UNIFIED THEORY
Comics and other magical discoveries...
Wednesday, June 28, 2023
Touring the Cleveland sky with XANNY STARS
Friday, April 9, 2021
UNIFTHEORY OF : JOKER 3
JOKER 3
(1975)
One of
my all-time favorite DC single issues. Picked it up as a back issue as a kid.
Joker vs. Creeper!
The
late, great Denny O’Neil wrote this one for the unique art team of Ernie Chua
and JL Garcia Lopez. Chua did that swell cover as well. Story has Joker and
Creeper having a massive fight in a junkyard (!) that ends with Creeper with amnesia
and captured by Joker. Joker decides to kidnap cartoonist Sandy Saturn, creator
of hit comic strip Cashews. (Yes, it’s Charles Schulz and Peanuts…)
Joker
talks the amnesiac Creeper into helping him. He does and there’s this bizarre
mini-plot of the cartoonist hating the strip so much that when Joker tells him
to draw Joker kicking his characters, he gladly does. Was this some kind of
Schulz/Peanuts thing in the 70s? No idea…
Wraps up
with Creeper changing back into Jack Ryder and regaining his memory…Another big
fight ensues, with Creeper knocking out Joker by punching a Batman punching bag
into him…Great stuff…
Creeper
always has been a favorite of mine and Joker of course is a central figure of
the DC Universe…Great figure work and fight scenes here by Chua and Garcia
Lopez…This one’s a lost gem…
Friday, April 2, 2021
UNIFTHEORY OF : JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA 200
JUSTICE
LEAGUE OF AMERICA 200 (1982)
DC has
published a lot of comics since 1935, but this might be one of its best ever.
The 200th anniversary of their flagship super-team combined major
characters with major creators in a great story that highlighted the best of
the teamwork concept and of the JLA’s history.
The
aliens from the first-ever JLA adventure return and control the original
members, pitting them against members who joined later over the years. So you
get tons of superhero battles (always a fan favorite) and then they combine and
split into mini-teams (another fan-pleasing move) to save the day.
The art
teams on the battle chapters are amazing and often were done by artists
associated with those characters. GL vs. Atom by Gil Kane. Flash vs. Elongated
Man by Carmine Infantino. Aquaman vs. Red Torando (with help from Phantom
Stranger) by Jim Aparo. Others had some connection. Firestorm vs. Martian
Manhunter by Pat Broderick. Superman vs. Hawkman by Joe Kubert. And some they
just said what the hell and assigned great artists – Wonder Woman vs. Zatanna
by Dick Giordano and in likely the best of the chapters, Batman vs. Green Arrow
and Black Canary by the always amazing Brian Bolland.
If that
wasn’t enough, the intro, connecting pieces and conclusion are by George Perez
and Brett Breeding. And this 72-page epic is contained in a fantastic
wraparound cover by Perez. For hardcore DC fans, this comic is the equivalent
of an all-you-can-eat buffet in Vegas right after winning big on the slots and
at Blackjack.
Wednesday, October 14, 2020
UTHEORY OF : Whiz Comics 2
Every little kid running around yelling “Shazam!” in the 70s
and looking for a lighting bolt to come down and make him a superhero has this
comic to thank. Whiz Comics 2 from late 1939, cover-date Feb. 1940.
It’s here that Captain Marvel made his first appearance.
That’s the name of the superhero. The TV show and the DC comics of that era had
to use the name Shazam because by that time Marvel owned the name “Captain
Marvel,” even though Fawcett was the original publisher.
Fawcett was a magazine publisher that like several others
got into comics in the 1930s. Whiz was the company’s first title, beginning a
run that would last til the early 1950s and see Fawcett become a top comics
publisher.
Bill Parker heroically wrote all seven features in the first
issue of Whiz, with CC Beck and Greg Parker each drawing three and Bob Kingett
drawing one. This limited number of creators gives the comic a consistent feel different
from many other debut issues. The layout style also makes more use of large
panels which plays to the strengths of the stories.
Capt. Marvel kicks things off with the tale of newsboy Billy
Batson gaining superpowers from an ancient wizard in an abandoned subway. Beck’s
art here is straight adventure, not the cartoonish style he would use with the
character for many years. In his first few stories, Capt. Marvel was drawn to
resemble actor Fred Murray, who was a fairly serious actor before playing a
sitcom dad on My Three Sons later in his career.
In the story, cap breaks up a radio sabotage ring run by his
eventual nemesis, Dr. Sivana, a classic mad scientist. Beck creates great
images of Cap smashing a machine, leaping, jumping through a window and pulling
up an elevator by its cable. He also drew the great cover of Cap tossing a car,
a kind of echo of Superman lifting a car on the cover of Action 1 from the year
before.
Cap’s debut adventure is followed by Beck on Ibis the
Invincible, a resurrected Egyptian prince turned magician by his all-powerful Ibistick,
a kind of magic wand. Ibis travels from America to Egypt to Europe looking for
his lost love, Taia, performing multiple miracles along the way. It’s a very
busy eight pages.
Golden Arrow is up next, an orphan raised by a prospector in
the West, developing outdoor skills including archery along the way. Solid
adventure art by Greg Duncan. No idea how Duncan hasn’t been written about
more. He was an early Fawcett artist who like many was drafted in the military
and was killed in action in 1944. I’ve read quite a bit about early DC artist
Bert Christman being killed in action as a war pilot but had never heard of
Duncan.
Beck is back with Spy Smasher in the next story. Wealthy sportsman
Alan Armstrong becomes a crimefighter. Lots of nice silhouette art by Beck and
fluid depictions of his gyrosub vehicle. Spy Smasher confronts the Mask, a
villain who had stolen war plans.
Duncan returns to draw Scoop Smith, a reporter who
investigates a villain named Dr. Death. Scoop gets the doctor to use a machine
to resurrect two men he had killed as an experiment. Hard to top that in a
debut story.
Swashbuckling sailor Lance O’Casey is next, drawn by Bob
Kingett. White cap, white pants, blue shirt with black stripes, and a pet monkey
named Mr. Hogan. Red-headed Lance was a fashion plate. Kingett’s looser, cartoonish
style fits the material. Lance battles a bad guy named Barracuda Brent, who
gets killed by a tiger.
Whiz 2 wraps up with Duncan drawing the exploits of private
detective Dan Dare. Dan breaks up a drug smuggling ring featuring bad guys
named Seminole Sam and Portugese Pete.
Capt. Marvel became a massive star for Fawcett, at one point
outselling even Superman. But the similarities between the characters – capes,
superpowers, chest symbols – was too much for DC, which battled Fawcett in lawsuits
until Fawcett had enough in 1953.
Ibis and Golden Arrow would have long runs in Whiz, with
Ibis in all 155 issues and GA in every issue but that last one. They couldn’t
have done one more GA story? Scoop would be gone after issue 6, with Dan Dare departing
after issue 22. Spy Smasher would have a peak in popularity including his own
solo title and a well-done movie serial but would be off the scene shortly
after the end of the war. Lance would leave and then come back again.
The open layouts – rarely more than six panels per page –
and well-developed sense of action really help these stories and likely had
kids coming back the next month looking for more.
DC would get the rights to Capt. Marvel in 1972, bringing
the character back in a much-ballyhooed series. That title had its ups and
downs, due in part to Beck’s style not fitting in with the more gritty realism
of that era.
The Shazam title was kind of skidding until the character
appeared in a hit live-action Saturday morning cartoon from 1974-76. These 28
episodes introduced the character to a whole new audience and rekindled the
magic of the possibility of a magic word and a lightning bolt creating a
wonderful transformation.
Sunday, October 4, 2020
UTHEORY OF : All-Star Comics 3
This one’s the granddaddy of all superhero team books.
All-Star Comics 3 from late 1940. The first appearance of the Justice Society
of America.
I can only imagine the impact that seeing eight superheroes
on one cover had on kids scanning the newsstands of that era. Plus the idea
that the heroes were all working together. That’s a lot for a feverish young
mind to take in.
DC – or National as it was called then – clearly was riding
a superhero wave when they decided to put their characters in a comic along
with those of sister company All-American, a separate firm with some shared
ownership and shared distribution. DC launched Superman in Action Comics in
early 1938 then followed with Batman in Detective and various heroes in the
pages of Adventure and More Fun. AA debuted the Flash and Hawkman in Flash
Comics in late 1939 and found a home for Green Lantern in All-American.
The first two issues of All-Star had been an anthology
featuring several of the characters who would form the JSA. Then writer Gardner
Fox apparently decided to stop messing around and bring the whole gang
together. With the exception of Sandman, all of the JSAers had made their
debuts in the previous 12 months.
This also was the last Famous First Edition that DC would
publish in the 70s, and the series went out with a bang. These oversized
(11x14) comics that DC and Marvel put out in that era are some of my most
treasured childhood memories and remain some of my favorite comics to this day.
Seeing the art blown up to this size remains thrilling. Yes, I enjoy simple
pleasures.
The iconic cover of All-Star 3 was drawn by Everett Hibbard,
a Golden age artist who drew the Flash for several years. Hibbard worked to
draw each character in the style in which they appeared. It was either that or
an early version of a jam cover. The same image with different text makes up
page one of the comic.
Interesting also that the JSA is seated at a round table,
like the Knights of King Arthur, history’s first supergroup, unless you want to
go way back and count the Twelve Apostles.
The framing device for this issue was a meeting of the JSA
where the members shared stories of their adventures. This very first episode
starts with Johnny Thunder – a character who controlled a magic genie named
Thunderbolt – being angry that he wasn’t invited, then accidentally using his
powers to be there anyway, encountering the JSAers in the process. After three
pages of humor, the Flash gets things started.
For the most part, each character’s story is drawn by the
artist who was drawing the character’s solo adventures. This practice continued
until the series went to stories where the entire team was working together.
The Flash’s story is drawn by Hibbard, who already had drawn
the character in several stories. His art is better here than in the framing
sequence. Hibbard’s style was very cartoonish and basic, but effective. Flash
battles pirates who are stealing sunken treasure.
Hawkman is next, encountering a lost civilization in a story
drawn by Sheldon Moldoff. Here, he’s doing a good job of emulating Flash Gordon
comic strip artist Alex Raymond, who was a huge influence on many Golden Age
artists. It’s more fitting here, since Hawkman almost certainly was modeled
after birdmen characters that earlier had appeared in Flash Gordon. In the
story, Hawkman rescues Shiera Sanders in the days before she became Hawkgirl.
Very realistic and well-done adventure art.
The next two stories both are drawn by Bernard Baily. The
Spectre battles monstrous villain Oom the Mighty and Hourman runs into a gang
of crooks who are impersonating him. Baily draws some great cosmic sequences of
the near-omnipotent Spectre, as well as some entertaining scenes of Hourman
slugging it out with several versions of himself.
Up next is a page drawn by Sheldon Mayer in which the Red
Tornado – a chubby housewife masquerading as a less-than-serious superhero –
arrives at the meeting and soon departs. RT was a character in Scribbly,
Mayer’s entertaining feature about a young cartoonist.
Then there’s a glorious two-page spread advertising all of
the comics that the JSAers were appearing in. Even in 1940, comics makers were
good at self-promotion.
Sandman follows up in a story cartoonishly drawn by Chad
Grothkopf, who apparently was filling in for regular Sandman artist Creig
Flessel. Sandman battles a scientist who has created an enlarging ray.
Dr. Fate next battles another sorcerer in a story drawn by
Howard Sherman, whose creepy and bizarre art – along with equally weird
lettering and panel borders – made Golden Age Dr. Fate stories glorious to
behold.
After a 2-page Johnny Thunder text story – which I think
comics needed for some kind of mailing rate – the Atom runs into crooks stealing
a gold shipment in a story drawn by Ben Flinton. Very cartoonish, but like most
GA Atom stories, redeemed by the uniqueness of the character’s costume – blue cape
and hood with only eyeholes, yellow shirt open to the waist and brown leather
belt, briefs and gauntlets capped off with red boots. The little guy packed a
lot of color into a small package.
The Atom was the only JSAer who hadn’t made a cover
appearance prior to All-Star 3, but kids must have been intrigued by the
costume if nothing else.
The final story in All-Star 3 has Green Lantern fighting
gangsters in a story involving a Walter Winchell-type newspaper columnist. This
one’s drawn by longtime GL artist and co-creator Mart Nodell…and…well…Nodell is
well-remembered and was one of the last living Golden Age artists, but I think
a lot of the time he was getting by on the energy of his drawing and the
novelty of a guy with a magic ring that could do almost anything. Carl Burgos
did the same thing at Marvel with the Human Torch. A man made of fire! The low
quality of the art is made up for by the sweep of the action.
All-Star 3 ends with the Flash returning from a quick trip
to Washington, where the head of the FBI asks to meet with the JSA in the next
issue of All-Star, which they of course agree to do.
The cast of the JSA would soon begin working together.
Membership would fluctuate for the first 25 issues or so. Hourman was gone
after issue 7. Wonder Woman joined in issue 8 – her historic first-ever
appearance.
All-Star was a hit, lasting 57 issues before wrapping up in
1951. Surprisingly, very few other comics makers tried to imitate the JSA. Timely
(Marvel) put characters together as the All-Winners Squad for two issues. Fawcett
and Prize each had a story that featured several of their characters. There
were sporadic team-ups here and there – and characters often wld appear
together on a cover without ever meeting - but the only JSA level attempt came
from DC itself. The company used second-tier characters for the Seven Soldiers of
Victory, who appeared in 14 issues of Leading Comics in 1941-45.
All-Star 3 got the age of the team book off to a roaring
start, even if it took a while for comics makers to see what was right in front
of them : When it comes to superheroes, more is better.
Wednesday, August 5, 2020
UTHEORY OF : Vigilante : City Lights, Prairie Justice
Here's another take on a Golden Age hero. Vigilante : City Lights, Prairie Justice. Four-issue miniseries from 1995-96, collected into a TPB in 2009. A couple years after his amazing series the Golden Age, James Robinson took a swing at the singing cowboy hero.
Story set in mid-40s has Vig battling Bugsy Siegel and other gangsters in Vegas, as well as taking on his old foe the Dummy. Art by Tony Salmons - with a few fill-in pages from Bret Blevins - is powerful and impressionistic. Not standard comic stuff. A little Frank Miller, a little Kyle Baker. Salmons' comic credits are scattered. I really liked his Dakota North series for Marvel in the mid-80s. There's some of that same feel here.
Only quibble is that the TPB cover by Mark Chiarello isn't his best for the series. It's OK, but his covers for the first and fourth issues are fantastic. Either one would have made a better cover for the TPB.
Worth picking up for the 50s period details and for a more in-depth take on a classic DC character...
Friday, February 14, 2020
UTHEORY OF : Our Fighting Forces # 158
Here's one from Jack Kirby's later days at DC. Our Fighting Forces 158, cover-date August 1975. By this point, Kirby's Fourth World titles had all been canceled, as well as his Demon comic. He was still doing Kamandi and launching Omac and Sandman when he dove into a 12-issue run on the Losers in this title. Great stuff in a Boy Commandos/Sgt. Fury vein, written and drawn by Kirby and inked by Mike Royer. Cover also by Kirby & Royer.
And even in 1975, only Kirby could get away with having an overweight female villain named Panama Fattie. Wow.
Kirby's DC days would last until early 1976. He'd return to Marvel shortly after...
Friday, February 7, 2020
UTHEORY OF : Ghosts # 49
Cover by Ernie Chan isn't one of his best but depicts the main story, a well-done tale by Carl Wessler with art by veteran Lee Elias. Can't go wrong with "I heard something in the basement" as the premise of most any horror story. Wessler wrote the other two stories here as well - a reunited love tale that featured the only mainstream pro work of artist Pit Capili and a haunted treasure number with solid art by Fred Carrillo.
Wessler by this point could knock out these stories while standing on his head and maybe sometimes did. The quality varies on how much detail he put in and how much effort the usual crowd of DC's horror artist of the era put into them.
They must have been doing something right. Ghosts survived the DC Implosion and soldiered on until 1982, running for an impressive 112 issues...
Thursday, January 30, 2020
UTHEORY OF : Justice League of America # 104
Ah, the Justice League of the 1970s. Source of so much lasting fandom but also its fair share of goofiness and contradictions. Case in point : JLA 104, cover-date February 1973. Great Nick Cardy cover, although it makes the Shaggy Man appear to be 50 feet tall.
Which brings us to the Shaggy Man, an impossibly powerful creature made of "living plastic" that tangled with the league only 3x in 15 years. Was he supposed to be Bigfoot? No idea. He debuted in 1966, a year before that famous film was recorded. So if the film was a fake, was the creature based on a Shaggy Man comic from the previous year?
And this issue came out a year before CBS ran a bigfoot/Loch Ness Monster special and three years before the classic bigfoot story on the Six Million Dollar Man TV show.
Anyway, in this issue Green Lantern foe Hector Hammond in psychic form releases Shaggy Man and teleports him to the JLA satellite where the league is gathered because they're...cleaning the satellite. Writer Len Wein must have been running out of ways to get the whole gang together.
Excellent art in many fight scenes by Dick Dillin and Dick Giordano. Shaggy Man defeats most of the league and is fighting Superman to a standstill until GL appears to save the days and prevent the satellite from crashing.
Black Canary was a relatively new member here and Elongated Man and Red Tornado wld join in the next 2 issues to complete the league's classic 70s lineup. Shaggy Man wldnt reappear til '81. A super-strong character who was almost indestructible and even when destroyed cld re-grow a new body must have presented too much of a writing challenge. And as an unthinking brute, there was no scheming or dialogue. It was all "Find JLA, punch JLA."
As a gathering place for DC's best and brightest, JLA had some high points in the 70s - as long as you didn't think about it too much...
Tuesday, January 21, 2020
UTHEORY OF : Marvel Treasury Edition # 15 (Conan)
More Bronze Age greatness...Marvel Treasury Edition 15 from 1977...reprints a classic Conan/Red Sonja tale from 1973 in the barbarian's own title drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith, as well as a John Buscema/Alfredo Alcala epic from a 1974 issue of Savage Sword...middle story from a 1974 ish of Savage Tales - pencilled by Gil Kane with the odd trio of Neal Adams, Pablo Marcos and Vince Colletta on inks - falls a little flat by comparison, but the other two are fabulous...all stories by Roy Thomas...
Monday, January 13, 2020
UTHEORY OF : Superman The War Years 1938-1945
Received this as a gift last year. Superman : The War Years 1938-1945. Published in 2015 by Chartwell Books. Kinda surprising outside companies still are doing their own DC reprint books. Contains 20 stories written by Jerry Siegel and drawn by Joe Shuster and other artists. Historical notes by longtime comics writer/historian Roy Thomas...
Shows the evolution of how the war was written about, first using stand-ins for Hitler, etc. and then after 1941 writing abt the war directly. Also explains how Clark Kent tried to enlist but failed the eyesight test when he accidentally used his x-ray vision to read the eye chart in the next room. Classic!
My favorite here has to be "The Conquest of a City" from Superman 18, cover-date Oct. 1942. Story by Jerry Siegel, art by John Sikela. Clark becomes convinced the people of Metropolis aren't serious enough about the war so he writes about it in the Daily Planet. A businessman approaches and suggests staging a fake invasion to prepare the city. Of course, the businessman is a spy who plans a real invasion that Superman has to stop. It's a bizarre story made even more bizarre by the fact that citizens are aware it's supposed to be a fake invasion and are kind of joking about it.
These stories in hindsight seem really innocent, but clearly show how strong a symbol of good Superman had become.
Thursday, December 5, 2019
UTHEORY OF : Green Lantern # 100
Tracked this one down after seeing it for many years. Green Lantern 100, cover-date Jan. 1978. Great cover by Mike Grell. Four superheroes standing on a rock with an anniversary logo in front of a cosmic swirl! Take my 60 cents! Always thought it was going to be one big story with all four heroes on the cover, but turns out to be two separate stories.
First is Green Lantern meeting the new Air Wave by Denny O'Neil with art by Alex Saviuk and Vince Colletta. Well-done superheroics. Colletta's inks don't overpower Saviuk's well-done pencil work. The original Air Wave ran in Detective from 1942-48. That character's secret identity was Larry Jordan, so O'Neil spins it to make the new AW his son - conveniently named Hal, just like GL Hal Jordan. A goofy Bronze Age twist. Also great that new villain Master-Tek looks like a blonde Tom Selleck. Ah, the 70s...
Second story isn't quite as good as the first, but OK. Green Arrow and Black Canary battle corporate corruption - surprise! - aided by an injured Roy Harper, who never dons his Speedy togs. We do however get to see Roy playing drums for a rock band called Great Frog. The 70s! This also is the issue where Oliver Queen decides to run for mayor of Star City.
Air Wave would go on to make several appearances as a backup in Action Comics. I always thought DC could have done more with the character and his electronic/radio powers. The GL/GA format would last for about 20 more issues. All in all, this is a solid comic with a lot to remind readers of what they liked about Bronze Age DC...
Friday, November 22, 2019
UTHEORY OF : JSA Savage Times TPB
Another great JSA TPB I found at Ollie's...JSA : Savage Times TPB from 2004...Collects JSA issues 39-45 from 2002-03...Great to find so many of these but the fact that they're at Ollie's means that DC printed way too many of em...More great superheroics involving many elements of DC's storied past from writers Geoff Johns and David Goyer and artists Leonard Kirk and Keith Champagne...Starts off with an eye-poppingly cheesecake Power Girl story drawn by Patrick Gleason and Christian Alamy...Another TPB that shows why JSA was one of DC's best titles for several years...
(And for a DC fan it's hard to resist any book with a cover that shows Captain Marvel fighting Metamorpho...like some lost issue of Brave & Bold or Super-Team Family...Shazam!)