Ah, it's that time again--time for a Year's Best collection!First off, love the cover by Ed Hannigan and Dick Giordano--it's a fun concept, pulling back the curtain and showing these heroes as "stars" on the way to an awards show. And I love the old-timey "press" guy on the bottom right.
Anyway, these stories were DC's self-appointed best of 1982:
"Dear Mom and Dad", by Marv Wolfman, George Perez, and Romeo Tanghal (New Teen Titans #20)
"Keep Me Alive!" by Bob Kanigher and Frank Redondo (Sgt.Rock #361)
"Plastique Is Another Word For Fear" by Gerry Conway, Pat Broderick, and Rodin Rodriguez (Fury of Firestorm #7)
"In The White Room" by Martin Pasko and Tom Yeates (Saga of the Swamp Thing #4)
"Haven!" by Doug Moench, Don Newton, and Frank Chiaramonte (Detective Comics #514)
"Old Friends, New Relatives, and Other Corpses!" by Paul Levitz, Broderick, and Bruce Patterson (Legion of Super-Heroes #286)
I...Vampire! in "Manhattan Interlude" by Dan Mishkin, Gary Cohn, Adrian Gonzales, and Tom Sutton (House of Mystery #310)
"When You Wish Upon A Planetoid!" by Mishkin, Cohn, Curt Swan, and Kurt Schaffenberger (DC Comics Presents #50, featuring Superman teaming up with...Clark Kent!)
Looking back over 1982, you can see that our pal Dan Mishkin and Gary Cohn had a good year, as did Pat Broderick (I hope DC threw them a bonus or two for landing two stories in one Year's Best collection, though I doubt it.) Starting around this time, there would always be New Teen Titans and Swamp Thing stories in each year's collection--the creative teams of Wolfman/Perez and Moore/Bissette/Totleben were cooking on all burners(even though this year's Swampy tale was from the earlier creative team!) and DC recognized that.
There's also a listing of some of the runners-up, like "A Loop In Time" by Mike W. Barr, Keith Pollard, and Mike DeCarlo from Green Lantern #158, "Starfire Unleashed!" from New Teen Titans #16, "The Private War of Hendrickson" by our pal Mark Evanier and Dan Spiegle from Blackhawk #253, "The Bunny From Beyond!" by Roy Thomas, Scott Shaw!, and Al Gordon from Captain Carrot #6, "The Debt" by Michael Fleisher, Ross Andru, and Tony DeZuniga from Jonah Hex #57.
One of my favorite tales in this collection the Batman one, "Haven!" which puts Batman in a very atypical location--a snowy wilderness miles away from Gotham--and tells a very compelling, heartfelt story. Hats off to Moench and Newton, and I'm glad DC recognized how good a job they did.
See you next year!
3 comments:
I loooooove all your blogs. I'm an illustrator myself and have the same passion for all this stuff . Thanks for the fun.
oh yes, those were the days..
I was 13 back then, when I bought exactly that comic. I just found a couple of them in the cellar and had to look through the net if they have grown in value.. it seems not, or am I mistaken ?
Is there a place where I can get more info ? I wouldn't want to sell them anyway.. too many memories connected to these comics.
I'll have to read them tonight..
I just stumbled across your blog and I'm enjoying it.
I did notice one mistake. The Batman story, "Haven," was a fill in by the great Len Wein.
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