It Came from the 1990s: The Brave and the Bold miniseries

Welcome to another installment of this blog’s occasional feature “It Came from the 1990s” in which I spotlight comic books that were released between 1990 to 1999. One of my reasons for doing this feature is that as a teenage comic book fan the 1990s were MY decade. I started following comic books regularly in 1989 when I was 13 years old, and as such the comics of my high school and college years were released within the 10 years that followed.

This time I’m going to be taking a brief look at The Brave and the Bold, a miniseries published by DC Comics in late 1991 and early 1992 that subsequently fell into obscurity. I recently re-read it for the first time in many years, and found it to still be a good, enjoyable read.

The Brave and the Bold initially ran for 200 issues from 1955 to 1983. As per Wikipedia, it started as “an anthology series featuring adventure tales from past ages with characters such as the Silent Knight, the Viking Prince, the Golden Gladiator, and Robin Hood. Beginning with issue #25 it became a “try-out” title for new characters & teams such as the Justice League of America. The series changed format yet again with issue #50, featuring team-ups between established DC characters. Finally, commencing with #74 and continuing throughout the rest of the run every issue of The Brave and the Bold had Batman team up with a different character each month.

For whatever reason, in 1991 someone at DC made the decision to revive The Brave and the Bold as a six-issue miniseries, featuring a team-up of three characters: Green Arrow, the Question, and the Butcher, with Black Canary appearing as a supporting character. DC promoted the project with a house ad announcing “The Return of the Original Team-Up Title.”

This incarnation of The Brave and the Bold is very much of the early 1990s. As with the Black Canary: New Wings miniseries that came out around the same time which I profiled previously, it was edited by Mike Gold, and it was very much of the post-The Dark Knight Returns era in which creators sought to bring a certain sense of realism to superheroes. I’ve always felt this approach worked best with non-powered costumed crime fighters, characters who already had one foot placed in a sort of quasi-reality. As such it’s not too surprising that Green Arrow and the Question were two of the most successful character revamps in the wake of TDKR.

Writer & artist Mike Grell reimagined Green Arrow as a shadowy urban vigilante who eschewed the trick arrows of his past, tackling street-level crime in Seattle. Following the successful three issue Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters miniseries by Grell in 1987, archer Oliver Queen graduated to a well-received ongoing series also written by Grell.

I suppose the Question might actually be considered a precursor to the anti-heroes who became so prevalent in American comic books during the 1980s. He had been conceived by Steve Ditko for Charlton Comics in 1967 as a somewhat less-radical version of his creator-owned character Mr. A, a ruthless vigilante who adhered to moral absolutism and Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy. The Question, aka investigative reporter Vic Sage, was nearly as much of a fanatic as Mr. A, but his actions were softened just enough that the Comics Code Authority wouldn’t reject the material out of hand. Clad in a blue trench coat, fedora, a blank face mask obscuring his features, the Question certainly possessed a distinctive appearance. 

Following Charlton’s demise in 1986 the company’s “action heroes” including the Question were purchased by DC. Writer & editor Denny O’Neil, who was at the opposite end of the political & ideological spectrum from Ditko, re-conceived Vic Sage as a Zen philosopher who fought to uncover political corruption. It’s subsequently been argued that perhaps O’Neil ought to have invented a brand-new protagonist rather than completely changing the thematic foundation of Ditko’s character. Whatever the case, though, The Question series written by O’Neil & drawn by Denys Cowan, which ran for 36 issues from 1987 to 1989, received a great deal of critical acclaim.

As for the Butcher, he is Native America ex-CIA operative John Butcher. Created by Mike Baron & artist Shea Anton Pensa, the character made his debut in a self-titled five issue miniseries published by DC in 1990. Other than a couple of back-up stories in Ms. Tree Quarterly, I believe The Brave and the Bold was his only other appearance to date.

Now that we’ve finally gotten the preliminaries out of the way, we can take a look at The Brave and the Bold miniseries, which was written by Grell & Baron and drawn by Pensa, with Pablo Marcos inking the fifth and sixth issues. Steve Haynie was the letterer and Julia Lacquement the colorist. Pensa drew the covers for the first two issues, with Grell providing cover art for the rest of the miniseries.

Oliver Queen, John Butcher and Vic Sage are each separately investigating an apparent alliance between a group of radical Native American separatists and the Irish Republican Army in the Pacific Northwest. The three men’s paths soon converge as they seek to uncover what has prompted this highly unusual association of extremists.

There’s a number of twists & turns in Grell & Baron’s plot as the three vigilantes attempt to find out what is actually taking place, and who is really pulling the strings behind the scenes. Along the way we have some interesting, and often humorous, interactions between the lead trio as they work together with various degrees of reluctance.

Grell & Baron’s story contains prominent social & political elements. One of the main issues that is brought up is the question of how Native American tribes, after centuries of persecution & genocide, should approach the future. The conservation of an embattled culture’s history & traditions while simultaneously working towards progress & modernity can be an exceedingly difficult balancing act, and understandably disagreements, often violent, are sadly inevitable.  And unfortunately there will always be forces that will exploit such dissention to their own greedy ends.

I’m not quite sure who was responsible for what in the plotting & scripting, although it’s fairly safe to conclude that Grell handled Green Arrow’s material and Baron managed the Butcher. No idea if one or the other or both of them wrote the Question, but there is a “special thanks to Dennis O’Neil” credit in the second issue, leading me to wonder if he might have at least given the story a once-over to make sure Vic remained in character.

John Butcher is scripted with a rather humorously sardonic voice which I enjoyed. In the first issue, commenting to Green Arrow and Black canary on the Native American independence movement he’s been investigating, Butcher offers the following opinion:

“I think the separatists are inviting disaster. It’s good to preserve culture, but radical attempts to create separate nations are confrontational and counter-productive. You got to go with the flow.

“Ain’t I a proper Republican! Personally, I don’t pay taxes. I must be a hypocrite or a libertarian.”

It’s interesting that, in keeping with the “grim & gritty” ethos that was very much at the forefront in superhero comic books, all three characters are willing to use lethal force. At the same time, Grell & Baron don’t glamorize the killing. It’s very much depicted as an unfortunately necessary evil, and there are two separate occasions when Butcher finds himself regretting that he had to kill an adversary. Having said that, the ending of the story does get very violent.

Reading this story in 2023, I did find there was the same problem of pacing that bothered me back when this miniseries was published over 30 years ago. The first five issues have the plot, and the mystery, unfold very gradually. Then with the sixth and final issue everything rushes to a conclusion.

Pensa’s artwork on this miniseries is definitely distinctive. I would describe his style as being simultaneously hyper-detailed and an exaggerated cartoonish quality. On the first couple of issues, barring the occasional oddly-constructed panel or awkward layout, Pensa does some genuinely beautiful, striking work. His covers for those two issues are also very strong. I felt Pensa’s pencils & inks and Lacquement’s coloring worked well together to produce some very textured, illustrative artwork.

Pensa’s art does seem to get somewhat loose & sketchy with the third and fourth issues, though. Perhaps this was why Marcos was brought in to provide inks on #5 and #6. His work certainly does give a different feel to the finished art.

I certainly enjoyed Pensa’s work on this miniseries. Whatever weaknesses there might be, Pensa’s storytelling for all six issues are very strong. For example, there’s a several page sequence in issue #4 in which the Butcher and the Question are fighting thugs on top of a speeding lumber truck. It’s almost dialogue-free, and Pensa does a superb job laying it out, making it a very tense, exciting scene.

Pensa’s career in comic books was relatively brief, beginning in 1986 and lasting roughly a decade and a half. He worked with Baron on several different projects during that period, and also penciled an issue of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman.

I imagine Pensa was one of the numerous talented artists who got their start during the indy comics boom of the mid 1980s, when wildly different styles were prevalent, but as the exaggerated superhero work of the early 1990s became so totally in-demand among publishers, opportunities unfortunately dried up and he had to find work elsewhere. From what little I’ve been able to find out about him, he also did work for gaming companies such as White Wolf. It’s a shame he didn’t have a more prominent, prolific career.

Grell is, of course, an absolutely incredible artist, and his covers for issues #3 to #6 are gorgeous. As I recall, during this time Grell was focusing mostly on writing and on cover artwork, but within a couple of years he was once again doing interior pages, too.

I met Grell and Gold at a small comic con in the mid 1990s, and I got the first issue of The Brave and the Bold miniseries signed by them. That was probably a somewhat unusual choice, especially as I know I owned a few issues of Green Arrow. But, as I explained at the start of this post, I didn’t start following comic books regularly until around 1989. This miniseries was among my first exposures to Grell’s work, so it had a certain sentimental value to me.

Although the majority of Grell’s run on Green Arrow was collected in a series of trade paperbacks by DC a decade ago, The Brave and the Bold miniseries has yet to be reprinted. I took a look on eBay, and copies of the comics can be found at affordable prices, so if you feel like seeking this one out it should be relatively easy to find.

Perhaps this miniseries wasn’t among Grell’s strongest work (reportedly his collaboration with Baron did not go smoothly) but it nevertheless helped get me interested in his writing & art, and to subsequently read a number of his other projects.

It Came from the 1990s: Justice Society of America part one

The Justice Society of America was the very first team of comic book superheroes, making their debut in All-Star Comics #3, published in November 1940 by All-American Publications, one of the two companies that later merged to form DC Comics.

For its first two issues All-Star Comics had been, like nearly every other title published by the nascent American comic book industry, an anthology series, in this case featuring several of All-American’s superheroes. It was with issue #3 that writer Gardner Fox and editor Sheldon Mayer devised the idea of having All-American’s costumed crime fighters joining to form a team. In that first story the Justice Society of America only appeared in a framing sequence drawn by artist E. E. Hibbard as the members recounted various solo exploits. But with the very next issue the members of the JSA were shown working together on a single case.

Justice Society of America #8 cover penciled & inked by Tom Lyle

The JSA featured in All-Star Comics thru to issue #57, released in December 1950, a ten year long run. At that point the superhero genre was very much in decline, and with the next issue the series was re-titled All Star Western.

A decade later, during the superhero revival of the Silver Age, the JSA returned, with Gardner Fox and editor Julius Schwartz revealing that they dwelled on “Earth Two” in a parallel reality, with the popular revamped heroes of the Justice League of America situated on “Earth One.” Between 1963 and 1985 the JSA and JLA met up in annual team-ups. The JSA eventually starred in a revival of All-Star Comics, and then appeared in the World War II era series All-Star Squadron along with the various other DC heroes from the early 1940s.

I was born in 1976, and I didn’t begin following comic books regularly until the late 1980s. By that time Crisis on Infinite Earths had resulted in the elimination of all of DC’s alternate realities. This ended up playing havoc with a number of characters’ histories, including the JSA, creating all sorts of continuity problems.

By the time I was reading DC Comics the JSA were in limbo, both figuratively and literally, having completely vanished from DC’s books. The in-story explanation for this had been depicted in 1986 in the Last Days of the Justice Society special written by Roy & Dann Thomas and drawn by Dave Ross & Mike Gustovich. To prevent Ragnarök from destroying the whole of reality, the JSA had been spirited off to a mystical dimension where they would have to fight against a cosmic evil for all eternity.

Justice Society of America #1 written by Len Strazewski, penciled & inked by Rick Burchett, lettered by Janice Chiang and colored by Tom Ziuko

Long story short (too late!) my first exposure to the JSA was in 1991 when DC Comics published an eight issue Justice Society of America limited series, bringing the team back into print for the first time in five years. In the present day the team was still trapped in the realm of the Norse gods, but in this miniseries set in 1950 several members of the JSA were pitted against one of their deadliest foes, the immortal conqueror Vandal Savage.

“Vengeance from the Stars” was written by Len Strazewski, penciled by Rick Burchett, Grant Miehm, Mike Parobeck & Tom Artis, inked by Burchett, Miehm & Frank McLaughlin, lettered by Janice Chiang, colored by Tom Ziuko & Robbie Busch, and edited by Brian Augustyn & Mike Gold, with cover artwork drawn by Tom Lyle. Gold wrote a text piece for the first issue that explained the history of the JSA, an invaluable source of info for a young reader such as myself in those pre-Wikipedia times.

Interestingly, this miniseries came about because DC’s plans to publish Impact Comics, a reboot of the Archie Comics superheroes, met with delays. Justice Society of America was done to give work to Strazewski and several of the artists who had committed to working on the Impact books and who now found themselves in a holding pattern. Considering its origins, this miniseries turned out to be a remarkably good read.

The heroes featured in “Vengeance from the Stars” are the original Golden Age versions of the Flash, Black Canary, Green Lantern, Hawkman and Starman. In addition to Vandal Savage, the team faces the lumbering undead swamp monster Solomon Grundy, Savage’s gangster henchmen, and an awesomely powerful trio of living constellations.

Justice Society of America #2 written by Len Strazewski, penciled & inked by Grant Miehm, lettered by Janice Chiang and colored by Tom Ziuko

I have to confess, back in 1991 I found the structure of this miniseries somewhat odd and off-putting. The first four issues are solo adventures of the Flash, Black Canary, Green Lantern and Hawkman. Issues five and six had team-ups of the Flash & Hawkman and Black Canary & Green Lantern respectively. The final two issues at last had all four heroes at last working together, with Starman, who had been Savage’s prisoner for the previous six issues, joining the fray.

Having subsequently read a number of JSA stories from the 1940s via reprints, looking at this miniseries in 2023 I now understand that Strazewski, Augustyn & Gold were emulating the structure of the All-Star Comics stories. In those original JSA tales the team would, after learning of a particular adversary or mystery in the first few pages, split off and have solo chapters, each drawn by a different artist, before teaming up at the end of the issue for a final battle with the bad guys.

The only thing missing here is the prologue which shows the team together before they all split off for their individual missions. In the lettercol in issue #3 Gold explains the reasoning:

“I always wondered why the superheroes would get together first and then just happen to encounter a menace worth of their combined might. Because this is a miniseries, Len could introduce the heroes one at a time as each encountered the menace.”

While I certainly understand Gold’s reasoning, I do wonder if he miscalculated. Several of the readers’ letters published wondered when the JSA would be working together as a team, and expressed a certain disappointment that the early issues were solo adventures. I myself only bought the first four issues when they were published, and I did not get the second half of the miniseries until a year or so later as back issues, and part of the reason for this was that I really wanted to see the JSA members working as a team.

It makes me wonder if having a first issue which had the team together for a few pages, as was done back in the 1940s, would have ameliorated the concerns of myself and other readers. Perhaps it would have, as Gold argued, been a bit contrived. But at the same time it would have given the audience a taste of the entire team before everyone went off on their side quests, sating our appetite for team action until everyone got back together for the climactic battle.

Justice Society of America #4 written by Len Strazewski, penciled by Tom Artis, inked by Frank McLaughlin, lettered by Janice Chiang and colored by Tom Ziuko

What’s called “writing for the trade” was really not much of a thing back in 1991, but this miniseries now feels like a very early example of it. I think it works better as a “graphic novel” than as individual comic books released across a span of eight months. When read in a single sitting it actually does feel like an extra-large issue of All-Star Comics, and it also made the wait for team action much more tolerable.

That criticism aside, Strazewski did write an enjoyable story. Looking at it for the first time in three decades, I found it to be a really fun, exciting tale. I’m glad that Augustyn & Gold put this project together.

I also had a much greater appreciation for the work of the various artists this time around. I was only 15 years old when the miniseries was released. Back then I really did not pay all that much attention to such things as layouts & storytelling, to mood, atmosphere & pacing. Now, however, it really strikes me at what a superb job Burchett, Miehm, Parobeck and Artis all did on this miniseries.

One of the stand-out aspects of the miniseries was the Black Canary solo chapter in the second issue. Miehm did absolutely fantastic work showing Canary’s athleticism in her battle with Savage’s goon squad and the brutish Solomon Grundy. As I commented in a previous blog post, I feel Miehm was one of the more underrated comic book artists of the 1990s, and my re-read of this miniseries gave me even more of an appreciation for his work.

I was also struck by the two issues that Tom Artis penciled. I bought & read all of the Impact Comics titles in the early 1990s, and I remember that I was somewhat underwhelmed by Artis’ work on The Web. I now wonder if that had to do with Bill Wray’s inking. On Justice Society of America Artis’ pencils are inked by the incredible Frank McLaughlin, and the collaboration between the two looks amazing. McLaughlin’s slick line really enhances Artis’ penciling, which resulted in me paying much more attention to the storytelling he utilized on his two issues.

Justice Society of America #1 written by Len Strazewski, penciled by Mike Parobeck, inked by Rick Burchett, lettered by Janice Chiang and colored by Tom Ziuko

Speaking of inking, it’s interesting to contrast Miehm’s inks over his own pencils on issue #2 to Burchett inking him on #7 and #8. It’s another good example of just how much of an impact an inker can have on the look of the finished artwork.

Also, I did feel Tom Ziuko’s coloring on the first six issues was more effective than Robbie Busch’s work on the final two.

Janice Chiang has always been one of my favorite letterers, and so I was happy to discover she had worked on this miniseries. It’s another one of those things I didn’t pay enough attention to back in the early 1990s. This time, though, Chiang’s lettering immediately leaped out at me.

An interesting fact is that, even though the JSA had been around for half a century at this point, they’d never actually had a comic book featuring their name. Yes, there’d been a four issue miniseries America vs. the Justice Society in 1985, and the Last Days of the Justice Society special a year later. But this miniseries was the first comic book to actually be titled Justice Society of America. Strange but true.

Justice Society of America #7 written by Len Strazewski, penciled Grant Miehm, inked by Rick Burchett, lettered by Janice Chiang and colored by Robbie Busch

On a more serious note, looking at this miniseries in 2023, it’s depressing to realize how many of the creators involved in it are no longer with us, some of them having died fairly young. Mike Parobeck, Tom Artis, Tom Lyle, Frank McLaughlin and Bryan Augustin have all sadly passed away in the intervening years. I hope that the other creators who worked on this project will still be around for many more years to come.

This miniseries was finally reprinted in a hardcover edition titled The Demise of Justice in 2021. I do question the wisdom of DC releasing it as a hardcover, because a less expensive trade paperback would undoubtedly have sold much better. Still, it’s nice that this is back in print in some form or another.

Next time I’ll be taking a look at the excellent but short-lived Justice Society of America ongoing series which came out in 1992.

Martin Pasko: 1954 to 2020

Longtime comic book & animation writer Martin Pasko passed away on May 10th.  He was 65 years old.

Between 1973 and 1982 Pasko wrote a great many stories for the various Superman titles at DC Comics.  On quite a few of these he was paired with longtime Superman penciler Curt Swan.  In 1978 Pasko, working with artists Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez & Dan Adkins, launched the Superman team-up series DC Comics Presents with a well-regarded two-part story costarring the Flash.

In the mid 1970s Pasko also wrote Wonder Woman.  The first part of Pasko’s run had him wrapping up “The Twelve Labors of Wonder Woman” storyline.  Several issues later the series shifted focus to the Earth-Two’s Wonder Woman during World War II.  This was an effort to align the book with the first season of the live-action television show starring Lynda Carter.  Pasko’s final two issues, #231-232, were plotted by his friend Alan Brennert, his first work in comic books.  Brennert & Pasko’s story, which was drawn by Bob Brown, Michael Netzer & Vince Colletta, had Wonder Woman teaming up with the Justice Society.

All of this was slightly before my time as a reader, as I was born in 1976.  I have read some of those Superman and Wonder Woman stories in back issues or trade paperbacks.  However, the first work by Pasko that I vividly recall from my childhood was his early 1980s revival of the Swamp Thing with artist Tom Yeates.

Pasko wrote the first 19 issues of The Saga of the Swamp Thing.  He and Yeates created some genuinely weird, spooky, unnerving stories during this year and a half period.  I vividly recall the two-part story from issues #6-7, which had Swamp Thing encountering a bizarre aquatic creature with eyeball-tipped tentacles that could transform people into one-eyed monsters.  The shocking cliffhanger in issue #6 definitely seared itself onto my young mind and left me wondering “What happens next?”

I think Pasko’s work on Swamp Thing is often underrated, overshadowed by the groundbreaking Alan Moore run that immediately followed it.  I know that I’m not alone in this estimation.  A number of other fans also believe Pasko’s Swamp Thing stories are due for a reevaluation.

During this time Pasko was also working in animation.  Among his numerous animation credits, he wrote several episodes of Thundaar the Barbarian, which had been created by fellow comic book writer Steve Gerber.  It was Pasko who devised the name Ookla for Thundaar’s massive leonine sidekick.  As he recounted years later, he and Gerber had been attempting to come up with a name for the character when…

“We passed one of the entrances to the UCLA campus and when I saw the acronym on signage, the phonetic pronunciation leapt to mind.”

I was a huge fan of Thundaar the Barbarian when I was a kid.  I doubt I paid any attention to the credits back in the early 1980s, but years later, after I got into comic books, when I watched reruns of the show, the names of the various comic book creators involved in it, including Pasko, leaped right out at me.

Pasko was the writer on the first several issues of the revival of E-Man from First Comics in 1983, working with artist Joe Staton, the character’s co-creator.  As I’ve previously written, I just don’t feel that Pasko was a good fit for E-Man.  It really is one of those series that was never quite the same unless Nicola Cuti was writing it.  Nevertheless, I’m sure Pasko gave it his best.  There is at least one issue of E-Man where I think Pasko did good work, though.  I enjoyed his script for “Going Void” in issue #5, which featured a brutally satirical send-up of Scientology.

Pasko got back into writing for DC Comics in late 1987, writing a “Secret Six” serial drawn by Dan Spiegel in Action Comics Weekly.  He soon picked up another ACW assignment, featuring the revamped version of the Blackhawks conceived by Howard Chaykin.

This past January on his Facebook page Pasko recounted how he came to write Blackhawk in ACW.  When asked to take over the feature from departing writer Mike Grell by editor Mike Gold, Pasko initially accepted it only because of the lengthy, ongoing strike by the Writers Guild…

“I took the assignment because I had no choice–I needed the money–but it turned out, in the end, to be the most fun I ever had writing comics. I haunted the UCLA Research Library, immersing myself in everything I could learn about the post-WWII era in which the series was set, making Xeroxes of visual reference for the artist and having the time of my life.

“But my greatest thanks are reserved for that artist, my fantastic collaborator, the impeccable storyteller, Rick Burchett. Which is why this stuff is tops among the work of which I’m most proud. That stuff was all YOURS, Rick.”

Pasko & Burchett returned to the characters with an ongoing Blackhawk comic book that launched in March 1989.  It was a really enjoyable series, and it’s definitely unfortunate that it only lasted a mere 16 issues, plus an Annual.

In 1992 Pasko became a story editor on Batman: The Animated Series, working on 17 episodes of the acclaimed series.  He wrote the episode “See No Evil” and co-wrote the teleplay for the episode “Paging the Crime Doctor.”  Additionally, Pasko co-wrote the screenplay for the 1993 animated feature Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, which was released theatrically.

In the later part of his career Pasko contributed to several nonfiction books.  He also wrote the occasional comic book story for DC.  Among these was the special DC Retroactive: Superman – The 1970s penciled by Eduardo Barretto, which gave Pasko the opportunity to write the Man of Steel and his Bronze Age supporting cast one last time.

I never had an opportunity to meet Martin Pasko.  I narrowly missed him at Terrificon a few years ago.  Fortunately, Pasko was very active on Facebook, and I was one of the many fans who he enthusiastically interacted with there.  He wrote some really great stories in his time, and will definitely be missed.

Frank McLaughlin: 1935 to 2020

I am sorry to report that another comic book creator whose work I enjoyed has passed on.  Frank McLaughlin was a talented artist whose career in comic books and comic strips lasted for nearly five decades, from the 1961 to 2008.   He passed away on March 4th at the age of 84.

McLaughlin, like a number of other comic book creators, got his foot in the door via Charlton Comics.  He was hired on to do a variety of production work for the Derby, Connecticut publisher.  In a 2016 interview McLaughlin recounted how he came to work for Charlton:

“All through my career, I have been blessed with the greatest of friends, beginning with a classmate at art school; Larry Conti. Larry hooked me up with his brother, Dan Conti, who was a department head at Charlton Press. Dan, in turn, introduced me to Charlton’s Pat Masulli, editor in chief of comics. Timing was perfect, because his assistant, Sal Gentile, was about to leave for Florida, in two weeks. I was hired on the spot, and Sal gave me an immediate ‘cook’s tour’ of the plant. It took me a few days for all this to sink in, but Sal was a terrific guy, and this made it easy for me to understand the job.”

During his time at Charlton, McLaughlin worked closely with fellow artist Dick Giordano.  If you look at McLaughlin’s work, especially his inking, you can see that Giordano was a definite influence.  Considering Giordano was an incredibly talented artist himself, one could certainly do worse than to draw inspiration from him.

McLaughlin had studied judo since he was 18 years old, and he drew on his martial arts experience to create the character Judomaster for Charlton.  Judomaster made his debut in Special War Series #4, cover-dated November 1965.  The next year an ongoing Judomaster series was launched, which lasted for ten issues. (Confusingly the issue numbers for Judomaster were #89 to #98, carrying on the numbering from the cancelled series Gunmaster. This was a common practice at Charlton.)  McLaughlin wrote, penciled & inked the entire ten issue run.

Unfortunately I am not especially familiar with McLaughlin’s work on Judomaster or the other Charlton “Action Heroes” titles from the 1960s, but judging by the artwork I’ve seen from it online he clearly did good work on it.  The cover for #93 (“Meet the Tiger!”) is especially striking.  I did recently locate copies of Judomaster #96 and #98 at Mysterious Time Machine in Manhattan, and I found them to be enjoyable, well-drawn comic books.

McLaughlin left Charlton in 1969 to freelance, and by the early 1970s he was regularly receiving work from both Marvel and DC Comics.  The majority of his assignments for the Big Two were inking the pencils of other artists.  It was actually via his work as an inker that I first became aware of McLaughlin, and developed a real appreciation for his art.

As a teenager in the 1990s I spent a lot of time attempting to acquire copies of every issue of Captain America published during the 1970s and 80s.  One of my favorite artists on Captain America was Sal Buscema, who penciled the series from 1972 to 1975.  Buscema was paired with several inkers during this four year run.  Reading those back issues during my high school & college years, I very quickly noticed there was something different, something special, about the work of one particular inker, namely Frank McLaughlin.

To my eyes, McLaughlin’s inks over Buscema’s pencils were really striking.  McLaughlin gave Buscema’s pencils kind of a slick polish.  I guess that’s how I would describe it.  As a non-artist, sometimes it’s difficult for me to articulate these things clearly.  Whatever the case, it looked great.

McLaughlin only inked Buscema’s pencils on six issues of Captain America, specifically #155-156, 160, 165-166 and 169.  I really wish he’d had a longer run on the title.  McLaughlin’s final issue, #169, was the first chapter of the epic “Secret Empire” storyline written by Steve Englehart.  The remaining chapters of that saga were inked by Vince Colletta.

I realize Colletta is a divisive inker, so I am going to put this in purely personal, subjective terms.  Speaking only for myself, I just do not think Colletta’s inks were a good fit for Buscema’s pencils.  As incredible as the “Secret Empire” saga was, I feel it would have been even better if McLaughlin had been the inker for the entire storyline.

Now that I think about it, when I was reading those Captain America back issues in the mid 1990s, and comparing Buscema inked by McLaughlin to Buscema inked by Colletta, and in turn comparing both to the other inkers who worked on that series the early 1970s, it was probably one of the earliest instances of me realizing just how significant a role the inker has in the finished look of comic book artwork.

McLaughin also inked Buscema on a few of the early issues of The Defenders, specifically #4-6 and 8-9.  Again, I wish it had been a longer run, because they went so well together.  In these issues the Asgardian warrior Valkyrie joined the team, and the combination of Buscema’s pencils and McLaughlin’s inks resulted in a stunningly beautiful depiction of the character.

I definitely regard Frank McLaughlin as one of the best inkers Sal Buscema had during the Bronze Age.

McLaughlin actually did much more work as an inker at DC Comics.  One of his regular assignments at DC was Justice League of America.  He inked issues #117-189, a six and a half year run between 1975 and 1981.

During most of McLaughlin’s time on Justice League of America he was paired with the series’ longtime penciler Dick Dillin.  Although I would not say that I am a huge fan of Dillin, I nevertheless consider him to be sort of DC’s equivalent of Sal Buscema.  In other words, much like Our Pal Sal, Dillin was a good, solid, often-underrated artist with strong storytelling skills who could be counted on to turn in a professional job on time.  I like quality that McLaughlin’s inking brought to Dillin’s pencils.  They made an effective art team.

Tragically, after completing Justice League of America #183, in March 1980 Dillin died unexpectedly at the much too young age of 51 (reportedly he passed away at the drawing board working on the next issue).  McLaughlin remained on for the next several issues, effectively providing finishes for a young George Perez’s pencil breakdowns, as well as inking over Don Heck and Rich Buckler. Nevertheless, as he recounted in a 2008 interview, he made the decision to leave the series:

“I did one or two issues, and then I said to Julie [Schwartz] “you know, I think I’d like to move on.” I was so used to what Dillin and I were doing together. I moved on and did a lot more other stuff.

“It was a good change of speed at the time, inking groups was fast becoming not a favorite–there’s too many people in there!”

Among his other work for DC Comics, McLaughlin inked Irv Novick on both Batman and The Flash, Ernie Chan on Detective Comics, Joe Staton on Green Lantern, and Carmine Infantino on the Red Tornado miniseries and the last two years of The Flash during the “Trial of the Flash” storyline.  He also assisted Giordano on several DC jobs during the mid-to-late 1980s.

McLaughlin’s last regular assignment in comic books was for Broadway Comics in 1996.  There he inked a young J.G. Jones on Fatale.

Between 2001 and 2008 he drew the Gil Thorpe comic strip.  In 2008 McLaughlin collaborated with his daughter Erin Holroyd and his long-time colleague Dick Giordano on The White Viper, a web comic serialized on ComicMix that was subsequently collected in a graphic novel in 2011 by IDW.

McLaughlin taught at both Paier College of Art in Hamden CT and Guy Gilchrist’s Cartoonist’s Academy in Simsbury CT, and he worked with Mike Gold on the instructional books How to Draw Those Bodacious Bad Babes of Comics and How to Draw Monsters for Comics.

In his later years McLaughlin did commissions for fans.  One of the characters he was often asked to draw was Judomaster, which all those decades later still had devoted fans.

Writer & editor Robert Greenberger, who worked at DC Comics from 1984 to 2000, wrote a brief tribute to McLaughlin on Facebook:

“I grew up on Frank’s work, first at Charlton then DC and Marvel. When I joined DC, he quickly welcomed me and was a font of stories.

“Frank was a gracious man, friendly, and willing to talk shop with eager newcomers, share tips with rising new talent, and lend a hand wherever needed.

“He was a workhorse of an artist, adaptable and reliable — two of the qualities desperate editors always welcomed. Even after I left staff, we’d run into one another at cons and it was picking up where we left off.

“I will miss him.”

I fortunately had an opportunity to meet McLaughlin once at a convention in the early 2000s.  At the time I was regrettably unaware of his work for Charlton, but I did have him autograph one of the Captain America issues that he had so wonderfully inked.  I only spoke with him briefly, but he came across as a nice, polite person.

It Came From the 1990s: Black Canary “New Wings”

A couple of years ago I sent a friend request to writer Sarah Byam on Facebook.  I had enjoyed Byam’s work in comic books in the early 1990s.  Having seen this blog, Byam asked me if I was interested in discussing her work on it.  I agreed, and she mailed me several books she had worked on.  Among these was the four issue Black Canary miniseries she wrote that DC Comics published in late 1991.  I read these back when they came out, but since then I sold off a lot of my collection.  So it was nice to once again have them.

Soon after Byam sent me those books life sort of got in the way.  I had to move into a new apartment, and find a new job, and so on.  Byam’s package ended up at the bottom of one of the countless boxes of stuff that I threw together during the move, and only recently did I finally dig it out.  So here, at last, is my retrospective on that Black Canary miniseries.

Written by Byam, the Black Canary miniseries has Trevor Von Eeden contributing pencil layouts, with the finished artwork by Dick Giordano.  Lettering is by Steve Haynie, and coloring by Julia Lacquement.

“New Wings” was, according to the text piece by editor Mike Gold in issue #1, the very first solo series to star Black Canary.  This was in spite of the fact that the character had been around, in one form or another, since 1947.  Serving as a longtime member of both the Justice Society and Justice League, the Black Canary also had a lengthy association with Green Arrow, cast variously as his girlfriend, partner and sidekick.  Nevertheless, it took 44 years for Dinah Laurel Lance to finally receive how own book.

Decades are an artificial construct, and truthfully there is very rarely a sharp delineation to separate them.  That’s certainly true of the 1980s and 1990s, with the end of the former and the beginning of the later serving as a period of gradual transition.

This miniseries certainly straddles the two periods.  In one respect it is very much rooted in the mid to late 1980s of DC Comics, which saw both the aftermath of Crisis on Infinite Earths, with its revisions to long-term continuity, and the one-two punch of Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, which motivated a shift towards “grim & gritty” street-level characters.

It’s also very much of the early 1990s, when the comic book market was experiencing a huge boom, resulting in both DC and Marvel flooding the market with new books.  As a result of those market conditions, the Black Canary miniseries got the green light, something that might not have occurred a few years earlier.

The 1987 miniseries Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters by Mike Grell had revamped Oliver Queen as a traditional archer, an urban vigilante based in Seattle, WA.  That story had also seen Dinah Lance brutally tortured, causing her to lose her “Canary Cry” sonic scream.

Although taking away Dinah’s superpower was undoubtedly an attempt to more realistically ground her alongside Green Arrow, in retrospect it is also an example of the “Women in Refrigerators” phenomenon, in female characters being reduced to helpless victims.

The “New Wings” miniseries has Byam picking up those threads.  Dinah is still recovering from the trauma of being victimized, and of losing her powers.  She has also growing tired of constantly being in the shadow of the headstrong, arrogant Green Arrow, of playing the role of responsible adult to Ollie’s hotheaded thrill-seeker.  Angrily tossing the accounting ledger at Ollie’s head, Dinah at last asserts herself.  She informs him that it’s his turn to figure out how to pay the rent & bills, while she goes off to the mountains of Washington State in an attempt to find herself and regain her inner peace.

Visiting her “Auntie Wren” at the Quinault Indian Reservation, Dinah is introduced to Gan Nguyen, a reporter, radio talk show host, and social activist.  Gan’s activities fighting against Seattle’s drug dealers have made him very unpopular with certain powerful people.  On the trip back to the city Dinah is forced to change into her Black Canary identity to save him from a pair of racist assassins.

“New Wings” is, in certain ways, a very prescient piece of writing.  The drug operation that Dinah and Gan are pitted against is run by rich, powerful men with connections to both politics and private industry who utilize the people from poor rural communities to do the dirty, dangerous work.  The center of the cocaine distribution network is the town of Sandbar, which Byam describes thus…

“Sandbar is one of those quaint little seaside towns, too sleepy even for tourists to bother with. A little too ‘Mayberry’ for some, it’s a good place to raise your kids. A safe place.

“In Sandbar, people love the Fourth of July, and the old men press up their uniforms every Veterans Day.

“How does a town like that go bad? Stagnate? Lose its sense of purpose?

“Traditions of protecting freedom, of sacrificing, son after son, becomes traditions of protecting property, sacrificing truth after truth…

“Because the only thing more terrifying than the enemy… is change.”

Sandbar sounds very much like one of those Red State communities that in the last few years have wholeheartedly embraced Donald Trump.  Their economy is in ruins, devastated by trickle-down economics and corporations shipping jobs overseas.  Yet instead of recognizing who is actually exploiting them, they are all too easily distracted by the racist dog-whistles that scapegoat minorities, immigrants and non-Christians as the causes of all their problems.

Byam was clearly observant enough to perceive this burgeoning phenomenon way back in 1991, in the years immediately before the GOP, the Koch Brothers and Fox News would commence to enthusiastically fuel the fires of racism, xenophobia and paranoia among white rural communities over the next two decades, eventually bringing about the rise of the Tea Party and Trump.

There are a couple of reasons why I have now finally got around to spotlighting this Black Canary miniseries.  One is the emergence of the hatemongering “Comicsgate” trolls in the last couple of years, angry white male fanboys who claim that diversity is destroying comic books, who want to return to the time when the industry was supposedly apolitical.  There is innumerable evidence to disprove their lies.  This miniseries, published in 1991, is certainly one example of how very wrong they are.

“New Wings” features a female character, Black Canary.  It introduces a Vietnamese American supporting character, Gan Nguyen.  It is written by a woman, Sarah Byam.  It is penciled by a black man, the Guyanese-born Trevor Von Eeden.  It is an extremely political story, tackling complex issues of racism, economic injustice, drug dealing, gun control and political corruption.  It raises some difficult, uncomfortable questions.

The other reason is the 2018 midterm elections.  This week over one hundred female candidates were elected to Congress.  This is important. It has been less than one hundred years since women finally gained the right to vote nationwide, when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified on August 18, 1920. And, as the last few years have vividly demonstrated, there is still so much work to be done in safeguarding equal rights, in making sure that they aren’t stripped away, in protecting women from once again being reduced to second-class citizens. We need to recognize that the struggle against sexism & misogyny, as well as all other forms of injustice, is ongoing.

In additionally to being very well written and thought-provoking, the artwork on “New Wings” is exceptional.  The collaboration between Trevor Von Eeden and Dick Giordano is extremely effective.

Von Eeden’s layouts are dynamic, superbly telling the story, both in the action sequences and the quieter conversational scenes.  The finished artwork by veteran artist Dick Giordano is beautiful, with his characteristic slick, polished work on display.

“New Wings” did well enough that an ongoing Black Canary series was commissioned.  Byam and Von Eeden returned, with Bob Smith coming onboard as inker.  Byam continued to write stories that addressed political & social issues.  She was one of those writers in the medium who very much helped my teenage self begin to broaden his perspective, to consider the intricacies of the world and the people who inhabit it.  Regrettably the ongoing Black Canary title only lasted 12 issues, but the majority of them were very well-done.

It would be another few years before Black Canary would once again gain the spotlight.  In late 1995 she was paired up with Barbara Gordon / Oracle in the Birds of Prey special, which soon led to the long-running, very well-regarded series co-starring the two characters.

Both the Black Canary miniseries and ongoing were my introduction to the work of Trevor Von Eeden.  I instantly became a fan of his art.  I was immediately struck by both his stunningly beautiful depictions of the title character, as well as his amazing layouts & storytelling.

It’s very much worth noting that Von Eeden has been vocal about the fact that he never felt any real affinity for the character of Black Canary.  I say this because it definitely speaks to both his talent and his professionalism that he nevertheless did superb work on the series.

One other note: Whoever designed the series logo did a great job.  It looks amazing.

It’s unfortunate that “New Wings” and the subsequent twelve issue series have never been collected in a trade paperback.  However, it should be easy enough to find these in the back issue bins, or for sale online.  They are well worth tracking down.

Hopefully in the future I can offer a detailed look at the 1993 series, as well as some of Sarah Byam’s other works.  Cross your fingers!

Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg! 35 years later

“I wanted to do a book that would annoy, piss off, and educate… and it did.” – Howard Chaykin

To celebrate the Fourth of July holiday week, I am taking a look back at the first 14 issues of Howard Chaykin’s comic book series, the dystopian political satire American Flagg!  Written & drawn by Chaykin, lettered by Ken Bruzenak, and colored by Lynn Varley & Leslie Zahler, American Flagg! was published by First Comics.

This year is the 35th anniversary of the debut American Flagg! (according to Mike’s Amazing World of Comics the first issue went on sale June 20, 1983).  This is one of those series that went totally under my radar for many years because, to be completely honest, I just was not mature or sophisticated enough to appreciate it back in my teenage Marvel Zombie days. Having become a fan of Chaykin through his later work, I subsequently discovered American Flagg! via back issues, and immediately fell in love with it.

American Flagg! is both very political and very patriotic, proudly wearing its love for America, albeit in a manner that was very different from most expressions of flag-waving to be found during the Reagan years.  As editor Mike Gold explains in the first issue…

“Chaykin’s probably the most patriotic person I know. Not in the usual ‘Love It or Leave It’ nonsense that serves to divide instead of unite – and is therefore not patriotic. Howard’s patriotism comes from pride – and from great hope for America.”

Of course, as he’s acknowledged over the years, Chaykin was not only interested in politics, and he also utilized American Flagg! to delve deeply into the worlds of violence, guns, fashion, and sex… lots and lots of sex.

The first issue of American Flagg! opens in October 2031 AD.  It has been three and a half decades since 1996, “the Year of the Domino, when everything went to hell.”  The United States and the Soviet Union experienced simultaneous violent collapses, and the planet was stricken by a series of calamitous economic, social and ecological crises.

The American government relocated to the planet Mars (“temporarily of course”) and, merging with private industry, reorganized as Plex USA.  Ostensibly formed to help put the country back on its feet, the so-called Tricentennial Recovery Committee is actually intended to milk the planet dry of its remaining money & resources, so that the Plex can permanently establish an independent nation / corporation on Mars.

Across the globe a number of Malls have been constructed, hives of government & commerce, their twin goals to maintain order and keep the population pacified with entertainment that is suffused with explicit sex and graphic violence.  The population of the former United States has splintered into numerous tribal factions, with different ethnic, religious, and political paramilitary “clubs” fighting it out.  The Plex actively encourages these “clubs,” providing them with weapons, and recording their battles to air on Firefight All Night, “the highest rated vidshow on three planets,” one that makes the Plex “a fortune in ad revenues.”

Into this morass of corruption and violence, of omnipresent mass media and runaway capitalism, all feeding an unending cycle of urban warfare, steps Reuben Flagg.  Born on Marsplex to left-leaning bohemian parents, Reuben was raised to have a love for the ideals of the American Dream.  For several of years Reuben starred in the Plex’s top-rated exploitive TV cop show Mark Thrust: Sexus Ranger.  Unfortunately for Reuben, even though the show got renewed, he was fired, replaced by a computer generated image.  The out-of-work Flagg is drafted and shipped to Earth, where he is assigned to be the new deputy ranger at the Chicago Plexmall.

This is the first time Reuben experiences the dire situation of life on Earth.  Chicago and the rest of the New Midwest are plagued by “70% unemployment, constant intergang warfare, and malaise on an epic scale.”  The idealistic Flagg is appalled, even more so when the various jockeying factions of the region each attempt to inveigle him in their corrupt activities.

As Reuben explains to Mandy Kreiger at the end of the third issue…

“I grew up on Mars with a passionate, reckless love for this country… a devotion fed as much by history as by my parents’ homesickness… Wasn’t till I got here that I discovered the spacious skies were soot black, and the fruited plains were rotted through and through.

“But the damage is deeper than physical disrepair – much deeper. The American Spirit – the honest, openhanded driving force of solidarity – has been castrated. Betrayed by the banks… big business… by slimy fat cats who use patriotism like a tart uses cheap perfume… betrayed by the Plex.

“Someone’s got to stop the decline… Or try.”

Of course, reading this scene in 2018, it is also possible to perceive this as an example of a white, straight, cisgender, able-bodied man riding into town and telling everyone they had better listen to him because only he knows how to save the day.  Your mileage may vary.

In the past Chaykin has said words to the effect that while he is not a nice person, he is a good person.  That is definitely how one could also describe his creation Reuben Flagg, as well.  Reuben has all manner of glaring flaws.  He is arrogant, impatient, short-tempered, sarcastic, a womanizer, and more than a bit self-righteous.  On the other hand, he is also governed by a clear set of morals, he is honest, he hates injustice, and he has a clear aversion to killing.  Reuben may not be nice, but he is basically good.

Chaykin draws this line between Reuben and many other members of the cast, who are nice, but not necessarily good.  C.K. Blitz, the mayor of Chicago, is certainly a nice guy.  He is very friendly and polite, and knows how to make friends.  He needs to be, to stay in office and do his job effectively.  But, like most politicians, he is motivated primarily by self-interest, wheeling & dealing in order to acquire more power, prestige, and wealth.  Blitz isn’t a bad person per se, but he’s always looking for the next angle that he can play for his personal gain.

John Scheiskopf and Ester de la Castro are even more striking examples.  Both of them can definitely be very nice.  Either of them will be your best friend ever… right up until the point when they no longer have a use for you, at which point they will literally knife you in the back.  Beneath their polite manners and warm smiles, both Scheiskopf and de la Castro are incredibly selfish, power-hungry, immoral individuals who will casually commit mass murder in the furtherance of their goals.

Chaykin is clearly pointing out the danger of superficiality, of falling for outward appearances, both in politics and business.  The slick, charming outward veneer often masks all number of sins and selfishness.  In contrast, an individual like Flagg may be obviously flawed, but in his case what you see is what you get, and he doesn’t hide who he is, good and bad.

Reuben is also Jewish.  Chaykin establishes this in an almost-offhand manner, and it is only referred to in passing from time to time.  It certainly is not a defining characteristic; Flagg is a character who, among other things, happens to be Jewish. Nevertheless, I believe that this made him one of the first ever Jewish characters to headline his own ongoing comic book series.

Chaykin quickly sets up a large ensemble of supporting characters and adversaries within the first several issues of the series.  Among these is the lovely Amanda “Mandy” Kreiger, the headstrong daughter of Reuben’s boss, the ever-obnoxious Chief Ranger Hilton Kreiger.  Mandy is a whiz with electronics, as well as Reuben’s main romantic interest… although certainly not his only one.

Among the other ladies in Reuben’s life is Gretchen Holstrum, the middle-aged “hostess” of the local Love Canal franchise.  Gretchen immediately finds herself drawn to the young, handsome Reuben, much to Mandy’s disgust, exacerbating the already-existing tension between the two women.

As the story advances, we learn a great deal about both Mandy and Gretchen’s histories.  It is to Chaykin’s credit that he develops Gretchen into a genuinely tragic, sympathetic character, yet at the same time still gives Mandy legitimate reasons to dislike her.  In other words, you can see both women’s points of view, and recognize that it’s a difficult situation, with complex emotions at play on both sides.

Another wonderful member of the supporting cast is Raul the talking cat.  Yes, that’s right, a talking cat.  Raul is both a source of comic relief and a close confidante to Reuben.  At various times Raul plays the piano, drinks himself silly, and operates heavily-armed attack helicopters.  He’s definitely a favorite of mine.

Raul is such a very cat-like cat that I figured that Chaykin must have had at least one cat in real life.  This was confirmed by Chaykin’s friend and occasional collaborator Don Cameron, who explained:

“Fun fact: Raul was based on a cat Howard had named Cochise who used to “mumble” all the time.”

It’s interesting to look at the place American Flagg! holds in Chaykin’s career.  In the prior decade Chaykin had produced a body of artwork of variable quality, ranging from good to lackluster.  Chaykin himself is dismissive of much of the material he drew during that decade, regarding it as sub-par.

In early 1980, after a disagreement with Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter, Chaykin left the field of comic books entirely, and for the next three years painted cover artwork for paperback novels.  When he returned to comic books in 1983 with American Flagg!, Chaykin’s work had clearly taken a seismic leap forward.  The quality of Chaykin’s art for this series is astonishing. Chaykin himself refers to American Flagg! as “the first thing I did that was any good.”

One of the most frequently-cited examples of Chaykin’s work on American Flagg! is page 17 of the first issue.  Chaykin’s brilliant layouts work with Ken Bruzenak’s superb lettering to create a stunning narrative sequence that lays out the back-story of the series.

Due to unforgiving deadlines and a crushing workload, Chaykin was unfortunately unable to draw the two epilogues to his first story arc.  Issue #13 is penciled by James Sherman, and #14 by Pat Broderick, with both inked by Rick Burchett.  All three artists do their best to emulate the tone, the storytelling modes utilized by Chaykin, but it isn’t quite the same.  It certainly serves as a very example of just how much of an impact the artist has on the look, the flow, the tone of the finished work in comic books.

American Flagg! was a very prescient work.  Chaykin looked at the United States in the early 1980s and clearly perceived exactly where the country would be going over the next three and a half decades.  The pervasive presence of mass media and its influence on the electoral process, the manipulation of government by private industry, the escalation of ethnic and religious conflicts and the factionalization of American society, the degradation of the environment… all of this is present.

Chaykin also foresaw the dangers posed by a heavily-armed paranoid conspiracy-peddling white supremacist alt-right movement based out of the American heartland, or as they call themselves here, the American Survivalist Labor Committee.  In issue #9, the A.S.L.C. stage a grandiose political rally which they broadcast to the region via the Fasfax Chicago network, and their charismatic leader boldly declares…

“We’re here to stop this country’s slide into oblivion… a crisis precipitated by the most malevolent criminal cartel known to man… the Italo-Brit-Zionist Conspiracy.”

There is even a subplot in the second half of the initial year-long story arc involving plans by the Soviet Union to manipulate the outcome of a Presidential election.  In 1983 that might have left readers going “What a crazy idea!” but in 2018 has most of us responding “Um, yeah, I can totally believe it.”

Chaykin’s work on this series was also groundbreaking and influential.  It’s probable that a number of up-and-coming creators who read American Flagg! in the early 1980s were influenced by it, and soon after utilized the tropes and techniques in their work for DC and Marvel.  It’s unfortunate that all these years later American Flagg! is still under-recognized, whereas The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen, two books that could be regarded as its immediate successors, have both received widespread acclaim and multiple printings.

If you haven’t read American Flagg! before, I certainly recommend it.  In 2009 the first 14 issues were collected into two trade paperbacks by Image Comics which are still readily available.  It is one of the best examples I can think of that demonstrates the vast, often untapped, potential of the comic book medium.