalizing on its own premise. The idea of the book is that Manhunter kills the supercriminals the justice system can't take down, but in this volume, she doesn't fight anyone like that: just her own father (and goons hired by him) and a new villain (I think) named Sweeney Todd who's a superpowered serial killer. This kind of stuff could happen in any superhero book-- but I always want to see each book be itself as much as it can. There are hints that we're going somewhere, though, as Kate is now a defense attorney, and there's clearly something up with her most recent client, Doctor Psycho.

Yes you are!
from Manhunter vol. 3 #21 (art by Javier Pina & Fernando Blanco)

The other part is that the book vanishes up its own backside sometimes. I like my superhero stories to be outwardly focused: it they're not out there saving people from problems that would exist without them, it's kind of like, what's the point? (For example, when Superman only saves people from invasions by General Zod that wouldn't have happened without Superman's presence, that would seem to indicate the world is better off without Superman.) Unfortunately, this is a very inwardly focused book in all three of its stories.

Faster than a DC Bullet: The Sandman Spin-Offs, Part XXXIII: Dead Boy Detectives: Schoolboy Terrors

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2014 (contents: 2013-14)
Borrowed from the library
Read April 2016

Dead Boy Detectives, Volume 1: Schoolboy Terrors

Writer – story: Toby Litt

Penciller – layouts – story: Mark Buckingham
Inkers: Gary Erskine, Andrew Pepoy
Finishers: Russ Braun, Victor Santos
Colorist: Lee Loughridge

Letterer: Todd Klein

They've had a couple of confusingly-titled standalones to their names already,* but the Dead Boy Detectives have finally landed an ongoing series, some twenty years after the characters originally debuted in The Sandman (and almost as long since they became detectives in The Children's Crusade). I'm not sure why, but I committed to reading every Sandman spin-off years ago, so here I am!

Schoolboy Terrors contains three stories. The first, "Run Ragged," is a short tale of the two ghost boys (Edwin, d. 1910s, and Charles, d. 1990s) helping find a lost dead cat; events quickly spiral out of control and they end up enrolled in a creepy school. This is fun, if inconsequential stuff: like Jill Thompson did in her run on the characters, Toby Litt and Mark Buckingham extract a lot of humor from the two boys' interactions with girls. (Charles is obsessed, Edwin less so.)

Weirdly, after the first story sets up these girls and their claim on the Dead Boy Detectives' treehouse, they basically don't turn up again except very briefly, and then we get a whole story about the boys making a different female friend. Not sure what that's about.
from Time Warp vol. 2 #1 (art by Mark Buckingham & Victor Santos)

School turns out to be a fruitful setting for the Dead Boy Detectives (Thompson's run was also set in one), as in the title story, they end up traveling to St. Hilarion's, the very school in which both boys died, eighty years apart. They're there to protect Crystal Palace, the daughter of a performance artist who likes MMORPGs but is possibly being set up as the receptacle for demons coming through from another dimension. I like the idea of taking the boys back to the scene of their demise, but it shows up one of the fundamental difficulties of the Dead Boy Detectives premise. What happened to these boys was terrible and gruesome-- they were both killed by bullies-- but the inclination is to put them into light-hearted goofy adventures. The plot in "Schoolboy Terrors" is about kids being killed so demons can use their bodies, sure, but the writing and especially Buckingham's art emphasizes the goofiness more than anything else, and the danger is all "fantasy violence," not realistic violence. Yet the boys have this fundamental, disturbing trauma in their backstories that is difficult to reconcile with their ongoing adventures, and bringing them back to the scene of their deaths makes that disjunction hard to ignore. Neil Gaiman is actually pretty good at mixing horror with childlike whimsy, but Toby Litt is not as talented a writer (no slight to him, of course).