Category: Graphic Novels

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Ghost Rider Marvel Masterworks volume 3


By Jim Shooter, Roger McKenzie, Gerry Conway, Don Glut, Don Perlin. Jim Starlin, Don Heck, Gil Kane, Tom Sutton & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-2214-6 (HB/Digital edition)

At the end of the 1960s American comic books were in turmoil, much like the youth of the nation. Superheroes had dominated for much of the previous decade; peaking globally before explosively falling to ennui and overkill. Established genres such as horror, war, westerns and science fiction returned, fed by contemporary events and radical trends in movie-making where another, new(ish) wrinkle had also emerged: disenchanted, rebellious, unchained Youth on Motorbikes seeking a different way forward.

Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Jack Kirby’s Jimmy Olsen, Captain America and many others all took the Easy Rider option to boost flagging sales (and if you’re interested, the best of the crop was Mike Sekowsky’s tragically unfinished mini-masterpiece of cool Jason’s Quest in Showcase). Over at Marvel – a company still reeling from Kirby’s defection to DC/National in 1970 – canny Roy Thomas green-lighted a new character who combined the freewheeling, adolescent-friendly biker-theme with the all-pervasive supernatural furore gripping the entertainment fields.

Back in 1967, Marvel published a western masked hero named Ghost Rider: a shameless, whole-hearted appropriation of the cowboy hero creation of Vince Sullivan, Ray Krank & Dick Ayers (for Magazine Enterprises from 1949 to 1955), who utilised magician’s tricks to fight bandits by pretending to be an avenging phantom of justice.

Scant years later, with the Comics Code prohibition against horror hastily rewritten – amazing how plunging sales can affect ethics – scary comics came back in a big way. A new crop of supernatural superheroes and monsters began to appear 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, softening the Code ban resulted in such an avalanche of horror titles (new material and reprints from the first boom in the 1950s), in response to the industry-wide down-turn in superhero sales, that it probably caused a few more venerable costumed crusaders to – albeit temporarily – bite the dust.

Almost overnight, nasty monsters became acceptable fare for four-colour pages and whilst a parade of pre-code reprints made sound business sense, the creative aspects of the fascination in supernatural themes was catered to by adapting popular cultural icons before risking whole new concepts on an untested public.

As always in entertainment, the watchword was fashion: what was hitting big outside comics was incorporated into the mix as soon as possible. When proto-monster 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 – beginning with a werewolf and a vampire – before broadening the scope with a haunted biker to tap into both Easy Rider’s freewheeling motorcycling chic and the prevailing supernatural zeitgeist.

Preceded by western hero Red Wolf in #1 and the aforementioned Werewolf by Night in #2-4, the all-new Ghost Rider debuted in Marvel Spotlight #5 (August 1972) and this sturdy hardback and equivalent digital compendium collects a third heaping helping of his flame-filled early exploits: specifically Ghost Rider #21-35, plus added attraction Marvel Premiere #28, spanning December 1976 to April 1979, and is preceded by an informative Introduction from Ralph Macchio.

What Has Gone Before: Carnival trick cyclist Johnny Blaze sells his soul to the devil in an attempt to save his foster-father Crash Simpson from cancer. As is the way of such things, Satan follows the letter but not spirit of the contract and Simpson dies anyway. When the Dark Lord later comes for his prize, Blaze’s beloved virginal girlfriend Roxanne Simpson intervenes. Her purity prevents the Devil from claiming his due and, temporarily thwarted, Satan spitefully afflicts Johnny with a body that burns with the fires of Hell every time the sun goes down…

After dancing with the Devil and assorted demons for months, and even dabbling with team superheroics on the Champions, Johnny has moved to Hollywood and works as stuntman on the Stuntman TV show: a hazardous gig that has brought him into a romantic dalliance with starlet Karen Page, a team-up with Daredevil and many clashes with supervillains.

As the action opens in GR #21’s ‘Deathplay!’, Gerry Conway, Kil Kane & Sam Grainger build on the trend as manic hireling The Gladiator attacks the Delazny Studio seeking a deadly weapon left by a sinister hidden foe.

After spectacularly repelling the armoured assassin, Blaze does a little digging into the studio and its staff only to clash with another veteran villain – The Eel, abruptly reinforced by Gladiator seeking a rematch. Thrashing them both only gets him in more trouble with the cops and – on the run again – he finally faces the criminal mastermind who has orchestrated many months of woe and learns ‘Nobody Beats the Enforcer!’ (Conway, Don Glut, Don Heck & Keith Pollard). The ganglord has his fingers dug deep into the studio and seeks ultimate power in LA, but somehow Blaze is always in his way, such as here, foiling the costumed killer’s attempt to steal a deadly ray concealed in a ring.

Attempts to further integrate Ghost Rider with mainstream Marvel continuity intensify with the arrival of new scripter – and actual motorbike afficionado – Jim Shooter. With Dons Heck and Newton illustrating, ‘Wrath of the Water Wizard!’ sees the embattled biker battling a hydrokinetic hoodlum at the Enforcer’s behest, only to be betrayed and beaten in anticipation of a blockbusting clash in Shooter, Heck & Dan Green’s ‘I, The Enforcer…!’

Cover-dated August 1977, Ghost Rider #25 presaged a return to wandering ways as Shooter, Heck & Tony DeZuñiga’s ‘Menace is a Man Called Malice!’ finds the infernal antihero implicated in an arson attack on a wax museum before battling a high tech madman. Blaze’s diabolical overreaction in victory signalled dark days ahead…

Don Perlin began his long association with the Spirit Cyclist in #26 as ‘A Doom Named Dr. Druid!’ (words by Shooter & inks by Grainger) as recently-revived and revised proto Marvel superhero Anthony Druid (who as Dr. Droom actually predates Fantastic Four #1) hunts a satanic horror and attacks the Ghost Rider. Only after beating the burning biker does the parapsychologist learn the dreadful mistake he’s made, but by then Blaze’s secret is exposed, his Hollywood life ruined and the end of an era looms…

Back on the road again Johnny encounters two fellow travellers, aimless and in trouble when he pals up with disgruntled former Avengers Hawkeye and time-displaced Matt Hawk – The Two-Gun Kid. Crafted by Shooter, Perlin & Green ‘At the Mercy of the Manticore!’ sees Blaze save the heroes from The Brand Corporation’s bestial cyborg monstrosity, but drive them away with his demonic other half’s growing propensity for inflicting suffering…

Still roaming the southern deserts, Blaze is targeted once again by his personal Captain Ahab in ‘Evil is the Orb!’ (Roger McKenzie, Perlin, Tom Sutton, Owen McCarron & Pablo Marcos). His vengeance-crazed rival abducts Roxie and mesmerises a biker gang to do his dirty work but hasn’t reckoned on an intervention by Blaze’s buddy Brahma Bill…

What seemed an inevitable team-up at last occurred in #29 as “New York Tribe” McCarron, DeZuñiga, & Alfredo Alcala augment McKenzie & Perlin for a saga of sorcerous subterfuge as Johnny Blaze is abducted and inquisition-ed by Doctor Strange. Sadly, it’s all a trick by the Mage’s greatest foe who turns Ghost Rider into a ‘Deadly Pawn!’, rigging a murderous retaliation and death duel between ‘The Mage and the Monster!’ as delivered by McKenzie, Perlin & Jim Mooney.

The clash concluded in an extreme expression of ‘Demon’s Rage’ (#31, with illustrator Perlin co-plotting with McKenzie and Bob Layton inking) as the diabolical scheme is exposed and expunged just in time for the fugitive Johnny Blaze to be captured by a mystical Bounty Hunter…

A story tragically similar to Blaze’s own unfolds in McKenzie, Perlin & Rick Bryant’s ‘The Price!’ before Blaze postpones his dark destiny yet again, only to plunge into a super-science hell to contest a medley of western biker and dystopian tropes run amok in ‘…Whom a Child Would Destroy!’ With both chapters uniquely enhanced by an all-Perlin art job, the mutagenic tragedy catastrophically concludes with ‘The Boy Who Lived Forever!’ before this collection closes with a long-deferred, primal thrill-ride.

Commissioned years earlier, ‘Deathrace!’ is a true Jim Starlin gem with Death and the Devil battling our hero in a war of wheels and will, with Steve Leialoha and pals updating and embellishing what we’d call today a Grindhouse shocker…

A big bonus section opens with another, much reprinted yarn. Courtesy of Bill Mantlo, Frank Robbins & Steve Gan is an attempt to create a team of terrors long before its time. Marvel Premiere #28 (February 1976) introduced the initial iteration of The Legion of Monsters in ‘There’s a Mountain on Sunset Boulevard!’. When an ancient alien manifests a rocky peak in LA, the Werewolf by Night Jack Russell, the macabre Man-Thing, current Hollywood stuntman/Ghost Rider Johnny Blaze and living vampire Morbius are irresistibly drawn into a bizarre confrontation which could have resulted in the answer to all their wishes and hopes, but instead only leads to destruction, death and deep disappointment…

With covers by Jack Kirby, Frank Giacoia, Al Milgrom, John Romita Sr., Steve Leialoha, Kane & Dave Cockrum, George Pérez & Rudy Nebres, Sal Buscema, Ernie Chan, Rich Buckler, Robbins, Pollard, Layton, Bob Budiansky, Bob Wiacek, Perlin, and Nick Cardy, other assets include a June 1978 house ad for all of Marvel’s supernatural series, original art pages and covers by Kirby, Romita Sr., DeZuñiga, Perlin & Alcala and Chan, as well as fascinating art edits by Milgrom & Michael Netzer to Starlin’s ‘Deathrace!’ story and the unused cover he originally drew for it.

These tales return Ghost Rider to his roots, and imminent threat of the real-deal Infernal Realm: portraying a good man struggling to save his soul from the worst of all bargains – as much as the revised Comics Code would allow – so brace yourself, hold steady and accept no supernatural substitutes…
© 2021 MARVEL.

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Dungeon Zenith volume 5 Fog and Tears


By Joann Sfar, Lewis Trondheim & Boulet, translated by Joe Johnson (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-316-5 (TPB/Digital edition)

Somewhere way out there, is a planet called Terra Amata. On this world of rich history and diverse ways of life, there’s a castle in a fantastic land of miracles, quests and adventures. Once upon a time it was also a rather dangerous meeting place dubbed the Dungeon…

As primarily crafted by prolific artisans Joann Sfar (Les Potamoks, Professeur Bell, Les olives noires, The Rabbi’s Cat) and Lewis Trondheim (Little Nothings, Stay, Ralph Azham) in collaboration with associates of a collective of bande dessinée creators (L’Association) – the Donjon saga has generated 59 volumes since debuting in 1998. A cult hit all over the world, it began as spoof and parody of roleplaying fantasy games, but as so often with stories of innate charm and high quality, it grew beyond its intentions…

After a cruelly long hiatus, English translations recently resumed, repackaged in full-colour album-sized paperbacks, forming sub-divisions of a vast, eccentrically raucous, addictively wacky generational franchise which welds starkly adult whimsy to the weird worlds of Sword & Sorcery sagas. These omnibus tomes take a legion of horribly human anthropomorphic stars into territories even wilder than those seen in Dungeon: Early Years, Parade, Zenith and Monstres. Latterly, adjuncts such as Antipodes and Bonus joined the sprawling braided mega-saga set on an alien world very much like ours in all the ways that really matter…

Dungeon reveals Terra Armata in time-separated epochs via periodic glimpses of a fantastic edifice on an unstable world where magic is a natural resource. Anthropomorphic inhabitants of the surreal realm include every kind of talking beast and bug, as well as monsters, demons, smart-a$$es, wizards, politicians and always – in all ways – strong, stroppy women-folk, making sense and taking charge. Whenever you look there’s always something happening and it’s usually quite odd…

Nominal star throughout the eons is a duck with a magic sword enabling – and eventually compelling – him to channel and/or be possessed by deceased heroes and dead monsters. At the time of these tales – long before his ethical downfall and rise to the unassailable rank of Grand Khan of dying, burning Terra Armata – he is simply Herbert of Craftiwich: and as usual he’s in a lot of trouble…

Just so we’re all on the same page: the “Dungeon” referred to is (mostly) an eternal hostelry and meeting place for wandering heroes, villains and extras we readers see over centuries. Adventures are staged as figurative times of day. Prequel series Potron-Minet relates to the dawn of the establishment, Donjon Zénith – the focus of today’s lesson – concentrates on a glorious hey-day, whilst the decline takes up Crépuscule – the twilight years.

Joining master craftsmen Sfar & Trondheim and supplying the art is Gilles Roussel AKA “Boulet”. He was born in the Parisienne sous-préfecture (sub-prefecture) of Meaux on February 1st 1975 and studied at the Graduate School of Decorative arts in Strasbourg, before creating comics like Raghnarok in 2001. Three years later he was one of the first to publish autobiographical webcomics (“Blog BD”) and became a leading light in the burgeoning field: a doyen of Paris’ Festival des blogs BD. Amongst jobs for magazines like Psikopat and Tchô, Boulet’s milestones include La Rubrique Scientifique, science comics series Project Octopus (from 2017), and many key literary collaborations such as Erik le Viking with Terry Jones (2008) and Par bonheur, le lait with Neil Gaiman (2015). In 2006, he took over the art for Donjon Zénith from Trondheim.

As so lavishly translated by NBM, Fog & Tears shares French Donjon Zénith tomes 9 &10: Larmes et brouillard and Formule incantatoire: seeing valiant Herbert in the worst trouble of his life in the eponymous opening instalment. The Dungeon has been captured by magical villain Delacour and all attempts to recapture it have failed. Now Herbert’s allies plan to take it back…

The duck has bigger problems. The dashing lover has just had a son with his beloved: a Kochak warrior princess. Isis is adamant that the infant will undergo all the rituals of her people, and he will accompany her into a frozen hell. He’s keen to accede to her every wish but the devout steppe-dwellers are intensely stubborn and unyielding and the duck is worried about his boy’s chances. Herbert has learned the Opasnyye Rite involves throwing infants into a pit of hungry wolves and seeing what happens…

After travelling deep into the icy region and utterly failing to talk Isis out of it, Herbert steals the baby and makes a run for home with an outraged army of fanatical military marvels on his heels. With Kochak ninjas and – far worse – Isis in close pursuit, the duck rejoins his abandoned allies and smuggles the waif onto the infiltration mission to Delacour’s Dungeon. Elsewhere, Dragonista couple Marvin and Pirzween – and their own newborn – survive a visit from Isis, leaving the outraged mother doubting her faith and the infant’s chances of survival.

In the aftermath, the duck duke and a dedicated band of necromancers slip into the keep, as do an army of outraged Kolchaks. In response, Delacour unleashes a plague of ghosts from profane coffer the Vault of Souls before fleeing. If the chest is not closed, the dead will overrun the world…

As chief necromancer Horus seeks to hold back the dead, Isis and her acolytes reclaim the baby, dragging poor misguided Herbert back north with them so he can witness the ritual that will make his son a Kolchak and the inheritor of the kingdom…

When all the tragedy ends, her father the Ataman realises that now his only chance for a true heir rests with him and recapturing the duck and his apostate daughter can wait…

In second chapter ‘Incantatory Spells’ his abandoned comrades – Marvin and Pirzween – take centre stage as Herbert’s ally Alcibiades recruits them for a convoluted conjurors’ quest to close the mystic chest still spewing ghosts into the world of the living. With only rapidly-weakening Horus holding back the host, Marvin undergoes humiliation multiple agonizing self-inflicted penances and even more humiliation as he chases down a string of components that will allow his magic wielding allies and comrades to stop the undead invasion.

It’s not the succession of weird wizards and constant stupid diversions that get to him though, it’s sneaking about in cowardly disguises – like when the mighty lizard must impersonate an elf – and Pirzween’s constant back-seat warrior-ing that ticks him off. That and her stupid girlish manner around old school flame/utterly unnecessary mystical quest-mate Blaise…

In the end though, even Herbert – and especially Blaise – have to agree that it’s Marvin’s idea and muscle that save the day and end the threat…

To be Continued…

Please be warned: these cartoon tales are a bit more sophisticated than general English or American fare. I know you’re okay with vicariously indulging in extreme and excessive depictions of violence, but if you fear your children, loved ones, livestock or servants might be adversely affected by mild swearing or nipples on birds and lizards, take whatever appropriate action you choose (which I believe is the magic phrase “it’s only a comic, dear”).

The rest of us will just carry on without you…

Surreal, earthy, brilliantly outlandish, sharply poignant, wittily hilarious and powerfully tragic, this is a subtly addictive read delivered via vibrant, wildly eccentric cartooning that is an absolute marvel of exuberant, graphic style. Despite being definitely not for younger readers, Dungeon Zenith is the kind of near-the-knuckle, illicit and smart epic older kids and adults will adore. And for the fullest comprehension – and even more insane fun – I strongly recommend acquiring all attendant incarnations too.
© Editions Delcourt 2022, 2023-2005. (Donjon Zénith tomes 9 &10 by Boulet, Joann Sfar Lewis Trondheim). © 2023 NBM for the English translation.

Dungeon: Zenith Vol. 5 – Fog & Tears will be released on October 17th 2023 and is available for pre-order now. For more information and other great reads please go to http://www.nbmpub.com/.

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The Demon by Jack Kirby


By Jack Kirby & Mike Royer & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-7718-5 (HB/Digital edition)

Jack “King” Kirby shaped the very nature of comics narrative. A compulsive storyteller, Jack was an astute, spiritual man who had lived through poverty, gangsterism, the Depression and World War II. He had seen Post-War optimism, Cold War paranoia, political cynicism and the birth and death of peace-seeking counter-cultures. He was open-minded and utterly wedded to the making of comics stories on every imaginable subject.

He began at the top of his game, galvanising the comicbook scene from its earliest days with long-term creative partner Joe Simon: creating Blue Bolt, drawing Captain Marvel and adding lustre to Timely comics with creations such as Red Raven, Hurricane, Captain America and The Young Allies.

In 1942 Simon & Kirby moved to National/DC and hit even more stellar highs with The Boy Commandos, Newsboy Legion, Manhunter and The Sandman before the call of duty saw them inducted into the American military.

On returning from World War II, they reunited and formed a creative studio working primarily for the Crestwood/Prize publishing outfit where they invented the entire genre of Romance comics. Amongst that dynamic duo’s other concoctions for Prize was a noir-ish, psychologically underpinned supernatural anthology Black Magic and its short-lived but fascinating companion title Strange World of Your Dreams.

All their titles eschewed traditional gory, heavy-handed morality plays and simplistic cautionary tales for deeper, stranger fare, and until the EC comics line hit their peak were far and away the best and most mature titles on the market.

Kirby understood the fundamentals of pleasing his audience and always strived diligently to combat the appalling state of prejudice about the comics medium – especially from industry insiders and professionals who despised the “kiddies world” they felt trapped in.

When the 1950s anti-comics comics witch hunt devastated the industry, Simon & Kirby parted ways. Jack went back to DC briefly and created newspaper strip Sky Masters of the Space Force before partnering with Stan Lee at the remains of Timely Comics to create the monolith of stars we know as Marvel.

After more than a decade there he felt increasingly stifled and side-lined and in 1970 accepted an offer of complete creative freedom at DC. The jump resulted in a root and branch redefinition of superheroes in his quartet of interlinked Fourth World series.

After those controversial, grandiose groundbreaking titles were cancelled Kirby looked for other concepts to stimulate his vast creativity and still appeal to an increasingly fickle market. General interest in the Supernatural was rising, with books and movies exploring the unknown in gripping and stylish new ways, and the Comics Code Authority had already released its censorious choke-hold on mystery and horror titles, thereby saving the entire industry from implosion when the superhero boom of the 1960s fizzled away.

At DC’s suggestion, Kirby had already briefly returned to his supernatural experimentation in a superb but poorly received and largely undistributed monochrome magazine. Spirit World launched in the summer of 1971, but as before, editorial cowardice and back-sliding scuppered the project before it could get going. You can see what might have been in a collected edition re-presenting the sole published issue and material from a second, unreleased sequel in Jack Kirby’s Spirit World…

With most of his ideas misunderstood, ignored or side-lined by the company Kirby opted for more traditional fare. Never truly defeated though, he cannily blended his belief in the marketability of the mystic unknown with flamboyant super-heroics to create another unique and lasting mainstay for the DC universe: one that lesser talents would make a pivotal figure of the company’s continuity.

This compilation gathers the entire eerie 16-issue run from August/September 1972 through January 1974 and opens with a fulsome Introduction detailing how The Demon came to be from Kirby’s then-assistant Mark Evanier before the astounding adventures begin…

Inked by Mike Royer, The Demon #1 introduces a howling, leaping monstrosity (famously modelled after a 1939 sequence from Hal Foster’s Arthurian epic Prince Valiant) battling beside its master Merlin as Camelot dies in flames: a cataclysmic casualty of the rapacious greed of sorceress Morgaine Le Fey.

Out of that apocalyptic destruction, a man arises and wanders off into the mists of history…

In our contemporary world (or at least the last quarter of the 20th century) demonologist and paranormal investigator Jason Blood has a near-death experience with an aged collector of illicit arcana. This culminates in a hideous nightmare about a demonic being and the last stand of Camelot. He has no idea that Le Fey is still alive and has sinister plans for him…

And in distant Moldavia, strange things are stirring in crumbling Castle Branek, wherein lies hidden the lost Tomb of Merlin…

Blood is wealthy, reclusive and partially amnesiac, but one night he agrees to host a small dinner party, entertaining acquaintances Harry Mathews, psychic UN diplomat Randu Singh, his wife Gomali and their flighty young friend Glenda Mark. The soiree does not go well.

Firstly, there is the painful small talk, and the sorcerous surveillance of Le Fey, but the real problems start when an animated stone giant arrives to “invite” Blood to visit Castle Branek. This shattering voyage leads to Merlin’s last resting place but just as Blood thinks he may find some answers to his enigmatic past, Le Fey pounces. Suddenly he starts to change, transforming into the horrific beast of his dreams…

Issue #2 – ‘My Tomb in Castle Branek!’ – opens with wary villagers observing a terrific battle between a yellow monster and Le Fey’s forces, but when the Demon is defeated and Blood arrested, only the telepathic influence of Randu in America can help him. Le Fey is old, dying, and needs Merlin’s grimoire, the Eternity Book, to extend her life.

Thus, she manipulates Blood – who has existed for centuries unaware that Merlin’s hellish Attack Dog the Demon Etrigan is chained inside him – to regain his memories and awaken the slumbering master mage. It looks like the last mistake she will ever make…

Kirby’s tried and trusted approach was always to pepper high concepts throughout blazing, breakneck action, and #3 was one the most imaginative yet. ‘The Reincarnators’ finds Blood back in the USA, aware at last of his tormented history, and with a small but devoted circle of friends. Adapting to a less lonely life, he soon encounters a cult able to physically regress people to a prior life – and use those time-lost beings to commit murder…

The Demon #4-5 comprise one single exploit, wherein a simple witch and her macabre patron capture the reawakened, semi-divine Merlin. ‘The Creature from Beyond’ and ‘Merlin’s Word’s … Demon’s Wrath!’ introduced cute little monkey Kamara the Fear-Monster (later used with devastating effect by Alan Moore in Saga of the Swamp Thing #26-27) and features another startling “Kirby-Kritter” – Somnambula, the Dream-Beast…

It seems odd in these blasé modern times but The Demon was a controversial book in its day – cited as providing the first post-Comics Code depiction of Hell and one where problems were regularly solved with sudden, extreme violence.

‘The Howler!’ in issue #6 is a truly spooky yarn with Blood hunting a primal entity of rage and brutal terror that transforms its victims into murderous lycanthropic killers, whilst #7 debuts a spiteful, malevolent young fugitive from a mystical otherplace.

‘Witchboy’ Klarion and his cat-familiar Teekl were utterly evil little sociopaths in a time where all comicbook politicians were honest, cops only shot to wound and “bad” kids were only misunderstood: another Kirby first…

An extended epic, ‘Phantom of the Sewers’ skilfully combines movie and late-night TV horror motifs in the dark and tragic tale of actor Farley Fairfax, cursed by the witch he once spurned. Unfortunately, Glenda Mark is the spitting image of the departed Galatea, and when, decades later, the demented thespian kidnaps her (in ‘Whatever Happened to Farley Fairfax?!!’) to raise the curse, it could only end in a flurry of destruction, death, consumed souls and ‘The Thing That Screams’…

This 3-part thriller is followed by another multi-part masterpiece (The Demon #11-13). ‘Baron von Evilstein’ is a powerful parable about worth and appearance featuring the ultimate mad scientist and the tragic, misunderstood monster he so casually builds. It’s a truth that bears repeating: ugly doesn’t equal bad…

Despite all Kirby’s best efforts The Demon was not a monster hit – unlike his science-fiction disaster drama Kamandi – and by #14 it’s clear that the book was in its last days. Not because the sheer pace of imagination, excitement and passion diminished – far from it – but because the well-considered, mood-drenched stories were suddenly replaced by rocket-fast eldritch romps populated with returning villains.

First back was Klarion the Witchboy who creates a ‘Deadly Doppelganger’ to replace Jason Blood and kill his friends in #14-15, before the series – and this wonderful treasury of wicked delights – ended in a climactic showdown with the ‘Immortal Enemy’ Morgaine Le Fey…

Kirby carried on with Kamandi, returned to The Sandman, explored WWII in The Losers and created the magnificent Omac: One Man Army Corps, but still could not achieve the all-important sales the company demanded. Eventually he returned to Marvel and new challenges such as Black Panther, Captain America, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Devil Dinosaur, Machine Man and especially The Eternals.

As always in these wondrously economical collections it should be noted that the book comes stuffed with un-inked pencilled pages and roughs in bonus feature ‘The Art of Jack Kirby’, and Evanier’s fascinating, informative Introduction is, as ever, a fact-fan’s delight.

Jack Kirby was and is unique and uncompromising: his words and pictures are an unparalleled, hearts-and-minds grabbing delight no comics lover could resist. If you’re not a fan or simply not prepared to see for yourself what all the fuss has been about then no words of mine will change your mind.

That doesn’t alter the fact that Kirby’s work from 1937 to his death in 1994 shaped the entire American comics scene and indeed the entire comics planet – affecting the lives of billions of readers and thousands of creators in all areas of artistic endeavour for generations and still winning new fans and apostles every day, from the young and naive to the most cerebral of intellectuals. His work is instantly accessible, irresistibly visceral, deceptively deep and simultaneously mythic and human.

He is the King and time has shown that the star of this book is one of his most potent legacies.
© 1972, 1973, 1974, 2017 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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A Spirou and Fantasio Adventure volume 20: The Dark Side of the Z


By Fabien Vehlmann & Yoann, designed by Fred Blanchard, colored by Hubert & translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-80044-103-3 (Album PB/Digital edition)

Boyish hero Spirou (which translates as both “squirrel” and “mischievous” in the Walloon language) was created by French cartoonist Françoise Robert Velter AKA Rob-Vel. This was before the Second World War for Belgian publisher Éditions Dupuis in response to the phenomenal success of Hergé’s Tintin at rival outfit Casterman.

Soon-to-be legendary weekly comic Le Journal de Spirou launched on April 21st 1938 with a rival red-headed lad as lead feature in an anthology which bears his name to this day. The eponymous hero was a plucky bellboy/lift operator employed in the Moustique Hotel – a sly reference to the publisher’s premier periodical Le Moustique. His improbable adventures with pet squirrel Spip gradually evolved into far-reaching, surreal comedy dramas.

Spirou and his chums have helmed the magazine for most of its life, with a cohort of truly impressive creators carrying on Velter’s work, beginning with his wife Blanche “Davine” Dumoulin who took over the strip when her husband enlisted in 1939. She was assisted by Belgian artist Luc Lafnet until 1943, when Dupuis purchased all rights to the property, after which comic-strip prodigy Joseph Gillain (Jijé) took the helm. In 1946, his assistant André Franquin assumed the creative reins: gradually ditching the well-seasoned short gag vignettes format in favour of epic adventure serials. He also expanded the cast, introducing a broad band of engaging regulars and eventually creating phenomenally popular magic animal Marsupilami.

Franquin was followed by Jean-Claude Fournier who updated the feature over nine stirring adventures tapping into the rebellious, relevant zeitgeist of the times: offering tales of environmental concern, nuclear energy, drug cartels and repressive regimes.

By the 1980s, however, the series seemed outdated and lacking direction, so three separate creative teams alternated on it. Eventually overhauled and revitalised by Philippe Vandevelde (writing as Tome) and artist Jean-Richard Geurts – AKA Janry – adapting, referencing and in many ways returned to the beloved Franquin era, the strip found its second wind.

Their sterling efforts revived the floundering feature’s fortunes, generating 14 wonderful albums between 1984 and 1998. As the strip diversified into parallel strands (Spirou’s Childhood/Little Spirou and Guest-Creator Specials A Spirou Story By…), the team on the core feature were succeeded by Jean-David Morvan & José-Luis Munuera. Then Yoann & Vehlmann took over the never-ending procession of amazing adventures…

Multi-award-winning French comics author Fabien Vehlman was born in 1972, began his comics career in 1996 and has been favourably likened to René Goscinny. He’s probably still best known for Green Manor (illustrated by Denis Bodart), Seven Psychopaths with Sean Phillips, Seuls (drawn by Bruno Gazzotti and available in English as Alone), Wondertown with Benoit Feroumont and Isle of 1000,000 Graves with Jason.

Yoann Chivard was born in October 1971 and was drawing non-stop by age five. With qualifications in Plastic Arts and a degree in Communication from the Academy of Fine Arts in Angers, he became a poster advertising artist whilst just dabbling in comics. His creations include Phil Kaos and Dark Boris for British Indie publications Deadline and Inkling, Toto l’Ornithorynque, Nini Rezergoude, La Voleuse de Pere-Fauteuil, Ether Glister and Bob Marone and he has contributed to Trondheim & Sfar’s Donjon.

In 2006, Yoann was the first artist to produce a Spirou et Fantasio one shot Special. It was scripted by Vehlmann…

Cinebook have been publishing Spirou & Fantasio’s exploits since 2009, alternating between the various superb reinterpretations of Franquin and earlier efforts from the great man himself.

When Jijé handed Franquin the strip part-way through Spirou et la maison préfabriqué (LJdS #427, June 20th 1946), the new guy ran with it. Over two decades he enlarged the scope and horizons until it became purely his own. Almost every week fans would meet startling new characters like loyal comrade and rival Fantasio or crackpot inventor and Merlin of mushroom mechanics Pacôme Hégésippe Adélard Ladislas de Champignac – The Count of Champignac…

Spirou and Fantasio became globe-trotting journalists, travelling to dangerously exotic places, uncovering crimes, exploring the fantastic and clashing with a coterie of exotic arch-enemies such as Fantasio’s deranged and wicked cousin Zantafio and that maddest of scientists, Zorglub.

This old school chum and implacable rival of Champignac is an outrageous Bond-movie-tinged villain constantly targeting the Count. A brilliant engineer, his incredible machines are far less dangerous than his mind-controlling “Zorglwave” and his apparently unshakable hunger to conquer Earth and dominate the solar system from a base on the Moon…

This tale – originally in 2011 La face cachée du Z – opens with our happily argumentative chums repairing the collaterally damaged Champignac chateau yet again. Exhausted, they go to indoors to sleep… and wake up in a horrific and tawdry casino resort. Compounding the shocks are weird, painfully unpredictable tricks of gravity, as it’s apparently built only for the super-rich and on the moon!

Worst of all, explaining the transition is smugly sanctimonious old enemy Zorglub…

Still agonisingly hungry for his rival’s approval, the evil genius blathers on about his triumphs and his Great Masterwork since last seen (in volume 18’s Attack of the Zordolts): escaping from dirty, dying Earth to the stars with hot Swedish science students Astrid and Lena. Now they’ve gone off together, leaving the science troll to carve out his interplanetary empire alone.

At least, he would be, if certain funding shortfalls hadn’t forced him into bed with One-percenters who think his citadel could be the most exclusive resort off Earth…

Zorglub still needs to be the virtuous Architect of Humanity’s Future, but the people he has are nothing like the ones he wants: bold Fantasio, ingenious Spirou and brilliant ethically pristine Pacôme de Champignac…

That’s why – for the most logical and moral reasons – he drugged and abducted them…

Without question, the lunar outpost is a technological wonder, with advances and advantages even the kidnapped admire, but the beloved holy Science is being increasingly sidelined, for bigger and better gambling rooms, ski slopes, surfing beaches, sports complexes, nature sideshows and glitzy restaurants.

It does not go down well when Spirou points out that Zorglub could have cleaned up and saved Earth for less money and effort…

Further debate is forestalled when a solar flare is announced and Spirou refuses to join everyone else in radiation-shielded shelters until he recovers his wandering wild pal Spip. Locked out, our hero spectacularly finds a way to survive the cosmic storm, but it’s not for a while that we realise it’s come at a severe mutagenic cost…

The pauper lad’s suicide run across the resort’s attractions was televised and has made him a minor celebrity amongst the movie stars like Blythe Prejlowieky (who soon seduces the kid for her own shocking purposes!), overly-competitive sporting gods like Mike Adibox, faceless money-moguls and flagrantly ostentatious oligarchs such as Igor. Not so much impressed as cautious is the investors’ appointed fixer and ultimate mercenary Poppy Bronco. He’s recognized something in the survivor that bodes badly for all…

The sun starts setting on the project after Champignac chides Zorglub for the worthlessness of his achievements and surrendering of his principled dreams. It coincides with a series of potentially lethal sabotage attempts and – defined by true devotion to their precious skins – the one-percenters commandeer the transport back to Earth, with only few such as Blyth and Igor choosing to stay behind with the peons and paid staff…

Finally rid of his annoying paymasters, Zorglub then executes his long-term plans but is completely unprepared for what happens to Spirou when the lunar night begins. Bronco isn’t though and organises a monster-hunt through the abandoned resort and across the moon…

The outcome is tense, gripping unexpected and so very To Be Continued.

Rocket-paced, action-packed, compellingly convoluted and with just the right blend of perfectly blending helter-skelter excitement and sheer daftness, The Dark Side of the Z is a terrific witty romp to delight devotees of easy-going adventure, drawn with beguiling style and seductive energy. This is pure cartoon gold, truly deserving of reaching the widest audience possible.
Original edition © Dupuis, 2011 by Vehlmann & Yoann. All rights reserved. English translation 2023 © Cinebook Ltd.

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Showcase Presents Superman Family volume 3


By Otto Binder, Robert Bernstein, Jerry Siegel, Alvin Schwartz, Bill Finger, Curt Swan, Kurt Schaffenberger, Wayne Boring, Dick Sprang, Al Plastino, Stan Kaye, Ray Burnley, John Forte, George Klein, John Giunta & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-812-6 (TPB)

When the groundbreaking Man of Steel debuted in Action Comics #1 (June 1938) he was instantly the centre of attention, but even then the need for a solid supporting cast was apparent and wisely tailored for. Glamorous daredevil girl reporter Lois Lane premiered beside Clark Kent and was a constant companion and foil from the outset.

Although unnamed, a plucky red-headed, be-freckled kid started working for Clark and Lois from Action Comics #6 (November 1938) onwards. His name was used in Superman #13 (November-December 1941), having already been revealed as Jimmy Olsen due to being a major player on The Adventures of Superman radio show from its debut (April 15th 1940).

As somebody the same age as the target audience for the hero to explain stuff to (all for the listeners’ benefit), he was the closest thing to a sidekick the Action Ace ever needed…

When the similarly titled television show launched in the autumn of 1952 – preceded a year earlier by landmark B-movie Superman and the Mole Men – it was another immediate sensation and National Periodicals began cautiously and judiciously expanding their revitalised franchise with new characters and titles.

During the 1950s/early 1960s, being different in America was a Very Bad Thing. Conformity was sacrosanct, even in comicbooks, and everybody and everything was meant to keep to its assigned and intended role: for the Superman family and cast, that meant a highly strictured code of conduct and parameters. Daily Planet Editor Perry White was a stern, shouty elder statesman with a heart of gold, Cub Reporter Jimmy was a brave and impulsive, unseasoned fool – with a heart of gold – with Lois brash, nosy, impetuous and unscrupulous in her obsession to marry Superman although she too was – deep down – another possessor of an Auric aorta. Moreover, although Clark was a Man in a Man’s World, his hidden alter ego meant that he must never act like one…

Yet somehow even with these mandates in place the talented writers and artists assigned to produce their wholesomely uncanny exploits managed to craft tales both beguiling and breathtakingly memorable – and usually as funny as they were exciting.

First to fill a solo title were the gloriously charming, light-hearted escapades of that rash, capable but callow photographer and “cub reporter”. Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #1 launched in 1954 with a September-October cover date, the first spin-off star of the Caped Kryptonian’s rapidly expanding multi-media entourage.

As the decade progressed the oh-so-cautious Editors tentatively extended the franchise in 1957 just as the Silver Age of Comics was getting underway, and it seemed that there might be a fresh and sustainable appetite for costumed heroes and their unique brand of spectacular shenanigans. Try-out title Showcase, which had already launched The Flash (#4) and Challengers of the Unknown (#6), followed up with a brace of issues entitled Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane in #9 and 10, before swiftly awarding the “plucky news-hen” a series of her own; in actuality her second, since for a brief while in the mid-1940s she had held a regular solo-spot in Superman.

At this time Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane was one of precious few titles with a female lead and – in the context of today – one that gives many 21st century fans a few uncontrollable qualms of conscience. Within the confines of her series the valiant and capable working woman careered crazily from man-hungry, unscrupulous schemer through ditzy simpleton to indomitable and brilliant hero – often all in the same issue – as the exigencies of entertaining children under the strictures of the Comics Code all too often played up the period’s astonishingly misogynistic attitudes.

The comic was clearly intended to appeal to the family demographic that made I Love Lucy a national phenomenon and Doris Day a ditzy latter day saint, so many stories were played for laughs in that same patriarchal, parochial manner; a “gosh, aren’t women funny?” tone that appals me today – but not as much as the fact that I still love them to bits.

It helps that they’re mostly illustrated by the wonderfully whimsical Kurt Schaffenberger.

Jimmy fared little better: a bright, brave but naive kid making his own way in the world, he was often butt of cruel jokes and impossible circumstances; undervalued and humiliatingly tasked in a variety of slapstick adventures and strange transformations.

This third cunningly conjoined chronologically complete compendium collects the affable, all-ages tales from Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #35-44, March 1959-April 1960 and Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane #8-16, April 1959-April 1960. It commences with the Man of Steel’s Go-To Guy in three tales drawn by the wonderful Curt Swan.

Probably fuelled by television (syndicated reruns kept the Superman family at the forefront of childish viewing habits) Jimmy’s comic was highly popular for over two decades, blending action, adventure, wacky comedy, fantasy and science fiction in the gently addictive, self-deprecating manner scripter Otto Binder had perfected in the 1940s and early 1950s at Fawcett Comics on the magnificent original Captain Marvel (you can call him Shazam!).

As the feature progressed, one of the most popular plot-themes (and most fondly remembered and referenced today by most Baby-Boomer fans) was the unlucky lad’s appalling talent for being warped, mutated and physically manipulated by fate, aliens and even his friends…

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #35 (March 1959) opened with ‘The Menace of Superman’s Fan Mail!’, by Binder & Swan, inked by Stan Kaye. Here, the cub reporter undertakes to answer the mountain of missives for the Man of Steel: inadvertently supplying a crook with an almost foolproof method of murdering the Metropolis Marvel.

The remaining tales are inked by Ray Burnley, beginning with a rather disingenuous yarn seeing the kid repeatedly causing trouble by wearing a futuristic suit of mechanised super-armour which only made him look like ‘The Robot Jimmy Olsen!’, whilst in ‘Superman’s Enemy!’ the devoted dope overnight turns into a despicable, hero-hating wretch. However, as a veritable plague of altered behaviour afflicts Clark Kent’s friends, the Action Ace soon discerns an underlying pattern…

Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane #8 (April 1959) opened with Alvin Schwartz & Kurt Schaffenberger’s ‘The Superwoman of Metropolis’, heavy-handedly turning the tables on our heroine when she develops incredible abilities and took on a costumed identity, and was instantly plagued by a suspicious Clark determined to expose her secret.

‘The Ugly Superman!’ dealt with a costumed wrestler who fell for Lois, giving the Caped Kryptonian another chance for some pretty unpleasant Super-teasing. It was written by Robert Bernstein, who unlike me can use the tenor of the times as his excuse, and pleasingly ameliorated by Schaffenberger delivering another hilarious dose of OTT comedic drama illustration. Following is a far less disturbing fantasy romp: ‘Queen for a Day!’ (Bernstein, Wayne Boring & Stan Kaye) found Lois and Clark shipwrecked on an island of Amazons with the plucky lady mistaken for their long-prophesied royal saviour…

Jimmy Olsen #36 began with Binder, Swan & Burnley’s ‘Super-Senor’s Pal!’, with the boy South of the Border in the banana republic of Peccador helping a local rebel fight the dictators by masquerading as a Latino Man of Steel. Kaye inked the momentous debut of ‘Lois Lane’s Sister!’, introducing perky “air-hostess” Lucy as romantic foil and occasionally attainable inamorata for the kid, in a smart, funny tale of hapless puppy love. With Burnley inks the final tale details the cub reporter’s accidental time-trip to Krypton and ‘How Jimmy Olsen First met Superman!’

Although we all think of Siegel & Shuster’s iconic creation as the epitome of comicbook creation, the truth is that very soon after his launch Superman became a multimedia star and far more people have seen or heard the Man of Steel than have ever read him – and yes, that does include the globally syndicated newspaper strip which ran from 1939 to 1966. By the time his 20th anniversary rolled around he had been a regular on radio, starred in a series of astounding animated cartoons and two movies, and just ended his first smash live-action television serial. In his future were many more, a stage musical, a stellar movie career and almost seamless succession of TV cartoons beginning with The New Adventures of Superman in 1966 and continuing ever since. Even Krypto got in on the small-screen act…

Thus it’s no wonder tales from this Silver Age period should be draped in gaudily wholesome trappings of Tinseltown – even more so than most of celebrity-obsessed America. It didn’t hurt that editor Whitney Ellsworth was a part-time screenwriter, script editor and producer as well as National/DC’s Hollywood point man.

The Man of Tomorrow’s TV presence influenced much of Lois Lane #9: a celebrity-soaked issue scripted by Bernstein which began with artists Dick Sprang & John Forte detailing how performer Pat Boone (who just-coincidentally had his own licensed DC comic at that time) almost exposed Earth’s greatest secret in ‘Superman’s Mystery Song!’

The Silver Screen connection continued in the Schaffenberger-limned ‘The Most Hated Girl in Metropolis’, wherein Lois is framed for exposing that self-same super-secret as a ruse to get her to Hollywood for her own unsuspected This is Your Life special. That issue ended with a welcome return to fantasy/comedy as Schaffenberger introduces a lost valley of leftover dinosaurs and puny caveman Blog – ‘Lois Lane’s Stone-Age Suitor’…

In JO #37 Bill Finger, Swan & John Forte reveal the incredible truth about multi-powered Mysterio in the case of ‘Superman’s Super-Rival’, whilst Binder, Swan & Kaye expose the difficulties of frivolous Lucy Lane having ‘The Jimmy Olsen Signal Watch!’: a timepiece that kept the boy on a constant electronic leash…

This issue closes with a cunning caper wherein resident crackpot genius Professor Phineas Potter concocts a serum enabling Jimmy to reprise his many malleable antics and tangled troublemaking as ‘The Elastic Lad of Metropolis!’ (Binder, Swan & George Klein) – and almost exposing Superman’s secret identity into the bargain.

Records from the period are sadly incomplete but Bernstein probably wrote each tale in Lois Lane #10, beginning with Schaffenberger-limned classic ‘The Cry-Baby of Metropolis’, as Lois – terrified of losing her looks – exposes herself to a youth ray and temporarily turns into a baby, much to the amusement of Superman and arch-rival Lana Lang…

Schaffenberger also illustrated ‘Lois Lane’s Romeo!’ with the constantly spurned reporter finally giving up on her extraterrestrial beau. Typically, she’s then romanced by a slick, romantic European who’s was also a conniving, crooked conman. She rebounds in top crime-busting form for ‘Lois Lane’s Super-Seance!’ (Boring & Kaye): apparently endowed with psychic sight, but actually pulling the wool over the eyes of superstitious crooks.

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #38 also tapped TV connection as the lad becomes ‘The MC of the Midnight Scare Theatre!’ (Bernstein, Swan & Forte): uncovering an incredible mystery after his hoary, hokey stage act apparently scares four viewers to death…

Although by the same creators, the broad humour of ‘Jimmy Olsen’s Wedding! to Lucy has a far less ingenious explanation, but at least ‘Olsen’s Super-Supper!’ (Bernstein, Swan & John Giunta) wraps up on a high as the impecunious kid enters an eating contest and allows shady operators to try an experimental appetite-increasing ray on him. Of course, the mad scientists have an ulterior, criminal motive…

A plane crash and head wound transform Lois into a fur-bikinied wild woman in #11 of her own magazine, but – even after being rescued by Superman – ‘The Leopard Girl of the Jungle!’ (Finger & Schaffenberger) has one last task to valiantly undertake. Anonymously authored ‘The Tricks of Lois Lane!’ finds the restored reporter up to her old tricks to expose Clark as Superman, whilst ‘Lois Lane’s Super-Perfume!’ (Bernstein) seems able to turn any man into a love-slave – until the Man of Steel exposes criminal scammers behind it…

Binder, Swan & Forte crafted all of Jimmy Olsen #39, beginning with the lad stuck on another world and quickly seen as ‘The Super-Lad of Space!’, after which, back in Metropolis, his ill-considered antics lose and win and lose him again a fortune in ‘The Million Dollar Mistakes!’ Lastly, ‘Jimmy Olsen’s Super-Signals!’ see him misplace his Superman-summoning watch and forced to spectacularly improvise every time he gets into trouble…

Bernstein wrote LL #12, beginning with two Schaffenberger specials: ‘The Mermaid of Metropolis’ in which an accident dooms Lois to life underwater beside Sea King Aquaman, until Superman cures her piscoid condition, whilst in ‘The Girl Atlas!’ Lana sneakily turns herself into a super-powerhouse to corral the Man of Steel and learns what sneaky means when Lois strikes back…

Al Plastino rendered ‘Lois Lane Loves Clark Kent!’, as the reporter, believing she has incontrovertible proof of Superman’s secret, starts a campaign to entrap her unknowing colleague in wedlock…

Swan & Forte illustrated all of JO #40, beginning with Binder’s ‘The Invisible Life of Jimmy Olsen’ as our hapless chum is enmired in all manner of mischief after a gift from his best pal unexpectedly leaves him unseen but not trouble-free. ‘Jimmy Olsen, Supergirl’s Pal!’ sees the reporter temporarily struck blind, just as a crook with a grudge tries to kill him. With Superman out of touch, the Caped Kryptonian’s secret weapon Supergirl (at this time a newly-arrived, hidden trainee no one except cousin Kal-El and Krypto know of) rushes to the rescue, only to have the feisty lad disbelieve and dispute her very existence.

Bernstein then exposes ‘Jimmy Olsen, Juvenile Delinquent!’ as he goes undercover to break up a street gang and discovers Perry White’s own son is a member…

Bernstein & Schaffenberger led in Lois’ 13th issue, hilariously ‘Introducing… Lois Lane’s Parents!’ Superman had offered her a lift home to the farm of Sam and Ella Lane for a family reunion, but thanks to a concatenation of circumstances, local gossip and super-politeness, the Man of Steel quickly finds himself peer-pressure-press-ganged into a wedding.

Fair Warning: this contains Lois’ first nude scene as a proud father gets out baby albums…

From the same creative team – and in a brilliant pastiche of My Fair Lady – ‘Alias Lois Lane!’ see the indomitable inquirer undercover as sketchy floozie Sadie Blodgett in a plan to snap candid shots of a movie star. It all goes south when “Sadie” is “hired” by crooks to impersonate Superman’s girlfriend in an assassination plot bound to fail!

Next, Finger, Boring & Kaye disclose ‘The Shocking Secret of Lois Lane!’ following a tragically implausible incident forcing the journalist to cover her disfigured head in a lead-lined steel box. Thankfully, the Action Ace is around to deduce what’s really going on…

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #41 opened with Bernstein, Swan & Forte’s ‘The Human Octopus!’, highlighting the lad’s negligent idiocy as he impetuously eats alien fruit and grows six more arms. However, the true effect of the space spud is far more devious…

Binder & Kaye joined Swan for ‘The Robot Reporter!’, with Jimmy using an automaton provided by Superman to do his job as he recuperates from a damaged ankle. Nonetheless, he manages to get into trouble from the comfort of his apartment. Thanks to stupid showing off, he’s then mistaken for a master fencer and catapulted into a Ruritanian adventure as ‘Jimmy Olsen, the Boy Swordsman!’ (Binder, Swan & Forte).

Binder & Schaffenberger opened LL #14 with ‘Three Nights in the Fortress of Solitude!’ as conniving journalist has contrived to isolate herself with Superman long enough to prove how much he needs a woman in his life, only to suffer one disaster after another…

Bernstein scripted ‘Lois Lane’s Soldier Sweetheart!’, revealing her warm and generous side as she helps a lonely GI attain his greatest desire. Jerry Siegel then returned to the character he created (and based on his own wife!) using still-secret Supergirl to catastrophically play cupid in ‘Lois Lane’s Secret Romance!’

Jimmy Olsen #42 started with uncredited story ‘The Big Superman Movie!’ (art by Swan & Forte), wherein the star-struck kid consults on a major motion picture. He would far rather have played himself, much to Lucy’s amusement, but ultimately the sharp apprentice journalist has the last word – and laugh. Bernstein was back for ‘Perry White, Cub Reporter!’ which has Editor and junior trading places, with power only apparently going straight to Olsen’s head, after which ‘Jimmy the Genie!’ sees something similar occur when boy reporter and magical sprite exchange roles in a clever thriller illustrated by Swan & Giunta.

Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane #15 featured a landmark mystery in ‘The Super-Family of Steel!’ (Binder & Schaffenberger) which seemingly sees Lois attain her every dream. She and her Kryptonian Crimebuster first become ‘Super-Husband and Wife’, with ‘The Bride Gets Super-Powers’ as a consequence. They even have a brace of super-kids before the astounding ‘Secret of the Super-Family’ is revealed…

In Superman’s Pal #43 TV show 77 Sunset Strip got a name-check as ‘Jimmy Olsen’s Four Fads!’ (Swan & Kaye) finds the kid attempting to create a teen trend to impress Lucy, whilst as ‘Phantom Fingers Olsen!’ (Boring & Kaye) he infiltrates a gang of murderous thieves, before being adopted by ‘Jimmy Olsen’s Private Monster!’ (Siegel, Swan & Forte). After causing no end of embarrassment in Metropolis, the bizarre beast takes Jim to his home dimension where even greater shocks await…

The book’s final Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane is #16 (April 1960) opening with ‘Lois Lane’s Signal-Watch’ with Schaffenberger art on (possibly) a Siegel script. Here the Man of Steel learns to regret ever giving a woman who clearly has no idea what “emergency” means a device to summon him at any moment of day or night…

That slice of scurrilous 1950s propaganda is inexplicably balanced by a brilliant murder thriller displaying all Lois’ resilience and fortitude as she infiltrates and solves (Bernstein’s) ‘The Mystery of Skull Island’, before Siegel authors another cruel dark tragedy wherein Superman tries to cure Lois’ nosy impulses – by tricking his own girlfriend into believing she has a death stare in ‘The Kryptonite Girl!’ Of course, as all couples know, such power develops naturally not long after the honeymoon…

I love these stories, but sometime words just fail me.

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #44 completes this third monochrome monolith, starting with Halloween-styled tale ‘The Wolf-Man of Metropolis!’ (Binder, Swan & Kaye) by blending horror, mystery and heart-warming charm in a mini-classic which sees the boy cursed to hairy moon madness. Desperate for surcease his only hope is a willing maiden to cure him with a kiss. That’s followed by Siegel, Swan & Forte’s ‘Jimmy’s Leprechaun Pal!’, a magical imp who made life hell for the cub until human ingenuity outwitted magical pranksterism, after which Bernstein, Swan & Kaye crafted possibly the strangest and most disturbing yarn in this compilation as the boy went undercover as a sexy showgirl to get close to gangster Big Monte in ‘Miss Jimmy Olsen!’

As well as containing some of the most delightful episodes of the pre angst-drenched, cosmically catastrophic DC, these fun, thrilling, deeply peculiar and yes, often potentially offensive stories also perfectly capture the changing tone and tastes which reshaped comics from the safe 1950s to the seditious, rebellious 1970s, all the while keeping to the prime directive of the industry – “keep them entertained and keep them wanting more”.

Despite my good-natured cavils from my high horse here in the 21st century (or “the End of Days” as they’re more commonly known), I think these stories have a huge amount to offer funnybook fun-seekers. I strongly urge you to check them out.
© 1959, 1960, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Challengers of the Unknown by Jack Kirby


By Jack Kirby, France “Ed” Herron, Dave Wood, Roz Kirby, George Klein, Bruno Premiani, Marvin Stein, Wally Wood & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-7719-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

The Challengers of the Unknown were a bridging concept between the fashionably All-American, verifiably human trouble-shooters who monopolised comic books for the majority of the 1950s and the reimagined costumed mystery men who would soon return to take over the industry.

As superheroes began popping up mid-decade, in 1956 came a super-team – the first of the Silver Age – with no powers, the most basic and utilitarian of uniforms and the most dubious of motives… Suicide by Mystery. Nevertheless their launch was arguably the second most important event of the Silver Age

Crucially, they were a huge hit from the get-go, striking a chord that lasted for over a decade before they finally died… only to rise again and yet again. The very idea of them was stirring enough, but their initial execution made their success inevitable.

Jack Kirby was – and remains – the most important single influence in the history of American comics. There are quite rightly millions of words written about what the man has done and meant (such as Paul Kupperberg’s enthusiastic Introduction and John Morrow’s pithy Afterword in this superb compilation), and you should read those if you are at all interested in our medium.

I’m still going to add a few words to that superabundance here: one of his best and most influential projects which, like so many others, he perfectly constructed before moving on, leaving highly competent but never quite as inspired talents to build upon.

When the comics industry suffered a paranoia-induced, witch-hunt-caused collapse in the mid-50’s, Kirby returned briefly to DC Comics to produce tales of suspense and science fiction for the company’s line of mystery anthologies. In a few episodes, he also revitalised Green Arrow (then simply a back-up strip in Adventure Comics) whilst creating the newspaper strip Sky Masters of the Space Force.

At the same time he also re-packaged for Showcase (the try-out title that launched many Silver Age DC mainstays) an off-kilter team concept that had been kicking around in his head since he and long-time collaborator Joe Simon had closed their innovative but ill-timed Prize/Essankay/Mainline Comics ventures.

After years of working for others, Simon & Kirby finally established their own publishing company: producing comics with a much more sophisticated audience in mind. That happened mere months before an industry-wide sales downturn amidst a changing society awash with public hysteria generated by the anti-comic book pogrom spearheaded by US Senator Estes Kefauver and pop psychologist Dr. Frederic Wertham.

Simon quit the business for advertising, but Kirby soldiered on, taking his skills and ideas to a number of safer, more conservative and less experimental companies.

The Challengers were four ordinary mortals; explorers and adventurers who walked away unscathed from a terrible plane crash. Already obviously what we’d now call “adrenaline junkies”, pilot Ace Morgan, diver Prof Haley, acrobat and mountaineer Red Ryan and wrestler Rocky Davis summarily decided that since they were all living on borrowed time anyway, they would dedicate what remained of their lives to testing themselves and fate. They would risk their lives for Knowledge and, naturally, Justice.

The series launched with ‘The Secrets of the Sorcerer’s Box!’ in Showcase #6 (cover-dated January/February 1957 – so it was on spinner-racks and news-stands in time for Christmas 1956). Kirby and scripter Dave Wood, plus inkers Marvin Stein and Jack’s wife Roz, crafted a spectacularly creepy epic wherein the freshly introduced doom-chasers were commissioned by duplicitous magician Morelian to open an ancient container holding otherworldly secrets and powers.

The story roars along with all the tension and wonder of the B-movie thrillers it emulates and Jack’s awesome drawing resonates with power and dynamism, which grew even greater for the sequel: a science fiction drama instigated after an alliance of leftover Nazi technologists and contemporary American criminals unleashes a terrible robotic threat. ‘Ultivac is Loose!’ (Showcase #7, March/April 1957) introduced a necessary standard appendage of the times and the B-movie genre in the form of brave, capable, brilliant and beautiful-when-she-took-her-labcoat-off boffin Dr. June Robbins, who became the no-nonsense, ultra-capable (if unofficial) fifth Challenger at a time when most funnybook females had returned to a subsidiary status in that so-conventional, repressive era.

The uncanny exploits paused for a sales audit and the team didn’t reappear until Showcase #11 (November/December 1957) allowing The Flash and Lois Lane their respective second shots at the big time. When the Challengers returned, it was in alien invasion epic ‘The Day the Earth Blew Up’.

Uniquely engaging comics realist Bruno Premiani (a former associate and employee from Kirby’s Prize Comics days) came aboard to ink a taut doomsday chiller keeping readers on the edge of their seats even today, and in their final Showcase outing (#12, January/February 1958) the Questing Quartet were preparing a move into their own title.

‘The Menace of the Ancient Vials’ was defused by the usual blend of daredevil heroics and inspired ingenuity. The wonderful inking of George Klein adding subtle clarity to a tale of an international criminal who steals ancient weapons that threaten the entire world if misused), but the biggest buzz would come two months later with the first issue of their own magazine.

Written and drawn by Kirby with Stein on inks, Challengers of the Unknown #1 (May 1958) presented two complete stories plus an iconic introductory page that would become almost a signature logo for the team.

‘The Man Who Tampered with Infinity’ pits the heroes against a renegade scientist whose cavalier dabbling unleashes dreadful monsters from the beyond onto our defenceless planet, before the team are actually abducted by aliens in ‘The Human Pets’: forced to win their freedom and a rapid rocket-ship (sphere actually) ride home…

The same team were responsible for both tales in issue #2. ‘The Traitorous Challenger’ is a disturbing monster mystery, with June returning to sabotage a mission in the Australian Outback for the very best of reasons. Then, ‘The Monster Maker’ finds the team seemingly helpless against super-criminal Roc who can conjure and animate solid objects out of his thoughts.

Issue #3 features ‘Secret of the Sorcerer’s Mirror’ with Roz Kirby & Marvin Stein again inking The King’s mesmerising pencils as the fantastic foursome pursue a band of criminals whose magic looking-glass can locate deadly ancient weapons. Undoubtedly, though, the most intriguing tale for fans and historians of the medium is ‘The Menace of the Invincible Challenger’, wherein team strongman Rocky is rocketed into space, only to crash back to Earth with strange, uncanny powers.

For years the obvious similarities of this group – especially this yarn – to the origin of Marvel’s Fantastic Four (#1 cover-dated November 1961) have fuelled fan speculation. In all honesty I simply don’t care. They’re similar but different enough, and equally enjoyable so read both. In fact, read them all.

With #4, the series became visually immaculate as the sheer brilliance of Wally Wood’s inking elevated illustration to unparalleled heights. The scintillant sheen and limpid depth of Woody’s brushwork fostered an abiding authenticity in even the most outrageous of Kirby’s designs and the result is – even now – simply breathtaking.

‘The Wizard of Time’ is a full-length masterpiece that opens with a series of bizarre robberies leading the team to a scientist with a time-machine. By visiting historical oracles, rogue researcher Darius Tiko has divined a path to the far future. When he gets there, he intends to rob it blind, but the Challengers find a way to follow and foil him…

‘The Riddle of the Star-Stone’ (#5) is a full-length contemporary thriller, wherein an archaeologist’s assistant uncovers an alien tablet bestowing various super-powers when different gems are inserted into it. The exotic locales and non-stop action are intoxicating, but Kirby’s solid characterisation and ingenious writing are what make this such a compelling read.

Scripter Dave Wood returned for #6’s first story. ‘Captives of the Space Circus’ sees the team shanghaied from Earth to perform in an interplanetary travelling carnival, before the evil ringmaster is promptly outfoxed and they return for France “Ed” Herron’s mystic saga ‘The Sorceress of Forbidden Valley’. Here, June becomes an amnesiac puppet in a power struggle between a fugitive gangster and a ruthless feudal potentate.

Issue #7 offers another daring double-feature: both scripted by Herron. First comes relatively straightforward alien-safari saga ‘The Beasts from Planet 9’, but it’s followed by a much more intriguing yarn. On the ‘Isle of No Return’, the “Challs” face a super-scientific bandit whose shrinking ray leaves them all mouse-sized….

Concluding Kirby-crafted issue #8 (July 1959) delivers a magnificent finale to a superb run as The King & Wally Wood go out in stunning style with a brace of gripping thrillers – both of which introduce menaces who would return to bedevil the team in future exploits.

Dave Wood, Kirby and the unrelated Wally Wood reveal ‘The Man Who Stole the Future’: introducing evil mastermind Drabny who steals mystic artefacts and conquers a small nation before the team dethrone him. However, although this is a tale of spectacular battles and uncharacteristic, if welcome, comedy, the real gem here is space opera tour-de-force ‘Prisoners of the Robot Planet!’ Written by Kirby (probably with Herron), it sees the human troubleshooters petitioned by a desperate alien, travelling to his distant world to liberate the organic population from bondage to their own robotic servants These have risen in revolt under the command of the fearsome autonomous automaton, Kra in a clear example of fiction foreshadowing fact. Do you know what your AIs do while you’re reading old comics…?

These are classic adventures, told in a classical manner. Kirby developed a brilliantly feasible concept with which to work and heroically archetypical characters. He then tapped into an astounding blend of genres to display their talents and courage in unforgettable exploits that informed and affected every team comic that followed – and absolutely informed his successive landmarks with Stan Lee.

But then Jack was gone…

The Challengers followed the Kirby model until cancellation in 1970, but due to a dispute with Editor Jack Schiff the writer/artist resigned at the height of his powers. The Kirby magic was impossible to match, but as with all The King’s creations, every element was in place for the successors to run with. Challengers of the Unknown #9 (September 1959) saw an increase in those fantasy elements favoured by Schiff, and perhaps an easing of the interpersonal tensions that marked previous issues (Comics Historians take another note: the Challs were bitching, bickering and barking at each other years before Marvel’s Cosmic Quartet ever boarded their fateful rocket-ship).

But that’s meat for another book and review…

Challengers of the Unknown is groundbreaking, wonderful and utterly timeless: sheer escapist thrills no fan of the medium should miss and perfect adventurers in the ideal setting of not-so-long-ago in a simpler, better galaxy than ours.
© 1957, 1958, 1959, 2003, 2017 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved

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Marvel Adventures Spider-Man: Peter Parker vs The X-Men


By Paul Tobin, Matteo Lolli, Ben Dewey, Christian Nauck, Terry Pallot & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4116-7 (Digest PB/Digital edition)

In 2003 the House of Ideas instituted a Marvel Age line: an imprint updating classic original tales and characters for a newer, younger readership. The enterprise was modified in 2005, with core titles reduced to Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four and Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man. The tone was very much that of the company’s burgeoning TV cartoon franchises, in delivery if not name.

Supplemental series including Super Heroes, The Avengers, Hulk and Iron Man chuntered along merrily until 2010 when they were cancelled. In their place came new volumes of Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes and Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man. Most of the re-imagined tales were collected in gleefully inviting digest-sized compilations and digitised like this torrid tome. It re-presents #58-61 – the final four stories – from February to May 2010, and all scripted throughout by Paul (No Romance in Hell, Plants vs Zombies) Tobin.

What You Need to Know: 16-year-old Peter Parker has been the mysterious Spider-Man for little more than six months. In that time, he has constantly prowled the streets and skyscrapers of New York, driven to fight injustice. However, as a kid just learning the ropes, he’s pretty much in over his head all the time.

The most persistent major hassle is the all-pervasive Torino crime-family, whose goombahs and street-thugs perpetually attack the wallcrawler on sight, spurred on by a $500,000 bounty on the kid’s web-covered head…

Peter’s civilian life is pretty complicated too, but of great help and constant comfort is High School classmate Sophia Sanduval – the extremely talented Chat – who can communicate with animals and knows Peter’s secret…

Following a handy introductory recap page, we open with him ‘Wanted’ (illustrated by Matteo Lolli & Terry Pallot) when the protracted vendetta against the Torinos is suddenly punctuated by wanted posters for the webslinger on every tree, fence and lamppost. During another brutal but pointless clash with the mobsters, the harassed hero is aided by a very capable masked woman in a red dress who introduces herself as the Blonde Phantom. She’s behind the find-Spidey posters but only because she wants to offer him a job with her Blonde Phantom Detective Agency…

Cautiously hearing her out, Spidey shares his strange and complex personal life with the sultry sleuth, telling her about Chat and how Gwen Watson claims to be going out on dates with his alter ego, something Peter adamantly denies. He doesn’t even have time for the girlfriend he’s got…

Gwen’s dad is Police Captain George Stacy – who also knows the boy’s secret and allows him to continue his vigilante antics. The senior cop acts as a mentor and sounding board, but has some very hard words concerning anyone taking money for doing good deeds. Peter kind-of agrees with him, but Aunt May is in desperate need of cash to repair the foundations of her house…

Conflicted Peter still hasn’t decided to meet up with Blonde Phantom, but as another band of Torinos jump them, the resulting battle reminds him that the last time he took money for being Spider-Man, Uncle Ben died…

The guilt-ridden kid sadly declines the glamorous gumshoe’s offer but is later astounded when Captain Stacy provides a welcome – and acceptably legitimate – financial solution to May’s money woes.

Blonde Phantom isn’t too disappointed either: she got Chat’s contact details out of Peter before they parted…

Pencilled by Ben Dewey, eponymous epic ‘Peter Parker vs. the X-Men’ finds the wallcrawler and Chat having an earnest heart-to-heart about their relationship – and Gwen’s persistent and insistent claims to still be going out on dates with Peter – when alarmed squirrels warn them that they are being spied on by a stranger with “three big fingers”. A rapid and thorough investigation results in nothing but a strange whiff of sulphur…

After they go their separate ways, the hero is again ambushed by Torinos, but one of them – later revealed as the grandson of The Family’s Big Boss Berto – helps him escape. George Stacy later warns him the increasingly impatient mobsters have finally hired some specialist help: engaging the services of super-assassin Bullseye – the Man who Never Misses…

Bewildered and extremely nervous our hero heads home only to find Wolverine spying on him. When the Arachnid attacks the clawed mutant he is assaulted by a whole squad of X-Men, and only after a frantic fray discovers they’ve come to offer help to a fellow mutant…

When he finally convinces them that he isn’t a Homo Superior kid, the embarrassed outsider heroes realise that mutant detector Cerebro must have been registering the girl he was with… the one who talks to pigeons and squirrels…

With pencils by Christian Nauck, ‘I’ve Got a Badge!’ focuses on the return of teenaged thief/mutant mindbender Silencer as Chat – now in training with the Blonde Phantom Detective Agency – explains to a baffled Peter that she can’t remember being his girlfriend, even though all her animal associates assure her it’s totally true.

Mysteries begin to unravel after Captain Stacy offers Spider-Man a Consultant position with the NYPD, asking him to help apprehend Silencer… who has been robbing the city blind.

Whilst searching for her and dreaming of a life where cops aren’t always after him, young Torino kid Carter takes an opportunity during one more gang hit to warn the wallcrawler Bullseye is after him…

Heading for Chat’s place, Peter finds Silencer in residence and calls in the cops, only to discover the bandit is actually his girlfriend’s BFF Emma Frost…

Choosing to help Emma escape, Peter sacrifices his chance for an easier life, and discovers to his dismay in the concluding chapter Emma is also behind all his romantic woes, meddling with both Gwen and Chat’s minds because she wants the webslinger for herself. Of course, the animals know what’s going on and when they tell Chat the fur – and webbing – flies…

Never the success the company hoped, Marvel Adventures was superseded in 2012 by specific comics tied to Disney XD television shows designated as “Marvel Universe cartoons”, but these collected stories remain an intriguing, amazingly entertaining and more accessible means of introducing the character and concepts to kids born two generations or more away from the originating events.

Fast-paced, enthralling and impressive, these Spidey super stories are intensely enjoyable yarns, although parents should note that some of the themes and certainly the violence might not be what everybody considers “All-Ages Super Hero Action” and might perhaps better suit older youngsters…
© 2009, 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Superman: The Silver Age Dailies volume 1 – 1959-1961


By Jerry Siegel, Curt Swan, Wayne Boring & Stan Kaye, with Otto Binder, Robert Bernstein & Jerry Coleman (IDW Publishing Library of American Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-6137-7666-7 (HB)

It’s indisputable that America’s comic book industry – if it existed at all – would be an utterly unrecognisable thing without Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster’s Superman. Their unprecedented invention was fervidly adopted by a desperate and joy-starved generation and quite literally gave birth to a genre if not an actual art form.

Spawning an impossible army of imitators and variations within three years of his 1938 debut, the intoxicating blend of eye-popping action and wish-fulfilment which epitomised the early Man of Steel grew to encompass cops-&-robbers crime-busting, socially reforming dramas, science fiction, fantasy, whimsical comedy and, once the war in Europe and the East dragged in America, patriotic relevance for a host of gods, heroes and monsters, all dedicated to profit through exuberant, eye-popping excess and vigorous dashing derring-do.

In comic book terms Superman was master of the world. Moreover, whilst transforming the shape of the fledgling funnybook industry, the Man of Tomorrow relentlessly expanded into all areas of the entertainment media.

Although we all think of the Cleveland boys’ iconic creation as epitome and acme of comic book creation, the truth is that very soon after his debut in Action Comics #1 Superman pretty much left mere funnybooks behind to become a fictional multimedia monolith in the same league as Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, and Mickey Mouse.

We parochial and possessive comics fans too often regard our purest and most powerful icons in purely graphic narrative terms, but the likes of Batman, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, X-Men, Avengers and Superman long ago outgrew their four-colour origins and are now fully mythologized modern media creatures instantly familiar in mass markets, platforms and age ranges.

Far more people have seen or heard the Man of Tomorrow than have ever read his comic books. The globally syndicated newspaper strips alone reached untold millions. By the time his 20th anniversary rolled around at the very start of what we know as the Silver Age of Comics, he had been a thrice-weekly radio serial regular, starred in a series of astounding animated cartoons, two chapter play serials, a movie and a novel by George Lowther.

He was a perennial success for toy, game, puzzle and apparel manufacturers and had just ended his first smash live-action television serial. In his immediate future even more shows, a stage musical, a franchise of blockbuster movies and an almost seamless succession of games, bubble gum cards and TV cartoons beginning with The New Adventures of Superman in 1966 and continuing ever since.

Even superdog Krypto got in on the small-screen act…

Although pretty much a spent force these days, for the majority of the last century the newspaper comic strip was the Holy Grail that all American cartoonists and graphic narrative storytellers hungered for. Syndicated across the country – and planet – with millions of avid readers and generally accepted as a more mature and sophisticated form of literature than comic books. It also paid better.

Rightly so: some of the most enduring and entertaining characters and concepts of all time were created to lure readers from one particular paper to another and many of them grew to be part of a global culture. Mutt and Jeff, Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, Buck Rogers, Charlie Brown and so many more escaped humble newsprint origins to become meta-real: existing in the minds of earthlings from Albuquerque to Zanzibar.

Most still do…

So it was always something of a risky double-edged sword when a comic book character became so popular that they swam against the tide (after all, weren’t the funnybooks invented just to reprint the strips in cheap accessible form?) to become a genuinely mass-entertainment syndicated serial strip.

Superman was the first original comic book character to make that leap – almost as soon as he was created – but only a few have ever successfully followed. Wonder Woman (briefly), Batman (eventually), DC’s aviator Hop Harrigan and groundbreaking teen icon Archie made the jump in the 1940s and only a handful like Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian have done so since.

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

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

In 1956, Julie Schwartz opened the Silver Age with a new Flash in Showcase #4. Soon costumed crusaders were returning en masse to thrill a new generation. As the trend grew, many companies experimented with the mystery man tradition and the Superman newspaper strip began to slowly adapt: drawing closer to the revolution on the comic book pages.

As the Jet and Atomic Ages gave way to the Space-Age, the Last Son of Krypton was a vibrant yet comfortably familiar icon of domestic modern America: particularly in the constantly evolving, ever-more dramatic and imaginative comic book stories which had received such a terrific creative boost as super heroes began to proliferate once more. Since 1954, and thanks to television, the franchise had been cautiously expanding. In 1959, the Caped Kryptonian could be seen not only in Golden Age survivors Action Comics, Superman, Adventure Comics, World’s Finest Comics and Superboy, but now also in Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen, Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane and soon Justice League of America. Such increased attention naturally filtered through to the more widely seen newspaper strip and resulted in a rather strange and commercially sound evolution…

After author/educator Tom De Haven’s impassioned Foreword, Sidney Friedfertig’s Introduction explains how and why Jerry Siegel was tasked with turning recently published comic book tales into daily continuities for an apparently more sophisticated and discerning newspaper readership. This meant major rewrites, frequently plot and tone changes and, in some cases, merging two stories into one.

If you’re a comic book fan, don’t be fooled: these stories are not mere rehashes, but variations on an idea for an audience perceived as completely separate from kids’ funnybooks. Even if you are familiar with the source material, the adventures gathered here will read as brand new, especially as they are gloriously illustrated by Curt Swan – and latterly Wayne Boring – at the very peak of their artistic powers.

As an added bonus the covers of the issues those adapted stories came from have been added as a full nostalgia-inducing full-colour gallery…

The astounding everyday entertainment commences with Episode #107 from April 6th to July 11th 1959. ‘Earth’s Super-Idiot!’ by Siegel, Swan & Stan Kaye is a mostly original story that borrows heavily from the author’s own ‘The Trio of Steel’ (Superman #135, February 1960, where it was drawn by Al Plastino). It details the tricks of an unscrupulous super-scientific telepathic alien producer of “Realies” who blackmails the Action Ace into making a fool and villain of himself for extraterrestrial viewers. If the hero doesn’t comply – acting the goat, performing spectacular stunts and torturing his friends – Earth will suffer the consequences…

After eventually getting the better of the UFO sleaze-bag, our hero returns to Earth with a bump and encounters ‘The Ugly Superman’ (July 13th – September 5th). First seen in Lois Lane #8 April 1959, where it was written by Robert Bernstein and illustrated by Kurt Schaffenberger, here eternal spinster Lois agrees to marry a brutish wrestler, and the Man of Tomorrow, for the most spurious of reasons, acts to foil her plans…

Episode #109 ran from September 7th to October 28th 1959, with Superman reluctantly agreeing to make a dying billionaire laugh in return for the miserable misanthrope signing over his entire fortune to charity.

Some of the apparently odd timing discrepancies in publication dates can be explained by the fact that submitted comic book stories often appeared months after they were completed, so their version of Siegel’s ‘The Super-Clown of Metropolis’ didn’t get published until Superman #136 (April 1960) where Plastino took the art in completely different directions…

‘Captive of the Amazons’ – October 29th 1959 to February 6th 1960 – merges two funnybook adventures both originally limned by Boring & Kaye. The eponymous equivalent from Action #266 (Jul 1960) was augmented by Bernstein’s ‘When Superman Lost His Powers’ (Action Comics #262) detailing how super-powered alien queen Jena came to Earth intent on making Superman her husband. On his refused she removed his Kryptonian abilities, subsequently trapping now merely mortal Clark Kent with other Daily Planet staff in a lost valley of monsters where Lois’ suspicions are again aroused…

Episode #111 ran from 8th February to 6th April. ‘The Superman of the Future’ originated in Action #256 (September 1959, by Otto Binder, Swan & Kaye). Both versions seemingly see Superman swap places with a hyper-evolved descendent intent on preventing four catastrophic historical disasters, but the incredible events are actually part of a devious hoax…

Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #10 (July 1959 by Siegel & Schaffenberger) offered up a comedy interlude as ‘The Cry-Baby of Metropolis’ (April 7th – May 28th) sees Lois terrified of losing her looks and exposing herself to a youth ray. Rapidly regenerating into an infant, she provokes much amusement in arch-rival Lana Lang… and that cad Superman…

Episode #113 May 30th – July 2nd features ‘The Super-Servant of Crime’ (Bernstein, from Superman #130, July 1959) as our hero outsmarts a petty crook who has bamboozled the Action Ace into granting him five wishes. Thereafter, ‘The Super-Sword’ (4th July to August 13th and originally by Jerry Coleman & Plastino for Superman #124, September 1958) pits the Kryptonian Crimebuster against an ancient knight with a magic blade that can penetrate his invulnerable skin. Once more, however, all is not as it seems…

Siegel, Boring & Kaye’s comic book classic ‘Superman’s Return to Krypton’ (in Superman #141, November 1960) was first seen in daily instalments from August 15th to November 12th 1960. There it told a subtly different tale of epic love lost as an accident marooned the adoptive Earth hero in the past on his doomed home-world. Reconciled to dying there with his people, Kal-El befriended his own parents and found love with his ideal soul-mate Lyla Lerrol, only to be torn from her side and returned to Earth against his will in a cruel twist of fate.

The strip version here is one of Swan’s most beautiful art jobs ever and, although the comic book saga was a fan favourite for decades thereafter, the restoration of this more mature interpretation might have some rethinking their opinion…

Wayne Boring once more became the premiere Superman strip illustrator with Episode #116 (November 14th – December 31st), reprising his & Siegel’s work on ‘The Lady and the Lion’ from Action #243 (August 1958), wherein the Metropolis Marvel is transformed into an inhuman beast by a Kryptonian exile the ancients called Circe…

Siegel then adapted Bernstein’s ‘The Great Superman Hoax’ and Boring & Kaye redrew their artwork for the episode (January 2nd – February 4th, 1961) from Superman #143 (February 1961). Here, a cunning criminal tries to convince Lois and Clark that he’s actually the Man of Might, blissfully unaware of who he’s failing to fool.

February 6th to March 4th has Superman using brains as well as brawn to thwart an alien invasion in ‘The Duel for Earth’ – originally appearing as a Superboy story in Adventure Comics #277 (October 1960) by Siegel & George Papp.

Superman #114 (July 1957) and scripter Otto Binder provided Siegel with the raw material for a deliciously wry and topical tax-time tale ‘Superman’s Billion-Dollar Debt’ – March 6th to April 8th – wherein an ambitious IRS agent presents the Man of Steel with a bill for unpaid back-taxes, whilst Episode #120 (April 10th – May 13th) introduces ‘The Great Mento’ (from Bernstein & Plastino’s yarn in Superman #147, August 1961): a tawdry showbiz masked mind-reader who blackmails the hero by threatening to expose his precious secret identity…

The final two stories in this premiere collection both come from Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane – issues #24, April and #26, July respectively – both originally crafted by Bernstein & Schaffenberger.

In ‘The Perfect Husband’ (15th May to July 1st) – begun and ended by Boring but with Swan pinch-hitting for 2 weeks in the middle – Lois’ sister Lucy tricks the journalist into going on a TV dating show. Here she meets her ideal man: a millionaire sportsman and war hero who looks just like Clark Kent…

Then ‘The Mad Woman of Metropolis’ sees Lois driven to the edge of sanity by a vengeance-hungry killer: a rare chance to see the reporter and butt of so many shameless male gags show her true mettle by solving a case without the Man of Tomorrow’s avuncular, so-often patronising assistance…

Superman: – The Silver Age Dailies 1959-1961 was the first in a series of huge (305 x 236mm) lavish, high-end hardback collections (frustratingly still not available in digital editions!) starring the Man of Steel and a welcome addition to the superb commemorative series of Library of American Comics which has preserved and re-presented in luxurious splendour such landmark strips as Li’l Abner, Tarzan, Little Orphan Annie, Terry and the Pirates, Bringing Up Father, Rip Kirby, Polly and her Pals and many of the abovementioned cartoon icons.

If you love the era, these stories are great comics reading, and this is a book you simply must have.
Superman ™ & © 2013 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Showcase Presents Superman volume 3


By Otto Binder, Jerry Siegel, Robert Bernstein, Bill Finger, Jerry Coleman, Edmond Hamilton, Leo Dorfman, Jack Schiff, Wayne Boring, Al Plastino, Curt Swan, Kurt Schaffenberger, Jim Mooney, George Papp, Sheldon Moldoff & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1271-1 (TPB)

Superman has proven to be all things to all fans over his decades of existence, and with the character currently undergoing another radical overhaul, these timeless tales of charm, joy and wholesome wit are more necessary than ever: not just as a reminder of great tales of the past but as an all-ages primer of the wonders still to come…

At the time these tales were published The Metropolis Marvel was enjoying revived interest. Television cartoons, a rampant merchandising wave thanks to the Batman-led boom in “camp” Superheroes generally, highly efficient global licensing and even a Broadway musical: all worked to keep the Last Son of Krypton a vibrant icon of Space-Age America.

Although we think of Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster’s iconic invention as the epitome of comic book creation, in truth soon after his launch in Action Comics #1 he became a multimedia star and far more people have enjoyed the Man of Steel than have ever read him. By the time his 20th anniversary rolled around, Superman was a regular on radio, astounding animated cartoons, two movie chapter-plays and a feature film, and had just ended his first smash-hit live-action television serial. In his future were many more; a stage musical; a franchise of cinematic blockbusters and a seamless succession of TV cartoons, starting with The New Adventures of Superman in 1966. Even Krypto got in on the small-screen act…

It’s no wonder then that tales from this Silver Age period should be so draped in wholesome trappings of “Tinseltown” – even more so than most of celebrity-obsessed America. It didn’t hurt that editor Whitney Ellsworth was a part-time screenwriter, script editor and producer as well as National/DC’s Hollywood point man. His publishing assistant Mort Weisinger – a key factor in the vast expansion of the Kryptonian mythos – also had strong ties to the cinema and television industries, beginning in 1955 when he became story-editor for the blockbusting Adventures of Superman TV show.

This third magnificent monochrome chronicle collects the contents of Action Comics #276-292, Superman #146-156 and excerpts from Superman Annuals #3-5, spanning May 1961 to October 1962; taking its content from the early 1960’s canon (when the book’s target audience would have been actual little kids) yet showcasing a rather more sophisticated set of tales than you might expect…

Wide-eyed wonderment commences with Action Comics #276’s ‘The War Between Supergirl and the Superman Emergency Squad’ by Robert Bernstein, Wayne Boring & Stan Kaye. Here, Superman is conned into revealing his secret identity and resorts to incredible measures to make a swindler disbelieve his eyes, after which #277 presented ‘The Conquest of Superman!’ (Bill Finger, Curt Swan & John Forte): another brilliantly brutal duel against super-scientist Lex Luthor.

Superman #146 (July 1961) offered ‘The Story of Superman’s Life’ relating more secrets by recapitulating Clark Kent’s early days in a captivating resumé. Covering all the basics, Otto Binder & Al Plastino share the death of Krypton, rocket-ride to Earth, early life as Superboy, death of the Kents and moving to Metropolis. Closing, ‘Superman’s Greatest Feats’ (Jerry Siegel & Plastino) sees the Man of Tomorrow travel into Earth’s past and seemingly succeed in preventing such tragedies as the sinking of Atlantis, slaughter of Christians in Imperial Rome, deaths of Nathan Hale, Abraham Lincoln and Custer and even the death of Krypton’s population. Of course it is too good to be true…

Action #278 featured ‘The Super Powers of Perry White!’ (Jerry Coleman, Swan & Kaye) with the senescent editor suddenly gaining superpowers and an inexplicable urge to conquer the world. In Superman #147 ‘The Great Mento!’ – Bernstein & Plastino – a mystery mind-reader threatens to expose the hero’s secret identity. ‘Krypto Battles Titano’ (Siegel & Plastino) finds the wandering Dog of Steel voyaging back to the Age of Dinosaurs to play before inadvertently saving humanity from alien invasion alongside the Kryptonite-mutated giant ape. The issue closed with ‘The Legion of Super Villains’ (Siegel, Swan & Sheldon Moldoff): a landmark adventure and stand-out thriller featuring Lex Luthor and the adult Legion of Super-Heroes overcoming certain death with valour and ingenuity.

This was followed by Swan’s iconic cover for Superman Annual #3 (August 1961); the uncredited picture-feature Secrets of the Fortress of Solitude and a superb back-cover pin-up.

The author of Action #279’s Imaginary Story ‘The Super Rivals’ is regrettably unknown but John Forte’s sleekly comfortable art happily limns the wild occurrence of legendary heroes Samson and Hercules brought to the 20th century by Superman to marry Lois Lane and Lana Lang, to keep them out of his hair! In #280 ‘Brainiac’s Super Revenge’ (Siegel, Swan & Kaye) returns that time-lost villain to our era and attacking the Man of Steel’s friends, only to be foiled by guest-star Congorilla (veteran Action Comics hero Congo Bill, who traded consciousness with a giant Golden Gorilla). Imaginary Stories were conceived as a way of exploring non-continuity plots and scenarios devised at a time when editors believed that entertainment trumped consistency and knew that every comic read was somebody’s first…

When Editor Weisinger was expanding Superman continuity and building a legend, he knew each new tale was an event adding to a nigh-sacred canon: that what was written and drawn mattered to readers. However, the ideas man wasn’t going to let aggregated “history” stifle a good plot situation, nor would he allow his eager yet sophisticated audience to endure clichéd deus ex machina cop-outs to mar the sheer enjoyment of captivating concepts. The mantra known to every fan was “Not a Dream! Not a Hoax! Not a Robot!”: emblazoned on covers depicting scenes that couldn’t possibly be true – even if it was only a comic book.

Superman #148 opened with Edmond Hamilton, Swan & Moldoff’s  ‘The 20th Century Achilles’, wherein a cunning crook makes himself immune to harm, after which ‘Mr. Mxyzptlk’s Super Mischief’ (Siegel, Swan & Moldoff) again finds the 5th dimensional pest using magic to cause irritation after legally changing his name to something even easier to pronounce, whilst the delightfully devilish ‘Superman Owes a Billion Dollars!’ – written by Bernstein – depicts the Caped Kryptonian’s greatest foe: a Revenue agent who diligently discovers that the hero has never paid a penny of tax in his life…

Action Comics #281 features ‘The Man Who Saved Kal-El’s Life!’ (Bernstein & Plastino), relating how a humble Earth scientist visited Krypton and cured baby Superman, all wrapped up in a gripping duel with a modern crook able to avoid Superman’s every effort to hold him, whilst in Superman #149, ‘Lex Luthor, Hero!’, ‘Luthor’s Super-Bodyguard’ and ‘The Death of Superman’ (Siegel, Swan & Moldoff) form a brilliant extended Imaginary saga describing the insidious inventor’s ultimate victory over the Man of Steel.

In “real” continuity, Action #282 shares ‘Superman’s Toughest Day’ (Finger & Plastino) as Clark Kent’s vacation only reveals how his alter ego never really takes it easy, before #283’s ‘The Red Kryptonite Menace’ (Bernstein, Swan & Kaye) follows Chameleon Men from the 30th century afflicting the Action Ace with incredible new powers and disabilities after exposing him to a variety of Crimson K chunks.

Superman #150 opened with ‘The One Minute of Doom’ – Siegel & Plastino – disclosing how all survivors of Krypton – even Superdog – commemorate the planet’s destruction, before Bernstein & Kurt Schaffenberger’s ‘The Duel over Superman’ finally sees Lois and Lana Lang teach the patronising Man of Tomorrow a deserved lesson about his smug masculine complacency.

Siegel, Swan & Kaye then baffle readers and Action Ace alike ‘When the World Forgot Superman’, in a clever and beguiling mystery yarn, followed here by extracts from Superman Annual #4 (January 1962): the stunning cover and featurette The Origin and Powers of the Legion of Super-Heroes by Swan & George Klein.

Action #284 featured ‘The Babe of Steel’ (Bernstein, Swan & Klein) wherein Superman endures humiliation and frustration after deliberately turning himself into a toddler – but there’s a deadly serious purpose to the temporary transformation…

Superman #151 opens with Siegel & Plastino’s salutary story ‘The Three Tough Teen-Agers!’ wherein the hero sets a trio of delinquents back on the right path, after which Bernstein, Swan & Klein’s ‘The Man Who Trained Supermen’ sees Clark expose a crooked sports trainer. ‘Superman’s Greatest Secret!’ is almost revealed after battling a fire-breathing dragon which survived Krypton’s doom in a stirring tale by Siegel, Swan & Klein: probably one of the best secret-identity-saving stories of the period…

Since landing on Earth, Supergirl’s existence had been a closely guarded secret, allowing her time to master her formidable abilities. These tales were presented to the readership monthly as a back-up feature in Action Comics. However with #285, ‘The World’s Greatest Heroine!’ finally goes public in the Superman lead spot, after which the Girl of Steel defeats ‘The Infinite Monster’ in her own strip. Supergirl became the darling of the universe: openly saving the planet and finally getting credit for it in stirring tales by Siegel & Jim Mooney.

Action #286 offered mini-epic ‘The Jury of Super-Enemies’ (Bernstein, Swan & Klein) as the Superman Revenge Squad inflicts Red K hallucinations on the Man of Steel: tormenting him with visions of Luthor, Brainiac, the Legion of Super-Villains and other evil adversaries. The saga continued in the next issue, but before that Superman #152 appeared, with a surprising battle against ‘The Robot Master’ (Siegel, Swan & Klein), charmingly outrageous romp ‘Superbaby Captures the Pumpkin Gang!’ (Leo Dorfman & George Papp) and ‘The TV Trap for Superman!’, a devious crime caper by Finger & Plastino with the hero unwittingly wired for sound and vision by a sneaky conman…

The Revenge Squad thriller concluded in #287’s ‘Perry White’s Manhunt for Superman!’ (Bernstein, Swan & Klein) as an increasingly deluded Man of Tomorrow battles his worst nightmares and struggles to save Earth from a genuine alien invasion.

Finger & Plastino’s ‘The Day Superman Broke the Law!’ opened Superman #153, as a wily embezzler entangles the Metropolis Marvel in small-town red tape before ‘The Secret of the Superman Stamp’ (Edmond Hamilton, Swan & Klein) sees a proposed honour for good works turned into a serious threat to the hero’s secret identity…

‘The Town of Supermen’ by Siegel & Forte, then finds the Man of Tomorrow in a western ghost town in a deadly showdown against ten Kryptonian criminals freshly escaped from the Phantom Zone…

The growing power of the silver screen informed ‘The Man Who Exposed Superman’ (Action #288 by writer unknown and Swan & Klein) as a vengeful convict originally imprisoned by Superboy attempts to expose the hero’s identity by blackmailing him on live television. ‘The Super-Practical Joker!’ (#289 by Dorfman & Plastino) sees Perry White forced to hire obnoxious trust-fund brat Dexter Willis: a spoiled kid whose obsessive stunts almost expose Superman’s day job.

Opening Superman #154, Hamilton, Swan & Klein’s ‘The Underwater Pranks of Mr. Mxyzptlk’ see the insane sprite return, resolved to cause grief and stay for good by only working his jests whilst submerged, after which ‘Krypton’s First Superman’ (Siegel, Swan & Klein) tells a lost tale of baby Kal-El on there that has unsuspected psychological effects on the full-grown hero. Next comes an example of the many public service announcements running in all DC’s 1960’s titles. ‘Superman Says be a Good Citizen’ was probably written by Jack Schiff and definitely illustrated by Sheldon Moldoff.

Exposure to a Red Kryptonite comet in Action #290 sees him become ‘Half a Superman!’ in another sadly uncredited story illustrated by Swan & Klein, after which Superman Annual #5 (July 1962) offers another stunning cover and displays the planetary Flag of Krypton, whilst Superman #155 featured  2-chapter ‘Superman Under the Green Sun’ and ‘The Blind Superman’ by Finger, Wayne Boring & Kaye, as the Man of Steel is trapped on a totalitarian world where his powers don’t work. Blinded as part of the dictator’s policy to keep the populace helpless, even sightless, nothing stops the hero from leading the people to victory. As if that wasn’t enough Siegel, Swan & Klein then debut showbiz thriller ‘The Downfall of Superman!’ with a famous wrestler seemingly able to defeat the Action Ace – albeit with a little help from some astounding guest-stars…

‘The New Superman!’ (Bernstein & Plastino, Action #291) sees the Metropolis Marvel lose his deadly susceptibility to Kryptonite, only to have it replaced by aversions to far more commonplace minerals, whilst #292 reveals ‘When Superman Defended his Arch Enemy!’ – an anonymous thriller illustrated by Plastino – which has the hero save Luthor from his just deserts after “murdering” alien robots…

The grand excursion into comics nostalgia ends with one of the greatest Superman stories of the decade. Issue #156, October 1962, featured Hamilton, Swan & Klein’s novel-length saga ‘The Last Days of Superman’ which began with ‘Superman’s Death Sentence’ as the hero contracts deadly Kryptonian Virus X and goes into a swift and painful decline. Confined to an isolation booth, he’s visited by ‘The Super-Comrades of All Times!’ who attempt cures and swear to carry on his works… until a last-minute solution is disclosed on ‘Superman’s Last Day of Life!’ This tense and terrifying thriller employed the entire vast and extended supporting cast that had evolved around the most popular comic book character in the world and still enthrals and excites in a way few stories ever have…

As well as containing some of the most delightful episodes of pre angst-drenched, cosmically catastrophic DC, these fun, thrilling, mind-boggling and yes, occasionally deeply moving all-ages stories also perfectly depict the changing mores and tastes which reshaped comics between the safely anodyne 1950s to the seditious, rebellious 1970s, all the while keeping to the prime directive of the industry: “keep them entertained and keep them wanting more”.

I know I certainly do.
© 1961, 1962, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Showcase Presents Legion of Super-Heroes volume 4


By James Shooter, E. Nelson Bridwell, Cary Bates, Curt Swan, George Papp, J. Winslow Mortimer, George Tuska, Dave Cockrum, Murphy Anderson, Mike Esposito, Vince Colletta & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2185-0 (TPB)

Once upon a time, a thousand years from now, a band of super-powered kids from a multitude of worlds took inspiration from the greatest legend of all time and formed a club of heroes. One day those Children of Tomorrow came back in time and invited their inspiration to join them…

Thus began the vast and epic saga of the Legion of Super-Heroes, as initially envisioned by writer Otto Binder & artist Al Plastino when the many-handed mob of juvenile universe-savers debuted in Adventure Comics #247 (April 1958) just as the revived superhero genre was gathering an inexorable head of steam in America. Since that time the fortunes and popularity of the Legion have perpetually waxed and waned, with their future history tweaked and rebooted, retconned and overwritten over and over again to comply with editorial diktat and popular fashion.

This drama-drenched fourth monochrome compendium gathers a chronological parade of futuristic delights from June 1968 to September 1970, originally seen in Adventure Comics #369-380 and the reprint issue #403, plus back-up tales from Action Comics #378-392 – a time when the superhero genre again dipped in popularity. Also included in this enchanting tome are the tentative first forays of the team’s slow revival as an alternating back-up feature in Superboy, via game-changing exploits from #172-173, 176, 183-184, 188 190 and 191, collectively covering March 1971 to October 1972.

During this period the youthful, generally fun-loving and carefree Club of Champions peaked; having only just evolved into a dedicated and driven dramatic action series starring a grittily realistic combat force in constant, galaxy-threatening peril. Although now an overwhelming force of valiant warriors ready and willing to pay the ultimate price for their courage and dedication, science itself, science fiction and costumed crusaders all increasingly struggled against a global resurgence in spiritual questioning and supernatural fiction…

The main architect of the transformation was teenaged sensation Jim Shooter, whose scripts and layouts (generally finished and pencilled by the astoundingly talented and understated Curt Swan) made the series accessible to a generation of fans growing up with their heads in the Future but as the fashions shifted, the series was unceremoniously ousted from its ancestral home and full-length adventures to become a truncated back-up feature in Action Comics. Typically, that shift occurred just as the stories were getting really, really good and truly mature…

Crafted by Shooter, Swan & Jack Abel, tense suspense blooms with ‘Mordru the Merciless!’ (Adventure Comics #369) when the Legion is attacked by their most powerful enemy: a nigh-omnipotent sorcerer the entire assemblage had only narrowly defeated once before.

A sneak attack shatters the whole team and only four escape, using a time-bubble to flee to the remote, archaic era where Superboy lived. With him come Mon-El, Shadow Lass and Duo Damsel, last remnants of a once-unbeatable force.

Mordru’s magic is stronger though and even the time-barrier cannot daunt him. Disguised as mere mortals, the fugitive Legionnaires’ courage shines through in exile as petty gangsters take over Smallville. The teens quashed the parochial plunderers and then opt to return to the 30th century and confront Mordru, only to discover he’s found them first…

The saga concluded in #370’s ‘The Devil’s Jury!’ wherein the band again break free to hide in plain sight by temporarily wiping their own memories to thwart the Dark Lord’s probes. Against appalling odds and with only Clark Kent’s best friend Pete Ross and Insect Queen Lana Lang to aid them, the heroes’ doomed last stand implausibly succeeds when Mordru’s overbearing arrogance causes his own downfall.

Then when the exhausted fugitives get back to the future they joyously discover that Dream Girl and benign sorceress White Witch had undone the deluded Dark Lord’s worst…

Extortion and espionage were the order of the day in #371’s ‘The Colossal Failure!’ as a Legionnaire’s parents are abducted and the hero is forced to botch missions. Ordered to retrain at the high security Legion Academy, Colossal Boy is subsequently caught selling the team’s training secrets and cashiered from the organisation…

This issue also offered the George Papp illustrated ‘When Superboy Walked Out on the Legion!’, wherein hyper-advanced super snobbish aliens threaten Smallville unless Superboy leaves Earth to join their band of press-ganged heroes. It requires ingenuity, a faux civil war and massive destruction to finally convince the alien autocrats to let the assembled champions return to their own home-worlds…

Colossal Boy’s tale of woe concluded in Adventure #372 when his concerned former comrades uncover the cause of the expelled giant’s dilemma, tracking him to a ‘School for Super-Villains!’ (Shooter, Swan & Abel), where the fallen hero is compelled to teach meta-powered man rogues all the LSH’s secrets.

Luckily – and thanks to the expedited induction of apprentice and ergo unknown heroes Timber Wolf and Chemical King – the good guys infiltrate and shut down this first incarnation of the Legion of Super-Villains.

From #373 onwards Golden Age veteran J. Winslow Mortimer replaced Swan as penciller and ‘The Tornado Twins!’ Don and Dawn Allen run rings around and generally humiliate the assembled heroes… but all for a very good cause, before ‘Mission: Diabolical!’ in #374 focusses on the future equivalent of organised crime after most Legionnaires are ambushed and held hostage by the insidious Scorpius gang.

Hard-pressed by rival outfit Taurus, the mobsters decided to “recruit” a team of heroes to equal their enemies’ squad of hyper-powered goons; Rogarth, Mystelor, Shagrek, Quanto and Black Mace. Of course, after infiltrating and defeating their foes, the compromised kids – Supergirl, Element Lad, Dream Girl, Ultra Boy and Matter-Eater Lad – are double-crossed by Scorpius and might have died if not for fortuitous intervention by the Legion of Substitute Heroes…

Next (#375-376) comes a powerful and devious 2-part thriller introducing galaxy-roving heroes The Wanderers, with that temporarily-insane-and-evil group battling the United Planets’ champions. They are far more concerned with determining who will be crowned ‘The King of the Legion!’ …

The matter is only relevant because a trans-dimensional challenger has demanded a duel with the “mightiest Legionnaire”, but when the dust settles the only hero left standing is chubby comic relief Bouncing Boy. When the triumphant winner is spirited away to another cosmos he lands in a feudal wonderland – complete with beautiful princess – menaced by a terrifying invader.

Sadly the hero is soon exposed as shape-shifting Durlan Legionnaire Reep Daggle and not the at-least-human Chuck Taine, but manfully overcomes his abductors’ initial prejudice and defeats usurper threat Kodar. He wins the heart and hand of Princess Elwinda, but is tragically rescued and whisked back across a permanently sealed dimensional barrier by his legion buddies who mistake a Royal Wedding for ‘The Execution of Chameleon Boy!’

A welcome edge of dark and bitter cynicism was creeping into Shooter’s stories, and ‘Heroes for Hire!’ (pencilled by Mortimer & inked by Jack Abel) sees the team charging for their unique services, but it’s only a brilliant ploy to derail the criminal career of Modulus: avatar of sentient living planet Modo who has turned his world into an unassailable haven for the worst villains of the galaxy…

Adventure #378 opens another tense and moving 2-parter as Superboy, Duo Damsel, Karate Kid, Princess Projectra and Brainiac 5 are poisoned and face only ‘Twelve Hours to Live!’

With no cure possible, the quintet separate to spend their last day in the most personally satisfying ways they can – from sharing precious moments with soon-to-be bereaved family to K-Kid’s one-man assault on the Fatal Five – only to reunite for their final moments and die together…

The incredible conclusion sees hyper-advanced being Seeron freeze time and offer to cure the practically dead victims if late arrivals Ultra Boy, Phantom Girl, Chameleon Boy, Timber Wolf, Star Boy, Lightning Lad and Chemical King return to his universe and defeat an invasion by brutes invulnerable to the mighty mental powers of the intellectual overlords…

However, even as the abducted Legionnaires triumph and return, their comrades – having been had been found again – are afforded the honour of ‘Burial in Space!’ …

Happily, a brilliant last-minute solution enables the dead to rise just in time to lose their long-held position in Adventure Comics as changing tastes and shrinking sales prompted an abrupt change of venue.

‘The Legion’s Space Odyssey!’ (# 380 cover-dated May 1969, by Shooter, Mortimer & Abel) sees a select band of Legionnaires teleported to the barren ends of the universe and forced to laboriously battle their way home against impossible odds. This argosy includes the “death” of Superboy and persistent sabotage by the Legion of Super-Pets. There’s a perfectly rational and reasonable excuse for the devious scheme of course, with the tale best remembered by fans as the mission on which Duo Damsel and Bouncing Boy first got together…

From #381 onwards Adventure Comics was filled with the 20th century exploits of Supergirl and the LSH took over her back-up spot in Action Comics, beginning with a reprint in #377 which is not included here.

Original, shorter Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes began in #378 (July 1969) with ‘The Forbidden Fruit!’ by Shooter, Mortimer & Mike Esposito with Timber Wolf deliberately addicted by criminals to a hyper-narcotic lotus in a bold scheme to turn the entire team into pliable junkies. Fortunately, the hero’s love for Light Lass allows him to overcome his awful burden, before #379’s ‘One of us is an Impostor’ (E. Nelson Bridwell, Mortimer & Murphy Anderson) offers a clever mystery to baffle Mon-El, Dream Girl, Element Lad, Shadow Lass and Lightning Lad as thermal thug Sunburst and a clever infiltrator threaten to tear the team apart from within.

Duo Damsel declares war on herself in #380 when one body falls under the sway of an alien Superboy. As half of her turns to crime, only Bouncing Boy can clean up the psychological mess of ‘Half a Legionnaire?’ (Shooter, Mortimer & Abel), after which Matter-Eater Lad reveals lowly origins and a dysfunctional family to lonely Shrinking Violet in #381: ending up ‘The Hapless Hero!’ battling her absurdly jealous absentee boyfriend Duplicate Boy -mightiest hero in the universe…

In #382 a covert team comprising Ultra Boy, Karate Kid, Light Lass, Violet and Timber Wolf attempt to end a potential super-robot arms-race and find that to succeed they have to ‘Kill a Friend to Save a World!’, before still-heartbroken Durlan Reep discovers an Earthly double of lost love Elwinda. However, on morphing into her ideal man he quickly sees the folly of ‘Chameleon Boy’s Secret Identity!’ – a tear-jerker with a hint of happy ending from Bridwell, Mortimer & Abel.

Shooter left his perfect job with #384, but signed off in style with his landmark ‘Lament for a Legionnaire!’ With art misattributed to Mortimer but in fact a welcome fill-in by Curt Swan & Abel, it tells how Dream Girl’s infallible prophecy of Mon-El’s demise comes true whilst his shocking resurrection introduces a whole new thrilling strand to the Lore of the Legion.

Bridwell, Mortimer & Abel show how a vengeance-crazed killer’s quest for retribution fails in ‘The Fallen Starboy!’ before crafting ‘Zap Goes the Legion!’ (Action #386) wherein female foe Uli Algor believes she has outthought and outfought the juvenile agents of justice. She forgot one crucial detail, however…

Then in #387 the creators delightfully added a touch of wry social commentary when the organisation had to downsize and lay off a Legionnaire for tax purposes after the government declares the team has ‘One Hero Too Many!’

Action #388 was an all-reprint Supergirl giant, but the now revenue-compliant Club of Heroes returned in #389 with ‘The Mystery Legionnaire!’ (by Cary Bates, Mortimer & Abel), explaining how robot dictator Klim is defeated by a hero who doesn’t exist, and Bridwell’s ‘The Tyrant and the Traitor’ (#390) reflects political turmoil of the 1970’s in a tale of guerrilla atrocity, destabilising civil war and covert regime change. The Legion Espionage Squad is tasked with doing dirty work, but even Chameleon Boy, Timber Wolf, Karate Kid, Brainiac 5 and Saturn Girl are out of their depth and only ‘The Ordeal of Element Lad!’ in the next issue saves the undercover unit from ignominious failure and certain death.

Action #392 (September 1970) temporarily ended the feature’s unbroken run with a low-key but gripping yarn from Bates, Mortimer & Abel including alternate dimensions and preposterous testing of ‘The Legionnaires that Never Were!’…

The Frantic Futurists weren’t gone too long. In 1971 a concerted push to revive them began with March-dated Superboy # 172 and ‘Brotherly Hate!’ by Bridwell & George Tuska. The sharp, smart yarn details the convoluted origins of twins Garth and Ayla Ranzz AKA Lightning Lad & Light Lass and their troubled relationship with older brother Mekt – the deadly outlaw Lightning Lord.

At the same time Adventure Comics #403 (April 1971) was released: an all-Legion reprint special which included new ‘Fashions from Fans’ by Bridwell, Ross Andru & Esposito as well as a comprehensive ‘Diagram of Legion Headquarters Complex’, included here for your delight and delectation…

Some of those fan-costumes – generally the skimpier ones designed by boys for the girl heroes – were adopted for ongoing backups appearing in Superboy. They continued the comeback with ‘Trust Me or Kill Me!’ (#173 by Bates & Tuska). Here, Superboy must devise a way to determine which Cosmic Boy is his true friend and which a magical duplicate made by malefic Mordru.

The origin of Invisible Kid and secrets of his powers are examined in #176 when a crook duplicates the boy genius’ fadeaway gifts in ‘Invisible Invader!’, whilst Bates, Tuska & Vince Colletta report on the ‘War of the Wraith-Mates!’ (#183) with energy entities renewing an eons-old war of the sexes after possessing Mon-El, Shadow Lass, Karate Kid and Princess Projectra.

In a tale by Bates. Superboy #184 hinted at days of greatness to come with ‘One Legionnaire Must Go!’ Here Matter-Eater Lad is framed and replaced by his own little brother, but the big advance was the inking of LSH fanatic Dave Cockrum over Murphy Anderson’s pencils. The neophyte artist would gradually transform the look, feel and fortunes of the Legion before moving to Marvel and doing exactly the same with an almost forgotten series entitled X-Men…

With Superboy #188’s Bates-scripted ‘Curse of the Blood-Crystals!’ (July 1972), Anderson began inking Cockrum, in the sixth stunning back-up tale of a now unstoppable Legion revival that would eventually lead to them taking over the entire comic book. This clever yarn of cross-&-double-cross finds a Legionnaire possessed by a magical booby-trap and forced to murder Superboy… but which of the two dozen heroes is actually the prospective killer?

Superboy #190 featured ‘Murder the Leader!’ as the Fatal Five attack during the election of a new Legion Commander. Rival candidates Saturn Girl and Mon-El must work together if either is to take the top job, after which this volume concludes with stunning thriller ‘Attack of the Sun-Scavenger!’ (Bates & Cockrum from #191). In a staggering burst of comics brilliance, manic solar scoundrel Dr. Regulus again attacks Sun Boy and his Legion comrades, using his own apparent death as key to ultimate victory…

The Legion of Super-Heroes is unquestionably one of the most beloved and bewildering creations in funnybook history and largely responsible for the growth of groundswell movements that became American Comics Fandom. Moreover, these scintillating and seductively addictive stories – as much as Julie Schwartz’s Justice League or Marvel’s Fantastic Four – fired the interest and imaginations of generations of and underpinned the industry we all know today.

If you love comics and haven’t read this stuff, you are the poorer for it and need to enrich your future days as soon as possible.
© 1968-1972, 2010 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.