The Iron Age of Comics

SUMMER CROSSOVER SPECTACULAR CONTINUES! Alien attacks on Earth are an almost routine occurrence in the DC Universe, but until 1988’s Invasion!, we’d rarely seen one treated as an actual global war, with campaigns on multiple fronts, chains of command, political negotiations and alliances, and massive casualties. In three 80-page giant issues, Keith Giffen brainstorms an alliance between the Dominators and several other alien empire...

SUMMER CROSSOVER SPECTACULAR BEGINS! Love 'em or hate 'em, big event comics were a defining feature of the Iron Age, cramming a whole universe of superheroes into a single miniseries and/or spreading a single story out over multiple titles. We begin three months of surveying the crossover phenomenon with one of the first major examples: Marvel’s Secret Wars II, written and architected by friend-of-the-podcast* Jim Shooter. ...

Concluding (for now) our look at the saga of Kyle Rayner, the last of the Green Lantern Corps (for the ‘90s, at least). Just when Kyle finally thinks he’s proved himself for all time as a worthy owner of the power ring, his future comes into question when a trip to the 30th century reveals the Legion of Super-Heroes have no record of his career as Green Lantern. His position isn’t much more secure in the 20th century after he picks...

Many artists look back on the work they did at age nineteen and cringe, but Matt Wagner keeps returning to Grendel, expanding and refining his youthful enthusiasms into an exploration of the nature of evil. Today, Grendel is a sprawling multigenerational saga that can be challenging to get into (and it was for one of your hosts), so we start at the beginning with the first link in the chain: a child prodigy who grows up to be the t...

In our continuing series on the early years of Kyle Rayner, our hero squares off against Fatality, a spacefaring warrior woman who wants to crush the Green Lantern Corps (even though Hal Jordan has mostly done the job already). Kyle also gets a new roommate with a connection to the GL legacy, introduces his girlfriend to his mom, gets trapped in a painting, and deals with a troubled friend who was indirectly responsible for Kyle ge...

Some people think Mike Hodges' 1980 Flash Gordon movie is cheesy trash and hate it; others think it's over-the-top hilarious and enjoy it. But some weirdos truly LOVE this exercise in tonal whiplash, and your humble hosts are two such men. We'll talk about the film as an adaptation of both the original Alex Raymond source material and the Buster Crabbe serials, and how it proudly defies Star Wars' revisionist sci-fi...

When Marvel let their license to produce Star Wars comics lapse in 1986, Return of the Jedi was three years in the rear-view mirror and it seemed possible there would never be any further installments in the franchise. But Tom Veitch and Cam Kennedy’s 1991 miniseries Dark Empire would begin Dark Horse Comics’ 23-year run of Star Wars comics and help launch the Expanded Universe. Set six years after the Battle of Endor, Dark Empire ...

It looks like Kyle Rayner and Donna Troy have broken up. In an effort to avoid both the consequences of his own self-sabotage and improve his approach to being Green Lantern, Kyle decides to go on a cross-country trip to seek advice from Batman, Captain Marvel, and Wonder Woman. He’ll also stand with Adam Strange and the Darkstars against Darkseid’s secret son and seek his own long-lost father with the help of new Green Arrow Conno...

Take The Dirty Dozen, populate with supervillains and obscure DC characters, and plug them into Mission: Impossible-style plots. This is the recipe that John Ostrander and Luke McDonnell used to launch Suicide Squad, a series that takes place in the same mainstream post-Crisis DC Universe inhabited by Superman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern, but takes a very different look at the place of superhumans in it, while also casting a s...

In our continuing series on the Iron Age Green Lantern, twentysomething ‘90s dude Kyle Rayner gets a new girlfriend (Donna Troy, formerly known as Wonder Girl, currently serving as a Darkstar), goes on a space adventure with his teammates in the Titans, meets Iron Age Flash Wally West and former Corpsman John Stewart, and is tempted to make a deal with the (literal) devil. But his biggest challenges will be confronting Major Force ...

Still bummed that Kraven the Hunter’s solo film career failed to launch? We ease the pain with a look at the celebrated 1987 storyline by J.M. DeMatteis and Mike Zeck that made the character’s reputation in the first place. “Fearful Symmetry” (later known as “Kraven’s Last Hunt”) is an unusually dark and generally atypical adventure for Aunt May’s favorite nephew, but it speaks to the central appeal of the hero and remains one of t...

Beginning an in-depth look at the life and times of Kyle Rayner, a new Green Lantern for a new era! It’s 1994, sales on the Green Lantern comic are down, and with anniversary issue #50 on the horizon, DC is looking to revitalize the title. New writer Ron Marz is brought on board with a mission: replace Silver Age stalwart Hal Jordan with a new character (in a new costume designed by incoming regular penciler Darryl Banks). The intr...

When was the last time you actually sat down to watch Joel Schumacher's Batman & Robin? Jim had never seen it, and Justin hadn't seen it for years and years. Is it worth a second look? (Or in Jim's case, a first?) In this Patreon-exclusive episode available now, we try to keep a cool head about a movie that provoked a lot of vitriol to have a clear-eyed discussion about what works and what doesn't. Want to hear ...

It’s the 50th regular episode of the podcast, and to celebrate, we’re finally doing a deep dive on a comic that helped ushered in the Iron Age and still stands as one of its most enduring accomplishments: Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight (better known in collected form as The Dark Knight Returns), aided and abetted by inker Klaus Janson, colorist Lynn Varley, and letterer John Costanza. But after 39 years of attention from th...

It’s the final lap of our epic look at every issue of this legendary run! With Linda Park erased from history and Wally West merged with the Speed Force (again), a grimmer and grittier speedster takes over Flash duty. We’ll talk about the end of Mark Waid’s (and Brian Augustyn’s) tenure on the title, the transition to the Geoff Johns era, and the awkward batch of issues in between. Plus, we offer our highlights and lowlights of the...

When Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti were handed creative control over some of Marvel’s B- and C-list characters in 1998, they offered the job of writing Black Panther to Christopher Priest…who didn’t want the assignment! But Priest was eventually convinced to take Quesada and Palmiotti’s Coming to America-inspired suggestion to bring T’Challa to Brooklyn and turn it into a radical reinvention of the character, years ahead of its t...

Who is Cobalt Blue? Well, we’ll tell you, but you might not like the answer! In 1997, Mark Waid and Brian Augustyn took a 12-issue vacation from the ongoing Flash series to recharge their batteries. But during this so-called “hiatus,” they were busy collaborating on a number of stories and even a 96-page hybrid prose/graphic novel that would set up their upcoming “Chain Lightning” storyline, billed as “the ultimate Flash epic.” Fan...

In 1988’s Amazing Spider-Man #300, Venom debuted as a ruthless, psychotic stalker and quickly became Spidey’s top villain. Within five years, he was so popular that Marvel semi-rehabilitated him into an antihero with his own series. But by the end of the decade, the character had become overexposed and was removed from active circulation. In the wake of the release of Venom: The Last Dance, we look back at one of the strangest evol...