Category: DC Superhero

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Showcase Presents The Elongated Man


By John Broome, Gardner Fox, John Broome, Carmine Infantino, Murphy Anderson, Irv Novick, Gil Kane, Neal Adams, Mike Sekowsky, Sid Greene & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1042-2 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

There are a bunch of comics anniversaries this year. Some of the most significant will be rightly celebrated, but a few are going to be unjustly ignored. As a feverish fanboy wedged firmly in the past, I’m again abusing my privileges here to carp about another brilliant vintage book, criminally out of print and not slated for revival either physically or in digital formats…

Once upon a time, American comics editors believed readers would become jaded if any characters were over-used or over-exposed. To combat that potential danger – and for sundry other commercial and economic reasons – they developed back-up features in most of their titles. By the mid-1960s the policy was largely abandoned as resurgent superheroes sprang up everywhere and readers just couldn’t get enough – but there were still one or two memorable holdouts.

In late 1963 Julius Schwartz took editorial control of Batman and Detective Comics and finally found a place for a character who had been lying mostly fallow ever since his debut as a very long-legged walk-on in the April/May 1960 Flash. The Elongated Man was Ralph Dibny: a circus-performer who discovered an additive in popular soft drink Gingold which seemed to give certain people increased muscular flexibility. Intrigued, Dibny isolated and refined the chemical additive until he had developed a serum which granting him the ability to stretch, bend and compress his body to an incredible degree. Then Ralph had to decide how to use his new powers…

A quirky chap with his own small but passionate band of devotees, in recent years the perennial B-lister became a fixture of the latest Flash TV series, but his many exploits are still largely uncollected in any format. The only archival asset is this charming, witty and very pretty compilation gathering his debut and guest appearances from Flash issues #112, 115, 119, 124, 130, 134, and 138 (spanning cover-dates April/May 1960 to August 1963) plus the Stretchable Sleuth’s entire scintillating run from Detective Comics #327-371 (comprising May 1964 to January 1968).

Designed as a modern take on Jack Cole’s immensely popular Golden Age champion Plastic Man, Dibny debuted in a cunningly crafted crime caper by John Broome, Carmine Infantino & Joe Giella. Flash #112 went on sale February 25th 1960, cover featuring ‘The Mystery of the Elongated Man!’ He was presented as a mysterious, masked yet attention-seeking elastic do-gooder, of whom the Scarlet Speedster was nonetheless highly suspicious…

Proving himself virtuous, Dibny returned in #115 (September 1960, inked by Murphy Anderson) when aliens attempt to conquer the Earth and the Vizier of Velocity needs ‘The Elongated Man’s Secret Weapon!’ as well as the guest-star himself to save the day. In Flash #119 (March 1961), Flash rescues the vanished hero from ‘The Elongated Man’s Undersea Trap!’, thereby introducing vivacious and deadly smart Sue Dibny as a newlywed “Mrs Elongated Man”) in a stirring saga of subsea alien slavers by regular creative team Broome, Infantino & Giella. The threat was again extraterrestrial with #124’s alien invasion thriller ‘Space-Boomerang Trap!’ (November 1961), featuring an uneasy alliance between the Scarlet Speedster, Elastic Investigator and sinister rogue Captain Boomerang, who naturally couldn’t be trusted as far as you could throw him. Ralph collaborated with Flash’s junior partner in #130 (August 1962) only just defeating the wily Weather Wizard when ‘Kid Flash Meets the Elongated Man!’ before bounding back into action with – and against – the senior speedster in Flash #134 (February 1963). Seemingly allied with Captain Cold in ‘The Man Who Mastered Absolute Zero!’, Dibny excelled in an epic thriller that almost ended his heroic career…

Gardner Fox scripted ‘The Pied Piper’s Double Doom!’ in Flash #138 (August 1963), a mesmerising team-up seeing both Elongated Man and the Monarch of Motion enslaved by the sinister Sultan of Sound, before ingenuity and justice ultimately prevailed. Soon after, when a back-up spot opened in Detective Comics (previously held by Martian Manhunter since 1955 and only vacated because J’onn J’onzz was promoted to lead feature in House of Mystery), Schwartz had Ralph slightly reconfigured becoming a flamboyant, fame-hungry, brilliantly canny globe-trotting private eye solving mysteries for the sheer fun of it.

Aided by his equally smart, thoroughly grounded wife, the short tales were patterned on classic Thin Man filmic escapades of Nick and Norah Charles, blending clever, impossible crimes with slick sleuthing, all garnished with the outré heroic permutations and frantic physical antics first perfected in Plastic Man. These complex yet uncomplicated sorties, drenched in fanciful charm and sly dry wit, began in Detective #327 (May 1964) with ‘Ten Miles to Nowhere!’ (by Fox & Infantino, who inked himself for all early episodes). Here Ralph, who had publicly unmasked to become a (regrettably minor) celebrity, discovered someone had been stealing his car every night and bringing it back as if nothing had happened. Of course, it had to be a clever criminal plot of some sort…

A month later he solved the ‘Curious Case of the Barn-door Bandit!’, debuting his direly distressing signature trademark of manically twitching his expanded nose whenever he detects “the scent of mystery in the air”. Then he heads for cowboy country to unravel the ‘Puzzle of the Purple Pony!’ and play cupid for a young couple hunting a gold mine in #329.

Ralph & Sue were on an extended honeymoon tour, making him the only costumed hero without a city to protect. On reaching California, Ralph is embroiled in a ‘Desert Double-Cross!’ when hostage-taking thieves raid the home of a wealthy recluse, after which Detective #331 offered a rare full-length story in ‘Museum of Mixed-Up Men!’ (Fox, Infantino & Joe Giella) as Batman, Robin and Ralph unite against a super-scientific felon able to steal memories and reshape victims’ faces. Returned to his solo support role in #332, the Ductile Detective then discovers Sue has been replaced by an alien in ‘The Elongated Man’s Other-World Wife!’ (with Sid Greene joining as new permanent inker). Of course, nothing is as it seems…

‘The Robbery That Never Happened!’ occurred when a jewellery store customer suspiciously claims he had been given too much change, before ‘Battle of the Elongated Weapons!’ (#334) concentrates on a crook who adapts Ralph’s Gingold serum to affect objects, after which bombastic battle it’s back to mystery-solving as EM is invited by Fairview City to round up a brazen bunch of uncatchable bandits in ‘Break Up of the Bottleneck Gang!’ While visiting Central City again, Ralph is lured to the Mirror Master’s old lair and only barely survives ‘The House of “Flashy” Traps!’ before risking certain death in the ‘Case of the 20 Grand Pay-off!’ after replacing Sue with a look-alike – for the best possible reasons – but without her knowledge or permission…

Narrowly surviving his wife’s wrath by turning the American tour into a World cruise, Ralph tackles the ‘Case of the Curious Compass!’ in Amsterdam, by foiling a gang of diamond smugglers before returning to the US to ferret out funny-money pushers in ‘The Counterfeit Crime-Buster!’ Similarly globe-trotting creator John Broome returned to script ‘Mystery of the Millionaire Cowboy!’ in Detective #340 (June 1965) with Ralph and Sue stumbling onto a seemingly haunted theatre and finding crooks at the heart of the matter, and ‘The Elongated Man’s Change-of-Face!’ (Fox, Infantino & Greene) finds a desperate newsman publishing fake exploits to draw the fame-fuelled hero into investigating a town under siege, before ‘The Bandits and the Baroness!’ (by Broome) has our perpetually vacationing couple check in at a resort where every other guest is a Ralph Dibny, in a classy insurance scam yarn heavy with intrigue and tension.

A second full-length team-up with Batman filled Detective Comics #343 (September 1965, by Broome, Infantino & Joe Giella). ‘The Secret War of the Phantom General!’ is a tense action-thriller pitting the hard-pressed heroes against a hidden army of gangsters and Nazi war criminals determined to take over Gotham City. Having broken Ralph’s biggest case, the happy couple head for the Continent and encounter ‘Peril in Paris!’ (Broome, Infantino & Greene) after Sue goes shopping as an ignorant monolingual American and returns a few hours later a fluent French-speaker…

Fox’s ‘Robberies in Reverse!’ boasts a baffling situation wherein shopkeepers start paying customers, leading Ralph to a severely skewed scientist’s accidental discovery, whilst #346’s ‘Peephole to the Future!’ (Broome) sees Elongated Man inexplicably develop the power of clairvoyance. It sadly clears up long before he can use it to tackle ‘The Man Who Hated Money!’ (Fox) starring a bandit who destroys every penny he steals.

‘My Wife, the Witch!’ was Greene’s last inking contribution for a nearly a year: a Fox thriller wherein Sue apparently gains magical powers whilst ‘The 13 O’Clock Robbery!’ – with Infantino again inking himself – sees Ralph walk into a bizarre mystery and deadly booby-trapped mansion, before Hal Jordan’s best friend seeks out the Stretchable Sleuth to solve the riddle of ‘Green Lantern’s Blackout!’ – an entrancing, action-packed team-up with a future Justice League colleague. ‘The Case of the Costume-made Crook!’ then finds Ralph ambushed by a felon using his old uniform as an implausible burglary tool.

Broome conceived ‘The Counter of Monte Carlo!’ as the peripatetic Dibnys fall into a colossal espionage conspiracy at the casino and afterward become pawns of a fortune teller in ‘The Puzzling Prophecies of the Tea Leaves!’ (Fox), before Broome dazzles and delights one more time with ‘The Double-Dealing Jewel Thieves!’ with a museum owner finding his imitation jewel exhibit is indeed filled with fakes…

As Fox assumed full scripting duties, mystic nomad Zatanna guest-stars in DC #355’s ‘The Tantalising Troubles of the Tripod Thieves!’ as stolen magical artefacts lead Ralph into conflict with a band of violent thugs, before ‘Truth Behind the False Faces!’ sees Infantino bow out on a high note as Elongated Man helps a beat cop to his first big bust and solves the conundrum of a criminal wax museum. Detective #357 (November 1966) featured ‘Tragedy of the Too-Lucky Thief!’ (by Fox, Murphy Anderson & Greene) as the Dibnys meet a gambler who hates to win but cannot lose, whilst Greene handled all the art on ‘The Faker-Takers of the Baker’s Dozen!’ after Sue’s latest art project leads to the theft of an ancient masterpiece.

Anderson soloed with Fox’s ‘Riddle of the Sleepytime Taxi!’, a compellingly glamorous tale of theft and espionage, before Ralph & Sue visit Swinging England (Detective #360 February 1967, by Fox & Anderson) for ‘London Caper of the Rockers and Mods!’ Meeting the reigning monarch and preventing warring kid-gangs from desecrating our most famous tourist traps, they head home to ‘The Curious Clue of the Circus Crook!’ (Greene). Here Ralph visits his old Big-Top boss and stops a rash of robberies following the show around the country. Infantino found time in his increasingly busy schedule for a few more episodes, (both inked by Greene) beginning with ‘The Horse that Hunted Hoods’: a police steed with uncanny crime solving abilities, and continuing in a ‘Way-out Day in Wishbone City!’ wherein normally solid citizens – even Sue – go temporarily insane and riot, after which unsung master Irv Novick steps in to delineate the mystery of ‘The Ship That Sank Twice!’

‘The Crooks who Captured Themselves!’ (#365, by Greene) recounts Ralph losing control of his powers before Broome & Infantino reunite one last time for ‘Robber Round-up in Kiddy City!’ as, for a change, Sue sniffs out a theme-park mystery for Ralph to solve. Infantino finally bowed out with the superb ‘Enigma of the Elongated Evildoer!’ (written by Fox and inked by Greene) as the Debonair Detectives thwart a thief in a ski lodge who seems to possess all Ralph’s elastic abilities. The Atom guest-starred in #368, helping battle clock-criminal Chronos in ‘The Treacherous Time-Trap!’ by Fox, Gil Kane & Greene, before iconoclastic newcomer Neal Adams illustrates poignant puzzler ‘Legend of the Lover’s Lantern!’ and Kane & Greene return for intriguing all-action ‘Case of the Colorless Cash!’. The close of the year signalled the end of an era as Fox, Mike Sekowsky & Greene concluded Elongated Man’s expansive solo stretch with delightfully dizzy lost-loot yarn ‘The Bellringer and the Baffling Bongs’ (#371, January 1968).

With the next issue Detective Comics became an all Bat-family affair. Ralph & Sue Dibny temporarily faded from view until revived as bit players in Flash and were finally recruited into the Justice League of America as semi-regulars. Their charismatic relationship and unique, genteel style have, sadly, not survived: casualties of changing comics tastes and the replacement of sophistication with angsty shouting and testosterone-fuelled sturm und drang.

Witty, bright, clever and genuinely enthralling, these smart stories from a lost age are all beautiful to look at and a joy to read for any sharp kid and all joy-starved adults. This adorable collection is a shining tribute to the very best of DC’s Silver Age and a volume no fan of fun and adventure of any age should be without. It should not, however, be the only place you can stretch out and enjoy such classic fare.
© 1960, 1961, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Golden Age Flash Archives volume I


By Gardner F. Fox, Harry Lampert, E.E. Hibbard, Hal Sharp & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0784-7 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

There are many comics anniversaries this year. Some of the most significant will be rightly celebrated, but a few are going to be unjustly ignored. As a feverish fanboy wedged firmly in the past, I’m still abusing my privileges here by carping about another brilliant vintage book, criminally out of print and not slated for revival either physically or in digital formats…

The innovative fledgling company that became DC published the first ever comic book super-speedster and over the intervening decades has constantly added more to its pantheon of stars. Devised, created and written by Gardner Fox and initially visually realised by Harry Lampert, Jay Garrick debuted as the very first Monarch of Motion in Flash Comics #1. He quickly – how else? – became a veritable sensation. “The Fastest Man Alive” wowed readers of anthologies like Flash Comics, All Star Comics, Comics Cavalcade and other titles – as well as solo vehicle All-Flash Quarterly – for just over a decade before changing tastes benched him and most other first-generation costumed crimebusters in the early1950s.

His invention as a strictly single-power superhero created a new trend in the burgeoning action-adventure Funnybook marketplace, and his particular riff was specifically replicated many times at various companies where myriad Fast Furies sprang up including Johnny Quick, Hurricane/Mercury, Silver Streak, The Whizzer, Quicksilver and Snurtle McTurtle – the Terrific Whatzit amongst so many others…

After half a decade of mostly interchangeable cops, cowboys and cosmic invaders, the concept of human speedsters and the superhero genre in general was spectacularly revived by Julie Schwartz in 1956. Showcase #4 revealed how police scientist Barry Allen became the second hero to run with the concept. We’ve not looked back since – and if we did it would all be a great big blur…

This initial charmingly beguiling deluxe Archive (sadly not available in not-quite-faster-than-light digital) edition collects the first year and a half of publication, spanning January 1940 to May 1941 of the irrepressible Garrick’s whimsically eccentric exploits in 17 (regrettably untitled) adventures from anthology Flash Comics. These tales demonstrate an appealing rawness, light-hearted whimsy and scads of narrative experimentation starring a brilliant nerd and (ostensibly) physical sad-sack who became a social reformer and justice-dispensing human meteor.

Following a fulsome Foreword from sometime Flash scribe Mark Waid, the fast fictions commence with the debut of ‘The Fastest Man Alive’, speedily delivering in 15 pages an origin and returning cast, whilst staging a classic confrontation with a sinister cabal of gangsters. It all started years previously when student Garrick collapsed in a Midwestern University lab, only to awaken hyper-charged and the fastest creature on Earth thanks to “hard water fumes” he had inhaled whilst unconscious. After weeks recovering in hospital, the formerly-frail chemist realised the exposure had bestowed super-speed and endurance. He promptly sought to impress his sort-of girlfriend Joan Williams by becoming an unstoppable football player…

Time passed, the kids graduated and Garrick moved to New York where, appalled by rampant crime, he decided to do something about it. The Flash operates mostly in secret until one day, whilst idly playing tennis with himself, Jay meets Joan again, just as mobsters try to kill her in a drive-by shooting. Catching a storm of bullets, Jay gets reacquainted with his former paramour and discovers she is being targeted by criminal combine the Faultless Four: master criminals set on obtaining her father’s invention the Atomic Bombarder. In the blink of an eye Flash smashes the gang’s sinister schemes and defeats diabolical leader Sieur Satan, saving Joan’s life whilst revelling in the sheer liberating fun and freedom of being gloriously unstoppable…

In his sequel appearance Flash stumbles upon a showgirl’s murder and discovers that Yankee mobster Boss Goll and British aristocrat Lord Donelin plan to take over America’s entire entertainment industry with ruthless strong-arm tactics. The speedster is as much hindered as helped by “wilful, headstrong” (that’s old world coding for forceful, competent and independently-minded) Joan who begins her own lifetime obsession of pesky do-gooding right there, right then…

Everett E. Hibbard began a decade-long association with Flash in #3, when Major Williams’ Atomic Bombarder is coveted by foreign spies. The elderly boffin being framed for treason prompts Garrick to come to his future father-in-law’s aid, after which Jay & Joan smash an off-shore gambling ring graduating to kidnapping and blackmail in #4. During these early escapades, Flash seldom donned his red, blue and yellow outfit: usually operating invisibly or undercover to play super-speed pranks with merciless, puckish glee. That started changing in #5, when the speedster saves an elderly artist from hit-men to frustrate mad collector Vandal who uses murder to increase the market value of his purchases.

Flash Comics #6 saw Jay & Joan at old Alma Mater Midwestern, foiling a scheme to dope athletes seeking to qualify for the Olympics, before #7 saw a stopover in Duluth lead to the downfall of gambler Black Mike – industriously fixing motorcar races with a metal melting ray. For #8, the Vizier of Velocity tracks down seemingly corrupt contractors building shoddy, dangerous buildings only to find graft and skulduggery go much further up the financial and civic food chain, whilst in FC #9, gangsters “acquire” a scientist’s invention and the Flash finds himself battling a brigade of giant Gila Monsters. Flash #10 depicts the downfall of a political cabal in the pocket of gangster Killer Kelly and stealing from the schools they administered, before in #11, Garrick meets his first serious opponent in kidnap racketeer The Chief, whose sinister brilliance enables him to devise stroboscopic glasses to track and target the usually invisibly fast crime-crusher…

With the threat of involvement in the “European War” a constant subject of US headlines, Flash Comics #12 (December 1940) had the heroic human hurricane intervene to save tiny Ruritanian nation Kurtavia from ruthless invasion. His spectacular lightning war sees Garrick sinking submarines, repelling land armies and crushing airborne blitzkriegs for a fairy tale happy ending here, but within a year the process would become patriotic morale boosting repeated ad infinitum in every US comic book as the real world brutally intruded on the industry and nation.

Back in the USA for #13, Garrick assists old pal Jim Carter in cowboy country where the young inheritor of a silver mine is gunned down by murdering owlhoots. Jay then heads back east to crush a criminal combine sabotaging city subway construction in #14, before saving a circus from robbery, sabotage and poor attendances in #15. Throughout all these yarns Jay paid scant attention to preserving any kind of secret identity – a detail that would soon change – but as Hal Sharp took over illustrating with #16 (Hibbard presumably devoting his energies to the contents of forthcoming 64-page solo-starring All-Flash Quarterly #1: another landmark for the hero) Joan is kidnapped by Mexican mobsters aware of her connection to The Flash. Rushing to her rescue, Garrick battles a small army, not only saving his girlfriend but even reforming bandit chief José Salvez. This high-energy compilation closes with another light-hearted sporting escapade as the speedster intervenes in a gambling plot, saving a moribund baseball team from sabotage even as Jay Garrick – officially “almost as fast as the Flash” – becomes the Redskins’ (a nickname now thankfully consigned to history’s massive dustbin of insensitivity) star player to save them from lousy performances…

With covers by Sheldon Moldoff, Dennis Neville, George Storm, Jon L. Blummer, Hibbard and Sharp, this book is a sheer delight for lovers of the early Fights ‘n’ Tights genre: exuberant, exciting and funny, although certainly not to every modern fan’s taste. Of course, with such straightforward thrills on show any reader with an open mind could find his opinion changed in a flash.
© 1940, 1941, 1999 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Golden Age Flash Archives volume II


By Gardner F. Fox, E.E. Hibbard, Hal Sharp & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0784-7 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

The ever-expanding array of companies that became DC published many iconic “Firsts” in the early years of the industry. Associated outfit All-American Publications (co-publishers until bought out by National/DC in 1946) were responsible for the first comic book super-speedster as well as the iconic Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Atom, Hawkman, Johnny Thunder and so many others who became mainstays of DC’s pantheon of stars.

Devised, created and written by Gardner Fox and originally limned by Harry Lampert, Flash Comics #1 saw Jay Garrick debut as the very first Vizier of Velocity and quickly become a veritable sensation. “The Fastest Man Alive” wowed readers for just over a decade before changing tastes ended the first costumed hero as the 1950s opened.

This charmingly seductive deluxe Archive edition collects the Fastest Yarns Alive from Flash Comics #18-24, covering June-December 1941, plus the first two issues of the irrepressible Garrick’s whimsically eccentric full-length exploits from All-Flash Quarterly (Summer and Fall of that same fateful year). All were written by an apparently inexhaustible Gardner Fox.

After another informative Introduction from comic book all-star Jim Amash, the rollercoaster of fun and thrills gathers steam with ‘The Restaurant Protective Association’ (illustrated by Hal Sharp), with Jay and girlfriend/confidante Joan Williams stumbling upon a pack of extortionists and exposing a treacherous viper preying on Joan’s best gal-pal, after which ‘The Fall Guy’ in #19 reveals how a gang of agile fraudsters are faking motor accidents to fleece insurance companies. Both cases gave Garrick ample opportunity to display his hilarious and humiliating bag of super-speed tricks and punishing pranks to astound playful kids of the day and which still delight decades later.

Flash Comics #20 led with ‘The Adventure of the Auctioned Utility Company’ wherein Joan accidentally buys a regional power outfit and Jay uses all his energies to reconcile a feuding family whilst teaching a miserly embezzler an unforgettable lesson…

Sharp had been doing such splendid artistic service on the monthly tales because regular illustrator E. E. Hibbard had been devoting all his creative energies to the contents of a forthcoming solo title: 64-page All-Flash Quarterly #1. The epic premiere issue opened with tantalising frontispiece ‘The JSA Bid Farewell to the Flash’, celebrating the fact that the Fastest Man Alive was the third character to win his own solo comic – after Superman and Batman – and would therefore be “too busy for Justice Society get-togethers”…

Fox & Hibbard then retold ‘The Origin of the Flash’, revealing again how some years previously college student Garrick had passed out in a lab at Midwestern University, only to awaken hyper-charged and the fastest creature on Earth thanks to “hard water fumes” he inhaled whilst unconscious. After weeks in hospital, the formerly-frail apprentice chemist deduced he had developed super-speed and endurance, and promptly sought to impress his apparently unattainable sort-of girlfriend Joan Williams by becoming an unbeatable football star. Upon graduation Garrick moved to New York where, appalled by its rampant criminality, he employed his gift to fight it…

‘The Men Who Turned to Stone’ plunged readers back to the present as one of Garrick’s colleagues at Chemical Research Incorporated discovers an instant petrification process and is abducted by criminals hoping to make lots of illegal money with it. Hibbard also illustrated uncredited fun-fact featurette ‘The Flash Presents his Hall of Speed Records’ before ‘Meet the Author and Artist of the Flash’ offers an intimate introduction to the creative team, before ‘The Adventure of the Monocle and his Garden of Gems’ sees the debut of a rare returning villain with an unwise addiction to other people’s jewels, but enough brains to counter Flash’s speed, if not Jay’s courage and ingenuity.

When Flash prevents the murder of a cowboy performer in New York, ‘The Rodeo Mystery’ soon takes Jay & Joan to Oklahoma and a crooked ploy to steal a newly discovered oil well, after which the issue closes with Flash smashing a gambler trying to take over the sport of Ice Hockey in ‘Menace of the Racket King’.

Gambling was also a problem in monthly Flash Comics #21 as ‘The Lottery’ (illustrated by Sharp) sees the Speedster expose a cunning criminal scheme to bilk theatre patrons and carnival-goers. Issue #22’s ‘The Hatchet Cult’ offers a rare exceedingly dark walk on the wild side as the speedster gets involved in a Chinatown Tong war and exposes the incredible secret of modern Mongol mastermind Mighty Kong…

Hibbard & Sharp collaborated on issue #23’s ‘A Millionaire’s Revenge’ wherein wealthy plutocrat Leffingwell Funk decides to avenge an imagined slight inadvertently delivered by a poor but happy man. The methodology is unique: beginning with engineering unsuspecting shoe store owner Jim Sewell’s inheritance of half a million dollars. It would have ended with leg-breaking thugs, disgrace and prison had not Jim counted Jay Garrick amongst his circle of friends…

Cover-dated Fall 1941, All-Flash Quarterly #2 (another all Fox/Hibbard co-production) kicks off with a spectacular all-action ‘Title Page’ and informative recap in ‘A Short History of the Flash’ before the creators ambitiously undertake a massive 4-chapter saga of vengeance and justice. In an era where story was paramount, this oddly time-skewed tale might jar slightly with modern continuity-freaks, spanning as it does nearly a lifetime in the telling, but trust me, just go with it…

‘The Threat: Part One – The Adventure of Roy Revenge!’ opens as brilliant young criminal Joe Connor is sentenced to ten years in jail and swears vengeance on DA Jim Kelley. The convict means it too, spending every waking moment inside improving himself educationally, becoming a trustee to foster the illusion of rehabilitation. On his release Connor befriends Kelley – who is currently pursuing a political career – and orchestrates the abduction of the lawyer’s newborn son. Years later a bold young thug dubbed Roy Revenge begins a campaign of terror against Mayor Jim Kelley which even Flash is hard-pressed to stop. When the bandit is at last apprehended, Kelley pushes hard to have the boy jailed, unaware of his biological connection to the savage youth. In the intervening years Connor had truly reformed – until his angelic wife died, leaving him to care for their little girl Ann and “adopted” son Roy. Without his wife’s influence, Connor again turns to crime and raises the stolen boy to hate his biological father…

‘The Flash Presents his Hall of Speed Records’ and ‘How to Develop Your Speed by the Flash’ break up the rolling melodrama before the saga continues in ‘The Threat: Part Two – Adventure of the Blood-Red Ray’ wherein Connor rises through ranks of the Underworld. He now plans to take over the country. Ann has grown up a decent and upstanding – if oblivious – citizen whose only weakness is her constant concealment of her bad brother Roy, who has been hiding from the law for years…

Even when the elder master criminal’s plan to destroy the Kelleys with a heat-ray is scotched by the Flash, the canny crook convinces the Speedster that he is merely a henchman and escapes the full force of justice…

‘The Threat: Part Three – The Wrecker Racket’ sees a new gang plaguing the city, led by a monstrous disfigured albino. No one realises this is Connor – who escaped custody by a method which physically ruined his body and only increased his hatred of Kelley. Locating Roy – who has since found peace in rural isolation – the malign menace again draws the young man into his maniacal schemes. When the boy nearly kills his “sister” Ann in pursuance of Connor’s ambitions, only the Flash can save the day, leading to a swathe of revelation and a shocking conclusion in ‘The Threat: Part Four – The End of the Threat’…

After that monumental generational saga this splendid selection closes with a full-on alien extravaganza from Flash Comics #24 as Garrick investigates a series of abductions and foils a madman’s plot to forcibly colonise the Red Planet. Unfortunately, when inventor Jennings and his gangster backer reach their destination with Jay a helpless prisoner, nobody expected the arid world to be already occupied by belligerent insectoids. Fox, Hibbard & Sharp’s ‘The Flash and the Spider-Man of Mars’ ends the book on a gloriously madcap, spectacular fantasy high note.

Amazing, exciting and quirkily captivating – even if not to many modern fans’ taste, the sheer exuberance, whimsical tone and constant narrative invention in these tales of a nerd who became a social crusader and justice-dispensing human meteor are addictively appealing, and with covers by Sharp, Sheldon Moldoff & Hibbard, this book is another utter delight for lovers of early Fights ‘n’ Tights fantasy. Of course, with such straightforward thrills on show any reader with an open mind could find his opinion changed in a flash.
© 1941, 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Golden Age Hawkman Archives volume 1


By Gardner F. Fox, Dennis Neville, Sheldon Moldoff & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0418-1 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

There are many comics anniversaries this year. Some of the most significant will be rightly celebrated, but a few are going to be unjustly ignored. As a feverish fanboy wedged firmly in the past, I’m again abusing my privileges here to carp about another brilliant vintage book, criminally out of print and not slated for revival either physically or in digital formats…

Although one of DC’s most long-lived and certainly their most visually iconic character, the various iterations of Hawkman have always struggled to find enough of an audience to sustain a solo title. From his beginnings as one of the assorted second features in new anthology Flash Comics (the others being Cliff Cornwall, The King, The Whip, spoof hero Johnny Thunder and Ed Wheelan’s “Picture Novels/Minute Movies”), adding lustre to the soaraway success of the eponymous speedster helming the title, Winged Wonder Carter Hall has struggled through assorted engaging, exciting but always short-lived reconfigurations.

Over decades from ancient hero to re-imagined alien space-cop and post-Crisis on Infinite Earths freedom fighter, or the seemingly desperate but highly readable bundling together of all previous iterations into the reincarnating immortal berserker-warrior of today, the Pinioned Paladin has performed exemplary service without ever really making it to the big time. Hopefully that’s all changed now, thanks to modern movie trends…

Created by Gardner Fox & Dennis Neville, Hawkman first took to the skies in Flash Comics #1 (cover-dated January 1940, but actually on sale from November 20th 1939). He stayed there, growing in quality and prestige until the title died at the end of the Golden Age, with the most celebrated artists to have drawn the Feathered Fury being Sheldon Moldoff and Joe Kubert, whilst a young Robert Kanigher was justly proud of his later run as writer.

Together with his partner Hawkgirl/Hawkwoman, for over a decade the gladiatorial mystery-man countered fantastic arcane threats and battled modern crime and tyranny with weapons of the past before vanishing with the bulk of costumed heroes as the 1950s dawned. His last contemporary appearance was in All Star Comics #57 (1951) as official leader of the Justice Society of America, after which the husband-and-wife hellions were revived and re-imagined nine years later as Katar Hol and Shayera Thal of planet Thanagar. That was thanks to Julie Schwartz’s crack creative couple Gardner Fox & Joe Kubert – a space-age reinterpretation which even survived 1985’s winnowing Crisis on Infinite Earths. Their long career, regular revamps and perpetual retcons stalled during 1994’s Zero Hour crisis, but they’ve reincarnated and returned many times since. However, despite being amongst DC’s most celebrated and visually vibrant strips over the years, Hawkman & Hawkwoman always struggled to retain sufficient audience share to sustain their numerous solo endeavours.

This spectacular deluxe hardcover re-presentation of their formative years (collecting appearances from Flash Comics #1-22, spanning cover dates January 1940 to October 1941) opens with a fond reminiscence by artist Moldoff (Batman, Black Pirate, Sea Devils, Gang Busters, Mr. District Attorney, Moon Girl) in his Foreword before the magic begins as it should with Fox & Neville’s ‘The Origin of Hawkman’. In an first epochal episode, dashing Carter Hall is a playboy scientific tinkerer and part-time archaeologist with a penchant for collecting old, rare weapons, whose dormant memory is abruptly unlocked by an ancient crystal dagger newly purchased for his collection. Through dreams, the dilettante realises that once he had been Prince Khufu of ancient Egypt, murdered with his lover Shiera by Anubis’ High Priest Hath-Set. Moreover, with his newly returned memories, Hall realises the eternal struggle is primed to play out once more…

As if pre-destined, he bumps into equally reincarnated and recently-remembering Shiera Sanders just as a terrifying electrical menace turns New York City’s subway system into a lightning-fuelled killing field. The new couple soon deduce the deadly genius Doctor Hastor is their reborn ancient nemesis Hastor and, after fashioning an outlandish uniform and anti-gravity harness from mystic Egyptian “Ninth Metal”, Hall hunts the deranged electrical scientist to his lair. He’s just in time to save mesmerised Shiera from a second death-by-sacrifice: mercilessly ending the cycle – at least for now…

Flash #2’s ‘The Globe Conquerors’ concentrated on fantastic science as Hall & Saunders tackle a modern Alexander the Great who builds a gravity-altering engine in a ruthless quest to conquer the world, whilst ‘The Secret of Dick Blendon’ in #3 sees “The Hawk-Man” expose a wicked scheme by insidious slavers turning brilliant men into zombies for profit, to gather riches and to ferret out the secret of eternal life.

Sheldon Moldoff debuted as artist in Flash Comics #4, illustrating a splendidly barbarous thriller wherein the Winged Warrior clashes with ‘The Thought Terror’: a sinister mesmerist enslaving the city’s wealthy citizens, prior to ‘The Kidnapping of Ione Craig’ in #5 pitting the crimefighting phenomenon against “Asiatic” cultists led by legendary assassin Hassan Ibn Saddah. These killers are determined to stop a pretty missionary and secret agent from investigating distant “Araby”. Moldoff has received overly unfair criticism over the years for his frequent, copious but stylishly artistic swipes from newspaper strips – usually those of  master craftsmen Alex Raymond and Hal Foster – in his work of this period, but one look at the stunning results here as the feature took a quantum leap in visual quality should silence those quibblers for good.

Maintaining the use of exotic locales, the story extended in #6 as Hall and Ione struggle to cross burning Saharan sands to the African coast before defeating Arab slavers and their deadly ruler ‘Sheba, Queen of the Desert’ before in #7 further exploring the mystical and supernatural underpinnings of the strip. These readily lent themselves to spooky tales of quasi-horror and barbaric intensity. Generally, “The Eerie Unknown” and deluded dabblers in darkness were oft-used elements in Hawkman tales, as seen in ‘Czar, the Unkillable Man’, wherein the Avian Avenger, back in the USA and reunited with Shiera, contests a merciless golem animated by a crazed sculptor aiming to get rich at any cost. Issue #8 offered another deranged technologist as Professor Kitzoff – ‘The Sunspot Wizard’ – alters the pattern and frequency of solar blemishes to foment riot, madness and chaos on Earth… until the Winged Wonder intervenes, after which in ‘The Creatures from the Canyon’ Hawkman repels aquatic invaders living in the depths 5,000 feet below Manhattan Island after they decide to expand their ancient empire upwards…

Bidding for an old firearm at an auction in #10, Hall is inexorably drawn into a maddening murder-mystery and hunt for a lost Colorado goldmine in ‘Adventures of the Spanish Blunderers’, before ‘Trouble in Suburbia’ manifests after a hit-&-run accident draws plucky Shiera into a corrupt and convoluted property-scam. Boyfriend Carter is quite prepared to stand back and let her deal with the villains – even if Hawkman must exert some surreptitious muscle to close the case. Another murderous scam then involves an old High Society chum as ‘The Heart Patient’ reveals how a devious gold digger and a rogue doctor serially poison healthy young men to fleece them into paying for a cure, whilst in #13, ‘Satana, the Tiger Girl’ preys on admirers for far more sinister reasons: pitting Hawkman and Shiera against scientifically hybridised killer-cats…

‘The Awesome Alligator’ sees an elder god return to Earth, inspiring and equipping a lethal lunatic in a plot to conquer America with ancient secrets and futuristic super-weapons. None of those incredible threats could withstand cold fury and a well-wielded mace, however…

At this time the Pinioned Paladin usually dispatched foes of humanity with icy aplomb and single-minded ruthlessness, and such supernatural thrillers as #15’s ‘The Hand’ gave Fox & Moldoff ample scope to display the reincarnated warrior’s savage efficiency, as when he tracks down a sentient severed fist stealing and slaughtering at its inventive master’s command. In #16,‘The Graydon Expedition’ reinforces the hero’s crusading credentials after ferociously independent Shiera Saunders goes missing in Mongolia, and the Winged Wonder undertakes a one-man invasion of a fabulous lost kingdom to save her. Flash Comics #17 offered ‘Murder at the Opera’, putting the bold birdman on the trail of an arcane Golden Mummy Sect with a perilously prosaic origin and agenda, whilst #18 has him investigating skulduggery in the Yukon after the philanthropic Miss Saunders rushes north to offer aid to starving miners during ‘The Gold Rush of ’41’.

Evidently capable of triumphing in any environment or milieu, Hawkman next derailed deranged physicist Pratt Palmer in #19, when that arrogant savant attempts to become the overlord of crime using his deadly ‘Cold Light’ discoveries. One month later, ‘The Mad Bomber’ sees the Avian Ace ally with a racketeer to stop mad scientist Sathan destroying their city with remote-controlled aerial torpedoes, after which Hawkman must end the tragically terrible accidental rampage of an extraterrestrial foundling raised by a callous rival for Shiera’s affections in ‘Menace from Space’…

This high-flying compilation concludes with October 1941’s Flash Comics #22 and ‘The Adventure of the Killer Gang’, wherein stubborn Shiera witnesses a bloody hijacking and determines to make the bandits pay. Although she again helps Hawkman deal with the murderous vermin as a civilian here, big changes were in store for her…

Already in All Star Comics #5 (July 1941) she had first worn wings and a costume of her own, and in Flash Comics #24 (December 1941) she would at last become an equal partner in peril and fully-fledged hero: Hawkgirl. Sadly that’s a tale for another volume…

Exotic, engaging and fantastically inviting, these Golden Age adventures are a true high-point of the era and still offer astonishing thrills and chills. When all’s said and done it’s all about the heady rush of raw adventure, but there’s also a fabulous frisson of nostalgia here to wallow in: recapturing that magical full-sensorium burst of smell and feel and imagination-overload that finds kids at a perfect moment and provokes something visual and conceptual that almost literally blows the mind.

We re-read stories hoping to rekindle that instantly addictive buzz and constantly seek out new comics desperately hoping to recapture that pure, halcyon burst, and these lost mini-epics are phenomenally imbued with everything fans need to make that breathtaking moment happen. Hopefully DC will realise that one day soon and revive these compelling compulsive collections: either in solid form or at least as digital editions…
© 1940, 1941, 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Green Arrow/Black Canary: Till Death Do They Part


By Judd Winick, Cliff Chiang, Amanda Conner, Mike Norton, André Coehlo, Wayne Faucher, Rodney Ramos, Patricia Mulvihill, Paul Mounts, David Baron & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-77950-929-1 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic and comedic effect.

Green Arrow is Oliver Queen, a cross between Batman and Robin Hood and one of DC’s Golden All-Stars. He’s been a fixture of the company’s landscape – often for no discernible reason – more or less continually since his debut in More Fun Comics # 73 in 1941. In those heady days origins weren’t considered as important as image and storytelling, so originators Mort Weisinger & George Papp never bothered, leaving later workmen to fill in the blanks. France Herron, Jack Kirby and his wife Roz crafted one that stuck in ‘The Green Arrow’s First Case’ at the start of the Silver Age superhero revival (Adventure Comics #256, January 1959), and variations of it still impact modern iterations.

As a fixture of the DC Universe GA was one of the few costumed heroes to survive the end of the Golden Age, consistently adventuring in the back of other heroes’ comic books, joining the Justice League during the Silver Age return of costumed crusaders before eventually evolving into a spokes-hero of the anti-establishment during the 1960’s period of “Relevant” comics, courtesy of Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams. Under Mike Grell’s 1980/1990s stewardship he became a gritty and popular A-Lister: an urban hunter dealing harshly with corporate thugs, government spooks and serial killers rather than costumed goof-balls.

…And then he was killed and his son took over the role.

…And then the original came back…

Black Canary was one of the first of relatively few Golden Age women crimebusters in DC’s universe, following Wonder Woman, Liberty Belle and Red Tornado (who actually masqueraded as a man) and predating Merry the Gimmick Girl. Bullet Girl, Phantom Lady and Mary Marvel all began their careers in the same time frame but only joined the DC pantheon after the Golden Age officially ended, snapped up in canny acquisitions that are still paying dividends. The Black Canary (Dinah Lance nee Drake) was created by Bob Kanigher & Carmine Infantino, debuting in Flash Comics #86, August 1947. She derived from a surge in femme fatales (mostly criminals or simply misunderstood) debuting due to equivalent exemplars appearing in gritty film noir B-features, but disappeared with most of the other print superdoers at the end of the Golden Age. However she was one of the first to be revived with the Justice Society of America in 1963.

Originally an Earth-Two crimefighter transplanted to our world, BC has been ruthlessly retconned over and again, but most often now Dinah Laurel Lance is the daughter of an earlier, wartime champion. However you feel about the character, two consistent facts have remained since her reintroduction/assimilation in Justice League of America #73-75 (see Crisis on Multiple Earths vol 1 please link to July 9th 2022 and The Justice League Hereby Elects  please link to September 15th 2017): she has vied with Wonder Woman herself for the title of premiere heroine and she has been in a stormy romantic relationship with Green Arrow ever since.

The tempestuous affair – which actually began during the Summer of Love – finally reached a dramatic culmination some years ago when the couple at last named the day, with this fearsomely dramatic and cripplingly funny tome gathering those unforgettable moments in a celebratory chronicle to warm the hearts and chill the souls of sentimental thrill seekers everywhere.

Reprinting Green Arrow and Black Canary Wedding Special and issues #1-14 of the monthly Green Arrow and Black Canary comic book that sprang from it, the saga begins with a hilariously immature retelling of the path to wedlock from scripter Judd Winick & Amanda Conner. Here the first cute-meet, passion, spats and tender moments are reviewed culminating in riotous hen-nights, rowdy stag-parties and a tremendous battle as a huge guard of dishonour – comprising most of the villains in the DCU – attack the assembled heroes when they’re utterly off-guard…

Naturally the bad guys are defeated, the ceremony concludes and the newlyweds head off to enjoy their wedding night.

And then – in circumstances I’m not going to spoil for you – Green Arrow dies again…

Obviously it doesn’t end there. The dramatic moment acts as springboard for a major restart. In the first issue of the new series Winick & Cliff Chiang’s ‘Dead Again’ only shows Ollie Queen in flashbacks as the Black (Widow) Canary goes on a brutal crime-crushing rampage.

‘Here Comes the Bride’ finds her slowly going off the rails. Only Ollie’s son Connor Hawke – heir to the Arrow mantle – seems able to get through to her where friends and allies like Green Lantern, Superman, Oracle and even Ollie’s old sidekicks Speedy and Red Arrow urge her to move on. As usual it takes the ultra-rational Batman to divine what really happened on the wedding night and send the grief spiral into useful new territory…

In ‘The Naked and the Not-Quite-So-Dead’ Dinah and latest Speedy Mia Dearden infiltrate the secret island paradise of the sinister miscreants who secretly abducted and imprisoned Green Arrow (notice how vague I’m being; all for your benefit?) and find where Ollie is currently; and constantly proving to be more trouble than he can possibly be worth. Conner is also on hand, but whilst attempting to spring his wayward dad also falls captive to uniquely overwhelming forces…

‘Hit and Run, Run, Run!’ ramps up the tension as the heroes all escape – but not before one of their number is gravely wounded by a mystery assailant, prior to ‘Dead Again: Please Play Where Daddy Can See You’ turning the tables and revealing that it’s Ollie’s turn to fall apart as his son and protégé fights for life…

With André Coehlo illustrating, heart-warming reverie ‘Child Support’ (another sequence of poignant flashbacks) describes Green Arrow’s history with his family and the extended team Arrow coterie of sidekicks. Soon, however, Dinah must drag Ollie back from the brink of utter despair when brain dead Connor is abducted from the hospital and life-support machines keeping him breathing…

Cliff Chiang returns for ‘Haystack – First Needle’ as the hunt goes global and felons from Prague to New Jersey to London, England learn that the green team don’t act like heroes when one of their own is imperilled.

Illo 2 here please


Limned by Mike Norton & Wayne Faucher ‘Greetings from Faraway Lands’ introduces super tech thief Dodger. As the team stalk the mastermind behind the botched hit on Ollie and abduction of dying Connor, this lovable rogue slowly graduates from an initially unwilling ally into something far more for one naively impressionable archer. With dubious intel now targeting global threat Ras Al Ghul as their foe and his League of Assassins as the murder weapon, ‘Haystack part 3: the Needle’ – by Winick, Norton & Rodney Ramos – exposes even more duplicity and misinformation as a rushed rescue mission successfully liberates a covert captive hero long gone but somehow unmissed…

Sadly for Ollie & Dinah, it’s the wrong one and a semi-delirious Plastic Man joins the expanding cast of hunters for new story arc ‘A League of Their Own’. Winick, Norton & Faucher’s opening chapter ‘Rubber and Glue’ introduces an alternative/impostor League of Assassins with their own outré agenda and incredible resources but as Team Arrow ‘Step Up to the Plate and Swing Away’ in ever stranger locales, it becomes increasingly clear that ‘The Man Behind the Curtain’ is not someone they regularly face.

In fact ‘The Son of the Father, the Father of the Son’ exposes a friend not an enemy behind the plot; albeit one motivated by tragedy and desperation and trapped in the vile manipulations of a true mad scientist mastermind’s vengeance-tinged plot and opportunistic attempts to build a super-powered slave army…

Unexpectedly defeated by the valiant acts of Team Arrow, the malign malefactor gets his comeuppance and a vastly changed, amnesiac but mostly cured Connor  rejoins his family in ‘Home Again, Home Again’ and as father and son seek to bond as they never could before, Oliver Queen realises that always ‘One Door Closes, Another Opens’…

To Be Continued…

The book concludes with a stunning and often hilarious variant cover gallery by Ryan Sook, Cliff Chiang, and Amanda Connor, reminding us that Green Arrow and Black Canary are characters who epitomise the modern adventure hero’s best qualities, even if in many ways they are also the most traditional of “Old School” champions. This witty and wild ride is a cracking example of Fights ‘n’ Tights done right and is well worth an investment of your money, time and emotional commitment.
© 2007, 2008, 2009, 2021 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Superman: The Golden Age Dailies 1942 to 1944


By Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster, Whitney Ellsworth, Wayne Boring & the Superman Studio (IDW/ Library of American Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-63140-383-5 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

In this month of romantic anticipation and disillusionment, it’s worth reminding ourselves that every iconic hero of strips and comics has a dutiful, stalwart inamorata waiting ever so patently in the wings for their moment to spoon and swoon or be rescued. Here’s another vintage outing for one of the earliest and most resolute…

The American comic book industry – if it existed at all – would be utterly unrecognisable without Superman. Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster’s unprecedented invention was first fervidly adopted by a desperate and joy-starved generation, and gave birth to a genre if not an actual art form. Spawning an army of imitators and variations within three years of his 1938 debut, the intoxicating blend of breakneck, breathtaking action and wish-fulfilment which epitomised the early Man of Steel grew to encompass cops-&-robbers crimebusting, socially reforming dramas, sci fi fantasy, whimsical comedy and, once the war in Europe and the East sucked in America, patriotic relevance for a host of gods, heroes and monsters, all dedicated to profit through exuberant, eye-popping excess and vigorous dashing derring-do.

From the outset, in comic book terms Superman was master of the world. Moreover, whilst transforming the shape of the fledgling funnybook biz, the Man of Tomorrow irresistibly expanded into all areas of the entertainment media. Although we all think of the Cleveland boys’ iconic invention as epitome and acme of comics creation, the truth is that very soon after his springtime debut in Action Comics #1 the Man of Steel was a fictional multimedia monolith in the same league as Popeye, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes and Mickey Mouse. We parochial and possessive comics fans too often regard our purest and most powerful icons in purely graphic narrative terms, but the likes of Batman, Spider-Man, Avengers and their hyperkinetic kind long ago outgrew four-colour origins to become fully mythologized modern media creatures familiar in mass markets, across all platforms and age ranges…

Far more people have seen and heard the Man of Steel than have ever read his comic books. These globally syndicated newspaper strips alone were enjoyed by countless millions, and by the time his 20th anniversary rolled around, at the very start of what we call the Silver Age of Comics, he had been a thrice-weekly radio serial star, headlined 17 astounding animated cartoons, become a novel attraction (written by George Lowther) and helmed two feature films and his first smash 8-season live-action television show. Superman was a perennial sure-fire success for toy, game, puzzle and apparel manufacturers all over the planet.

Although pretty much a spent force these days, for the majority of the previous century the newspaper comic strip was the Holy Grail that all American cartoonists and graphic narrative storytellers hungered for. Syndicated across the country – and often the planet – it was seen by millions, if not billions, of readers and generally accepted as a more mature and sophisticated form of literature than comic books. It also paid better, and rightly so. Some of the most enduring and entertaining characters and concepts of all time were created to lure readers from one particular paper to another and many of them grew to be part of a global culture. Mutt and Jeff, Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, Buck Rogers, Charlie Brown and so many more escaped humble, tawdry newsprint origins to become meta-real: existing in the minds of earthlings from Albuquerque to Zanzibar. Most still do…

The daily Superman newspaper strip launched on 16th January 1939, augmented by a full-colour Sunday page from November 5th of that year. Originally crafted by luminaries like Siegel & Shuster and their studio (Paul Cassidy, Leo Nowak, Dennis Neville, John Sikela, Ed Dobrotka, Paul J. Lauretta & Wayne Boring), the mammoth task required additional talents like strip veteran Jack Burnley and writers including Whitney Ellsworth, Jack Schiff & Alvin Schwartz.

The McClure Syndicate feature ran continuously until May 1966, appearing, at its peak, in over 300 daily and 90 Sunday newspapers; a combined readership of more than 20 million. Eventually, Win Mortimer and Curt Swan joined the unflagging Boring & Stan Kaye whilst Bill Finger and Siegel provided stories, telling serial tales largely divorced from comic book continuity throughout years when superheroes were scarcely seen.

This is the first volume of the Library of American Comics collection, which picks up from the Sterling/Kitchen Sing softcover editions which ceased production in 1999. All of the material is long overdue for re-release and digital editions. Here, however, the never-ending battle resumes with Siegel & Shuster and their helpers addressing the world war had just become part of. This superb collection – still not available digitally, despite its superb quality and sublime content – opens with an Introduction by John Wells discussing the Man of Tomorrow’s role of during those days of combat and fear, comprises episodes #20-30, pages 967 through 1814, and publication dates February 16th 1942 to October 28th 1944. It begins with ‘Lair of the Leer’ (February 16 – May 23 1942, #967-1050) as following Pearl Harbor, Clark Kent tries to enlist but fails the physical. In his eagerness, the hero had accidentally activated his super vision and read an eye chart in another room!

Marooned at home, Superman instead counters a wave of sabotage instigated by a murderous maniac dubbed The Leer and addresses Congress, swearing to defend the homeland while America’s brave boys settle the fascists overseas…via a string of Japanese, Italian and German operatives, seeking to destroy government, shipping transport infrastructure and arms plants. As he tirelessly stops these attempts, savvy Lois Lane investigates and soon is in the thick of the action…

The challenge is swiftly taken up by the master spy who mistakenly targets male reporter Clark, but gets snoopy Lois anyway; a mistake that leads to his undoing and his end…

Dialling down fury and spectacle, strips 1051-1115 reveal the secret of ‘The Steel Mill Poet’ (May 25-August 8) as Lois & Clark visit critical war industry site the Canby steel mill where fanciful dowager Mrs Canby believes her cousin’s odes and ditties will uplift the sweaty toilers. With morale plummeting Superman goes looking for her vanished husband, and finds himself playing cupid to two generations of steel tycoons whilst also scotching a sabotage scheme unlike any other…

The naval war features heavily in ‘The Monocle Menace’ (August 10-November 21, #1116-1205) as a new malicious mastermind targets shipping and support services by creating a evil Superman doppelganger, although his real objective is a secret formula. As usual Lois is first on the case and has a ringside seat to an ever-escalating battle of super-powers against super science; even saving her hero when the Man of Steel succumbs to sinister mesmerism and seemingly switches sides!

With Wayne Boring taking more and more of the drawing duties, Seasonal whimsy informs the 23rd exploit as Hitler, Mussolini and General Tojo combine forces to shatter the moral of the world by having ‘Santa Claus Kidnapped’ (November 23-December 19, strips 1206-1229). This compels Superman to go undercover in Berlin, saving Saint Nick and giving the German resistance a big boost before returning to truly nasty business by countering ‘The Villainy of the Voice’ (December 21 1942 to April 17 1943, and 1230-1331). Here an anonymous plotter uses a whispering campaign of insinuation and innuendo to terrorise key workers until Lois and Clark expose the rat and his insidious gang of spying blackmailers and extortionists…

As the Daily Planet’s top reporters are despatched to “war-torn Europe”, Lois &Clark accidentally encounter super spy ‘The Nefarious Noname’ (April 19-June 26, 1332-1391) and are sucked into a Hitchcockian chase around London in pursuit of stolen Allied invasion plans. “Luckily” Superman is also on hand to help them against the freakish, many-eyed psionic mutant terror commanding the enemy agents and a ferocious battle of powers and war of wills ends with the right side victorious again…

Returning safely to America, LL & CK are just in time to see how ‘The Sneer Strikes’ (June 28 – August 21, #1392-1439) as the brother of the Leer targets Japanese Internment Camps in a remarkably even-handed exploration of what we now consider one of the darkest ethical moments in US history. Hopefully that’s not a statement I’ll have amend over the next four years…

Back then though, the reporters’ investigative visits uncover spy schemes and escape plots, forcing the Man of Steel to use his disguise powers to go undercover, infiltrating the Nipponese gang as they attempt to destroy US/Chinese relations and foil a West Coast invasion. The war was slowly turning in the Allies’ favour and reader burnout was growing, so it’s no surprise story #27 moved into solid mystery territory with ‘Where is Lois Lane?’ (August 23 – November 18, #1440-1518) as Clark and Jimmy Olsen realise the woman working at the Daily Planet with them has vanished. Moreover, every aspect of her non-work life – home, neighbours, friends – has been eradicated…

It’s even more confusing when she suddenly reappears, claiming everyone else is crazy. Maybe its because she’s been replaced by an enemy agent wearing her face and form carrying out a bizarre ploy to make Superman her slave and destroy the US economy…

A different kind of whimsy is in play when Lois’s niece – a habitual liar who could shame Baron Munchausen, if not the 47th President – debuts in ‘Little Susie’s Fibs’ (November 19 1943 – February 19 1944, #1519-1598). The fabricating deceiver is an inveterate troublemaker, and when she sees Clark become Superman the scene is set for an avalanche of chaos, after Susie confronts Kent. Of course, he denies everything but cannot find a way to prove he is NOT the Man of Steel telling a lie, and the fantastic hilarity goes into overdrive when ‘The Mischievous Mr. Mxyztplk’ first manifests (February 21 – July 19, #1599-1727). Forewarned by medium Madame Zodia, Lois & Clark are still utterly unprepared for a spate of poltergeist phenomena at the Planet building, heralding the arrival of a fun-addicted magical imp who doesn’t care who gets hurt whilst he’s getting his giggles…

As if his antics aren’t enough to fully occupy the Action Ace, the “Most Beautiful Woman in the World” chooses that moment to stop covering her face, no longer caring about the fights and accidents her looks generate. With men rioting and suiciding everywhere, the imp sets his heart on her too, but Miss Dreamface seeks to steal Superman’s, even though faithful old flame Ted is still chasing her too. The frenzy mounts and peaks in Metropolis, setting the scene for tragedy and disaster, even if true love eventually finds a way to restore order…

Acclaimed favourite of the Superman radio show, the Daily Planet copy boy got his first taste of pictorial fame in concluding sequence #30 ‘King Jimmy Olsen’ (July 20-October 28 1944, #1728-1814). Here the dauntless is lad abducted by hidden super-scientific kingdom Thymaung. The boy is the exact double of ruler Rahma, and a council of usurpers want to replace their noble boy king with a pliable primitive they can control and who will front their campaign to conquer Earth. Unfortunately for them, Superman tracks down his pal, but insists the kid plays along until the Man of Tomorrow can safely liberate the captive king. A whirlwind ride of action, fantasy and first love, it heralds a new era of decreasingly political satire in favour of gender stereotyping and reinforcement masked as a comedic “battle of the sexes”. There will be more of that next time -and all through the “Atomic age” of the 1950s & 1960s…

For now though, these yarns offer timeless wonders and mesmerising excitement for lovers of action and fantasy. The raw-boned early Superman is beyond compare. If you can handle the warts of the era or just crave simpler stories from less angst-wracked times, they are ideal comics reading, and this a book you simply must see.
© 2016 DC Comics. All rights reserved. Superman and all related names, characters and elements are ™ DC Comics.

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Superman: The Man of Steel volume 2


By John Byrne, Marv Wolfman, Paul Levitz, Jerry Ordway, Greg LaRoque, Erik Larsen, Karl Kesel, Dick Giordano, Keith Williams, Mike DeCarlo, Arne Starr, P. Craig Russell, Bob Smith, Jose Marzan Jr., John Beatty, India Inc. (Giordano, Kesel, Bob Lewis, Ordway, Russell, Smith, Robert Ian, Bill Wray), Kurt Schaffenberger & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-0591-0 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

In 1985 when DC Comics rationalise, reconstructed and reinvigorated their continuity with Crisis on Infinite Earths they also used the event to simultaneously regenerate their key properties. The biggest gun they had was Superman and it’s hard to argue that the change was not before time. The big guy was in a bit of a slump, but he’d weathered those before. So how could a root and branch retooling be anything but a pathetic marketing ploy that would alienate “real” fans for a few fly-by-night Johnny-come-latelies who would jump ship as soon as the next fad surfaced? The new Superman was going to suck…

They couldn’t have been more wrong.

It began with all Superman titles being “cancelled” (actually suspended) for three months, and yes, for the first time in decades, that did make the real-world media sit up and take notice of the character everybody thought they knew. However, there was method in this seeming corporate madness. The missing mainstays were replaced by a 6-part miniseries running from October to December 1986. Entitled Man of Steel, it was written and drawn by Marvel’s mainstream superstar John Byrne – fresh off a spectacular, groundbreaking run on Fantastic Four – inked by venerated veteran Dick Giordano. The bold manoeuvre was a huge and instant success. So much so that when it was first collected as a stand-alone compilation album in 1991, it became one of comics’ premiere “break-out” hits in the new format that would eventually become the industry standard for reaching mass readerships. Nowadays few people buy the periodical pamphlets but almost everybody has read a graphic novel…

From that overwhelming start the Action Ace seamlessly returned to his suspended comic book homes, enjoying the addition of a third monthly title that premiered that same month. Superman, Adventures of Superman, and Action Comics (which became a fan-pleasing team-up title guest-starring other favourites of the DC Universe, in the manner of the cancelled DC Comics Presents) were instant best-sellers. The back-to-basics approach lured many readers to – and, crucially back to – the Superman franchise, but the sheer quality of the stories and art are what convinced them to stay. Such cracking, clear-cut superhero exploits are a high point in the Action Ace’s decades-long career, and these collections are certainly the easiest way to enjoy one of the most impressive reinventions of a comic book icon.

So successful was the relaunch that by the early 1990’s Superman would be carrying four monthly titles as well as Specials, Annuals, guest shots and regular appearances in titles like Justice League – quite a turnaround from the earlier heydays of the Man of Steel when editors were frantic about never overexposing their meal-ticket.

In Superman’s 85th year of more-or-less consecutive and continuous publication, a new sequence of collections brought Byrne & Co.’s tales to a new generation of fans, and at long last we’re getting around to plugging the rest of them whilst adding our usual plea that the series continues and re-presents more of this wonderful material…

Spanning cover-dates May to December 1987 and re-presenting Superman #5-11, Action #588-593 and Adventures of Superman #429-435, plus crossover issues Legion of Super-Heroes #37-38 with relevant informative bio-pages from Who’s Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #13 & 23 and Who’s Who Update 1987 #2, 4-5, this monumental sequel compilation follows the Never-Ending Battle in unfolding, overlapping story order, not chronological release dates, and opens with ‘How Did I Get Here?’ – a reprinting of editor Mike Carlin’s introduction from a 2006 collection before the Actions and Adventures continue to unfold…

With Byrne’s so-very-controversial reboot of the world’s first superhero a solid smashing hit, the collaborative teams tasked with ensuring his continued success really hit their stride with the tales here, beginning with ‘The Mummy Strikes’ and ‘The Last Five Hundred’ (Byrne & inker Karl Kesel, from Superman #5-6). This introduces a first hint of romance between the Man of Tomorrow and Wonder Woman before Lois Lane and Clark Kent are embroiled in an extraterrestrial invasion that started half a million years ago, and features rogue robots and antediluvian bodysnatchers.

In ‘Old Ties’ (Adventures of Superman #429) Marv Wolfman & Jerry Ordway reveal the catastrophic repercussions of hidden race of alien telepaths the Circle transferring their expansionist attentions from rogue state Qurac to Metropolis, before segueing into a sidereal saga from Action Comics #588-589. Here Byrne & Giordano combine the Caped Kryptonian with Hawkman & Hawkwoman in ‘All Wars Must End’ – an epic battle against malign Thanagarian invaders – before meeting Arisia, Salaak, Kilowog, Katma Tui and other luminaries of the Green Lantern Corps who rescue the star-lost Superman in ‘Green on Green’ before uniting together and eliminating an unstoppable planet-eating beast.

Superman #7 by Byrne & Kesel follows ‘Rampage!’ as a petty male colleague sabotages a Metropolis lab experiment, accidentally mutating his boss Dr. Kitty Faulkner into a super-strong, rage-fuelled monstrosity. Thankfully, Superman is on hand and keeps a cool head, but only until Adventures of Superman #430 which sees the Metropolis Marvel ‘Homeward Bound!’ courtesy of Wolfman & Ordway before resorting to harsh measures in pitched battle against metahuman bandits the Fearsome Five. In Action Comics #590 Byrne & Giordano explored ‘Better Living Dying Through Chemistry’, wherein a bizarre toxic accident turns ambulatory waste dump Chemo into a giant Superman clone. Happily, its old adversaries The Metal Men are on hand to aid in the extremely violent clean-up…

As the ripples of Crisis on Infinite Earths pinged across the new DCU, there were a few bumps to smooth out that had missed being sorted during the big show. One of the most confusing was how the new Superman was never a costumed, crusading Boy of Steel. This epic tome includes two critical issues of Legion of Super-Heroes (#37-38) which outlines and resolves the dilemma that occurred after the Man of Tomorrow’s retcon eliminated his entire career and achievements as Superboy. The crossover event provided a classic back-writing exercise to solve an impossible post-Crisis paradox whilst giving us old geeks one chance to see a favourite character die in a way all heroes should…

Legion of Super-Heroes #37 (August 1987, by Paul Levitz, Greg LaRoque, Mike DeCarlo & Arne Starr) sets the scene for ‘A Twist in Time’ as a team of 30th century Legionnaires head back to 1960s Smallville to visit inspirational founding member Superboy only to find themselves attacked by their greatest ally and inspiration – the Time Trapper. The saga segues into Byrne & Kesel’s ‘Future Shock’ (Superman #8) as a strange squad of aliens appear in his beloved boyhood hometown. Mistaking Superman for Superboy, the Legionnaires attack, and after an inconclusive clash concludes, start piecing together an incredible act of villainy and cosmic manipulation that has made suckers of them all…

When a kill-crazed Superboy shows up the tale shifts to Action #491 as Byrne & Keith Williams reveal a ‘Past Imperfect’ where the youthful and adult Kal-Els butt heads until a ghastly truth is exposed, leading to Levitz, LaRoque & DeCarlo’s stunning and tragic conclusion in Legion of Super-Heroes #38, where the devious reality-warping mastermind behind the scheme falls to ignominious defeat at the hands of ‘The Greatest Hero of Them All’…

Back on solid ground and his own reality the one-&-only Superman then battles a new kind of maniac malcontent in ‘They Call Him… Doctor Stratos’ (Adventures of Superman #431 by Wolfman, Erik Larsen & embellishment tag-team “India Inc.”), delivering a crushing defeat to a weather-warping would-be god before Byrne & Kesel’s Superman #9 sees the Last Son of Krypton meet The Joker for the first time in a maniacally murderous battle of wits ‘To Laugh and Die in Metropolis’…

Accompanied by inker P. Craig Russell, Wolfman & Ordway open extended story arc Gangwar with ‘From the Streets, to the Streets!’ as a mystery mastermind foments chaos and teen unrest, with unsavoury tycoon Lex Luthor implicated. Social worker/troubled youth mentor Jose Delgado returns, but seems as helpless as Superman, Lois or Jimmy Olsen in saving Perry White’s son from a life of crime or imminent incarceration…

Inked by Keith Williams, Byrne teams the Man of Steel with Jack Kirby’s New Gods Big Barda and Mr. Miracle in fighting depraved Apokolips émigré Sleez during ‘A Walk on the Darkside’ and sequel ‘The Suicide Snare’ before channelling our hero’s pre-Crisis days in ‘The Super Menace of Metropolis’. Aided by Kesel, he reveals how Luthor tries to discredit the Action Ace by boosting his powers after which Bob Smith joins Ordway illustrating ‘A Tragedy in Five Acts’: the second part of Gangwar where escalating street chaos leads to a life-altering injury for Jose Delgado…

For Superman #11, Byrne & Kesel reintroduce a carefully revamped fifth dimensional prankster in wickedly barbed, in-joke drenched Mr. Mxyzptlk romp ‘The Name Game’, whilst in AoS #435,Wolfman, Ordway & José Marzan complete this collection’s comics section with Gangwar conclusion ‘Shambles’ – introducing mystery street hero Gangbuster, before #436’s ‘The Circle Turns’ finds Superman assaulted by psychic delusions thanks to the vengeful alien telepaths: two slower tales building on the strong continuity and character interactions that typified this incarnation of the Man of Tomorrow.

Bonus features this time include previous collection covers by Ordway, and augmenting the Costumed Dramas are more extracted character profiles from Who’s Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #13 & 23 and Who’s Who Update 1987 #2, 4-5, featuring Mr. Mxyzptlk, Rampage!, Superboy (Kurt Schaffenberger inks), The Legion of Super-Heroes (by LaRoque & Larry Mahlstedt), and Time Trapper (Keith Giffen & Rick A, Bryant) before a big bold pin-up of the Man of Steel ends the fun for now.

These superhero sagas are true a high point in the Man of Tomorrow’s near nine decades of existence and these astoundingly readable collections are certainly the easiest way to enjoy a stand-out reinvention of the ultimate comic-book icon.
© 1986, 1987, 2020 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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OMAC – One Man Army Corps by Jack Kirby



By Jack Kirby with D. Bruce Berry, Mike Royer, Joe Kubert & various (DC)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-1026-6 (TPB) 978-1-4012-1790-7 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

There’s a magnificent abundance of Kirby collections in print, but none seem more prescient than this compact gem of dark prognostication that “The King” (perhaps thankfully) never lived long enough to see come true in all the ways that most matter…

This oft-compiled collection re-presents possibly his boldest, most bombastic and most heartfelt creation after the comics landmark that was Jack Kirby’s Fourth World cycle.

Famed for larger than life characters and gigantic, cosmic imaginings, “King” Kirby was an astute, spiritual man who had lived through poverty, gangsterism, the Depression and World War II. He experienced pre-war privation, post-war optimism and opportunism, Cold War paranoia, political cynicism and the birth and death of peace-seeking counter-cultures, but always looked to the future while understanding human nature intimately. In OMAC: One Man Army Corps, he gave his darkest assumptions and prognostications free rein, with his “World That’s Coming” now proving far too close to the world we’re frantically trying to escape or save right now…

In 1974, with his newest creations inexplicably tanking at DC, Kirby tentatively considered a return to Marvel, but – ever the consummate professional – he scrupulously carried out every detail of an increasingly onerous and emotionally unrewarding DC contract. When topical supernatural star turn The Demon was cancelled, the King needed another title to maintain his Herculean commitments (he was legally obliged to deliver 15 completed pages of art and story per week!) and returned to an idea he had shelved back in 1968. That was to re-interpret Captain America for a possible future where all Kirby’s direst suspicions and fears could be made manifest. In 1974 he revisited those anxieties: producing a nightmare scenario that demanded not a hero but a warrior.

Dubbing his Day-After-Tomorrow dystopia “The World That’s Coming”, Kirby let his mind run free – and scared – to birth a frighteningly close appreciation of our “Now”, where science and wealth have outstripped compassion and reason, whilst circumventing law and ethics, as humanity teeters on the brink of self-inflicted global annihilation. His thoughts then are represented here in the editorial that accompanied the premier issue…

OMAC #1 launched with a September/October 1974 cover-date, introducing the Global Peace Agency, a world-wide Doomwatch-style police force who manufactured a super-soldier to course-correct mankind and crisis-manage the constant threats to a species with hair-trigger fingers on nuclear stockpiles, chemical weapons of mass destruction and made-to-measure biological horrors. Base, uncontrolled human nature is the true threat manifested in this series, and that was first demonstrated by decent young man Buddy Blank who – whilst working at Pseudo-People Inc. – discovers that their euphemistically entitled Build-A-Friend division hides a far darker secret than merely pliant girls who come in kit-form (I believe we finally have those now, too, for those with much money but no moral compass…)

Luckily Buddy has been singled out by the GPA’s resident genius Professor Myron Forest for eternal linkage to sentient satellite Brother Eye. His atoms shifted and reconstructed, Buddy is fundamentally restructured and rebuilt to become a living God of War, and the new-born human weapon easily destroys his ruthless employers before their murderous plans can be fully realised. ‘Buddy Blank and Brother Eye’ was followed by a truly prophetic tale, wherein impossibly wealthy criminal Mister Big purchases an entire city simply to assassinate Professor Forest in ‘The Era of the Super-Rich!’

Kirby’s tried and trusted approach was always to pepper high concepts throughout blazing action, and #3 was the most spectacular yet. OMAC fought ‘One Hundred Thousand Foes!’ to get to murderous Marshal Kafka, terrorist leader of a rogue state and a private army, arsenal of WMDs and solid belief that the United Nations can’t touch him. Sound familiar…? That incredible clash carries on and concludes in #4’s ‘Busting of a Conqueror!’, whilst in #5, Kirby moved on to other, newer crimes for the new world. The definition of a criminal tends to blur when you can buy anything – even law and justice – but rich old people cherry-picking young men and women for brain-transfer implantation is (hopefully) always going to be a no-no. Still, you can sell or plunder specific organs even now…

Busting the ‘New Bodies for Old!!’ racket took two issues, and after the One-Man-Army-Corps smashed ‘The Body Bank!’ he embarked on his final adventure. Ecological disaster and water shortage was the theme of the last tale, but as our hero trudges across a dry, desolate lake bottom amidst the dead and dying marine life he is horrified to discover the disaster is the work of one man. ‘The Ocean Stealers!’ (#7) introduced scientific madman Doctor Skuba, who mastered atomic manipulation techniques that had turned feeble Buddy Blank into an unstoppable war machine.

Joe Kubert crafted the cover to final outing OMAC #8. ‘Human Genius Vs Thinking Machine’ was an epic ending seeing Brother Eye apparently destroyed with Skuba and Buddy perishing together in a cataclysmic explosion. But that final panel was a hasty, last-minute addition by unknown editorial hands, for the saga never actually finished. Kirby – his contract completed – had promptly returned to Marvel and new challenges such as Black Panther, Captain America, 2001, Devil Dinosaur, Machine Man and especially The Eternals.

Hormone treatments, Virtual Reality, medical computers, satellite surveillance, genetic tampering and all the other hard-science predictions in OMAC pale into insignificance against Kirby’s terrifyingly accurate social observations in this bombastic and tragically incomplete masterpiece. OMAC is Jack Kirby’s Edwin Drood: an unfinished symphony of such power and prophecy that it informs not just the entire modern DC universe and inspires ever more incisive and intriguing tales from the King’s artistic inheritors but still presages more truly scary developments in our own mundane and inescapable reality. As always in these wondrously economical collections it should be noted that the book includes many Kirby pencilled pages, confirming his artistry was always a match for his imagination.

Jack Kirby is unique and uncompromising. If you’re not a fan or simply not prepared to see for yourself what all the fuss has been about then no words of mine will change your mind. That doesn’t alter the fact that Kirby’s work from 1937 to his death in 1994 shaped the entire American comics scene, affected the lives of billions of readers and thousands of creators in all areas of artistic endeavour around the world for generations and still wins new fans and apostles every day, from the young and naive to the most cerebral of intellectuals. His work is instantly accessible, irresistibly visceral, deceptively deep whilst being simultaneously mythic and human: and just plain Great. Let’s hope there will be future generations around to enjoy them…
© 1974, 1975, 2021 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Robin Archive Edition volume 1 & 2



By Bob Kane, Bill Finger, Win Mortimer, Jim Mooney, Curt Swan, Jack Burnley, Sheldon Moldoff, Charles Paris, John Fischetti, John Giunta, Fred Ray, Don Cameron, David Vern Reed, Jack Schiff & various (DC Comics)

ISBN: 978-1-4012-0415-0 (HB/vol 1) 978-1-4012-2625-1 (HB/vol 2)

These books include Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Robin the Boy Wonder debuted in Detective Comics #38, cover-dated April 1940 and on sale from March 6th of that momentous year. He was created by Bob Kane, Bill Finger & Jerry Robinson, introducing a juvenile circus acrobat whose parents were murdered by a mob boss. The story of how Batman took the orphaned Dick Grayson under his scalloped wing and trained him to fight crime has been told, retold and revised many times over the decades (some of which we’ll revisit over the next 12 months) and still regularly undergoes tweaking to this day.

In chronological DC comics continuity Grayson fought beside Batman until 1970 when, as an indicator of those turbulent times, he flew the nest, becoming a Teen Wonder college student and ultimately leader of a team of fellow sidekicks and young justice seekers: the Teen Titans. He graduated to his own featured solo spot in the back of Detective Comics from the end of the 1960s, where he alternated and shared space with Batgirl, holding a similar spot throughout the 1970s in Batman, before winning a starring feature in the anthological Batman Family and Giant Detective Comics Dollar Comics. During the 1980s he led a New Teen Titans team, initially in his original costumed identity, but eventually reinvented himself as Nightwing, whilst (re)establishing a turbulent working relationship with his mentor Batman.

Robin’s groundbreaking creation as a junior hero for young readers to identify with inspired an incomprehensible number of costumed kid crusaders, and Grayson continues in similar innovative vein for the older, more worldly-wise readership of America’s increasingly rebellious contemporary youth cultures. However, his star potential was first realised much earlier in his halcyon career…

From 1947 to 1952 (and issues #65-130), Robin the Boy Wonder carried his own solo series – and regular cover spot – in Star Spangled Comics at a moment when the first superhero boom was fading and being replaced by traditional genres like crime, westerns, war and boys’ adventure stories. His exploits blended in-continuity action capers with more general youth-oriented fare, reducing adults Batman, Alfred and Commissioner Gordon to minor roles or indeed rendering them entirely absent, allowing the kid crusader to display not just his physical skills but also his brains, ingenuity and guts.

Long out of print and crying out for modern reissue in some form as well as completion of the full run, these stellar Archive compilations re-present the first 21 tales from Star Spangled #65-85 (covering February 1947 to October 1948) in volume 1 before adding the exploits from ASC #86-105 (November 1948-June 1950) as a second tome.

Compelling but uncomplicated, these yarns recapture the bold, verve and universal appeal of one of fantasy literature’s greatest youth icons, opening with volume 1’s fascinating Roy Thomas penned Foreword, discussing the origins and merits of boy heroes and history of the venerable anthology title before offering some insightful guesses as to the identity of the generally un-named writers of the Robin strip. Although almost universally unrecorded, most historians consider Batman co-creator Bill Finger to be author of most if not all of the stories and I’m going to happily concur here with that assessment until informed otherwise…

Star Spangled Comics #65 starts the ball rolling with ‘The Teen-Age Terrors’ illustrated by Win Mortimer (with the inking here misattributed to Charles Paris) in which the Caped Crusaders’ faithful butler happens across an unknown trophy and is regaled with Dick’s tale of that time when he infiltrated a Reform School to discover who inside was releasing the incarcerated kids to commit crimes on the outside…

That tale segues seamlessly into ‘The No-Face Crimes’ wherein the Boy Wonder acts as stand-in to a timid young movie star targeted by a ruthless killer, and #67 reveals ‘The Case of the Boy Wonders’ as our hero becomes part of a trio of boy geniuses kidnapped for the craziest of reasons. In #68 an outrageously flamboyant killing results in the pre-teen titan shipping out on a schooner as a cabin boy, spending ‘Four Days Before the Mast’ to catch a murderer, after which modern terror takes hold when Robin is the only one capable of tracking down ‘The Stolen Atom Bomb’ in a bombastically explosive contemporary spy thriller. Star Spangled Comics #70 then introduced an archvillain all his own for the junior crime crusher, as ‘Clocks of Doom’ premiered an anonymous criminal time-&-motion expert forced into the limelight once his face was caught on film. The Clock’s desperate attempts to sabotage the movie Robin is consulting on inevitably leads to hard time in this delightful romp (this one might possibly scripted by Don Cameron)…

Chronal explorer Professor Carter Nichols succumbs to persistent pressure and sends Dick Grayson back to the dawn of history in #71’s ‘Perils of the Stone Age’ – a deliciously anachronistic cavemen & dinosaurs epic with Robin kickstarting freedom and democracy, after which the Boy Wonder crashes the Batplane on a desert island, encountering a boatload of escaped Nazi submariners in ‘Robin Crusoe’ – a full-on thriller illustrated by Curt Swan & John Fischetti. In SSC #73 the so-very-tractable Professor Nichols dispatches Dick to revolutionary France where Robin battled Count Cagliostro, ‘The Black Magician’ in a stirring saga drawn by Jack Burnley & Jim Mooney, after which the Timepiece Terror busts out of jail set on revenge in ‘The Clock Strikes’ as illustrated in full by Mooney – who would soon become the series’ sole artist. Before that Bob Kane & Charles Paris step in to deliver a tense courtroom drama in #75 as ‘Dick Grayson for the Defense’ finds the millionaire’s ward fighting for the rights of a schoolboy unjustly accused of theft. Then cunning career criminal The Fence comes a cropper when trying to steal 25 free bikes given as prizes to Gotham’s city’s best students in ‘A Bicycle Built for Loot’ (Finger & Mooney).

Prodigy and richest kid on Earth, Bert Beem is sheer hell to buy gifts for, but since the lad dreams of being a detective, the offer of a large charitable donation secures the Boy Wonder’s cooperation in a little harmless role play. Sadly, when real bandits replace actors and Santa, ‘The Boy Who Wanted Robin for Christmas’ enjoys the impromptu adventure of a lifetime…

Another rich kid is equally inspired in #78, becoming the Boy Wonder of India, but soon needs the original’s aid when a Thuggee murder-cult decides to destroy ‘Rajah Robin’, after which ‘Zero Hour’ (illustrated by Mooney & John Giunta) sees The Clock strike again with a spate of regularly-scheduled time crimes before Star Spangled #80 reveals Dick Grayson as ‘The Boy Disc Jockey’, only to discover the station is broadcasting coded instructions to commit robberies in its cryptically cunning commercials. Robin is temporarily blinded in #81 whilst investigating the bizarre theft of guide dogs, but quickly adapts to his own canine companion and solves the mystery of ‘The Seeing-Eye Dog Crimes’, but has a far tougher time as a camp counsellor for ghetto kids after meeting ‘The Boy Who Hated Robin’. It takes grit, determination and a couple of escaped convicts before the kids learn to adapt and accept…

A radio contest leads to danger and death before one smart lad earns the prize for discovering who ‘Who is Mr. Mystery?’ (#83), after which Robin investigates the causes of juvenile delinquency by going undercover as new recruit to ‘The Third Street Gang’, before the outing ends on a spectacular high as the Boy Wonder sacrifices himself to save Batman and ends up marooned in the Arctic. Even whilst the distraught Caped Crusader is searching for his partner’s body, Robin must respond to the Call of the Wild, joining Innuits and capturing a fugitive from American justice in #85’s ‘Peril at the Pole’…

The second hardback Archive Edition re-presents more tales from Star Spangled recapturing the dash, verve and universal appeal of one of fantasy literature’s greatest youth icons – albeit with a greater role for Batman – and opens with a Foreword by Bill Schelly adding layers of historical perspective and canny insight to the capers to come.

Every beautiful cover is included – although most of the later ones feature colonial-era frontier sensation Tomahawk – lovingly rendered by Mooney, Mortimer, Paris, Bob Kane and Fred Ray. Although unverified, writers Bill Finger, Don Cameron, David Vern Reed and Jack Schiff are considered by most comics historians to be the authors of these stories. Easier to ascertain is Mooney as penciller of almost all and inker of the majority, with other pencil and penmen credited as relevant.

Action-packed, relatively carefree high jinks recommence with Star Spangled Comics #86 and ‘The Barton Brothers!’ (inked by Mortimer, who remained until #90) as the Boy Wonder seeks lone vengeance, hunting a trio of killers whose crime spree includes gunning down Batman, after which racketeer Benny Broot discovers he’s related to aristocracy and patterns all his subsequent vicious predations on medieval themes as ‘The Sinister Baron!’…

In defiance of his mentor Robin goes AWOL to exonerate the father of a schoolmate in ‘The Man Batman Refused to Help!’, although his good intentions clearing an obviously framed felon almost upset a cunning plan to catch the real culprit, after which SSC #89 has ingenious hoods get hold of ‘The Batman’s Utility Belt!’ and sell customised knock-offs until the Dynamic Duo crush their racket. Then the murder of a geologist sends the partners in peril out west in #90 to solve ‘The Mystery of Rancho Fear!’, acting undercover as itinerant cowboys to deal with a gang of extremely contemporary claim-jumpers.

With Mooney now handling all art chores, #91 sees the Boy Wonder instigating a perplexing puzzle to stump his senior partner in ‘A Birthday for Batman!’ It would have been a perfect gift if not for genuine gangsters who stumble upon the anniversary antics. The crimebusting kid played only a minor role in #92’s ‘Movie Hero No. 1’ wherein Batman surreptitiously replaces and redeems an action film actor who is a secret coward, but resumes star status for ‘The Riddle of the Sphinx!’ when a mute, masked mastermind seemingly murders the Dark Knight and supplants Gotham’s criminal top dog Red Mask.

Entertainment motifs abounded in those days and Star Spangled Comics #94 heralds ‘The End of Batman’ as the Dynamic Duo stumble on a film company crafting movie masterpieces tailored to the unique tastes and needs of America’s underworld, after which greed and terror grip Gotham’s streets when a crook employs an ancient artefact to apparently transform objects – and even the Boy Wonder – to coldly glittering gold in #95’s ‘The Man with the Midas Touch!’

Indication of changing times and tastes came with September 1949 Star Spangled Comics as Fred Ray’s Tomahawk took over the cover-spot with #96. Inside, Robin’s solo saga ‘The Boy Who Could Invent Miracles!’ – pencilled by Sheldon Moldoff with Mooney inks – saw the kid crusader working alone whilst Batman recovers from gunshot wounds, encountering a well-meaning bright spark whose brilliantly conceived conceptions revolutionise the world… prior to almost exposing the masked avenger’s secret identity. With Mooney back on full art, The Clock returns yet again in #97 in ‘The Man Who Stole Time!’: determined to publicly humiliate and crush his juvenile nemesis through a series of suitably-themed crimes

… but with the same degree of success as always. Next, Dick Grayson’s classmate briefly becomes ‘Robin’s Rival!’ after devising a method of travelling on phone lines as Wireboy.

Sadly, his ingenuity is far in excess of his fighting ability or common sense and he’s wisely convinced to retire, after which gambling gangster Sam Ferris breaks jail, turning his obsession with turning circles into a campaign of ‘Crime on Wheels!’ until Robin sets him straight again in advance of SSC #100’s powerfully moving tale of the Boy Wonder giving shelter to ‘The Killer-Dog of Gotham City!’ and proving valiant Duke can shake off his criminal master’s training to become a boon to society. In #101, High School elections are being elaborately suborned by ‘The Campaign Crooks!’ employing a bizarre scheme to make an illicit buck from students, whilst ‘The Boy with Criminal Ears!’ develops super-hearing: making his life hell and ultimately bringing him to the attention of sadistic thugs with an eye to the main chance…

Star Spangled Comics #103 introduces ‘Roberta the Girl Wonder!’ as class polymath Mary Wills follows her heart and tries to catch the ideal boyfriend by becoming Robin’s crimefighting rival, before #104’s ‘Born to Skate’ shows classmate Tommy Wells’ freewheeling passion leading Robin to a gang using a roller-skate factory to mask crimes as varied as smuggling, kidnapping and murder. Then the wholesome adventures end with a rewarding tale blending modelmaking and malfeasance, as guilt-wracked Robin comes to the aid of a police pilot who has been crippled  and worse whilst assisting on a case. As part of his rehabilitation, the Junior Manhunter devises high-tech models for Bill Cooper’s aviation club, but when ‘The Disappearing Batplanes!’ are purloined by cunning air pirates, the scene is set for a terrifying aerial showdown…

Beautifully illustrated, wittily scripted and captivatingly addictive, these rousingly traditional superhero escapades are a perfect antidote to teen angst and the strident, overblown, self-absorbed whining of so many contemporary comic book kids. Fast, furious and ferociously fun, these superb Fights ‘n’ Tights classics are something no Bat-fan, Robin-rooter or fun-fan will want to miss.
© 1947, 1948, 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. © 1948, 1949, 1950, 2010 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Showcase Presents Blue Beetle


By Len Wein, Joey Cavalieri, Paris Cullins, Gil Kane, Ross Andru, Don Heck & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-5147-5 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

The Blue Beetle premiered in Mystery Men Comics #1, released by Fox Comics and dated August 1939. The pulp-inspired hero was created by Charles Nicholas and possibly initially scripted by Will Eisner. “Charles Nicholas” was a shared pseudonym used by Chuck Cuidera (Blackhawk), Jack Kirby (everything) and Charles Wojtkowski (Blonde Phantom, Young Allies, Nyoka, Iron Corporal) with that last one generally attributed with inventing our remarkably resilient Azure Avenger.

The Cobalt Crimecrusher was inexplicably popular from the start: translating his comics venues into merchandise, a radio show and even a newspaper comic strip. Constantly traded and acquired by numerous publishers, BB survived the extinction of most of them: blithely undergoing many revisions to his origins and powers. By the mid-1950s he ended up at Charlton Comics, appearing sporadically in a few long-inventoried tales before seemingly fading away. However, that was only until the superhero resurgence of the early 1960s when Joe Gill, Bill Fraccio, Tony Tallarico and, latterly, neophyte scripter/devoted Golden Age acolyte Roy Thomas revised and revived the character. Technically, it resulted in a 10-issue run cover-dated June 1964 to 1966 (actually two separate 5-issue runs), but if you also check out our Action Heroes Archive review you’ll see that it wasn’t quite that simple…

Pulling together many disparate strands from previous incarnations, former cop and valiant troubleshooter Dan Garrett was reshaped into an archaeologist gifted with a mysterious and magical ancient Egyptian scarab recovered from lost tomb. This trinket would transform him into a lightning-throwing, flying superman whenever he touched the scarab and uttered the trigger phrase “Khaji Dha!”

After another brief sojourn in comic book limbo, Garret (note the different spelling, it varies from issue to issue, but we’ll stick to double “r”, double “t”, okay?) resurfaced as Steve Ditko took on the concept, tweaking it to construct a fresh new, retooled hero. This one started as a back-up feature in Captain Atom #83 (November 1966) before graduating to his own solo title. Ted Kord was a troubled scientist with mystery and undisclosed tragedy in his past, as well as an unspecified connection to Garrett. In fact, he was the police’s prime suspect in the academic’s disappearance and possible murder…

The Ditko version was sublime but short-lived: an early casualty when the Sixties Superhero boom reversed and horror again ruled the newsstands, Charlton’s “Action Hero” experiment was gone by the close of 1968, leading a long line of costumed champions into limbo and clearing the decks for a horror renaissance.

Time passed and reading tastes changed again. After the cosmos-consuming Crisis on Infinite Earths re-sculpted DC’s universes in 1986, a host of stars and even second stringers got floor-up rebuilds to fit them for a tougher, uncompromising, straight-shooting, no-nonsense New American readership of the Reagan era. In the intervening years, DC had pursued an old policy: acquiring characters and properties of defunct publishers. A handful of Charlton buy-outs had featured in Crisis and now Captain Atom, The Question and two Blue Beetles seamlessly slotted into the new DCU, ahead of the rest of the lost contingent…

Primarily scripted and steered by Len Wein (Swamp Thing, New X-Men, Batman, almost everything else), this massive monochrome compilation gathers the entire 24-issue run of Blue Beetle volume 6 (cover-dates June 1986 through May 1988) plus a superb crossover origin/restated backstory from Secret Origins (volume 2) #2, originally released as a vanguard to the series. Sans preamble, a steady diet of light-hearted swashbuckling begins with Len Wein, Paris Cullins & Bruce D, Patterson’s ‘Out from the Ashes!’ wherein a Chicago office building burns down. Suddenly, above the roaring flames a giant mechanical bug floats into view and from it plunges rookie hero Blue Beetle. He is desperate but determined to help the beleaguered firefighters… but not with the conflagration. His target is deranged super-arsonist Firefist, but the glorified acrobat’s tricky gadgets seem to be no match for the heavily armoured foe’s ferocious firepower. Barely escaping with his life, Beetle takes some comfort from the fact that even if he didn’t stop the bad guy or save the skyscraper, he has rescued an imperilled fireman…

In the aftermath, the masked man heads back to work: revealed to us as junior genius Ted Kord who has just (most reluctantly) assumed control of his tyrannical father’s technological innovations and manufacturing business. Ted doesn’t like business but loves inventing, which is why he spends as much time as possible with the company’s quirky thinktank geniuses Jeremiah Duncan, Melody Case and Murray Takamoto. Now he learns the company is sitting on a discovery of Earth-shattering importance. What Ted doesn’t know is that someone nefarious and extremely close wants it, or that far, far away someone has broken into the crypt on Pago Island where Ted’s mad scientist uncle Jarvis Kord killed Dan Garrett – the original Blue Beetle. An archaeological rival, Conrad Carapax is seeking the fabled something that cost his competitor his life…

Suddenly, Firefist attacks again and the neophyte hero rushes off to challenge him. The woefully one-sided battle gets serious in ‘This City’s Not for Burning!’ as the arsonist almost kills our hero again, forcing Ted to get smart and investigate where and why; not how. Despite catastrophic collateral their final clash leads to victory of sorts but leaves the hero open to betrayal from within his trust circle and targeted by a major supervillain seeking the modified wonder element Promethium undergoing modifications in Kord Inc’s labs…

Also adding to Ted’s woes and generally amping up tensions is slowly circling – and rapidly spiralling – cop Lt. Max Fisher who cannot shake the conviction that the glib scientist in his sights knows something about the Garret disappearance…

With Firefist apparently dead, two separate evil masterminds amp up their plans with the disguised janitor at affiliate/partner S.T.A.R. Labs convincing career criminal Farley Fleeter to revive his old gang The Madmen to attack Kord Inc. in BB #3’s ‘If This Be Madness…!’ As the melee is interrupted by the handily close-by Blue Beetle, corporate machinations and untrustworthy trusted friends all further their own treacherous schemes against Ted, allowing one of those villains in the shadows to make a move, revealing ‘The Answer is Alchemy!’ Here old Flash-foe Al Desmond/Mr. Element/Doctor Alchemy steals the hotly contested Promethium sample to reenergise his failing, matter-reshaping Philosopher’s Stone, but the battle to reclaim it is wild and violent, and against all odds the Beetle triumphs…

With a plethora of soap opera subplots in place, the tales assume a more action-driven shape and pace in the Azure Avenger’s first team up. ‘Ask the Right Question!’ introduces DC’s remodelled iteration of Ditko’s other, Other, OTHER immortal creation – albeit prior to his reinvention by Denny O’Neil & Denys Cowan. As up-&-coming masked mobster The Muse organises Chicago’s disparate gangs into an army a well-dressed but faceless vigilante in a powerplay to seize control from reigning Don Vincent Perignon. After the customary introductory confusion-clash Beetle and Question (AKA investigative journalist Vic Sage) set about dismantling the organisation and usurpation in ‘Face-Off!’ (BB #6) and blockbusting, Dell Barras-inked conclusion ‘Gang War!’

A delightful sentiment-soaked divertissement comes in BB #8 as ‘Henchman!’ sees Ted Kord reject job applicant and former criminal minion Ed Buckley, inadvertently driving him back to lawlessness and a position with evil genius The Calculator: a tragic mistake that the hero is happy to pay for when reformed-&-honest Ed subsequently saves the Beetle’s life…

The other lurking super-villain reveals himself at last in #9 & 10 as ‘Timepiece!’ (Cullins & Barras art) and sequel ‘Time on his Hands!’ (Chuck Patton & Barras) – both tie-ins to crossover event Legends. They see America’s superheroes outlawed by Presidential decree as part of New God Darkseid’s plan to destroy the very concept of heroism. As Ted’s conscience and desire to save innocents compete, another close friend falls foul of time bandit Chronos, and he suits up to settle the matter with the villain, law or no law. Meanwhile elsewhere, the Kord Promethium project has advanced to a point where it’s ready to be stolen by more lurking fiends, whilst on Pago Island, Carapax has uncovered a terrifying menace…

Guest-starring the New Teen Titans (Nightwing, Cyborg, Wonder Girl, Starfire, Jericho & Changeling/Beast Boy) ‘Havoc is… the Hybrid’ (#11, Cullins & Barras) sees deranged former Doom Patrol member Mento (Steve Dayton) unleash a personal pack of Promethium-mutated villains against the super-team with Blue Beetle caught as ‘Man in the Middle’ (co-scripted by Joey Cavalieri) before Wein, Cullins & Barras reveal the final fate of another unlucky unfaithful Kord collaborator in ‘Prometheus Unbound!’

Simultaneously, Carapax finally recovers and is subsumed by the maverick tech he accidentally unleashed. In BB #14 to Ted makes a momentous decision. Set on finally confronting Max Fisher about the death of Garrett, Ted is unaware that the cop is already facing ‘The Phantom of Pago Island!’ after travelling to the atoll and meeting a monster which promptly slaughters his entire party. Resolved to deal with Fisher, Blue Beetle arrives in time to join him ‘In Combat with… Carapax!’ (pencilled by Ross Andru) with both escaping believing the killer robot gone for good. As they form a tenuous new relationship with Fisher increasingly exploiting the fact that he knows Kord is a superhero, another manic supervillain (Catalyst) and megalomaniacal business competitor (Klaus Cornelius) lurk in the wings, kidnapping Jeremiah Duncan for info on Kord’s business secrets…

In ‘Anywhere I Hang my Head is Home!’ – art by Andru & Danny Bulanadi – cop and vigilante unite to catch a ruthless “Skid Row Slasher”, before Fisher oversteps by picking targets for the Beetle, even as the gallant hero is battling new masked menace Overthrow in #17’s ‘The Way the Brawl Bounces!’ (Cullins & Bulanadi) before and inevitably the original Blue Beetle returns to reclaim his mantle in ‘…And Death Shall Have No Dominion’ (all Cullins art): a grim and brutal clash with a shocking sting in the tale.

Exposing criminality and deceptions at S.T.A.R. Labs, Ted hunts a potential heir of Dan Garrett and clashes with a bizarre mechanoid organism in #19’s ‘A Matter of Animus!’ (as Andru & Bulanadi begin a sustained run), prompting a trip to Kord’s middle east facility as ‘Iran Scam!’ (another company crossover event component – this time for Millennium) reveals how a close enemy is actually an agent for ancient alien cabal the Manhunters, in a sly cover for a worthy pop at how women are oppressed under the Ayatollahs. It’s counterbalanced and leavened by purer superheroics in follow-up Millennium chapter ‘If This Works, It’ll Be a Miracle!’ (BB #21) wherein Ted and Justice League International take on a nest of Manhunters.

Crisis successfully averted, Ted is blindsided by vengeful Chronos who traps the Blue Beetle millions of years in the past before Kord turns the tables on him in #22’s ‘A Question of Time!’ (Andru, Gil Kane & Bulanadi art) before returning to now and a second episode with the Madmen in ‘Don’t Get Mad, Get Even!’ (Don Heck & Bulanadi). Now the series abruptly terminates on a cliffhanger as – in the midst of battling Carapax again – Ted’s dad Thomas Kord reclaims “his” company from the son and heir who’s ruining it in ‘If At first, You Don’t Succeed…!’

With the solo series ended, Ted made a welcome home as a beloved but underestimated comedy foil in various Justice League iterations, whilst this book closes on that promised origin yarn ,as seen in Secret Origins #2. Crafted by Wein & Kane, ‘Echoes of Future Past!’ spectacularly traces valiant Dan Garrett’s life, career and ultimate sacrifice in a bravura masterclass on superheroism as a humble college professor becomes a divinely chosen wonder man saving Earth from undead giant mummies, corrupt governments, scientific madmen, supervillains and worse before paying the final price and inspiring a lineage of heroes…

With covers by Cullins Patterson, Barras, Terry Austin, Patton, Andru, Bulanadi, Steve Bové, Dick Giordano, Mike Mignola, Chris Wozniak, Keith S. Wilson, Garry Leach, Gil Kane & Ricardo Villagran this bold bonanza of Fights ‘n’ Tights delights is a book no superhero lover should miss – unless DC finally get around to giving one of comics’ grandest brands the archive treatment he/they deserve…
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