Marvel Masterworks: The Black Panther, Volume 1 by Don McGregor, Rich Buckler, Billy Graham, et al.

Marvel Masterworks Presents The Black Panther, Volume 1: Collecting Jungle Action Nos. 6-24

Collection published: 2016
Contents originally published: 1973-76
Read: February 2023

Writer: Don McGregor

Pencilers: Rich Buckler, Billy Graham, Gil Kane, Keith Pollard
Inkers: Klaus Janson, P. Craig Russell, Pablo Marcos, Dan Green, Billy Graham, Bob McLeod, Jim Mooney, Keith Pollard
Letterers: Tom Orzechowski, Dave Hunt, Art Simek, Joe Rosen, Charlotte Jester, Karen Mantlo, Janice Chiang, Denise Wohl, Harry Blumfield, Irving Watanabe, Shelly Lefferman

The second installment in my series of Black Panther posts brings me to the Black Panther's first ongoing series, a run in Jungle Action by Don McGregor, which is made up of two stories: Panther's Rage and The Panther vs. the Klan! The first story takes T'Challa back to Wakanda after his sojourn to America, along with his girlfriend Monica, who I guess must be from some Avengers stories I haven't read. Panther's Rage inspired the Black Panther movie, as it's about an attempt by Erik Killmonger to depose T'Challa from the throne of Wakanda.

At the same time he wrote this, Don McGregor was also writing Killraven, of which I am a big fan, and this is very similar: wordy and portentous, perhaps verging into pretentious, with a large emphasis on character and theme. Like Killraven, it has a lot of the trappings of superhero comics, but it is not one. Panther's Rage is a war comic, a war in a nation, a war in a people, and a war in one man. He fights grotesque villains working for Killmonger, but it's more like a fever dream at times, surreal battles that are really there to illuminate what's happening inside T'Challa.

I'll take all the Black Panther vs. vicious monsters you've got.
from Jungle Action vol. 2 #10 (art by Billy Graham & Klaus Janson)

I can't say I always liked it. It gets a bit repetitive at times, and the ongoing plot doesn't move very quickly. Sometimes there were just so many words. The series had eleven different letterers across its eighteen issues, and I can see why: why do more than two issues of this when you can go letter some Captain America comic with half the dialogue and none of the narration? But Billy Graham and Rich Buckler capture power in their layouts and art, and sometimes the thing whole rises to poetry.

Monica wears the hippest outfits.
from Jungle Action vol. 2 #15 (art by Billy Graham & Dan Green)

McGregor builds up a recurring cast around T'Challa, and I look forward to seeing if future writers keep these people's lives going. Indeed, if the story has a single success, it's in convincing you that though Wakanda is a strange place, it is a real place. It is a country with people and history and geography and conflict. I suspect that will be its legacy.

Maybe my favorite part of the whole run: Killmonger's two dopey followers that the Black Panther is forever getting the drop on.
from Jungle Action vol. 2 #12 (art by Billy Graham & Klaus Janson)

This makes it all the more inexplicable that for its second arc, McGregor had T'Challa go to the American South with Monica to investigate the apparent suicide of her sister. The Ku Klux Klan plays a big role, as does a not-the-KKK organization, the Dragon Clan. Gone are all the characters and history he had so painstakingly built up; T'Challa himself suddenly feels less plausible as he for some reason never takes off his Black Panther outfit. There are still fun parts—Monica's solitaire-obsessed father—and interesting imagery, but the investigation moves at a crawl, and nothing has really happened at the point where the story suddenly ends because the book was cancelled for low sales.

The Dragon Clan outfits lack the effective simplicity of the real KKK.
from Jungle Action vol. 2 #19 (art by Billy Graham & Bob McLeod)

Don McGregor and his collaborators would be soon replaced by Jack Kirby. I will be curious if Kirby's return to the character he cocreated keeps any of McGregor's innovations, but I fear I already know the answer...

(Somewhat weirdly, Marvel would actually get another writer and artist to finish the Klan storyline in three issues of Marvel Premiere, over three years after Jungle Action was cancelled. Like, why? If it wasn't worth doing at the time, why was it worth doing years later? I cannot imagine a comics publisher nicely capping off a mediocre run like this now. Those issues of Marvel Premiere are in another Marvel Masterworks Presents The Black Panther volume, but alas that one is not on Hoopla.)

ACCESS AN INDEX OF ALL POSTS IN THIS SERIES HERE

Review: America vs. the Justice Society by Roy Thomas, Alfredo Alcala, Howard Bender, et al.

Roy Thomas never got his often-expressed wish of writing a Justice Society focused ongoing, but 1985 did see the release of the America vs. the Justice Society mini-series. This was collected by DC Comics in a trade paperback in 2015, but reviews of the trade led me to pick up the original issues instead, as the trade omitted Thomas's "skeleton keys," an extensive set of notes in each issue that explained all the references. I read it where it is set chronologically, between issues #12 and 13 of Infinity, Inc.

The basic premise is that a diary surfaces, written by Batman, that claims the JSA were converted to allegiance of Hitler right at the moment of their founding, and that they were secretly working for him during World War II. A congressional committee convenes a hearing to see if charges should be brought against the JSA. This pits Batman's two children against each other: Helena Wayne a.k.a. the Huntress swears to defend the JSA even if it means unmasking Batman while Dick Grayson a.k.a. Robin believes nothing should tarnish the reputation of his old mentor.

You might think there's some good potential for drama here (and the Dick/Helena scenes are probably the comic's best ones), but it turns out to be the Roy Thomasest Roy Thomas comic that ever Roy Thomased. Because how do the JSA defend themselves? By recapping their entire history in exhaustive detail. Like, literally most of this comic is various JSA members taking turns standing before a committee and reciting an issue-by-issue chronology of their previous cases. Like, why? Obviously in some cases, this is supposed to smooth out continuity issues (Thomas clearly takes care of a couple things that bothered him about the JSA's 1970s revival in All Star Comics, for example), but much of it is simply, "this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened," ad nauseam. There's also some finessing of the JSA's Golden Age continuity... but that Thomas had already done in All-Star Squadron, and so most of the Golden Age stuff here is actually just recapping retcons he had already written elsewhere! And I had already read!

Even the characters know what they're talking about is often irrelevant; there's a bit where Power Girl is recapping the 1970s history of the JSA, and Wildcat thinks to himself, "I left about that time... to work with kids instead of hoodlums for a change. No sense bringin' that up, though." Yeah, there is no sense in bringing it up! But you did it anyway, Roy Thomas!

The original case of the JSA is actually recapped three different times. Issue #1 gives the distorted version from the "Batman diary," and then the JSA tell each other the true version... and then in issue #2 they tell it to the congressional committee all over again! Why why why?

The eventual answer to the plot doesn't make much sense. Batman worked out that Per Degaton was going to steal a time machine in 1984,* but he had brain cancer. The tumor was making Bruce Wayne paranoid and so he couldn't tell the JSA... but his Batman half(!) knew he had to get the word out, and so secretly wrote the fake diary and asked it to be released in 1984 so that the JSA's attention would be drawn toward their past and thus Per Degaton at the crucial moment. Like, when that was all explained, all I could go was, "!?" It's the sort of thing that might fly in an actual Golden Age comic, but not in the year 1985.

I will say, actually, I have come to an appreciation of Per Degaton. When I first encountered him (in Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 6), I noted that his name was dumb but I kind of felt sorry for him. Now that I've encountered him again in All-Star Squadron and this story, there's something kind of awesome about this mediocre research assistant who keeps trying to conquer the world again and again, but every time his attempt to do so is erased from history so that not even he knows he did it. There's a great bit in issue #3 where the same panel of him going, "Funny, Professor! I dreamed last night I was ruler of the world! ≽sigh!≼ Wonder if I'll ever be anything but a lab assistant?!" and the professor replying, "Stop mumbling, Degaton, and wash these tubes like a good fellow!" is used three times in two pages. He's the kind of would be conqueror of the world I can relate to. (Maybe that's just because he has red hair.)

from America vs. the Justice Society #3
(art by Howard Bender & Alfredo Alcala)

The first issue (which is double-length) is pencilled by Rafael Kayanan. Apparently I've seen his work a couple times before (in The Children's Crusade and Chewbacca), but I can't say I remember him. He did make a good impression here: there's a lot of talking, but he does a good job with facial expressions, bringing the large cast of characters to life. I also liked Mike Hernandez's work on #2,† but I wasn't impressed by Howard Bender on #3-4; his faces are kind of weird, which is a big detriment in a comic mostly about people standing before a committee and talking.

The funny thing is, of course, that this was all pointless. The final issue came out in April 1985... the same month as Crisis on Infinite Earths #1, a series that would culminate with the rewriting of DC history so that Superman, Batman, the Huntress, and Robin never served with the JSA at all! Like most comics projects that emphasize continuity over story (something Thomas is always in danger of doing, but never so much as here), it ultimately is meaningless because the next retcon just retcons out this retcon.

America vs. the Justice Society was originally published in four issues (Jan.-Apr. 1985). The story was written and edited by Roy Thomas; pencilled by Rafael Kayanan (#1), Rich Buckler (#1), Jerry Ordway (#1), Mike Hernandez (#2), and Howard Bender (#3-4); inked by Alfredo Alcala (#1-4), Bill Collins (#1), and Jerry Ordway (#1); co-plotted by Dann Thomas; lettered by Cody; and colored by Adrienne Roy (#1) and Carl Gafford (#2-4).

* Issue #1 is set on November 26, 1984, a couple months before its cover date of January 1985. Interestingly, issues #1-11 of Infinity, Inc. were all set in December 1983, and #12 shortly thereafter, so there must be a big time jump in that series if Infinity, Inc. #13 picks up after America vs. the Justice Society #4.

† The GCD tells me he is the artist better known as Michael Bair.

This post is the seventh in a series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers Jonni Thunder, a.k.a. Thunderbolt. 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)
   

Review: Star Hunters by David Michelinie, Bob Layton, Rich Buckler, et al.

In addition to reprinting old material, DC Super-Stars was also a venue for launching new series. One of these was Star Hunters, which had its first (double-length) installment in Super-Stars before spinning off into its own series. Published 1977 to 1978, it was definitely riding the same space opera zeitgest that gave us IronWolf and Star Wars; the text feature in Super-Stars #16 explains that writer David Michelinie was inspired by Space: 1999 and Star Trek when he first pitched the concept in 1975, though it wasn't accepted until 1976, and the first part went on sale in June 1977, almost exactly one month after Star Wars appeared on screen, though the text feature doesn't mention Star Wars at all despite some obvious similarities.

The text page sort of waffles about whether it is a team book or not: Micheline pitched it as a team book called The Survivors because team books did better in the market at the time, but the text piece indicates that as ideas coalesced, it became a solo book: Donovan Flint, Starhunter. Obviously things changed between when the text piece was finalized and when the cover to Super-Stars #16 was printed! I'd say the book itself waffles about this. Donovan Flint is definitely the main character, but he's one of a group of adventurers on a spaceship together, and the title highlights all of them, yet the story rarely does.

Premise

The basic premise of the book is that the mysterious and nefarious Corporation infects a group of varied people with particular skills with a deadly illness that means they will die if they set foot on Earth. In exchange for the cure, the Star Hunters will have to travel into space on the C.S.V. Sunrider, to recover the second half of an alien artifact that contains the location of an ancient alien race that seeded life on Earth and other planets.

It's sort of a contrived premise, I feel. The death sentence aspect makes the nefarious nature of the Corporation too obvious from the beginning, and it's never adequately explained why they have to go to such lengths, why they can't  just pay some people to go find it instead, and get more loyalty that way. It's also a premise that's never really developed. You might think that finding the second half would be a challenge (otherwise why go to such lengths?), but the Star Hunters just go straight to the planet where the first half was and find the second half in the same cave! By the end of the second issue! (Star Hunters #1, that is.) From there the story swerves massively, with first some battles against terrorists, and then Donovan is killed and resurrected and becomes a messiah dedicated to taking down the Corporation with an army at his back all in time for a massive battle over Earth in Star Hunters #7, which turned out to be the final issue, even though the lettercol in #7 promises more to come with a new creative team.*

Obviously you can have series where the seeming premise turns out to not be the actual premise, but Michelinie doesn't really pull it off here, as the book rockets through both the old and the new premise unbelievably fast. Why is Donovan a space messiah? How does he recruit a resistance army with basically one speech? Someone was clearly watching Star Wars, but I don't think he was learning the right lessons. (Though, after Star Hunters, Michelinie wrote nineteen issues of Marvel's Star Wars comic from 1981 to 1983.)

I would say the book was influenced by Blake's 7 too: when the original Sunrider is destroyed, the crew find a mysterious advanced warship that they take for their own, completely with an obliging supercomputer in a box. It's basically the Liberator with ORAC/ZEN aboard. C'mon, it has to be a Blake's 7 rip-off! A band of rebels in an awesome but enigmatic spaceship fighting to liberate a dystopian Earth! Except, you know, Blake's 7 didn't premiere in the UK until January 1978, several months after the first installment of Star Hunters. And the lines of influence wouldn't make any sense going the other way, either. Convergent evolution, I guess. Like I said, something was in the air in the 1970s!

Characters

Donovan Flint is the main character: an Irish space rogue who spouts lines like, "'Twould seem someone's had a bit much o' the grape t'night" and "All right, bucko, ye've had yer fun." (See him front and center on the cover of issue #1 to the right.) He's a little obnoxious in a fun way-- brash and over-the-top, but the writer clearly knows it. Well, at first, because any enjoyment you might get from his antics is ruined by the way he acts toward...

Darcy Vale is originally set up as the leader of the Star Hunters and the captain of the Sunrider, even though Flint is clearly the main character. (She's in the foreground of the cover of #2 to the left; that's her best cover appearance, since she's usually unconscious or in the far background on the others.) Flint is condescending and obnoxious to her; in Super-Stars #16 he makes a pass, but she rejects it, and he thinks, "she was rather pretty-- in a computerish sort o' way..." Once she's placed in command, he constantly disregards her orders, and condescends to her, calling her "girly" even though she's a highly trained scientist who the Corporation recognizes for her leadership skills. I liked her a lot: attractive and intelligent and standoffish. But it all goes downhill because after Donovan dies and comes back to life, she's like, "Oh maybe you should be in command" and his sexism is validated. Like, why do I want to read about an obnoxious boor who turns out to be right?

Mindy Yano, the Sunrider's computer technician and electrician, seems to be the model of the ideal female character, meek and timid, and consistently left behind on the ship. She initially gets to show her stuff in Super-Stars #16, but she fades into the background after that, only becoming important when the crew realizes she has a spy device implanted in her, so they isolate her from the rest of the crew and you never hear from her again!

Some Other Guys also are part of the crew, but honestly I could never remember who they were because they were subsumed under the book's increasing focus on ALL DONOVAN FLINT ALL THE TIME.

Final Thoughts

Despite my initial misgivings about the premise, I think I would have enjoyed Star Hunters had it continued to be like the second half of the first issue, where the whole crew works together to overcome a crisis with their wits and ingenuity. But as the book goes on, everyone who's not Donovan Flint ceases to be important (I don't know why they didn't just go with Starhunter as the title, given that), and the book becomes increasingly battle-driven too. Making Donovan a space messiah didn't help, either-- the god-like "Entity" who reanimates him feels completely grafted on, ill-fitting with the tone of the rest of the book.

Michelinie's writing is okay; he's prone to melodrama in his captions, much like Denny O'Neil. Don Newton, the original artist, is pretty good (though he sometimes draws women's faces a bit weird); of Newton's various replacements, I thought Larry Hama was not great, Mike Nasser was strong, and Rich Buckler was decent. Inker Bob Layton is the only artistic contributor to work on more than half the series, and I suspect he brings some continuity to the rotating pencillers. Sometimes his lines are a bit too thick, but that might be down to technical limitations of the 1970s. (Layton is also credited with helping plot issue #7... one of two he actually didn't ink! I wonder what's going on there.)

If it had continued, Gerry Conway would have taken over as writer (with Rich Buckler and Tom Sutton continuing on art); I really liked Gerry Conway's work on Crisis on Multiple Earths, and I wonder what he could have done here, since Star Hunters seems suited to his talents (weird sci-fi stuff, space-time epics, large casts). Maybe he could have redeemed it, but we'll never know.

Star Hunters originally appeared in DC Super-Stars #16 (Sept./Oct. 1977) and Star Hunters #1-7 (Oct./Nov. 1977–Oct./Nov. 1978). The series was written by David Michelinie (S-S #16/SH #1-7) with plot assist by Bob Layton (#7); pencilled by Don Newton (S-S #16/SH #1), Larry Hama (#2), Mike Nasser (#3), and Rich Buckler (#4-7); inked by Bob Layton (S-S #16/SH #1-5) and Tom Sutton (#6-7); colored by Liz Berube (#1), Tatjana Wood (#2-3), and Jerry Serpe (#4-7); lettered by Ben Oda (#2), Shelly Leferman (#4, 7), Jean Simek (#5), and Milt Snapinn (#6); and edited by Joe Orlando (S-S #16/SH #1-6) and Allen Milgrom (#7).

* Star Hunters was a victim of the legendary "DC Implosion," when inflation and recession hit DC Comics hard, resulting in widespread lay-offs (including of Star Hunters editor Al Milgrom) and the cancellation of sixty-five ongoing series.