Review: "Man-God!" by Roy Thomas and Tony DeZuniga

The Young All-Stars was not the first time Roy Thomas had adapted Philip Wylie's Gladiator for comics. In 1976, he scripted a 52-page adaptation of the novel that was illustrated by Tony DeZuniga in atmospheric black and white. Despite the fact that the story was published by Marvel, it's easy to imagine it fitting into the continuity Thomas established in Young All-Stars. In fact, DeZuniga draws Hugo Danner with a white streak in his hair, evidently patterned after how Joe Shuster drew "The Superman" on the cover of an otherwise lost 1933 comic book (you can see a copy of the cover here), though probably on that cover the white is just meant to indicate a glare from a light source. It's fitting: a proto-Superman drawn to resemble a proto-Superman. The artists on Young All-Stars would draw Hugo Danner and his son Arn "Iron Munroe" Munroe the same way. (DeZuniga actually drew a couple issues of YA-S, but not, I think, any that Hugo Danner actually appears in.)

Anyway, how is the actual comic? Roy Thomas is, you know, gonna Roy Thomas. Obviously the premise prevents him from packing the page with continuity, but one definitely gets the feeling that Thomas is more interested in Hugo's superpowers than he is Hugo as a character. In the novel, Hugo's college years especially are a source of deep emotion, as he struggles to find his place as a young man; here, it seems like Thomas is trying to speed through them so he can show off Hugo doing super-things during the first World War. The way Hugo left his girlfriend was sad and tragic in the novel, but she barely resonates here.

What does work is Tony DeZuniga. DeZuniga has long been a favorite of mine, since I first came across his work in DC's 1970s horror comics; his lavish work on The Secret House of Sinister Love especially impressed me. Those comics were originally color but presented in black and white in the Showcase Presents editions I read them in, and my guess was they probably looked better in moody black and white than their actual original appearances. All that is to say that though his color work is always good, black and white is definitely DeZuniga's métier, and a comic designed to be in black and white is even better than ones that only ended up that way inadvertently. He makes great use of shading, and the lack of color is especially effective in the sequences set during the Great War, lending them a grimness despite Thomas's focus on the vaguely superheroic antics.

The adaptation was, alas, incomplete; the second half of the novel was promised for a later installment of Marvel Preview but it never came to pass even though the title lasted another four years. If you have an interest in Gladiator, though, and/or if you like Tony DeZuniga as an artist, this is worth tracking down. (I got a used copy for $3.60, so it's not exactly hard to come by.)

(I could be mistaken, but I actually think that with this story, I say goodbye to Roy Thomas. As far as I know, The Young All-Stars and Secret Origins were his last JSA/Earth-Two works for DC Comics, except for All-Star Comics 80-Page Giant, which I already read out of publication order. For a decade, he shaped the JSA's role at DC, and even though he will never be in the pantheon of great writers of dialogue, and his continuity predilection sometimes annoyed me, his contribution to the idea of the JSA as a heroic legacy shaped the JSA's role in the DC universe for the next two decades, and is what made me want to undertake this whole project to begin with. He might be the man who had to kill the JSA off, but he also gave them a way to maintain their relevance even in a post-Crisis universe. Go Roy!)

"Man-God!" originally appeared in issue #9 of Marvel Preview (Dec. 1976). The story was written and edited by Roy Thomas and illustrated by Tony DeZuniga.

 

This post is a supplement to a series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers volume 2 of Justice Society of America. 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)
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)
    

"They are the sons—the daughters—the protegees—of the legendary Justice Society of America. They are the new generation of Earth-Two super-heroes. They are—INFINITY, INC."

One of the things that originally spurred my interest in reading the Earth-Two/Justice Society comics from DC was that idea of legacy that grew to dominate their depictions in the 1990s onward: series like Starman leveraged the long histories of these heroes in powerful ways, and I liked that a lot, and wanted to experience more of it. But the other thing that made me want to read all this was that Lyta Hall is actually my third-favorite Sandman character, and I wanted to see where she originated: Infinity, Inc.

It actually kind of amuses me that Neil Gaiman's Sandman, read by so many people who are otherwise unaware of DC continuity, has a major storyline rooted in an overcomplicated Roy Thomas retcon from the 1980s that is now in many ways forgotten and irrelevant. Yet while Infinity, Inc. has never really been collected, Lyta has recently been played by Laurel Lefkow in Audible's high-profile adaptation of The Sandman! The character lives on, even if detached from her past.

But let's go back to the beginning. I've previously discussed the first ten issues of Infinity, Inc., the "Generations Saga" (see below), but the series ran up to 53 issues in total, plus two annuals and a special. Infinity, Inc. was a super-team created by Sylvester Pemberton (the Star-Spangled Kid, later Skyman), mostly made up of heroes with relations to Golden Age characters, set on Earth-Two. So there was Skyman himself (a kid hero in the 1940s, propelled forward through time to the 1970s), Fury (the daughter of Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor), the Silver Scarab (the son of Hawkman and Hawkgirl), Nuklon (son of the Atom's goddaughter), Northwind (a mentee of Hawkman), Obsidian and Jade (children of the Green Lantern), Brainwave (son of JSA foe the Brain Wave), Wildcat (mentee of Wildcat), Doctor Midnight (mentee of Doctor Mid-Nite), and Hourman (son of Hourman). Rejected from membership in the Justice Society, they struck out on their own.

I liked the Generations Saga, but after that, I found the book hard to get into. Todd McFarlane takes over as regular artist with issue #14. I know he would later become one of the superstar artists of the 1990s and creator of Spawn, but I found his over-complicated layouts made for tough reading and distracted from the storytelling. Plus a lot of those early issues are that kind of team book I am not a huge fan of, where the fights just come on top of fights, and one feels that if people weren't always shooting off hot-headed and/or not having conversations, three-issue subplots could be over in one. The book suffered, too, during Crisis on Infinite Earths (#18-24), as it had to connect into the big story, but not actually do anything important.

I know a lot of people (including, I think, co-creator Roy Thomas himself) think the Crisis ruined this book, but it was at that point where it really took off. McFarlane is penciller up until issue #37, but learns how to balance his layouts with clear storytelling, and Roy's wife Dann goes from co-plotter to full-fledged co-writer. The characters begin to pop more, the team has clearer interactions and connections, and the ongoing subplots start to get underway. I really do love ensemble books, and Infinity, Inc. has the interplay of personalities required to make a good one. I came to pretty fond of all the characters: overbearing but well-meaning Skyman, earnest Midwesterner would-be starlet Jade, angry Obsidian, doofy Nuklon, feisty Wildcat, and so on. I don't think the Thomases always used them all to their utmost-- there was a Jade/Fury resentment that never went anywhere, and Northwind was underused-- but all-in-all the effect was charming, and I was always happy to spend time with this bunch.

Highlights for me included the debut of Helix, a group of genetic experiments gone wrong. I had this vague notion that Director Bones, who I know from Marc Andreyko's Manhunter, had been a supervillain at some point; I hadn't know he was an Infinity, Inc. character who originally spoke in rhyme! Mr. Bones, as he was then, is paroled under Skyman's care after Helix helps Infinity, Inc. He only behaves to protect his "siblings" in Helix... but by the end of the run, he's a well-meaning member of the team (and the final story arc actually has a very neat storyline where he is framed for murder and has to prove himself innocent). I liked the use of Solomon Grundy; after Jade (daughter of his old enemy) saves his life, he declares allegiance to her. This is one of those comics where even weaker storylines are elevated by the cast: I was always up for some Nuklon/Wildcat flirting, or a cameo from Stripesy, or what have you.

The Crisis, of course, complicated everything, as did the killing off of the Justice Society (more on that in a future post). But both of those things produced some of the series's strongest issues, "Memories" (#27), where we get a flashback to the JSA brats as kids, and "What Private Griefs..."  (#30), where each Infinity, Inc. member must deal with the loss of the JSA in their own way. Suddenly Infinity, Inc. was folded into the same DC universe as the Justice League and everyone else-- but to be honest, I thought this almost always worked just fine. The only time it didn't work was "The Degaton Paradox" (Annual #2) which took itself to explain how the events of America vs. the Justice Society played out in this new timeline... a question I never had, given an overcomplicated answer.

And what of Fury? Lyta Trevor was the daughter of the Earth-Two Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor, who were wiped from existence by the Crisis. Roy Thomas clearly originally thought he could make this work by just never mentioning it, so Brainwave wipes Lyta's memories of her parents. This was kind of a dark move the series never really reckoned with, and later moved away from because it doesn't actually make any sense: Lyta would have to have parents in this new timeline, after all. So we slowly learn that she's the adopted daughter of one Admiral Trevor (no relation to Steve, I guess) and the Golden Age heroine Miss America (who in the new history took Wonder Woman's place in the JSA), but also the biological daughter of the (retroactive) Golden Age heroine Fury. I thought the new backstory was interesting, and worked in terms of making her a legacy-- which seems to me was really the point of all the Infinity, Inc. characters. You can work around the specifics of whose legacies they are. The original Fury is given an origin in Secret Origins #12, and I am given to understand that she plays a key role in The Young All-Stars, which I will read in the course of time.

In a very complicated plotline, her fiancé the Silver Scarab (Hector) deserts her after she becomes pregnant, but that's because he's under the mental influence of an ancient Hawkman villain. He ends up dying-- but then it turns out he's not dead, as he has become the replacement for the short-lived 1970s Jack Kirby version of the Sandman. Why Roy Thomas decided to pick up this character concept, I have no idea, except that he is always compelled to chase down loose continuity ends. Lyta goes off to the Dream Dimension to live with Hector-- and the series is promptly cancelled, leaving the two of them free to be used by Neil Gaiman when he starts publishing The Sandman just five months later. (I have a theory that Gaiman really wanted to use the actual Kirby Sandman, but had to deal with revelations and changes Thomas made to him in Wonder Woman #300 and Infinity, Inc. If so, I think it worked out for Gaiman in the long run given how important Lyta became to the climax of The Sandman.)

Outside of the continuity issues, I still did like Fury a lot. She's a daughter of money and privilege, and good looking (one imagines that these days, she'd be showing off on Instagram), but she's strong, physically and mentally, and heroic. There's a harder edge to her in her post-Infinc appearances, for obvious reasons, but you can see how that's nascent here. I don't think she's a great character yet, but you can see the potential for greatness-- and that's what I love about shared universe superhero comics anyway.

Vince Argondezzi later takes over for McFarlane on pencils, and he's pretty good-- both are aided well by Tony DeZuniga, an old favorite of mine, on inks. Near the end of the run, Michael Bair becomes the regular penciller, and though I like his work on some of the Roy Thomas-penned Secret Origins I've read, his slightly macabre style doesn't really fit Infinity, Inc., and he is way too obsessed with working in panty shots and sideboob for the female characters. (Comics, everybody!) But despite this, I enjoyed the series up to its end, and wish it had run longer and done more, because I think it had a lot of potential. As I keep bouncing around DC's Earth-Two-adjacent material, I look forward to seeing what other writers do with these characters.

One last continuity note: I had previously read it, but I reread Convergence: Infinity, Inc. at the point I think it takes place, between issues #24 and 25. Published in 2015, Convergence was about characters being plucked out of old continuities to live on an alien planet for a year and then fight; Infinity, Inc. and the Justice Society were taken from during the Crisis itself. So we get appearances from the whole original gang. (I think? Now that I think about it, is Northwind in it?) The issues were written by Jerry Ordway, who co-created the series with Roy Thomas and Mike Machlan, and who pencilled issues #1-10 and part of Annual #2. Ordway emphasizes some aspects of the characters that had been forgotten at that point (Jade's desire to be an actress, for example), but he also incorporates post-Infinc revelations about the Infinitors. Most notably, I had completely forgotten that Todd "Obsidian" Rice was revealed to be gay in Andreyko's Manhunter! Ordway plays that up here. Reading subsequent issues of Infinity, Inc. through that lens actually really works: there are some comments, when Todd dates Marcie and when Todd meets Raven of the New Teen Titans, that I actually found hard to interpret any other way than hinting at him being gay! He has a dark secret, and I feel like he doesn't perform well sexually-- but his girlfriend Marcie is actually a Manhunter using him for evil purposes, so she has incentive to play along. Fortuitous, and I'm glad Ordway was willing to take on retcons to his co-creation.

This post is the tenth in a series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment will be a supplement covering a reading order for Infinity, Inc. 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)
   

"A world at war! And against the forces of Axis darkness, the mightiest heroes of Earth-Two have banded together, under direct orders of the President, as the... ALL-STAR SQUADRON"

All-Star Squadron is an important moment in the history of superhero comic books. In the letter column of issue #10 (Feb. 1983) is the first recorded occurrence of "retroactive continuity," the word later shortened to "retcon." Writer Roy Thomas uses it in response to a letter from Lee Allred (who would himself become a comic book writer of, among other things, Fantastic Four and Batman '66 Meets the Legion of Super-Heroes). Allred praises Thomas for his "matching of Golden-Age comics history with new plotlines." Thomas's reply makes it clear the word is not his coinage: "As for what Roy himself (myself) is trying to do, we like to think an enthusiastic ALL-STAR booster at one of Adam Malin's Creation Conventions in San Diego came up with the best name for it, a few months back: 'Retroactive Continuity.' Has kind of ring, don't you think?"

Retcons would go on to be one of the major creative forces of the superhero comics industry, and it all begins here! Well, kind of. That statement's untrue in two ways. One is that comics writers had long been willing to "retcon" things when needed. The other is that this actually isn't how we now think about retcons. Often these days, "retcon" is used to mean an idea that retroactively wipes out old continuity: think of all the different origins of Green Arrow. Sometimes the new origin is justified in-story (e.g., a timeline change), but sometimes a new writer just tells an old story a new way. But Roy Thomas means the opposite. This isn't new continuity that retroactively disregards old, but new new continuity that retroactively slots in.

All-Star Squadron takes as its premise that all the Golden Age comics adventures happened as written. (Basically, anyway.) But in between those adventures, these ones happened. The series begins on the eve of Pearl Harbor; after the Japanese attack, President Roosevelt organizes every American superhero into the All-Star Squadron, who will fight the Axis on the home front. This gives Thomas access to every character published by DC in the 1940s, plus those published by Quality Comics (whose characters were published by DC after the company ceased operations in 1956). The resulting organization has an extraordinary amount of members (over fifty), though in practice the comic tended to focus on a smaller set of the larger membership. Thomas weaves the adventures of the A-SS (um...) in and out of real Golden Age stories, as well as real World War II history.

It's pretty enjoyable stuff. There are two sets of characters Thomas tends to prioritize: the core Justice Society members (e.g., the Atom, Doctor Fate, the Spectre, and so on) and a set of characters whose adventures are much less chronicled (usually Liberty Belle, Johnny Quick, Robotman, Commander Steel, Firebrand, the Shining Knight, Amazing-Man, Tarantula). I tended to enjoy the book more when it focused on this latter set. I don't think the JSA qua the JSA is notably interesting: too many of them are square-jawed heroes who come from money, and of course their storylines are fairly set in stone.

But the other characters-- whose own series were short-lived, and whose futures were wide open-- give Thomas a canvas to do more. I really liked both female leads. Liberty Belle is the leader of the All-Stars, a real Golden Age character given new life here. I liked her a lot: a fierce, opinionated woman who swam the English Channel to escape the Nazis and who now argues in favor of American military intervention in the war through her radio show, she's a strong leader character in the Saturn girl mode. Plus she has a cool costume, complete with jodhpurs. (It took me some research to figure out why her pants had this weird thing on them.) Firebrand is a Roy Thomas creation, a distaff version of an existing Quality Comics character. Wealthy society girl Dannette Reilly replaces her brother when he's incapacitated during Pearl Harbor and she spontaneously gains fire powers. Again, a fun character. Many of the others are good, too: Robotman is a tragic character with a perpetual smile, Commander Steel too has a tragic background. (Steel was a retcon character from a brief 1970s WWII-set ongoing. More on him when I eventually jump back to his series.) I liked Amazing-Man, a black Olympic medalist spurned by his own country. These characters could change, go places, enter relationships, and so on.

This is the kind of comics I like. A team made of diverse personalities, working together. I did feel sometimes as though I liked the idea of the characters more than the actualities, as Thomas will never be praised for amazing dialogue or character-focused plots. But it's the kind of comic series that's greater than the sum of its parts: I have fond memories of its sprawling cast, even if I couldn't point at a specific story and say, "That one made good use of them."

The stories weave in and out of existing Golden Age stories, as I said. Thomas usually fills you in or recaps, which is fine. He was at times more interested in the retroactive continuity than the other elements of storytelling. In Annual #3 (1984), for example, we learn that Green Lantern stepped down as chairman of the JSA because he accidentally killed someone. This isn't a character point-- it's never mentioned before or since, it never affects any decision he makes-- it's just there to explain why he was abruptly replaced as chair between issues in the original All Star Comics run of the JSA. Or Hourman struggles with an addiction, but Thomas doesn't get any character mileage out of it; it just explains why he switched from using a pill for his powers to a ray. There's also a lot of time spent explaining how some characters are on Earth-Two in these stories even though they were on Earth-X in a JLA/JSA crossover from the 1970s. At first it's interesting, but it goes on and on and it's honestly contrived even for this medium.

What was more interesting was the way Thomas grounded the series in the war. I know the comics actually do a lot with the war, but in my experience, it's in a pretty jingoistic, simplistic way. Thomas weaves All-Star Squadron in and out of the actual events of World War II. The All-Stars deal with the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, attack Japan (unsuccessfully) in revenge, save Churchill from assassination during a real America visit, discover the Ultra-Humanite was responsible for a real act of sabotage, fight in the real Battle of Santa Barbara, and so on. The Justice Society members enlist as ordinary soldiers and officers, but soon end up activated as the Justice Battalion under the command of the War Department, Roy Thomas expanding a real Golden-Age story into a multi-issue saga.

Probably my favorite of all of these was when Thomas had the All-Stars involved in a real 1942 Detroit race riot in issues #38-40 (Oct.-Dec. 1984). (Black defense workers brought in to increase production were met with hostility by white residents.) He's not afraid to criticize his own leads; at first, many of the All-Stars (who are all white except for Amazing-Man) are all, "Well, really, both sides are violent and thus should be criticized" before finally realizing that maybe it's worse to be a violent racist than someone using violence to defend themselves from violent racists.

One aspect of the series is somewhat ridiculous: it ran sixty-seven regular issues; the first sixty make it from December 1941 (Pearl Harbor) to April 1942. That's twelve issues per month of story time on average, though February disproportionately has twenty-three issues (plus two annuals) devoted to it. It took two years of actual release time to get through February, almost an issue for each day of the month! To make it to V-J Day, All-Star Squadron would have needed to run about 528 issues. To be able to do that, it would still need to be running now, as with issue #1 debuting Sept. 1981, #528 wouldn't be reached until Oct. 2024 if I've done my sums right.

I feel like this was somewhat optimistic.

I would really like to know why Roy Thomas took this approach. Why stretch it out so much? He did go on to cover May and June 1942 in the sequel series The Young All-Stars (which I haven't yet read), but that still leaves over three years of wartime uncovered! So we have seven months packed with superhero incident, and many more comparatively empty. He had to know even at best, All-Star Squadron would make it to 100 issues tops. It sometimes feels contrived within the story, even; there's a story set in 1942 that explains a powers and costume change the Atom underwent in 1948. Why are we explaining this now and not in 1948? Or, there's a bit where we're told Robotman built a special aircraft to transport the All-Stars in his spare time. What spare time!?

The art is always solid; Thomas was assigned and/or picked good collaborators, the best of which was Jerry Ordway. Ordway's done great stuff since as both writer and artist, but this was his first ongoing comics assignment; he inked most of issues #1-20, and pencilled most of #19-29 (before departing to co-create Infinity, Inc., again with Thomas).

There are some specific stories worth commenting on in brief:

• #9-10: "Afternoon of the Assassins!" / "Should Old Acquaintance Be Destroyed…" (May-June 1982) wraps a frame story around an unpublished issue of Gerry Conway's Steel, the Indestructible Man series from the 1970s. Conway's dialogue is left mostly intact; Jerry Ordway inks over Don Heck's 1970s pencils. It's a clever idea, though in practice, I found the Steel flashbacks kind of dull. I wonder if I will enjoy them more when I read the preceding issues.
• #13: "One Day during the War…" (Sept. 1982) is a slice-of-life story following a number of All-Stars on a single day. It's neat, and quiet, and the kind of thing I wish Thomas had done more often. (Though Dannette gets over her anti-Japanese racism improbably easily.)
• #18-26 and Annual #1 (Feb.-Oct. 1983) form a gigantic epic about the All-Stars battling the Ultra-Humanite and his/her minions, as well as another version of the Ultra-Humanite from 1984, and their own descendants in Infinity, Inc.! A big cast, a big story, it slowly build from a single confrontation with Thor(!) to a massive showdown. Great stuff, superhero comics at its best.
• #36-37: "Thunder over London!" / "Lightning in Berlin!" (Aug.-Sept. 1984) bring in Captain Marvel from Earth-S, temporarily under Nazi mind-control. It has its high points (I liked how Superman was mad because he thought Marvel was a knock-off), but it's way too easy for the All-Stars to sneak into Hitler's HQ and back out again. That should have been much more tense!
• #50-56: Special Crisis Cross-overs (Oct. 1985–Apr. 1986) cover how the Crisis affected 1943. This was neat, because I had a little frisson when I realized that #50 was leading into a scene I remembered from reading Crisis on Infinite Earths for the first time... all the way back in 2008! But this time I had a context for who Dannette Reilly was! And the sub-plot about Mr. Mind popping over from Earth-S to do a really bad job of running a supervillain team was some inspired comedy. Some of it was tough reading, though; the issue about defending Cape Canaveral against time-lost Indians seemed to have nothing to do with anything. But there was some fun stuff... even though the Crisis sounded a death-knell for All-Star Squadron, as several All-Stars could not have existed in this new context, and several others would have to be substantively changed. Roy Thomas grumbled in a letter column that at first he was told he could have an exemption for his series: Earth-Two could exist in the past, even if in the present it had been merged with Earths-One, -Four, -S, and -X. But I can see why this wasn't allowed to happen: if the goal of Crisis was to reduce confusion, saying there was an alternate Earth in the 1940s whose history had been erased doesn't seem like it would do it.
• #52, 55-59: Shanghaied into Hyperspace! (Dec. 1985, Mar.-July 1986) is a series of back-up stories showing what the Justice Society was up to during the Crisis. A Nazi plot (supplied by the Monitor) launched them into space, each to a different planet in the solar system; a passage by Harbinger knocked each rocket into a different timeline. This is apparently an expansion of an actual JSA story, the parallel timelines conceit being used to explain why the eight planets are nothing like they are in reality or even other DC stories. An okay idea, but Thomas is (as he often is) too faithful to the terrible stories, and they are deathly dull to read.
• #57-60: "Kaleidoscope" / "I Sing the Body Robotic!" / "Out of the Ashes… Mekanique!" / "The End of the Beginning!" (May-Aug. 1986) are technically post-Crisis, but the crimson skies remain as Roy Thomas ties up loose continuity ends before the series completes. He explains this as a the timeline changes being delayed by Mekanique, a robot villainess from the future. There's a neat bit where at the beginning of #60, a photo is taken of the All-Stars, then Mekanique lets history change, then the photo is developed, and you can compare the "original" to the photo and see which characters have been replaced (e.g., the Golden Age Superman no longer exists, but now Uncle Sam is there, as Earth-X's history has been folded in).

Issues #61-67 are an extended epilogue, no longer advancing the story of All-Star Squadron as The Young All-Stars was prepared. There are origin stories for Liberty Belle, the Shining Knight, Robotman, Johnny Quick, and Tarantula in #61-63, 65-66 (Sept. 1986–Feb. 1987), some of which are interesting, some not. Liberty Belle, the Shining Knight, and Johnny Quick didn't get very developed origins during All-Star Squadron's main run, so that was nice, but on the other hand, the stories of Robotman and Tarantula were hashed out in detail already. Plus we get a fun missing adventure in #64 (Dec. 1986), slotting in between issues #46 and 47 (June-July 1985). The last issue, #67 (Mar. 1987), rounds things out with a retelling of All Star Comics #4, the first real JSA adventure. As always, Roy Thomas is so faithful to the original as to make you wonder why he bothered! It's a fizzle of a last year for a comic that had been moving from success to success prior to Crisis.

On the whole, All-Star Squadron is the exact kind of superhero comic I enjoy. I like comics for the way they span large chunks of time, take in multiple issues and ideas, and build a tapestry. The joy of them for me is in the almost accidental way they do so: I love Green Arrow, for example, for his lack of constancy. If the character had been the same all along, I don't think I'd like him so much. All-Star Squadron is fun because it takes that accidental continuity and brings some coherence to it. But at the same time, it's just another installment in the accidental picture of Earth-Two, drawing on what Gerry Conway and Paul Levitz did in the 1970s, and providing a foundation for what other writers like James Robinson would do in the 1990s and beyond.

Oh, and having their base in the Trylon and Perisphere from the 1939 World's Fair was super-cool. 

This post is the third in a series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume One. Previous installments are listed below:

1. All Star Comics: Only Legends Live Forever (1976-79)
2. The Huntress: Origins (1977-82)
   

Black Orchid: Origin Issues

Over seven years ago now, I read Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean's Black Orchid miniseries, which reinvented the character of the Black Orchid for 1980s. As often happens when I read updates of DC characters, it made me want to read the original version, and I eventually acquired all the major pre-Crisis appearances of the Black Orchid, mostly in Adventure Comics and The Phantom Stranger. (Adventure Comics vol. 1 #428 might be the most expensive single issue I have ever purchased.)

As originally conceived by writer Sheldon Mayer and artist Tony de Zuñiga, the Black Orchid has an interesting, unusual conceit. Her first three stories in Adventure Comics follow similar formats: someone is plotting something dastardly, but he gets warned off by the mysterious superhero Black Orchid who has the powers of flight, superstrength, and invulnerability. He realizes Black Orchid must a woman privy to his plans, and acts on his suspicions, but it turns out she was a woman he overlooked because she disguised herself as someone close to him. Rinse, repeat. The reader never learns Black Orchid's civilian identity; the viewpoint character is always the criminal.

Pair this with the lush artwork of de Zuñiga, and you have something special. (I always liked his work on DC's horror comics from around this same time period.) My favorite of the original three stories was the last one, "The Anger of the Black Orchid" in Adventure #430, where she takes on a skeevy nightclub owner running an extortion racket-- dark city streets, beautiful women, and unscrupulous men make the perfect venue for the Black Orchid's retribution. Like a lot of DC features of the time, it's pretty clear that these stories do not take place in the "DC universe"; people are amazed at the Black Orchid's powers, saying it's like something out of comic books. This definitely isn't a world where the Justice League is buzzing around!

After her brief run of fourteen-page lead features in Adventure (July/Aug.-Nov./Dec. 1973), the Black Orchid was transferred to Phantom Stranger vol. 2, where her eight-page back-up feature appeared eight times across issues #31 to #41 (June/July 1974–Feb./Mar. 1976). Some are written by Mayer, but the rest are by Michael Fleisher (with Russell Carley on "script continuity"); de Zuñiga draws the first one, with Nestor Redondo and Fred Carrillo doing the rest. These stories, even the ones Mayer or de Zuñiga worked on, show a lack of understanding of the Black Orchid character. Suddenly she's a well-known public figure that criminals impersonate convincingly in two different stories; suddenly she has the power to hack computers with X-rays and to assemble androids to help in her counter-crime plots.

The very first one, "Island of Fear!", was decent, though it suffered for its shorter length, but all the ones after that I found disappointing or misjudged. The Black Orchid ends up folded into the DC universe as well. No DC characters appear, but they are acknowledged; in #41, for example, Black Orchid jokes about showing off her super-strength because it will attract the Justice League's attention.

That was it for the character as a regular feature until Neil Gaiman; Phantom Stranger was cancelled with #41. I enjoyed the run in the way I enjoy a lot of the more standalone DC stuff from the 1970s; I don't think reading a ton of it one go would hold up, and I'm not sure a series about a character we're always on the outside of would be sustainable in the long run. But reading it in small amounts is an enjoyable dose of something different from the normal superheroics, especially at the hand of master illustrators like de Zuñiga and Redondo.

The character did have two significant pre-Crisis guest appearances, which I also tracked down, in The Super Friends #31 (Apr. 1980) and Blue Devil Annual #1 (1985). There wasn't much continuity within the original set of Black Orchid stories, so I was pretty surprised when her appearance in Super Friends turned out to be a direct sequel to her final storyline in Phantom Stranger #38-41; the same villain comes back for another crack at Black Orchid, but inadvertently attracts the attention of the entire Justice League. It seems strange for a cartoon tie-in series aimed at kids to draw so directly on a story that appeared four years prior, but it is by continuity nut E. Nelson Bridwell, so there you go. It floats but discards the idea that the Black Orchid is a Kryptonian, and I thought her flying into space with Superman was going a bit too far with what the original run had implied about her superpowers.

On the other hand, I did enjoy the Blue Devil Annual story a lot; I really should read that series someday (I have previously only read its crossover with The Omega Men). Her role is small, but fun, in a story of several DC mystic characters teaming up to fight Felix Faust. Both Madame Xanadu and the Phantom Stranger promise they have given the real origin of the Black Orchid, one ripping off Daredevil ("struck across the face with a tumbling bouquet of orchids [...] [that] had been saturated with fallout from a bomb test") and the other Spider-Man ("a bouquet of orchids was accidentally irradiated! [...] Paula stumbled-- and accidentally pricked her fingers on the thorns of those selfsame stems!"*). It pokes fun at every character concerned, which I gather was the modus operandi of Blue Devil in general.

Gaiman and McKean, of course, used their series to kill off the Black Orchid, give her an origin, and resurrect her in a new body; she was said to be a plant-human hybrid, and after their story, there was an ongoing series about the more obviously plant-like new incarnation's adventures. I liked Gaiman and McKean's story on its own merits, but I'm wondering if I would have found it as satisfying if I had read the original adventures of the character first. Her charm is her femme fataleesque mystery, I think, and making her a bizarre sci-fi creation kind of takes away from that. I'm glad I tracked these stories down to find out how she originally was, even if there weren't any real answers to be found.

* I instantly objected that orchids don't have thorns... and one panel later, so does Madame Xanadu.

What Is... The Gothic?

This is a question I've been thinking about recently, because I'm reading a book about "Gothic science fiction," but I'm not convinced that I have the world's strongest grasp on what the Gothic is, beyond a genre where vaguely spooky things happen.

That's not quite true. Like many things literary, I was forced to confront its nature by teaching-- though I prepped a discussion on the Gothic that I didn't actually end up teaching, because my class turned out to have plenty of other things to say about Frankenstein, and so we didn't get to it. But on my PowerPoint slides, I wrote stuff like "Elements of the supernatural" and "Wild and desolate landscapes, ruined abbeys, feudal halls, medieval castles with dungeons" and "Refuses to resolve contradictions or settle ambiguities; leaves the contradictory and paradoxical, finding only unresolvable moral and emotional ambiguity" and "Renegotiates the line between 'good' and 'evil'." (I suspect a lot of this is probably derived from The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, which has turned out to be quite a useful investment as a teacher of literature.)

Interestingly, when looking up my Frankenstein slides, I also found where I discussed science fiction, and let me tell you, these two definitions of sf seem a little strange juxtaposed against one another:

“…[L]ess congenial to SF is the fantasy (ghost, horror, Gothic, weird) tale, a genre committed to the interposition of anti-cognitive laws into the empirical environment. …[T]he fantasy is inimical to the empirical world and its laws.” --Darko Suvin

“Science fiction is the search for a definition of mankind and his status in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of knowledge (science), and is characteristically cast in the Gothic or post-Gothic mode.” --Brian Aldiss

The emphasis here is mine. There's a very big divide there as regards the interaction between science fiction and the Gothic! Something to ponder in my review of this Gothic science fiction book, perhaps.

Anyway, the real problem is that it's just a genre I haven't read very much of; a look of the top items tagged "gothic" on LibraryThing, for example, reveals a mix of books I haven't read and books I think are more Gothic-influenced than outright Gothic. I've never read The Castle of Otranto or The Monk or any of those V. C. Andrews novels where a woman's face appears through a cutout on the cover. (I think my mom owned a number of these.)

What I have read, though, is comics. Specifically the complete run of The Sinister House of Secret Love, a short-lived DC comics series of Gothic romance tales from the 1970s. It lasted for four bi-monthly double-sized issues from Oct./Nov. 1971 to Apr./May 1972 before being retooled with issue #5 as Secrets of Sinister House. That version actually lasted until issue #18, but from #6 onward it was a pretty generic 1970s horror anthology comic, featuring a number of eight-page stories in each issue. It's those first five issues that are something special:

Such glorious covers! They're real treasures of 1970s comics, with art by heavyweights such as Tony DeZuniga, Dick Giordano, and, best of all, Alex Toth. They all draw such lush imagery, dripping with atmosphere. (And, of course, the ladies are all good-looking, and typically end up experiencing adventures in their flimsy nightgowns.)

from Secret House of Sinister Love #3
script by Frank Robbins, art by Alex Toth & Frank Giacoia
courtesy The Alex Toth Archives

You gotta love those 1970s fashions! (Surprisingly, I think, for the Gothic, I'm pretty sure all the stories are set in the present day, despite the present scarcity of ancient families inhabiting medieval castles.) This is actually the first time I've seen one of these in color; the reprints in Showcase Presents The Secrets of Sinister House were in black and white, and probably all the better for it-- Toth and Giacoia have amazing linework that really stands on its own without the colors.

These Gothic romance comics have very same-y plots: a young woman travels to a distant location, usually on a promise of romance and/or to get a job (typically as a governess). Something sinister is secretly going on-- usually the romantic figure is evil. There are minor variations; for example issue #4 takes place in India, and I have a vague memory that in one of the stories, the innocent girl is actually a reporter who knows a fair bit more than she's letting on. What makes them so worth reading is not the stories, but the artwork. I'd love to own these, but even at its cheapest, a single issue is at least $10, if not $30 (and, of course, the Alex Toth one is nigh-unavailable).

from Secret House of Sinister Love #4
plot by Mary DeZuniga, dialogue by Michael Fleisher, art by Tony DeZuniga
courtesy True Love Comics Tales

Do these stories have "Elements of the supernatural" or "Wild and desolate landscapes, ruined abbeys, feudal halls, medieval castles with dungeons," or do they "Refuse[ ] to resolve contradictions or settle ambiguities; leaves the contradictory and paradoxical, finding only unresolvable moral and emotional ambiguity" or "Renegotiate[ ] the line between 'good' and 'evil'"? Kind of. These definitely have the former of those: all the stories imply the supernatural even when natural causes are revealed in the end. I don't think they really feature the project of the Gothic genre, though, just the features: they're pretty, well, generic.

I was surprised to recently come across an instance of the genre recently, however, in the pages of the 1972-73 Marvel series Night Nurse. Night Nurse was another short-lived, four-issue series, this one about three nurses from diverse backgrounds trying to make it in the big city. It's basically exactly what you'd imagine: lots of melodrama (usually with men telling the nurses they can get married... if the women give up their careers) and hostage crises. In the 2000s, one of the nurses was repurposed as a character running a free night clinic for injured superheroes, which inspired an appearance by Rosario Dawson in a similar capacity on Netflix's Daredevil series.

"This is Daredevil, Matt Murdock. This is serious. We don't have time for jokes!"

I guess because of this, Marvel released a reprint volume containing all four issues of Night Nurse, plus one of the modern issues of Daredevil where the character appeared. Imagine my surprise, though, when after three issues of hospital drama, issue #4 turned out to be a stereotypical Gothic romance comic!

In issue #2, Christine Palmer-- who gave up a life as a Midwestern debutante to be a nurse-- fell in love with a gifted surgeon who turned out to be an alcoholic and was stealing drugs to pay off a debt and committed a hit-and-run on the daughter of his best friend, the police commissioner and botched the surgery that should have save her life. Also her jerk dad turns up and pressures her to come home even though in issue #1 he said he'd let her do her own thing. In issue #3, Chris is nowhere to be seen; one of the other nurses mentions she disappeared after all the brouhaha of issue #2.

In issue #4 you find out what she did: answered an ad for a live-in nurse at a creepy seaside manor! She has to walk there in a storm because none of the locals will come close; there's a sexy heir in a wheelchair, a creepy aunt, and a creepier butler; mysterious lights blink at night; and did that seaside railing just happen to collapse... or is someone trying to kill her!? It has very little to do with nursing, but is a perfect example of the Gothic romance comic. (Though Winslow Mortimer is not quite the right artist for the project. It's hardly his fault; his clean linework and straightforward style was really well-suited for the naturalistic tone of issues #1-3. He does manage to work in the obligatory gratuitous nightgown shot.)

from Night Nurse #4
script by Jean Thomas & Linda Fite, art by Winslow Mortimer
courtesy Sequential Crush

I don't know why this issue exists. Was it a desperate attempt to save a sinking series? Night Nurse #4 came out in May 1973, long after the retooling of The Secret House of Sinister Love ought to have shown there really wasn't a market for this kind of thing! And would sales figures for issue #1 even have been in before production of issue #4 began? Maybe scripters Jean Thomas and Linda Fite just really liked Gothic comics and thought they were a logical inclusion in a series about urban nurses?

If anything, it's even more generic than those issues of Secret House of Sinister Love, but its very incongruity contributes to it being a delight. The other Gothic romance comics I know of have never been collected: DC's The Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love (1971-72) and Charlton's Haunted Love (1973-75). I hope that happens, and I hope I come across other Gothic tales as unlikely as that of Night Nurse.

Also I hope I figure out exactly what the Gothic actually is someday.