Hayoth cameo in the DoomsDay Clock multiverse and some awesome new Ostrander era Suicide Squad fan art

I didn't think I was ever gonna do another posting on this blog again but something got my attention recently I really felt like talking about. By chance I came across a panel during a Google search of the Israeli super commando team The Hayoth which I did not recognize from the pages of The Suicide Squad, The Spector or Checkmate from the pre-reboot era of DC Comics. It turns out this panel was from a cameo appearance the team made in The Doomsday Clock series (2019-2020) which was some kind DC Multiverse Watchman cross over story line. In this version of The Hayoth we have all the original characters (Ramban, Judith, Golem and Dybukk) along with a couple additions. One of which is Seraph, who appears to be the team leader.

Seraph's real name is Chaim Levon and he was a Hebrew school teacher. His powers were derived mostly from a number of artifacts with super natural properties based on Jewish folklore. He first appeared in the pages of Super Friends back in 1977 which means he was not part of the pre-reboot mainstream DC Universe any more then supporting characters or story lines from the actual Super Friends cartoon were. https://superfriends.fandom.com/wiki/Seraph

The other addition was a character known as Pteradon. He was part of the pre-reboot mainstream DC Universe. He first appeared in The New Teen Titans 24 (1986) as Captain Israel Harel of the Israel Defense Force. He was part of a rescue operation that was reminiscent of the real life famous Raid on Entebbe operation. He was fatally shot by a not quite dead terrorist right after the mission objective was achieved. Tales Of The Teen Titans Issue 84 | Read Tales Of The Teen Titans Issue 84 comic online in high quality. Read Full Comic online for free - Read comics online in high quality . (view-comic.com)

His body was soon recovered and sent to a company known as Dayton which carried out some form of genetic engineering on Captain Harel which gave him the power of flight, superhuman strength and razor sharp talons. As Pteradon, he was reluctantly pressed into service for the criminal master mind known as Mento as part of a superhuman strike force called Hybrid which battled with The Teen Titans and Blue Beetle. Pteradon never encountered The Hayoth or The Suicide Squad.

 

Now when I started writing this posting yesterday I thought it would be devoid of anything specifically with The Suicide squad it's self. But as good fortune would have it I happened to discover this amazingly illustrated nostalgia bomb by Tom Grummett right after I published this posting. This was posted to comic art fans just 2 months ago so talk about good timing. Anything else you might want to know about this awesome Suicide Squad fan art can be found here https://www.comicartfans.com/galleryPiece.asp?Piece=1789111&GSub=150703&GCat=332&UCat=332&Status=Complete

The Final Mission

https://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=1495688

As you can see the last time I posted anything was way back in January. So clearly this blog site is pretty much done. If you think of each posting as a mission then this is the final one. But for the sake of ceremony I thought I'd just have one last posting/mission to bring this Suicide Squad blog to an official close. I thought I might also use this opportunity to share a few final thoughts and tie up some loose ends in the process. I did see Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay and thought it was over all not bad. It wasn't with out it's problems but I'm not in the least bit interested in getting into all that it is what it is. But I'll admit, between the humor, action and explicit nature it was certainly entertaining if nothing else. So that's as close as it gets to any sort of movie review from me. The live action movie still sucks to me every bit as much as the day I saw it in case any one was wondering. And I could still give a rat's ass about anything going on with The Squad as far as new comics goes that hasn't changed either. So long folks.

DC Legends . . . not quite the stuff of legend for me

Ya know folks I may get a little bit of heat about this but I after doing some reading of the DC Legends mini-series this weekend I'm not that big of a fan. Now ofcourse this isn't the first time I've read the series but even back then it honestly didn't grab me despite all it had going for it. You had The Squad's first mission along with a bunch of some of the best heroes and villains in the DC Universe's history and great talent on the series like John Ostrander and John Byrne. I feel the same way about the original Crisis on Infinite Earths maxi-series after having finally read it I felt like it was really over rated despite it's legendary status among the DC readership. Can't quite put my finger on it as far as the why but both of these series just didn't make for a great read for me unlike say for example Marvel's original Secret Wars which was like an adrenaline charged page turner which holds up pretty good even today.

Awesome classic Ragman fan art

Absolutely bad ass! This is some top notch fan art, the figure composition, the colors and even the detail in the costume. And ofcourse I love the extra added touch of Ragman tearing up a nazi flag while also sporting a Magen David (star of David) pendant. All very appropriate for our "clothe golem" Jewish avenger. And in case you were wondering, this is where I found it https://www.deviantart.com/art/Ragman-705702433

Too bad we never got to see this in the old DCU it would have been epic!

Len Wein...and now Harry Dean Stanton

Bill Sienkiewicz

Ya know it's ironic that this tragic news about Len Wein's passing should come just over a week after I fished this issue of Comics Interview 32 out of a quarter box. Which as you may have guessed I grabbed because of The Swamp Thing article inside. Cheesy as the early 80s Wes Craven film was it seemed really cool to me at the time and it was actually my introduction to The Swamp Thing character. And then one day I saw an issue at a drug store some where and that would be the beginning of what was a pretty big Swamp Thing collection. I even had this Swamp Thing action figure at one point it was actually kinda cool it had this detachable hand with a line attached to it that pulls the hand like a fisherman's reel.
As for Wolverine, I was a fan long before it was hip to be a Wolverine fan in the 80s I collected every appearance I could find. Back then a Wolverine appearance in a non-X-Men title was always guaranteed to bump up it's value but I didn't care much about that I just wanted to read more Wolverine and seeing him interact with other Marvel super heroes from Captain America to Spider-Man and even ROM was beyond awesome. Ofcourse Wein's body of work went far beyond just co-creating Swamp Thing and Wolverine and I think it's nice to know all that will still be around for future generations to enjoy.

Len Wein and Hugh Jackman at the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con

Over the years I've done a few unique Swamp Thing centric blog postings over here if you never saw them or don't remember them you suck, but here are the links anyways...
http://suicidesquadtaskforcex.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-didnt-squad-ever-run-into-swamp.html
http://suicidesquadtaskforcex.blogspot.com/2016/11/swamp-thing-and-golem.html
http://suicidesquadtaskforcex.blogspot.com/2013/12/poison-ivy-vs-swamp-thing.html

September 15th Update: So now we have it happen again this week. Another big name from our child hood as comic book and sci-fi fans has passed away. This time it was Harry Dean Stanton who died at 91. Stanton has had a long career on both the big screen and small spanning for decades. I knew him best as Brett from ALIEN and as Brain from Escape from New York. And don't forget about Stanton's brief appearance in the first Avengers film where he plays a security guard who finds Bruce Banner amid a mass of debris caused by him falling through the roof of an abandoned building while he was The Hulk.

Black Power

Fan art by Peter Temple left click to enlarge

Obviously I like this fan art other wise I wouldn't have posted it here but at the same time part of me wants to see even more black heroes from Marvel and DC in here kinda like those Marvel Universe Handbook or DC Who's Who montage covers. Off the top of my head specifically I'm thinking Luke Cage, Misty Knight, Blade, the John Stewart Green Lantern and Mr. Fantastic. Don't know if Amanda Waller quite fits the profile of what defines a "super hero" but I'd include her just on general principle.

Ok and now for another kind of black power. Just by chance today I passed through The 4th Annual Vintage Car Show in Downtown Hayward (California) while running some errands and look what they had there. Not at all a fan of the tim burton Batman films (or much of anything from burton for that matter) but I have to admit the batmobile in those movies was one of the few things they had going for them. The tumbler is my favorite though.

The Suicide Squad goes nuclear

Ya know with all this shit going on with north korea and their nuclear program not to mention renewed tensions with russia and the threat of islamic terrorists trying to get their filthy hands on that shit for years now it got me thinking about Firestorm 64 written by John Ostrander. The issue came out in 1987 in which the Cold War was still going on here in the real world even though it would be only a few years later that the soviet union would collapse. For about the next two decades or so we really didn't think about nuclear war as something that we had to worry about any more.
So this issue was part of a story arc in which Ronald and professor Stein (who was dying of a brain tumor at the time) as Firestorm attempted to coerce the nuclear armed nations of the world into dismantling their nuclear arsenals under the threat of doing it for them if they didn't comply. A some what similar premise to the awful Superman 4 film which ironically also came out in 1987. Yeah that didn't go over to well and as a result Firestorm was declared an outlaw and become subject to arrest. As a result Captain Atom (prior to this issue), Task Force X, The Justice League mixed it up with Firestorm in an attempt to end his crusade.
The story line continues and comes to a head in Firestorm annual 2 in which The Squad and The League start to fight each other. Adding to the mayhem The Parasite who at the time was in The Squad goes rogue. Firestorm manages to deal with The Parasite and make his escape only to be confronted in the Nevada desert by a russian super powered agent named Pozhar. The show down happens shortly before professor Stein's tumor finally kills him and disrupts the Firestorm bond in the process which happens only seconds before both the U.S. and Soviet governments try to nuke both combatants. Good stuff, makes me miss the 80s all that much more.

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/marvelmasterworksfansite/suicide-squad-the-complete-ostrander-run-1st-time--t24588.html