The Doc Savage mini was underrated, like the Adam Strange mini at the time. It's a good modern take of Doc Savage, which lead to the ongoing, which wasn't that bad unto itself. I liked it, as it crossed over with the ongoing Shadow series by Barreto at the time. Good time for DC to be updating the pulp heroes. 

The Deadshot mini is great and I covered it in my Suicide Squad thread.  Nice fleshing out of the character.

Shanower did a few things at DC...always very good.  They used a lot of guys who were similar to Maguire, around that time, like Shanower and Ty Templeton.  Paul Chadwick, of Concrete fame, also did a few special things at DC.

I am personally not a fan of the Doc Savage mini, though I bought it, back then.  It tried to darken things up and introduced a son, who was a failure and a grandson, who was more like Grandpa.  I'd rather have the original (who returned anyway).  The art was great, though.  However, I think Millennium (the company, not the mini-series) did a better job with Doc Savage than DC did.  They did eventually do a crossover between Doc and the Shadow, where Doc tries to capture the Shadow to treat him in his sanitarium, where he "cured" criminals.  

My memory is fuzzy but David might have returned to Star Trek...or maybe that was earlier.  he said, in his But I Digress column, in CBG, that there was a Paramount rep who purposely played power games with his stories and he had enough of it.  He dealt with different people on the prose novels.

Cosmic Odyssey was pretty good and was further used to make Darkseid one of DC's biggest baddies, while also serving to relaunch the New Gods, with Jim Starlin writing (until mark Evanier takes over).  You would have thought Starlin was perfect for the 4th World; but, i would say he was the least successful writer at capturing the feel of Kirby, apart from Gerry Conway (and he seemed to finally get it by the time of the JLA/JSA/New Gods team-up).  I wasn't happy with how he used Forager/Bug.  The art looked great.  I was lukewarm to Mignola until he did World of Krypton (the Byrne one, not the earlier mini) and then Cosmic Odyssey.  Fafhrd and Gray Mouser, too (and I was a fan of the characters).  When I saw Hellboy, I was a complete Mignola fanboy.  I will say that I think his style works better on the 4th World characters than it does the DC superheroes in the story (apart from Batman).

DC also reprinted Neal Adams' Man-Bat, the Fleisher/Aparo Spectre and Dr Fate with art by Simonson & Giffen. Marvel seems to have contributed way more to the glut, with reprints including Neal Adams' X-Men, Conan Red Nails, Steranko's Captain America & Nick Fury, Ditko & Brunner Dr Strange, Miller Spectacular Spider-Man, Starlin Captain Marvel & Warlock, Byrne Starlord, Fantastic Four Annual #1, G-S X-Men #1 and Phoenix the Untold Story.

Love Shattered Visage and thought it captured the Prisoner well, plus made allusions to other spy properties that fit into that same world quite easily, like George Smiley and the Circus. Motter used to design album covers for Warner's Canadian division, which is where Mister X first appeared, as an image. I'm a big fan of that series, plus Terminal City and Electropolis. Plus, he turned me on to some great books about futurist images, architecture and design, in his letter pages.

Jan Dursema did a lot of the TSR stuff, as I recall, which suited her talents quite well, if you have ever seen the graphic novel adaptation of The Magic Goes Away, by Larry Niven.

Alien Nation starred James Caan, as a human police detective, and Mandy Patinkin, with Terrence Stamp as the villain. The basic premise is that a space ship, with an enslaved population of people appears over Earth, after the aliens rebelled against their masters. They settle on Earth, but it is an uneasy coexistence. Caan's partner is killed, by an alien (called a "Newcomer"), during an attempted robbery of a Newcomer store. he is assigned a Newcomer as a partner, one of the first to be made a detective. Caan doesn't liek the Newcomers but wants to get to the heart of what happened in the robbery that killed his partner, which seems to revolve around a black liquid/gel. The Partner, Sam Francisco (the Newcomers were given new names, because their native names were unpronouncable, to humans), called George by Caan (the Newcomer doesn't care), is able to figure out that there was a personal connection in the robbery and the substance was the narcotic used to subdue the Newcomers and make them controllable, as slaves.

The movie is a sci-fi take on the plot of a racist cop who has to team with a minority cop and expands his horizons, becoming friends. The plot is mostly geared around the conspiracy at the heart of the shooting that kills the human partner, with the Newcomer society and past as backstory and character material. The tv series acts as if the movie never occurred, but has George Francisco partnered with Sykes (now played by Gary Graham, while George is played by Eric Pierpont), but with greater emphasis on the two societies and their intermixing, with the police cases and other elements acting a devices to move the plot along, but the character drama being more of the main point of the series.

The film was created by Rockne S O'Bannon, who also created Seaquest DSV and Farscape and wrote for the revived Twilight Zone and Amazing Stories. Gale Ann Hurd was the producer of the movie and snapped up the script, from O'Bannon. The original title was Future Tense, then the working title, during production, was Outer Heat, drawing from In The Heat of the Night and The Outer Limits, both of which provided inspiration for the story. Originally, the Newcomer cop was to be called George Jetson; but, at the last minute, Hanna-Barbera denied permission to use the name and it was changed to George Francisco and the Sam Francisco gag was created to justify changing it to George, with the Francisco surname kept.

The tv series was developed and produced by Kenneth Johnson, of The bionic Woman, The Incredible Hulk and V fame. It debuted with the Fox Network, airing on Monday nights. It had a cult following, but midling ratings. It was cancelled with a cliffhanger of a mass Newcomer poisoning, which was resolved in a tv movie, after a novel that detailed how the Newcomers rebelled and came to Earth, sold quite well. It was followed by 4 more tv movies.

Plastic Man, at DC has always been a mixed bag, apart from Kyle Baker's take on it. I haven't seen this one; but, Phil Foglio is a good choice for writing Plas and Doug Rice and Hilary Barta are equally perfect. Jack Cole's Plas was on a whole 'nother plane.

I was not happy with this Unknown Soldier and skipped it. It lost the essence of the original.

The G'Nort origin (Secret Origins #34) is one big Dr Seuss riff, visually. The issue also has the origin of Captain Atom and subsequent Ditko stories, as a test of the false backstory of the DC Captain Atom. There is also the origin of Dmitri Pushkin, as a Rocket Red (more the program and how he came into it and how he gets sent to the West).

Warlord, without Grell, was just wrong. Jurgens did fine artistic work; but, the stories weren't the same. I kind of felt it peaked at issue #50 and should have been left alone, after that. The last storyline, with Grell and Jurgens and a future America was decent, though.

Separated at birth…

 

DC Direct Currents #10 (Books shipping Nov 1 thru Nov 29, 1988)



Special 12 page issue! Interesting choice to lead with Black Orchid. I read that book a long time and don't remember much about it. I'm not a huge fan of McKean, if I'm being honest with myself.

Batman's 50th Anniversary celebrations start with a hardcover presentation of The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told. I seem to remember that this was a book that was sold in bookstores after the movie took off. There's also a 96 page Christmas with the Super-Heroes special featuring reprints of some of the best Christmas stories DC has produced. DC are launching another TSR book, this time Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. 

The editor's column explains how DC chooses which material to collect as trade paperbacks or hardcover editions. She claims they don't want to flood the market. YMMV.

There's a new Mister Miracle series by J.M. DeMatteis and Ian Gibson. Gibson draws Barda as though she's an Asian woman. There's yet another TSR book, Gammarauders, being handled by Peter Gillis. The next page features a little book called Sandman by some guy called Neil Gaiman that's bound to go nowhere. (Interestingly, they choose to print a panel where the Sandman is striking a Spectre-like superhero pose.) Finally, we wrap things up with a reminder that the Invasion! is continuing. 

This month's interview has Peter Gillis striking a very Alan Moore-esque pose. It's a shame he dropped out of comics. I feel like he could have produced some interesting Vertigo books or done some interesting indy work in the 90s. 

No cover of the month this month. The back cover is Black Orchid's origin issue from Adventure Comics #428. I didn't realize she was a Bronze Age character.