Wonder Woman #15 – “Swan Song” – Len Wein/George Perez/Bruce Patterson
This one starts with Diana having a sexy dream about Superman, and apparently it’s not her first. She’s been seeing his image everywhere and he almost seems like a god, considering all his power. Diana’s attraction to him confuses her and she can’t talk to Julia about it because Julia’s visiting family in Greece. Elsewhere in Boston, a guy breaks into the headquarters of Ogawa Electronics and hacks into their computer, gathering information about someone called Silver Swan. Over at Myndi Mayer’s publicity firm, her new associate (Skeeter LaRue) shows her a giant painting of Wonder Woman they’re planning to display at
an upcoming charity event. Skeeter takes most of the credit for the painting, even though two other employees (Steve and Deni) did the art and Steve came up with the original idea. In Chinatown, a woman named Maxine Sterenbuch is chased by a guy in a car, but she’s saved by the same dude who was looking up the Silver Swan info at Ogawa Electronics. She’s grateful until he pulls a gun and shoots her. Meanwhile, Diana is praying for guidance with her Superman infatuation and Vanessa reminds her to get some sleep because the big 
charity fair is tomorrow, and Vanessa’s class will be attending. Maxine wakes up tied to a bed and the guy who saved her (Solomon) tells her that her friend Valerie (who she was supposed to meet in Chinatown) set her up to be killed, and that Valerie is the Silver Swan. Maxine doesn’t believe him and we get a history of her relationship with Valerie: they started as pen pals and became like soulmates, even though Valerie insisted they never meet in person. (I’m kinda getting a lesbian vibe between them, but maybe I’ve just been watching too many Xena episodes.) Eventually, Maxine did meet Valerie (who was a total babe), but her husband (Armbruster) didn’t like their friendship and beat the shit out of Valerie. Solomon insists Valerie
set Maxine up to be killed, to keep her from finding out Valerie’s secret … she’s not a babe, she’s a mutated freak because her parents were exposed to nuclear tests before she was born. Solomon tells her how Armbruster funded an experiment to give Valerie sonic powers, turning her into a hottie called Silver Swan as a side-effect. He shows Maxine a tape of Silver Swan killing his father (who was in charge of the experiment) and says he’s sworn to kill Silver Swan in revenge. Meanwhile, Armbruster (who sent the assassin to kill Maxine) is still searching for her, but he’s distracted by his plans to send Silver Swan 
after Wonder Woman. Apparently he’s been filling Silver Swan with hatred for the Amazon and plans to use her as a weapon at the fair, although he doesn’t really say why he hates Wonder Woman so much. At Hanscom Air Base, Etta Candy is happy with her recent weight loss, but feels a bit frumpy when she compares herself to Wonder Woman, and wonders if Steve’s feelings for her will withstand his friendship with Diana. At the fair (which is raising money for needy children) Steve Trevor runs into Vanessa, who tells him Diana thinks of him as a father figure, so I don’t think Etta has
anything to worry about. We see Vanessa is also kinda jealous, since her boyfriend Barry has the hots for Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman shows up at the fair, but before she has a chance to do anything, Silver swan shows up to cause trouble. Solomon and Maxine are there, but a guy puts a gun to Solomon’s head before he can go after Silver Swan. When Diana tries to reason with Silver Swan, she freaks and unleashes one of her deadly sonic blasts at a Ferris wheel full of kids.
Firestorm #70 – “Time-Wrecked” – John Ostrander/J.J. Birch/Sam De La Rosa
This one starts with a press conference at Vandermeer University about the Strategic Defense Initiative. Vandermeer is involved with testing the SDI components, but a lot of people are protesting, saying that SDI will make the world more dangerous, not less. (Yes, this was a hot-button issue in the 80s.) The lights go out and a bearded dude pops in, crushes the model of one of the satellites, and vanishes. Dean Emily Rice recognizes him as someone named Rikkard, but lies when the cops ask her about it. A reporter (Bree Daniels) gets a photo of the “ghost”
and notices Rice’s evasion. Elsewhere, Doreen Day is watching a news story about the disappearance of Chief Ferguson. Doreen doesn’t know Ferguson was a Manhunter robot, so she gets paranoid and wonders if Firestorm had something to do with Ferguson’s disappearance (since he vanished right after she told him about Ronnie being Firestorm) and if she might be his next target. Last issue, Firestorm split back into Ronnie and Mikhail after fighting Zuggernaut, but the new Firestorm’s mind went somewhere else. It ended up getting pulled into the timestream, where a bearded dude (yeah, 
it looks like the same guy that popped in at Vandermeer) tells Firestorm he’s the Flying Dutchman of Time. Ronnie is being patched up by Felicity when his grandpa (Richard Dare) comes in to warn him that Stalnoivolk is after him. Dare doesn’t know about Ronnie being Firestorm (and Ronnie doesn’t think the Russians know either) but they decide they’d better get someplace safe just in case. Unfortunately, Stalnoivolk busts in before they can leave, demanding to see Firestorm. Bree confronts Rice, showing her what she dug up on the photo she took of the “ghost”: the guy’s name is Rikkard Rynders, a former Vandermeer professor (and peacenik) who supposedly died twenty
years ago. Bree thinks Rice used special effects to continue Rynders’s protests, but Rice says the truth is actually way weirder than that. In the timestream, Rikkard tells Firestorm that he’s met him before, but Firestorm can’t remember because it hasn’t happened for him yet. Rikkard takes Firestorm back to the late 60s, when he was a firebrand professor, protesting war and violence. Rice tells the same tale from her perspective (she and Rikkard were lovers, not just professor and student) and we learn how Rikkard experimented with time travel, concluding that it was a matter of astral projection, not physics. He used drugs to travel back in time, like Castaneda, 
although Rice compares him to Timothy Leary (a reference Bree doesn’t get). Rikkard built a machine to enhance his astral experiences and sent his consciousness back through time, trying to see the beginning of the universe. The machine overloaded and the lab burnt down, but Rikkard thinks Firestorm’s consciousness can help him. He pushes Firestorm out of the timestream and into his body just as the fire rages in the lab. In Moscow, Serafina recruits some of her dissident friends to help get her uncle Mikhail back from the KGB, who are interrogating him about Firestorm. When he refuses to answer, they toss his wife out the window, reasoning that Mikhail will become Firestorm to save her. He tries, but Firestorm’s consciousness is stuck in a burning laboratory in the 1960s.
Warlord #128 – “The Brood” – Michael Fleisher/Jan Duursema/Tom Mandrake
This one starts where last issue left off, with the dragon attacking Travis Morgan and his new friend Dreadnar because Dreadnar is trying to eliminate her and her clutch of eggs. Of course, Dreadnar considers it justice, since the dragon wiped out his entire village, including his son. The story is told partly from the dragon’s point of view and we see that she has no malice toward Morgan, but can’t take the time to differentiate between him and her real enemy. When Dreadnar wounds her, the dragon takes off and Morgan wonders why she didn’t just
kill them both with her fiery breath. In Siberia, Danny Maddox is ready to break out of the GULAG and decides to take Mariah with him. He gets her out of solitary and they slip out through a hidden tunnel Maddox has been digging. Back in Skartaris, we learn that human blood is the only thing that can keep newly-hatched dragons alive, which is why the dragons demanded human sacrifices. After the failure of the harvest last year and the withholding of the sacrifice, the dragons had to punish the humans, since they need their blood to insure the survival of their species. In Shamballah, Jennifer 
contemplates Tara, whose soulless body she has preserved with a magic spell, allowing Morgan to believe Tara is dead. In the Vale of Dragons, Morgan and Dreadnar try to sneak up on the dragon, but she’s waiting for them. In Siberia, Maddox and Mariah run into some soldiers and hide in the forest. Mariah says she might know a way to get away from them for good. She leads him to where the portal to Skartaris was, but has trouble finding the dead pteranodon that marked the spot. Maddox thinks she’s crazy until she finds the pteranodon buried in the snow and leads him past it, into the passage to Skartaris. Gunfire causes an avalanche to bury the cave entrance, so the Russian soldier figure the escapees will starve or suffocate, but Mariah has
already taken Maddox through the passage into Skartaris. Morgan and Dreadnar fight the dragon and Dreadnar stabs her in the eye. She smashes him to the ground, breaking every bone in his body. She expects Morgan to attack, but he doesn’t, sensing that she’s not really evil. With his last breath, Dreadnar hurls his sword into the dragon’s eye and she collapses on top of him. Morgan says the monster is dead, but I’m not sure if he means the dragon or Dreadnar. But the dragon dies happy, since Dreadnar’s blood seeps through the ground to fall on her clutch of eggs and nourish them as they hatch.