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Post by Action Ace on Jul 29, 2014 20:50:28 GMT -5
- In addition to the breathing apparatus Prof. Hamilton gave him, Superman now has a teleportation belt he apparently got from the Omega Men. When did this happen?? The belt is depicted at the end of Adventures of Superman #450, but I don't recall it being mentioned there. Invasion! #3 He goes into space, comes back when the gene bomb goes off, fights aliens again, gets teleporter and heads back into space again. Superman needing a breathing apparatus to fly in space? BAH!
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Jul 29, 2014 20:54:48 GMT -5
- Superman reflecting that "with great power comes great responsibility?" I think Ordway got his characters confused. maybe notAwesome information. Thanks for this. D'oh! Totally forgot about Invasion. Thanks again.
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Post by dupersuper on Jul 29, 2014 21:53:18 GMT -5
D'oh! Totally forgot about Invasion. Thanks again. I always really liked Invasion: 1 of the better cross-over stories.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Jul 30, 2014 9:37:21 GMT -5
D'oh! Totally forgot about Invasion. Thanks again. I always really liked Invasion: 1 of the better cross-over stories. I've been avoiding all the crossovers due to utter lack of interest in crossovers, but sometimes this means that I miss out on important little tidbits like the Omega Men belt.
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Post by paulie on Jul 30, 2014 9:58:36 GMT -5
I always really liked Invasion: 1 of the better cross-over stories. I've been avoiding all the crossovers due to utter lack of interest in crossovers, but sometimes this means that I miss out on important little tidbits like the Omega Men belt. DuperSuper is right... Invasion was not half-bad. A good, fun, aliens attack the earth story.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Jul 31, 2014 10:30:34 GMT -5
Action Comics Weekly #629 Last issue, the letter column subtly indicated that plans were already in the works to return Action Comics to a monthly title starring Superman, and this week, there's no letter column at all -- just an ad with next week's cover, reminding fans (as always) to vote for their favorite features. This issue feels more tedious than most, perhaps because I know it's all going to end soon anyway (therefore, why care?), and perhaps because it seems like more and more of the features are taking a page from the Black Canary playbook, asking us to invest far too much energy into following intricate plots and precise details of previous chapters without giving us a character or motivation with which we can really identify. Thus, the Speedy and Blackhawk features, in particular, just begin to feel like work. Green Lantern: I get where James Owsley (later Christopher Priest) is going. It's an inversion of the personalities from O'Neil and Adams' "Hard Traveling Heroes" storyline, this time with Hal as the compassionate liberal and Captain Atom as the hard-headed believer in black and white justice. However, where O'Neil and Adams told this across many different self-contained stories, Owsley is attempting to draw it out across one uninteresting story that simply refuses to resolve itself. Black Canary: Beautiful images. If only Sharon Wright weren't telling a story over them. I gleaned this one and found every line of dialogue I read obnoxious, every characterization trying far too hard. Secret Six: Though we knew who Mockingbird was already, this chapter is choc full of explanations as we learn that August Durant (the original Mockingbird) gave an honest origin story in the original series but was essentially a stooge for the government as Mockingbird, giving the Six the orders the government gave him. We also learn that the agency was dismantled in 1969, but that the group kept in touch and, when the government ordered Durant back into service in order to extract his disease and weaponize it, he reached out to Dirienzi, explaining that he had been Mockingbird all along, to help him reunite the Six against the agency controlling him. Durant was killed, and so Dirienzi took his place as Mockingbird, using Durant's wealth and resources in order to do so. If you didn't know anything about the original Secret Six, this might have seemed like an uninteresting chapter, but if you know the team's history (as we now do thanks to the helpful articles shared here by Hoosier X), then this chapter of explanations, in itself, comes off with its share of surprises. The original Mockingbird had never actually been in charge? Holy government conspiracies, Action Comics Weekly! Nightwing & Speedy: Please note that, two chapters into this new story arc, Nightwing has not appeared nor been mentioned, and doesn't seem likely to appear anywhere in this storyline. ACW contracted for Marv Wolfman to write a Nightwing story and got Cherie Wilkerson writing Speedy instead. Wolfman isn't even credited with an assist as of this chapter. And the story is pretty tedious already. I stopped reading about two pages shy of the end of the chapter. Pretty sure I'm done with it unless Nightwing shows up. Blackhawk: As indicated earlier, this once simple, guilty-pleasure reading franchise has become heavy with past continuity and minor details to be memorized. It's work to read, and the characters and storylines just aren't worth the effort. I think I'm done reading this one too. So that's now more than half the book I'll be skipping each week. But I'm simply stuck with Superman... "Journey's End" writer: Roger Stern pencils: Curt Swan inks: Murphy Anderson letters: Bill Oakley colors: Tom Ziuko editor: Mike Carlin grade: B+ Don't call it "Journey's End" if you don't intend to deliver on that promise. Still, I must admit, this is the chapter that should have come WEEKS ago. We finally meet one of the elder leaders of the Superman-following religious cult, as well as witness her weird ability to telekenetically control sand (and possibly more), and learn that the bad guys are about to launch their big assault, having witnessed Clark and Bob enter the secret hiding place of the Fellowship. Swan art, ably inked by Anderson and colored by Ziuko, with a plot line that's finally advancing -- it's a good installment, even if it doesn't take away the pain of those previous plodding chapters, nor the fear that a pace this exciting has just GOT to get slowed down again next week. Minor Detail: It's worth noting that, as of this issue, there are five pages of ads following this two page spread feature. If you're flipping the book backward instead of forward, it's actually really hard to even find this feature (and would that be such a bad thing?).
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 31, 2014 11:51:06 GMT -5
I have The Brave and the Bold #120 (Batman travels to the future somehow and meets Kamandi and they fight man-like bears and man-like apes and find a tribe of humans living in the heads at Mount Rushmore) and it's a double-sized issue. It's not a Super-Spectacular but it's big enough to reprint Secret Six #2! So, hoo-ray!
It's pretty compelling. I've had this issue for a year and a half, so I read it long after I first heard of The Secret Six in the ACW series. It has quite a few of the scenes discussed in the articles I linked to, so it's a pretty good issue to have to see the full context of those isolated panels.
That panel that shows the guy mentioning Mockingbird as Durant walks by in the background is in this issue. And it just seems weird to put that in so early in the series. I wonder if the original writer was going to fix the clues so they all pointed to Durant but then have a BIG REVEAL later on with a complex explanation for why it was ... well, whoever. (I'm guessing Mockingbird turned out to be the Chief!)
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Aug 3, 2014 19:22:11 GMT -5
Adventures of Superman #451 writer/art: Jerry Ordway letters: Albert DeGuzman colors: Glenn Whitmore asst. editor: Renee Witterstaetter editor: Mike Carlin grade: C I was really expecting more from this storyline by this point. I wasn't surprised when Stern's installment was a bit ho-hum, but Ordway hit it out of the ballpark last issue, and yet this chapter leaves me yawning. Superman is still aimlessly wandering through space and running into random conflicts that seem to exist simply for the sake of giving him something to do on panel, and the world believing Clark Kent is dead isn't really making for any exciting drama just yet. I don't know why Ordway is holding off on showing the Daily Planet staff and their presumably emotional reactions to all this. That's the story that's worth reading here. Instead, the issue gives its focus to Luthor using Jose Delgado as DC's answer to Deathlok, and it just doesn't make any sense. I could believe that Luthor is trying to punish Delgado for past deeds, but he never says nor implies this. He's just using Delgado as an overly expensive remote controlled cyber-thug with which to terrorize his minor enemies. Speaking of which, even before Prof. Hamilton decided to exploit the scenario, I decided it was damn right careless for Luthor to be brazenly threatening to kill a man over a remote feed, let alone to a technology wizard in his laboratory. How could he be sure there weren't any recording devices on, or people able to intercept the feed? How could a man this damn clumsy when dealing with a low-on-the-totem-poll enemy ever expect to hold on to power? I can't say I particularly enjoyed any aspect of this issue, and that comes as a sincere disappointment to me. Important Details: - The world believes Clark Kent is dead. - Luthor believes Superman is far away from Earth, thanks to Brainiac's telepathy failing to sense him anymore. - Prof. Hamilton publicly embarrasses Luthor by putting him on TV while he was threatening Hamilton, and doing it via a pirated broadcast that appeared to originate from Luthor's television station with the seeming intention to aggrandize Luthor's image. Minor Details: - Though Ordway is solely credited for art in this issue, it still looks like Dennis Janke is inking him in places, especially when Amanda McCoy, a woman who was young and attractive enough to be a personal assistant to Lex Luthor a little more than two years ago (more like one within comic continuity), is inked like a homely old woman much in the same way that Lois Lane looked like an aging crack whore in previous issue. The penciling is all right; it's the inks. - Toby Raynes, reporter for the Metropolis Star, under editor in chief George Taylor, reappears here after having not been seen since Superman #9. Ordway does his homework. - Wait. The breathing apparatus Prof. Hamilton gave Superman is just a glorified oxygen tank? I'd assumed it was some impressive invention that was creating more air for him. How could Clark have taken such extraordinary preparations for his trip as we saw last issue, fully realizing he might never come back, with a limited oxygen tank and no plans on how to refill it once he was deep in space? This makes absolutely no sense. - Happerson, the assistant Luthor was displeased with so many months back when he first pried the kryptonite from Metallo's body that became his kryptonite ring, is still working for Lex in this issue. I find that surprising. - For someone who's been so careful about following Byrne's continuity, even going so far as to resurrect the loose plot points from Superman #2 in this story arc, Ordway sure blundered on the cover. That very same Superman #2 was where Byrne put forth the absurd explanation that the reason no one ever realized Superman looked like Clark Kent was because Superman always vibrated his head at high speeds in order to prevent cameras from taking non-blurry shots of his face, yet the newspaper photo on the cover of this issue shows a clear picture of Superman's face...and it's right beside a photo of Clark Kent. To be clear, I think Ordway is trying to show how the two faces don't look that similar after all, largely because Clark apparently takes the time to do his hair completely differently when he turns into Superman, but it's still a poorly timed continuity glitch. Plot synopsis in one sentence: Superman accidentally space leaps into a giant space creature's digestive system and spends the issue fighting its stomach microbes, the world believe Clark Kent has been murdered by intergang, Morgan Edge has ordered his people to discover who Kent's informant was on the Intergang exposé, Luthor, aware that Superman is off-world thanks to Brainiac, decides to finally get revenge against Prof. Hamilton by sending a remote controlled Jose Delgado after him, Toby Raynes of the Metropolis Star calls Ma and Pa Kent, who do not know the world believes Clark is dead, and is told that Clark is staying with them, thus sparking her curiosity, Prof. Hamilton is able to both free Delgado from Luthor's control and publicly embarrass Luthor by broadcasting his death threat on live television, and Superman decides to head back to the alien planet that worshipped him because his oxygen is depleted and he realizes his space leaps have been reckless and dangerous.
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Post by SJNeal on Aug 5, 2014 11:47:43 GMT -5
After a(nother) marathon reading session, I'm all caught back up!
Very interested to read upcoming reviews of the "Exiled" epic (which only gets better, shaxper, don't worry).
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Aug 5, 2014 11:49:09 GMT -5
After a(nother) marathon reading session, I'm all caught back up! Great to have you back, old friend! So I've been told repeatedly. I believe you guys.
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Post by SJNeal on Aug 5, 2014 12:10:53 GMT -5
So I've been told repeatedly. I believe you guys. Haha, I forget I can sometimes sound like a broken record. Must be senility setting in...
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Aug 5, 2014 12:12:06 GMT -5
So I've been told repeatedly. I believe you guys. Haha, I forget I can sometimes sound like a broken record. Must be senility setting in... No, I need that kind of repetition when approaching a run that starts so tediously. Believe me; it's welcome
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Aug 6, 2014 21:47:31 GMT -5
Action Comics #630 Mike Gold confirms two of my theories in his letter column this issue, when he writes: The problem with giving more pages to Superman, Ray, has been in lining up the talent: not just anybody can write or draw The Man of Steel, and Roger, Curt, and Murphy are pressed to the limit. But their problem will be resolved in Action #643 So DC had definitely decided as of last issue to end Action Comics Weekly with #642, and the reason the Superman feature was limited to two pages was due to the limitations of the creative team; most likely Curt Swan penciling this feature at the tender age of 68. Nice to be right sometimes. As for the stories themselves: Green Lantern: Tedious, but not especially bad. In case you're wondering, Captain Atom can beat Hal Jordan in a fair fight. Black Canary: Nope. Secret Six: The series sort of wraps up really abruptly after tons of time has been spent on explanations. There's a cliffhanger, with seemingly a new Mockingbird taking over after Di Rienzi is killed, so maybe there's another Secret Six chapter coming in the next 12 issues. Incidentally, I'd pointed out in an earlier review that even this non comics code approved title seemed to be constrained, clearly avoiding ever depicting one character killing another. In this final chapter, the bad guy pulls a Disney move and falls to his death, landing on a stake that drives through his chest, though leaving absolutely no blood. Nightwing & Speedy: Still no Nightwing. Still no Marv Wolfman. Still not worth reading. Blackhawk: Even when Pasko gets too caught up in trying to further plot and characterization when what made this series special from the get-go was never those things, but rather its fun loving, crass, tongue and cheek nature, Rick Burchett keeps the art light, hokey, and fun. I would never continue to read this series at this point if it weren't in a comic I was already reading, but Burchett certainly takes the edge off. And then there was Superman... "The Power from Beyond!" writer: Roger Stern pencils: Curt Swan inks: Murphy Anderson letters: Bill Oakley colors: Tom Ziuko editor: Mike Carlin grade: A- I'd love to know how the creative process for this feature worked. Did Stern write weeks ahead and then leave Swan to pencil at his own pace, did he squeeze in a two page script once a week while writing the main Superman title, did Swan dictate any of the plot/pacing, and, most importantly, how much had to be changed at this point, now that it's official that Action Comics Weekly will be ending with #642 (and, whether or not it had been decided yet, this feature will end with #641). Thus, while Stern seemed to be stalling and putting off moving this story along for so many weeks now (how long was it originally intended to last, I wonder?), the pace has now picked up considerably, with only 22 pages of story remaining in which to wrap everything up. This time around, we have the Consortium's army moving towards the secret hideout of the Fellowship, building toward a climactic battle, while Curt Swan finally gets to provide us with our first glimpse of the cult we've heard so much about (interestingly enough, he continually chooses unusual limited perspectives, giving Clark's whole experience a dizzying sensation, but also preventing us from getting any sense of how many members are there -- a dozen, a hundred, it's impossible to say). But most interesting yet, Clark begins to explore the nature of their mysterious powers, determining its coming from above, seemingly from nowhere, without their knowledge. I assume we're talking outer space. Things are building, and we're finally starting to see some payoff for 29 issues worth of patience. It's all that one could ask for at this late point.
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Post by MDG on Aug 7, 2014 11:59:48 GMT -5
Action Comics #630 Is this the only time John Severin drew Superman?
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Post by Pharozonk on Aug 7, 2014 12:24:00 GMT -5
Pre-Crisis Superman would probably be able to hold that elephant with just his index finger.
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