Marvel Comics Presents #29

From the random box of unread comics.

Title: Marvel Comics Presents
Issue: 29
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Date: October 1989
Writer: Howard Mackie, Don McGregor, Doug Moench, Mark Gruenwald
Artist: Rich Buckler, Bruce Patterson, Gene Colan, Tom Palmer, Paul Gulacy, Paul Ryan, Danny Bulanadi
Colorist: Andy Yanchus, Mike Rockwitz, Glynis Oliver, Paul Becton
Letterer: Bill Oakley, Joe Rosen, Tim Harkins, Janice Chiang
Cover: Dennis Jensen, Dan Adkins
Editor:Terry Kavanagh, Michael Rockwitz

Marvel's bi-weekly anthology series from the late 80's is a combination of short series of varying length told in one chapter per issue, and the occasional standalone story. There was a fairly heavy emphasis on X-Men characters in this series, with Wolverine appearing in most issues.

This one starts off with a Havok story, part 6 of 8, with the revelation of the villainess Plasma revealed as the "Living Pharaoh". Havok has taken a beating in the story leading up to this, so he's in no condition to take on Plasma, but he manages to escape. In the Egyptian desert, he's found by Wolverine, and a battle with some ethnic-stereotyped henchfolk riding hovercraft occurs. The word "infidel" gets shouted a lot as Havok and Wolverine squash the jobbers, setting up the looming confrontation with Plasma,

Next up is Black Panther in part 17 of 25 of a really interesting premise: T'Challa on seeking out his long-lost mother in apartheid South Africa. This is a pretty grim story with T'Challa dealing with his own failures, and a lot of focus placed on the corruption present in the street-level reality of South Africa. Definitely the best story here, although this segment only scratches the surface of the possible story. I'd be interested in reading more of this.

The third story is Coldblood, which looks like an attempt to soft-launch a new character. I'm not sure if anything more was ever done with Coldblood. The title character is a cyborg, in the process of escaping from his makers, I guess, who want to use him to do, well, evil cyborg things, I suppose. There is a lot of shooting and explosions. This was possibly influenced by The Terminator? It had some decent visuals, including a car crashing through, a Vegas casino, but the feel was pretty generic.

Last up was this issue's standalone story, featuring Quasar with a cameo by Man-Thing, who is involved in the plot, but doesn't actually do much. Quasar is tracking a strange energy disturbance and finds himself in Man-Thing's swamp in Florida. Jennifer Kale (inexplicably dressed in an armor-bikini; or maybe this is how she always dresses?) explains that the Man -Thing has been infected with something, and that something turns out to be a villain named Quagmire. Quagmire takes one look at Jennifer and goes into full-on attempted sexual assault mode. Quasar puts a stop to that, and quickly determines that while Quagmire is immune to Quasar's energy powers, he is fully punchable in the face. The weird body-horror setup with Man-Thing is not bad, but Quagmire is pretty disappointing as a villain.

Rating: 4.5/10

Batman #559

Down to the last few of this run of Batman I brought from my unread comics box in the US.

Title: Batman
Issue: 559
Date: October, 1998
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Doug Moench
Penciller: Bob Hall
Inker: Sal Buscema
Colorist: Gregory Wright
Letterer: Todd Klein
Editor: Jordan B. Gorfinkel, Dennis O'Neil
Cover: Rodolfo Damaggio, Patrick Martin

This is the last "Aftershock" issue in the Batman title, but not the conclusion of the crossover. And besides, Aftershock was really just a chapter in the bigger saga that will be No Man's Land, starting next issue.

With a mass exodus of refugees underway, the GCPD is hard pressed to maintain any kind of order. Bullock and Montoya find themselves defending Mercy Hospital from a siege by desperate gang members seeking drugs. Batman and Robin come to their aid, but the city continues to crumble.

Bullock totally steals the show here, even getting a (awesome) romantic subplot! There are some great characters introduced for this issue as well, and even the generic thug villain gets enough personality to make him, well, slightly less generic.

The writing is really tight, with good attention to detail, and an excellent shock at the end.

Rating: 7.5/10

Batman #558

Back to Batman and Aftershock!

Title: Batman
Issue: 558
Date: September, 1998
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Doug Moench
Penciller: Jim Aparo
Inker: Sal Buscema
Colorist: Gregory Wright
Letterer: Todd Klein
Editor: Jordan B. Gorfinkel, Dennis O'Neil
Cover: Rodolfo Damaggio, Patrick Martin

Continuing with the Aftershock storyline, this issue serves two purposes. It functions as a big infodump on the current state of affairs of Gotham City, by way of a radio address given by DJ (and current romantic interest of Bruce Wayne) Vesper Fairchild. It also shows an emotionally fragile side of Bruce Wayne as he grapples with despair at the sight of his city seemingly dying around him, and destruction of a scale that he is ill-prepared to handle.

Given those purposes, this issue handled them remarkably well. Vesper's narration added a human side to the department-by-department recap of all of the challenges facing Gotham. Alfred, along with some flashbacks to the funeral of Bruce Wayne's parents, provide the sounding board for Bruce Wayne's current emotional crisis.

That emotional crisis did feel a bit like it came out of the blue, given last issue's fairly standard team-up story with Ballistic (reviewed here), but I must remind myself that this crossover storyline does not progress in order of individual issues of any one series, so hopefully it was set up better in some of the other Bat-titles.

There's very little in the way of action here. The Batman takes on a couple of looters in a token fight scene. But I found the discussion of the aftermath of the Gotham Earthquake, and its effects on the city, to be quite engaging.

Rating: 7/10

Batman #557

Continuing to make my way through the Batman issues of Aftershock.

Title: Batman
Issue: 557
Date: August, 1998
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Doug MoenchArtist: Vince Giarrano, Sal Buscema
Colorist: Gregory Wright
Letterer: Todd Klein
Editor: Jordan B. Gorfinkel, Dennis O'Neil

Ballistic looks like he walked straight out of the pages of one of those 1990s Image Comics superhero team books. He's even got the wardrobe made entirely out of belts and pouches. So many pouches!

He's being hired to go retrieve an evidence bag buried in the ruins of Gotham. Except the guys who hired him haven't done their homework. Ballistic is former GCPD (before somehow obtaining a fairly generic package of superpowers: enhanced strength, endurance, senses, invulnerability, what have you). He may not look it, but he's a good guy, and he's going to take the job, but he's also going to make sure justice is served.

Which does not sit well with the mysterious suits who hired him. In a sudden case of buyer's remorse, they try shooting him, which works about as well as it usually does on invulnerable-types. Plan B, then, is to arrange for a bunch of generic thugs to ambush ballistic in Gotham, begging the question of if the bad guys had this many thugs already in Gotham, why not use them to retrieve the bag?

It does get better once the inevitable encounter between Ballistic and the Batman occurs. They actually manage to break a lot of the hero-meets-hero clichés, and their interaction is made more interesting by the fact that Ballistic has encountered the Jean-Paul Valley version of Batman and is a bit thrown off by the reactions when, unknown to him, it's Bruce Wayne under the cowl.

The revelation of what was in the bag proves uninteresting, but I did find Ballistic's personality and his interaction with the Batman to be interesting.

Rating: 5.5/10

 

Batman #556

More from the 1990s Batman issues in the random unread comic pile.

Title: Batman
Issue: 556
Date: July, 1998
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Doug Moench
Penciller: Norm Breyfogle
Inker: Joe Rubinstein
Colorist: Gregory Wright
Letterer: Todd Klein
Editor: Jordan B. Gorfinkel, Dennis O'Neil

On the surface, this is an issue in which not much happens. The repair plans continue at Wayne Manor. The Batman makes short work of some bank robbers who tried to loot a bank in the aftermath of the Gotham earthquake. He goes on to rescue a man who refused to leave his structurally-unsound apartment building.

But this issue is a nice pause to assess the implications of the earthquake plot, and there is a lot of good dialogue throughout, all setting up future plot developments. The final scene between Bruce Wayne and current girlfriend Vesper is particularly well done.

This is the type of issue that helps make a large ongoing story better by giving the story a bit of breathing space.

Rating: 6.5/10

Batman #555

Continuing with the short run of 1990s Batman from my unread comics stack.

Title: Batman
Issue: 555
Date: June, 1998
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Doug Moench
Penciller: John Beatty
Inker: Sal Buscema
Colorist: Gregory Wright
Letterer: Todd Klein
Editor: Jordan B. Gorfinkel, Dennis O'Neil
Cover: Kelly Jones, Patrick Martin

We're now into "Aftershock", which continues so directly from "Cataclysm" that one wonders why it needed its own title at all. Gotham is in ruins from the earthquake, and Batman and Robin are attempting to rescue a group of commuters trapped in a subway car in a collapsed tunnel.

Enter... The Ratcatcher. Yeah, not exactly top-tier opposition. And unfortunately, because Ratcatcher is pretty third-string in the Rogues Gallery, the writer felt it necessary to reintroduce him to the reader by means of a clunky infodump in the form of a soliloquy given to an audience of (you guessed it) rats.

In fact, Ratcatcher talks a lot in this story, and he doesn't actually say all that much when he does.

What does work well here is that the story makes very good use of the dangers of the collapsed tunnel, with a bunch of clever threats and twists to complicate the rescue.

And it's nice to see the Batman finally get Ratcatcher to shut up.

Rating: 5/10

Batman #554

Continuing with the run of Batman that I brought here as part of my random stack of comics to read.

Title: Batman
Issue: 554
Date: May, 1998
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Doug Moench
Penciller: Klaus Janson
Inker: Sal Buscema
Colorist: Gregory Wright
Letterer: Todd Klein
Editor: Jordan B. Gorfinkel, Dennis O'Neil
Cover: Mark Buckingham, Kevin Nowlan, Patrick Martin

This directly follows issue #553, which I reviewed here, but it really doesn't because we are in full-on crossover mode. so this is Part 12 of Catacysm. This is inconvenient because I only have the Batman title to work with here, so I'm missing a lot of plot.

This issue introduces the Quakemaster, a mysterious villain who is claiming responsibility for the massive earthquake that hit Gotham, and threating to unleash more earthquakes if he is not paid one MILLION dollars! (Okay, actually, he asks for 100 million).

The Batman is trying to figure out if the Quakemaster's claim is for real, which seems unlikely until you remember that this IS the DC Comics Universe, and so things like people being able to cause earthquakes have a somewhat higher level of plausibility.

There is also the issue of a missing seismologist. Is she a victim of the Quakemaster or an accomplice?

This was a very detective-work oriented issue, with the action kept to a minimum. Bruce Wayne in detective mode is always fun, and there were some good contributions from Harvey Bullock and Renee Montoya as well.

Not a really eventful issue, but effective at moving the story along.

Rating: 6.5/10

Batman #553

Among the stack of random comics I brought from my storage unit in the US was a small set of Batman from the Cataclysm/No Man's Land mega storyline of the 1990s. It's far from a complete set, but here is the earliest issue in storyline order that I have. It's part 3 of Cataclysm.

Title: Batman
Issue: 553
Date: April, 1998
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Doug Moench
Penciller: Klaus Janson
Inker: Sal Buscema
Colorist: Gregory Wright
Letterer: Todd Klein
Editor: Jordan B. Gorfinkel, Dennis O'Neil
Cover: Mark Buckingham, Kevin Nowlan, Patrick Martin

Cataclysm Part 3. Gotham City is hit with a 7.6 earthquake, and this issue begins at the moment the quake strikes.

We see Lucius Fox at the Waynecorp Building (conveniently constructed to withstand an 8.5... unlike pretty much every other building in Gotham), and then a clever bit where Commissioner Gordon is nearly killed by the bat-signal falling through the roof.

The story then shifts focus to two parallel plots: Bruce Wayne and Alfred trying to escape from what's left of the Batcave and (stately) Wayne Manor, and Barbara Gordon taking charge of disaster relieve coordination from GCPD HQ.

Putting aside for a moment the question of where she gets the authority to do that, Barbara is her usual awesome self here, and Sergeant Bullock also gets in some good scenes.

This epic took place at a time when the Batman supporting cast was really top-notch and it was great seeing plots that had huge long-term implications for Gotham and the Batman characters. Too often, editorial direction is timid about such changes. They really went all-out when it came to wrecking Gotham is a plot that went on to span several years.

This was a nice change from the usual Batman plots, and it makes great use of all of the familiar disaster movie tropes.

Rating: 8/10