By Cary Bates, Gerry Conway, Arnold Drake, Bob Haney, Paul Levitz, Martin Pasko, Dick Dillin, Jim Aparo, Fred Carillo, Mike Grell, Kurt Scaffenberger, Romeo Tanghal, Tex Blaisdell, Vince Colletta, Dick Giordano, Bob Layton & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3728-8 (TPB), 978-1-4012-4198-8 (Digital edition)
This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.
Deadman debuted in Strange Adventures #205 cover-dated October 1967 and on sale from August 29th. He heralded a new kind of superhero comic at a time when costumed crusaders were in their second decline in 20 years, and edgy if not actually scary supernatural stories were increasingly attracting the attention of the entire world.
In his wake TV introduced Dark Shadows, sci fi anthologies Outer Limits and Twilight Zone segued into Rod Serling’s Night Gallery whilst movies like Rosemary’s Baby revolutionised scary cinema. In literature, a revival of Gothic romance set pulses racing and hearts fluttering once more. However, in many ways it was business as usual as horror stories had been a top seller since books began and plays, comics, radio, and TV since its earliest incarnations had dwelt heavily upon tales of the unknown…
As the 1960s ended, its colossal superhero boom became a slow but certain bust, with formerly major successes no longer able to find enough readers to keep them alive. The appetite for costumed clowns was paling in favour of a resurgence of more traditional genres, and one rational editorial response was to reshape comic characters to fit evolving contemporary tastes.
Publishers swiftly changed gears and even staid, cautious DC reacted rapidly, making masked heroes fit the new landscape. Newly revised and revived costumed features included roving mystic troubleshooter The Phantom Stranger and golden age colossus The Spectre, whilst resurgent traditional genres spawned atrocity-faced WWII spy Unknown Soldier and cowboy bounty hunter Jonah Hex, spectral western avenger El Diablo and game-changing monster hero Swamp Thing, spearheading a wave of new formats, anthologies and concepts.
Moreover, supernatural themes and horror-tinged plots were shoehorned into those superhero titles that weathered the trend-storm. Arguably, the moment of surrender and change had already arrived with the creation of Boston Brand in the autumn of 1967, when venerable science fiction anthology Strange Adventures was abruptly retooled as the haunted home of an angry ghost…
This third Deadman collection (of five) again proves that changing times and tastes demand different heroes, with pertinent material from World’s Finest Comics #223 & 227: The Phantom Stranger #33, 39-41; Brave and the Bold #133, Superman Family #183 and DC Super-Stars #18, cumulatively spanning cover-dates May/June 1974 to Winter 1978, and confirming that as tastes vacillate, the valiant dead can keep on going simply by changing a bit of perspective…
High wire acrobat Boston Brand was a rough, tough, jaded performer who had seen everything and masked his decent human heart behind an obnoxious exterior and cynical demeanour. As “Deadman”, Brand had been the star attraction of Hills Circus and lover of its reluctant owner Lorna Carling. He also acted as a secret guardian for the misfits it employed and sheltered. One fateful night, Brand almost missed his cue because he had to stop a local cop harassing circus mystic Vashnu. It would have better if Brand had been late, because as soon as he started his act – 40 feet up and without a net – someone put a rifle slug into his heart. Despite being dead before he hit the ground, Brand was scared and furious. Nobody could see or hear him screaming, and Vashnu kept babbling on that he was the chosen of Rama Kushna – “the spirit of the universe”. The hokum all proved horribly true when that entity astonishingly made contact, telling Boston that he would walk among men until he found his killer.
The gig came with some advantages. He was invisible, untouchable, immune to physical laws and able to take possession of the living and drive them like meat cars. His only clue was witnesses in the audience who claimed that a man with a hook had shot him…
Brand’s hunt brought him into contact with killer mystic The Sensei – a master murderer who has dealt with ghosts before – and helplessly, frustratingly, experienced the end of the Hook. When the Sensei executed Boston’s quarry, Rama Kushna asked if a balance has been struck and capitalised on Brand’s furious negative response. Brand demanded true justice for everyone and inadvertently elected himself the agent of its enactment…
The search had brought him into contact with Batman (and other superheroes) and together they saved a Tibetan spiritual paradise on Earth. Sensei’s League of Assassins deemed benevolent Shangri La Nanda Parbat bad for the business of murder, and Deadman’s efforts to save the city from invasion were coloured by the fact that within its boundaries he becomes a living, breathing person again…
By the time of this outing, and thanks to a rapprochement with his aerialist twin brother Cleveland Brand, Deadman has found his killer, but only uncovered infinitely more injustice and innate rottenness at the heart of the world. Now he roams aimlessly, despondent and nearly mad…
Opening in World’s Finest Comics #223, Superman & Batman recruit Brand to help in their search for a serial killer. Shocks abound when all evidence points to the culprit being the brain-damaged, secretly institutionalised, unsuspected older brother of Bruce Wayne! When the whole truth emerges in ‘Wipe the Blood Off My Name’ (Bob Haney, Dick Dillin & Vince Colletta), the lonely, isolated ghost goes off the rails and decides to keep on possessing mentally vacant Thomas Wayne Jr.
Batman has other ideas though…
Apparently ignoring these events, Deadman then clashes with The Phantom Stranger (#33, November 1974 by Drake & Mike Grell) during the Man with No Name’s war against spiritual mad scientist Dr Zorn. In ‘Deadman’s Bluff!’, the ghost’s protracted, and apparently obsessively pointless hunt for his own murderer is exploited by the villain. As ever, the chase ends in frustration and fury for Boston, even though Zorn fails to spark war between the ethereal avengers, and instead causes an antagonistic partnership to be formed between them. After months of relentless manhunting, Batman’s search for Thomas Wayne culminates in ‘Death Flaunts its Golden Grin’ (WFC #227, February 1975 by Haney, Dillin & Tex Blaisdell), as the caped crusaders accidentally find the fugitives whilst tracking global smugglers. That moment of triumph is brief and ends in tragedy for all concerned, after which the guy in the hat gets reacquainted with the spectre in skin-tights for Phantom Stranger #39’s ‘Death Calls Twice for a Deadman’: a last-ditch effort to revive dwindling sales as horror stories faced their own decline.
Guest-starring The Sensei, it signalled a belated return to the company’s over-arching continuity, but was too little, too late. Deadman similarly co-starred in PS #40’s ‘In the Kingdom of the Blind’ and #41’s concluding chapter ‘A Time for Endings’(February-March 1976 and both by Paul Levitz & Fred Carillo). Now modern mage Dr Nathan Seine sought to bring Elder Gods to Earth using blind psychic Cassandra Craft as a medium…
With that tale’s finish, his series ended and the Phantom Stranger all-but-vanished until the winter of 1978 and a giant-sized Deadman team-up tale from DC Super-Stars #18 that is happily forthcoming.
First, though, Deadman – by Haney & Jim Aparo – remanifests in Brave and the Bold #133 to deliver ‘Another Kind of Justice!’ to aging rum-runner Turk Bannion when his heir and murderer turns to a more modern form of smuggling with Dark Knight & Wandering Wraith objecting. Uncanny events hit a lighter note next as Cary Bates, Kurt Schaffenberger & Colletta explore inexplicable somnolent excursions on ‘The Day Lois Lane Walked All Over Superman!’ (Superman Family #183, May June 1977). Here, though, Brand invisibly aids all concerned as a monomaniacal psychic messes with mind-control and body-borrowing…
Closing this grimoire of the dead-&-gone is that epic clash from DC Super-Stars #18. Concocted by Gerry Conway, Marty Pasko, Romeo Tanghal, Dick Giordano & Bob Layton, ‘Phantom Stranger and Deadman’ was an extended Halloween extravaganza seeing the moribund supernatural champions – with venerable vintage ghost-breaker Dr. Terrence Thirteen and necromantic nemesis Tala, Goddess of Evil in attendance – attempting to eradicate an infestation of demons lethally infiltrating the comic book Mecca of the season: Rutland, Vermont (long associated in both Marvel and DC titles as the only place to be on the Eve of All Hallows). The war was for humanity’s survival and no-one escaped unscathed…
With covers by Aparo & Neal Adams, this graphic grimoire perfectly captures the echoes of an era in transition through a delirious run of comics classics no ardent art lover or fanatical fear aficionado can do without.
© 1964, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 2012 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.