The Helmet of Fate

by Steve Gerber, Gail Simone, Steve Niles

Collecting the five specials that determined who will be the new Dr. Fate!

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Dc Comics, Fantasy, Superheroes, Comic Book, Graphic Novels Comics

128 pages, Paperback

First published October 3, 2007

About the author

Steve Gerber graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in communications and took a job in advertising. To keep himself sane, he wrote bizarre short stories such as "Elves Against Hitler," "Conversion in a Terminal Subway," and "...And the Birds Hummed Dirges!" He noticed acquaintance Roy Thomas working at Marvel, and Thomas sent him Marvel's standard writing test, dialoguing Daredevil art. He was soon made a regular on Daredevil and Sub-Mariner, and the newly created Man-Thing, the latter of which pegged him as having a strong personal style--intellectual, introspective, and literary. In one issue, he introduced an anthropomorphic duck into a horror fantasy, because he wanted something weird and incongruous, and Thomas made the character, named for Gerber's childhood friend Howard, fall to his apparent death in the following issue. Fans were outraged, and the character was revived in a new and deeply personal series. Gerber said in interview that the joke of Howard the Duck is that "there is no joke." The series was existential and dealt with the necessities of life, such as finding employment to pay the rent. Such unusual fare for comicbooks also informed his writing on The Defenders. Other works included Morbius, the Lving Vampire, The Son of Satan, Tales of the Zombie, The Living Mummy, Marvel Two-in-One, Guardians of the Galaxy, Shanna the She-Devil, and Crazy Magazine for Marvel, and Mister Miracle, Metal Men, The Phantom Zone , and The Immortal Doctor Fate for DC. Gerber eventually lost a lawsuit for control of Howard the Duck when he was defending artist Gene Colan's claim of delayed paychecks for the series, which was less important to him personally because he had a staff job and Colan did not.

He left comics for animation in the early 1980s, working mainly with Ruby-Spears, creating Thundarr the Barbarian with Alex Toth and Jack Kirby and episodes of The Puppy's Further Adventures, and Marvel Productions, where he was story editor on multiple Marvel series including Dungeons & Dragons, G.I. Joe, and The Transformers. He continued to dabble in comics, mainly for Eclipse, including the graphic novel Stewart the Rat, the two-part horror story "Role Model: Caring, Sharing, and Helping Others," and the seven-issue Destroyer Duck with Jack Kirby, which began as a fundraiser for Gerber's lawsuit.

In the early 1990s, he returned to Marvel with Foolkiller, a ten-issue limited series featuring a new version of a villain he had used in The Man-Thing and Omega the Unknown, who communicated with a previous version of the character through internet bulletin boards. An early internet adopter himself, he wrote two chapters of BBSs for Dummies with Beth Woods Slick, with whom he also wrote the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, "Contagion." During this period, he also wrote The Sensational She-Hulk and Cloak and Dagger for Marvel, Cybernary and WildC.A.T.s for Image, and Sludge and Exiles for the writer-driven Malibu Ultraverse, and Nevada for DC's mature readers Vertigo line.

In 2002, he returned to the Howard the Duck character for Marvel's mature readers MAX line, and for DC created Hard Time with Mary Skrenes, with whom he had co-created the cult hit Omega the Unknown for Marvel. Their ending for Omega the Unknown remains a secret that Skrenes plans to take to the grave if Marvel refuses to publish it. Suffering from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis ("idiopathic" meaning of unknown origin despite having been a heavy smoker much of his life), he was on a waiting list for a double lung transplant. His final work was the Doctor Fate story arc, "More Pain Comics," for DC Comics'

Reviews

[Little Timmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A interesting new direction for this Classic Golden Age Character. Very interesting read. Very recommended

[Sud666 · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Helmet of Dr. Fate is a collection of comics detailing the wanderings of the aforementioned Helmet.

So the Helmet is on the loose and these comics each tell the story of how the main characters interacted with the helmet. The first two stories with the Detective Chimp and Sargon were pretty good and then, sadly, the quality of the stories declined severely. The ones with Black Alice, some random angel named "Zauriel" (Who?) and some random no-name hero called Ibis (Who?) were essentially microwaved poop.

So the only reason this collection earned 2 stars is due to the first two comics which are quite decent. The rest? Meh..take a pass.

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basic Plot: The old Dr. Fate is dead so who will claim the helmet and become the new Dr. Fate?

Dr. Fate is a powerful entity, and not everyone would view becoming the Dr. as a blessing. This miniseries showed 5 different short stories about potential candidates for the helmet and how they reacted to its appearance in their lives. The characters that appear are lesser-known unless you are a hardcore DC fanatic, but are interesting on their own.

[John Yelverton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Silly little book that was just put out there without effecting any other book series.

[Devero · Rating 2 out of 5]

Un albo che raccoglie la miniserie sul destino dell'Elmo del Dr. Fate, a spasso per l'universo DC in cerca di un nuovo possessore per la decima era della magia. Il tutto passando per diversi personaggi in cerca di rilancio. C'è Zauriel, l'angelo che fece parte della JLA di Morrison.
Ci sono Ibis e Sargon lo stregone, i nuovi detentori del titolo, per lo meno. C'è Black Alice, personaggio che non conoscevo e che mi sta alquanto antipatico. Infine c'è Detective Chimp, una specie di parodia di Sherlock Holmes e di Batman, per certi versi, che è il personaggio più interessante della miniserie e forse uno dei migliori, per potenzialità inespresse, di tutto il cosmo DC.
Disegni altalenanti, storie anche. 2 stelle bastano.

[Tony Laplume · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun tour of underutilized characters (the highlights for me are Sargon, Detective Chimp, and Zauriel), and not as such the picking of a successor to Doctor Fate.

[Andrew Sorrentino · Rating 2 out of 5]

Obscure characters come into contact with the Helmet of Fate. Are any of these the next Dr Fate? Not much happens in this anthology. The art is great though.

[Index Purga]

Traduce The Helmet of Fate
1ª Historia
The Helmet of Fate: Detective Chimp #1
El Caso del muy muy Mágico Mono Mago (22 págs.)
Título Original: The Case of the Massively Magical Monkey Mage
Guión: Bill Willingham
Dibujo: Shawn McManus
Entintado: Shawn McManus

2ª Historia
The Helmet of Fate: Sargon the Sorcerer #1
Sín Título (22 págs.)
Título Original: Sín Título
Guión: Steve Niles
Dibujo: Scott Hampton
Entintado: Scott Hampton

3ª Historia
The Helmet of Fate: Black Alice #1
Alicia la Negra: La Muerte y la Doncella (22 págs.)
Título Original: Death and the Maiden
Guión: Gail Simone
Dibujo: Duncan Rouleau
Entintado: Duncan Rouleau

4ª Historia
The Helmet of Fate: Ibis #1
Nacido en Oriente (22 págs.)
Título Original: Born in the East
Guión: Tad Williams
Dibujo: Phil Winslade
Entintado: Phil Winslade

5ª Historia
The Helmet of Fate: Zauriel #1
La Sangre de los Angeles (22 págs.)
Título Original: The Blood of Angels
Guión: Steve Gerber
Dibujo: Peter Snejbjerg
Entintado: Peter Snejbjerg

fuente: http://proyectodc.com/ficha.php?item=95

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories in this just didn't capture me as much as I thought they would. They almost seemed a little boring.

[Travis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Weird little DC event, that collects a bunch of one shots, as the helmet of Fate wanders the world, in search of a new host, along the way we attempt to relaunch a couple new versions of old DC magical heroes.

Has potential, but had almost no impact on the rest of the DCU.
Decent time waster.

[boofykins · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was okay. I mostly read it to get a little more Detective Chimp after reading Infinite Crisis Omnibus. He's a very cool chimp. Very cool, indeed.

[Michael Liggett · Rating 2 out of 5]

Couldn't get past the horrendous first story. I'm down for a talking chimp detective and the feel the story had at first but then the writer's racism set in. The first two non-white humans to show up were black "thugs" whose lives the chimp was able to know through the power of the Helmet of Dr. Fate. He announces that the first thug just got HIV from sharing a needle while the second leaves his young niece by herself in their apartments instead of watching her like he promised and that a neighbor was working up the courage to molest her.

I mean come on!! How out of touch are the editors and writer that they would think this was okay to print?! They may be trying to sell to 45 year olds but this garbage reads like it was written by a Jr. High kid trying to be "edgy" and "hardcore".

Needless to say I pretty much closed the book at that point. I have no clue how the other stories went because if this was how the book was starting then I wasn't going to invest my time in the rest of it. Luckily this was a library book so I didn't waste any money on it.

The art was pretty good throughout the book, though. That's why it's 2 stars instead of 1.

[Liza · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this was something of a stand alone book that I could read with a basic knowledge about Doctor Fate. However interesting these stories are, I feel like they could really be more tightly interconnected. I really liked that each story collected in this trade paperback has a different writer and a different artist. It's always awesome to check outs different "takes" on a common theme, or in this case the common object of the Helmet of Doctor Fate. Ultimately, this collection doesn't add much to the overall Doctor Fate story, and it doesn't give any sense of closure. I didn't learn the fate of The Helmet of Fate.

[Martin]

A collection of one-shot books from the lesser known ranks of DC Comics. The Helmet of Fate passes through each of them while looking for the next person to be known as the sorcerer Dr Fate.

The individual books are quite short, but are well done. I picked this up because fantasy writer Tad Williams (who I didn't realize wrote comics, too) did one of the stories, and Gail Simone (Wonder Woman, Birds of Prey) wrote another, but all five were quite enjoyable.

They did a good job of making each story different (some characters wore the helmet, some just had it interrupt their lives) and of showing how becoming the master of magic isn't necessarily a gift.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting collection of short stories. I thought it would be about different people gaining the powers of Doctor Fate through the helm, but the title is correct, it's more about the helmet and how it affected people on its way to find the next Doctor Fate. Pretty diverse and interesting ideas, but I kept expecting to see Doctor Fate. Guess I wish I knew that going in.

[Jean-Pierre Vidrine · Rating 4 out of 5]

The idea of different stories being linked by some inanimate object is an old fiction staple. DC made good use of it here in a book that is almost a supplement to The Books of Magic. It's rather a pity that most of the characters explored and introduced here have not become more prominent in the shared universe.

[B. Barron · Rating 3 out of 5]

5 Stories:
Detective Chimp (4) - Excellent story.
Sargon the Sorcerer (3) - Solid, very good.
Black Alice (4) - Really good.
Ibis the Invincible (2) - The weakest of the stories here.
Zauriel (3) - Also a solid story.

[Warren]

One Year Later

[sixthreezy · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF... It was okay at first, but just continued on without a whole lot of a clear story line.. Got bored.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked the first four stories, but the last one was god awful. Pun intended. The egyptian gods in the fourth story were also waaay too pale.

[Fugo Feedback · Rating 3 out of 5]

Desde "Día de venganza" que no me divertía tanto con los personajes místicos de DC. Recomendable hasta para escépticos.

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

journey was aight BUT WHO THE HECK DOCTOR FATE DOE THEY DON'T EVEN SAY NONE OF THESE PUNKS KEEP THE HELMET fricken punks man

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice idea, thought it could have been better. Did like the Black Alice

[Kevin Milner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty interesting, I enjoyed that the stories were about characters of whom I have read little.
Bill Willingham is the man!

[Variaciones Enrojo]

Edición española, tomo único.