Wrap it Up is a lot like my Provide Some Answers feature, which is about long-running comic book plots finally being resolved. This, though, is a more specific comic book occurrence where the plotlines of a canceled comic book are wrapped up in the pages of another comic book series. This would happen most frequently in Marvel Comics, but other companies did it, as well.

Today, we look at how an issue of Justice League wrapped up plots from a series that they never would be able to wrap up today!

In 1992, DC released a new series based on Pete Morisi's Charlton superhero, Thunderbolt. Written and penciled by Mike Collins (with inks by Jose Marzan Jr.), the series was called Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt.

The conceit of the series was simple. Peter Cannon had grown up in a monastery where the order had a special leader called the Thunderbolt (this is all basically the same concepts that Iron Fist was riffing on). In the first issue, we see that the original Thunderbolt had died...

The series is based around the idea that Peter Cannon had become the new Thunderbolt, but then five years earlier, he had decided that he was no longer cut out to be, in effect, a superhero (since supervillains were getting more and more powerful). However, he was pulled out of retirement and ended up fighting against an evil crime syndicate known as Scorpio.

However, when he was named the new Thunderbolt, one of his friends kin the monastery, Andreas Havoc (shown here in issue #2), believed that HE should have been chosen...

We meet Havoc in the present in issue #4, and he's still pissed off about how he had the honor "stolen" from him...

When he finds out that Peter is back in business as the Thunderbolt, he loses it...

He then steals a bunch of ancient scrolls in #11...

However, in #12, it turns out that the previous Thunderbolt was still alive!!! And working against the order!

Havoc is distraught. He thought that he had been robbed of an honor, but as it turned out, the honor never should have been transferred to anyone else in the first place, since the previous Thunderbolt was still alive!

He didn't live much longer, though, as he broke free of his brainwashing to sacrifice himself...

Peter then found out that his girlfriend was actually one of the HEADS of Scorpio! He left her and basically just abandoned everything to just go off and live his life, unencumbered by all of the expectations that he had placed upon himself for being "the Thunderbolt."

So that was 1993. Mike Collins went right from that series to doing a number of fill-in issues on the various Justice League books, so he was well immersed in the world of the Justice League. In fact, Justice League Quarterly #8 was actually used to introduce DC readers to Thunderbolt, as he saved Flash and Power Girl in a back-up in that issue...

So it would only be natural if that same series would be used to resolve a hanging plot thread from Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt. However, it was also used to do a clever "reunion" of a certain group of heroes (read on to also find out why this couldn't have happened today)..

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In Justice League Quarterly #14, Paul Kupperberg (who was the editor on Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt and is currently in charge of Charlton Neo, an updated version of Charlton Comics) and Mike Collins came together for a story that teamed up a bunch of Charlton characters who were now DC Comics characters.

Blue Beetle and Captain Atom bring in Thunderbolt to take down Havoc, who is back to claiming that he should be THE Thunderbolt...

Captain Atom calls in his old friend, Nightshade, to help and in the middle of all of it, a brand-new Judomaster showed up! So it was a whole Charlton reunion!

In the end, Havoc is defeated...

Okay, but here's the twist. You see, Pete Morisi owned certain rights to Thunderbolt independent of Charlton, and eventually the full rights to the character reverted to Morisi (well, his estate, as he passed away in 2003).

Dynamite did a Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt revival a few years back...

So that's why this story couldn't be done in the Justice League today.

If anyone has a suggestion for a comic book series that was wrapped up in another comic, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!