THE DESTRUCTOR, No. 4 (Conway / Ditko, Milgrom; Atlas/Seaboard, 1975)

Every Wednesday morning, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 20 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-)read it, write about it, and publish whatever emerges. Earlier installments live here.

(Box08): One of those oddities that's been in The Collection since the early days, an enjoyable enough yarn from Gerry Conway of a mostly forgettable and Jersey-proud hero (somewhat reminding me of Orion mixed with Hunter Biden – IDK, first combo that came to mind) encountering a band of superpowered Outcasts living in an underground city in New Mexico made by Oppenheimer collaborators who hated their work and resolved to make a perfect world which is, as always, anything but.

Also: Ditko!

If nothing else, this week's random served as a fascinating launchpad into learning a bit of the history of this short-lived (it folded in 1975, a year after its founding, which is a shame: those perks offered are massive, even now) Martin Goodman-initiated effort at competing with Marvel and DC:

Atlas/Seaboard offered some of the highest rates in the industry, plus return of artwork to artists and author rights to original character creations.^[7] These relatively luxurious conditions attracted such top names as Neal Adams, Steve Ditko, Russ Heath, John Severin, Alex Toth and Wally Wood, as well as such up-and-coming talents as Howard Chaykin and Rich Buckler.

A total of 23 comics titles and five comics magazines were published before the company folded in late 1975. No title lasted more than four issues.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas/Seaboard_Comics

Apparently in 2019 producer Steven Paul paid a lot of money to buy the characters in an effort to make a cinematic universe (featuring a writer's room led by Akiva Goldsman)...

Paul, whose credits include Ghost Rider, Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance, andGhost In The Shell, has also signed Oscar-winning screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind) and his Weed Road Pictures to oversee a writers room to exploit the properties, which include Phoenix, Tiger-Man, Iron Jaw, The Dark Avenger, and The Grim Ghost.

SP Media Group struck the acquisition deal through Atlas Comics library owner Nemesis Group Inc. and its principal Jason Goodman, who is the grandson of Marvel Comics founder Martin Goodman.

Production on the first project is anticipated to commence during the second quarter of 2020 with a release expected for 2021. The companies intend to produce and release at least one superhero project each year after that. The writers room will get to work on creating 10 initial outlines and will choose the first project after that.

Jeremy Kay https://www.screendaily.com/news/steven-paul-buys-stake-in-atlas-comics-library-strikes-finance-and-production-deal-with-paramount/5139484.article

Given that this seems to be the only news of the project (and Paul's… less than stellar track record) I'm guessing that this venture met the same fate as its comics predecessor. A shame. They could've cashed in on the BARBENHEIMER craze - I mean, come on: Jon Voight was excited:

Jon Voight, a longtime family friend of the Pauls (Paul is Voight’s manager) turned up to a press conference at the Carlton on the Croisette and said he would help with screenplays and anticipated acting in some of the films. He stars in family drama JL Family Ranch 2, which Pauls’ Crystal Sky Pictures is selling in Cannes.

Jeremy Kay https://www.screendaily.com/news/steven-paul-buys-stake-in-atlas-comics-library-strikes-finance-and-production-deal-with-paramount/5139484.article

Though I’m saddened that we’ll never get a Jon Voight-led Outcasts film, I did get to peruse some great Ditko art and learn a strange bit of comics history to boot: a midmorning well spent.

CHECKMATE, Vol. 3, No. 5 (Bendis / Maleev; DC, 2021)

Every Wednesday morning, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 20 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-)read it, write about it, and publish whatever emerges. Earlier installments live here.

(Box06): "It's stress banter... let it happen": has there ever been a more self-aware line in Bendis's career?

On paper and in theory this pairing should work: Bendis and Maleev doing spy stuff in the DC Universe (so far my only exposure to Bendis's tenure in this particular sandbox) with a fantastic cast of characters, including three of my favorites (The Question, Damien Wayne, and Kate Spencer).

And the series as a whole does, indeed. work.

But.

CHECKMATE works only once Bendis gets out of his own way and moves the thing along; so much of this issue was spent tripping over himself to extend something out to six issues that should've been done in four that I can't see the footprints.

Not like that that's nothing new for Bendis: it's been a common complaint over the entirety of his career. Decompression, etc etc etc...

But I've two more that irk me more than I'd like: One, everyone sounds the same, as though I'm reading Bendis having fun with action figures (that, thanks to Alex Maleev, look really fucking good) and doing the voices in a really cool setting. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Banter has its place – ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN, anyone? – but not as the defining rhythm of indistinguishably clever people.

Which brings me to my second problem: it's been the same thing for the last 20-some years. No surprises, nothing new, nothing interesting – replace one set of characters with another and do the Bendis banter-clever people / Mamet thing (I hold a similar ire for much of Joss Whedon's work), ad infinitum. What once was exciting and fresh is now, as per the usual cycle, dreadfully common.

The times that I've truly loved Bendis – ALIAS, DAREDEVIL, and TORSO, in particular – are the times that he was in a more grounded format with real(ish) people up against seemingly insurmountable odds, most of them brought upon themselves. I'd love for him to go back there, try something new by mining the past; hell, use a silent protagonist.

I've little faith that that will actually happen but hey, if Maleev is along, it will, at least, look really REALLY good.

WEB OF SPIDER-MAN, No. 103 (Kavanaugh / Saviuk; Marvel, 1993)

Every Wednesday morning, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 20 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-)read it, write about it, and publish whatever emerges. Earlier installments live here.

(Box19): The more I encounter '90s Marvel (though DC was guilty of it too) comics in these Wednesday blind pulls, the more I'm amused by how every character's dialogue has the same rhythm: to imagine each being read by Paul Soles (Spidey's voice in the '67 animated series) is not only not a stretch, but adds an even deeper amusement (MJ and Peter's connubial woes, for example, are brilliant in a Soles voice; little wonder writers of the time wanted to ixnay the marriage – though that doesn't mean I agree with the decision).

But: MAXIMUM CARNAGE! And it was, indeed, Maximum, even down to the length of the crossover 14 parts... which would then prove to be not MAXIMUM enough, what with two-year-long CLONE SAGA a year in the future (but I'm sure I'll get to some of those issues as I do more of these). And this issue, in particular, opened with CARNAGE WITH A BIG GUN.

MAXIMUM!

Derision of the MAXimal thereness of much of the issue aside (being part ten of 14 tends to do that), I do have to mention here that Alex Saviuk draws one hell of a Spider-Man: his action scenes (of which this is wall-to-wall) MOVE and he can capture small emotional beats that would otherwise be (and were) glossed over in the hands of lesser artists. Should be mentioned as one of the definitive Spidey artists.

But yeah, Carnage with a big gun. Probably could have led with that and saved both of us some time. MAXIMUM time.

CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, No. 7 (Wolfman / Pérez, Ordway, Giordano; DC, 1985)

Every Wednesday morning, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 20 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-)read it, write about it, and publish whatever emerges. Earlier installments live here.

(Box06): Pleasant surprise, this one: a chance to revisit a single issue of something I'd read only in trade and rather recently at that. And, while my hope that I could read CRISIS as more than "a gorgeously illustrated historical document with too many one-note action figures" remains elusive, I did, nonetheless, sense a humanity missing in most of the rest of the series (a portent of a shift in storytelling priorities in the post-CRISIS world?): the iconic cover, of Superman holding Supergirl's lifeless body still packs a punch; I can only imagine the impact seeing that had on the reader as it stared back at them from the racks.

While he rightly receives plaudits for his rendering of spectacle and universe-shattering narrative turns, Pérez has a unique and unmatched ability to both illustrate said universe-shattering for our eyes and through the eyes and expressions of the characters experiencing it: he brings the anguish, the fear, and the rage to life, pouring it off of every page, especially in the issue's final, unforgettable pages. Similarly - and perhaps it's because I (re)read it out of context with the other eleven issues – I sensed a desperation on the part of the heroes that I didn't feel in other issues: maybe it was always there and my initial, overwhelmed and trade-paperbacked reading missed it or maybe this was the issue that it all, indeed, turned. Interesting that hundreds of worlds had died in issues previous but that it took one iconic death to hammer the stakes home.

Brings up a note: in my eventual re-read of CRISIS, I'm going to do it via single issues and not in trade. Want to see if this approach lends a different experience and makes me see what I was missing – the weight, the history-shattering stakes, the humanity – in my first go-round. If this issue is any indication, I have a feeling that it will.

THE QUESTION, No. 19 (O'Neil / Cowan; DC, 1988)

Every Wednesday morning, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 20 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-)read it, write about it, and publish whatever emerges. Earlier installments live here.

(Box14): Among the joys of joys in this, the latest phase of my comics collecting, has been experiencing much DC's post-TDKR / pre-Death of Superman (86-+/-92) output for the first time (I was a little young – I doubt six/seven year-old me would have appreciated them as much as the present 42-iteration does though who knows; I did read DRACULA for the first time when I was six): BATMAN: THE CULT; RONIN (though that was '82/'83, but still) DOCTOR FATE; and, most utterly – because I can't come up with a better word for how much I adore this series — O'Neil and Cowan's THE QUESTION.

That this week's blind pull was one of my favorite issues of one of my favorite series of all time featuring one of my top five comics characters (will list them at some point) was nothing short of intellectual manna: everything great about the O'Neil/Cowan run distilled into 28 pages: a done-in-one takedown of topical, corrupt prescience (in this case, plastic guns) by a social justice warrior in both his faced and non-faced identities who takes the time to engage in verbal sparring (more often than not whist in an impressive yoga position) with the best mentor/father figure in comics (I love you Alfred, but Tot will always win out for me), all with a sympathetic Hub City eccentric (Augie Lumberg and Doll – would anyone guess that the most gut-punching moment of the issue would come when a rubber love doll is shot in the head?) – whose connection to the main story becomes apparent only in the moment of utmost impact and danger – stuck in the middle.

One of the things that I've written about over my years of writing about comics is that the best, most enduring characters are those that are what I term "elastic": pliable enough to be molded into who they need to become so that the creative team to do their job as caretakers and shepherds while maintaining the very things that kept made the character so sacred in the first place. The Question, while not a objectively an "A-lister" – though both Vic and Montoya are to me – fits this and then some: in the hands of his creator, he was a less-stark vehicle for Ditko's Randian/objectivist proclivities; in the hands of O'Neil and Cowan, a zen social justice warrior; in Veitch and Edwards's, an all-seeing, weird-ass poet shaman attuned to the chi flowing through Metropolis; in Rucka's, a hard-noir vehicle of redemption; in Lemire's, one of resurrection: the Question's mask is nothing short of a tabula rasa for any type of story imaginable – and O'Neil and Cowan's 36 issues remain, three+ decades on, the bar beyond which all of our imaginations must reach.

WILL EISNER'S THE SPIRIT, No. 15 (Aragonés, Evanier / Smith; DC, 2008)

Every Wednesday morning, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 20 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-)read it, write about it, and publish the resultant review/memory/whatever. Earlier installments live here.

(Box17): Another of the done-in-one titles that DC was publishing at the time (the superb Palmiotti / Grey JONAH HEX being the other), the only fault in this issue being that not only did the team of Aragonés, Evanier, and Smith have the unenviable task of following Darwyn Cooke's run on the title but that all were working under the shadow of Will Eisner's long and incalculably innovative pen.

As much as I love The Spirit and his world, I find it to be, in the hands of anyone other than Eisner, lacking: Cooke did an admirable job, as did Aragonés, Evanier, and Smith – though the less said about Frank Miller's monstrosity of a film version (that being said, I'd argue that, had Miller tried him in comics (though maybe not the Miller of the mid-late naughties), it would've been a different story: film is clearly not Miller's medium, something I think (and hope) he's come to recognize) the better.

The missing piece in those non-Eisnerian hands? Eisner himself and that spirit (yeah yeah) of innovation: it's as much a part of The Spirit's character as the cape and cowl are to Batman, the radioactive spider to Spidey, and the S-symbol to Superman: to simply tell stories, no matter how enjoyable and fun, isn't enough to make the character resonate. Nonetheless, this issue – and the whole of the DC series – was, if not resonant, then at least both enjoyable AND fun.

THE SPECTRE, Vol. 3, No. 8 (Ostrander / Mandrake; DC, 1993)

Every Wednesday morning, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 20 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-)read it, write about it, and publish the resultant review / memory / whatever. Earlier installments live here.

(Box16): One of the crown jewels of the 90s (words rarely uttered though the era does hold a special place in my heart), DC doesn't get much better than this SPECTRE series, a perfect collision (similar to the 00’s JONAH HEX series) of writer and artist and characters – Corrigan / Spectre (Mandrake's Spectre, like Kaluta's Shadow and Adams's Batman) is THE Spectre, as far as I'm concerned), Amy, Nate – pushed to their limits in a deft balance of the topical (HIV ignorance) with the timeless (demons and the afterlife and human nature and all): in a just world, this volume of THE SPECTRE would be spoken in the same breath as Gaiman's SANDMAN.

I've always imagined (supported by evidence of previous lackluster efforts) The Spectre – a mostly-naked, pasty, all powerful vehicle of wrath and vengeance in pixie boots, a hooded cloak, and a speedo – to be a difficult character to get right: while he has limitless power and can do anything (not always a good thing), from punishing a mugger to stepping in to bring one Crisis after another to an end, he's not the most elastic of DC's stable (a la Superman or Batman): punishment, wrath, green cape, a dead cop powerless to stop his perpetual companion.

Ostrander and Mandrake succeed where others failed (and continue to do so (while all have been solid – I'm a big fan of Hal Jordan’s time as The Spectre, as vehicle of redemption, one of those rare transformations that, to me, worked; and I wish Crispus Allen had had a longer tenure – there hasn't been a capital-G Great take like Ostrander/Mandrake on The Spectre in awhile) by leaning in and pushing the character and his staples to their nth degree: their Spectre is both heroic and terrifying, a potent mixture of hardboiled private eye and embodiment of vengeance; I would both love and hate to see Tom Mandrake draw my greatest fears.

While it's been in the "pick them up whenever you see them" file, I'm adding this series to my list of "runs to complete”; an absolute pleasure to revisit.

FANTASTIC FOUR, Vol. 1, No. 39 (Lee / Kirby; Marvel, 1965)

Every Wednesday morning, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 20 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-)read it, write about it, and publish the resultant review / memory / whatever. Earlier installments live here.

(Box09): Of all the "greats" in comics, Lee and Kirby's FANTASTIC FOUR (or, Kirby’s FANTASTIC FOUR with Stan Lee dialogue) has been something of a blindspot for the entirety of my collecting days and decades: I've read an issue here and there – the earliest issues, the greatest of the greats, No. 51 (This Man, This Monster), among others – and, in each case, doing so reminds me a.) how good the Fantastic Four can be, and, b.) to just buy that omnibus.

The more I've reacquainted myself with Marvel's 1960s output the more it's become clear that there are really only a handful of stories being told – the hero is a coward!? the hero(es) lose their powers! the hero quits!? the heroes fight each other! the heroes team up! the hero's life outside the mask impedes on the life in the mask! among others – under an overarching villain-of-the-month plot (the "filler" issues being largely nothing more than a villain-of-the-month): the brilliance of 1960s Marvel was in their ability to stack and transpose these plots to different characters and combinations of characters while keeping everything within the parameters of each character (even though everyone sounds like Stan Lee, FELLA! PAL!, the overlording Jobs in a bullpen of genius Wozniaks) and the nascent Marvel Universe as a whole: in this case, the FF lose their powers and team up with Daredevil (who had popped in to help the FF with their wills) to defeat Doctor Doom who, by the end of this issue (I've also got issue 40 in the boxes, so I might cheat and read ahead) has, after being de-hypnotized by a Latverian court hypnotist, learned the truth and is ready to (in what I'm sure will be his undoing) toy with the powerless FF before slaying them all once and for all and ensuring the world knows who did said slaying; a tree falling in the forest Doom is not.

While I wouldn't consider this to be among the greatest of the great FF adventures, it's nonetheless an idea-packed explosion of creation and drama that sings and thrills as only mid-60s Marvel could do. Will it spur me to finally devour the rest of the Lee / Kirby run? In theory, it absolutely should. In practice? TBD.

CAPTAIN AMERICA, Annual 9 (Thomas / Valentino, et al; Marvel, 1990)

Every Wednesday morning, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 20 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-)read it, write about it, and publish the resultant review / memory / whatever. Earlier installments live here.

(Box05): One of the first issues that sent me into this 34-year comics collecting spiral, its Iron Man blasting Cap cover drawing nine-year-old me to the stand at The Grocery Bag in Millersburg, OH, one of two local 90s gateways to the comics world but the only one that had Smurf Ice Cream (vanilla colored blue with Smurf blood or something) and an omnipresent smell of wet cardboard (unrelated to Smurf ice cream, probably) wafting about but the comic itself, revisited after 33 years: if CIVIL WAR was an entertaining Cap-v-Iron Man throwdown, it's got nothing on TERMINUS FACTOR's volcano-creature tainted fish-fry-laden Cap-v-Iron fisticuffs in a small mountain town: did the first chapter of CIVIL WAR end with an angry, red-eyed, tainted-fish-infected bear striking a pre-Image Jim Valentino-drawn pose after killing a deer while an Anti-Monitor lookalike hovered overhead? I think not. By virtue of a pre-COCAINE BEAR cocaine bear, it wins. Millar, eat your heart out.

The two other stories – a WWII-flashback by Randall Frenz and a pre-Spidey Mark Bagley and a prelude to the NOMAD limited series (which ends with Jack Monroe assuming the mullet and eye-dilation sunglasses look that would define the EXTREME nineties) – are, as per most annuals, largely forgettable – following tainted-fish Cap-Iron Man throwdown is nothing if not an unenviable task but it does bring up a point: I've long been dismayed that annuals were (and are) treated as an afterthought, a fifth-week stuffing of second-rate material to fill space, a lost opportunity. Feels like every approach has been tried – company-wide crossovers in the nineties, but even those were second-rate (BLOODLINES, anyone?), the "story behind the story" approach (Superboy Prime punched a wall and reanimated Jason Todd) in the naughties, etc etc – but nothing ever felt right.

Clearly, the only solution is more tainted-fish-fry cocaine bears.

SUPERMAN, No. 664 (Busiek / Pacheco, Merino; DC, 2007)

Every Wednesday morning, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 20 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-)read it, write about it, and publish the resultant review / memory / whatever. Earlier installments live here.

(Box17): Now entering the weird, post-INFINITE CRISIS / pre-FLASHPOINT back half of the DC naughties when nothing quite clicked though, in theory, it should have: Busiek and Pacheco (RIP; if there was anyone born to draw Superman) are a phenomenal team but even they couldn't bring magic to the character and his world as it was then. Not that this is a bad issue – it isn't, not by a long shot – but I won't remember any of it after writing this; starting to lose some of it even a few moments after reading it: it was wholly there in its thereness.

(IIRC, Morrison and Quitely's ALL-STAR SUPERMAN was unfolding in stuttering release parallel, an unenviable position for any team on the main books to find themselves in.)

If anything, this makes evident why the New52 (and the ensuing decade+ of rebirthing and rebuilding) came into being: there was clearly a need to revitalize the line (though the Bat-line came through unscathed, as it was quite good then, IIRC: Morrison again); it was only in the shoddy, haphazard execution via "editorial bloodsucking" of said revitalization that the New52 failed to leave little more than a bad taste.

Though I'll admit, the pie was a nice – if unsubtle – touch.