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Who Is Mister Terrific? A DC Comics Superhero

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There is not one, but two superheroes named Mister Terrific in the DC Comics Universe. Like many others, the original was created during the Golden Age Era and the second one took up the mantle decades later, reviving the legacy of a–probably forgotten–member of the Justice Society of America. 

Terry Sloane, Golden Age’s Mister Terrific 

Like Wildcat and the Gay Ghost, Mister Terrific first appeared in Sensation Comics #1 (1942). Created by Charles Reizenstein and Hal Sharp, this superhero was mostly thought of as just another masked mystery man, but he had a darker start than others.

You see, Terry Sloane may have had everything you’d ever want, but the thing that was missing led him to contemplate suicide. Known as “The Man of 1,000 Talents,” Terry was rich, he possessed a photographic memory and the skills of an Olympic athlete, and he was a master of the martial arts. He was a highly intelligent, natural-born leader, and an accomplished businessman. All of that in his early 20s!

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What Is the Marvel Method?

Roy Thomas explained the Marvel MEthod in the backup story in Avengers Annual #2

There is not one and only proven way that every cartoonist follows to make comics. In mainstream comics, it’s common for a writer to produce a full script that the artist follows to produce the illustrations—then the inker, colorist, and many more people add to it.

This was not the standard for a long time at Marvel Comics. There, writers and artists worked together by following what is commonly known as The Marvel Method.

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Martian Manhunter Reading Order (J’onn J’onzz)

Introduced in the story “The Strange Experiment of Dr. Erdel” in Detective Comics #225 (1955) by writer Joseph Samachson and artist Joe Certa, the Martian Manhunter is a DC Comics superhero also known as J’onn J’onzz (often pronounced “John Jones”).

A green-skinned humanoid from Mars, J’onn J’onzz came to Earth with an experimental teleportation beam constructed by Dr. Saul Erdel who can’t send him back before a few years. In the waiting, the Martian Manhunter shapeshifts into a human. When Dr. Erdel is killed, he has no way to go back to Mars. He then decided to fight crime under the identity of John Jones, a detective in Middletown, USA.

During this time, J’onn J’onzz revealed his existence to the world to act publicly as a superhero and became a founding member of the Justice League. However, he still kept his secret identity “alive” until “Detective John Jones” was killed in action. After that, he moved to The House of Mystery to fight a supernatural menace.

With Superman taking a bigger role in the Justice League, the Martian Manhunter became less and less present. At the end of the 1960s, he eventually went back to Mars and only appeared occasionally in stories and didn’t make a real comeback until 1984 (in Justice League of America #228). Three years later, Post-Crisis on Infinite Earths, J’onn J’onzz stayed in the Justice League of America, unlike most of the other previous members. He quickly got a short miniseries that retcon his origin stories.

Now, the Martian Manhunter is the last of the Martian race. He has a lot of powers as he can shape-shift, fly, has super-strength and speed, possesses enhanced senses, can turn invisible, communicate telepathically, move objects via Telekinesis, and more! Despite his fear of fire, he is one of the most powerful heroes of the DC Universe. Also, he is known for his wisdom, calm demeanor, and profound sense of duty.

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Lady Death Reading Order

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At the start of the 1990s emerged a new popular trend in the comic book world, the Bad Girls comics. Violent scantily clad busty women of supernatural/occult origins who quickly found an audience in this bubbling market. Vampirella was making a comeback, but soon also came Neil Gaiman’s Angela, Rob Liefeld’s Avengelyne, Billy Tucci’s Shi, Marc Silvestri’s Witchblade, but before them, there was Lady Death.

Introduced in 1991 by writer Brian Pulido and artist Steven Hughes in Evil Ernie #1 published by Chaos! Comics, Lady Death was originally a hallucination. Ernest “Ernie” Fairchild thought that she was his dream girl and she would love him if he killed everything on Earth. Evil Ernie was deranged, to say the least. Nevertheless, Lady Death caught on and moved to become something else.

In her own series, Lady Death was introduce as Hope, a young Swedish medieval girl whose power-mad father tries to gain enough strength to challenge the lord of hell so he can become its ruler. As she tried to save herself, Hope ended up in Hell fighting Lucifer. She cast him through Heaven’s Gate and took his place as the ruler of Hell–but he cursed her, she can never return to the mortal plane so long as the living walk the Earth.

As the 1990s progressed, Lady Death found her way into more Chaos! Comics series and additional miniseries. But once Chaos! Comics filed for bankruptcy, the character rights were sold and Lady Death entered the CrossGen universe–but not all the Chaos characters followed her. Brian Pulido continued to work on Lady Death with the (family-friendly) series Medieval Lady Death, but CrossGen Entertainment followed the same road as Chaos! Comics. Lady Death was this time sold to Avatar Press where Pulido worked on two series, Medieval Lady Death as well as the Classic Lady Death. 

Since then Lady Death moved to a new imprint at Avatar Press (Boundless Comics) before jumping to Coffin Comics, Brian Pulido’s own publishing company.

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Alpha Flight Reading Order, Canada’s premier team of superheroes

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A lot of Marvel’s superheroes are based in New York, but you can’t find more all around the world, including Canada! That’s where you’ll meet the members of Alpha Flight, a team often described as the Canadian’s Avengers.

From time to time, Wolverine’s back story was evoked and, in The Uncanny X-Men #120-121 by John Byrne, a new element was introduced, the Alpha Flight team. Their first on-page action was to try to abduct Wolverine to get him back to his home country as the Canadian government had invested in his training and wanted to have him rejoin his original team.

That’s how James MacDonald Hudson (Vindicator, later Guardian), Jean-Paul Beaubier (Northstar), Jeanne-Marie Beaubier (Aurora), Corporal Anne McKenzie (Snowbird),  Walter Langowski (Sasquatch), and Michael Twoyoungmen (Shaman) were first introduced to the readers.

John Byrne thought this was a one-off, but Canadian readers and X-Men fans alike loved the concept, and the Alpha Flight team quickly got its own ongoing series that ran from 1983 to 1994. Throughout the year, the team evolved by adding new characters.

After the first volume concluded, the series would come back multiple times and, to this day, is still active.

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Who is Ra’s al Ghul, Batman’s Nemesis?

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The Joker may be considered by most as the ultimate enemy of Batman, but he certainly is not the only deadly threat in the Dark Knight’s rogues gallery. One that also stands apart among other DC Comics supervillains is Ra’s al Ghul.

Ra’s al Ghul’s First Apparition

Created by writer Dennis O’Neil and artist Neal Adams in the story “Daughter of the Demon” (Batman #232, 1971), Ra’s al Ghul was named by DC editor Julius Schwartz–in Arabic, the name means “the Head of the Demon.” If we are to believe Talia al Ghul, Ra’s chose this name himself, it was not given to him.

Ra’s al Ghul first entered Batman’s world after his daughter Talia, whom Batman had recently rescued from the League of Assassins, was kidnapped. He appeared suddenly in the Batcave to reveal to the Detective that the people responsible are the same as the ones who just took Robin (Dick Grayson). Once the shock passes, the two team up to go on a series of adventures, following the criminal to the other side of the world.

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Who is Red She-Hulk? The Origin Story of Marvel’s Red Monstress

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The Hulk Family Tree has expanded as more people got poisoned by Gamma radiation. The Marvel Universe is full of monsters, but all are certainly not green ones. Since the first incarnation of Red Hulk (also known as Rulk) first appeared in 2008, we know they also can be red ones.

Announced in a shroud of mystery during the 2009 Comic Con, Red She-Hulk followed Red Hulk’s path as his real identity was hidden for some time (nearly two years). Once again, Marvel threw a few “red” herrings on the readers’ path with clues leading to Domino of X-Force and Elektra. So, at the beginning, there only was the character design:

What [Jeph] Loeb did reveal was the process by which the character was created by [Ed] McGuinness and “Code Red” arc artist Ian Churchill. “Ed did the design, but Ian certainly made it his own. The two of them sent stuff back and forth until everyone was happy. Ed’s big contribution to it was that he wanted this big, long, flowing mane of hair that was black and had a red streak in it -sort of like the Bride of Frankenstein. It makes her look super cool. We worked a long time on what it is that she wears because we didn’t want her to be wearing what Jen wears, and we didn’t want her to be wearing a white torn shirt. What she has on is very specific.” —Introducing… Red She-Hulk (CBR.com)

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Lobo Reading Order (DC Comics)

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When he was first introduced by Roger Slifer and Keith Giffen in Omega Men #3 (1983), Lobo was a villain from planet Velorpian, the last of his race, who partnered with Bedlam. You can forget about that. This was not DC Comics’ Main Man, the Lobo who gained fame during the 1990s.

Reintroduced by Giffen in Justice League International, then in L.E.G.I.O.N. (and R.E.B.E.L.S.), before getting his own miniseries famously written by Alan Grant (plotted by Giffen) and with art by Simon Bisley that retconned his origins, Lobo is an interstellar mercenary and bounty hunter from the utopian planet of Czarnia. He is brash, indestructible, and likes being violent.

Drenched in black humor, Lobo was deliberately outrageous as he was used to parody the violent excesses of the time. As Giffen said it, “I have no idea why Lobo took off.  I came up with him as an indictment of the Punisher, Wolverine, badass hero prototype and somehow he caught on as the high-violence poster boy. Go figure.”

As a product of the 1990s, Lobo appeared less often during the following decades, but he still came by from time to time to collect a bounty and be chaotic.

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The Sixth Gun Reading Order (and Shadow Roads)

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The Sixth Gun is a comic book series created by Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt that was published by Oni Press. The story is set in the Old West, shortly after the end of the Civil War. It’s a Western with fantasy elements (or sci-fi, I’m not quite sure how to define it).

The story of The Sixth Gun takes place in the Old West during the late 1880s and centers around a set of six magic pistols connected to each other by dark powers. They will be used to rewrite the World. Each one of the six guns is bound to the man who used it until his death.

The Sixth one ends up in the hand of Becky Montcrief and now people want to kill her in order to take it back. With the help of the mysterious Drake Sinclair, Becky goes hunting for the other guns, and she’s not the only one. During their quest, they must fight against General Hume and his four horsemen, the Knights of Solomon, the Sword of Abraham, and the Grey Witch.

The main Sixth Gun series is composed of 50 issues. During its original run, the publication of the series was punctuated by multiple spin-off miniseries. Once the main story was concluded, a new ongoing spin-off series titled Shadow Roads was launched.

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Batman ’66 Reading Order

In January 1966, the American TV Network ABC launched a live-action Batman show starring Adam West as Bruce Wayne/Batman and Burt Ward as Dick Grayson/Robin. It soon became a massive hit which had a big impact on pop culture, influencing other TV Shows but also the comic book it was based on.

It was created by William Dozier, a man who, before starting work on the project, had never read a Batman comic in his life. Not knowing how to adapt the character, he tried multiple approaches and the one that worked was to make Batman a pop-art campy comedy. For the kids, it was a colorful action/adventure series. For the adults, it was a fun time.

This Batman show lasted for three seasons and a movie as ABC decided to milk this success to the max, ordering 60 episodes for the second season, emptying at a fast rate its creative juice. The public grew tired of Batman and Dozier tried to save the series by introducing Batgirl/Barbara Gordon (played by Yvonne Craig) and asking DC Comics to develop the character in the Batman comics. This was not enough to make the ratings go up–Dozier also flirted with surrealism at one point and tried to be more topical.

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