Monday Memories #6 - All-Star Squadron #37

Each Monday this year I'll be taking a look back at a random comic, prestige format issue, graphic novel or collection of reprints from amongst my 3,000 or so comics that date from 1962 to 2003 - I figured anything in the last ten years would be too recent to hark back to.

The comics are chosen completely at random and apart from a four week lead-in period, even I don't know what I'll be looking at in the weeks to come!

Who Was Who Is Who #28

So for want of anything better to write about on a Monday, I'm going to go through all my copies of Who's Who and see if I can predict who will make it over to the new DCU by the end of 2012, who might make it and who hasn't got a Fat Marvel's chance.

MANHAWKS - having dropped The Savage Hawkman after learning Rob Liefeld was getting on board, I've no idea how likely it is that the Thanagarian aspect of the character will be developed. However, I can't see these guys ever coming back, so I guess that point's moot.

Who'd Like A Cocktail? #176

Speak for yourself, man.

Darkseid's Back

Actually, it's his front that's been revealed as DC show off Jim Lee's redesign of the DCU's big villain who, as they say, "has not appeared inside a DC comic since early 2009" . . . unless you count Justice League: Generation Lost #14 (November 2010) or DCU: Legacies #8 (February 2011) that is.

But anyway, here's the new look Darkseid:

Is it me or has the old fella put on a couple of pounds in the last couple of years when he's been hanging around in Limbo? He was always a sturdy chap but now he seems sort of . . . portly.

Still, at least he's lost the little mini-skirt he had for a while which left nothing to the imagination and led to more than one Basic Instinct style moment, like the time he flashed his own son Orion:

or when he gave Mary Marvel a bit of a shock in Countdown To Final Crisis:

No wonder she dropped her Soder Cola.

Friday Night Fights - Green Lantern's Might (Sorta)

Yay! I won last week's Fight! And who said Countdown to Final Crisis didn't contain anything worth while?!

At the risk of pushing my luck, I'm once more delving into the pages of Countdown... where we find dark Mary Marvel wandering around on Apokolips beating the crap out of anyone she can find.

Seriously, if Darkseid's giving you compliments you know you've gone over to the . . . err . . . dark . . . ummm . . .

Yeah, anyway, Mary's beating the snot out of Green Lantern Kyle Rayner but it's okay because here comes his ex, Donna Troy, to the rescue!

Oh wait - maybe not so much rescue as being battered by Mary using Rayner as a baseball bat!

I swear - the above is the best panel in the entirety of Countdown to Final Crisis! WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP  I can read it for hours!

Mary (with her overly large head) declares herself the winner and if you all head over to Spacebooger and vote for me like you did last week, I can too!

This interesting use of a Green Lantern first appeared in Countdown to Final Crisis #3, cover dated April 2008, written by Paul Dini and Sean Mckeever with art by Freddie E. Williams II.

So, Farewell Then . . .

This is a rhetorical question, but does anyone else think Countdown To Final Crisis ended with more of a whimper than a bang?

After all that hype, all that universe hopping, the key series leading into the forthcoming Final Crisis limped to an end. Pied Piper - last seen being blown to hell in issue #9 - somehow survived and landed in Gotham City; Jason Todd who appears to have foregone the Red Hood identity is also in Gotham, as surly and nasty as he was when he started out; Mary Marvel is still wearing black and has become a petulant bad girl; Buddy Blank has become an OMAC more recognisable to older readers (and readers of older comics) and the boy who would be Kamandi on another Earth here turns out to have been named Tommy all along in a nod to the post-Crisis On Infinite Earths retcon; and the Challengers From Beyond . . .

After moping around Ray Palmer's house they address the Monitors and tell them to watch their behinds because they are monitoring the Monitors.

I can't help wondering if this whole idea of Kyle Rayner, the Atom, Donna Troy and Forager (I notice Jimmy Olsen didn't make the cut) keeping tabs on the Monitors is just going to get swept under the carpet. Rayner's a Green Lantern so will have duties elsewhere; the Atom's already due to appear in The Atom series alongside Ryan Choi, the latest Atom; Donna Troy's back in with The Titans; which leaves Forager . . . one new character (with little characterisation) is going to monitor all of the Monitors? In which series is this likely to happen?

No, I think it's more likely that a few months down the line, after Final Crisis, we'll never hear about this whole monitoring the Monitors lark again.

Which won't be a bad thing to my mind.

You Can Keep Your Action Figures...

What I want is my very own Mary Marvel Bobblehead as previewed in Countdown To Final Crisis #3:

Look at the size of her head! It's enormous!


Wow, three posts in one week - a personal best!