Action 613 – Green Lantern’s lack of fear, Nightwing and Speedy begin, the Phantom Stranger’s Mind Games, Holly Robinson dies, and Black Canary talks

Nightwing gets the cover of Action 613, and supposedly a solo series, which is really a team-up story, beginning in this issue.

David and Smith spend this chapter putting Green Lantern through the emotional manipulations of Mind Games.  Hal’s enemies Sinestro, Star Sapphire, Black Hand, Hector Hammond and the Shark appear as hallucinatory images, as do friends Arisia, Kilowog, Tomar Re, Salaak, and other members of the Green Lantern Corps.

Mind Games controls Hal’s emotional roller coaster, but the manifestations are drawn from his own subconscious.  So when Mind Games makes Green Lantern feel fear, the spell is broken.

So much for Mind Games.

The story ends as Hal wonders how he came to be without fear, and his ring sucks him inside to give an answer.

Nightwing gets one whole solo page of his series, by Marv Wolfman, Chuck Patton and Tom Poston.

By the second page, Speedy has joined the story, helping against some cigarette smugglers.  Roy enlists Dick in a secret CBI mission, to get Cheshire, the mother of his child.

Cheshire is working on another assassination, as she tends to do, and sees the two heroes in the crowd.

Although this is supposedly Nightwing’s first solo series ever, Speedy dominates this, as well as the next Nightwing storyline.

The Phantom Stranger returns in this 2-part story by Kupperberg, Tom Grindberg and Dennis Janke.  Bruce Gordon has just taken the Phantom Stranger to his first Woody Allen movie as this story opens.  You’d swear the men were on a date.

People are dying while reading the latest book by a popular horror author.  The Phantom Stranger investigates, questioning the author, whose book, Mind Games, happens to share the same name as the villain in the Green Lantern story in this issue.

The writer used an actual ancient invocation he came across while writing his book, and is dumb enough to speak it, calling forth Au Puch, who captures the Stranger.

Newell, Kitson and Patterson share the third part of the Showcase Catwoman story.

Holly Robinson dies as a result of the explosion.  It’s a powerful and touching scene, but in the long run, a terrible idea.  Holly was a superb supporting character for Catwoman, connecting her back to her beginnings on the streets.  Eventually, the decision was made to simply ignore this story, and Holly was brought back to life.

Catwoman seeks out Holly’s cheating spouse, who stole the cat brooch before setting the bombs.

Selina gets the brooch back, but Arthur pushes her out the window.

Wright, DuBurke and Marcos continue the muddled Black Canary story.

Lots of people talk. They talk about all kinds of stuff.  Drugs, illegal aliens, crashed planes and all sorts of odds and ends that loosely tie together, but the story is hardly making the effort to follow it rewarding.