Month: June 2015

Welcome to another of the re-tooled Who’s Who Wednesdays, a regular feature here at the Fortress where every Wednesday (hence the name) I will present an entry from the original series of Who’s Who comics that DC published between 1984 and 1988.  Superman was well represented in those series and I wanted to share the entries with you just in case you have never seen them.  Today’s entry is Matrix-Prime!

(originally published in Who’s Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #15 (May 1986)

Be sure to check out Episode Fifteen of the amazing Who’s Who: The Definitive Podcast of the DC Universe hosted by Rob Kelly and the Irredeemable Shag.  It is an awesome podcast that I cannot recommend highly enough.

Remember that you can click on the images to make them larger.

For those coming in late, Direct Currents was a cool, free giveaway that DC used to send to comic shops to promote their books.  They usually had short articles pimping whatever DC felt was going to be their hot thing that month as well as release dates and solicitation information for all their books.  I love these things as artifacts of my person Golden Age of collecting.  I even have a whole section of this site devoted to the more Superman centric editions of Direct Currents and you can see that section by clicking on this link.

Zero Month was the focus of issue 79 of Direct Currents and one of the more amusing things about about it was the Cover of the Month thing on the first page.  Usually it highlights whatever cover the people putting Direct Currents thought was the best around and nothing was ever going to keep it down.  In this edition they declared that all of the covers win the Cover of the Month thing, which is amusing.  Superman got some decent real estate as well, though I would have preferred that either the Superman: The Man of Steel or the Superman cover to be blown up like the Action Comics one, but they all look good so it’s not a huge deal.

Enjoy!

Zero Month got not one but two sampler comics that were sent to comic shops.  Both of them are pretty neat too.  One was mostly black and white while the other was pretty much full color.  The biggest difference between the two is that the black and white one has just Zero in the title and the other one was straight up called Zero Month.  I’d love to sit here and type about why this was and when the word “Month” was added but I can’t because…I don’t know.  It’s interesting nonetheless and maybe someone can clue me in to why things played out the way they did.  No matter the reason here are the samplers.

First up is the Zero Sampler.

Next up is the Zero Month version.

Back when Jeff and I started covering Zero Hour on From Crisis to Crisis I dedicated a few posts to the coverage Previews (the ordering guide for Diamond Distributors) gave to that event.  Well, the very next month Previews did the same thing with Zero Month.

Continue reading PREVIEWS OF ZERO MONTH

Episode 187: Zero Month Part 1

Welcome to the one hundred and eighty-seventh episode of From Crisis to Crisis: A Superman Podcast!  This podcast has a simple premise; examine just about every Superman comic published between Man of Steel #1 in 1986 to Adventures of Superman #649 in 2006 in an informative and hopefully entertaining format.

Part index.  Part commentary.  Part history lesson.  All podcast.

Zero Hour is over.  Done and dusted.  The timeline has been reset and the DCU has a fresh coat of paint on it.

What does this mean for Superman?

So glad you asked!

This time out Mike and Jeff kick off their two part look at the Zero Month issues of Superman.  All of these books came out with the cover date of October 1994 and all of them were numbered zero, which made remembering the issue numbers really easy.  In Superman: The Man of Steel #0 the villain known as Conduit has a serious mad-on for Clark Kent.  Who is this Conduit guy and what does he have to do with Clark’s old classmate Kenny Braverman?  That question is answered in Superman #0 where we learn what motivated Kenny to hate Clark Kent with the fire of a thousand burning suns.  After that we take a look at Superboy #0 where the Kid and Tana Moon take a little vacation and pal around with Professor Emil Hamilton and the Kid proves that he shouldn’t be allowed to have x-ray specs.  Then the boys hop into a cab, pay their $7.50 and discuss what was going on in the real world when these comics were on the stands.  Finally, as promised two episodes ago, Mike and Jeff dip into the mailbag and read a bunch of your e-mails!

During the course of the intro to this episode we mention a video that DC sent to comic shops to promote Zero Hour and Zero Month.  As promised here it that video for your viewing pleasure.

You can subscribe to the show in two ways. First there is the RSS Feed and there is also the iTunes link. Are you on Facebook? Be sure to “like” the official FCTC page, which you can find by clicking on this link.

If you want to comment on the show or contact the hosts you can always private message Mike and Jeff, at the Superman Homepage, leave comments here or at the Homepage or here or email them by clicking this link. All questions, concerns, fears, trepidations and cheap shots are welcome.

Next Time: Adventures of Superman #0, Action Comics #0, Steel #0 and Outsiders #0!

Welcome to another of the re-tooled Who’s Who Wednesdays, a regular feature here at the Fortress where every Wednesday (hence the name) I will present an entry from the original series of Who’s Who comics that DC published between 1984 and 1988.  Superman was well represented in those series and I wanted to share the entries with you just in case you have never seen them.  Today’s entry is Reactron!

(originally published in Who’s Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #19 (September 1986)

Be sure to check out Episode Nineteen of the amazing Who’s Who: The Definitive Podcast of the DC Universe hosted by Rob Kelly and the Irredeemable Shag.  It is an awesome podcast that I cannot recommend highly enough.

Remember that you can click on the images to make them larger.