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Post by Hoosier X on Feb 6, 2017 17:57:15 GMT -5
I am in this thread for educational purposes. This is why I do not post much. 😺 Most of my Marvel and DC comics are from the 80's and 90's... I only have the Mike Grell and Mike Baron The Brave And The Bold mini-series about Green Arrow, The Question and The Butcher. I should reread this soon. It's short and I can barely remember it. I think it involves deforestation. I have all of the Grell Green Arrow stuff except for The Wonder Years four issue mini and all of O'Neil / Cowan The Question issues too, as they crossed over a bunch of times. I loved Shado and Dinah; I liked how Ollie took on poachers and other environmental issues. I'm predictable... I remember this series but I didn't read it. I was probably still sulking over the time when The Brave and the Bold was cancelled and they replaced it with Batman and the Outsiders.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 7, 2017 13:26:01 GMT -5
I am in this thread for educational purposes. This is why I do not post much. 😺 Most of my Marvel and DC comics are from the 80's and 90's... I only have the Mike Grell and Mike Baron The Brave And The Bold mini-series about Green Arrow, The Question and The Butcher. I should reread this soon. It's short and I can barely remember it. I think it involves deforestation. I have all of the Grell Green Arrow stuff except for The Wonder Years four issue mini and all of O'Neil / Cowan The Question issues too, as they crossed over a bunch of times. I loved Shado and Dinah; I liked how Ollie took on poachers and other environmental issues. I'm predictable... Those look cool. Added to my want list.
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Post by Prince Hal on Feb 13, 2017 17:03:16 GMT -5
A Comic Lover’s Memories Part 15 DC’s Multiple EarthsYou may recall that, several Russian novels ago, I was talking about my original encounter with The Brave and the Bold (#57), in which a new character named Metamorpho made his debut. For me, B and B 57 was essentially just an early issue of a new title. (And it was a fun title and character, more Marvel than DC in its flippant, irreverent tone.) Unbeknownst to Hal-Boy, that and the second of the two Metamorpho try-out issues (#58) were a throwback for B and B, because as of its 50th issue, the title had switched to what was then a unique format – super-hero team-ups. The concept of a team-up between two DC heroes was not really on my radar screen at that point. Of course, I had read World’s Finest, which according to the perplexing tagline, teamed “your two favorite heroes, Superman and Batman with Robin the Boy Wonder.” (Do the math.) But those stories really didn’t count as team-ups because those two/three always worked together. It would be like describing Batman and Robin “teaming up.” Just not the same concept. Neither was the JLA, even though one of the bonuses of JLA was the old “let’s split into smaller teams or pairs” routine, which for a few pages anyway, did allow us to see Green Arrow team with Aquaman and J’onn J’onzz, or a team of Superman, the Atom and Wonder Woman. Outside the pages of the JLA, though, those kinds of things just didn’t happen. And you certainly didn’t see two heroes fight alongside each other for 25 pages each. I would soon discover that two (or more) heroes teaming up was a commonplace at Marvel. (I have yet to divulge the story of my introduction to Marvel, which occurred in early 1965 and involved deceit, theft, prevarication and Sgt. Fury. I’ll save that for another time.) As I became more of a knowledgeable comics fan, I began to recognize that among the many differences between Marvel and DC was that DC didn’t do much “cross-promotion.” Stan had a small roster of heroes, and from the get-go, those heroes were clearly shown to operate in a shared universe; in fact, Marvel’s heroes were all based in one place, New York City, less than 20 miles from the Fortress of Halitude. That was striking contrast to DC Comics, where the only cities that shared names with the world I lived in lay beyond the borders of the United States, like Paris or London. (In fact, it got more specific than that in those early days: the Avengers’ mansion was somewhere on Fifth Avenue, the Baxter Building was clearly in Midtown, Dr. Strange lived in the Village, and Spider-Man lived in Queens.) DC’s heroes lived in fictional cities in unnamed states (with the exception of Wonder Woman, who worked in Washington, DC) and they were the only heroes responsible for the extra-legal crime-fighting in those cities. I always guessed at, and sometimes writers put hints of, the counterparts for these fictional cities, but there was never any real consistency in any of that. For the record, I always thought of Hawkman’s Midway City as Chicago (because of Midway Airport); GL’s Coast City as Los Angeles; The Flash’s Central City as Kansas City; and the Atom’s digs, Ivy Town, as New Haven, Connecticut. Star City and Middletown, the hometowns of Green Arrow and J’onn J’onzz, were non-descript. Gotham and Metropolis were just Gotham and Metropolis. Each had such a distinct look and feel that they couldn’t both be New York City even though New York was clearly the city where Batman and Superman, the two DC icons, would naturally set up shop. (Although in the Silver Age, there was no New York City in the DC Superhero Universe.) The geography of these two places was fungible, though. Sometimes they seemed as close as the Twin Cities, sometimes they were not all that close together. Since the DC heroes lived all over the place, it was easier to accept that they rarely ran into each other. In the relatively small setting Stan had carved out for his heroes, however, it was inevitable that they would run into each other. And Stan took things a few steps further. Sure, Spider-Man, the X-Men and DD would show up in the FF in the present-day, but we also got to see Captain America fight alongside Sgt. Fury in World War Two, and even the Rawhide Kid, Kid Colt and the Two-Gun Kid rode together every so often, too. And then there was ”The Wedding of Sue and Reed” in FF Annual 3, (Summer 1965), a superhero extravaganza if ever there was one. I remember when a friend and I chipped in to buy that issue. I didn’t know the Marvel Universe all that well and I remember poring over that delightful Kirby goulash of a cover trying to figure out who all these guys were, and when I finally did, being disappointed that Kid Colt wasn’t in the story. That annual was my Marvel Comics primer, encyclopedia and history book, and I reread it time and again until it disappeared. The frequent encounters between Marvel characters may have been as much a business decision as an artistic one on Stan’s part. With a small stable of titles, Stan needed to interest his readers in everything he and Martin Goodman were publishing. Remember Stan’s constant plugs in the superhero titles to try Millie the Model, including Millie’s cameo in the FF wedding story? The Marvel line wasn’t large enough (nor Goodman willing, I’m sure) to have more than one editor, who also doubled as the primary writer, so it was simple for Stan to weave his characters and titles into a larger story. With no possessive, ego-driven editors to deal with, except Stan, Marvel’s heroes were able to work together (well, after an obligatory fight, of course) and inhabit a more realistic version of our world. From a kid’s point of view, though, it was just so cool that Marvel heroes (and villains) bumped into each other on what seemed a regular basis. In the issues released in May 1964, just to choose a random month, Baron Zemo was the antagonist in both Sgt. Fury and the Avengers; Namor, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch were guest stars in the X-Men; and Loki was attacking Dr. Strange in Strange Tales. It was quite the opposite at DC, where team-ups were events; the granddaddy of them all was the JLA’s annual two-issue summer picnic with the JSA, which had sprung from the classic “Flash of Two Worlds” in Flash 123 (on sale in July 1961), which also led to both good news -- three more team-ups between the Earth-One and –Two Flashes would follow – and bad news – it took until Flash 151, on sale in January 1965, for them to happen. So DC wasn’t exactly looking to squander what it thought was an attractive aspect of its universe. Even though it was still really in its infancy, DC’s Multiple Earths concept had been well received and justly celebrated by the readers. At that time, it was still a small cosmos, centered around Earth-One and Earth-Two, with Earth-Three and Earth-A making what were then one-time appearances in 1964 and 1965 respectively, both in the JLA-JSA team-ups. As a kid, I realized that there was something to be said for the rarity of a team-up or a guest appearance by another hero, but if marvel was overdoing it at times, DC was letting a great opportunity to create a more cohesive universe slip away by parceling out these “events” so infrequently. Of course, my fellow 10- and 11-year-olds and I didn’t quite realize that this kind of attitude shouldn’t have surprised us, because DC Comics, like the universe it had created might as well have been the model for Gardner Fox’s Multiple Earths, because DC Comics was sub-divided into separate Earths that almost never ever crossed each other’s orbits. But then we didn’t know from business. We just bought comics. Still, we could have used a guide to the various “Earths” that spun at different speeds in the DC editorial offices. If we’d had one in 1965, it might have looked like this: In order of the frequency of their appearances at Earth-N (Newsstand) and Earth-C (Candy Store), herewith the DC Editorial Earths when I was a kid: Earth-M was Mort Weisinger’s heavily guarded Superman Family Compound, with all the Superman titles, plus World’s Finest, which Mort had pulled into his gravitational field from poor Jack Schiff. Earth-J was Julius Schwartz’s cosmic playground, the home of luminaries like the Flash, Green Lantern, the Atom, and Hawkman, in addition to the JLA and the new look Batman and Detective. Earth-RK was the (primarily) war-torn neighborhood of Bob Kanigher, but he also helmed his creation, Metal Men, and inexplicably was the keeper of the keys to the wacky world of Wonder Woman. Earth-G was George Kashdan’s Island of Misfit Characters ( Metamorpho, Blackhawk, Rip Hunter, Aquaman, Sea Devils). Earth-B was Murray Boltinoff’s Dr. Jekyll Institute, where the manic ( Jerry Lewis, Fox and the Crow, Bob Hope, Sugar and Spike) shared space with the "serious" ( Challengers, Doom Patrol, Tomahawk). Earth-JM was Jack Miller’s Home for the Chronically Melodramatic (the romance titles) and which, as far as I was concerned, barely existed outside of an occasional barbershop sighting. Earth-S fell to the beleagured, hapless Jack Schiff. It was the sad Death Valley of the DC Universe. It was to this comic book elphants' graveyard that Mystery in Space, Strange Adventures, and Tales of the Unexpected had limped off to die and where the Houses of Mystery and Secrets had been deemed nearly unfit for human cogitation. We readers knew that at orderly DC, unlike at ragtag Marvel, no fraternizing between worlds was allowed.
JLA and World's Finest would have to suffice. However, as Hal Lad would soon discover, within the worlds was a different story...
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Post by Prince Hal on Feb 16, 2017 15:10:58 GMT -5
A Comic Lover’s Memories Part 16 DC Silver Age Team-Ups: Earth-RKAs I was saying last time, in the Silver Age DC universe, team-ups were treated as events, with the JLA-JSA get-together we looked forward to every summer being the pièce de resistance. Even so, team-ups did occur on DC’s individual editorial Earths. But on Earths-M and –J, they were generally few and far between and, like the summer extravaganza, presented as rare treats for the readers that DC was good enough to grant every so often. As you might expect, however, team-ups were a little different over on Earth-RK, where everyone and everything (think the oddball Metal Men and the nigh indescribable Wonder Woman) was a bit different. In fact, for a stretch of a couple of years there, from late 1963 through the summer of 1966, team-ups were pretty common in DC’s war comics. But far from losing their special luster, these team-ups did what Stan’s many team-ups had done at Marvel: they helped to create a more cohesive universe and made the characters that much more realistic when we saw that they weren’t alone out there. And of course, the team-ups also made reading the comics more fun because they were less predictable, especially in the days when the next issue of a comic was almost always a surprise. The first Earth-RK team-up I’m aware of happened when Mlle. Marie, who had lost her too brief series in Star-Spangled War Stories with issue 91(April 1960*), co-starred with Sgt. Rock in Our Army at War 115 (Dec 1961). Though her name wasn't mentioned on the cover, she was shown... A gallant gesture from RK to the sophisticated Marie, who had been replaced by a bunch of angry pteranodons and stegasauri chewing men and materiel to bits in the War That Time Forgot. A year or so later, Rock himself popped over to see Johnny Cloud, the Navajo Ace, in All-American Men of War 96 in January 1963, but other than those two instances, it was every man (and underground resistance fighter) for him or herself. But then along came The Brave and the Bold 52 (March 1964). With issue 50, DC had decided to change the format from Showcase-lite to team-ups, formalizing in a specific title what for Marvel had long been simply part of its shtick. (We’ll go into the reasons for DC’s decision and the first few team-ups another time.) After two issues teaming superheroes, DC for whatever reason, turned to Kanigher. He and Joe Kubert produced “Suicide Mission, “a 25-page “book-length novel” that teamed Rock, Johnny Cloud and Jeb Stuart and his Haunted Tank and another DC character, whom I will not mention because I ain’t the spoilin’ type. Anyway, that issue seemed to inspire Kanigher. In an interesting bit of detailed continuity that was rare for both DC and Kanigher, who could make Bob Haney-look like Roy Thomas in his concern for continuity, B and B 52 was immediately referred to (via flashback) in two comics that came out the very next month, Our Army at War 140 and All-American Men of War 102, which in addition featured Mlle. Marie working with Johnny Cloud. Kanigher must have been convinced that these team-up stories could be newsstand gold, and so he released the team-up genie from the bottle; over the course of the next two years, DC’s war books featured over a dozen team-up stories. By DC standards, Kanigher’s ETO became a breeding ground as fertile for team-ups as Marvel’s New York City. However unwittingly, Kanigher was creating a more cohesive “Earth” than DC readers were used to in the early 60s. Cloud would appear in six issues of G.I. Combat between April 1965 and April 1967. And in three of those, Rock also was a featured guest star. You might have thought that DC’s war heroes would be dropping in on Our Army at War, where Sgt. Rock reigned supreme as the flagship character of the war line. But the bulk of the team-ups occurred in the pages of G.I. Combat, where the Haunted Tank had been a fixture since #87 (Feb 1961). Oddly enough, though, these guest appearances/ team-ups were not always mentioned on the cover, which seems to defeat the purpose... Then I checked the sales figures. G.I. Combat was the steady leader by quite a margin among DC’s war books in 1963 (320,000+); 1965 (320,000+); 1966 (255,000+) and 1967 (200,000+)** . I’d’ve thought it would have been Our Army at War with Sgt. Rock, but he never cracked 270,000+. I never would have guessed that the Haunted Tank consistently outsold Sgt. Rock. Obviously if Kanigher wanted to boost interest in his other stars, it made sense to show them off in his best-selling title. Which explains why Jeb Stuart only clank-clanked over to fight alongside Sgt. Rock in OAAW twice, while Rock dropped in on Jeb Stuart in eight issues. If any title could have used the sales boost a guest star might give, it would have been AAMW, where Johnny Cloud had been the lead feature since #82 (September 1960). The title would be cancelled in July 1966 with issue 117, but Kanigher continued to use Cloud as a frequent guest star, I assume trying to gin up interest in him among the readers of OAAW and G.I. Combat. In any event, Johnny Cloud and Jeb Stuart ran into each other so often -- sometimes literally --... that you might almost have thought that Kanigher was trying to see if he could create a team out of them. (A foreshadowing of the Losers?) Two of those appearances (120, August 1966 and 124, April 1967) came in the wake of the cancellation of AAMW, which left Johnny grounded and homeless. In the latter issue, Cloud actually appeared twice, as the guest star in the first story and flying solo in the second. But even that possible back-up slot never materialized. (Keep in mind that Kanigher, like Weisinger, often used reprints as back-ups. Using new Cloud stories would have meant spending money.) Johnny showed up once more a couple of years later in OAAW 191 (January 1968) with Sgt. Rock (and Unit 3). I’m guessing RK had a soft spot for Johnny Cloud and wanted to keep him on everyone’s radar screen despite the apparent lack of interest in him. Aside: I wonder if air war stories, like naval war stories, just weren’t as interesting to most readers as those set on the ground. Enemy Ace didn’t sustain his own title for too long, either. As for DC’s quartet of Pacific Theatre fighters, Captain Storm, Lt. Larry Rock, Gunner and Sarge, they almost always worked solo, but there were a couple of exceptions, which also occurred during Kanigher’s team-up frenzy. Gunner and Sarge met the newest DC war star, Captain Storm, in their own series, in Our Fighting Forces 87. Eight issues later Storm made a cameo in Lt. Larry Rock’s debut as the Fighting Devil-Dog (August 1965). Then in Captain Storm 13 -- sorry, awful cover -- (March, 1966), all four of them joined forces for the first and only time. Of course, as we all know now, Storm would soon be joining Gunner, Sarge and Johnny Cloud as a member of the Losers. Even Mlle. Marie, she of the eight-issue run in Star-Spangled War Stories, dropped in for a few of RK’s couples-only affairs, teaming with the Haunted Tank in G.I. Combat 123*** and 131-132 and with Hunter’s Hellcats (DC’s Dirty Dozen “homage”) in Our Fighting Forces 116-17. The oddest team-up of all was probably the two-parter in OAAW 162-63 (Nov-Dec 1965)that featured Sgt. Rock and, out of the misty past, the Viking Prince, whose run in Brave and the Bold had ended in five years earlier. Give Kanigher credit for doing everything he could to boost sales. I can say that as a reader, I loved the team-ups, not just because they were fun stories, but also because, as I often remind everyone, you were never guaranteed that your favorite comic would be on the comic rack from month to month. G.I. Combat and OAAW were almost always exceptions. But pity poor Johnny Cloud; AAMW was a definite hit-or-miss title. So was SSWS. (Your mileage may have varied.) Thus, seeing the Navajo Ace with the Haunted Tank and the Rock of Easy was a definite treat, no matter how Kanigher decided to team them up. Next time: Earth-M actually had team-ups?* All dates are the on-sale dates, as graciously provided by St. Mike’s Amazing World. (I owe the Newsstand feature alone a sacrificial lamb or two.) ** DC sales figures from Comichron. Sales figures for 1964 are unavailable, but as so many of the team-ups took place in G.I. Combat, it stands to reason that it was still the best-selling war book.
*** Added September 18, 2017. Thanks to Hoosier X! I missed this one!
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Post by Prince Hal on Mar 10, 2017 15:16:27 GMT -5
A Comic Lover’s Memories Earth-J: The Coolest Pad at DC
Before we talk about the team-ups on Earth-J, let’s set the stage a bit. I knew little about artists and writers then, but even I could tell the difference between Batman’s heavy, clunky art and the darkness and claustrophobia of Gotham City and the graceful lines and sunny skies of Earth-J. Compare Sheldon Moldoff’s Gotham -- er, I mean, Bob Kane’s Gotham -- to the Central City and Coast City of The Flash and Green Lantern and you could immediately see the difference between 1950’s America and its 1960’s incarnation. Everything on Earth-J was sleek, from hairdos to automobiles, to furniture, to the. Which was why, to the Princeling Hal, Earth-J was without question the coolest, most sophisticated of all the DC Earths. Every house you saw in The Flash looked “modern” (“mid-century vintage” in the real estate ads now), like Rob and Laura Petrie’s place. Green Lantern and Carol Ferris went out to swanky parties and nightclubs, like you’d see in Rat Pack movies. And Adam Strange’s Rann... with its silhouettes of far-off cities that seemed to decorate every Infantino horizon like delicate filigree, looked nothing like the plywood-and-Styrofoam planets we saw in the Grade Z movies SF movies we watched and rewatched in glorious black and white on Channel 9 and Channel 11. As a young Silver Ager of 10 and 11, I loved the look of these books, but I was frustrated by the reading level and the scientific knowledge I needed just to understand the Mystery in Space, The Flash, and Green Lantern. Not that I saw them all that much. As I’ve said before, I only saw Green Lantern (or Green “Lantrin,” as my friend -- who also called Lois Lane “Louis” -- always said) at my nice cousins’ house. And the first place I saw a copy of Mystery in Space was at my dentist’s office, where I struggled mightily trying to read it before reluctantly returning it to the magazine table when he called me in. I felt as if I were reading something on a way more adult level than any comic I bought. Even so, I was immediately intrigued, in great part because of the stunning cover (I’ve written about it before on these boards), but also because of the futuristic look of the story, and because everything about it was so different from anything else I’d ever seen between two comic covers. Even the name and the logo (like The Brave and the Bold) fascinated me. “Sophisticated” and “adult” are the words that keep coming back to me as ways to describe them. As for The Flash, well, I don’t remember the first issue I ever saw, but I do remember that the first one I bought was #149, which I recall enjoying because of the big role Kid Flash played in it. First of all, “Kid Flash” was such a cool name, so different from any other sidekick’s name I’d ever heard. Plus, my mother and many other adults thought “kid” was a coarse word when applied to a child, which of course was another reason I liked it. It also had a tough sound to it that “Flash, Jr.,” for instance, or “Quickie” certainly wouldn’t have had. Little did I know then that it may have been a throwback to Golden Age names like Kid Eternity and the Tough Kid Squad, as well as Western heroes like Kid Montana, the Ringo Kid and the Apache Kid. I also bought (and loved) Flash 160 a few months later, an 80-Page Giant that created the soft spot I still have in my heart for Johnny Quick. Even as I got older, I didn’t buy The Flash regularly, but I did pick it up on occasion. I think maybe his Rogues Gallery and his adventures were just a tad too neat and non-violent for me. I enjoyed fisticuffs and mysteries and there didn’t seem to be much of either in The Flash. And to be honest, as much as I loved Infantino’s clean look, the flip side of was that it could get a little antiseptic. I liked the grittiness of Kubert more. I never really noticed Green Lantern on the stands, and when I saw this one… at my nice cousins’ place, I tore into it, but had trouble making headway. I wasn’t annoyed, really, just knew I was punching above my weight class, and I respected my cousins’ ability to understand this highbrow stuff. I just figured that, like MiS, Green Lantern would be a comic I’d have to earn the right to read by getting smarter. Now I was crazy about the JLA, which I read whenever I could get my hands on it from the time I was 10. I didn’t know from different editors then, so I didn’t realize that JLA was edited by the same guy who edited the other Earth-J books. But I did know that even if the science in JLA stories was over my head, it was more than made up for by Pier-Six brawls waged by an abundance of superheroes, including the ones I rarely ever saw on the stands. I have to admit that I was spoiled a bit because the first JLA I ever read was this one… I think I must have read it at my cousins’, and really liked it, but I never saw the second chapter. However, I know I bought JLA 31... hot off the stands at Cohen’s Stationery down on the Avenue. The cover grabbed me right away and remains one of my favorite and most memorable covers. (I think I’ve always been a sucker for covers with a black background because of this and Adventure 312.) I can remember reading this as I walked home, and by the time I got to Cumberland Avenure, five minutes from Cohen’s, I was starting to feel as if I were being allowed into a secret comic society where previously hidden or unknown information was being bequeathed to me: the scroll, the official process of nominating heroes for membership, the heroes hanging around afterwards shooting the breeze… it was all so cool. Hawkman even mentioned that he’d previously had adventures with Aquaman and the Atom, which suggested that these comics took place not in individual worlds, but in a far bigger place than I’d imagined. And since I was not to see an actual copy of Hawkman until a few years later, when he was just three issues from cancellation, seeing him in action in JLA was a true treat. One Earth-J comic I really enjoyed, but almost never saw on the stands was The Atom. Another cover etched into my memory is this one, thanks to the vivid colors and definitely because of the weirdness of Chronos’s costume. Looking back, I was never intimidated by the science in The Atom, despite its coming out of the same editorial office, but I’m sure it was because of the inherent whimsy of a tiny character. You just can’t help enjoy all of the outlandish settings: giant phones, giant cats, giant everythings. And the Gil Kane art was so beautiful. You could see every muscle in the Atom’s body tense and release when he sprang from one bad guy’s chin to and crash like a battering ram into another’s solar plexus. Maybe watching a little guy take it to all the tough guys who plagued Ivy Town – and there were always lots of “crooks” in Ivy Town in addition to the occasional super-villain – made him extra likeable to me as a 10-year-old kid younger by a year than his classmates and smaller than virtually all of them. Plus, for a kid who loved history, those great Time Pool stories were a ball. Thaks to Alpheus Hyatt, the Atom met folks like Bne Franklin, Dick Turpin, Henry Hudson, and even Edgar Allan Poe! The Flash was buttoned-down and serious. In Green Lantern the fate of the world, galaxy or universe was forever at stake. But The Atom always seemed to be a down-to-earth kind of guy who had a lot of fun being a super-hero, despite getting into apparently inescapable jams in every issue... I rarely got to see too many of his comics around the old hometown, but whenever I did, I gobbled them up. Apparently, I had developed a taste for whimsy, even though I had no idea of what whimsy meant, or that it even existed. The Atom and the JLA were my portals to the coolest earth of all, Earth-J, where, I would soon learn, the team-ups were as cool as everything else. Next: Earth-J’s Team-Ups Galore!
Kid Hal, 1964
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Post by Prince Hal on Mar 30, 2017 17:22:25 GMT -5
A Comics Lover’s Memories Earth-J Team-ups: The FlashOne of the best parts about reminiscing about my early memories about the Silver Age is that I learn so much about the years I’m recalling that I had never had a clue about as a young kid just getting started in comics reading. In those days (I’m talking here 1963-65, when I was 9, 10, 11 years old), distribution was unreliable, my own access to funds and stores was limited, which meant that I would sometimes go months between seeing or buying a comic. Plus, the comics fan “industry” really didn’t exist, so we kids had no clue about what went on behind the scenes of comics. Anything you learned about what went on you had to glean from letters pages and ads for comics. We never for a moment thought that making comics was an actual business driven by numbers on a tally sheet, run by guys who were motivated by profits. We just figured that a bunch of guys were having fun making these and getting them out to us kids. No way was I able to recognize that comics reacted to trends in popular culture, that comics companies copied from each other, that editors were forever throwing out concepts at readers hoping something would drive up the sales figures, and that titles could be cancelled if they failed to sell. I just accepted that whatever comics were on the stands always had been there and always would be, excepting of course when a comic tying in to a movie we all liked came out. (Why there was no comic book of The Great Escape I’ll never understand…) An older reader, though, with the benefit of a wider perspective and a deeper knowledge of the medium would have been aware of those kinds of factors. Now, looking back, I can see deeper into the past thanks to websites like Mike’s Amazing Newsstand (I bow my head to Mike in wonder and awe!) and the many books that have been written about those years. One of my assumptions when I started to dig into the Earth-J (for Julius Schwartz) team-ups was that it was only fitting that the best and essentially only DC team-up stories were done so well there because it was on Earth-J that Gardner Fox had begun the whole Multiple Earths concept with a team-up for the ages in the pages of the now-sacred Flash 123. However, I discovered that it was well before the Earth-One Flash crossed the barrier to Earth-Two that the team-up horse trotted out of the Earth-J barn. In fact, that legendary team-up with Jay Garrick in Flash 123 was actually the third time that Barry Allen had teamed up with another super-hero. And both of the others were brand-new characters! And the first of these adventures holds an even more significant, if unrecognized distinction of being the very first team-up of two DC heroes in the Silver Age.* Just seven issues into his revival, the Flash not only works alongside another hero in this issue, but one who is making his debut, not just in the Silver Age, but e-vah, as we say up in this neck of the woods. Complete with domino mask, the Elongated Man (aka Ralph Dibny) slithered into comic books in the pages of Flash 112 (released in February 1960). The gimmick in the story (and one that would be a staple of many a superhero team-up) is that the Loose-Limbed Lawman is thought to be the culprit in a rash of crimes plaguing Central City. When the Flash captures the Gooey Gumshoe near the scene of one of the crimes, he explains that he’s being framed by the real crooks. Naturally, he and the Flash combine their talents to apprehend the crooks, and a new alliance is formed. Julie must have had a soft spot for the Curlicuing Cop, because he reappeared very quickly, and even “blurbed” on the covers of 115 and 119. In each he’s the co-star of the second story and enlists the help of the Flash. The Molassean Manhunter appears prominently on the cover of Flash 124, in a story in which it is the Flash who reaches out to Ralph for help in defeating Captain Boomerang. By this time, Ralph is essentially a semi-regular in The Flash, showing up every few issues. Perhaps Julie, recalling the success of Plastic Man, was trying to groom the Shimmying Shamus for a shot in his own title, or at least in Showcase or B and B? I know I’ve read somewhere that EM was intended, like the other Golden Age heroes Schwartz had revived and refashioned, to be a new version of Plastic Man, whom Schwartz and his writers didn’t realize was actually a DC property, having come over from Quality with Blackhawk, G.I. Combat and other titles. No matter, because DC had a propensity for heroes who stretched: Elastic Lad had shown up a couple of years earlier and Elasti-Girl was just over the horizon. And a revival of Plastic Man, as we all know, would inevitably occur as well. In #130 it’s a different wrinkle, a unique teaming of EM and Kid Flash. As is his wont, the Puttified Policeman is looking for help from the Flash, but the Crimson Comet is going on vacation and sends Kid Flash in his place. The two relative novices handle the Weather Wizard without too much muss and fuss in this one-of-a-kind pairing. Still wearing his domino mask, though making little effort to separate Ralph Dibny from his EM identity, the Ductile Dick is cover-featured in team-ups in Flash 134 and 138. That would be the final go-round, though, for the Flexible Flatfoot and the Vizier of Velocity. They were an odd pairing, but maybe those work best. The Flash was a crew cut, super-serious type, while EM was a dashing, charmingly egotistical devil-may-care sort, whose hair was always depicted as being wavy and longish -- especially for the early 60s -- who was forced, by dint of his goofy super-power and his sense of humor, to fight crime in a non-traditional style. He was a bit of an odd duck for the stodgier Flash to get used to. Any thoughts Schwartz or DC had of giving Ralph his own title apparently died there, as it would be almost a year before he would appear again. However, B.O. -- as Schwartz was nicknamed for his constant reminder to writers to “Be Original” -- definitely hadn’t forgotten the Slinky Sleuth, as we’ll see next time. Now I mentioned that the Flash had yet another regular team-up partner who also preceded the first appearance of the Flash of Earth-Two. His name might surprise you. It was Wally West, aka Kid Flash. For me, team-ups are better when they rely on their uniqueness, not on their familiarity; ergo, a sidekick doesn’t qualify as a team-up partner -- Batman and Robin, for instance, can’t “team up,” because they always work together. As do Aquaman and Aqualad, Captain America and Bucky, and Green Arrow and Speedy. So what was different about Flash and Kid Flash? When you look through the old Flash issues, you realize that Kid Flash was never a sidekick to the Flash. He didn’t go “on patrol” with him or show up for his many battles with his Rogues Gallery. His adventures were almost all solo outings as the star of his regular back-up strip. As a kid, it always was pretty obvious to me that like most other Earth-J comics, the Flash was aimed at kids older than 9, 10, or 11. The letter-writers were obviously bright, they knew comics, and they had established themselves as important inhabitants of Earth-J. That they were mostly high school kids didn’t matter; Earth-J was for smart, well read, knowledgeable fans, and woe to you if you had sloughed off in science class, because by page four of a Flash or GL story, John Broome or Gardner Fox was making you wish you’d been paying attention when the teacher had been discussing the Aurora Borealis or sub-atomic particles. And right from his first appearance in Flash 110, Wally West was the teenage link with the comic’s older readers, not a tagalong who acted like a dopey kid, but a genuine do-gooder. He solved mysteries and foiled crime in far different milieus than his mentor: drag strips, beatnik pads, high school gang fights, frat house initiations, and the small-town underworld of Blue Valley. Frankly, even Robin couldn’t hold a candle to Kid Flash in those early Silver Age years. Turns out that Kid Flash not only worked alone, but that he didn’t work alongside the Flash until Flash 120, a year and a half after his introduction, which, as an acknowledgement of their separate careers, was actually billed as a team-up on the cover. I’m guessing that the adventure among the Golden Giants must have sold well, too, because Kid Flash returned for another novel-length team-up in Flash 125. (Flash’s third team-up issue in a row, btw…) It was in the next Flash-Kid Flash teaming ( Flash 135) that Kid Flash gets his way-cool “modern” uniform. (Nowadays, it would be called mid-century vintage, I guess.) The Supersonic Stripling appeared more than any other hero as Flash’s partner, including one “very special” issue ( Flash 173) in which he teamed with both Barry Allen and Jay Garrick! It’s obvious that once the sales figures on Flash 123 rolled in, Schwartz knew he had a good thing going, as he took advantage of the cosmic treadmill to team the Flash regularly with his boyhood hero, the Flash of Earth-Two. The Earth-Two Flash was Flash’s co-star just about annually, with six team-ups between 1961 and 1968. Don’t know what it was about the Flash that made him such a bro-magnet, but in addition to the three guys we’ve mentioned, he also became a tried and true buddy to Hal Jordan. In fact, Hal and Barry Allen became fast friends, appearing as teammates seven times, four times in GL and three in Flash. They were perfectly suited for each other, a couple of unflappable sf-oriented heroes with intelligent lady friends and a knack for using brains over brawn to save the world. Their mutual adventures began in GL 13 (on sale April 1962), which features a classic Ira Schnapp-designed cover blurb: “Introducing… A GREAT NEW FIGHTING TEAM.” Flash was so team-up crazy that he starred in two that month, as Flash 129 featured one with Jay Garrick. Like the two Flashes, the Verdant Vindicator and the Red Racer would also team up regularly, twice in ’62, once in ’63, twice again in ’64 and then once each in ’66 and ’67. As I said about a year ago at the start of this entry, I never would have suspected that the Flash would have been part of so many team-ups during his Silver Age career. Oh, as far as I’m concerned, the Flash’s Silver Age, which lasted just about nine years, was also the Infantino Era, stretching 68 issues, from #105 to #174 (less the annuals). Your mileage may vary, but it really doesn’t matter, as the Flash’s penchant for team-ups basically disappeared when Andru and Esposito took over the art and a gallimaufry of writers tried to do what Broome and Fox had done so stylishly for so long. End of cranky old guy rant. Anyway, of those 68 purely Silver Age issues, 22 featured team-up stories; that’s nearly a third of them! I never would have suspected there’d be that many team-ups in a DC comic in the Silver Age. I’m guessing Schwartz saw sales jump whenever the Flash teamed up with one of his many pals. They were to The Flash what purple gorillas were to the rest of the DC line. I only wish he’d thought about having Johnny Quick drop in for a visit. All the poor guy got was one lousy reprint in Flash 161, an 80-pager. My OCD, stats-loving side got the better of me -- feel free to check my math.** KF (8): 120, 125, 135, 149, 156, 159 (which also features Dr. Mid-Nite!), 161, 173 EM (6): 112, 115, 119, 124, 134, 138 GA Flash (6): 123, 129, 137, 151, 170 (also featuring Drs. Fate and Mid-Nite!), 173 GL (2): 131, 143 KF and EM: 130 112, 115 (1960), 119, 120, 123, 124, 125 (1961), 129, 130, 131, 134 (1962), 135, 137, 138 (1963), 143, 149 (1964) 151, 156 (1965), 159, 161 (1966), 170, 173 (1967) *Unless you count various chapters in the three JLA stories in Brave and the Bold 28-30, which I don’t. ☺ ** Yes, I’m a real nerd. Stats am fun. Next time, the other Earth-J team-ups, plus team-ups from the fringes of the DC Universe.
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Post by Prince Hal on Apr 8, 2017 14:25:30 GMT -5
A Comic Lover’s Memories Team-ups of The Unexpected Earth-J… Beyond the Flash
Julius Schwartz was no dummy. Team-ups worked in The Flash, or he wouldn’t have done so many of them. Schwartz must have figured that the concept could also help to jump-start a hero without his own book, because it’s clear he used the team-up concept to bring more attention to his reincarnation (ahem) of Hawkman. Unlike the Flash, the Atom and GL, who had all had runs in Showcase, Hawkman hadn’t been able to make the jump to his own book from his first set of try-out issues, which came in The Brave and the Bold from 1960-61, or from his second set in April, June and August of 1962, either. In April, 1963, Julie tossed him into The Atom #7 where the two teamed up in a novel-length story. Then, in September, Schwartz installed him in the back-up slot of Mystery in Space for five issues, even giving him two solo covers. He also -- I’m guessing – persuaded Murray Boltinoff to put him into Brave and the Bold 51 with Aquaman, the title's second team-up issue, which came out in October. Thus, from the start of his run in Mystery in Space in September 1963, Hawkman was on the stands (and cover-featured) five times in four months (seven, if you count two insets on Mystery in Space); not bad, considering that Batman, appearing in three different titles, was on ten covers during that stretch. I think we can infer that Schwartz was putting on a full-court press for a character he must have really liked. The string of appearances culminated in a team-up between the two resident heroes of Mystery in Space, the justifiably well regarded “Planets in Peril” in MiS 90, 25 gorgeously bedecked Infantino-Anderson pages that proved to be far more than just a routine teaming of two otherworldly heroes. “Planets” was a full-blown space opera of worlds in collision that co-starred Hawkgirl, Alanna, Sardath, and the armies of Rann and included such minor events as the teleportation of Earth to Rann’s solar system, the Sphinx, the Colosseum, and the Iwo Jima Memorial coming to life on Rann, the theft of Lake Superior, the disintegration of Mt. Everest, inescapable death-traps, a renegade scientist, and a bittersweet ending. (Prince Hal says: Don’t ask, just buy it!) If spotlighting Hawkman and teaming him up with other heroes to get him into his own series was Schwartz’s strategy, it paid off. At some point in the fall of ’63, the sales numbers must have started looking good, because in in February of 1964, Hawkman #1 was published. That guest-starring role in Atom 7 also turned into a fairly regular pairing. Though Hawkman and the Atom didn’t share exactly the same kind of sf vibe as he and Adam Strange or the Flash and GL did, the team-ups worked out charmingly. Besides, with Jay Garrick, Kid Flash, GL and Elongated Man always popping up in the Flash and GL periodically hosting the Flash and Alan Scott in his mag, Schwartz must have figured that “Hey, team-up stories sell, and these two guys are the only possible pairing left here on Earth-J. Maybe it’ll work.” And it did. The only time the Atom appeared in Hawkman’s title was in Hawkman 9, but Hawkman flew over to join the Atom in #s 7, 31 and 37. And the Hawkman team-ups were not the only ones in which the Hardy Homunculus participated. Schwartz tried to capture some Earth-Two magic by bringing in Al Pratt, the Atom of Earth-Two, for two pairings with Ray Palmer, one in 1966 and another in 1968. Like the covers of so many other 1960s Schwartz titles, these are outstanding examples of Gil Kane at his explosive best, especially the latter, one of my all-time favorite covers. Later on, when both books were on the brink of cancellation, DC combined the strips into one title in an attempt to salvage something for the two heroes. It continued the Atom’s numbering and debuted as The Atom and Hawkman 39 in August 1968, but it only lasted seven issues. That solution was seen as a bit of a radical approach coming from stodgy DC; to fans it had to be clearly reminiscent of Marvel’s split titles, but somewhat ironic as well. All of those split titles ( Strange Tales, Tales of Suspenese, and Tales to Astonish) had become a thing of the past just a few months earlier when Marvel’s new distribution arrangement had allowed for more titles to be published. However, the attempt to combine the Atom and Hawkman, who three times in that seven-issue run teamed up in novel-length stories, was actually not the first time Schwartz had used a team-up with Hawkman to try to save an old favorite. Late in 1966 and early in ’67, with Hawkman’s own title established, Schwartz re-teamed Adam Strange with Hawkman in Hawkman #s 18 and 19, obviously hoping Hawkman could return the favor Adam Strange had done for him previously. Those two issues of Hawkman were the first in which the archaeologist-turned-spaceman had been seen in over a year, as he had lost his longtime slot with issue 102 of Mystery in Space in mid-1965 after a 50-issue run. Aside: The star of arguably the most sophisticated DC strip throughout the six years of its run, Adam was treated ignominiously as the end approached; in essence, Adam Strange and Mystery in Space were sacrificed in order to restore the stature of a more famous hero, one far more important to the future of DC Comics than Adam. The character, of course, was Batman. Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino, who had taken Adam to the heights of galactic glory, had been teleported to the New Look Batman Universe, and both he and Mystery in Space were left to lesser hands. Stripped of his emblematic helmet --what was up with that?! – and forced to share not just the book, but the cover of MiS with both the entirely unspectacular Space Ranger and his red-headed descendant, the "Future Adam Strange." He was even forced to team up with the Cosmic Constable in pedestrian, generic sf stories redolent of the worst days of Jack Schiff's Batman. No surprise, really, because Adam’s editor had been replaced by a new “JS.” Yes, the goodhearted, but goofy-alien-enthralled Jack Schiff was now at the helm of Mystery in Space. The magazine would somehow hang on until mid-1966, expiring with the entirely dopey Ultra, the Multi-Alien trying to hold the fort. End of aside. Whatever magic had enabled Adam Strange to help Hawkman, it wasn’t reciprocal. His two-issue stint with Hawkman was his last appearance anywhere until Schwartz brought him back for a run of reprints (with one exception, a Denny O’Neil original in #222) when he took over Strange Adventures with #217 in January 1969. Schwartz’s long memory for old favorites was evident when he took over Batman and Detective. He clearly had not forgotten the character who had been the focus of the first-ever DC Silver Age team-up back in Flash 112. In Detective 327, the issue in which Schwartz took over Batman and ushered in the New Look, he rewarded Elongated Man with his own series as the second feature, a spot he would occupy until Detective 383 (released November 1968), when Batgirl squeezed him out. Schwartz also reunited Ralph with the Flash in Detective 336, and in Detective 350, Green Lantern beamed down to work with him in “Green Lantern’s Blackout,” the story in which Ralph switched from his purple and blue costume to his more vivid red and black togs. Doing something else that had worked before in The Flash, Schwartz twice teamed up Batman and his back-up in a novel-length story, an idea that apparently had never occurred to Jack Schiff in all the years that Batman had shared Detective with the Martian Manhunter. In Detective 331 Batman and Robin meet Ralph for the first time in “The Museum of Mixed-up Men.” Their second team-up, in Detective #343 (released July 1965) was even better, the exciting “Secret War of the Phantom General,” which featured a Nazi war criminal as the villain. And, for good measure, that fall Schwartz also imported both EM and the Atom (!) to Batman 177, though they were more cameos than co-stars. Which brings us to the other famous resident of Earth-J, Green Lantern. Meeting his Golden Age counterpart worked for the Flash, so Schwartz would have been foolish not to have it happen in Green Lantern. So, like the Flash and the Atom, Green Lantern also worked with his Golden Age counterpart. (I’m guessing that Schwartz never tries the same trick with Carter Hall and Katar Hol, because even in his yellow cowl costume, the Golden Age Hawkman looked too much like his Earth-One counterpart.) Alan Scott and Hal Jordan teamed up in 1965, 1966 and once more in 1968 (Scott popped up in a flashback in ’67 as well). Each story was the beneficiary of a typically drop-dead beautiful Gil Kane cover. When he first popped in to see Hal Jordan in Green Lantern 40 (on the stands in August 1965), the Golden Age GL was in the midst of what seems to have been a try-out of sorts. His turn in GL 40 was his fourth appearance that year, with turns in the JLA-JSA issues as well as a “guest star” appearance in Showcase 55. No surprise there, as 1965 was the year of the Golden Agers. (On which more another time.) That first GL-GL team-up centered around the secret origin of the Guardians and the first appearance of the infamous Krona, who 30 or so years later would play a critical part in the destruction of the Multiverse during the Crisis on Infinite Earths. The issue remains a key chapter in the history of the DC Universe. The second ( GL 45) upped the Golden Age ante by bringing back the Earth-Two Green Lantern’s comic sidekick (You hadda have one in the 40s if you were going to be considered for membership at the Mystery Man Country Club), the quintessential Brooklyn cab driver, Doiby Dickles, complete with his very special lady, Goitrude (his cab). I won’t ruin it for you, but suffice to say that Doiby not only has a lot to do with defeating the malevolent Prince Peril, but winds up with rather a surprising reward. Hint: the story includes a beautiful princess, too! Adding to the let’s-not-take all-this-too-seriously fun is artist Gil Kane, looking a lot like a silver-haired Ray Palmer, who breaks the fourth wall to add some cliffhanger-style narration. My favorite of the three is the final pairing of the two GLs in GL 61... From its unforgettable cover to its unique story, this one is a classic. Young pro Mike Friedrich does an admirable job recapturing the grandeur of John Broome’s work on the previous two GL-GL team-ups but also includes some late-60s philosophizing that adds genuine emotion to the story. Ironically, Hal Jordan, attempting to help an angry, disillusioned Alan Scott cope with the ceaseless tide of evil in the world, plays a role similar to the one Green Arrow would for him a few years later – minus the smug attitude, of course. Kane and Sid Greene turned in their usual stunning art, not just in the action sequences, but in the intense scenes when Alan Scott is so frustrated and enraged that he wills his power ring to rid the Earth of all evil. This would be the final Silver Age teaming of Earth-One and Earth-Two counterparts, and a fitting one. Schwartz, Fox, Broome, Infantino, Anderson and Kane, had orchestrated a style that was perfect for the early 60s, laced with science-fiction and the innocence of traditional super-hero comics. But that style, coming smack-up against the radical changes and turmoil of the late sixties, had crested and was gradually vanishing. That final team-up story 's title neatly captures the feel of that time of transition: "Thoroughly Modern Mayhem.” Next time: Team-ups on Various Earths
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Post by Prince Hal on May 22, 2017 15:50:41 GMT -5
A Comic Lover’s Memories Part the Umpteenth The Best Unknown Editor at DCWhen I first became aware of DC’s fringe universes, the ones that lay beyond the familiar orbits of Earths-J and -M, where the standard DC superheroes held sway, it was only because once in a while I’d catch a tantalizing glimpse of one of them in an occasional ad in one of my “mainstream” DC comics. Sometimes it would be just the names of these comics from beyond the pale that I’d see in one of the classic DC subscription ads. I never saw them on the newsstands or in the candy stores. Thanks to my rat-faced-bastid cousin, as I’ve mentioned before, I did see a few Bob Hopes -- which I really liked, btw -- a few Blackhawks, and one issue of Rip Hunter, both of which I also liked. Ah, memories...Other than those few, however, I knew nothing of the non-JLA, non-Schwartz and Weisinger universes, meaning that in my early years of collecting, between 1961 and 1967, I never ever even saw an actual pulpy-paper copy of Sea Devils, or Challengers of the Unknown, or Doom Patrol… No Tomahawk, no Sugar and Spike, no Wonder Woman, no Metal Men... Nary a Showcase, or a House of Secrets, or a House of Mystery, or a Fox and Crow... When eventually my budget, my mobility and comics distribution all improved in late 1967 and early 1968, I was finally able to read buy and read many of the books from the DC universes (and become a Marvel buyer, too) that had for years rotated at a different rotational speed than the big-gun universes. What I discovered when I got a chance to read these books was that the editor of many of these titles was a guy named Murray Boltinoff, and looking back, I have to say that Boltinoff really opened my eyes, because he had a real knack for talking directly to the readers, not exactly typical of DC’s editors. Mort Weisinger, Julius Schwartz and Robert KanigherMort Weisinger talked down to the readers, of course, since he was a crotchety, defensive, passive-aggressive crank who couldn’t resist a dig, a snide remark or an out-and-out insult to his target demographic of ten-year-old nerd-boys. Robert Kanigher’s style wasn’t particularly engaging, either. You may recall that for years, the war comics’ letters pages read more like a column in Mercs ‘n’ Contractors Monthly, with RK (or some poor peon) dishing out answers to “readers’” questions about self-propelled guns, types of ammunition, and the comparative weight of Fokkers and Spads. All responses were supposedly reeled off by Sgt. Rock while he and the combat-happy Joes of Easy Company were taking ten. (Hence the page’s title.) Eventually Kanigher ran a more typical letters page, in which he often addressed readers as “Mr.” So-and-So, as if he were writing for the New Yorker, and never acknowledged the questions they posed about the stories or characters. It seemed like a Kanigher rule not to do so, and also to mention at least once in every column that Rock did not survive World War Two, having been killed by the last bullet fired in the final seconds of the war. His terse responses were always signed “RK;” warm and fuzzy he wasn’t. To be fair, Julius Schwartz talked to you, too, but he approached the letters pages like a teacher working a group of bright students, which was fine, but it didn’t always make for much participation for anyone else, especially newbies. I will say that it was a great way to learn about some of the ins and outs and finer points of comics, though, for which lots of kids like me had reason to thank excellent fans like Irene Vartanoff, Guy Lillian III, Paul Gambaccini, and Martin Pasko, among others. And while Stan (or whoever pretended to be Stan) tried to sound like your best pal in the Marvel letters pages, a little of that unctuous Stan-lish goes a lo-o-o-ong way, even when you’re 12. Two or three issues of “Hoo boy, effendi! Glad you dug our swingin’ little saga, cuz we’d hate to see what youda said if ya’d hated it! But we’re guessin’ that there’s gonna be a whole caboodle of Marvelites who might disagree with you, too, if the ever-bulgin’ mailbag is tellin’ us true…” and you needed to cleanse your palate with a bracing pint of Old Mort. Anyway, Murray (and isn’t that the perfect name for a mensch? Cue the Mary Tyler Moore Show theme…) took a whole different approach and engendered genuine warmth and camaraderie. And he had a penchant for appearing in his stories, too... He’d print all kinds of letters, and by devoting a good part of the column to snippets drawn from even more letters, he expanded the community of readers and was able to present a wide range of opinions and comments. Hell, he even gave space to fans who wanted to buy and sell back issues. I remember his doing that in Tomahawk, Blackhawk, Doom Patrol, and I’m pretty sure in Challengers, too. What I loved about the Boltinoff books then and still love now is that Murray was able to deftly combine affection and respect for what they were doing with a lack of pretension. In other words, he and his writers and artists took their characters and their adventures just seriously enough. Boltinoff's Earth in the mid-60s was not at all like the other DC Earths. Murray actually provided a little touch of Marvel at DC, but he was not just aping what Marvel had done, as some of the other DC editors ventually did (poorly, it turned out), but going in unique directions with his titles. I guess you could argue that he could get away with trying something new and different with his characters because their titles were always flying under the radar -- steady, stalwart, unrecognized, and definitely not high maintenance in the sense that the JLA types were. Change and innovation were definitely possible on Earth-B. From everything I’ve read about Boltinoff, he was essentially the consummate pro, often taking the least likely titles and turning them into big sellers. In an interview in The Krypton Companion, Nick Cardy says that Arnold Drake called him DC’s best editor. In the 1965-69 volume of the American Comic Book Chronicles, Drake says that Boltinoff, unlike Jack Schiff and Mort Weisinger, did not try to “enforce his own style” on his writers. He relied on proven artists and writers; supposedly he was the least likely of DC’s editors to buy someone’s first submission. In an interview in Comic Book Artist, Steve Mitchell, who worked not just as an artist, but in DC’s production department as well, claims that no Boltinoff book was ever late, and that though not “show bizzy,” Boltinoff “was so good at his work, nobody really knew he did it.” The interviewer chimes in that Boltinoff was DC’s best-selling editor; I think he means in the 70s, when he had inherited a couple of better known titles like Action, GI Combat and Superboy, but even so, that’s a nice feather in his cap. Anyway, Boltinoff strikes me as a guy who, to paraphrase Falstaff, might not have been an innovator himself, but was the cause of innovation in others. In addition, he seemed to have a nose for what would sell, if his track record is an indication. Thus, it seems apropos that the first-ever "team team-ups" and the first crossover between the stars of titles at DC (I think I’m right here, but feel free to correct me if you can think of something earlier) would happen under his watch. Boltinoff’s pioneered team-up stories between teams long before they became de rigueur, and eventually, old hat. When Boltinoff decided to team the Challengers of the Unknown with two other teams of adventurers, the Doom Patrol and the Sea Devils, it was a sit-up-and-take-notice moment, because there were really no such animals at DC outside of the annual JLA-JSA spectaculars. And there had certainly never been meetings that involved the company’s lesser-known types. I like trying to figure out why he might have done it. Certainly team-ups between heroes were becoming more frequent; as we’ve said before, Marvel never met a team-up it didn’t like. Hell, the first issue of Spider-Man featured the Fantastic Four; Daredevil and Spider-Man each showed up in the other’s 16th issue; and Spidey and Dr. Strange teamed up in the second Spider-Man Annual. Granted, Stan perfected the heroes-fighting-it-off-before-joining-forces shtik, but still, the combatants usually wound up as bff’s. Over at DC, by late 1965, when DP 101 and Challengers 48 came out, The Brave and the Bold had solidified itself for the better part of two years as a team-up book. So what Boltinoff pulled off wasn’t really a big risk, was it? Well, maybe not, but it was unique in a couple of ways. It crossed over from one book to another, first of all, which to my knowledge, really hadn’t happened at DC. In fact, it went from DP 101 to Challs 48 back to DP 102, so technically it was a three-issue crossover. And it was a team-up of teams, which at DC we had seen only in the previous few summers, when the JLA and the JSA met for their annual tete-a-tete. In Fantastic Four 26 (out in February 1964), the FF and the Avengers had teamed up -- after the obligatory initial brouhaha -- but actually did work together to defeat the Hulk. Two issues later, the FF teamed with the X-Men – sorta—in FF 28 (on sale April 1964), but that was another battle-by-mistake story, not a true team-up against a common enemy. I’m thinking that these must have been the earliest team-up of Marvel Comics teams in the Silver Age if only because the FF wouldn’t have had another team to fight alongside of until mid-1963 when thefirst issues of Avengers and X-Men arrived (according to the sainted Mike and his Amazing Newsstand: sing loudly his praise!) on the same day, July 2. I wonder if these team-ups were not only a way to use the FF to sell the other titles, but also to try to cash in on the popularity of the JLA-JSA spectaculars. In either case, Stan didn’t waste much time, as each of those team-ups came out between the fourth and fifth issues of Avengers and X-Men, respectively. In any case, its' Murray the B we're interested in right now and we'll head back to him and his groups of misfit heroes ASAP... Cause who'd want to miss this?!! Next: The Nitty-Gritty on the Earth-B Team-ups!
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Post by Prince Hal on Jul 18, 2017 16:42:41 GMT -5
A Comic Fan’s Memories, Part 22 More on Murray Boltinoff's EarthMurray Boltinoff’s sector of the DC Universe was home to an assortment of adventurers who never stepped over the line into traditional superhero-dom. Oh, they were heroes, of course, and they were more than capable of super-heroic feats, but Earth-Boltinoff comics were so far removed from all the other DC Earths that they might as well have been published by a different company. In the full flower of the Silver Age, Boltinoff edited a gallimaufry of unique titles: Challengers of the Unknown, Blackhawk, Doom Patrol (spawned from My Greatest Adventure), T omahawk, Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis, Dobie Gillis, Sugar and Spike, and Fox and the Crow. That is quite a wide-ranging roster, especially compared to the other editors, who presided over much smaller universes. Schwartz had the science-fiction anthologies and heroes, Weisinger the Superman Family, Kanigher the war books (Yes, he did also edit Metal Men and Wonder Woman, perhaps because he needed outlets for all the inanity he couldn’t legitimately squeeze into World War Two stories… not counting The War That Time Forgot.) As we mentioned last time, Boltinoff, and I’m guessing, Arnold Drake, his good right hand, whose innovative scripts and offbeat plots guaranteed he would never be courted or stolen away by Schwartz or Weisinger, decided to do something DC had never done before: team up two adventure teams, and do it as a crossover between the two titles. [Annoying OCD moment: I guess technically the DP was a superhero team, but with one exception, which we’ll mention later, the DP never showed up anywhere near the more respectable DC Earths and their heroic residents. They were the self-proclaimed “World’s Strangest Heroes,” not “super-heroes.”] In fact, a great part of their appeal and their characterization derived from their general dissatisfaction with the hands they’d been dealt. This was especially the case with Robotman and Negative Man, whose lives did indeed present serious challenges as a result of the incidents that made them what they were. Given Drake’s well documented realization that Marvel Comics was taking it to DC big-time with their un-stodgy approach, it’s not a stretch to think that he took a look at the Marvel titles in which this kind of team-up had already occurred between the FF and the X-Men and figured he and Boltinoff could do the same with their stable of characters. And maybe they figured it would boost sales on both titles. Not that a kid buying comics in 1965 ever thought about copies sold per issue. Back in those days, when news and general information about comics came only through letters pages, house ads and the limited-access pipeline of mimeographed fanzines, you just bought what you saw on the stands. You never gave a thought to why a particular character or comic was published. Sales? Who knew from sales? All we knew about the business end of comics was that Superman was “The World’s Best-Selling Comics Magazine!” as attested by the circle that appeared occasionally on the cover, between issues 180 (on sale in August 1965) and 201 (September 1967). DC definitely had a right to brag, though. According to the excellent site, Comichron (http://www.comichron.com/yearlycomicssales/postaldata/1965.html), Superman led all comers in 1965 with 824,000 average copies sold per issue. Per frikkin’ issue. Impressive enough on its own, but when you look at the figures for all of the Superman Family, you realize how long a shadow the Metropolis Money-Maker cast, and why Mort Weisinger could get away with being a world-class turd. Consider: In 1965, only three non-Superman titles cracked the top 10: Archie (7th, with 468,000); Batman (9th, with 454,000); and Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories (10th, with 410,000). Superboy, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Action, Adventure and World’s Finest finished in the remaining spots in the top ten. With Superman’s figures included, over 37,000,000 copies of Earth-Mort comics sold in 1965, grossing nearly over 44 million bucks for DC. In 2017 dollars? Well, a dollar in 1965 equals $7.74 in 2017. Do the math. (And I didn’t count the annuals: add 13 cents per issue for those.☺) One caveat, of course, is that these were the figures as reported by DC. Still, they couldn’t have gotten away with reporting they’d sold over 37 million Superman Family comics in a year without having moved some big numbers. No wonder DC couldn’t afford to offer any benefits to its writers. BTW, DC’s next two titles on the list finished in 11th and 15th places respectively: JLA, and – brace yourselves — Metal Men! Post-Silver Age Hal took this little excursion into sales figures because he was curious to see if circulation numbers might have had anything to do with the Challenger team-ups with the Doom Patrol and Sea Devils. Well, lo and behold, in 1965, Challengers sold about 221,000 copies per issue, the DP 201,000 and the Sea Devils a measly 183,000. The figures aren’t available for all years, but judging by what I could see, Challengers and DP had been hanging in there at those 200-plus numbers, for a few years, but Sea Devils had been falling every year since their debut. (They were down about 16,000 issues from 1964, and had fallen from a peak of 205,000.) Just wondering, but perhaps when Boltinoff and Drake decided to run the crossover between the Challengers and DP, the sales figures looked good enough to prompt Sea Devils editor George Kashdan (another DC editor on and of the fringe) to ask Boltinoff to allow the Sea Devils to pop over to see if it might induce some Challs readers to give his seagoing adventure team a try or bring back some former fans. Or maybe Boltinoff owed Kashdan a favor for importing the Doom Patrol into the pages of the Brave and the Bold for their one and only excursion into DC’s “big leagues” when they teamed up with the Flash (infamously chunky-looking on the Bruno Premiani-drawn cover) in B and B 65 (released June, 1964), a little more than a year after their debut. Whatever the circumstances, the team-up at best may have only staved off the ebb tide of the Sea Devils, whose tanks ran out of oxygen five issues after their visit with the Challs with the release of their 35th issue in March 1967. As for the Challs-DP story... well, leave it to Arnold Drake to try something very different for DC: a true crossover between two titles. Technically, it ran through three issues, though, because the team-up itself actually began in the last panel on the final page of the lead story in Doom Patrol 101. The DP is conducting a post-mortem on its defeat of the unfortunately named Kranus (the other kids must have mocked him at Super-Villain Prep) the Conqueror, punctuated by Robotman’s choice 1960s insults directed at Beast Boy, whom he called “Beat-Brat.” Anyway, unbeknownst to the DP, Ace Morgan of the fabled “Legion of Death-Cheaters” is stammering out a call to the “World’s Strangest Superheroes” for “m-m-medical help. ” The Challengers look as if they have been felled by poison. Thus begins this mini-epic. It continues in Challengers 48, with the DP arriving to see the tableau of seemingly dead Challengers. Check out that cover first, though: What kid could have resisted the come-ons from Boltinoff? (In 1965, I only saw this one in the ads. It would not be until years later that I found it for 50 cents somewhere.) “A Fantastic First…” That ratchets up the uniqueness of the issue. “Unbelievable!”… Well, it better be or I ain’t buying,” says every 12-year-old kid who reads comics in 1966. “The Doom Patrol Becomes A Grim Burial Squad!” “Doom?” “Grim?” “Burial?” Cool words. And that mythic, melodramatic title: “Twilight of the Challengers!” Somehow Robotman cries. (All we need is him squeaking out “oil… can” a few times.) Of course he is carrying two of the Challs. The ever-classy Rita manages to strike a pose and hoist Red Ryan waist-high. And the most aptly named superhero ever, the cynical Negative Man, is bringing up the rear as the sun sets behind him. As we said of anything that was cool back then, “Wicked!” The story itself? Hey, it’s the Silver Age, so brace yourselves. Yes, of course the Chief has a “Life Cabinet” where he can stash the Challs in a low-temperature, high-oxygen, low-pressure environment till whatever is killing them can be slowed down. Yes, of course the Chief can use his “experimental process” of reaching their unconscious minds using “low-level radio energy” to communicate with their “brain centers.” Yes, of course the “League of Challenger-Haters,” whom the Challs keep in their own private prison in Challenger Mountain, are responsible. Yes, of course the Challengers are poisoned by a herd of “chemo-zooids” that look like rabbits unleashed on them by Multi-Man. Yes, of course we see Red put three bullets into one of the rabbits at point-blank range. Yes, of course the Haters have an undersea hideout that the DP and Challs have to attack. Yes, Multi-Man changes into a giant creepy sea anemone and swallows Robotman through the top of his head, only to have Robotman burst free through said head. Yes, there is a scene in which Rita wraps Multi-Woman’s ankles around her head as the despicable Multi-Man tiptoes away. And that’s just Part One. Tune in next time and all that, for... "8 Against Eternity!" (Jeebus X. Christmas, what a title!)
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Post by Deleted on Jul 18, 2017 17:15:15 GMT -5
I LOVE Fat Flash on the cover of Brave & Bold 65! Never knew about the Doom Patrol/Challengers crossovers. Holy My Greatest Adventure Batman! Great stuff Sir Prince Hal !
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Post by Deleted on Jul 18, 2017 19:03:04 GMT -5
I LOVE Fat Flash on the cover of Brave & Bold 65! Never knew about the Doom Patrol/Challengers crossovers. Holy My Greatest Adventure Batman! Great stuff Sir Prince Hal ! So, do I ... Brave and the Bold #65 is one of my top 5 Brave and Bold issues.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jul 19, 2017 9:22:51 GMT -5
OBVIOUSLY this is the best thread ever. I love team-ups with all my heart and soul.
I didn't know that Brave and the Bold # 52 - one of my favorite comics period - led to a wave of DC War Team-Ups. I will be spiritually incomplete 'till I own at least all the MMs. Marie guest star stories.
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Post by Prince Hal on Jul 19, 2017 9:28:32 GMT -5
I LOVE Fat Flash on the cover of Brave & Bold 65! Never knew about the Doom Patrol/Challengers crossovers. Holy My Greatest Adventure Batman! Great stuff Sir Prince Hal ! So, do I ... Brave and the Bold #65 is one of my top 5 Brave and Bold issues. I love the Flash's gigantic "ears," too! Challengers/Sea Devils coming up soon!
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Post by Prince Hal on Jul 19, 2017 9:29:58 GMT -5
OBVIOUSLY this is the best thread ever. I love team-ups with all my heart and soul. I didn't know that Brave and the Bold # 52 - one of my favorite comics period - led to a wave of DC War Team-Ups. I will be spiritually incomplete 'till I own at least all the MMs. Marie guest star stories. Thanks, Repti! I love them, too, and that issue of B and B is a great one. More to come.
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Post by Prince Hal on Mar 12, 2020 15:59:57 GMT -5
A Comic Lover’s Memories, Part 34 The Year of Few Comics (Part Two)Slam’s response to the previous entry jarred my memory and I did some checking that proved what he made me suspect… that I’d also read my first Doc Savage paperbacks during the Year of Few Comics. I think I only read three Doc Savage books total – at least that’s all I can recall -- and two of them would have been available during this particular time. (The other, "Death in Silver," didn’t come out till 1968.) I recall grabbing those two very quickly, in a local J.J. Newberry’s and loving them. Of course, Doc was every pre-pubescent boy’s dream-self, but I do remember liking Monk as well. If Doc was my idealized self, Monk was the real me, a mini-Mr. Hyde. Except that he was super-strong, Monk embodied everything about Kid Hal that made me seek refuge in books like this and Robert E. Howard’s. He was short, less than good-looking, and always being mocked by Ham. And like him, I could have a short fuse at times. For whatever reason, both of the Doc books I saw featured him squaring off against giant reptiles. What wasn’t to like? And those James Bama covers, well, they were just pain cool. (Although Doc had a certain aged weathered look to him.) I also loved the 1930s atmosphere. Wonderful fun. I don’t really remember why I didn’t stay with Doc. I do recall that I never saw them anywhere else, at least when I had a little pocket change, and that there never seemed to be different ones at Newberry’s. Which I’m sure wasn’t the case, but when you’re 11 or 12, life has a shapeless quality to it. I might have gone a few days or a few months between visits to Newberry’s for all I know. I was also starting to read mysteries around this time, especially Sherlock Holmes. I think I first read "The Hound of the Baskervilles" in 1966 thanks to a book I bought through the TAB Book Club, which we received a circular for every month at school. Found a picture of the edition I read.... I always bought more books than any other kid in my class, I’m sure, and for that I give full credit to my mother. For all her faults, she always let me buy whatever I wanted form the list. The books were all reduced in price, which helped, but still, she must have realized how much I loved to read, and encouraged me to order a batch of books every month. Believe it or else, I still have a couple of books I first bought from the TAB Book Club and have found a couple on-line that I wanted to read again. Here are a couple I've kept since the late 60s. I still dip into these once in a while. Now for the comics I bought that year (with their on-sale dates)… Aquaman 31 (November 3, 1966) Hadn’t seen an Aquaman comic since the halcyon days of Aquaman 9, one of just two comics my mother ever bought for me and my brother (knowingly, at least). It was an odd issue because it combined the spy craze (Aquaman was up against a criminal organization called O.G.R.E. (Organization for General Revenge and Enslavement) It looked like a Superman cover, what with Aquaman stripping off his civvies to reveal who he was. My guess is that I picked it up because it was any Aquaman comic was a rara avis and that I’d better grab it or never see one again. I loved the Cardy art… so clean and clear, and for someone like me, who was trying to learn to draw, his was an easier style to learn from, all circular lines and uncluttered compositions. I wonder if this wasn’t hanging around on the racks in December, when I bought the two comics next on my list, probably because I was over at my grandmother’s after Christmas. She used to give me “errands” to run and allowed me to keep the change to spend on “funny books.” I’d run to the deli at the bottom of her street, pick up some ham for sandwiches and then hit the four candy stores in two blocks nearby and hunker down in front of an old movie reading to my heart’s content. A halcyon time. Batman 189 (December 6, 1966) I bought this because of the cover, an all-time great. The art on the story itself (by Moldoff and Giella) was not up to the standards Infantino, Giella (and the unknown colorist) established. But that was nothing new on most of the “New Look” Batman issues. This was certainly not a cover influenced by the Batmania craze, that’s for sure. (The “Holy Cliffhanger” blurb aside, of course, but you hardly notice it, do you?) I do remember, though, that the character of Jonathan Crane stuck with me. Clearly modeled on Ichabod Crane of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” Crane made more sense as a character than Batman foes like the Riddler and the Penguin, whose alter egos seemed identical in every respect to their costumed selves. In most cases, we never saw them “out of character.” Crane, however, had another life, as a teacher of all things, and was clearly an angry outsider who had never fit in and was now ready to burst. Because his m.o. was inducing fear by exploiting phobias, he was, even in the less violent and dangerous Silver Age, a foe Batman did not find easy to defeat. The cover was a better forerunner of the kind of aura the Scarecrow would eventually have as an enemy of Batman’s and of the kind of Batman we’d see appear once O‘Neil and Adams started to tell his stories. Tarzan 164 (December 15, 1966) I knew about Tarzan of course, and this might have been my attempt at jumping into the adventures of yet another pulp-era hero, given that I was becoming a fan of the Conan and Doc Savage stories.I t was a beautiful cover painting, like almost all of the adventure genre comics at Gold Key were. The innards were also good, though Gold Key's rigid page compositions worked against the movement of Russ Manning's flowing, graceful drawings. Adventure 353 (December 27, 1966) This one is an all-time favorite, a top-notch story. The blurb about a doomed legionnaire, the creepy design of Validus, and the somber background color (kind of a brownish-purple?) made this jump out at me. The Dirty Dozen/Magnificent Seven motif worked beautifully. The doomsday scenario was believable, the dangerous villains without a hint of having even a nugget-sized heart of gold among them -- Validus excepted -- and the heroes a decidedly motley crew. The Legion would have to save the universe sans Brainiac-5 and Saturn Girl, as well as the rest of the Legion. Only Superboy (natch!), old reliable Cosmic Boy, new kid in town Ferro Lad, Sun Boy and the fabulously useless Princess Projectra were left to defend the Alamo against the ravenous Sun-Eater, a Galactus-level antagonist, something unheard of at DC Comics, in a story told on a cosmic scale. Young Jim Shooter combined the best of Marvel with the best of DC in this finale (I had neither bought nor read the first half) and in a saga that today would have been a 12-issue mini-series destined to be collected in a trade, told a story of heroism, courage, treachery, and derring-do on an epic scale. In a time at DC that even a two-issue story was a rarity, this could have been expanded by two or three issues and would have been even greater. Still, it was as good as it got in 1966. No muss, no fuss, no merchandise tie-ins, no rapes or mind-wipes, no grim grittiness or painfully self-conscious world-weariness. These heroes and villains just got the job done. And so did Jim Shooter and Curt Swan. Great comic. The next batch I bought early in the summer. I’m betting I stayed over at my grandmother’s house again, maybe as a reward for graduating from eighth grade. Batman 194 (June 6, 1967) No memories of reading this, but I know I loved the cover. Just so different from the usual, plus I had really liked the previous Blockbuster story, which I still remember reading. It also had an excellent cover. B and B 73 (June 22, 1967) My first-ever B and B! I was so excited to actually hold an actual Brave and the Bold in my hands. Dramatic cover by Infantino and Cuidera! A couple of DC heroes I rarely got to see! At last, the comic I always wanted to read, but had never seen anywhere before! Just my luck, it was the final non-Batman team-up. With a couple of exceptions, I was somehow able to find B and B from here on in, but it was the oddball team-ups like this one that had always made me want to read it in the first place. Rawhide Kid 60 (June 29,1967) Another first. And probably my first Western comic, period. I remember picking this up at a candy store that always had comics just lying around, quite a few of them long beyond their shelf life. Another oddball book that I thoroughly enjoyed, but then rarely ever saw another issue of! The next issue I remember buying was #67, 15 months later. Sgt. Fury #46 (June 29, 1967) I was a sucker for this kind of story in Sgt. Fury, especially a John Severin story. It made me think that Marvel could do an occasional DC-style war story in which actual people were the characters, as opposed to GI superheroes. Ripley’s Believe it or Not 7 (August 24, 1967) No idea why I bought it except that I’d never seen it before. I’ always liked the comic strip, and the paperback collections of it, so maybe that was it. And the cover painting is a little creepy with that earless, round-headed werewolf snarling at you. Detective 368 (August 29, 1967) My first Detective in nearly two years; I’d skipped most of the go-go check phase in Detective and Batman. I couldn’t stand the TV show and the disrespectful way in which it had treated Batman (and by extension, me), which accounted for some of that. I do remember, though, that as I read this issue, with a stunningly drawn and colored Infantino-Anderson cover stripped of go-go checks for the third issue in a row, Batman solving a mystery, and a clever little Elongated Man back-up, I felt as if I’d returned home where things were more the way they used to be. It was a nice feeling, too, especially as I was headed on the adventure of a lifetime, one that would change me forever, an adventure in which comics would play an important part.
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