Noteworthy Issues: DC Challenge #1 (November, 1985)

I may have finally found it:  a comic series that may be impossible to review.

I’ll explain why below.

Issue:  DC Challenge #1, November 1985

Writer:  Mark Evanier

Artists:  Gene Colon and Bob Smith

The Plot:  An experimental form of storytelling starts here.

Commentary:  So, here’s the deal with DC Challenge:  possibly in honor of the company’s 50th anniversary, the creative types decided to come up with a sort of round robin storytelling.  To that end, they established certain rules:

• Each issue would have a different writer and art team
• The creative team could use any character from DC’s 50 year stable of characters, but they could not use any character they were currently working with (so Marv Wolfman, for example, couldn’t toss the Teen Titans into the mix)
• The creative teams would have zero contact with each other
• Each issue would have to end with a major cliffhanger that the succeeding creative team would need to plausibly solve
• Each cliffhanger would also give the new team the title for their individual story

So, that’s the outline on how DC Challenge was supposed to work out.  Will it all add up to something?  I don’t know.  I think this might have been one of DC’s last hurrahs before Crisis on Infinite Earths could happen, so it’s a Silver Age story.  That may explain why Bruce Wayne is actually happy some unknown criminal sent him a videotape on Beta instead of that VHS he disapproves of for some reason.

Yes, that happens.

So, what’s the plot?  Well, mysterious demonic figures are possessing people, there are aliens in the Daily Planet building, Superman and Wonder Woman each individually wrestle a demon, Batman thinks the Riddler pierced his secret identity but it wasn’t really the Riddler, and Adam Strange really wants to see Superman.  Superman was attacked by an unknown figure on the moon while Jimmy Olson and a Planet intern interacted with dead celebrities.  Oh, and in the end, Batman corners some turban-wearing alien that was posing as the Riddler, and said alien informs the Dark Knight that he has eight seconds to diffuse a bomb that will destroy half of Gotham.

That…is a lot of crazy.  I am either going to love this or hate this.

Grade:  C+

Note on the grade:  I am not sure what to make of this first issue as it is, well, a lot.  I’m saying “C+” because I’m not sure where this is going.  But that may have been the fun part because no one working on this project seemed to know either.  As it is, DC Infinite just started adding this story to its content library, so I figure I can work through this oddity.