DCUG Developer’s Diary #6

Howdy folks, and welcome to another DCUG Developer’s Diary! I promised more news before too long, and I am pleased to deliver. It has been an incredibly productive few weeks. I have gotten so much done, conducted so many experiments and tried so many different approaches to modding problems, that I’ll be hard pressed to remember and record a tithe of it, but I’ll try to hit the highlights for y’all! I’ve been hard at work on my Aquaman campaign, and most of the progress I’ve made has been on that part of the project. I’ve finished the next two missions, which were very work intensive and demanding, both in terms of modding and in terms of writing.

I’ve really been digging into FF modding, trying all sorts of things in order to bring this story about my favorite character to life in as high a quality as I can manage. I’ve done a lot of innovating, and I’ve tried to bring a high level of detail to everything about the campaign, from maps to characters, to effects, to plots. I’m quite happy with how it is all turning out, but I am also perpetually frustrated that I can’t quite bring what’s in my imagination to the screen as perfectly as I’d like. I’ll tell y’all a little about all of the different parts of the process I’ve gone through to bring this adventure to life.

Creating an Undersea World:

In my last DD, I walked y’all through some of the steps I went through to try to create an interesting and attractive underwater map for my second mission, and although I was pretty happy with the results of my labors, I wasn’t completely content. Considering how much of Aquaman’s story is going to be set beneath the waves, I had a good reason to keep trying to improve things. I had a number of different ideas about how I could enhance the look of my underwater maps, and I’ve been hard at work trying to figure out how to implement them. Tweaking map textures looks okay and is important, but I had bigger dreams.

I had always thought that it would be great to be able to put a ‘water’ filter over the ‘camera’ of FF. Unfortunately, there’s no way to do that, or at least none I could discover…but I couldn’t shake the idea. As I often do when I am trying to get inspiration for a mod, I spent some time going back and playing through FF1 and 2, and this reminded me of something that might provide me another way to accomplish a similar result and set me to digging into FF’s game files and documentation to figure out how to bring a bit more atmosphere to my undersea settings. This lead me on a journey that had me experimenting with Python scripting in new ways that were both exciting and more than a little scary, because I was very much out of my depth! But, that’s how you learn when you’re modding. In fact, constantly stretching to accomplish something that seems out of reach is the only reason I’m a modder in the first place!

The (mostly) finished product with several new features

Dream Wave Effect

As you may remember if you’re a veteran of FF2, the second game began with a rather unusual mission, which was actually a nightmare of one of the Freedom Force members. At the end of the mission, the player’s vision of the map was distorted by this blurry, wavy, dream-vision effect that covered the map. It occurred to me that, if I could figure out how to create this, and if it could be customized, such an effect might actually be a pretty perfect device for giving a submarine map an underwater “feel.” So, I opened up the script for the first mission and started digging. Now, I’ve been teaching myself about real Python scripting, but I am still beyond a neophyte, so I wasn’t entirely sure what I was looking for or what to make of it when I found it. Fortunately, Irrational helpfully labelled their scripts, and it was all clear enough for me to find the pertinent sections, even if I didn’t yet know how to interpret. them.

So, I started reading through the FFscripting document, hoping to find explanations of this code. The documentation did have a section on the Dream Wave effect, though it was a little hard for me to understand. Eventually, I copied the code that, to my best guess, was what I needed and just started experimenting with it. Unfortunately, my first efforts either simply didn’t work or even crashed the game! Finally, I hit on this combination. Here’s the code you can use to create an EZScripted mission that uses the Dream Wave.

Misminimod_storyfile = 'mission'

import m25minimod
from m25minimod import *

def OnPreRendererCreate():
	ff.RENDER_WARP = 1

#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#
# Important Callbacks
#
#---------------------------------------------------------------------	

def OnPostInit():
	m25minimod.OnPostInit(campaign=1)
	ff.RENDER_WARP = 1
	Mission_StartDreamWave(5,-1,0)
	Mission_FadeDreamSinParams(1, .01, .25, 1)

The first lines on each side are just the usual setup for EZScript missions. At first I was just using the two obvious lines, Mission_StartDreamWave and Mission_FadeDreamSinParams, but the effect wasn’t actually beginning. That’s when I noticed that the FF2 mission script actually had those PreRenderer and ff.RENDER commands, so I added those too, and I found myself with a nice, trippy warp effect! Then it was just a matter of tweaking it. The documentation explained that the first two commands I started with are what actually controls how the Wave appears.

The Start command has three points of customization (how long it fades in, how long it lasts, and how long it fades out). You’ll notice that the duration control is set to -1, meaning it will run forever, and thus I’ve got a 0 in the last slot, because it doesn’t need to fade away. You could tweak these settings to create short-lived effects and do other kinds of clever moves with it.

The Fade command sets the degree and strength of the effect, and it’s also got various customizations: (Frequency, or how often waves of the warping effect are created / Amplitude, or how big the waves are / Speed, or how quickly they move across the screen / and Fade Time, or how quickly they fade away) The default values in the mission were “(1, .03, .35, 1)”, so you can see that I didn’t change them drastically. I tried a few various permutations, but I eventually settled on the lowest amplitude and a slower speed. I think the final product looks pretty good, and you can check out a video of the effect in action on a mission here below. It looks pretty good in action, but it can be a little disconcerting, even on the lowest setting, so I’ll include a set of non-warped mission files for the campaign for those who are prone to motion-sickness or the like.

Sunlight Settings

So, the maps certainly looked a bit more striking and ‘watery’ with the Dream Wave effect turned on, but they were still missing something. Several folks on FR had suggested that if I could change the light color on the map to make it more sea-toned, that could help, so I had planned to mess with the lighting settings of the maps. However, before I could do that, I had to discover what actually controlled these settings! At first I thought this might be controlled through the map files, like the layout or extents texts, but after examining some of them, I realized that wasn’t the case. There were almost certainly nice, clear tutorials that covered this kind of thing once upon a time, but if they existed they’ve been lost to the ages, so I had to poke around in the forum archives for mentions of the subject. I eventually found some of our great former mappers discussing these settings, which it turns out were located in the python files of a map. Thus, I was once again delving into unfamiliar depths! With that post as a guide, I was able to find this section of the python document:

Mission_GetSunlight()

rotation: Sun rotation angle from north in degrees: +ve is east
tilt: Sun tilt from horizontal in degrees: +ve is down
brightness: Intensity of sunlight (0=none to 1=full)
ambient: Intensity of ambient light (0=none to 1=full)
Color: 3-tuple, red, green, blue values (all are 0 to 1)

Then I dug around in missions and custom maps and found those that seemed to have nice, bright, clear light, and used that as a starting point. I then played with the color values, changing out what colors were strongest, until I found a nice, ocean-y color palette which was, as you might imagine, heavily blue and green. Here’s the code I ended up using (just right below the code for the Wave effect).

	Mission_SetSunlight(-40,30,1,1.0,(0.4,0.8,1))
	Mission_SetShadows(-40,30,(0.2,0.3,0.3))
	Mission_SetProjShadowBackground((1,1,1))
	Mission_SetProjShadowColor((.8,.7,.7,1))

You’ll notice there are some other commands there too, each with their own settings. I just copied those from another mission, but you could add further customizaiton with those settings for shadows. However, we’re concenred with the sunlight settings. I’ve got brightness and ambient light both turned all the way up, and I’ve got the blue light at max and the green pretty close. The combination creates a nice, watery feel for the maps and everything on them, including my characters and props.

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Creating a Sky Sphere

You may notice in my screenshots and videos that there’s another feature these maps have that help create their atmosphere, and that is a background that replaces the blank black void that is the default for FF maps. Here, as with most everything I’ve done, I’m just standing on the shoulders of FR community giants. What you see in these images is called a “sky sphere”, which is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a big spherical object that sits around your map and provides a lovely backdrop for your adventures. The way that our mapping masters had used these in the past was to make them character templates, but that can create problems in modding, both because of this creating ‘phantom characters’ that mess up the complex “branding” function of the FFX Control Center, and because campaign missions don’t seem to like such characters being on a map. Thus, I tried making these into regular generic objects, and that seems to have worked just fine. I tried adding them directly to the map nif, but when I did, the top of the sphere was registered as the ‘ground’ and all the characters were shunted to the outside!

So, how do you use a sky sphere? Well, it’s actually super easy. They’re included with the map pack, so you can find the actual object and their textures in that wonderful resource. You’ll find the spheres in the pack’s art/library/characters directory. Once you get them, you can copy the settings they have in the map pack, but just change their template type to “generic.” Now, because they’ll be objects and not characters, their textures need to be in with the rest of your map’s textures. Once you’ve done that, you can place them on your maps by placing a marker, then changing it to be the sphere. Once you’ve done that, you’re good to go! The spheres come with several really nice textures, but you can also just name your own textures in the same pattern and use them on your maps for a variety of different effects! Check out my ‘water sphere’ on my Atlantis map!

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Atlantean Chic – Decorating My Aquatic World:

Speaking of Atlantis, my story called for a visit to the fabled lost city by the Aquatic Ace, and thanks to folks vastly more talented than me, I had great starting places for both the Atlantean Palace and the city itself. However, as always seems the case, I wanted a bit more. So, as I worked on the various maps, I started cobbling together new props to decorate them. I did this by the usual method of just using replacement textures in a map’s folder, but I also literally built props using Nifskope, which is a huge blessing for modders. Nifskope allows you to combine and manipulate meshes, so I was able to take parts or whole meshes, both character and object, and use them to create various new props. This is exceedingly easy to do these days. For example, I created a throne as a centerpiece for my Atlantean throne room by combining the chair object from the FF1 Robot Factory maps, the TNT crates from the warehouse maps, a dolphin RandomDays had imported for me, and a little shell from Tomato’s Aquagirl skope. The result looked like a lot more than the sum of its parts.

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Adding a refl and a glow texture to the mesh pieces, as well as tweaking the color settings of the meshes themselves, allowed me to make the whole thing look shiny and impressive. I did the same type of thing to create some nice underwater foliage for my city map. I started with a thin tree object, the ger_tree_poplar, but I wanted to make it look like a piece of a kelp forest, so I copied over ger_weed, and then placed several copies of it all up and down the tree, rotating and enlarging them here and there so that the whole thing had a nice, ragged, wavy appearance. I created a number of items like these, and I rounded out my decorations by adding textures I found online to existing meshes to create artistic accents, making bronze statues, golden images, and paintings. The paintings used art from the Atlantis Chronicles, which a seemed fitting place to find images of Atlantean history.

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Populating Atlantis:

While I’ve been hard at work designing maps and writing missions, other incredibly talented members of our community have been contributing some wonderful stuff to other facets of my project. Tomato has continued to help me out with a number of contributions, big and small. RandomDays has imported a ton of incredibly useful objects for me and has in general pitched in innumerable ways, and Deanjo2000 has been churning out some incredibly gorgeous skins and skopes! In fact, between RD and Dean, we’ve got an amazing vessel for Aquaman’s nemesis, Black Manta. Dean has contributed a lot of great DC characters to the mod since my last update, and he was kind enough to create the Aquaman supporting cast member Murk, from the modern books, who Jeff Parker did such excellent work with. This gave me a really useful character to play with in my development of my Aqua-adventure, and it’s also just fun beating the snot out of this thinly-veiled pastiche of the hook-handed Aqua-jerk of the 90s! In general, I’ve seen a fantastic amount of support from the community lately, which has been really encouraging and energizing. Look for even more great art assets coming soon!

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Telling the Story:

Of course, all of the work described above has been in service of a story that I’ve been dying to tell for years and years. My Aquaman campaign is one that I mapped out in broad strokes back when I was first working on the DCUG, over a decade ago. The story has evolved and changed a good deal since then, and I have been more than a little influenced by the fantastic work done by Jeff Parker and Dan Abnet in the New 52 Aquaman series. Still, I’m quite excited to finally get the chance to tell it, especially because it is such an ambitious project, and one that I have often despaired of ever having the chance to do justice. With the support of the FF community, diminished but still full of talented, I have been able to make a good start on it. As I’ve made maps and props and a thousand and one little tweaks and enhancements, I’ve also been hard at work on the campaign.

I’ve finished missions #3 and #4, which included some of the most challenging writing of the entire narrative. I had to introduce Atlantis, supporting characters, and an absolute mountain of plot, all in a very small amount of narrative space, as I only had a few missions and base scenes in which to do it. I could probably have spread this over more missions, but considering how much time and effort it takes to successfully write, script, and create a mission, I’ve tried to be conservative with my campaign design, which is not a strength of mine, as my project catalog can attest! So, I’ve slaved over the writing of these missions and base scenes, and while I’m not 100% happy with it (I never am), I am content. The missions themselves I think are a neat mix of ideas, and I hope they’ll prove fun to play. The players will be hit with a lot of information and a lot of my original Aquaman mythos in these missions, but I’ve tried to make them exciting and entertaining, as well as (hopefully) full of intriguing glimpses of story and mystery. As an extra treat, each mission has a custom cover created by Unkoman for their loading screens. Some are snappy tweaks of classic Aquaman covers, and some are much more elaborate creations, but they are all awesome, and Unko has put a lot of time and effort into them, crafting these custom loading screens that really make the campaign feel polished and complete.

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#3 “Torn Between Two Worlds”

I won’t give away too much of my plot in these features. Instead, I’ll tease a bit about the missions and talk about how I made them. This first one up presented some design problems, in multiple ways. First, I had to skope custom keys for various characters that I already had in the DCUG, but for whom I didn’t have underwater versions. Then I had to create new powers and builds for each of them. When writing the mission itself, I knew I wanted a showdown with some of Black Manta’s minions, but I wasn’t really sure what to do to make it interesting and provide some variety. I came up with a couple of different encounter types so that the mission wasn’t simply a straight fight, and I designed it so that Aquaman was accompanied by some Atlantean allies. My scripting challenges arose from two sources. First, I needed to get the allies into the mission immediately so that the opening cutscene could include them and set up what was going on. Second, I needed my villain to get defeated but still get away, and I wanted to make sure that he didn’t show up until the player had cleared out all of his henchmen.

To solve my first challenge, I made my starting encounter an Alliance encounter, which allows you to create long-term allies for the mission, and I simply had its starting cutscene be my intro CS. However, as is often the case, solving one problem created another one, and this one was quite the mystery to me for a while. I would play through the entire mission, and everything would work, only for all of the starting encounters to respawn as I was playing through the last encounter. It was maddening! Not only did it look super messy and confusing, the mission wouldn’t end because the event chain had restarted! I finally, just yesterday, figured out what the issue was, after seeing no clear reason why this would happen and trying dozens of different things to fix it. The problem all came down to the fact that I was using my Alliance encounter to start my mission, and it was also being used to launch those opening encounters. It’s super obvious in hindsight! You see, the CS would play, and the encounter would ‘end’, spawning the next ones…but it wasn’t ACTUALLY over until all of the allies died. Most of the would get taken out in the mission, but your main ally, Murk, was made of sterner stuff, and he’d usually stick around until the end, where he was knocked out by another encounter….which would then start the whole thing over again! Simply using a different encounter to spawn the others solved the problem very nicely.

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The second problem proved much more easily solved, though it also gave me some trouble. EZScript has an option for Custom Encounters that allows you to set one up where a villain will stop fighting at certain health thresholds. This is meant to simulate a common mission element from the FF campaigns, and it would be a very useful mission component. The trouble is, it’s never worked quite right, and I have trouble with it every time I try to use it. I decided to give it another look, and sure enough, it gave me fits. Either Manta wouldn’t stop and would get knocked out, or he’d stop and just get stuck, so the rest of the mission didn’t play. Finally I gave up and just used a simple Interrogation, which worked like a charm. However, this left me with the difficulty of getting my villain away. I’ve gotten around this in the past by having the screen fade and just having dialog advance the plot and narrate what’s happening. Obviously, that’s not the most elegant of solutions, and I wanted a bit more out of this, especially because I didn’t plan on this actually being the end of the mission. The trouble is that, once in an interrogation state, a character is locked into their stun animation and can’t move. So, I decided to cheat a bit. I used some camera work and fades to extricate Manta, then gave him an animation command to bring him out of the stun state. He still couldn’t move, but he LOOKED normal, and that made the CS work reasonably well. In the, the mission proved to be more challenging to create than I anticipated, especially since it was originally conceived as just a fight, but the final product should prove interesting, I hope!

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#4 “Caverns of Death”

Bizarrely, mission #4, although much more ambitious in terms of scripting, as I was trying something I’d never done before, proved much easier. In fact, the most complicated and fanciest bits worked right out of the gate, while the simple stuff, as is often the case, tripped me up. This one involved the newly recruited Aqualad joining Aquaman as they fought their way through a cave full of monsters, and made some interesting discoveries about the history of Atlantis along the way, as well as some hints of the overarching plot! I decided to get clever, because once again I was struggling to find a way to provide some variety to how my story idea made it into mission form. The monsters our Aquatic Aces faced were a fairly straight-forward threat, but I came up with the idea of having the heroes encounter eggs that could hatch at random intervals, spawning more of the monsters. If the heroes can destroy the eggs early, they won’t have to worry about reinforcements, but if they don’t, they might get overwhelmed! I did this by creating two sets of encounters. The first was just a custom Destroy Object encounter with a Countdown condition to provide a ticking clock. The second, which is only triggered if the object isn’t destroyed before the clock runs out, spawns a monster in a Hunt encounter. I added some FX to make it look a little smoother, and it all worked pretty well. Here’s the EZScript encounters in question:

Encounter: Brood1
Type: Custom
Actions: countdown, heroes destroy objects
Objects: trench_egg named bob
Time: 215
Marker: shell1
Next: If Timer Still Going: None
Next: If Timer Expired: Birth1

End Cutscene:
bob is destroyed

#--------------------------------------------------

Encounter: Birth1
Type: Hunt
Villains: trenchs
Marker: scrack1
Next: None

Alert Cutscene:
Play effect effect_ffx_transmute at scrack1

Interestingly, I’ve recently discovered that the brilliant M25, who created EZScript, was even more brilliant than I had given him credit for, and he included the ability to name objects (like ‘bob’ up there) as well as characters so that you manipulate them directly through your scripts.

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Alright folks, well that should give y’all a nice peak behind the curtain at what I’ve been up to. Now that I’m past these challenging missions and maps, I’m hoping I can move a bit more quickly in the coming weeks, but we’ll see. I know that I promised some information about my GLC campaign in this diary, but I think it’s already long (probably overlong!) enough, so I’ll get to that next time. I hope that this has been interesting and useful. Please feel free to ask questions or post comments, especially if you’re interested in getting into modding yourself or are just looking to get involved in the fantastic FF community!

DCUG Developer’s Journal #3

Welcome back Freedom Fans!  Today’s journal covers some more testing, but it also has a teaser for something that is just starting to come together!

I have been working on testing the final expansion JLA mission (other than the JSA conclusion missions), #17.  This features the conclusion of the Injustice Gang storyline, with the League ambushing the Gang in their headquarters, much to their surprise!  I drew heavily on the excellent JL:TAS two-parter, “Injustice for All” for inspiration for this story.  Like the second episode of that arc, we begin with Batman captured and with the League rushing to his rescue.  However, Luthor has an ace up his sleeve, and the villains have backup in the form of the deadly dangerous Amazo!

I thought hard about putting Amazo into his own arc also based on JL, but I figured that I needed to concentrate my storytelling in this campaign in order to get the most bang for my buck because of how much time and effort it takes to create a single mission.  I can plot out endless stories, but there are only so many hours in the day to actually make them.  Thus, I have a less than optimal setup, but I think it makes for a nicely dramatic mission.

Anyway, because of my stacking the deck against my players, I decided to give them a way out in case they found Amazo too much to handle in addition to the other villains.  Using a setup I’ve used often before for turrets and other defenses, I gave Amazo a “kill switch” of sorts.  I created Amazo with a custom encounter, giving him a custom name so I can deal with him between encounters, but I also created a switch in that encounter, which, when flipped, triggers a CS that kills Amazo (bob).  To give the players a hint, I put in a time-delay CS to tip them off.  Check it out here:

#——————————————————————————-

Encounter: Meanbot1
Type: Custom
Actions: switches exist, villains fight heroes
Villains: amazo named bob
Secondary Objective: “Disable Luthor’s new weapon” for 2500 prestige
Switches: ff_science_equipment
Marker: warehouse2
Next: None

Start Cutscene:
Wait for 240 seconds
Hero says, “Look! If we can get to Luthor’s equipment, we might be able to disable the android!”
Red Arrow on warehouse2_object1

All Switches Turned Off Cutscene:
Camera on bob
Play effect effect_electricalburst at bob
bob says, “Nooo! I had only begun…to live…!”
bob is killed
Play music music_05_fort_ft

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The mission itself was, once again, a bit of a mess at first, but fortunately, it was mostly an easy fix.  I had mixed my metaphors again in the main CS where the heroes confront the villains, using ‘real’ names (black_manta, cheetah, etc) instead of the substitution names I had given those characters so I could manipulate them between encounters (wet, cat, etc).  That kept the CS from playing.  You see, I had split the villains into two encounters, with Luthor in one and the rest of the Gang in another.  I did this because I had to get clever to work around Luthor’s Energy Shield interrogation bug, which I described in the first journal entry.  I had a devil of a time coming up with a workaround.

The simple thing would be to just use a Cutscene encounter with a new Lex after the defeat of the first, but this would mean you wouldn’t have to defeat the entire team to win.  I tried using that strategy, but starting the CS with a “Starts When” condition, triggered once the other encounters are finished, but those are always temperamental.  It didn’t work, so I tried a LOT of other things before settling on an unorthodox solution.

I made the final encounter a custom one, with conditions to turn off Lex’s AI and the “Allies Want to Chat” condition, meaning he’s interrogatable, without having to be defeated first.  This means that you won’t be able to talk to Lex until there are no enemies near by.  It’s not a perfect solution, but it gets us much closer.  Now, chances are, players will finish off everyone else before trying to talk to Lex.  Unfortunately, the Chat encounters have never really worked, but I got around this too.  I made the CS the End Cutscene for the encounter, so even though a Chat CS won’t work, as soon as the players click on Lex, the End CS plays, which has the same function.  And, viola, we’ve got a functional mission that even has some neat features.

With those intermediary missions finished, I’m on to the new JSA missions!

First, however, I haven’t just been working on testing.  No, I’ve been hard at work updating and tweaking other parts of the DCUG as well, and with the help of our riduclously talented and awesome community, I have a few new additions to show off.

There are a ton of really fantastic meshes, skins, and skopes out there for my favorite hero, Aquaman.  However, as you might imagine, I’m a tad picky about him, seeing as he is my favorite.  So, with the help of the community, and especially Detourne_me, I got an all-star team of mesh, skope, skin, and keys to create my ideal Aquaman for FF.  I also tweaked his powers and abilities, and he’s now more awesome than ever.  I even changed up his aquatic telepathy to use the ‘doot-doot-doot’ sound effect from the classic cartoon!

This awesome Aquaman deserved equally awesome villains, so asked Deanjo2000 to customize some new versions of Black Manta and Ocean Master.  The results are just plain stunning!  Dean really did an exceptional job on both, but his Orm is especially great because he was able to take my vague, unhelpful requests, and turn them into a really nice version of the New 52 look for the character that also incorporates some classic elements as well.

And finally, Detourne_me came through once more, providing me with something I expected to be quite tough, and doing it in record time as well!  Feast your eyes on a classic piece of DC war-comic history….the Haunted Tank!

These are only the beginning, too!  I’ve got several more skopes/skins from Dean and from others that I’m going to be using to update and expand the mod in the days to come.  I’ll post some teases for such updates in these journals from time to time!

Into the Bronze Age: October 1970 (Part 6)

Hello my dear readers, and welcome to the last edition of Into the Bronze Age for October 1970.  We’ve made it through another month and are well on our way to 1971!  It’s been a particularly interesting month, and at the end of the post I’ll provide some reflections on the overarching themes that we’ve been observing in this set of books.  Well, let’s get started!

If you’re new to this little journey, you can check out the first post to learn what it’s all about.

Roll Call (You can see everything published this month HERE)

• Action Comics #393
• Adventure Comics #398
• Aquaman #52
• Detective Comics #404
• Green Lantern/Green Arrow #80
• Phantom Stranger #9
• Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane #105
• Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #133 (Jack Kirby’s debut!)
• Superman #230
• Teen Titans #29

Bolded entries are covered in this post, the others will be covered soon.

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Superman #230

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“Killer Kent Versus Super Luthor”
Writer: Cary Bates
Penciler: Curt Swan
Inker: Dan Adkins

Ohh boy, this is a goofy one, folks.  This issue, with its incredibly gimmicky premise and its simplistic execution could be the poster child for the current state of Superman comics in 1970.  While change is abroad at DC, with social relevance breaking in on superheroes and growing depth and complexity to be found in most books, their flagship character remains completely unaffected, starring in stories that could easily have come from 1960 rather than 1970.  This is definitely one such tale.  Yet, despite its silliness, this issue actually has some pretty fascinating concepts behind its foolish facade.  The basic idea is an old one, what would happen if the hero and villain exchanged lives.  In this case, it is Lex Luthor who comes from Krypton and Clark Kent who is born on earth.  Bates actually adds some really interesting wrinkles to this setup, though they don’t amount to much.

To begin with, young Lex-El’s childhood is rather different than Kal’s.  His mother dies in a completely predictable accident with one of Jor-El’s inventions when an ion storm overloaded the device, which, for some reason, wasn’t designed to deal with common weather events.  What is this, like the third time, just in this year of comics, that one of Jor-El’s inventions has gone horribly wrong?  Seriously, why would this guy be let within a mile of a lab?  Everything he builds tries to kill somebody!  Anyway, this leaves Lex without a mother, but it leaves his father embittered and bat-guano insane to boot.  Instead of blaming himself for forgetting the fact that Krypton occasionally has storms, Jor blames the real villain.  Krypton itself.  That’s right, the planet killed his wife, and the planet must pay!  It’s utterly nuts, even for a crazy man.

And Jor-El is not just your garden variety madman.  No, he’s a madman with access to incredibly destructive super science!  He creates a weapon called the ‘Lethal Liquid’ that destroys Krypton from the inside out, but not before he and his bald-as-an-egg boy (also the fault of one of his inventions, by the way) hop a rocket for Earth.

I am become Jor-El, destroyer of worlds…

Meanwhile, on Earth the parents of Clark Kent are also quite different from the kindly farmers we remember.  Ma and Pa Kent have more in common with Bonnie and Clyde than with the rural American ideal.  When we meet them, they’re engaged in a running gunfight with the police, a chase that is only ended by the sudden arrival of the kryptonian rocket.  It drives them off the road, killing them.  However, they had already given their son to an underworld scientist named Dr. Markem so that he could implant, and I kid you not, “evil genes” in the kid.  Apparently, these parents of the year were really concerned that their son should grow up to be a criminal himself…for some reason.  So, they hired this quack to take their “evil genes” and implant them in their sons brains…despite the fact that A) that’s incredibly stupid and B) he’s already their son and should therefore already have their genes.

Well, unspeakably goofy and unnecessary plot devices aside, the Dr. drops his now orphaned charge off at the Smallville Orphanage while Jor-El discovers that, for some reason, he doesn’t have powers on Earth, though his son does.  The mad scientist gives baldy a super suit and sets up a medical practice, using his advanced science to become very successful.  The years pass, and Clark, adopted by the Langs, grows up to be young Lex’s best friend.  Lex becomes Superboy, and when Clark saves his life from an assassin, they become friends in that identity as well.

Yet, the peace of these idyllic times is soon shattered by madness…and also plot.  The insane Jor-El decides once again to blame an inanimate object for a misfortune and concludes that he must destroy Smallville in revenge for the attack upon his on.  He invents a new doomsday device (ohh, is it Tuesday already?), and he unleashes it on the town.  At the same time, Superboy and Clark had gone flying when the adopted boy went into a trance as his evil implant began to do its work.

Superboy rushes Clark to his father’s office, then notices the device destroying the town.  He manages to stop it, but his friend awakens, now ‘evil,’ and attacks the nutball scientist, killing him in the struggle.  Yet, our story doesn’t end there!  Next, for some reason, we leap ten years into the future, where Lex Luthor is a reporter for the Daily Planet and Clark Kent is in a comma after a failed robbery.  Because this wasn’t complicated enough, Lois Lane is also moonlighting as a nurse and has fallen in love with the comatose crook.

But we’re STILL not done.  The aged Dr. Markem shows up at the hospital and uses an invention to teleport the patient to his hideout, where he revives the criminal in hopes that he’ll pay him the money his parents owed when they died.  Just then, the evil scientist, not to be confused with the mad scientist, dies of a heart attack, leaving Kent alone in his hideout with a plethora of super-scientific inventions and a sudden desire to kill Superman.

Phew!  Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.  The setup with an aggrieved Jor-El and a motherless Lex could have been really fascinating, but the execution is just so silly that there isn’t much here.  The evil gene device is so goofy that it undermines another fun concept, which is the idea of a human Clark Kent with reason to hate the superhuman kryptonian.  The issue manages to be readable and entertaining, but too silly to amount to anything.  It’s a shame, because there were neat ideas here.  I’ll give it 2 Minutemen.

P.S.: The one standout feature of the issue is an item printed in the letter column which makes the same observations about the Superman books that I’ve been noting.  Keane Bonyun asks why, with so much of DC evolving, the Man of Steel is stuck in the past, a flat and uninteresting character in comparison with many of his fellows.  The editor notes that a big change is coming for Superman himself, and in the meantime, he points out new directions in Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen, which is rather neat.  Clearly even at the time people both within and without the company were aware that the times were changing and the genre was evolving..

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Teen Titans #29

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“Captives!”
Writer: Steve Skeates
Penciler: Nick Cardy
Inker: Nick Cardy
Letterer: John Costanza

This book, on the other hand, is a fun read.  Unfortunately, it reveals that the pointless Mr. Jupiter experiment is not yet over, but at least it gets the Titans back in action and back in costume.  Despite a few weak moments, it’s an interesting issue.  Perhaps the most compelling feature of the story is that it engages with the concept of Hawk and Dove in both frustrating and enjoyable ways.  Skeates manages to make Dove both aggravating and likeable at different points, but the most important thing is that he delivers an action-packed and enjoyable adventure.

We pick up where the previous issue left off, with Aqualad having been defeated by Ocean Master and his cronies and tied to a tree to die of dehydration.  The silly one hour limit is mentioned again, unfortunately.  I wonder when they got rid of that.  Anyway, just as he’s about to run out of time, the young Aquatic Ace sees that the cavalry has arrived, in the form of the Teen Titans!  That’s right, they finally got off their duffs and decided to do something useful.  Aqualad fills his friends in on the story so far and tells them that he managed to put a tracer on one of Ocean Master’s men.

Meanwhile, Hawk and Dove have slipped away from the team in order to pursue the investigation on their own.  Hawk actually has a pretty good plan, and they head to Sharon’s (the girl who was attacked last issue) apartment and wait, hoping that the villains are still watching the place.  Sure enough, a band of thugs show up, and Hawk plans to disable them and let one escape so that they can trail him back to Orm.  In the donnybrook that follows, Dove is pretty much useless, but even worse, he turns tail and runs, rationalizing that they can’t take these three, seemingly average guys and he needs to get help.  Of course, if Dove had been even moderately useful in the fight, that probably wouldn’t have been the case.  This brings me to a problem I had, not so much with the issue, but with the character.

Hawk and Dove are a cool concept, and one that is definitely timely for the era of their creation.  However, making proper use of them is rather tough.  It just makes no sense for a sincere pacifist to be a superhero.  It’s an inherently violent job, after all.  Justice League Unlimited handled the portrayal quite well, presenting a Dove who was very capable in a fight, despite the fact that he didn’t resort to direct violence.  The Dove who is a master of aikido, the martial art that turns an attack back upon an attacker, is a much more reasonable and useful character, after all.  Aikido is used to protect the practitioner, but it also emphasizes protecting your opponent from injury, which fits as a pacifistic way to take an active part in a fight.  Lifeline from G.I. JOE employed it for just such a purpose in the 80s comic.  Of course, we’re dealing with the very beginning of the character’s career, and it makes sense that neither he nor his writers would have worked out all the kinks just yet.  The result is still frustrating, making Dove seem like a coward rather than a man of principle.

Well, back to the story, Dove finds the other Titans and brings them on the run as their attackers cart Hawk off.  They make short work of the minions in a nice Cardy action scene, only to have Hawk dragged beneath the waves by Ocean Master!  Dove tries to intervene, only to be captured as well.  The pair awaken in an underwater base, tied to a pole.  The peaceful partner has managed to piece together the plot, and it seems to be related to one of our previous Aquaman stories.  Remember the aliens who were in cahoots with Orm?  They’re back, and now they’ve brought in some intergalactic muscle!  The handsome gents from the last issue of Titans were a super strong warrior race that the original invaders recruited.  The strange transformation that Sharon witnessed was a process that they use to walk among humans.

After they compare notes, our heroes manage to escape from their foolproof prison by…standing up.  Even the heroes seem to be surprised by how easy it is.  Apparently Ocean Master is really not cut out for this world domination bit, as he tied the two brothers to a pole that had no top.  It’s a little taller than the teens, but they stretch a tad and manage to free themselves.  It’s…a bit silly that the mighty supervillain would make such an oversight, and it makes him seem incompetent.  It’s a fairly minor issue, though, and the escape requires cooperation from the brothers, which helps to add to the story and gives them a solid character moment.  Once free, they fight their way through the base until they run into Ocean Master himself, displaying good teamwork despite their differences.

With Ocean Master they find one of the disguised aliens, and Hawk can’t take him alone, so Dove abandons his principles in the face of global Armageddon, and comes out swinging.  They’re holding their own when alien reinforcements arrive and things start to seem hopeless.  Just then, the Titans charge in, having used the tracker to find the base, and they clean up their extraterrestrial enemies with aplomb.  It’s another lovely Nick Cardy sequence.

After the action, the heroes deal with the big question, the future of the Titans.  As I mentioned in the intro, we sadly don’t see the end of the Jupiter episode, but at least Aqualad is smart enough to realize how completely inane the whole thing is.  The rest of the Titans say they still feel like their vow has merit, and I suppose a vow is a vow, no matter how foolish.  Of course, they’ve already broken it by taking part in this adventure.  Nevertheless, they say that they’ll only help out in extreme cases like this and that they’ll leave regular crime fighting to the police.  Hopefully this is Skeate’s first step to moving them into a new direction.  We’ll have to wait and see.

This is another good issue, as if that were really in doubt with Steve Skeates holding the pen.  Cardy’s art is as lovely as always, though I really don’t care that much for his Ocean Master.  He’s well drawn, but he just seems softer, less imposing than Aparo’s or Adams’.  Anyway, this issue is fun, exciting, and even manages to ask some interesting questions about principles and pacifism, even if it does so a bit awkwardly at times.  Despite the frustrating moments with Dove, I’ll give Skeates credit for trying to do something new and challenging.  The whole adventure is enjoyable, and it’s great to see the Titans back in action.  I especially enjoy that Aqualad gets to play the leader and the level-headed one.  It’s a role he’s good at, and it’s a shame we don’t see it more often.  Unfortunately, it looks like Aqualad will be leaving the book after next issue, and that is a crying shame.  The team won’t be the same without him.  Anyway, I’ll give this issue 4 Minutemen, though I’m tempted to go a bit higher.

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Final Thoughts:

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This was a solid if hardly electrifying collection of issues.  While most of the books were fairly average in quality, we had a handful of stronger offerings.  In particular, it’s worth noting that we actually got an entirely tolerable, even enjoyable, issue of Green Lantern/Green Arrow.  Even if the comics weren’t stellar, this month provided us with several unique and interesting moments, from the arrival of Jack Kirby at DC to the first, halting steps towards bringing more mature themes to the Man of Steel in Action Comics.  At the same time, issues like this latest Superman remind us of just how far there is to go, and the contrast between this month’s two Superman books is really telling.  Even more interesting to me is the fact that, in the context of the whole catalog of DC comics, what Jack Kirby is starting to do in his Fourth World books is all the more exciting and innovative.  I’m sure it will be a fascinating experience to read those books in context.  Well, that’s it for October 1970.  I hope you’ll join me soon as we begin our sojourn in November!

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The Head-Blow Headcount:

It’s been an uneventful month, in terms of the wall of shame, though I’m sure we’ll see new additions soon to rack up the headcount!

Into the Bronze Age: August 1970 (Part 1)

Well, last month was a bit of a letdown, but this month promises to be a bit more interesting, with more Aquaman and more of the fun Manhunter debut!  Join me as we forge a little further Into the Bronze Age!

This month in history:

• 2nd San Diego Comic Con was held (of note probably only in this context)
• Rubber bullets used for the first time during the Troubles in Ireland
• France performs nuclear tests
• 1st computer chess tournament held
• Peruvian Airlines jet carrying 45 US exchange students explodes
• Jim Morrison is tried in Miami on “lewd & lascivious behavior”
• Venera 7 probe launched for Venus
• Unrest continues at home and abroad, with bombs and riots in the US and Ireland

Well, both the Troubles in Ireland and the Space Race continue, and although it was a quieter month in the US, things were obviously still not peaceful.  I imagine it will be some time before we stop seeing these events in our monthly roundup.

This month’s chart topper was “(They Long to Be) Close to You” by the Carpenters, a sweet, sappy song that is something of a contrast to the rage in the air all over the world.  Even in a burning world, love endures, I suppose.

Roll Call (You can see everything published this month HERE)

• Action Comics #391
• Aquaman #52
• Batman #224
• Detective Comics #402
• The Flash #199
• Justice League #82
• Phantom Stranger #8
• Showcase #92
• Superman #229
• Teen Titans #28
• World’s Finest #195

Bolded entries are covered in this post, the others will be covered soon.

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Action Comics #391

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“The Punishment of Superman’s Son”
Writer: Robert Kanigher
Penciler: Ross Andru
Inker: Mike Esposito

“The Ordeal of Element Lad!”
Writer: E. Nelson Bridwell
Penciler: Win Mortimer
Inker: Jack Abel

Okay, I was astonished to find that the headline tale was NOT written by Bob Haney.  It features the Super Sons, after all, and it is full of all kinds of Haney quality Zaniness!  Of course,  that means this is an odd one, Haney or no Haney.  It is pretty hilarious in spots and just ohh so very goofy throughout.  The Super Sons stories are always pretty out there, and this one is no exception.  Interestingly enough, Wikipedia is all kinds of wrong about these oddball characters, maintaining that the first appearance of the Super Sons was in a Haney-penned story from 1973.  Apparently this 1970 feature wasn’t the first appearance either, though, as that was in 1965.  There you go kids; that’s why your teachers tell you not to trust Wikipedia!  Anyway, let’s jump right into the madness, shall we?

Essentially, this is Goofus and Gallant, the super hero edition, with the oddly doppleganger-ish children of the World’s Finest duo standing in for the titular pair.  We join Superman and his son, the incredibly creatively named Superman Jr. (Really?  Not, you know, Superboy?) as they discontentedly watch Batman and HIS equally creatively named son, Batman Jr.  The young Dark Knight is getting the Metropolis Medal of Valor in recompense for his deeds of daring do in the great city.  The Man of Steel and his son look on unhappily, with Super-Dad really bucking for ‘Father of the Year’ as he berates his son for not being as good as Batman’s boy.  Later, they head home to the “secluded, adjoining homes of Superman and Batman in the country between Metropolis and Gotham.”  And, just for the record, it was at that moment that I began to suspect that this issue was written by a 10 year old.  Seriously, there are a lot of concepts here that seem like something my little nephew would come up with, the fevered dreams of playground storytelling.  I realize that these comics were pitched to younger readers, but there’s a bit of a difference between what a kid would think is cool and what a kid would come up with if left to his own devices.

Anyway, at the door the super pair are met by “Mom,” who is conveniently wearing a wig and has her face in shadow.  This is actually a funny and clever little element of these Super Sons stories.  They always had the mothers’ faces in shadow and they tried to keep their identities fuzzy.  It’s hilarious that they’d go to that much trouble for these stories they’ve already labeled as ‘imaginary,’ and which don’t have many other concessions to logic or consistency.

Well, here we see a few more moments of the type of domestic farce that I love so very much, with the Super-Family sitting down to eat in full costume.  Fortunately, it’s not the focus of the issue.  It’s just a bizarre little side feature, as if Ross Andru just forgot that these characters have civilian identities after the first page.  Either way, Superman continues to play ‘disappointed Dad’ and is fairly ugly to his son as he takes off to retrieve a special singing alien plant.

We get an admittedly cool sequence as The Man of Tomorrow recovers the plant from a creature of flame, intending to bring the vociferous vegetable home to display on Earth.  The idea of a singing plant is not a new one, and it’s a cool enough sci-fi concept.  Yet, this story goofies it up by having the sounds the bush creates be genre and instrument specific.  This alien life-form plays “rock, marimba, strings, piano, cello, [and] steel band.”  Sure.  Just think about that one for a moment.

The Boy of Steel demonstrates his Goofus bona fides by burning the vocal vegetable to a crisp by flying too fast when he’s sent to deliver it.  This earns the poor schmuck a real tongue lashing from his father, combined with a healthy dose of parental guilt.  You really do feel for this poor kid (apparently only 14), as his various screw-ups throughout the issue are all accidents, and he’s really trying to do his best.  He reminds me a bit of Jerry Gergich from Parks and Rec.  To top things off, Batman and son just casually drop by to brag about how awesome they are.  I swear, the whole thing reads like parody.  If this were written today I’d think it was really clever satire!

Super goofs are the worst!  Also, smug Batman better watch out or he might find himself thrown into the sun…

The Super Sons hang out, with the Boy Detective trying to cheer up his super pal, including offering to let him ride his “Bat Bike.”  Ha!  Well, all of his efforts are to no avail, and then the two of them each attempt to stop a group of robbers with a nifty subterranean tank that looks more than a little like the Transport Modules from the old Ninja Turtles ‘toon (maybe the crooks work for Krang!).  The Boy of Steel blows it again, being fooled by fake Kryptonite, while Batman Jr. cleverly outwits the thieves…at least, if you don’t think about it too hard.  He finds the tunneling tank in a lake, hiding out from the authorities, so he plugs up its air snorkel, which is currently UNDERWATER, with a handkerchief.  This, somehow, causes the gang to surface, despite the fact that the snorkel was already blocked by being, you know, UNDERWATER!  It’s just a ridiculous little oversight that adds to the silliness of this issue.  Did you guys even bother to READ this thing before you sent it to press?

Afterwards, we get another dose of domestic farce as all of the heroes sit down to a family dinner, still in costume, to celebrate Superman Jr.’s birthday.  Yay.  For his gift, the elder Superman decides to take his son to the Fortress of Solitude for the first time in an attempt to heal the rift between them…the rift that he has totally caused for being a jerk to his well-meaning son.

Unfortunately, Goofus, I mean Superman Jr., screws everything up when he’s left alone in the Fortress.  He accidentally trashes the place, which seems to be the final straw.  The issue ends with the Dad of Steel locking his son in a booth and dropping in a piece of gold kryptonite to permanently take away his powers.  There’s actually something of value there, as the Super Father faces the fact that his son is more or less a danger to everyone on Earth because he’s such a huge clutz, but he’s also only 14…and who wasn’t a screwup at that age?  In other words, it immediately sinks into bathos or “narm.”  I’m sure we’ll see some type of turnaround next issue, but that’s where this merry-go-round of craziness ends.

So, what do we make of this non-Haney batch of zaniness?  Well, I’m not really sure.  It’s just so goofy and silly that I certainly can’t enjoy it the way I do your average adventure story, but it is also undeniably vivacious and full of energy in a way that last Superman story simply was lacking.  It is clear that Kanigher isn’t thinking too deeply…or at all…about this tale, but it is fun and you really can’t help but feel sorry for the Super-Loser.  It does seem like the basic concept suffers from a lack of creativity, with the Super Sons just being carbon copies of their fathers, but there are neat moments interwoven with the ludicrous ones, though the latter outnumber the former.  This is a very Silver-Agey tale, though somehow less obnoxious than some of the others we’ve waded through.  I suppose it is just so wacky that it comes back around again and is fun.  I’ll give it 2.5 Minutemen.  It’s final effect is silly, but entertainingly so.

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“The Ordeal of Element Lad!”

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In the backup position this month we have the continuation of the excellent Legion story from the previous issue, and just as in that comic, this story absolutely steals the show.  It suffers from its brevity to a degree, yet it still manages to deliver a great espionage adventure.  Bridwell really came through with this two-parter, giving us a fascinating setup, solid if limited character work, exciting twists and turns, and a level of sophistication that really stands in marked contrast to the childish fare that seems to populate the pages of the Superman books.

You can see Bridwell struggling with his limited space to a degree, but the way he’s structured the two separate episodes helps to mitigate these restrictions.  For example, our perspective shifts a bit with this issue, and characters who didn’t get too much focus in the previous story get to carry most of the action in this one.  Unfortunately, Timber Wolf and Karate Kid still get rather short shrift, falling between the cracks a bit, but I suppose that type of thing is bound to happen in a team book with a big cast, especially when page real-estate is at such a premium.  The real stars of the issue are Element Lad and Saturn Girl, and we join the latter at the beginning of the story right where we left her, deep in the belly of the beast, having infiltrated the science labs of the tyrannical President Peralla.  The previous issue’s mild cliffhanger ending is continued as the scientist’s assistant declares that she knows the young Legionnaire.  Fortunately, she doesn’t know her as a Legionnaire!  It seems that this girl, Marli Zhorg (gotta’ love these Legion names) was a schoolmate of Saturn Girl’s but hasn’t kept up with her fellow Saturnian’s exploits since the old days.  Thus, she thinks that Imra is just another scientist looking for a job, happily assuming that her college buddy has no more qualms about working for a dictator than she does.

Yet, though her cover is intact, the psychic heroine faces another obstacle.  She can’t telepathically smuggle the secrets of the ‘Humanoid’ super soldiers out to her teammates in the presence of another mind-reader.  Thinking quickly, she sends a seemingly innocent message ‘in the clear’ to Brainiac 5 that nevertheless appraises him of the situation.  It’s a nice display of her resourcefulness.  Meanwhile, the rest of the team is meeting with Masrin, the rebel leader, under the guise of being fellow operatives from the Dark Circle.  As they try to figure out how to fight the seemingly unstoppable Humanoids, Brainy discovers a trace of their substance on Karate Kid’s hand and rushes to conduct an analysis.

Just then, the loyalist forces attack, and a desperate battle ensues, a battle that will be hopeless unless the young Coluan can solve the mystery.  In a fun and fitting little sequence, Brainy solves the puzzle in the time it takes Element Lad to complain about his tardiness.  It’s a nice little character moment, demonstrating Brainiac 5’s competence, coolness, and also indicating the touch of arrogance that comes from knowing you’re the smartest being in the room.

With the secret in his possession, Element Lad begins a herculean labor, single-handedly dispatching the Humanoids by converting their bodies into various elements, all while making the rebels believe it is their new weapons carrying the day in order to maintain their cover.  The sequence is nicely illustrated by Mortimer, and the Legionnaire displays a creative use of his powers as he destroys the creatures.

The effort leaves him so drained that Timberwolf has to carry him when the rebels advance, but even so, he keeps up his attack.  Soon they are storming the capitol itself, and Saturn Girl sends them inside information, handily dispatching her former friend when she realizes what the young heroine is up to.  Brainy uses his force field belt to penetrate the city’s defenses and smash their controls, allowing the rebels to sweep in and providing him with a nice action sequence in the bargain.

Masrin is more concerned with securing the treasury than with the capture of Peralla, and he pulls a Scrooge McDuck (minus the charm and whimsy) as he examines the wealth of the planet.  Here we see the culmination of the solid character work that Bridwell manages to weave into this fast moving story, as the rebel leader’s vices are displayed in several subtle ways amidst the action.  We see it when he shouts cornball lines during the battle that make the heroes roll their eyes, as well as in his casual disregard for his men in the previous story.  His vices prove his undoing, in classic fashion, as his greed provides the opening the Legionnaire’s need to take care of him.  The team convinces Masrin to hold back most of the treasure and only offer a small portion to his troops.  When he does so, Element Lad uses the last of his energy to transmute the gold and jewels into simple lead and stone.  The rebels turn on their disgraced leader, and a better man takes his place.

The team, their mission successfully completed, is extracted, and the tale ends with Element Lad waking up in the infirmary after his heroic efforts, being congratulated by the others.  His valiant, unyielding perseverance throughout the issue was really quite impressive, and it’s pleasant to see the fellow get his due, especially because he’s a character that I don’t know well.  I like seeing new (to me) characters come out strong, and I always enjoy seeing underdogs (and Element Lad rather seems like one to me) make good.  He really does carry the issue, though, and his endurance in the face of his increasing exhaustion is a great heroic note for the character, even if it’s all we have time to learn about him.

So, there you have it, an excellent Legion adventure, full of fun, intrigue, and energy,  with personality and character packed into every rare spare moment.  I didn’t even mention the romance subplot where the rebel officer’s girlfriend was revealed to be in love with someone else.  That type of extraneous element could easily just feel tacked on and unnecessary, but it is indicative of Bridwell’s apparent desire to see that nothing is left hanging.  Instead of being a distraction, it is handled with a light enough touch to add just a little extra flavor to the tale, occupying no more than a single panel and fitting in organically.  Once again, we see the power of visual storytelling, as a single word balloon and a meaningful glance tell us everything we need to know about the way things stand.

The story isn’t perfect.  It’s just too short to be entirely successful.  The setup for the yarn remains impressive, though it doesn’t get as much exploration as we might like.  The final resolution, disposing of both Perala and Masrin, as well as the general threats to the world, as quickly as it does is a tad unsatisfying.  Nonetheless, the dramatic irony of Masrin’s greed-triggered fall helps to ameliorate this feeling.  On the whole, if the only complaint you can level against a story is that you wish there were more of it, you’re doing pretty well.  I’ll give it a solid 4 Minutemen, like it’s previous iteration.  I am really enjoying these Legion tales, and I’m looking forward to the next one!  They really help make these Action Comics days more enjoyable.

 

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Aquaman #52

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“The Traders’ Trap”
Writer: Steve Skeates
Penciler: Jim Aparo
Inker: Jim Aparo
Letterer: Jim Aparo
Editor: Dick Giordano

“Never Underestimate a Deadman”
Writer: Neal Adams
Penciler: Neal Adams
Inker: Neal Adams
Editor: Dick Giordano

Well, back to Aquaman’s aquatic adventures, and happy I am for the return!  I really love this run, as I’ve remarked before, and though this isn’t the best one of the bunch, it’s still pretty darn good.  This issue is graced with another beautiful Nick Cardy cover, one that embraces the visual daring and creativity of the art within.  Once again, the SAG team deliver an innovative story that is breaking away from the standard formulas, along with really lovely and unusual art.  Imaginations continue to run wild, and the flurry of creative concepts keeps flying as the team further fleshes out this strange world.  What’s more, this story provides a really surprising and rather challenging moral dilemma for its protagonist.  In short, this book continues to encapsulate the best things about the Bronze Age.

Another beautiful, trippy Aparo splash page

Before we rejoin our hero and his silent girl friday, the SAG team tosses out another concept to populate this bizarre world, a new and interestingly designed race of aliens, quite ugly but also fairly unique.  They have an advanced ship that looks a bit like a fugitive from Star Trek, and they are apparently on the hunt for slaves!  They approach the blue colony sphere…thing…from the last issue and spot the Sea King and his companion fighting off a horde of the natives.  The giant-headed aliens are impressed with the scrappy pair’s prowess, so they decide to capture them.

Trapped in a force field, the Marine Marvel and the girl are brought aboard the alien ship and imprisoned in glass tubes with the rest of the day’s ‘catch.’  Aquaman deduces that the strange beings are telepathic and have highly developed brains, what with their huge melon-heads and all.  It seems telepathy is a common feature in the life forms of this bizarre land, a nice little bit of internal consistency that doesn’t get remarked upon but which makes the setting feel more fleshed-out and believable.

Then we get a moment that I really enjoyed, one of those ‘Aquaman-is-awesome’ scenes that this series does so well.  While the glass prisons are enough to hold most life forms, the Sea King is not so easily cowed.  Held in his cell by powerful mental force, Arthur proves once again how much raw willpower he can muster as, inch by agonizing inch, he forces his arm to move until he shatters the cylinder and escapes.  Then he proceeds to wipe the floor with the big-brained bozos, casually remarking that though they may be smart, they aren’t too much in a fight.  It’s a really great sequence, and demonstrates how well the SAG team handle the character.

I LOVE this panel with Aquaman cleaning three of the aliens’ clocks at once!

The Marine Marvel smashes a door control to cut off reinforcements and makes his way to the bridge, still desperate to follow the telepathic ‘pull’ that had drawn him to that blue colony in the first place in the hopes that it would lead him to Mera.  Some experimentation allows him to discern the workings of the controls, and the inclusion of that scene helps to illustrate the attention being given to the telling of these tales.  It makes sense that an alien ship could not be instantly piloted by a stranger, so seeing Aquaman actually pressing the wrong buttons as he’s trying to figure it out is a nice nod to logical consistency and their efforts to create a believable universe.  As Aristotle said, impossibilities (like men breathing under water and traveling to other worlds) can be accepted, as long as the are believably possible impossibilities.

Well, once he arrives back at the colony, we encounter the most interesting moment in the story.  Our hero realizes that the girl is still trapped, and he faces the choice of what to do with her.  He knows he is going to be charging into battle against overwhelming odds as he pursues his quest, and he also knows that the colonists are likely to kill the girl on sight because she was the one who fired on them.  Yet, if he leaves her behind, she is liable to become a slave…or worse!  It’s a compelling and puzzling moral dilemma with no easy answer, and Aquaman himself doesn’t instantly know what to do.  He wants to do what is best for the girl, yet what that might be isn’t easy to discern.  His decision is made quickly, but at least we are shown that he sweats over it.  He chooses to leave the girl behind as he continues to search for a way home.

Now, I’m far from convinced that this was the right choice, and it is actually rather troubling to me that Aquaman abandons her.  While I rather think that Skeates intends it to be thus, it seems that, at the least, Arthur should have woken her up and asked her what SHE wanted.  Of course, given her beliefs, she might not have ‘spoken’ with him, even if he had done so.  It is truly a difficult situation, as he could not take her home, her life wouldn’t be worth a plug nickel in the new colony, and our hero knows nothing else about this weird world.  As he remarks, at least she is safe, for the moment.  Nonetheless, it is vexing, and the fact that this simple four-color adventure book had me puzzling over a moral conundrum is a testament to its quality and to its uniqueness in the current crop of comics.

Well, to turn back to our tale, the Sea King attempts to fight his way into the colony, but he is felled by a…*gasp* head blow!  Yep, poor Arthur gets a second spot on the Head-Blow Headcount wall.  I’m afraid it won’t be his last, either.  I will say this for the noggin knock, though, at least these alien inhabitants of this land might actually have the strength to knock our hero out with one shot, unlike the average humans who tend to do so.  Either way, his captors decide to carry him to the “Extermination Chamber”!  Dun dun, DUNNN!

What a great place for a scene shift.  We check in briefly with Mera and Vulko, who are monitoring Black Manta as he circles Atlantis.  Suddenly, the Manta-ship disgorges two divers, but what are they up to?  Well, we won’t find out this issue, as our scene shifts again, picking back up with our hero on his way to his dreadfully named destination.  He makes swift work of his three guards in a nice, dynamic sequence, and he realizes that he’s reached the source of the strange ‘pull’…but there is nothing there!

Just then, Mera snaps and cries out that she needs her husband (calling him “Aquaman” instead of Arthur, which always bothers me as it seems quite unnatural), and in response, the startled Sea King suddenly finds himself growing…and growing…finally appearing in front of a very surprised Sea Queen!  What is going on?  Well, we’ll actually get our answers in the Deadman backup!

It’s a surprising and intriguing ending, though I really dislike Mera’s panicked outcry.  The modern portrayal of Mera has its problems (for one, she’s now trained as a warrior and assassin and quite blood-thirsty…just like every other character Geoff Johns reimagines), but at least she’s a fiery, independent woman.  I like my Mera with more spirit, more moxy.  She should be no-one’s damsel in distress, especially with all the power she is packing.  Still, like I said with the last issue, I do enjoy the idea that both husband and wife are desperate to be reunited.  It’s sweet.  This outburst pushes things too far, though.

The more interesting element is, of course, the controversial (to me, at least), choice that our hero makes this issue.  It is handled briefly, and the action moves right along, yet it is a really compelling moment that tells us about the character.  What do y’all think of his choice, readers?  What should Aquaman have done with the girl?  Feel free to weigh in through the comments.

Once again, the story suffers a bit from brevity, but it still manages to present us with a complete adventure, while also keeping us on the hook by raising as many questions as it answers.  Throughout Aquaman comes off as pretty awesome, powerful, capable, indomitable (other than that one head-blow…), and driven, yet still concerned about the girl who has fallen in with him, despite his own considerable problems.  I think the issue itself may not be quite as strong as the last one in all respects, but the episode with the choice provides enough interest and depth to push it up to the next level in my estimations.  Thus, I award it a very respectable 4.5 Minutemen.

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“Never Underestimate a Deadman”

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This Deadman backup provides a fun and interesting, if a bit uneven, conclusion to our main adventure, and it is followed by an Aquaman epilogue that I will cover in this section.  Neal Adams is in fine form, so the art is beautiful, but unfortunately, he is also handling the writing chores, and his prose tends to be a tad purple.  He also makes some rather odd choices with his captions, as when the boxes constantly urge the hero to hurry.  Still, it’s a fun yarn.

It opens with Deadman and the strange, dimension hopping Tatsinda arriving back on Earth after a stomach churning journey.  The Deceased Detective commits something of a faux pas by telling his now cat-shaped companion that he liked her better in the other world.  They encounter the Ocean Master moping about his betrayal of the man who he has come to realize is actually his brother, Aquaman.  In a really nice bit of characterization, there is an element of pride even in Orm’s remorse, a certain epic grandeur that reminds one of Milton’s Satan in a funny costume.  It is not just that he betrayed his brother, it is also that he failed to save him, and the failure itself, a failure to enact his will, is, perhaps, what galls him most.  It’s actually a wonderful character beat, and I think it captures something about Orm that is true about most great villains.  The central sin, the original sin, and the one that leads to worldly greatness both good and bad, is pride.  It must be the defining characteristic of any would-be world-conquering villain.  Magneto or Lex Luthor would be nothing, despite their individual causes, if they were not backed up by towering pride and will to back it.

I’ll add, at the risk of sidetracking this commentary even further, that Ocean Master’s costume, though here it looks about as good as it ever does, is just a lost cause.  The light purple, almost pink cloak and pants, the whole color scheme…it just doesn’t have the dignity the character needs.  The later redesign that adopted a more serious color scheme looks world’s better.  The modern version is, like almost every single New 52 costume, overdesigned, but it has some good elements.  I like the scales that echo and reflect Aquaman’s armor, but the whole thing just doesn’t quite come together.  I think one more pass would get it right.  Unlike many folks, I actually quite like the helmet.  I think it is distinctive and interesting.  The new version refines it nicely, but I think it has always been a good trademark for the character, making the design pop.

Well, anyway, Deadman grows tired of listening to Orm’s monologuing as the fate of the world hangs in the balance, so telling Tatsinda to hang tight, he grabs the reins of the villain’s body, and uses him to infiltrate the aliens’ ship.  I bet you had forgotten all about these guys, huh?  Well, helpfully, we get a quick recap, and the invaders obliging explain their plan to “Orm,” since he is, after all, their ally.  They are going to flood the world with radiation from all of their emitters, and this will reduce the inhabitants’ intelligence, making them nice, tractable slaves.

The ghostly hero decides to smash their devices, and by jumping from opponent to opponent, he makes some progress, but the aliens shut their brains down to thwart him (That has to be a VERY specific skill.  How often would it come in handy?  I mean, other than going to see a DC movie?).  Unable to use the aliens, Deadman begins to flit across the globe, controlling various animals to smash the devices, but he realizes that to get the central device he needs help, namely, Aquaman!  We discover what has happened to the Aquatic Ace.  Apparently the invaders don’t believe in taking life (an interesting touch), so to fulfill their bargain with Orm, they just shrunk the hero down, and he is now trapped in a microscopic realm on Mera’s ring.  Intense concentration can reverse the effects (sure, why not), so Deadman snags Vulko in order to prompt Mera into such an effort, and this triggers the Sea King’s return.

Yet, is it all for naught?  The Dead Detective realizes that the time limit has expired!  Fortunately, it seems that his efforts were enough, even without destroying the central device…or were they?  Tatsinda tartly informs the smug spirit that it was, in fact, she, who saved the day.  She swam out to the ship and sabotaged the device so that it backfired, stupefying the aliens and forcing their withdrawal.  This is an unexpected and fun twist.  I enjoy Tatsinda’s self-satisfied recounting of her deed, and she also coolly informs our hero that no lady, no matter what her form, cares to be ignored.  It’s a fun little ending, even if it is a bit of an anti-climax.

To add to the fun of this issue, the team also provides us with an accounting of the creation of these interlocked tales, which is, in and of itself, an enjoyable and interesting read.  I’ll reproduce it below so y’all can enjoy it as well.  Essentially, it was a collaborative idea that all the creators contributed towards, the story evolving as it was told.

Anyway, the story itself was a good read, and Deadman’s frantic efforts made for good adventure fare.  In the end, these aliens just didn’t seem like that great of a threat, and that rather lowered the impact of the story.  I think that this is the weakest of the Deadman chapters, and the weakest chapter overall, especially considering the weight and enjoyability of the Aquaman section from this issue.  Still, those are pretty high marks to hit, and the tale deserves an above average 3.5 Minutemen.

The epilogue reunites our two submarine superheroes, and the couple discusses the strangeness of the recent ordeal while also bringing the returned king up to date on Black Manta’s odd behavior.  Mera notes that she is, in a sense, the goddess of this bizarre microscopic world and speculates about other such places.  We know from the Atom that they abound, making the DCU Universe even more packed with life and wonder than is apparent.  It’s a neat concept, and it rather reminds me of the medieval idea that God would waste no space in creation, thus, every element and every area must have its life, its wonder, and its purpose.  It’s a lovely vision of the universe, and, though it raises endless questions, is great for a world of wonders such as this.  The issue ends with Aquaman calling out Manta and promising further adventures to come!

 

Well, I am going to stop this post here, letting these two issues stand alone.  I’ve decided to start treating multi-feature books as multiple entries since their writing takes just as long as do multiple individual issues. That will also hopefully help me keep up a more rapid and consistent pace.  I’m trying to use this blog to discipline myself in writing, in part as training for my dissertation writing which is coming up soon, so hopefully this will aid that objective.  I’m also going to try to rein in my issue commentaries a bit, as they’ve grown more than I had intended, so you may look for more restrained summaries in the future.  As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments, and I hope you will join me next week as we tread further on our journey Into the Bronze Age!

 

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The Head-Blow Headcount:

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Poor, poor Aquaman.  He becomes the second hero to make a return appearance on the wall of shame.  At least this time, it might make some sense.  I have to say, I expected we’d see even more entries, but I suppose we aren’t even a year in yet, are we?  Clearly, this trope is alive and well in the Bronze Age.