This week Luke sits down to explain the second year of Tangent Comics to Charlie from The Young Ones Podcast. There’s a lot of weird stuff, Peter David does Peter David stuff, the KGBeast shows up and then it definitely totally has a satisfying conclusion.
Universes and Comics Covered:
- Earth-9 – Tales of the Green Lantern #1, Powergirl #1, Wonder Woman #1, The Trials of the Flash #1, Nightwing: Night Force #1, The Superman #1, The Joker’s Wild #1, The Batman #1, and The JLA #1
Check after the jump for the image gallery and notes!
Phase 2: 1998
Tales of the Green Lantern
Colors – Lee Loughridge, Letters – Comicraft
Framing Sequence –
writer – James Robinson, art – JH Williams 3 & Mick Gray
Brightest Light – Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning writers, Mike Mayhew and Wade Von Grawbadger on art
Lois Lane was an adventurer who traveled around the world and she was hired by the billionaire playboy Booster Gold to explore where the nuke for treasure and just found the fishmen who she wanted to help so he had his bodyguard Kilowog kill her and dump her into the ocean where the fishmen brought her to their city and she returned as the Green Lantern, tricked Gold into killing Kilowog and then the fishmen killed Gold.
Darkest Light – Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning writers, Georges Jeanty and Drew Geraci on art
In post war Czechoslovankia Manhunter and her robot dog Pooch were attacking the necromantic army of Darkside, an evil member of Meridian. Manhunter thought she had killed her before but it was actually her sister whose ghost has appeared, forgiving Manhunter for her “goof”. The ghost confronted Darkside and Manhunter smashed Darkside’s magic orb with a lantern killing her and her sister, Kori Anders, took up the magical lantern using the absorbed necromantic power.
Know Evil – John Ostrander – writer, Ryan Sook and Nick Gray – art – looks very Hellboy
Zatanna sought an audience with the Dark Circle of evil necromancers including Etrigan, Madame X’al, Bane, Ra’s Al Ghul, Sargon, and the Creeper because she wants in. They tell her she has to find the Green Lantern which she spends three years tracking down and ends up killing herself when her magic rebounds and then the previous bearer Jason Blood passes it on to her explaining that it controls the bearer and not the other way around.
Powergirl
Writer – Ron Marz, Art – Dusty Abell, inks – Dexter Vines, Color – James Sinclair, Letters – Chris Eliopoulos
Previously China artificially created a Supergirl but ultimately she died but now 6 years later they are working on a new improved prototype known as Powergirl. The president of America, Sam Schwartz, who was previously on the Metal Men, wants to steal her – and when I say we, I don’t mean a black OPS special team – I mean the President, his wife Martina aka Raven, his chief of staff John Holliday aka Hawkman, and his assistant attache Ray Quinones aka LOBO, who is in a wheelchair.
They land in China and start fighting and run into soldiers but are saved by their resistance contact, Jade, who has dragon tattoos she can summon and she leads them into the genetics lab where Powergirl will be done incubating soon and then will need to imprint.
Unfortunately that’s when Black Lightning and Gravedigger show up with Nightwing troopers. A firefight breaks out and Powergirl wakes up, healing Rey who had gotten killed. Both sides try to pitch to her and the Chinese government comes in. Powergirl decides she wants to figure out what she wants to do and both sides leave for the time being.
Wonder Woman
Writer – Peter David, Pencils – Angel Unzueta, Inks – Jaime Mendoza, Colors – Pam Rambo, Separations – Jamison, Letters – Comicraft
Lori Lemaris and her cameraman “Ambush” Bug (he’s human) are recording at the opening of the Superfriends Resort and Casino when an alien ship crashlands and the green alien warrior Wanda shows up along with her cohort Woo-Z. Wanda is basically an excuse for Peter David to write really long paragraphs of “witty dialogue” and gets called Wonder Woman because someone doesn’t understand what she’s saying. That’s when two other aliens, the Beast Boy, Gar, and the Element Girl, Ferro, show up.
They go to fight Wonder Woman because they hate her dialogue and Lori painfully for us asks what is going on so Woo-Z explains.
There is the planet Gotham that halted aging so the women all got smart and beautiful and psychic and the men are all feral. The boys have Arangs and the women have Bahts.
Lena Thorul thought it was dumb and created Wanda who has a Bahtarang and then sent her a bunch of information from worlds and then teamed her with Woo-Z a prior creation but the Gothamites hated her, killed Lena and so Wanda fled to Earth.
She defeats the people who are after her and then flies off to never be mentioned again, thank god.
The Trials of the Flash
Writer – Todd Dezago, Pencils – Paul Pelletier, Inks – Andy Lanning, Colors – Joe Rosas, Separations – Heroic Age, Letters – Comicraft
Nightwing directors Marcus Moore and Black Lightning want to use Plastic Man, Gunther Ganz, to capture The Flash, after her father failed to capture her again.
The Flash, Lia Nelson, meets up with Plastic Man at Starro’s where they talk about how they’re going to mess with the plan. Suddenly Firestorm troopers and Taylor Pike, the Spectre, show up and capture her, messing up the plan and capturing both The Flash and Plastic Man for betraying Nightwing.
At the base it turns out The Flash and Plastic Man actually made each other look like one another so they could escape and Plastic Man steals Black Lightning’s chair. It turns out they were working on this so they could get Plastic Man’s real body but Firestorm sends soldiers after them. They end up destroying Plastic Man’s plastic body but doing so wakes up the real Gunther who is still able to access the plastic and the team escapes together and the entire Secret Six including The Joker, The Atom, and Manhunter reconvene to celebrate until The Flash remembers she needs to go back to work and she heads down to Earth to foil her father’s plot to capture her again.
Nightwing: Night Force
Writer – John Ostrander, Art – Jan Duursena, Colors – Gloria Vasquez, Separations – Android, Letters – Comicraft
The Doom Patrol – Firehawk, Doomsday, Star Sapphire and Rampage are on the run in Czechoslovakia trying to reach Meridian, the British opposition to Nightwing, as they are pursued by Nightwing. They get saved though by Obsidian and Jade who kill the Nightwing agents.
Meanwhile at the secret base underneath the Pentagon, Nightwing decides to deploy Night Force before Marcus Moore goes down and confronts the Creeper because not only did Marcus Moore vape his own soul back, he also vaped the soul of the Creeper which the Dark Circle that is the higher agency Nightwing works for is unaware of, otherwise they’d replace the Creeper. Moore thinks there is something going on with the Circle.
Meanwhile Gravedigger, Black Orchid, Hex and Wild Cat are traveling to Moscow.
Meanwhile there, Josef Stalin, who is a vampire, meets with the Doom Patrol and they want to attack him but he forces them to stand down.
Night Force meets up with Jade and Obsidian who want to stop Stalin who secretly controls Meridian, because he plans to extract their souls to feed to the KGBeast. Night Force comes in just too late so there’s a Stalin as a giant bat vs Tattoo dragon vs Wildcat fight as the KGBeast which is a tentacle monster is woken up. In the fight, Black Orchid while trying to free the Doom Patrol merges the souls with the Earth causing a worldwide energy pulse knocking out all technology and creating the Ultra Humanite, a giant magic robot soul monster. Jade, Black Orchid, Hex and Doomsday are the only survivors who have to unmake the Ultra Humanite.
The Superman
Writer – Mark Millar, art – Jackson Guice, Colors – Lovern Kindzierski, separations – Digital Chameleon, Letters – Comicraft
Harvey Lee Dent is a police officer who tries to talk Carter Hall from killing himself because his design was made in the wrong color. Dent tries to talk him down by cuffing them together but Carter jumps and they both land at the bottom of the skyscraper.
Harvey wakes up later to see his girlfriend Lola and his buddy Pie-Face there, and everyone is surprised that he survived.
As time passes he starts to get more intelligent, learning how machines work and even rebuilding them, reading everything that he could and then when he returned to work, he developed a new way of policing that ended all crime on his beat, but he stopped sleeping. He starts getting powers like flight, pyrokineses, telekinesis, telepathy, future sense and and he had to balance using his powers and not.
He ended up working on helping anyone who asked him for help as Superman and he started to scale up like supervillains – The Home-Boy Legion, Two-Face the Master of Disguise, The Spectral Hourman, Heat-Wave, Batgirl, Star Boy, Polaris, Johnny Thunder and his Lightning Bolt, and he even teamed up with the Atom as the World’s Finest but he became even more distant and Lola ended up cheating on him with Pie-Face which he knew and Black Orchid tried to hook up with Superman but he refused.
He started going after Nightwing and that is how he figured out his origin where Professor Joseph Chill wanted to make a new Superman and basically did testing in the water of a black community that killed everyone except for him, Chill got fired, and it was all forgotten and covered up and Superman got some revenge.
Lola planned to leave with Pie-Face to move to New Atlantis but she still loved Harvey so he presented her with a new version of the Miraclo Pill that would make her his equal. That’s when Ultra Humanite’s attack shows up and they embrace, as she takes the pill and they kiss because Harvey wants to make the relationship work.
The Joker’s Wild
Writers – Karl Kesel and Tom Simmons, Pencils – Joe Phillips, Inks – Jasen Rodriguez, Colors – Moose Baumann, Separations Digi Chan, Letters – Comicraft
New Atlantis has started using OMAC robot cops that have issues and that attack John Keel and his partner Moonrider. Luckily the Joker shows up and takes it down – but it gets back up until the Atom helps and knocks it out. He wants to help them catch her in public but she flees. The Atom is then confronted by an angry crowd because they hate what his legacy means.
We get a quick montage of The Joker hopping by Mary Marvel the college student, Madame Xanadu who owns the VR center and is preparing to launch the super expensive Titanic Simulation, and World’s Finest newspaper where Lori Lemaris works.
The blackout hits, Atom loses his power and Lori decides to spring into action as the Joker.
The Atom meanwhile gets attacked by agents of the JLA, Chemo, Teen Titan and Hunter. The Joker springs in with limited weaponry and isn’t faring super well so her partner, who restocks the Impulse soda machines, sends a distress call and the two other Jokers appear and are able to knock them out and save The Atom bringing them back to their EMP-resistant base because Mary Marvel, Madame Xanadu and Lori Lemaris are all – The Joker.
The Batman
Dan Jurgens – writing and layouts, Klaus Janson – finished art, Gregory Wright – colors, Comicraft – letters, Heroic Age – separations
The light bending villainess Prysm is preparing to steal from Deylight Labs where the power is out and the only person still working there is Dr. Ardeen who she intends to kidnap. Luckily Bat-Man, the Dark Knight, shows up – a dude in a red metal knight suit.
Bat-man gets distracted by Dr. Ardeen and guards show up so he has to run off and Prysm steals Dr. Adreen for her boss King Kobra.
Bat-man returns to the Castle Bat, the House of Secrets which is magically protected by a fog where his controller Sir William is stuck.
In the past he abandoned Arthur at Camelot since he never felt he got recognition, his wife Lady Tasima who Dr. Ardeen looked like, stuck up for him and so Sir William drew his sword but decided to leave and declared war. The war intensified and it came to Arthur and William on the battle but Tasima turned out to by a monster who tried to kill Arthur so William slayed his wife which frees Merlin who explains Tasima was actually Morgan Le Fay in disguise and William was her weapon and Merlin stuck him in the castle till he atones which he does with his armored suit.
King Kobra meanwhile wants to become the king of the world using Ardeen’s help but Bat-man rushes in and he saved Ardeen from the clutches of King Kobra and William is left alone in his castle.
JLA
Writer – Dan Jurgens, Pencils – Darryl Banks, Inks – Norm Rapmund, Colors – Rob Schwager, Letters – Comicraft
A secret council including Raven the wife of the president, Senator Manson whose art was destroyed by the Comet, and Shadow Thief decide to kill the original Atom while the world is in chaos, meanwhile there are a group of soldiers who now worship the Ultra Humanite which makes no sense.
The original Atom gets killed by an assassin known as The Question and Raven and the President call in the rest of the Justice League of America.
Meanwhile the Secret Six have been defeated by the Ultra Humanite which is why they aren’t worried about the Atom’s revenge.
The shadowy figures send out the Justice League of America agents to bring together the new assets they want – The Question for The Green Lantern, The Human Target for Superman, The Vigilante for Batman, and Johnny Double for Wonder Woman. They get their asses beaten in various ways – Green Lantern brings back the original Atom for example but the four targets end up running into one another because the Atom and not the Green Lantern was the actual target.
Superman determines their goal was to stop the Ultra Humanite so they decide to fight him, and form the new Justice League of America and that’s the end. For now.