WONDER WOMAN & SUPERMAN versus QUEEN CLEA & BLOCKBUSTER

"Crisis in Eternity!" Chapter 2: "Crisis on a Lost Continent" (DC)
Where: Justice League of America #135 When: October 1976 Why: E. Nelson Bridwell & Martin Pasko How: Dick Dillin & Frank McLaughlin

The Story So Far...
King Kull, ancient Lord of Beast-Men, has devised a means to penetrate the fabric of space and time to invade The Rock of Eternity! He traps the gods within in a state of molecular slow-motion -- leaving humanity defenseless as he plans his ultimate revenge on modern man!

Only the god of speed, Mercury, escapes in time to warn the heroes of three worlds of the coming threat from beyond the multiverse: The Justice League of Earth-One, Justice Society of Earth-Two, and Squadron of Justice of Earth-S!

Opposing them are a small army of allies recruited by King Kull to bedevil the heroes. On Earth-Two: Queen Clea schemes to reclaim her Atlantean throne with the help of villains from three worlds. While Penguin & Ibac oversee construction of a doomsday machine, Clea & Blockbuster host Wonder Woman & Superman!

Tale of the Tape...
Strength: Superman 6 (Invincible)
Intelligence: Draw 4 (Tactician)
Speed: Superman 6 (Mach Speed)
Stamina: Superman 6 (Generator)
Agility: Superman 3 (Acrobat)
Fighting: Wonder Woman 6 (Warrior)
Energy: Superman 5 (Lasers)
Total: Superman 33 (Super)

A few weeks ago we looked at Superman versus Wonder Woman, but that's not what they're all about. These legendary heroes are at their best working side by side -- and today they're forming a titanic tag team against a dangerous alliance!

Queen Clea reigns over the submerged Atlantean city of Venturia: an outpost where men are second-class citizens to physically imposing women, and efforts to conquer sister city Venturia are always on the agenda.

To aid in her plans for conquest Clea has recruited a villainous cadre from multiple Earths. She has specifically enslaved Blockbuster with a Venus Girdle to ensure the dim-witted powerhouse remains obedient to her every order!

Mark Desmond was a chemist who tested experimental formulas on himself, greatly enhancing his size and strength at the cost of his intelligence.

He's a traditional adversary for Batman, but we saw him joining the Suicide Squad in their first mission to take down Darkseid's avenging fire giant Brimstone. Its a battle that demonstrates both Blockbuster's formidable strength -- and its limits!

To that end: Blockbuster is arguably out of his weight class going up against Superman and Wonder Woman. He might be able to at least knock one of them around, but together they should be more than a match. There also remains the risk that he may break free of Queen Clea's influence and turn against her!

Wonder Woman and Superman are old pros working together many times as members of the Justice League. We've seen them triumph against Gorilla Grodd in JLA: Classified #3, and the Injustice League in Justice League of America #15.

This story is pre-Crisis, which means it's actually a crossover between two worlds: Superman hails from Earth-One, while this is the Wonder Woman of Earth-Two who we saw in JSA Strange Adventures #1 as a member of the Justice Society.

The classic Wonder Woman still relies on her invisible jet and might not be quite as strong as her modern incarnation. Will that matter? Let's take a look...

The Tape: Wonder Woman & Superman Ranking: Superman (#5)

What Went Down...

Scoping their opponents from the sky: Superman takes the lead, leaving Wonder Woman in her invisible jet above while he swoops earthbound.

He recalls the efforts of Wayne Enterprises to render Blockbuster more docile on the path to recovery, but gets a rude awakening when Queen Clea orders the hulking behemoth to punch him clean out of the air!

Kneeling in the dirt Superman chides his own over-confidence, while Blockbuster grapples with the effects of having struck the Man of Steel! 

The blow leaves Blockbuster clutching his own hand and complaining of the pain.

Superman sees an opportunity to strike, counting on the dim-witted villain to lack the sense to avoid an oncoming attack.

Superman swings both feet under Blockbuster's jaw with a gravity-defying kick!

The blow staggers the chemically enhanced powerhouse, but the Man of Steel has succumbed to over-confidence once more. He failed to note Queen Clea lurking in the background with a second Venus Girdle at the ready!

Before he even realises what's happening -- the golden belt of influence is clasped around his waist by a cackling Clea!

With Wonder Woman's jet landing nearby; Queen Clea slaps Blockbuster across the face and compels her slaves to confront the Amazonian arch-nemesis. The behemoth rushes to comply while Superman fights to resist the girdle's control.

Thinking fast -- Wonder Woman tosses her golden lasso over Blockbuster and stops him in his tracks. He silently trembles for a moment before succumbing to its magical influence and Wonder Woman's command to remove Superman's belt!

Now totally in thrall to Clea -- The Man of Steel arrogantly holds Blockbuster off with a single extended arm. The simplistic brute remains totally focused on removing the mind-altering belt, but he's simply no match for Superman's might!

"You got in one shot -- but that's all! Because you see -- I'm Superman... And nobody takes Superman... Got that? NOBODY!"

With one arm Superman easily lifts Blockbuster off his feet and sends him slamming violently into a nearby rocky mound!

Turning his attentions to Wonder Woman, the Man of Steel once again fights to resist the Venus Girdle. He warns he's about to attack, but as his resolve fades Wonder Woman defiantly orders him to stop -- and he does!

Queen Clea erupts with furious confusion as Superman freezes on the spot and Wonder Woman closes in to end her villainous plot with a charging uppercut!

The Amazon then liberates Superman from the Venus Girdle, noting it forces a state of obedience unto its wearer -- which can be influenced by any one!

The Hammer...

For a minute there it looked like we might have another battle between a mind-controlled Superman, and Wonder Woman, but the quick-thinking Amazon avoided conflict by hoisting Queen Clea with her own petard!

We looked at Superman vs Wonder Woman a few weeks ago, and although it can be a lot of fun to see who wins when heroes go head-to-head -- I've been craving an antidote to the increasingly common trend of hero-on-hero violence.

That seemed as good a reason as any to return to the 'Crisis on Three Worlds': a three-way crossover that subverts the once annual tradition of Justice League and Justice Society meetings by adding The Squadron of Justice of Earth-S!

You might know that particular world as the pre-Crisis home of Captain Marvel, as well as his prehistoric nemesis King Kull -- who is the arch-villain of this story!

King Kull is manipulating events from The Rock of Eternity in an effort to exact revenge against modern day humans. Queen Clea's lust for conquest over Earth-2's Atlantis creates an alliance of convenience, which also involves The Penguin and Ibac, working in addition to Clea's outmatched bodyguard: Blockbuster.

We've already seen what happens when Green Arrow catches up with Penguin, and I rather look forward to eventually taking a closer look at Ibac's fate, too.

In the mean time: It might seem a little corny that the Venus Girdle could so easily be turned against the one conspiring to use it, but I kind of appreciate the literal quality of the rules. It only forces obedience upon the wearer. Not loyalty!

It's also nice that Wonder Woman had the opportunity to resolve the situation somewhat peacefully. Sure, she still kayoed Clea with a sock to the jaw, but she remains a warrior for peace, looking for simple non-combative solutions. I like it.

I also enjoy seeing heroes work together to resolve problems in a relatively short amount of time. This fight spans a brisk four and a half pages of spine-busting action. Dick Dillin uses the page space pretty well with classic layouts.

I'm a little less keen on some of the complications that come with the pre-Crisis multiverse. Modern canon recast the Earth-Two Wonder Woman as Diana's adventuring mother Queen Hippolyta. In these original printings it was very much the Wonder Woman we all know and love.

Because of that fact we consolidate these characters in the records unless there's a specific reason to consider them otherwise. Which means this victory will push Wonder Woman into the Top 10!

If you'd like to see today's battle for yourself you can find it collected in Crisis on Multiple Earths Volume 4! Use the Amazon purchase link provided to do any of your shopping and you'll not only get a great deal -- you'll help support the site at no extra cost!

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Secret Wars on Infinite Earths has featured over 650 battles and is counting down to ranking our 1000th character! You can check out some of the ranked fighters in the 2020 Rankings Recap, or just revisit the Top 20 Fights of 2020 and Featured Fight Recap. Or explore the Secret Archive for a complete index of every featured fight organized by publisher, series, and issue number!

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Winners: Wonder Woman & Superman
#5 (--) Superman
#10 (+1) Wonder Woman
#362 (-56) Blockbuster
#940 (new) Queen Clea

TASK FORCE X versus BRIMSTONE

Send For... The Suicide Squad! (DC)
Where: Legends #3 When: January 1987
Why: John Ostrander & Len Wein How: John Byrne

The Story So Far...
From distant planet Apokolips, the New God Darkseid and his minion Desaad curse the heroes of the world known as Earth! These mighty mortals have risen to thwart their wicked plans time and time again!

Inspired only by evil intent, the New Gods devise a new plan! Operation: Humiliation -- a scheme to attack the heroes through monsters and media manipulation!

On the frontline of Darkseid's war is the firey goliath: Brimstone! A creature of sentient plasma hatched in the heart of a nuclear reactor, he believes himself to be a blazing fallen angel sent to cleanse the world of false idols.

Having come up short against titanic Brimstone, Firestorm and Cosmic Boy joined the Justice League of America in trying to stop him. All succumbed to his mighty powers. With the situation getting desperate, Task Force X spook Amanda Waller opts to initiate her plan to employ known criminals as expendable agents. Equipped with an experimental gun, Colonel Rick Flag leads the team to South Dakota on what can only be considered a suicide mission!

Tale of the Tape...
Strength: Brimstone 6 (Invincible)
Intelligence: Enchantress 5 (Professor)
Speed: Bronze Tiger 4 (Olympian)
Stamina: Brimstone 7 (Unstoppable)
Agility: Bronze Tiger 3 (Acrobat)
Fighting: Bronze Tiger 5 (Martial Artist)
Energy: Enchantress 6 (Mass Destruction)


Task Force X are: Rick Flag, Bronze Tiger, Deadshot, Captain Boomerang, Blockbuster & Enchantress.

Task Force X was originally established to respond to post-war super-human threats emerging in the absence of a congressionally disbanded Justice Society of America. Among their original personnel were members of the Suicide Squad who had served during World War II, and fought on Dinosaur Island.

Decades later; Agent Amanda Waller assumes control of Task Force X, seeking to resurrect the Suicide Squad as a secret team of government sanctioned super-villains. They are an expendable black-ops force operating with complete deniability for the chance to have their criminal records expunged. The only requirements: Accept the mission, complete the mission, survive the mission.

Leading Waller's team in the field is Colonel Rick Flag, whose father was a member of the WWII Suicide Squad, and Task Force X. Flag recruited deadly deprogrammed assassin and second-in-command Bronze Tiger, along with crack shot mercenary Deadshot.

They headed an original line-up of complicit and reluctant villains:
- Mark Desmond, aka; Blockbuster: A chemist whose experiments turned him into a dim-witted powerhouse who clashed with Batman and The Outsiders.
- June Moone aka; Enchantress: A powerful mystic able to conjure constructs, magic energies, illusions, and various other magic phenomena.
- Digger Harkness, aka; Captain Boomerang: Australian boomerang expert and frequent criminal foe of The Flash!

Operating as Task Force X; the Suicide Squad would learn of their expendability through their first field mission: To destroy a giant flaming monster rampaging across the United States! The monster they're targeting: Brimstone!

We've been following Brimstone's destructive exploits a lot in the last month. He first appeared from a techno-seed planted in a nuclear reactor in Legends #1, where he soundly defeated Firestorm. He would then fend off Cosmic Boy, before defeating the entire Justice League of America in Legends #2! That's a pretty formidable record, but the Suicide Squad have something the JLA didn't!

Understanding that Brimstone is composed of 'super-heated hydrogen plasma given sentient form by complex magnetic fields', Task Force X is able to equip Deadshot with an experimental laser rifle. Capable of firing a single blast able to penetrate the nexus of Brimstone's field - it's their only chance for success!

Can he make the shot? We've seen Floyd Lawton find his target fighting Manticore [Suicide Squad #2], but it was coming up short against the new Flash that got him caught in the first place, leading to his Suicide Squad recruitment [Legends #1]. A master marksman with skinny odds and a death wish.

Everything is working against their success, but that's what the Suicide Squad is for! Will they be the first to take down Brimstone, or die trying? Let's find out...

The Math: Brimstone Ranking: Brimstone (#92)

What Went Down...
In the shadow of Mount Rushmore, The Suicide Squad march uneven ground toward their fate. Captain Boomerang asks if he can change his mind. Brimstone welcomes the sinners with expectation and an explosion! No turning back now!

While the team recovers, Colonel Flag helps Deadshot size up the target. One shot to hit a bullseye at the nexus of magnetic fields. To help make it easier, Flag deploys the super-brute Blockbuster. With "spade-like" hands he scoops up the rock beneath Brimstone's feet and lifts!

Captain Boomerang does his best to chip in, tossing a baffle-rang that swirls around the monster's head. It induces momentary disorientation, but only serves to provoke an attack!

A column of flame descends from the goliath's hand. Despite her best efforts, Enchantress discovers she's unable to transmute the sentient plasma! The heat worries Bronze Tiger, but Enchantress remains confident and cool.

Blockbuster continues his attack of Brimstone's vertical base, smashing through the rocky terrain to reduce it to treacherous rubble! This too only serves to aggravate the behemoth.

Darkseid's destroyer reaches down with a giant hand and wraps it around Blockbuster. The size were as if he were a mere insect. The intense burning heat of the plasma - enough to reduce Blockbuster to a smouldering corpse!

Captain Boomerang is horrified as the sizzling body lands before him. His sacrifice provides sufficient distraction. While it fell, Deadshot sized up Brimstone through an experimental rifle scope. Seeing an object at the heart of the creature's magnetic fields, he finds the target! Rick Flag orders him to fire!

The focused laser beam strikes at the centre of Brimstone's chest! The unfeeling creature is confronted with sensations of agony unlike anything he has known!

Brimstone cries for the dark god who forsakes him, clinging to a delusion of religion that tells him he is a fallen angel. Darkseid shows no mercy. A truly expendable agent whose usefulness is served in the defeat of the Justice League and death of one of Earth's legends: the man-brute, Blockbuster!

Coming apart at the seams, Brimstone becomes a screaming, out-of-control blaze! Even in death - he continues to threaten the lives of the Suicide Squad! A giant ball of flame hurtles toward Bronze Tiger and Enchantress!

Now that Brimstone's flame is no longer sentient -- Enchantress can end the threat with a simple enchantment that turns inferno into a harmless snowstorm!

The Hammer...
Just like that: Deadshot and The Suicide Squad save the day!

Not a bad result for their first appearance! Of course, poor Blockbuster wasn't so lucky. His rather grisly death helped drive home the name and mortal stakes of The Squad. He, the first in a list of fatalities that would plague the group!

In revisiting these early, post-Crisis comics, I'm really reminded of the livewire sense of excitement they created! As much as this was a new beginning for the DC Universe, it also clearly felt like a sharpening and refining for a lot of characters, and properties.

The Justice League got a much needed jolt in transition away from Detroit-based third stringers [Legends #2], to a constructive mix of old and new icons, some originally sourced from other publishers. An all-star assembly that could refresh classic heroes, and elevate new ones to legendary status!

The Suicide Squad played a big role in that reinvigoration and juxtaposition, too! By assembling a few issues earlier in Legends, they became of the same world, cut from the same cloth. They were destined to compliment and clash with the heroes that would leave issue six to become Justice League International. A step ahead of the global topical concerns of the JLI, more immediately rooted in the world of military black-ops, espionage, and beaurocracy.

It was fitting that the two teams would finally meet in battle in Russia. Both teams would feature in stories negotiating the friction of the tail end of Cold War hostilities between The Soviets and America. JLI may have been taking a more worldly view of super-heroes, but The League and Squad both owed their origins to the height of the Cold War in the early sixties.

The Suicide Squad was originally created at the tail end of 1959, appearing in The Brave and The Bold. They were uniform soldiers in the mould you know. A far cry from recurring super-villains like Deadshot and Captain Boomerang, but a modern legacy that continued its tradition -- rather than deleting it in reboot.

The Squad of the late eighties refreshed what was around them by building something new from old parts. Rather than partaking in hard rebooting, the meta principle became part of the core of the book. What if you could have a team with a genuine sense of mortal danger? What if the modern new DCU tried to get a little something extra out of some of its lesser characters, rather than simply writing them out, or frivolously destroying them?

In the world of the Suicide Squad, Amanda Waller is giving them a lifeline of redemption and clean slates. In the world of publication, characters like Blockbuster and Enchantress are getting second chances to mean more than they had in the past. Granted, I'm not sure the series really played out like a do-or-die scenario for expendable intellectual property, but that core concept is exciting! Join the book and become a new icon - or be deleted!

In Legends #3; overseeing arch-villain Darkseid chalked Blockbuster's death up as a win in the spread. If only he knew what would happen! Siblings and clones would keep the DC Universe populated with Blockbusters for years to come! Brimstone came back pretty quick, too. Darkseid promised he would, though.

I'm not sure either character was compelling enough to demand their deaths be undone, but I go with it. Misfits of science both, their pseudo-resurrections have a way of working with their innate simplicity. I especially like that Brimstone continued as a recurring problem for Firestorm. Their encounter in Legends #1 has stuck with me these past few weeks. Somehow it just worked!

Thirty years later, death doesn't mean what it used to. I may forgive the pseudo-return of the team's original fatality, but the circus of death and resurrection is fairly constant in Marvel and DC Comics. It's hard for the Suicide Squad to really mean the same. Likewise, the material drifted over the years, losing the drama of the early Ostrander years to action-movie frivolity. Yet, through it all, there's no denying the appeal of this ragtag group of villains, held to a short leash by a very scary, very powerful woman called Amanda Waller!

Little wonder, then, that Warner Brothers has launched the property into a feature film screening in theatres today - August 5th!

We'll be taking the opportunity to look closer at some of the characters in the film with a feast of feature fights and Hero of the Week spotlights throughout the month of August!

Read and own the entire first appearance of the Suicide Squad by using the Amazon purchase link embedded in this article [right]. Find more stories with these characters and others by following links, or diving into the Issue Index Archive!

Winners: Deadshot, Blockbuster & Captain Boomerang
#95 (+206) Deadshot [+1 Kill - Brimstone]
#98 (-6) Brimstone [+1 Kill - Blockbuster]
#291 (new) Blockbuster (Mark Desmond)
#292 (new) Captain Boomerang
#404 (+63) Bronze Tiger [+1 Assist]
#495 (new) Col. Rick Flag [+1 Assist]
#496 (new) Enchantress (June Moone) [+1 Assist]