Retro Replay: Green Lantern # 123

When I was a kid, the character Green Lantern fascinated me.  Did Hal Jordan have the gnarliest power bestowed upon an ordinary human, or what?  Okay, so maybe Peter Parker, Jean Grey and Barry Allen trump Hal, but there was something extra cool about sliding on a ring and being able to project your innermost thoughts in green light form.  Considering how many plastic toy rings (i.e. junk) you could get out of a bubblegum machine back then, we kids of the Seventies flocked toward Green Lantern in our superhero playtime.  Arguments were always abound over who was Spiderman and who was G.L.  I usually opted out of those senseless scrums, pulling out my buzzing Han Solo laser pistol and insisting upon crossover character play.  "Ahh, geez, Raymond, you're always  Han!" the other kids would bark.  As I nick from Harrison Ford in departure from my folks following every single visit, hey, it's me!

I came late in the game when I started reading Green Lantern.   Even though a mere buck could snag you a few comics at one time, I did have my mandatory selections (drop down to my Heavy Metal  post for further elaboration) and by the time Green Lantern  # 123 arrived in 1979, the cover price had stepped up to forty cents a pop.  I know, boo effing who, Van Horn, considering today's prices.

I reached a point in life, as everyone does, when I didn't have to rely on my allowance for my entertainment funds.  By the time I started working a part-time job, though, I was still only reading a few titles religiously.  I bought my first car on my own, I paid my car insurance, I needed pizza and Tastycake money for my 10 minute breaks at the grocery store.  Then you had to factor in date money, Friday night movie money and I had became such a connoisseur of music at the time I was blowing an easy third of my part-time earnings on albums and cassettes, much as it had been comic books prior to.

In other words, it took me a hell of a long time to get on board with Green Lantern.  The 1990s were good to me in the fact I was working two jobs, going to college full-time and running track.  My expenses were increased only in the fact I was commuting an hour one-way to the university and doing what I could to slip my folks some extra groceries since they were shacking me up when they didn't have to.  While working in the comic book shop (enjoy my reminiscences in the Big Dumb Lists section), I became affluent with the macro comic world and finally, G.L. made my cut.

I went to a lot of area comic conventions, which were hardly the big ticket item they are now.  Back then, it was a just a mere banquet room in a regional Holiday Inn with local shops selling their overstock and comic geeks playing the superiority game over one another.  I knew a guy who thought you were absolute shit if you weren't reading Legion of Super-Heroes, much less Green Lantern.  You've no doubt witnessed fanboy feuds between Marvel and DC cotillions, and this particular dude was pro-DC with such furor it rivaled supporters of the main two presidential candidates this year.  I was over this dude in a hurry when he snidely told me "Jonah Hex?  Feh.  DC's biggest mistake."  No, that was Bat-Mite.

On the flipside of this exchange, however, I made it a mission to scarf all the cheap back issues I could unearth of Green Lantern  and # 123 was one of my favorites.  Unfortunately, fate intervened when I was broke, still a relative newlywed, and I sacrificed a large portion of my comics.  I sold my entire run with Kyle Rayner and all those wonderful Hal Jordan issues.  It was only recently when I spotted # 123 in a dollar box that I was reunited with the book.  A little tattered, but obviously loved.  I didn't need a grade appraisal other than the staples were there and the spine retains a full edge.

What's great about Green Lantern  # 123 is not only due to an appearance by Sinestro, who was wreaking havoc over Hal Jordan's life (or, being a royal pain in the ass, if you prefer) in numerous issues at this point.  It's not even due to a Superman cameo.  Prior to this issue, "Mission of No Return!" Hal Jordan and Oliver Queen were teamed up under the Green Lantern/Green Arrow  re-brand.  As boldly decried upon Gil Kane's in-your-face cover, Hal and Oliver were going their separate ways with Green Lantern "Back at last in solo star-spanning action!"

The truly cool part to this issue, written by Denny O'Neil and drawn by Joe Staton, is seeing a far less smartass version of Guy Gardner, who is trapped in the Phantom Zone (the same one from Superman's world) in this issue.  Guy is used as a pawn by General Zod and his motley band of imprisoned cutthroats from the galaxy.  Hal takes it upon himself to engineer a rescue, postponing his marriage to Kari and refusing help from his soon-to-be-former partner, Oliver Queen (this story opens the rift between them).  He won't even take a hand from Superman himself, who appears merely to open the portal of the Phantom Zone for Hal.  There's a good reason Supes doesn't get to join in the fun.

Considering the way DC remolded Guy Gardner into a short-lived, cocky superstar in the Nineties, it's hilarious seeing him far humbler and still in trad Lantern tights circa 1979.  Hal is armed with a lead box containing a block of anti-Kryptonite (ta-daaaa!), which helps keep General Zod at-bay even when turning the ring of an unconscious Guy Gardner against Hal.  Do the physics in your head why Hal's secret weapon works inside a dimension constituted by a bipolar molecular density; hint hint, the story is destined for the anti-universe, Qward.

These initial shenanigans against Zod (Terence Stamp would've been heartbroken) are a mere warm-up for a long go-round with Sinestro, lying at wait and striking at Hal with his negating yellow ring projections.  With Gardner's life hanging in the balance, Hal Jordan reverses his bodily atoms to adjust to Qward's inside-out nature.  He takes a lump from Sinestro (in this period, unwilling to take many shots in return) and then, following traditional comic protocol, he comes back to defeat his nemesis.  Hal reduces planetoids to space debris and creates a giant fan with his ring to spray back and blind Sinestro before clocking him cold.  Good times.

Guy Gardner is effectively in a coma by issue's end, no doubt pondering in obtuseness how he'd look in a blue bomber jacket, pirate boots and mushroom cap haircut.

Footnote, I had a blast showing my son this issue, particularly the advertisements for the network Saturday morning programming from my childhood:  Superfriends, Plastic Man, The Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner Show, Fat Albert, Jason of Star Command and Tarzan/Batman.  He and I ate Boo Berry cereal while watching the Superfriends  on DVD thereafter, manipulated from the way I used to do the same as a kid.  Now that's  good times.

Retro Replay: Vampirella Vol. 2 # 1 (Dynamite Entertainment)

Halloween's just around the corner (Halloween ComicFest 2016 is October 29th, mark your calendars), which means it's time to troll the horror comics on top of kicking out the fright jams on the tube.

 As they have done with Red Sonja, Dynamite Entertainment continues to hit the reset button on their other big moneymaker franchise, Vampirella, by hauling in new creative teams to start over from scratch.  Kate Leth's current Hollywood-steampunk inception of the legendary vampiress has its supporters, particularly a new generation of readers who've balked at Vampi (and Sonja's, for that matter) gratuitous skin trade.  For me, though, Dynamite had a hell of a good thing going with Gail Simone on Red Sonja  and in Vampirella's case, Bram Stoker Award-winning author Nancy A. Collins.  Thongs and swinging cleavage being secondary to the bigger attraction:  tremendous writing from two of the industry's pros.  Collins, who also had terrific comic book runs on Swamp Thing, Sunglasses After Dark, Dhampire:  Stillborn, Predator:  Hell Come A'Walkin' and Jason vs. Leatherface, vowed to bring the buxom nosferatu back to her horror roots on her run from 2014 through '15.  In her brief but bountiful stint on Volume 2 of the series, Collins well made good on that pledge.

Since 1969, ol' Vampi has emerged as a supreme badass from her black-and-white pulp gestation during the Warren Publishing years.  Archie Goodwin's space vamp heroine predates Marvel's masculine vampire assassin Blade, who, with a hard-edged portrayal by Wesley Snipes, thrust his alpha-pointed katana into the hearts of fans (much less bloodsuckers) during the Nineties.  Prior to Blade, Marvel had Morbius, who has tormented Spiderman on occasion and returned now and then to haunt readers on his own.  Let us not forget other fang bang comics over the years such as The Tomb of Dracula, Planet of Vampires, I, Vampire, The House of Mystery, 30 Days of Night, Vampire Tales and the red-hot contemporary series American Vampire.  While we're at it, Vertigo just released a Lost Boys comic this week.

Under Dynamite's wing, Vampirella regained her prestige in the wake of onscreen vampire vogue such as The Vampire Diaries, True Blood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and of course, the adolescent-targeted Twilight series.  Personally, I would flag the Swedish film Let the Right One In  and its equally powerful American remake Let Me In  as not only the finest horror fiction story in more than a decade, but the primer to making a schlock queen like Vampirella a returning overnight sensation.

With revived interest in Near Dark, The Lost Boys, Fright Night, Max Schreck's Nosferatu (my vote as the best vampire flick of all-time) and Christopher Lee's suave Dracula for Hammer Studios, Vampi's resurrection seemed a given.  In the care of Eric Trautmann, Vampirella  turned out to be a bigger success than even Dynamite themselves probably anticipated.  As with Red Sonja, the imprint has spun off numerous Vampirella miniseries, one-shots and crossovers to the point some might argue she's become a pop Drac, an older comics world equivalent to Kristin Stewart.  In the care of Nancy A. Collins, however, the spinoffs, one-shots, annuals and miniseries were either goofy fun (i.e. Feary Tales)  or downright horrifying, as with Prelude to Shadows, a prequel to the first issue of Collins' outstanding debut, the six-part "Our Lady of Shadows." 

Eric Trautmann rebooted Vampirella  properly when taking charge of the franchise for Dynamite in 2010, but the publisher's jump back to the primitive in 2014 rang not to high heaven, but you-know-where.  Nancy A. Collins went straight for the jugular (pun intended) in her Vampi debut in "Our Lady of Shadows" by thrusting the daughter of Lilith unto the feet of Ethan Shroud and his nefarious Cult of Chaos.  

Vampirella is sent by the Vatican to investigate the kidnapping of a little girl, Emma Baxter.  Emma is marked as a sacrifice to be performed on The Feast of Shadows, one of Chaos' most unholy rites.  As it turns out, the girl's father, Bill, happens to be a member of the cult.  Having had plenty of her fill of the dreaded warlock and high priest Shroud in the past, Vampirella begrudgingly accepts the task set before her. 

Things don't go well for Vampi as she's captured and submitted to a brutal ritual, branded as a future vessel for Umbra, the Lady of Shadows, effectively the governess of Chaos' blood-flung realm.  There's nothing at all pop-minded and pretty to Collins' exposition in this story, in particular the gruesome final stanza of issue # 1.  Chaos has eviscerated Mrs. Baxter and left her for dead hanging upside down.  The biting (sorry for another bad pun) closure to this opening act finds Vampirella forced to feed on Baxter and end her suffering.  

Collins immediately turned the Vampirella ethos on its head with this scene, given the fact our scantily-clad heroine has sworn to protect humanity by destroying only her own kind.  In this issue, Vampirella is twice a victim of obligation.  Having to disavow her principles this quickly into the series was, well....cool.  As Vampirella is fated to become the high mother of the global vampire sect during Collins' 13 issue run, to call Volume 2 of Dynamite's hold on the franchise a game-changer is hardly doing it justice.

Retro Replay: Amazing Spiderman Vol. 1 #133

This week's Retro Replay selection comes courtesy of a viewing of Spectacular Spiderman:  The Animated Series  yesterday with my son, particularly the episode featuring the Molten Man.  Not even seconds within the appearance of this show's teened-down Mark Raxton, I detected that twinkle in the boy's eyes, the one all you parents know.  It's that mystified gleam, indicating fascination, an in-the-moment connection that imprints upon a youth's mind, be it short-term or long.  Short-term being slack-jawed wonderment, long-term meaning the cogs are twisting inside that little brain to ask Santa  for an unattainable Molten Man action figure to wage war against his vast army of Spidermen.  Without a doubt, there's an appealing spectacle of a walking inferno if you're a young boy, one especially being raised by an adult comics nerd.

I thought highly of Spectacular Spiderman:  The Animated Series,  though nothing will beat Spiderman  '67 in my eyes, despite the latter using stock footage to greater offense than even the Filmation cartoons of the 1970s and '80s.  Yes, every new Spiderman, Batman, Superman, Supergirl, Flash, X-Men or Captain America motion media presentation is susceptible to reinvention and rule-bending.  Thus I had no qualms with how Spectacular Spiderman  handled Peter Parker's revolving love tryst of Liz Allen, Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane Watson.  It being for a younger generation than mine, it was hipper to the broken social taboos and put Peter into an interracial relationship by changing Liz's heritage.  For that, I give the series a thumbs-up, as I do with the Flash  series for what it's done with Barry's surrogate family--Iris in particular--that tells reinforces the message love and honor is deeper than skin.

In this particular round of events on the show (where Petey and Gwen declare their mutual love and Liz is on her way out romantically with an extra harsh twist fate ringing to the 'ol Parker luck), Liz's full brother, Mark Raxton, appears as an adolescent version of the more memorable adult Raxton from The Amazing Spiderman  comics.  You fellow comics nerds will flag along with me the original Mark Raxton is only Liz's stepbrother, for whom she felt responsible and vanished from the series to take care of him by becoming a nurse.  Her efforts were to no avail, of course, as Raxton breaks from free to find the critical elemental cure-all, which is where we find ourselves in Amazing Spiderman  #133.

The Molten Man first appeared in Amazing Spiderman  #28 and with far less definition than Ross Andru's glorious depiction when #133 came out in 1974.  Molten Man is reputed to be able to lift up to 40 tons and can withstand heat temps through 500 Fahrenheit.  Mark Raxton gained his powers after exposure to a liquid alloy from a meteor discovered by Spencer Smythe, whom veteran Spidey readers will recognize as one of the webhead's eternal pains in the ass.  Instead of turning Raxton into a walking plant ala Stephen King's Creepshow,  Raxton becomes a walking blast furnace.

Spotting the reaction of Nolan while we watched the show, I slithered over to my archives and pulled out Amazing Spiderman  #133 to show off, since that would be a comics nerd dad thing to do.  Kiddo's jaw drooped further in reaction and, doing what any eight-year-old would, he quickly started pawing for it and asked me to pull it out of the bag.  Now, of course, I never was the investor type of comics fan; I'm a reader,  for God's sake.  Yet when I spotted the current value for this issue at mint, I had to raise my brows.  My copy would sit in the VF category (very fine, if you're a comic book rook), but I still had that protective snap trap inside my mind, the same one telling my kid we can only play with my original set of Star Wars  figures on occasion since they're technically antiques.

I'd opened Pandora's box, however, so I had to follow through and let kiddo peek at the contents inside after being asked the question, "Did Molten Man live through this issue?"  See, even kids today know what tricksters comic publishers are.  Still, you had to have been there while I recited the splashed-out sound effects from the panels such as "SPAT!" "SPANG!" "WAK!" and "HISSSS!"

"The Molten Man Break Out!" was written by Gerry Conway, one of Marvel's master writers of the 1970s, and it was the rear half of Molten Man's second story arc in The Amazing Spiderman.   Here, Molten Man is after Daily Bugle  reporter Ned Leeds who is recuperating in the hospital.  Leeds has discovered Mark Raxton's secret and ba da da daaaaaaa,  Spiderman is there to thwart the attack.  Essentially this story is broken into two primary conflicts involving Raxton.  After failing to snuff out Ned Leeds, he turns his attention to acquiring a set of isotopes that can save him from melting into oblivion.

Of course, this is going to pit him against the wall crawler one final time (yeah, right) in a brawl carrying from the subway leading out of Manhattan into Brooklyn (presumably the 7 line if the rail system was the same back then) and into a construction zone, one of comics' tried and true superhero arenas.  You can imagine my son's reaction when he saw Molten Man dissolve in the water after Spiderman diverts him into diving for the isotopes, ringing to the kid chime of "Noooooooooooooo!"

This being a significant person in Liz Allen's life, you can expect the ramifications to Molten Man's death aren't going to bode well in Peter's future life.  In this story, we see a brief sequence where Peter spies upon Liz and MJ talking and Liz recounts her long disappearance.  The ol' Parker luck strikes again, as Petey's stealth mode is foiled by an angry dog which rips his pants.  It's one of the enduring charms of the Spiderman ethos, the omnipresent roll of snake eyes over Peter's tail-spun, er web-spun life, often to comedic effect.

Now this being 1974 when Molten Man was presumed to have bitten it, nobody expected to see Mark Raxton ever again.   However, the comics revival through 1990s and 2000s saw everyone return from the dead, particularly Norman Osborn and of course, Mark Raxton, who has rampaged yet again.  He's most notably been in Marvel's original Civil War  crossover, the Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2  video game and of course, Spectacular Spiderman:  The Animated Series where he was, along with Rhino and others, a pawn of the Green Goblin.

As my son said it best upon sealing the book back up, some bad guys are just too cool to die forever.