This week’s question: What’s your favorite anniversary issue?

Tim Durkee:  I’m glad that this question was given an extra week. I knew I could catch up with my reading and two anniversary issues would be a part of that. First off, I’m very far behind, so please don’t chuckle too loud when tell you I just finished Amazing Spider-Man # 690-700 including every point one and gimmick book in between. For all purposes issue 692 is the 50th anniversary issue, but that was overshadowed by the hype surrounding 700. The cat has been out of the bag for several years now, the question would have it been worth the cover price when first released?

I hate when a character dies in a book, not because my favorite hero or villain has perished, but because they never last. Give it a few months, maybe a year and they are back so I was I was in hurry as I knew what to expect. Did ASM 700 deliver to a reader who is very skeptical of deaths, anniversaries, and gimmicks? It sure did!

For a moment I actually thought this was it, the last story. No more Parker. The way the letter columns were filled it was more like a eulogy page rather that a celebration of one of the greatest super-heroes created. And I am reading this, believing this, knowing what happened. That’s what we call darn good writing, true believers! Now I’m on to Superior Spider-Man, which I stayed away from initially. I’ve never been known to have a favorite anniversary issue, until today.

Mike Sterling: Very early on in my comic collecting endeavors, I always went out of my way to pick up “special” issues. Extra-sized anniversary editions or annuals or the large treasury editions, even if they were from series or featuring characters I didn’t normally follow. There was just something especially enticing about these, even if the higher pricetags bit into my funnybook-buying budget. And, in the late ‘70s/early '80s, there was no shortage of fine books to choose from: Flash #300, detailing the origins of all the Rogues, Detective Comics #500, a monster of a comic featuring stories starring not just Batman, but several other characters featuring throughout the series’ long run.

And then there was Justice League of America #200 from 1982.

A great premise: the founding members of the League have gone out of 
control, and it’s up to their latter-day teammates to bring them down.
A great story structure: each confrontation is divided into its own short chapter, including one splash page punctuating the conflict between the characters.
A great collection of artists: each chapter is illustrated either by the artist most strongly associated with the characters involved (such as the Flash versus the Elongated Man by Carmine Infantino, or the Atom versus Green Lantern by Gil Kane), or by an artist that is most perfectly suited to said characters (such as Green Arrow and Black Canary versus Batman as drawn by Brian Bolland). The artwork for the framing and connective sequences is by George Pérez, who was then nearing the end of his run as the regular Justice League artist.
The story, by Gerry Conway, very nicely showcases each major character from the title’s history, as well as tying the plot into the team's origins. It is, in effect, a sequel to Justice League of America #9 (1962), where the League’s origin was initially told. Conway also contributes an extensive text history of the series on the inside front and back covers.

This is 72 adless pages of superhero perfection, presenting the almost Platonic ideal of how each character should be treated. Sure, maybe Pérez isn’t quite as polished here as he would become in short order, but there’s no denying his work’s power and enthusiasm. He certainly holds his own with the other featured artists. In addition to Bolland, Kane and Infantino, there’s Jim Aparo, and Dick Giordano, and Joe Kubert, and Brett Breeding, and more. If anyone’s taking suggestions for one of those giant tomes that features high-quality scans of original art, I nominate this book for the treatment.

Justice League of America #200 is the comic I think of when I think of superhero comics. It’s the one that reminds me of why I became interested in superhero comics in the first place. Not that it was my first superhero comic, by any means, but it still remains, at least to the part of me that still remembers that youthful thrill of seeing the week’s new arrivals on the newsstand racks, the best.

Scott Cederlund: My Legion of Super-Heroes fandom started out sporadically.  I probably read more reprints of older Legion stories in Adventure Comics or even the old Treasury Editions.  There’s one Treasury Edition that reprinted a Mordru story that’s still one of my favorite comic stories.  Those old Silver-Age stories were hokey but all of those super-powered kids running in those old fashioned costumes held a wonderful charm over me.  That’s probably why I had a problem with some of the more modern (at least modern circa 1983) Legion stories.  The characters kind of seemed familiar but with all of their updated, Bronze Age costumes, my mind couldn’t connect those old Legion stories to the current Legion stories.

Legion of Super-Heroes #300 is a suspect anniversary issue because the series continued the numbering of the original Superboy series after it became Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes with issue #197.  So maybe the 300th issue of Legion of Super-Heroes is a bit of a stretch but it provided the link for me between the Legion I knew from those old reprints and the modern day Legion as it contained a number of imaginary stories about possible timelines for the Legion, all written by Paul Levitz and drawn by a number of different artists.  

Levitz’s story touched on all of the eras of the Legion, all the way back to it’s earliest and corniest days in the late 1950s and 1960s, through the Bronze Age cynicism of the 1970s and all the way through the Keith Giffen technological utopia of the 1980s. These stories were “what ifs,” looking at the decisions that the Legion had made through those years and how they could have been different. And Levitz even framed it through the perspective of the brother of the late Ferro Lad.  All of these maybes and could-have-been were told from the point of view of one of the Legion’s first and greatest tragedies.

There’s only a handful of comics from 1983 (or even before that) that I can actually remember buying and reading for the first time. I got the issue from a shop called All American Comics in Evergreen Park, Il, on a summer night. And I read the comic in the lobby of the Christ Medical Center on 95th Street. My father had taken me to the comic shop as a mild bribe before going to visit my grandmother in the hospital. I can remember the lighting still being dim in the waiting area while my father went up to my grandma’s room. I probably went up to her room for a little bit but I was probably quickly allowed to go down to the lobby to read my comics while my dad spent time with his mother.  

The comic means as much to me about the contents of it as it does about the summer of 1983 when my grandmother died of cancer. When the question was posed about anniversary issues for this column, I immediately thought of this issue but it took a while to sink in about what the comic means to me and why I still have it in my collection.  The comic is full of possibilities and things that never happened in the Legion continuity, but they all could have happened if the writer and artists had made different choices along the ways. For this anniversary issue, Paul Levitz tapped into some of that potential that exists in all comics within the boundaries of continuity.

Joe Gualtieri: This week’s question is borderline impossible. It would have been tough enough if we could pick five, but one anniversary issue? Especially as someone who was a young teen during the prime years of anniversary mania (Marvel made a way bigger deal about the thirtieth anniversaries of their various superheroes than they did the fiftieth), this felt like a nigh-impossible task. Outside of material reprinted in The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told (“To Kill a Legend” from Detective Comics #500 is a contender here), my first anniversary issue was likely Detectve #627, celebrating Batman’s 600th appearance in the title (yes, it’s actually his 601st, an error pointed by many letter writers in subsequent issues). It reprinted the very first Batman story, “The Case of the Criminal Syndicate” by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, and a retelling of the story, “The Cry of the Night is- ‘Kill’”, from #387 by Mike Friederich, Bob Brown, and Joe Giella. It also contained two new reinterpretations of that first story by essentially the then-contemporary teams on both Detective and Batman: Marv Wolfman, Jim Aparo, Mike DeCarlo, and Adrienne Roy, and Alan Grant, Norm Breyfogle, Steve Mitchell, and Roy. The Grant/Breyfogle tale was a little gruesome for my tastes at the time, but getting four variations, retold over time, has always left an impression on me as a great way to do an anniversary issue.

My favorite though? In the end, it comes down to two issues, both from the same storyline, Spectacular Spider-Man #189 (the first of four issues celebrating Spider-Man’s thirtieth anniversary in 1992, each with a hologram on the cover, because 1992) and #200. My first Spider-Man comics were Amazing #347 (Venom!) and Spectacular #175 (Doc Ock!), both purchased from Robinson’s Convenience Store on the same day because they had villains I liked from Marvel trading cards. Funnily enough, I came in as a classic creator left, as Spectacular #175 wrapped up Gerry Conway’s final Spider-Man story-arc (though it was written by David Michelinie). The next two issues were fill-ins by some guy named Kurt Busiek, and then in #178, J.M. DeMatteis’s run started with a sequel to his already legendary Kraven’s Last Hunt, with Sal Buscema on art. Despite not having read that story, his run worked really for me, in part because the story was something of a thematic sequel, focusing on Harry Osborn and his struggles with his father’s legacy as the Green Goblin. By the end of that initial arc, Harry had fallen to his worse impulses, becoming a villain again.

After a detour involving the Vulture, DeMatteis brought Harry back in #189 for “The Osborn Legacy.” Deranged after using his father’s super-strength formula, Harry kidnaps his own family and starts psychologically torturing Spider-Man. At the end of the issue, Spidey actually turns Harry over to the authorities, despite the threat of Harry revealing his secret identity as Peter Parker. Over the next year, Harry would occasionally show that he could still reach out from prison, but he was released in #199. The next issue, “Best of Enemies!” sees Harry up his war against Spider-Man, his family struggling to deal with his instability and Harry fighting himself, caught between wanting to do what his evil father would want and his long friendship with Parker. The issue is tense, and features one of probably only two scenes returning to the scene of Gwen Stacy’s death that is actually any good, as Harry takes Mary Jane Parker there to assure her he will not hurt her. In the end, Peter and Harry come to blows, Harry poisons Peter and leaves him to die in a death trap before Mary Jane talks him into going back. Then the super strength formula he used a year earlier turns to poison and kills him (a simple metaphor, but beautifully done, and perfect for the genre). Harry Osborn’s death is absolutely stunning, a scene so well done by Buscema that DeMatteis deviated from his original plans and left the final pages silent.

Spectacular Spider-Man #200 is everything an anniversary issue should be: it wraps up the current creative team’s story-lines, but beyond that it truly builds on the history of the characters involved. “Best of Enemies” gets its impact not just from the artistry of DeMatteis and Buscema, but from everyone who came before on the Spider-Man comics. It’s a story that demands a mature Spider-Man, and is inconceivable without him being married to Mary Jane. Marvel has, inexplicably, just reprinted parts of it, and the only way that makes sense to me as vindictiveness over how it shows how wrong nearly everything the company has tried to with the character since has been, as Marvel’s flailed about, trying to de-age him, believing kids couldn’t relate to an older, married Spider-Man. *Ahem* Anyway, it also has a foil cover, and being 11 in 1992, I confess to having a weakness for those when they’re well done.

This week’s question: To celebrate the new year, what’s your favorite #1 issue?

Tim Durkee: My favorite first issue is Justice League. I’m referring to the 1987 series written by Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis with pencils by Kevin Maguire. I was always a fan of the JLA, even the Detroit era. DC’s ads (featuring a picture of the cover of the first issue) for the book had me anticipating the release, and I was not disappointed after that long – or what seemed to be a long – wait for the release. Everything about that cover just teased the readers that this was going to be a very different JLA book than what we were used to. I knew it was going to be a fun title; I don’t know how I knew that as I did not have any inside information about it. I followed the book seriously for about two- dozen issues and then casually for another two dozen. The cover is still one of my favorites, and the first 24 issues along with the first two annuals are in my “Forever Box: not for sale, not for trade.” Yes, I do have several of those. Just the right amount of action, along with a well-written cast makes this version a great read. Grab a copy of the first issue and see for yourself.

Logan Polk: This might be the hardest comic book related question anyone’s ever asked me. My collection is filled with first issues to series, many of which never saw a proper end, with just as many that are nothing but relaunches for book that needed a sales bump. To pick my favorite? That’s a Herculean task of the geeky kind.

The obvious choice is probably X-Force #1. I know, I know; typical ‘90s comic, Liefeld, blah blah, but like I said in last week’s QT, it was Cable that pulled me completely in to the world of comics. Still, other than the cover, I don’t actually remember too much about that first issue. Probably because I didn’t read it until months after it hit the stands, possibly a year.

Qualifying something as your favorite would mean it would have to have had an impact, making itself memorable in a significant way. That narrows down the choices a great deal, and the first #1 issue I recall doing that was The Maxx #1 by Sam Kieth and William Messner-Loebs. I still remember opening that book and being both perplexed and thoroughly engaged by the dialogue and the pseudo-superheroics of Kieth’s Br'er Lappin; the juxtaposition of his grimy cityscape and The Outback, the way his characters weren’t action figures (outside of Maxx that is), the opening monologue from his cardboard box, the ride in the police car, the introductions of Julie, Gone and those creepy Isz. It’s a series I’ve owned in multiple formats, and that first issue has never gone out of my mind.

Mike Sterling: Picking out my favorite first issue is a challenge…which series are my favorite is a lot easier, since those are much longer bodies of work with which to form an opinion. But trying to remember just that one issue, separate from your memories of the issues that followed, the single installment that grabbed your eyeballs and fed itself directly into your mind, embedded forever in your fondest comic-reading memories – well, that’s certainly the trick, isn’t it?

There have been plenty of great first issues, of course. Fantastic Four is a brilliant transition between the sci-fi/monster books of 1950s Atlas and the 1960s superhero universe of Marvel. The first issue of the recent She-Hulk series really knocked me for a loop. I still have some fondness for the debut issue of John Byrne’s Alpha Flight. And so on. I appreciate these as solid examples of comic-booking, but they lack the specific emotional component that made me decide on what exactly is my favorite #1.

And that would be The Saga of the Swamp Thing #1 from 1982.

“Whoa, now hold on there a minute, Mike,” those of you who have some familiarity with my particular tastes may be saying to yourselves. “Now, picking a Swamp Thing comic is no surprise, but the Marty Pasko/Tom Yeates Saga the of Swamp Thing #1 and not the original considered-by-everyone-to-be-a-classic Swamp Thing #1 by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson from 1972? Have you done flipped your gourd at last?”
Well, lemme 'splain. My entry into the world of Swamp Thing fandom was two-fold: through old copies of the '70s series found in a used book store, and the ancient Nickelodeon program Video Comics which would present a comic panel-by-panel onscreen with narration and sound effects (as seen here). I spent some time piecing together that original series, in whatever order I could find them, reading and rereading the books once the holes were filled, and wondering what I was missing. I knew those Swamp Thing stories were out there, and I knew the series was over and done, with no more continuing adventures coming after I completed that run. Well, aside maybe from a guest-appearance or of Brave and the Bold or DC Comics Presents here and there, but that was hardly the same.

Until, of course, the new Saga of the Swamp Thing series was announced. None of the folks from the original series were involved, beyond co-creator Len Wein as editor, but that was fine. The old comics were great, but they were the old comics. They were done. Wein and Wrightson and Kraft and Michelinie and Redondo weren’t doing new stories, and even as I was putting together that original run, I realized this was a finite thing. Once that was done, that was it.A new series, however…! That’s a promise of a new issue only a month away from the current issue you have in your hot little hands! And you don’t need to go out on a treasure hunt to find that next installment, as it’ll be coming, freshly printed, to a newsstand near you!

Sure, that first issue of Saga of the Swamp Thing wasn’t the same as the older stuff, and maybe it wasn’t quite up to the classic material in the original 10 issues by Wein and Wrightson. But it was good, and for someone who was certain that he was just about to have all the Swamp Thing there ever was, knowing that, for at least a while, there was going to be brand-new, previously untold tales of his favorite character coming each and every month was welcome news indeed.

So that’s why Saga of the Swamp Thing #1 is my favorite first issue. Not so much about the actual quality of the content (which, as previously noted, I enjoyed just fine) but for the promise that single comic book held: that there would be more of these Swamp Thing comic books forthcoming.

Joe Gualtieri: This question was a lot harder than it seemed on the surface. TV pilots are notorious for not always resembling what a show becomes, and the same is true of comics series as well. There’s also the matter some of the best comics #1s are not really #1s at all, like Amazing Fantasy #15 or New X-Men #114 (which is surely better than any X-Men comic that actually has a #1 in the corner box). It was sorely tempting to subvert the intent of the question and go with Invisibles v3 #1, which is actually the last issue of the series.

Ultimately though, I was over-thinking it and missing the obvious—Action Comics #1, specifically the Superman story. Taken out of context, it’s an action-packed story that does a great job of establishing Superman as a champion of the oppressed and the love triangle between Superman, Lois Lane, and Clark Kent. Lane, interestingly, isn’t an ace reporter for the Daily Star, but instead an advice columnist; her fiery personality is all-there, however, as she slaps a gangster who interrupts her date with Kent.

What really makes me love the first Superman strip though, is Philip Wylie’s novel Gladiator. Published in 1930, Gladiator is a turgid sci-fi novel about Hugo Danner, whose father experimented on him in the womb, resulting in Danner possessing super-strength, invulnerability, and the ability to leap great distances. Sound familiar? The difference between Danner and Superman is one of personality. Danner is a whiny shit who agonizes over what he should do with his great power. In a way, you might say Wylie invented the Marvel superhero, 30 years before Stan Lee. The issue of whether or not Jerry Siegel read Gladiator has been somewhat controversial, but apparently he admitted reading it in an unpublished autobiography. Anyone who reads both Gladiator and Action #1 would have little doubt that was the case though, as many of the vignettes in Action come off as direct responses to scenes from Gladiator. Unlike Danner, Superman never hesitates to use his powers to do good and in his very first adventure tackles gangsters, wife-beaters, corrupt politicians, and saves an innocent man from the electric chair. In context, the whole comic reads like a response to Gladiator, one that finds it wanting and desires to show how a man with superpowers should act. It makes for an exhilarating and generally up-lifting read, and means that the aspirational aspects of Superman, which are the best parts of the characters, were there from day one

This week’s question: What’s your favorite holiday-themed comic other than the infamous Alan Brennert Supergirl story?

Tim Durkee: The first book that came to my mind when the question was asked was Batman: The Long Halloween. Originally published as a 13-part mini-series by DC in 1996, the tale brings Batman and Harvey Dent together along Jim Gordon to track down a killer who strikes on holidays. If you have seen the Dark Knight film, you may find some influence the story had on the movie. It features the art of Tim Sale and was written by Jeph Loeb. Set in Batman’s early days following Batman: Year One. I find it to be a unique way of introducing the many enemies of Batman in one story while still keeping the emphasis on who is the mysterious villain committing the holiday crimes. Some may find it boring, as it is an origin tale as well. I won’t spoil it, maybe I already did letting you know some elements are in the Dark Knight movie.

Logan Polk: My favorite holiday themed tale in all of comics is The Long Halloween. For me Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s year long Batman series, in which each issue was somewhat themed around a holiday, encapsulated everything I love about the Dark Knight. It features one of the greatest assemblages of his rogues gallery, flawlessly folds the organized crime aspect into the costumed craziness and centers itself around a mystery, allowing for the detective aspect to come fully into play. While Loeb’s story ultimately doesn’t amount to more than a series of homages to some of the greatest crime noir stories previous, Sale’s art creates such a brilliant look and mood for the world these characters are operating in that it hardly needs to be more than that. I was fully wrapped up in figuring out who the Holiday Killer would be, and even after several re-readings over the years, I still find it to be a page turner.

Joe Gualtieri: Growing up, a key piece of comics education for me was finding random comics that I had never heard of before. Obviously, the infamous three-pack was the major component of such an education, but sometimes Building 19 would get long boxes or maybe a drug store would have a bunch of comics with gigantic “$3/$1.00!” stickers taking up a quarter of the cover. The most important comic for me I got that way was Ambush Bug #2 by Keith Giffen, Robert Loren Fleming, Bob Oksner, and Anthony Tollin. That bizarre little morsel prompted me to track down the rest of the mini-series, and I was thrilled to find that not only was there a sequel series, there was also Ambush Bug Stocking Stuffer.

As with the rest of the series, the Stocking Stuffer is loaded with jokes I didn’t get in early adolescence, but there are so many, I amply enjoyed it even at the time. Now? My favorite part is probably the two-page “How to Write Comic Books” sequence, which is a parody of Steve Ditko’s didactic comics. That is completely bizarre thing to stick in a Christmas themed issue, but it’s par for the course for Ambush Bug. Another highlight is a caricature of Julie Schwartz chasing around a Manga-ized Ambush Bug. AB is standing in for Keith and Fleming here, complaining to Schwartz that, “…we can’t possibly be funny for 40 pages!” and Schwartz responds “You quitter! My jokes aren’t funny and I’ve been around for 40 years!” Young me found the situation and art hilarious, now I can appreciate the portrayal of Schwartz, and frankly, I totally identify with telling bad jokes just for the sake of telling jokes to get through work.

I’m probably not doing a great job of selling the Stocking Stuffer, but it’s a comic light on plot (there is one, barely, about AB’s “dead” sidekick Cheeks the Toy Wonder coming back) and is practically a stream of consciousness-style series of jokes, parodies, and gags from Giffen, Fleming, and company. It also has Jonni DC, Continuity Cop making a rare appearance and I think we can all agree that’s the greatest gift of all.

Scott Cederlund: If we talked about favorite all time runs of comics, the Marv Wolfman/George Perez New Teen Titans would be highly placed in my list. But if we talk about favorite Teen Titans issue, my introduction to the original Teen Titans in Teen Titans #13 (1967) by Bob Haney and Nick Cardy actually has to be up there. And it’s Haney and Cardy riffing on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol that makes it so much fun as the Teen Titans fight against a Scrooge-like junkman.

I don’t know if I’ve ever actually owned an actual copy of this specific issue. As one of my earliest comics, I had a copy of Christmas With the Super-Heroes, one of DC’s early treasury editions. The only things I knew of any of these characters was that Robin was Batman’s sidekick and that I had Mego figures of Kid Flash, Aqualad and Wonder Girl. They were a bit like the Justice League but only kids. But they were incredibly awesome as they helped a wheelchair-bound kid and his father out of a tough situation during the Christmas season.

For a kid who was already at the age of 4 indoctrinated by Marvel and the artistic children of Jack Kirby (actual Kirby appreciation would come probably over a decade later), Cardy’s artwork is what really stood out from that Treasury edition. It was filled with Irv Novick and Dick Giordano (who I probably assumed at the time were the DC house style), Bob Oskner and Wally Wood, Win Mortimer and others, Cardy’s images in this issue still astound me.

There are ways that he drew superheroes, these odd angles that he used to frame the action, that look completely different than anything else I had seen before or for a long time afterwards. And his cartooning of Ebenezer Scrounge (their Scrooge,) Jacob Farley and Scrounge’s accomplices really gives this story a life other than being merely a superhero comic. The Teen Titans almost seem like an intrusion into this wonderfully drawn homage to Dickens.

Then there’s Haney with his silly attempts to be writing to the kids of the time, which is actually a bit more subdued in this issue than in his other Teen Titan comics. Wonder Girl is still “Wonder Chick” but like Cardy, Haney seems to be having more fun with the Dickens-like characters. Most of the comic is Scrounge being haunted by his past sins in classic A Christmas Carol style.

As an introduction to the Teen Titans, Haney and Cardy’s comics had a great love for these junior Justice Leaguers as their own characters. There’s nothing in this story that even suggests that these are just the sidekicks or the junior varsity other than a one-pager in the actual comic that shows them reading Superman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman and Batman comics (What? No love for Carmine Infantino’s Flash from Kid Flash?) Haney and Cardy treat them as heroes who are kids, which was a great thing to stumble upon in a Treasury comic that featured Superman, Batman and Captain Marvel. Even if Robin had been around since the 1940s by this point, here he wasn’t a junior partner but in important part of the team.

And honestly, this was probably my introduction to A Christmas Carol. Flipping through the comic now and still incredibly enjoying the Cardy artwork, Haney and Cardy take enough liberties with the story that I don’t think Dicken’s would recognize much of his work in this comic other than on the most surface level. But this would become as much of my A Christmas Carol experience as Dicken’s writing or any of the movies but most specifically the 1951 Alistair Sim version of the story. Nick Cardy’s parka-wearing Wonder Woman defines Christmas to me even now as much as any of the ghosts of Christmas past do.

Mike Sterling: I’d love to pick, say, an Arbor Day comic as my choice for my favorite holiday funnybook (and presumably this example from the Flaming Carrot Annual would be a good'un), but my holiday preferences are strictly plebeian. Christmas and Halloween are my events of choice, and as they tend to be the events of pretty much everyone’s choice, there is no shortage of comics to choose from.

Despite the current season, I’m going with a Halloween-themed story which actually gave me a moment of difficulty in trying to track it down. I believed it to be one of the classic Donald Duck stories cartooned by the Good Duck Artist himself, Carl Barks, back during the 1950s prime of his contributions to the Disney comics oeuvre. As it turns out, however, it’s a modern classic by the man who many feel is the successor to Barks, Don Rosa.

”Fit to be Pied,“ as it’s been dubbed (the comic itself is sans title) first appeared in 1987, early on in Rosa’s duck comics career, and hopefully I may be forgiven my confusion regarding its authorship as it is very much in the style of Barks’s 10-pagers. Donald, in competition with his eternal adversary Neighbor Jones, strives to win the local jack o'lantern contest, and and he and Jones engage in a chaotic war of one-upsmanship, involving disguises, thievery and outright vandalism. It's an exercise in escalating efforts and Jones and Donald attempt to outdo each other, as poor Huey, Dewey and Louie look on nearly helpless bystanders, appalled at the behavior of these supposed adults.

Ultimately (spoiler warning!), Donald achieves his initial goal in besting Neighbor Jones, but of course it is at great personal cost to himself, in the tradition of most of Donald’s Pyrrhic victories. Rosa's depiction of Donald’s vacillation between joyous triumph and angered defeat never fail to entertain, and easily match Barks’s own illustration of the ups-and-downs of comicdom’s most emotionally unstable fowl.

The story is reasonably easy to find – the original comic in which it appeared (Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #526) is not so old and uncommon as to be prohibitively expensive, and the story has been reprinted recently in the Don Rosa Library Volume 1 from Fantagraphics. It remains a fine example of latter-day Disney comics, as does all of Rosa’s work.

Looking at the late-August release of Justice League #1 as a kind of preseason game, how did the new season of DC Comics pan out for its first real week?

Action Comics was heavily favored, written by Grant Morrison, with art by the solid Rags Morales. It was okay but very restrained, as if Morrison was trying to hold back the usual torrent of ideas to see what the other kids brought, see if this experiment was going to flop. Could be he is less interested in trying to match or top All Star Superman and is instead playing games with himself, trying to come up with a Superman who is pretty much the opposite of the All Star version and see if that can be compelling, too.

Animal Man was the best book of the book, so let us get that out of the way quickly. The Believer bit was clever, and a good way to get exposition out of the way quickly, leaving room for not just good characterization of Buddy Baker and his family, but a done-in-one menace (of sorts), AND a creepy, suprising twist. Add to that that he honors Morrisons star-making run on the book by somehow introducing Moore Swamp Thing elements, and color me impressed. Artist Travel Foreman makes a mistake or two with perspective, but that nightmare sequence is stunning.

Swamp Thing by Scott Snyder and Yannick Paquette is a solid, attractive book, though one of many where it isn’t clear what is still considered canon and what isn’t. Alec Holland used to be Swamp Thing, but isn’t anymore, but clearly he will be again, or somehow bonded with ST. And Superman knows him. Paquette has some nice Nowlan-style art here and while hes always been a bit stuff, dude does work hard and is always consistent. Some interesting, creepy stuff that oddly enough has some parallels with Animal Man, though unintentionally.

Those were really the three books I will definitely continue with. Ones on the fence or securely on the other side of it…?

O.M.A.C. by DiDio and Giffen is better than I thought, a fun remix of the Kirby semiclassic series, although I wanted D&G to bring more of their own ideas to it. Also, O.M.A.C. himself isn’t very cool. I would rather he had that crazy otherworldly swagger and command of all kinds of crazy weapons and gadgets, but here he is kind of a mindless thug.

Batgirl by Gail Simone and Ardian Syaf suffers from an ugly costume design, awkward dialogue and narration and a character reboot that fails to honor Barbara Gordons time as Oracle, which is to say, the past 20+ years. Honestly, it would have been better to completely ditch her paralysis entirely than make it a spinal injury that she was able to utterly overcome, physically, yet causes her to mentally freeze when someone points a gun at her. If she was mentally strong enough to get herself back in superhero shape, she should be mentally ready for anything. And as far as that costume, isn’t the appeal of Batgirl, and most young female superheroes, that they present a contradiction, a litheness and unpadded fragility and abandon that flies in the face of the danger they are in from bigger, stronger opponents? When you give them armored costumes and clunky boots, it takes the fun out of it. The one positive thing I would say about the book is that at least its somewhat lighthearted and is the only one to even attempt to give the lead character a friend, though she (the new roommate) is pretty unrealistic so far. Is there a lamer attempt at activism than painting Fight the Power on your own apartment wall? Another security deposit sacrificed to the Cause.

Men of War is one I am kind of torn on. I think Sgt. Rock meets Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is a great tag, but not sure theres enough here to make anyone put down their controllers. Also, for a book that spends so much time on military jargon, one would think it would be a heavily researched war series, but all of a sudden it looks like these guys are up against a supervillain? I will give it another issue or two, but I don’t know quite what this book is supposed to be. Im all for war stories of impossible odds, but when that means regular guys against superpowers, maybe that crosses the line from brave patriot to fool?

Detective Comics by Tony Daniel is…well, I give Daniel credit in that I have studiously avoided his Batman run after the first couple of pretty poor issues. His art has improved since then, and he writes a coherent Batman. And yes, I was very surprised by the gross-out twist at the end, both as a reader and as a guy who wonders who oversees how DC handles their franchise characters. So, it may be a good deal of morbid curiosity, but I will be back for issue #2.

Batwing by Judd Winick and Ben Oliver is one of the better-looking books, but Winick fails to distinguish the character enough from Batman. Well, hes more like Jim Gordon as the only good cop on an African police force, who also puts on Bat-armor at night. The character isn’t interesting enough and the setting isn’t used well enough.

Green Arrow by J.T. Krul, Dan Jurgens and George Perez is a pleasant surprise. Krul doesn’t do anything very impressive here—Ollie Queen is kind of Tony Stark, kind of Bruce Wayne, the corporate superhero playboy—but at least the pace is quick and with the Jurgens/Perez art it looks a lot like the comics I read in the 80s and 90s that were probably crap in retrospect, but at least they were my kind of crap. I would prefer Krul get to work developing one interesting villain, though, instead of unleashing a torrent of codenames and powers who only want to bust stuff up and upload it to YouTube.

Static Shock by John Rozum and Scott McDaniel is too energetic and goodhearted to come down too hard on. I generally like teen heroes who are still recognizably teens in their behavior, and Rozum keeps Statics Peter Parkery science nerd thoughts going along rapidly, humorously and pretty endearingly. I didn’t love the book or felt like there was anything new, but its enjoyable.

Justice League International by Dan Jurgens and Aaron Lopresti is thoroughly average. I don’t have anything against Booster Gold, Fire, Ice or the other lightweights on this team, but either make them real interesting real quick, or treat them as punchlines the way Giffen and DeMatteis did back in the day. Jurgens isn’t sure which way he wants to go here so he never adopts a consistent tone, as if hes trying to please everyone. To be fair, with the heavy hitters on the real Justice League, writing these guys is like managing the Pittsburgh Pirates. You cant beat fun at the old ballpark, but theres a lot more talent on other teams, in other ballparks. Having Batman cameo smacked of desperation, and has anyone said anything about the plot? No, because its dull. Team gets together at the behest of two characters we know nothing about, and after farcical meet and greet, go off to find a missing UN research team. Question: aside from the real world value of making this a Justice League title, why would you name your UN-sanctioned team after the independent superhero team with which youre not associated and don’t control?

Stormwatch by Paul Cornell and Manuel Sepulveda is one of the bigger disappointments of the week, although to be fair, that’s partly because at one time I gave a shit about Stormwatch/The Authority and never cared much about Batgirl, Green Arrow, Static, etc. Having the Moon threaten Earth seems kinda like something Warren Ellis might have come up with, although he would have used some science in there somewhere, right? How is this giant Moon-fist going to break out of its orbit? Its like when you put your hand on a kids head and hold him far enough away from you that he cant punch you. Doesn’t that happen to you? Anyway, Cornell is tasked with restarting Apollo, Midnighter et al pretty much from scratch, except now with 100% more Martian Manhunter, and some new would be badass called Eminence of Blades or something. I think he lives through this but gets his ass kicked. I didn’t mind it overall but it was underwhelming, much of which could be laid at Sepulvedas feet, as he fails to make cool what Cornell gives him, while at the same time, Cornell doesn’t do a very good job of reintroducing these characters by having them do or say interesting things.

Hawk & Dove – I didn’t read it. And yeah, Rob Liefeld had something to do with that, but no more than Sterling Gates did. No thanks.

–Christopher Allen

Diversions of the Groovy Kind has a nice group of splash pages from Keith Giffen’s 1977 run as penciler of Marvel’s The Defenders. It makes me kinda want to read them, which I think I have somewhere, but what struck me first is not so much what Giffen brings to these pages but what you get from Klaus Janson. Giffen and Janson are credited as the “artists,” which can cover a wide range of things, but clearly Janson is not just faithfully putting ink where Giffen’s pencils were. Janson has always been an overpowering inker, but he’s so good that usual works out fine, just different. Many prefer John Byrne or Frank Miller inking themselves, but Janson’s inking over them resulted in some of my favorite comics art. 

What you see here is a young Giffen who hadn’t quite found his style yet. Not that he’s ever settled on one style for very long, but he’s not as confident here, judging by the results later when he’s inked by Chic Stone. Chic Stone is an inker who will generally diminish the power of one’s pencils, and we see an awkward Namor image for the issue where Stone inks Giffen. And earlier, once Janson has left the book, we see that what Giffen is most comfortable doing at this stage in his career is aping Jack Kirby’s style. It’s right there in the splash to #48 with a Kirbyesque Scorpio, Giffen and Dan Green doing a credible imitation of Kirby’s distinctively jagged contour lines, while in the next issue we get an excellent, Kirbyesque Moon Knight. No surprise, as frequent Kirby inker Mike Royer inked this issue. Still, I much prefer a Janson job than another Kirby knockoff. 

–Christopher Allen