Saturday, April 25, 2009

Restart


As mentioned in my last post, 1970 was Mort Weisinger's last year editing the Superman line of comics. After he retired, DC distributed the Superman line among the remaining editors and gave one - Jimmy Olsen - to new comer Jack Kirby. 

I don't know if they split up the responsibilities because the rest of the staff were too close to capacity for any one editor to pick up all the books, or if publisher Carmine Infantino considered it an experiment to see which editor did the best job with the character.
In the silver age there really weren't such things as the "reboots" that became so common in the eighties, nineties and the aught-naughts. New editors simply took over books and took them in new directions. Continuity wasn't wiped out; at most it was ignored. The page below followed the one above and explained what DC planned to do with each Superman Family book while pointing out that this wasn't the first change for Superman; he had evolved over the years since his introduction.
The Superman comic was given to Julius Schwartz, who put Denny O'Neil on it and introduced Marvel style multi-issue subplots to the book. The series began with a literal bang, an explosion at a Kryptonite reactor that rendered all Kryptonite on Earth inert and harmless. It was a major change to the character, removing an overused plot device from future consideration for many years. The first issue also introduced a byproduct of the explosion, a kind of Superman doppelganger made of the sand Superman landed in during the explosion. Whenever the sand creature roamed near Superman, he sapped some of Superman's powers. Eventually the subplot led to a final confrontation. The sand creature permanently took half of Superman's powers and left earth, leaving a less powerful, more write-able super-character.

Action Comics was given to Murray Boltinoff, who put Clark Kent on television and sent him out on the road like Charles Korault on the CBS news during this same era, hunting out stories and finding Super-adventures.

Superboy had previously been given to Murray Boltinoff as well. Early in Murray's run on Superboy he de-aged Ma and Pa Kent.

Jimmy Olsen went to Kirby, who quickly sent Jimmy and Superman into a series of adventures as creative as Kirby's best Fantastic Four stories from issue 40 to 60. He introduced the Hairies, the Project, the Guardian and Newsboy Legion, Dubblex, and skirted around the stories he told in his Fourth World books.

Lois Lane became E. Nelson Bridwell's book. ENB ended the long time rivalry between Lois and Lana Lang by abruptly sending Lana off to Europe. The stories in the Lois Lane book became relevant to the times. Lois wrote stories about racial prejudice. Lois became more adult in other ways as well. She no longer connived to trick Superman into revealing his secret identity or marrying her. To the back of the book he introduced Rose and the Thorn, a hip booted split personality heroine seeking revenge for the death of her father at the hands of the criminal organization "the 100". The series was a kind of count down as she eliminated the members of the 100 one-by-one and the comic kept score.

Adventure Comics was given to Mike Sekowsky. Mike started his tenure with a cover featuring new designs for Supergirl's costume. He chose one with a mini-skirt, hip boots and gloves. Then he introduced a mysterious malady that suddenly took away Supergirl's powers at inopportune moments and challenged her in a manner similar to his contemporaneous treatment of Wonder Woman. He also introduced a new villainess, Luthor's cousin, Nasthalthia

Finally, World's Finest went to Julius Schwartz as well. Julie threw Batman out of the book and turned it into Superman's version of a Brave and Bold comic, teaming Superman up with a different character each month, usually characters he was known for editing. 

After a few years the books were shuffled again. Action went to Julie. Adventure to Joe Orlando. Lois to a romance comic editor, and World's Finest to Murray, who brought back Batman as Superman's regular partner.  But that's a different blog...

April Fool

Nineteen seventy was editor Mort Weisinger's last year in comics after creating his own empire within the world of DC comics -- the Superman Family -- over more than two decades. This issue of Action is from May of 1970, Mort's last year guiding Superman's fortunes. Letters from fans pointing out errors were a staple of sixties letter columns, especially in Mort's books. Sometimes the errors were as simple as a coloring mistake introduced in the printing process. Sometimes they concerned misrepresentations of a characters abilities or continuity errors. The editor usually conceded the fans were right, but sometimes the editor came up with implausible stories to explain the errors. It became a kind of letter page sparing match between editor and fan. 


This issue of Action was billed as a feast of errors and the editor challenged readers to catalog all of them -- sort of a comic story version of "what's wrong with this picture?"

Yet there was more to the story than an easter egg hunt for mistakes. The premise was that Superman had been away in space and when he returned he discovered Earth had gone crazy. 

At first he thinks it must be due to Mxyzptlk, but Mxyzptlk appears, recuses himself and disappears back to the fifth dimension, leaving the world as crazy as ever. Everyone knows whatever Mxy does is undone when he leaves, so he can't have been responsible. 

At the end of the story Superman discovers a hapless scientist in space who had intended to create a duplicate of Earth in a mirror orbit on the other side of the sun. Instead his device created an imperfect duplicate of Earth and slipped the real one into some other dimension. 

Using the kind of convoluted fairy tale logic that Mort is famous for, Superman uses the machine to create an imperfect duplicate of itself by pointing it at a mirror. Then he uses the imperfect duplicate machine to restore Earth and banish the odd copy to its own dimension.

But what of the error counting? Not a few of the readers realized that since there was a logical explanation for most of the oddities, they weren't really errors. That left only a few true intentional errors such as the bandage on Superman's shoulder in the opening panel of the story.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

The Greatest Moments in Comics

I have recently been reading the Spiderman Omnibus Volume 1, which I purchased a few months ago after reading a biography of Steve Ditko and realizing that Volume 1 contains Ditko's complete Spiderman artwork. 


While reading the stories I was reminded of how Mary Jane, up until recently the love of Peter Parker's life, was introduced and developed in the Sixties and early Seventies. 

For years Aunt May tried to set Peter Parker up with Mary Jane, the niece of her best friend. Peter resisted at every turn, fearing that any girl Aunt May wanted him to meet would be awful. This subplot lasted all through the Ditko years. 

It wasn't until shortly after Johnny Romita assumed the art chores that Marvel actually introduced Mary Jane to the book. This panel sequence at the end of one issue is Mary Jane's first appearance in Spiderman.


Earlier in the book, Peter is just beginning to realize that he has feelings for Gwen Stacey, someone that was also introduced after Ditko left. Yet Peter consents to finally meet MJ, only to discover she's a gorgeous woman. 

For many more years MJ is just a flirtatious friend while Gwen is Peter's true love. Then after Stan left the book and Gerry Conway took over, Gerry wrote the death of Gwen Stacey at the hands of the Green Goblin. 

The issue after Gwen dies, this page appears, the last page of the book and -- I think -- one of the finest pages to ever appear in comics. In this one page Gil Kane, Johnny Romita and Gerry Conway transform MJ from a lighthearted friend to a serious character and set her on the road to becoming Peter's primary love interest and eventual wife.

To tell you the truth, when I read this page some thirty five years later, I still choke up. 

The storytelling, the facial expressions and recognition that words aren't necessary make this page one of the greatest moments in comics.