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Post by Action Ace on Jul 4, 2014 15:23:44 GMT -5
I almost forgot, Hoosier X there is a Showcase Presents volume that has all the Batgirl backups in it plus a few more appearances.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 4, 2014 15:44:34 GMT -5
I almost forgot, Hoosier X there is a Showcase Presents volume that has all the Batgirl backups in it plus a few more appearances. I'll have to see if I can get it through the library. I would love to read ALL the Rep. Boots Gordon (D-N.J.) appearances. |
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Post by Action Ace on Jul 4, 2014 16:09:28 GMT -5
I almost forgot, Hoosier X there is a Showcase Presents volume that has all the Batgirl backups in it plus a few more appearances. I'll have to see if I can get it through the library. I would love to read ALL the Rep. Boots Gordon (D-N.J.) appearances. Another odd thing about her term is the timing. It almost works out that she could have been elected in the Democratic Watergate wave of 1974, re-elected twice and thrown out of office in the Reagan Revolution of 1980. |
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 4, 2014 16:15:32 GMT -5
I'll have to see if I can get it through the library. I would love to read ALL the Rep. Boots Gordon (D-N.J.) appearances. Another odd thing about her term is the timing. It almost works out that she could have been elected in the Democratic Watergate wave of 1974, re-elected twice and thrown out of office in the Reagan Revolution of 1980. It's even better than that! Detective #422 to #424 are from 1972! Boots Gordon - as Batgirl - was probably front and center in investigating the Watergate crimes!
This is DC's greatest untold story of the 1970s!
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Post by foxley on Jul 4, 2014 19:55:34 GMT -5
This is actually mentioned somewhere (I think in Who's Who), and the explanation given is that in the DCU there exists something called the Knight Dependents Act (named after Seantor Knight, the father of Phantom Lady) which allows people younger than 25 to run under certain circumstances.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 4, 2014 22:38:51 GMT -5
That sounds real familiar, foxley. I don't where I might have seen it.
But I don't have a problem thinking of Boots as aged 25 in 1972.
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Post by travishedgecoke on Jul 5, 2014 7:09:23 GMT -5
On the subject of 70s Batman... I never really got the ire raised in some over the Spook being "killed" early in the Grant Morrison run, because a) hardly anyone remembered the Spook up to that point and b) the Spook turns out to've been a dead man in the story he's introduced in. Appearing to be dead isn't really going to slow the Spook down, if someone else wanted to use him again, it just gave us a fresher death to riff on.
Kubert even drew the Spook's removed head to look like an incidental character in the original story, not the guy as caught, who turns out to've been executed ten years earlier.
(Bonus: That second part of that two-part story was "The Spook Strikes Again," which I only remember because of Miller and Varley's DKSA.)
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Post by gothos on Jul 7, 2014 17:06:32 GMT -5
Some of you might find this project interesting. If you can think of anyone I may have missed, chime in.
BATMAN METAVILLAINS YEAR-BY-YEAR
For many years the Batman franchise has been identified as one of the best sources of superior villains. I got interested, though, in the order in which they appeared: the good, the bad, and the mostly forgotten.
“Metavillains” is a throwaway term for any villain with a “meta” type of weapon, ability or appearance, to avoid the cumbersome associations with “supervillains.” I do leave out two types I found irrelevant to this survey: gangs of crooks whose only fantastic nature is dressing up in odd garments, and the much-hated aliens of Batman’s “sci-fi” period. All villains are drawn from Batman’s features in BATMAN, DETECTIVE COMICS, or WORLD’S FINEST: I don’t include any characters from the Batman-Superman teamups in WORLD’S FINEST or the ROBIN backup feature. Villains’ appearances are dated according to the dates on the magazines themselves for convenience, which may not match the actual time of appearance.
EARLY GOLDEN AGE—1939 through 1945 (end of World War II)
1939-- Doctor Death,The Duc D’Orterre,The Monk,The Scarlet Horde
1940—The Catwoman, the Joker, Clayface (I), Hugo Strange, The Puppet Master, Professor Hugo Vreekill, Adam Lamb
1941—Blackbeard, The Penguin, Professor Radium, The Scarecrow
1942—Two-Face, Little Nap
1943—The Crime Doctor, The Cavalier, The Conjurer, Tweedledee and Tweedledum
1944-- none
1945—The Blaze
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Post by gothos on Jul 7, 2014 17:07:34 GMT -5
LATE GOLDEN AGE—1945 through 1955 (institution of Comics Code)
1946—The Jackal
1947—Doctor Hercules, Doctor Agar, The Glass Man, The Shiner, The Thinker (I)
1948—The Human Key, The Mad Hatter (I), The Riddler
1949—Count Florian, The Goblin, The Gong, The Thinker (II), The Pied Piper, Tiger Shark, Professor Zero
1950—Deadshot
1951—The Dagger, Killer Moth
1952—The Firefly (I), The Human Magnet, Hydro, Mister Cypher, The King of the Cats
1953—Jolly Roger, Mister Blank, Mister Roulette, Boss Dyke, The Executioner, The Black Rogue
1954—Jonathan Bard, The Crimesmith, The Inventor, The Mirror Man, Mister Camera, Baron Gravio
1955—none
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Post by gothos on Jul 7, 2014 17:10:01 GMT -5
EARLY SILVER AGE-- 1955 to 1964 (beginning of the “New Look”)
1956—The Mad Hatter (II), Checkmate
1957—The Daredevils, Professor Milo
1958—The Calendar Man, the Bat People, Doctor Double X, Jackal-Head, The False Face, The Terrible Trio, The Mirage Maker
1959—The Clock, Mister Zero, The Firefly (II), Astro, Thor, Alec Wyre, The Professor, The Signalman
1960—The Star-Man, The Atomic Man, The Spinner, The Kite-Man, The Zebra-Man, The Sea Fox, Professor Simms, The Wheel
1961—The Planet Master, Simple Simon, Doctor Pneumo, The Blue Bowman, The Clockmaster, The Moth, The Raven and the Wasp, The Brand, The Elemental Man
1962—Alpha, Hugo Arnold, Clayface (II), Mister Polka-Dot
1963—The Ant-Man, The Cat-Man, Doctor No-Face, Jungle Man, Doctor Dorn
1964—Eric Barroc, Boss Barrow, the Zodiac Master
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Post by gothos on Jul 7, 2014 17:10:58 GMT -5
LATE SILVER AGE—1964 to 1970 (end of Silver Age)
1964- The Outsider, the Grasshopper Gang, Andrew Warner
1965—The Big Game Hunter, The Make-Up Man, Karmak, Klag the Hunter, Eddie Repp, General Von Dort, The Getaway Genius, Mister Incognito, Eivol Ekdal
1966—Mister Esper, Doctor Tzin-Tzin, The Bouncer, The Death-Man, The Birdmaster, Poison Ivy, The Hooded Hangman, The Rocketeers, the Monarch of Menace, the Eraser, the Cluemaster, the Blockbuster, the Spellbinder
1967—Ira Radon, Johnny Witts, Bag O’Bones, Rembrandt Dickens, The Schemer, Doc Hastings
1968—The Sports Spoilers, the Masquerader
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Post by gothos on Jul 7, 2014 17:16:08 GMT -5
Originally when I put together this timeline, I only intended to put it on my blog. Then I found myself wondering if it might sell to CBR or Comixology, with the addition of commentary on each of the four periods, tracing the frequency with which the villains appeared, cultural significance, and what have you-- for which I've done a rough draft.
It's a shame there's no print fanzines that would want this, but those that remain are largely all about interviewing the comics creators, not analyzing the comics themselves.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 7, 2014 17:28:40 GMT -5
I love these guys.
The Spinner is hi-larious.
I love the way Mr. Camera's face is distorted through the lens in his mask.
And there's Johnny Witts! They came up with him in the 1960s and in his second appearance he was sitting at the table with Catwoman, Joker and Penguin (and the Getaway Genius!) when they all got together to discuss how to keep organized crime out of Gotham. (They preferred their own form of disorganized crime.) And then Johnny Witts never appeared again!
And I also love Arnold Hugo's status as a member of one of Gotham's oldest families, thirty or forty years before every other villain had the same status. (Hugo's invisible robots are pretty cool, too.)
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Post by gothos on Jul 7, 2014 18:07:23 GMT -5
I've still never read Arnold's first appearance. I first encountered him as a J'onn J'onzz foe, when Jack Schiff took that feature from DETECTIVE to HOUSE OF MYSTERY. I seem to remember that the professor got his names crossed around in the transition.
Now that I think of it, the wild and crazy villains of Schiff's BATMAN are of a piece with the wild and crazy heroes of his DIAL H feature!
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 7, 2014 19:17:31 GMT -5
I've got about 15 original issues of Detective Comics from the 1959 to 1963 era and I've read quite a few others in reprint form. One of the comics I have is Detective Comics #306 with the first Arnold Hugo story. He's definitely called Arnold Hugo. He's all mad because the Gotham Historical Society bypassed him for a pageant in favor of ... Bruce Wayne! So he subjects himself to the Brain-Stimulator he's invented and his head grows big and he decides to get his revenge by disrupting the historical pageant!
Ha ha ha ha! So evil!
So Bruce Wayne enacts the time when his medieval ancestor Lancelot Wayne dressed in a gliding suit to glide like a bat into the water. ("The first Batman!" Bruce says to himself.) Hugo attacks the demonstration with a ray and Bruce manages to slyly get into his real Batman costume and scuffles with Hugo for about ten more pages.
I also have the story where Arnold Hugo first fought the Martian Manhunter, and that's in Detective Comics too. I've never read any of the appearances in House of Mystery.
He's listed as Hugo Arnold in Michael Fleischer's Batman Encyclopedia.
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