World Comic Book Review

28th March 2024

Satire predicts politics – Allusions to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in DC Comics’ The Demon #26-29 (1992)

“The Demon” #26, 27, 28, 29
Writer: Dwayne McDuffie
Artist: Val Semeiks
DC Comics, 1992
Review by Max Yezpitelok

One highly peculiar and clearly satirical 1992 storyline contained in the pages of an obscure comic book called “The Demon”, published by American comic book company DC Comics, where a rhyming demon runs for president of the United States is amongst the oddest of all US mainstream comic book stories. But from the perspective of a very cynical reader in 2016 the story has some uncanny similarities to the current presidential election.

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“The Demon” is an anti-hero created by acclaimed writer Jack Kirby in 1972. The character has yellow skin, blazing red eyes, and horns. There is an underlying sense of Jekyll and Hyde schizophrenia to the character, premised on the idea that an evil demon of hell named Etrigan is harboured within a well-meaning human named Jason Blood. Etrigan breathes fire and is just as likely to incinerate other characters within storylines as to assist them. As such, the character is difficult to define within the genre of superhero comics and but for being part of its famous creator’s legacy to that genre, would more properly sit within the realm of horror. Etrigan is magically summoned by the incantation, “Gone, gone, form of man, arise the demon, Etrigan!”

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Women Assemble!

A-Force #1 [Review]
Marvel Comics, January 6, 2016
Writer: G. Willow Wilson
Review by Neil Raymundo, Feb 1, 2016

An American publisher of superhero comic books, Marvel Comics, is presently engaging in what some comic book retailers have described as “publishing carpet bombing”: flooding the market with numerous first issues of new titles. Within many of those new titles, a common thread emerges: the repeated extension of the “Avengers” comic book franchise.

The “A-Force” is another Avengers-orientated spin-off book from Marvel Comics’s 2015-16 Secret Wars crossover event, written by G. Willow Wilson (and more on her below). This event, as we have explained in other reviews, in essence destroyed majority of the publisher’s different continuities and consolidated the survivors into a single reality ruled by an omnipotent villain called Doctor Doom. The single reality was dubbed Battleworld. One of the places within Battleworld is an island paradise called Arcadia, which is protected by the “A-Force.” This is a superhero team of exclusively female characters drawn from Marvel Comics’ extensive intellectual property asset base. It consists of, amongst many others, the following characters: Medusa, She-Hulk, Captain Marvel, Dazzler, Sister Grimm, and a mysterious and gender-fluid cosmic being called “Singularity.”

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Captain Marvel #1 [REVIEW]

Marvel Comics, January 05 2016
Writers: Michele Fazekas and Tara Butler
Review by Neil Raymundo, January 25, 2016

Captain Marvel #1 is part of American publisher Marvel Comics’ ANAD (All New, All Different) campaign, which is a relaunch of many characters and books apparently in order to attract a new generation of fans and give writers a clean slate in character development and reinvigoration. The other ANAD titles are clearly aimed at a younger demographic, full of fresh new faces, and premises that will be relevant mostly to teenagers.

The new title “Captain Marvel”, on the other hand, is an outlier. This character has a particularly strident cadre of fans which style themselves as “the Carol Corps”. Marvel Comics have been understandably keen to maintain the attention and affections of this group, to the point of including the name “the Carol Corps” (the name derived from “Carol Danvers”, Captain Marvel’s alter ego) in the title of one of their publications. This adoration and the announcement of a Captain Marvel movie for 2018 has attracted mainstream interest from Time Magazine to women’s haute couture magazine Marie Claire.

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Nothing Alien Here

Green Lantern Corps: Edge of Oblivion 1
DC Comics, March 2016
Writer: Tom Taylor
Review by DG Stewart, 18 January 2016

The Green Lantern Corps is a concept which borrows heavily from EE “Doc” Smith’s science fiction classics, known as The Lensmen series (1937-1960). The stories of both are founded on the idea that deep space is patrolled by benevolent aliens of different races, and that notwithstanding their differences both physically and philosophically, these galactic patrollers are united by altruism.

In Mr Smith’s books, the aliens are very alien, to the point of resembling looming monsters. In DC Comics’ Green Lantern Corps (created in 1959 by John Broome with editor Julius Schwartz), the points of alienness have always been much less sophisticated. Traditionally the Green Lantern Corps have consisted of many humanoids with different skin colours or animal features. Some of the Green Lanterns are sentient earth-type animals. One high point of the possibilities of the concept of alienness within the Corps’ ranks came in 1985 when writer Alan Moore created (as a passing mention) a Green Lantern which was a super-intelligent mathematical concept. Another Alan Moore creation, albeit one first based in the same, semi-comedic story, featured a sentient planet called Mogo which was a Green Lantern. But setting aside such irregular bursts of imagination, most of these alien lawmen have been depicted as having only marginally more biodiversity than Earthlings.

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