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Post by Cei-U! on Jul 13, 2021 10:37:32 GMT -5
The Jimmy Olsen run was the Zeppo Marx of Kirby's Fourth World.
Cei-U!
I summon the obscure analogy!
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 13, 2021 11:17:49 GMT -5
The Jimmy Olsen run was the Zeppo Marx of Kirby's Fourth World. Cei-U! I summon the obscure analogy! At least it wasn't Gummo. |
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Post by MWGallaher on Jul 13, 2021 20:44:49 GMT -5
SUPERBOY #178 On sale in August 1971  Cover by Neal Adams With a cover like that, it’s easy to see why a monster fanatic like young Mike would plunk down his quarter! The Superman Family titles were familiar enough that I could be confident of not feeling too lost, I thought. “Pawn of the Monster-Maker” Written by Leo Dorfman Penciled by Bob Brown Inked by Murphy Anderson Lettered by Ben Oda We open with Superboy flying around the distant “devastated world” of Glorr, looking at the monstrous animal/plant hybrids caused by pollution (a big cause in the early 70’s). He returns home to Smallville only to receive a call to the Cinema City Studios, where a fire has broken out. (Is this in Smallville? I wouldn’t have wondered about that back then, but the Smallville I came to know would not have been home to a movie studio.) Battling a two-headed dragon (“What kind of sick brain could create a hideous beast like this?!”) in the midst of the fire, Superboy finds his hands turning into dragon claws, which is witnessed by film director Mr. Milo and his aide Klip. The transformation passes quickly, and Superboy concludes that the animatronic dragon set itself—and the set—on fire. It was all part of a movie scene, and Superboy’s a critic of the monster-making director: “Mr. Milo, monster pictures are out of date. Everyone knows your so-called creatures are just glorified wind-up toys!” Milo thinks his work is still worthwhile, with several hits behind him:  Milo vows a comeback, as Superboy heads home. But the next day, a television tower near Metropolis is hit by a lightning storm, and Superboy, responding to prevent the collapse of the tower, is transformed into a giant Frankenstein:  These crazy transformations must be the result of exposure to the polluted atmosphere of Glorr, Clark figures. Next up, he responds to an emergency at the zoo, and transforms into a giant ape. Milo and Klip, conveniently, are on the scene filming Superboy’s strange change.  In the following days, the changes continue: a giant werewolf, a giant ant, each time with the film-maker on the spot ready to take some footage. Turns out that Klip has invented an “ultra-morph ray” powered by Red Kryponite. That’s a new one on me, but the caption explains that Red K has weird temporary effects. They’ve been using Superboy to get scenes for their next monster film. Unfortunately, no one is calling on Superboy now, since in his monster transformations, he’s causing plenty of damage. So Milo engineers an emergency, with actors pretending to be attacked by bats. Superboy responds, and Klip uses his ray to turn Superboy into a giant bat, as Milo films. What’s this?! Superboy transforms into a giant bat even without the ray being focused on him!  It’s all a setup—Superboy figured it all out thanks to the director’s too-convenient appearance at every transformation. There is a real giant bat for one panel at the end: the Red K lens has fallen out and the ray transformed Milo himself into a bat, temporarily! It wears off and Superboy takes them both to the cops. As I probably expected, it was an easy read, self-contained and not requiring any significant amount of comic book knowledge. In retrospect, it’s odd that the story has Superboy seeming so critical of monster movies when the comic itself is capitalizing on them. Next up, the reprint content! Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes: “The Lone Wolf Legionnaire” Written by Edmond Hamilton Drawn by John Forte  The splash promises a story of the Legion wanting “to enlist a youth who refuses to join!”, showing a young man with a wolf’s head icon on his chest turning his back on several colorfully costumed characters. I would have been very intrigued from the start, since I’d never heard of any of these guys. From the convenient roll call, I could have matched Sun Boy based on the costume, and maybe figure out that the girl was Light Lass, although the hard-to-distinguish icon would have had me uncertain as to whether this was instead Saturn Girl. Still, I trusted all would be made clear, and dived right in… …to find someone going into jail on a “prison world” for joining the Legion under false pretenses to sabotage their “Emergency Board” (“vital to the law enforcement of the universe!”) I’m all in at this point. SF superheroes of the future, prison planets, cool stuff! Next, I meet this Emergency board. Superboy I know, although I wouldn’t understand why he’s hanging out with heroes in the future like it was routine. The monitor board leads Saturn Girl to dispatch Superboy and…Mon-El (what kind of name is that for a superhero?) to the planet Krallak to deal with an exploded moon, and Ultra Boy and Lightning Lad to Zoon to recover stolen space crystals (and a second big theft reported after the pair depart!). Brainiac 5 and Light Lass are sent to Earth to check out an interplanetary circus with too-dangerous beasts. At the circus, Brainy and Light Lass deal with an out-of-control menagerie of strange alien animals like the camelephants and the Morvennian fear-beast, when they are aided by a new arrival, swinging on the acrobat’s rope. This turns out to be “Karth Arn”, a self-described “Lone Wolf” who rejects Light Lass’s suggestion to join the Legion, which is “short of members”. No way, says the loner, until he hears about the superhuman robberies on Zoon. This catches his interest, but he still walks away from the Legionnaires, who report back at headquarters, with suspicions that this Lone Wolf with super-acrobatic powers and strength might be the thief of Zoon, come to Earth to hide out. Light Lass follows her heart, convince that Lone Wolf is no criminal. But Chameleon boy reports that Lone Wolf has arrived on Zoon, and then it’s Brainy, Light Lass, and Sun Boy off to Zoon in pursuit. On Zoon, the video shows a barehanded man in shadow ripping off a metal door to steal the crystals. Fingerprints? Nope, Ultra Boy’s untra-vision shows the fingerprints to be blank! The newly-arriving Legionnaires are pursing Lone Wolf in their cruiser when they’re trapped by a ray pulling them into another dimension. Lone Wolf, who’s soft on Light Lass, rams their cruiser to save them. In the wreckage, he reveals to Light Lass his awful secret: he’s not a human being. In part two, Lone Wolf flees before sharing more, but Light Lass (who kissed his unconscious lips!) explains he can’t be a robot, as Brainy suggests. An android, then? Yep, that’s exactly what he is, according to Lone Wolf’s own thoughts of his non-existent memories of a childhood. Doing some research, the Emergency Board identifies Dr. Mar Londo of Zoon as an android experimenter, but he’s been dead since 2963. Still, worth checking out his lab, where they presume Lone Wolf is heading. There they meet the scientist’s son, Brin Londo, who explains that Karth was created in order to secure the rare element Zuunium, which exists only on Zoon. Dr. Londo created a whole army of androids and sent them to the mines, where strange beasts and volcanic activity wiped out most of the androids. Only one, Karth Arn, returned with the goods. Dr. Londo promises to treat Karth like a son, but when Londo dies, Karth deserts his creator’s son Brin. Calling himself Lone Wolf, he proceeded to start committing robberies, according to Brin. The story falls apart when Lone Wolf arrives, though; “Brin Londo” is the android, and “Karth Arn” is the real son, granted super-powers courtesy of the Zuunium. The android stunned the son into amnesia after his dad died, convinced him he was an android, and posed as the natural son. In a quick wrap-up, Brainy cures Brin’s amnesia, and he joins the Legion, but disavows the name “Lone Wolf”, now that he has companions. And that would have been my first comic book superhero origin story! I remember thinking that “Lone Wolf” was a really cool name for a superhero, and digging the wolf’s head symbol. I wouldn’t have know quite what to make of the Legion, or guessed how big the roster was, especially since they make a big deal of being short-handed. I got that they were operating in the far future, and picked up on some of the super-powers, but not all of them. “Mon-El” and Lightning Lad disappeared from the story without giving a clue as to what their deal was. Ultra Boy only showed his “ultra-vision” powers. Brainiac 5, well, maybe I figured out from his name that he was supposed to be smart, but he didn’t do any super-braining in this story. Saturn Girl just seemed to be the dispatcher. So it left me with questions, but I didn’t feel dissatisfied. There was obviously too much going on to give all of these guys a full demonstration, right? Weird beasts, strange planetary illumination, dimension-transfer rays, space crystals, love story, prison planet (I probably expected that guy on page 1 to play some kind of part in the story, but no, he’s just there to establish the importance of the Legion’s “Emergency Board”, which I don’t recall ever seeing mentioned again in the many Legion stories I would read in the ensuing years!), the mystery of what Lone Wolf would call himself now…lots to chew on in these 17 pages! "The Superboy Legend" A one-pager with art by Brown and Anderson explains Green Kryptonite, and how Superboy was first exposed to it. Thanks, guys, very helpful to a new reader. Even though I already knew what it did and where it came from, this was a nice bit of elaboration. "Superbaby's First Friend" by Geoff Brown, Bob Brown, and Murphy Anderson The Kents are vacationing in Redstone Park, where even in isolation, Ma & Pa are concerned about baby Clark (who's about 3) using his powers where strangers might see. They want to keep his identity a secret until he's Superman (they were really planning ahead!). A similar situation is occurring on the other side of the lake, where a couple are keeping young pointy-eared Gary, who can raise boulders telepathically, away from prying eyes. When Gary sees Clark walking on water, the both of them figure it's OK to show each other their special abilities. Gary's mommy and daddy taught him how to do his tricks--all he has to do is say a poem, and he can grow flowers, or ride through the air on a stick. Evidently, Gary's family are witches. Nearby, Kimbro and Rowley are fleeing from the cops to Volcano Lake, where they stashed the loot from their recent museum heist. The sight of flying babies is distracting, though:  When they recover after being rescued, they assume it was a delusion, and don their scuba gear. Beneath the waters of the lake, they gather some of the loot, but not the heavy statue, which will require special equipment to retrieve. Special equipment...or the assistance of two super-powered tykes! Clark and Gary show up again, and help the guys out by fishing out their "dolly"!The thugs chase off the boys with cruel words, and Clark reacts with the epitome of DC baby-talk:"We only want to play, but bad mans scare us! They be mean!" But kids are easily distracted, and begin playing with Gary's bubble-blower. Of course, with their powers, they quickly begin to accelerate their play, until the lake is covered in thick foam, blocking the thugs' escape. Gary's parents assume Gary was responsible, and the Kents pin the blame on Clark, and both families flee in opposite directions. None of the parents believe their sons' stories of another little boy who also has super powers. The rangers investigating the weird lake phenomenon nab Kimbro and Rowley when they make their way out of what proved to be "a harmless glycerine emulsion which won't harm the environment."Back in their respective homes, the boys wonder if they'll ever meet their special playmate again. OK, “Superbaby”. This was a new one for me, just beginning to be exposed to the wide range of Superman Family characters and concepts that would receive their own backups. The masthead said “Superboy”, but this was not the Teen of Steel, it was the Tot of Steel. But, I must admit, I remember getting a big kick out of this. A typical American reader of the time was sure to find Gary's (unnamed) family familiar, since TV's popular Bewitched sitcom had made us comfortable with the idea of a friendly family of witches in a modern setting. Around this time, the TV family had introduced a second child, Adam, a baby warlock. Murphy Anderson gave his usual polish to Bob Brown's often rough-hewn art. Geoff Brown was a pseudonym for writer Leo Dorfman, according to the GCD. MONSTER APPEAL: This was as pure an example of the comics pandering to the monster-lovers as you could hope to find, with Superboy transforming into Frankenstein’s monster, King Kong, and, at least on the cover, that awesome bat-creature! And the film director’s past creations looked pretty neat, too. 5 out of 5! COLLECTING INSPIRATION: SUPERBOY would become one of my first must-buy comics, for a while at least. Especially when it had the Legion! 4 out of 5! LORE: There were some gaps to fill in: Superboy’s role in the Legion, mainly, but I got the gist of everything, a short introduction to Kryptonite (which I knew from the TV show, of course, but this gave lots of important details), Clark Kent’s parents, and the very concept of “Superbaby”. I had to figure out that this was Superman as a teen, since it didn’t say so specifically, but that was probably easy enough, and maybe I knew it already from the cartoons on Saturday morning. 3 out of 5! ART-SCHOOLING: While John Forte’s work on the Legion reprint wouldn’t have bowled me over, I think I really dug the work of Bob Brown and Murphy Anderson on the new content, mainly (although I wouldn’t have realized it then) due to Anderson’s lush inks polishing the frequently clunky work of Bob Brown. And this would have been my first pure Neal Adams cover, and boy, was it an art lesson! Awesome stuff! 2 out of 5! |
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Post by MWGallaher on Jul 18, 2021 6:45:53 GMT -5
WORLD'S FINEST COMICS #206 On sale in August 1971  Cover by Dick Giordano This one reprints: “The Secret of the Captive Cavemen” by Bill Finger & Jim Mooney (WF #138, Dec 1963) “The Creature That was Exchanged for Superman” by Jerry Coleman, Dick Sprang, and Sheldon Moldoff (WF #118, Jun 1961) “Riddle of the Four Planets!” by Coleman and Mooney (WF #130, Dec 1962) “The Mirror Batman” by Coleman and Mooney (WF #121, Nov 1961) These reprints added panels on the splash to identify penciler and original publication date and issue number (writers and inkers listed above obtained from GCD). Young Mike would have considered these reprints—between 10 and 8 years since original publication—to be pretty old, but I did have a basic understanding of where in the history of DC’s publishing these would have landed, having seen the Newsboy Legion reprint date in JIMMY OLSEN. The penciler credit was helpful as I was beginning to gather names and form a rudimentary awareness of differences between styles. As an artistically inclined youth, I knew from comparison between myself and others that some people were “better drawers” than others, but the concept that among professional artists there would be detectable distinctions and different levels of quality was not an immediately obvious conclusion without the accumulation of evidence. Credits helped me to develop that understanding. Apparently the Superman and Batman related comics seemed like the safest bet for me during this first month of comics buying. Looking over all the comics on sale in August 1971, none of the other covers made a memorable impression on me, although I surely must have seen many of them on the stands next to the ones I did buy (this issue completes the total of four comics I bought during my first month). I’m at a loss to explain why none of the Marvel comics drew my interest. I knew Spider-Man and Fantastic Four from their cartoon shows, which I had enjoyed. I’m positive that I really liked The Hulk (particularly) and Thor (somewhat) from their appearance on the Grantray-Lawrence cartoons (but not Captain America, Iron Man, or Sub-Mariner!). Perhaps it’s just that the Marvel comics I saw didn’t feature enough monsters on the cover. AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #102 did feature “Vampire at Large” with Morbius, but perhaps I didn’t see that one. CREATURES ON THE LOOSE? WHERE MONSTERS DWELL? No memory of being tempted by those, and except for HULK #145, no prominent monstrosities stand out. The table of contents identifies the theme of this issue as “Adventures on Other Worlds”, all featuring the team of Superman and the Dynamic Duo. This would be my first exposure to the fact that these guys had an ongoing history of teaming up. (Aside: a couple of years prior, my next door neighbor’s dad contradicted my contention that Batman was a “new” hero and Superman was “older”. He made the to-me dubious claim that they had been around for about the same length of time. This would have been my first lesson in the history of comic book publication. ) In “Secret of the Captive Cavemen”, Batman and Robin encounter an alien attempting to shoot humans with his Z-beam, which fires red loops but has no effect. The alien flees into the library, where Batman and Robin overhear him talking to someone—modern humans are not susceptible to the Z-beam. He needs to use it on primitive humans! The alien commits suicide (!?) by a poison pill when the heroes corner him, and his compatriots flee in a space ship that can travel into the past.  Time to visit Professor Carter Nichols (see shaxper & Hoosier X ’s Batman review thread, now playing in this forum!) for an assist with time travel, with Superman scheduled to join him once the workday is over! The World’s Finest team battles some cavemen, then become friends with the tribe right when the aliens return to take captives. The heroes tear up their uniforms and make themselves up to look like shaggy troglodyte versions of themselves to blend in. The costumes mark them as “leaders” of the tribe to the aliens, whose Z-beam saps free will…except, of course, modern men like the World’s Finest, who fake being mentally subdued. The slaves are transported to the aliens’ home planet to be put to work. Their task? Mining drakkium, an ore that affects the aliens like Kryptonite, hence their inability to mine it themselves. Once refined, the drakkium is safe, it’s the raw ore that they fear. The planet’s red sun leaves Superman de-powered, and when the aliens realize the World’s Finest aren’t really mind-controlled, the command the cavemen to attack them. The problem is easily solved when Superman commandeers the Z-Beam himself and re-instructs the cavemen. It turns out these aliens are rebels attempting to overthrow their rightful government. The complicated plan? Expose the government aliens to raw Drakkium ore to kill them, then send the refined ore—which is equally deadly to humans—to Earth, and conquer our own planet, as well! The heroes defeat the plan, using raw Drakkium to render the rebels unconscious, saving them before they die, of course. The good government aliens bury all drakkium in the sea, and the trio returns to their own time, with Superman captured in the “collapsible time-box” Batman had on hand to return to Professor Nichols’ lab! Next up is “The Creature That Was Exchanged for Superman”, and the split splash page previews the premise: Superman is transported to some other space-time dimension where he battles a goofy orange alien with a snout like a saw blade, while an identical and invulnerable alien takes his place on earth, defying the attempts of Batman and Robin to combat it. The transfer occurs while the WF Team are campaigning to “Help the Heart Fund” in a banner-bedecked Batmobile:  The Dynamic Duo are incapable of restraining the apparently dangerous monster, who appears to be seeking out something with the aid of his light-emitting belt device. It burrows underground, giving Batman an idea of trapping it when it attempts to emerge. Robin has insightfully guessed that Superman has been swapped over to the creature’s world of origin, where a different variety of aliens attempts to restrain Superman, giving their creature time to complete its mission before swapping the two again with their exchange machine. Superman’s invulnerable to their weapons but his powers are altered here: his heat vision becomes frost vision, and his flight is uncontrollable. Use of any power is, therefore, very risky, but a runaway vehicle makes the attempt necessary; his super-breath, though, is flame breath! Fortunately for his conscience, the aliens’ technology is quite advanced, and they didn’t need his help! Seeing the threat Superman presents, the natives share another piece of the puzzle: the space-time exchange ray was stolen by “Vathgar”, and they presume it was done to bring this deadly alien Superman to their world to help him conquer it! Superman reasons with him, and meets other Skran, the species of beast that has taken his place on Earth. These animals are harmless, but Vanthgar has stolen two. With one on Earth, the other must be with Vanthgar, and Superman’s unaffected super-hearing will allow him to track it…once he’s learned to control his wobbly flying powers! On Earth, the Skran is gobbling iron ore, and defeats Batman’s attempts to capture it, being apparently as invulnerable as Superman, and capable of changing a cascade of water released from the dam into steam. It’s acquired new, strange powers from eating the iron ore! On Xeron, Superman has mastered his distorted powers, and battles Vathgar’s other Skarn, also empowered from eating iron ore (which is extremely rare there). Superman’s in a fix: if he allows the exchange to occur (the machine has scheduled it for a particular time and place), then the super-powered Skran currently on Earth will devastate Xeron, without him there to defeat it. But if he doesn’t go to the location to complete the exchange, the deadly Skarn will stay on Earth, imperiling Superman’s adopted home planet! And if Batman and Robin destroy the Skran on Earth, Superman is trapped there on Xeron! Batman and Robin have deduced the same dilemma as the Skarn approaches the again-visible transport ray, when a barrage of artillery from the military appears to destroy the Skarn before it reaches the ray! But the smoke clears, and instead, the attack has caused the Skran to split into two identical copies of itself! One of them enters the ray, and back comes Superman! But Superman has a plan already in mind, and retrieves an iceberg to encase the Skarn clone that has remained on Earth. It turns out that his freeze-breath had sapped the Skarn’s powers on Xeron, revealing the vulnerability of the iron-powered beasts. The Skarn left on Earth is now a harmless creature, destined for a new home (in an iron-free cage) at the Gotham Zoo! In “Riddle of the Four Planets!”, the splash presents Superman battling the Zelaphod, a giant star-fish like alien digging tendrils into the surface of the planet, where they will trigger terrible explosions, while Batman, Robin, and some visiting aliens watch. The next pages bring us up to speed: the aliens—all different in species—have arrived right with the Zelaphod, which has already burrowed itself outside Gotham. They’re a troupe of traveling entertainers on a sight-seeing trip through the cosmos, and they’ve accidentally brought along the deadly hitchhiker, a beast thought to have been a myth, but one that is reputed to absorb chemicals through its far-reaching tendrils, then destroying the planet it has been leeching from.  Summoning Superman doesn’t help, since he can’t dislodge the Zelaphod. The troupe recalls an antidote immortalized in a poem titled “Sauk”, which (“obviously”) stands for the initial letters of four planets, each of which is home to one of the ingredients cryptically referenced in the poem. Superman will fly to Sinzar and Antella to get two of the ingredients, Batman and Robin will accompany the troupe to Unxor and Karos for the other two. On Sinzar, Superman discovers its “waterless sea” in a lost city inside a mountain, and on Antella, the Forbidden Forest, home to weird creatures, finds the “barking tree”, retrieving both of his parts of the antidote. On Unxor, after filling in for the cast who have been stricken with space measles and performing a show of acrobatic stunts, Bruce and Dick find “the ears that hear the music of morning’s knell”, and on Karos, the “tuft of hair from the mystic Krell”, with Superman coming to their aid to defeat the dragon-like Krell. It is there that Batman discovers the origin of the Zelaphod and takes steps to ensure that another can never be born. Back on Earth, the antidote successfully destroys the monster.  Finally, in “The Mirror Batman”, halting a heist at an antique warehouse leads to a problem for Batman and Robin when Batman falls into a strange mirror and disappears behind the glass, with Robin unable to enter it himself! Robin heads off to summon Superman, while one of the thieves gets an idea, knowing that Batman has been trapped in a mirror. Once Superman arrives, Batman is able to return from the mirror world, but in a distorted funhouse mirror shape, and with no recognition of his allies. This disoriented and misshapen Batman demonstrates a variety of unusual powers such as walking through walls (this would have reminded me of what I always thought was the coolest episode of “Adventures of Superman” on tv, when he developed the ability to walk through walls; something about that visual tripped me out as a kid!). Batman inadvertently damages a suspension bridge, keeping Superman and Robin busy while the thieves steal the mirror, thinking Batman is still trapped inside. Meanwhile, Batman has returned to his normal shape, but not his normal mind, and is still demonstrating strange powers. Those powers aren’t enough to resist Superman, who brings him back to the warehouse to find the mirror missing! Fortunately, the thieves have left a trail in the form of microscopic traces of swampland, of which there is little in the Gotham City vicinity. Superman and Batman easily track down the thieves, reattain the mirror, and solve its mystery, turning a hidden knob that opens the gateway to a strange world. Entering it, they all transform into distorted figures and Batman recovers his memory. In a confusing flashback, Batman establishes that he was mistaken for “one of Xanu’s creatures” by a defending alien being there, and that in his super-powered, distorted form, he can pass back through to Earth. That same defending alien is still there when the World’s Finest team arrives together, and Superman agrees to defeat this “Xanu” in return for a cure for Batman. He does so, and the team returns to Earth, destroying the mirror behind them so that no other passage can take place. I’d say a sampling of DC’s Silver Age weirdness is essential for a comics reader’s education, and this set of reprints gave me a good lesson. There were lots of gratuitous battles with strange alien monsters padding almost every story, the plots were complicated, ridiculous, and engaging. Re-reading for the first time in decades, I’m confident that I would have enjoyed the selection of stories back in 1971, but not a single one of these stories had any sticking power in my memory, maybe because none of these throwaway stories was to have any impact on the ongoing mythos I was soon to find myself immersed in. Superman, Batman and Robin never returned to any of these worlds, or referenced their adventures there, so they were forgettable. This issue would settle down to the bottom of my pile of comics to be recalled only as a cover. MONSTER APPEAL: While the monsters in these stories weren’t quite up to the level of serious menace I craved, they were creative, varied, and numerous. The Zelaphod was my favorite: the idea of a giant starfish extending tendrils deep into the Earth was a juvenile taste of the kinds of Lovecraftian concepts I’d come to appreciate as I got older. 4 out of 5! COLLECTING INSPIRATION: I’d be buying WORLD’S FINEST fairly often, especially since I was soon to learn that this was, at the time, functioning as a Superman-based counterpart to BRAVE & BOLD, rather than a permanent Superman/Batman team title. It didn’t inspire a huge love for DC’s early Silver Age material, though. 2 out of 5! LORE: Most importantly, I learned that Superman, Batman, and Robin had had a long-standing relationship. Knowing their status as close friends was an important component of knowing the DC Universe as of 1971. I also met Professor Nichols, who I’d see in other reprints that would make it a little clearer how he was seemingly sending the Dynamic Duo through time. 2 out of 5! ART-SCHOOLING: Jim Mooney’s work, which would become very familiar since he was ubiquitous through the 70’s, was never a favorite of mine. This was my first exposure to it, as it was to the work of Dick Sprang. Sprang’s style was old-fashioned, yes, but he’d become one of my favorites in the many reprints of Batman stories that would be featured in the 70’s. His bold, pleasant artwork had an appeal similar to that I felt for Ernie Bushmiller’s on the newspaper comics page. The letterer was uncredited, but Stan Starkman’s work, seen on some of the stories here, would have subtly characterized DC’s Silver Age look for me, with its irregular-shaped caption boxes. 2 out of 5! |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 18, 2021 8:16:30 GMT -5
MWGallaher, first, just wanted to say I continue to really enjoy your posts in this thread! One thing that jumps out to me is how for many of us back in the day, the titles we picked up had a lot of reprint content mixed in with the newer stories. As you were describing a story like "the Lone Wolf Legionnaire" above, I can relate to reading that one for the first time as well but in an Adventure Comics digest, yet also having some similar thoughts. I think for many of us who started reading in the Bronze Age (whether on the earlier side or a bit later on), we really were still absorbing a lot of Silver Age (and earlier at times) content with our young impressionable minds. Which then ties a bit into what I'm also enjoying with observations like your artist impressions and how they formed (like your comment how Dick Sprang appealed to you and why versus how you felt about Mooney). Again, a very enjoyable journey you are sharing, I'm looking forward to your continued memories/thoughts.
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Post by berkley on Jul 18, 2021 13:04:29 GMT -5
MWGallaher , first, just wanted to say I continue to really enjoy your posts in this thread! One thing that jumps out to me is how for many of us back in the day, the titles we picked up had a lot of reprint content mixed in with the newer stories. As you were describing a story like "the Lone Wolf Legionnaire" above, I can relate to reading that one for the first time as well but in an Adventure Comics digest, yet also having some similar thoughts. I think for many of us who started reading in the Bronze Age (whether on the earlier side or a bit later on), we really were still absorbing a lot of Silver Age (and earlier at times) content with our young impressionable minds. Which then ties a bit into what I'm also enjoying with observations like your artist impressions and how they formed (like your comment how Dick Sprang appealed to you and why versus how you felt about Mooney). Again, a very enjoyable journey you are sharing, I'm looking forward to your continued memories/thoughts. Very true - with me it was mostly Marvel but I remember reading lots of the early FF, Avengers, X-Men, Daredevil, etc in reprints, often in Annuals on the stands in the later 60s and early 70s. It was nice to be exposed to those older stories at a young age, so that they never felt weird or old-fashioned to me, though the artwork was often very different to what was being done in the then-current issues of those comics. And I carried on this practice into the mid and late 70s, when I read most of the Ditko Dr. Strange at the same time as Englehart and Colan were making the new issues one of my favourite series. |
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Post by MWGallaher on Jul 25, 2021 21:35:15 GMT -5
THE FLASH #210 On sale in September 1971  Cover by Murphy Anderson “An Earth Divided” Written by Cary Bates Pencilled by Irv Novick Inked by Dick Giordano My second month of comic collecting begins, and I was still focusing on the DC stuff. The Flash had caught my attention in JLA; I really liked the costume, with that overwhelming red, the nifty details like the wings on the boots, the lightning bolts around the waist and forearms leading me to work out how they could circle around and match up without spiraling. The story opens with a real grabber of a scene: Abraham Lincoln of the future being assassinated by a raygun-wielding John Wilkes Booth?!  Back in the present, Barry Allen and his wife Iris head off to visit her parents. I learned lots of Flash Facts in those two panels: Barry is a married blonde, his in-laws live 1000 years in the future, and he has a weird “cosmic treadmill” that allows him to time travel! The next page fills me in on more of this: Iris was sent back in time from the war-torn world of 2945 by her parents Fran and Eric Russell, where she was adopted Superman-style by Prof. & Mrs. Ira West, but her birth parents survived, and she can visit them in the future thanks to Barry’s remarkable machine, powered by his own super-speed running. In 2971, Iris intends to set up a “picture news service” (something the post-war “Earth-West” is deficient in), but Flash is side-tracked investigating the murder of President Lincoln. How could history be repeating itself? Booth is being monitored as he flees to Earth-East in an ion-jet turbo-suit. Seems he can’t be followed through the “Wild Region” of strange radiation separating the two hemispheres. That’s not about to stop Flash, but there’s no TV reception from the Wild Region, so Iris can’t follow her husband’s progress. So what happens in the Wild Region? Terrifying hallucinations, which Flash counters by concentrating on “Lincoln 2971”, an android duplicate of the legendary leader created by the super-science of 1000 years hence. With a computer brain, he should have been able to predict the assassination attempt… Flash has made it through to Earth-East, where Booth captures him with a “lethal cybernautic chain”, courtesy of the mysterious “Master Bekor”. The chains are impossible to vibrate through, and are tightening around the superhero! Leaving Flash in the death-trap, Booth (like the new Lincoln, an android) reports to Master Bekor, returning the murder weapon. Bekor turns the weapon on the assassin, but the ray-gun instead materializes…President Lincoln?!  Lincoln has outsmarted the villain after all, having indeed anticipated the attempt and countered it with his own technological defenses, which resulted in the ray-gun collecting his atoms for later reconstruction. Lincoln defeats his foe, and Flash escapes the chains by spinning at super-speed, which unravels them. Lincoln may have defeated Bekor, but with the turbo-suit damaged, he cannot personally extradite the villain back to Earth-West. The Lincoln android, apparently convinced he is human, mysteriously begins to sink into the floor… …which has been a rescue courtesy of The Flash, vibrating him through the Earth’s core to avoid the Wild Region. A thought balloon tells us he’ll go back for Bekor. In the closing panel, Iris cuts Barry off when he begins to tell about his adventures—everyone followed them on television! I was quite a fan of Abraham Lincoln when I was a kid. When I drew portraits of all the presidents up to LBJ when I was 7, I spent a lot more time on my Lincoln:  So maybe my fondness for Lincoln explains why I came back for the next issue, with THE FLASH becoming one of my first regular series purchases… …because it sure as heck wasn’t this story! Obviously, I wasn’t able to recognize this as the utter crap it was, and I was dazzled by the costume and the powers. Wow, this was bad. Flash does almost nothing but escape a trap and rescue Lincoln. The villain comes out of nowhere, the conflict between Earths -West and -East is vague, the conclusion of the war that led the Russells to transport their daughter to the past is glossed over, the dangers of the Wild Region are hard to grasp, Lincoln’s survival is gobbledy-gook, Flash’s escape from the chain is completely random and unjustified, “Lincoln”’s apparent mental breakdown lasts for one panel, why an android can’t cross through the Wild Region which is just hallucinations of giant hands is hard to fathom, the consequences of forced extradition of a foreign dictator (presumably) are ignored, Flash wraps things up off-panel…Really, the whole thing seems to be an exercise to re-write Lincoln’s famous quotes slightly to fit into a futuristic setting. Novick’s art is pedestrian, and the “special effects” are lame, the futuristic city is uninteresting, Giordano’s inking is clunky. Next up, Steve Skeates writes and Dick Giordano illustrates the Elongated Man in “a Tasteless Trick!” Ralph (Elongated Man) Dibney is distracted as he and his wife observe a man buy and eat a magazine at a newsstand. His vibrating nose signals a mystery, and Ralph strips down to his superhero costume to follow the man, stopping to pick up the uneaten portion of the magazine from the trash for his wife to take back home. The magazine-eater and his companion head to a theater, and the sign outside identifies the man with a taste for newsprint as “Maha-Skeet” the magician. Ralph assumes that it was just a trick performed for fun, and heads back home, abandoning the mystery. Back home, Ralph is still unsatisfied, realizing that the man appeared to be doing the “trick” to send a signal to Ralph, whose identity as the Elongated Man is known to the public. A look at the magazine leads Ralph to conclude he was being alerted to a plot to rob the Savin Estate, so Ralph heads there. Sure enough, the bad guys are there, and Maha-Skeet is being held at gunpoint, in hopes he can find Savin’s safe: the magazine article said it would take “a real magician” to find the safe, and they apparently took that literally! While the magician attempts to find the safe’s hidden location, Ralph goes into action:  Everyone ends up knocked out except for Ralph, who must now locate the magician’s daughter, who’s being held hostage. Thanks to one of the thug’s uncharacteristic use of the word “pad”, Ralph deduces that she was being held at a nightclub called “The Pad”. The story wraps up, revealing that the magician did indeed intentionally signal the Elongated Man with the magazine-eating stunt. Elongated Man would have been entirely new to me, although I’d have seen Mr. Fantastic on Saturday mornings doing a similar stretching act. The story provided no explanation for this remarkable ability, which seemed a lot weirder than what I remembered Reed Richards doing. I don’t know if it struck me as notable that both of the superheroes were married men in this comic. Finally, DC supplied the reprint content that padded their 25 cent books of the era, with “The Invasion of the Cloud Creatures” by John Broome, with art by Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson. It may have been this reprint that convinced me THE FLASH was worth following. Barry and Iris attend a lecture from a guy who encountered evil living clouds, which later attack an Air Force base. It’s here that I’m introduced to one of the coolest bits of Flashery, as I witness for the first time the release of the Flash costume from his secret ring compartment! Flash battles the clouds, which present much more of a threat than Bekor did in the lead story. Bringing up the rear is another letters page. I was really stricken with the look of the letters page header, Flash-Grams:  This was a more elaborate design than I’d seen so far, with Flash’s emblem, a full-body illustration, and a neat logo with speed effect. I was eager to use the letters pages to glean insights into prior comic book history any way I could in those early reading experiences. From this two-page lettercol, I picked up some information on Kid Flash and an unknown character, Sargon the Sorcerer, evidently a one-time superhero of the “Golden Age” (which I knew referred to the early days of comics publishing in the 1940’s), now being presented as a villain in THE FLASH. I would soon encounter this character again… MONSTER APPEAL: While Irv Novick tried to make the giant hands in the Wild Region scary, he couldn't sell me on it. Infantino's cloud monsters were rather comical. This one wasn't pushing any monster buttons. 0 out of 5! COLLECTING INSPIRATION: It got me hooked on THE FLASH, somehow. 3 out of 5! LORE: Iris Allen and her origins in the future, the cosmic treadmill, Barry's 70's haircut, the Flash ring, Elongated Man, Sargon the sorcerer, and Kid Flash. I had no foundation to recognize Adam Strange streaking across the cover, but a later Flash-Grams would alert me to the fact that this wasn't a random future guy. Some important bits there, so... 2 out of 5! ART SCHOOLING: Irv Novick wasn't bowling me over with this stuff, but I'd have to get used to his work, because it was going to be all over a lot of my early purchases. Giordano's full art in the Elongated Man backup would have been more satisfying, but nothing special. I don't think I was too impressed with the vintage Infantino, but I did really dig the Murphy Anderson cover. 1 out of 5! |
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Post by MWGallaher on Jul 26, 2021 19:58:49 GMT -5
TEEN TITANS #36 On sale September 1971  “The Tomb Be Their Destiny” Written by Bob Haney Art credited solely to Nick Cardy, but it appears he was inking George Tuska’s pencils. Not that I would have recognized that in 1971. In an eerie crypt, Speedy, Wonder Girl, Robin, and Mr. Jupiter recap the previous issue, in which Lilith seems to be playing out Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in the modern day, with Romeo the son of a local mobster and Kid Flash a jealous suitor, now recovering from a stabbing…oh yeah, and a sinister hunchback also in the mix, who happens to be lurking in the shadows of the crypt, watching the Titans. The Titans spot the hunchback while they’re piecing out the mystery, but are caught in a collapse of the roof when they try to pursue him. As they dig, they find a scrap of Lilith’s dress. The hunchback, unseen by the Titans, is exiting the tomb with the unconscious Lilith, taking her into the dark via gondola. Romeo’s dad is consulting his nephew “Calibano”, an Italian Barnabas Collins:  The hunchback has reunited the seemingly reincarnated lovers on a fog-haunted island in the river. The hunchback is the original Calibano, a spurned rival for the original Giulietta, as Lilith’s psychic powers reveal:  It ended in tragedy, with Calibano laying himself to rest in the crypt beside Romeo, who he had stabbed, and Giulietta, who followed her lover by suicide. Calibano has slept for centuries, and has revived to duel with 1971’s Romeo. Jupiter and the Titans make their way to the island in time for Speedy to fire an arrow into Calibano’s chest?!  Also happening, the modern Calibano is in a funeral barge in the same river, dumping cargo to frogmen. Robin intervenes underwater, Mr. Jupiter finds himself at gunpoint, and Romeo’s dad kills off Calibano before Calibano can kill off Mr. Jupiter. The cargo? Smuggled diamonds, an extracurricular activity that’s earned Calibano a watery grave. Calibano (the hunchback) returns to the crypt to die, and the story wraps up, with only one mystery unresolved: Who were the original occupants of the empty slabs? Umm… This was probably not the best issue for a newcomer to sample the Teen Titans. At 11, I was only vaguely aware of the details of the Romeo and Juliet story, and somewhat more familiar with Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, so those were the only aspects of the story I could really grasp. I probably ignored many problematic aspects of the story: Speedy accidentally killing Calibano I, the don dispatching Calibano II with no repercussions from Mr. Jupiter, who is acting as an agent for Interpol. Did I ask why Wonder Girl didn’t do anything super-powered, did I rue the absence of Kid Flash except in flashback? Was I disappointed by the abrupt conclusion that leaves Lilith and Romeo as lovers, and Kid Flash in the hospital? What was the point of the diamond smuggling, and why did that earn Calibano II a bullet? I really don’t remember much besides confusion. I do know I liked Speedy a lot. In general, I wasn’t one of those kids that liked the non-super-powered guys because “I could really be them”, but I did find myself feeling a little of that with Speedy. The art is extremely atmospheric in the crypt scenes, to the credit of Tuska and Cardy, but the biggest selling point to me was the hunchback dissolving into dust on the cover. Forrest J. Ackerman had me convinced that the Hunchback of Notre Dame was a legitimate “monster”, and I had long been haunted by the climax of a Twilight Zone episode that ended with someone crumbling into dust. I was also primed to dig the Teen Titans themselves, even if this first sampling left me confounded and unsatisfied. I had been exposed to them before, possibly on their few tv cartoon appearances and definitely in one comic book glimpsed at a block party, and I found the cover design appealing, with four Titans’ full body images plastered down the left side of the cover. Looking at it now, I do believe I see the handiwork of Vince Colletta in those figures, which seem to have been re-drawn since the initial appearance of this design feature in issue 27. Next up is the letter column, “Tell it to the Titans”. This column had a distinctly different style than the ones I’d seen so far, a style I’d come to recognize as characteristic of Murray Boltinoff. Boltinoff would run extracts from letters, interjecting comments, which made for a fun read. The issue being discuss here, #33, sounded a lot more interesting than what I had read, with a character called Gnarrk, a teen-age caveman! Next comes an Aqualad solo story, “The Girl of the Shadows”, by Steve Skeates, writer, and penciled, inked, and lettered by Jim Aparo. Until this anniversary revisit, I had forgotten that this was my first exposure to the guy who would become my favorite comic book artist.  The story is nothing but a tease, with Aqualad following a mysterious beauty he spots at an outdoor dance at a coastal city. Before she can explain what she needs from the aquatic hero, “Lelant” arrives to retrieve the woman he calls a “little queen”. Aqualad fights him off, and the mystery woman urges Aqualad to follow: “We must get past the wall—before it’s too late!” But Aqualad’s hour of air-breathing is almost up, and next thing he knows, the girl has disappeared from the blind alley! He swims off, with the strong feeling that he would meet her again. But he didn’t. I did my part to help try to make it happen, showing this 3-pager to Peter David when he was in charge of the Aquaman series. Peter had researched DC’s Atlantis thoroughly, but he had missed this, a story I later realized was a leftover from the cancelled AQUAMAN series. After reading this story out loud to onlookers at the 1992 Chicago comic convention, he vowed to finally resolve the mystery… But he didn’t. Next comes the reprint material, “Superboy Meets Robin the Boy Wonder”, written by Dave Wood with art by Al Plastino. Robin travels back in time to destroy an old trophy of Superboy’s, a clock with a Kryptonite bomb that would, in his own time, explode and doom the adult Man of Steel. For the second time, I witness Professor Nichols, who facilitates Robin’s trip through time. Robin teams up with the Boy of Steel until such time as Superboy receives the dangerous trophy, an event that hasn’t happened yet. But Superboy spots some suspicious behavior, as Robin retrieves a metal fragment with a fingerprint on it, then trips and interferes with Superboy’s efforts to stop a flying battering ram, acquiring another fingerprint along the way. Superboy’s convinced something’s fishy, but Robin convinces him that this outlandish story of being from the future is true, by describing remarkable feats he will perform as Superman. So why was he collecting the fragments? “The fact that there are fingerprints on them is only a coincidence! I took those fragments as souvenirs to give to you in the future when you are Superman as a surprise birthday gift!” Superboy and Robin continue to team up as they await the arrival of the trophy. They defeat a young Luthor, and finally a robot arrives to deliver the clock trophy. Inside the robot is Pete Groff, whose role in these affairs I’ve glossed over. Pete’s got some Kryptonite to weaken Superboy after he knocks out Robin, but Superboy defeats the fleeing villain with a mirror retrieved from Robin’s utility belt. And Robin returns to his own time. So wait, Robin’s explanation was for real? All of those suspicious retrievals were red herrings? Like the Fortress of Solitude doesn't have enough mementoes already, so Superman needs to have a few chunks of smeared metal on display? All to pad the story with some intrigue that doesn’t amount to much, ultimately. Still, a Robin/Superboy team-up was a cool idea, and I probably enjoyed it at the age of 11. Finally comes another new back-up short, this one featuring Lilith: “The Teen-Ager from Nowhere” Written by Bob Haney Art by Nick Cardy  This is a flashback to Lilith’s youth in Kentucky, where her psychic powers reveal that a little boy presumed drowned is still alive. She leads the townsmen to a well into which the boy has fallen. The men are happy to have rescued the lad, but they become suspicious of Lilith, who they assume must have been responsible for putting him there! The brutes intend to “slap the truth out of her”, but Lilith’s dad arrives, and Lilith explains “I just sensed it…like I see something else now…in my mind!” Lilith has picked up on the presence of the boy’s dog still in the well. The boy fell in while trying to rescue his hound! The townsfolk still dismiss Lilith’s powers, assuming she saw it all happen, but back at home, Lilith reveals another psychic insight: these are not her true parents—she’s adopted! It’s true, they were planning to tell her on her 13th birthday next week. Distraught, Lilith flees to the nearby orphanage, and learns that her real mother also had psychic powers, and that they may still be alive. She’s determined to find them someday, but in the meantime, she’s happy to return to her adoptive home. MONSTER APPEAL: From a modern perspective, it’s distasteful to think we once considered a spinal deformity a mark of a “monster”, but blame FJA and Aurora for brainwashing young Mike on that matter. But Bob Haney has his characters refer to Calibano I as a “monster”, too. DC was obviously referencing Victor Hugo’s story here, and Quasimodo is one of the classic Universal monsters that I hadn’t seen done in my first month of comics collecting, so it triggered me to part with my quarter. Oh, and don't forget an imitation Barnabas Collins--that was a strange choice, but obviously intentional. I wonder if that was Tuska's idea or something directed to add another tie into monster fan culture... 2 out of 5! COLLECTING INSPIRATION: I’d stick with TEEN TITANS whenever I saw it through the end of its run, so despite the low enjoyment value of this issue, it wasn’t a total fail. 3 out of 5! ART-SCHOOLING: As a Bronze Age baby, I was going to need to get accustomed to Nick Cardy, who was about to be ubiquitous on DC’s covers. George Tuska would be a mainstay, too, so it was good to get warmed to both men’s styles. High points here, though, for introducing me to Aparo, even if I wasn’t overly impressed with this particularly minor effort. 4 out of 5! LORE: Mr. Jupiter would prove to be a transitory element of Teen Titans lore, and thus not ultimately of much importance. This period also straddled the “plainclothes Titans” phase, with little overt super-heroic action and Wonder Girl in semi-civilian garb. Lilith was all new, and I remember wondering why she just had a civilian name rather than a cool code name. I’d wonder the same about Mal, whose name was an even greater letdown. I guess the most surprising thing was an Aqualad solo story, preparing me to assume that almost any character might be fair game for a backup story. And it’s hard to think of anyone that wouldn’t get their shot in the back pages of some book or another over the next few years. 2 out of 5! |
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Post by Prince Hal on Jul 27, 2021 9:29:28 GMT -5
Seeing that first Aqualad panel made me immediately think of this panel from Avengers 95, which went on sale a month later!  |
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Post by kirby101 on Jul 27, 2021 10:52:13 GMT -5
Here goes my rambling 50th Anniversary story.
Through the 60s, my older brother and I read comics haphazardly. Mostly Marvel, but some DC, Archie, etc... The characters were in the zeitgeist because while we weren't active readers, we knew enough about them to follow reading their comics once or twice a year. We started young in the early 60s, I definitely remember Spider-Man #8 and FF #29. We both think we had Amazing Fantasy #15, but can't swear by it. My brother, who was a surfer, bought all the Buscema-Lee Silver Surfers. Of course at some point our Mom told us to get rid of all that "clutter" and they went to the trash bin. Except my brother held onto the Surfer. A story told too many times by too many fans.
Then around 69 when he was in High School, my brother became good friends with a guy who was a big comic fan, had a massive Silver Age collection and knew about all the artists and writers. He started telling us about nuisances of comics and the history of the books. Also taught us to recognize different artist. (BTW we are still great friends today).
So I started reading more current books he lent us.
Then I saw the add for Conan. Don't know why it resonated with me so much, but I decide I would buy that one. I did and it to use the time's vernacular, it blew my mind. Was it Barry Smith's art? Was it the character of Conan. Not sure, but those images of the history of mankind exploded on the page for me. So I started buying Conan bi, and then monthly.
Of course this also kept me up on the other books through the ads, the bullpen and Stan's Soapbox. And some point around Conan #10-#11 I decided to start buying a lot of other Marvel books. Why I did this when Marvel went to the big 25 cent books, I have no idea. But I went from buying only Conan #9 or #10 to buying; Amazing Spider-Man, Avengers, Captain America, Daredevil, Fantastic Four, Incredible Hulk, Marvel Spotlight, Sub-Mariner, Thor, and probably a couple of reprint books.
And I was off, buying the slate of Marvel books every month and a few DC as well. And in no time I was responding to the back issue ads. Mostly Passaic, but Rocket Blast too. I started amassing a Silver Age collection going back to the early 60s, DD #7 and up, Avengers #12 and up, Cap- TOS #61 and up, Thor #106 and up, FF #30 and up. And so on. I usually had a limit of $1.50 for books, so I didn't spend the big bucks ($20!!) for the early, early books.
So I was immersed, reading all the current books and loads of back issues.
And I kept reading to today, I moved more to DC books in the 80s and 90s and then gave up the big two in the last decade.
I see discussions of people who really want reprints of this book or that, it's an embarrassment of riches that I didn't need the reprints, because I owned all those books. I say owned because I sold my whole collection a few years ago. I live in New York, in apartments with no room for 30 boxes of comics. So I had them in a storage space. I really could not enjoy having them buy looking through my collection or checking out some old issue. A few years ago, my wife and I bought a Co Op which also did not have the room for my collection. We were also looking at houses, so there would have been a chance for storage space. But as we are now in someplace for the long term, I saw no reason to keep a collection that would sit in storage. Did it hurt? Damn straight it did. I still feel a little loss over it being gone. But it just wasn't realistic or practical to hold on to it.
So here I am 50 years later, still reading comics, still discussing comics, still loving comics.
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Post by MWGallaher on Jul 28, 2021 10:21:50 GMT -5
Seeing that first Aqualad panel made me immediately think of this panel from Avengers 95, which went on sale a month later! Stay tuned--that was one of my first ventures into Marvel Comics! |
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Post by MWGallaher on Jul 28, 2021 10:37:21 GMT -5
Here goes my rambling 50th Anniversary story. Through the 60s, my older brother and I read comics haphazardly. Mostly Marvel, but some DC, Archie, etc... The characters were in the zeitgeist because while we weren't active readers, we knew enough about them to follow reading their comics once or twice a year. We started young in the early 60s, I definitely remember Spider-Man #8 and FF #29. We both think we had Amazing Fantasy #15, but can't swear by it. My brother, who was a surfer, bought all the Buscema-Lee Silver Surfers. Of course at some point our Mom told us to get rid of all that "clutter" and they went to the trash bin. Except my brother held onto the Surfer. A story told too many times by too many fans. Then around 69 when he was in High School, my brother became good friends with a guy who was a big comic fan, had a massive Silver Age collection and knew about all the artists and writers. He started telling us about nuisances of comics and the history of the books. Also taught us to recognize different artist. (BTW we are still great friends today). So I started reading more current books he lent us. Then I saw the add for Conan. Don't know why it resonated with me so much, but I decide I would buy that one. I did and it to use the time's vernacular, it blew my mind. Was it Barry Smith's art? Was it the character of Conan. Not sure, but those images of the history of mankind exploded on the page for me. So I started buying Conan bi, and then monthly. Of course this also kept me up on the other books through the ads, the bullpen and Stan's Soapbox. And some point around Conan #10-#11 I decided to start buying a lot of other Marvel books. Why I did this when Marvel went to the big 25 cent books, I have no idea. But I went from buying only Conan #9 or #10 to buying; Amazing Spider-Man, Avengers, Captain America, Daredevil, Fantastic Four, Incredible Hulk, Marvel Spotlight, Sub-Mariner, Thor, and probably a couple of reprint books. And I was off, buying the slate of Marvel books every month and a few DC as well. And in no time I was responding to the back issue ads. Mostly Passaic, but Rocket Blast too. I started amassing a Silver Age collection going back to the early 60s, DD #7 and up, Avengers #12 and up, Cap- TOS #61 and up, Thor #106 and up, FF #30 and up. And so on. I usually had a limit of $1.50 for books, so I didn't spend the big bucks ($20!!) for the early, early books. So I was immersed, reading all the current books and loads of back issues. And I kept reading to today, I moved more to DC books in the 80s and 90s and then gave up the big two in the last decade. I see discussions of people who really want reprints of this book or that, it's an embarrassment of riches that I didn't need the reprints, because I owned all those books. I say owned because I sold my whole collection a few years ago. I live in New York, in apartments with no room for 30 boxes of comics. So I had them in a storage space. I really could not enjoy having them buy looking through my collection or checking out some old issue. A few years ago, my wife and I bought a Co Op which also did not have the room for my collection. We were also looking at houses, so there would have been a chance for storage space. But as we are now in someplace for the long term, I saw no reason to keep a collection that would sit in storage. Did it hurt? Damn straight it did. I still feel a little loss over it being gone. But it just wasn't realistic or practical to hold on to it. So here I am 50 years later, still reading comics, still discussing comics, still loving comics. Thanks for chiming in! It's great to hear another contemporary account from someone who started collecting around the same time, since I didn't have any collecting peers. I was a long way off from getting into the back issue market, but even though I didn't have any "collecting peers", I did somehow manage to pick up couple of items in trade with a neighbor who possessed (but had no interest in) SILVER SURFER #1 and SPYMAN #2. I don't know what valuables were exchanged, but I'd say I got the better side of that deal for sure! My next back issue purchases, from a flea market dealer who would later be my regular comics shop retailer, were some back issues of BRAVE & BOLD. I remember the dealer thoughtfully warning me that there was no Neal Adams work other than the covers, but I wasn't after the Adams artwork, I wanted Batman with Adam Strange and Batman with "?"! I managed to acquire a couple of other B&B back issues by finding discarded copies of #93 (House of Mystery) and #88 (Wildcat). My first mail-order purchases came probably 2 or 3 years into my collecting, after I discovered that Marvel had once published a solo Dr. Doom series. Marvel had rarely if ever referenced that feature in any of their editorial content or in footnotes to Doom's appearances that I saw, so I'm not sure how I discovered it, but once I did, I had to have it, so I bought ASTONISHING TALES #1-9 in a single lot, and I wasn't let down by what I got! |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 28, 2021 10:45:04 GMT -5
I'm just shy of four years from my fifty year mark. Great thread.
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Post by MWGallaher on Jul 28, 2021 18:04:31 GMT -5
I'm just shy of four years from my fifty year mark. Great thread. I plan on still being a member then, Slam, so feel free to do some thread necromancy in 2025 and take the lead and I'll be reading! |
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Post by MWGallaher on Aug 3, 2021 18:17:18 GMT -5
SUPERBOY #179 On sale in September, 1971  Cover by Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson Apparently, I was up for a second helping of Superboy. It had done the best job of satisfying my monster itch last month, and this issue’s horrific cover scene promised even more! I think people melting into something else probably triggered some very specific fright in me (remember I was still haunted by the recollection of seeing The Ancient One “melt” into a standing stone in an issue of STRANGE TALES I’d spied a few years earlier). At this stage of the game, I still assumed that the cover images would accurately reflect what happened inside the comic. As it turned out, this issue did nothing to disabuse me of that naïve belief; if anything, Swan and Anderson toned down what I was going to find in the lead story… “Death Is My Dominion” Written by Leo Dorfman Art by Bob Brown and Murphy Anderson Superboy awakens amidst the ruins of a large city, and when he investigates, the survivors call him a “killer”, and attempt to drive him off with gunfire. Superboy is baffled, having no memory of any of this. When he flies down to save some of the people from a falling billboard, the terrified people suffer from the “liquidation effect” caused by nearness to Superboy: they melt into the earth beneath them. Only Elissa, a young girl, is able to escape, since she is farther from the crowd. Superboy confirms what he saw: “A minute ago they were people…living flesh and bone…and now—they’re just puddles of quivering protoplasm!” A mysterious mastermind is observing from a camera as Superboy chases Elissa, who hides behind a protective glass window and explains the situation: Superboy fought a spacecraft of alien invaders over Lincoln City. The aliens fired a bomb that bounced off of Superboy and landed in the city, destroying it! Superboy is blamed for not stopping the bomb from dropping, but that’s not the worst of it: his approach means a melting death for the people of Lincoln City:  (See what I mean? Bob Brown shows us a much more disturbing scene than Curt Swan did on the cover. The Comics Code Authority approved this?!) Superboy doesn’t remember any of this, and when he tries to leave the city, he cannot, due to an impenetrable invisible dome, outside of which, he spots another Superboy, using superpowers to deal with emergencies?! Following the phoney with his X-ray/telescopic vision, he sees his doppelganger assuming the Clark Kent identity—is this an agent of the aliens taking over Superboy’s life? We’re about to get answers, as the young Lex Luthor lands his own spacecraft outside the dome to taunt the trapped Superboy. Luthor enters the dome, but Superboy finds unexplainably unable to lay hands on his enemy. He’s under Luthor’s mental domination, now, and proceeds to begin destroying what remains of Lincoln City. He even comes too close to Elissa, who melts like all the rest! All becomes clear when the Superboy from outside the dome—the real Superboy—arrives. The guy we’ve been following is an android, and this has all been an elaborate trap to bring Superboy into the path of Luthor’s Kryptonite-powered freeze ray (and, although it goes unsaid, this was clearly a means of playing out a sadistic fantasy of watching “Superboy” kill innocents in a grisly manner). We get the explanation of how Luthor used his electronics to leech powers from Superboy in a fly-by to power his android, which was programmed with Superboy’s personality, but also with the “laws of androidonics”: “No android may harm its creator!” (I think Arthur C. Clarke Isaac Asimov--thanks Rob Allen!--was cool with others adopting his Laws of Robotics, so there was no need to disguise it, Leo Dorfman!) “Lincoln City” was a mock-up used for nuclear bomb tests, and the “citizens” were also androids, programmed to melt in “Superboy”’s presence. Now the plan is to power up an army of android Superboys to be Luthor’s slaves during his conquest of the universe. For this, all he needs is his android copy, so it’s time to kill off the genuine Boy of Steel, but the android gets in the way of Luthor’s Kryptonite grenade, sacrificing himself. The android Superboy melts away in the same manner as his android “victims”, Superboy recovers (since the bomb short-circuited his freeze ray), and Luthor ends the tale behind bars. Well, this was a humdinger of a tale! Plenty of gross melting, a complicated plot, and my introduction to Lex Luthor, “the world’s greatest juvenile criminal scientist!” It delivered 100% on the cover promises, although it turned out to be a fake Superboy and fake people. From an adult perspective, Superboy’s salute to the android seems insufficient—“A collection of chemicals and artificial protoplasm…but he was a hero!”—especially on a page that ends with a grinning Superboy taunting his enemy in jail. Next comes this issue’s reprint… “Superboy Meets Ben Hur” (from SUPERBOY #92, 1961) Art by Curt Swan and Stan Kaye Lana Lang’s father, the preeminent archeologist at the Smallville Museum, has been fired for buying a bronze bust of Ben Hur. Not only is the bust disfigured to look like a “Bizarro-version of some Roman” (I didn’t know about the Bizarros at this point), but Ben Hur is “a fictional hero in a novel by Lew Wallace!” Prof. Lang is a sucker for spending $30,000 of the museum’s funds to the shady characters who found it “near an ancient ruin!” Prof. Lang is convinced the bust is legit, and Superboy decides to help out by traveling into the past, using his super-speed to pierce the time barrier. Superboy recaps some of the key background from Wallace’s novel, then arranges to be picked up as a galley slave, where he is shackled behind…Ben Hur! So Ben Hur was real, but he looks nothing like the bust, so Prof. Lang was swindled, after all. Superboy uses his super rowing powers to give the slaves a break, expediting the voyage. Ben Hur and Superboy escape, and before you know it, Ben Hur is recruited for the chariot races, just like in the book. Superboy introduces the Romans to the joys of popcorn, rangles some fine steeds to replace the ones stolen from Ben Hur, and claims to have been gifted with flight from the god Mercury. When you’re copping from Ben Hur, the only thing anyone cares about is the chariot race, and as you might expect, Superboy’s powers rig the race in Ben Hur’s favor:  In honor of his victory, the emperor has a statue of Ben Hur erected, a hollow statue filled with gold. When that little fact leaks out, thieves topple the monument and chip away at the head, trying to get at the gold. And thus is all explained! Superboy returns to the present, retrieves the bottom half of the statue, and proves that Prof. Lang was right. Or, as Prof. Lang puts it, “As usual, Superboy has seen to it that justice is done!” A fun enough story for a new reader, even one that didn’t know or care about Ben Hur as much as readers would have in 1961, when the Charlton Heston-starring blockbuster film was still fresh in readers’ minds. Thanks to reprints like this, I would soon learn that Superman/boy would often travel to other times or other worlds to prove trivial assertions for his friends, and that although Smallville was a small town, one still might find world-class museums, atomic research plants, major race-tracks, mountains, plains, waterfalls, caverns, whatever a story called for. I didn’t notice and wouldn’t really care. Next up is another new story: “Revolt of the Outcasts” Written by Leo Dorfman Art by Bob Brown and Murphy Anderson In the swank suburb of Fairdale, near Smallville (see what I mean? It even has swank suburbs!), sanitation workers have been ordered to destroy a rustic flower stand operated by an old man whose only defense is a crutch…that is, until Superboy comes to said defense! Seems Fairdale is preparing for its Centennial Celebration, and the unlicensed Mr. Casey’s primitive two-bit operation is not welcome. The law is the law, according to Superboy, but at least he can transport the flower stand to a more acceptable location—at the edge of town where there are no customers! Mr. Casey abandons his livelihood and heads back to Hungry Hill, the “undesirable” neighborhood outside of Fairdale, where the poor can be satisfied among their own kind…at least when the boys in blue aren’t hassling them:  Superboy steps in to assist again, but you can’t fight city hall, as they say: Hungry Hill is scheduled to be demolished entirely, including the local blacksmith, printer, pottery maker, fabric weavers… It gets personal for Superboy when he meets Pete Ross, whose father went bankrupt and had to move out of Smallville to Hungry Hill:  Pete complains about the unjust harassment of Hungry Hill, but Superboy doubts the authorities are really that heartless. But he’s about to get a lesson in hard cold reality, when the Mayor leads in the demolition crew, impatient to let the people have their day in court. The crew cuts off water, gas, electricity, in hopes of getting them to abandon the community. Superboy to the rescue! He digs a moat to protect the area, bores underground to find water, and the people have their oil lamps for light! Superboy reports back to his folks, who are sorry to hear that the Ross family has fallen on hard times, and Pete gives a flashback I’ll soon see again and again—he learned Clark’s secret identity on a camping trip. Next day, the demo crew comes to do their dirty work, and Superboy’s there to defend Hungry Hill…until he is distracted by a staged emergency in Fairdale! By the time he’s done cleaning up an overturned gas truck, the destruction of Hungry Hill has begun…what to do? Superboy’s got a plan…and it starts with filling in the moat! Is he betraying the poor folks of Hungry Hill? Nope, he just wants the mayor to see Hungry Hill as the hidden treasure it is:  Rather than something to be ashamed of, Hungry Hill is something to celebrate as part of the Centennial: “a living museum of the crafts and skills that built our town of Fairdale!” (Wait, why is this all about Fairdale? These snobs are co-opting the charm and interest generated by their poorer outcasts!) OK, an undeniably hokey story, with a happy ending spoiled by a paternalistic tone that keeps the wealthy secure by gussying up the hard-scrabble Hungry Hill as a tourist attraction. But some of the points raised here resonate with the adult Mike. I just so happen to be a Google Street View addict, and I’ve spent hours virtually wandering through places like Bangladesh, marveling at the vibrant economic activity. It’s universal: humans work their individual crafts, they trade, they commune in the markets, the life blood of society. In the poorest of societies, the marketplace always takes its place at the center. MONSTER APPEAL: Looking back, I thought maybe this was inspired by the film The Incredible Melting Man, which was featured in FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND, but no, that film came out later. The lead story was pretty graphic and horrific, enough to make up for the tamer backing material. 3 out of 5! COLLECTING INSPIRATION: One of my first repeat purchases. I was pretty comfortable with Superboy, and I would continue to buy this title for quite a while. 3 out of 5! ART-SCHOOLING: More of the same from Bob Brown and Murphy Anderson. While a burgeoning comics fan needs to be exposed to multiple artists to begin to appreciate the craft, that fan also needs repeat exposure to the same artists to pick up on their characteristic techniques. Bob Brown would never be a favorite of mine, or a big fan favorite, and in fact wouldn’t be around much longer, but I’d be seeing more of his work. Murphy Anderson would be a mainstay, and seeing what he brought to these stories would be important in coming to understand the inker’s role in establishing the look of a comics page. 3 out of 5! LORE: My introduction to Luthor, albeit the young version, and my introduction to Pete Ross, who I’d have on a Slurpee cup not long after this. 2 out of 5! |
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