"Post No. 667"

"COMIC BOOK REVIEWS":

Justice League America Annual (DC) #6 (1992) is one of those "Eclipso-The Darkness Within" x-overs. Over the years DC took a somewhat minor character and elevated him into major villian. And, I admit, I really liked the old Eclipso stories that ran in House of Secrets, especially when they had Alex Toth artwork. And in this JLA adventure the villian is raising his usual brand of havok possessing myriad heroes and heroines alike, while in the meantime, Superman and Wonder Woman contemplate whether or not they even want to be a part of that version of the League which contains other members such as The Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, Guy Gardner, etc. The whole story boils down to Blue Beetle in mortal combat with Eclipso, attempting to get the villian from the JLA headquarters and wrecking BB's flying "Bug". Overall, not a bad tale from 17 years ago (Geez; has it been THAT long??). A decent Jurgens script and always a delight to see the artwork of Dave Cockrum.

Gross Point (DC) #1 (08/97) deals with a normal family moving into a bizarre town that looks like the origin point of "The Addams Family". It was better than I figured, written by Mark Waid and Brian Augustyn, accompanied with some quirky artwork by S.M.Taggart & Roger Langridge. ("Gross Point" being that name of the town, of course.) For some reason I feel like this would have been a better alternative-type title or even a small press publication than something released by the big two.

Daredevil: Flashback (Marvel) Minus 1 (07/97), writen by Joe Kelly and artwork by the wonderful Gene Colan was a pure delight, giving us a tale of Matt Murdock's days pre-Daredevil as he began to attend college and over-coming any hardships of such. We get to see his first meeting with "Foggy" Nelson, and read of his father's concern fearing his son's handicap will hold him back from achieving his education. Honestly, it's always so nice to see Colan on this title after he did so many silver-age issues. Of the "Flashback's" Marvel produced in this series, this issue is definitely the best and I recommend you looking for a copy of it in the back issue bins at your comic shop if you don't already have one. Even the cover illustration is enough to send one's mind back to 1968.

Fantastic Four (Marvel) #507 by Waid (again), Porter and Rapmund, continues the multi-part "Authoritive Action" storyline where "Dr. Doom" has been sent to Hell, and the FF take over control of Latveria, much to the dismay of the U.S. government who sends in Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. to remove them. Reed does this "sacrafice myself" routine and extracts Doom to an alternate space where only he and Richards exist, and various scenes from their past conflicts constantly replay themselves (so we get to see some reprinted Kirby artwork adorn "the walls"). Fury's plans go array when the citizens of Latveria tell them they want the FF as their rulers since they're so much better than Doom, and the rest of the FF go off to hunt for Reed, finally entering this alternate space, and Richards tells them to quickly leave as Doom would escape. The scene chages to where they are out of that area, back in Latvaria with the soldiers of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Susan Storm uses her force shield to literally make a hole through several of the soldiers! That's right. Doom had exchanged his mind with Sue! Naturally this leaves us with a clifthanger ending. Not a bad storyline.

The Incredible Hulk V2 (Marvel) #62 (12/2003) written by Bruce Jones with Mike Deodato, Jr. artwork. Always nice to read a story by Bruce Jones. I've always considered him to be one of the more under-rated talents around in comics. And Deodato's artwork is always good. This issue has Part 3 (of 5) called "Split Decisions" which deals with these partial-bionic-part-vampire-for-The-Hulk's-blood critters attacking everyone (they remind me of the "Alien" right after it eats its way out of one's stomach). Since I hadn't read any of the story before, or much after, I can't really give a good opinion of this comic one way or the other, save that what I read, I liked.

Superman/Batman (DC) #35 (07/2007) has Supes trying to rid Metallo of some sort of virus which is, in fact, an "infection" of Braniac who's moved on to nano-technology these days, and in the meantime, Doc Magnus has recreated The Metal Men and they are involved in this as a subplot. My main complaint about this issue (by Verheiden, Huhhenheim, Lee & Young) is that it's way too over-ploted. It's always nice to get one's money-worth in any story, but a single theme per issue, dealing with such and letting that come to a conclussion is much more satisfying to me personally than cramming it full of a half-dozen subplots with which to keep up.

Batman (DC) #'s 655 thru 658 (09-12/2006) is by Grant Morrison with nice artwork by Andy Kubert. This tale is all about a kid that's supposingly Batman's son by the daughter (Talia) of Ra's Al Ghul . Her goal is to either get Bats to join her as a team, or become his mortal enemy forever, using "their kid" as a ploy in this, and along the way she gets hold of the Man-Bat formula to create a force of such half-human soldiers. The kid, by the way, is a trained ninja who just about kills Robin (something I find a little hard to swallow) because he wants to be the only one in Bats' life "as a son". At the end of this tale it appears that Talia has blown both her and the kid up, but....ya know how dat stuff goes. Not too bad a story by Morrison, and Kubert's artwork goes a long way in making it enjoyable, but it seems like this story's been told before one way or the other.

Now, in Detective Comics (DC) #842 (05/2008), Bats is dealing with a suit of armor that's from the middle-ages, perhaps cursed due to its original owner losing control and killing a bunch'a folks. Peter Milliagan's "okay" writing Batman, but not one of my favorite writers on Dark Knight tales.