New comic, old ideas - Adventure Comics #461

Only Legends Live Forever

Adventure Comics #461

Cover Dated: January / February 1979
Released: 12th October 1978

Adventure is an anthology comic, but we'll skip the other stories so no talk about the Barry Allen Flash, Deadman or Earth-1 Wonder Woman stories. I'm reading from the trade anyways so even I've not had the joy of the other stories.

And for the new comic we're back to the same old, same old, with Power Girl being mardy at the boy. Though to be fair it's because they're putting pressure on her to keep an energy bubble from closed in her and Alan, only for it being a test to get Green lantern to use the full extent of his powers. She storms out, with an admirably cool cutaway of the pneumatic tube to get her back to the mansion proper, pass a now recovered Wildcat who alas seems his normal self.

We then get a much sweeter scene where Dick Grayson reveals that he knows that Helena is the Huntress. It even goes to the length to say that she's not the type to stay in the kitchen, even though she's apparently trying to make the perfect souffle. It's nice that Dick manages to have worked out that she Helena, he's as good a detective as Bruce on a good day. And as mentioned Bruce isn't exactly impartial about his little daughter, and that Dick won't snitch on Helena being a superhero.

Then we get into the meat of the story, and an innocent detail that hasn't aged well in the 21st Century. As it seems that Gotham has itself its own Twin Towers, patterned quite obviously on the ones on New York. It seems that someone is climbing the outside of the tower calling for Bruce and refusing anyone help to the point of throwing a cop out of a window. He scatters cop on the roof with yellow energies, all the time calling for Bruce to turn up.

The JSA arrive and Power Girl again has a terrible time of it, almost instantly being wrapped in energy chains and thrown in the river. Though the rest of the JSA getting taken down almost as easily. Only Flash get close to the man, only to find out that for some reason he can't touch him for some reason. Then the JSA all defeated he threatens to destroy the towers demonstrating by causing it to shake (shown by one leaning to the left). Bruce luckily shows up at this point and we finally discover the origins of this man.

It appears that the man was sent to prison for a murder, which he claims Bruce set him to take the fall, he escaped and somehow gained this power. But we don't find out how because Dr Fate turns up at this point, only to almost instantly be felled by the man's powers.

Its a little disconcerting how straightforward this is compared to previous issues, apart from the starting scenes the whole comic is just the story told straight through. I suspect that the issue had already been planned and it's just been cut in half, but I guess we'll find out in the next issue.