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.

 

 

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.