1st Issue Special #3

Writer - Bob Haney

Artist - Ramona Fradon

1st Special #4

Writer - Robert Kanigher

Art - John Rosenberger and Vince Colletta

Publisher - DC Comics (1975)

Not that anyone cares besides me, but one of my many goals, just ahead of getting a girlfriend and paying off my Visa balance, is to read and review some obscure DC series. I reviewed the first couple issues of this a while back, and since there are no comics being published this week due to the New York ape riots, I thought I’d get back to this series.

As I mentioned before, 1st Issue Special was partly a tryout book, partly a clearinghouse for unused stories for comics that already tried and failed. Metamorpho had his own series from 1965-68 and now, in 1975, Haney and Fradon reunite for another one-and-done to gauge current interest in the character.

Haney’s pretty fun when you’re in the mood for him, with his corny dialogue like, “Gotta convert to a toppler-stopper” when Metamorpho is trying to stop a Scooby Doo-style ghostly villain from knocking over the Washington Monument. As for Fradon, I admit I don’t quite get the appeal. She’s almost Will Elder-broad in her style, which is a nice change from gritty and photorealistic, and perfectly fine for all-ages ’70s superheroing, but she doesn’t do anything clever with the storytelling. It’s all simple grids, cartoony faces, uniform line weights and the least detail or shading she can get away with. It’s a mercenary job. On the other hand, as flimsy as the story is, the one page text piece by Haney, “The Making of Metamorpho the Element Man,” makes it clear he believed.

Issue #4 brings us “Lady Cop,” and brother, it is dire.

After watching her roommates being murdered by a guy with skull-and-crossbones boots, Liza enters the police academy in order to make a difference, and no doubt eventually find that killer. At graduation, she stops a crazed academy dropout with a grenade. She’s ready.

Lady Cop (where was the deodorant tie-in?) foils a tenement rooftop rape (?) and then buys a little black girl an ice cream, thinking, “her kiss wiped out Mr. Bad Mouth’s,” which was much like a thought I had after my last annual review at work. Yes, it’s risky writing about work online, but my boss’ last name has one letter different from Badmouth, and he did more than kiss me, so it’s unlikely he’ll find this on a search. 

“Lady Cop” is the kind of four color urban comics story where the thugs are all white and hold chains menacingly (?) from rooftops, while wearing magenta pants. Kanigher does what he can to bring some reality to the proceedings, with one character talking on the phone about having V.D., while a stereotypically excitable Hispanic woman exclaims, “Madre de Dios!” and “muy malo!” Lady Cop (let’s call her L.C.) knocks a would-be stabber upset that in the topsy-turvy world of 1975, “skirts” are “in the cops,” unconscious against a lamppost. See, he was going to stab her and use her to wipe his shoes. Yikes. But L.C. is a pro, and even gives the guy mouth-to-mouth to bring him back.

After a distracted make-out session with her boyfriend, who feels emasculated by having a lady cop for a girlfriend, L.C. finds the V.D. girl and gives her a pep talk about V.D. being like a poison underground river that can cause blindness, insanity and death. Suitably encouraged, she (Nina) faces her father (Pinta) and after he punches L.C. in the face for his daughter’s whorishness, L.C. reminds him that his dead wife (Santa Maria) wouldn’t have cast their daughter out just for premarital sexin’. 

Then, Chain Rape-o finds L.C., swings and misses, and ends up in the drink, where she has to fish him out, pondering whether she’ll ever find her roommates’ killer. Just a typical day for Lady Cop. 

A miserable comic, made even more cruel by what looks like honest effort on the part of Vinnie Colletta. Why this comic, Vinnie? Why?

—Christopher Allen