Category: Nostalgia

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Showcase Presents Superman Family volume 2


By Otto Binder, Jerry Coleman, Alvin Schwartz, Leo Dorfman, Robert Bernstein, Bill Finger, Curt Swan, Wayne Boring, Kurt Schaffenberger, Dick Sprang, Al Plastino & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-812-4 (TPB)

In America during the 1950s and early 1960s being different was a bad thing. Conformity was sacrosanct, even in comic books, and everybody and thing was meant to keep to its assigned and intended role.

For the Superman family and extended 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 Olsen was a brave and impulsive, unseasoned fool with a heart of gold – and plucky News-hen Lois Lane was nosy, impetuous and unscrupulous in her obsession to marry Superman, although she too was – deep down – another possessor of an Auric aorta. They were – of course – uniformly white and the Anglo-est of Saxons…

Yet somehow even with these mandates in place, talented writers and artists assigned to detail their wholesomely uncanny exploits managed to craft tales both beguiling and breathtakingly memorable – and usually as funny as they were exciting as seen in this second cunningly combined chronologically complete compendium. Here, collected in marvellous monochrome, are the affably all-ages tales from Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #23-34 (September 1957-January 1959), Lois’s second try-out issue originally seen in Showcase #10 (September/October 1957) and #1-7 of her subsequent solo series Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane (March/April 1958-February 1959).

We commence with the Man of Steel’s Go-To Guy in three tales comprising issue #23 of his solo title: illustrated as almost always by the wonderful Curt Swan & Ray Burnley. ‘Jimmy Olsen’s Two Super-Pals’ was the first of three scripts by irrepressible Otto Binder, describing how our lad gains an other-dimensional Genie as another faithful Super-Friend. Of course with sinister radium bandits plaguing Metropolis there’s more to the cosmic companion than meets the eye…

Next comes ‘Jimmy Olsen, the Bearded Boy’ wherein boastful hubris and a magic potion inflict runaway whiskers on many Daily Planet staffers – even Clark Kent – prompting a flurry of face-saving secret feats from the identity conscious Man of Tomorrow.

As Jimmy’s series progressed, one of the most popular plot-themes (and most fondly remembered and referenced today by surviving Baby-Boomer fans) was the unlucky lad’s appalling talent for being warped, mutated and physically manipulated by fate, aliens, magic, mad science and even his friends …a fate which frequently befell Lois too, although Jimmy got far fewer marriage proposals (but not NONE!) from aliens, murderers of monsters…

The boy’s bits briefly conclude with ‘The Adventures of Private Olsen’, wherein the Cub Reporter is assigned to write articles on Army life and – with Superman’s assistance – teaches a nasty and unscrupulous drill sergeant a much-needed lesson…

When Lois Lane – arguably the oldest supporting character/star in the Superman mythology if not entire DC universe – finally received her own shot at a solo title, it was very much on the terms of the times. I must shamefacedly admit to a deep, nostalgic affection for her bright and breezy, fantastically fun adventures, but as a free-thinking, (nominally) adult liberal of the 21st century I’m often simultaneously shocked these days at the jollified, patronising, patriarchally misogynistic attitudes underpinning so many of the stories.

Yes, I’m fully aware that the series was intended for young readers at a time when “dizzy dames” like Lucille Ball or Doris Day played up to the popular American gestalt stereotype of Woman as jealous minx, silly goose, diffident wife and brood-hungry nester, but to ask kids to seriously accept that intelligent, courageous, ambitious, ethical and highly capable women would drop everything they’d worked hard for to lie, cheat, inveigle, manipulate and entrap a man just so that they could cook pot-roast and change super-diapers is plain crazy and tantamount to child abuse. They’re great, great comics but still… whooo… gah… splutter… I’m just saying…

Cover-dated September/October 1957 and illustrated by Wayne Boring & Stan Kaye, Showcase #10 was the second and final test appearance for what became  Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane, opening with scripter Binder’s ‘The Jilting of Superman’, wherein the Action Ace almost falls for a most ancient ploy as Lois pretends to marry another man to make the Kryptonian clod realise what she means to him…

Written by Jerry Coleman, ‘The Sightless Lois Lane’ tells how a nuclear accident temporarily blinds the journalist, and how her sudden, unexpected recovery almost exposes Clark Kent’s secret when he callously changes to Superman in front of his “sightless” friend, after which Binder delightfully details the contents of ‘The Forbidden Box from Krypton’. Exhumed by a Smallville archaeologist, this hoard houses devices originally packed by Superman’s birth father Jor-El and intended to aid the infant Superbaby on Earth. Of course, when Lois opens the chest all she sees is a way to become as powerful as the Man of Steel. Before long, she’s addicted to being a super-champion in her own right…

Scant months later, the mercurial journo had her own title, clearly offering exactly what the reading public wanted…

Jimmy Olsen #24 featured another trio of top tales from Binder, Swan & Burnley beginning with ‘The Superman Hall of Trophies’ which finds a Kryptonite-paralysed Metropolis Marvel trapped in a museum and rescued by the brave boy reporter. ‘The Gorilla Reporter!’ sees the poor kid briefly brain-swapped with a mighty (confused) Great Ape before – as so often before – Superman must audaciously divert attention from his exposure-threatened alter ego by convincing the world at large that Jimmy is ‘The Luckiest Boy in the World’…

Issue #25 – by Binder, Swan & Burnley – features ‘The Secret of the Superman Dummies’ wherein a trip to a magic show results in Jimmy being inescapably handcuffed to the last man in the world Superman dares to approach, after which ‘The Second Superboy’ reveals how poor Jimmy is accidentally rocketed to an alien world where he gains incredible abilities courtesy of resident absent-minded genius Professor Potter. ‘The Day There Was No Jimmy Olsen’ then offers a tantalising hoax and mystery which ends with an unexpected promotion for the pluckily ingenious boy…

Jimmy began #26 subject to inexplicable bouts of deadly mass fluctuations and improbably became ‘The World’s “Heavyweight” Champ’ before – as newly appointed ‘Jimmy Olsen, Foreign Correspondent’ – uncovering a sinister scheme to defraud the Ruritanian Kingdom of Hoxana. Back home again though, he has to again undergo a well-intentioned con from his best pal after seeing Clark flying and subsequently – inadvertently – himself becoming ‘The Birdboy of Metropolis’…

Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #1 (March/April #1958) at last arrived, sporting three stunning yarns illustrated by sleek, slick comedically-inclined illustrator Kurt Schaffenberger, whose distinctive art-style would become synonymous with the woman reporter. Everything kicked off with ‘The Bombshell of the Boulevards’ (scripted by Leo Dorfman) wherein she dons a blonde wig to deceitfully secure a Hollywood interview and provokes a death-duel between rival enflamed suitors. Of course, it’s only another scheme by Superman and Jimmy to teach her a lesson in journalistic ethics. It’s a good thing reporters are so much less unscrupulous these days…

During this Silver Age period, with Superman a solid gold sensation of the newly ascendant television medium, many stories were draped in the wholesome trappings of Tinseltown – even more so than most of celebrity-obsessed America. It didn’t hurt that chief editor Whitney Ellsworth was a part-time screenwriter, script editor and producer, as well as National DC’s Hollywood point man.

Otto Binder then reunited with old Captain Marvel collaborator Schaffenberger for ‘Lois Lane, Super-Chef’ as she disastrously tries to master home cooking in another scheme to get the Man of Steel to propose, whilst in ‘The Witch of Metropolis’ a science assignment goes horrifically awry, transforming her into a wizened old hag every time the sun sets…

All courtesy of Binder, Swan & Burnley, SPJO #27 opens with ‘The Boy from Mars’ wherein the cub reporter gets his own lesson in integrity after trying to create a circulation-boosting hoax, and a refresher course on the perils of pride and over-confidence after messing up ‘A Date with Miss Metropolis’ before the issue ends in a riotous battle with his own evil duplicate after Professor Potter accidentally creates ‘The Outlaw Jimmy Olsen’…

Ever so slowly a more mature tone was developing in the kid’s adventures. In #28’s ‘The Spendthrift and the Miser’ an alien gift from Superman triggers wildly manic mood swings whilst an accidental time-trip incredibly reveals that Jimmy is destined to become ‘The Boy who Killed Superman’ after which in ‘The Human Skyscraper’, another botched Potter product enlarges the kid to monumental, city-endangering size.

Over in the second Lois Lane comic book she is apparently appalled to uncover ‘Superman’s Secret Sweetheart’ (uncredited here but possibly Bill Finger?), but is in fact on her very best mettle and helping a bullied college girl fight back against her mean sorority sisters.

The Binder recounts how Tinseltown improbably calls and the reporter becomes – eventually – an extremely high maintenance actress in ‘Lois Lane in Hollywood’…

‘Superman’s Forbidden Room’ closes proceedings with a cruel hoax played on her well-publicised infatuation, but this time it isn’t the Man of Steel doing the fooling and the stakes have never been higher than in this moody thriller illustrated by Boring & Kaye and probably written by Jerry Coleman.

In Jimmy Olsen #29 the usually adept reporter suffers a monumental writer’s block whilst working on a novel, but ‘The Superman Book that Couldn’t be Finished’ eventually is …with a little hands-on Kryptonian help. ‘Jimmy Olsen’s Super-Pet’ then sees the cub reporter adopted by super-hound Krypto in his twilight years: an act that is instrumental in rejuvenating the Dog of Steel for a new generation.

The issue ends with ‘The Amazing Spectacles of Doctor X’: a clever thriller seeing Jimmy appropriate goggles which can see the future and glimpsing something he wishes he hadn’t!

Crafted by Binder & Schaffenberger, The Rainbow Superman’ opens Lois Lane #3 portraying the “News-hen” at her very worst as a cosmic accident makes the Man of Tomorrow an ambulatory spectrum and she sets about seeking to see if Clark also glows, whilst ‘The Man who was Clark Kent’s Double’ (scripted by Coleman, as is the final tale here) breaks her heart after she again proves too nosy for her own good.

‘Lois Lane and the Babe of Steel’ then delivers a terrifying glimpse of her dreams come true when Superman trades temporal places with his toddler self, causing all manner of problems for the capable bachelorette…

In JO #30, ‘The Son of Superman’ – by Binder, Swan & Burnley – jerks our tears as an attempt by the Kryptonian to adopt the boy reporter goes tragically wrong, after which the creators prove equally adept at concocting mystery and tension when criminals scheme to destroy Jimmy by making him ‘The Cub who Cried Wolf’.

‘Superman’s Greatest Enemy’ – with Dick Sprang standing in for Swan – then discloses how the naive lad falls for a crook’s scam but has enough smarts to turn the tables at the end…

Binder & Schaffenberger open SGFLL #4 with a well-meaning Jimmy using hypnotism to get Clark to propose to Lois, utterly unaware who he is actually using these gimmicks on, and catastrophically leading to ‘The Super-Courtship of Lois Lane’…

Times have changed, but when Coleman scripted ‘Lois Lane, Working Girl’ he was simply referring to her being challenged to undertake a job in manual labour, so shame on you. Alvin Schwartz then crafts a canny conundrum in ‘Annie Oakley Gets her (Super)man’ for Boring & Kaye to illustrate, when a riding accident out West causes Lois to believe she is the legendary sharpshooter whilst hunting some very nasty gangsters with very real guns…

Jimmy Olsen #31 highlights the now mythic tale of ‘The E-L-A-S-T-I-C Lad’ (Binder, Swan & Burnley) wherein Superman is ultimately responsible for the reporter gaining stretching powers. He should have known better than to leave a chest of alien artefacts with the nosy, accident-prone kid…

‘The Mad Hatter of Metropolis’ sees the simple power of suggestion convince the kid that he can imitate the feats of famous folks simply by donning their characteristic chapeaus,  before ‘The Boy who Hoaxed Superman’ has him attempt to secure a pay raise by pretending to leave for the future. Sadly, it doesn’t work, and everybody seems to prefer the replacement Perry hired who is, of course, Jimmy in disguise…

For #32 Professor Potter’s latest chemical concoction makes Jimmy look like Pinocchio but does compensate by giving him ‘The Super Nose for News’, whilst an uncanny concatenation of crazy circumstances turns the sensibly staid Man of Tomorrow into ‘The Rock ‘n’ Roll Superman’ every time the kid reporter – masquerading as a pop star – twangs his old guitar. Then, Alvin Schwartz scripts ‘The Jimmy Olsen from Jupiter’, revealing how aliens mutate the cub reporter into one of their scaly selves: complete with extremely useful mind-reading abilities, much to Superman’s dismay…

Robert Bernstein & Schaffenberger’s ‘Superman’s Greatest Sacrifice’ leads in Lois Lane #5, as the journalist meets her millionaire double and seemingly loses her beloved sort-of lover to the rich witch, whilst in ‘The Girl of 100 Costumes’ the canny lass employs a myriad of new looks to catch his attention, in an uncredited story drawn by Al Plastino.

It was back to silly, disquieting (and fat-shaming) usual for Binder & Schaffenberger’s ‘The Fattest Girl in Metropolis’ as a plant growth ray “accidentally” super-sizes the valiant but vain reporter. Imagine her reaction when Lois learns Superman has deliberately expanded her dimensions… for good and solid reasons, of course…

Binder, Swan & Burnley were in sparkling form in JO #33, starting with ‘Legends that Came to Life’, wherein a nuclear accident animates the strangest foes from fairy tales and only Jimmy, but not his mighty mentor, can save the day, after which ‘The Lady-Killer from Metropolis’ offers a classic case of boyish arrogance and girlish gossip which leads to the boy reporter briefly becoming the sexiest thing in Hollywood. The horror and hilarity is capped by ‘The Human Flame-Thrower!’ as Potter’s latest experiment leaves Jimmy with the worst case of high-octane halitosis in history…

Coleman, Boring & Kaye opened LL #6 with ‘The Amazing Superman Junior’ as yet another attempt to teach Lois a lesson backfires on the pompous Man of Steel and she brings in a mysterious kid to show the Kryptonian what it feels like…

This is followed by a brace of tales by Bill Finger & Schaffenberger, starting with ‘Lois Lane… Convict!’ which seemingly sees the reporter take a bribe from gangster Baldy Pate and pay a terrible price, whilst in ‘Lieutenant Lois Lane, U.S. Army’ she and Clark join the military for a story only to have Lois’ (temporary) rank turn her into a man-hating bully. Surely some mistake, no…?

‘Superman’s Pal of Steel’  by Binder, Swan & Burnley, begins the last Jimmy Olsen issue in this marvellous monochrome collection, as another secret identity-preserving scheme takes a bizarre turn after the boy reporter genuinely gains an incredible power. Alvin Schwartz then fills ‘The Underworld Journal’ which see our kid inherit his own newspaper …and swiftly go off the journalistic rails.

Finally for the boy, Potter’s newest invention turns Jimmy’s clunky old kit into ‘The Most Amazing Camera in the World’ (Binder, Swan & Burnley) – and a deadly danger to Superman’s greatest secret…

Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #7 ends this volume with three more mixed-message masterpieces. beginning with ‘Lois Lane’s Kiss of Death’ (by Bernstein & Schaffenberger), wherein a canny conman tries to fool the reporter into botching her biggest crime exposés. Schwartz then has Lois use hypnotism to wash her heroic obsession out of her mind in ‘When Lois Lane Forgot Superman’.

Illustrated by Boring & Kaye, the tale takes an unlikely turn when she turns her passionate, unfulfilled attentions on poor Clark, after which Lana Lang fully enters the Man of Steel’s modern mythology. When Lois took in the destitute, down-at-heel lass who once held the Boy of Steel’s heart, she seemingly allowed her to also become ‘The Girl who Stole Superman’ in a tense and clever tale from Coleman & Schaffenberger…

These spun-off, support series were highly popular, top-selling titles for more than two decades: blending action, adventure, broad, wacky comedy, fantasy and science fiction in the gently addictive whimsical manner that Binder and Schaffenberger had perfected at Fawcett Comics on the magnificent Marvel Family.

As well as containing some of the most delightful episodes of the jovial, pre angst-anointed, cosmically catastrophic DC, these fun, thrilling and yes, occasionally deeply moving, all-ages stories also perfectly depict the changing mores 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…

I certainly do…
© 1957, 1958, 1959, 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Captain Action: Classic Collection


By Gil Kane, Wally Wood, Jim Shooter & various (IDW)
ISBN: 978-1- (TPB) eISBN: 978-1-64936-046-5

These days comics are about kids of varying ages looking back. So too are toys, and baby boomers like me are particularly prone to the fabled golden age and certain “must-have” items – whether we ever actually owned them or not. An added bonus comes if those toys made it to comics and vice versa…

Back then, the ultimate acme for so many of us in the UK was – no, not the Johnny Seven multi-gun, or Man from U.N.C.L.E. briefcase – but the Captain Action nine-heroes-in-1 doll (sorry, Action Figure)… 

Once upon a time comics were considered the nigh-exlusive domain of children, with many scrupulously-policed genres and subdivisions catering to particular and stratified arenas such as fact, fantasy, adventure and humour. They were even further codified by age and gender.

A particular and popular recurring theme was tapping into the guaranteed and hopefully mutual sales boost offered by licensing and cross-marketing. West Coast outfit Dell/Gold Key had early on specialised in out-industry licensing deals and adaptations…

Many titles depended on a media celebrity like Howdy Doody, Charlie Chaplin or Mickey Mouse and in America that eventually spread to the marketing of products also aimed at kids… such as sweets, cartoons and toys…

By the end of that era, comics for kids were almost exclusively released as a minor strand of a major maketing strategy. That comics like Thundercats, Micronauts, Transformers, Rom and G.I. Joe were actually good and entertaining on strictly strip terms was a happy coincidence and thanks solely to the diligent pride and efforts of the creators involved. Sadly, it also led to publishers intensifying efforts to add a toy component to their own properties. Hands up anyone out there who owns a Spider-mobile, Batboat or Supermobile…

For DC, that trend really began in 1968. Although the company – known as National Periodical Publications back then – had long benefitted from creating comics adventures of movie stars like Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis or Dale Evans and shows such as Gang Busters, A Date with Judy and Mr. District Attorney, they had stayed away from the toy biz – unless you count two issues of Showcase (#53 & 54 Novenber/December 1964 and January/February 1965) that unofficially tied-in to Hasbro’s release of the first G.I. Joe line.

Then, just as costumed superheroes boomed, peaked and began an inexorable die-back, an old connection resurfaced…

In 1964 inventor and promotions wizard Stan Weston devised a way to sell dolls to boys: a dilemma that had stumped toymakers for centuries. He devised an articulated mannequin that would represent all branches of the military and could be aurmented by add-on uniforms and equipment. He called it an “action-figure” and sold the notion to Hasbro, who marketed it with great and lasting success as G.I. Joe (in Britain it was rebranded Action Man).

With his remuneration, Weston – whose promotions company Leisure Concepts had secured representation rights to DC, Marvel and King Features characters – devised a similar boys toy figure designed to ride the then-current global superhero wave triggered by the Batman TV show. “Captain Magic” was not only a superhero in his own right but could also transform into other superheroes via costumes and masks purchased seperately…

Released in waves, these alter egos included Superman, Batman, Aquaman, Spider-Man, Captain America, Sgt. Fury, The Phantom, 2 different Lone Rangers, Tonto, Steve Canyon, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and the Green Hornet.

Weston sold this concept to Hasbro’s rival Ideal Toy Company who went all-out in producing and marketing the range. It launched in 1966, redesignated Captain Action…

A huge success, an expansion line in 1967 introduced a kid sidekick, pet panther, villains, an Action-Cave, secret lairs, a super car and lots of other paraphenalia. Latterly, distaff partner Lady Action was joined by doll versions (“Super Queens”) of Wonder Woman, Mera, Supergirl and Batgirl…

The line was an early casualty of the downturn in superheroes and discontinued in 1968. It has, however, cemented itself in popular memory, with the core character returning on many occasions. He now enjoys a new marketing company seeking to rebuild the brand, Since 2005, Catain Action Enterprises have been testing the waters and some of their efforts can bee seen as ads and addenda throughout the book…

However, back at the height if the craze that DC link led to Editor in Chief Mort Weisinger commissioning a comic book tie-in. It turned out to be one of the most lovely, powerful, experimental and maturely sophisticated titles of the era and – finally – all the legal loopholes have been circumvented so you can see it at last …or if you’re truly blessed, once again…

Weisinger tapped his youngest writer – teenager Jim Shooter – and teamed him with veterans on the potentially colossal project. Miracle-working editor Julie Schwartz was in charge, and Wally Wood started the ball rolling artistically, but the real revelation came after replacement penciller Gil Kane took over the writing…

Born Eli Katz and a pre-WWII infant immigrant from Latvia, Kane was one of the pivotal players in the development of the American comics industry, and indeed of the art form itself. Working as an artist, and an increasingly more effective and influential one, he drew for many companies from the 1940s onwards, tackling superheroes, crime, action, war, mystery, romance, animal heroes (Streak and Rex the Wonder Dog!), movie adaptations and, most importantly perhaps, Westerns and Science Fiction tales.

In the late 1950s he became one of Schwartz’s key artists in regenerating and rebooting the superhero concept. Yet by 1968, at the top of his profession, this relentlessly revolutionary and creative man felt so confined by the juvenile strictures of the industry that he struck out on bold new ventures that jettisoned the editorial and format bondage of comic books for new visions and media.

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

His other venture, Blackmark (1971, and also with Goodwin), not only ushered in the comic book age of Sword and Sorcery, but also became one of medium’s first Graphic Novels. Technically, as the series was commissioned by fantasy publisher Ballantine as eight volumes, it was also envisioned as America’s first comic Limited Series.

Before them, though, there was Captain Action…

Edited by Schwartz with covers by Irv Novick, Wood, Kane & Dick Giordano, the entire DC run is collected here, preceded by a fulsome and informative Introduction from Mark Waid.

Unable to play with the toy’s major attraction – multiple super-personalities – Shooter & Wood instead went with classical drama for issue #1’s ‘Origin of Captain Action!’: revealing how archaeologist Clive Arno and his assistant Krellik uncover a chest of coins left in antiquity by incredible superbeings remembered by humanity as gods.

These coins allow the holder to access the incredible powers of countless deities, but the temptation proves too much for the scheming assistant.

However, when he tries to steal them, an ancient failsafe painfully prevents him…

Driven away, the scoundrel is then found by the coin vindictively created by primal God of Evil Chernobog: one which imparts astounding magical abilities and feeds his hatred. As Arno designs a costumed identity to help the world via the coins, Krellik spies on and steals his thunder, resolved to taint the project before it even begins…

Returning to America, Arno learns ‘Where the Action is’ from his son Carl, as Krellik plunders museums dressed in Arno’s proposed uniform. A swift chase then results in a cataclysmic clash and brief cameo by Superman…

Trailing his enemy, the true Captain cannot stop Krellik obtaining more deadly artefacts of the lost gods. As the first issue ends he is savagely beaten and apparently defeated before he’s even started …

With Kane pencilling Shooter’s script and Wood inking, the saga concludes in #2 as ‘The Battle Begins!’ with the victorious villain repeatedly failing to appropriate the power coins: stymied by the remarkably astute and valiant Action Boy. When Krellik’s frustration boils over and he starts wrecking the city, our recently returned hero goes all out and at last overcomes in ‘Captain Action’s Reactions!’ Kane was eager to stretch his creative muscles in a period of great change and challenge and Schwartz was happy to oblige…

Although already distressingly high in drama and calamity, the series went into overdrive with #3 as the toy company’s preferred archfoe debuted. A blue skinned humanoid with an exposed brain. Dr Evil was fleshed out as Kane wrote and pencilled ‘…And Evil This Way Comes!’, revealing how a catastrophic earthquake in San Francisco caused hundreds of deaths and triggered an evolutionary aberration in the laboratory of Dr. Stefan Tracy…

The Nobel Laureate was also Arno’s father-in-law and both were united in grief over the death of his daughter (and Arno’s wife) Kathryn. They also shared an abiding love for Carl Arno.

All that seemed over when Tracy was elevated to the status of a futureman resolved to similarly improve mankind, no matter how many perished in the process…

The most telling consequence of the quake is the loss of all but a handful of power coins. Action Boy is given the superspeed inducing Mercury artefact, whilst his dad keeps the tokens of Zeus, Hercules and Heimdall (rationalising why the Captain needs cool tools like his supercar the Silver Streak), and they deploy to save lives in the aftershocks.

They are hindered and countered by Tracy/Dr. Evil: using his devices to amplify the natural disaster. His deed almost kills his grandson, until a fast-fading final shred of humanity hampers his deeds and hold back his damning hand…

The act is his last as a human being and allows the Captain a desperate chance to drive him away…

From this issue on a letters page – Action Line – was included, and they are reprinted from here on.

Kane went even more deeply into mature themes with #4 as ‘Evil at Dead World’s End!’, sees the hyper-evolved savant drawn across the universe to a dying planet peopled with beings just like him. Well, not quite: these beings are at the end of existence on a dying planet, worn out by eons and resolutely awaiting death. Dr. Evil refuses to let them go, inspiring their brief rejection of well-earned rest with the promise of a fresh young world: Earth. To offset his son-in-law’s interference, the mind master distracts the hero with a trio of rampaging monsters and cruel resurrection of dead Kathryn. The alluring spectre then implores her husband to forsake life and join her in the beyond…

The high impact dramas were far from what any kid might expect, and the series closed on an even more shocking premise as ‘A Mind Divided’ revealed a nation torn apart by a racist demagogue inciting insurrection and racial purity: a campaign polarising America’s youth and encapsulated in a single father’s descent into madness. Captain Action might be able to rescue victims, stop bombers, break up riots and beat uniformed thugs but saving a twisted soul from self-inflicted tragedy was beyond even the reach of gods…

Now, rush out and buy the Captain Action Parachute Mortar, kids…

The comics material closes with text and letters page Action Line and a reader competition – ‘The Two Faces of Dr. Evil’ – before even more avarice-inspiring found-features fill out the Captain Action Gallery.

The comics stories preceding this section were packed with ads for old and new Cap merch in the gaps originally filled by DC comics releases (some contemporarily crafted by Michael Polis) for dolls/action figures, toys, accessories, costumes, “Captain Action Action Facts!”, card & board games, choco bars, breakfast cereal, freezer pops and vintage comic book house ads and TV promos for the franchise.

Here however are full-page delights such as paintings of Captain Action; toy ads from the comics for Action Boy, Dr. Evil. Lady Action and pages from the Captain Action Yellow Book by Murphy Anderson, Kurt Schaffenberger, & Chic Stone, plus astondingly lovely original art pages and pencil art by Kane & Wood.

Although Captain Action couldn’t sustain a readership or toy-buying clientele, DC would dabble again and again with related topics (like Alex Toth & Neal Adams’s sublime Hot Wheels comic in 1970, MASK, Masters of the Universe, and DC in-house properties Mego Superheroes and Kenner’s Super Powers action figures) and publishing properities now make a large paart of every successful comics company…

The 1960s was the era when all the assorted facets of “cool-for-kids” finally started to coalesce into a comprehensive assault on our minds and our parents’ pockets. TV, movies, comics, bubble-gum cards and toys all began concertedly feeding off each other, building a unified and combined fantasy-land no kid could resist. That nostalgic force has never been more wonderfully expressed than in the stories in this book and you would be mad to miss it.
Captain Action: Classic Collection © & ™ 2022 Captain Action Enterprises, LLC. All rights reserved.

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The Complete Peanuts volume 7: 1963-1964



By Charles M. Schulz (Fantagraphics Books/Canongate Books UK)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-723-0 (HB) 978-1683960058 (US PB) 978-1847678140 (UK HB)

Peanuts is unequivocally the most important comic strip in the history of graphic narrative. It is also the most deeply personal. Cartoonist Charles M Schulz crafted his moodily hilarious, hysterically introspective, shockingly philosophical surreal epic for half a century: 17,897 strips from October 2nd 1950 to February 13th 2000. He died from the complications of cancer the day before his last strip was published…

At its height, the strip ran in 2,600 newspapers, translated into 21 languages in 75 countries. Many of those venues are still running perpetual reprints, as they have ever since his death. In his lifetime, book collections, a merchandising mountain and television spin-offs had made the publicity-shy artist a billionaire.

None of that really matters. Peanuts – a title Schulz loathed, but one the syndicate forced upon him – changed the way comics strips were received and perceived: proving cartoon comedy could have edges and nuance as well as pratfalls and punchlines.

Following animator Bill Melendez’s Foreword – relating how he became the TV arm of the Peanuts phenomenon – the timeless episodes of play, peril, psychoanalysis and personal recrimination resume as ever in marvellous monochrome, with more character introductions, plot advancements and the creation of even more traditions we all revere to this day…

As ever our focus is quintessential inspirational loser Charlie Brown who, with increasingly fanciful, high-maintenance mutt Snoopy, remain largely at odds with a bombastic, mercurial supporting cast, all hanging out doing what at first sight seems to be Kids Stuff.

As always, daily gags centre on playing, musical moments, pranks, interpersonal alignments and a seasonal selection of sports, all leavened by agonising teasing, aroused and crushed hopes, the making of baffled observations and occasionally acting a bit too much like grown-ups.

However, with this tome, the themes and tropes that define the series (especially in the wake of those animated TV specials) become mantra-like yet endlessly variable. A consistent theme is Charlie Brown’s inability to fly a kite, and here the never-ending war with wind, gravity and landscape reaches absurdist proportions…

Mean girl Violet, prodigy Schroeder, self-taught psychoanalyst and world dictator-in-waiting Lucy van Pelt, her brilliantly off-kilter little brother Linus and dirt-magnet “Pig-Pen” are fixtures honed to generate joke-routines and gag-sequences around their own foibles, but some early characters – like Shermy and Patty – gradually disappear as new attention-attracting players join the mob. Here that’s thoroughly modern lad “5” and his forward-looking non-conformist family “the 95472s”…

At least Charlie Brown’s existential crisis/responsibility vector/little sister Sally has settled into being just another trigger for relentless self-excoriation. As she grows, pesters librarians, forms opinions and propounds steadfastly authoritarian views, he is increasingly relegated to being her dumber, yet always protective, big brother…

Resigned – almost – to life as an eternal loser singled out by cruel and capricious fate, the Boy Brown is helpless meat in the clutches of openly sadistic Lucy. When not playfully sabotaging his efforts to kick a football, she monetises her spiteful verve via a 5¢ walk-in psychoanalysis booth: ensuring that whether at play, in sports, flying that kite or just brooding, the round-headed kid truly endures the character-building trials of the damned…

At least she’s consistent and equally mean to all. Over these two years, her campaign to curb that weird beagle and cure her brother of his comfort blanket addiction reaches astounding heights and appalling depths – such as when she wins a school science fair by exhibiting Linus as a psychological case study.

This volume opens and closes with many strips riffing on snow, and with Lucy constantly and consistently sucking all the joy out of the white wonder stuff…

Her family ally in the Blanket War is Grandma, but that never-pictured elder’s efforts to decouple Linus from the fabric comforter that sustains him in the worst of times are becoming easier to counter, even as Snoopy’s schemes to swipe the shroud become more elaborate and effective…

Lucy also finds time to master skipping and train others in the wonders of her “jump rope”, but ultimately her unflinchingly high standards lead to accusations of “crabbiness”. The prodigy cannot, however, master the intricacies of kicking a football herself, to the woe of all around her…

Perpetually sabotaged, and facing abuse from every female in his life, Charlie Brown endures fresh hell in the form of smug, attention-seeking Frieda, who demands constant approval for her “naturally curly hair” and champions the cause of shallow good looks over substance. Even noble Snoopy is threatened, as she drags – literally – her boneless, functionally inert but still essentially Feline cat Faron into places where cats just don’t belong. When not annoying the ever-hungry, entertainment-starved beagle, Frieda constantly cajoles the unconventional hound into chasing rabbits like a real dog!

Endless heartbreak ensues once Charlie Brown foolishly lets slip his closet romantic aspirations regarding the “little red-haired girl”: a fascination outrageously exploited by others whenever the boy doesn’t simply sabotage himself…

With great effect, Schulz began assiduously celebrating more calendar occasions as perennial events in the feature: adding Mothers and Fathers’ Days, the Fourth of July and National Dog Week strips to established yearly milestones like Christmas, St. Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween/Great Pumpkin Day and Beethoven’s Birthday.

Other notable events include persistent scholastic prevarications and a futile quest to attain that one elusive baseball bubble-gum card for Charlie’s set (Joe Shlabotnik, if you have a spare…), and the gang’s epic and sustained attempt to clean Snoopy’s labyrinthine multistorey doghouse.

At this time, the beagle was growing into the true star of the show, with his primary quest for more and better food playing out against an increasingly baroque inner life, wild encounters with birds, dance marathons, philosophical ruminations, and evermore popular catchphrases. Here, that sense of untrammelled whimsy leads to drama and rabies shots for Snoopy…

Sports injuries play a major role too, with baseball manager/pitcher Charlie Brown benched by “Little Leaguers elbow”, leading to a winning streak for the team. The event also spawns a late diagnosis of “eraserophagia” (nervous chewing of school pencil rubbers). At least the gang gamely rally round, with Linus becoming a lauded sporting superstar of the pitcher’s mound, whilst all and sundry are happy to scream at Charlie whenever he puts a pencil anywhere near his mouth…

The bizarre beagle magnified his strange interior development in all ways. Other than an extended Cold War duel for possession of the cherished comfort blanket, the manic mutt adapted to that darn cat and sundry rabbits but still made time to philosophise, eat, dance like a dervish, stand on his head, converse with falling leaves, play with sprinklers, befriend and battle birds, eat more, stoically brave the elements and discover the potent power of placards and marches…

The Sunday page had debuted on January 6th 1952: a standard half-page slot offering more measured fare than regular 4-panel dailies. Thwarted ambition, sporting failures, explosive frustration – much of it kite-related – and Snoopy’s inner life became the segment’s signature denouements as these weekend wonders afforded Schulz room to be at his most visually imaginative, whimsical and weird…

Particular moments to relish this time involve an increasingly defined, sharply-cornered romantic triangle involving Lucy, Schroeder and Beethoven; Charlie Brown’s backyard camping excursions; copious “pencil-pal” communications; poor penmanship; the power of television and decline of comic books; Lucy’s invention of “immoral” sporting tactics; an outbreak of tree-climbing in advance of the regular autumnal leaf collapse; horrendous rainfall; the growth of avian protest marches; Linus’ mural of the Story of Civilisation and eventual run for School President (with Charlie Brown as Veep!) and a new feature declaring what “Happiness Is…” at the start of each Sunday strip…

To wrap it all up, Gary Groth celebrates and deconstructs the man and his work in ‘Charles M. Schulz: 1922 to 2000’, preceded by a copious ‘Index’ offering instant access to favourite scenes you’d like to see again…

Readily available in hardcover, paperback and digital editions, this volume guarantees total enjoyment: comedy gold and social glue metamorphosing into an epic of spellbinding graphic mastery that still adds joy to billions of lives, and continues to make new fans and devotees long after its maker’s passing.
The Complete Peanuts © 2007, United Features Syndicate, Ltd. 2014 Peanuts Worldwide, LLC. The Foreword is © 2006, Bill Melendez. “Charles M. Schulz: 1922 to 2000” © 2007 Gary Groth. All rights reserved.

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The Art of Archie: The Covers


By various, edited by Victor Gorelick & Craig Yoe (Archie Books)
ISBN: 978-1-936975-79-2 (HB/Digital edition)

For most of us, comics mean buff men and women in capes and tights hitting each other, lobbing trees about, or stark, nihilistic genre thrillers aimed at an extremely mature and sophisticated readership of confirmed fans – and indeed that has been the prolific norm for nearly twenty years.

However, over the decades since 1933 when comic books were invented, other forms of sequential illustrated fiction genres have held their own. One that has maintained a unique position over the years – although almost now completely transferred to television – is the teen-comedy genre begun by and synonymous with a carrot topped, homely (at first just plain ugly) kid named Archie Andrews.

MLJ were a small outfit which jumped wholeheartedly onto the superhero bandwagon following the debut of Superman. In November 1939 they launched Blue Ribbon Comics, promptly following with Top-Notch and Pep Comics. The content was the accepted blend of costumed heroes, two-fisted adventure strips and one-off gags. Pep made history with its lead feature The Shield – the industry’s first superhero clad in the American flag – but generally MLJ were followers not innovators.

That all changed at the end of 1941. Even while profiting from the Fights ‘n’ Tights phalanx, Maurice Coyne, Louis Silberkleit and John Goldwater (hence MLJ) spotted a gap in their blossoming market and in December the action strips were joined by a wholesome, ordinary hero; an “average teen” who had invitingly human-scaled adventures that might happen to the readers, but with the laughs, good times, romance and slapstick heavily emphasised.

Pep Comics #22 introduced a gap-toothed, freckle-faced, red-headed goof showing off to the pretty blonde next door. Taking his lead from the popular Andy Hardy movies starring Mickey Rooney, Goldwater developed the concept of a youthful everyman, tasking writer Vic Bloom & artist Bob Montana with the job of making it work.

So effective and all-pervasive was the impact and comforting message the new kid offered to the boys “over there” and those left behind on the Home Front that Archie and the wholesome image of familiar, beloved, secure Americana he and the Riverdale gang represented, one could consider them the greatest and most effective Patriotic/Propaganda weapon in comics history…

It all started with an innocuous 6-page tale entitled ‘Archie’ which introduced the future star and pretty girl-next-door Betty Cooper. Archie’s unconventional best friend and confidante Forsythe P. “Jughead” Jones also debuted in that first story, as did the small-town utopia they lived in.

The premise was an instant and ever-growing hit. In 1942 the feature graduated to its own title. Archie Comics #1 was the company’s first non-anthology magazine and began an inexorable transformation of the entire company. With the introduction of rich, raven-haired Veronica Lodge, all the pieces were in play for the industry’s second Phenomenon (Superman being the first).

By May 1946 the kids had taken over and, retiring its costumed champions years before the end of the Golden Age, MLJ rebranded, renamed itself Archie Comics, and became to all intents and purposes a publisher of family comedies. This overwhelming success, like the Man of Tomorrow’s, forced a change in the content of every other publisher’s titles and led to a multi-media industry including a newspaper strip, TV, movies, pop-songs and even a chain of restaurants. Intermittently the costumed cut-ups have returned on occasion but Archie Comics now seems content to specialise in what they do uniquely best…

Our eponymous high-schooler is a good-hearted lad lacking common sense and Betty – pretty, sensible, devoted girl next door, with all that entails – loves the ridiculous redhead. Ronnie is spoiled, exotic and glamorous and only settles for our boy if there’s nobody better around. She might actually love him too, though. Archie, of course, can’t decide who or what he wants…

This never-tawdry eternal triangle has been the basis of seventy years of charmingly raucous, gently preposterous, frenetic, chiding and even heart-rending comedy encompassing everything from surreal wit to frantic slapstick, as the kids and an increasing cast of friends grew into an American institution.

Adapting seamlessly to every trend and fad, perfectly in tone with and mirroring the growth of teen culture, the host of writers and artists who have crafted the stories over the decades have made the archetypal characters of Riverdale a benchmark for youth and a visual barometer of growing up American.

Archie’s unconventional best friend Jughead is Mercutio to Archie’s Romeo: providing rationality and a reader’s voice, as well as being a powerful catalyst of events in his own right. There’s even a likeably reprehensible Tybalt figure in the crafty form of Reggie Mantle – who first popped up to cause mischief in Jackpot Comics #5 (Spring 1942).

This beguiling triangle edifice (plus annexe and outhouse) has been the rock-solid foundation for eight decades of comics magic. …and the concept seems eternally self-renewing and self-perpetuating…

Archie has thrived by constantly reinventing its core characters, seamlessly adapting to the changing world outside the bright, flimsy pages, shamelessly co-opting youth, pop culture and fashion trends into its infallible mix of slapstick and young romance.

Each and every social revolution has been painlessly assimilated into the mix with the editors tastefully confronting a number of social issues affecting the young in a manner both even-handed and tasteful over the years.

The cast is always growing and the constant addition of new characters such as African-American Chuck (an aspiring cartoonist), his girlfriend Nancy, fashion-diva Ginger, Hispanic couple Frankie & Maria and a host of others like spoiled wild-child home-wrecker-in-waiting Cheryl Blossom, and Kevin Keller, an openly gay young man and clear-headed advocate, capably tackling and dismantling the last major taboo in mainstream comics.

A major component of the company’s success has been the superbly enticing artwork and especially the unmistakable impact afforded via the assorted titles’ captivating covers.

This spectacular compilation (a companion and sequel to 2010s Betty & Veronica collection) traces the history and evolution of the wholesome phenomenon through many incredible examples from every decade. Augmented by scads of original art, fine art and commercial recreations, printer’s proofs and a host of other rare examples and graphic surprises no fan of the medium could possibly resist, this huge hardback (312 x 235mm) and digital delight re-presents hundreds of funny, charming, intriguing and occasionally controversial images as well as background and biographies on the many talented artists responsible for creating them.

Moreover, also included are many original artworks – gleaned from the private collections of fans – scripts, sketches, gag-roughs, production ephemera from the initial art-to-finished-cover process, plus an extensive, educational introductory commentary section stuffed with fascinating reminiscences and behind-the-scenes anecdotes.

The picture parade begins with some thoughts from the brains behind the fun as ‘It’s a Gift’ by Publisher/Co-CEO Jon Goldwater and ‘You Can Judge a Book by its Cover!’ by Editor-in-Chief/Co-President Victor Gorelick. Then ‘On the Covers’ issues guidance from cartoonist, Comics Historian and perpetrator Craig Yoe before taking us to the 1940s where ‘In the Beginning…’ details the story of Archie with relevant covers and the first of a recurring feature highlighting how later generations of artists have recycled and reinterpreted classic designs.

‘A Matchless Cover’ leads into the first Artist Profile – ‘Bob Montana’ – incorporating a wealth of cracking Golden Age images in ‘Who’s on First!’ before chapters dedicated to specific themes and motifs commence with a celebration of beach scenes ‘In the Swim’, after which artist ‘Bill Vigoda’ steps out from behind his easel and into the spotlight.

‘Deja Vu All Over Again’ further explores the recapitulation of certain cover ideas before ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll!’ examines decades of pop music and “guest” stars such as the Beatles, whilst ‘Archie’s Mechanically Inclined’ probes a short-lived dalliance with an early form of home DIY magazines.

The life of veteran illustrator ‘Al Fagaly’ leads into a selection of ‘Fan Faves’ ancient and modern before the biography of ‘Harry Sahle’ segues neatly into a selection of cheerleading covers in ‘Let’s Hear It for The Boy!’

It wasn’t long after the birth of modern pop music that the Riverdale gang formed their own band and ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, The Archies!’ focuses on those ever-evolving musical prodigies with scenes from the Swinging Sixties to the turbulent Rap-ridden 21st century, after which the history ‘Joe Edwards’ leads into a barrage of smoochy snogging scenes in ‘XOXOXO!’

Always a keen follower of fads and fashions. the Archie crowd embraced many popular trends and ‘Monster Bash!’ concentrates on kids’ love of horror and recurring periods of supernatural thrills, after which a bio of ‘Dan Parent’ leads unerringly to more ‘Celebrity Spotting!’ with covers featuring the likes of George Takei, Michael Jackson, Simon Cowell, J-Lo, Kiss, the casts of Glee and Twilight, and even President Barack Obama. all eagerly appearing amongst so very many others.

‘Art for Archie’s Sake’ dwells on the myriad expressions of junior painting and sculpture and, after the life story of the sublimely gifted ‘Harry Lucey’, ‘The Time Archie was Pinked Out!’ details the thinking behind the signature logo colour schemes used in the company’s pre-computer days.

‘Life with Archie’s a Beach!’ takes another look at the rise of teenage sand and surf culture through the medium of beautifully rendered, scantily clad boys and girls, whilst – after the lowdown on writer/artist ‘Fernando Ruiz’ – ‘Dance! Dance! Dance!’ follows those crazy kids from Jitterbug to Frug, Twisting through Disco and ever onwards…

‘The Happiest of Holidays’ highlights the horde of magical Christmas covers Archie, Betty and Ronnie have starred on whilst ‘Rhyme Time’ reveals the odd tradition of poetry spouting sessions that have been used to get fans interested and keep them amused.

A history of the inimitable ‘Samm Schwartz’ precedes a look at classroom moments in ‘Readin’, Writin’, an’ Archie – with a separate section on organised games entitled ‘Good Sports!’ – after which the life of legendary art star ‘Dan DeCarlo’ neatly leads to another selection of fad-based fun as ‘That’s Just Super!’ recalls the Sixties costumed hero craze, as well as a few other forays into Fights ‘n’ Tights fantasy…

‘Let’s Get this Party Started’ features covers with strips rather than single images and is followed by a biography of ‘Bob Bolling’ before ‘A Little Goes a Long Way!’ concentrates on the assorted iterations of pre-teen Little Archie comics. This is then capped by the eye-popping enigma of teen taste as visualised in the many outfits over changing decades revealing ‘A Passion for Fashion’…

‘Come as You Aren’t’ is devoted to the theme of fancy dress parties after which the modern appetite for variant covers is celebrated in ‘Alternate Realities’ (with stunning examples from Fiona Staples, Tim Seeley and Walter Simonson amongst others) all wrapped up by the gen on artistic mainstay ‘Bob White’.

The entire kit and caboodle then concludes with an assortment of surreal, mindblowing covers defying categorisation or explanation in ‘And Now, For Something Completely Different’, proving that comics are still the only true home of untrammelled imagination: featuring scenes that literally have to be seen to be believed…

Enchanting, breathtaking graphic wonderment, fun-fuelled family entertainment and enticing pop art masterpieces, these unforgettable cartoon confections truly express the joyous spirit of intoxicating youthful vitality which changed the comic industry forever and comprise an essential example of artistic excellence no lover of narrative art should miss.

Spanning the entire history of American comicbooks and featuring vintage images, landmark material and up-to-the-minute modern masterpieces, this is a terrific tome for anybody interested in the history of comics, eternally evergreen light laughs and the acceptable happy face of the American Dream.
™ & © 2013 Archie Comics Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. All covers previously published and copyrighted by Archie Comic Publication, Inc. (or its predecessors) in magazine form in 1941-2013.

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Doom Patrol: Silver Age volume 1


By Arnold Drake, Bob Haney, Bruno Premiani, Bob Brown & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-8111-3 (TPB/Digital edition)

1963 was the year when traditionally cautious comic book publishers finally realised that superheroes were back in a big way and began reviving and/or creating a host of costumed characters to battle outrageous menaces and dastardly villains.

Thus it was that the powers-that-be at National Comics decided that venerable adventure-mystery anthology title My Greatest Adventure would dip its toe in the waters with a radical take on the fad. Still, infamous for cautious publishing, they introduced a startling squad of champions with its thematic roots still firmly planted in the B-movie monster films of the era that had not-so-subtly informed the parent comic.

No traditional team of masked adventurers, this cast comprised a robot, a mummy and an occasional 50-foot woman, who joined forces with and were guided by a vivid, brusque, domineering, crippled mad scientist to fight injustice in a whole new way…

Covering June 1963 to May 1965, this stunning compilation collects the earliest exploits of the “Fabulous Freaks”, gathered from My Greatest Adventure #80-85 and thereafter issues #86-95 of the rapidly renamed title, once overwhelming reader response compelled editor Murray Boltinoff to change it to the Doom Patrol.

These dramas were especially enhanced and elevated by the drawing skills of Italian cartoonist and classicist artist Giordano Bruno Premiani, whose highly detailed, subtly humanistic illustration made even the strangest situation dauntingly authentic and grittily believable.

Eponymous premier tale ‘The Doom Patrol’ was co-scripted by Arnold Drake and Bob Haney, depicting how a mysterious wheelchair-bound scientist summons three outcasts to his home through the promise of changing their miserable lives forever…

Competitive car racer and professional daredevil Cliff Steele had died in a horrific pile up, but his undamaged brain had been transplanted into a fantastic mechanical body. Test pilot Larry Trainor had been trapped in an experimental stratospheric plane and become permanently irradiated by stratospheric radiation, with the dubious benefit of gaining a semi-sentient energy avatar which would escape his body to perform incredible feats for up to a minute at a time. To pass safely amongst men Trainor had to constantly wrap himself in unique radiation-proof bandages…

Former movie star Rita Farr was exposed to mysterious gases which gave her the terrifying, unpredictable and, at first, uncontrolled ability to shrink or grow to incredible sizes.

The outcasts were brought together by brilliant but enigmatic Renaissance Man The Chief, who sought to mould the solitary misfits into a force for good. He quickly proved his point when a mad bomber attempted to blow up the city docks. The surly savant directed the trio of strangers in defusing it and no sooner had the misfits realised their true worth than they were on their first mission…

Second chapter ‘The Challenge of the Timeless Commander’, sees an implausibly ancient despot seeking to seize a fallen alien vessel: intent on turning its extraterrestrial secrets into weapons of world conquest, culminating in ‘The Deadly Duel with General Immortus’ which saw the Doom Patrol defeat the old devil and thereafter dedicate their lives to saving humanity from all threats.

My Greatest Adventure #81 featured ‘The Nightmare Maker’, combining everyday disaster response – saving a damaged submarine – with a nationwide plague of monsters. Stuck at base, The Chief monitors missions by means of a TV camera attached to Robotman/Steele’s chest, and quickly deduces the uncanny secret of the beasts and their war criminal creator Josef Kreutz…

Solely scripted by Drake, a devious espionage ploy outs the Chief – or at least his image, if not name – in #82’s ‘Three Against the Earth!’, leading the team to believe Rita is a traitor. When the cabal of millionaires actually behind the scheme are exposed as an alien advance guard who assumed the wheelchair-bound leader to be a rival invader, the inevitable showdown nearly costs Cliff what remains of his life…

In #83, ‘The Night Negative Man Went Berserk!’ spotlights the living mummy as a radio astronomy experiment interrupts the Negative Man’s return to Trainor’s body: pitching the pilot into a coma and sending the ebony energy being on a global spree of destruction. Calamity piles upon calamity when crooks steal the military equipment constructed to destroy the radio-energy creature and only desperate improvisation by Cliff and Rita allows avatar and host to reunite…

Issue #84 heralded ‘The Return of General Immortus’ as ancient Babylonian artefacts lead the squad to the eternal malefactor, only to have the wily warrior turn the tables and take control of Robotman. Even though his comrades soon save him, Immortus escapes with the greatest treasures of all time…

My Greatest Adventure #85 was the last issue, featuring ‘The Furies from 4,000 Miles Below’: monstrous subterranean horrors fuelled by nuclear forces. Despite having tricked Elasti-Girl into resuming her Hollywood career, the paternalistic heroes are pretty grateful when she turns up to save them all from radioactive incineration…

An unqualified success, the comic book transformed seamlessly into The Doom Patrol with #86 and celebrated by introducing ‘The Brotherhood of Evil’: an assemblage of international terrorist super-criminals led by French genius-in-a-jar The Brain. He was backed up by his greatest creation, a super-intelligent talking gorilla dubbed Monsieur Mallah.

The diametrically opposed teams first cross swords after brotherhood applicant Mr. Morden steals Rog, a giant robot the Chief constructed for the US military…

DP #87 revealed ‘The Terrible Secret of Negative Man’ after Brotherhood femme fatale Madame Rouge attempts to seduce Larry. When the Brain’s unstoppable mechanical army invades the city, Trainor is forced to remove his bandages and allow his lethal radiations to disrupt their transmissions…

An occasional series of short solo adventures kicked off in this issue with ‘Robotman Fights Alone’. Here Cliff is dispatched to a Pacific island in search of an escaped killer, only to walk into a devastating series of WWII Japanese booby-traps…

All mysteries surrounding the team’s leader are finally revealed in issue #88 with ‘The Incredible Origin of the Chief’: a blistering drama telling how brilliant but impoverished student Niles Caulder suddenly received unlimited funding from an anonymous patron interested in his researches on extending life.

Curiosity drove Caulder to track down his benefactor and he was horrified to discover the money came from the head of a criminal syndicate who claimed to be eons old…

Immortus had long ago consumed a potion which extended his life and wanted the student to recreate it since the years were finally catching up. To insure Caulder’s full cooperation, the General had a bomb inserted in the researcher’s chest and powered by his heartbeat…

After building a robot surgeon, Caulder tricked Immortus into shooting him, determined to thwart the monster at all costs. Once clinically dead, his Ra-2 doctor-bot removed the now-inert explosive and revived the bold scientist. Tragically, the trusty mechanoid had been too slow and Caulder lost the use of his legs forever…

Undaunted, ‘The Man Who Lived Twice’ destroyed all his research and went into hiding for years, with Immortus utterly unaware that Caulder had actually succeeded in the task which had stymied history’s greatest doctors and biologists…

Now, under the alias of super-thief The Baron, Immortus captures the Doom Patrol and demands a final confrontation with the Chief. Luckily, the wheelchair-locked inventor is not only a biologist and robotics genius but also adept at constructing concealed weapons…

In DP #89 the team tackle a duplicitous scientist who devises a means to transform himself into ‘The Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Menace’ before ‘The Private War of Elasti-Girl’ finds the Maid of Many Sizes using unsuspected detective skills to track down a missing soldier and reunite him with his adopted son.

‘The Enemy within the Doom Patrol’ sees shape-shifting Madame Rouge infiltrate the team and turn them against each other whilst issue #91 introduces multi-millionaire Steve Dayton.

Used to getting whatever he wants, he creates a superhero persona solely to woo and wed Rita Farr. With such ambiguous motivations ‘Mento – the Man who Split the Doom Patrol’ was a radical character for the times, but at least his psycho-kinetic helmet proved a big help in defeating the plastic robots of grotesque alien invader Garguax…

DP #92 tasks the team with a temporal terrorist in ‘The Sinister Secret of Dr. Tyme’ and features abrasive Mento again saving the day, after which ‘Showdown on Nightmare Road’ in #93 features The Brain’s latest monstrous scheme. This results in the evil genius being transplanted inside Robotman’s skull whilst poor Cliff is dumped into a horrific beast, until the Chief out-plays the French Fiend at his own game…

Creature-feature veteran Bob Brown stepped in to illustrate #94’s lead tale ‘The Nightmare Fighters’ as an eastern mystic’s uncanny abilities are swiftly debunked by solid American science. Premiani returned to render back-up solo-feature ‘The Chief …Stands Alone’ wherein Caulder eschews his deputies’ aid to bring down bird-themed villain The Claw with a mixture of wit, nerve and weaponised wheelchair.

This initial outing concludes with The Chief’s disastrous effort to cure Rita and Larry (DP #95), resulting in switched powers and the ‘Menace of the Turnabout Heroes’, so naturally that would be the very moment the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man picks for a return bout…

Although as kids we all happily suspended disbelief and bought into the fanciful antics of the myriad masked heroes available, somehow the exploits of the Doom Patrol – and their surprisingly synchronistic Marvel counterparts The X-Men (freaks, outcasts, wheelchair geniuses, both debuting in the summer of 1963 – so happy shared 60th folks!) – always seemed just a bit more “real” and plausible than the usual caped and costumed crowd.

With the edge of time and experience on my side it’s obvious just how incredibly mature and hardcore Drake, Haney & Premian’s take on superheroes actually was. These superbly engaging, frantically fun and breathtakingly beautiful tales should rightfully rank amongst the finest Fights ‘n’ Tights tales ever told. Moreover, you should definitely own them, so go do that now.
© 1963, 1964, 1965, 2018 DC Comics, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Airboy Archives volume 1


By Chuck Dixon, Tim Truman, Stan Woch, Benn Dunn, Bill Jaaska, Tom Lyle, Larry Elmore, & various (IDW)
ISBN: 978-1-61377-900-2 (TPB) 978-1-62302-641-7 (IDW Digital edition)

Airboy was one of the very best adventure strips of the Golden Age: one with a terrific pedigree and a profound legacy. Created for Hillman Periodicals by the brilliant Charles Biro (Steel Sterling, Crimebuster, the original Daredevil, The Little Wiseguys and landmark genre prototype Crime Does Not Pay number among his many triumphs), it featured a plucky teen and his fabulous super-airplane, affectionately dubbed “Birdie”.

Airboy and Birdie both debuted in the second issue of Air Fighters Comics, cover-dated November 1942 (so Slightly Belated Happy Birthday guys!). The title was packed out with similarly-themed and oddly off-kilter aviator heroes such as Skywolf, The Iron Ace, The Black Angel, The Bald Eagle, The Flying Dutchman, The Flying Fool and a landmark horror proto archetype dubbed The Heap – forerunner of all comic muck monsters…

In December 1945, and after 23 issues, the title was redesignated Airboy Comics and soldiered on until 1953, when Hillman with great foresight got out of the funnybook biz just as hostile clouds of censorship were gathering. In over a dozen years of publication, the boy-warrior had tackled the Axis powers, crooks, aliens, monsters, demons and every possible permutation of sinister threat and horror-tinged terror – even subversive giant rats and conqueror ants!

The gripping scripts – initially the work of Biro and Dick Wood before the latter assumed complete control – took the avenging aviator/soldier-of-fortune all over the world to confront some of the most striking adversaries in comics and often some of the sexiest. The most notable of these was undoubtedly the conflicted Nazi Air Ace known as Valkyrie, who flew the killer skies with a squadron of lethal lovelies codenamed The Airmaidens.

However, as the world and tastes changed, Airboy vanished with many other gaudy comic book champions whose time had run out. Clearly, memories remained fresh for many, no doubt rekindled by a superb popular history series in the early 1970s. The Steranko History of Comics and its effusive chapter on the lethal lad led to a speculative venture reprinting two issues of the early run.

Airboy was also the inspiration for Jetboy – originating lynchpin of the Wild Cards franchise by Howard Waldrop, George R.R. Martin, Melinda M. Snodgrass and their many friends. That began in January 1987 and is still going strong with 30 books as of 2022…

In 1982 comics devotee and champion archivist Ken Pierce had collected early Airboy exploits featuring the voluptuous, absurdly pneumatic Nazi-turned-freedom-fighter Valkyrie, and this apparently inspired budding independent comics company Eclipse to reboot and revive the character …and many of his Hillman comrades.

Always innovative, Eclipse were experimenting at that time with fortnightly (that’s twice a month, non-Brits) comics with half the page count of industry standard books, but at a markedly reduced price. To be honest, at 16 pages of story per issue, it wasn’t that different from the 17-18 pages Marvel and DC had been reduced to working with during the late 1970s…

Airboy premiered at 50¢ a copy in July 1986 and quickly found a vocal, dedicated following. Rereading – in either trade paperback or digital editions – this first archival compilation, it’s easy to see why…

Collecting Airboy #1-16 spanning July 15th 1986 February 27th 1987, this superb, so very Eighties all-action romp opens with a revelatory Introduction by instigator and near-exclusive scripter of the entire resurrected franchise Chuck Dixon who asks and answers ‘Why Airboy?’: detailing the events that led to all-star packager/indie maverick Tim Truman getting involved with one of the biggest and most influential series of that era. With Dixon scripting, Truman co-plotting, editing and pencilling, Tom Yeates inking, Tim Harkins lettering and Ron Courtney applying a then-radical colour palette, the initial 5-issue story arc (collected in 1989 as graphic novel Airboy: The Return of Valkyrie) explodes into action…

Issue #1 begins ‘On the Wings of Death’ as, in California’s Napa Valley, a broken man rails against an unjust fate. David Nelson II is bitter and angry. Not even his teenaged son can bring joy to his life. The boy barely knows and certainly has no warm memories of his dad: an aviation magnate who switched from building civilian planes to forging deadly high-tech weapons for any dictator to buy…

Trained since birth by former Japanese WWII fighter ace and deadly martial artist Saburo Hirota, young Davy has become a brave, confident fighter who cannot imagine why his life has been one of constant combat training.

Suddenly, a horde of assassins attacks the compound and the senior Nelson dies in a hail of bullets. Only then does Davy discover the truth about his father. Once upon a time, the aloof martinet was war veteran and roving hero Airboy: battling against and alongside valiant comrades and piloting a truly unique super-aircraft. Second feature ‘Phoenix’ sees the aging samurai tell of the lost hero and – armed with the truth – Davy Nelson III swears to avenge his father and atone for his own inactions and neglect…

Two weeks later, ‘The Wolf and the Phoenix’ reintroduces WWII legend Skywolf who tangentially enters the saga whilst clearing out South American drug traffickers who have been using his isolated Florida Keys island/US military dump for decommissioned ordnance as a staging post for their enterprise. When Hirota and the kid turn up, it’s not just to share the news of a fallen comrade, but also to reclaim and rebuild the shell that used to be Birdie…

As they reassemble and modify the super plane, stories are told and Davy discovers another shocking truth. His mother was not his father’s true love. Once he loved a beautiful German woman-warrior named Valkyrie. However, for the last thirty years she has been trapped in suspended animation by Misery, a phantasmal being who feeds on evil and steals the souls of lost fliers…

Forced to do the monster’s bidding for three decades – such as providing weapons for South American despots to slaughter and enslave innocents – the old hero had gradually died inside. Now his son is ready to avenge him and free the beautiful sleeper. Soon Skywolf’s drug-dealer problem are connected to the death of the original Airboy, leading them all to tropical Bogantilla and despotic General Orista – one of Nelson Aviation’s biggest customers and a staunch anti-Communist whose regime is proudly supported by the Reagan Administration…

With #3’s ‘Misery Loves Company’, Willie Blyberg began inking Woch as – after a tragic and costly misunderstanding – the reunited Air Fighters ally with rebels resisting Orista’s depredations. It’s been a hard struggle as the dictator army is fully supplied with Nelson’s armaments, backed up by black magic. Ghastly Misery has been extorting the ordnance from his arch foe by threating to kill the comatose Valkyrie: a process that had slowly poisoned the heart and crushed the soul of Davy’s dad. Now, however, the tide is turning…

Months previously, from deep in the Florida Everglades the monstrous bog-creature known as The Heap stirred after decades of inactivity. Something momentous was beginning to unfold and – vaguely remembering a previous life, brave heroes and a diabolical evil – it began shambling southwards…

Now the rebels and yanqui heroes raid the General’s citadel in Gamada Cruz, assisted by the Heap and a local shaman, triumphantly completing their ‘Assault on Villa Miserio’ by rescuing the dormant sleeping beauty, weaking bloody vengeance on Orista and driving off the immortal emotion vampire behind all the death and destruction in concluding chapter ‘Misery Takes A Holiday’ (illustrated by Woch, Blyberg & Emil Novak). Not all the good guys make it back, and most uncomfortably of all the revived captive is unaware that the hero she tries so passionately and amorously to reward is not “her Davy”…

Fast-paced, beautifully illustrated and written with all the gung-ho bravado of a Rambo movie, this tale of liberation and revolution rattles along, a stirring blend of action and supernatural horror that sweeps readers along with it, setting the scene for a tense confrontation in #6 as ‘Back in the USA’ covers the aftermath wherein the time-displaced “aviatrix” seeks to adjust to a strange and frustrating new world and form some kind of relationship with the son of her lost lover…

Hirota leaves them to it: he’s more concerned with another long-term rehabilitation project: helping an old ally from WWII with very different yet eerily similar problems. Davy is trying to cleanse his corporation of the last taint of scandal and corruption only to discover that – thanks to CEO Emil Kronenberg – it has been happily supplying appalling weapons and support to almost every gang, terror group and corrupt regime on the planet. He has no idea that other eyes are upon the aging European: hungry, implacable, vengeful ones…

In #7, Valkyrie accepts a vast wad of cash and heads to New York City to lose herself in hedonism. Inked by Jeff Butler, ‘Partytime’ then sees Davy ambushed by his entire complicit Board and abducted by Kronenberg who resumes the indoctrination experiments he devised back in the camps in Germany. Unluckily for him, whilst losing herself, Valkyrie has impossibly found an old friend from the War who also has not aged a day…

Fellow former Luftwaffe pilot Baron Victor Heller has his own magical secrets to keep but makes a useful ally once Davy’s disappearance galvanises Hirota to enlist Val’s assistance in finding the boy…

Davy’s in big trouble in #8 (illustrated by Woch & Blyberg with colours from “Air Rescue”), trapped ‘Down in the Darkness’ and tortured. The extreme hostile takeover move proves initially unsuccessful and as the next issue hikes the price up to $1.25 and extends the page count, ‘Body Count!’ sees his friends move in for a savage showdown.

Inked by Mark Nelson & coloured by Moondoggies, it was offset by a new back-up series exploring the post war career of Skywolf and other Golden Age Air Fighters characters. Concluding in the next issue, ‘China Hands’ by Dixon, Larry Elmore, Harkins & Steve Oliff/Olyoptics, is set in 1948 as China falls to communist control. Here Link Thorne – AKA The Flying Fool – ferries food and medical supplies to the simple peasants caught up in the political carnage, only to be framed by US spook Jensen of what will become the CIA and imprisoned by Chang Kai Shek’s Nationalist army.

Desperate to help, American freight company owner Riot O’Hara reaches out to aimless drifters Skywolf to spring Thorne. Their rescue attempt is sabotaged by agents of the American government and officially they all die in the attempt… Officially…

With John Nyberg inks, #10 concludes Davy’s rescue and sees Kronenberg at last get what’s coming to him in ‘Tooth and Claw’, even as ‘China Hands part 2’ reveals how Skywolf became the man of mystery we all know and love…

Airboy #11 was written by Truman, with art from Ben Dunn & Hilary Barta. ‘…I Am Birdie’ peers into the past and retells the origin of David Nelson II and his sentient wonder craft whilst Dixon & Bill Jaaska combine for another historical 2-parter starring Skywolf. Set in 1949, ‘I Don’t Need My Grave!’ (with the concluding chapter inked by Jeff Darrow) sees the masked wanderer in Tokyo, resolved to stop criminal upstart Billy Yee, strongarming Riot O’Hara.

Yee wants her to export his drugs to America, but as “sangokujin” (displaced Korean or Chinese foreigners) must work outside Japan’s established criminal hierarchy. That’s proved when Skywolf’s attack is interrupted by members of the Yamataki syndicate and before long Yakuza and Yankee outlaw are united in the same goal. All they have to do is deal with the US soldiers Jensen has set on their tails and it’s clear sailing from then on…

The Airboy story in #10 had ended with a portentous teaser as an aerial assault force devastated Skywolf’s Florida island retreat in 1985. Leading the raid was a bloodthirsty loon dubbed Manic. The saga properly kicks off in #12’s ‘Gone to Texas’ (by Dixon, Woch, Kim DeMulder), as – whilst Hirota counsels former ally The Iron Ace (angrily trapped inside the world’s most advanced full body prosthesis) – Davy and Valkyrie tentatively explore their new normal. Both are understandably disturbed by the thought of renewing her relationship by proxy, switching her avid affection from father to son, but thankfully Skywolf distracts them with his latest problem…

Amidst the rubble of his home is a message from his unseen enemies: the burned body of a cop from the banana republic of the Grand Coronicos Islands…

A hastily arranged meeting brings Davy and Hirota to Galveston, Texas and a frankly hilarious encounter with Skywolf’s older, smarter, tougher, wheelchair-bound mother. She thinks her boy’s an idiot and refuses to call him anything but “Lawrence”, but her advice is welcome and leads to Nelson Aviation fronting Skywolf a new top-of-the-line helicopter gunship for their upcoming visit to the Grand Coronicos…

In #13 Dixon, Woch, Nelson & Steve Haynie craft a chilling ‘Tag-Team’ as Manic and his psycho partner Cowgirl apprise their boss of the situation. The nation is supposedly ruled by avid anti-Communist El Presidente Generalissimo Valasquez, but it’s his wife who has really pulled the strings for much of the last 50 years. The methodical scheme to corner America’s entire drug trade is hers, but that starts unravelling as soon as Davy and Birdie start shooting down drug-filled cargo planes…

The response is swift and savage and teams are despatched by Manic to kill everyone close to Nelson and Skywolf. Of course no drug cabal assassin is a match for Hirota, Valkyrie or Lawrence’s mom…

The drama intensifies in ‘A Barrel Full of Sharks’ (Woch & Nelson) as the intended victims all converge on the Islands for a little payback…

Airboy #13 & 14 also offer a fantastic history mystery by Dixon, Tom Lyle & Romeo Tanghal, as ‘Queen of Yeti Valley’ reveals how Skywolf and the Bald Eagle unite to exfiltrate the British Ambassador’s daughter in the Himalayas and end up saving a lost race from human monsters…

In 15 & 16 the posterior back-ups see supposedly deceased Skywolf sneak back into Texas in 1950 for ‘White Lightning’ (Dixon, Woch & Vern Henkel). Happily anonymous, the outlaw says hi to his ma and puts paid to a preacher opening up a Ku Klux Klan franchise to deal with all them uppity, invasive Mexicans in a deeply satisfying and cathartic dose of bigot-trashing catharsis…

At the fronts and in the Eighties, Airboy and his crew go undercover to infiltrate Puerto Oloroso, poverty stricken capital of the Grand Coronicos Island Chain, inevitably unleashing a ‘Caribbean Rampage’ over the final two episodes in this spectacular opening compilation. By scuttling the scheme to flood America with cut-price coke, Airboy, Hirota, Valkyrie and Skywolf (and his mom) achieve a brief moment of pure Eighties synergy: marrying style, outrageous fashion, ostentation, Contras, drugs, the CIA and always over-the-top action with a spurious motive, and wicked humour in a high octane romp translating the fighting stars of WWII to the era of Airwolf, Nightrider and Miami Vice.

Including stunning covers by Truman, Woch, Dave Stevens, Tex Blaisdell, Paul Gulacy, Flint Henry, Howard Bender, Yeates, John Totleben. Davis Dorman and Ron Randall, this is a true lost delight of sheer escapism well worth tracking down, with the promise of more and even better still to come.
Airboy Archives volume 1. Airboy © 2014 Chuck Dixon. © 2014 Idea and Design Work’s LLC. All rights reserved.

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Playbox Annual 1955 – A Picture and Story Book for Boys & Girls (47th Year)


By many & various (the Amalgamated Press)
No ISBN

These materials were created long ago in a different society for a very different audience. As such much material is inadvertently funny, blatantly racist and/or sexist and pretty much guaranteed to offend somebody sooner or later. Think of it as having to talk to your grandparents about “back when everything was better”…

If you don’t think you can tolerate – let alone enjoy – what’s being discussed here, maybe it’s not the book you need today. Why not look at something else or play a game instead?

This is probably the most controversial and potentially distressing book I’ll review this year – so why have I?

There’s a long-cherished but perhaps rather dangerous idea opining that beauty is greater than truth and the comics work in this book is of an astoundingly high quality. The problem is that it’s frequently applied in support of unchallenged assumptions about race, gender, class and culture.

These splendidly entertaining stories, strips, puzzles. poems and jokes come from a time and place where everything was fine and as it should be – as long as you were white, comfortably well off and preferably male…

Normally I review graphic novels and comics collections with a view to readers and potential purchasers becoming fans of the picture-strip medium beyond their usual comfort zones. Here though, I’m cautiously applying modern critical sensibilities to once ubiquitous items that shaped generations. On one level, an entire genre of pictorial edification seems forever lost: permanently removed from the contemporary cultural scene. With material like this though, I can’t honestly say whether that’s a good thing or not…

If you’re lucky enough to stumble across a copy or any similarly-vintage volume, I hope my words convince you look for yourselves. I’m always on my high and wide horse about the paucity of classic vintage strips, stories and comics but I think we need to create an academic benchmark in the entertainment ether for cases like this one.

Material available to the young and older readers of the 21st century will never be of this nature again, but that doesn’t mean it should be shoved aside and forgotten. This sort of stuff shaped generations and it needs to be studied in context.

These are slices extracted from our communal childhood, and must not be swept away or covered up – like Japan’s removal of its role in WWII ( apparently excised from the country’s school history texts) or our own government’s sly massaging of history and culture to wash away common folk, social inequity, and the accomplishments of women, the labour and union movements…

Playbox Annual 1955 was released by The Amalgamated Press in 1954 (dating was year-forward on such bumper, hard-backed premium editions so the book would have been released in the Autumn intended as a Christmas staple). For nursery kids and their parents or adult guardians, radio, comics and being outside in the fresh air were the order of the day. Television was still in its infancy. DC Thomson’s exuberant and anarchic stable of titles were the favourites of older children, but their fare for toddlers was all but indistinguishable from that of other publishers.

Far less open to change or innovation, Alfred Harmsworth’s AP  was the most prolific purveyor of children’s papers, with a pedigree stretching back to the end of the 19th century and a stranglehold on syndicated and licensed characters (especially screen and radio stars) which kept well-intentioned, nostalgic parents coming back for more…

Playbox was AP’s Jewel in the Crown. It had launched – prior to the company’s official foundation – on 19th October 1898, running until 1909 with illustrators and writers such as Julius Stafford Baker, Stavert Johnstone Cash, Mabel F. Taylor and Mabel Lucie Atwell as regular contributors. Favourite features endured through merger and amalgamations (I guess the clue was in the name) until a second volume appeared on St. Valentine’s Day 1925.

It was a rebranding and relaunch of Jungle Jinks and this iteration lasted until 11th June 1955, whereupon it again morphed into a more contemporary title by merging with Jack and Jill.

For much of that second life, Playbox benefitted from the cachet of undisputed UK comics superstar Tiger Tim and his chums The Bruin Boys – Bobby Bruin, Jumbo Elephant, Willie Ostrich, Georgie Giraffe, Jacko Monkey, Joey Parrot, Porkyboy Pig and Fido Pup – who spent their days learning to be civilised at Mrs Bruin’s Boarding School. The feature was originally rendered by Stafford Baker, but eventually became a multi-artist enterprise encompassing many of the country’s greatest artists.

Tim had first appeared in Harmsworth’s Daily Mirror in 1904, graduating in 1909 to The World and His Wife and its weekly children’s supplement – Playbox. The gang also appeared in the Rainbow weekly colour comic (from February 1914) with Tim as cover feature until its demise in 1956.

In 1919, Tiger Tim’s Weekly (nee Tales) launched, augmented by its own annual from 1921 (first one dated 1922 – got it now?). At a time when merchandising deals for children’s stuff were in their infancy, the characters were so popular that Britains – a toy soldier manufacturer – launched a line of lead figures to sell alongside their more militaristic and farm animal fare.

In this twilight years album – the 47th yearly release – the line-up as ever includes not only anthropomorphic Tim and Co. but also general features (prose and strip), fact pieces and plenty of puzzles and games to keep the nippers engrossed – and quiet – for hours…

Once again: when this book was released, our views of other races and cultures ranged from patronisingly parochial to outrageously insular to smugly intolerable and just unforgivable. As with every aspect of British – Hell, all “White Culture” – there was an implicit assumption of racial superiority – notwithstanding the fact that every empire is built on multi-nationality; and even within living memory WWII could not have been won by white warriors alone.

Which brings us back to ethnic stereotyping. All I can say is what I always do: those times were so different. Mercifully, the best of us have moved beyond the obvious institutionalised iniquities of casual racism and sexism and are much more tolerant today (unless you’re obese, gay, gender-nonconforming, trans, vegan, liberal, or childfree and happy about it). If antiquated attitudes and caricaturing offends you, don’t read this or any old comics – it’s your choice, but perhaps you shouldn’t condemn just on my or anybody else’s say-so without seeing what’s here…

Moreover, class and regional differences underpinning this entire era are far more insidious and egregious – just look at Sexton Blake and his assistant Tinker or upper middle-class, highly educated Dan Dare and his canny, competent but inescapably comedic “Ee baih gum” sidekick Digby…

I fear historic portrayals and inclusions of other races have always and will always be controversial and potentially offensive from our elevated standpoint, and we have mostly moved on since those pitifully ignorant times. It’s not really even an excuse to say, at least in our post-war comics, that baddies were mostly our kind and all those differently-hued cultures were victims: generally friendly, noble savages not trying to eat us…

Nor will this diversion ameliorate the shock of one particular illustrated story at the back of this particular book: I’m saying nothing further now, but By Crikey you’ll know what and why when we get to it…

This cosy, royalty-rich annual (so, so many kings and princesses!) begins in traditional manner: following stunning 2-colour frontispiece Wibblewobble Town (by Tom Wilkinson?) we open with western prose adventure ‘Cowboy Courage’ as young Cowboy Dan come to the rescue of “redskin maid” Wild Rose and her pony White Cloud in a beautifully limned monochrome yarn, before Stavert Johnstone Cash wishes ‘A Merry Christmas to All’ in a frenetic tableau starring cat clan the Fluffkins.

Via illustrated prose, a genteel dispute between King Nosegay and Wizard Wobble is settled on ‘The Giant Haystack’ before the Bruin Boys merge doggerel and comic strip in cooking clash ‘“Plop!” Goes the Pancake’ (probably drawn by Herbert Foxwell) whilst  text tail (!) ‘The New Puppy’ reveals how a big baby mutt learns to get along with aging tabby cat Montmorency…

‘Sky-High for Treasure’ combines strip and verse as two lads hunt pirate treasure (by Mabel Atwell?) whilst we resort to prose for ‘The Princess with the Purple Hair’ before returning to red & black tones for Cowell’s squirrelly tableau ‘The Tickletails are on the Move’ and Hugh McNeill’s fairy forest romp ‘Ring A-Ding Ding!’, all supplemented by Cash’s poetic pinup ‘Mow-Pram Rides’ and an animal inspired ‘Hamper of Jokes’.

Many inclusions are traditional “block-&-pic” (a progression of panel drawings accompanied by a paragraph of typeset words), such as McNeill’s ‘Two Boys in a Boat’, but ‘Home by Howdah’ is a modern comic strip story in all but content.

Fairy tale wonders and staggeringly lovely art masking and reinforcing so many poisonous attitudes about privilege, class and race are all out in force here, as the worst of “blackface minstrel” shows manifests as a bunch of jolly “picaninnies” who have to find an animal alternative to a crashed motor car…

Prose and monochrome return in ‘Peter to the Rescue!’ as a cowardly boy finally finds the motivation to be a hero and ‘Hair-Raising’ offers tonsorial tips for urbane birds before Tammy Twinkle shares a forest folk day out in text treat ‘Off to the Sea’, after which McNeill rolls out some seasonal chuckles in ‘Here’s Santa Smiler’…

Block-&-pic thriller ‘Robin Hood’s Pupil’ finds young John and his sister Catherine seized by Normans before devising a way to summon the immortal hero and – following more jokes in ‘Breezy ‘Bus-Stop Chatter’ – eerie prose yarn ‘Friendly Snowmen’ sees some seasonal wanderers lending a frosty helping hand to a lad who wants to buy his ailing little brother some sweets…

‘Laugh with Chic’ (McNeill) segues into puzzle page ‘A Happy Holiday’ and more Bruin Boy larks in ‘Topsy-Turvy Trick’ before Dick and Pusskins (Whittington and his animal asset) turn a job search into a tobogganing treat in ‘Icy Trip’ whilst prose parable ‘The Dragons’ Picnic’ sees a scaly family pay their regal respects and save a king in distress…

More casually racist cartoon virtue signalling sees a friendly white store owner help Little Raven and his father Chief White Wing when they desperately need a surfeit of pelts to buy off “Blackfeet” raiders. All the generous ‘Paleface Friends’ get in return is the useless gold clogging up the natives’ river…

A burst of activity is encouraged by ‘Trick Fun’ and ‘River Race’ before text thriller ‘Air Rescue’ sees housebound Linda play a big part in saving a sinking yachtsman, whilst ‘Reg and Ron’ endure scholastic shocks in strip form prior to more puzzles in ‘Strangers Around’ and ‘Games for Your Party’.

A burst of black and orange heralds Cash’s Fluffkins tableau ‘Sports day’ and Foxwell’s Bruin Boy strip ‘Christmas Snowball and Fun for All’ before we’re back in the world of appalled sensibilities with prose fantasy ‘Ching Chung’s Pets’, after which McNeill charms again in kiddies’ seaside adventure ‘Off for a Float in Chic’s Paddle-Boat’…

Tableau ‘The Woolly Boys’ Train-Ride’ closes the colour section before prose treat ‘Farmer’s Boys’ finds two wilful animal slackers learning the value and rewards of hard work, and illustrated verse ‘Lazy Trains’ brings us to a text tract of boarding school mice enjoying illicit ‘Cheese Pie for Supper’ and illustrated instructions on how to cast ‘Shadow Pictures’.

Apprentice Val works for ‘Grundvik the Toy-maker’ and foils a robbery in this text thriller in advance of pictorial epigram ‘The Buntings’ Dress Parade’ and more Bruin Boy hijinks in ‘Wigwam Surprises’, after which ‘Playbox Theatre’ details how to make a play at home… Another ‘Puzzle Page’ leads to historical adventure as a cabin boy Bob unearths ‘The Pirates Treasure’ and Chic invites ‘Too Many to Tea’. That’s just as well because you’ll need a bracing beverage to get past this year’s visit to (African? Caribbean? Alabamian?) favourite vacation spot and the ‘Darkietown Yacht Race’. I have words but I’m not going to use them…

Dickensian Victoriana sees two vagrant lads clean a widow’s chimney and encounter ‘Lucky Smoke’ and rich rewards after which city kids have ‘Country Fun’ in a prose tale sporting beautiful and uncredited silhouette illustration, prior to cartoon gag ‘A S’talking Stork Surprises Sam’ segues into cheeky kitten ‘Flips’ shares his diary and ‘Adrift on Ice’ shows and prose the valour of two kids in the arctic looking for food for their mother…

What passed for age-appropriate children’s content back then might raise a few eyebrows these days but we’re back on solid ground when ‘Percy Pump’s Pranks’ in prose bring the festivities to a close, leaving only room for a ‘Playbox ad’, editorial comment in ‘My Letter to You’ and a back cover adorned with advertorial ‘Cadburys Puzzle Picture’…

Popular fiction from a populist publisher will always embody some underlying assumptions unpalatable to some modern readers, but good taste by contemporary standards was always a watchword when producing work for younger children. Some interactions between white children and other races is a little utopian, perhaps, but more insidious problems arise from the accepted class-structures in many stories and the woefully petrified sexism displayed throughout.

None of this detracts one jot from the sheer creative power of the artists involved, and perhaps the best we can hope for is that readers use judgement and perspective when viewing or revisiting material this old. Remember, Thomas Jefferson may have kept slaves, but Britain’s Royal Family, our museums and educational institutions all benefitted hugely from the trade; it’s only been illegal to beat your wife since the 1970’s (The Domestic Violence and Matrimonial Proceedings Act 1976), and even today and far too often people who die in police custody apparently only have themselves to blame…

So before I go off on another one or get put on another government watch list, let’s return to the subject at hand and say that despite all the restrictions and codicils this is in many ways a beautiful piece of children’s art in the time-honoured fashion of Enid Blyton, Dodie Smith and Arthur Ransome, with lovely illustrations that would make any artist weep with envy.
© 1955 The Amalgamated Press.

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Flash Gordon Annual 1967


By anonymous staff of the Mick Anglo Studio, Dick Wood, Al Williamson, Don Heck & various (World Distributor’s [Manchester] Ltd.)
No ISBN – ASIN B000ZOP1GY

By most lights, Flash Gordon is the most influential comic strip in the world. When the hero debuted on Sunday January 7th 1934 (with the superb but rather dated Jungle Jim running as a supplementary “topper”) as response to revolutionary, inspirational, but clunky Buck Rogers (by Philip Nolan & Dick Calkins and which had also began on January 7th but in 1929), a new element was added to the realm of fantasy wonderment: Classical Lyricism.

Where Rogers had traditional adventures and high science concepts, this new feature reinterpreted Fairy Tales, Heroic Epics and Mythology. It did so by spectacularly draping them in the trappings of the contemporary future, with varying esoteric “Rays”, “Engine” and “Motors” substituting for trusty swords and lances – although there were also plenty of those – and exotic flying craft and contraptions standing in for Galleons, Chariots and Magic Carpets.

Most important of all, the sheer artistic talent of Raymond, his compositional skills, fine line-work, eye for concise, elegant detail and just plain genius for drawing beautiful people and things, swiftly made this the strip all young artists swiped from.

When all-original comic books began a few years later, literally dozens of talented kids used the clean lined Romanticism of Gordon as their model and ticket to future success in the field of adventure strips. Most of the others went with Milton Caniff’s expressionistic masterpiece Terry and the Pirates (which also began in 1934 – and he’ll get his go another day).

At the time of this annual a bunch of Gold Key and King Features Syndicate licenses were held by Mick Anglo, who provide strip and prose material for UK weekly TV Tornado. It combined British generated material with US comic book reprints in an era when the television influence of shows like Tarzan and Batman, and venerable features like Flash Gordon – who also had a small screen presence thanks to frequent re-runs of his cinema chapter plays. The project was extremely popular, even though not always of the highest quality…

In 1966, newspaper monolith King Features Syndicate briefly got into comic book publishing again: releasing a wave of titles based on their biggest stars. These were an ideal source of material for British publishers, whose regular audiences were profoundly addicted to TV and movie properties. Moreover, thematically they fitted with World Distributors’ other licensed properties, which repackaged Western’s comics material like Star Trek, Beverly Hillbillies or Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea with domestically generated material – usually crafted by Mick Anglo’s packaging company Gower Studios.

This Anglo-American (tee-hee!) partnership filled our Christmas needs for a generation, producing a range of UK Annuals – and the occasional Special – mixing full-colour US reprints with prose stories, puzzles, games and fact-features on related themes.

Flash Gordon Annuals appeared sporadically over the next few decades beginning with this release from 1967 which leaned heavily on generic prose space opera adventure leavened with some truly stunning comics tales.

In opening yarn, ‘The Tanks of Triton’ Flash, Dale Arden and Dr. Zarkov are recast as general space explorers and their voyage to unknown world Athene sees them saving an advanced and cultured pacifist species from barbaric underseas invaders, after which the explorers pop back to Mongo and visit the Unexplored Continent just in time to scotch the conquest plans on tyrants in waiting ‘The Doom Men’ .

Thus far the fictive text had been augmented by full-colour painted illustrations (and inset epigrammatic facts about Space) but the first full photo feature of rocket science takes centre stage in ‘Britain’s Contribution to Europe’s Satellite’ comes next, counterpointed by maze puzzle ‘Earth in Danger’ before vertical take-off jets are reviewed in ‘Look – No Runway!’

Natural history feature ‘It All Depends!’ discusses relative lifespans before prose yarn in two tone line art ‘Undersea Peril’ sees Flash, Dale and Zarkov discover yet another hidden aquatic kingdom and depose another crazed would-be world conqueror before we enjoy board game ‘Space Flight to Mongo’ and themed crossword ‘Space Fill-In’.

Full-colour comics wonderment begins with the eponymous lead strip from King Comics’ Flash Gordon #1, cover-dated September 1966. Possibly scripted by Archie Goodwin (or Larry Ivie?) ‘Flash Gordon’ was latterly credited to majestic illustrator Al Williamson. While we’re being detailed, the last page is supposedly inked by Gray Morrow…

The strip sees our terrific trio returned to Mongo, in search of desperately needed Radium to stave off a crisis on Earth. Packed with all the vast cast of the series it depicts how the visitors arrive just in time to thwart a coup d’état in frozen kingdom Frigia…

Williamson was one of the greatest draughtsmen to ever grace the pages of comic books and newspaper strip sections. He was born in 1931 in New York City, after which his family relocated to Columbia just as the Golden Age of syndicated adventure strips began.

The lad’s passion for “the Comics” – especially Raymond’s Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim – broadened as he devoured imported and translated US material and the best that Europe and Latin America could provide in anthology magazines as Paquin and Pif Paf. When he was twelve the Williamsons returned to America where, after finishing school, the prodigy found work in the industry that had always obsessed him.

In the early 1950s he became a star of E.C. Comics’ science fiction titles beside kindred spirits Joe Orlando, Wally Wood, Roy G. Krenkel, Frank Frazetta & Angelo Torres. He drew Westerns Kid Colt and Ringo Kid for Atlas/Marvel and during the industry’s darkest days found new fame and fans in newspaper strips, firstly by assisting John Prentice on Rip Kirby – another Raymond masterpiece – and, from 1967, on Secret Agent Corrigan.

Williamson drew Flash Gordon for King Comics and worked on mystery tales and westerns for DC whilst drawing Corrigan; eventually becoming go-to guy for blockbuster sci-fi film adaptations with his stunning interpretations of Blade Runner and Star Wars.

His poetic realism, sophisticated compositions, classicist design and fantastic naturalism graced many varied tales, but in later years he was almost exclusively an inker over pencillers as varied as John Romita Jr., Larry Stroman, Rick Leonardi, Mark Bright, José Delbo and a host of others on everything from Transformers to Spider-Man 2099, Daredevil to Spider-Girl. His magical brushes and pens also embellished many of Marvel’s Graphic Novel productions – such as The Inhumans and Cloak and Dagger: Predator and Prey.

Williamson died in June 2010.

In this Annual, it’s back to prose & painted illos for ‘The Green Horde’ as our heroes discover a new planet just in time to foil a secret invasion of Earth, after which ‘The Black Beasts of Prey’ takes the wanderers to planet Zeus in time to save a dying race of humanoids from fluing dinosaurs and set evolution back on its destined track…

US comic book Flash Gordon #1 also had a back-up starring fellow legendary stalwart Mandrake the Magician and it appears here: crafted by Dave Wood, Don Heck & Andre LeBlanc. ‘Midnight with Mandrake’ sees a gang of thieves unleash sleeping gas on a city crowd, only to have Mandrake change it from soporific to an hallucinogen that sends everyone on the trip of their lives…

It’s back to 2-tone and peerless prose as our heroes find ‘Ming the Merciless’ loose on Earth and stealing weapons tech to reconquer Mongo, after which gag page ‘Laughs in Space’ segues into a text told war of liberation for marsh dwelling primitives in ‘The Last of the Claymen’ and a ‘True or False ’ brain teaser page before we spectacularly end with the last strip from Flash Gordon #1, as the Terran Trio test Zarkov’s new mole machine and discover a lost civilisation deep under the crust of Mongo. Sadly, the locale of Krenkellium might be fresh and new but power, politics and peril seem to play out in a universal manner in ‘Flash Gordon and the Mole Machine’ (by Archie Goodwin & Williamson).

This kind of uncomplicated done-in-one media-tasty package was the basic unit of Christmas entertainment for millions of British kids at one time and still holds plenty of rewarding fun for those looking for a simple and straightforward nostalgic escape.
© MCMLXVI, MCMLXVII by King Features Syndicate, Inc. The Amalgamated Press.

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Look and Learn Book 1964


By many & various (Fleetway)
ISBN10: 901267-49-X – ISBN13: 978-0-90126-749-8

One the most missed of publishing traditions in this country is the educational comic. From the fact features in the legendary weekly The Eagle to the small explosion of factual and socially responsible boys and girls papers in the late 1950s to the heady go-getting heydays of the 1960s and 1970s, Britain had a healthy sub-culture of comics that informed, instructed and revealed …and don’t even get me started on sports comics!

Amongst many others, Speed & Power, World of Wonder, Tell Me Why and the greatest of them all Look and Learn spent decades making things clear and bringing the marvels of the world to our childish but avid attentions. They always did so with taste. wit, style and – thanks to the quality of the illustrators involved – astonishing beauty.

Look and Learn launched on 20th January 1962, brainchild of Fleetway Publications Director of Juvenile Publications Leonard Matthews, and executed by Editor David Stone (almost instantly replaced by John Sanders), Sub-Editor Freddie Lidstone and Art Director Jack Parker.

For twenty years and 1049 issues, the shiny beautifully printed comic delighted children by bringing the marvels of the universe to their doors, and was one of the country’s most popular children’s publications. Naturally, there were many spin-off tomes such as The Look and Learn Book of 1001 Questions and Answers, Look and Learn Book of Wonders of Nature, Look and Learn Book of Pets and Look and Learn Young Scientist, as well as the totally engrossing Christmas treat The Look and Learn Book.

This volume was released for Christmas 1971 (as with almost all UK Annuals it was forward-dated) and is a prime example of a lost form. Within this 132 heavy-stock paged hard-back are 46 fascinating features on all aspects of human endeavour, history and natural wonders.

Technology always played a growing part in proceedings and – aided and abetted by printing advances photography – the ever innovative editors subdivided this volume into themed categories: opening naturally with a Science Section that includes – in drawn and painted but mostly photo – features Beneath the Waves – the Story of Submarines, A Jet in your garage?, Cities in the Sky, Our Polluted Planet (yep they were bloody warning us way back then!), Quiet Please! and Tested for Toughness.

To keep readers on their intellectual toes there are tests at the end of each course module and a Science Quiz ushers readers into the next phase – Our Wonderful World of History…

Here – although photographs are increasingly used throughout – traditional illustrators still rule. Diagrams, cartoons, paintings and drawings were rendered by some of the world’s greatest commercial artists and might include such luminaries as Ron and Gerry Embleton, Helen Haywood, Ron Turner, Ken Evans, Angus McBride, Peter Jackson, “Pratt”, Fortunino Matania, John Millar Watt, John Worsley, Alberto “Albert” Breccia, Clive Upton, James E. McConnell, Ken Lilly, C.L. Doughty, Wilf Hardy, Dan Escott, R.B. Davis, Oliver Frey and many others, illuminating the articles and making these books (and the comics) an utter delight for hungry minds to devour whilst the Roast Beast and plum pudding slowly digested…

Right here back then that meant revealing such marvels as Conquerors of the Incas, The Heart of Sienna, When Horses Went to War, Are You Superstitious?, Signs of the Times, The First Americans, and Christmas Customs which comes with its own History Quiz and heralds a swift sojourn in the Wonderful World of Nature.

That means admiring and studying our native fauna in Their Home is the Highlands, Marine Marvels, The Grand Canyon, Winged Beauties (butterflies on stamps), Gems from the Ocean, Fish with a difference, When a Boar Goes to War, Creatures of the Night, Builders without hands, Puma – or Rumour?, Snakes Alive!, Fabulous Monsters and Birds of Prey and then taking the Nature Quiz…

Our Wonderful World of Art injects some high culture to the mix, starting with The Artist at War – enhanced by famous contemporary images from G.H. Davis, Bruce Bairnsfather, Frank Wooton, Paul Nash and Dame Laura Knight – which is followed by facts, photos and paintings of Pompeii.

An examination of silent cinema comedies in The Banana Skin Boys, The Young Road to Fame (acting and actors) and exploration of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in He Lived His Books covers more sedentary interests before Their Fathers Made Them Stars and The Revolutionary Genius (William Morris) segues into The Arts Quiz. That takes us to the end with a peek at Our Wonderful World…

Here Round-the-World Sailors take the lead after which This town was… Buried for 1,500 Years (Herculaneum this time) offers more insights in lost worlds and Australia’s original inhabitants take centre stage in Corroboree! The Silent City explores Mdina in Malta before Ballooning over the Alps, The Making of a Sea, Ellan Vannin, Land of Music and Song and Under a Spanish Sky bring the session to a close – with its attendant Quiz – and of course all the answers…

With modern digital media I suppose this kind of book is unnecessary and irrelevant now, but nostalgia aside, the glorious art in these editions make them worth the effort of acquisition, and I defy anyone of any age to not be sucked into the magic of learning that looks this lovely…

© 1971 IPC Magazines, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

 

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Superadventure Annual 1960-1961


By Jack Miller, Jack Schiff, Joe Millard, Otto Binder, Edmund Hamilton, Robert Bernstein, Gardner Fox, John Forte, Bob Brown, Ramona Fradon, Jim Mooney, Edwin J. Smalle Jr, Howard Sherman, Ruben Moreira, Henry Boltinoff & others (Atlas Publishing & distributing Co./K.G. Murray)
No ISBN:

Before 1959, when DC and other American publishers started exporting directly into the UK, our exposure to their unique brand of fantasy fun came mostly from licensed reprints. British publishers/printers like Len Miller, Alan Class and bought material from the USA – and occasionally, Canada – to fill 68-page monochrome anthologies – many of which recycled the same stories for decades. In Britain we began seeing hardcover Superman Annuals in 1950, Superboy Annuals in 1953, Superadventure Annuals in 1959 and Batman books in 1960. Since then many publishers have carried on the tradition…

Less common were the oddly coloured pamphlets produced by Australian outfit K.G. Murray and exported here in a somewhat sporadic manner. The company also produced sturdily substantial Christmas Annuals which had a huge impact on my earliest years (I strongly suspect my adoration of black-&-white artwork stems from seeing supreme stylists like Curt Swan, Carmine Infantino, Al Plastino, Wayne Boring, Gil Kane or Murphy Anderson utterly uncluttered by flat, limited colour palettes).

This particular tome comes from 1960 whilst a superhero craze was barely bubbling under, allowing us access a wide range of the transitional genre material that fell between the Golden and Silver Ages. Everything in comics was changing and this book offers a delightfully eclectic mix of material far more in keeping with the traditionally perceived interests of British boys than the caped-&-cowled masked madness soon to obsess us all…

This collection is all monochrome, soundly stiff-backed, and sublimely suspense and joyous, and begins with Space Ranger: a relatively new property seen in Showcase #16.

In America, Showcase was a try-out comic designed by DC to launch new series and concepts with minimal commitment of publishing resources. If a new character sold well initially, a regular series would follow. The process had been proved with Frogmen, The Flash, Challengers of the Unknown and Lois Lane, so Editorial Director Irwin Donenfeld urged his editors to create science fiction heroes to capitalise on the twin zeitgeists of the Space Race and the popular fascination with movie monsters and aliens.

Jack Schiff came up with a “masked” crimefighter of the future who premiered in issues #15 & 16 (1958). The hero was Rick Starr: interplanetary businessman who – thanks to incredible gadgets and the assistance of shape-shifting alien pal Cryll and capable Girl Friday Myra Mason – spent his free time battling evil and injustice from his base in a hollow asteroid.

A few months later, the State-side Space Ranger was transported to DC’s science fiction anthology Tales of the Unexpected, beginning with issue #40 (August 1959): holding the lead and cover spot for a 6-year run and enduring frequent revivals and reboots ever since…

Canonically, we start with his third published exploit as ‘The Secret of the Space Monster’ (plot by John Forte, scripted by pulp veteran Edmond Hamilton and illustrated by Bob Brown) sees Rick, Myra and Cryll investigating an impossible void creature and uncovering a band of alien revolutionaries testing novel super-weapons.

Continuity was practically unheard in these DC overseas editions – and I’m pretty sure the editorial staff never gave a monkey’s about reading cohesion. UK spellings and currency were scrupulously re-lettered, but stories were arbitrarily trimmed to fit the page count and layout, making endings unclear or uncertain. However, we loved the sheer eclectic exoticism (we didn’t call it that, though); we were just wide-eyed impressionable grateful kids, okay?

One of the few superheroes to survive the collapse at the end of the Golden Age was a rather nondescript and generally bland looking chap who solved maritime crimes, rescuing fish and people from sub-sea disaster.

Created by Mort Weisinger & Paul Norris in the wake of Timely Comics’ Sub-Mariner, Aquaman first set sail in More Fun Comics #73 (November 1941). Strictly a second stringer for most of his career, the Sea King nevertheless continued on far beyond many stronger features. He was primarily illustrated by Norris, Louis Cazeneuve and Charles Paris, until young Ramona Fradon took over the art chores in 1954, by which time the Sea King had settled into a regular back-up slot in Adventure Comics. All of the salty sagas here are illustrated by her, and limned every single adventure until 1960: indelibly stamping the hero with her unique blend of charm and sleek competence.

At the time this book was released, America’s Aquaman had been refitted. Showcase #4 (1956) rekindled the public’s taste for costumed crime-fighters. As well as re-imagining Golden Age stalwarts, DC updated its hoary survivors. The initial revamp ‘How Aquaman Got His Powers!’ (Adventure #260, May 1959) was the work of Robert Bernstein. That tale set a new origin – offspring of a lighthouse keeper/refugee from undersea Atlantis – and eventually all trappings of the modern superhero followed: themed hideout, sidekick, even super-villains! Moreover, continuity and the concept of a shared universe became paramount.

In this seasonal collection however, he’s still a charming, dedicated seagoing nomad with a tendency to find trouble as in ‘The Ocean of 1,000,000 B.C.’ (Adventure Comics #253, October 1958 by Bernstein & Fradon) where he swims through a time warp and helps a seashore-dwelling caveman against a marauding dragon.

Cartoonist Henry Boltinoff was a prolific and nigh-permanent fixture of DC titles in this period, providing a variety of 2, 1, and 1½ page gag strips to cleanse visual palates and satisfy byzantine US legal directives allowing publishers to sustain cheaper postal shipping rates. He’s here in strength: his gentle humour jibing perfectly with contemporary British tastes, in the first vignette starring space boffin Professor Eureka…

Based on Alex Raymond’s newspaper star Jungle Jim, the next feature was very much of its time. Congo Bill debuted in More Fun Comics #56 (June 1940) and adventured there for a year (#67, May 1941) before upgrading to flagship title Action Comics with #37 (June 1941). A solid and reliable B-feature, his global safaris were popular enough to make him a star of his own movie serial and win his own 7-issue series (running from August/September 1954 to August/September 1955). His exploits followed trend slavishly: he faced uprisings, criminals, contemptuous rich wastrels, wars, plagues, evil witch-doctors, mad scientists, monsters, aliens – and every permutation thereof – in his monthly vignettes; gained a sidekick in Action Comics #191 (April 1954) and even evolved into a sort of superhero in Action #224 (January 1957) when he gained the power to body swap with golden gorilla Congorilla. He/they prowled in Action until #261 (February 1960), whereupon the feature moved into Adventure Comics, running from #270-283 (March 1960-April 1961). As comics folk are painfully, incurably nostalgic, the characters have been revived many times since…

Here Congo Bill – with Janu the Jungle Boy open their innings with ‘The Mystery of the Jungle Monuments!’ (Action Comics #206, July 1955) authorially uncredited but illustrated by Edwin J. Smalle, Jr., as they uncover a cunning smuggling plot before equally long-lived space patrolman/interplanetary Coast Guard operative Tommy Tomorrow pops in from the future to solve ‘The Puzzle of the Perilous Planetoid’ – from Action Comics #206 July 1955 and crafted – as were most of his missions – by Otto Binder & Jim Mooney.

The strip was a hugely long-running back-up strip which began in Real Fact Comics #6 (January 1947). Devised by Jack Schiff, George Kashdan, Bernie Breslauer, Virgil Finlay and Howard Sherman, it was a speculative science feature that returned in #8, 13 & 16 before shifting to Action Comics (#127-251, December 1948 to April 1959). Along the way Tommy became a Colonel in the peacekeeping Planeteers organisation…

With superheroes ascending again, he then moved into World’s Finest Comics (#102- 124, June 1959 to March 1962) and endured one final reboot in Showcase #41-42, 44 & 46-47 (1962-1963) before fading from sight and memory until rediscovered and reimagined by later generations…

Here the interstellar star of 2058 (so not long now) and his patrol partner Captain Brent Wood solve a titanic taxonomical conundrum before we switch from fantasy to contemporary showbiz…

When superheroes declined in the early 1950s, Detective Comics shed its costumed cohort for more rationalistic reasoners and grounded champions. One of the most offbeat was Roy Raymond, a TV personality who hosted hit series “Impossible… But True”. Illustrated by Ruben Moreira, it launched in #153 (November 1949): its formulaic yet versatile pattern being that his researchers or members of the public would present weird or “supernatural” items or mysteries for the arch-debunker to inevitably expose as misunderstanding, mistake or, as in this case, criminal fraud…

Produced throughout this book by Jack Miller & Moreira, Roy Raymond, TV Detective introduces ‘The Man with the Magic Camera’ (Detective Comics #246 August 1957) as a tinkerer with an X-ray camera is exposed as a cunning crook after which another Boltinoff Professor Eureka treat segues into Aquaman thriller, ‘The Guinea Pig of the Sea’ (by Joe Millard & Fradon from Adventure Comics #250, July 1958) with the Sea King abducted by a well-intentioned but obsessive researcher fed up with waiting for a moment in the hero’s hectic schedule to open up…

My earlier carping about continuity is confirmed here as Congo Bill and Janu face ‘The Five from the Future’. Crafted by Miller & Sherman, it comes from Action Comics #243 (August 1958) and sees the heroes facing an alien invasion of beasts. It reads well enough as is, but is actually the second part of a continued tale, with the first chapter appearing towards the end of this tome. I pity the little kid trying to make sense of that. Actually, no I don’t: we didn’t care that much – it’s just adults that worry about that instead of great art and fantastic thrills…

If you can find this book, just read part 1 at the back then flip back here, ok?

Tommy Tomorrow then makes a rare mistake by accidentally destroying ‘The Interplanetary Scarecrow’ (Action Comics #245, October 1958) before ending the seasonal menace it was intended to frighten off and – following another Professor Eureka moment – Roy Raymond heads to Africa and encounters ‘The Man who Charmed Wild Beasts’ (Detective Comics #256 June 1958).

Space Ranger is next in his very first tale (from Showcase #15 and seen in the US with a September/October 1958 cover-date). It commenced – without fanfare or origin – the ongoing adventures of the futuristic mystery man – beginning in ‘The Great Plutonium Plot’. Plotted by Gardner Fox, scripted by Hamilton and illustrated by Brown, it begins when Jarko the Jovian space pirate targets ships carrying a trans-uranic element. Rick Starr suspects hidden motives and, as Space Ranger, lays a cunning trap, exposing a hidden mastermind and a lethal ancient device endangering the entire solar system…

Keeping up a theme of times and space ‘At Sea in the Stone Age’ is an anonymously scripted Aquaman yarn limned by Fradon (Adventure Comics #184, January 1953) which sees another watery warp propel the Sea King into the distant past. Once again primordial men need help against ravening sea monsters and the hero is happy to oblige…

Bill and Janu then confront ‘The Riddle of the Roc!’ (illustrated by Sherman from Action Comics #244 September 1958) as crooked diamond prospector Ed Vance finds a giant egg and trains the hatchling into the perfect plundering weapon …until our great white hunter employs his trapping skills…

With his job and reputation on the line, Tommy Tomorrow solves ‘The Mystery of the Three Space Rookies’ (Action #244, September 1958) who are just too good to be true, before tantalising ads and public service announcement ‘The Atom – the Servant of Man’ – by Schiff, Morris Waldinger & Tony Nicolosi? – precede Miller & Fradon’s salty tale of Aquaman’s plight as ‘The Robinson Crusoe of the Sea’ (Adventure Comics #252, September 1958). It begins when a chemical spill makes the Sea King allergic to seawater and offers a charming sequence of clever crisis management by our hero’s octopus pal Topo…

Miller & Smalle, Jr. pit Bill and Jungle Boy against ‘The Amazing Army of Apes!’ (Action #219, August 1956) as a soldier seemingly deranged by jungle fever goes on a rampage, after which Colonel Tommy Tomorrow is pressganged into a space tyrant’s retinue to stalk freedom fighters as one of ‘The Hunters of the Future!’ (Binder & Mooney from Action Comics #190 March 1954) and Boltinoff’s Moolah the Mystic has a close encounter on his flying carpet…

Roy Raymond exposes fraud and attempted murder in the case of accident-prone ‘Mr. Disaster’ (Detective #258, August 1958) before one final Space Ranger romp solves ‘The Riddle of the Lost Race’ (Fox, Hamilton & Brown from Showcase #16). The case takes Rick’s team on a whistle-stop tour of the Solar system in pursuit of a vicious criminal and hidden treasures of a long-vanished civilisation…

Aquaman scuppers ‘The Outlaw Navy’ of a modern pirate in a rip-raring romp by Millard & Fradon (Adventure Comics #194, November 1953) and the first part of Congo Bill’s alien adventure finds him and Janu the Jungle Boy facing Venusian marauder Xov on a ‘Safari from Space!’ (Miller & Sherman, Action Comics #242, July 1958). To confirm an old prospector’s bonanza claim Tommy Tomorrow assembles ‘The Strangest Crew in the Universe’ (Action Comics #241 June 1958) before the Superadventuring wraps up with Roy Raymond investigating apparently accursed timber from ‘The Fantastic Forest’ as seen in Detective Comics #260 October 1958). The festivities finish with a quick cartoon lesson in science feature Solar System Sizes!, revealing the wonders of comets and meteors.

Quirky and fun, this is a true delight for oldsters and casual consumers of comics and offers true fans their only real opportunity to see material DC doesn’t seem to care about any more…
© National Periodical Publications, Inc. Published by arrangement with the K.G. Murray Publishing Company, Pty. Ltd., Sydney.