[Contains spoilers for Countdown to Final Crisis Volume 3]

There's a point, about five issues in to Countdown to Final Crisis Volume 3, where this book gets pretty good. It's a shame, to be sure, that it took almost thirty issues to get there, but in this volume, finally, Countdown to Final Crisis shows a little heft.

This volume of Countdown starts off with some of the same problems as previous. The story begins with a gratuitous Firestorm cameo that's completely out of the blue and hardly explained, making it hard to care about the character; Mary Marvel continues to flit angrily from location to location in a storyline grown far beyond repetitive. There's also almost an entire issue dedicated to Superman-Prime torturing Mxyzptlk, with absolutely no bearing on the rest of the story. The lack of real character connection and motion to the plots plagued Countdown through much of the first two volumes, and in the beginning I feared the same would be true here.

At the same time, it's clear that the writing and art team has a much stronger presence in this book right from the beginning. The issues seem more targeted, following one character through a greater extent of the chapter; Keith Giffen's drafting also comes through stronger, more like 52, with sometimes six- or eight-panels per page. And the lineup of artists involved in this volume is nothing short of astounding: Jamal Igle, Jesus Saiz, Pete Woods, Scott Kolins, Ron Lim -- even JLA's Howard Porter provides art for an issue. There's a different tone here, such to suggest that Countdown has changed.

Maybe it's the three pages of the Pied Piper, bereft of the Trickster, contemplating his own impeding death -- and the way in which his situation gets increasingly dire as he heads out into the desert. Maybe it's the surprisingly moving meeting between the Earth-51 Batman and Jason Todd (the meeting that one imagines Bruce and Jason might've had the first time around, had the latter not been trying to kill the former), which leads into a couple issues where Jason is, maybe for the first time, an actually likable character. Maybe it's the epic, expansive multi-front war between the Monitors, Monarch, Superman-Prime, and the Challengers of the Beyond that ends this volume. Whatever it is, Countdown takes a sudden giant turn in character and content, and the book just keeps rising from there.

One difficulty with Countdown is that there's so much inherit mystery, whether necessary or unnecessary, that it's hard to care when you don't really know what's going on. We've seen hints before that Athena is really Granny Goodness, but when it's revealed -- and Holly and Harley Quinn meet the real Amazonian queen Hippolyta -- the story takes a great leap forward. I look forward to the final volume, where perhaps the revelation of more mysteries might reveal the book further.

[Contains full covers, "What Came Before" text pages.]

We'll follow the threads of Countdown now to Countdown: Arena. Come along!

Number 497


Al Wiseman


Al Wiseman was Hank Ketcham's assistant on Dennis the Menace, but where I encountered him was in the comic book versions of Dennis. Wiseman's artwork was excellent, and not only did he do a great job on Dennis and the other characters, but he could really draw architecture. He gave us a view of 1950s suburban America at Dennis' eye-level.

There were a series of special giant comics that came along in the late '50s-early '60s: Dennis the Menace In Mexico, in Hollywood, in Hawaii, etc. Where they were different for me was that Al Wiseman and writer Fred Toole had write-ups in the comics. They were given credit! Wiseman and Toole got their names and photos in the books. Ketcham must've really thought a lot of them to allow that.

There's an Al Wiseman website, but it doesn't look like it's had any activity in a couple of years.

This fun take on Treasure Island from Dennis' point of view is from Dennis the Menace #17, 1956. It was reprinted a couple of times. I think it's an excellent example of Toole and Wiseman's superior work on Dennis.

Number 496


Dr. Gordon and Mr. Eclipso


Don Markstein's Toonopedia site gives a pretty concise history of Eclipso, a super villain who is the dark side of a decent guy.

Holy Robert Louis Stevenson.

Anyway, this particular episode, with the tunnel-digging robot ROGER, was published in House of Secrets #67, July-August 1967. Bob Haney wrote it, and Alex Toth illustrated it. I know for sure because he signed the last panel in a most distinguished way. As usual with Toth, the artwork is probably better than the story, and yet the story is pretty good!

I got these scans from the Internet some years ago, 2003 to be exact, off of some DC fan site. I just can't remember where. If the guy who produced these scans will contact me I'll give him credit.

Number 495


Moon Monster


Bernard Baily, who began his comics career almost before there were comic books, drew this moody-looking monster tale for House of Mystery #97, April 1959. I scanned it from DC Special #11, a DC Giant Comic from 1971.

Baily co-created The Spectre, Hourman, had his own comic book art shop, did some of the most gruesome and horrific horror comics covers of the early '50s, and during the Silver Age did a lot of work in DC's mystery comics. That's not to mention his syndicated comic strip work. The guy was busy!

Baily, who was born in 1916, died at age 79 in 1996.

Can humanity achieve peace by making war? In the eight issues collected in Jack Kirby's O.M.A.C.: One Man Army Corps, Kirby examines a world where soldiers are obsolete, and governments use intelligent machines to fight secret battles against their enemies. Kirby's story seems a classic superhero tale of good versus evil, but on closer inspection we find the good perhaps isn't so good.

The O.M.A.C. series subsists on one resounding contradiction: the futuristic Global Peace Agency, with such strict laws of nonviolence that each member vows never to hurt another human being, creates a super-weapon in the form of a man to fight their battles. Believing, they say, that waging war with a large army would cause them to face large armies in return, they instead employ the O.M.A.C. to fight their battles while looking on from their home base.

The members of the GPA are faceless, purportedly so as to represent all nations without discrimination; at the same time their dispassionate approach to combat brings to mind a cold assassin, and one can't help but view the hoods they wear as akin to those of executioners.

O.M.A.C. himself looks like the war god Ares, but hides within the sniveling, milquetoast (and aptly-named) Buddy Blank. Kirby never quite makes clear why the GPA chooses Blank to become O.M.A.C., but they again show their eerie dispassion in plucking him from his life to "atomically" reorganize him into their weapon.

In a strange parallel, Blank becomes O.M.A.C. to rescue his attractive co-worker, only to learn that she herself is a faux human created as a bomb; Blank indeed becomes much the same. There's an odd scene a few issues in where the GPA introduces the O.M.A.C. to its new volunteer parents, whose purpose is never quite explained (Blank, we presume, had parents of his own). There's a sense that the GPA recognizes they've stolen Blank's identity from him, even if they're not moved enough to release him, and so tries to offer a substitute for love without understanding the inherit impossibility of doing so.

Indeed there's much that was once genuine in "the world to come" -- as Kirby's calls the future in which O.M.A.C. takes place -- that's now been commodified. Blank's original employer Pseudo-People sold faux people for companionship, and later for assassination. The villain Mr. Big, in another story, rents an entire city for a private party, forcing the city residents to remain off the streets all night -- and then he, too, turns the city into a trap for O.M.A.C.

Kibry's future is a world that money can buy anything, and anything that can be bought can be repurposed to kill -- often in the pursuit of more money. Concepts like emotions have become commodities, and even as the story's hero fights his equivalent villains, it seems that neither the Peace Agency nor the villains are immune to the corruptive nature of this society, with O.M.A.C. caught in the middle.

Jack Kirby never finished his O.M.A.C. saga, ending the series rather abruptly, and his former assistant Mark Evanier in his introduction puzzles over, but never offers answers to, the story's meaning. Surely there's something just a little sinister intended in the Global Peace Agency, and an allegory hidden in the GPA having transformed Buddy Blank into the ultimate weapon and then inexplicably promoting him to an extent that no GPA member can give him orders, effectively ceding control of said weapon.

Also telling is the final story in which an increasingly sympathetic villain fights the GPA's Brother Eye satellite in a battle of man versus machine that leaves the reader unsure whom to root for.

Kirby's O.M.A.C. is deceptive -- seemingly the story of a covert intelligence group that fights for peace, it's instead a treatise on the futility of that fight. Kirby presents O.M.A.C. as simultaneously a warrior and a victim, and in doing so reveals the shortfalls of the cause to which O.M.A.C. is drafted.

Constant readers know I'm not much for pre-Crisis storytelling, and indeed there's not much of a constant, driving plot in this O.M.A.C. collection, but the sheer volume of what Jack Kirby's trying to say here makes it worth the read (if not for the sheer number of Countdown to Final Crisis in-jokes I understand better now). Certainly this volume deserves a place on your bookshelf next to your other Jack Kirby omnibuses.

[Contains full covers, introduction by Mark Evanier, sketch pages. See more reviews of O.M.A.C. from Timothy Callahan, Val Jensen, and Paul Smith]

We rejoin the fight now with Countdown to Final Crisis Volume 3, coming up next.

Number 494


The Wolf of Cave Canyon


Dell Comics, like the movies, licensed established characters and then did whatever the hell they wanted with them. It's why in this story Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd are not ventriloquist dummies sitting on Edgar Bergen's knees, but up and walking around like the British movie, Dead of Night, and its countless imitators.

Dell also had a habit of using the same motifs, crossing over standard themes. "The Wolf of Cave Canyon," could have featured Porky Pig and nephew Cicero, or Andy Panda and Charlie Chicken, or any number of other characters. It's probably because the same writers wrote much of the material for many comics.

For all that, Charlie McCarthy #9, from 1952, is pretty entertaining. It's made better by the artwork of Harvey Eisenberg, and as clichéd as the Western setting and plot are, I still like it. So sue me. Sometimes we old-timers, jaded by reading thousands of comics with every possible theme, plot and setting, forget what it was like to be seven or eight years old, wearing a cowboy hat and boots, with our six-shooters holstered on our hips, reading a story set in the Wild West of someone's imagination.

Another adventure of Charlie McCarthy is featured in Magic Carpet Burn here.