Millennium Edition: Police Comics 1 #1

This is my review for the original  (Same story as reprint)

This comic had twelve features, most of them are Superhero tales.  The comic starts off with the featured star, Firebrand.  Firebrand is a wealthy playboy with little to no motive to fight crime.  He is like Bruce Wayne without the a past tragedy.  He has a suck-up boxer who follows him around.  After reading this issue I felt there was too much missing.  The only interesting aspect to the character is the shirt.  Is it pink, see-through or both?  I gave it three stars.
 
Next is 711.  This is a great concept for a 1940's character, but has giant holes.  711 in the name of the hero and it is the same as his prison number.  711 goes to prison for a friend, Jake Horn (temporarily).  Everything goes goes wrong when the Jake is killed by a car before he can confess.  I would feel real bad for 711 if he didn't seem so dumb for going to prison in the first place.  He then digs a tunnel out of prison but feels he has no were to go so he stays.  While in prison he finds an inmate who swindled widows and orphans out of there money.  As if one of those groups weren't bad enough.  This is where 711's origin takes a twist.  He uses his escape tunnel to find the missing money that was swindled.  Now all of a sudden the bad guys know who he is as if he had been doing it for years.  He also uses the cheesy gimmick of putting black tape on a mirror so that it looks like prison bars when a bad guy looks in the mirror.  He also uses his prison number as his hero name.  It is like he is asking to get caught.  The story showed a lot of promise but just fell flat.  I also gave this four stars.
 

711 is followed by a one page comic strip called Super Snooper that really was more cute than funny.  After Super Snooper we have a Eagle Evens comic.  Now Eagle has no origin in this book and I'm not even sure what he does after the first issue.  Putting that aside this wasn't a bad Golden Age story.  He fights some World War II bad guys and there is a possibility of interesting characters to come.  Not saying they will but there is potential here.  For a Golden Age story I give it three-and-a-half stars.
 
The Sword is next and I found the whole thing pretty dull.  The Sword is a news reporter with a sword.  Again there is no motivation for the hero.  He is also put in a situation where he can have a duel with the villain.  That all seems really convenient.  I gave this story three stars.
 

Next is Plastic Man and I am surprised to say that this is the best story in the book.  He has a great origin and motivation.  He is not as silly as he is in just about everything I have seen him in and you can really see why he was so appealing compared to many of the others.  I give this story four stars
 
Steele Karringan is much like 711, but he is getting out of prison for a crime he didn't commit.  I don't feel sorry for this guy or like him.  He is not a superhero or anything but a guy who just got out of prison.  There was a story of him foiling some bank robbers but I just didn't care.  I did not like this story much at all and give it two stars.
 
Now Mouthpiece was a great story.  It is not an  origin story but the bad guy is truly evil.  The bad guy Peg Leg Friel transports immigrants from Mexico illegally.  The thing is though he wraps the people (woman and men) in chains and if he is seem by any patrols he just tosses the still living people chains and all overboard so he don't get caught.  Letting them drown.  This is a dark story and I give it four stars. There was a weird part though.  The immigrants are described as being from Mexico at the begging of the story and Europe buy the end. 
 

A short story called Vengeance is next and it was surprisingly good.  The short story is followed by a Phantom Lady story that was lacking but not bad and I gave it three-and-a-half stars.  It is followed by another comic strip called Dewey Drip.  Dewey is a lot funnier than Super Snooper but not by much.
 
The last story is a Human Bomb story.  The origin of his superpower seems pretty silly.  I liked it all right but I think over all it was good and I gave it three-and a-half stars.  I would recommend this book to any one who thinks they are a true comic fan.  There is a lot of history here and a variety of characters. Over all I gave the book four stars.  It is worth it as a whole.
 
In Liberty We Trust