Also note that as of the writing of Who’s Who, the original Green Team had exactly one appearance, in First Issue Special #2. They would not appear again in a published DC comic until 1990 (Animal Man). So no, the original Green Team did not warrant a mention in Who’s Who as they had not even had a story which involved the rest of the DCU at the time of it’s publication.

This! A thousand times this, Frank! I always hear the “Who’s Who is unnecessary because we have the internet” argument, and I think it completely misses the point on a number of levels. The printed version serves a different purpose (one which Frank eloquently shows the internet fails at) and as an added bonus it shows where the character was in a specific moment in time. Exactly!

aa) Every time I read a Hal Jordan comic, it turned me off of reading more. The only time I enjoyed the book before John Stewart took over in the mid-80s was the Corps specials, which were amazing sci-fi anthologies for their time. Given though, I believe I would land amongst the Star Sapphires, as my primary motivation is passion. Bolland Is.

bb) I wanted to see more Grimbor in Legion comics, but doubt I’ve ever encountered him in story. I think Liefeld did the Legion Who’s Who profile. Giordano seems to have “fixed” Hamilton in the foreground to make him more static and “on model,” unfortunately. Is Shag familiar with Steve Lightle? I don’t think that artist is the artist Shag is thinking of. I’ve seen Lightle employ a number of styles, but none that look exactly like Craig Hamilton.

cc) Screw DC. Their Ghost is Gay. Atlas’ was Grim. Even Bill Sienkiewicz (no spellcheck needed, amateurs) couldn’t make him more Grim than Gay.

dd) I like that the Guardian uses a policeman’s badge as a shield. I love Captain America. I want to at least like the Guardian. I do not. He’s tolerated more often than not, especially as a Superman hanger-on. Bleh.

ee) The Guardians are quite famously modeled after David Ben-Gurion, main founder and the first Prime Minister of Israel.

ff) I bought The Essential Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Master Edition. I never picked up the looseleafs when they came out, but I did purchase them bound together in black & white twenty years out of date. This is because I appreciate a universe of characters being illustrated by a variety of artists that would have otherwise never come together. I find that most online resources are poorly written, unfocused, overly long, and favor contemporary interpretations. Printed reference remains of its time, a snapshot of its point of creation without the adulteration of later retcons. Quality wins out over relevance.

Finally read all of my KIrby Fourth World Omnibuses (my Goodness that is great stuff), and Forever People is actually my favorite part of that epic (with the exception of the seminal “The Pact” from the New Gods). Big Bear in particular, who is pretty much a cypher for the X-Men’s Beast, has become one of my favorite characters after this reading (only preceded by Booster Gold, Ambush Bug, Jericho from the Teen Titans, B’wana Beast, and, of course, Composite Superman).

I also want to take issue with the notion that Who’s Who couldn’t work as a print comic today. Although I love the idea of an E comic that will direct you to places where you can buy appearances of old characters (hey, maybe this will motivate Comixology to offer more older stuff), I think what always made Who’s Who distinct from similar titles, OHOTMU for example, is that the entries are not designed to be complete retellings of a characters histories. Who’s Who, as the name implies, is the best answer to the question, “Who is Goldface?” If I ask that, I don’t want a blow by blow of everytime the character appeared, I want a brief overview of that character’s motivations, powers, etc. If comics are done well, that sort of an overview will not “be outdated as soon as it is printed”. The problem is with comics that have to do huge reboots or have something major go on in every issue, not with a printed encycopedia. Or maybe I’m just an old, grumpy comic book guy.

Geo-Force! OF COURSE Jim Aparo has to draw Geo-Force. I imagine that his first appearance is called out specifically as the preview because said Outsiders preview was a special feature section of TB&TB #200. I like Geo-Force but I will not subject myself to the slings and arrows of other commenters so I will leave it at that.

Gizmo at least kept stuff in his pouches, right?

Glorious Godfrey was my avatar online for a long time. I’m a big fan of Godfrey and think he was used to great effect in the early days of Forever People, preaching his gospel of Anti-Life. Creepy stuff.

One of the Golden Glider’s Chillblaine boy-toy’s murdered her Post-Crisis. Captain Cold killed this guy in revenge, unsurprisingly.

Alan Scott has always been my favorite Green Lantern. I used to use this fact to shut down “Hal vs. Kyle” style arguments back in the 90s and 00s. Someone would be ranting about how much they loved either Hal or Kyle, I’d say “Eh, he’s not my favorite Green Lantern,” and the other party would get riled up, then I’d say “I like Alan Scott,” and they’d deflate and have to agree that Alan Scott was cool. Hee!

As far as George Tuska, I always have a sort of dissonance with guys like you because of my connection to his work on Iron Man. The character of Iron Man was well suited to Tuska — the grimmace which he added to the armor’s faceplate is, to me, definitive of the late Silver Age to Bronze Age Iron Man — as was the strip itself. Tuska always did great work on Tony’s female companions (Pepper, Marianne Rogers, Whitney Frost, Janice Cord and so forth) and the twisted faces of the antagonistic members of the Stark Industires board of directors, a recurring theme in this era. I recognize that not everyone likes Tuska, and that he doesn’t seem to fit with more traditional superhero strips, but on Iron Man his stuff works very nicely.

Thanks again for the great show guys! Always a hoot!

m) One of my early comics was a G.I. Robot/Creature Commandos team-up, which was very cool. A commentator on one of my blogs suggested Gizmo as Cyborg’s legacy rival for a new Injustice Gang. Perez created Gizmo, and I think he supplied many such entries for characters he was responsible for. Associating these two entries makes me want the New 52 G.I. Robot to have been Silas Stone’s grandfather. What?

n) I totally dig the classic retro vibe of Ed Barreto’s Global Guardians spread, and I’ve had an unhealthy enthusiasm for this team since I was first exposed to them. They have such enormous, never remotely realized potential from a conceptual standpoint. Icemaiden was not Ice because Giffen/DeMatteis screwed up her name in JLI and turned Tora into a separate character rather than contradict themselves. Dr. Mist was a powerhouse before he was thrown under the bus as part of a Zatanna origin retcon, but he went on to form Primal Force and is part of the New 52 in Justice League Brand Dark Lager. It was the second Jack O’ Lantern who joined Primal Force, as this one formed a nefarious alliance with Queen Bee and got himself killed as a result. He rocked that green/purple color scheme. The Olympian from Gail Simone’s Wonder Woman run was not related to this guy. Owlwoman was a big part of an ongoing Guardians serial in JLQuarterly. Tasmanian Devil joined General Glory, Bluejay and Silver Sorceress in JLI’s baldfaced swiping of Marvel characters for no apparent good reason during fallow years, while simultaneously lifting The Fox from Archie. Wild Huntsman was important in the short-lived Zero Hour Manhunter series. I generally agree with Rob’s point, except these guys were less a reflection of international heroic ideals and more a collection of cultural stereotypes that foreign readers roundly mocked. The JLI ran them through the meat grinder early on, with about a third of these guys killed in a single issue of JLQ.

o) It’s funny that Shag used the term “Theakstonized,” since Theakstonization was a process for reprinting comics where back issues were bleached of color, embellished by an inker, and reshot when there were no file negatives available. I think Bill Black’s AC Comics still uses the technique for their public domain Golden Age collections.

p) Russ Heath is a baaad mother. He drew a Catwoman story for LOTDK that was hawt. Big in the war comics.

q) Golden Glider was very much a “why do you exist” Bronze Age thing. Geoff Johns milked her corpse for Captain Cold characterization. Chillblaine was in the Robot Chicken DC Special.

The cover: While Paris Cullins does an admirable job, I really missed George Perez doing the covers.
It’d be interesting to see what his take would be on the covers he didn’t do..

Letters page: BOY! Does David Bedard of Saskatchewan, Canada take Len Wein and company to task! Almost like some folks do after they listen to the Who’s Who Podcast! Geeks!

Gemworld: I was reading bits and pieces of Amethyst back in the day but I don’t think this was worthy of a two-page spread.

General Immortus: Not only has he probably encountered Vandal Savage over the years but it’d be
cool if there was some back story with Anton Arcane as well.

Gentleman Ghost: Like Rob, I first encountered Gentleman Jim Craddock via the Super Friends. Post-Crisis (long post-Crisis actually) they clarified that he was indeed a ghost and his death had ties to past incarnations of Hawkman and Hawkgirl (Nighthawk and Cinnamon if I recall the story).

Geo-Force: Love the Outsiders. Love Jim Aparo. Just not loving this page.

Gizmo: Attention Marv Wolfman…we get it. Gizmo is a genius. But does his last name have to
beat us over the head with that fact? O’Jeneus? C’mon!

Global Guardians: Some coolness going on with some of the characters but quite a bit of lameness
with most. But I think that’s to be expected when you try to shoe-horn characters created for the Super Friends universe into the actual DCU proper.

Golden Glider: Big fan of the story arc (Flash #261-263) where she tries to screw with Barry’s relationship with Iris with her flunky The Ringmaster (who preceded Chillblaine)

Gorilla City: The “erroneous” published account of the origin of Gorilla City featuring Green Lantern is from “DC Super-Stars” #14 (1977) and was written by….Bob Rozakis.

Gorilla Grodd: I know that he’s a hulking gorilla but the background is a bit sparse doncha think?

Granny Goodness: aka Bea Arthur

Green Arrow(s): How cool would facing pages have been?

Golden Age and Silver Age Green Lantern: How cool would facing pages have been? (If they added a half page of Gleek and gave G.I. Robot a full page it would have worked!)

John Stewart: His pose is a bit off and if you remove the surprint I’m not sure exactly what he’s supposed to be standing on (besides the top of his head)…

Green Lantern Corps: Brian Bolland did the covers for the original “Tales of the Green Lantern Corps” mini-series.

The Green Man: As usual, I’m not feeling the full page Omega Men love…

Grimbor: Shouldn’t that be GrimBORE? Ugh! Gimme Composite Superman as a Legion foe over this ass-clown.

Grim Ghost: If DC hadn’t changed him from Gay to Grim would Sienkiewicz’s art have worked as well?

Guardian: Some Kirby stuff in Who’s Who is good…this isn’t one of them…Very boring.

The Hottest Legionnaire: If we’re going by Who’s Who pages, then my all-time favorite Saturn Girl is out of the contest because that page and costume sucks. Bring on the pink bikini!