Batman #444

From the Random Box of Unread Comics.

Title: Batman
Issue: #444
Date: February, 1990
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Marv Wolfman
Penciller: Jim Aparo
Inker: Mike DeCarlo
Colorist: Adrienne Roy
Letterer: John Costanza
Editor: Denny O'Neil

The Batman is on the trail of the mysterious Crimesmith. The only problem is, Crimesmith has rigged his henchpersons to explode if they try to rat him out. So the Batman goes into full-on detective mode, all while providing new associate Tim Drake with some Robin-in-training advice. The Crimesmith turns out to be closer to home than Bruce Wayne might have imagined, and he's holed up in a lair loaded with deathtrap-level security systems.

This was a solid story: Good detective work, some nice scenes with Tim, good action when it came time for that, and villains who felt human. This continues directly from the previous issue, but stands alone well while setting the stage for some future plot developments.

Rating: 7/10

Swamp Thing #68

From the Random Stack of Unread Comics.

Title: Swamp Thing
Issue: 68
Date: January 1988
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Rick Veitch
Penciller: Rick Veitch
Inker: Alfredo Alcala
Colorist: Tatjana Wood
Letterer: John Costanza
Editor: Karen Berger

A fun bit of nostalgia in the "Meanwhile" editorial by Dick Giordano expressing his excitement for the soon-to-debut Star Trek: The Next Generation (and hyping DC's comic adaptation).

The story in this issue has four threads. By far the most disturbing is an attempted truck-bomb attack on the Galaxy Communications skyscraper in Metropolis, which becomes more unsettling reading with the benefit of hindsight.

While the attack plays out in Metropolis, the Swamp Thing shares experiences with his previous incarnations among the Parliament of Trees in a sequence that does a nice job of expanding the pantheon and mythology of the Swamp Thing.

The other two storylines occur in Houma. Chester faces temptation by a reality TV star looking to cash in on Chester's association with the Swamp Thing.

And in a heartfelt segment, Abigail helps Liz in her struggle with PTSD as they try to get through a simple run into town for errands, only to find Abigail's past rearing its ugly head. Swamp Thing during this time period was great at slow-build character development, where the events of the stories had lasting effects on the characters, and this issue did a very nice job with Abigail, Liz, and Chester as we get insights into them through quiet moments, small actions, and bits of dialogue.

Rating: 8/10

Swamp Thing #43

From the Random Stack of Unread Comics.

Title: Swamp Thing
Issue: 43
Date: December 1985
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Alan Moore
Artist: Stan Woch, Ron Randall
Colorist: Tatjana Wood
Letterer: John Costanza
Editor: Karen Berger

From Alan Moore's classic Swamp Thing in the pre-Vertigo days of the mid-Eighties.

Chester finds a strange root that has dropped off of the Swamp Thing, and he shares it with two different people. It has two very different effects.

This was a very good self-contained story, with the title character really appearing only in the opening sequence, and all of the focus on the character of Chester, as the discovery he makes forces him to look inward and to ask some very difficult questions.

Great issue for character development, and some awesome visuals as well.

Rating: 8.5/10

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

Batman #570

Last summer, I packed some comics from a box in my storage unit that was labeled as "unread". I have a bad habit of buying comics at a faster rate than I read them, so I've got a fair amount of random comics in those unread comics boxes. I was in a hurry, so the comics I ended up taking with me to Saigon from that box really were pretty random and scattered. Within those, the biggest grouping was a run of Batman from 1998's Cataclysm and Aftershock storylines, and a couple from the epic that followed up on those, No Man's Land. This issue is the last of that batch. These have been enough fun that I may seek out some more from these crossovers when I get back to the US in June.

Title: Batman
Issue: 570
Date: October, 1999
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Bronwyn Carlton
Penciler: Mike Deodato
Inker: David Roach
Colorist: Pam Rambo
Letterer: John Costanza
Editor: Frank Berrios, Joseph Illidge, Dennis O'Neil

This takes place during the massive No Man's Land crossover, in which a disaster-stricken Gotham has been abandoned by the US government and left is a state of anarchy (as opposed to Anarky, who was at least mentioned in one of the Cataclysm issues that preceded this; so he'll probably show up sooner or later).

Cataclysm and Aftershock, at least in the issues that I've looked at so far, stayed away from using the heavy-hitters among the Batman's rogues gallery. Not the case here, as Joker and Harley Quinn are front-and-center, in a story where the Batman only appears in one panel. It's really Harley who's the star here. While looting the upper floors of a luxury apartment tower, she finds a self-help book called "The Code: Laws of L'Amour That Will Make Your Man Marry You". The book is subversively feminist and Harley's hands she begins to make changes in the whole dynamic of her relationship with her "Puddin".

The Joker, meanwhile, waffles between puzzlement and obliviousness as he trains a new henchman, a young intellectual named Josh, and makes plans to hold an election for leadership of Gotham, with himself as the lead candidate.

All of this is set against the block-by-block territorial battles raging in the No Man's Land, with various factions vying for control of scarce resources.

This was some fun character development for Harley Quinn, and a nice setup for coming conflicts between her and Mr. J.

Rating: 7/10

Superman #100

From the random stack of comics, here's a milestone Superman book from 1995.

Title: Superman
Issue: 100
Date: May, 1995
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Dan Jurgens
Penciler: Dan Jurgens
Inker: Brett Breedng, Josef Rubinstein
Colorist: Glen Whitmore
Letterer: John Costanza
Editor: Chris Duffy, Mike Carlin
Cover: Dan Jurgens, Joe Rubinstein

I love "milestone" issues, especially involving historic characters like Superman. So this is the 100th issue of the Superman title that began following Crisis on Infinite Earths in the 1980s. It's got a holofoil cover (because it's 1995, after all; it also has a scene involving a brick-sized cell phone!), and the story is "The Death of Clark Kent".

While that would appear to be a play on the Death of Superman storyline, which also leaned heavily into gimmicky cover territory, this story plays out more like a much kinder, gentler version of Identity Crisis.

Villain Conduit, who just happens to be Clark Kent's old high school buddy Kenny Braverman, has figured out Superman's secret identity. And after a bit of teasing Clark Kent with the knowledge, Clark now knows that Kenny knows, and all of a sudden everyone in Clark Kent's life is in danger.

Or rather they would be, if it were not for the fact that Conduit seems to be utterly incompetent as a villain. The guy commands a private army equipped with military hardware, and his powers make him a match for Superman in a straight up fight, but yet he resorts to mailing people exploding champagne bottles, has his men surround Ma and Pa Kent's house and then wait to attack until Superman arrives, and can't even decide whether to spill the secret identity to a captive Jimmy Olsen.

Really, Conduit? Really?

In fact, the whole scene of Conduit blathering on and on to Olsen about "if you only knew what I knew about Clark Kent" and then not telling pretty much tells all the readers everything they need to know about this story. The status quo is in no danger here. And neither is Superman, or Clark Kent for that matter.

Just about the only redeeming bit in this issue is a reasonably well thought out scene between Superman and Lois Lane (in 1995 continuity, Clark and Lois are engaged and Lois knows Clark is Superman), in which Clark talks about the importance of his identity as Clark Kent and about the pride he takes in his news reporting and writing. More of that, please.

And less Conduit.

Rating: 3.5/10

Swamp Thing #130

Okay, two days to departure, and it's comic marathon time! It's actually not that huge a marathon, but I do have five more comics in my to-read stack after this one, and I'd like to get them all read and reviewed before getting on the plane on Tuesday.

I will pretty much buy any comic with a Charles Vess cover, which I am pretty sure is how I ended up with this issue.

Title: Swamp Thing
Issue: 130
Date: April, 1993
Publisher: DC Comics (Vertigo)
Writer: Nancy A. Collins
Penciler: Scot Eaton
Inker: Kim DeMulder
Colorist: Tatjana Wood 
Letterer: John Costanza
Editor: Stuart Moore
Cover: Charles Vess

The Swamp Thing reappears, weakened and delusional, in Pennsylvania after a meeting with the Parliament of Trees. Desperate to get home, he starts moving south, hallucinating as he goes, and becoming more and more weakened and damaged by various encounters along the way, until he no longer has the strength to go on.

Meanwhile, sinister forces are closing in on those he loves ad various events and conspiracies run their course.

This was all well executed, but it has the problem that I have with a lot of the more recent (okay, admittedly, 1993 no longer counts as recent, but by "recent" what I really mean is anything-post-Allan-Moore) Swamp Thing stories is that they always feel like throwbacks to the classic stories. Everything in this issue (with the possible exception of the final page) felt like Swamp Thing material that I had seen before. It's still good, but no one seems to have ever come up with a direction for this series and this character beyond what Allan Moore did with it from 1984 to 1987.

So not a particularly original or innovative story, but well-paced and great visuals. And the Charles Vess cover is awesome.

Rating: 6/10