Vintage Chinese Tintin Comics

Old Chinese comic books come in a 9 cm x 12.5 cm squartebound format that looks like it is adapted from printing newspaper comic strips. Antique shops in tourist areas sell plenty of Chinese titles (I have photos of a couple in this entry), but there I have also found a fair amount of Tintin reprints. Here are a couple that I bought yesterday at a shop new Shanghai's Yu Bazaar.

These are dated 1987.

As usual, I don't review comics I can't read, and my Chinese has a ways to go before I know enough characters to get through these, but I still thought they were a fun find.

Superman #10

From the random stack of unread comics.

Title: Superman
Issue: #10
Date: October, 1987
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: John Byrne
Penciler: John Byrne
Inker: Karl Kesel
Colorist: Tom Ziuko
Letterer: John Costanza
Editor: Michael Carlin

From John Byrne's run on the rebooted Superman in the 1980s. This issue is actually from right around the time I started seriously collecting comics, although Superman wasn't one of the books I followed regularly back then.

Considering how "rebooted" this version of Superman was supposed to be, this issue had a surprisingly Silver Age vibe to it.

Clark Kent's powers go out of control one by one, while Lex Luthor watches on from afar, and Clark fears he's become a danger to Metropolis. And of course that's just the moment when a big robotic monster names Klaash attacks.

The story starts out looking like it is going to be the beginning of serious long-term problems for Clark, but then the whole thing gets resolved and wrapped up in a few pages, bringing everything back to status quo.

This makes this a fairly good self-contained issue, one that isn't going to lose new readers in a maze of continuity. But it also feels a bit anticlimactic when all is said and done.

Luthor has some good moments here, and Maggie Sawyer is excellent. Maggie is also the only character who really gets any plot action that extends beyond this story.

And there are a couple bits of fun comic relief early on when it's Clark's x-ray vision that's out of control.

Not a lot of depth, but a fun Superman story with an "old school" feel.

Rating: 6/10

Detective Comics #575

Kiddo picked this one out for me to read today. This is probably the most valuable (not that that is saying much) and most historically important book in the stack of random unread comics. I think it's the oldest as well.

Title: Detective Comics
Issue: 575
Date: June, 1987
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Mike W. Barr
Penciler: Alan Davis
Inker: Paul Neary
Colorist: Adrienne Roy
Letterer: Richard Starkings
Editor: Denny O'Neil

This is the first installment of the Batman Year 2 storyline, which followed up on the historical reimagining of the Batman's origin in Batman Year 1.

With James Gordon now Commissioner of Police in Gotham, the Batman has the official sanction of the police department, and the newly-installed Bat Signal shines from the roof of police headquarters.

But the Batman was not the first vigilante to stalk Gotham's streets, and it appears that after a twenty-year hiatus, the Reaper has returned to Gotham, handing out death to any criminals who have the misfortune to encounter him.

And when the still-inexperienced Batman confronts the Reaper, he barely survives the encounter.

Now, the Batman is forced to consider how far he is willing to go in escalating the violence of his own campaign against crime.

The Reaper is a great villain, older and more skilled than the young Bruce Wayne of this series, and completely ruthless in his crusade against crime.

Wayne's thoughts of using a gun do seem a bit silly, as it seems unlikely that a pistol is going to make that much of a difference against the Reaper, but the gun, of course, is really just symbolic. And it does make for an awesome image on the cover.

Jim Gordon and Doctor Leslie Tompkins are solid in their supporting roles here, and the newly-introduced Rachel Caspian is an intriguing addition to the story.

This doesn't have the initial kind of impact that Batman Year 1 did, but it's still a very good Batman story.

Rating: 7/10

Robotech: The Macross Saga #23

Nostalgia time! While I was a Marvel fan as a kid, this was the first comic series I seriously collected when I got into comics again after high school.

Title: Robotech: The Macross Saga
Issue: 23
Date: November 1987
Publisher: Comico
Writer: Markalan Joplin
Penciler: Mike Leeke
Inker: Mike Chen
Letterer: Bob Pinaha
Editor: Maggie Brenner
Cover: Mike Leeke, Mike Chen

Comic adaptation of the English-language TV adaptation of the Macross anime.

We open in the midst of a full-scale Zentraedi attack on Macross City, but it's quickly revealed that there is more going on here than meets the eye. In the midst of the chaos, Zentraedi are attempting to defect to the Micronian (human) side.

Meanwhile Rick Hunter walks in on Minmei and Kyle in an awkward moment. Melodrama ensues.

The second half of the book is almost all dialogue (there is one brief battle toward the end), and this is where the strengths of this series really come through. There is some pretty intense political intrigue and maneuvering going on both on the Zentraedi side and the human side. There is also a great scene between Lisa Hayes and Rick Hunter as they discuss past and present loves (all the while dancing around the topic of their own feeling for each other) over tea. What really makes this scene work is that it is given plenty of time, so the conversation flows naturally. The small talk develops the characters and deepens the backgrounds of the supporting cast, while it builds up the romantic tension between Rick and Lisa. This was as good a "quiet" scene as I've seen done in comics.

Nice mix of space-opera and soap-opera.

Rating: 7.5/10

I'm selling my copy of this comic here.