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You cheated, though, by skipping the Excalibur mini-series written by Ben Raab. I know you said that you were going to skip it, but it's still cheating!

That was one of my favorite all-time issues of SUICIDE SQUAD. Another cool scene had Duchess (secretly Lashina) beating the hell out that one guy with his own tail! Manticore or something?

I remember reading the Capt. Cold scene mentioned above aloud to my dad. It was my barometer of cool (no pun intended).

Invisibles was three volumes, of course, but I guess you're counting the final volume as a mini-series (even though it's not--it would have been a maxi-series--I miss that good old DC maxi-series logo).

Plus, it's really nothing like Excalibur, because it didn't go from actually good to totally irrelevant to almost irrelevant (but with more punching) in the three progressive volumes--oh wait, Snark Free--sorry, I didn't mean any of that. Excalibur is totally great.

I thought the original Jihad was the first group of baddies from Suicide Sqaud #1--am I totally mis-remembering that. Who were those guys, then?

Lois and Clark would never have time to play chess, but if they did, Clark would win every game. He's effin Superman.

That was the original Jihad. They reformed in #17, with (almost all) new members.

Hey Brian-

Howabout BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS debuting in 1983 by Mike W. Barr & Jim Aparo, THE OUTSIDERS v1 launched in 1985 by the same team, and THE OUTSIDERS v2 launched in 1993 by Barr & Paul Pelletier? That's 3 series in 10 years, even though they didn't have the same title, they were essentially the same group - minus the caped micro-manager.

I could see it either way. Good question though!

There's so much affection for Suicide Squad, I wish they'd collect the whole run.

Usagi Yojimbo. Has had three separate volumes thus far (started with #1 for each publisher - Fantagraphics, Mirage, and Dark Horse), all by Stan Sakai.

Tomb of Dracula -- The first three volumes were almost entirely by Wolfman and Colan, though the first didn't technically launch with Wolfman so much as Wolfman simply made the series his own. But Colan drew all of ToD I, the launch issue of II, and all of III (which was, admittedly, a miniseries).

Ah! How could I forget? Mike W. Barr started on Batman and the Outsiders, stayed through its relaunch as The Outsiders, and then wrote the mid-90s Outsiders relaunch too!

Oh, and the Impulse cover homages Detective Comics #345, the first appearance of the original Blockbuster.

D;oh! Didn't see that Greg had Outsider already.

"There’s so much affection for Suicide Squad, I wish they’d collect the whole run."

There's craploads of incredible material DC has never bothered to collect. Where's my collected run of the Ostrander/Mandrake Spectre? Where's my Giffen-era JLA?

Lois vs. Clark at chess?

"Silver Age" style answer: Lois cheats. Clark (using his Superman powers) notices that she's cheated, but allows her to win anyway, since he can't reveal that he has powers. Then, he sets up an elaborate plan to "teach her a lesson", likely involving actual kings and queens (or possibly robots, or aliens, or hyponotism... or, heck why not, all of the above). In the end, she realizes that what she did was wrong, and confesses to cheating.

"I think Grant Morrison could still pull Crazy-Quilt off. Who else could, do you think? And I mean the same way as he was! No drastic revamp!!!"

I don't think that anyone, even Morrison, could pull of writing Crazy Quilt "seriously". And I don't think I'd want to see the results of an attempt. However, I could see a couple of folks playing him straight rather than as a joke. Morrison could pull it off, and I think Gail Simone could do it too (look how she managed to play Catman straight and make him almost as cool as Deadshot -- that's an accomplishment right there). Oh, and after the Suicide Squad lovefest, I'd like to think that Ostrander could too -- he managed to play Catpain Boomerang straight with excellent results. I'd be a bit afraid of the results from anyone else, though, since I'd think they might side too much with nostalgic portrayals (and it would turn out goofy instead of fun) or with "serious" portrayals (which are painful to read, at least for me).

Playing Crazy Quilt seriously would be as disastrous as trying to play, oh, I don't know, Doctor Light seriously. Playing characters like this straight, however, and not letting the characters in the story treat them as jokes is how these characters worked in the first place (you think they were LESS dippy 40 or 50 years ago than they are now?)

This isn't quite what you're looking for with your Excalibur challenge, Brian, but it's similar enough to point out anyway: Mark Waid was involved in all three reboots of the Legion of Superheroes - editor during the partial reboot that happened early in the Giffen/Bierbaum run, co-writer of the post-Zero Hour reboot and writer of the current take.

One thing though: with Legion and Outsiders, each volume was working with the same basic concept. With the three Excaliburs, you have three radically different books, despite the same name and writer.

Lois would lose at chess, because she doesn't have the patience for the game. She's a pretty gung-ho gal.

But you better believe she kicks Clark's sorry but at Tekken IV, even with his super-reflexes. He's all like, "Dangit, I can't get this move off!" and she's all like, "Quit whining, super-beeyotch!"

Seems like LSH kept on relaunching, but I cannot be sure.

Impulse #62 is an homage to Uncanny X-Men #141 "Days of Future Past", right?

Grendel comes close. (war Child is a mini, but the series itself was structured as a series of miniseries anyhow.)

Strangers in Paradise as well, although the first volume is apparently technically a mini.

A Distant Soil, Maybe? Elfquest, probably...lots of series, and Richard Pini did at least some writing in pretty much each one.

But yes, Chris Clairmont is the Bob Newhard/Bill Cosby of comics...

Groo

In the Superman Returns version of the Lois/Clark chess match.

Lois wins by using the dreaded "Dot" gambit.

When she is losing, she stands up, yells "DOT GAMBIT!" and slams her indestructable head onto the board, thus ending the games and declaring herself the winner.

Please note, this comment IS snark free. I can't begin to tell you how much I hated the movie.

"Tomb of Dracula — The first three volumes were almost entirely by Wolfman and Colan, though the first didn’t technically launch with Wolfman so much as Wolfman simply made the series his own. But Colan drew all of ToD I, the launch issue of II, and all of III (which was, admittedly, a miniseries)."

Right. Gerry Conway wrote the first 3 issues of the first Tomb of Dracula run, followed by Archie Goodwin and then Marv on issue 7...
Nice try though, Brownie Point for thinking out of the box

Mmmm...brownies....

The angle is wrong, but the 'Impulse' cover sort of homage-es the first issue of Mad.

"It's Melvin!"

The cover makes reference to an old Batman ish.... the first appearance of Blockbuster. Robin is imploring Batman not to fight him because he is too tough, and Batman takes off his mask and says "He's too tough for Batman.... but not too tough for Bruce Wayne!"

things are different since the last time i've been here, nice work. i'll have to stop by more often.

I allowed this piece of spam, if only because it is pretty darn funny to see spam for CHESS SETS!