DC - Review - FA Online

Zatanna 12

Once, not too long ago, you wouldn’t see Zatanna from year to year. She might turn up in event books, Justice League of America cameos, a mini-series or special once a decade, the odd Vertigo book… how things change! This month alone we’ve seen her in the JLA 80pp Giant, Power Girl and her own book.

Booster Gold 43

Ah, I’m about to read my first Booster Gold comic. Let’s read the portents. Keith Giffen? He’s done some good stuff, some bad. JM DeMatteis? Never liked his writing. All bathetic poetics or studiedly unfunny zaniness. Chris Batista? Rich Perrotta? Never heard of them, but the cover isn’t the abomination that you see on many other comics. Mmmmm – this one could go either way.

Jimmy Olsen 1

This Jimmy Olsen one-shot is a knitted-together set of scrapings, unwanted leftovers from DC’s back-up program last year. This run of ten-page back-ups in Action Comics was dumped mid-run when DC decided that people would rather pay $2.99 for less pages. Snappy, fun and hanging on the full, ridiculous history of Jimmy Olsen, these little stories are knitted into a really fun 70 page giant, which successfully manages to tell a new, contemporary, fun Jimmy Olsen story.

Adventure Comics 523-525

Twenty-two years ago, in the previous ‘hardcopy’ incarnation of this illustrious publication, I concluded a dismissal of the first issue of the 1989 Legion of Super-Heroes series with a phrase along the lines of, “Legion fans have long memories, and endless patience. We can wait.”

Justice League of America 80-Page Giant 2011

I love the JLA: as a concept, in that I love plenty of past issues, and in that I love many of the mainstays of the team. I always want a reason to read it, and rarely regret it. But oh my god this is fucking dreadful.

Xombi 1 vs. Xombi 1

Xombi, in its original incarnation (1994-96, 22 issues), was a title in the Milestone line, that grand mid-nineties experiment presided over by the recently deceased Dwayne McDuffie in tweaking mainstream comic archetypes via a more pronounced multicultural presence sans qualifiers. The series’ spotlight was placed upon David Kim, a research scientist endowed with nigh-immortality, an optimum body (always at its peak performance and never subject to aging), and the quirk of minor matter transmutation, all courtesy of that break-glass-here element of superhero comics, nanotechnology.

Showcase Presents The Witching Hour 1

Who writes the blurbs for these things? This features art “from a host of comics legends including Alex Toth, Bernie Wrightson, Jack Sparling, Pat Boyette and George Tuska,” a selection that slips steeply away from the legendary. In case you think that really is the best list they could pull, here are a few more artists featured inside: Kirby, Adams, Infantino, Gil Kane, Cardy, Morrow, Williamson, Sekowsky, Wood, Grandenetti, Aparo. I think I’d have mentioned one or two of those ahead of, for instance, George Tuska.

Giant Size Atom 1

It’s not quite up there with Giant-Sized Man-Thing, but Giant Size Atom’s a pleasing oxymoron. If only the contents were as diverting.

Showcase Presents Justice League of America 5

This collection, reprinting JLA 84-106, 1970-73, is not one of the better periods for the JLA. I love the team and several of its members, but it has to be faced that it has had plenty of crappy periods. After the charming and fun, if very trivial, early stories by Fox & Sekowsky, by now it is trying to be more Marvel and more ‘relevant’ as the term was then.

Gil Kane

An interview from 1986 with one of the great veteran comic artists.