Tales from the Bronze Age

This is mandatory viewing for anyone who grew up reading DC Comics in the late 60s, early 70s. Longtime comic writer/onetime Jack Kirby assistant Mark Evanier interviews DC writer/editor/onetime publisher Paul Levitz about going from 14 year old fan to publisher. It's two fanboys-turned-pros who discuss their early disillusionment with the industry and how they made things better for artists.

Levitz has some horror stories about how DC treated its talent; but there's also some hope toward the end when Levitz (and others) worked to give neglected artists their due (and royalties).

Due to the time difference (Evanier is in LA, Levitz is in NY) Levitz seems to be getting sleepy toward the end, and some of the questions from viewers that Evanier introduces aren't questions at all, just comments, leaving the low-energy Levitz to just give one-word non-answers.

But there are a lot of stories about your favorite DC artists an inkers from the silver/bronze age and what the staff at DC really felt about them. (most cringe-worthy: DC executive tells Evanier to tell Kirby to try to draw more like Curt Swan.)

Movie review: Thor: Ragnorak

Spoiler in the one-sheet

It's another winner from the Marvel factory. It basks in its own silliness without ever disrespecting the characters. (Maybe this is the problem with DC movies. Maybe DC's contempt for its characters is why the movies are so divisive.)

Thor must return to  Asgard when his sister, the God of Death, takes over. Before he can do this, he and Loki get sidetracked to a gladiator planet (this used to happen to Capt. Kirk a lot), where he's matched up against the Hulk. This was supposed to be a big surprise but since this scene was in every trailer and commercial it turns what should have been the biggest surprise in the film into the lamest.

Not a dramatic speech goes by without some heckling, and no heroic action takes place without some self-deprecation. In a funny set of sequences, Thor plays the Hulk and Bruce Banner against each other.

Tom Hiddleston again becomes the spotlight hog. Such a great character, sometimes good, mostly bad, but always captivating on screen. Why hasn't this guy been signed up to be the next James Bond?

Jeff Goldblum plays the most powerful nebbish in the galaxy. Closure for the character doesn't come until the closing credits.

Minor quibbles:

This film and "Age of Ultron: both end with the heroes evacuating a city while fighting an army of drones.

The sequence with Doctor Strange is fun, but entirely gratuitous.

When Mark Ruffalo broke out in movies he was compared to a young Brando. Watch the scene where Thor debriefs Banner and you'll think, 'is he intentionally channeling Brando?"

Quick review: Mystic U #1

I walked in cold, I had no idea what it would be about. But, I'm a big Zatanna fan, so I was intrigued ... up until page 3 or 4 when I realized someone at DC said, "What if Zatanna went to Hogwarts?"and someone else said, "And what if she had misfit friends like "Monsters U?"

And they squandered all my intrigue.

After a half dozen Harry Potter books and a few seasons of "Witches of Waverly Place" haven't we had enough of sorcery schools?

It's beautifully drawn, and they're building up to a "big evil is coming" story line (where did we see that before?), but ... Zatanna is better than this. Read Paul Dini's Zatanna books, they're a revelation full of crazy new ideas. This is just a retread of books and movies we've seen before.


Maybe I'm looking at it all wrong, maybe Dini's Zatanna was aimed at older readers and this book is aimed at preteens? Even so, preteens deserve better.

I did enjoy the allusions to DC's early 70s horror lines, OK, they made an old coot like me happy, but even then, they were a little more than cameos.

The team-up that never was

One of the great annual events for DC Comics readers in the '60s and '70s was the  JLA-JSA team up.

These issues were historically the best selling of the year. Furthermore, the parallel earths concept intrigued DC readers to no end and left a limitless source of ideas for the writers (Power Girl! Robin as an adult! Huntress! Infinity Inc,! Earth 3 villains, etc.). This idea was so popular with the readers that DC of course had to sh!# on it. So they gave us the Crisis on Infinite Earths, better known as the Continuity Disaster that Keeps Giving.

Enough bitterness.

Anyway, as the years went on, the writers wanted to bring in more super teams. DC had been on a buying spree as other comic book companies went out of business, so there were plenty of characters to go around.

But just like the original JLA-JSA team-up, they needed a reason why the characters hadn't run into each other earlier

For Gardner Fox and Julius Schwartz, this wasn't a crisis (excuse the pun), it was an opportunity!  The answer: Parallel universes. Brilliant!

 Len Wein teamed up the JLA, JSA, and the National Comics heroes who'd pretty much been in limbo: The Seven Soldiers of Victory (Shining Knight, Vigilante, Crimson Avenger)

Their absentee excuse: They were said to have been stuck in a time loop for years (when in reality, they were pretty lame).

For another year, someone remembered that DC owned the rights to the Quality Comics characters, of which only Plastic Man and The Blackhawks were used. This left Doll Man, The Ray, Black Condor, Phantom Lady, and one of the lamest ideas for a super hero, Uncle Sam.

Their story: They were on Earth Q, where they lost World War II. Roy Thomas would later ret-con this to make them originally inhabitants of Earth 2, who moved to Earth Q to help the war effort. They failed. (He even killed Plastic Man, which really didn't make any sense, because he had his own DC titles off and on in the 60s and 70s which took place on Earth 1…which means, was a Quality Comics character from the 1940s the first DC Comics Earth 1 character?)

After decades, DC finally got ownership of the Fawcett characters, so they were put in the rotation. Where had they been? Earth S (for Shazam, of course.)

By the 80s, this left one set of characters DC had recently purchased: The Charlton "Action Heroes."  (Charlton, like National Comics were somehow opposed to super-powered super heroes. They were also opposed to team books. Any 8-year-old comic book reader can pretty much tell you his favorite books are superhero books, and super team books. The Charlton guys never grasped this. This is probably two of the reasons we don't have Charlton Comics today).

Unfortunatley, the purchase of these characters came too close to the "Crisis on Infinite Earths." As a result, we never saw the JLA-Action Heroes team up. We saw the Charlton characters integrated in the new merged DC universe after the Crisis, but no team-up beforehand.

I'm throwing the idea out there to either a DC Comics pro, or a fan fiction writer: The unbefore-told tale of the JLA-JSA-Earth C Action Hero team up.

Run with it!

Nick Cardy RIP

Just an amazing artist. The first dozen comics I ever bought had his covers, so I do have this nostalgic love for his work. But still,. beautiful women, beautiful design. Imagine my disappointment when he was replaced as DC cover artist by Mike Grell, Ernie Chan, and Jose Garcia Lopez. All great artists, but...when it came to covers, Cardy is still the best.

RIP: Carmine Infantino

Another childhood idol gone. I saw him at a comic convention in Philly. He was signing his book. Why in the world did I not pick up the book and get him to sign mine?

Oh well.

He had an interesting career. He drew for DC in the '40s, '50s, '60s, mostly the golden age Flash and various JSA members, then the silver age Flash and Batman. By the '70s, DC made him publisher. He wasn't drawing as much, but I enjoyed his reprints in the 100 Page Super Spectaculars.

In the mid-70s DC gave him the boot and replaced him with some woman in her 20s with no comic book or artistic experience at all. Talk about adding insult to injury.

Anyway, imagine my surprise later on when I instantly recognized his work on the cover of Nova, a Marvel book. Holy cow!  He also did the interiors and that was pretty much the only Marvel book I bought regularly. Then of course there was Star Wars and Spider-Woman.



Then the big surprise. He went back to DC for the Flash. Once again, for a comic geek like myself, this was nirvana. I spent hours comparing his '60s and '80s art. The style looser, but still dynamic. Characters seemed to jump off the page.

Pick up Justice League of America #200 for a real treat. Golden Age greats Infantino, Joe Kubert and Gil Kane return to draw the Flash, Elongated Man, Hawkman, Green Lantern and the Atom.

Review: Zatanna Shades of the Past TPB

Holy crap what a good read!

This is the exact opposite of everything I don't like about trade paperbacks:

It's a collection of (very clever or scary or funny) standalone stories, not a giant epic mess of retcon madness which is just a smaller part of a larger retcon madness.

The art is beautiful and consistent on every page, there's only one chapter that has more than one penciller.

A working knowledge of DC magic characters from the past helps the reader, but is not mandatory.

I would like to say no loose strings, but Brother Night pops up in the background, leading you to think he'll be there for the finish. He isn't, but it doesn't take away from the enjoyability of the book.

Some details:

This collects Zatanna 7-16

The stories: Shades by Adam Beechen and Chad Hardin. Magicians' relics come alive to cause trouble. Cool idea, very good art.

Pupaphobia by Paul Dini and Cliff Chiang. A multi-part thriller about a marionette who may or may not be evil. Twists and turns and the art goes from very good to beautiful.

Symmetry by Matthew Sturges and Stephane Roux. How freaking clever. Everyone knows Zatanna and Zatara cast their spells by speaking backwards, but in the 75 years of this conceit, writer Sturges was the first to ask, "How does this apply to palindromes?" Brilliant! Once again some sexy, compelling art and great facial expressions.

Brace Yourself by Adam Beechen and Jama Ingle. Zatanna gets the Li'l Archie treatment.  A story of Zatanna as an awkward tween. Really an homage to the great back-up stories from the 60s and 70s where a writer could take the heroes out of continuity and focus on character. I was thinking of The Private Life of Clark Kent stories from Superman and Action in the 70s, or the Elongated Man's mini-mysteries in the back of Detective. Great work by Igle.

The Cat with the Crystal Ball Eye by Dini and Igle. The book's lone non-standalone story. The Spectre, Brother Night, and Dale Colton all show up in  a story that finishes somewhere, but not in this volume. Take this chapter out and run it in a volume with that story.

Wingman by Beechen and Igle and Travis Moore. Cute story about a night out with Zatanna and her irresponsible cousin Zachary. I'm not crazy about changing pencillers in midstream, but there's no change in quality, just style. Igle's work is traditional with some good facial expressions, Moore's work is reminiscent of Gene Colan's (faces in shadows, simply drawn) (in a good way).

Witch Hunt by Derek Fridolfs and Igle. A pack of witch hunters hunts down Zatanna. The action starts on page 2 and doesn't let up til the last page. And a clever resolution to boot.

The Sorceress' Apprentice by Beechen and Victor Ibanez. More great art in a book full of great art. (check out the library!). Zatanna chases an extra-dimensional imp. Not heavy, but a lot of fun.

And then there's the painted covers by Adam Hughes. This artist is of course amazing. His women just define pin-up sexuality. The covers alone are worth the price of admission.

Finally, it occurred to me about half-way through why I was enjoying this book as much as I was. It was like the 70s all over again and I was reading - no, not reading - getting sucked into a DC 100 Page Super-Spetacular. In all my posts in which I complain about DC today, the underlying complaint is they don't make them like the used to. This is how they used to make them.

R.I.P. Joe Kubert

His career spanned 70 years! He was always 10 years ahead of most other artists. It's an amazing body of work.

Gay Green Lantern first reaction

I haven't read the book yet so I probably shouldn't say anything...and I've been telling anyone who'd listen that the JSA has to leave the past behind in favor of a new start...but...

Making GL gay just seems like an act of trendiness rather than an act of good writing.

Think about 1986. The Crisis on Infinite Earths reboot. Dr. Light, Dr. Mid-Nite and Wildcat were each replaced with minority women (Asian, black, Hispanic respectively). Remember? Of course not. It seemed like a good idea for about an hour, then all three characters disappeared and were forgotten within months. No further thought was put into it than, "Hey, I have an idea, let's replace B-listers with minority women." Then the thinking stopped.

Hopefully I'm wrong.

It is hilarious reading comments from people who say putting a gay character in a comic book will turn children gay. I've been reading comics for 40 years and I still can't fly!

Comic review: World's Finest No. 1

Things are getting better and better. The Huntress is once again Batman's daughter. And Power Girl is definitely the cousin of an alternate dimension Superman. Things are right again in the DC Universe. Why was that so hard?

Things start with the women covering a lot of exposition. They're trapped on Earth 1 after being whisked from Earth 2, and they've spent the last five years setting up their identities. A flashback explains the circumstances of the whisking part. It's a nice touch that Helena is the one who saves Power Girl.

The bookend chapters are drawn by George Perez and the flashback is by Kevin Maguire. I usually complain about an issue having too many artists but these two are freaking icons who get better and better over the decades. It's an all-star team-up. Check out the page of Helena and Karen in their civilian clothes walking across the street. It sets up the contrast in their personalities. Tough girl Helena's in a leather jacket and jeans and the girly Karen is in this great dress which just shows curves without showing skin. Also look at Helena's face above. Just beautiful.

Writer Paul Levitz has a long history with these two characters and though I may never forgive him for they way he killed the Earth 2 Batman back in the 70s, his affection for these characters show. It's a lot of fun and am looking forward to more.

Back during the Crisis on Infinite Earths, there were a couple scenes of PG and Huntress commiserating about the ongoing drama, and I remember someone writing a letter to the editor saying that these two make a natural team, and he was right. They really belong in World's Finest.

My only complaint is PG's new costume. Give her the old one, close the Wally Wood window, and don't give her too many muscles!

Comic Review: Earth 2 No. 1

I've been asking DC for years to unchain the JSA from World War II and they've done it. Bless you DC. Now they no longer have to age while the rest of the DCU stayed the same age.

We have cameos by the young Alan Scott, Al Pratt and Jay (and Joan) Garrick, but the JSA isn't even in this issue, it's just laying groundwork for the future. The whole book features the Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman from this new Earth 2, and it's a little reminiscent in how the Earth 3 characters kicked off Crisis on Infinite Earths. I don't want to spoil it but if you read Crisis you'll see what I"m talking about.

It's a great twist that Batman Superman and Wonder Woman are the old guard and the JSA will be the new kids. This will probably preclude an Infinity Inc. return, but it might be worth it.

The future Power Girl and the Huntress hang around long enough to get blasted into Earth 1 in World's Finest No. 1 (a review on that tomorrow).

I'm a JSA purist and even though this is a total reboot, I was very happy with what they're doing here. The love of the characters and legend is there.

Great story by James Robinson, great art by Nicola Scott.

Best Curt Swan Inker

This is a post for the true comic book geeks. Who was Curt Swan's best inker? Swan was of course the Superman artist from the '60s to the '80s. The question is who was his best inker. If you're a baby boomer and read Superman in the '60s, the answer is probably George Klein. Clean lines, a massive chest, a 'Mad Men'-era haircut. Truly manly.

Then the '70s came along and Murphy Anderson started inking, and everything changed. The lines were feathered, and Superman was dragged out of the '50s. Sideburns! Anderson would be my favorite inker and though most of his work on Swan was from the early '70s, he'd still pop up through the '80s on one-shots. DC definitely needs to put out a Swanderson trade paperback.

The late '70s also gave us Bob Oksner, Dave Hunt and Kurt Shaffenberger. Oksner was probably the most true to Swan's pencils. Not a lot of flair, but a real solid Klein-like consistency. Shaffenberger could make any penciller look like Shaffenberger. Compare his work on Swan to his work on his own pencils and you'll see little difference. Shaffenberger did make the most perfect S insignia though.

When asked, Swan said his favorite was Al Williamson, an EC Comics veteran who, once again, put his own imprint on Swan's pencils. It is an interesting look.

See you in the funny papers

I'm behind on this review, but if you are any kind of comic strip fan, it would behoove you to find a copy, (I've seen them in Barnes & Noble), or better yet subscribe to Hogan's Alley. It covers comics from the Yellow Kid to Sponge Bob (another yellow kid, actually) and everything in between.

As a kid I loved spreading out the Sunday comics on the living room floor, studying the art, and memorizing the names of the artists, and the syndicate. (The Evening Bulletin's selection was always better than the Inquirer's). This magazine has interviews of or stories about everyone I've ever admired.

The latest issue has a great interview with Cathy Guisewite, a history of Bluto and his legally-induced dopplegangers, and a funny story about how every time DC Comics needed to goose sales, they'd put a gorilla on the cover.

Check it out here.

Literature's longest unresolved plot thread

Spirit King kills Mr. Terrific in 1979, escapes, they finally get around to capturing him in 1997.

Review JSA Monument Point TPB

In theory the best reason to buy a trade paperback collection of several issues of a comic book would be that you’d get a complete story arc (beginning, middle, end) without the fear of jumping in the middle of a confusing arc.

Ahh theories, so cute.

The Monument Point TPB starts with a nine-page backstory of the members of the Justice League and how they were inspired by the JSA. As you keep reading further in the book you’ll realize this has nothing to do with anything.

Nothing.

Anything.

Actually they’re winding down an umpteenth JSA series, so they want to remind us that you couldn’t have a JLA if it weren’t for the JSA. This is only partially true. In actual comics history, Flash was the only JLA member who was inspired by the the Golden Age Flash. So it’s all retroactive continuity that Batman was inspired by Dr. Mid-Nite, Green Lantern inspired by The GA Green Lantern, etc.

The George Perez art in this chapter is of course extraordinary. He’s like Kubert, Infantino and Kane in that decades in the business just make him better.

Then we cut to Degaton being thwarted again and again by his own doppleganger, unlike most of everything else in this book, this will count for something later on.

(Great splash page by Freddie Williams III)

Things go to shit quickly with the umpteenth retelling of the JSA-meets-Joseph McCarthy-and-goes-into-retirement story with truly shitty art by comics legend Howard Chaykin. All the jaws are so perfectly square you’d think the JSA was filled with Jay Leno impersonators. And there’s a closeup of Black Canary that makes her look like that weird lady who had 100 plastic surgeries and doesn’t look human anymore.

OK, once again winding up things by touching on the past. The concept of the government putting superheores out of business would be stolen later by “The Incredibles.” 

Then...the story starts. The Flash is mayor of Monument Point, disaster strikes, Dr. Fate comes crashing to the ground after, it is explained, heading off to another dimension with Lightning. Umm, this probably happened in a previous trade paperback, so this would be a screw-you to casual readers.

Meanwhile, Degaton is wreaking havoc in the JSA HQ, OK, I like JSA beating up villains. I’m not sure why Green Lantern is dressed as a giant lantern, but OK, I can overlook that. It is a cool fight sequence, with Degaton using his temporal powers to age Wildcat, de-age Hourman, and summon dinosaurs. Cool! 

After he’s defeated we go to the JSA looking over the body of Lightning in some kind of coma/death, in a chamber. What happened to her, once again, who knows? And when did Blue Devil join the JSA, and who is the chick in the white robe? They spent two pages telling me who Superman is, yet they just throw in the white robe lady person and I’m supposed to know who she is.

This has happened before, I miss an issue of JSA and they add ten members. Stop it! 

Let’s institute what we’ll call The Power Girl Rule. Think back to 1976, Power Girl was the JSA’s first new member who was created specifically to join the JSA. She had never existed before in solo stories like everyone else in the JSA. And think about it: She was the Earth 2 Supergirl, who wanted her own identity separate from her cousin. A bit of a “woman’s libber,” the body of a healthy 16 year old girl. And this is important: Her superpowers were limited to those of Superman in Action Comics number 1: Leap tall buildings in a single bound, more powerful than a locomotive and faster than a speeding bullet.

She was not indestructible, she could not move planets, no heat/x-ray vision, and don’t even mention super ventriloquism.

This character had a lot of potential. 35 years later, I’m still waiting. 

Things went off the rails pretty quickly. Her costume changed from issue to issue. (peek-a-boo window came and went), she didn’t get an actual origin story for three years!, and then she got a new origin story every five years, and the limited super powers went out the window pretty quickly and she was soon moving planets.

This has been the story of every character created for the JSA since then. They start out good, then a new writer comes along and everything goes into the toilet, and the character is just part of this grand rotation of new members who ultimately don’t add anything. (Red Beetle? Blue Devil? Starboy?!! Nuklon, the character who looks like Nuklon who I have no idea who he is? Star Girl who started out as a teen, but is now all womanly, the Red Tornado girl, on and on.

So here’s the Power Girl Rule, no more new characters until you can complete a story arc with the old ones.

OK, so Lightning, who’s now a woman (when did this happen?) saves herself through her own will power. Oh, that seemed easy. Meanwhile Mayor Flash is having heated discussions with his cabinet because nothing’s more thrilling in comics than seeing men and women in suits discuss civic planning.

Also, Kent Nelson has a big mystic symbol burned onto his face, and whenever someone asks about it, he brushes it off as if he woke up at a frat party with “Loser” written on his forehead with permanent marker and he doesn’t want to talk about it.

I am not a fan of Tom Derenick, his super heroes look good, but his charcoal pencil style with civilians just look creepy. And the facial features never seem proportionate to each other.

The covers by Mario Alberti are amazing though. Good stuff.

After all this, we get to the real story, a big giant ancient city under Monument Point. It’s so spooky and mysterious, the JSA calls in the Challengers of the Unknown to help explore. 

Holy crap, as I’ve mentioned before, the JSA now has about 100 members they don’t know what to do with. Stop inviting guests!

Jerry Ordway jumps in now, another one like Perez, great in the ‘80s, even better now.

Johnny Quick unleashes an ancient Kirby-esque destructo-monster, and once again, as long as the JSA is beating up bad guys, I’m happy.

Everything is put right by GL who gives his life to save the world.

And this is probably the first time a comic book company killed one of its characters. Oh wait they do this monthly. And there’s no dramatic tension because the character always comes back to life. Always.

Oh and Mister Terrific inexplicably loses his intelligence, but it’s OK, he inexplicably gets it all back again.

So they wrap up loose ends, and at its heart there’s a good story, but there’s so much other crap going on. It’s so heartbreaking. I got hooked on the JSA with Justice League 22, and ever since then I’ve seen DC treat it with neglect.

Here’s another complaint about modern comics which will make me sound like an old fogey. Mike Sekowsky drew the JLA for eight straight years, then Dick Dillin took over and drew every page for every issue for 12 years. Today, an artist draws about five pages of a book and says, “Wow I’m beat, can someone else finish this book?” So we get these jarring shifts in style. 

Dick Dillin was only as good as his inkers, but, he had stamina.

Am I asking so much, a beginning, middle and end, with characters I’m familiar with?

DC's last really interesting concept?

In the '60s DC had this really cool idea. They created a heroine whose job it was was to be rotating guest star. Zatanna was the daughter of 1940s DC B-lister Zatara, a thinly disguised rip-off of King Features' Mandrake the Magician.

Her story was her father went missing, and she would pop up in various DC titles in her quest to find him. Green Lantern would be tracking a bad guy on one mission and he'd run into Zatanna, whose quest intersected GL's plot. Months later The Elongated Man would be working on a case which once again would interconnect with Zatanna. And so on.

This went on until the climax when she teams up with the whole Justice League.

DC later collected these stories in a trade paperback which is a lot of fun (except for the Batman chapter which sucks really bad and doesn't even feature Zatanna. Pick up the book, but skip that chapter).

This remains a great silver age concept: A storyline that took years to tell, but still worked as standalone stories. They don't do that now. Pick up any individual issue of any of DC's constant universe-changing maxi-series and you'll be totally baffled.

I like the picture above because it's sexy without being revealing (do a Google image search for Zatanna and you'll see what I mean), and at first glance an Asian Zatanna takes a minute to absorb, but once you think about it, it's obvious Zatanna should look exotic.

Not-so-super heroes

I never quite understood the whole Seven Soldiers of Victory.
First of all, there were eight members!
While sister comic book company All-American Comics had the genuinely thrilling Justice Society, most members with a superhuman power, National had these guys. All non-powered civilians in long underwear.
Vigilante was a Lone Ranger rip-off, Crimson Avenger started as a Shadow rip-off, Green Arrow an unashamed Batman rip-off -- he drove an arrow mobile, worked in an arrow cave, flew an arrow plane...and he had an obligatory teen sidekick.
The gimmick with the Star-Spangled Kid was he was a  teen with an *adult* sidekick.
Let's face it, these guys were losers.

Charlton Comics had the same problem, with the exception of Captain Atom all their heroes were civilians in long underwear. Psssst, this isn't why kids buy comic books.

Classics of Western Literature Part 2

I guess I was in fourth or fifth grade, and a classmate of mine was giving away comic books (I suspect this was on orders of his mom wanting to get rid of old comics in the house because at the time, this book was ten years old). And he gave me this! Can you imagine? I'm sure there are young members of royalty who've been given more valuable gifts, but, not the magnitude of this. Think about it: One of the first comic books I ever read represented the culmination of the previous 25 years of DC Comics and the template for what was to come for the next 50 years!
Any gift anyone has ever given me since then has had an awful hard time topping this.