DC Relaunch: This is Not Good-Bye

On the occasion of the end of the pre-Flashpoint DC Universe, upon the publication of Flashpoint #5 and Justice League #1.

Wally West will be back.*

Believe it or not, he'll be back. In five years, maybe, or ten, or twenty, when Wally's finally back, come see me. We'll talk about it.

They all come back. Anything can happen.

Barry Allen came back. Kara Zor-El came back. Jason Todd. Booster Gold got a series again, written and drawn for a time by Dan Jurgens. Swamp Thing is back from limbo. Animal Man. Resurrection Man, though maybe the name should've tipped us off.

I remember wondering if Ultra Boy would ever find out that Phantom Girl hadn't died, but was living in the twentieth century as Phase. Ultimately they met, but Phase, it turned out, was really Phantom Girl's cousin. The couple was finally reunited just before Zero Hour; now that whole storyline's no longer in continuity.

Hal Jordan came back. Oliver Queen. Hank Hall. Dawn Granger. Connor Kent.

One of the great (in my opinion) unresolved storylines of the pre-Death of Superman era was that head of Newstime Colin Thornton was really the demon Satanus. When the creative teams changed, I figured Superman would never find out about that; he finally did, in a story by Gail Simone just before Infinite Crisis, over ten years after the original revelation. Simone hadn't even started writing for DC when the original story came out, but she finished it. Anything can happen.

Ronnie Raymond. Rex Tyler. Max Mercury. The Peter David-era Linda Danvers showed up in a miniseries for a few seconds, a couple of years back. Bart Allen. Will Payton, a bit, though he was actually Prince Gavyn.

John Stewart left the Darkstars and went back to being a Green Lantern. Boddika's back -- Arisia, too. Some people wouldn't believe Guy Gardner was once a Vuldarian. He's going to appear in a new Justice League International title, alongside Fire, Ice, Booster Gold, and a Rocket Red again, and that's good news. A lot of what's to come is good news.

Jericho. The Superboy of Earth-Prime. Kal-L. The Kingdom Come Superman. Stephanie Brown. I read a comic the other day where General Glory cameoed. Blue Devil headlined Shadowpact for a while.

When Barry Allen died during Crisis on Infinite Earths, Geoff Johns was a teenager; over twenty years later, he helped write Barry's resurrection. Who could have guessed, at the time?

JLA/Avengers, rumored for so long, is even a little dated now. The New Teen Titans: Games is scheduled to arrive next month.

Jack Knight will be back; maybe James Robinson will write it, or someone else, maybe someone we've never heard of. Ambush Bug will be back, whether by Keith Giffen or another writer. Just a few years ago, DC published a new Captain Carrot miniseries(!). Wally West will be back. Someone will write it -- maybe even you.

When John Byrne recreated Superman after Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Justice Society was in limbo; they came back. A Superman origin without the Justice Society in existence seems so foreign, and yet it worked before. That Byrne origin was my favorite, but it's long since been replaced -- by Jeph Loeb, in part; by Mark Waid, for a time; and by Geoff Johns, lately, though it's about to be replaced again.

Do now what we we did then -- remember the classic Justice League/Justice Society team-ups. Tell new readers about them. Buy the New Teen Titans and the Flash (Wally West) Omnibuses. Put them on your top ten lists and treat them as vaunted aspects of DC Comics history. Barry Allen came back -- in Return of Barry Allen, in "Chain Lightning," in Rogue War, in Infinite Crisis, in Final Crisis -- because it excited the fans, and it because it sold books. If you want it, and you wait for it, and you keep the faith, Wally West will be back.

Krypto. Holly Robinson. Tora Olafsdotter.

Wally will be back. They all come back. Anything can happen.

* Written prior to reading Flashpoint #5, so disregard if Wally secretly takes on Barry's identity or something equally unforeseen happens.

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Number 1009





Ellery Queen and the corpse that killed





We featured the Saint on Friday, Perry Mason on Monday, and we're following it up with Ellery Queen. The Saint, Mason and Ellery Queen were born in the golden era of the pulps as leads in detective novels. The Saint was created by Leslie Charteris. Mason was created by prolific Erle Stanley Gardner (who got to a point where he had six secretaries transcribing his tape recorded story dictation). Ellery was created by Manfred Lee and Fred Dannay under the name Ellery Queen.



Unlike this comic book story, which depends on the pseudo-horror angle and less on detecting, the Ellery Queen of the novels is a detective in very clever whodunnits with clues provided for the reader. There was much less finesse and writing skill in this comic book story, but it's still entertaining. The art is by an artist so far unidentified. The style looks familiar, one of those things where I can almost put my finger on whodunnit, but not quite. That's the biggest mystery of "The Corpse That Killed": whodrewit?



At least we know that Norman Saunders did the painted cover for this Ziff-Davis comic.



From Ellery Queen #1, 1952:

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Review: Brightest Day Vol. 2 hardcover/paperback (DC Comics)

The second volume of Brightest Day contains three origin stories -- exercises in retroactive continuity, for the most part. In its details, this is a book mired deep in the continuity of the DC Comics Universe -- too deep, perhaps, deep enough to even set an educated fan like myself's head spinning. In its broad strokes, however, I continue to enjoy Brightest Day very much; there are fan-favorite characters here experiencing the kind of rebirth that writer Geoff Johns (with Peter Tomasi) is known for. And this second volume ends on a number of cliffhangers leading into the third book, making the wait for the final chapters all the harder.

Add to all this that Brightest Day -- though I've not heard anyone say so directly -- seems to me an intentional lead-in to a number of the new DC Reboot series, and that makes Brightest Day one of the most compelling titles I'm reading right now.

[Contains spoilers]

Two villains and a hero -- the Martian D'kay D'razz, Hawkworld's Queen Shrike, and the new Aqualad -- all receive origins in this volume, and all are relatively confusing. D'razz's involves an unlikely Martian-transport accident before Martian Manhunter's self-same accident, and then the writers tie D'razz's current mayhem to both Manhunter's death in Final Crisis and resurrection in Brightest Day, instead of just the latter event. Aqualad's "couple adopt an orphaned baby" beginnings is too much (though perhaps intentionally) like Superman's, and his ties to Aquaman's wife Mera's own "secret" past are too much tied in obscure Aquaman stories that haven't themselves been revisited in years while the character's been in limbo.

Worst, however, is Hawkgirl Shiera Hall's mother Queen Khera emerging as Brightest Day's limbo-Hawkworld's Queen Shrike. Hall herself hasn't appeared in a comic for ten years or longer, and Shrike isn't apparently Hall's mother proper, but rather the mother of Hall's ancestor-by-reincarnation, the Egyptian Princess Chay-Ara. How Hall immediately recognizes her, and the overcomplicated two-page spread that details a series of murders and suicides that lead to Shrike becoming a pharaoh and then queen of Hawkworld, become less important than the reader's basic understanding that this person is "good" and that person is "bad." I give Johns and Tomasi points for not glossing over the minutia Mera and Hall's individual origins just because we haven't seen them in a while -- at the same time, the book's momentum comes to halt with these double-page origins, filled with details that I can't imagine will factor all that heavily later.

This is the exception, however, because otherwise the various plotlines of Brightest Day move rather swiftly. Johns and Tomasi's Aquaman, with Ivan Reis's art, is as self-sure and commanding as he should be, and the writers even make his telepathic powers look cool as he touches his fingers to his forehead at the end of the book; I also root for this Aqualad mainly because of how much I like his counterpart in the Young Justice cartoon. The Hawkman/Hawkworld story, despite the complicated villain, is nicely violent (too violent, some might argue, but I've come to believe that Hawkman stories lend themselves to a certain amount of bloodshed). The Deadman/Dove thread gets some life (and some neat guest stars) once the curmudgeonly Hawk drops out of the picture; the Martian Manhunter delves too long into obvious fantasy sequences, but I find Manhunter's conflict with D'razz very compelling -- on one hand, she's the last female of his species, and on the other, she's a mass murderer.

Still best, as was the case in Brightest Day volume one, is Johns and Tomasi's take on Firestorm. Again, as is Johns's wont, the writers offer a new take on the character's old paradigm -- now, Firestorm's two halves must remain in peaceful emotional sync or else destroy the universe-- a hard task under regular superheroic circumstances and even tougher when one side played a role in killing the other's girlfriend. Firestorm is an established hero, but this revised approach makes everything that was old now new (and young) again. It's hard not to see the similarities between where this is going for Firestorm and the descriptions of Gail Simone's new Firestorm series; we don't know if Firestorm is a relaunch a la Batman or a reboot a la Superman, but the former increasingly seems more likely the case, and that the events of Brightest Day will still have an impact going forward.

Indeed, given titles for Aquaman, Firestorm, Hawk and Dove, Deadman (in DC Universe Presents) Resurrection Man (who cameos here) and certain others -- and the similarities, at least, between Firestorm here and the upcoming Firestorm series -- Brightest Day seems more and more like a "backdoor pilot" for the DC Relaunch, and it's surprising more hasn't been made of that. Given that we wait-for-traders will be sobbing quietly at midnight on August 31, waiting for the DC Relaunch to visit us in collected form sometime in May 2012 (oh, the humanity!), you'd think DC would do well to point out that if fans want their first taste of the DC Relaunch, they might very well find it in Brightest Day.

Over the last four chapters of Brightest Day volume two, Johns and Tomasi leave every character with some kind of cliffhanger, and even despite knowing how some of volume three will shake out, the suspense is exciting. As a semimonthly series (which we'll lump in with DC's previous weeklies), I can't say Brightest Day is "better" than 52 solely because of 52's scope and ambition, but Brightest Day is a good story, and shows weeklies can work after the relative disappointments of Countdown to Final Crisis and Trinity. Being semimonthly perhaps helps Brightest Day substantially; the title is focused, action-packed, and rarely slow (Martian Manhunter dream sequences notwithstanding). I'll say again -- Brightest Day is one of the better titles I'm reading right now.

[Contains original and variant covers.]

Wednesday marks the end of the DC Universe as we know it ... be here for some universe-ending thoughts from Collected Editions.

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Number 1008





Mort Drucker's Perry Mason





"The Night Perry Masonmint Lost A Case" is a favorite of mine, from Mad #48, 1959. Not only am I a fan of of artist Mort Drucker, but I also remember the Raymond Burr TV show with fondness. I watched it every week.



I downloaded the scans of the original art from Heritage Auctions. It went through some production phases in which it was cleaned up, where the bleed edges of the panel borders were covered up, giving it a neater appearance than it had in its primary state. Like many artists whose work was done for black line printing, Drucker used Craftint paper, "painting" with the chemical that brought out the ben day effects. That paper became known as Grafix, and is now no longer produced. (The end of an era.)



The first Perry Mason series lasted for nine seasons on CBS, and there was a time when he actually lost a case on television (CNN did some research at some point and found out he actually lost three of three hundred, not a bad track record). I remember the hoopla around that first "losing" episode. I wonder if this satire gave some Perry Mason producer or writer the idea.

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Number 1007





Dead men--and women--tell no tales





Saddle Justice was an EC Comics entry into the field of Western-themed comic books, before they got into the New Trend comics that would make them infamous.



I like the alliterative titles of these stories, and the female protagonists, both of whom are as rough-and-tumble, if not more so, than the men they go up against. Johnny Craig did "The Lady Longrider" and Graham Ingels drew "The Grinning Gun Girl," setting the mood on the first page with the symbolic skull.



[SPOILER ALERT] The lessons of "Gun Girl" are muddled, especially in the last three panels when the law closes in. The posse decides to shoot down psychotic Sally "in cold blood" because it's the "only way we can stop her from killing more people!" The sheriff would rather "take her in alive. . .[but] no sense in running any more risk with a killer like her!" so they shoot her. As she lays dead the sheriff moralizes, "Reckon she was a bad one...human life didn't mean a thing to her it seems!" That's because even in death she has her grin and after shooting her in cold blood, he says, "See, she's still grinning! Sure was cold-blooded...even about her own death!" The code of the West in action! Another crime comics ending, where the law is just as brutal as the criminals they are chasing.



From Saddle Justice #6, 1949:

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Number 1006





The Saint and Stumbo





The online copy of Avon's The Saint #5 has an index card identifying various artists who worked on this 1949 Avon comic.





The Grand Comics Database doesn't reflect this information.



If I had not read the I.D. of the artist of "The Saint Breaks A Spell," I would never have guessed it, even though it's a name well known to me. Warren Kremer was Harvey Comics' chief artist for decades, drawing all of the Harvey characters, most notably Casper, Richie Rich, and one of my favorites, Stumbo the Giant. The card tells us that Kremer did two strips in this issue of The Saint. I'm including a Stumbo story from Hot Stuff #17, 1959, to show you that a decade made a lot of difference in that artist's career.



The Saint splash panel provides us yet another example of the Jeepers Girl, who I have featured before. See Pappy's #727 and Pappy's #911, and Pappy's #788, which links to another blogger who has found more examples.

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