CHALLENGE! #12 (Errata) (Oct 1986)
DC Comics

By Masked Man

DC is all excited about one of their upcoming books, KAMANDI CHALLENG a round-robin exercise in which each issue has a different creative team working on a single story. Each of the twelve issues is to end with a cliffhanger (well, except the last one I suppose), and start with the resolution to the last cliffhanger (well, except the first one). The concept was tried years before in 1985 as DC CHALLENGE. Which featured almost every character in the DCU (except Kamandi!), go fig. And I'll spoil things right off the bat for ya, it got totally out of control! Story wise, the DC CHALLENGE was a mess. Which is probably why it's taken 31 years (holy $hit, it's been 31 years!?) before anyone got the guts to try it again. It also sounds like Dan Didio and Keith Giffen are trying to control things by having it center around Kamandi (boy of the future), instead of it being the free for all that the DC CHALLENGE was. Either way, let's wind back the clock and check out the DC CHALLENGE!

(excerpt)

Artists: Gene Colan inked by Bob Smith, Chuck Patton inked by DeCarlo, Carmine Infantino inked by Bob Smith, Gil Kane inked by Klaus Janson(!), Dave Gibbons inked by Mark Farmer, Dan Jurgens inked by Larry Mahistedt, Joe Staton inked by Steve Mitchell, Rick Hoberg inked by Dick Giodano, Don Heck inked by Karl Kesel, Curt Swan inked by Terry Austin(!), Keith Giffen inked by Romeo Tanghal, and George Perez inked by Terry Austin.

The goal was to hook up writers and artist who never worked together, as well as pencilers and inkers who never worked together. You got some great match-ups like Curt Swan and Terry Austin and some please don't do that again match-ups like Gil Kane and Klaus Janson. While each writer knocked out their issue, the artist teams stumble three times. In issue #9, Don Heck inked himself (not a treat), in issue #11 Dave Hunt inked Keith Giffen and in issue #12 George Perez bowed out (probably because he was knee deep in reinventing Wonder Woman) and he was replaced by an army: Dan Spiegle (8 pages), Denys Cowan (4 pages), Luke McDonnell (4 pages), Stan Woch (4 pages), Steve Lightle (4 pages), Ross Andru (4 pages) and Tom Mandrake (10 pages). So nothing really worked as planed, but let's check out each issue!