Back Issue Alphabet: Q is for Quasar #3 of 4 (2007)

Annihilation: Conquest - Quasar # 3 (Christos N. Gage, Mike Lilly)

The cover features the star of the book, Phyla-Vell, kneeling pensively while offering up a quantum energy sword. It isn’t very indicative of the events inside the book, but it does represent the character of Phyla; stoic and noble.

Back Issue Alphabet: P is for Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #74 (1983)

Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #74 (Bill Mantlo, Bob Hall, Jim Mooney)

This is certainly an interesting cover. I was honestly hoping that the “mind-shattering conclusion to the Debra Whitman saga” would involve her being devoured by an army of tiny Spider-Mans. It’s a very eye-catching design, and it subtly follows the “Z” layout for eye movement.

In the interest of full disclosure, you should know that the entirety of my Spider-Man reading/watching consists of the 90s Fox cartoon, the Sam Raimi movies, and Ultimate Spider-Man. I couldn’t tell you what a “classic” Spidey story is supposed to be, but I can tell you this: the best Spider-Man stories always have a grounded human story going on alongside whatever scientific insanity is going on at the time. Case in point, in the cartoon, there was an episode where Curt Conners is abducted by a race of lizard people, turned into The Lizard, and then tries to hotwire the neogenic recombinator to turn all of New York into lizard people; the underlying message of the episode is that marriage is about working through the tough times together, as explained by Mrs Conners. Awe, how heart warming!

Back Issue Alphabet: O is for The Omega Men (1983)

The Omega Men #1 (Roger Slifer, Keith Giffen, Mike De Carlo)

The cover is fairly overblown, and it didn’t give me high hopes for the content. I went into this book ready to tear into another self-important space opera, but darned if The Omega Men didn’t pull me in. It’s a Green Lantern/Teen Titans spin-off, but it’s spun so far off that you don’t require any knowledge of the crossover event that birthed it to enjoy the story.

Back Issue Alphabet: N is for The New Teen Titans Vol 3 #20 (1983)

The New Teen Titans Vol 3 #20 (Marv Wolfman, George Pérez)

This is by far the most original cover that I’ve come across, not just in the line of writing “Back Issue Alphabet” but in my decade or so of reading comics. It’s eye catching, relevant to the events in the book, and made me curious as to what was inside.

Back Issue Alphabet: M is for Marvel Premiere #41 (1978)

Marvel Premiere #41: Seeker 3000 (Doug Moench, Tom Sutton)

At an unspecified time in the future, mankind has colonized our neighboring planets but has failed to “attain a safe warp drive and escape the solar-system.” This is a bummer, because the sun is about to “go nova” and mankind’s hope lies in the ship Seeker 3000 and a telepath who can generate warp fields. There is so much non-science in this book that it will burn the retinas of anyone possessing anything more than a high-school level understanding of physics.

Back-Issue Alphabet: L is for Legends of the DC Universe #41

Legends of the DC Universe #41 Lessons in Time Part Two of Two (Todd Dezargo, Rich Faber, Drew Johnson)

I love this cover. I have no idea what’s supposed to be going on, but I love it. I’m guessing that The Atom teams up with a temporally displaced World War 2 velociraptor battalion. The cover was so radical that I bent the rules of Back-Issue Alphabet and checked the box I randomly pulled #41 out of for #40. It was right next to it, so I picked it up. It takes a bit out of the randomness of the Back Issue Alphabet project, but the way I see it is if a reader randomly took this book of the self in 2001, he would be smart enough to see “part one of two” on the cover and check if part one was on the shelf beside it, which is what I did. Because I’m smart enough. 

Back Issue Alphabet: K is for Ka-Zar #3 (1974)

Ka-Zar #3 (Mike Friedrich, Don Heck, Mike Royer)

For anyone not in the know, Ka-Zar is Marvel’s version of Tarzan, but instead of an ape named Cheeta, Ka-Zar has a sabre-toothed cat name Zabu. And instead of Africa, Ka-Zar lives in the Savage Land, Marvel’s version of The Lost World.

The cover is... vibrant. A giant bald guy wearing Renaissance fair boots is punching a tree and shouting while Ka-Zar and Zabu leap at him. Also, there is a woman with a ripped blouse staring directly at Ka-Zar’s loincloth with a horrified expression. Who ripped her blouse? Who messed up her face? Will she actually appear in the comic (spoiler alert: not really)?

Back Issue Alphabet: J is for Justice League America #51 (1991)

Justice League America #51 (J.M. DeMatteis, Keith Giffen, Adam Hughes) (1991)

Out of all the books I’ve reviewed for Back Issue Alphabet, this is the first issue from a series that I’ve previously read. I’ve enjoyed volumes one through four of J.M. DeMatteis and Keith Giffen’s Justice league International, which encompasses issues #1 through #30 of the series. It changed it’s name to "Justice League America" to differentiate itself from its spin-off, Justice League Europe.

Back Issue Alphabet: I is for Iron Man: Director of Shield #31

Iron Man: Director of Shield #31 With Iron Hands Part 3 of 4 (Stuart Moore, Carlo Pagulayan, Steve Kurth)


The cover is a very nice drawing of Tony in armour, which is lost in a sea of hundreds of very nice drawings of Tony in armour just sort of standing around or flying. I really wish comic book covers were more like they were in the 80s and earlier, where the cover was relevant to what was actually going on in the book itself.

I’ve been following Iron Man comics since Matt Fraction took over in 2009, so it was interesting to see this issue come up in my random selections. In “With Iron Hands,” Tony has to deal with the consequences of being brilliant and rich. Well, that sounds quite sarcastic, but when people rise above the masses they become easy targets for the disgruntled and the jealous.

Back Issue Alphabet: H is for H.A.R.D. Corps #14 (1993)

Back Issue Alphabet: H is for H.A.R.D. Corps #15 (1993) (David Micheline, Yvel Guichet)

Oh my gosh. This is exactly the kind of mess I was looking forward to reviewing when I started the Back Issue Alphabet. I legitimately love this cover. Some guy with a mullet, one glove, and a thriller jacket is trying to melt the helmet off of a guy in tech-armour, who is choking him. It’s a neat use of perspective.

Back Issue Alphabet: G is for Groo the Wanderer #47 (1989)

Groo the Wanderer #47 (Sergio Aragonés, Stan Sakai, Tom Luth, Mark Evanier)

Back-Issue Alphabet: F is for Fantastic Four #251

Fantastic Four #251 (1983) John Byrne, Jim Novak, Glynis Wein

Tired of me featuring DC comics? You’re in luck! This week we’re looking at John Byrne’s Fantastic Four #251. Not only is it the first “Back Issue Alphabet” book that’s older than I am, it’s a great microcosm of what the Fantastic Four are all about. 

Back Issue Alphabet: E is for Eclipso: The Darkness Within #1 (1992)

Eclipso: The Darkness Within #1 (Kieth Giffen, Robert Loren Fleming, Bart Sears)

If the cover scan looks a little bit askew, that’s because the diamond that Eclipso is holding over his eye is actually a little plastic thingy that’s attached to the comic book. It’s like one of those treasure troll tummy gems, and despite my initial optimism, it doesn’t actually grant wishes. 

Back-Issue Alphabet: D is for Detective Comics #665 (1993)

Detective Comics #665 (Chuck Dixon, Graham Nolan, Dick Giordano)

First off, the cover: Wow. This is precisely what I was hoping for when I was yanking random books out of the bin. Completely screw-ball covers like this. The central focus of the cover is Batman’s cackling visage. He is just so totally pumped to be beating these thugs senseless with a board with nails in it. And this is Batman; He has a jet shaped like a bat, boomerangs shaped like bats, and a robot dinosaur back in the Batcave. When he’s beating a guy with a board with nails in it, it’s simply to inflict indignity. And look at his ears. They’re twice as tall as the rest of his head.He can’t even close the roof of the Batmobile with these things up. So he either has to detach them when he drives or just drive with the top down and have the ears covered with bugs by the time he gets home.

Back-Issue Alphabet: C is for Catwoman #1

Catwoman #1 (1993) (Jo Duffy, Jim Balent, Dick Giordano)

Back in the 90s, when a comic book villain became popular enough he would grow a conscience and be awarded his own ongoing series. Over at Marvel we had Deadpool and Venom, and at the DC end of the spectrum we had Catwoman!

When I pulled Catwoman #1 out of the long box, two things caught my eye and set off great big whoop-whoop warning signals: The cover is embossed (a hallmark of terrible 90s gimmickry) and the art was by Jim Balent. Now, my only exposure to Jim Balent is through the annotations of Tarot provided by the one and only Chris Sims’ Invincible Super-Blog (warning: his Tarot annotations not for kids... or anyone, really). So you can imagine that I was fairly nervous as to what would be contained inside Catwoman #1. Even with DC’s mainstream titles being fully safe-for-work, I was prepared for some monumentally bad artwork. 

Back-Issue Alphabet: B is for Batman: Turning Points #5

Back-Issue Alphabet; B is for Batman: Turning Points #5 (2000) (Greg Rucka, Paul Pope)

At a glance, the cover isn’t very remarkable. It’s Batman and Commissioner Gorden standing on a rooftop and looking out into the city. However, upon closer inspection we see that they’re smiling as they gaze out into the night. That’s our first clue that this issue is a bit different from a lot of Batman stories. Just what are they smirking at? I bet some extremely rich guy on the adjacent rooftop slipped on a banana peel and landed on a pie. That always cracks me up.

The Back-Issue Alphabet - A is for “Action Comics #607”

A couple weeks ago I stumbled upon a treasure trove of old comics at Edmonton’s Pop Culture Fair. I had been toying with the idea of reviewing random single issues for a while, but couldn’t quite think up a system for it. It finally hit me when I found one seller that had boxes upon boxes of comics for sale sorted alphabetically. From there, I decided to randomly pick one from each letter of the alphabet to review for my blog. 

I’m going to read these books with the notion that I had pulled them from the stands the day they hit comic books stores, and determine if they would persuade me to continue buying the series (or seek it out in trade). The criteria that I’ll be judging each issue on are it’s cover, story value, artwork, and new reader compatibility.

The plan right now is to make this a weekly series, updating on Mondays. Also I reserve the right to change the name of this series of posts from “The Back-Issue Alphabet” to something better if I can think it.

Anyhoodles, let’s get on to to the first installment, starting with the letter A.