Action!!!--Action Comics #1, June, 1938

    So time for the change-up.  As promised (hopefully) some what more concise reviews.  While it is easier for me to read a block of Golden Age comics in a row, for you dear readers, I'll continue to post no more than 3 issues in a post.  This one merits its own.
    4 months and 75 years ago, Action Comics #1 was published.  While it wasn't the issue that started the comic-book industry, it is commonly accepted as the first appearance of what we now consider to be a super-hero, and the issue that served as the cornerstone for the industry we know today.  In Action Comics #1, Superman made his first appearance.

Superman - 'Superman, Champion of the Oppressed'  by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster
     Superman breaks into the governor's mansion to secure a pardon for an innocent woman, gives a wife beater a taste of his own medicine, saves Lois Lane from a kidnapping, and dangles a lobbyist from some power cables to find out which crooked senator with whom he is dealing.  This first chapter moves at a break-neck speed.  Most of the classic trappings are in place: Clark Kent reporter, Lois Lane, and the basics of his origin.  Superman is instantly likeable, Siegel basically writes Superman as Slam Bradley with super powers. Rating: 4.5

Chuck Dawson - 'The A-G Gang' by Homer Fleming
    A western strip about a cowboy who rides into town looking to get revenge on the gang that killed his father.  Chuck ends up the wrong side of the law when he escapes from prison after coming out on the losing end of the fight.  A bland strip that doesn't make a lot of sense.  The main character has such a large chip on his shoulder he rides into town believing everyone must be part of the gang.  He goes out of his way to pick fights with every one he meets.  Rating: 2.5

Zatara - 'The Mystery of the Freight Train Robberies' by Fred Guardineer
     Zatara and Tong investigate and break of the Tigress' train robbery ring.  Even if Superman hadn't of been introduced, Action Comics would have been worth noting because of the Zatara strip.  It's quick paced and fun.  There's good chemistry with Zatara and Tong, and it was fun to see the backwards spell his daughter Zatana would be known for being used. Rating: 4

Pep Morgan - 'The Light Heavyweight Championship' by Fred Guardineer
    Pep is a sports strip about an extremely athletic college student that has bounced around the DC titles.  In this strip, he fends off a crooked promoter who has his champion try to drug Pep during the fight.  Not a bad strip, but in the early days anything was fodder for a strip, so all genres were acceptable.  While they can make for an interesting diversion, the limited story potential prevents real character development.  Still it has serviceable art for the period.  Rating: 3

Scoop Scanlon, Five-Star Reporter - 'The International Jewel Thief'' by John William Ely
    A crusading reporter follows a scoop about an international jewel thief coming to town and aids the police in his capture.  The highlight of the strip is the chemistry between Scoop and Rusty, his photographer.  I also like that it shows some down time as they wait for thief's ship to come in.  Unfortunately its let down by some pretty crude art. Rating: 3

Tex Thompson - 'Murder in England' by Bernard Bailey
    Traveling wealthy Texas oil man, finds a body in the English countryside and is framed for the murder.  A decent enough  adventure/crime strip with decent art. Rating: 3

Overall rating: 4

    

New Adventure Comics #26

(Editor's Note -- Rather than try to put this in the new format I'll be using going forward, I decided to preserve this one in its original format since I started it 4 months ago.)
     I still haven't found the right mix of insight and brevity.  I feel compelled to provide a 'Story so far...' synopsis to every feature.  Here is what I am going to attempt.  I'll list every feature with a 1-2 sentence synopsis and make comments about those that I feel merit additional discussion.  I still feel the need to mention every issue so readers of the blog can get a sense of the chaotic ebb and flow of the Golden Age.  So without further adieu, New Adventure Comics #26:

Captain Jim of the Texas Rangers -- "The Train Robbery, Part 26"
     One of the few strips that's been in every issue of New Adventure (originally New Comics), this is the adventures of an older rancher, his niece and nephew, his best friend, the Captain Jim in the title, and his trusted ranch foreman who are in never-ending trouble with bears, stampedes, rustlers, bank robbers, etc.  It would be exhausting to read in a collection, but it works well in serial parts.  The only problem is the expanse of characters.  The strip gets a good number for this day and age (approx. 6), but by the time you catch up with all the leads who are in at least three different places, the story doesn't advance any more than a 3-pager.

Federal Men -- "The Safety Patrol"
     I find Federal Men to be the oddest of the Seigel and Shuster strips.  Ostensibly, the lead is Steve Carson, an FBI Agent.  Initially the strips were him in gang buster or pseudo Sci-Fi stories toppling gangs, saboteurs, or mad scientists.  Soon there were adds for 'Junior Federal Men' club membership packs, and the strip changed from being about the exploits of Steve Carson to being about kids who become crime-stoppers and good citizens as a result of their emulating Steve and being in the club.  In this strip, Steve is only seen in the beginning talking about road safety to the school, then shifts to how the kids implement his lecture and deal with a hit-and-run driver, then ends with Steve delivering the motto.  Its not bad at all, because it has the Siegel and Shuster energy that was unique to their strips at the time, but I felt it worth noting how the strip had changed, and I'm curious if boy interest in the strip was really that high or if it was a marketing stunt/wishful thinking.

Nadir, Master of Magic  --  "Pearl of the Bleeding Heart, Part 10"
     An adventurer/magician tracks a stolen, cursed pearl.  Not a bad strip, but after the first 3 installments, the magic has all but disappeared (literally) and  Nadir is indistinguishable from other socialite/adventurers.  The pearl however, is seriously cursed.  It now in its third or fourth owner, all of the previous owners being killed and betrayed by the owner after them.

Rusty and His Pals -- "The Pirate Ship, Part 1"
     A group of kids build a raft, play pirates, and run into real pirates.  Notable for being one of the first contributions of Bob Kane to DC Comics and the first of two in this issue.  I won't get into the quagmire (right now) of to what extent Bob Kane was a "real" creative professional, but I think it important to note the milestone considering the contribution he will make in another year.

Don Coyote
    Don Coyote is a humor set in medieval times, but utilizing modern slang and sexual attitudes (well, modern from the perspective of 1938).

Dale Daring -- "The Red Hatchet, Part 4"
    Being named after the female lead, you'd almost expect this to be about a female adventurer Ala Sandra of the Secret Service, but Dale Daring owes more to 'The Perils of Pauline'.  A blonde heiress and her father somewhere in Asia (maybe Tibet) fall afoul of a Mongol tribe with Capt. Don Brewster hurrying to the rescue.  Not very memorable.  In fact, I struggle to remember what was the macguffin or crime that started the whole strip.

Captain Desmo --"Captain Demso Flies Again!"
    A heroic fighter pilot defends an outpost against Mongol raiders. Notable for Captain Desmo's laughable pseudo-super hero stryle outfit.  Considering what was to be published in June, 1938, something was in the air.

Click Evans -- "In the War Zone"
    A newsreel reporter crashes in a war zone, is taken prisoner, and escapes.

Cal n' Alec
    A humor strip about two cowhands who get into mischief.  In this installment, their donkey is stolen by an Indian (nee Native American), and the two try to steal it back.

(Editor's Note --My thoughts for here on out are now 4 months old.  I apologize if I have nothing profound to say...not that I've been profound up to this point.)
Detective Sergeant Carey of the Chinatown Squad
    Sgt. Carey and Sleepy  try to escape the Tong by boat.  Fairly typical 'yellow menace' fare.  The main advantage to the Sgt. Carey serials is they are kept to a respectable 3-4 parts and not 9-10.

Sandor and the Lost Civilization
    Ostensibly a jungle strip, Sandor takes place in and entails intrigue in the court of an Indian rajah.  Unfortunately, I've lost the thread of the plot.  Its been the same serial since the beginning.  Now its devolved to random running around the palace.

The Golden Dragon
    A group of adventurers searching for Genghis Khan's gold route the Mongolian army trying to stop them.  Like Sandor and Captain Jim, The Golden Dragon has been in almost every issue of New Adventure.  I like the serial overall.  Its moving at a slow pace (they've barely made any progress), but unlike Sandor, I can still keep up with the plot.


   

Battle of the Atom, Forever Evil, and Infinity

So, there are currently three events running concurrently in DC/Marvel: Battle of the Atom, an X-Men crossover, Forever Evil a DC line-wide crossover, and Infinity, an Avengers crossover.  I'm relatively current with these, so I'll be presenting my thoughts to-date.  Of course here be spoilers, arrgh!!!


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Battle of the Atom
    Spinning out of All-New X-Men, the synopsis for Battle of the Atom is fairly straightforward: armed with the hindsight of what their continued presence in the present of the Marvel Universe means, a team of X-Men from the future come to the present to coerce/force the original 5 X-Men to return to their time of 1960's Marvel  (okay, okay, whatever passes in Marvel continuity for what was originally the 60's when the early X-Men comics were originally published).  With two Battle of the X-Men bookends, the story runs through All-New X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, and X-Men.  I believe it is 18 parts in all, and it is somewhere around part 9.

While not as "epic" as the other two events, this is currently my favorite.  I've posted a large post here about my love of All-New X-Men, and I feel like with this event, I'm getting a new installment every week.  If you aren't reading All-New X-Men, start right now, and get this in the trades at the very least.  A very strong 4.5 out of 5 for me.

Forever Evil
    Continuing in a lot of ways continuing from Trinity War which was not an event so much as a preamble, Forever Evil chronicles the defeat of the Justice League by the Crime Syndicate of Earth-3 (Pandora's box was a portal to Earth-3) and the rise of the villains who stand in their way.
    While this did have a long preamble, in many ways I have a hard time judging this event yet.  It is a 10 part series with at least 3 6-issue mini-series crossovers.  So far only issues 1-2 and the first issue of Arkham War have come out.  So far, I give it a 3.5 out of 5 with it showing a lot of potential.  While I knew I was right about the Outsider being the head of the Secret Society, it was a clever twist and a wink to the silver age to have him be the Earth-3 evil Alfred, and hearing Luthor saddle up while secretly pining for a Superman to save the day is comics-gold.
    The cost of this is a worry point if you want to follow the tie-ins because you're talking about 30+ issues, but the tie-ins sound so damn intriguing.  The Rogues from Flash refusing to follow the Secret Society's orders and destroy Central City, but rather stand to protect it because of one of their own being in a Central City hospital in Forever Evil: Rogue's Rebellion.  Or Bane trying to conquer a Gotham City that's been divided into fiefdoms by the escapees from Arkham in Forever Evil: Arkham War.  Those two at least, I think I'm going to have to get.

    Infinity is a 6 part mini-series that crosses over with Avengers Assemble, New Avengers, Avengers, Mighty Avengers, and Thunderbolts, with New Avengers and Avengers being the most important to following the through-line with Infinity.  Infinity reminds me a lot of Infinite Crisis in that Infinite Crisis was the culmination of several bad things happening at once.  In Infinity, the majority of the Avengers are in space fighting the builder's armada which is intent on razing Earth and the Illuminati are distracted by both incursions from alternate earth's destroying planets as well as the infighting between Black Panther and Namor.  Thanos picks this moment when most of the heroes are away to invade Earth as a cover for searching for and killing his heretofore unknown about son, Thane.
    Infinity, just the 4 issues do-date on its own gets a 4 out of 5 for me.  There's a lot happening at a brisk pace with some big ideas.  I was worried about the rumors of everyone becoming an Inhuman coming out of this, but I like that the Terrigen bomb only effected those who are partially Inhuman in their ancestry.  It's the build-up and ancillary series that are let down.  Avenger in particular, which has been building to this cross-over for some 15 or so issues has been horrible, so I have include that preamble and the tie-ins, it would fall to a 3 out of 5 (most of the Avengers issues have been around a 2 or 2.5 out of 5 for me since Hickman took over).

...And we're back

Well...
that went off the rails quickly.

For a flotilla of reasons that all amount to life in general taking place (a couple of surgeries for my son, new boss at work, an uptick in workload, etc.), we've been gone for oooh, about four months now.  But we're back, and ready to get at it.  We resolve to try and do better on keeping up with the blog.  Some housekeeping announcements:

• Like the blog, the grand reading experiment(s) have taken a backseat to everything else.  There has been some progress, but I've been playing around with how I read.  For the golden age material, I've stopped reading it by month, but have started reading it by title/year.  However, the silver age, I'm still reading by publication date.  I was starting to struggle with the golden age material in terms of keeping up with all of the serialized parts when a single issue would have 6-10 serials to keep track of and it might be months between reading an issue.  I tried the same with the Silver Age, but on the Westerns in particular, it was too repetitive.  I needed a monster comic in between to break-up the monotony.  I am current on Marvel and DC (maybe a week behind), and I am about 1-2 months behind on the indies.
• Format.  I feel like my posts are still way too long, so here is what I am going to attempt: An overall score for the issue (out of 5), each story or serial with writer/artist, a one sentence synopsis, if merited a a few sentences of commentary, and individual story scores
• Upcoming posts in no particular order:
• A post I saved, but never published, on New Adventure Comics #26
• A post on Action Comics #1-7 (If this becomes overly long it will get broken into multiple posts)
• A post on Gunsmoke Western from 1960 (ditto here)
• A post on recommended indie reads
• A post on my thoughts on the current 3 big events in the big 2

Finally I'd like to cover some items from the geek-sphere that have happened while I was away:

• First and foremost Doctor Who.  I love the casting choice of Peter Capaldi, though I think we may lose some of the geek-girl audience.  I did the Snoopy dance when the recovery of Enemy of the World and Web of Fear from the Troughton era was announced.  Less then 100 missing episodes now, and I hold-out hope that were recoveries will be announced.
• Movies:  The only geek-cred movies I've seen this year are Man of Steel and The End of the World.  I've already talked about Man of Steel.  I liked End of the World and not being part of the stoner generation part deux, I prefer the Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg sensibility of humor than the Judd Apatow/Seth Rogen brand.  However, I felt like this was the weakest of the Cornetto trilogy.  It took too long for the shoe to drop, the plot got very bleak in the last 10 minutes of the film, and I'm not sure how to interpret the denouement for the Gary King character.  I give it a 3 out of 5.  Being the father of a (just turned) 4 and 7 year old, most of my cinema dollars go to kids fare.  Having seen the Croods, Turbo, Planes, and Monster University this summer, the best of the lot was the Croods, the biggest surprise was Planes (I expected a snooze fest and found it quite engaging), and the biggest disappointment/worst was Monsters University.  It had humor, it had a plot that made sense, but it was lacking in charm.  It really suffered from not having a Boo equivalent character.  When it ended, while I was trying to rally my feeling of 'meh' into something positive, my son looked up at me, frowned, and said, "That wasn't a good movie, daddy.  I didn't like it."  At that point, any attempt to justify and positively view what I had just watched went right down the drain.
• Genre TV: 
• Sleepy Hollow has been relatively good so far.  I'd give it an average of 3.5 out of 5.  I don't like the heavy repetition of revelation prophecy (making the female cop the prophesied second witness opposed to someone who is a bystander swept into the horror, I think is too much), but its managed to deliver some pretty consistent chills for primetime television, especially with their use of the always out of focus horned one.
• Agents of Shield I'd give a 3 out of 5 so far, but I'm two episodes behind because of a fall-break vacation last week.  I like the characters and the setup, but I'm waiting for it to break new ground in the Marvel cinema/TV universe, and I'm not sure it's going to be allowed to.  I'm not advocating a villain of the week approach per se, but if new and interesting supers can't be introduced and everything is down to Tesseract/Chitauri/Extremis tech, and they can't play with concepts like Vibranium, Unstable Molecules, etc. for fear of limiting or contradicting with the films, I think it will wear out it's welcome with geekdom quickly.  Using names without the actual characters will only get you so far.
• Once Upon a Time has re-engaged me, and I think the decision to approach it as two mini-seasons as opposed to one long one is wise since it was the feeling of the story being drawn out last year that lost me at the end.  However, if they don't reveal why Pan wants Henry beyond a simplistic "He's the True Believer" within the next couple of episodes, they will lose me again.
• Once Upon a Time in Wonderland:  It has an OK start (3 out of 5), but the danger of spin-offs is the continuity or lack of continuity affecting the audience's appreciation of the series.  I'm not sure if Cyrus is supposed to be the genie from Aladdin, because I think that is Sydney Glass, who I'm hoping shows up here.  Also, I'm not clear on the timeline -- after the flashback to little Alice, it says Present Day, but it appears the curse in Storybrooke hasn't been broken because Cinderella and Grumpy are going by their human identities, however the Knave makes reference to the Hatter being happy and never wanting to come back to Wonderland, which happened after the spell was broken.  Then, Alice is a mortal from the 18th century who is in an asylum in the 21st century.  How?  My last fault with the pilot was the end.  I know that the Once Upon a Time series typically uses CGI for the fantastical backgrounds, but the end-sweep was awful.  I wasn't sure if the tower where Jafar had Cyrus was supposed to be miles away or feet away.  A better choice would have been to pull-back to show them arrayed on chess squares to fit the Looking Glass motif that fits the use of the Red Queen.