Tales From the Vault: Lois Lane #93

Welcome back to another gripping installment of Tales From the Vault, where we read comics so you don't have to. Or something like that. So what's on the docket today? How about a prime example of some Silver Age superdickery, courtesy of Lois Lane #93, guest starring Wonder Woman? Grab your kryptonite and cinch up your red underpants, because this one is a doozy.

And don't forget to click on the images to enbiggen them.

Details: This issue of Lois Lane (technically, the series is titled Superman's Girl Friend Lois Lane, but I refuse to use that title for reasons that are about to become obvious) has a cover date of July, 1969. The comic doesn't have any credits, because DC was really into the whole corporate factory thing at this point, but it's by writer Robert Kanigher and artists Irv Novick and Mike Esposito. Anyone who knows Kanigher has a pretty good idea of the madness that is about to ensue, so it's probably just as well they didn't scare the kids by putting his name on the first page.

Synopsis: First off, this issue came out during the short-lived I-Ching era of Wonder Woman, which for those of you who aren't Chinese means the brief period when Wonder Woman lost all of her super powers, got rid of her costume and fought crime using amazing kung-fu taught to her by her blind Asian mentor I-Ching. That's a real thing. I did not just make that up.

So, to the story: Wonder Woman is in Metropolis to help Superman out by performing with him in the circus. Finally, someone realized what a freak that alien tool is. Or, actually, it's for charity. Naturally, Lois is on hand to cover the story for the Daily Planet, and just as naturally she immediately becomes insanely jealous to the point of having nightmares about the possibility of Wonder Woman stealing her man. Here's a tip, Lois: If he can be stolen, he's not really your man. Think about it.

Anyway, Perry White loves the article so much that he assigned her to follow Wonder Woman and Superman around. This plan goes wrong right away as it's clear that Superman is, in fact, falling for Wonder Woman. So she tags around behind them like a lame duck while they do things like try on wigs at Wonder Woman's boutique (don't ask) and go dancing at a hippie night club. No, really:




In fact, Superman gets so into the dancing that he accidentally uses his super speed and sets the dance floor on fire. Now that's cutting a rug. Anyway, irritated by the gathering crowd, he and Wonder Woman fly off to enjoy themselves in private, ditching Lois in the process, who can only watch forlornly as they fly off - something that will happen more than once in this comic (foreshadowing!).

Lois, though, is made of sterner stuff, so she decides to fight for her man. Literally: She hires a judo and karate expert to train her. And after a super cool training montage, where Lois becomes a martial arts master, she's ready to challenge Wonder Woman. Oh, it's on!



Unfortunately for Lois, Wonder Woman without her powers is still Wonder Woman, so she immediately decks Lois, throwing her ass-over-teakettle, slamming her into the ground and then pimp-slapping the hell out of her, all while Superman perches on a rock and has the time of his life, no doubt concealing a super-boner as the ladies catfight for his love. You'll want to click on this to see it in all it's... glory:




Honestly, it's downright disturbing. Here's a closeup of his face as he watches the fight:




Nothing gives him as much pleasure as seeing Lois get beat to a pulp. Think I'm exaggerating his super-assholitude? Check out the end of the fight where, unable to walk, Lois crawls on her hands and knees, literally praying for Superman's love. His response? He flies off with Wonder Woman again, leaving Lois broken, bloodied and lying in the dirt:






As it happens, though, Lois still has an ace up her sleeve. See, all along Superman has told her that he can't marry her ever because, as a normal human, she would be an easy target for villains bent on revenge. And since Wonder Woman has no powers any more, it means Superman can't marry her. Which is why Lois is so shocked and horrified when Wonder Woman suddenly saves an exploding NASA rocket using flight, invulnerability and super strength. How? Why? WHYYYYYYYYYY?!

Well, it doesn't matter why, because now that Wonder Woman has powers again, it's a done deal: Superman proposes and she accepts. Better yet, Lois gets the assignment to cover the wedding, so she has to trail around behind Wonder Woman while Diana shops for her wedding dress. And she's totally bitchy about it too, delivering the stone cold line "Now you can come and watch me shop!" when Lois asks if she can instead get a look at Wonder Woman's new mansion.

Lois isn't the best reporter in Metropolis for nothing, though. She figures something must be up. And sure enough, she quickly (well, it's page 18, so not that quickly) uncovers the truth. Sneaking over to Wonder Woman's new mansion, she discovers the real Wonder Woman locked in a basement cell. Turns out the Wonder Woman who has been wooing Superman is actually a Kryptonian imposter, escaped from the Phantom Zone. But before Lois can rescue Diana, the fake Wonder Woman returns, and, after declaiming her origin, blasts Lois with a disintigrator ray.

Except! Superman flies in out of nowhere and destroys the ray gun before she can fire it. Then he frees Diana and Lois and shunts the villainess off to the Phantom Zone. So how did Superman know what was going on? Was the whole charade a clever plot on his part to uncover her evil scheme?

Well, no. Turns out he happened by totally by chance. See, he was looking for Lois to tell her he had decided not to marry Wonder Woman after all. So for those keeping score, everything Superman did in this issue -- acting like the biggest a-hole in the universe, two-timing with Wonder Woman and then proposing to her -- it was all totally real, because Superman had NO IDEA she was an imposter. And forget about how crappy Lois must feel about all this, imagine how totally awkward Superman's next conversation with Wonder Woman must have been. "Wait, you fell in love with 'me?' And you got engaged to someone you thought was me? Did you guys, like... do it? You know what, I don't even want to know."

Really, how creepy is that?

THE END!!!

Extras: There's a letter from DC in the back of the book explaining why they had to raise their price from 12 cents to 15 cents. It had been a dime since issue #30, but it would only be 20 issues before the price was raised again with #112. There's also a full page ad with a bunch of comic book covers and a giant blurb that says "Dynamite's Coming!" in huge letters. What does that mean? Who the hell knows. I'm guessing they were just trying to think of words that started with D and C.

My Grades: For sheer WTFness, this issue gets a solid A. Superman, on the other hand, gets an F for being the worst "boyfriend" ever and just for being a gigantic douchenozzle. Lois is a toss up; on the one hand she shows guts and gumption, as usual, battling Wonder Woman in hand to hand combat. On the other hand, she's still in the lovelorn fool mode DC stuck her in for pretty much all of the 1950's and 60's. So I'm giving her an Incomplete. I-Ching Wonder Woman, though, is tops, so she gets an A for not kicking Superman right in the junk when she found out he was banging her doppelganger. Even though I would pay a lot of money to see that happen -- the kick part, not the banging part.

Free Lois!

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Top 5 Oddball Wedding Covers

Hey, welcome back to The Vault's overview of weddings in comics. I would have posted this sooner, except I was at a wedding. See how that works? But with the revelry safely behind me, I'm free now to take a look at today's topic: the Top 5 Oddball Wedding Covers.

Now, before we reveal the list, I want to say that one of the great things about the word "top" is that it's really vague. I'm not claiming that these are the best oddball wedding covers, I'm just saying they are the "top" oddball wedding covers. You know what that means: these are just the ones I know about. Given the nature of wedding covers in comics history, I'm sure there are dozens of truly bizarre horror covers and romance covers in particular. Many of those are probably far weirder than the five I have picked, but for whatever reason, these are the five that have stood out for me.

So here's a challenge for you, my interactive readers: if you have any favorite wedding covers that haven't made my list (or tomorrow's list of the Top 5 Superhero Weddings) let me know about it and if there are enough cool covers I'll do a follow-up feature on reader submissions.

Otherwise, stop complaining and read on.



5. Jonah Hex #47

I'd like to give a shoutout to honorable mention Groo the Wanderer #42, which almost made the cut but got bumped by one of my personal favorites, the wedding of Jonah Hex. This choice was influenced by the fact that this issue kicked off a typically out there Hex storyline that eventually saw the bounty hunter head to China to rescue his immigrant bride from kidnapping warlords who wanted to force him to assassinate the Emperor. Why the hell not.












4. Rip Hunter, Time Master #24

This is what happens when you time travel: you mess up history. Case in point? This cover, which shows the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth, deciding to destroy all of history by marrying Rip Hunter, Time Master. Suck on that, Earl of Leicester!














3. Amazing Spider-man #131

An entire generation of young comic readers are still traumatized nearly four decades later by the image of Aunt May tying the knot with Doctor Octopus. Don't even think about the honeymoon. Agh, get the brain bleach! And the eye bleach! Why, Gerry Conway, why?!













2. Wonder Woman #155

Despite the fact that Wonder Woman is about to marry a disgusting alien monstrosity, I still find this easier to look at than the whole Aunt May / Doc Ock thing. Seriously, ugh. Bonus points, though, for having alternate timeline versions of herself, including Wonder Tot, as part of her own wedding party.














1. Jimmy Olsen #98

What else could number one possibly be except Jimmy Olsen #98, which not only sees Jimmy getting hitched to a female gorilla, but also sees the always politically correct Superman dressed up as a "witch doctor" and performing the ceremony using black magic. Score one for the 1950's (and make sure you click on this one to look at the larger version).


Tomorrow (or whenever): The Top 5 Superhero Weddings!

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Tales From the Vault: WONDER WOMAN #215

What can even two super-heroes do against the awesome might of Mars, the God of War?! Your answer to that question will depend entirely on whether or not you consider Aquaman to be a super-hero. Let's find out the answer... together!


Details: This issue comes to us with a cover date of January, 1975, with a story credited to writer Cary “Nord” Bates and the art team of John Rosenberger and Vince Colletta. Of course, merely by typing the name “Vince Colletta” I have made myself the target of a thousand infuriated internet art policemen, but so be it. Plus, I wanted to reiterate how much I loved John Rosenberger on Cheers.

I’d also like to mention the cover, which is classic mid-70’s DC, complete with an ineffectual Aquaman watching the action helplessly in the background. Hey Aquaman, how’s your son these days? Oh, right. And, of course, this cover is vastly more fun if you read the “Super-heroine Number One!” blurb with an offensively racist caricature of a Chinese accent. I can’t wait to read the actual story.

Especially because that story is titled “Amazon Attack against Atlantis!” Yes, folks, it’s another Amazon Attacks! Or, rather, the original Amazon Attacks. Place your bets on how many infants will be murdered before Batman uses the Books of Magic or something to defeat, I dunno, Hera. Vegas has the over/under at eleven.

Synopsis: The action starts off with a bang, as Wonder Woman is just finishing what appears to be a spirited verbal beatdown of the god of war, Mars, who… uh, is on the JLA satellite for some reason. Hanging out, tossing back a few beers with his buds I guess. Actually, it turns out he’s being tried by a jury that consists of Aquaman, Black Canary, Green Arrow, Elongated Man and Batman. What, were the Inferior Five busy that day? Strangely, Mars seems perfectly at ease with being put on trial by this collection of ragamuffins, and merely states that it is Diana’s word against his. It’s a stalemate.

Except, Mars hasn’t factored in the testimony of Aquaman! Seriously, a supervillain forgot to take Aquaman into account? That’s almost impossible to believe. But, sure enough, Aquaman jumps up and exposits that they’re right in the middle of a series of trials designed to prove that Wonder Woman is still worthy of membership in the league, and as part of this he has been following her around, watching her every move. Pre-code this is what would have been referred to as “stalking”. Good cover story, Arthur! Of course, given the total creampuff lineup the JLA is sporting in this issue, the idea that they would have to spend more than one second debating Wonder Woman’s merits is pretty hard to believe, but whatever.

(Yes, fine, Wonder Woman requested these tests herself. It is kind of ironic that the tests takes the form of a series of trials that seems directly patterned on the legend of Hercules, though, given Diana’s history with him).

Anyhoo, back to the story, which goes like so. Aquaman is flopping around uselessly in the East River one day when he sees Wonder Woman flying overhead. Suddenly, a big arm made of water reaches up and smacks her down. Aquaman briefly panics, apparently assuming Wonder Woman can’t swim, but she’s fine: using her magic lasso, she, uh… throws it up in the air and then climbs it like a reverse “Indian rope trick!” Say what? That’s… crazy… wtf. Oh, wait, I can fanwank my way out of this; she must have lassoed the end of her invisible plane. Sure. Of course, she seemed to be flying under her own power here, but… you know what, let’s just move on.

She then corrals the waterspout with her lasso and spins it counter clockwise, causing the water to disperse harmlessly and ending the threat. Aquaman is duly impressed, then jumps onto the shore and resumes his aggressive stalking, using a “land-pack” that consists of a suit stuffed into a sack. Diana, for her part, is doing the same thing, except she’s using her lasso to switch costumes because “Diana’s costume has been treated with a special solution that transforms it under the vibrations of the magic lasso!” Why doesn’t it surprise me that the Amazons have mastered the art of vibration based powers?

Rushing to her job in the U. N. Crisis Bureau… wait, holy sh*t! The U.N. is responsible for Crisis?! Let me guess, the Monitor is actually Kofi Annan? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is being sanctioned because he’s secretly developing the anti-life equation? Darfur was caused by Wen Jaibao punching the walls of reality? I have to say, this actually makes world politics a whole lot easier to understand.

Also helping to understand the inner workings of the U.N. is Aquaman, who manages to secretly eavesdrop on these classified briefings by having a tank full of goldfish telepathically relay the info to him. Then he trails behind Diana and her boss as they wander around to find a cheap lunch in Manhattan. Now, that seriously is a job for the Justice League. Suddenly, though, a guy walks by with a bunch of dogs that abruptly transform into huge wolf things and attack Diana right in the street! Oh noes!

Luckily, Diana remembers her I-Ching training and karate chops the crap out of them, including one wolf which still looks a lot like a huge, fanged poodle (which is… awesome). Then we get a half page of U.N. personnel trying to figure out if Diana is actually Wonder Woman, and… wow, I couldn’t care less about all that secret identity bullhockey. Even when this issue came out it was tedious and hackneyed.

Also not caring about it is Aquaman, who is too busy explaining plot elements as part of his deposition to the JLA. See, while this is going on, a horde of telepathic fish is trying to contact him, but they can’t because this mysterious figure who has been causing the attacks on Diana zaps them all senseless. Or, as senseless as a pile of fish can ever be, I guess. At the same time, Wonder Woman realizes that the Amazons aren’t answering their “mental radio set” or the “omni-viewer”, so she starts becoming concerned and decides to fly to Paradise Island to check on them using her “robot plane”. Quotes courtesy of Jack Kirby.

Interestingly, Aquaman isn’t sure what to at this point:

Aquaman: Paradise Island’s location is a secret that no man is supposed to know! If Wonder Woman flies there by air – I can swim fast enough to trail her by sea – but should I?

Leaving aside for a moment the idea that Aquaman can swim as fast as a jet, I find this bit of soul searching to be interesting, especially in light of the fact that just two issues earlier, in Wonder Woman #213, Flash follows her to Paradise Island without a second thought, even following her onto the island (getting by the “no man shall set foot on the island” thing by hovering in place an inch off the ground, which is a serious cop out on his part). In this comparison, Aquaman comes off a lot better than Flash, who seems a bit disrespectful if not outright disdainful of their customs. Have some respect, Barry, you knob.

Before he can decide what to do, though, Aquaman realizes he’s been out of the water for an hour and needs to get wet or else he’ll die from “air-aches”. Um. Okay, whatever. Rushing over to a nearby fountain, he reaches in to restore himself when it suddenly turns into a giant gusher of pure crude oil. And not only does this prevent him from getting his fix of h2o, the gusher hits Diana’s plane flying overhead and then magically turns to solid coal, trapping it in place.

Wow. I don’t know if Mars is behind this, but the least he could do if he’s going to kill the JLA is do it in a more Earth friendly way. Oil, coal… how about using solar power or wind turbines next time, huh? Taking over the world won’t do much good if the world dies from carbon emissions, dude.

Diana, though, has other things to worry about. She flies up into mid air and using… a cloud?... as leverage, she lifts her plane and the coal pile right up into the air, smashes the coal all to hell and jumps in her plane and flies off. Man, someone is going to be surprised when they go out to their car in the morning and find it buried under a half ton of coal. Luckily for Aquaman, the coal doesn’t land on him, but he’s got other things to worry about, namely the “air fever” that is about to claim his life. Lying on the ground, he’s about to kack when a bunch of kids rush up and stare at him. Like they’ve never seen a guy passed out on a New York sidewalk before, sure; Mars, I’ll believe, but this is pushing the limits of fantasy. Anyway, Aquaman is too weak to say anything, but he does have enough energy to suddenly do a huge karate kick and clobbers a kid’s can of TAB, dousing him with soda and restoring his energy. That’s just gross.

But things are going from bad to worse: Diana arrives at Paradise Island to discover that it’s missing! And Aquaman gets a telepathic message from a panicked minnow in the sewers, who gives Aqauaman terrible news. No, it’s not about being flushed by some kid’s mom, it’s about Atlantis being attacked… by AMAZONS!!! Yes, the missing Paradise Island is now parked directly above Atlantis; apparently the island moved when Ben turned the magic wheel under the hatch or something. But however it got there, the war is about to begin.

Turns out that Hippolyta and all the ladies have been ensorcelled by Mars, which we discover when Mars shows up and tells Wonder Woman his plan. I think this sort of thing is how Batman got his rep as such a great detective; it helps when villains tell you what they are doing and why. Essentially, it turns out that Mars is bored of war and because of this, he is no longer gaining as much energy from warfare as he used to. He needs some new, exciting type of war to recharge his batteries, so he came up with this plan.

Of course, telling the details to Diana might have been a tactical flaw, but what do you want? I mean, he’s only the god of war, tactics aren’t his strong po… oh, wait. And sure enough, Wonder Woman figures out a plan right away which she immediately communicates to Aquaman using sign language. Do they teach ASL in Atlantis and on Paradise Island? Regardless, the plan is like so: a horde of whales swim up out of nowhere and prevent the Amazons and the Atlanteans from getting at each other. While this is going on, Wonder Woman attacks Mars. He easily deflects her attacks, slapping her around…

…but suddenly, he shrinks down to regular ol’ human size, instead of being god-tall, and Diana socks him in the gut with a karate chop. Turns out, the energy of setting everything in motion drained all his remaining power, so by preventing the sides from warring, the whales also prevented Mars from replenishing his energy, making him easy prey for Diana.

And that’s that. Aquaman finishes his story (by the way, his testimony is backed up by a "lung fish", which can "not only mimic human speech -- but repeat word for word what it has heard". That's right folks, someone has finally found a pet more annoying than a parrot) and the rest of the Justice League (if you can call them that) render their verdict: they’ve found him guilty and are going to send him to the “top-security interplanetary prison”.

Whoa, what? On who’s authority? Is this one of those Dr. Light brainwashing moments, where the JLA arbitrarily decide to take one of Earth’s elder gods and throw him in the space clink? Don’t the other gods have an issue with this? And wouldn’t this provide exposure to exactly the kind of exotic warfare he needs to replenish his bored batteries? I dunno, y’all, this seems like a really shady deal all around. But,

THE END!!!


Extras: One thing that caught my eyes was a page advertising DC subscriptions. The top half is trying to sell you on The Amazing World of DC Comics, which was an in-house magazine with interviews and behind the scenes look at DC. I used to actually own a bunch of these and like a fool I sold them; now I wish I had them back, because I’m sure they’re fascinating. I doubt they can match the kind of whacked out, adult themed discussions Marvel was printing over in FOOM but if I get the chance to land some of these cheap I’ll definitely be looking into it.

The bottom half of the subscription page is for actual comics. It includes a long note trying to explain the pricing, since some titles are bi-monthly “100-Page Super Spectaculars” and others are monthly, regular size comics that may sometimes have 60 page specials mixed in. DC swears that “the subscription price is never more than the cost of buying sinlge copies at your local retailer”, but since the price for a subscription is $3, and the cover price of the monthly titles is 20 cents, you can see that a year should only cost $2.40. Man would I not have wanted to be in the subscription department to try and figure out the exact mix of 20 cent and 60 cent issues they had to send – or had already sent – to give someone the correct number of comics for their money. Add to this the fact that the price went up to 25 cents just a couple months later and this is a disaster waiting to happen. Plus, the titles listed appear to be a completely random cross section of comics DC was publishing at the time – even though this ad is in Wonder Woman, for instance, Wonder Woman itself isn’t listed as one of the options, though you can of course order a sub to titles such as Shazam!, The Witching Hour, Young Romance and Tarzan.

I have a feeling this ad wasn’t real successful.


My Grades: Um. This comic had its moments. It’s interesting in that it’s not as campy as a lot of the fun, campy stuff DC was putting out at the time, but nor is it as serious as some of the more serious stuff they were producing either. It felt like Bates was trying to write a solid superhero adventure but got bogged down by some of the trappings of the genre that DC was forcing him to include, like the secret identity stuff, which was already outdated when this appeared. It’s hard to dock someone points for being alive in the wrong time period, though, so I’ll give this a B for the 1970’s, even though it’s only a C+ at best for me reading it now.

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New Comic Cavalcade

Today in New Comic Cavalcade, we review a batch of shiny comics, hot off the presses, including Thor Annual #1 and Warlord #6. But first, we'll start off with something a little different from my usual reading list... Wonder Woman!


Wonder Woman #35
Gail Simone and Aaron Lopresti

Confession time: in my two and a half decades of reading comics, I've never actually purchased a new issue of Wonder Woman. Hard to believe considering some of the other random crap I've bought over the years (yes, I did buy a copy of Youngblood #1, but it was for snark purposes only, okay?), but sadly true. I like the character well enough in theory, but in practice when I look through her comics there just doesn't seem to be any there there, if you know what I mean.

Well, after a critically reviled new launch, the current series of Wonder Woman has been handed over to arguably the most prominent female writer in comics, Gail Simone. With this in mind, I decided to actually give Wonder Woman a try and read #35. My verdict: it's okay.

That may seem a bit tepid, but it's not meant as a slight. The comic was okay. It wasn't bad. I didn't dislike it. In fact, I might be interested enough to read the next issue. There were a few strikes against me going into this issue, of course, the main one being that it's the second part of a two-parter so I had no idea what was going on (and I haven't read an issue of Wonder Woman published after 1975, so I really have no idea what's going on). Simone handles this okay, though; while there were a few points I was confused at, most of it wasn't major enough to detract from the book. I did have a couple issues with the story -- for instance, a pretty big deal is made of her using her lasso to free one character from mind control, only to have that character basically vanish until the last couple pages which made me wonder what the big deal was. Also, the story set-up kind of didn't have a lot to do with the climax; part way through a Fight Club type competition, this goddess shows up and shunts Diana to this island somewhere and the two fight/talk it out there, with basically no connection to the preceding events. In other words, I was just getting into the framework of the story only to find out that the important stuff had almost nothing to do with the set-up. That was a bit of a bummer.

On the other hand, I really liked the relationship between Wonder Woman and Black Canary. Yes, I'm a sucker for Black Canary anyway, but this was really nicely done and I'd like to see more of it. And even though I didn't know what they were talking about and was a little miffed about the whole Fight Club frame story being ignored, I was intrigued by the developments between Diana and Pele.

Overall, then, I have to say the book was okay. It almost seemed like this should have been a longer story, maybe three issues, something I never thought I would say in this day and age; if the battle with Pele was the middle part and they had come back to a full issue of Fight Club, Dr. Psycho and Sarge Steel, with Black Canary battling hordes of villains and whatnot, it would have felt like the set-up was a more important and more organic element. As it was, the ending seemed a bit rushed, like two stories had been grafted together at the last second. So while it was pretty good, it could have been better.

But that's a good thing. I read a lot of comics these days that seem like there's basically no hope. For my first issue of Wonder Woman, then, the fact that it has potential is a pretty big positive.

My Grade: I'm going to give it a B instead of a B-. There wasn't anything really actively bad in this issue, it just didn't live up to its full potential.



Thor Annual #1
Peter Milligan, Mico Suayan, Tom Grindberg and Stefano Gaudiano

Another month, another issue of Thor that's not actually an issue of Thor. Granted, at least this is an annual, which suggests it's part of the actual Thor storyline, but it also would be cool if Marvel could put out a monthly Thor comic without having to resort to untold dozens of one-shots and side projects. Back in my day, we called those fill-in issues, and putting lipstick on a pig doesn't make it a prom queen.

Of course, the weird truth is that most of those fill-ins were actually better than the main comic. That's not the case with this Annual though, and you can take that for whatever you want. Yes, this story does tie in directly with the main storyline going on in Thor. It's a perfectly serviceable modern comic, which is to say that the writing is fine, the art is fine, a bunch of red shirts and casually murdered to give the story impact and everything that happens is set-up for some future story. Sometimes those future stories actually deliver on this promise and then sometimes you publish five years of New Avengers.

If I seem overly harsh on this comic, well, it's not really that bad of course. The comic is fine. It does have a couple good parts, namely the return of one of Thor's arch-enemies, the Egyptian death god Seth. And it moves the story of Thor along from a character standpoint, as he is able to put behind him his unintentional killing of his grandfather Bor. They also use multiple artists to good effect, with some guy named Mico Suayan providing really nice pencils for the frame story. So, yeah, it's fine. I just hope that at some point it leads to something.

My Grade: Two grades for this one. The actual comic itself gets a B. It's fine. My enjoyment of the comic deserves a C, however. Thor's been back in the Marvel Universe for two years or more now; I'm not really in the mood for even more set-up at this point.



Warlord #6
Mike Grell and Chad Hardin

Speaking of getting to the point, here's Warlord #6, the last issue of the introductory arc from Mike Grell. As my legions of long-time readers know, there's probably no comic being published now that I want to succeed more than Warlord. Please, Comic Gods, let this comic live!

Unfortunately, while this issue is a decent climax to the story, it's also still not that great. I just can't get into the art. Some of the page layouts are decent -- there are some nice sequences with big, dramatic fight scenes -- but other caused me to reread the page multiple times to figure out just what was happening. And even when the layouts were good, the actual artwork just didn't float my boat anyway. Plus, the ending (not the second ending, which is a set-up for Deimos (yawn)) was a bit of a puzzler. If Jennifer was powerful enough to block this guy's magic and send him fleeing for another world, why did any of this need to happen? And just where did he end up in that last panel? Is he back on Earth, trapped in a cave because of the rockslide from previous issues? Or is he inside that temple, buried by the rubble from that cannon blast? Or... what?

I have no idea what's going to happen in the next storyline, but I'm begging you guys at DC: if you're reading this, bring in a different artist, because something needs to be done to save this book. The sales are terrible. Grell is a fine writer, but this isn't his strongest stuff and he really writes best for himself anyway. But whatever you do, if this book gets canceled, for the love of god you'd better tie up this Tinder subplot before it ends or I will explode like a supernova. And yes, I am going to mention this in every single review of Warlord until they resolve it.

My Grade: C+. But the covers are still all A's at least.

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