Action Comics Weekly #636

History

Action Comics Weekly was born out of the editorial vacuum left when John Byrne departed the Superman titles after the landmark 600th issue: rather than simply hand the flagship to another creative team, DC transformed it into a weekly 48-page anthology beginning with issue #601 (May 1988), deliberately evoking the series' original multi-feature roots from 1938. Each issue balanced a rotating cast of features — some inherited from cancelled titles, some brand new — under a rotating editorial team rather than a single guiding hand, which meant each strip was effectively its own autonomous production. By the time #636 arrived in January 1989, the anthology was in its final two months, and the editorial team used it to introduce Phantom Lady (written by Len Strazewski, art by Chuck Austen) and the Speedy solo strip (written by Mark Verheiden, art by Louis Williams) while continuing Alan Grant and Mark Pacella's Demon serial — a concentration of new launches that gave the fading weekly a late burst of energy.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First appearance of Delilah 'Dee' Tyler as the second Phantom Lady, created by writer Len Strazewski and artist Chuck Austen; Tyler was the daughter of the U.S. Attorney General, trained by the original Golden Age Phantom Lady, Sandra Knight, at a covert academy in France, and inherited Knight's equipment and costume.
• Phantom Lady (Dee Tyler) ran as a backup feature from this issue through Action Comics Weekly #641, with her debut story establishing her as an expert in savate (French kickboxing) and the wielder of upgraded versions of the black-light projector and a new holographic illusion device.
• The Speedy solo serial ('Exiles') launches here with issue-part one, written by Mark Verheiden and drawn by Louis Williams; Roy Harper is depicted settling into life in Los Angeles as a single father raising Lian Harper, working as a private investigator's hired assistant.
• Alan Grant's Etrigan/Jason Blood arc, titled 'The Book of Pandemonium,' begins in this issue with pencils by Mark Pacella and inks by Bill Wray; Jason Blood reluctantly summons Etrigan to perform an exorcism on a possessed child — a story picking up threads from the 1987 Demon miniseries.
• The Phantom Stranger appears in a standalone chapter in which he breaks a supernatural spell being used by a musician to abduct children; this issue is one of his final appearances in Action Comics Weekly, and his ACW stories were later collected in DC's Phantom Stranger trade paperback.
• The Superman two-page serial ('The Face and the Voice!'), written by Roger Stern and drawn by Curt Swan, continues the 'Fellowship/Consortium' storyline that ran throughout the anthology's entire run; this installment was later reprinted in the trade paperback Superman: The Power Within.
• Wild Dog's 'Crack Up' story arc begins here as well (running through #641), with Max Allan Collins writing; the issue thus opens three simultaneous new story arcs — Speedy, Phantom Lady, and Wild Dog — in the same package.
• Action Comics Weekly ran 42 issues total (May 1988–March 1989), reverting to a monthly Superman-only title with issue #643 in July 1989; #636 is one of the final six issues of the entire weekly experiment.

Cast · 32 characters

Full credits

Key issues in Action Comics Weekly

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#601 1st appearance — Tony Mantegna

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#611 1st appearance — George Flannery

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#622 1st appearance — Sadie Falk

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#637 1st appearance — Voice-Over