This is at least the second time I've been fooled by the Mike Mignola cover for Justice League Quarterly #14. For one thing, of course there's no interior art by Mignola in there; for another, the cover copy promises "Reunion!" but the characters really hadn't met before.
The bulk of this issue is wrapping up plotlines from DC's attempted relaunch of Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt. Oddly, the wikipedia entry mentions the character is owned by the estate of his creator, Pete Morisi, since his death in 2003. It makes me wonder if, say, the Question and Blue Beetle, would revert to Steve Ditko's estate; and this discussion is sadly more interesting than the issues of DC's Thunderbolt relaunch that I've read. Or this one.
Captain Atom is again in his default role as government tool--not quite tool, really, but still taking orders from the man. Here, Blue Beetle is goofy and useless, Nightshade...does something. Ugh. Throw in a new Judomaster; and all this issue does is make you again realize how Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's made a silk purse out of a sow's ear when they rejiggered these characters for Watchmen.
From "Havoc Unleashed!" Written by Paul Kupperberg, pencils by Michael Collins, inks by Eduardo Barreto. Per the GCD Indexer Notes: "Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, Nightshade, Judomaster, Thunderbolt and Sarge Steel were all characters created by Charlton Publications and purchased by DC. The only other Charlton character owned by DC not shown here is the Question." That's not quite true: you forget Peacemaker, which is a little surprising, even if he was probably dead at the time, Kupperberg wrote his limited series. (There is a slight nod in the dialog to Peacemaker; it's a little too cute.) Looking that up, I realized on the two posts I did on Peacemaker, I started typing his name as 'Peacekeeper' halfway though; and I don't think anyone noticed, which tells you all you need to know about that.
Maybe I'd be a little easier on this issue if they had thrown in the Question; it probably couldn't have hurt...wait, I've seen L.A.W., so nevermind.
The rest of this issue is uniformly pretty bad: a Crimson Fox story, a Jack O'Lantern tale--the Global Guardian Irishman, not the guy that occasionally gives Spider-Man the hassle--and a Praxis story. Why there's a story here about a Klingon moon here, I don't know.
The deal with Thunderbolt was that Pete Morisi owned some rights to the character before DC bought him from Charlton, so there was already a legal entanglement. A settlement was worked out whereby DC had to have a successful ongoing Peter Cannon series by such and such date, or something along those lines. If not, the rights would revert back to Morisi. DC failed, rights transferred, and as far as I know the Morisi estate still holds them. However, Thunderbolt showed up in an issue of "DC Legacies" last year, so who knows?
ReplyDelete