Number 580


Let loose the Wheel of war!


My dad, Big Pappy, said to my mother, "I'm going to the corner for some cigarettes. Want anything?" Mom shook her head no and went back to feeding my baby brother. I piped up, "Bring me a comic book!"

In the summer of 1952 I was five-years-old, too young to read but old enough to love comic books. I loved having Big Pappy read them to me. He said he'd look for a comic book, and sure enough he came home with one. Big Pap usually bought me Little Lulu or Donald Duck, but this time he brought home Blackhawk with the great Reed Crandall cover of the War Wheel.

Big Pappy told me once he liked to read Blackhawk when he was in the Army Air Corps, because he was a flier. He wasn't a fighter pilot or military flier, but he had a civilian pilot's license. He never flew after the war, and never renewed his license when it lapsed. He always regretted it. Maybe in his daydreams Big Pappy saw himself as a member of the Blackhawk team.

I was awestruck by Blackhawk and the big War Wheel. My original copy of Blackhawk #56, September 1952, didn't survive, but I never forgot it; I jumped at it when I saw it at a Comicon in the early '80s. I was happy to see that the artwork on the lead story of my well-remembered comic was by Reed Crandall.

Wheel yourself into Pappy's memories: of his dad, Big Pappy (the Blackhawk who never was), and the comics fan Pappy came to be.











While Blackhawk #56 was the first War Wheel story, the Wheel was too great and diabolical an invention to be disposed of in one story. It came back several times, including the Mark Evanier/Dan Spiegle run of Blackhawk during the '80s. This is #252, which owes something to the cover of #56.



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Number 579


I pity the poor immigrant...


It's a shame that this 56-year-old story should seem so timely and modern. I'm sorry we're not past tribalism. Old prejudices and xenophobia die hard. Or never die, as the case may be.

The story is written by Stan Lee and drawn by John Romita, originally published in Menace #3, May 1953.





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With The Sinestro Corps War and Final Crisis very swiftly behind them, both Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps begin gearing up for Blackest Night. Green Lantern tackles the Red Lanterns, while Green Lantern Corps: Sins of the Star Sapphire focuses on the "don't call them Pink" Lanterns. Of the two titles this go-around, I found Green Lantern Corps to be the more effective; writer Peter Tomasi struggles sometimes in his dialogue and interaction between the Lanterns, but wraps it up in a plot that, like his last volume, I found imminently gripping.

Tomasi's big accomplishment in this collection is to make me fear for the character's lives. The Star Sapphire story has less really to do with the Sapphires than with the Lanterns' search for the baby-stealing Sinestro Corps member Kryb. That Kryb kills the Lanterns and kidnaps their babies is creepy enough, but Tomasi introduces Kryb's mind-control power that, at one point, forces four Lanterns to hold down a pregnant fifth Lantern as Kryb prepares to slice her open. As in the previous volume, Ring Quest, Tomasi combines well superheroics and science-fiction horror, and there's no lack of adrenaline as the Lanterns fight Kryb for their lives and the lives of their children.

As Geoff Johns does in Green Lantern, Tomasi uses the emotional spectrum of the new Star Sapphire corps, "love," as the underlying theme of the story. The married Lanterns fight to protect each other and their children, Lanterns Kyle Rayner and Soranik Natu consider a relationship, and Guy Gardner reunites with long-time love Ice. Somewhat predictably, the Guardians outlaw love between the Corpsmen just as these storylines reach their climax, but Tomasi surprised me in the end with the unexpected fallout of the Guardian's decision.

Even as the plot of Sins of the Star Sapphire held my interest, I found that Tomasi still struggled getting in to the story, especially in his dialogue between Kyle Rayner and Guy Gardner. Guy, as we know, is a "guy's guy," and Tomasi seems to try to write "guy dialogue" here, but it comes out rather flat and unreal -- as in Ring Quest, the character's repeat one another ("Helluva first night, buddy," Guy says. "Helluva first night," Kyle repeats, in two panels we could have done without). Similarly the attraction between Rayner and Natu is meant to drive the end of the story, but as they've rarely interacted all that much so far, it seemed more something "told" to the reader than something we actually felt.

There's only one more Green Lantern Corps collection (the controversial Emerald Eclipse hardcover) before Blackest Night, and my hope is that Tomasi will turn his attention away from the Lanterns he's spotlighted so far. Rayner and Gardner headline the series, we know, and we've seen Natu, Arisia, and Sodam Yat, but early favorites Isamot Kol and Vath Sarn, the Rann/Thanagar odd couple, are nowhere to be found, nor have we ever learned much more about Natu's supposed partner Iolande. Here's hoping Tomasi gets a chance to feature them before the crossover takes hold.

[Contains full covers]

In all, Tomasi's Green Lantern Corps promises to be a worthy companion to Geoff Johns' Green Lantern, even as the book still works to find its footing. I'll be curious to read Tomasi's Outsiders not too long from now and see how that holds up.


Number 578


Joe Shuster's ghost


After writing a review of Craig Yoe's Secret Identity, The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-creator, Joe Shuster I did a little research. Since Shuster did the illustrations for the Nights of Horror booklets that caused such a stir in 1954, I looked at some other work he did that year. Or should I say, didn't do. I have a couple of strips signed by Joe Shuster for Charlton Comics. I scanned these stories from 1954, "Secrets Of the Box" from Strange Stories of Suspense #22 and "Quest of the Beyond" from This Magazine Is Haunted #20. They're inked by Ray Osrin, but although the top signature says Joe Shuster, it appears to me that Shuster hired a ghost to do the pencils. None of the artwork in these strips looks anything like the Joe Shuster artwork for Nights of Horror, or for other work I associate with him, early Superman or even 1948's Funnyman. It doesn't make much sense for him to do unsigned artwork for Nights of Horror and make it look like the Superman creator Joe Shuster, and then sign artwork for Charlton that obviously wasn't by him. But that's what looks like happened.

I also posted an unsigned strip in Pappy's #331 called "Mental Wizard" from Charlton's The Thing #16, which is obviously by the same artist. Check out the bearded character, who looks like Smirnov in "The Secret In the Box."

Maybe Craig Yoe can figure it all out. As he showed in Secret Identity, he's good at this sort of detective work!

Stay for one more comment after you read the second story.












Do you think that last panel is goofy? That's not a human heart, but a Valentine heart. Since it's supposed to be a human heart my thought is that being 1954, with loud criticism of horror comics at an ear-splitting level, somebody in charge at Charlton said, "Better soft pedal that last panel. Put in something that is supposed to be a human heart but not so gory." I don't know that's what happened, but like Shuster's ghost, I can't figure out it out otherwise.