The Great Disaster!

The Great Disaster is the rather stupendous Showcase volume from DC which attempts to gather together the sundry tales which relate the retro-continuity saga of how the Earth fell victim to a rather surprising atomic war in October of 1986 and how human society dealt with that.

The book is divided into discrete sections. The first titled "Pre-Disaster Warnings" contains stories from the back of Weird War Tales concerning the "Emperor of Weehauken" by Sheldon Mayer and Alfredo Alcala, a man who travels from the future to our present day, and a Superman yarn which lays out the potential future as hinted at in pages of Kamandi the Last Boy on Earth by Jack Kirby.

The next section called "The Day After Doomsday" offers up over a dozen tiny vignettes from the back pages of Weird War Tales, The Unexpected, and The House of Mystery which give glimpses of life after society has crumbled. There's a distinct Twilight Zone tone to these brief yarns by Len Wein, Steve Skeates and others. My favorite is a trilogy of stories about the last man and woman on Earth named "Adam and Gertrude", with delightful artwork by Jack Sparling.

The third section is titled "Tales of the Atomic Knights" and reaches back to the masterfully crafted vintage stories from Strange Adventures by John Broome and Murphy Anderson. To my knowledge, all the Atomic Knight stories are here and that alone is worth the price of admission to this book. You'll believe that a profoundly average man dressed in an atomically-altered Medieval suit of armor can ride a gigantic mutated Dalmation across a surprisingly benign atomic wasteland -- you really will.

The next section titled "The Gods Return" begins with Jack Kirby's Atlas one-shot for the debut of 1st Issue Special and then offers up all twelve issues of Hercules Unbound.  The first six issues by Gerry Conway, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Wally Wood are lush and vibrant, then the series takes a turn as writer David Michelinie and later Cary Bates finish up the saga with artwork by Walt Simonson under sundry inkers, his own to great effect in the last two issue. It is with these stories that the Atomic Knights return to DC lore, though in ways very surprising.

The penultimate section is titled "More Tales of the Post-Apocalyptic World" and offers up a quartet of stories from the back pages of Kamandi the Last Boy on Earth written by Gerry Conway, Paul Levitz, and David Anthony Kraft with artwork by Pablo Marcos and Mike Nasser. These tales feature a young ape named Urgall who teams up with a scheming rat named Otis and comely ape wench called Myra. And that is followed by "The Day After Doomsday" by Robin Snyder and Vic Catan which shows some poor misguided humans with a wild plot to repopulate the Earth. 

The volume closes out with "Alternate Endings" offering a post-Crisis view of the Atomic Knights from the pages of DC Comics Presents when Superman uncovers the "real secret" of the Gardner Grayle. How this one fits into the overall storyline is anyone's guess these days, but it's a snazzy story on its own as written by Dan Mishkin and Gary Cohn and drawn by Alex Saviuk and Frank McLaughlin. 

All in all this is a utterly fabulous book,  a truly sprawling collection of disparate stories by some talented writers and artists from the Silver and Bronze Ages of DC. The story of "The Great Disaster" is not all here, there's more revealed in the pages of Kamandi and OMAC and elsewhere, but the thread is here for those who wish to find out more about one of DC's most clever conceits.

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Black Widow - The Champions!

When the Black Widow broke it off with Daredevil, she said she was intent on not being a sidekick but desiring to establish herself as a single agent for justice. What does she do? She joins a team, or better put, she helps establish a brand, new team based in Los Angeles named "The Champions". Admittedly she ends up being the field leader for this ragtag crimefighting unit, but still and all. 

But what a debut it is. Tony Isabella with artist Don Heck is credited with creating this new team from (let's admit it) cast offs from other vintage series. Save for Ghost Rider, who is most misfit of the bunch, none of the heroes had demonstrated the ability to hold a single title. The aforementioned Widow as fresh from the pages of DD, the Angel and the Iceman were X-Men without a home after the arrival of a batch of X-Men with the likes of Storm, Nightcrawler and Wolverine. Hercules had been guest-starring in Thor but save for a single story in an otherwise all-reprint Ka-Zar comic had neverh ad a solo outing in the Marvel Universe. But in tried-and-true tradition these disparate heroes gather together to battle the force of Olympus when one Pluto's schemes to capture Hercules and the goddess Venus from a couple of shotgun weddings. 

The battle against Olympus rages in the second issue which turned out to be Don Heck's pentulimate effort on the series. 

The sturdy George Tuska checked in with is equally sturdy comic book pages to wrap up what was effectively the Champions origin yarn. Bill Mantlo taps in to script Tony Isabella's plot. 

The Widow gets a little more page time in the fourth issue which features more Tuska art with winning inks by Vince Colletta and a one-off story by Chris Claremont. The Champs battle a madman making super-soldiers from mental patients. 

In his lasting outing Don Heck returns to help Tony Isabella tell a story about an inventor who is suffering from the pain of economic recession and turns to crime and his super-powerful exoskeleton. The Angel gets his inheritance, and this fortune becomes the money which will hopefully make the Champions a reliable super-team in the manner of the Tony Stark funded Avengers. 

Under a crackerjack Jack Kirby cover we get the second part of the Rampage saga and the Black Widow becomes the leader of the brand-new Champions. The art chores are again handled by the Tuska-Colletta team. 

Natasha and Ivan become the center of the next story which has the Champions battle a band of Soviet operatives. The Griffin is a spearhead for this attack when attempts to kidnap the hospitalized Rampage. The Widow meets up with the man who trained her to learn important secrets. This one features an Isabella script drawn by the  Tuska-Colletta crew. 

Rampage is used by the mastermind the Outsider who has a deadly secret related to Ivan. Rampage's anger is used against him. And the Champs encounter the combined might of the Titanium Man, the Crimson Dynamo, the Griffin and a new lovely enemy named Darkforce. Bill Manto becomes the regular writer with this issue joined by a green Bob Hall. 

The battle against the Soviet team continues. Secrets are revealed and enemies uncovered. A new ally named Darkstar might have also appeared to assist the Champions in the future. 

Bob Hall wraps up his tenure on the book which sadly I have to report was hurt by limited storytelling. But we get to the end of this longest Champions story with the Widow in charge of the team, Darkstar a new member of sorts, and the Angel sporting a better-looking costume. The Iceman is having second thoughts about the team. The cover is very deceptive in that this scene doesn't really happen. 

The final issue in this first volume of The Champions Classic brings the team into its finest hour. With the threats at bay the team has a new headquarters and new equipment, though the quality of the latter is called into question. Black Goliath shows up to assist them team against the Stilt-Man. They have a surprisingly hard time against a baddie that Daredevil defeated alone. The big news is that the up-and- coming John Byrne steps in to take on the art chores. If the Champ had looked this good from the get-go they might've caught on with more fans. 

In the second volume things begin to improve for the Black Widow a bit. Hercules is the clear focus for the covers of The Champions. and I guess was considered the powerhouse to make the team succeed. That meant that the Widow while being on the covers was rarely featured. 

In a story by Mantlo and Byrne which turns out to be a sequel to the stunning Silver Surfer #5, the Stranger appears just as the Champions are presented with the threat of a bomb which will ignite and destroy nearly everything. It turns out the Strange is trying to end the threat, but the Champs don't believe him. 

The end up being transported to another dimension to find a talisman which will help end the threat only to learn it was on Earth all along, brought there by Hercules after a battle alongside Thor against the blind despot Kamo-Tharn. After a desperate struggle the threat of the bomb is ended. 

Ivan says goodbye to the Widow to deal with some family matters (or so he says) but soon after he leaves the team is confronted with the truly weird menace of the "man" called "Swarm". The bees get some measure of revenge in this Mantlo-Byrne outing. 

In what turns out to be John Byrne's last issue as penciler of the mag, the bizarre Swarm is routed just in the nick of time. 

The Champions guest-star in 1976's Iron Man Annual in a story by Bill Mantlo and the rock-steady George Tuska. Tuska is my all-time favorite Iron Man artist and he is in fine form on this one. The Champs are recruited to help Shellhead battle MODOK and the secret cabal called A.I.M.

George Tuska is on hand again in Avengers #163 as Hercules, Black Widow and Iceman are lured to NYC by Iron Man and attacked by him. It all has to do with a threat to the Beast and a rarely seen nemesis of Hercules called Typhon. Jim Shooter wrote this one which is a big old battle issue in the classic form. 

Then we slip over to Super-Villain Team-Up where Doc Doom has conquered the world by means of a secret gas which has made all of humanity slave to his will. The Champions are just one team among many who are now Doom's willing thralls. Oddly it's up to Magneto to save the day. 

That battle carries over into the penultimate issue of The Champions by Mantlo and artist Bob Hall. Hall has improved significantly since his last stint on the team and turns in a solid effort here as the heroes fight among themselves to save the world from Doctor Doom. For the record the "Surprise Guest-Star" is the Hulk. 

Bill Mantlo turns once again to George Tuska for the final issue of The Champions. John Byrne supplies the inks on this one to create a very nice-looking finale. The Champions find themselves fighting not only the Sentinels but the evil mutants they appear to be chasing when they crash into the Champions' headquarters. We are promised that the story will continue in a fashion in the pages of The Avengers. 

Turns out that's not quite right as the final moments of the Champions are recorded in two issues of Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man. Bill Mantlo's story is drawn by Sal Buscema and inker Dave Hunt and we pick up moments after the end of the last issue of the Champs. The team splits with the Widow heading back to NYC with Hercules. There had been a suggestion in the last few issues of the run that they might be a flicker of romance between the two. It's left to the Angel to clean up the mess with a building that proves a public danger and a best friend in the Iceman who falls under the spell of Stuart Clarke the severely injured man who had fought the Champs as Rampage. Things are put right by the end of the two issues and the "Heroes of the Common Man" are no more. 

The Champions was an important stop in the career of the Black Widow. She'd left her partnership with Daredevil to find strength in herself and she instead found a team which was in sore need of practical field leadership. She proved fully capable of leading a team of men, even one including Hercules. The Champions failed as a comic book and as a team in the Marvel Universe, but it's difficult to lay much of that failure at the feet of the Widow. 

More on the Widow and some of her amazing team-ups next time. 

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Dystopian Countdown #3 B - Hercules Unbound!

Hercules is the perfect superhero, a demi-god on Earth trapped between his two heritages and generally striving to improve the lot of those regular folks he lives among. Usually he struggles with his own limitations, anger and such, but holds himself to a standard beyond that of mortal men. Such a character is ideal to plunk down not in the usual mythic setting, or even the modern day, but in the future, particularly a future which erupted from the "Great Disaster".

Part of Gerry Conway's "Conway Corner" productions (though the nickname might've been dropped by this time) Hercules Unbound was drawn by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez with Wally Wood inks. Later Walt Simonson stepped in, so this is a consistently good-looking comic. Hercules here comes to future Earth and immediately sets out to help people against an array of threats. He deals with the kinds of things that had much in common with other DC comics like sentient animals and suchlike. The Atomic Knights make a guest-starring appearance, their first in many years. Much of the world Hercules worked in was at first made into a dream and then wiped away all together with the ballyhooed Crisis on Infinite Earths.

But for this fanboy, the "Great Disaster" has always happened, and we'll take a look at yet another part of it tomorrow in a third and final entry.

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Of Man-Bulls And Minotaurs!

The above scene, from Eerie #10 presents a very angry image of one of my favorite mythological beasts -- the Minotaur. The little blurb says it all, youngsters trapped in a dangerous confusing environment with a overwhelmingly deadly menace hunting them down. It's only just about every horror-slasher flick of the last many decades. It's a formula filled with fright and the Minotaur is the original implacable menace.

We get the classic Minotaur on this cover from issue seven of Charlton's Hercules series.

Jack Kirby cobbled together this energetic image with Cap's Kooky Quartet filling in for the youth of Athens for the cover of The Avengers #17.

Some years later Iron Man battled a new Minotaur, as seen on this cover for Iron Man #24 by the late great Marie Severin.

Marvel eventually created a new version of the Minotaur with their "Man-Bull" who ended up becoming one of a small army of powerful but small-minded minions over the years. In this cover debut on Daredevil #79 we see him taking on DD as dramatically rendered by Sal Buscema.

The Man-Bull returns for his revenge in Daredevil #95 and #96 when he uses the formula that made him a monster to create many more in the streets of San Francisco.

He pops over to battle The Cat and team up with Melter and Whiplash to take on Iron Man before setting his sights on DD again.

First he battles him in Daredevil #129.

And finally in Daredevil #133. After this encounter the Man-Bull is seen little more for many years, but his brutish potent presence remains in the memory.

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