DC Direct Currents #83 (February cover date, 1995)





Azrael gets his own book. It had the chops to run for 103 issues.

There's a Batman Adventures Holiday Special. The Batman books are getting a revamp. Moench and Jones are the new creative team on Batman, which must have been exciting for some. A Modesty Blaise graphic novel, a Street Fighter one shot (huh), and a hard-hitting updated version of Black Lightning. The latter was written by Black Lightning creator Tony Isabella and apparently he was fired from the series after issue #8. The series ran for 13 issues. There's MORE Lobo. At least one of them is drawn by Carlos Ezquerra, who deserved the payday. The other book is The Brave and the Bald, a Lobo/Deadman team-up illustrated by Martin Edmond, who must have been seen as an adequate replacement for Bisley. 

In the solicitations there's the Power of Shazam softcover edition, which reminds me of some info I got from the Johnny DC column that John Byrne was supposed to do a Captain Marvel series after he finished OMAC, but quit the project for the typical Byrne reasons. I'm sure he would have messed around with the character, but his design work for Captain Marvel looked pretty slick.  

Slow month for Vertigo. Jamie Delano gets a Vertigo Voices one shot. There are some Vertigo tarot cards designed by Dave McKean. Sandman: World's End is released in hardcover. Eddie Campbell and Sean Philips are doing Hellblazer. I actually bought these at the time because I was a fan of Bacchus, Alec and From Hell, but they're a real come down from the Ennis era. 

It's just as well that Shazam landed in the hands of Jerry Ordway, who treated the character with respect towards what had been done well, while updating t for a new audience and a somewhat more serious take. It wasn't "grim & gritty," but is wasn't treated as kiddie material, either, like the previous series, at the beginning. At the time, I was okay with a potential Byrne series; but, in retrospect, I think it worked out for the best and Ordway's run is still the longest sustained one outside of Fawcett.

Didn't we have the Modesty Blaise GN solicited previously? I can't recall when I first heard about it, but, I bought it through Bud Plant's catalog, which came with a signed bookplate, from Peter O'Donnell. They did similar with other works, such as the very first trade collection for Bone, from Cartoon Books (long before Scholastic got involved).

Nice to see Starman getting some cover love. I'm sure DC realized they had a hit, by this point. I can't remember when they started selling Starman merch, though. I bought the badge pin, which was nice and hefty. One of the few things like that I still have, along with an Archie Meets The Punisher pin and a Bone pin.

In regards to Babylon 5, I don't think even the tie-in novels did huge numbers, in the US. The series was more popular in the UK and there were a couple of books about the series, with episode guides, published before we got any US publishing, as well as regular features in magazines like SFX. I was working for B&N when they started putting out the tie-ins, which I picked up, but even for tie-in series, they didn't move a ton of books. I think it was down to the profile, in syndication, as different stations would show it at different times. They got a big boost in viewership when they moved to the TNT network, as they started rerunning the earlier seasons; plus, they produced the telemovies, like In The Beginning, showing the Earth-Minbari War, which was followed immediately after by the re-edited "The Gathering," the pilot, with Christopher Franke music in place of Stewart Copeland, and some scenes trimmed or edited out.

I agree that the Peter David Centauri trilogy was the high point. The book by JMS' now-ex-wife, (Kathryn Drennan), which detailed what happened to Sinclair, in between season 1 and his return, plus resolved the question of Catherine Sakai and why Sinclair was motivated to leave everything behind to travel back to the past and become Valen.

The series never got the support from WB that Star Trek did from Paramount. The serial nature hurt it, some; but, it proved influential enough that Star Trek started going more that route and paved the way for things like the revived Battlestar Galactica. I also really wish their costume designer worked on some of these superhero films, so we could get some nice cloth uniforms instead of all the latex and similar. Cloth just has some much more weight and presence, on-screen.

Maybe they figured that publishing all (six?) issues in a single volume would make it less obvious that Dick Giordano wasn't able to finish the job. About 4/5 of its whopping 144 pages are ghost-penciled by an uncredited Dan Spiegle.

As I said on the previous entry, the story is an adaptation of the first prose novel that O'Donnell wrote. It was adapted from his screenplay for the film, which wasn't used, as they went with the more camp version they filmed. O'Donnell didn't care for the finished product and turned his script into the novel, which was then followed by a series of prose novels, in addition to the newspaper strip. In the film Pulp Fiction, you can see John Travolta reading that book, when he is waiting for Bruce Willis, in his apartment. Tarantino (or Miramax, at his urging) obtained the rights to make a Modesty film, then did nothing with it, until the option was about to expire (at least, I think I read that), which led to a quick low budget piece, directed by Scott Spiegel, which features a younger Modesty, working in a casino, which is taken over by criminals. She plays a game with their leader, trading stories of her youth, to buy time. Raymnod Cruz (Clear and Present Danger) was the best known actor involved; but, the actor who played the lead criminal was a pre-Game of Thrones Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. Modesty was played by Alexandra Staden, who was ridiculously thin, which I found rather distracting, as she looked like she would snap in two at any moment. It did work for the flashback scenes where she is hungry and alone, before encountering her mentor, Professor Lob.

DC Direct Currents #84 (March cover date, 1995)






Captain Marvel gets his own series. I've never explored Captain Marvel to any great degree, not even the classic Golden Age stuff, but I know people here speak highly of this series. 

Inside, we've got the Blood Pack, which I think is connected to Bloodlines. It's extremely 90s looking but in more of a Whilce Portacio/Marc Silvestri vein. There's a Superman Elseworlds graphic novel by Dave Gibbons and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez that is kind of halfway tempting. Alan Grant and Kevin O'Neill bring us a Bat-Mite special, which is very tempting. John Ostrander brings us more Gotham Nights, and there's an adaptation of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe with art by Steve Leialoha. Not a bad month of offerings. The last page is a preview for Guy Gardner: Warrior #29 where Guy opens a tavern for metahumans. 

Over at Vertigo, there's Jonah Hex: Riders of the Worm and Such, which I thought was weaker than Two-Gun Mojo but still has gorgeous Truman art. There's another preview mag out, but this one stands out a little more as it has a preview for Preacher. Jamie Delano and Richard Case have a miniseries out called Ghostdancing. I was never a big fan of Delano but nice to see Case getting some work. Books of Magic gets a trade paperback, so I guess that book was doing well by Vertigo standards. Some of their books are quietly going by the wayside. Both Kid Eternity and Doom Patrol are gone by this stage. Black Orchid won't last much longer. They're about to enter their middle period, however, which produced some of the imprint's finest works.

We won't make it that far, though. Our little newsletter only has a handful of issues left.  

Outside of Fawcett, Power of Shazam was the best take on the character and the most successful.  Ordway had a nice mixture of serious stories, with humorous elements and he and Peter Krause made Fawcett City a unique place.  They also, generally, were able to bring back classic elements, with modern touches and still retain the essence of the original.  Mr Mind was, literally, an alien worm, which could bore into heads and control minds, like you see in Star Trek:  The Wrath of Khan.  Back then, I was getting two superhero series, monthly, from DC and they were Starman and Power of Shazam.  When they crossed over, I was in heaven....or at least the Rock of Eternity.

Forgot to mention it last time, but I was also a fan of Black Lightning.  Really good book, until editorial started messing with Isabella and he quit.  Quite frankly, I thought he was achieving was Milestone was trying to do, but not quite capturing.

Bat-Mite was awesome!

I though Riders of the Worms and Such was fine, though it led t that BS lawsuit from the Winter Brothers, which vindicated DC and Lansdale and Truman.

Yeah, Green Arrow and the Question both carried Suggested for Mature Readers labels and there were at least crossovers within that world.  GA stayed away from the JLA and Question was a loner; but, Batman did appear in the GA Annual #5, during the Eclipso crossover.  However, it does not have the Mature Readers label on it.  My guess it was because of the event, rather than Batman; but who knows.  DC could be inconsistent with that stuff.

The Demon did appear in Sandman, which was a Mature Readers title.  For the most part, though, they did kind of keep those books and Vertigo as separate worlds.  Swamp Thing had a bit of crossover, earlier on, when Alan Moore took over and it continued for a bit (like John Constantine in Crisis, etc), but it did become rarer.  Sandman's only real crossover, other than Etrigan, was with Lyta and Hector Hall, who were homeless, after Infinity Inc folded.