Gorilla Daze

As sublime as much of the Silver Age was, the more you read the more obvious it becomes that there was a heck of a lot of repetition. All the characters were basically treated the same — no matter who they were, or when their adventures were supposedly set.

Superman fought aliens and robots and had bizarre transformations. As his adventures were successful so these tropes were shoe-horned in elsewhere. Batman got the treatment (rather uncomfortably, it has to be said) , so did Wonder Woman. But, why stop with the present? Blackhawk — who was ostensibly a WW2 fighter pilot — ended up shooting down spacecraft, as indeed did our old friend Tomahawk, whose stomping grounds were the time prior to the American War of Independence. Dressed in leathers and a coonskin hat, Tomahawk was not averse to fighting the odd alien or giant gorilla between bashing the British. Somehow, this seems even more ludicrous given the time period. Westerns were wildly popular during the 50s and 60s, as evidenced by the vast number of such shows on TV, but clearly DC felt that the genre could do with a little spicing up. Here we see a a forlorn ranger asking the immortal question, “How are we gonna stop Tomahawk setting the whole frontier ablaze?” And he might well ask, seeing as how the cannonballs he’s just fired at Tomahawk have been melted by the fierce heat!

What, I wonder, would a Tomahawk movie made at that time have been like? Directed by John Ford, we’d perhaps get to see big John Wayne taking on a giant purple gorilla, or a pack of wild mutant dogs. “Fill your hands, you sons of a bitch!” etc… Bring Marvel’s Spragg the Living Hill into the mix, and Brokeback Mountain suddenly becomes a very different proposition..!

So even if you are the type who eschews non-super-hero comics, rest assured the practically any genre is worth checking out during this period of comics history. It’s all equally silly, and utterly wonderful.

Image ©2010 DC Comics

Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane #106, November 1970

In the late 1960s comic sales were once again on the downturn following the brief interest in the revitalised Marvel Comics (not to mention the Batman tv show), and comics publishers were forced to look for a new trend to exploit. DC, in its infinite wisdom, decided to try appealing to a slightly more mature audience by tackling serious themes pulled from the headlines of the day. Yep, DC went ‘relevant’ — and while Denny O’Neil’s Green Lantern/Green Arrow material is fondly remembered today, I’m betting very few want to remember Lois Lane #106.

‘I Am Curious (Black)’ kicks off with Lois Lane trying to get an exposé of life in Metropolis’s ghetto area, Little Africa, but she comes up against a wall of silence. The black kids run from her, doors are slammed in her face, and she’s humiliated in the street by being called ‘whitey’. Finally, an old woman willingly talks to her – but it turns out she’s blind!

Despairing that she’ll ever get her story, Lois turns to Superman for help. He flies her to the Fortress of Solitude and uses ‘the Transformoflux Pack’ on the reporter. A minute later Lois stands before him transformed into… a black woman! And not just any old black woman, oh no, Lois has become one hot momma!

Returning to the ghetto, Lois is shocked to find that white taxi driver Benny the Beret now ignores her hails, and she is stared at by all the white folk on the subway. Invited into the apartment of a young African-American woman, Lois is disturbed when a lump of plaster falls from the ceiling into her coffee, and recoils in horror as a rat attacks the baby in the room next door! Finally Lois’s eyes well up when the young woman asks her how she can help. This proves too much for a tearful Lois: “She lives in misery… yet she asks if she can help me!”

Back out on the street, Lois comes across a makeshift school where Dave Stevens, the young man who called her ‘whitey’ earlier (as opposed to the artist of The Rocketeer), is teaching the neighbourhood kids that, “Black is beautiful! Say it loud and clear! Proud!” A minute later, he is shot by some nasty white guys in a nearby alley who are caught teaching black kids how to steal to pay for drugs (no I’m not making this up!).

Superman shows up just then to despatch the villains, but the local hospital doesn’t have enough funds to stock all types of blood and so Dave Stevens is fading fast. Superman can’t help because a needle can’t penetrate his Kryptonian skin, but luckily Lois is “O-Negative! Just like him!”

After the blood tranfusion has saved the young man’s life, Lois asks Superman whether he would marry her if she stayed black. Superman says that as an alien he can’t be racist. “But,” says Lois, “your skin is the right color!” Just then the Transformoflux wears off and Lois is back to normal. She goes to see the revived Stevens, frightened in case he rejects her again for being white and tricking him.

On the final, wordless, page Lois enters the room and Stevens looks shocked; but then he smiles broadly and grasps Lois’s hand in friendship.

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And so it was that all the problems with race relations were solved in a DC comic in late 1970,  and we all lived happily ever after. Responsible for this, er… ground-breaking insight were Bob Kanigher (writer), Werner Roth (pencils) and good ol’ Vinnie Colletta (inks). Kanigher was one of the best comics writers of all time, having had a hand in numerous classic tales over the years. When he was good, he was very, very good. When he was bad… Oh, boy, watch out!

The cover — by the dream team of Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson — is by far the best thing about this issue.

At the end of the day, I’m sure it was all done with the best of intentions, but….

Images ©2010 DC Comics

Hawkman #10, Oct-Nov 1965

Wow! Check out that gun. Now that’s what I call a way-out weapon! A stun gun featuring no less than seven barrels threatening to cut short the career of the winged wonder. Was there ever excitement more explosive than that supplied by C.A.W., the Criminal Alliance of the World? I think not. Editor Julie Schwartz isn’t afraid to reference the Cold War — not to mention the Hot War and the Secret War (shhh! don’t tell Jim Shooter) — to entice the potential purchaser. They don’t make covers like this any more, and I reckon that’s a shame. Your modern symbolic or action portrait covers are all well and good, but their very sameness detracts from their usefulness as a sales tool – in my humble opinion anyway.

Art by the ever brilliant Murphy Anderson. His work on this title was some of the very best of his career.

Image ©2010 DC Comics

The Adventures of Jerry Lewis #105, March-April 1968

As the story opens, Superman has been fighting a “cosmic creature” for a full three days and three nights. When he finally defeats it, it explodes as it’s revealed to be a robot. Unbeknowst to the Man of Steel, Lex Luthor is responsible: the blast was a means to expose Superman to a fine spray of Kryptonite dust. Over the next few hours he grows increasingly weaker as the dust starts to take effect.

Perry White sends a very tired Clark Kent to investigate “the growing power and danger of teen-agers, how they’re the number-two enemy — after China!” It seems that a computer has selected Jerry Lewis’s young nephew, Renfrew, as a potential typical teen. Clark finds Jerry’s house a complete mess thanks to a recent rampage by Renfrew. Renfrew then soaks Clark with the contents of a large bowl of water. Dripping wet, Clark goes to the bathroom to change clothes — and stashes his super-suit in a laundry hamper, as he wears some of Jerry’s things.

Jerry’s housekeeper soon discovers the super-suit, and gives it to Jerry — who immediately tries it on!

Having tracked the Kryptonite trace Luthor arrives, but Clark spots him and immediately realizes Luthor’s fiendish plan. Dressed as Superman, Jerry is in imminent danger — but Clark accidentally knocks himself out. Luthor chases Jerry firing a hail of bullets, but the bullets just bounce off the suit. Renfrew tries to help, but has to be rescued by a revived Clark as Jerry runs into a junk yard. Trapped, it looks like the end of the line for Jerry as Luthor closes in. Just then, a sudden gust of wind — in reality Clark’s super-breath — pulls the super-suit off Jerry.

Superman appears, having cleaned the Kryptonite dust off of his outfit, and quickly disposes of Luthor. Forgetting his assignment, Superman heads for deep space and another monster — after all, “That Renfrew is worse than Kryptonite! I just had to get away for the rest!”

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The cover and interior art are by the sure hand of Bob Oksner, although the Superman figure on the cover looks like Wayne Boring, so I suspect that’s been pasted in from somewhere. Arnold Drake seems to get the blame for the story, but there are no credits in the issue itself. It’s all hideously unfunny: the very height of hilarity seemingly intended to be Clark swallowing a pigeon as he uses his super-lungs to extract the super-suit from Jerry.

The notion of teenagers being a menace is kind of interesting, and I wonder whether that was genuine concern on the part of the middle-aged creative team (Murray Boltinoff was editor), or just a means to an end/comment on Renfrew’s character? The “menace” of teens doing their own thing was of course also featured in that other big hit title of 1968: Brother Power, the Geek. Superman’s guardian, Mort Weisinger, was most certainly unhappy about that!

The appearance by Superman in the Jerry Lewis title seems to be part of an attenpt by DC to bring in more readers: over the course of a couple of years, the book also played host to Batman (#97), the Flash (#112), and Wonder Woman (#117 – see HERE). They’re all pretty painful reads, and it’s wonder the book survived as long as it did — however, the official statement of circulation that appears in this issue puts the average print run at 341,000, with an average sale of 181,000! That sales figure wasn’t great for the time, but isn’t disastrous — it seems Lewis was able to command the loyalty of a heck of a lot of readers.

Images ©2010 DC Comics

Werewolf #1, Sept 1967

Ah yes, the “only super hero super spy in the world” — apart from Harvey’s Spyman of course….

When Major Wiley Wolf (yes, really) crashes his aircraft in the Canadian wilds, he is presumed dead. However, he survives the crash and lives for the next six months with a pack of wolves, one of which, Thor, tales a particular shine to the major. Wiley’s boss, Major Hartley, refuses to give up on his pal and continues the fruitless search until, one day, Wiley and Thor are spotted and rescued.

Hartley realises that his old friend is not the same man he was and offers him up for a special assignment. Met at Washington airport by Judy Bowman of Central Intelligence, Wiley finds that he’s been volunteered, without his knowledge, to become Unit One’s single operative, codename: Werewolf!

An intensive regime of punishing training ensues as Werewolf learns to beat people up, pick locks, shatter planks of wood, and shoot accurately. A special hypnotic technique enables him to hold facial expression for long periods so as to effect a perfect disguise. Thor is part of the deal too: he has a minature receiver implanted in his head so he can react to Werewolf’s sub-vocal commands. Finally, Werewolf is given a special suit. And what a suit it is:

For his first “howl” Werewolf is sent to Cuba to smash a Russian missile outpost. He and Thor parachute to the scene and, taking on the appearance of a Cuban soldier and then a country yokel, he infiltrates the base with the help of a local intelligence contact — who just happens to be a nine-year old boy (shades of Joe 90!).

Attacked by military personel, Werewolf is grateful for his super-suit: bullets bounce off, and it affords him a degree of super-speed. Thor plays his part by disabling various soldiers, but before Werewolf can destroy the base, he is captured. Luckily the suit burns through the ropes that bind his wrists, and Werewolf uses a sub-vocal command to order in a spy plane to take photographic evidence of the missiles’ existence. He then orders Thor to blow up the base using a handy destruct swith that just happens to be sitting in the woods.

“Kabloom!”

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The third and final of Dell’s horror super-hero triumvirate is actually fairly competent. Well, relatively speaking anyway. How Wiley Wolf (oh, honestly!) survives in the frozen wilderness for six months without food, water, or a change of clothes is not explained. The reason for his becoming a changed man is, however. We’re told that Wiley began to think of himself as a wolf, and that wolves are a civilized breed, never taking more than they need to survive. Every once in a while, though, one wolf goes a bit bonkers and infects the others with a kind of kill frenzy (how scientifically accurate all this is, I dunno). Suddenly remembering that he is human, Wiley has an epiphany: “there [are] a lot of people in the world like insane wolves and I swore to do something about it.”

You have to love the idea of a suit that is just one molecule thick. Bet that’s a bugger to put on, all those ladders in his tights, etc! It’s also just about the easiest super-hero outfit in hsitory to draw — even the X-Men’s Havok had more detail. And, on wonders what the animal cruelty crowd would have to say about poor old Thor being thrown out of an airplane, even with a parachute!

The script is by Don Segall with art by Tony Fracchio and our old friend Tony Tallarico. Great art it ain’t, entertaining it most certainly is.

Images ©2010 Dell Publishing Co., Inc/the respective copyright holder

Giant-Size Invaders #1, June 1975

Number one — and the one and only, sadly. This launched Roy Thomas’s baby: a high concept super-hero series set during the second world war. Thomas had grown up reading the Justice Society of America in All Star Comics not long after the end of the war, and for him writing the Invaders was something of a dream job. And it shows: Invaders was a fabulous comic, both in terms of writing and art. The latter was handled with aplomb by Frank Robbins.

Now, Robbins is a bit of a controversial figure. He wasn’t really a super-hero artist — his background was in adventure strips, such as his own Johnny Hazard — and his style alienated a lot of fans. But I loved his stuff, and thought it captured the period perfectly. It was probably fan resistance that meant very few issues of the ongoing series had covers by him, but that did mean we got a nice run of covers by Kirby instead.

Robbins drew most of the first 28 issues, and this giant-size origin issue, wherein Winston Churchill recruits Captain America, Sub-Mariner and the Human Torch to the Allied cause in Europe. After that Roy Thomas soon left too, and the series went into a fairly rapid decline. Issue #41 wrapped up the dangling plotlines before the axe fell.

Cover by Robbins, with the softening ink line of John Romita, Sr.

Image ©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc

Frankenstein #2, September 1966

The first issue of Dell’s Frankenstein was a fairly standard adaptation of the book/movie, however, with this second issue things took a decidedly odd turn…

The success of Stan Lee’s Marvel comics meant that super-heroes were big news again, and all the publishers wanted in on the action — even if they had no track record with costumed characters. During the 1940s and 50s Dell was a hugely successful publisher specialising mainly in licenced product such as Disney characters and movie tie-ins. Dell’s product was beautifully produced, though the actual content was packaged by Western Publishing which also held the majority of the licences. Things were going so well in fact that the company didn’t bother subscribing to the Comics Code Authority in the wake of the horror comics clamp-down of the mid-50s. Instead, the comics carried the promise that “Dell Comics are good comics” on the inside of every cover.

In the early 1960s Western and Dell parted company, and both continued to publish comics — Western as Gold Key, and Dell under its own banner. Western got the better end of the deal and went from strength to strength for the next decade or so, while Dell, it’s fair to say, struggled. Western had the writers, the artists and a wealth of experience in creating comics, Dell… didn’t. The ill-fated attempt to turn the “big three” classic monsters into super-heroes is sadly indicative of a company having lost its way.

So, Frankenstein #2: A bolt of lightning strikes a derelict castle and awakens the slumbering Frankenstein monster. A hundred years have passed while he slept, and the sight of his green-hued head in a mirror startles him: he has no memory of who he is. He puts on a flesh coloured mask and goes out into the wide world for a look around. In order to protect his identitiy he decides to call himself Frank Stone.

No, seriously.

He discovers that he has super strength when he rescues the elderly Henry Knickerbocker from a car crash. Knickerbocker dies anyway, but not before he’s left his rescuer all his vast fortune. Lucky, eh? Now able to masquerade as a millionaire playboy, Frankenstein — sorry, Frank Stone — goes on a one-monster crusade against crime, protecting Metropole City from all who would do it ill.

One such miscreant is Mr Freek and his evil pet gorilla, Bruto. In a tense showdown Frankenstein battles the huge gorilla to rescue his newly-acquired butler, William. Oddly, with William safe, Frankenstein elects to let Freek go, no questions asked. The mad scientist and his pet just sail off into the sunset as Frankenstein and William wave them off.

Later, at a society do, Frank meets the delectable, but nosy, Miss Ann Thrope (!). Determined to prove her suspicion that Frank is “the monster they call Frankenstein”, she throws herself off a roof, hoping Frank will, er, reveal himself. He’s too canny for that however, and she’s left to write up her thoughts in a private diary. Meanwhile, elsewhere, Mr Freek vows revenge..!

Don Segall (not the Dirty Harry movie director — at least, I hope not!) wrote this mess and it was given the illustrative quality it deserved by Tony Tallarico, a talent much beloved by all bad comic fans everywhere. It’s got a monster, super-powers, a secret identity, a butler and a suspicious chick who’ll stop at nothing to prove Frank is more than he seems. Original stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree.

The worst comic ever? Nah. Soon we’ll be looking at Dell’s other super-heroes: Dracula and the Werewolf!

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid…

©2010 Dell Publishing/the respective copyright holders

Adventure Comics #300, September 1962

The comic that launched a zillion comics fans–well Legion fans anyway! After a few years of traipsing from guest appearance to guest appearance, those teenagers from the 30th century finally gained their own regular series here. The Curt Swan cover became a classic and the format was repeated over and over on numerous comics. Meanwhile, inside, the backup strip featuring the Legion told the tale of “The Face Behind the Lead Mask!” by Jerry Siegel and John Forte. Not the most auspicious of starts, perhaps, but very entertaining nonetheless. Things would get a lot better soon and, as the Silver Age continued, the Legion went from strength to strength, becoming one of DC’s most popular group of characters.

It’d be interesting to know whether Mon-El really was released from the Phantom Zone due to “popular demand”…

Image ©2010 DC Comics

Thrill-o-Rama #1, October 1965

One of Joe Simon’s latter-day editorial efforts for Harvey, this used up inventory material left over from the comics cull of 1957. Bob Powell drew the lead Fate strip, as he had done through four issues of The Man in Black in the previous decade. “The Hate Cupids” is a peculiar tale of Venus and cupid teaming up to thwart the Man in Black’s attempts to arrange the early death of a sculptor who’s working for Saladin. It’s clearly intended to be humorous, but it’s not a great success.

The back-up stories are by Powell, Doug Wildey and George Tuska. The best of these is “The Old Hulk” which sees a band of stranded astronauts come across a mysterious abandoned spacecraft on a remote asteroid. Elsewhere, “This is How it Might Have Happened” (a regular feature from The Man in Black) shows how a small change to a seemingly insignificant event can dramatically change the outcome, meaning the difference between life and death for the lead character!

Cover by Joe Simon.

image ©2010 Harvey/the respective copyright holder

Daredevil #133, May 1976

Marvel used to trumpet the Human Fly as an amazing super-hero because he was “real”. Eighteen months before the debut of the masked stunt man, the House of Ideas had a tryout with another real life super-hero: Uri Geller! Yep, the ace spoon-bender had a co-starring role here alongside the Man Without Fear.

Apparently Stan Lee was something of a fan, and asked writer-editor Marv Wolfman to arrange a guest-appearance in a Marvel comic. As Wolfman was scripting Daredevil at the time, it seemed easiest to slip the psychic in there rather than offer the challenge to another writer. Geller himself later visited the Marvel offices and amazed the previously skeptical Wolfman with a display of key bending and psychic drawing. In the letters column article, Wolfman claimed that he’d become a believer.

In the story itself Geller is presented as having genuine super-powers, and uses his abilities to aid ol’ hornhead dispatch the dastardly Mindwave and his Think Tank, when the latter attempts a daring bank raid. The District Attorney himself calls in Geller when he believes that Daredevil doesn’t have what it takes to bring in Mindwave. While Daredevil swings through the Manhattan skyline, Geller takes a cab — Black Widow he ain’t. In the end, though, Geller’s amazing powers save the day when he ties up the bad guy with steel bars using just the power of his mind!

Perhaps not surprisingly, issue #137′s letter column featured a major rebuttal from Geller-skeptic James Randi.

Cover art by Gil Kane.

Image ©2010 Marvel Characters, Inc