Demon With a Glass Hand – A DC Science Fiction Graphic Novel


By Harlan Ellison, adapted by Marshall Rogers (DC Comics)
ISBN: 0-930289-09-9

Long before comics got into the highly addictive habit of blending and braiding parallel stories and sharing universes science fiction authors such as Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Larry Niven and Harlan Ellison were blazing the trail. Ellison crafted an extended series of short stories and novellas into the gripping and influential War against the Kyben, even going so far as to break out of print media and into television; consequently garnering even greater fame and glory as well as the 1965 Writers Guild of America Award for Outstanding Script for a Television Anthology and the Georges Melies Fantasy Film Award (1972) for Outstanding Cinematic Achievement in Science Fiction Television.

Demon with a Glass Hand was written as a teleplay – the author’s second – for influential TV show The Outer Limits, premiering on 17th October 1964, and only later being adapted into a prose adventure. In 1986 the startlingly talented and much missed Marshall Rogers used the original, unedited first draft of the TV script to create a fantastically effective comics adaptation for the experimental DC Science Fiction Graphic Novel series.

Humanity’s battle against the Kyben lasted ten generations and involved all manner of technologies including time travel. Trent is a man with a mission and huge holes in his memory. Somewhere in his occluded mind is a vast secret: the location of the entire human race, hidden to prevent the invading Kyben from finding and destroying them. Instead of a right hand he has a crystal prosthetic that talks to him, but the glass computer cannot restore his memories until three of its missing fingers are recovered.

Dispatched to the dubious safety of the 20th century Trent has been followed by a horde of aliens determined to secure that fateful secret and they have taken over the skyscraper where those missing digits are secured…

Aided only by the apparently indigenous human Consuelo, Trent’s paranoiac battle is as much with himself as his foes. As he gradually ascends the doom-laden building to find answers he may not want, he finds fighting creatures painfully human and just as reluctant as he to be there almost more than he can bear but at least his mission will soon end…

Or will it? Demon with a Glass Hand is a masterpiece of tension-drenched drama, liberally spiced with explosive action, and the mythic denouement – in any medium of creative expression – has lost none of its impact over the years.

Classy and compelling this is a perfect companion to Ellison’s other Kyben War comic adaptations, collected as Night and the Enemy, and it must be every fan’s dream to hope that somewhere there’s a publisher prepared to gather all these gems into one definitive edition…
© 1986 The Kilimanjaro Corporation.  Illustrations © 1986 DC Comics Inc.  All Rights Reserved.

JLA: Trial By Fire NEW EXTENDED AND REVISED REVIEW


By Joe Kelly, Doug Mahnke and Tom Nguyen (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84023-928-X

When the World’s Greatest Superheroes (see JLA: New World Order) were relaunched in 1997 the quality – and hype – were everything jaded fans could have asked for, but the glistening aura of “fresh and new” doesn’t last forever and by the time of these tales (seven years later and reprinting issues #84-89) the hard task of keeping the excitement levels stoked in a fan-base with a notoriously short attention-span was getting much harder.

Clean, clear-cut, high-concept tales had perforce given way to more involved, even convoluted storylines, and an increasing dependence on other series’ and characters’ continuity. A low point from the usually excellent Joe Kelly was this tale following the appearance of an alien telepathic presence that puts American President Lex Luthor into a brain-dead coma before assaulting the entire League.

Investigations lead to an alien incursion more than twenty thousand years ago when a monstrous presence was defeated at huge cost by a band of cavemen led by the League’s oldest foe, but it appears that the diabolical beast known as “The Burning” may not have died forever…

Going back even further in DC history it would appear that the Guardians of the Universe, immortal taskmasters of the Green Lantern Corps were involved in the creation of The Burning, and their implacable meddling may have been instrumental in the origins, rise and potential fall of one of Earth’s greatest heroes…

Plagued by cruelly debilitating visions and psychic assaults, as are a sizable portion of humanity, the heroes are desperately struggling as one of their own is possessed by the malevolent entity Fernus who is only seconds away from turning the entire world into a radioactive cinder. Can the JLA get their act together in time to prevent Armageddon? Of course they can… but not without paying a brutal, tragic price…

This is not a terrible tale: whole sections are exceptionally entertaining and the art is spectacular throughout. But it is too far-ranging and undisciplined; with so many strands to keep hold of that it loses cohesion every now and then and feels almost rushed in execution.

The JLA has a long history in all its incarnations of starting strong but losing focus, and particularly of coasting by on past glories for extended periods – and it was distressing to see such portents so soon. Luckily the New/Old Dog still had a few more tricks and a little life in it before the inevitable demise and reboot for the next generation after Final Crisis.

Worth a little of your time, but only if, and in the context of, reading the good stuff too…

© 2004 DC Comics. All right reserved.

Walt Disney’s Uncle Scrooge in The Mines of King Solomon – Gladstone Comic Album #1


By Carl Barks & anonymous (Gladstone)
No ISBN

The greatest surprise about this magnificent slice of all-ages-adventure is just how long it took to make the blindingly obvious connection between the epitome of the American self-made man – okay, Duck – and the most ubiquitous legend of lost and illimitable wealth. ‘The Mines of King Solomon’ is magical mystery and exotic derring-do wrapped up in the author’s sly wit, uproarious slapstick and down-home, simple morality: in other words, pure Carl Barks.

One of the greatest storytellers America has ever produced, Barks’ early life is well-documented elsewhere if you need detail, but in brief, he started as a jobbing cartoonist, before joining Disney’s studio in 1935, toiling in-house as a animator before quitting in 1942 to work exclusively and anonymously in comic books.

Until the mid-1960s he worked in productive seclusion writing and drawing a vast array of comedic adventure yarns for kids, creating a Duck Universe of memorable – and highly bankable – characters like Gladstone Gander (1948), the Beagle Boys (1951), Gyro Gearloose (1952), and Magica De Spell (1961) to augment the stable of cartoon actors from the Disney Studio. His greatest creation was undoubtedly the crusty, energetic, paternalistic, money-mad gazillionaire Scrooge McDuck: the star of this show.

So potent were his creations that they fed back into Disney’s animation output itself, even though his brilliant comic work was done for the licensing company Dell/Gold Key, and not directly for the studio.

Throughout this period Barks was blissfully unaware that his work (uncredited by official policy as was all the company’s cartoon and comicbook output), was nevertheless singled out by a rabid and discerning public as being by “the Good Duck Artist.” When some of his most dedicated fans finally tracked him down, his belated celebrity began.

Gladstone Publishing began re-releasing Barks material – and a selection of other Disney comics strips – in the 1980s and this album is another one of the best. Whilst producing all that landmark innovative material Barks was just a working guy, generating covers, illustrating other people’s scripts when necessary (as here in the intriguing supplementary “team-up” with Grandma Duck) and contributing story and art to the burgeoning canon of Donald Duck and other Big Screen characters.

Printed in the large but increasingly scarce European oversized format (278mm x 223mm) this glorious gem reprints the contents of Uncle Scrooge #19 (1957) wherein the Mallard Magnate decides to personally check all his global money-making ventures, and dragoons Donald Duck and his nephews into tagging along to be his unpaid dogs-bodies.

At his glass factory in Sweden he discovers that the supply of sand has dried up, and Duck-of-Action that he is, flies straight to the Sinai desert to discover why. And thus begins an absorbing trek through epochs ancient and modern that leads, via bandits, beasts and general bedlam, to the uncovering of the most spectacular treasures of the ages…

Barks drew ‘Honey of a Hen’ for an unnamed scripter (from Four Color Comics #1010, better known as Grandma Duck’s Farm Friends, 1959) wherein the mighty Management Mogul fails to optimise productivity on the old biddy’s small-holding, but it’s all the great man himself for the remaining stories; two Scrooge single-page gag strips from Uncle Scrooge #19 and #21 and a painfully funny yarn from Walt Disney Comics and Stories #227 (1958), once again pitting the irascible Donald against his nephews in their most obnoxious mode as veteran know-it-alls of the Junior Woodchucks.

No one has ever bettered Barks at blending humour with drama and charm with action and even if you can’t find this particular volume, his work is now readily accessible through a number of publications and outlets. So if you’ve denied yourself his captivating brand of magic, no matter what your age or temperament you can easily experience the magic of the man Will Eisner called “the Hans Christian Andersen of Comics.”

You poor fools, what are you waiting for?

© 1987, 1959, 1958, 1957 The Walt Disney Company. All Rights Reserved.

The Medusa Chain


By Ernie Colon (DC Comics)
ISBN: 0-930289-00-5

Born in Puerto Rico in 1931 Ernie Colón is a tremendously undervalued and unsung maestro of the American comics industry whose work has been seen by generations of readers. Whether as artist, writer, colourist or editor his contributions have affected the youngest of comics consumers (Monster in My Pocket, Richie Rich and Casper the Friendly Ghost for Harvey Comics and his similar work on Marvel’s Star Comics imprint) to the most sophisticated connoisseur with strips such as his startling indie thriller Manimal.

His catalogue of “straight” comic-book work includes Battlestar Galactica, Damage Control and Doom 2099 for Marvel, Grim Ghost for Atlas/Seaboard, the fabulous  Arak, Son of Thunder, Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld, the Airboy revival for Eclipse, Magnus: Robot Fighter for Valiant and so very many others.

In 2006 with long-time Harvey Comics/Star collaborator Sid Jacobson he created a graphic novel of the 9/11 Commission Report entitled The 9/11 Report: a Graphic Adaptation. In August 2008, they released a 160-page follow-up: After 9/11: America’s War on Terror. Even now he’s still hard at work on the strip SpyCat which has appeared in Weekly World News since 2005.

During the first wave of experimental creativity that gripped the 1980s comics business he released this self-generated (even lettering and colouring it himself) science fiction thriller through DC’s ambitious, oversized Graphic Novels line. Intriguing, complex and multi-layered, it is the gritty tale of Chon Adams, a star-ship officer convicted of a dreadful crime, sentenced to a lifetime of penal servitude on a deep-space space cargo ship, and how he finds a kind of fulfilment in a situation most would describe as a living hell.

Flavoured by Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination (commonly known now as Tiger! Tiger!) by way of noir prison/chain-gang movies like George W. Hill’s The Big House this is a fascinating tale-within-a-tale as Chon’s “crime” is gradually revealed whilst he endures and survives against unbelievable odds in the depths of infinity gaining unlikely allies and a grain of self-respect…

Graphic, uncompromising and thoroughly compelling this classy tale careens from cynical depths of human depravity to heights of glorious high fantasy with ease: a true lost gem of that boldly exploratory 1980s comics boom, and a cracking read for any older SF fan.

And the one good thing – for you – about Colon’s relative obscurity is that copies of this gem – and his later Marvel graphic novel Ax – are still readily available through internet retailers at ridiculously low prices. Definitely one you really, really want…
© 1984 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Checkmate: Pawn Breaks


By Greg Rucka, Jesus Saiz, Steve Scott & various (DC Comics)
ISBN:978-1-84576-603-0

In the aftermath of DC’s Infinite Crisis an international organisation to monitor and control meta-human affairs was developed, under the aegis of the United Nations Security Council. Originally an American agency, Checkmate had gone rogue under the telepathic influence of Maxwell Lord, and the new internationally sanctioned organisation is tasked with policing all nations, protecting them from metahuman dangers and terrorism, and also preventing “rogue” nations and regimes from weaponising their own paranormal resources.

This second tripwire-tight collection reprints issues #8-12 of the fondly remembered comic book, following as the organisation (composed of superheroes and traditional intelligence operatives) goes to absolutely outrageous lengths to place an undercover agent in the global death cult Kobra, courtesy of Greg Rucka, Jesus Saiz and Fernando Blanco.

‘Pawn 502’ is a superbly paranoid thriller with plenty of twists and turns and spellbinding action, cleverly plundering many dark and dusty corners of DC continuity for the delectation of long-term readers whilst skilfully keeping the newly initiated appraised. Crossover fans mighty like to know there’s a classy Shadowpact guest-shot included here.

Following is an intriguing tale that slips uncomfortably into the too-real world of South American death squads and rigged elections from writers Rucka, Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir, pencillers Steve Scott and Cliff Richards, and inkers Nathan Messengill, Steve Bird and Art Thibert.

‘Corvahlo’ is a dark, sordid tale featuring ex-JLA-er Fire and Bat-baddie Bane which cleverly reveals that there’s a traitor in Checkmate and, as a team is sent to retrieve a witness to vote-rigging, that mystery Judas is planning to subvert or destroy the entire organisation if necessary…

This is a cool and engaging blend of genres, with the murky world of espionage coldly and logically grounding the high-flying gloss of costumed super-doers. Moody and addictive, but perhaps a little too dependent on a working knowledge of the DC universe, this is nevertheless a fabulous series of yarns for the older fan, and the spy-game milieu should guarantee a few converts from espionage devotees looking for a little something on the wild side…

© 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Crossing Midnight book 1: Cut Here


By Mike Carey, Jim Fern, Rob Hunter & Mark Pennington (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-666-5

The variety and power of mythology is the greatest gift of our convoluted collective history as a species and for the imaginative amongst us it works twice. As children we absorb tales of magic and love and heroism with open-mouthed, unblinking wonder and they become part of our day-to-day existence: “fairy-tale romance”, “evil stepmother”, “Prince Charming” and a hundred other phrases are part of a verbal short-hand we all share without thinking. And when we’re older we seek out modern rehashings of those tales in our preferred media of fictional entertainment.

What horror-movie can’t be reduced to Hansel and Gretel or Little Red Riding Hood, and which action blockbuster hasn’t got an indomitable Jack overcoming all obstacles? And Rom-Coms?: c’mon!

For some there are also tales from other cultures which can be ingested in pure form such as the various interpretations of China’s Monkey King (see Journey to the West, Monkey Subdues the White Bone Demon or Havoc in Heaven for example) or even the triumphant Fables revising our childhood landscape with all the scary, salacious bits restored…

And then there’s synthesis…

Lots of westerners are fascinated with the myths and culture of Japan, but scary storyteller Mike Carey has taken it to a captivating new level, blending elegant fantasy with contemporary horror stories and gangster cinema in this tale (comprising issues #1-5 of the much-missed Vertigo comic book) of a magical quest through the darkest parts of the modern lands of the Rising Sun.

Kai and Toshi Hara are twins born in Nagasaki, one either side of the Witching Hour, and that crucial time difference will forever blight their lives… Born seven minutes after midnight Toshi is no ordinary girl: bold, energetic and utterly immune to any and all harm from edges and points; no blade will touch; but her older brother seems painfully weak and mortal. Unknown to all when they were little kids they accidentally slipped into a spirit world, and although they came back their friend Saburo was never seen again.

Their loving parents have problems too. When father asks the wrong question about shipments at the office he falls foul of the Yakuza, and always Toshi is becoming more difficult, more rebellious…

One night when they are barely into their teens a figure appears in her room: Aratsu, celestial Lord of the Knives has come to claim her as his new servant, and unless she complies her family will suffer. Suddenly discovering his own supernatural ability Kai drives Aratsu away but he will return and if she goes it will be as if she never existed…

Seemingly helpless the twins are inexorably drawn into the world of the Kami, spirits and shadows real and hungry who shed no tears when their mortal pawns die in horrendous ways. As the real and unreal increasingly weave together Kai finds himself in the unusual role of protector, saving his father and rescuing Toshi from a life of immortal servitude and unending horror

Burt eventually Aratsu gets his way and Kai determines to get his sister back at all costs…

Carey, Fern, Hunter and Pennington have crafted a superb blend of legendary Nippon and modern Japan with dystopian culture clashes, childhood nightmares and gangster action swirling together in this compelling horror, mystery fairytale epic that almost defies categorisation. I define it as a book no adult fantasy fan should miss…
© 2007 Mike Carey and Jim Fern. All Rights Reserved.

Smilin’ Jack: the Classic Aviator


By Zack Mosley (Classic Comic Strips)
No ISBN

Modern comics evolved from newspaper comic strips. These pictorial features were until relatively recently hugely popular with the public and highly valued by publishers who used them as an irresistible weapon to guarantee and increase circulation and profits.

It’s virtually impossible for us to understand the overwhelming power of the comic strip in America from the Great Depression to the end of World War II. With no television, broadcast radio far from universal and movie shows at best a weekly treat for most folk, household entertainment was mostly derived from the comic sections of daily and especially Sunday Newspapers. “The Funnies” were the most common recreation for millions who were well served by a fantastic variety and incredible quality.

From the very start humour was paramount; hence the terms “Funnies” and “Comics”, and from these gag and stunt beginnings came mutants and hybrids like Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs. Comedic when it began in 1924, it gradually moved from mock-heroics to light-action and became a full-blown, rip-roaring adventure series with the introduction of ancestral he-man and prototype moody swashbuckler Captain Easy in 1929.

From there it wasn’t such a leap to full-on blockbusters like Tarzan (which began on January 7th 1929) and Buck Rogers (also January 7th 1929) – both adaptations of pre-existing prose properties, but the majority of drama strips that followed were original productions. The tidal-wave began in the early 1930s when an explosion of action and drama strips (tastefully tailored for a family audience and fondly recalled as “Thud and Blunder” yarns) were launched with astounding rapidity. Not just strips but entire genres were created in that decade which still impact on not just today’s comic-books but all our popular fiction. Still most common however were general feel-good humour strips with the occasional child-oriented fantasy.

Among the most popular of the new adventure genres was the Aviator serial. With air speed, distance and endurance records bring broken every day, travelling air-circuses barnstorming across rural America and real life heroes such as Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart plastered all over the front pages it wasn’t difficult to grasp the potential of funny-pages analogues.

The first was Tailspin Tommy, by Glenn Chaffin and Hal Forrest, the story of boy pilot Tommy Tompkins, which ran from May 21st 1928 (almost exactly one year after Lindbergh’s epic flight in the Spirit of St. Louis) until 1942, swiftly followed by Lester J Maitland and Dick Calkins Skyroads and John Terry’s Scorchy Smith (see Scorchy Smith: Partners in Danger) 1930 -1961, as well as such late-arriving classics as Flyin’ Jenny, Buz Sawyer and even Steve Canyon.

Zack Mosley was an enterprising young cartoonist who assisted Calkins on both Skyroads and the legendary Buck Rogers (see Buck Rogers: the First 60 Years in the 25th Century). He was also a dedicated pilot and flying enthusiast, and when he heard that Captain Jor Patterson (influential editor of the Chicago Tribune) was taking lessons he swiftly pitched a series to the kingmaker of comic strips.

On the Wing debuted as a Sunday page on October 1st 1933, but the name never gelled and the series was re-titled Smilin’ Jack (apparently Moseley was surreptitiously known as “Smiling Zack” around the Tribune office), from the December 31st episode. The strip steadily gained interest and syndication subscribers and on June 15th 1936 was augmented by a daily strip.

Jack Martin was a nervous student pilot, and the series originally played safe by vacillating between comedy and hairsbreadth thrills as he and his fellow learner-pilots learned the ropes. Never a top-tier series it nevertheless always delivered terrific entertainment to the masses, moving with the times into a romance, war-feature, a crime thriller (complete with Dick Tracy style villains) and even a family soap. Moreover the strip progressed in real time and when it closed on 1st April 1973, Jack was a twice married air veteran with a grown son and a full cast of romantic dalliances in tow. It wasn’t lack of popularity that ended it either. Mosley at 67 years old wanted to spend his final years in the air, not at a drawing board…

This fabulous collection delivers a delightful selection of rousing romps, beginning with that name changing first episode from December 31st 1933, before concentrating on some classic sequences from the roaring thirties starring Jack, comedy foil Rufus Jimpson (a hill-Billy mechanic), eye-candy air hostess and love interest Dixie Lee (subject of an extended romantic triangle), Latin spitfire (the curvy sort not the fighter plane sort) Bonita Caliente and spies, thugs, imbecile passengers, South American revolutionaries and even a foreign Legion of the Skies with an eerily prescient stiff-necked Prussian flyer named Von Bosch whose type would soon be plastered all over the strips and comic books when WWII broke out

This kind of strip is, I suspect, an acquired taste today like Preston Sturges or George Cukor films, with a little bit of intellectual and historical concentration required, but the effort is certainly worth it, and if this kind of stuff is good enough for the likes of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg it’s perfectly good enough for you and me…
© 1989, 2009 Chicago Tribune Syndicate. All Rights Reserved. (I’m guessing here: if somebody else actually owns the rights let me know and I’ll happily amend the entry)

JLA: World Without a Justice League NEW REVISED AND EXTENDED REVIEW


By Bob Harras, Tom Derenick & Dan Green (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-335-1

During the Identity Crisis it was revealed that not only did factions of the Justice League ignore Due Process and lobotomise (call it mind-wipe if you’re in a generous mood) some of their enemies, but when Batman objected he too had his brains scrambled by his own team-mates.

Torn apart, the League formally disbands just as the entire universe is on the verge of utter destruction. The repercussions of that betrayal poisons the relationships of these once staunch comrades, as does the revelation of an illicit affair between two of the heroes, so that when the remnants of the splintered super-hero team and a few former members more or less reunite to stop old foe the Key, they spend more time sniping at each other than dealing with the problem.

The villain has evolved from dedicated nuisance into a psionic mass-murderer, and further complicating the mess is the escape of one of the Original Seven Deadly Sins from its eternal captivity, adding to the level of destruction by inducing riots and insanity throughout the population of Gotham City. The final straw is loss of their most powerful assets halfway through the hunt as the resurrected Titan Donna Troy whisks a hastily cobbled together strike force into space to deal with the intergalactic ramifications of the Infinite Crisis.

One of the truly memorable incarnations of a venerable comics institution died with more of a whimper than a bang in this final collected story-arc (reprinting JLA #121-125) and for all the explosive action and “mano-a-mano” posturing, the result is a somewhat lacklustre postscript to a excellent series of super-hero adventures. The title was sadly lost in the huge shuffle of Infinite Crisis, and passed almost with few mourners.

Bob Harras, Tom Derenick and Dan Green did their best, but the heavy-handed shoehorning of the overweening Crisis segments destroyed the narrative flow, and any casual reader who just picks this book is just inviting a migraine if they haven’t read the other books too.

An inauspicious end to a great run, and poor use of some talented people and great characters but the “automatic rewind/reset” of Infinite Crisis and numerous ‘One Year Later’ relaunches (see 52 parts 1-4) soon made this a distant memory.

And of course, in comics, nothing stays dead for long…

© 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Batman: Sword of Azrael


By Dennis O’Neil, Joe Quesada & Kevin Nowlan (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-56389-100-7

Almost a lost classic now, this impressive fast-paced romp (originally released as a four issue miniseries and teaser-prelude to the KnightFall comics publishing event) catapulted artist Joe Quesada (superbly inked by the incredible and far too rarely seen Kevin Nowlan) to the forefront of hot “name artists” after a relatively anonymous introduction to the industry as a colourist/penciller at Valiant Comics and illustrator on DC’s TSR licensed Spelljammer series and Question Quarterly.

Here given a full creative head he combines with Dennis O’Neil, probably the most efficiently prolific of modern Bat-scribes, to introduce a young medical student to the DC universe, but one with a centuries-old secret.

When international arms dealer Carlton LeHah embezzles millions of dollars from a hidden warrior-cult with origins dating back to the Crusades their avenging assassin Azrael tracks him down but is unprepared for the cutting edge weaponry Lehah has awaiting him.

Wounded unto death the Knight of St. Dumas activates his final resource: his own son. Programmed since birth, trained to kill and augmented by the implanted skills of uncounted deadly soldiers of a fanatical organization, the new Azrael goes hunting…

Meanwhile Bruce Wayne has been hunting the murderous forces loose in his city but he too is unprepared for Lehah who has since graduated to the next stage of a martial madness. Believing himself the physical avatar of the Demon Biis, he has been stalking the last cult-members, sowing death and destruction wherever he appears. When he captures Batman, faithful Alfred and the new Azrael are all that remains to prevent a global catastrophe…

Sharp, clever, hypnotically adrenaline-charged and strikingly illustrated, this mini-classic (only 112 pages including Archie Goodwin’s introduction, sketch pages and cover gallery) is about due for a 21st century upgrade, but if not there’s always your favourite comics vendor or internet retailer…
© 1989, 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Superman – the Mightiest Superhero in the Galaxy!


By various (DC Comics/Tempo Books)
ISBN: 0-448-14532-4-125

Released in 1978 to coincide with and capitalise on the major motion picture starring Christopher Reeve, this dandy little black and white paperback was part of a continuing drive by DC to get out of the down-market newsstands and place their characters regularly onto the shelves of bookstores.

Comic books had always suffered low self-esteem when compared to “proper books” and even their newspaper strip cousins periodically took every opportunity to break out of the “kid’s stuff” ghetto – such as when the incredibly popular Superman radio show and animated cartoons of the 1940s resulted in the iconic Adventures of Superman novel by George F. Lowther in 1942 (coming soon! What I think about a really hard to find book from nearly seventy years ago!).

They achieved some success with the plethora of paperbacks that accompanied the 1960s “superhero/camp craze” which had every funny-book producer from Archie Comics to Tower Books churning out rapidly re-sized, monochrome editions of their wares, all-new material (See Dracula or Blackmark) and even prose novels such as Batman vs the Three Villains of Doom (also on my “to do” list!) and ever since then comics collections could be seen every so often in Waldenbooks or W.H. Smiths nestled between science fiction and movie novelisations.

Of course this was before they gave up trying to fit their only strengths into a limiting format and went the European route of albums/graphic novels/trade paperbacks – with spectacular success. And just in case you were wondering why they kept trying? At its best, a comics title could reach about a million unit sales through magazine vendor systems whilst a book – any book – had the potential of reaching four to twenty times that number…

The collection in question takes its content from the early 1960’s canon (when the book’s target audience would have been little kids themselves) showcasing a rather more sophisticated set of tales than you might expect, starting with a somewhat truncated ‘The Complete Story of Superman’s Life’ from 1961, illustrated by Al Plastino covering all the basics: death of Krypton, rocket to Earth, early life as Superboy, death of the Kents and moving to Metropolis, whilst ‘Superman’s Mermaid Sweetheart’ is a bittersweet sequel to the Man of Steel’s doomed college romance with the mermaid Lori Lemaris from 1959 illustrated by the legendary Wayne Boring.

Curt Swan drew the remaining three tales, a telling confirmation of his huge contribution to the mythology of the Man of Tomorrow, beginning with ‘Superman’s Greatest Secret’ (1961) one of the best secret identity preservation stories of the period – with a giant fire-breathing monster too – whilst the landmark ‘The Legion of Super-Villains’ from the same year is a stand-out thriller featuring Lex Luthor and the adult Legion of Super-heroes and the fun concludes with ‘When Superman Lost his Memory’ (1965) an excellent example of another favourite plot when our hero had to recover not only his lost identity but also his missing superpowers…

There is a nostalgia and comforting familiarity to these tales but the immense quality and talent of the artists and especially writers such as Jerry Siegel, Edmond Hamilton, Otto Binder, Leo Dorfman and all the rest. My own longstanding personal appreciation and regard for this kind of package stems from my own boyhood, when I discovered how perfectly such books fitted into a school blazer pocket…
© 1978 DC Comics, Inc. All Rights Reserved.