Then and Now

First, another random discovery while making sense of the Collection: Freedom Fighters #5, cover dated December 1976. I don't think I bought this one off the racks, tho certainly the prominent display of Wonder Woman (hey, big surprise: she wasn't really dead!) suggests that as a possibility. I think rather this was one of a collection of issues I received in a trade with someone who preferred the Marvel issues in my collection which didn't really interest me.

In any case, it's a dramatic cover, but the story inside is a little wanting. Bob Rozakis gets the writing credits, and I really "knew" him better from his Answer Man column in the back of DC titles later in the seventies. You could write him your queries about continuity and such and he'd be glad to set you as straight as was possible. Of course, in those pre-Crisis days, the "imaginary story" possibility was thrown around a lot.

And it's interesting that he was writing the Freedom Fighters in light of that, because there seems to be a little bit of a continuity wonk going on here. It's hard to be sure exactly on which Earth (yes, there were many back then...)this story takes place...though the presence of Wonder Woman suggests Earth One or Two...probably One, owing to some minimal visual cues in the interior artwork of Ramona Fradon which suggest more present-day than historical context.

But since I've only got the single issue, I can't be sure where the story was supposed to be set. After all, by then, the Freedom Fighters would long ago have migrated to Earth X from Earth 2 to fight the Nazis...but I don't believe there ever was a Wonder Woman on that Earth, so perhaps they came to Earth 1...or maybe it was just a big goof. Whatevs, this was exactly the sort of compound confusion the Crisis was designed to fix.

(Shame, though, that Ray Thomas and the gang at All-Star Squadron worked so hard to tell that tale properly ten years later, only shortly before the Multiverse got the finger, making it all a little moot...)


Still, it was fun to find this issue so soon after having read the recent Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters miniseries trade. There's no doubt that the FF are in proper continuity now (tho thanks to the appetite of Mr. Mind/Evil Skeets, it sounds as though there are TWO sets of Freedom Fighters out there...)
and I surely enjoyed this series, and look forward to seeing where this group goes from here, now that they're getting another regular series and will be dealing with the seemingly ill-planned Amazons Attack aftermath.

The story in the mini gives Uncle Sam and the Gang (most of them killed in the opening pages of Infinite Crisis, to be re-invented here) some new relevance in our post-911, post-Bludhaven/Crisis world, as they join together to take on the dark forces of S.H.A.D.E. (Super Human Advance Defense Executive), a team of meta-humans authorized by the President of the US, who's now been replaced with some alien machine creature who's running the country into the ground. Oh, if only the troubles in the current Executive Office were so easily explained.

Still, it's a rollicking story through the fresh environments of New Earth, which for the purposes of this story have more similarities with our "real" world than we usually see. Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti have woven a tale to recreate these great heroes, in a way that manages to draw some sharp parallels to the troubles of this dimension that's entertaining, too. I have to admit I nearly stood up and cheered when the new Firebrand (he's okay, but he's no Danette Reilly!)says,

"The war is a big oil-sucking lie and people are dying by the truckload because of it. The whole world knows there were no warehouses packed with nuclear warheads, no underground vats of bio-toxins, no super-agents dropping from the sky like human bombs. Our nation is anesthetized and divided but somehow our leaders are not ashamed."

Yep, that pretty much sums it up, doesn't it? Sure I like my comics as Escapism the same as anyone, but its also nice to see some real world issues addressed from time to time, especially when we have so very many to spare. In fact, as we watch President Gonzo execute sacrifice innocent Americans in terrorist attacks to discredit meta-humans and begin to circle around the Constitution for the kill, having your president replaced by an alien/machine actually begins to seem one of the more reasonable explanations for the past six years in our world.

Daniel Acuna is the artist and his style seems to reflect well the dark and bright contrasts of this all-out fight to preserve the integrity of the United States.

Boxes of Progress

Well, as you can see, the sorting process is moving along well, as a result of a few minutes here, a half an hour there and the occasional multiple hour session. I've managed to sort the bulk of my comic collection into a dozen different longboxes. I've left the image large, so you can try to souse the logic behind why certain things are stored together...but to be honest, there's a randomness, too. Sometimes, it was just a matter of what run of titles happened to fit in the available space remaining.

But I tried to keep some thematic sense about things, too. Solo titles by characters from various Titans titles are grouped with those titles. Same with the various versions of the Justice League and their stars. Assorted Legion of Super Heroes titles are collected with related mini-series, and a few crossovers which threatened to impact timelines and/or The Future. Spooky titles like Spectre and the Demon got a box together. You get my drift.

Still remaining in the project (and make no mistake, it's a pretty vast chunk of the collection) are titles featuring both Superman and Batman and their costars. At the moment, I'm guessing another four or five boxes may do the trick. We'll see.

Meanwhile, I also stumbled across this issue of Whiz Comics 102, dated October 1948. It's possibly the oldest book in the entire collection, something I stumbled across at a flea market a number of years back.

The cover, featuring Captain Marvel facing off against the Dangerous Dollar is a classic piece of late Golden Age magic. How cool and surreal it might've been if Cap had actually been going up against an animated, human-sized dollar bill...but I suppose they might've gotten letters from the folks over at Dick Tracy for that kind of frivolity.

Inside, Billy Batson finds a dollar that the breeze carries to his feet, and he is quickly set upon by assorted gangsters looking to reclaim it. Of course he says the magic word ("SHAZAM!") and makes short work of these thugs, but then recognizes the mystery at hand, and before long figures out that one of these gangsters has hidden a considerable sum of loot, and the directions for finding said cache are coded onto the face of the bill.

Now, for ten cents, you got an awful lot of comic back then. In addition to this Shazam tale, there's also a post-war adventure of Commando Yank (yawn), an old West adventure of the Golden Arrow (double-yawn), four pages of inanity from Colonel Corn and Korny Kobb (puns too dreadful to mention, as their names suggest) and a seven page tale of Ibis the Invincible being turned into a bat.

You know, in light of all that (even for a dime)it's no wonder Fawcett Comics went out of business.

Snapshots

The image above is Showcase #97, a pre-Crisis title that showed Power Girl emerging as a solo hero in her own right.

Spent today in the basement, moving forward on the organization process of the collection. I seem to have passed the halfway mark, as there are more comics properly long-boxed than not at this point. Still the Batman and Superman titles alone will probably take up four more boxes just by their lonesome.

Having spent the day in the company of assorted musty and moldy old boxes (who nonetheless have done a good job of protecting the collection through a variety of varying-quality storage situations), I have a bit of a headache and I'm not really feeling up to a full review of any random issues...I thought I would share some scenes of the work in progress, and some of my discoveries.

And then there's this finale image from Legends #6. This was the first crossover event post-Crisis, and I remember it was a bit of a relief to see all the major players on the same page together again! It was the start of Bad Costume Time for Black Canary (pictured here between Wonder Woman, Batman and Captain Marvel...and due to some poor perspective, appearing to be about ten years old...).

Now this I was particularly happy to find: The Question #1, and Blue Beetle #5. Both of these guys were new to me as the dust settled from the Crisis on Infinite Earths, and while I waited for the start of things like George Perez' Wonder Woman or John Byrne's Superman...these titles began first, and introduced me to heroes of the former Charlton comics, who'd recently been "folded" into the DC Universe.

Blue Beetle quickly took the comedy route in the pages of Justice League, but The Question, man, Vic Sage or Charlie, he was the real deal. I wish that I could take the time to re-read all those stories now that I've got them all in one place, and in the right order...but other things beckon just now, and so I'll have to wait.

I just this weekend read 52 Volume 3, the trade of last year's brilliant weekly series. What a great story (or collection of them, really...) they tell. I found this shortly after reading Vic's death scene in those pages. So sad to see him go, but--unlike so many vocal internet fans (is there another kind?)--I'm really kind of grooving on the idea of Renee Montoya taking up the dermaskin mask and seeking some answers.

As for Blue Beetle, well, Ted Kord was also sadly lost to us recently in the lead-up to Infinite Crisis...and his loss was a big one, too. However, I also highly approve of Jamie Reyes adventures as the all-new and different Blue Beetle; the latest trade of that title is actually sitting high on my reading pile at the moment and I look forward to diving in.