Going Down Danger Street!

At first, I intended to give a no-holds barred issue by issue review of Danger Street. The limited series takes the often-forgotten heroes featured in the thirteen issues of First Issue Special, a Showcase-style series DC made use of in the Bronze Age. Not all of the heroes in the series were throwaways such as Warlord which went on to become a big hit for DC. The New Gods also have been revived time and again over the decades. Mainstays like The Creeper, Dr. Fate and Metamorpho find life now again in the pages of DC Comics. And even Manhunter has been used and to my mind somewhat abused over time. But others such as Atlas, The Green Team, The Outsiders (not the Batman version), Lady Cop, Starman (not the Earth II versions), and Codename: Assassin have been little used to say the least. 

But after reading the series, I don't want to spoil in anyway what proved to be a pretty compelling yarn. This is a stew for sure, disparate characters thrown into a cooker pressure and then left to simmer. One is often left to wonder if the result will taste any good at all. I can say this brew has a heady taste indeed. The best I can say is that Tom King has created a story which is the Brothers Grimm meet Quentin Tarantino. We have a Princess (Lady Cop) and three Princes (Warlord, Starman, and Metamorpho), four Young Lads (Dingbats of Danger Street), an Ogre (The Creeper), a Giant (Atlas), two Knights (Manhunter and Codename: Assassin), some Monsters (The Green Team), some Rogues (The Outsiders), and sundry Dragons (The New Gods of New Genesis and Apokolips). 

The story is narrated by the Helmet of Fate, which it turns out plays a key part in the saga as well. Characters arrive from all over and tumble into one another's lives. Some are connected in ways we never imagined. Some seem destined to clash. Most are just trying to survive another day. To describe the interactions and fates of the various heroes and assorted characters would be the spoil some terrific surprises. But it is sufficient to say that not everyone gets out alive. 

Here are the sundry covers for this series.  

Highly Recommended. 

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Danger Street Signs - Manhunter!

In anticipation of a review of Danger Street by Tom King, Jorge Fornes and assorted cover artists I am representing my thirteen reviews of DC's 1970's Showcase-style comic 1st Issue Special. The books by King and company make use of ALL of the sundry heroes and heroines who appeared in these pages. So, let's continue. 

When Jack Kirby's grand project of the "Fourth World" was shelved because of disappointing sales he was nonetheless required to fulfill his contract for DC which called upon him to create many pages of new comics material. Many great projects resulted such as The Demon and Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth. And there were several one-shots as well in 1st Issue Special such as Atlas in the debut issue of the try-out series. Now it came time for another Kirby creation and as he had done with The Golden Guardian in the pages of Jimmy Olsen, he plucked a hero from his halcyon days as a partner with Joe Simon during DC's  Golden Age. That hero was Manhunter. 

Manhunter had been like Sandman, a hero that Simon and Kirby had revised and polished up but alas they did relatively few issues with the hero. The "Manhunter" name was used by DC several times over the decades as in a one-shot issue of 1st Issue Special's precursor Showcase. More famously Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson  had revived Simon and Kirby's hero Paul Kirk in a much admired series which alas saw the demise of the tragic hero. Now it was Kirby's turn to bring back the "Manhunter" name and his hero is a well-meaning fellow named Mark Shaw. 

Shaw is a dedicated public defender who is frustrated that justice is so elusive for those without means and influence and that those who deserve punishment escape it too often. His uncle informs him of an ancient cult dedicated to justice called the "Shan" and their "Manhunters". Shaw makes contact and is a accepted into the still-thriving cult and becomes a Manhunter, wearing striking red armor and a blue metallic mask. He is successful in defeating a weird collector who enslaves people and severs their heads, and the story stops abruptly as he makes his way to confront an enemy named "The Hog". 

This Manhunter is seen no more until a few years later when Steve Englehart revives the character of Mark Shaw and the Manhunters, turning the concept on its head a bit and making them into robotic zealots who hide a dark secret as old the DCU itself. The Manhunters become a grand concept which supplied DC with some dandy storytelling twists for years to come in the post-Crisis era. 

Next time Kirby strikes again with a brand new kid gang. 

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Paul Kirk Day!

Archie Goodwin was born on this date in 1937. He was simply one of the finest writers and editors ever to be in the comics arena. He proved himself a great writer on titles such as Iron Man for Marvel and Batman for DC. He was both a writer and editor for Warren Magazines, launching such well- remembered titles as Blazing Combat. It was in the pages of Detective Comics that he and Walt Simonson gifted the world with Manhunter. 

My personal manhunt is finally over. And as a little extra-special find for my birthday this year, I located a delightful copy of Manhunter - The Complete Saga from the small Excalibur publishing outfit. This was the very first reprinting of the amazing series by Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson, and the only version of the Manhunter story I didn't already have.  And it's a much better package than I expected. There are great pencil drafts from Simonson when he was designing the character. And the late great Archie Goodwin supplies both a great foreword and afterword for the volume. And the short but sweet saga of Paul Kirk performs quite well in black and white. We are even treated to a full page of Goodwin's own distinctive cartooning. This was produced in 1979 by the Excalibur gang, not a time when upscale comic reprints were all that common. It was less than a decade since the original stories had appeared. 

Manhunter by Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson is among the most treasured comic yarns in my long experience in the form. As Goodwin describes in his introduction to the 1979 reprint, the freedom to create something fresh and unusually lively was a result of two factors. One was that the series appeared in Detective Comics, which at the time was suffering a sales slump and so change was seen as good. And the other was that Manhunter was the back-up piece and so seen instantly as less important overall. So, things could change, and in the Bronze Age changes in the status quo of comics was much ballyhooed but rarely done with total commitment. Here was a hero who could do things other Comics Code approved heroes might not be able to get away with, hidden as he was in the shadows of a dangerous world but also in the back of a familiar comic.

I have now collected the Manhunter in all its forms. I picked up several of the chapters in real time as they first appeared and have filled in the gaps since. I've picked up the 1984 DC reprint, the 1999 reprint titled Manhunter: The Special Edition which hard on the sad news of Archie Goodwin's untimely death offered a new chapter, wordless but no less important to the core saga. I more in more recent years picked up the story in a collection of Archie Goodwin's best DC stories, and I even popped for the magnificent "Artist's Edition" which showcases Simonson's tasty pages in their full black and white glory. I love this little saga. I loved it then and I love it still. I am not alone.

The story taps so many of the pop-culture vibes of the era, with a Golden Age hero named Paul Kirk who has grown disillusioned and then dies in a tragic accident. He is revived by a cabal of evil men who seek to use him and his genetic make-up to help them conquer the world. He turns against these men and turns his back on power and immortality to recapture that which they seem to have stolen from him, his fundamental sense of self and his basic human need to shape his own destiny as much as he can. 

The notion to connect Manhunter directly to the vintage Golden Age hero of that named made most famous by the Simon and Kirby team was brilliant. Ironically though the Goodwin-Simonson Manhunter has been reprinted numerous times, the Simon and Kirby Manhunter tales have never been collected though they'd fit neatly into a single slim tome. It's an oversight on DC's part for certain. We've gotten good reprints of the Boy Commandos, the Newsboy Legion, and Sandman, but for some unknown reason no similar package for Manhunter. 

I first noticed something different about the writing of Archie Goodwin in his early Iron Man issues back in the late 60's when fresh from Warren he dabbled a bit for Stan "The Man". There was a deceptive simplicity to his writing that though it felt like it had not personal style was in fact rich with and inviting for that very reason. When he took the editor's seat at Detective Comics, I took notice and could feel that a more adult approach was evident in both the lead feature and the back-up. 

And then there's Walt Simonson who made his bones on Manhunter, a quick little series that lasted only a brief time but brought many awards and critical recognition to its makers. Simonson did not waste the heft the series gave him and went on to become a significant force in comics of the era. Reading Manhunter in various formats is like listening to a great piece of music in different performances, the greatness is always evident regardless. 

If they sell Manhunter again, I likely will buy it all over -- the music is so very, very sweet. 

Below are the splash pages for the series and the covers of the Detective Comics issues in which they appeared. All but one of the Manhunter chapters was in a 100-Page comic and those were absolute troves of wonderful stories from across the decades. Maybe that richness added to my ardor for the series. I don't know. 

The inventiveness of Simonson's pages is remarkable and reminds me of Will Eisner's delightful Spirit splashes and he was just getting started. (The story "Cathedral Perilous, the fifth chapter was specifically inspired by Eisner's Spirit stories, according to Goodwin.) Three of the seven Manhunter stories won Shazam awards (Chapters 1, 5 and the finale) and garnered best writer awards for Goodwin in 1973 and 1974. This series is so good that it has withstood all of the reboots by DC over the intervening decades. A remarkable saga indeed. Goodwin and Simonson returned to the character in the late 90's but before Goodwin could script the final pages by Simonson he passed away. Simonson refused to have anyone else write the story and it was published without dialogue of any kind. The storytelling is so keen that none is needed. The collection which featured this final new Manhunter tale also won awards. 

Comics don't get better than Manhunter! Now if DC would only reprint those classic Golden Age Manhunter stories. I have the few in magazines here and there, but we need a collection. 

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