Category: Gil Kane

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Marvel Team-Up Omnibus volume 1


By Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway, Len Wein, Steve Gerber, Ross Andru, Gil Kane, Jim Mooney, Sal Buscema, Don Heck, Mike Esposito, Frank Giacoia, Steve Mitchell, Frank Bolle, Don Perlin, Sal Trapani, Wayne Howard, Dave Hunt, Vince Colletta & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-6699-7 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Inspiration isn’t everything. In fact, as Marvel slowly grew to a position of market dominance in the wake of losing their two most innovative and inspirational creators, they did so less by experimentation and more by expanding proven concepts and properties. The only real exception to this was the assembly line creation of horror and horror-hero titles in response to the industry down-turn in super-hero sales – a move expedited by a rapid revision in the wordings of the increasingly ineffectual Comics Code Authority rules.

The concept of team-up books – an established star pairing or battling (usually both) with less well-selling company characters – was not new when Marvel decided to award their most popular hero the lion’s share of this new title, but they wisely left their options open by allocating an occasional substitute lead in the Human Torch. In those long-lost days editors were acutely conscious of potential over-exposure – and since superheroes were actually in a decline they may well have been right.

Marvel Team-Up was the second regular Spider-Man title (abortive companion title Spectacular Spider-Man was created for the magazine market in 1968 but died after two issues). MTU launched at the end of 1971 and went from strength to strength, proving the time had finally come for expansion and a concentration on uncomplicated action over sub-plots…

This engaging hardback and/or eBook compilation gathers the first 30 issues of Marvel Team-Up (spanning cover-dates March 1972 to February 1975) and includes crossover fun from Daredevil (and the Black Widow) #103, plus double length larks from Giant-Size Super Heroes #1 and Giant-Size Spider-Man #1-3. As well as a monolithic assortment of nostalgic visual treats at the back, this mammoth tome is dotted throughout with editorial and letters pages (from ‘Team-Up’ to ‘Mail it to Team-Up’) and also includes recycled Introductions from previous Marvel Masterworks editions (namely Gerry Conway’s ‘Behold: An Introduction’ and Roy Thomas’ ‘A Long, Loose Leash’ and ‘Full Credit – or Blame’) plus other contemporary editorial announcements as seen in each original issue, just to enhance overall historical experience…

Marvel Team-Up #1was crafted by Roy Thomas, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito as a mutual old enemy reared his gritty head in charming seasonal saga ‘Have Yourself a Sandman Little Christmas!’. A light-heated romp full of Christmas cheer, rambunctious action and seasonal sentiment, the story set the tone for all epics to follow. Merry Marvelite Maximii can award themselves a point for remembering which martial arts/TV hero debuted in this issue, but folk with lives can simply take my word that it was Iron Fist’s sometimes-squeeze Misty Knight…

Gerry Conway assumed the writer’s role and Jim Mooney the inks for ‘And Spidey Makes Four!’ in the succeeding issue as our hot and sticky heroes then take on and trounce the Frightful Four and Negative Zone bogeyman Annihilus before without pause going after Morbius the Living Vampire in #3’s ‘The Power to Purge!’ (as inked by Frank Giacoia). The new horror-star was still acting the villain in MTU #4 as the Torch was replaced by most of Marvel’s sole mutant team (The Beast having gone all hairy – and solo) in ‘And Then… the X-Men!’

Inked by Steve Mitchell, this boldly enthralling thriller was illustrated by magnificent Gil Kane at the top of his form. Kane became a semi-regular penciller, and his dynamic style and extreme-action anatomy lifted many pedestrian tales such as #5’s ‘A Passion of the Mind!’ (Conway script & Esposito inks), pitting Spidey and The Vision against manipulative mesmeric Puppet Master and robotic assassin the Monstroid. The bad guy again carried over to the next issue and joined by the Mad Thinker in ‘…As Those Who Will Not See!’ pitted the wallcrawler and The Thing against cerebral scoundrels in a cataclysmic battle no Fights ‘n’ Tights fan could be unmoved by…

MTU #7’s ‘A Hitch in Time!’ was produced by Conway, Andru & Mooney: guest-starring Thor with otherworldly Trolls freezing Earth’s time-line as a prerequisite step to conquering Asgard, after which #8 provides a perfect example of the team-up comic’s other function – to promote and popularise new characters. ‘Man-Killer Moves at Midnight!’ was most fans’ first exposure to The Cat (later retooled as Tigra the Were-Woman) in a painfully worthy if ham-fisted attempt to address feminist issues from Conway & Mooney. The hard-pressed heroes joined forces here to stop a male-hunting murderer paying back abusive men. These days we’d probably be rooting for her…

Iron Man collaborated in the opening foray of 3-part tale ‘The Tomorrow War!’ (Conway, Andru & Frank Bolle) as he & Spidey are kidnapped by Zarkko the Tomorrow Man to battle Kang the Conqueror. The Torch returned to help deal with the intermediate threat of a ‘Time Bomb!’ (with art by Mooney & Giacoia) before the entire race of Black Bolt’s Inhumans pile in to help Spidey stop history unravelling in culminatory clash ‘The Doomsday Gambit!’ – this last chapter scripted by Len Wein over Conway’s plot for Mooney & Esposito to illustrate.

Deftly delineated by Andru & Don Perlin, Wein scripted a Conway plot for ‘Wolf at Bay!’ in MTU #12 wherein wallcrawler meets Werewolf By Night Jack Russell to maul malevolent mage Moondark in foggy San Francisco, after which we divert to the Man Without Fear’s own title. Here they share some left coast limelight as Daredevil and the Black Widow #103 (Steve Gerber, Don Heck & Sal Trapani). This sees them join the still-California-bound wallcrawler as a merciless cyborg attacks the odd couple while they pose for roving photojournalist Peter Parker in ‘…Then Came Ramrod!’…

Kane & Giacoia limned ‘The Granite Sky!’ wherein Wein pits Spidey & Captain America against Hydra and Grey Gargoyle in a simple clash of ideologies, after which ‘Mayhem is… the Men-Fish!’ (inked by Wayne Howard – and, yes bad grammar, but great action-art!) matches the webslinger with the savage Sub-Mariner against vile villains Tiger Shark and Doctor Dorcas as well as an army (navy?) of mutant sea-beasts.

Wein, Andru & Perlin created The Orb to bedevil Spidey and Ghost Rider in ‘If an Eye Offend Thee!’ in #15 before Kane & Mooney limn ‘Beware the Basilisk my Son!’: a gripping romp featuring (the original Kree) Captain Marvel, concluding with ‘Chaos at the Earth’s Core!’ (inked by “everybody”!), as Mister Fantastic joins the fracas to stop Mole Man inadvertently blowing up the world. Human Torch Johnny Storm teams with The Hulk in MTU #18 to stop antimatter malcontent Blastaar in ‘Where Bursts the Bomb!’ (Giacoia & Esposito inks), but Spidey blazes back a month later with Ka-Zar in situ to witness ‘The Coming of… Stegron, the Dinosaur Man!’ (Wein, Kane & Giacoia). His plans to flatten New York by releasing ‘Dinosaurs on Broadway!’ is foiled with Black Panther’s help… as well as the artistic gifts of Sal Buscema, Giacoia & Esposito.

Dave Hunt replaced Esposito inking ‘The Spider and the Sorcerer!’ in #21 as Spidey and Doctor Strange once more battled Xandu, a wily wizard first seen in Spider-Man Annual #2, before we pause for a brief lecture.

Giant-Size titles were quarterly double-length publications added to the schedule of Marvel’s top tier heroes, and the wallcrawler’s were used to highlight outré or potentially controversial pairings such as Dracula and Doc Savage. Here they are represented by try-out Giant-Size Super Heroes #1 which pitted the wallcrawler against Living Vampire Morbius as well as hirsute and manic Man-Wolf. In a classic clash by Conway, Kane & Esposito. Within months a quarterly double-length Spider-Man team vehicle was added to Marvel’s schedule….

Back in MTU #22, Wein, Sal B & Giacoia’s ‘The Messiah Machine!’ brings the monthly story glories to a brief pause after depicting Hawkeye and the Amazing Arachnid frustrating deranged computer Quasimodo‘s ambitious if absurd mechanoid invasion. Then – cover-dated July 1974 and courtesy of Conway, Andru & Heck – Giant-Size Spider-Man #1 saw the webspinner in frantic pursuit of an experimental flu vaccine, improbably carried on an ocean liner in ‘Ship of Fiends!’ The quest brought him into chilling contact with newly-revived vampire lord Dracula and a scheming Maggia Capo at ‘The Masque of the Black Death!’…

Here that bizarre battle is accompanied by its original editorial text feature ‘An Illuminating Introduction to Giant Size Spider-Man’ before we move on to monthly MTU wherein the Torch & Iceman fractiously unite to stop Equinox, the Thermo-Dynamic Man on ‘The Night of the Frozen Inferno!’ (Wein, Kane & Esposito). Still embracing supernatural themes and trends, the webslinger learns ‘Moondog is another Name for Murder!’ in a defiantly quirky yarn illustrated by Mooney & Trapani which brings the decidedly offbeat Brother Voodoo to the Big Apple to quash a Manhattan murder cult…

Wein, Mooney & Frank Giacoia then determine that ‘Three into Two Won’t Go!’ as Daredevil joins Spider-Man in thrashing inept kidnappers Cat-Man, Bird-Man and Ape-Man, after which Giant-Size Spider-Man #2 sees the amazing arachnid drawn into battle with Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu as sinister immortal Fu Manchu frames Spider-Man in ‘Masterstroke!’ The duped heroes clear the air in ‘Cross… and Double-Cross!’ before uniting to foil the cunning Celestial’s scheme to mindwipe America from the ‘Pinnacle of Doom!’

MTU #26 finds the Torch and Thor battling to save the world from Lava Men in The Fire This Time…’ by Wein, Mooney, Giacoia & Hunt. At this time, in a desperate effort to build some internal continuity into the perforce brutally brief encounters, the scripters introduced a shadowy trio of sinister observers with an undisclosed agenda who would monitor superhero episodes and eventually be revealed as providers of outrageous technologies for many of the one-shot villains who came and went so quickly and ignominiously…

They weren’t involved when the Chameleon frames Spider-Man (again) and tricks the Hulk into freeing a man – for the most unexpected reason of all – from the New York Men’s Detention Center in #27’s ‘A Friend in Need!’ (Wein, Mooney & Giacoia). They did, however, have a cloaked hand in ‘The City Stealers!’ (#28 by new regular creative team Conway, Mooney & Vince Colletta) when strange mechanoids swipe the island of Manhattan, necessitating Spidey and Hercules (mostly Hercules) having to drag it back to its original position…

After that implausible minor miracle Spider-Man experiences time-displaced disaster as Giant-Size Spider-Man #3 (Conway, Andru & Esposito) explores ‘The Yesterday Connection!’ Now lovely alien Desinna seeks the aid of Spidey in 1974 and – in ‘The Secret Out of Time’ – the hands-on help of legendary 1930s adventurer Doc Savage. Across a gulf of four decades the heroes individually discover something is not right in ‘Other People in Other Times!’ With the escape of a savage rampaging monster, two eras seem doomed to destruction, at least until wiser, more suspicious heads and powers prevail in ‘Tomorrow is Too Late’ ensuring that ‘The Future is Now!’…

Marvel Team-Up #29 displays a far less constrained – or even amicable – pairing as flaming kid Johnny Storm and patronising know-it-all Iron Man butt heads whilst tracking a seeming super-saboteur in ‘Beware the Coming of Infinitus! or How Can You Stop the Reincarnated Man?’ before in #30 Spider-Man and The Falcon find ‘All That Glitters is not Gold!’ whilst tracking a mind-control drug back to its crazy concoctor Midas, the Golden Man.

However, adding extra lustre are visual treats aplenty in the form of contemporaneous house ads; covers and frontispieces from seasonal tabloid treasury Giant Superhero Holiday Grab-Bag (with art from John Buscema & John Romita Sr.) and original art pages and covers from Andru, Kane, Esposito, Perlin, Mooney, & Giacoia plus Kane pencil layouts. Also on view are covers from Marvel Tales #234, 249, 254, by Todd McFarlane, Marshall Rogers, Brian Stelfreeze, complete with new bridging pages by Jae Lee. Jan Harpes & Renee Witterstatter, and another gallery of Spider-Man Megazine covers (#1-6) by James Fry, Hector Collazo, Stelfreeze, Jung Choi, Ron Frenz, Al Milgrom, Stuart Immonen, Kirk Jarvinen, Jason Moore and Mark Buckingham, plus the unpublished cover of #7 as crafted by John Romita Sr & Jr.. Closing the book is a truly unique unused cover for #8 by Brian Bolland.

These stories are of variable quality but nonetheless all exhibit an honest drive to entertain and please. Artistically the work is superb, and most fans of the genre would find little to complain about so, although not really a book for casual or more maturely-oriented readers, there’s bunches of fun on hand and young readers will have a blast, so there’s no real reason not to add this tome to your library…
© 2025 MARVEL.

Today in 1892 Korky the Cat creator James Crighton was born as was Golden Age great Creig Flessel in 1912 and Al McWilliams in 1916. Writer/editor/publisher Bob Shreck joined the party in 1955, three years after Crocket Johnson released the final episode of Barnaby.

Back in 1938, the very first Donald Duck newspaper strip was syndicated and in 1987 the astounding Ken Reid drew his last breath – as did Dutch comics maestro Lo Hartog van Banda in 2006. As always, look in the blog for more or just buy anything with these guys’ names on it…

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Richard Wagner’s THE RING OF THE NIBELUNG


Adapted by Roy Thomas, Gil Kane & Jim Woodring (DC Comics/ExPress Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-56389-006-2 (DC TPB) 978-0-93295-620-0 (TPB ExPress Publishing)

Richard Wagner’s four epic operas Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfreid and Götterdämmerung (or The Rhinegold, The Valkyrie, Siegfried and Twilight of the Gods if you’re less pompous than me) is a classic reinterpretation of Germano-Norse myth and classic poems collected as the Icelandic Eddas. Over 26 years the master of German music distilled them into a cycle of staggering power, which people either love or hate. Great tunes, too.

Everybody loves the brilliant animated tribute-come-distillation starring Bugs Bunny entitled “What’s Opera, Doc?” – although they probably refer to it as “Kill the Wabbit!”…

All joking aside, the Ring Cycle is a true masterpiece of Western Culture and an immortal inspiration to purveyors of drama and historic fiction. In 1989 and 1990 long-time fans and comics superstars Roy Thomas (who had already integrated the plot into the canon of Marvel’s Mighty Thor) and the legendary and nearly mythical Gil Kane produced a four part, prestige-format miniseries that adapted the events into comic strip form. Latterly P. Craig Russell also adapted the saga in his own inimitable style.

Alberich the Nibelung is a dwarf shunned by all, but a cunning operator who still manages to charm the three Rhine Maidens. Commanded by the King of the Gods to guard an accursed treasure horde that even they could not tame or master, the river nymphs reveal the secret to the glib intruder. Whoever recasts ‘The Rhinegold’ into a ring will have all the wealth and power of the world, but must forever forswear love and joy. Never having known either, greedy Alberich easily forsakes such unsampled pleasures and seizes the treasure even All-Father Wotan dared not touch.

Meanwhile in Heaven, wily Loge has convinced Wotan to promise giants Fasolt and Fafner anything they wish if they will build the great castle Valhalla to house the world’s heroes. Assured that the trickster god can free him from his promise to the giants, Wotan accepts their price, but on completion the giants claim as recompense Freia: Goddess guardian of the Apples of Immortality.

Bound by their Lord’s sworn oath, the gods must surrender her, but malicious Loge suggests that Alberich’s stolen gold – now cast as that dreadfully anticipated ring – can be used by any other possessor without abandoning love. Thus the brothers demand the world-conquering trinket as a replacement fee…

In ‘The Valkyrie’, an unarmed warrior who calls himself Woeful is the sole survivor of a blood-feud. Fleeing, he claims Right of Hospitality from a beautiful woman in a remote cottage, but when her husband returns they all discover that he is a member of the clan Woeful just battled. Secure for the night in the holy bond of Hospitality, Woeful realises he must fight for his life in the morning when the sacred truce expires. Without weapons, he thinks little of his chances… until the woman reveals to him a magic sword embedded in the giant Ash tree that supports the house…

‘Siegfried’ is the child of an illicit union, raised by malicious, cunning Mime, a blacksmith who knows the secrets of the Nibelung. No loving parent, the smith wants the indomitable wild boy to kill the dragon Fafner – who used to be a giant – and steal the magical golden horde the wyrm guards so jealously. However, the young hero has his own heroic dreams and wishes to wake the maiden who slumbers eternally behind a wall of fire…

‘Twilight of the Gods’ reveals how all the machinations, faithlessness and oath-breaking of the Lords of Creation leads to ultimate destruction. Siegfried has won beauteous Brünnhilde from the flames, but their happiness is not to be. False friends drug him to steal his beloved, and wed him all-unknowing to a woman he does not love. A final betrayal by a comrade whose father was the Nibelung Alberich leads to the tormented hero’s death and inevitable consequences…

If you know the operas you know how much more remains to enjoy in this quartet of tales, and the sheer bravura passion of Kane’s art, augmented by the stirring painted palette of Jim Woodring, magnificently captures the grandeur and ferocity of it all. This primal epic is visual poetry and no fan should be without it.

Released by DC in 1991, as a 4 part prestige miniseries before collecting in one titanic tome, the book was re-issued by ExPress Publishing in 2002 and remains not only a high point in the careers of Thomas and Kane (who was particularly passionate about the source material and the debt modern heroic fiction owed to it) but also a landmark in graphic narrative. If you don’t have it already you must make it your life’s quest to get it.
© 1991 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 2000, Gil Kane went to his own heavenly reward. On the other hand, in 1799 Swiss teacher and creator of the modern comics medium Rodolphe Töpffer was born. In 1960 Grant Morrison showed up for the first time, and today is especially momentous as it saw the first appearance of Marsupilami as delivered by André Franquin in Le Journal de Spirou #721.

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Invincible Iron Man Epic Collection volume 7 (1976-1978): Ten Rings to Rule the World


By Bill Mantlo, Gerry Conway, Herb Trimpe, Roger Stern, George Tuska, Keith Pollard, Keith Giffen, Carmine Infantino, Jeff Aclin, Mike Esposito, Don Perlin, Jack Abel, Fred Kida, Alfredo Alcala, Rudy Nebres, Bruce Patterson, Josef Rubinstein, Bob Wiacek, Pablo Marcos, Don Newton & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-6059-9 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Arch-technocrat and supreme survivor Tony Stark has changed profile and rebuilt himself many times since debuting in Tales of Suspense #39 (March 1963). There and then, as a VIP visitor to Vietnam assessing the efficacy of munitions he had designed, the inventor was critically wounded and captured by sinister, savage Communists. Put to work building weapons with the dubious promise of medical assistance upon completion, Stark instead crafted the first of innumerable technologically-augmented protective suits to keep himself alive and deliver him from his oppressors. From there it was a simple – transistor-powered – jump to full time superheroics as a modern Knight in Shining Armour…

Conceived after the Cuban Missile Crisis at a time when Western economies were booming and “Commie-bashing” was America’s obsession, a dashing new Thomas Edison employing Yankee ingenuity, wealth and invention to safeguard the Land of the Free and better the World seemed an obvious development. Combining then-sacrosanct faith that technology and business in unison could solve any problem, with the universal imagery of noble knights battling evil, Stark – the Invincible Iron Man – seemed an infallibly successful proposition.

Of course, whilst he was the acceptable face of 1960s Capitalism – a glamorous, benevolent, rich, technocratic and all-conquering hero when clad in super-scientific armour – the turbulent tone of the 1970s soon relegated his suave, “can-do” image to the dustbin of history. With ecological disaster and social catastrophe from myriad big business abuses new zeitgeists of the young, the Golden Avenger and Stark International were soon confronting some tricky questions from an increasingly politically savvy readership.

With glamour, money and fancy gadgetry not quite so cool anymore the questing voices of a new generation of writers began posing uncomfortable questions in the pages of a series that was once a bastion of militarised America. Collectively accommodating cover-dates November 1976 to October 1978, this Epic chronological epistle completes that transitional period, reprinting Iron Man #92-114, plus Annual #4 and a guest yarn from Marvel Premiere #44 as Bill Mantlo’s passionate writing triggered a minor renaissance in the Steel Sentinel’s chrome-plated chronicles that resulted in some of the best stories of the Eighties era. It also returned Iron Man to the top-rank of Marvel stars.

If you’re a fan thanks to the movie interpretation, that iteration starts right here, right now…

The mettle majesty opens with manic menace The Melter who soon regrets an ill-advised grudge rematch in ‘Burn, Hero… Burn!’ (Gerry Conway, George Tuska & Jack Abel) before Herb Trimpe returns to plot and pencil Iron Man #93. Pitting Old Shellhead against a British-based modern-day pirate in ‘Kraken Kills’ (Conway script & Abel inks), the self-declared Commander deduces Stark’s secret identity before blackmailing the inventor into building weapons for his super-submarine fleet. Never at a loss, though, Stark turns the tables, sparking ‘Frenzy at Fifty Fathoms!’ to scupper the madman’s plans…

Invincible Iron Man Annual #4 (August 1977) offers an all-action alliance with newly constituted super-team The Champions by Mantlo, Tuska & inker Don Perlin. When psychic assassin M.O.D.O.K. overwhelms the Golden Avenger, Iron Man calls in old allies Black Widow and Hercules (plus teammates Ghost Rider, Iceman, Darkstar and The Angel) to thwart ‘The Doomsday Connection!’

Also from that issue comes an out-of-place martial arts vignette by Roger Stern, Jeff Aclin & Don Newton. ‘Death Lair!’ stars former Master of Kung Fu villain Midnight on a mission of murder against old Iron Man enemy Half-Face…

The regular monthly climb to reclaimed pole position resumes with veteran Iron Man artist Tuska joining plotter Conway, scripter Mantlo and inker Perlin in unleashing giant android ‘Ultimo!’ (IM #95, cover-dated February 1977) against Washington DC. Clad in upgraded armour and in the Capitol to answer congressional questions about his company, Stark is targeted by a vengeful hidden nemesis who activates the mountainous monster for a classic B-movie sci fi rampage in the streets, with the Golden Avenger supplementing hard pressed Army and National Guard units… before falling in ignominious defeat due to sabotage…

Mantlo, Tuska & Abel prove you can’t keep a good Iron Man down as the embattled hero rallies and retaliates in ‘Only a Friend Can Save Him’ as former close ally and dutiful S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Jasper Sitwell joins the counterattack. Meanwhile, a long-simmering plotline advances as NYPD detective Michael O’Brien – who holds Stark responsible and accountable for the death of his brother Kevin – finally allows his obsession with a cover-up to pull him across legal lines and into collusion with shady PI Harry Key, whose latest client also has nasty plans for the playboy inventor…

Thanks to ingenuity and sheer guts, Stillwell & Iron Man seemingly destroy Ultimo deep below DC, but their triumph is short lived as a return to Stark’s Long Island factory provokes a ‘Showdown with the Guardsman!’ (Conway, Mantlo, Tuska & Perlin). When Mike takes PA Krissy Longfellow hostage, steals the armour suit that drove his brother insane and ambushes the Golden Avenger wearing it, the clash is swift and brutal. Thankfully this time, the blockbusting battle ends before another good man dies…

Whilst subsequently treating O’Brien, another distraction comes when an old frenemy attacks the facility and US interventionist economic practises. ‘Sunfire Strikes Again!’ sees the Japanese ultra-nationalist mutant warrior again seek to derail progress, unaware that he’s a pawn of the lurking presence gunning for Stark. However, the harried hero’s problems start with the fact that his greatest weapon is offline and he’s fighting in borrowed Guardsman armour. When the conflict frees imprisoned Michael O’Brien, the cop seeks to make amends by joining the battle in an obsolete Iron Man outfit, but – even with Mike Esposito inking – the new allies rapidly find themselves ‘At the Mercy of the Mandarin!’

During the melee, Key tries his luck in the Stark vaults once too often and encounters an unexpected problem, thanks to another insidious infiltrator planted by a different scheming mastermind. However, having freed himself, Tony is too now busy rushing to a far-distant, potentially world-ending final battle in anniversary issue #100. Invading China, Iron Man faces horrors, homunculi Death Squads, nuclear armageddon and his most obsessive enemy whose ‘Ten Rings to Rule the World!’ ultimately prove insufficient to the task…

With the tyrant’s countless plots to discredit Stark now exposed, our hero starts a long journey home, even as in Long Island, Harry Key, Sitwell and one of the traitors in Stark’s midst begin a cautious espionage dance…

Iron Man’s trip stalls when he’s shot down over Yugoslavia (just google it) and awakens in a creepy old castle filled with freaks and outcasts safeguarded by a familiar – to elderly or dedicated Marvelites at least – huge and daunting figure. Recovering in ‘Then Came the Monster!’ our weary voyager views Castle Frankenstein and panics: clashing with the gentle “Modern Prometheus” before the real menace emerges.

Inked by Esposito & Pablo Marcos, ‘Dreadknight and the Daughter of Creation!’ channels old Marvel horror tales as a brutal and brutalised escaped experiment of Doctor Doom’s laboratories seeks to compel the great granddaughter of Victor Frankenstein to share with him the secrets of creating life…

This ruthless high-tech paladin’s sadistic efforts are eventually thwarted by Iron Man and the original (good) Monster, after which the Steel-Shod Sentinel at last arrives home in #103’s ‘Run for the Money!’ by Mantlo, Tuska & Esposito. Sadly, it’s just in time for the next domestic crisis as Sitwell exposes the traitor only to be captured by revolting corporate villain Midas, who – patience exhausted – launches a truly hostile takeover using tanks, mercenaries, lawyers and the Stock Market…

He is temporarily checked by itinerant junior hero/innocent bystander Jack of Hearts who – as per standard Marvel protocol – is attacked by weary, late arriving Iron Man who misconstrues events and assaults the well-meaning stranger. Shock follows shock as Midas’ legal chicanery forces Iron Man’s surrender, ceding control of Stark International to his enemy, even as the villain’s agent and top lieutenant Madame Masque quits to ally herself with the defeated hero and his ousted, outmanoeuvred alter ego Tony Stark.

In the aftermath, repercussions of the takeover ripple outwards. With Stark no longer paying her bill, deeply disturbed super-telepath (and former Stark inamorata) Marianne Rodgers is kicked out of the sanatorium that has been keeping her psionic deadly tendencies in check…

The fightback begins in ‘Triad! (Mantlo, Tuska & Esposito) after Stark initially refuses the help of Masque. Thus she instead allies with former lover/patsy Sitwell whilst elsewhere, interested parties Michael O’Brien and Jack of Hearts also seek to stop Midas converting Stark’s purloined resources into a world-conquering armed force. Also heading slowly towards a showdown, Marianne graduates towards Long Island, leaving a trail of bodies in her wake…

With ‘Every Hand Against Him!’ and despite the stakes being so high, Tony has quit forever, preferring to hide in his father’s old house with Madame Masque. Less sanguine over the crisis and National Security threat, many of Iron Man’s allies join a volunteer force recruited by psychic superhero The Wraith and eventually consisting of Police Captain Jean de Wolf, former Iron Man stand-in Eddie March, The Guardsman & Jack of Hearts, covertly backed up by Sitwell and (the first) Nick Fury…

Still short of power, they co-opt through blackmail, Masque’s lethal skills and Tony’s last remaining armour suit to take out Midas. ‘Then There Came a War!’ (#106) sees the squad invade SI to face a legion of automated Iron Men. At the height of battle Marianne Rodgers – in a fugue state – finally reaches her destination. As Keith Pollard & Fred Kida step in to illustrate the catastrophic conclusion, ‘And, in the End…’ sees her power tip the scales, uncovering even more treachery in Tony’s inner circle and inspiring the despondent hero to take back his heritage, his company and his honour…

With most of his allies apparently dead, Iron Man calls in Avenging ally Yellowjacket (AKA original Ant-Man Henry Pym) to help whip up a miracle cure in #108 (Mantlo, Carmine Infantino & Bob Wiacek). This incurs some ‘Growing Pains!’ and a palate-cleansing action-filled monster-bash as the clear-up somehow reactivates Kang the Conqueror’s devastating Growing Man android to add to the wreckage and rubble…

Once the fighting is finished, rebuilding Stark International begins, with Mantlo, Infantino & Kida dictating the pace prior to another crisis after Jack of Hearts traces the Growing Man’s programming commands as emanating from Luna. Thus Iron Man and his superhero apprentice board a Quinjet and experiences a very painful ‘Moonrise!’ when their mission intersects a secret sortie by Soviet Super-soldiers Darkstar, Vanguard & Crimson Dynamo. The Communist cosmonauts are only investigating a bizarre alien artefact, but entrenched political and personal animosities spark a savage clash. Both sides are preoccupied when the silver egg activates, transporting those closest to it – the Americans – to somewhere far, far away…

Mantlo, Pollard & Kida stretch their fantasy muscles in an astral epic as the heroes materialise aboard a vast ship bearing Colonizers of Rigel to their next conquest. Sadly, these ‘Sojourners Through Space!’ have targeted Wundagore II – used by animal-enhancing man-made deity the High Evolutionary to store former experiments – and are soon caught up in a battle against formidable space Knights of Wundagore and two devastating late-arriving, quickly escaping human captives within their colossal Command ship…

When an alliance of humans and hyper-evolved Earth beasts proves too costly, the Rigellian venture is called off in ‘The Man, the Metal, and the Mayhem!’  but this in turn leads to renegade Colonizer subcommander Arcturus spitefully targeting Earth with a robot stolen from Galactus (the original Punisher from Fantastic Four #48-50). Upon its despatch, closing instalment ‘Moon Wars!’ (IM #112, July 1978 by Mantlo, Pollard & Alfredo Alcala) sees a swift, unauthorised Colonizer strike prompt a desperate dash back to Luna and shattering descent to Detroit for Iron Man, resulting in blistering battle with the cosmic weapon of chastisement and a new definition of the word “invincible” for the triumphant Golden Avenger…

With Mantlo scripting, Pollard layout pages and Trimpe’s pencilling for inker Josef Rubinstein, Iron Man #113 trumpeted a fresh beginning for Stark International after defeating the bloody takeover bid of Mr Midas. However, as the new complex opened for business, an old enemy is already infiltrating the company whilst a more brazen assault comes after a dying foe is manipulated into attacking the complex using ‘The Horn of the Unicorn!’

Seeking help for the beaten-and-at-death’s door Unicorn, the Metal Marvel consults The Avengers and inadvertently triggers a second assault by the villain who also activates a long-interred robotic threat that seems agonisingly familiar in ‘The Menace of… Arsenal!’ (Mantlo, Giffen & Bruce D. Patterson) leading to a turning point moment you’ll need the next book or another collection to enjoy…

To Be Continued…

Here, however, one last narrative nubbin comes from Marvel Premiere #44 (October 1978): the one-shot try-out of Stark’s former apprentice, by Mantlo, Giffen & Rudy Nebres). ‘The Jack of Hearts!’ reexamines the origin of trust fund brat Jack Hart, who was inundated in the experimental “zero fluid” invented by his murdered father. Seemingly resurrected and imbued with incredible energy and computational powers, Jack hunts The Corporation who ordered the hit and here – thanks to new connection in S.H.I.E.L.D. – inconclusively clashes with their preferred hitman Hemlock…

With covers throughout by Jack Kirby, Al Milgrom, Abel, Ron Wilson, Dan Adkins, Gil Kane, Dave Cockrum, Sal Buscema, Jim Starlin, Val Mayerik, George Pérez, Terry Austin, Frank Giacoia, Joe Sinnott, Joe Rubinstein, John Byrne, Wiacek, Pollard, John Romta Jr., Ed Hannigan & Frank Giacoia, other extras include house ads, cartoon fan letter ‘Printed Circuits’ (by Fred Hembeck from #112); editorial pages and style sheets from Marvel Premiere #44 and original art covers by Starlin, Mayerik & Cockrum.

From our distant vantage point the polemical energy and impact might be dissipated, but the sheer quality of the comics and cool thrill of the eternal aspiration of man in perfect partnership with magic metal remains. These Fights ‘n’ Tights classics are amongst the most underrated but impressive tales of the period and are well worth your time, consideration and cold hard cash
© 2025 MARVEL.

You’d think we barely have room for a review this time as it’s such an auspicious day for comics…

In 1912 today creepy cartoon colossus Charles Addams was born, and in 1929 both Buck Rogers by Dick Calkins and Hal Foster’s Tarzan strips debuted. In 1934 Alex Raymond & Don Moore launched Jungle Jim and a year later combined it with new idea Flash Gordon.

Underground and Mad magazine artist Jay Lynch was born in 1945 and two years later Milton Caniff premiered his other masterpiece with the launch of Steve Canyon. That ran until 1988.

In 1953, Bob Wiacek joined the party as did Karl Kesel in 1959, and publisher Fabrice Giger (Les Humanoïdes Associés) arrived in 1965. Surely by coincidence, two years after, that nativity was followed by the launch of Greg & Eddie Paape’s Luc Orient in Le Journal de Tintin.

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Blackmark – 30th Anniversary Edition


By Gil Kane, with Archie Goodwin, Harvey Kurtzman & Neal Adams (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-456-7 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Gil Kane was one of the pivotal players in the development of the American comics industry, and indeed of the art form itself. Working as an artist, and an increasingly more effective and influential one, he drew for many companies since his 1940s debut: on superheroes, action, war, mystery, romance, movie adaptations and, perhaps most importantly, Westerns and Science Fiction tales. In the late 1950s Kane became one of editor Julius Schwartz’s key artists in regenerating the superhero. Yet by 1968, at the top of his (admittedly much denigrated) profession, this relentlessly revolutionary and creative man felt so confined by the juvenile strictures of the industry that he struck out on bold new ventures that jettisoned the editorial and format bondage of comic books for new visions and media.

His Name Is Savage was an adult-oriented black & white magazine about a cold and ruthless super-spy in the James Bond/Matt Helm/Man Called Flint mould, co-written by friend and collaborator Archie Goodwin. It was very much a precursor in tone, treatment and subject matter of many of today’s adventure titles.

The other venture, Blackmark (also with Goodwin), not only ushered in the comic book age of Sword and Sorcery, but also became one of the first Graphic Novels. Technically, as the series was commissioned by fantasy publisher Ballantine as eight volumes, it was also envisioned as America’s first comic Limited Series. Volume 1 was released in January 1971, with volume 2 just completed when the publisher cancelled the project. A generation Kane’s junior but a long term, seasoned collaborator, Roy Thomas reprinted those tales in Marvel’s monochrome magazines Savage Sword of Conan and Marvel Preview, with the artwork rejigged to accommodate the different page format.

That’s enough background. Blackmark tells the tale of a boy born into a war-ravaged, primitive future where atomic holocaust has resulted in a superstitious society that fears and shuns technology and science – like parts of the American Bible Belt. Similarly, feudal lords rule by might and terror, whilst rebel technophiles are hunted like dogs. One night, and when fleeing persecution, a married couple encounter a dying scientist-king who pays the woman to impregnate her with a son pre-programmed to be a messiah of science.

Blackmark is born into a life of poverty and toil. When his parents are killed by a wandering warlord he devotes his life to vengeance, and learns all the physical skills necessary when he is taken for a gladiator slave. It is (sadly) overwhelmingly familiar to us today, simply because it was so influential at the time – albeit with those few original purchasers who seem to have become the next generation of comics and literary creators.

Although the plot might seem old hat, the beauty and power of the illustration has never been matched. Kane designed the pages with blocks of text as part of the whole, rather than with willy-nilly blurb and balloons to distract the eye, and his evocative figure drawing has never been as taut, tense and passionate. Always suffering from deadline pressures, the artist called in colleagues Harvey Kurtzman & Neal Adams to help lay out and finish the project on time. The script, over Kane’s story, was provided by the incomparable Goodwin, as much a master as Kane himself; Nevertheless, Blackmark is very much quintessential Kane.

This compilation (incomprehensibly out of print and hard to find) collects original volumes 1 and 2 and presents them in a size far larger than the original standard paperback. As well as a fantasy masterpiece, and a spectacular comic romp, it preserves and presents a literal breakthrough in comic storytelling that should be on every fan’s must-read list.

And in bloody print…
© 2002 Fantagraphics Books & the estate of Gil Kane. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1857 pioneering cartoon satirist and comic strip creator Frederick Burr Opper was born. He did Happy Hooligan, And Her Name Was Maud and Alphonse and Gaston and so have we, so go look back in wonder. In 1913 George McManus’ Bringing Up Father launched and charmed generations until 2000. Look for that too, but perhaps wonder why Red Ryder isn’t better represented here. After all its artist Fred Harman died today in 1982…

In comic books, unsung wonders Joe Certa (Martian Manhunter) and Don Heck (everything) were born in 1919 and 1929 respectively. In 1958 the utterly unique H. G. Peter passed away. He was still drawing Wonder Woman at the time. Less well known but just as dedicated, Kid Colt, Outlaw and drag racing comics illustrator Jack Keller passed on in 2003.

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Showcase Presents Robin The Boy Wonder


By E. Nelson Bridwell, Ed Hamilton, John Broome, Leo Dorfman, Gardner F. Fox, Cary Bates, Mike Friedrich, Frank Robbins, Denny O’Neil, Bob Haney, Elliot Maggin, Bob Rozakis, Ross Andru, Curt Swan, Sheldon Moldoff, Pete Costanza, Chic Stone, Gil Kane, Irv Novick, Murphy Anderson, Dick Dillin, Rich Buckler, Bob Brown, Mike Grell, A. Martinez Al Milgrom & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1676-4 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

As previously mentioned, there are a lot of comics anniversaries occurring in this otherwise dreadful year. The ultimate and original sidekick is probably the most significant of DC’s representatives, and indeed there have been a few intriguing collections released to celebrate the occasion. This one, however, is probably the best but remains criminally out of print, if not utterly unavailable…

Robin the Boy Wonder debuted in Detective Comics #38 (cover dated April 1940 and on sale from March 6th). Co-created by Bob Kane, Bill Finger & Jerry Robinson, he was 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 and still regularly undergoes tweaking to this day.

Grayson fought beside Batman until 1970 when, as an indicator of those turbulent times, he flew the nest, becoming a Teen Wonder college student. His creation as a junior hero for younger readers to identify with has inspired an incomprehensible number of costumed sidekicks and kid crusaders, and Grayson continued in similar innovative vein for the older, more worldly-wise readership of America’s increasingly rebellious youth culture.

The first Robin even had his own solo series in Star Spangled Comics from 1947 to 1952, a solo spot in the back of Detective Comics from the end of the 1960s – a position he alternated and shared with Batgirl – and a starring feature in anthology comic Batman Family. During the 1980s he led the New Teen Titans, initially in his original costumed identity but eventually in the reinvented guise of Nightwing, all while re-establishing a (somewhat turbulent) working relationship with his masked mentor.

This broad ranging easy on the eye monochrome compilation covers the period from Julie Schwartz’s captivating reinvigoration of the Dynamic Duo in 1964 until 1975 with Robin-related stories and material from Batman #184, 192, 202, 213, 227, 229-231, 234-236, 239-242, 244-246, 248-250, 252, 254 and portions of 217; Detective Comics #342, 386, 390-391, 394-395, 398-403, 445, 447, 450-251; World’s Finest Comics #141, 147, 195, 200; Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #91, 111, 130 and Justice League of America #91-92.

The wonderment begins with the lead story from Batman #213 (July-August 1969) – a 30th Anniversary reprint Giant – which featured an all-new retelling of ‘The Origin of Robin’ courtesy of E. Nelson Bridwell, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito, perfectly reinterpreting that epochal event for the Vietnam generation. After that, the tales proceed in (more or less) chronological order, covering episodes where Robin took centre-stage.

First up is ‘The Olsen-Robin Team versus… the Superman-Batman Team!’ (from World’s Finest #141, May 1964, by Edmond Hamilton, Curt Swan & George Klein). In a stirring blend of science fiction thriller and crime caper, the underappreciated sidekicks fake their own deaths to undertake a secret mission even their adult partners must remain unaware of – for the very best of reasons of course. A sequel from WF #147 (February 1965) delivers an engaging drama of youth-in-revolt as ‘The New Terrific Team!’ quit their assistant roles to strike out on their disgruntled own. Naturally there’s a perfectly reasonable – if incredible – reason here, too…

Detective Comics #342 (August 1965) featured ‘The Midnight Raid of the Robin Gang!’ by John Broome, Sheldon Moldoff & Joe Giella, wherein the Boy Wonder joins a youthful gang of costumed criminals, after which Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #91 (March 1966) delivers ‘The Dragon Delinquent!’ (Leo Dorfman & Pete Costanza) as Robin and the cub reporter, unknown to each other, both infiltrate the same biker gang with potentially fatal consequences.

‘The Boy Wonder’s Boo-Boo Patrol!’ – originally a back-up in Batman #184 (September 1966, Gardner Fox, Chic Stone & Sid Greene), shows the daring lad’s star-potential in a clever tale of thespian skulduggery and classic conundrum solving, before ‘Dick Grayson’s Secret Guardian!’ (Batman #192, June 1967, Fox, Moldoff & Giella) depicts his physical prowess in one of comic books’ first instances of the exo-skeletal augmentation gimmick.

‘Jimmy Olsen, Boy Wonder!’ (SPJO #111, June 1968, by Cary Bates & Costanza) finds the reporter trying to prove his covert skills by convincing the Gotham Guardian that he was actually Robin, whilst that same month in Batman #203 the genuine article tackles the ‘Menace of the Motorcycle Marauders!’ (Mike Friedrich, Stone & Giella) consequently learning a salutary lesson in the price of responsibility…

Cover-dated April 1969, Detective Comics #386 featured the Boy Wonder’s first solo back-up in what was to become his semi-regular spot for years. ‘The Teen-Age Gap!’ (as described by Friedrich, Andru & Esposito) depicts a High School Barn Dance which only narrowly escapes becoming a riot thanks to his diligent intervention, after which Gil Kane & Murphy Anderson assume the art-chores with #390’s ‘Countdown to Chaos!’ (August 1969), bringing the series stunningly alive. Friedrich concocted a canny tale of corruption and kidnapping leading to a paralysing city ‘Strike!’ for the Caped kid to spectacularly expose and foil in the following issue.

Batman #217 (December 1969) was a landmark in the character’s long history as Dick leaves home to attend Hudson University. Only the pertinent portion from ‘One Bullet Too Many!’ by Frank Robbins, Irv Novick & Dick Giordano is included here, closely followed by ‘Strike… Whilst the Campus is Hot’ (Detective #394 from the same month, by Robbins, Kane & Anderson) as the callow freshman stumbles into a campus riot organised by criminals and radical activists, forcing the now Teen Wonder to ‘Drop Out… or Drop Dead!‘ to stop the seditious scheme…

Detective #398-399 (April & May 1970) ran a 2-part spy-thriller with Vince Colletta replacing Anderson as inker. ‘Moon-Struck’ has lunar rock samples borrowed from NASA apparently causing a plague among Hudson’s students until Robin exposes a Soviet scheme to sabotage the Space Program in ‘Panic by Moonglow’. The 400th anniversary issue (June 1970) finally teamed the Teen Wonder with his alternating back-up star in ‘A Burial For Batgirl!’ (Denny O’Neil, Kane & Colletta): a college-based murder mystery which again heavily references the political and social unrest then plaguing US campuses, but which still finds space to be smart and action-packed as well as topical, before chilling conclusion ‘Midnight is the Dying Hour!’ wraps up the saga.

Never afraid to repeat a good idea, Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #130 (July 1970) sees Bob Haney & Murphy Anderson detail the exploits of ‘Olsen the Teen Wonder!’ as the boy reporter again apes Batman’s buddy – this time to infiltrate an underworld newspaper – whilst World’s Finest #195 (August 1970) finds Jimmy & Robin targeted for murder by the Mafia in ‘Dig Now, Die Later!’ by Haney, Andru & Esposito. Simultaneously in DC #402 ‘My Place in the Sun’ (Friedrich, Kane & Colletta), embroils Grayson and fellow Teen Titan Roy Speedy Harper in a crisis of social conscience, before our scarce-bearded hero wraps up his Detective run with corking crime-busting caper ‘Break-Out’ in the September issue.

Robin’s romps transferred to the back of Batman, beginning with #227 (December 1970) and ‘Help Me – I Think I’m Dead!’ (Friedrich, Novick & Esposito) as ecological awareness and penny-pinching Big Business catastrophically collide on the campus, beginning an extended epic seeing the Teen Thunderbolt explore communes, alternative cultures and the burgeoning spiritual New Age fads of the day. Inked by Frank Giacoia ‘Temperature Boiling… and Rising!’ (#229, February 1971) continues the politically-charged drama, albeit uncomfortably interrupted by a trenchant fantasy team-up with Superman sparked when the Man of Steel attempts to halt a violent campus clash between students and National Guard.

Crafted by Friedrich, Dick Dillin & Giella, ‘Prisoners of the Immortal World!’ (WFC #200, February 1971), has brothers on opposite sides of the teen scene abducted with Robin & Superman to a distant planet where undying vampiric aliens wage eternal war on each other. A return to more pedestrian perils in Batman #230 (March 1971) sees ‘Danger Comes A-Looking!’ for our young hero in the form of a gang of right-wing, anti-protester jocks and a deluded friend who prefers bombs to brotherhood, courtesy of Friedrich, Novick & Dick Giordano. ‘Wiped Out!’ (#231, May 1971) then offers an eye-popping end to the jock gang whilst #234 sees a clever road-trip tale in ‘Vengeance for a Cop!’, when a campus guard is gunned down forcing Robin to track the only suspect to a commune. ‘The Outcast Society’ has its own unique system of justice, but eventually the shooter is apprehended in the cataclysmic ‘Rain Fire!’ (#235 & 236 respectively).

The Collective experience blooms into psychedelic and psionic strangeness in #239 as ‘Soul-Pit’ (illustrated by new penciller Rich Buckler) finds Grayson’s would-be girlfriend, “Jesus-freaks” and runaway kids all sucked into a telepathic duel between a father and son, played out in the ‘Theatre of the Mind!’ before exposing the ‘Secret of the Psychic Siren!’ and culminating in a lethal clash with a clandestine cult in ‘Death-Point!’ (Batman#242, June 1972). After that eerie epic we slip back a year to peruse the Teen Wonder’s participation in one of the hallowed JLA/JSA summer team-ups, beginning in Justice League of America #91 (August 1971) and ‘Earth… the Monster-Maker!’, as Supermen, Flashes, Green Lanterns, Atoms and a brace of Hawkmen from two separate Realities simultaneously and ineffectually battle an alien boy and his symbiotically-linked dog (sort of) on almost identical planets a universe apart. There’s still time to painfully patronise the Robins of both until ‘Solomon Grundy… the One and Only!’ gives everyone a brutal but ultimately life-saving lesson on acceptance, togetherness, youthful optimism and lateral thinking…

Elliot Maggin, Novick & Giordano then set ‘The Teen-Age Trap!’ (Batman#244, September 1972), with Grayson mentoring troubled kids – and finding plenty of troublemakers his own age – whilst ‘Who Stole the Gift from Nowhere!’ is a delightful old-fashioned change-of-pace mystery yarn. However, ‘How Many Ways Can a Robin Die?’ by Robbins, Novick, Dillin & Giordano (Batman #246, December 1972) is actually a Dark Knight story with Teen Wonder helpless hostage throughout, whereas #248 opens another run of solo stories with ‘The Immortals of Usen Castle’ (Maggin, Novick & Frank McLaughlin) wherein another deprived-kids day trip turns into an episode of Scooby-Doo, Where are You? The ‘Case of the Kidnapped Crusader!’ (pencilled by Bob Brown) then puts the Student Centurion on the trail of an abducted consumer advocate and ‘Return of the Flying Grayson!’ (Maggin, Novick & McLaughlin from #250) painfully reminds the hero of his Circus past after tracking down pop-art thieves.

Batman #252 (October 1973) sees Maggin, Dillin & Giordano’s light-hearted pairing of Robin with a Danny Kaye pastiche for charming romp ‘The King from Canarsie!’, before ‘The Phenomenal Memory of Luke Graham!’ (#254 January/February 1974 and inked by Anderson) causes nothing but trouble for the hero, his college professors and a gang of robbers…

It was a year before the Teen Wonder’s solo sallies resumed with ‘The Touchdown Trap’ in Detective Comics #445 as new scripter Bob Rozakis and artist Mike Grell catapulted our hero into a 50-year-old college football feud that refused to die, whilst ‘The Puzzle of the Pyramids’ (#447 and illustrated by A. Martinez & Mazzaroli) offers another clever crime conundrum. This eccentrically eclectic monochrome compendium concludes with an action-packed, chase-heavy human drama by Al Milgrom & Terry Austin as ‘The Parking Lot Bandit!’ & ‘The Parking Lot Bandit Strikes Again!’ (DC #450-451, August & September 1975), giving the titanic teen one last chance to strike a bit of terror into the hearts of evil-doers…

These stories span a turbulent and chaotic period for comic books: perfectly encapsulating and describing the vicissitudes of the superhero genre’s premier juvenile lead: complex yet uncomplicated adventures drenched in charm and wit, moody tales of rebellion and self-discovery, and rollercoaster, all-fun romps. Action is always paramount, and angst-free satisfaction is pretty much guaranteed. These cracking yarns are something no fan of old-fashioned Fights ‘n’ Tights fiction should miss.
© 1964-1975, 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1922, Belgian auteur Marc Sleen was born. We still haven’t seen English versions of his Nero yet, but have slavishly and repeatedly begged you all to tune in to the oeuvre of Ronald Searle, who left us all far less today in 2011.

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Conan the Barbarian Epic Collection volume 1: The Coming of Conan (1970-1972)


By Roy Thomas & Barry Windsor-Smith with John Jakes, Gil Kane, Dan Adkins, Sal Buscema, Frank Giacoia, Tom Palmer, Tom Sutton, “Diverse Hands”, Marie Severin, John Romita Sr. & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-2555-0 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Because We Believe in Blockbusters… 9/10

During the 1970’s the US comic book industry opened up after more than 15 years of cautiously calcified publishing practises that had come about as a reaction to censorious oversight of its self- inflicted Comics Code Authority. This body was created to keep the publishers’ product wholesome after the industry suffered their very own McCarthy-style Witch-hunt during the 1950s.

One of the first genres revisited was Horror/Mystery comics and from that sprang pulp masterpiece Conan the Cimmerian, via a tale in anthology Chamber of Darkness #4, whose hero bore no little thematic resemblance to the Barbarian. It was written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Barry (Windsor-) Smith, a recent Marvel find, and one who was gradually breaking out of the company’s all-encompassing Jack Kirby house-style.

Despite some early teething problems – including being cancelled and reinstated in the same month – the comic book adventures of Robert E. Howard’s brawny warrior became as big a success as the revived prose paperbacks which had heralded a world flowering in tales of fantasy and the supernatural.

After decades away, the brawny brute recently eventually to the aegis of Marvel. Designated “the Original Marvel Years” (due to the character’s sojourn with other publishers/intellectual properties rights holders), this bombastic tome of groundbreaking action fantasy yarns re-presents the contents of Conan the Barbarian #1-13 plus that trailblazing short story, cumulatively spanning cover-dates April 1970 to January 1972. Digitally remastered and available as a trade paperback or eBook, these are the absorbing arcane adventures that sparked a revolution in comics and a franchising empire in my youth, and are certainly good enough to do so again. They are also astonishingly readable…

The drama begins most fittingly after a glimpse at a classic map of ‘The Hyborean Age of Conan’ plus an accompanying quote I’m sure every devoted acolyte already knows by heart, after which that precursor romp sets the scene.

Set in modern America, ‘The Sword and the Sorcerers!’ primes the pump with the tale of a successful writer who foolishly decides to kill off his most beloved character Starr the Slayer: a barbarian so beloved that he has taken on a life of his own and is determined to do whatever is necessary to keep it…

After that we are catapulted back in time approximately 12,000 years into a forgotten age of terrors and wonders as scripter Thomas broadly follows Howard’s life path for young Conan of Cimmeria, beginning with the still teenaged warrior’s meeting with a clairvoyant wizard who predicts a regal destiny in ‘The Coming of Conan’ (inked by Dan Adkins), through brief but brutal enslavement in ‘The Lair of the Beastmen’ (Sal Buscema finishes), before experiencing a minor Ragnarok and witnessing ‘The Twilight of the Grim Grey God!’

An aura of lyrical cynicism grows to balance the wealth of mystical menaces and brooding horror as the wanderer becomes a professional thief and judge of human foibles in ‘The Tower of the Elephant’. Conan’s softer side is revealed in CtB #5 after meeting bewitching ‘Zukala’s Daughter’ (Frank Giacoia inks) and liberating a wizard-plagued town. Buscema returned for ‘Devil Wings over Shadizar’, wherein the warrior lad tackles a welter of antediluvian terrors, with both Adkins & Sal B applying their pens and brushes to expose ‘The Lurker Within’ – based on Howard’s magnificent chiller The God in the Bowl – after which tomb raider Conan crushes zombies and dinosaurs in ‘The Keepers of the Crypt’ (inked by Toms Palmer & Sutton)…

Thomas’s avowed plan was to closely follow Conan’s established literary career from all-but-boyhood to his eventual crowning as King of Aquilonia, adding to and adapting Howard’s prose works and that of his posthumous collaborators on the way. This agenda led to some of the best, freshest comics of the decade. The results of (not-yet-Windsor-) Smith’s search for his own graphic style led to unanimous acclaim and many awards for the creative duo.

By issue #9 the character had taken the comics world by storm and any threat of cancelation was long gone. ‘The Garden of Fear’ – adapted by Thomas & Smith, with inks by Sal B from Howard’s short story – features a spectacular battle with a primordial survivor in a lost valley before the wanderer returns to big city life, and learns too late to ‘Beware the Wrath of Anu!’

This god-slaying bout is mere prelude to another classic Howard adaptation, ‘Rogues in the House’: an early masterpiece of action and intrigue benefitting from a temporary doubling in page count.

‘Dweller in the Dark’ is an all-original yarn of monsters and maidens, notable because artist Smith inked his own pencils, and indications of his detailed fine-line illustrative style can be seen for the first time. An added bonus in that issue was a short back-up yarn by Thomas & Gil Kane with “Diverse Hands” called in to ink ‘The Blood of the Dragon!’: telling of a very different Hyborian hero getting what he deserves…

Fantasy author John Jakes plotted the final tale in this initial outing as ‘Web of the Spider-God’ offers a sardonic drama of the desert with the surly Cimmerian battling thirst, tyranny. pompous priests and a big, big bug in a riotous romp finished off by Thomas, Smith & Buscema.

Adding value to the treasury is a vast bonus section which includes pencilled cover art (used and unused); Thomas’ original script breakdowns as annotated by the artist; extracts from Marvelmania (the company’s first in-house fanzine); unused illustrations, house ads and Marvel bulletin items; cover roughs, concepts and finished art by Marie Severin & Gil Kane; Jakes’ plot synopsis and many pages of original art from the tales collected herein.

Also on show are cover galleries of the Marvel Books reprint paperback line and the Conan Classic comics series – all by Windsor-Smith – plus even before-&-after alterations demanded by the Comics Code Authority on the still contentious and controversial title.

These re-mastered epics are a superb way to enjoy some of US comics’ most influential and enjoyable blockbuster moments. They should have a place carved out on your bookshelf.
© 2020 Conan Properties International, LLC (“CPI”).

Herrrr–ge’s Ad–Ventures of Tinnnn–Tinn! (well, some of them) were largely drawn by Bob deMoor, who was born today in 1925, as was the wonderful Michael Zulli in 1952. Have you read The Puma Blues: The Complete Collection in One Volume?

In 1982 today, mangaka Katsuhiro Otomo saw the first episode of his astounding Akira epic published.

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Gil Kane’s UNDERSEA Agent


By Gil Kane, Steve Skeates, Gardner Fox & various (IDW)
ISBN: 978-1-63140-444-3 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Outstanding Action Adventure Comics… 9/10

April 6th 2026 marks the centenary of Gil Kane’s birth. As we might all be dead or scavenging in ruins and rubble by then, here’s a little something I was planning on adding to a month of Kane creations then…

The 1960s was the era when all assorted facets of “cool-for-kids” finally started to coalesce into a comprehensive assault on our minds – and our parents’ pockets. TV, movies, comics, bubble-gum cards and toys all began concertedly feeding off each other, building a unified and combined fantasy-land no kid could resist. The history of Wally Wood’s legendary comics Camelot is convoluted, and once the mayfly-like lifetime of the Tower Comics line folded, not especially pretty: wrapped up in legal wrangling and lots of petty back-biting. None of that diminishes the fact that the far-too brief run of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents was a benchmark of quality and sheer bravura fun for fans of both a still-reawakening superhero genre and the popular media’s spy-chic obsession.

In the early 1960s James Bond movie mania was going from strength to strength, with action and glamour utterly transforming the formerly understated espionage vehicle. The buzz was infectious and soon A Man like Flint and Matt Helm were carving out their own pieces of the action, even as the gogglebox shanghaied the entire trope with the irresistible Man from U.N.C.L.E. (which premiered in September 1964), bringing the genre into living rooms across the world.

Before long, wildly creative narrative art maverick Wood was approached by veteran MLJ/ Archie Comics editor Harry Shorten to create a line of characters for a new distribution-chain funded publishing outfit: Tower Comics. Woody called on some pals – coincidentally many of the biggest names in the industry – to produce material in a broad range of genres; as well as T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, spun-off Dynamo & NoMan and adjunct title U.N.D.E.R.S.E.A. Agent, there was the magnificent war-comic Fight the Enemy and youth-oriented comedy Tippy Teen. Samm Schwartz and Dan DeCarlo handled the comedy book – which outlasted all the others – whilst Wood, Larry Ivie, Len Brown and others crafted landmark/benchmark tales for the industry’s top talents to illustrate in truly innovative style. It didn’t hurt that all Tower titles were in the beloved-but-rarely-seen 80-Page Giant format: there was a huge amount to read in every issue!

Tapping into the Swinging Sixties’ twin entertainment zeitgeists – subsea action and spy sagas – Tower supplemented their highly popular acronymic star-turn, The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves (T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents) with a United Nations Department of Experiment and Research Systems Established at Atlantis: an aquatic narrative vehicle deploying U.N.D.E.R.S.E.A. Agent against crooks, aliens, monsters, enemy agents and the inimical forces of the environment they operated in.

Unlike its dry-land counterpart series, however, U.N.D.E.R.S.E.A. Agent began with their strong, solid stories (by D. J. Arneson, Steve Skeates & Don Segall) being illustrated in a traditional manner by industry veteran Ray Bailey – albeit with occasional stints from Mike Sekowsky, Joe Giella, Frank Giacoia, John Giunta, Frank Bolle, Manny Stallman & Sheldon Mayer.

According to this collection’s appreciative Foreword by Greg Goldstein and reiterated in Michael Uslan’s fact-filled Introduction, that old school stuff didn’t sit well with kids and in issue #3 Gil Kane moved over from T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, coming aboard to inject his unique, hyper-energetic human dynamism to the watered-down project.

Just a personal aside here: Although I bow to no one in my admiration for Kane and applaud this superb hardback compilation of his UA contributions, I also adore that other stuff – especially Bailey’s workmanlike, Caniff-inspired renditions – and eagerly anticipate the day someone finally gathers the entirety of the 6-issue run in one commemorative tome…

This superb book, however – compiled in 2015 to celebrate the astounding transformation in Kane’s own artistic endeavours which sprang from his brief time at Tower – reprints the breakthrough material which led to his sudden maturation into a world-class Auteur.

At that distant time Kane was a top-rated illustrator but would soon become one of the pivotal players in the development of the US comics industry, and indeed the art form itself. Working as an artist and, after this, an increasingly more effective and influential one, he has drawn for many companies since the 1940s, stamping his unique style on superheroes, action, war, mystery, romance, movie adaptations and most importantly, perhaps, Westerns and Science-Fiction tales.

In the late 1950s he was one of editor Julius Schwartz’s key artists in regenerating the superhero. Yet by the mid-1960s, at the top of his profession, this relentlessly revolutionary and creative man felt so confined by the juvenile strictures of the industry that he dreamed of bold new ventures which would jettison the editorial and format bondage of comic books for new visions and media.

In U.N.D.E.R.S.E.A. Agent #3-6 (spanning June 1966 – March 1967) he was allowed to ink his own pencils for the first time in decades and encouraged to experiment with composition, form and layout – and write, too – and Kane discovered a graphic freedom which opened up the way he told stories and led directly to his independent masterpieces His Name is Savage and Blackmark…

(His Name Is Savage was an adult-oriented black-&-white magazine about a cold and ruthless super-spy in the Bond/Helm/Flint mould; a precursor in tone, treatment and subject matter of many of today’s adventure titles. Blackmark not only ushered in the comic book age of Sword and Sorcery, but also became one of the first Graphic Novels. Technically, as the series was commissioned by fantasy publisher Ballantine as 8 volumes, it was also envisioned as America’s first comics Limited Series.)

So what have we here? Lieutenant Davy Jones is the U.N.D.E.R.S.E.A. Agent, a skilled diver who, whilst working at the international science lab Atlantis, had an accident which gave him magnetic powers that had to be controlled and contained by a hi-tech belt. His boss is affably brilliant boffin Professor Weston, and Jones had a young, impetuous apprentice seaman as sidekick. Skooby Doolittle joined him in tackling monsters, amok experiments and a remarkable number of crooks, mad masterminds and spies who thought pickings were easier under the waves…

Kane’s contributions commence with ‘The Will Warp’ – from UA #3 and written by Skeates – wherein our dashing heroes must contend with diabolical Dr. Malevolent who has perfected a ray to control minds. Soon the vile villain has taken over Atlantis, but has not reckoned on the speed of reaction and sheer determination of Jones & Doolittle…

Skeates also scripted Kane’s tale in #4 wherein Skooby has an unfortunate lab accident and is transformed into a colossal ravening reptilian. Amidst a storm of destruction and with his best friend now an actual danger to shipping, Davy is forced to extreme measures ‘To Save a Monster’…

‘Born is a Warrior’ (#5, written by Kane’s long-time collaborator Gardner Fox) sees hero and partner go above and beyond in their efforts to overthrow an undersea invasion by aliens, before the astounding adventures conclude with a potent, extra-length tale of triumph and tragedy. ‘Doomsday in the Depths’ (#6, by Fox) finds Jones lost at sea and swept into a utopia beneath the sea floor. Trapped forever in the paradise of Antor, he finds solace in his one true love: the sumptuous scientist Elysse. Sadly, Davy is compelled to abandon the miracle city and girl of his dreams to save them all from a horrific monster. Although ultimately victorious, he cannot find his way back…

A glorious cascade of scintillating fantasy action; these yarns – accompanied by a cover gallery by Kane – hark back to a perfect time of primal, winningly uncomplicated action adventure. This is a book to astound and delight comics fans of any stripe or vintage. Is that you?
Gil Kane’s UNDERSEA Agent © 2015: UNDERSEA Agent © 2015 Radiant Assets LLC. All rights reserved.

Today in 1914 author and batman scripter David Vern Reed was born. Thirty years so was later Brazilian comics master Léo (AKA Luiz Eduardo de Oliveira). You can find them all over this blog if you look. In 1965 the amazing Kyle Baker joined us and ditto for him.

In 1969 landmark British girls’ comic Lady Penelope ended after 204 issues, and six years later we said farewell to national treasure John Millar Watt, renowned for the strip Pop, but also a wonderful crafter of stuff for Thriller Comics Library, Robin Hood Annual, girls’ weekly comic Princess and especially Look and Learn.

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Man-Thing Marvel Masterworks volume 1


By Steve Gerber, Roy Thomas, Len Wein, Gerry Conway, Val Mayerik, Gray Morrow, Rich Buckler, John Buscema, Neal Adams, Howard Chaykin, Jim Starlin, Gil Kane, Dan Adkins, Jim Mooney, Frank Bolle, Chic Stone, Frank McLaughlin, Sal Trapani, Joe Sinnott, Frank Brunner, Mike Ploog & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-5547-2 (HB/digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times. This book also includes some Discriminatory Content included for dramatic and literary effect.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Timeless, Remorseless, Evergreen Scary Stuff to Make You Think… 9/10

At the end of the 1960s American comic books were in turmoil, much like the youth of the nation they targeted. Superheroes had dominated for much of the decade; peaking globally before explosively falling to ennui and overkill. Older genres such as horror, westerns and science fiction returned, fed by radical trends in movie-making, where the kids who had grown up with Marvel now fulfilled the bulk of their young adult entertainment needs.

Inspiration isn’t everything. In fact as Marvel slowly grew to a position of market dominance in the wake of the losing their two most innovative and inspirational creators, they did so less by experimentation and more by expanding proven concepts and properties. The only real exception to this was the hasty hyper-generation of multiple horror titles in response to the industry down-turn in super-hero sales – a move vastly expedited by a rapid revision in the wordings of the increasingly ineffectual Comics Code Authority rules.

The switch to supernatural stars had many benefits. Crucially it brought a new readership to Marvel comics, one attuned to the global revival in spiritualism, Satanism and all things sinisterly spooky. Almost as important, it gave the reprint-crazy company an opportunity to finally recycle old 1950s horror stories that had been rendered unprintable and useless since the Code’s inception in 1954.

A scant 15 years later the Comics Code prohibition against horror was hastily rewritten – amazing how plunging sales can affect ethics – and scary comics came back in a big way with a new crop of supernatural heroes and monsters popping up on the newsstands to supplement the ghosts, ghoulies and goblins already infiltrating the once science-only scenarios of the surviving mystery men titles. In fact lifting of the Code ban resulted in such an en masse creation of horror titles (both new characters and reprints from the massive boom of the early 1950s) that it probably caused a few more venerable costumed crusaders to (temporarily, at least) bite the dust.

Almost overnight nasty monsters (and narcotics – but that’s another story) became acceptable fare on four-colour pages and whilst a parade of pre-code reprints made sound business sense, the creative aspect of the contemporary buzz for bizarre themes was catered to by adapting popular cultural icons before risking whole new concepts on an untested public. As always in entertainment, the watch-world was fashion: what was hitting big outside comics was to be incorporated into the mix as soon as possible.

The first fan-sensation of the modern era, (now officially enshrined as the Bronze Age of US comic books) Swamp Thing had powerful popular fiction antecedents and in 1972 it was seemingly a concept whose time had come again. Prime evidence was the fact that Marvel were also working on a man-into-mucky, muddy mess character at the very same time. Both Swampy and the Macabre Man-Thing were thematic revisions of Theodore Sturgeon’s classic novella It, and bore notable resemblances to a hugely popular Hillman Comics star dubbed The Heap.

He/it sloshed through the back of Airboy Comics (née Air Fighters Comics) from 1943 until the end of the Golden Age, and my fanboy radar suspects Roy Thomas’ marsh-monster The Glob (Incredible Hulk #121-November 1969 & #129-June 1970) either inspired both DC and Marvel’s creative teams, or was part of that same zeitgeist. It must also be remembered that in the autumn of 1971 Skywald – a very minor player with big aspirations – released a monochrome magazine in their Warren knock-off line entitled The Heap.

For whatever reason, by the end of the 1960s superhero comics were in another steep sales decline, again succumbing to a genre boom led by a horror/mystery resurgence. A swift rewriting of the Comics Code Authority augmented the changeover and at National/DC, veteran EC comics star Joe Orlando became editor of House of Mystery and sister title House of Secrets. These were short story anthologies embracing gothic mystery scenarios, taking their lead from TV triumphs like Twilight Zone and Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, but a horror themed lead meant a focus on character not plot, tragedy and empathy over twist endings and most precious of all, continuity…

No one was expecting satire and social commentary but that came along for the ride too!

Remarkably soon after the Comics Code prohibition against horror being amended, scary comics returned in force and a fresh crop of supernatural superheroes and monsters began appearing on newsstands to supplement the ghosts, ghoulies and goblins already infiltrating the once science-only scenarios of the surviving Fights ‘n’ Tights titles.

In fact, the lifting of the Code ban resulted in such an avalanche of horror titles in response to the industry-wide downturn in superhero sales, that it probably caused a few more venerable costumed crusaders to – albeit temporarily – bite the dust.

When proto-horror Morbius, the Living Vampire debuted in Amazing Spider-Man #101 (cover-dated October 1971) and the sky failed to fall in, Marvel moved ahead with a line of shocking superstars. They began with a traditional werewolf and a vampire before chancing something new: a haunted biker who tapped into both Easy Rider’s freewheeling motorcycling chic and the prevailing supernatural zeitgeist: the all-new Ghost Rider (in Marvel Spotlight #5, August 1972). He had been preceded by western hero Red Wolf in #1 and the aforementioned Werewolf by Night in #2-4. From these beginnings spooky floodgates opened to such an extent there was even room for non-white stars like The Living Mummy and ultimately today’s star turn…

This quirky compendium collects the earliest exploits of Marvel’s muck monster, and not at all coincidentally traces the rise of a unique comics voice. Steve Gerber was a sublimely gifted writer with a ferocious social conscience who combined a deep love of Marvel’s continuity minutiae with dark irrepressible wit, incisive introspection, barbed cultural criticism, a barely reigned-in imagination and boundless bizarre surrealism. His stories were always at the extreme edge of the company’s intellectual canon and never failed to deliver surprise and satisfaction, especially when he couched his sardonic sorties as thinly veiled attacks on burgeoning cultural homogenisation and commercial barbarity. Via material from Savage Tales #1, Astonishing Tales, #12-13, Adventure into Fear #10-19, The Man-Thing #1 & Marvel Two-In-One #1 (communally spanning May 1971 to January 1974) we’ll see how Marvel increasing became the voice of a lost and dissatisfied liberality…

The revolution begins after an erudite Introduction by authorial everyman Steve Orlando (Scarlet Witch, Wonder Woman, Ben 10, Heavy Metal Magazine), before we trudge back to very different times and the beginning of a new kind of comics experience and Marvel’s continued experiments with the monochrome, mature reader marketplace…

Ranged amidst the grittier-than-usual adult-oriented material (that meant partial nudity and more explicit violence back then) Savage Tales #1 (cover-dated May 1971) was a mixed bag of sword & sorcery, sci fi, crime and horror stories featuring Conan, Ka-Zar and more. That line-up included a powerfully enthralling horror yarn entitled ‘Man Thing!’ Scripted by Gerry Conway & Roy Thomas, it offered a fairly traditional spooky story elevated to sublime heights by Gray Morrow’s artwork. It related how government biochemist Ted Sallis was hiding out in the swamps whilst finishing a new/recreated iteration of the much-prized Super-soldier formula that had created Captain America…

Sadly, his live-in lover Ellen is an agent for the opposition and when she and her minions made a play for the formula, Ted is wounded and flees into the murky mire. To preserve the only sample of his life’s work, the desperate, possibly dying boffin injects himself with it… and the bog mingles with the mix to spawn something tragic and uncanny…

Barely conscious or sentient, a shambling muck-monster emerges, apparently set on justice or vengeance…

Savage Tales was not a success and who knows how many manic Marvelites actually saw the anthology, but creators are stubborn brutes who can’t let things lie, so some months later the muck monster shambled back via a tenuous mainstream comic book connection…

Cover-dated June 1972, Astonishing Tales #12 sees the Savage Land’s self-appointed Sovereign Ka-Zar – and morphologically unsubstantiated primaeval saber-cat Zabu – abruptly relocating to Florida in pursuit of S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Barbra “Bobbi” Morse only to find that ‘Terror Stalks the Everglades!’ Here Thomas, John Buscema & Dan Adkins deftly recast the Jungle King as a freelance “consultant” for the superspy network, assisting aging biologist Dr. Wilma Calvin – who just happens to be Morse’s mentor – in tracking down a missing scientist named Ted Sallis.

What Ka-Zar doesn’t know is that the project all of them are working on is the recreation of the super-soldier serum that created Captain America and what nobody (technically) alive knows is that Sallis succeeded before he vanished. However, when Advanced Idea Mechanic agents tried to steal it. Sallis had injected himself and the chemicals reacted with the swamp’s magical energies to create a mindless shambling monster.

Readers are clued in thanks to a lovely unused interlude intended for Savage Tales #2, with Wein & Neal Adams providing a chilling recap sequence detailing the macabre Man-Thing’s previous relationship with Calvin, before back in the now, AIM attacks, trapping Ka-Zar with the bog-beast…

In AT #13 (Thomas, J. Buscema, Rich Buckler & Adkins), the mystery grows as the Jungle Lord escapes the ‘Man-Thing!’ to focus on the real monsters, subsequently routing out a traitor and defeating AIM… for now. With the attention-grabbing overlap with mainstream Marvel done for the moment the path was clear if muddy for a new horror hero to forge ahead, but what was needed was the right tone of voice…

Steve Gerber was a uniquely gifted writer who combined a deep love of Marvel’s continuity minutiae with dark irrepressible wit, incisive introspection, barbed socio-cultural criticism, a barely reigned-in imagination and boundless bizarre surrealism. His stories were always at the extreme edge of the company’s intellectual canon and never failed to deliver surprise and satisfaction, especially when he couched his sardonic sorties as thinly veiled attacks on burgeoning cultural homogenisation and commercial barbarity. With Man-Thing he held up a peculiarly scummy mirror to many cordoned-off and taboo subjects and made history – and enemies – over and over again. However before him, Conway & Morrow returned, aided by Howard Chaykin as the bog beast won its own series, beginning in (Adventure into) Fear #10. Cover-dated October 1972, ‘Man Thing!’ (Say it again! Again!) saw the monster defy all odds to return an abandoned baby to a daddy who just did not want him… and would not take no for an answer…

After that conceptual interlude Gerber, Buckler & Jim Mooney opened an extended mystic parable in Fear #11 on the ‘Night of the Nether-Spawn!’ Gerber’s take was that the beast was empathic and all-but-mindless, reacting and responding to those in its vicinity, but having practically no personal volition. Here that relationship draws in teenagers Jennifer Kale and her little brother Andy who are about to get into all sorts of trouble because they stole something from their grandpa. Sadly, when you play with a magical tome belonging to an ancient cult, handed down over eons to the latest in a long line of guardian wizards, sinister stuff is likely to happen…

The upshot is that a demonic force comes looking for little Miss Kale and its evil emanations make it a painful intrusion the maddened muck monster cannot abide. With diabolical Thog the Nether-Spawn thus preoccupied battling the bonkers bog-brute all through small-town Citrusville, Andy & Jennifer are free to try to fix what they broke. All appearances and happy endings to the contrary, it’s too little, too late…

The nation’s racial tensions boiled over into Fear #12 as Gerber, Jim Starlin & Buckler discovered ‘No Choice of Colors!’ after the moss-heap slurped into a far-too-personal vendetta linking racist white sheriff Wallace Corlee and fugitive black murder suspect Mark Jackson. After initially and instinctively saving the wounded runner, Man-Thing is helpless against the literally paralysing hatred of both men: one condemned for loving the wrong shade of woman and the just other happy to have a legal reason to kill another “coloured man”…

Only after one of the enraged obsessives is no more can the swamp beast freely act against the other…

In #13, Val Mayerik begins his fruitful association with the series as – inked by Frank Bolle – ‘Where Worlds Collide!’ finds Gerber in universe-building mode: introducing Jennifer Kale’s Grandpa Joshua as high priest of a cult that has thrived secretly since Atlantis sank beneath the waves. They have safeguarded the world for eons, handing down the sacred Tome of Zhered-Na, but now Jennifer’s meddling as she innocently answered the call of her heritage has opened a portal to infernal terror that begins by taking Jen’s not-boyfriend Jaxon and opening pathways to devil-infested dimensions. When the Man-Thing follows, he finds a place where Ted Sallis is made manifest again and where Thog offers to make it permanent if the human will betray his world…

Ted’s violent refusal coincides with Joshua and the grandkids showing up and, in the flush of frantic battle and escape to consensus reality, the Kales discover Jennifer’s uncanny link to the mindless (again) monster…

Veteran Chic Stone inks #14’s ‘The Demon Plague!’ as, all over America, hate and insanity blossom. Everywhere, humans attack those nearest, dearest or even largely indifferent to them; and the deluge of violence even affects the wildlife in Florida’s swamps with Man-Thing pitilessly assaulted by everything that walks or hops or crawls or swims…

Joshua Kale soon determines that the not properly sealed dimensional portal is permitting demons to pass and possess mortals, and convenes a cult ceremony to close it from within the swamp – which just happens to be the Nexus of All Realities…

Despite best efforts the ritual goes awry and, curiously spying on them, Jennifer and the bog-beast are abducted from existence by a major mage dubbed Dakimh the Enchanter. Forced into gladiatorial actions to retain the sacred tome that only Jennifer knows no longer exists, everybody underestimates the shambling compost heap with flamethrower hands, and the Earthlings are promptly returned without giving away any more arcane secrets…

With Frank McLaughkin as guest inker this time, Gerber & Mayerik probe ‘From Here to Infinity!’ in Fear #15. With chaos gripping the entire planet, the Man-Thing seemingly killed by invading demons and no sacred tome to consult, Joshua Kale visits ancient Atlantis, seeing how mystic Zhered-Na personally dealt with the last such incursion, learning of an eternal war between divine realms – shining Therea and dark Sominus…

As the current cult leader views how his inspiration met her end, elsewhere Dakimh recruits promising potential sorceress Jennifer, revives the bog-beast and takes them both an a trans-dimensional voyage to save reality and stop the sorcerous shooting war…cat least for now and at the cost of the link to the swamp totem…

Abruptly switching tack and tone, Fear #16 ‘Cry of the Native!’ (inked by Sal Trapani) explores themes of Native American rights, ecological barbarism and callous capitalism run amok, when developer F A Schist attempts to drain the swamp and relocate its Indian occupants to facilitate his new airport complex. Complex issues of new jobs versus already broken treaties and promises lead to sabotage, riots and civil unrest, but what concerns the Kales most is how the disruption might affect the shaky barriers holding back the hungry hordes of Sominus…

This time, however, simply human pride, greed, bigotry and love of violence – all agonising felt by mindless, empathic Man-Thing – is enough to spark riot and butchery, and stall the project. In the aftermath (and with Trapani sticking around as inker) #17’s ‘It Came Out of the Sky!’ offers dark, wry parody as the bog-beast curiously opens a long-submerged space capsule buried in the hidden mire. Within is a super-powered baby sent from a world believed by one scientist/loving father to be on the imminent edge of extinction due to environmental collapse…

The capsule had fed and sustained the godlike being within for 22 years, but when Wundarr emerged to immediately imprint on the Man-Thing, nothing could convince the educationally and emotionally challenged – and fully-grown – waif that the unthinking moss-mass was not his mother. The rejection and indifference proved unbearable and the violent tantrums that resulted almost destroy the airport construction site and Citrusville…

The story notionally carries over into debuting superhero team-up book Marvel Two-In-One #1 (cover-dated January 1974) where, after a desert clash with Thanos, Fantastic Four stalwart Ben Grimm accidentally and improbably ends up in Florida for the premier issue of his own title. Crafted by Gerber, Gil Kane & Joe Sinnott, the ‘Vengeance of the Molecule Man!’ sees The Thing learn some horrifying home truths about what constitutes being a monster when battling with and beside ghastly, grotesque anti-hero Man-Thing after the essence of the reality-warping villain starts possessing bodies in the swamps

Back in Fear #18, Gerber, Mayerik & Trapani resume straight terror tropes and real-world controversy in ‘A Question of Survival!’ as a bus load of ordinary people and a drunk driver catastrophically intersect on a highway through the Everglades. Drawn to the emotional turmoil, the mire monster becomes unwilling witness and unintentional guide as the survivors learn about each other (this at a time when women and minorities were still legally second-class citizens, and pacifists & warhawks violently clashed over Vietnam) whilst trekking back to civilisation and medical treatment. Sadly, one of them really needs to be the only survivor and is not averse to more killing…

The series truly hit its innovative stride with its final appearance in (Adventure into) Fear #19 – cover-dated December 1973 – wherein Thog makes his grand move to conquer all realities and destroy the benign over-gods of Therea. That’s when Jennifer Kale officially becomes ‘The Enchanter’s Apprentice!’ (Gerber, Mayerik & Trapani) and joins another trans-planar trek as the formerly regulated realms of existence begin to collide, clash and combine. First task is to gather the heroes needful to the task and her far-from-united party rapidly expands to include tutor Dakimh, the mindless Man-Thing, a burly barbarian (Korrek, Warrior Prince of Katharta!) and a brusquely cynical talking mallard who calls himself Howard…

Hounded by Thog’s forces, their task is to traverse the twisting paths of existence and save the gods with the chase leading directly into The Man-Thing #1 (January 1974) and a world-shattering ‘Battle for the Palace of the Gods!’ Along the way, Howard is an early casualty, lost in a plunge through cascading universes and the chaos even briefly encompasses baffled heroes Daredevil and Black Widow; and all seems lost when the malign Congress of Realities smashes into seemingly undefended Therea. However, there are forces at play that are beyond even demons and devils, and the mysterious Man-Thing is their unknowing yet willing tool; and ultimately realties are rebalanced and life goes on…

With covers by John Buscema, Buckler, Morrow, Adams, Starlin, Kane, John Romita Snr., Alan Weiss, Frank Brunner, Sinnott, Frank Giacoia, Herb Trimpe & Ernie Chan, the extras in this moody tome of terror and extrospection also include – from November 1970 – Thomas’ original plot for the short story in Savage Tales #1; an original grey-toned art page by Morrow; more by Buscema & Adkins, Buckler, Mooney, Weiss, Brunner, Mayerik & McLaughlin. For your perusal, Gerber’s plot for Fear #16 follows, with lettering notes and Brunner’s cover for #17. More original art includes Romita’s cover for #18 plus interior art by Mayerik & Trapani. The cover art for #19 by Kane & Chan opens another gallery before segueing into house ads, Adams’ cover for Monsters Unleashed #3 and a cover gallery for reprint title Book of the Dead #1-3 (1993-1994) by Tennyson Smith & Morrow, and Ariel Olivetti’s cover to the 2012 Man-Thing Omnibus.

We – me especially – apply the terms milestone, landmark and groundbreaking as guarantors of quality that change the way comics are perceived and even created. It has never been more true or accurate than with these game-changing, socially aware horror yarns. These are stories you must not miss…
© 2024 MARVEL.

Today in 1894 the magnificent Elzie Segar was born. Go read some Popeye or even Thimble Theatre if you can find it.

In 1980 Berke Breathed chose the day to begin his almost-as-magnificent Bloom County strip, as we last saw in Bloom County: Real, Classy, & Compleat 1980-1989. Some of that last factoid is made up by me, but it could have happened…

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DC Finest Green Lantern (volume 2) – Earth’s Other Green Lantern


By Gardner F. Fox, John Broome, Bob Haney, Gil Kane, Carmine Infantino, Ramona Fradon & Charles Paris, Murphy Anderson, Joe Giella, Frank Giacoia, Sid Greene & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-79950-326-2 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Pure & Superhero Sensationalism… 9/10

After a hugely successful revival and reworking of Golden Age all-star The Flash, DC (National Periodical Publications as they were then) built on a resurgent superhero trend. Cover dated October 1959 and on sale from July 28th, Showcase #22 hit newsstands at the same time as the fourth issue of the new Flash comic book (#108) and once again the guiding lights were Editor Julie Schwartz and writer John Broome. Assigned as illustrator was action ace Gil Kane.

Brash, cocky test pilot Hal Jordan was in California when an alien cop crashed on Earth. Mortally wounded, Abin Sur commanded his ring – a device which could materialise thoughts – to find a replacement officer: one both honest and without fear. Scanning the planet, the wonder weapon selected Jordan, whisking him to the crash-site. The dying alien bequeathed his ring, lantern-shaped Battery of Power and his profession (patrolman of Sector 2814) to the astonished Earthman.

In 6 pages the story established characters, scenario and narrative thrust of a series that would become the spine of all DC continuity. With the concept of the superhero being re-established among the buying public, there was no shortage of gaudily clad competition. Better books thrived by having something a little “extra”. With Green Lantern that was primarily the superb scripts of John Broome & Gardner Fox and astounding ever-evolving drawing of Gil Kane (ably abetted by a string of top inkers) whose dynamic anatomy and dramatic action scenes were maturing with every page he drew. Happily, the concept itself was also a provider of boundless opportunity.

Other heroes had extraterrestrial, other-dimensional and even trans-temporal adventures, but the valiant champion of this series was also a cop: a lawman working for the biggest police force in the entire universe.

This fabulous compilation gathers Green Lantern #40-61 (October 1965 -June 1968) plus contemporary guest appearances in The Flash #168, Detective Comics #350 and The Brave and the Bold #69. It all gets started without fanfare and opens with GL #40 which went on sale on August 26th 1965.

Conceived and delivered by Broome, Kane & Sid Greene (with conceptual input as always from editor Schwartz, ‘The Secret Origin of the Guardians!’ was a landmark second only to game-changing ‘Flash of Two Worlds’ (see DC Finest: The Flash – The Human Thunderbolt) as the Emerald Gladiator with his Earth-2 counterpart Alan Scott have to stop obsessed Oan scientist Krona, whose misguided attempts to discover the origins of the universe had introduced evil into our pristine reality billions of years ago. His actions forced his immortal brethren to become protectors of life and civilisation in an unending act of group contrition – the Guardians of the Universe.

Now he was back and still asking the wrong question, with his efforts also endangering a parallel earth. Happily for creation, that world had its own vastly experienced Emerald Avenger, who pitched in, and was so good at crisis management that the Guardians offered him Hal’s job…

Simultaneously high concept and all-action, the tale became a keystone of DC cosmology and a springboard for all those mega-apocalyptic publishing events such as Crisis on Infinite Earths. It has seldom been equalled and never bettered…

Gardner Fox scribed GL #41, spotlighting twisted romance in ‘The Double Life of Star Sapphire!’ as an alien power-gem again compels Jordan’s boss/true love Carol Ferris to subjugate and marry her sometime paramour Green Lantern. Fox also wrote another cracking magical mystery to end the issue as extraterrestrial wizard Myrwhydden triggered ‘The Challenge of the Coin Creatures!’

Next came ‘The Other Side of the World!’ wherein Fox continued a long-running experiment in continuity with a superb tale of time-lost civilisations and an extra-dimensional invasion by the Warlock of Ys co-starring peripatetic quester Zatanna the Magician as perfectly pictured by Kane & Greene.

At that time the top-hatted, fish-netted sorceress appeared in a number of Schwartz-edited titles, hunting her long-missing father Zatarra: a magician-hero in the Mandrake mould who had fought evil in the pages of Action Comics for over a decade, beginning with the very first issue. In true Silver Age “refit” style, Fox concocted a young, equally empowered daughter, promoting and popularising her in guest-team ups with superheroes he was currently scripting. If you’re counting, these tales appeared in Hawkman #4, Atom #19, Green Lantern #42 and an Elongated Man back-up strip in Detective Comics #355 as well as a slick piece of back writing to include the high-profile Caped Crusader via Detective #336. It all concluded after this GL segment in Justice League of America #51. You can enjoy the entire early epic by tracking down Justice League of America: Zatanna’s Search…

The Flash shared the spotlight in #43: a high-energy tussle with a debuting tectonically terrifying new supervillain for Fox’s ‘Catastrophic Crimes of Major Disaster!’ and the next issue provide two tales – an increasing rarity as book-length epics became the action-packed norm.

Second-class postage discounts had for years dictated the format of comic books: to qualify for cheaper rates periodicals had to contain more than one feature, but when the rules were revised single, complete tales not divided into “chapters” soon proliferated. Here though are two reasons to bemoan the switch; Fox’s ‘Evil Star’s Death-Duel Summons’ and Broome’s “Jordan Brothers” adventure ‘Saga of the Millionaire Schemer!’, offering high-intensity alien supervillain action and a heady, witty comedy-of-errors mystery as Hal visits his family and is embroiled in new sister-in-law Sue’s hare-brained scheme to prove that her husband Jim Jordan is actually Green Lantern!

Crossovers were becoming increasingly common as shared continuity expanded and heroes popped up out of their regular jurisdiction. One brilliantly executed example follows…

Back in 1963 Schwartz had assumed editorial control of Batman & Detective Comics, allowing him space 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 gave certain rare people increased muscular flexibility. Intrigued, Dibny isolated and refined the chemical and developed a serum granting him the ability to stretch, bend and compress his body to an incredible degree. From Detective #350 (April 1966) comes ‘Green Lantern’s Blackout!’ wherein Hal’s best friend Thomas Kalmaku seeks out the Stretchable Sleuth to solve the riddle of the hero’s abrupt disappearance – an entrancing, action-packed team-up with a future Justice League colleague by Fox & Carmine Infantino.

Scripted by Broome, Earth-2’s ring wielder returns for another power-packed pairing in Green Lantern #45’s fantasy & fisticuffs romance romp ‘Prince Peril’s Power Play’. The author raised the dramatic stakes with the hero’s first continued adventure in the following issue. GL #46 opens with Fox’s delightfully grounded crime-thriller ‘The Jailing of Hal Jordan’, before – preceded by a spectacular Kane pin-up – ‘The End of a Gladiator!’ details the murder of Sector 2814’s GL by old foe Dr. Polaris, concluding with his honour-laden funeral on Oa, home of the Guardians!

Broome was on fire at this time: the following issue and concluding chapter sees the hero’s corpse snatched to the 58th century and revived in time to save his occasional future home from a biological infection of pure evil in the spectacular triumph ‘Green Lantern Lives Again!’ Bizarrely garbed goodies and baddies were common currency at this time of incipient TV-generated Batmania, so when gold-plated mad scientist Keith Kenyon returned it was as a dyed-in-the-wool costumed crazy for Fox’s ‘Goldface’s Grudge Fight Against Green Lantern!’: a brutal clash of opposites. Sadly, Broome’s showbiz scoundrel Dazzler didn’t quite set the world afire in #49’s ‘The Spectacular Robberies of TV’s Master Villain!’ but the yarn was still a shocker, as Hal Jordan quit his job as a Coast City test pilot and went on the first of his vagabond quests across America…

Green Lantern had been the first hero to co-headline with Batman in The Brave and the Bold #59 (April/May 1965): a tale which became the blueprint of the title’s next 20 years as two colleagues joined forces for a specific case. There devious criminal scientist John Starr tricked Bruce Wayne into clearing his name and stole the Emerald Crusader’s power to fuel a chronal assault on Gotham as the Time Commander. Here and now, Win Mortimer joins scripter Bob Haney as Gotham Gangbuster and Green Knight endure a fractious reunion in B&B #69’s ‘War of the Cosmic Avenger’ (December 1966-January 1967) as John Starr repeats his tactic to unleash star-powered golem Cosmo upon the world, utterly unaware that the monster might have its own sinister agenda. Luckily, our heroes are smarter than the brilliant but bad time bandit…

With Green Lantern #50 Kane began inking his own art (probably in preparation for his forthcoming independent publications Savage and Blackmark), lending the proceedings a raw, savage appeal. The fight content in the stories was also ramped up, as seen in Broome’s murder-mystery treasure hunt ‘The Quest for the Wicked Queen of Hearts!’, complimented by an extragalactic smack-fest in Fox’s ‘Thraxton the Powerful vs Green Lantern the Powerless’, prior to Broome bringing the Emerald Crusader back to the 58th century to battle ‘Green Lantern’s Evil Alter Ego!’ in #52. Meanwhile, across the editorial aisle in The Flash #168 (cover-dated March 1967 but on sale from January 19th) Broome delivered a full-length thriller for Infantino & Sid Greene in which the Guardians of the Universe seek out the Scarlet Speedster after finding ‘One of our Green Lanterns is Missing!’ Bafflingly, as the Vizier of Velocity hunts for his missing best buddy, he is constantly distracted and diverted by a gang of third-rate thugs who have somehow acquired futuristic super weapons…

Back in GL #52, Broome & Kane have Alan Scott and comedy sidekick Doiby Dickles pop over from Earth-2 to aid against returning arch nemesis Sinestro in frankly peculiar ‘Our Mastermind, the Car!’, before finding far less outré plot or memorable foe for #53’s ‘Captive of the Evil Eye!’ wherein an alien giant stealing Earth’s atmosphere is ferociously foiled. The same issue sees Infantino & Greene step up to illustrate Broome’s thrillingly comedic Jordan Brothers back-up ‘Two Green Lanterns in the Family!’ as Hal finds employment as an investigator for the Evergreen Insurance company…

Broome & Kane reunite for positively surreal, super-scientific saga ‘Menace in the Iron Lung!’ (GL #54), with a manic shut-in orchestrating a deadly remote war against the Viridian Avenger followed by an all-out attack on the Guardians and their operatives in ‘Cosmic Enemy Number One’. The trans-galactic assassinations conclude in ‘The Green Lanterns’ Fight for Survival!’ and the appointment of a second Earthling to the now depleted Corps.

For #57, Fox scripts a sparkling Fights ‘n’ Tights duel in ‘The Catastrophic Weapons of Major Disaster!’ with the walking extinction event simultaneously tapping into and depowering the power ring before #58’s gripping psycho-thriller ‘Peril of the Powerless Green Lantern’ sees our hero seemingly suffering from debilitating combat fatigue. Sid Greene returned to inking with this yarn, staying on to embellish another continuity landmark.

In Green Lantern (volume 2 #59, March 1968) Broome introduced ‘Earth’s Other Green Lantern!’ in a rip-roaring cosmic epic of what-might-have-been. When dying Abin Sur originally ordered his ring to select a worthy successor Hal Jordan wasn’t the only candidate, but simply the closest of two. Here thanks to Guardian technology Hal sees what would have occurred if the ring had chosen his alternative Guy Gardner instead¦?

Action lovers and fans of fantasy fiction couldn’t find a better example of everything that defines superhero comics, but by the time of these later stories began DC was a company in transition – as indeed was America itself – with new ideas (for which, in comic-book terms, read “new, young writers”) granted greater headway than ever before: in turn generating an influx of new kids unseen since the very start of the industry, when excitable young artists and writers ran wild with imagination. Green Lantern #60 (April 1968), however, was an all-veteran outing as Fox, Kane & Greene introduced a fantastic new foe in ‘Spotlight on the Lamplighter!’, a power-packed, crime-busting morality play inadvertently foreshadowing a spectacular Green team-up classic in the next issue.

We end as we began for the last tale in this collection, wherein Mike Friedrich pens ‘Thoroughly Modern Mayhem!’ Mercifully the story is as wonderful as the title is not, since it cut to the quick of a problem many a kid had posited. If the power ring was so powerful why not just command it to end all evil? When the old and world-weary Emerald Crusader of Earth-2 does just that, it takes both him and his Earth-1 counterpart to remedy the shocking consequences to all of humanity…

Augmented with covers by Kane, Murphy Anderson, Jack Adler, Infantino, Greene & Joe Giella, these costumed drama romps are in themselves a great read for most ages, but when also considered as the building blocks of all DC continuity they become vital fare for any fan keen to make sense of the modern superhero experience. This blockbusting book showcases the imaginative and creative peak of Broome, Fox & Kane: a plot driven plethora of action sagas and masterful thrillers that literally reshaped the DC Universe. If you love superheroes you will never read better…
© 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 2025 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1908 key comics personage, DC editor, writer and media intermediary Whitney Ellsworth was born, and in 1970 so was Mexican maestro Humberto Ramos who has excelled on everything from Amazing Spider-Man to Young Justice.

You’ve probably never heard of her, but Dorothy Woolfolk shattered a bunch of glass ceilings and was DC’s first woman editor. We lost her today in 2000, but her legacy lives on.

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DC Finest Horror – The Devil’s Doorway


By Alex Toth, Gil Kane, Mike Friedrich, Gerry Conway, Sergio Aragonés, Dave Wood, Joe Orlando, Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, Steve Skeates, John Costanza, Otto Binder, D.J. Arneson, John Albano, Julius Schwartz, E. Nelson Bridwell, Joe Gill, Robert Kanigher, Jack Oleck, Cliff Rhodes, Bob Haney, George Kashdan, Jack Miller, Carl Wessler, Dennis O’Neil, Alan Riefe, Dave Kaler, Jack Phillips, Murray Boltinoff, Curt Swan, Jerry Grandenetti, Bill Draut, Werner Roth, Jack Sparling, Morris Waldinger, Tom Nicolosi, Bernard Baily, Jack Abel, George Roussos, Eddie Robbins, Wayne Howard, Stanley Pitt, Bruno Premiani, Dick Giordano, Dick Dillin, Murphy Anderson, Pat Boyette, Neal Adams, Nick Cardy, Mike Sekowsky, Sid Greene, Mike Roy, Mike Peppe, Don Heck, Wally Wood, Ralph Reese, George Tuska, Gray Morrow, John Celardo, Art Saaf, José Delbo, Vince Colletta, Frank Giacoia, Al Williamson & many & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-79950-280-7 (TPB)

Sadly this masterful mystery megamix is not yet available digitally, but we live in hope…

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Splendid Slice of Spectral Shock & Awe… 9/10

It’s the time for sweet indulgence, shocking over-eating and spooky stories, so let’s pay a visit to a much-neglected old favourite in a fresh new costume…

US comic books started slowly until the coming of superheroes unleashed a torrent of creative imitation and sparked a new genre. Implacably vested in World War II, the Overman swept all before him (and very occasionally her or it) until the troops came home and the more traditional genres resurfaced and eventually supplanted the Fights ‘n’ Tights crowd. Although new kids kept on buying, much of the previous generation of consumers also retained their four-colour habit but increasingly sought older themes in the reading matter. The war years altered global psychological landscapes and as a more world-weary, cynical young public came to see that all the fighting and dying hadn’t really changed anything, their chosen forms of entertainment (film and prose as well as comics) reflected this.

As well as Westerns, War and Crime comics, celebrity tie-ins, madcap escapist comedy and anthropomorphic funny animal features were immediately resurgent, but gradually another of the cyclical revivals of spiritualism and public fascination with all things occult, eldritch and arcane led to them being outshone and outsold by a wave of increasingly impressive, evocative and shocking horror comics.

There had been grisly, gory and supernatural stars before, including a pantheon of ghosts, monsters and wizards draped in mystery-man garb and trappings (The Spectre, Mr. Justice, Sgt. Spook, Frankenstein, The Heap, Sargon the Sorcerer, Zatara, Monako, Zambini the Miracle Man, Kardak the Mystic, Dr. Fate and dozens more), but these had been victims of circumstance: The Unknown as a “narrativium” power source for super-heroics.

Now the focus shifted to ordinary mortals thrown into a world beyond their ken with the intention of unsettling, not vicariously empowering, the reader. Almost every publisher jumped on the increasingly popular bandwagon, with B & I (which became magical one-man-band Richard E. Hughes’ American Comics Group) launching the first regularly published horror comic in the Autumn of 1948. Technically, though, Adventures Into the Unknown was actually pipped by Avon who had released an impressive single issue entitled Eerie in January 1947 before finally committing to a regular series in 1951. By this time, and following the filmic horror heyday of Universal Pictures’ fright films franchises, worthy comic book monolith Classics Illustrated had already long milked the literary end of the medium with adaptations of The Headless Horseman, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (both 1943), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1944) and Frankenstein (1945) among others.

If we’re keeping score, this was also the period in which Joe Simon & Jack Kirby identified another “mature market” gap by inventing the Romance comic (Young Romance #1, cover-dated September 1947) but they too saw sales potential in macabre mood material, resulting in seminal anthologies Black Magic (launched in 1950) and boldly obscure psychological drama vehicle Strange World of Your Dreams (1952). Around that time the staid cautious company that would become DC Comics bowed to the commercial inevitable and launched a comparatively straightlaced anthology that became one of their longest-running and most influential titles with the December 1951/January 1952 opening of The House of Mystery.

When the hysterical censorship scandal which led to witch-hunting hearings was at its height, the mobs with pitchforks furore was adroitly curtailed by the industry adopting a castrating straitjacket of self-regulatory rules. Horror titles produced under the aegis of the Comics Code Authority were sanitised, anodyne affairs in terms of Shock ‘n’ Gore.

However, since appetite for suspenseful short stories remained high, in 1956 National DC introduced sister title House of Secrets (a November/December cover-date). Plots were dialled back into superbly illustrated, rationalistic, fantasy-adventure vehicles which would dominate the market until the 1960s when superheroes (which began sneaking back in 1956 after Julius Schwartz reintroduced The Flash in Showcase #4), finally overtook them.

Green Lantern, Hawkman, The Atom and a slew of other costumed cavorters generated a gaudy global bubble of masked mavens which even forced the dedicated anthology suspense titles to transform into super-character split-books, with Martian Manhunter and Dial H for Hero monopolising House of Mystery whilst Mark Merlin – later Prince Ra-Man – sharing space with Eclipso in House of Secrets. When caped crusader craziness peaked and popped, HoS was one of the first casualties, folding with #80, the September/October 1966 issue.

However, nothing combats censorship better than falling profits and by the end of the 1960s the Silver Age superhero boom was over, with many titles gone and some of the industry’s most prestigious series circling the drain. This real-world Crisis prompted surviving publishers to loosen self-imposed restraints against crime and horror comics. Nobody much cared about gangster titles at that juncture, but liberalisation coincided with another bump in public interest for all things Worlds Beyond-ey, so resurrection of scary stories was a foregone conclusion and obvious no-brainer…

Even ultra-wholesome Archie Comics re-entered the field with a rather tasty line of Red Circle Chillers: a minor substrate they regularly return to with style and potency to this day.

Thus, with absolutely no fanfare at all House of Mystery #174 (cover dated May/June 1968), confirmed the downturn in superhero stories eveywhere as it hit newstands everywhere presenting a bold banner asking Do You Dare Enter The House of Mystery? Inside it reprinted admittedly excellent short fantastic thrillers originally seen in House of Secrets from those heady days when it was okay to scare kids…

It was a slow but unstoppable hit which just kept spreading…

This DC Finest collection gathers a year’s worth of scary stuff snapshotted from House of Secrets #81-85; House of Mystery #180-185; The Witching Hour #3-7; The Unexpected #113-117 and includes a short back-up yarn from Phantom Stranger volume 2 #5, which cumulatively filled dank evenings from May 1969-April 1970. It all starts – with absolutely no fanfare at all – in HoM #180…

Going from strength to strength, the fear flagship was increasingly drawing on DC’s major artistic resources. Astounding opener ‘Comes a Warrior’ is a chilling faux Sword & Sorcery classic written and drawn by da Vinci of Dynamism Gil Kane, and inked by incomparable Wally Wood, before they illustrate Mike Friedrich’s fourth-wall-demolishing ‘His Name is Cain Kane!’

A Sergio Aragonés gag page in the long-running ‘Cain’s Game Room’ roaming sequence then cleanses palates for Cliff Rhodes & Joe Orlando’s text-terror ‘Oscar Horns In!’ before Marv Wolfman & Bernie Wrightson proffer prophetic vignette ‘Scared to Life’. A double-page ‘Cain’s Game Room’ precedes an uncredited forensic history lesson drawn by Morris Waldinger and recycled as‘Cain’s True Case Files’ to close proceedings for that title. Meanwhile over in long-running, recently remodelled fantasy anthology The Unexpected, the former sci fi vehicle was retooling as a gritty, weird thriller venue with George Kashdan, Jack Sparling & Vince Colletta detailing ‘The Shriek of Vengeance’. Here, Golden Age troubleshooter Johnny Peril is accused of heinous crimes and then abducted by maniac justice dispenser The Executioner. His gladiatorial tests are no problem for an ordinary guy who’d been facing the incomprehensible unknown since Comics Cavalcade #19 (February 1947) and soon the true motive is exposed and the scheme crushed…

Dave Wood & recent Charlton Comics émigré Pat Boyette then glare into ‘The Eyes of Death’, revealing the fate of an actual criminal who gains the power to see iminent fatalities before Wood, Curt Swan & Mike Esposito ride ‘The Tunnel of Love Fear!’ to introduce potential host narrator Judge Gallows, discussing one of his stranger cases…

With Tales of the Unexpected #105 and House of Mystery #174, National/DC had gambled heavily that anthology horror material was back and wouldn’t call the wrath of the gods – and parents – down upon them. Now that they had a boutique mystery stable, they put lots of thought and effort into creating an all-new title to further exploit our morbid fascination with all thingies fearsome and spooky. They would also resurrect House of Secrets (cancelled in late 1969. Apparently in those heady days it was okay – and profitable – to scare the heck out of little kids if you also made them laugh.

Edited until #14 by Dick Giordano, The Witching Hour first struck with a February/March 1969 cover-date (actually on-sale from December 19th 1968). From the outset it was an extremely experimental and intriguing beast. Here however we begin with #3 (cover-dated July 1969). In this graphic grimoire, cool & creepy horror-hosts traditionally introducing the entertainments are replaced by three witches. Based as much on a common American misapprehension of Macbeth as the ancient concept of Maiden, Mother & Crone, this torrid trio constantly strove to outdo (and outgross) each other in telling of terror tales.

Crucially, Cynthia, Mildred & Mordred – as well as shy monster man-servant minion Egor – were designed by and initially delineated by master illustrator Alex Toth, making framing sequences between yarns as good as and frequently more enthralling than the stories they brazenly bracketed. Following intro ‘You Be Our Judge’ from Toth & Giordano, the graphic genius & Colletta illustrate Don Arneson’s medieval mood masterpiece ‘The Turn of the Wheel!’ before Alan Riefe & Sparling tell a decidedly different ghost-story in ‘The Death Watch’. Steve Skeates & Bernie Wrightson then debut a decidedly alterative fantasy hero in ‘…And in a Far-Off Land!’, followed by the first in a series of short prose vignettes: anonymous fright-comedy ‘Potion of Love’ and Mike Sekowsky & Giordano deliver the sisters’ farewell epilogue…

Back at House of Mystery #181, scripted by Otto Binder and drawn by quirkily capable Sparling, ‘Sir Greeley’s Revenge!’ offers a heart-warmingly genteel spook story, albeit jump-cut interrupted by new comedy featire Page 13 (from Aragonés) after which Wrightson’s first long tale is fantastical reincarnation saga ‘The Siren of Satan’ (scripted by Bob Kanigher) before we get to the next big thing – and an actual resurrection…

House of Secrets returned with #81 (August/September 1969) just as big sister HoM had done a year previously. Under a bold banner declaiming “There’s No Escape From… The House of Secrets”, Mike Friedrich, Jerry Grandenetti & George Roussos introduced a ramshackle, sentient old pile in ‘Don’t Move It!’, after which Bill Draut limned the introduction of bumbling caretaker Abel (with a guest-shot by his murderous older brother Cain) in eponymous intro set-up fable ‘House of Secrets’. A prose yarn by Gerry Conway ‘Burn this House!’ gave the portly porter a pause before he kicked off his storytelling career with Conway & Sparling’s‘Aaron Philip’s Photo Finish!’ before the inaugural issue is put to bed with a Draut limned ‘Epilogue’…

The Unexpected #114 led with Kashdan, Ed Robbins & Colletta’s ‘Johnny Peril – My Self… My Enemy!’ as a modern day alchemist unleashes a lifeforce-stealing golem on the doughty P.I., after Dave Wood & Art Saaf premier a new host regaling readers with ‘Tales of the Mad, Mod Witch’ and opening with a warning about magic fountains and poorly aimed coins in ‘The Well of Second Chances’. Thematically on safe ground, we switch to Witching Hour #4 as Toth renders a ‘Witching Hour Welcome Wagon’ after which Conway scripts spectral saga ‘A Matter of Conscience’ for Sparling & George Roussos. Anonymous prose piece ‘If You Have Ghosts?’ then segues into smashing yarn ‘Disaster in a Jar’ (Riefe & Boyette) before Conway turns in period witchfinder thriller ‘A Fistful of Fire’ for José Delbo – a vastly underrated artist who was on the best form of his career at this time.

Toth’s Weird Sisters close out that issue as we move on to HoM #182 which opens with one of the most impressive tales of the entire decade. Jack Oleck’s take on the old cursed mirror plot is elevated to high art with his script for ‘The Devil’s Doorway’ illustrated by incredible Alex Toth. Marv Wolfman & Wayne Howard follow with ‘Cain’s True Case Files: Grave Results!’, and an expose of the Barbadian sugar trade, after which an Aragonés Game Room break leads to nightmarish Gothic revenge tale ‘The Hound of Night!’ from Kanigher & Grandenetti. HoS #82 was a largely Conway scripted affair with Draut drawing both ‘Welcome to the House of Secrets’ and ‘Epilogue’, whilst cinema shocker ‘Realer Than Real’ was illustrated by Werner Roth & Vince Colletta. Prose poser ‘His Last Resting Place!’ leads to Wolfman & Giordano’s short sci fi saga ‘Sudden Madness’ prior to Conway & Sparling regaling us with salutary tale of murder and revenge ‘The Little Old Winemaker’. Finally, as realised by Dick Dillin & Neal Adams ‘The One and Only, Fully-Guaranteed, Super-Permanent, 100%’ presents a darkly comedic eerily unsettling tale of domestic bliss and how to get it…

Carl Wessler & Ed Robbins open Unexpected #115 with Blitz- survivor Maude Waltham unwisely accessing the ‘Diary of a Madman’ and being drawn into a world she could not comprehend or cope with, after which Dave Wood, Swan & Jack Abel reveal how an opportunistic showman appropriates an old abndined house and discovers ‘Abrakadabra – You’re Dead!’ A classic plot gets a sixties makeover as ‘The Day Nobody Died!’ (by Wood as D.W. Holz, Werner Roth & Frank Giacoia) details the repercussions of a wise man unwisely caging the angel of death…

In Witching Hour #5 the sisters are at their most outrageously, eerily hilarious introducing an anonymous yarn lavishly embellished by Wrightson – a nifty nautical nightmare of loneliness and ‘The Sole Survivor!’, before text-teaser ‘The Non-Believer! and Boyette’s stunning, clownish creep-feature ‘A Guy Can Die Laughing!’ set the scene for Steve Skeates, Stanley Pitt & Giordano’s dating dilemma ‘The Computer Game’ I think this was one of the first to explore that now-hoary plot, and it neatly anticipates Toth’s sign off for the witches and added single-page black-comedy bonus ‘My! How You’ve Grown!’ from Sid Greene…

For #183, Joe Orlando offers Cain introductory chuckle ‘Welcome to the House of Mystery’ before, in collaboration with Oleck, Grandenetti reveals the misery of ‘The Haunting!’ Following more mirth in Cain’s Game Room (by John Albano) and vintage Bernard Baily ‘Odds and Ends from Cain’s Cellar’, ‘Curse of the Blankenship’s’ and ‘Superstitions About Spiders’, Wolfman & Wrightson contribute ‘Cain’s True Case Files: The Dead Can Kill!’ A bonanza of Aragonés comprising a comedic horroscope on Page 13 and two pages of Cain’s Game Room precedes a canny teaming of Kanigher with Grandenetti & Wally Wood that results in the truly bizarre ‘Secret of the Whale’s Vengeance’…

After Draut & Giordano’s ‘Welcome to the House of Secrets’ piece, superstar Toth made his modern HoS debut with Wolfman-written fantasy ‘The Stuff That Dreams are Made Of’, before Mikes Royer & Peppe visualise sinister love-story ‘Bigger Than a Breadbox’, bookended by anonymous text teaser ‘Once Upon a Time in Mystery Book…’ Wrapping up, Conway & Draut revive gothic menace for chilling fable ‘The House of Endless Years’.

Modernity is briefly embraced in Unexpected #116 as thanks to Dave Wood & Art Saaf, The Mad Mod Witch escorts a group of strangers on an ‘Express Train to Nowhere!’ after which author unknown & Boyette describe a doomed Dutch peddlar’s brush with legend and ‘Steps to Disaster’, before Murphy Anderson picks out apparel ‘Mad to Order’ as Wrightson details the problems wrapped up in a ‘Ball of String!’ ‘Ashes to Ashes, Dustin to Dust?’ then closes the issue with a spectral tale of love & death from Murray “Al Case” Boltinoff & Sid Greene…

Sekowsky & Giordano limn Dave Kaler’s take on the sinister sisters’ intro for Witching Hour #6, after which far darker horror debuts as ‘A Face in the Crowd!’ (Conway, Mike Roy & Mike Peppe), wherein a Nazi war-criminal and concentration camp survivor meet in an American street. Wolfman & Delbo depict a tale of neighbourly intolerance in ‘The Doll Man!’ and ‘Treasure Hunt’ (Skeates, John Celardo & Giordano) shows why greed isn’t always good. Also included were Conway’s prose tale ‘Train to Doom’, ‘Mad Menace’ – a ½-page gag strip by John Costanza – and ‘Distortion!’: another Greene-limned one-pager.

HoM #184 features the triumphant return of Oleck & Toth for captivating Egyptian tomb raider epic ‘Turner’s Treasure’ before cartoon pauses for Page 13 (a diploma fron Aragonés & Orlando) and Orlando gag ‘The Fly’ deftly segues into epic barbarian blockbuster ‘The Eyes of the Basilisk!’ by Bridwell, Gil Kane & Wally Wood…

Closing with more Albano Cain’s Game Room giggles, next comes info short ‘The Devil’s Footprints!’ by Kanigher, Swan & Nick Cardy from The Phantom Stranger #5 (cover-dated January/February 1970) before in House of Secrets #84, Conway & Draut maintain the light-hearted bracketing of stories prior to properly beginning with ‘If I Had but World Enough and Time’ (Wein, Dillin & Peppe): a cautionary tale about too much TV. Tensions grow with Wolfman & Greene’s warning against wagering in ‘Double or Nothing!’ and Skeates, Sparling & Abel’s utterly manic parable of greed ‘The Unbelievable! The Unexplained!’, before Wein & Sparling mess with our dreams in ‘If I Should Die before I Wake…’

Johnny Peril leads in Unexpected #117, as Kashdan & Greene reveal how he becomes the patsy for a clan seeking to avoid a hereditary curse in ‘Midnight Summons the Executioner!’, after which Case, Grandenetti & Draut see a woman trick fate by accepting ‘Hands of Death’ whilst Wessler & Tuska detail the downfall of a money-mad beast in ‘The House that Hate Built!’ Wessler & Bruno Premiani then detail the uncanny ‘Death of the Man Who Never Lived!’ in a spy yarn unlike any other…

In Witching Hour #7, Toth & Mike Friedrich show spectacular form for the intro and bridging sequences, whilst Draut is compulsively effective in prison manhunt saga ‘The Big Break!’, with scripter Skeates also writing modern-art murder-mystery ‘The Captive!’ for Roussos. Friedrich & Abel advise a most individual baby to ‘Look Homeward, Angelo!’, whilst text piece ‘Who Believes Ouija?’ and Jack Miller & Michael Wm. Kaluta’s Gothically delicious ‘Trick or Treat’ round out the sinister sights in this issue. Then, House of Mystery #185 sees Cain take a more active role in all-Grandenetti yarn ‘Boom!’, with Albano, Aragones & Orlando Page13 and Cain’s Game Room, prior to Wayne Howard illustrating the sinister ‘Voice from the Dead!’ Following more Orlando Game-iness prolific Charlton scribe Joe Gill debuts with ‘The Beautiful Beast’: a lost world romance perfectly pictured by EC alumnus Al Williamson.

This monolitic montage of macabre mirth and scary sagas ceases with House of Secrets #85. Here, Cain & Abel acrimoniously open, after which Wein & Don Heck disclose what can happen to ‘People Who Live in Glass Houses…’ whilst graphic legend Ralph Reese limns Wein’s daftly ironic ‘Reggie Rabbit, Heathcliffe Hog, Archibald Aardvark, J. Benson Baboon and Bertram the Dancing Frog’, ere John Costanza contributes comedy page ‘House of Wacks’ and Conway, Kane & Adams herald the upcoming age of slickly seductive barbarian fantasy with gloriously vivid and vital ‘Second Chance’.

With iconic covers from Neal Adams, Jack Adler, Toth, Sekowsky, Cardy and Gray Morrow this (hopefully first of many) moody mystery compilations is a perfect accompaniment to dark nights in, and one you can depend on to astound and amaze in equal amounts.
© 2025 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Today – or maybe even tonight – in 1939 underground cartoonist Frank Stack was born. His blasphemous antics have made us laugh for decades. Why not check out The New Adventures of Jesus: The Second Coming.

In 2011 today UK icon Mick Anglo died. He’s all over this blog if you want to see something very special but I’d advise scoping out one of his unique Annual creations, such as Batman Story Book Annual 1967 (with Robin the Boy Wonder).