A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Egmont's The Super Heroes Magazine, the UK's monthly b/w reprint package of DC stories published in the very early 80s. Today's "corner box" image is taken from the Christmas issue. In addition to reprinting possibly my favourite Dead Santa tale from JLA 110, this issue featured Wanted: Santa Claus Dead or Alive.
This story is Frank Miller's first pencil job on the Goddamn Batman but it's also a stodgy tale by hardboiled boho , Denny O' Neil. You could tell that just from his penchant for pulpy names. Boomer Katz is a skell masquerading as a department store Santa. I don't care for O'Neil's heavy handed, melodranatic style and I prefer a little surrealism with my Dark Knight.
Dead or Alive first appeared in 1979's DC's Super-Star Holiday Special. Another tale from that book was featured in The Super Heroes, IIRC: a 30th Century holiday epic for the Legion of Super Heroes. You might be forgiven for thinking Klordny Week had superceded Xmas.
In Star Light, Star Bright, Farthest Star I See Tonight by Levitz and Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, Superboy leads a quest for the Star of Bethlehem. With Legion buddies Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, Wildfire and Phantom Girl, he brings peace to some primitive alien tribes. My favourite scene depicts a quasi-Japanese Xmas for Karate Kid with a big ol' origami tree. Garcia Lopez draws youthful, limber Legionnaires having fun.
The Night The Mob Stole Christmas is a typically bizarre Bob Haney Brave and Bold outing with art by late-70s LSH artist Joe Staton. Here, Plastic Man is a sidewalk Santa who pulls himself out of a slough of self-pity to help Bats stop some cigarette smugglers, comically nicknamed "buttleggers". Cue kerr-azy shapes from Plas and the deathless sight of Batman speaking in CB radio slang! Haney's Plastic Man is a morose creature bemoaning his freakish powers a la Stan Lee's heroes.
We jump ahead a couple of years to 1981 and The Batman's Last Christmas. This Aparo/Barr yuletide tale guest stars my favourite DC heroine of the the 70s, Earth-2's angular and imposing Huntress.
This seasonal saga depicts Bruce Wayne discovering his own father's alleged criminal past thanks to a Western-themed gangster named "Spurs". He vows to give up his caped crusade but is encourage to rededicate himself with the help of his surrogate daughter Helena. I was always a little uncomfortable with her fixation with her dead father's doppelgänger on E-1 and the strange physicality of their relationship.However, goodwill to all is restored with Aparo's charming Christmas scroll signed by all of DC's staff on the story's last page.
Of course, B&B was replaced by Batman and the Outsiders, a quirky, retro team book from Barr and Aparo that attempted to capture the bottled lightning of X-Men and New Teen Titans.
This first Christmas issue of the series- The Hand that Rocks the Cradle- borrows from the seasonal ghost story tradition and guest stars the Phantom Stranger, another Jim Aparo favourite. The villain Tannarak is a dead ringer for Abra Kadabra but the scenes of possessed babies are both comic and eerie.
Barr and Aparo revived their B&B gangland accountant idea for A Christmas Carol 1985. Here, those gloriously cheesy Outsiders — now joined by Looker !— use their powers to re-enact the Dickens classic. They attempt to encourage Scrooge-surrogate Eben Mudge to testify against his boss. Batman was out of the book at this time but I loved its cartoony, zany style. The New 52 needs fewer Extreeeme!! 90s homages and More Fun comics, to coin a cliché.
On a more sombre note, it's a shocking thirty-two years since the shooting of John Lennon. I can vividly remember hearing the radio news - this predates breakfast television - as I got ready for school (Hamilton Grammar) in my dad's house on a pitch-black morning. The Beatles had broken up when I was in primary school; they were only the stars of quirky, unfunny British films wheeled out on Bank Holidays. As a cultural event for adults however, the shooting seemed to symbolise the end of the freedom of the Sixties and a tragic start for the oppressive Eighties.
But it was also the cue for interminable Radio One interviews and maudlin, naive record releases. In middle age, I feel no great admiration for Lennon the avant garde art tourist and bedroom peace activist. In my early twenties, however, I did feel wistful for his myopic young face peering out of the shrubbery on the back cover of Rubber Soul.
And though they were some weeks apart, I associate Lennon's death with my mail-order copy of X-Men 137, The Fate of the Phoenix. Jean Grey's self-sacrifice on the Moon was a momentous climax to the Claremont/Byrne era. Nowadays, several elements of the story irk me: the endless exposition; the superfluous Kree/Skrull conflict; the disposable new Imperial Guards and the wholesale lift of the plot from Star Trek's Where No Man has Gone Before ( even the title is taken from a ST novel of the period). But then again, this naive attempt at the epic gave Marvel a confidence and gravity it had lost during the gonzo years of Bloodstone or the Legion of Monsters in the High Bronze Age.
Next: Christmas in the Marvel Universe
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The Super Heroes was a nice little magazine, reminding me in some ways of Super DC. Even today, I think there'd be a place for a British mag reprinting some of those pre-crisis classics.
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