Category: Comics
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Cary Bates (script) Mike Grell (artist) Jack C. Harris (assistant editor) Murray Boltinoff (editor) This issue features Tyroc’s formal admission to the Legion, which will be handled entirely in long shot. Given it’s the ostensible point of the whole issue—the story’s about Tyroc’s last test before membership—the abrupt finish is a little disconcerting. Except it…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) Ebony’s X-Ray Eyes show the problem with caricature, racist and otherwise. At the start of the strip, Ebony gets some of the Spirit’s x-ray juice in his eyes and can see through things. He quickly happens across some crooks who’ve decided to go…
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Gerry Conway (editor, script) Keith Giffen (layouts) Wally Wood (pencils, inks) Al Sirois (inks) Ben Oda (letters) Paul Levitz (assistant editor) It’s a few weeks after last issue (and adventure) and the doldrums of being a superhero have sunk in. The issue opens on a rainy day at the JSA brownstone, with Power Girl challenging…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) Despite the immediate follow-up to last strip, we still don’t get a big Spirit versus Orang scene. Spirit will track Orang to the ends of the Earth (well, Sumatra), but they never have a real, intellectual or physical showdown. Instead, they’re still in…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) Orang is a Frankenstein story from the monster’s perspective. The Spirit is still around, but he doesn’t have anything to do with the actual action of the strip. Instead, it’s the sad tale of Orang, an orangutan, turned into a being with human-level…
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Jim Shooter (script, layouts) Curt Swan (pencils) George Klein (inks) Milt Snapinn (letters) Mort Weisinger (original editor) E. Nelson Bridwell (editor) This issue of Super Stars reprints an eight-year-old Adventure Comics two-parter about Superman visiting the Legion a little further in the future, so they’re all adults. The script is one of those infamous teenage…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) Orphans is about the Spirit taking a young orphan, Billy, slumming in the underworld. Spirit comes across Billy and his friend, Barney, in the cemetery smoking cigars and getting sick from it. Barney’s trying to convince Billy to join a gang with him.…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) Morger Boys has maybe one bad moment, some missed opportunities, a peculiar finish, and fantastic action. The strip opens twenty-five years ago—so, you know, 1915–with the execution of a notorious murderer, Morger. Mrs. Morger makes their four sons promise to avenge Papa’s death…
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Gerry Conway (editor, script) Paul Levitz (assistant editor, plot assist) Ric Estrada (pencils) Wally Wood, Al Sirois (inks) Ben Oda (letters) All-Star slightly improves from last time, mainly because Wildcat has fewer opportunities to be a sexist prick. There’s a huge one at the beginning, so much of one the Flash comments on it (internally)…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) Daisy Kay’s kidnapping involves a lot more action than the setup will imply. The strip opens with Homer Creep (renamed from the previous, presumably French spelling, Creap) bursting into the Spirit’s crypt lair with a pistol at the ready. Spirit handily disarms Homer…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) While The Death Dolls do play a part, the most impressive element of this strip is the proto-Nazi killer robot. “Proto” because Eisner wasn’t willing to be too explicit in 1940. But there will be a robot shaped like a German soldier (the…
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Gerry Conway (editor, script) Ric Estrada (pencils) Wally Wood, Al Sirois (inks) Ben Oda (letters) Paul Levitz (assistant editor) The issue opens with the JSA reading their email—no joke—and an anonymous sender telling them there will be disasters in three major cities: Seattle, Capetown, and Peking. The heroes split into pairs to investigate. Seattle is…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) Since the last strip, when the Spirit confessed to a murder he did not commit to save Commissioner Dolan’s reputation and career, he’s apparently been taking it easy. The strip opens with a gorgeous, gigantic splash of the title character–Palyachi, introduced by a…
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Jim Shooter 1, Cary Bates 2 (script) Mike Grell (artist 1, pencils 2) Bill Draut (inks 2) Ben Oda 1, Joe Letterese 2 (letters Jack C. Harris (assistant editor) Murray Boltinoff (editor) Ah, yes, the valiant superheroes of the future… who are willing to sacrifice a little kid’s life because they don’t like him. Well,…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) Eldas Thayer is the name of a miserly old rich guy who’s refusing to pay for his niece’s medical treatment. Thayer’s doctor has just given him the bad news—he’s got a day to live. The Spirit shows up just after, pleading for the…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) There’s a lack of consistency to Mr. Midnight. After a gorgeous splash page, featuring the dramatically posed new villain, with the intro text recapping the Spirit’s origin segueing naturally into the exposition’s start, the art seems to go from Eisner’s drafting table to…
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Jim Shooter (script) Mike Grell (artist 1, pencils 2) Bill Draut (inks 2) Jack C. Harris (assistant editor) Murray Boltinoff (editor) Despite a poor opening, the feature’s not terrible. I mean, Mike Grell’s mid-forties-looking Superboy is always a thing, but otherwise—besides the incessant bickering between the Legionnaires—it’s an okay story. Once you get past Superboy’s…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) Eisner and studio tell one heck of a full story in these eight pages. The splash panel gives the Spirit origin and shows Wildwood Cemetery very close to New York City proper, with an airplane below the cemetery. But the story of The…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) Johnny Marston’s splash panel has a short blurb explaining the Spirit’s origin—of note because it’s a strip standard from now on. It’s also the first strip where the Spirit stumbles into an ongoing adventure. Johnny Marston is a blue-blood fallen on hard times.…
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Jim Shooter (script) Mike Grell (artist) Ben Oda (letters) Jack C. Harris (assistant editor) Murray Boltinoff (editor) Jim Shooter and Mike Grell contribute both stories this issue and offer little quarter. Grell’s art is slightly better than usual (or at least not as obviously deficient), and I guess Shooter could be worse. The first story…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Sam Rosen (letters) The strip opens with Ebony and a lodge brother in Wildwood Cemetery looking for the Spirit. They find him, appearing out of smoke, and request his assistance–their lodge building seems to be haunted, can Spirit investigate? After some whinging, the Spirit agrees. The…
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Jim Shooter 1, Cary Bates 2 (script) Mike Grell (artist) Ben Oda 1, Joe Letterese 2 (letters) Murray Boltinoff (editor) The first story, from Jim Shooter and Mike Grell, opens with Princess Projectra’s shuttle crashing as she attempts to land at Legion headquarters. Timber Wolf is there to save the day, complaining about “women drivers”…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Zoltan Szenics (letters) The first panel sets up everything in the strip (save formal cast additions)—mobster Grogan on trial for murder, defended by “The Black Queen,” his lawyer, and a side item about the school district running out of money for lunches. Grogan gets off (with…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Zoltan Szenics (letters) The strip opens with Spirit dropping into Ebony’s cab. Literally, from a tree. Spirit then pulls a gun on Ebony, demanding a ride to town, while the passengers—Homer Creap and Ellen Dolan—sit terrified. Ellen’s in town to visit her dad, the regular cast…
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Cary Bates (script) Mike Grell (artist) Ben Oda (letters) Murray Boltinoff (editor) What a strange comic book. Cary Bates and Mike Grell contribute both parts, feature and backup, though “feature” is a bit of a stretch. The lead story is a retcon. In the farther-flung future than the Legion of Superheroes, future Earthlings are obsessed…
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Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Zoltan Szenics (letters) The Spirit ends his first adventure leaving three burning questions unanswered. First, why is he remaining officially dead—we’ll loop back—second, why doesn’t he think everyone will recognize his blue suit, and, third, how does he have those little tombstone calling cards carved already.…
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Today, a full month later than I’d hoped but a couple weeks before I feared, I’m dropping The Comix Section #1, an e-zine of comic book criticism. If you have a good color printer, lots of ink, legal-sized paper, and a powerful stapler, it can also be a paper zine. It was meant to be…
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Monkey Face—sorry, Monkey Prince—sort of transcends this issue. The comic’s set over forty-five minutes to an hour, but isn’t a waste of decompression. Instead, Marcus the Monkey Prince has a very full after-school calendar. He gets some more training from the custodian, Mr. Zhu, who’s actually a mystical being (Shifu Pigsy), but most of his…
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I only have the vaguest memories of my previous Tomb of Dracula read through, but when Harold H. Harold appears this issue… I remembered he was going to be obnoxious beyond compare. In not disappointing my expectations, writer Marv Wolfman succeeds in disappointing my everlasting soul. The issue opens with Dracula in Boston, messing around…
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Sometimes the snow comes down in June, and all that business because out of nowhere… Archangel is really good. It’s not the best of writer Garth Ennis’s War Story: Volume Two, which is only not a joke award because of that David Lloyd story, but Archangel definitely makes up for the previous couple entries. Now,…
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