Geoffrey vs. SUPERBOY AND THE RAVERS

Since I can't keep up with doing a weekly thing about the new comics, instead I will do an irregular thing about comics which are not new at all. And I will start with DC Comics seminal 1990s series SUPERBOY AND THE RAVERS.

This series ran 19 issues, monthly from September 1996. I collected it for 12 issues, much to the derision of my fellow comic readers. It was written by Karl Kesel, one of the mainstays of DC Comics writing in the 90s.

It's a silly concept.  Superboy, who was reimagined after the Death of Superman into a teen-aged clone of Superman, falls in with a group of other teenage superheroes who in common that they all go to this intergalactic non-stop party, the "rave" after which they take their team name. The other characters are:

Sparx, a teenage Canadian girl-next-door from a family of superbeings who can turn into living electricity.

Aura, an Asian girl who is a bitch and can control magnetism.

Hero Cruz, a Latino/Black guy with a force field vest which later gets replaced by the DC Comics artifact the H-Dial which allows him to turn into a different superhero with different powers each time it is used. Also, in a time when it was rare, he was a gay superhero.

Kaliber, an alien guy from an anti-matter universe where evil is good and good is evil (comics!) who can shrink or grow himself or others. He's good, so in his universe he is a dangerous terrorist.

Rex the Wonder Dog, a dog with enhanced dog-like dog powers, like the Captain America of dogs, who also served in WW2 and fought Nazis. Starred in his own comic in the 50s. No lie.

Half-Life, a rebellious youth from the 50s who was abducted by aliens and turned into a half-James Dean half-green ooze skeleton dude in a leather jacket (once more, comics!).

Other regular characters included Kindred Marx, an orange skinned alien who looked like an elf in a suit and ran the rave. Bouncer, the rave's bouncer, a big alien who didn't speak English. DJ, the rave's DJ who was a hot-girl robot.

This sounds pretty stupid as I type it all out.

I remember when I was buying this monthly that one friend really grilled me on why. My reason really kinda sums up what I love about superhero comics, the sense that any bizarre thing can happen. I told him that, out of all the comics being published, Superboy and the Ravers was the only one in which there seemed to be a reasonable chance that the team might have to at some point save the world by beating Nazis in a game of baseball and that clearly if that storyline took place it was one I HAD to read.

Basically, it was fun.

Over the years this comic, when it is thought of at all, really is kind of a punchline at times about the excesses of 90s comics trying to appeal to the hip, urban youth of the day. Not as blatantly about nothing as some Image comics were, but still, a series about teens at a party that never ends...as I said a paragraph ago, it sounds kinda stupid.

Well I reread the 12 issues I have and I have to say, it's not.  It was and still is fun. A fun, easy read with pleasant characterizations, a few interesting concepts and some nice art by Paul Pelletier and Aaron Lopresti.

The art is so nice that I was wondering where Paul Pelletier might have gone only to discover that same night while reading the much more recent Marvel Comics cosmic crossover War of Kings that he was still drawing and was still really good.

HIGHS:

Hero Cruz getting the H-Dial. This was I think the first big use of that object post-Crisis and it was a fun callback in a time when Silver Age stuff was kind of swept under the rug. All round Hero was a cool character. If we weren't under the tyranny of DC's New 52 regime, I would hope for a Hero Cruz return.

Half-Life. I liked this guy. It's a neat concept: the delinquent form the 50s with strange, alien granted abilites after a UFO abduction. While aliens are rife in comic worlds, UFO type stuff is rare.  He was different and again, were it not for the Nu52, I would hope for more Half-Life some day.

LOWS:

The over-arching plot/mystery of the party itself was kinda of weak. I wish the story had been even more focused on just having these crazy adventures.

Tying into the above, Kindred Marx was a boring character and, while this won't make sense to anyone reading comics now, at the time he really looked A LOT like a character in another DC series. His resemblance to Stealth, a female character appearing in the comic L.E.G.I.O.N. was uncanny and if the internet had been as big back then everyone would have derided the fact that it turned out Marx had no connection at all to Stealth and wasn't even the same species.

ALL IN ALL:

Fun comics. I do wish they'd had that baseball game.