I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world. Mastodon Verification Link	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, was a late adopter of Twitter and left when it turned fascist, and always declined to adopt Facebook. He was a fairly early adventurer into the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

I started with Marvel, and then moved to some indies, so it's time to do something from the other one of the Big Two - DC. I was more a Marvel fan than a DC fan for most of my collecting career, which isn't to say I didn't collect quite a few DCs. Mostly though, they were second string titles - I never really did Batman or Superman or Wonder Woman, for instance. Some of the lesser known titles were really good, though, and years later some of them got new life on tv - think of the Teen Titans and (Green) Arrow. To start with, though, we'll do a deep dive ...

These are two comics that I don't really remember at all. I suspect that both showed up in my box as part of the previously mentioned 'all number 1s' option. One of them, I continued to collect; one, I did not. So let's talk about 'first issues,' perhaps a nicer term than 'number 1s.

The first issue of a comic book is, in many ways, like the pilot of a tv series. It needs to serve as an introduction, capture the audience's attention, and convince them to stick around. It's not easy, there's an art and a skill to it. Of course, not all comics (or tv shows) will appeal to everyone, nor are they really intended to. They have a target audience, and the first issue (or pilot) will be tailored to that audience. There are lots of things to consider: do you introduce all the main characters, or just some? if it's a superhero comic, do you need to do the origin story? (Movies always seem to answer this 'yes'.) How much plot does it need? How much exposition to get the setting right? And so on, and so forth.

For me these days, the most important bits are character and relationship. I'm somewhat pleased to find that the same seems to have been true thirty or forty years ago, even if I didn't think of it that way. (Or at least, that's the narrative I can construct from these two first issues.

'Tempus Fugitive' has nice art, to be sure. But ... the entire first issues is, almost literally, one long car chase. (Technically, I guess, it's a flying time machine chase, but ...) It's pretty enough to look at but it's kind of boring. There's practically no character development, and almost no character, and only the vaguest hint of relationship between any of the characters. It completely failed to grab my interest, now, or in 1990. It ran for four issues, and I couldn't be bothered.

By contrast, Thriller starts with character and motivation. The main character is introduced, and some backstory is skilfully introduced. Other characters are brought in with their relationships sketched in broad outlines. It's well done. Certainly well done enough to keep me buying them. It ran in 1983-1984, when I was collecting a lot of comics and, at the minute, it feels a little ahead of its time. (Although I could be wrong, I'm working from memory here.) Especially at the beginning, the plots were fairly detailed, and the character development continued apace. It was, in broad strokes, familiar territory - mysterious leader of a team of experts. Doc Savage, The Challengers of the Unknown, even films like 'Ocean's 11' or 'The Dirty Dozen.' It was handled nicely, though, and there was some complex world building underlying and supporting the series.

It ran for 12 issues, and although a lot of mini/maxi-series ran for 12, I think this was intended to be an open-ended run. There's a note in a fan site that it was cancelled due to poor sales, which reinforces the idea both that it was ahead of its time and also pretty good. (I mean, there's a pretty elaborate fan site, which says something.) The original writer left after issue 7, and the original artist after issue 8, and the series couldn't take the shock. By issue 10, I think, the writing was on the wall, and the last three issues feel very rushed. It reads as though the new creative team wanted to tie up all the loose ends and explain all the mysteries which had been hinted about in the earlier issues. Issue 10 is almost nothing but a long expository sequence, and the charm of the first issues is lost.

Changing writers and artists is not unusual; with long running series, it happens quite regularly. Sometimes this can re-invigorate a character or title - Frank Miller's run on 'Daredevil' comes to mind, as does Alan Moore's re-imagining of 'Swamp Thing.' Sometimes, though, it fails. The team on the tail end of 'Thriller' are not bad, but the didn't suit the material. (To some extent, this is why some writers and artists took some of their ideas to the indies, where they could retain control.)

I enjoyed the re-read - or at least 2/3s of it - but these, like the rest so far, fail to make the cut.

NB - if anyone reading any of these is interested in any of the 'non-keeper' comics let me know. We might be able to work something out ...

• Comic Read Through Part Three
• Comic Read Through Part Five