Podcast – The Classy Comics Podcast

Catwoman and Batman are engaged but they have to settle some old business and also a double date with Superman and Lois Lane. Affiliate link included. Transcript: Graham: Batman and Catwoman go into the desert on a secret mission and then they go on a double date with Superman and Lois Lane. Find out more as we take a look at Batman Vol 5: Rules of Engagement, straight ahead. [Intro Music] Announcer: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise Idaho, here is your host Adam Graham. Graham: Rules of Engagement is a really interesting Batman book about Tom King. It really doesn’t hinge on the fight scenes or the big action sequences you saw, particularly during the first three volumes of Tom King’s run and, of course, a little bit in The War of Jokes and Riddles. This is much more a character-based book. It collects issues 33 to 37 of Batman along with Batman Annual #2. The first part of the book is issues 33 to 35 and the story, Rules of Engagement, in which Batman and Catwoman are heading to Khadym, a restricted area that no one on earth is supposed to enter, especially superheroes. There’s even agreement with the Justice League but Batman is violating the agreement because, as it eventually turns out, the woman who is responsible for the hundreds of murders that Catwoman has been accused of and is still wanted by law enforcement for is in Khadym but she’s also there with the League of Assassins and Talia Al Ghul. So, with the help of Tiger a friend of Nightwing’s, i.e Dick Grayson, they make their entrance into Khadym. There Tahlia sends out the League of Assassins to weaken Batman before she can come out and finish the job and defeat him. However, Catwoman stands in her way and the two have the best fight in the whole book, which is essentially a book length sword fight. As can be expected with anything Tom King writes, there is a lot of dialogue in there but it is really a great dual and of course there’s an explanation in the book because one thing you might wonder is why Batman is kind of down from the count, not able to do anything while Catwoman has the wind and strength to actually carry on the sword fight but the reason, as stated in the book, as Dick Grayson said, he always would take the brunt of any fight whenever he fights so. Catwoman has not received the level or severity of fight as the brunt of the battle came on Batman. As they dialogue Talia Al Ghul essentially says that she views herself as the best and Batman as the only man who could possibly be her equal. Catwoman scoffs at that and challenges her and tells her how she views Batman. “The man is broken. All the way from the start, cracked. He’s always going to put a vow, a vow he took as a 10-year-old, a vow to war on crime, whatever that is. He’ll always take that vow over anyone”, and she goes on to say, “If you think of yourself as the best and you’re looking for the best, whatever he is Talia, I swear he’s not that. What he is, all he is, he’s just the stupid man I stupidly love”. And it’s a very honest statement but there’s some sweetness in it too and I think this is one reason why the entire Selina Kyle/Bruce Wayne marriage could work and I think, if nothing else, it does explain part of what he finds attractive. Selina doesn’t love him as this mythic figure, this incomparable perfect a legend. I think that so many women in the D.C. Universe have had designs on Batman but really have just kind of have this very mythic view and put him on this huge pedestal and that’s really uncomfortable for anyone but I think Selina’s view is a lot more honest and accepting of who he is and it’s something that he can live up to. The book is also interesting because it does feature more of the Bat family finding out about this engagement,

Superboy and Robin team up to train and then travel to an alternate universe, and then they get their own lair. Affiliate link included Transcript: Graham: The Super Sons travel to another dimension and get a brand spanking new headquarters. Find out all about it as we take a look at Super Sons: Vol 2: Planet of the Capes, straight ahead. [Intro Music] Announcer: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise Idaho, here is your host Adam Graham. Graham: The Super Sons, originally, they came up with a sort of imaginary stories idea back in the Bronze Age of comics where Superman and Batman had each had sons that fought crime together and did buddy things but generally as adult grown up sons but in the D.C. Rebirth world Batman and Superman have actual juvenile sons and so the Super Sons series follows their adventures together. The second volume collects issues 6 through 10 of the series. First up is the four-part Planet of the Capes story. The Kents are slowly easing Jon into using his powers and developing his life as Superboy and his mom is checking to see if he has his cell phone and they’re giving him a ten o’clock curfew and Jon objects to it. “Come on, it’s Friday. Damian’s dad lets him stay out all night”, and Clark says, “Damian’s dad dresses like a bat and gets hit in the head 28 times every night, so maybe not the best argument” and Jon replies, “Ok fair point, dad”. I just love that. It’s just a really funny bit and it sets the course for what’s mostly, pretty light-hearted adventures. Jon goes out on patrol and he’s joined by Damian for a good part of it, where Damian is being incredibly intense. He has a really, not so encounter, with a jaywalker, where he just gets really, almost dirty-harrish on the guy. Superboy just say, “You know, cross at the cross walk and be safe for your dog”, and much of their patrol is spent doing things like rescuing cats from trees and in a one particular scene, Jon helps Damian change a tire and then the Teen Titans show up for a mission. Damian, of course, being the head of the Teen Titans and Damian has no interest in taking Jon along as Superboy is not a teen and therefore not eligible to join the Teen Titans. And I really do sympathize with Damian on that point but it might be a bit pedantic when the team needs help, which does turn out to be the case because they end up facing several little known super villains; Atom-Master and Chun Yull but it’s Time Commander that confronts them and, in a way, too quickly in the battle uses his powers to age Damian seventy years, which leads to Titans turning to Jon for help and, of course, as Superboy, Jon is more than happy to go and help the Titans and it’s a fun story as the Teen Titans encourage Jon in the course of this and it really seems to build his confidence and he really shows his strength as a secret weapon. Damian is really somewhat limited and it’s, in a way, satisfying to see this character kind of to, because he can be so arrogant, to be kind of put in his place for just a little bit. We know he’s going to get better. In fact, he gets better by the end of the story as the super villains end up melting into goo and it turns out that they were created by a character named Kraklow, who really was just a magician who’s been performing at a lot of different shows and things for years. Just a minor low-key career magician who suddenly turned super villain creating monstrous, other super villains to do is bidding. And the Teen Titans take Kraklow away but Jon and Damian stay behind with, now that the battles over, Damian delivering some putdowns and trying to make sure that Jon doesn’t develop a big ego because there’s only room for one of those on the Super Sons team.

The most forgettable member of the Silence returns in the conclusion of the Sapling saga. Affiliate link included. Transcript: Graham: The doctor encounters a world with all the marks of Time Lord interference and then he and Alice have to have a final confrontation with the scream as the story of the sapling comes to an end as we take a look at Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor The Sapling Volume 3 – Branches, straight ahead. [Intro Music] Announcer: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise Idaho, here is your host Adam Graham. Graham: This volume collects four issues of Titans 11th Doctor Comics issues 9 and 11 through 13 and there are two stories in it. The first is Strange Loops, which finds the Tardis arriving on the planet Zoline, which the last time the Doctor had been on this world, it was pre-industrial. A special mask is required in order to breathe the air. The Doctor is having some strange reactions and so he sets out to find out what’s going on and there is a sense on this world with the massive increase in technology, that there may have been some Time Lord involvement perhaps during the Time War, where they, for some reason, move the development of this planet ahead but that actually turns out to not exactly be the case even though initially we see what appears to be a Time Lord but it’s not actually a Time Lord at all it’s a Time Lord weapon known as the Orphaned Hour. The Orphaned Hour was a weapon that the Time Lords conceived that would automatically, when it’s deployed, roll back the enemy’s technology and development by 30 years. So imagine if you are going to war and you attack the enemy with this and before the battle, they are thrown back to whatever technology they had in the 1980s. It’s that sort of concept. However, those who are near the Orphaned Hour are actually protected from its effect. So, three people found it and they started using it. They sent people went 30 years. They used the Orphaned Hour sent everyone back 30 years but because they were close by the machine they were not affected and they also had all of the technological advances of the previous 30 years which they then introduced and pawned off as their own and by doing so repeatedly, they were credited as the planet’s saviors and their great inventors. It’s a clever concept for both a weapon and for con game but the Orphaned Hour did not want to be used that way and so the Doctor took it away but what the Tardis did with it led to a situation where the Tardis was going to crash and so the Doctor Sapling to take root and if you recall the nature of the sapling, is that it was meant to be planted on a planet and then would overrun all the life on the planet and then grow a new sapling to be sent elsewhere. This is a dangerous situation but it’s in the Tardis. So, it’s not like it’s actually on the surface of the planet. So, it’s a little different. However, The Scream, the villain from Volume 1 of the Sapling, has been following them throughout this time and when the Sapling puts down roots, The Scream re-emerges inside the Tardis to take advantage of this situation and to now have the combined power of the Sapling and the Tardis. Of course, The Scream is part of the species, The Silence, and as such the Doctor doesn’t remember all the details about him since that is the great talent of The Silence is if you look at them you see them but then you turn away and you don’t remember them and this is particularly true of The Scream, which if you’ll recall from Volume 1, The Scream was so forgettable that even other members of The Silence forgot about him. So, anyone who looked on him totally forgot about him immediately thereafter. Now the Doctor in the finale of the series, finds himself in Hungry Thirsty Roots up against...

Supergirl battles a bunch of villains we don’t care about, gets a new status quo, and then goes to Mongolia to have a trilingual adventure. Affiliate link included. Transcript: Graham: Supergirl’s powers surge out of control as she faces the Fatal Five as we look at Supergirl: The Girl of No Tomorrow, straight ahead. [Intro Music] Announcer: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise Idaho, here is your host Adam Graham. Graham: This is the third volume of Supergirl stories under the D.C. Rebirth label and this has some callbacks to the previous volumes. Volume 2 ended on a cliffhanger with her seeming to be shot by Katherine Grant. However, she wasn’t actually shot by Kat Grant. As Volume 3 starts, we found out that Kat was giving a speech elsewhere. The person who shot her and was pretending to be Miss Grant was none other than the sorceress Selena. However, what she did shoot Supergirl with, has caused her powers to rage out of control. Something that has not been uncommon in the D.C. Universe. If you’ll recall our review of Flash Volume 5, negative the Flash also got hit with something, in this case the negative speed force, which caused his powers to rage out of control. So, there’s a lot of that going around in the D.C. Universe. However, the main focus of this story is on the battle between Supergirl and the so called Fatal Five, which is led by the Emerald Empress along with the aforementioned Selena, Indigo, Solomon Grundy and Magog. And at first glance this really does appear to be a bit of a motley crew. They’re trying to stop Supergirl from doing major damage in the future. Why this is something Solomon Grundy would care about? I really don’t know. I guess Grundy can just be relied upon to create menace, you know, doesn’t really care much what the reason is and I think he and Magog, for that matter, kind of serve the same purpose in this. While the Emerald Empress, Indigo and Selena tend to monologue quite a bit in explaining their motives, in having conversations with Kat Grant. Some of it, I think particularly Indigo, comes off as just a bit sanctimonious. Emerald Empress has at least a believable motive for why she’s doing what she’s doing as she believes that Supergirl’s going to cause the death of her father but their methods really make it hard to sympathize much with them. Also as part of their plan. in order to undermine the public’s trust in Supergirl, Indigo manages to have it exposed that the Cyborg Superman who she fought back in volume 1 was actually her father and that she and the D.E.O., the Department of Extra Normal Operations. are keeping him alive in a tank after all the mess that he created. She tries to explain that she’s just showing him the same sort of compassion that people on earth had shown her and I think that’s very true to her character. That’s very true to who Supergirl is but it’s not received well by folks in National City who feel lied to because she didn’t reveal her relationship to the Cyborg Superman and I should say there are some one of two Cyborg Superman’s. This should not be confused with the Cyborg Superman who was Hank Henshaw in a previous episode on Superman. That’s another cyborg Superman. So yeah, D.C. continuity. The story becomes really a pretty big melee with a lot of fighting and action. That’s decent enough maybe a bit repetitive. It doesn’t go on forever but for quite a while. In the course of it, Supergirl is able to have some surgery performed on her which stops her from literally exploding, which is what the massive increase in her powers was going to do at the start of the plot but she still doesn’t have it under control and also Jeremiah and Eliza her adoptive parents get into the act and rea...

The Torch is dead, but he’s an android so how does that work? It’s the best Mad Thinker story ever as Toro and the Torch return. Affiliate link included. Transcript below: Graham: How can an android be dead? Get ready to flame on as we take a look at The Torch by Mike Carey, straight ahead. Announcer: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise Idaho, here is your host Adam Graham. Host: Most people know Johnny Storm of the Fantastic Four as the Human Torch. However, he was not the first character in Marvel Comics to bear that name. Actually, the original Human Torch, presented first on the front cover of Marvel Mystery Comics number 1, was an android. An android named Jim Hammond. During the Golden Age of comics, he fought crime in a wide variety of different Marvel magazines and he also made a brief comeback along with Namor and Captain America in the mid-1950s. The 1970 series, the invaders told of how Namor, Captain America, and the human torch along with other heroes, such as the Union Jack Nazis during World War Two. The torch came out of the Avengers Invaders mini-series which featured the death of the Human Torch. However, as the villain of this story, the Mad Thinker, points out how does an android die? During the Golden Age, the Human Torch had a sidekick known as Toro and this is been fleshed out so his full name is Tom Raymond who also had flame powers and he joined forces with the Torch in his fight against evil. Tom Raymond died but when Bucky Barnes got control of the Cosmic Cube for a while, he undid that. Unfortunately for Toro, his wife had moved on and he has no place in the world as the story opens. Both Toro and the body of the Human Torch are set to be examined by the Mad Thinker who has been hired by Advanced Idea Mechanics (AIM) in order to build a weapon and his idea involves building a weapon involving flame and so he has the Torch’s body stolen and kidnaps Toro but he’s got his own planes and mind. I’ll go ahead and discuss this kind of in segments. The main characters of this, Toro is an old character. He’s got a lot of reason to be sympathetic. He’s kind of lost in this new world and doesn’t really know his place in it with nowhere to go and just nothing to do. You do feel for the guy. At the same time, while his present is very uncertain, what he thought he knew about his past is challenged. He definitely goes on a journey and I think at the start of the story I didn’t much like him but as the story goes on, we really get to know him better and also see the type of the impact he makes on the Torch. The Torch, is part of the experimentation by the Mad Thinker, has many of the emotions and values, sort of, thought centres in his programming neutralized and so he actually starts out when he awakens, being just really a machine and he has to really rediscover what it was that made him seem so human-like as the Human Torch. And as the book goes on, really the relationship between Toro and the Torch becomes a lot more interesting. I also have to say I love the Mad Thinker in this. He is just a superb villain. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this well written. He’s devious, he’s got plans within plans and he even though he’s at first in the early part of the book, he’s hired by Advanced Ideas Mechanics and later on he is hired by a group of Nazis, who are running an underground city where the third rock continues to thrive, dominated by android citizens in New Berlin but the Mad Thinker really has his own agenda and there’s an intelligence, a cunning and a ruthlessness about him that makes him formidable as a villain. I think he’s almost written as practically Dr Octopus standards though not quite that over the top in the ego department but really he is just incredibly well written.

Barry Allen and Wally West continue their groundbreaking adventures as they travel through time and battle epic villains like Captain Boomerang for the first time and a team up with the Green Lantern. Affiliate link included. Transcript: Graham: The Flash is tied to a giant boomerang, twice and Kid Flash travels back to pre-historic times, twice. We’ll talk about it, straight ahead in The Flash: The Silver Age Volume 2. Announcer: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise Idaho, here is your host Adam Graham. Graham: As I discussed in a previous episode after many of the great superhero franchises of the Golden Age flamed out in the late 40s and early 50s, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman remain the really only consistent games in town when it came to superheroes. However, that changed when D.C. introduced Barry Allen as the Flash in Showcase number 4. The Flash was successful and with the Scarlet Speedster’s success, many more superheroes would be added to the roster of the D.C. Universe. To understand what made the Flash successful, it’s important to understand what the Flash didn’t have. There wasn’t great characterization or much characterization at all. That would be something really that Marvel would bring to superheroes with the emergence of the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man later on in the 1960s. What the Flash brought was mind-blowing imagination, when it came to the use of the Flash’s super speed as well as the rogues he fought. In fact, the colorful rogues of the Flash, Captain Cold, Mirror Master, Weather Wizard and the Prankster, remain popular to this day and they were really cranked out in the early years of the Flash’s comeback. The Flash: The Silver Age Volume 2, comes after the Flash’s initial three trial appearances and his first thirteen issues have introduced so much but there’s even more that gets introduced in this volume and we’re going to discuss it. This particular volume collects issues 117 to 132. I won’t try and cover everything in this book. It’s a 400-page book plus, unlike say a modern comic where you have plots that take place over multiple issues, these are all self-contained or in many cases, they are two stories in a single issue so I won’t try and cover everything. I will say that these are pretty lengthy issues when you take a look at them. Generally you’re looking at about 23 to 25 pages, which is a good length for the early Silver Age books. They get a lot shorter during the Bronze Age. The first big milestone comes in issue 117 of the Flash, the first issue collected in this book and it introduces Captain Boomerang. The story begins when a corporate honcho has the idea that his company could make a really big trend out of selling boomerangs, as yo-yos had recently been a big deal and they need to hire someone who is experienced throwing the boomerang. And so our villain is hired and uses the name Captain Boomerang. That’s part of the plan and instead of taking this cushy corporate job, it’ll be like being the Marlboro Man. With plenty money coming his way, he instead turns to a life of crime using incredibly clever boomerangs in order to commit his crimes. Flash actually thinks he’s spotted Captain Boomerang at the scene of a crime but Captain Boomerang convinces him that he’s innocent and that it would do harm to his elderly parents, who aren’t his parents but two actors playing them and gets the Flash to go away but realizes he has to get rid of the Flash and how is he going to do that? He’s going to tie him to a rocket-powered boomerang. Now when I asked my wife about this, she pointed out shouldn’t a boomerang return back to where it was thrown and that’s a good question. However, this time the Flash to a boomerang solution is...

Come back to the late 1960s as the JLA/JSA battle strange black spheres and the sinister Dr. T.O. Morrow. Affiliate link included. Transcript: Host: Get ready for universe spanning crisis as we take a look at Crisis on Multiple Earths Volume Two, straight ahead. [Into Music] Announcer: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise, Idaho, here is your host Adam Graham. Host: During the Silver Age of D.C. Comics, as we discussed in another episode, a multiverse was established to exist with, particularly in the beginning, there being Earth-1 which was the home of the ongoing main D.C. Universe characters and then there was Earth-2 a parallel Earth with many similarities and a very similar history but with Golden Age heroes including Golden Age versions of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman who fought in World War two and contained the D.C.’s Golden Age characters including the Justice Society of America. As part of this multiverse those universes crossed over time and time again. It wasn’t actually an annual tradition. For more than twenty years, there were annual crossovers between these two universes as adventures would begin on one earth and ultimately to adventures on the other or onto an earth unrelated to either of the two. We’re going to take a look at some crossovers from late in the Silver Age. These are from 1967 to 1970 and this was at a transitory time for the Justice League of America where this book has the last two crossovers written by Gardner Fox and the first two written by Dennis O’Neil and the last story that was penciled by Mike Sekowsky and the first three that were penciled by Dick Dillon, who became the go to Justice League penciler for many years. The story’s start out with Justice League 55 in 56 and the final two stories are from Justice League of America number 82 and 83. So, with that said we’ll go ahead and get started with the first two-parter and all of these are two-part stories, so four of them, The Crisis That Struck Earth-2 and The Negative Crisis That Struck Earth-1 and the only thing I’m really going to complain about art wise in the entire book is the image for Robin’s uniform. This is the first Justice League crossover to feature the Earth-2 Robin who is now grown to adult and has taken on an adult costume. However, that costume is just really awful. It combines the Batman and the Robin costumes in a way that just really clashes. He’s got, from the Batman suit, the trunks, the boot, the utility belt and the grey bodysuit, as well as, the blue gloves but added to that, he’s got the yellow cape and a very high collar. So, it’s a ridiculous looking long cape and his emblem is a red crest with a yellow R and the Batman symbol in the middle of it. It doesn’t look good on the cover. It looks a little bit better on the interior where actually the crest is different. It doesn’t have the red circle in there, which makes the thing look a little less busy but I think the R is not very good. A lot of times during that Silver Age, they would imagine Robin as an adult continuing to fight crime and they would imagine costumes that just really didn’t fit an adult hero. It would either just be like Batman costume but with the number two on it to indicate that he is the second Batman rather than the first original Batman. Why this should matter to criminals? I don’t know but I digress. I think the costume in this book is probably one of the worst but again that’s the only complaint I have about the art in this book. Everything else is fine Sekowski and Dylan really know their stuff. Alright, so now the plot. This begins with Black Energy orbs striking for average ordinary people and turning them into supervillains who have to be stopped by the J.S.A. However, when the J.S.A.

Batgirl solves a mystery at the local swimming pool and then reveals a dark secret. Affiliate link included. Transcript: Graham: Barbara Gordon investigates ghost in a local swimming pool and then has to face some ghosts from her past. Join us as we take a look Batgirl Volume 3: Summer of Lies, straight ahead. [Into Music] Announcer: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise Idaho, here is your host Adam Graham. Graham: I have to admit, prior to this volume, I was about on the verge of giving up on Batgirl and somewhat bummed that Batgirl and the Birds of Prey was being cancelled because to me that was the better book. First two volumes have been kind of directionless and have not really taken good advantage of the character but they intrigued me enough that I gave this one more try. So, Volume 3 of Batgirl is called Summer of Lies and it collects six issues. It features issues twelve through seventeen. The book starts off with issue twelve, which has Batgirl apparently going ghost hunting in Troubled Waters where some people are claiming to have seen a ghost at the local Y swimming pool and Barbara has to find out the truth behind what’s going on. I really like this story with Batgirl taking on this investigation. It’s a nice little mystery. It’s a one-off story and it does show the character’s intelligence, which I think has been missing from some of the more recent stories in the Batgirl time frame. Here you see her using intelligence, wit and courage to solve the case. So, I enjoyed this one a lot. The second one is The Truth About Bats and Dogs and this story finds Batgirl rescuing a little girl who’s in trouble and she is looking for a famous dog that has gone missing and at the same time Catwoman is searching for one of her cats who has also gone missing and so the obvious result, after a little brief scuffle, is that it’s time for a team up. Overall, I thought the story was good humored, it was fun, it was sweet, it pokes some gentle fun at some of our social media culture and the idea that both this missing cat and missing dog had tens of thousands of followers on this social media network. One thing I do like about Burnside, which is Batgirl’s hometown in the comics at this point, is that it does poke some fun at some of the more over the top sides of our urban hipster culture. So, I thought that was a really nice touch. Then we have the heart of the book, which is the four issue story, Summer of Lies and essentially this involves a case from her early days which was also some of her earliest time knowing Dick Grayson coming back to haunt her and she has to figure out what’s going on now and she has to reveal what happened then and the plot of the story is that Barbara has just moved to Gotham from Chicago with her dad, who is really over protective and nervous about letting her go around Gotham City. She gets a job at a Olive Garden knockoff where a fellow waitress befriends her and offers her a job as her assistant and only later does she find out that this is under false pretenses and something is going on and it’s an interesting tale because she also has already got the Batgirl identity and she meets Robin with Dick Grayson in a robin costume, which is not something typically we see because Dick Grayson has been Nightwing for so long but here you get to see them interact and how they first met as teenagers as well as perhaps a chance to explore rekindling their relationship in the current comics though, I mean, I’ve been following Nightwing, so at this point Barbara Gordon is one of many entrants in the Dick Grayson sweepstakes. I like this one because it explores an area of their past that I find interesting. I think it can be tricky when you have comic stories that explore the past of characters when those are kind of overdone ...

Captain Marvel gets a new haircut and takes command of a team of Candian Superheroes…IN SPACE! Transcript: Graham: Captain Marvel gets a haircut and a new look and also takes command of a space station. We’ll talk about it ahead as we take a look at Captain Marvel: The Rise of Alpha Flight. Announcer: Welcome to the Classic Comics podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise Idaho here is your host Adam Graham. Graham: After a critically acclaimed, if not always commercially successful, run on Captain Marvel, Kelly Deconnick left the book and the series was taken over by Tara Butters who wrote the Agent Carter series. So, we’ll take a look at what she did in this book Captain Marvel: The Rise of Alpha Flight which covers issues one through five of the relaunch Captain Marvel series. Captain Marvel is Carol Danvers who began her career as Miss Marvel back in the 1970s. We reviewed Essential Miss Marvel Volume 1 talking about that series while she was a lot of identities became Miss Marvel again and then in 2012, she became Captain Marvel deciding that it had apparently been long enough since the death of Marvell for her to go ahead and claim that banner and she’s been Captain Marvel ever since 2012. However, it’s been a bit of a rough road. She has dad a total of 5 different series. She had 2 series by Kelly Deconnick and then this series and then this was followed by The Mighty Captain Marvel, which was followed by another Captain Marvel series, though continuing on with numbering as if they were starting from scratch and she is due this summer and might actually be released by the time this episode is out, to have her own mini-series The Life of Captain Marvel, which is a relaunch and definitive origin story ahead of the Captain Marvel movie due out next year. Alright, well that out of the way, let’s take a look at this book The Rise of Alpha Flight. Well Carol has gotten a job as commanding a space station which is the galaxy’s first line of defense and she leaves her erstwhile love interest Rhodey aka War Machine behind so that she can go up into space and actually this is the second straight volume that started her doing that. The second Kelly Deconnick volume had her leaving so that she could explore the universe in an Avenger starship and in many ways Deconnick was giving her much the same role as Captain Kirk. Here she is taking on command of a space station and it can be compared to Babylon 5 or it can be call compared to Deep Space Nine, if you want to stay strictly Trek-based. She points to or new haircut, which is short as opposed to the traditional Carol Danvers style which tends to be on the long side and she tends to be skilled at putting it up if necessary but here they opted for shorter hair, which amounts to most over in new look and as far as that goes, it looks fine. It’s a haircut that many women realistically wear and I can kind of see why she would go with it. So, she arrives on the space station, which is staffed by the Canadian Superhero Team Alpha Flight. On the space station she runs into her biggest challenge which is her first officer Lieutenant Commander Abigail Brand, who is doubting her fitness and whether she’s up for the job, particularly with the heavy diplomacy but thankfully for Captain Marvel, instead they encounter a ghostship that happens to have the Hala star on it, the symbol that she wears on her chest and she starts having visions of the original Marvell of the Kree. Well, overall I felt the best character in this book was Abigail Brand. There were at least a couple different sides to her personality and she tended to be the most interesting and unpredictable character in the book with a lot of twists. Some people said her general style towards Carol is passive aggressive.

DC Superheroes crossover with Looney Tunes so get ready for Bugs Bunny meets the Legion of Superheroes, Lobo takes on the Road Runner, and get ready for the newest noir classic, Batman v. Elmer Fudd. Affiliate link included. Transcript: Graham: Be very, very quiet. We’re reviewing comic crossovers. Join us as we take a look at D.C. meets Looney Tunes straight ahead. [Intro Music] Announcer: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise Idaho here is your host Adam Graham. Graham: The idea of the D.C. meets Looney Tune series was pretty simple. Essentially, you would have a 30-page story that was told more in a typical D.C. comics style and then after that you’d have about an 8-page story that was much more Looney Tunes and cartoony. So, the trade paperback of D.C. meets Looney Tunes contains all 6 issues and so we start out. The first issue is Legion of Super-Heroes/Bugs Bunny Special #1. This story really does seem like it is probably not set with the modern-day Legion of Superheroes but rather the counterpart from the 1980s. The plot is that Supergirl is dying and so they try to summon Clark Kent from Smallville to come and help. Now the reason I say this looks kind of like a Bronze Age issue is because Supergirl’s wearing her outfit. The outfit very much looks like something from the 1970s and instead of Clark Kent though, they get bugs bunny, who happens to have some carrots that give him temporary superpowers and I’ll be honest that this story is probably the weakest in the collection. It shows less thought and really doesn’t do a whole lot, particularly with Bugs Bunny. There are some funny bits but it’s not that funny and so oftentimes the humor in this first issue seems to be a bit one note mainly in allegiance of superheroes are angsty and there’s angstiness going around which again I think would probably fit more with a Bronze Age characterization. The art is nice but this one was pretty mediocre and not only that, but for the Looney Tunes comic they just repeated the D.C. Comics on a story in a more Looney Tune-ish fashion. Again, not a whole lot of imagination went into this. Next up is Martian Manhunter and Marvin the Martian #1 and in this story, Marvin is actually from another dimension and travels to the D.C. Universe to destroy the earth. The art I like in this. They’ve made some small changes to his costume, made it a little bit more detailed than you see in the Looney Tunes cartoon. It’s a nice look. The story itself is OK. It’s better than the Bugs Bunny one but the essential point of this is that despite not being understood by people of earth, nevertheless the Martian Manhunter defends earth and there’s very little humor in this story and so I don’t think it has enough points to fill up its pages but I did like the second, The Looney Tunes story which was amusing. Essentially imagines Marvin discovering that he and the Martian Manhunter exist in the same world and wondering why don’t I have all these superpowers. It’s a cute story, not great, but I enjoyed it so this one was OK but nothing special. The next one, and in this book it’s interesting that the story seemed to almost be arranged in order of quality. Next up we have Wonder Woman/Tasmanian Devil and this story actually does show some thought and manages to put Taz within the world of Amazonian myth and that at one time Taz met Wonder Woman but she tricked him and so he’s a little sore at her and then Wonder Woman comes to him and says that she really needs his help to save her people from Circe. Now why Taz said yes? I don’t know but I do like the story and the art is good. They do modify Taz just a bit so that he looks more like a real Tasmanian Devil. The little short Looney Tuneseque story, is a cute story where Wonder Woman retells Taz a ...

I revisit the first graphic novel I read, “The Untold Legend of the Batman” as well as Len Wein’s other later Batman work including Batman meets Grizzly Adams (sort of). Affiliate link included. Transcript below: Graham: We take a look at the first graphic novel I ever read and a few more of Len Wein’s Batman tales as we conclude our look at Tales of the Batman: Len Wein. Straight ahead. [Into Music] Announcer: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise Idaho, here is your host Adam Graham. Graham: Concurrently with Wein’s run on Batman the last three months, there was a mini-series released called Untold Legends of the Batman. It was actually only the second mini-series that D.C. Comics had created. The first was 1979’s mini-series, World of Krypton. This Untold Legends of the Batman, kind of serve to really cement what Batman’s origin story had been because there has been a lot of conflicting tales, imaginary tales. There was information in various books and this becomes kind of a definitive Batman origin story which takes existing information on what had happened with Batman and also goes ahead and adds in a new information, new little spins and touches on Batman’s origin story and right there, Untold Legends of the Batman became the definitive Batman origin story for about six years until Crisis on Infinite Earths but for a while it was and it’s actually a pretty good story. It was the first graphic novel that I ever picked up. I got it from a thrift store, must have done it was because the edition I read was from 1982 and it was published in a pocket paperback format in black and white. When I read it, I liked it but I was a bit confused because the only Batman I had ever experienced was the 1960’s Batman T.V. series with Adam West. So, this seemed kind of rough edged. Reading it as an adult, it’s not really that problematic. Batman is rough-edged, but there’s a reason for that that’s revealed as the story goes on. Of course, Batman’s origin story isn’t told directly. It’s actually told through a framing device that there had been some strange attacks on Batman. His father’s Batman costume, his father was the first Batman in this origin story, wearing it as a costume for a party, it’s destroyed and there are other strange goings on leading up to the destruction of the Bat-mobile at the end of Issue 2 and the story follows Batman as he tries to find who’s behind this and keeps running into moments where people are recalling parts of his origin, of his relationship with Robin and Commissioner Gordon and I think that this is actually a really solid origin story. It’s a shame that it was wiped from continuity but it’s still a good read for fans who want to have a handle on the way Batman was pre-crisis or just want to read a really good Batman story. This holds up and is as good if not better than when I remember reading it is a kid. As a recent writer on Batman, Wein wrote a backup story for Detective Comics #500, which much like the Action Comics #1000 that we reviewed a few weeks ago, was a baby anniversary issue with a lot of stories. Wein got a two-page story where he decided to tell the classic, it was a dark and stormy night tale in the narration with the pictures telling a Batman story. It was one of those things OK. It’s not the greatest thing in the world but I guess it’s an interesting little story. Then we have a guest story from Action Comics [Detective Comics] #514, Haven, in which Batman is chasing the gangster Maxie Zeus, who thinks he’s a greek god through some tough terrain on winter road and both Zeus and the Bat-mobile crash and Batman is rescued by a bearded mountain man who is friends with the animals. Reading the story, this character Haven,

A look at Len Wein’s Bat-murderer saga in the early 1970s. Then in the later 1970s, Wein became the writer of Batman and introduced a love interest in the form of Selina Kyle. Affiliate link included. Transcript below: Graham: Can Batman survive the danger posed by such foes as Ra’s al Ghul and Signalman? We’ll tell you all about it next as we take a look at Tales of the Batman: Len Wein straight ahead. [Into Music] Announcer: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise Idaho, here is your host Adam Graham. Graham: Len Wein was one of those really great comic book readers tied into a lot of things was a co-creator of Swamp Thing and also of Wolverine as well as helping to revamp the X-Men and was rightly inducted into the comic book Hall of Fame in 2008, passed away in 2017. Today we’re taking a look at Tales of the Batman: Len Wein, which collects his work on the Cape Crusader. These range from one off appearance in Detective Comics to his own run as writer of Batman and actually the very first graphic novel I ever read. So, let’s go ahead and take a look. The book starts out with a story from Detective Comics 408 and it opens with Batman seemingly in a haunted house where nothing is quite as it appears. This is just a really, really good story and the art by Neal Adams is just fabulous. It does a great job setting the scene, the atmosphere, giving it all this sort of Twilight Zone feel to it. So, both writing and art are really good here and then there is an appearance in World’s Finest, the Batman/Superman team up book and me it’s another one with Neal Adams artwork and it’s a story in which Clark Kent is apparently trying to hire thugs to kill Superman and Batman is trying to figure out what’s going on. Now this one is a fairly good story. It does end with a pretty nice super villain battle with Dr Light. It’s not my favorite World’s Finest story but I enjoyed it pretty well. Alright, so the next thing that he ends up writing is the Bat-Murderer saga, which was a series in Detective Comics #444 to #448 and it’s mostly has the art by Jim Aparo and the plot in this involves Batman picking up a gun and appearing to shoot Talia al Ghul and the police declare the him wanted for murder because he won’t turn himself in and he’s on the run from the police trying to clear his name. He breaks into jail to question Ra’s al Ghul about what happened to Talia and then he appears to shoot Ra’s and so it’s a story where he is on the run from the police and then The Creeper gets into the action to try and hunt down Batman. The story is interesting. It’s essential the first 4 or half issue stories with the other half of the comic book and Detective Comics taken up by the backup feature but in issue 448, we get a full-fledged resolution at a circus. The story’s not perfect and he does also fight a villain, Silversmith, in the middle of this. This is a really good serialized story for the era. It manages to build action, to build consequences, to increase the pressure as The Creeper rejoins the hunt and you get a reveal. It’s not completely surprising. It just does tend to make a lot of sense. Next stop is another guest writing appearance in Detective Comics #466. In this one, Batman is dealing with the return of an obscure villain named Signalman. Signalman is one of those villains that just shows the strength of the Batman Rogues Gallery and how you can really go back through history to see some characters who are not considered all that successful and make them interesting. In this case Signalman really does give Batman a run for his money and actually comes close to killing Batman, which you wouldn’t really expect from a villain like signal man but he tried to kill him in the most Signalman way poss...

The Titans try to figure out who’s the traitor on the team. Affiliate link included. Transcript: Graham: It’s time for the Titans to root out the traitor. Find out all about it as we take a look at Titans Volume 3: A Judas Among Us. Announcer: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast where we search for the best Comics in the universe. From Boise, Idaho here is your host, Adam Graham. Graham: The Titans have been around for 50 years in either the form of the Teen Titans, the original teen from the 1960s, with sidekicks for Batman, the Flash and Aquaman to the present day. There have been a lot of iterations of this. One of the more popular ones are the Titans, which are the original Teen Titans, people who knew each other since they were kids, now fighting together as adults, young adults. The Titans disappeared in the New 52. In Titans Rebirth, it was revealed that their memories had been stolen and Wally’s return helped them to remember who they were and come together as a team with old Wally West, a big part of the action and what had happened. They went through a lot of difficult times including Lazarus Contract, which I covered very early in the series. In which they were given cause to doubt Dick Grayson over his agreeing to, with Deathstroke, to something called the Lazarus Contract. However, what exactly that entailed, I’m still not clear on and more importantly, the heart of the team, Wally West had his own heart injured as a teen when the teams traveled back in time to stop Deathstroke. This was Damian Wayne’s decision at work. So, you’ve got the first 2 volumes of Titan stories and you also have the crossover event, the Lazarus Contract in the rearview mirror. I really do like the first issue of this book. It’s a good starting place, even though it’s the first issue of volume 3. Issue 12, if you were reading the issues individually as they came out. It begins with Omen visiting Psimon in prison to try and get information about H.I.V.E. They are a group that was masquerading as someone who was just helping out metahumans by getting rid of their powers and quirks so they didn’t stop them from living a normal life and they had gotten, actually, some heroes to do it including Mal Duncan, the former guardian, who tried to get his wife to do it as well. She had the identity of Bumblebee. However, in the process she didn’t get her powers taken, she got her entire memory. So, she doesn’t remember Mal and does not remember her baby, which is a major problem they have to resolve. On top of Wally’s heart, Donna Troy has learned that her own background is a lie. She’s picked that up from Wonder Woman and this reflects the fact that Donna Troy’s identity has been something that writers have been messing around with for decades when she was first introduced on the Teen Titans as a Wonder Girl, which was based off of Bob Haney’s misunderstanding that there actually was a Wonder Girl from seeing covers of Wonder Woman comics when this was actually just Wonder Woman as a girl and not a separate character that he could use but it’s become more serious and it becomes more serious still. The book still has a lot of fun and I think the art is great. Some of the resolutions, the question about old Wally West and his heart, really is addressed and it does intersect some plot points. I think the biggest thing is the crossed on the team because Simon in that first issue, states that there is a traitor on the Titans and that plot plays out and adds to the sense of suspicion on the team. With old Wally, it does put him in this very interesting mental state He is at risk of dying when he uses his powers but he still wants to help people and still wants to be part of the team and he actually has a moment with Donna Troy when he kisses her and that creates some problems with Roy Harper, aka Arsenal,

The Doctor goes to Antartic and finds Vikings, Ice Warriors and a ton of continuity. Affiliate link included. Transcript: Graham: The Doctor arrives in Antarctica to find Vikings and a whole mass of old continuity and then faces a greater challenge when he takes Bill shopping. We’ll tell you all about it as we take a look at Dr Who: The Twelfth Doctor – The Wolves of Winter. Straight ahead. Announcer: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast where we search for the best Comics in the universe. From Boise, Idaho here is your host, Adam Graham. Host: We’re now to the point in the Twelfth Doctor comics continuity where he began to travel with his series 10 companion Bill Potts and they continued on to some adventures in the comics rather than going with one-off comic-only companions. This book contains 4 issues and 2 different stories. The first is a 3-issue story the titular Wolves of Winter, where the Doctor arrives right after Vikings land in Antartica fleeing other Vikings and wanting to protect their treasure and pretty soon there are some mysterious goings on and the Doctor and the Vikings bump into the Ice Warriors and the Ice Warriors are on Earth on the trail of the flood. Now this is another continuity point, if you’ve been following Doctor Who, going back to the 10th Doctor era, the second to last television stories for the 10th Doctor. The Waters of Mars had the Doctor facing off against a Martian virus that took possession of human host and sought to wipe out everyone at a Mars colony and in many ways this story is before this because we’re back in the time of the Vikings, a several hundred years before the events in the Waters of Mars. The Antarctic setting really does create a great sense of atmosphere particularly the way the art is laid out in this book and there is a lot going on. There is also another villain from the Doctor’s past. This one from classic Doctor Who, and I won’t reveal it as a big spoiler here, that shows up. I think writer Richard Menic deserves credit for managing to get this to hang together as a story with its own continuity and just really work as a story because there are some Doctor Who stories where they’ll just throw out a bunch of continuity. Ooh Dalek, Ooh I Cybermen, Ooh Ice warriors, aren’t you impressed but this is actually a really good story with some solid twist and some actual surprises. It does use a lot of continuity and the more that you’re into Doctor Who, the more you’re going to appreciate this story but I think it is absolutely a solid, well-told tale. The second story is “The Great Shopping Bill” and in this one, this is after the point in series 10 when it was revealed that Missy was what was being imprisoned in the vault. She had had a sense of death conferred on her for her crimes but the Doctor had decided to rehabilitate her by locking her in this vault and pledging to keep guard on it for as long as it took and not to go off-world, though he does fudge a bit on that during the course of series 10. At any rate, it’s found that the dimensional stabilizer is failing and in order to keep the vault secure for Missy, as well as to keep Missy alive, they have to find a new one and it finally occurs, thanks to Bill’s suggestion to go to the Ubermart, which is a giant intergalactic market with anything you could imagine including dimensional stabilizers. Anyway, in the store Bill finds a lost little girl and tries to get her back to her mother. However, there’s confusion, robots end up chasing after them, particularly when the Doctor reports Bill missing. It’s a sweet, short little story. It’s a fun read, not particularly great but I think enjoyable. Well overall I thought this was actually a pretty decent volume. I don’t think it was great by any means. I think that when Doctor Who comics are truly great,

An old enemy returns and why the Kents left Hamilton County. Affiliate link included. Transcript: There’s something weird going on in Hamilton County when Batman comes to town. Find out more about it as we take a look at Superman Volume 4: Black Dawn. Straight ahead. [Intro Music] Announcer: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise, Idaho here is your host, Adam Graham. D.C. Rebirth began with Clark Kent and family living in Hamilton County. Clark running a farm with Lois getting rehired to the Planet, first impersonating her younger self and then made the actual Lois Lane with the advance of Superman Reborn, where the 2 timelines were merged. She, and now Clark, have jobs in Metropolis and so, eventually, it’s going to require moving there. I think this has always been in the offing. As much as I like the idea of Clark Kent, rural farmer who super commutes as Superman, I think that these things in comics, there tends to be a gravitational pull back towards a certain status quo and one of those big things is Lois Lane and Clark Kent, reporters for The Daily Planet, working and living in Metropolis. So, this was always going to end and I think that the writers of Superman, where most of the Hamilton County stuff occurred, were really aware of that; that this was not going to last forever and so they actually were pretty clever about it. They worked in little hints throughout the Superman issues that showed some of the weirdness going on in Hamilton County but never focused on it too much except for one issue which didn’t seem at the time to really go anywhere but in retrospect, was part of the weirdness going on throughout this. And so, we come to Black Dawn and in many ways Black Dawn is like a finale of a T.V. series. The book contains issues 20 through 26 with the Black Dawn storyline taking up issues 20 through 25 and you remember Superman is being published every two weeks. Currently, it’ll be just monthly when Brian Michael Bendis takes over. So, this is the culmination of a year’s worth of storytelling and their writer Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason as the artist, really, it’s a great run. I highly recommend it, right from the first volume but at any rate the story begins with Batman coming to town to report some problems with John’s powers and some weirdness going on in Hamilton County and Superman, Batman, Robin and his son John, aka Superboy, are doing the general superhero thing of scoping around in the shadows until Lois Lane comes out and shines the light on them and tells them to be like normal people and go indoors to talk and so there is this great picture. This is one of my favorite pictures from the Patrick Gleason art on Superman where you’ve got Batman and Superman sitting at the kitchen table of farmhouse along with Robin and Superboy and you’ve got the rooster clock in the background and it’s just as beautiful for how out of place and awkward Batman looks in this picture. It’s got one of these great lines, where because Batman doesn’t eat his pie, and Superboy asked “Doesn’t your dad like Apple?” and Robin whispers, “Batman doesn’t eat pie.”, and it’s just a beautiful, weird little thing and I just love that. It’s really emblematic of the sort of fun this series has had. Really, it’s just a tremendous picture and it’s one of my favorites in this run so I love that and essentially Batman reveals that there’s weird readings and that John’s powers are being repressed, for some reason, and he’s here to investigate and everybody goes to bed but Batman wanders out on his own and is captured. So, it’s a serious situation and other people disappear and get captured. Lois finds herself alone in the farmhouse and so we get an issue where Lois is dealing with being alone in this really...