Bass and Siskoid cover the Daily Planet Extra, a true-blue newspaper leaked to Earth-Prime SOMEhow, the Nov. 4th, 1988 special edition published in the wake of the Invasion. Wait... they still found room for Cat Grant's gossip column?
Listen to Episode 3 below (the usual filthy filthy language warnings apply), or subscribe to First Strike: The Invasion! Podcast on iTunes!
Relevant images and further credits at: First Strike ep.3 Supplemental
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Do not go down the Pocket Universe hole, it will never end!
That picture of Funky Flashman is actually DC marketing guy Bob Wayne.
These days Sidney Mellon would be the most popular Reddit troll ever.
The big one you missed in the TV listings was Courageous Man, based on Bob Kane’s Courageous Cat.
Casey the Cop was an old DC half page filler strip.
Sheik Rattle Enroll is from SONIC DISRUPTORS
Young Romance and Secret Hearts were DC romance titles as well, and Supergirl was a cast member of SH for a while.
Okay, I lied. I don’t have this! Not sure what I do have, but I think it was a newsprint free giveaway ad/flyer that looked like a Daily Planet edition? I may be confusing this with something else. Sorry if I’m muddying the water.
I agree it’s kind of odd to relate some tragic real world events to this…and then go cheeky with in-jokes. BUT, DC was far less dour and serious than they seem now. There was still a sense of “it’s just comics, folks” even when they were publishing “mature” stuff like the pre-Vertigo titles, Watchmen, DKR, etc.
An odd nitpick, but Scrapper is normally seen in an orange sweater (very Velma-like). Maybe they really wanted an orange background and opted to change it?
Great show as always! Looking forward to exploring all the crossovers, which I definitely do not have!
Chris
DC Universe Australia sure bounced back from losing 80% of the population. No biggie I guess.
I’m guessing Australia was fixed in Zero Hour.
Easier than fixing Hawkman, amirite?!?
A picture is worth a thousand words…
Oh man that’s awesome!!!
And watch out Shagg, New52 Flash is about to knee you in the back of the head!
Ha! That’s actually an enormous New 52 Firestorm poster. So it’s Ronnie about to knee me in the back of the head! 🙂
Since you are a WHO fan, did you notice the TARDIS playset in the background?
That makes a lot more sense. Goes to show how all the damn costumes look the same in the New52.
Cool TARDIS interior in the back too.
By the way, Sharon Scott (Bruce Wayne’s date) is Blue Devil’s girlfriend. His series was over by this point, so… poor Dan. Loosing out to Bruce Wayne. 🙁
THAT’S why it sounded familiar!
I wish I had this!
As said above, Linda Danvers starred on a soap called Secret Hearts in the Superman Family book, playing a mean ‘hussy’ named Margot.
Definitely cute that the listing is about a Supergirl-like character.
I must admit I don’t have this mini so I am going to gauge my efforts to track it down based on your enthusiasm! I love the trippy Animal Man crossover, pure Morrison madness. And Invasion did clear the decks for Morrison to take over Doom Patrol.
Great episode. And great promotion from DC.
Really enjoying the podcast, Siskoid and Bass. I read this when it came out; but never really re-read it. It started well; but, I was a bit underwhelmed by the end and I think I had hit crossover fatigue. I do recall being a bit miffed that this interrupted Manhunter, with a sidetrip to Australia (and an encounter with the Flash), when the book had been building momentum. Doug Rice would soon leave it and it never really recovered. I guess I kind of associate the series with those kind of tangental things. Also, the aftermath was rather short-lived, so it kind of fell into the dark recesses of memory. However, waht you’ve been talking about was what drew me into it, in the first place. I thought McFarlane was good, at this point, having enjoyed him on Infinity, Inc. At DC, he got a lot of mentoring by Dick Giordano (by his own admission) and his artwork came a long way. Once he hit Marvel, then he fell into a lot of people squatting on rooftops and capes flowing all over creation, especially when they let him “write.” Liefeld was another who seemed to be given focus, at DC.
The Khunds had been built up really well, in Legion of Superheroes; but, I remember being somewhat disappointed with them, here. I guess I wanted them to be more central to the plot, rather than the Dominators.
I had that Daily Planet tie-in and it was a lot of fun. I want to say it was a give away in comic book stores, similar to Comic Shop News. The closes t thing to this ind of fun was an issue of said Comic Shop News, which came out on April 1, when the release day fell upon it. They had a banner headline that said “Marvel buys DC!!!!!!!” It was filled with articles about the new changes that were coming, like Justice, of the New Universe (which was still going, at this point) joining the Justice League. When you flip the issue over, you got the headline “April Fools!” or something similar. It did almost seem plausible at the time. Ironic that about 10 years later there had been a real possibility of Warner acquiring the bankrupt pieces of Marvel (there were certainly rumors that they were looking at the possibility).
The thing about these crossovers was always the aftermath. Crisis led to a real golden period, for DC, while Legends gave us Justice League and Suicide Squad. Millennium gave us Manhunter and New Guardians, neither of which set the world on fire (though Manhunter started really well). This gave us LEGION, which had a good run, and the Blasters Special, which was at least funny (with Peter David, in a playful mood). The event comics didn’t exactly create fertile environments; but, a few, like this, were entertaining enough on their own.
I Love this show. I know exactly when I lost this paper…. In a bet. I may dig up the other issues of this I have. I’m not even sure I still have the mini. I bought it new, from the shop. I remember the crossovers but I have no actual memory of the book it’s self. Time to dig and reread!
This show just gets better. We never got that Daily Planet paper in the UK, that I know of, darn.
Is it sad that when you sai ‘Qurac’ and Iraq I hear Korak and Arak?
Siskoid and Bass: Having a great time listening to this podcast! I remember reading this series (when I was in my mid-20’s) and the multitude of cross-over issues I happened to collect at the time. I recently posted my first comment for the Secret Origins podcast so now it’s only fair I post a comment for First Strike: Invasion! I don’t recall my local comic book store offering the Daily Planet Invasion! supplement and I’m now disappointed I missed it. Ah well. Thank goodness for this podcast so listeners like me can enjoy the Invasion! series all over again.
I’d like to make a general comment on one of the reasons why DC came up with this storyline. In the 80’s, Marvel’s X-Men and super-powered mutants was BIG! If a character had a super-power, more than likely it was explained he/she was a mutant. God, I think Marvel even categorized Spider-Man as being a mutant for a period of time in the 80’s. If the word “mutant” was on the cover, sales would expect to increase. ‘Nuff said.
I feel DC came up with the creative response to explain the large number of super-heroes of their Earth by introducing the meta-gene. Which I thought was clever. A Marvel character would be considered a mutant at birth waiting for their powers to manifest later in life, whereas a majority of DC meta-human characters would have no clue how special they were until the correct sequence of events forced their powers to manifest.
These are my thoughts. Not sure if you or your listeners agree. Looking forward to the “next wave” of episodes for this podcast series. Ha! Pun intended. Must be my meta-gene responding to the outbreak of podcasts I’ve been listening to for the past few months.
I finally went through my magazine boxes to find the newspaper, which I bought in the mid-90s from a fan/dealer working out of his garage. I debated opening up the shrinkwrap, but curiosity got the better of me, and now said newspaper is browning with a massive crush roll all the way down one side. I never read the whole thing, but it was a cute bit of meta merchandise. I prefer getting through it vicariously via you guys.
Hey, just a quick note on the “Drop Dead” kerfluffle:
The actual headline appeared on the New York Daily News: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/president-ford-announces-won-bailout-nyc-1975-article-1.2405985
The New York Times had a recent article saying that Ford never really told New York to drop dead: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/28/nyregion/28veto.html?_r=0
I remember seeing the headlines as a 10-year-old living in NYC, and it was shocking enough that I still remember it. I think even then I knew that the Daily News wasn’t being 100% accurate about their quote. They were a bit less formal than the New York Times, but nowhere near as bad as the New York Post ever got.
Oh, btw, the New York Daily News building was used for the scenes of the Daily Planet in “Superman the Movie”. The lobby had that giant golden replica of Earth that is spotted in the background in a few scenes. The bit where Margot Kidder bumps into Rex Reed in the revolving doors of the Daily Planet were filmed there on 42nd Street. As a kid, those were some of the first locations in a movie that I got to visit in real life. 🙂
What did I say? Times? Sorry about that!
But that’s a great link via the movie!
I’m very fond of Invasion!, which struck me at the time as a thinly veiled attempt to do “Mars Attacks the DC Universe!”
American depictions of Australia in 80s comics were never very accurate and it was always entertaining to see what they would come up with. One of the things that really stood out to Australian readers was that MacFarlane had obviously never bothered to obtain any photo-reference of Melbourne, instead drawing a generic big American city full of skyscrapers.
Having now read the Daily Planet Extra for the first time, I was surprised to discover that the Khunds apparently landed on the Melbourne Opera House, which is quite a feat for a building that never existed. I can’t help but wonder whether this was a typo for Sydney Opera House, or whether somebody at DC just assumed that every major city in Australia must have had a similarly named building.
I think that Claremont & Lee later did a parody of Invasion in Uncanny X-Men, during the time the team was based in Australia, but I can’t remember whether that depiction was any more accurate.