Gerber stuff: 3 out of 5

Rest of the stuff: 3 out of 5

Aw, poor Midnight Sons.  Your attempt at a lil’ inner circle of continuity between issues featuring your spooky crew of Ghost Riders and Doctor Stranges was cute, but ultimately, not enough people cared.  I dug the title dressing, though!  It did make the books feel important.

Issue 9 of the isolated tales of the Midnight Sons was an especially chucklable oddity, doing a time warp dance back to the time of The Invaders for the totally-not-Ghost Rider tale of Blazing Skull, Union Jack and Destroyer teaming up against some American-hating ‘ratzis.’  Dan Slott’s four-part, extra-sized tale has a tough time staying on target, with its frame story of a ratzi (it would seem that in comic-code era Marvel you could show swastikas but not say Nazi) plot to blow up a random landmark, and instead wants to have fun gathering the ‘vaders band and doing a lot of Golden Age posturing.  …Which isn’t a bad thing because it does end up being fairly fun, with breezy pulp logic and action and occasional winks at the reader regarding the silliness of the whole thing.  James W. Fry III’s art and Heroic Age’s colors are pretty overblown, but it works for the story’s EVENTS ALWAYS HAPPEN IN CAPS AND EXCLAMATIONS! Tone.  There’s nonetheless some slog, given the expanded page length, which is hurt by the characters not being much outside of their one-dimension, one-line-slingin’ personas.  But Slott’s a pro, and tosses in enough distraction amd ratzis to keep things moving.

In case the randomness of Blazing Skull wasn’t enough, the issue also featured the only-ever continuance of Steve Gerber’s Legion of Night series.  You remember – that two issue prestige series comprised of Gerberverse characters that created the in-continuity, demon-battling legion amd then – excepting this very short – was never mentioned again?  Of course you remember.

Omen, the Legion leader, is tied to the body of ex-lawyer (…because he died), Charles Blackwater, whose as-previously-seen dissheved body looks all healed up and ready to lawyer again in this story, but we’ll Grant Steve a lot of wiggle room with details here because you can tell he wanted to do a lot more with his setup had he had the page space. For example: where the heck are the rest of the Legion?  In ‘Little Monsters’, we really just get Omen, and then the barest hint of More To Come when yet another character – investigator Leena Wolfe – is told she’ll play a role in the group.  Before that, Omen has to tussle with a hate-spewing mini-demon, and Steve’s few pages manage to be both vicious and goofy within their small allotted space.  As was the case with the prestiges: more of a curiosity than a must read, it still kills me that we will never see where Steve imagined this going.

I preferred Alan Hopkins’ and Mark McKenna’s bright, bouncy art for this more than Whilce Portacio’s line-splattered stuff, but Whilce’s uber-gothy manga villain design for Omen is humorously out of place in that bright, bounciness.  Still, the style works for the very mixed tone the story achieves.