DC Versus Marvel Omnibus Pt. 3: Marvel Treasury Edition #28

Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man must have been a success for DC and Marvel, as it was followed by a second crossover starring the pair, although almost everything other than the headliners would be different in the sequel: Different creators, different villains and a different way of assembling and publishing the book. 

Reading it in 2024, and immediately after reading its predecessor, I think it suffers somewhat in comparison with the original. Certainly, some of that may be due to the fact that this is the second go-round, and it therefore doesn't feel as special as the first, but that can't entirely account for what seems like an overall dip in quality. 

As previously mentioned, the second Superman/Spider-Man crossover wasn't as painfully, painstakingly produced as the first, with the two publishers negotiating over every decision and every panel. Instead, by the time of its publication in 1981 (and one does wonder why it took them five years for a follow-up), DC and Marvel decided to take turns producing their crossovers, with each publishing a crossover in-house (Marvel would handle this one, while DC would be responsible for the Batman/Hulk crossover published later that same year).

Thus the story was published in what was technically Marvel Treasury Edition #28, although the painted John Romita Sr. and Bob Larkin cover simply blares "Superman and Spider-Man". Marvel Treasury Edition, which launched in 1971 and ended with this very issue, consisted of Marvel comics printed in the "Treasury" format, meaning they were over-sized 10-inch-by-14-inch tabloids...so, as with the original crossover, this one would have been in a bigger format than those of most comics at the time.

This time the creative team would consist of writer Jim Shooter, who had previously written plenty of Superman comics for DC at the start of his career and was, at the time, the Editor-in-Chief of Marvel, and pencil artist John Buscema. The artist would be inked by a whole cadre of inkers; the credit box gives Joe Sinnnott a "figures inked by" credit, while nine different inkers are listed under "Backgrounds inked by" (These are all name artists that most modern readers would recognize and include the likes of Walt Simonson and Klaus Janson).

The villains our heroes would be facing off against this time are both rather odd choices, at least compared to the original crossover, which featured their respective archenemies Lex Luthor and Doctor Octopus.

Here the Marvel villain is Dr. Doom, who had, of course, crossed paths with Spider-Man (as well as most Marvel heroes) over the years, but is nevertheless more of a Fantastic Four villain or a Marvel Universe-in-general villain, rather than a Spidey-specific one (Although I do recall him being prominently featured in the opening sequence of 1981 Saturday morning cartoon Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, one of my first introductions to Spider-Man). Of course, putting Superman and Doctor Doom in the same comic was probably a great temptation, so I don't suppose one can blame Shooter for taking this extremely rare opportunity to do so. 

As for the Superman villain, it's The Parasite, who is such a relatively minor member of the Man of Steel's rogues' gallery that he seems rather out of place here, especially considering that the previous crossover featured Luthor. Using Parasite in such a high-profile Superman story seems somewhat random, like using, I don't know, Terra-Man. In Marv Wolfman's introduction, which originally ran in 1991 collection Crossover Classics and is collected in the omnibus, he points out that Shooter had created The Parasite, which may explain the villain's presence here. 

Also somewhat odd for a Superman/Spider-Man crossover? The book has guest-stars. Both Marvel's The Incredible Hulk and DC's Wonder Woman appear rather prominently in the book, particularly the former, who is rather central to the plot (As for the latter, she seems almost shoehorned in, present mainly to offer a DC counterweight to the Hulk's appearance). Referring to Wolfman's introduction again, the reason for the pair's appearances in this book was apparently simply because both were on TV at the time, and so the publishers had requested they appear in the story as well. 

As for that story, it is driven by Doom's latest ambitious plan to conquer the world. This, which isn't thoroughly explained until fairly late into the 62-page story, involves controlling The Hulk with a sonic device, freeing Parasite from his special underground prison, a series of underground bases hidden under construction sites all over the world, destroying all of the world's fossil fuels, plunging the world into chaos and, finally, swooping in to reveal his new energy source, which he claims in equivalent to a small star, after which point he will be declared king of the world.

As for Parasite's role, it seems mainly manufactured to include him in the proceedings; Doom needs his powers to ultimately operate his new fuel source, but he strings Parasite along, promising to feed him the captured superheroes Doom collects throughout the story. 

The book opens with two parallel columns on the inside cover just as the previous crossover did, although here instead of introductions by that project's editors Stan Lee and Carmine Infantino, they are short prose pieces with seven tiny inset illustrations, dedicated to recapping the two heroes' origins.

After we're briefly introduced to the Spider-Man on the title page—the tale is officially called "The Heroes and the Holocaust!", although the holocaust in question refers to the dictionary definition of the word, not the historical one that immediately comes to mid—and a brief action sequence, we get two rather interminable pages of Doom talking to himself in his underground lair. It's so overdone as to almost be funny. Certainly, the point where Doom commands a lackey to make sure he's recording his "every utterance" and to produce a transcript he can review later on, is genuinely funny, but man, it just goes on and on.

I should here pause to note that I've never actually read anything Shooter has written before (at least, not to my knowledge, anyway), his time at DC and Marvel preceding my interest in comics by a decade or more, and I was rather surprised to find out just how wordy he is. Panels that could use a word balloon or two might get seven, and some panels where words aren't even necessary will get four paragraphs.

I've always associated this sort of over-writing with early Marvel, and its founding writer/editor Stan Lee's efforts to contribute something of his own to the clear storytelling of his collaborators like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, so I'm not sure how much of this is Shooter, and how much of it is simply Marvel's house style at the time, but there is a ton of verbiage in this comic, far more than in the crossover that preceded it. 

Anyway, in the tenth straight panel of Doom's monologuing, he reveals "Operation H!", which is to send The Hulk to Metropolis. Also on the way to Metropolis? Down on his luck Daily Bugle photog Peter Parker, who needs to make money to take girls to Elvis Costello concerts and pay his aunt's hospital bills; his editor, J. Jonah Jameson, points to a poster of Superman on his office wall (Funny we never see that in any other Marvel comics!) and tells Parker he would certainly pay for photos of a Hulk/Superman fight, which seems to be brewing. 

The fight does indeed take place, in an eight-page sequence in which the Man of Steel tries to talk the Hulk down to no effect, and blows are traded. Somewhat surprisingly, though the Hulk tackles Superman and gets in a devastating sucker punch, he's really no match for Superman, the fight ending with Superman planting his feet and letting Hulk strike him repeatedly, to no visible effect.

Superman: "Not this time, Hulk! You caught me by surprise--once! This time, I'm ready! And when I'm ready...and I don't want to be moved, no power on Earth-- --can move me!"  

Hulk: "RRRRAH!"

Having read other Superman/Hulk fights (in the pages of 1996's DC Versus Marvel, which will be collected in the upcoming DC Versus Marvel: The Amalgam Age Omnibus, and in Roger Stern and Steve Rude's 1999 The Incredible Hulk Vs. Superman #1, collected in this very volume), and having seen Superman beaten to death by the Hulk-like Doomsday in 1993, the one-sidedness of the fight seemed off, especially given the fact that this was a Marvel produced book, but then I suppose this is the pre-Crisis Superman, whose power levels were of the planet-juggling variety, and not even the strongest one there is can knock him on his heels.

After several panels of the Hulk trying to do just that, Superman's vision powers diagnose the problem: "A micro-miniature drone...emitting an ultrasonic screech at a frequency that drives the Hulk wild!" With that destroyed, Hulk loses interest in the fight—"Cape-Man talks stupid! Cape-Man is stupid! Hulk should smash anyway-- --but Hulk is tired!"—and reverts to a shirtless Bruce Banner and is taken away to S.T.A.R. Labs. (Peter Parker, who was there to take pictures of the fight, briefly suits up as Spider-Man, but Superman waves him off.)

What was the point of all that, other than to get the Hulk in the comic? Well, apparently Doom planned it so that at one point the Hulk would strike the ground in a specific spot with a powerful enough blow to free the Parasite from his prison.

While in town, Parker runs into Jimmy Olsen, who recognizes him and buys him a cup of coffee. They get to talking, and ultimately Parker sells his photos to the much-more-generous-than-Jameson Perry White, and he decides to stick around Metropolis for a while, freelancing for the Daily Planet. (And asking out Lana Lang and falling prey to one of Steve Lombard's practical jokes; at this point in his history, Parker was apparently single).

Meanwhile, Clark Kent relocates to New York City and goes to the Daily Bugle to look for some work while he's there. He suspects Doom is behind the Hulk rampage/Parasite prison escape business ("Only two men alive could have engineered something like that...and I happen to know that one of them, Lex Luthor, is safely locked away!"), so he wants to keep an eye on him, as well as maintain a high profile as Clark Kent in NYC, in an attempt to "draw fire" away from his friends in Metropolis.

But mainly it's just fun to see the two trade cities and supporting casts for a while.

Eventually, Spider-Man infiltrates one of Doom's underground bases, where he finds Wonder Woman rather randomly in the process of fighting off a horde of the villain's soldiers. She's eventually captured, and put into a stasis tube alongside the Hulk, who Doom had captured off-panel.

After hearing Doom's master plan as laid out to Parasite—a 12-panel sequence—Spidey goes for help and finds Superman. Together, the pair storm the base, battle the villains and, at the climax, team-up to stop Doom's malfunctioning experimental star-like power source, which threatens to destroy the entire world. To do this, Superman rushes into the reactor and hugs it, apparently keeping it from exploding with his bare hands, while he tells Spider-Man to figure out how to shut the thing off (Doom has long since retreated to a pre-readied rocket ship, having assumed the Earth was toast and planning to escape the planet.)

As impossible as their tasks may seem, the two heroes manage to save the day and, afterwards, return to their respective cities, jobs and supporting casts. 

Having already met one another once and gotten along, there is no need for the fight-then-team-up ritual here, and so the most exciting action sequences involve Superman vs. The Hulk and Spidey vs. The Parasite, who borrows his spider-powers from him (Though she initially tries to lasso him, Wonder Woman and Spider-Man never actually fight one another). 

So that aspect of a crossover is out, but, somewhat oddly, Superman and Spider-Man aren't really together throughout most of the book.  

During the Hulk battle, for example, when Spider-Man is about to confront the Hulk, taking over for the punched-out-of-the-panel Superman, the Man of Steel suddenly returns and shoos Spidey away: "Step aside, son! This is a job for Superman!" (Spidey responds with, "Hey! Hold on, big shot! What am I--? The water boy?" and then, after Superman has crushed the drone driving Hulk and solved the problem, the wall-crawler slinks back into an alley, saying "Now I know what a fifth wheel feels like!")

It's only at the climax that the two really work together, and even then, they don't share all that many panels with one another, as they divide up their world-saving duties. 

As with Shooter, I'm not terribly familiar with the work of artist John Buscema, although consulting his list of credits on Wikipedia, I see that I definitely read at least one book he drew (2001's Just Imagine Stan Lee and John Buscema Creating Superman), although given the number of comics he's drawn over the years for Marvel, I'm sure I've encountered his work at least a few times, likely in the pages of Conan collections or those phonebook-like Essential volumes.

He does a fine job on the art here, although it's notable that at no point does he seem to be given the sorts of showcases afforded Ross Andru in the first Superman/Spider-Man team-up, which featured multiple splashes and double-page splashes. The closest he gets is a single splash page, the title page, wherein most of the visual real estate is eaten up by the title and credits and the figure of Spider-Man swinging into action that appears is relatively small and seen from behind.

Later, when Superman first appears, he gets something of a splash page, although two inset panels also eat into it. 

The rest of the pages are fairly panel-packed, which, when coupled-with all of Shooter's dialogue bubbles and narration boxes, gives the book a cramped, crowded feel. I do wonder how it would have read in the bigger size it was originally published in, but Marvel doesn't seem to have taken special advantage of that size to really show off its heroes, their crossing paths or Buscema's art. 

The real pleasure of the book—aside from seeing the two heroes' secret identities working at one another's newspapers, which is obviously a lot of fun—is probably Shooter and Buscema pitting the world's greatest hero (That would be Superman, obviously) against the comic books' greatest villain (Doctor Doom). It's little surprise, then, that the strongest scene is that in which Superman visits the Latverian embassy and the two characters trade dialogue and worldviews before Doom tries to kill Superman, fails and then simply crosses his arms and says "Bah!" when Superman foils him, as his diplomatic immunity spares him of facing any real consequences. 

Overall though, this isn't a particularly strong comic, which is quite disappointing given the relative rarity of DC and Marvel characters sharing space and, of course, that the previous effort was so much stronger. But, as mentioned earlier, this wasn't 1981's only DC/Marvel crossover and, thankfully, the other one turned out pretty great. 

Next: 1981's DC Special Series #27, featuring Batman and The Hulk

DC Versus Marvel Omnibus Pt. 2: Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man

Though well aware of its existence, and familiar enough with it that I knew of its dynamic cover by Carmine Infantino and Ross Andru, Dick Giordano and Terry Austin, I had never actually read the 1976 Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man #1, the very first collaboration between the two biggest American comic book publishers* and the first time any of their characters would meet one another in a shared story.

I had a pretty good excuse, though. I wasn't yet born when the book originally hit newsstands (Although I guess I had a second chance when it was collected in 1991's Crossover Classics, and a third chance in 1995 when it was republished in a "special collector's edition").

The recently released DC Versus Marvel Omnibus is giving me another chance though, and this time I seized it.

This collection certainly primes the reader to appreciate just how significant the comic was at the time. 

There are several different prose pieces from various comics professionals that discuss the book's publication. These stress the care that went into assembling the perfect creative team: Writer Gerry Conway was chosen as the only one at the time to have written both characters, pencil artist Ross Andru because he had drawn both and was the current Amazing Spider-Man artist. They also stress the incredible cross-company wrangling that went into every panel. (In his afterword to the collection, Tom Brevoort writes that "Superman/Clark Kent and Spider-Man/Peter Parker appear in exactly the same number of panels in the story and are in aggregate the same relative sizes in each." He didn't believe Marvel and DC were quite that exacting with the portrayal of the characters when he first heard it, so he actually consulted the text to check it out for himself and realized that they actually were.)

Readers at the time would also have been clear on what a big deal it was. Not just because superhero comics fans would have of course known that the two publishers' characters had never met, but because of the presentation of the book: It was published in tabloid format and cost a whole $2.00. That will seem like a steal to today's serial comics readers, who are used to shelling out $3.99 for a 20-ish page story, but in 1976, the average comic book was still only 30 cents. 

The original comic also contained a pair of short introductions running in parallel columns on its inside front cover, one from Marvel's Stan Lee and one from DC's Carmine Infantino, both trumpeting the rarity of the occasion. 

Inside, the action pauses at three points for page-length recaps of the origins of the heroes and the villains (the latter of whom share a single page), apparently there for any DC-only readers who weren't sure who this Spider-Man fellow was, or any Marvel-only readers who were somehow unfamiliar with Superman's whole deal.

As to why those two characters were chosen, well, that's obvious enough as to probably be not really worth mentioning. They were each publishers' most popular flagship characters, and each was the apotheosis of his respective publisher's protagonists. 

As for the villains involved, they are Superman's archenemy Lex Luthor and Spider-Man's villain Doctor Octopus, who are both derivations of the basic mad scientist archetype. (Reading this in 2024, I did wonder why the Green Goblin wasn't chosen as the Spider-Man villain featured, as the movies and 21st century comics had lead me to believe that he was Spider-Man's number one adversary. Was that not the case in the mid-70s? Or was the Green Goblin currently dead at that time?)

The book opens with a splash page featuring the two characters facing off, with the credits between them—oddly enough, "Edited By: Carmine Infantino and Stan Lee" is the top credit, perhaps this book's equivalent to "Stan Lee Presents"...?—and the title of the story blaring in the lower left corner: "The Battle of the Century!"

From there we get a 15-page Superman solo story in "Prologue 1". After a great double-page spread of Andru's Superman streaking into action towards a giant, city-smashing (and now rather retro-looking) robot, we get what amounts to a Superman solo story. 

The robot, piloted by Lex Luthor (wearing his familiar Super Friends get-up) steals a maguffin from S.T.A.R. Labs, and though Superman defeats the robot, Luthor and the doohickey escape. Superman briefly returns to the Galaxy Communications Building—this was during the time Clark was a TV news anchor—where we meet jerk prankster Steve Lombard, Galaxy owner Morgan Edge and Superman's pal Jimmy Olsen. Clark's not there long, though, leaving to track down Luthor for another battle, one that ends with Luthor being taken to jail...after he stashes the thingamabob for later use. 

From there, Clark and some co-workers take off for New York City, where they will be attending the "World News Conference."

After the aforementioned page detailing Superman's origin (In five panels and about 75 words; Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely would famously get it down to just four panels and eight words in 2006's All-Star Superman), it's Spider-Man's turn. 

His "Prologue 2" is also a 15-page solo story, this one opening with a double-page splash of Spidey reclining on a flagpole, as his Spidey sense alerts him to the presence of some thieves atop a nearby roof-top (These splashes look great in this format; I can only imagine how impressive they were in the original tabloid format). 

The thieves turn out to be in the employ of Doctor Octopus, who Spidey battles until the villain makes his getaway in a flying ship with its own set of tentacles. The police show up just in time up to chase Spider-Man away, their guns blazing (That's one big difference between the two red-and-blue clad heroes; Spidey is considered an outlaw vigilante, while Superman is embraced as a beloved celebrity).

Peter Parker stops at the Daily Bugle to sell pictures of the Spider-Man/Doc Ock fight to J. Jonah Jameson, a sequence that includes these two sublime panels, depicting Jameson's reaction to a terrible, terrible photo of Parker's that Jameson accidentally had run on the front-page. From there, there's a few panels of an attempted date with Mary Jane Watson, during which Parker must make a lame excuse, dash off to become Spider-Man and resume his battle with Doc Ock, this time defeating him and sending him to jail. 

In the last panel, Parker and the Bugle staff head to the same news convention the Galaxy staff was headed to.

The two prologues, which have now accounted for 30 whole pages of the book, or well more than your average superhero adventure already, do a great job then of establishing the characters, in costume and out, as well as their basic milieus and supporting casts and ongoing conflicts.

It's worth noting that both look, read and feel like a regular Super-Man story and a regular Spider-Man story—or, I suppose one could say, a "real" Superman story and a "real" Spider-Man story—which likely argues that the publishers made the right call in hiring creators with past experience on both characters. 

It helps, I suppose, that this was a time in which both superhero publishers were much more strict with the basic designs, looks and depictions of their stable of characters, and they tended to have to be drawn a certain way in order to look like themselves. These days, there is much more leniency given to super-comics artists, and designs can vary quite radically, depending on the personal styles and whims of the artists. (By the way, some of the aforementioned prose pieces noted that John Romita Sr., one of the two definitive Spider-Man artists, was tasked with re-drawing the Peter Parker faces in this comic, just as Neal Adams re-drew some of the Superman figures. Neither is credited for their work in the final product, however.)

And then, after a one-page, five-panel Spider-Man origin recap, it's time for a third prologue, this one a much shorter, five-page one in which Lex Luthor and Dr. Otto Octavius meet one another in New Mexico federal "Maximum X Security Penitentiary Number One," apparently some sort of special prison just for super-villains. Despite supposedly being escape-proof, Luthor breaks them both out and they escape together, with Luthor riding on Doc Ock's back like he was a horsey as he runs away on his metal tentacles.

Then, finally, it's time for the crossover to really start. 

At the news conference, Clark tells Lois Lane about "Comlab One-- The world's first orbiting communications laboratory!", which is apparently on display there. Lois then meets young Peter Parker, who saves her from a fall, and then, immediately afterwards, she meets a rather petty and possessive MJ (MJ: "I guess you're not the liberated type--eh, 'Miss' Lane? Some men like that sort of thing. Some men dig their women, 'feminine'." Lois: "Pull the claws in, MJ. Peter's cute-- --but he's a bit young for me, don't you think?")

Then, suddenly, Superman—actually, "Superman"—swoops in, fires weird beams from his eyes at the ladies, and then they both disappear, as the hero flies away. 

Clark and Peter both rush to change clothes and then meet in the sky over the roof-tops for the first time, the moment afforded another two-page splash. 

In Marvel fashion, they immediately come to blows, Superman having "heard reports" about Spidey and thus assuming he's behind Lois' bizarre disappearance, and Spidey, having seen Superman blast them with eyebeams, assuming Supes is to blame (In actuality, it was Luthor disguised as Superman; Luthor also gives Spidey a surreptitious blast of a "red sun radiation device" to power him up enough so that he'll be able to go toe-to-toe with Superman...at least for the length of a fight scene). 

What follows then is a dynamic 12-page fight scene, unusual in its length and choreography. It doesn't end until the red sun radiation wears off, and there's a fun sequence in which Spidey pounds away at Spider-Man for several panels, Andru drawing multiple arms on the wall-crawler to suggest how often and how fast he's throwing punches into Superman's chest and abdomen, and Superman just stands their stoically, absorbing the ineffectual blows, until Spider-Man steps back to look at his hands, now encased in pink jagged lines to suggest pain, and remark "Oboy." 

With their battle over (The unsurprising winner in a contest of super powers? Superman), the two finally calm down, realize neither is to blame for their love interests' disappearances, and decide to team-up, with Superman dragging Spidey behind him as he flies by a strand of webbing, Spidey having somehow fashioned skies of webbing to "air-ski" behind Man of Steel.

After pages of investigation, the two heroes eventually track Luthor and Doc Ock to the abandoned satellite headquarters of Luthor's Injustice Gang, from where Luthor enacts his world-imperiling plan. Using the thing stolen from S.T.A.R. in the first prologue, he's able to hijack that fancy communications satellite that Clark pointed out to Lois (and readers) earlier, using it to fire a beam that somehow generates hurricanes numerous and powerful enough to engulf the whole world (I'm not a scientist, so I'll just have to take Luthor's word for it that making giant hurricanes is well within the abilities of the communications satellite). 

Luthor will only relent and call off the super-storms if the United States government pays him "ten billion dollars within the next hour."

As Superman leaps out of the satellite and flies to Earth to intercept a two-hundred-mile tidal wave that will destroy the Atlantic coast of America, Spidey battles the villains, encouraging Doc Ock to ultimately turn on the mad Luthor ("I can't let you do it, Luthor!" Octavius cries as he smashes computers with a tentacle, "The Earth is my home, too!")

Eventually, the day is saved, as are the heroes' respective love interests, both of whom are at this point in history completely ignorant of the double-lives their men are currently leading.

At 100 pages—bigger even than an 80-page giant!—the book likely read as appropriately epic in 1976, and surely the bicentennial kids at the time would have felt they got their two bucks worth. Heck, at that length, it's basically a short graphic novel, published at a time when that word wasn't part of the average comics reader's regular parlance.

Conway and company certainly do a fine job of thoroughly introducing their heroes and villains, to an extent that later crossovers wouldn't even attempt, as the publishers would eventually (perhaps rightly) assume that anyone reading superhero comics at all would be pretty familiar with the participants in any crossovers (Like, why would you even pick up a book about Batman and The Punisher or Galactus and Darkseid if you weren't already familiar with them...?).

The creators also devote themselves to comparing and contrasting these heroes, boiling down and then accentuating what make them each unique and likable in the first place, and giving readers little moments of interest, like the panels in which MJ and Lois meet one another, or those where Edge and Jameson run into one another and discuss their talented but lacking employees Kent and Parker.

It's pretty much the ideal inter-company crossover comic.

That said, the intensity that went into the discussions and behind-the-scenes crafting of the comic was such that neither Marvel nor DC seemed to want to repeat it, even though it was the first of a whole series of crossover comics, being followed by a 1981 re-teaming of Superman and Spider-Man and a Batman/Hulk crossover, and then a 1982 Uncanny X-Men/New Teen Titans crossover. 

For each of these, the publishers would essentially take turns running the crossovers, so that they didn't need two teams of executives and editors counting panels or measuring figure drawings on the way to production. 

We'll look at the first of these second-wave crossovers next week. 

Next: 1981's Marvel Treasury Edition #28, featuring Spider-Man and Superman

*Actually, Tom Brevoort writes in his DC Versus Marvel Omnibus afterword that while the companies were in discussions for the Superman/Spider-Man crossover, both happened to be working on different adaptations of The Wizard of Oz. Rather than compete with dueling comics, they released their first joint venture: MGM's Marvelous Wizard of Oz. That comic does not, of course, appear in the omnibus. 

DC Versus Marvel Omnibus Part 1: All the non-comics content

I'm not a fan of the giant omnibus format. 

The inches-thick hardcovers are just too big, too heavy and too unwieldy. Those that I've handled before, both the ones I've bought and the ones I've seen at the library (where they tend to suffer a lot more damage than smaller comics collections and need repairs far more often), tend to make unwholesome sounding creaks if I hold them at the wrong angle or open them too wide, as if threatening to break on me. 

They're certainly hard to take with you anywhere, barely fitting in a messenger bag and threatening to bust out of it, so they aren't books that I can read on my lunch breaks, or when dining out alone at a restaurant. And even in the comfort of one's home they can be difficult to read, as one can only read them in certain positions.

If publishers must release giant omnibus format books, I would prefer they do so in paperback form, like the recent-ish Sandman Mystery Theater Compendium Vol. 1 that DC released last year. At 980 pages, it was of course still very big, very heavy and very unwieldly, but it was doable, and its basic integrity didn't seem threatened by its own weight or seem unstable like an old rickety, ramshackle house in a storm.

All that said, I do find myself occasionally attracted to the books that get published in the format and have even bought one: DC's 2022 Batman No Man's Land Omnibus Vol. 1, a thousand-pager collecting the many stories published under the "No Man's Land" banner. I only made it about 100 pages into it before giving up, though; it was just too hard to read. 

Despite my dislike of the format, I couldn't resist the DC Versus Marvel Omnibus, a huge hardcover collecting about half of the stories the two publishers have collaborated on over the years, with the other half relegated to a second volume, DC Versus Marvel: The Amalgam Age Omnibus, which looks like it's currently slated for a late December release (More on which publications are in which books below). 

While there's some historical significance for these rare-ish publications, and an awful lot of work by some of the greatest and best-known talents to work in mainstream comics among them, I've read remarkably few of them, partly because many were published before my time, partly because of my ambivalence about the Marvel characters (I didn't really read any Marvel until a good decade after I started reading comics, and never developed the sense of loyalty or ownership of their characters and universe that I felt for DC's) and partly because they were relatively hard to find. 

This then, offered a chance get them all in one fell swoop, even if it was awfully pricey for a single comic book. Still, I've been buying fewer and fewer comics in any format, I could afford it. (As long-time readers have surely noticed, I gave up on serially-published comics some years ago—with only very rare exceptions—and I now try to buy as few trades and collections as possible, given how quickly they can fill up my bookshelves, and my bookshelves then fill up my living space.)

Given the enormity of the book, which contains almost 20 over-sized comics stories and hundreds of pages of extras, it would simply be too big to review in a single "A Month of Wednesdays" blog post, or even in a single blog post devoted to the book alone.

So, as I mentioned the other day, my plan is to tackle the book crossover by crossover, and basically review my way through it. 

Before reading the first crossover story, though, I decided I should devote a post to all the...stuff in the book, given how much of it there actually is. So let's here take a look at all the stuff other than the comics content, before digging into the first of the crossovers. 

Let's start with the basic outline of the tome. 

The 960-page collection includes almost every DC/Marvel character crossover, from the classic 1976 Superman Vs. The Amazing Spider-Man to the millennial Batman/Daredevil. That means that, in addition to those two stories, the omnibus includes (deep breath) Marvel Treasury Edition #28 (Superman and Spider-Man again), DC Special Series #27 (Batman vs. The Hulk), Marvel and DC Present: The Uncanny X-Men and The New Teen Titans #1, Batman/Punisher: Lake of Fire #1 (featuring the Jean-Paul Valley version of Batman, weirdly enough), Punisher/Batman: Deadly Knights #1, Darkseid Vs. Galactus: The Hunger #1, Spider-Man and Batman #1, Green Lantern/Silver Surfer: Unholy Alliances #1, Silver Surfer/Superman #1, Batman/Captain America #1, Daredevil/Batman #1, Batman/Spider-Man #1, Superman/Fantastic Four #1 and Incredible Hulk Vs. Superman #1. 

So, what's missing? 

Well, most obviously given the title of this cinder block of a collection is 1996's four-issue miniseries DC Vs. Marvel. That's slated to be collected in the upcoming DC Vs. Marvel: The Amalgam Age Omnibus, along with all of the Amalgam one-shots, and the two sequel miniseries, DC/Marvel All Access and Unlimited Access. This makes sense, given that the Amalgam comics, each of which featured brand-new heroes that combined DC and Marvel characters, resulted from the events of the DC Vs. Marvel series, as at one point during the proceedings the two fictional universes are fused into a new combined universe.

Also missing is 2003's JLA/Avengers, which is not slated for inclusion in the Amalgam Age Omnibus. It's a curious, and quite unfortunate, omission, as that four-issue crossover series by Kurt Busiek and George Perez is the best of the DC/Marvel crossovers (at least of those that I've read) and one of the better inter-company crossovers of all time. 

It's also, one imagines, the single crossover that would be of the greatest interest to the largest number of readers, given not only its quality and the reputation of its creators, but also the current high profile of the two teams, particularly the Avengers, who weren't exactly the household name they are now 20 years ago.

JLA/Avengers was first collected in a 2004 hardcover set, and then again in 2008 as a trade paperback. An extremely limited edition was released in 2022 to help the now late Perez with his medical bills, and demand then was quite high, which made me assume it would be collected herein. Perhaps if these two omnibuses sell well enough DC and Marvel will see fit to also re-release JLA/Avengers. 

As for this collection, it actually starts out with some Perez art, as the cover is a Perez piece referencing the first couple of DC/Marvel crossovers, repurposed from the 1991 Crossover Classics collection. (If you bought or buy the omnibus through the direct market though, you also have the opportunity to choose a variant cover edition featuring a new image by Jim Lee and Scott Williams; it's not the greatest work from Lee, and, compositionally at least, is nowhere near as strong or dynamic an image as the Perez cover, but, given Lee's early years as a superstar artist at Marvel followed by a career as an executive at DC, he's probably one of the best choices to produce a cover for a book like this.)

Given just how many pages of comics content there are in this book, it might be surprising that the publishers found room for other miscellanea to include, but there are several introductions and forewords, two afterwords and plenty of backmatter.

First here's a brand-new introduction from Paul Levitz dated February of this year. Levitz notes that he was "in the room where it happened" when it came to that first Superman/Spider-Man crossover that was the very first collaboration between the two publishers, which for a majority of their history were among the most bitter rivals in the industry. 

Levitz was, at that time, an assistant editor to DC editor to Gerry Conway, who was chosen by the executives to write the crossover, as he was, at the time, the only person to have written both characters. The art team was similarly chosen to best represent the two publishers and their respective flagship characters: Pencil artist Ross Andru was the only artist to have drawn both characters and was then working as Spidey's primary artist, and inker Dick Giordano was chosen because he was widely regarded as the best inker in the business.

Levitz would go on to be involved in the next round of inter-company crossovers: The next Superman/Spider-Man crossover, that of Batman and The Hulk, and that of the X-Men and Teen Titans, after which things fell apart, and the publishers wouldn't see fit to try again for another decade or so (That decade, of course, was the '90s, the decade in which the vast majority of the stories in this collection were published).

Levitz's introduction is followed by not one, not two, but three forewords, each of which was previously published in the previously mentioned Crossover Classics collection. These are by Conway, Giordano and Tom DeFalco, and all focus on that initial Supes/Spidey book. 

The next prose piece, also culled from the pages of Crossover Classics, is by Marv Wolfman, and details how he almost wrote the second Supes/Spidery crossover (Instead, Jim Shooter would get the honor, though the comic's credits include a notation reading "Special thanks to Marv Wolfman for plot suggestions.") He also mentions being pegged to write the second X-Men/Teen Titans crossover...a crossover that never actually came to pass. 

That's followed by two story-specific introductions from Crossover Classics, one by Batman/Hulk writer Len Wein and another by X-Men/Teen Titans writer Chris Claremont. 

About 300 pages in we get another prose piece original to this volume, this one from long-time Marvel and DC editor Mike Carlin, dated March 2024. In it, he discusses the resumption of DC/Marvel crossovers with 1994's Batman/Punisher: Lake of Fire #1. This comic, and the dozen or so crossovers that followed, resulted from, as Carlin explains, a new generation of writers and editors coming in at both publishers, ending the "cold war" between Marvel and DC (And it helped that these newcomers were all comics fans turned comics pros, and thus had an entirely different attitude about the characters than their predecessors). He also seems to intimate that a new cold war began in the early years of the century (with JLA/Avengers being the sole exception of new DC/Marvel collaborations), seemingly because "some new players would join the mix in the early 2000s."

After the last pages of 2000's Batman/Daredevil: King of New York #1, we get a pair of afterwords, both written specifically for this collection.

The first is from writer Ron Marz, who is quite familiar with the intercompany crossover, having written the DC Vs. Marvel miniseries, as well as Green Lantern/Silver Surfer (and several DC/Dark Horse crossovers). He cites one of the crossovers collected in this book as having reignited his passion for the medium when he was a teenager and had drifted away from super-comics: Claremont and Walt Simonson's X-Men/Teen Titans book, which he reveals he still keeps a copy of in his desk to pull out and flip through whenever he feels the need for inspiration.

That's followed by a very interesting piece by Tom Brevoort, who reveals the original idea for the Superman/Spider-Man team-up was not for a comic book at all, but for a movie. That was the idea of David Obst, the literary agent that kickstarted the first DC/Marvel crossover, anyway. (The idea of such a film sounds pretty insane to even imagine in 1976, two years before the first Superman movie and 26 years before the first Spider-Man movie. Even today, in the years after characters as unlikely as Ant-Man, Aquaman, The Guardians of The Galaxy and Blue Beetle III have all had a movie or two or three, the idea of a DC/Marvel crossover movie still seems so unlikely as to sound crazy.)

Brevoort also discusses a few tidbits about that original Superman/Spider-Man crossover, like the fact that Neal Adams and John Romita Sr. did some uncredited touching up of the art, and the mathematic specificity that went into the story, with each hero appearing in the exact same number of panels and being drawn at the same size in aggregate (If Superman appeared in the foreground and Spider-Man in the distant background of one panel, for example, there would be another panel where Supes was in the background and Spidey foregrounded).

And if you're beginning to think that this sounds like an awful lot of bonus material for a book that pretty much sells itself, wait—there's more!

There's Conway's nine-page story outline for the original Superman/Spider-Man crossover, about 100 pages of art (much of it in black and white) with notes from many of the creators who worked on the pages (Darryl Banks, J.M. DeMatteis, Barry Kitson, Ron Lim, Ron Marz, Roger Stern), the covers from the four Crossover Classic collections (pencilled by Perez, John Romita Jr., Salvador Larroca and Ed McGuinness), Alex Ross' homage to Superman Vs. The Amazing Spider-Man (from a 1999 issue of Wizard Magazine), a fold-out of Dan Jurgens' and Ross' cover to Superman/Fantastic Four, a fold-out by John Byrne and Terry Austin promoting DC Vs. Marvel (which also adorns the cover of the collection, under the book jacket), a few pages of house ads promoting the various crossovers and, in the edition I got anyway, a fold-out of Jim Lee's variant cover for the omnibus, full-color on one side and black and white on the other.

It's an awful lot of stuff, without even accounting for the comics stories themselves. As much as it is, it's welcome. This is, after all, a book selling for over a $100—it's labeled for $150, though I didn't pay that much for my copy—so it's nice to see the publishers seemingly doing as much as they can to make it worth that high price. 

Now, with all that out of the way, I guess I'm ready to start actually reading the comics themselves, huh?

Next: 1976's Superman Vs. The Amazing Spider-Man #1

A Month of Wednesdays: October 2024

BOUGHT: 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Reborn Vol. 9—First, Last, Always (IDW Publishing) I just so happened to read a pair of books about goth in the past few months, John Robb's The Art of Darkness: The History of Goth (Manchester University Press; 2023) and founding member of The Cure Lol Tolhurst's Goth: A History (Hachette Books; 2023). Both discussed the English rock band Sisters of Mercy, who proved quite influential in the musical genre referred to as goth (although most bands labeled such don't care to be so labeled). Their debut album was 1985's First and Last and Always. 

Was writer Sophie Campbell inspired by the Sisters of Mercy when choosing the sub-title for the ninth and final volume of her Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles run which, it turns out, also represents the end of the 150-issue series, which lasted from 2011 to 2024? (Don't worry, they've already relaunched with a new #1, with writer Jason Aaron now at the helm.) 

Looks like it. 

A bit of an odd synchronicity, that, as I would not have recognized the reference had I not noticed Robb's book one day at the library and decided to pick it up. 

As I mentioned, this is the end of Campbell's five-year, 49-issue, nine-volume run on the title, collecting her final six issues. These are mostly drawn by Vincenzo Federici, with some additional art by Fero Pe, Dan Duncan and Campbell herself, returning to draw a touching, wordless four-page reunion featuring the title's core cast. (Campbell also draws the final cover herself, a great piece which really should have been the cover of this collection, and she collaborates with Kevin Eastman on variant covers for the series; as I've said before, the pair constitute what is probably the ideal TMNT art team at the moment, and IDW really should find a project worthy of the team's talents to have them provide the art for...if not both write and draw it.)

Despite lots of callbacks to previous stories (signified by asterisks and editorial boxes), including several to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Armageddon Game and its tie-ins (which I didn't read),  and time travel-enabled visits to key points of IDW's TMNT history/continuity, including to the very night of the characters' origins and to the feudal Japan where their souls originally came from (before being reincarnated into their new 21st century mutant bodies), this seems like something of an odd "last" TMNT story, for either Campbell's own run or this volume of the Turtles' adventures. 

That may be because, as I mentioned when writing about it upon its release, the previous volume felt so much like an ending, with the five title characters all splitting up and going their own ways at the end. Or it may be because Armageddon Game was such a big story with such a large cast and apparent significance (it even big-footed its way into the main title, seemingly forcing this book to deal with the build-up, tying directly into it and then dealing with the fallout from it) that it may have felt like an early climax to this iteration of the TMNT franchise. (Again, I didn't read it, so I'm just guessing here.)  

Just as likely, though, it may be because this isn't so much a TMNT story as it is a Donatello story. 

Sure, the other characters all appear, but they are never together until the very last pages. The present, "real" Leonardo, along with April, helps Donatello with his magic/science experiments from their farmhouse base, and thus appears throughout the book, albeit in what is very much a supporting role. And the present Michelangelo makes a brief appearance, lasting all of several pages. The present versions of Raphael and Jennika are MIA until the reunion page at the end, however. Future versions of the other four turtles all have brief appearances during Donatello's time travel journey, but the focus is undeniably on Donatello throughout.

And what is Donatello up to? Well, using a mishmash of magic and science—computers, sigils, his warp crystal pencil, a high-tech power gauntlet and the redacted notebook of his own future self—he, April and Venus are attempting to travel through time to find his future self, who he hopes can help him with the notebook, all in an effort to stop Armaggon, a sort of time-travelling giant cosmic shark entity (Which, we learn in this volume, is actually a mutated Megalodon.)

Neither target is sitting still, however. Future Donatello is on the move through time, forcing Present Donatello to chase him, while Armaggon is apparently set on devouring Donatello at some juncture, preferably in the past before he accidentally creates Armaggon, and therefore preventing the monster's own painful existence. 

Complicating matters further, Armaggon has apparently recruited a future version of Bob, the mutant mandril who was training under Leonardo and ends up getting kicked into the time portal along with Donatello and Venus, to sabotage the experiment and drain characters of their QNA, which is...well, let's not get into all that here.

Suffice it to say this is the story of Donatello's quest to not screw up the timeline he's seemingly endangered, and it involves a lot of time jumps to the near future and a few to the more distant past, seemingly resolving the long-ish running sub-plot in which the character secretively and obsessively tries to make sense of sorcery and fix everything. 

For what it is, it's fine, although it really feels like it could have been a Donatello miniseries rather than the conclusion of the longest running Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle title and narrative of all time (For context, the original Mirage Studios volume of TMNT only lasted 63 issues, while the Archie Comics Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures lasted 72 issues). 

It of course remains disappointing that Campbell, one of modern super-comics' best artists and maybe the most gifted to ever draw Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman's creations, is relegated to writing only (as I suppose I've probably mentioned at least nine times now), rather than writing and drawing, as in the start of her run, before her appearances on art duties became more and more infrequent, and eventually trailed off altogether. 

Federici is a fine artist, though, and the book looks good and reads well throughout, the only real visual hiccup coming near the end of the book, as one of the "additional art by" creators tags in to draw a scene of Donatello and Venus travelling back in time to visit the lab where the Turtles and Splinter would soon get mutated. There Donatello is drawn with big eyes, his pupils visible through his mask (Federici has drawn his eyes all-white and pupil-less whenever masked throughout the book), making him suddenly look like the original cartoon version of Donatello rather randomly.

Never do the characters feel as alive and as real as during those last four pages, however, the ones where Campbell returns to draw Donatello stepping out of a time portal at the end of his adventure and finding and embracing his family. (The aforementioned Eastman/Campbell covers sure come close, though, pairing Campbell's superior character designs and rendering with the thick, weighty, gritty inking of Eastman that defines the characters, giving them a Mirage Studios aura.)

I'm sort of bummed to see Campbell's run ending. Her TMNT was the last serially published comic book I was reading and was then the last ongoing series I was buying regularly in trade.

I suppose I'll pick up the first volume of Aaron's relaunched TMNT when its available in trade; while I'm not as confident in his abilities as I was in Campbell's, I did enjoy his big, over-the-top and usually funny runs on Wolverine and the X-Men and The Avengers. 

The immediate future of the franchise seems a bit uncertain, with bad news (unconfirmed rumors about IDW's plans regarding page rates on their licensed comics that struck many professionals as laughably low) and good news (former ComicsAlliance editor Andy Khouri being named TMNT editor...although I suppose he probably prefers being known as a former DC Comics editor at this point). 

I hope, whatever happens next, we haven't seen the last of Sophie Campbell's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and, seriously IDW, get Campbell and Eastman to team-up on the art for something befitting their talents and the quality of their collaboration.

BORROWED:

Batman/Superman: World's Finest Vol 4: Return to Kingdom Come (DC Comics) Even the greatest comics artists are human, and thus capable of making mistakes. Still, I was caught off guard when I hit page five of the latest collection of the Dan Mora-drawn Batman/Superman: World's Finest—and I presume we can all agree that Mora is indeed one of the greatest comics artists, certainly within the genre of Big Two super-comics—and realized the bat-symbol on Batman's chest was...off. 

If you look closely, there are an extra pair of "points" on the bottom, which is the wrong style of bat-symbol for this iteration of the character, although it is a very familiarly wrong bat-symbol. Specifically, that's what the bat-symbol that adorned the suit worn by Michael Keaton in the original 1989 Batman film looked like (The filmmakers corrected it in time for the sequel, 1992's Batman Returns). 

Now, the Batman of this title is indeed a past Batman. The specific year in which the events of World's Finest occur has been tough to pinpoint, but it's clearly sometime after Batman adopted his 1960s "New Look" (adding a yellow oval around his bat emblem) and sometime before Dick Grayson quit being Robin, wherever that is the current DC Universe timeline/canon (Which, perhaps, is something only Mark Waid knows at this point). 

I at first assumed the setting of the book was the modern version of the Silver Age, but since then Firestorm has appeared on-panel, so it must be around the modern equivalent of 1978. Regardless, though, Batman didn't add any points onto the bottom of his symbol in the late 1970s or '80s; the only place that particular version of the logo has ever appeared was in the film.

Assuming this might have been a clue that the Batman of the story was meant to be an alternate universe one—the first three pages of the book show The Flash Barry Allen racing through the Speed Force, with various alternate realties, be they culled from old "Imaginary Stories" or Elseworlds projects, appearing in the background—I just rolled with it. (It's a bravura sequence, by the way, and one that allows Mora to temporarily "cover" the work of other artists who did their own variations of Batman, Superman and company in various projects over the years). 

But that was not, in fact, the case. It seemed curious to me that an artist of Mora's caliber and profile would make such a mistake, but he does it every time he draws this Batman. Why would he start doing so in the fourth collection of the series, I asked myself, and then I went online to look at past covers and panels and, I saw, he didn't just start doing that; he's been drawing Batman's logo like that for the entire series now. (So the real question is, I guess, why didn't I notice it until just now?) 

It's really perplexing, and the exact sort of thing that one might think a comics editor, especially in this day and age, would notice immediately and seek to correct. I don't know; perhaps a creative choice was made by Mora and/or Waid and/or DC to use this particular version of the logo to further differentiate this Batman from other iterations (Beyond his blue and gray costume and the yellow circle, I guess), but that seems fairly unlikely.

Anyway, those seven paragraphs should be more than enough for this month's bat-symbol discourse. (Now, anyone got any opinions on Absolute Batman's logo...? Kidding!)

As the sub-title indicates, this volume of Waid and Mora's team-up title finds the former returning to his own 1996 Kingdom Come, for what I believe is the first time since the underwhelming 1998 kinda sorta sequel series/event The Kingdom (which did at least yield a pretty good Plastic Man story in Waid and Frank Quitely's The Kingdom: Offspring #1). 

It seems a rather odd choice for this particular title, set as it is sometime in DC's own now-murky past, given that Kingdom Come was set in millennial DC's near-future... which is, of course, even further in the future for these particular iterations of the characters. 

Additionally, the world of Kingdom Come that the World's Finest here visit, long since established as Earth-22 in the current mapping of the multiverse, isn't yet the familiar world of Kingdom Come, as it seems to be years before such events as Superman's retirement or Magog's killing of The Joker. So rather than the familiar world of Kingdom Come, which is teased on the cover by the appearances of some of its iconic characters, this is a visit to that world in its own past, a world on its way to becoming that of Kingdom Come. 

What does that mean, exactly? 

Well, other than the restaurant chain Planet Krypton and handful of Alex Ross' old designs filling up some group shots (Judomaster, a Boba Fett-inspired Peacemaker, the yellow and red version of Captain Atom, the post-Metal Men giant Alloy, the always-intriguing-to-me Fourth World version of Batwoman), this might as well just be another random alternate Earth, given that it says relatively little about Kingdom Come. Other than, I suppose, after all is said and done, pushing the now grown-up David—last seen in the pages of World's Finest at the end of the "Strange Visitor" arc (collected in volume two) being greeted by Gog— into the direction of becoming Magog.

That Waid has to engage with Kingdome Come/Earth-22 at all then seems only to be the result of the fact that he sent the multiverse-lost David, formerly Boy Thunder, there in the pages of "Strange Visitor."

So here we have Flash Barry Allen, exploring the multiverse as is apparently an old hobby of his, and telling Superman, Batman and Robin that he has finally found their lost ally, David/Boy Thunder. Setting them up on a "modified Cosmic Treadmill", he sends Superman and Batman to the Kingdom Come-iverse, where they experience some time displacement, appearing as phantoms in the far-flung future, after the events of Kingdom Come, where they witness their own older counterparts mourning the dead in a field full of gravestones marked with the names of superheroes. 

From there hey drift backwards to a time long before the events of Kingdom Come, but long after David first arrived on this world. David is now an adult hero going by the name "Thunderman," and he has replaced his cape and headgear with a jacket and domino mask. 

Upon meeting Superman and Batman after so long (his time), David immediately turns on his former mentors, and this world's Superman (still wearing a shield with yellow behind the red S, despite what the covers may promise, but not yet having grown out his hair, as he would in the "past" of Kingdom Come) and this world's Batman (wearing "the experimental flight suit Lucius has been working on" because a recent Mongul attack destroyed his regular wardrobe, an attack that conveniently gets him to dress more like he did in Kingdom Come) both arrive to throwdown with their alternate-earth duplicates, never stopping for a moment to think that they might be alternate-earth duplicates (Part of Gog's long-term masterplan for this world has included his keeping secret the existence of alternate realties, apparently).

Gog's full plan is eventually revealed to our heroes. Gog, looking just as he did in the pages of the 2007 JSA arc "They Kingdome Come" and seated atop a more expansive version of Metron's flying chair (complete with what looks like the Worlogog above it), has used some form of subtle mind-control to push all of this world's heroes into obeying him, even worshipping him like a god. 

David, who is transformed into Magog as part of Gog's "Asencion" plan, is to lead this army of heroes in an all-out invasion of Apokolips, a suicide mission during which Gog intends for them all to die, himself included...thus rectifying his ancient mistake of sitting out the war that killed the old gods of the Third World, allowing all but him to ascend into Valhalla. (The Old Testament! Norse mythology! Jack Kirby! There's some comic book religion for you!)

The only ones who can stop him are, of course, both worlds' World's Finest, plus their allies, who include Captain Marvel, the "Green Knight" version of Green Lantern Alan Scott, the hawk-person version of Hawkman and Wonder Woman in her Golden Eagle armor.

The stakes of the battle are super-high, Batman realizes, as Gog's mind-control may actually be the Anti-Lie Equation, so putting him in contact with Darkseid may actually doom all of reality. Of course, the heroes win, but in an unexpected way, with David, now Magog, using his powers to blow off Gog's head.

This of course leads to a stern lecture from Batman and Superman, who don't appreciate the way in which David just saved all of reality, with even Captain Marvel and Alan scolding him. David's just like, Forget it; I'll just go off and kill the Joker one day, ushering in a new age of darker heroes who appreciate the use of deadly force, eventually goading all of the world's heroes into a huge war that will kill, like, everyone...and it will be fully painted!

In an odd (but appreciated!) ending, The Spectre arrives (not wearing any underwear, like the Kingdom Come version) to give "our" Superman and Batman a brief tour of David's future and the events of Kingdom Come, allowing Superman to give the post-Kingdom Come David an inspiring pep talk that inspires him to go on to lead a whole new, post-Kingdom Come generation of heroes, most of whom looked brand-new (and Mora-designed...?) to me. 

This is probably weakest arc in the series to date, lacking as it does the world-building that made Kingdom Come so fun and, by engaging only with a past version of the world from that compelling and, let's face it, seminal story, it feels somewhat half-assed. 

Gog, Darkseid and the multiversal elements are all written as well as can be, but they also feel a bit generic, with nothing really new to say about any of the characters...if, indeed, anyone was clamoring for a new Gog story. Or even a revisit to Kingdom Come at all. (Although it's 30th anniversary is right around the corner!)

Of course, if this gets newer and younger readers to check out the Kingdom Come trade, then I suppose it will ultimately be worthwhile.

For my part, it was at least fun to get to see Mora's versions of a handful of Ross designs (in addition to all those panels of alternate realities he drew in the first few pages of the collection). I imagine he had fun making this book, and the many, many variant cover artists all seemed to enjoy getting to draw Kingdom Come characters, based on how many of them appear in the gallery at the back of the book...despite the fact that so many of those characters don't actually appear in that form in the comics themselves. 

Personally, I think it could have used more Cathedral. 

Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville (DC) Are Fire and Ice still viable characters? Writer Joanne Starer makes a pretty convincing argument in this six-issue miniseries, although the results come with a handful of reservations, most of which could probably have been solved if the script had gone through another draft or so.

Fire debuted in a 1979 E. Nelson Bridwell and Ramona Fradon issue of Super Friends as Green Fury, a name she would change to Green Flame as part of the Global Guardians before finally settling on Fire. Ice followed almost a decade later, being created Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire for their beloved Justice League International run, with the character first appearing in 1988's twelfth issue, apparently as a new version of Icemaiden (She's actually a distinct character from original Global Guardians character Icemaiden, who first appeared in Super Friends in 1977, but let's not get into their tangled history here).

The pair are best known, of course, for their role in the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League run. They weren't there in the very first issues, which featured a slightly more high-profile line-up, but once they officially joined in 1988's JLI #14, they quickly became part of the core Justice League cast, and among the League's longest-serving members, hanging on through various creative team and line-up changes that followed (Ice would be killed off in 1994 crossover "Judgement Day", whereas Fire would serve on the team through Justice League America's 1996 cancellation, which made way for Grant Morrison, Howard Porter and John Dell's JLA launch).

They've been relatively little seen since leaving the Justice League orbit, though. To my knowledge, their last major appearances were in the pages of 2010 bi-weekly maxi-series Justice League: Generation Lost by writers Judd Winick and Giffen and a variety of artists. (That is, unless you count Tom King and Greg Smallwood's 2021 Human Target maxi-series, which I don't, mostly because I didn't read it, although it being a Black Label book, I'm uncertain if it counts as canon or not.) 

Unlike many of their peers, the duo never really had any notable appearances in the many cartoons, live-action television shows or feature films that have introduced so many DC comics characters to a new generation of would-be comics readers (cameos in Justice League Unlimited and, for Fire, in Batman: The Brave and The Bold, aside). 

All that time out of the spotlight is part of the hook of this title, of course, a hook that is further suggested by the sub-title. They are meant to be getting a new lease on life, moving to a new town for a fresh start, a course of action strongly suggested by Superman (Fire sees it as punishment for a screw-up, but Superman himself describes it as a vacation, "A time to relax and rebuild...I believe they call it self-care?")

The only problem with this premise is, because it's been so long since we've seen the characters in the DCU (and I barely remember anything about Generation Lost at this point), readers don't really have any sense of what they're actually taking a vacation from. What is their current status quo? Where do they live? Do they live together? What do they do, exactly? 

When we first meet them here, it's in a 10-page short story by Starer and her collaborator artist Natacha Bustos that was published in Power Girl Special #1 (It seems to be an odd choice to start a story, complete with its inciting incident, in an entirely different comic book; thankfully DC included it in the final trade collection). 

They are going into superhero action in Baltimore, with Fire grumbling about "a team of children" sending them to confront a natural disaster, apparently the children being the Titans, who, at this point, have taken the place of the disbanded Justice League. What the natural disaster is exactly isn't entirely clear, a recurring problem with these opening pages. Bustos draws huge waves pounding the Fells Point area of the city, with the heroes pulling bystanders out the way and using their powers to either freeze or evaporate the waves.

(I should perhaps note here a peculiarity about the way Bustos, who's elegant linework and somewhat abstracted, cartoonier sense of character design is a pretty perfect fit for the general comedic tone of the book. When Fire is using her powers, she is generally drawn like a naked woman on fire, basically a color-swapped, female version of Marvel's The Human Torch. Bustos, however, always draws her clothes when she's in fire mode, complete with jacket, headband and little biker gloves.)

Into these proceedings storms Baltimore local Green Lantern Guy Gardner (Ice called him, against Fire's wishes), and he proceeds to use a giant vacuum cleaner construct on one of the waves that somehow...breaks the frozen wave that Ice had created and deluges her with water...? (It's not clear exactly what happens here, or how.)

This leads to Fire and Guy battling one another, until Superman shows up to break up the fight. It is here he suggests the leads take their vacation, offering his parents' own farmhouse in Smallville ("I know the perfect place. Quiet, cozy, full of good people and mom's apple pie...").

They of course accept...sort of. ("But if we're doing this, we're doing it my way," Fire insists.) Instead of staying at the farm, they sign a 12-month lease on a downtown salon with six rooms available above it, "the only rental available in Smallville," according to L-Ron, who comes with them. For some reason that's never made clear, they decide to re-open and run the salon, rather than just living above it. They re-hire one of its old employees, endearing new character Tamarind, to do most of the actual salon work. 

While Ice takes to smalltown life, enjoying spending time with Martha Kent and her new friend Rocky Rhoades, Fire bridles at what feels like an exile and craves to re-make a name for herself. She ultimately engages in a variety of social media-driven schemes to bring supervillains to her in Smallville, ultimately gathering a bunch of them for a sort of social media reality show about rehabilitating villains by giving them work in a salon (These villains include pre-existent ones like Ambush Bug, Gentleman Ghost, Maxie Zeus and Beefeater as well as new, original ones like Smarty Pants, Lot's Wife and Gorilla Grodd's little sister Linka). 

Meanwhile, Fire and Ice have their friendship—which is at least partially built on how extremely different their personalities are from one another—severely tested, and a pair of villains with links to their past make appearances. One of these is a seemingly wendigo-inspired supernatural villain from Ice's homeland that turns people into cannibals (leading to some rather intense and violent, if mostly off-panel, content that feels somewhat jarring given the otherwise light-hearted proceedings) and a villain of sorts with ties to old JLI continuity (There's an editorial box at one point reading, "See Justice League America #34! Yes, the one from 1990.")

Despite the plot's several leaps in logic big and small that I've mentioned, and maybe trying to squeeze one too many major villain into so short a story (I think they could have done without the cannibal one, for example, which would have put greater focus on the remaining villain and made for a more streamlined storyline while excising the whole people killing and eating one another thing), Starer and Bustos' comic is a fairly fun one. 

It's fun and it's funny, with a majority of the jokes landing, especially those involving Tamarind's obliviousness to Fire's claims to fame, and the interpersonal conflicts still manage to feel consequential without ever getting too heavy. It's a story in which Martha Kent, Jimmy Olsen, Krypto the super-dog and Lobo can an all appear in and, more importantly, feel like they fit in. 

I can't say enough good things about Bustos' cartooning, which is superior. It's almost too bad that the book boasts covers by Terry and Rachel Dodson, who were probably good "gets" for DC on this series, as their covers don't remotely suggest the style or spirit of the art within, and just how good Bustos is. (This is true of all of the many covers, of course; the one exception being the entirely appropriate, perhaps even mandatory one by Kevin Maguire, doing a Fire and Ice-only riff on his iconic—and oft-riffed upon—cover to 1987's Justice Lague #1.)

Are Fire and Ice still viable? Sure they are, particularly if they star in comics like this, which keep the semi-serious, but mostly comedic take that Giffen and DeMatteis gave them during their time in the Justice League, a take that was mostly abandoned by the other Justice League creators that followed them, even as they kept Fire and Ice (and Booster Gold, Blue Beetle and Guy Gardner) around.

Fire, a former model, could probably do with a costume redesign at this point, though. Both characters have tried out new and different costumes since their early-90's heydays, of course, but Bustos here costumes them in their original JLI/JLA looks. That's probably the right call, given that much of the audience for this book was probably drawn to it by nostalgia for those years, but Fire's costume, such as it is, looks incredibly dated.

We could argue about the mini tank top that Ice wears over her spandex, which suggests 1980s aerobic craze fashion, but in general her costume looks clean and classic, the sort of Silver Age-esque look that never seems to age or grow dated.

Fire, on the other hand, wears all-green street clothes that might have been fashionable in the late '80s, but now look...well, they look like they are from the late '80s, the head band, the gloves, the belt, the short jacket over a bustier...it all looks a little too hair metal, as does her own voluminous, '80s style hairstyle (Which becomes somewhat ironic, given that she is now living above and apparently working in a hair salon).

If the heroes are to reappear in another comic by Starer and Bustos—and I would certainly read another one—Fire could definitely use a makeover during it.  

Green Arrow Vol. 2: Family First (DC) Rather unfortunately, writer Joshua Williamson's refers to the events of Tom King and company's 2018 series Heroes in Crisis in this collection of his Green Arrow run. You remember Heroes in Crisis, right? The miniseries in which a beloved hero commits a mass casualty event at Sanctuary, a secret mental health retreat staffed by robots that was set-up by Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman long ago, a place where heroes would regularly go, unmask, and spill all their secrets.

I say unfortunately because by linking back to that story in new narratives, it helps embed King's fairly bonkers story into mainline DCU continuity, and I was actually kind of hoping that everyone—especially DC Comics writers—would just sort of forget about Heroes in Crisis and it would therefore gradually become something of a retroactive Elseworlds or Imaginary Story. (I did not personally care for Heroes in Crisis, obviously; it is a very bad comic, although it becomes much less bad if one thinks of it as not meant to be in continuity. Here was my immediate reaction to the first issue; I swear I later read the trade and I am assuming I reviewed that on EDILW too, although I can't find it now, because I am terrible at "website".)

Not that Heroes in Crisis is a big part of the second collection Williamson's Green Arrow run, of course. As the book nears its climax, GA learns that his one-time sidekick Roy Harper, who has gone missing, is in actuality currently working for Amada Waller (So he's not dead after all, as he appeared to be at the end of the first volume! Whew!). Roy was sent to retrieve a maguffin for Waller but failed in his mission; to find Roy, GA must now take up his mission and retrieve said maguffin for Waller.

That maguffin? One of those creepy expressionless gold masks the android therapists at Sanctuary wore in Heroes in Crisis, a mask that apparently recorded and retained all the secrets it was told over the years, which is basically everything on the superhero community, from Batman's secret identity to Hal Jordan not knowing what "will" actually is. 

Green Arrow takes the mission, deciding he will simply figure out what to do with the mask and Waller at some point in the future (Does this play out in the pages of Absolute Power...? Now that I'm a trade reader, I'm obviously behind on the current goings-on of the DCU, but I thought I heard that Ollie was working with Waller in that book.)

If the first volume of the series was about Ollie's finding his way home after the events of Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths, this volume is about him adjusting to the DCU proper, reacting to the current status quo (Roy MIA, the JLA disbanded), reuniting with the rest of his now very extended family of heroes (Williamson has essentially retained the supporting cast of pretty much every Green Arrow run of the last 25 years, even roping in Arrowette, who doesn't really have anything to do with Oliver Queen and company aside from the fact that she also has a bow and arrow), and settling his score with Merlyn, the main villain of the early issues of the series. 

Taking both volumes together, Williamson's story is essentially one of straightening out the Green Arrow franchise for the publisher, making sure all of the related characters are properly resurrected and placed in the current status quo after years and years of other writers' stories killing them off, writing them off, rebooting them away or finding newer, narrower focuses. 

So here Ollie visits various Justice Leaguers to ask them about the team disbanding, with Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and Hal Jordan getting full scenes, while others like Hawkgirl, Martian Manhunter and Black Adam simply get one-panel cameos.

Ollie and his son Connor Hawke begin a search for the missing Roy, which involves battles with Onomatopoeia and Brick and a break-in at the now Waller-controlled Hall of Justice. They fight Roy and his team before an Arctic Justice League facility of some kind. There's a battle against hard-light holograms of the Justice League. And then there's Ollie's climactic confrontation with Merlyn, after a recounting of the two characters' history with one another. 

It's a lot, and something of a greatest hits of 21st century Green Arrow comics, setting the character and cast up for future adventures under the direction of a different writer (Despite the rather definitive feeling of the last scene in this book, it looks like Williamson will be writing the next five issues as well, so that will probably mean there will be enough new comics from him for a volume three).

It's unfortunate that Williamson doesn't have a consistent partner on this book, and instead works with a hodge-podge of different artists with differing, contrasting styles that suggests the editors went with who was available, rather than who worked well together.

There are several passages drawn by Phil Hester, who, in addition to contributing art to the previous volume, was also the artist on Kevi Smith's 2001 Green Arrow run and the Brad Meltzer arc that followed it. These are, of course, great, as Hester is a great artist, a solid draftsman with a nice, simple, individual, striking style. Here he draws the chapter with Ollie and Connor taking on Onomatopoeia and Brick (the former a Hester co-creation), as well as the seven pages detailing the Ollie/Merlyn history and a short scene set during Ollie's time on the deserted island. I kinda wish they just let Hester draw the whole thing. 

The top credited artist is Seann Izaakse, who I think was meant to be the main artist for Williamson's run, and who draws the issue where Ollie confronts Waller, and portions of several other issues. His style is fine, well in-keeping with the general look and tone of what one might call DC's current "house" style, although it doesn't sing for me in quite the same way Hester's does.

The main problem with his art, though, is there's not enough of it to establish a look for the book. Several other artists seem to help him finish a few issues/chapters, including poor Tom Derenick, whose art I quite enjoy, but who of late generally only seems to turn up to help other artists meet deadlines. 

And then there's Carmine Di Giandomenico and Trevor Hairsine, who draw the first issue of the collection, the one in which Ollie visits the empty Hall of Justice (before Waller takes over, which occurs in another book, Titans: Beast World), and then various members of the League. 

I'm just not a fan of their style. They are here colored by Romulo Fajardo Jr., and I found the work to be dark, muddled and with too many digital effects, as well as some missed opportunities to draw cool stuff, as when we see Ollie wandering League headquarters, and instead of trophies we just see generic high-tech stuff and the images of other artists' covers dropped into the background on monitors or projected holograms.

There's definitely a lot to like in this volume (and this run so far), especially if you're a fan of the characters featured, although the art style changing up every few pages or so in what is meant to be a continuing storyline is certainly an unwelcome experience.

Godzilla: War For Humanity (IDW Publishing) If Jake Smith's work on this miniseries isn't the very best art to grace one of IDW's many, many comics featuring the King of the Monsters—and James Stokoe's work on 2012's Godzilla: The Half-Century War and 2015's Godzilla In Hell is hard to beat—then it at least constitutes some of the best Godzilla art we've yet seen. 

Smith's big, chunky characters and anxious, action-packed panels call to mind the work of alternative and indie comics creators more than that of the modern superhero comics artists that tends to dominate the super-comics and IP exploitation genres, and, at a glance, his cartooning seems closer to the lineage of, say, R. Crumb than that of, say, Jack Kirby. It's also full of thick, inky lines, extensive cross-hatching and even a hint of the chibi in some of the monsters' faces, giving it something of the look and feel of the comics of Godzilla's home country. 

It's a refreshing change of pace and seems like an even more radical departure from the norm when compared to some of the more recent Godzilla comics for adults, from both IDW and DC Comics, the latter of which was focused on the Warner Bros/Legendary version of the characters (IDW's Godzilla: Monster Island Summer Camp and Godzilla: Monsters & Protectors also featured some rather distinct artwork, but that was in large part due to their more distinct audience of younger readers). 

Perhaps most impressive is the way Smith renders the title character and his—well, here, its—kaiju kin. Smith's monsters look very much like giant, living, breathing monster suits, specifically those of the Showa era. It's only in the monsters' faces, their eyes and mouths, that they are drawn more lifelike and realistic than the creatures of the original cycle of the Godzilla film series; otherwise, the designs are quite faithful to the source material, to the point that they resemble the suits and marionettes come to life more than anything else.

(How faithful is Smith's design work? Well, in one panel featuring the quadrupedal Anguirus, the monster is drawn with the knees of its back legs on the ground, in the posture of a crawling baby rather than that of an actual four-legged animal; this is because, of course, that is the way that Anguirus was depicted in the films. It's not until later, when the monster curls itself up into a spiny ball to attack an opponent, that it adopts a dynamism that would have been unthinkable in one of the early films.) 

The story, by writer Andrew MacLean of Head Lopper fame (who also provides rather striking variant covers for each issue), is probably best described as serviceable. 

He engages with ideas of Gaian environmentalism, including speculation that humanity may be seen as a sort of fever or infection attacking the earth, and various monsters as the world's defense system against them, ideas that have occasionally surfaced in the Godzilla films over the decades. There's also a sub-plot involving an interpersonal conflict regarding the main protagonist and the idea of intergenerational trauma.

Despite these efforts though, MacLean's War For Humanity ultimately boils down to a monster comic about monsters fighting one another and, given the quality of Smith's artwork and his striking style, that's more than enough for a Godzilla miniseries-turned-graphic novel. 

The aforementioned protagonist, Dr. Yuko Honda, had a childhood run-in with Hedorah, and just when it seemed all was lost, Godzilla arrived on the scene to battle the smog monster and save her. That incident would inspire her to devote her life to the field of kaiju studies, travelling the world to give lectures about how Godzilla is humanity's savior, protecting us from other, worse giant monsters.

As for those giant monsters, mankind seems to have made peace with them in the world of this particular story, with governments and militaries closely monitoring them during their regular migrations. 

The arrival of a brand-new giant monster on the scene causes absolute chaos, though. This is Zoospora, a titanic monster that dwarfs all the others, an eye-less green giant with Biollante-like tentacles that seems to be made entirely out of fungus (You can see it towering over the other characters on the cover above).

The newcomer attacks existing kaiju from Toho's stable, pinning them down with its vines and then vomiting some sort of viscous black liquid into their open mouths and then leaving just as suddenly. After the attacks, the monster victims develop the swirly eyes of a hypnotized cartoon character, drool black liquid, and go on violent rampages.

Honda is recruited into an elite team to deal with the new threat, one consisting of a diverse group of Hollywood stereotypes: Annoying (but kinda hot?) billionaire tech bro, tough Michelle Rodriguez-type soldier, nervous genius, etc. Her plan is, of course, to get Godzilla to defend them from Zoospora and his growing gang of converted monsters...but Godzilla seems content to just chill on Monster Island with Minilla. 

Following an unlikely lead, the team consults a bizarre green face growing out of the walls of a cave in Tibet, a creature said to be able to communicate with kaiju. It is this face that tells Honda that Godzilla is not only indifferent to humanity but actually wants Zoospora and the other monsters to wipe them all out, for the good of the earth. 

Plan B? Use a M.O.G.U.E.R.A. to force Godzilla into the fight. By the climax, Godzilla and our heroes piloting the M.O.G.U.E.R.A. battle against Zoospora and possessed monsters Gorosaurus, Anguirus, Manda, Rodan and Mothra (Ebirah also makes a brief, two-page appearance, fighting Godzilla on Monster Island). 

I honestly can't recommend the book highly enough to Godzilla fans...or fans of fantastic comics art in general. In fact, if you're not a Godzilla fan, this comic is strong enough that it just might convert you.

(While we're on the subject of War For Humanity, Tegan O'Neil wrote a rather long but very good review of the series for The Comics Journal, one that puts the Godzilla character in its proper, current pop culture context, including a look at Godzilla's prevalence in American comics at the moment. The piece also features plenty of artwork, if you want to check out Smith's versions of the Shobijin, Mothra, Ebirah and the other monsters. You can read it here.)

Komi Can't Communicate Vol 31 (Viz Media) Manga-ka Tomohito Oda sure respects Tadano and Komi's privacy. In this volume they seem to kiss on purpose for the first time, but it's not presented all that clearly. They are drawn in an extreme longshot standing face-to-face and extremely close together, and, in the following panel, from the neck down. A few panels later, Tadano stutters, "D-Did w-we j-j-just k-k-kiss???" Komi says nothing for a few panels, then tilts her head weirdly, with a narration box telling us "Komi is confused too!!" 

Um, so I think there was a major milestone in the leads' relationship in this volume, but I'm not entirely sure? Nor, apparently, are the characters themselves.

In addition to that climactic possible (probable?) kiss scene in the rain, this volume includes the introduction of new character Kawai's family to Tadano and Komi (both of whom she wants to marry), all the kids enjoying a festival and a social media makeup tutorial by Manbagi. 

Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead (Viz) This latest volume of one of the two manga series I've managed to continue following over the last few years is a bit shorter in new story content, consisting as it does of just a single new three-chapter story arc, "Dolphins of the Dead." It makes up for that, however, with that story being a fairly pivotal one, finally directly addressing a storyline that has been simmering since the first volume of the series. 

And, in terms of page count, it makes up for it with not one, not two, but three short bonus stories starring the characters in new situations.

When Shizuka is looking over the gang's shared bucket list of "100 Things I Want to Do Before Becoming a Zombie" after Akira reports that they have already completed 68 items on the list, she randomly notices that someone has already scratched off #33, "Meet the woman of my dreams."

Akira tries to deflect, but she questions him, bringing flooding back to her memories of him confessing his love to her a few volumes back, when she was bitten by a zombie and about to die from its infection (This was when they met first met Tsurumi, who was able to cure her with a serum hastily made with Izuna's seemingly immune-to-zombies blood.) 

Shizuka had likewise already confessed her feelings...to the readers, if not Akira (She thought she was confessing to him, but the silent figure she mistook for Akira turned out to be a zombie).

As the pair go off alone to try to talk to one another about their feelings (and fail miserably), they are interrupted by a zombie and flee...right into the arms of Sakaki, a handsome young doctor who emits a halo of sparkles to denote just how good-looking he is. Offering Shizuka an alternate path, one where she can realize her long-held dream of becoming a doctor, and in the company of a handsome man who isn't the least afraid to express his feelings, she is suddenly torn.

Luckily for her, and Akira, and the readers—in another manga, Dr. Sakaki could have become an ongoing character and long-running impediment to Akira and Shizuka's inevitable but long-delayed relationship—she's not torn for long. Instead, the young pair of friends finally look each other directly in the eyes, kiss deeply and tell each other that they love one another....just as a zombie horde is closing in, escape is impossible, and it seems they have only seconds left to live. So romantic!

Obviously, they do escape, thanks to a rather unexpected, out-of-left-field intervention, and they will live to star in another volume.

From there we get immediately into the back-up stories.

The first is "Kencho in Borderland," a sort of sequel to the much earlier "Akira in Borderland," during which the star appeared in a short Alice in Borderland crossover, as Zom 100 is written by Alice's manga-ka. Having not read Alice, I'm sure I didn't really get much of "Akira in Borderland," but Zom 100's central conceit carried over: Akira was so elated that he no longer had to go to the miserable job he hated, he was happy to be in almost any other circumstances at all, no matter how dire. Here, Kencho stars in a crossover along with Akira and I, obviously, didn't get any of the references (But Akira is still there, and still happier than he was while working for a living).

After that comes "Making of the Dead (Anime)", in which Akira, Kencho and Shizuka visit a recording studio, where they meet the voice actors playing them in the anime adaptation, and get to record themselves, playing the voices of a couple of zombies (In truth, the Zom 100 characters are here standing in for the creators, writer Haro Aso and artist Kotaro Takata, who actually made the studio visit.) 

This is how I found out that there even was an anime; the opening sequence looks fun (and the use of colorful paint instead of blood and slime is interesting), although I doubt I'll pursue it. There are relatively few properties that I enjoy enough to follow both the manga and the anime, given how similar the latter tend to be to the former, although there are of course exceptions to this rule (Ranma 1/2, Dragonball/Dragonball Z, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Full Metal Alchemist).

And then, finally, comes "Making of the Dead (Film)", which repeats the exact same formula, except here they visit a film set, where filmmakers are hard at work on a Zom 100 live-action film for Netflix, and again Akira and Kencho play zombie extras (and again are filling-in for the creators, who had that experience in real life). 

And this is how I found out they made a live-action Zom 100 adaptation. I'd probably be a bit more inclined to check this out over the anime, although from what little bits I see from the trailer, it does seem to track the first few volumes fairly closely; some of the creative choices that need to be made to make a comic into a film tend to be a bit more interesting than those that go into a manga-to-anime adaptation, I think. Here's the trailer on YouTube; they do seem to have captured the zombie apocalypse-as-life-affirming event nature of the series well.

While I was a bit disappointed to get less Zom 100 than usual in this installment, it is nice to see that the creators seem to be having so much success with it, and hopefully the new adaptations will manage to drive eyeballs to the comics. 

Walt Disney's Donald Duck: The 90th Anniversary Collection (Fantagraphics Books) Donald Duck debuted in the 1934 animated short "The Wise Little Hen," which of course makes 2024 the character's 90th anniversary. Fantagraphics, the premiere North American publisher of quality Disney comics, acknowledges the milestone with a massive comics collection, containing 20 or so individual comic stories spanning some 370 pages, including work from all of the best-known Duck artists from all over the world, including Carl Barks, Don Rosa, Romano Scarpa, Daan Jippes and Giorgio Cavazzano.

The contents don't precisely map to the years of Donald's career, with the first comics featured after David Gerstein's welcome introduction being a series of newspaper comic strips by artist Al Taliaferro beginning in 1938. The final entry is a one-page "Donald Duckling" strip from 1998, but it's preceded by what ends up being the most recent story, a Giorgio Salati and Paolo Motturo Duck Avenger story from 2010. So, what's that add up to...just 72 years...? 

Well, that's close enough, I suppose. I certainly don't know enough about the state of worldwide Disney comics to suggest any from the last 14 years or so that should definitely be here, certainly not ones that should bump any of the contents that ended up being included. Even those that I found to be a bit of a drag compared to the more compelling inclusions—like, for example, "Donald Duck, Special Correspondent," a 29-page 1938 adventure made of comic strips reconfigured into an Italian comic book story that sees Donald reunited with "Wise Little Hen" co-star Peter Pig for a story involving two fictional countries at war—have a certain historic value that makes them worthwhile, if not, necessarily, that much fun to read. (What, for example, might Donald Duck's comic book history have been like if Peter Pig had become his sidekick, rather than the extended family of ducks we'd meet in future animated shorts and comics?)

Aside from covering the basic bases by having well-known inclusions from important cartoonists in the character's history that demonstrate what exactly they brought to the proceedings, there are several entries that seem selected specifically because they are past anniversary stories of their own.

So in addition to Carl Barks' 1949 "Lost in the Andes", its 1989 Dona Rosa sequel "Return to Plain Awful" and Roman Scarpa's 1960 "The Legend of Donald Hood," there's also "The Life and Times of Donald Duck", a 1984 story by Marco Rota, in which an apparently completely human reporter from the real world (with five fingers on his hands and everything!) journeys to Duckburg, and ends up interviewing Donald about his life story (a story which has several differences from the canonical life of Donald Duck that we know...or that long-time readers would have seen unfold in the comics) and "Hero 300", a 1991 story by Evert Geradts and Mau Heymans in which Donald uses lightly-edited bound copies of his own Donald Duck comic books to prove he's the city's greatest hero, earning overnight (and fleeting) super-stardom.

There are also Gyro Gearloose-assisted travels through time and to deep space, an abduction by a high-tech, extra-dimensional, underwater civilization, a story where Donald and Scrooge trade lots in life due to the application of Gladstone Gander's luck and another where Donald runs for mayor as a law-and-order candidate (I had to try very hard while reading this one to keep out intrusive thoughts about another candidate for office named Donald who is also fantastically exaggerating the crime problem in order to appear tough on crime).

And there's still more.

It is a lot of Donald Duck, enough Donald Duck, in fact, that at one point I wondered if it was too much Donald Duck, or if such a thing is actually impossible. After sitting with the book for a few days, I think I come down where I would have before I read decades worth of Disney duck comics—there's no such thing as too much when it comes to great comics, regardless of who the star is. 

(As for the fact that I slept fitfully, having feverish dreams of Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge between time spent reading their stories on my laptop or while propped up on couch cushions on my phone—Oh, by the way, like the Titans: Beast World comics mentioned in the previous column, none of the libraries in the Clevnet consortium had a physical copy of this book, so I read it digitally through Hoopla; I hope this isn't a sign of things to come in terms of comics for adults in libraries—I'm going to assume that it had much more to do with the fact that I was reeling from Covid and running a high fever as I read this collection, and not that I had overdosed on Donald Duck.) 

REVIEWED: 

Boy Vs. Shark (Tundra Books) I can't say enough good things about this book, a comics (and comic) memoir by Paul Gilligan about the summer of 1975, when he was a 10-year-old boy who sought to prove his maturity and manhood by going to see Jaws...and only ended up terrifying himself. Afterwards, he was afraid of being attacked by a shark in the pool...and the bathtub...and the garage...and his own bedroom. 

It's about much more than that, though, as the book deals with the pressures on boys to grow up and to demonstrate a rather particular type of masculinity. Big issues and serious topics, yes, but it's also hilarious. 

I reviewed it for Good Comics for Kids, but part of me wishes I would have pursued an interview with Gilligan instead, as I'm awfully curious about just how true a true story it is; some of the characters are just so perfect for the story (particularly the older, juvenile delinquent character, which isn't exactly a flattering portrayal) that I wonder if they were real people or fictionalized composites, and if all of the events in the book really happened in real life just as they do here.

Anyway, it's one of the most fun books I've read in quite a while. Check it out. You can find my full review here. 

The Grinch Takes a Vacation (RH Graphic) The next installment in RH Graphics' new line of graphic novels starring Dr. Seuss characters features the Grinch and comes courtesy of cartoonist Kaeti Vandorn. 

The character strikes me as a much more challenging one than The Cat in the Hat, who starred in the first one (by Art Baltazar), largely because the Grinch has a character arc so specifically tied to a certain set of experiences. Vandorn's not the first creative to be tasked with exploiting this particular IP though, and I think the strategy she takes—portraying the Grinch as an all-around negative person, despite his conversion experience on that one particular Christmas—is probably the best one available. 

One can an argue that these graphic novel stories featuring Seuss' characters aren't really necessary, and I'm certainly inclined to find those arguments convincing, but I remain pleased that RH Graphic and those involved are seeking out highly skilled individual creators and letting them draw the characters and the comics in their own distinct styles. More here. 

Monster Locker (First Second) I picked this up mainly because it was a new book geared towards younger readers, and thus seemed to fill the criteria of my "beat" as a contributor to Good Comics for Kids. That, and kids vs. monsters is always a pretty compelling narrative premise to me. 

When I hit page nine and read the line, "And mom is, like, the bravest firefighter in Columbus," my heart skipped a beat. Columbus? Is this set in my former hometown?! I thought, though I cautioned myself; it could be set in Columbus, Georgia, after all. 

But by page 16, it was certain, when protagonist Pablo tells himself that his parents will regret telling him he's too young for a cell phone, after his role-playing game day gets cancelled and he has to walk home from the comics shop: "They'll get me a phone when they hear I had to walk home through the mean streets of Columbus, Ohio."

Aha! Monster Locker is set in Columbus, Ohio! Neat! It turns out that the writer, Jorge Aguirre, is from Columbus, though he now resides in New Jersey. (Aguirre is responsible for the graphic novel Call Me Iggy, as well as the Chronicles of Claudette series, featuring the installments Giants Beware!, Dragons Beware! and Monsters Beware!)

The story, drawn by Texas' Andrés Vera Martínez, is about a very average sixth grader who discovers that his new locker is a portal through which monsters can be summoned. The portal is put into action when the vengeful Aztec Earth goddess Coatlicue and her army of monsters invades the school and ultimately takes over the whole city. 

As for Columbus-specific content, there's not much, and, if I had to guess, I'd guess that Columbus was chosen in part because it's where Aguirre is from, and in part due to its nature as an average modern American city (Eccentric California transplant Takashi Rosenberg does refer to Ohio as a particularly weird place in several spots, though). 

There's a mention of the Scioto River Park, but the few specific locations visually referenced (comic shop Wizard's Way, coffee shop Quazar Coffee) seem created specifically for the comic (I Googled them both, just in case!). 

Still, it's exciting to see Columbus so represented in a comic book, and it's more exciting still that the comic itself is such a good one, a fun, funny adventure that may be targeted at younger readers, but is nevertheless all-ages in the best sense of the term. 

I'd recommend it to any of my readers. And especially to any of them that hail from Columbus, although now that I'm almost 15 years removed from my own time there, I don't know how many of you are actually Columbusites...

Anyway, for an actual review of Aguirre and Martínez's Monster Locker, click here. 

The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien (Harry N. Abrams) This is a rather weird book from writer and artist John Hendrix, who has comics, picture books and hybrid prose/comics works on his resume. 

It belongs in the hybrid category, with a joint biography of Lewis and Tolkien and their relationship told in illustrated prose, with only very occasional scenes rendered in the comics form, while another narrative arc runs through the book, this one told entirely in comics and featuring two "host" characters talking about Lewis, Tolkien and the ideas the two thinkers and writers contended with throughout their careers. 

I'd recommend it to fans of either man's work...a group that includes pretty much everyone, I would imagine. More here. 

Spider-Man: Octo-Girl Vol. 1 (Viz Media) The My Hero Academia: Vigilantes creative team of Hideyuki Furuhashi and Betten Court reunite for a licensed manga that takes its inspiration from The Superior Spider-Man. Doc Ock has once again jumped bodies while on the precipice of death, only this time he accidentally ends up in the body of a Japanese school girl who is in a coma, and the pair are sharing the body. Hijinks ensue, and the long-time Spider-Man villain once again finds himself gradually becoming a hero, this time at the urging of the girl whose body he is inhabiting. More here.