Detective Comics (1937) #479

Detective Comics 479

I wasn’t expecting much from this issue; the team of writer Len Wein, penciller Marshall Rogers, and inker Dick Giordano hasn’t impressed in their one-and-a-fifth (they did a bookend on a reprint) issues of Detective so far. Wein’s writing a sequel to Rogers’s arc with Steve Englehart, trying to maintain continuity, like Batman hallucinating a woman is Silver St. Cloud, so he shakes her. He can’t handle her breaking up with him. I think Wein’s done this issue; did he have an outline for Batman stalking Silver St. Cloud, secreted away in the DC vaults, perhaps? Pretty much nothing else makes sense from here.

Once again, Batman’s trying to stop Clayface II, who’s trying to cure himself of being a murderous jelly protoplasm monster. Batman doesn’t care about any of that nonsense. He’s not interested in the who, the why, or the how, just the where and maybe when. It’s one of those resolutions where Batman doesn’t put the dynamite in the clown’s pants and push him in a hole to blow up, just, you know, doesn’t tell the clown he’s got dynamite in his pants–not murdering on a technicality. Englehart wrote Batman as a childish thug. Wein writes him as a callous one.

As for the art, Rogers and Giordano occasionally have good panels. There are also lots of lazy ones; anything over a medium shot, and neither artist gives Batman a face in the distance. There are some nice moody city shots and rural road shots because Rogers does a swell job with the scenery, but the Batman fights don’t impress much.

After that underwhelming feature story, Wein’s back to writing the Hawkman backup, which features Hawkman talking to birds, who fly him and Hawkgirl across the country or something. Like a few dozen birds getting together, lifting them into the air, and flying with them.

It’s camp.

Even though the story only runs eight pages, it feels longer than the Batman feature. Hawkman and Hawkgirl are back on Earth after getting kicked off their planet by the new leadership, only to discover they’ve apparently lost their jobs at their museum. There’s something strange about the new curator, who has a teleportation cape, which sets up needing bird friends.

Rich Buckler and John Celardo’s art is mostly okay. The eventual supervillain’s absurd even for this story, and Wein’s got the same ending to both this story and the feature as far as villain reveals.

Maybe if the Hawkman weren’t so slow, it’d be better. As is, it’s more sluggish pages in an already sluggish comic.

Detective Comics (1937) #478

Detective Comics 478

When Steve Englehart started his Detective run, he quickly settled on a fascist, macho narration style to describe Batman and his male perfection. When Hugo Strange showed up and proved to be just as cut, the two men complimented each other’s physiques and prowesses, with Strange’s evil assistant lady making fun of them.

At the time, I thought Englehart was self-aware.

Turns out he more likely was making fun of the lady for not knowing how to appreciate men appreciating men.

Englehart’s been off Detective two issues now, for some reason taking inker Terry Austin with him and leaving penciller Marshall Rogers with Dick Giordano to ink. Giordano’s an odd choice for Rogers, unless they wanted someone with the technical skill to turn Rogers’s pencils into inks without any personality or agency.

Len Wein’s writing now, and in Englehart’s fascist, macho style. This issue takes place the evening of Englehart’s last issue (which means the previous issue, a reprint with bookends, took place earlier in the same day). Batman’s pissed off because Silver St. Cloud left him, so he takes it out on some punks, beating the shit out of them like Frank Miller’s writing.

After going home—Wein’s got some weird narration details, but Batman deciding the one burglary was the only crime in Gotham for a night is something—Bruce Wayne gets mad at his parents’ portrait; if they hadn’t died, he wouldn’t have lost Silver!

Bruce Wayne yell whining, and breaking things is obnoxious.

Pretty soon, the cowl’s back on because there’s still the actual comic—there’s a new Clayface II. This one’s not a criminal but a scientist who tried to cure his congenital disabilities, which went wrong, of course, and left him a science supervillain. He occasionally has to turn people into protoplasm, blood lust a side effect of the procedure.

The Clayface II origin’s not great, but it’s so much better than Wein sorting through the Englehart refuse; it gets the comic to a barely tolerable but not terrible cliffhanger.

Detective Comics (1937) #477

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Despite my youthful indiscretions in reading the famed Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers, I had no idea what came after it. Turns out neither did DC at the time, since this issue’s got Len Wein, Rogers, and new inker Dick Giordano doing three new pages around a reprint from 1971.

Batman and Commissioner Gordon go to visit Rupert Thorne in Arkham—Rogers’s Arkham is situated right next to the Gotham Mountains—and Thorne tells Batman about Hugo Strange’s ghost. Gordon says it’s a bunch of hooey, but Batman met a mysterious ghostly figure last episode (not to mention he’s Batman, and he’s met ghosts before, right, he’s friends with aliens and gods).

As Gordon soapboxes about ghosts being stupid, Batman remembers back to the previous issue, which is reprinted. Wein and Marv Wolfman get the writing credit. Giordano’s inking too, but it’s Neal Adams pencils. Lots of great art, but the writing’s so insipid the art doesn’t matter. There’s the curse of bad superhero comics… sometimes the writing can ruin the art as a narrative. Individual panels look great but taken as a whole, super yuck.

Batman has tracked a missing Robin to a newly appeared haunted mansion somewhere in Gotham. Robin’s in college in the story, which means Dick Grayson took a long time to graduate, no doubt too busy superheroing.

The mansion’s haunted and starts scaring Batman, who takes to whining, especially after he walks in on his funeral, and all his friends show up to talk about how much he sucked. Superman calling him “The Caped Conman” is nonsense but more amusing than the rest, especially when a tweenage Robin decides with Bats out of the way, he can run Gotham his way.

The reveal’s terrible. Racist too. Be terrible even if it weren’t. It also doesn’t have anything to do with ghosts. It’s got to do with “Batman: The TV Show” levels of silly death traps, but no ghosts.

The last page, back to the present, has a cliffhanger involving a new villain.

Wein and Wolfman write the story in second person “tension” talk, directly addressing Batman and telling him how and why to be concerned or afraid. It’s a bad device once, terrible twice, but then they do it another forty-five times or whatever. It’s atrocious and succeeded in making me miss Englehart.

It’s certainly not a good sign for the post-Englehart but not yet post-Rogers Detective Comics.

Dracula Lives (1973) #8

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I may be committing sacrilege, but I’m not a fan of Pablo Marcos’s Dracula. Sure, the outfit looks good, but Dracula himself—with his seventies stash—looks more like a plumber than the prince of darkness. The issue opens with a Marcos pin-up; I’m not just taking the chance to gripe.

In other words, I was again concerned a few pages into Dracula Lives. Would the book continue its seemingly inevitable downward trajectory?

Nope.

There are still causes for concern. The issue has even less content than the previous one, with no movie review, no Atlas horror reprint, just an even longer prose piece. Chris Claremont has the honors this time. He’s better than many of the prose writers—possibly the best even—but it’s still… a prose piece in a comic book. Also, Claremont repeats the same paragraph structure every third or fourth one, which leaps out. Marcos contributes the art.

And the Bram Stoker’s Dracula adaptation is losing momentum, primarily because of Dick Giordano. This issue’s entry involves Jonathan Harker loitering around Castle Dracula, waiting for the story to take off; Giordano’s got very little enthusiasm for Jonathan Harker. I get it; lack of enthusiasm for Jonathan Harker is the big problem with Dracula.

Harker spends most of this chapter alone, during the day, no vampires in sight. I’m guessing Roy Thomas faithfully adapted the novel because the doldrums are familiar. It’s not a horror story right now; it’s a Victorian hostage thriller; Giordano’s not the guy for Victorian hostage thrillers.

Just like all Dracula adaptations, they promise once Drac gets to London next issue, it’ll start getting good.

But the issue’s also got two excellent original stories. The first is from Doug Moench and Tony DeZuñiga. DeZuñiga’s art is lush and gorgeous and a perfect fit for the plot. Though I just realized the story’s somewhat out-of-order; it’s a “Dracula’s U.S. Vacation,” which Lives has been loosely doing, only I thought he already went home.

Anyway.

Drac’s in New York to get back the artifacts Americans grave robbed from his castle. Moench’s got a simultaneously thin and potent subplot about Dracula becoming a pop icon and everyone being fascinated with him. Neither Lives nor Tomb addresses the general Marvel-616 public’s reaction to Dracula being real. I’m not even sure Moench’s making that flex (it’s thin, after all), but there’s also potential.

But this one’s not about the artifacts (maybe next time). Instead, it’s Dracula versus New York beat cop. Moench cuts from Dracula’s perspective to this copper’s; he hates his job, hates the working poor, and wants to quit; just one more night. And, wouldn’t you know it, Dracula attacks the streetwalker the copper didn’t arrest, and the cop intervenes.

It quickly becomes an action piece; the cop injures Dracula (slightly), but enough Dracula decides to destroy the cop. But he’s also hungry.

Great art from DeZuñiga, good script from Moench. It’s really effective.

The second original is from Len Wein, Gene Colan, and Ernie Chan. Once again, Chan proves a perfectly able inker for Colan—at least in black and white—which continues to surprise.

Thank goodness for the art. Wein’s script is surprisingly okay, but the story’s absolutely goofy. The year is 1936, and Dracula is in Rome. He’s hitting on the ladies, even when those ladies belong to the local mob bosses.

Except these mob bosses aren’t like the Sicilians from The Godfather Part II; they’re 1930s Hollywood gangster types. In the extremis. Incredibly, Colan and Chan can get away with it even as the story lends itself more to a spoofy style. It ought to be absurd comedy; thanks to the art, it’s not.

The more interesting part of the story is Dracula and the ladies. Wein writes brief flirtation and courtship scenes for Dracula and his lady victims, only without Dracula—in his thought balloons—acknowledging he’s going to kill them. They’ll be dead, and he’ll wonder what happened to that lovely Italian gal he liked so much. Still, there are some stories only Len Wein could write, and this story is one of them. Multiple times it seems like it ought to be entirely derailed, only Wein’s chugging along just fine.

Also, Colan and Chan’s Rome is absolutely incredible. Such good art.

Even as its problems continue piling up, Dracula Lives remains a very worthy read.

Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes (1977) #247

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This issue’s an object lesson in bad art and how it can ruin a story. Not the feature, which has Jack Abel inking Joe Staton, but only because it’s not a good story. Len Wein scripts, finishing last issue’s cliffhanger about the Fatal Five’s latest scheme against the Legion.

Only it’s not a scheme. The Fatal Five tried to help a developing planet along and get them admitted into the Federation, only the investigating Legionnaires realized they’d broken the Prime Directive. So the Fatal Five then attacked the superheroes. Previously, it was unclear it wasn’t an elaborate ruse; this issue clarifies—the supervillains thought they were doing the right thing, and when the Legion rejected them, they went as homicidal as usual.

Superboy can’t find any other Legionnaires to help, so he’s got to figure out a way to save the day himself. With better art, it might’ve been an okay story for him. His problem-solving isn’t bad; it’s just got terrible visuals, as do all the fights on the planet. With better inking, Staton’s layouts can have some charm. Well, within reason. Abel’s not up for the task. Not able, as it were.

Between the art and the patronizing, infantilizing plot—like, if the villains really don’t know taking a planet from the Stone Age to the Space Age in a week is wrong, I’m not sure they can comprehend why being villains is bad either—it’s a disappointing story. Though, obviously, with not terrible art, who knows.

But then the art’s even worse on the backup. Dave Hunt inks Staton. The figures need to be seen to be believed; I thought it was bad with the female Legionnaires (they’re scantily clad enough to showcase the godawful figure drawing), but then fully clothed Brainiac 5 has a massive, triangular chest in a third of his panels.

The story—written by Paul Levitz—is a cute anniversary story for the Legion, set during the election for the next leader. Brainiac 5 and Wildfire are campaigning against each other (and both abject dicks), but then strange, disastrous setbacks keep occurring. The punchline ought to be cute but instead comes off harsh and feckless because it’s affecting many people.

So, with better art, the second story would be improved. Hunt inking Staton, however, just leads to a charmless reading experience, with the goofy punchline no help.

It’s not a terrible comic, but it’s far from good.

Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes (1977) #246

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It’s half an excellent issue. The first story is a big success, an And Then There Were None type mystery set at a research hospital on Mercury. It’s the done-in-one feature. The second story’s a little shorter, but with the cliffhanger. Unfortunately, it’s also kind of bad. The writing’s not terrible, but the art falls apart during the big fight scene, and the story can’t recover. The pacing’s all off.

What’s strange is both stories have half the same art team; Joe Staton pencils the feature, and he pencils the backup. Only on the feature, he’s got Dick Giordano inking, which makes the art look nearer Gil Kane or Carmine Infantino than anything else, and quite good. The expressions on Phantom Girl are terrible, but otherwise, the art’s aces. On the backup, Murphy Anderson inks Staton. While Anderson’s inks aren’t Giordano’s by any stretch, they’re better than last time. But once the action starts, Staton’s layouts start crapping out, and Anderson’s inks aren’t any help. It’s fascinating to see the two examples of different inkers consecutively, but it would’ve been much better if Giordano had inked both stories.

Paul Levitz gets a credit on both: the feature’s plot and the backup’s script. Len Wein scripts the feature. It’s a good mystery with a solid sense of humor. It opens with a mini-mystery—the Legion lost track of Karate Kid after the previous issue’s big battle, and it turns out he’s in the medical lab on Mercury. Except people only go there when they’ve got a terminal disease. It’s unclear why the lab is on Mercury—the doctors are insect people who aren’t native to the planet—so maybe part of the research involves saunas.

After the heroes discover what Karate Kid’s actually doing there, one of the doctors asks if they can investigate missing persons. Insects, actually. It becomes an engaging mix of mystery and action, with the solution not entirely unexpected but well-told. Wein’s got great pacing and does an excellent job with the investigating without feeding the reader red herring. There are actual good clues throughout.

It’s an impressive story; as I was reading it, I kept hoping it’d somehow go on for the whole issue, even though a cover blurb promised the backup. So I hoped they’d have Giordano inking on it too.

Nope.

The second story is about how Legion villains The Fatal Five accidentally reformed and started shepherding a developing planet. Naturally, they want to join the Federation or the Union or whatever it’s called. Except no one trusts them because they call themselves the Fatal Five, so the Legion has to go investigate this new planet.

Superboy leads the team.

Levitz also structures it as something of a mystery, but not as well as Levitz does in the feature; the two stories contrast on multiple levels.

There’s an okay reveal (kind of out of “Star Trek”) and then a big action scene. The action’s not good. It’s also a dramatically inert action sequence and probably reductive (we won’t find out until next issue).

So half a good comic. But, wow, what a good first half.

Werewolf by Night (1972) #8

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Did Marvel have a market research department in the seventies? Was there some editorial edict to make Werewolf by Night aim younger? Despite being about a teenager who just turned eighteen and presumably feeling the weight of adulthood (legally, anyway), protagonist Jack Russell isn’t. Since the comic only ever shows him on his werewolf days and nights, he mostly walks around half-dressed, whining about the werewolf being hungry last night and sleeping away the day because the comic’s got no ideas.

Or maybe writer Len Wein was just going for a riff on schlock and failed because guest penciler Werner Roth has no sense of humor.

The issue opens with Wolfman Jack running off from the burning circus, leaving sister Lissa and pal Buck behind to answer the questions for the cops. Lissa’s less explicit about knowing Jack’s the werewolf. She just gazes out at the mountains, implying she knows her brother’s out there furry and hungry. Then Lissa and Buck are gone, their requisite page in. Wein also checks in on seemingly evil, murderous step-dad Phillip, who gets a threatening phone call (like he’s been getting since his second issue) and a visit from copper Lou Hackett. Hackett wants to talk to the family about a werewolf!

Presumably, these plot lines will be important later, but I’m worried I’m presuming a lot.

The main story is about Jack happening into a cave with a locked door at the end. When he hears noises behind it and opens it, but the chamber inside is empty except for a skeleton holding a book. Jack settles in for some light reading before he turns into the werewolf—for all the complaining about the werewolf’s constant hunger; otherwise, it doesn’t seem like Jack would eat at all—and reads about yet another Southern California warlock who called another demon into Marvel 616. The warlock locked the demon in the chamber and stayed inside until he and the demon died. The timeline’s shaky but maybe the demon picked the guy’s bones clean over the years.

Jack doesn’t realize he’s messed up, so he falls asleep, waking up to turn into the werewolf and discover there’s a very talkative demon he needs to fight.

The demon taunts the werewolf for, I don’t know, half the issue while they duke it out. The taunting is where it feels like Wein is targeting younger readers. It’s distinct, Bond villain taunting, but it’s contentless blathering.

Roth’s pencils leave a whole lot to be desired. It’s unclear if Paul Reinman’s inks help or hurt. It doesn’t matter. The issue’s entirely disposable.

Detective Comics (1937) #466

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The feature has Ernie Chan and Vince Colletta art and all the visual failings such a pairing promises. But the story’s… oddly… good?

A Silver Age Batman villain—The Signalman—returns for a bunch of themed heists. What makes it interesting is how well Signalman does against Bats. Len Wein writes; Signalman has a lot of bravado speeches, which work. Batman has a lot of descriptive speeches, which do not. Though when Batman’s just got thought balloons, it’s a little better. Especially after Signalman gets the upper hand.

It might just be the Silver Age feel of the story. While Chan’s pencils are still bad, they’re not failing to realize some brooding, dark knight detective Batman; they’re failing to realize Batman stopping a panic at the ballpark. There’s no heavy lifting to the art.

And Signalman’s outfit is ridiculous, so having a better artist on it wouldn’t do any good. The resolution’s disappointing, but it’s an entertaining enough read on the way there. Signalman’s just a colorful villain. He talks a decent amount of good smack.

It’s a totally fine feature against some considerable odds.

The backup’s more of the Calculator series from writer Bob Rozakis. This time he’s got Green Arrow fighting the Calculator, with Elongated Man along as cloying sidekick, and Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin on the art.

I was expecting quite a bit more from Rogers and Austin, but it’s either just okay, visually confusing, or downright bad. Not like, Chan and Colletta bad, but “someone else drew these faces on these heads, and you can tell” bad. The visually confusing parts come with the Calculator’s attack on Green Arrow (also at a ballpark, which they mention in the feature); Calculator is shooting baseball bats out of his head at Green Arrow, who’s breaking those baseball bats with baseball bats.

Rogers does a lousy job staging the superhero action. Though Rozakis’s script doesn’t explain Calculator’s plan at all, just having a plan. It’s bewildering, tiring, and disappointing. The only reason I was reading Detective this early was for Rogers’s backup; I wanted to get the whole story. Silly me.

I probably would’ve bet cash money against ever saying I liked an Ernie Chan and Vince Colletta story than a Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin, but here we are. The only star, obviously, is Wein. He knows how to write that Signalman story and does it well.

Werewolf by Night (1972) #7

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Apparently, somewhere in between issues, Jack sat down with sister Lissa, and they had the “your brother’s a wolfman” talk because she knows it in this issue and it’s old hat. If it were a better comic, I might be disappointed, but so long as they don’t pair Lissa off with forty-something Buck Cowan… I’m not going to complain.

Not when writer Len Wein’s referring to the one Black character as a “Black giant.” It all feels very colonial. And very Christian; in his narration, which Wein writes with incredible detail and verbosity, Jack describes something like Moses’s cane separating the Red Sea, and you’ve got to hope they were smoking something.

The issue opens with lions versus werewolf—circus lions, which Jack explains in the narration means they aren’t as fierce as his surfer boy werewolf—only Wolfman Jack doesn’t beat them in a fight; instead, it’s the appearance of the Swami. He calms everyone down—and reveals he can mind-read for realsies—and it’s cliffhanger resolved. Jack sleeps off the shaggy dog syndrome, then spends the next day in a hypnotic trance until sister Lissa and buddy Buck arrive to save him.

Sadly, they’re no match for the Swami’s hypnotism, so it will be up to the werewolf to sort things out.

The Swami’s plan involves the Bloodstone, which will end up being a Captain America MacGuffin in the eighties—I’m not sure on the continuity. It’s just here to give the Swami an excuse to do a blood sacrifice, as well as to explain why the carnival flunkies work for him. The Bloodstone leads to incredible wealth somehow. It’s not important. Wein overwrites the narration so much and slowing down on it just reveals wanting (or problematic) content; why bother putting energy into parsing it all.

The art’s okay. Jim Mooney isn’t a good inker for Mike Ploog’s pencils, but he’s also not the worst.

The conclusion’s so perfunctory and bland—the Swami’s not some great villain—you’d think Wein was finishing off an arc he hadn’t started, but he wrote the last issue too.

I’m trying to think if there’s anything else notable. Maybe the way Wein writes Jack’s experience of the werewolf’s adventures—but it seems unlikely his approach (Jack’s more lucid observing the werewolf than his own existence) will carry over to the inevitable next writer.

Though, I guess Jack’s also never not hypnotized when he’s human in the issue. It’s a mess not worth unraveling. Werewolf by Night reads like a joyless churn for everyone involved.

And I think the series has used the same villain resolution before, which isn’t great given it’s only ten issues in (counting the Marvel Spotlight).

Werewolf by Night (1972) #6

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Frank Bolle’s not the best inker for Mike Ploog’s pencils, but he’s far from the worst. This issue’s got some fantastic panels, even with Bolle muting the Ploog faces. Most of the art’s at least good, if not better, with only one wanting page when writer Len Wein introduces the cop who’s figured out there’s a werewolf on the loose. But the cop’s only a tease for later. Instead, the issue’s all about an evil circus swami kidnapping Jack so the show can have a real, live werewolf.

The issue starts with an unrelated action sequence; Wolfman Jack versus truckers (back when they were unionized). It’s a bit of a page killer, something to get the werewolf in Werewolf by Night as soon as possible. There’s no connection to last issue—other than when the cops talk about the events—but when Jack’s sister, Lissa, shows up, she’s apparently forgotten she found out her brother was a werewolf and she’d be turning someday too.

However, she at least isn’t paired off romantically with Jack’s roommate and bestie Buck Cowan, who’s in his forties at least. Lissa’s not yet eighteen. I’m just waiting for that icky to hit.

After the opening werewolf action, set on the last night of the full moon, Wein jumps ahead to the next one, though Jack isn’t preparing for it because, if he did, there couldn’t be a comic book. He’s always got to be taken vaguely by surprise the moon gets full every month.

He, Lissa, and Buck are on a day trip to San Diego, where they come across the circus. The swami immediately hypnotizes Jack to make him docile enough for kidnapping. Lissa and Buck disappear from the story at this point, with Buck telling Lissa her brother probably just hitched back to L.A. out of boredom. The cop scene’s next and seems like it’d be a missing persons report.

Nope.

There’s a little introduction to Jack and the circus; the second tier bad guy is the dwarf lion tamer who resents having a werewolf around; the good guy is a gentle giant who doesn’t let the lion tamer abuse hypnotized Jack. But once the full moon rises, there’s no way to keep the werewolf under control, and the whole circus has to get in on the fight.

The beginning’s a little rocky, with the art carrying the water, but the eventual roaming circus chase and fight is good. Wein doesn’t overwrite the narration as much previous writer Gerry Conway did.

It’s fine. For a seventies Marvel horror book, it’s totally fine.