The Swimmer

Of all the characters that DC reintroduced in the Silver Age, Aquaman has to be considered the most unique, for many reasons. First, he was not a "relaunch"; he was one of the few DC superheroes (along with Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and Green Arrow) to have been published continuously from the Golden Age on.

Flash, Green Lantern, Atom and Hawkman had all been regular characters in the Golden Age whose series were cancelled and thus could be reintroduced to a new generation of readers with revised costumes, secret identities and origins. With Aquaman, DC didn't have that luxury, especially since he'd been a part of the Justice League of America from its introduction in Brave & Bold #28 (Feb-Mar 1960). Thus when they decided to give him a tryout for his own title with Showcase #30 (Jan-Feb 1961) they did not try a real relaunch; they just expanded his adventures.

He'd arguably been relaunched in Adventure #260 (May 1959), which created a new origin:



His mother turned out to be from Atlantis, and she passed on to her son the ability to survive underwater indefinitely, to mentally command the creatures of the sea, and to swim at amazing speeds. In Adventure #269 (Feb 1960), he gains a companion in Aqualad, an outcast orphan from Atlantis.

But this revealed another oddity about Aquaman compared to the other Silver Age characters. Aquaman didn't have a private life. He didn't maintain his Arthur Curry identity. He didn't have a home. He didn't have a girlfriend (unlike all the other Silver Age DC characters except notably Batman).

And so things stood when DC gave Aquaman his tryout for the big time with Showcase #30-33. The first story was blessed with the artwork of Ramona Fradon, one of the few female artists of the Silver Age, who had drawn Aquaman for several years in the short stories. The second story marked the beginning of Nick Cardy's historic run on the series.

Those looking for gay subtexts will not be shorted, although to me this almost seems to be implying a maternal role for Aquaman:



The early stories were all edited by Jack Schiff and suffer from his endless willingness to publish stories involving monsters at this time. No kidding, here are the villains in the first several stories:

Showcase #30:


Showcase #31:


Showcase #32:


Showcase #33:


The stories themselves are pretty mundane as you can imagine from those covers and they were book-length tales, another rarity for DC at the time. It's a struggle to find any continuing characterization efforts. Check out the "Aquacave" in this panel:


Those are pretty spartan digs.

Lois Lane's Romances

As I have written before, DC's comics were in some ways ahead of Marvel's when it came to girlfriends. DC had a lot of savvy, career-oriented women as love interests. But that's only half the story; DC's gals still tended to be comedic foils for the heroes. None more so than Lois Lane, who supposedly loved Superman passionately, but was willing to dump him at the drop of a hat.



Maybe it was just the blue suit?



Any superhero will do apparently.

Or all of them:



Or even a super-villain:



Apparently Lois doesn't have a long memory:



Or has she forgotten that she used almost those exact words to express her love for Astounding Man?



She also had some exotic boyfriends:





If Supes isn't available, maybe she could steal his dad?



Update: Mark Engblom posted yesterday on Superman's many girlfriends. In Action #370, we learn that Earth had not been Kal-El's second planet; that his rocket initially landed on another world, where he did not have super powers, and where he lived, married a woman named Lasil, and had a son named Vol. Eventually, of course, he was transformed back into a toddler and sent to Earth, where only a couple of hours had passed (since time in this alternative world passed much quicker than in ours).

Batman's Weird Transformations

Mark Engblom has a terrific post up on transformations in general, which inspired me to create this one.

As the character of Batman became more mature in the public image, the writers often had to go to great lengths to come up with something entertaining. Inevitably they hit on the idea of turning Batman into something quite different.

The obvious first step was to reduce Batman and Robin in size. This happened not once, but twice:



And:



Tiny Batman, what else can we do? In Detective #248, they hit on the obvious:



That's actually a pretty terrific little story and the third to last Detective Batman by Sprang, but it symbolized a flood of Batman transformation stories that plagued the Silver Age.

Consider these. Batman Old:


Batman Young:



And of course the Diapered Detective:



This particular story ranks as the worst Batman story of the Silver Age.

Batman the alien:



Flatman and Ribbon:



Good grief, more aliens:



Bat Kong:



Even in World's Finest, Batman could not maintain his normal body for long:

Now This Is a Silly Villain

It's off-topic here, because the comic is from 1948, but I couldn't resist writing about this one. There have been plenty of bizarre villains in the history of comic books, but you're going to have to work hard to beat this guy:



Meet Pinball. As has been traditional in comics for ages, his head resembles his namesake--see the Vulture, the Clock and the Shark for some other examples. His schtick consists of sending wealthy men pinball machines with some theme that will amuse them--cars for an auto racing magnate, jewels for a jeweler, etc. Of course, the machines are gimmicked to somehow incapacitate the recipient so Pinball and his minions can rob him at their leisure.

The Star Spangled Kid encounters him when his dad (a wealthy banker) receives a machine. As is also traditional in these stories, when the villain is captured the hero must close the tale with a pun on the theme:

Random Cover of the Day: Mystery In Space #31

The GCD is down right now, so I can't check the artist, but it's a beautiful cover with terrific inking and dynamic perspective. This is a classic DC "puzzle" cover, where the goal was to get the kid to pick up the comic and find out how exactly the earth managed to get sliced in half like an orange.

Update: As pointed out by my old buddy Snard in the comments, the cover is by Gil Kane, one of the more prolific artists of the Silver Age.

Random Cover of the Day: Phantom Stranger #6

Comments: Classic headless horseman by Neal Adams. Note the way the tree draws our attention up to the title after we first focus on the couple in the car and the man on the horse. Note the mysterious castle across the bridge; it's not hard to guess that the headless horseman will turn out to be their host.

Random Cover of the Day: House of Mystery #79

Comments: It's a "Great Scott!" cover; DC used that as its all-purpose expression of amazement. What can we deduce from this cover about the story inside? Note the title, "The Creature from Inner Space". Does this indicate that the creature came from inside the earth? Why is the protagonist driving a boat? Did he come across the creature inside a cave on an island?

If it's burning the water, it must be losing energy, right? What powers the creature?

Decent dramatic action by Jack Kirby according to the GCD, although the cover story was by Ruben Moreira.

Lessons in Bad Characterization: Brave & Bold #64

The Brave & Bold team-up stories of the 1960s pose a problem for Batman fans. They're bad, but that's not really the crux; there were many bad stories during the Batman Silver Age. The problem is that they were created by writers who weren't familiar with the characters enough, and edited by George Kashdan, who apparently didn't worry too much about little things like continuity or characterization.

The result can be ignored for some of the heroes involved; not many Supergirl or Wonder Woman fans obsess over the ridiculously girlish way they acted in B&B #63. But Batman has a tougher time, because there are so many Batman teamups from 1966 on that it constitutes a significant body of work.

There are some stories that must be either ignored or palmed off as involving Batman from Earth II. How else can you explain Bruce Wayne appearing as an adult in WWII London? Answer: You can't. It was ludicrous in the 1960s; now of course it would make him an 80-year-old codger.

Let's look at Brave & Bold #64 for an example of the horrific characterization that typified these stories.

In the story Batman improbably rescues a gal about to be shot by a bowman using his rope:



She faints and they recognize each other:



"But why was that bow buzzard trying to ventilate your beautiful torso?" Timeless dialogue!

Okay, so we get the inevitable flashback. Seems Marcia was a beautiful but spoiled rich bitch, and Batman had both rescued and tamed her:



Batman assumes that's the end of it, but she has different ideas:



Why, yes, I'd be happy to have a crack shot on my team, never mind that my parents were gunned down by a crook. And before you know it, when they're not busting up crime gangs, they're steaming up the windows of the Batmobile. But then she dumps him, which brings us up to the point where they rediscover each other.

Now, that's pretty horrific characterization for Batman. Dumped by a society chick? We learn that she went on to become engaged to another man, named Nicky. Nicky was determined not to live off her inheritance, so he... became a thief. Say what? He's too noble by half!

Well, you can see the problem already, right? Here's Batman mooning over a gal who dumped him for a lowlife. But it gets even worse. She wants him to return a jewel that Nicky stole before he died (she's available again). Batman returns the emerald, but is surprised that the newspapers haven't remarked on its return. Then it turns out that the commissioner has received a photograph of Batman returning the gem, but it looks like he's taking it. He agrees to go to jail pending trial (huh?) but that doesn't prevent another teary-eyed scene:



With Batman in jail, we learn (sort of) the real plot. Marcia is actually a crook working for a syndicate known as Cyclops. She has managed to free Eclipso from the body he shares with Dr Bruce Gordon (hmmmm, Bruce Gordon?) so that he can join her on a criminal rampage throughout Gotham City. But it turns out that Marcia has been forced to work for Cyclops because they threatened to kill her dad. So it's okay that she dumped our hero, because she did it for family. Sheesh!

The Crack of Doom

What do you see when the Fantastic Four's worst enemy bends over?


Dr Doom was far from an original character. The name, Dr Doom, had commonly been used in comic books for villains. The concept of a man hiding his tragically disfigured face behind a mask goes back at least to the Phantom of the Opera.

But in other ways, Dr Doom was truly unique, one of the great villains of the Marvel Silver Age. He first appeared in Fantastic Four #5, and right from the start he showed his difference from most other villains. For starters, Doom was honorable, after a fashion, as Reed notes here:



In that same story, we get the first telling of Doom's oft-repeated and frequently embellished origin:



Lee and Kirby often ended stories with Dr Doom apparently dead; this was something of a nod to the Golden Age Batman tales with the Joker always dying at the end and yet returning again.







In Fantastic Four Annual #2, (Summer 1964), we learn the full history of Von Doom. His parents had been gypsies. His mother (a witch) died when he was young, and his father (a healer) was persecuted and blamed for the death of a princess he failed to save. We get a slightly revised version of the accident, with Reed the (almost) savior:



We also learn that Doom is the ruler of a distant European land called Latveria in that story; this will become a longtime plotpoint in the Marvel Universe.

More Doom to Come!

The Silver Age Superman

The Silver Age Superman was dramatically different from the Golden Age Superman. Aside from the very early stories, the Golden Age Superman tales tended to be more of a whimsical series. Perhaps sensing that Superman was too powerful to face ordinary crooks, the Golden Age Superman generally found himself up against conmen like J. Wilber Wolfingham, or other enemies who used guile and cunning like the Prankster or Luthor.

The other option was to weaken Superman, and this DC, especially under Weissinger's editorship, began pursuing with a vengeance. Although Green Kryptonite had been introduced in the comics as early as 1949, and in the Superman radio series years earlier than that, it had only featured in occasional stories prior to the Silver Age.

In Adventure Comics #255, Red Kryptonite made its first appearance in a Superboy story. Red K had an unpredictable effect on Kryptonians, and what's more, each piece affected them differently, conveniently for plot purposes a period of exactly 24 hours. It would be quite a task to list all the changes that Red K worked on Superman over the years, but a short listing includes making him only able to speak and write Kryptonese, turning him into a dragon, causes him to lose his powers temporarily, and even split him into two people--one Superboy, one Clark Kent.



DC expanded the Kryptonite line to three varieties in Superman #157. Quex-Ul, a Phantom Zone Prisoner, is released and vows to get revenge on Superman for his imprisonment. He has observed Gold K taking away the powers of a Krytonian beast permanently, and knows it will do the same to Superman.

Of course, the problem with Gold K is that being permanent, DC could never use it on Superman, only threaten its use.

In addition to Kryptonite, we learned that Superman had another vulnerability: Magic. This required the return of a Golden Age villain, Mr Mxyzptlk (although in the GA he was known as Mxyztplk), who proceeded to appear with alarming regularity. Several other characters used magic to cause trouble for Superman as well:



We also learned that Superman lost his powers under the influence of a sun that was not yellow, like Earth's:


The funny thing is that whenever the plot called for Superman to pick up the nearest mountain, they'd have him do it without blinking an eye, which just kept up the pressure to weaken him.

I've Got Something to Tell You, Honey...

In Flash #165 (Nov 1966), Barry Allen and Iris West finally get married. This was not DC's first wedding; Aquaman and Mera had finally tied the knot in Aquaman #18 (Nov-Dec 1964), Hawkman and Hawkgirl had been married when they arrived on Earth, and Ralph and Sue Dibney were wed immediately before the Elongated Man story in Detective #327 (May 1964). Reed Richards and Sue Storm over at Marvel had also married in Fantastic Four Annual #3 (1965).

But this wedding was different because it was the first time a superhero had gotten married without his wife knowing his double identity. This created some additional tension for the Scarlet Speedster:



So for the next year we would periodically see Barry musing his dilemma.

Ironically, this point had supposedly been settled before in Flash #156. An alien had arrived on Earth, letting everybody know that Barry Allen was the Flash. But at the end Barry has a chance to go backwards in time and change that memory. But he asks Iris for permission:



Despite that pledge, he finally decides to do the big reveal on their first anniversary. Of course there are only two real ways to go with this kind of moment from a plotting perspective, and DC chose the more amusing one:



The story (as it happens) was also Carmine Infantino's swan song on the Flash, so this is an especially poignant moment.