TwoMorrows Publishing Comics - Hero-A-Go-Go!

By Michael Eury

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION: Goin’ to a Go-Go

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CHAPTER 1: Campfire

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Eclipso............................................................................................................................................7 Superman and the Giant Cyclops..............................................................9 Magicman and Nemesis.........................................................................................12 The Teen Titans...............................................................................................................14 Metamorpho, the Element Man...................................................................17 AN INTERVIEW WITH RAMONA FRADON.........................21 Dial H for Hero....................................................................................................................23 Harvey Thrillers............................................................................................................... 25 Captain Action................................................................................................................31 Dell’s Monster Super-Heroes.........................................................................36 Palisades Park....................................................................................................................41 AN INTERVIEW WITH VINCE GARGIULO..........................43 Batman All Star Dairy Products................................................................45 Batman Mini-Comics.................................................................................................47 Super-Hero Paperbacks.......................................................................................50 Blackhawk, Junk-Heap Heroes ...................................................................60 Aquamania...........................................................................................................................63 B’Wana Beast................................................................................................................... 67

CHAPTER 2: Camptown Revivals

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I.W. Super Comics.........................................................................................................69 The Shadow..........................................................................................................................71 Captain Marvel ................................................................................................................73 Doc Savage.........................................................................................................................77 The Spirit................................................................................................................................ 79 Fighting American.........................................................................................................81 Plastic Man .........................................................................................................................83 The Owl..................................................................................................................................... 87

CHAPTER 3: Campus Clowns

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Jerry Lewis, One-Man Justice League.................................................91 Herbie the Fat Fury...................................................................................................98 Super Goof.........................................................................................................................100 Pureheart the Powerful & Man from R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E.........101 The Inferior Five............................................................................................................ 104 Go-Go.........................................................................................................................................110 The Mighty Heroes ...................................................................................................115 AN INTERVIEW WITH RALPH BAKSHI...............................118 Super Luck..........................................................................................................................125 Miracles, Inc. ......................................................................................................................126 Super Presidents ......................................................................................................128 AN INTERVIEW WITH TONY TALLARICO.......................136 The Nice–Terrific War.............................................................................................. 138

The Other Nice–Terrific War...........................................................................143 The Return of the Original Yellow Tornado.................................144 The MAD Adventures of Captain Klutz .........................................145 AN INTERVIEW WITH DICK DeBARTOLO....................... 147 Fatman, the Human Flying Saucer....................................................... 148 Not Brand Echh..............................................................................................................151 Fruitman................................................................................................................................156 Sinistro, Boy Fiend....................................................................................................158 Fearless Frank................................................................................................................ 159 Captain Costello and Captain Splendid........................................160

CHAPTER 4: Camp Runamuck

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Bondmania.......................................................................................................................... 163 Irwin Allen’s Fantastic Voyages ..............................................................174 AN INTERVIEW WITH BILL MUMY...................................... 178 Batmania...............................................................................................................................182 Jan and Dean Meet Batman ......................................................................190 AN INTERVIEW WITH DEAN TORRENCE........................ 192 It’s A Bird… It’s A Plane… It’s Superman........................................198 AN INTERVIEW WITH BOB HOLIDAY............................... 200 Tarzan, TV’s Most Famous Swinger...................................................205 The Green Hornet....................................................................................................206 Dick Tracy, Sixties Super-Cop...................................................................209 Wonder Woman TV Pilot....................................................................................212 Saturday Morning Super-Heroes.............................................................214 Hanna-Barbera Heroes.......................................................................................225 Filmation’s DC Super-Hero Cartoons...............................................237 Marvel Super-Hero Cartoons......................................................................239 America’s Best TV Comics............................................................................ 242

CHAPTER 5: Band Camp

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Beatlemania.....................................................................................................................245 AN INTERVIEW WITH JOE SINNOTT................................ 249 Swing with Scooter.................................................................................................251 Super-Hip.............................................................................................................................253 Surf’s Up!.............................................................................................................................255 Monkeemania and Comic Books............................................................257 AN INTERVIEW WITH JOSE DELBO................................. 263 The Cowsills ...................................................................................................................265 The Archies .....................................................................................................................268 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.................................................................. 270 BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................. 270 ABOUT THE AUTHOR...................................................................... 271

Chapter 1

CAMPFIRE Uh-oh ... Now I know how toothpaste feels! YEEOW!

Detail and dialogue from The Brave and the Bold #68. TM & (C) DC Comics.

HAW! I’ll squeeze the elemental juice out of you, fella!

THE SUPER-HERO EXPLOSION ECLIPSO

Split personality!

Gordon vs.

Eclipso on the Toth-drawn House of Secrets #67 cover.

Hero and Villain in One Man Let’s get this out of the way from the get-go: Eclipso scared the heck out of me when I was a kid. In 1966, I had just started buying comics at age eight when the “Hero and Villain in One Man!” was winding down his original three-year blip of fame. As I scoured the racks searching for Batman funnybooks, I’d avert my eyes when stumbling across those issues of House of Secrets starring Eclipso. As drawn by Jack Sparling, Eclipso was horrifying, with his pointy demon ears, blue half-moon face, and swollen-lipped evil snarl.

But I scared easily back then. Bette Davis gave me nightmares (those were her What Ever Happened to

TM & © DC Comics.

Baby Jane? years, when her makeup was gruesomely applied like Herman Munster’s).

Who was Eclipso? Created by writer Bob Haney and artist Lee Elias, this high-concept character— “Hero and Villain in One Man!”—debuted in issue #61 (July–Aug. 1963) of House of Secrets, one of DC Comics’ eerie anthologies. His premiere only garnered a headshot inset at the bottom of the comic’s cover, with HOS’ Mark Merlin considered a better draw for the spotlight. But over time Eclipso would… yes, eclipse the other stars of the book (Merlin and, later, Prince Ra-Man) to become House of Secrets’ dominant cover feature.

Issue #61’s inaugural tale, “Eclipso, the Genius Who Fought Himself,” introduces solar-energy scientist Dr. Bruce Gordon, the feature’s hero who would also become its villain. While studying an eclipse of the sun on an island sinisterly named Diablo, Gordon is scratched by an uncanny black diamond wielded by a loco jungle shaman named Mophir. From that moment on, Gordon becomes a modern-day Jekyll

LEFT: Original Jack Sparling art, with monsters galore, from HOS #80.

Courtesy of Heritage.

TM & © DC Comics.

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An eyepopping “team-up” in Brave and Bold #64. Cover by Gil Kane.

TM & © DC Comics.

Jack Sparling.

TM & © DC Comics.

RIGHT: How to handle a temperamental heiress, Sixties-style.

From B&B #64.

TM & © DC Comics.

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and Hyde during each eclipse. An eerie shadow casts across part of Gordon’s face, triggering his transformation into the super-villain Eclipso, a repugnant ogre in violetand-black dance togs who emits energy blasts whenever he holds the black diamond to his “eclipsed” eye.

Imagine, a super-villain starring in his own series! In 1963! Naturally, with the puritans at the Comics Code Authority enforcing the rules, Eclipso always had to be defeated, but instead of incarceration, Eclipso would be vanquished—actually, he’d vanish, until the next eclipse (which conveniently would occur in the next issue). And a mere camera flashbulb could defeat him… really. Light was his nemesis. Professor Simon Bennett, Gordon’s colleague, and the professor’s daughter, Mona, Gordon’s main squeeze, employed everything from lamps to photon light bursts to send Eclipso running home with his tail between his legs.

Actually, between Gordon’s legs. Eclipso’s chief adversary was himself—his alter ego, Bruce Gordon.

(Bob Haney admitted in a 1997 interview with Michael Catron that the character’s name was a Batman gag, borrowed from Bruce Wayne and Commissioner Gordon.) Gordon would concoct ways to thwart Eclipso, while Eclipso despised his goody-two-shoes alter ego—sort of like the Incredible Hulk hating “puny Banner,” but with a better vocabulary.

After Lee Elias rather tepidly illustrated the first two Eclipso stories, the amazing Alex Toth became the Eclipso artist for five beautifully drawn installments, beginning with issue #63. He was replaced by the feature’s last artist, Jack Sparling, beginning with HOS #68. Sparling, a journeyman with a scratchy art style, was surprisingly in fine form on Eclipso; his loose linework was well suited for the unconventional appearance of the character and the peculiar creatures that populated Haney’s scripts. Yet Eclipso was doomed to fail.

The feature’s high concept quickly ran dry, his eclipse-triggered transformations were generally contrived, and between his vulnerability (Boo! I’ve got a flashlight!) and his detachment from the main DC Universe, Eclipso never seemed like much of a

threat. And to make matters worse, Haney never cared much for the Eclipso feature—his heart just wasn’t in it.

As Eclipso’s series was winding down in 1966 (it ended with the cancellation of House of Secrets with issue #80), the “Hero and Villain in One Man!” was discovered by a new readership. It started with The Brave and the Bold #64, which presented a “teamup” titled “Batman versus Eclipso.” This issue, which went on sale just before the January 12, 1966 premiere of ABC-TV’s Batman, is noteworthy for several reasons: It co-starred a hero and a villain, a revolutionary concept at the time.

It offered Bob Haney, writer of both B&B and the Eclipso feature, a chance to give his strange B-level (make that C-level) star a shared limelight with an A-lister.

It featured Batman spanking an heiress (not the Caped Crusader’s primary mode of discipline, but, hey, it was the Sixties).

And finally, it added Eclipso to the roster of Batman’s rogues’ gallery—albeit briefly. While this B&B issue wasn’t enough to sustain Eclipso’s regular series for much longer, kids buying Batman merchandise from coloring books to frame tray puzzles would find a rather benign Eclipso battling the Masked Manhunter and his youthful ally, Robin, the Boy Wonder. Many fans who are familiar with Eclipso’s comic-book legacy are unaware of his appearances in Batman merchandising.

Some of those fans became comics professionals and, years later, began working the kinks out of the character, making Eclipso more formidable and believable. Eclipso returned in the Seventies to battle the Justice League and the Metal Men, then came back in the Eighties for a metaphysical tussle with the Phantom Stranger. I had gotten over my fear of Eclipso in 1992 when, as a DC Comics editor, I codeveloped a reimagining of the villain in the crossover Eclipso: The Darkness Within. (On its first issue cover, we added a glued “black” plastic diamond over Eclipso’s sinisterly squinting eye. This gimmick was clever

SUPERMAN AND THE GIANT CYCLOPS A Whacked-Out Wax Exhibit

Part of growing up is the crushing discovery that sometimes, advertisements stretch the truth. Other times, they flat-out lie.

You’d think that Sixties comic books, which paraded their wholesomeness by plastering the Mompleasing Comics Code Authority seal of approval on their covers, would be immune to such swindles.

But amid their four-color pages existed the most shameless examples of advertising’s sliding scale of honesty, from the X-Ray Specs that provided no voyeuristic peek through fabric whatsoever to the Sea Monkeys that could not, in fact, be trained as pets.

Those charlatans! How dare they deceive children??

The mightiest of super-heroes, Superman himself, exposed his vulnerability to false advertising in 1964 when he loaned his very name and image to one of the Sixties’ greatest let-downs: the “Superman and the Giant Cyclops” attraction at the World’s Fair.

The bar of anticipation was hoisted to stratospheric highs by the fair itself, an astonishing Space Age wonderland that was 1964’s second biggest American invasion (after the Beatles). Engulfing 650

LEFT: Eclipso, Bat-villain, as seen in a frame tray puzzle, coloring book (back cover shown), and a card from a Batman card game, all from 1966.

TM & © DC Comics.

The DC Comics house ad of 1964, promising a wax museum thrill.

Superman TM & © DC Comics.

at the time but later hated when collectors realized the diamond made it tough to bag and board the issue without damaging the comic in front of it.) And since then Eclipso, like comic books themselves, has gotten darker and meaner.

But for those of us who lived during the Camp Age, we’ll always think of Eclipso as the moon-faced menace who’d duck when you’d turn on your front porch light.

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The Unisphere dominates this 1962 poster produced by U.S. Steel to promote the fair. © 1962 U.S. Steel.

Marvel’s Millie the Model #124 and Dell’s The Flintstones at the New York World’s Fair were among the 1964 comic books taking place at the fair.

Millie the Model © Marvel Characters, Inc. Flintstones © Hanna-Barbera Productions.

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acres in Flushing, Queens, New York, and attracting over 51 million visitors from across the globe during its two-year run, the World’s Fair promised “Peace through understanding,” a motto exemplified by the Unisphere, the fair’s iconic steel replica of Earth that towered twelve stories tall. Comic books caught fair fever, including Marvel’s Millie the Model, who set her hairsprayed hopes on becoming Miss World’s Fair. The hype even reached the Stone Age, with the Flintstones yabba-dabba-doing the Time Warp to drop in for a World’s Fair visit.

“Come to the World’s Fair!” screamed a full-page DC Comics house ad of 1964, its flashy Ira Schnapp calligraphy beaconing every comics-reading kid from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, to Walter’s International Wax Museum exhibit. Leaping from the

pages of a Mort Weisinger-edited Superman comic was the Man of Steel, punching Cyclops in the jaw in an exhilarating illustration by Superman artist supreme Curt Swan and inker Sheldon Moldoff. The ad included a coupon allowing children under twelve years of age to see this sensation for the discounted price of forty cents.

The coupon specified that children must be accompanied by an adult. Those adults were called upon to calm their kiddies’ crying jags after having their little hearts broken by what could very well be the cheesiest wax exhibit ever.

Cyclops wasn’t the brutish behemoth as rendered by Swan and Moldoff. He was instead a hirsute, near-naked weirdo whose swollen nipples stared at you and took your eyes off his own signature orb. Superman bore no resemblance to Swan’s classic version, nor TV Superman George Reeves, and was in desperate need of a shave. A conspicuous web of wires dangled Superman from the ceiling, creating the illusion of flight only for the most naïve or nearsighted fairgoer. The only thrill on display here was provided by the damsel in distress, a wax beauty whose slightly exposed slip attracted ogles from any boy frustrated by the dashed dreams of X-Ray Specs.

“Superman and the Giant Cyclops” might have wowed them between pig races and Tilt-a-Whirl rides at the County Fair, but at the World’s Fair, you expected a better show.

Well, at least you got a cool Curt Swan Superman vs. Cyclops pin-up for your bedroom.

The horror!

The World’s Fair’s Superman and the Giant Cyclops wax exhibit, revealed!

Photos courtesy of Bob Burns. Superman TM & © DC Comics.

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Nemesis (detail from the cover of Adventures into the Unknown #154) and Magicman (detail from the cover of Forbidden Worlds #126).

Art by Kurt Schaffenberger.

MAGICMAN AND NEMESIS

The Siegfried and Roy of the Camp Age

TM & © Roger Broughton.

Magicman’s daddy, Cagliostro.

Chic Stone’s Nemesis, on the cover of Adventures into the Unknown #167.

TM & © Roger Broughton.

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The Sixties’ race to overpopulate comic-book racks with super-heroes created more wrong turns than a drunken taxi driver. Among them: the Siegfried and Roy of the Camp Age, Magicman and Nemesis.

They were the product of American Comics Group (ACG), known for its long-running supernatural anthologies Adventures into the Unknown, which began in 1948, and Forbidden Worlds, which began in 1951 and gave birth to the cult favorite Herbie. In the mid-Sixties, their editor, Richard A. Hughes, acquiesced to reader and market demands and created the super-heroes Magicman, who took over Forbidden Worlds with issue #125 (Jan.–Feb. 1965),

and Nemesis, the cover-featured star of Adventures into the Unknown beginning with issue #154 (Feb. 1965). Conceptually, both characters were a better fit for their anthologies than, say, Martian Manhunter or Dial H for Hero were for DC’s House of Mystery.

Magicman and Nemesis were rooted in the occult, both had creepy origins…

…and both had the most embarrassing costumes this side of Captain Nice. As comics historian Don Thompson wrote in his essay “OK, Axis, Here We Come” in the 1970 book All in Color for a Dime, Magicman and Nemesis were “a couple of limpwristed super-heroes” who were “costumed as if for ballet.”

Magicman’s bare arms, peek-a-boo chest, and pixie boots so undermined his masculinity that they made his turban look like a beauty shop towel wrap. And the barelegged Nemesis was emasculated by striped briefs and a hood that looked better suited for a Forties screen diva. Soft costume colors (lime for Magicman, powder blue for Nemesis) didn’t help their virility, either.

They were nicely drawn, however, particularly on their covers, most of which were done by German immigrant Kurt Schaffenberger, a goat herderturned-comic artist who dazzled Golden Age readers with his work on Fawcett Comics’ Captain Marvel

Take this League and lump it!

LEFT: Justice League of America #42.

RIGHT: At story’s end, Metamorpho becomes a stand-by member.

TM & © DC Comics.

in the second (#68). B&B #68 stands as one of the pinnacles of the High Camp movement, exploiting Batmania with its inclusion of three nefarious fiends from Batman’s rogues’ gallery—the Joker, the Penguin, and the Riddler—and borrowing a character from the House of Ideas by transforming Batman into Bat-Hulk. That year, Metamorpho was also among the DC characters drawn by Wally Wood in Topps’ Comic Book Foldees funny-picture collectible cards.

Metamorpho was also immortalized in song.

Yes, song. You could only imagine what was on the minds of the studio musicians who recorded the twangy beach/guitar tune “Metamorpho (the Element Man)” in 1966, with lyrics like, “This is the story of the Element Man”/“Starts out in old Egypt land,” and a chorus that double-chanted the hero’s name (hey, a gig’s a gig!). The song, released by Tifton Records along with a narrated Metamorpho adventure, was re-released by Power Records in the Seventies and can be heard on the Internet (word of warning: It’s catchy and kooky, but you won’t be able to get it out of your head for days). Also, in the world of Tifton Records, Metamorpho said “Yes” to the Justice

League, as he was one of the heroes in its Justice League tune in the LP Songs and Stories About the Justice League of America.

And then there was the Metamorpho TV cartoon.

Actually, there wasn’t the Metamorpho TV cartoon. Or was there?

With the 1966 spurt of Meta-merchandising, the Element Man was one of a handful of DC heroes gobbled up for development for television animation—and judging from the wackiness leaping from each vibrant page of DC’s Metamorpho comic, the character was perfect for the cartoon medium, especially with color television then becoming commonplace. A DC house ad touted Metamorpho as one of several DC stars coming to TV in the Fall of 1966. That didn’t happen, but several years later, in a 1970 Brave & Bold letters column, Bob Haney wrote that Metamorpho’s origin was produced as an animated pilot, “an adventure that was put on film for a TV series, but shelved when some super-heroes went out of style on the tot tube.” Many years later, he shared a similar story in an interview. Metamaniacs like yours truly and Mark Waid searched for physical evidence of the Metamorpho cartoon’s existence—even model sheets— but our quests were fruitless.

In the 2012 book Lou Scheimer: Creating the Filmation Generation by Lou Scheimer with Andy Mangels, the TV animation producer of the Camp Age’s DC super-hero cartoons remarked, “I don’t think we ever did [produce a Metamorpho pilot],” explaining, “Pilots were very expensive, and the chances were that maybe you couldn’t sell it, and then what were you going to do with the damn thing?”

While it’s easy to assume that Haney—who freelanced as a writer for Filmation’s DC cartoons—was referring to a Filmation Metamorpho pilot, it might have been produced by a different party, if one is to

Metamerchandise!

LEFT: Singalong with Rex. RIGHT: Wally Wood’s version of the Element Man, on a Comic Book Foldee.

TM & © DC Comics.

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THE OTHER WOMAN IN METAMORPHO’S LIFE An Interview with Ramona Fradon

Ramona Fradon entered the comic-book industry in the Fifties, at a time when few women worked in the business, drawing the Aquaman feature in Adventure Comics for an unbroken run of ten years. After a hiatus she returned to co-create Metamorpho with Bob Haney, designing the Element Man’s unique (and bizarre) appearance and his memorable supporting cast. In the years since, Ramona has dazzled readers as one of the few cartoonists to do justice to Jack Cole’s Pliable Pretzel, Plastic Man, and earned a new generation of fans as the artist of DC Comics’ Super Friends title.

This extremely versatile illustrator, a 2006 Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame inductee, has also drawn comic strips (following creator Dale Messick on Brenda Starr for an impressive fifteenyear stint) and children’s books.

But to Camp Agers, Ramona Fradon is the Metamorpho artist.

hero series and he thought my drawing would be just right for the character he had in mind.

My first inclination was to say no, but when he described the goofy plotline I was intrigued and agreed to design the characters and do the first four episodes to get the series launched.

What was it about the character that you found as an incentive to return to comics?

I love to exaggerate, and Bob’s characters were wonderfully exaggerated popular stereotypes that I thought I could have fun with. It’s no secret that I don’t enjoy drawing super-heroes, and it’s because they are so straight and so serious and so lacking in identity except for their individual powers and the costumes they wear. In Metamorpho, there was a humorously dysfunctional set of characters that interacted in ridiculous and improbable ways.

After a long run on Aquaman, you’d dropped out of comics for a few years before launching Metamorpho in 1964. What were you doing during that?

I spent my time raising my little girl and working intermittently on a couple of children’s books. I actually revised and finished one recently and it’s selling on Amazon. It’s called The Dinosaur That Got Tired of Being Extinct.

In designing Metamorpho, did you go through variations for his appearance, or did you have a clear vision of what he should look like from the get-go?

I muddled around with capes and masks and other conventional super-hero costumes, but Metamorpho wasn’t conventional and none of them suited him. I finally decided that, since his body was always changing into different forms, clothing would get in his way, so I put him in shorts with the necessary insignia and left it at that.

How did George Kashdan recruit you back to DC to do Metamorpho?

George called me one day and said he had an idea for a super-

But he did briefly wear a costume in his third appearance (Metamorpho #1)…

If I remember correctly, for awhile he dressed up as a normal person

Interview conducted in September 2015.

when he and Sapphire went out, and maybe he was at a costume ball in that one story.

He and Sapphire really got around.

Did you also choose his body’s colors?

No. Metamorpho is not only colorful, he’s textured. What elements are the four quadrants of his body supposed to represent?

Well, they are supposed to represent the four elements, earth, fire, air, and water, but I have to admit they look more like wood, metal, maybe water, and some horrible form of acne on his upper left side.

Where on Earth did you get the inspiration for Simon Stagg’s hairstyle?

I guess I was thinking of a mixture of old pictures of Southern

Ramona Fradon.

An undated recreation of B&B #57’s cover, autographed by artist Ramona Fradon.

Courtesy of Heritage.

TM & © DC Comics.

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LEFT: Production proof of original art for Spyman #1’s cover. Art by George Tuska; the Spyman hand cutaway was drawn by Jim Steranko.

RIGHT: The cancellation of Thrill-O-Rama deprived us of this one!

Unpublished Jack Sparling cover art to issue #4.

Courtesy of Heritage. © the respective copyright holder.

headquarters. Steranko set the pace for the series with his first-issue script, penciled by George Tuska.

Two more issues of Spyman followed. In issue #2, written by Steranko and illustrated by Dick Ayers, Spyman and his hand struggled against the Evil Eye Society, fronted by a Mysterio-looking bad guy who fired blasts from his giant-eyeball head. Issue #3, written by Otto Binder and drawn by Bill Draut, featured Spyman’s conflict with a super-computer called the Id Machine. Of all of the Harvey Thriller superhero comics, Spyman was the standout, not only for its significance as being Steranko’s first comic-book project but also for its quality in presentation (despite its round-robin art teams).

Conversely, Spyman’s back-ups were a random selection of whatever Joe Simon had to shove into the book: issue #1’s amateurish secret agent riff “Eye Spy (Agent #00 1/4) and His Gal Friday Jane Blond (Operative #38-22-36),” issue #2’s fear-the-future feature “Robolink,” and issue #3’s rock-n-roll superhero spoof “Campy Champ” (see Chapter 5). As with Jigsaw’s “Big Hero Adventures” header, Spyman’s logo was dressed with the title “Top Secret Adventures,” the series’ original title.

PIRANA There seems to be an unwritten law requiring every comic-book universe to have its token oceanic superhero, not surprising for a world that’s predominantly 28

water. For Harvey, it was Pirana (an “accepted South America spelling” of “piranha,” we’re told in a footnote of the hero’s first adventure, although one wonders if Joe didn’t pull that out of the dictionary to explain away the logo designer’s spelling error).

Pirana was the headliner of the revived Thrill-ORama, demoting its previous star, “The Man in Black Called Fate,” to back-up status beginning with issue #2 (Sept. 1966).

There are many dangers lurking in the deep, and Joe Simon attempted to portray Pirana as one of them, nicknaming him “the deadliest creature in all the world.” If in your vocabulary “deadly” means “unoriginal Aquaman ripoff,” then Pirana lives up to that claim. For those less charitable, the Otto Binderwritten/Jack Sparling-drawn Pirana has little going for it. A bland costume (“shark-colored” green, with jet-powered flippers) and bland artwork gave it little reason to stand out amid its sea of competitors.

Pirana is actually Edward Yates, an oceanographer who becomes a water-breather after stepping onto a live electrical wire at the bottom of the sea.

With his pet barracudas Bara and Cuda swimming alongside him, Pirana’s bargain-basement arch-foe is Brainstorm (a.k.a. Generalissimo Brainstorm), a Humpty Dumpty-shaped mastermind whose jumbo cranium sizzles “Snap! Crackle! Pop!” (Did Kellogg’s ever notice this encroachment upon its Rice Krispies property?) Brainstorm’s lackeys are the Human Anchor, Murderina Mermaid, and Killer Porpoise.

Pirana appeared in two issues of Thrill-O-Rama, being deep-sixed with issue #3, although a fourth

Action Boy in his 1st issue box.

Action Boy TM & © Captain Action Enterprises, LLC.

RIGHT: House ad in Captain Action #2 announcing Dr. Evil’s appearance in the next issue. Art by Gil Kane.

Captain Action and Dr. Evil TM & © Captain Action Enterprises, LLC.

Krellik’s up to no good on this original art page to page 2 of DC’s Captain Action #2.

Art by Wood, story by Shooter.

Courtesy of Heritage.

Captain Action TM & © Captain Action Enterprises, LLC.

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Arno, who, along with his duplicitous colleague Krellik, unearthed ancient coins imbued with the abilities of the gods of myth. The altruistic Arno wields the tokens as the superhero Captain Action, while Krellik, empowered by the coin of the god of evil, Chernobog (Loki), unleashes a crime spree, usurping Arno’s Captain Action identity as well as many of the coins. Wally Wood was tapped by Weisinger to launch the series. Since Shooter at the time drew breakdowns instead of typing scripts, on Captain Action #1’s splash page Wood credited himself as artist plus “Story by Jim Shooter” (at this time, the majority of DC’s comics were published uncredited). The writer told me in 1998, “It was the first time I got a credit. Wally considered me an artist, because I did layouts.”

DC had contracted with Ideal for a five-issue run, the company’s first toy tie-in. Longtime Green Lantern artist Gil Kane stepped in as penciler with issue #2, with Shooter scripting and Wood remaining on as inker. This issue concluded the Krellik storyline.

By the time the third issue of the bimonthly series went into production in late 1968, Weisinger passed off Captain Action to editor Julius Schwartz.

Schwartz offered Gil Kane the opportunity to write as well as draw Captain Action, which Gil relished.

Kane brought Ideal Toys’ Dr. Evil into comics with issues #3 and 4. Issue #5 pitted Captain Action and

Action Boy against a persuasive demagogue. Despite dynamic storytelling and gorgeous artwork, DC’s Captain Action premiered too late to capitalize upon the toy line’s momentum and was not renewed. Kane confessed to me in 1998, “It broke my heart when it ended cold.”

From time to time, the good Captain seemed primed for a comeback, including Lightning Comics’ A.C.T.I.O.N. Force #1 in 1987 and a Captain Action #0

ashcan edition in 1995. Finally, in 1998, Joe Ahearn, who thirty years earlier had been one of those kids playing with Ideal’s Captain Action, convinced toy manufacturer Playing Mantis to release a new line of Captain Action super-hero figures, including additions to original line such as the Green Hornet’s ally Kato and villain costumes for Dr. Evil. In the years since, Captain Action’s fate has been charted by Ahearn and his business partner Ed Catto. Their Captain Action Enterprises venture has kept the hero in the public eye through additional figure and costume releases (including an impressive array of Marvel uniforms), action figures of various sizes, comic books, novels, T-shirts, and other merchandise.

Of the many super-heroes introduced during the Camp Age, Captain Action is one of the few who has proved durable. Looks like his boast on the cover of his first DC issue was right: This really is a job for Captain Action!

Portions of this essay appeared in The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide #45 and appear here in edited form.

journey to America, joins Dracula as his sidekick, Fleeta (as in fledermaus).

Four weeks after the debut of Dracula, on June 30, 1966, Werewolf #1 premiered, with a December 1966 cover date. Its cover claimed that Werewolf was “The Only Super Hero… Super Spy in the World.”

That wasn’t quite true—competitor Harvey Comics’ Spyman #1 hit the stands a week earlier, Marvel’s non-powered Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. had already been mixing super-heroics with espionage for over a year in the pages of Strange Tales, and Charlton’s ironfisted Sarge Steel had been around since 1964—but Dell did offer a fresh spin on a trend that was beginning to wear thin. Issue #1 begins with U.S. Air Force pilot Wiley Wolf, on a mission, crash landing in “the forbidding wastes of the Arctic Circle.”

He survives the crash but awakens with amnesia, and tends to a wolf that was injured by his plane’s wreckage. A bond forms between man and beast, and for months, Wiley, still without his memory, lives among the wolves: “For a while I thought I was a wolf.

Although I knew I was different, I started to think like them merely to survive.” Here, writer Arneson borrows more from Tarzan than The Wolf Man, the result being a cold, detached person with a wolf (named Thor) as his friend and ally. Wiley Wolf’s memory returns and he’s rescued from the frigid tundra. With the world believing that Wiley had perished in his crash, the Feds recruit him to Top Priority Unit One of Central Intelligence, outfitting him to be the super-spy codenamed Werewolf. He’s “implant[ed] with physiognomical disguise suggestions,” a preposterous ability to train his face muscles to replicate the personal characteristics of others, making him a master of disguise. Werewolf is also outfitted in a pitch-black jumpsuit with a full facial hood which makes him bulletproof and able to survive underwater. Other than having Thor the wolf as his partner, there’s little in Werewolf to tie it in to Dell’s other monster-hero books (while a Frankenstein cameo in Dracula #4 tied their two books together), and thus these lone wolves were left to their own devices to bust up Commies and no-goodniks for the rest of Werewolf’s threeissue run.

My defense of Dell’s monster-heroes may seem half-hearted from these series’ descriptions, as they illustrate the obvious parallels between their charac-

ters and other material. Of the three, Werewolf is the weakest, one of many dime-a-dozen super-spies of the Sixties.

But the concepts behind Frankenstein and Dracula were just darn clever. Crimefighting monsters?

Although this theme has been revisited in the years since, Dell’s Frankenstein and Dracula were revolutionary for the Camp Age. True, Dracula borrowed liberally from Batman, but then again, Dracula was one of the original inspirations for Batman, so both have taken their bites from the same neck. I will point out that in Dracula, the title character’s lab work with bats predates DC’s Man-Bat by roughly four years; Dracula’s lab scenes are uncannily prescient of Kirk

Fighting Frankies!

Original Tony Tallarico cover art to Frankenstein #3.

Courtesy of Heritage. © the respective copyright holder.

Boxing Bloodsucker!

The POW!er of Dracula. © the respective copyright holder.

39

PALISADES PARK

Superman’s Favorite Amusement Park The ink was barely dry on copies of Action Comics #1 back in 1938 before Superman’s corporate bosses discovered that the hero’s “S” also stood for “$.” While you never find super-salesmanship listed among Superman’s super-powers, the Metropolis Marvel has long doubled as the Madison Avenue Marvel, over the years hawking everything from bubblebath to peanut butter.

Outside of lending his name to his publishing home of National Periodical Publications (“Superman” top-lined DC Comics’ cover bullet for many years), no promotional campaign involving the Man of Steel was more visible during the Sixties than Supie’s Palisades Amusement Park ads appearing in DC titles. “Be my guest,” invited Superman in a compelling late-Sixties ad that caught my young eye. This wonderland was located in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, “½ mile south of the George Washington Bridge,” the ad explained. For those of us living in far-flung Anytown, U.S.A., we could only dream of accepting Superman’s kind offer.

Alan Brennert didn’t have to dream. The Emmywinning TV writer/producer (L.A. Law), comic-book

scribe (a handful of the best Batman stories—ever), and bestselling novelist (his books including Moloka'i), grew up near the park. “When I was a kid, circa 1960, I used to get my comic books at Pitkoff’s candy store on Palisades Avenue in Cliffside Park, New Jersey,” Brennert shared with me in January 2016. “About a mile down the street was Palisades Amusement Park, in whose giant saltwater pool I waded as a toddler and in which my Aunt Eleanor once laid down God knows how many quarters at a concession stand in order that I might win a giant stuffed dog I immediately named Ruff, after Dennis the Menace’s dog.

“When I started reading DC Comics, of course I saw the half-page ads in which Superman shilled for the park (even holding a not-to-scale replica of it aloft with one hand, my favorite of the ads). Having Superman ‘ballying’ for my neighborhood amusement park was both thrilling, and yet unsurprising, to me. After all, Palisades was a great park—why shouldn’t Superman be endorsing it? It wasn’t until years later, when I started to understand how advertising worked, that I began to wonder why a regional amusement park should be advertising in national publications (no pun intended). And still later I would hear from comics readers/writers like Mark Waid, who once told me

Alan Brennert’s tale of diver Toni Stopka, 2013’s Palisades Park. © Alan Brennert.

Superman invites DC Comics readers to visit Palisades Park.

TM & © DC Comics.

41

A HERO-A-GO-GO TOUR OF PALISADES AMUSEMENT PARK An Interview with Vince Gargiulo

Vince Gargiulo grew up in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, just fifteen blocks away from Palisades Amusement Park. Today he is the Executive Director of the Palisades Amusement Park Historical

Society and webmaster for its website, PalisadesPark.com. The park’s most renowned historian, Gargiulo has written two books and produced one documentary on the subject: Palisades Amusement Park: A Century of Fond Memories (Rutgers University Press, 1995), which was followed in 1998 by his PBS documentary based on the book, narrated

by Ken Burns; and Postcard History Series: Palisades Amusement Park (Arcadia Publishing, 2005). Vince has kindly shared with Hero-A-Go-Go photographs of Palisades Park’s comic-related attractions.

actor dressed as Superman ever appear at the park?

I don’t believe anyone ever appeared at Palisades as a Superman costumed character.

George Reeves did, however, make a personal appearance. I do not have an exact date as to when this occurred.

Were there marketing studies conducted to show how many attendees were drawn to the park from outside of the New York metro area by the ads published in comic books?

None that I am aware of. But based on published newspaper articles throughout the lifetime of the park, I was able to calculate that 33% of the visitors to Palisades were from New York.

The Batman Slide was built in the mid-Sixties. Do you know exactly when? I’m assuming it was in response to the over-

night success of TV’s Batman, which first aired in January 1966.

The first mention I found of the Batman Slide in news articles was from March 1966.

What Batman-isms were featured on the Batman Slide?

At the very top of the tower was a large cutout of the comicbook Batman. Below that was a sign that read “Batman Slide,” with a version of the Batman logo in the background. I do not believe they ever included Robin’s image anywhere on the attraction.

Was the Batman Slide still in operation when the park closed in 1971?

Yes, the Batman Slide was in operation right up until September 12, 1971. It was sold to Adventurers Inn in Queens, New York.

There was also a Batcave amusement there around the same time. What was it?

Vince Gargiulo.

LEFT: A revised edition of Gargiulo’s Palisades Amusement Park: A Century of Fond Memories, plus a DVD of its PBS special and other park-related collectibles, can be purchased at www.

PalisadesPark. com.

The Batman Slide and Batcave barrel attractions.

The Corbett Collection/www.

PalisadesPark.com.

Batman and Robin TM & © DC Comics.

Interview conducted in January 2016.

Since Superman was Palisades Park’s pitchman in DC Comics throughout the Sixties, did an 43

HOLY HOMOGENIZATION, BATMAN! Batman All Star Dairy Products

“Robin doesn’t have green legs!” chided the eightyear-old me in 1966 when I first saw the poster for Batman Slam Bang Vanilla (with Banana Marshmallow) Ice Cream. It was taped to the paneled wall above a jangling freezer in a neighborhood supermarket in my hometown of Concord, North Carolina.

I was with Mom and Dad and my baby brother John for a routine grocery stop, but this otherwise forgettable shopping outing became eternally etched into my memory because of that egregious coloring snafu. Any kid worth his weight in banana marshmallows could tell you that Robin’s legs were bare, and his costume was red, green, and yellow. Of course, at the time I didn’t understand that this marketing tool’s sherbet hues of lavender, green, orange, and white were designed to grab the eyes of kids like me and make us salivate for this dairy product promoted by the super-heroes we watched twice a week on TV. It did. It was around this time that I began a steady weight gain which, two years later, had me muffintopping the waistband of my “Husky” dungarees and had Mom patching their inner legs chafed threadbare by my waddling, dumpy thighs. It wasn’t until writing this essay that I realized that my childhood obesity was sparked by the fighting-trim Batman and Robin, but I was such a Dynamic Duo devotee that I’d follow the Caped Crusader anywhere—including the ice cream cooler.

My childhood body-image issues aside, what was cool about Batman’s stint as a dairy-product spokesman was that it brought the hero, his youthful ally, and even his atomic-battery-powered hot rod to

The garish eye-grabber that drove third-graders wild!

Batman and Robin TM & © DC Comics.

All Star © All Star Association.

my little town of 18,000! And I wasn’t alone— during the Camp Age, Batman and Robin All Star Dairy posters and products spread across communities in the Eastern and Central U.S. faster than the Joker’s laughing gas. “Batman” even drove his “Batmobile” in promotions and Christmas parades.

And the once-popular screen cowboy Hopalong Cassidy was all the poorer for it.

How did the Caped Crusader become the Masked Milkman?

The All Star Dairy Association—which is over a half-century old and still in business at this writing from its Lexington, Kentucky, headquarters—provides uniform packaging and promotional materials to small, regional dairies that join its network. From the mid-Fifties through the mid-Sixties, Hollywood’s Hopalong Cassidy was under contract with All Star as its celebrity face, his smiling visage printed onto milk bottles and ice cream cup lids. William Boyd, the actor made famous by his role as “Hoppy,” hopped from town to town making All Star-sponsored personal appearances at Boys Clubs and movie houses, encouraging kids to drink milk (who, in turn, encouraged their parents to buy milk).

Hoppy was asked to ride off into the sunset in late 1965 when All Star, anticipating the swelling tsunami of Batmania, licensed Batman and Robin

You won’t be smiling much longer, Hoppy!

William “Hopalong Cassidy” Boyd was All Star’s dairy pitchman— until Batmania hit!

Photo courtesy of Robert E. Burrage, Sr.

LEFT: From the author’s collection, a Batman ice cream carton.

Batman and Robin TM & © DC Comics.

All Star © All Star Association.

45

time for Barry Strauss to brush his teeth and go to sleep.”

It would be a big help.

A grateful parent,

Mrs. James S.

Chicago …to teenagers…

Dear Batman, You are so tall and handsome and brave and I would give anything to have a date with you just once.

Frankly, the last time I ever went out with someone who wore a mask was on Halloween six years ago.

Sincerely,

Marsha W.

Newark, N.J. …to comic-book readers: Dear Batman: Wow! What a story! What a cover! Batman no.

180 was the greatest, by far.

There are two things I liked best about this particular issue.

On the splash page, the Batman “insignia” was super-imposed over the colorful art, rather than being placed over a black background. This might seem like a nutty thing to point out, but it signified a change.

Batman got shot! It might seem morbid of me to thank you for this incident, but it seems unlikely that the Cowled Crusader would go through every single adventure without getting hurt. He had to get shot sometime, and this was as good a time as any.

Sincerely,

Mark P.

St. Louis, Missouri

A brisk but deliriously engrossing read, Bill Adler’s Funniest Fan Letters to Batman is the ultimate feel-good book that harkens back to a simpler era in the not-yet-Dark Knight’s history.

SUPERMAN SIGNET BOOKS The Man of Steel had to shrug off being demoted to DC Comics’ No. 2 hero during Batmania, but on the cover to Signet Books’ little-known Superman paperback—in the same black-and-white reprint format as its Batman, Joker, and Penguin books—Supie is also shrugging off a lightning bolt. Each of the five stories reprinted in this hard-to-find edition are illustrated by Wayne Boring, but the art of THE Superman artist of Sixties, Curt Swan, graces its cover. Problem is,

Swan’s cover image—the flying Superman penciled

by Swan and inked by Stan Kaye for the cover of Superman Annual #2—has been retouched, probably traced, quite possibly by the same artist that hacked off the Caped Crusader’s legs on the Batman volume.

Still, this hard-to-find paperback—hyped on its back cover as “the first full-length book featuring the greatest adventures of America’s superhero”—is a fun sampler of Atomic Age Superman stories.

Superman (D2966)

Signet Books (May 1966) Reprints: “The Invulnerable Enemy” from Action Comics #226 (Mar. 1957) “Superman’s 3 Mistakes!” from Superman #105 (May 1956) “Titano the Super-Ape!” from Superman #127 (Feb. 1959) “The Menace of Cosmic Man!” from Action Comics #258 (Nov. 1959) “The Menace of Red-Green Kryptonite” from Action Comics #275 (Apr. 1961) 53

MARVEL SUPER-HEROES LANCER BOOKS Batmania, the sensation, might not have been possible without the birth of the Marvel Age which preceded it. The House of Ideas’ Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, et al. reinvigorated the masked men genre with a “new, groovy breed of”—as the New York Herald Tribune called Marvel’s mightiest—“Super Heroes with Super Problems,” characters that clicked with teens and college-age readers. Once the Batman fad hit, Marvel jumped on the paperback bandwagon by licensing some of its characters to Lancer Books for a series of six collected editions, with a strong marketing push toward universities. The back cover of the Fantastic Four edition used this quote culled from Michigan State News: “The campus craze that’s sweeping the nation: ‘Cool heroes… cool villains… cool plots… cool adventures… comic book reading is in!” Were the hallowed halls of higher learning not an impressive enough pedigree for culture lovers, the California Pelican called Marvel Comics “the Playboy of comicdom.”

Holy Hugh Hefner! While essentially in the same format as Signet’s Batman and Superman books, the six Marvel reprint paperbacks mostly featured a horizontal layout.

The Fantastic Four Collector’s Album (#72-111)

Lancer Books (1966) Reprints: “Captives of the Deadly Duo” from Fantastic Four #6 (Sept.

1962)

“[Who are the Fantastic Four?]” story/panel montage from Fantastic Four #1 (Nov. 1961) and Fantastic Four #11 (Feb. 1963) “The Impossible Man” from Fantastic Four #11 (Feb. 1963) “The Mad Menace of the Macabre Mole Man” from Fantastic Four #31 (Oct. 1964) 1-page pin-ups: Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Girl, the Thing, the Human Torch, Super-Skrull, the Molecule Man, and Hate Monger from Fantastic Four Annual #2 (1962)

Spider-Man Collector’s Album (#72-112)

Lancer Books (Apr. 1966) Reprints: “Duel with Daredevil” from Amazing Spider-Man #16 (Sept. 1964) “Who is This Amazing Teen-Ager? Here’s… the Origin of Spider-Man” story/panel montage from Amazing Fantasy #15 (Aug. 1962) and early issues of Amazing Spider-Man “The Menace of Mysterio!” from Amazing SpiderMan #13 (June 1964) 1-page pin-ups: “Guest Star Page” (Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, and the Hulk) and “Peter Parker as Spider-Man” from Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1 (1964)

The Incredible Hulk Collector’s Album (#72-124)

Lancer Books (1966) Reprints: Opening page from Tales to Astonish #60 (Oct. 1964) “Banished to Outer Space” from Incredible Hulk #3 (Sept. 1962) “The Ringmaster” from Incredible Hulk #3 (Sept.

1962) “[The Origin of the Hulk]” from Incredible Hulk #3 (Sept. 1962) “The Incredible Hulk” from Tales to Astonish #60 (Oct. 1964) “Captured at Last” from Tales to Astonish #61 (Nov. 1964) “Enter… the Chameleon” from Tales to Astonish #62 (Dec. 1964) “A Titan Rides the Train” from Tales to Astonish #63 (Jan. 1965) 1-page Hulk pin-up from Tales to Astonish #62 (Dec. 1964)

The Mighty Thor Collector’s Album (#72-125)

Lancer Books (1966) Reprints: “[The Mighty Thor Battles… the Lava Man]” from Journey into Mystery #97 (Oct. 1963) “Giants Walk the Earth!” from Journey into Mystery #104 (May 1964) Tales of Asgard in “[Home of the Mighty Norse 54

BLACKHAWK

The “Junk-Heap Heroes” Era

The JLA and LBJ are ready to put the Blackhawks out to pasture. From Blackhawk #228.

TM & © DC Comics.

60

Oh, the humanity! Blackhawk, the long-running series that was one of the Golden Age’s bestsellers, sprung a slow leak in the Silver Age that finally sputtered into an ignominious Camp Age detour.

The Blackhawks, the leather-clad, international flying squadron of World War II freedom fighters under the leadership of the chisel-featured he-man known as Blackhawk, first took to the air in Quality Comics’ Military Comics #1 (Aug. 1941). Soon thereafter, America’s involvement in the war helped soar the feature and its solo spin-off title Blackhawk (which launched with issue #9, continuing the numbering of Uncle Sam Quarterly) to the top of the sales charts. During its heyday, Blackhawk commanded some of the best talent of the era, from the team who created the series—Chuck Cuidera, Bob Powell, and Will Eisner—to a host of others including the remarkable Reed Crandall, William Woolfolk, Manly Wade Wellman, Bill Ward, Paul Gustavson, and the artist who would draw for series for many years, Dick Dillin. Known for their rallying cry of “Hawk-a-a-a!” and for their aerial-battle crooning, the Blackhawks were popular enough to become multimedia stars, first in a short-lived 1950 radio series with Michael Fitzmaurice as Blackhawk, followed by a 1952 fifteenchapter movie serial starring the dashing Kirk Alyn, previously known to comics fans as the Man of Steel in two Superman serials.

Despite those successes, Blackhawk seemed out of its element in the postwar world. The team tangled with Communists, mummies, and enemies with wild weapons (such as sky sleds, a flying cannon, and flying tanks). Still, the series plodded on, published monthly, shifting from Quality Comics to DC Comics when the latter licensed (and later purchased) the title beginning with issue #108 (Jan. 1957). Then Blackhawk really started to get weird.

Under editor Jack Schiff, the Blackhawks were sort of like the Challengers of the Unknown, fighting monsters, genies, giants, and mutant insects—stuff right out of sci-fi movies of the day. The Blackhawks also encountered no end of costumed super-villains during a time when such menaces weren’t in vogue, from returning enemy Killer Shark to oddballs like Mr. Beam, the Eel, King Condor, the Chameleon, Molecule Man, Split-Man, and Mr. Quick-Change.

(Schiff even trotted out prototypes for future Batman villains: Blackhawk #117 [Oct. 1957] featured a Mr. Freeze, over a year before the Bat-rogue who would eventually take that name—Mr. Zero—first appeared in Batman #121. Two years later, Blackhawk #141 [Oct. 1959] introduced a Cat-Man, a villain not unlike the one who would first plague Batman and Robin in late 1962’s Detective Comics #311.) Editors changed, writers changed, and costumes changed, with the team getting red-and-green togs beginning in Blackhawk #197 (June 1964). By the time the flying aces were ready for the junk heap, George Kashdan was Blackhawk’s editor, with France Herron scripting for the durable Dillin/Cuidera team. They were desperately trying to help this book find its voice, with Kashdan himself scripting a back-up about Blackhawk’s WWII glory days, but nothing seemed to click.

Enter Bob Haney, the writer who feared no challenge. And under editor Kashdan, Haney ushered in “The New Blackhawk Era!” commencing with Blackhawk #228 (Jan. 1967), abetted by the art team that had been plugging away for what seemed like forever, Dillin and Cuidera.

Its cover is legend among Justice League collectors, as it features the JLA’s Superman, Batman, the Flash, and Green Lantern, drawn for the first time

by Dick Dillin, the illustrator who would soon replace Justice League of America’s Mike Sekowsky and become that book’s artist in residence for over a decade.

On Blackhawk #228’s splash page, Haney jumpstarts this new era by whisking readers to the White House, where the JLA’s Big Four confer with the President of the United States (only seen over the shoulder but clearly Lyndon B. Johnson). Haney’s caption warns us of a “grim, momentous meeting,” where the Caped Crusader spells it out to the Chief Executive:

“…It’s a fact, sir—the Blackhawks are washed-up has-beens, out of date antiques, a danger to national security! To put it bluntly… they just don’t swing!”

AQUAMANIA

“The Death of Aquaman” (he got better) in Aquaman #30 was one of the Camp Age’s shockers!

The King of the Sea and TV’s Big Splash

TM & © DC Comics.

Really, is there a super-hero more lampooned—more harpooned—than the Rodney Dangerfield of the Justice League, Aquaman? No respect, no respect at all.

Go ahead. Laugh at him. Get it out of your system.

(You’d better, or you’ll have to answer to Jason Momoa.)

We weren’t laughing at Aquaman during the Sixties. Back then, DC Comics’ Atlantean superhero was the “KING of the SEA and TV” (his series’ tagline), transcending his bimonthly comic book to star in an animated cartoon show and a wave of merchandise from a Big Little Book to a jigsaw puzzle.

The unfortunate byproduct of this Aquamania was that the Sea King’s increased profile during the Sixties helped him dive into a role on Super Friends in the Seventies. Sure, that sounds like a good gig, but on Super Friends, Aquaman’s water-based powers seemed limiting when juxtaposed against the high-flying Superman and Wonder Woman, or the Batmobile-ing Dynamic Duo… which thereby opened the floodgate of Aquaman jokes that haven’t seemed to ebb, lo, these decades later.

But let’s forget all of that and dip back into the Camp Age to relive Aquaman’s crowning moment.

A decade before Jaws soiled our swimtrunks and scared us out of the ocean, kids thought that the Seven Seas were cool! We were weaned on reruns of Sea Hunt, a syndicated “action” show whose pacing rivaled a slow faucet drip (but we still had attention spans back then, so we didn’t know any better). We flipped over Flipper, Frankie and Annette movies, Surfside Six, Sea Devils, Sub-Mariner, G.I. Joe’s frogman uniform, the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, the Ventures, View-Master’s Wonders of the Deep, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. We were

so wet behind the ears that we didn’t even realize that Jacques Cousteau was tricking us into watching documentaries.

Swimming alongside these undersea properties was DC Comics’ own Aquaman, one of the publisher’s more steadfast super-heroes despite his secondstring reputation. He premiered in 1941 and managed to stay in print—as a back-up feature in anthology books like Adventure Comics—long after most other long-underwear types fell out of fashion. By the early Sixties, Aquaman had found his way into the original line-up of the Justice League of America as well as his own bimonthly series, a reliable B-list book from the editorial desk of Jack Schiff and soon, George Kashdan. Originally, the Aquaman title suffered from DC’s Sea Devils and TV tie-ins Sea Hunt and Flipper were among the waterlogged comics of the Sixties.

Sea Devils TM & © DC Comics. Sea Hunt © United Artists Television. Flipper © Ivan Tors Films, Inc. and MGM.

63

B’WANA BEAST

The Jungle Master DC Comics’ resident mad-scientist writer, Bob Haney, combined Tarzan and Batman (and the Phantom, too) into “The Jungle Master” known as B’Wana Beast, an offbeat super-hero that began his twoissue Camp Age run in Showcase #66 (Jan.–Feb. 1967), hitting the stands on November 22, 1966, just under three months after the premiere of NBC-TV’s new Tarzan series starring Ron Ely. Joining Haney were artist Mike Sekowsky, inker George Roussos, and editor George Kashdan.

Under B’Wana Beast’s pelt-masked helmet was Mike Maxwell, a millionaire’s aimless heir who follows his college buddy, Rupert Kenboya, the son of an African tribal leader, back to “Ken’s” homeland of Zambesi to become a ranger on its game preserve.

Mike and Rupert’s plane crashes atop Mount Kilimanjaro, where an injured Maxwell is nursed with mineral water from its inner caves. Luckily for originseeking readers, that water possesses mystical properties, and Mike is transformed into a human powerhouse! This occurrence seems to be preordained, with a gorilla named Djuba being the “wizard Shazam” that guides Maxwell on his heroic journey, crowning him with a colorful headdress which enables Mike—now B’Wana Beast—to telepathically communicate with animals (imagine the fun Haney would have had scripting an Aquaman/B’Wana Beast Brave and Bold team-up). B’Wana Beast’s weirdest super-power is his helmet’s ability to merge two jungle beasts into one, as he does in the premiere installment by blending a charging rhino and buffalo into—oh, I don’t know, let’s call it a rhinalo—a leviathan massive enough to trample a dinosaur-shaped tank operated by the jungle super-villain “He Who Never Dies.” And thus B’Wana Beast, whose “very name invokes terror,” protects the jungle under the

veil of a Phantomesque mystique which Ken, the police commissioner of his people’s burgeoning government, loyally guards.

The Batman influence is obvious on Showcase #66’s cover (where Sekowsky is inked by Batman artist Joe Giella), as the hero punches notyet-ally Djuba with an uppercut—all that’s missing is a giant POW! sound effect. Its jungle setting aside, B’Wana Beast borrows from Tarzan’s playbook with his yell “Kiiiiiuuuuuuueeeeee!” which, when you read it aloud, sounds like a hog call.

Haney was famous for his well-intentioned attempts at relevance that were later regarded as comical due to their slightly dated vocabularies. With B’Wana Beast, Haney’s timing was way off: His portrayal of African tribal customs marched out of step with the then-emerging Civil Rights Movement, most infamously in one panel where Rupert Kenboya disparages his father by joking to Maxwell, “Sure, pal—he’s loaded! He’s got more leopard claws than anybody in Africa…!” The hero’s name (“bwana” means “boss” or “master”) also harkened back to an era of black-and-white jungle movies where the white man lorded over people of color. Haney didn’t intend his feature to be offensive (after all, this was the era of Wonder Woman’s Asian arch-foe, Egg Fu), but later regarded B’Wana Beast as one of his failures. There’s a legend in comicdom that a planned third Showcase tryout issue for B’Wana Beast was scrapped after artist Mike Sekowsky walked away, incensed by the script’s racism.

In our contemporary society, political correctness would never have allowed the creation of a character such as B’Wana Beast, so you might assume that the Jungle Master has been permanently banished to limbo. Think again. While B’Wana Beast did take a long vacation after his second Showcase issue, the Jungle Master would eventually return in a handful of appearances, most notably in writer Grant Morrison’s Animal Man and as a Batman ally on the Cartoon Network’s Batman: The Brave and the Bold. There have been B’Wana Beast action figures, and every once in a while you might spot a body-sculpted cosplayer parading through comic-cons dressed as the hero. Bob Haney would be surprised.

Batman of the Jungle— B’Wana Beast’s POW!erful premiere in Showcase #66.

TM & © DC Comics.

LEFT: When Rhino met Buffalo— the Jungle Master’s composite creature. From Showcase #66.

TM & © DC Comics.

67

Chapter 2

CAMPTOWN REVIVALS SPLIT!

eek!

Detail from M.F. Enterprises’ Captain Marvel #1. (C) the respective copyright holder.

UNSUCCESSFUL COMEBACKS SUPER COMICS

Israel Waldman’s Unauthorized Comic Book “Revivals” The Fifties were a bad time for the comic-book business. The boom of World War II and the Forties had faded, the new innovation of television was siphoning readers, and the entire industry found itself under siege “thanks” to a fussy psychologist who blamed the comic books for juvenile delinquency. Golden Age startups like Avon, Fiction House, and Fox closed shop, leaving behind a ton of inventory.

Then came the Silver Age, where reboots (the Flash, Green Lantern) and upstarts (Martian Manhunter) trickled into print in the late Fifties. Soon, the business was booming again, opening a door for one of comics’ most inglorious opportunists.

Publisher Israel Waldman gobbled up artwork from those shuttered comics houses and started publishing random issues of series reprinting material from the Golden Age of Comics. Beginning in 1958, his immodestly named I.W. Enterprises cranked out a barrage of irregularly released comic books in every imaginable genre, dusting off former stars like Sheena (Queen of the Jungle), Ka’a’nga (Jungle King),

Torchy, and Phantom Lady, and also-rans like SuperBrat, Apache, Kat Karson, and Man O’Mars. I.W. avoided cover dates, a gimmick to keep its books on display longer. Most kids who stumbled across these titles had no clue that they were reading reprints.

I.W.’s production costs were minimal, with an occasional new cover being the only fresh material commissioned. And thus, Israel Waldman became the Big Lots of comic books, offering remaindered product to consumers.

As the Camp Age emerged in the mid-Sixties, Waldman renamed his funnybook line Super Comics, ramping up his super-hero output by reissuing more golden oldies. Here’s where a trio of once-famous super-heroes got another moment in the spotlight once Waldman repackaged issues of their magazines from Quality Comics: Plastic Man, the Spirit, and Doll Man.

Super Comics’ Plastic Man—tagged “The Flexible Man with the Power of Steel!”—ran for three issues, starting with #11 (1963), under an uncredited cover possibly drawn by Jack Abel and Sol Brodsky.

It reprinted the contents of Quality’s Plastic Man #13 (Mar. 1949): two Plas stories by the character’s creator, Jack Cole (“Gazelle Van Gander” and “Say It Ain’t So, Plas!”), plus a Woozy Winks tale. Super’s next Plas issue was numbered #16 (1964), with a cover by Gray Morrow. It reprinted Quality’s Plastic Man #21 (Jan. 1950), another issue with two Plas tales (“Kra Vashnu” and “Where is Amorpho?”) and a Woozy short. Lastly, Super published Plastic Man #18 Three of Super Comics’ unauthorized reprints: Plastic Man #11, Spirit #11, and Doll Man #17.

Plastic Man and Doll Man TM & © DC Comics. The Spirit TM & © Will Eisner Studios Inc.

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THE SHADOW

This moody Paul Reinman cover clouded readers’ minds into expecting this scene inside the comic.

The most ludicrous of the Silver Age Superman’s super-powers was super-ventriloquism. But during the Camp Age, the Metropolis Marvel wasn’t comics’ only Edgar Bergen impersonator. Lamont Cranston, a.k.a. the Shadow, was another super-ventriloquist!

If you’re scratching your head trying to recall the episode of The Ed Sullivan Show featuring the comedy stylings of Lamont Cranston and his dummy, Shrevy, don’t. No such thing. But during the summer of 1964, Archie Comics (Radio Comics, Inc.), home to America’s favorite teenager and its own mighty crusaders, boarded the super-hero revival bandwagon by licensing that famous mystery man from the pulps and old-time radio and turning him into a superhero… and a super-spy. Two—count ’em, two— secret identities in one!

Older readers still haunted by the Shadow’s terrifying laugh on radio must have had high hopes when spotting the Paul Reinman-drawn cover of Archie’s The Shadow #1 (cover-dated Aug. 1964). In the left foreground prowls the Shadow, his brow furrowed, his stony face and prodigious honker concealed by his enveloping cloak and his sweeping fedora. He lies in wait for the “cruel, ruthless” descendant of Genghis Khan, Shiwan Khan, his mortal foe (since 1939) who’s approaching with minions in tow. While yellow is the dominant color on the cover, its figures are moodily monochromatic, and a blurb beneath the logo stirs the memory and stills the heart: “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men… only the Shadow knows!” At last—the Shadow had returned!

If DC Comics’ covers of the Sixties stretched the truth by sensationalizing scenes that barely existed inside the comics themselves, then Archie’s Shadow #1’s cover told such a flat-out lie that it would’ve spiked a polygraph off the charts. There was no transition from the classic, creepy Shadow shown on the cover to the modern, campy Shadow whose adven-

The Shadow TM & © Condé Nast.

Archie Comics and the Dark Avenger

tures abruptly begin on page 1. It’s as if the cover was produced for a wholly different comic book.

That said, it’s really not a bad Sixties comic.

“The Shadow vs. the RXG Spymaster!” begins with a flashback to an earlier encounter between the Shadow (the new Archie version, not his classic version as seen on the cover) and his enemy, Shiwan Khan, in “a grim showdown on the gargoyle-lined battlements of the cathedral of Notre Dame!” The Shadow disorients his foes by throwing his voice to make it seem he’s hidden in the darkness, then gets the drop on the bad guys through physical combat and sharpshooting. This sounds similar to the Shadow we know, but his appearance, as seen from the splash page forward, is disconcerting to those who know the Dark Avenger’s conventional look. Archie Comics’ Shadow is, essentially, a blond-haired, handsome white guy in a black suit and black opera cape. That’s it. No fedora, no scarlet muffler, and no aquiline nose. Once Khan manages to escape, the Shadow “switches to Lamont Cranston, his secret identity” simply by removing his cape and putting on horn-rimmed eyeglasses. At least the other guy who uses super-ventriloquism changes clothes when donning spectacles as a disguise!

Archie Comics’ Cranston, a Manhattanite, is a “wealthy

LEFT: The Shadow’s elaborate disguise change to Lamont Cranston!

From The Shadow #1.

The Shadow TM & © Condé Nast.

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of that man-child Marine from Mayberry, Gomer Pyle, who was prone to pronouncing “Shazam!” when amazed. A few of us encountered the character in Jules Feiffer’s seminal history book, The Great Comic Book Heroes, first published in 1965, and a few more discovered the hero’s movie serial incarnation The original Captain Marvel’s movie serials returned in 1966’s On the Scene presents Super Heroes Warren magazine and in an art-house re-release (albeit with a mis-colored Cap on its movie poster).

Movie poster courtesy of Heritage.

Shazam!, Superman, Batman, and related characters TM & © DC Comics. Captain America © Marvel.

The Phantom and Flash Gordon © King Features.

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through its inclusion in Warren Publications’ On the Scene presents Super Heroes one-shot magazine in 1966 or through the serial’s 1966 re-release in bigcity art-house movie theaters.

Myron Fass hailed from a generation before mine, however, and for him, Captain Marvel still had great marquee value. Fass had built an empire of sleazy, cheesy pulp magazines, parroting hot commodities—MAD, Playboy, Famous Monsters of Filmland—with low-budget knock-offs—Lunatickle, Foto-Rama, Shock Tales. Prior to becoming a publisher in the mid-Fifties, he put pencil and pen to paper as an illustrator for lots of funnybook houses.

So when super-heroes were enjoying a new wave of success in the mid-Sixties, Fass launched his own comic-book company, M.F. Enterprises, Inc., built around its signature star: Captain Marvel.

M.F.’s Captain Marvel #1 (cover-dated April 1966) contains much of what an older reader might expect from a character with that eminent appellation: a young boy named Billy, a magic word, and a flying super-hero in brightly hued tights. Yet even a kid who only knew of Captain Marvel from Gomer Pyle’s fixation would have suspected that something was a bit… off with this comic book, beginning with its cover.

The cover shows Captain Marvel displaying what might very well be the most ludicrous and, quite frankly, disturbing super-power ever: the ability to segment his body into pieces. M.F.’s Captain Marvel could propel his head, torso, arms, legs, and hands— even his fingers—into different directions, orchestrating their actions. I suspect that sounded revolutionary when this super-hero was brainstormed—and yes, there are some fun panels where Captain Marvel’s fists and feet simultaneously pummel his foes—but the end result is quite morbid, almost like something out of a grisly EC horror comic. Witness the splash page of issue #1, where a welcoming Captain Marvel is cradling his own head. No, it’s not a bloody, severed noggin like the ones that drove Dr. Wertham on an anti-comics crusade a decade earlier, but it’s still unsettling enough to give an eight-year-old Bat-fan the willies.

The cover also features this blurb: “PLUS a bonus feature PLASTIC MAN,” superimposed over a yellow-colored panel showing a hard-to-identify stretchable figure using an elongated arm to apprehend a stunned victim. Plastic Man also wasn’t on the radar of most Camp Age kids (yet), but like Captain Marvel, he was a super-star from a previous generation. But this Plastic Man and this Captain Marvel were not the heroes that found success in the Forties and early Fifties. Fass was banking that the once-popular names of his characters would equal a modern-day hit.

Perhaps his senses had been dulled by exposure to pulp paper mold spores and hammering printing presses, but Fass thought no one would object to his super-powered pretenders to the throne. Sure, you

Eisner’s original artwork to the cover of The Spirit #2, and its published version, with its loads of cover copy.

Courtesy of Heritage.

The Spirit TM & © Will Eisner Studios Inc.

Will Eisner.

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Giant Size at 64 pages for 25 cents, The Spirit #1’s cover worked a little too hard at courting both the super-hero and spy markets: Its humorous crooks and bright colors flirted with the kids addicted to the slam-bang antics of TV’s Batman, while its inventive layout—especially its elaborate title, an Eisner hallmark—winked at the more sophisticated reader who might curl up with this comic book before diving into the latest Ian Fleming 007 paperback. The cover also promised “Action,” “Intrigue,” “Suspense,” and “Laughter,” yet these graphic elements weighted down Eisner’s breathtaking artwork. Those bookselling virtues were clearly evident in Will’s rendering and didn’t need to be plastered alongside the illustration.

Inside, Eisner, with an inking assist from Chuck Kramer, retells the Spirit’s origin in an updated sevenpage adventure. That was followed by a breezy twopage “interview” with the Spirit penned by Marilyn Mercer (Eisner’s former secretary) that contemporizes the hero with then-current pop-culture references to the Beatles, James Bond, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (an example: “And then there was the plot to cut the Beatles’ hair,” says the Spirit, confidently claiming that he spared the Fab Four’s coifs). The rest of the book reprints seven Spirit seven-page tales from 1948 and 1949, and includes a “Spirit Lab” twopage “Invincible Devices” filler newly produced by Eisner.

Nearly half a year passed before Harvey released The Spirit #2 (Mar. 1967). With this edition, Eisner’s delightful cover art and design were allowed more breathing room, with limited copy appearing—however, the text’s hyperbolic proclamation (“8 smashing,

fabulous, absolutely boss stories”) seemed better suited for an issue of Archie Giant Series than The Spirit. The first of the issue’s eight stories was another new adventure by Eisner, presenting the origin of the hero’s nemesis the Octopus; Eisner also produced another “Spirit Lab” two-pager titled “The Man from MSD,” while Mercer assembled a two-page lettercol.

Rounding out the package were seven more Spirit seven-pagers from 1948 through 1950.

There was no Spirit #3, although it was planned and previewed in a one-page house ad at the end of issue #2. Harvey’s Thriller line had imploded, gone after a scant two years on the stands.

Why did The Spirit fail to catch on? Harvey Comics’ attempt to shoehorn The Spirit into a ZOWIE!-compatible package was a poor decision, and grouping one of the medium’s most unique concepts and acclaimed artistic visions with leaden underperformers like B-Man was a millstone around The Spirit’s neck. Yet despite the patently campy flourishes of these two Harvey issues, Eisner’s Spirit remained Eisner’s Spirit, not a misstep like so many other Sixties revivals.

Looking back from the comfortable vantage point of hindsight, Harvey’s The Spirit was also an instance of bad timing. The market screamed for over-the-top super-heroics, and Eisner’s crafty sequential art zipped over the heads of eight-yearolds. As it had been a generation earlier, The Spirit was miles above most of its competitors, yet in a market with glutted with entries clambering for shelf space, Eisner’s crimefighter was indeed “outnumbered.”

FIGHTING AMERICAN

Simon & Kirby’s Father of the Camp Age You might call Simon & Kirby’s Fighting American the father of the Camp Age. Co-created by Joe Simon (co-plotter/inker) and Jack Kirby (co-plotter/penciler) for Prize Comics in 1954, their Cold War answer to Captain America was originally a no-nonsense Commie-crusher, a product of an era of McCarthyism—the Communists were everywhere, waiting to paint the town Red by infiltrating our neighborhoods and our movies, so we needed a new star-spangled paragon to give ’em a patriotic uppercut. “The atmosphere at that time was very bleak for everybody, really, because it was right after the war and it was the early [Fifties] and we were just turning our attention to look for another enemy,” Kirby told Will Murray in a 1989 interview that was published in 2016 in The Jack Kirby Collector #67.

With the second issue, Simon & Kirby loosened up a bit when introducing the villains Double-Header (a two-headed crime czar) and the Handsome Devils, thieves whose Hollywood-worthy good looks wooed their starstruck victims (in reality, the Devils were actually hideous goons that looked like they walked out of a Basil Wolverton drawing who hid their horrid mugs under facemasks, prompting the Fighting American’s young sidekick, Speedboy, to exclaim, “Why, the Handsome Devils are nothing more than a bunch of ugly ducklings!”). According to Kirby, changing the tone of the feature “was my idea, but Joe agreed, finally.”

After dipping that toe in the waters of humor, Joe and Jack jumped in the deep end of the High Camp pool with Fighting American #3. No longer was the Cold War a chilling subject: readers met the ridiculous Russkies Poison Ivan and Hotsky Trotsky. Soon, Simon & Kirby pitted the Fighting American and Speedboy against enemies of decency like Rimsky and Korsakoff, Rhode Island Red, Professor Dyle Twister, Invisible Irving, and Super-Khakalovitch, among others. “…I think both of us had a bellyful of serious heroes at the time, and the war itself had spent itself inside us and inside everybody else,” Kirby said. “So we decided to do something different and the field itself demanded it.”

Despite Kirby’s contention of market demand, audiences failed to connect with his and Joe’s Fighting American—Duck and Cover drills at schools conditioned comics-reading kids to fear, not poke fun at, the Communist threat, and adults had not yet found Camp fashionable. So Prize’s Fighting American went bye-bye in 1955 with #7 (an issue that also

featured contributions from writer Carl Wessler and artist John Prentice), although Joe and Jack had begun work on an eighth issue.

Once the American popular culture caught up with Simon & Kirby and the Camp Age was in full swing, Joe Simon brought back his and Jack’s “Battling Prince of Comicdom” (and Speedboy, too) in Fighting American #1 (Oct. 1966, on sale July 15, 1966), published in Harvey’s Giant Size format as one of Simon’s “Harvey Thrillers.” “Look out! It’s Round Robin!” exclaims our flag-draped fighter on the allnew Kirby/Simon cover as a portly pilferer bounces like a rubber ball at our hero. Kids who read the Legion of Super-Heroes in DC’s Adventure Comics had seen such a wacky super-power in the shape of Bouncing Boy, who had been around since 1961— although Fighting American #1’s Round Robin story had been intended for Prize’s Fighting American #8 and had been collecting dust in a flat file since 1956.

Harvey’s Fighting American #1 was a mix of previously unpublished material and reprints. It opens with the cover-featured Round Robin short story, interrupted midway by a reprint of the Fighting American’s origin (from Prize’s first issue), which tells the grim tale of how the mind of nerdy Nelson Flagg was transferred into the body of his Commie-crushed, super-soldiered brother, Red-hating speaker-of-truth Johnny Flagg. Two other previously produced tales saw print for the first time: “Roman Scoundrels,” featuring the villainy of Commissar Yatz, and “The Secret of Yafata’s Moustache,” pitting the patriotic pair against Viva Yafata. In addition to the origin, the

Jack Kirby.

Courtesy of HeroEnvy.com.

Fighting American and Speedboy bounce back into comics in 1966.

TM & © Joe Simon estate.

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known as the writer of DC’s Doom Patrol, the Marvellike quarrelsome team of nonconformist heroes, and Deadman, the murdered circus aerialist on an afterlife mission to find his killer. During the Camp Age, Drake was editor Murray Boltinoff’s go-to guy for funny stuff, being the writer behind The Adventures of Bob Hope, The Adventures of Jerry Lewis, and the Calvin and Hobbes forerunner Stanley and His Monster, a back-up which eventually squeezed The Fox and the Crow out of their own book.

For the first issue of Plastic Man, Drake was paired with artist Gil Kane—yes, that Gil Kane, who had wowed DC readers with the Silver Age revivals of Green Lantern and the Atom from editor Julie Schwartz’s desk. DC’s funniest writer, teamed with one of DC’s most dynamic draftsmen, on a revival of a once-beloved character. How could it fail?

Issue #1 is a lot of fun. Drake applies the same reasoning to Plastic Man that he did to Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis, jettisoning Plas’ former partner, the roly-poly Woozy Winks, whom he considered dated, for an all-new, all-now supporting cast. Plas’ new pal is pet-shop owner Gordon K. “Gordy” Trueblood, an all-American straight man to the playful Plastic Man. The “Sapphire Stagg” to Plastic Man’s “Metamorpho” is rich girl Micheline “Mike” DeLute III, a strawberryblonde beauty whose tightly wound mother, Micheline “Moms” DeLute II, and scheming butler, Fawnish, have it out for the “plastic peasant.” Also at odds with Plas are police Captain Matthew McSniffe, who for some unexplained reason believes Plastic Man is actually a crook (maybe he read Police Comics #1), and the villain of the series, Dr. Dome, whose clanging bell-like helmet predates Howard the Duck’s Dr. Bong by over a decade. The sworn enemy of Plastic Man, Dr. Dome unleashes two of his minions against our hero: Professor X (no, not that Professor X, although Drake would write a few issues of Marvel’s X-Men two years later) and the bad doctor’s sexy daughter, Lynx.

In one 23½-page story, Plastic Man catches a falling piano, fends off an adoring public, disguises himself as a birdcage, swings with a monkey, outwits a superglue weapon, gooses a countess, pesters his wouldbe mother-in-law, drenches two pesky cops, dodges a thermal ray, is slipped a mickey by a femme fatale, survives a drowning attempt, and shrugs off constrict-

ing hoops. This madness is delightfully drawn by Kane, who stretches his own artistic chops by showing us he’s more than just a sci-fi/superhero artist. Gil’s Plas shifts, shakes, and shimmies with the best of ’em.

Plastic Man #1 includes with a text page titled “The Boys Behind the By-Lines,” a jokey interview with (actually, by) Drake. Therein, in addition to his comics creds Arnie mentions his screenplays for the grisly horror flick The Flesh Eaters (1964) and the voyeuristic thriller Who Killed Teddy Bear (1965). He also announces, “I just completed the pilot script for a PLASTIC MAN [animated] television series.” The text page concludes with a blurb that the next issue would feature an interview with the other boy behind the by-line, Gil Kane…

…but Kane’s continued presence, like the promise of a Plastic Man TV program (which didn’t happen, at least during the Sixties), was another dashed hope. Two months later, readers who bought Plastic Man #2 were surprised to find that Kane had moved on. The new Plastic Man artist was Win Mortimer, a longtime illustrator for DC (Superman, Batman, and Robin’s solo series in Star Spangled Comics) and comic strips (Superman, David Crane). Win had recently co-created Stanley and His Monster with Drake, in the pages of The Fox and the Crow, and with Mortimer on Plastic Man, editor Boltinoff was banking on a (excuse the pun) win-win. No such luck.

Win Mortimer’s Plastic Man was flat, and Drake’s first-issue energy started to wane. Dr. Dome’s presence as a villain in issues #1–4 and 6 quickly wore thin, as did the recurring shtick with the rest of the supporting cast.

Plastic Man #7 (Nov.– Dec. 1967) is the most noteworthy issue outside of the premiere ish. It features a gorilla cover penciled by Carmine Infantino—the visual creator of Super-Gorilla Grodd and the artist of many of DC’s famed gorilla covers—and inker Mike Esposito. Its story, “Plastic Man’s Fantastic Old Man,” reveals that the Plastic Man we’ve been reading is actually the son of the original Plas, who had earlier retired from super-heroics to

LEFT: Kane springs through Plastic Man #1 with an unexpected flair for humor.

TM & © DC Comics.

Arnold Drake.

Courtesy of David Siegel.

Plastic Man #7 offered an Infantino gorilla cover.

TM & © DC Comics.

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Chapter 3

CAMPUS CLOWNS

LOOK! Up in the ever-lovin’ sky!

It’s a Goony-Bird!

Naw! It’s nothin’ but STUPORMAN!

Detail and dialogue from Not Brand Echh #7. TM & (C) Marvel Characters, Inc.

It’s a Jefferson Airplane!

SUPER-HERO SPOOFS JERRY LEWIS

One-Man Justice League Move over, Snapper Carr! Step aside, Captain Action!

Although Snapper had a key to the JLA’s Secret Sanctuary and the good captain was an ideal substitute for the world’s greatest super-heroes, there was one non-powered DC Comics character that was both stooge to and stand-in for the Justice League of America: Jerry Lewis!

Google “Jerry Lewis DC Comics” and you’ll find links to blogs written by incredulous fanboys befuddled over how a TV and movie comedian could have his own comic book in the first place. Those bloggers were born too late to get it, and from their youthful vantage point, the idea of a Jerry Lewis comic book seems as peculiar as a contemporary comic book starring Amy Schumer. But as with all matters historic, to fully understand why something happened, you have to couch your thinking in the culture of the day.

So before we explore Jerry’s encounters with Justice Leaguers, let’s look back at how he joined the line of DC super-stars in the first place—and his brushes with comics characters outside of DC’s pages.

JERRY LEWIS’ EARLY COMIC-BOOK ENCOUNTERS In 1946, debonair Dean Martin, a nightclub crooner, and jumpy Jerry Lewis, a stage funnyman, joined forces as a musical-comedy act. Over the next ten years, they graduated from stage to radio, to television, and to movies, and became one of entertainment’s dynamic duos, with Martin playing the womanizing straight man to Lewis’ bungling man-child.

Meanwhile, in the mid-Fifties, shrinking comic-book sales were partially being blamed on the advent of the Television Age. So the big daddy of funnybook publishers, DC Comics, snatched up a handful of

licenses to create comic books based on popular TV shows and celebrities in an effort to lure back readers. Among them was an Adventures of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis humor comic launched in 1952.

As the world of comic books borrowed from Hollywood, Tinseltown returned the favor with the 1955 Martin–Lewis musical comedy Artists and Models, directed by Frank Tashlin. Here, Jerry is Eugene Fullstack, the comic book-obsessed roommate of struggling artist Rick Todd, played by Dean.

Eugene dreams of comic stories and blabs in his sleep, spouting freakish fantasies which eavesdropping Rick puts to paper. Romantic interests are in the form of Dorothy Malone as artist Abby Parker, and Shirley MacLaine as Bessie Sparrowbrush, the model for Abby’s signature character, Bat Lady—which happens to be Eugene’s favorite comics hero. Topping it off is a Bill Gaines-like comic-book editor played by Eddie Mayehoff, whose other super-hero connection is his co-starring role with Mickey Rooney in the illfated spoof The Return of the Original Yellow Tornado.

Bat Lady comic books were dummied up for the movie and are spotted in several scenes, including a few original art pages believed to have been drawn for the film by Arthur Camp and Neil Wheeler.

It’s noteworthy that Eugene’s favorite character, Bat Lady, predates DC Comics’ own Batwoman! Artists and Models premiered on November 7, 1955, and Batwoman first appeared in Detective Comics #233, cover-dated July 1956.

The Martin–Lewis partnership dissolved in 1956, and soon, Dino was removed from the DC Comics title. It became The Adventures of Jerry Lewis with issue #41 in 1957.

At the box office, Jerry—without Dean—starred in a flurry of screwball comedies built around witless but affable protagonists including The Delicate

One of the campiest comics of the Camp Age: The Adventures of Jerry Lewis #97, teaming Jerry with the Dynamic Duo! Batman, Robin, and Joker TM & © DC Comics. The Adventures of Jerry Lewis © the respective copyright holder.

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MDA (Muscular Dystrophy Association) Labor Day Telethon, which launched in 1966. DC axed the Jerry Lewis comic book in 1971 after an impressive span of 124 issues (plus one collected edition, Super DC Giant #S-19). When it was in its prime, however, The Adventures of Jerry Lewis may very well have been “America’s Funniest Comic Mag,” and its Batman, Superman, and Flash team-ups are among comicdom’s funniest stories featuring those heroes.

Special thanks to John Wells for his assistance, including his identification of the source of the Superman image on the Jerry Lewis #105 cover.

And to the French people for their love of Lewis.

BOB HOPE, SUPER-FRIEND Believe it or not, Bob Hope beat Jerry Lewis to the super-hero team-up party!

DC’s The Adventures of Bob Hope #92 (Apr.–May 1965), a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde spoof where Bob the “funster turns monster,” featured a cameo by Superman.

“Missile Beach Party” was the title of Bob Hope #94 (Aug.–Sept. 1965), a Muscle Beach Party-meets-Flash Gordon take-off. It included a cameo by Aquaman.

Not long after Batman and Robin dropped in on Jerry Lewis, they made a cameo in Bob Hope #103 (Feb.–Mar. 1967). In “The Love Machine,” Super-Hip’s new dating computer spews out all types of “perfect” couples, including the Dynamic Duo. All three Hope stories were written by Arnold Drake. Bob Oksner illustrated issue #92 (his first time drawing Superman) and 94, while the art team for #103 was Carmine Infantino and Mike Esposito.

RIGHT: The Fat Fury’s first appearance in Herbie #8.

Art by Ogden Whitney.

TM & © Roger Broughton.

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HERBIE THE FAT FURY

Have Lollipop, Will Fight Crime Whenever I read the adventures of Herbie, the improbable, unexpressive hero from American Comics Group whose capricious chronicles were written by Shane O’Shea (a pseudonym for ACG editor Richard E. Hughes) and deliciously illustrated by Ogden Whitney, I feel like a fly on the wall in the Sixties-era DC Comics office of Superman editor Mort Weisinger.

Herbie Popnecker was a square peg in a round body, an innocent and undervalued oddball whose inelegant appearance belied his inherent greatness… making him the cartoon equivalent of E. Nelson Bridwell, Weisinger’s sheepish but brilliant assistant editor.

There’s a physical resemblance between Herbie and Nelson, although Bridwell’s vocabulary was far greater than his ACG counterpart’s, who tended to speak in sentence fragments. Mort would pummel Nelson with sometimes-public verbal abuse, while Herbie’s pigheaded father, Pincus Popnecker, was merciless to his son, belittling him as a lazy, “fat little nothing.”

Herbie had super-powers, including the abilities to walk through the air, travel through time, summon spirits, and communicate with wildlife, skills mostly

Three—Pureheart, Superteen, and Captain Hero (actually Jughead Jones)—who joined forces to rescue a brainwashed Veronica from the clutches of the dastardly duo of Evilheart and Mad Doctor Doom (a villain transplanted from the pages of Little Archie).

The super-heroes then branched out, with Evilheart appearing in Reggie and Me, Superteen in Betty and Me, and Pureheart the Powerful and Captain Hero getting their own books. (Not to be outdone, Little Archie—the adventures of Archie as a child—featured Little Pureheart stories, and even Little Evilheart made an appearance!) Their super-powers were of the garden variety, mostly super-strength (except for Evilheart, who was powerless), but occasionally a cockamamie super-power would emerge if it would guarantee a laugh, like Pureheart’s Intercranial TV. Superteen’s transformations were attributed to Betty’s twirling of her blonde ponytail, while Jughead would become Captain Hero after reciting this oath to his trademark headwear:

TOP & BOTTOM: Jughead’s Captain Hero costume went from yellow (LEFT) to blue during his brief super-stint.

Teeny weeny magic beanie Pointing towards the sky, Give me muscle, power, vigor, Form a SUPER GUY!

TM & © Archie Publications, Inc.

Meanwhile, the Man from R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E. took over Life with Archie with issue #51. V.E.R.O.N.I.C.A. and R.E.G.G.I.E. were reformed into P.O.P. agents, and once TV’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E.’s spin-off The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. debuted, Betty was billed as the Girl from R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E. Frank Doyle’s spy

spoofs got zanier with each issue: The Batusi craze inspired the villain the Whistler, whose music forced the P.O.P. agents to dance in LWA #52, and LWA #59 spotlighted Archie’s red jalopy, souped up into the P.O.P.mobile.

Between these two hero-vs.-villain genres, there seemed to be no end of threats to the previously Norman Rockwellian suburban landscape of Riverdale. Super-villains were in high supply, some of them leaping the fence between the Pureheart and R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E. stories. Atom Man, Birdman, the Bowman, the Collector (who trapped go-go girls under glass), the robot Computo (no relation to the Legion of Super-Heroes villain), the Demon Dropout (a.k.a. the Mad Chemist), the Devilish Disguiser, Dr. Demon, Dr. Detest, Dr. Nose, the Drummer, the Enforcer, Fang Finkster, Flamethrower, the devil Hotfoot, the mind-controlling sexpot Looker, the Mad Clown, the Mad Music Master, the Mailman, Mr.

LEFT: Even Reggie Mantle got into the super-“hero” act!

TM & © Archie Publications, Inc.

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RIGHT: Showcase #62, introducing the Inferior Five. Cover by Joe Orlando.

TM & © DC Comics.

Machine, Mr. X, Mod Man, the Octopus, the Postman, the Reptile, Sandman, Super Spy, Tar-Man (who spewed asphalt!), Toyman, the Whammy, and Witch Doctor were among the super-crooks causing trouble for the gang.

Two years after Archie first donned a cape, the super-hero and spy fads were waning and Pureheart, the Man from R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E., and company vanished as quickly as they had materialized. Pureheart the Powerful (which had been retitled Captain Pureheart) and Captain Hero were cancelled, Betty and Reggie returned to normal teen life, and the new hot thing—the Archies—squeezed the Man from R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E. out of Life with Archie. The end of the Camp Age certainly contributed to their demises, but in Archie Comics’ case, the publisher’s own excesses, particularly with superfluous super-villains, caused the properties to implode, an example of too much of a good thing.

The World’s Greatest Goof-Ups DC Comics’ Inferior Five were the Camp Era’s Guardians of the Galaxy (movie version): a team of ill-motivated, laughing-stock misfits, united by fate and forced to work together. They were also the product of a time when it was fashionable to laugh at, and with, blundering authority figures, from nervous deputies (Barney Fife) to fumbling frontiersmen (F Troop) to meatheaded marines (Gomer Pyle). As a super-hero parody, the Inferior Five were certainly not

CAPTAIN SPROCKET Archie Comics’ Archie’s Mad House was the home of unorthodox takes on the Archie gang, plus otherworldly and crackpot humor involving UFOs, aliens, witches (like Sabrina), and monsters. It was in this bizarro book that Captain Sprocket, one of the Camp Age’s earliest super-hero parodies, debuted in issue #25 (Apr. 1963), in a story drawn by Joe Edwards (and possibly written by George Gladir).

This way-out wonder, a “space scientist, space adventurer, [and] space loverboy”—or “the World’s Only Three-inOne Hero,” as he was billed—was Space Ghost with Roger Ramjet’s personality, years before either of those Gary Owens-voiced characters were created. For some inexplicable reason, the Feds in Washington, D.C., would summon Captain Sprocket in times of national or global crisis, only to be flummoxed by his ineptitude—although somehow, someway, he’d always defeat his enemy.

Captain Sprocket was an irregularly published feature, appearing off and on in Archie’s Mad House throughout the Sixties, even scoring some cover appearances along the way.

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THE INFERIOR FIVE

alone, tripping over contemporary costumed clowns such as Captain Nice, Forbush-Man, the Mighty Heroes, and Captain Klutz. As characters, they were “the greatest group of rejects in comics history.” But as a comic-book series, The Inferior Five was far from inept, thanks to the talented writer who first gave these oddballs voice, E. Nelson Bridwell.

In a 1981 interview in Comics Feature magazine, Bridwell acknowledged the original Inferior Five editor, Jack Miller, with brainstorming a book about incompetent super-heroes in what Miller called “The Inferior Four,” an obvious spoof of Marvel Comics’ Fantastic Four. “At first I was going to write the script myself,” Miller revealed in the lettercol of the I-5’s first

Detail from Spotlight Comics’ The Mighty Heroes #1 (1987). Art

by Jim Engel.

fully subversive 1987 Saturday morning cartoon The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse.

In this interview, Bakshi takes us behind the scenes of the creation of The Mighty Heroes, his projects at Paramount, and his early days of working with Steve Krantz.

Mighty Heroes TM & © CBS.

Interview conducted in January 2016 and transcribed by Steven Thompson.

A CALL GOES OUT FOR… THE MIGHTY BAKSHI!

An Interview with Ralph Bakshi

RIGHT: Bashi’s high school portrait.

Courtesy of RalphBakshi.com.

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In the Seventies, Ralph Bakshi directed the revolutionary animated films Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic, Wizards, and The Lord of the Rings (the 1978 version). But then again, he was always one to test boundaries.

Born in Palestine, as an infant Bakshi was moved by his family to the U.S. to flee the threat of war. He grew up in the rough-and-tumble Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York, where he learned to think on his feet. After graduating from an arts-vocational high school in 1956, Bakshi, a comic-book fan, began his animation career as a cel polisher at Terrytoons.

He rapidly learned his craft and rose up the ranks until the fateful day in 1966 that he made an impromptu pitch to CBS’ Fred Silverman for The Mighty Heroes.

That led to his becoming that series’ director and the Creative Director for Terrytoons, and a whirlwind few years of Camp Age animation projects. In 1967, Bakshi replaced fabled animator Shamus Culhane as the head of Paramount Cartoon Studios’ (Famous Studios) New York-based animation house, with an aggressive mandate to develop cartoons for television. That short-lived venture was followed by Ralph’s often-tumultuous professional relationship with Steve Krantz, during which time Bakshi took over the TV toons Rocket Robin Hood and Spider-Man. This led to Fritz the Cat, which Krantz produced.

In the decades following, Bakshi directed several other animated films including American Pop, Fire and Ice, and Cool World, and was responsible for the delight-

Let’s start with how you got started at Terrytoons. How old were you then?

That’s a good question. I was eighteen and I’d just graduated high school at the School of Visual Arts. I think it’s now called the School of Visual Arts but in those days it was the Vocational Professional Arts School, where professionals from the industry taught the various classes. So I graduated and, because I won an award in cartooning, Terrytoons offered me a job at graduation.

There was no thought of going to college. In those days, if you had options, you’d rather work.

So I accepted the job. Little did I know I’d be at a desk polishing cels, [laughs] for the camera.

I might have thought twice about it, but there I was, suddenly selfdetermined. My mother could not get me to clean a glass, and then I end up polishing stuff all day. [laughs] Some of the early shows you were working on was stuff I cut my teeth on as a kid watching

JFK and LBJ in Comic Books

The original SuperLBJ versus his greatest enemies!

Detail from the cover of the comic insert A.P.E. Comics, from 1965’s Biggest Greatest Cracked #1.

Art by John Severin.

Scan courtesy of John Wells. © 1965 Cracked Magazine.

Before Nixon and Watergate, people looked up to the U.S. President. It’s true! Every kid believed that he (not she—back then, only First Ladies, secretaries, and mistresses were allowed in the White House) could grow up to be our commander-in-chief. They also believed they could grow up to be an astronaut or a cowboy.

So we shouldn’t be surprised that the Swinging Sixties gave us an astronaut president and a cowboy president—the handsome Man from Camelot who promised us the moon and the feisty Man from Texas who ran Jim Crow out of town on a rail.

JFK’S NEW FRONTIER OF COMIC BOOKS The Camp Era was in its embryonic stages during the presidential election of 1960 when Republican Richard M. Nixon, a familiar face who’d been eyeing the Oval Office from down the hall as vice president to Dwight D. Eisenhower, campaigned against Democrat John F. Kennedy, a fresh face who’d impressed folks with both his promise of a New Frontier and his gorgeous wife who wore the best pillbox hats this 128

side of Kurt Schaffenberger’s Lois Lane. Old versus Young. Status Quo versus Here We Go. And if you believe the political analysts, the Gray Suit versus the Dark Suit, as Nixon’s drab, five o’clock-shadowed appearance in a televised debate (in black and white) made many viewers tune him out in favor of the stark, striking, vibrant Kennedy. Still, MAD Magazine hedged its bets with its sixtieth issue by releasing a flip cover, one side duplicitously congratulating Nixon, the other, JFK! (MAD, and Americans of voting age, ignored the candidacy of Huckleberry Hound, who ran on the Hanna-Barbera ticket, at least according to the Huckleberry Hound for President issue of Dell Comics’ Four Color series, #1141. However, those same voters disregarded MAD #56’s “New Man” campaign for Alfred E. Neuman for President, highlighted by a Kelly Freas cover crammed with likenesses of political figures.)

While celebrities and comic books were frequent bedfellows, U.S. presidents were infrequently seen. Presidents in comic-book stories were traditionally generic statesmen (except for flashbacks to historically significant past presidents like Washington and Lincoln, who tended to pop up frequently), or their faces were purposely obstructed or in shadows (done so to preserve “the dignity of the office”). Then came the first rock-star president of the TV age. John Fitzgerald Kennedy had barely lowered his swearing-in hand after his January 20, 1961 inauguration before he became one of the most indemand real-world guest-stars of comic books of the early Sixties.

The new U.S. president made a quickie comicbook appearance in a one-shot aptly titled John F. Kennedy, New U.S. President. Published on newsprint with a newsprint cover, this issue flew under the radar of, well, everyone reading comic books, since it was produced by the U.S. Information Agency as a giveaway to international dignitaries to introduce them to our new commander-inchief.

Charlton Comics, the little Derby, Connecticut, comics house that rapidly and rabidly exploited any new trend, was the first to rush a JFK comic-book publication onto the

© U.S. Information Agency.

SUPER PRESIDENTS

THE NICE–TERRIFIC WAR Guest Essay By Will Murray

Note: This essay was originally conceived as an article for Jon B. Cooke’s magazine ACE: All Comics Evaluated, for which its opening artwork by USA Today illustrator Keith Carter was commissioned.

ACE was cancelled before “The Nice–Terrific War” could be published. Jon then planned to include this feature in his Comic Book Artist magazine. Once I discovered its existence, I inquired to Jon about publishing it here in Hero-A-Go-Go instead. My sincere thanks to Jon Cooke, Will Murray, and Keith Carter for agreeing to its publication in my book.

– Michael Eury

THIS PAGE & OPPOSITE: TV heroes Captain Nice and Mr. Terrific put up their dukes in this illustration by Keith Carter.

Captain Nice © NBC. Mr. Terrific © Universal Television.

Art © Keith Carter.

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Fifty years ago, two obscure superheroes went to war—with one another. These colorful characters did not slug it out in the real world, but on an electronic battlefield still in its youth.

History has chosen not to formally record this tragi-comic epic, but some skirmishes did make the newspapers. One reporter dubbed it “The Nice–Terrific War.” Out of these accounts it is possible to recount the sorry tale of the year when Mr. Terrific and Captain Nice battled one another to mutual extinction.

It began on network television, in January of 1967—the traditional start of the socalled “Second Season.” That was the month when the Big Three dumped their Fall losers and brought in fresh troops for ratings reinforcements.

A year before, ABC’s Batman had debuted, shaking up the mid-season ratings sweepstakes.

That network followed up with The Green Hornet in the Fall. Naturally, NBC and CBS wanted to get into the act.

Buck Henry of Get Smart fame was tasked with concocting the NBC entry, Captain Nice. Over at CBS, they were allied with Universal Studios to produce Mr. Terrific. Jack Arnold, the director behind The Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Incredible Shrinking Man, was the mind behind the alternate alter ego.

Mr. Terrific was hardly original. A minor DC super-hero by that very name operated back in the Golden Age of Comics. As for the concept, it appeared to have been borrowed from the popular Saturday morning cartoon show, Underdog, starring Wally Cox.

The differences between the two superschnooks were superficial. Mr. Terrific starred

Stephen Strimpell as humble gas-station attendant Stanley Beamish who is the only mortal who can swallow a “power pill” and become energized.

Recruited for a secret government agency, he dons a silver lamé suit and matching aviator goggles to battle America’s enemies as Mr. Terrific.

Police chemist Carter Nash, played by William Daniels, invented the potion that transformed him into Captain Nice. His hyper-colorful homemade costume was the gaudiest thing this side of the Golden Age Green Lantern. He, too, wore goggles when flying.

At first, the development of both shows seemed to be innocent examples of synchronicity.

Stephen Strimpell had been a New York actor when he decided to take a two-month break in Los Angeles to get away from the oppressive humidity. “I told my agent, ‘No calls. Just let me rest.’ But I was barely off the plane, still in my traveling suit, when a CBS casting director tracked me to my hotel room and asked if I was interested in doing a TV series. He had seen me off-Broadway in The Exhaustion of Our Son’s Love, where I had gotten some impressive notices, and he was delighted I was right on the scene.

Before the week was out I was signed to star in Mr. Terrific.” Strimpell had played a rough-edged garage mechanic in the play. He was also cast in a new Dick van Dyke movie, A Garden of Cucumbers. When the pilot sold, it created a problem. “I found I’d have to report for work on both projects the same day.

Obviously, I couldn’t be at both the Goldwyn and Universal Studios simultaneously. For awhile it looked like there would have to be a court fight for priority.

But finally they settled it amicably by telescoping my 5 and a half weeks of work in the van Dyke picture into 1 and a half days.”

While Buck Henry was developing Captain Nice, he remembered an actor who would be perfect for that part. Trouble was, he couldn’t remember the man’s name or where he had seen him! Walking past a theater showing A Thousand Clowns, Henry spotted the actor’s face on a display still. Fate—or something approximately like it—rudely yanked William Daniels off Broadway.

At the time, Daniels observed that Henry patterned Carter Nash after Daniel’s stuffy social worker character in A Thousand Clowns.

Both shows premiered Monday night, January 9, 1967. CBS’s Mr. Terrific debuted at 8:00 with the episode entitled “Matchless.” NBC decided to air Captain Nice a half hour later, at 8:30, in “The Man Who Flies Like a Pigeon.” Bad blood immediately resulted.

“That back-to-back scheduling is something,” remarked Daniels. “In the hierarchy of the networks it may make sense, but it’s beyond me. But I can’t concern myself with that. I just work all the time.”

Whether archly or smugly, he added, “I’ll be honest and say I feel better about it after I saw the premieres of the two shows.” Boom.

Critics were not kind. One lumped both shows together and called them “disheartening.” Strimpell

RIGHT: Original C. C. Beck cover art to Fatman #1.

Courtesy of Heritage. © the original copyright holder.

FATMAN, THE HUMAN FLYING SAUCER The Original Captain Marvel’s Creators Reunite

When everyone and their brother was getting into the super-hero comic-book game in the Swinging Sixties, Will Lieberson and Bernie Miller and their brothers— Martin Lieberson and Joe Miller—decided to jump in.

As Milson Publishing Company, Inc. (its name derived from merging their last names), the Liebersons and Millers were thinking big: they chose a plus-sized super-hero who one-upped the traditional caped crusader by being “the only comic hero with 3 identities” and put him in a giant-sized, 64-page title, twice the size (and price) of the average comic book.

Published under the “A Lightning Comic” imprint, Fatman, the Human Flying Saucer #1 (Apr. 1967) appeared roughly one year after the debut of M.F. Enterprises, Inc.’s new Captain Marvel comic—although

Fatman becomes the Human Flying Saucer! From Fatman #2. © the respective copyright holder.

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Fatman was much closer to being a Captain Marvel revival than M.F.’s Captain Marvel was.

Credit for that can be ascribed to the creative talent behind Fatman, starting with the Liebersons and Millers. They formed Milson Publishing “after lamenting the glory days of Captain Marvel’s supremacy on the newsstands,” as P.C. Hamerlinck, editor of FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), wrote in FCA #147, which appeared in Alter Ego #88 (Aug. 2009). Earlier, Will Lieberson and Bernie Miller had bird’s-eye views of the World’s Mightiest Mortal’s heyday as staffers at the hero’s publishing house, Fawcett Publications.

Milson scored a major talent coup for Fatman that might have benefitted Myron Fass and Carl Burgos’ ill-fated Captain Marvel: the hiring of writer Otto Binder and artist C. C. Beck, hyped on Fatman’s covers as “the creators of the original Captain Marvel.” That pedigree might not have carried weight for the gradeschool-aged kids who saw Fatman #1 racked along-

side other April 1967-cover-dated titles like Amazing Spider-Man #47, the 80-Page Giant The Flash #169, and Richie Rich #56, but for those with familiar with comic-book history, it was like, well, catching lightning in a bottle.

Fatman is one of those campy comic books that a contemporary audience will find hard to swallow. An obese super-hero?? Depending upon your personality, that’s worthy of social-media ridicule or politically correct disgust. And his third identity (Fatman was his second) was that of Saucerman, a “human flying saucer,” into which he morphed after running up a good steam. If you’re tempted to post a smarmy meme mocking a guy who shape-shifts into a UFO, let me ask you, would you poke fun at the Transformers?

Fatman’s other identity was his real one: Van Crawford. As Fatman’s corpulence defied the iconic image of the super-hero, Crawford similarly was not what one would expect from a secret identity. He was a wealthy idler, sort of Bruce Wayne as a couch potato, an unfocused rich guy who sponged off the family fortune (his parents were alive, and disappointed in him) and wasted away his days with pursuits such as stamp collecting, culinary delights, and raising orchids. Fortunately, Van’s heart was in the right place—he was prone to helping those in need.

Crawford is bird watching during his origin in issue #1 when he waddles to the aid of a quavering flying saucer. This near-crash is actually an alien’s test of Van’s super-hero-worthiness. Crawford is awarded a chocolate drink that gives him superpowers: boosted strength, speed, and agility, and

RIGHT: Great Kreepton! Not Brand Echh #7’s Stuporman featured Roy Thomas and Marie Severin’s hilarious spoof of the Man of Steel.

TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Superman TM & © DC Comics.

Roy Thomas.

Mirthful Marie’s original cover art for Not Brand Echh #3.

Courtesy of Heritage. TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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tion that ran from 1952 to 1955 until puritanical psychologist Dr. Frederic Wertham’s comic-book witch hunt threatened to torch the business and triggered, among many other things, MAD’s transformation into a black-and-white magazine. Roy and Gary had in mind MAD’s classic super-hero spoofs like “Superduperman” and “Batboy and Rubin” when proposing Marvel’s funny funnybook. In the NBE Masterworks, Thomas noted, “Gary says I felt it should be called Brand Echh, the name Stan had coined to refer to the competition.” Roy gave Stan credit for “stand[ing their idea] on its head”: “Rather than parody rival companies’ heroes, we would burlesque Marvel’s characters!” And thus was born the home of the Silver Burper, Doctor Bloom, Sgt. Furious and His Hostile Commandos, and many other zany EarthNBE versions of Marvel—make that “Marble”—stars.

But, wait a minute—how did Brand Echh become Not Brand Echh? Originally, the new Marvel comic book was indeed titled Brand Echh, although its cover led readers to believe otherwise. Look closely at the cover of issue #1 (Aug. 1967). Above its Brand Echh logo is the Stan Lee-added tagline, “Who says a comic book has to be good?” Note that the word “Not” is inserted before the logo in a different color and font. This was intended to be a clever play on words, but to anyone spying the cover, the “Not” prefix was read was part of the series’ title, and very quickly the book officially became Not Brand Echh.

I have to credit Not Brand Echh #3 (cover-dated Oct. 1967, which went on sale in July 1967) for being my gateway comic to the bulk (not the Inedible guy)

of the Marvel Universe. Back then, TV dictated my comic-book purchases, and since I watched Adam West’s Batman and the Saturday morning Superman, I read those heroes’ comic books and other comics they appeared in. (Grantray-Lawrence’s Marvel SuperHeroes syndicated show wasn’t among my viewing habits, and Saturday morning’s Spider-Man and Fantastic Four cartoons were still two months away from their debuts.) I remember when Kurt, a slightly older kid down the street, tried to convert me to his Marvelmania by showing me an early issue of Amazing Spider-Man drawn by Steve Ditko. I was puzzled over Ditko’s now-classic (and oft-imitated) depiction of Peter Parker’s tingling spider-sense, with his drawing of a half-Parker/half-Spidey face. “Is that how he becomes Spider-Man?” I asked. Dumb gradeschooler me accepted a reality where a millionaire and his youthful ward could become costumed crimefighters by sliding down Batpoles, but was stymied by artistic interpretation. But the cover of Not Brand Echh #3 grabbed this nine-year-old and led me to plop down my hard-earned (actually, Daddy-begged) twelve cents for my first purchase of a Marvel comic.

And what nine-year-old could resist such an image, mirthfully and meticulously managed by marvelous Marie Severin? It featured the Mighty Sore, as musclebound as Marvel’s Thor but not as well groomed, his toes protruding through a tattered boot, a button popping from his tunic, and a wooden hammer instead of the vaunted weapon of myth. Then there was a rather panicked version of Marvel’s Star-Spangled Sentinel, Charlie America,

RIGHT: BERRY interesting…

Fruitman in his own one-shot!

Cover art by Ernie Colón. © DreamWorks Classics.

Sorry, Stupie, but in NBE, the Marble heroes face front! From issue #7.

TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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NBE started out with a bang, published eight times a year in the traditional comic-book format.

But before long, its formula was altered. With issue #9 (Aug. 1968), the magazine went to a bimonthly frequency and its size was doubled, as was its price, from twelve cents to twenty-five cents. According to Roy Thomas, “I don’t recall if the extra length was Stan’s idea or [publisher Martin] Goodman, but this is around the time the Silver Surfer solo book debuted at double size.” This wreaked havoc with the production schedule, forcing issue #10 to become a reprint edition (“The Worst of Not Brand Echh”). In the three issues that followed, NBE’s requisite parodies were accompanied by so-so short features and advertising take-offs which felt like filler material.

Marie Severin’s cute “Stamp Out Trading Stamps!” cover for issue #13 brought the series to its end, although for the reader there was no indication that they were holding the final issue. In its lettercol—with its self-deprecating “This is a Letters Page?” title—it’s business as usual from Roy Thomas, although the writing was on the wall that NBE was in need of a tune-up. The column started with a “Bullpen Butt-in Dept.,” where Rascally Roy admitted that the “deadly monster Deadline” encouraged him to invite some of his friends from fandom— Bill DuBay, Ronn Foss, and Phil Seuling—to produce material for issue #13. Thomas then appealed to the readers—“our ever-lovin’ roving editors”—for their input into NBE’s direction.

There were no future issues. “It was simply discontinued,” Roy wrote in his Masterworks intro.

“If there was any material left over for NBE #14, I’m unaware of it.” A casualty of a price hike and the exhaustive process of producing such a high volume of gag-loaded comic stories, Not Brand Echh was no more, imploding under its own weight.

While Forbush-Man has returned on occasion, as have some of the Marble heroes, it’s never quite been the same. Not Brand Echh and the laughs it engendered— for its readers and its creators—was the proverbial lightning in a bottle.

At least that bottle has been uncorked with a Marvel Masterworks edition.

FRUITMAN

The Supermarket Superman I’ve had super-hero daydreams in a lot of places that invite mind wandering—classrooms, meetings, church, the DMV—but never at the grocery store, even though I find supermarkets comforting since my father worked at one. Never have I fantasized that I was the Astounding Stock-Man, or Captain Checkout, or Bagboy. And never once have I wished that I could become a piece of fruit.

That was Percival Pineapple’s superpower. This plump proprietor of a fruit stand could stop criminals by shape-shifting into a pear.

Or an orange.

Or a cantaloupe.

Yes, this was Fruitman, “the greatest crimebuster ever,” whose secondary superability was dropping fruit-related puns that were such groaners (“suPEARhero,” “a PEACHy idea,” “na-CHERRY-ly,” “GRAPE Scot!”), reading them was like sucking a lemon (sorry). As Percy Pineapple, he let the reader in on “the world’s best GOURDed secret,” often breaking the fourth wall with asides about his alter ego.

Percy called himself “the world’s busiest crimefighter,” although as witnessed in his stories he had ample time to comb the beach, take vacations and cruises, and go on dates.

Percival Pineapple looked a bit like Archie Comics’ Dilton Doiley, but with a mod haircut and a rounder waistline. In times of trouble, with a POP! and magic sparkles, Percy would transform into a piece of fruit that bore his bespectacled face—similar to the talking fruit from The Annoying Orange web and TV series. (That show’s creator, Dane Boedighemier, was born in 1979, three years after Fruitman’s last adventure, so unless he stumbled across a back issue it’s unlikely that Daneboe’s chatty citrus can count Fruitman as an influence.)

Yet Fruitman did more than chat—he apprehended bad guys. If he needed to hitch a ride to a crime scene, Fruitman could become a peach and bound

WILL ROBINSON, TV’S OTHER BOY WONDER

An Interview with Bill Mumy The Sixties offered no shortage of boy and teen heroes to look up to, from the globetrotting Jonny Quest, to the high-flying Superboy, to Robin and Jimmy Olsen, the best buds of Batman and Superman. But really, was

space family blasted off in the Jupiter 2 he had already logged years of screen time as an actor. In the half-century-plus since Lost in Space’s September 5, 1965 debut, Mumy has scored successes in virtually every imaginable spectrum of the entertainment business—in addition to his galaxy of work in front of the camera, he’s an accomplished musician, songwriter, voice actor, narrator, author, producer—even a comic-book scribe (including his co-creations The Comet Man, Dreamwalker, and Trypto the Acid Dog). Whether you know him as The Twilight Zone’s Anthony Fremont, the kid in the Dick Tracy Water-Power Jet Gun commercial, young Darrin Stevens, Babylon 5’s Lennier, or the narrator of A&E’s Biography, for those who grew up during the Camp Age, Bill Mumy will forever be TV’s other Boy Wonder, Will Robinson.

Interview conducted in February and March 2016.

Bill Mumy as Will Robinson, by and courtesy of artist Mike Hoffman.

Lost in Space® TM & © Legend Pictures, LLC.

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there a kid hero more happening than Will Robinson? Sure, he may have been lost in space, but Will played guitar, had a groovy wardrobe and two hot sisters, feared no giant Cyclops, and palled around with not one but two sidekicks (a robot and a crabby but lovable man-child). Plus, Will was the smartest guy in the room.

While Bill (then Billy) Mumy may have been just a hair older than many of the children watching him each week on Lost in Space, by the time he and his

Before I ask questions of Bill Mumy, the adult creative artist, can we channel Billy Mumy, the child actor, for a moment? Tell me how you, as a kid, felt the day you first saw the elaborate Jupiter 2 set for Lost in Space.

I hate to disappoint people when they expect me to have reacted like I was really feeling like I was seeing a legit spaceship, or a real robot, etc., when I was a kid. But the truth is, I’d been on sets and locations and around lots of props and in all kinds of wardrobe for half my life by the time we started Lost in Space. I was a seasoned pro by then. The LIS sets were truly impressive… but remember, they were spread out over two separate soundstages on the 20th Century Fox

lot. The upper deck was on one stage, the lower on another… we had swing sets that connected and disconnected… no ceilings… big lights, cameras, and cranes and cables and crew always everywhere. I LOVED the look of the show. But I never got caught up in the feeling that it was anything other than just cool sets and props and acting.

Although you had been acting for several years and were quite experienced, Lost in Space was your first hit…

Well, I’d been in a ton of “hits” before LIS. Three Twilight Zones, three Hitchcocks [Alfred Hitchcock Presents], two Loretta Young Shows, the hit Westerns of the day, several major studio feature films, Disney films, etc.

We were all proud of the success Lost in Space achieved and we all paid attention to the ratings every week, but I don’t think we ever felt like we were a big hit at the time. Successful, yes. But, we certainly were no Bonanza.

Let me rephrase that—Lost in Space was the first show you started on from day one, and there was a lot of LIS merchandising, with your likeness on trading cards and toys and such. How did you, as a kid, process that fame?

The merchandise was very cool, and I used to go up to Irwin Allen’s office often and he’d allow me to take “one” of the current LIS merchandise stuff he had laying around. I dug it, but it never felt like much of a big deal to me at the time. I enjoyed being part of the Aurora Model kit… None of my real friends ever treated me special or acted like they were impressed by what I was doing when I wasn’t tossing a Frisbee around with them. Basically, I left my work at work and then became a normal kid. I didn’t think about processing fame.

Is it true that you were the first choice to play Eddie Munster?

Yes.

A 1966 poster of the Dynamic Duo from the animated opening credits to the Batman TV show.

Courtesy of Heritage. © Greenway Productions/20th Century Fox Television/DC Comics.

Batman TM & © DC Comics.

AMERICA GOES BATTY

The Batman TV Show

RIGHT: Camp-fests showing the 1943 Batman movie serial became a 1965 art-house fad.

Courtesy of Heritage.

Batman TM & © DC Comics.

It’s a classic Hollywood success story: a television producer, desperate for reading material for an airline flight, chances across an issue of Batman (issue #171, with the Riddler) and—Holy Brainstorm!—an idea lightbulb flashes over his head and he realizes that the Caped Crusader can be TV’s Next Big Thing.

This is a tale that has been told repeatedly by well-intentioned journalists, comics historians, artists, and by Batman editor Julius Schwartz in his autobiography. It’s certainly a crowd-pleaser. Too bad it isn’t true.

Actually, there is an element of truth therein: the producer, William Dozier, was reading Batman comics on an airplane. But instead of a lightbulb, a dark cloud of embarrassment loomed over his head: “I felt a little bit like an idiot,” Dozier confessed in 1986 in The Official Batman Batbook.

So how, then, did Batman, the comic book that only recently had been spared the axe, become Batman, the programming and cultural phenomenon?

It all started, according to one account, when a television executive spent an evening with Batman and Robin.

THE FIRST “ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW” “Made in 1943… discovered in 1965! Columbia Pictures presents An Evening with Batman and Robin. The greatest serial ever filmed… now the IN-tertainment scoop of the year!”

That’s how Columbia Pictures touted its rerelease of the 1943 movie serial Batman; its fifteen chapters were edited into a single motion picture 182

and retitled An Evening with Batman and Robin.

Starring the plump Lewis Wilson and gawky Douglas Croft as the Masked Manhunter and Boy Wonder, this black-and-white low-budget romp was replete with ridiculously broad performances, a scenerychewing Japanese villain named Dr. Daka, spinetingling narration, and cliffhanger action. What passed for escapism to World War II-era audiences was perceived as the “in” thing by the trendy sophisticates of the swinging Sixties. In the twenty art houses where An Evening with Batman and Robin was booked, it was greeted with chuckles and guffaws, plus cheers for the heroes and hisses for the villains, the same type of rambunctious audience interaction that later became popular with midnight screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

A version of Batman’s television genesis places Yale Udoff, at the time ABC-TV’s director of late night programming, at a screening of An Evening with Batman and Robin at Chicago’s Playboy Club, where he allegedly took note of the crowd’s response to the characters he had read in comic books as a child. (A variation on this story sets it at Hugh Hefner’s Chicago Playboy Mansion, with both Udoff and Batman creator Bob Kane among Hef’s guests for a Batman showing.) It’s unlikely that director Lambert Hillyer intended his 1943 Batman to be anything short of “serious” thrills, but his retread serial proved that the dashing Dynamic Duo were good at getting laughs in 1965. While Udoff was connected, at least peripherally, with Batman’s development at ABC, his attendance at a Playboy showing of this serial is apparently another urban legend that has evolved from a distortion of the facts.

It had only been a year since a 1964 essay by Susan Sontag had popularized the term “Camp.”

THE BOY BLUNDER SPEAKS! An Interview with Dean Torrence

Dean Torrence and Jan Berry met in high school in Los Angeles and gigged together in several doowop groups until finding fame as the surf-music duo Jan and Dean, starting in 1963 with the

known for TV’s Bewitched. In the works was the weekly series Jan and Dean on the Road, planned for a Fall 1966 premiere on ABC. The show would whisk Jan and Dean to a different tour destination each week, allowing them to parody other TV shows along the way. The series—and Jan and Dean’s partnership—was derailed on April 12, 1966 when an auto accident nearly took Jan’s life.

Berry took years to recuperate, during which time Torrence reestablished himself as a successful graphic designer, producing Grammy-nominated and Grammy-winning album covers for numerous successful acts through his company, Kitty Hawk Graphics. In the late Eighties, Jan’s condition had improved enough to allow the duo to reunite for concerts and new recordings, a second act they enjoyed until Berry’s 2004 passing.

Interview conducted in October 2015 and transcribed

by Steven Thompson.

Holy Hype, Batman!

This Billboard ad from January 29, 1966 promoted Jan and Dean’s “Batman” single.

Batman TM & © DC Comics.

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single “Surf City.” Hits including “Little Old Lady from Pasadena,” “Dead Man’s Curve,” and “Ride the Wild Surf” followed. Jan and Dean’s popularity led to their co-headlining their own comedy movie in 1965, Easy Come, Easy Go, an ill-fated production that Torrence discusses in this interview.

As their concept album Jan and Dean Meet Batman made its way into stores in March 1966, the boys had just finished shooting a television pilot for Ashmont Productions, in association with 20th Century Fox Television, for director William Asher, best

You and Jan released the single, “Batman,” in January of ’66, then the album. I played the grooves off of Jan and Dean Meet Batman when I was a kid.

That’s my wife’s very, very favorite Jan and Dean LP. And she’s fifteen years younger than me, so she wasn’t around when it came out. Somehow she heard it. It’s not as though I sit around and play any of this stuff, but somehow she heard bits and piece of it and it became her favorite LP. Your “Batman” song was a riff on the TV show theme… but interspersed throughout was a little of your comedy. The single was recorded first, then the album, isn’t that right?

The single was probably done first. I know it was right around Jan’s accident, and Jan’s accident was in April of ’66, so that sounds about right. So it was the last project we worked on.

It sounds like it was a fun project.

We had a lot of fun with that. We kind of understood that most of our music had some sort of humor in it. And sometimes it was a lot more subtle. I think even some folks weren’t even sure if we were serious or if it was tongue in cheek, you know? But, yeah, we always had some sort of little humorous thread going through most of our music. “Batman” was one of the first times we were making it more overt.

The songwriters you were working with, Don Altfeld and Fred Weider, did some of the sketch writing for this album. They co-wrote the LP, but whoever wrote that first song really knew their Batman lore. The chorus said, “We need THE Batman.” Now, this was back then he was Batman, not THE Batman. It had been a long time since he had been THE Batman, which is how we see him today.

And even the single’s vignette of the reenactment of Bruce Wayne’s origin—that really spoke to the comic-BOOK fan, not just the kid who might have been swept away by all of this stuff on TV at the time. So, which of the songwriters was the Batman fan?

I’d guess it was probably Weider.

I don’t even remember him. Don [Altfeld] was a high school buddy and co-wrote a few of our tunes, including “Little Old Lady from Pasadena.” Don was in pre-med at UCLA with Jan—and they were also friends from high school, as I said. In 1966, I don’t think they had a lot of time to sit around and research all the stuff you’re talking about. So I’m guessing it was probably the other guy. At least the detail stuff.

IT’S A BIRD… IT’S A PLANE… IT’S SUPERMAN

The Man of Steel on Broadway When DC Comics readers saw the Man of Steel “strut the Krypton Crawl” in Jimmy Olsen #88 (Oct. 1965), little did they know that in just a matter of months, their hero would become a Super(song and dance)man—on Broadway, to boot! But then again, with his World’s Finest friend Batman appearing on television two nights a week, Superman wasn’t about to be upstaged.

RIGHT: The musical’s soundtrack album from Columbia Records, featuring the original Broadway cast.

Superman TM & © DC Comics.

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The timing of the March 29, 1966 Broadway premiere of It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s Superman might suggest that it was one of the many super-hero projects rocketing onto the pop-culture landscape after Batman’s January 12, 1966 premiere and meteoric success. But this musical’s trajectory was far from faster than a speeding bullet. Superman’s transformation from the comics page to the Broadway stage began with composer Charles Strouse and lyricist Lee Adams, Tony winners for Bye Bye Birdie. In 1964

they had just finished the Sammy Davis, Jr.-starring Golden Boy, a musical about different kind of superman, a scrapper from Harlem who punched his way out of the ghetto as a pro boxer.

As Adams told writer Lynne Stephens in Comic Scene vol. 1 #11, he and Strouse were looking for a sunnier vehicle for their next project and approached Esquire magazine writers David Newman and Robert Benton to gauge their interest in co-writing a musical comedy. “They came back to us with the idea of doing Superman, and we thought that sounded pretty good,” Adams told Stephens. The musical duo could have asked for another idea: the heyday of television’s The Adventures of Superman was long gone (although the show could still be found in syndication), and eight Sadie Hawkins Days had passed since Broadway’s last adaptation of a comics character, 1956’s Li’l Abner. Instead, they forged ahead, obtaining the Superman rights from National Periodical Publications and spending eighteen months writing the musical. The project became more powerful than a locomotive once they partnered with super-producer Harold (Hal) Prince. Prince’s string of hits (as coproducer or producer) included Damn Yankees, West Side Story, Fiorello!, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and at the time, his Fiddler on the Roof was a long-running smash.

While the Strouse/Adams/Newman/Benton/ Prince version of the Man of Steel would, like that Jimmy Olsen cover, feature a musical Man of Steel, the child-catering silliness of your average Mort Weisinger-edited Superman comic book was nowhere to be found in It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s Superman—except for its portrayal of Lois Lane, who only had eyes for the big blue guy and who, in the words of New York Times reviewer Stanley Kauffmann, “would like to be his altar ego.” There was no Bottle City of Kandor, no giant key to unlock the door of the Fortress of Solitude, no Jimmy Olsen with a Superman signal watch, no Superbaby flashback, and no Bizarro, Lex Luthor, or Brainiac. There were

Bob Holiday as Superman signed autographs as part of the musical as well as off-stage.

From The Amazing World of Superman #nn, courtesy of John Trumbull.

Superman TM & © DC Comics.

THE SIXTIES SUPERMAN An Interview with Bob Holiday

Fifty years after being hoisted over a stage on wires, Bob Holiday still takes Superman seriously. He’s unfortunately overlooked by those who only consider Hollywood when counting the actors who have played the Man of Steel. But for the Camp Age generation, Holiday was the “real” Superman—especially for the awestruck kids who met him backstage in 1966—having appeared as Superman on Broadway, on TV shows and commercials, and in print ads.

Interview conducted in January 2016.

It’s not every day a fella gets to chat with Superman! Are you ready to fly down memory lane?

Michael, I want to thank you for including me in your book. It’s nice to be remembered. Let’s do this!

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Superman made his debut in comic books when you were a small boy. Did you read Superman comics as a kid?

I sure did! I loved reading the comics, and I loved watching the movie serials. I was a huge Superman fan.

A lot of kids played Superman by tying a towel around their necks as a cape. Were you one of them?

No, I didn’t ever do that. I think that started more when the George Reeves TV show aired.

Kids had a better visual of Superman and they wanted to look more like him. The comics were small pictures. It was different.

Lyricist Lee Adams once said in an interview that you were the first actor who auditioned for the lead in It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s Superman. He felt that you were too good to be

true, but they kept auditioning actors before finally settling on the best of the bunch, the first guy to walk through the door!

Were you aware at the time that you were the first person to audition for Superman?

I knew I was early, but I didn’t know I was the first. It all happened so fast. I saw the ad in the New York World Telegram that Hal Prince was looking for a Superman. And I fit the physical requirements—six-foot-three-inches, 200 pounds, black hair, and blue eyes. It was overwhelming. I knew I had to audition. I wanted the part so bad. I knew I had to do my best and completely believe in Superman. I raced over to Hal Prince’s office, and I ran into Hal and Charles Strouse coming out of the elevator. I loved their greeting, “Bob Holiday, Bob Holiday! Are we glad to see you!” But I was on pins and needles during the whole audition process. I had no idea whether or not I’d get the part.

What was required of you when you auditioned for the Superman and Clark Kent roles?

First and foremost, I had to sing. I chose two songs that I’d done in

Williams, Richard Long, and Andrew Duggan were handsome detectives in New Orleans in Bourbon Street Beat, which premiered in 1959, the same season Warner Bros. debuted Hawaiian Eye, about handsome detectives in the newly minted fiftieth state.

Bourbon Street Beat lasted only one season, but Williams’ Madison character was relocated to the ABC startup Surfside 6, about handsome detectives on a houseboat… and Richard Long’s Bourbon Street Beat character Rex Randolph found a home on the popular 77 Sunset Strip, about handsome detectives in L.A.

So when Bill Dozier grabbed The Green Hornet as his follow-up to Batman, the charismatic 32-yearold Van Williams, who had logged several years as a handsome detective on TV, was Dozier’s choice to play his masked handsome detective on his new series. Williams took a couple of days to mull over the offer before accepting it, but then committed himself to the role, sold on Dozier’s decision to play The Green Hornet straight, not campy like Batman. As Dozier told the L.A. Times in its April 30, 1966 edition, “It would be foolhardy to try to copy Batman. Batman is in a class by itself and any imposter would fall on its Batface.” Williams told TV Guide in 1966, “The Green Hornet is a pretty dead-pan guy.”

The series hurried into production—just like Dozier’s Batman had, not long before. In addition to Batman’s twice-weekly and The Green Hornet’s weekly schedules, Dozier was executive-producing a third weekly series for ABC for a Fall 1966 launch: The Tammy Grimes Show, a sitcom starring Broadway actress Tammy Grimes as a wealthy wastrel. Dozier

was also developing pilots for Dick Tracy and Wonder Woman, coveting more comic-based properties to strike while the Bat-iron was hot.

The Green Hornet premiered at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, September 9, 1966. Dozier set the tone of the show with his narration, opening each episode with:

“Another challenge for the Green Hornet, his aide Kato, and their rolling arsenal, the Black Beauty. On police records a wanted criminal, the Green Hornet is really Britt Reid, owner-publisher of the Daily Sentinel—his dual identity known only to his secretary and the District Attorney. And now, to protect the rights and lives of decent citizens, rides the Green Hornet.”

Then came the show’s jazzy theme song, an upbeat reworking of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee” arranged by Billy May and performed by trumpeter Al Hirt.

Other than The Green Hornet’s opening narration by Dozier and its swinging score, the show was the polar opposite of Batman. Batman and Robin were “duly deputized” law officers, with Gotham City’s inept police force routinely turning to them.

The Green Hornet and Kato were outlaws, adopting that ruse to infiltrate crime cartels, then set them up for a fall. Batman mostly took place during the day, and the Batcave was lit up like a discotheque.

The Green Hornet mostly took place at night, and the garage where Kato maintained the duo’s wheels was dimly lit and threatening, with an eerie jade glow.

The sleek, ebon, gadget-loaded Batmobile looked like a hot rod. The sleek, ebon, gadget-loaded Black Beauty looked like a tank. Batman and Robin fought kitschy super-villains who seemed like rowdy frat boys and girls on a crime-spree spring break. The Green Hornet and Kato fought hired killers with silent guns, ruthless racketeers, and insurance scammers.

Other than gun moll Molly in the opening two-parter, no one ever died on Batman. On The Green Hornet, people lost their lives to gunshot wounds and leopard attacks. The fights on Batman were cartoonish, a splash of sound effects, surf music, and choreography. The fights on The Green Hornet were street-level and believable, from the Hornet’s swift punches and disorienting hornet-stings to Kato’s unpredictable, blur-of-motion kicks and chops.

Oh, you were wondering when I’d get around to Bruce Lee, the Chinese-American actor who introduced martial arts to a mainstream audience, weren’t you? Lee, a child actor in Hong Kong cinema, was performing martial-arts demonstrations in Southern California in the mid-Sixties when he caught the eye of Dozier, who cast him in his failed Charlie Chan pilot, Number One Son. Two years later, Dozier

Album cover to Al Hirt’s The Horn Meets “The Hornet,” depicting Van Williams as the Green Hornet with the chops-master trumpeter.

Courtesy of Heritage.

TM & © The Green Hornet, Inc.

LEFT: The Dynamic Duodark, on the photo cover of Gold Key’s The Green Hornet #1 (Feb. 1967).

TM & © The Green Hornet, Inc.

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of Diana Prince? She went on to bit parts in the films Targets and Easy Rider before dropping out of Hollywood and, apparently, off the face of the Earth.

The writers weren’t entirely to blame for this misfire, either. Hart and Siegel’s not-quite-a-Wonder Woman concept might have worked as a MAD parody, or as a Carol Burnett sketch, the latter of which might have happened since both writers later worked on that show.

This one’s failure rested on the shoulders of its executive producer. Dozier set his sights on becoming the Irwin Allen of comic-based television but was attempting to produce too much, too quickly. And in the case of Wonder Woman, he lacked a clear understanding of the character’s virtues.

Could TV’s Wonder Woman have worked, if played straight? Obviously, in the Seventies we learned the answer to that question, but it’s interesting to ponder the missed opportunity of a 1967 Wonder Woman action series starring Linda Harrison— or even Ellie Wood Walker, for that matter. Gender trailblazers like Pussy Galore, Emma Peel, and Honey West had opened the door for such a treatment. Too bad William Dozier’s misstep bolted it shut.

LEFT: Screenshots from the Wonder Woman pilot, showing Ellie Wood Walker as Diana Prince and Wonder Woman, Maudie Prickett as her mother, and Linda Harrison as the mirror Wonder Woman.

Wonder Woman TM & © DC Comics.

Wonder Woman TV show © Greenway Productions/20th Century Fox Television/DC Comics.

It wasn’t all bad for the Amazon Princess during the Camp Age! She enjoyed a merchandising wave including an Aurora model kit, a Super Queens figure from Ideal, and a board game.

Wonder Woman TM & © DC Comics.

doting mother was Maudie Prickett (not Hope Summers, as Daniels stated in his Wonder Woman book), one of the most durable character actresses of Sixties’ television and the possessor of its most tightly wound hair bun; you might remember her as the maid-next-door pal of the title star of Hazel, and she also portrayed no end of usually one-off characters on programs including The Andy Griffith Show, Bewitched, and Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. And who was Ellie Wood Walker, the pilot’s Diana Prince/“ugly” Wonder Woman? Wood had only one screen credit prior to Wonder Woman as part of the ensemble movie cast of The New Interns, director John Rich’s 1964 sequel to the hospital drama The Interns. Wood was an attractive newcomer with a flair for comedic timing, and deserved a better vehicle than Who’s Afraid 213

Detail from the cover of Gold Key’s Underdog #1 (Mar. 1975). TM & © Classic Media.

SATURDAY MORNING SUPER-HEROES Cartoons’ Coolest Camp Age Crime-Crushers

Long before streaming, DVRs, and binge watching— before VCRs, even—there was Saturday morning, a hallowed time for children. This was when television’s three networks—NBC, CBS, and ABC—devoted a programming block to kids, no grown-ups allowed!

Mom and Dad slept in on Saturdays while electrified boys and girls vaulted out of bed, gobbled bowls of sugar-laced breakfast cereals, and binge watched— Sixties style!—animated cartoons and occasional live-action shows tailored specifically for them. This now-archaic Saturday morning demographic courtship dated back to the movie serials of the Forties and Fifties, when theaters were crammed with screaming pre-teens frenzied by a deluge of adventure and comedy shorts.

Beginning in 1966, comic-book ads touting the TV networks’ Saturday morning line-ups were one of the funnybook fan’s most anticipated annual events.

These promos, illustrated and lettered in the style of the comics themselves, whetted appetites by announcing the new super-hero and comedy animated series that would be premiering in September.

Second only to Saturday morning as a television block for children was the weekday afternoon. Having thrown the kiddies a bone on Saturdays, in the afternoons the major networks catered to stay-at-home 214

mothers addicted to the guiding light of daily soap operas, which filled the dark shadows of the days of their lives with searches for tomorrow until the edge of night (dinnertime). Luckily, independent TV channels picked up the slack, distracting schoolkids from their homework by airing syndicated cartoons and live-action adventure shows. (Ever noticed how both soap operas and adventure cartoons feature roguish bad guys with eyepatches?)

Some of the credit for the wave of campy superheroes of Sixties animated television must go to Gene Deitch and Jay Ward. In 1957, Deitch began producing Tom Terrific, a (barely) animated series of shorts for Terrytoons, aired as part of the Captain Kangaroo morning children’s show on CBS. Tom was a silly, shape-shifting super-hero who wore a funnel hat, palled around with the apprehensive Mighty Manfred, the Wonder Dog, and fought the “rotten to the core” Crabby Appleton. In 1959, Ward introduced the world to Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Bullwinkle the Moose in an ABC series originally titled Rocky and His Friends. Like Chuck Jones’ Looney Tunes theatrical shorts that preceded it, Ward’s show took cartoons and applied layers of humor that would appeal to viewers of all ages—even adults. While Rocky and His Friends changed titles and networks over the years, its characters (some of which would break out into their own shows) and ready-for-primetime voice talent (Bill Scott, June Foray, Paul Frees, Daws Butler, Hans Conried, Edward Everett Horton, and Charles Ruggles) made the series a classic. Also predating the Camp Age was Mighty Mouse, Terrytoons’ former star of theatrical shorts whose Mighty Mouse Playhouse had been a Saturday morning staple on CBS since 1955.

The advent of cable television’s round-the-clock children’s networks, followed by TV on demand, choked the life out of these beloved pop-culture rituals. Today, the once-revered Saturday morning is the domain of golf and weekend editions of news programs, and afternoon is home to sassy TV judges.

This section of Hero-A-Go-Go dials back to the Sixties, when many of our favorite super-heroes and secret agents originated not in the comic books, but on the flickering images of our televisions.

BATFINK

First Appearance: Batfink, syndicated, 4/21/66 Number of episodes: 100 Secret Identity: none Super-powers: steel-reinforced bat-wings, supersonic sonar radar Catchphrase: “Your bullets cannot harm me—my wings are like a shield of steel!”

Rogues’ Gallery: Hugo A-Go-Go, Skinny Minnie, Daniel Boom, Fatman, Kitchy Koo, Queenie Bee, Judy Jitsu, Brother Goose

first aired in 1962 (over two decades before a quartet of teenage mutant ninja turtles would kick their way into the popular culture). Also in 1962, two episodes of The Jetsons were super-hero-themed: “Elroy’s TV Show” featured the youngest Jetson as a TV hero called Spaceboy Zoom, and “Elroy’s Pal” involved the boy’s hero worship of a TV super-hero named Nimbus the Great. A Season Five episode of The Flintstones airing in February 1965 featured Fred standing in for a popular Stone Age super-hero named Superstone. And on the itty-bitty, atomic-energized heels of Atom Ant’s Fall 1965 debut came not one but two episodes of The Magilla Gorilla Show featuring costumed crimefighters: “The Purple Mask” and “Super Blooper Heroes.”

After ABC’s Batman became a hit, Hanna-Barbera stopped dabbling in super-heroes and started delivering them wholesale, developing a universe of new characters, frequently crossbreeds of superheroes and another genre. This first push was at the urging of Fred Silverman, head of CBS-TV’s Daytime Programming, for the Fall 1966 Saturday morning season; Silverman was heavily involved with show designer Alex Toth and H-B in roundtable discussions during the development of the Space Ghost and Dino Boy cartoons for that season. One year later, Hanna-Barbera was cranking out super-hero and adventure-hero shows not only for CBS but also ABC and NBC, expanding their H-B universe but also producing the first animated version of Marvel Comics’ The Fantastic Four. Merchandising deals were struck, with Atom Ant and Space Ghost being particularly popular on store shelves. Gold Key Comics produced Jonny Quest, Atom Ant, Secret Squirrel, Frankenstein, Jr. and the Impossibles, and Space Ghost oneshots, followed by seven issues of the title HannaBarbera Super TV Heroes, an anthology which rotated the adventures of Birdman, the Galaxy Trio, the Herculoids, Mighty Mightor, Moby Dick, Shazzan, Space Ghost, and Young Samson and Goliath.

Once the Camp Age ended, the Hanna-Barbera super-heroes disappeared, with master illustrator Alex Toth staying on board to design a new wave of adventure heroes such as the Arabian Knights (before long, Toth would get another chance at designing a super-hero show, with Super Friends). In one way or another, however, the H-B heroes have managed to return, and return again, in syndication, comic books, new animated series, and collector-oriented toys; as of this writing, DC Comics has reintroduced the heroes in a new comic book titled Future Quest. Some Baby Boomers were rubbed the wrong way when two of their childhood super-heroes were played for laughs in the adult-oriented cartoons Space Ghost Coast to Coast and Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, but hey, you don’t see anyone clamoring to do a Batfink or Mighty Hercules revamp, do you? This is proof positive that of the countless costumed crimefighters birthed in the Camp Age, Hanna-Barbera’s heroes had legs—and in one case, antennae.

ATOM ANT First Appearance: The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show, NBC, 9/12/65 Number of episodes: 26 Secret Identity: none Super-powers: flight, super-strength, super-speed Catchphrase: “Up and at ’em, Atom Ant!” Rogues’ Gallery: Big Fats Dynamo, Ferocious Flea, the Glob (Crankenshaft’s Monster), Mr. Muto (Karate Ant), Dr. Von Gimmick Synopsis: Hanna-Barbera’s smallest super-hero is one of its mightiest. Originally co-starring with the spy spoof Secret Squirrel in an hour-long show, Atom Ant and Secret Squirrel split into their own half-hour series in 1967. The companion features Precious Pupp and The Hillbilly Bears rounded out Atom Ant’s program.

Atom Ant is the keeper of the Crook Book, bustling with dossiers of do-badders. His anthill home, with a mailbox, leads to his underground headquarters containing weightlifting and crimefighting equipment. He is often called into action by the authorities, his tiny antennae picking up their distress signal. A popular gimmick for Atom Ant’s animators was to show the tiny hero’s super-deeds from a distance, with Atom barely visible as a speck, then cutting to a close-up. Howard Morris originally voiced Atom, followed by Don Messick.

Atom Ant was heavily merchandised, including a Gold Key Comics one-shot, a View-Master set Gold Key Comics’ Atom Ant #1 (Jan. 1966).

TM & © HannaBarbera Productions.

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(shared with Secret Squirrel), a push puppet and Tricky Trapeze from Kohner, a Transogram board game, and a Halloween costume, among other items.

was reimagined as Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law on the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim.

DINO BOY

Courtesy of Heritage.

TM & © Hanna-Barbera Productions.

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BIRDMAN First Appearance: Birdman and the Galaxy Trio, NBC, 9/9/67 Number of episodes: 40 Secret Identity: Ray Randall Super-powers: flight, energy blasts, formation of energy shield Catchphrase: “Bir-r-r-r-r-rdman!”

Rogues’ Gallery: F.E.A.R., Number One, Dr. Millennium, Vulturo, Morto, X the Eliminator, Nitron the Human Bomb Synopsis: While Hawkman was fluttering about on Saturday mornings in CBS’ The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure, Hanna-Barbera introduced its own Winged Wonder, designed by Alex Toth and voiced by Keith Andes.

Birdman, the super-hero incarnation of the Egyptian sun god Ra, is solar-powered, his energy waning during prolonged exposures to darkness. He is dispatched on missions for Inter-Nation Security

by Falcon-7, his bossman who sports an eyepatch.

Headquartered in the Bird Lair, deep inside an inactive volcano, Birdman is accompanied into action by his golden-eagle companion Avenger and occasionally, a kid sidekick named Birdboy.

This super-hero was actually Hanna-Barbera’s second Birdman. One of the super-criminals to fight Frankenstein, Jr. was the Birdman, a dumpy, costumed crook who commanded robotic birds.

Merchandising of Birdman was limited, although the hero did appear as a 1967 Ben Cooper Halloween costume and in Gold Key Comics’ Hanna-Barbera Super TV Heroes (according to the Grand Comics Database, the Birdman/Galaxy Trio team-up in issue #2 of H-B Super TV Heroes was scripted by Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel). The character

TM & © Hanna-Barbera Productions.

Birdman title cel.

First Appearance: Space Ghost, CBS, 9/10/66 Number of episodes: 18 Secret Identity: Todd (last name unknown) Super-powers: none Rogues’ Gallery: Vampire Men, Rock Pygmies, Treemen, Ant Warriors, Worm Men, Bird Riders, Sun People Synopsis: Officially titled Dino Boy in the Lost Valley, this series was reminiscent of the works of master of adventure Edgar Rice Burroughs, albeit with contemporary overtones. Designed by Alex Toth, Dino Boy’s primitive landscape provided a dramatic departure from its host series, Space Ghost (Space Ghost starred in two episodes per half hour as opposed to Dino Boy’s one).

Dino Boy is Todd, whose life is spared once he parachutes from a doomed aircraft. Lost in a dangerous world he never made (an uncharted South American village which has inexplicably remained mired in the Stone Age), he is rescued and befriended by a hulking caveman named Ugh, and embarks upon a series of Lost Valley adventures riding atop Ugh’s brontosaurus, Bronty. The young voice actor playing Dino Boy was Johnny Carson, who soon became known as John David Carson to avoid confusion with the famous Tonight Show host.

FRANKENSTEIN, JR. First Appearance: Frankenstein, Jr. and the Impossibles, CBS, 9/10/66 Number of episodes: 18 Secret Identity: n/a Super-powers: flight via astro boots, superstrength, various powers from mechanical body parts (battering ram from head, power beams from fingers, electrical energy from fists, elongating arms, etc.)

Gold Key Comics’ Space Ghost #1 (Mar. 1967). Front cover by Dan Spiegle, back cover by Alex Toth.

age of the Arabian Nights, where they are frequently imperiled by wicked wizards, terrifying beasts, and disgusting bandits. The teens fly from adventure to adventure on Kaboobie, the winged camel given to them by Shazzan.

Shazzan’s thunderous voice was provided by Barney Phillips, a TV and film actor known for roles in Dragnet, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, Twelve O’Clock High, and one of the most popular Twilight Zone episodes, “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?” Jerry Dexter, who was also voicing Aqualad at the time for Filmation’s Aquaman series, played Chuck, while animation great Janet Waldo voiced Nancy and Don Messick voiced Kaboobie.

In Ted Sennett’s The Art of Hanna-Barbera, CBS’ Fred Silverman, fundamental in the development of Shazzan, lauded the look of the show (the handiwork of Alex Toth) but cited its star’s omnipotence as its biggest weakness. Nonetheless, Shazzan was licensed for several products including a jigsaw puzzle, a Big Little Book, a coloring book, and comicbook appearances in Gold Key’s Hanna-Barbera Super TV Heroes.

Hanna-Barbera twice repurposed Chuck and Nancy’s ring-transformation gimmick: with Wonder Twins Zan and Jayna touching fists in Super Friends, incanting “Wonder Twins powers, activate,” and with young Benjy Grimm merging two ring halves in Fred and Barney Meet the Thing, speaking the phrase “Thing ring, do your thing!” to become the Thing of Fantastic Four fame, of sorts.

TM & © Hanna-Barbera Productions.

SPACE GHOST First Appearance: Space Ghost, CBS, 9/10/66 Number of episodes: 42 Secret Identity: unknown (at least originally) Super-powers: invisibility and flight from InvisoPower button on belt; Power Bands that fire numerous types of blasts, including but not limited to the Force Ray, Destructo Ray, Vibro Ray, Stun Ray, Pile Driver Ray, Heat Ray, and Freeze Ray; traverses galaxy in his Phantom Cruiser spacecraft, operating from his base on the Ghost Planet Catchphrase: “Spa-a-a-a-a-a-ce Ghost!”

Rogues’ Gallery: the Heat Thing, Zorak, Brak, Moltar, Metallus, Spider Woman (Black Widow), Creature King, Lokar, Lurker and One-Eye, Sandman, the Schemer Synopsis: Some might call Space Ghost “Batman in space” (those two heroes finally met in a 2011 episode of the Cartoon Network’s Batman: The Brave and the Bold, by the way). Created during CBS-TV exec Fred Silverman’s push for new, realistic superhero programming, Space Ghost, like Batman, has since been reimagined for subsequent generations, but it’s his original two-year run on Saturday morning that continues to haunt fans to this day.

Space Ghost was the perfect example of an animated series firing on all cylinders. Let’s start with Alex Toth’s character designs. Space Ghost’s sleek costume is a curious balance of intimidating and comforting imagery, from an ebon cowl that resembles an executioner’s hood to an ethereal white 235

HannaBarbera’s super-heroes, revitalized in 2016 for DC Comics’ Future Quest series.

TM & © HannaBarbera Productions/ DC Comics.

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bodysuit that makes the hero look both spooky and messianic. This is iconography at its most classic, akin to Carmine Infantino’s costume design for the Silver Age Flash or Gil Kane’s for the Silver Age Green Lantern—but unlike those DC Comics heroes, whose costumes have been modified to suit the times, Space Ghost today looks exactly like he did when we first met him in 1966. Just as the vibrantly hued Robin, the Boy Wonder softened the Batman’s jagged edges, Space Ghost’s young allies Jan and Jace, decked out in primary colors, make the intergalactic mystery man seem more approachable—and borrowing a cue from H-B’s own Jonny Quest and its cartoony pet Bandit, Space Ghost’s Blip the monkey adds the spice of comic relief. Space Ghost’s arsenal (his Power Bands) and “wheels” (the Phantom Cruiser) might have even been coveted by a certain Gotham Guardian.

While Toth’s Space Ghost universe was compatible with the other H-B heroic realms he imagined, with its respective aliens, robots, supervillains, and sound effects that might also feel at home in episodes of The Herculoids or Birdman, Space Ghost’s cosmic backgrounds and surreal environments gave the show a unique look, especially the starry spacescapes, from which Space Ghost’s gleaming costume stood out like a beacon. Space Ghost’s pacing was breakneck, beginning with its opening, announced by the hero’s triumphant rallying cry cuing an eerie, almost hypnotic siren’s call of a theme. Each second of Space Ghost’s seven-minute episodes was skillfully timed to keep the viewer glued to the screen. Also elevating the series above the one-and-done, easily forgettable episodes of most super-hero cartoons was its landmark six-part Space Ghost “Council of Doom” storyline from Season Two, where a sinister sextet of villains from previous installments—Metallus, Creature King, Zorak, Moltar, Brak, and Spider-Woman—united to attempt to destroy Space Ghost, hurtling him through space and time in chapters which also featured his team-ups with the newest members of HannaBarbera’s Saturday morning pantheon: Mighty Mightor, Moby Dick, the Herculoids, and Shazzan.

Lastly, the voice talent truly made Space Ghost special. The teen twins, Jan and Jace, came to life courtesy of actors Ginny Tyler and Tim Matheson (him again!), with Blip’s eeks and ooks cheerfully chirped by the alwaysamazing Don Messick. But make no mistake about it, the star of Space Ghost was Gary Owens.

His piercing baritone defined the super-hero just as much as Alex Toth’s illustrations did. No stranger to Camp and caped

crusaders—among his many credits: Roger Ramjet, Dynomutt’s Blue Falcon, and the hand-cupped-overhis ear announcer of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In— Owens was tapped by the show’s producers to lend voice to Space Ghost. “Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna, and Fred Silverman, the president of CBS [Daytime] at the time, were the ones who chose me as Space Ghost,” Owens told interviewer Richard A. Scott in 2008 in Back Issue #30. “I had been doing the promos for every Hanna-Barbera show, from Jonny Quest to you-name-it… [and] then Joe called me one day and said, ‘You know, Fred and Bill and I were talking and because of your marvelous projection on every adventure show that we have, we’d like for you to be the Space Ghost character.’ And I said, ‘Well, thank you.

I’d love to do it.’ And that’s how I got the job. I didn’t have to audition for it or anything.”

Paired with a Dino Boy installment per threesegment episode, Space Ghost enjoyed strong ratings during its two seasons on Saturday morning and was heavily merchandised. The hero starred in a Gold Key Comics one-shot and was one of the headliners in Gold Key’s Hanna-Barbera Super TV Heroes anthology. Parental watchdog groups pressured Space Ghost and other similar action shows off the air in the late Sixties, but Space Ghost has refused to die. New Space Ghost cartoons were produced in the early Eighties, Comico’s aforementioned one-shot was released in 1987 (with a follow-up co-starring the Herculoids planned but later aborted), the irreverent late-night talk show Space Ghost Coast to Coast premiered in the mid-Nineties, and in 2005 DC Comics published a five-issue Space Ghost miniseries providing a real name, backstory, and origin for the hero. Still, for the children of the Camp Age, our super-specter will always be the one who knew how to make a grand entrance, belting out a hearty “Spa-a-a-a-a-a-ce Ghost!”

FILMATION’S DC SUPER-HERO CARTOONS A Big Day for Ted Knight

Superman and Superboy. Aquaman, Aqualad, and Mera. The Atom, the Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, the Justice League of America, and the Teen Titans. Batman, Robin, and Batgirl. Filmation Associates—the animation company that brought the DC Comics pantheon to television beginning in 1966— boasted the world’s most famous super-heroes in its stable. But its biggest star was one that Saturday morning viewers never saw: Ted Knight.

Yes, that Ted Knight, who would, in a few years, rocket to fame and Emmy Awards as dim-bulb newscaster Ted Baxter on the long-running The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and would later star as—coincidentally—the artist of the comic strip Cosmic Cow in Too Close for Comfort. Ted Knight, the vicar of vocal modulation, the earl of urgency, who could read any copy and give it the importance of a vital news bulletin, such as this title voiceover for an episode of Filmation’s The Flash: A scarlet costume ejects from his ring, and in a blur of motion, police scientist Barry Allen becomes…

The Flash, world’s fastest human!

Flash! Whose speed enables him to vibrate through solid walls and conquer the barriers of time and space in the pursuit of evildoers.

The Flash—Scarlet Speedster of justice!

With Ted’s voice in mind, that gives you goosebumps, doesn’t it?

Before he stepped in front a microphone to narrate a DC super-hero episode, Ted Knight played a pivotal role in the origin of those cartoons.

“The studio was now down to two employees— myself and Hal [Sutherland, former Disney animator]—and a shutdown was imminent,” wrote Lou Scheimer, a one-time animator of Bozo the Clown, in his biography (with Andy Mangels), Lou Scheimer: Creating the Filmation Generation. “Norm [Prescott, radio jock-turned-animator] was doing his best to try to raise money from someone, somewhere, somehow.” Filmation Associates, co-founder Scheimer’s fledgling animation company headquartered in California’s San Fernando Valley, was on the verge of closing its doors in 1965—until Superman saved the day! A phone query from DC Comics’ Superman

editor Mort Weisinger in New York about the possibility of Filmation producing a new Superman cartoon for CBS’ Saturday morning schedule led to an appointment for a studio visit from DC’s Hollywood dealmaker, Whitney Ellsworth… and panic, since Filmation was on the verge of bankruptcy and had scaled back to a deal-killing barebones operation.

To create the illusion of a thriving animation house, Scheimer called in friends and colleagues to fill the studio’s workstations, including his friend Ted Knight. Out of Ellsworth’s view, Knight spoke in numerous voices, manufacturing enough hustle-bustle to impress Ellsworth to move forward with Filmation.

The end result was The New Adventures of Superman, an animated series that put DC cartoons and Filmation on the map. It was the first time Superman had appeared in animation since the celebrated Fleischer Studios theatrical shorts of the early Forties (discounting the animation used in the Superman live-action movie serials to compensate for the era’s special-effects inadequacies), and was Superman’s return to television after actor George Reeves’ purported “suicide” brought one of the classics of Fifties’ television, The Adventures of Superman, to a tragic end.

Weisinger became involved as story editor of the series, as Ellsworth had been with the live-action Adventures of Superman TV show during the previous decade, keeping the cartoons as true to the comics as possible, bringing along comic-book scribes Leo Dorfman, Bob Haney, and George Kashdan as writers. Familiar villains from the comics appeared (Lex Luthor, Brainiac, Titano, Toyman, the Prankster, and Mr. Myxzptlk), and new rogues were created for the show (including the Warlock, the Sorcerer, lots of alien invaders, and a host of monsters assuming the shapes of fire, ice, trees, and lava). While the animation was produced in Hollywood, “they actually recorded the Superman voices in New York, at the same radio studio in which they had recorded the Superman radio show,” wrote Scheimer. Filmation’s

The voice of Filmation’s DC cartoons, Ted Knight.

Autographed photo courtesy of Heritage.

Filmation’s Norm Prescott, Hal Sutherland, and Lou Scheimer.

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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TM & © DC Comics.

TM & © DC Comics.

TM & © DC Comics.

Superman was a talent reunion from radio’s Superman, with Bud Collyer as Superman/Clark Kent, Joan Alexander as Lois Lane, Jackson Beck as the narrator and as Perry White, and Jack Grimes as Jimmy Olsen. The half-hour episodes featured two The New Adventures of Superman segments sandwiching one The Adventures of Superboy segment, marking the Boy of Steel’s first appearance on TV (although a Superboy live-action pilot produced a few years earlier failed to earn a berth on the schedule). Voicing Superboy and teenage Clark Kent was Bob Hastings, best known as Lt. Carpenter on the sitcom McHale’s Navy. Ted Knight—in his first foray into the DC animated universe—narrated Superboy and yapped the role of super-dog Krypto. Filmation’s The New Adventures of Superman debuted on Saturday, September 10, 1966 and was a ratings smash for CBS, elevating the network from last (third) to first place in the war for Saturday morning viewers.

With Superman’s success, Filmation raced to develop new projects. They announced an animated version of The Marx Brothers and a cartoon musical titled Three Billion Millionaires, both of which failed to reach production. A similar pall was cast over Filmation’s fruitless pilots for the teen secret agent show

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The Kid from S.P.Y., the weirdo super-hero show The Adventures of Dick Digit, and the spy spoof Bulldog Bound. Continuing their relationship with DC Comics (credited on TV by its official name, National Periodical Publications, or N.P.P.), Filmation also announced Green Lantern as having his own show.

Numerous DC characters were in development, with announcements being made to the trades in early 1967 that Aquaman, Batman (to begin production after the live-action show ended), and Green Arrow were also in the works. At one stage, Aquaman was to team up, in Brave and the Bold fashion, with a rotating roster of DC heroes including the Atom, Blackhawk, the Doom Patrol, the Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, and—showing Bob Haney’s involvement with the growing TV franchise— B’Wana Beast. Also under development were the Challengers of the Unknown, the Metal Men, Plastic Man, and Wonder Woman, with Metamorpho under consideration as well, sparking an urban legend that a Metamorpho pilot was produced. An infamous DC Comics house ad in 1966 excited fans

by prematurely, and erroneously, announcing that Wonder Woman, Plastic Man, and Metamorpho would be coming soon “in colorful animation!”

This ambitious fishing expedition eventually netted a streamlined DC super-hero show titled The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure, premiering during the Fall of 1967. Many of the aforementioned characters never made it onto the screen. Filmation eventually opted for a group of characters that were, according to Scheimer, “all visually very different from each other”: the Atom (voiced by Pat Harrington, Jr.), the Flash (Ray Owens), Green Lantern (Gerald Mohr), Hawkman (Vic Perrin), the Justice League of America (starring the aforementioned heroes and Superman, but not Aquaman, although the Sea King was shown in JLA bumpers), and the Teen Titans.

Three shorts for each of those features were produced, rotating in a “guest hero” spot. Each Hour of Adventure installment consisted of two Superman episodes, one Superboy, two Aquaman episodes, and the guest hero episode, plus a secret code seg-

HELP! HOW TO DRAW A BEATLES COMIC IN THIRTY DAYS An Interview with Joe Sinnott

Listen… do you want to know a secret? Joe Sinnott was comicdom’s first official Beatles artist.

For most comics fans, Joltin’ Joe is best known as one half of the art team of Marvel’s flagship title, Fantastic Four, inking Jack Kirby’s FF pencils beginning in 1965. In the years that followed, Sinnott’s name would become synonymous with Marvel Comics, and over time his work would grace almost every title published by the House of Ideas, as well as the Amazing Spider-Man syndicated comic strip. His career dates back to 1950, when Joe landed an assignment for St. John’s Publishing while still a student at New York City’s Cartoonists and Illustrators School (now known as the School of Visual Arts). Throughout the Fifties and early Sixties, Sinnott penciled and inked stories in a variety of genres for several publishers, earning kudos for his accurate likenesses on biographical comics starring public figures as diverse as Pope John XXIII, John F. Kennedy, and Mickey Mantle.

Sinnott’s flair for drawing celebrities got him the gig to draw Dell Comics’ 1964 Beatles biographical one-shot, with a deadline that would require eight days a week for any other artist to meet—64 pages due in one month! How did this fan of the music of Bing Crosby complete such a Herculean task? Let’s find out…

Interview conducted in February 2016.

Let’s set the stage with your career just before Dell Comics’

The Beatles one-shot: You were drawing romance stories for Charlton, war comics for Dell, and some biographies and other stories for Treasure Chest. How did you get the Beatles assignment?

A friend of the editor, a cover illustrator named Vic Prezio, saw some of my stuff where I did some pretty good likenesses.

He really liked them, and recommended me to his editor friend.

Naturally, they wanted someone that did good likenesses. That’s how I got the Beatles assignment.

How familiar were you with the Beatles and their music when you got the assignment?

I had never heard of the Beatles or their music at the time. I don’t even recall seeing a picture of them. I was from the old school, a big fan of Bing Crosby and his music, and the Big Band era.

With its backstories of each of the four Beatles, plus their beginnings as a band, you had to have a lot of reference. What type of reference were you provided?

They did not provide any reference whatsoever. I had to scrounge around for the only magazine or two that was available, so I knew what they looked like, and their instruments, etc.

This was a real handicap, as I had so little to go on for such a long book. However, towards the end, I had drawn them so often that I needed very little reference. The instruments and guitars are what was really the most time consuming. I feel I did a nice job on them, getting down to the finest detail.

You sure did!

Did the Beatles or their agents have likeness approval?

If so, were there any problems, or was there any redrawing required?

None whatsoever! I never had to redraw anything, although they did Photostat one panel that I did, and flipped it. I had drawn a sports car with the steering wheel on the left, but as you know, over in England, the steering wheel is on the right. It was so easy to make that mistake. I once did the life story of Babe Ruth for Treasure Chest comics, and drew a panel of him with the glove on his left hand. Babe Ruth was left-handed [and wore his glove

Joe Sinnott and Jack Kirby in 1975.

Courtesy of joesinnott.com.

Meet the Beatles… by Joe Sinnott.

Detail from page 1 of Dell’s The Beatles.

Note Joe’s signature in the bottom right corner.

The Beatles TM & © Apple Corps.

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HERE WE COME…

Monkeemania and Comic Books On Tuesday, July 11, 1967, I saw Jimi Hendrix—but I don’t remember the experience.

Before you assume I was in a stupor during the legendary rock guitarist’s gig, let me assure you, that wasn’t the case. I was only nine years old, and any purple haze influencing me was an overdose of Nehi Grape soda.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience, an up-and-coming psychedelic-rock band fronted by an electrifying artist who would later be anointed the number-one guitar player of all time, forged the most unlikely partnership since U.S. super-spy Napoleon Solo joined forces with Russian agent Illya Kuryakin: Hendrix opened for one of pop music’s biggest acts, the Monkees, for a handful of concerts during the Monkees’ 1967 American and British Tour. And I was there!

My wonderful mom, a professional woman, dedicated wife, and mother to two sons (one of them not quite two at the time), fought the masses to buy four Monkees concert tickets and cart me and two of my friends (Allen and Benji) to the Charlotte (North Carolina) Coliseum, a drive that in those days took

around an hour each way from our home in nearby Concord, North Carolina. We didn’t have the best seats in the house—in fact, we were in the nosebleed section, near the clattering air-conditioning units, so far away from the Monkees that I remember saying, “M-a-a-a-ahm, they’re bigger on TV than they are from here” (smart-mouthed kid)—but, hey, I saw the Monkees, live! A half-century later, the concert is just a warm blur of nostalgia that includes no recollection whatsoever of Hendrix, whose performance I probably fidgeted through. But my mother, the coolest mama this side of Barbara Cowsill, so loved her son that she herded our posse through the packed house of 13,000 screaming kids—and still went to work the next morning at 8:00 a.m.! (And they call Diana Prince “Wonder Woman”!)

Whereas the Beatles whipped teenage girls into a frenzy, the Monkees did the same for preteens. Kay Reimier of the Charlotte Observer, in her report of the concert in the next day’s edition, described the sardine-can-crammed madhouse as “a show that began like a confused kindergarten recess and ended in what felt like 120-degree psychedelic mayhem.

The two Red Cross stations set up in the Coliseum treated about 14 cases of hysteria and exhaustion.”

While I didn’t keel over from either malady that night, I was stricken with Monkeemania. And what kid with a TV wasn’t? Marcia Brady was so infected, several years later she sweet-talked her way into getting Davy Jones to sing at her prom!

Jones, plus Micky Dolenz, Mike Nesmith, and Peter Tork, the made-for-TV fab four, became instantly famous once their weekly comedy-music show, The Monkees, premiered on NBC-TV on September 12, 1966. Their hiring came in response to an ad posted in September 1965 in the Hollywood trades:

“Madness!! Auditions. Folk & Rock MusiciansSingers for acting roles in new TV series. Running parts for 4 insane boys, age 17–21. Want spirited Ben Frank’s types. Have courage to work. Must come down for interview.” (Ben Frank’s was a 24/7 Sunset Strip restaurant, a happening hangout for Sixties celebs.)

GTO-a-go-go!

MPC’s model kit for the Monkeemobile.

The Monkees TM & © Rhino Entertainment Company.

LEFT: The TV fab four’s first official comic book, Dell Comics’ The Monkees #1, from late 1966.

The Monkees TM & © Rhino Entertainment Company.

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HE’S A BELIEVER

An Interview with Jose Delbo Artist Jose Delbo might be best known for his long stint on DC Comics’ Wonder Woman, which he illustrated from the midSeventies through 1981, including the era of the Wonder Woman television series starring Lynda Carter. But long before Carter was lassoed into that role, Delbo, a native of Argentina, was inching his way into comicdom, beginning with super-hero comic books published in South America. After moving to the U.S. in the mid-Sixties, Charlton Comics’ Billy the Kid Western series was his steppin’ stone to bigger projects. Delbo’s art caught the eye of Dell Comics’ editor/writer D. J. (Don) Arneson, who recruited him to illustrate many of Dell’s TV tie-in titles.

Then came Monkeemania.

Arneson hired Delbo to be the artist for Dell’s new Monkees title, beginning with its second issue.

Jose loved the assignment, staying on the title until the end of its run. Then he switched from one

Fab Four to another, illustrating the Paul S. Newman-scripted adaptation of the Beatles’ animated movie Yellow Submarine, published by Gold Key Comics.

In the decades since Beatlemania and Monkeemania, Jose Delbo has illustrated many animation-inspired comic books including ThunderCats, The Transformers, Captain Planet and the Planeteers, 101 Dalmations, and The Little Mermaid, plus Marvel’s ambitious NFL SuperPro series. He is a former Kubert School instructor and a 2013 Ink Pot Award winner… but amid his storied career, he regards The Monkees as one of his favorite projects.

Interview conducted in September 2015.

Before we discuss The Monkees, let’s start with some background. You were born in Argentina and became a professional artist in your teens. Tell me about your art studies, your teacher, and your earliest work.

Well, I went to several schools, but my comics teacher was Carlos Clemen, one of the greatest cartoonists of Argentina—great artist, great man.

When did you move to the States, and how did you break in to the U.S. comic-book market?

I came to the States in 1965. My first chance to do comics was with Charlton Comics. That same year I got Billy the Kid. I really enjoyed

it because I love to do Westerns.

Pat Masulli was the editor of Billy the Kid. What was working with Masulli like?

I never met Pat Masulli. I worked through an agent.

You were working for a number of publishers, but found a lot of work at Dell Comics. How did you get started there?

I was called by Don Arneson to work for Dell. My first assignment was Hogan’s Heroes.

Jose Delbo.

Courtesy of Cincinnati Comic-Con.

Charlton was known for its notoriously low rates. Did the Dell work pay better?

The payment was much better!

Where were you living when you were doing this mid-Sixties work?

I was living in New Jersey with my wife and two kids.

Did you visit Dell’s office much?

What was the office environment like there?

Well, I went very often, because I was doing a lot of comics for them. The environment was very good. I had a great relationship with Don Arneson.

Before The Monkees, you followed Hogan’s Heroes with The Big Valley, and before long, you were also drawing other Dell TV comics like The Rat Patrol, Gentle Ben, The Mod Squad, and The Brady Bunch. You obviously had a flair for likenesses. What type of reference were you given for these TV comics?

I was given a lot of photographs for references.

So, how did you get the Monkees assignment?

I don’t remember how I got it.

I assume the usual way, they needed an artist and they liked me.

LEFT: A Delbodrawn splash page from issue #2 (May 1967). In April of 2016, art from Delbo’s Monkees comic books was used for the official lyric video for “She Makes Me Laugh,” the first release from the band’s Good Times reunion album.

The Monkees TM & © Rhino Entertainment Company.

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Hero-A-Go-Go celebrates the Camp craze of the Swinging Sixties, when just about everyone—the teens of Riverdale, an ant and a squirrel, even the President of the United States—was a super-hero or a secret agent.

Relive the coolest cultural phenomenon through this lively collection of nostalgic essays, histories, and interviews, featuring:

Bill Mumy (Lost in Space) Bob Holiday (It’s a Bird … It’s a Plane … It’s Superman) Ralph Bakshi (The Mighty Heroes, Spider-Man) Dean Torrence (Jan and Dean Meet Batman) Ramona Fradon (Metamorpho) Dick DeBartolo (Captain Klutz) Tony Tallarico (The Great Society Comic Book) Vince Gargiulo (Palisades Park historian) Joe Sinnott (The Beatles comic book) Jose Delbo (The Monkees comic book) and more!

TwoMorrows Publishing Raleigh, North Carolina All characters TM & © their respective owners.

ISBN-13: 978-1-60549-073-1 ISBN-10: 1-60549-073-3 53695

9 781605 490731

ISBN 978-1-60549-073-1

$36.95 in the USA Printed in China