DC Direct Currents #37 (Books shipping in February, 1991)



This was another issue of Direct Currents that I owned. It appears that I was visiting the comic book shop once every two months. I actually checked out The Marvel Requirer and Comic Shop News back issues and my theory checks out. The cover feature is Kid Eternity, which I've never read. I like that Duncan Fregredo panel, however. 

Inside, there's a trade paperback collection of Batman: The Cult with a cool drawing by Bernie Wrightson that would have awed me as a kid. Detective Comics is celebrating 600 issues of Batman stories, and there's a new Justice Society of America miniseries with a different artist on each issue. 

The solicitations feature a preview for Superman Special #1 by Walt Simonson, a book that wouldn't come out until 1992 and which some fans theorized contained clues to how Superman would return from the dead after Doomsday killed him. There's also a preview for Tempus Fugitive #3, which was massively delayed. 

This month's interview is with Jim Aparo, who reminisces over Aquaman, Phantom Stranger, The Brave and the Bold, and The Spectre. That's a killer resume. The cover of the month is a Star Trek plug. The back cover is Kid Eternity's origin from Hit Comics #25.

Not the way they're hyping it!

DC Direct Currents #38 (Books shipping in March, 1991)



The cover feature this month is Armageddon 2001. I don't have a lot to say about Armageddon 2001 other than at least it's taking place in the annuals and not spilling over into the ongoing titles. 

Inside, there's news on the Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn trade paperback and the sequel, Emerald Dawn II. They say Emerald Dawn was one of the most talked about miniseries of 1989. I guess? Mister E is getting his own miniseries written by science fiction and horror novelist K.W. Jeter, and Batman's Ras al Ghul stories are being collected into one volume, Tales of the Demon.

Flash gets his 50th issue to little or no fanfare. Hellblazer ha a new creative team of Garth Ennis and Will Simpson. Straight out of the gate, Ennis begins the brilliant storyline where Constantine is diagnosed with lung cancer. Justice League also hits 50 issues with the conclusion of the General Glory storyline. Little did I know it at the time, but Giffen and DeMatteis were already planning their exit from the Justice League books. Meanwhile, Twilight #1 is being solicited again, which is really late. 

The interview this month is with Archie Goodwin, Denny O'Neil and Jonathan Peterson where they discuss Armageddon 2001. I guess DC was proud of this crossover. They keep promising how its going to shake things up. The cover of the month is a meh Batman cover. The back cover is Justice League of America #21 which reintroduced The Justice Society of America. 

Do you mean Jonathan Peterson?

Going into Armageddon 3000, the premise sounded intriguing and I liked how it was going, at first; but, once word got out about how it was going to end and they pulled the swerve, it completely fell apart.  It wasn't perfect; but, I thought it was a step up from the previous batch of crossovers and liked the idea of using the annuals and not interrupting individual series.  Had they done the original ending, with Captain Atom turning heel, I think it would have been more fondly remembered.  Of course, the compromise necessitated Zero Hour, to fix problems created and, for my money, the only good thing to come out of that was Starman.

I bought that Tales of the Demon book and loved it, rereading it several times over the years.  One of the best Batman collections, given that most of the Ra's al Ghul stories were top flight.  I had previously bought The Saga of Ra's al Ghul, the 4-issue Baxter format reprint of the O'Neil, Adams and Novick stories (Irv did some of the art, on a couple of Ra's stories).  Always liked the dynamic at play there, mixing Fu Manchu, James Bond, The Shadow and Batman.  I was happy to see that the trade book featured some of the later Ra's stories, as the Baxter reprint only covered through the O'Neil/Adams/Novick stuff.  The colelction also had a nice Brian Stelfreeze cover, who I always felt was a bit under-rated.  I always enjoyed the work of all of the members of Gaijin Studios, of which Stelfreeze was a member.

I exited the Justice League books not long after the changeover.  They lost any sense of fun and were just average team superhero stories, after.

Venom was an interesting premise, with Batman using super-steroids.  Given that this was about to become a bigger deal in sports and in the media, the gang were ahead of the curve (but behind pro wrestling fans, who knew most of the stars were 'roided to the gills).  

DC Direct Currents #39 (Books shipping in April, 1991)



This is a special 12 page issue but the extra pages are mostly filled up by large images. Weird. On the cover they're celebrating Star Trek's 25th Anniversary by releasing a trade paperback of "The Mirror Universe" by Mike Barr and Tom Sutton. 

Inside, the new editor has quit already. Writer Paul Kupperberg does the editing this month. There's some kind of environmental themed Superman special, and Armageddon continues. DC is treating it like their first big event of the 90s, but I'm not feeling it.

Demon #12 features Demon vs. Lobo with a gnarly painted cover by Simon Bisley. DC were nowhere near as shameless with their guest appearances as Marvel were, but perhaps they should have been as those things always stood out on the shelves. They solicit three Green Arrow issues plus an annual. That's a lot of Green Arrow. So much Green Arrow that Kupperberg includes two giant ass pictures of him. The second picture looks like the pencil sketch for a Mike Grell painting. Justice League #51 is penciled by Adam Hughes. I remember being really excited about that. It's the issue where G'Nort, Kilowog and J'onn go out for a night on the town. 

Mister Miracle reaches his final issue. It won't be the last book of the Direct Currents era to be cancelled. There is a full page color image of the cover to Green Lantern #13, which was a special double-size issue, but really, why?

This month's interview is with Bob Greenberger, the editor of DC's various Star Trek books, and Michael Jan Friedman, the writer of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Why no Peter David? Probably because he'd quit again. Greenberger talks about it being a treat to be able to get Claremont away from Marvel  to devote some time to writing a Star Trek book for DC. That's funny. 

The back cover is All Star Comics #3 which introduced the JSA. The cover of the month is from the current JSA miniseries. There was a lot of filler in this issue but at least the covers and the interview make sense.

Loved me some Impact Comics. Well, love is probably a bit strong.....liked very much! I was always intrigued by the MLJ Archie heroes, after reading about them in The World Encyclopedia of Comics, and I got to see a bit in the Archie Super Hero Special digest, which reprinted some of the 50s Private Strong, The Fly and The Jaguar, as well as some of the Mighty Comics stuff (Black Hood and The Web), some 70s Red Circle stuff and the Gray Morrow Black Hood revamp. Then, I was further intrigued by a teaser article about the early 80s Red Circle revival and got ahold of the first few Mighty Crusaders and enjoyed them for what they were. In college and just after, I collected the whole Red Circle/Archie Superhero revival, though it was a mixed bunch (some nice Fox stories, some decent reprints, some cool odds and ends and a bunch of average to mediovre stories).

There was actually supposed to be another revival, before this, called Spectrum, which Archie was going to launch with a bunch of ex-DC and Marvel people. However, the bosses killed it because they decided they didn't want to do a darker line of comics, which was how those books were being pitched.

So, the DC revamp sounded like the best shot at it, with some good folks involved. I liked most of it, but I could kind of see that it was doomed to be short-lived, pretty early on. I enjoyed The Fly, The Comet and especially Legend of the SHIELD, but was kind of ambivalent to Jaguar and skipped The Black Hood, because I wasn't fond of the premise and was already tired of dark and violent stuff. I bought the first issue of the Crusaders, but not the rest, nor the Crucible attempt to revamp it. I liked the WEB, at the start and its premise, plus Tom Artis' lively art; but, as soon as he was off the book it just seemed to wither on the vine.

The later Red Circle revamp, at DC was pretty decent and I greatly enjoyed both The Shield and The Web. The Dark Circle line also had some good books, especially The Fox (who also had some of the better 80s Red Circle material).

I loved Kirby's OMAC; but hated Byrne's, and especially his duo-tone boards. It felt pretty soulless.

The Superman titles were doing fairly well and had been crossing storylines between books. Man of Steel was a logical extension of that, providing 4 chapters, each month, to tell a story. It worked pretty well, for quite a while, before some hiccups started messing with the joy. I had given up on the line, just before Doomsday, put them back on my list for that and what followed, but abandoned them once the Return was played out. I hated the Super-Mullet.....saw enough bad ones on 2/3 of the pro wrestling community (fans and performers).

I did end up writing a letter to DC, taking issue with some of the premise of Legend of the Shield. Joe Higgins is an Army officer, who is framed and court martialed, by his own father, to bring him into the project to develop the Shield super-suit, and he was busted down to sergeant. It doesn't work that way and I wrote them to take them to task for it. An Officer is commissioned into the military, he/she does not enlist. They serve at the leisure of the Commander-in-Chief, though they may have a minimum commitment, as I did, with my NROTC scholarship. They cannot be reduced in rank to an enlisted rank, by definition, only reduced in officer rank. In reality, an officer who is court martialed will find themselves drummed out of the military, after serving any punitive sentence. Enlisted can be reduced in rank and come back up to that rank, depending on the circumstances. It just didn't make sense, even within a fictional construct and I found it a little insulting, at the time. Looking back, I don't know why I bothered, other than it was something to do. We didn't have no fancy internet to heckle the editor and creative team. I had to type it out, put it in an envelope, walk 10 miles, uphill, through snow, fighting off polar bears and armed penguins to mail it and LIKED IT!