Monday Memories #25 - Action Comics #616

Each Monday this year I'll be taking a look back at a random comic, prestige format issue, graphic novel or collection of reprints from amongst my 3,000 or so comics that date from 1962 to 2003 - I figured anything in the last ten years would be too recent to hark back to.

The comics are chosen completely at random and apart from a four week lead-in period, even I don't know what I'll be looking at in the weeks to come!

ACTION COMICS #616 - September 1988

As I may have mentioned before, the weekly edition of Action Comics was DC's first stab at getting issues out on a weekly basis. As with all anthologies - be they comics, novels or films - you're always going to end up with something of a mixed bag.

I tracked them down years ago primarily in order to have a bridge between the various Green Lantern series . . . and what an odd bridge it turned out to be. Hal Jordan continues his affair with Arisia and ends up appearing on Oprah, while Star Sapphire comes along and kills Katma Tui, sending John Stewart off the deep end. And then, in this issue, Hal gets locked in a safe the interior of which is painted yellow, so how's he going to get out?

By means of a thinly veiled Hulk, of course.

The remaining stories aren't up to much, if I'm honest, particularly the Black Canary and Wild Dog tales. The biggest star of the title, Superman, was relegated to a two page centre spread where he didn't do much apart from save some scientists:

And Nightwing travels to London to find Speedy who's gone in search of Cheshire so of course he finds a pub:

Because everything in Britain begins with Ye Olde...

And I'm not even going to mention his blatant flouting of the British laws which demand a motorcyclist to wear a helmet.