There's a general consensus that once writer Dwayne McDuffie had Final Crisis out of the way, the quality of his Justice League of America picked up considerably. Never in McDuffie's run were his stories bad or embarrassing to the characters; in fact, his characterization was always strong even if the story plots -- due to McDuffie himself or the aforementioned pre-Final Crisis editorial fiat -- sometimes lacked real verve.

Whether with Final Crisis behind him or the new inclusion of his former Milestone characters, McDuffie's previous Justice League volume Second Coming showed marked improvement over the two before, and Worlds Collide is his best Justice League yet. We mourn, then, that it also collects McDuffie's final issues of the title.

Indeed, the great strength of McDuffie's Justice League run all along has been the characters. Throughout, I for one have enjoyed the "doomed from the beginning" romance between Hawkgirl and Red Arrow; McDuffie also well spotlighted Vixen and Red Tornado in the last volume. Here, at the end, McDuffie finds character gold in the unlikely pairing of the female Dr. Light and the young Firestorm; Light is over-angry and Firestorm overly-flippant, but they quickly bond as Justice League outsiders. As well, time hasn't lessened McDuffie's touch with the Milestone characters; his Icon remains as noble as his Hardware does enjoyably overconfident.

Left with a handful of Justice League second-stringers in the wake of Final Crisis, McDuffie creates a plucky sub-League that's surprisingly fun to watch. McDuffie pits the team against Starbreaker, a classic and powerful Justice League foe, and convincingly demonstrates how this team -- Zatanna, Green Lantern John Stewart, Firestorm, and Dr. Light -- could reasonably take down Starbreaker on their own. McDuffie gets points for characterization again -- his League comes together solely for the purpose of upholding League values, and the way the four quickly learn to care for one another makes them all the more endearing; there's a "soul" in this story that wasn't there before, and the reader suddenly cares because, it seems, the writer does, too.

Unfortunately, by choice or again by editorial fiat, how McDuffie gets to this clear space isn't entirely pretty. The real victim in this volume is Black Canary, the chairwoman to whom little of the League has shown respect throughout McDuffie's run (part of a storyline, he says, to ultimately build Canary back up). In Worlds Collide, much of Canary's team either resigns or joins a rival League (including Canary's own husband, Green Arrow) such that Canary herself quits.

For those who thrilled to see Canary take charge, branching off of Gail Simone's take on Black Canary in Birds of Prey, to see Canary's League end in flames is a disappointment. After years of writers casting Canary as the victim, chairing the League represented not only a victory for Canary, but for the portrayal of women in comics. But one difficulty with a character gaining their strength is that sometimes writers don't know where else to go, and therefore must break the character down again -- we see this not only with Canary, but even with Oracle in Birds of Prey after Simone's departure. Again, I'm not sure any of this is actually McDuffie's choice -- in one chapter, Canary and Oracle actually discuss whether it's "sexism" that's been the problem with Canary's leadership in the Justice League, and one wonders if this isn't another instance of McDuffie making his own statement on his troubled Justice League run through his characters.

Indeed, it's hard not to hear McDuffie in a a rather startling exchange between Canary and Green Lantern Hal Jordan halfway through the book. As Hal announces his intent to form his own League (in James Robinson's Cry for Justice), he ticks off on his fingers what very little Black Canary's Justice League has accomplished. Indeed it is very little, mostly helping fellow Leaguers rather than saving the world -- as compared to Grant Morrison's JLA, this League's accomplishments are paltry. McDuffie could very well be speaking about how his own writerly hands have been tied; most of what this League has done has been in service to either crossovers or forthcoming miniseries, and the reader imagines they feel McDuffie's frustration in Canary's own.

What came next, of course, was McDuffie's firing from Justice League reportedly for airing his frustrations about the direction of the series. Those frustrations, it seems, mainly involved the interruption of crossovers in the series -- yes, McDuffie dealt with a bunch of Final Crisis, but I recall Grant Morrison has as many crossovers with JLA and seemed to take them more in stride -- Superman showing up in his blue costume, and Wonder Woman's mother joining the League, as two examples. No comic, I'm sure, is easy to write, but I wonder if Justice League is as hard as it seems, or if it just takes a certain kind of writer to write it. James Robinson takes the League next, with a membership that seems geared more toward working with the current changes in the DC Universe rather than being derailed by it -- I'll be curious if Robinson's run, finally, becomes a "lasting" League run, rather than the fits and starts we've seen so far.

[Contains full covers]

One good thing to come out of all of this is the announcement of Milestone Forever, a new miniseries by McDuffie. The return of the Milestone characters in Worlds Collide (and how McDuffie ties it to past Milestone history and to Final Crisis) is one of the best parts of this volume, and I'm eager for more Milestone on the way.

Thanks for reading!

Number 639


Jann and her man can!


This is the second of five jungle girl stories I'll be posting this week.

Jann of the Jungle, yet another jungle princess, was published in Jungle Action, then the title was changed to Jann of the Jungle after the titular (smirk, smirk) heroine. Atlas' other jungle girl, Lorna, was fortunate to be drawn by Werner Roth, and Jann by Jay Scott Pike, both great girl artists. Both series were written by Don Rico, apparently the resident jungle girl scripter.

"The Jackal's Lair" is a fun little story from Jann of the Jungle #10, 1956, about Jann, her man, and a jungle monster. This comic also dispels a myth I've believed for years about Code-approved comics, that female breasts were supposed to be de-emphasized.

Pike left comics to do illustration and did some topnotch pin-up work. Here's a posting I did about Pike in Pappy's #334.

Grab the nearest vine and swing on over to Chuck Wells' Comic Book Catacombs Blog for another Jann story!






TOMORROW: The thrilla that is Camilla!


Number 638


Sheena in harem pants!


This week we're going to do something different...I've got all jungle girl stories lined up for this week. It's cold where I am...the first week of December, a bleak and cold month. Ugh. I need to go someplace warm, someplace where I can see babes in leopard-skin bikinis swinging through treetops and wrestling crocodiles. Unfortunately, for me such traveling to exotic places is done vicariously via the four-color world of jungle comics.

Chuck Wells at Comic Book Catacombs and I are in collusion. He is also showing jungle girls this week. Check them out here.

First up, Sheena, the original Queen of the Jungle. In this story some traders get the drop on Sheena and her idiot boyfriend, and sell them into slavery. You get to see Sheena wearing a harem outfit in this story, which is the main reason I chose it. We all have our fantasies.

It's from Sheena, the Queen of the Jungle #3, Winter 1943.








TOMORROW: Jann of the Jungle!


Number 637


Spacehawk and Dork help the war effort


We've had some fun this week, and we'll end the week in the same way. Spacehawk was Basil Wolverton's creation, who started his run in Target Comics #5 as a strictly off-this-world spaceman who fought Wolverton-style grotesque aliens. As World War II began Wolverton's editors told him to bring Spacehawk to Earth so he could fight our enemies. Wolverton is said to have protested this change, and in retrospect he was right. Spacehawk didn't last long after that.

However, even after the theme of Spacehawk was changed there were still memorable stories in the Spacehawk canon because they're by Basil Wolverton, who never drew an uninteresting comic in his life. He was famous for his funny dialogue and funny names, and for an alien name "Dork" seems great. In 1942 when Basil drew this he was probably thinking of a good, punchy name, not realizing he would be making us laugh almost 70 years later for reasons he couldn't anticipate.

From Target Comics Volume 3 Number 1, March 1942:









Make sure you come back on Sunday for the beginning of a special Jungle Girl week. We're kicking off with a Sheena story, and will follow each day for six days with beautiful jungle babes.
It seems the best of times and the worst of times for the Justice League of America title. In Second Coming, writer Dwayne McDuffie presents a Justice League tale that is interesting and well-steeped in League history, though suffers from a general sense of unimportance. This is fine Justice League, but I dare say Justice League needs to be better than "fine" in order to make a mark.

For the most part, Second Coming serves to rejuvenate two fan-favorite Justice League characters, Red Tornado and Vixen. These are necessary steps, and under different auspices both stories might succeed far better. Focusing on Red Tornado and Vixen, especially the latter, makes this feel less like a Justice League story than a character piece with plenty of guest stars (though McDuffie gives nice moments to both Black Canary and Zatanna, and also Animal Man). Neither Tornado nor Vixen change here, nor do any other Leaguers, such that this story could have taken place just as well in JLA Classified as in the main title.

McDuffie recognizes that Red Tornado, to be sure, has been in this position before -- his body destroyed, the League trying to rebuild him -- and turns the story on Tornado's sense of trying to change his life. The change, Tornado's proposal to his girlfriend, is a good one (I thought they were already married), though it doesn't help the reader escape the same ennui that Tornado feels. McDuffie takes up a good chunk of Tornado's story in this book with the Justice League fighting Amazo -- that is, again. There's nothing notable about this incarnation of Amazo, no gimmick or special circumstances; it's just a hero/villain slugfest with an equally simple, the heroes acknowledge, solution. McDuffie gets the voices of all these characters, especially Tornado and Zatanna, but ultimately this part has little to distinguish itself.

Much like Gail Simone's long Black Canary storyline in Birds of Prey, McDuffie has stripped Vixen of her powers, her League status, everything -- only to restore her in this volume essentially the same as before. Arguably, Vixen gains a healthy dose of respect from the League (as, one imagines, she is meant to gain from the reader), but frankly, I liked Vixen just as much as I did before. McDuffie writes a good Vixen story, don't get me wrong, and a fine one-off tale of an alternate Justice League, but I felt more relief to see Vixen's powers back to normal than I did cheer at her recovery. It's hard to say at this point what original writer Brad Meltzer might have intended for Vixen's haywire powers in the first place, but I hope from here on to see less drama surrounding the character and more of Vixen as a valued member of the League.

At the end of Second Coming, the reader learns that Anansi, source of Vixen and apparently Animal Man's troubles for a white, was essentially "just kidding." The trickster character claims he's been testing Vixen for the purpose of strengthening her for a fight ahead -- that is, Anansi isn't a villain, and all his villainous acts can just be swept under the rug. It's an unfortunate amount of noise to ultimately signify nothing; Anansi makes interesting claims about fabricating the aliens that gave Animal Man his powers, and also about having ties to problems with the Multiverse in Final Crisis, but that he "takes it all back" in the end contributes to the story falling flat.

Of course, one always has to watch when a writer introduces a "storyteller" character into a story, as McDuffie does with the Anansi. It's perhaps too easy to read McDuffie's well-publicized frustrations with writing Justice League in what Anansi says -- for instance, Vixen admonishing Anansi to "put everything back" in its place, and Anansi refusing because it's what "they" want him to do. McDuffie decrying "excessive continuity" through Anansi is worthwhile for a laugh, though the details of his plan to use Vixen to "reassert ... control" (over the direction of the Justice League title, presumably) smacks a bit of desperation.

There's a lot I liked about Justice League of America: Second Coming. McDuffie references an earlier meeting between Animal Man and Vixen, technically out of continuity -- good. McDuffie offers some "guy talk" where Superman is sensitive and Green Lantern is brash in giving Red Arrow advice -- good. And there's a beautifully illustrated scene of Black Lightning having a heart-to-heart with Hawkgirl (not sure if this is Ed Benes or one of the guest writers), marred only by a mix-up of Hawkgirl and Black Canary's backstories. It's a good book, not a waste of time or money (though it contains remarkably few issues for a hardcover), but McDuffie fails to do anything new with the Justice League here. After their long years of history, I'm not sure just teaming up these heroes cuts it any more.

[Contains full covers]

(Blog@Newsarama contributor J. Caleb Mozzocco has an interesting take on Second Coming on his blog Every Day Is Like Wednesday.)

Number 636


Pappy's Fourth Annual Thanksgiving Turkey Awards


Thank you. Thankyouverymuch. I am thankful for all of Pappy's readers.

Today is Thanksgiving Day, time for Pappy's annual Thanksgiving Turkey Awards. It's
the one day a year I get to pick the dumbest story I've found all year and present it to Pappy's readers. It's all my subjective judgment. You don't get to vote.

This year I've chosen "Million-Year Monster," which originally appeared in Forbidden Worlds #14 in 1953. I've scanned it from its appearance in a black-and-white magazine, Shock, volume 1 number 3, from 1969. Here's the cover of Forbidden Worlds by artist Ken Bald, where the story was so highly thought of it got the pole position. Note the red dinosaur with a man's face, note the Shemp Howard hairstyle. Note the atom bomb cloud surrounding the monster and a lone soldier shooting.

Inside note that the Million-Year Monster can speak, but what it mostly says is, "Me want Jill!" Words alone cannot describe this story. You just have to read it. The Grand Comics Database says the artists are Paul Gattuso? (? means they aren't sure) and Dick Beck.

"The Million-Year Monster," our award winner for 2009, earns four turkeys.

Previous award winners are:

2006: "The Flat Man"
2007: "The Day the World Died"
2008: Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen in "The Bride of Jungle Jimmy"





Number 635


O. U. Kidd!


I considered running this strip in September on Talk Like A Pirate Day. It's by Al Hartley; a prime example of his pre-Archie days and his ability to draw busty woman. Hey, talk about your treasure chests...

"Captain O. U. Kidd" is from an Atlas Comics Mad imitation, Wild #1, 1954. We've shown two other Hartley satires from Atlas' sister publication, both of them featuring buxom girls. You can go here, and then you can go here for those tales.

Don't forget to come back tomorrow for the fourth annual Pappy's Thanksgiving Turkey Award for the dumbest story I've found this year.







[Contains spoilers for Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds.]

As should come as no surprise, Geoff Johns and George Perez's Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds is a big book of caped and costumed superhero fun. Johns not only takes the opportunity to bend the classic Legion of Super-Heroes mission alongside twenty-first century social issues, but also amends what many readers will see as poor choices made by DC Comics in the time leading up to Final Crisis. Be warned, however -- even as I'd venture there's something here for everyone, to really understand every detail of this story requires a knowledge of DC Comics' Legion lore that this reader, to be sure, didn't have.

Johns succeeds with the Legion here much in the same way he did with Green Lantern: Rebirth, reviving the classic interpretation while preserving the modern versions. All three Legions get a place -- the newest Legion as stories from Earth-Prime, the Zero Hour Legion shunted to a parallel Earth though remembered through the remaining speedster XS, and the classic Legion as the new continuity. In this, and in some slight of hand involving the Final Night crossover and the modern Superboy and Supergirl's meetings with the Legion, Johns establishes that all the Legion stories you love still did happen, won't be forgotten, and are integral to the current Legion. Most everything included (sorry, John Byrne Superman years) and very little left out.

In the past, Legion has always paralleled themes of racial and global harmony, as teenagers from different "worlds" join to live and work together. Johns' new Legion status quo has xenophobia run rampant on Earth (similar, we could say, to issues facing the United States) while the rest of the universe looks to disassociate itself from Earth because of their xenophobia (much the same, again, to the tarnished reputation of the United States world-wide). Into this comes Johns' Legion, young adults from different backgrounds working together against the push and pull of their own planets; it's a small tweak, but one that revitalizes the relevancy of the Legion much the same as the Green Lantern series has been an allegory for the plight of New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina.

The big news however, at least for me, is that Johns uses Legion of Three Worlds to resurrect Superboy and Kid Flash, both controversially killed since Infinite Crisis. I already knew about the resurrections, but I was quite surprised that Superboy's return related to Starman's actions in Justice Society. Much the same, I knew Kid Flash Bart Allen would be back via Brainiac 5's lightning rods, but not that the original, "forgotten" team up of the three Legions involved rescuing baby Bart and his cousin Jenni from the Reverse Flash. Johns ties together plots from this past year's Superman and Justice Society with nary a thread left hanging -- rare in these days -- and the execution is very, very impressive.

Legion of Three Worlds follows the classic Legion recruiting some Multiversal help to defeat the rampaging Superboy-Prime of Infinite Crisis fame. Prime recruits his own Legion of Super-Villains, allowing Johns to delve into extreme Legion apocrypha and spotlight even more esoteric Legion characters. It's here unfortunately where Legion of Three Worlds shows the difficulties inherit especially in the classic Legion series: there's just so many characters and relationships. That Wildfire has an unrequited love for Dawnstar I get, and also that Lightning Lord is Lightning Lad's brother, but when we get into the White Witch/Black Witch/Mordru situation, I for one was hopelessly confused. One hopes that in Adventure Comics or wherever the Legion may appear next, Johns and subsequent writer Paul Levitz have the space to take things more slowly and let new readers get to know the characters better.

In truth I've kept up better with the post-Zero Hour and Infinite Crisis Legions, who largely take a back seat in this tale. Indeed there are some nice moments, both "cute" -- the inclusion of the every grouchy Gates, that the second Ferro Lad is just called "Ferro" and that we once called Phantom Girl "Apparition" -- and also that Johns cleans up some trailing Legion plotines, like the second Lightning Lad stuck in Element Lad's body. But the two alternate Brainiacs, who get the most screen-time, spend much of it bickering at one another in a rather rudimentary way -- the second Brainiac sits in awe of the adult Legionnaires, while the third Brainiac has only snide comments for anyone over the age of eighteen. It's a very rough distillation of the temperament of the two Legions -- likely all Johns had space for -- but the result feels somewhat simplistic.

Regardless, Legion of Three Worlds deserves a special place alongside George Perez's JLA/Avengers and likely also JLA/Titans, Kingdom Come, and Green Lantern: Rebirth. All of these are books that deftly celebrate DC Comics minutia through echoed words and phrases, recreated postures and poses, and more in-jokes packed into the background than you'll find anywhere other than an issue of Ambush Bug. The book begins in the thirty-first century Superman Museum, and the artifacts here -- Dubbilex, the Tangent Superman, Superboy's original jacket -- are just a taste of what's to come. There's material here for DC readers from the Legion's beginning to just a few years ago; something in this book is sure to delight.

The book is tagged as a Final Crisis crossover, but the cross occurs in one direction only. Final Crisis references Legion of Three Worlds (turns on it, even), but Legion in no way references Final Crisis, and in fact largely contradicts some of the comics that follow in Final Crisis's stead. This should worry the reader not at all. Final Crisis and Legion do eventually match up a couple months down the road, and the offending scene in Legion is easily dismissable. Chalk it up to all the time paradoxes that go on in Legion of Three Worlds; the incongruity is a blunder, but it doesn't overshadow what's otherwise a well-written, well-drawn story that celebrates the DC Comics history it's built on.

[Includes full, variant, and unused covers]

Number 634


Our bud, Pud


These Fleer Dubble Bubble ads are taken from DC and Fawcett Comics of the early 1950s, circa 1951-54. They're drawn by Ray Thompson, an oldtime cartoonist who went into advertising.

Pud, who looks like Tubby Tompkins' first cousin, and his gang, are featured in these Sunday-style strips. They (of course) prominently display the bubble gum product the kids are selling. What I remember about Dubble Bubble was if it wasn't fresh it was a tiny pink brick which could break your teeth. You worked it in your mouth to get it softened sufficiently to chew. The flavor didn't last very long, and was usually gone by the time you could make a bubble.

Pud and his gang hung around places like haunted houses.

They promoted international goodwill by helping a boy who didn't speak their language. And, of course, with Dubble Bubble gum.

Pud was a hero. He single-handedly foiled robberies, just by using gum! Pud's gang could be a little kinky, playing pirates and bondage. Pud saved his sister, tied up by his friends. Heh heh...it's all in fun, isn't it, Pud? No need to get hostile. Have another chaw of tiny pink bricks.



Pud gave out really bad advice. Kids, listen to Pappy, not to Pud: Bears in the wild are not tame. Every year there are campers who get mauled by bears. Do not mess with bears.

Pud and his gang visited the zoo and despite the "Do not feed the animals" signs they give a chimp some gum. Some fun!

The Dubble Bubble kids went to exotic locales, including the frozen north...


...and the land of the headhunters. Hope they got away before the flavor of the Dubble Bubble disappeared and the headheader got interested again in their heads. Where were their damn parents?

They showed up in India, where they met a snake charmer:

Pud and his friends didn't practice safety when playing. Once again kids, listen to Pappy. Do not shoot arrows in the direction of your friends.

Finally, the Pud Posse were able to defy the law of gravity with bubble gum.


The ads were so well known they were the target of satire in Mad #21, drawn by Will Elder.

Thompson also did the campaign for White Cloverine Brand Salve, another advertiser ubiquitous in comics. The history of the Wilson Chemical Company, which produced the salve, is interesting in itself.




It's Thanksgiving Week. Even with travel and get-togethers I'd like you to stop in on Thursday, November 26. I'm not going anywhere. I have Pappy's annual Turkey Award, given to the dumbest Golden Age story I've read this year.