To Infinity and Beyond

From March 1984 comes today's selection, Infinity, Inc. #1, brought to you by the creative team of writer Roy Thomas and arts/co-designers Jerry Ordway and Mike Machlan.

It's Christmas Eve 1983 (I guess Ma Hunkle was still MIA back then, but couldn't someone have slapped a wreath up on the building?), on Earth 2 and Hawkman has called an emergency meeting of the Justice Society of America. Everyone's there except Superman and Sandman (Wesley Dodd's had recently suffered a stroke), but before Hawkman can explain why they are gathered they are interrupted by four upstart new heroes who burst in, clamouring for membership.

Holy bad parenting, Batman...all four of these "new" heroes have ties to family ties to members of the League. For college kids, I thought they were sort of unreasonable to their parents (sure, in high school, kids can be a little mean to their moms and dads, but by college, you hope this will be settled down...it was for me, anyway...), but I suppose that was largely colored by the bad attitude of the Silver Scarab, aka, Hector Hall, child of Hawkman and Hawkgirl. Between super-heroing and archaeology, the Hawks were apparently absent parents...and Hec pretty seriously resents his latchkey childhood.

Anyway, the Society ask the kids to wait in an adjacent room, while they have some discussion about whether or not to admit the younger generation. While they wait, the kids reflect on their origins.

The blonde with the the wierd red and gold costume and head-piece (is it a hat, a crown...some sort of modern tiara?!) is Lyta Trevor, daughter of Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor, who's dating Hector and has chosen the name Fury for her superhero identity. She mentions her meeting with the Earth One Wonder Woman as one of the things that encouraged her to finally step up to the hero business (remember when they met in WW #300? No? You should read yesterday's review for the through-line).

One of the other two heroes is Nuklon, who's the godchild of golden age Atom, Al Pratt, who is over seven feet tall and endowed with great strength, as a result of his one-time villain grandfather's experiments against the All-Star Squadron back in World War II.

The fourth member is Norda, using the codename Northwing, who hails from Feithera, a mystical city which the Hawks discovered during their early hero careers, populated by a human-like race of bird people(I really can't explain it any better than that!). His father was an anthropologist whom Hawkman brought to Feithera to study the culture. Hector really has some attitude about Norda, since he resents the attention of the Hawks.

Anyway...the JSA open the doors and announce their decision in the negative (never mentioning that the vote was nearly a tie), which is when two more young heroes show up, showing off new abilities.

Despite their claim that Green Lantern is their dad, neither Jade nor Obsidian are welcomed into the Society...and the kids go off to sulk and scheme. The JSA's younger and most-recently-added members, Power Girl and Huntress go after the kids to talk to them...and to think some about the old-ster attitudes of their fellow JSAers.

Of course, the Brainwave bursts into JSA headquarters on the last page for a cliff-hanger.

This was an interesting first issue, although the kids have not yet come up with the idea for their own team here, nor even the name in the title. It's also strange that Brainwave Junior (the guy in red with the blue goggles) is featured on the cover while Fury and Northwing are not, since he doesn't appear in the series until the second issue, at least. By the time of their debut, we had also already seen this team, when they traveled into the past to meet the All-Stars of WW II.

On another note, this was one of like four experimental books at the time, featuring a new reproduction method which I believe was called The Baxter Process, or perhaps that was the kind of paper they were using. I know I shied away from these titles for a little while due to the higher cover price (can you imagine, that there was a time when we thought $1.25 was too much to pay for a comic book?)...but eventually, the new art reproduction won me over...

Explosive First Issue

March 1978 brought this first issue of Firestorm the Nuclear Man to newstands everywhere. Here, Gerry Conway (listed as both writer and creator...but it's unclear, there's no penciller...did Conway draw as well? Anyone know?) introduces the first new DC superhero we had seen in some years.

Ronnie Raymond is a high school student (tho he and all his peers are drawn to look like adults...hey, it's the end of the Silver Age, after all) who's recently transferred to a new school. Ronnie's more of a jock than an egghead, though still a nice guy...and he's trying to win the attention of Doreen Day. She's already noticed him, though, and was interested enough to check the teacher's seating chart to learn Ronnie's name.

But school smarty Cliff Carmichael is jealous and sets out to make Ronnie look bad, goading him into fighting in the lunch room and trumping all his question-answering in the classroom. That night, Ronnie sees an interview with a protester at a new Hudson nuclear power plant, and decides that taking on the business of activism will show Doreen he's not "some dumb kid."

Of course the protesters are actually bomb-toting terrorists in disguise and Ronnie ends up overpowered and left for dead at the new power plant. He wakes up to find himself near the plant's atomic pile, where he sees the unconscious Professor Martin Stein, the plant's creator, and a very large bomb.

Ronnie is trying to get the bomb out of the plant when it goes off...

...and his life is changed forever, when he and Stein are fused together into a new being, capable of reading and changing the atomic structure of any material. Stein appears in Ronnie's head like the "voice of reason", providing information and guidance, though having been unconscious at the time of the "fusing", Stein is not the dominant personality in their combined make-up.

This first issue shows us the accident and Firestorm's self-discovery of his newly-formed powers and abilities. The new hero fashions a costume for himself with those new powers and is able to stop the terrorists from blowing up another plant. Unbeknowst to him, there's another who was at the site of the blast...who we'll learn more of in future issues.

As this issue ends, Ronnie finds that he can seperate himself and Professor Stein, and he puts the confused Stein into a taxi cab, not yet explaining their new-found relationship.

I always liked Firestorm, possibly because he quickly was welcomed into the Justice League of America, the first new hero to be inducted after I began reading (okay, Zatanna technically became a member after I learned of the League, but in the issues immediately proceeding my regular purchase of the title. more about that another day).

I was particularly sorry when Firestorm was accidentally run through with the Shining Knight's sword during Identity Crisis. I suppose it was the magic nature of the blade which kept Firestorm from transforming it into rubber or gas and saving himself. As a result, Firestorm's containment shell was breached...and he sacrificed himself to prevent his fellow heroes from dying in the resulting atomic blast.

Later, a new Firestorm came on the scene, whom I'm not as familiar with. I'm sure the character is great (an opinion bolstered by how many fans of Ronnie Raymond continue to protest him loud and long on the internet!), but I thought it was a pretty cheap shot on Meltzer's part...it seemed like just one more death in a series that featured a little too much of it and added a whole new level (mindwipes, rapes, secrets and lies) to the shiny JLA age in which Firestorm debuted.

We miss you, Ronnie, but still love those old adventures...and look forward to seeing how you fit into Rip Hunter's plan to repair a damaged timeline.

Say The Word...

...Feel The Power.

The Power of Shazam #1, March 1995.

(*EDIT, 3/5)

Ten years after the residents of Earth 5 got "folded in" to the continuity of a singular earth, Captain Marvel and the rest of his family finally get a reboot. And it's quite fun.

One of the challenges of blogging about this collection is the collection's ability to suck me in (just as it did when I was a kid who was supposed to be cleaning his room!). In one of the recently discovered boxes, I discovered the first four issues of this series all together...and I couldn't help by dive into them right off, and I've been enjoying the ride.

The series is great, with all the classic elements of the earlier Captain Marvel series. First off, Jerry Ordway is writing, but also doing cover art, which means we have a Captain who looks as he should...which is to say, very square-jawed and heroic, and with more than a passing resemblance to the original model for the character, actor Fred MacMurray. Interior artists Peter Krause and Mike Manley do nice work on continuing that look, as well as establishing the unique look and feeling of the Cap's hometown, Fawcett City.

In these first four issues, Billy Batson is secretly living on his own and as the Captain, is moonlighting as a dockworker. This wreaks havoc-a-plenty with his school life and he finds that he's knocking heads with his teacher, Miss Wormwood.

Now, that little bit I found (and still find) distracting: Miss Wormwood is Calvin's third grade teacher in the Calvin and Hobbes strip by Bill Watterson...and having her here, in that purple polka-dotted dress, feels a little cheap. You'd think that Ordway could've come up with an original name.

I wonder how Watterson felt about this. With DC having only come out of a major lawsuit that tied up the use of Captain Marvel for so long, you'd think they'd have been a little more careful. But anyway, let's call it homage and move along.

By the third issue, Billy has his radio announcer job at WHIZ Radio again, and his employer has arranged a tutor for him...so that should draw to a close the little battles with Miss Wormwood, anyway. As announcer, he hosts a county-wide spelling bee and meets both his long-lost sister, Mary (who's suffering from some memory issues and doesn't recognize her brother...though she suddenly recalls that her father looked like Captain Marvel) and Freddie Freeman.

In the fourth issue, Mary's old Tawky Tawny doll comes to life and helps Billy, convincing Mary to "say the word" and become Mary Marvel...which she does, just in time to rescue Billy from a gang of thugs who were trying to kidnap her.

I look forward to finding whatever else of this series remains in my collection and sitting down some rainy morning or evening to spend a little more time in Fawcett City.

Impulse #1

Today I'll feature this gem, found in another of those three discovered boxes of random titles: Impulse #1, from April 1995.

Here we have Bart Allen, grandson of Barry Allen, the Silver-Age Flash, who's come from the era of the Legion of Super-Heroes to the end of the 20th Century. Recently instrumental in Wally West/Flash's success in the "Terminal Velocity" storyline, Bart spins into his own title.

It's a great issue, using Bart's first day in high school as the framing sequence for a recap of his origin. Having been raised by machines in the future and possessing the attention span of a flea, it's a riot to watch Bart try to figure out 20th Century technology, like when the class is assigned to write an autobiography, and he can't find the ON switch for his pencil.

Bart's living in Birmingham, Alabama, with perfect slow and easy backdrop for a kid from the future who's learning to control his super-speed. Because Wally's got so much going on in his own life, he's sent Bart off to live with Max Mercury, one of the Golden Age speedsters, whose known as the "Zen Master of Speed."

You can feel Bart's frustrations, when he has finally figured out how to use the pencil and told his origin tale, and Max rips it up, launching into a lecture about protecting one's secret identity. There's also a great set-up for future storylines, when Bart races some kind of secret guided missile and begins to uncover a mystery.

Ah, Bart, what a short time you were with us (is a spoiler warning really necessary to tell you that Bart died at the hands of the Rogues Gallery last spring, after taking up the red costume of his Flash forebears?). As fitting for a speedster, it went by all too quickly.

But there's been teases of a possible return, so we'll have to wait and see. Hey, nothing improves your chances of a return from the grave than dying in a comic book!