Every Wednesday morning, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 20 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-) read it, write about it, and publish the resultant review/memory/whatever. Earlier installments live here.

(Box09): Finally, something from the latest wave of comics procurement, the hybrid "grab fascinating things at random antique malls / make highly calculated offers on ebay for specific issues and complete series" wave, this issue being part of the former.

While the Doctor Fate mythology was, is, and remains somewhat murky (to my fantasy-incompetent brain), I've held a nigh-lifelong fascination with the character – a fascination no doubt initiated via the wave-two Super Powers figure (which should, at some point, become part of the latter hybrid procurment wave) and I do love what little I gleamed here: that the 1991 incarnation was Inza Nelson (I think I've had the issue where she assumes the mantle since it came out, one of those 10-year-old Rite-Aid grabs in the first phase of the great procurement), while Kent Nelson, the usual Doctor, has remained young "through becoming Dr Fate and now possessing a new body through The Lords of Order... and that (his) old body is now possessed by a particularly right-wing Lord of Order named Shat-Ru" (love his old body's opening line, "Humankind is a filthy mass of grubs, battening on lust and deceit"); it doesn't hurt that Messner-Loeb's writing makes me want to read the next issue which I don't have and, further, makes me want to collect the entire run (written by one of my favorite writers, J.M. DeMatteis) – which seems to be the way as I've been making my way through these late-eighties DC series which I was too young to appreciate or read when they first came 'round, the O'Neil / Cowan THE QUESTION series being at the peak of that list.

Short version: very cool stuff that makes me wish that Doctor Fate – and Pierce Brosnan – had gotten a better big-budget film debut than a Doctor-Strange-meets-Professor-X knockoff (at least DC and Marvel were honest about it in the 1996 Amalgam Comics combo when the characters merged during DC VS MARVEL into Doctor Strangefate) in a shitty vanity project. Such a great character yet to be used to their full potential – though this series is a solid start.