11. DC Comics Presents #10
(1979)



DC Comics Presents was a great little sleeper of a comic. It kind of snuck out on newsstands, as a team-up book, starring Superman, taking advantage of a resurgence in popularity, due to Richard Donner and Christopher Reeve). It had better stories than a team-up book had any right to, often giving us the best Superman stories of the era. This was one of my favorites, both for a rather odd pairing and for the interesting hook to the story. The piece was written by veteran Superman writer Cary Bates and drawn by Joe Staton, one of the more dynamic artists working at DC, at the time.

Superman is in France, accepting an award from the French president (who looks nothing like Valery Giscard D'Estaing, but rather like a Hollywood actor, who escapes my memory, with Charles De Gaulles' nose). Supes detects that there is a bomb in the award and tries to throw it away, apaling the snooty Frenchmen (Zoot alors! Ze Supairman ez rejecting our award; Barbarian! 'e must be Anglaish to be zo gauche!) However, the top of the award is stuck to his hand; so, he flies up (up, and away) into the sky, where it explodes and Supes disappears in a burst of fire and smoke.

Supes wakes up in a forest, in France, sometime after 1944, where two German soldiers (probably SS) are discarding American uniforms to get back to their lines. They are Werewolves; not the Larry Talbot kind by the SS infiltrators who created disruptions behind American lines in the Battle of the Bulge. They skidaddle and Supes comes to, with partial amnesia! he can't remember who he is; but, he recognizes the uniforms and equipment as being GI, from WWII and their newness leads him to believe that is where he is. Seeing that he is in a circus outfit, he quickly dons the uniform, just in time to be discovered by the target of the infiltrators: the Combat-Happy Joes of Easy Company. They are suspicious of the newcomer, who sounds like an American, but so did the "Baker Company Krauts." While they are interrogating him, the Germans unleash an ambush. Easy eats dirt and unloads on the Germans, taking them down, but get up to notice the newcomer still standing, hands in the air. Luckily, he was protected by a large tree, so they don't see that bullets don't penetrate. They think there is something to his story and take him with them, quizzing him about things an American would know (when Casablanca came out, who won the world series, FDR's job before being president, etc.) They then run into a Panzer and the new guy ends up with the bazooka. He has their vulnerable underbelly directly in his sights.....but he cannot pull the trigger!!!!



This was a terrific tale, as Superman travels back in time and meets Sgt Rock and the men of Easy Co. It also mixes in the dilemma of Superman's oath to never take a life. It would be easy for a writer to just have Superman sweep away the German weapons and take them all prisoner; but, Bates is taking us right into the problem of considering all life sacred, when one part of it is trying to kill you and your friends. It is a dilemma that many soldiers have had to face, and then had to live with, for the rest of their lives. Alvin York is a famous example, a man with a violent past who foreswore it to seek a path of peace, then was called to serve in a war. He won the nation's highest honor, for actions where he was forced to kill, but did so by taking as little as necessary. He lived with it for the remainder of his days.

Superman reacts in frustration and anger and smashes his fist into the ground, creating a fissure that traps the tank, allowing Easy to jump on it and dump handgrenades into it, killing the crew and knocking out the tank. Superman's memory is restored by the stress and he sneaks off, secretly saving Easy from a Stuka attack, then detecting how the Germans were tracking them and single-handedly neutralizing the Germans. He then fakes his own death and is buried by Easy, who then move on. He then emerges from his grave and flies back to the present, to find who set the bomb, which carries over into the next issue.

Rock had met Batman, in the Brave and the Bold; but, this is Superman. These are as two diverse a characters as you will find, yet Bates and Staton seamlessly weave them together in a great story.

11. Sgt. Fury Annual #3 (Marvel, 1967)

Nick Fury and Lyndon B. Johnson




When his 1966 solo series The Great Society ended after just one issue, fans were no doubt wondering when erstwhile superhero Lyndon B. Johnson would show up next. Luckily, they didn't have to wait long, as LBJ popped up just a year later in an unexpected place - in the pages of Sgt. Fury!

Oddly enough, though, this story didn't take place during World War II, but rather during "the present day," as LBJ shows up to ask Fury and the Howlers to head to Vietnam to stop the Vietcong from developing nukes. Since half the Howlers were in SHIELD at this point, it reads a lot like a SHIELD story, until they get over there.

Is this a great story? Well, not really. It was a bad idea to do stories like this because it took all the suspense out of the series knowing everyone on the team would survive World War II. But it was fun to see LBJ pop up in a totally unexpected place like this for a story like this.

Both of the choices by mrp two days into this contest are books I didn't know existed. As Shatner's character said in Airplane II, "Why the hell aren't I notified about these things?"

Need to track down mrp's choices, forthwith!

Fantastic pick Slam!  I totally forgot about this mini.  Underrated and oh so good!

11. Mystery in Space 90 (March 1964, DC Comics)
“Planets in Peril”
Gardner Fox, Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson

From the start of his run in Mystery in Space in September 1963, Hawkman was on the stands (and cover-featured) five times in four months (seven, if you count two insets on Mystery in Space); not bad, considering that Batman, appearing in three different titles, was on ten covers during that stretch. Schwartz was putting on a full-court press for a character he must have really liked, even shifting him from the raw primitivism of Kubert’s art to the slick, detailed look of Murphy Anderson.

In any event, the string of appearances culminated in a team-up between the two resident heroes of Mystery in Space that proved to be far more than just a routine teaming of two otherworldly heroes, but DC super-heroic science fiction at the peak of its High Silver Age.

“Planets” was a full-blown Gardner Fox space opera in which he used a stripped-down variation on his old JSA tales: Adam and Alanna face a challenge on Rann in Chapter One; Hawkman and Hawkgirl face their own problem on Earth in the second chapter; and the four join forces in Chapter Three to defeat the villain.

The plot reminds you of one of the old Strange Adventures stories, but with super-heroes starring instead of ordinary Earthmen. Somehow Earth has been transported to Rann’s solar system and because it is rotating more quickly than Rann, the two planets will soon collide.

“Planets” co-starred Hawkgirl, Alanna, Sardath, and the armies of Rann and included, in addition to worlds about to collide, such minor events as the teleportation of Earth to Rann’s solar system, the Sphinx, the Colosseum, and the Iwo Jima Memorial coming to life on Rann, the theft of Lake Superior... 



the disintegration of Mt. Everest, inescapable death-traps, a requisitely arrogant scientist-villain, and a bittersweet ending. (Which more on later.)

All in a 25-page novel gorgeously bedecked with the elegant design and stylish, space-age Infantino pencils (Adam Strange’s longtime penciller) bedecked with Anderson‘s gorgeous inks, highlighted by a couple of stunning full-pagers.. (The usually unobtrusive Anderson put his initials in the background on a truck on page 10… maybe he took special pride in this book. Completely justified.) If you are looking for an example of this legendary team at its best, look no further.

Even the two heroes’ logos look beautiful together on the splash page, which for me was always one of the hoped-for highlights of a team-up story. (Thanks, Ira Schnapp!)



What a perfect teaming of characters, too. Heroes who employ advanced science and technology, each with a female partner with whom they are in deep and everlasting love, all of whom are known for their brains more than their brawn.

For all the hard comic-book science here, this story was really magic.

Unfortunately, that magic was not to be repeated. I told you the story had a bittersweet ending. As usual, Adam and Alanna are separated, but the last page contains an ad for (at last!) Hawkman #1!

But there’s more bitter, because as Hawkman was finally given his own title, Adam Strange was losing his. Infantino and Anderson would draw just one more issue of MiS, because Schwartz went over to edit the New Look Batman and took Infantino and Anderson with him.

Adam was left to the not-so-hot team of Jack Schiff and Lee Elias and shared his cover status with the not-so-immortal Space Ranger. (!) He would vanish for a long stay in comic book limbo just 10 issues later.

PS: DC did a few of these team-ups between different characters appearing in one book. Prince Ra-Man and Mark Merlin met in the page of House of Secrets; Flash teamed with Kid Flash; another pairing like this will pop up soon on my list. Marvel did it in Tales to Astonish and Tales of Suspense, but not in Strange Tales. How cool a book-length Steranko-drawn Nick Fury-Dr. Strange team-up would have been!

Slam_Bradley, the only surprise for me re your choice of Guns was that it wasn't further toward the top of your list. GREAT choice.

Vandal Savage skewered by a triceratops is worth the price of admission alone.

Now if only Truman had done a sequel set on Skull Island...