Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  This week, Bennett looks at two revivals of vintage characters.
 
Last Saturday I made it into Super-Fly Comics & Games and quite literally the first thing its owner Tony Barry did once I stepped inside was grab the latest issue of Previews, turn to the Dynamite Entertainment section and point somewhat triumphantly at the new title Codename: Action.  This is yet another revamp of the Captain Action franchise, this one set in the 60s where the character will meet a bunch of 40s heroes during their sunset years.  Tony had seized upon this title as yet another feeble attempt to contemporize a "classic" character by stripping it of one of its inherent elements, in this case, the "Captain" portion of his name.
 
Which is when he referenced one of his favorite movies, the 2004 direct-to-DVD mockumentary Comic Book: The Movie.  For those who haven't seen it (this includes, much to Tony's disbelief, me) to once again quote Wikipedia the plot involves "Don Swan and his battle against a fictional film studio, which is about to announce a film based on his favorite superhero Commander Courage."  One of the things this studio does to modernize the character is to change his name to "Codename: Courage," even though "Codename" is also getting to be well past its sell-by date.  I suppose "Callsign Courage" or maybe "#Courage" would be a little more modern (I'm still surprised there hasn’t been a social media-themed Dick Tracy villain named "#Hashtag").
 
In spite of this evidence, I didn't think it likely Ed Catto of Captain Action Enterprises would mess with his property on such a fundamental level, not with a Captain Action animated series in development.  Plus having read the press release I knew that along with being a "six-issue comic book event," Codename: Action is an origin story for the character so it's before he became a Captain.  Seeing as how it is set in the 60s I'm really hoping the comic will also feature a death ray and a hollowed out volcano full of jumpsuited henchmen.
 
Strangely enough there was almost a Codename: Action comic back in 1985 from Lodestone, but that was before the publisher received a letter from DC Comics about using the word "Action," so it quickly became Codename: Danger.  But if you look closely enough at the Codename: Danger logo you'll see, peeking out from around its edges, a bit of the one from Codename: Action.  It's curious how history repeats itself, which makes me wonder if Dynamite Entertainment will be receiving a similar response from DC's lawyers.
 
Speaking of revivals, Captain Midnight #0 is significant for a couple of reasons.  First, as far as I can tell, this is the first comic book in decades to feature an airplane pilot as its hero.  For those who think the character was at least some kind of quasi-superhero this was a development from fairly late in his career after Fawcett got the comic book rights.  This was also when he got his signature sweet-looking red flying suit with the clock chest insignia.  Previously he was more or less a standard two-fisted "airplane driver" (as Milton Caniff delighted in calling pilots for some reason); well, he was a little more than that.  He belonged to that sub-genre of larger than life aviators who, like Blackhawk, fought WWII as independent contractors.
 
The other reason being the comic is an attempt to revive a Golden Age character which manages to get more things right than wrong.  It's got crisp writing, solid art (not to mention some stunning covers) as well as a real Michael Bay approach to the material.  But if I had a quibble (and you just knew I'd have one) it occurs directly after Captain Midnight's vintage Douglas Bomber comes hurtling out of the Bermuda Triangle just off the bow of the USS Ronald Reagan.  The Navy then promptly locks him up and very loudly interrogates for hours for the crime of… I don't know exactly, being extremely Late For Dinner*?  I understand we live in a world where a state of "heightened awareness" is indistinguishable from hysterical paranoia but locking up a man out of time for being slightly unsettling seems to me to be a little over the top.  If this is considered a reasonable military response to a guy in a costume making an unexpected appearance  it makes me think that if Captain America came out of the ice today he'd end up cooling his heels in Guantanamo Bay for a couple of years.
 
* Believe it or not this is actually kind of funny, just so long as you know there’s a 1991 fish out of water/time travel movie called Late For Dinner directed by W.D. Richter, the man who gave us The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.