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Post by rberman on Mar 9, 2019 21:35:51 GMT -5
Having just finished looking at Moore's starmaking run on Swamp Thing, I'd like to turn now to look at various short runs and short subjects Alan Moore did for DC. I wanted to call the thread "Before Watchmen," but that wouldn't be true of some of these works. Let's dive right in! Detective Comics #549-550 “Night Olympics” (April-May 1985) Creative Team: Story by Alan Moore, Art by Klaus Janson. The Story: Green Arrow and Black Canary are making their nightly rounds, bashing the heads of petty criminals in alleys. A policeman explains that some of the thugs have been emotionally traumatized by previous encounters with some of the more bizarre heroes. It hasn't turned them from their crooked ways, though.  A young punk archer catches them by surprise from a rooftop, skewering Black Canary in the left shoulder. Removing the arrow will be fatal, and Green Arrow surprisingly opts to chase the villain rather than save the victim. Having lost the element of surprise, the kid proves no match for Green Arrow, who deflects the next arrow coming his way and then sends a hail of missiles at his opponent. Later, he takes flowers to Dinah in the hospital.  My Two Cents: “Why isn’t Black Canary ever mentioned, even casually, in the Green Arrow backup stories?” a letter asks of Detective Comics editor Len Wein in this very issue. And here she is, getting seriously wounded and left for dead while Green Arrow stalks her assailant. That’s progress!  This was originally published as a pair of eight page backup features in consecutive issues of Detective Comics. As such, the story is basic, yet entertaining. Moore has fun with the sports theme, comparing different aspects of criminal behavior to sporting events. His background writing short subjects for the British comics industry stood him in good stead here. Klaus Janson was much in demand as an artist after his dazzling run with Frank Miller on Daredevil in the early 80s. Here, he does a dynamite job on some panels:  But then on others, he seems to have left the drawing to his inebriated landlord:  |
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Post by Icctrombone on Mar 9, 2019 22:03:35 GMT -5
I always felt there was a reason some artists were only inkers. Klaus Janson never dazzled with his pencils.
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Post by rberman on Mar 10, 2019 17:23:28 GMT -5
Green Lantern #188 “Mogo Doesn’t Socialize” (May 1985) Creative Team: Alan Moore wrote it, and the art is by…. Dave Gibbons! This pair may amount to something one day… The Story: Novice Green Lantern Arisia wants to know why some Lanterns never visit Oa. Senior Lantern Tomar Re tells her about the time a fierce but stupid warrior named Bolphunga wanted to pick a fight with Mogo, supposedly the strongest Green Lantern. He went to Mogo’s planet and looked and looked, but he couldn’t find Mogo. Suddenly he realized…. the planet was Mogo. Aaaaaah! Retreat…..  My Two Cents: This trifle of a back-up story didn’t have to be a Green Lantern story and probably wasn’t one when Moore first thought of it, but it’s a fun little setup-punchline that showcases Moore’s talent for whimsy. Along the way, he gets to flex his creative muscles suggesting other kinds of life forms far beyond the usual humanoids with funny heads. Many of these early Moore shorts for DC start with a similar nugget of “What if there was a life form that…?” 
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Post by rberman on Mar 11, 2019 8:30:23 GMT -5
Omega Men #29 “Brief Lives” (May 1985)
Creative Team: Alan Moore writing. Kevin O’ Neill, artist. The Story: An army of sentient insects descends upon a planet populated by stone giants whose metabolism runs so slowly that the insect civilization runs its entire course and collapses, before the giants even realize they have been invaded.  My Two Cents: Omega Men seems to be a sort of DC Guardians of the Galaxy alien super-team. They guard the Vega system, and this is just a “Tales of Vega” back-up feature. As with the Mogo story, this four page vignette is just a brief (heh) look at the possibility of truly alien aliens who have little hope of even being aware of each other’s existence, let alone interacting, even in warfare. Moore reused the story nugget of “beings on vastly different timescales” with his description of The Flash in Swamp Thing #24 as “a man who moves so fast that his life is an endless gallery of statues.” Grant Morrison has several plots involving this feature as well, including "The World" in New X-Men, Earth-Q in All-Star Superman, the junkyard in The Filth, and the rescue of The Spectre in JLA.
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Post by rberman on Mar 11, 2019 14:04:48 GMT -5
I always felt there was a reason some artists were only inkers. Klaus Janson never dazzled with his pencils. He does a nice job with the silent Daredevil-style rooftop duel above, but some the faces are occasionally wonky. |
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Post by Icctrombone on Mar 11, 2019 14:12:59 GMT -5
I didn't really like his Daredevil or random Batman jobs.
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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 12, 2019 0:28:27 GMT -5
The Mongo story was, basically, in the vein of his short pieces for 2000 AD. I enjoyed the animated version, with Roddy Piper voicing the criminal. It fit perfectly.
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Post by zaku on Mar 12, 2019 1:10:36 GMT -5
Why Mogo is light blue!?!
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Post by rberman on Mar 12, 2019 1:33:25 GMT -5
Why Mogo is light blue!?! I wondered the same! |
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Post by rberman on Mar 12, 2019 9:10:04 GMT -5
Omega Men #30 “A Man’s World” (June 1985)
Creative Team: Alan Moore writing, Paris Cullins pencils, Rick Magyar Inks.
The Story: On an alien world, a female sociologist watches a male-only tribe’s ritual spearing of giant snails and convinces a handsome native warrior to mate with her. She doesn’t realize that the spearing ritual is how this species procreates symbiotically with the snails. The next morning, he excitedly tells a friend about the experience; his spear runs red with the sociologist’s blood…  My Two Cents: Another one about cultural blind spots. My first summary attempt was seven sentences, which seemed long for a four page story. But Moore does a great job of packing explanatory detail into these vignettes.
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Post by rberman on Mar 13, 2019 7:21:47 GMT -5
Vigilante #17-18 “Father’s Day” (May-June 1985)   Creative Team: Alan Moore writing. Jim Baikie pencils and ink. Issue 17: Child molester Carl Linnaker gets out of prison and makes a beeline for his ex-wife Joanne, whom he murders. His now-teen daughter Jodie gets away and is taken in by two kindly women: Louise the prostitute and White Line Fever the drug dealer.  Jodie knows enough to have Fever call district attorney Adrian Chase for help, not knowing that Chase is that hero in a ski suit Vigilante. He responds to Fever’s call, and after a brief struggle, they trade information about Jodie’s situation.  Meanwhile, Louise has gone shopping for Jodie’s favorite cereal. Carl happens to be in the supermarket and overhears Louise talking about the kid hiding in her apartment. He follows Louise home, murders her, and kidnaps Jodie. Fever gets home and swears vengeance; after a moment’s pause, Vigilante agrees.  Issue 18: Fever’s knowledge of the neighborhood proves invaluable, as does her car after Vigilante’s motorcycle gets completely stripped. As they drive around looking for Jodie, Fever rants against authority.  Carl is full of excuses for his crimes, even as he commits more crimes like robbing a gun shop. When Louise spies Carl in a nearby car, he flees with Jodie into a fuel storage area. During an ensuing fight, Jodie gets a hold of Carl’s gun and surprisingly uses it to shoot Vigilante in defense of her dad. But Fever shows up just then in her car and spins her tires over Carl’s head to make sure he’d dead.  Fever flees the city, fearful of charges about Carl’s death or the drugs in her apartment. Vigilante opens an envelope Carl was carrying. It contained vacation pictures of himself and Jodie having a good time in years now lost, as well as a letter whose contents have been shown in captions throughout the issue.  My Two Cents: In the lettercol, Marv Wolfman raves about Alan Moore being “the sensation of the eighties.” Strong words for 1985! I guess DC staffers could see everything Moore was working on. Wolfman had originated this series but was taking a break from it for a few months to hammer out Crisis on Infinite Earths.
This is one of those stories in which the titular hero is really the observer. It could have been published as an adventure of Batman or Swamp Thing or Booster Gold; it just happened to be Vigilante with whom Moore had the opportunity to tell this tale. Issue 18 was touted as “Judgement Day” in the teaser ending of #17, but by the time of publication, it was “Father’s Day Part II.” “White Line Fever” claims she got her nickname for her good driving, but I think we are to understand that it’s a cocaine reference. Her apartment is full of drug paraphenalia. I wonder what Dennis O’Neil thought about this story about a drug dealer with a heart of gold. Moore would introduce a similar character Chester in Swamp Thing soon. And just what was in those glass pipes that Laurie smokes in Watchmen?  The supermarket clerk is similarly blasé about Louise’s prostitution, sharing a joke about her aching feet.  In Swamp Thing, we saw that Moore wanted Americans to rethink the idea of people being absolutely good or evil. Here he gives us a textbook case of a bad guy – a vicious pedophile murderer – and shows the complicated feelings his daughter has both for and against him, like a woman who defends her abusive husband from the police. This doesn’t seem like a good argument for him as a complicated character worthy of pity; it’s more a statement about how confused the victims can be.  |
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Post by MDG on Mar 13, 2019 8:23:14 GMT -5
Vigilante #17-18 “Father’s Day” (May-June 1985) I bought this because i was picking up most of Moore's stuff at the time, and i remember thinking he did a good job (only Vigilante story I ever read) but... I know Moore's a good writer and all and DC probably wanted to keep him happy, but couldn't the editor have said, "Uh, Alan, in the US we call it "Emergency" not "Casualty."? (Same thing shows up in an issue of Swamp Thing.) |
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Post by rberman on Mar 13, 2019 8:37:34 GMT -5
Vigilante #17-18 “Father’s Day” (May-June 1985) I bought this because i was picking up most of Moore's stuff at the time, and i remember thinking he did a good job (only Vigilante story I ever read) but... I know Moore's a good writer and all and DC probably wanted to keep him happy, but couldn't the editor have said, "Uh, Alan, in the US we call it "Emergency" not "Casualty."? (Same thing shows up in an issue of Swamp Thing.) Good catch; lay the blame on artist Jim Baikie, who is Scottish. (And also on the editor.) Baikie collaborated with Moore on other work as well. American comics often make a different error, equating the word "casualty" with "fatality" instead of "injury."  |
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Post by Icctrombone on Mar 13, 2019 8:43:27 GMT -5
I blame the editor, do they even review the books nowadays ? Didio claims that the penis in the Batman book was an error , they didn't catch.
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Post by rberman on Mar 13, 2019 8:48:11 GMT -5
I blame the editor, do they even review the books nowadays ? Didio claims that the penis in the Batman book was an error , they didn't catch. I suspect they just try to keep the schedule straight between all the different collaborators and look for large-scale errors like "missing page" or "blurry scan" rather than critiquing the art, dialogue, or plot. |
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