FLASH GORDON: KINGS CROSS #1 - 5

Written by: Jeff Parker & Jesse Hamm | Drawn by: Jesse Hamm
Colored by: Grace Allison | Lettered by: Simon Bowland
Packaged & Edited by: Nate Cosby

I don't really follow Dynamite much. I peruse their Comixology sales now and then, but I don't pay a lot of attention with what they're doing with their various licenses -- I just buy stuff that looks interesting. And FLASH GORDON: KINGS CROSS looked like something I might enjoy. Starring some of King Features' most popular comic strip heroes and drawn in a really clean, cartoony style, it looked like a lot of fun. So I picked it up and let it sit for a while, finally reading it recently.

...And boy was I confused! At first I thought we were jumping into some new epic en media res, with the characters having already met at various points in the past and lots of references to things that had already happened, but had never actually been published. Sort of like George Lucas's concept for the original STAR WARS: joining the saga as if it were the middle of an ongoing movie serial. So I figured things like the presence of a black Phantom and a Phantom-in-training named Jen would be explained as we went along, and the oblique references to unseen past events would be fleshed out.

This was my impression, at least, until partway through the second issue when a footnote appeared. "Check KINGS QUEST 1 - 5 for that epic tale!", it said.

KINGS... QUEST? Wow, they're really going all-in on pretending there were stories that preceded this one! A fake footnote! Clever, I thought. But still... I figured maybe I should just Google this to be sure.

RED SONJA: THE BALLAD OF THE RED GODDESS

Writer: Roy Thomas | Artists: Esteban Maroto & Santi Casas
Letterer: Tom Napolitano

Did you know that Esteban Maroto created Red Sonja's iconic "chainmail bikini" look? I had no idea! I knew that John Buscema was the first to draw it in the monthly CONAN THE BARBARIAN comic, but I'm pretty sure I read someplace years ago that it was Neal Adams who came up with the famous metal two-piece. Turns out, according to the foreword to this volume, Adams inked the outfit's debut, but Maroto penciled it at the request of writer/editor Roy Thomas.

Now I'm sure this little tidbit has been known in general for quite some time, but it was news to me, so I thought I'd share it before we move along into THE BALLAD OF THE RED GODDESS, an original graphic novel created first for the Spanish market and eventually translated into English by Dynamite. This story reunites Thomas, Maroto, and Sonja several decades on, and teams them with another artist, Santi Casas, for good measure.

Again per the forewords (there are three; one by each creator -- plus an afterword by Maroto as well), the story was created in the "Marvel method" -- and that means the purest form of that method, from the dawn of the Marvel age. It was plotted by the artists, Maroto and Casas, and then scripted by Thomas. But the overall package is pretty seamless, and it's nigh-impossible to tell the collaboration was done this way.

THE UNBOXING - APRIL 2020

I may be under state-mandated quarantine due to COVID-19, but The Unboxing recognizes no authority! Here's what we have this month:

From DC, it's TALES OF THE BATMAN: MARV WOLFMAN (inexplicably labeled as "Volume 1" even though I'm pretty sure this contains every Batman story Wolfman ever wrote). As we saw when I looked a ton of Batman in the Seventies comics last year, Wolfman's run on BATMAN continued directly from Len Wein's, wrapping up several loose ends, so the main reason I grabbed this volume was to site beside TALES OF THE BATMAN: LEN WEIN on my shelf for just that reason. It also contains a number of other Wolfman-penned Batman stories, though, which I'm sure I'll check out someday.

And from Marvel, we have the CAPTAIN AMERICA EPIC COLLECTION: BLOOD AND GLORY, another installment in Marvel's collection of Mark Gruenwald's dedace-long run on Cap. When I started buying a lot of digital collections a couple years ago, I gradually tapered off my purchases of most trade paperbacks, figuring that Marvel seems to publish everything in hardcover sooner or later, and the digital versions would be my reading copies of most paperbacks (and of things I never really needed to own physically in the first place) until the inevitable Omnibus, oversized hardcover, etc. came around. But these Gruenwald Cap collections are pretty much the only paperbacks I "grandfathered in", since I had several already.

For those keeping count, this book follows from the previously released Epic Collections SOCIETY OF SERPENTS, JUSTICE IS SERVED, THE BLOODSTONE HUNT, STREETS OF POISON, and THE SUPERIA STRATAGEM -- plus the out-of-print Epic-in-all-but-name THE CAPTAIN -- and all of them together collect CAPTAIN AMERICA # 307 - 410. Gruenwald's CAP run ended with issue 443, so that's only thirty-three issues to go, which will comprise a total of three more Epic Collections (which we know since BLOOD AND GLORY is volume 18, while MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY, the book beginning the Mark Waid/Ron Garney run that immediately followed Gruenwald, is vol. 22.

I grabbed a few digital items this month as well. Amazon/Comixology had a BOGO sale when the Coronvirus situation really started heating up, so I picked up the following:

• AVENGERS EPIC COLLECTION: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES
  (The only Silver Age Avengers Epic I was unable to get in Marvel's big year-end sale because it wasn't discounted at the time.)
• AVENGERS EPIC COLLECTION: THE AVENGERS/DEFENDERS WAR
• AVENGERS: THE ORIGIN
  (You'll be seeing more about this book, plus the subsequent pair listed below, very, very soon right here!)
• AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES vol. 1
• AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES vol. 2
• X-MEN MILESTONES ONSLAUGHT
  (I'm weirdly excited for this one because it contains only the core, "essential" parts of the "Onslaught" saga, without all the extraneous crossover junk. Looking forward to cracking it open when Gentlemen of Leisure's "X-aminations" reaches this point in the not-too-distant future!)
• X-MEN MILESTONES: PHALANX COVENANT
  (Since for some reason, the old PHALANX COVENANT hardcover has never seen a digital release, this will be my digital copy -- even though it's missing a few issues from the hardcover edition.)

Not too shabby, considering I haven't been allowed to leave the house for nearly a month! But now, with distribution on hold from some publishers due to the ongoing quarantine situation, we can only wonder what May will bring...!

CONAN: THE DAUGHTERS OF MIDORA AND OTHER STORIES

I grabbed this digital volume in a sale when Dark Horse's Conan license ended a couple years ago. It contains a number of stories of varying length, which were originally published between 2004 and 2012. So without further ado, let's dive in!

"TROPHY"
Script by Tim & Ben Truman | Art by Marian Churchland
Letters by Brandon Graham

This eight-page tale is a short, light-hearted opening to the volume, but it's a nice showcase of what Conan is all about, hitting all the major marks. Conan, lugging a sack with him, wanders into a desert village and stops at a fancy inn for some refreshment. He regales the patrons with stories of how he acquired the various treasures in his bag, getting them drunker and drunker until they all pass out -- at which point he purloins their valuables and departs for the next inn on the road.

Like I said, it hits all the marks: Conan the wanderer, coming out of the desert to civilization. Conan the barbarian, as we see, through his stories, scenes in which he kills various powerful warriors through increasingly creative and violent means. Conan the carouser, drinking heavily and enthralling a roomful of revelers with his tales. And Conan the thief, making off with their belongings after his stories are done. If somebody knew nothing about Conan, this would be a nice little primer for the character -- which is possibly why it was placed first in this collection!

WONDER WOMAN/CONAN #1 - 6

"A CROW WITHOUT MERCY" | "BLADE, BRACELETS, AND BLOOD AND SAND"
"THE DANCE OF WICKED CROWS" | "WAR AND THE WIND RIDER"
"LIKE BLOOD FROM THE SKY" | "A FEAST OF FORBIDDEN FLESH"
Writer: Gail Simone | Penciler: Aaron Lopresti | Inker: Matt Ryan
Colorists: Wendy Broome with Tony Avina | Letterer: Saida Temofonte
Editor: Kristy Quinn | Group Editor: Jim Chadwick

I bought the digital collection of this series on a lark during a Wonder Woman sale at Comixology a while back. I like Gail Simone (though I've honestly read very little of her work outside of her brief DEADPOOL/AGENT X run of a couple decades ago), I like Aaron Lopresti, and I like Conan and Wonder Woman -- so why not give it a try?

The story, in my opinion, is more like a Conan adventure guest-starring Wonder Woman than a true team-up of co-headliners. I have no problem with that, but it seems worth mentioning. It follows Conan as he makes his way into a city of slavers, where he watches a woman battle in a gladiatorial arena. Conan believes he recognizes her as his first love, a girl from a tribe of women who he once knew as Yanna. Leaping to her aid, Conan is captured and imprisoned with the woman.

Of course this is actually Wonder Woman -- it's not a mystery and so the story makes no attempt to hide it. However she has no memory of her true self, and the real puzzle for readers is -- what's the deal here? Is this what we used to call an "Elseworlds" story? I.e., is this just sort of a case of "What If Wonder Woman existed in the Hyborean Age"? As the issues progress, Conan trickles out his history with the girl, Yanna, who he believed killed when they were both teens. But, come issue 5, it becomes clear that this really is Wonder Woman. She's been lost to time, and her fellow Amazons, sent back to the past by Queen Hippolyte, find her and bring her home to present-day Themyscira.

HE-MAN/THUNDERCATS #1 - 6

"SWORDS AND OMENS" | "WHEN THUNDER STRIKES" | "SWORDS AND SORROWS"
"CLASH OF TITANS!" | "THE FALL OF GRAYSKULL!" | "ACROSS THE UNIVERSE"

Written by Rob David & Lloyd Goldfine | Drawn by Freddie E. Williams II
Colored by Jeremy Colwell | Lettered by Deron Bennett
Associate Editor: Jessica Chen | Editor: Kristy Quinn | Group Editor: Jim Chadwick

So it's time for a confession. A little more than twenty years ago, I wrote a full-fledged fan-fiction story about a team-up between He-Man and the ThunderCats. It's probably still floating around out there someplace, since nothing ever goes away on the internet. It was a labor of love for me, and while I haven't looked at it in a very long time, I still remember a lot about it. So a crossover between these two is sometihng that's interested me for a long time. (I would've played it myself as a kid, if the toylines had been in scale with one another.)

So it's with heavy heart that I must report this particular meeting between the ThunderCats and the Masters of the Universe, in a 2016 DC miniseries, is... not good. It has its moments, which we'll look at below, but overall it's a pretty big letdown -- and I don't think that's because I had any unrealistic expectations for it; rather I believe it's because I had fairly reasonable expectations!

We'll begin with the artwork. At face value, it's fine. A little busy for my own personal taste, but very energetic and exciting. The problem -- and this is personal taste, I know -- is that I don't believe it's right for this kind of story. A mini-series meant to capitalize on nostalgia for two properties from the eighties should be drawn in a style that resembles those properties as they existed at that time. I know DC has had the MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE license for years now, and they're doing their own modern spin on the property -- so there, modern artwork and artistic license are totally appropriate and acceptable. But here, I can't help feeling the story would have felt more authentic if the art had taken its cues from the HE-MAN and THUNDERCATS cartoon series (or the minicomics or something else of that era).

SPRINGTIME GRAB BAG

It's time once more for that annual tradition where I dig through the various and sundry comics I've bought but have yet to read, and review some of them. This year, I've got offerings in the queue from DC, Dark Horse (sort of), and Dynamite.

We'll start on Monday with the first DC offering, a crossover I would've gone nuts for as a child: HE-MAN/THUNDERCATS. I bought this one a few years ago via Comixology, I think around the same time I also picked up BATMAN/TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES ADVNTURES, but I just never got around to it until now.

We'll follow that up with another crossover, also half from DC: WONDER WOMAN/CONAN. The Conan half of the story comes from Dark Horse, back when they still had the license. And then we'll keep the Conan theme running with a book I grabbed in a Comixology sale when Dark Horse lost that license: CONAN: THE DAUGHTERS OF MIDORA & OTHER STORIES. But our Hyborian Age antics won't end there! The following week, we'll read our first of two books from Dynamite: RED SONJA: THE BALLAD OF THE RED GODDESS, written by Sonja's co-creator, Roy Thomas.

After that, it's one final Dynamite offering: FLASH GORDON: KING'S CROSS, a limited series which sort of revisited the concept of the 1980s DEFENDERS OF THE EARTH cartoon series, in that it teams up King Features' best-known comic strip action stars -- Flash, the Phantom, and Mandrake the Magician. And then we'll hop over to IDW for a look at last year's STAR TREK/TRANSFORMERS series.

All of this will take us through April, and when it's done I'll reveal what's coming up next: something from the House of Ideas, a place we haven't visited in over a year, if you can believe it!