GREEN LANTERN #46 - October 1993

Death City

Credits:  Gerard Jones (writer), M. D. Bright (penciler), Romeo Tanghal (inker), Albert de Guzman (letterer), Anthony Tollin (colorist)

Summary:  Green Lantern, enraged at the destruction of Coast City, fights his way into Engine City.  He faces Mongul in battle, but is unable to destroy the engine room when he discovers its kryptonite power source, knowing that Superman is nearby.  Mongul takes advantage of Green Lantern’s inability to affect yellow and breaks his arm and knee.  Green Lantern finds Steel’s hammer and uses his ring to build armor around his body.  With the hammer, he beats Mongul into unconsciousness.

Irrelevant Continuity:

• Steel left his hammer behind after he flew Cyborg Superman’s metal form into the engine room’s gears in the previous chapter.  Where he is now is not revealed.
• Mongul is still referring to Cyborg Superman as “the leader” even though Mongul’s turned against him by this point.
• Green Lantern’s title was going through an awkward stage during this crossover.  This is the gray-at-the-temples, drunk driving, renegade Hal Jordan from what I’ve been able to glean from online articles.

Total N00B:  Green Lantern’s ring is still powerless against yellow at this point in continuity.  I was surprised to see that bizarre old rule was still in place in 1993, but then I remembered Ron Marz stating in Wizard that Hal’s replacement wouldn’t have that absurd restriction, so this must be one of the final stories to feature it.  

Production Note:  The Return of Superman trade only reprints sixteen pages of this issue.  Presumably, the rest of the issue deals with storylines that don’t directly relate to the GL/Mongul fight.

Review:  Green Lantern was thrown a bone and allowed to participate in the “Return of Superman” event, although it’s debatable if this really helped the title in the long run.  Within a few issues, the destruction of Coast City will become the basis for Hal Jordan turning rogue, an idiotic decision that DC stubbornly stuck to for a surprising number of years.  (Never tear down the existing hero in order to build up your replacement hero.) This issue is mostly dedicated to Green Lantern screaming at Mongul and futilely punching him.  Gerard Jones does exploit the basic flaw in the fight’s premise -- Mongul is yellow -- and gets a few entertaining pages out of it.  Green Lantern knows he can’t directly hurt Mongul, so he has to use his ring to destroy everything around Mongul, using Engine City as a weapon against him.  The action’s staged rather well, and M. D. Bright keeps the fight energetic, but it’s hard to ignore that almost every other page is either a splash page or double-page spread.  It’s a quick read, and what passes for “depth” are some melodramatic narrative captions from Green Lantern about his hate fueling his power.  It’s not pleasant.  

MAGNETO AND THE MAGNETIC MEN #1 - April 1996

Opposites Attract

Credits: Gerard Jones (writer), Mark Waid (plot assist), Jeff Matsuda (penciler), Art Thibert w/Jaime Mendoza & Lary Stucker (inks), Richard Starkings & Comicraft (letters), Kevin Tinsley (colors)

Summary: In response to his brother’s construction of the Sentinels, Magneto has created his own team of robots, the Magnetic Men, to aid mutantkind. They stop Will Magnus’ newest creation, Sinistron, from kidnapping the mutant Kokoro, but soon encounter him again on the slave-nation of Genosha. When Sinistron paralyzes Magneto’s consciousness, Antimony leads her fellow Magnetic Men to discover their own sentience and break free. United, the team defeats Sinistron, and Magneto realizes that his robots are more than machines, but are his new family.

Continuity Notes: The Magnetic Men are based on the personalities of the deceased members of the Brotherhood (the original group lead by Magneto in the Amalgam Universe, killed by his brother’s Sentinels). The Amalgam answer to the Metal Men, the team consists of Antimony (Scarlet Witch and Platinum), Bismuth (Toad and Tin), Cobalt (Mastermind and Gold), Iron (Unus the Untouchable and Iron), and Nickel (Quicksilver/Iceman and Mercury). The woman they save in the beginning, Kokoro, is an amalgam of Psylocke and Katana. Sinistron is a robotic version of Mr. Sinister.

Review: The Amalgam books produced by Marvel seemed to be more “’90s” than DC’s lot, mostly due to X-artists like Roger Cruz and Jeff Matsuda. In terms of story, this reads as a traditional superhero comic, but it’s definitely not penciled in a style associated with ‘90s DC. Even though DC had their fair share of Image-style artists, that’s not the look people tend to associate with that era of the company (DC probably has more Jim Lee clones today than it did in 1996). Since most of the artists chosen for their Amalgam titles were pretty conventional, I’m guessing DC editorial specifically avoided the Mike Deodatos of the day. If the goal of Amalgam was to evoke the old school, that didn’t stop Marvel from hiring artists that could just have easily shown up on a Youngblood spinoff. Then again, this is pretty restrained for a Jeff Matsuda job, so maybe he intentionally toned things down. Personally, I find this style more palatable than his X-Factor work.

Even though I know very little about the Metal Men, I’ve always considered this a great concept. Making Will Magnus Magneto’s brother is a cute play on their names, and the Amalgam Universe is filled with these in-jokes, but giving Magneto a team of Metal Men modeled after Marvel’s earliest mutants? That’s the kind of creative thinking and continuity-melding you want in an Amalgam book. Now, if only the Metal Men had actually maintained a healthy newsstand presence following the Silver Age, perhaps I would’ve gotten more out of the actual story. I’m sure there are character bits and inside references I’m missing out on, so unfortunately much of the issue comes across as standard superhero fare. Perfectly acceptable, but not particularly exciting. The references I do get are entertaining, so I’m assuming fans of both the X-Men and Metal Men will get a lot more out of this than the average reader.

JLX #1 - April 1996

A League of Their Own!

Credits: Gerard Jones & Mark Waid (writers), Howard Porter (penciler), John Dell (inker), Chris Eliopoulos (letters), Gloria Vasquez & Heroic Age (colors)

Summary: The Judgment League Avengers face off against the JLX, a group of former members aligned with accused eco-terrorist, Aqua-Mariner. Mr. X uses his telepathic powers to distract the JLA and allow JLX to escape. JLX travels with Aqua-Mariner to find Atlantis, the ancestral home of mutantkind. They find the city abandoned, and are soon attacked by Will Magnus and his Sentinel robots. During the fight, Mr. X is forced to reveal his hidden Martian powers to defeat the Sentinels. Although they’re shocked by Mr. X’s true identity, JLX decides to stay with their ally.

Continuity Notes: The JLX consists mostly of mutant ex-members of the JLA. The line-up includes Mr. X (Martian Manhunter, posing as a mutant and wearing a Bishop-style “M” on his face), Apollo (Cyclops and the Ray), Aqua-Mariner (Namor and Aquaman), Mercury (Quicksilver and Impulse), Runaway (Rogue and Gypsy), Wraith (Gambit and Obsidian), Firebird (Phoenix and Fire), and Nightcreeper (Nightcrawler and the Creeper). In this reality, Will Magnus is Magneto’s brother, which is a play on Magneto’s original “real” name of Magnus.

Review: What does it say about 1996 that Marvel and DC gave us JLX instead of JLAvengers? Amalgam happened to occur during Mark Waid’s brief association with the X-Men, so it makes sense that he would help to develop one of the Amalgam X-teams, although I'm sure he would've had more fun with the Avengers characters. I have mixed feelings about this one. In a way, it captures the Amalgam sentiment, as the book is filled with references to imaginary storylines (The JLA has split! Angelhawk is secretly a mutant! Wraith’s darkness is slowly tainting Runaway!), and it’s hard to fault the characters chosen to be amalgamated. Martian Manhunter working as an undercover X-Man? Will Magnus creating the Sentinels? Nightcreeper -- a cool visual and funny in-joke? This is good stuff. The execution is iffy, though. Aside from Porter’s inconsistent art, the script is often a bore. I can’t tell if the overwrought dialogue is intentionally or accidentally bad, but either way it drags the book down. If this is deliberately a parody of the X-style, it’s so dry that it’s hard to read it as a joke. And were any other characters held up for ridicule during the Amalgam event? Singling out the X-Men doesn’t seem fair.