Infinite Crises on Infinite Earths

After bringing back the Golden Age Flash in Flash #123's memorable Flash of Two Worlds, Gardner Fox followed up with Flash #137's Vengeance of the Immortal Villain. In that story, Vandal Savage, a major Golden Age villain, had captured the former members of the Justice Society of America and the two Flashes rescued them.

The Golden Age and Silver Age Flash teamups had become an annual tradition by that point, and it was only natural that DC extend the concept to a JLA/JSA teamup, which they did starting with Justice League of America #21-22, the August and September 1963 issues. This was significant in that I believe it was the first time a DC story had covered two complete, book-length issues. DC had experimented with continued tales before, but always in their anthology comics, so that the stories were not book-length.

In that first tale, Golden Age villains The Icicle, The Fiddler and The Wizard teamed up with the Silver Age baddies Mr Element (the pre-reformed Al Desmond), Chronos and Felix Faust. The Fiddler had appeared in Flash of Two Worlds, so he became the first GA villain to make two appearances in the Silver Age.

One notable oddity about the GA/SA characters; DC revived the heroes in new costumes and identities, but there were very few cases of DC bringing back GA villains as new SA characters. I'm wracking my brain here and the only one that comes to mind is at the very end of the SA, the GA Hawkman's villain the Gentleman's Ghost popped up as a new villain for Atom and Hawkman. Anybody? I'm not talking about just the return of the GA villains (like Mxyzptlk or the Penguin) in the SA, I'm talking about new villains roughly based on the GA villains but as recognizably different as Jay Garrick and Barry Allen, and therefore as new as the Barry Allen Flash. Anybody?

Anyway, in this story the GA villains meet some SA villains and they decide to combine operations. The Fiddler has a note that will open up the barrier between the two worlds, and they realize that this takes care of a major problem for them:



Now that is a cool concept for a story. But eventually the GA crooks on the SA world (Earth-1) decide to take on the JLA. At first they succeed, in fact trapping the heroes in their clubhouse. But fortunately there's a crystal ball there and the Justice League heroes summon the Justice Society stars to help them out:



In the second story everything seems to work out fine for the heroes, but this turns out to be a trick to get the Green Lanterns (both GA and SA) to use their powers to free the two Flashes. This gives the villains a chance to imprison all the heroes:



Note in particular the SA heroes presented and the ones that lack a real GA counterpart. At the time, DC still had not quite embraced the concept that there was a difference between the GA Superman and the SA Superman. Ditto with Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow and Aquaman. What do those five characters have in common? They were the only five DC superheroes to be published continuously from the 1940s to the 1960s. Of course the Martian Manhunter lacks a GA equivalent as well, but he was a strictly new SA character, not a revival.

It was easy for DC to say that there were two Green Lanterns (in fact there were a multitude of them), or two Flashes; it didn't take a genius to tell the difference between Alan Scott and Hal Jordan. But with Batman or Superman establishing a dividing line can be extremely tricky, as DC would discover over the years. DC would eventually accept the idea as we shall see in later instalments.

Next in this series: If there's an Earth-1 and an Earth-2, can Earth-3 be far behind?

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Number 149


Jet Powers and The Devil's Machine!


What th--?! At the end of "The Dust Doom," the first story in Jet #3, (Pappy's #146) the human race was having to make a new beginning after near annihilation. Now here we are with story two and everything seems as it was before the first story. So what gives? Well, I don't know, but can tell you that the storyline begun with "The Dust Doom" is continued in Jet #4. It's an odd way of doing continuity, and the confusion it caused among readers might be the reason that Jet only lasted four issues. That and the fact that science fiction comics weren't very good sellers compared to other genres.

"The Devil's Machine" is from the same template as "House Of Horrors" in Jet #2. Another mad scientist. Another girl. More civilian victims. Another pseudo-scientific device from the mind of writer Gardner Fox. No Su Shan this time, though.

Professor Mikla has developed a machine, "the multipliciter,"* that duplicates animals. A herd of cloned elephants and lions escape his laboratory. Since this is a comic book, the authorities handle it in the least humane way possible. Instead of capturing or tranquilizing the marauding beasts they machine gun them to death from the air. I guess PETA didn't have a chapter in that part of the country in 1951.

As is also usual for this type of story, the mad scientist comes up against his own equipment and it kills him. Actually, he kills himself--or himselves, as it were.

Once again the story has good art by Bob Powell, hurt by bad printing.

*Anticipating by four-and-a-half decades the movie, Multiplicity(1996), starring Michael Keaton.

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Unknown Worlds #25

I've talked a little bit about American Comics Group, a small publisher that managed to put out about 1,150 comics from the late 1940s to the late 1960s. They put out comics in just about every genre, from teen to romance to funny animal to war. But their specialty was the kind of light fare that passed for horror in the Silver Age. Unknown Worlds was a late entrant for AGC in the horror field, coming on the heels of their long-running Adventures into the Unknown and Forbidden Worlds comics. I thought I would take a detailed look at one issue of Unknown Worlds from August 1963.

The opening story is entitled "The Specter of Colonel Clay". William Ames' family is forced to abandon their Oklahoma farm during the Depression. They decide rather than head to California like everybody else is doing, they'll go southeast. After an angry experience with a farmer who wants them to live in old slave quarters, they find an abandoned antebellum mansion which they hope to fix up and farm. But the mansion is haunted, and they are nearly killed a few times.

The young boy of the family manages to talk to the ghost, who had been a colonel in the Confederacy. The ghost is bitter at the Yankees who plundered his farm during Sherman's march through Georgia, and at the Southerners who refused to help him when he attacked in a suicidal raid, and determined to frighten away the Ames like he's frightened away other people who tried to live on his land. But this family is made of sterner stuff:



Art by Ogden Whitney.

The colonel is of course unable to resist the little tyke's pleas, and they become friends and opponents across a checkerboard. He helps out the boy's dad when some young toughs decide to take over the farm, and in the end he realizes his hatred is misplaced and he joins the rest of his family, at peace in the cemetery.

The second story is "Gentle Brute". A husband and wife team of anthropologists come across a hidden valley where cavemen and dinosaurs live. They help a caveman, and in turn he saves them from a tyrannosaurus rex, teaching them that cavemen were capable of noble feelings.

The artwork on this story was by John Forte, at the time in the middle of his run on the Legion of Super Heroes.

"Tiny Mermaid" is a one-pager. A girl and a guy discover a mermaid in an seashell, but then a tidal wave washes over them so that they have no evidence.

In "Weird Walking Stick", a UFO is shot down in a cornfield. A hayseed manages to pull a strange, glowing stick out of the flying saucer. It has odd powers and seems to automatically do whatever its owner desires. However, it is stolen by a greedy carnival operator whose use ends up destroying the stick.

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Number 148


Pussycat, Pussycat, I love you…


Did anyone ever draw glamorous, sexy chicks as well as Bill Ward?

Pussycat was a feature Ward did in the 1960s for Marvel Comics owner Martin Goodman's line of men's magazines, after having established himself as a cartoonist of excellence in drawing the female form. Ward had worked as a comic book artist for years. He created super-siren Torchy, as well as being an artist specializing in love comics and several other genres, including Blackhawk. It was the pin-up art that made him famous, though.

Pussycat was a satire on the spy craze started by the James Bond phenomenon, continued on with TV shows like The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (and The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., Get Smart, et al.) The character she most resembled was Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder's Annie Fanny in Playboy. Like Annie, Pussycat was an innocent, without guile. She apparently didn't understand the effect she was having on the men around her, who acted like horny idiots.

This particular strip was originally published in 1966, then reprinted in 1968 in a compilation magazine, Pussycat #1, listed in the indicia as being published by Marvel Comics. It contains one story by Wally Wood and another by Jim Mooney. The cover is by Bill Everett. The rest of it is all Ward.
Click on pictures for full-size images.

Several books have been published reprinting Ward's pin-up cartoons. For years he sold about 30 of them a month to Goodman's Humorama Publications. You couldn't open one of those digest magazines without seeing a new Ward.

Years ago I got lucky and found some of Ward's cartoons for sale at a San Diego Comicon. I even found a rough he submitted for approval, most likely to the aforementioned humor magazines he contributed to so regularly.
Even though it's a rough he lavished his time and attention on the girl. The guys in his cartoons, and even in his comic strips* were drawn as generic guys, with a lot less attention than he gave to his girls. The guys in his cartoons all went crazy at the sight of a pretty girl. If you were ever to see a living Ward girl walk down the street you might go crazy too.

*Ward was also a regular for years in Cracked Magazine, sometimes under the name McCartney.

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Number 147


Stan Lee and Joe Sinnott's Witch In The Woods


When Stan Lee wrote "The Witch In The Woods" in 1953 for Menace #7, comics were under direct assault by parents and teacher groups, from the pulpit and even from investigators in the government. Considering the avalanche of criticism burying the comics industry Lee's satiric story seems tame, not so much a 'repel all boarders' defense as a gentle and funny rejoinder to the critics.

Lee is right that Brothers Grimm stories, gathered as they were from European folktales, are often cruel and nightmarish, especially for children. But comics were available on practically every newsstand, in every drugstore and mom-and-pop store in the country. In the early 1950s I could walk two blocks and find three stores that sold comic books. Almost every kid had access to comics and they sold in the millions every month. On the other hand, unless I went to the library or bookstore I'd have a hard time finding a copy of "Hansel and Gretel." Stories by the Brothers Grimm were considered literature. Comics weren't. Even so, it wasn't the story material that bothered the do-gooders, it was its marketing and availability to children.

"The Witch In The Woods" is a good story, anyway. Lee did a fine job with the familiar tale and its framing device. Joe Sinnott's artwork is, as usual, top-notch. He made his real fame with his inking of Jack Kirby in the 1960's, but he was an above average artist in his own right.

You can find other postings with Joe Sinnott artwork by clicking on his name in the links below.

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Number 146


Jet Powers And The Dust Of Doom!


Forget all about global warming. There's a more immediate danger: The earth is going through a cloud of radioactive dust! Yikes! We've got three days, so live it up, folks. In this story as the doom approaches anarchy reigns with looting and murders. Then Jet Powers makes an appearance.

Speaking to the world over loudspeakers, and telling an involved and personal story, Jet tells how he went into space with sexy Su Shan and his spaceship conked out from the radioactive dust. Due to Jet's ingenuity they got back, but I'll let you read about it.

This is pretty heavy doomsday stuff for just a 9-page story, starting off this third issue of Jet, written by Gardner Fox and drawn by Bob Powell.

Ever since Su Shan admitted to Jet that she liked him (second story, second issue), I've wondered what's going on. There's no indication there was any weightless whoopee going on in space, but I mean, still, you've gotta wonder where Jet's head is, traveling alone with a beautiful girl and not being more attracted or something. She blinded me with science, as the song goes…or Jet was blinded to her by science. Who knows? It's been a long time since 1951 when this appeared. Anyone who could tell us where the Jet Powers/Su Shan partnership was going had Jet continued its run past #4 is long since dead.

The printing on this story is pretty bad. The ink blobs up, fills in delicate lines, drops out in other places. Whoever printed this comic book must've been sleeping on the job. I did the best I could with what I had to scan.

In the 1980s Ray Zone used his wizardry to transform this issue into a 3-D comic book. You collectors will want to look for that. Zone had some of the same problems I had making the blobby printing acceptable.

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Number 145

Kurtzman Cuts To The Core

When I look back on Harvey Kurtzman's career, and especially his satiric comic book stories, I think of two things: He was lucky to have good friends who were such great cartoonists, and he saw through to the core of what he was satirizing.

These two 3-pagers are from Humbug #3, October 1957. Kurtzman satirizes a current popular movie and a current television show, getting maximum laughs with minimum space.

The "A.P.B. On The M.O. At The O.K. Corral" takes on the Burt Lancaster movie, "Gunfight At The O.K. Corral." My friend, Eddie,* who sent me the scans I used for these stories, asked me one time, "Is the O.K. Corral [shootout] the most important event in American history or what?" He was referring sarcastically to the then popular movie Tombstone, and the surge of interest in an event that in real life wasn't as dramatic as the movies made it seem.

The splash panel to "A.P.B." is Davis being inspired. I don't know how much of Kurtzman is in the secondary figures, like the little Indian wearing a hat with eyeholes, the drunk passed out under the table, or even the hound dog flopped over on the floor. But the gag is pure Kurtzman, as is the rest of the strip, which, in three pages, basically takes the movie apart.

I remember "You Are There" as a once-popular CBS television show. It ended its run in October, 1957, about the same time this issue of Humbug was going off sale. Kurtzman had nothing to do with the show going off…it had just run its course. What Kurtzman got right about the show was its premise, the odd idea of a modern reporter walking around an historic event with a television camera and microphone asking questions. The assassination of Caesar is hilarious for the principals explaining the events.

Kurtzman did something obvious for the time, which was use the instantly recognizable TV star Sid Caesar as Julius Caesar. He's even got Sid Caesar's sidekick, Imogene Coca, on the sidelines sticking her tongue out. (Following behind Caesar is Howard Morris, one of his sidekicks from the show. Morris went on to play Ernest T. Bass in the Andy Griffith show.) Caesar's humor, as well as that of song parodist Stan Freberg and radio stars Bob and Ray, were elements that Kurtzman folded into his comic book stories. He also used the cartooning and caricature skills of best buddy Will Elder. Elder shared Kurtzman's vision of parody: Make it look like the original. Of the cartoonists Kurtzman worked with, I don't think anyone understood Harvey as well as Elder.

*See Eddie's blog, Chicken Fat. It's not a Mad or Kurtzman blog, but Eddie is a big Kurtzman fan and uses elements from him in his blog.

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