Tidbits!--Challengers of the Unknown, the Haunted Tank, the War That Time Forgot.

Alright. It's been a long, long time. I mean, I last updated in December, but I last posted a review in November. Reading the old Silver Age showcases just...drained me of my desire to read comics from that era. They're frustrating at points. Don't get me wrong--they have a wild charm to them, and there are so many great ideas introduced that could have been great. But it's too much effort.

Tonight, I finished reading the sixth Legion archive, and so I'm going to be working on a huge review of the first six Legion archives to be posted soon. Tonight, though, I'm going to do little mini-reviews. See, I've wandered here and there, trying to read various Showcases that I was somewhat interested in. And for a little bit, it's fine, but doing the whole thing is just taxing. So, I'll be giving my impressions of them.

Challengers of the Unknown was something I looked forward to, if only because it was a Kirby project. I've become a fan of Jack Kirby recently, and so I was excited to see that the Challengers had several stories done by him. And yeah, there were some good parts here. Definitely a lot of crazy ideas tossed around. And I loved the introduction of June Walker, especially with the Challengers playing pretty big roles in the Brave and the Bold series DC has been publishing. It was nice to see where they all began, as previously my only familiarity with the characters had been from a story arc in the 90's Superboy series. However, this series suffered from a fairly typical Silver-Age malady--nothing actually happened. Aside from June's introduction, there didn't seem to be any recurring characters, no real continuity between the issues. At least other books, like Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, and Justice League of America, brought in characters that would eventually become prominent in comics. The Challengers never really had anyone like that. So if that's the sort of thing you want--to see the origins of certain characters--you could probably just read the first few stories in this Showcase and be done with it, because you aren't going to get much more out of it. If you want stories that are actually rather decent for Silver Age stories, however--after all, the radical deus ex machina plot twists aren't quite so insane here, usually--then this might be one to try out.

The Haunted Tank. I bought this on a complete whim at my local comic shop, as they were selling a bunch of trades for four dollars apiece, this included. I hadn't planned to buy any war comics, but I had been introduced to the Haunted Tank during Crisis on Infinite Earths, so there was that intriguing familiarity. And I thought that it was a pretty cool concept--a veteran spirit, guiding a forceful youth in his mission. Add in the rave reviews of someone from my comic shop, and I was pretty excited. And a few of the stories in here were pretty good, I will admit. The problem, I think, was that I'm just not a fan of war comics. I've never really cared for war movies, or war stories, and so war comics was just something I was content to ignore. And I did give it a chance here, but I don't think that I would have been the target audience. If you like war stories, I'd say go for it--like I said, some of the tales were pretty decent. If you don't like this genre, however, it's not something that will convert you.

The War That Time Forgot will finish up this session. Yes, I know that I don't like war comics, but there was just a crazy magic about soldiers being trapped on an island ruled by dinosaurs that I had to try. And I had just read The New Frontier right before buying this, so I knew that the concept could really go places (I still think that the first chapter was one of the best parts of the whole series). But some of the things in this Showcase...they were just completely laughable. The dinosaurs were of random sizes, sometimes changing from panel to panel. And the designs, while not horrible, were relatively subpar. Yeah, there was definitely that fun feeling of "Anything goes", especially since the characters could be killed off at will. But at the same time, that might have been part of the problem--many Silver Age stories, as I said before, have no real continuity between issues. This is among the worst of the lot, as we're introduced in each story to a new set of soldiers, who encounter a new set of dinosaurs. There's nobody to grow attached to, because they're ultimately irrelevant. They're very nice done-in-one stories, and I think that this is the sort of hilarity that the Silver Age excelled at. And the potential is most definitely there. I intend to finish reading this, going at it slowly--a chapter or two every so often, because I think that it'll be worth it.

Alright, that's everything for now. I'll see if I can do some minor reviews of The Elongated Man, Shazam, The Phantom Stranger, Green Lantern, Justice League of America, and Supergirl. I also have a full review ready for Teen Titans, which my sister will be joining in on. I think that next, however, I'll be posting a review for the first six archives of the Legion of Super-Heroes. Don't miss it!