Quarter Bin 82 "Return of the Duck Knight, Dixon & McDaniel's Nightwing, Pandora's Futures End, Rucka's Queen & Country, Dixon's Robin"

Not always, but this time the title of this column may be taken literally.  Thank you for reading this.

The Midnite Skulker #2 (Target)
From August 1986.
This issue, as you can tell, is dubbed "Return of the Duck Knight," which makes this a vintage parody of Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns.  I just had to read it.  We live in an age where anything that's parodied isn't taken seriously (it's funny because literally anything can be made to sound ridiculous, right?), but there was a time where it was taken for granted that anything was fair game, including something that was just beginning to become a touchstone.  E. Larry Dobias delivers a pretty spot-on parody, down to panel structure and emphasis on TV reportage.  The whole Duck Knight thing was later absconded by Darkwing Duck, but...Dobias get there first!  Midnight skulkers, meanwhile, also exist in the comic strip B.C., which means you have to be pretty specific to find this on Google.  I know people who aren't fans of superheroes find it very hard to take them seriously, so it's not surprising that someone instantly showed up to make fun of Dark Knight Returns, but it's pretty funny, observing how much pain Bruise Wane, I mean Bruce Wayne would be in if he really did try and resume a young man's career when he was anything, anything but.  I mean, if you were to make a movie about Old Man Bruce, I wonder if anyone would take him seriously.  I remember critics pointing out how Jack Bauer probably couldn't absorb relatively easy jumps at his age when the last 24 revival happened.  And Jack would still be young compared to the Bruce Wayne of Dark Knight Returns!  Clint Eastwood had some hits as an old man adventure star (Unforgiven, Gran Torino), but again, no real comparison to Miller's vision.  Apparently, only ducks can pull it off otherwise...

Nightwing #26 (DC)
From December 1998.
When I quit reading comics before heading off to college, I quit cold turkey, unlike what I've managed to do in this Comics Readr era (although I'm hoping to make a better go of it in a few months).  The transition was during my senior year of high school, and I guess it was more staggered than I now remember, because I don't remember reading this issue back in the day, in which Huntress enters the series proper (there had been a mini-series team-up previously) under the auspices of Chuck Dixon and Scott McDaniel, who somehow managed to turn Dick Grayson's first ongoing series into their own little creative showcase, especially McDaniel, who parlayed this work into higher profile stuff with Batman and Superman, before gradually be used less and less, to the point where you'd hardly know the poor guy's still working in comics...Anyway, I loved this era, and it's always worth revisiting.  Clancy's still there, Soames is still there, Tad is still there, and even Cisco!  It's easy to forget Cisco, because he wasn't as well defined as some other characters, but this was such a rich vision of Dick's further crime-fighting career, I wish it got more respect later.  There are always reprints, and back issues...

Trinity of Sin: Pandora - Futures End (DC)
From November 2014.
I continue to pick away at the Futures End and Villains Month comics DC put out, since there's such a wealth of material to be found.  The latest is Pandora, who was seemingly intended to be the major new character of the New 52, and who was killed off in DC Universe Rebirth, and apparently in this story, too.  It seems that was always her fate.  As part of the "trinity of sin" (along with the Question and Phantom Stranger), she ended up inhabiting one of the more obscure corners of the DC landscape.  These are characters who recur in the comics with some regularity, but they're rarely around for much more than a visit.  Pandora was inhabiting, at first, the role of Harbinger from Crisis on Infinite Earths, and so it can actually be said she had remarkable staying power.  It's time to put aside the notion that she was a creative failure.  The surprisingly dependable Ray Fawkes, still looking for a true breakout project, was responsible for this.

Queen & Country FCBD (Oni)
From May 2002.
This was one of the releases from the very first Free Comic Book Day.  (Read a little about that here.)  With the recent return of Greg Rucka to the pages of Wonder Woman (and DC in general), it's worth remembering that he's got a pretty long history in comics at this point.  His first creator-owned success was Whiteout (adapted into a 2009 film), but Queen & Country is what, besides his Batman work, put Rucka on the map (for me, he'll always be best remembered as part of the writing dream team of 52).  Until now, I'd never read any of it.  Turns out it's pretty good.  It's also worth noting, with some amusement, that Bryan Lee O'Malley, who would later launch the innovative Scott Pilgrim series of graphic novels at Oni, appears listed as artist for someone else's project.  You just kind of expect someone like that to have emerged fully formed, but apparently that wasn't the case.

Robin #75 (DC)
From April 2000.
This was from later in Chuck Dixon's long run on the title he helped launch (he had nearly twenty-five issues left to go after it, reaching the hundredth issue, and then a few more later).  By this time, Tim Drake is about ready to take his break from being the Boy Wonder, and Stephanie Brown will assume her ill-fated turn, in what is still a shockingly downplayed part of the Robin lineage.  But that's about fifty issues and two writers later.  It's not surprising that Dixon would be the writer to shepherd Tim away from the Dynamic Duo partnership, as the beginning of the series had Tim breaking away from "AzBats" and thus a Robin striking out on his own for the first time.  Tim kind of remains in that mode, actually.  The artist is Pete Woods relatively early in his career.  I can't believe I'm just making a label for the guy.