Superman and Batman: Heroes Against Hunger

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A chance to talk to artist Tom Mandrake? I should mark the occasion by finding some of his back issues at my local comics shop, What If?

(That's the Rome, GA, store's name, for realz, but don't you love that sentence?) OUr fearless shop owner Jason helps me search by my request, and through the back issue bins I dig with another person for the first time in a lil' minute. He takes out this DC Comic for $5 and says, "this one has his early work, AND look at all the people..." He then named just a few, and handed me Superman and Batman: Heroes Against Hunger.

For my budget purposes, I had to consider there's but a single page of Tom's work there. Yet, I wanted to think on what it might've meant to young Mandrake, invited to create a round-robin entry alongside such a proud array of talent. I didn't expect much of the story, and I already had the single Spectre I found (#28), New Mutants (#13- his first Marvel series), and Firestorm #2, since I've also heard from Pat Broderick AND GErry Conway about participating in BAck Issue Magazine's spotlight on Nuclear Men!

But I bit. The way each creative team carries the story along's so evocative. Such a spectrum of styles within the framework of a story with both underlying gravitas and no shortage of the wonder that makes human life so joyful, my friends.

By the time I reached Tom's page, I felt I was reading my favorite Superman/ BAtman comic book in years. The way Jim STarlin, Berni Wrightson and company (including Stephen King, as his star was really hitting the firmament in pop culture) use Lex Luthor in relation to the heroes and invaders makes it my very favorite Lex Luthor story I think I've ever read. There's gravity as the adventure concludes, and Barry Windsor-Smith's two pages of the native people enduring famine complement everyone's efforts with the most pain-staking connection to reality the story has to offer.

I love this comic book. It teaches, but it reaches into your heart with how it entertains. It challenges you. You may find your imagination primed to connect with life for people perhaps you'll never meet. But here we are, all the children of the same beautiful, sun-bathing blue orb.

When
next I talk with Tom,

I will pick up with his collaboration with Kevin VanHook- Superman and BAtman vs. Vampires and WErewolves!

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