Quarter Bin #62 "Binge-worthy VII: Superman"

The Adventures of Superman #473 (DC)
From 1990.

via DC Wikia

Dan Jurgens is known for creating Booster Gold and killing Superman.  Before Superman #75 he spent a considerable apprenticeship to become the successor of Man of Steel rebooter John Byrne.  It's not like he came out of nowhere to introduce Doomsday, though it probably seemed that way to everyone who came just for the big event.  It turns out there was also considerable lead-in to the crucial role Hal Jordan would play in the follow-up "Reign of the Supermen" climax.  Jurgens had also been employing Guy Gardner in another of his successor projects, Justice League, in which he followed the Giffen/DeMatteis/Maguire act.  Gardner and Superman were teammates in that book.  This is an issue that brings Superman, Jordan, and Gardner together, and even by the cover alone is a reminder that Jordan had a rough time of it from the start of that particular Green Lantern reboot, which was also the start of Gardner's solo push.  Seeing these elements interact well before they hit the grand stage was a moment I had to include in the binge, beyond a doubt.  The story itself is meaningless, but it's also more than worth noting that the issue opens with Lois showing off the engagement ring she's just gotten from Clark, because the later wedding was postponed deliberately by the Doomsday business because of the Lois & Clark TV series.  It's always good to remember context.  Jurgens also used Jordan to considerable effect in the pages of Zero Hour, meanwhile, the conclusion of his hot streak.  And then everyone started reducing his career to "the guy who killed Superman."  Even his art, here inked by Art Thiburt, is crisp, something altogether removed from the Jurgens who would later be accused of being out of touch.  I think it was his notoriety that made it so easy for Jurgens to be dismissed, being so closely associated with one of the biggest moments in comics history, and one of the first to be later dismissed as a publicity stunt, although it wasn't.

The Adventures of Superman #516 (DC)
From 1994.

via DC Wikia

The debut of Alpha Centurion, although the supporting character who appeared in later comics is more or less a completely different character, this one's written by the frequently underrated Karl Kesel, who along with Stuart Immonen provided the most reliable material for the concept.  The Zero Hour issues across the line provided DC a chance to revisit older continuity due to the changes that were occurring in the timeline thanks to the event, but this was a marked departure.  The Superman zero issues themselves introduced another new character, Conduit, a villain this time, which was in-step with a company-wide effort to refresh the landscape with new and updated concepts.  Alpha Centurion is much like the current Ulysses, although in the Roman's case he became soiled by association with Lex Luthor and the Contessa, a relationship featured in...

Superman: The Man of Tomorrow #2 (DC)

From 1995.

via Comic Vine

Man of Tomorrow was a "skip week" title, as in what DC published in its weekly Superman cycle when there were five instead of four weeks in a month, or in other words perhaps the series that made the franchise wear out its welcome in the '90s, that and the steady stream of climactic arcs ("Doomsday"! "The Death of Clark Clark"! Electric Superman!).  At the time it also brought back creators who hadn't been used in the titles for a while, in this instance Roger Stern, who at one time had written Action Comics, and Tom Grummett, whose work on Adventures of Superman had included the debut of Superboy.  This issue involves Lex Luthor's post-Underworld Unleashed revitalization (the long red hair and beard of the '90s Luthor who was originally called Luthor's son was in fact a clone meant to replace the body poisoned by years of wearing a kryptonite-studded ring; the frail body left when the ruse was exposed lead to the Lex Luthor we know best today, the calculating villain who could pose a positive public face) as well as his relationship with the Contessa, the only character who ever stood toe-to-toe with him, and the in-continuity version of Alpha Centurion's debut.  The noble time-displaced hero becomes a pawn of the Contessa's but never a villain, it should be noted.

The Adventures of Superman #1,000,000 (DC)
From 1998.

via DC Wkkia

DC One Million was a Grant Morrison event spinning out of his JLA. This particular tie-in is a reminder that the event attempted to elevate Resurrection Man, whose title character is heavily spotlighted in the issue.  Creators Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning later became known for their Marvel sci-fi titles and DC Western efforts, but the hero who died, came back with a different power, and was as such one of several immortals on the playground added one of the many twists to the event as far as legacies explored were concerned.  DC liked the idea well enough to attempt a, well, resurrection of Resurrection Man in the New 52 reboot, but the concept wasn't much more popular then, either.

Superman: The Man of Tomorrow #1,000,000 (DC)
From 1998.

via DC Wikia

In this DC One Million issue, the histories of the Superman dynasty and Solaris, the Tyrant Sun and villain of the event are explored, making it a pretty crucial tie-in.  For me the most significant aspect of the issue is artist Georges Jeanty, one of the first artists to convince me Superboy could survive without Tom Grummett.  Jeanty later went on to have an extended run illustrating Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics for Dark Horse, and has returned to DC in the pages of Batwoman.

Superman #147 (DC)

From 1999.

via Superman Homepage

One of the things I never really understood was why, if it was a shared universe, there was always so little emphasis on who the Green Lantern for the sector of space Krypton occupied, they had so little to do with its destruction.  Actually, that Lantern was Tomar-Re, a now-deceased Corpsman who was integral to Hal Jordan's early career (as reflected in the Green Lantern movie).  Superman himself would seem to be a natural as a selection for the Corps (the idea was bandied about to have Clark Kent glimpsed as the ring looked for a new host in the movie).  There was a neat Elseworlds comic called Batman: In Darkest Knight, which you can figure out for yourself.  This comic comes from 1999, the year I gave up reading comics for half a decade to save money for college, so it features an arc I hadn't previously known about, Superman exploring various different fates had things turned out differently for him.  You've got to remember, too, that at the time, there was no Green Lantern Corps, only the one, Kyle Rayner, so a cover with a Corps is itself a novelty.  The writer is Ron Marz, who guided Rayner throughout his early career, so he certainly knew the lore.  The issue also features one of those periodic Hal Jordan appearances post-Parallax, although this is a reality where none of that happened.  Also present is Sinestro, who had more presence "Emerald Twilight" and afterward than he'd had in years.  In fact it might be said that Jordan's downfall was a huge windfall for Sinestro.  He became relevant again, which eventually led to everything Geoff Johns did with him, and now an ongoing series of his own.

Superman #155 (DC)
From 2000.

via DC Wikia

Another thing I missed was Jeph Loeb's Superman prior to Superman/Batman, his last universally-heralded creative run, which included one of his collaborators during that time, Ed McGuinness.  This was the start of a soft reboot, in which you could pretty much forget the '90s ever happened, when DC was once again struggling to prove that the Man of Steel was still relevant.  (On a side note, isn't it a little odd that McGuinness has never done an out-and-out Shazam project?  Just going by that cover, you'd think he would be an obvious selection!)  One of the biggest beneficiaries of the soft reboot, in a way, was Lex Luthor, who was extricated in a heartbeat from all the shenanigans of the previous decade (which in a way was a very bad thing, at least concerning the Contessa and Luthor's daughter with her).  The issue opens with Superman and Luthor in one of those improbable we're-buddies moments Luthor helps stage for the benefit of the public.  It also has, as the cover shows, Superboy in one of his earliest let's-hang-out-with-the-Kents moments.  Some of the developments are keyed in to that era: Luthor about to run for president, Lois being estranged from Clark.  Loeb's trademark narration, used sparingly this time, comes from Pa Kent.  I know Loeb is working for Marvel's media division these days, but I'd love for him to make a committed return to comics themselves...

Superman #156 (DC)

From 2000.

via DC Wikia

The story continues!  Loeb's narration begins by quoting a Clark Kent newspiece on Superman's activities, but then becomes Perry White's thoughts on Clark's problems with Lois (it should be noted that Lois & Clark had been over since 1997, so any soap opera elements were strictly comic book material).  Involved in this state of affairs is Wonder Woman.  This was years before the New 52 reboot, mind you, years before Superman/Wonder Woman, years before Clark and Lois actually split up and a romance formed between the Man of Steel and the Amazon Princess.  But an idea that was too good to pass up apparently came up at least once before, in more innocent form.  It should be noted that if the soft reboot hadn't taken place, Lois's behavior in the issue wouldn't make any sense.  I wonder how readers reacted at the time.  The ones who write into letters columns always tend to like bold new creative teams.  It was likely a different story in the budding online community, where everyone basically hates everything...

The Adventures of Superman #596 (DC)

From 2001.

via Recalled Comics

This issue shipped the day after 9/11.  The debut of the black S-shield and the aftermath of the Our Worlds At War event are one of the coincidences that cropped during that time.  Featured is a confrontation between Superman and Flash villain Weather Wizard.  Suffice to say but Superman handles this particular Rogue a little more...directly.  Also featured is President Luthor, who attempts once again to paint Superman in a bad light, only for an ordinary construction worker to put things into perspective.  The artist might seem to be more Ed McGuinness, but it's actually the late, much-lamented Mike Wieringo, known as Ringo to his fans.  I loved his work in the pages of The Flash and Robin.  Even though he died in 2007, it seems like it's been far longer.  He remains greatly missed.

Superman #179 (DC)

From 2002.

via DC Wikia

This is one of the stories that addressed Superman's continued relevance directly, as he ends up in a black neighborhood and confronted by a black superhero he's never even heard of, Muhammad X (Jeph Loeb cobbled the name from Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X, as the character himself explains).  Although the whole lesson is pretty obvious, I like the unusual perspective the character still manages to bring to the proceedings.  It'd be interesting to see him return, if he would feel compromised.  Anyway, Lois (their relationship, it seems, didn't end after all, at least at that point) convinces Superman to talk with Steel about his concerns, but he ends up with talking with Steel's niece, Natasha Irons, instead.  Stargirl happens to be present as well.  "Have you ever heard of 'Muhammad X'?" he asks.  "Have you ever heard of Batman?" she responds.  She lists a bunch of other black heroes, Rush, Silence, Stoneyard, Underground, none of whom exist outside this issue.  Superman later talks to Martian Manhunter (one of the green skins another black man might have referred to in Green Lantern/Green Arrow #76) and references Black Lightning (he's a member of Luthor's cabinet, it might be noted) and Mr. Terrific.  Aside from the point the comic is trying to make, it's also interesting to note that Loeb at least is capable of acknowledging that no matter how many heroes DC has running around that readers know about, there are likely many more that they don't, a little of what happens to characters after their series have been cancelled, only it applies to others as well.  Muhammad X also represents some of the more violent superheroes DC experimented with, such as those who appeared in Justice League Elite following the appearances of Manchester Black, another character who challenged Superman during this period.

Action Comics #791 (DC)

From 2002.

via DC Wikia

I picked this one up because of its gorgeously offbeat, evocative cover, which looks like it has Tim Sale written all over it, but the artist is actually John Paul Leon.  The story inside takes a flashback to Clark Kent's Smallville days, as the cover might also tell you, and it's about bullying, but it also reveals that Clark isn't just a superhero because of his powers, but because of the values instilled in him by the Kents, something that's sometimes overlooked.  The perspective of the story is interesting, because by some interpretations the feelings of isolation in the girl Clark (yes, Clark, not Superman) saves are shared by Clark himself (certainly in the movie Man of Steel, less so in Smallville), who is sometimes depicted as a jock and sometimes as someone who can't be a jock (Superman the movie).  It's a nice issue, and certainly fits in with the era nicely.

Superman #185 (DC)

From 2002.

via DC Wikia

Here's one of Geoff Johns' earliest Superman stories.  The Man of Steel smashes into a softball field (there's a real American image right there!) in the midst of a fight with Major Force (who may forever be associated with the women-in-fridges moment from Green Lantern), one of those real brawls fans always want Superman to have in the movies (uh...until they got it in Man of Steel).  Johns seems to use Major Force in much the way Grant Morrison later would classic Superman villain Metallo, as a kind of experiment in what would have happened in the Man of Steel had become a tool of the U.S. military.  At the end of the fight, Superman leaves Major Force looking...very much like what happened to Wolverine at the end of Death of Wolverine recently.  I don't think any of these kinds of parallels are intentional, but it's certainly interesting to see them happen.

Action Comics Annual #11 (DC)

From 2008.

via DC Wikia

Here's the conclusion to a different Johns story entirely, when he'd returned years later for the start of a proper Geoff Johns run on Superman, starting out working alongside Richard Donner for the second time in his career (Johns famously began his working career as Donner's personal assistant), the finale of "Last Son," in which the son of General Zod becomes the adopted son of Superman (Rick Remender has recently done a kind of echo of this in the pages of Captain America), the Chris Kent later featured in the pages of Grant Morrison's The Multiversity: The Just.  The character was also featured in the "New Krypton" arc in the guise of the Kryptonian hero Nightwing, after whom Dick Grayson named his post-Robin superhero personna, and in a different incarnation is the Superman of Earth 2.

Superman: Birthright #12 (DC)

From 2004.

via DC Wikia

A Mark Waid project.  There was a time when I was hopelessly devoted to Waid's career and believed he could do no wrong.  That version of me would still have existed in 2004, but ten years later things are a little different.  What about a project from 2004?  A twelve-issue miniseries where I've read only the concluding chapter, and without doing the research I must assume that the whole story is basically a Year One story where Lex Luthor tries to prove how bad Superman is by perpetrating a whole hoax of a Kryptonian crisis, which culminates, of course, in Luthor's defeat, but on a pretty nice note where it's this context where Superman learns about his origins for the first time (there are many versions of that, too).  It strikes me as very similar to Scott Snyder's Superman Unchained.  But more on that another time...

Superman/Shazam: First Thunder #4 (DC)

From 2006.

via DC Wikia

If you asked the survivors of Fawcett Comics decades ago what they would've thought of a shiny happy Superman/Captain Marvel team-up mini-series...the results would probably not have been suitable for a family-friendly blog.  DC put Fawcett out of business when it successfully accused its hugely popular lead character of being a shameless ripoff of Superman (just one of the many legal battles Captain Marvel spawned; there's a whole saga associated with his British counterpart Marvelman, also known as Miracleman, a revival Marvel has only recently made possible after remaining in limbo for two decades).  The writer is Judd Winick, who at one time had a massive tide of his own popular acclaim, but gradually lost, well, pretty much all of it, and I guess I still don't quite understand why.  I've always liked what I've seen of his work.  Actually, I guess I'm not really a Barry Ween fan.  Still haven't read Pedro and Me.  This comic seems like it's more of the good stuff, perhaps even some of his best stuff.  Captain Marvel/Shazam (because Marvel ended up creating an unrelated character named Captain Marvel, an incarnation of which was famously killed off by Jim Starlin in an groundbreaking graphic novel, this Captain Marvel eventually lost the right to be called anything else but Shazam by DC) has had a number of efforts given him at re-establishing his credentials, and like Martian Manhunter, by my estimation, has looked excellent in all of them, but he's lost the popular vote.  It's a shame.  It's ironic that this particular effort exists at all, because in a weird kind of way, Shazam as interpreted from a Superman perspective totally works...

Digitally Speaking...#5 "Batman"

Batman #13 (DC)
From 2012.  This is Scott Snyder's introduction to the "Death of the Family" arc.  And surprise to say, but it's kind of shockingly bad.  Not bad as in it's written or drawn poorly, but conceptually it's so poorly executed that it's surprising something like this would be the start of a major story arc for a major character in a major company.  Internet critics say that sort of thing all the time.  I was following a blogger who trashed just about every issue of AvX that way, and that was an event written by Marvel's top creators.  I've ragged on Snyder in the past.  I know he's supposed to be the best Batman writer in years.  I even recently came to his defense in terms of the conclusion to this very arc and what he might have planned for some grand greater scheme.  But in terms at least of this issue, out of all the "Death of the Family" issues I've read, it's easily the worst.

It begins randomly, Commissioner Gordon and Harvey Bullock talking about omens, and then the next page taking all the steam out of the conversation, and then transitioning to Gordon's smoking habit, and then the Joker randomly appears, and then Batman arrives, and then we have a recap of an apparently aborted story Tony Daniel began at the start of the New 52 in the pages of Detective Comics, the one that got the Joker's face peeled off in the first place.  Snyder never really convincingly explains any of that, but it's okay, because it's the creepy Joker.  Then the Joker becomes all methodical, copying the events of the first time he ever struck Gotham, which becomes a pastiche on how the character operates in Tim Burton's Batman.  And finally we reach the Joker and Batman, and the real story is teased.

Honestly, I have no idea why Snyder had to be so obtuse about it.  Damian mocks the whole thing right from the start.  Maybe that's why Grant Morrison realized he had to go, because he's a barometer.  Unlike how Snyder attempts to present Joker, it's really Damian who cuts every situation down to what it really is.  So it's no wonder that the best "Death of the Family" issue came from Batman and Robin.

It's certainly not this issue.  Definitely not.  I have no idea what Snyder was thinking.  He's not really that bad a writer.  To start a major arc like this, though...When Kyle Higgins started at DC, he was paired with Snyder for the Gates of Gotham mini-series.  But now I'm thinking it's Snyder who needs a co-writer.  There's no great shame in this.  Geoff Johns had co-writers, too.  Snyder had one when American Vampire began (some dude named Stephen King).  He needs someone to help formulate stories better.  He's apparently reached the point where editors can't approach him that way (although the buzz in Negative DC Talk is that all the writers who've abruptly departed the New 52 have done so because of meddling editors), but seriously, reading this issue alone?  Any objective analysis begs for Snyder to get a little help.

That's all he needs really.  He has a lot of good instincts.  He also has a lot of bad ones.  Comics are ripe with this kind of talent.  Ed Brubaker, for example.  Brian Michael Bendis.  Even Mark Waid.  Fans like to lump Morrison in with them, Johns too.  I put Brubaker in with that lot because the best and really only good stuff he did with Captain America involved the Winter Soldier arc.  He got his reward with a whole movie based on that work.  Bendis is an undeniable talent, but he suffers from an acute case of verbal diarrhea that constantly gets in the way of telling real, actual stories (then again, sometimes maybe that's the point).  Waid is his own worst enemy.  He's literally a comics savant, but all his best instincts are usually stymied by his nervous need to rebel.  I don't include Morrison or Johns because it's really a matter of creative differences.  Whereas with Snyder, he can't formulate a story completely.  At a certain point, he just throws out whatever he's got.  He's at a point in his career where most people don't care.  But in the long run, it'll absolutely matter.

And this issue is proof of that.

Batman 101
This compilation is a primer comiXology has that at once serves to provide a checklist for a few noteworthy stories from throughout Batman's publication history, as well as provide previews for all the original New 52 series (plus some vintage covers to round out the set).  As far as the preview pages go, they certainly illuminate the original worth of those series.  Scott Snyder's Batman starts out as promising as most Scott Snyder series.  He's usually good at setting a mood (the above example notwithstanding).  He also helps set the tone for most of the other entries, dominated as they are by caption narration (which as a rule I love in comics).  Tony Daniel's Detective Comics comes off extremely well.  At the time, Tony was more or less being demoted.  After serving as artist during pivotal Grant Morrison issues, he'd become primary writer/artist on Batman.  When the New 52 began, he was shifted to the secondary Batman title.  I'd hoped he'd stick around for a while, but he was one of the earliest disappointments in that regard.  Since being booted from Detective Comics, he's bounced from Superman to Justice League to Superman/Wonder Woman.  I'd prefer the guy have some permanent home.  There's also Peter Tomasi's Batman and Robin, which kicks off a more visual story (which is only fitting, given he's working with ideal collaborator Patrick Gleason).  If these few pages intrigue you, know that there's much more interesting material that follows.  David Finch's Batman: The Dark Knight, a title I never had much faith in, reads about as well as any other in these opening pages.  I guess this one's my bad.  Kyle Higgins' Nightwing doesn't come off as well as it could.  I read a lot of the early issues, and it was pretty good stuff, but here it's surprisingly incoherent.  (Maybe Snyder and Higgins ought to stick together more often?)  Gail Simone's Batgirl might presumably be in the same ballpark as Tomasi's relatively feet-first introduction, but as I have far less faith in Simone than Tomasi, I never found out where she went with it.  Judd Winick's Catwoman is a highlight, but then Winick is far better than most fans care to admit.  Which might explain why his role was so tiny in the New 52, because the stupid fans never admitted as awesome he is.  The only real quibble here is why Catwoman has by default become Sexy Catwoman for the past twenty years.  I mean, I know there was the Jim Balent era in the '90s, but then by default every female character in the '90s was presented that way.  It was more the inexplicable fetish version from the early '00s that decided because she wears latex Catwoman must be Sexy Catwoman, her zipper apparently never able to find the top of her costume (and more often than not, finding it incredibly easy to find the bottom).  Winick is also responsible for the similarly impressive Batwing.  This incredibly long paragraph ends by wondering why the hell J.H. Williams' long-anticipated Batwoman ended up becoming one of the earliest lost titles of the New 52.  Seriously.  Sure, it's still being published (and now written by Manhunter mystic Marc Andreyko), but you'd hardly know it.  What's up with that?  It's enough to make me have to read it myself.  And people, I can't read everything I want to anymore.  I learned the hard way.  But it looks like I'll have to make another exception...

Batman: Black & White - A Black and White World (DC)
From 1996.  This is an excerpt from Batman: Black & White #2, from an innovative anthology series DC recently revived.  "A Black and White World" is written by Neil Gaiman, which pretty much by default makes in the best story featured in today's column.  The story more than earns the distinction, and in classic Gaiman fashion, deconstructing the world of Batman so that he and the Joker are filming their own roles in a movie straight out of a comic book script (or perhaps are simply aware that they are characters in a comic book).  The funny thing is, Grant Morrison has had them participate in similar conversations, so it wouldn't be so much of a stretch to assume that between encounters, Batman really does visit Joker at Arkham Asylum and they talk exactly like this, the Joker especially, just as if it's all a game.  It's enough to wish Gaiman would write more Batman (he also wrote "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?", a coda to Morrison's "Batman R.I.P." arc), and especially more Joker.  This few pages is more insightful to the dynamic between the two than everything Snyder did in "Death of the Family" (besides my supposition as to his ultimate, as-yet-unrevealed purpose), especially in the above opening issue.  But that's Neil Gaiman for you.

Quarter Bin #48 "Day of Judgment, Flash, and Green Lantern"

Comics featured in the Quarter Bin column were not necessarily bought from a quarter bin.  This is a back issues feature.

Day of Judgment #3 & 4 (DC)
From November 1999:
I've been wanting to read Day of Judgment for years.  For any number of reasons.  One of them is that it was released in 1999.  I quit reading comics in the spring of 1999 as I prepared for college.  Ever since then I've been trying to catch up with everything I missed between that time and 2004, when I started transitioning back into regular reading.  1999 was significant for a lot of reasons, and one of them was that it was the first big year for Geoff Johns at DC.  He started out writing the fairly innocuous Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E., a kid punches version of Starman.  And yet the company seemed to know it had something far bigger than that right out of the gate.  Years later Johns became an event machine for DC, but his very first one was Day of Judgment.  That's not even the only hallmark for this event.  It was also the last stop on the redemption tour for fallen Green Lantern Hal Jordan, who had gone on an epic rampage as Parallax before sacrificing himself in The Final Night.  Day of Judgment saw him assume hosting duties for DC's Spirit of Vengeance, the Spectre.  The Spectre is always a hard character to write on a regular basis.  He's envisioned as the embodiment of God's Wrath, dispensing justice in grim and ironic ways.

I spent years looking through back issue bins for Day of Judgment.  It was never collected, and it was impossible to find (unless you use the Internet cheat and were willing to pay for the pleasure of reading this increasingly obscure adventure).  Johns finished the redemption of Hal in the pages of Green Lantern: Rebirth, with the hero literally shedding the identity of the Spectre like changing an outfit.  If you want the lasting legacy of this phase in the character's history, it sits in the pages of Kevin Smith's Green Arrow: Quiver (which only figures, because Hal and Oliver Queen have their own brand of DC history).  Earlier this year, even knowing that DC was finally going to collect the mini-series, I was still looking for the back issues.  I came across these, like a preview (rest assured I have the collection and will write about that, too).  The most curious thing about it is the art, which is the reverse of anything you'd expect, much subdued.  (Soon enough DC would go in the opposite direction in that regard, immortalized in Our Worlds at War and the existence of Manchester Black.)

I'll leave this one for the moment with the thought that it was worth the wait.

The Flash 80-Page Giant (DC)
From April 1999:
In the spring of 1999 Mark Waid was still writing The Flash, immersed in the subsequently lost saga known as "Chain Lightning," but DC was already preparing for the post-Waid Speed Force.  He doesn't write a single story in this special, although his editor Brian Augustyn does.  There are seven tales from a variety of creators.  The first one is Augustyn's and features Wally West teaming up with Jay Garrick, something that not uncommon in the Waid era.  There's a vintage Teen Titans of the original lineup (with West again in his classic Kid Flash getup), then another Wally tale that evokes the pre-Waid era, then another Wally tale, then another one that at least ruminates on his relationship with Linda Park.  Finally we get one that features someone else entirely (mostly), the Flash featured in Kingdom, the Waid reality that evoked his own Kingdom Come.  The final tale features XS, the Legion of Super-Heroes speedster.  I always wondered why she was mostly neglected as a character.  I don't she even exists these days, which is pretty sad.  Soon enough, Geoff Johns was writing Wally's adventures and then rewriting the legacy of The Flash by bringing back Barry Allen.  This serves as a nice time capsule between these eras, so I guess it's only right that Waid was not technically involved.

Green Lantern #167 (DC)
From September 2003:
I got this issue from the Judd Winick era mostly because the cover image inadvertantly evokes the later Geoff Johns era with an alien who looks very much like a member of the Indigo Tribe.  Who knows, and that's as much as why I wanted to have this one, but maybe Johns was inspired by this very issue, or perhaps just the cover?  It seems reasonable enough.  There's even an alien on the very first page who looks exactly like Larfleeze.  It's worth noting that in the back page DC projects preview section, Geoff's Teen Titans #1 and Waid's Superman: Birthright #1 and Empire #1 are listed.  I don't plan all these connections.  They just happen.

Green Lantern #181 (DC)
From November 2004:
This one's the final issue of Kyle Rayner before Green Lantern: Rebirth.  It's fittingly written by Ron Marz, Kyle's creator, who hadn't actually written Kyle regularly for years at this point.  It'd been creators like Winick and Ben Raab in the meantime.  I'd caught a previous "final Rayner issue from Marz" during one of the rare comics I caught during my exile (Marz would later write a Rayner mini-series called Ion based on a character revision from Winick), so I'm happy to close this loop.  In the issue he battles Major Force, a villain whose main claim to fame was originating the hideous "women in fridges" syndrome in Kyle's early adventures when he shockingly murdered the new Green Lantern's girlfriend Alex, whom readers might have assumed would be a love interest with longevity.  The last bit of trivia I'll mention is that the issue is edited by Peter Tomasi, who would go on to a successful writing career with Green Lantern Corps being one of his first assignments.

Passing the Green Flame

Green Lantern: Passing the Torch
collects Green Lantern #s 156, 158-161

The final issues of Judd Winick's run on Green Lantern features the aftershock of his signature storyline, the outing of supporting character Terry Berg and the resulting sever beating he receives because of it.

Terry's friend happens to be Kyle Rayner, the erstwhile Bearer of the Last Ring, who takes the attack badly, exiling himself to space rather than confront his lost faith in humanity.  John Stewart once again wields the emerald power in the first issue, and himself struggles to find something to believe in, while Rayner and Jade, the daughter of the first human Green Lantern, Alan Scott, try to shepherd a new generation of Guardians, and try to find some new direction.  Ganthet sets them on a mission that plays like an episode of Star Trek, before they discover that one of the Guardian foundlings has gone missing and forces everyone to face some harsh truths and face what they've been avoiding.

Being a fan of Kyle Rayner since his introduction in 1994, and especially Ron Marz's extended run with the character, I was disappointed to leave him behind when I parted ways with comics in 1999.  I missed Winick's run originally, but the Terry Berg arc was one of those unavoidable developments, one of the signal comic book stories of that era.  In its own way, it's a Green Lantern story that compares to the famous Green Arrow road arc from the 1970s.  Winick does not let Rayner off the hook, and neither does Terry, for his decision to run away from his problems rather than confront them, as he essentially abandons his friend in his moment of need.

If that's not a reason for you personally to read Passing the Torch, there's Rayner's trademark deep immersion into the whole Green Lantern mythos, which was always strangely appropriate, considering he was coming in at a moment when it seemed all the old ways had been lost thanks to Hal Jordan.  The collection includes the return of Mogo, famously the planet Green Lantern, whose profile would be heightened in the reboot of the franchise that would come several years later.  It also features a handy timeline of Green Lantern lore, as if making a statement for everything new fans from the Geoff Johns era might want to know.

As a character and a moment, much of Rayner's time as Green Lantern may now seem anachronistic, even the Guardian foundlings, since these little blue men are in current continuity once again the same old guys they always were.  Reading Passing the Torch is a nice reminder of what that time was like without needing to be bogged down by its particulars.  John Stewart wonders if he should become a member of the Justice League.  The long journey and development Kyle has enjoyed in his ten years dominating the franchise seems to be reaching a natural ebb.  The title might refer to the characters in the collection, or that subconsciously, it's a goodbye to the fans who followed these adventures and refused to let Kyle be forgotten (he currently stars in Green Lantern: New Guardians, using his unique talents as a conduit between the many different corps).

The fun thing is that the writing from Winick is never better than when he's handling Kyle and Jade, treating them as the centerpiece that they are.  Kyle became famous for his relationships, both with Jade and Donna Troy, that never seemed to work out.  His most recent doomed love was with Soranik Natu, the daughter of Sinestro.  I'm sure he's got a few more in him.  He's the new Dick Grayson in that regard.  So yeah, you can just have reading it, too.