Quarter Bin #40 "The Mosaic Action Conspiracy of Superman"

ACTION COMICS WEEKLY #s 613-14

From August 1988:

Until 52, COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS, and TRINITY, weekly comics seemed like an experiment that was never going to happen again.  The first time was when the mother of all comic books, ACTION COMICS, was converted to a weekly anthology title toward the end of the 1980s, for less than a year, the first time in forty years it didn’t star Superman exclusively.  Until recently, I had never read any of it, but had always been intrigued.  Seeing Nightwing on the cover of #613 was what convinced me to finally have a look, in an adventure captioned as “Nightwing flies again!”  The writer is Marv Wolfman, who famously steered the course of Dick Grayson’s evolution in NEW TEEN TITANS.  For modern readers, it may be a little difficult to imagine a time when Nightwing wasn’t established as a viable solo figure, but that didn’t really happen for another seven years, when the first NIGHTWING ongoing was launched.  The weird thing about this adventure is that it co-stars Roy Harper, and is basically a Roy Harper story, featuring Cheshire, but much of the narrative thrust is driven by Dick’s thoughts about moving on from the Batcave.  The other notable story in the issues features Hal Jordan as Green Lantern, written by Peter David, explaining how his power ring actually removed all his fear from him.  David has made most of his name writing licensed novels on other people’s ideas, and he treats this story pretty much the same way he writes those, putting his own ideas that don’t necessarily configure to the established material, so that it seems like it makes sense but doesn’t.  (I used to read his Star Trek books religiously, but gradually became disillusioned, ironically while reading the early Excalibur books.  It’s highly unlikely that people go around routinely tearing off the antennas of Andorians in fights, a fact that ENTERPRISE made clear several years later.)  Among the other features are two-page entries with Superman from Roger Stern and Curt Swan.  I would suggest that Swan’s Man of Steel in these pages looks about as classical as you can get.  I’d read that layout on a weekly basis, easily.  Issue #614 features great Green Lantern cover from Mike Mignola.  Makes me wish he still did DC work.

CONSPIRACY #1 (Marvel)

From February 1998:

I raved about this Dan Abnett ditty recently, a discovery I made from a stack of comics I got a decade ago but only recently sat down to read.  I should amend that previous statement to say that I raved about the second issue, and perhaps it would have been as well to leave it at that, because the first issue is disturbingly similar, except with a beginning that in hindsight isn’t really necessary, as Abnett treats the same conspiracy theory about the disturbing shared origins of the most famous Marvel superheroes in slightly different terms, which is disappointing.  Given that CONSPIRACY was only two issues long and was soundly forgotten by everyone, including any publisher who ever knew Abnett might have written something without Andy Lanning, it’s equally disappointing to know that the brilliance I caught the first time around really might have been a fluke, and that’s why Abnett’s been writing with a partner ever since.  Still, I would say this is worth a look, but if you only have time for one issue, go with the second.  It even helps make THE AVENGERS and that whole movie franchise make sense for comic book fans.

GREEN LANTERN #17 (DC)

From October 1991

GREEN LANTERN: MOSAIC was a short-lived ongoing series between published 1992-93, and the only issue I’ve ever read is the first one, and its surreal nature has never really left my imagination.  Starring John Stewart, it was about a community of disparate alien cultures brought together on Oa as an experiment, and thus is unlike any other Green Lantern story that I know of.  I discovered that it had its origins in a story arc from GREEN LANTERN, in which John and the reader are introduced to the concept (in modern comics this would have been done back-to-back, without any awkward gap between this and the launch of the series) and John basically gets to express his frustrations with being a Green Lantern.  (I would strongly suggest that a future Green Lantern movie consider using him before Guy Gardner or Kyle Rayner, even if he has to interact with Hal Jordan and make viewers think of Tony Stark and Jim Rhodes.)  There’s few characters with enough integrity to pull off a concept like Mosaic, and John was always the only Green Lantern for the job.  These stories need to be reprinted.

SUPERMAN: THE MAN OF STEEL #121 (DC)

From February 2002

SUPERMAN: THE MAN OF STEEL #133 (DC)

From February 2003:

These are two early Superman stories from Geoff Johns, who at the time was better known for THE FLASH, AVENGERS, and JSA.  His later run on ACTION COMICS produced some of the most iconic Superman stories of the modern era, but at this point he was trying to draw out the man in the Man of Steel, like everyone else at the time convinced that Superman needed to be justified to modern readers.  The writer who famously reinvigorated the Flash’s Rogues Gallery turned to the Royal Flush Gang in the first of these issues, from the perspective of a low-rung member who manages to make Superman feel bad, in a way wounding him.  That’s as much as the Royal Flush Gang will do to him, because otherwise they’re a perennially goofy concept and unworthy of a Superman comic.  This is probably one of their finest appearances.  In the second issue, the “Lost Hearts” story arc sees the Man of Steel hiding out incognito in Hell’s Heart, reconnecting with Lana and more human conflict.  There’s also Traci 13, who would later become a recurring character in the first Jaime Reyes BLUE BEETLE ongoing.  This arc was her first appearance.