All-Star Comics #1-2

In 1999, the Justice Society of America, as far as the DC Universe was concerned, was a non-entity. Half the members were unceremoniously killed off in the Zero Hour event five years prior. A handful of members—Doctor Fate, the original Flash and Green Lantern—were active, but not very prominent. Considering the JSA originated in World War II and were always closely defined by that era, now 50+ years gone, the general sense seemed to be that the Justice Society’s time was done.

But you can’t keep a good concept down. Or maybe you just need to keep those trademarks active. Or maybe it was because Grant Morrison’s relaunch of the Justice League of America was going gangbusters, and James Robinson’s Starman, with its strong sales, critical praise, and focus on superhero legacies, meant that maybe there was an audience for the original superhero team after all. In any case, the JSA returned to the spotlight in 1999 in a multi-comics event dubbed “The Justice Society Returns!” with the ’99 model of All-Star Comics was meant to reintroduce the JSA to a then-modern audience.

Aliens vs Predator, Aliens/Predator: Deadliest of the Species, Aliens versus Predator versus the Terminator

The original Aliens vs. Predator miniseries came out in 1990. When I undertook my inventory in 2011 I was surprised to find that I did not own this series, as I have very clear memories of reading the issues at my parent’s house. The most likely explanation is that this was a comic my father bought. Pretty much any comic my father bought was read by me, which means I got to read Mike Grell’s run on Green Arrow, Epic Comic’s Alien Legion, all the DC Comic runs of Star Trek: The Next Generation and a host of other stuff slightly less memorable. I mentioned this before that while I collected comics, my father mostly just read them. Every year or two he’d purge his collection; either threw them out or gave them away at garage sales or something. This wasn’t something I cared much about when I was in my teens—after all, if my dad was reading something I cared about, I would’ve taken his comics and put it in my collection. It’s only with the hindsight of adulthood that I realize many of the titles he read would be enjoyed by me now (another piece of evidence to hurl onto the overflowing pile of evidence that, not only am I my father’s son but that I have, incontrovertibly, turned into my father). Thus I can add Aliens vs. Predator to the list of comics I deeply regret not saving from my father’s callous disregard for posterity.

My original intent was to just review Aliens / Predator: The Deadliest of the Species, and then I decided to tack on Aliens vs Predator vs the Terminator because, well, how could I not? But this past Saturday I found myself in a comicbook store (read: all these comicbook reading has made me nostalgic and now I find myself haunting comicbook stores in a futile attempt to reclaim the joys of my youth) and I stumbled upon a complete set of the original Aliens vs Predator mini-series, the comicbook I remember reading 22 years ago. So now I have read three separate mini-series, 21 comics in all, and I feel sufficiently immersed in “Aliens versus Predators” stories that I can write a comprehensive and insightful review of the oeuvre in total.

Alan Moore's Songbook

For almost ten years, I wanted to know what “This Vicious Cabaret” sounded like. The song appeared as the opening chapter to the second part of V for Vendetta, by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. Moore wrote and (as far as I know) composed the score himself. When I first read the lyrics, way back in 1990, I desperately wanted to know how the music went. I spent almost ten years imagining how the song sounded. Every few years I would stumble upon someone who could play piano and I would ask them to play the sheet music; twice this happened, and twice the people I asked couldn’t play the song, commenting that it was written very oddly. (This may also have to do with the fact that the score sheet was for the vocals, not piano, although I didn’t realize that until many years later.) This, of course, only fueled my imagination further, fantasizing about what sort of insanely brilliant arrangement Moore devised that could confound lesser beings so consistently.

In 1999 a fellow Vendetta fan sent me a copy of David J’s V for Vendetta EP. This was just as the Napster revolution was starting, and still a few years before you could just search YouTube for “This Vicious Cabaret” and find it in 3 seconds, so you still had to put some effort into finding music. You couldn’t just e-mail an mp3, and CD burners were not yet ubiquitous. So to have someone who had a copy of J’s then-out-of-print EP, be able to burn it to CD and mail that copy to me was an extremely lucky and generous act. I remember receiving the CD in the mail and hungrily putting the disc into my CD player to listen to the song—really, finally, listen to it—after so many years.

Agent X #1

I quit collecting comics in 2003. It had been nearly 16 years since I started buying comics on a weekly basis, over 800 consecutive weeks. Buying comics was so important to me that if vacations were going to be planned, I needed to make sure that there would be a place for me to get my comics. When I visited prospective colleges, one of the most important questions I asked was “Where’s the nearest comicbook store?” Hell, when my grandfather died in 2000 and I spent a week in Florida for the funeral, I still found time to go to a comicbook store and get my weekly fix.

So why did I stop? Part of was necessity. My first job out of college was for an advertising company in New York City. I was let go in April 2002, and the job I took after that came with a significant cut in salary. In 2002 was spending $30 - $40 dollars a week on comics; that kind of spending was out of the question on my new budget. Also, honestly, I think by that time I was just getting tired of the weekly ritual, of the collector mentality that said “You must buy this!” At some point in the first half of 2003, a week came where I did not by a comicbook, and I have been (mostly) sober for 450 weeks since.

Adventures of Superman 0, 517 - 531, 578, 582 - 583

There’s a scene in Adventures of Superman #583 where Batman, having been killed (again) by The Joker, revives and claws his way out of the grave Superman dug for him. It’s a splash page with two inset panels. The two panels show Batman’s gloved hand breaking out of the surface, in true horror movie fashion. The splash page itself shows a Batman, free from the waist up, continuing to claw his way out. His face is mostly in shadow, and with the pointed “ears” of his cowl, along with the agape mouth, he looks feral, driven by instinct as much as madness. The panel is both awesome and terrifying. At the same time, it took me out of the story completely because it reminded of a very similar scene, one written by the same man who wrote #583, J.M. DeMatteis. That other scene was written 13 years earlier, and was a Spider-Man story. That story, like this one, featured the apparent death of a hero, Spider-Man, who of course wasn’t really dead and who also had to claw his way out from his own grave while the rain pours down. Here are the two images, for comparison’s sake:
 

Adventures of Superman #505 - 516

I’ve been struggling with writing this blog entry, trying to explain why there were some elements about these issues that I liked, some that I think failed, and some that were just kinda “meh”, but it wasn’t coming together at all. After dwelling on it for a couple of days, I think I finally figured out what was missing: chemistry.
 

Adventures of Superman #500 - 504

After “Funeral for a Friend” wrapped up, all the Superman titles suspended publication. After all, Superman was dead so there seemed little point in continuing his titles, right?  It was actually a nice stunt on DC’s part, as it did lend to the illusion that Superman truly was dead. Plus, it gave DC added publicity when it announced, three months after the titles stopped, that Adventures of Superman #500 would be released, and that Superman might not be dead after all.