Great Moments In Comics History No. 7: German WW 1 Fighter Aces Are BAD ASS

Here's the situation: Rittmeister Hans von Hammer, "Enemy Ace" to the Allied forces, finds himself in a bit of a pickle over the skies at the Western Front. His tri-wing Fokker has been riddled with bullets and he's going down in flames. Is this the end? The hell it is!







The "Enemy Ace" saves himself from being a burnt smudge on the ground by grabbing hold of the axle of another airplane and hangs on for dear life while British fighters chase after him and his saviour over the skies of France. Just try to wrap your head around that one, will you?

This classic scene of bad-assery can only come from the mind of Robert Kanigher and the pencil skills of Joe Kubert. Reprinted in Showcase Presents: Enemy Ace (DC, 2008).

For more of DGR's Great Moments..., click the appropriate label below.

You don't mess with Batman's Snoopy doll collection. You just don't.

From Showcase Presents: The Brave & The Bold vol. 3 by Haney & Aparo.

Because Sometimes...

...you just need to see Batman & Robin take a ride on an inflatable giant hand.

From Showcase Presents World's Finest vol. 2

Friday Night Fights: Classic Edition Round 3

Because I'm the goddam Silver Age Batman, bitch!

The Brave and the Bold #95 is such an insane comic, you just know it was written by Bob Haney. This issue has it all: a missing person, a femme fatale, unrequited love, fights in exotic locales and Batman getting framed for murder....

As we all know, when you are on the run from the law, all you need is a hat and an overcoat to fool the cops. They'll never notice that you're still wearing a cowl over your face and your undies on the outside. Truly, Batman is a master of disguise.

But it's the punch that makes this issue a classic. Female, shmemale, he's hitting that face like nobody's business. Let's see it one more time.

Batman is no one's patsy!

Neither is Bahlactus!

(All scans from Showcase Presents: The Brave and the Bold vol.2)

SUICIDE SQUAD (1987) (part 2)

In this here part 2 of my Suicide Squad pimpin’, I’m gonna highlight to you readers of DEM’S GOOD READIN’ (all three of you) some of the outstanding issues of the series. A bit difficult because John Ostrander’s plotting and scripting was so crazy fun that practically the entire 66 issue run was a classic. So I gotta narrow it down a little bit. Okay, let’s do it! By the way, if you missed part 1, it's over here.

SUICIDE SQUAD #10



This would be in everyone’s favorite issue of Suicide Squad. The Squad vs. Batman and the Squad wins. No shit, they do. See, Batman is pissed off that the Squad exists. He disagrees that unreformed super crooks are given an early parole if they complete and survive their missions. So he plans to expose the Squad’s existence.

But old Bats must have had an off day or something because his presence was detected by the guards.


“Damn! We in trouble now!” You said it, Mrs. Waller. Batman compromised the Squad. That’s a cue for some sweet panels of whup ass. First up, it’s Duchess:

Next up: Deadshot

Now, Batman later reveals that Deadshot pulls his shots around Batman. Why the hell for, Deadshot? Just kill the man and your rep’s secured. Batman seems to be telling the truth as we see here:
Scratch one Deadshot. But it ain’t over yet. Col. Rick Flag still wearing his Day-Glo yellow vest stands between Batman and the main exit.

It must take confidence for someone to go out and fight Batman while wearing what Rick Flag is wearing. Bright yellow in a maximum security prison. Crazy, dude. Still, props to Flag for going three panels with the Bat before getting whammed. Most people don't even last a panel. But you know how the Squad finally stopped Batman? Amanda Waller threatens to expose Batman’s identity.


What the hell? Fingerprints? Seriously? Batman is supposed to be the world’s greatest detective and he got taken down like a punk. In the letters pages in issue #14, there was a full flame on by the fans and Ostrander admitted he goofed. Ouch. But hey, issue #10 is still awesome!




SUICIDE SQUAD #18



It's like the ex-lover who refuses to go away: The JIHAD's back! And they're attacking Manhattan.

The Manticore’s back too. And this time, his face is bullet proof. So how did the Duchess handle this guy?





He got whacked by his own tail!

There’s a new Jaculi but Deadshot takes her down easy. Sure, with Batman, he pulls his shots. Anybody else, he takes them down.


And Captain Cold shows that his ass is just as bad as the rest.


"Hell is cold! And sucker...I am CAPTAIN COLD!" Wasn't he a joke in the FLASH comic? Well, he's bad ass here.


I don't know why but I find that panel hilarious.




Issue 23 was an INVASION tie-in but that’s not why I picked this one out (though it has all the action you expect from a typical issue of Suicide Squad). This is why:

First appearance of Oracle!

When Alan Moore had the Joker shoot and cripple her in the pages of The Killing Joke, Barbara Gordon was already considered an expendable character. It was Ostrander and Kim Yale who thought that she could be revamped as an information broker of the DC Universe. Oracle appeared occasionally in the pages of the Squad but it wasn’t until issue 49 that she joined Task Force X.


Yeah, that's right, kids! That hot babe in the wheelchair you see in Birds of Prey had her humble beginning in little ol' Suicide Squad. Bow to the glory that is Ostrander and Yale!




SUICIDE SQUAD #26. Rick Flag goes on an unauthorised solo suicide mission to Qurac and plans to finish the Jihad once and for all.



Well, at least he isn’t wearing his yellow vest anymore. That ninja body suit is much more sensible.

And they all die. This issue made me sad. And I was quite irritated when I heard that John Ostrander plans to bring Flag back from the dead in the new mini series, Suicide Squad: Raise the Flag. Okay sure, I know this is just the comics and dead characters come back to life all the time. Marvel brought back Bucky for damn’s sakes! And they managed to pull it off. But Flag’s death wasn’t a marketing ploy like Superman's. It was actually quite poignant. And it lived up to the book's name. Anyone could die, no matter how 'regular' a status that character seems to have. I’ll be looking forward to finding out how Ostrander plans to bring back Flag. Make it good, man! I, of course, will get the trade because that’s just the way I am.

So yeah, those are just some of the outstanding issues of the Suicide Squad. There are a whole lot more: the death of Dr. Light (yes, that Dr. Light back when he was a wimp). The resurrection of Dr. Light (probably the funniest issue in a non-funny comic series). There’s the Phoenix Gambit storyline, that massive crossover with Checkmate. I’m telling you, Suicide Squad was pure gold. It’s too bad DC cancelled the Showcase reprint originally scheduled for November of this year. It would make a great tie-in with the current mini series. Maybe they’ll release it together when the trade for Raise the Flag is released next year or whenever.

I Be Pimpin' SUICIDE SQUAD (1987) (part 1)

As I write this, the first issue of a new Suicide Squad mini-series has just hit the stands and has inspired me to write something about the 1980s Suicide Squad. That and I didn’t know what to write for the blog this week. So I thought, “Hey! Suicide Squad! The best comic DC published in the late-80s. Let’s tell the kids today about that cool comic.” So here it is, kids.

Suicide Squad was first introduced in the pages of LEGENDS, a six-issue series which had the sole purpose of nothing more than acting as a launch pad for upcoming titles. Suicide Squad was one of those titles.

The premise is simple. The Suicide Squad is a secret government group tasked to accomplish politically sensitive and suicidal missions as all get out. The Squad is mostly made up of super villains who are given a choice: go on the mission, complete the mission and if you survive it, you get a full pardon. Sounds simple enough, right? Yeah, but the name’s Suicide Squad.

When we first see them in #3 of LEGENDS, the newly-formed squad is preparing for their first briefing by their boss, Amanda ‘The Wall’ Waller.

The Wall takes no shit from nobody.

By this time, the more astute of you may be thinking, “Wait a minute, man. These guys are crooks right? So who’s to say they won’t escape in the middle of the mission?” Gotcha covered there, buddy.

We will see later on if any of the Squad’s members were stupid enough to try and see if Big Momma was bluffing. But now, their first mission:


Holy crapola!

Suffice it to say, they succeeded in bringing down their target in the end. Fast forward about four months later and the Squad gets its own book. Yay!



I have to admit, that cover sold me to the Squad even more than their appearance in LEGENDS did. There’s nothing like floating heads on a black background that shouts “Instant hit series!” to me. And that tagline? Hell, I don’t know what stopped me from buying 10 copies.

Plotted by John Ostrander, the same talented guy who wrote LEGENDS, this first issue was mostly a build up to the Squad’s first mission in their regular series. Apparently, some super powered terrorists called ‘The Jihad’ have attacked what looked like to be a generic American airport. Except that it’s not:

Damn, that’s hardcore. They killed their own people for the sake of a product demonstration.



If issue 1 was the build up, issue 2 was the execution. The Squad’s bringing the battle to the bad guys’ lair before they could attack America. Bad news is the Jihad’s HQ is called Jotunheim, a crazy ass structure built into the side of a mountain.

Good news is they have a couple of undercover agents within the Jihad and one of them is Nightshade who can teleport in and out of anyplace like nobody’s business.



And the fun begins....

Deadshot gets to pair up with the Jihad’s Manticore, a guy who’s half lion and half scorpion or something. He’s also Greek. Manticore isn’t much of a people person and sleeps alone at the bottom of an elevator shaft:


Okay, so that didn’t work. Maybe Deadshot shoot try shooting him or something. No sense calling yourself Deadshot if you decide to just go ninja on your prey and kill him with an elevator shaft while he’s sleeping. Deadshot thinks so too and tries to take the Greek freak down face to face.



The other members of the Squad don’t have much trouble with their targets. Captain Boomerang, a longtime Flash fiend, is given the task of hunting down yet another speedster, the Jihad’s Jaculi.


I like what Ostrander did with Boomerang. The man’s a jerk and a killer and Ostrander never shied away from that fact. Later on in the series, Boomerang is used a lot as comic relief but in this issue, he’s a total bad ass. Still, if you can’t handle a middle aged Aussie guy with trick boomerangs then you don’t really deserve to live.

Oh yeah, remember the tagline on the cover of the first issue? The only Squad member to die is Mindboggler and even that was due to Captain Boomerang’s treachery.

See? Boomerang is a total dickhead.

Another Squad member, Enchantress, makes short work of the bad guy’s digitally engineered genie.


Basically, for a terrorist organization, the Jihad isn’t up to the Squad’s standards. They get their asses kicked big time. On their own turf too. Even Col. Rick Flag, the Squad’s leader, manage to subdue Rustam and this is a guy who can create a fiery sword from his fist. All Rick Flag had to do was just bitch slap this guy with his automatic!


There’re a few more fight scenes in this issue but you get the idea. Squad goes in, Jihad gets screwed, Squad flies home. Between that, there’s a double cross on both sides, some sweet kung fu fighting and the Squad’s own helicopter backup piloted by weird voice commands:



“We smooth. Peel”

What?

Anyway, these first two issues of Suicide Squad totally blew me away. I got what I expected and then some. Up to that point, comics was all about the good guys doing good things like helping old ladies cross the street and knocking out that month's megalomaniac. The Suicide Squad ignored all that shit and gave us stories of intrigue that might just occur in the real world (if the real world had people running around in the night wearing yellow vests and killer boomerangs) while at the same time not forgetting that they are part of the DC Universe.

John Ostrander was at his peak then and he didn’t waste any time with pages and pages of the characters just standing around doing nothing. His job was to tell a good story from page 1 and he did just that. Luke McDonnell’s pencils I wasn’t too keen on. He wasn’t bad. Far from it. I just didn’t like his style. The people he drew looked stiff sometimes. Fortunately, he was inked by the alliteratively named Karl Kesel and he can make anyone’s pencil drawings look good.

It was a great comic that never achieved the sales that it deserved. Not enough boobs, I think. After a 66 issue run, the Squad was cancelled, a fact that I'm still bitter about today. Seriously, I felt like Chris Crocker. Damn you, fanboys!

Next: part 2

SHOWCASE PRESENTS THE WAR THAT TIME FORGOT (DC, 2007)

Let me get something out of the way quickly: DC Comics' The War That Time Forgot was all sorts of insane. If it was any more insane, big guys in white coats would come around, firmly drag it away into a van and drive it to a nice place somewhere in the country where all other insane books live. As it were, this 500-odd page book is usually kept in a dark room somewhere, its existence denied by those who own it and its pages browsed through only on lonely, rainy nights when the wife's away and the kids are asleep in their rooms. It's that kind of book.

TWTTF chronicled the adventures of U.S. soldiers who get sent to a remote Pacific island during the period in Earth's history known as double-you-double-you-aye-aye. As the story begins, a detachment of Marines are parachuted over the island to find out what happened to the two previous recon patrols that never reported back.

Safely landing on the island (but not before encountering a pterodactyl on the way down), the Marines discover empty enemy bunkers with bowls of rice undisturbed and empty foxholes with rifles and machine guns but no soldiers. Looks like the enemy just got up and left. But why? By the way, nowhere in the entire collection was "Japanese" or "Japs" referred to though it's pretty obvious who the previous occupiers of the island were.

Anyway, the Marines soon find out why the "enemy" up sticks and left the island:



Yeah, soldier. That must have been it. Earthquake wakes up prehistoric creatures who were in suspended animation all these years. Makes sense to me.

With that exposition out of the way, TWTTF never again refers to it. From now on, it's just dinosaur vs G.I. The soldiers are attacked by ancient, giant lizards on land:



Underwater:

Yeah, that tank is underwater fighting a giant coelacanth. I told you this book was insane.

The soldiers also get some trouble in the air:



From encounters in the hot, steamy jungle:


To the cold, frozen wasteland (I think the editor wanted some of the stories to take place outside of a hot Pacific island):


TWTTF doesn't have regular characters who appear in every issue. Instead we get guys who appear for a two or three issue story arcs. Most of them have something unique to make their adventures stand out. Like, there's the two man task force codenamed, "The Suicide Squad". No Deadshot in this squad, natch. Deadshot would have killed all the dinos before lunch. This Suicide Squad consists of Morgan and Mace. Mace accidentally caused Morgan's brother's death in the Winter Olympics (event: Toboggan racing) and Morgan volunteers for any mission that Mace is in....just so he can keep an eye on Mace. And shoot him if Mace decides to run.

But my personal favourite are the stories featuring Mac and the G.I. Robot. They get a four issue appearance (#101-104) where Mac reluctantly takes the robot on a test run in a dinosaur infested island. Here's Mac making all those war bonds work by teaching the robot some snazzy dance moves to impress the girls:

They soon get to be good friends, though, and none too soon for what do they bump into on that island? No, not more dinosaurs. They get to meet this guy:




It's a giant Japanese robot soldier!

Giant Japanese robot soldier can't be killed. Nothing can stop him....except maybe regular human sized American robot soldier?



And to top it all off, we also get to see some hot dino on dino action:



And dino on white gorilla fisticuffs (it's a mysterious island in the Pacific, of course there will be a giant gorilla there! A white gorilla? BONUS!)



I've never read the original colour version but that's not a problem. I prefer the black and white reproduction. Without colour, we can see the beautiful linework by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito. Even Joe Kubert has a one issue fill-in here. And there's no need to nitpick the ludicrous dinosaurs that appear in this comic. I don't think accuracy was what they were aiming for here. They came up with a book about dinosaurs terrorising soldiers during World War Two and by golly, they made it fun. Of course, if you read this collection it's advised that you read no more than three or four issues per sitting. It can get pretty boring pretty quick if you try to read it all in one go. It's like good chocolate cake. Eat a few slices and save some for tomorrow. Lather, rinse, repeat.

But never forget these wise words: DC SHOWCASE PRESENTS THE WAR THAT TIME FORGOT is fookin' insane.