The first DC SAMPLER must have proven to be a success, because for the next couple of issues, DC did it again–producing a free comic book-sized magazine promoting all of their upcoming series. You can really see that the switch-over to what DC would become was in full swing by this point, and there’s a lot of really good and interesting material covered in this second 1984 sampler. The company was casting off its reputation as a publisher for very young children and becoming the leader in terms of expanding the subject matter for comic books into more literate and adult-interesting directions.
Of course, that didn’t prevent them from having fan cartoonist Fred Hembeck produce the framing sequence for the book that ran on the inside front and back covers.
ATARI FORCE was a licensed comic in the vein of Marvel’s G.I.JOE or TRANSFORMERS, and like those titles, it was a lot better and more involved than it had any right to be.
This NEW TEEN TITANS spread includes a couple of developments that never made it to the page, including Frances Kane’s costumed identity as Magenta and the black Doctor Light.
This spread was the first exposure many fans had to the lyrical prose being employed by Alan Moore in SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING. It helped to turn readers on to teh fact that there was something interesting going on in that series.
I can recall this being my first glimpse at the impending change coming to JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA and being intrigued by it. I had stopped buying the book by this point, but I did come back for teh Detroit hand-over, and stuck with it until Gerry Conway and Chuck Patton left.
It’s interesting that Batman as a solo character doesn’t get any space devoted to him in this Sampler. The only title where he’s really spotlighted is the team series BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS. That would change in just a couple of years, but you can see what the “New DC” thought that the Direct Market was looking for.
The downfall of THRILLER, whose creative team of Robert Loren Fleming and Trevor Von Eeden had been replaced by Bill Dubay and Alex Nino, writing finis to what had been one of the more interesting experiments in the DC line of that time.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
A decade or more later, Frances Kane as Magenta appeared in Mark Waid’s Flash run, I think drawn by Oscar Jimenez. Purple cape & head mask, I think there was a partially white body suit.
Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez’s art was likely the best appeal of Atari Force.
I wonder if the close timing of “Thlller” to the Michael Jackson album had any effect either way on the comic. Comics were so far from the center of the mainstream, then.
Chuck Patton’s classic JLA looked pretty good in that pic. There”a Aquaman & the Outsiders. I’m me ean, yh, the new CC JL(D).
BatO was fun. Became a top 3 team book for me, w/ Stern & J Buscema’s Avengers & JRJr’s Uncanny X-Men. Briefly ranked as #1 when Alan Davis took over from Aparo & drew the characters .
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I loved Garcia-Lopez’ art but Conway did a great job with the writing on Atari Force. Mike Baron, who came on after the first arc ended … not so much.
But better than the replacement team on Thriller. Worse, the editors’ response to negative feedback LOC was to say that Fleming really wasn’t that good, kind of crappy really.
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Editors just defensively dismissing a writer or ant pro would be crappy. Though as a reader, I haven’t liked 90% of Gerry’s stories that I’ve read. Maybe Atari Force got his best efforts due to the commercial nature. Maybe he thought it would be a higher profile project, compared to the then more insular comicbook superhero medium.
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I checked RLF’s bibliography to avoid a knee jerk reaction to that assertion his writing (having not read Thriller) and can say confidently that he’s a good writer from the stuff of his I did read. I don’t remember Baron being less than on Atari Force though. I think he’s gone a little Dave Sim since though. 
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Only Swamp Thing and Thriller didn’t make my list. I can’t recall why Thriller didn’t even get sampled but Swamp Thing was too horror based for me. I preferred my monster comics to have heroic monsters like Ghost Rider or Werewolf By Night. Even Son Of Satan was more to my taste. I tried Vigilante but it just never clicked for me. 
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I must have followed Vigilante as a Titans spinoff because it certainly didn’t offer anything else to hold me.
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I have to say, “Magenta” is a bad name for a superhero. Or, well, maybe not a bad name once we get to the era or names like Cable and Domino and such…
…but even then, for a hero with magnetic powers, it’d still be bad.
It looks like a typo.
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I remember thinking the name was a stretch when I saw her in that “Flash” issue. Whomever coined it for that Teen Titans story got the 1st 3 letters right! Close enough. Let’s go home, it’s Millah time. Let’s see, Mag-neato. Dr. Polaris & Polaris. The Magnet. Lodestone. I think DC’s legacy Amazing Man in JLE (descended from the Will Everett Roy had in America’s “A.S.S.”- ask Tom about that one) had his powers switched to magnetism. Probably others.
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