tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-335721182024-03-13T21:31:45.670-07:00Reep's DaggleA personal review of comic book related art and culture updated on a weekly basis.Thomas Mitchellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14050003112181747851noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33572118.post-16933028079731605872009-04-25T13:12:00.001-07:002016-02-27T14:46:54.836-08:00Restart<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinO6XcVo4ZuqDA-2zaKrOUXEKNENXtzz9EU6H21rRyVfkWDjVw6hXwDxVo1ZQo5fXf6M3SMLBZMleMk1ebc8aw0R6MLPHi1ndcJntanzlimH9OZwGVjA7T34xYgRfSeNlYDdhI/s1600-h/softboot001.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5328734109734664386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinO6XcVo4ZuqDA-2zaKrOUXEKNENXtzz9EU6H21rRyVfkWDjVw6hXwDxVo1ZQo5fXf6M3SMLBZMleMk1ebc8aw0R6MLPHi1ndcJntanzlimH9OZwGVjA7T34xYgRfSeNlYDdhI/s400/softboot001.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 274px;" /></a><br />
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As mentioned in my last post, 1970 was Mort <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Weisinger's</span> 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. </div>
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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 <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Infantino</span> considered it an experiment to see which editor did the best job with the character.<br />
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In the silver age there really weren't such things as the "reboots" that became so common in the eighties, <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">nineties</span> 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.</div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiciZS9cFP8BwU8Bl4t7OFI9z1DARYbF4vnwKJ_MMjG_uz67OymoZtSWIaqa6EoiGZwIra0T_6yj-OJLrRAxXGnL02LKMvxCYsbTVOoolhGJTQjbL8i6UWswcfgpNB6zrRAGqX/s1600-h/softboot002.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5328724860772527250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiciZS9cFP8BwU8Bl4t7OFI9z1DARYbF4vnwKJ_MMjG_uz67OymoZtSWIaqa6EoiGZwIra0T_6yj-OJLrRAxXGnL02LKMvxCYsbTVOoolhGJTQjbL8i6UWswcfgpNB6zrRAGqX/s400/softboot002.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 274px;" /></a>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 <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Kryptonite</span> reactor that rendered all <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Kryptonite</span> 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 <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">doppelganger</span> 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.</div>
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Action Comics was given to Murray <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Boltinoff</span>, who put Clark Kent on television and sent him out on the road like Charles <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Korault</span> on the CBS news during this same era, hunting out stories and finding Super-adventures.</div>
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<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Superboy</span> had previously been given to Murray <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Boltinoff</span> as well. Early in Murray's run on <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Superboy</span> he <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">de</span>-aged Ma and Pa Kent.</div>
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Jimmy Olsen went to Kirby, who quickly sent Jimmy and Superman into a series of adventures as creative as Kirby's best Fantastic Four <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">stories</span> from issue 40 to 60. He introduced the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Hairies</span>, the Project, the Guardian and Newsboy Legion, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Dubblex</span>, and skirted around the stories he told in his Fourth World books.</div>
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Lois Lane became E. Nelson <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Bridwell's</span> book. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">ENB</span> 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.</div>
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Adventure Comics was given to Mike <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Sekowsky</span>. Mike started his tenure with a cover featuring new designs for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Supergirl's</span> costume. He chose one with a mini-skirt, hip boots and gloves. Then he introduced a mysterious malady that suddenly took away <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Supergirl's</span> powers at inopportune moments and challenged her in a manner similar to his contemporaneous treatment of Wonder Woman. He also introduced a new <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">villainess</span>, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">Luthor's</span> cousin, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">Nasthalthia</span>. </div>
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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. </div>
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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...</div>
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Thomas Mitchellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14050003112181747851noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33572118.post-70407947057904857382009-04-25T12:31:00.001-07:002009-04-25T12:58:10.974-07:00April Fool<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMNsznwSVOQdbuGTRTpFa7yQwrKPOXIsjuzO5hqeq9n_lEDaFzi6Bgf_KBnC6Orfv0PUe5aSqmhLpr-5Ja9m4qqpkJtC3LE29hnxivMSYnm6DL5SVIXKe8BH_x9RAZ2J5SbsNu/s400/aprilfool001.jpg" style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 266px; height: 400px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5328714338132674754" />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. <div><br /></div><div>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?"</div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.<br /><div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKHV6A4vaWvTf_RuLjWxu9s68DAp8XlwSZkxVkexYUA3fargkJdwqcmYqaC3_EVIdP675h5zRmgCQ_ip9N0uOYza4dNu2vKN40orqGLc7ELQLUKh0Zih78yk8uBXyksuq1NgkU/s400/aprilfool002.jpg" style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 306px; height: 400px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5328714340080713810" /><br /></div></div>Thomas Mitchellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14050003112181747851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33572118.post-2055675711843369962009-04-14T22:31:00.000-07:002009-04-14T22:57:00.711-07:00The Greatest Moments in ComicsI have recently been reading the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Spiderman</span> Omnibus Volume 1, which I purchased a few months ago after reading a biography of Steve <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Ditko</span> and realizing that Volume 1 contains <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Ditko's</span> complete <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Spiderman</span> artwork. <div><br /><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div>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 <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Ditko</span> years. </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div>It wasn't until shortly after Johnny <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Romita</span> 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 <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Spiderman</span>.</div><div><br /></div><div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdTg7eupRFQ7-V-RGRdHdLK0laK-CVqd5TJYlbehHWVE3i1F2uBwlyXSphplcitL7ZYd-uKIv7oL4J-VxSNXd7Z_wyS-I2fbok_hCRji7BjaFxLU6T2urF1GHdAgDF-h4LZf_i/s400/faceittiger005.jpg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 232px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5324789119539759826" /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div>Earlier in the book, Peter is just beginning to realize that he has feelings for Gwen Stacey, someone that was also introduced after <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Ditko</span> left. Yet Peter consents to finally meet <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">MJ</span>, only to discover she's a gorgeous woman. </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div>For many more years <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">MJ</span> is just a <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">flirtatious</span> 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. </div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNNBrX2zXgzKl0C1gnMX92CQMEMyWNDLzZDIzHgNN-tBFYvGaWCeIyrX7epcm0WfwDRGn-FJ9VlPCnRSnf0TOg_cr_y3NeAs5_3m32atPeL4VtrGCeUs2Z_1GHEtrNfe8cbzkr/s400/mjstays004.jpg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 269px; height: 400px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5324791741328866082" /></div><div style="text-align: left;">To tell you the truth, when I read this page some thirty five years later, I still choke up. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The storytelling, the facial expressions and recognition that words aren't necessary make this page one of the greatest moments in comics.</div></div>Thomas Mitchellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14050003112181747851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33572118.post-88140782768420294092008-08-03T11:06:00.000-07:002008-08-03T11:49:35.794-07:00Recent TreasuresHas it really been one month since I added a word to my "weekly" comics blog? It has. But rather than waste words lamenting my lack of words in July, I will simply forge on. And what better to change the subject than a couple brief reviews of two recent favorites.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Brave and Bold 15 - Nightwing and Hawkman</span><br /><br />I know I have written about Brave and Bold before, but I haven't written about it enough. Rather than relying on the show value of destroying a legend or the nostalgia of retelling an updated version of an old legend, this series just tells great comic stories. And once again when two or three heroes met to fight a common goal, one has the impression that in coming together one is witnessing something unusual. Yet the series is not a throw back to simplicity or comics naivite. This series is my favorite read of every month. It keeps me coming in to the comics shop.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Justice Society of America Annual #1 </span><br /><br />Earth-2 returns in this tale of Power Girl's homecoming, but from the start of her return the continuity incongruities nag at thoughtful readers.<br /><br />Power Girl became a part of DC's primary Earth at the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths, when all the parallel Earths collapsed into one, along with all the other surviving Earth-2 characters. How could it be possible that she came from the Earth-2 recently reinstated in the DC Universe when it didn't exist three years ago? And if Power Girl was absent from this new Earth-2 while she lived on DC's primary Earth, why weren't the other Earth-2 heroes who lived there with her also absent from this new Earth-2?<br /><br />At first it seems to be a continuity conundrum we are supposed to accept, but suddenly the story takes a surprising turn, and it turns out our vague sense of disbelief is valid. Power Girl's unease at her sudden departure from DC's primary Earth is multiplied when she discovers this Earth-2 is NOT her original home.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span><br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size:100%;"></span></span>Thomas Mitchellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14050003112181747851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33572118.post-57634330691820102842008-07-05T10:51:00.000-07:002008-07-05T12:06:18.229-07:00Homage<span style="font-family:arial;">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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />The second reference is on the following page. A young man walks in on Brainiac 5 and introduces himself as M'rissey.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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 <em>The Inferior Five</em> and created the original, spy-story-influenced <em>Secret Six</em> 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 <em>Jimmy Olsen</em>, Julius Schwartz on <em>Superman</em> and <em>World's Finest</em> -- and he was given editorship on <em>Lois Lane</em>. For the other editors he wrote the letter's pages, and was allowed for the first time to sign them with his initials.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br /><br /><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5n2qCD4S-ragKQMdePjwyH56J5PLgqQOHog8cD7GIoKG9AQkSOU79zQD0_4frzEIBYy7Yo1GaamyKfLCFuhOlDit8Bo5tlBErK18LDP9j1owpQGmqmnA8l1aIi3ipUi5fU7ZA/s1600-h/08.jpg"><span style="font-family:arial;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219598351484667346" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5n2qCD4S-ragKQMdePjwyH56J5PLgqQOHog8cD7GIoKG9AQkSOU79zQD0_4frzEIBYy7Yo1GaamyKfLCFuhOlDit8Bo5tlBErK18LDP9j1owpQGmqmnA8l1aIi3ipUi5fU7ZA/s400/08.jpg" border="0" /></span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">For better for for worse, this type of story in comics was probably one of the most enduring influences on my adult political opinions.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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 <em>LE-APA</em> for about a year until the members renamed it <em>Interlac</em> after the language of the Legionnaires.<br /><br />I joined <em>Interlac</em> 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span>Thomas Mitchellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14050003112181747851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33572118.post-78625092492051486572008-07-05T09:58:00.000-07:002008-07-05T12:02:22.118-07:00Compostions<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9LsBfaqifUleIrSK2xhTCQz-s5kGrVz2nnvXXBi1pVq0TIYBdzZck-xVdT3FEbOQsI3iM7QnJ8qeY9TrEXeb_jQkqoBTCw9yxqntZZ27epd5DWx0GZpusfbT3xu2M-oFLZuVS/s1600-h/216_4_142.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219588546545477202" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9LsBfaqifUleIrSK2xhTCQz-s5kGrVz2nnvXXBi1pVq0TIYBdzZck-xVdT3FEbOQsI3iM7QnJ8qeY9TrEXeb_jQkqoBTCw9yxqntZZ27epd5DWx0GZpusfbT3xu2M-oFLZuVS/s400/216_4_142.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><span style="font-family:arial;">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. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">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.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">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. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">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 <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Weisinger</span> -- Superman's editor -- so the stories and art all had a Superman feel to them. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">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. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">He started out as an ordinary janitor in the Superman museum. One night lightning struck <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">miniature</span> models of the Legion of Super Heroes through a window, bounced off the models and hit the janitor. Now it turns out the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">miniatures</span> 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, <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">imbuing</span> 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 <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Superboy</span>, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Supergirl</span> and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Monel</span> -- 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 (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Brainiac</span> 5). </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">So basically Superman, Batman and Robin were way over matched. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">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 <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">homage</span> to Brainiac 5. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">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. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">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.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">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.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span></div><br /><div><br /><br /></div><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span>Thomas Mitchellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14050003112181747851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33572118.post-29208774425070871242008-06-29T10:27:00.000-07:002008-06-29T20:16:17.131-07:00Magic Moments<span style="font-family:arial;">I began to collect comic books in 1970 when I was in junior high school. As told in previous postings to this blog, I had been buying them since before I knew how to read, but the idea that collecting comics might be a hobby like collecting stamps had never occurred to me before then. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">To fully appreciate the story I am about the tell, you have to understand that in Iowa in 1970 many of the things a modern collector takes for granted did not exist. There were no comic book stores, so there was virtually no place to buy back issues. Comic books were purchased at supermarkets off those squeaky wire <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">carousels</span>. After a few weeks on the stands they were pulled by the magazine distributor and destroyed if they weren't sold. Furthermore distribution was very spotty. When I first started collecting I visited three to five different stores that sold comics on a weekly basis just to make sure that I got every issue of the ones I collected. There may have been comic conventions, another source for purchasing back issues today, but if there were, they weren't anywhere near Cedar Rapids, the city I lived in. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">It is in this particular time and place that my story, my magic moment, takes place. I was checking out the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">newsstand</span> at one of the grocery stores that sold comics. It was a small store called Jack and Jill, about a fifth of the size of a modern supermarket. It was so small and the aisles were so narrow, that they had <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">miniature</span> shopping carts for their customers. It was a place my parents shopped every Saturday as I was growing up because they had an old fashioned meat market where the butcher cut, weighed and packaged the meat for each customer to order. You wheeled your cart up, told him what kind of meat you wanted, pointed through the glass case at the piece you wanted and he cut it for you right then. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">In any case, one day in particular in the early, early seventies, I was browsing the comics on the stand and I came across five comics that didn't belong. Comics at the time cost 20 or 25 cents, These comics were 12 cents. One was a Teen Titans comic, which I knew from the issue number was several years old. I picked them up, looked inside the front cover at the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">indicia</span></span> a the bottom of page one. They were all from 1968! How in the world did four comics from 1968 arrive on a <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">newsstand</span> three years later? Had someone walked in with them, set them down and forgot them? Had they road around on some magazine distributor's truck for four years hidden in the back until he unknowingly pulled them out and put them on the stand with their contemporaries? Or maybe, just maybe, I was the beneficiary of an honest-to-god space-time <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">anomaly</span> that had deposited four and only four periodicals from the near past in the present. And maybe if I returned to this store frequently enough, I would be its beneficiary again! Maybe next time there might be comics from a few years in the FUTURE!</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">For several minutes I leafed through them, not certain what to do. If they were left by someone else, maybe that person would come back to get them. If I took them, I might be stealing them. What would the checkout clerk say when she rang them up and saw they were only 12 cents. But the price of comics was completely beneath the notice of adults. She'd never notice anything at all.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">So, with my palms damp, I snagged them up with the two or three other books I planned to buy that day and took them to the checkout counter. As the clerk rang them up, I mentioned that they looked old. I mentioned the date inside the cover. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">"Probably just a reprint," said the woman at the cash register.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Not likely, I knew. It's true that comics publishers published reprints, but they NEVER printed exact replicas with the original <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">indicia</span></span> and all the original ads! </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">So I paid my 48 cents for all four, plus sales tax and walked out, my feet just an inch or so from making contact with the ground, excited at the small mysteries of my world, hopeful that they might somehow continue, but pretty certain that nothing that impossible would ever happen to me again in all my years of comic collecting. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">And you know what? </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Nothing nearly as magic as that ever happened to me again.</span>Thomas Mitchellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14050003112181747851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33572118.post-56993061815036889742008-06-21T10:28:00.000-07:002008-07-05T12:01:56.039-07:00Strange Adventures<span style="font-family:verdana;">This week Amazon shipped my preordered copy of the <em>Adam Strange Archives, Volume 3.</em><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;"><em><blockquote><em>How it came to be that a book I ordered three months ago, and which became generally available two months ago, was just now shipped is a story I won’t tell in this blog.</em></blockquote></em>When DC first published their hardcover archive editions several decades ago I wasn’t a big fan. The early ones featured stories from the Golden Age Comics. I’m old, but not old enough to be nostalgic for the forties, and in my opinion the stories don’t wear well today. But in the last few years, as DC began releasing hardcover editions of stories from the Silver Age, I began collecting them. Particularly gems I missed during the sixties like Hawkman, the Flash, the Blue Beetle, the Doom Patrol and the Kirby stories of the Challengers of the Unknown, when I was completely focused on the Superman family.<br /><br />My introduction to <em>Adam Strange</em> came in the early seventies when I began collecting the comics I read. DC’s science fiction anthology reprint comics were some of the first non-Superman family books I began to buy regularly. At the time DC published two: <em>From Beyond the Unknown</em> and <em>Strange Adventures</em>. Both featured wonderful written and illustrated short sci-fi stories, many written by comic writers who also wrote science fiction short stories for magazines or who wrote science fiction novels, and drawn by DC’s best artists of the fifties. I would happily place most of these stories along side the best of EC comics of the same era. Their tone is more wholesome, but they are just as imaginative and skillfully crafted.<br /><br />Before it was given to editor Julius Schwartz, <em>Strange Adventures</em> had featured the original <em>Deadman</em> series, illustrated by Neal Adams. From the beginning, Julie began reprinting <em>Adam Strange</em>, a series he edited in the fifties. And what could be more appropriate than publishing <em>Adam Strange</em> in <em>Strange Adventures</em>?<br /><br />Early in the run, Julie experimented with a couple new <em>Adam Strange</em> stories that he assigned to Denny O’Neil. Unfortunately, by the early seventies Gardner Fox and John Broome, the authors Julie had worked with for decades, the two men he used most frequently on all his super-hero revival books, and the men most suited to writing science fiction, had left DC and were not available to write new <em>Adam Strange</em> stories. Denny O’Neil wrote New Wave science fiction, stories less focused on science and plot and more focused on character and dialog. Apparently neither story sold well enough for DC to revive Adam Strange as a new series and the reprints continued for several years.<br /><br />The truth was that even though the old <em>Adam Strange</em> stories were ten to fifteen years old, they far outclassed the new stories. They were illustrated by Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson, who were both at their peak, and whose pencils and inks perfectly complement each other. Even with the limited 16 color palette of “four color” comics, the artwork was uncommonly beautiful. The skies of Rann ran the gamut of soft pastels: yellow, pink, light green and blue. The desert plains stretched as wide as the page, and in the distance the horizon was usually broken by far-off fanciful futuristic spires of some Rannian city. Infantino drew Adam flying by jet-pack through the skies like he was swimming underwater.<br /><br />The stories generally followed a familiar formula. In the sixties all series fiction, not just comics, but television too, adhered to formula. Think Gillian’s Island, where the story was always about trying to get off the island; or Bewitched, which was always about Samantha trying to conform to suburbia for her husband.<br /><br /><em>Adam Strange</em> was an archeologist from Earth, who was accidentally captured by a teleportation ray, the Zeta Beam, which took him to Rann, a planet in the Alpha Centauri star system, Earth’s nearest neighbor. The Zeta Beam intersected Earth’s path at regular intervals, as the two planets aligned themselves, always in the southern hemisphere, because Alpha Centauri is only visible in the southern skies and the Zeta Beam was like light -- it traveled in a straight line. However the teleportational effects of the Zeta Beam wore off after a few days, and Adam faded back to the Earth location he had been taken from. Each time Adam arrived on Rann, the planet was faced with some terrible adversary or natural disaster. Armed with technology from Rann, and powered purely by his intelligence, wits, and logic, Adam routinely saved his adopted planet, while forging a romantic relationship with the daughter of the scientist wore invented the Zeta Beam and brought him to Rann in the first place.<br /><br />Adam was perhaps one of the earliest post modern hero, in that he was acutely aware of the formulaic nature of this adventures on Rann, and because of his desire to stay on Rann with Alanna, tried to defeat it’s limitations. Julie and Gardner Fox sometimes tinkered the formula as well, having the Rann’s menace come to Earth, or starting the story with Adam’s departure from Rann.<br /><br />Modern series fiction avoids formula like the plague, but however maligned it may be today, I never tire of its application. In my opinion a formula frees the author from worrying about being original in unimportant ways and allows him/her to concentrate their originality on the other areas of the plot. Think Bill Murray in “Ground Hogs Day”. Bill’s character knew certain things would happen every time the day was repeated, and that certainty freed him to experiment with his behavior in ways he could never have imagined. Authors of series fiction today spend too much energy on imagining how a character can change and not enough on telling a story.<br /><br />Of course you might ask, why did I bother to buy three pricey volumes of the <em>Adam Strange Archives</em> when I already own the seventies reprints? I suppose that I love the series so much I simply wanted to own it in hardcover and have the excuse to read the stories again.<br /><br />As much as I am glad that DC is using <em>Adam Strange</em> in new stories today, such as the Rann/Thannagar war series, I wish that they would recognize the qualities that made <em>Adam Strange</em> great -- the nobel qualities of Adam and the Rannians, and the tight science fiction plots of his early adventures.</span><br /></span>Thomas Mitchellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14050003112181747851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33572118.post-14300819520824220652008-06-15T14:44:00.000-07:002008-07-05T12:01:35.210-07:00Skaar-ed<strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Skaar, Son of Hulk</span></strong><br /><br />I did not read much of last year's Hulk series, nor the spin-offs, and considering I find most sword based adventure stories dull, I would not normally pick up Skaar, Son of Hulk. However Ron Garney's art, so I was looking forward to this series.<br /><br />Unfortunately I was disappointed. The artwork is muddy and low contrast, and the situations and characters do not offer much opportunity for Ron Garney to show off what I believe he does best, which is to wonderfully illustrate enormously muscled heroes.<br /><br />After the first few pages I just skimmed the rest. I won't be buying more of this title.Thomas Mitchellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14050003112181747851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33572118.post-37874907873682077152008-06-15T14:27:00.000-07:002008-07-05T12:01:09.844-07:00Turn Turn Turn<span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Action 866</strong></span><br /><br />To everything there is a season.<br /><br />The more things the change the more they stay the same.<br /><br />The most villanous bottler since Dasani is back! The version of Brainiac that was responsible for stealing Kandor and keeping it in a bottle has returned to the Superman mythos. I don't know whether I found this story charming because it brings back the Brainiac I grew up with or because of Gary Frank's art.<br /><br />Also revived:<br /><ul><li>The Steve Lombard/Clark Kent practical joke rivalry. This I could do without. It was lame in the seventies when Cary Bates and Elliot Maggin created the character. It's still lame. It also signals the return of Clark Kent as wimp.</li><li>Clark Kent's bangs. (Is this a nod to Brandon Routh's hairstyle in Superman returns?) In any case they remind me of the sporadic 1960s series featuring the Superman of 2965, who also wore his hair draped down over his forehead. At the time I remember thinking how handsome and mod it made him look and even deciding to wear my hair the same way.</li></ul><p></p>Thomas Mitchellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14050003112181747851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33572118.post-83975360146044398902008-06-07T10:46:00.000-07:002008-07-05T12:00:35.147-07:00The Big Undo<span style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;"><strong>Secret Invasion 3</strong></span><br /><strong><span style="font-family:arial;"></span></strong><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Is the Tony Stark who led the majority of Marvel heroes to register during <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Marvel's</span> Civil War series last year a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Skrull</span>? </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I make no secret of my distaste for the Civil War story and it's effect on the Marvel universe. I think that government registration of heroes, while perhaps a realistic request, introduced to heroic fantasy one of the saddest elements of our modern, post terror-obsessed society. It tainted my escapist reading pleasure with the same poisonous paranoia I face when I read the newspaper. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">If, as is hinted by the Skrull Spider Woman in this week's Secret Invasion, Tony is a Skrull, perhaps that explains the registration drive. Wouldn't registering all Earth's heroes make it easier for a Skrull invasion force to corral them all? </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">If so, wouldn't the removal of the false Tony Stark from influence in the Marvel Universe restore the pre-Civil War status quo? </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">I admit that I often go off on flights of fancy as I read fiction, seeing endings I hope I will read as I work my way through a series, and I'm usually wrong and disappointed. Still, wouldn't it be nice if I were right?</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;"><strong>Trinity 1</strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">Unlike DC's previous weekly series, Trinity does not rely as heavily on creation by committee. There is one writer. And the main section of every issue is drawn by one and only one penciller -- and a talented one! This makes me hopeful that perhaps there might actually be one or more cohesive stories to be told, not just a series of interwoven events. I hope this is the case. </span>Thomas Mitchellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14050003112181747851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33572118.post-76725828162446592062008-05-30T19:57:00.000-07:002008-07-05T12:00:16.779-07:00Crisis Time<span style="font-family:arial;">In the sixties and the eighties summer comics meant special "annual" editions of popular comics -- thicker books with 50% to 100% more pages. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">In the last decade or so summer has presaged multi-part, continuity shattering, event comic series by both major publishers. Of course this year is no different. This week DC released the first issue of Final Crisis, the seven part series that promises once more to change everything. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">We've learned by now that comic book change is no more radical than political change. No matter what the promises, the word "change" usually means more of the same. I don't expect that this year will be any different. Heroes will die -- until they come back to life. (What choice do the majors have but to continually resurrect their fallen heroes when EVERY comic creator working today REFUSES to create new characters for them if they cannot own their creations.)</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">While I find Grant Morrison's interpretation of the DC universe interesting, it troubles me to see it canonized. I don't really understand how all these plain-clothes New Gods came to walk the Earth after Jim Starlin vaporized every one of them and set the stage for a new theological dynasty just a month or two ago. I also don't know how Detective Turpin can fail to recognize Orion -- much less the odd name Kalibak, considering his fight to near death with Kalibak in the original New Gods series. I find it less than amusing that Grant has decided the Guardians have codified the crimes of the universe like the California Highway Patrol. I could hardly care less about this Society of Super-Villains uniting under Libra, especially when it includes fourth rate characters like Mirror Master (I am SO afraid). And what makes anyone think that the death of Martian Manhunter will lend any drama to the story when it happens in a single panel. Any hero deserves a more protracted death scene than that, and any writer with the least understanding of drama knows that a struggle of some sort is required if a death is to have any punch.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">No matter. What will be will be. When this is all over, it will have no more lasting effect than the last big event, and DC will not feel the least bit bound to abide by its outcome, so let them kill Superman for all I care. We know they are all coming back sometime in some future reboot and comic book history will forever be as elastic and mallable as communist political history, with characters continually airbrushed in and out of the artifacts of the past.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><strong><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:180%;">1985</span></strong><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Full disclosure -- by 1985 I was an adult in my late twenties. I owned a car, a house. I was in a commited relationship and even had a loving pet who depended on me. I was knee deep in the second horrific term of President Reagan and had already lost several loved ones to AIDS. (Where do you think they GOT the name, the AIDies?) So there is absolutely no nostalgia in my soul for the innocence of the mid eighties. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Still I found Marvel's mini series, 1985, incredibly charming and I'm more than willing to give it a fair chance. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I love the focus on real people on the real Earth, and I can honestly share the astonishment and wonder of the little boy at seeing villains and heroes of his fantasy life in the flesh. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">But, hey. I read comics and I am on my way to senior citizenhood. My suspension of disbelief and appreciation of fantasy is way beyond dispute.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><strong><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:180%;">Action 865</span></strong><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">You know I don't give a whit for the Toyman. I generally find the re-engineering of a character's origin dull beyond comprehension. But for some reason I really enjoyed Geoff Johns' reinterpretation of who Toyman is; his explanation for other, perhaps misguided takes on the character; and even the reintroduction of Cat Grant.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">(See, I told you no one and nothing dies in comics. Sooner or later it all comes back. Here is one element of the perfect example. After years of simply building upon the John Byrne re-boot of Superman, and slowly, gently re-introducing the characters and stories of the silver age, DC has almost completely returned Superman to the continuity of the late seventies. Now all we need is the re-revival of the Lois Lane/Lana Lang rivalry over Superman. Or would that be in poor taste considering that Lana knows Superman is married to Lois as Clark? Is there a Mephisto in the DC Universe?)</span>Thomas Mitchellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14050003112181747851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33572118.post-1464087477399917282008-05-24T07:01:00.001-07:002008-07-05T11:59:30.403-07:00Brave and Bold<span style="font-family:arial;">Can I tell you all how much I LOVE DC's new Brave and Bold series?</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I have a secret. When I settle down on the couch to read the week's comics, I sort them by how excited I am to read them. The one's I'm most excited about are As; the ones I'm less excited about are Bs; the ones I think are a bit dull and maybe buy out of habit are Cs. Then I read them in that order: The As that same night, Bs over the next few days, and Cs I may not even get to before the next week.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The Brave and the Bold is one of those comic magazines that I snarf up enthusiastically and it always makes the A pile because it is executed brilliantly. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Until recently the art was by George Perez, now Jerry Ordway, but both of them are solid artists who are excellent at telling a story, draw the human form well and create wonderful compositions on the page. They are at the top of their craft in the super suit world.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">But Mark Waid's stories for this book have been even better! Mark respects each and every hero who dances across the pages of the book, understands what makes them unique and intriguing and lets them show us these traits. Plus he has strung together a dozen or so pairings - some odd, some not so odd - into a great, unified, nonstop story from the very first issue until the twelfth. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I know that Marvel Team-up used this same concept a few years back, but the stories there didn't move nearly so fast. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">If excellence alone drove sales, this would be the best selling book by any company. I hope this never ends!</span>Thomas Mitchellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14050003112181747851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33572118.post-939316459777382352008-05-17T10:11:00.000-07:002008-07-05T11:58:58.858-07:00Bat Lash - RIP<span style="font-family:arial;">As I was starting to collect comics in a big way during my early teens, I had the good fortune to live in a town with a used book store that sold used comics at about half the cover price. (This was before the comic specialty stores <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">proliferated</span> and prices of old comics were higher than cover price.) It allowed me to reach back in time five or six years and buy magazines I'd missed during the time I was focused completely on the Superman family magazines. It allowed me to discover the wonderful experimental comics of the late sixties, especially from DC. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Bat Lash was one of those comics, and I had the further good fortune to find a complete run of the short lived series. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Mind you I have a deep aversion to the western genre because during my childhood we watched television as a family on a single black and white TV, and my father watched all the westerns -- Gunsmoke, Bonanza, the Virginian, the Texas Rangers, etc. It meant I missed the youth oriented shows of the era like Land of the Giants, Laugh-in, and Get Smart. Over the years I tired so much of the formula that I find it difficult to read or watch anything remotely like a western. (The same is true of doctor, lawyer and detective shows, which wore out their welcome in my mind in the seventies.)</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">What I loved about Bat Lash however was first the lovely, sketchy artwork of Nick Cardy, and second the whimsical nature of the stories. Bat didn't set out to do good. In fact he was generally no good -- self-centered and conceited. He tried to avoid trouble, but trouble kept finding him, and in the process of escaping it, he almost accidentally managed to help out a few folks around him. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I was hopeful that DC's new Bat Lash series might recapture some of that magic. After Sergio Aragones, who was responsible for much of the original tone, was involved, and John Severin was drawing it. John style is much tighter than Nick Cardy, but still he is a master and is particularly adept at westerns. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Unfortunately the six issue mini-series that finished this week is -- in constrast to the original -- leaden and dull. Six issues to tell an origin story that might have filled a few pages if told in the pace of the original series. Six issues sqaundered. Six issues and no fancy, no magic. Now Bat Lash will slip into limbo, perhaps for another forty years, perhaps forever, and the opportunity to revisit all the original fun is lost. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Can someone explain to me how it is possible in an era that in many ways prefers its entertainment to move faster and faster and constantly change, comics and television stretch out simple plots for months and years? Isn't this counterintuitive? Am I the only one who feels cheated?</span>Thomas Mitchellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14050003112181747851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33572118.post-81848992418610660192008-05-10T09:51:00.000-07:002008-05-10T10:55:57.489-07:00Starting Over<em><span style="font-family:verdana;">This blog has been inactive for too long. The difficulty has been that my time is too limited to devote to long discourses. So I've decided to take a new tack here. One posting a week about one comic published that week -- the one I find most inspiring either because I love it or I hate it.</span></em><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Although I suspect I will eventually be disappointed, I'm excited for now about Marvel's Secret Invasion, despite my general dislike of stories based on suspicion of shape shifters. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">When the first issue came out, and the seventies Marvel heroes climbed out of their rocket, I assumed that all of them were the real heroes, and that all the horrid things Marvel has done to these characters over the last few years could be wiped away as it is revealed that the characters we have been reading were imposters. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">(One might also assume that the seventies set were the Skrulls and that they had been manufactured several years ago and kept on ice until now, when they broke free, thinking they were the real deal. But you can see I am biased against many of the transformations Marvel characters have undergone in the last few years.)</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Of course now that the second issue is out, it has been revealed that while some of the seventies set may be the real heroes, some are not. So Marvel is now in position to tease us for the next few months, making us wonder which heroes will be retro-ed and which will be left in their present sad state. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">As a Steve Rogers fan, my hope is that the Captain America that landed last issue will be the real deal. He, Thor and Hulk are my favorite Marvel heroes, and a Captain America that is not Steve Rogers is just a temporary and poor substitute. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">(By the way, my fondness for these three is not necessarily due to the stories they have been featured in over the years. I has more to do with their potential, and I suppose their appearance. Over the coming weeks, I expect to have an opportunity to explain that in more detail.)</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Considering the condition of this country today, there has never been a better time for telling Captain America stories. Since 9/11 Marvel has tended to put Steve in the role of combatting terrorist inspired antagonists, but I think they have missed the mark. I think that a Steve Rogers, who grew up during the FDR era, would be more liberal, and more likely to be alarmed by the recent actions of his government in suppressing dissent, breaking international law and violating human rights. I think he might be more likely to equate our actions to the villain he fought against during the second World War and be inspired to speak out against his own government in defense of liberty at home and abroad. I think his patriotism is more nuanced than his costume. We caught a glimmer of this during the Civil War series in his dissent against hero registration. In fact the biggest tragedy -- should the Civil War Captain America turn out to be a Skrull imposter -- would be that the amazing speech Captain America made in defense of civil liberties during CW would not have been made by Steve Rogers. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">My previously mentioned dislike of stories based on suspicion of shape shifters is, in fact, due to where this story line inevitably leads. It leads to a response very much like the one our country has taken in the last seven years. It leads to fear inspired -- or perhaps only fear advantaged -- intrusions on privacy, suspicion of and intolerance for dissent. I am by no means the first to say this, but in our rush to protect our freedoms, we destroy them ourselves. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Shortly after 9/11 I saw the following quote, offered in a program that had nothing whatsoever to do with the events of the day, but so timely that I wrote it down.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">"...And the art of life is to save enough from each disaster to be able to begin again in something like your old image."<br />Murray Kempton<br />“Part of Our Time”</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">This is America's challenge in the 21st century. We have stumbled up until now. I hope that we will pick ourselves up and correct our errors. And I hope that Steve Rogers will return to lend his voice to that cause and that course.</span>Thomas Mitchellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14050003112181747851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33572118.post-1156912623307564832006-08-29T21:36:00.000-07:002006-12-10T15:08:30.516-08:00Who His Is and How He Came To Be: An Origin for the Author of This BlogWhen I was a very young child in the early sixties, before I even knew how to read, I became an avid fan of the Superman television series, which my local television station reran as part of an afternoon kids show, "Dr. Max".<br /><br />I can't remember seeing Superman for the first time, so I can't claim it was love at first sight, but I know the series quickly became a juvenile obsession for me, enough that I soon <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">cajoled</span> my mother to buy Superman family comics for me and to read them to me over and over while I looked at the pictures. I DO remember my first comic book. It was a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">Superboy</span> story. I don't remember the plot, but I remember one panel -- <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">Superboy</span> intercepting a bolt of lightning with his chest.<br /><br />After I learned to read, my parents bought me many other Superman family comic books -- Superman, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">Superboy</span>, Action, Adventure (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">Superboy</span> and the Legion of Superheroes), World's Finest (my only exposure to Batman), Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen. Surely there were other characters on the comic stand at the local supermarket, but I honestly can't remember seeing any other comics, except for funny animal books, and I never considered buying any of those.<br /><br />The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">mythos</span> of Superman -- the Fortress of Solitude, the Bottled City of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">Kandor</span>, the Phantom Zone, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">Arco</span> City, green <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">Kryptonite</span>, red <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">Kryptonite</span>, Gold <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">Kryptonite</span>, Blue <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">Kryptonite</span>, White <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">Kryptonite</span>, the magic of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">Mxyzptlk</span>, the futility of trying to change the past, and the increasing cast of Super beings including animals -- they were my waking dreams, as real as the biblical characters I learned about in Sunday School.<br /><br />As many stories as I read as I passed through grade school, I was never allowed to keep the comics themselves. My mother considered them clutter and encouraged me to give every last one of them to my little niece and nephews. Until junior high, when, having read in a letter column that some fans collected comics, my desire to hold on to my comics was <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">legitimized</span> to me as a hobby.<br /><br />A veil of another sort feel from my eyes around the same time. I began to notice other super hero comics, and I began to buy them. It was the early seventies, the tail end of a very exciting time for comics. DC was madly innovating, trying to hold on to the market share they were losing to Marvel. Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams were revitalizing Batman and Green Lantern. A literary changing of the guards was in progress. Gardner Fox, John <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">Broome</span>, Arnold Drake, even Stan Lee were, for one reason or another, stepping aside. New voices, like O'Neil, but also Cary Bates, Steve <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">Skeates</span>, Steve Gerber, Steve <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">Englehart</span>, Mike Friedrich, Len <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">Wein</span> and Marv <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">Wolfman</span> were stepping in. War, over population, pollution, racism, sexism, drug addiction, and religion became story topics. Comics were ever so slightly coming of age at the same time that I was. I would be lying if I denied that their liberal messages had no influence on the shaping of my own political beliefs, but it is also too simplistic to say they were the only influence.<br /><br />First my collecting spilled over to other DC heroes, though their comics were disappearing almost as quickly as I discovered them. Through Kirby's work in Jimmy Olsen, I discovered his Fourth World series' from their first issues. I began to buy the Batman books, the Teen Titans, Green Lantern, Flash, the Justice League, and Wonder Woman. Then I started to notice Marvel heroes on the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">newsstand</span>. I had some familiarity with the characters and their <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">story lines</span> from the episodic sixties cartoons, which also ran on "Dr. Max". But I honestly didn't realize they were published in comics until then. I was please to discover many of the stories I had seen on the Saturday morning Fantastic Four cartoon had been based on the stories published in the comic. It made picking it up and understanding their past much easier.<br /><br />At that time, most young boys stopped reading comic books by the time they reached High School, but in my sophomore year, we moved to a new town, two thousand miles from my closest friends, and maybe because of that, my involvement with my four color friends only intensified. DC was in descent -- although my loyalty to the company that published my first love never abated -- but Marvel was on a creative roll. Steve <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">Englehart</span> published his classic Captain America stories, and soon after wrote the Avengers/Defenders crossover, a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">Marvelized</span> version of the annual Justice League/Justice Society crossovers. Steve Gerber wrote Man-thing and out of that created Howard the Duck. Doug <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">Moench</span> wrote War of the Worlds and P. Craig Russell magnificently illustrated it. Marv <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">Wolfman</span> and Gene Colan had a wonderful run on Tomb of Dracula, and Roy Thomas and John <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">Buscema</span> did such incredible things with Conan that even I, a die hard fan of men in tights, forgave the character for not wearing them. Truth was he was even sexier without them!<br /><br />One might have thought that even a social misfit like me might have stopped buying, reading and collecting comics by college, but instead I found <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">fannish</span> friends by mail and through an <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">APA</span> (<span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">Amateur</span> Press Alliance - it's what comic fans did before the Internet). Suddenly I was not only reading them, I was writing about them, going to conventions about them, and spending far too many hours racking up expensive long distance phone bills talking to other comics fans, even if I wasn't always talking about comics.<br /><br />The late seventies was a fairly dismal time for comics fans. Most of what was published was hack work, except for a few bright spots like Englehart's Silver St. Cloud series in Detective Comics and Chris Claremont's X-Men revival. I also fondly remember Martin Pasko's run on Superman reviving the Lois Lane/Lana Lang rivalry with a touch of adult wit.<br /><br />For two brief periods I did actually give up collecting comics, although I never sold or gave away the ones I already owned. Once when I graduated college and moved to San Francisco I stopped buying them for a few months, and once more a few months later when my boy friend moved in, but that second time barely counts, since he was buying them and I was still reading them. When we separated, I went cold turkey again, expecting to give them up, but soon I was back at the comic store buying as many as I had before.<br /><br />The eighties were a bronze age for comic super heroes. Those of us with fond memories of super heroic action from our youths took pure joy in Wolfman and Perez's Teen Titans, the Levitz and Giffen Legion of Superheroes, and the Crisis on Infinite Earths. George Perez worked wonders on the new Wonder Woman; John Byrne gave Superman a boost, and a series of talented writers and artists made the new Flash the most consistently excellent super hero series of the next twenty years. As the eighties continued more adult fare was published like Alan Moore's Watchmen and Swamp Thing, Sandman, and the seriously warped Doom Patrol.<br /><br />Although the ninties were not nearly so exemplary, by then I was no more able to give up my weekly visit to the comics store than I was able to give up my morning cup of coffee. To tell the truth, sometimes I am not even sure why I continue to buy them. Certainly there are as many disappointments each week as there are satisfying moments. I long ago gave up being concerned about having an uninterupted series of any title. I buy now mainly based on the creators, a favorite artist or writer. As much as I love many different characters I have read over the years, too often both DC and Marvel have taken the wrong tact with one of my favorites and the result is not only a waste of my money, but arguably a waste of the paper the comic was printed on. Still I almost never discard a comic I buy, and by now I must have close to twenty thousand of them -- way too many to count!<br /><br />As this weekly blog continues, I hope to share my thoughts regarding my favorite characters and what I like about them. I expect I will also share my pet peeves about particular books and why I think they have fallen short of their potential.Thomas Mitchellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14050003112181747851noreply@blogger.com0