“Yesterday’s” Comic> Lucky Comics Showcase #1

Okay, guys, you don’t have to rip off Golden Age anthologies, too.

Lucky Comics Showcase #1

Lucky Comics (February, 2002)

COVER ART: John Michael Helmer

As you can tell from the cover, this comic contains three stories: Beetle Girl, Crom The Barbarian, and Flame Girl. The girls are of course tied to Golden Age superheroes while Crom is a take on Conan. Perhaps this is supposed to be the guy Conan prays to? I don’t know. Good or not, this isn’t a series I would connect to.

Meanwhile, past showings of Beetle Girl in these reviews have not been the best showing for Dan Garrett’s daughter, Flame Girl is new, and I only have limited exposure to The Flame, the guy who travels through flames but also has a cool car and airplane. That will at least be something different. Crom we saw in one of the Free Comic Book Day specials.

Beetle Girl: “Rise Of The Beetle”

WRITER/LETTERER: John Michael Helmer | ARTIST: Eric Douthitt | EDITORS: Brad Eastburn & Michael Wagoneer

Here’s a bit more about Beetle Girl’s cast. She has a fiance named Thomas who knows her grandfather was the Golden Age Blue Beetle (they even refer to him by that name in one panel–nobody tell DC) but apparently doesn’t know she’s Beetle Girl. May want to work on that, Danni. She gets new hearing aids, which is not helping her position any and doesn’t come into play unless it’s really how she picks up a robbery on police radio. The place being hit is a jewelry store where Thomas ordered the ring, so Beetle Girl goes to stop them. No, I don’t think that was her only reason. I want to give the girl some credit. She replaced grandad’s chainmail armor with something that expands with a special spray, which has its advantages. We still don’t know where her gear is from, but it’s apparently not that bulletproof as one of the bad guys shoots her shoulder and she at least feels it. She stops them but their boss, a former Nazi named Sky Raider, takes off in his airship without her even knowing. We also had Danni and Thomas…please tell me that’s not intentional, John…watching a movie about a Blue Beetle adventure where he stops a Nazi from pushing drugs to kids? What? It’s an odd story, but sadly what I’ve come to expect with Beetle Girl. Also, don’t let this artist do closeups shots, please. At normal length he’s fine, but close-ups of faces are not that attractive.

Crom The Barbarian

SCRIPT/LETTERER: John M. Helmer | ART & STORY: Jim Gullett | EDITOR: Jatinder Ghataora

Crom is sent to rescue a king’s daughter. Normal adventure for this type of story. Crom beats a rock demon and meets a wounded man he gives a potion to, while the king’s other daughter decides she needs to join the fight or her training was a waste. That’s really all that happened. The fight is okay but limited because the art is not the best. This comic’s close-ups are worse than the last one. It’s not professional quality, and that’s from an admitted rank amateur myself. Otherwise, the story is way too short to get into outside of the fight, and this is not my genre. That kind of limits my perspective, but I couldn’t get into this one.

Flame Girl: “Reign Of The Cobra Queen”

SCRIPT/LETTERER: John M. Helmer | ARTIST: Bruno Abdias | ART EDITOR: Micaias Ramos | EDITOR: Michael Wagoneer

This story doesn’t tell us how Flame Girl got her powers, but I never knew how the original Flame got his, so par for the course. She’s apparently dating a detective named Dame, and her name is Linda. That’s more than I know about her predecessor. They’re after a woman named La Sombra, who can travel through shadows the way Flame Girl passes through flame. They use that power to invade her base by…blowing up part of her space so Flame Girl can walk through the flames and surprise her? Seems a bit harsh. We’ve seen The Flame travel through a lit cigarette match. Flame Girl also stop her from revenge-killing a thief named Cobra Queen, who is trying to get money to support her terror operation, and both manage to escape.

So Flame Girl seems as competent as Beetle Girl, who has also let a villain escape to attack another hero (assuming La Sombra is the antihero type). At least the art here is really good, easily the best of the issue.

overall

I think this is the last Lucky Comic in my list, at least for a while. These Golden Age descendants may not be the overpowered girl bosses we get now, and I’m not against leaving the public domain heroes in the Golden Age while seeing what the current generation does. It’s just they’re not exactly showing me a high success rate. I like them conceptually but they need to be written as better heroes than they’re depicted as here.