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
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