Night Of The Reaper!

It is an absolute mystery to me why the Rutland, Vermont Halloween stories have never been collected in a single volume. (I'm talking to you Craig Yoe.) They are delightful artifacts from a bygone time when comics was a small world and dominated by two largish companies who had not yet been swallowed up by corporations and who treated their fans by inviting them into the story. Now these weren't exactly fans, but creators such as Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, Berni Wrightson and Steve Englehart among others who participated, but the sheer fun of the fourth-wall busting events brought absolute glee to this fanboy's heart.

"Night of the Reaper" is arguably the best of the Rutland stories, perhaps simply by dint of the art from superstar Neal Adams. The story weaves in and out and around the parade and the follow-up party hosted by Tom Fagan. During this dark and sometimes gruesome tale we learn that Nazis prowl the darkness and that one in particular, a former commandant of a death camp has found a hiding place in the isolated quiet of Vermont. Batman tries to track down the deadly "Grim Reaper" who seems to be appearing and killing off folks. 

While Batman gets to the bottom of the mystery and as we all know bring some level of justice to the proceedings, comic book pros find all sorts of tomfoolery to engage in, some of it even beneficial to the case.

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Children Of Doom!

"Children of Doom" is a story I've examined before at the original Dojo,but this time I'm focusing on it as an atomic fable. The yarn of how the story was composed is interesting in itself as it was put together quickly when a scheduled story for Charlton Premiere failed to appear and that Denny O'Neil (under his Charlton pen name of "Sergius O'Shaunessy") wrote it quick and artist Pat Boyette (who typically did pencils, inks and letters for his jobs) handled the rest. It's weird and oddly compelling, even if it doesn't totally make sense all the time. 

We begin at the end with a story told in flashback of how an atomic Doomsday device was made to scare mankind into peace. But a tinpot dictator used other technology to create massive firestorms which were the targets of missiles from space which caused the firestorm to overspread the entire planet. It resulted in mutations of three kinds -- firestarters, blind soothsayers, and mysterious others who stay hidden from the mass of humanity who survive but just barely.

The astronauts who fired the missiles think they can get their ship to Venus where they think they might survive and there they encountered a mutated human, one of the mysterious hidden variety who is apparently able to transport himself across space, and they bring him back to Earth.

But all that folderal activates the Doomsday device and only the weird powers of the mysterious and shunned mutants can save the day for the rest of humanity which hangs on by a thread as the story winds up. It's not a happy tale, it's not really a sad tale, it's an enigmatic fable which does and doesn't make sense at the same time. 

But one thing it is for certain and that's a parable preaching against the dangers of war and particularly atomic war, as if that needed preaching against. But there we are. This story is widely reprinted but I read it this last time in The Unknown Anti-War Comics from Yoe Books. 

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Black Lightning Strikes Again!

Black Lightnng proved too good a character to let disappear when the original series passed away during the great comic book implosion. Jeff Pierce was a smart and adept black man who wanted to bring justice to Suicide Slum and those were stories needed telling. So what to do?

World's Finest, the longtime home of Superman and Batman tandem was a dollar comic for a time and had room to rent to aspiring heroes and heroines looking for a place to next. Hawkman and Hawkgirl too up residence as did Captain Marvel / Shazam. Green Arrow had been there in the pre-dollar days and that left room for one more and Black Lightning stepped in.

Written by Denny O'Neil and drawn by Dick Dillin, George Tuska, and Rich Buckler among others the stories sadly were not that strong. O'Neil didn't get Isabella's take on Black Lightning and instead of a good man pretending to be a brash superhero we get just the former, a hero full of platitudes all too eager to call attention to the color of his skin. 

The fight against the underworld continued but the private life of Jefferson Pierce was almost never dealt with aside from a few antique references to mimeographing some tests. (That was a blast from the past, I'll say that.)

Things were a little better when Black Lightning guest-starred alongside Superman. The threat is from the school Pierce works at and that helps, but the absolute oddness of the threat is not the kind of thing Black Lightning ought to battling. He doesn't do aliens. '

Which is pretty much what he told the Justice League of America when they checked him out for membership, In classic Silver Age style they tested  him under the guise of presumed villains but it felt weird and in the end he turned them down. 

One excellent thing about the two-parter, a favorite of mine from this era of the JLA, is that Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughling drew Black Lighting exceedingly well. His costume really had snap and I got a real sense of what should look like. It had seemed rather drab really from the get go, a side effect of Vince Colletta's inks (I generally like Colletta, but he doesn't hit the mark on his turn on Black Lightning). 

Then it was off to Detective Comics, also a dollar book as Black Lightning closed out his Bronze Age career. 

He looked quite sharp alongside Batman when Dick Giordano drew him as they worked in parallel mostly to stop a deadly gang of gas theives. 

But it was in the last two installments of his run that new writer J.M DeMatteis and artist Gerald Forton really hit the ball out of the park. Suddenly the personal life was back and the school was front and center and the whole thing felt exactly right. The tone of the character was the strongest it had been since Isabella's departure. 

And like that it was over. Black Lightning finished out his run and then went on to join Batman in the replacement comic for The Brave and the Bold -- The Outsiders. Drawn by Jim Aparo (as he was in his Who's Who entry he looked quite sharp. (See the cover at the very top of this post.)

It would be some time before he'd return again under the hand of his creator Tony Isabella. That's coming soon.  

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Nifty Presents - Anti-War Comics!

The Unknown Anti-War Comics is a tome I wanted the moment I saw it. The books that come Craig Yoe's operation can vary in quality, but this looked to be one that offered a wide range of material. I was a bit disappointed in that we have basically two types of stories here -- classic war yarns and vintage sci-fi stories. I don't object either and I don't object to seeing them together I just expected a bit more variation.

That said, what do get are two issues of a weird little book called Never Again, which is spot on with the theme of the collection. The comic just had two issues, with work by Ross Andru among others -- the offbeat thing is the two issues are numbered one and eight. These are Charlton comics, so numbering is always eccentric to say the least.

The majority of the collection is old-fashioned sci-fi tales and pretty good ones too, the kind with lots of ready space travel and twisty endings. It's neat to see a collection with so much of Bill Molno's work in it, as he's often seen as a hack and most of the time gets no mention when his stuff is reprinted. Other Charlton mainstays like "Nicholas Alascia" (two guys -- Charles Nicholas and Vince Alascia), Sal Trapani, and Dick Giordano are represented.

The collection closes with what might be Charlton's most famous single story -- "Children of Doom" by Denny O'Neil and Pat Boyette. It's a weird and wack view of a war-torn future, one  in which mankind is not necessarily the winner. This is a fun collection, but maybe a western or a romance thrown in to make the collection feel a bit more well-rounded.

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