Celebrating Artist Scott Hampton

Celebrating the birthday of artist Scott Hampton (April 10, 1959) with his covers to the 3 issue mini-series, Black Widow...

...featuring Natasha Romanova and Yelena Belova (along with Daredevil) as the two are forced into each others identities for the length of the series.

Black Widow #1 and #2 (January and February, 2001)

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Black Widow #3 (March, 2001)

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Remembering Artist Gil Kane

Remembering artist Gil Kane on his birthday (April 6, 1926 - January 31, 2000) with a special Showcase on two of his most fondly remembered characters...Green Lantern and the Atom....with their Showcase covers!

Green Lantern Hal Jordan began his career in Showcase #22 (September-October, 1959), with the Atom Ray Palmer following with Showcase #34 (September-October, 1961)....and comics were never the same!

Showcase #23 and #24 (November-December, 1959 and January-February 1960)

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Showcase #35 and #36 (November-December, 1961 and January-February, 1962)

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Celebrating Artist Art Adams

Celebrating artist Art Adams on his birthday (April 5, 1963) with the covers to his 6 issue limited series featuring Longshot, an alien from another dimension who ended up in ours, without his memory but with the power of luck....

....which allowed him to evade Mojo (ruler of the land he escaped from) and Spiral (Mojo's assassin) with the help of Ricochet Rita (Rita Wayword) for a while (and later, hook up with the X-Men).

Longshot #1 and #2 (September and October, 1985)

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Longshot #3 and #4 (November and December, 1985)

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Longshot #5 and #6 (January and February, 1986)

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Remembering Artist Joe Orlando

Remembering artist Joe Orlando on his birthday (April 4, 1927 - December 23, 1998).  Though known more for his editing and work on horror comics, Joe worked on humor comics as well, handling the first 13 issues of Swing With Scooter...the adventures of an English singer who came to America to escape his fame, but wasn't that successful.

Scooter had a group of followers, including redhead Cynthia, brunette Penny, blond Cookie, friendly Sylvester, angry Malibu and hipster Kenny who served to lead him into all sorts of scrapes (at least until issue #14, where the mag turned into more of an Archie Comics clone).

Swing With Scooter #1 and #2 (June-July and August-September, 1966) 

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Swing With Scooter #3 and #4 (October-November, 1966 and December-January, 1966/1967) 

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Swing With Scooter #5 and #6 (February-March and April-May, 1967) 

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Swing With Scooter #7 and #8 (June-July and August-September, 1967) 

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Swing With Scooter #9 and #10 (October-November, 1967 and December-January 1967/1968) 

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Swing With Scooter #11 and #12 (February-March and April-May, 1968)

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Swing With Scooter #13  (June-July, 1968)

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Celebrating Artist Todd Nauck

Celebrating artist Todd Nauck (April 2, 1971) on his birthday with a few special covers to Young Justice, featuring the team.

The team started out with Robin, Superboy and Impulse (under the watchful eye of Red Tornado)...grew to add Secret, Wonder Girl and Arrowette...and then even Empress, Slobo and the Ray (and so many more!).

Young Justice #1 and #18 (September, 1998 and March, 2000)

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Young Justice #21 and Dark Crisis: Young Justice #1 (July, 2000 and August, 2022)

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Mad April Fools

What better way to celebrate April Fool's Day than with the biggest fool of all...Alfred E. Newman!

Here, from Mad Magazine #39 (May, 1958) with a cover painting by C.C. Beall Jr. and Mad Magazine #114 (October, 1967) with Alfred playing the fool for a cover by Norman Mingo.

Celebrating Artist Val Mayerik

Celebrating the birthday of artist Val Mayerik (March 29, 1950) with a couple of his covers featuring Frankenstein's Monster...Frankenstein Monster #18 (September, 1975) and Iron Man #101 (August, 1977).

Planet DC JSA And Batman

Here are the last two of the 8 Planet DC Annuals of 2000, focusing on heroes you know meeting heroes from foreign lands...

...this time around, the new heroes are Nemesis and the Boggart, who meet with the JSA and Batman.

JSA Annual #1 (October, 2000)

First up is Nemesis (Soseh Mykros) in a story by David Goyer, Uriel Caton and Wade von Grawbadger, as she fights the clones of Sportsmaster (an old JSA foe) as a way to battle the Council.  Soseh was the daughter of Dr. Anatol Mykros (who worked with the Council, which were thought to be defeated by Batman and the Mark Shaw Manhunter long ago.  Mykros experimented and had two daughters, Soseh and Ellina, both of whom had incredible regeneration abilities, as well as Eidetic Kinesthesia (the ability to duplicate any fighting style she encountered).  Meant to lead the Sportsmaster clones, Soseh felt what her father was doing was wrong, and opposed him, drawing her into battle with her sister.  While Soseh defeated Ellina and got away, she was injured and floated away in the Aegean Sea...

...where, in the second story in the annual (by Geoff Johns, Buzz and Jim Royal, as Buzz did the cover as well), Soseh ended up on Themyscira, home of the amazons, where, at the time, Hippolyta was acting as Wonder Woman, and training newer JSA members Black Canary, Star-Spangled Kid and Hawkgirl.  There, she related her tale and, having encountered the Sportsmaster clones before, the JSA decided to help, going to the back to the secret facility in Greece where the Council was cloning Sportsmaster, and destroyed it, with Soseh killing her sister along the way (a setback for the Council, who was allied with JSA foe, the Ultra-Humanite as well).  Nemesis continued fighting the Council with the help of the JSA, but ended up allying with Black Adam, where she was killed by Eclipso (all in the next few years of JSA books).

Batman Annual #24 (October, 2000)

The last of the new heroes from the Planet DC was the Boggart, as detailed in this story by John Ostrander, Jim Aparo and Sal Buscema (with a cover by Michael Kaluta).  On a rare vacation to England, Alfred Pennyworth ran into the beast...leaving him comatose, inviting a visit by Bruce Wayne (and Batman) to investigate.  Going to the place Alfred last was, Elsbeth Fields (call her Gran Puddin) was set to give Bruce her granddaughter, Rosemary....until Bruce was chased from the house by the Boggart.  Having Rosemary calm the Boggart, Gran Puddin explained that her son Harry, and new bride, Diana, had Rosemary with help from Lord Malvern, who, now claimed Rosemary.  

Bruce went to confront Geoffrey, Lord Malvern, who directly shooed Bruce from his mansion and made light of claims of the beast.  Going back as Batman, Bruce encountered security guard Grayle, as Rosemary and the Boggart went to the mansion as well.  When the girl and her imaginary friend got in, they found other children who also had imaginary friends, and found that Lord Malvern was experimenting to give children telekinetic powers....which manifested as imaginary friends.  Grayle, as a security guard representing other interests, tried the formula on himself, manifesting the beast.  Lord Malvern had a cure for the formula, but needed Batman to distract Grayle, and the Boggart to distract the beast, wherein Malvern gave Grayle the cure, and the beast disappeared.  Realizing Malvern was not malevolent, Gran Puddin gave her blessing for Rosemary to be trained at the mansion (with the Boggart reluctantly agreeing).

In the second story, also by Ostrander, Aparo and Buscema, Rosemary (and the Boggart, the manifestation of her powers) met Roland Royce, who was to study the Boggart (but the Boggart would have none of that).  The Boggart manifested badly, and, after being admonished by Rosemary, disappeared for a while.  Rosemary learned why Malvern was so intend on protecting children, having lost his son, William, who was the first recipient of the experiment, and killed himself because he couldn't handle the power.  With the help of the Boggart, Malvern and the spirit of his son reconciled.  Sadly, Rosemary and the Boggart never reappeared.

Celebrating Artist Glenn Fabry

Celebrating the birthday of artist Glen Fabry (March 24, 1961), who provided the painted covers to the Trenchcoat Brigade...

...a four issue mini-series featuring John Constantine, the Phantom Stranger, Doctor Occult and Mister E...four magic users in the DC universe united by their love of finely tailored coats.

Trenchcoat Brigade #1 and #2 (March and April, 1999)

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Trenchcoat Brigade #3 and #4 (May and June, 1999)

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Planet DC Flash And Green Lantern

Even more coverage of the Planet DC Annuals of 2000, where DC's greatest American heroes worked with heroes from other lands.

Here, the Flash (Wally West) teams up with the members of Super Malon including sorceress Salamanca), while Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner) meets Sala.

Flash Annual #13 (September, 2000)

Here it is a whole team of heroes in Argentina, in this story by Chuck Dixon and Enrique Alcatena, but first we start out with one of the earliest heroes, Jay Garrick, the Flash, trapped in some mystical land, while Wally West, the Flash, plays chess with Oracle in the JLA Watchtower on the moon.  There, Wally gets a mystical summons from Salamanca, and beams down to Argentina, where he faces the Peteys (little hairballs that are super fast servants of Gualicho).  Gualicho entraps Salamanca in a mystic bottle, with one of the Peteys taking it, leading Wally on a chase through Argentina, where it finally disappears.  

Wally uses his super speed to follow the Peteys' vibrations, ending up in the mystic land, where he meets Jay and the rest of the Super Malon (Cachiru, wolf Lobizon, blue costumed Pampero, brown hooded Vizacacha,  swashbuckling Cimarron, jaguar styled Yaguarette and horse headed Bagual), where they explain that Flash must race los Peteys and win or become trapped in phantom form as they are (and do it before the solstice or the wizard Gualicho can free himself from this land Salamanca trapped him in).  Wally starts to race the Peteys, but instead confronts Gaulicho, freeing Salamanca from the bottle, so she can free the rest from their phantom forms, and combined, beat Gaulicho.

In the second story, also by Dixon/Alcatena, readers learn of the romantic ties between Salamanca and Cachiru, as the duo have to deal with a ghostly Mazorquero (a secret police member of a governor of Argentina long ago) who haunts the Dona Rosario Echeverria, an old woman who was dying....and, the love of Jose, who was that secret guard, who was waiting for her to die to be with her, leaving Salamanca and Cachiru to decide if they would resurrect their old affair.  Salamanca and most of the Super Malon appear again in Wonder Woman #186 and #187, with Salamanca attending a meeting of mystics in Infinite Crisis.

Green Lantern Annual #9 (September, 2000)

Meanwhile, in Tunisa, Sala is introduced in a story by Timothy Truman, Koi Turnbull and John Lowe (with a cover by Truman), starting with demons of the air decimating a small tribe, raising one of them from the dead to become Pazuzu (who will open the gateway).  Soon after, on an archeological dig in the area, Sala Nisaba and friends (including Assan) find an old well that is a passageway to the gates of hell, with local soldiers killing all but Sala and Assan, as Green Lantern appears to save them.  Sala recognizes Kyle (as they attended college classes together), and, along with the old man the soldiers were torturing, go to explore the well. 

There, they find the wall keeping the Kurnugi (Babylonian Underworld) from invading Earth.  Sala finds the ruins to explain the wall, that it keeps Nergal (lord of terror), his wife (Ereskigal) and her evil mother (Tiamat), the demon lord (Pazuzu) and Humbaba (entrail faced demon) away from Earth.  Istar (the lady of heaven) and her ring bearer (Ninurta) fought to keep them back there in ancient times...and, Kyle finds the ring bearer was an agent of Oa (and the Guardians of the Universe).  Then, the demons appear and take Sala and the rest to Kurnugi, where the family plots to escape (and against each other...), but needed the ring of one of the Guardians' agents (Kyle) as well as Istar's ringstaff to get free, which they now have.  They also reveal that Sala was a descendant of Istar and Ninurta, and has the power of Istar...

In the second story, by Tim Truman and Paul Ryan, the plans continue, with the family sending their demons into Kyle to try to get him to relinquish the ring, which they eventually do, but even as Nergal opens the gateway, Kyle continues to fight, with Sala fully embracing her new identity as the lady of battle.  Kyle gets Assan as Sala continues to fight the family, with Sala getting Kyle his ring, as he and Assan escape through the gateway, but leaving Sala behind.  Kyle would return to help Sala in the JLA: Gatekeeper mini-series, with Sala later appearing in the Infinite Crisis Special: Day of Vengeance.

A Deadly St. Patrick's Day

Have a happy St. Patrick's Day, but be careful to celebrate safely...

...that means no Poison Ivy, even if she is green, here on the cover to Batman: The Long Halloween #6 (May, 1997) by Tim Sale.

Planet DC Superman And Titans

Continuing coverage of the Planet DC Annuals of 2000...this time around with groups meeting solo heroes over the world.

Superman gets a chance to work with Iman, El Muerto and Acrata, while the Titans team up with Bushido.

Superman Annual #12 (August, 2000)

There are three heroes here...Iman, El Muerto and Acrata, in a story by Brian K. Vaughn, Carlo Barberi, Marlo Alquiza and Juan Vlasco (with a cover by Humberto Ramos and Wayne Faucher), Clark Kent gets a temporary assignment in the Mexican version of the Daily Planet, where he meets the local Mexican heroes, a group of individuals who have been working together fighting one menace, terrorists attacking Mexico City.  Acrata (Andrea Rojas, using her mystic powers, disappears into the darkness) to find the source of the problems, while El Muerto (Pablo Valdez, a young boy who died trying to be a hero like Superman, who came back to life to still fight the good fight) and Iman (Diego Irigoyen, a boy genius who became an astronaut, only to return to Earth to find his parents murdered, built a suit of armor to fight crime) and Superman tracked the menace down their way.  

Together, they tracked down Duran, who was using mystic menaces and Brett Dechamps and his environmental group, Earth Rights, to destroy civilization to prevent pollution.  Using her mystic amulet, Acrata powered Superman with the ancient magic allowing him to defeat Duran. 

In the second story, by Oscar Pinto, Francisco Haghenbeck, Carlo Barberi and Juan Vlasco, reporter Gary Hoffman delved into the secrets of Iman, El Muerto and Acrata, as well as situations that Earth Rights had set up, and even a little of the mystic history leading up to that final battle with a researcher for prehispanic cultures, Professor Bernard Rojas (secretly, Acrata's father)....at least until he was killed by the mystic forces unleashed before the main story.

These heroes would have later appearances, with Iman appearing in Final Crisis and Justice League: Cry For Justice; El Muerto popping up in Day Of Vengeance and Infinite Crisis and Acrata appearing in Birds of Prey #100 and Justice League of America #54, #55, #58 and #59.

Titans Annual #1 (September, 2000)

Meanwhile, over in Japan, Bushido debuts in a story by Geoff Johns, Benjamin Raab, Josue Justiniano and Christopher Ivy (with cover by Justiniano).  Flamebird and Beast Boy find themselves in Japan, where they get involved in a battle between Bushido (Ryuko Orsono) and Tengu, a battle which had raged on from generations (Tengu having killed Bushido's mother during a battle they had, which resulted in his inheriting her legacy and weapons to fight the demons which plagued their homeland).  In this battle, Tengu possessed Beast Boy and fled, with Flamebird left behind to explain things to the Titans (Nightwing, Flash/Wally West, Troia, Tempest and Arsenal) and prevent Bushido from killing Beast Boy in his zest to end Tengu.  Bushido and the Titans fight each other and Tengu, with Bushido eventually ending Tengu and his possession of Beast Boy (with Gar surviving).

In the second story, by Johns, Raab and Rick Mays, the origins of Bushido and his line are explored, the weapons he used that are possessed by the spirits of his ancestors, and the bloody legacy he has to deal with as he fights the Yakusa at his mother's gravesite...all the while thinking that perhaps he needed others to work with to save his own soul.  Working with the Titans was a blessing and a curse for Bushido (in Titans Secret Files and Origins, Titans #25 and #32) as it lead him to be there for an attack by Superboy-Prime in Infinite Crisis, resulting in his death....but he did return as a Black Lantern in Adventure Comics #4 and #5.

Celebrating Martial Artist Chuck Norris

Celebrating the birthday of martial artist/actor Chuck Norris (March 10, 1940) with the covers to his Marvel Star Comics mini-series, Chuck Norris Karate Kommandos based on the Ruby Spears cartoon of the same name...a series that featured Chuck working with a group of martial arts enthusiasts (samurai warrior Kemo, apprentice Reed, Pepper the mechanic, sumo champion Tabe and Too Much, Chuck's young ward) fighting crime with martial arts, especially the criminal organization VULTURE, lead by Claw and his ninjas!  

Issues #5 and #6 are rumored to exist, but no proof has yet been found!

Chuck Norris #1 and #2 (January and March, 1987)

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covers by Mike Zeck and John Beatty; M. D. Bright and Joe Rubinstein

Chuck Norris #3 and #4 (May and July, 1987)

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covers by Tom Morgan and Mark McKenna; Alex Saviuk and Bob McLeod

Veronica In Timely Trouble

Think you are having trouble with Daylight Saving Time?  Well, try being Veronica Lodge, who is having big trouble with time in London, England, as she hangs around Big Ben...in this bit from Veronica #14 (April, 1991) with cover by Dan Parent and Hy Eisman.