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GH: DEFENDERS #120

As I’ve spoken about several times as we’ve looked at assorted issues that I bought over the years, DEFENDERS was a series whose best days were behind it by the time I started reading it. For a long stretch of time, it simply wasn’t very good–yet, as a dutiful Marvelite, I kept on buying it every month. I honestly could not tell you why, it’s just one of those crazy things that comic book readers…

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BHOC: IRON MAN #120

By the time this issue of IRON MAN came out, there was no mistaking the qualitative improvement the series had experienced, and it became a title that I really enjoyed every month. Whereas the IRON MAN of most of the prior decade had always felt a bit underpowered, prone to attacks from one medical condition or another and something of a pushover, Shell-Head under Michelinie. Romita and Layton…

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May the 4th be with you.

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Comics from Arcane for the week of May 4, 2024: The Night Eaters TP, Nightwing 2024 Annual, Superman: House of Brainiac Special 1, Minor Threats: The Fastest Way Down 2, Blood Hunt 1 Red Band Edition, The Savage Sword of Conan 2, Conan the Barbarian 5-8 Patch Zircher virgin variants, FCBD Absolute Power 1, FCBD Conan the Barbarian Battle of the Black Stone, FCBD Hellboy/Stranger Things, FCBD The Valiants, and FCBD Jonny Quest

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Comics from Arcane for the week of April 24, 2024: Green Arrow 11, The Expanse Dragon Tooth 11, Conan the Barbarian 10, Daredevil 8, Monstress 51, Power Girl 8, Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver 3, The Forged 7, and If You Find This I'm Already Dead 3.

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Comics from Arcane for the week of April 17, 2024: Helen of Wyndhorn 2, Superman 13, Jay Garrick The Flash 5, Bloodshot Unleashed Reloaded 2, Wonder Woman 8, Green Lantern War Journal 8, Titans 10, Nightwing 113, and Captain Marvel 7.

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reblog for sample size, please and thank you! I remembered to make this a full week-long poll

like the last poll, NO MULTIPLE OPTION! YOU HAVE TO PICK JUST ONE!!

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Tank Girl (1995) Directed by Rachel Talalay

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Cain and Abel. From SANDMAN and HOUSE OF MYSTERY. Brush and ink.

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Happy birthday to Evan Dorkin!

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Classic cover by Ric Estrada from Falling in Love #99, published by DC Comics, May 1968.

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Meanwhile...in the Not Every Superhero Needs a Sidekick department.

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April 1986. Long ago, back in the prehistoric days when you could still potentially buy both a new comic book and a candy bar for a single U.S. dollar, DC had a protracted flirtation with digest-sized comics, obviously intended to capture some of the supermarket checkout rack space normally dominated by Archie Comics. With very few exceptions, they were all-reprint, with a diverse array of material ranging from Golden Age reprints to '70s horror comics to recent DC highlights. This issue, #71 of the BEST OF DC BLUE RIBBON DIGEST line (which was only a "series" in a very technical sense), was one of the last, if not the last, of this eight-year experiment, and it sort of highlights why it became unworkable.

Let's suppose that you're a kid in early 1986, and while in line at the grocery store, you persuade your parental figure to buy you this comics digest. If they could spare the $1.50 plus tax, there was no obvious reason to object — it's a comic with a silly cartoon character on the cover and seems to have some Superman and Batman stuff, no big deal. What it contains, however, is a very peculiar assortment of recent material, including, inter alia:

"The Day the Earth Died" from SUPERMAN #408 (Paul Kupperberg/Ed Hannigan/Curt Swan/Al Williamson), a story about Superman's nuclear anxiety that begins with a rather harrowing dream sequence where Superman sees Metropolis destroyed by nuclear attack, leaving him the only survivor.

"Mogo Doesn't Socialize" from GREEN LANTERN #188, the now famous Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons short that introduced Mogo, the Green Lantern who's a planet.

Three ridiculous Keith Giffen stories: Blue Devil fighting the Trickster (from BLUE DEVIL #8); Ambush Bug trying to hassle Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman into guest-starring in his new miniseries (from ACTION COMICS #565); and a short in which the Atari Force's alien pet Hukka is terrorized by a robotic toy (from ATARI FORCE #20).

A tongue-in-check Batman adventure from BATMAN #383 (Doug Moench/Gene Colan/Bob Smith) in which our hero, in both his identities, desperately tries and repeatedly fails to get some sleep.

A solo story for Katana from BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS (Mike W. Barr/Jerome K. Moore) in which Tatsu murders some guys and recovers a stolen Japanese artifact with no dialogue or sound effects other than running radio commentary on a baseball game.

The well-known Alan Moore Swamp Thing story ("Rites of Spring," from SWAMP THING #34, drawn by Stephen Bissette and John Totleben) where Abigail Arcane and the Swamp Thing get very high on one of his psychedelic tubers and Abby gets her monsterfucker card punched, which editor Barbara Randall said had to be carefully recut not for content, but to get it to fit the page format.

This was a reasonably representative sampling of DC's 1985 output, but it's a weird lineup that's all over the place in tone and content. I have no idea what a hypothetical kid would have made of "Rites of Spring" upon encountering it in this format (by the time I happened upon my copy of this digest years later — for 50 cents — I'd already read it in TPB), but it would have been apparent that we were not in Riverdale anymore.

One nice thing about the digest series is that they often had some thoughtfully selected material; the themed issues are worthwhile, chosen with care even if the size and quality of reproduction were far from ideal. DC has occasionally put out conceptually similar packages, but not on a regular basis, usually in something more like regular comic book dimensions (the Walmart specials, for instance), not on a regular basis, and not on supermarket checkout racks.

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I’m populating a paintings only list. Email me for details at ragsmorales at ProtonMail dot com

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I’m paying to force seven thousand strangers to see a photo of my late husband having fun with his dog. Tumblr Blaze is totally worth it. XD

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ECCC 2024 purchase: Daredevil 44. Cover art by Gene Colan and Jim Steranko.