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Post by The Man of Tomorrow on May 13, 2014 16:09:17 GMT -5
Schaffenberger is really one of the unsung best artists of the solver and bronze ages. His style treaded the line between realistic and cartoony, but his characters were always expressive. Worked really well on Lois where (vixen that she was) she would be saying one thing and thinking another. So true, so true, MDG.
This is what you're missing, Scott, when you don't read reprints.
MDG, did you ever read that Elongated Man backup (not a reprint!) in a 1970s Detective that was drawn by Schaffenberger? It starts with Sue so angry that she tears the newspaper in half because she wasn't named as one of the World's Greatest Women (or something) along with Golda Meir and Gloria Steinem. And then Ralph fights mink-coat thieves. But he loses his powers! And then ...
I sure do miss Ralph and Sue. And Kurt Schaffenberger.
That was the first solo Elongated Man story I ever read and was the first time I ever saw sweet Sue! |
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Post by Crimebuster on May 13, 2014 20:19:11 GMT -5
Schaffenberger is really one of the unsung best artists of the solver and bronze ages. His style treaded the line between realistic and cartoony, but his characters were always expressive. Worked really well on Lois where (vixen that she was) she would be saying one thing and thinking another. So true, so true, MDG.
This is what you're missing, Scott, when you don't read reprints.
I'm not missing it, I'm buying the originals! I'm missing nine issues of Lois Lane to have #43-up. It's not the stories I dislike, it's the fact that they are reprints. NO REPRINTS!!!  |
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Post by Hoosier X on May 13, 2014 23:55:14 GMT -5
That was the first solo Elongated Man story I ever read and was the first time I ever saw sweet Sue!
I wrote this up on my blog in a post titled "Kurt Schaffenberger Draws the Dibnys."
And here is Part Two titled "Elongated Sue."
(One of the art links doesn't work anymore. I'll have to try to fix that tomorrow.) |
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Post by Hoosier X on May 13, 2014 23:58:16 GMT -5
So true, so true, MDG.
This is what you're missing, Scott, when you don't read reprints.
I'm not missing it, I'm buying the originals! I'm missing nine issues of Lois Lane to have #43-up. It's not the stories I dislike, it's the fact that they are reprints. NO REPRINTS!!! OK. That's not as bad. But some of these stories are really hard to get otherwise.
What I don't like is some of the stories that get reprinted over and over. I understand why Batman #1 or Action #1 or Amazing Fantasy #15 get reprinted a lot. But there are some Ross Andru Wonder Woman stories that I see all the time. What's the deal?
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Post by foxley on May 14, 2014 2:07:27 GMT -5
At the risk of further derailing the thread, I've always loved looking through Schaffenberger's stories to see if he's inserted a cameo of himself into the art, as he often did.
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Post by Crimebuster on Jun 20, 2014 23:38:02 GMT -5
October 1974
Superman #283: A scientist rails in an interview about how slow NASA's space program is going. He's sure we'll never get to Mars unless he's allowed to juice things up. Not coincidentally, some weird crap happens that tricks Superman into thinking there's a bomb about to go off. He discovers it's a dud and goes back to his secret identity - Chris Delbart, the "Wolf of Wall Street." Wha huh? Turns out the scientist set it all up to learn Superman's secret identity in order to blackmail Superman into taking him to Mars in order to plant fake alien artifacts there in order to trick the powers that be into funding more space exploration. Superman agrees - but instead he dumps the guy in a fake Mars at an amusement park. Turns out Supes figured it all out and made up the Delbart thing to throw the scientist off his trail. THE END! In the backup story, Mr. Mxyzptlk shows up and starts bringing all the monuments in Washington, D.C. to life. Superman tricks hi by etching his name, backwards, into the Gettysburg Address at the Lincoln memorial and getting the imp to read it aloud. THE END! My Grade: B-. Ho hum.
Action Comics #443: Oh boy. The entire Justice league - except Superman - is captured by a group of supervillains including Brainiac, Grodd, Merlyn, Ocean Master, etc. You know, the usual suspects. They spy on Superman and are temporarily confused by the fact that for some reason he's dressed as Superman in his daily life and fighting crime as Clark Kent. And nobody seems to notice. Brainaic finally deduces correctly that Superman is just screwing with them, at which point Superman shows up at their hideout and attacks. And loses. But in the process, he accidentally frees Flash, who frees everyone else, and the Justice league wins. Hurray! My Grade: B-. It gets a boost only because of all the cool characters in it, not because of the story. Which... more on this below.
World's Finest #227: Superman starts by stealing and smashing the Statue of Liberty, but this is just one of those "shocking moments that starts a comic book story but turns out to be a total non sequitor." It's a fake and Superman exposits that he's trying to crack a ring of smugglers bringing gold into America to ruin our economy. He finds Batman and they argue, as Batman is obsessed with finding his brother Thomas, who you may remember was abruptly introduced a couple issues ago. Batman tracks him to a circus, where he has a hot air balloon and dresses up like Daredevil. Meanwhile, Superman finds the smugglers and discovers that - and here is a wild coincidence - they are using hot air balloons. Hijinks ensue. Batman catches up with his brother, who is still possessed by the spirit of Deadman. They team up to take out the bad guys - Superman has been waylaid somehow in a fashion that is typically ridiculous given he's Superman - and during the fight, Thomas throws himself in front of a bullet to save batman. Dead as quickly and as randomly as he lived. The End! My Grade: C+. Some Haney elements, but not enough to save it. Notes: It really struck me this month how, despite the veneer of modernization and Julie Schwartz's touches, Superman is still kind of stuck in the Silver Agey. Just look at month's cover for Superman. It's a classic DC "question" cover - you know, where you read it and go, why is Superman's secret identity someone other than Clark Kent? How is it possible?! The art may be modernized thanks to Nick Cardy, but otherwise this cover could have graced any issue of Superman or Action from 1950 on. It's not just the cover, though. Both of the stories this month are just riffs on the secret identity thing. You can pretty much tell that Schwartz came up with these high concept ideas - "Superman's secret identity is someone other than Clark Kent!" "Superman is the clumsy oaf, and Clark is the superhero!" - and then told his writers to come up with stories around the ideas. I mean, I would bet my bottom dollar that's what happened. It's just so... retrograde. Months like this I wonder why I bothered to buy these comics, much less read them. It's really dispiriting to read this same nonsense in 1974 that they were doing in 1954. My god, guys. Gwen Stacy was already dead more than a year by this point. And this is what you have to offer, DC? Sure, this issue of Superman had some "modern" touches, at least in terms of trying to seem timely with a gloss of relevance. Within the first four pages we got references to Barbara Walters (who was one of the hosts of The Today Show at the time) and Skylab. However, this story stretched my ability to suspend disbelief past the breaking point. In a world that has Superman and Green Lantern and Adam Strange and countless others capable of space travel, am I really supposed to think none of them have ever, or are ever, going to provide any information or assistance to Earth's space program? Plus, the whole thing about going to Mars to plant fake info about an alien civilization there for the Voyager probe to discover... seems kind of pointless given the existence of Martian Manhunter and his race of actual Martians on actual Mars. DC seems to forget that these stories aren't taking place in a vacuum. It just doesn't work at all for me. Beyond that, the Action story had a bit of a flaw for me - besides being impossibly silly - namely the fact that all the supervillains saw that Superman is Clark Kent. I mean, he wasn't trying to hide it. The entire planet saw it. But while the people of Earth may have somehow not noticed, thanks to Superman's deus ex machina device, none of the villains were actually on Earth and thus were unaffected by it. They were watching it on their monitors trying to figure out what was going on. So, does that mean they all now know Superman's secret identity? Um... Finally, one thing that stands out for me about Bob Haney's World's Finest run is how incompetent Batman and Superman are. They are constantly failing, messing up clues, making mistakes and getting people killed om the process. It's a real wake up call compared to how they are portrayed in their own books. It's nice to see superheroes being, you know, just people who try hard but make a lot of mistakes. But it's also still kind of jarring given how infallible they usually are.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jun 21, 2014 15:42:37 GMT -5
I have World's Finest #227! So I can summarize the reprint stories! (Unless there's something I've forgotten, this is the last 100-page giant I have for Superman-related comics. Sorry about that!)
The first reprint is a Rip Hunter, Time Master story wherein Rip and the gang (Jeff, Corky and Bonnie) go back in time to ancient Greece. They run across some centaurs, and a sorceress identified as Calypso turns Jeff into a griffin! So Rip, Corky and Bonnie go to Olympus and meet Zeus and he says he'll help Jeff if they perform an IMPOSSIBLE LABOR! (And also Bonnie meets Theseus and he falls madly in love with her. OF COURSE!) So then they sort of wander around on their quest and get some golden apples and Jeff is saved and it turns out that the Greek gods were actually aliens. ALIENS! (Oh, Rip. There's a lady here who would like to speak to you. Her name is Diana.)
Not too bad, especially compared to some of the other World's Finest reprints. Not too great either.
In the Vigilante, Vig has persuaded a number of former bad guys (called "owlhoots") to go straight. This state of affairs is upsetting to the local "outlaw chieftain," who finds himself in the midst of an underworld labor crisis. So he frames some of the reformed owlhoots by training his own gang members to copy their crime habits. Vigilante trusts his reformed friends and it turns out he's right. Not bad. My favorite thing about the Vigilante series (aside from the cool art) is Vigilante's sidekick, Stuff. He;s always hanging on to the back of Vigilante's motorcycle (without a helmet!), and no matter what crazy tricks and dangerous stunts Vigilante executes on his cycle, Stuff always manages to hang on. (It's a good thing Vig isn't ticklish.)
And then there's another very early J'onn J'onzz story. The Manhunter chases some gangster around, scaring the guy until he confesses to a murder. It's actually pretty creative and nicely rendered, but I'm a sucker for old J'onn J'onzz, even though this is long before the era of Zook and Diane Meade.
And last is a more-than-sufficiently goofy-ass Superman-Batman team-up from the Silver Age. Our heroes are bedeviled and befuddles by Anti-Superman and Anti-Batman, who appear from nowhere and start committing mischief. Can you guess who they are? (Well, you probably can guess their identities if you've ever read a Silver Age World's Finest story.) This story is a lot of fun. I especially like the cameos by Toyman, the Prankster, the Joker, the Penguin and the Riddler. And the Curt Swan art.
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Post by Action Ace on Jun 21, 2014 19:08:43 GMT -5
Notes: It really struck me this month how, despite the veneer of modernization and Julie Schwartz's touches, Superman is still kind of stuck in the Silver Agey. Just look at month's cover for Superman. It's a classic DC "question" cover - you know, where you read it and go, why is Superman's secret identity someone other than Clark Kent? How is it possible?! The art may be modernized thanks to Nick Cardy, but otherwise this cover could have graced any issue of Superman or Action from 1950 on. It's not just the cover, though. Both of the stories this month are just riffs on the secret identity thing. You can pretty much tell that Schwartz came up with these high concept ideas - "Superman's secret identity is someone other than Clark Kent!" "Superman is the clumsy oaf, and Clark is the superhero!" - and then told his writers to come up with stories around the ideas. I mean, I would bet my bottom dollar that's what happened. It's just so... retrograde. Months like this I wonder why I bothered to buy these comics, much less read them. It's really dispiriting to read this same nonsense in 1974 that they were doing in 1954. My god, guys. Gwen Stacy was already dead more than a year by this point. And this is what you have to offer, DC? Since I came in late... Why did you bother to buy and read these comics? |
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Post by Crimebuster on Jun 22, 2014 0:04:36 GMT -5
Notes: It really struck me this month how, despite the veneer of modernization and Julie Schwartz's touches, Superman is still kind of stuck in the Silver Agey. Just look at month's cover for Superman. It's a classic DC "question" cover - you know, where you read it and go, why is Superman's secret identity someone other than Clark Kent? How is it possible?! The art may be modernized thanks to Nick Cardy, but otherwise this cover could have graced any issue of Superman or Action from 1950 on. It's not just the cover, though. Both of the stories this month are just riffs on the secret identity thing. You can pretty much tell that Schwartz came up with these high concept ideas - "Superman's secret identity is someone other than Clark Kent!" "Superman is the clumsy oaf, and Clark is the superhero!" - and then told his writers to come up with stories around the ideas. I mean, I would bet my bottom dollar that's what happened. It's just so... retrograde. Months like this I wonder why I bothered to buy these comics, much less read them. It's really dispiriting to read this same nonsense in 1974 that they were doing in 1954. My god, guys. Gwen Stacy was already dead more than a year by this point. And this is what you have to offer, DC? Since I came in late... Why did you bother to buy and read these comics? Idiocy, apparently. But really, it's because my exposure to this stuff came via Lois Lane, which is turning out to be by far the most fun of any of the series. I guess I thought the other Superman titles from the time would share that whimsical madness, but they really don't. Also, I was buying various runs for Supergirl and Lois Lane stories, as well as the Green Arrow backups in both Action and World's Finest. So I realized I was getting about half the issues anyway for reasons other than Superman, so I might as well just get the rest. |
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Post by Action Ace on Jun 22, 2014 13:47:40 GMT -5
Since I came in late... Why did you bother to buy and read these comics? Idiocy, apparently. But really, it's because my exposure to this stuff came via Lois Lane, which is turning out to be by far the most fun of any of the series. I guess I thought the other Superman titles from the time would share that whimsical madness, but they really don't. Also, I was buying various runs for Supergirl and Lois Lane stories, as well as the Green Arrow backups in both Action and World's Finest. So I realized I was getting about half the issues anyway for reasons other than Superman, so I might as well just get the rest. I was wondering, since the general critical consensus is that the front half of Superman comics in the 1970s is a bit better than the back half. I know what's a ahead and, other than the Earth 2 stories and some DC Comics Presents issues, I'm not sure if you'd enjoy any of it. This is why I liked team up books as a kid. It warned me off of characters I didn't like such as Thor and Green Arrow so I didn't try out their comics. |
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Jun 22, 2014 13:57:24 GMT -5
I started reading Superman books in 1962. By 1974 I said enough is enough. I've grown and it seemed Supes was regressing. I didn't come back until around 1986/87
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Post by Crimebuster on Jun 22, 2014 21:31:46 GMT -5
The crazy thing for me is that, as you guys know, I just did this same thing with Wonder Woman. That title was the biggest mess I have ever read, bad stories, capriciously damaging editorial malfeasance, incomprehensible continuity. And yet, even though the Superman stuff is just aggressively mediocre, I enjoyed doing the Wonder Woman readathon much more. The lows were lower on Wonder Woman, but at least there were occasionally some bright spots, or at least weird spots. With the exception of Lois Lane and some of the Sekowsky Supergirl run, this stuff has just been soul drainingly impotent.
You know something is wrong when the series is less fun to read than Bronze Age Wonder Woman.
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Post by Crimebuster on Jun 23, 2014 0:12:59 GMT -5
November 1974 Superman #284: Hey, this issue isn't half bad actually. I feel like I just won the lottery. Anyway, Superman gets a call from old pal Pete Ross, who tells Clark he should come to Smallville. Clark arrives and finds Lana Lang there. They have a brief reunion that is interrupted by... Superboy! Turns out that when Superboy left for Metropolis, he destroyed all his Superboy robots. One of them survived, though, and decided that Superboy himself must be evil since he killed the other robots. He's secretly been protecting Smallville ever since. Now that Superman is there, though, the robot decides he has to take Superman out since Superman is a killer. Superman turns the tables by tricking the robot into thinking he caused a heart attack in a bystander. The robot decides he himself must be evil and so he destroys himself. THE END! My Grade: B. More on this issue below. Action Comics #444: A mysterious dude hires two intergalactic killers to assassinate Earth's mightiest superhero. They track down Superman and blast him with some weird energy beams that hurt him and cause him to start, um, belching sparkles.He figures out that the best way to fix this is a blast from Green Lantern's ring. When they try it, though, a feedback loop kills Hal! Turns out the guy that hired the assassins was Sinestro. Except, the plan actually failed. Hal was just playing dead! As usual Superman has a far fetched explanation that involves his belch sparkles having a magnetic signature. So between panels, he set up the whole thing with Hal. Okay. THE END! Meanwhile, oh, thank god, it's a Mike Grell Green Arrow backup. At least there's some good art here. In the story, some crooks claim to have killed Dinah and Ollie believes them because they send in a chunk of her wig as proof. He vows vengeance. To Be Continued! My Grade: B-. I've certainly read worse. Superman Family #169: Ah, and here's Lois Lane. No matter how boring the other Superman family strips get, I can always count on some batcrap crazy stories from Lois. And this month is no exception. A vigilante called The Tarantula shows up in Metropolis and starts executing criminals. Lois investigates and is captured. The Tarantula is about to execute her as well when Lois is suddenly saved by... The ghost of her CIA partner Simon! Yes, no fooling, his ghost, who has been protecting her since his death. Lois almost bought it this time, though, because Superman used a special machine to make the ghost visible - and the two were in the middle of an argument over who Lois loved more when they realized she was in danger. Deciding Superman had won that argument, Simon's ghost decides to dissipate, leaving Lois to mourn him a second time. THE END! My Grade: B+. Notes: This was a decent month all around! It's all sunshine and lollipops in the world of November, 1974! The Superboy Robot story was interesting. I was kind of rooting for the robot when he fought Superman. Superman's explanation on why he destroyed the robots was a little silly - he said he had to since he was changing from Superboy to Superman. You know, that rite of passage all young boys go through when they hit puberty - the moment they kill their own robot doubles. Superman, of course, ended up just creating an army of Superman robots to replace the Superboy robots, so I'm not sure why he didn't at least use the old robots for parts, or even transfer their robot minds into new "adult" bodies. Instead, he had them all commit suicide by flying into the sun. Um. Why? This issue did have some continuity in it, as Superman commented on the fact that Superboy Robot 6 had upgraded himself in a way that kept him from being affected by the issues that forced him to shut down all his other Superman robots two years earlier in World's Finest. Not mentioned in the story is the fact that this is also (as far as I can recall) the first Lana Lang appearance since she was written out of Lois Lane back when Robert Kanigher took over the book with #105. So about four years earlier. This month's Lois story also had me scratching my head a couple times. The guy who turned out to be Tarantula had the dumbest master plan to protect his identity yet - he framed his own son for it. His son who lives with him. Ensuring the cops and media would immediately come right to his house looking for information. Smooth move, x-lax. The fact that the bad guy was called The Tarantula was also of interest to me. Of course, DC had a golden age hero named Tarantula who would later become one of the main characters in All-Star Squadron. This guy, though, was copying a character on a TV show by that name. So I guess Earth-1 didn't have a Tarantula. More interesting is the timing - Marvel's version of Tarantula first appeared just a few months earlier, in July, 1974. That's just about exactly how much lead time they would need to put this issue together. I wonder if DC brought back Tarantula in order to protect their copyright and trademark. It's notable that Tarantula does appear on the cover, which also mentions his name.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jun 23, 2014 22:12:32 GMT -5
Isn't the real question why did Superman need robots in the first place? And if he could build robots that had his powers, why did we need any other superheroes?
Sometimes the Silver Age hurts my brain.
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Post by misterintensity on Jun 24, 2014 5:30:23 GMT -5
Isn't the real question why did Superman need robots in the first place? And if he could build robots that had his powers, why did we need any other superheroes? Sometimes the Silver Age hurts my brain. During the Superboy days there weren't any other superheroes. After that I believe there was an explanation that the Earth's pollution has rendered the Superman robots less than effective. |
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