The origins of Mister Terrific Michael Holt

There's no indication on the cover of 1997's The Spectre #54, which was produced by the great Richard Corben, but this issue in writer John Ostrander and artist Tom Mandrake's series would feature the introduction of a new, legacy version of minor Golden Age character Mister Terrific, as well as featuring appearances from various Justice League and Justice Society characters, making it a particularly superhero-heavy issue. The covers of the series, which are typically great, don't always comment directly on the contents within, and this is a pretty good example...although there is a zombie in the issue. 

The story opens with a man standing on a bridge above a train track, sadly regarding a framed headshot of a smiling woman, signed "Love Always, Paula." He lets it drop onto a train below, and is then interrupted by a couple of little kids, one of them holding a gun that looks comically huge in his little hands. 

"Okay, fool-- Give us all your monies if you wanta live!" the boy says, and the man responds. "But what if I don't care if I live?"

Enter Jim Corrigan, from out of nowhere, with harsh words for the kid. The frightened child fires several shots into Corrigan's chest, to no effect (He is, of course, already dead, and has been so for decades). Corrigan's voice changes to a spookier one, rendered by letterer Todd Klein in a jagged dialogue balloon tinted green at the edges, and the font of the lettering gets similarly rough and jagged. Corrigan then transforms into The Spectre, and the children flee in panic.

Once they're alone, The Spectre tells Michael Holt, for of course that's who this man is, that he was drawn there by his thoughts: "Self murder is still murder. And murder is the province of The Spectre."

Holt explains his thoughts, revealing a bit about his background, vague though it is at this point: 

My wife is dead. Car accident tore her out of my life with no warning. All the things I've done with my life--the money I've made, the achievements in sports and science-- --They're nothing without her. I don't know why I should live.

The Spectre shifts back to his Corrigan form and begins to tell Holt of his old friend Terry Sloane, a man who similarly had money and brains, but found himself bored...and was once a victim to kids who tried to rob him, seeking to imitate the heroes of their day, the gangsters of the 1940s.

Sloane's response was to demonstrate to kids that gangsters aren't anyone to look up to or imitate, and he did so by making himself into something far cooler: A superhero, who regularly took down gangsters and revealed them to be the losers they were.

Here artist Mandrake devotes a half a page to the Golden Age Mister Terrific, smiling broadly as he beats up a trio of armed gangster types, a couple of kids in the background cheering him on. 

The Spectre then goes on to tell the story of Mister Terrific's last adventure, somewhat based on 1979's Justice League of America #171-172, by Gerry Conway, Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin, although one need not have any familiarity with those comics to follow this, which obviously needed to be altered to fit into the post-Crisis continuity, anyway (Here, for example, the characters share a single Earth rather than hailing from two parallel ones, and a problematic character like The Huntress is absent, though Power Girl is still there).

During The Spectre's story, Mister Terrific is murdered aboard the JLA satellite, apparently by The Flash Jay Garrick...who was actually possessed by a villain named The Spirit King. In the aftermath, as the JSA pursued the villain to Earth, Garrick went looking for The Spectre, and the two heroes catch up with the villain in Doctor Fate's tower in Salem, where  The Spirit King has now taken control of Fate and defeated and captured the other heroes (Green Lantern Alan Scott, Hawkman and Power Girl, if you're interested).

When The Spectre and Flash arrive, they find themselves in a trap set by The Spirit King, who, being a ghost, is untouchable by either The Flash or Spectre ("You have no power over me, Spectre!" the villain gloats. "Your authority ends at the grave! And I have stepped beyond it!").

It gets worse. The Spirit King has apparently made a deal with the demon Shaitan, acting as a portal for the evil entity to cross over onto Earth. And then the corpse of Mister Terrific joins the battle, shambling towards The Flash. So there's the zombie that Corben's cover seems to promise. (It's unclear to me just how it is that Sloane's corpse became quite so skeletal and desiccated in the short time since he had apparently died, but whatever, Mandrake draws a great zombie).

Ultimately the day is saved when the ghost of Mister Terrific appears, and, being a ghost, is able to lay his hands—and, more importantly, his fists—on his fellow ghost The Spirit King. He punches him into the portal Shaitan was attempting to come through, which The Spectre seals, saving the JSA and, perhaps, the whole world. 

After a few words with his teammates, the ghost of Mister Terrific fades away, leaving the glowing words of his slogan, "Fair Play" hanging in the air.

The story told, Holt wonders why exactly The Spectre told it to him.

The Spectre answers, with a bit of a speech that would prove transformative for Michael Holt and, indirectly, the future JSA and the DC Universe as a whole. He switches back to Corrigan mid-way through, which is why the language shifts accordingly: 

A void exists and needs to be filled.

No one can ever be replaced. Not your wife, not Terry Sloane, but their passing leaves a void that needs to be filled.

You feel the void your wife has left...

Mr. Terrific filled a purpose and that purpose isn't filled by Superman or Batman or even The Spectre.

He worked at the street level. He reached kids that might have otherwise gone bad. Replaced "gangsta" role models with one that stressed "Fair Play."

There is a need to for that kinda hero today, get me? Maybe, if you fill a void that's out there, you can ease the one that's inside you.

You game? 

Indeed, Holt is. 

The scene shifts to a basketball court, where the kids who tried to rob Holt in the opening scene are reporting back to some obviously older (and far taller) young men, who are belittling their failure to bring back any money, and threatening them with a beating.

And then Holt shows up, now wearing a big pair of sunglasses and a leather jacket with the words "Fair Play" emblazoned on the back, the logo mirroring the one that the original Mister Terrific wore on his torso. He sure threw that costume together pretty quickly!

He confidently introduces himself with a seemingly new too-cool-for-school personality: "You can just call me Mr. Terrific--cause that's what I am." He's also carrying a basketball. After he easily beats up the two armed bad guys ("I'm not afraid to die, so I'm not afraid of you!" he says to one, who points a gun at the back of his head), he shoots the basketball from afar, and of course he makes the shot, complete with a "SWISH!" sound effect. 

Then The Spectre arrives, sweeping up the older kids in his cloak and promising to punish them now for murders they may commit in the future, at which point Holt gets in his face, saying he'll take responsibility for them, and citing "Fair Play" to the Spectre. 

The Spectre concedes the point and flies away, thinking to himself about how the confrontation was a ruse, that the kids "needed to see their hero seemingly strong enough to face down even The Spectre...it will build your reputation and burnish a legend."

It's a pretty great comic, as are most issues of Ostrander and Mandrake's Spectre series, and, if you can find it in a back issue bin or if you read it online from Kindle, it's a pretty good starting point for getting into the book (Like too much of that volume of The Spectre, it's never been collected). 

Leaning towards horror and constantly dabbling with moral quandaries, this series was one of handful from the '90s that seemed to straddle the DC Universe and the sort of content from the Vertigo imprint, although this issue felt a little special in just how full of superheroes it was, the colorful, muscular figures rendered in Mandrake's spooky, sketchy style.

Now, of course, the issue is best known for introducing the new Mister Terrific, who would, a few years later, join the new JSA team and become a DCU mainstay, even headlining his own short-lived solo title in 2011 as part of DC's "New 52" initiative. 

As you can see in the images above, the character bears relatively little resemblance to the more familiar version from the 1999-2006 JSA series, though. Obviously, that's visual, as he would adopt the distinctive black T-shaped mask, the black, white and red costume and the hovering robot "T-Spheres" later, as his background in science and athletics would be fleshed out to the point where we learn he was an Olympic athlete and genius-level intellect (one of the smartest people in the world, actually). Oh and, perhaps oddly given that he was introduced in an issue of The Spectre where the embodiment of the Wrath of God told him a story about ghosts, zombies and demons, we would eventually learn that he is an atheist. 

He also seems to have drifted pretty far from the initial point of inspiration, that of being a street-level hero focused on being a role model for young people and steering them away from the potential appeal of a life of crime. Of course, that was likely a side-effect of being on the JSA, a team book in which the threats were naturally bigger, more global and less grounded than street crime, as they had to be significant enough to require the attention of a large team of very powerful characters including the android Hourman from the 853rd Century and a Dr. Fate. 

After his introduction in The Spectre #54, the new Mister Terrific next appeared in 1998's The Spectre #62, the last issue of the series. In this issue, Corrigan/The Spectre buries Corrigan's bones and holds a funeral for himself, one attended by characters from throughout the series, and throughout the DC Universe (and, in a few cases, just beyond, like Swamp Thing). At the end, the green cloak of The Spectre floats up into the sky, leaving the naked Corrigan on Earth...at least until a bright light from the sky envelopes him and he disappears.

Mister Terrific's role is quite small. He arrives wearing the same simple costume Mandrake gave his in his first appearance, although at this point he seems to have added gloves with a yellow "T" on them.

"Who are you? Black Lighting?" one attendee asks him when he walks up. 

Later, when Corrigan's surviving JSA allies—Jay Garrick, Alan Scott, Ted Knight and Ted Grant—arrive, Wildcat puts his hands on his hips and asks Holt, "So--yer the new Mr. Terrific, eh?"

"You got a problem with that?" Hold replies. 

Wildcat punches him on the arm: "Nope. Glad to see it. Just do th' name justice, okay? Terry was a friend o' mine."

This new Mister Terrific would, obviously, end up spending a lot of time with Wildcat, Garrick and Scott in the future.

His next appearance was in the pages of 1999's JSA Secret Files & Origins #1. He doesn't appear in any of the special issue's comics stories—he wasn't initially a member of the team, which was being written at the outset by James Robinson and David Goyer, and pencilled by Steven Sadowski. Instead, he appears in one of the profile pages, which, in these specials, would feature an illustration of the character and a few paragraphs of text about the character in question, functioning a little like the old Who's Who pages.

Here, he's drawn by an artist credited as "Grey" and inked by Vince Russel. This is the first published appearance of what would become his standard and best-known costume, the one he'd wear throughout the pages of JSA and the series that followed it, Justice Society of America (And the one that appears in the new Superman movie). The image also shows the first appearance of the "T-Spheres."

Though Grey is the first person to draw it, I'm not sure if they get credit for the design or not; in fact, I'm not sure who designed it (Do let me know if you know). 

The profile on this page, written by Holt's co-creator John Ostrander, fleshes out his past accomplishments, noting that he was "an Olympic decathlon gold medal winner" and that he "created his own cyberwear company which he ultimately sold to the Waynetech Corporation."

It also notes that he "fights in the inner-city for the minds and hearts of the kids there." "The modern Mr. Terrific fights the new 'gangstas' with skill, intelligence, and by just being so damn cool," Ostrander writes. (Interestingly, Ostrander refers to Holt's late wife as "Angela," although we saw the name "Paula" written on her picture in his first appearance).

As for the JSA title proper, Mister Terrific first appears in the fifth issue, written by Robinson and Goyer and penciled by guest artist Derec Aucoin, where he meets Sandy Hawkins and the android Hourman at Tylerco. It's revealed there that he acts as a consultant for Tylerco, and in return they fund a youth center Holt had started. He is, by this point, wearing the costume from Secret Files & Origins.

He then shows up in issue #11, at which point Geoff Johns has replaced Robinson and Goyer's co-writer, and this issue features breakdowns and inks by Michael Bair and pencils and inks by someone credited simply as "Buzz." 

Here Mister Terrific has his T-Spheres for the first time in a story and he talks about his ability to be completely "invisible" to security technology, which made it easy enough for him to break into the Kobra base that the JSA was in the process of infiltrating when they met him.

"We'll have time for intros and initiation parties later," Hawkins tells him and, from this point on, Mister Terrific will be a member of the JSA. 

In his initial appearance in the pages of Ostrander and Mandrakes Spectre, both The Spirit King and the original Mister Terrific talk about coming into their own only once they had died, something that Corrigan seems to meditate on a bit, wondering if he too only really started to make a positive impact on the world once he had died.

Although Jay Garrick assures Terry Sloane's ghost that he was always a valuable member of the team when he was alive, it would seem that Sloane really did have the biggest impact on the DC Universe and the DC comics line after he died: As the inspiration for his far more prominent namesake. 

A Month of Wednesdays: June 2025

BOUGHT: 

Nancy Wears Hats (Fantagraphics Books) Better writers and smarter comics readers than I have extolled the virtues of Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy comic strip over the years, and so I doubt there's anything I can say about this new collection that's all that worthwhile. 

Suffice it to say that this nice big collection includes over 300 strips from 1949-1950, when the strip was in its prime. I feel like I've seen a fair amount of these strips before, either in other collections I've read or from social media accounts like this one, although there were also a fair amount of strips that were new to me.

Bushmiller's Nancy is, of course, pure, unadulterated comics in perhaps their most perfect form. They're a pleasure to read, and an education for anyone who wants to make comics. I therefore can't recommend this collection—or any of Bushmiller's Nancy, really—highly enough. 

The collection, featuring raised words and art on the cover and nice overall design work by Kayla E., also includes a short, unsigned, three-paragraph prose afterword. Entitled "Ernie & Nancy", the last paragraph lists the character and comic strip's accomplishments, noting that one of Bushmiller's Nancy strips remains the picture that The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language uses next to the definition for "comic strip" and quoting an un-cited Wally Wood that "It's easier to read a Nancy comic than it is to not read one." The piece cheekily ends with this last line: "Who's lit now, Sluggo?"

BORROWED:

Batman/Superman: World's Finest Vol. 6: IMPossible (DC Comics) The latest volume of Mark Waid and Dan Mora's World's Finest picks up right where the last one left off—Mr. Mxyptlk and Bat-Mite have appeared in the Batcave, fleeing an army of villainous "mites" led by a mysterious bad guy, a threat dangerous enough that it has already killed one mite (Green-Mite, who, unable to choose between Green Arrow and Green Lantern, patterned himself off of both).

The arc, "IMPossible", fills most of the trade, accounting for four of the five issues collected within. The story is actually fairly simple. The mysterious bad guy, alternately referred to as "Doom Mite" and "the Imp Killer," hails from the sixth dimension, and he has come to our heroes' fourth dimension, seeking to find its greatest champion and then fight him (or her), rather than taking the time to conquer the whole dimension.

To do determine Earths greatest hero, he's unleashed the various villain mites to team up with their counterparts and attack their archenemies, so that, for example, Sinestro and Sin-Mite team-up against Green Lantern Hal Jordan and Abra Kadabra and his mite tackle Flash Barry Allen, and so on.

Before long, Metropolis is full of superheroes, supervillains and villainous mites, and Batman, Superman, Robin and their new allies Mxyptlk and Bat-Mite wade into battle. I hesitate to say too much more about the plot, as it is full of some really fun, fairly crazy surprises, but I will note that a quite unexpected champion is finally chosen, Batman, Superman and Bat-Mite spend a significant part of the story trapped in the second dimension and then journeying through the dimensions to get back to the fight and, of course, the sixth-dimensional threat is eventually vanquished.

As per usual for this series, there are a lot of guest-stars, and not merely among the various Justice Leaguers and villains in the Metropolis battle royale (Probably my favorite in this story? Prince Ra-Man, who certainly wasn't anyone I was expecting to see here). 

Mora draws the majority of "IMPossible," and it, of course, looks great. His approach to the various imps and mites is interesting, as he draws them all with their usual otherworldly proportions, but he also renders them quite realistically, so that, say, Mxyzptlk and Bat-Mite look like their usual selves...but also about as realistic as possible, giving them a slightly unsettling look (I think it's the texture of Bat-Mite's gigantic eyeballs that really gets me). 

The design for the sixth-dimensional villain is interesting too, as he looks both goofy and scary at the same time, the ratio between the goofiness or the scariness changing depending on the scene and, seemingly, the level of threat he poses in itl

Mora does get a little relief from artist Travis Mercer, who draws Superman and Batman when they are trapped in different dimensions, and the fact that they suddenly look so different than when Mora is drawing them is thus naturally excused by the weird circumstances they are in (Interestingly, in the second dimension, the heroes and Bat-Mite take on the appearances they had in old cartoons, with Bat-Mite wearing the costume he did in The New Adventures of Batman and sporting the green skin he had in that late seventies show).

For all the big, crazy twists and turns, Waid does an admirable job with all of the characters, accentuating the differences between Mxy and Bat-Mite's relationships to their heroes (Mxy lives to vex Superman, while Bat-Mite worships Batman and tries to help him) and the imps' relationship to one another (Mxy finds Bat-Mite extremely irritating). 

Most remarkably, Waid tells a compelling story about Batman's stories "growing up", the shift between the silliness of the Silver Age and the more serious Broze Age (which I guess is when World's Finest is actually set? All available clues suggest it is sometime after 1978 but sometime before 1984, our time) and Batman and Bat-Mite coming to a sort of understanding regarding the fact that their relationship needs to evolve. 

So it's a lot of fun, probably the most fun story arc in the series so far, but it's not just fun. It's really, really great superhero universe comics. 

The fifth issue in the collection is a story entitled "Death In Paradise," and is drawn by Gleb Melnikov. Seemingly set somewhere in the past—like, further in the past than other World's Finest stories, based on Robin's costume and apparent age—it features Batman, Robin and Superman being invited to Themyscira to help the Amazons solve a seemingly impossible locked door murder. 

The solution ends up involving the Well of Souls, an innovation from the George Perez Wonder Woman and a pair of villains, one of Wonder Woman's oldest adversaries, and his sister, appearing here for the first time. 

I feel like the Wonder Woman-ness of the story is mostly relegated to her milieu, and her relationship with the title characters doesn't come into play much, although there's a neat scene near the end of "The Trinity" all working together, and a bit of an aside about the three of them meeting for coffee soon. 

There's also a very charming panel in which Robin is shown a kanga, and says, "Yes, please" as soon as an Amazon asks him if he would like to ride one...so soon, in fact, that letterer Dave Sharpe places Robin's word balloon so it overlaps with that of the Amazon. 

Melnikov's style is a departure from Mora's, but not too sharp of one. His Superman and Batman are both thick and bulky without quite looking over-muscled (Do note that Melnikov gives Batman his standard bat-symbol, rather than the Batman '89 one that Mora always gives him for some reason). The same goes for Wonder Woman, who looks far bigger than an evil goddess who appears and some of the other Amazons. His Robin seems particularly small and youthful, even cute (His costume includes a pair of longer black shorts, and his cape is scalloped into different lengths, giving it a more bird-like appearances). 

It's not as great as "IMPossible," of course, but then Waid often has short, one-issue "cool down" stories between his arcs, of which this is apparently one. Like all of his other World's Finest stories, it's fun, fairly light-hearted and as much a celebration of the characters involved as an exploration of them.  

It Rhymes With Takei (Top Shelf Productions) When I read George Takei's 2019 graphic novel memoir They Called Us Enemy, which I had reviewed for The Comics Journal, I was kind of intrigued by a fairly short passage in it about his TV career. As I wrote about it on EDILW shortly after, "the glimpses we see of what it must have been like to be a young, gay, Asian man trying to get roles back then sounds like pretty fertile ground for a memoir, too."

I assume I'm not the only one that had that reaction, as now, six years later, Takei and the same creative team who helped turn his memories into that first book are back with a new work, It Rhymes With Takei, a memoir that covers just that subject and period of Takei's life.

But not just that. At some 330 pages, it is essentially Takei's biography, covering his entire life, but organized around the throughline of Takei's sexuality, his life and career in the closet and the eventual, gradual process of coming out, first to his family (which, in at least one instance, didn't go too well) and then, given his relative celebrity, to the whole world.

Takei is currently 88 years old and was born in 1937. He had a pretty good reason to keep his sexuality a secret for as long as he did. He developed a passion for theater in college that lead to his pursuit of a career in acting, and he had seen what happened to a favorite actor of his, Tab Hunter, when the press discovered that Hunter was gay. 

And then, of course, there was the fact that being gay was, to a certain degree, literally illegal when Takei was a young man, with police raids of gay bars an ever-present fear for him when he would occasionally decide to visit one, often against his better judgement.

While Takei's fraught relationship with his own sexuality is the organizing principle of the book, It RhymesWith Takei essentially covers his entire life (the time in the concentration camp as a child is mentioned but not dwelled on, of course, given that there's a whole graphic novel about that). So readers will learn a bit about his childhood, his education, a formative trip abroad to study Shakespeare, his early work in Hollywood, his early theater career, his big break in Stark Trek, his activism, his off and on work in politics, a relatively short stint working on transit in California and his post-Star Trek life as a minor celebrity, seemingly forever tied in the public imagination to that one particulary gig. 

Several relationships of several sorts are covered, from a furtive hookup in college, to a creative relationship that included a romantic element, to a bad relationship in the 1980s, to his finally meeting Brad Altman, the man who would eventually become his long-time partner and then, when gay marriage was finally legalized, his husband. 

As American culture seems to gradually relax a bit towards expressions of gay life in the 1980s (at least compared to the decades previous), Takei doesn't exactly come out, but he does start to seem less paranoid about people finding out that he might be gay, including becoming visibly active fighting AIDS and even eventually joining a gay running group in Los Angeles, where he is immediately recognized (This, by the way, is where he would meet Brad). 

In 2005, he finally made the decision to come out, a carefully planned-out event, in which he submitted to an interview with a hand-picked journalist for Frontiers magazine. (Though the cover had a headline reading "Exclusive: George Takei Comes Out," it was Margaret Cho whose image was on the cover). 

I don't know what impact doing so actually had on his career at that point; I'm not really a television watcher, nor do I know anything about New York or Los Angeles live theater, so I can't tell you if he got more or less roles after that, but I suspect his roles increased. Or, at the very least, his visibility certainly seems to have increased, as once he came out, he was able to embrace acts of activism in a big way in TV interviews and on social media, which is mainly where I know him from (Well that, his appearance in Kevin Keller #6, which I doubt he would have made were he still closeted. Oh, and, of course, I know him as one of the creators of They Called Us Enemy).

Takei has lived a pretty amazing life, and though he is probably forever going to be best known for his appearances on the Star Trek show and its movies, he accomplished a lot, and moved in powerful circles, having met governors, presidents and prime ministers.

Mostly by an accident of his birth, his lifetime lined up pretty neatly with the history of the gay movement in 20th and 21st century America, and it's remarkable how much history he therefore saw and lived through, from seeing press attacks on Tab Hunter, clandestine hook-ups and secret gay bars, to the increasing visibility of gay men as human beings during the AIDs crisis, to events he witnessed from afar (like Stonewall, the assassination of Harvey Milk, Ellen DeGeneres coming out), to the state by state fights for gay marriage (which in part prompted his own coming out), to the Supreme Court ruling in favor of gay marriage in 2015. And, of course, in his career, he went from desperately hiding his sexuality to becoming a gay icon.

Now I'm not—or, perhaps I should say, I wasn't—a George Takei fan. I have, perhaps rather remarkably, never actually seen anything he's ever appeared in, be it Star Trek, or one of his film roles or any of his many television appearances (with the exception of Rodan and Godzilla Raids Again, which he did some voice work on; Rodan actually appears in one panel of the book). And as a Gen X straight white guy, my own life has very little resemblance to his. 

I say that just to note that I still found It Rhymes With Takei a fascinating read, an extremely compelling telling of a fascinating life, and the delineation of a rather hopeful historical arc experienced by a particular American minority. 

Somewhat unfortunately, there's no backmatter in the book explaining exactly how it was made. As you can see by the cover, Takei gets top billing, his name above the title while his co-creators have their last names stacked up in the lower lefthand corner. 

On the title page, the credits read:

Written By

George Takei

Art By

Harmony Becker

Adapted By
Steven Scott & Justine Eisinger

Presumably Scott and Eisinger turned Takei's story into a comic script of some sort, and perhaps did some form of breakdowns, but it's not entirely clear how exactly the book got made, which is something that is probably of greater interest to comics folks than the average reader. 

Becker's art is here presented in full color, in contrast with They Called Us Enemy, and much of it seems rather heavily referenced, especially later in the book as Takei's media appearances become more frequent, and the words of various politicians and other media personalities are quoted, giving many panels the look and feel of a Tom Tomorrow strip, albeit with thinner lines. 

For the most part the art is more serviceable than noteworthy, a quite effective vehicle for telling Takei's story. 

I'd highly recommend it as the story of an extraordinary American life...as well as the story of a celebrity who, chances are, you may know pretty well and the story of a gay man in America who happened to live through many tumultuous years and a lot of changes for the better, changes that seem to have been very gradual and slow, and then to have happened all at once. 

Komi Can't Communicate Vol. 34 (Viz Media) This volume is dominated by a cultural festival, in which Komi's class—which this time she leads as class representative—decides to do a ramen stand. This proves more difficult than expected, thanks to some regulations on the preparation of food and, especially, the various conflicting personalities and communication disorders of the class, like that of new character and prickly perfectionist Shota Kori. 

There's also some more advancement in Manbagi's unlikely romance with the shy soccer star Wakai (which makes me really nervous, I have to admit, due to how one-sided it seems to be as it develops, and I wish it got a little more attention, as it seems more dramatic than the cultural festival stuff), plus an over-the-top celebration of Komi passing her exams hosted by Rami and an unlikely discussion (complete with bets) regarding what kisses taste like (not spicy shrimp, apparently).

Night Drive (Fantagraphics Books) Richard Sala died in 2020, and this latest publication of the unique stylist's work contains generous supplementary material that gives additional insight into his career, personal life and death...all of which had always been a complete mystery to me, a fan who didn't upon his work after seeing some pages that captured his unusual mixture of the horror genre, sex appeal and an indie artistic aesthetic until the early 21st century. (He apparently died from a heart attack, at the age of 65, which likely meant a few more decades worth of work from him would remain unrealized.)

The title of the book comes from Sala's self-published 1984 anthology comic, a 30-page black and white book that included some 14 distinct stories, some of which are extremely short, only a page or two or three (I had to keep consulting Night Drive's table of contents to see when one story ended and another began). 

Many of these are quite simple in construction and read as dream-like poems paired with illustrations, in Sala's earlier, thinner-lined, more wiggly style; if you look at the cover above, for example, you can see clearly see the later Sala in it, but his art style is obviously not yet as refined as it would become.

This reprint of Night Drive is, of course, the heart of the book, a typically beautifully designed oversized (8.8-inch x 11.3-inch) hardcover from Sala's regular publisher, Fantagraphics.

The original Night Drive's title page includes a quote from writer Jorge Luis Borges: "The solution to the mystery is always inferior to the mystery itself," which serves as a sort of master key to unlocking so much of Sala's work, from these first short illustration and narrative mash-ups to his later graphic novels, which seem organized around the idea expressed in that quote, always bearing an air of mystery and filled with plot points that are rarely explained, his stories often being more suggested than delineated. 

The most famous inclusion in Night Drive is undoubtedly its longest story, the seven-page "Invisible Hands" which, in addition to featuring instances of what would become Sala hallmarks—colorful supervillains, animal masks, a beautiful woman, gunplay—is an early example of his sort of unexplained mystery story, full of genre-inspired imagery and events.

It also, rather famously, lead to an animated adaptation on MTV's 1991 Liquid Television, an anthology show I watched as a teenager, although I never connected that particular feature with the Sala of Peculia, Maniac Killer Strikes Again and his various works of the 2000s, wherein I first encountered his work. 

In addition to including the original (and apparently never before reprinted) Night Drive, this book includes about a dozen pages of similar short comics from the same time that were either intended for the original comic or a never produced follow-up (grouped here under "Outtakes") and a four-page collaboration between Sala and writer "Mark Burbey" for 1988 comic Street Music. 

Aside from the comics content, the book also includes a prose remembrance by Sala's friend (and occasional interviewer) Dana Marie Andra (who also wrote under the penname Mark Burbey), heavily illustrated by Sala's covers for Horror Show and Street Music and a handmade Christmas card; a section reprinting Q-and-A style interviews from The Comic Book Journal and Comic Book Bin and a blog post of Sala's about Night Drive and the "Invisible Hands" adaptation; and, finally, an afterword by Daniel Clowes. 

Although the Sala comics in Night Drive aren't his best nor most sophisticated work, they're important previews of what is to come, reading retroactively like an intriguing map of a magnificent career in comics and illustration that would flow from them. It's fascinating to see how much of Sala's style and interests were present here at the very beginning of his publishing career, and how they contain what is often more important in Sala's comics than the exact lines drawn or words written, the mood and spirit of his peculiar aesthetic.

I especially enjoyed all of the prose stuff about Sala, given how little I actually knew about him. Sala was about a generation older than me, and reading about his influences, I see I had very little firsthand experience with the works that informed his: Typical "monster kid" stuff, 1960s genre TV, Frank Frazetta, Jack Kirby, Hammer films, 1970s horror comics, Fantomas, German expressionist films, a wide variety of prose literature. This probably goes a long way toward explaining the fact that, in addition to appreciating his specific art style and the moody, mysterious, Lynchian vibe of his work, I often felt things in it rather than actually recognizing them. (Reviewing all the mentions that he or others made of his various influences in the prose pieces here, I think the only places a Venn diagram of them overlaps with my own pop culture diet is probably the writing of H.P. Lovecraft and the art of Jack Kirby).

Night Drive probably isn't the best place to start with Sala's work, but for his many fans, it's an extraordinarily rewarding read. 

Star Wars: The Battle of Jakku (Marvel Entertainment) As I've mentioned in previous posts discussing Star Wars comics, the time period of the franchise I generally find most interesting is that set after Return of the Jedi, as that was, at one point, the end of the "official" story of the original films' heroes and their conflict with the villains of the Empire, opening up the possibility of more imaginative adventures completely unmoored from the emergent continuity. Unlike other periods of Star Wars comics, those set post-Jedi didn't have to end at a certain place or keep things from changing too much.

That was certainly the case with those first Marvel Star Wars comics, which moved past the Rebellion Vs. Empire storyline pretty quickly after the release of Jedi (I reviewed collections of Marvel's post-Jedi issues in this post and this one). And it was, to a certain degree, the same with the Dark Horse comics of the 1990s, although as time went on, more and more of the official Star Wars story got filled in by the increasing number of novels and other "Extended Universe" media (I've been trying to read those via Marvel's Epic Collections, but they are proving harder to find than I'd like; I reviewed the first collection here and the second here). 

By the 21st century, it seemed that the novels, comics and video games had mapped out much of the rest of the lives of Luke, Leia, Han and company, and various creators turned their sites on the ancient past and far-flung future of the Star Wars galaxy. So while the 2015 slate cleansing of the "Extended Universe" continuity that accompanied the release of new film The Force Awakens did strike me as rather unfortunate (there were so many comics and novels at that point, I could probably have spent the rest of my life trying to catch up on what I had missed), it did at least offer a somewhat intriguing opportunity. 

That is, if nothing else, the post-Jedi future was once again wide open, and the original Star Wars heroes were again available for brand-new, not-yet-chronicled adventures, right? 

Well, sort of. 

The downside of Star Wars getting a Crisis on Infinite Earths-like continuity reboot that relegated all of the non-film stuff into a new, non-canonical "Legends" status was that the post-Jedi period now had an end point it had to line-up with, that of the status quo presented in The Force Awakens (Even if it did leave a few decades in which new stories could be told). And while there were certainly admirable aspects of the new trilogy, it was, overall, disappointingly familiar (I wrote at the time of The Force Awakens' release that it felt as much like a remake as a sequel), and at its core it presented the very same Rebels vs. Empire conflict as the original trilogy, rendering Jedi not so much an exclamation point as a comma, and our heroes (well, Leia at least) stuck fighting the exact same damn conflict for decades.

This is all a very long way of saying that I was excited—even if it's a somewhat reserved sort of excitement—for Marvel's Star Wars: The Battle of Jakku, an almost 300-page trade paperback collecting a series of miniseries from last year set in the still relatively little-explored post-Jedi, pre-Force Awakens period in which Luke, Leia, Han and company are still important players. This, after all, was the new, new, new post-Jedi version of Star Wars, and the first time since regaining the license that Marvel would be producing new comics not closely tied to the events of one of the trilogy of film trilogies.

I'm sorry to confess that I found it somewhat disappointing, especially because it was written by Alex Segura, a comics pro whom I like a lot and who, being a comics person-turned-novelist whose resume includes some Star Wars prose work, sure seems like an ideal candidate to produce new Star Wars comics. 

I'm not entirely sure how to diagnose my disappointment, I'm afraid, so bear with me here as this portion of the post meanders a bit.

Is it the specific construction of the book, which reads less like a new Star Wars film in comics form (as my favorite Star Wars comics generally have) than a Star Wars novel or TV series in comics form? (And hell, perhaps the novel or the TV series are the predominant media for Star Wars stories at this point).

Is it the breaking up of the band, so that our heroes are rarely together in this storyline, with only Leia and Luke present throughout, though usually doing their own things? (Lando comes and goes, and Han, who leaves with Chewbacca and the droids on the first page, doesn't return until very late in the book.)

Is it the failure to live up to its title, which promises to tell the story of the battle that littered new trilogy hero Rey's desert planet with the Imperial wreckage she's seen exploring in The Force Awakens...? (The battle will eventually be fought, but not until the last pages of the collection, some ten issues or so worth of comics into this storyline.)

Or is it, as I suspect, the need to connect to the other post-Jedi, pre-Force Awakens novels and TV shows, of which there are apparently enough to dictate the comings-and-goings of various characters? (I was interested enough in this new post-Jedi continuity that I read Chuck Wendig's Aftermath trilogy of novels when they were originally released between 2015 and 2017, which went a ways towards setting up The First Order incarnation of the Empire, and apparently committed Han and Chewie to Kashyyk at a certain time, which is why I guess they are absent throughout so much of Battle of Jakku.)

At any rate, the true star of this comics narrative is Grand Moff Ubrik Adelhard, whom I at first took to be a character original to these comics, but a quick consultation of Wookieepedia just now reveals that he actually debuted ten years ago in a mobile game. (I didn't look up every single character as they appeared in this comic, although I did feel compelled to do so; that's because pretty much all of them are introduced as if a reader should already be familiar with them, despite the fact that outside of Rae Sloane, who I recognized from her role in Aftermath, and the characters from the first trilogy of films, I didn't know any of these people.)

In the wake of news of the Emperor's death, Adelhard locks down his sector of the galaxy, initially denying the death of the Emperor, Big Lie-style. He has a small circle of allies that includes a punctilious female imperial officer, a big, masked Vader-esque lieutenant dressed all and black and an apparent Force witch of some kind, who hails from a group called "The Acolytes of the Beyond." 

This quartet and their agents and allies will spend the entire series betraying one another, and much of the plotting will revolve around their machinations and their jockeying with one another, all as Adelhard jockeys for a place within the emerging structure of the post-Palpatine Empire.

Adelhard builds alliances with unlikely actors throughout the series, including the gangster-like spice runners lead by a lady wearing the same full-head masked helmet that Keri Russel's character wore in Rise of Skywalker (I think this lady is maybe meant to be Russel's character's mom?). But after one defeat and/or one betrayal too many, he ends up going completely rogue, targeting both the remnants of the Empire and the emerging Republic in the titular battle, nihilistically hoping to kill off everybody. 

As for that battle, I must confess I don't quit get it. 

It's supposedly a final showdown between the two sides of the Galactic civil war, and meant to be final in a way that I guess the Battle of Endor wasn't, although it's not really clear why that's the case, or why the Empire and the Rebels/Republic amass all their forces there in the first place. 

Like, I don't always get the way that Star Wars applies various military concepts or story tropes to outer space...battles between armadas of spaceships don't really need to be anchored to particular planets, do they? (As I always understood the Battle of Endor and the Battle of Yavin, those basically happened where they did because, in the first case, the Empire lured the Rebels there with a cover story of a not-yet-operational Death Star and, in the second, because that's where the Rebel base was and the Empire came there to zap them with their first Death Star, right?) (Note: I also didn't understand the fact that a map to Luke's location was a story point in the last trilogy; like, why would you have a two-dimensional map of outer space with a trail marked on it rather than just, like, a set of coordinates...?)

Leading up to it, however, is a whole lot of standing on bridges and in conference rooms, talking politics and battle plans, on both sides. 

As I said, much of the attention is paid to Adelhard and his contentious inner circle, but we also see a lot of Leia and Mon Mothma doing the same (Leia, about halfway through the book, will start showing a belly, and in her few action scenes, she's quite visibly pregnant. The scripts don't really acknowledge this in any way until she finally gives birth at the end of the book, though, at which point the whole cast of heroes from the original films finally reunite around her and the baby on the penultimate page.) 

There seem to be four primary artists involved—Leonard Kirk, Jethro Morales, Luke Ross, Stefano Raffaele—but none of the art really sings. Given how established the galactic setting is at this point, and how much of this particular series is set aboard Star Destroyers, there's not a whole lot for the artists to actually invent, and they are mostly employed drawing familiar Star Wars corridors, conference rooms, ships, armor and costumes. 

The likenesses tend to vary depending on the artist, and thus the scene but, again, Luke and Leia are really the only characters played by familiar actors who appear throughout the series. When Han does return later, apparently after his Kashyyk adventure, he sports a beard.

There are a few scenes where Luke ignites his light saber and Stormtroopers shoot blasters where it really feels like Star Wars, and there's a scene where a big, goofy-looking monster appears to chase Luke and his pilot partner a bit, where I actually sighed in relief and thought, "Finally," but, for the most part, this, I am sorry to say, felt more like a bloodless exercise in continuity dot-connecting than an attempt to capture the various virtues of the films in the comics medium.

I want to read new comics featuring the heroes of Star Wars, and while I assumed this post-Jedi story would give its creators the opportunity to tell a new and exciting story with those heroes, that's not how it turned out. I'd prefer more big, goofy alien monsters, and less Republic or Imperial politics, I guess. 

Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead Vol. 17 (Viz) I admit I am far from an expert on the zombie genre, which has so exploded in the past 20 years or so it seems way too big for a more casual fan to keep up with, so I'm honestly not sure: Has anyone done zombies in space before...?

Haro Aso and Kotaro Takata get there in this seventeenth volume of their life-affirming zombie apocalypse comedy. It seems like an odd direction for the book to take at this point, as the world is now some months (maybe even years?) into a zombie apocalypse, and I confess some skepticism when I saw the cover, and the title of this story ("Outer Space of the Dead") and flipped through to see rockets and our heroes in space suits.

But the creators make it work. One of the increasingly few remaining items on our protagonists' collective bucket list of things to do before becoming zombies is "Experience zero gravity," and I wonder to what degree crossing off the items on that list influences the stories Aso and Takata decide to tell. 

At the volume's opening, our heroes are lounging on a beach, but after an extremely loud boom and a horde of zombies following it, they find themselves at headquarters of Star W, a private space exploration company that has been prepping an unmanned rocket for a test launch throughout what Shizuka calls "the pandemic." 

With electricity provided by windmills, plenty of astronaut food to live on, and a high barb-wired fence to keep the zombies out, charismatic Star W founder Hirotaka Ukaji and his employees have kept busy pursuing his dream of "Japan's first civilian-led... ...manned flight to outer space! And launched from Japanese soil to boot!"

Our heroes are present for the test flight, but as the countdown begins, things go wrong, as they so often do in zombie narratives. A section of the fence collapses and zombies swarm. Akira and his freinds have a plan to save Star W's many employees, and it involves luring all of the zombies beneath the rocket's thrusters, where they will be incinerated during the launch, but there's a catch they don't think of until it's almost too late: What happens to them when the rocket blasts off?  

The solution, of course, is to board the rocket, which they do with Mr. Ukaji. That presents a whole new set of problems of course, including one that doesn't seem to make any sense, which I spoiled a few paragraphs ago, I guess: There are, somehow, zombies in space, despite how far removed the people at the International Space Station were from whatever caused the infection on Earth.

Or were they? There's an intriguing cliffhanger ending, one that ties into the few hints we've gotten so far about what set off Zom 100's zombie plague. Also intriguing? When our heroes reach space, they see an awful lot of lights still burning on earth, giving them some way to gauge how well civilization outside of Japan seems to be faring. At the very least, humanity seems to have managed to keep the lights on while the zombie pandemic rages. 

REVIEWED:

Don't Cause Trouble (Henry Holt and Company) Is Arree Chung's fictionalized memoir about growing up Chinese-American with a two very idiosyncratic parents and trying to be cool American Born Chinese meets Big Nate...? Personally, I've never gone in for those sorts of "it's X meets X" descriptions of comics or movies or whatever, as they often seem a little too pat, and they tend to do a disservice to all of the works involved, but I have to confess I thought of both of those very different comics while reading Don't Cause Trouble. Chung's book deals with some of the themes that American Born Chinese does, although it's more about being an outsider in general than being Chinese-American specifically, while the big-headed grade-schooler characters and the style in which they are drawn reminded me a bit of Lincoln Pierce's popular comic. It's really funny, and I enjoyed it a lot. More here. 

Godzilla: Skate or Die (IDW Publishing) There's a fantastic page-turning experience near the climax of this rather unique Godzilla comic.

In the last panel on a righthand page, a scientist is theorizing about an alien doohickey that fell to earth and seems to be attracting and enraging giant monsters Godzilla and Varan, who spend most of the book battling one another. The scientist says the thing's influence is spreading and that "Godzilla, Varan...they could just be the beginning...."

Then, when the reader turns the page, they are confronted with an awesome two-page splash depicting ten more Toho monsters, all rendered in bright pink, while the scientist and other characters appear small along the bottom of the page, the scientist declaring, "These pulses could awaken every kaiju on the planet!"

And thus, the fate of the world is at stake in this book, although our heroic skaters' main concern is much smaller: Saving their beloved skate park. 

Writer/artist Louie Joyce's Godzilla comic is at once completely atypical and faithful to the basic Godzilla narrative, which always revolves around human beings and their problems as related to the giant monster/s, but here the human beings involved aren't the usual scientists, reporters and military types, but rather a group of Australian skaters. It's fun stuff, and another good argument for IDW and/or Toho allowing various creators with their own distinct styles to essentially go nuts with the long-lived IP. More here. 

Reel Life (Graphix/Scholastic) Cartoonist Kane Lynch's graphic novel follows sixth-grader Galen as he faces a series of dramatic alterations to his family life, which seem to begin when his dad cheats on his mom. To help process these changes, Galen and his best friend, who make movies in their spare time, attempt to make a documentary about his parents' divorce. More here. 

When exactly was Plastic Man's Justice League tenure? A surprisingly difficult question to answer!

So, we all know that Plastic Man joined the Justice League during Grant Morrison's run on the1997-2006 series JLA, right? 

Now, if you asked me, say, a few weeks ago when Plastic Man joined the Justice League, I would have guessed that he did so in 1997's JLA #5, as that is the first time he appeared on the cover of the book. 

But, as I recently discovered while revisiting some of the earlier arcs of Morrison and company's JLA—which was not only one of my favorite comic books ever but was one of my favorite things ever—Plastic Man's induction into the team was a rather gradual, slow-rolling affair.

So when, exactly, did Plas join the JLA? 

Was it JLA #5? 

That was, as I said, when he first appeared on the cover. A very busy done-in-one story entitled "Woman of Tomorrow", several scenes of it were devoted to Justice League try-outs. Plastic Man was one of the heroes who showed up on the lunar Watchtower to apply to the League, but he only actually appears in a single panel, the one above. 

He doesn't get interviewed (like Max Mercury, Damage and "Hitman" Tommy Monaghan do), nor does he get immediately accepted (as Tomorrow Woman does). 

He would, of course, eventually join—as would Green Arrow Connor Hawke, Aztek and Steel, all of whom also cameo in this issue among the others applying—but not in this particular issue. 

Was it JLA #11? 

That was the second part of the six-issue epic "Rock of Ages", which included the above scene. 

Batman, in his Matches Malone guise, approaches Eel O'Brien at a New York City bar, apparently to make an overture towards recruiting him for a League mission. 

There are a couple things I didn't really like about this scene—the potty humor in one of Plas' asides to the ladies, the fact that he has apparently used "more oil...than they have on the beaches of Kuwait" in his hair despite the fact that he can control his body on a molecular level, the fact that his tongue splits into three separate horns in a Looney Tunes-esque response to the threat to set him aflame—but it also has its attributes.

Artists Howard Porter and John Dell do a great Plastic Man, one that's clearly recognizable even without his costume. I like the idea that pretend criminal Matches and reformed criminal Eel might run in similar circles. I like the implication that Plas sees through Batman's disguise when Batman slips into his "real" voice momentarily, as indicated by Plas' use of quotes around the name "Matches". 

And, of course, by the end of the arc, this will prove an effective scene, demonstrating that Batman has approached Plas about something, without revealing exactly what.

Was it JLA #15? 

That's the sixth and final chapter of "Rock of Ages", in which regular artist Porter is joined by unlikely guest artists Gary Frank and Greg Land (whose art is obviously not that of Porter, but whose particular styles might not be recognizable as that of theirs, perhaps because they hadn't at that point arrived at their styles; the above panels are obviously by Porter). 

That is when we find out that Plastic Man has infiltrated Lex Luthor's Injustice Gang, having replaced The Joker (Which is discovered when Ocean Master finds The Joker tied up and gagged in a closet; Plas-as-Joker stammers an excuse as Luthor points a gun at him: "Me and my crazy gags, huh? You know me, Lex! Laughing fish one minute, tied up...uh...Joker clones, the next.")

That's when we first see that Plastic Man is working with the JLA (this is apparently what Batman-as-Matches had recruited him for a few issues earlier in the arc), however he's not yet officially on the League.

"You're not one of the Justice League", Luthor says to Plastic Man in the very next panel following those above. 

Later in the issue, after Plastic Man has helped Batman, Superman, Martian Manhunter and Green Arrow defeat the Injustice Gang—he uses his shape-changing powers to counteract Circe's magical ability to change men into animals and then later punches out the real Joker with a fist at the end of a stretchy arm—Superman shakes his hand. 

"Thanks for your help..." Superman says. Batman adds, "Plastic Man...We'll be in touch."

Was it JLA #16? 

That issue, entitled "Camelot", is the first of a two-part arc devoted to new villain Prometheus' attack on the Justice League. In it, the media is invited to the Justice League's Watchtower to meet the new team line-up, which is introduced in a two-page spread (and is thus too big for my scanner, sorry). 

This line-up includes Plastic Man, who is here officially a member of the Justice League...along with Zauriel, Steel, Huntress and new Wonder Woman Hippolyta (Temporarily replacing her daughter Diana, who John Bynre had temporarily killed off or made into the goddess of truth or some such in her own title). Orion and Big Barda show up at the end of the next issue, apparently assigned to protect earth by then-Highfather Takion. Oracle is also a member, although she obviously works from home, as per usual. 

So yes, I guess the actual answer as to when Plastic Man joined the Justice League is JLA #16. I was way off.

(The story of how the new line-up was gathered is left untold in the title proper, but Christopher Priest, Yanik Paquette and Mark Lipka fill in some of the blanks in "Heroes," the lead story from JLA Secret Files & Origins #2; Plastic Man is only in a handful of panels though, and it doesn't show his actual recruitment, perhaps because Morrison had previously teased it in JLA. Today the story seems particularly interesting in part because of how it, and a few scenes in the main title, present Aquaman as one of the team's leaders, alongside Superman and Batman. Wonder Woman, again, was busy in her own title.)

As for when Plastic Man leaves the team, well, that's even trickier. 

He survived the next two changes of writers, being the only character other than the Big Seven to survive the line-up purge when Mark Waid took over with 2000's #43, and sticking around when Joe Kelly took the baton from Waid with 2002's #61.  

In 2003's #76, in the aftermath of Kelly's "Obsidian Age" storyline, Plastic Man quits to spend more time with his son (who Kelly had introduced about ten issues previously). Plas goes to great lengths to purge his own mind of his Plastic Man persona, so he can be a father full-time, but Batman again recruits him when the team needs him at the climax of the "Trial By Fire" arc. 

In attempting to purge himself of his weakness to fire, J'onn J'onnz transforms into Fernus, a "Burning Martian," and he eventually has the League on the ropes. Batman reasons that Plastic Man's plastic brain is immune to psychic attack, and that his shape-changing abilities will level the playing field against those of a Martian:

"Martians adapt form through study," Batman says of Plastic Man's ability to go toe-to-toe with Fernus:

Nearly instantaneous study thanks to the telepathy, but it's still methodical. 

Plastic Man is inspiration made form.

The Martian can't compete without full concentration.

And so Plastic Man grows to giant size and engages the similarly gigantic Martian. 

When Fernus tells Plastic Man is out of his league, Plastic Man corrects him: Untrue, mon flammable frere! I still have all privileges to the JLA scouts club!" Apparently, his leave of absence was always meant to be temporary, then. 

And then, shortly after the conclusion of "Trial By Fire," the JLA title gets...weird for its last three years or so, with the book become something of an anthology title with rotating creators on each arc. 

After the conclusion of "Trial By Fire," Kelly will write two more issues, #90, a done-in-one which ties-up a plot thread regarding Batman and Wonder Woman and in which only they and a few other Leaguers appear, and #100, which is Kelly's final issue on the title, but sets up the 12-issue 2004-2005 Justice League Elite maxi-series, in which the Justice League also appears. 

Plastic Man is shown to still be on the team through the end of that series, his last appearance in it being in Justice League Elite #10 (cover-dated June of 2005). 

Meanwhile, in JLA proper, Plastic Man appears in some of the post-Kelly arcs (The Denny O'Neil-written "Extinction" from #91-93, the Kurt Busiek-written "Syndicate Rules" from #107-114) but is absent from others (John Byrne and Chris Claremont's "The Tenth Circle" from #94-99, the Chuck Austen-written "Pain of The Gods" from #101-106). 

So Plastic Man seems to be on the JLA right up until it disbands over the course of the title's penultimate arc, the Geoff Johns and Allan Heinberg-written "Crisis of Conscience" from #115-119 (with cover dates between August and November of 2005). 

In that story, which explores the fallout of events revealed in the Bard Meltzer, Rags Morales and Michael Bair Identity Crisis miniseries, the current JLA dissolves, as many members peel away as the story progresses: Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman and The Flash. 

At the end of the arc, the League is just J'onn J'onnz and Green Lantern John Stewart, and they are in the process of discussing new recruits when Superboy-Prime attacks, destroying the Watchtower and seemingly killing J'onn. 

Plastic Man doesn't appear at all in "Crisis of Conscience," and it seems that Johns and Heinberg simply didn't know or forgot he was on the team, and editor Mike Carlin failed to remind them. 

The title would last for one more arc, an Infinite Crisis tie-in written by Bob Harras and eventually collected as "World Without a Justice League" (#120-125). The arc, which mostly follows Green Arrow Oliver Queen as he and other allies deal with the events of the event series, opens with an Aquaman-led ceremony at the old Happy Harbor headquarters, wherein he makes a speech, and various past Leaguers pick up handfuls of dirt and let the wind blow them away.

Plastic Man is at the ceremony (and on the cover), and that, December 2005's JLA #120, is his final appearance in the title, which would only last a few more issues anyway. 

So, when did Plastic Man leave the Justice League? It's not entirely clear, but apparently somewhere between panels of "Crisis of Conscience", I guess. 

On The Champions Classic Vol. 1

In my last post, I said that I would be covering the first 560 pages or so of Marvel's Ghost Rider saga, via a copy of Essential Ghost Rider Vol. 1. That wasn't entirely accurate, though, as there were some early Ghost Rider appearances missing from that collection, including an issue apiece of Marvel Team-Up and Marvel Two-in-One and, of course, any issues of The Champions. 

That last title was, of course, the name of a short-lived, West Coast superhero team that Ghost Rider joined, lasted a team shoe title lasted just 17 issues between 1975 and 1978.

And unlike so many other Marvel superhero teams, The Champions never really received a proper revival. Part of that is due to the legal issues involving the team name, I suppose, but, more likely it had to do with the oddball nature of the team, the lack of cohesion among its members and, even more so, its non-existent raison d'etre. Like what, exactly, was the point of The Champions, really? They seemed so randomly assembled that they made Marvel's famously non-team team The Defenders look like The Fantastic Four.

(While the original, 1975 incarnation of the team was never revived there would, of course, be later West Coast-based Marvel super-teams, like the West Coast Avengers and The Order, and the name "The Champions" would eventually be reclaimed in 2016 by a group of teenaged heroes. The only time the original Champs were ever really seen again tended to be in flashback stories, though).

It's hard to guess why exactly that might be over 50 years later, of course, beyond those broad problems that I had already mentioned. Additionally, there were apparently some significant publication delays, even if the book was meant to be bimonthly for some of its run. And, of course, there was a pretty remarkable merry-go-round of creators involved in the book's short life.

The credits on the first issue's opening splash page start with "Series conceived and written by Tony Isabella," but regardless, Isabella only wrote only five of the first 11 issues (and got a "plot" credit for a sixth, written with Bill Mantlo). Chris Claremont was credited as "guest writer" on issues #4, and Mantlo took over for writer with issue #8 (According to comics.org, Isabella's last issue of Champions came out in August in 1976, the same month as his last issue of Ghost Rider, which then assistant editor Jim Shooter apparently re-wrote part of, drastically changing a somewhat long-running plot point of Isabella's). 

The art wasn't too terribly consistent either, although given the fact that Big Two comics in the seventies hewed so much closer to basic designs and a sense of house style than their later comics would, the book reads smoothly enough. 

Don Heck penciled the first two issues and came back for issues #5 and #6. George Tuska handled issues #3, #4 and #7, Bob Hall drew issues #8-#10 and, finally, John Byrne handled #11 (And he got a pretty interesting credit in it; his was the final one, coming after those for letters, colors and editing, and read, "And introducing the pulse-pounding pencils of John Byrne--Artist").  

And that is just the first 11 issues of the title, which is all I have to go on, as I have before me a 2006 trade paperback collection entitled Champions Classic Vol. 1, borrowed from a local library. The back half of the series was collected in 2007's Champions Classic Vol. 2, along with what must have been guest appearances in other titles, and it seems like the team's entire 1970s publishing history was collected later still in 2018's Champions Classic: The Complete Collection. 

I can't find copies of those books though, so for now let's just read the first 11 issues of the series, shall we? Here are some thoughts that occurred to me while I did so...

•The cover of the first issue (and those of the next ten too) screams the line-up at the reader, listing each hero with an exclamation point just above the book's title. So, what have we got? A couple of ex-X-Men (Angel and Iceman), a former Avenger (Hercules), an Iron Man villain-turned-Avengers ally most recently seen as Daredevil's partner (Black Widow) and, finally, a still rather new-ish character who had never been affiliated with a team before (Ghost Rider). A pretty odd mixture, I think anyone would conclude...even, I imagine, regular Marvel readers circa the late 1970s.

•I referred to the team above as a West Coast super-team which, from afar, would seem to be the organizing principle for the team, a sort of West Coast answer to the Avengers (Coming some years before the more directly so West Coast Avengers, of course). That's not quite why the team is formed, though. It's never articulated on any of its pages that most of the Marvel's superheroes seem to hang out in New York City, anyway, and that Los Angeles and the surrounding environs could therefore use a little superhero coverage.

Rather, this team's coming together seems to be more a matter of coincidence than anything else. All of the five heroes on the cover above just so happen to be in the same place at the same time, that specific place being the UCLA campus, and that specific time being when otherworldly foes arrive there to attack and abduct Hercules...and another Olympian, Venus, who is apparently posing as humanities professor Dr. Victoria Starr. (It's unclear to me after minutes and minutes of Internet research if this Venus is meant to be the same one who shows up in later 21st century Hercules comics or any of the various Agents of Atlas comics)

•What brings all of these heroes to UCLA at the same time? Well the former X-Men are there as apparent students, although a brief conversation between the two, and a narration box referring to them as "confused young men," makes it sound like neither Angel Warren Worthington III or Iceman Bobby Drake intend to finish their degrees. 

"Prof X was great-- gettin' me a scholarship here and all--" Bobby tells Warren, "But I guess college isn't what this little mutant is lookin' for."

As for the Widow, Natasha Romanoff is there with her "old friend" (and sometimes mentor/driver/love interest) Ivan Petrovich. She's come to apply for a job as a Russian teacher, and she wears a purple skirt over her regular tight black bodysuit. It's a weird look, but one that allows for Ivan to cry, "'Tash! Strip for action!" when various mythological menaces appear on campus.

Hercules? Well, he's there as a guest-lecturer.

And, finally, Ghost Rider? Well, by this point he has relocated to Hollywood to serve as a stuntman in Stunt-Master's TV show, and he's only on campus to deliver a package from his new friend Katy Milner to her brother, who attends school there.

So yeah, it's basically just a bunch of coincidences. The players are all in place though when harpies, Amazons, Cerberus and mutates all attack, at the orders of Pluto and his allies Ares and Hippolyta. The Greek god of death has a rather convoluted (and kinda dumb) plan: To force Venus to marry Ares and Hercules to marry Hippolyta and, with these potential enemies of his wed to his allies and thus somehow unable to contradict or fight them, Pluto can go ahead and overthrow Zeus and conquer Olympus.

•So hey, stupid question: Where do Warren's wings go when he's in disguise as a normal human? Does he just bind them, or otherwise stuff them under his clothes, and they then seem to disappear...? They seem awfully big to be able to comfortably hide under a shirt and blazer, as he apparently does here. 

Iceman just ices up, apparently freeze-drying his street clothes so that they simply crumble off of him (I do wonder what happens to his wallet, though). He's therefore able to start fighting harpies right away, while Warren has to dash off to change into his superhero costume. 

When Warren returns, Bobby asks what happened to his mask, and Warren says he's decided to go public with his identity.

I would have asked what happened to his shirt, and if he's sure about that headband. 

•Ghost Rider, who almost has his head taken off by a rather Kirby-esque looking giant who calls himself Cerberus and later turns into a (one-headed) giant dog, transforms into Ghost Rider, and uses the word "fracus". 

He did so at least three times in the Isabella-scripted issues of Ghost Rider, too. I'm assuming that Isabella and editor Marv Wolfman (who edited both Ghost Rider at the time and these earlier issues of Champions), must have just agreed that there's a "u" in "fracas"...? Me, I like to just pretend that Johnny pronounces it funny, whether he's thinking it to himself as above or saying it aloud.

•Speaking of assumptions, I would guess the various Olympians in these first few issues all first appeared in the old Thor comics, or something else Jack Kirby was drawing? They are all very much apiece with Kirby's Asgardians and New Gods, their costumes more tights than togas. 

•In further discussion of his plan, Pluto tells readers that he seems to have unionized the various death gods and devils of the Marvel Universe. Note that both Satan and Mephisto seem to be completely different and distinct personages here.

•Eventually the goofy-looking Zeus-powered supervillain The Huntsman appears and, with a bit of trickery, he's able to kayo the Champs and make off with the unconscious Hercules and Venus, taking them back to Olympus, where the mortal heroes are unable to follow them. Defeated, Johnny, Black Widow and the two mutants all walk away from one another in different directions. This is the end of the second issue.

•And this is the opening of the third issue. Yowza! As I said on Bluesky, I'm not sure why this George Tuska and Vince Colletta splash wasn't used for the cover, which is simply an image of the heroes punching out mutates while Pluto and Zeus look on, and a caption reads "Assault on Olympus!" 

This splash, meanwhile, is like an early pre-cursor to the swimsuit specials.

Anyway, Warren and Natasha are apparently so broken up about seeing Hercules abducted right out from under them that they retreated to Warren's beach house and stripped down to their bathing suits to pose in. Bobby, meanwhile, ice skates and thinks about what a loser he is and recaps the events of the previous issues. Interestingly, among his thought clouds is a mention of "The girl I loved, Lorna Dane." 

Apparently, Bobby is so closeted that he even thinks like a heterosexual! Of course, given how much time he spends around psychics, maybe that's necessary to keep his homosexuality a secret...

•Johnny Blaze shows up (maybe everyone exchanged contact information between issues?), wearing his regular leathers rather than swimwear. He's thought of a way to get them to Olympus and tells the others that one of the portals that Pluto had opened up on campus, a portal that Iceman blocked with a mountain of ice, may still be open if they can just dig their way through the ice. 

They do, carry out their "Assault on Olympus!", have a big fight, Ghost Rider tells off Zeus and convinces him to take his anger out on Pluto, and the five Champions-to-be and Venus return to Earth.

Why doesn't Venus, whose divine abilities, like Hercules', are basically superpowers, join up? I don't know. I would say maybe the goddess of love just isn't much of a joiner, but then she did join the Agents of Atlas, a rather oddball super-team that lasted much, much longer than the Champs did (Although, again, these may be different versions of Venus...I know the Venus on the Agents' team is, after all, eventually revealed to not actually be the Olympian love goddess herself, although now I can't remember how long that fake Venus was meant to have been impersonating the real one...)

•Issue four of a brand-new series! Time for...a guest-writer...? 

That's how Chris Claremont is credited here, anyway. He joins Tuska and Colletta for a one-issue story in which yet another mad scientist is engaged in trying to re-create the super-solider serum that created Captain America. This guy, named Lansing, runs a state hospital that seems to essentially be some kind of nursing home, and he experiments on his charges, creating super-strong old men. It is played completely straight.

Our heroes basically just stumble into the plot. At the opening, Hercules and Black Widow are walking on the beach (this time Tuska draws Natasha not in a bikini, but rather her usual costume, and with a trench coat over that). They're kidnapped, brainwashed and then sent to attack Iceman, Angel and Ivan at the beach house, leading a small army of super-old men. Then Ghost Rider shows up. There's a big fight, and our heroes win. 

Though it's the fourth issue and a guest-writer, it's at the end of this story that someone finally suggests that maybe a team of some kind be formed. There are two panels of Hercules and Angel arguing about the fate of the mind-shattered old men, and Angel gives a bit of a speech, the last of it over an image of the team standing side-by-side in silhouette:

All Right! 

There is evil in the world, Hercules--and Lansing was a part of it. 

But there's good as well--and we're a part of that!

The question is: Do we do anything about it--or do we sit around crying in our beer? 

Like it or not, folks, we're unique, we've got power--and I hope the responsibility--the duty to use it wisely...

To help those who can't help themselves, the innocents, the victims of people like Lansing. 

Because...the world still needs...CHAMPIONS...

•The villain of Champions #5, which sees the return of Isabella and Heck (the latter of whom shares an "artists" credit with John Tartag), is apparently named Rampage, and he is introduced on the opening splash page like so, "Presenting: The everyman of super-villains...the first menace borne of the recession..."

So, um, was there a recession in 1976? I wouldn't even be born until the following year, so you can't blame me for not having been up on current events in the late 1970s. 

Is this the time of high oil prices and long lines for gas, of "stagflation" and Jimmy Carter's so-called "malaise speech"...? 

Isabella certainly seems to be highlighting Rampage as a character whose backstory revolves around the economic climate at the time.

He's Stuart Clarke, a brilliant inventor with his own company, a company that his lawyer advises him must declare bankruptcy if he hopes to fend off his many creditors. How brilliant is he? Well, he has designed a super-suit to rival the one Iron Man wears, we're told a couple of times (That's what he's wearing on the cover above, and it's powerful enough to allow him to exchange blows with Hercules).

 After almost two pages of narration explaining his downfall, he embarks on his plan: Wearing the suit, he will rob FDIC-protected banks (was that not all banks in 1976...?), so that the only one really being "hurt" is the federal government itself, "the very government whose ill-conceived policies caused the recession which has put my business in such dire straits."

•The Champions still aren't really a formal team or anything, but most of them are still hanging around L.A. together. 

Hercules is challenged by UCLA's football team. 

Black Widow, now wearing a vest and skirt over her costume, talks with the brooding Ivan, who thinks "Warren's ideas for the Champions" might be like those of "The Avengers or even your partnership with Daredevil" and will end with her being hurt. 

"It's nothing that makes any logical sense," she tells Ivan of the team, which, um, might have been part of the team's problem. "Just a feeling. You know, the Champions are really a lot like us. Loners."

And as for the mutants? Well, they take a meeting with Warren's lawyer about his inheritance, and he learns just how rich he actually is. It's certainly rich enough to found and fund a super-team, and so before the issue is out he sits down with Hercules, the Widow and Ivan to talk about his idea for the Champions, for them to be "storefront superheroes"..."extending a needed hand when ordinary people face out-of-the-ordinary problems."

They will never actually get there...at least not in these first 11 issues, anyway.

Iceman misses the meeting because he's busy with the team's business manager, who we briefly saw in the first issue, where he was UCLA's lecture agent. The university fired him, blaming him for the damage Pluto's forces caused to campus, so Angel and Iceman hire him to manage the Champs.

Iceman doesn't sound like he wants to be part of the team, though, as his thought clouds reveal to readers that he's worried about operating too publicly as a superhero and risking his secret identity and that he "may want to chuck this whole Iceman bit someday-- --and live a normal life."

•The next issue continues to tie Rampage to the recession, the title page calling him "Rampage-- The Recession-born super-villain who could be YOU!!" and stating that this is "A tragedy of today." It takes the entirety of the issue, but the four heroes—Ghost Rider remains MIA in this issue, dealing with his own problems in his own book—eventually corner the villain. He tries to commit suicide, but a last-second ice shield blunts the explosion that would have done it.

In a bit of a twist accentuating the nastiness of our current capitalist system, Clarke/Rampage's lawyer, who we met in the previous issue, spends the last few panels being pleased with the outcome: "He never had a chance to alter my power of attorney status in regard to Clarke Futuristics. If I move fast enough, I can sell the company-- --and make a tidy fee for myself-- --even after paying his creditors."

•The Champions first came together when the enemies of one of their members attacked, and that's the case for this next arc of issues too, which will comprise issues #7-10. A team of (mostly) Soviet villains will come for defectors Ivan and the Black Widow. They are led by a new Crimson Dynamo, who turns out to have a connection to Ivan (Spoiler alert for a 49-year-old comic: He is actually Ivan's son), and they include The Titanium Man, Darkstar (making her debut here, apparently) and The Griffin (who I actually just looked up to make sure he wasn't from the Soviet Union; I'm actually not sure what he's doing hanging out with the others). 

The bad guy's also rescue Rampage from a certain prison sentence, but that particular alliance is rather short-lived, as the Dynamo tricks Rampage into detonating a bomb placed on his costume while in the presences of some of The Champions.

•With issue #8, Bill Mantlo takes over scripting duties, and he's joined by pencil artist Bob Hall and inker B. Patterson. 

•Angel's dumb costume is damaged in an explosion, and so he needs to change into another one. The Champs' business manager gets him one, but it is apparently an old one from his X-Men days...although the color is wrong...? It's not great (I've never been a fan of those head-socks that some X-folks like Cyclops and Gambit wear), but it's much, much better than the yellow and red costume Warren's been wearing up until this point. 

•That same business manager has arranged a big press conference to officially announce the formation of The Champions, but only Angel and Hercules are available to make it (Black Widow is captured, Iceman is searching for Black Widow and Ghost Rider has rushed the badly injured Rampage to the hospital). The villains are available, however, and so they attack Angel and Hercules. 

•Darkstar eventually betrays the other bad guys, rescuing the male Champs from an inescapable trap she herself had put them in with her powers and allowing them to rescue the Widow. She'll show up in issue #11 as well, and it seems like she's in the process of joining the team, but, according to the Internet, she never formally does so.

•In the final issue of the collection, penciled by John Byrne and inked by Bob Layton, the team seems to have finally become your standard superhero team, complete with a headquarters and a fancy new team vehicle with a "C" logo, and they monitor for crises that require superhero intervention. Here, it's an invasion by some shadowy aliens who have apparently appeared in a few other, previous Mavel comics. 

•This issue is heavy on guest-stars, as Black Goliath, Hawkeye and the Two-Gun Kid all appear.

•As for Black Goliath, he appears first in his civilian identity as Bill Foster, "Tony Stark's west coast rep." He's on the roof of the Challenger's new HQ as they test their new air car, which he apparently designed. He's dressed in a long white coat but, when the car malfunctions, he grows to giant size, ripping out of his civilian clothes, and revealing the costume he apparently wore underneath them (and which must also grow with him...?). Note the big collar; I guess that must fold down to fit under his shirt?

•Once he's grown giant and blown his cover, he introduces himself to the team as "L.A.'s hardest-to-miss, spanking new super-hero". As an LA-based superhero, he would seem to be a good candidate for joining The Challengers, but he apparently never officially does so either.

•The last panel of issues #11 is a cliffhanger involving Stilt-Man. I would really like to see how that turned out, and how a guy whose super-powers are apparently just stilts would prove a challenge to The Champions...