Issue(s): Code of Honor #1
Cover Date: Jan 97
Title: "Guns"
Credits:
Chuck Dixon - Writer
Tristan Shane & Brad Parker - Artists
Jason White - Assistant Editor
Kelly Corvese - Editor

Review/plot:
The Code of Honor series felt like a Marvels cash-in project to me at the time it came out, and i stick by that impression today. Chuck Dixon isn't the sort of writer that i would expect to do the deep continuity mining that this series gets into (and unlike Marvels, it hits the more obscure stuff, like events from Marvel Team-Up), but on the other hand the focus on a rookie cop dealing with feeling upstaged by super-heroes is right up his alley, so i had mixed expectations going in.

Jeff Piper is a rookie New York City. His partner, Mike Badilino, will eventually become Ghost Rider supporting character Vengeance, something that readers would have known already when this was coming out.

At the personal/human level, the story works quite well so far. The first hero Piper encounters is Luke Cage...

...and seeing him he feels a mix of pride at seeing a black super-hero (Piper is black) and uselessness at seeing what Cage can do, both in terms of his powers and the fact that he's not restricted by Miranda.

We then go through a string of additional super-hero encounters and those feelings of helplessness and resentment get amplified.

There's a fun scene where Jeff and Mike think they're chasing down a runaway dog and it turns out to be a stray dinosaur from the Spider-Man/Black Panther team-up.

All the while, there's debate amongst the police about the Punisher, who unlike the other heroes, deals very directly with the type of crime that they're concerned with. Piper encounters the Punisher at one point...

...and lets him walk after seeing him shoot two armed men.

He also picks up a $1,000 bill dropped by the Kingpin in a vague sort of bribe.

Piper is a very passive character. His decision to let the Punisher go is conflicted and mostly due to fear, and the bribe situation is similarly due to him just sort of standing there dumbfounded as the Kingpin drops the bill out of his limo.

Same thing on the homefront. Piper has fallen in love with a hispanic girl named Janet Ruiz that he rescued during an armed robbery. But his mother is bigoted against hispanics, and he just sits there dumbstruck while his mother makes racist remarks when they all go out to dinner.

It's frustrating to see Piper as a bystander in his own life, but it's entirely realistic so i approve of that. This guy isn't a typical comic book protagonist.

Later, he proposes to Janet and she accepts.

Dixon paints a nearly apocalyptic situation when it comes to crime and drugs from this time period. I'll accept that crime was bad at this time, but i feel like Dixon is overemphasizing it. You'd also think with all the street level super-heroes, it'd be a little better than it was in the real world.

I don't like the art at all. Like most painted art, it's stiff and there's no storytelling; it's a series of scenes that don't flow together very well. For someone like Alex Ross you can forgive that and focus on the nice pictures, but in this book, everyone is super-clenched and ugly. Sometimes you can see veins right through the costumes, which i guess means they're actually wrapped in cellophane.

The civilians are at least not grotesque but they are still stiff. The picture i've posted of the Punisher above looks different than everything else in this issue, and different than other Punisher shots in this book, like this one:

I see there are two artists on this book. I think that top Punisher must be Brad Parker's and that's his only super-hero contribution (it looks like he also painted some of the civilian scenes, which are some of the best looking parts of the book).

The others i'm guessing are Tristan Shane's. Having two completely different art styles in the book is a bit incongruous.

In each issue of this series, there will be a shot of Angel flying overhead. I'm sure his various costume changes are meant to symbolize something, although i'm not quite sure what (although i guess in issue #4, his Archangel persona will represent the violence of late 80s and beyond). In this issue he's in his ugly, ugly graduation outfit.

Quality Rating: C-

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: As expected, the continuity on this book isn't given the care that Kurt Busiek gave to Marvels. It has, for example, scenes from Marvel Team-Up #23, which was published in July 1974, taking place after Werewolf By Night #32, which was published in August 1975. The only way to make that work is to shuffle a year's worth of Werewolf By Nights prior to their publication date. And based on other mistakes in the Code of Honor series, it seems likely that Jeff Piper just continually mixes up the order in which events occur; i guess he has a really bad memory.

Angel's appearance might raise an eyebrow, because he's been missing since at least Avengers #111, and won't be found until Captain America #174-175. But that just means the scene that shows him has to take place before Avengers #111. The only dependency is that Avengers #111 takes place before Luke Cage is active, and that's not a problem.

Marvel Team-up #19-20 taking place in between Marvel Two-In-One #2 and Daredevil #108-109 is also problematic for me because the Two-In-One and Daredevil issues are part of a tight set of events related to the end of the Thanos War and Captain America's resignation, but that's potentially workable. It's also excusable; from a publication point of view, the books are more or less in the right order. But given the other mistakes in this series, i'm just ruling this as Piper describing things out of order again.

With the exception of the Werewolf By Night/Moon Knight appearance, this seems to be a retrospective of the years 1973-1974. As i did with the Marvels series, i've placed this issue after the last referenced event, even though it actually spans a large period and could be considered to be taking place concurrently with all of the issues listed below. For Werewolf By Night, maybe Moon Knight had been stalking him for some time or it's just a coincidence that they pass through the same area in a short period of time. I don't think we know how long Moon Knight was active before his first appearance.

References:

• Namor and the Thing fighting Dakkamite robots from Marvel Two-In-One #2.
  
• The dinosaur rampage from Marvel Team-Up #19-20.
  
• The Beetle/Daredevil fight from Daredevil #108-109.
  
• Werewolf By Night being chased by Moon Knight in Werewolf By Night #32. However, it's just not possible for that scene to have occurred yet.
  
• Human Torch and Iceman fighting Equinox, from Marvel Team-Up #23.
  
• A Wrecking Crew rampage, which shows them standing outside the Harlem Canaan Youth Center, which is probably meant to be the same scene as when the Wrecking Crew is fighting the Defenders at the Harlem Boys Club in Defenders #17-19.
  
• Falcon pursued by a Dominus robot in Captain America #178.
  
• A Hulk/Thing fight that i think must be a new scene.
  
• There's a scene that i guess is meant to be a flood of images rushing through Jeff Piper's head, but doesn't show them as they're occurring so it doesn't affect placement. In addition to a generic picture of Iron Fist that probably represents his first appearance in Marvel Premiere #15-16, we see Captain America and the Banshee, presumably from Captain America #172 (except that encounter was in Nashville so i don't know why it would be relevant to Piper), the Harpy from Hulk #168 and the coming of Firelord from Thor #225.
  
• A reference to Spider-Man and the Punisher on a hijacked boat from Amazing Spider-Man #134-135.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? Y

My Reprint: N/A