Remember The Time .... ?

Welcome to a special second post this week; and in honor of this being a special post, here's a special comic!

Scooby-Doo! Team-Up No. 1
DC Comics
Sholly Fisch, writer
Dario Brizuela, artist

I didn't know anything about this title a few months ago when I was doing my monthly comics pre-order. But it looked like a fun title that maybe harkened back to the old "Scooby-Doo Movies" cartoon show. This animated classic took the original Mystery Incorporated gang of Scooby, Shaggy, Velma, Daphne and Fred, expanded their initial half-hour adventures into an hour-long program and paired them with a different guest-star each episode. Sometimes the guest was a real personality such as Sandy Duncan, Don Adams, Don Knotts, Jerry Reed  or Jonathan Winters animated for the show. Other times, the guests might be real people starring in their own animated shows, like the Harlem Globetrotters, or fictional characters like the Addams Family and the Three Stooges. Some episodes even starred other cartoon characters such as the casts of Josie and the Pussycats and Speed Buggy.

Two episodes of this series teamed the Scooby gang with the Caped Crusaders, Batman and Robin, and pitted their combined forces against both the Penguin and the Joker. Those episodes of "Scooby-Doo Movies" were so popular and fondly remembered by fans, that the much more recent "The Brave and the Bold" animated Batman series included a tribute to them. In that episode, Bat-Mite, the imp from another dimension who idolizes Batman, tells of some of the Dark Knights strangest team-ups, one of which includes Batman and Robin crossing paths with both the Scooby gang and "Weird Al" Yankovic in a "Scooby-Doo Movies" style mystery.

Back to this comic, the advance solicit information promised that the team-up in this first issue of this comic series would again pair the Scooby gang with Batman and Robin. Sign me up!

And what a romp this issue is! It fully acknowledges the previous team-ups from "Scooby-Doo Movies," as well as including a number of other "in jokes."

The Mystery Incorporated gang travels to an unnamed mall to investigate reports of a "giant bat creature." Once there, they see Batman and Robin. Daphne greets the Caped Crusaders with, "Long time, no see, Batman -- ever since our run-in with the Joker and the Penguin!" Fred, shaking hands with Batman, adds, "Yeah, we kept running into all sorts of people back then. Singers, basketball players ... It felt like we were teaming up with someone different every week!" And Batman responds with, "I know the feeling."

In the few months between ordering this issue and receiving my copy, I have since learned that Scooby-Doo! Team-Up is scheduled to be a three-issue bimonthly series. You can bet I've pre-ordered issue Nos. 2 and 3 and am anxiously awaiting them, too!

Or Maybe I AM Getting Too Old

The Green Hornet Vol. 1 tpb: Bully Pulpit
Dynamite Entertainment
Mark Waid, writer
Daniel Indro and Ronilson Freire, artist

I was pleasantly surprised not long ago by the fresh take on the Batman mythos presented in the original graphic novel Batman: Earth One, then rather disappointed in Superman: Earth One, a similar updating on the familiar beginnings. This book is somewhere in between. The writing is great as one would expect from a veteran writer like Mark Waid. And the artwork is crisp and clear, as one would expect from an action/adventure story such as this one.

And yet, I'm just not feeling it.

In his introduction, Waid explains how he developed the plot of this story, and it sounds interesting, if not quite as original as Waid claims. The Green Hornet's alter ego, Britt Reid, owns a daily newspaper in Chicago. Waid's idea was to have Reid experience some success both as the crusading journalist and as the Hornet, and end up eventually "believing his own press and stumbling hard over his own ego." Take away the newspaper angle and that story HAS been told before, by Waid himself, as well as a great many other writers. A familiar basic plot does not make a story bad, by any means. Familiar plots are re-told in any number of new and creative ways to very great effect all the time.

I am even quite willing to give Waid props on his characterization in this volume. Quite often when a writer wants to take an established character and show him or her making mistakes early on that helped teach a lesson and shape the individual that character would eventually become, the writer ends up making said character act "out of character" to bring about the error in judgment. Waid avoids that common writing flub here. His Britt Reid/Green Hornet behaves consistently throughout this narrative.

My problem with the story is that I just personally don't care for the way Reid/Hornet is acting here. And I don't like how quickly former partners the Hornet and Kato are placed at odds with each other and physically battle each other. Where is the friendship and devotion to each other these two characters should have in order to carry out the mission they have set for themselves?

Another problem this trade suffers from is incredibly decompressed storytelling. The great bulk of this trade, collecting the first six issues of the series, is almost pure setup rather than a complete story unto itself. This is the second time I have run across a trade that did not present a complete narrative in and of itself. Comics are a continuing medium; it is not unusual for the stories to continue from issue to issue for years, yet still, most trade collections offer a satisfying beginning, middle and end within the framework of the ongoing continuity. This book does not. Perhaps that is a new path comic storytelling is destined to take, but I'm still of the mindset that a single trade should contain a single story even if several trades tell a much larger narrative.

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Just a quick "heads up" before I go: Stop by this Friday for a special second post this week!

Now Presenting The Fourth And Final Member Of The Team -- At Last

The Lone Ranger 19
Dynamite Entertainment
Ande Parks, writer
Esteve Polls, artist

I am really liking the work Ande Parks and Esteve Polls are doing on this title. The stories go deeper than even Brett Matthews did on his incredible 25-issue re-telling of the Ranger's origin in the first volume of this series from Dynamite; Parks gets these characters and presents them as the "classic" versions despite some updating from Matthews' run. And Esteve Polls' art is fantastic for this series.

But one of my absolute favorite things about this run is the attention these two creators have paid to previously "untouched" portions of the legend. A previous arc gave a great deal of back story to the Ranger's "faithful Indian companion," Tonto. I'm not aware that Tonto's origin has ever been nailed down previously as even the tribe he belongs to seems fluid in some re-tellings.

This time out, Parks and Polls give us some details about Scout's back story, and appropriately enough, Scout's story is tied into Tonto's history in a very nice fashion, completing the transformation as Tonto becomes the man we are familiar with.

For those who don't know -- and shame on you if you don't -- Scout is Tonto's horse, and he is every bit as valued a member of this western justice team as Silver, the Ranger's steed. Both horses are often portrayed as very intelligent animals who actively assist their human companions in remarkable ways. And Silver has long had an "origin" story just like the Ranger. At the conclusion of that tale, Silver chooses to stay with the Lone Ranger just as much as the Ranger selects Silver. Now, Scout has a similar origin with a similar choosing scene.

This is an excellent done-in-one comic, and a tale any Lone Ranger fan ought to consider reading!!

Young Love, Forever Destined To Fail?

Nightwing annual 1
DC Comics
Kyle Higgins, writer
Jason Masters, Daniel Sampere and Vicente Cifuentes, artists
Special shout-out to the creator of The History of Dick/Babs (So Far) site for helping refresh and/or double-check my memory on some of the books I've read but was too lazy to dig out for reference this time around.

This was a great done-in-one issue by regular Nightwing writer Kyle Higgins, but then I'm partial to the subject matter.

I've long been a fan of Dick Grayson, first as Robin and later as Nightwing. I didn't read that many of the 1970s and early-80s Batman Family and Detective Comics stories that featured Robin and Batgirl in both solo stories and team-ups when they were new. But I've always liked the Barbara Gordon Batgirl character, too.

Now, as many of my longtime readers know, I'm a huge fan of the Titans, absolutely loving the Wolfman/Perez reboot from 1980 onward (as well as discovering and liking the earlier incarnations of the team much after the fact). As a fan of that series, I confess, I loved the Robin/Starfire relationship. Dick and Koriand'r of Tamaran made a great couple readers hoped would endure.

But before that run of Titans came to an end, so too did the relationship between Dick and Kory. Later writers hinted at the couple's feelings for each other remaining in the various Titans relaunches since then, but those hints and suggestions never went anywhere.

Jump ahead a few years and Nightwing is given his own series, and Barbara Gordon gives up being Batgirl shortly before being crippled by the Joker. That was a tragic story, but out of those events came Barbara's new identity as Oracle, a much stronger personality and just as heroic as Batgirl had ever been portrayed. And writers began hinting back to the early careers of Dick and Barbara and a possible budding attraction that never reached full potential. Adding to that retconned romance was the de-aging of Batgirl. When she debuted, Barbara Gordon was easily 10 years older than the Boy Wonder; but nowadays, the pair are very close to the same age and always have been.

Around that same time, I finally caught up on a number of those old Batman Family and Detective Comics stories mentioned before. A mutual attraction and possible relationship between Robin and Batgirl was not a wholly new idea. The current stories played it up as more than it had been at the time of those earlier stories, but there were definite hints at affection on the part of Robin, at least, even back in the 70s and 80s. Adding to the current portrayal of the pair being interested in each other in the past were re-tellings of each of their origins -- including Robin: Year One and Batgirl: Year One.

In time, the two began a relationship facilitated by the fact that writer Chuck Dixon was crafting both their respective adventures in Nightwing and Birds of Prey. All of that culminated in the pre-New 52 DC continuity in the controversial Nightwing annual No. 2 (January 2007) when Dick proposes to Barbara, but alas, a wedding does NOT follow. The book was controversial for some of its retconned history. For example, the scenes where Dick Grayson stops to see Barbara Gordon for the first time after she was crippled by the Joker. The pair end up spending the night together, but Dick is not just there to check on his old friend -- he's also there to invite Barbara to his and Kory's wedding. Ouch! That's a bit of retconning I could have done without.

I was a fan of a relationship between Dick and Barbara. Through the great writing of the various stories that built their relationship, I came to see Barbara as the great love of Dick's life. These two characters seem to genuinely care about and for each other, and I have often hoped they would find a way to get together -- not for a hook-up, but for a real, lasting relationship.

Fast forward another few years to The New 52, DC's reboot of its superhero universe continuity. Many characters' histories were changed, but one of the things I was glad to see survived the reboot was the mutual attraction between Dick and Barbara early in their careers. It was hinted at in the very first New 52 Nightwing story arc when Dick is reunited with several of his friends from Haly's Circus, including Raya, a girl Dick's own age whom he'd had feelings for long before the circus came to Gotham, Dick's parents were killed and he started down the road that would lead to his becoming Robin. In one issue of that arc, Barbara guest-starred, and (spoilers) she seemed to distrust Raya. Dick writes Barbara's reaction off to jealousy because he and Barbara have flirted before. The past mutual attraction was also a part of the action in The New 52's Batgirl No. 3.

This issue, the first New 52 annual for Nightwing, takes that suggestion even further, bringing back the idea that Dick and Barbara have long had feelings for one another but could never quite make things work out to actually date before. During the course of a current case the pair are working together, they spend a lot of time reminiscing about their first meeting and first kiss. It is nice to see this favorite concept from the old continuity creep back into the new. And, since the original Teen Titans' history seems to have been wiped out with the New 52, there goes that whole thing between Dick and Babs after he and Kory are engaged.

Oh, and this annual also introduces The New 52 version of the Bat-villain Firefly, playing a bit with readers' expectations. It's a good read; you should check it out!

She's Truly A Wildcat

The Complete Omaha The Cat Dancer vols. 1-8
Amerotica
Reed Waller and Kate Worley with James Vance, creators
********** Mature Content Warning ************

Omaha the Cat Dancer is another one of those books I'd heard of before but really knew very little about. I'm not sure anymore where or how I first heard of the title. I remember seeing an add in 1989 for the Omaha statue that was being solicited. Maybe that was my first exposure to the character, but I think the name was at least a little familiar before then.

However I first heard of the title, I didn't see an issue of Omaha until much later. At one point, I'd purchased an earlier trade collection, I think The Collected Omaha vol. 3, and at another point I owned the first and third issues of Vol. 2 of the monthly comic, but I no longer have any of those in my collection.

Those issues gave me a taste of the series -- funny animal characters populate Omaha's world, but otherwise, they behave like ordinary people and often engage in explicit sexual behavior, which was fully depicted in the series.

I got to know some of the characters a little bit: Omaha, a stripper in a nightclub who is hiding out from someone or something; her boyfriend, Chuck, an artist who doesn't seem to work much because his family has money, but he wants little to do with them; their friend, Shelley, a former stripper who is now confined to a wheelchair; and everyone's sorta friend, Joanne, a former lover of Chuck's who fits into the mix in other ways that weren't clear to me at the time.

That was the problem with these random glimpses into the world of Omaha. Obviously, there was a continuing story from which I was missing vital pieces. The pictures were pretty to look at, but I couldn't really follow what was going on.

So, when I heard almost 10 years ago that the entire irregular run of Omaha was going to be collected, I decided to snap them up. The first seven volumes started coming out in 2005 and finished up in 2007, reprinting the various Omaha stories and shorts to that point. Finally, I could follow the story from the beginning, and learn a lot more about the creation process through introductions by each of the creators in the various volumes.

The initial episode featuring Omaha and Chuck was the brainchild of Reed Waller and appeared in a magazine called Vootie. Waller explains that his characters have animal faces and tails because illustrated people never look "natural" on a page. Those first two strips introduce Omaha's and Chuck's relationship. Also seen in those initial episodes, though not yet named, is George, the owner/manager at the Kitty Korner, the club where Omaha dances. The very first installment also introduces a major plot point in a moral decency campaign which threatens the Kitty Korner and Omaha's livelihood.

Kate Worley came to the series and took over the writing chores after those first two installments while Waller continued to supply the art. The story line backed up a bit at this point, showing Omaha first arriving in Mipple City looking to start over. That third installment introduces a still bipedal Shelley, and she and Omaha become fast friends. Soon other recurring characters are introduced including Jerry, Joanne, Pong and of course, Chuck.

The plot thread of the moral decency campaign is expanded into a full-blown conspiracy that will have major, ongoing ramifications for the characters and their world. Beyond the various interpersonal relationships among the various multi-generational characters, other plot points of this saga incorporate handicaps, substance abuse, blackmail, small-town graft, crime families and the culture wars. And the setting of the story switches from the fictional Mipple City, Minnesota, to San Francisco, California, and back again.

As the creators themselves admit in one of the introductions, Omaha is not a story for everyone. But I enjoyed the multi-layered storytelling and am glad I finally had a chance to read this series. At its best, the story reminds me of Terry Moore's work in Strangers In Paradise, another lengthy story I not long ago read for the first time in its entirety and enjoyed. (Moore provides the introduction to the sixth volume of this series, by the way.) There are many, many characters in a rich, twisting plot, and all of it is written well.

Some of the sex seemed overdone to me. And some parts of the finale to the series seemed a bit rushed. But then, the final volume of The Complete Omaha was produced 10 years after the series initially disappeared. Much of what happens in the finale was written or at least choreographed by Worley, but then completed by Waller and Vance after her death but with her blessing. Still, all in all, Omaha is a satisfying story about interesting characters in crazy circumstances.