Manic Monday Triple Overtime--Never Play Cards With The Phantom Stranger!

In which the Phantom Stranger socks a guy in the jaw, holds a gun on him, and cheats at poker!!

Hank Wheeler is the destined to be the world rodeo champion. Except that someone seems to be trying to jinx him--and maybe even kill him--by causing accidents and taunting him with the cards from Wild Bill Hicock's infamous "dead man's hand"--a full house, aces over eights!

Fortunately, Hank has friends in high places...

And so...

Smacking him in the jaw? Holding a gun on him? Stranger, you are so slumming it this story! Do Heaven approve of this?

He taught Batman that trick...

And so you now know why the Phantom Stranger isn't allowed in Las Vegas!!

From Adventure Comics #419 (1972)

Manic Monday Bonus--Dueling Origins!

In the first (and only) mission of the "Spooky Justice League," the mysterious Black Orchid pulls off some amazing stunts, leading the Creeper to query Madame Xanadu about her origins:

(click to embiggen to full origin-size)

Wow...that origin story seemed...well, kind of familiar. Hmm...

Anyhoo, later in the same donnybrook, Blue Devil has a similar question for the Phantom Stranger:

(again, click for embiggenment)

Damn, that seems even more familiar!!

Get a room, you two!!

The mysteries over Black Orchid's origin continued, until Neil Gaiman came along and ruined everything...

From Blue Devil Annual #1 (1985)

The Secret Origin Of Justice League Dark--In 1985?!?

Random chance has a bunch of freaky heroes coming together to thwart a plot by Felix Faust: Man-Bat, Black Orchid, Madame Xanadu, Phantom Stranger, Blue Devil, the Creeper, and Etrigan!!

After they settle Faust's hash, the Creeper has an idea:

"A Spooky Justice League Of America"?!?! This is it, then, right? The real beginning of Justice League Dark?

It's going to happen, right?

Nah.

So close, and yet so far.

From Blue Devil Annual #1 (1985)

Worst Thing About The nu52 #13

 Not that I needed any more reasons to be cranky, of course, but a couple of weeks ago we saw this:

That's right..."Last of your family line." Which means...

No Traci Thirteen in the nu52. She not only hasn't appeared...she hasn't even been born.

Which is odd...

...because pre-Flushpoint, DC seemed to be building up to bigger things for Traci--Blue Beetle's girlfriend, a back-up series in Teen Titans, etc. And she had her own mini-series during Flushpoint, as "the most important girl in the world." Heck, she was even created by Co-Uber-Poobah Geoff Johns, which you would think would guarantee the character's continued existence, if not prominence.

Not so much, it would seem. Apparently Johns doesn't have Jim Lee's pull, and it was more important to inject Voodoo in the DC Universe.

I suppose we can hope that the Haunted Highwayman is a sexist dick who only counts male descendants as the "family line."

Probably not, though. Traci was, of course, a legacy hero, and unless you're one of the Robins, that's verboten in the nu52.

So farewell, Traci. It was nice knowing you.

Panel from Phantom Stranger #2 (2012). Cover from Flashpoint: The World Of Flashpoint #1 (2011).

Manic Monday Triple Overtime--Don't You Just Want To Punch This Guy?

The Phantom Stranger is one of my least favorite characters--smug, preachy, whiny, and either completely worthless in a conflict or deus-ex-machina-pull-a-rabbit-out-of-his-cape insanely powerful when the story called for it.

Depending on how you look at things, he was probably sorta kinda based (maybe) on The Mysterious Traveler, a character who originated as the omniscient narrator star of his self-titled 1943-1953 radio series. He had a one-shot comic published in 1948, and a digest-sized pulp magazine in 1951-52. Then Charlton published a comic from 1956-1959.

Phantom Stranger, meanwhile, had six issues in 1952, and then was revived by DC in 1969.

Obviously, they bear a lot of similarities, including dress, and occasional omniscient narrator over horror anthologies positions. Given the overlapping dates, it could be a Man-Thing/Swamp Thing situation.

Still, Mysterious Traveler was much less annoying, much more tolerable, and...

Never mind. I want to kick his smug ass, too.

From Tales Of The Mysterious Traveler #5 (1957)

Yet Another Reason They Don't Let me Write Comics

Story idea that came to me in a dream:

Someone's been monkeying in the time stream, and Thomas and Martha Wayne are never murdered!! Yay, right?

Unfortunately, this means that Bruce Wayne never becomes Batman...and, in one of those "step on a butterfly" kinda things, the result is that the entire world becomes a post-apocalyptic hell.

So the Phantom Stranger takes Bruce back in time...and adult Bruce Wayne has to replace Joe Chill and shoot his own parents to repair the timeline and save the world.

Yes, I know that's completely ripped off from The City On The Edge Of Forever. I dreamed it, OK? So it must be an Inception, and someone must have wanted me to have the idea, right? Right?

Great...now the internet's premier Batmanologist Chris Sims AND Harlan Ellison are gonna kick my ass.

[PS--before you ask, there was a very good reason why the Phantom Stranger didn't just shoot the Waynes himself, or get someone besides Bruce to do it, or get Rip Hunter...but damned if I can remember it after waking up. Probably it was Darkseid's fault...or Bat-Mite...]

Bob Haney--International Man Of Mystery!

It's 1971, and the Phantom Stranger is helping Batman investigate an evil coven:

Yes, Batman has a "bag." Groovy, man.

Other shagadelic things in this issue:


Yes, Batman is bestest friends with some guy we've never heard of before. And he's godfather to the dude's kid. Not Bruce Wayne--Batman. No mention is made of how this came about, although it must have been intensely cool to have Batman in church on christening day...

And, surprisingly enough, they get along quite famously:

Aaawwwwww.

Ah, but all is not well. When fulfilling his godfatherly duties, Batman sees:


See, the widow is really part of an evil cult, and the godson is really an "evil godling" they worship, and they need to sacrifice Batman to bring the boy to full power. So, good job on the godfathering there, Caped Crusader.

And when Batman is languishing under a "hex":




Are you tripping yet??

Fortunately, the Phantom Stranger shows up to save Batman's hash...

...yes, that's the Stranger. He had to take on "spectral form" surrounded with a "psychic barrier" to protect himself from the coven's spells. Really.

Oh, yeah, later on, when Batman is about to be overwhelmed by cultists?




Yes, the Phantom Stranger pretended to be Lucifer taking Batman away to a properly "consecrated" death in order to rescue him. Of course, he could have just teleported batman away without all the theater, but that's the Phantom Stranger for you...

Folks, I am overcome with the sheer awesomeness of this story. I intended to pull only the first panel here, because Batman had a "bag"...but this issue was like eating popcorn, you just can't stop, with the whole godfather business sliding into Rosemary's Baby riffs and psychedelia and "spectral forms" and...

And i didn't even tell you about the part where Batman's evil godling godson Enoch had a secret hidden twin who was "all good" and Batman accidentally kidnapped the wrong child and the day was saved by Roger's ghost, and...

Seriously, this issue was tripping balls.

Bob Haney and Jim Aparo freak me out in The Brave And The Bold #98 (1971).

The Best Cover Ever...?

Or The. Best. Cover. Ever. I vote the latter.

The best part? That scene actually happens (several times). But, I have to report, it's not precisely what you'd expect from a Phantom Stranger comic. We start with a race of humans that has lived underground for eons:

Then, throw in amazingly wonky pseudo-science mutant powers:

Finally, throw in some ill-advised human underground atomic testing:

And you've got what seems more like a wretched 1950's B-sci-fi flick, or a Doctor Who episode--mutants from another race posing as children to assassinate atomic scientists with death vision?--than a Phantom Stranger story. Who's responsible for this?

Oh, that explains everything.

Anyway, back to the cover. Neal Adams pretty much knocked it out of the park there...a mysterious set-up that makes you want to read the issue, without the usual overhype of distraught captions and word balloons. Masterfully composed, and with the great logo, and the odd but wonderful "DC logo inside the stylized bat," and the "computerized" Stranger watching on, well, who the hell could resist this comic?

Adams did the covers for Phantom Stranger #3 thru #19. You can go look for yourself, but here's a few I snatched:





Even though he did only one interior for the book, I'd argue that those covers, in large part, helped create the mystique that the character has today.

The Phantom Stranger is pretty much the epitome of everything I don't like in a character: my generally lukewarm attitude towards horror and magic; eternal mystery about origins, so you can't ever have real character development; undefined power set, which runs from normal human to damn near omnipotent, depending on the writer's deus ex machina needs; smugness and refusal to share his seemingly omniscient knowledge because he fancies himself so damned important...OK, I've never much cared for the character, all right?

Yet covers like these? They make me want to read the stories. So, if Neal Adams ever gets tired of being completely bugf%^& insane on Batman:Odyssey, maybe DC can put him on some Phantom Stranger covers, and find someone to take another stab at establishing the dude (Paul Cornell, anyone??).