I might have to revisit JLE then, bar the first issue it has been a very, very long time since I last read it.

I had Gilgamesh II as well and liked it but didn't love it, and ended up selling it on ebay when in need of spare cash a while back, there's a hell of a lot of comics I wish I still had from that period, but I can't say Gilgamesh is one of them.

The characters in The Blasters were a group of humans who were kidnapped by the alien invaders, the Dominators (they were one of the main races involved, along with a few others) for testing and their meta-genes were activated. The group included Snapper Carr, while the rest were introduced in Invasion. They escape and end up travelling the stars, after the war ends. LEGION was the other main spin-off of invasion and the only one that lasted for a duration. I get the feeling that no one really had high hopes for the group to catch on, so the special was all they got. I read it; it had some decent comedy in there, similar to what David di on X-Force. For a one-shot, it was a decent book.

Hated the Janus Directive. It interrupted too many things and saddled the much better Suicide Squad with having to crossover with Checkmate, which never rose above "okay", as a series. Manhunter had lost its mojo; but, he was well used. It was supposed to make Kobra a bigger deal, but that didn't really work out that way, though Ostrander & Yale put him to good use in the revamped Suicide Squad. If it had been just their baby, it would have been so much better; but, Paul Kupperberg was writing Checkmate and Cary Bates & Greg Weisman were writing Captain Atom; but that series kind of went stale, after Pat Broderick left it, in my opinion. Loved the first year and the second still had some good stuff; but, it started to wear thin. It kept going for another couple of years; so, someone still liked it.

I was a young naval officer, at this point and my weekly outlay was probably somewhere between $20 and 30, depending on what came out and if I picked up any books. I didn't get many collections, at that time, though I did buy the $75 slipcase 2-volume set of the Simon & Kirby Captain America.....the one that got pulled because someone drew a penis on Bucky, on one of the color plates. The other big one I bought was the limited edition reprint of the Monster Society of Evil serial that was published by some independent entity. Otherwise, I bought a few Greatest Stories Ever Told hardcovers, but not the pricier Masterworks and Archive editions.

Credit cards helped, too, as this was the era of Easy Credit!

Don't ever do that kids.......you,ll be paying a lot more than cover price, for a long time.

I enjoyed the Hawk & Dove series, until Armageddon 2000 killed any chance of progressing.

Grell had an interesting path into comics.  He started out as an assistant to Dale Messick, on Brenda Starr.  How many comics people can say they apprenticed to a female cartoonist?  He was then developing a strip feature, called The Savage Empire and was getting nowhere, as adventure strips were dying.  However, those samples helped him get into DC, when Julie Schwartz (I think) took a look at it.  The way Grell tells it, Julie asked him what made him think he could draw comics and Grell retorted by tossing his portfolio down and said, "You tell me!"  He walked out of there with his first assignment (I think it was the Aquaman story he did in Action Comics).  He was later courted for Atlas, which led to DC publishing Warlord, based on his Savage Empire stuff.  The original version was an archeologist or similar academic/scientist discovering this savage world, rather than an Air Force pilot.

I finally got to meet Grell, a few years back (well, more than a decade, now) and he was fun to talk to.  Mike Gold and John Ostrander were also there, so i got to talk a lot of First Comics stuff with them.

DC Direct Currents #16 (Books shipping May, 1989)



Very strange issue this time as there's barely anything to it. The cover feature is The Unauthorized Biography of Lex Luthor, which looks and sounds great, but I'm not sure how it was in execution. Then, they're basically shilling a Superman baseball cap, some more Batman buttons, and a bunch of trade paperbacks, including Justice League: A New Beginning. They also cover Firestorm's new look, which is fugly.

The interview this month isn't an interview per se, but an article about how DC has been revamping its older characters post-Crisis. There must have been some deadline troubles or something as sharp-eyed readers will realize that the creator quotes are from people they've previously interviewed. 

The cover of the month is Walt Simonson doing Sgt. Rock. The back cover is Firestorm's debut issue from 1978.

Things return to normal next month, so this issue must be an outlier. 

He did some fine war comics, when he first broke in, under Archie's editorship.  That was how he got the Manhunter gig.

The art was really good though. Ed Barretto was an excellent artist.