Tales From The Basement: What Marvel Zombies Missed

I'm sure the phrase "Marvel Zombie" isn't going to make readers (if there are any) of this blog scratch their heads and wonder what the heck it is to what I a refer. In a nutshell, if you were reading Claremont/Byrne X-Men, Miller Daredevil, Stern/Romita Jr. Spider-Man or any of the other fine Marvel comics being produced in the early 80s, chances are you were a Marvel Zombie.

If you were also unaware that DC Comics, First Comics, Comico, Aardvark-Vanaheim and Eclipse Comics were producing comics at that time, chances are you were a Marvel Zombie. This post will concentrate on a few of my favorite titles from this time that were produced by DC.

All-Star Squadron

I think this debuted in 1981. What I remember most about All-SS (can't really abbreviate this one by it's first letters, now can I?) is that it featured, introduced and/or re-introduced a lot of cool characters that you didn't see all that often. Characters that have since become part of the DC canon. In my opinion, JSA writers/resurrectors James Robinson and Geoff Johns should have been thanking Roy Thomas in each and every issue of JSA.

You shouldn't be surprised to learn that Roy Thomas was the writer of this great series, and Rich Buckler and Jerry Ordway were among it's artists. The stories were classics - set during World War II, every issue oozed with authenticity. If I hadn't known better, I'd have sworn these comics were written in the 1940s. The Joe Kubert covers probably helped to promote this perception.

Roy Thomas was no dummy - he used a tried-and-true comic book trick by having the book cross over with the Justice League of America title, thereby guaranteeing exposure to a much larger audience. The good news is that the story was so good, even if you were not reading All-SS prior to that crossover, chances are you were afterwards.

What was most interesting to me is that Plastic Man was a pivotal character in this series. He was a federal agent of sorts who was sorta responsible for forming the team. I have always been bored by Plastic Man. I don't think that the writers ever took him that seriously. And I keep hearing about how he is the most powerful character in the DC Universe, but I never see this. And I thought that Frank Miller (whose work I usually really like) made him look like a total doofus in the Dark Knight sequel.

Anyway, some of the cool characters we were treated to were Johnny Quick, Liberty Belle, Firebrand, Steel, Robotman, Tarantula, the Alan Scott Green Lantern, the Spectre, Baron Blitzkreig, Per Degaton, the Ultra-Humanite, Cyclotron and Hawkman just to name a few.

The best part of this series is that it doesn't seem to have resonated with many people as it did with me. The stories are great and the art is great. If you are looking for a decent title to read that offers excellent team-oriented tales and a timeless storytelling style, go ahead and get some issues of All-SS. It compares very favorably to the Marvel output of it's time.

In fact, I liked this title so much, I forgot that I had already written about how good it was.

Batman & The Outsiders

Nowadays, most people probably think the Outsiders is an original concept. And it kind of is - but it's a derivative of the Batman & The Outsiders title that came about when Brave & Bold's 200th and final issue came out. Batman quit the Justice League and formed the Outsiders - a team of mostly all new characters that would be led by Batman.

As if this concept wasn't cool enough, it was written by longtime Batman Scribe Mike W. Barr (writer of the awesome Son of the Demon graphic novel) and drawn by long-longtime Batman artist Jim Aparo. From the getgo, I knew this was going to be one of my favorite all-time titles. Alan Davis became the artist in later issues.

The new characters were the sword-wielding Katana, the amnesiac Halo and the former prince Geo-Force. The established, but less used characters were Metamorpho and Black Lightning. The disparate characters were woven together expertly and Batman was convincing as the loner who suddenly wanted to lead a team.

Again, this title proved that good stories, good art and an understanding of your characters could work well to make a title that would hold up well more than 20 years later. Amazingly, these back issues also seem to have fallen through the cracks and can be had for a relatively small amount. But they're worth the effort.

Firestorm

This character, who was first featured in the Justice League of America and as a backup in Flash, had two attempts at a solo title. The first was in the late 70s and that only went 5 issues, a casualty of the "DC Implosion" which saw a good number of DC's titles killed in the late 70s.

The original 70s issues were written by the 3rd ever Spider-Man writer Gerry Conway and drawn by Al Milgrom. The second series, The Fury of Firestorm, was again written by Conway, but drawn by Pat Broderick.

It seemed to me that Conway was putting his take on Spider-Man, but calling it Firestorm. It read kinda like an updated version of the teen hero tales we were treated to when the original Amazing Spider-Man came out - interesting characters and pretty good adventures - and some cool villains to boot.

Ron Raymond went to school, dealt with a bully and graduated and went to college. The main differences were that Ron was popular, and the bully was the outcast, Ron was athletic (a basketball player) and he wasn't a top academic student. These are the sorts of changes that were implemented in John Byrne's Man of Steel miniseries and his subsequent Superman revamp, but I thought the concepts worked much better here.