Yeah, we sat on those for a while, in my store.  We had a license to reprint the big black Marvel history/reference (not the Les Daniels one, though we got a license fo it, later) and the Batman reference book.  At different times, we also had rights to reprint some of the Calvin & Hobbes big books (the ones that had the two volumes combined and the Sundays in color) and one of the Get Fuzzy series, plus the classic Peanuts one, from the late 60s/early 70s, where Snoopy is barely more than a pup and Sally was just born.

I just visited my original old store, in Springfield...the Bargain section is pretty sad, these days, though it has been that way for over a decade.  We used to get some great art and architecture books for it and they are long gone, plus some excellent history material.  There is still some history, with a lot of visual reference, but a lot of the other traditional sections are shadows of their former selves.

From what I recall of the Don Martin set, you could bludgeon someone to death with it, provided you could lift it.  The Speed Racer books shocked me.  I recall when Now Comics had the license and the comics were on the stands; but, I never looked through one.  I flipped through these, when we got them in and it was total amateur hour.  Now always used young, cheaper talent, but this was light years away from Alex Ross' Terminator material or Jeff Butler's Green Hornet art.  It made AC's worst material look like EC Comics' best!

DC Direct Currents #77 (September cover date, 1994)





Zero Hour is finally here. I bought it off the newsstands, but I barely remember anything that happened in it. It gets a three page preview in this issue, so DC clearly viewed it as a big deal. The only offer comic they preview is a weird little tie-in to some science fiction TV show called Viper.

That's a nice Spectre cover even if I really hated the way Mandrake drew Superman, though everybody was drawing a bad looking Superman at this point. It reminds me of that joke in Hitman about a petition for Superman to get a decent haircut again. 

On the flipside we have the Invisibles. This was the first Vertigo title where I got in on the ground floor. I collected every issue from the beginning to the end. I viewed it as one of the seminal series of the 90s, at least while I was collecting it, but strangely I don't think it's viewed that way in comic circles. I'm not sure if that's because it's too weird or because it was up and down in terms of quality, or simply because other projects by Morrison have eclipsed it. There are a few titles from my comic book collecting days that don't have the reputation they had when I was collecting them (Cerebus springs to mind), but I was a big fan of the Invisibles. 

Vertigo also begun reprinting Moonshadow from this month, which is how I came to read it. I'm not sure how they were ale to reprint a comic that had been published by Marvel, but I'm sure someone knows. The impetus for reprinting the book was that J.M. DeMatteis and Jon Muth had both done recent work for Vertigo. Berger had actually swung a deal for DC to publish Moonshadow before Shooter agreed to publish both Moonshadow and Greenberg the Vampire. 

Shade, the Changing Man offers a great entry point for new readers as Bachalo is off to do mutants at Marvel. I always thought that was a bold and interesting transition from Bachalo from Vertigo guy to X-books guy. Sean Phillips takes over as Shade's artist. 

ps Ugh...Zero Hour! The only thing I can say is at least it gave us Starman.

Not a fan of anything beyond Starman, except Superman, The Man of Steel #37 had him run into alternate versions of Batman, based on different eras (Bronze Age Batman, Dark Knight Batman, Detective Comics #27 Batman, etc). I could swear they did that opposite with Batman, but I think, now, that might have been a promotional poster, where one was the various Batman surrounding Superman and the other Was various Superman doing the same, to Batman.

1. I happened to like Zero Hour. A good Crisis cleansing. A lot of the monthly tie-ins and Zero issues made for good books. Also gave us Robinson's Starman.

2. That Spectre cover by Alex Ross, the final cover of the "Spear of Destiny" arc. Its one of my favorites too.

3. The Invisibles is still my favorite Grant Morrison original owned property. I was at the right age to start reading this title. I was into conspiracy theories, Crowley and all the dark things he was putting into this book. 

Starman was brilliant, but I was already turning into a James Robinson fan, with Firearm and Grendel Tales: Four Devils, One Hell. I especially enjoyed that he encouraged book discussions in Firearm, as that was part of the character, that he was a big bibliophile. He really hit it out of the park, though, with Jack Knight, and his handling of Ted really gave him a personality that had always been missing. Plus, the supporting characters, with the O'Dares and The Shade, great stuff.

Manhunter, on the other hand......yeah, not what I look for in a character with that name. Costume was too "Image" and it just didn't work for me. Apparently, I wasn't alone, because they brought Mark Shaw back from the dead to try to salvage something from it, so there was that.

I ended up picking up the 1st trade of the Legion revamp. It was pleasant, didn't have all of tha baggage that had built up and let them be young again, which had been the appeal of Legionnaires. I didn't continue it though. Don't really remember why....probably because it still wasn't Great Darkness Saga level and my other Legion favorite material was when I was younger and it was more adventure than darkly serious. Waid brought back some of that sense of adventure; but, I guess I just wasn't in that place.

I was reading Flash, up through Terminal Velocity. I had been hearing things and jumped on board during The Return of Barry Allen and then quickly got my hands on the Born to Run issues. I had been grousing about the whole "grim & gritty" thing, since 1988 and was well sick of everyone trying to out dark each other. It was such a bright, refreshing breath of air. Same with Starman, once Robinson got through the baptism of fire and had Jack deliberately be a hero and love the feeling. It was exactly what I felt had been missing, for so long, apart from a few series.

By the way, the author's name is Eric Van Lustbader. He's probably better known these days for continuing Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne series, with the success of the movies; but, in the early 80s, he was writing a series of novels that were a major component in the ninja fad, starting with The Ninja, in 1980. It featured a character named Nicholas Linnear and it set up a lot of the tropes of 80s ninja movies and such, like dark and light sides and other mystical elements, much of which influenced Frank Millers take on ninjas, in his work (along with Lone Wolf & Cub and the film The Yakuza). They were big sellers, through the 80s and the start of the 90s, then seemed to taper off and disappear, though the last novel was published in 1995. More than likely that was part of the reason he was writing a Batman book.

The Metropolis SCU was a prominent portion of the Triangle Era, so it makes sense to get a special. Why Cindy Goff? She had worked with Slave Labor Graphics and Epic, so maybe she was an Archie Goodwin find or Dan Vado pitched for her.....maybe she pitched the idea for the story. Perhaps she was a fan of the Maggie Sawyer character.

I was fine with Batman/Predator II, for what it was. Mr Punch was one I bought through B&N, because I got a better discount; but, it really wasn't my kind of thing.

I don't think I paid close attention, before, but that Sgt Rock image hammers it home: DC has been mishandling Rock for years. The stripes indicate a Master Sergeant. A Master Sergeant isn't leading a squad, into battle. He'd be the senior NCO at battalion level, not a squad leader or platoon sergeant, like Rock was usually depicted. He should be hip deep in paperwork!

"This issue, Rock faces a mountain of requisitions, about to tilt over. His company NCOs have dysentery and the CO has the clap. Can he rescue the battalion from this mess?"

Not quite as exciting.