David tagged posts

DC and Hanna-Barbara are back with yet another crossover special. This time they are taking us back to 1976 to bring together a character I have no recollection of before his current CW series (which I actually thought was a Netflix exclusive, just to show how much attention I’ve paid) and a character I recognize, grew up around, but also have no recollection watching or reading. This should be interesting.

So my memory may not be amazing, but my Google-Fu is decent. Black Lightning was developed by Tony Isabella, after his work on Marvel’s Luke Cage. He became DC’s second African American superhero, and their first to be featured on television. He first appeared in 1977, a year after this story takes place, which amuses me to no end...

The Lonely Crusade represents the second story arc of the gritty reimagining of The Black Hood, collecting issues #7-11. It picks up with recovering drug addict Greg Hettinger returning to Philadelphia, from a rehab program (and a murder) in California. The pitch to editor Alex Segura began with “It starts with this gang called The Crusaders…”

People have been going missing in the slums of Philly, including some patients of Hettinger’s girlfriend, Jessie. As he returns to duty as a cop, he spends he days investigating the disappearances with his partner. However, they aren’t able to uncover very much information beyond rumors of a mysterious gang and a white van...

One of my more recent comic discoveries is Aspen Comics. (Which is fairly embarrassing, since we often review them here at Geek-o-Rama.) This year marks their 15th anniversary and they show no sign of slowing down. So when the opportunity to review their newest title, Portal Bound, I was quite excited.

Portal Bound takes us into a new world, or more accurately two new worlds. One, is the earth as we know it, as seen through the eyes of a young teenage boy, Eli. Eli is hardly hero material, he’s quiet, nerdy, and as unassuming as a teen can get. The second is Havos. In theory, Havos and Earth are the same, like two sides of a coin. The colours are wrong, the technology is wrong, and the people are wrong, but they remain inexorably bound together...

One of the more unusual promotional things that I remember from comics in my youth were these sealed plastic grab-bags of random titles. I was gifted several of these but I remember almost nothing more. Yet somehow I remember The Challengers of the Unknown. I don’t even remember if I read it, and I know I didn’t have any more than the one issue. But I still remember that hourglass.

Now there’s a New Challengers, and despite my overall apathy towards many of DC’s bigger titles I really enjoyed this one. The story begins on a plane, in a storm, somewhere in the Himalayas, “then”. There’s a crazy guy covered in bandages, a glowing something, and the plane gets crashed. That’s all I really got from the prologue.

Then we skip ahead to somewhere in Colorado, “now”...

The Shadow / Batman crossover is a unique beast. I read it, I enjoyed it, but the entire time I was trying to figure out if I missed something. It consistently references a shared backstory between the two heroes. That backstory is amazing, and completely plausible, but it never gets more than referenced. So I went back into these two heroes past. Back. Back. Back to the 1970s, when they first met. Too far. How about six months before this series first went to print, and the Batman / Shadow miniseries I previously reviewed for your reading pleasure. (You should go read it right now.)

The two six-issue series ran back to back with the first six being published by DC, and the second six by Dynamite. (That’s one way to solve the “who gets top billing” discussion)...