Kirby’s Super Powers

by Allan on November 29, 2012 at 10:44 pm
Posted In: Wondrous Ads

Super Powers, Jack Kirby

I remember Jack Kirby’s return to DC—after nearly a decade—being trumpeted in some magazine in 1983 or so. Probably Comics Scene or Comics Feature. He was ostensibly back to finish up the Fourth World saga, a project dear to Kirby that DC had so carelessly abandoned in 1972. I was so excited by this turn of events and couldn’t wait for the results of this deal to see print. But wait and wait I did. And it wasn’t until mid-1984 that this ad screamed at me from whatever comic I was reading. Jack was back!

Truth to tell, I thought this Super Powers thing looked like a bit of a Secret Wars knock off, and that black smoke creature looming in the background was clearly DC’s answer to the Beyonder. But, otherwise it looked great, with Kirby really seeming to put some effort into this piece—it was going to be great to see Jack handle some DC charaters he’d never gotten his hands on before. His Batman here looks fabulous, and I remain convinced a Kirby Batman comic would’ve been a joy.

Sadly, Super Powers ultimately turned out to be something of a damp squib. It was tie-in to a line of action figures, and read like it. Kirby plotted the five-issue series, and handled the full script and art for the last of these. I don’t know how detailed that plot was, but I’m guessing he didn’t put a great deal of thought into it. It didn’t really need it. His art, too, had deteriorated quite badly by this point due to the effects of illness and was but a shadow of his former self. Joey Cavalieri and Adrian Gonzales did the honours elsewhere.

The remainder of this phase of Kirby’s career consisted of the much-vaunted—and ultimately disappointing Fourth World “finale”—a bunch of character pages for Who’s Who, half of a Superman/Challengers of the Unknown team-up and a second Super Powers series, this one with art throughout by the King. It was even less distinguished, and Kirby retired soon after.

I still dig this house ad though.

Image ©2012 DC Comics

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Tiger-Man #3

by Allan on November 18, 2012 at 12:26 am
Posted In: Atlas Comics

Tiger-Man #3, Atlas

Tiger-Man #3, September 1975

“Hell is Spelled… Hypnos!”

Script: Gerry Conway

Pencils: Steve Ditko

Inks: Al Milgrom

Tiger-Man rushes into Harlem Hospital carrying a badly burned man. As the medical staff go to work, Tiger-Man recalls the evening’s events. In the midst of Harlem River Park, a man down on his luck pours a jerry can of petrol over his head and lights a match… whoosh!

In his civilian identity as Dr Lannie Hill, our hero attends the operating theatre and offers his help to the surgeon. It’s too late, however, the man is dead. His dying word, “Hypnos…” hangs in the air. Hill finds himself  plagued by self-doubt.

A couple of nights later, while on patrol, Tiger-Man witnesses a woman standing on train tracks. Before he can reach her, the train runs her over. When he sees another woman at the controls of a run-away car, he is determined to save her—eventually plunging into the river to do so. As he pulls her out she whispers, “Hypnos…”

It transpires that all three victims were under the care of psychiatrist Doctor Kaufmann, so Tiger-Man pays him a call. He is attacked by the monocled—and clearly deranged—Kaufmann, who suddenly prefers to be called Hypnos. Hypnos focusses his amazing “psychic power” through the monocle and fells Tiger-Man, the super-hero falling to the floor in imagined agony. Later, still under the influence, Tiger-Man pours petrol over himself, but is mugged before he can light a match.

Coming to his senses, Tiger-Man crashes through Hypnos’s window. A chase over the rooftops ensues, and Hypnos once more shines his monocle beam on Tiger-Man. Our hero lashes out and grabs the monocle, accidentally turning it on Kaufmann in the process. Driven completely insane by the beam, Hypnos falls to the pavement below.

Tiger-Man crushes the monocle. He realizes that Kaufmann had craved perfection in his patients, but the fact that no one can be perfect had driven him mad. Tiger-Man leaves the scene deciding that from now on he is “going to accept myself — just the way I am!”

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

Tiger-Man may have made peace with his savage tendencies and accepted himself, but the comics buying public begged to differ. This was the final issue.

It reads like a bit of a rush job—but then a lot of Atlas comics read like that. The whole thing is rather silly, and Kaufmann/Hypnos a wildly ineffectual villain. His appearance on the cover (from the pen of Larry Lieber)  is nothing like his look inside, which just goes to show how shoddy these comics could be.

Ditko can tell a story as well as anyone, but he clearly had little interest in this job and the actual drawing is perfunctory at best. Conway—overworked with editing and scripting work at Marvel and DC—gives it the minimum of attention. It was a book clearly going nowhere.

So, that was Tiger-Man. He also appeared in the two issues of Thrilling Adventure Stories, the best of Atlas’s black and white magazine line. But I’ll get to those in the fullness of time. Overall, Tiger-Man is not overly distinguished, but was perhaps a little ahead of his time. two decades later and bloodthirsty anti-heroes were all the rage.

Image ©2012 the copyright holder

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Mighty Crusaders

by Allan on November 12, 2012 at 10:41 pm
Posted In: Silver Age Comics

Super-Heroes vs Super-Villains

Super-Heroes vs Super-Villains, one-shot 1966

Published especially “For Collectors” —it says so right there in the indicia —this one-shot was a collection of reprints of various Mighty Comics stories. Mighty Comics was an imprint of Archie in the mid-60s when it tried to cash in on the Marvel-led super-hero boom.  Archie started life back at the start of the Golden Age as MLJ, before taking the name of their star character. For this project, for whatever reason, they briefly used the Radio Comics name in the indicia, while the Mighty Comics logo ran on the covers.

Springing out of the revived Fly-Man comic, Archie revived several of its Golden Age characters, dusted them down, and gave them an airing for a whole new generation, along with a few new characters for good measure. The Shield, The Comet, Flyman, The Web and several others were all present and banded together to form The Mighty Crusaders.

Most of the stories were written by Superman creator Jerry Siegel, though it must be said that they are hardly his strongest efforts. Camp was the order of the day, and while that sort of worked on live action shows like Batman, it grates badly on the printed page—especially when the hip patter of Marvel was what the readership craved.

As here,  several Mighty Comics covers proudly proclaimed the comics the work of “Dick-Vic-Bob and Paul” though who the heck they were is anyone’s guess. “Paul” might’ve been artist Paul Reinman I suppose.

After about a year, Mighty Comics disappeared back into the ether and Archie went back to solely publishing the adventures of, er… Archie and his pals. They weren’t great comics, it’s fair to say, and it would be hard to really recommend them, but they have a certain charm. Hen-pecked super-heroes like the Web don’t come along too often and should perhaps be cherished when they do.

Although I’ve not read it as yet, I see that Archie has recently revived The Mighty Crusaders for another go round.

Image ©2012 Archie Comics

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Batman vs Thor!

by Allan on November 4, 2012 at 4:39 pm
Posted In: Wacky comics

Batman #127

Batman #127, October 1959

No, it’s okay, you haven’t missed a Marvel/DC crossover—this Thor appeared right here long before Stan and Jack’s more familiar Thunder God took to the air. Interestingly enough, the plot features a mild-mannered museum curator who becomes the Thunder God when he touches a viking hammer! Sound familiar? Conspiracy theories start here. Let’s start a campaign to get the value of this comic raised to stratospheric levels by getting it listed in Overstreet as a ‘proto’ appearance.

One can only imagine what an actual Thor/Batman clash would’ve been like had Kirby been approached to handle such a thing in the mid-1970s. I don’t think Kirby ever drew the Dark Knight properly—we’ll ignore Super Powers and a commission or two—but I think his Batman would have been a blast. I guess it would have been essentially the early-1960s giant-robots-and-aliens Batman but with the peddle to the metal! Come to think of it, what if, in 1970, it had been Batman that DC wanted Kirby to makeover and not Superman. Would Bruce Wayne have found the Hairies living in the back of the Bat Cave? Would the DNAlien have trashed Wayne Manor? Robin and the Newsboy Legion? Just imagine…

Cover art by Curt Swan and Stan Kaye.

Image ©2012DC Comics

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Our Peace Lovin’ Bat Lash

by Allan on October 28, 2012 at 4:01 pm
Posted In: Wondrous Ads

Batlash ad, Nick Cardy

Beautiful half-page house ad for Bat Lash, in this case taken from The Witching Hour #2 (1969). The cover depicted is issue #4, which was by the comic’s regular artist, the always brilliant Nick Cardy.

In an era of near-ubiquitous cowboys—TV was wall to wall westerns in the late-1960s—Bat Lash was a different kind of hero. He had a penchant for the finer things in life, and, while a serial womaniser in common with many of his lik, was more likely than not to run away from any suggestion of violence. The man with no name he was not. Oh, and he often wore a flower in his hat.

Created by committee, Bat Lash enjoyed a seven-issue run of his own comic, which followed an initial appearance in Showcase. Sergio Aragones—yes, that one—most often provided the plots, while Denny O’Neil scripted. It’s a beautiful piece of work that deserved a far longer run.

Image ©2012 DC Comics

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