Homage

In the midst of this week's Legion of Super-Heroes comic (#43), on two adjoining pages, Jim Shooter buried a tiny homage to real people who are part of the Legion's past, assistant editor E.N.B. and comic fan Rich Morrissey. This week I'd like to expand on this homage to both of these men, both deceased.

First the references. The first is on page 14. When the Science Police are attempting to examine the contents of the Legion's computer system, Brainiac 5 gives up his access code "E-N-B-31-87". The letters are E. Nelson Bridwell's initials. I can't say for sure, but I think the numbers are the year of his birth and death (1931 and 1987). I'm pretty sure about the year of death, and given my understanding of his age during the sixties, I'm pretty sure he was born around 1931.

The second reference is on the following page. A young man walks in on Brainiac 5 and introduces himself as M'rissey.

E. Nelson Bridwell was Superman editor Mort Weisinger's assistant editor for most of the sixties. Think Roy Thomas to Stan Lee, only the DC version of that. Mort Weisinger was of course the Superman editor of the fifties and sixties who with his writers crafted most of the classic Superman mythology. E.N.B. never had as prolific a writing or editing career as Roy Thomas, but he contributed to the Superman mythos and DC comics in his own way for most of his adult life. During Jim Shooter's first work on the Legion in the late sixties, E.N.B. was assistant editor and someone he would have met frequently.

E.N.B. was a bit of an odd duck. A man who remained single his entire life, and was not only a walking encyclopedia of comic book and pulp fiction, but had constructed in his own imagination genealogical and other connections between all of them. In the late sixties he wrote DC's short lived comic hero spoof comic The Inferior Five and created the original, spy-story-influenced Secret Six comic. When Mort Weisinger retired at the end of the sixties and editorial responsibility for the Superman family books was spread among the other editors, E.N.B. continued his role for multiple editors -- Jack Kirby on Jimmy Olsen, Julius Schwartz on Superman and World's Finest -- and he was given editorship on Lois Lane. For the other editors he wrote the letter's pages, and was allowed for the first time to sign them with his initials.

The departure of Mort Weisinger was pivotal for all the Superman titles. DC had been trying fresh approaches on all it's titles for a few years, but in 1970 those changes reached Superman. The stories started to reflect the social changes and clothing of the era.

In Lois Lane, E.N.B. ditched an integral aspect of the title since it's inception, the Lois Lane / Lana Lang rivalry for Superman's affections. Lana gave up and took a job in Europe, leaving Lois as Superman's undisputed love interest. Lois gave up her conniving ways and became a stronger, more capable character, a kind of feminine feminist, and a hard hitting liberal journalist.



For better for for worse, this type of story in comics was probably one of the most enduring influences on my adult political opinions.

During the seventies I became a bit of a comics letter hack. I started to write letters to the editors of my favorite comics and before long many of them were published, often in letters pages edited by E.N.B.

Toward the late seventies when I decided I wanted to write comics and submited story ideas to the editors, E.N.B. was one of the editors who responded to my submissions. I didn't sell any stories, but he often responded with encouraging words and constructive criticism.

Now Rich Morrissey was a much more of a comics letter hack. In fact he was in some ways an inspiration to me, because as the editors started publishing seriously written fan critiques of comic stories in the late sixties and early seventies, Rich's letters were routinely published in most of the DC comics I bought -- several every month. In later years Rich would say that every letter he ever wrote was published. But Rich, in fact, was more than a letter hack; Rich was what we in the seventies called a BNF (Big Name Fan). He was someone other fans knew by name, who wrote for fanzines and interviewed the pros. He along with Mike Flynn, Harry Broertjes, and Jay Zilber, created the fanzine the Legion Outpost and were in large part responsible for the re-emergence of the Legion from the back pages of Superboy into their own title again in the seventies. It was also this group of fans who tracked down Jim Shooter in the seventies, after he had abandoned comics for good, and convinced him to come back. He wrote a few stories for DC, moved on to Marvel, became editor of the entire Marvel line for many years, and the rest is history.

When the Legion Outpost began to wane, Rich Morrissey started a Legion APA (Amatuer Press Alliance). APAs are still alive today, but not many fans are aware of them. Basically they were like a comic convention in print. Anywhere from twenty-five to fifty fans joined the APA and on a monthly or bi-monthly basis they contributed self contained fanzines, mimeographed, dittoed or photocopied and sent to a central mailer who collated them all together and sent them out to all the members. The Legion APA Rich started was called LE-APA for about a year until the members renamed it Interlac after the language of the Legionnaires.

I joined Interlac in its second year and it was there that I came to know Rich better. In many ways Rich was like E.N.B., in fact of all the fans in my generation of comic readers, Rich was the one who probably got to know E.N.B the best. He also had a near encyclopedic knowledge of comics, but he had his own nerdish quirks, like the pi song he wrote, which was a seemingly endless song listing the numbers of the mathematical constant pi -- you know, 3.14 etc., etc. I never witnessed it in person, but supposedely Rich could sing it forever without failing to remember the next number in the sequence.

Unllke many fans from the seventies, Rich didn't even try to pursue a career in comics. He became a lawyer. Rich died at a young age several years ago.

Compostions

One of the hallmarks of Superman comic stories from the sixties was irony. If you had a nickel for every Superman family story in the sixties that ended with one of the main characters turning to the reader in the last panel and pondering the stories ironic ending, why you could probably buy half the Superman comics published during the sixties with those nickels, considering that the comics only cost 10, 12 or 15 cents.

Today's piece of personal comic history is just such a tale of irony, only it's not irony encapsulated within the pages of a comic book; it's irony about childhood collecting of comic books.

One of my all time favorite Superman family characters in the sixties is a rather obscure character called the Composite Superman. He only appeared twice, and although my purchases were spotty when I was a kid -- limited to one comic a week at most -- usually on Friday evening when my parents were buying groceries -- I somehow managed to buy both of those appearances.

Both of the Composite Superman stories appeared in World's Finest -- which one could argue is not really a Superman Family comic, since it co-starred Batman, but it was edited by Mort Weisinger -- Superman's editor -- so the stories and art all had a Superman feel to them.

The Composite Superman was a character who, split down the middle, looked like Superman on one side and Batman on the other side -- only his skin was green -- and I'll explain the logic of that in just a minute.

He started out as an ordinary janitor in the Superman museum. One night lightning struck miniature models of the Legion of Super Heroes through a window, bounced off the models and hit the janitor. Now it turns out the miniatures weren't just artist renderings. The Legion had made a gift of the models to Superman, and had constructed them by using a replication machine. The replication machine inadvertently replicated the Legionnaire's powers as well as their likenesses. The lightning released the powers and transmitted them electrically into the body of the janitor, imbuing him with all the powers of the Legion of Super Heroes. This arguably made him the most powerful character in comics history, and not because he would be able to simultaneously shrink to the size of an atom (Shrinking Violet), bounce around (Bouncing Boy) sub atomic structures, and munch (Matter Eater Lad) on neutrons. At the time the Legion included Superboy, Supergirl and Monel -- all of whom had Superman's powers -- so he had triple the abilities of Superman! Plus he could read minds (Saturn Girl) and was a super genius (Brainiac 5).

So basically Superman, Batman and Robin were way over matched.

I won't tell you the plot of either of the two stories, mainly because I don't remember them, and besides the stories inside the comic are not the point of this posting, but he used Chameleon Boy's powers to make himself look the way I described, and I guess he chose to have green skin as an homage to Brainiac 5.

Anyway, the first issue was one of my all time favorite comics. Like most comics I bought as a kid, I probably reread it dozens of times. But somehow, one day, it disappeared. Until on a summer day months later I found it my backyard, wrinkled and stiffened by exposure to rain, snow and weather. Kind of a sad moment, but something I recovered from. :) Also a little odd, because I don't think I took my comics outside to read as a kid.

At the end of the first issue, somehow Superman and Batman manage to take away the Composite Superman's powers, and he returns to being an ordinary janitor at the museum.

In the second appearance, basically lightning strikes the same place twice and he becomes the Composite Superman all over again. I remember being just as enamored of the second story as the first. Again the comic eventually disappeared until one day I found it in my backyard, wrinkled and weatherbeaten. These are the only two comics of mine that ever met this fate, and -- as Lois, Jimmy, Clark, Linda, Superman, Supergirl, or Superboy might think in the final panel of their comic book stories -- how ironic that two issues featuring the same favorite character should meet the same fate, considering that none of my other comics ever did.