ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #433 & SUPERMAN #11

“GANGWAR PART TWO: A TRAGEDY IN FIVE ACTS”
Dramatized and Choreographed by: Marv Wolfman and Jerry Ordway
Inked by: Bob Smith | Lettered by: Albert de Guzman | Colored by: Anthony Tollin
Edited by: Mike Carlin

The Plot: A series of vignettes follows Jimmy Olson, Lois Lane, Perry White, Jose Delgado, and Lex Luthor though their interactions with Jerry White. First, Jimmy is inside a convenience store when it’s robbed by a gang including Jerry. Superman catches most of the group, but Jerry gets away. Later, Lois visits Jose to find him arguing with Jerry. Jerry leaves to go warn “the boss”, a portly older man, that Lois was spying, but Superman interrupts their meeting before the boss can have Jerry beaten.

Later still, Lois presents a story to Perry White which includes reference to Jerry as a member of the gangs that have recently plagued Metropolis. Perry goes to visit his son in prison, but Jerry gives him the could shoulder. After being escorted to a darkened room, Jerry is harassed by a gang of inmates, but Superman appears and saves him—however, at some point after the Man of Steel departs, Jerry is beaten anyway.

As Lex Luthor receives a humanitarian award, Jose Delgado accosts him. Luthor’s private security catches up with Jose and prepares to kill him, but Superman intervenes. Later, Luthor meets with one of his scientists about Project Synapse, a plan to create a “super soldier” to challenge Superman, but declares the project a failure when only one of the test subjects survives.

JAMES BOND NEWSPAPER STRIPS PART 3

“FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE” | “DR. NO”
February 1st, 1960 - October 1st, 1960
Written by Peter O'Donnell & Henry Gammidge | Illustrated by John McLusky

James Bond's fifth and sixth adventures were adapted into the film series' second and first movies, respectively -- and as a result, the big screen versions of DR. NO and FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE may be the most faithful of all the entries in the series.

There are differences, certainly -- both movies feature the organization SPECTRE in some form or another, while SPECTRE does not yet exist in the novel/comic strip source material. The movie version of DR. NO also introduces Felix Leiter, who is nowhere to be seen in the book, and who Bond had actually already met three times previously in the original continuity(CASINO ROYALE, LIVE AND LET DIE, and DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER). There are also additional "conquests" for Bond and an extra action set-piece or two in the movies -- but aside from all these relatively minor discrepancies, and aside from the flipped order, the film versions of both stories match up very cleanly with the originals.

In FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, the Russian intelligence agency SMERSH decides to demonstrate its power by killing a British secret agent, and settles on Bond, using a secretary named Tania Romanova as bait. Romanova states that she will defect in Turkey and will bring the Soviet cipher device, the SPEKTOR, with her -- but she will surrender herself only to Bond, with whom she's fallen in love via his dossier. Admittedly, the setup to the film version is different -- where here, it's SMERSH alone after Bond, partly due to his foiling some of their prior operations, in the movie it's SPECTRE manipulating SMERSH so they themselves can steal the cipher device (known in the movie as the LEKTOR rather than the SPEKTOR for obvious reasons).

WONDER WOMAN #9

“BLOOD OF THE CHEETAH”
Plot & Layouts: George Pérez | Script: Len Wein | Finishes: Bruce D. Patterson
Letterer: John Costanza | Colorist: Tatjana Wood | Editor: Karen Barger
Thanks to: Bob Smith

The Plot: Chuma performs a ceremony on Barbara Minerva. The next day, Diana and Myndi Mayer visit Doctor Minerva at her hotel, where the doctor unwittingly touches Diana’s lasso and reveals that she lied about possessing a second Girdle of Gaia. Diana leaves, horrified that a fellow woman would deceive her.

Later, Minerva transforms into the Cheetah. As Diana sleeps beneath a tree on Julia Kapatelis’s property, the Cheetah attacks. Cheetah seem to have the upper hand until Julia arrives with a hunting rifle and shoots her, knocking into the lake. Diana searches for her beneath the water, but there is no body to be found.

Diana decides the time has come to leave Man’s World and return to Paradise Island. She bids Julia and Vanessa farewell, and departs.

Sub-Plots & Continuity Notes: We’re reminded again about the “Wonder Woman Tour” which has seen Diana traveling the world as a goodwill ambassador… which of course begs the question, if she’s making such highly publicized travels, why has Clark Kent had such a difficult time tracking her down? If Superman wants a date with Wonder Woman, all he has to do is turn on the TV to find out where she is, then fly there!

The Cheetah apparently gets her power from the tree she brought to the United States, which narration seems to imply is actually some ancient god in Earthly form. Also, Chuma refers to Cheetah as the last of her kind, but what that kind is goes unrevealed.

JAMES BOND NEWSPAPER STRIPS PART 2

“MOONRAKER” | “DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER”
March 30th, 1959 - January 30th, 1960
Written by Henry Gammidge | Illustrated by John McLusky

Last week I touched on the Bond film producers occasionally removing scenes from certain big screen adaptations, only to insert them into subsequent movies later on. This week we'll note how the producers would occasionally discard an Ian Fleming story entirely, keeping the name and perhaps the names of certain characters, but otherwise coming up with an entirely new story.

"Moonraker" is a great example of this. The movie, released in 1979 as the twelfth film in the series, is a globetrotting adventure which sees Bond travel from England to California to South America to outer space, accompanied by beautiful CIA agent Holly Goodhead, in search of a missing space shuttle. The novel, published in 1955 as the third book in the series (and of which this strip is a faithful adaptation), is set entirely in and around London and sees Bond playing undercover detective as he works with beautiful Scotland Yard officer Gala Brand to determine who has murdered the head of security at a private rocket complex.

So... yeah. It's clear that by the Roger Moore era, the Bond film producers had found a formula that worked, and were unwilling to deviate from it at all, even if it meant coming up with a new story from whole cloth and slapping the title of an existing book on it. The only commonality between both the MOONRAKER film and book is the name of the villain, Hugo Drax -- and even then, it's literally only the name which holds. The Drax in the movie is a sinister American businessman. The Drax in the book (and comic strip) is a German posing as a Briton in order to launch his rocket at London and avenge the loss of World War II.

SUPERMAN #10

“THE SUPER MENACE OF METROPOLIS”
Story & Pencils: John Byrne | Inks: Karl Kesel
Coloring: Tom Ziuko | Lettering: John Costanza | Editing: Michael Carlin

The Plot: At the Daily Planet, Clark Kent’s X-Ray vision acts up, followed by his heat vision. He hurries out of the building and into the sky, where he’s attacked by a being calling itself Klaash. Superman battles Klaash, but his malfunctioning powers lay waste to Metropolis in the process.

Finally, when he realizes that Klaash isn’t visible to anyone other than him, Superman deduces that Lex Luthor has been using a satellite to make his powers act up. He disables the satellite and returns to Luthor, than brings Luthor to Maggie Sawyer for questioning—but when Luthor’s attorney reveals that the satellite and Klaash project were manufactured legally as part of a government contract, and when Luthor accepts partial responsibility for the incident and promises to repair all damages, Maggie has no choice but to let him go.

Sub-Plots & Continuity Notes: Clark recalls that his battle with Rampage was ten days ago, and wonders if all the excess energy he absorbed from her is the cause of his power fluctuations.

For those keeping track of time passage, recall that three days passed at the end of the Rampage issue, during which the “Pocket Universe Saga” took place. Which means that in the past seven days, Superman has (at least according to the story order presented in the MAN OF STEEL trade paperbacks) fought the Fearsome Five, teamed up with the Metal Men, battled Doctor Stratos, fought the Joker, been involved with Luthor's plot to turn troubled teens into a criminal army, and been captured by Sleez. But of course, a week passed during the Fearsome Five story, which presumably means all this other stuff took place in between the cracks of that story, even though none of it was mentioned (since it hadn't happened yet).

THE UNBOXING - JUNE 2018

No new books this month; just a brief Digital Unboxing. Last month, Comixology ran a big sale on "Young Readers" material from Dark Horse, and around the same time there was a Dark Horse 50% off coupon as well -- so, at the recommendation of several posts on the Marvel Masterworks Message Board, I doubled the sales up and purchased eight volumes of the USAGI YOJIMBO SAGA -- which is every volume in that series printed to date, covering more than 150 issues, plus some specials and the like. I've had mild interest in Stan Sakai's samurai rabbit epic for several years, and now I finally own a massive chunk of it -- though when I'll actually settle down to read this stuff is anybody's guess.

(Also, I've learned that there was an earlier USAGI YOJIMBO series which lasted thirty-eight issues and whose reprint rights currently lie with Fantagraphics rather than Dark Horse -- so whenever I finally get to USAGI, it will certainly not be until after there's a Fantagraphics sale allowing me to pick up the eight volumes covering that series as well.)

JAMES BOND NEWSPAPER STRIPS PART 1

“CASINO ROYALE” | “LIVE AND LET DIE”
JULY 7TH, 1958 - March 29th, 1959
Written by Anthony Hern & Henry Gammidge | Illustrated by John McLusky

The comic strip adventures of James Bond begin, as they did in novel format, with "Casino Royale", a tale that sees British agent Bond dispatched to the French town of Royale-les-Eaux with a mission to gamble in high-stakes baccarat against Le Chiffre, a Frenchman in the employ of Soviet spy organization SMERSH. It seems Le Chiffre lost the Russians some money, which he now intends to win back on penalty of death -- and Bond's job is to see to it that he fails in this last-ditch gamble to save his own life.

It's kind of impressive how closely to the original novel the Daniel Craig CASINO ROYAL film hewed. As noted on Sunday, I did read the first three Bond novels a few years ago, and with them reasonably fresh in memory, I can say that this adaptation is quite faithful -- and that, aside from the entire first act, which fills in a lot of background for Bond's mission, such as how the secret service learns of Le Chiffre and his intentions, the movie follows the plot of the book very closely as well.

And that plot is relatively simple: Bond arrives in Royale-les-Eaux, is joined in his mission by assistant Vesper Lynd, French operative Rene Mathis, and CIA agent Felix Leiter, survives a handful of assassination attempts, defeats Le Chiffre, is kidnapped and tortured for his trouble, sees Le Chiffre assassinated by SMERSH, recuperates in the hospital, vacations with Vesper, falls in love with her, and then finds her dead of suicide, having left a note explaining she's actually a double-agent for the Russians.