About My Comics History

The earliest I can remember comic books was from when we would go visit my grandparents at Oneida Lake in New York State. When the car was all loaded up we'd head towards the highway, but along the way we stopped at the Sweet Shoppe and mom would hand me a dollar with instructions to get three of the giant-sized comics (25 cents apiece) and four candy bars (five cents apiece) and I got to keep the nickel. Back then I was only 8 or 9, so I tended to get the Harvey comics like Baby Huey, Little Dot, Richie Rich, etc. I had three younger siblings, but my brother Mark couldn't read yet, so he didn't get a comic.

The first superhero comic I can remember reading was Adventure #320, with the return of Dev-Em. It was at my cousin's house in Massachusetts. I remember going with my cousin over to a friend's house who had to play this hot new record for us: Help Me Rhonda by the Beach Boys.

I remember getting into Archie Comics when I was 10, and the Batman craze hit when I was 11, so like many kids in America I bought some comics around then. I remember specifically having bought Batman #179 and #181, and I also bought the final Outsider story in Tec #356.

But I didn't really get the bug until 1968, when I happened to read World's Finest #179 at the local barber shop. It was a reprint giant with lots of Dick Sprang artwork, and I was hooked enough that I went back to the barber shop the next day and gave them a quarter for the issue.

At around the same time, one of the NY news programs ran a piece on a comic convention in New York, so the idea that comic collecting was a hobby that could make you some money was also planted. I wasn't just buying four-color entertainment, I was making an investment in my future.

So I amassed my collection for a couple years. I actually went to a NYC comics convention around 1970 at the Statler Hilton. I got some cool comics there, including Batman #18, #31 and #71, the longtime sole issues of my GA collection.

And then, what happened? I got to be about 17 and I was saving money for car repairs and gas and dates and although I kept buying Batman and Spiderman I was not a comics junkie at all. I still had the pretty good collection I had amassed when I started in eighth grade, but like everybody else life intervened and so I got to college.

And found that for the first time in my life, reading a comic was not considered completely geeky. In my first semester, Warren came out with their first Spirit issue. Having read the Harvey Spirit #1 in high school, I bought that issue and passed it around my dorm. When I went to the local store a couple weeks later, the second issue was sold out, although I soon found many copies floating around the dorm.

There were cool people in college that loaned out their copies of comics. Thanks to them I read a lot of comics I would not otherwise have bought, like the Starlin Warlock series or Swamp Thing or the original Howard the Duck stories.

I got out of college and was apparently cured of my comics addiction. I got a job working for the man every day and I was climbing the corporate ladder. A friend of mine and I teamed up with two other guys to rent a house. And like the second day I after I moved in, somebody said, oh, you should check out the comics in the basement.

A complete run of Amazing Spiderman from about 110-142, including awesome copies of 121, 122 and 129.

That got the bug back in me, especially when those issues were followed by the original clone saga with the Jackal, which I found entertaining. But I dropped Spiderman shortly after Len Wein took over. He's a fine writer but he didn't have a feel for the character; his Spiderman stories read as if they had been written for Batman, not Peter Parker.

And that was pretty much it for comics and me for 20 years. Oh, I kept my collection, and every now and then I'd pick up an issue, like Batman #300, or one of the Hobgoblin issues of Spiderman, or the final issue of the (Barry Allen) Flash. A coworker of my girlfriend recommended Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen to me in the late 1980s, both of which I devoured. I bought quite a few of the Spirit reprints by Kitchen Sink. But if I read more than ten comics a year from 1978-1997 I'd be surprised.

Fast forward to May 1998. It's a Saturday night and I'm sitting around bored with nothing in particular to do, and I got this oddball idea: Why not try to locate the covers to the first 100 issues of Amazing Spiderman? Well, even in those relatively primitive internet days, that did not turn out to be terribly difficult, so I set myself a somewhat tougher task: Locate the covers to the first 100 issues of Batman.

I got about 60 covers from various sites; one of my big hauls came from a site called the Golden Age Batman site of Mr Bill Jourdain, who also blogs Golden Age Comics.

As the evening wore on into night, I decided to see if there were any binary newsgroups devoted to comic books. As it happened, a newsgroup had been created only a month earlier, called alt.binaries.pictures.comics. So I posted the covers that I had downloaded that evening. A few days later somebody posted some more covers, and a few days after that another poster uploaded a big set of covers.

I had a scanner, but like most people, hardly ever used it. But I still had a collection of comics and so I began scanning the covers to fill in gaps. And one evening in June I decided to try scanning a story. I chose The Secret of Hunter's Inn from Batman #18. If I expected a sensational response, I didn't get one. But about a year later, somebody posted a complete scan of a Cry for Dawn issue and the newsgroup literally went nuts. Everybody started scanning complete comics like mad.

We had only one rule at ABPC. Comics that were under a year old were not allowed to be posted. Partly it was defensive; we hoped that by not scanning the newest comics the companies would let us skate on the older material. But also none of us wanted to hurt the industry that had given us so much pleasure.

The scans posted to ABPC grew at a phenomenal rate. In the beginning I was burning a CD of new scans once a month, then twice a month, then once a week, then every day. To give you an idea, in April 2001, 412 comics were posted to ABPC. In April 2002? Try 1,045. By April 2003 it was 1644.

And in the midst of that flood of comics, I started filling in the gaps in my own collection. I found that I hadn't lost interest in comics so much as I had lost interest in new comics. Indeed, one of the things that had kept me collecting into the mid-1970s was the ready availability of reprints in the backs of those 100-pagers that DC published for awhile around 1974. But reprints very much fell by the wayside as that decade wore on, and the prices for the older issues kept rising.

Hence the focus of this blog on the Silver Age of Comics. Although I'm a big fan of the Golden Age material, I don't have the extensive knowledge of that era like Bill Jourdain. And although there's a fair amount of newer stuff that I like, there's a massive gap in my knowledge of comics from 1978-1997 that I'm never going to be able to make up.

Book Report: Man of Two Worlds by Julius Schwartz

Note: This is not the cover to the book, but this comic gets referenced inside the book so I thought I'd put it here.

I checked this book out of the library over the weekend and devoured it. I am going to work parts of it into various posts, but I did want to discuss my overall impressions before hand:

The book is long on anecdotes, polished and well-told. Schwartz was a speaker at many comic and science fiction conventions, and obviously knew how to entertain his audience.

Unfortunately, polished anecdotes have a downside; oftentimes they have been embellished over the years by the speaker to make them more humorous or ironic. Note: This is true of anybody's anecdotes, so I'm certainly not accusing Schwartz of misrepresenting himself. But any historian worth his salt knows that anecdotal history tends to bear only occasional resemblance to the actual facts.

This is a minor example, but one that is revealing. Schwartz mentions his fandom for the New York Yankees, and Babe Ruth, and notes:

The Sultan of Swat signed a contract with the Yankees in 1927 for a record eighty thousand dollars, making him the highest paid baseball player. He was asked to justify eighty grand when at the time Herbert Hoover, the President of the United States was only making seventy-five thousand dollars.

Ruth snapped back, "I had a better year than Hoover. Besides how many home runs did Hoover hit last year?"

This is a very famous baseball anecdote, but the timing is off. Hoover wasn't president in 1927 (he didn't take office until 1929). Indeed, the fact that the story is generally told as of 1930 makes it punchier because of course the Depression had started in 1929.

The book opens with a terrific joke. Schwartz notes that he was always punctual, preferring to be an hour early rather than a minute late, and says that his gravestone will read: HERE LIES JULIUS SCHWARTZ: HE MADE HIS LAST DEADLINE.

On the other hand, some of the stories read like they'd make great anecdotes with the target of Schwartz's ire on a podium with him, cackling away at the tale, but seem unfunny and indeed a little insensitive in a book. For example:

Also, Mike [Sekowsky] used to like to have a drink with lunch on occasion. When he was doing Justice League for me I remember once when I had to tell him, "Mike, you have to do the cover today, so when you come back from lunch you have to be prepared to do the cover. So no more than two martinis for lunch.

....And on occasion, when Mike didn't come back from lunch, I had to summon someone else (usually Murphy Anderson) to pitch in on the work that was on deadline.

Ouch! As I said when I profiled Schwartz a few months ago, nobody has a bad word to say about him, so I assume that story did not seem as unkind at conventions as it does in print.

Update: Tom in the comments notes that Sekowsky's drinking problem is well-documented and led to his ouster from the Supergirl and Wonder Woman features. The drinking problem is discussed here.



And also mentioned by Joe Giella:

JG: Mike Sekowsky had a very bad temper. Anyone that crossed him had better look out. He drank... He was the go-to guy, but began to deteriorate later. One day he completed a story and I was asked to ink it, but it was very bad and I couldn't ink it. I was asked to re-pencil it and I did so gladly, because Mike really saved me once on a job and wouldn't accept a dime for his help... I liked Mike very much, but the drinking was really starting to hurt him.

So it appears that this was well-known in the industry and not some case of Schwartz airing family laundry. My apologies!

Schwartz acknowledges the huge mistake in Detective #327, his first Batman tale, which featured Batman picking up a gun and holding it on some crooks that he and Robin had already defeated. And he talks about the death of Alfred, another topic I have discussed.

Overall, I rate the book as a very entertaining read for anybody with an interest in the Silver Age of Comics.



Update: Here's an anecdote that checks out; Schwartz mentions being the first to publish something by Harlan Ellison, the famed science fiction author. Sure enough, from Real Fact Comics #6:

Classics Illustrated

When I decided at age 13 to start collecting comic books, the reaction from my family was, to say the least, not positive and supporting. My parents definitely shared the view that comics were throwaway trash entertainment for kids. And to be honest, that was not entirely an unfair characterization of the medium, although things were already changing on that front as both DC and Marvel started chasing the adolescents like me.

It's funny because I think of the comic collectors of my era that I've met over the years, and they're all pretty bright, but certainly the image of the time was a dummy who moved his lips as he read, slowly. I had always been a voracious reader; by third grade I was reading five-six books a week. True, it was mostly the Hardy Boys or the Bobbsey Twins, but it most definitely was not picture books for me. By sixth grade I was reading the "We Were There" series, novels of American history as (supposedly) told by the kids who lived at the time.

So comics definitely seemed like a regression to my parents. But I was an obstinate youngster and they gradually accepted my decision. Of course, it helped that I did not solely read comics; by that point I was also a sci-fi fan. I also picked up some "educational" comics, like the Classics Illustrated line, although they were mostly on the wane by then, and it was pretty obvious despite the new covers that the artwork was dated. But it did interest me in some of the stories, and so at 15 I borrowed a copy of The Three Musketeers from a friend.

Who committed suicide by jumping in front of a train a week later. Sorry to spring that on you, but it's a major part of the story. Needless to say, I was emotionally wrecked for the next month or so. But one of the ways I got through it was to dedicate myself. I set a goal for myself to read the classics--not the comics, but the original books on which they were based. I did use the list on the back cover as a starting guide:

How did I do? Pretty well I'd say. Now mind you, finding some of those books (other than the first 20 or so, which virtually any good library would have) was quite a chore. I read all but Adventures of Marco Polo and Michael Strogoff in the first 30. I read Moby Dick unabridged, and let me tell you that really required dedication. And although I'm a big Robert Louis Stevenson fan, I've never been able to finish The Black Arrow. Overall I've probably read about 90 or so of the 167 in the original series (not all of which are listed on that particular back cover.

But most of the books, once you got into them, were terrific. The Count of Monte Cristo, Les Miserables and Crime and Punishment are books that everybody should read once.

The comics themselves varied in quality, both in the written adaptations and in the artwork. Here's the highly stylized splash to Arabian Nights (better known as 1001 Nights):


When the comic was redone in the 1960s, that beautiful style disappeared:


I'll always remember the moment when the inspector confronted Raskolnikov, in Crime and Punishment. During the story, he's seemingly befriended the young student, and they are discussing the murder that is the focus of the story here:

Of course, collecting the Classics Illustrated has presented many headaches as the comics were often reissued with new covers, and later with new interiors. At one point collectors used the HRN (highest reorder number) on the back cover to differentiate between various versions, but even that is not foolproof.

In Search of... Aliens

A reader named Darell writes:

When I was young, before I started collecting comics (I collected and traded them between 1960 and 1966) I used to read my uncle's. This would have been in the very early sixties, 1961 to 63 probably (he was about 16).

I remember him having many comics that had a serial for a few pages in the back of (main) comic book I’m not sure who the publisher was, could have been Charlton, DC, I don’t remember, although it was before Marvel and Gold Key.

In any case, in the serial I’m hoping to chase down, the main character(s) for what i can remember were in contact with another race of advanced men who had tall heads, sort of like an Egyptian pharaohs’ crown and I think their bodies were colored, like light blue or green or? I can’t remember too much. I remember these people were found behind a wall or partition, almost like another dimension and our main characters were interacting with them somehow when they came in contact with them. Sorry it’s not much, but does it ring any bells?

My uncle only had comics like war comics, Magnus Robot Fighter, DC, Charlton, was there an AC?

Comments by Pat: I suggested The Aliens from Magnus, Robot Fighter, but after reading my post on them, Darell responded that while he remembered that series, it was not the one he had in mind.  Any ideas, fellow Silver Age fans?  I don't think it could be Marvel, because it doesn't fit the serial requirement.  Despite what Darell says, I would not rule out Gold Key; they started publishing in 1962, so they would not be entirely outside of the 1961-63 timeframe he mentions.  I don't think it could be ACG; they didn't have any serials that I can remember in any of their science-fiction books.  Charlton, or Dell, maybe?

Dr Jerry Bails, RIP

One thing I don't get into much around here is the fan aspect to comic book publishing. I liked comics but only attended one comic convention (around 1971 in New York), and only knew of a couple other kids my age who were into them as well. I only wrote one letter to the editor (pointing out a mistake in a Thor issue), which went unpublished. I pretty much was out of comic collecting by 1977, and the only comics I bought from about 1979-1998 or so were Spirit reprints, Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns and the final issue of The Flash.

But Dr Jerry Bails' passing does deserve mention, because he was the young man who pushed for the return of the Justice Society of America with letters to Julius Schwartz and Gardner Fox in the 1950s, and thus may have been a partial inspiration for DC's Silver Age heroes. And considering that it was sales of the (renamed) Justice League of America which inspired Stan Lee and Jack Kirby to create the Fantastic Four, it's not hard to see that this man had a huge impact on Silver Age comics.

Here's a terrific interview with him from a couple years back, hitting on a theme I've returned to on occasion here:

A culture passes on its values through stories, and I credit comics with shaping many of my values. I noticed when I wrote a book on the impact of technology on the environment, I made lots of references to the morals in famous children's stories, and classical stories. My view of the moral world was shaped by comics, radio drama, movies, storybook time at the library, as well as the traditional Sunday school. All these sources conveyed values by telling stories. It's part of humanity's oldest tradition. Comics were just the best visual method for the mid-20th century.

The lighter moments when we are reading for fun are not trivial. They are part and parcel of the mortar that strengthens our character by providing both stress relief and reaffirmation of cultural values. I don't personally get into the study of this function of pastime reading, but I'm aware of it.

Frankly, I think readers tend to be more empathetic and less aggressive than people who prefer aggressive sports for the cathartic effect. Unfortunately the mass media today sell more advertising and admissions by playing up caustic, vituperative and downright antisocial values. I can't believe that's good for any of us, but especially kids. Stories, even crime stories, can and should have a redeeming value. I guess that's why horror for its own sake never interested me. I prefer heroic behavior in my stories, even if the hero is a slow learner.

I especially liked his tale of hunting down the All Star issues back in those pre-comic store, pre-Ebay days. I didn't buy a whole lot of back issues by mail back then because they were expensive and so my experience was pretty much the same; slowly finding back issues by checking around here and there--used bookstores, somebody's older brother, etc. I had one great score around 1970 when an antiques show came to town with a big batch of 5 cent comics including a nearly complete run of the Legion issues of Adventure.

Batman was probably the easiest to locate, as everybody had bought issues back during the TV show craze, and I quickly assembled a fairly long run (although I did have to break down and buy one "filler" issue). Which resulted in my fascination with the character that continues to this day.

And On the Third Issue, He Arose Again...

I have talked a little bit about death and resurrection in the past.  Lightning Lad was one of the first major instances of it involving a hero in the DC universe, at least where the resurrection was not immediate.

But in the Silver Age, Marvel seemed to be the place where corpses got up and walked on a regular basis (especially villains), and so I thought I would try to catalog all of their examples.  Of course, an undertaking like this is going to require the assistance of my readers.  Although I have read virtually all of the Silver Age Marvel line, my memory's nowhere near as good as it used to be.

First up is Doctor Doom.  The Lord of Latveria apparently succumbed at the end of several of his early adventures.  For example:

Or:

And:

Let me point out here that there's actually a pretty good reason for the "death" ending; it saves the writers the necessity of explaining how the villain got out of jail.  And Doctor Doom was, in a way copying an earlier DC villain in meeting his apparent demise at the end of many of his early meetings:

And:

This last bit, with the villain falling into water, has become something of a cliche for comic writers.  It has the advantage of giving the appearance of death, combined with the uncertainty.  Plus, conveniently, it doesn't really have to be explained much in the subsequent resurrection.  See there was this pipe/cave nearby with a convenient air pocket....

Anyway, Dr Doom had more than his share of deaths in the early Marvel Age, so we'll skip over him.  The next major villain to "die" in the FF was the Puppet Master:

He returned in FF #14 and, although he apparently bit the bullet at the end of that issue, many more times as well.  One of the interesting things about that initial resurrection, though, was that Stan didn't bother to explain it.  Never mind that (as shown above), we'd seen him fall out of a skyscraper.  This would become the rule, rather than the exception.

I'm not sure if there are any other "deaths" in the Silver Age Fantastic Four, so let's move on to the Amazing Spiderman.  The only real death and resurrection I'm aware of there involves the Vulture:

The original Vulture apparently shuffles off the mortal coil shortly after that scene, although he returns in ASM #63 to battle both Spidey and Blackie Drago, his chosen successor.  I'm again not aware of any other deaths and resurrections in the Silver Age involving Spiderman, although there are some (Silvermane, for example) who died in the SA but didn't respawn until much later.

The only example of a major Marvel hero dying and not coming back for a couple of issues (a la Lightning Lad) involved Captain America.  Death here from CA #111:
Note the "falling into water" bit I mentioned earlier.  Cap's resurrection came in the first issue of his magazine that I ever bought:

I'm struggling now to think of resurrections involving other Marvel villains. About the only one that's coming to mind is the Rhino's passing from Hulk #104:

The Rhino would return along with the Leader to bedevil Bruce Banner's wedding in Hulk #124 as I covered awhile ago. Oh, the Leader, that's right, he died in Tales to Astonish #74:

And both the Leader and the Rhino appear to die at the end of Hulk #124, but we know better. The Black Widow had a couple of brushes with the Grim Reaper, as I have covered in the past. And I know the Unicorn appeared to die in Iron Man #4. Any more examples? I'm mostly interested in cases where the resurrection happened by the end of the Silver Age, simply because there are so many examples after that.

Updates: Some good suggestions in the comments section: The Mandarin's castle was hit by an ICBM in ToS #86:

But he returned with a reasonable explanation:

Multi-dimensional teleportation device. Don't leave home without it! The Mandarin also shuffled off the mortal coil in Avengers Annual #1:

And, as my anonymous commenter noted, he returned in the Hulk #107 with no particular explanation. MDTD, I suppose?

Titanium Man learned the fate of Silver medalists in the old Soviet Union:

But he returned ten issues later, this time apparently supported by the Red Chinese. The Red Skull drowned at the end of ToS #81, weighed down by a suit of golden armor:

He returned in ToS #89 with the explanation that the Cosmic Cube's power kept him alive. Hat tip to Nick Caputo on that one. The Red Skull biffed it again in ToS #91:

The explosion death was also popular, because it can be argued that we missed seeing something due to the flash. The Skull returned in Cap #101:

The Stilt Man shriveled up like Dr Doom up above in DD #8:

When the Leap-Frog asked him about his apparent death, Stilty was rather terse, replying, "You seem to have an uncanny knack for being wrong."

Another commenter pointed out that Magneto died in X-Men #53 and returned in X-Men #62; I can't find those issues at the moment to post panels.

Observations: One thing seems apparent; the villains who "die" on multiple occasions but return just as often tend to be Marvel's top antagonists; Dr Doom, the Mandarin, the Red Skull and the Leader are all on the short list of major baddies.

Update II: Diablo took a dirt nap thanks to his android, the Dragon Man, in FF #35:

He returned in Avengers #41, with the explanation that he owed his survival to alchemy.

Five Things to Understand about Silver Age Comics

I want to go into each of these points in more detail at some time, but I did want to mention what I consider to be the five most important things to keep in mind when reading Silver Age Comics (both the blog and the actual books):

1. These comics were designed to be largely throwaway entertainment for youngsters, an impulse purchase. Due to the Comics Code Authority, comic books had to be both entertaining to kids and unlikely to raise the hackles of any mother. The result was a product that while hugely entertaining to young readers would generally be (and was) seen as childish by a large majority of adults and teens.

2. Quality entertainment did make it through despite (or as a result of?) the "G" rated nature of the product. But still it must be judged on that level and for its time. Things that I look for today in the comics of the past are things like positive characterization of the hero, and inspiring stories. Remember, when I praise something that I'm not comparing it to how things would be done today; I'm comparing it to Saturday morning cartoons of the 1960s and the Hardy Boys, because that's what the Silver Age comics were competing against.

3. Many of the developments of the Silver Age were fan-based. This is something that I have not talked about sufficiently, but Mort Weisinger started the practice of publishing letters to the editor in some of his Superman family of magazines, which reinforced the continuity that Weisinger was already imposing on the Superman legend. Although letters columns had appeared in other comics before then (notably the American Comics Group line), this was a first at DC as far as I can determine. At the same time, fans like Dr Jerry Bails and Roy Thomas were petitioning Julius Schwartz for a renewal of the old Justice Society of America. I have a longish post coming up on Bails and Thomas.

4. The successful superhero revivals almost all had one thing in common; they were new versions of the old hero, with different names and occupations and origins (Flash, Green Lantern, Atom, Hawkman, Human Torch). Where the returns fizzled (mostly) were where they involved simple returns of the old characters. DC tried returning several of the Golden Age heroes as they were, including Dr Fate, Hourman, Black Canary and Starman, and all failed (although BC came back a few years later). Even at Marvel, the new Human Torch sizzled while the Sub-Mariner fizzled for years. Captain America? The exception that proves the rule; it was really when they stopped talking about him being around in WWII that he started making sense as a modern character.

5. Changing demographics at least partially caused by the ready availability of the birth control pill resulted in the dramatic changes that occurred in comic books in the early 1970s, as the publishers chased after the baby boomers.

Catman--Batman's Swipe of Blackhawk?

This one requires a bit of explanation. Last fall, I reviewed Blackhawk #148, and pointed out several areas of similarity between those stories and some earlier/later Batman stories. Given that Jack Schiff was editing both magazines, it seemed reasonable to assume that plots and characters had been swiped wholesale in some cases.

So it is with the Catman. Before we get into the history of the character, let's just post two covers that show the swipe:





In the original, Blackhawk #141 (October 1959), the Blackhawks encountered a boastful pilot/crook called the Catman, who announces he's going to commit a daring crime, and who then gives his location. The Blackhawks arrive just in time to see the Catman crash his plane, but when they land:



Catman conveniently explains that he has already used up four other lives prior to meeting the Blackhawks, so he has four remaining. Whether he is telling the truth or not, the countdown starts at four for the purposes of the story. He intentionally races through a deadly fire (three) and deliberately causes a landslide (2). But when Blackhawk proves that Catman also used up a life getting over the electrified fence, the crook gives up rather than relinquish his final life. At the end there's a bit of a hint that perhaps Blackhawk fooled CM:



Note as well that the credit for the pencils in the Blackhawk issue go to Dillin; want to guess who drew the covers for the first two Catman appearances in Detective? Yep. As far as I know, those are Dillin's only work on the character (outside of the Justice League), although he did not do the cover to Detective #325 shown above; that one's by Moldoff.

The introduction in the Batman mythology came with Detective #311. Catman (yes, they spelled it with the hyphen, and no, I will not) debuted in that issue and more important, he was one of the rare Batman characters of that time who was not created by Sheldon Moldoff:



Jim Mooney did the interior artwork for the first two Catman stories in Batman, while Moldoff did the last issue.

There is a key subplot in the story that appears shortly after the revelation that Catman is attracted to Batwoman. I'm reading Submariner and Sue Storm, but it's especially interesting because the story mentions him being inspired by the Catwoman, who has been gone from the Batman universe for years and would not reappear for another 3+ years (well after her first appearance on TV).



At the end of that story, the Catman (apparently) dies. It's an obvious plot development, and the next appearance, in Tec #318 actually gave us the return of the Catman and a new Catwoman:



In this story, the Catman returns. Batwoman chases after him, but is stymied when his kitty-car jumps over a ravine. She crashes and looks likely to fall from a ledge, when the Catman comes to the rescue:



Batman may be the world's greatest detective, but he clearly doesn't understand women. Batwoman confesses to having mixed feelings about Catman. Part of it no doubt was the truth of what he told her after saving her life:

"Batman will never marry you! You're a fool to waste your time on him!"

Later, a clumsy mistake by Batwoman results in the Catman getting away. This echoes some of the early Catwoman tales, where Batman would apparently allow her to get away. This leads to an argument between Batman and Batwoman, covered enthusiastically by the newspapers. Batwoman bails out one of the Catman's henchmen and asks to be taken to the Catman, so that she can become his Catwoman. But it was all a plot to locate the Catman's hideout, and a homing beacon that Batwoman carried resulted in Batman and Robin arriving. At the end of this story, Catman is again apparently killed.

His third (and as far as I know, final) appearance is in Detective #325, the cover of which is shown near the top of this post. The story is basically a swipe of the idea from Blackhawk #141, that the Catman has nine lives. Instead of getting his extra lives from an African witch-doctor, he gets it from the cloth that was woven into his cape.

But Batwoman learns this secret when she examines the Catwoman costume she had worn in Detective #318:



Somehow she senses that it's nine lives altogether for her and the Catman combined, so she uses up a couple of them while wearing the Catwoman outfit so that next time they face him, he'll be on his final life. And here's a real rarity in the Silver Age: Robin finishing off the villain:



I think I'm going to have to read more Blackhawk issues to see if I can find similar swipes. I seem to recall that the old Boy Commandos and Robin villain, Crazy Quilt, appeared in a Blackhawk story in the 1960s.

Update: See also this terrific post by Bill Jourdain, that we might call, "When Batman Swiped Robin".

Update II: Bill also did a podcast a few years back on the Golden Age Catman, a character from the Holyoke line of comics. I should also note that there was a one-shot Batman villain in the GA called the King of the Cats who turned out to be the Catwoman's brother.

First Kiss #2

I haven't talked much about Charlton Comics here. Aside from Steve Ditko's terrific work, it's safe to say that they are considered the ugly stepsister of Silver Age comics, with (mostly) mediocre art and stories. Their comics even seemed to be printed on cheaper paper than the other publishers. And yet they did publish a boatload of comics in the Silver Age; at least 2500 that I've been able to catalog, and I'm positive that I'm missing some.

Like most publishers in the Silver Age, Charlton eschewed the superhero comics except during Batmania. They published a LOT of romance comics, even more than
DC. Their active romance titles in the Silver Age included Career Girl Romances (37 issues), Cynthia Doyle, Nurse In Love, Dr Tom Brett Young Intern, First Kiss (40 issues), High School Confidential Diary and Confidential Diary (17), Hollywood Romances (10), I Love You (82), Just Married (74), Love Diary (69), My Secret Life (29), Nurse Betsy Crane (16), Romantic Secrets (44), Romantic Story (83), Secret Romance (10), Secrets of Love and Marriage (25), Secrets of Young Brides (40), Sweetheart Diary (34), Sweethearts (92), Teen Confessions (65), and Teen-Age Love (70 issues). When flipping through the comics racks back then, I often thought of Charlton as the equivalent of Harlequin in the comics.

The opening story in this issue is pretty good despite the dull-as-dishwater title, Love Him, Love What He Does. Alice is a bit ashamed of her prizefighter boyfriend George. She wants him to take up a more genteel profession, like her friends' husbands:

So she gives him an ultimatum: Either he gives up boxing or she dumps him. However, he's on the verge of a title bout and isn't about to abandon the sport he loves. Alice, who's been moping about, decides to attend the big fight, initially hoping that he will lose and come to his senses:

And win he does, making Alice realize that she's as proud of him as she would be of a lawyer or doctor:

The story could have been more dramatic if there had been a confrontation before the fight between the two lovers, with Alice initially admitting that she hoped George would lose, and then him recovering to win the bout when he realizes that she's rooting for him. Still, it's a solid effort. The subtext (accept your man for who he is, not for who you wish he were) is a frequent theme during romances of this era, although that would change as editors began to demand that leading men be wealthy and/or powerful. Of course, you could argue that a championship fighter was exactly that; back in the 1950s they were probably the most well-paid figures in sports.

The second story is not as satisfying; you can probably guess the ending from this panel alone:

The dreaded mustache tells us that he's not the right man for her. She goes out shopping, gets stuck in a ditch and meets an arrogant man who tells her to stop spinning her wheels. No real surprises here; the arrogant man is her true love.

The third story does present some interesting points. Doris Wiles had married a wealthy playboy, who died and left her and her infant son penniless. She works her way up from waitressing to running her own restaurant. A wealthy former friend of her husband, improbably named Carlos McLean, starts to woo her. But wait, he has the dreaded mustache! Is he a villain?

Nope, and he seals the deal when her son swallows something that puts him in peril:


I'm going to guess that the specialist went by the name of Dr Heimlich. ;)

There's an interesting PSA:

I don't remember DC publishing any overtly religious PSAs during the Silver Age, although they certainly published ones that promoted religious tolerance.

Solid Gold Heart closes out the book. Donna is a succesful model who wants to make the jump to acting. Her downstairs neighbor is Larry, a self-employed biochemist. Donna is promoting her career and making the gossip columns by going out with various wealthy playboys, but she wishes Larry were more successful. One days she promises to attend a sales pitch to an investor, but then her manager calls with a rich date who will certainly get her name in the paper. Torn, she attends the date even though it is at the same corner as Larry is waiting. But it all works out in the end, as:

It's an entertaining story, largely selling the same message about accepting your man for who he is as the opening tale. And as in the opener, the woman doesn't really have to suffer, as it is clear her man will become wealthy.

There's a "movie date" filler bit of advice here:

One oddity; the comic does not seem to contain many ads aimed at women; in fact the inside front cover contains a Joe Weider body-building ad.

Bring On the Giant Green Boxing Gloves, Part I

I've always envied the Comics Treadmill guy H for his posts on Prop Stars, the gigantic background props that appeared in hundreds of Batman stories from the 1930s-1960s. The idea of such a series of posts is absolutely brilliant, because composing them isn't terribly difficult if you have access to the source material, and yet they're quite entertaining to put together and read.

But he's pretty much got that market cornered, and I couldn't think of a comparable series of posts until this afternoon, when I surfed over to the Fortress Keeper's place and saw his post about the Golden Age Green Lantern (as drawn by Alex Toth). This part jumped out at me:

At the time, the pre-teen Fortress Keeper was struck by Alan Scott’s garish costume (He seemed more like a Rainbow Lantern, we thought. Remember, this was loooonnng before Geoff John’s Crayola take on the Green Lantern Corps) and apparent preference for deductive reasoning and two-fisted grit over flashy power-ring theatrics.

(No giant boxing gloves!)

This caused an mmediate inspiration to catalog the giant green things that Green Lantern created in the Silver Age. So without further ado:



Green Ring Thing #1 is a net that GL puts underneath a missile that he is unable to grab because it is colored yellow. It succeeds because the tip of the missile is red. Now here's the tricky part; is it "giant"? Obviously large nets are common in commercial fishing, although I'd guess that they don't have the gaps that this net is shown having. I'm going to say it qualifies as a giant object. Now, how does it rate as a GL giant object? I'm going to give it five star sapphires out of a possible five, as it solves the problem shown on the cover of Showcase #22, GL's very first appearance in the Silver Age.

Green Ring Thing #2 is a giant hawk that GL creates with his power ring:



Obviously this is a giant bird; it is intended to scare away a yellow pterodactyl that GL cannot defend himself against otherwise. Four star sapphires out of a possible five; interesting as the first animal GL creates but not otherwise historic.



Green Ring Thing #3 is a pair of springs. GL saves a yellow roller coaster car when he quickly realizes that its underside is painted black. Obviously this qualifies as giant and seems worthy of three star sapphires.



Green Ring Thing #4 is a set of several microphones. As you can see they are not giant and therefore do not qualify.



Green Ring Thing #5 is a jail cell. These appeared with amazing frequency in the Silver Age, but do not qualify as "giant"

Green Ring Thing #6 is a firemen's net.



Not giant.

Ditto for Green Ring Thing #7:



Green Ring Thing #8 gets us back on track:



A giant green test tube to capture the monster shown on the cover of Showcase #24? Five star sapphires out of five.

Running Tally:
Giant Green Net: 1
Giant Green Bird: 1
Giant Green Springs: 1
Giant Green Test Tube: 1

This takes us through the end of Green Lantern's Showcase appearances; I'll start in with his solo title next and try to pick up the guest appearances and JLA stories afterwards. One thing I do note is that three of the legitimate Giant Green Ring Things were created to handle something yellow (only the test tube broke this pattern).