Thoughts

I’ve mentioned a couple of times before how interesting it is that big story ideas in these early eighties comics get covered in a couple of issues. Whereas you feel now such a big idea would form the basis of a huge Crossover, with dozens of titles and spin-offs supporting its own dedicated storyline title.

Nowhere is that more apparent in this and the next issue. A two-parter built on an idea that could have comfortably kept a Summer Crossover going for months.

It’s really all here – New York is transformed into a Conan-esque fantasy kingdom, with the heroes themselves reimagined as time-period appropriate adventurers. There is so much stuff here that teases and tempts with hints about the vaster world out there. None of which the two issues at all delves into.

This is not a criticism. This is an absolutely great two-part issue. Pacey, exciting and action packed. The fantasy fun is exactly the sort of thing I hoped the previous stories with Arkon had been. It delivers so much on the fun Frazetta-style promise. Crossovers nowadays are so bloated it is impossible to read it all and you wish they would cut back. So it is so strange to read something and think “I wish they had done dozens of stories in this world”

Fun Panel

Any Googling

There is genuinely so much exposition in this issue – the scale of New York’s transformation outlined to the reader – that its really hard not to be convinced that there are issues out there that cover all this fun stuff. There isn’t. I checked. But everytime I read this story I think there might be something out there.