"The End" Week: Challengers of the Unknown #87!

I wasn't going to break my usual title formatting, but this would've been the one to do it, since "12 Million Years to Twilight!" is a heck of a title. From 1978, Challengers of the Unknown #87, written by Carla and Gerry Conway, pencils by Keith Giffen, inks by John Celardo. 

We saw the previous issue recently: most of the Challengers were in the future, along with Swamp Thing, Deadman, and a currently hypnotized Rip Hunter. The local evil head honchos, the Sunset Lords, were dumping their genetic mistake monsters in the past, and fighting local rebel Lucas Lawspeaker, who was a telepath that could 'see' Deadman. He advises the ghost to help the Challs, who make an escape attempt before they can be "re-programmed" like Rip had been. Swarmed by mutant guards, Swamp Thing tells the others to fight on, sacrificing himself to give them time...

Meanwhile, in the past, in the best team book tradition, quit team member Red Ryan un-quits, returning to Challenger Mountain as the injured Prof. Haley, in an exo-suit, still fights a bunch of monsters. They squeak out a win, while the Swamp Thing faces the Sunset Lords' cyborg Persauder, beating it.

Lucas Lawspeaker's rebels then attack, while in the past Red and Prof. are able to contact the JLA (and apparently the Demon and Lightray, just because!) to fight off the time-monsters. Beaten, the Sunset Lords are about to blow up the city, but are stopped by Rip Hunter, who breaks free from their mind-control thanks to Deadman. 

With the future now in good hands, everyone heads home in Rip Hunter's time sphere--and then apparently goes their own way, since this was the last issue. We don't see them break-up or say goodbye or anything. Aw, I don't know if the Swamp Thing ever gets to hang out with anybody like that anymore. Deadman either, I suppose. Lucky reader Andy Proctor had just come up with a new title for the book's letters' column, Address: Unknown, too; but it wasn't entirely: the Challengers would appear again in 1982's Adventure Comics #493.(I kind of liked that serial, although I don't know if there's anywhere to get it other than the digests. One episode begins, with one of the team a little irritated after a recent attempt on his life, while the other guys are reading, watching TV, balancing their checkbook...)

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Read "Is This the Future?" in the same tone as Killmonger in Black Panther, "Is this your king?"

I've said this a million times over the years, that DC has so many great characters that I love to death...that absolutely could not carry their own title in a wheelbarrow. So, putting a bunch of those guys, in one book? Love it, love everything about it! Let's see how well it's executed, in today's book: from 1978, Challengers of the Unknown #86, "The War at Time's End" Written by Gerry Conway, pencils by Keith Giffen, inks by John Celardo. 

Mysterious boxes are releasing monsters, like a violent Bizarro Pokémon, and in Challenger Mountain, the injured Prof. Haley manages to fight one off, but is then trapped in an airlock by five more. That gives him to recap the last few issues: Red Ryan had quit the team, after fighting with Rocky Davis over 'honorary' Challenger, June Robbins. (Urg, 'honorary.' June wasn't an original member and was a woman, but her treatment seems pretty Stone Age even for the time!) The team then investigates the first mystery box in Canada, accompanied by Swamp Thing (!) and unknown to them, Deadman: after fighting the monster, the Prof. had discovered the box was from the future. The far future; like the year Twelve Million A.D.! For a consult, the Challs go to visit Rip Hunter: they don't find him, but his time sphere returns, with the skeleton of someone from the future. The team takes the sphere to investigate, and the Prof. realizes the monitoring equipment was in the next room...with the monsters!

The Challengers and Swamp Thing, in the future, are confronted by an obviously controlled Rip Hunter and future "sub-men." Deadman possesses one, to give the others time to escape, but they catch a beating at the hands of the "Persuader," which was more robot than human, so Deadman couldn't take it over. The big cheese, "Sunset Lord," thinks the new prisoners could be useful in crushing rebel "Lucas Lawspeaker," so Deadman starts looking there. Back in the past, the Prof. uses an exo-suit to fight the monsters, while Red Ryan faces another box in mid-Metropolis, by turning a mini-cam into a laser! (He was the team's electronics expert, but that still seems iffy.) In the future, Deadman had pieced together the backstory: people were created "in somethin' called a gene vat, like some kinda human yeast." The Sunset Lords had inadvertently created a batch of monsters, and the arrival of Rip Hunter gave them a means of getting rid of them, by dumping them into the past. Deadman then checks out the slum "Black Alley," and meets Lucas Lawspeaker, who surprisingly, can read his mind! To be continued...

Part of the reason I do this blog is to shore up my memory; since I'm virtually positive I have the last few issues of this series somewhere, yet it didn't ring a bell when I read this! I'm glad I picked it up at that toy show, then. This was pretty early Giffen art, so it might not be the style you're familiar with: this was a couple years before his Legion run.

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80-Page Thursdays: DC's Nuclear Winter Special #1!

Yay, a new DC 80-pager! These are usually light, breezy reading...OK, this one may not be scads of fun. Or scabs of fun. From (late) 2018, DC's Nuclear Winter Special #1, featuring stories by Mark Russell, Mairghread Scott, Paul Dini, and more; art by Giuseppe Camuncoli, Mike Norton, Christian Duce, and more.

Sigh. Look, I know sometimes comics readers can want "dark" stories: that's why stuff like What If? or Days of Futures Past is popular. "All your favorite heroes, and here's them dying!" This issue feels like a step further, since just about everyone else is dead, too. Framed by Rip Hunter pages, as he tries to play Scheherazade and tell stories to stall three post-apocalyptic cannibals while his time sphere recharges; these stories could all be canon, carved-in-stone predestined futures, or lies Rip pulls out of his ass. Or both! Still, the cannibals are supposed to be funny, with their references to "Oogle" and terms and conditions of who can be eaten; they really aren't.

The obligatory Batman story is Damian's dark future, but as least pits him against R'as al Ghul instead of the Joker. Next is a Superman One Million/Martian Manhunter story, then a dark Flash story: sacrificing himself to save the day one last time, Barry is trapped in the Speed Force forever, but at least gets to see those he left behind before he goes on to what's next.

In "Where the Light Cannot Reach," Aquaman is living on a mountaintop, but two scientists convince him to brave the irradiated ocean depths in search of a radiation-eating microbe. "Last Daughters" features an older Supergirl trying to save what might be the last girl on earth. Paul Dini and Jerry Ordway pit Firestorm against oddball Outsiders robots, the Nuclear Family. That one is set after some level of atomic holocaust, but Firestorm appears to be about as usual, not huffing radiation or anything.

Phillip Hester's "Northern Lights" is a Kamandi Hanukkah story, and probably my favorite of this lot. Then a kinda generic Catwoman story--it puts the "winter" in nuclear winter, anyway; then the last full story, "The Birds of Christmas Past, Present and Future." An aged and crabby old Green Arrow is invited to the JLA holiday party, despite having quit the team long ago; and revisits an old friend and an older frenemy. It's not bad, especially if you hold with the opinion that Ollie is never going to make the right decisions in his personal life, not even if he lives to be 80. (All that chili he eats, I don't see him living past that...)

The scans are in no particular order this time, since this was a square-bound that we still crammed into the scanner. Despite having Harley Quinn and Wonder Woman on the cover, they aren't in this one. (Save WW briefly appearing in Flash's story.) I paid half-price for this one, and I guess I half-enjoyed it? Despite the grimdarkness of nuclear winter, it didn't quite go that far. It's no Twilight of the Bat, that's for sure.
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I enjoy the CW's DC Comics shows, but a good 90% of the heroes problems--particularly on Flash--are probably caused by the hero themselves. Which might be why Booster Gold hasn't gotten a show or appeared yet, since he'd probably cause several times more problems than that! From 2008, Booster Gold #4, "He's Gonna Save Every One of Us!" Written by Geoff Johns and Jeff Katz, pencils by Dan Jurgens, finishes by Norm Rapmund.

On the trail of the villain Supernova, Rip Hunter and Booster have an unexpected "fender bender" in the timestream, running into Flash and Kid Flash on their cosmic treadmill! Although Rip doesn't want to mess with the Flashes' timeline, they are headed to Central City...just a few years before the Flash Museum was built, Barry notices. Booster realizes too late the bad guys wouldn't get tracked unless they wanted to be found, and he's right; as Supernova and Rex Hunter reveal themselves!

Although he wears a costume like the Silver Age Time Master did, Rip knows "Rex" is really Jason Goldstein, who had wanted to join Rip's team but also wanted to change history as he saw fit. (Rex had tried to kill Lex Luthor as a child, but Rip points out without Lex, his clone Conner Kent wouldn't be around to save billions...) Rex and Supernova plan on erasing the history of the Justice League, so they can take their place as the heroes; and they just wiped out Flash and Kid Flash, who disappear into nothingness!

Meanwhile, in a couple of subplots, a reporter tracks down Booster's ancestor Daniel, who is forced to try and pass himself off as Booster; and classic Blue Beetle Dan Garrett is interrupted during a mummy fight (!) by someone resembling the modern Beetle...

Rip and Booster figure out the scheme: they're at the night the lightning bolt hit Barry Allen's lab, splashing him with chemicals and turning him into the Flash. By the simple expedient of putting a lightning rod on the roof, they've stopped the Flash and Kid Flash from ever happening. (And probably about four hundred super-villains, but keep that to yourself!) While Rip throws down with Rex, and Skeets battles Supernova's higher-end security droid Maximillion (Black Hole shout-out!) Booster fights the condescending Supernova, who seems to know everything about him. Grabbing his mask, Booster reveals him to be--his dad! Who has an evil-looking scar and dead eye...I think Booster's origin had always mentioned him shaving points for gambling; being pushed into it by his dad may have been a later addition.

Struck by lightning, Supernova disappears, thrown into another time period. Rip beats down Rex for mentioning the name Bonnie, who Rex murdered. A lightning bolt hits the lab, history is reset, and the Flashes return. Booster doesn't consider it a win, though; and wants to get to his real mission: saving Blue Beetle Ted Kord. Rip seems to back down and agree to help, except there's one more little thing they need to fix, another temporal anomaly: Black Canary shouldn't be the current leader of the Justice League. It should be Barbara Gordon. And not as Oracle...but as Batgirl!

A big premise of this series was Booster may no longer have been an incompetent, irresponsible, glory-hound goofball; he had to pretend he was to protect the timeline. Time-travelling villains might go after Superman or Batman's past, but Booster would've been beneath notice. Still, the time-travel shenanigans, a dramatic unmasking, subplots: Booster Gold really should hit the CW again sometime. (He appeared in an episode of Smallville some time back!)
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How much are you paying, for Jonah Hex to call you "sir"?

Thanks to the Legends of Tomorrow TV show, I think I've seen more episodes with Rip Hunter, than read comics with the character. Going back through the blog...it's close. He's in this book, but only barely: from 1990, Time Masters #3, "Time Has Come Today" Written by Bob Wayne and Lewis Shiner, pencils by Art Thibert, inks by Jose Marzan Jr.

(I don't know what is going on with that gun there.) Rip is kind of a brooding, moody dick in what we see of him here; but he's fighting a conspiracy spanning centuries, and his equipment and team are only good for "one round trip only, for each of us." He's a little pissed young Corky wasted a trip back to dinosaur times. Based on an anachronistic Polaroid, Rip sends Jeff Smith back to 1874, where he may have to assassinate Porfiro Diaz before he becomes president of Mexico. (Spelled 'Porfiro' here, it should be Porfirio Diaz, a real historical figure!) Still, Jeff's in for a tough time, since not only is he not a killer, he's in that Polaroid with Diaz's bodyguards: Scalphunter, Bat Lash, and Jonah mothersmurfing Hex.

From our point of view, hiring those three is like getting the Justice League; but I didn't think Scalphunter worked for cash much, and who hires Bat Lash? Even more unusually, Hex is rather out of character here: when the Spanish ambassador pulls a gun on Diaz at dinner, Hex smokes him, but is oddly deferential to Diaz. I wouldn't think there was enough money in the world to make Hex polite, and based on the context here Diaz was probably at best a robber baron. Hex still saves Diaz from Jeff, who has to escape to the present with a bullet in his arm; as Rip's headquarters is booby-trapped with explosives, and he and his team are forced to flee with Cave Carson! Some history seems to be implied, but Rip looks like he's seriously considering being blown up rather than accept help from Carson.

This was an eight-issue series, and has been collected; I am not positive how I got just this one issue now...
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