Tubby was on my runners-up list, and he was one of my favorite characters back when we did that topic years and years ago. Seems like Icctrombone is begging for some schooling again...

Another I considered, but didn't have any genuine love for, was THE PHANTOM BLOT. I just love the very idea that a Mickey Mouse villain got his own title. I read a few issues, and they weren't bad, if you like Mickey adventures. I guess Western realized that the Phantom Blot was a favorite, so why not give the kiddies nothing but PB vs. Mickey stories for a while?
A couple of series that I loved felt like spin-offs (and of course would be under other standards), but didn't meet our topic definitions. Gerber's FOOLKILLER miniseries had a new character adopting the identity, so it wasn't a qualifying spin-off of MAN-THING or OMEGA THE UNKNOWN. CHRONOS did have the Atom's arch enemy appearing in the first issue to hand-off the time tech, but Gabriel Walker was the lead of the ongoing, and he debuted in his own first issue.
I only thought of BLACK GOLIATH just now, and I might have considered slotting him in. His wasn't a great series, so it probably wouldn't have made my cut, but I've got a lot of fondness for anything Hank Pym-adjacent.

JUMBO COMICS #166

One of my Christmas presents came late:



It's Phil Manzanera's autograph, along with a pin depicting his red Gibson Firebird guitar.

EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS’ TARZAN #100, January 1958, Dell



Cover model Gordon Scott was Hollywood’s Tarzan of the era, playing the part in six films between 1955 and 1960.

Written by Gaylord Du Bois

Art by Jesse Marsh (Tarzan stories) and Russ Manning (Brothers of the Spear)

“The Rifle of Tippoo Tib”



It sounds like a silly name, but Tippoo Tib, or Tippu Tip, was an actual historical figure, an Arab slave trader in Zanzibar. The name is a nickname meaning “gatherer of wealth”, and he was an associate of famous white explorers Stanley and Livingstone.

This first story is premised on the idea that this famous slave trader—acknowledged here only as “the greatest Arab explorer—the first ruler of east Africa”—is so respected that the black African boy Moki, son of the late king of the Badungas, will inherit the throne if he can follow his father’s clues to retrieve the rifle that Tibboo Tib bequeathed him. Moki has a poem—“My head untie, my steps retrace, the moon on high will mark the place” and a hunting assegai--and Tarzan uses the first part of the poem to get the treasure hunt started by removing the thong from the assegai to find a map to Mandrill Canyon.

Tarzan leaves Moki, promising to return at night when the moon is on high, but Moki gets impatient waiting, and he climbs the cliffs indicated on the map alone.

On the cliffs, he is attacked by mandrills, but is saved when Tarzan returns. The risen moon reveals a shadow on a distant cliff that resembles a rifle pointing downwards. Moki and Tarzan follow the clue to recover the rifle, which is in a hidden city populated by mandrills. Although Tarzan can, of course communicate with them, they are uncooperative and combative, chasing them off a ledge into an underground river.



Tarzan and Moki swim out, having succeeded in their quest to earn Moki a youthful kingship and having become friends.

“Zulu Welcome” is this issue’s text feature. Apparently these text features regularly told stories of the native boy Mabu, who here meets Chief Umtosi of the Zulu. The one-pager is a disjointed telling of how the Zulus welcome Mabu and his friend into their village. For such a short feature, it’s remarkably unreadable and uninteresting.

“Tarzan and Kifaru” is the second and final Tarzan story in this issue.



Tarzan and “Boy” try to rescue a rhino and its “toto” (young offspring) from a crocodile, but the croc kills the mother. Tarzan dives in and kills the beast, rescuing the young rhinoceros.



They take the baby home to raise it, and include a shot of Jane and the treehouse, to establish consistency with expectations established by readers who know Tarzan from the Weismuller movies:



Once the baby has grown up a bit, Tarzan and Boy release it into the wild. When hunters later capture Jad-Bal-Ja, Tarzan’s friend the Golden Lion, Tarzan attempt to save the noble beast, but he is surrounded by native hunters who want the kill. But then comes Boy, riding on the back of Kifaru, the rhino, who has come to repay Tarzan’s favor in saving his life.

The “Brothers of the Spear” backup is untitled.



This is an installment in an ongoing serial, that has Dan-El (the white “brother of the spear”) following the elephant corps of Molithi (the black “brother of the spear”) and saving them from an attack by Tuareg raiders. Maybe it was worth reading (for more than the pleasant Russ Manning art) if you were following the story, but this comic strikes me as one aimed at casual readers looking for a familiar character, not one aimed at hooking a devoted readership.

I know Jesse Marsh has his fans, but his sketchy work is just not my kind of comics. Panels look like cels from a crudely animated mid-70’s cartoon to me. The staging feels static, and images such as Tarzan rising from river with water pouring off of him are unconvincing, establishing the point but not evoking any sensation in the reader. His Tarzan is almost always expressionless, intentionally evoking the stereotypical Weissmuller performance.

The stories feel trivial, ornamented with mild thrills to cover very simple plots. This matches my general impression of Western’s typical output: competent but not engaging. It was close enough to the primitive version of Tarzan of film that the reader would find it familiar.

From a comics fan’s perspective, though, there is nothing to really praise here. It’s a bit sad that with one of the best known characters in adventure stories, the creators would coast along with such bland, unexciting content. Basic competence and Russ Manning prevent it from being Jungle Junk, but that’s all.

While both the Dell and Gold Key runs were produced by Western Publishing, the Gold Key approach to the feature, which I'll sample separately, was done very differently, as we shall see.

1. SUPERMAN’S PAL JIMMY OLSEN #142, October 1971, DC Comics


Published cover by Neal Adams and Jack Kirby, Kirby’s original version on the right

By Jack Kirby and Vince Colletta

Spun-off from SUPERMAN #13, November/December 1941 via SUPERMAN #91, August 1954 (debatably attributed as the first appearance of the “Earth-1” Jimmy Olsen)

There’s a saying you might have heard: “Dance with the one that brung ya.” For me, that’s the 142nd issue of this spin-off series starring Superman’s best friend, Jimmy Olsen.

Jack Kirby’s Jimmy is the comic without which, I may not have ever been here in this forum or have ever begun reading comics. It was the first, in a tale I’ve recounted several times here: 11 year old monster movie fan can’t get his Famous Monsters of Filmland fix at the newsstand and happens to spot this convenient substitute. I know Superman and Jimmy from tv, and here’s a vampire in the Count Dracula mold and a werewolf, and I’ve got a quarter to spare, so why not?


Years later, I would see this issue spotlighted in an AMAZING HEROES article on (I think) “the 10 worst Jack Kirby stories ever.” So even at his “worst”, and with his often-cited “worst inker”, Vince Colletta, the Kirby magic was strong enough to make a convert out of me.

There was a lot I wasn’t equipped for in “The Man From Transilvane”: the Newsboy Legion, the DNA Project, the Guardian…and it was a continued story, so I didn’t even get a full serving! More than 50 years later, I can’t reconjure how this story affected me, what exactly thrilled me or disappointed me, but I was captivated enough to return to the comics rack, as recounted in my thread on my first year of comics collecting. Here’s what I said about this issue in that thread. I don’t think I can improve on the fuller commentary I worked up there, but I think I’ve more than justified my high ranking of this comic for Class Comics Christmas 2023.


(I used to own this original art for page 1 of the 2-page DNA Project backup in this issue, one of the saddest things I ever had to give up: a page from my first comic, bought for only $35 at a con where I met and spoke with Jack Kirby for a good 15 minutes. No waiting in line for expensive autographs, just walked up and talked to a god of the art like an ordinary guy. He wasn’t being mobbed by fans, just hanging out at his booth and shooting the breeze with anyone who wanted to talk. Between that experience and hanging out with Jim Aparo for a couple of days, I never had much interest in going to later cons to “meet” favorite pros the way it goes at these things now.)

And may I wish you all a happy holiday, and express my appreciation for this annual tradition, and give thanks to Cei-U! for developing and hosting the celebration each year (and apologies for beating him to the Bizarros, but a huge part of the sense of community here is discovering common love for specific pieces of this huge domain of comics--read CROSSFIRE!). This forum has been so important to me, especially over the past 4 or 5 years. Its existence is a gift that rewards me every time I log on. Thank you all, friends and fellow fans, for everything you’ve done to keep the joy of comics alive in me, and for your ongoing comradeship, encouragement, and positivity.

And finally, here’s to brutalis , whose untimely passing I remember each Christmas season. Wish you were around for this one, Bruce.

Well, I saw it. A property like this has little to justify its appearance on the big screen aside from the spectacle, and there's plenty of that here. It's overwhelming, and not as impressive as it was the first time around; I frequently lost track of what was supposed to be happening underwater and what wasn't, so I'd say they didn't do as good a job of conveying the sub-sea environment as they did before. It strikes me that most of the DCEU properties all would have been better served staying as one shots, rather than hopeful trilogies: Wonder Woman, Shazam and Aquaman were all well suited to end after a single installment, and in hindsight, should have.

There's a big disappointment in the "Thanks" credit for various comic book creators whose work inspired what ended up on screen. The climax of the film involves Black Manta kidnapping Arthur Jr. with the intent of killing him, but the creators from whose work that scene was inspired, David Michelinie and Jim Aparo, are conspicuously absent, while others, whose contributions are much murkier, are included.

Anyway, James Gunn is starting over, so farewell, DCEU. You weren't nearly as bad as some fans made you out to be.