Look Before You Leap Day

Người đăng: vanmai yeu em on Thứ Sáu, 29 tháng 2, 2008

Here's a humorous Peg short from Superman #136 on a leap year tradition:



This sequence from Lois Lane #19 might be a little surprising:



In the story, Lois has been hypnotized into forgetting about her affections for Superman and decides that maybe her co-worker deserves a shot, alarming the heck out of Clark.

Update: In Green Lantern #3 (Nov-Dec 1960) Green Lantern experienced the Leap Year Menace:

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Number 268



The Glittering Nightmare


John Forte was a solid artist from the golden and silver age of comics. His work was known to me mainly in the late 1950s in the ACG mystery comics, Adventures Into The Unknown and Forbidden Worlds. A few years before his death in 1965 he went to work for DC Comics, and in a brilliant assignment by editor Mort Weisinger was picked to do the "Tales Of The Bizarro World" series in Adventure Comics.

"Bizarro World" was my favorite feature, but its oddball humor was ahead of its time. I was upset when it was canceled for "The Legion of Super Heroes." Oh well. DC Comics reprinted all of the Adventure Comics "Bizarro World" stories in 2000 in book form, so I could enjoy them all over again.


"The Glittering Nightmare," written by ACG editor Richard E. Hughes under one of his pen-names and drawn by Forte, is from Forbidden Worlds #76, 1959. It owes something to Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. Hughes wasn't above borrowing ideas, and like most comic book writers, turning them into Bizarro versions of the originals.

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Mr. Door Tree at the Golden Age Comic Book Stories blog shows us some excellent Frank R. Paul original art from old covers. Go here and scroll down. There's lots of good artwork to look at otherwise, too. Enjoy this blog. This stuff is really great.

Anyway, the story is that the paintings were saved from the trash when publisher Hugo Gernsbach was cleaning out his office. There was a time when Gernsbach appreciated Paul's artwork, selling it in the form of full-size prints. Here's an ad from a late 1920s Air Wonder Stories:


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Double Trouble

Người đăng: vanmai yeu em on Thứ Năm, 28 tháng 2, 2008

One of the more durable plot ideas of the 1960s was the concept of the doppleganger, the criminal version of the hero. The appeal of these doubles to writers and editors is pretty obvious. Having created these extraordinary characters with "powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men", the creators found it difficult to present them with a real challenge. What better solution than to have them face villains with similar qualities?

The concept is not original with superheroes; Sherlock Holmes had his Moriarty, the crime-creating mastermind to his crime-solving genius. Going back further, God found himself in constant battle with the fella with the horns. We've already talked quite a bit on this blog about Bizarro and
SuperMenace, two memorable DC knockoffs of Superman.

But there were many other dopplegangers. Green Lantern had Sinestro:



Sinestro was a renegade Green Lantern who had abused his power and had his ring and lantern taken away by the Guardians. At some point he acquired a ring that emitted a yellow light and thus was invulnerable to Green Lantern's own beam.

Hawkman had the Shrike:



The Shrike was an interesting double in that his powers were similar to Hawkman's (although the lightning-shooting wings were a significant difference) but his origin resembled that of another DC hero:


Instead of landing in Kansas, this rocket landed among a grudge-bearing tribe of Indians who dreamed of the youngster restoring them to glory, which led to the Shrike (initially) being a criminal, stealing back ancient treasures.

Well, if a doppelganger works, then why not a doppelgang?

The Legion of Super-Villains was a twist on the Legion of Superheroes and specifically the original three members of that group, who were similarly seen voting down Superboy on the famed cover of Adventure #247. This particular concept for a cover (which looks like a game show) was also used in Action #296, and Jimmy Olsen #87, making it something of a doppelgang itself.

Over at Marvel, the Frightful Four were a similar but different version of the Fantastic Four. The Justice League of America had an even more similar opponent in the Crime Syndicate of America of Earth-3.

Two of the more interesting duplicates of the Silver Age were Amazo and the Composite Superman. Amazo debuted in Brave and Bold # 30. He was an android who had been given the powers of the members of the Justice League of America (not counting Superman). But World's Finest #142 introduced a character who topped even that:



The Composite Superman was Joe Meach, a failed high-diver who after being saved by Superman, was offered a position at the Superman Museum as a janitor. But instead of being grateful, Meach resented his lowly status. So when a freak bolt of lightning hit the statues of the Legion members at the Superman Museum and gave him virtually limitless power, he used it in an evil way:



Fortunately his powers turned out to be temporary as is his memory of the experience and so he ends up back where he started, pushing a broom.

Oddly enough, a similarly menial position was the origin of a reverse doppelganger, The Leader. While working a mindless job at a chemical research plant, he was exposed to gamma radiation that amazingly stimulated his brain, making him a being of great intellect but little physical ability, the exact opposite of the Hulk as he mentions here:



Some other famed doubles: Crimson Dynamo/Iron Man/, Titanium Man/Iron Man, Gas Gang/Metal Men. Many superheroes had some sort of real duplicate created by a ray or magic or red kryptonite, so we'll ignore those. I don't see a real Reverse Spiderman or Reverse Daredevil or Captain Russia out there, and while you can argue Loki as the anti-Thor, I don't buy it. That's more a personal rivalry that doesn't really imply similarity in powers. For the same reason I'd argue that Dr Doom is not Mr Fantastic's double, nor is Baron Mordo the equivalent of Dr Strange.

Atom battled a few small villains but I don't think any of his villains really mimicked him beyond that. There were of course several Kryptonian criminals who appeared in the Silver Age as doubles of Superman or Supergirl.

Any others?

Update: Kyle points out Professor Zoom, the Reverse Flash. He was in the original post, but somehow an editing mistake left him out. Good catch!

Update II: Here's a different take--multiple androids with the combined powers of the Avengers:

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Người đăng: vanmai yeu em on Thứ Tư, 27 tháng 2, 2008


Number 267



The tallest tale



I'm in need of a laugh today. I went looking for a laugh and found several good ones in Spunky Junior Cowboy #3, September 1949. The whole book is drawn by one of the all-time cartooning greats, Jack Bradbury.

I've posted another Bradbury strip, a Spencer Spook episode from Giggle Comics here.

I bought this comic book in the 1970s. What struck me immediately on re-reading this story is nowadays how much Old Bill reminds me of…me. Yup, Pappy is like Old Bill: a white-bearded windbag, full of stories of dubious veracity. Old Bill has a mule named Sal, and Pappy has a wife named Sally. Just don't tell Mrs. Pappy I said that, will you?





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Thou Shalt Not Kill

Người đăng: vanmai yeu em on Thứ Ba, 26 tháng 2, 2008

Depending on your religion, it's either the fifth or the sixth of the Ten Commandments. It came up as part of a discussion over at Comic Coverage of the graphic novel series, DC: the New Frontier and the resulting animated feature based on the comics. I intend to do a long post on the NF series, which is a terrific reworking of the early Silver Age of comics, but for now I'd like to riff on the killing thing:

As Mark noted:

Another "disconnect" for me was Cooke's nonsensical decision to make Korean War fighter pilot Hal Jordan...get this...a pacifist. That's right, Hal made a point of refusing to shoot down hostile enemy aircraft, thereby adding to New Frontier's strange moral paralysis when it comes to its historical view of Communist expansionism and the clear need to contain it.


This was a jarring note for me as well, for several reasons. First, since Hal (in the NF) was a fighter pilot, whose father had been killed in WWII, it seems unlikely that he would have this pacifist streak. And second, if ever there was a DC hero who positively reveled in violence (if not killing), it was Green Lantern, possibly because Gil Kane could draw a punch better than any other artist:



That panel of course shows the Golden Age Green Lantern throwing the haymaker, but trust me, it was a rare issue that didn't feature Hal or his GL identity using his fists.

It is possible that Hal's unwillingness to kill in Korea marks him as suitable for the lantern and the ring, although it raises doubts about his suitability as a fighter pilot.

Early on in the Golden Age, DC's heroes were somewhat cavalier about the fate of criminals. Batman's cold-blooded response to the death of the villain in Detective #27 was, "A fitting end for his kind!" And those early issues frequently showed him tossing villains off rooftops to their apparent death. As I discussed in my (long and getting longer) post on Batman and guns, this changed after Batman #1, in which our hero kills monsters who were once men, and the driver of a truck with a machine gun mounted on the Batplane. As I noted, after that, Batman never shot to kill.

The concept of the hero not killing quickly became established for DC superhero types after that. I am not sure where this originated; it is well-known for example, that Doc Savage, a precursor to both Batman and Superman, used "mercy bullets" in his revolver that rendered his foes unconscious rather than killing (although he was quite willing to perform a little "brain salad surgery" to turn criminals back into productive members of society).

At any rate, this was codified fairly early in the DC Golden Age, and it lasted through the Silver Age.

There were, of course, several stories whereby the hero or his alter-ego was accused of killing somebody, but it was always a mistake or part of some other plot, as in Detective #249's The Crime of Bruce Wayne

But in Adventure #342, we got the real deal:

Star Boy, while on a trip to another world, sees a man kill an explorer he had befriended. The man then turns his gun on Star Boy, explaining that his goal was actually to kill the Legion member. With apparently only one chance to save his life, Star Boy violates the code:

He may be in the clear as far as the law is concerned, but not with his Legion buddies:

That is a pretty sophisticated argument made by Superboy. However, Star Boy's fate is sealed when Brainiac 5 demonstrates a way Star Boy (whose power is to make things super-heavy) could have survived without killing:

Star Boy was expelled. He and Dream Girl, who was not yet a Legionairre, joined the Legion of Substitute Heroes for the next year or so.

In Action #358-359, Superman was accused of homicide for accidentally killing a man whom he boxed against in an exhibition bout. He didn't know that a criminal mastermind had secretly set up the situation. But we did learn a little more about some of the "exceptions" in Superman's code against killing from Lois Lane's startling testimony:

So it's okay, as long as they're "dangerous aliens from space wearing human masks--condemned murderers?"

I will update this post as I find more stories that deal with the general DC code against killing.

Update: Green Lantern's code against killing is discussed by Sinestro, from Green Lantern #7:



Update II: The Avenger Code:



Update III: The X-Men Pledge:



Update IV: More about Superman. In Superman #171, our hero was confronted by two aliens with a very tough choice:



This story features terrific characterization. Superman, faced with the option of going against his code or allowing Earth to die, decides to kill himself by purposely exposing himself to Green Kryptonite. However, the aliens are not going to let him off that lightly, so they change the Green K to another element. They want him to kill someone else. Guess who volunteers?



Wow, terrific characterization for Jimmy. Later in the story, both Lana and Lois attempt suicide (yes, this issue went out with code approval), and in Lana's case she almost succeeds. In the end, Superman decides to "kill" Clark Kent by tying him up near a nuclear test blast. Of course, Clark really survives but he hopes that this will fool the aliens.

No such luck, but it doesn't really matter as the aliens weren't really planning on destroying Earth:



Yep, these are the same gamblers Rokk and Sorban, who were featured in the nutty World's Finest issue I talked about last year. They were also supposedly behind the Flash/Superman race in Flash #175, although we found out at the end two of Flash's major villains (Abra Kadabra and Professor Zoom) were impersonating the two aliens.
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Goodbye, Green Lantern!

Người đăng: vanmai yeu em on Thứ Hai, 25 tháng 2, 2008

The late 1960s were a time of change for DC Comics. This became startlingly obvious in Green Lantern #49, the December 1966 issue. GL's main cast of characters had stayed steady since his introduction in 1959--sidekick Pieface (Tom Kalmaku), love interest Carol Ferris, and secret identity, test pilot Hal Jordan. But that all got shook up quite a bit in this issue, starting with the girlfriend:



I can't think of another DC comic where a hero had been thrown over permanently by a long-standing girlfriend in favor of another man. Oh, sure, Bruce Wayne's gals had a habit of dropping off the face of the earth every few years. Aquaman had gotten married, as had the Flash (mentioned briefly in this issue). So this was really something different. But that was not all the goodbyes in store for us in this issue.

Hal decides that he cannot stay in Coast City with Carol married to another man, and so he strikes out on his own, resulting in this poignant farewell:



I'll have to do a full post on Pieface sometime, but he was a pretty unique character in the DC universe. Although his name suggests the buffoonish sidekicks of the Golden Age, like Doiby Dickles or Winky, Blinky and Noddy, Pie was played straight, as a serious character.

And even this was not the end of goodbyes. An even more startling departure came at the end of Green Lantern #61 (June 1968). It wasn't announced other than with this small note at the end of the story:

Gil Kane, who had drawn every panel of every Silver Age Green Lantern story, was now out of the picture. This was part of great DC reshuffling of artistic duties in mid-1968 that I will have to cover in depth at some later date. Apparently, DC's artists and writers had been pressuring the company for health and pension benefits, and in an effort to head that off, DC decided to switch around the assignments, probably feeling that the long-term association of artists with characters gave the former too much clout.

Many of the switches worked, but this one appears to have been a failure, as Kane was back at the old stand by mid-1969, although he only got one more year with the character before the advent of the Green Lantern/Green Arrow series by Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams.
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Number 266



Wonderman



"Hordes Of The Immortal Emperor" is from Wonder Comics #16. I've posted stories from this issue before in Pappy's #158 and Pappy's #166.

Someone needs to collect all of the Wonderman stories. We're seeing part of a longer continuity, and what a continuity! A city, Pyropolis, on the sun! A villain named Dr. Voodoo! An "immortal emperor" (page 3) who looks like a smiley face caught in a vise! This is pretty crazy stuff, very entertaining.

The Grand Comics Database has mistakenly listed the contents of this issue, #16, under #15. It also lists the artist of Wonderman as Bob Oksner. See if you agree. Compare the story to this, also from 1948, from Sensation Comics, posted recently in Pappy's #254. Whether or not Oksner drew Wonderman--and I don't think he did--it doesn't detract from it being a screwball comic classic.

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#007. The History of Comic Books & comics versions of classical books

Người đăng: vanmai yeu em on Chủ Nhật, 24 tháng 2, 2008

A Tidbit of Comic Book History
In 1754, Benjamin Franklin created the first editorial cartoon published in an American newspaper. Franklin's cartoon was an illustration of a snake with a severed head and had the printed words "Join, or Die." The cartoon was intended to goad the different colonies into joining what was to become the United States.

Richard Outcault's Yellow Kid was the first comic strip to use balloons.
According to many experts, the precursors to modern comics were the satirical works of artists like Rudolph Töpffer, Wilhelm Bush, Christophe, or Angelo Agostini (first Brazilian comic artist).

Rudolph Töpffer - Birth of the Graphic Novel
In 1827, Switzerland's Rudolphe Töpffer created a comic strip and continued on to publish seven graphic novels. In 1837, "The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck" was published by Rudolphe Töpffer and it is considered the earliest known comic book. In 1842, "The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck" became the first comic book published in the United States. "Obadiah Oldbuck" was a forty page book. Each page had several picture panels with accompanying text underneath.

Wilhelm Bush
In 1859, German poet and artist, Wilhelm Bush published caricatures in the newspaper Fliegende Blätter. In 1865, he published a famous comic called "Max und Moritz".

Yellow Kid
The 1895 "Yellow Kid" created by Richard Outcault has often been cited as being the first comic strip. The reason being is that Richard Outcault was the first artist to use the balloon, an outlined space on the page where what the characters spoke was written. However, comic strips and comic books were published before "Yellow Kid" debuted in the New York City newspaper "The World".

Are Comic Books Funny?
Around 1900, the terms "comics" and "comic strip" came into common use in the United States. Where did the word come from? The strips of pictures being printed in magazines and newspapers at that time were all funny or comic. At first newspaper comic strips were called "the funnies" and later the term comics became more popular. Early American comic books were often collections of reprints of newspaper comic strips.

Brenda Starr
On June 19, 1940, "Brenda Starr" the first cartoon strip written by a woman was published in Chicago.


The comics versions of these classical books were published as MC Comics. In this series 36 comics were published, but I have 30 only.



20000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA by Jules Verne - Book; MC Comics; CI Comics

A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Charles Dickens - Book; MC Comics; CI Comics

ALICE IN WONDERLAND by Lewis Carroll - Book; MC Comics; CI Comics

ARABIAN NIGHTS - Book; MC Comics; CI Comics

BLACK BEAUTY by Anna Sewell - Book; MC Comics; CI Comics



DR JEKYLL & MR. HYDE by Robert Louis Stevenson - Book; MC Comics; CI Comics

DRACULA by Bram Stoker - Book; MC Comics;

FRANKENSTEIN by Mary W Shelley - Book; MC Comics; CI Comics

GULLIVER'S TRAVELS by Jonathan Swift - Book; MC Comics; CI Comics

IVANHOE by Sir Walter Scott - Book; MC Comics; CI Comics



MOBY DICK by Herman Melville - Book; MC Comics; CI Comics

ROBIN HOOD by J. Walker McSpadden - Book; MC Comics; CI Comics

ROBINSON CRUSOE by Daniel Defoe - Book; MC Comics; CI Comics

SHE by H. Rider Haggard - Book; MC Comics;

THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON by H G Wells - Book; MC Comics; CI Comics



THE FOOD OF THE GODS by H G Wells - Book; MC Comics; CI Comics

THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME by Victor Hugo - Book; MC Comics; CI Comics

THE ILIAD by Homer - Book; MC Comics; CI Comics

THE INVISIBLE MAN by H G Wells - Book; MC Comics; CI Comics

THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS by James Fenimore Cooper - Book; MC Comic; CI Comics



THE MASTER OF THE WORLD by Jules Verne - Book; MC Comics; CI Comics

THE MOONSTONE by William Wilkie Collins - Book; MC Comics; CI Comics

THE ODYSSEY by Homer - Book; MC Comics; CI Comics

THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER by Mark Twain - Book; MC Comics; CI Comics

THE PRISONER OF ZENDA by Anthony Hope - Book; MC Comics;
CI Comics



THE TIME MACHINE by H G Wells - Book; MC Comics; CI Comics

THE WAR OF THE WORLDS by H G Wells - Book; MC Comics; CI Comics

TOM SAWYER by Mark Twain - Book; MC Comics;

TREASURE ISLAND by Robert Louis Stevenson - Book; MC Comics; CI Comics

WHITE FANG by Jack London - Book; MC Comics; CI Comics


Most of them and some more (total 169) were published by "Classics illustrated" too.

Source of information: Link

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Updated (July 2009): 6 more Marvel Classics Comics.  Now this set (total 36)  is complete.



Marvel Classic Comics 10

Marvel Classic Comics 11



Marvel Classic Comics 12

Marvel Classic Comics 17



Marvel Classic Comics 27


Marvel Classic Comics 28


These are NEW mediafire links, earlier links by KK were dead.

All credit to original scanners & Saswat who provided new links.
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