2. Zatanna #1-16 (2010-11)



I love Zatanna. She is such a fun and underused character. (And the fishnets don't hurt either.) But she is a character that many otherwise able writers struggle to handle well. This was not her first stint headlining her own feature, either. She had a run in World's Finest during its days an anthology book,that was decidedly average, and a four issue miniseries in 1993 that we fans prefer not to talk about, as creators Lee Mars and Esteban Maroto obviously had no idea what makes the character tick or why fans love her. The 2005 Seven Soldiers mini was very good and might have earned a spot on my list is it hadn't been blown out of the water by this ongoing.

No other writer has the love and affection for Zatanna that Paul Dini has. So much so that Bruce Timm has joked about Dini's unhealthy fixation on her. This only became funnier when Dini married stage magician Misty Lee, who is as close to real life Zatanna as you can get.


Basically, Dini did everything right in setting Zee up in her own monthly book. He established her in San Francisco as her permanent base of operations (although this was actually continuing something Neil Gaimen had established in Books of Magic), gave her a regular supporting cast (her agent, her stage manager, a homicide detective as a potential love interest, etc.), started to construct a recurring rogues gallery, and made her a consultant the SFPD called in whenever a case had supernatural connections. Dini also nailed Zee's personality: remembering that Zee is first and foremost a performer, who loves her life as both a stage magician and a superhero. Unlike most magical heroes whose default setting is brooding and mysterious, Zee is bright and bubbly.

The book was cut short when DC rebooted their universe yet again,but--for one brief shining moment--we fans had a Zatanna title done right, and they can't take that away from us.

Yeah, in my mind this might be the best Star Wars comic ever done, a close second would be Knights of the Old Republic.

2. Under Construction
thanks Kurt

Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.



Why you ask...
Steranko pure and simple

Day Eleven (#2)
Robin (Star Spangled Comics 65-130)



I’m going to admit that even I am not old enough to have plucked any of these from the newsstand, and all I’ve read of this series I’ve read in reprints, but that does not change any of the facts. This is a favorite series of a character spun off into his own feature. In fact, I might go so far as to say that the Robin featured in the best of his Star Spangled stories is my all-time favorite version of Robin.

Even though it may be no more than comfort food.

For much of this run, Robin was treated by the adult world and behaved as though he were an adult. In essence, he was an adult, given the adventures he enjoyed and the responsibilities of being the sidekick to the world’s greatest detective, the Masked Manhunter, the Gotham Guardian, the Caped Crusader. In his own series, Robin was just as much a detective, manhunter, crusader and guardian as his mentor, called upon by the various authorities when things went haywire in Gotham and the Boy Wonder’s teacher was out of town. Indeed, in of the very best solo Robin stories, the Boy Wonder has to track down the three vicious Barton Brothers after they have shot and seriously wounded his mentor and he brings them to justice. And, as was customary in the best of these stories, said mentor never appeared except for making an occasional one- or two-panel cameo to kvell about Robin’s victory.

I first read a few of these stories in the back of World’s Finest (“Editor’s Round Table;” “Demand Classic,” one of those) and I loved them. It was great seeing Robin on his own, out from under the shadow of the Gotham Goliath; it perfectly suited the typical comic book reader’s fantasy (well, mine at least) that with a little training and a more understanding local police department, I could be out decoding clues, cold-cocking crooks and outsmarting C-list costumed villains.

One of the memorable stories, for all kinds of reasons, reprinted in Batman 199, is “Operation: Escape.” Robin is giving a lecture at the Gotham Police College, because of course he is, and challenges the cadets to explain how he once used a broken tennis racket, a baseball shoe and a golf ball to escape from a pit with a trap door in a house belonging to a crook named Champ.



Because we all have pits in our houses where we toss a bag of old sports equipment.

None of the cadets can figure out Robin’s brilliant solution because as one of them says in the final line, “There’s only one Robin the Boy Wonder!” (Boldface his.)

When you’re a cynical old b*st*rd, stories like these cut the bile the bile a bit. I make neither apologies nor rationale for enjoying these 1940’s gems. Sometimes I need to give logic, reason and science a little vacation and immerse myself in a world that never was just for a breather from people who have placed logic, reason and science on permanent leave and immersed themselves in a world that never was.

PS: Solution supplied on request.

This team originally only existed in a time-lost corner of Marvel's Motley Multiverse, then, made one further appearance twenty years later only to be unceremoniously destroyed, but you can't keep a good team down! It's the...

#2. Agents of Atlas

In 1978, Tony Stark posed the question to as assembled group of his Avengers team-mates, "What If the Avengers had been formed in the 1950s?" What followed was a glorious tale in which FBI Agent Jimmy Woo gathered a team of strange misfits to combat the nefarious schemes of The Yellow Claw! Our heroes included a bunch of characters who'd first appeared in stories published by then-Atlas Comics, including Marvel Boy, Gorilla Man, The Living Robot, Venus, and a more recent creation, 3D Man, who'd been invented as a period character. It also featured a host of guest-stars and villains from that period.
In the end, the Watcher contemplates whether we might see more adventures of these heroes... and for a long time, we didn't. They resurfaced briefly in the miniseries 'Avengers Forever' by Kurt Busiek (him again?!) and the late, great Carlos Pacheco, but didn't get the chance to make much more than an impression before being whisked away into obscurity again.

It was years later that the concept would be revived in a miniseries which would eventually spin-off into its own ongoing series.
Writer Jeff Parker postulated that the group's members conformed to 1950's movie archetypes:
* The Secret Agent (Jimmy Woo)
* The Alien (Marvel Boy/Robert Grayson/The Uranian)
* The Mermaid (Namora)
* The Goddess (Venus)
* The Robot (The Living Robot)
* The Monster (Gorilla Man)
And came up with an idea that the group would become part of an underground conspiracy, dedicated to uncovering and curtailing the conspiracy's more nefarious elements while shifting its resources towards more benevolent goals.

Agents of Atlas existed in its own little pocket of the Marvel Universe, occasionally interacting with it, but for the most part, operating on levels normally unseen or unheard of. It was odd, quirky, pulpy fun with a cast of equally bonkers characters. You never knew where it was going to go, but you knew it'd be a hell of a ride. In many ways, it reminded me of Paul Grist's 'Jack Staff' in that many of its characters came from outside the superhero paradigm but fit perfectly into their own weird little niche within it.

I'm actually going to allow it. Since Jimmy Woo is the central character, we can consider AoA as a spin-off of the 1950s Yellow Claw title.

Cei-U!
Has been meaning to read Agent of Atlas for years!

To be fair, this was one of the ones I was worried about. And I didn't expect that reprieve, but as I love the hell out of the series, I'm gonna take it anyway!
And oh yeah, you should definitely check this series out!

The original trade paperback collection (which has the cover I used above) is a particularly juicy treasure trove, containing The Six Issue Series, a reprint of 'What If...?' #8, the original appearances of all the major characters from the 50's and a bunch of the supplementary promotional material they were using to hype the series in the first place.