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I didn’t forget, but there’s a good reason I didn’t have time to do this week’s installment. I just brought my dad home from the hospital today. Nothing major (or at least no surgery), but he’s been in there all week so that was the priority. I considered just having this week’s CBS Transformers later, but opted against it. So we’ll finish the sample episodes next week, followed by the one script they did, a final thoughts, and then this series will be done.
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Sheena faces her biggest threat yet: Tarzan’s lawyers!
Jumbo Comics #13
Real Adventure Publishing Co (March, 1940)
Okay, now we’ll be caught up with this series. It’s not easy needing new ways to open these reviews. Even in speed mode these reviews take awhile, and that’s after, or rather while reading a bunch of comic stories altogether. Sure, they’re short. Sometimes too short to fully tell their stories. However, numbers do count for something. This is just under 70 pages of comics and a text story. That’s a lot to go over, hence why I usually bypass the text stories and lame gag pages. There’s multiple creators so I can’t just do a creator page. So instead I pad out for the homepage with nonsense like this. That’s good, so let’s get started.
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Catch more from Wentworth Bros. on YouTube
The big question is why do so few of them wear pants?
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While this isn’t going to be a weekly series I did want to at last start the first one. For more about the comic, how I got it, why I’m reviewing it, and all the biases coming with it, check out the introductory article to this series.
You’ll also notice I amended something from the when it was originally posted. Tales Of The Black Freighter being an allegedly popular comic in the Watchmen universe rather than anything with superheroes gets talked up alot. They even made a direct-to-video animation of the thing to coincide with the movie. I always assumed the story itself showed up in the pages. I have since learned only covers show up. We don’t actually get a story within the story. Apparently it was an actual DC comic published in our world, and there’s a spiritual connection between the two works or something, but there won’t be a section devoted to that comic after all. I will, however, still give the documentation it’s own review section.
With that, I guess we just go into the first issue.
I’m not cleaning that up.
Watchmen #1
DC Comics (September, 1986)
“At Midnight, All The Agents…”
WRITER: Alan Moore
ARTIST/LETTERER: Dave Gibbons
COLORIST: John Higgins, who never gets credit, possibly because he’s not a co-creator of the concept and characters.
I’m working from the 2014 “New Edition”, a reprint of the “Absolute Edition” which redid the colors. Higgins is still credited, but I thought I’d bring it up. Images used to prove a point or break the text wall come from scans of the original 1986 comic, or so the site I’m using would let you believe. Yes, I’m using a pirate site, who in turn stole it from a DIFFERENT pirate site, which is kind of appropriate given Moore’s current opinion of DC and the pirate comic showing up as what he thinks would be the popular comic in that universe. However, my reviews are coming from the edition I personally and legally own. All I had to do was draw the right game piece out of a bag, but it’s still legally my copy.
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“Wow, I really let the backyard get out of hand.”
Michael Turner’s Fathom: Cannon Hawke #0
Aspen Comics (digital copy: April, 2011)
PLOT: Michael Turner & Koi Turnbull
WRITER: J.T. Krul
PENCILER: Koi Turnbull
INKER: Larry Welch
COLORIST: Beth Sotelo
LETTERING: Dreamer Design
DIGITAL EDITORS: Frank Mastromauro & Vince Hernandez
BW Media Spotlight 
BW’s Saturday Article Link> DC VS Manga On Genre Variety
In a recent article of mine, I went over what DC Comics could and couldn’t learn from manga, after Jim Lee’s comments that they should look to their success to chart DC course. One of the things I’ve mentioned is that in the past American comics embraced multiple genres, while today only indie comics try to do anything other than superheroes and licenced works. We actually made more comics for “everyone” than we do now when certain groups are demanding comics be “made for everyone”, only not as disingenuous. It other words it was done for story variety rather than placating (insert group who doesn’t actually read comics here).
In an article for his Megacosm website, writer Victor James digs more into how comics used to make multiple genres of comics, like Japanese manga creators and publishers do today. Manga followed the Golden Age formula of tackling multiple storytelling genres for multiple age groups, and while that’s only one reason for their success, it’s one comic fans and commentators were requesting and suggesting even before the rise of Japanese media in the West to current levels. Something to think about.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on March 14, 2026 in Comic Spotlight and tagged comics vs manga, commentary, Golden Age comics.
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