Sunday Splash Page #452

"Funeral Shroud," in The Black Hood #2, by Mark Wheatley (writer), Rich Burchett (artist), Tom Ziuko (colorist), Steve Hayne (letterer)

The Black Hood was the last of the solo titles from the Impact line, the first issue not shipping until the other 5 books were already on at least issue 4. The character had already popped up in other books (The Fly, The Web.) Very excited at the prospect of other costumed heroes emerging, always talking up the idea of them all forming a super-team.

They eventually would, and we'll get to The Crusaders next year, but Black Hood wouldn't be part of that. At least, not the same Black Hood.

The Black Hood wasn't unique in switching protagonists. Legend of the Shield had a different guy (briefly) take the uniform once Higgins' name was cleared. The Web was an ensemble cast who were all, at one time or another, "The Web." However, this was at least a little unique in how it made those switches, the reasons why, and in one case, how quickly.

It starts with Wayne Sidmonson. Sidmonson is the Black Hood who met other heroes. By the time the series begins, he's all the way round the bend. The first issue is overlaid with a letter to his wife, who he abandoned to pursue the cause of his truest love, Justice. No, seriously, that's what he says. He still loves her, and wishes he could be home for Christmas, but his war is just too important. He also admits he drained their kids' college funds to buy weapons. What, you couldn't just keep drug dealers' cash, like the Punisher?

His moral compass is out of whack. A teenager taunts Wayne about being lost, he twists the kid's arm to near breaking, then locks him and his friend in a filthy mall bathroom stall, just to be cruel. He gleefully terrorizing them, because one kid was rude. He's in Seaside City looking for a subterranean pier. But it's not to break up a deal between local crimelord "The Patriarch," and Pirate Blue. No, Wayne wants to make a deal with Blue - a pirate, a smuggler, an arms dealer - to buy weapons.

All this seems to stem from him owning a "McBonnie Burger" franchise, which got robbed at some point. He's Michael Douglas' character in Falling Down, mediocre middle-class dude who decides guns are the answer to his insecurity. He wears spiked gauntlets, huge shoulders pads, and armor. The armor is bulletproof. The hood is not, and Wayne bites the dust in issue 1, at the hands of Hit Coffee, #2 man to the Patriarch.

(The main story of The Black Hood Annual is Wayne's wife dealing with his funeral and just how badly he fucked their finances, while two government agents that had been tracking him conclude she's a frigid bitch for being mad Wayne wasted all their savings on a "Hood-mobile." I just end up feeling bad for Darcy, stuck dealing with the lousy hand her nutso dead husband left her.

I would have done an entry on the Annual if there'd been a splash page from the back-up story about the past wearers of the Hood, but no dice.) 

Wayne wasn't the first Black Hood, as he learns in the afterlife and we see in the final issue and the back-up stories in the Annuals. He's not the last. The two teenagers got out of that stall and followed him. The rude one, Jeff, can't keep his mouth shut and gets in trouble. His friend, Nate Cray, won't abandon him, but doesn't want to risk being recognized. So he puts on the Hood. And grabs some guns. And starts dodging bullets with surprising ease. Somehow, the hood being cursed, in addition to giving it sentience, enables it to give the wearer enhanced physical abilities.

Nate rescues Jeff, they escape. Nate doesn't want anything to do with the hood. He's a big farm boy whose family just moved here after the farm went belly-up. Quiet and kind, but awkward. A boy who would protect a snapping turtle biting his hand from his father's attempts to make it let go, but also named his dog, Dufus. What the hell, man?

But when he holds the hood, at least at first, he feels more confident, and he keeps running into situations where he needs it. A stage magician sent to prison for 17 years because someone tampered with his saw-in-half box, gets paroled and sets out for revenge. A doctor who went from working on "safe acid", to some video game, to drugs to alter your DNA, took the drug and now he's ozone.

Which somehow gave him the ability to rain lasers from the sky. Is he manipulating the ozone layer to let tiny pinpricks of cosmic rays rain down? I have no idea; this is not the last time Wheatley does something regarding a character's backstory and powers that makes no sense to me. Nate - whose outfit is a simple red coat and some heavy pants and boots, much more stripped down than Wayne's look - kills the doctor with the power of CFCs, but feels no validation at stopping the man who hurt his mother. He hates what the hood's doing to him, the changes he feels in himself. He throws it away.

Hit Coffee finds it. Hit touts himself as the Patriarch's #2 man. What that means is, he gets the shit jobs. Run to Baltimore to fetch sandwiches for the Patriarch. Go pick up a sports car the Patriarch is giving to one of his other guys. Wayne became the Black Hood because he was afraid, and wanted things to make sense as he understood the concept. Meaning terrorize the people he thought ought to be terrorized. Nate wore it to protect people he cared about, then threw it away to protect himself. (He'll ultimately take it up again to protect those same people.)

Hit wears it - along with a snazzy vest with big buttons and a collar and shoulder pads - to get what he thinks he's owed from an ungrateful boss. He finds getting to be the boss isn't so great. It's constant fires to put out, and demands from underlings to deal with. Made harder because the hood's influence means he can't handle things how he wants. The curse condemns its wearer not to harm a good man (so what's it say about Jeff, that Wayne could do what he did?) This apparently continues even after you give the hood away.

Hit gives it back to Nate, while Nate's wearing a different hood. Hit somehow knows who Nate is, and intends to use him to help keep the Patriarch's mob in line. How he figured it out is never explained. They stop a guy who, as a child, was exposed to several defoliants in Vietnam and now absorbs the memories of people he touches as a result. Which he uses to rob mob casinos. The guys running the casinos do not seem to connected to the GIs that attacked his village, he just figures it's a good place to get a lot of cash. Refer to my earlier comment about backstories and powers.

The DNA drug the doctor made gets into the hands of a girl Jeff really wants to impress, but her low self-esteem turns her into living slime. Jeff seeing her as a wonderful girl helps pull her together, but Nate's harsh words wreck all that. It's a weird pair of issues, with everyone assuming someone is being dragged down by someone else. The principal assumes Jeff will ruin Nate. Jeff's dad - a sadsack idiot of a counterfeiter whose printing shop is now owned by Nate's dad - assumes Nate is the one getting Jeff in trouble. Nate assumes Carmen is going to ruin Jeff. Everyone is pointing fingers, no one is trying to help.

One thing we learn in issue 12, where a heretofore unseen WEB agent with some sort of telepathic abilities tries to assess Nate and ends up connecting with the hood, is the hood tries to seek out someone who will use it well. But over time, it corrupts the wearer. We're shown Wayne early on wanting to protect and serve justice in a way he feels the cops don't. Given he's in a panel colored entirely red, with guns everywhere, it's hard for me to think the cheese hadn't already slipped off his cracker. Did this mean Nate's harsh words to Carmen were the start of his corruption? Or just him being a dumb teenager, frustrated with what passes for his best friend and lashing out at a safer target? It's also the story where Nate turns to shooting sooner and more frequently than normal, which is a troubling development.

The recurring theme is, Nate puts on the hood to help people. Everyone else uses their powers or skills to get something. The magician, the doctor, the casino thief, Hit Coffee: All resent how things went for them, and decide to take what they feel they're owed. Revenge, money, whatever. Even Wayne decided at some point any means were justified for his ends, even dealing with Pirate Blue. His war is too important to worry about details like who gets hurt. You could add Jeff, who initially thinks the hood is really cool and wants Nate to go on patrols and beat people up. 

(Nate questions how he's supposed to traverse rooftops, or get down to street level in time if he does see a crime in progress.)

The book's tone goes strange places at times. Issue 7 alternates between Hit taking apart the Patriarch's operations, and a history of "The Patriarch," a title not so much handed down as wrested away since colonial times. Wheatley and main series artist Rich Burchett present it like a Seuss story, complete with the issue title, "Horton Wears the Hood!" (because Hit's real first name is Horton.) The backstory works as another example of people seeing power only as a means to get what they want, but the choice of presentation is curious.

There's a whole bit where Jeff's dad is a hostage Hit doesn't want, because the hood wouldn't let him kill the man. Hit keeps leaving Mr. Sealey ways to "escape" - a crowbar, the keys to the handcuffs - and the man keeps refusing to take the hint. In issue 3, there's an entire sequence where Jeff repeatedly fails to hide one of the huge guns Nate brought back from the confrontation underground as Nate's mother cleans up some broken glass on the floor right in front of them, and she simply doesn't react. During the DNA drug doctor's trial, his attorney's opening statement is hampered by him fumbling papers, or his glass of water, or his glasses. I think it's meant to be he's gradually turning to ozone and is increasingly incorporeal, but it comes off like he's a klutz, and this is somehow hurting his defense.

Burchett is the artist for the first half of the series, albeit with a host of different inkers. Mike Chen in issue 4, Chen and Jose Marzan Jr. in issue 5. Damon Willis on issue 6. Willis also pencils issue 9. Burchett draws issue 7 himself, then does breakdowns on issue 8, with Neil Vokes as penciler. Tim Sale draws issues 10 and 11, and Peter Snejbjerg (with Chen on inks) draws issue 12. Burchett emphasizes a different style and approach for each wearer of the hood. Wayne is built like a fire hydrant and tends to charge straight in, letting bullets bounce off the armor and tackling his enemies. It's full speed ahead, deal out punishment.

With Hit, he's mostly using two Uzis, so it's a lot of shooting. We occasionally see him show off the strength, lifting a metal plate that covers the entrance to the place he hid Sealey, or hefting machines off Jeff so Nate can pull him clear. But Hit's also the slimmest of the 3, even shorter than Nate despite being a grown man, so that showcases the power the hood provides. Or shows the difference in Hit when he's wearing the hood. The guy who relied on hustle, charm and perseverance is brute forcing his way through things now.

With Nate, Burchett and the other artists focus on agility, the strength apparent through the leaps and flips. When the magician (who apparently studied how to combine different animals into chimeras in prison, which I guess could at least be loosely connected to unfortunately cutting his dog in half) sets a flying tiger on Nate, Nate leaps forward with his arms wide, then tucks into a forward roll to avoid the claws. Or he's leaping over tables and halfway up escalators while carrying a tactical shotgun, vaulting police cars and dumpsters with one hand like Daredevil would. Nate shoots, but it's a last resort.

Saturday Splash Page #238

"The Direct Approach," in The Web Annual #1, by Mark Waid (writer), M.C. Turner Alan (penciler), John Lowe (inker), Linda Kachelhofer (colorist), John Costanza (letterer)

I discussed the one round of Annuals the Impact Comics line had when we looked at The Legend of the Shield Annual in 2023. The Web Annual was the first chapter of the overarching story of Templar - a massive guy with a Fu Manchu 'stache, whose legs look like he has water retention issues - trying to reveal the location of a holy grail (the Holy Grail?) via a series of ecological catastrophes. But, as I used a page from that in Sunday Splash Page #302, and the Web's part is only really significant in that it's the one time "Rad" Stiles gets to do anything of use in 15 total issues of The Web, I figured I'd highlight one of the other stories running through the annuals.

Across 4 of the 6 annuals, Waid charts the history of the Jackson family and how it intertwines with the original Shield. Who, by what passed for the present day in the Impact Comics-verse, had vanished decades ago, along with his super-suit. So in 1953, the Shield is bribed into rescuing the son of "Lucky" Jackson, a notorious mobster, with the promise of a written confession of enough crimes to put Jackson away for decades. Matthew, who has an eidetic memory and serves essentially as his father's ledgers, is less than pleased that the man who rescued him then hauls his dad off to jail.

The story jumps to 1958 Cuba, where Matthew is preparing to take over the organization from his father's right-hand man. If he can survive the rise of Castro, and the ample opportunities it provides for backstabbing. The Shield, even if there's not much he can do about the societal upheaval on the island, saves Matthew, who turns away from crime. We learn in the 3rd part that his son Tony is hanging with a bad crowd, idolizing his grandfather (still in prison), despite Matthew talking up how great the Shield was, and ends up doing a favor for a certain Mistah Big in their city. Deliver a package to a certain home by midnight on Halloween. Matthew, who is pretty much a stringbean in every chapter, throws on a Shield Halloween costume and saves his son from getting blown up by the bomb.

Which brings us to the 4th part. It was depressing, but a perfect fit for being in The Black Hood Annual. Set in the "present day" - meaning, 1992 - we find Tony still living in his hometown of Soundview. In part 3, we were told it was the 5th largest city in the country, a thriving place. Now it looks like another dying, post-industrial city, and Tony has taken all his father's talk about the Shield to heart in the worst way. He roars around on a motorcycle, wearing what's left of that Halloween costume over a leather jacket and calling himself the Shield. Tony's trademark seems to be, upon finding criminals, to say, 'Okay scum, it's Judgement Day,' then kick the door in and start shooting. Maybe spout some Schwarzenegger-isms while beating up the crooks.

He lives alone in a ratty apartment, smoking cigs and doing pull-ups. Says his wife is the streets, and she needs a firm hand, which is, not great. As the narrator puts it, when his father died, Tony went a little nuts. Even his grandfather, finally out of prison, can see this is bad, and is pretty blunt Tony is not the Shield. Which doesn't stop Tony from walking to a trap to rescue his grandfather, one set by an old friend. A trap that gets him and the friend killed. No one but "Lucky" comes to Tony's funeral. Well, except for one older gentleman with orange-red hair. Hint, hint *looks significantly at the splash page.*

The arcs don't quite line up. The Jackson family don't exactly get more decent, as Matt's probably the best man of the three, but circumstances around them seem to decline steadily. Lucky was the biggest wheel in what passes for Impact's version of Vegas (or maybe Atlantic City?), all glittering lights and fancy parties. Then Matt's trying to hold a casino together in a country about to be flipped on its head. Then the setting shifts to a different thriving city, that ten years later looks like a dump.

Is it that, the further you get from something's origin or true existence, the more distorted perception of it becomes? Lucky understood the Shield, who he was, how he acted, what he believed, enough to use him, and was just honorable enough to stick to his deal. But Lucky was never going to be the type to stick his own neck out. Matt comes to respect the Shield and what he stands for, but isn't strong enough physically to be him. His lone act of heroism gets him killed. And maybe, in an effort to distance himself from his and his father's criminal past, Matt got too lost in hero worship. He forgets there are limits to what the Shield, or one man in general, can accomplish. He understood that in Cuba, but by Tony's adolescence, he'd forgotten, and the Shield was nearly godlike to him. Tony's physically strong, but that aggrandized view of the Shield, plus his father's death, did a number on him. The vigilante he becomes can't save anyone, and it hardly occurs to him to try until his grandfather is endangered. He figured if he just kept beating up scum, it would fix things eventually.

Saturday Splash Page #237

"Truant Officers," in The Web #5, by Len Strazewski (writer), Tom Artis (penciler), Bill Wray (inker), Eric Kachelhofer (colorist), Vickie Williams (letterer)

The Web was a bit of a rarity in the Impact Comics line as an ensemble book (Black Hood had a revolving cast, in a sense, which we'll get to when Sunday Splash Page gets there.) Where the other books revolved around solo heroes, "The Web" was an entire government organization. It had existed since the late '60s, with a broad mandate to investigate the unusual, but seemingly really created to investigate the disappearance of that generation's superheroes, the American Crusaders. Without success.

There were multiple agents, with different areas of operation, varying levels of public visibility, and different approaches. They eventually got powered armor, although the power was transmitted from some central station, and required authorization to use, even before Web fell on hard times as the years passed and budgets shrank. Eventually they were roaming swamps in business suits, chasing reports of UFOs.

With the emergence of new superheroes they're back in business. More money (but also more oversight), and more staff. That's where Strazewski makes his mistake, the cast is simply too large. From top-down, you've got Powell Jennings, who is some dipshit prep-school goober appointed as head of the agency. Of the field staff that are holdovers from the earlier years, there's Bill O'Grady, in charge on-site (that's him in the flak jacket), "Big Daddy" Rothco (the bearded guy), the Sunshine Kid (a spiritualist/hippie type), St. James who gets brought in to run tactics, "Jump" Kennedy, a pilot whose girlfriend was abducted by aliens a decade ago, and Gunny Beaupre. There's another guy, who calls himself "Troy" but is referred to by others as "Brew", who shows up in another issue.

Among the new generation, there's "Win" Winfield, whose older brother is part of the same prep-school dipshits as Jennings, Rad Stiles, the aggressive dickhead of the cast, Buster Thomas, the scientist who devised the updated version of the armor, where the power boost circuitry is actually wired under their skin, and Saleh/Silver, a former DEA agent and St. James' estranged daughter. Plus, the three kids up there (from left to right, Jamal, Alyce and Kevin, although Jamal is sometimes white and sometimes black, depending on the issue), who found an old Web base when Big Daddy used it after stopping a theft in the first issue.

That's too many characters! Especially when we're told, in issue #2, only one of them was intended to be the actual "Web" that was out in the field, in public. Double-especially when they're crossing over with the other titles, or devoting pages to guest-stars. Buster teams up with The Fly in issue 5, the (3rd) Shield guest-stars in issue 12, and The Fly, the Comet, and a third hero get suckered into attacking Web in issue 9. Plus, the last two issues are written by Paul Kupperberg, listed as "guest writer," so he brought in yet another old agent (up to then unmentioned) for his own story.

As a result, the book feels overstuffed and directionless. Plots or character arcs make little progress. Some characters get basically nothing. Issue 8 implies Winfield's desperate to prove himself after being compared unfavorably to his brother all these years. That doesn't jibe with his behavior up to then, where he seemed content to stand back and let others lead. Nothing's ever done with the tension between Silver and her father, beyond the initial argument that shows it exists. "Jump" has one run-in with a UFO, this time with working armor, but it ends inconclusively and he doesn't tell anyone about it or try to get any help. I couldn't tell you a thing about Rad or Gunny. Not likes, dislikes, motivations. Nothing.

The kids - who insist on being called "the Posse" - get one back-up story where Big Daddy tries to teach them how to drive some vehicles. While they don't crash, they're reckless enough he yells at them to stop after two pages. Also, O'Grady talks about maybe using them for undercover or intelligence gathering, but putting them in bright yellow armor on loud vehicles, while likely to increase their life expectancy (at least the armor part) doesn't seem great for that purpose. At least the kids negotiated themselves $25/month in pay, which is $25 more than they were initially being offered.

Generally, the focus is on O'Grady, Sunshine, Big Daddy, and Buster. O'Grady struggling with an administrative role and chomping at the bit to do fieldwork instead. He never really sorts that out, never gets better at handling Jennings' particularly irritating brand of making unreasonable demands, then blaming O'Grady when they backfire. Sunshine spends a lot of time making remarks that are supposed to be sage or clever and pretending to kind of be above the fray, but it's Kupperberg who comes closest to addressing the flaws in that, as the laidback attitude lets a former agent who built his rep on a lie get put in charge of peoples' lives. There could have been something for Big Daddy, training the kids, but again, that got almost no page time. Thomas is a scientist by trade, who submitted to the procedure she developed after early attempts went badly. She isn't supposed to feel very confident using the armor, but that only crops up intermittently.

Maybe the plan was always for the "1 agent" bit to get thrown out by circumstances, but that could have been something to make better use of such a bloated cast. Have a real sense the characters are competing with each other to be that "1 agent", and the negative impact that has. Maybe Buster shifts towards tech support, coming up with new gadgets for the armor, or Sunshine sticks strictly with training. Some characters wash out, or maybe "Jump" vanishes pursuing his vendetta against the aliens.

Tom Artis draws the first six issues, then guest pencilers for three issues, then Hoang Nguyen for three issues, and Barry Horne draws Kupperberg's two-parter. I'm not sure Artis' art was suited to such a crowded book. His art looks alright in the larger panels, but once he has to cram more characters in, or the panel space shrinks, things get messy and disorganized. His art always looks very busy to me, a lot of small lines and hatch marks on faces and clothes, though I guess that could be Wray's inks. With room to operate, like a full-page splash, it's fine. In the 5th panel of a 6-panel page, with 4 characters involved, not so much. The coloring also overwhelms the linework at times, rendering characters indistinct blobs.

Nguyen fares better, at least once Mike DeCarlo starts inking in issue 11. The previous issue, the linework alternates between almost disappearing and giving characters oddly exaggerated mouths. DeCarlo seems to use a thinner line, but it's a stronger one. The characters are solid, distinct. The action is clear and easy to follow. Just in general, it's less busy-looking, but it's also an issue that focuses heavily on just Silver and how she ended up with Web, so there's not as many people in mass-produced armor running around at one time.

The book's also plagued by miscommunication between writer and art team. Panels that don't show what the dialogue implies is there. In several of those cases, it's like there's a one-panel delay between dialogue and art, the latter running behind the former. It's worst in the guest penciler issues from 7 through 9, so maybe it was a time crunch thing. There's a page of a fight in issue 8, a 9-panel grid, that's a complete mess of dialogue that doesn't seem to match the action. There's no flow to anything, to the point I'm not sure if you're supposed to read down the columns or across the rows, because it doesn't really work either way.

Taken as a whole, it's by far the weakest of the core six titles.

Random Back Issues #146 - The Comet #12

The issue starts with Rob, aka the Comet, having a nightmare about a snowy wilderness. He finds his parents, who went missing around the time he gained his powers, but they're scared of him. There's someone he can't make out with them, but when he tries to move closer the ground opens beneath him and he sees some awful truth.

Which he promptly forgets on waking up and realizing he's late for breakfast with his TV reporter friend, Victoria. He gets a sarcastic greeting, and hits to his pride keep coming, as Victoria called detective Ben Lee to help fix her car's flat, because, 'she knew she could count on him.' While Ben retrieves aerosol fix-a-flat, Rob tries to use his powers to seal the puncture and expand the air in the tire.

So while Victoria goes to breakfast with Ben (who has both car and steady employment, oooh-la-la), Rob's in search of a new tire. He stops to watch the broadcast launch of a weather satellite co-engineered by the U.S. and U.S.S.R. on a store-window TV, but the broadcast is hijacked by a hyper-patriotic armored nutjob. Inferno's seized control of Strategic Air Command to decry this attempt to weaken America by sharing technology with its enemies, which he suspects is a deliberate conspiracy. So he's altered its course, and will intercept and destroy it.

Rob rushes home, gets in costume, gets the location of S.A.C. from Victoria and rushes off to stop Inferno. He even grabs a camera to take some photos of the fight, as a thank you to Victoria. Too bad the speed he flies at melted the camera. He takes a few hits but looks to have the upper hand, except Inferno's been gaining altitude the whole time and they just hit the jet stream. Inferno's armor guides him out, but Rob's struggling to tell up from down and running low on power in the process. By the time he gets his bearings, he's outside the atmosphere. Oops.

Or maybe not. Turns out he doesn't need air (concerning), and being beyond the ozone layer means he's soaking up more solar power than ever. One blast is enough to make Inferno bail, but the satellite's falling back to Earth. When Rob goes to retrieve it, Inferno triggers its engines remotely and sends it and Rob on a collision course with the Sun!

Which ought to take months at minimum, but turns out to be irrelevant as Rob overloads on solar energy and explodes! Destroying the satellite in the process. Not a great showing for the Comet, and from here, things only get worse for him.

{3rd longbox, 12th comic. The Comet #12, by Mark Waid (writer), Kevin West (penciler), Jeff Albrecht (inker), Tom Ziuko (colorist), Tim Harkins (letterer)}

Random Back Issues #142 - The Jaguar #6

It's winter in Michigan, and, at least in the early-90s, that still means snow! Maria's excited and having a great time on the quad, only to be interrupted by her Mean Girl roommate Tracy. Although Maria finds Sammie's "polite liberal" condescension more patronizing.

But Tracy's actually here to invite Maria on a weekend trip with her, Sammie, and Tracy's boyfriend Brian. Assuming Brian can get his jeep to run. It's got a flat, and Brian can't get the lugnuts loose. While Brian goes to call his dad about getting some cash - for a different car? a mechanic? a hydraulic torque wrench? - Maria's alone with the jeep. Easy enough to change to Jaguar and use super-strength to remove the lugs and replace the flat. Except now she has to explain how it happened when Brian returns! Time for a clever ruse!

Brian has got to be the Wallet Inspector's favorite customer.

While on the road, Tracy's inner monologue reveals her reason for inviting Maria. Maria doesn't know Tracy saw her change into the Jaguar a week ago. Tracy's making nice while she figures out a way to use Maria. A conversation about super-heroes that have started popping up is interrupted by the Abominable Snowman, causing Brian to crash the jeep. They ski to a nearby town of. . .Doom Creek? Oh, come on!

The guy running the local diner doesn't dismiss their story. Nope, what they saw is the Doomster! It's been around for decades! People use to come to see it, but you were never the same once you saw it! it fought crime, but then it started attacking people at random! Diner Guy advises them to try the farmhouse down the road for a phone, as he doesn't have one. The electricity gets in your brain, you see. Messes with the Sasquatch blood.

Before they get there, the Doomster strikes! It seems focused on Tracy, but that gives Maria a chance to transform and tackle it. Tracy considers the fact that Maria's saved her twice, when all Tracy wants to do is use her, but still rationalizes keeping Maria's secret from Brian and Sammie on the grounds it isn't worth anything if other people find out.

They find a strange nursery in the root cellar of the farmhouse, along with a shotgun-wielding old couple! The farmer explains his grandfather saw a space ship crash in 1901 and there was a weird little baby inside, that he and his wife raised as their own (once they figured out it ate sand and ammonia water), while teaching it to do good. Only problem, this baby's people experience all time at once. They see a person's past, present, and future. So the Doomster's been pulling a Minority Report, though how anyone was able to discern this I don't know, as there's no indication the Doomster speaks English of can communicate telepathically.

Either way, the notion it's after her for something she's going to do freaks Tracy out enough she runs back into the snow, and into the Doomster. Jaguar wasn't able to bring him down in Round 1, though she did end up in a position to get their jeep unstuck. Now she's back for Round 2. There's no talking between them and they eventually cause an avalanche. Tracy insists on staying to look for Maria, who does manage to dig herself out. No sign of the Doomster, though.

We looked at the next issue back in January, which was a winter excursion for Maria with a more commonplace threat: dumbasses with badges and guns.

{6th longbox, 6th comic. The Jaguar #6, by Bill Messner-Loebs (writer), Chuck Wojtkiewicz (penciler), Jose Marzan Jr. (inker), Tom Ziuko (colorist), Tim Harkins (letterer)}

Random Back Issues #137 - Legend of the Shield #6

Nice try, but everyone knows you stop a bad guy with a gun with a good guy in a multi-million dollar suit of experimental armor.

The last time we looked in on the Shield, his first mission ended with hostages rescued, but his friend  Devon murdered before he could tell Joe the court-martial was a plot by Joe's dad to make sure he had the son he thought he could control wearing the Shield armor. Well, Joe's wearing the Shield armor, but he's also on the run until he can bring down his dad, so, 1 out of 2?

Joe's in Summit City, saying his farewells to Dusty, the sidekick of the original Shield, who was beaten into a coma by members of the gang the Jewels in the previous issue. A guy watches from the shadows, lamenting how he let Dusty down. Elsewhere, the mysterious "Hauser" who runs Summit City, is dealing with the leader of the Jewels, who looks like he was part of Run DMC. He doesn't appreciate being told to report back on sightings of the Shield, to the point he throws a knife into Hauser's chest. 

Which does nothing except make Hauser threaten to cut off the meds the leader's mom needs. Does that mean he controls the pharmaceutical companies or drug stores in town, the doctors who prescribe the drugs? Don't tell me he's, gasp, interfering with the mail. That fiend!

Joe drops a letter in the mail to Devon's parents, explaining what really happened, then steps into a "Techno-Nook" for a new watch battery. Only to find the story being robbed at Uzi-point by more Jewels, who are also on the lookout for him. Joe wonders about their mysterious "boss", but wins the fight easily.

The store's owners, the Carvers, explain they saved enough to move to a 'slightly less bad part of town,' and get this store. It makes them an easy target, but they stay because you have to take a stand somewhere. The Carvers' son Theo arrives and pulls a switchblade on the Shield, thinking he attacked the store. A little talking clears things up, and Theo agrees to help Joe find a news photographer he befriended. They run into more Jewels on the way, irate that Theo refuses to join, but Bert the photog comes out with a gun, giving them a chance to scramble inside his apartment.

Oddly, the Jewels make no attempt to besiege the place with their M-16s. Even stranger these guys don't recognize Joe as the guy they're supposed to be looking for, even though his armor is plainly visible beneath his open trenchcoat. Joe wants to know where the Jewels are based, because this latest bunch were carrying military hardware.

As it turns out, the one supplying the Jewels is McGill, the Green Beret that got Devon killed. Joe's dad is getting McGill the guns to supply to gangs to draw out Joe, and McGill is taking money from Hauser for the guns, with neither of those two the wiser. Presumably he'll use the money to fix the damage Joe did to his face when he went rogue.

So Joe's got a lot to deal with, and that's without him knowing The Web are trying to track him down, or that The Fly is in town and had his own run-in with the Jewels that's got him looking to get involved.

{6th longbox, 90th comic. Legend of the Shield #6, by Grant Miehm (writer/artist), Mark Waid (writer), Matt Hollingsworth (colorist), Albert DeGuzman (letterer)}

Random Back Issues #122 - The Jaguar #7

Shot through the heart, and you're to blame, 'cause the cop is afraid, of cryptid dames. 

Maria De Guzman takes a walk in the woods outside the college town where she lives to enjoy some peace and quiet. It's also a chance to see what she can do as the Jaguar.

After spending a moment wondering how her costume transported itself from her closet to her body, she tests her long jump. A quarter of a mile's not bad, but only makes her question what she is even further. She sets off running and easily catches a squirrel, noting the animal didn't fear her when men did, and which is the wiser? Leaping to the top of a tree to enjoy the view, Maria marvels at how she can hear the students back on campus (which she described as 45-minute walk). But she also hears gunshots.

The shooting is the local sheriff and one of his deputies, plinking away at cans on a fence while another deputy takes the statement of a farmer about a break-in on his property last night. The shooters are a couple of dopes, as the sheriff tells the deputy that if those cans were 'international drug lords, they'd have fried you by now, Zimo!' Don't see the issue, the drug lords are clearly just selling to the squirrels.

Zimo responds he wants to live in frontier days, so he could slay savage Indians, but the sheriff objects to that talk. He's one-quarter Cherokee, after all! The deputy argues the sheriff, named Dal Zehnder, is German, but the sheriff insists his people crossed the land bridge from Asia 20,000 years ago! At least he's not buying into the Clovis hypothesis. He also doesn't know why Zimo needs a .44 Magnum, but Zimo argues it's for Bigfeet and Sasquatches, right about the time the Jaguar arrives to see what's happening. Zimo's immediate response is to shoot her. Credit to the sheriff, he's really sticking to his "one-quarter Cherokee" bit with the 'stupid white-eyes' remark.

Fortunately, the bullet didn't penetrate, sparing Zimo's hours of trying to figure out how a subliterate dolt like himself could fill out a report on the shooting. While Zimo and Dal tell the other deputy, Jaguar runs into the woods. The farmer says the only other damage was to the cover of his old well, and when the competent deputy offers to board it up, she falls in. The Jaguar's made it to a road and switched back to Maria. Maria can feel the pain of the gunshot, but also hears the shouts (the Jaguar abilities seem to be leaking over) and immediately switches back to the Jaguar to investigate, not watching to see what's ahead.

Ouch. Still, she returns to the farm, where the deputy (one of the other cops refers to her as "Rocky", but the other called her "Lucky") is alive, but partially buried. The Jaguar climbs down, but she's a lot heavier in this form, so the side of the well collapses, burying her, too. She begins to panic, unconsciously reverting to Maria as she curses her overconfidence for killing the cop. But Lucky's not dead, and not able to see who's with her, tells "Jaguar" how she was thinking of stories about dragons her grandmother who came from Japan told. About them being forces for good.

This lasts 3 panels, but is enough to spur Maria into transforming back and leaping to safety with "Lucky" in a scene I used for Sunday Splash Page #274. After that, there's one page of Maria back in her dorm room, noting her cuts healed within an hour, and that something about her made the people (especially the guys) afraid. I don't think Messner-Loebs ever delves into if she's got a pheromone thing going, like Jessica Drew used to, or if it's something magic or what.

{5th longbox, 7th comics. The Jaguar #7, by William Messner-Loebs (writer), Chuck Wojtkiewicz (penciler), Mike Manley and Bruce N. Solotoff (inkers), M. Hollingsworth (colorist), W. Schubert (letterer)}

Sunday Splash Page #302

 

"Clank the Mecha-Dragon," in Legend of the Shield Annual #1, by Adam Blaustein (writer),  J.J. Birch (penciler), John Lowe (inker), Tom Ziuko (colorist), Clem Robins and Albert DeGuzman (letterers)

The Impact! line lasted long enough for one round of Annuals. As was the custom at the time, pioneered by such beloved storylines as Atlantis Attacks! and Bloodlines, all six annuals were part of a larger, overarching storyline called "Earth Quest."

As outlined in the first of the annuals (The Web Annual), a villain called the Templar wanted to bring about ecological catastrophe in his belief that would prompt the emergence of "the Grail", actually an alien device that could restore the entire world. The Templar hoped it could do the same for him, since he was a large dude who looked like a 2-armed version of Goro from Mortal Kombat.

The other annuals only sort of stuck to this. For the Shield, the "ecological catastrophe" is in the background, as it's snowing in Arizona when it's supposed to be 60 degrees out. Isn't that winter in Arizona? (Yes, I know they get snow in the mountains, I've been to Flagstaff. Lowell Observatory, represent!)

The "grail" part comes in as Joe wrecks some robot Vikings meant to be part of some big sci-fi/fantasy convention thing and has to help out to pay off the damage. The son of the guy behind it was a techno-villain in The Comet, and someone sent him a "grailquest" program to add, which unfortunately, is a rapidly evolving artificial intelligence that thinks it really is supposed to kill the "intruders" (read:convention-goers.)

The Annuals also shared secondary stories, as there's one with an academic discussing the history of The Black Hood as a notable figure through the ages, and another about the legacy of the Shield in the years between the original and Joe Higgins. Although the Shield's own Annual doesn't have a chapter of that history, oddly enough, instead using an adventure of the Web set in 1965, revolving around a space capsule falling out of control. I wonder if that was a mistake and the chapters got switched, or they didn't want to overload either book with past adventures of the lead heroes?

Sunday Splash Page #301

 

"Compromising Position," in Legend of the Shield #10, by Grant Miehm (writer/artist), Mark Waid (writer), Matt Hollingsworth (colorist), Albert DeGuzman (letterer)

When DC decided to try and revive the old Archie heroes, Legend of the Shield was one of the first two series. It ran 16 issues, which was middle of the pack for the Impact! line, and was centered primarily on Joe Higgins, once a promising young officer, until railroaded under false charges.

Grant Miehm, who was plotter as well as artist for most of the series, goes somewhere between The Fugitive and The Incredible Hulk (TV show) style story. We learn in the first issue Joe's paranoid, authoritarian bully of father, General Higgins, was behind his conviction, because Joe could only be considered for the Shield project as an enlisted man, not an officer. Joe learns this by the beginning of issue 3, and spends the next 10 issues on the run, using the Shield armor to help reporters, politicians, kids in trouble from gang violence, while also trying to find some allies to help clear his name.

The fugitive thing does end, as Joe confronts his father in a kangaroo court and partially clears his name. The original Shield is involved, which has Mark Waid's (who is credited with dialogue most of the time) fingerprints all over it, as Joe's armor is the best the military could do to re-create the original version.

Joe's has some bulletproof alloy, but also can create an electromagnetic field if he clasps his hands together. I guess it's like completing a circuit. I like the design (which I'm guessing was Miehm's work) better than the original's. The shoulder/chest piece being smaller looks better to me and doesn't raise as many questions in my mind about how Joe manages to bend at the waist.

The book pivots briefly to a different character wearing the Shield armor, but it never feels like it's going to stick, and it doesn't. Although once Joe's back in the suit, he's rocking one of those terrible super-long '90s ponytails like Nightwing had for a while. Just awful.

The abrupt end of the line, like with The Jaguar, left several threads unanswered. While Joe was evading his father's attempts to kill him, there was a secretive crime lord industrialist type trying to figure out how to use the Shield to his own purposes. Joe confronts him once, but is forced to help him. There's never any conclusion to that. They don't really explain why Joe kept having weird visions of the original Shield trying to speak to him, either. So it goes.

Random Back Issues #117 - The Web #13

Not if you're going to describe it like that.

Kupperberg and Horne are listed as "guest" writer and penciller, respectively, but this two Part 1 of a two-part story is also the penultimate issue of the book.

Government spy/paranormal investigation agency WEB has a problem. An old enemy of theirs, Frenzy, has escaped from the Army base where he's been kept doped up for 26 years. Frenzy's super-strong and seemingly hasn't aged in all that time, but his most dangerous ability is a 'psychic madness virus', that damages the sanity of anyone within 10 feet of him.

While the Army was acting a jailer, they weren't briefed on that ability, so when Frenzy's escaped, 122 soldiers died, 70 were wounded, and 42 are unlikely to regain their sanity. WEB's Director, Powell Jennings, wants WEB to be the ones who recapture Frenzy, to protect his reputation. To that end, he contacts Mark Austin, the WEB member who caught Frenzy the first time. That this happened 26 years ago and Austin's in at least late middle age isn't necessarily a deal-breaker; half the cast of the book are people who were part of WEB back then and are still active.

This includes Bill Grady, who is the man in the command center for WEB, and hasn't totally shaken off the last fight with Frenzy, and the Sunshine Kid, who's still an active agent (and as much a hippie as the name might suggest), and was the first to actually fight Frenzy. That was in a subway, and Kid chose to save a person driven to jump in front of a subway car by Frenzy's powers over stopping Frenzy. The final battle was in Omaha, when Frenzy and his followers tried to hijack a nuclear bomber. That's where Mark Austin triumphed.

So no big deal, right? Well, Austin isn't part of WEB. He serves as some sort of Undersecretary in the U.S. government since shortly after that fight. Still, Powell visits, asking for help. Austin describes how, on that fateful day, he recognized that all the WEB agents sharing the power that runs their armors weakened their defenses against Frenzy's madness. So, Austin boldly decided called for all the power to himself and leapt into the fray, knocking Frenzy out with a furious attack!

Can you smell the bullshit? Sure you can, but Powell's a stuffed shirt, so he doesn't. He's only too happy to name Austin field leader for this mission. The rest of the team finds out when Powell and Austin show up at their HQ, Austin already wearing the armor under a trenchcoat. Man knows how to make a dramatic reveal. Nobody else seems to think this is a good idea, but they're not in charge, so they just have to deal.

After a stop in a Las Vegas prison to recruit some followers, Frenzy hijacked a plane going to Chicago and caused it to crash (by driving the crew insane.) He survived, but I'm assuming the people in the roadster with him, shooting the cops with heavy machine guns, are new recruits, since I doubt anyone else survived the crash. The 3-person team Austin constructed shows up at the end, ready to fight. The next, and final issue, has two fights against Frenzy, plus, to the surprise of no one except Powell, the reveal that Austin's version of his "victory" was a load of crap.

{12th longbox, 98th comic. The Web #13, by Paul Kupperberg (writer), Barry Horne (penciller), Andrew Pepoy (inker), Linda Kachelhofer (colorist), Vickie Williams (letterer)}

Random Back Issues #114 - Legend of the Shield #2

Yep, that'll do it.

Joe Higgins passed his trial run with the Shield armor, which actually involved keeping the armor from being stolen by a big cyborg guy called Mann-X. Now it's time for his first mission: rescuing some American hostages from the fictional Middle Eastern country of Bahkti. Except Higgins is having weird dreams about what seems to be the original Shield, fighting in Korea, possibly.

He won't open up about them to anyone, even his best friend, Lt. Devon Hall, so Hall decides to get ready for his briefing with Higgins' father, a brigadier general. He's a bit early and sees a dossier on the desk. It's not about the mission, but about the fact the general made up charges to get his son court-martialed and busted to sergeant so he could be used in the Shield project. I guess the Army wasn't willing to spare any officers for the job.

Hall doesn't get a chance to tell Joe before the mission, and the general's none-too-subtle that he knows Hall read something he wasn't meant to. Worse, the general arranged for the loan of a Major McGill from the Green Berets for the mission to Bahkti. Because General Higgins is a fucking lunatic. The type who threatens his ex-wife just because Joe visited her.

The mission starts well enough, as Joe's team use the element of surprise to rescue the hostages, while Devon's squad disable all the Bahktian helicopters except one. Just in case. But when Devon's group go to free the other group of hostages they were told about, they find nothing except a bunch of Bahktian soldiers.

While Joe's rigging explosives to blow the munitions dump and cover their tracks, Devon's wounded and pinned down by an entire angry squad. The explosion gives him a chance to get to the chopper he spared as a back-up, but McGill disabled it, too. So Devon's stuck trying to reach the original helicopter as the rest of the soldiers, Joe and the hostages lift off.

Unfortunately, Devon gets gunned down, and Joe can't hear the warning that his father railroaded him, either. Nice touch having the sound effects cover the speech balloons. Joe flips out and gets knocked unconscious by the other soldiers, but by next issue, he's a fugitive trying to figure out how to bring down his father.

{6th longbox, 120th comic. Legend of the Shield #2, by Grant Miehm (writer/artist), Mark Waid (writer), Jeff Albrecht (inker), Tom Ziuko (colorist), Albert Deguzman (letterer)}

Sunday Splash Page #274

 

"Life Number Eight," in The Jaguar #7, by William Messner-Loebs (writer), Chuck Wojtkiewicz (penciler), Mike Manley and Bruce N. Solotoff (inkers), M. Hollingsworth (colorist), W. Schubert (letterer)

My back issue project of late last year was the early '90s Impact Comics line DC put out with the old Archie heroes, so welcome to the first of those titles.

The Jaguar followed Maria De Guzman, freshman college student from Brazil, moving to Elm Harbor, Michigan. A sleepy little college town, which happens to have stuff like government laboratories hidden beneath it, and weird alien Sasquatches out in the boonies. Maria struggles to fit in, not aided by a cruel Queen Bee character who singles her out for torment, especially once they end up as roommates. (Messner-Loebs does expand on what's going on with Traci later, using her eventually as comic relief, and confidante.) 

When Maria's attacked by a bunch of assholes while out for a nighttime jog, she transforms into a huge, feral warrior woman. Messner-Loebs initially plays it as Maria remembering the transformation as more of a dream, as The Jaguar was something her aunt told her about as a protector of the rain forest, and which terrified Maria. Maria eventually accepts that she's the one changing, and by halfway through the series has even learned to revel in her abilities.

David Antoine Williams was series artist for the first four issue, and there are similarities between his work and a Rich Burchett or Ty Templeton. Smooth, solid lines. Straightforward designs without a lot of messy cross-hatching or anything like that. Wojtkiewicz takes over as artist in issue 5, and ends up drawing 7 of the remaining 10 issues.

Williams' version of the Jaguar seemed like something Adam Hughes or Terry Dodson might draw. Buff, prominent, rounded hips and chest, just all around big. Wojtkiewicz tones that down a bit while maintaining the musculature. He also emphasizes the animal aspect more. Hair a bit wilder, shading the face to make the green eyes stand out more. When she runs, he draws her up on the balls of her feet and leaning forward, like she's a moment away from dropping to all fours.

Messner-Loebs has Maria gradually embrace being the Jaguar, trying to use it to do good. When she's approached about joining a super-team (because they tried hard to interconnect the books), she agrees. For someone who was frightened by her aunt's admission she'd killed men with this power, Maria doesn't seem that frightened of losing control herself once she understands what's going on.

Unfortunately, the Impact line went under from poor sales, so the book ended at 14 issues. Worse, it ended on a cliffhanger, as Maria and Traci fly to Brazil to investigate the murder of Maria's father and the seizing of her family's assets.