Third Day of Christmas: A femme fatale for the Saturday morning cartoon crowd

Jezebel Jade, originally appearing in comics in the pages of Jonny Quest, and spinning off into her own 3 issue mini-series. She was a femme fatale and the foil/romantic interest for Race Bannon. It’s hard to ignore the impact of a Dave Stevens cover, but she was a standout character in the JQ series, and getting her mini by Messner-Loebs with art and covers by a young Adam Kubert was a no-brainer. I was always a sucker for the strong femme fatale type, but this one had a heart of gold underneath it all, but never mention that (unless you happen to be Race Bannon).





-M

10. Squadron Supreme (1985)

First appearing in Avengers #85 (and based off of an earlier evil incarnation, the Squadron Sinister), the Squadron is of course a direct rip on the Justice League. In 1985, the team fully spun off into a 12 issue limited series masterfully written by Mark Gruenwald.

The story explores a scenario where the superheroes decide they can run the world better than the regular humans and proceed to do just that. I personally love this one as much as a lot of other "groundbreaking" comic book work from this time.

#10

Hawkeye



First appearance: Tales of Suspense #57 1964
Creators: Stan Lee / Don Heck
Series covered : Solo Avengers # 1-10 1987
Series Team: Tom Defalco/ Mark Bright/Joseph Rubinstein/ Jose Marzan



I consider Hawkeye one of my favorite characters in all my comics reading life. I first became aware of him in the 70’s while reading reprints of silver age Avengers stories in Marvel Triple Action. The kooky quartet stories of the Avengers that lasted from Avengers # 16-26 cemented his wiseguy rebellious personality that was kind of original for the comics genre. He challenged Captain America's authority from the beginning but you knew that he had a heart of gold underneath. In the 80’s the Avengers expanded to a franchise of titles , adding West Coast Avengers and Solo Avengers. The latter starred two stories , one being a Hawkeye lead feature and the second, a story with any one of the rest of the team. There have been 2 other mini series with Hawkeye before this but these tales went deeper into his  past. For example, You find out it was someone else that taught him archery (Trick shot) and he had to settle a debt with that person. For the most part, I feel he works best in the pages of the Avengers as a supporting cast member, but this 40 issue run was solid stuff.

10. Black Panther in JUNGLE ACTION #6-18, Marvel Comics, September 1972-November 1975

Spun off from FANTASTIC FOUR #52, July 1966

By Don McGregor with Rich Buckler, Gil Kane, Billy Graham, Klaus Janson et al.



Those of you who read my Jungle Gems or Jungle Junk thread know that I gave my first sampling of this highly-regarded run a highly negative review. I’d gone into it eager to trash writer Don McGregor’s tin ear and penchant for overblown writing, looking for flaws and deficiencies.

As I’d hoped, other forum members came to its defense, and did so heartily and convincingly, so I committed myself to attempting to read the entire saga from the beginning, with an open mind. And thus did I become a convert.

OK, gang, I get it. Marvel’s first graphic novel, coming unexpectedly out of nowhere, “Panther’s Rage” was a groundbreaking, ambitious, richly plotted work that walked a fine line between respecting the norms of both the superhero comic (throwing a parade of newly-created, memorable super-villains at our hero) and the jungle comic (challenging our hero with a menagerie of menacing jungle beasts) while upsetting others: it featured an almost entirely all-Black cast, told an extended story with genuine consequence from beginning to satisfying end, didn’t waste too much valuable panel space on hand-holding rehash. It provided a map of Wakanda early on, and demonstrated a well-planned out structure by using the locations shown as the story played out. It generated a convincing sense of concern for the hero’s survival, most remarkably in a single issue over the course of which T’Challa, already at a disadvantage with his mystic panther powers limited thanks to an interrupted ritual, is progressively wounded, his costume in tatters, crawling home barely alive. The supporting cast are not just a collection of character types, but well-developed characters with distinct personalities and drives.

McGregor’s weaknesses are still there, but they are compensated for; once sucked into the story, his florid prose feels not so much like pretentiousness but more like an integral part of the experience. You can bet I'll be reading McGregor's two follow-ups to this epic. Thanks a million to the members whose well-reasoned and polite counterarguments convinced me to give it a try. I wouldn't have suspected that a classic comic I read for the first time just days before the annual CCC event would rise to the ranks of my top 12, but this morning, while writing up what I had originally slotted for this position, I realized that it had!

Day Three (#10)
Howard the Duck

 

For a while there, some of the best social and comic book satire you could ever read. Even non-comics fans cottoned to Howard’s Whitmanesque “Waauuugh!” hurled at a ridiculous world full of hairless stalking apes. And naturally, it was a world he never made.

I didn’t stay with Howard, who had popped up out of nowhere in Man-Thing story that I hadn’t read, but for about 15 issues or so, he made me laugh and provided a haven of relatively adult humor and commentary on everything from politics to martial arts movies. To comic books themselves. Steve Gerber’s Howard was a self-appointed spokesman for Everyman (in other words, every human being out there) who is appalled by having to deal with insanity gussied up as sanity, absurdity presented as normality and idiocy masquerading as reason. That he was a cigar-smoking duck just made everything he said that much funnier. There was a smidgeon of Kafka in those early issues.

But, like so much satire, Howard (and perhaps Gerber) ran out of juice because his kind of attitude never changes and lacks nuance as much as that of any institution he’s criticizing. It’s an anthropomorphic version of keep your wiffleball off my lawn stuff, which itself becomes parody instantaneously. And Gerber’s satire was quite specific, to its time and place, which meant that it was funny and perceptive... but ephemeral. And a non-stop screed, which was Howard’s style is too one-dimensional to retain much power for very long.

However, in 1976, when the first issue hit the stands, mainstream comics were in another of their typical ruts and Howard provided the proverbial much needed lift. I guess it was as close as Marvel was going to come to publishing an underground comic, the artwork (for the couple of years when I read it at least) was usually quite good, and until things got repetitive, Howard was entertaining. Not an insignificant accomplishment for a guy, um, duck who had popped up in a horror comic a few years earlier.

#10. Moon Knight



Him again!

A graduate from the Werewolf by Night academy, Moon Knight was already the star of his own comic when I discovered him.

He was, basically put, what I thought Batman should be. The few issues I read had no costumed super-villains and dealt with things like drug trafficking and jilted lovers. It felt new, despite treading old ground; it felt a bit more authentic than other similar titles. Part of its appeal was how straightforward it was: you had the hero with simple motivations, stock market money that explained how he could afford his toys, you had the girlfriend who was neither a perpetual hostage nor a ninja/sorceress/heir to a crime empire; you had the trusted sidekick/mechanic. Just enough toys in the toybox, and no crippling and convoluted backstory.

Plus, there was the idiosyncratic Bill Sienkiewicz art, which was at the same time familiar and innovative (Bill had moved beyond his Neal Adams phase at that point). Reading the Moon Knight Essentials a few years ago, I realize that I was lucky with the issues I had read way back when; in the Essential, there were quite a few issues inked by people whose style didn't mesh with Sienkiewicz's. The most beautiful ones were the ones he inked himself, and they were often very impressive.

"My" Moon Knight is a street-level do-gooder, who turned to vigilantism to atone for his past life as a mercenary (and because he's addicted to action). The Egyptian theme of his costumed identity might have been a hallucination and was not referenced too often. He was not suffering from multiple personality disorder, he was not the avatar of a god, he did not deserve the insane continuity nightmare that his comic-book career would turn into.

He's also a good example of how a one-time villain in a C-list book can outgrow his origins!