Thursday, May 24, 2007

Tales of the Great Disaster

No, it's not a look back at the v4 era. "Tales of the Great Disaster" was one of a number of sporadic backup series that appeared in the 70s that dealt with the Great Disaster that brought forth the world of Kamandi and the Atomic Knights. DC announced a Showcase volume coming out in November that collects all of these backup stories (to tie in with the Great Disaster we're going to hear about from Countdown), one of which is the Superman story I wrote about here. Superman 295 features the Time Trapper trying to wipe out all possible futures that would result in the Legion, and Superman gets stuck in the future of the Great Disaster timeline. With the help of the Green Lantern named Xenofobe, Superman restores the timelines.

SHOWCASE PRESENTS: THE GREAT DISASTER FEATURING THE ATOMIC KNIGHTS TP
Collects: FIRST ISSUE SPECIAL #1, HERCULES UNBOUND #1-10, SUPERMAN #295, DC COMICS PRESENTS #57, and stories from KAMANDI #43-46, STRANGE ADVENTURES #117, 120, 123, 126, 129, 132, 135, 138, 141, 144, 147, 150, 153, 156 and 160, WEIRD WAR TALES #22, 23, 30, 32, 40, 42-44, 46-49, 51-53, 64, 68, 69 and 123, HOUSE OF MYSTERY #318, HOUSE OF SECRETS #86, 95, and 97, TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED #215 and 221, and THE AMAZING WORLD OF DC COMICS #12.
$16.99 U.S., 576 pages

The First Issue Special is Jack Kirby's Atlas which I'm not familiar with (and that link doesn't shed any light on how it would be related). Hercules (which reveals how World War III started in 1986) ties in with the Atomic Knights from Strange Adventures, DCCP has Superman and the Atomic Knight (which retconned the Knights into being a simulation running in Gardner Grayle's mind), the Kamandi stories are "Tales of the Great Disaster", and the war/mystery books are "The Day After Doomsday" short stories (which I'm not familiar with either). The last one, from AWODCC, is an article written for that magazine which tries to put together a coherent history of the Great Disaster circa late 1970s.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

As far as I can tell, Atlas was a Conan sort of story, set in bygone days, not a post-apoc future.

Maybe in the new Great Disaster, Atlas will be retconned into a future barbarism thing?

viagra online said...

this a terrific history, for some time Atlas have the paper of Conan and vice verse, what a mess with this two, but the story end cool.