The Kents 9-12—"To the Stars By Hard Ways"

 

The saga of Superman/Clark Kent's ancestors ends with this last arc, "To the Stars by Hard Ways." 

As with the previous two storylines, it is told as a series of old letters ("epistolary style" is the technical term) sent from Pa Kent in Kansas to his son in Metropolis. These letters are written by either Jeb Kent, the bad seed of the Kent family; Jeb's brother, Nathaniel, who treads the straight and narrow as a lawman; or Mary Glenowen, a victim of the government's constant moving of Native American tribes.  

Not surprisingly, the focus here is on the two brothers and their disagreements, which have reached a breaking point. Jeb, who fought for the Confederacy, now rides with Jesse James and his gang. Nathaniel, who fought for the Union, is now a lawman with Wild Bill Hickok. A confrontation is inevitable, and the story doesn't disappoint. 

The art for this final act is from Tom Mandrake. His style is similar to Tim Truman's (who penciled the first eight issues), so the change is not as jarring as might otherwise be. What Mandrake lacks in Truman's attention to detail, he makes up for with a more fluid sense of movement among the characters. Swapping artists for the last part of a mini-series is often seen as a sign of deadline problems; however, Ostrander announced the change in the first issue, so it was obviously anticipated and part of the overall plan. Maybe Truman could only commit to part of the project, or Mandrake wasn't available for all of it. Decades later, all that matters is that the series ends strongly. 

True to his word, Ostrander avoids the temptation to show readers Superman in costume, even though there is a moment on the last page when such an appearance would not have been out of place. Readers would only recognize this as a Superman-adjacent project if they recognized the Kent reference in the title or noticed the stylized "S" worked into each cover. (With the latter, Mandrake is more subtle than Truman.)

The letters page in issue 11 provides the sources Ostrander consulted. On the same letters page, he states that he wants to tell more stories of the Kents (even if the conclusion of the arc feels, to this reader, like the important elements of their story have concluded). Obviously, those additional stories never came (or haven't come yet), which is a shame. Western comics were as rare as hen's teeth in the late '90s and are equally scarce today. 

Regardless, the twelve issues of The Kents are solid and enjoyable. A reader on Facebook opined that he doubts DC will ever reprint the book (even digitally) since it didn't sell well initially. The company also has plenty of other Superman stories to reprint that are more audience-friendly, as the character makes his way to the big screen again this summer. And that reader is probably right. 

Still, if you're haunting the back-issue bins and come across The Kents, it's worth the time. 

 

The Kents—"Brother Versus Brother"

 

 

 

The second arc of The Kents, issues 5-8 ("Brother Versus Brother") continues the excellence of the first four issues. Again, writer John Ostrander demonstrates his skills at turning copious research into compelling historical fiction. Penciller Tim Truman and inker Michael Bair again provide excellent visuals, capturing the gory intensity of the Civil War to complement Ostrander's scripts. 

Much of the groundwork from the first arc, "Bleeding Kansas," bears fruit here. Clark's ancestors, siblings Nathaniel and Jeb Kent, find themselves on opposite sides of the war. Nathaniel is a scout and spy for the North, while Jeb fights for the Confederacy and Confederacy-adjacent causes. The arc opens with Jeb's letter home to his sister, confessing that he's killed Nathaniel. (Spoiler alert: He hasn't.) 

Ostrander presents Nathaniel as conflicted. Yes, he wants to kill his younger brother since Jeb tried to kill him, yet he realizes that such vengeance is hollow. In a moment of retribution for a separate incident, he burns down the house of slavers who captured Sarah Freeman, a Black woman who lived next door to the Kents in Kansas. This fiery action alerts Nathaniel that no solution may be too extreme for his hatred and rage. 

Mary Glenowen, Nathaniel's love, has her own hardships, as this arc gives her a larger role than in previous issues. She faces prejudice not only because she is biracial, but also because her neighbors believe that she is sleeping with the young Black man she is helping to raise. Added to these trials are the continual advances of Jim Lane, a powerful politician, who wants Mary for his own lecherous purposes and will go to any lengths to have her. 

Highlights of the four issues are the depiction of Jeb's hellish first military battle; Lane's Order No. 11, basically a scorched-earth policy of retribution against Missouri (demonstrating that atrocities occurred on both sides); and cameos by John Wilkes Booth and a DC Western hero whose appearance is one of the few times I smiled during a grim storyline. 

In the present, Pa Kent and Clark discuss via mail why these old missives are best commented upon in print instead of by phone. Such commentary is necessary to the epistolary style of the story, of course, but it's nice to see Ostrander addressing the rather old-fashioned communication choice (even for the 1990s).  

My only complaint is the font size. This may sound like a "me" problem, but I have to believe other readers were similarly impacted by the struggle to read some of the text boxes. It's not only the size of the various fonts involved, but also the italics and the faux-script look to differentiate among the narrators. I have decent-ish vision, and I was often challenged by the size of the text. If DC ever gets around to reprinting this—and I hope the company does—using a larger, Absolute size would be helpful. 

On to the third and final arc of the series. 

The Kents—"Bleeding Kansas"

I've been wanting to read The Kents (1997-1988) for years, and thanks to a sale at my Local Comic Book Shop on Free Comic Book Day, now I can. 

The Kents is the story of Clark Kent's mid- to late-19th-century ancestors. The framing story shows Pa Kent, on his Kansas farm, unearthing an old box of letters, journals, and artifacts buried a century earlier. These items tell the story of Silas Kent and his sons, Nathaniel and Jebediah, Boston residents who relocate to the Kansas territory in 1854 to support the abolitionist movement with their presence and printing press. They are embroiled in the showdown between pro-slavery and free-staters incited by the Kansas-Nebraska Act. 

Silas Kent is the crusading reporter in the Kent family tree. At one point, he reprints the entire Declaration of Independence on the front page of his newspaper and rails against "border ruffians" from Missouri who cross into the Kansas territory to raise hell, stuff ballot boxes, and harass the Black populace and anybody who supports them. 

Nathaniel Kent is the Clark/Superman proxy, in appearance, action, and moral code. Accused of being against slavery but without personal acquaintances among the Black community, he sets out to rectify this character flaw by building a friendship with Tobias and Sarah Freeman and their son, Joshua, who live next to the Kent farm. He also falls in love with Mary Glenowen, the daughter of an English father and a Delaware tribe mother. Mary is also the betrothed of Wild Bill Hickok, one of several real-life individuals who mix with the fictional Kents. 

Jeb Kent is the problem child. He questions whether slavery is immoral and pummels his father with hypothetical questions about taking the law into one's own hands when the law itself is unjust. In response to one of his scenarios, Nathaniel points out, "It's not that [breaking the law] is right! It's that it is sometimes necessary." Jeb's preciousness—if that's what it is—foreshadows later events when he joins with the Missouri faction to terrorize abolitionists. Meanwhile, his frequent misspellings in letters to family back in Boston underscore, perhaps unfairly, his moribund thought processes and impetuousness. 

In the first four-issue arc, Luther Reid, about as hissable a villain as a reader could want, leads the pro-slavery faction. He takes lethal action against one of the Kents, inciting the remaining two to seek revenge. 

Writer John Ostrander dedicates The Kents to his wife, Kim Yale, who died before it was completed. It is obvious the book is a passion project for Ostrander, whose blending of history and fiction is seamless. One incident—the caning of Senator Charles Sumner, an abolitionist, by Representative Peter Brooks, in the Senate chamber after Sumner gave a speech criticizing two of Brooks' fellow senators—sent me scurrying online for corroboration. It was true, and just as horrific as Ostrander's account. 

To Ostrander's credit, the first arc shows more nuance to the opposing points of the slavey issue than the reader might expect. While anti-slavery forces are clearly shown as being on the wrong side of history (and morality, and common sense ...), their argument—that the government was guilty of overreach in demanding they divest themselves of "property"—is presented. And abolitionist John Brown, martyred for the cause, is shown to be too extreme in his methods to be effective at changing any minds. Of Brown's abortive attempts at Harper's Ferry, Ostrander has Pa Kent note, "The operation was a fiasco and Brown was captured and later hanged for treason, achieving with his death far more than he ever did with his life." 

Even Jeb Kent, firmly embedded on the wrong side of the issue, is shown to have second thoughts. When the posse Jeb runs with ambushes some free-state supporters and executes them, Jeb refuses to participate, provoking Reid's ire. 

Ostrander studiously avoids appearances of Superman in costume, content to have Clark and Lois Lane read the letters Pa Kent sends from Smallville to Metropolis. Only one incident, an Iroquois blanket with a symbol that looks very similar to the Man of Steel's stylized "S" logo, overtly calls the reader's attention to the bigger DC Universe connections. 

Based on past work, penciller Timothy Truman is obviously at home in the Western genre and contributes his typically detailed artwork here. Each character is delineated carefully, and the buildings, clothing, and landscapes feel true (whether the characters are in New York, Boston, or the Kansas territory). Inker Michael Bair delineates Truman's pencils to perfection. 

One bonus to reading the book in single issues is the letters pages. In the first issue, Ostrander explains how his original intent was to feature Deadshot's ancestors in the story. Publisher Paul Levitz suggested using the Kents, instead. It was a good call. While the book would tell the same story, it resonates more with Superman's adoptive family as the focus. 

"Bleeding Kansas" is a terrific first arc for this maxi-series and has me anticipating the rest of the story. Highly recommended. During this Summer of Superman, I'm surprised DC isn't reprinting The Kents, which would appeal to an audience beyond the usual superhero crowd. 

 

Superman vs. Shazam! is a missed opportunity

 

Of the treasury reprints that DC has offered in the last year or two, Superman vs. Shazam! is the first that has disappointed me. Where the other two '70s team-ups (Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, Superman vs. Wonder Woman) feel like event books, with ambitious stories that match the oversized artwork, Superman vs. Shazam! feels disjointed, crowded, and padded. 

Some of this disappointment comes from the script. Gerry Conway, who hit the tabloid Supes/Wonder Woman meeting out of the park, fumbles here with an overcomplicated story awash in DC continuity. It opens on Mars, in the castle of Karmang the Evil (yep, that's his name, a downgrade from his previous sobriquets: Karmang the Good, Karmang the Scientist, and Karmang the Sorcerer), who plans to destroy two different Earths and use the energy to bring the population of Mars back to life. 

Central to Karmang's plan are Black Adam, one of Captain Marvel's oldest foes, and Quarrmer, the alien doppelgänger for the Man of Steel, best known from Superman (original series) #233. Karmang transforms Black Adam into a replica of Captain Marvel, sending him to battle Superman on Earth One. He then sends Quarrmer, already a dead-ringer for Superman, to battle Captain Marvel on Earth S. Meanwhile, both Black Adam and Quarrmer have hidden "space-time engines" on both planets, which will "drive both Earths into collision," according to our Big Bad, thus creating the energy he needs to restore his people. 

Meanwhile, the real Superman and Captain Marvel, still partially under the thrall of Karmang's disruption rays (to which they were exposed in their battles with the fake versions), meet on Earth One to battle one another. It's a fight that takes most of the book, and yet is only peripheral to the plot. Mary Marvel and Supergirl must do the real heavy lifting, not only sussing out the threat of Karmang but also giving readers story-stopping exposition about Black Adam and Quarrmer. 

It's no spoiler to say that everything ends up the way it's supposed to, with the bad guys soundly defeated and both Earths safe, but getting there is awfully convoluted. As if this isn't enough, Conway also juggles silly subplots about Mary Marvel's crush on Superman and the toxic masculinity of Steve Lombard, one of Clark Kent and Lois Lane's co-workers. 

The artwork does the story no favors. Artists Rich Buckler and Dick Giordano are doing their best to channel Neal Adams, but the imitation—much like that of Quarrmer for Superman or Black Adam for Captain Marvel—doesn't work. Instead, the reader is left wishing that Adams had drawn the story himself. 

It doesn't help that the artists have a penchant here for bungling big action moments. For instance, we don't get a full-on view of Superman's face in his first appearance. Instead, we see his neck:

And then his neck (again) and his back:

And then a couple of profile or near-profile shots:

The scenes of Karmang on Mars are better. An interlude that provides the villain's backstory is drawn more dynamically than anything else in the book. But as soon as the story shifts back to Earth (either one), the clunkiness returns. 

My favorite missed opportunity in the multi-sequence Superman/Captain Marvel brawl is this one, which certainly belongs in the Awkwarded Posed Panels Hall of Fame: 

Thankfully, Superman's fist is visible, lest the reader believe that the Man of Steel has just hit Marvel in the family jewels. Yet somebody at DC thought this angle was splash-page worthy. 

And maybe it's just my copy, but the entire book looks muddy and dull, unlike the crisper reproductions in other DC tabloid reprints so far.

This is the first issue that wasn't worth my $14.99. Your mileage may vary, certainly, but it's hard to walk away from this without thinking of it as a missed opportunity to team these two iconic characters. 

Earth X ... at last

I bought Earth X four years ago, but only this May did I manage to read it all the way through. 

This says more about my eyes being bigger than my stomach, reading-wise, than about the quality of the work by Alex Ross, Jim Krueger, and John Paul Leon. 

Still, the book is dense, both in concept and execution. Readers weaned on more pedestrian crossover events (oh, all the villains have escaped from Arkham ... again!) may be surprised by how ambitious Earth X is. Its goal is nothing less than a unified theory of the disparate events at the bedrock of the Marvel Universe, encompassing the Celestials, Inhumans, and Asgardians, along with Uatu the Watcher and Galactus thrown in for good measure. And those are just the cosmic players. The book is also chock-full of the typical suspects—Reed Richards, Tony Stark, Captain America, Spider-Man, the Thing, et al. 

So, this is a book that swings for the fences. It doesn't quite get there, but it still offers much to recommend. 

First, the world-building and continuity bridges are impressive. Krueger, as writer (sharing story credit with Alex Ross, who also designed the futuristic landscape and characters), has set himself a Miltonian task (to "justify the ways of God to men," as the poet announced in Paradise Lost) by teasing out "a purpose to the throng of accidental heroes that Stan [Lee] and Jack [Kirby] created so many years ago." Earth, it seems, is home to a gestating Celestial, protected through the years by mutations implanted in the indigenous inhabitants. Said mutations present themselves as superheroes, but only after traumatic events, such as World War II (for many of the Invaders) or radioactive spiders (for ... well, you know), germinate the deeply buried seeds. 

Second, this may well be John Paul Leon's masterpiece. I haven't yet read The Winter Men, which some readers declare his finest work. Yet it's hard to imagine any other artist organically working so many heavy hitters into one story. The climactic battle between Galactus and the Celestials rivals any big-budget superhero film, and that's just one sequence among dozens that are equally jaw-dropping. 

It was also gutsy of Krueger, Ross, and Leon to use Aaron Stack, aka Machine Man, aka Mister Machine, as the story's protagonist. Outside of hardcore fans in 1999 (when Earth X was first published), who even remembered this character from Kirby's short-lived 2001: A Space Odyssey series? But Stack makes the perfect vehicle to observe a Watcher's dissolution into madness. That the creative team also worked in an appearance by the Monolith, the hunk of extraterrestrial stone that gave humanity's ancestors the edge over their enemies in Kubrick's original film, is a bonus. 

However, Earth X's biggest assets are also its biggest flaws. The ambitious plot is sometimes too convoluted. A teenaged Red Skull skulks about the periphery, a new Daredevil's origin remains fraught with mystery (if it was revealed, it flew over this reader's head), and a major plot point—all of humanity gaining superpowers—isn't explored in nearly the detail that it could (or should). 

A series that relies so much on the audience's previous knowledge of the Marvel Universe doesn't need origin recaps for the major players, but the book overflows with them. Worse, these summaries of Spider-Man, the X-Men, and the Fantastic Four don't provide any new analyses or breakthrough observations. 

And the ongoing battle of wits between Stack and Uatu becomes tiresome, especially when extended to text pieces at the end of each chapter. These could uncharitably be described as filler, something to fill the empty spaces around Ross's concept sketches. A better use of the pages comes in the appendix to Chapter Twelve, when Captain America offers an insightful analysis of his relationship with the Red Skull and with America itself. More insights like this would allow the words to compete with Ross's sublime designs.  

In the end, Earth X is a book that commands attention. It transcends the tired rationales for most large-scale events and delivers a carefully considered vision of the Marvel Universe's past and future, along with some slices of philosophy suitable for our own time. Despite flaws in pacing and an overabundance of underutilized characters, it's a book that deserves to be revisited.

Even if it takes some readers four years to do it. 

 

Lost Marvels 1: Tower of Shadows

 Tower of Shadows is the first volume in Fantagraphics Books' Lost Marvels line, dedicated to titles that Marvel apparently has no interest (re: financial incentive) in reprinting. 

It's a promising start. The sturdy hardback reprints most of the first nine issues of the short-lived anthology from the 1970s. "Short-lived" in its original incarnation, at least. With the tenth issue, Tower of Shadows was relaunched as Creatures on the Loose, took a more sci-fi/fantasy bent, and would eventually house the Man-Wolf solo series. 

The stories are not the main draw here. While a stellar collection of comics writers (Roy Thomas, Marv Wolfman, and Gerry Conway among them) fills these pages, the tales they spin are perfunctory rehashes of stories EC Comics did much better a few decades earlier. When Jake Wyatt grouses about the possibility of a robot taking over his drilling job in a mine in "Look Out, Wyatt ... Automation's Gonna Get Your Job" (Gary Friedrich, writer; John Buscema, penciler; and John Verpoorten, inker), the reader knows exactly what type of machine is going to show up soon and the role the setting will play in serving old Wyatt his just desserts. 

But let's face it, most readers will buy this for the art, by such standout draftsmen as Gene Colan, the aforementioned John Buscema, Barry Windsor-Smith, and Joe Tuska, many of whom are stepping away from the standard superhero fare that marked the majority of their careers. 

The best pieces are the ones where the artist also serves as the writer. This doesn't save them from formulaic, O. Henry-style plotting, but in most cases, the artists give a little extra to help them transcend the ordinary. We're talking "From the Brink!" by Johnny Craig, "Flight into Fear!" and "The Ghost-Beast!" by Wallace (Wally) Wood, two efforts from the severely underrated Tom Sutton, and, of course, "At the Stroke of Midnight" by the legendary Jim Steranko. That last one won an Alley Award and is, as the book's introduction states, "probably the stand-out story of the Tower of Shadows series." Unfortunately, it's also the first piece in the collection, so everything after is a slow coasting downhill where story satisfaction is concerned. 

The book's reproduction is great, given that these issues are fifty-plus years old. The art isn't garishly recolored but is presented in decent scans on paper that is far better than the original newsprint but still gives off the comics vibe. 

One caveat is that the book does not reprint two stories adapted from H.P. Lovecraft's work because of "legal questions." Nor does it reprint the stories that were themselves reprints of earlier Atlas/Marvel titles. The editors say they've been "naturally omitted," but I wonder how much it would have affected the price of the volume to include them, especially with the cutting of the Lovecraft material. 

Readers who like horror anthology comics (which I generally do) and/or the artwork of any of the gentlemen listed above will find much to like here. If you're looking for something that will compare to the glory of EC Comics in its heyday ... well, this isn't it. But then again, so few things are. 

Godzilla vs. Spider-Man

Of the three Godzilla oneshots released by Marvel so far, I expected the least of Godzilla vs. Spider-Man. Maybe that's why I liked it the most. 

Given Spider-Man's popularity, a meeting of the two characters could be seen as a blatant cash grab. Yet setting the story in the 1980s era, with Spidey newly garbed in his symbiote suit from Secret Wars, provides as much rationale as such a story needs. 

It makes sense that Godzilla, the "eighty-thousand ton surgeon," should head to New York to destroy the spreading "cancer" of the alien symbiote. And, just as Godzilla vs. Fantastic Four provided fan service by mixing the Silver Surfer's power cosmic with the Big G's own radioactive powers (to say nothing of a Godzilla-sized Thing battling him), this issue sees the black suit expanding its ambitions to kaiju-sized extremes. 

An unexpected delight of the issue is the inclusion of typical Spider-Man subplots—Mary Jane v. Black Cat, Peter being verbally abused by J. Jonah Jameson, and the perennial Parker woe-is-me soliloquy as he muses on his mistakes. 

Joe Kelly writes the script as a pastiche of Spider-Man stories from forty years ago (which never go out of style, apparently), while Nick Bradshaw channels the style of Art Adams to give the visuals a slick, ultra-detailed 1980s sheen. The result is the most effortless Godzilla mash-up yet. 

  

Godzilla vs. Hulk

 

It's taken forty-eight years, but Marvel has finally gotten around to the titanic match-up it promised back in Godzilla: King of the Monsters #1. 

On the letters page of that first issue, editor Archie Goodwin ran a one-panel gag by Dave Cockrum speculating about an encounter between the Big G and the Green Goliath. It didn't go well for the Hulk. 

The Hulk fares better in Godzilla vs. Hulk #1, the second in a series of standalone adventures starring Toho Studios' biggest star and various luminaries of the Marvel Universe. This issue is courtesy of writer Gerry Duggan, artist Giuseppe Camuncoli, inker Daniele Orlandini, colorist Federico Blee, and inker Ariana Maher. 

Duggan introduces a world where General Thunderbolt Ross's Hulkbusters organization has been on a mission to eliminate monsters from the world, including various kaiju. Ross has already dispatched the Hulk (or so he thinks) and is now baiting a trap for Godzilla in the desert. Oh, and two of his prized associates are Dr. Demonicus (who first appeared in the fourth and fifth issues of Marvel's original Godzilla series) and Dr. Bruce Banner. 

Revealing much more would ruin the fun of this monster mashup. Suffice it to say that Duggan meshes Godzilla, the Hulk, and various other aspects of the Marvel U in inventive ways. Those looking for epic, kaiju-sized battles will not be disappointed. Also, a dangling—and disturbing—plot thread regarding Rick Jones remains for another day. 

Camuncoli and Orlandini draw a Godzilla more in line with the original cinematic version of the creature than most of Marvel's renditions thus far. Their Hulk, however, looks a little anemic, and if it is meant to fit the '70s model of the character, it falls short in some places. (A variant cover by Scott Koblish and Rachelle Rosenberg looks more like the Hulk of this era.)

Overall, a fun comic! I'm looking forward to round three next month, when Godzilla meets the 1980s Spider-Man. 

'Enormous Radio' is parable for our socially saturated age

 

"The Enormous Radio" by John Cheever grows in relevance as society's experiences with social media become more entrenched. 

Originally published in The New Yorker in 1947, the story centers on Jim and Irene Westcott, married for nine years with two small children and living in a twelfth-floor apartment. Life is good for the Westcotts, who are mildly out of step with their neighbors, preferring a quiet existence buoyed by their love of classical music playing over the radio. 

When their old radio malfunctions, Jim buys a new one. Irene is at once struck by the "ugliness of the large gumwood cabinet," observing that the new set "stood among her intimate possessions like an aggressive intruder." Nonetheless, its tone is lovely — at first. Soon, Irene notes that the radio has a significant defect. Instead of picking up traditional broadcast stations, it somehow transmits conversations from other apartments in the Westcott's building. 

At first, this hiccup is endearing:

The Westcotts overheard that evening a monologue on salmon fishing in Canada, a bridge game, running comments on home movies of what had apparently been a fortnight at Sea Island, and a bitter family quarrel about an overdraft at the bank. They turned off their radio at midnight and went to bed, weak with laughter.

But soon, Irene finds herself obsessed by these clandestine peeks into her neighbors' lives and can no longer maintain a polite facade of ignorance in public. The listening becomes a daily ritual: 

Irene shifted the control and invaded the privacy of several breakfast tables. She overheard demonstrations of indigestion, carnal love, abysmal vanity, faith, and despair. Irene's life was nearly as simple and sheltered as it appeared to be, and the forthright and sometimes brutal language that came from the loudspeaker that morning astonished and troubled her. She continued to listen until her maid came in. Then she turned off the radio quickly, since this insight, she realized, was a furtive one. 

One day, Jim comes home to his wife's insistence that he go to a neighboring apartment and stop an abusive husband. Instead, he turns off the radio, scolds her for eavesdropping, and has a repairman fix the device the next morning. (No word on how the repairman reacts to a device that can spy on one's neighbors.)

But the damage has been done. As a colleague recently observed about a sensitive situation in the workplace, "Once you know, you know, and you can't ever not know again." Irene has peered behind society's curtain and found a humbug. Her faith in humanity cannot be restored. Nor can she return to that blissful state of unknowing. 

But Cheever saves one last revelation. Irene, the reader learns, is not as innocent as she appears to be, and in her own past, there are circumstances, decisions, and declarations just as petty, sordid, and shocking as anything blaring through the enormous radio. 

One of the themes of Cheever's story is the disquieting nature of moving from innocence to knowledge, wherever and however this happens. Parallel to this runs a moral for our oversharing, social media era, where all of us listen to the enormous radios of Facebook, X, Instagram, and more. The revelations there threaten to change forever how we view neighbors, family, and friends. 

What's worse is that so many of us—myself included—willingly speak into our enormous radios, sharing and oversharing, commenting incessantly with words we would be too timid to use face to face. 

Yet despite these revelations, or because of them, social media goes on and on, confidently infiltrating our lives, monetizing our shared secrets and shattered expectations, providing a mechanism by which we trust others less and build walls at the very time when we should be doing the opposite.  

At the end of "The Enormous Radio," Irene "held her hand on the switch before she extinguished the music and the voices, hoping that the instrument might speak to her kindly." 

Instead, the announcer brings the news of twenty-nine dead in Tokyo, followed by the weather. She—and we—can do nothing to effect change in either. 

The YouTube link at the top of the page is a wonderful CBS Radio Workshop adaptation of "The Enormous Radio." It's worth a listen.  You can find Cheever's original story here.  

The Unexpected No. 202

Easter was celebrated April 6 the year The Unexpected #202 was released with an Easter-themed cover and a September cover date. It might seem DC was late to the party, but newsstand comics were regularly dated several months ahead so that retailers would leave them on the shelves longer. (In my experience, this didn't happen—retailers removed each "old" issue when the new one came along, regardless of the cover date.)

I wasn't buying many comics for myself in 1980, so I don't know if this issue was a gift or if I picked it out. It could have been one of a handful of comics that showed up in my Easter basket that year, although the cover likely would have given my parents pause. 

Despite that nightmare-inducing rabbit, the scariest part of Luis Dominguez's illusration is the kid in the orange-and-yellow shirt. Those thick eyebrows reek of menace, and if little Yellow Dress had to choose between him and the giant bunny, she might have done better with the rabbit. 

The interior of the book is standard anthology fare for DC at the time. Abel, caretaker of the House of Secrets, introduces the stories, most of which are written and drawn by unknowns. The two exceptions are "The Midnight Messenger," with the great Joe Orlando joining Ken Landgraf on art, and the cover story. 

"Hopping Down the Bunny Trail" is written by Michael Uslan of Batman movie-producing and Shadow fame. It's drawn by Tenny Henson, lettered by Esphidy, and colored by Tatjana Wood (who colored oodles of DC stories and covers).  

The story opens with two staples of such tales—the creepy old house and the too-trusting parents, who have no problem with an egg hunt at the local haunted emporium, provided it gets the rugrats out of their lives for a little bit. 

Next up, little Marvin, one of said rugrats, demonstrates his candy-eating acumen by severing the head from a chocolate bunny. "Mmmm," he says. "I always bite off the head first." You can almost hear karma rumbling behind him. 

Two panels later, the kids arrive at the gates of the old Krieger place (apparently, it's bad form not to speak of its age with each reference) and meet the giant rabbit at the gates. The bunny just has to be "Old Man Snyder" (everything in this town is old, apparently) because "he always dresses up as Santa Claus at Christmas time." 

So off the three little cherubs go on their Easter adventure, locating more eggs inside the spooky old mansion than their peers, thereby winning the "big toy" that the talking rabbit—who, as we will learn, is most assuredly not Old Man Snyder—promised. 

Before the reader can say "plastic grass," the kids have fallen through a trap door and into a vat of chocolate, as children are wont to do. This is when the perfidy of Peter Rabbit makes itself known. The bunny is hungry, and can you guess the main course? 

In the penultimate panel, the life-sized rabbit looks to pull little Marvin headfirst into his (its?) mouth. To underscore the irony, the narrator tells us that all his two friends can see is "the object that dropped from Marvin's pocket—his chocolate Easter bunny with the head bitten off!" 

I have to credit Henson for capturing the horror of what could have been a silly moment. The rabbit is disturbing, maybe because we don't know at first if it's real or just Old Man Snyder dressed up in a costume and revealing his homicidal (and canibalistic) tendencies. And he would have gotten away with it, if not for those darn kids!

Five pages of brutal simplicity are on display. Setup, escalating tension, climax, and decapitating denouement are all efficiently, uh,  dispatched. 

It doesn't appear that this story will be reprinted in the upcoming DC Finest volume, The Devil's Doorway, which is a pity. There aren't all that many Easter-themed horror stories, and this one makes quite an impression. 

ROM Omnibus Vol. 1

 I was recently a guest writer at the Collected Editions blogsite, reviewing ROM Omnibus volume 1. Here's a link. 

Sunrise on the Reaping

Scholastic Press published the latest Hunger Games novel a few weeks ago. If you like Suzanne Collins's work on earlier installments of the series, you should enjoy Sunrise on the Reaping. 

The book tells the story of Haymitch Abernathy, the drunken mentor of Katniss Everdeen, District 12's most famous victor of the annual Hunger Games. Similar in some respects to President Snow's backstory from The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2020), Haymitch's adventures begin with the love of a young woman from the Covey, that group of traveling musicians living on the outskirts of the district, both literally and figuratively. 

Abernathy breathes a sigh of relief on the day of Reaping when his name is not called, meaning he can continue his life as a bootlegger-in-training and helper to his mother and little sister. But the relief is short-lived as Capitol incompetence leads to Abernathy being named a substitute, sent off with three other young people on an adventure only one can survive.  

From this point, the novel follows an enjoyable, if predictable, trajectory: Abernathy and his fellow tributes are shuttled off to the Capitol, trained in various forms of woodcraft and fighting techniques, and eventually dropped into the Arena, the high-tech environment where they will battle to the death. 

Sunrise on the Reaping reminded me of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, not in any plot sense but because both feel like soft reboots of earlier versions of their respective series. While Sunrise hurtles along at a lively clip, especially once the characters begin to compete in the Hunger Games, it is also an exercise in déjà vu. Many scenes, inventive though they are, serve as callbacks to earlier moments (or, technically, later ones, as this is a prequel). This entry is not as original or as compelling as Songbirds and Snakes, which had the difficult task of balancing the characteristics that led Snow to villainy with some redeeming qualities to allow the audience to sympathize with him. 

Haymitch is a compelling character who is easy to root for. In keeping with the hangdog, down-on-his-luck persona established in the earlier books, the prequel Haymitch is the victim of almost preternaturally bad luck. Some of this he brings upon himself, but much is just a matter of unfortunate circumstances. As if being chosen for a slaughter-or-be-slaughtered scenario could ever be viewed as fortuitous. 

Collins is a sensitive writer, so the dialogue rings true for the world she has now invested five books in developing. She deepens the mythology while avoiding too many overt references to the other novels and characters. The various observations about how a state-run media can shape a story through selective editing are especially welcome—and timely. 

It's worth noting how Collins has used the plot kernel of people hunting people, a staple of pulp fiction as far back as Richard Connell's "Most Dangerous Game," (arguably the story more freely adapted than any other for radio, TV, movies, and other stories/novels), given it a dystopian sci-fi twist, and built an increasingly rich world around it. 

Spy vs Spy: The Big Blast

The newsstand collections of classic MAD material may fly below the radar of some fans, but I enjoy them. Whether this enjoyment extends beyond flipping through the pages to actually buying them ... well, not always. Still, I couldn't resist plunking down my hard-earned shekels for Spy vs. Spy: The Big Blast. Even though, at $14.99, it is assuredly not cheap, to paraphrase the omnipresent advisory from past Mad covers. 

The world of Antonio Prohias' black-and-white battlers is visually dense. These strips cannot be scanned casually. The reader must peer into them to determine Messrs. Dark and Light's antics and how their shenanigans pay off in the final panel. 

It took me a few minutes to adjust because it's been many years since I last perused the characters. Let's say I had to clean my spyglasses. Take, for instance, the first strip reprinted in this volume, from Mad #74 (October 1962):

One first notices the presence of a female spy, who often outwits both men, as the wrecking-ball gag in the top half of the page demonstrates. This single panel is much larger than the ones below and thus easier to decipher. 

In the gag at the bottom of the page, I'm ashamed at how long it took me to figure out that the female spy is dropping objects into the sleeping spies' upside-down hats and not into lampshades or ashtrays. And this is with the images reproduced in color, presumably making it easier to discern the headwear. 

(A word about this volume and color: Editor John Ficarra notes his dream is to colorize all the Spy adventures. This is "despite the fact that the entire strip was predicated on the literal dichotomy between 'Black' and 'White,'" he writes. While Ficarra characterizes the coloring as a universal good (calling S v. S one of the "clear winners" of the editorial decision to print the magazine in color starting in the year 2000), I'm not so sure. The stark contrast may have made it easier for readers to notice details like the above-mentioned hat trick. Coloring, especially on strips that share space with the one-panel gags, obscures the stage business that sets up the punchline. 

And those punchlines, despite their variety, are all of a piece. One spy or the other gets crushed, creamed, jolted, jilted, or annihilated, except in the early strips where both sometimes do. It's similar to watching a Road Runner cartoon—the viewer knows the Coyote is always going to get his, so the fun is in how the schemes unravel for him this time. 

Later strips in the Spy vs. Spy collection, where Prohias gives himself an entire page for continuity—or perhaps he is given the room (not sure how much freedom he had in this regard), work better. The larger size (see below, from October 1970) makes the business easier to follow. 

Mad has made this collection more appealing by featuring the work of Peter Kuper, who started drawing the Spy vs. Spy strip in 1997. His two-page spreads allow for much more panel innovation. Also, his strips are bloodier, as seen in the punchline to the July 2001 strip below. I prefer Kuper, as sacriligioius as this admission may be. Please don't put dynamite in my dresser while I sleep. 

Also featured in the volume are an illustrated tribute to Prohias by Sergio Aragonés and some terrific pin-ups courtesy of Nathan Sawaya, Bill Sienkiewicz, and others. My favorite is Darwyn Cooke's image of the two spies asleep, their methods of torture surrounding them, like a demented version of the children in Clement Moore's Christmas poem, with visions of sugar bombs dancing in their heads. 

The inside back cover advertises the Spy vs. Spy Omnibus. Not sure if it's a new printing or just a holdover from the last time this magazine was printed. 

The cover says this magazine should be displayed until 5/23/25. Get yours while you still can. 

Godzilla vs. Fantastic Four

Anybody who knows how much I love comics also knows how much I wear my heart on my sleeve where the Marvel Comics' series Godzilla King of the Monsters is concerned. It's easily the best series of my youth and firmly in my top-five favorite series ever. 

So I was excited to see the original 24 issues reprinted last year in a deluxe hardcover edition and even more excited to learn of a new six-issue series featuring Godzilla and some of the luminaries in Marvel's stable. The first of these is Godzilla vs. Fantastic Four. (Spoilers ahead!)

First, it's obvious the creators went all-in to make Godzilla an integral part of the Marvel Universe, in much the same way that DC did last year with Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong.  This issue includes not just the Big G and Marvel's cosmic-powered quartet, but also Silver Surfer, King Ghidorah, and even a cameo by Galactus. 

The story takes place shortly after Godzilla's first movie appearance. Readers learn very early (page one, panel two, as a matter of fact) that the Fantastic Four tried to help Tokyo during that initial cinematic encounter but arrived too late. Now Godzilla is back, attacking New York City, so Reed, Sue, Ben, and Johnny have a second chance. 

This scenario sets the stage for an issue that is almost entirely action, exactly what most readers want from a pairing of these properties. An added wrinkle comes from the news that King Ghidorah, the three-headed hydra from Toho Productions, is the new herald of Galactus. Thus, it will require the combined might of the FF and the Silver Surfer, Galactus's former herald, to stop him. 

The story goes down smooth and is fun to read. Writer Ryan North has captured the dynamics of the FF's relationships during the Silver Age—the uber-intellectual Reed, the bantering Johnny/Ben dynamic—while modernizing Sue Storm to make her far more capable than she ever was in the early years of the strip. 

One big caveat—and it may be more a matter of editorial dictate than a flaw in North's script—is that nothing in the story makes it abundantly clear this is all happening in the past. Maybe Marvel doesn't want to call attention to the age of its most popular properties, maybe the powers-that-be thought a story spread across six decades would lose dramatic immediacy, or maybe the whole story-across-decades idea is meant to be more of an Easter Egg than a bonafide plot point. 

However, the only real indication I had about the timeframes being adjusted from issue to issue came from the house ad on the back cover: "Godzilla takes on the Marvel Universe across the eras!" The story itself takes a far more subtle approach: the bathtub-shaped Fantasticar and Sue's hairstyle are tipoffs that this isn't happening in contemporary continuity, but it wasn't until a reference by Ben to the Silver Surfer being exiled to Earth that I really figured out the timeframe. (Maybe I'm dense, too—always a possibility.)

Part of the problem is the artwork. It's fashionable in some quarters to slam John Romita Jr., and that's not what I'm doing here. He's a great artist, and pairing him this issue with inker Scott Hanna makes for some clean, easy-to-follow artwork. However, nothing about the visuals screams Silver or Bronze age. Sadly, not many artists from this period are still alive and/or working, so the best readers can hope for is art that replicates that past glory. And this issue, as fun as it is to look at, simply doesn't capture that era.  

Regardless, I'm onboard for all six issues. Here's hoping for a bombastic battle between Godzilla and the Hulk later in April! 

Batman's Strangest Cases

Unlike my previous tabloid-sized purchase, Batman's Strangest Cases wasn't part of my childhood collection. I had never heard of the book until DC reprinted it in March. 

The moody cover—"moody" if you consider comic book pages blowing across a darkened urban landscape to be sinister, I guess—promises "The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Published," a bit of hyperbole considering all five of the stories contained within were relatively new when this collection was released in 1978. Unusual for the time, the creators are listed out front, and it is a murderer's row of talent: Denny O'Neil (who writes three of the stories), Neal Adams, Len Wein, Bernie Wrightson, Frank Robbins, Dick Giordano, and Irv Novick. How recognizable these names were to newsstand patrons of the time is unknown. 

The stories are all Bronze-Age fun, situated in the period where Batman was receiving the serious treatment by DC, but before he became the grim-and-gritty poster-child of the late 1980s to today. 

My favorite story in the volume is the first, "Red Water Crimson Death," a team-up of sorts between the Dark Knight and Cain, host of DC's long-running House of Mystery anthology series. The latter stays in character throughout, breaking the fourth wall to narrate and offer sly asides to the audience, thus eschewing the caption boxes so prevalent in most mainstream titles of the time. It's an exciting tale that takes Batman from the mean streets of Gotham to the shores of Scotland for a real gothic-inspired mystery. 

The second story is the oft-reprinted first meeting between Batman and Swamp Thing, from the seventh issue of Swampy's own book. The moody artwork by Wrightson is the main draw here (no pun intended), as I found the story didn't age as well as I thought it would. The visual of Swamp Thing in a yellow trenchcoat and fedora evokes memories of the golden age of detectives, which even in the 1970s was fading fast. A house ad at the end of the story promotes the second issue of The Original Swamp Thing Saga, a series of reprints that were my initial introduction to Len Wein and Wrightson's classic series. The wraparound cover depicts Swampy's battle with the Frankenstein Monster and Werewolf surrogates from issues three and four. 

The third story in Batman's Strangest Cases is "The Batman Nobody Knows." According to the opening caption box, "three ghetto-hardened kids" have joined Bruce Wayne on a camping expedition in the woods, a scenario that in our jaded twenty-first century feels suspect on its very face. The kids each share their impressions of Batman as crimefighter, supernatural force, etc., culminating in an appearance by the real deal, whom the kids write off as Bruce Wayne in a not-so-impressive costume. A funny little short, this one serves as a segue into the final two tales, both of which are fairly oozing with gothic trappings. 

In "The Demon of Gothos Mansion," our hero sets out to help Alfred Pennyworth's niece, who has taken a teaching job at a desolate estate "one hundred miles from the nearest town." Little does she—or Batman—know that she has been recruited to help bring to life a demon, Ballk, at the cost of her own life. Batman ingeniously escapes a death trap. More escapades ensue. 

The final entry, "A Vow from the Grave," involves a group of displaced circus performers (what we'd once uncharitably characterize as "freaks") and an escaped murderer. As with all the stories in this volume illustrated by Neal Adams and Dick Giordano, this one is saturated—almost literally, given the incessant rainfall—with atmosphere, making them great candidates for the giant-sized treatment in this volume. 

One refreshing aspect of all the stories is the way Batman is portrayed as fallible, albeit within the boundaries of pulpish fiction. In other words, he's a trained fighter who will come out on top by the end of every adventure (this is never in doubt), but he is by no means invincible. In "Red Water Crimson Death," a loose step leads a common thug to get the jump on him, causing Commissioner Gordon to insist that our hero go on a vacation. "You're no good to me dead!" Gordon exclaims. 

Similarly, Batman looks like he's putting in some effort to dispatch bad guys on a dock in the Swamp Thing story, while O'Neil sees fit to add a caption in "The Demon of Gothos Mansion" to explain how Batman's defeat of two country thugs, armed with a sycthe and axe, is possible only because of "long years" of training. In Batman stories of the last few decades, such victories are treated as foregone conclusions, and our hero would never be tripped up by something as mundane as a loose step. The character is poorer for being divorced from his roots as a regular person in a costume and elevated to near-deity status in today's comics and films. 

A final observation is how much narrative ground can be covered so quickly in these stories. It takes exactly one page of story to get Bruce Wayne from Gotham City to a secluded country estate in "The Demon of Gothos Mansion," an entire story that, in 15 pages, is a marvel of economy. Similar efficiency is evidenced in "A Vow from the Grave," which has the same truncated page count. I know it's Old Man Shouts at Cloud territory to bitch about decompression in modern comics—and, listen, I love a lot of modern books—but it's so refreshing to read a complete story in just one sitting. 

Overall, I really enjoyed Batman's Strangest Cases, three of which were brand-new to me. For $14.99, it was a fun stroll through the Bronze Age. 

Batman's "Special All-Villain Issue!"

  

The book above is my original, well-loved copy of Limited Collectors' Edition 37, better known as the Batman "Special All-Villain Issue" from 1975. The tabloid-sized comic has followed me across six houses and multiple milestones—pre-teen, teen, college student, single guy, married guy, father, and now empty-nester. 

As proof of its heavy usage, see my attempts to complete the word search on page 52. I never did find "(Mr.) Roulette." 

Having the answers on the inside back cover didn't help because I'd already cut up that page to make the 3-D diorama. 

The image above is DC's recent reprinting of the title, exact in every way except for the updated price and some tiny type identifying it as a product of 2025 (and the obligatory line about the book being released in a time when racism was more prevalent, which explains why it's full of nothing but white people). 

And can we take a moment to admire the draftsmanship of the incredible Jim Aparo on this cover? Wow! 

As I re-read these 64 pages of golden-age goodness, I was amazed at how many panels were still imprinted indelibly in my memory, fifty years later. 

This stunt by the Joker, which led to a bus careening off the road and killing all the passengers, is still horrifying. 

The Penguin's appearance is probably my least favorite of the "5 Thrilling Batman Tales" in the book, but I remember tracing this panel a time or two because I liked the trajectory of Batman's punch.

The reprint of a series of Sunday strips featuring Two-Face (but not the Harvey Dent version of the character) remains memorable because of a conclusion at a drive-in theater and the finality of the last panel.

Boys and girls, crime does not pay!

Contrast that Two-Face finale with the silliness of this Scarecrow takedown by the Boy Wonder (and a Bob Kane signature on a panel that he probably never came close to actually drawing). 

And, finally, we have Batman roping Catwoman to end her latest caper. 

All in all, it's a fantastic collection of vintage Batman material. To my seven-year-old self, however, everything was fresh off the showroom floor in a book that I inhaled as part of my comic-book DNA. 

Reading it again was fantastic, even if I didn't try the word search this time.