American Comic Book Chronicles: 1965-69 by TwoMorrows Publishing

THE

1965-1969

by JOHN WELLS

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TwoMorrows.Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics. (& LEGO! ) TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com

THE

1965-1969

by JOHN WELLS

Dedication To my brother David Wells, the greatest superhero I know who was born in the 1960s.

Writer: Editor: Logo Design: Layout: Cover Design: Publisher:

John Wells Keith Dallas Bill Walko David Paul Greenawalt Jon B. Cooke John Morrow

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, North Carolina 27614 www.twomorrows.com • 919-449-0344 email: store@twomorrowspubs.com First Printing • March 2014 • Printed in China ISBN 978-1-60549-055-7

American Comic Book Chronicles: 1965-69 is ©2014 TwoMorrows Publishing, a division of TwoMorrows Inc. All rights reserved under international and Pan-American copyright conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical. Photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. All reproductions in this historical overview of comic books are copyright by the respective copyright holders, and are used here strictly for historical purposes. Attempts have been made to properly attribute copyrights for use in this book; if you are a valid copyright-holder and have not been properly credited, please contact TwoMorrows so that this can be corrected in any future printings. The viewpoints expressed in the text are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of TwoMorrows Publishing. Archie, the Archies, Fly-Girl, Josie and the Pussycats, Mighty Crusaders, Pureheart the Powerful, the Shield, Superteen. TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc. The Beatles TM and © Apple Corps Ltd. Dr. Who TM and © British Broadcasting Corporation. Bullwinkle, George of the Jungle. TM and © Bullwinkle Studios. Captain Action. TM and © Captain Action Enterprises, LLC. Mighty Mouse TM and © CBS Operations. Star Trek. TM and © CBS Studios Inc. Casper the Friendly Ghost, Lone Ranger, Richie Rich. TM and © Classic Media, Inc. Dark Shadows TM and © Dan Curtis Productions, Inc. Angel and the Ape, Animal Man, Anthro, Aquaman, Balloon Buster, Batgirl, Batman, Beast-Boy, Black Canary, Blackhawk, Blue Beetle, Brat Finks, The Brave and the Bold, Brother Power the Geek, B’wana Beast, Cap’s Hobby Hints, Captain Atom, Captain Hunter, Catwoman, the Creeper, Deadman, Debbi’s Dates, Dial H For Hero, Dr. Fate, Dr. Thirteen, Doom Patrol, Enemy Ace, Fighting Devil Dog, Firehair, The Flash, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, the Hawk and the Dove, Hawkman, Hourman, House of Mystery, Immortal Man, the Inferior Five, Jimmy Olsen, the Joker, Jonny Double, Judomaster, Justice League of America, Krypto, Leave It To Binky, Legion of Super-Heroes, Mad, Man-Fish, the Maniaks, Martian Manhunter, Metal Men, Metamorpho, Millie the Model, Nightmaster, Nightshade, the Parasite, the Penguin, the Phantom stranger, Plastic Man, Prince Ra-Man, The Question, The Riddler, Robin, Secret Six, Sgt. Rock, Son of Vulcan, the Spectre, Stanley and His Monster, Starman, Superboy, Supergirl, Superman, Swing With Scooter, Teen Titans, Tomahawk, Ultra the Multi-Alien, the Viking Prince, the Witching Hour, Wonder Girl, Wonder Woman. TM and © DC Comics. Vampirella. TM and © DFI. Chip ‘n’ Dale, Donald Duck, Junior Woodchucks, Mickey Mouse, Phantom Blot, Super Goof, Uncle Scrooge TM and © Disney Enterprises, Inc. Grinch TM and © Dr. Seuss Enterprises LP. Peter Cannon TM and © Dynamite Characters, LLC. Tarzan TM and © ERB, Inc. Steve Canyon. TM and © Estate of Esther Parsons Caniff. Feds ‘n’ Heads, Wonder Warthog. TM and © Gilbert Shelton. Dennis the Menace. TM and © Hank Ketcham Ent., Inc. The Banana Splits, Dino Boy, Frankenstein Jr., the Herculoids, the Impossibles, Jonny Quest, Mighty Mightor, Moby Dick, Scooby-Doo, Shazzan, Space Ghost TM and © Hanna-Barbera Productions. Tintin. TM and © HERGÉ / Moulinsart 2013. Get Smart TM and © Home Box Office, Inc. Fighting American, the Fly TM © Joe Simon. Beetle Bailey, Blondie, Flash Gordon, Mandrake the Magician, The Phantom, Popeye, Secret Agent X-9. TM and © King Features Syndicate, Inc. Junkwaffel TM and © Mark Bode. Avengers, the Black Knight, Black Panther, Blastaar, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Captain Savage, Chili, Daredevil, the Falcon, Fantastic Four, Galactus, Ghost Rider, Guardians of the Galaxy, Homer the Happy Ghost, the Hulk, Inhumans, Iron Man, Kid Colt Outlaw, the Kingpin, Masters of Evil, Mephisto, Modok, Nick Fury, Not Brand Echh, Peter the Little Pest, the Prowler, the Red Skull, Sauron, S.H.I.E.L.D., Silver Surfer, Spider-Man, the Squadron Sinister, Starhawk, Sub-Mariner, the Thing, Thor, the Vision, X-Men, Yellowjacket. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. Creepy, Eerie. TM and © New Comic Company. Pogo. TM and © Okefenokee Glee & Perloo Inc. Peanuts TM and © Peanuts Worldwide LLC. Dynamo, Lightning, Menthor, NoMan, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, Undersea Agent. TM and © Radiant Assets, LLC. Dr. Solar, Magnus Robot Fighter, Space Family Robinson. TM and © Random House, Inc. The Monkees. TM and © Rhino Entertainment Company. Fritz the Cat, Keep On Truckin’, Mr. Natural. TM and © Robert Crumb. Herbie, Magicman, Nemesis TM and © Roger Broughton. Alter Ego TM and © Roy & Dann Thomas. Mr. A. TM and © Steve Ditko. Dick Tracy. TM and © TMS News and Features, LLC. Tom and Jerry TM and © Turner Entertainment. Cannon, Dragonella, the Misfits, Pipsqueak Papers, Sally Forth TM and © Wallace Wood Properties, LLC. Woody Woodpecker TM and © Walter Lantz. Bugs Bunny TM and © Warner Bros. Blazing Combat. TM and © Warren Publishing Co. The Spirit. TM and © Will Eisner Studios Inc. Zap Comix TM and © ZAP Comix. Abbott & Costello, Adventures of Bob Hope, Adventures of Jerry Lewis, Ben Casey, The Big Valley, B-Man, Bunny, Captain Venture, Classics Illustrated, Clawfang the Barbarian, The Colossal Show, Dr. Graves, Dragula, Dynamite Joe, the Fab Four, Fatman, Fruitman, Golden Legacy, I Spy, Honey West, Jack Q. Frost, Jigsaw, King Kong, Lobo, Lonely War of Willy Schultz, Man In Black Called Fate, Melvin, Melvin Monster, Miracles, Inc., the Modniks, Neutro, Nukla, Pirana, the Shape, Sick, Spookman, Spyman, Super Green Beret, Tales of the Green Beret, !Teenman!, Thane of Bagarth, 3 Rocketeers, Tiger Boy, Tiger Girl, Tippy Teen, Total War, Tyro Team, Web of Horror. TM and © respective copyright holders.

Table of Contents Introductory Note about the Chronological Structure of American Comic Book Chronicles.................. 4

Note on Comic Book Sales and Circulation Data.......................................... 5

Introduction & Acknowledgements . ........... 6

Chapter One: 1965 Perception................................................................8

Chapter Two: 1966 Caped Crusaders, Masked Invaders.............. 69

Chapter Three: 1967 After The Gold Rush......................................... 146

Chapter Four: 1968 A Hazy Shade of Winter................................. 190

Chapter Five: 1969 Bad Moon Rising.............................................. 232

Works Cited....................................................... 276 Index................................................................... 285

Notes Introductory Note about the Chronological Structure of American Comic Book Chronicles By Keith Dallas

Despite what cover dates may have indicated, the true release dates of Gold Key’s innovative digests and poster-comics were on display in these 1968 ads. TM and © respective copyright holders.

head as most Direct Market-exclusive publishers chose not to put cover dates on their comic books while some put cover dates that matched the issue’s release date.

The monthly date that appears on a comic book cover doesn’t usually indicate the exact month the comic book arrived at the newsstand or at the comic book store. Since their inception, American periodical publishers—including but not limited to comic book publishers—postdated their issues in order to let vendors know when they should remove unsold copies from their stores. In the 1930s, the discrepancy between a comic book’s cover date and the actual month it reached the newsstand was one month. For instance, Action Comics #1 is cover dated June 1938 but actually went on sale in May 1938. Starting in 1940, comic book publishers hoped to increase each issue’s shelf life by widening the discrepancy between cover date and release date to two months. In 1973, the discrepancy was widened again to three months. The expansion of the Direct Market in the 1980s though turned the cover date system on its

This all creates a perplexing challenge for comic book historians as they consider whether to chronologize comic book history via cover date or release date. The predominant comic book history tradition has been to chronologize via cover date, and American Comic Book Chronicles is following that tradition. This means though that some comic books that were released in the final months of one year won’t be dealt with until the chapter about the following year. Each chapter, however, will include a yearly timeline that uses a comic book’s release date to position it appropriately among other significant historical, cultural and political events of that year. 4

Notes

Note on Comic Book Sales and Circulation Data publishers; instead they sent to the publishers notarized affidavits of the number of unsold copies they destroyed. In essence, an “honor system” was in place that relied on the newsstand distributors to be truthful about the number of copies bought by consumers and the number of unsold copies being destroyed.

Determining the exact number of copies a comic book title sold on the newsstand is problematic. The best that one can hope to learn is a close approximation of a comic book’s total sales. This is because the methods used to report sales figures were (and still are) fundamentally flawed. During the 1960s, most comic books sold on the newsstand would print an annual “Statement of Ownership, Management and Circulation” in one of their issues as was required by the United States Post Office for all periodicals. These statements divulged—among other information—a comic book title’s average print run, average paid circulation, and average returns from the newsstand. The data in these statements were as accurate as the publishers could provide. The publishers certainly knew how many copies they printed, but they relied on the distributors to inform them of how many copies were sold on the newsstand and how many unsold copies were being “returned” for a refund. Most distributors actually didn’t return unsold copies—or even stripped covers of the unsold copies—back to the

“I wouldn’t take the Publisher’s Statement numbers to church,” former Charlton and DC Comics editor Dick Giordano advised in Comic Book Artist #1 (Spring 1998). “I’m not sure where they came from but I’ll tell you one thing I know for sure—because I can’t get in trouble. At Charlton, they just made them up.” While that publisher is an extreme example, Giordano’s caution is welladvised. American Comic Book Chronicles then recognizes the flawed nature of newsstand circulation data but is resigned to the fact that it is also the only data available and will consider it a close approximation of a comic book’s total sales numbers.

1968’s burst of magazine-size comic books included His Name Is Savage #1 (cover art by Robert Foster), The Spectacular Spider-Man #2 (art by John Romita) and Hercules #8 (art by Sam Glanzman and Jim Aparo). TM and © respective copyright holders. Spider-Man TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

This Is Where I Came In Born in 1964, I was a member of the Sesame Street generation, the first group of kids to experience comic books when Disney issues were no longer number one in the land, Batman was a silly TV superhero and Archie was a Saturday morning singer whose records could even be cut off the backs of cereal boxes (see page 239). Publishers, frankly, didn’t know what to do with us.

INTRODUCTION & ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The average color comic book cost more and contained less than at any time in the medium’s history. We were less willing to part with 12¢ or (gulp!) 15¢ for an issue than our older brothers and sisters had been for the 10¢ model. And if the comics weren’t selling as well as they used to, distributors and retailers were that much less interested in selling them. And they weren’t very interested in the first place. The things that got my attention in the beginning were the packages that broke away from the norm and showed up in places where traditional comic books were nowhere to be found. The Wonderful World of Disney magazine and Walt Disney Comics Digest helped me learn to read and they were a critical entry point that made it possible for me to graduate to “older” superhero comic books in the 1970s. The savvier publishers and creators of the 1960s had begun to catch on to the fact that their readership was no longer necessarily graduating from comics altogether when it hit puberty and they were tailoring their content accordingly. The late 1960s—particularly 1968—was awash in experimentation and breaking away from the stiffer old school look. Marvel Comics aside, very little of that product sold well but mainstream audiences have always preferred the comfort of the familiar to the shock of the new. What’s remarkable is how many of the 1960s’ “failures” have endured. Critical darlings like T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, Deadman, and Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. have been reprinted and revisited time and again. One-shot wonders such as Guy Gardner and the Guardians of the Galaxy were retooled as successful headliners. Even the much-maligned B’wana Beast got his own action figure and a recurring role in an animated cartoon. If there’s a downside to all this, it was surely the fact that the creators involved shared little or none of the profits of that success. For every Will Eisner or Joe Simon, there were 100 Jack Kirbys or Jerry Siegels whose frustrations drove them—sometimes on their terms, sometimes not—away from their most famous creations. Such cautionary tales became part of the same fabric of comic book history as the stories they conjured up but they didn’t stop a new generation of young enthusiastic writers and artists from naively making the same sort of work-for-hire deals that their predecessors had made. TM & © Warner Bros. Inc.

The blossoming underground comics field and “pro-zines” like Wally Wood’s witzend—while below the radar of the average reader—offered a critical alternative not only for unbridled personal expression and creative ownership but a crude business model for a whole new way of selling comic books. Along with the aforementioned young men entering mainstream comics, the underground creators played an important role in keeping the form vital and growing…even if the audience was shrinking. The perception of that audience— at least the segment still reading them into adulthood—began a fundamental shift in 1965. Slowly at first, the pastime of enjoying a comic book was evolving from mainstream to a niche activity that the press imagined was made up of social outcasts. The Batman TV show only made things worse, triggering decades of newspaper headlines prefaced by the words “Sock! Wham! Pow!” and the illusion that comic books in general were simpleminded and those who collected them were amusing eccentrics. Half a century later, they’re still laughing—this time at The Big Bang Theory—but at least now fans are laughing with them.

I was also aided greatly by former colorist and editor Carl Gafford, whose “This Month In Comics” feature was a tremendous resource along with his personal feedback on the early chapters in this volume. KC Carlson, surely the most vocal promoter of these two 1960s editions, reviewed each chapter herein as I completed them, catching numerous embarrassing errors and offering feedback that made this a better volume. As in Volume One, Mark Waid was a tremendous resource for toughto-find comic books as was Gene Kehoe. I also owe great thanks to Robert Greenberger, Sam Kujava, Robin Snyder, and Murray Ward for their support and input in the course of putting this volume together. Among my most-referenced websites in the course of this project were The Grand Comics Database, Mike’s Amazing World of Comics (courtesy of Mike Voiles), Don Markstein’s Toonopedia, and John Jackson Miller’s The Comics Chronicles. A special thanks to Heritage Auctions, as well, for allowing us access to some of the rare pieces of original art contained in their archives.

Batman TM and © DC Comics.

And, of course, thanks to Keith Dallas, without whom I’d never have even considered tackling a project of this scale. I couldn’t ask for a better or more supportive editor. Likewise, I must give an enormous bow to our designer David Greenawalt, whose expert work has made both this book and 1960-1964 look so inviting and good. A special tip of the hat must go to publisher John Morrow, for his willingness to grant us the extra pages that enabled us to let David shine and truly showcase the wonders of 1965-1969’s comics.

As in the first volume of this 1960s retrospective, I was not able to produce this work alone. I owe an enormous debt to my friend Mike Tiefenbacher, who not only convinced me to tackle this project in the first place but served as my foremost cheerleader throughout. His insights, suggestions, and fact-checking were indispensable.

In many ways, the most important contributor to this book may be Gary Brown. A prolific contributor to comic book fandom since the 1960s through fanzines like Comic Comments and the apa-zine The final thank you must go to Capa-Alpha, Gary learned of my those of you reading this book. Irv Novick and Tony Strobl & Larry Mayer respectively drew the . covers of 1968’s Batman #202 and Walt Disney Comics Digest #4, . desire to reference vintage comThe support and enthusiasm that two of the first comic books owned by four-year-old John Wells. . ics news ‘zines and generously you bestowed on our 1960-1964 TM and © DC Comics and Disney Enterprises, Inc. shared his bound volumes of The volume was gratifying and I hope Comic Reader and Don and Maggie Thompson’s Newfanyou’ll find this follow-up at least its equal. The comic books gles for use in this book. A glance at the bibliography will of the 1960s were some of the most pivotal in the industry’s give some indication of what an extraordinary tool these history and I’m proud to have added to an understanding vintage fanzines were. I can’t thank Gary enough. of their significance. 7

1965

Perception

Comics, the March 18, 1965, edition of Newsweek declared, were “no laughing matter.” However trite the headline may have been even then, it wasn’t really wrong. In the span of five years, the balance of power in the comic book field had changed dramatically. Industry leader Dell had fallen out of favor thanks to a 1962 split with client Western Publications that resulted in the latter producing comics for themselves—much of it licensed properties—as the widely-respected Gold Key Comics. The stuffily-named National Periodical Publications—later better known as DC Comics—had seized the number one spot for itself although its flagship Superman title could only claim the honor of being the United States’ best-selling color comic book, not the best-seller period. That trophy was claimed by Mad, the black-and-white humor magazine that had been quietly purchased by a National subsidiary in 1964. Through a series of superhero revivals spearheaded by editor Julius Schwartz, DC had also shone the spotlight on a new growth genre. Even publishers whose strengths lied in teen humor (Archie), kids comedy (Harvey), or simply the ability to keep the presses running (Charlton) dabbled in costumed crime-busters to one degree or another. (The defiant ACG rejected the idea of superheroes as did Hallden, whose “line” consisted of Dennis the Menace.) Marvel Comics—under the principal direction of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko—brought something fresh to the concept, though, something beyond the slick artwork and space age premises that DC had successfully marketed. By accident as much by design, the Marvel heroes defied the classical archetype of physical and mental perfection. More often than not, these newcomers had great power that was leavened by disabilities or failings that they had to rise above, situations that could make them brittle and argumentative when they got together. In Julie Schwartz’s DC books, at least, the heroes were welladjusted adults prone to speaking in even tones and using their indoor voices. At Marvel, the stars—whatever their physical ages—were virtually all overgrown teenagers who screamed at the top of their lungs. To kids moving into adolescence with all the emotional turmoil and drama that entailed, the angst of Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four and company was all too relatable.

CHAPTER ONE

That recipe—also including large dollops of soap opera— was paying off for Marvel in comic books sold, which leapt by roughly one million copies in 1964 and again in 1965 (Tolworthy). Marvel’s titles were distributed by a company named Independent News that, like Mad, was part of the larger National Periodical Publications family. Consequently, DC’s executives were well aware of their competi8

tor’s growth…and more than a little concerned since their own sales had mostly been holding steady since 1962. Since the late 1950s, DC had been expanding and freshening its line by testing new features in tryout titles like Showcase and The Brave and the Bold. From 1957 to mid-1962, in fact, virtually every Showcase creation had been promoted to an ongoing series. After the 1962 debut of the white-hot Metal Men, though, no Showcase tryout had clicked with readers. Moreover, in 1965, three of the title’s earlier successes were discontinued when Adam Strange and Space Ranger were dropped from the pages of Mystery In Space while Rip Hunter…Time Master was cancelled with issue #29 (November-December 1965).

erally in their teens or twenties who found relevance in the Marvel superhero books that they weren’t experiencing elsewhere. “I had first told Irwin that we’ve got to listen to fans to some degree because they were the vanguard,” Drake said. “Irwin’s reply was, ‘Yeah, but don’t forget that they only represent two percent of our audience.’ That was very short-sighted. Leaders are always a tiny majority.

That’s part of what makes them leaders” (Reed 60). DC writer-editor Robert Kanigher— whose Sgt. Rock series in Our Army At War had inspired Marvel’s Sgt. Fury title—dubbed the upstart publisher “CC Comics” (as in copycat) in his letter columns. Attempting to replicate Stan Lee’s brand loyalty campaign, Kanigher even briefly peppered his covers with copy like “DC breaks all

Ironically, The Brave and the Bold— whose sole successes had been Justice League of America and Hawkman—had better luck pinpointing new hits after it abandoned the tryout model in 1963 for a format involving team-ups of various DC characters. Bob Haney and Ramona Fradon’s sly Metamorpho #1 (July-August 1965) followed a twoissue 1964 spotlight in B&B #57 and #58. Haney and Bruno Premiani’s pairing of three kid sidekicks in B&B #54, however, had unintentionally inspired the Teen Titans. And when Haney and Fradon paired Batman and Green Lantern in B&B #59, no one could anticipate that the Caped Crusader would eventually emerge as the book’s permanent costar in 1967. The suggestion by writers like Haney and Arnold Drake that DC might be falling behind was greeted with defensiveness. “I recall Drake and I telling [DC Executive Vice President Irwin Donenfeld] in the first months of the Marvel revolution that we should be aware of what Stan Lee was doing, what was happening to kids, to colleges, to the public pulse, blah blah,” Haney recalled. “For our pains, he snarled that Marvel only did 35 million copies yearly, while DC did 100 million. The rest, alas, is history” (Haney 8). Drake pointed to the audience of diehard comic book fans that had sprung up in the past five years, readers gen-

The Brave and the Bold’s hits included the Teen Titans, Metamorpho, and the first in a series of Batman team-ups. Batman, Green Lantern, Metamorpho, Teen Titans TM and © DC Comics.

TIMELINE: 1965 A compilation of the year’s notable comic book history events alongside some of the year’s most significant popular culture and historical events. (On sale dates are approximations.) January 20: Lyndon Johnson is sworn in for his first full term as President of the United States.

February 1: Former National Comics [now DC] publisher Harry Donenfeld dies at age 71. February: Superheroes come to Disney comic books via Super Goof in Gold Key’s New Adventures of the Phantom Blot #2. February 15: Morrie Turner’s trailblazing Wee Pals comic strip, with an ethnically-diverse cast of children, debuts in five newspapers.

JANUARY

FEBRUARY February 20: The Ranger 8 spacecraft photographs future landing sites for astronauts before crashing on the moon.

January 24: Sir Winston Churchill dies at the age of 90. The widely-hailed former British Prime Minister’s state funeral in London is attended by scores of world leaders.

February 25: DC’s The Brave and the Bold #59 unites Batman with Green Lantern, a harbinger of the Caped Crusader’s future co-starring role in the title.

March 23: Aboard Gemini 3, Gus Grissom becomes the first NASA astronaut to fly in space.

April 20: Nine years after being Cartoonist of the Year, Peanuts creator Charles Schulz becomes the first cartoonist to again be honored with the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben Award. Other winners recognized for their 1964 work include Frank O’Neal (humor newspaper strips, Short Ribs), Hal Foster (story newspaper strips, Prince Valiant), George Lichty (newspaper panels, Grin and Bear It), and Paul Fung, Jr. (comic book category, Blondie).

March: Charlton’s Son of Vulcan becomes the next superhero of its line, beginning in Mysteries Of Unexplored Worlds #46.

April 6: Intelsat I (“Early Bird”) becomes the first commercial communications satellite launched into orbit.

March 2: The Sound of Music, starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, premieres, eventually becoming one of the highest-grossing movies of all time.

May 4: The star of Marvel’s war comic book acquires a second series in the present as Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strange Tales #135).

May 10: Former adventure cartoonist Art Sansom goes for laughs in his new comic strip, The Born Loser.

April 11: On Palm Sunday, dozens of tornados strike six Midwestern states with more than 250 fatalities.

March 18: Russian cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov becomes the first man to walk in space.

MARCH

June 6: The Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” is released in the United States, eventually becoming their first number one hit there.

APRIL

M AY

JUNE

May 3: Kid comic strip Tiger, by Bud Blake, debuts.

March 11: Abandoning its Justice League template, Marvel’s Avengers #16 replaces its headline stars with Captain America and a trio of reformed villains, Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch.

April 29: DC’s adolescent sidekicks—now including Wonder Girl—are formally dubbed the Teen Titans in a tryout in The Brave and the Bold #60.

March 8: 3500 U.S. Marines become the first American combat troops set to foot in Vietnam.

March 7: In Selma, Alabama, a violent confrontation between Civil Rights marchers and state troopers becomes known as “Bloody Sunday.” As further marches take place, President Johnson condemns racism and invokes the seminal phrase of the movement: “We shall overcome.”

May 25: Muhammad Ali’s victory over Sonny Liston in a highly-anticipated boxing rematch is mired in controversy over whether the latter took a dive.

Batman, Green Lantern, Teen Titans TM and © DC Comics. Avengers, Fantastic Four, Nick Fury, S.H.I.E.L.D. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. Blazing Combat is TM and © respective copyright holder.

the rules” until future DC writer Cary Bates took him to task in the letter column of Star-Spangled War Stories #127 for the “unnecessary hard-sell.” Drake found a relatively more receptive audience in editor Murray Boltinoff, for whom he wrote Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis, Doom Patrol, and others. The DP was the furthest thing from traditional superheroes that DC published, with a quartet of crime-fighters who justifiably regarded their powers as a curse. Issues #99 and #100 (November-December 1965) went further by upending the template of the well-mannered kid sidekick via Gar Logan, a green-skinned hero dubbed Beast-Boy who was mouthy and insulting in the extreme. “Beast-Boy was a double entendre,” Drake observed. “He was a brat—a pain in the ass. So calling him Beast Boy was appropriate. […] We wanted a character who could assume many different animal forms, and also wanted a kid in the strip, someone

the kids could relate to. They were starting to talk back to their elders. They were starting to make their elders earn their respect. So Beast Boy was an attempt to picture what I thought was happening among some of the young people” (Mougin, “Arnold Drake” 9). The previous few years (and those to come) had been transformative ones

for the writer’s style, something he later reflected on: “Stan Lee’s success had something to do with it. But only in the sense that I saw it as a signal that much of what I had always wanted to do could now be done. Two other factors were much more important in changing my work.

Beast Boy embodied the generation gap in these panels from Doom Patrol #100. Art by Bruno Premiani. . Beast Boy, Doom Patrol TM and © DC Comics.

July: Warren’s hard-hitting war comic book Blazing Combat #1 arrives on newsstands.

August: Tower Comics’ T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1 blends the superhero and spy crazes into a slick 25-cent package. August: Costumed crime-fighters hit Riverdale when Pureheart the Powerful and Superteen make their respective debuts in Life With Archie #42 and Betty & Veronica #118.

September: National Allied [now DC Comics] founder Major Malcolm WheelerNicholson dies at age 75.

September 6: T.K. Ryan’s comical Western-themed Tumbleweeds debuts in newspapers one day after Howie Scheider’s humor strip Eek and Meek.

October 28: Along with writer Gaylord Dubois, artist Russ Manning begins a revitalization of Gold Key’s Tarzan comic with an origin adaptation in issue #155.

November 8: The enduring Days of Our Lives soap opera premieres on NBC.

November 9: Seven eastern states and portions of Canada go dark in a blackout lasting as long as 13½ hours.

September 9: A hidden race of Inhumans emerges from the shadows in Fantastic Four #45. September 20: Tales of the Green Beret debuts in newspapers as a 12-week mini-series by Robin Moore and Joe Kubert. It returns as an ongoing feature on April 4, 1966.

July 29: The soon-to-benamed Animal-Man debuts in Strange Adventures #180.

J U LY

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

September 15: CBS’ Green Acres and Lost In Space premiere the same night as NBC’s I Spy and ABC’s The Big Valley. Other notable TV series debuts of the week include CBS’ Hogan’s Heroes and The Wild Wild West on September 17 and NBC’s Get Smart and I Dream of Jeannie on September 18.

July 30: President Johnson’s Social Security Act of 1965 establishes the Medicare and Medicaid healthcare programs.

NOVEMBER

October 28: Construction is completed on St. Louis, Missouri’s 630-foot-tall Gateway Arch, now the United States’ tallest man-made monument.

August 6: President Johnson’s Voting Rights Act of 1965 expressly prohibits discrimination against minority voters.

September 9: Peter Parker begins his college studies and makes a bad impression on classmates Harry Osborn and Gwen Stacy in The Amazing Spider-Man #31.

DECEMBER

November 7: The Pillsbury Doughboy debuts in TV commercials. Conceived by Ryan Tanttila and Rudy Perz, the first sketches of the character were drawn by Green Lantern creator Martin Nodell.

September 13: Elliot Caplin teams up with celebrated 1940s comic book artist Lou Fine to launch the hardboiled detective comic strip Peter Scratch.

August 6: The Beatles’ studio album Help! is released in the U.K., with hit singles including the title track, “Yesterday,” and “Ticket To Ride.” August 1: Reed Richards marries Susan Storm in the superhero social event of the season (Fantastic Four Annual #3).

December 9: “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” based the Peanuts comic strip, airs on CBS, defying network jitters to become a beloved critical and ratings hit.

October: Dell’s Lobo #1 becomes the first comic book with a black leading man.

Lobo is TM and © respective copyright holder. Peanuts is TM and © Peanuts Worldwide LLC. Tarzan TM and © ERB, Inc.

One was Murray Boltinoff, who tended less to enforce his own style on the writer than did [editors Jack Schiff and Mort Weisinger]. He gave you your head, which, with writers like myself, is the way to extract the best. The other factor is that I was allowed to create some of my own titles (Doom Patrol, Stanley and His Monster, Deadman). Perhaps there was a third factor. This all happened in the ‘60s. And if the events of the ‘60s didn’t change your way of looking at things, you had to be dead.” (Reed 58)

Nostalgia Act Halfway through the decade, much had changed in the United States. After generations of institutionalized discrimination, the segregation of black Americans was officially prohibited but many in the country were

fighting hard against compliance. A 1965 clash between Civil Rights activists and state troopers in Selma, Alabama, was only one of many encounters that had turned bloody. The country’s progressive intervention into Vietnam to stem the tide of Communism took a grim turn when the first U.S. combat forces arrived in Southeast Asia. And the nation still mourned the loss of President John F. Kennedy, assassinated on November 23, 1963. “And you tell me over and over and over again, my friend,” singer Barry McGuire fairly snarled, “Ah, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction.” The P.F. Sloan-written Eve of Destruction, its chorus surrounded by a litany of recent atrocities, was catapulted to the top of the pop charts in September of 1965 by youthful listeners even as many of their horrified parents wished the turmoil would just go away. 11

If only solutions were as easy as the editorial cartoon featuring President Lyndon B. Johnson that ran in the June 30, 1965 Los Angeles Times. Stepping into a broom closet, LBJ emerged in the third panel dressed as Superman with a speech intended for the United Nations clutched in one hand. “Posing as our mild mannered President,” a bystander declared, “he is actually…Superchief!” The cartoon, a reference to the President’s June 25 speech that called on the U.N. to put greater focus on global crises like birth control and poverty, tapped into Johnson’s ambitious call for the Great Society. Building off initiatives conceived under President Kennedy, Johnson envisioned a wideranging series of social programs that included the reduction of unemployment and improved medical coverage for the poor and elderly. The idealism in those goals and the scope of what Johnson wished to achieve also made him fodder for editorial cartoonists,

who saw the naïve streak of a comic book superhero. Even humor magazine Cracked, in its first 1965 Annual, couldn’t resist producing a pull-out color comic that featured the Chief Executive in patriotic tights and fighting the forces of evil on its John Severin-illustrated cover. “As your present President, it is incumbent upon me to play a variety of roles in the course of a single day,” LBJ explained in a September 1965 cartoon by Jules Feiffer. “Policeman of the world. Social worker to the poor. Lover of peace. Seeker of consensus. Educator. Civil rights leader. At the close of the day, what a relief it is to be able to git into my pajamas…and just be myself.” The final panel’s punch line was keyed to an image of Johnson in a Superman costume. Superheroes in particular—but comics in general—embedded themselves in the national consciousness over the course of 1965, albeit less for where they were going than for where they’d been. Given the turmoil in the present, there was a perhaps unconscious longing for something that reminded people of a simpler time. Jules Feiffer, for one, plumbed the depths of his own nostalgia for a major book release on November 15. At $9.95, The Great Comic Book Heroes was the equivalent of eighty-two 12-cent comic books but it was also a treasure trove for young comic book fans who were fascinated by what preceded them. Having come of age at precisely the point when Superman and company emerged in the late 1930s, Feiffer wrote with unapologetic fondness of the comic books he loved as a boy. And he also looked behind the curtain to describe the atmosphere in which they were created, obliquely recalling his own years in the industry working with Will Eisner and others.

The Great Comic Book Heroes represented many young readers’ first exposure to comics stories of the 1940s. © Jules Feiffer. Superman TM and © DC Comics.

printed. It was this aspect of the book, perhaps more than Feiffer’s text, that made The Great Comic Book Heroes such a sensation. The notion of a hardback full of old superhero stories was unprecedented, and it was at the top of many fans’ Christmas lists that year.

The essay (excerpted in Playboy before the book’s publication) was supplemented by 127 pages of actual stories from that Golden Age he spoke of: the origins of Superman, Batman, Captain America, Plastic Man, and others, along with vintage episodes featuring the likes of the Spirit and the Sub-Mariner, virtually all of them previously unre-

For Feiffer, writing in his Afterword, there was no use maintaining the pretense that comic books were anything but junk…and there was nothing wrong with that. “It is there to be nothing else but liked. Junk is a secondclass citizen of the arts; a status of which we and it are constantly aware. There are certain inherent privileges in second-class citizenship. Irresponsibility is one. Not being taking seriously is another. Junk, like the drunk at the wedding, can get away with doing or saying anything because, by its very appearance, it is already in disgrace. It has no one’s respect to lose; no image to endanger. Its values are the least middle-class of all the mass media. That’s Lyndon Johnson’s aspirations to create a “Great Society” led to cartoonists like Feiffer . why it is needed so.” characterizing the President as a virtual Superman. © Jules Feiffer.

It may have been a backhanded compliment but it was a compliment. And Feiffer had come by his opinions honestly. That was more than could be said for, say, pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, whose blow-ups of comic panels were all about the supposed banality of the source material. Thirty-two prominent cartoonists struck back by displaying paintings, sculptures, and interactive works with their own characters at an art show benefiting the USO that ran from May 18 to 29 in New York City. Playing up the event to Johnny Carson on the May 14 episode of The Tonight Show, Milton Caniff is reported to have quipped that “it was about time the cartoonists started getting the [moolah] that some pop artists have been getting for ‘stealing’ from the comic strips” (Bails, “Agent X Reporting #9” 1). There was a fair amount of sarcasm in the exhibit, none more so than in William Overgard’s panel enlargement of Steve Roper looking through a peephole: it was the same image that Lichtenstein had swiped for a 1961 painting (Kaler, “Sounding Off #3” 1). Even “Batman is pop now,” William J. Fripp reported in the April 16 Boston Globe, “like Campbell Soup cans or late TV horror shows. An irresistible part of the campus scene—at least for this season.” Fripp wasn’t referring to the comic book, though, but rather the cheesy 1943 movie serial, reedited into a lengthy feature film. Released by Columbia Pictures in 1965, it quickly became a communal experience for young adult audiences who delighted in mocking the bad acting and ridiculous situations. The college students attending a screening at Harvard’s Brattle Square Theater were said to be “approaching hysteria.” The Batman movie, the Globe article declared, was “camp,” its earnest delivery at odds with the absurdity of its concepts. Stan Lee reported in The Amazing Spider-Man #28 ( September 1965) that so many fans felt stigmatized by the word “comics” that their line would henceforth be known as Marvel Pop Art Productions. The rebranding lasted four months before Lee declared an end to it in the Marvel Bullpen Bulletins page running in AS-M #32: “We never realized how many thousands were intensely loyal to the name Marvel Comics,” a sheepish Lee admitted. “Your mail, phone calls, and telegrams bowled us over! So once again we fell on our red faces—and from now on, we’re the Marvel Comics Group once more—so be it!” Marvel Bullpen Bulletins, incidentally, was another innovation on Lee’s part, an outgrowth of the “Special Announcements Section” and “Mighty Marvel Checklist” that already peppered most of the line’s letter columns. Consolidating those features into a single page effective with issues dated December 1965, Bullpen Bulletins became another like these helped the Marvel brand explode . key component in promoting the Pages even as publisher Martin Goodman grumbled that the MMMS fan club . Marvel experience, whether an- was too expensive to maintain. Spider-Man TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. 13

(the word Billy Batson exclaimed to become Captain Marvel).

nouncing upcoming issues, pitching t-shirts and membership in the Merry Marvel Marching Society, or introducing readers to the men who created the comics. Outside the relative handful of enthusiasts following superhero fanzines, this sort of behind-the-scenes material was a new experience and the seeming intimacy of it further fostered brand loyalty.

In between the two pieces, Detroit fan Jerry Bails was contacted about being interviewed for another article. A Professor of Natural Science at Monteith College, Bails was virtually the founding father of superhero comic book fandom, a devotee of the 1940s Justice Society of America who’d mobilized in 1961 to support DC’s modern-day revival of the team as the Justice League. Joining forces with Missouri fan Roy Thomas, Bails self-published a fanzine called AlterEgo dedicated to the resurgence of superheroes and started a cottage industry of similar publications (in widely varying degrees of quality) throughout the country from other fans.

Astonishingly, Spider-Man and the Hulk even showed up in the September issue of Esquire as two of the “28 People Who Count” on college campuses. The wildly eclectic list of personalities chosen by students also included names like Bob Dylan, Malcolm X, Fidel Castro, and the Viet Cong!

Meet the Press

On January 16, Bails, comic strip fan In some ways, the year had been Shel Dorf, and six other local collechard on the egos of self-respecting Jerry Bails and his wife Jean in a 1967 Christmas photo. tors met with reporter Hugh Mccomic book collectors and it all beCann for a lengthy interview, one gan with an article in the Decemwhose content would be pooled with ber 6, 1964 New York Times that touted the fact that old feedback from other collectors in New York City. The fincomic books were selling for anywhere from $2 to $25. A ished product, entitled “Superfans and Batmaniacs,” ran follow-up appeared in the January 30, 1965 edition, proin the February 15, 1965 of Newsweek and was not exactly claiming “Shazam! Vintage Comic Prices Up, Up and Away.” the exaltation of comics fandom that Bails had anticipated. The headline would become the template for thousands Rather, it affected a mocking tone throughout, referring to of comic book-related newspaper articles in the decades fans as “comic cultists,” chuckling about their scholarship ahead, revised only slightly after 1966 to insert Batman on the minutiae of old stories, and closing with homophoTV show sound effects (“Sock! Pow!”) in place of “Shazam” bic innuendo about Batman, Spider-Man and their fans. “To say that the response was one of mild disappointment is probably the best way to characterize fans’ overall reaction,” Bill Schelly wrote. “While there was no denying the giddy thrill of seeing comics depicted and discussed in national media, the article managed to get almost as many facts wrong as it did right—not the best batting average for a highly-respected periodical” (Schelly, “That 1965 Newsweek Article” 17). Prominent fans Don and Maggie Thompson offered a minority viewpoint, appreciative of the light touch and grateful that the emphasis was not on the monetary value of old comic books. Maggie remarked that spring: “Now come on, people, what did you expect!? What reactions have you been getting from the ‘outside’ world when you’ve talked about your hobby, anyway? Respectful interest and ‘where do I sign up’ responses? Or amused amazement? Children’s literature is held in contempt by many so-called literates—what response can you expect, then, for comic art, which is regarded with contempt and dismay by promoters of children’s literature? How can you blame people who never claimed to be doing other than writing for a national audience for putting things in a way to appeal to that audience?” (4)

Esquire’s “28 People Who Count” included two familiar Marvel heroes . in its 1965 graphic. The Hulk, Spider-Man TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

ers and encouraged communication. Happily for Bails and other fans, the CCA’s bulletin was ultimately just an intimidating request and one that the scrappier ACG and Marvel were willing to ignore. Gold Key likewise continued to publish full addresses but it didn’t belong to the CCA in the first place.

“There’s Money in the Funnies” (real headline) and “Adults Read Comic Books” became the news media’s equivalents of “Man Bites Dog” stories, scenarios so absurd that they sprouted up in newspapers, magazines, and news programs across the country with varying degrees of dignity. Chicago’s 15-year-old Billy Placzek, with a collection of some 27,000 comic books, even showed up on a May episode of the To Tell the Truth TV show. Jerry Bails was inundated with phone calls from reporters, recalling one particular conversation shortly after the Newsweek article appeared:

Fans also lamented the fact that this spate of publicity was causing the price of back issues to rise. Fred Patten remarked at the time that “there are more really old comics available today that there were three or four years ago” and some of the credit was due to those articles. “The non-Comics Fans who’ve been ignoring their old comics for all these years, or throwing them out when they came across them in some forgotten trunk, are now taking them to the bookstore to sell. So high prices or not, they are passing into the hands of collectors, where they’ll be cared for [and] preserved, which is the important thing” (3).

“I stopped giving out interviews when Walter Cronkite’s producer called me, and told me that he would really prefer to interview me himself. He was a quick study, and could give himself exactly what he wanted to put on the air. (No lie!) When I declined to be interviewed, he asked for the name of a New York banker or stock broker who collected Captain Marvel. It had to be someone from New York; if it wasn’t happening in New York, then it wasn’t really happening. It had to be a professional, or there was no shock (news) value, and it had to be Captain Marvel he collected, because that was the only strip the producer figured the over-30 audience would know. Remembering the slightly colored treatment fans received at the hands of Newsweek, I couldn’t resist asking Mr. News Producer if it was [all right] if the collector was married. He paused before he answered. I hung up.” (Bails, “Fandom Origins” 30)

With comic books now becoming collectibles, it was imperative that there be some sort of basic guidelines for assessing the condition of a given back issue, particularly since fans purchasing old comics through the mail couldn’t see what they were buying. To that end, Bill Spicer published The Guidebook To Comics Fandom in 1965, an impeccably produced fanzine in collaboration with Jerry Bails that laid out the general history of the recent fan movement and included features such as a list of pre-1946 comic books featuring action heThe roots of later comic book price guides could be found in this fanzine. roes. Most importantly, it articulated and defined a comic book grading system—Mint, Near Mint, Very Good, Good, Fair, and Poor—that would endure for decades with To Bails’ horror, some of the articles had even asserted— only modest revisions like the addition of a Fine classificawithout substantiation—that pornographers were mailtion (Schelly, The Golden Age of Comic Fandom 84). ing advertising to kids based on addresses found in comic books. The Comics Code Authority’s Executive Secretary Coupled with the more detailed indexes of comic book seLeonard Darvin immediately suggested that its members ries that Bails and others were compiling in CAPA-Alpha publish nothing more than a given reader’s name, city, and and elsewhere, the raw material that would be employed state in their comic books’ letter columns (Bails, “Agent X in Robert Overstreet’s pioneering 1970 Comic Book Price Reporting #5” 1). By late spring, Archie and DC had both Guide now existed. It had been preceded in 1965 by a pubcomplied, and even Hallden’s Dennis the Menace was comlication produced for Hollywood’s Argosy Book Shop. Bill pelled to end its pen-pal lists (Bails, “Agent X Reporting #8” Schelly noted, however, that “The Argosy Comic Book Price 2). Guide wasn’t much different from other extensive dealer lists, and had no noticeable impact on the market” (The The fan movement had proliferated in part thanks to the Golden Age of Comic Fandom 86-7). letter columns that published the full addresses of read15

Fan artist Dave Cockrum first made his mark in mainstream comics through his designs for the Shrike and a new look for Son of Vulcan. Hawkman, Son of Vulcan TM and © DC Comics.

ing old comic books than creating new ones did not deter fans from dreaming of a career in the industry. The fanzines and letter columns of the era were filled with names of young men like Rich Buckler, Mike Friedrich, Mike Vosburg, and Marv Wolfman who’d make the leap to comics pros in a few years. 18-year-olds Walter Simonson and Bernie Wrightson—destined to make a splash in the 1970s on features like Manhunter and Swamp Thing—first surfaced on fan art pages in Magnus, Robot Fighter #10 (May 1965) and Creepy #9 (June 1966). The explosion in interest for back issues was transformative for New York City teenager Howard Rogofsky, who decided to skip college following his high school graduation and continue earning money from old comic books. “I just kept on selling through the mail, except I did it full time. I’ll give you an example. In 1965 (you have to consider the prices at that time), I grossed about $15,000 that year. The following year I grossed $60,000. And you’re talking 1960s prices too!” (Carter 19)

Passionate Magnus fan Mike Royer, who’d already scored one minor credit at Gold Key in 1964, took it upon himself to send sample pages to Magnus creator Russ Manning. “He wrote back and said, ‘If I ever needed an assistant, you would work,’” Royer said. “So I packed my bags and moved to California and metaphorically moved into his backyard and said, ‘Well, I’m here!’ (laughter) Out of the kindness of his heart, he gave me work” (Morrow 10). The first of it appeared in Magnus #12 (January 1966).

The Youngbloods

Twenty-one-year-old Dave Cockrum, the future co-creator of X-Men characters like Colossus, Storm, and Nightcrawler, opened up a copy of Hawk-

Despite the fact that someone could potentially make more money sell16

man #11 (December 1965/January 1966) to discover that his “sketch of a proposed Hawkman foe called the Black Shrike” had inspired that issue’s featured adversary and earned him a copy of Murphy Anderson’s original cover art. And Cockrum was already reeling from the fact that Charlton had just used another of his costume designs for the title character in Son of Vulcan #49, even thanking him on the cover. Charlton editor Pat Masulli made a pitch to several prominent 1965 fanzines asking readers to submit sample plots for Son of Vulcan or Blue Beetle, ultimately buying scripts from Roy Thomas, Dave Kaler, and Tom Fagan. “Attention fanzine readers!!!” the cover of Son of Vulcan #50 (January 1966) subsequently screamed. “Charlton’s challenge has been answered…the story in this issue was written by one of you!!!” And identified far less bombastically as “R. Thomas” in the story’s credits. “They couldn’t spell out a nine-letter name,” the writer later laughed (Mougin, “Roy Thomas” 8). Poised to leave his high school teaching position for a graduate scholarship in foreign relations, Thomas abruptly changed careers that spring when he received an offer from Mort Weisinger to serve as the Superman editor’s assistant on a twomonth trial basis. Coupled with the Charlton offer that followed, the young man was elated over his impending entrance into the comics industry… right up until he arrived at the DC offices in New York City. It was there that he learned that his two-month trial was now two weeks, his promised $110-a-week pay had shrunk to $100, and, most awkwardly, he found that he’d been hired to replace E. Nelson Bridwell, whom Weisinger had fired but still expected to train his successor. “Mort was a tyrant,” Thomas later declared, elaborating that “it was often his manner more than his words that browbeat me and others.” In the course of his time in New York, Thomas had also touched base with other editors and writers he’d met while working on Alter-Ego. While Charlton offered opportunities for young writers like Roy Thomas in Son of Vulcan #50, other publishers exhibited work by future pros such . as Walter Simonson and Bernie Wrightson in fan art pages. Son of Vulcan TM and © DC Comics.

Roy Thomas began his Marvel career by dialoguing this Stan Goldberg-Frank Giacoia-illustrated story. Millie the Model TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

One of those contacts was Stan Lee, who asked the 24-year-old to take the Marvel writer’s test. That amounted to dialoguing four Jack Kirby-illustrated pages from Fantastic Four Annual #2. As Thomas related, Lee liked what he saw: “Suffice it to say, without really quite intending to apply for a job at the much smaller Marvel Comics, I found myself on Friday, July 9th—the last day of my one paid, four-day week on staff at DC—sitting in the office of Stan Lee a ten-minute walk from Mort’s office, and being asked what it would take to hire me away from National. ‘Just offer me what Mort promised me,’ I answered, meaning $110 a week. When Stan did, I accepted—and yeah I’d have jumped for the $100 a week I was actually getting, too.” Returning from his lunch hour, Thomas gave the news to Weisinger, graciously offering to remain until a replacement was hired…and suggesting Bridwell ought to return to that job. “Mort ordered me out of the building immediately,” he recalled, “declaring

I was ‘a spy for Stan Lee.’” Within the hour, Thomas was receiving his first Marvel assignment: writing dialogue for the already-illustrated “Whom Can I Turn To?” (published in Modeling With Millie #44: December 1965). “Mort did re-hire Nelson almost immediately,” Thomas adds, “not that I imagine my recommendation had much to do with it” (Thomas, “Two Weeks With Mort Weisinger” 28-31).

good impression on the up-and-comer and was amazed when Thomas called late in the summer with an offer for O’Neil to take the Marvel writer’s test. Soon, the reporter was on the East Coast himself as Stan Lee’s second assistant. He also broke in with a Modeling With Millie tale, this one in issue #46 (April 1966) and partially written by Thomas before the latter was reassigned to write Sgt. Fury.

Lee intended for the new hire to be his second assistant editor but the first was already struggling. Steve Skeates, who’d won the position by writing a letter constructed as comic book captions, recalls, “I had no idea before I signed on that the main function of an assistant editor was proofreading, and I was fairly terrible at that. I think Stan felt guilty about firing me that quickly and let me write a number of Kid Colt and Two-Gun Kid Westerns” (Brodsky, “Steve Skeates: Comic Book Writer Extraordinaire” 21).

“It was mostly too goofy a thing not to do,” O’Neil reflected. “So I thought I’ll certainly give this a year, I’ll get some stories to tell and then I’ll probably come back to what I considered to be my real profession which was small town journalism. I somehow never got back to that paper” (Brodsky, “Denny O’Neil: Writer On the Storm” 13-14).

A month before Thomas’ trek to New York, his mother had passed along news of his story to a reporter named Denny O’Neil at the Cape Girardeau Southeast Missourian who had already written two recent articles on comic books. Penning a third piece on Roy specifically, the journalist made a

Magazine Rack Bill Spicer, who began lettering comic books for Gold Key in 1967, wasn’t ready to quit his day job like Thomas and O’Neil had done. Still, he was already a formidable writer, editor and publisher whose Fantasy Illustrated was launched in 1964. The pro-caliber photo-offset fanzine was devoted to comics stories illustrated by some of the best artists in fandom, indi-

The upscale Fantasy Illustrated included contributions from fan artists like Landon Chesney, Buddy Saunders, . Jeff Jones, and Bill DuBay. Issue #4 was also of note for Richard Kyle’s articulation of the “graphic novel,” . a term first coined in Capa-Alpha #2. TM and © Bill Spicer.

Goodwin’s relationship with his collaborators encouraged some of their best work. “My working method for Warren,” he explained, “was usually to talk with the artists, find out what they’d like to draw, and tailor a story utilizing either settings or scenes that they’d be interested in drawing. Everything was done full script” (Catron, “A Conversation With Archie Goodwin” 201). Newspaper cartoonists John Prentice (Rip Kirby) and Leonard Starr (On Stage), each masters of their craft (and Goodwin acquaintances), sent rave letters that appeared in Creepy #2 while Al Kilgore actually inserted the book’s host Uncle Creepy into the December 18, 1964, Bullwinkle daily strip, where the cartoon moose declared himself to be a fan. The format of a newspaper comic strip was not only rigid but had to be clear enough to survive being reduced to fairly small dimensions. It was exciting, then, for the artists to explore the possibilities of the form without restriction.

The Fantasy Illustrated adaptations of Adam Link caught the attention of publisher James Warren. © Bill Spicer.

viduals such as Landon Chesney, Joe Staton, and Alan Weiss. Spicer later declared that he was engaged by “the idea of having complete freedom to produce just about any kind of comics stories, unconcerned with the real-world commercial inconveniences like newsstand distribution and sales. At the time, I apparently fancied myself a minor league William Gaines and Harvey Kurtzman rolled into one” (Schelly, The Golden Age of Comic Fandom 53-5). A high point of Fantasy Illustrated’s first two issues was an adaptation of Otto Binder’s 1940 tale “Adam Link’s Vengeance” by Spicer and artist D. Bruce Berry. Adam Link, a robot who’d developed self-awareness, had been the subject of ten short stories between 1939 and 1942 and the adaptation had been good enough to catch the attention of one of FI’s subscribers, Jim Warren. The magazine publisher, who’d launched the black and white horror comic book Creepy in late 1964, immediately decided to have Otto Binder and artist Joe Orlando adapt the entire Adam Link series for his own publication starting

with issue #2. Published irregularly into 1967, the Creepy episodes didn’t manage to cover all the original stories but they did derail Spicer’s plans to produce more adaptations of his own (Schelly, The Golden Age of Comic Fandom 55). Creepy had been an unqualified success for Warren Publications, its page count gradually being bumped from 52 to 60 to 68 pages per issue while maintaining a price of 35¢. Like the early 1950s EC horror comics that inspired it, the magazine boasted a stellar core roster of artists (notably Orlando, Reed Crandall, Gray Morrow, Angelo Torres, and Al Williamson) and strong writing. Archie Goodwin, who succeeded Russ Jones as editor in 1965 and wrote the bulk of the book’s stories, was not as copy-heavy as the EC scripters, though. And unlike the color EC issues, Creepy’s artwork was rendered in black and white that was immeasurably enhanced through a variety of techniques that added dimension and tone to the illustration. 19

“Hot rumors, bless our old grapevine gossips, spoke of top talent being rounded-up by Warren,” Alex Toth recalled. An adventurous stylist, the

Among Warren’s promotional items was this rubber mask of Uncle Creepy, advertised in Creepy #6. Creepy TM and © New Comic Company.

Before his arrival at Warren Publications, Alex Toth previously explored the possibilities of working with washtone and Craftint (or Grafix) . treated paper for stories like this in Millar Publishing’s Drag Cartoons #14 (April 1963). Dragula TM and © respective copyright holder.

Most readers of the Bullwinkle newspaper strip were likely baffled by the in-joke references to Creepy and Warren Publications in this December 18, 1964 installment. Bullwinkle TM and © Bullwinkle Studios.

artist had already played with the black and white form in lightweight fare like Dragula for Petersen Publishing’s humorous DragToons magazines, but Creepy was something else altogether. Toth conceded that he wasn’t a particular fan of horror conventions—or Warren’s pay scale—but couldn’t resist contributing, beginning with issue #5 (October 1965). “It gave me playroom time to explore/experiment with the wonderful world of black and white and tone, or gray ‘Pelikan ink’ washes and even texture work with ‘Conté crayons’ (litho/tusche) grays to juice it up a bit,” he later wrote. “ It was grueling but incalculable great learning fun, basic training, having to think in terms beyond just line” (Toth 57).

Even as Creepy was reviving classic horror, Ballantine Books was republishing its groundbreaking 1950s EC predecessors in a series of 50-cent paperbacks comprising Tales From the Crypt, Tales of the Incredible, The Vault of Horror, and two Ray Bradbury spotlights: The Autumn People and (in 1966) Tomorrow Midnight. Highlighted by handsome Frank Frazetta covers, the five books had to disassemble the original comic book page layouts for use in this smaller format. Warren was more than horror, of course. Its small line was an eclectic mix that also included the magazines Famous Monsters of Filmland and Help!, the latter composed of comics, photo humor, and comedic prose. Legendary EC editor/writer Harvey Kurtzman had conceived and edited the magazine in 1960 and guided it through a tumultuous five years that included lawsuits and arguments with Jim Warren over content. The publisher also claimed to have lost $50,000 on the venture and he and Kurtzman mutually agreed to end the magazine with issue #26 ( September 1965). Before it ended, though, the magazine published the first widely-distributed appearances of Fritz the Cat in Help! #22 (January 1965) and #24 (May 1965). The creation of a then-21-year-old former artist for American Greetings Cards named Robert Crumb, Fritz was conceived around 1959 as “an outgrowth of those funny animal comics that my brother and I drew all the time we were kids. We had this cat named Fritz, the family cat. I did these comic strips about our cat to amuse my little sister and younger brother. That’s basically how it started. The earliest ones that are in print are from sketchbooks I did in ‘64 and ‘65” (Groth 74). The Fritz who appeared in Help! was entirely inappropriate for little children, its first two-page installment depicting the cat bringing a girlfriend home and removing her clothes because “them little fleas are hard t’ get hold of.” The second episode cast Fritz as a singer who brought a female groupie home with him and—since she was a pigeon—proceeded to eat her! Crumb had briefly worked at Help! as an aide to assistant editor Terry Gilliam in the summer of 1964. When Gilliam left in 1965, Harvey Kurtzman extended an invitation to Crumb to replace him and the young newlywed was elated at the opportunity to work next to his idol. Packing up their

The back pages of Warren’s magazines sold a variety of horror-related products through mail-order branch Captain Company, including membership in a Creepy fan club. Creepy TM and © New Comic Company.

The randy Fritz the Cat became an outlet for his introverted creator. Fritz the Cat TM and © Robert Crumb.

belongings, the artist and his wife left Cleveland for New York City and moved into an apartment on a Sunday. “Next day, that Monday, I reported to work,” Crumb recalled. “This is no joke: I walked into the Help office, Kurtzman’s standing there against a wall looking real forlorn, and guys are taking out the furniture!” (Groth 60).

Although best known for creating Mad in the 1950s for EC, Kurtzman was widely respected for his trailblazing war comic books Frontline Combat and Two-Fisted Tales of the same era. Despite their trappings, the titles truly provided an anti-war message, emphasizing the personal toll of combat and sometimes portraying the perspective of “the enemy.” Having caught the spirit of EC’s horror comics with Creepy, Jim Warren now hoped to do the same for its war comics with Blazing Combat.

Kurtzman, at least, had other opportunities, most notably his and Will Elder’s Little Annie Fanny strip for Playboy, and attempted to find a spot for Crumb in his operation. After trying to support himself as a commercial artist, the young man ultimately returned to Cleveland and American Greetings in 1966.

“When I learned from Russ [Jones] that that’s what they were interested in doing,” Archie Goodwin recalled, “I was incredibly enthusiastic because—as an EC fan, while I loved all the EC books—the war stuff was always my fa-

Crumb’s six-page Harlem sketchbook in Help! #22 (January 1965) represented some of his first mainstream work. © Robert Crumb.

vorite. So I leaped up and down at the chance to do the material” (Catron, “A Conversation With Archie Goodwin” 201). Blazing Combat #1 (October 1965) featured a mix of the Creepy stable like Crandall, Orlando, and Torres (plus a Frank Frazetta painted cover) along with veterans of the EC war comics George Evans and John Severin. Like EC, the story backdrops could extend to any war in history, whether the Revolutionary War or the conflict then raging in Vietnam. “Viet Cong” (by Goodwin and Orlando) articulated the book’s point-ofview, following a U.S. Army advisor to a South Vietnamese battalion. The communist forces of the Viet Cong were portrayed as insidious and brutal, but the South Vietnamese’s Captain Thanh came across as unsympathetic in his own right, using brutal beatings and water torture in his attempt to drag information out of the enemy. Troubled by what he’d seen, Lt. Crew remarked on the last page that it was a “funny kind of war. Not like any war U.S. Army ever fought before…you can’t use the book or many of the old rules. Thanh makes mistakes…I make mistakes…we’re both learning. But, man alive…I hope we’re not learning too late!” “When we were looking around for people to do the war material,” Goodwin explained, “Joe [Orlando] volunteered. He said, ‘If you need anything on Vietnam, let me do it because I’ve got a lot of photos for swipe and research.’ So Joe, by dint of having the best reference file, became the resident Vietnam artist” (Catron, “A Conversation With Archie Goodwin” 201202). “Vietnam probably has to be the most documented war in history,” Goodwin continued, “but at the time we were doing it, it was very hard to find anything about it. For instance, there weren’t books out about Vietnam. I had to scrounge Time magazine to get anything” (Catron, “A Conversation With Archie Goodwin” 202). The book, Jim Warren pointedly said, was anti-war. “The emphasis in Blazing Combat was not blood and gore,” he said. “The stories had a humane

Frank Frazetta painted the covers for every issue of Blazing Combat. TM and © Warren Publishing Co.

approach. I was against the war in Vietnam because I’ve never believed in limited war. Either you go to war to win—and win quickly and decisively—or you stay out” (Cooke, “Someone Has To Make It Happen” 34). Priced at 35¢, the black and white magazine’s first issue was distributed to retailers and sold respectably. It would be 1966 before the full implications of challenging the United States’ presence in Vietnam became apparent.

Fighting Soldiers From the Sky Robin Moore got a taste of that in 1965, shortly after the publication of his best-seller The Green Berets. Taken to task by Pentagon officials for revealing top secret information about the Special Forces that he’d observed in Vietnam, the journalist found himself attacked in some quarters for emphasizing “what a disaster” the United States’ presence in Southeast Asia was becoming and in others for glorifying the elite squad whose exploits

In a year when documentation on the war in Vietnam was still sparse, Joe Orlando positioned himself as Archie Goodwin’s go-to artist on stories about the conflict by virtue of his well-stocked photo reference file. Original art courtesy of Heritage Auctions. Blazing Combat TM and © Warren Publishing Co.

he documented. Major General William P. Yarborough—who’d molded the Green Berets as a strategic force within the traditional Army—was understandably a vigorous advocate of Moore’s book and suggested that a comics adaptation be produced (Moore xiv-xvi). Approached about developing a newspaper strip, Jerry Capp (the brother of Li’l Abner creator Al Capp and prolific comic strip writer Elliot Caplin) immediately contacted Neal Adams as its prospective artist. Adams’ modern, realistic style had been rejected by comic book publishers earlier in the decade but he’d carved out a niche on the Jerry Capp-scripted Ben Casey comic strip. Adams (who recalls being approached by Elliot rather than Jerry) agreed to have lunch with Robin Moore but turned down the offer. “I am really not for this war,” Adams said, “so I don’t think I’m the right guy for this spot” (Offenberger).

Like most industry professionals, Kubert dreamed of the wider circulation, prominence, and respect that was accorded popular newspaper strip creators and he had his own rejected proposal—a caveman feature called Tor—to prove it. Consequently, he leapt at the opportunity to do Green Beret. “In order to portray Special Forces soldiers accurately and to get authentic background material,” biographer Bill Schelly wrote, “Kubert visited the Special Warfare Center in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where

Robin Moore had received his Green Beret training” (Man of Rock 167). The artist understood that the feature would elevate “the work of the Special Forces guys, what they were doing, how they were working in the different places, the responsibilities that they had being sent to Vietnam and so on and so forth. It sounded to me like it would be a good idea to use the interest in that situation as a springboard, but not to make a political treatise out of it.” Rather, Kubert

As an alternative, the cartoonist suggested they contact “the ultimate war artist”: Joe Kubert. With a career in comic books dating back to apprenticeship in the late 1930s, the 38-yearold Kubert had matured into one of the industry’s artistic masters with a dark, sketchy vitality that was unlike any other illustrator. That look had been particularly well-suited to DC’s war comics and its flagship Our Army At War title starring Sgt. Rock.

Joe Kubert and his 3½-year-old son Andy in . a 1965 newspaper photo.

A sampling of 1965 strips from Robin Moore and Joe Kubert’s Tales of the Green Beret. TM and © respective copyright holder.

envisioned “something similar to Terry and the Pirates, a kind of romantic adventure kind of thing” (Tauber).

the renowned Rock brought low. The villain appeared to perish at the end of the story but he was back for an encore as early as 1966’s OAAW #165.

Once Kubert completed work on an entire 12-week sequence of 72 daily strips, Tales of the Green Beret was presented to newspaper syndicates. The Chicago Tribune snatched up the feature and sold it to subscribing newspapers as a mini-series that ran from September 20 to December 11, 1965. That might have been the end of it had it not been for Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler’s recording of The Ballad of the Green Berets. As the song sped up the charts, the Chicago Tribune green-lit an ongoing Green Beret strip that began on April 4, 1966. Kubert remained as artist while Robin Moore was credited as its author. (Moore identified the real writer as Howard Liss while Kubert recalls that it was Jerry Capp.)

The most memorable Rock story of the year was indisputably OAAW #160’s “What’s the Color of Your Blood?” It featured the return of a black soldier named Jackie Johnson and was as outspoken as the character’s previous appearance in 1961’s issue #113 had been subtle. Jackie, a flashback detailed, had been a boxer prior to World War Two and suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of a German challenger named Uhlan who used his victory to assert the genetic superiority of the Nazi’s supposed “master race.” In the midst of the war, Easy Company found itself captives of a German squad led by Uhlan.

Through 1965, at least, Joe Kubert’s primary allegiance was to DC’s war titles under the helm of editor (and frequent writer) Bob Kanigher, particularly on G.I. Combat (where he drew the Haunted Tank series until original artist Russ Heath returned with issue #114: October-November 1965) and Sgt. Rock’s home base of Our Army At War.

At gunpoint, Jackie was forced into a boxing rematch where Uhlan taunted him to admit that his blood was black. In a fury, the black soldier defeated the Nazi and Uhlan wound up getting shot in the chaos that followed. Jackie himself stepped forward to donate blood that would save his enemy’s life and the Nazi was forced to admit that he was wrong. “The color of your blood—is red.”

Affirming the biggest draw in the five DC war books, the OAAW title was shrunk effective with issue #158 ( September 1965) to make room for the dominant Sgt. Rock logo. Inside, the top kick of Easy Company also acquired an arch foe in the form of the Iron Major, a proud Nazi commander with a metal right hand and a particular interest in seeing

The story owed a debt to a pair of racially-charged 1930s bouts between African American fighter Joe Louis and German boxer Max Schmeling. Even Jackie’s name was a tribute to Jack Johnson, who’d been the first black heavyweight champion early in the 20th Century. Less obviously, the concluding blood transfusion scene recalled the climax

Despite the fact that the U.S. armed forces were segregated during World War Two, African American soldier Jackie Johnson remained a regular in DC’s Sgt. Rock series for the balance of his run as did his Marvel Comics counterpart Gabe Jones in Sgt. Fury. Sgt. Rock TM and © DC Comics.

of Marvel’s Sgt. Fury #6 from 1964 in which black soldier Gabe Jones donated his own blood to a racist colleague. Bob Kanigher’s comments in the letter column of OAAW #163 suggest that Gabe Jones might actually have inspired Jackie’s return. Acknowledging that a competitor’s war comic featured a black soldier, the writer-editor asserted that he’d introduced such a character first but had perhaps been too subtle. “Did I make a mistake in showing Jackie as an American soldier without a single stereotype action, name, or word to mark him as a Negro?” he wondered. “Did I make a mistake in not having him dance or sing or play a horn—to keep him in the usual typed roles for Negroes? Did I make a mistake in thinking that Jackie’s skin was khaki-colored like everyone in Easy? The silence then, makes me regretfully think so.” Our Fighting Forces #98’s letter column added that the story also earned a response from the American Nazi Party. “Just got a poison pen letter from them on the official letterhead, no less,” Kanigher remarked. “Am still airing the office out.” Challenging perceptions were also at the heart of a landmark Kanigher-Kubert creation introduced as a 15-page back-up to the Rock episode in Our Army At War #151 (February 1965). Triggered by recent media coverage commemorating the 50th anniversary of the start of World War One, it told the story of a pilot from the so-called Great War—when aerial combat first entered warfare—who was very good at shooting down enemy planes. Honor and duty dictated his actions, but he grieved at the loss of each of his fifty-plus kills and silently chafed at his reputation as a “killing machine.” The gaunt loner couldn’t relate to the adventurous young men in his squadron and he turned instead to a black wolf in the forest as the only soul who related to “the lonely business of killing.” The twist was that Rittmeister Hans Von Hammer flew in the German army and readers were being asked to sympathize with an Enemy Ace.

Mike W. Barr later declared. Followup episodes in OAAW #153 and #155 emphasized the same elements as the first but Barr observed “that in Kanigher’s hands, they never become stale, contrived character ‘tags.’ It’s the difference between a summer stock theatre and a troupe of great actors. The first may be entertaining once, but the second you can watch again and again, and always see something new, though the words and actions are the same” (49).

“Kanigher, in a few bold strokes, created and fully fleshed out one of comicdom’s few unique characters,”

The audacity of a war series that posited the enemy as its protagonist was tempered by a half-century’s distance

The unconventional Enemy Ace debuted with this splash page from Our Army At War #151. . Enemy Ace TM and © DC Comics.

but the execution of the premise created a sensation among the war line’s fans. Kanigher aggressively fanned the flames, filling the letter columns in all five of his combat titles with reader raves about Enemy Ace. A rare critical letter condemning the concept filled half a page in OAAW #161, all the better to provoke still more responses. “I didn’t tell anyone I was putting Enemy Ace in,” Kanigher said of that first episode. Even a portion of OAAW #151’s cover had only teased his presence with a flaming question mark and this copy: “Who is the blazing

Enemy Ace and Balloon Buster represented both sides of the World War One aerial conflict. Balloon Buster, Enemy Ace TM and © DC Comics.

enemy we dared not show on the cover? Who? Who? Who? Who?” Once he had an armload of reader letters, though, the writer had no trouble convincing DC management to let him and Kubert try out Enemy Ace as a headliner in DC’s test-run title Showcase (issues #57 and #58: July-August and September-October 1965). Despite the text page promotional campaign, the so-called Hammer of Hell didn’t fly high enough to earn his own book. Kanigher’s other new war characters of ‘65 were no more successful. After five years as the star of All-American Men of War, World War Two pilot Johnny Cloud was replaced in issue #112 (November-December 1965) by a World War One flyer named the Balloon Buster. So named for his skill at shooting down German zeppelins, Steve Savage was distinct from Enemy Ace in every way, a 28

dirt poor farmer whose aerial successes were acknowledged grudgingly as opposed to Von Hammer’s lauded nobleman. Just as the German pilot was based on the real-life Manfred von Richthofen (a.k.a. the Red Baron), Savage was modeled on genuine U.S. war hero Frank Luke. Russ Heath, who’d left DC in late 1963 to assist Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder on Playboy’s Little Annie Fanny feature, returned to the fold in 1965. Along with resuming his role as artist on the Haunted Tank, the slick, detailoriented illustrator was also assigned to the Balloon Buster. Joe Kubert recalled that Heath had a considerable collection of military photographs and schematics that added immeasurably to the visual authenticity of both World War One features (Kubert 6). (The best-remembered World War One Flying Ace of 1965, surprisingly, wasn’t featured in a comic

Woman, Superman, and Batman in Justice League of America had been no less monumental.

book at all. On Sunday, October 10, Snoopy climbed atop his doghouse and prepared to do battle with the Red Baron, the first in a series of fantasy sequences that would be indelibly linked with Charles Schulz’s Peanuts comic strip.)

Much of the subsequent early-1960s fan movement sprang from the efforts of devotees Jerry Bails and Roy Thomas to support JLA via a self-published fanzine entitled Alter-Ego. The duo’s real interest had been the 1940s Justice Society of America and, thanks in part to their lobbying, Schwartz and writer Gardner Fox engineered the revival of those long-lost heroes by revealing that they still existed on a world in a parallel dimension dubbed Earth-Two. The modern Flash’s first meeting with his Golden Age counterpart in 1961 created a sensation, inspiring two sequels and a full-fledged JLA-JSA team-up in 1963 that sold so well that Schwartz decided to make it an annual event.

Elsewhere, Kanigher ended the six-year run of Gunner and Sarge in Our Fighting Forces, replacing them with another Marine in issue #95 (October 1965) whose family ties might give him an edge in sales: he was Sgt. Rock’s previously unknown brother. Set in the Pacific theater of World War Two as a contrast to his sibling’s European backdrop, Lt. Larry Detail from the 1966 book, Snoopy and the Red Baron. TM and © Peanuts Worldwide LLC. Rock had sustained a shrapnel wound to the head that he kept secret rather than risk being sent home.

Consequently, the editor set out to determine exactly how many Golden Age heroes the market would bear. In January 1965, along with the fourth dual Flash team-up in The Flash #151, Schwartz spun off JSA members Doctor Fate and Hourman for a tryout in Showcase #55. Seeking a powerhouse adversary for the duo, Gardner Fox selected an undead monster named Solomon Grundy who’d been the mortal enemy of Green Lantern during the

Typical of Kanigher’s features, the series emphasized its central hook—“the ‘time-bomb’ ticking in his head”— repeatedly, rendering the panels in which Larry was wracked with pain in a splash of red. The writer noted in issue #97 that the character was based on a real Marine “who did conceal the after-effects of a wound in order to keep on fighting with his buddies.” The sideeffects were less dramatic for him, though, manifesting in a tendency to say “hot for cold, or sour for sweet, saying the reverse of what he thought.” Former Johnny Cloud artist Irv Novick moved to Our Fighting Forces to draw the Fighting Devil-Dog, its title based on the Marines’ nickname dating to 1918. Although none of the new creations were a particular sales success, Kanigher was proud of all of them, particularly Enemy Ace. Recalling the accolades that the Kubert-illustrated Hawkman revival had received a few years earlier in the fan-voted Alley Awards, the writer-editor wrote in Our Army At War #163, “I would very much like to see Joe receive an Alley— not for a pre-sold Golden Age character—but for one that springs to life now.”

Keep Searchin’ Some of DC’s greatest successes since the late 1950s had indeed been based on such “pre-sold” characters. Under the editorial guidance of Julius Schwartz, 1940s characters like the Flash, Green Lantern, the Atom, and Hawkman had been virtually re-created with modern looks and backgrounds. The decision to unite some of these newcomers and DC perennials such as Wonder Lt. Rock was not the success his brother Sgt. Rock was. Art by Irv Novick. Fighting Devil-Dog TM and © DC Comics.

1940s. (Given the Comics Code Authority’s ban on zombies, Fox could only say that Grundy was a manifestation of Slaughter Swamp.) As a bonus, the aforementioned original Green Lantern guest-starred in the back third of the story. Murphy Anderson, who epitomized the sleek realistic DC look, was chosen to draw the two tryout issues (the latter of which introduced a modern version of the evil Psycho-Pirate). “I was chosen because Julie knew my love for that period,” the artist explained. “Since I had a lot of my old comic books, it was easy for me to go back and reference them. I used a lot of my own personal books for references on those tryouts. It was just fun for me, and he knew that. I didn’t try to copy the other guy’s style, but I did try to get the feel of the character, and keep the costumes accurate” (Voger, “DC’s Silver Age Front Line” 44). The creative team reunited that summer in The Brave and the Bold #61 and #62 for a pairing of Starman and the Black Canary. It was an unusual match not only because their publishing histories had never overlapped during the 1940s but because they were a male-female combo. The partnership was strictly platonic, though, because Dinah (Black Canary) Drake had married her detective boyfriend Larry Lance after her feature ended. Likewise, Fox had revealed that Doctor Fate’s Kent Nelson finally wed his longtime girlfriend Inza Cramer. B&B #62—which brought back the heroic Wildcat—added that Golden Age villains Sportsmaster and the Huntress had gotten married, too. Among Schwartz’s core fan base, the four issues were hugely popular, resulting in Alley Awards for Best Novel (Showcase #55), Best Cover (B&B #61), Best Inker (Murphy Anderson), and Best Revived Hero (Doctor Fate). Despite trying to offset the lower recognition factor of the characters by doubling them up, the editor was left with disappointing sales reports and plans for a third grouping with Doctor Mid-Nite and the Sandman were abandoned. For their next attempt, Schwartz, Fox, and Anderson would focus their efforts on a single character.

Despite fan accolades, DC’s 1965 Golden Age tryouts didn’t click with general audiences. . Doctor Fate, Hourman, Black Canary, Starman TM and © DC Comics.

On the whole, the vintage heroes seemed to work better as guest-stars, whether in the latest JLAJSA team-up (Justice League of America #37-38) or the first non-JLA meeting of the original Green Lantern (Alan Scott) with his modern counterpart in Green Lantern #40 (October 1965). The latter adventure (written by John Broome and illustrated by Gil Kane and Sid Greene) significantly

The first dual Green Lantern team-up had ramifications far beyond 1965. Gil Kane was inked by Murphy Anderson on the cover and Sid Greene on the interior. Green Lantern TM and © DC Comics.

deepened the mythology of the alien Green Lantern Corps seen at intervals over the preceding five years. Readers were aware that the Corps was overseen by a race of immortal blue men known as the Guardians of the Universe but this story revealed that they did so out of personal responsibility. Ten billion years ago, one of their number—Krona—had defied them to use a time-viewer that would reveal the origin of the cosmos. By tampering with the natural order, he’d unleashed evil into the universe and compelled his brethren from the planet Oa to create the Green Lantern Corps to help “stem the tide of evil.” Krona himself had been dematerialized by the Guardians, but he returned in the present to take possession of Alan Scott’s body in an illfated effort to resume his mad obsession with the birth of existence.

revealed that Krona’s actions hadn’t simply unleashed evil but also created uncounted parallel universes like Earth-Two and the primary Earth-One. As noted in Crisis On Infinite Earths #7 (October 1985) and many issues since, Green Lantern #40 wasn’t simply the “Secret Origin of

The full mythic significance of the story wasn’t apparent for another 20 years until writer Marv Wolfman

The Flash TM and © DC Comics.

the Guardians” but the origin of the entire DC multiverse. On a far less cosmic scale, the Schwartz-edited Flash #155 (by John Broome, Carmine Infantino, and Joe Giella) brought together most of the Scarlet Speedster’s greatest enemies as the Rogues Gallery. A few had crossed paths in earlier issues and the group had been named in a 1964 pinup (80 Page Giant #4), but this was the first time they’d gotten together for a proper story. Bad guys had been joining forces against a common enemy almost as long as superheroes had existed, but the Rogues developed into something special, a fraternal brotherhood that cared about each other as much as the man they were plotting against. When Schwartz inherited the struggling Batman and Detective Comics in 1964, he’d acquired the Caped Crusader’s own impressive collection of recurring adversaries but opted to use them sparingly. The goal had been to

scripter had literally co-created Batman, contributing key details to his look and developing many of the strip’s bestknown early cast members from Robin to the Catwoman despite Bob Kane having claimed sole credit. In a historic piece of comics journalism, Bails revealed his findings in an article entitled, “If the Truth Be Known, or, A Finger In Every Plot.”

create a contemporary new look for the series and the classic villains were a reminder of the old one. Hence, there’d been new specialty crooks like the monstrous Blockbuster (Detective Comics #345) and the self-explanatory Getaway Genius (Batman #170).

Within weeks of the ‘zine’s publication, Batmania editor Biljo White received a six-page letter from an indignant Bob Kane, who demanded his document be printed in the prominent Batman fanzine as a public statement repudiating the Bails article elsewhere. “I, Bob Kane, am the sole creator of Batman,” he insisted, and spent the next several pages tearing apart Finger, the exposé, and its writer. He was unwilling to grant his one-time partner more than the slightest credit, not only out of ego but to protect the significant financial investment he still had in the character. Bails refused to back down and White—caught in the middle—sat on Kane’s letter for two years before finally running it in a Batmania Annual. The truth of Bails’ article endured and, through his pioneering efforts, Bill Finger is now accepted as the man who co-created Batman (Schelly, “Batmania” 16-19).

Still, Schwartz’s time on Batman was unlike anything he’d ever experienced before. Artists Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson His previous charheralded the return of the Riddler on Batman #171’s acter makeovers had cover. Batman TM and © DC Comics. picked up years after the original versions were cancelled. With Batman, the cartoonier pre-1964 version was not only fresh in the minds of readers but regularly being reprinted in DC’s 80 Page Giants. Hence, there was an obligation to revisit big guns like the Joker in Detective Comics #332 (October 1964) and #341 (July 1965) and the Penguin in Batman #169 (February 1965) as part of the New Look. Certainly, the revival of the Riddler—a green-costumed thief who left clues to each of his crimes—in Batman #171 was a nod to fans who longed for the Good Old Days. The character hadn’t appeared in a comic book since his 1948 debut (Detective #140 and #142), but he had been profiled in a recent issue of Mike Vosburg’s Masquerader fanzine. It’s unknown whether the article inspired Schwartz to bring him back but few mothballed characters have benefited more from a second chance. The Riddler was destined to become one of the series’ best known villains. Schwartz, who’d published his own science fiction fanzines as a teenager, had encouraged this new breed of amateur publications in the early 1960s that began with Jerry Bails’ self-published AlterEgo. And it was Bails, in the pages of Capa-Alpha #12 (September 1965), who stirred up a hornet’s nest that year on the subject of Batman. During one of the earliest comic book conventions in New York on July 31 and August 1, Bails and other fans had the opportunity to talk to Bill Finger, the longtime comic book writer whom Schwartz had innocently revealed as a major contributor to the Batman series in a 1964 Detective Comics text page. Chatting with Finger at his apartment alongside Dave Kaler and Roy Thomas, Bails quickly discovered that the veteran

Jerry Bails’ article on unsung Batman co-creator Bill Finger ignited a firestorm with Bob Kane.

drew the rest of the issue in an approximation of the style of artist H.G. Peter with thick outlines, stiff poses, and accentuated check bones. 1940s supporting players Etta Candy and the Holliday Girls returned and Wonder Woman’s mother Queen Hippolyta—a blonde since 1958—was a brunette once more. It was, Kanigher declared, an experiment and the book returned to the modern style for a two-parter in WW #157-158 that was outlandish in its own right. Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor took on Red Chinese soldiers and their gigantic leader Egg Fu, who was literally a gigantic egg-shaped head with a prehensile mustache to grab his enemies. Adding insult to injury, Egg Fu and the soldiers also spoke in stereotypical slurred speech patterns (e.g. “Amerlican” for “American”). The capper was WW #158’s eight-page epilogue in which teenage fan protesters were shown picketing the DC offices over the unnamed editor’s treatment of the Amazon Princess. Within, the unnamed Kanigher (his back to the viewer) informed the assembled cast—everyone from Wonder Tot to Mer-Boy to the Glop—that they were getting their walking papers. Buoyed by the early response to WW #156’s flashback (represented in the letter column by fan Robert J. Allen), the writer-editor proclaimed that the series was officially reverting to that style. The next issue opened with a retelling of Wonder Woman’s 1941 origin.

Wonder Woman #156 tested the waters for a return to the series’ 1940s look. . Wonder Woman TM and © DC Comics.

Somewhere between Bob Kane’s vitriol and Julius Schwartz’s warm feelings for organized comic book fandom was the latter’s office-mate Bob Kanigher, whose own efforts—whether the war titles or his, Ross Andru, and Mike Esposito’s offbeat Metal Men—were generally snubbed. Worse still, his Wonder Woman title was voted Worst Regularly Published Comic in the Alley Awards twice, once in 1961 and again in 1964. Small wonder, then, that the writer-editor included a line in WW #151 remarking that Wonder Girl was facing “the most fantastic threat since fanzines were invented.” The series was admittedly pretty wacky by 1965, now host to bizarre villains like the gelatinous Glop (WW #151) and situations such as the Amazons sewing on Wonder Girl’s face after it had been stolen by the Duke of Deception (WW #153). Kanigher was writing fantasy stories for young girls, and he was prepared to ignore the mostly male fanzine audience who favored the original 1940s stories by series creators William Moulton Marston and Harry G. Peter. After observing the explosion of newspaper articles about the newfound interest in old comic books, though, Kanigher decided that there might be something to this nostalgia. Hence, he prepared a story for Wonder Woman #156 (August 1965) wherein the Amazing Amazon visited a proprietor of old comic books and was literally transported into the pages of one of them. Ross Andru and Mike Esposito

Male fans’ disdain for the Wonder Woman comic book were reflected in this panel from WW #158. TM and © DC Comics.

Wonder Woman #159’s infamously heavy-handed cover heralded the series’ back-tothe-basics approach. TM and © DC Comics.

B&B #60 (June-July 1965), but a few tweaks needed to be made. The group needed a proper name—the alliterative Teen Titans fit the bill nicely—and they required a female member for girl appeal. Supergirl really wasn’t an option, partly because the college-age heroine was older than the high school boys but mostly due to Superman group editor’s Mort Weisinger’s protectiveness of his characters. Instead, Kashdan and Haney looked to the pages of Wonder Woman and realized that Wonder Girl was exactly what they were looking for.

The cover of Wonder Woman #159 may well have been the most copy-heavy cover ever published by DC. With the title character shoved to the left side of the frame and a hand over her mouth as she tried to “tell the truth,” the bulk of the space was spent extolling the virtues of the selfdescribed “great collector’s item” as “comic’s [sic] ‘Golden Age’ returns more dazzling than ever!” Ironically, one of the great appeals of Wonder Woman since 1958 had been the modern, sleek art of Andru and Esposito. In their hands, the heroine had actually been pretty and the stipulation that they mimic the style of the comparatively stodgy H.G. Peter undercut the artistic duo’s effectiveness.

The problem—as several readers realized even if Kashdan and Haney did not—was that Wonder Girl was Wonder Woman herself as a teenager. In 1961, Bob Kanigher had launched a series of “impossible tales” in which the Amazing Amazon teamed up with herself as both an adolescent and a toddler. After a certain point, he stopped putting disclaimers in the stories and the casual reader had no idea that the trio was the same person at different ages. And yet, there she was beside the three male Teen Titans. It would be another four years before someone explained that one.

Although the experiment would be mocked in later years for its excesses, the Wonder Woman makeover was a virtual template for the sort of thing that publishers of longrunning characters would do for decades to come. Series that had veered too far from their roots could always count on getting attention by announcing that they were going back to basics (like Julius Schwartz’s Batman shake-up a year earlier, that also meant purging extraneous secondary characters). The mer-people and bird-people and full-blown Wonder Family were essentially gone for good…with one exception. One of DC’s surprise hits of 1964 had been a oneshot story in The Brave and the Bold #54 that united Aqualad, Kid Flash, and Robin the Boy Wonder as a team. A year later, editor George Kashdan commissioned writer Bob Haney and artist Bruno Premiani to produce a sequel for

Nick Cardy became the Teen Titans’ regular artist in Showcase #59 following earlier illustrator Bruno Premiani in The Brave and the Bold #60. Teen Titans TM and © DC Comics.

Marvel’s Sub-Mariner and Dr. Strange were echoed by DC’s Man-Fish and Prince Ra-Man. Art by Howard Purcell and Bernard Baily, respectively. Man-Fish, Prince Ra-Man TM and © respective copyright holder.

In Teen Titans, there’d be none of the teenage angst and insecurities that defined Marvel’s groundbreaking Amazing Spider-Man or DC’s own Beast-Boy. As they answered distress calls from kids around the country, the youthful quartet displayed a surface interest in the fads and sounds of the day, whether surfing or rock groups like the Flips, but they were ultimately seasoned role models in the mold of their adult counterparts. These were teens as their adult creators wished they might be rather than what they really were. The series, Haney declared, “was calculatedly aimed at a 12-year-old audience. We kept it very simple. We were not going for the Marvel readers” (Burkert 35). Whatever its failings, youngsters loved the concept and another Teen Titans yarn was scheduled for Showcase #59 (November-December 1965). DC decided there was no point waiting on further sales figures. With the declaration that “they just couldn’t wait to start their own mag,” Teen Titans #1 was released two months later.

bols—in issue #22 of their title but expanded their franchise worldwide with the formation of the International Sea Devils. The same story introduced Captain X and the Man-Fish, a pair of antagonistic supporting players based on Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo and Marvel Comics’ SubMariner.

Kashdan’s only concern was Bruno Premiani. “I remember showing Bruno a drawing he’d done of Robin,” the editor recalled, “with a rather small, scrawny body.” The artist, who strived for realism, explained that this was how most younger teenagers looked, prompting his editor to explain that the boys needed more “heroic” physiques. Premiani adjusted the teens’ looks accordingly but Kashdan was under pressure by Executive Vice President Irwin Donenfeld to bring a new artist onto the fledgling strip. Rejecting his boss’ suggestion of Jim Mooney (whose layouts Kashdan deemed weak), the editor gave the assignment to the more dynamic Nick Cardy effective with Showcase #59 (Amash, “Sales Don’t Tell You Everything” 59).

A shake-up in House of Secrets also evoked Marvel not only through its introduction of Prince Ra-Man, a mentalist with gray streaks in his hair (like magician Dr. Strange), but also via its revised cover logo that gave dual billing in each issue to Ra-Man and co-feature Eclipso (similar to Marvel’s own double-bill titles). Mark Merlin, who’d spent six years in HOS, was killed off in issue #73 to make for room for Ra-Man but his memories were reincarnated in the newcomer.

Cardy’s primary book was still the Kashdan-edited Aquaman, which built on the momentum of the underwater hero’s 1964 marriage by having the lovely Mera give birth to a son in issue #23 ( September-October 1965). Like his mother, Aquababy could create hard-water constructs with the wave of a hand.

No such contrivances were employed when editor Jack Schiff decided to drop Adam Strange and Space Ranger from the pages of Mystery In Space. In the hands of Julius Schwartz, Gardner Fox, and Carmine Infantino, Adam’s feature had been one of DC’s crown jewels in the eyes of most fans. When Schwartz’s team was shifted to Batman in 1964, Schiff’s attempt to continue the series with writer Dave Wood and artist Lee Elias had been roundly rejected. Convinced the book might do better with a character that didn’t invite such comparisons, the editor worked with Wood and Elias to create something new.

Such changes could be found throughout many of DC’s lower-tier titles in 1965 as its editors and writers contended with slipping sales. The Challengers of the Unknown traded in their trademark purple outfits for new red-andyellow ones in COTU #43 (April-May 1965). The Sea Devils didn’t just get new uniforms—with matching trident sym35

Adventures #177) dealt with a man who discovered that he’d been reincarnated over and over again. Tapping the superpowers he’d possessed in early lives, the stranger died while helping evacuating a flood-ravaged town but was certain he’d live again. Although likely not intended as anything more than a one-shot character, the Immortal Man (as he was named in 1966) eventually returned for three sequels in issues #185, #190, and #198. Likewise, “I Was the Man With Animal Powers” (Strange Adventures #180: September 1965) seemed like nothing more than a charming episodic science fiction short. A timid young man named Buddy—unable to even propose to his girlfriend Ellen—found himself endowed with newfound confidence when he gained the ability to mimic animal powers via radiation from a UFO. Penciled by Carmine Infantino from a script by Dave Wood, the story had an energy that had been lacking in most of Schiff’s books and the editor moved quickly to commission a Gil Kanepenciled sequel for issue #184. Returning in 1966, Buddy was ultimately dubbed Animal-Man.

Mystery In Space #103 cover art by Lee Elias. Ultra the Multi-Alien TM and © DC Comics.

Debuting in MIS #103 (November 1965), Ultra the Multi-Alien was undeniably different but not in ways that many readers thought were any good. Set in the near future, astronaut Ace Arn was caught in the crossfire of four marauders from different worlds, a mishap that resulted in all five merging into a single being. Ace’s brain was in charge of the composite form, which was the detail that many fans delighted in mocking. The concept itself wasn’t necessarily bad—artist Ramona Fradon had created a striking segmented form for DC’s Metamorpho just a year earlier—but Ultra just looked silly. He was part bald blue man and part hairy green monster set atop a bird’s leg and a lightning bolt. Aside from an odd feature involving a presence called the Green Glob in Tales of the Unexpected, Schiff stopped short of introducing ongoing series in his other fantasy titles. Instead, he oversaw the creation of several characters who’d pop up at irregular intervals. Bob Haney and Lee Elias’ Automan, a robot reminiscent of Adam Link, debuted a month before Ultra in Unexpected #91 but didn’t reappear until issues #94 and #97 in 1966. Earlier in the year, a Jack Sparling-illustrated story entitled “I Lived a Hundred Lives” (Strange Strange Adventures #180 cover art by Carmine Infantino and . Murphy Anderson. Animal-Man TM and © DC Comics.

Most comic book heroes led charmed lives but Immortal Man died at the end of each of his four 1960s appearances, confident that he’d soon be reborn with a new identity. Original art by Jack Sparling courtesy of Heritage Auctions. Immortal Man TM and © DC Comics.

Twists on the family unit informed both of these Bob Oksner-illustrated features from The Fox and the Crow #94 and #95. The Brat Finks, Stanley and His Monster TM and © DC Comics.

For readers who preferred animals who acted like people, writers Paul Laikin and Bill Finger and artist Bob Oksner offered the Brat Finks for The Fox and the Crow #94 (OctoberNovember 1965). The generation gap comedy hinged on rat teenagers Rhoda and Rudy’s desire to avoid work and have fun despite the efforts of their disciplinarian mother and a soft-hearted father content to believe “this is just a passing maze you’re going through.”

Over in Bob Hope #95 (October-November 1965), timid teenager Tadwallader Jutefruce took up residence in Bob’s home when he started attending classes at Benedict Arnold High School. Tapping into the monster craze of the early 1960s that now extended to TV shows like The Munsters and The Addams Family, the faculty of BAHS resembled various horror icons.

ed in the form of Super-Hip, “America’s most disgusting super-hero.” For the parents who couldn’t understand the mop-top hairstyle of the Beatles and their loud rock music and their defiance of tradition, Super-Hip was everything they hated. The feeling was mutual for the guitar-wielding “patron super-hero of all swingers” who declared himself “the mortal enemy of every super square.”

Drake didn’t stop there, though. Tad had a split personality that manifest-

The motivation behind all these new characters hinged on the fact that

Arnold Drake (also joined by Oksner) made his own contribution to the book in F&C #95 with Stanley and His Monster. On the surface, the concept seemed perfectly ordinary: a lonely five-year-old who was forbidden to have a dog decided to drag one home anyway and hid him in his room. The twist was that “Spot” was a centuriesold, 1200-pound monster. After years of dodging angry mobs and hiding in sewers, who was he to correct Stanley? Drake and Oksner were simultaneously injecting new blood into DC’s long-running Adventures of Jerry Lewis and Adventures of Bob Hope titles, humor comics inspired by the famous comedians. Renfrew, Jerry’s kid genius nephew introduced in 1964, was joined by eccentric housekeeper Witch Kraft effective with Jerry #88 (May-June 1965).

Original creations were poised to replace the stars of Adventures of Jerry Lewis and . Adventures of Bob Hope if DC dropped either comedian’s license. TM and © respective copyright holders.

Hope, Lewis, and The Fox and the Crow were non-DC properties that required the company to pay an annual licensing fee. As sales waned on those titles in the mid-1960s, those charges were impacting the profit DC was making. “One of the things I had in mind when I created Super-Hip and Witch Kraft and all the rest,” Drake explained, “was to put DC in a position where at the end of the contracts they could say, ‘That’s it. We aren’t going to be publishing Hope and Lewis any more.’ What they would be publishing instead would be Super-Hip and Witch Kraft & Renfrew” (Blanchard 96). Amidst all of these changes, Mort Weisinger’s Superman titles were remarkably sedate over the course of 1965. Since 1958, the editor had been aggressively adding elements and concepts to the family of seven Superman titles, exploring multi-part stories and using “imaginary tales” to explore otherwise untouchable topics

like the Man of Steel’s marriage or death. Defying the rigid status quo applied to the typical superhero feature, Supergirl (featured in the back of Action Comics) underwent seismic changes in her life as she grew from teenage orphan to adult college student. The developments of 1965 were comparatively minor. Weisinger’s assistant E. Nelson Bridwell wrote an episode in which Superboy’s girl friend Lana Lang acquired a superpowered alter ego called the Insect Queen (Superboy #124). George Papp drew the first Insect Queen stories. TM and © DC Comics. In Adventure Comics #332, Edand classic stories of the years immond Hamilton scripted a dark Lemediately preceding them. (Many of gion of Super-Heroes story wherein those earlier tales, incidentally, were Lightning Lad stalked the creature readily available in DC’s popular 80responsible for his arm being amPage Giant reprint specials, a previputated and replaced with a robotic ously standalone series that was now prosthesis. folded into the numbering of whatHamilton also penned ever series they were spotlighting.) Superman #181’s The reprint collections fed the ravenintroduction of the ous hunger of young readers without Superman of 2965, ready access to old, difficult-to-acproclaimed as the quire back issues. Under no obligastart of a new series tion to pay residuals to the writers featuring the Man of and artists who’d originally produced Steel’s descendant. the stories, publishers with a decent Despite ending on a backlog of material like DC, Archie, cliffhanger, the story Gold Key, Hallden, Harvey, and Marwasn’t wrapped up vel saw reprints as a source of bigger until eight months profits, too. later in Action Comics #338 and #339, by which point Hamilton had retired from comics and Weisinger had gotten cold feet on the whole thing.

Tapping the media fascination with vintage comic books, Superman #183 . reprinted several 1940s stories. Superman TM and © DC Comics.

The Superman family of titles had largely reached a plateau. They were still well-crafted— courtesy of writers like Hamilton, Jerry Siegel, and Leo Dorfman and artists such as Curt Swan, Al Plastino, Kurt Schaffenberger, and George Papp— but there was little that matched the milestone events 39

Hoping to defray costs on DC’s romance comics, editor Jack Miller made the fateful decision to add a reprinted short story to each title starting in the fall of 1965. Noting a considerable chunk of unpublished material, the editor also ended four ongoing strips featuring actress April O’Day, advice columnist Amy Ames, nurse Mary Robin, and stewardess Bonnie Taylor (effective with Girls’ Love Stories #115, Secret Hearts #107, Young Love #52, and Young Romance #139, respectively) in favor of liquidating the generic inventory he had on hand. The cumulative effect for artists like John Romita and Gene Colan was unnervingly similar to what they’d experienced in 1957 at Atlas Comics when Stan Lee was forced into putting a moratorium on fresh stories until he used up everything that was already paid for.

We Gotta Get Out of This Place

if I didn’t turn any work out. I think it was $250 a week, which is much more than I ever made in comics.” (Blumberg 48).

Both artists had found refuge at DC following the Atlas implosion and Romita paid a visit to the DC offices in mid1965 in the hope of landing non-romance assignments. “Unfortunately, it was July,” he remembered, “and editors were on vacation when I went down the hall to see Julie Schwartz and some of the others. I used to go in once every two weeks to get a new script, and outside of two or three people in the bullpen that treated me well, everyone else treated me like a leper. I was invisible. In eight years I was never welcomed into their inner circle. I always felt like an outsider, like a kid looking through a candy store window. I had very little hope of any of these guys giving me any sort of work” (Ridout 30-1).

It was only after the artist had committed himself that the call from DC finally came. Ramona Fradon, the penciler of DC’s 1964 hit Metamorpho, was leaving effective with issue #4 to raise her daughter. Would Romita, editor George Kashdan inquired, be willing to succeed her on the title? “I told them that I had already made a handshake deal with Stan,” he explained, “and I didn’t want to renege on that. Ironically, my first chance at a DC adventure book came after I left” (Lee 29-30). Half a dozen other DC artists had also begun working for Marvel over the course of 1965 but none were willing to burn their bridges as Romita had. Instead, as George Roussos (a.k.a. George Bell) had done earlier, they adopted pseudonyms when working for the competition. Inkers Frank Giacoia and Mike Esposito (as Frankie Ray and Mickey Demeo) were the first, in Strange Tales #129 (February 1965) and Tales of Suspense #66 (April 1965), respectively, while Jack Abel (as Gary Michaels) began embellishing Iron Man late in the year in Tales of Suspense #73. Abel was inking Gene Colan (alias Adam Austin), who’d first arrived at Marvel as penciler on the Sub-Mariner feature in Tales To Astonish #70 (August 1965). Werner Roth (as Jay Gavin) succeeded Jack Kirby as penciler of X-Men with issue #13 (September 1965) and Gil Kane (as Scott Edward) took a one-episode crack at the Hulk in Tales To Astonish #76 (February 1966).

Prevailing on Stan Lee at Marvel Comics, Romita was hired to ink Don Heck’s pencils for The Avengers #23 (December 1965) but, twice-burned, the artist was convinced that comic books were a dead end and got a job doing storyboards for an advertising agency. Madison Avenue had nothing on Lee, who dragged the artist off to lunch on a Friday afternoon and spent three hours wearing him down. As Romita described it: “He gave me the sales pitch of his lifetime, that I was a natural comic artist, I should be a big fish in a little pond, all that stuff. He guaranteed me verbally that he’d match the [ad agency] salary even

The influx of new talent only increased the workload of Marvel’s star artist Jack Kirby. Recognizing that his collaborator’s frenetic in-your-face approach to storytelling was a key component to the company’s growing success, Stan Lee regularly prevailed on Kirby to demonstrate his storytelling techniques for the newcomers. Consequently, along with producing full pencils for key features like Fantastic Four, Thor, and Captain America along with most of the line’s covers, the prolific illustrator was also laying out stories for other artists to get them on their way. Romita, conceding that eight years of drawing romance comics had taken its toll, received some basic tutelage on his first issue of Daredevil. “It was not even full breakdowns,” the new arrival said of the pages that Kirby gave him. “It was more like pacing, very rough shapes.” Romita equated the approach to a silent movie that exaggerated normal activities for effect—“everything in dynamics, everything in extremes”—and offered two pages from DD #12 (January 1966) as a case in point: “I would have Matt Murdock going into his apartment and changing his clothes mundanely, in a very civilized way. In Jack Kirby’s version of the two pages Matt tears off his clothes, he leaps out the window [as Daredevil] without checking what’s out there, he uses a flagpole to spin around and land on the roof of a car that’s going fifty miles an hour uptown on the FDR Drive! That was the mindset that Jack Kirby had flowing out of him that I had to learn.” (Ridout 32) Historian Mark Evanier points to X-Men #12 (July 1965) as a rare example of the layout approach not working.

Following Jack Kirby’s direction, John Romita brought excitement to the simple act of Daredevil donning his costume. Daredevil TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Alex Toth, highly regarded in the artistic community for his streamlined style, was interested in drawing for Marvel but, like Romita, was a novice at the plot-first method. Sandwiched between Kirby breakdowns and murky inks by Vince Colletta, Toth hated the end result. “Some have suggested that Toth felt overwhelmed by Jack’s underdrawing but I suspect it was the other way around: Kirby hadn’t given him enough of a foundation on which to build” (Evanier, “Jack F.A.Q.s: Fall 2003” 13). Whatever the case, Toth deleted Marvel from his prospective employers as he’d already done at DC. In some instances, Kirby simply drew select pages of a story that Lee believed needed the extra impact. The World War Twobased Sgt. Fury had been primarily penciled by Dick Ayers since 1964 and issue #18’s “Killed In Action” (May 1965) was no exception. Intent on proposing to his aristocratic girlfriend Lady Pamela Hawley, the hard-bitten Nick Fury risked all manner of dangers before arriving at her Jack Kirby’s pencils added impact to the pivotal scene in Sgt. Fury #18 wherein its titular hero learned that his intended ancestral home and discovering fiancée was dead. Sgt. Fury TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. that she’d perished during an air tor Doom-lookalike Iron Mask. (The Two-Gun Kid, incidenraid. The climactic page, which tally, made a guest-shot of his own in Kid Colt #125.) closed with the shattered Fury letting the engagement ring slip from his hands, was penciled not by Ayers but by Although his collaborator was maintaining a killer regiKirby. Even in scenes of subdued tragedy, Kirby had an immen, Lee wasn’t exactly sitting idle. When New York and pact that many of his contemporaries lacked. several other Northeast states went dark during a blackout on November 9, 1965, Roy Thomas abandoned plans to work on a Millie the Model story that evening and hung out with Denny O’Neil and Dave Kaler instead. The following morning, Thomas discovered “that Stan had got a little candle brigade [at his home] and he’d written like five or ten pages of Thor during the same time we were goofing off. Nothing could stop Stan, not even a total blackout. And then he apologized to Sol Brodsky, the production manager, because he had only done five or ten pages!” (Mougin, “Roy Thomas” 13)

When he wasn’t drawing interior pages, Kirby was also drawing covers, even contributing to Marvel’s three Western titles, now largely illustrated inside by Dick Ayers, Jack Keller, and Larry Lieber. Kid Colt Outlaw #121, for one, had a decidedly super-heroic feel with its Kirby-Stone depiction of a Kid Colt/Rawhide Kid crossover and a glimpse of Doc-

Few readers of the time understood that the illustrators of their favorite Marvel features were working without a screenplay. Traditionally, artists worked off a full script with dialogue and a description of what was to take place in each panel. In the interest of speeding up production in the early 1960s, Stan Lee had begun working up plots—in varying degrees of detail—for artists like Kirby and Steve Ditko with the expectation that

they could pace the stories in a manner that was more visually exciting and organic than anything he might describe. Once the art was turned in and—if necessary—corrected, Lee wrote dialogue and captions. Inventive natural storytellers like Kirby and Ditko executed the so-called Marvel Method brilliantly but they were also the earliest to resent the division of labor. As Lee’s confidence in their abilities grew, the details of his plots shrank and his collaborators were no longer simply pacing the stories but virtually co-plotting them.

The Amazing Spider-Man cast, as rendered by Steve Ditko in issue #23. Spider-Man TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Ditko was deeply invested in both the Dr. Strange and Spider-Man features, debating with Lee on the direction of the latter in particular. He believed strongly that the breakout hit about a putupon high school student with super-powers needed to

J. Jonah Jameson took all the credit in this panel from Amazing Spider-Man #27. © Marvel Characters, Inc.

maintain its naturalistic feel and had resisted the writer-editor’s efforts to introduce unearthly elements or to undo some of Peter Parker’s personal problems. In 1965, Ditko later wrote, “Stan chose to break-off communicating with me” (Ditko, “A Mini History 1” 56). While Lee later insisted that the situation hadn’t been initiated by him, the fact remained that the two were no longer speaking. Sol Brodsky became the duo’s intermediary in the Marvel offices when Ditko delivered his artwork for approval. “When I picked up the pages to be inked,” he recalled, “I considered or ignored any story/art comments made by Brodsky. I don’t know if the actual source was Stan or Sol” (Ditko, “A Mini History 1” 58). As far as readers of the Lee-Ditko features could tell, nothing had changed. They still looked the same and— thanks to Lee’s witty and melodramatic dialogue—sounded the same. The fact that Ditko was now being credited as the full plotter on both Dr. Strange and Spidey (effective with Strange Tales #135 and Amazing Spider-Man #25, respectively) made no one suspicious.

In Amazing Spider-Man #25, Betty Brant and Liz Allan discovered they had a prospective rival . for Peter Parker’s affections even if he didn’t know it yet. © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Lee, influenced by reader criticism, had previously objected to the cartoonishly exaggerated grin of Spidey’s newspaper publisher nemesis J. Jonah Jameson. Deliberate or not, Ditko put Jameson’s cackling visage front and center in issue #25 (June 1965), where the newsman was visible on the electronic face of a robotic Spider-Slayer that he was bankrolling. Two issues later, Ditko addressed the matter of why Peter Parker would continue to take photos for a tight-

pear in costume [or] action. I wanted JJJ’s and the GG’s lives to mix for later story drama involving more than just the two characters” (Ditko, “The Ever Unwilling” 17, 24).

The specter of Spider-Man assured that romance between Betty Brant and Peter Parker was not to be. . Spider-Man TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

wad who hated his alter ego. After making a sale to the Daily Bugle’s rival paper, Peter decided that its editor was entirely too interested in how he got his Spider-Man pictures. The unassuming Frederick Foswell (formerly the villainous Big Man from issue #10) was reestablished as a Daily Bugle crime reporter over the span of several issues, casting suspicion that he was either the Green Goblin or the Crime-Master, two mysterious bad guys embroiled in a New York gang war. In a conscious effort “not to follow the usual formula or some comic book aesthetic dogma,” Ditko not only had the Crime-Master shot and killed by the police (rather than captured by Spidey) but unmasked as someone that readers had never seen (Ditko, “The Ever Unwilling” 24). Moreover, Foswell had been using his old contacts to help bring the mobster down.

a different approach with the Green Goblin, which continued to simmer well into 1966. “I knew from Day One, from the very first GG story [in 1964], who the GG would be. I absolutely knew because I planted him in J. Jonah Jameson’s businessman’s club. It was where JJJ and the GG would be seen together. I planted them in other stories where the GG would not ap-

Amazing Spider-Man #25 occupied something of a middle ground on the subject of concealed identities. Since issue #15, Stan Lee had carried on a running joke about Aunt May’s attempts to fix Peter up with her best friend’s niece Mary Jane Watson. Convinced that the girl was surely a crashing bore, he repeatedly avoiding meeting her. Ditko delivered a partial payoff in ASM #25 when Peter’s romantic rivals Betty Brant and Liz Allan met Mary Jane for themselves. Even with her face and hair judiciously concealed, there was no mistaking that she was a beautiful woman. “She looks like a screen star!” Betty shuddered. Peter, however, remained oblivious and the gag continued.

Lee surely chafed at not being able to exploit the drama of the situation but, in print, used it as opportunity to sell the unconventionality of the series. “In real life, when a villain is unmasked, he isn’t always the butler, or the one you suspected,” Spider-Man mused. “Sometimes he’s a man you didn’t even know!” (Later, in an ironic passage, the blowhard Jameson declared that “the entire capture of the Crime-Master took place under my personal direction” and that Foswell “was just a cog in the wheel.”) Ditko believed the twist was appropriate for a short-lived character with “no future story value” but took

Gwen Stacy and Harry Osborn were unimpressed with their new college classmate Peter Parker. . © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Peter’s struggling romance with Betty wasn’t long for the world, though, culminating when he realized that her desire for a quiet life in the suburbs would never fit with his secret life. After breaking things off, Peter walked away, a symbolic specter of Spider-Man pushing him one direction and his ex-girlfriend the other (ASM #30). No change was as meaningful as Peter’s high school graduation in ASM #28 (dated September 1965 but on sale in June). Still a hard-luck student, the essence of the feature would endure but the college backdrop implied an independence and maturity that would truly put the man in SpiderMan. The removal of Betty Brant and the graduating Liz Allan helped clear the deck for this new phase in Peter’s life. Distracted by his Aunt May’s latest health woes, though, the young man immediately made a bad impression on new classmates Gwen Stacy and Harry Osborn (ASM #31). “I planted the [Green Goblin’s] son (same distinct hairstyle) in the college issues for more dramatic involvement and storyline consequences,” Ditko said of Osborn, whose unmasked father had yet to rise above being an unnamed background character (Ditko, “The Ever Unwilling” 17).

of nearly every member of the Avengers and replaced them with a trio of reformed criminals! In a way, the writer-editor was his own worst enemy. He’d indulged fans with regular crossovers by the Marvel superheroes and peppered stories with footnotes referring to previous issues. The Avengers presented a unique challenge, though, in that its members also appeared in solo features that were evolving into serials. How could Iron Man be dead in Tales of Suspense #61 and alive in Avengers?, reader Gary Thorne demanded to know in issue #15. Stan laughed it off (“You probably know by now that ol’ Shell Head isn’t dead…so what the hey!”) but he understood the complaint. In the interest of suspense and relieving the headache of coordinating appearances in multiple books, Lee had Iron Man, Thor, Giant Man, and the Wasp abruptly quit the team for Working from Jack Kirby layouts, Dick Ayers . drew the transitional events of Avengers #16. . Avengers TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

While Stan Lee wasn’t aware of Peter’s graduation until he saw Ditko’s penciled pages, the development had been one he’d been considering for a while, even writing a scene in Fantastic Four #35 where the teen had checked out a prospective college. Without really thinking about it, Marvel’s chief architects had rejected the idea that their young series should be locked into a status quo and shook up several series throughout 1965.

A Change Will Do You Good Bowing to the inevitable, Reed (Mr. Fantastic) Richards married Sue (Invisible Girl) Storm in Fantastic Four Annual #3. Don Blake told Jane Foster that he was secretly Thor in Journey Into Mystery #113 (but she didn’t believe him). Recurring X-Men villains Magneto, Mastermind, and the Toad were exiled from the series when the cosmic Stranger dragged them into space in issue #11. And in perhaps Lee’s most audacious move, he got rid 44

their own reasons in Avengers #16 (May 1965). That left a stunned Captain America as the de facto elder statesman for a team of new recruits. Hawkeye the Archer had fought Iron Man several times after being se-

Don Heck had been the regular Avengers artist since 1964 but, like every other Marvel penciler short of Ditko, he periodically worked off Jack Kirby layouts when Stan Lee felt a feature needed a shot of dynamism or, in the case of Avengers #16, a promotional boost. Designing all those roughs necessitated Kirby leaving the full pencils on X-Men, ironically at a point when two of the feature’s most memorable adversaries debuted. Working from Kirby layouts, Alex Toth (issue #12) and new regular penciler Werner Roth (issue #13) illustrated the story of the Juggernaut, an unstoppable mass of power who shrugged off everything the teenage mutants threw at him as he marched toward his estranged step-brother Professor X. (Wally Wood, incidentally, recalled being tapped to draw X-Men himself but the plan never materialized (Evanier, “Jack F.A.Q.s: Summer 2006” 21).) The conclusion of the Juggernaut two-parter in X-Men #13 also marked the debut of penciler . Werner Roth (as “Jay Gavin”), working from Kirby layouts. X-Men TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

A Lee-scripted trilogy in X-Men #14-16 cut to the heart of the series’ concept of mutants who stood apart from the human race. Previous issues, particularly those featuring the departed Magneto, had emphasized in-fighting among good mutants and evil ones. The story of the Sentinels was different, harkening back to the Nazis’ extermination of the Jews during World War Two. Designed by scientist Bolivar Trask, the Sentinels were massive flying robots designed to identify the mutant bloodline that Trask saw as a blight on the human race. Overstepping their parameters, the Sentinels viewed genocide as a reasonable course of action in dealing with the mutant threat and would return in the decades to come as an often pointed analogy for racial hatred.

duced by the Russian spy called the Black Widow. And mutant siblings Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, reluctant enemies of the X-Men, were eager to put their past behind them now that Magneto was no longer around to strong arm them. Effective with Tales of Suspense #63 (March 1965), Lee had eliminated the need to coordinate its Captain America solo series with Avengers when he and Jack Kirby moved the action to World War Two and started adapting stories from 1941’s Captain America Comics #1. [The shift also dodged the prospect of Cap getting involved in Vietnam, which he visited in TOS #61.]

It really shouldn’t have worked. The Avengers had been a showcase for many of Marvel’s star players and that concept had effectively been thrown out the window. Unlike DC’s defining all-star title Justice League of America, though, Marvel’s books pivoted on personality clashes and the new roster’s underdogs provided conflict in spades. The smart-mouthed Hawkeye, in particular, became the new team’s breakout star, questioning the authority of its World War Two “relic” leader at every turn. “Amazingly,” Roy Thomas later wrote, “with this foursome—Captain America and his also-rans, as we fans thought of them at first—Avengers actually gained in sales, despite such early mediocre opponents as the Minotaur, the Commissar, Swordsman, and Power Man” (Thomas, “Avengers Is The Sentinels go into action in X-Men #15. © Marvel Characters, Inc. Mine” 4-5). 45

ists like Kirby and Ditko rather than strictly scripted. “Kirby seemed to hold sway in plotting these improvisational tales,” he observed, “but Lee held the [reins] in when he felt it necessary. (Lee would occasionally acknowledge in print—albeit jokingly—that a Kirby full page was decoration and did not advance the plot)” (Caputo 27). Like Scheherazade in One Thousand and One Nights, Marvel’s foremost creators kept their enrapt followers coming back for more. In its way, the approach—like those in TV soap operas—even felt more attuned to real life, where events never wrapped up so neatly. Focused purely on creating comics in the short term, Lee, Kirby, and Ditko never realized their fusion Thor vs. the Absorbing Man from Journey Into Mystery #121, with art by of subplots, soap opera, Jack Kirby and Vince Colletta. Thor TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. and never-ending stories What was not unusual about the story would be the new normal for superwas its length. At DC and elsewhere, hero adventures within a generation. continued stories were still ultimate(Ironically, one of Marvel’s genuine ly standalone; once they were done, a soaps—Patsy Walker—was cancelled new episode started fresh in the next with issue #124 (December 1965), its issue. Marvel’s multi-parters rarely heroine still separated from her Vietachieved such clean endings and nam-stationed boyfriend at the end.) didn’t particularly aspire to them. In Tales To Astonish #60-74 (October Lee and Kirby’s Journey Into Mystery, 1964-December 1965), variously illusfor instance, Thor’s first meeting with trated by Ditko, Kirby, and Bob Powell, the Absorbing Man (JIM #114) led didevoted an incredible fifteen months rectly to the hero’s pursuit of Loki and to the Hulk’s conflict with the greena kidnapped Jane Foster (JIM #115), skinned Leader. Mutated by gamma an adventure that moved Odin to rays like Bruce Banner had been, the subject him to “the trial of the gods” Leader was endowed with height(JIM #116-117). Still reeling from that, ened intelligence (and an enlarged he faced an enchanted vessel called cranium) and hoped to use his brutish the Destroyer that had been created counterpart to invade the sanctum of by Thor’s father to defend the world the alien Watcher on the moon. (JIM #118-119). In the aftermath, the Thunder God re-forged his hammer A year-long Doctor Strange opus just in time to fight the Absorbing (Strange Tales #130-141: March Man again (JIM #120-123). 1965-February 1966) put the magician on the defensive, forced to flee A certain amount of this was promptaround the globe and into other died by the nature of the Marvel “split mensions while pursued by the forces books” that featured two shorter stories rather than one long one. Historian Nick Caputo also notes the impact Doctor Strange highlights from Strange Tales #130, of the adventures being paced by art#135, and #138. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. 46

of his greatest foes, Baron Mordo and Dormammu. Plotted by Steve Ditko with a Lee script, the adventure showcased some of his best artwork, shadowy, foreboding, and brilliantly imaginative. Departing from his traditional 6-8 panels per page, the artist paid off Strange’s search for a cosmic entity called Eternity with issue #138’s full page shot of a being whose star-lit body seemed to be composed of an entire solar system. Stan Lee was less enamored with the co-features in each title. Strange Tales’ Human Torch-Thing strip, despite stunts like having them meet the Beatles in issue #130, never came across as more than a pale reflection of the Fantastic Four parent book. Likewise, Tales To Astonish’s Giant-Man feature had undergone constant fiddling since the character’s 1962 debut as Ant-Man but never gelled. A new costume in issue #65 was too little and too late. A scant two months after he and the Wasp were evicted from Avengers, their home series ended, too, in TTA #69 (July 1965). The Torch-Thing strip concluded the same month. Their replacements were both familiar faces. The SubMariner, who’d been one of Timely Comics’ most successful properties in the 1940s, had been revived by Lee and Kirby in 1962 and spent three years as a recurring foil for the Fantastic Four and, at one point or another, most other Marvel heroes. Deposed as ruler of undersea Atlantis,

The former Sgt. Fury left World War Two behind in Strange Tales #135. . Nick Fury, S.H.I.E.L.D. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Prince Namor embarked on a quest in the Lee-scripted new series to reclaim his throne with art by the moonlighting Gene Colan (as Adam Austin) and inker Vince Colletta. The feature was comparatively bland, though, when set alongside Strange Tales #135’s new series, which deployed the Lee-Kirby team to fine effect. Spies, counter-spies, and high-tech operations like T.H.R.U.S.H. and S.P.E.C.T.R.E. had become one of pop culture’s hot concepts thanks to the budding James Bond movie franchise and the like-minded Man From U.N.C.L.E. TV series. Gold Key snagged the license for the U.N.C.L.E. comic book itself in 1965. At DC, Jimmy Olsen played the suave Agent Double-5 (Jimmy Olsen #89) while C.A.W. (Hawkman #7), Starfinger (Adventure Comics #335-336), and Sean Connery-lookalike Damos (Mystery In Space #100, 102) also evoked the Bond films. In the pages of 1965’s Male Annual #3 (a men’s magazine also published by Martin Goodman and definitely not bearing the Marvel imprint), the voluptuous Pussycat of S.C.O.R.E. thwarted the objectives of L.U.S.T. in a story by Stan Lee, Wally Wood, and Jim Mooney. It was only natural that Marvel would want a more substantial piece of the action than a risqué feature in an adult magazine. For all the accolades that the company was reaping for going its own way, Lee was still ruled to a

Gene Colan (alias Adam Austin) and Vince Colletta draw the first . installment of the new Sub-Mariner feature in Tales To Astonish #70. . Sub-Mariner TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Hydra. “Cut off a limb,” the fanatics’ mantra said of its constantly replenishing ranks, “and two more shall take its place.” What S.H.I.E.L.D. needed was a leader capable of strategizing against an enemy like that and the spy agency spent the entirety of that first story selling their prospective candidate on the job. As the star of Marvel’s ongoing Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, Nick Fury had an impressive résumé dating back to World War Two. Part of the magic of the Marvel experience was its constant emphasis on a larger shared universe and the well-established Fury resonated with fans far more than a character introduced cold would’ve done. In a further touch of cross-continuity, Tony Stark (a.k.a. Iron Man) guest-starred in the pilot as S.H.I.E.L.D’s weapons supplier. The present-day Fury had been seen in 1963’s Fantastic Four #21 as a CIA agent but Lee felt that if Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. was going to appear on a regular basis, he needed a point of distinction beyond gray temples. Stan suggested an eyepatch on the older Fury, an idea that Kirby carried through, but not without some secret trepidation. Unknown to any of his co-workers, the hard-pressed artist had been having troubles with one eye. “Kirby was stunned,” biographer Mark Evanier wrote. “Here he was, worrying about losing the use of an eye, and a character he viewed as his alter ego had just lost an eye. Life imitating art imitating life he called it” (Evanier, Kirby: King of Comics 138). Kirby maintained an exhaustive schedule, drawing pages “seven days a week, ‘chained to the board’ (his term) in a dark, cramped basement cubicle he called ‘the Dungeon” (Evanier, Kirby: King of Comics 137). On top of his aforementioned layouts for newcomers and frequent cover art, he was also co-plotting and fully penciling four monthly series (Fantastic Four, Journey Into Mystery, and the Captain America and Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. strips). All this, plus designing prospective new heroes for the Marvel line. Ka-Zar, a recycled 1930s/1940s jungle hero from Martin Goodman-published pulps and comics, became Marvel’s blond-haired answer to Tarzan, albeit one who occupied a prehistoric Savage Land beneath Antarctica. Unlinked to any particular series, Ka-Zar debuted in X-Men #10 (March 1965) and went on to appear with such heroes as Daredevil, the Sub-Mariner, Spider-Man, and the Hulk as the decade wore on.

As visualized by Jack Kirby, S.H.I.E.L.D. was filled with magnificent men. and their flying machines. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

degree by a philosophy that Goodman had ingrained in him: If someone else has a hit property, create one of your own.

Overlapping the Norse gods with the Roman pantheon, Lee and Kirby pitted Thor against Hercules in Journey Into Mystery Annual #1. Outliving the hugely popular Italianborn Hercules film series (1957-1965) that influenced his creation, Marvel’s good-natured brawler was a fine contrast to the sober Thor. Likewise, the Warriors Three (premiering in JIM #119’s “Tales of Asgard” story) provided a

Kirby attacked the concept with zeal, filling the 12-page pilot with robots imperceptible from humans (Life Model Decoys), a flying sports-car armed with missiles, and a gargantuan heli-carrier high above the earth. This was the home base of the Supreme Headquarters International Espionage Law-Enforcement Division and it was the last line of defense against a sprawling terrorist organization called 48

The Warriors Three—seen here in Journey Into Mystery #122—consisted of dashing Fandral, dour Hogun, and the good-humored Volstagg. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Goodman story seems hard to believe. Whatever the case, Lee and Kirby were on the verge of creating a new group of heroes. It began with a villainess named Madam Medusa.

much-needed sounding board for the solitary thunder god. The trio of Asgardian adventurers boasted dashing ladies’ man Fandral, the humorless Hogun, and the boastful, morbidly obese Volstagg, who became a reliable source of comic relief like his Shakespearean model Falstaff.

Perhaps inevitably, Lee and Kirby had been inspired to create a Frightful Four to oppose their flagship heroes in Fantastic Four #36 (March 1965). There was no trouble finding male members for the quartet—The Wizard, Paste-Pot Pete, and the Sandman filled those spots—but locating a female analog for the Invisible Girl was more problematic. Instead, the creative team simply came up with an amnesiac newcomer with long red hair that she could wield like a weapon. The Frightful Four saga continued at intervals in FF #38 and #41-43, culminating with the capture of the three men and Medusa’s escape.

Each of the newcomers was a potential candidate for a spin-off series but that first required space on Marvel’s schedule. Unfortunately for Martin Goodman, his company was tied to an agreement with magazine distributor Independent News and they—part of the same company that owned rival DC—decreed that Marvel could only publish a certain number of titles each month. So Goodman and Lee watched with increasing horror into the summer of 1965 as Charlton, Archie, and newcomer Tower each introduced or revived superhero properties that bore some of the earmarks of the influential Marvel line. When The Comic Reader #39 (July 1965) reported that Joe Simon was packaging a hero line for Harvey, Goodman is said to have panicked. Industry veteran Simon had a decades-long record of successes that included— with former partner Jack Kirby—the creation of Captain America and the romance comic genre. “Goodman was afraid of Joe,” Kirby later said. “A lot of people were afraid of Joe because they knew that Joe Simon was good at putting books together” (Evanier, “Jack F.A.Q.s: Fall 2005” 13). At that point, Goodman supposedly directed Lee and Kirby to develop new characters in their current titles who could be promoted to books of their own once the expanded line-up was approved (Evanier, “Jack F.A.Q.s: Fall 2005” 13). Given the lead time required to create a comic book and the fact that some of those creations showed up just a month after the Simon news item, the

Joining forces in Fantastic Four #36, the Frightful Four was comprised of Madam Medusa, the Wizard, Paste-Pot Pete (soon to be renamed the Trapster), and the Sandman. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Lee and Kirby decided that Medusa would be part of a larger community of superbeings, a freakish royal family dubbed the Inhumans. Gorgon, with feet like hooves and a stomp that leveled buildings, came on stage first, charged with rescuing Medusa. Hot on his heels were Medusa’s elemental sister Crystal, her dog Lockjaw (a giant bulldog with antennae and the ability to teleport), martial artist Karnak, scaled fish-man Triton, and their leader Black Bolt, a strong silent type whose softest whisper could unleash destruction. Over the course of five issues (Fantastic Four #44-48: dated November 1965-March 1966), the FF joined the Inhumans at The Inhumans took center stage in Fantastic Four just as inker Joe Sinnott brought his . their hidden Great Refuge polished sheen to Jack Kirby’s pencils. Fantastic Four, Inhumans TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. in the Andes mountain had constantly struggled with finding inkers who were range, fighting Black Bolt’s mad brother Maximus and seta good fit for his star’s pencils. Moreover, an embellisher ting up a new romantic conflict for the book. Having rewho seemed perfectly appropriate on one feature might be solved the romantic triangle between Mr. Fantastic, the wildly ill-suited for another. Such was the case with Vince Invisible Girl, and the Sub-Mariner, Lee and Kirby now set Colletta. up a new conflicted love affair between the Human Torch and Crystal. The sticking point here was not another man His soft, thin-lined style had been well-suited for the robut a negative zone force field that trapped the Inhumans mance comics where he first made his name and it seemed inside their city and kept everyone else out. to mesh well with the often medieval backdrops of Thor. On Fantastic Four, where he’d begun inking Kirby with That milestone run coincided precisely with the arrival issue #40, the style seemed entirely too thin for the techof an artist who would help define Lee and Kirby’s peak nology-heavy modern feature. With a well-earned repuyears on Fantastic Four. Since Kirby’s return to Marvel, Lee tation for speed, Colletta was a savior for publishers who needed a story turned in quickly, but that productivity came with a price. Stylistic issues aside, Colletta was further diminishing Kirby’s pencils by erasing details he deemed extraneous.

The Inhumans’ answer to Dr. Doom was Maximus the Mad. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Martin Goodman finally asked Stan Lee why their star comic book looked so terrible. According to Marvel production manager Sol Brodsky, Lee seized the opportunity to get a few dollars more a page to hire someone who was up to the job. The man he had in mind had inked a handful of earlier Marvel stories—including the origins of Doctor Doom (FF #5) and Thor (Journey Into Mystery #83)—between assignments for the Catholic-themed Treasure Chest comic book. “Goodman agreed,” Mark Evanier wrote, “and Stan suddenly had enough money to lure Joe Sinnott to ink approximately one book a

would become as much an expectation of Lee as was the underlying Kirby excitement. Wally Wood had brought precisely that quality to Daredevil, beginning with issue #5 (December 1964). Having severed his relationship with Mad after an incensed reaction to his first rejection by the magazine, Wood brought his formidable talents to Marvel and Stan Lee was ecstatic, even touting the artist by name on the covers of issues like DD #5 and Avengers #20. His effect on Daredevil was transformative, taking what had been a relatively undistinguished superhero strip and giving it respectability. “By now Wood had further refined his art, eliminating what he considered ‘unnecessary clutter,’” Michael T. Gilbert wrote. “This new approach gave the book a sleek, elegant look, perfect for the character. By issue #7, Wood asserted himself further, completely redesigning cartoonist Bill Everett’s original yellowand-red costume. In an inspired move, Wood made the uniform devil-red with striking black highlights, further emphasizing the ‘devil’ part of ‘Daredevil’” (89).

Stan Lee’s delight at adding Wally Wood to the Marvel roster spilled into . Daredevil #5’s cover copy. Daredevil TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

month for Marvel—usually, Fantastic Four. A few months later, when the rates went up a little more, Sinnott went full-time” (Evanier, “Jack F.A.Q.s: March 2002” 10).

DD #7 was arguably the highlight of Wood’s Marvel stint, revolving around Matt Murdock’s efforts at defending the Sub-Mariner in court and, after that went badTM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. ly, pursuing Namor as he tore through the city. Daredevil was hopelessly outmatched but his perseverance won him the respect of even the aquatic anti-hero, who cut short his rampage and headed out to sea.

Sinnott had a slick, handsome brush-line that embodied the upscale look personified in the 1950s and 1960s by artists such as Sy Barry and Murphy Anderson. The union of Kirby and Sinnott effectively married Marvel dynamics with DC-style elegance, establishing a new baseline for the appearance of the entire company line. In time, the prettiness embodied in artists like Sinnott and John Romita

Daredevil’s new red costume was showcased during issue #7’s battle with the Sub-Mariner. . Daredevil, Sub-Mariner TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

The artistic legend’s respect for Stan Lee was another story. Once he realized just how much the Marvel Method required him to contribute to each plot, Wood grew angrier by the month over his editor’s unwillingness to credit him as anything more than “artist” or to pay him for the virtual co-plotting he was doing. Lee finally gave him a writer credit on DD #10 but, when the opportunity presented itself, Wood bolted. His Daredevil tenure ended abruptly with issue #11 (December 1965) and left the fateful opening for John Romita.

Tippy Teen TM and © respective copyright holder.

were compelled to raise their own… while threatening to fire anyone who worked for the competition (Austin 97).

A Tower Rises The opportunity went by the name of Harry Shorten. The 50-year-old publisher of Tower Books was ready to make the leap into comics and he wanted Wally Wood on his team. Shorten was not without connections, having created the Shield for MLJ in 1940 and served for years as an editor at the company now known as Archie. He did, in fact, raid his former company in anticipation of the new comics line, recruiting influential Jughead artist Samm Schwartz to serve as editor of the line and contribute to its representative teen humor title along with a few fellow Archie recruits. Given that pedigree, a teen humor book in the Archie style was assured and Tippy Teen #1 (dated November 1965) helped introduce the Tower Comics line in August. Featuring a blonde girl and friends like dimwitted football player Animal Barnes and his folk singer girl friend Go Go West, the look of the title was unmistakable. “Harry [Lucey] and I were still working for Archie, and they were furious,” Dan DeCarlo recalled. “They knew we were doing something, but we kept denying that we were doing it. [The editor] told me ‘I know you’re tickling the stuff.’ I said ‘Not me, but if you think it’s me, it’s somebody imitating me’” (Irving 13). Discovering that Schwartz was offering higher page rates to artists, Archie’s execs

“Samm Schwartz offered me a staff job,” Victor Gorelick remembered. “When I mentioned this at Archie, [publisher] John Goldwater asked if I was out of my mind. He offered me a $50 raise to stay, and that was a lot of money then. So I said, ‘Whoooaaa! I’m your man!’ And I stayed” (Amash, “The Hangman Cometh” 46). Schwartz and company may have known teen comedy but superheroes were another matter. Marvel’s explosive growth was motivating every publisher to take a crack at the genre and Tower was no exception. That’s where Wally Wood came in. He would be responsible for creating and developing a book for the line virtually unimpeded by his new bosses. Schwartz may have been the title’s editor but Wood called the shots when it came to content. And there was plenty of content to produce. Publishers Distribution Corporation, which also circulated Archie’ comics, insisted that Tower’s line consist wholly of 64-page 25-cent comics (Klein 8). In varying degrees, most major publishers had explored the format over the past several years, aware that the higher pricepoint was an incentive for retailers to make more money than on traditional 32page comics. No one had been so audacious as to completely abandon the 12-cent model, though. 52

The series was born during several phone calls that Wood made to several friends and acquaintances earlier in 1965, asking each of them to help him in brainstorming the new heroes. “Wally said he wanted to do a Justice League group kind of thing so we batted around a few names,” recalls Len Brown, whom Wood had worked with on a recent Topps trading card set. Enamored of the villainous Thunder Riders in the 1935 Gene Autry movie serial The Phantom Empire, Brown suggested the new team be called the Thunder Agents. Wood liked the name but twisted it to fit the spy fad: T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents (Cooke, “Len Brown, Dynamo” 49-50). Tying in with the group name, Brown also pitched a character called Thunderbolt. A fan of 1940s superstar Captain Marvel, the 23-year-old suggested the hero have a lightning bolt on his chest, too, and Wood complied,

Dynamo stood front and center on Wally Wood’s cover for . T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1 while Menthor and the transparent NoMan . brought up the rear. TM and © Radiant Assets, LLC. Comics

Agents and its acronym (The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves) along with most of its characters (Ivie 64-68), a claim Brown and Wood collaborator Dan Adkins both dispute (Cooke, “Dynamite Dan Adkins” 34). No one disputes the fact that, just weeks before the first issue went on sale, Thunderbolt was hastily renamed Dynamo and the pages bearing his original moniker were re-lettered. In June, in DC’s Justice League of America #37, the magical Thunderbolt (central to the 1940-1947 Johnny Thunder series) was revived and prominently featured. Wood—or someone in the Tower entourage—had likely seen the comic book and panicked. (Wood also made another last-minute change, a tribute to the friend who’d The Iron Maiden was a femme fatale in the tradition of the Dragon Lady and the Catwoman. T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents TM and © Radiant Assets, LLC. created Dynamo and wrote his first few adventures. Dynamo’s coming up with a unique design that real name was now Leonard Brown.) was ultimately rendered in blue and white (Cooke, “Len Brown, Dynamo” 50). Costume aside, though, the square-jawed hero owed a more obvious debt to Joe Shuster’s stocky, lesspowerful early Superman. Larry Ivie, another early contributor to the series, contends that it was he who conceived the T.H.U.N.D.E.R.

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1 (November 1965) emerged as a potpourri of influences and archetypes that rose far above the sum of its parts. Fusing secret agents with superheroes, the series spotlighted a trio of government operatives who’d each been entrusted with super-devices conceived by slain scientist Professor Jennings.

The aforementioned Dynamo started out as a paper-pusher in T.H.U.N.D.E.R.’s administrative department whose physical stamina made him a good candidate to wear a “thunderbelt” that would enhance his strength to superhuman levels. He was Superman and Clark Kent, a hero who could never catch a break, whether being lectured by his boss for every misstep, struggling to romance a secretary, or winding up in the hospital after a tough case. Other than Spider-Man and Will Eisner’s long-absent Spirit, no hero seemed to get beaten up as much as Dynamo. The novelty of NoMan wasn’t his invisibility cloak but rather the fact that his mind belonged to a 76-yearold man whose consciousness was downloaded into one of several android shells. If a body was killed in action, Anthony Dunn’s mentality transferred to another. According to Russ Jones, Wood was a huge fan of science fiction author A.E. Van Vogt’s Null-A novels and its body-switching hero (Cooke, “A Man Called Jones” 79). Finally, there was Menthor. A double agent secretly working on behalf of the sinister Warlord, John Janus had an abrupt change of heart when he put on a cybernetic helmet that endowed him with a wide array of mental powers (to say nothing of a conscience). At a glance, though, the most remarkable thing about Menthor may have been his costume design and blue-red color scheme, which was nearly identical to DC’s

The artistic line-up in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1 included Mike Sekowsky & Frank Giacoia (T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Squad), Reed Crandall (NoMan), and Gil Kane & Mike Esposito (Menthor). TM and © Radiant Assets, LLC.

One of the great selling points of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents was its look. Here was a high end roster of artists that included industry legend Reed Crandall (on the NoMan origin), George Tuska (primarily drawing the Buck Rogers comic strip in 1965), Dan Adkins, and (unbeknownst to their primary employer DC) Gil Kane, Mike Sekowsky, and Mike Esposito. And towering above them all was Wally Wood, who’d claim Best Pencil Artist in the 1965 Alley Awards while TA netted the Best Giant Comic and Best New Series prizes. Unlike superheroes with innate powers, Dynamo and company were dependent on their futuristic accoutrements.

“Wood’s storytelling style used a minimum of words,” Robert Klein and Michael Uslan observed, “relying heavily on the art to carry the mood and meaning of the story. This was in distinct contrast to Marvel’s wordier comics. With the freedom he was granted at Tower, he was able to control the stories and carry out this philosophy. Not satisfied with the art and dialogue, Wood also developed plots and springboards for the other writers. His passion for T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents came through issue after issue. It was truly a labor of love for him. His distinctive style dominated the look of each book because his inks, or the inks of Dan Adkins and the key assistants who echoed his style, helped unify the feel of what would become a growing super-hero line of comics” (Klein 11).

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents TM and © Radiant Assets, LLC.

Atom. The fact that Atom designer Gil Kane penciled the beginning and end of the story only made the effect more pronounced. Why Tower panicked over the Thunderbolt name but not Menthor’s costume design is a mystery for the ages. Rounding out the cast was the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Squad (initially scripted by Larry Ivie), a quintet in matching red jackets and black pants who lacked any of Professor Jennings’ endowments. In the mold of DC’s Challengers of the Unknown, they were each experts in a particular field: Guy Gilbert was a military tactician, John “Dynamite” Adkins specialized in weapons, Egghead was a brilliant strategist, William “Weed” Wiley was an “expert locksmith and escape artist” and token female Kathryn “Kitten” Kane was the technology authority. The team was comparatively bland although Weed’s chain-smoking and shady past eventually helped him break out of the crowd. T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents was less a team book than an anthology. Although its characters were all part of the same organization, they each appeared in their own stories in each issue, only occasionally crossing over as they fought the common threat of the Warlord and his subterranean network. Accustomed to the Archie Comics template, Samm Schwartz actually preferred stories in the ten-page range (Cooke, “The Old World Heroes” 60). This might explain why even the longer Woodillustrated Dynamo stories were split in two in the early issues. The first Dynamo tale ended on a cliffhanger, with the hero in the clutches of an armored redhead called the Iron Maiden, and picked up at the end of the issue where all the book’s heroes joined forces to rescue him. (The Maiden herself got away, destined to return often as the smoldering attraction between her and good guy Dynamo continued to heat up.)

Authentic and Authorized Interestingly, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents wasn’t the first acronym-titled comic book that Wally Wood worked on that year although the Leo Dorfman-scripted M.A.R.S. Patrol in Gold Key’s Total War #1 (July 1965) owed more to the Navy S.E.A.L.S or the Green Berets than anything out of James Bond. The harrowing feature projected a scenario wherein the U.S. mainland was under assault by mysterious invaders who sported crab insignias on their purple uniforms. And even as America was reeling, every other nation on Earth was being struck by the same marauders.

Cover painting by George Wilson. . Total War TM and © respective copyright holder.

The United States had an edge, though, in the form of the Marine Attack Rescue Service, a series of combat teams whose focal point was the typical mix of specialized members: combat pilot Cy Adams, frogman Ken Hiro, commando Russ Stacey, and paratrooper Joe Stryker. The series was distinguished not only by its racially diverse cast (Hiro was Asian-American and Stryker

was black) but by its unflinching depiction of the atrocities of war. The series opened with the slaughter of civilians in Atlantic City during the raiders’ first assault and rarely let up in the issues that followed with ghastly scenes like a soldier burning to death in a tank. It was a rare reminder that Gold Key didn’t subscribe to the Comics Code. The nature of the enemy— hairless humanoids implied to be aliens—made it possible for Gold Key to deliver an unabashedly pro-military feature without taking a stance on the George Wilson painted Doctor Solar #15’s time-bendreal war raging in Vietnam. ing cover while Frank Bolle drew the interior. . TM and © Random House, Inc. Dorfman was certainly wellversed in modern warfare, That same philosophy referencing a number of current miliapplied to Ripley’s Believe tary weapons in the course of the seIt Or Not #1 (June 1965), ries. Characteristic of Gold Key, Total which didn’t make the War was put on hold after two issues leap to an ongoing series until sales reports came in. The iniuntil 1966. Meanwhile, tial report on the first issue was disseveral 1964 one-shots couraging (Kaler, “On the Drawing (The Lone Ranger; Mighty Samson; Board” 4). Nonetheless, the company The Phantom Blot; Voyage to the Botultimately saw enough promise to tom of the Sea; Beagle Boys) returned publish the final Dan Adkins/Wally as active Gold Key titles although Wood-illustrated story a year later in Disney’s The Scarecrow ran only two mid-1966 and gave the now-ongomore issues before being cancelled. ing series a more commercial name: The Phantom Blot #2 (April 1965), M.A.R.S. Patrol. meanwhile, expanded the Disney brand further thanks to a brainstorming session between Disney Publications Department head George Sherman and London merchandising rep Peter Woods. Taking their inspiration from the industry’s explosion of costumed crime-fighters, Sherman had writer Del Connell run with the idea of transforming Mickey Mouse’s dimwitted pal Goofy into Super Goof (Sherman 14).

Following his prototype appearance in Phantom Blot #2, Super Goof began wearing red flannels for his costume. Phantom Blot, Super Goof TM and © Disney Enterprises, Inc.

Feeling his way, Connell (with artist Paul Murry) played Super Goof’s initial Blot appearance as a dream, gave him actual powers via a specialized cape in Donald Duck #102 (July 1965), and cemented the details in Super Goof #1 (October 1965) with the introduction of radioactive goober peanuts that endowed Goofy with a temporary burst of Superman-style powers. In the tradition of superhero takeoffs dating back to the 1940s’ Red Torna55

do and Supersnipe, Goofy also wore bright red woolen long underwear. Gold Key was still having a fair amount of success with heroes played straight, whether the licensed Phantom or its own Magnus, Robot Fighter and Doctor Solar. The momentum of Gold Key’s 1964 sales had even justified Phantom and Solar’s frequencies being upgraded to bi-monthly in 1965 but they’d been kicked back to quarterly by year’s end. Doctor Solar, whose sales declined the worst, actually went on a six month hiatus after issue #15 (December 1965) but the book left on a high note before its sabbatical. “Doomsday Minus One Minute” (by writer Dick Wood and artist Frank Bolle) found Solar stymied by an atomic device that—thanks to a vision of the nearfuture—he knew was going to set into motion the destruction of Earth. Traveling to 1962 to determine how to safely deactivate the bomb, Solar found the answers he needed…but lost the ability to return to the future. Having merged with his ‘62 incarnation, Solar was now mortal again and forced to choose between a normal life with his cherished Gail Sanders

“authentic” and “authorized” (to say nothing of a “Gold Key Collector’s Item”), Tarzan #155 (December 1965) offered a beautifully drawn adaptation of the original Tarzan of the Apes novel. For the rest of the 1960s, with only occasional breaks, the series would go directly to the source and adapt one Burroughs story after another. Manning’s revitalization was only the latest of the 1960s’ makeovers of long-running features. Earlier in the year, another Gold Key contributor got the same opportunity. Fred Fredericks, whose credits ranged from scripts on Mighty Mouse and the 1965 Astro Boy one-shot to art on the company’s new Daniel Boone and Munsters titles, was among those who made a pitch to take over Lee Falk’s 31-year-old Mandrake the Magician newspaper strip following the death of its original artist Phil Davis on December 16, 1964.

Beneath a George Wilson cover, Russ Manning began drawing Tarzan with issue #154 while an ad within touted his and writer Gaylord Dubois’ upcoming adaptations of the Burroughs novels. Tarzan TM and © ERB, Inc.

and reliving the nuclear accident that cost him his humanity. Inevitably, he chose the latter but it was perhaps the most moving episode in the entire series.

“King Features and Lee Falk were said to be mightily impressed by the quality and variety of the material he submitted,” Jerry Bails reported, “but the thing that clinched it was supposed to be the Gold Key comic, [First Men In the Moon], which Fred drew so well” (“Agent X Reporting #8 1). Fredericks took over the daily strip on June 7 (followed by the Sundays on June 27) and gave the feature a fresh contemporary look much as Sy Barry had done on Falk’s Phantom strip three years earlier.

The star of the Gold Key adventure line was indisputably Tarzan. Charlton’s Jungle Tales of Tarzan book, although halted in its unauthorized tracks effective with issue #4 (July 1965), had put great stock in being a more visceral, authentic portrayal of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ famed apeman and that message hadn’t gone unnoticed.

First Men In the Moon was one of Gold Key’s movie tie-ins, an aspect of its publishing operation that had shrunk considerably since the days when it had been associated with Dell Comics. Still, there were several other adaptations in 1965, among them The Outlaws Is Coming (in Three Stooges #22), Lord Jim, Rio Conchos, Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines, and four contemporary Disney film and TV issues: Mary Poppins; Emil and the Detectives; Gallegher, Boy Reporter; and Merlin Jones as The Monkey’s Uncle.

It coincided with a sad turning point for Jesse Marsh, the book’s artist of 18 years. Plagued with diabetes, the 58-yearold felt compelled to retire in 1965 and left the series in the hands of his virtual heir apparent Russ Manning. It was a logical choice on many levels, not the least of which was the fact that the younger cartoonist had already revitalized the franchise via 1964’s Korak title and was earning raves for his work on the futuristic Magnus. Manning’s art had a fluid, modern look that sang to young audiences in a way the comparatively stiff Marsh’s did not. It was a comparison that Manning—a friend and admirer of his predecessor—was never comfortable with but he never shied away from articulating his vision of Tarzan.

A surprising number of one-shots amounted to reissues of old material, most conspicuously in the summer’s 25-cent giants Vacation In Disneyland #1; Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig #1; Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck #1; Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle #1;

An issue after Manning’s arrival on the book, he and prolific writer Gaylord Dubois met the challenge posed by Charlton and returned to their hero’s roots. Declaring itself

Flintstones With Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm #1; and the 12cent Best of Donald Duck #1 (reprinting Carl Barks’s 1949 56

Fred Fredericks’ art modernized the Mandrake strip. Original art for December 26, 1965 strip courtesy Heritage Auctions. Mandrake the Magician TM and © King Features Syndicate, Inc.

classic “Lost In the Andes” for the first time); Donald Duck Beach Party #1; Alice In Wonderland #1; Big Red #1; Cinderella #1; Robin Hood #1; and Toby Tyler #1.

It was part of a tumultuous transition for the venerable title, which also abandoned its trademark Mickey Mouse serials effective with issue #299. Replacing them (and taking Donald’s place as the book’s lead feature) was “Walt Disney Theater,” which inserted Mickey, Goofy, Donald and company into literature-based comedies like “The Two Musketeers + One” (#299), “The Hound of Basketville” (#300), “20,000 Weeds Under the Sea” (#301), “Ali Scrooge and the Forty Beagles” (#302), and “Treasure Island A-YoHo” (#303).

What was often less apparent amidst the single new issues full of animation-based new material (Deputy Dawg #1; Dinky Duck and Hashimoto-San #1; Peter Potamus #1; Linus the Lion-Hearted #1; Mushmouse and Punkin Puss #1) were the ones that were reprints (Buffalo Bill, Jr. #1; Flash Gordon #1; Annie Oakley and Tagg #1). Porky Pig #1 (January 1965) premiered as an ongoing series with nothing but reprints and his Warner Bros. colleague Bugs Bunny had gone reprint by the time he hit issue #100 (July 1965). Mickey Mouse seemed particularly hard hit, not only going predominantly reprint with issue #100 (April 1965) of his own title but doing the same in Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #293-294 (February-March 1965). Elsewhere in the title, the traditional Carl Barks lead Donald Duck stories were supplanted by Tony Strobl-illustrated tales in WDC&S #293, #295-296, and #298 before Barks reprints (shoved to the center or back of each issue) popped up in issues #299303.

Tony Strobl penciled the cover of the landmark Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #300 along with the interior “Walt Disney Theater” story. Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories TM and © Disney Enterprises, Inc.

Unlike Gold Key’s other centennial issues of the year (also including the still all-new Donald Duck), Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #300 (September 1965) actually acknowledged its own milestone with a 25th Anniversary cover and a page commemorating the event inside. Dell, which had partnered with Western Publications for the first 22 years of the book’s life, was less celebratory, its sales a far cry from the glory days before their biggest hits had gone to Gold Key. In 1965, it counted Air War Stories, Combat, Ghost Stories, Kona, and Thirteen along with licensed titles Alvin, The Beverly Hillbillies, and The Outer Limits as its bigger successes. And licensed properties were far A specially-minted coin bore the Lobo TM and © respective from a panacea, though Dell con- mark of Lobo. copyright holder. tinued to issue movie adaptations like Beach Blanket Bingo, The Sons of Katie Elder, and Two On a Guillotine. The notable hit in the lot was Bewitched #1 (April-June 1965), wherein Henry Scarpelli illustrated the further adventures of enchanted TV housewife Samantha Stevens. Other ’65 launches 12 O’Clock High and No Time For Sergeants were dropped before the year was out, though, the latter fizzling about the same time its ABC counterpart ended. Sinbad Jr., based on an animated cartoon, was also gone after three issues. (Gold Key, incidentally, published a more traditional version of the Persian hero in its 1965 Fantastic Voyages of Sindbad #1). And fictional detective Charlie Chan, whose previous comic book incarnations never lasted more than a year, managed only two issues under the Dell imprint, one dated 1965 and the a black man…and the first African American character to other 1966. ever star in his own comic book. They were joined by several other cancellations over the Within the stories, no character ever remarked on Lobo’s course of the year—Ben Casey #10, Burke’s Law #3, Dr. skin color. It was a deliberate approach meant to avoid Kildare #9, Felix the Cat #12, Petticoat Junction #5, Ponytail controversy, one also employed by Morrie Turner’s new #12—all of them licensed properties whose sales didn’t Wee Pals comic strip about an ethnically varied group of justify the added expense. With a history dating back to children. Steve Ditko had been similarly subtle in his 1965 1920s animation, Felix was no longer the draw he’d once Spider-Man stories, casually drawing African Americans been, as evidenced by his comic book adventures bouncin the background to better reflect U.S. culture. ing from Toby to Harvey to Dell over the past decade. After D.J. Arneson, the Dell line’s editor (and frequently writthis latest cancellation, no other publisher picked up the er), took his inspiration from Philip Durham and Everett license and even its newspaper strip counterpart would be L. Jones’ new book, The Negro Cowboys. “On reading the discontinued by the end of 1966. book in 1965,” he recalled, “I recognized the potential for a Meanwhile, Dell focused on the creation of original propblack comic book hero based on historical fact; the Buffalo erties, attempting to shore up its Jungle War Stories book Soldiers, the name given to African-American Union solby renaming it Guerrilla War with issue #12 and introdiers in the American Civil War. A number of those soldiers ducing a World War Stories title that lasted only three iswent west and became cowboys following the war and I sues. Dropping its lone Western book Idaho with issue #8, conceived Black Lobo as a dramatic characterization of this Dell introduced an unexpectedly daring replacement, one little-known history” (Coville). whose origins are contentious. Incorporating aspects of the Lone Ranger, Zorro, and Robin The premise was a familiar one: Accused of a crime he Hood into the concept, Arneson had artist Tony Tallarico didn’t commit, a Civil War veteran fought injustice while prepare a cover mock-up and present it to Dell president he was on the run. Atop the foreheads of those he captured Helen Meyer. Deeming “Black Lobo” too inflammatory, were gold coins sporting an “L” and a wolf’s head. His real she abbreviated the title and approved Lobo #1 (December name never disclosed to readers, the stranger was dubbed 1965) for a fall release with Arneson on script and Tallarico Lobo by those he fought. This twist was a big one: Lobo was on art (Coville). 58

Best known for his humor work on features like Little Lulu, Stanley also had a less-demonstrated penchant for the macabre (as in Dell’s 1962 horror comics). Mixed with his trademark stock devices (like the family pet crocodile that constantly tried to eat the boy) and inverted commentary on modern society, Melvin Monster was easily the most subversive title in Dell’s line-up.

Gauging sales on the oneshot, Meyer was encouraged enough to okay a second issue ten months later (dated October 1966) before declaring the series a failure. Tallarico, who claims to have created Lobo himself, contends that distributors were returning the issues unopened because its star was black (Amash, “I Absolutely Love What I’m Doing” 42). Arneson, however, insists it was nothing so dramatic. “Sales were the primary basis for the continuation or discontinuation of a series title,” he explained. “I neither have now nor did I have at that time any intimation or suggestion that Lobo was discontinued because anyone was somehow conspiratorially ‘opposed’ to it” (Coville).

Nukla #1 (October-December 1965) was comparatively conventional, representing Dell’s shot in the super-powered arms race. Originally a CIA operative Matthew Gibbs had been shot down by the Red Chinese and vaporized by nuclear missiles. Reconstituting himself as a nuclear-powered superhero, Nukla pledged his allegiance to the United States. If that sounded a bit like Captain Atom and Doctor Solar, it wasn’t a coincidence. Joe Gill, the former’s creator, had also created Nukla. As illustrated by Sal Trapani and his brother-in-law Dick Giordano, it was a nice-looking feature, but its Cold War tenor felt oddly dated next to the mid-1960s’ leading superheroes.

Like Tallarico, Arneson had no regrets over those historic issues. “That Helen Meyer, a trailblazer in her own right as the only female president of a major publishing company, and incidentally, the highest paid female executive in the country at the time, made the decision to publish Lobo is a tribute to her intelligence, foresight and sensitivity” (Coville). Dell’s Melvin Monster #1 (AprilJune 1965) took an entirely different tack on the outsider, playing it in the vein of Charles Addams and the monster humor craze that was still holding steady in pop culture. The product of celebrated cartoonist and Dell fixture John Stanley, it recounted the story of a greenskinned little boy whose mommy was a mummy and daddy was a knuckle-dragging beast. Set in Monsterville, a suburb next to a city full of ordinary humans, Melvin was a misfit, constantly pushing against the conventions of monster society, as in issue #1 when he insisted on attending school rather than throwing rocks at it. In tears over her son’s behavior in issue #2, Melvin’s mom wept, “He was a perfect angel, Baddy! Oh, it was unbearable!”

The Race Is On At Charlton Comics, the real Captain Atom burst back on the scene in Strange Suspense Stories #75-77, where the bulk of his short stories from 19601961 were reprinted in anticipation of a revival of the series. Effective with issue #78 (December 1965), the book was re-titled Captain Atom and creators Gill and Steve Ditko (inked by Rocke Mastroserio) delivered the hero’s first new adventure in years.

Cover art by John Stanley (Melvin Monster) and Rocco Mastrosero & Sal Trapani (Nukla). TM and © respective copyright holder.

Tonally, it was a different strip than the one Gill and Ditko had left. The old model of short stories had given way to the increasingly common full-length ones. With twenty pages to work with rather than five, there was less urgency to dispatch plot points in a single frame. Action sequences could carry over several panels and characters could

“cancelled” (with issue #4 and #5, respectively) but actually had their titles reassigned to the former Six Gun Heroes (with issue #84) and Unusual Tales (with issue #49).

The covers of Captain Atom #78 (art by Steve Ditko) and Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds #46 (art by Dick Giordano) heralded the expansion of Charlton’s superhero line. Captain Atom, Son of Vulcan TM and © DC Comics.

carry on conversations. Like the superhero formula itself, Ditko’s style had evolved over the past few years at Marvel. There was no attempt on Joe Gill’s part to emulate Stan Lee’s patter although the chatty credits box on page one (likely written by editor Pat Masulli) was clearly mimicking Marvel. Captain Atom’s return was only the latest step in Charlton’s move to introduce superheroes into its line, an initiative launched in 1964 with the revival of Blue Beetle. If the Beetle was Charlton’s answer to Superman, then Son of Vulcan was surely Thor. Introduced in Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds #46 (May 1965) and dressed like a Roman centurion, the hero started out as a battle-scarred reporter named Johnny Mann who made the mistake of complaining about the injustice of war while in an ancient Mediterranean temple. Swept before an audience of angry Roman gods, Mann found defenders in the forms of Vulcan and Venus, the patrons of fire and love. With the tentative blessing of the gods’ king Jupiter, the human was given the means of channeling the deities’ power on Earth. Disgusted by the whole thing, the war god Mars vowed to sabotage the Son of Vulcan’s efforts whenever he could, sometimes using the Earthly villain Dr. Kong as his proxy.

After writing the pilot, Pat Masulli passed the series on to Joe Gill while Bill Fraccio and Tony Tallarico drew the feature from start to finish. Well aware of the fascination that superheroes held with readers of comics fanzines, Masulli used the Vulcan and Beetle series to woo that audience with tangible payoffs. Fan Dave Cockrum’s suggested redesign of Son of Vulcan was adopted for real in issue #49 while Roy Thomas earned his first paying script assignments in issue #50 and Beetle #54. Charlton’s tendency to change titles of existing books rather than premiering with issue #1 (in order to evade second-class postage headaches) was prevalent on the hero books and elsewhere in 1965. Aside from Strange Suspense Stories and Captain Atom, there was Mysteries’ change to Son of Vulcan (with issue #49). The low-numbered Gunmaster and Blue Beetle were both 60

If that wasn’t confusing enough, Li’l Genius, Brides In Love, and Konga were all discontinued in 1965 but their numbering lived on in periodic one-shots over the next few years as Summer Fun, Summer Love, and Fantastic Giants. Montana Kid #50 (March 1965) was continued a year and a half later as Gunfighters #51. And, yes, there were some books that were simply cancelled period: Army Attack #4, First Kiss #40, Freddy #47, Gorgo #23, Jungle Tales of Tarzan #4 (thanks to ERB, Inc.’s lawsuit), and Navy War Heroes #7. Motivated by the recent Fess Parker TV show, Charlton also released Frontier Scout Daniel Boone #14 (March 1965) as a one-shot reprint special. In the midst of all this, Charlton actually started a title with issue #1, an unremarkable book called Special War Series that only made its mark with

Frank McLaughlin’s Judomaster premiered in Special War Series #4. . Judomaster TM and © DC Comics.

its fourth and final edition (dated November 1965). In the midst of World War Two, Sgt. “Rip” Jagger was the lone survivor of a ruthless Japanese attack on a Pacific island and found himself in the care of a colony of refugees who opposed their government’s war. Indebted to Jagger for saving his daughter’s life, the group’s leader insisted on training him in the martial arts and transformed the soldier into a symbol of the resistance. Dressed in red and yellow with the Japanese rising sun integrated into his costume, Rip became Judomaster and helped free the island from oppression. “I thought it would be neat to have an action hero who didn’t have super powers to rely on,” explained Frank McLaughlin, the Charlton editorial assistant who created and drew the hero. Moreover, the strip tapped the growing popularity of the martial arts, something that McLaughlin and members of the company’s Santangelo founding family already enjoyed (Cooke, “The McLaughlin Report” 87). The ubiquitous Joe Gill scripted the origin story, but McLaughlin eventually felt confident enough to write the

feature himself when it returned in 1966. Charlton’s other new war hero of 1965 was American Eagle, a blatant rip-off of DC’s Johnny Cloud strip with an American Indian pilot. Introduced by Gill and artists Charles Nicholas and Vince Alascia in Fightin’ Air Force #50 (August 1965), the feature ended in issue #53...probably because someone noticed that DC had cancelled Johnny’s own series. It’s a testimony to the clamor for superheroes that even ACG’s prolific writereditor Richard Hughes caved in. After years of telling readers that such characters were out of place in his small line’s fantasy books, Hughes unexpectedly delivered two of them nearly back to back. But he Schaffenberger original art (signed as Costanza) for Forbidden Worlds insisted on doing so on his #125, courtesy Heritage Auctions. Magicman TM and © Roger Broughton. own terms, endowing both heroes with mystic orislain detective Steve Flint arrived at gins that fit the theme of their the gates of the Unknown and discovrespective titles. ered that he and the Grim Reaper had a mutual enemy in the form of Mafia Debuting in Forbidden Worlds boss Goratti. Endowed with super#125 (January-February 1965), natural powers by the Reaper, Steve Magicman was the immortal headed back to Earth as a “revengeful son of the alchemist Cagliostro spirit” and the name of Nemesis...beland had wandered the Earth for lowing “ya-hooooo” en route. Along a couple centuries, most recentwith a light blue hood, the ghostly ly taking the persona Tom Carhero displayed the icon of a nearlygill in Vietnam. After a buddy drained hourglass on his red shirt, was murdered and an influensported bare legs, and wore striped tial senator kidnapped, Tom rebriefs. By issue #161, he’d already solved to quit denying his supertired of the non-stop demands on his natural heritage and fight back time and went on strike in support of against guerrilla forces. “A war’s “decent dying conditions.” However half won when you can strike much his origin may have owed to fear into your opponent,” he the 1940s hero known as the Spectre, declared, “and I’ve got to strike

Kurt Schaffenberger used the alias of fellow artist Pete Costanza on the cover of ACG’s Adventures Into the Unknown #154 to placate his DC editor Mort Weisinger’s objections about his work for other publishers. Nemesis TM and © Roger Broughton.

that fear.” Donning an eclectic costume that included a green turban and tights, a purple cape, and pixie slippers, Magicman flew into action. He fought the Red Chinese for two issues before leaving Southeast Asia for bigger things like alien invaders, ghostly pirates and (in FW #130) Fidel Castro! Over in Adventures Into the Unknown #154 (February 1965), 61

Nemesis TM and © Roger Broughton.

known Worlds, which lacked recurring features. Amidst the jubilation over ACG adding superheroes, reader Jay Masch protested their retro quality in Forbidden Worlds #132’s letter column, declaring that Costanza’s art “just doesn’t come up to the standards of today’s average comics magazines.” Hughes respectfully disagreed, adding that “we’re not striving to equal our competitors’ The Fat Fury was empowered by his ubiquitous lollipops. Herbie Popnecker TM and © Roger Broughton. creations, thank you— just trying to bring our tive to disguise with alown readers the very best and many ternate names, but the fans think we’re succeeding.” gesture was evidently enough to satisfy Weisinger’s edict.

Nemesis was most assuredly not the grim avenger created by Jerry Siegel a quarter century earlier. The light touch that the amiable Hughes brought to both features brought to mind Fawcett Comics’ classic Captain Marvel stories, an effect that was reinforced by the fact that former Cap artists Pete Costanza and Kurt Schaffenberger drew, respectively, the features and their covers (with Chic Stone taking over Nemesis in AITU #157). Schaffenberger was also DC’s foremost Lois Lane artist, signing each story he drew as he did his ACG work. Paranoid about losing (or sharing) his talent, Mort Weisinger gave him an ultimatum in the latter half of 1964: Either cease moonlighting or stop advertising it (Voger, Hero Gets Girl 31). The artist’s solution was simply to sign other names to his ACG covers, beginning with the first 1965-dated issues. The earliest were credited to Costanza, but Schaffenberger ultimately took the pseudonyms of Jay Kafka and Lou Wahl for his non-DC assignments. The illustrator’s clean, cartoony work was far too distinc-

Even Hughes and artist Ogden Whitney’s comedic Herbie took the superhero plunge in issue #8 (March 1965) of the character’s comic book. Heeding President Johnson’s call to arms against the threat of Mr. Horrible, the youngster looked over photos of superheroes (including Skyman, whom Whitney drew from 1940-1948) and decided to go that route. Flunking out of the American Hero School, the bespectacled boy decided to make a go of it anyway. A month ahead of Super Goof, Herbie donned red long underwear of his own along with a blue cape and mask…and a toilet plunger for a helmet! The Fat Fury would be spotlighted on the cover of every evennumbered issue through the end of Herbie’s run. Even John Force, Magic Agent (whose short-lived book ran in 1962) was making periodic returns, as in Adventures Into the Unknown #153 and #157. Continuing characters seemed to be paying off and sales on the ACG books all seem to have gone up, even Un62

Archie publisher John Goldwater had no such qualms. Seven months after cancelling Adventures of the Fly, he put it back on the schedule as Fly Man #31 (May 1965) with, as editor Victor Gorelick remembers, a very specific goal: “Marvel’s Spider-Man had gotten popular, and we changed the characters to compete with them. John Goldwater had a lot of input

Mighty Crusaders TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc. The Fly TM © Joe Simon.

off Mighty Crusaders #1 (November 1965), where they took on a bad guy called the Brain Emperor.

cleaning […] but I was convinced that the heroes had potential for greatness. I think the appeal for me was that these characters were different from the heroes offered by Marvel and DC. Except for the Fly and FlyGirl, they were all ‘40s revivals, the product of a different era: primal super-heroes in a way, without the over elaboration and accumulated gimmicks of later decades” (71).

The scripts came courtesy of Jerry Siegel, who’d also been writing Archie’s Shadow title through issue #8 when it was canThe Marvel approach carried over celled to make room into the letter column in Fly Man #34 for Crusaders. Squirmthat (distancing itself from the Archie ing under the tyranname) extolled the virtues of Radio nical thumb of Mort Comics in an unintended parody of Weisinger, the creator The fledging Mighty Crusaders mimicked Marvel’s bickering heroes in this Paul Stan Lee’s patter: “From now on, our of Superman had been Reinman-illustrated panel from Fly Man #31. The Fly TM and © Joe Simon. The Comet TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc. mag pages are gonna explode with secretly writing for Arthrills!” it screamed. “The art’ll be the chie since 1964 with with how we did the covers and was zingiest! The scripts will be the sockian eye toward making a break from particular about what he wanted to est! Our shoes will be the sloppiest!” DC. His Fly Man overflowed with see. He wanted us to follow the Marwisecracks and over-the-top dialogue vel style” (Amash, “The Hangman CoThe real Lee and his boss were not along with bickering superheroes, but meth” 43). amused. “[Martin] Goodman had it didn’t feel right. Siegel delivered the Stan dictate a serious letter to Archie, Archie fans had long pleaded for a surface details but they lacked the wit superhero team book and that’s esof Stan Lee and the sentially what was delivered. Along situations grounded with the Black Hood and Comet (both in domestic settings. 1940s heroes who’d been revived Fly-Man and comearlier in the book’s run), the rechrispany didn’t even tened Fly-Man was also joined by seem to have private the red, white, and blue Shield. This lives. Coupled with wasn’t the short-lived Lancelot Strong artwork from Paul character developed by Joe Simon and Reinman that was Jack Kirby in 1959, though, but rather as bland as Jack Kira still-youthful version of the original by’s was exciting, MLJ hero from 1940-1948 who preArchie’s superhero dated Captain America in the patribooks were a disapotic hero department. (A few months pointment. later, it was explained that this was But Goldwater’s inactually Bill Higgins, the son of the stincts were correct first Shield.) and kids flocked Frustrated that these upstarts kept to the series anyinterfering in his attempts to kill Flyway. What the Man, the sinister Spider manipulated books lacked in exthem all into gathering to discuss creecution, they more ating a team called the Mighty Cruthan made up for saders with the idea that they’d sucin the thrill of seecumb to their egos. Sure enough, the ing these heroes star of the book declared the whole united and the posthing a crazy idea and snorted, “I’m sibilities that they not convinced you ‘super-heroes’ are held. “Somehow, mighty enough to deserve joining as a callow youth up with me!” So the other three beat of 13 and 14, I liked up Fly-Man and went away mad… these characters,” or so it seemed until the final pages Dwight Decker when they revealed it was all an act remembered. “I to draw out the villain. After hosting hated the dumb the new team in his own book for a stories and hoped few months, Fly-Man joined them and prayed for A Reinman-drawn ad in Fly Man #33 announced the new Mighty Crusaders comic and Fly-Girl in the pages of the spinbook. Mighty Crusaders TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc. The Fly TM © Joe Simon. a drastic house63

The costumes of Superteen and Pureheart the Powerful (along with their cohort Captain Hero) were tweaked as they became recurring characters. . Art by Dan DeCarlo and Bob White, respectively. TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

but I don’t know what effect it had,” former Marvel artistcolorist Stan Goldberg reported (Amash, “The Goldberg Variations” 23). Lee was irritated enough to pen this message in Amazing Spider-Man #29 (October 1965):

self-help book, the teenager noted that true strength came from pureness of heart. Focusing on that so-called PH Factor was all it took to awaken the hero within (although the early stories insisted Archie was dreaming all this).

“Have you noticed the sorry mess of Marvel imitations making the scene lately? Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery and all that jazz, but we wanna make darn sure no dyed-in-the-wool Marvel madman gets stuck with one of those inferior Brand Echh versions of the real thing! So, lull yourself to sleep each night with these imperishable words: It isn’t a Marvel masterpiece unless it says Marvel on the cover trademark! Don’t ever settle for less—you’re too important to us! Remember—we found you first!”

The same month that Archie made his first transformation, homespun Betty Cooper experienced a metamorphosis of her own and became Superteen in Betty and Veronica #118. And finally, there was Captain Hero. Otherwise known as Archie’s laidback pal Jughead Jones, Cap had a broader power set than either of his counterparts, even turning his head into a corkscrew during his debut in Jughead #126 (November 1965). Doyle scripted all three stories with Dan DeCarlo and Bill Vigoda respectively penciling the latter two. More naturally amusing and drawn in the classic Archie style, all three characters played to the teen publisher’s strengths that the Mighty Crusaders would avoid.

Not only was John Goldwater not worried, he encouraged writer Frank Doyle and artist Bob White to transform Archie Andrews himself into a red-and-blue costumed superhero called Pureheart the Powerful, too. Introduced in Life With Archie #42 (October 1965), Pureheart made early returns in issues #44 and #46 (his costume amended to orange-and-blue), acquiring an origin in the third. Reading a

For the most part, Archie Comics did what it did best in 1965 although it turned the lights out on Wilbur, a teen book whose popularity never matched Archie’s. Essentially cancelled in 1959, its final three issues (#88-90) were published annually between 1963 and 1965 with reprinted Dan DeCarlo material. An ongoing new title replaced it. Betty and Me #1 (August 1965) put the spotlight on Veronica Lodge’s homespun blonde rival for Archie’s affections. Destined for a 189-issue run that ended in 1992, the series premiered inauspiciously with decade-old Dan DeCarlo reprints beneath a new DeCarlo cover. (The same month, Archie Presents the Official Soupy Sales Comic Book #1, the first and only title ever devoted to the wildly popular children’s show personality, was published.)

Laugh and the World Laughs With You

Betty and Me became an enduring series for Archie but Soupy Sales’ East Coast . popularity didn’t translate to a national hit. © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

Soupy also showed up in a less flattering spread in Mad #99 (December 1965) about the purported contents of the comedian’s wallet. Over the course of the year, the magazine also imagined a James Bond movie as a musical (Mad #94), skewered 007’s TV counterparts in “The Man From A.U.N.T.I.E.” (Mad #96), and inserted budding movie stars the Beatles into a World War One flick (Mad #93). Meanwhile, Al Jaffee’s “Snappy

Al Jaffee offered his first “Snappy Answers to Snappy Questions” in Mad #98. Mad TM and © DC Comics.

also served him well in True Comics and Adventure Stories, a 25-cent one-shot released by Parents’ Magazine Press in 1965. “Sick came upon Jack,” it was explained in issue #44, “when, during Governor Rockefeller’s last campaign, two political books were produced, one by Mr. Sparling, the other by ye ed, Joe Simon.”

Answers To Stupid Questions” became the magazine’s latest recurring feature in issue #98. As Mad’s dominance in pop culture increased, a customizable Aurora model of its mascot Alfred E. Neuman joined its tie-in merchandise. Major Magazines’ Cracked was having a tougher time of it, having actually dropped a signature of pages (reduced from 52 to 44) in 1964 to cut costs. Both it and the competing Sick were holding fast to a 25-cent price point (unlike Mad, which had raised to 30¢ in 1963), but the days of that retail price were clearly numbered. “1965-1970 were lean ones for Cracked,” Mark Arnold reports, but they also saw the debut of 92-page Cracked Annuals that repackaged older material (64). In the regular series, writer George Gladir recalled one joke from issue #46 (September 1965) that was troubling in hindsight:

The highly-respected Simon had a considerably longer history with Harvey Comics, which had aspirations of diversifying its kids humor line in 1965. Approached by the company to package a sampling of adventure titles, Simon pulled together remnants from 1958’s Thrill Adventure imprint and a handful of newly generated stories to produce four one-shots collectively known as the Harvey Thriller line (whose logo consisted of an “H” against concentric circles). Per Harvey policy, they were all launched in the summer with the expectation that execs could assess complete sales figures and decide whether to continue the books the following year.

“The article was ‘What Are Celebrities of 1965 Doing Today in 1990?’…sort of a backward glance at the present from the standpoint of the future. In it, I predicted John Lennon would die at the hands of his souvenir-hungry fans in NYC…only a few miles from where Lennon actually met his unfortunate demise a number of years later. I took no satisfaction in being so prophetic” (Arnold 53).

Blast-Off #1 boasted no less than Jack Kirby on its spacefaring Three Rocketeers feature, albeit 1958 vintage Kirby prepared for the unpublished Race For the Moon #4. The Man In Black Called Fate (whose 1957-1958 run lasted four issues) headlined Thrill-O-Rama #1, which was filled out with three fantasy shorts drawn by Bob Powell. And the requisite combat title Warfront #36 (continuing the numbering of a book cancelled in 1958) tried to cut in on Sgt. Fury’s turf with the rule-breaking Dynamite Joe, “the blast-crazy Marine.”

At Crestwood’s Sick, the latest addition to the title’s regular artists was Jack Sparling. With a career dating back to the 1940s, the prolific Sparling also drew material for DC, Dell, Gold Key, and Harvey over the course of 1965. Often remembered for rushed, sloppy work, Sparling could turn out expertly rendered work when he set his mind to it, earning him assignments on a number of political promotional comics during the 1960s. His gift for likenesses

Finally, there was Unearthly Spectaculars #1, a collection of inventory fantasy tales that included a Doug Wildey-illustrated five-pager about a teen named Paul Canfield with 65

The Harvey Thriller line began with remnants from earlier projects in Joe Simon’s files. Dynamite Joe, 3 Rocketeers, Tiger Boy TM and © respective copyright holders.

unbroken line of comic book adventures extended back to All-American Publication’s first issue in 1939, was cancelled with issue #148 as was its companion Mutt and Jeff New Jokes with issue #4.

all sorts of superhuman abilities. At the end, the boy discovered that his parents were from Jupiter and that they’d used their shape-shifting powers after relocating to Earth. Seeing potential in a panel where Paul transformed himself into a tiger with a human head, Simon commissioned a cover from Jack Sparling featuring the new superhero Tiger Boy and tacked a note onto the end of the story promising that he’d return.

That left Dennis the Menace as the foremost newspaper strip-based comic book in the country. Benefiting from the heavy syndication of the Dennis 1959-1963 TV series and high quality of writer Fred Toole and artists Al Wiseman and Owen Fitzgerald’s stories, the title’s sales had soared in the early 1960s. It was augmented further by the Dennis the Menace Giant series, whose travelogues devoted to locales like Mexico and Washington, D.C. were reprinted multiple times. 1958’s “Dennis In Hawaii” issue, in particular, had been reissued six times by 1965. Even with the inevitable post-TV slump, Dennis was still among the top fifteen bestselling comic books of 1965.

There was nothing particularly bad about any of the stories, but there was nothing especially exciting, either. Such was the power of Joe Simon’s formidable reputation, though, that the mere rumor that he was cooking up a new superhero line struck terror into the halls of Marvel. It was, otherwise, a thoroughly undistinguished year at Harvey, its bread-andbutter kids comics holding steady with no new additions to the line-up. Harvey did, however, conclude that its licensed comic strip tie-ins were no longer worth continuing. Burned off during the summer, Blondie Comics #163, Chic Young’s Dagwood #140, and Blondie & Dagwood Family #4 ended comics books’ love affair with the Bumstead family…for a year at least. Simultaneously, Mutt & Jeff, whose

The Thriller titles promoted their companion books via ads like these. . Man In Black Called Fate, 3 Rocketeers TM and © respective copyright holders.

(Effective with the March-dated Dennis #77, incidentally, the title officially began classifying itself as a Fawcett comic book although Hallden, whose name referred to the comic strip’s Post-Hall Syndicate and Dennis himself, continued to package its content. Still, for readers who’d cherished the earlier Fawcett imprint—in-

Caplin launched the Peter Scratch private eye strip on September 13, but the feature never found an audience and limped into 1967 before it was cancelled. To be fair, hit humor strips were far from a sure thing, either, particularly those like The Nearsighted Mr. Magoo (premiering January 10) that tried to capitalize on TV properties. It fizzled in 1966. Still, the long-running successes among 1965’s comic strip debuts—Eek and Meek, Tiger, Tumbleweeds, Wee Pals, and two-year-old British import Fred Bassett (whose U.S. premiere was on June 28)—all played things for laughs. No one appreciated that more than Art Sansom. After thirteen years of drawing the space opera Chris Welkin, he saw the adventure strip discontinued on April 10. Noting which way the wind was blowing, Sansom reinvented himself as a humor cartoonist and introduced The Born Loser. Five decades later, carried on by Sansom’s son Chris, it remains one of the more widely syndicated comic strips in the country. Comic strips in general were reinventing themselves as surely as comic books, a phenomenon that Time Magazine publisher Bernard M. Auer remarked on in 1965: “More and more strips are offering political satire, psychology, and comments of varying subtlety on the rages and outrages of everyday life” (19). A feature article asserted that, “thanks largely to these new strips, the whole comics industry—300 syndicated strips and panels in 1,700 newspapers—is pulling itself out of the doldrums. […] Advertising revenue for the Sunday comics supplements reached an estimated 6,000,000 in 1964, double what it was the year before” (“Comments in the Comics” 80). The focus of that Time article was Charles Schulz, whose subversively pointed 15-year-old Peanuts had evolved into a multi-media juggernaut that included the appearances of Charlie Brown and company in TV commercials for the Ford Falcon and the 1962 best-seller Happiness Is a Warm Puppy. Within a month of this latest article, CocaCola had agreed to sponsor a Peanuts holiday special. Packed with lines pulled directly from old Peanuts strips and embodying a sentiment and explicit spiritual message that terrified network executives, A Charlie Brown Christmas premiered December 9 on CBS to overwhelming and enduring acclaim. Circulation of the strip soared, its subscription list of 700 papers surpassing 1,000 by the end of the decade.

Dennis the Menace #71 was the first to bear the Fawcett name.. TM and © Hank Ketcham Ent., Inc.

cluding Captain Marvel Adventures—it was nice to see the name on a comic book again.) One of the more interesting contradictions between comic books and comic strips was the slowly growing divide between comedy and drama along with the diminishing overlap in readers. Millions were gleefully reading number one strip Blondie in 1,600 newspapers but only a tiny fraction had any interest in her comic books which were, according to the prejudices of the age, kid stuff. On the other hand, Superman was one of the best-selling comic books in the country but its comic strip counterpart was literally months away from cancellation. Launching a successful adventure newspaper strip had become an uphill battle, regardless of how fine its creative team. Lou Fine, revered for his realistic artwork at Quality Comics, had only improved with age by the time he and writer Elliot

Time Magazine: April 9, 1965. . Peanuts is TM and © Peanuts Worldwide LLC.

Television, for all that comics publishers grumbled about it, could still be an effective tool in boosting readership, something that the 1950s Superman and 1960s Dennis the Menace programs had amply demonstrated. Doubters needed only to wait a month. It might have been a Charlie Brown Christmas but it was going to be a Batman New Year.

1966

Caped Crusaders, Masked Invaders

A superhero walks into a discothèque. “Anything I can do for you, sir?” a star-struck cigarette girl asks. “Check your cape?” The maître d’ offers a ringside table but the masked man declines. “Just looking, thanks. I’ll stand at the bar. I shouldn’t wish to attract attention.” This was Batman. Not the comic book character, mind you, but a film adaptation that was well on its way to becoming the TV phenomenon of 1966. In the months preceding its premiere, though, no one associated with the project could ever have imagined such success. At the outset, the Caped Crusader had been nothing more than a consolation prize, a property that ABC’s programming department licensed only because neither of their top choices (Superman and Dick Tracy) was available (Eisner 5-6). Contacted by ABC’s Douglas Cramer about the possibility of his Greenway Productions putting together a TV series, William Dozier agreed to think on the prospect. Picking up several Batman comic books—some old, some new—for research on a plane trip following his first meeting with Cramer, the producer concluded that the ABC execs “were crazy. I really thought they were crazy, if they were going to put this on television.” The only way it could be pulled off, he decided, was to make it “so square and so serious” that it would work on two levels: as an adventure for kids and as a comedy for their parents (Eisner 6). A New York Times article explained: “ABC could not afford to put the show in an expensive time slot if it only appealed to children; they don’t have the buying power. ‘This is a merchandising medium,’ said Dozier dryly, ‘not an entertainment medium.’ He decided to apply the pop art technique of the exaggerated cliché, laying it on to the point where it becomes amusing to adults” (Stone 75) Lorenzo Semple, Jr., whom Dozier chose to write the pilot, contends it was he who suggested that approach (Eury 62), but both recollections largely sidestepped the fact that the notion of playing Batman for laughs was already out there thanks to the recent movie-house showings of the 1943 movie serial where audiences mocked its deadpan style. Whatever the inspiration, ABC was sold on the pitch. When the series was announced in September of 1965, Dozier anticipated a leisurely development window for a project that wasn’t slated to premiere until a full year later. Unfortunately, ABC’s 1965 fall schedule was sink-

CHAPTER TWO 68

Batmania couldn’t be contained within U.S. borders, as evidenced by this British poster from late 1966 for the U.K.’s theatrical release. When a reported back injury felled TV’s Catwoman Julie Newmar, former Miss America Lee Meriwether stepped into the role for the Batman feature film. Batman TM and © DC Comics.

ing fast, a combination of new series like Gidget, Tammy, and A Man Called Shenandoah failing to catch on and old ones such as Ben Casey and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet running out of steam. During one recent week, the ratings were so bad that the network could claim only one series that was even in the top thirty: The Lawrence Welk Show (Kreiling 15). Out of desperation, ABC executives conceptualized “the Second Season,” a clutch of in-development shows that would be rolled out in January to replace the flops of September. Suddenly under the gun to have their series ready in weeks instead of months, Dozier and company filmed a pilot by the end of October. Thirtyseven-year-old Adam West and 20-year-old Burt Ward starred as Batman and Robin with Alan Napier (Alfred), Madge

Blake (Aunt Harriet), Neil Hamilton (Commissioner Gordon), and Stafford Repp (the created-for-TV Chief O’Hara) rounding out the cast. The series owed as much to the comic books’ old school Caped Crusader as it did to the more serious version edited by Julius Schwartz since 1964. Schwartz’s predecessor Jack Schiff, in fact, “was the one consulted on the material given to them”

(Schiff A67) and he supplied several Batman Annuals full of 1950s stories. Those issues proved crucial since the TV show’s team wanted a “special guest-villain” for each episode and Schwartz had limited his use of costumed crooks to the Joker, the Penguin, the Riddler, and a few minor newcomers. Drawing on the older content, Dozier’s team revived oneshot wonders Mister Zero (as Mister Freeze) and False Face along with the Mad Hatter and the long-absent Catwoman. That’s not to say that Schwartz’s stories weren’t utilized, too. For instance, the pilot incorporated scenes from a 1965 Riddler story (Batman #171), while “Batman’s Inescapable Doom-Trap” (Detective Comics #346) was the basis for February 9 and 10’s Zelda the Great story.

TIMELINE: 1966

April: Comic books’ first black superhero debuts in Fantastic Four #52 when the FF meets the Black Panther.

A compilation of the year’s notable comic book history events alongside some of the year’s most significant popular culture and historical events. (On sale dates are approximations.) March 5: Barry Sadler’s “Ballad January: M.F. Enterprises’ Captain Marvel #1 introduces a split-apart hero with a familiar name.

February 10: Jacqueline Susann’s blockbuster novel Valley of the Dolls follows three actresses on paths to self-destruction.

January 12: The premiere of ABC’S Batman TV series ignites an international craze.

of the Green Berets” begins five weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100.

March 16-17: Gemini VIII astronauts Neil Armstrong and David Scott achieve the first docking with another orbiting space vehicle but are forced to abort the mission. News bulletins on their reentry disrupt airings of Batman and Lost in Space.

April: Amazing Spider-Man #38 and Strange Tales #146 mark the end of Steve Ditko’s celebrated Marvel Comics run. April 1: President Johnson and other political figures become superheroes in The Great Society Comic Book. April 28: Longtime Tarzan comic book artist Jesse Marsh dies at age 58.

JANUARY

FEBRUARY

MARCH

APRIL

April 12: Singer Jan Berry (of Jan and Dean) suffers severe head injuries in a car crash near Beverly Hills’ Dead Man’s Curve.

January 19: India elects Indira Gandhi as its Prime Minister.

January 13: The Bewitched TV show welcomes a new addition when Tabitha is born.

March 28: The Avengers, a British spy fantasy unconnected to the Marvel comic and starring Patrick Macnee (John Steed) and Diana Rigg (Emma Peel) begins airing on ABC.

April 23: Johnny Rivers’ song “Secret Agent Man” peaks at Number Three on the Billboard Hot 100.

March 29: It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman opens on Broadway.

May: A new era begins when John Romita becomes the new artist on The Amazing Spider-Man with issue #39 and a story that shows the Green Goblin unmasked.

May 1: The Superman newspaper strip is cancelled after 26 years but a Batman and Robin strip fills the void on May 29.

June: Menthor dies a hero’s death in the landmark T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #7.

May 2: Morrie Brickman’s The Small Society tackles current events in a new comic strip.

May 28: “When A Man Loves A Woman” earns Percy Sledge the top spot on Billboard’s charts.

M AY

June 8: An F5 tornado in Topeka, Kansas claims sixteen lives and surpasses $100 million in damage.

JUNE May 16: The Beach Boys’ influential album Pet Sounds (including singles “Caroline, No,” “God Only Knows,” “Sloop John B,” and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”) is released.

May 2: Former Bizarro and Legion of Super-Heroes artist John Forte dies. April 26: On Stage creator Leonard Starr wins the National Cartoonists Society’s 1965 Reuben Award. Other winners include Gus Arriola (humor newspaper strips, Gordo), Roy Crane (story newspaper strips, Buz Sawyer), Jim Berry (newspaper panels, Berry’s World), and Wally Wood (comic book category, Blazing Combat).

June 27: The gothic soap opera Dark Shadows premieres on ABC, later acquiring a cult following when it introduces supernatural elements.

Batgirl, Batman, Captain Atom TM and © DC Comics. Fantastic Four, Spider-Man TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. Flash Gordon TM and © King Features Syndicate, Inc. Space Ghost TM and © Hanna-Barbera Productions.

Unlike the sober good guys in the series, the villains had free rein to chew scenery and did so with abandon. Stand-up comic Frank Gorshin’s manic, giggling Riddler—first seen in the pilot—virtually defined the character both on film and in comics for a generation as did Burgess Meredith’s cackling, impeccably costumed Penguin. Along with Cesar Romero’s Joker and Julie Newmar’s Catwoman, they formed the nucleus of the TV show’s rogues gallery. Even with return engagements and secondary bad guys, the series was trotting out original-to-TV menaces like King Tut (played by Victor Buono) and the Bookworm (Roddy McDowell) by the end of Season One in May. Schwartz’s 1964 revamp of Batman had restored a great deal of dignity to a character who’d often become lost in a science fiction haze. Even with that, though, the dialogue in any given story was there to advance the plot rather than evoke any sort of naturalistic tone. Simply by directing their cast to earnestly deliver such lines, Semple and Dozier were well on their way to achieving the humorous tone they wanted. Next, they punched up the dialogue with melodramatic flourishes. Criminals were “dastardly” and Robin reacted to every situation with specially-tailored exclamations like “Holy flypaper!” The creative team cranked up the absurdity to ten in the opening two-parter. Not content with the image of Batman in a The cover of Life’s March 11, 1966 issue amply demonstrated the . Batman TV show’s frequent lack of dignity. TM and © DC Comics.

July: Al Williamson’s Flash Gordon #1 from King Comics recalls the glory years of the Alex Raymond-created feature.

August: At the hands of Steve Ditko, Captain Atom #83 de-powers its eponymous hero while introducing the new Blue Beetle in a second feature.

September: Secret agents continue to thrive on TV with the first episodes of The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. (Sept. 13: NBC) and Mission: Impossible (Sept. 17: CBS). September 1: After a ten-year courtship, Barry Allen marries Iris West in The Flash #165. September 2: Veteran comic book writer France Edward Herron succumbs to cancer at age 48.

July 4: President Johnson signs the Freedom of Information Act, allowing full or partial disclosure of many previously classified documents.

J U LY

November 7: Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara is confronted by dozens of anti-war students while speaking at Harvard University. October: The Black Panther Party, an aggressive branch of the civil rights movement, is founded by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton. December 15: Entertainment mogul Walt Disney dies of lung cancer at age 65.

October 10: The Beach Boys’ signature song Good Vibrations is released as a single. August 5: The singles “Yellow Submarine” and “Eleanor Rigby” highlight the Beatles’ Revolver, regarded by many critics as their career-best album.

AUGUST

September 3: “Sunshine Superman” gives Donovan his first and only Number One hit on the Billboard charts.

SEPTEMBER

July 14: Eight student nurses are murdered by Richard Speck in Chicago.

October 17: Celebrity-laden game show Hollywood Squares begins on NBC.

OCTOBER

September 12: NBC’s musical-comedy The Monkees wins big with young viewers despite critics who dismiss the Beatles-inspired quartet as the Prefab Four.

July 31: Neal Adams’ Ben Casey comic strip ends as its hero ships off to Vietnam.

September 10: Superheroes conquer CBS’ Saturday mornings with cartoons including Space Ghost and Dino Boy and New Adventures of Superman. September: Fantastic heroes abound on TV with the debuts of Star Trek (Sept. 8: NBC), The Green Hornet, The Time Tunnel (Sept. 9: ABC), and Tarzan (Sept. 9: NBC) while Marlo Thomas’ That Girl (Sept. 8: ABC) offers a lighter alternative.

November 29: A new Batgirl makes her million-dollar debut in Detective Comics #359.

NOVEMBER

DECEMBER

November 5: The Monkees’ “Last Train To Clarksville” hits Number One in the Billboard Hot 100 songs.

December 18: Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas, narrated by Boris Karloff, is faithfully adapted as a CBS animated special.

Ben Casey TM and © respective copyright holder. Grinch TM and © Dr. Seuss Enterprises LP.

discothèque, Semple then proceeded to have him dance the Batusi with the villainous Molly (played by Jill St. John) and turn into a weepy drunk after imbibing spiked orange juice. Arriving at the very moment when TV networks were converting the last of their programming from black and white to color, Batman took full advantage of that palette. Beyond the costumes and backdrops, the series also peppered its fight scenes with superimposed sound effects (by fittingly-named DC letterer Joe Letterese) that evoked the comic book experience as much as they did some of the paintings in the pop art movement. Many scenes were even shot at an angle to simulate the visual variety of a dynamic comic book page. The pilot was given a failing grade by test audiences three consecutive times, its straight-faced comedy lost on the viewers. “The network executives panicked,” Dozier’s assistant Charles FitzSimons recalled. “They

had bought an entire run of episodes, and this was going to be the biggest bomb in history” (Eisner 7). In desperation, ABC launched a publicity campaign the likes of which had never been seen before in TV history. “Skywriters emblazoned Batman Is Coming in the heavens above the Rose Bowl game,” it was reported in the January 28, 1966 edition of Time Magazine. “Every hour on the hour, TV announcements bleated the imminent arrival of the Caped Crusader.” As Robert Greenberger later observed, “You had to be in a coma not to know that Batman was coming to TV in the New Year” (9-10). Evoking the movie serials of old, the typical Batman adventure aired in two parts, the first ending on a cliffhanger while a portentous narrator (vocalized by Dozier himself) played up the crisis to the hilt, avowing in the pilot that “the worst is yet to come!” CBS’ new Lost In Space series—airing opposite the Dynamic 71

Duo—featured cliffhanger endings, too, but Batman one-upped it by concluding each episode exactly 24 hours later. For the entirety of its first two seasons, the series would run two nights a week on Wednesdays and Thursdays. (ABC’s primetime soap opera Peyton Place was actually running three nights a week during the 19651966 TV season.) Putting things in meteorological terms, it was the perfect storm. The mid-1960s turmoil with its wars and protests and change had created an environment of nostalgia for ostensibly simpler times that in turn fueled the proliferation of articles throughout 1965 on collectors of old comic books and the heroes of yesteryear. Add a healthy dose of newfound cynicism and you had a receptive audience that laughed uproariously at the corny old Batman serial and found relevance in the less-than-perfect Marvel Comics heroes. Stir in the colorful Pop Art movement. Most directly, ABC’s lousy fall season and its

Cesar Romero, Frank Gorshin, Burgess Meredith, and Julie Newmar respectively brought the Joker, Riddler, Penguin, and Catwoman to life. TM and © DC Comics.

frenzied reaction to the tepid audiences overlapped with the release of Jules Feiffer’s Great Comic Book Heroes. The climate couldn’t have been more right.

ric Wertham as comic book fans’ most hated subject. It wasn’t so much the show itself as its influence. For decades to come, many in the general public—and especially the mainstream media—regarded the series as an exact replica of a superhero comic book (if not comic books in general). Once again, an outsider had defined what comics should or shouldn’t be and fans reacted accordingly.

The ratings, Robert Greenberger reported, “were beyond anything the network could have expected. Trendex, the era’s version of overnight Nielsen ratings, showed that the debut episode had an astonishing 49% sampling in the top 50 TV markets. The concluding episode the following evening added ten percentage points. The marketing had worked and the show was a monster hit. Lost In Space and [NBC’s] The Virginian never knew what hit them” (10).

The case can be made, however, that no television network would have aired a superhero show at all had it not been for that approach. Expressing this minority viewpoint in Batmania #10’s letter column, Florida college student Gary Brown asked if his fellow fans realized “how long Batman would last in the jungle of ratings if it would be played serious, à la Bonanza, etc? Let’s face it, it wouldn’t stand a chance!”

That Darn Camp! Other than stuffy TV critics, the only people in the United States who didn’t seem to love Batman were hardcore comic book fans. As far as Dwight Decker was concerned, January 12, 1966, would go down in history as Black Wednesday. Nearly fourteen, the high school freshman anticipated that the TV show would be a revelation for the masses that would legitimize comics as the respected medium that he knew it was (Decker 49). Not only did the series convince no one of the hidden virtues of comic books, it cemented in the mind of their detractors that they were as silly and frivolous as they’d always imagined. Batman, publications like The New York Times and Life declared, was camp.

The controversy was an awkward one for Batman editor Julius Schwartz. Allowing that some of his comics’ dialogue and situations might elicit chuckles in real life, he’d nonetheless worked hard over the past two years to restore the series’ integrity and seriousness and the TV show would do nothing but undercut it. Publicly, though, Schwartz could only be supportive of the camp craze—first referencing it by name in the letter column of Justice League of America #44 (March 1965)—while carrying out orders from his boss Irwin Donenfeld to make the comic book more like the TV series.

“As it got out to the mainstream media, ‘camp’ was simplistically defined as something so bad it was good,” Decker explained. “Actually, ‘camp’ originated in the gay community as a term for things that were so aesthetically outrageous they were really kind of cute. Either way, it wasn’t good” (Decker 49-50). Ultimately, the Batman TV show would rank second only to wouldbe 1950s comic book censor Fred-

Batman #179’s cover copy hinted at the . camp approach to come. TM and © DC Comics.

Given the lead time required to produce a comic book and the unexpected acceleration of the TV show’s premiere, Schwartz barely had time to insert a plug for the show at the end of a story in January’s Batman #179. It’s uncertain whether Schwartz was aware of the pilot’s villain or just got lucky but the issue tied in perfectly by spotlighting the Riddler on its cover. Regardless, the tone and gim-

the John Broome-scripted tale was basically played straight but with flourishes that included its title, over-sized sound effects, and a couple “holy” exclamations that were hastily added to Robin’s word balloons. One could almost hear William Dozier’s theatrical delivery of the copy on Batman #184’s b u s y - b u t - e f f e c t iv e cover: “For 13 jittery nights, the Bat-Signal blazed in the sky…for 13 desperate days, the Hot-Line remained unanswered! Where are Batman and Robin? Not even they know!” The front of the previous issue had shouted “Holy emergency!” as it showed Batman ignoring a Hot-Line call to watch his TV show. Since the point of all The French expression à gogo (“in abundance, galore”) was absorbed into . this was to attract the hip 1960s discotheque scene but looked silly in places like Detective Comics #352. Original art by Sheldon Moldoff and Joe Giella (as “Bob Kane”) courtesy . fans of said program, of Heritage Auctions. Batman TM and © DC Comics. some of the campiest moments were on Carmine Infanmicks of the series weren’t reflected in tino’s impeccably-designed covers. the comic book until Schwartz and comPlenty slipped through to the pages pany actually watched some episodes. within, though. The Caped Crusader It was the issues on sale in April (dated wiggled out of a trap in Batman #183 June) that first truly reflected the show’s by simulating the gyrations of the impact. Nothing else could explain a Batusi, for instance, while in issue story entitled “Batman’s Crime Hunt #188 the Dynamic Duo faced a crook A-Go-Go” (Detective Comics #352). Cencalled the Eraser who looked like a tering on a villain named Mister Esper human pencil. who employed subliminal messaging,

Even sound effects like these from Batman #186 had to be exaggerated to the match the out-sized Batman TV show. TM and © DC Comics.

The top tier of each Batman Sunday comic strip—like this July 10, 1966 episode drawn by Moldoff and Giella—. was a virtual throwaway which newspaper editors could delete for space reasons if they wished. TM and © DC Comics.

A Batman newspaper strip (premiering May 29) outside of Schwartz’s purview had no inhibitions whatsoever about capitalizing on camp. Its writer was former DC editorial director Whitney Ellsworth, a man who’d long served as a key liaison with the company’s projects in other media like the Adventures of Superman TV show and who believed that the comics should be reflecting the film manifestation. Consequently, the comic strip (illustrated first by Sheldon Moldoff and then Joe Giella) overflowed with gags, sound effects, cornball dialogue, and even regular appearances by Chief O’Hara (who, as noted, was created exclusively for the TV show). With separate storylines running in the daily and Sunday versions of the strip, the Penguin and Catwoman were each featured villains in its first weeks. Back in the comic books, costumed crooks—mostly ignored for the previous two years—were another concession that Schwartz made to the TV series, and 1966 saw a veritable wave,

even including the Weather Wizard (Detective Comics #353) who was normally seen in The Flash. Most of them were minor-leaguers like the Birdmaster (Detective #348), the Monarch of Menace (Detective #350), DeathMan (Batman #180), the Hangman (Detective #355), and Joker henchman Gaggy (Batman #186), although the Cluemaster (Detective #351), Doctor Tzin-Tzin (Detective #354) and the Spellbinder (Detective #358) were notably revived or reworked in the decades ahead. If the intention was to create a gallery of rogues to be mined by William Dozier’s team, it was a complete failure. Carmine Infantino recalled that the producer specifically requested female characters but his and writer Robert Kanigher’s creation Poison Ivy (Batman #181 and #183) was never used on the show (Eury, “The Man Who Redesigned Batman” 23). With visuals dominated by a leafy bathing suit, the character returned in the 1970s and gradually evolved from a 74

temptress who literally put Batman on a leash to a plant-based villainess in the top tier of the Dark Knight’s rogues gallery. The series’ foremost femme fatale was a conspicuous no-show in Schwartz’s comics. Banished from comic books following the institution of the Comics Code, Catwoman had made a limited return via reprints in a pair of 80-Page Giants during 1964 and 1965, but the Batman editor still viewed her as part of the past that he wanted to move beyond. Instead, her comics revivals took place in unusual venues like the Ellsworth-Giella newspaper strip and a Kellogg’s Pop Tarts mini-comic giveaway (drawn by Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson from an E. Nelson Bridwell script). When she finally did show up in an actual comic book, Catwoman was matching wits with Superman’s girlfriend in the Mort Weisinger-edited Lois Lane #70 (by Leo Dorfman and Kurt Schaffenberger) while Batman sat things out. Julius Schwartz

Carmine Infantino and Joe Giella’s eye-catching covers thrilled fans with newly visualized villains like the Hooded Hangman, the Spellbinder, and the Outsider. . Batman TM and © DC Comics.

eventually bowed to popular demand but he had other things to take care of first. The most prominent of the Schwartz era’s villains was a character who’d fought Batman and Robin four times since 1964 (Detective #334, #336, #340, #349) without making a physical appearance. The insidious Outsider was a being with seemingly supernatural powers and intimate knowledge of the Dynamic Duo’s secrets, someone whom they’d thwarted but never defeated. That streak ended in Detective

#356 (October 1967) when Gardner Fox, Sheldon Moldoff, and Joe Giella exposed the villain as a chalk-white boil-covered monstrosity…who had the fingerprints of Bruce Wayne’s late butler. Killed off in 1964, Alfred made an unexpected comeback in 1966 when he and his successor (Dick Grayson’s Aunt Harriet) were both featured on the TV show. Inevitably, Schwartz was compelled to match that status quo. Reader Henry Goldman had speculated in issue #349’s letter col-

umn that Alfred was the Outsider (“Why else would you foolishly dispense with such an important character?”) and the Batman editor must have decided that was as good an idea as any to solve the conundrum. Consequently, “Inside Story of the Outsider” disclosed how a well-meaning scientist’s efforts to revive Alfred instead turned him into a monster. Restored to normal and stripped of the memories of his criminal misdeeds, the noble butler returned to Wayne Manor, assuring Aunt Harriet that she was to remain in the household to “speed

Other 1966 adversaries of the Dynamic Duo included a visitor from The Flash (Weather Wizard), a new villainess (Poison Ivy), and a rogue unseen since 1943 (the Scarecrow). TM and © DC Comics.

my recovery.” The Alfred Memorial Foundation, established in 1964, was rechristened the Wayne Foundation, a name already in use on the TV show. Batman’s first season—concluding May 5—was over before DC began truly capitalizing on the phenomenon that had caught even them by surprise. Within weeks, the Batman logo was prominently added to Detective Comics’ covers, a development paralleled in July on World’s Finest #160 (with the Caped Crusader getting top billing over co-star Superman). The Brave and the Bold’s series of DC character team-ups acquired Batman as its more-or-less permanent co-star, initially joining forces with the Flash (B&B #67), Metamorpho (B&B #68), and Green Lantern (B&B #69). Already present on every Justice League of America cover on sale in 1966, Batman became almost ridiculously prominent starting with the summer’s annual crossover with the Justice Society. Mike Sekowsky’s cover design for JLA #46 incorporated huge sound effects while issue #47 rendered the Caped Crusader as a giant, proportions he maintained in varying degrees for the next year. Over in Teen Titans, Robin wasn’t quite so honored but his name was strategically placed

above the logo starting with issue #5. And then there were the cameos. Some were uncredited, as in Batman’s brief appearances on the cover or interiors of Swing With Scooter #3-5 and Bob Hope #103, and others were a blatant bid for readers, like Metal Men #21’s cover promotion of a twopage Batman and Robin guest-shot. The TV series was no stranger to cameos, having initiated a recurring bit where various celebrities would pop their heads out of a window Nelson Riddle’s official soundtrack album had competition from four dozen while the Dynamic acts who covered or performed variations on Neal Hefti’s Batman theme song. TM and © DC Comics. Duo was scaling a The payoff in units sold was phenombuilding. The first of these—in April enal. Julius Schwartz’s New Look had 20’s first Bookworm episode—feaarrested the core Bat-books’ sales detured Jerry Lewis, a comedian whose cline but the difference between Batcomic book just happened to be pubman’s 1965 numbers (an average of lished by DC. Whether that scene in453,745 copies sold per issue) and the spired them or not, Arnold Drake and 1966 ones (898,470 copies) painted a Bob Oksner were soon at work on a vivid picture of the TV show’s impact full-fledged crossover for Adventures (Miller). At the outset, Carmine Inof Jerry Lewis #97 (on sale September fantino recalled, the title was selling 20) with the Joker as guest-villain. an astounding 98 or 99% of its print run. “A million copies, a million and a half copies; they sold amazing. Lots The Brave and the Bold #68 (art by Mike of money was pouring in and we still Sekowsky and Mike Esposito) and Jerry Lewis #97 (art by Bob Oksner) were among got the regular page rates,” the artist the DC issues cashing in on Batmania. . added ruefully. “Thirty dollars a page TM and © DC Comics. in those days” (Eury, “The Man Who Redesigned Batman” 24). When the fiscal year ended on September 30, The Wall Street Journal reported, National Periodical Publications “had net income of $3,500,000 […] on revenue of $65 million” (“Kinney Plans To Acquire…” 6). The entire entertainment industry was seeing green. Television networks that would have scoffed at superheroes a year earlier were rushing pilots into production for next winter. On the heels of Neal Hefti’s infectious Batman theme song, dozens of musicians released cover versions and Bat-themed singles of their own. British singer Donovan’s hit “Sunshine Superman” (including the line “Superman and Green Lan76

produce camp. In the mind of publisher John Goldwater, the self-deprecating humor of Marvel and the so-bad-it’s-good qualities of camp in Batman were interchangeable. All that mattered was that Archie was getting part of the superhero market-share. Late in 1965 (in issues dated January 1966), Archie’s pair of superhero comics were re-branded the Mighty Comics Group. If the evocation of the Marvel Comics Group and its “Mighty Marvel” nickname wasn’t enough, the interiors pushed the effect further by copying Lee’s credit box banter. Fly Man #35 boasted “eloquent editing by Rick Gee” [Richard Goldwater], “superb script by Jerry Ess” [Jerry Siegel], and “dazzling drawing by Paul Arr” [Paul Reinman]. In case fans somehow failed to catch on, the cover of that aforementioned paperback (reprinting five recent stories) urged readers to “marvel at their stupor deeds.” Whatever the failings of Fly Man and Mighty Crusaders, Siegel and company nonetheless knew what buttons to push to keep collectors coming back for more. In a time when fascination with 1940s superheroes was at its peak, it was a simple matter to earn favor with fans by reviving one of them. In Mighty Crusaders #4 (April 1966), Siegel and Reinman went for broke and brought back everyone!

Kids had their choice of trading card series featuring stills from the TV show or painted images produced by Norman Saunders. Batman TM and © DC Comics.

tern ain’t got nothing on me”) hit U.S. charts in July. Chicago radio producer Dick Orkin’s hilarious Chickenman serial (in two-and-a-half minute bursts) was so popular that it was soon syndicated nationally. A superhero action figure called Captain Action—who could be dressed as more than a dozen comics characters including Spider-Man, the Lone Ranger, Steve Canyon, and Batman himself—was a smash in toy departments.

The aptly-named “Too Many Super Heroes” had the Fireball, Inferno, Firefly, the Web, the Fox, Blackjack, Bob Phantom, Zambini the Miracle Man, Kardak the Mystic Magician, Steel Sterling, Mr. Justice, Captain Flag, and comparative newcomer Jaguar come out of retirement with an eye toward joining the Crusaders. As they took on the Hangman and the Wizard—two MLJ heroes who’d gone bad in 1965’s Fly Man #33—the eighteen crime-busters got further as-

Publishers rushed paperbacks into print featuring any costumed character they could get their hands on. The books ran the gamut from outright farce such as Lancer Books’ Captain Israel and Boy Chick (by Eric Reuben and Stan Kaye) to Lancer’s more dignified paperback compilations of Marvel’s Fantastic Four, Hulk, Spider-Man, and Thor (complete with a “super heroes with super problems” tagline via The New York Herald Tribune). TV-style sound effects plastered the back covers of Signet’s three volumes of 1950s Batman stories and prose novel Batman Vs. 3 Villains of Doom while the first of Tower’s four collections of recent superhero material was entitled Dynamo, Man of High Camp.

Mighty Archie at the Bat Tower was just cashing in on the trend, but Archie Comics’ Belmont imprint really meant it when they published their High Camp Superheroes paperback in April. Archie had gotten back into the superhero business in a naked ploy at mimicking the success of Marvel but did such a bad job of it that they’d virtually delivered a textbook on how to

Paul Reinman drew several specialty ads touting Mighty Comics along with stories like this one from Fly Man #35. . Fly Girl, the Shield TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc. The Fly TM © Joe Simon.

Siegel’s climax—in which the Wizard’s 1940s persona was brought to the present to shame his 1960s incarnation—was similarly novel. Even the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to superhero gatherings, for better or worse, was a forerunner of the cameo-laden company crossovers that began proliferating in the 1980s.

Paul Reinman’s busy cover for Mighty Crusaders #4. TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc. The Fly TM © Joe Simon.

sistance from kid sidekicks Dusty and Roy the Mighty (formerly Super) Boy who were temporarily plucked from the 1940s. On page 24, Fly-Man rejected the lot of them. Captain Flag, the Fox, and the Web decided to form their own team of Ultra-Men in Mighty Crusaders #5 while the Jaguar, Mr. Justice, and Steel Sterling united as the Terrific Three. Although widely mocked for decades to come, the story was exactly the sort of thing that frustrated older fans with Mighty Comics. As bad as the dialogue and plotting may have been, there were still flashes of the Jerry Siegel who co-created Superman. The concept of a superheroturned-villain would eventually be explored to the point of cliché but it was nearly unprecedented in 1966.

Nothing epitomized the conflict between concept and execution more than the Web. Originally published in Zip Comics #27-38 (1942-1943), the hero was long-retired and living in suburbia when he returned in Fly Man #36 (March 1966). John Raymond had promised his wife Rose that he’d never return to costumed crime-fighting, but he convinced her to relent just once so that he could track down a crook who’d swiped his Web alter ego. Once bitten, though, Raymond couldn’t quit and he secretly started working out to regain his A-game. The underlying conflict in his subsequent solo stories revolved around Raymond being browbeaten by his wife (and eventually his mother-in-law as well) over his continued heroics. The intent was surely to evoke the personal conflicts experienced by the likes of SpiderMan but the ongoing nagging of Rose Raymond was more shrill than funny. That’s not to say the feature didn’t have its moments. When the evil Iron-

The greatest obstacles to the Web’s fight against crime were his wife and mother-in-law, . as seen here in Fly Man #38. TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

fist burst into his home, the Web explained that he couldn’t fight back because he’d promised his wife that he’d quit. “Any super-hero who would let his little woman do that to him isn’t worth fighting,” the disgusted villain whined. Throwing off his armor, he stalked past the remains of the Raymonds’ front door and vowed to start a new life as a chicken farmer! Apart from the Web and the Shield, historian Lou Mougin observed, none of the Mighty heroes “was shown having a private life, a civilian identity, an occupation, non-heroic friends, or anything resembling a supporting cast. […] There was no way for the reader to identify with these onedimensional heroic figures. When he was getting his lumps, who cared?” (Mougin 45). As far as Archie was concerned, plenty of readers still did in 1966. Fly Man, which was already running solo stories starring other Mighty heroes, was repurposed into Mighty Comics with issue #40 (November 1966) and began spotlighting a rotating mix of

further in Life With Archie #48 by declaring resident bad boy Reggie Mantle as the aptly-named Evilheart. Making the leap from Little Archie, Mad Doctor Doom joined forces with the new bad guy and they both returned in Life #50. That issue’s 23-page gathering of Pureheart, Superteen, and Captain Hero as the United Three was essentially a big send-off for the run of superhero riffs. Certainly, they were gone from that title, replaced by a new “Man From R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E.” series that mocked the conventions of the spy craze and which debuted in Life With Archie #45. By the time the first Evilheart story appeared in February, though, Batmania was in full swing and plans escalated to expand the Archie-as-superhero conceit in a big way. The Reggie comic book, cancelled in 1965, returned as Reggie and Me #19 (August 1966) and a vehicle for more Evilheart escapades. Simultaneously, Betty and Me #3 put the blonde heroine’s Superteen alter ego front and center while ongoing Archie as Pureheart the Powerful and Jughead as Captain Hero titles premiered over the next two months. Archie Giant Series #142 reprinted several of the earlier stories. Even Archie’s pint-sized incarnation got into the act with a turn as Little Pureheart in Adventures of Little Archie #40-42. Little Archie writer-artist Dexter Taylor noted that the stories were a directive from editor Richard Goldwater and his father John. “I don’t know how successful that was,” he remarked. “I never got too much feedback on that. I used to get letters all the time, but not on Little Pureheart, so I don’t know if they were crazy about it or what” (Brown, “Dexter’s Taylor-Made Comics” 66). A contributor to Little Archie since 1957, Taylor became its primary creator when the series’ beloved developer Bob Bolling abruptly shifted to the teen Archie titles following issue #38 (Spring 1966). “The reason I stopped, I think, was that somebody told them I was looking for another job,” Bolling recalled. “They never told me but I think that’s why. So, they started giving me scripts by Frank Doyle. […] I do what I’m told and it was a challenge to me and difficult, but I did it.” After years of drawing the kid-sized Archie characters, the artist struggled with getting the proportions of their older selves right and credited fellow artists Harry Lucey and Dan DeCarlo in helping him through the transition (Brown, “The Adventurous Career of…Bob Bolling” 62).

The Mighty Heroes reprint giant was joined by a companion issue spotlighting Archie’s Pureheart the Powerful and friends. Mighty Crusaders TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc. The Fly TM © Joe Simon.

stars including the Web, the Shield, and the Black Hood. A month after the Belmont paperback, a second collection of Mighty reprints was released as the 25-cent color comic book Super Heroes Versus Super Villains #1. What’s interesting about Archie’s pursuit of the superhero audience was less the conventional titles than what happened in its bread-and-butter teen humor comics. It was not uncommon for the company to latch onto a fad of the day and frontload its covers with gags on the subject. Superheroes were no exception. In the October and November-dated issues alone, 15 of the 25 titles Archie published those months featured costumed characters. The surprise was how heavily the interiors focused on them, too. Having recast Archie, Betty, and Jughead as superheroes in separate 1965 stories, writer Frank Doyle took things a step

Along with Evilheart, Archie also fought the forces of C.R.U.S.H. as an agent of P.O.P. . (Protect Our Planet). TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

This Door Swings Both Ways No matter the circumstances, whether the transfer of Bolling, the retirement of Disney duck artist Carl Barks, or the firing of Jerry Siegel from DC’s Superman books, the departure of a celebrated creator was ultimately irrelevant to their respective publishers. They could be replaced. That reality didn’t make this late-breaking news item from December 1965’s The Comic Reader #44 any less startling: “Late the last week of November, Steve Ditko turned into Marvel the last Spiderman [sic] and Doctor Strange art that he would ever be doing for them.” On that fateful day, Roy Thomas remembers, “Ditko brought in pencils for one of his two series, and told Sol [Brodsky, production manager] that he’d finish the episode of each hero that he was working on, and that would be it” (Amash, “‘Roy the Boy’…” 7). “Sol was sitting there with a memo on his desk to give Steve a raise of $5 or so a page, or whatever they could afford,” Thomas added, but it was never delivered (Amash, “Roy Thomas Interview” 18). Internally, the departure was hardly a surprise. Ditko and Stan Lee hadn’t been speaking to each other for a year, the plotter-artist instead delivering his plotted and illustrated pages to Brodsky. The cartoonist’s motivation for leaving has never been clarified, though, resulting in a half-century of speculation tying it to everything from Lee and Ditko’s supposed disagreements over the true identity of the Green Goblin to a failure on Martin Goodman’s part to make good on promised royalties to the Marvel creators for use of their artwork in licensed products. “I know why I left Marvel but no one else in this universe knew or knows why,” Ditko declared in 2001. “It may be

This milestone sequence of Spider-Man’s triumph through sheer force of will remains . a series high point for many fans. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

of mild interest to realize that Stan Lee chose not to know, to hear why, I left” (Ditko, “Some Background” 35). Whatever his reasons, Ditko went out at the top of his game. Amazing Spider-Man #31-33 (dated December 1965-February 1966 but on sale prior to his November resignation) are justly regarded as a series milestone. Nearly two years earlier, Peter Parker had donated blood to save the life of his Aunt May, despite the implications of his biological make-up having been altered by a radioactive spider. With May now dying of blood poisoning, a guilt-ridden Spider-Man sought out Doctor Curt Connors in the hope of finding a cure. Connors, still grateful for the hero’s help in stopping his 1963 rampage as the Lizard, set his sights on an experimental serum, only to lose it when the agents of the mysterious Master Planner stole it. The villain—actually Doctor Octopus—was taken aback when his hysterical old foe stormed his underwater complex and fled for his life as the walls came tumbling down. Wedged beneath tons of machinery, symbolically lowered the curtain on his Amazing Spider-Man tenure in these Stan Lee-dialogued panels Spider-Man was mocked by the aban- Steve Ditko from issue #33 even though he remained on the book for five more episodes. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. doned vial of serum just yards ahead of full-page image of the web-slinger triumphantly lifting him as accelerating drops of water portended the ceiling the metal debris. giving way to the river above. As issue #32 closed, Aunt May slipped deeper into a coma, Dr. Connors’ miracle cure— There were more obstacles in his path but the worst was belacking the crucial serum—was losing its potency, and an hind him. With Connors’ cure in doctors’ hands, a bruised immobilized Spider-Man hung his head. “I’ve failed!! Just but more assertive Peter Parker visited the Daily Bugle ofnow—when it counted the most—I’ve failed!!” fices, insisting that J. Jonah Jameson give him a fair price for his latest Spider-Man photos. Returning to Aunt May’s bedside, Peter allowed himself a moment to exhale as she clutched his hand and murmured his name.

But guilt and responsibility were powerful motivators. In ASM #33, recalling how he’d failed to save his Uncle Ben in 1962, Spidey swore that he wouldn’t let his Aunt May die, too. Forcing him past his limits and steeling his resolve, the young hero slowly forced himself upwards, bearing unimaginable weight on his back. Pacing the sequence to convey the momentum of the struggle, Ditko progressively decreased the number of panels on each page, going from seven to six to four before culminating with a powerful

Silently admiring the boy’s devotion, May’s doctor mused, “Too bad there aren’t more young men like that. Too bad someone like him can’t be an idol for teenagers to imitate… instead of some mysterious, unknown thrill-seeker like— Spider-Man.” Simultaneously, the window of May’s hospital room framed Peter as he walked away, its progressively closing window blinds symbolizing the end of an era. Enhanced by Lee’s dialogue, the Master Planner trilogy is widely regarded as Ditko’s finest hour on the series.

When he dialogued this caption for Amazing Spider-Man #35, Stan Lee had no . idea who Ditko intended this character to be. The Looter TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

The drawbacks of Lee and Ditko’s cold war were occasionally apparent in the finished scripts. A subplot in ASM #30 had introduced the Master Planner’s men but an unwitting Lee dialogued the story as if they were working for that issue’s primary villain, the Cat. Issue #35 ended with a teaser panel for an upcoming villain that Lee had never seen, resulting in this copy: “Next ish…a swingin’ super-villain, so different, so new, we can’t even tell you his name yet! Let’s meet him together in Spider-Man #36! ‘Nuff said!”

“I felt constrained to do it exactly like Ditko. I tried to ghost him, because in the back of my mind I felt sure that Ditko would come back to it. I could not believe that anyone could establish a book for three years, have a great success, and walk away from it. I didn’t know the depth of Ditko’s commitment and dedication. He just would never look back. I thought, ‘In three or four months, he’ll come back and he’ll work it out.’” (Ridout 39) In his last Spider-Man issues, Ditko moved Norman Osborn—seen here with son Harry—from the background to the foreground but had not yet revealed his greatest secret. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Ditko’s run on Doctor Strange climaxed neatly in his final installment with a showdown between the demonic Dormammu and the cosmic Eternity in Strange Tales #146 (July 1966), allowing incoming plotter-artist Bill Everett a fresh start (with dialogue by Lee and Denny O’Neil). Amazing SpiderMan was a different story and Lee used the loose ends to his advantage, gambling that a big pay-off on the lingering subplots would hold readers who were horrified by the new look.

Having anticipated that the storyteller’s days at Marvel were numbered, Lee had written a Spider-Man guest-appearance into Daredevil #16-17 (May-June 1966) with the specific goal of trying out John Romita as Ditko’s successor. One would be hard pressed to find two artists who were more different. Ditko’s characters tended to be slighter of build and less traditionally handsome. Romita’s looked like the actors who would play them in a movie. Nonetheless, the newcomer made an effort to sublimate his natural style, as he explained in a 1994 interview:

Ditko’s idea to introduce a “planted” character who’d eventually emerge as the true face of the Green Goblin had moved forward in his final two issues. ASM #37 and #38 (June-July 1966) identified him as Norman Osborn, father of Peter’s college classmate Harry and a businessman with criminal connections. Plotting an issue for the first time in over a year, Lee went for broke in Amazing Spider-Man #39 and revealed that, just as Ditko intended, the Green Goblin was the elder Osborn. Discovering his foe’s true identity, the Goblin kidnapped Peter Parker outside the teen’s home and engaged in a protracted account of his origins well into issue #40. An explosion conveniently gave Osborn partial amnesia, not only erasing his knowledge of Spidey’s real name but also his entire criminal past. Out of compassion, the hero let him off the hook as the Goblin’s costume went up in smoke.

John Romita’s first two Spider-Man issues . tore the masks off hero and villain alike. . Spider-Man TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

If the resolution seemed pat, it was not much different than other developments in the first Lee-Romita issues. The writer-editor had fretted almost from the start over reader complaints that Peter’s classmates picked on him too much and that J. Jonah Jameson took advantage of the teenager and that Aunt May was a drag. In ASM #39,

Mary Jane was a flighty party girl who loved thrills as much as Betty Brant detested them. It was one more detail of the immediate post-Ditko era that demonstrated how drastically the tone of the series had changed. The conflicted loner who made the hard choices suddenly seemed to have it pretty good. Romita’s romance comic pedigree only enhanced the effect, endowing Peter and his friends with fashion model good looks. The Amazing Spider-Man was becoming a different creature, losing the unique bite that catapulted it to stardom. Many fans didn’t seem to mind, a fact borne out by issue #39’s “How Green Was My Goblin” being voted Best FullLength Story in the Alley Awards. For all its derivative qualities, though, the Lee-Romita Spider-Man would ultimately prove quite satisfying in its own right, and its more commercial guise pushed sales to heights never dreamed of in the early 1960s.

Mary Jane Watson left Peter Parker speechless in this panel from Spider-Man #43. Original art by Romita from issue #42 courtesy of Heritage Auctions. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Harry Osborn, Gwen Stacy, and even the bullying Flash Thompson were suddenly sympathizing with Peter. Parker’s cool factor increased in ASM #41 when he bought a motorcycle. In the same issue, Lee laid the groundwork for reducing Aunt May’s presence with an eye toward her moving in with friend Anna Watson. First, though, there was the matter of Anna’s niece, the unseen subject of another long-running bit in the series. After two years of evading blind dates with a girl he assumed to be a crashing bore, Peter was finally cornered at the end of ASM #42. Bracing for the worst, he opened the front door and his jaw dropped. Standing before him was a stunning redhead in a sleeveless black top and blue jeans. “Face it, tiger,” Mary Jane Watson cooed. “You just hit the jackpot!” “The go-go dancers were hot then,” Romita recalled. “Stan wanted Mary Jane to be a wild, real flashy, streamlined girl. Someone who was really today.” Modeling her on actress Ann-Margret, the artist added “dimples and a cleft to the chin” to distinguish her from Gwen Stacy. “When I did Gwen,” Romita continued, “I did her as icy and cold and aloof as Ditko did; and when Mary Jane came in, I made her as fiery as we could.” Although the panel that introduced the character has become a beloved image for fans, the penciler was personally disappointed by it. “I wish I could do it over,” he explained. “People thought it was good, they still remember it. But I wanted it to be something that would really knock people’s socks off” (Salicrup 39). 83

The Ascent of Stan The Marvel brand got a considerable push from a ubiquitous syndicated article by Dave Burgin on its contemporary heroes in December of 1965, touting sales of “33 million [copies] annually, double the figure three years ago.” Throughout 1966, the Bullpen Bulletins pages in every Marvel issue boasted of celebrity visits to its offices by the likes of film director Federico Fellini, on-air mentions by disc jockeys, radio interviews with people like CBS’ Mike Wallace, and the feature articles appearing in “more than a hundred newspapers from coast to coast.” The gregarious Lee made an ideal interview subject, his quips and personality inevitably overshadowing any of his collaborators. That name recognition opened a door that made Martin Goodman’s eyes light up: merchandising. The Merry Marvel Marching Society had been a smash with

The Marvel Super-Heroes animated series was played up in house ads. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

a reputed 40,000 members by the start of 1966 and tiein items that included a Spider-Man t-shirt and six-foot poster, each using Ditko art. They were followed by Kirby-drawn sweatshirts featuring the Hulk and Thing and a wave of licensed product: the Lancer paperbacks, Marvel Mini-Books (sold in vending machines), comic book and record sets from Golden Books, Aurora models devoted to Spider-Man, Captain America, and the Hulk, buttons, bubble gum cards, stickers, board games, jigsaw puzzles, hats, and Halloween costumes. In a year when television was driving sales, that fall’s syndicated Marvel Super-Heroes animated series was perhaps the company’s most high-profile licensing deal of all…and maybe its least profitable. Robert Lawrence, part of the Grantray-Lawrence production company that generated the cartoons on behalf of Krantz Films, recalled working out an “unbelievable” deal with Martin Goodman and his son Chip largely because “they didn’t know what they had and where to go. Believe it or not, in this contract I was able to obtain participation in the merchandising rights, and a continuing interest in it” (McGovern 43). Earmarking five heroes (Captain America, the Hulk, Iron Man, the Sub-Mariner, and Thor), Lawrence put together 13 three-chapter adventures for each of them and ultimately had a 65-episode package to sell to local TV stations. Produced with a small budget, the cartoons were relatively primitive but they had a novel selling point. The frames were reproduced directly from original comic book panels of the past five years. Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Don Heck, and Gene Colan had retroactively become animation storyboard artists…for free. Kirby, for one, wasn’t happy. “All of a sudden there were his drawings being animated,” his biograJack Kirby and Steve Ditko resented seeing their artwork used . in merchandising without residual compensation. . The Hulk, Spider-Man, the Thing TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

pher Mark Evanier explained, “and it was like, ‘if I’d known they were gonna do that with it I would’ve demanded to be paid a lot more.’ And he went to Martin Goodman and complained, and Goodman said, ‘Well, I didn’t make any money off the show’” (McGovern 47). Indeed, even Stan Lee, who wrote or revised dialogue on the cartoons, likely did so as part of his salaried editorial duties with no extra pay. Nor was anyone but Goodman profiting from the spate of reprints cropping up in 1966. Along with the 1962-1964 era stories filling out that year’s annuals, 25-cent giants Marvel Collectors’ Item Classics #2 (April 1966) and Marvel Tales #3 (July 1966) launched ongoing titles that reprinted the early Marvel hero stories for the benefit of the scores of new fans. The one-shot Marvel Super Heroes reprint collection, placed on the schedule in support of the animated series of the same name, followed suit in July.

As the Marvel fan base grew, Marvel Collector’s Item Classics and Marvel Super-Heroes . offered newcomers a way to catch up. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Even the 12-cent Fantasy Masterpieces (replacing Patsy Walker on the schedule) tried to pull in superhero fans by making the artists on its 1959-1962-vintage monster and suspense reprints the selling point rather than the stories themselves. It was undeniably flattering for Kirby, Ditko, Dick Ayers, Don Heck, and Joe Sinnott to see their names played up on the covers but Marvel, like every other publisher, didn’t pay for second-run stories and flattery didn’t pay the bills.

Marvel’s core artists were touted by name on the cover of . Fantasy Masterpieces #1. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Kirby’s resentment for Lee was growing, as well. Steve Ditko and Wally Wood’s frustrations over plotting stories and seeing Lee flatly credited as “writer” on the finished product were shared by Marvel’s foremost artist but his position was untenable. With a wife and four children to support, he could ill afford to cut his ties with Marvel and look for work elsewhere, particularly at DC where resentment still smoldered in the wake of his 1959 Jack Schiff lawsuit. 85

So Kirby bit his tongue and forged ahead as a loyal company man. Awakening to an angry phone call on January 9, 1966, Stan Lee discovered that Roz Kirby wasn’t as good at maintaining her silence. Was Lee, she demanded to know, responsible for the Marvel profile by Nat Freeland in that day’s New York Herald Tribune’s Sunday Magazine that elevated Stan at her husband’s expense? (Evanier, Kirby: King of Comics 147). Glibly expounding on the groundbreaking virtues and psychology of the Marvel heroes, Freeland fairly chanted “Lee! Lee! Lee!” until the final paragraphs’ introduction of his collaborator. Reducing Kirby to a monosyllabic receptionist, the reporter described him “sucking a huge green cigar” and declared that “if you stood next to him on the subway, you would peg him for the assistant foreman in a girdle factory.” Jack wasn’t laughing. Roy Thomas, who sat in on the late 1965 interview, emphasized that he witnessed no malice on Lee’s part. “Stan is always ‘on,’ and he’s promoting Stan, but he’s also promoting Jack. I saw that, y’know? And Jack would jump in with his own pronouncements, and Stan strides around, and Jack just kind of sits there, but he was eloquent enough in his own way. And

The events of Fantastic Four #48-50—illustrated by Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott—were soon immortalized as “the Galactus Trilogy.” TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

the reporter is more interested in Stan, but at the same time is talking to Jack.”

pages wrapped up the past six months’ Inhumans adventure. What happened next was worth the wait.

The article’s ultimate slant, Thomas concluded, “was just one of those unfortunate situations that I think really did heap a lot of coals on the fire, and Stan always considered it an important turning point in his relationship with Jack. But there’s no way to prove that or straighten it out. How do you say, ‘I didn’t do it. I wasn’t responsible for what this reporter wrote’?” (Amash, “Roy Thomas Interview” 18). In the aftermath, a significant concession was made effective with issues on sale in August (Fantastic Four #56 and Thor #133): The traditional “written by/ penciled by” credits were replaced with variations of “A Stan Lee-Jack Kirby Production.”

Something…someone…was approaching the Milky Way and the entity represented a grave enough threat that the Skrulls—the series’ resident evil aliens—were compelled to black out their own solar system to escape detection by that unseen force. The skies above Earth turned to flame and panic set in. The end of the world, it seemed, was nigh. It was hardly reassuring when the Watcher, a moon-based alien from earlier issues who was strictly charged with observing events on the world below, broke his non-interference pact to set foot on Earth and explain that he’d created the illusion of flames himself in a futile attempt to shield the planet.

Fantastic Voyages Blissfully unaware of this turmoil, fans only saw that Lee and Kirby were at a creative pinnacle which manifested in Fantastic Four #48-50 (March-May 1966) as something later dubbed “the Galactus Trilogy.” Typical of Kirby’s new freeform storytelling, the plot was not neatly compartmentalized and FF #48’s first seven

Galactus’ garish color scheme in FF #48 was immediately replaced with a more somber purple for issues #49 and #50. The “G” on his chest was soon dropped, as well. . TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

With each succeeding development, Kirby cut away to outer space as a gleaming bald man on a surfboard (!) soared closer and closer, finally arriving in New York City and silently transmitting a signal. An enormous sphere entered the atmosphere, opening to display a photographic collage and— on the last page—a giant in magenta and blue armor. This was Galactus and he

FF #49’s middle chapter split the action in three directions: the Watcher sent the Human Torch across the cosmos to find a device capable of stopping Galactus while the rest of the Fantastic Four made largely futile efforts at slowing down the destroyer of worlds. Slugged by the Thing in issue #48, the Silver Surfer conveniently found himself in the apartment of his attacker’s blind girlfriend Alicia. Oblivious to concepts as basic as hunger or compassion or anything that didn’t involve serving his master, the alien softened in the young woman’s presence. Emboldened by his newfound conscience, the herald vowed to rise up against Galactus.

The Silver Surfer’s first contact with humanity awoke something within him. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

The rebellion, as detailed in FF #50’s third act, went about as well as the Fantastic Four’s earlier attempts, but the timely arrival of the Human Torch turned the tide. In a state of shock from witnessing wonders beyond his comprehension (“We’re like ants…just ants…”), the Torch handed off his secret weapon to Mister Fantastic, who pointed the Ultimate Nullifier at their foe. Apoplectic, Galactus screeched that the device would destroy Earth far more definitively than anything he could

intended to drain Earth of “all elemental life” for his own self-preservation. In that month’s Bullpen Bulletins, Lee described his Marvel Method of producing comics, remarking that he need merely give Kirby and company “the germ of an idea, and they make up all the details as they go along, drawing and plotting out the story.” Comments like that led some to joke that Lee’s pitch for this issue was merely a command to have the FF meet God. While that seems rather extreme, one thing should be certain. The guy on the surfboard wasn’t in the original pitch. Pressing his partner for details, Lee recalled, “Jack replied something to the effect that a supremely powerful gent like Galactus, a godlike giant who roamed the galaxies, would surely require the services of a herald who could serve him as an advance guard” (Lee 206). Dubbed “the Surfer” in Kirby’s margin notes, the character was given the catchier moniker of the Silver Surfer in Lee’s finished script (Amash, “Roy Thomas Interview” 22).

The Human Torch delivered the key to Galactus’ defeat in FF #50. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

The Surfer was exiled to the planet he fought to save. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

The Silver Surfer’s cosmic-powered revolt against Galactus couldn’t end well. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

do but conceded that he’d perish with it. Accepting the Watcher’s terms that he never again molest Earth, the chastened destroyer left the planet…but not before, in a fit of pique, exiling his upstart herald to the world he’d championed. “I found that I’d made a villain out of God,” Kirby remembered in a 1970 interview, “and I couldn’t make a villain out of him. And I couldn’t treat him as a villain, so I had to back away from him. I backed away from Galactus, and I felt he was so awesome, and in some way he was God, who would accompany God, but some kind of fallen angel? And that’s who the Silver Surfer was. And at the end of the story, Galactus condemned him to Earth, and he couldn’t go into space anymore. So the Silver Surfer played his role in that manner” (Morrow 10). The Galactus Trilogy’s impact went far beyond being a rousing adventure story. The beats that Kirby employed in pacing it would gradually become embedded in the execution of the modern superhero serial. “While the idea of introducing the main villain

on the final page had been used before, and as recently as [that] month’s The X-Men #17,” Tom DeFalco explained, “this particular cliffhanger [FF #48] was so powerful that it permanently changed the structure of [superhero] comic book storytelling. To this day, multipart stories are constructed to follow the formula established by Fantastic Four #48” (DeFalco 115). The final quarter of FF #50 had focused on the members coming to terms with their experiences, including a sequence where Johnny (Human Torch) Storm enrolled at Metro College and made a soon-to-be best friend in the form of a tall Native American named Wyatt Wingfoot. On the day after Doomsday, the entire cast needed a few moments to decompress and the following issue demonstrated precisely the right way to follow up a story involving an extinction-level threat.

Despondent over his monstrous appearance and its impact on his relationship with Alicia Masters, the Thing found sympathy with an unnamed stranger who used his formidable scientific prowess to transfer the hero’s monstrous appearance to himself. Fueled by professional jealously for Reed Richards, the man infiltrated the Fantastic Four with an eye toward killing his rival at the first opportunity. The real

FF #51’s tale of tragedy, betrayal, and heroism was . regarded as one of the Lee-Kirby team’s finest moments. . TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Thing, having reverted to his human Ben Grimm persona, gave up trying to expose the charade and decided to take his chances with Alicia. For the impostor, the up-close view of his supposed nemesis was a revelation. When Mister Fantastic was trapped in the other-dimensional Negative Zone, “the Thing” not only leapt in to save him but sacrificed his own life to do so. Abruptly regaining his rocky exterior, Ben shambled back to the team’s headquarters. Whatever the impostor—never named in the story—had intended to do, Reed eulogized, “he paid the full price—and, he paid it—like a man.” The Galactus saga may have represented Fantastic Four at its most cosmic but FF #51’s “This Man, This Monster” was perhaps the one LeeKirby issue that best represented its sense of heart, heroism, and self-sacrifice. Having done cosmic and intimate, Fantastic Four moved on to groundbreaking with issue #52 (July 1966) and the Black Panther. Since his and Kirby’s introduction of black soldier Gabe Jones in 1963’s Sgt. Fury #1, Lee had been quietly advocating a more representative picture of the population in Marvel’s comics, also encouraging his artists to include black characters in crowd scenes. “I wasn’t thinking of civil rights,” he said in a 1998 interview. “I had a lot of friends who were black and we had artists who were black. So it occurred to me… why aren’t there any black heroes? Just like today I think there ought to be more Hispanic heroes, there ought to be some Scandinavian heroes, and Native American heroes. I think we ought to play up all the possibilities” (Brodsky 34). Comic books’ first black superhero was not introduced without trepidation, of course, and Martin Goodman surely had some concerns about possible backlash in some of the country’s markets. Clad in an obsidian costume, the Black Panther was clearly identified as a black man via his partially exposed face in early stages of the comic book’s production, but his original cowl was changed to a full face mask before publication. Set in a mysterious African kingdom called Wakanda, much of that first issue involved the Panther—Wakanda’s

The introduction of the first black superhero in Fantastic Four #52 was an electrifying . moment for African American readers. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

chieftain—demonstrating his considerable fighting prowess and heightened senses as he gave the FF a run for their money. Having broken the ice with his unconventional gettingto-know-you routine, the stranger pulled off his mask and spent the first half of FF #53 detailing the particulars of his history. Wakanda, he explained, was an enormously wealthy and technologically advanced territory that sat on a massive deposit of a vibration-absorbing metal called Vibranium. An ivory hunter named Klaw had actually 89

killed the Panther’s father ten years ago, and the young ruler (first identified as T’Challa in 1968) had summoned the Fantastic Four when the assassin seemed poised to return. The Black Panther ultimately managed to set Klaw running, but the villain made an early return in issue #56, transformed into a crimson manifestation of living sound. Typical of the Lee-Kirby creations, the details of the Black Panther’s creation are murky. One account asserts that Kirby initiated the character via a hero called the Coal Tiger clad in a

The pivotal moment of the Black Panther’s unmasking was held until the end of FF #52. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

striped yellow shirt and briefs. Roy Thomas is skeptical, remarking, “I’ve no proof the impetus for a black superhero came from Stan—but one can’t automatically assume it came from Jack, either. It’s equally possible that Stan came up with the idea, maybe even the name ‘Black Panther’—and if and when he did, there right in front of him was Jack with his very un-African ‘Coal Tiger’ concept drawing (since there ain’t no tigers in Africa), ready to alter it in an instant into the dark garb of T’Challa, son of T’Chaka” (Thomas, “Of Peaks and Panthers” 2).

rold joined the cast of Modeling With Millie in issue #48 (by Denny O’Neil and Stan Goldberg). Two months after that, Lee and Don Heck introduced African American scientist Bill Foster as Hank (Goliath) Pym’s new assistant in Avengers #32 (September 1966), the first of two issues involving a group of white supremacists called the Sons of the Serpent.

According to Kirby, the character’s gestation extended back to mid-1965 and Martin Goodman’s supposed edict that he and Lee create new superheroes in Fantastic Four who could be spun off into their own series (Evanier, “Jack F.A.Q.s: Fall 2005” 13). While details of the story are chronologically questionable, the claim is also a stretch in another respect. If the goal was truly to create characters that could carry their own book, a commercially risky black superhero made little sense. Regardless, Lee was serious about diversification within the regular Marvel titles. Native American Wyatt Wingfoot quickly rose to prominence in Fantastic Four, holding his own alongside the team as early as the Black Panther two-parter. The same month as FF #53, black model Jill Jer-

Most of the new Marvel villains of 1966 had no connection to hot button issues. Batroc the Leaper (Tales of Suspense #75), the Looter (Amazing Spider-Man #36), the Gladiator (Daredevil #18), Boomerang (Tales To Astonish #81), the Rhino (Amazing Spider-Man #41), and the Living Laser (Avengers #34) were colorful if straightforward costumed thieves. Others, notably Black Bolt’s mad brother Maximus (Fantastic Four #47), the otherworldly Collector (Avengers #28), computer intelligence Quasimodo (Fantastic Four Annual #4), and the Super-Adaptoid (Tales of Suspense #82) aimed higher. It was in the pages of Thor, though, that Lee and Kirby seemed to be striving to one-up Galactus. Formally known as Journey Into Mystery, the comic book was officially renamed with issue #126 (March 1966) and accelerated the roller coaster ride it had been on. Pluto, Greek god of the underworld, was cleverly cast as a slick Hollywood producer who got Hercules to sign a contract agreeing to consign himself to Hades (Thor #127130).

Bill Foster premiered in the Don Heck-illustrated Avengers #32. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

No sooner had he helped his new pal out of that jam than Thor headed into outer space with Tana Nile, a female Colonizer from Rigel who maneuvered the Thunder God into helping them stop a menace from the mysterious Black Galaxy. Kirby had been incorporating photographic collages into his Marvel work for a few years

at this point, but the sight that greeted readers on the last page of Thor #132 was easily his most effective and freakish to date. Looming before Thor and a Rigellian Recorder was a world whose topography was a human face. “I have been waiting for you,” Ego the Living Planet declared. Defeated by Thor in issue #133, Ego wasn’t sorry to see him go. With no time to catch his breath, the Thunder God headed to a European mountain called Wundagore and met a hightech Doctor Moreau called the High Evolutionary who was evolving animals into vaguely human medieval knights in his service (Thor #134-136). Still spread across the Marvel line with frequent layout duties and pinch-hitting, Kirby seemed to reserve his greatest enthusiasm for the FF, Thor, and his beloved Captain America. Cap’s solo strip in Tales of Suspense had left its 1940s background for the 1960s effective with issue #72 (December 1965) but the shadow of World War Two still loomed large. TOS #78 reunited the hero with his wartime ally Nick Fury and earned him an open invitation to work with S.H.I.E.L.D., something that held particular appeal thanks to a smitten Cap’s meeting with one of the spy agency’s operatives (later known as both Agent 13 and Sharon Carter) a few issues earlier in TOS #75-76. Captain America’s alliance with S.H.I.E.L.D. led to a mingling of adversaries with references to Mentallo and the Fixer (from Strange Tales #141-143) and frequent appearances by A.I.M. (Advanced Idea Mechanics), a science combine whose members dressed like beekeepers. Initially known as THEM (beginning in Tales of Suspense #78), they established themselves as a force to be reckoned with in TOS #79 by reviving Nazi horror the Red Skull after 20 years in suspended animation and then unveiling their ultimate achievement. The glowing Cosmic Cube could do just about whatever the person holding it desired and Cap came dangerously close to losing everything before he made the Skull drop it in TOS #81. Once S.H.I.E.L.D. settled into the firmament of Captain America’s solo series, the feature finally seemed to have a particular direction—and its

Jack Kirby’s employment of photo collages dated back to 1964’s Fantastic Four #29, even finding their way into . the Galactus Trilogy before the artist used the form to visualize Ego the Living Planet in Thor #132. Traditional pencils (with Vince Colletta inks) brought the being to life in issue #133. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Nick Fury, S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Cosmic Cube became inextricably linked with Captain America over the course of 1966. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

star a purpose—beyond just marking time between issues of Avengers. It was the sort of development whose impact was only evident in hindsight, much like Tales To Astonish #77’s transformative story in which Rick Jones—wrongly believing the Hulk was dead—broke his silence and revealed that the green behemoth was really Bruce Banner. In the short term, the disclosure didn’t seem to matter much since the monster was rarely reverting to “puny Banner.” Further out, with the necessity for secret identity games extinguished, the focus fell purely on its outcast star’s status as a fugitive and a wanderer.

book’s companion feature, the Sub-Mariner. Twenty-seven years after creating the character, Bill Everett was drawing him again. Everett had been thunderstruck when he’d seen a picture of his creation in the 1965 Playboy preview of Jules Feiffer’s The Great Comic Book Heroes. Concluding that “comics must really be doing pretty good,” he sent a telegram to Lee that weekend and received a prompt phone response on Monday: “Come back to work” (Thomas, “Everett on Everett” 27). Despite his ill-fated turn drawing Daredevil #1 a few years earlier, Everett was welcomed back to Marvel with open arms. He was not alone.

The Young (and Middle-Aged) Rascals While Stan Lee continued to script the Hulk series, its visuals were in a constant state of flux. Working from Kirby layouts, everyone from Mike Esposito to Gil Kane to John Romita to Bill Everett provided finished art, culminating in Tales To Astonish #84’s art credit to “almost the whole blamed Bullpen” (with Jerry Grandenetti doing primary pencils). After that, John Buscema took over for three issues while Everett was reassigned as the inker of the

Cover art by Jack Kirby and John Romita. . TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

The aforementioned Buscema, who’d cut his ties with the industry in 1960 to go into advertising, returned to pencil a few stories for ACG before Stan Lee phoned him with a personal invitation to come back to Marvel. Characterizing his first Hulk story as “a disaster,” Buscema recalled that Lee told him he was “missing the boat” and suggested he bone up on Jack Kirby. “I took a pile of books home and I devoured the stuff,” he continued. “And that’s how I got back into

Still, Thomas intended to do things differently on the books he was taking over. “At first,” he explained, “Werner [Roth] was going to go on plotting the stories [for X-Men] and then I said that didn’t make sense, I was the writer and wanted to plot my own stories, not accept what an artist gave me. It didn’t matter that much to Stan but it mattered to me” (Mougin, “Roy Thomas” 16).

comics. Without Jack Kirby, I don’t think I’d ever have stayed, because my style was not comic-oriented; it was advertising” (Evanier, “John Buscema: The San Diego 2001 Interview” 11).

Building on what came before him, Thomas revisited old villains, filled in missing pieces (like explaining in Sgt. Fury #34 how the Howling Commandos got together or detailing their alluded-to D-Day mission in Sgt. Fury Annual #2), and tossed off fun connective bits for those interested in the greater Marvel tapestry, as when Jasper Sitwell’s father showed up in the 1940s-based Sgt. Fury #36.

Jack Abel, firmly entrenched on DC’s war comics, spent eleven months inking Iron Man as “Gary Michaels” (Tales of Suspense #7381, 83) before getting cold feet. “I still considered In a rare two title crossover, an Iron Man-Sub-Mariner DC to be the big battle in Tales to Astonish #82 continued from Tales of Suspense #80. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. publisher of comics,” Abel explained, “and I didn’t want to jeopardize my position there doing too much work for Marvel” (Kraft 43).

“I saw myself as a continuer,” the writer explained, “somebody who should just keep the books going with the same feel. Since I was a relatively blank slate, I was able to do it. When Stan saw the couple of Charlton stories I’d written earlier in more of a Gardner Fox style, he wasn’t too impressed. It’s probably a good thing I already had my job at Marvel at that point!” (Amash, “‘Roy the Boy’ in the Marvel Age of Comics” 9).

DC may have drawn a line in the sand at some point in 1966 since both Abel and Mike Esposito (still using his Mickey Demeo pseudonym) abruptly stopped working for the competition before the year’s end. Gene Colan, who’d become the new penciler on Daredevil with issue #20 after John Romita moved to Spider-Man, cast his lot with Marvel. Comparing DD and his regular gigs on Iron Man and Sub-Mariner to his shrinking DC romance work, Colan could do the math on which company would bring in the most income. The fact that the June 1966 edition of Bullpen Bulletins had outed him as “Adam Austin” might have helped the decision, too. Amidst the shuffling of artists, there were prominent developments on the script front, too, as Lee began handing off series to his new assistants. Denny O’Neil followed Roy Thomas on Modeling With Millie and Patsy and Hedy along with dialoguing Doctor Strange in Strange Tales and the odd one-off issue here and there. Steve Skeates scripted a few issues of Kid Colt Outlaw and Two Gun Kid before Lee’s brother Larry Lieber got the Marvel Westerns all to himself. Roy Thomas, whom Jack Kirby immortalized as young S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Jasper Sitwell in Strange Tales #144, inherited three titles in the Marvel mainstream: Sgt. Fury (beginning with issue #29: April 1966), X-Men (issue #20: May 1966), and Avengers (issue #35: December 1966). At the same time, he dialogued two Steve Ditko Doctor Strange stories. “I felt a little embarrassed about having my name first,” he recalled of the credit boxes, “but on the other hand you just open up a peck of troubles if you start fooling around with that kind of thing” (Mougin, “Roy Thomas” 19).

Clean-cut S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Jasper Sitwell was based on young Marvel writer Roy Thomas. . Art by Jack Kirby and Howard Purcell from Strange Tales #144. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Copyrights were renewed every twenty-eight years and Captain America co-creator Joe Simon had made it known that he intended to reclaim the property. “Before the new copyright laws of 1978,” Simon later explained, “there was a fuzzy area of interpretation as to who was entitled to renew, the author or the ‘proprietor,’ meaning owner or publisher” (Simon 205). Learning that Simon had requested certificates of copyright from the U.S. Copyright Office on Captain America Comics #1-10 (19401941) in his own name, Goodman moved quickly to reprint stories from those issues…with Simon and Jack Kirby’s credits removed.

In the beginning, Lee edited Thomas’ stories ruthlessly, sometimes so late in the game that corrections had to be made on print-ready pages that were already in the hands of production manager Sol Brodsky. Early in 1966, Thomas recalled, something changed: “Stan told me he’d decided that he’d been changing some dialogue because it needed changing, but he went on, ’Sometimes, I think I’ve just been trying to make it read like I wrote it instead of you, which doesn’t make any sense, because I’m not writing it.’ I know Sol had been pleading with him to ease up on the corrections. Stan said, ‘From now on, just show me the first and last page of any story you write, and if they’re okay, I’ll assume the rest is okay, too.’ … After that, things went pretty smoothly.” (Amash, “‘Roy the Boy’ in the Marvel Age of Comics” 9)

Simon’s decision to exclude Jack Kirby—who’d developed Cap alongside him—from the legal action would prove to be ill-advised. Already sensitive over the credit issues on his current Marvel work, Kirby was none too happy to learn that his former partner was claiming sole responsibility for Captain America, too. Using that to his A Golden Age Captain America reprint series in Fantasy Masterpieces advantage, Goodman persuaded was instigated by a lawsuit filed by Joe Simon. . TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. Jack to sign a deposition on July Along with his writing responsi12, 1966, that documented his bilities, Thomas was technically assigned to edit Fantasy own part in the character’s creation. In exchange, the pubMasterpieces, retooled with issue #3 as a 25-cent giant that lisher promised Kirby would receive an amount equal to sandwiched its old monster stories with reprints of CapSimon if an out-of-court settlement was reached (Howe tain America tales from 1940. “I never ‘edited’ FM,” Thom77). More than three years passed before that day came. as told American Comic Book Chronicles. “Stan chose the During that same 1966 time frame, Carl Burgos made a le[superhero] leads for some time. I had more leeway on the gal challenge of his own to reclaim ownership of the Hubackups, as time went by.” man Torch, which he had created in 1939. Distinct from the Unlike the more recent material, Marvel possessed no teenage Torch that Lee and Kirby had been using in Fantasstats of those 25-year old stories and went to considerable tic Four since 1961, Burgos’ character hadn’t been strictly work to reproduce them, toning down content to meet human at all. Rather, he was an android who, along with Comics Code standards in the process. While that might Cap and the Sub-Mariner, had been one of Timely Comics’ have sounded like more trouble than it was worth, Martin three best-selling heroes of the 1940s. Goodman believed it was a necessity. That version hadn’t been seen since a brief 1953-1954 revival, so Roy Thomas was understandably surprised when Stan Lee—who had none of the sentimental attachment for the Golden Age heroes that his young assistant had—proclaimed that he and Jack were bringing the old Human Torch back to fight the new one in Fantastic Four Annual #4 (on sale in August 1966). “People have often assumed I pushed him into it,” Thomas remarked, “but it’s not true at all” (Mougin, “Roy Thomas” 20).

The short-lived return of the original Human Torch in Fantastic Four Annual #4 was evidently . meant to blunt legal action by Torch creator Carl Burgos. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Revived by the Mad Thinker in that story, the old Torch was around for only a matter of pages before being killed off seemingly for good. Still, he’d made an appearance and

A month later, Fass’ color comics line (M.F. Enterprises) tried to take a bite out of the teen humor market with a comic book whose title, according to the fine print in its indicia, was Henry Brewster. On the cover, though, it was merely Henry, its logo presented in the same red and blue primary colors used on the best-selling Archie. Artist Bob Powell, to his credit, didn’t try to emulate the Archie look in Henry, and if the teen publisher had objections to the upstart title, there’s no record of it. Beginning on August 15, 1966, Powell and writer Bessie Little also staked out newspaper strips with Teena A Go Go, a short-lived feature that guest-starred real celebrities like teen actor Paul Peterson and singers Gary Lewis and Peter & Gordon.

continued to do so for the next year as reprints of his 1940s adventures (and those of the Sub-Mariner) were scheduled for Marvel Super Heroes #1 and 1967’s Fantasy Masterpieces #7-11. Although never confirmed, those actions may have been Goodman’s way of staking a claim just as he was doing with the Captain America reprints. Unaccounted for was the Sub-Mariner and his own creator Bill Everett. According to Roy Thomas, Everett was ultimately “given a loan by Martin Goodman that wasn’t going to have to be paid back, so he wouldn’t sue, which he never intended to do, anyway” (Amash, “Roy Thomas Interview” 22).

Splitting Image Along with their separate lawsuits, Simon and Burgos were actively competing with Marvel in 1966, but the latter cartoonist’s product was undeniably the bigger irritant. It came from publisher Myron Fass, himself a former comic book artist who’d been publishing a variety of lowbrow magazines and sensationalistic tabloids. Like others in the latter half of 1965, Fass had decided there was money to be made in comics and recruited Burgos as an editor and occasional artist to join him in the venture.

Myron Fass’ eclectic output included pre-Code horror and teen humor. . TM and © respective copyright holder.

A quarterly black and white magazine called Weird, its first issued dated January 1966, hit the stands first. Leading off with an eight-page Frankenstein story by Burgos and writer-associate editor Roger Elwood, the title’s pages were otherwise filled with 1950s reprints from Ajax-Farrell. In sum, there was none of the sophistication or quality of the Warren horror comics it was competing with. Somehow, though, that didn’t prevent the Eerie Publications series from remaining on the stands until 1981.

M.F.’s next publication earned enough wrath for two titles. Its name was Captain Marvel. In 1966, the names of few comics superheroes conjured up quite as much nostalgic warmth with the general public as that one. Created by Bill Parker and C.C. Beck in 1940 for Fawcett, Captain Marvel—resplendent in red and yellow—began as an attempt to cash in on Superman but quickly became something more. Shouting the name “Shazam,” a boy named Billy Batson called down magic lightning that transformed him into the adult Marvel and led him on a series of adventures that were at turns exciting, funny, and charming. Justly earning its reputation as one of the best superhero features of the day, Cap (along with several spin-offs) was ultimately cancelled in late 1953 after a protracted legal battle with Superman publisher National Comics (a.k.a. DC). A dozen years later, the name could justifiably be said to have been abandoned so Fass and company leapt on it. Created and edited by Burgos with a script by Elwood and art by Leon Francho, the red-

headed hero in the purple costume didn’t resemble his old namesake in the slightest. And as “a human robot,” he shared a common link with Burgos’ Human Torch. But then there was the matter of his magic word. When Cap shouted “Split,” his body parts detached: his head from his shoulders, his arms from his torso, his fingers from his hands. After that (vaguely unsettling) display, he was restored by shouting “Xam!” If the similarity between “Split-Xam” and “Shazam” wasn’t enough, there was also a kid named Billy who palled around with the hero. It was a hardly a surprise when, a few issues later, his last name turned to be Baxton.

the Terrible Five just added insult to injury. In July, Goodman tried to buy the Captain Marvel trademark outright for $6,000 but Fass refused (Hamerlinck 77). By September, though, it was clear that Captain Marvel was far from a hit. The title sold, on average, only 100,000 copies of its 250,000 issue press run (Hamerlinck 77). Fass cancelled it with issue #4 and Henry Brewster with issue #6. Final issues of each were published during the summer of 1967. Matters of quality aside—Captain Marvel was mediocre, at best—M.F.’s weren’t even a good value. Following the trend toward thicker comics, Fass made both titles 25-cent giants but skimped on the actual number of pages. Marvel, Harvey, and Tower were offering sixty-eight pages for that price and DC had its 80-Page Giants. M.F.’s books clocked in at forty-eight.

The detail that got DC Comics’ attention, though, was the cover’s proclamation that Plastic Man was appearing in the issue as “a bonus feature.” Dressed in green and characterized as an alien villain, his stretchable powers were otherwise a match for the long-running Quality Comics hero (1941-1956). Having purchased the Quality properties a decade earlier, DC had to move quickly to secure their claim to the name while siccing their lawyers on Fass. Within three months, the classic Plas was inserted into the Dial H for Hero story DC’s House Of Mystery #160, a precursor to the ongoing Plastic Man comic book that went on sale in September. DC’s admonition came quickly enough for Burgos to have their character’s name revised to Elasticman when Captain Marvel #2 went on sale two months later. Perhaps cautioned that DC also owned Quality’s dormant Doll Man property, a miniature villain in issue #2 was dubbed Tinyman. On the other hand, the issue’s remaining villains were named Dr. Fate (not unlike the 1940s DC property who’d been revived a few years earlier) and Atom-Jaw (looking much like Iron-Jaw, the popular villain in Lev Gleason’s 1940s Crimebuster feature). And, name change or not, Tinyman’s facial features were identical to newspaper strip adventurer Steve Canyon, complete with the trademark stripe in his hair. Captain Marvel #3, the first produced after the Batman TV show hit, prominently featured a bad guy called the Bat on the cover, necessitating yet

Carl Burgos continued to edit Weird but any love he had for the comic book medium in general and the Human Torch in particular was gone. Details of his unsuccessful bid to regain the rights to the Torch—or a possible settlement—are unknown, but the cartoonist’s daughter Susan remembers a bleak afternoon in the summer of 1966 when Carl Burgos took every scrap of comics memorabilia that he owned and threw them in a heap in his backyard.

Despite his familiar name, Carl Burgos’ new Captain Marvel had powers quite unlike his 1940s predecessor. TM and © respective copyright holder.

another call from the DC legal team. By issue #4, the villain had been renamed the Ray. That, too, had been the name of a Quality hero but one too old and obscure to raise a red flag. Meanwhile, Martin Goodman was smoldering over the fact that someone else was publishing a comic book that prominently featured the name Marvel. The fact that a villain called Dr. Doom was plugged on the cover of the one-shot Captain Marvel Presents 96

“I took as many of the comics as I could carry back to my room, like they were some treasure,” she recalled. “He came in and demanded that I give him the comics. We argued because I wanted them and he said, ‘I don’t want you to have them.’ He’d never been like that before because we always shared with each other.” In the end, the teenager relented. Learning of her father’s lawsuit years later, she came to believe that his actions were a response to its outcome (Amash, “The Privacy Act of Carl Burgos” 9).

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Unlike Burgos, who may have seen this as his last chance to leave a heritage for his daughter, Joe Simon had both a rich legacy of achievements and a still-considerable amount of

respect within the comics industry. He could afford to be patient and allow things to play out in the courts. Late in 1965, Simon had devoted part of Sick #42 (dated February 1966) to the resurgence of superheroes, reviving his and Kirby’s own Fighting American for the cover. The interior included “Superfan,” a parody of contemporary fanzines that presented them as gossipy tabloids complete with salacious articles and photos. Sick #48 (November 1966) continued the gags via “The New Age of Comics,” a story written by Simon himself and drawn by Angelo Torres that ridiculed Stan Lee. Insider gossip and news stories clearly informed the piece’s depiction of “Sam Me” as an egomaniac who insisted his name be on every comic book (“How else can I make a living in this ridiculous business?”), tore apart his artists’ work, took credit for other people’s ideas, and revived old superheroes when he couldn’t think of new ones. As pointed as the jokes were, one got a sense that Simon didn’t really understand why Marvel was becoming such a success. In the satire, he dismissed all superheroes as interchangeable product purchased by an undiscerning readership. That may explain the comic books that he packaged for Harvey in 1966. Per company policy, Harvey test-marketed single issues of the Harvey Thriller line during the previous summer and they sold well enough to justify several ongoing series that began going on sale in June of 1966. The 12-cent Jigsaw #1, Spyman #1, Thrill-O-Rama #2, and Warfront #37 appeared first, followed by 25-cent giants Fighting American #1 and The Spirit #1 in July, and finally two more giants—DoubleDare Adventures #1 and Unearthly Spectaculars #2—in August. Their contents—a mingling of superheroes, generic supernatural tales, and the occasional 1950s Jack Kirby reprint—can accurately be described as random. Thrill-O-Rama #2 included a story featuring its first issue’s star (The Man in Black Called Fate) but the headliner was now Edward Yates, a blond guy in a green diving suit called the Pirana, “deadliest creature in all the world.” Acquiring the ability to breathe underwater, he was joined by “the amazing Piranapets, two barracuda cleverly named Bara and Cuda. The kicker was the guy that Yates was fighting, a fat man in a loud red uniform with thick eyebrows and

Joe Simon revisited his and Jack Kirby’s 1950s creation Fighting American on the cover of Sick #42 (alongside the magazine’s mascot Huckleberry Fink). . With artist Angelo Torres, Simon later took aim at Stan Lee in Sick #48. Fighting American TM and © Joe Simon. Sick TM and © respective copyright holder.

a mustache. Around his bald head, sparks went “Snap! Crackle! Pop!” This was Generalissimo Brainstorm and he was “the thinking man’s villain.” It’s unknown whether “Rice Krispies” and “trademark infringement” were among those thoughts. Jigsaw went the Plastic Man route, wisely avoiding the name itself. He was astronaut Gary Jason and acquired his stretchable properties thanks to benevolent aliens who rescued him from certain death and expected him to act as their “space agent” in return. Unearthly Spectaculars’ Jack Quick Frost (“the coolest hero in comics”) was formerly James Flynn, a member of the International CounterIntelligence Agency who now used his icy powers to fight villains like the corpulent Lord Lazee, “world’s laziest villain.” (Jack and Pirana, incidentally, had first appeared as unnamed heroes in a George Tuska-illustrated parody in Sick #42.) Over in Double-Dare Adventures, B-Man started out as a super-crook with the properties of the alien bees that had stung him. He was pretty much unstoppable unless he ran low on honey. “What sheer irony,” he cackled. “Barry E. Eames, whose very initials spell BEE, is about to reap a harvest of riches because I almost am one!” Thank goodness the F-Bee-I convinced him to become a force for good in the second issue. For all the protests that fans leveled against ABC’s BatFighting American TM and © Joe Simon. The Spirit TM and © Will Eisner Studios Inc. B-Man, Jack Q. Frost, Jigsaw, Pirana, man for impugning superheSpyman TM and © respective copyright holder. ro stories, some of them rehe declared. “Whoever would work for me” (Amash, “Sially were that bad. Still, many of the Harvey Thriller heroes mon Says” 47). Revisiting characters from the 1965 tryouts, did seem to be actively camped-up. Otto Binder, officially Gil Kane drew a new Tiger-Boy story while Mike Sekowsky credited at the Grand Comics Database with writing Piraand Joe Giella delivered another 3 Rocketeers tale (Unna, is speculated to have written many of the line’s other earthly Spectaculars #2). Jack Sparling drew Pirana and hero stories but there’s no definitive evidence. contributed to Magicmaster, Tony Tallarico illustrated Jigsaw, Bob Powell tackled the Glowing Gladiator, Bill Draut By his own admission, Simon gathered creators for the worked on B-Man and, along with George Tuska and Dick books indiscriminately. “I just picked them out of the air,” Ayers, contributed to Spyman. 98

tutelage of a magician’s orphaned son in the ways of sorcery. Simon accepted both pitches but, to Steranko’s dismay, felt obligated to change the characters’ respective names to the Glowing Gladiator and Magicmaster by the time they debuted in Double-Dare Adventures #1. The original titles, he explained, were too generic and couldn’t be copyrighted.

Among those disappointed with the line was a key contributor named Jim Steranko. At the age of 27, he’d already lived an extraordinary life that included such exploits as fire-eating, playing guitar in a band, and performing as a stage magician and escape artist. Growing up with a love of comics, the young man had briefly entered the industry in the late 1950s when he inked pages in a studio with Vince Colletta and Matt Baker, but the grind had proved too much (Gilbert 53). Now an art director at the Milford Associates advertising agency in Shillington, Pennsyvania, Steranko’s desire to work in comics had returned. Approaching Harvey, he learned of their desire to create a superhero line and pitched several concepts to Joe Simon (Deihm 2).

Conceptually, all three characters had been promising (as had the rejected Future American and Spacewolf) but the juvenile execution was far from what Steranko had expected. Frustrated further over the payment he’d been promised for creating the heroes, the artist spoke to industry legend Wally Wood and decided to take his next pitch to Tower Comics (Gilbert 56).

Simon seemed to respond the most to Spyman, a secret agent named Johnny Chance whose left hand was burnt off while “disarming an enemy radioactive bomb about to be detonated at Cape Canaveral Rocket Center.” Courtesy of “the exobiologists of Project Normal Plus,” Chance was equipped with an artificial hand that had everything from a blaster to an x-ray probe to a recording device and camera. The marriage of the spy and superhero fads seemed ideal in Simon’s eyes and Spyman became one of the line’s first launches. Steranko plotted the first issue but his art contribution was primarily represented by the schematic he drew of that wonderful hand, which appeared on the cover of every issue.

Despite his extensive work for Tower, Wood had been a contributor to the Harvey Thriller line, too. He and Dan Adkins had produced much of Warfront #37, including the introductions of Lone Tiger and Wood-lookalike Dollar Bill Cash, but his most memorable material ran in Unearthly Spectaculars #2. The whimsical five-page “Miracles, Inc.” revolved around an eccentric team of superheroes and their initiation of a prospective new member while the ten-page “Earthman” followed the adventures of an amnesiastricken human on a dangerous and exotic world.

Digging out an unused script from the 1940s, Wood recruited his friend Al Williamson to draw “Clawfang the Barbarian.” Set in a postFrustrated in bringing Spyman to life, Jim Steranko—seen here in a 1967 photo—set Steranko’s Gladiator was his sights on other spy creations like his own Super Agent X and Marvel’s S.H.I.E.L.D. . apocalypse future where TM and © respective copyright holder. Harry Barker, an archaemankind had regressed to ologist who channeled the savagery and primitive weapons, the seven-pager had spirit of the warrior Hannibal through an ancient amulet been previewed in Thrill-O-Rama #2. It was perhaps the to become a modern-day hero in golden armor (rendered only story in the entire Harvey Thriller line that was ahead red and blue in print) who wielded an enchanted sword. of the curve. “Sorcerer” would focus on the ancient Shamarah and his 99

Among the Harvey Thriller line’s high points were the Al Williamson-illustrated Clawfang the Barbarian and Wally Wood’s Miracles Inc. . TM and © respective copyright holder.

The sword-and-sorcery genre was experiencing a resurgence at the time, ignited in part by Lancer Books’ reissue of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories in paperback during 1966 with painted covers by Frank Frazetta. “Add to that the U.S. publication of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, new editions of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ other adventure series [on the heels of Tarzan reissues], and original creations like Michael Moorcock’s Elric, Lin Carter’s Thongor, and Gardner Fox’s series set on the distant planet Llarn…and a huge revival of fantasy fiction was underway by the mid1960s” (Wells, “Sword-and-Sorcery In the Comics” 17-18). Clawfang, buried in the middle of a book full of superheroes, didn’t have a prayer of tapping that audience. Still, it and the other Wood material were easily the highlights of the Thriller line’s new content, not only because of the uniformly high quality of the artwork but for the complete absence of camp in the scripts. Unfortunately, Simon ruefully reported, Wood never delivered any sequels, thanks to a meeting of the artists called by Leon Harvey. The Harvey Vice-President and Editor had a certain look that he wanted in the adventure stories and he concluded that it would be easier to show than tell. Wood watched as his own original art pages were spread out in

front of him and covered with tracing paper. With a red crayon in hand, Leon Harvey “proceeded to give drawing lessons to one of the most accomplished artists in the history of comics,” a horrified Simon recalled. “In the midst of Leon’s swishing and swirling of his now-blunt crayon, Wally picked up his boards, discarded the tracing papers neatly in the wastebasket and walked off without a word, never to enter the Harvey portals again” (Simon 166).

The Spirit of ‘66 There was other first-rate material in the Harvey Thriller line-up, but it was largely a product of another time. Simon revived his and Jack Kirby’s short-lived Fighting American feature of the 1950s for a fine reprint special. It had lampooned superhero conventions, too, but far more effectively than the heavy-handed camp of the modern stuff. Even more impressive was The Spirit #1 (October 1966). Created by Will Eisner, the feature had been a weekly newspaper comic book insert from 1940 to 1952 that centered on an often embattled hero who took far more knocks than the typical crime-fighter. The strip garnered a well-deserved reputation for its mix of humor and drama, its sometimes rule-breaking splash pages, and its general level of craft. Eisner had long since moved 100

on, now producing comics-related content via his American Visuals Corporation, but his older work had just been reappraised. Former assistant Jules Feiffer had not only sung the praises of the dormant feature in The Great Comic Book Heroes, but reprinted an example to prove his case. “It certainly gave The Spirit some cache,” Eisner conceded. “A third party endorsement is always tremendously valuable” (Cooke, “Resurrect-

ing the Spirit” 99). Less than two months after his book’s publication, Feiffer penned another essay on comic books in the January 9, 1966 New York Herald Tribune Sunday Magazine, the very same publication that sent Jack Kirby into a rage. As part of that edition’s coverage of “The Great Comics Revival,” writer Marilyn Mercer decided to track down Will Eisner. Like Feiffer, she’d worked for the cartoonist in the latter half of the 1940s and was determined to convince her old boss to revive his great creation, if only for this one occasion (Thomas, “Hark, the Herald Tribune Sings” 40-41). Eisner finally agreed, working with assistant Chuck Kramer to produce a five-page adventure in toned black and white that detailed how the Spirit stopped political enemies from interfering with the election of incoming New York City mayor John Lindsay. Along the way, the thugs also got the blame for the ‘65 New York blackout. Reading that story, Leon Harvey was moved to call Eisner and inquire about the possibility of him producing new Spirit stories for them. The cartoonist wasn’t interested in doing that but he still owned all the original artwork from years past and Harvey was welcome to reprint those for an agreed-upon licensing fee. Eisner, unlike all but a handful in the indus-

Missing from the new material produced for Harvey’s Spirit revival was the innovative lettering of Will Eisner’s longtime collaborator . Abe Kanegson. For the rest of his life, Eisner wondered whatever became of his old friend, unaware that Kanegson—having earned a subsequent . reputation as a folk singer and square dance caller—had died of leukemia in May 1965 at the age of 44. Original art courtesy of Heritage Auctions. . TM and © Will Eisner Studios Inc.

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began to push the barriers of what comics could be.

try, had been in a position to retain ownership of his creations but his continued possession of those old pages was happenstance.

The sort of personal, creator-owned content that Eisner came to champion had its roots in a new comic book published in the summer of 1966. Truthfully, witzend was more of a fanzine with a readyfor-mail-order print run of one-thousand copies and a $1.00 price tag for its forty black and white pages. This was no mimeographed pamphlet created by fans, but rather an offset-printed showcase for any professional cartoonist who wished to contribute.

“I just held onto the artwork because I wanted to,” he explained. “Where I come from, my mother used to save string. The artwork just seemed personally valuable to me and it always angered me that the artwork was regarded by publishers to be trash.” Ironically, that sentiment even extended to Harvey. While doing inventory with his art agent Denis Kitchen decades later, Eisner realized that the original pages from a few stories he’d loaned to the company had never been returned (Cooke, “Resurrecting the Spirit” 99).

The pro-zine (as this sort of thing came to be called) had originated with Wally Wood’s assistant Dan Adkins, who’d gone so far as to advertise a precursor called Outlet S-F Comics in Selecting seven stories 1965. Fascinated by the from 1948 and 1949, Eisner possibilities, Wood eventupacked the first issue with ally took charge of the projsome of his strongest work. ect himself while giving The celebrated “Ten Mindue credit to Adkins. The utes,” a real-time account The Spirit #2 opened with a new story featuring the hero’s mysterious foe the Octopus. . elder cartoonist tapped of the end of a soon-to-beTM and © Will Eisner Studios Inc. connections far beyond killer’s life, was included as those of his young colleague and made an offer to every was the cartoonist’s personal favorite “Gerhard Schnobble” comics artist in his orbit (Schelly, “Bill Pearson, The witzend about an unobtrusive little man who could fly. Aware that Interview” 39). 1940’s first Spirit story was comparatively crude and even racially insensitive in its depiction of “Our theory is that an artist is his sidekick Ebony White, Eisner drew a own best editor,” Wood wrote in the fresh account for Harvey’s first issue first issue, “and left to his own devicalong with a new cover. es will turn out his best work.” Wood was willing to print that work in witElsewhere, the early installments zend with no editorial interference of Eisner’s more obscure 1941 Spirit but also no pay. The selling point, he daily strip were collected in a smallemphasized, was copyrights: run edition by fan publisher Edwin Aprill. It earned him recognition for “Everyone in this business has Best Fannish One-Shot in the 1966 given away characters and ideas Alley Awards while Harvey’s color for page rates, which then belong comic won for Best All-Reprint Title. to the publishers. This will be a place to print, and therefore proHarvey pulled the plug on all the hero tect, an idea. And there is the posbooks with issues on sale in Decemsibility, not too great, but enough ber, but The Spirit (cancelled with isto base some foolish hopes on, sue #2) represented the legacy of the that this may turn out to be a Harvey Thriller line. A core group of great financial success. This is the fans—too young to have experienced time! It is now or never! The exisThe Spirit when it was new—had tence of fandom gave the necesnow seen Eisner’s creation for themsary impetus to our faint hearts, selves and they would kindle the Laid out by Archie Goodwin, the cover of witzend #1 . featured the art of Wally Wood, Dan Adkins, Reed . and so we want to say to all flame into the 1970s when the series Crandall, Jack Gaughan, and Al Williamson. you horny-handed, ink-stained was revisited again and its creator TM and © respective copyright holder. 102

The project was enthusiastically embraced by the artistic community with Steve Ditko, Will Eisner, Gil Kane, Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, Gray Morrow, and Joe Orlando among those whose support was appreciated in that first issue. “There was every kind of intellect and point of view expressed by the individual contributors,” Bill Pearson said of those—like Ditko and Morrow—whose work later appeared in the title, “none of whom ever expressed their dismay at any other material in the magazine. Their own work was not censored or altered, and that was their only concern” (Schelly, “Bill Pearson, The witzend Interview” 40). One thing the pro-zine did not do was make money. “witzend paid nothing for the first printing, after which all rights and the originals were returned to the creators,” Bill Pearson explained. “We had nothing but a title. No inventory, no advertising, no distribution. Advertising is what makes publications profitable” (Schelly, “Bill Pearson, The witzend Interview” 41).

The T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Rolls Employment in the mainstream comic book industry was still necessary to pay the bills and Wood spent 1966 continuing to develop Tower Comics’ T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. The book’s mix of action, humor, characterization, and lean dialogue had made it the toast of superhero fandom in the space of only a few issues, but its formula and lineup of features continued to be refined.

Originally drawn in the early 1950s, Al Williamson’s “Savage World” was re-scripted by Wally Wood when it was published in witzend #1. TM and © respective copyright holder.

editor-publishers, demon reviewers and wild-eyed mimeograph machinists, rustling out there in the underbrush…You have shown us the way! We are eternally grateful…unless we lose our shirts!” Bill Pearson did much of the production work on the early issues, “preparing the work for the camera, doing logos, spelling corrections, general assemblage. It wasn’t a complicated publication to handle because most pages were fully completed and sized proportionately to the page, but I had more experience at that part than Woody did” (Schelly, “Bill Pearson, The witzend Interview” 40).

The T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Squad, aside from being the only characters in the book without power-enhancing paraphernalia, also matched the Wood style the least thanks to the feature’s kinetic Mike Sekowsky pencils. In issue #2, team member Egghead was killed off so casually that his teammates didn’t even seem to notice. It was with a sense of relief, then, when new writer Steve Skeates transitioned the Squad’s Guy Gilbert into a Wood-created s u p e r h e r o called Lightning in TA #4, handing the feature off to him in TA #5, and leaving the three remaining members to fend for themselves in the backgrounds of the book’s other series. The yellow-costumed Lightning was a super-speedster in the well-trod tradition then represented by DC’s Flash and Marvel’s Quicksilver but he had a built-in downside that made the concept seem fresh: He could run one hundred times faster than a normal human, yes, but the exertion on his body reduced his life span every time he did so.

Entitled et cetera until a last minute discovery that the name was already taken, witzend #1 (Summer 1966) was an eclectic package that ranged from the straightforward action of Wood’s brutal Animan to Jack Gaughan’s wordless “Moon Critters” to Archie Goodwin’s unconventional fable “Sinner.” The Al Williamson-illustrated “Savage World” (prepared for Eastern Color’s Buster Crabbe Comics before its 1952 cancellation) opened the book, while a toned image of Crabbe by Frank Frazetta graced the back cover. Pretty as much of it was, there was nothing remotely earth-shattering about any of it, but that really wasn’t the point.

Outside Wood’s purview, editor Samm Schwartz oversaw further tinkering in TA’s 103

Lightning TM and © Radiant Assets, LLC.

Fans who delighted in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents’ artwork were less taken with Undersea Agent, regarding the art of Ray Bailey (on the lead feature) and Manny Stallman (on Merman) as too old-fashioned or eccentric for their tastes. TM and © Radiant Assets, LLC.

Then there was also the matter of Undersea Agent’s art, primarily executed by Ray Bailey. An assistant of Milton Caniff in the early 1940s, Bailey carried a degree of the star cartoonist’s style into his own work over the years but it paled in comparison to the original. While competent and professional, it was a look that seemed dated in 1966, all the more so when in direct competition with Wally Wood. Starting with issue #3, Gil Kane began drawing a story in each issue and immediately delivered a much-needed shot of adrenaline to the book. Like the other publishers that latched onto the superhero genre in 1965 to ride Marvel’s coattails, Tower was serendipitously poised to cash in on Batmania. Once publisher Harry Shorten saw the TV show’s effect on comic book sales, he ordered an immediate expansion of the line for the summer. In June, Tippy’s Friends Go-Go and Animal spun-off from Tippy Teen while Fight the Enemy became Tower’s first war comic, a mix of generic shorts and series like “Saga of the Lucky 7” (art by Mike Sekowsky and Frank Giacoia) and Secret Agent Mike Manly (art by Dick Giordano).

companion series Undersea Agent. Premiering in October 1965 (and dated January 1966) with initial scripts by D.J. Arneson, the book literally submerged the spy games of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. via Lt. Davey Jones and the operatives of U.N.D.E.R.S.E.A. (United Nations Department of Experimental and Research Systems Established at Atlantis). If the goal was to evoke the thrills of ABC’s Voyage To the Bottom of the Sea TV show, though, it was a failure. The strip was being second-guessed as early as Undersea Agent #2 when Davey acquired magnetic powers. A further upgrade came in issue #5 (October 1966) when a spin-off superhero called Merman (a.k.a. Olympic swimmer William Fields) was added to the book. The feature was also tainted by the Vietnam War-inspired resurgence of “yellow peril” stereotyping that was cropping up throughout pop culture. Mercifully, the feature’s initial Asian menaces Dr. Fang and Tyro, their flesh an uncomfortable shade of yellow, were gone after UA #3. In fairness, Dynamo’s clash with “Vietnesia’s” Red Dragon in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #3 wasn’t any more flattering.

Most importantly, there were new superhero titles. In Spring, a black and white paperback reprint collection (Dynamo, Man of High Camp) was rushed into print via the Tower Books imprint, eventually followed by volumes devoted to NoMan, Menthor, and the Terrific Trio. Dynamo was awarded his own comic book in June and a NoMan title debuted in September. Outside of drawing the covers, Wood handed the responsibilities on NoMan to others, notably Ogden Whitney, who drew most of the title character’s stories in the title, and the Steve Skeates-Chic Stone writer/artist team on the book’s Lightning strip.

A Dynamo paperback tried to take . advantage of Batman’s camp craze. . TM and © Radiant Assets, LLC.

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As it had been from the beginning, Wood’s baby was the Superman archetype Dynamo. The hero’s spectacular buildingsmashing fight with the robotic Dynavac was immodestly declared “the greatest

The isolated Andor—introduced in a Steve Ditko/Wally Wood-illustrated story in Dynamo #1—struggled to come to terms with the brainwashing he’d endured at the hands of the Subterraneans. TM and © Radiant Assets, LLC.

“Wonder Weed” in a comic relief series variously drawn by John Giunta, George Tuska, and Steve Ditko. There was still plenty of drama to be found in Dynamo, none of it more vivid than the story of Andor that began in issue #1. Raised from infancy by the green-skinned Subterranean People who’d been fighting the Agents for months, the human Andor had endured a lifetime of physical and psychological conditioning. He could topple a tank, recover from bullet wounds in minutes, and telekinetically move objects as heavy as an anvil. A human set apart from humanity, Andor was sent into civilization to kill Dynamo and might have succeeded were it not for Kitten Kane’s pleas to resist his programming.

fight of all time” on the cover of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #2 and that sort of primal spectacle was part of the feature’s appeal.

Losing himself in the throngs of the surface world, Andor was ready to make his break from the Subterraneans but they weren’t willing to let him go. Reasserting their mental control, they led him into conflict with Lightning (T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #9) and NoMan (TA #10). The novelty of Andor floating through various series aside, neither follow-up had much of the brooding intensity that Wood (with penciler Steve Ditko) had brought to the first story. That tragic quality returned in spades when Wood and Ditko revisited the character in 1967. Ra

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The approach to the hero’s romantic life could swing either way. Sometimes it was played for laughs in his frustrated relationships with rivals Alice Robbins and Kitten Kane. At other times, as when he crossed paths with the wicked Iron Maiden, it was more subdued and conflicted. Privately brooding at the end of one story in TA #4 in which he believed the villainess to be dead, the agent had no patience for Alice’s usual needling and snapped, “Do me a favor…just leave me alone.”

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Recalling the evolution of Superman once he got his own comic book, Wood seemed to appreciate the fact that a non-stop diet of grim heroics would give a numbing sameness to an entire title full of Dynamo stories. Consequently, he made a point of balancing the high-stakes drama with more lightweight romps like issue #1’s Sekowsky-penciled “Day In the Life of Dynamo.” Elsewhere in the title, the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Squad’s liveliest member threw on a costume and became

Tower had been one of Ditko’s first ports of call after leaving Marvel and his first work appeared in TA #6’s NoMan story. One issue later, he and Wood collaborated on a Menthor adventure that became one of the most famous in Tower’s history. Properly situated at the 105

end of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #7, “A Matter of Life and Death” was a tough act to follow. John Janus’ brain-enhancing Menthor helmet was regularly being snatched by evil forces and it had been stolen by the subterranean Warlords in this story. Thanks to a mind-shattering failsafe, that didn’t work out so well but the Warlords still had Menthor and a guaranteed deathtrap for his fellow Agents when they came to rescue him. Without his helmet and repeatedly staggered by gunfire, John kept running toward the deathtrap and tripped it himself…with all his friends bearing witness. Shock gave way to rage and the Subterraneans never knew what hit them. The late, unlamented Egghead could only have wished for such a reaction. Staged by Ditko for maximum impact via Dan Adkins’ layouts, the final page was left for mourning, including a panel of the grieving Dynamo carrying Menthor’s body and another with a grave’s-eye view of the mourners. Dan Adkins, who typically worked with Wood as an artist, wrote the script for that milestone and deliberately departed from the happy ending his mentor had plotted for him. “I wanted to show the people that characters can die,” he explained. “Wally told me for two hours, ‘You’ve got to change this, we can’t kill off Menthor!’ And I kept saying, ‘Ah, you never use him anyway! He’s a lousy super-hero! [laughter] I convinced Wally, then Wally had to do the same act for Samm” (Cooke, “Dynamite Dan Adkins” 35). The death of a superhero was not unprecedented, of course. A few characters like Archie’s Comet and Quality’s obscure #711 had even been killed off when their features ended in the 1940s. That didn’t make the idea of a character perishing in his own series any less shocking, though. The violence of both Menthor’s death and the vengeful response of his friends was electrifying in a way its predecessors never touched. The last page’s vow of retribution, fulfilled in issue #8’s final defeat of the Subterraneans, would become a staple of hundreds of stories for decades thereafter as countless writers and artists tried to recreate the impact of that ten-page story from 1966. The tragic sacrifice of Menthor played out in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #7. Original art courtesy of Heritage Auctions. . TM and © Radiant Assets, LLC.

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For the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, life had to go on. With one

to [actress] Kim Novak, after whom I modeled the character’” (Gilbert 56).

evil organization gone, another (S.P.I.D.E.R.) reared its head in Dynamo #2. Someone also had to step into the vacancy left by Menthor and that person was Craig Lawson, an airborne hero with a flight cape called the Raven. He shared one common link with John Janus—both had reformed after infiltrating T.H.U.N.D.E.R. for the Warlords—but that’s where the similarity ended.

Passing on offers from Archie (as a cover artist) and DC (as a writer), Steranko got an appointment at the Marvel offices to show off Super Agent X and met Roy Thomas. “I was sent out by Sol [Brodsky] to look at his work and basically brush him off,” Thomas remembered. “Stan was busy and didn’t want to be bothered that day.” Impressed by what he saw, Lee’s assistant showed the pages to Brodsky and they agreed that a meeting with the artist was worth the editor’s time (Amash, “‘Roy the Boy’ In the Marvel Age of Comics” 23).

The newcomer debuted in a George Tuska-illustrated story in TA #8 but he didn’t become a polarizing figure until the second installment in issue #9. More specifically, it was the debut of writer-artist Manny Stallman. His work, in the estimation of cartoonist and Lee was likewise impressed and commentator Fred Hembeck, the spy angle on the sample “featured some of the craziest pages suggested an obvious looking comic book pages I’d home for the newcomer: Nick ever seen in all my fourteen Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. After years. Flying sequences that a final test that required him to swooped right off the pages. Imink two Jack Kirby Fury pages, pressionistic brush strokes that Steranko began doing finishes didn’t spare the ink. Quirky on Kirby layouts in Strange plots and idiosyncratic diaManny Stallman’s freewheeling artwork on the Raven was hated . Tales #151 (December 1966). by many 1960s fans even as some of the artist’s contemporaries . logue” (Hembeck 11). The visuStill enamored of Super Agent appreciated its boldness. TM and © Radiant Assets, LLC. als alone were as unlike Wally X, the up-and-comer pitched it Wood as humanly possible and most fans detested them. to Paramount Studios’ animation division in late 1966 and Some, like Hembeck himself, later reassessed the work and received an invitation to develop it as a TV series (Deihm 2). found a cartoony freshness they’d missed on the first goIll-fated to the end, the project was never realized thanks round, a style that Gil Kane likened to “a combination of to Paramount getting out the cartoon business in 1967. By Bob Oksner and Harvey Kurtzman.” the time that happened, though, Steranko was well on his way to becoming a star. “He was the only guy out there who was making an effort to just break out and be different,” Kane continued. “I myself had a slow evolution—it was painful, it was laborious. The New Lives of Superman I still question what it is that I really know with any auThe X-traordinary X-ploits of Super Agent X would indisthority. But Manny had a way of instantly grasping certain putably have been at home among the animated series fundamentals. His work had a flavor that absolutely got of 1966-1968. At the start of the 1960s, typical Saturday me” (Evanier, “P.O.V.: CBG #1236” 22). morning programming had largely been a mix of live-action 1950s reruns and cartoons originally run as theatrical shorts but it evolved quickly. In the fall of 1965, NBC and ABC’s schedules were peppered with original cartoons that referenced fads like superheroes (Atom Ant), secret agents (Secret Squirrel), creatures (Milton the Monster), and even (in an eponymous series) the Beatles. Fearing that its competitors were getting an edge, CBS’ daytime programming chief Fred Silverman overhauled the network’s entire Saturday morning roster effective September 10, 1966 (Korkis 10). The Batman Effect was unmistakable.

Jim Steranko, destined to be a rule-breaker himself, very nearly ended up working for Tower. Following his break with Joe Simon, the cartoonist had taken Wally Wood’s advice and pitched Super Agent X to Harry Shorten. Described by Steranko as “a human bomb,” the hero was secretly a scientist named Alex Lincoln who controlled negative matter and traveled on a gadget-laden motorcycle called the Cyk-Lone (Deihm 2). Shorten okayed the character for his own book but the project quickly fell apart. “According to Steranko,” historian Michael T. Gilbert explained, “when Samm Schwartz saw Jim’s pencils he objected to the shape of a female character’s nose. Steranko refused to change it, words were exchanged, and the artist stormed out. Steranko adds, ‘The nose their derisive art director wanted changed belonged

Like Mighty Mouse and Underdog (carried over from the old schedule), some of the costumed characters aimed for laughs, as in Frankenstein, Jr. and the Impossibles and The Mighty Heroes (premiering October 29). Space Ghost (on a double-bill with the unrelated Dino Boy) played things 107

straight and enchanted youngsters with its streamlined designs by creator and renowned comic book artist Alex Toth. The Lone Ranger tried to one-up the old black and white shows by pitting the now-animated masked man against threats out of science fiction. And, finally, direct from the comic books, The New Adventures of Superman returned the Man of Steel to animation for the first time since the theatrical shorts of 1941-1943. CBS was so enamored of the slate of programs that they bought a comic strip-style double-page advertisement in the pages of every DC and Marvel comic book in August to promote it. In doing so, they created a fixture of late-summer comic books that kids would CBS didn’t have a lock on Saturday morning superheroes. NBC’s line-up included The Super 6 and—airing opposite Superlook forward to for years to man—a Bob Kane creation called Cool McCool. Dino Boy, Frankenstein Jr., the Impossibles, Space Ghost TM and © Hanna-Barbera Productions. Lone Ranger TM and © Classic Media, Inc. Superman TM and © DC Comics. come. Well into the 1980s, readers could still find one netvillains created on his watch like Brainiac and Titano. A work or another making a play for their attention with a number of comics stories were also adapted into Supersingle or double-page preview of their new Fall cartoons. boy sequences that ran between the Superman tales that opened and closed the show. Comics writers Leo Dorfman, At Marvel, whose comics were also promoting the syndiArnold Drake, Bill Finger, Bob Haney, George Kashdan and cated Marvel Super Heroes cartoon, the February 1967 BullBill Woolfolk were among those contributing scripts (Korpen Bulletins page insisted Superman’s appearance in that kis 11). first ad was a compliment. “It proves that no matter how they may hate to admit it, even they are willing to pay a bundle just to appear in a Marvel mag!”

The series was produced by a largely-untested three-yearold company called Filmation. It was so young, in fact, that co-founder Lou Scheimer had to resort to filling desks at their studio with “friends, family and some artists from Hanna-Barbera” to give the appearance of a bustling operation when visitors from DC popped in (Korkis 11). Even with an official team working on the animation cels, the cartoons were inevitably a much cheaper-looking creation than the lush Fleischer productions of 1941. The notable common link was in the vocal casting. Clayton “Bud” Collyer, who’d given voice to Superman in both the earlier cartoons and the radio series returned to the role for Filmation, joined by fellow radio vets Joan Alexander and Jackson Beck who resumed the roles of Lois Lane and the series narrator.

Just as Stan Lee participated in Marvel’s animation scripts, DC editor Mort Weisinger functioned as story consultant on the Superman project and made a point of including

The New Adventures of Superman also included the first TV appearance of Superboy, . whose 1961 failed live-action pilot never aired. TM and © DC Comics.

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Fred Silverman’s gamble paid off handsomely, catapulting CBS from third place in the ratings to number one. New Adventures of Superman alone netted “more than 50 percent of the audience in its time slot” (Korkis 11). It was an eagerly-greeted bright spot for DC in a year that had seen its flagship character battered in his ventures outside comic books. The number of newspapers subscribing to the venerable Superman newspaper strip had shriveled to the point that

it was cancelled, its last daily episode running on April 9 and its last Sunday on May 1. Batman, whose aforementioned strip debuted four weeks later, had previously made a cameo in the February 2-4 Superman dailies. On March 29, eleven weeks after Batman premiered, the musical comedy It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman opened on Broadway and DC had every reason to expect another blockbuster. 129 performances later on July 17, it was gone and so was its backer’s money. “At $600,000,” historian Mark Evanier declared, “it was then one of the most expensive musicals ever produced, and therefore its biggest flop” (Evanier, “Up, Up and Away”). As critics often observe, the enterprise looked good on paper. Its production team had uniformly fine credentials including the men who wrote the songbook for Bye Bye Birdie. Its Superman (Bob Holiday) looked the part. Nearly every review was a rave. It’s a Bird, alas, was no Birdie. “There’s only one song—‘You’ve Got Possibilities’—which had any life outside of the show,” Evanier noted, “and the book is quite silly” (Evanier, “Up, Up and Away”). Outside of Lois Lane and a barely-represented Perry White, the comics cast wasn’t used at all. Typically, the show runners seemed embarrassed by the whole notion of Superman. They went beyond just playing him for laughs as William Dozier did with Batman, though, and actually made the Man of Steel a supporting character in his own story. Popular actor Jack Cassidy (playing gossip columnist Max Mencken) wound up getting top billing and (such as they were) the plum lines. For Pittsburgh native Jim Shooter, though, “the whole thing was like a dream.” Mort Weisinger’s newest writer was making his first visit to New York City in June and the veteran editor made sure he had “the classic ‘best seats in the house.’” Afterwards, Weisinger brought Shooter backstage to meet Holliday and the cast. “A highlight reel night,” the writer later wistfully recalled (Shooter, “It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman”). Brimming with naiveté and nerve, Shooter was convinced that he could write comic books better than many

Curt Swan and Sheldon Moldoff drew this provocative Legion of Super-Heroes tale from Adventure Comics #342 wherein Star Boy killed a man in self-defense. TM and © DC Comics.

of those currently being published by DC and set out to prove it. “I spent a year literally analyzing and studying comics, especially Marvels, trying to figure out what made the good ones work and what made the bad ones bad.” Having worked out what he perceived to be the formula, he set his sights on what he’d concluded to be “the worst comic book published:” Adventure Comics, starring the Legion of Super-Heroes (Eury, “Jim Shooter Interview” 73). It really shouldn’t have worked. Rather than sending a brief, typed plot synopsis, Shooter wrote and drew an entire Legion story and mailed it to Weisinger. If that wasn’t audacious enough, Shooter followed it with a 46page two-parter in complete defiance of the fact that most comic book stories were still complete in one issue. Luck was with the novice, though. Over the past year, the Legion series had begun interspersing its standalone episodes with two-part episodes, most notably the Jerry Siegel109

scripted “Computo the Conqueror.” Published in Adventure #340-341, it dealt with a computer created by Legionnaire Brainiac Five that gained sentience and went on a rampage that seemingly killed Triplicate Girl. (The conclusion revealed only one of the heroine’s bodies had perished and that she’d live on as Duo Damsel.) The scope of that story was complemented by writer Edmond Hamilton’s unconventional exploration of a hero (Star Boy) who killed a criminal and faced a trial for possible misconduct in Adventure #342. However rooted both stories might have been in the old conventions, they were breaking through the stodginess that Shooter saw earlier. Propitiously, though, Hamilton and Siegel were both gone and the Superman books needed new writers immediately. In the amateurishly-drawn pages before him, Mort Weisinger saw a fresh voice that could compete with encroaching Marvel Comics. On February 10, 1966, he called Shooter

form his body into iron and who was a likely twist on Marvel’s Iron Man, complete with a similar helmet. Nemesis Kid reflexively developed a defense for any opponent he faced. Princess Projectra could create sophisticated illusions. The underdog in the bunch was Karate Kid, whose “super-karate” paled next to the others. When Earth was invaded by the warriors of Khund, suspicions fell on the reclusive martial artist as a traitor in the team’s midst before the true conspirator Nemesis Kid was revealed. “Karate Kid was my solution to the Legion’s most glaring problem,” Shooter declared, “lack of action. Too many Legionnaires simply Jim Shooter’s first Supergirl story (Action #339) was illustrated by the feature’s pointed their fingers regular artist Jim Mooney. TM and © DC Comics. to use their power. Karate Kid meant action” (Shooter, “Kato confirm that he was buying the Lerate Comments” 31). He and Ferro Lad gion two-parter and commissioned had also been intended to add a bit of a 12-page Supergirl story for Action ethnic diversity to the Legion’s overComics #339 before he hung up (Eury, whelmingly Caucasian cast. “In my “Jim Shooter Interview” 73). crummy drawings, [Karate Kid] was Shooter’s debut in Adventure #346half-Asian,” Shooter explained, but 347 (July-August 1966) ambitiously neither Sheldon Moldoff (who drew introduced four Legionnaires. Ferro issue #346) nor Curt Swan (who penLad was a teenager who could transciled issue #347) picked up on that (Cadigan 53).

Legion of Super-Heroes TM and © DC Comics.

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“I wanted Ferro Lad to be the first black Legionnaire, and Mort said ‘No, we’ll lose our distribution in the South.’ So I said, ‘Whatever. He has a mask on. Who’ll care?’ [laughs] But I couldn’t do it. I said, ‘How is it that you can have orange people from other planets and green people from other planets, and you can’t have a guy from China, or a black character?’ But those were the rules in those days” (Cadigan 53). Diversity issues aside, Weisinger not only made minimal changes to the newcomer’s script but instructed his artists to use Shooter’s pages as layouts. Where Moldoff literally adapted the artwork with awkward poses and staging intact, the self-assured Swan deftly translated their essence into more natural images, “making,” in Shooter’s words, “improvements in the angles and compositions here and there. […] The way he caught the sense of what I was trying to indicate with my crude scribbles and turned them into beautiful illustrations was amazing” (Eury, “Jim Shooter Interview” 73). Settling in on the series, Shooter began shoring up its rogues gallery with the additions of Doctor Regulus (Adventure #348) and Universo (Adventure #349) along with writing—and continuing to layout—periodic scripts for every Superman book short of Lois Lane. Incorporating the lessons he’d learned from his Marvel research, the

when his mortal body couldn’t contain it. Weisinger was so taken with the Parasite that he had the story adapted for CBS’ animated series but never bothered to tell the character’s creator. Shooter didn’t learn about it until interviewer Michael Eury told him in 2006 (Eury, “Jim Shooter Interview” 73). The new writer was keeping secrets, too. Over the past few years, Weisinger had accepted several plot pitches from college student Cary Bates and assumed Shooter was a contemporary. Hoping that his new discovery would visit the DC offices as Bates had, the editor made a phone The Parasite’s transformation in Action Comics #340 had a ghastly intensity. . TM and © DC Comics. call to Pittsburgh that Shooter recalled well: writer employed a bit more naturalistic dialogue and character bits like Duo Damsel’s unrequited crush on Superboy. At the end of Adventure #349, the Legion learned that the teen genius Rond Vidar who’d helped capture Universo was the villain’s son. The final scene’s shot of the heartbroken Rond was reminiscent of the endings of many Spider-Man stories. Shooter’s first Superman story fittingly ran in Action Comics since action—reflecting the sprawling Marvel fight scenes—was something he tried to emphasize as much as character. Issue #340’s episode detailed how exposure to atomic waste transformed a lab worker into the ghastly purple Parasite and enabled him to amplify his own strength by leaching it off of those around him. Fully half of the 14page story was devoted to the villain trading punches with a weakening Superman before its payoff. Drunk on power, the Parasite tried to bleed off all of the hero’s power and blew up

August, four months after The Comic Reader #47 broke the news). At once, countless superhero fans were inspired to consider a career in comic books themselves in the hope that lightning would strike twice. From the inside, it wasn’t quite as rosy. Although Shooter repeatedly emphasized that the insight Weisinger gave him on the comics industry—from storytelling to business practices—was invaluable, it was an education often delivered with the brutality of a disciplinarian’s yardstick: “He told me […] he wasn’t going to cut me any slack because I was a kid—that he intended to treat me the same as any other writer. That seemed fine—till I found out that he treated all his writers like crap. Once we were really working together, discussing plots, covers, characters and all that on a regular basis, I quickly learned that he was nasty, abusive, foul-mouthed, cruel, and vicious.” (Eury, “Jim Shooter Interview” 74-75) No one knew that better than Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel, who’d resumed writing the character in 1959.

“I worked through the mail and by phone from 400 miles away. At some point, after I’d written several stories, [Weisinger] asked me to come to New York and spend some time in the office so he and his staff people could show me some things. I hesitated… then he asked me how old I was. Fourteen, at that point. I told him. Silence. Then he said, ‘Put your mother on the phone.’” (Eury, “Jim Shooter Interview” 74) The legend of Jim Shooter, the teenager who became a comic book writer to help his financially-strapped parents make ends meet, became one of the best-known behind-the-scenes stories of 1960s comics. Never one to waste a great hook, Weisinger dropped the bombshell about his 14-year-old writer into the letter column of Adventure #349 (on sale in

Al Plastino art from Action #340. . Superman TM and © DC Comics.

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ton retired from comic books. Instructed to quit on “doctor’s orders,” the scripter left abruptly in mid-script, leaving the story of Kandorian excon Ak-Var to be completed by Weisinger assistant E. Nelson Bridwell for Action Comics #336 (Bridwell 18). By early June, the last of Hamilton’s stories had been published. That left Leo Dorfman and Otto Binder to write seven Superman-related titles. Even with the timely arrival of Jim Shooter, Weisinger was slotJerry Siegel’s final Superman story from Superman #182—illustrated by Curt Swan and George Klein—. ting periodic reprints into Acconsidered new beginnings and second chances. TM and © DC Comics. tion, Superboy, and Lois Lane “Though I work hard,” he vented to his former collaborator by that summer to fill the void. Meanwhile, the line’s rosJoe Shuster in a 1962 letter, “I get a lot of scorn, belittleter of artists expanded to include veteran Fawcett/ACG artment and hot-tempered abuse from editor Mort Weisinger ist Pete Costanza (taking over Jimmy Olsen with issue #91) who says my plotting and scripting is inferior and beneath and Wayne Boring, returning to comic books following the his ‘high standards.’ This is really making a buck the hard cancellation of the Superman newspaper strip. (Legion of way, but it’s the only way I can support my family” (Catron Super-Heroes artist John Forte, who’d stopped drawing the 34). series with issue #339 in the latter half of 1965, died on May 2, 1966 at the age of 47.) Reclaiming the rights to Superman through the 28-year copyright renewal, then, was not just a way for Siegel and Amidst the turnover, Weisinger was constantly secondShuster—his eyesight diminished and reduced to workguessing himself. Late in 1965, Perry White was abruptly ing as a messenger boy—to secure their livelihoods but to appointed to the United States Senate and replaced as leave a legacy for their heirs. In the short term, Siegel knew Daily Planet editor by handsome newcomer Van Benson how DC would react to a legal challenge and he began lin(Lois Lane #62) in a presumed attempt at rejuvenating the ing up alternative assignments beyond his Archie work. Superman cast. Benson lingered long enough to make apExpanding his search beyond the U.S. borders, he even pearances in Action #335 and Jimmy Olsen #91 before beearned a gig writing a feature called the Spider (“America’s Master Crook”) in two-page installments for British publisher Fleetway in their weekly comic book Lion (effective with the January 1, 1966 issue). The other shoe dropped in Earl Wilson’s syndicated newspaper column of January 17, 1966: “With the Superman copyright reverting back to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in April, National Periodical Publications may make them tremendously wealthy with a new deal due to the forthcoming B’way show, franchises, etc.” Whether it was Siegel who leaked the item to Wilson or someone else, they were wildly optimistic in declaring the rights issue a done deal. April came and went and DC still owned the Man of Steel. The disheartened Siegel and Shuster began making plans for a lawsuit but it wasn’t filed until 1969. Siegel’s employment at DC was terminated immediately, though. “The Villain Who Married Supergirl” (Action #338, on sale April 28) was the last comics story that he ever wrote for the company. “The New Lives of Superman” (in the previous November’s Superman #182) had been his last script for the Man of Steel himself and dealt with the hero’s efforts to establish a new secret identity. In the end, Superman resumed his Clark Kent alter ego, content in the comfortable status quo. For Jerry Siegel, such things were no longer an option. During the same time frame as Siegel’s firing, longtime Superman writer and science fiction novelist Edmond Hamil-

Swan and Klein also drew Adventure Comics #350’s Legion of Super-Heroes makeover wherein Superboy and Supergirl were written out of the series. TM and © DC Comics.

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touched on that himself. He explained “what was happening in the field and why Stan Lee would eventually outstrip us and what to do about it. Also, what not to do—not imitate Stan to the point that kids couldn’t tell the difference” (Reed 60).

ing revealed as an F.B.I. agent in Lois #63 and passing the job back to Perry in issue #64. “Apparently, Weisinger did plan at one point to keep Benson as editor and Perry White as a Senator,” historian Richard Morrissey noted, “but he quickly got cold feet” (Wells, “The Strange Case of Van Benson” 11).

Noting that Marvel was “more with what was happening in the country than we were” and “aimed their stuff According to E. Nelson Bridwell, at an age level that had never read comMorrissey continued, cold feet also ics before in an impressive number,” contributed to a story in which SuDrake argued that uniformly altering perboy and Supergirl were forced to the entire DC line to capture that older leave the Legion of Super-Heroes for readership could potentially cost them a year (Adventure Comics #350: Noyoung ones. He suggested treating the vember 1966). The editor had decidSuperboy and Supergirl rejoined the Legion in Adventure Superman titles as entry level books, ed that the team no longer needed #351’s happy ending. TM and © DC Comics. the Schwartz-edited hero comics as the a Superman-related front man but, pre-teen tier, and more unconventional series like Doom having committed to the plan, went into panic mode: The Patrol and Metamorpho as the magazines that contained Boy of Steel and his cousin had to return immediately in “adult concepts, adult language, a little cheesecake, a little issue #351! To his credit, Bridwell (who wrote both issues) idol-breaking, a little ’think’ stuff now and then—plus the betrayed no hints of his boss’ indecision in the two issues, grotesqueries and the much-much-bigger-than-life vildevising a feel-good adventure that didn’t just bring back lains, etc.” (Drake 21). the missing Superboy and Supergirl but restored maimed members Lightning Lad, Bouncing Boy and Matter-Eater For his trouble, Drake was scoffed at by Donenfeld. The Lad and returned Star Boy to the team roster alongside his exec preferred more superficial explanations for Marvel’s girlfriend Dream Girl. success. Roy Thomas recalls how, during a poker game in late 1965 or early 1966, he asked inker Mike Esposito why Vacillating on whether to shake things up or stay the he and penciler Ross Andru were now drawing Wonder course, Weisinger mixed more serious stories with sillier Woman in an unpleasant imitation of original artist H.G. ones. Superboy #131’s “Dog From S.C.P.A.,” for one, may Peter. “Mike told me, with some incredulousness in his have been the nadir of the abbreviated spy craze-type voice, that ‘they’—he didn’t elaborate on precisely who names. The Space Canine Patrol Agency was a group of these DC powers-that-be were—had decided that the ‘sesuper-dogs like Chameleon Collie and Tusky Husky who cret’ of Marvel’s growing success was, and I quote him, ‘bad recruited Krypto for their fight against crime. art’” (Evanier, There’s a Lot of Myth Out There” 20).

Direct Currents

While WW editor Bob Kanigher may have been a proponent of the “bad art” theory, Irwin Donenfeld was definitely responsible for altering the entire DC trade dress by run-

Despite stories like that, Weisinger and Bridwell were still able to make cracks about Marvel in their letter columns. In World’s Finest #156, a reader remarked on the conceit of the unnamed writer of “Brand I” to compare himself to Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott. “That’s why everyone calls his magazines Brand I,” the editorial response cracked. “I for imitator and I for ‘I’m great.’ Actually, we feel this hambo will be remembered when Shakespeare and Scott are forgotten—not before!” Over in Julius Schwartz’s letter columns, readers were referring to Marvel as “Brand Ego” (Flash #161) or “Brand Ugh” (Atom #26). The heckling, instigated by Stan Lee’s own reference to the competition as “Brand Echh,” got so bad that reader Mike Murano made a plea in Marvel’s July 1966 Bullpen Bulletins to lay off the “unpleasant propaganda.” He argued that “both of you are marketing the same product—but your treatment of the stories and problems you choose to bring up is startlingly different—and you need not resort to needling and name-calling.” Murano’s appeal mostly fell on deaf ears as did his point that DC and Marvel each had distinct approaches to superheroes with their own virtues. In a memorandum written to DC’s Irwin Donenfeld in February 1966, Arnold Drake

George Papp drew Krypto’s meeting with the S.C.P.A. in Superboy #131 along with the super-canines’ return engagements in issues #132 and #136. TM and © DC Comics.

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received $5 and a copy of the original art. The cartoonist recalled that Donenfeld’s inspiration for the feature was the fact that DC “had a lot of advertising from the different model companies” (Voger 46). The feature even earned DC an Award of Merit in 1967 for its “outstanding promotion of hobbies” (Evanier, There’s a Lot of Myth Out There” 20). Donenfeld maintained that there was a stock group of cover concepts that always sold comic books but put restrictions on their use lest they become overused. In the 1950s, Julius Schwartz had discovered that the image of a gorilla behaving like a human was one such hook, leading to a string of follow-up covers from every editorial house. After peaking in 1959 with eight gorilla covers over the course of the year, the fad abated somewhat in the 1960s until the Marvel threat emerged. Apes abounded on the covers of 1966’s Strange Adventures #186-187, Star Spangled War Stories #126, Sea Devils #30, Hawkman #16, Teen Titans #6, Tomahawk #107, and Jimmy Olsen #98 with more to come in 1967.

Before it invited reader participation, Cap’s Hobby Hints had appeared in 1964 and 1965 DC titles as Cap’s Hobby Center. TM and © DC Comics.

ning a checkerboard pattern across the top of every cover effective with the February 1966-dated issues. The “GoGo Checks,” aggressively advertised as part of a push for brand loyalty, were inspired by Donenfeld’s observation that only the top of a given comic book cover was visible on a spinner rack and that it needed an extra punch to stand out from the competition (Evanier, There’s a Lot of Myth Out There” 20).

Perhaps the most far-reaching of Donenfeld’s cosmetic changes was his decision to eliminate the typeset comic book title slug that ran across the top of every comic book page through late 1965. Detailing the executive’s conversation with production man Sol Harrison, artist Murphy Anderson recalls Donenfeld declaring, “We’re losing sales and these running heads take up valuable space that could be used for artwork.” A flummoxed Harrison agreed to make the change and Anderson seized the opportunity to make another (Harvey 90).

DC’s introduction of its half-page “Direct Currents” feature a month later further demonstrated how the company brain-trust wasn’t grasping the Marvel mystique. Marvel’s Bullpen Bulletins pages were a chatty family newsletter. DC’s Direct Currents was the weekly TV log. The latter was a useful tool but it didn’t build the loyalty that a more intimate peek behind the curtain would have done.

At that point, most original comic book art was drawn at twice the size of the printed page (roughly 12 ½” by 18 ½”). While working on the The Go-Go Checks rebranding of DC’s line was aggressively Buck Rogers comic strip in the 1950s, promoted in house ads. TM and © DC Comics. Anderson had drawn the art at a Also in the March 1966-dated DC issues, a recurring halfsmaller size, though, and grew to like it. “It made my inkpage cartoon called “Cap’s Hobby Hints” debuted. Written ing much faster,” he explained. “The penciling might have and drawn by Henry Boltinoff, who’d produced hundreds been a little slower at the smaller size, but that was more of cartoon fillers for DC in the past 20 years, the feature than compensated for by the fact that you didn’t have to was an outgrowth of the earlier “Cap’s Hobby Center” feafill so much space in inking” (Harvey 90). ture about the owner of a hobby shop. The new twist enPersuading Harrison to let him draw pages at a 10” by 15” couraged readers to submit their tips for building models, size, Anderson produced his first stories in the smaller forwhich Boltinoff would then draw. Winning participants

TM and © DC Comics.

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Murphy Anderson’s covers for Showcase #60 and #61’s Spectre revival had a cosmic quality unlike anything then published by DC. TM and © DC Comics.

mat for Hawkman #12 and Showcase #60. After the pages went to the color separation plant, Anderson recalled, “word came back from Chemical Color: ‘You know, this tenby-fifteen size is pretty good. We can gang up four of them on the copy board and shoot them all at once.’ Suddenly, they told DC—and I’m sure they told Marvel—‘We can save you a little money. All at once, the edict went out: everybody has to work ten-by-fifteen” (Harvey 91).

the option of using the larger size. “Most of the Marvels changed within a month or two of the issues dated November, 1967,” Evanier detailed. “Jack’s first work on the small size was the Captain America story in that month’s Tales of Suspense (#95) and you can see everyone experimenting: The lettering is too big, the inking is too bold, and Jack’s panels are filled with head shots and sparse backgrounds. Within a few months, everyone had learned how to accommodate the page proportions, but Jack still longed for the larger canvas” (Evanier, “P.O.V.: CBG #1221” 24).

“I caught a lot of flack,” Anderson continued. “Gil Kane hated it, and he’d come in, and he’d give me the needle. The letterers detested it. It was harder for them, but, ultimately, when they adjusted to it, they liked it” (Harvey 91). Neal Adams, Gene Colan, Joe Kubert, and Curt Swan were among those who favored the new approach while Steve Ditko, Don Heck, Jack Kirby, and Mike Sekowsky found it maddening.

“It was totally innocent. It was just one of those things,” Anderson insisted (Harvey 91), but his effort to speed up his own production wound up, in Evanier’s words “[changing] the manner in which most artists would approach the composition of their pages” (Evanier, “P.O.V.: CBG #1221” 24).

“Kirby really disliked the change, especially at first,” Mark Evanier reported. “He said, ‘The first time I finished a page, I picked it up and half the art was on my drawing table.’” Another artist told Evanier “that he complained to his editor that a page now took him twice as long, and that the results weren’t nearly as good. The editor’s response, he claimed, was: ‘Yeah, but the pages are easier to mail now’” (Evanier, “P.O.V.: CBG #1221” 24).

At the end of 1965, Anderson’s thoughts weren’t on changing the industry but drawing the latest of Gardner Fox’s 1940s revivals for the Julius Schwartz-edited Showcase #60 and #61 (January-February/March-April 1966). The creative team’s efforts at doubling-up Golden Age heroes for tryouts had flopped twice so they decided a single hero might be more viable. Created by Jerry Siegel and Bernard Baily in 1940’s More Fun Comics #52, the Spectre was a literal ghost who was empowered by an implied God to fight evil on Earth after his police detective alter ego Jim Corri-

The change rolled out at different times for each publisher and a few like Charlton and Gold Key still gave artists 115

The Spectre revival was the Julius Schwartz-Gardner Fox-Murphy . Anderson team’s final attempt at trying to launch a new series . starring a Golden Age hero. TM and © DC Comics.

gan was murdered. Exhibiting a ruthlessness and degree of power that dwarfed Siegel and Shuster’s earlier Superman, the character had mellowed considerably by the time his feature ended in late 1944. In the age of the Comics Code, the Spectre couldn’t creatively kill murderers as he’d done in the beginning, so Fox and Anderson came at the character in terms of his stature. Freed from a spell that had trapped him in Jim Corrigan’s body for twenty years, the Spectre once again fought criminals and grew to the size of a giant but he also tackled threats that were more in his league. The final third of Showcase #60 pitted the hero against his demonic counterpart Azmodus as they fought on the astral plane, throwing planets at each other and plucking stars from the sky. Issue #61’s follow-up was even grander, following the Spectre and a Satan-surrogate called Shathan through a conflict that sent them hurtling through time toward the “primal atom” at the heart of the universe-creating Big Bang.

teen months before committing to an ongoing Spectre title in September 1967. Showcase #62’s new feature got a much quicker response and for good reason. Debuting two months after the Batman TV show, the Inferior Five played superheroes for laughs, but did so in a way far smarter than camp’s so-badit’s-good. The first major creation of Weisinger assistant E. Nelson Bridwell (and edited by Jack Miller), the I5 also tapped the generation gap as a team of misfits who had to live up to the impossibly-high standards of their parents, a Justice Society-type team called the Freedom Brigade.

If these weren’t the “much-much-bigger-than-life” threats that Arnold Drake referenced, nothing was. Like Ditko had done with Eternity in his Doctor Strange stories and Kirby was beginning to do with Galactus, Fox and Anderson were approaching superheroes on a cosmic scale that had rarely been done. The question was whether it was too different. Panicking over Showcase’s long dry spell in producing a hit, Irwin Donenfeld took no chances this time and had a tagline (“The Spectre Is Coming!”) inserted into many DC titles—sometimes literally within story panels— the month before the revival. A follow-up ad continued the line (“closer—closer—closer—He’s here!”) with the official pitch for Showcase #60. Preliminary reports were encouraging enough to justify a third Spectre tryout in issue #64 but DC ultimately waited a full four-

Pushed into the family business, spindly Myron Victor (“a 98-pound weakling before he lost weight”) put on a jester’s costume and called himself Merryman since he was going to be making a fool of himself anyway. He was joined by the muscle-bound klutz Awkwardman, an overweight flyer called the Blimp who could mostly hover, an archer 116

Among the alternate names the Inferior Five considered for their team in Showcase #62 were the Doomed Patrol and the Fantastic Farce. TM and © DC Comics.

called White Feather who was afraid of everything around him, and a well-endowed blonde named Dumb Bunny who was “stronger than an ox—and almost as smart.” It was Bridwell’s first opportunity at DC to demonstrate the wit that enabled him to sell material to Mad in the 1950s and he ran with it. The series was also the first DC assignment for former EC Comics artist Joe Orlando, whom Bridwell recommended to Miller as penciler (Levitz 5). Jerry Grandenetti is believed to have ghosted part of the story while Mike Esposito served as inker.

schedule once its crossover potential was apparent. Consequently, the Jack Miller-edited feature originally advertised for Showcase #62 broke precedent and premiered as an ongoing series without a tryout.

The feature’s secondary agenda was made clear when the Inferior Five returned in Showcase #63 and #65, fighting caricatures of the Hulk and the Avengers in the former and the X-Men in the latter. Jack Miller had actually conceived the series as a much more overt mockery of Marvel’s flagship Fantastic Four, asking Bridwell to develop a group called the Inferior Four (Morrissey 27). “Logical-minded even in parody,” historian Richard Morrissey wrote, “Bridwell at once wondered why a self-styled group of ‘inferior’ heroes would enter the trade at all. Perhaps because their parents insisted on it?” (Morrissey 27). By the time he was done, the writer had exceeded Miller’s membership parameters by one and none of them bore any resemblance to the FF. The Inferior Five was better for it.

Swing With Scooter #1 (June-July 1966) starred a mop-topped Paul McCartney lookalike who’d just quit a red-hot British rock group called the Banshees in favor of a quiet life as a student in an American high school. Riding his namesake Vespa motor scooter (then popular among a fashionable teen movement called the Mods in Britain), Scooter turned the small town upside down as the boys wanted to be like him and the girls wanted to be like Cynthia, the odd Brit girl in his life. Once everyone realized that Cynthia was actually Scooter’s sister, the mod boy from across the pond was fair game for Cookie, Penny, and every other girl in town.

Although created with no inkling of Batman’s humorous tone, the Inferior Five may have been rushed onto DC’s

Created and written by Miller and his 20-year-old assistant Barbara Friedlander, the series was a fresh change

One of several house ads preceding Swing With Scooter #1. TM and © DC Comics.

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Miller himself wrote “Reach For Happiness,” beginning in Secret Hearts #110 (March 1966). Gene Colan drew its first four installments, passing the feature to John Rosenberger when he cut his ties with DC and moved to Marvel. Meanwhile, Barbara Friedlander scripted Heart Throbs’ “3 Girls—Their Lives… Their Loves,” starting in issue #102 (June-July 1966) with art by Jay Scott Pike. “3 Girls,” the story of three career women (Chris Mason, Marian Tyler and Sandy Simms) who shared a ManBatman snuck onto Joe Orlando’s cover for hattan penthouse, clearly Swing With Scooter #3. TM and © DC Comics. owed its concept to Alex Kotzky’s Apartment 3-G newspaper strip. Less obviously, “Reach For Happiness” inverted the premise of the 19651966 ABC soap Morning Star. The latter involved a woman named Katy Elliot who left her small hometown for New York after the death of her fiancé Greg Ross. In Miller’s story, the death of actress Karen Wilder Summers’ husband motivated her return to her hometown for an awkward reunion with former fiancé Greg Marsh.

from the other teen humor titles on the market, less concerned with high school affairs and fads (Beatlemania, excepted) than telling comedy-adventure stories. Handing off the Inferior Five to Mike Sekowsky with Showcase #65, Joe Orlando designed the Scooter cast and penciled the title for the next two years. Obviously intended to capitalize on pop music’s British Invasion, Swing With Scooter was aggressively promoted with a full-page house ad during its April premiere and a March plug referencing its unrealized Showcase appearance. Slogans like “Scooter Is Coming” and “Scooter Will Put You In Orbit” were inserted into panels of a few February stories while the first full-page ad appeared in the Miller-edited romance comics. Despite his short-lived 1965 moratorium on new material for the romance comics (which now featured one reprinted short story per issue), Miller had plans to retool the line in 1966. With a collective sixteen soap operas airing weekdays on the U.S.’s three major TV networks, the editor saw the potential to tap some of that audience for serials of his own. To that end, he created two soaps, both of them built up in DC romance book house ads on a level the titles had never seen before. Once each story was underway, subsequent installments reliably opened with a one-or-twopage recap of the cast of characters and what had come before. Gene Colan’s art and Ira Schnapp’s vibrant lettering highlighted . early ads for “Reach For Happiness.” TM and © DC Comics.

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A creative ad preceded The Flash #165’s . milestone wedding. TM and © DC Comics.

cover artist, but he made a rare excursion into DC’s adventure side in Strange Adventures #191. Fittingly, its star was a beautiful heroine who’d appeared previously in a Bob Haney/Howard Purcell story in issue #187 (April 1966). Secretly a demure blonde named June Moone, the Enchantress was a witch for the under-thirty crowd with a green outfit whose traditional trappings like a pointed hat were offset by a checkered mini-skirt. After one last appearance in issue #200, the “switcheroo-witcheroo” faded away until a revival in the 1980s.

Whatever their derivative qualities, both serials were a huge step up from the simplistic short stories that characterized most romance comics. Discussing the features in a 1987-1988 survey for the comics index collective APA-I, Mike Tiefenbacher praised “3 Girls’” “fast pace and realistic dialogue” and described “Reach For Happiness” as “a remarkably well-crafted serial, quite well-written in terms of dialogue.” Each, he continued, was progressive in its story construction that resembled 1980s primetime soap operas more than anything on the air in the 1960s.

The most romantic doings in the DC’s hero books of 1966 were a pair of weddings. Rita (Elasti-Girl) Farr and Steve (Mento) Dayton tied the knot in Drake and Premiani’s Doom Patrol #104 despite the best efforts of her protective teammates and their mutual enemies. The newlywed Dayton still got left on the curb when his bride took off to join her cohorts in saving an imperiled plane. “I love my wife,” he snapped, “but I can’t stand my freak brothers-in-law!”

With John Romita’s departure for Marvel, “3 Girls” artist Jay Scott Pike became the romance group’s preeminent

Five months later, Barry (Flash) Allen and Iris West—a couple for a full decade—were wed in The Flash #165 (November 1966) after a failed attempt by the Reverse-Flash to impersonate the groom. Even with the vows exchanged, Barry still wasn’t ready to tell the woman he loved that he was really the fastest man alive. Incredibly, that subplot simmered for another year. One month later, in an interesting attempt at creating contrast, writer John Broome

Elasti-Girl and Mento’s wedding included the Justice League and Teen Titans . in the audience as well as Super-Hip (from the Arnold Drake-scripted Bob Hope). . TM and © DC Comics.

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artists to return to their modern style in Wonder Woman #165, Kanigher sighed in the following issue’s letter column that it had been “a wistful experiment.”

ended the half-hearted romance of Hal Jordan and Carol Ferris by having her run off with another man (Green Lantern #49). Crushed, Hal quit Ferris Aircraft and headed for parts unknown. (In a third Schwartz-edited book, Ray Palmer and Jean Loring were engaged to be married in The Atom #26.)

Metamorpho underwent a more subdued artistic shake-up in 1966 when Ramona Fradon left the title with issue #4 to be a full-time mother to her young daughter. Replacement pencilers Joe Orlando (issues #5, #6) and Sal Trapani (issue #7-on) did a creditable job of maintaining the cartoony look of the feature with the aid of inker Charles Paris, but neither brought the essential spark that Fradon had contributed. Still, with writer Bob Haney at the helm, Metamorpho remained enormously popular and even co-starred in The Brave and the Bold #66 and #68 over the course of the year. According to E. Nelson Bridwell, Metamorpho’s pairing with the Metal Men in B&B #66 was one of the book’s best-selling team-ups ever (Gafford).

For some features, status quo changes were as simple as new clothes. The Elongated Man retired his original purple costume for a bolder red outfit (Detective Comics #350), while the two-shot “Man With Animal Powers” adopted an orange Infantinodesigned costume in Strange Adventures #190. The latter first called himself A-Man, expanding it in his fourth appearance (SA #195) to the enduring Animal-Man. The retro look that writer-editor Robert Kanigher applied to Wonder Woman at the end of 1965 wore out its welcome quickly. Over the course of Wonder Woman #159-164 (JanuaryAugust, 1966), Kanigher pretended it was 1942 again, reviving such longlost villains as the Cheetah, Dr. Psycho, and Giganta while compelling Ross Andru and Mike Esposito to sub-

Wonder Woman vs. Giganta, by Andru & Esposito. . TM and © DC Comics.

limate their natural style and mimic original illustrator H.G. Peter. The revamp, ironically inspired by fans pining for the Good Old Days, had its supporters but they were far outweighed by detractors like reader Mike Friedrich. “The so-called art is awful,” he snapped in WW #166’s letter column. “The old ‘40s art styles don’t fit in the modern age. The accented collarbones and facial features, especially the nose, make her look unnatural.”

Looking that bad wasn’t easy, Esposito recalled. “Ross had to draw backwards, almost beneath what he was trying to strive for, to get that antiquated 1945 look, which wasn’t his style. It was fine when Peter did it—but certainly not fine when Ross and I did it. DC thought by doing it that way they could attract attention. You can’t force a trend. You can’t force magic. Magic happens” (MurStrange Adventures #190 cover art by Carmine. ray 24-25). Instructing the Infantino and Murphy Anderson. TM and © DC Comics.

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An overly optimistic house ad even touted Metamorpho (along with the Flash, Plastic Man, and Wonder Woman) coming to TV in the fall of 1966 “in colorful animation.” Noting rumors that Filmation had produced a Metamorpho test reel, company co-founder Lou Scheimer said that he has no recollection of one. “Pilots were very expensive,” he ex-

Metal Men, Metamorpho TM and © DC Comics.

J’onn J’onzz, the Manhunter from Mars, fared the worst with only one meaningful JLA appearance in 1966. Two years of repetitive threats unleashed by the Idol-Head of Diabolu finally came to an end in House of Mystery #158 (April 1966) when J’onn destroyed the artifact and moved in a new direction. With two of his books cancelled that year—House of Secrets (with #80) and Mystery In Space (with #110)—editor Jack Schiff was determined to save this one. Still scripted by Jack Miller and drawn by Joe Certa, the feature turned toward fashionable spy wars in HOM #160 and introduced an international crime syndicate called VULTURE and its masked leader Mr. V (a.k.a. Faceless). Adopting a human alter ego for the first time since 1964, the Manhunter took the persona of suave European socialite Marco Xavier to facilitate the search for his new adversaries.

Metamorpho agreed to be a reserve member of the JLA in these Mike Sekowsky/Bernard . Sachs-illustrated panels from Justice League of America #42. TM and © DC Comics.

plained, “and the chances were that maybe you couldn’t sell it, and then what were you going to do with the damned thing?” (Scheimer 54). Metamorpho’s star-power should logically have translated into membership in Justice League of America and the offer was made in issue #42 (February 1966). As the title of Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky’s story made clear, though, “Metamorpho Says No!” The hero didn’t like being a freak, he explained, and was actively seeking a cure for his mutation. “I thought that having a hero turn down membership in the JLA was novel,” editor Julius Schwartz explained, while conceding that his real motivation was personal: “I didn’t really care for the character that much” (Gruenwald 34). As the League fought the likes of the Royal Flush Gang (JLA #43) and the Shaggy Man (JLA #45), their stories increasingly focused on Schwartzedited heroes and big guns Superman and Wonder Woman. Aquaman and Green Arrow, on the other hand, only showed up for two cases in 1966.

The former—involved with running the kingdom of Atlantis and dealing with a family that now included evil half-brother Ocean Master (Aquaman #29)—had an excuse for his absence but GA, who no longer had a series of his own, did not.

J’onn was gone from the covers, though, replaced in House of Mystery #156 (January 1966) with a kidfriendly feature entitled “Dial H For Hero.” Illustrated by Supergirl artist Jim Mooney, it was the story of a bespectacled boy from Littleville who came across a mysterious object that looked like a telephone’s rotary dial but with alien characters rather than numbers. By dialing what he translated to be “H-E-R-O,” Robby Reed instantly transformed himself into a costumed hero…and a different one

A Jim Mooney-illustrated two-page pin-up in House of Mystery #165 compiled most of the heroes . that Robby Reed had conjured up in “Dial ‘H’ For Hero.” TM and © DC Comics.

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each time! Reversing the procedure (O-R-E-H) returned him to normal. Initially transformed into comparatively sober guys like Giantboy, Cometeer and the Mole, Robby was soon acquiring much wilder alter egos on the order of costumed infant Mighty Moppet (who squirted crooks with his baby bottle) and King Kandy (with lollipop bombs and licorice lassos). The situations got sillier, too, as when Baron Bug trapped one of Robby’s alter egos on a giant piece of fly paper. If readers laughed, Jack Schiff declared in HOM #162’s letter column, so much the better. “Isn’t that part of the fun in reading these adventures?” Created by Schiff (who co-plotted each episode with writer Dave Wood), the series was his self-described “pet” project (Schiff A68) and one that was essentially a modernization of Fawcett’s Captain Marvel. Both featured alliterative boy identification characters who had distinctive catch phrases (Billy Batson’s “Holy Moley” vs. Robby Reed’s “Sockamagee”) and magically became adult heroes after visiting a cavern. When Billy was transformed, though, Captain Marvel became an idealized adult, possessed of maturity and wisdom but without the life experiences that bred cynicism. Robby, however, shed none of his youthful perspective when he spun the dial. It seemed appropriate, then, that when DC took action against Myron Fass’ unauthorized use of the Plastic Man name in his Captain Marvel title, they turned to Dial H For Hero. It was a simple matter for Robby Reed to dial up Plastic Man as part of House of Mystery #160’s adventure to secure DC’s claim to the dormant Quality Comics hero. With the Batman-induced feeding frenzy, DC’s lawyers were working overtime not only to crack down on unauthorized usage of the Caped Crusader but on anyone trying to use the name of one of their other heroes. Fan artist Bill DuBay, who’d been writing and drawing Picto-Origin short stories for The Comic Reader that recapped the beginnings of 1940s superheroes, was quickly informed that he could not run an installment on Plastic Man (Rothermich 2).

Plastic Man showed less skin in his new DC series, where he sported . red leggings in place of bare flesh. TM and © DC Comics.

By September, Plastic Man #1 (dated November-December 1966) was on sale, part of the Murray Boltinoff-edited humor line and written by said line’s chief writer Arnold Drake. In his 1940s heyday, Plas had been one of comic books’ all-time great superheroes, a straight man in a world of lunatics expertly rendered by cartoonist Jack Cole. Re-reading many of those old stories, Drake judged it “charming,” but “felt it was no longer pertinent, particularly the character of [blubbery sidekick] Woozy. I replaced him with [Gordon K. Trueblood], the All-American boy, who runs the pet shop and is a rah-rah kid. I wanted to play him against Plastic Man’s sophisticated attitude; amorality is what it amounted to. Lots of pranks” (Reed 60). Along with Gordy, Drake set up a recurring cast of foils that included Plas’ socialite girlfriend Micheline de Lute III, her disapproving mother, equally disapproving Police Captain McSniffe, and recurring villains Doctor Dome and his daughter Lynx. After a crisply-illustrated first issue by Gil Kane, though, the strip seemed to falter in the eyes of many fans when the blander Win Mortimer took over the art in Plas #2. Others took issue with Drake’s fresh start and wished that he’d tried to

Robby Reed’s transformation into Plastic Man was a . harbinger of the real Plas’ return. TM and © DC Comics.

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continue the series in the daunting tradition of Jack Cole. The writer had no regrets, however, emphasizing, “I wasn’t writing for the fans. I was trying to write for a wider audience” (Reed 60). There was still much to satisfy fans at DC in 1966, of course. Drake himself wrote a rare crossover between two titles that united the Challengers of the Unknown with the Doom Patrol in COTU #48 and DP #102. (Marvel followed suit several months later when an Iron Man/Sub-Mariner brawl began in Tales of Suspense #80 and ended in Tales To Astonish #82.) Four issues into its run, Teen Titans gave a much-requested guest-spot to Green Arrow’s sidekick Speedy that sold well enough to earn a sequel in 1967 (TT #11). Supergirl earned her first 80-Page Giant (Action Comics #334) that reprinted her origin and several early 19591960 adventures. And the Flash/Green Lantern team-ups resumed after a two year absence with GL #43’s debut of Major Disaster.

Quasi-Conventional War Perhaps the trippiest fan-oriented event was published in Our Army At War #162-163 (January 1966-1967). In 1955, Bob Kanigher and Joe Kubert had created a feature about an amnesia-stricken 10th Century Viking Prince named Jon whose adventures appeared in The Brave and the Bold through 1959. Although never a huge hit, the handsomely-drawn series still had passionate devotees, and the

Our Army At War #162’s unusual team-up spurred renewed interest in the Viking Prince, whose 1950s adventures began to be reprinted in 1970. TM and © DC Comics.

Kanigher-Kubert team decided to bring Jon back for an encore…in the middle of World War Two alongside Sgt. Rock! It seems that Jon had been swooped off to Valhalla before his time by a lovestruck Valkyrior maiden and sent back to Earth—a millennium after his time—by Odin to die for real. It wouldn’t be easy, though, since the Norse god Odin made the hero impervious to metal, wood, fire and water. After two issues of fighting Nazis with Easy Company, though, the Viking Prince found a way thanks to plastic explosives. (In 1979-1980’s All-Out War title, Kanigher dusted off the premise for a character called the Viking Commando.) Rock, G.I. Combat’s Haunted Tank, and Star Spangled War Stories’ “War That Time Forgot” all soldiered on in 1966, although the latter feature ran a standout episode entitled “My Brothers With Wings” in SSWS #129 (October-November 1966). In a twist on the Tarzan legend, infant Tommy Smith was lost on Dinosaur Island and, absurd as it sounds, raised by pterodactyls. Rescued and assimilated back into society a few years later, Tommy grew up to become a pilot in World War Two and inevitably returned to the isle, drawing on his buried memories to reconnect with the primitive beasts and direct their power toward the Japanese forces that were attacking him. Written by Howard Liss with lush art by Russ Heath, the surprisingly touching story inspired an early sequel in issue #131.

The first Supergirl giant was a key step in proving the young . heroine’s ability to carry a title on her own. TM and © DC Comics.

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him and his predecessors Gunner and Sarge to Capt. Storm #13 for a guest appearance while giving their old spot to a Green Beret named Capt. Hunter (initially drawn by Irv Novick, then Jack Abel). Breaking away from the “safe” theaters of World War One and World War Two, the new series followed Capt. Phil Hunter into the jungles of Vietnam in search of his missing twin brother Nick whom he steadfastly believed was alive and in captivity (Our Fighting Forces Sam Glanzman art for Army Attack #46. #99: April 1966). Permeated TM and © respective copyright holder. with a “who-do-you-trust” paranoia, the new feature was filled with hidden dangers from toys laden with explosives to pits concealing sharpened punji sticks. Was Capt. Hunter’s native guide Lu Lin trustworthy or leading him into a trap? He was never sure.

Tommy Smith and his “brothers with wings” first took flight in the Russ . Heath-illustrated Star-Spangled War Stories #129. TM and © DC Comics.

Kanigher’s other war anthologies were struggling a bit, particularly the aerial combat book All-American Men of War. Dumped in favor of the Balloon Buster, pilot Johnny Cloud flew back into the book to shore up sales, but it was too late. AAMOW ended with issue #117 (September-October 1966). Losing faith in Our Fighting Forces’ Fighting Devil Dog feature after a mere four issues, Kanigher sent

There was no longer any avoiding it. With 200,000 more troops in Southeast Asia than the year before, the United States’ jungle warfare “had outgrown the dimensions of guerrilla battle and had become, in the words of Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, a ‘quasi-conventional war’” (Norman 434). Kanigher believed it was time to address the Vietnam conflict in one of his titles. Most longtime comic book publishers realized that sales went up at Army base retailers (called a PX) and it seemed logical that soldiers would want to see heroes that were relevant to their situation. The fact that Kanigher’s frequent collaborator Joe Kubert was now drawing an ongoing Green Berets comic strip in that same environment may also have influenced that decision. A run of Kubert and Robin Moore’s strip was actually collected in a paperback in September 1966, released not long before Charlton devoted the entirety of Army Attack #46 to the Green Berets and touted an early Vietnam-based story in War and Attack #57. Dell had beaten everyone to the punch by years, having focused on Vietnam in Jungle War Stories since 1962. It was ironic, then, that the series (re-titled Guerrilla War) was cancelled with issue #14 (March 1966) just as Dell’s competitors caught up with them. There was an anticipated rise in demand for war comics in general and some publishers ignored post-1960 conflicts altogether. Such was the case with Stanley Morse’s Battle Heroes, two 25-cent giants reprinting war stories first run in various Morse publications of the Capt. Hunter TM and © DC Comics.

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1950s. Likewise, Harvey was content to focus on conflicts past in Warfront or avoid the front lines and go for laughs in its abundant Sad Sack titles. Beetle Bailey newspaper cartoonist Mort Walker, who devoted the week of January 2-8, 1966 to gags about war protesters, resisted sending his slacker hero far from Camp Swampy. “I was tempted to send him to Vietnam since that what he’s trained for,” Walker conceded. “But then I thought, no, because if you look at the history of comics, you see that the minute the war was over, the soldier characters were finished.” It was far better, he thought, to focus on “the common experience of basic training that everybody does, that everybody can relate to” (Harvey 53).

Along with war protesters, Beetle Bailey also referenced the superhero craze in Sunday strips starring Super Sarge (November 28, 1965) and Fatman and Slobber (March 27, 1966). TM and © King Features Syndicate, Inc.

a story running from July 31 to October 21, Pete’s actress wife Mary Perkins got involved with the campy Captain Virtue TV show.)

Steve Canyon creator Milton Caniff, long a vigorous supporter of U.S. military forces, thought it disingenuous to produce a feature about a military man and ignore the war. Fleetingly seen in Vietnam over the past few years, Steve was there again in a January 22-March 20 continuity. Its principal emphasis was on a U.S.O. entertainer whose helicopter was shot down and who survived while the Vietnamese couple shielding her did not.

There was a certain unexpected finality in Neal Adams’ Ben Casey medical newspaper strip, though, when its doctor hero listened to a serviceman’s account of the fighting overseas and declared on July 28 that he was volunteering his services in Vietnam effective immediately. Two days later, the four-year-old comic strip was cancelled. The TV show on which the strip was based also ended in 1966 but hardly as definitively!

Outside the military features, no one needed to pick sides, and the war was touched on only tangentially. Having previously shipped off Patsy Walker’s boyfriend Buzz to Vietnam in 1965, Stan Lee (and Uncle Sam) sent a draft notice to Peter Parker’s nemesis Flash Thompson, too (Amazing Spider-Man #43) but otherwise carried on as usual in the strip. At DC, a sequence in Showcase #64’s Spectre story required the ghostly hero to infuse himself with “good radiation” from selfless individuals like Peace Corps workers, physicians, and a Green Beret in Vietnam.

Some of the stories were clearly supportive of the war effort and others non-judgmental. None were like “Landscape” from Warren Publications. Written by Archie Goodwin and drawn by Joe Orlando for Blazing Combat #2 (January 1966), the seven-page story followed a humble Vietnamese farmer named Luong who watched as guerrillas and Green Berets alike overran his village in the name of setting them free. His neighbors died, his wife died, his village was razed, and still the old man tried to reassure himself that at least he still had his rice field. When South Vietnamese flame-throwers began burning even that in their march on the enemy, the farmer finally snapped but was struck

Award-winning On Stage cartoonist Leonard Starr treated the Vietnamese jungle exodus of reporter Pete Fletcher and a Chinese defector as a gripping survival story, largely sidestepping politics and moving to entirely different subject matter once the January-April continuity was over. (In

Part of Ben Casey’s Vietnam sequence from July 20, 1966. Original art by Neal Adams, courtesy of Heritage Auctions. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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the issue, Jim Warren reported, “and wholesalers were returning bundles unopened, along with nasty letters to me.” The $4000 loss that the publisher took on the issue, his distributor advised him, was nothing compared to the fallout it was beginning to have on any magazine bearing the Warren Publications imprint. Rather than risk his entire company, Jim Warren pulled the plug on Blazing Combat (Cooke, “Someone Has to Make It Happen” 35). “With time, this has been blown out of proportion a bit,” Archie Goodwin said of his intentions on the series, “making it seem we were far greater crusaders than was actually the case. Basically, I was trying to write the same type of stories that Harvey Kurtzman had in his EC war comics and to make those stories good enough to please and inspire the artists who were doing the book” (Goodwin 9).

Monstrosities Those artists continued to have opportunities in other Warren magazines. Creepy had been a great enough success that it could justifiably have gone monthly. The horrific climax of Goodwin and Orlando’s “Landscape” from Blazing Combat #2. TM and © Warren Publishing Co. That’s essentially what the company did when it created a companion title called Eerie that would down by a guerrilla bullet before his protests could regisbe published in the six months of the year that its counterter, his hat fluttering into the mud. “They march away,” part was not. Still edited and partially written by Goodwin, Goodwin said of the soldiers, “and the destruction, like the hat and rice paddy, becomes part of the landscape.” The implication that the U.S. and its allies were as destructive in their way as their enemies—all of them shrugging off the collateral damage suffered by Vietnamese natives—did not sit well in some quarters. As Jim Warren remembers, word quickly spread among wholesalers—“many of whom belonged to the American Legion”— that Blazing Combat was denouncing U.S. fighting men. “The pro-Vietnam mentality at the time,” Warren explained, “was immense.” Sales for that second issue took a big hit but Warren was willing to lose $2000 per issue. “This was my contribution for a cause I felt was right (even through my bookkeeper and accountant were not thrilled about it)” (Cooke, “Someone Has to Make It Happen” 34). Bleeding money, Blazing Combat pressed on into issue #4 with Russ Heath’s exquisitelyrendered “Give and Take” (about a soldier trying to preserve a bottle of wine in combat) described by Comic Book Artist editor Jon B. Cooke as “possibly the best” story in the series. Sight unseen, Army PXs refused

Recruiting a Playboy photographer to take pictures of him in fatigues and war gear, Russ Heath based . all the soldiers in Blazing Combat #4’s “Give and Take” on himself. TM and © Warren Publishing Co.

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and caused no further problems for the far more successful Warren magazines. Cover artist Frank Frazetta’s own blossoming career producing book covers, movie posters and record jacket art meant that he could no longer do every Warren horror cover and Gray Morrow and Dan Adkins began filling in for him. Frazetta made a rare return to comics line art in Eerie #3, though, to draw a pair of beautiful non-smokers on the beach in a half-page public service spot. “The anti-smoking ad by Goodwin and Frazetta,” historian Richard J. Arndt explained, “was publisher Jim Warren’s reaction to cigarette companies offering him high paying advertising to target his 14-18 year old readers. It effectively stopped the offers” (Arndt 73).

both titles featured beautifullydrawn horror stories differentiated basically by their hosts, the gaunt Uncle Creepy and the short, fat Cousin Eerie. On sale December 28, 1965, Eerie #2 (dated March 1966) perplexed many readers by not beginning with issue #1. The explanation rested with Myron Fass and began in the summer of 1965. After telling his distributor Publishers Distribution Corp. that he intended to publish Eerie, Jim Warren was informed that Fass had already laid claim to the name and that his mostly-reprint magazine would be on sale in the fall. Archie Goodwin elaborated on what happened next:

“The distributor was after Warren to give in as the other publisher had a larger line of Creepy’s stellar pool of interior magazines and was therefore artists—including Gene Colan, considered a more valuable Reed Crandall, Johnny Craig, Jerry customer. Warren had one The hastily-compiled Eerie #1 sported cover art by Jack Davis. . Grandenetti (often ghosting for TM and © New Comic Company. day before he was scheduled Joe Orlando), Gray Morrow, Anto meet with the distribugelo Torres, Alex Toth—also carried over to Eerie. Notables tor and the other publisher to argue the case. He like George Evans, George Tuska, and Wally Wood popped had me and letterer Gaspar Saladino meet with in for single horror stories but 1966’s most auspicious new him and, utilizing some inventory material from regular was indisputably Steve Ditko. Pushing himself to Creepy as well as some material already printed, new heights in the black and white arena, Ditko employed the three of us cobbled together a pamphlet-sized cross-hatching to fine effect in his Eerie #3 debut (“A Room little magazine emblazoned with the Eerie logo already designed for us by our regular letterer Ben Oda. Warren had simple line repo done on it overnight. By the next morning, there were 200 copies of “Eerie #1” in existence. Some were shipped to other cities where Warren had arranged for them to be on sale. When he went to his meeting, Warren tipped the newsstand operator outside his distributor’s building so that several copies of our freshly printed ‘magazine’ would be displayed. Entering the meeting, Warren handed a shocked distributor and competitor copies of Eerie #1 and announced that it was on sale downstairs. Confirming this, the pair capitulated.” (Goodwin 9) Retaining Eerie Publications only as its imprint name, Fass’ magazine was renamed Weird

The Frank Frazetta-drawn anti-smoking public service spot ran in several . Warren magazines between 1966 and 1971. TM and © Warren Publishing Co.

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novel in an original fifty-cent black and white paperback. Published by Ballantine Books, it was illustrated by Alden McWilliams with a script by Otto Binder and Craig Tennis. There was no shortage of paperbacks full of reformatted comic books and strips that year but a volume comprised of original content and a single story was part of a stillelite crowd that Richard Kyle had referred to in 1964 as a “graphic novel.” In 1962 and 1963, Dell Comics had done serious adaptations in Dracula #1 and Frankenstein #1, but 1966’s second issues of the those two titles (dated November and September 1966, respectively) took a sharp turn into Adam West territory. The new Dracula was a purple-costumed descendant of the original whose blood experiments upgraded his senses and enabled him to become a bat. Blood-sucking was strictly forbidden, though. He didn’t want to besmirch the family name. Red-costumed Frankenstein was the original, although he went the Batman route in Dell’s account with a millionaire alter ego (Frank Stone), a faithful butler, and a snoopy neighbor (Miss Ann Thrope) who was determined to prove he was really the hero of Metropole City. Unlike the public domain Dracula and Frankstein, Wolfman was still a trademarked name (by Universal Studios) so Dell opted for Werewolf as the title of its third monster-

Steve Ditko (Eerie #6) and Gene Colan (Eerie #5) each demonstrated their mastery of washtone in Warren’s horror comics. TM and © New Comic Company.

With a View”) and brought an unprecedented dimension and richness to his art through the subsequent use of wash-tone. His pinnacle may have been Creepy #10’s “Collector’s Edition.” Obsessed with possessing “the ultimate occult work,” an ancient tome called Dark Visions, Colin Danforth was driven to murdering a bookseller to claim it only to find that its secrets revealed his own horrifying demise. The story’s impact was all in its execution: meticulously cross-hatched throughout, menacing angles and recurring close-ups of Danforth’s eyes whose meaning wasn’t clear until the final page. “Steve Ditko never produced a finer art job than ‘Collector’s Edition,’” cartoonist Richard Howell once asserted. “Its attention to detail, command of technique, and overall pacing are breathtaking” (Howell 45). Traditional monster archetypes like mummies, werewolves, and vampires were still a staple of the Warren magazines, extending to the non-comics Famous Monsters of Filmland and Monster World. Frazetta redesigned Frankenstein’s Monster for the cover of Creepy #10 (illustrating a Goodwin/Rocco Mastroserio story within) after Goodwin and Reed Crandall teamed up on a two-part “Coffin of Dracula” for issues #8 and #9. Late in 1966, Creepy’s original editor Russ Jones oversaw an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s entire Dracula 128

vel) in 1990’s World’s Worst Comics Awards #2. The Arneson/Fraccio/Tallarico creative team had greater success when they melded superheroes with politics in The Great Society Comic Book. Characterized Detail from Dell’s . as a superhero by Frankenstein #2 and . political cartoonists the Bill Fraccio/Tony . since 1965 for his Tallarico cover for . Werewolf #1. TM and © high-minded Great respective copyright holder. Society legislation, President Johnson was a natural subject for a comic book take-off as Super LBJ, but he was not alone. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara donned tights as Captain Marvelous and Johnson’s wife Lady Bird became the star-spangled Wonder-Bird while John F. Kennedy’s siblings appeared as Bobman and Teddy, secretly plotting to seize the Group Resigned to End All Threats Society for themselves. They and more than half a dozen others were entangled with such menaces as Doctor Nyet (Nikita Khrushchev), the Sicko Kid (Fidel Castro), and steel industrialist Businessman. Appropriately, the 32-page issue went on sale just in time for April Fool’s Day 1966. hero book. Secretly an Air Force pilot named Wiley Wolf, the black-garbed It wasn’t published by Dell, though. mystery-man snapped after beArneson had done an earlier politiing stranded in the wilderness with cal comic book with Jack Sparling wolves for six months and returned to (Instant Candidates ‘64) and he was civilization as a crazed environmentalist intent on saving the world from the human wolves all around him (assisted by lupine pal Thor). Sensing a man they could use, the C.I.A. recruited him immediately and set him up with the requisite super-spy arsenal. “Dell attempted to do some superheroes,” D.J. Arneson laughed. “You know, it was an attempt” (Coville). Dashing off scripts for each series as quickly as he could, the writer-editor assigned the art to the Bill Fraccio/ Tony Tallarico team with the understanding that they’d have the pages drawn just as swiftly. Even setting aside the departure from each character’s traditional horror ambiance, the execution was so laughable that the books quickly earned a reputation as one of comic books’ great misfires, even recognized (along with Mighty Comics and Myron Fass’ Captain Mar-

Fraccio and Tallarico’s back cover for The Great Society Comic Book. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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Kosher Comics #1 cover art by Mel Crawford. . TM and © respective copyright holder.

receptive when two former Dell colleagues Dick Gallon and Peter Workman suggested a different kind of satire for their new Parallax Publishing company (Coville). Great Society’s 100,000 copy print run was far below that of the average comic book, but this particular issue was aimed at the book store market, distributed by Pocket Books with clothbound covers and a $1.00 price tag. Arneson and Tallarico were even given proper creator credits on the cover. (Fraccio, hired by Tallarico to pencil the story, was not.) Assessing the volume, historian Carl Gafford declared it “a cute little comic even if the jokes…are a bit thin (too thin to support a 32-page comic—an 8-to12-pager in Mad or Help! would’ve been better)” (Gafford). Still, the issue sold well, enough so that Bobman and Teddy (“another great adult comic book,” its cover crowed) was published later in the year. Also in 1966, Parallax published a quartet of Jewish superhero take-offs by Henry Slesar and Mel Crawford in Kosher Comics. Recalling that Dell president Helen Meyer had been upset when he wrote the 1964 book without consulting her (Coville), Arneson approached her first. Tallarico noted that she liked it but didn’t think it was appropriate for her company (Amash, “I Absolutely Love What I’m Doing” 41). Still, Meyer had been supportive of the two men’s trailblazing black cowboy series in 1965, publishing a second issue of Lobo in 1966 before poor sales

With most of its original comic books cancelled, Dell relied largely on licensed properties. . Mighty Mouse TM and © CBS Operations. Get Smart TM and © Home Box Office, Inc. Dr. Who TM and © British Broadcasting Corporation. The Big Valley TM and © respective copyright holder.

dictated its cancellation. It was far from the only short-run title to get the axe from Dell that year, joined by other last issues that included Air War Stories #8, Guerrilla War #14, Naza #9, Raggedy Ann and Andy #4, Sinbad, Jr. #3, and superhero book Nukla #4. By that point, freelancer Dick Giordano recalled, “they were really hedging their bets. Most of their books were quarterly, and they wouldn’t order issue #4 until they got some kind of sales figures on #3, and what that generally meant was, you had a month to write, pencil and ink 32 pages” (Cooke, “The Action Hero Man” 38). Outside of the new monster-hero books, the company relied on new licensed properties to fill the vacancies on its schedule. When Gold Key let their rights to the Terrytoons cartoons lapse in 1965, Dell seized the moment to re-launch Mighty Mouse (with issue #166) and Heckle and Jeckle under their imprint. TV comics Gidget and I Dream of Jeannie were each cancelled themselves after two issues but the adaptations of Big Valley, F-Troop, Get Smart, and Hogan’s Heroes pushed on into 1967. The latter two series— along with Nukla #4—even sported pencils by Steve Ditko as he picked up new post-Marvel assignments. Amidst Dell’s eclectic movie adaptations (including infamous theatrical flop Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and controversial war film Battle of the Bulge), Dr. Who and the Daleks stands out in retrospect. Doctor Who—a mysterious Time Lord

who’d been featured in a cult British TV show since 1963—was regularly adapted into comics in the United Kingdom but Dell’s edition was unique. It was the only original comic book featuring the character that was ever produced by American creators in the 20th Century. For penciler Dick Giordano, it had been just another job.

Where the Action Is A one-time assistant to Charlton Executive Editor Pat Masulli, Giordano had spent the 1960s as a freelancer overseeing a small studio of artists. Noted for his impeccable, visually attractive style, he had little difficulty finding assignments but the 33-year old father of three had reached a crossroads. “I was going through a period in my life where I was having problems working, where I was trying to figure out why am I here, why are we doing these things. I was dealing with my mortality, all those things, and I thought, ‘This type of staff job—the editorial position—would be better for me than to get by freelancing. I’ve got a family to support.’” Giordano regularly made his interest known to Charlton publisher Charles Santangelo and it paid off in late 1965. “When they decided to move Pat Masulli out of the comics and into the music business end,” he declared, “I was the only one they considered [to replace him]” (Cooke, “The Action Hero Man” 39). Having won the job, the new Executive Editor got a crash course on the particulars of the printing and sched130

uling process and began to form a vision of where he wanted to take the comics line. Looking at the thirty-six titles he’d inherited, Giordano immediately scaled them down to thirty bimonthly books. Along with six final issues (Battlefield Action #62, Black Fury #57, Fightin’ Navy #125, Marines Attack #9, Sarge Steel #8, and Submarine Attack #54), early 1966 saw four other books virtually cancelled with their numbering transferred to new titles: Blue Beetle continued as Ghostly Tales #55 (May 1966), Fightin’ Air Force as War and Attack #54 (June 1966), Gunmaster as Judomaster #89 (June 1966), and Son of Vulcan as Thunderbolt #51 (March 1966). Thunderbolt, oddly, had debuted two months earlier with issue #1 and was the last of Pat Masulli’s efforts to add superhero titles to the Charlton line. Clad in a segmented red and blue costume with bare legs, the blond hero was born Peter Cannon. His physician parents had died while saving the inhabitants of a Himalayan lamasery from a plague and the grateful High Abbot vowed to use their teachings to raise the Cannons’ infant son to “the highest degree of mental and physical perfection.” Learning to channel the latent 90% of his brain power that usually lay dormant in humans, Peter repeated a mantra to focus his will power: “I can do it…I must do it…I will do it!” Grudgingly returning to the United States as an adult alongside his friend Tabu, the young man craved solitude but his conscience wouldn’t allow

of Comics had come and gone (survived by Superman and Batman), I could sense that another ‘superhero explosion’ was in the making. Pat agreed that the timing was right, but the Charlton bosses thumbed the book down” (Morisi 22). Becoming a constant presence on the company’s Westerns, the cartoonist continued to explore options into the 1960s and even made unsuccessful attempts at buying dormant 1940s superhero properties (Johnson 62).

Thunderbolt was joined in the United States by his friend and servant Tabu. Peter Cannon TM and © Dynamite Characters, LLC.

him to ignore the incredible threats that he read about in the newspapers. Protecting his privacy with a domino mask and his old training costume, Peter set forth as Thunderbolt to fight threats like dinosaurs in New York City and a resurrected Egyptian princess named Evila. Lurking behind many of them was the Hooded One, a green-cloaked menace from the lamasery who’d long resented an “outsider” having access to his sect’s secrets. Unlike the by-the-numbers mediocrity of Blue Beetle and Son of Vulcan, Thunderbolt sparkled with the passion of someone who was fulfilling a lifelong dream. A fan of superheroes in the 1930s and early 1940s, Peter Anthony Morisi entered the comic book industry too late to actually draw any. Even after becoming a New York City police officer in 1956, he wasn’t able to sever his ties with comics entirely. Working under the radar of his primary employers (who frowned on moonlighting), he variously signed his work “PM” or the better-known “PAM.” “I told editor Pat Masulli that I was interested in doing a superhero strip,” Morisi recalled of his arrival at Charlton in 1957. “Although the Golden Age

In 1965, Morisi continued, “Pat called to tell me about an opening in the Charlton schedule for a one-book deal. He said I could create, write, and illustrate my own superhero strip, without interference, if I took the assignment. Wow! Wow! Wow! The bits and pieces of ideas that I had stored away in my mind could no longer be denied” (Morisi 22).

Unable to acquire the rights to the Golden Age hero Daredevil, Morisi borrowed the character’s costume for his new hero. “I was tempted to use Daredevil’s spiked belt, too,” he added, “but didn’t have the nerve” (Johnson 63). Meanwhile, Cannon’s origin—extending to his Hooded One nemesis—was lifted from Bill Everett’s 1939 creation AmazingMan. Luckily for the cartoonist, Wally Wood’s last minute name change of his earlier Thunderbolt to Dynamo in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1 two months earlier prevented a conflict that might have derailed the whole project.

sink to name-calling in his responses. “I did what I did to be more candid and more open,” he later explained. “What I was doing in my approach to the letter pages—which I wrote entirely—was to write a letter to Mom” (Cooke, “The Action Hero Man” 40). Typical letter columns featured reaction to issues that were three or four months old but, taking advantage of Charlton’s in-house printing press, the editor was also able to print comments in one issue that discussed the one immediately preceding it. “While your ideas of team-ups, superheroes battling one another, a group comic, sidekicks, lady love interests and fantastic villains are worthwhile,” Giordano wrote to fans in general in Thunderbolt #53, “we feel that you can find all of these things in the books coming from other companies such as National, Tower, Marvel, Mighty and ACG. What we at Charlton are aiming at right now are unique tales with unusual features!” The new editor was all for costumed heroes but he wanted them on his terms. Taking the “Action-Hero” tag-

The loner hero and Morisi’s striking minimalist art style were a hit with fans, a few of whom leapt to the conclusion that PAM was Pat Masulli. Not true, Giordano assured them in Thunderbolt #54’s letter column, but he was more than willing to play up the mystery. The letter columns, still a rarity in most Charltons but added to the fan-oriented superhero books, were a classy departure from the sniping of Marvel and DC. Giordano not only ran references to the competition in reader letters but declined to 131

Detail from Thunderbolt #1 by Pete Morisi. . Peter Cannon TM and © Dynamite Characters, LLC.

Before unveiling his new look, Captain Atom endured the sniping of a fickle public in these panels from Captain Atom #84 (left) and #83 (above). TM and © DC Comics.

ers while stopping the meltdown of a nuclear reactor, Cap found that they were making an erratic return. Immersed in an experimental silver metal, the hero was elated to find that his radioactivity was in check and his basic capabilities—though weaker than before—were once again under control. Emphasizing to lapsed readers that this was a new beginning, Ditko used Cap’s metal shell as the basis for a new red and blue costume that replaced the predominantly yellow original. Ironically, with his primary colors and unmasked face, the less-powerful Cap bore a greater resemblance to Superman now than he had before. Charlton’s actual Superman analog—Blue Beetle—was history, but Ditko had plans for him, too. Introduced in seven-page shorts in Cap #83-84, a new Beetle emerged who was strictly flesh and blood although he benefited from an arsenal of hi-tech gadgetry highlighted by a giant Bug that shuttled him around the city. Clothed in contrasting shades of blue, he had a vivid costume design highlighted by goggles and a scarab design that spilled over his chest and back.

line used on house ads for the Masulli-era books, Giordano wanted to make the Charlton crime-fighters distinct in their lack of super-powers. “You’ll read a Superman story to see how he prevails, not if he prevails,” Giordano elaborated. “But that takes tension and suspense out of the story; you know at the end of that story, Superman will still be there” (Cooke, “The Action Hero Man” 40).

Parceling out just enough information to tease readers, Ditko divulged that this newcomer was scientist Ted Kord and that he had some connection to earlier Beetle Dan Garret and a place called Pago Island. Ominously, at the end of issue #84, Kord was hauled in for questioning in Garret’s murder. The mystery was sustained for several more months before a pay-off was delivered in mid-1967.

In support of that goal, Son of Vulcan and Blue Beetle were cancelled (running Roy Thomas’ first professional scripts in their last issues) while the more successful Steve Ditko-penciled Captain Atom would survive as the exception to the rule. Ditko, though, believed he could adapt the series to fit the new model and plotted a two-parter for issues #83-84 (November 1966 and January 1967) in which Cap’s powers were dramatically scaled down. Echoing Ditko’s earlier Marvel work, the Captain Atom of these issues was no longer the universally-trusted hero of earlier issues but someone whose mask and atomic nature made him an object of suspicion and fear. Having lost his pow-

Blue Beetle TM and © DC Comics.

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In an interview published in Marvel Main #4 (October 1968), Ditko frankly characterized the 1964 Blue Beetle series as “terrible,” adding that he “began thinking how it could have been handled. The ideas I had were good, so I marked them down, made sketches of the costume, gadgets, the Bug, etc.. I put them in an idea folder I have and forgot about it. A year or so later, when [Charlton] was again planning to do super-heroes, I told Dick Giordano about the BB idea I had. He was interested in trying it, so it came out of the idea file, and into the magazine” (Canterbury).

devoted to his monster stories (Fantastic Giants #24) that summer and billed it as “a Steve Ditko Special!” ACG, DC, Dell, Tower and Warren had all given him work after he left Marvel, but Charlton and its willingness to let him work unmolested had a special place in Ditko’s heart. Just as Morisi and Ditko felt personally invested in their projects, writer-artist Frank Captain Atom and Nightshade joined forces in Captain Atom #82. . McLaughlin was passionTM and © DC Comics. ate about his own creation when JuDitko’s first contribution to Giordano’s domaster #89 picked up where the line-up had been an Action Heroine World War Two hero’s adventures created by fan-turned-pro Dave Kaler had left off in Special War Series #4 and premiering as a guest-star in Capeight months earlier. Rip Jagger was tain Atom #82 before the hero’s rebranded a traitor by Japan’s notoribirth. Traditionally a solo act, Cap had ous broadcaster Tokyo Rose at one initially been miffed when he was point in the next year and blinded at paired with a mysterious secret agent another. In one of the first comic book named Nightshade to track down the stories to address the United States’ Ghost who was stealing government internment of Asian Americans dursecrets. Impressed with her fighting ing the war, Judomaster visited a Wyskills and sharp wits, Cap was soon oming relocation camp in issue #91 smitten and the duo had exchanged (October 1966) and came away with real names (she was Eve Eden) before a kid sidekick named Tiger. the story was over. Sidelined during Captain Atom’s makeover, the womIssue #92’s Nazi villain Smiling Skull an in the orange mask and sleeveless had, in a neat bit of continuity, previblue dress returned as a series regular ously appeared in 1965’s Sarge Steel with issue #85 in 1967. #3. Created by Pat Masulli and first illustrated by Giordano, Sarge survived It was a testament to the artist’s imthe cancellation of his book, not only portance at Charlton that the comhaving an inventory issue burned pany even published a 25-cent giant off in the summer as Secret Agent #9 but landing in Judomaster #91 as the title’s new back-up series.

Steve Ditko received star billing on the cover of . Fantastic Giants #24. TM and © respective copyright holder.

The same month, Thunderbolt #54 introduced its own back-up, a strip about three folk-rock-singers-turnedsuperheroes called the Sentinels. From its grandiose story titles to its bickering lead characters (Rick “Helio” Strong, Cindy “Mentalia” Carson, and Crunch “The Brute” Wilson), the feature was obviously taking its cues from Marvel. It was hardly a surprise to learn that both writer-creator Gary Friedrich (a Missouri friend of Roy Thomas now living in New York City) and artist Sam Grainger came straight from superhero fandom. Although stilted and amateurish in some respects, the series made a respectable showing in a year that saw the Mighty Crusaders, Myron Fass, and Dell’s costumed monsters lower the bar. 133

The last of Charlton’s new hero backups premiered in Fightin’ Five #40 (November 1966). When diplomacy failed in envoy Christopher Smith’s negotiations with the world’s warlords, he didn’t turn the other cheek. He put on an odd-looking helmet, a flight-pack and a brown and white costume…and took out the bad guys by force. He was the Peacemaker, “a man who loves peace so much that he is willing to fight for it!” (A clunkier version of the tagline appeared eight months earlier in Gunmaster #88). Created by the prolific Joe Gill, the character had an earnestness about him that made the concept a bit laughable but the artwork of Pat Boyette helped sell it.

Peacemaker strides on stage in Fightin’ Five #40.. TM and © DC Comics.

With a budget that was arguably the lowest in the industry, Giordano was forced to be resourceful in raising page rates for his best creators. Effectively writing off a certain percentage of the line’s war, romance, and Western books, he “started buying artwork from a company in Brazil” at low rates. “Then,” Giordano continued, “I talked to my boss and said, ‘Look, I’ll spend the same money I am now, just let me decide who gets what. So by getting the cheaper artwork, but having a budget to stay within which was based on the crummy rates we had, I was able to give money to people like Steve Ditko and the people who were really producing stuff for me” (Thomas, “The Silver Age of Charlton” 6). Among those benefiting from the budgetary juggling act was Charlton’s leading automotive writer-artist Jack Keller. Despite the immense popularity of hot rods and street rods (custom-car designer Ed “Big Daddy” Roth was even parodied as Ding-Dong Daddy in DC’s Teen Titans #3), no one other than Petersen Publishing (CarToons; Hot Rod Cartoons; et al.) was even interested in the genre. With Giordano’s encouragement, Keller began expanding the parameters of the line’s four hot rod books and introducing serials into their ongoing series. One of the most notable was a multi-parter that opened in Drag-Strip Hotrodders #12 (November 1963) by destroying the reputation of motorcyclist Ken King and sent him into 1967 trying to clear his name.

Pat Boyette’s first Charlton assignment appeared in Shadows From Beyond #50. . TM and © respective copyright holder.

The 43-year-old Boyette seemed to come out of nowhere, delivering sharp pen-lines, adventurous layouts, and distinctive lettering that were so self-assured that one would never guess he hadn’t drawn a comic book before 1966! His lone credit had been a short stint on the Captain Flame newspaper strip in 1954. Restless after years in local radio, TV, and film productions, the Texan had been persuaded by a friend to try drawing comic books and sent a cold submission to Charlton in 1965. A letter informed the would-be artist that the company was reorganizing and that they’d be in touch later…almost exactly a year, as it happened. Receiving a script for a horror story (“‘Spacious’ Room For Rent,” published in Shadows From Beyond #50: October 1966), Boyette was invigorated by Giordano’s instructions to “do whatever you want with it. […] Although Charlton was not known for paying big fees,” he explained, “it gave me an opportunity that the other companies didn’t offer and that was the freedom to experiment, to do as I wanted, to make changes, to be happy. After growing unhappy in television because of the long tiresome wearisome haul, I decided, ‘Man, I’m not going to go into comics to be unhappy. If I go into comics, I’m going to be happy, or I ain’t gonna be there’” (Mangus 80). “I was desperate for talent,” Giordano recalled of his early days as editor. “Whoever walked in the door got a job to do, and I was trying to do comic books with Charlton better than they had been. […] The first day I got there, I’m going through the filing cabinet and I’m picking talent out that had been totally ignored” (Thomas, “The Silver Age of Charlton” 6). Along with Boyette, Friedrich, and Grainger, the editor also hired New York comicon organizer David Kaler for assignments that including dialoguing Ditko’s Captain Atom stories.

TM and © respective copyright holder.

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Conspicuously absent in the Charlton line-up (in no small part due to the decade-old Comics Code) were any horror comics. Noting that the non-Code Warren, Dell, and Gold Key were all having success with the genre, Giordano decided the time was right to try it again. Ghostly Tales #55 (picking up Blue Beetle’s numbering) got the ball rolling with stories drawn by Ditko, Ernie Bache, Charles Nicholas, and Rocke Mastroserio, a vampirish host named Mr. L. Dedd, and a debonair “ghost fighter” named Doctor M.T. Graves. One ghost returned to haunt Charlton in 1966 and it stemmed from a series of allegedly authentic stories that Joe Gill had been writing for the war comics. Handed a bound volume of Medal of Honor recipients and the action that earned them the citation, the writer was instructed to adapt an account of each soldier’s death into comics form. Approaching Charlton exec Burt Levy, Gill argued that many of the men were still alive and that artists would be unable to accurately render details like their race or hair color. Levy “insisted on using their names!” Gill declared. “Everything had to be authentic!”

Bill Montes and Ernie Bache drew the Joe Gill script for 1963’s Army War Heroes #1 that prompted a lawsuit from Richard E. Bush. TM and © respective copyright holder.

I think, something like $7,000,” Gill said of Charlton’s eventual settlement (Amash, “The Joe Gill Interview” 14).

Medal of Honor winner Richard E. Bush’s lawsuit against Charlton—filed on April 20, 1966—was certainly real enough even if the premature account of his death in 1963’s Army War Heroes #1 hadn’t been. “They had to pay,

The company was better off referencing present day pop stars, inserting the Beatles alone onto three covers (Career Girl Romances #32; Teen Confessions #37; Summer Love #47) and launching a comics/pop music hybrid called GoGo. Along with a Jon D’Agostino strip featuring “screen teen queen” Miss Bikini Luv, the series also featured ongoing take-offs on rock stars (The Rotting Stumps), spies (The Man From R.E.L.A.T.I.V.E.), soap operas (Return to Peculiar Place), and superheroes (Blooperman). Dick Giordano credited the series’ inspiration to Pat Masulli, who argued that “there was a lot of stuff available from the music department that fit in Go-Go. Photos, topical material” and stills of Herman’s Hermits, the Rolling Stones, the Byrds, or actor David McCallum might show up in a given issue (Cooke, “The Action Hero Man” 45).

Big Deals and No Deals Mad, of course, did topical much more effectively, but the only celebrity stills it ran had gag word balloons attached or came from the likes of comedienne Phyllis Diller (Mad #105) and actors Chuck Connors and David Hedison (Mad #103) in response to a mention in the magazine. The title took its 100th issue in stride (“Big deal,” Alfred E. Neuman yawned on the cover) and kept right on making a punching bag out of pop culture’s biggest hits. The inevitable Batman TV show parody (by writer Lou Silverstone and artist Mort Drucker) ran in issue #105 (September 1966), focusing on teen sidekick Sparrow’s inability to make any strides with the ladies thanks to the whole crime-fighting thing. Sergio Aragones whipped up a spread of Batman sight gags for the following issue. On the other end of the cultural spectrum, the escalation in public demonstrations was the inspiration for Mad #107’s “Protest Magazine” (“The Publication For Everyone Against Everything”) whose features included the “Ask Auntie Establishment” advice column. Somewhere in between were

Jon D’Agostino likely drew the cover of Go-Go #1. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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revue’s general manager Mike Brandman: Gaines’ first royalty payment from Brandman came in the form of 35,000 pennies, the second arrived via a check “made out jointly to Gaines and Brandman’s secretary,” and the third was stapled one hundred times to a piece of paper. “The fourth payment arrived as a check payable to Gaines’ personal account, with a note disclosing that photostats of the check had been sent to Jack Liebowitz, then head of Mad’s parent company, National Periodical Publications, and to Louis Lefkowitz, the attorney general of New York State” (Jacobs 182).

Norman Mingo painted Mad #105’s . Batman cover while George Woodbridge . drew issue #107’s “Protest Magazine” from . Larry Siegel’s script. TM and © DC Comics.

bits like one on congratulatory purchase tags for products such as rockets and movie animals. That particular two-pager’s significance wasn’t in its gags but in what it meant for its writer. A frequent contributor to Mad since 1962, Dick DeBartolo had no idea when he conceived the purchase tag strip for Mad #103 (June 1966) that he was beginning an unbroken streak of writing material for literally every issue of the magazine for the next five decades! By 1966, Mad’s library had been collected into more than two dozen paperbacks, including an edition devoted exclusively to Antonio Prohias’ Spy Vs. Spy, and the satellite product didn’t end there. Mad #104 even pitched the cast album for The Mad Show, an Off-Broadway musical revue that opened three days before Batman’s premiere at New York City’s New Theatre. Magazine regulars Stan Hart and Larry Siegel wrote the book for the show while Stephen Sondheim (referred to as Nom De Plume in the playbill) was one of several lyricists. As with so many things Mad, there was a dash of irony: The revue’s music came via Mary Rodgers… whose legendary composer father Richard had been part of a failed lawsuit against the magazine for its song parodies only a few years earlier.

The cast included Paul Sand, future Laugh-In regular Jo Anne Worley (who showed up in Mad #104’s back cover ad parody), and later Alice star Linda Lavin. The latter, in fact, also starred in It’s A Bird, It’s A Plane, It’s Superman only a few months later, even singing its stand-out “You’ve Got Possibilities,” but Lavin might have been better off sticking with The Mad Show. Superman’s 129 performances paled next to Mad’s 871. Publisher William Gaines, incidentally, found a kindred spirit in the

Lacking the clout of Mad, rival Cracked attempted to get an animation deal of its own, striking a deal with Krantz Films (connected to the Marvel Super Heroes cartoons) to create a show for them. George Gladir and John Severin produced a pilot story called “The Flipsides” for Cracked #52 (July 1966)—with magazine mascot Sylvester P. Smythe recast as Clyde Flipside—but nothing ever came of the project (Arnold 65, 71). Nor did a reported TV pilot based on “!Teenman!,” an ongoing feature about a rock-singing superhero that began in Sick #46 (August 1966) (Kaler, “What’s News: 12/66” 5). Harvey Comics was faced with a similar situation when they were hired to produce a tie-in comic book for a toy

The Mad Show’s cast included MacIntyre Dixon, Dick Libertini, Jo Anne Worley, Linda Lavin, . and Paul Sand. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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Millie the Model did. Becoming hipper as it went along (at least on the covers), Bunny ultimately had a five-year run of twenty issues. Meanwhile, the May 23, 1966, edition of Newsweek reported on the incredible sales of Bantam Books’ reissues of Lester Dent’s 1930s Doc Savage novels and noted that the Goodson-Todman film studio had plans for a TV series in 1967 “that won’t be camp.” Rights issues eventually killed the project but Gold Key wound up having Leo Dorfman and Jack Sparling adapt the very story that the producers had intended for their pilot—The Thousand-Headed Man—in Doc Savage #1 (November 1966). It’s unknown whether the one-shot was intended as a tie-in to the unrealized film. The most awkward licensed-project-that-wasn’t of 1966, though, was surely Gold Key’s Space Family Robinson. Conceived by Del Connell in 1962 as one of the publisher’s few original properties, its concept bore an uncanny resemblance to Lost In Space, an Irwin Allen-produced TV series that had debuted on CBS on September 15, 1965. Author Edward Shifres asserted in his 1996 book Space Family Robinson: The True Story that Allen had actually tried to buy the film rights to the title only to discover they were already in the hands of another screenwriter named Hilda Boehm. Undeterred, Allen tweaked the formula by expanding the family unit to include an older third Robinson child, a spacecraft pilot, and a conniving stowaway named Doctor Smith (Krell 34-35).

The short-lived !Teenman! feature ran in Sick #46, #47, #49, and #50-52. Original . art by Bob Elliott courtesy of Heritage Auctions. TM and © respective copyright holder.

company’s new doll. Bunny was meant to compete with standard-bearer Barbie but the manufacturer got cold feet. As artist Hy Eisman recalled, “Harvey felt the concept was exactly what they had been looking for to compete with Archie. So they decided to go through with the comic anyway” (Squirek 61). Eisman found himself being micromanaged every step of the way as Leon Harvey repeatedly laid down the sort of art direction that had sent Wally Wood packing. The executive insisted on “[finding] a way to incorporate the Harvey simplicity” while evoking the Archie art style. “He didn’t like to see half figures, or heads, or partials in any panel,” Eisman added, noting Harvey’s preference for full-figure poses. “He also liked to see as many characters in the panels as possible. Being a neophyte, I followed his instructions completely” (Squirek 61).

“Gold Key was thinking about suing the production company,” SFR artist Dan Spiegle remembered, “but our corporate lawyers said it wasn’t wise because we were already doing other work for them—Voyage To the Bottom of the Sea, […] etc.—and we’d be cutting off our nose to spite our face” (Cooke, “The Splendor of Dan Spiegle” 52). Instead, an agreement was reached that allowed Gold Key to revise its cover logo to Space Family Robinson: Lost In Space effective with issue #15 (January 1966). “I believe it was our Eastern office that made this decision,” West Coast editor Del Connell told Edward Shrife, “thinking that the addition of the TV show’s name might increase sales of our book. I didn’t like the idea but the decision was made” (Krell 34).

Released as a 25-cent giant, Bunny #1 (December 1966) proclaimed, “She’s hip! She’s mod! She’s boss!” She was also rather bland. Whether winning a beauty contest or finding a man, things came a little too easily for small-town-girl-turnedsupermodel Bunny Ball. Among the many boyfriends she cultivated in the first issue alone were O.O. Heaven, agent of A.U.N.T. (a composite of Man From U.N.C.L.E. actors Robert Vaughn and David McCallum) and the Beagles rock quartet. For all that, the comic book did fill a void, particularly with its interactive qualities that encouraged girls to submit fashion designs in the manner that Archie’s discontinued Katy Keene title and Marvel’s

Harvey promoted its new Bunny comic book to retailers . with a promotional calendar. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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The change seemed to pay off, justifying the comic book’s promotion from a quarterly schedule to bi-monthly with issue #18. Reflecting the cliffhangers that ended every episode of Lost In Space, Space Family Robinson #18 also inaugurated the comic book’s first multi-part story, one involving the discovery of 12th Century humans who’d been placed in suspended animation on an alien vessel. Editorially keeping a stiff upper lip, Del Connell finally let

his guard down shortly before the last original episode of Lost In Space aired on March 6, 1968. Responding to a reader inquiry in Space Family Robinson #27 about the similar properties, Connell replied, “Well, our comic was published for three years before the TV show went on the air… and the subtitle of our second episode was ‘Lost In Space.’” Gold Key was faced with another dilemma when a Tarzan TV series starring Ron Ely premiered on September 9. Gaylord Dubois and Russ Manning’s ongoing adaptations of the Edgar Rice Burroughs novels had been a critical and financial success, but the publisher could scarcely ignore the potential of tie-in sales. The solution was ingenious. Typically published eight times a year, the title was upgraded to monthly effective with issue #162 (December 1966), its cover sporting a Ron Ely photo and a new logo: Tarzan of the Apes TV Adventures. In the months that the Manning adaptations didn’t appear, stories set in the TV series’ continuity (written by Dubois and variously drawn by Doug Wildey, Dan Spiegle and Alberto Giolitti) were published. Coinciding with the changeover, the 15-year-old critically-acclaimed Brothers of the Spear back-up feature ended in Tarzan #161 after 136 episodes.

Space Family Robinson #15 cover painting by George Wilson. TM and © Random House, Inc.

They were comparatively quicker awarding series to NBC’s I Spy and CBS’ The Wild Wild West in the spring and summer, an acknowledgment of the grip that secret agents still had on pop culture even in a world gone Bat-mad. The former—groundbreaking in its casting of black comedian Bill Cosby as a series lead opposite white actor Robert Culp—and the latter—which fused spy games with Westerns—fit nicely alongside Gold Key’s year-old Man From U.N.C.L.E. comic book. The publisher also released one-shots devoted to Secret Agent (based on British import Danger Man starring Patrick McGoohan) and Honey West (whose star Anne Francis played a sexy private eye). Writer Dick Wood and artists Mike Sekowsky and Mike Peppe offered an original back-up series beginning in U.N.C.L.E. #7 that featured a group of female counter-spies led by a woman with the unlikely name of Jet Dream. By now, the craze was being kidded in many quarters, notably on NBC’ live-action Get Smart TV series and animated Cool McCool (created in part by Batman’s Bob Kane), Mell Lazarus and Jack Rickard’s Pauline McPeril newspaper strip (premiering April 11, 1966), and the feature film Our Man Flint. The latter was itself parodied in Hanna-Barbera’s big screen The Man Called Flintstone and Gold Key published an adaptation in Flintstones #36. It followed other one-shots devoted to Tom and Jerry and the Mouse From T.R.A.P. (a 25-cent giant) and Saturday morning’s Secret Squirrel (whose companion series Atom Ant got a try-out, too).

The company’s swift reaction to Tarzan and Lost In Space ran counter to their characteristic caution when it came to TV shows. Snatching the comics rights to a series before it aired was a gamble, one that too often resulted in single issue try- Tarzan #162 photo cover featuring Ron Ely. . TM and © ERB, Inc. outs like 1966’s Laredo and Legend of Jesse James whose TV incarnations never caught on. Gold Key Disney Goodbyes and Hellos waited until NBC’s Flipper and CBS’ Gomer Pyle - USMC Mickey Mouse: Super Secret Agent topped them all in were in their second seasons before committing to ongoterms of weirdness. For much of his comic book existence, ing comic books for them in 1966.

Secret agents were well-represented at Gold Key in 1966. . Tom and Jerry TM and © Turner Entertainment. Flintstones TM and © Hanna-Barbera Productions. Honey West, I Spy TM and © respective copyright holders.

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the effect was positively freakish. After three issues of “the new Mickey Mouse,” Gold Key realized how unsettling it was and returned to the reassuring cartoony style in issue #110.

Mickey Mouse’s turn as a secret agent in a world of humans was promoted in a house ad. . TM and © Disney Enterprises, Inc.

Mickey had been portrayed as a twofisted adventurer, often enlisted by policeman friend Chief O’Hara to solve one case or another. It shouldn’t have been much of a reach, then, for him and Goofy to be recruited by Police International to fight spies under the codenames of Pumpkin-3 and Coconut. The challenge, someone must have observed, was getting the new direction noticed. That turned out to be no problem at all.

Beneath that comforting timeless surface, though, the Disney line was changing. It had no shortage of talented writers and artists—Murry, Jack Bradbury, Manuel Gonzales, Tony Strobl, Carl Fallberg, Vic Lockman and Bill Walsh among them—but one man stood out. For twenty-three years, without ever signing his name to a single one of the Donald Duck or Uncle Scrooge stories he created, Carl Barks had instilled an expectation of quality in the minds of youngsters. It was the baseline that “the Good Duck Artist’s” colleagues were measured against and it was about to go away. Weary of the grind, Barks began a countdown when he turned sixty-five

on March 27. He would retire on June 30. His editor Chase Craig understood the implications, writing in November 1965, “I had not forgotten about your retirement plans but I did not remember the actual date. In fact, I would like very much to forget such a date as it will be a catastrophe for the comic book industry. I’m sorry that 23 years of comic booking gives you such a pain in the neck, but look on the bright side. . . . [T]hink of how many people you’ve made happy with Uncle Scrooge” (Andrae 271). Barks left enough Uncle Scrooge stories to run halfway through 1967, but the ones dated 1966—while not his peak material—were still a fine, varied lot. There were “Micro-Ducks From Outer Space” (US #65), a robot horse (US #66), and reflecting the cartoon-

What readers of Mickey Mouse #107 (June 1966) encountered was a straight adventure story with realistic-looking people and settings written by Don R. Christensen and drawn by Dan Spiegle…real in every respect but the Paul Murry-illustrated cartoon mouse and dog running around in the midst of it and drawing no attention to themselves whatsoever. For those holding the comic book, though,

“Good duck artist” Carl Barks in an undated . 1960s photo.

As this page from Mickey Mouse #108 demonstrates, the juxtaposition of humans and . cartoon animals was more strange than cool. TM and © Disney Enterprises, Inc.

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in 1951’s WDC&S #125, started off as an annual with follow-up issues in 1967 and 1968 but was finally promoted to an ongoing quarterly series effective with issue #4 (January 1970).

Uncle Scrooge #64 included this startling scene wherein an enemy soldier blew . up the Duckburg Embassy in Unsteadystan. TM and © Disney Enterprises, Inc.

ist’s age, some mockery of pop music via unseen singer Tweedy Teentwirp (US #62). “That’s what’s wrong in England!” Scrooge snapped. “Beat singers are making all the money, and my Shakespearean drama house is going bust!” Remarkably, Uncle Scrooge #64’s “Treasure of Marco Polo” even referenced Vietnam, sending the ducks to war-torn Unsteadystan and depicting its Duckburg Embassy being blown up. When the country’s hereditary ruler Prince Char Ming rose to reclaim power from guerrillas at the end of the story, a soldier asked, “Who is he? We’ve had sixty rulers in six months.” A generation later, the Disney Company was uncomfortable enough with that comment to have it replaced in reprints along with any reference to “dictators,” “rebels,” and “revolutions” (Blum 22). Since Barks’ last Donald Duck story appeared in 1965, Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories attempted to regain its footing. Donald reprints by Barks ran in issues #304-307 (January-April 1966) before a new Donald and Daisy feature premiered in issue #308. Barks wrote and drew that episode and another in WDC&S #312 and then left the title for good. The Walt Disney Theater feature that had been intended to replace the Barks leads was discontinued with

WDC&S #311 (August 1966), while issue #313 (October 1966) made an attempt at restoring one of the book’s other discontinued traditions: The Mickey Mouse serials resumed with the four-part Paul Murry-drawn “The Treasure of Oomba Loomba,” based in part on a 1937 newspaper continuity. Reflecting the editorial uncertainty at play, issue #311 even included an unprecedented request for readers to submit their own suggestions as to what they’d like to see in the book.

Such was the norm for Gold Key comic books. Tweety and Sylvester #2 (February 1966) and Ripley’s Believe It or Not #2 (October 1966) became ongoing titles a respective twenty-seven and sixteen months after their first issues were published. Lassie—absent for fifteen months—returned from limbo for issues #65-67 before returning to the kennel until the summer of 1967. Total War (now called M.A.R.S. Patrol) came back for a third issue in 1966 that did well enough to justify another one a year later. Beep Beep the Roadrunner, a series that Gold Key didn’t continue after its 1962 split from Dell, defied them all by returning with issue #1 (October 1966) and maintaining a regular schedule right up to issue #105 when the entire comics division shut down in 1984. Filling out of the Gold Key 1966 playlist was the usual array of one-shots that ranged from pulp obscurities (G-8 and His Battle Aces) to Disney films (Legend of Young Dick Turpin; That Darn Cat), animation (Milton the Monster and Fearless Fly), and 25-cent giants devoted to the Lone Ranger, Turok, Woody Woodpecker, and Barks duck classics. An ongoing Zorro comic book was also put on the schedule, re-

In the short term, Gold Key attempted to follow Barks through the introduction of new characters. Emil Eagle, an evil counterpart to inventor Gyro Gearloose, debuted in a story by Vic Lockman, Jack Bradbury, and Steve Steere (Uncle Scrooge #63). Meanwhile, beatnik Fethry Duck (“Donald’s Buzzin’ Cousin”), created for Disney’s bustling overseas market in 1964, made appearances in Donald Duck #105, Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #304 and Donald #106, only to vanish as quickly as he came. Correctly banking that, like Beagle Boys a few years earlier, a Barks concept could stand on its own, Gold Key released Huey, Dewey and Louie Junior Woodchucks #1 to test the waters with stories by Vic Lockman and artists Tony Strobl and Steve Steere. The Woodchucks, an idealized version of the Boy Scouts that Barks introduced 140

Tony Strobl and Steve Steere’s cover for . Junior Woodchucks #1. TM and © Disney Enterprises, Inc.

printing late 1950s stories in a move to justify Disney’s continued hold on the license to the character. Meanwhile, Magilla Gorilla #9, Mr. and Mrs. J. Evil Scientist #4 and My Favorite Martian #9 marked the final issues of those titles.

Unexplored Kingdoms The abrupt disappearance of Beetle Bailey, The Phantom and Popeye from the Gold Key schedule in 1966 had nothing to do with sales, though. Rather, the King Features Syndicate had grown frustrated over the handling of its newspaper strip properties in comic books. Harvey had cancelled Blondie and Gold Key had relegated its three books to a quarterly schedule. In the face of Blondie’s enduring fame, Beetle’s recent milestone acquisition of one thousand subscribing newspapers and The Phantom comic strip’s surge in popularity under artist Sy Barry, the syndicate concluded that it could not only do the job better but save money by producing the comic books in-house. On top of that, they could publish them more frequently, fulfilling the demands for more comics material overseas. Issues of King Comics were, in fact, simultaneously delivered to U.S. and foreign distributors. Hiring former Gold Key editor Bill Harris to edit a group of six titles, King set its sights on a June 1966 launch (its first issues dated August). Beetle Bailey #54, Blondie #164, and Popeye #81 picked up numerically where they’d left off with their previous publishers but now enjoyed a bi-monthly schedule. In the interest of cross-promotion, Blondie also featured Beetle Bailey short stories while Popeye showed up in early issues of Beetle before the more appropriate Mort Walker/Dik Browne-created Hi and Lois became its co-feature. Harris, who’d eagerly rallied collectors during his days at Gold Key, knew that King Comics’ real opportunity with fans was in its three action titles, Flash Gordon #1, Mandrake the Magician #1 and The Phantom #18 (all dated September). All three were still syndicated in newspapers across the country, with the Mandrake Sunday feature even carried in the nationallydistributed weekly Grit.

King Comics’ line-up included Blondie (art by Paul Fung, Jr.), The Phantom (art by Bill Lignante), . Mandrake the Magician (art by Don Heck and Mike Peppe), and Beetle Bailey (art by the Mort Walker studio). . TM and © King Features Syndicate, Inc.

Fanzine articles in the 1960s had ignited a renewed interest in the influential original 1930s Sunday strips of creator Alex Raymond that pitted Flash Gordon against Ming the Merciless on the planet Mongo. The primal super-heroics of those stories stood in contrast to the straight sciencefiction of the present-day newspaper strip and Harris believed that was a distinction worth capitalizing on. Aware that Al Williamson had been a devout fan of Raymond’s strips and adopted some of that art style in his 141

own work, the editor convinced him to write and draw King’s first issue. For the first time in years, Flash Gordon, Dale Arden, and Dr. Zarkov stood on the planet Mongo, recalling their battles with Ming and embracing the allies who’d helped them defeat him. “It was the most beautiful comic book I ever saw,” Batton Lash declared of his reaction as a twelve-year-old. “Williamson gave Flash a sophisticated flair the character hadn’t seen in years. Al set a new standard for

Al Williamson’s cover for Flash Gordon #1. . TM and © King Features Syndicate, Inc.

Flash Gordon—and comics in general. He took Raymond’s neoclassical approach to Flash and contemporized it, without losing any of the romanticism” (Lash 6). It was nothing short of a love letter to Alex Raymond and, having written it, Williamson was ready to move on. “They weren’t paying me enough, I was kind of unhappy about it, and I just didn’t feel like doing it,” he explained, so he left the series in the hands of Archie Goodwin and Frank Bolle (FG #2) and Bill Pearson and Ric Estrada (FG #3). Wally Wood and Gil Kane also got to draw the character in four-pagers for The Phantom #18-20. Trumpeted in fanzines months before its release, Flash Gordon #1 eventually picked up Alley Awards for its cover, feature story (“Return To Mongo”), penciling, and coloring to say nothing of Hall of Fame and Best All-Time Great Comic Strip honors for Raymond’s original work. The response left Williamson thunderstruck: “I don’t know what happened, but they said they got letters from all over the world, so they must have printed the same stuff in Europe. They showed me a bag that was full of letters on the book, and that was the first time a reaction like that had ever happened to me. And ev-

Original Williamson art from Flash Gordon #1, courtesy of Heritage Auctions. TM and © King Features Syndicate, Inc.

erybody at King saw the second book coming in and they didn’t particularly care for it. They wanted the first book, my kind of work, or Alex’s type of work. And they gave me a little more money and said please do it. And I said, ‘OK, as long as I get my [original art] back,’ and that’s why I did issues 4 and 5.” (Ringgenberg 78). Early reaction to the King Comics line in general was so positive that Bill 142

Harris announced in the fall that it would double in size by May and June of 1967 with Buck Rogers, Girl Phantom, Jungle Jim, Ponytail, Secret Agent X-9 and an undisclosed sixth title in the works (Kaler, “What’s News: 11/66” 4). A month later, the sextet was put on hold, delayed by “a new department project at King” (Kaler, “What’s News: 12/66” 3). Meanwhile, reports that “many dealers refused to handle the early King titles” because of their lack of a Comics Code Authority seal led the company to belatedly begin submitting its content to the

States was a tougher market to crack, though, and an attempt at releasing several Tintin albums through Golden Books in 1959 and 1960 had been a disappointment. In 1965, someone realized that the trick to developing an audience for the character was to include him in a publication that kids were already buying. To that end, a deal was struck with the fifteen-year-old Children’s Digest—whose circulation is said to have averaged 700,000 copies per issue—to serialize one Adventures of Tintin story per year in its pages. Beginning with “The Secret of the Unicorn” in the January 1966 issue, Tintin

enjoyed a fourteen-year relationship with the magazine that increased his name recognition with an entire generation of American kids. Despite scores of paperback compilations of contemporary comic strips, proper graphic albums like those represented by Tintin had yet to catch on in the United States. The rare early examples like Ballantine’s Dracula, though, could be amazing and that was certainly the case with 1966’s The Pogo Poop Book. Cartoonist Walt Kelly had been collecting runs of his Pogo newspaper strip in trade paperbacks since 1951, increasingly editing and expanding the content for successive

Tintin’s debut in the January 1966 Children’s Digest. TM and © HERGÉ / Moulinsart 2013.

CCA with its January 1967-dated issues (Kaler, “What’s News: 8/67” 3). As it put its muscle behind the adventure features it syndicated, King Features looked at its other properties and decided it no longer needed its own version of Little Orphan Annie. Even as the 37-year-old Little Annie Rooney expired on April 16, 1966, the hipper Modesty Blaise was moving in. Created for Britain’s London Evening Standard in 1963 by writer Peter O’Donnell and artist Jim Holdaway, Modesty had experiences as an orphan that eclipsed her American counterparts. Those scars gave her an immeasurably tougher foundation for her adult adventures as a criminalmastermind-turned-Secret-Serviceconsultant. The Hall Syndicate began distributing Modesty in the U.S. on March 14, 1966 but it never became a widespread hit stateside. Complex and sexually provocative with the occasional topless shot of its heroine, the feature tended to make conservative editors skittish. There were no such concerns over the year’s other prominent comics import, this one the product of cartoonist Georges Remi (better known as Hergé). In his native Belgium, Remi had been producing the humor-tinged adventures of a blond young reporter named Tintin since 1929, cultivating a passionate following that expanded to England in the 1950s. The United

The imaginative landscape of Pandemonia was well-represented in this September 4, 1966 Pogo Sunday page. . TM and © Okefenokee Glee & Perloo Inc.

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volumes. Poop Book, though, was remarkable in that it devoted almost its entirety to brand new stories. Never one to shy away from social or political commentary, Kelly addressed themes like racism (including “The Kluck Klams,” a piece on the son of a white supremacist), war and supreme beings (“God is not dead,” Kelly quipped in response to a recent Time article on atheism. “He is merely unemployed...”). Rendered in his lush, cartoony style, he framed those messages in a manner accessible to adults and children. Stretching himself, Kelly even executed one story (“Mouse Into Elephant”) in handsome Bertram Fitzgerald alongside the cover of Golden Legacy #1. washtones.

TM and © respective copyright holder.

By the time the book went on sale in November, Kelly was in the midst of a sweeping continuity in the newspaper strip (July 1, 1966-April 1, 1967) that catapulted Pogo, Albert the Alligator and Churchy LaFemme into a distant land of dinosaurs, unicorns and cave people called Pandemonia. Although the cartoonist deliberately avoided overt topical references in order to bank strips ahead of deadlines, he couldn’t resist introducing caricatures of President Johnson and Red China’s Chairman Mao Zedong as strangers who wanted nothing more than to “protect” the people of the distant land.

“The Pandemonia sequence is often cited as the most interesting and artistically appealing storyline in the history of Pogo,” Selby Kelly and Steven Thompson wrote. “Part of the reason for this is, obviously, the whole new range of fantastic creatures and landscapes portrayed. It is also highly political, with the characters of the Loan Arranger and Gwan Shi Foah battling over Sha Lan. […] After Pandemonia, Pogo tended to be more open and scenic. Where the strips from the ‘50s are overly dark and claustrophobic, the strips from the late ‘60s are more open, with a finer line and broader vistas. The experiment of wider spaces was obviously a success” (Kelly 175, 181). Despite drawing a feature populated entirely by animals, Kelly was drawn into the debate over the absence of black characters in comic strips. In the November 1966 issue of Ebony, he declared, “All animals pick on things not like them. If something’s different, they attack it. Southern readers are no more prejudiced than those in the North. They’re all got [sic] damn schizophrenic phonies.” Noting the attitude that a black character who appeared in a strip needed to serve a specific purpose, Kelly continued, “They can’t accept him there simply as a human being. People are going to live in their dream world long enough to be destroyed by it if they are not careful. I hope they come to grips with reality in time for some good to come of it” (Pierce 56). In the midst of the debate, a pioneering 33-year-old black accountant named Bertram A. Fitzgerald decided to make his own mark in the comic book industry. Recalling how the biographies he’d read as a boy had avoided making reference to the race of men like Three Musketeers author Alexandre Dumas, the New Yorker wondered how his worldview might have changed had he known they were black. Inspired, he threw his resources into creating a series of biographical comic books about trailblazing black men and women (Christopher 28). Naïve in the process of producing a comic book, Fitzgerald had an even greater challenge on his hands because of his skin color. Rejected by every local publisher, he finally found a small out-of-state printer who was willing to turn out Golden Legacy #1 (“The Saga of Toussaint L’Ouverture and the Birth of Haiti”). Written and drawn by Fitzgerald’s

This excerpt from Walt Kelly’s The Pogo Poop Book looked . at the generational effect of racism. TM and © Okefenokee Glee & Perloo Inc.

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Army buddy Leo McCarty, the 32-page color comic came with a 25-cent price tag. Frustrated with his distribution arrangements, Fitzgerald tapped his accounting skills to convince Coca Cola to be Golden Legacy’s corporate sponsor effective with issue #3 in 1968 and the series continued through 1976 (Christopher 28, 30). In 1966, though, the only comics-related product that Coke was sponsoring were CBS’ second and third Peanuts animated specials (Charlie Brown’s All-Stars and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown). Fantasy abounded on television that fall and its skin color, with rare exceptions, was white. For all that, black actors like Bill Cosby (I Spy), Greg Morris (Mission: Impossible) and Ivan Dixon (Hogan’s Heroes) were a sign of progress. When Star Trek boldly went “where no man has gone before,” young viewers saw an ethnically diverse crew that included the African-American Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) and Japanese-American Sulu (George Takei) and suggested that the future was brighter than it appeared. Chinese-American Bruce Lee was cast as Kato opposite Van Williams in executive producer William Dozier’s Green Hornet TV series. Hoping to repeat his January success, Dozier had acquired the rights to the 1940s crime-buster and ABC dutifully scheduled the show to open its Friday night schedule, airing in the same time slot occupied by Batman on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Three weeks after their September 9 premiere, the Green Hornet and Kato even made a cameo on their companion series, a harbinger of a full crossover in 1967. Significantly, Dozier realized that the camp phenomenon was ebbing and he opted to have the Hornet’s adventures played straight. For Batman, though, there was no going back. It returned on September 7 with the familiar villains interspersed with newcomers created to accommodate celebrity guests like Art Carney (The Archer), Van Johnson (The Minstrel), Shelley Winters (Ma Parker), Walter Slezak (The Clock King), Vincent Price (Egghead), Carolyn Jones (Marsha, Queen of Diamonds), Cliff Robertson (Shame), Maurice Evans (The Puzzler) and Michael Rennie (The Sandman). October 26 and 27’s innuendo-laden two-parter featuring flamboyant pianist Liberace in the dual roles of Chandell and his twin brother Harry became the highest-rated episodes in the TV series’ history.

Kurt Schaffenberger drew the cover for this so-called “battle of the century” in Forbidden Worlds #136. Magicman, Nemesis TM and © Roger Broughton.

comedy moments but its most famous was immortalized on the cover of the prose novelization Batman Vs. the Fearsome Foursome. That sequence had Batman carrying a bomb above his head, running from place to place as its fuse burned down and frantically trying to find somewhere to dispose of it without harming civilians. “Some days,” the exasperated Caped Crusader declared, “you just can’t get rid of a bomb.” For DC’s Batman comic book franchise and—in varying degrees—the other publishers who’d tapped into it, the public perception of superheroes and the comic book medium in general as campy, old-fashioned froth was a time-bomb in its own right. ACG’s Richard Hughes had grudgingly gone along with the trend when he introduced Magicman and Nemesis in 1964, even engaging them in a Marvel-style fight in Forbidden Worlds #136 (July 1966). By summer, though, the writer-editor saw the market saturation and bumped both heroes from the covers of FW and Adventures Into the Unknown in favor of traditional spook stories. Hughes had lived through the 1940s heyday of superheroes and the 1950s crackdown on horror comics, but the implosion that he saw coming might be more than he could ride out.

The second season was preceded by a feature film that premiered in theaters on August 3. Before Batman was rushed into becoming a mid-season replacement, the film had been intended as an introduction to Dozier and company’s spin on the characters but it remained a memorable showcase for the Dynamic Duo’s greatest enemies: The Joker, the Penguin, the Riddler and—played by Lee Meriwether rather than Julie Newmar—the Catwoman. The movie had several unforgettable

Batman TM and © DC Comics.

145

1967

After the

Gold Rush

Lightning, TV networks and comic book publishers alike soon discovered, did not strike twice, at least when it came to superheroes. On the birthday of its premiere, Batman celebrated with its first three-parter (January 11, 12, and 18, 1967). The episode, titled “The Zodiac Crimes,” notably paired the Joker and Penguin but is perhaps best-remembered for one of its cliffhangers where Robin was swallowed by a giant clam.

ABC’s snubbed rival networks offered heroes of their own a few days earlier on January 9. CBS’ Mister Terrific starred Stephen Strimpell as Stanley Beamish, endowed with superpowers in one-hour durations by a “power pill.” (If DC objected to use of the name of its old Mister Terrific character and Hourman concept, there’s no record of it.) Meantime, NBC offered mild-mannered Carter Nash (played by William Daniels) as Captain Nice in a funnier series developed by Get Smart co-creator Buck Henry.

Neither set the ratings charts on fire but, then, neither did ABC’s own more serious Green Hornet from the previous fall. A guest-appearance by the Hornet and Kato on the March 1-2 episodes of Batman did little to boost viewership. The last original episode of The Green Hornet aired only a few weeks later on March 17, continuing with reruns into the summer alongside Captain Nice and Mister Terrific before all three faded away. Two hero pilots by Batman and Hornet executive producer William Dozier were never picked up at all. Dick Tracy— starring future All My Children actor Ray MacDonnell with a pre-Brady Bunch Eve Plumb as Tracy’s daughter Bonnie Braids—was rejected by NBC for the 1967-1968 season. Also left behind was a cringe-inducing Wonder Woman pitch portraying the character as a delusional female who only imagined she was a super-heroine. “It’s amazing how many readers seem to have turned against Super-Heroes,” Richard E. Hughes declared in Forbidden Worlds #145 (August 1967). “But then again, maybe it’s not so amazing. You can have too much of a good thing, and the market sure was glutted with this type of story. There’s a further reason for opposing the Big Boys—a reason very apparent with magazines of our special type. For the last twenty years, we have specialized in publishing comics which featured our own private formula—a skillful admixture of the Supernatural and Science Fiction. We were the first to introduce this formula and stuck with it through the years, gathering a large and devoted readership in the process. Our readers resented it when we introduced Super-Heroes, preferring our original formula. That’s

CHAPTER THREE 146

why we’ve removed heroes and are back with what our readers really want.” Although colored by Hughes’ disdain for the superhero genre, his editorial comment on the events of 1966 was nonetheless spot-on. The comic book racks were sagging under the weight of all those costumed crime-busters and the novelty had worn off. A reluctant participant in the fad at best, the ACG writer-editor cut his ties in the fall of 1966 (issues dated 1967) by discontinuing both Magicman (with Forbidden Worlds #141) and Nemesis (in Adventures Into the Unknown #170). The humor comic Herbie—whose title character had often gotten laughs as the Fat Fury— was cancelled outright with issue #23 (including a reprint of his 1958 debut). The cancellation—abrupt enough that three Herbie scripts went un-illustrated (Vance, “Something…?” 53)—left room for the supernaturaloriented Gasp! on the schedule but it survived only four issues before being terminated alongside the August 1967-dated Adventures Into the Unknown #174, Unknown Worlds #57, and Forbidden Worlds #145. Ironically, Hughes’ defiant editorial in the latter issue amounted to Famous Last Words. After 24 years, the American Comics Group was out of business. The final issues of the ACG books were selling around 155,000 to 162,000 copies per issue, numbers in the same range that got DC’s Sea Devils and Dell’s Thirteen cancelled in 1967 (Miller). “The comic book business had just fallen off tremendously,” ACG publisher Frederick Iger explained, “There was a dry-up of the industry. The small candy stores were going out of business, and comic books were being distributed through supermarkets and things and it was just time to let it go” (Vance, “Forbidden Adventures” 71). Fatman was joined in his series by Tin Man, a teenage hero whose skinny .

Iger maintained his Custom Comics division that cre- alter ego Lucius Pindle wore the same red and blue wardrobe as Captain Marvel’s Billy Batson. TM and © respective copyright holder. ated specialty one-shots for businesses but Hughes needed more than that to make ends meet. ACG had long had a connection with National Comics (DC), both through Like Myron Fass, Lightning hoped to evoke the spirit of its former co-owner Harry Donenfeld and their mutual disFawcett Comics’ original Captain Marvel and their credentribution by the National-owned Independent News Comtials suggested they might pull it off. Bankrolled by former pany. The unemployed writer may have used that connecFawcett Executive Editor Will Lieberson, one-time writer tion to get his foot in the door at DC. The fact that longtime Bernie Miller, and their brothers, the venture also pulled ACG contributors Kurt Schaffenberger and Pete Costanza in key players like editor Wendell Crowley and writer Otto were also there—and drew his scripts for Lois Lane #79 and Binder to develop the line (Hamerlinck, “High Camp HiJimmy Olsen #107—likely helped, as well. jinXXX” 86). For whatever reason, though, DC was not a good fit for The most auspicious presence was Captain Marvel co-creHughes, and the veteran writer left comics entirely after ator C.C. Beck, who was tapped to draw Fatman, the Hupenning tales for Hawkman #23-25, Jimmy Olsen #114, and man Flying Saucer #1 (April 1967). As described by histounspecified suspense stories. According to historian Mirian P.C. Hamerlinck, the hero was “a wealthy and portly chael Vance, “Hughes ended his career and his life writing young man named Van Crawford, still living at home with response letters to complaints for Gimbel’s Department his disappointed parents [and who] spent his days birdStore in New York City” (Vance, “Forbidden Adventures 31). watching, growing orchids, collecting puppets, and raiding He died of myelofibrosis at the age of 64 in 1974. the refrigerator. As Fatman, he was a colossal, lumbering ACG was merely the first (and oldest) publisher to fall durparody of a super-hero dressed in a self-made green cosing an almost uniformly difficult year for color comic book tume. And when he managed to get up a fast enough runpublishers. M.F. Enterprises resurfaced in June to burn off ning start, Fatman was able to rapidly turn himself into a final issues of Henry Brewster #7 and Captain Marvel Presmetal Human Flying Saucer and whisk away into the sky” ents the Terrible Five #5 while Lightning Comics (a.k.a. Mil(Hamerlinck, “High Camp HijinXXX” 86). son Publishing) came and went in the span of five months.

Hello, Goodbye

147

TIMELINE: 1967 A compilation of the year’s notable comic book history events alongside some of the year’s most significant popular culture and historical events. (On sale dates are approximations.) January 15: Football’s first Super Bowl airs simultaneously on CBS and NBC.

January 21: Golden Age cartoonist Homer Fleming, whose work appeared in both Detective Comics #1 and Action Comics #1, dies at age 84.

JANUARY

June: The 24-year-old American Comics Group publishes its final issues.

April 14-15: Major protests against the Vietnam War are held in New York City and San Francisco. April 24: The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton’s famed novel about teenage Ponyboy and two rival Oklahoma gangs, is published.

February: The Question, Steve Ditko’s hard-hitting new hero, debuts in Charlton’s Blue Beetle #1.

May: Who says a comic book has to be good? Not Brand Echh #1 and Marvel Comics!

May 1: Elvis Presley marries Priscilla Beaulieu in Las Vegas.

February: Pop music is put on notice when The Archies begin performing in Life With Archie #60.

FEBRUARY

January 30: Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson begin their modernization of the Secret Agent Corrigan newspaper strip.

MARCH

APRIL

M AY April 28: Champion fighter Muhammad Ali is stripped of his title and boxing license after refusing military induction.

March 7: The Peanuts comic strip becomes an Off-Broadway play— You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown—with Gary Burghoff in the title role.

April 24: The Little King cartoonist Otto Soglow receives the 1966 Reuben Award at the annual National Cartoonists Society ceremony. Other winners include Mort Walker (humor newspaper strips, Beetle Bailey), John Prentice (story newspaper strips, Rip Kirby), Jim Berry (newspaper panels, Berry’s World), and Al Williamson (comic book category, Flash Gordon).

January 27: Apollo 1 astronauts Roger Chaffee, Gus Grissom, and Edward White perish in a fire during a launch pad trial.

June 1: The Beatles’ renowned concept album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band goes on sale, yielding favorites like “With a Little Help From My Friends” and “A Day In the Life.”

June 15: Lee Marvin tops a huge cast in The Dirty Dozen, a hit movie about convicts turned World War Two commandos.

JUNE June 16: California’s Monterey Pop Festival helps set the stage for the counter-culture movement called the Summer of Love. June 5: The Six-Day War commences, leaving Israel with territories captured from Egypt and Syria. June 3: Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” tops the Billboard Hot 100.

Deadman, The Question TM and © DC Comics. Peanuts TM and © Peanuts Worldwide LLC. Uncle Scrooge, Jungle Book. TM and © Disney Enterprises, Inc.

Dubbed “the only comic hero with three identities,” Fatman wore a costume cut from the same cloth as the Marvel Family, albeit with green replacing the original Cap’s red and a flying saucer icon in place of a lightning bolt. Beck’s art was, if anything, more confident and refined than it had been in the 1940s and 1950s and its clear, cartoony virtues were the highlight of the series. Where the feature stumbled was in replacing the more understated humor of Captain Marvel with the heavy-handed camp of the Batman TV show. Fatman, for one thing, constantly used “Holy” exclamations while his pal Tinman often employed Cap’s old catch phrase “Holy Moley.” The boy-into-man aspect of Cap’s adventures was translated into Lightning’s other effort Tod Bolton Super Green Beret #1 (April 1967), written by Binder with art by Carl Pfeufer. Gifted with an enchanted green beret by his soldier uncle, young Tod

zones around the world, most obviously Vietnam but also Cuba and—by breaching the time barrier—World War Two-era Germany and the U.S. circa 1775. Super Green Beret’s ties to the increasingly unpopular presentday war, though, made the book’s two issues a bit uncomfortable.

Super Green Beret TM and © respective copyright holder.

was transformed into an adult super-warrior each time he placed it on his head. From the safety of his Valleyville home, the boy could telepathically pinpoint crises in war 148

One gets the sense that Lieberson, at least, believed the new comic books should be aimed at the adult audiences who’d laughed at Playboy Club showings of the Batman serial and read Jules Feiffer’s essay in Playboy itself. The publisher used his own men’s magazine Monsieur to promote Fatman (Hamerlinck, “High Camp HijinXXX” 87) and he advertised the star of a planned Captain Shazam title (evoking Captain Marvel’s magic word) as “a turned-on super swinger!” Secretly Steve Thomas (Agent Six) and an amalgam of six murdered agents, the hero would be empowered “through electronic gimmicks and not invulnerable” (Kaler, “What’s

July: “The long hot summer” of race riots escalates with violent uprisings in Newark, New Jersey and Detroit, Michigan.

August: Will Franz and Sam Glanzman’s “Lonely War of Capt. Willy Schultz” offers a different perspective on war stories in Charlton’s Fightin’ Army #76. August: A year after Carl Barks’ retirement, his last Disney duck script is published in Uncle Scrooge #71.

July: Archie Comics inker Vincent DeCarlo, younger brother of Dan, dies of lung cancer at age 38.

September 11: Gordon Bess’ Redeye newspaper strip features a comical tribe of Native Americans.

August 13: Motion picture taboos on sex and violence are shattered by Bonnie and Clyde, a movie that paves the way for such content to be commonplace.

J U LY

June 21: Former DC artist Stan Kaye, best known for a long stint inking Superman, dies at age 50.

July 8: Buck Rogers’ adventures in the 25th Century cease when his 38-year-old comic strip ends.

September 9: Superheroes continue to thrive on Saturday mornings with the debuts of ABC’s Fantastic Four and Spider-Man and CBS’ Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure.

AUGUST August 29: Arnold Drake and Carmine Infantino’s ghostly acrobat Deadman begins searching for his killer in DC’s Strange Adventures #205.

September 11: The Carol Burnett Show begins a celebrated 11-season run on CBS.

October: The latest incarnation of Captain Marvel makes his bow in Marvel Super-Heroes #12.

October 1: Veteran comic book artist Bob Powell dies of intestinal cancer five days before his 51st birthday and a month and a half before the birth of his fourth son Seth.

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

September 27: Former Gumps cartoonist and Dondi co-creator Gus Edson dies at 66. Afterwards, Bob Oksner begins writing Dondi on behalf of artist/co-creator Irwin Hasen. September 16: CBS’ Mannix stars Mike Connors as a Los Angeles detective.

August 29: The finale of ABC’s The Fugitive, when Dr. Richard Kimble catches up with his wife’s killer, becomes the most-watched episode in TV history (until 1980). August 30: Thurgood Marshall is confirmed as the first black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

September 14: The third and final season of ABC’s Batman adds actress Yvonne Craig to the cast as Batgirl while Raymond Burr returns to TV on NBC’s Ironside as a paraplegic police consultant.

News: 12/66” 3). C.C. Beck reported that the character never made it past the conceptual stage and no artwork was produced (Brown 46).

December 12: Race relations are at the heart of Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?, a film about a white woman who introduces her black fiancé to her parents.

October 18: The Jungle Book, the last animated feature overseen in Walt Disney’s lifetime, premieres in theaters.

November 7: President Johnson signs the Public Broadcasting Act, providing federal funding for educational and enlightening non-commercial television programming.

December 21: Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, and Katharine Ross star in The Graduate, the year’s top-grossing motion picture.

November 9: Rolling Stone, a magazine devoted to music and the counterculture, begins publication.

NOVEMBER October 26: Navy pilot John McCain is shot down and becomes a North Vietnamese prisoner of war until 1973. October 17: The Off-Broadway musical Hair brings hippies and the sexual revolution to the stage in New York City’s East Village.

DECEMBER

December 23: Celebrated Captain Marvel, Jr. and Flash Gordon artist Mac Raboy dies at the age of 53.

December 31: Daredevil motorcyclist Evel Knievel’s failed 141-foot leap over the fountains of Las Vegas’ Caesars Palace leaves him in a coma for the next month.

lections of stories ever published. Depending on the page one flipped to, a reader could find superheroes, kid humor, Roman gladiators, miscellaneous single-panel gags, World War One aviation, monsters, funny animals, or hot rods. Indeed, a portion of the content seems to have been cobbled together from unpublished material that the various contributors simply had lying around.

Like Tower and M.F. Enterprises, Lightning had adopted the thick 25-cent format but bypassed its trademark glued square spine for a stapled package as Gold Key had recently done with its giants. That decision “cost them a small fortune in sales losses,” according to retailers who complained that the Lightning issues were indistinguishable from 12-cent comics on a crowded spinner rack and seemed overpriced at a glance (Kaler, “What’s News: 8/67” 3). Declaring the enterprise “a costly fiasco” that lost its partners their $64,000 expenditure, Lieberson cut his losses and shut down the company (Lage 97), leaving behind a partially completed fourth Fatman issue (Brown 46).

“I’d guess that to kids who managed to convince their parents to shell out the 98¢, it cost new,” former Comic Reader editor Mike Tiefenbacher told American Comic Book Chronicles, “it had all the appeal of the unfocused Joe Simon Harvey issues published during the same period. Not enough superheroes for that crowd, not enough science fiction, or straight adventure or whatever, and definitely nothing that stood out as more important than anything else.” If the comic book had a star artist, it was Wally Wood, who led off the issue with the origin of an “atomic Hercules” called Radian who fought a villain called the Steel Skull. Later in the issue, Wood contributed a fantasy humor strip Goody Bumpkin. Technically, the pair of features ran only a collective five pages but that count was deceptive. Despite the massive dimensions of its pages, Wham-O generally ran its art at a smaller size than traditional comic books. Consequently, one page of Wood’s stories had enough panels to fill three in a standard issue. The art on a few features was literally published at postage stamp-size, most nota-

It seems probable that the publishers of Wham-O Giant Comics #1 (April 1967) didn’t see a return on their investment either but Bill McIntyre (editor), Don Peters (story editor), and Del Potter (art director) surely had to take pride in creating one of the genuine novelties in comic book history. At 48 pages, there had been thicker comics but not one of them had been this big: it measured 21” x 14”! Conceived by the California toy company Wham-O that unleashed the Hula Hoop and the Frisbee on kids in the 1950s, the comic book sported one of the most eclectic col149

sold to retailers across the country over the next few years. Unlike newsstand comic books, this one was non-returnable and many fans tell tales of discovering the behemoth amidst coloring books on store racks some five or ten years after it was printed.

Packed Away

Wham-O Giant Comics boasted massive pages like this one featuring Wally Wood’s Radian. TM and © respective copyright holder.

bly “Melvin the Magician,” which boasted 94 panels on one page! Along with Wood, the comic book also featured work from industry veterans Otto Binder, Lou Fine, Andre LeBlanc, John Stanley and Marvin Stein as well as Ernie Colon and Sururi Gumen. What truly added to the visual variety of the title was Wham-O’s extensive use of local Southern California artists like Virgil Partch, Warren Tufts, John Ushler and George Wilhelms as well as animators Ward Kimball (cited as “Faculty Advisor”), Willie Ito and Alan Shean. Several contributors to Pete Millar’s automotive cartoon magazines—notably Mike Arens, Nelson Dewey, Dennis Ellefson, Bruce Steffenhagen and Jim Willoughby— were complete strangers to color comics when they were recruited for the project. Magazine cartoonist W.T. Vinson drew a Super Sibling one-pager and draped the entire package in

an enormous wraparound cover that featured every character in the book. Though somewhat off-register, the coloring in the issue was ambitious in its own right with a more nuanced full-process treatment than basic comic books. Despite the April date on the issue, Wham-O didn’t begin test-marketing the book until June with campaigns in Omaha, Nebraska (Kaler, “What’s News: 8/67” 4), California, and Texas that extended to Iowa in the fall. Southern California fans even recall two ubiquitous television commercials for the giant comic. Although a $4.98 six-issue subscription was optimistically offered for the comic book far too large to fit in a mailbox, no further issues were ever published. Marketed to department stores, Wham-O Giant Comics was simply too unwieldy to catch on and the remaining stock of the issue was gradually 150

In 1967, though, the department store/gift shop venue was a tantalizing alternative to the magazine distribution system that saw a percentage of every comic book publisher’s product returned for credit. Intrigued by the profit possibilities, King Comics made the radical decision to leave the newsstand market altogether in favor of selling 29-cent bagged “King Paks” containing either its three 12-cent adventure titles or its three humor books. The entire King line went on hiatus from December 1966 to April 1967, allowing a gap wide enough for any returnable newsstand issues to be cleared away before the multipacks arrived (Harris, “Forum: 4/67” 10). Fans did not greet the news warmly. Many had already missed Flash Gordon #4 and Mandrake #4 thanks to their print run “being cut by 50,000 copies before the distribution runs had been set” and many of the published copies being shipped overseas to fulfill contracts with foreign clients (Kaler, “What’s News: 2/67” 3). Informed that their access to further issues was at the discretion of retail chains, many readers were understandably miffed. King was convinced that fans would come around, though, and accelerated the frequencies on all of its books

to monthly for the summer. Rather than solicit additional new material for the titles, editor Bill Harris drew instead on the company’s extensive inventory. Mandrake the Magician #8-9 and The Phantom #25, for instance, ran stories first created for Italian audiences while Mandrake #10 reconfigured a 1950 Rip Kirby newspaper continuity. Meanwhile old Mac Raboy and Alex Raymond Sunday pages (the latter via badly reinked Italian proofs) were reworked for Flash Gordon #7, #9, and #10 while a 1951 Dan Barry composite became the cover of issue #11. The September 1967-dated King issues devoted three full pages to ads touting Flash Gordon projects: issue #9, a record album featuring the voice of movie serial star Buster Crabbe (and new Al Williamson jacket art), and a lavish $11.95 11” x 14” hardback reprinting a long run of Raymond’s Sunday strips in black and white. Licensed from King Features Syndicate, the latter was edited by Woody Gelman, an art director at Topps Chewing Gum and former writer for National Comics’ funny animal titles. His abiding interest in classic newspaper strips led him to create the Nostalgia Press imprint to re-present those rarities with the respect they deserved. Actively involved in bringing the book to life, Al Williamson was horrified when he learned the comic strip proofs that KFS provided to them were poor copies shot from micro-

Flash Gordon TM and © King Features Syndicate, Inc.

Intended to bypass traditional newsstand distribution, King Paks were a disaster for King Comics. The Phantom, Flash Gordon TM and © King Features Syndicate, Inc.

film. “Luckily,” the artist detailed, “I had a set in black and white, and we got the missing stuff from Mrs. Raymond. […] The only reason that you can reproduce fairly decent stuff from Raymond’s stuff is because we did the Nostalgia book, and that’s in nice black and white. They can re-shoot from that. They’re practically proofs, some of those pages” (Ringgenberg 88-89). In the wake of Flash Gordon #1’s thunderous reception in 1966, Williamson returned to the comic book effective with issue #4 (March 1967) with Archie Goodwin on scripts. The book typically included a Mandrake four-pager but Williamson insisted that it be replaced by another King property Secret Agent X-9, and that he and Goodwin got to produce the short. The idea, he explained, was to break up the monotony of drawing nothing but alien landscapes. The fact that X-9 was another Alex Raymond creation (in collaboration with novelist Dashiell Hammett) made the character’s presence in Flash all the more fitting. 151

Fatefully, however, the Secret Agent X-9 newspaper strip’s current artist Bob Lubbers was leaving to create his new Robin Malone feature for the NEA syndicate and King Features editor-in-chief Sylvan Byck needed a replacement. In demanding to draw the X-9 short, Williamson unwittingly auditioned for the newspaper strip and he and Goodwin won an assignment they didn’t even know they’d tried out for (Ringgenberg 78, 80). Their first installment appeared on January 30, 1967, beginning a tenure than ran through February 2, 1980. (Kicking off the new era, KFS renamed the strip Secret Agent Corrigan, a name that purists like Williamson himself never accepted.) Simpatico in a way that few creative teams are, Williamson and Goodwin fed off each other, the artist pitching ideas and concepts to the writer who tailored stories that fit his collaborator’s style. Their X-9 premiere, historian Mark Schultz asserted, had “a new sense of purpose and urgency. […] The light-hearted capers of the previous incarnation were replaced by a darker, more violent tone, representing a turn back towards the original conception of the character as created by Hammett and Raymond. Only a slight turn, actually: X-9 remained a

spinach-eating sailor man became criticized by respected comic strip historian Bill Blackbeard in a persuasive article for the early 1960s fanzine Xero. That point-of-view was soon adopted by a number of influential comic book fans. It was only in the 21st Century that Sagendorf’s work was reappraised and the subject of more than one reprint volume.

Goodwin and Williamson’s short story in Flash Gordon #4 earned them the assignment of producing the Secret Agent X-9 comic strip. TM and © King Features Syndicate, Inc.

secret agent of the ‘60s—contemporary pop-culture interests fed by the James Bond movie series and TV’s The Man From U.N.C.L.E. demanded that” (Schultz 8). Coupled with periodic uncredited art assignments on two other King newspaper strips (Big Ben Bolt and Rip Kir-

by), Williamson no longer had time to draw Flash and his story in issue #5 proved to be his last. Reed Crandall stepped into his shoes with the next issue, accompanied by writer Bill Pearson. Other newspaper cartoonists contributed to the King books in varying degrees. Sy Barry and Fred Fredericks, directly or via clip art, generated covers for The Phantom and Mandrake while Brick Bradford writer-artist Paul Norris produced seven short stories starring the time-traveler for those two books. Elsewhere, Mort Walker’s studio was turning out stories for the Beetle Bailey title while longtime Popeye cartoonist Bud Sagendorf did double duty on its comic book counterpart.

Bud Sagendorf’s cover for Popeye #87 included favorites Swee’Pea, . Alice the Goon, and Brutus. TM and © King Features Syndicate, Inc.

Sagendorf, in fact, had an unbroken 21year stretch on the comic book, dating back to 1946’s Four Color #113. In that time, the cartoonist’s style had transitioned from creator Elzie Segar’s original design to a slicker look with simpler, more kid-friendly stories. Though entertaining in its own right, Sagendorf’s take on the 152

King Features was never anything less than delighted with Sagendorf and, more than two decades after his 1994 death, reprints of his newspaper strips were still in syndication. His comic book streak ended with Popeye #92 (December 1967), however, as did the rest of the King Comics line. By mid-summer, King had succumbed to pressure and announced an intended return to newsstand distribution (while maintaining the King Paks) but it was too late (Kaler, “What’s News: 8/67” 3). Frankly describing King Comics’ outlook as “a little bleak,” Bill Harris reported late in 1967 that the Saalfield Publishing Company (better known for coloring books) had taken over its distribution and that future comic books would be comprised entirely of reprints of stories first run by Dell in the 1950s and early 1960s (Harris, “Forum: 1/68” 6). Nothing further came of the plan, however, and the final King issues—including a Jungle Jim reprint issue that replaced the canceled Mandrake—were all dated December 1967...and ominously priced at 15¢. Bill Harris ruefully recalled having quit his job at The New York Times to take the editorial position in 1966. “Behind my reasoning was that it could lead to the bigger job of King Features’ comic strip editor,” Harris explained, “a job I was sure was imminent because the current editor, Sylan Byck, struck me as not long for this world. As it turned out, the King Comics line went down in flames after a short time, and old Sylvan was still going strong” (Harris, “Under the Gun” 59).

From Top to Bottom While no other publisher had been foolhardy enough to risk its entire line on multi-packs, others saw their potential for added revenue. DC had been bagging four issues in 47-cent

cent hardback editions, distinct from early incarnations in their use of full color illustrations rather than blackand-white ones. Aside from odd-men-out Dick Tracy and Popeye, every character in the new BLB series—from Bugs Bunny to the Man From U.N.C.L.E.—also had their own Gold Key comic book. By the time the new series ran its course in 1969, Aquaman, Batman, and the Fantastic Four (each the star of a Saturday morning cartoon) also had Big Little Books of their own.

Comicpacs since 1962 and Marvel leapt in with its own Multi-Mag package in 1967. Gold Key outdid them both with an experimental 59-cent five-pack that contained unpriced variant copies of many issues that had recently gone on sale on comics racks.

In the comic book division, Gold Key tested the waters with a pair of Saturday morning superhero one-shots— Frankenstein, Jr. #1 (January 1967) and Space Ghost #1 (March 1967)—that didn’t warrant series pick-ups. The Green Hornet #1 (February 1967) premiered as on ongoing book with Dan Spiegle art but was only on issue #3 when its root TV series expired. Gold Key’s single issue of Captain Nice (with art by Manhunter From Mars illustrator Joe Certa) barely made it to comics racks before the final episodes of the cancelled TV series aired in August.

With titles including Flipper, Mickey Mouse, The Three Stooges, Uncle Scrooge, Woody Woodpecker, and Yogi Bear, each comic had been reThe silhouette of a toy top appeared on each of Western’s Top Comics Fun Paks. Snow White and the published with a Seven Dwarfs. TM and © Disney Enterprises, Inc. prominent Top Comics name emblazoned on its cover and no Gold Key logo in sight. Even if someone tore open the package, the issues were easily identified as something that unscrupulous vendors couldn’t return for credit. Collectors occasionally found Top Comics issues with “15¢” stickers affixed by businesses that did open their bundles.

Before the post-Batman fallout was apparent, editor Matt Murphy realized that Gold Key actually had its own superhero among properties that carried over from its former partnership with Dell. The Owl (a.k.a. police investigator Nick Terry) had a three-year run extending from Crackajack Funnies #25 (July 1940) to Popular Comics #85 (March 1943) and the nocturnal crime-buster seemed like a good prospect for the camp sweepstakes. (Unknown to Murphy, Jerry DeFuccio and Mart Bailey had attempted to sell a similar Alias the Owl newspaper strip in 1966.) Dan Spiegle adhered to Alex Toth’s character designs when adapting the Space Ghost cartoon. TM and © Hanna-Barbera Productions.

Unlike King Comics, Gold Key already had ample associations with retailers as part of the larger Western Publishing empire and its Whitman subsidiary. “Top Comics was a prototype for Western’s new way of making money,” historian Jon McClure explained, “by using their department store connections to sell bags of material reprinted specifically for that secondary market, material already paid for and being produced. A low print run of reprints added nicely to Western’s bottom line, and with a large distribution system and customer base already in place, the experiment became a reality in 1971” (McClure 46), now using an inconspicuous Whitman icon rather than the oversized Top Comics. The Whitman imprint gained attention from nostalgic fans in 1967 when it revived its decades-old Big Little Book series with a dozen new 39153

the entire industry’s with sales higher than any books other than DC’s Batman-Superman bloc, Archie, and Mad. Unfortunately, the spin-off Girl failed to find a TV audience and its comics counterpart died with it.

The Owl #1’s inside front cover . laid out the series’ core details. . The Owl, Owl Girl TM and © Dynamite Characters, LLC.

tion of the 1966 movie about a miniaturized medical team in a scientist’s brain. Despite the trademark Wood look, the story was largely drawn by his assistants Dan Adkins and Tony Coleman.

Still affecting what he imagined to be his Stan Lee voice, Jerry Siegel was hired to write the series and opened the book with a long-winded intro to “you admirers of the Golden Age of Comics” who’d purchased “this collector’s item first ish.” Owl Girl (alias Morning Eagle reporter Laura Holt) played Robin to the Owl’s Batman as they fought the Birds of Prey Gang while accoutrements like robot bird Owlo and the flying Owlmobile assisted the Terrific Twosome in their fight against crime. (John Verpoorten, who assisted the book’s artist Tom Gill, later got a fair amount of ribbing at Marvel Comics when he told his fellow artists that he’d designed the Owlmobile [Amash, “To Be Continued” 30].) Siegel’s last panel promised a follow-up with the Owl’s “strangest case” but Gold Key waited a year to publish it.

Gold Key’s relative confidence in the new properties it adapted from the 1966-1967 TV season can be gauged by the number of issues it approved for each series: It’s About Time got one, The Time Tunnel earned two, and The Invaders (based on a mid-season replacement about a secret alien incursion) received four extending into 1968. The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. ran five issues, dated January to October 1967, and must have seemed like a sure thing to the publisher. Moving an average of 411,235 units per issue in 1967, the primary Man From U.N.C.L.E. title wasn’t just Gold Key’s best-selling comic book but one of The crew of Gold Key’s Enterprise rained down destruction unlike anything seen on the Star Trek TV show. TM and © CBS Studios Inc.

It was the same sort of caution the company applied to M.A.R.S. Patrol Total War, returning with issue #4 in the summer for its annual outing. By now, Mike Roy and Mike Peppe were drawing the book but series originator Wally Wood made an appearance on Fantastic Voyage #1, an adapta154

Star Trek #1 (July 1967) was cautiously placed on the schedule near the end of its namesake TV show’s first season but a second issue didn’t follow for eight months. Scripted by Dick Wood with art by Italian illustrator Nevio Zeccara, it was not an auspicious debut. With no firsthand knowledge of the series, Zeccara committed unwitting gaffes such as depicting plumes of flame coming out the starship Enterprise while rendering the crew in generic jumpsuits instead of their trademark uniforms. For his part, Wood characterized Captain Kirk, Mister Spock, and company as Starship Troopers rather than open-minded explorers. Discovering

a world of plant-based life-forms who reacted badly to human beings, Spock issued a genocide order to other planets and the crew of the Enterprise carried it out! So much for the show’s Prime Directive that forbade interference in alien cultures. Writer Patrick Daniel O’Neill noted that the TV series used some of the same stock science fiction devices that the early Trek comic books did “but usually with more subtlety and wit than were demonstrated in Gold Key’s issues and with a knowledge that they were relying on the clichés to set up a familiar pattern and play with it. Gold Key’s stories merely played out patterns to a standard conclusion.” In the company’s defense, O’Neill continued, “they thought they were just doing a comic-book version of yet another TV series, as they had done in the past. How could they know they had just bought a piece of a legend?” (O’Neill, “The First ‘Star Trek’ Comics: Less Than Gold?” 28). Gold Key’s original adventure series had more integrity but other than Space Family Robinson—buoyed by its Lost In Space TV tie-in—they were, at best, holding their own in sales. Following two recent reprint editions (#54 and #57), the venerable Turok, Son of Stone even saw its frequency reduced from bi-monthly to quarterly with issue #58 (July 1967). Echoing the serialized nature of Marvel’s superhero books, writer Dick Wood initiated a chain of continuity in Doctor Solar #19-22 (April 1967-January 1968) that brought its hero’s conflict with bald criminal scientist Nuro to a crossroads. By the time it was over, Nuro was dead but his consciousness lived on as the ro-

botic King Cybernoid. Magnus Robot Fighter #18-19 (May-August 1967) also ran a pair of linked stories by writer-artist Russ Manning in which the North Am government questioned its hero’s true nature after learning of his lack of documentation in their electronic database. Serialization was present at intervals in Tarzan, Gold Key’s second-bestselling title in 1967. Gaylord Du Bois and Russ Manning’s adaptations of the Edgar Rice Burroughs novels typically spread over two issues while Du Bois and artist Tom Massey’s new Leopard Girl back-up (which began in 1966’s Tarzan #162) spooled out its heroine’s origin and early adventures throughout the year. Set in the African jungle and starring a blonde white science prodigy named Meru (née Sylvia Morgan), the feature hinged on her rather astonishing achievements that included endowing her chimp, panther, and leopard companions with rudimentary human speech. When the local Minister of Health charged in to question why she was experimenting on human subjects, Meru cured him of the deadly fever he’d contracted en route and all was forgiven (Tarzan #169). It was all rather outlandish, particularly following the dignified Brothers of the Spear feature by Du Bois and Manning that had preceded it. Whatever its failings, Leopard Girl ran until Tarzan #194 in 1970. Although Dan Spiegle and Alberto Giolitti were drawing the TV-based episodes in Tarzan, Russ Manning was the feature’s undisputed star creator. Watching as sales on the comic book went up and subscribers to the Tarzan newspaper strip went

down, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. approached the 38-year-old Manning in September 1967 about replacing current cartoonist John Celardo. It had been a tumultuous year for Celardo, who’d already been caught in the middle of a late-1966 financial dispute between ERB, Inc. and the United Features Syndicate that threatened to end the newspaper strip altogether. With that crisis resolved, the cartoonist pulled out of a deal to draw a new book for DC and returned to Tarzan, his strips now sent to ERB first for approval before being rerouted to UFS (Kaler, “What’s News: 2/67” 4). Within months, though, the Tarzan owners decided they wanted their content produced in the relative vicinity of their Tarzana, California headquarters. Celardo balked, explaining, “I had two young children [and] I liked New York.” Convinced that the newspaper strip was only a few years from cancellation, he decided the time was right to quit (O’Neill “John Celardo” 27). In a sense, Celardo had done too good a job of keeping the strip modernized, something illustrated by the January 2-February 28, 1967 daily story in which the Ape Man teamed up with U.S. Strategic Air Command to retrieve a missing nuclear bomb. In Manning’s view, that worked against the hero: “One thing that we almost made a conscious decision on when I first started Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs and myself, we had to decide that Tarzan could not operate in the same world with atom bombs and jet planes and radios. I don’t think he’d be competent with those things. How

Tarzan’s wife Jane and son Korak—seen in this January 4, 1968 daily—were non-entities in the ape-man’s newspaper strip before Russ Manning took over. TM and © ERB, Inc.

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could a man swinging through the trees operate and be effective against radio if radio is done correctly? He’s outdistanced” (Saba 63).

The Aliens #1 (September 1967), a collection of his 1963-1965 Magnus back-ups, was a sign of things to come.

Instead, beginning with the December 11, 1967 daily strip and the January 14, 1968 Sunday, Manning placed his emphasis on the fantastic realms that Burroughs had created in his novels. Folding his comic book versions of Tarzan’s wife Jane and son Korak into the strip, the cartoonist sent the Ape Man on months-long excursions into prehistoric Pal-ul-don and the hidden valley of the Ant Men for his opening volleys. Even without overt modern trappings, the newspaper strip seemed hipper and more contemporary in Manning’s assured hands.

A year after leaving comics, the aforementioned Carl Barks had his final story published in Uncle Scrooge #71 (October 1967) but, surprisingly, he didn’t draw it. “I was about to retire,” the cartoonist recalled, “and I didn’t want the long grind of drawing [‘King Scrooge the First’] to run me into overtime.” InUncle Scrooge and Money adapted a . theatrical short of the same name. . stead, he handed off his TM and © Disney Enterprises, Inc. rough layouts to editor Chase Craig and the story was completed by artists Tony Strobl and Steve Steere (Blum 24).

The trade-off was that the cartoonist’s days on comic books were numbered. Little more than a year after the retirement of Gold Key’s Good Duck Artist, the publisher was now losing its most popular adventure illustrator. One could hardly blame Manning, though. The comic strip dream job wasn’t just more prestigious but more stable. Comic book sales were falling and he knew that Gold Key could easily start publishing reprints if things got too tight.

That last tale involved the 4,000-year-old Swami Khan Khan luring Scrooge, Donald Duck, Huey, Dewey, and Louie into a quest for a treasure lost to him years ago. With the fortune found and his aim to steal it for himself exposed, Khan Khan had a change of heart and claimed only a powdery antidote to the immortality formula that had kept him alive all those years. Declaring himself “tired and old and lonely,” the withering duck sighed, “My armies have long been dust in the desert out there, my slave girls, too. I go gladly to join them. … Everlasting life, good-by!” Looking at the scene, historian Geoffrey Blum declared, “It’s impossible not to see a parallel to Barks taking his leave of the duck comics (Blum 32). Ironically, it was only after Barks’ retirement that Scrooge—the sole major Disney character who’d never appeared on film—finally starred in his own animated short, one paired with the liveaction Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin theatrical release in March of 1967. Essentially an educational cartoon on the history of currency, Uncle Scrooge and Money was designed to be rented to schools and was, by most accounts, as bland as Barks’ stories were lively. That didn’t keep Gold Key from publishing a Strobl-penciled tie-in comic, complete with a 10-page Barks reprint in its back pages. (Griffin and Disney’s summertime live-action film The Gnome-Mobile also got companion comic books.)

Carl Barks only laid out his last story in Uncle Scrooge #71, leaving Tony Strobl and . Steve Steere to complete the art. TM and © Disney Enterprises, Inc.

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Disney’s big theatrical release of the year was The Jungle Book, its adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s short stories that premiered October 18. Noted as the final animated production created during the lifetime of founder Walt Disney (who died in December 1966), the movie was ultimately the second-highest-grossing of the

Mickey Mouse serials took a turn toward science fiction, beginning with issue #317-319’s “Red Wasp Mystery” (February-April 1967) in which the intrepid Mickey impersonated a missing superhero. Missing from the Gold Key schedule by the end of 1967 were Flipper, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., Little Monsters, and Cave Kids, the last-named gueststarring the futuristic Space Kidettes (from NBC’s Saturday morning schedule) in its concluding issue #16 (March 1967). A two issue run based on Hanna-Barbera’s syndicated cartoon Laurel and Hardy also began and ended during the year.

The Jungle Book movie adaptation spawned a series of Mowgli short stories but the . Chip ‘n’ Dale comic book became an enduring title. TM and © Disney Enterprises, Inc.

year, eclipsed only by the considerably more adult The Graduate (Mike Nichols’ film that starred Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft). Carl Fallberg and Al Hubbard produced a 25-cent, 64-page Jungle Book adaptation but Gold Key, continuing to explore new territory, decided they could generate further sales by simultaneously reissuing it as an oversized 59-cent tabloid. Beyond its size, the one-shot was also distinguished by its “W” identifier in the top corner of the cover that represented publisher Western.

83 issues through the end of the comics line in 1984. (Gold Key cautiously revisited Lady and the Tramp spinoff Scamp with a one-shot in 1967, as well, but waited until 1969 to okay a new series for the cartoon pup.) After suffering an identity crisis over the past few years, Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories stabilized with Donald Duck tales (now generally produced by Lockman and Strobl) once again opening each issue as they had in the Barks glory days. Meanwhile, the three-part Paul Murry-illustrated

Amidst it all, the company made a concerted bid for reader loyalty through the introduction of the Gold Key Comics Club, a mock newspaper insert that began appearing in all of the company’s titles starting with the March 1967-dated issues. Unlike the chatty Bullpen Bulletins or newsy Direct Currents, the Comics Club pages bade for reader participation by inviting kids to send in their own drawings and jokes with the promise of seeing their name in print. It was basically a more elaborate version of Archie’s long-running “Archie Club News” feature that encouraged members to submit short articles for print (although Gold Key wasn’t asking them to pay 20¢). The pen pal fea-

As the Disney Studios grappled with how to proceed following Walt Disney’s death, Gold Key was struggling with a follow-up to Carl Barks in 1967. In the short term, Uncle Scrooge resorted to reprints while its spin-off Beagle Boys comic book (which had never featured Barks content) was cancelled with issue #7 (August 1967). Replacing it on the schedule was Moby Duck, a book about an abrasive sailor who’d been created by Vic Lockman and Tony Strobl for Donald Duck #112 and #114 (March and July 1967) with an eye toward the ongoing series. That run endured into 1970 (followed by a 1974-1978 revival) but Gold Key had greater success with Chip ‘n’ Dale #1 (December 1967). Abandoned after the Disney properties left Dell in 1962, the cartoon chipmunks—via penciler Harvey Eisenberg and others—made good use of their second chance and appeared in

Mickey Mouse’s brief turn as a superhero—seen here in Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #318—. was written by Cecil Beard and drawn by Paul Murry. TM and © Disney Enterprises, Inc.

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ture in Fawcett’s Dennis the Menace had served a similar function until the 1965 concerns over printing kid’s addresses shut it down. With sales down over 100,000 copies per issue since 1965, Fawcett took another stab at getting readers’ juices flowing by announcing a “Draw Dennis” contest atop the covers of issues #88 and #89 (January and March 1967) with a promised $50 grand prize. The promotion didn’t increase sales but the freefall of the previous few years, at least, had been halted. With an average of 308,736 copies sold per issue, the title was still one of the twenty best-selling comic books in the country.

The final panel of Frank Hill’s first Melvin story, from Dennis the Menace #88. TM and © respective copyright holder.

Changing the channel from Batman and U.N.C.L.E., Archie had a new favorite TV show and its name was The Monkees. The NBC musical-comedy about a made-for-TV rock band was not a ratings smash but it was a hit with the audience that mattered to Archie: young people. The quartet (Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Mike Nesmith, Peter Tork) was generally modeled on the Beatles but the TV show itself owed a blatant debt to the Fab Four’s 1964 and 1965 films A Hard Day’s Night and Help! Like its inspiration, the typical Monkees episode was an almost stream-of-consciousness affair, “breathless,” Time Magazine declared, “with jump cuts, stop action, asides, speedups, titles, slow motion, and every other photographic gimmick that the Beatles people ever thought of” (“New Faces: Monkee Do”).

Dennis #88, incidentally, introduced a new secondary feature, a four-pager by Short Ribs cartoonist Frank Hill about a teenager named Melvin Goodwin. Drawn in the traditional Dennis art/lettering style, Melvin’s antics were a nice contrast to the Owen Fitzgerald-illustrated lead stories that revolved around a five-year-old’s world. The backup ultimately ran through issue #101 (March 1969). Dennis may have been in the top twenty but Mad was still the number one comic book in the land, averaging 1,789,555 copies per issue in 1967. Even Mad couldn’t resist a stab at superheroes but it did so on its own terms via its paperback line. Created by Don Martin, The Mad Adventures of Captain Klutz was a manic collection of short stories about a comic book-obsessed man named Ringo Fonebone who was as good at being a superhero as he was with the rest of his life: not very.

Enter The Archies. In Life With Archie #60 (April 1967 but on sale in February), the red-headed teenager joined forces with Jughead and Reggie to create his own rock band and seemed to lose his mind in the process. Racing from situation to situation and singing snatches of songs in between, Archie’s life even flashed before his eyes at one point: It started when he was a caveman.

The Beat Goes On After boasting in the February 1967 issue of the trade publication Bestsellers that it had sold 50 million issues during the previous year (Kaler, “What’s News: 3/67” 4), the publisher of America’s number one comic book teenager decided it had had enough of superheroes. Systematically, Archie Comics began retreating from its excursion into larger-than-life costumed cutups. Evilheart was the first to go (Reggie and Me #23: April 1967), then Superteen (Betty and Me #8), Little Pureheart (Little Archie #44), and finally the ongoing Captain Pureheart and Captain Hero with their respective sixth and seventh issues (November 1967). The comparatively more serious Mighty Comics showcase—whose features had expanded to include the Fox and Mister Justice—was likewise gone with issue #50 (October 1967). For that matter, Archie had also tired of spy take-offs, ending its R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E. stories in Betty and Me #7 and Life With Archie #63.

In the issues that followed, there were pages that had no panelto-panel continuity at all, just pure strings of nonsense, fantasy, fourth-wall breaking, and exasperated commentary from Betty and Veronica. The girls auditioned to be The Archies’ go-go girls in issue #64 but quickly realized they were better off being gone-gone. Scripted by Frank Doyle with pencils by Bob White, the surreal feature ran its course by late summer and ended in issue #66. The wacky rockers continued to make occasional cover and interior appearances across the Archie line in the months that followed, though.

The Archies’ first concert in Life With Archie #60 was rendered by . Bob White and Jon D’Agostino.TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

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Having transitioned from longer adventure stories to pop-inspired parodies over the course of the 1960s, Life With Archie no longer had a particular theme. For the time being, it would simply run the sort of trademark humor stories that characterized the rest of the line.

Fruitman wasn’t the only one blushing at his antics, which began . in Bunny #3. TM and © respective copyright holder.

Harvey’s own Dynamic Duo—drawn by Ernie Colon in Richie Rich #56—. wasn’t revisited until the 1970s. TM and © Classic Media, Inc.

As Archie looked for the next big thing, it cautiously released only one new ongoing series, a collection of mostly one-page gags entitled Jughead’s Jokes (August 1967). Harvey Comics couldn’t even manage that, marking the first year since 1959 that it had released no new titles on the market. Instead, 1967 was a year of belt-tightening, beginning with the abrupt termination of the Harvey Thriller line. The titles’ cancellation was so abrupt that a house ad included the covers for Jigsaw #3 and Thrill-O-Rama #4 that would never go on sale.

“The Harvey Thriller debacle may have been enough to nearly drive the company out of business,” historian Mark Arnold observed, noting that an unprecedented number of reprints began appearing in the mainstay humor books at that point, “perhaps a cost-cutting measure to secure the ship” (Arnold 33). In the second half of the year, the company took a hard look at its sales and decided to discontinue Sad Sack’s Funny Friends #70 (dated September 1967), Harvey Hits #122, Little Sad Sack #19 (both November 1967), Baby Huey #79, Little Audrey TV Funtime #19 (both December 1967), Baby Huey and Papa #33, Little Audrey and Melvin #34, Little Dot Dotland #34, Tuff Ghosts Starring Spooky #32 (all January 1968) and Hot Stuff Sizzlers #32 (February 1968). Including the eight jettisoned Thriller books, Harvey had cancelled 18 comic books in little over a year’s time.

After a seven month gap between its second and third issues, teen humor title Bunny #3 (November 1967) ran a bizarre episode of the “Bunny Ball Fantasy Theater” in which mild-mannered grocer Percival Pineapple became Fruitman. Literally. As a mobile banana, for instance, he shed his peel (blushing with embarrassment) to trip up a pair of thieves who “knocked themselves plum unconscious.” The puns kept on coming in 1968 when Fruitman returned in several sequels.

Beware of Falling Supers Struggling Tower Comics put its entire line on hold in the fall of 1966 (with books dated November and December), returning with March 1967-dated comics that included three final issues: Fight the Enemy #3, NoMan #2, and Undersea Agent #6. Dynamo wasn’t far behind, expiring with issue #4 (June 1967). The surviving T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents became something of a catch-all but it still presented strong material. A high point was Wally Wood, Steve Ditko and Dan Adkins’s continuation of the story of Andor in TA #14-15, compounding its tragedy when the anti-hero was blinded. The presence of Wood and his primary assistants was progressively shrinking, though, and the book’s lifeline was fading.

Outside of a few cover gags (Richie Rich Dollars and Cents #16; Playful Little Audrey #69), Harvey resisted having its humor characters play superheroes as Archie’s teens had done…with one exception. An Ernie Colon-illustrated story in Richie Rich #56 (April 1967) found perfect butler Cadbury and his wealthy young charge playing Crashman and Rippy for a charity benefit when Richie’s parents were kidnapped for real. Declaring that they had no time to change out of their blue-andred costumes, the duo leapt into an experimental hovercraft and were on their way to rescue Mr. and Mrs. Rich from the frogfaced Croaker. It was less forced and more entertaining than many of the Thriller stories but Harvey had no intention of revisiting the concept anytime soon. Superheroes had burned them The tragic saga of Andor continued in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #14 when he fought Dynamo again. . too badly. TM and © Radiant Assets, LLC. 159

“There were rumors all over the place,” writer Steve Skeates recalled, “and people were rushing to get their last jobs in so that they could get that last paycheck. For example, the last Lightning story that Chic Stone [drew] had

a lot of stats in it, just so he could get it done” (Irving 16). With only unused Dynamo and NoMan stories left in inventory, Tower ran four of them in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #17 (December 1967) and put the superhero business on hold for a year as it weighed its options. T.H.U.N.D.E.R. was a fan favorite, one that DC and Marvel each considered formidable enough to parody in 1967 (Inferior Five #1 and Brand Ecch #2), but that hadn’t translated into sales. As galling as it was for the superhero devotees, Tower’s Tippy Teen was a bigger draw with the total comicsbuying audience. Placed on a quarterly schedule with issue #17 (December 1967), Tippy continued unimpeded into 1968. Superheroes may have been the last hope for the once mighty Dell Comics but it was a faint one at best. On the heels of its critically-lambasted trio of monster-hero titles, Dell released Neutro #1 and the on-the-nose Superheroes #1 (each dated January 1967 but on sale in October 1966).

Despite being touted as “the most astounding super hero of all,” the Jack Sparling-illustrated Neutro was anything but. Inspired by an unprecedented rash of UFO sightings in 1966 (enough that Congress conducted public hearings on them in April of that year), the series told of a 10th Century alien visitation that left a disassembled giant robot on Earth. In the present, Neutro was discovered and reconstructed by two archaeologists, leading to digressions on the robot’s potential as a force for good or a force for evil, the true intentions of his alien creators, and a rundown of all the foreign powers wanting him for themselves. By that point, the story was over and Neutro was in the hands of enemy agents. Apparently, he destroyed the world because there was never a second issue. Instead, Dell replaced it with the more general Flying Saucers, wherein Sam Glanzman, Sal Trapani, Jose Delbo, Chic Stone, and others illustrated supposed close encounters with UFOs. It was gone in four issues.

The Neutro one-shot was drawn by Jack Sparling. . TM and © respective copyright holder.

Trapani (with writereditor D.J. Arneson) also drew Superheroes, whose featured team was really (unbeknownst to the Beatles) the Fab Four. Their story began in a museum called the Dell Hall of Heroes where statues of Kona, Nukla and Toka stood across from the Future Room filled with android models of the company’s next wave of stars. Conveniently, the exhibition was right next door to an atomic energy plant and the inevitable accident resulted in four teenagers having their minds transferred into the androids known as Crispy, El, Hy, and Polymer Polly. Despite the names, the quartet made it four issues—by which point the androids had been destroyed and the kids had internal160

Superheroes’ Fab Four were—left to right—Hy, . El, Polymer Polly, and Crispy. . TM and © respective copyright holder.

ized their power—before Dell shut down the Hall of Heroes for good. Along with their original creations, Dell also had the rights to Terrytoons’ Mighty Heroes, a Ralph Bakski-created Saturday morning cartoon that ran on CBS in the 1966-1967 season. Led by a wise-beyond-his-years infant named Diaper Man, the team included such champions as Cuckoo Man (who flapped his arms to fly), Rope Man (literally, a rope man), and the self-explanatory Strong Man and Tornado Man. Mighty Heroes ran for four issues (March-July 1967), its cast then shuffled into another Terrytoons title (Mighty Mouse #170-171) before giving up the ghost. Dell itself was perilously close to doing the same. Like Gold Key, its recent track record for snagging a successful TV license was abysmal (whether the show was a hit or not) and 1967 was no exception. Comics based on Daktari, The Iron Horse, Mission: Impossible, The Monroes, Rango, Rat Patrol, and T.H.E. Cat each began and ended (or went on hiatus) that year as did Tales of the Green Beret (illustrated by Sam Glanzman and based on the Joe Kubert comic strip). Even Dell’s irregular movie adaptations (whose 1967 releases included box office smash The Dirty Dozen) ended with a version of Mad Monster Party.

The Monkees #1 (March 1967) was a welcome exception, arriving on comic book racks as TV’s pop music wonder boys were soaring in popularity. Written by writer-editor D.J. Arneson, the first issue seems to have been drawn by committee (with penciler Mo Marcus assisted by multiple artists) before Jose Delbo settled in as the book’s regular illustrator on issue #2. On this and other film projects, Arneson recalled that he had a free hand in terms of likenesses and content. “We had the license to do it and there was no approval by the licensor,” he explained. “We did the comic and I don’t recall ever a licensor getting back to us. It all would have been after the fact as the book would have already been published” (Coville). It was around this time that Arneson, in his early thirties and anxious to explore more writing opportunities, broached the prospect of quitting Dell to company president Helen Meyer. She made him a counter offer that would allow him to retain a staff editor position, coming into the office three days a week and spending the rest of his time on freelance pursuits. “I did that for the remainder of the year, which I promised her I would do,” Arneson recalled. “After the year was up, I went back and wanted to go full time but she kept me on under the same circumstances” (Coville).

Meyer’s reluctance to restore Arneson’s five-day work week may have something to do with Dell’s output. Between comic books dated January and December 1967, Dell cancelled all but one of its ongoing series. Along with the short-lived new titles, those final issues included Alvin #19, Beverly Hillbillies #18, Bewitched #11, Big Valley #5, Combat #26, Dracula #4, FTroop #7, Frankenstein #4, Get Smart #8, Ghost Stories #20, Heckle and Jeckle #3, Hogan’s Heroes #8, Kona #21, Melvin Monster #9, Outer Limits #17, Thirteen #25, Toka #10, and Werewolf #3. Many of the titles resurfaced with reprints or leftover inventory during the next few years but only The Monkees lived to open the 1968 schedule. License or not, Dell didn’t have a lock on all comics featuring the Prefab Four Seen here on the first issue of their Dell comic book, the Monkees were (as their detractors called Peter Tork, Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, and Davy Jones. . them). Writer Howard TM and © Rhino Entertainment Company. Liss and artist Gene Fawhad a smattering of comics content in cette had done a Monkees its second and final issue, notably a paperback full of comics in 1966 for “Monkees Family Album” illustrated Popular Library while cartoonist Richby Joe Orlando. ard Hodgens was credited with the follow-up Monkees Go Mod in 1967. Elsewhere, the first two issues of Charlton’s Teen Tunes fan magazine Photos of the Monkees saturated the included two-page comics stories in covers and interior pages of Teen Beat which Go-Go character Miss Bikini #1 (November-December 1967), an Luv met “the Mongeese” and “Funny ill-fated fan magazine from DC that and Chair” (a.k.a. Sonny and Cher). had to immediately change its name Effective with issue #3 (November after complaints from the publishers 1967), the two-page feature starred of Tiger Beat. The renamed Teen Beam the Monkees by name in a manic adaptation of their song “Mr. Webster.” Carefully trademarked in the name of the TV series’ Raybert Productions, the shorts seemed to be just as authorized as the Dell and Popular Library editions but the circumstances behind them are a mystery.

DC’s short-lived Teen Beat/ Teen Beam . featured the Monkees in both its issues. . TM and © Rhino Entertainment Company.

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Charlton Premieres The feature’s artist was no secret, though. By 1966, Connecticut-based Jim Aparo had been rejected by many of the comic book industry’s best known publishers, including DC, Warren, and (as early as 1953) E.C. Comics, and had a pile of unsold newspaper strip proposals with names like Stern Wheeler and Zip Tyro. On vacation from his ad agency job in the summer of 1966, Aparo decided to make the hour’s drive to Charlton’s Derby headquarters for a personal pitch to Dick Giordano. Impressed with the versatility in Aparo’s samples, the new editor realized that the artist’s crisp cartoony style was amenable to humor as well as drama and assigned him a Miss Bikini Luv story (published in Go-Go #5) on the spot (Harris 51). Like another recent Charlton discovery Pat Boyette, Aparo delivered a complete package of pencils, inks, and lettering. Paid around $15-20 per page, he conceded that “it wasn’t enough money for all those parts but I did it because I wanted to do it; I wanted full command of my work” (Amash, “The Aparo Approach” 72). The illustrator found Giordano’s lack of micromanagement to be liberating. “He figures if you’re a professional, he’ll give you a script and you’ll do it! If you have a problem, call, straighten it out but you’re on your own, which was neat! And it was neat. I was my own boss” (Harris 51). Amidst episodic Western, romance, suspense and science fiction tales, Aparo also began drawing several back-up features. Tiffany Sinn, the Gary Friedrich-created “C.I.A. sweetheart” seen briefly in Career Girl Romances #38-39 (February, April 1967) made her last appearance in a Dave Kaler/Aparo short for Secret Agent #10. Elsewhere, Kaler and Aparo teamed up for a Nightshade back-up in Captain Atom #87-89 that fleshed out the mysterious heroine’s background and her ties to a shadowy parallel dimension.

Thane of Bagarth mirrored Prince Valiant’s blue and red color scheme. TM and © respective copyright holder.

As a longtime fan of Prince Valiant, Aparo was delighted to draw another Charlton feature for Hercules #1 (October 1967) that—on the surface—was meant to evoke Hal Foster’s beloved Sunday strip. In “Thane of Bagarth,” though, Steve Skeates was more directly referencing the historic adventure story Beowulf, using its title character to banish the feature’s red-headed land baron Hrothelac when the story began. With a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature, the writer was inspired by “the 40-year gap in this ancient hero’s legend, all of which I had learned about at Alfred University. I would place my series in that gap” (Schwirian 12).

Aparo and Denny O’Neil collaborated on “The Prankster,” a back-up set in futuristic Ultrapolis about a wise-cracking anarchist who stood in opposition to the city’s crackdown on “love, laughter, art…everything that lends dignity to human beings.” The concept was reminiscent of Harlan Ellison’s Hugo Award-winning 1965 short story “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” but the series never got past its cliffhanger ending in Thunderbolt #60 (November 1967). The book was cancelled with that issue. With his work for Marvel diminishing, O’Neil had paid attention when Dick Giordano began visiting New York City “once a week interviewing prospective writers and artists. […] I fell into a rhythm of going up there every Thursday morning and being given a job” (Brodsky 14). For the sake of his better-paying Marvel scripts, though, O’Neil pulled a name from Norman Mailer’s 1955 novel Deer Park and signed his Charlton stories “Sergius O’Shaughnessy.”

The Aparo-illustrated Nightshade feature in Captain Atom #87 featured a rare creator acknowledgment for the . heroine’s originator Dave Kaler. TM and © DC Comics.

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The feature was a good complement to headliner Hercules, whose book chronicled the mythological demigod’s 12 labors. Writer Joe Gill and artist Sam Glanzman brought the same earthy intensity to the pilot that they’d shown in the ill-fated 1964-1965 Jungle Tales of Tarzan

Fightin’ Army #76 set up the moral quandary of Will Franz and Sam Glanzman’s Willy Schultz . (whose name was misspelled on the cover). TM and © respective copyright holder.

book and, as a public domain character who was also active at Marvel Comics, Herc wasn’t subject to complaints from licensing agencies. By that point, the 42-year-old Glanzman had taken a young would-be artist under his wing. Impressed by the teenager’s sketches, the older artist was compelled to ask what sources he was basing the drawings on. “He wrote back,” Glanzman recalled, “that he was getting his reference from me!” (Cooke, Glanzman’s Derby Days” 90). Recognizing that his protégé might have a better shot as a writer, the mentor coached him in tailoring prospective scripts and sent him to Dick Giordano. Under the editor’s guidance, 17-year-old Brooklyn native Will Franz became the newest writer on Charlton’s payroll (Cooke, “The Lonely War of Will Franz” 96). Aware that Giordano wanted to revive interest in the moribund war books by adding recurring characters, Franz worked up three World War Two-based series that were drawn by Glanzman. The Devil’s Brigade (War Heroes #27: November 1967), centering on tanks in North Africa, was immediately scuttled when the book it was appearing in was cancelled. (It eventually continued in Fightin’ Army #79, 81-84). “The Iron Corporal,” which detailed American soldier Ian Heath’s exploits with the Australian army in New Guinea, had a more sustained run in Army War Heroes #2238 (November 1967-June 1970).

Franz’s signature series, however, was “The Lonely War of Capt. Willy Schultz,” beginning in Fightin’ Army #76 (October 1967). Schultz had been a loyal American soldier of German ancestry in North Africa whose entire world was turned upside down when he was falsely accused of murdering his bumbling but privileged commanding officer. Surviving a land mine explosion that killed the men driving him to his execution, the desperate captain—fluent in German— decided to pass himself off as a Nazi soldier and found a temporary haven with a Tiger unit. Still devoted to his country, Schultz risked his charade to destroy an ammunition dump at the German camp but he couldn’t help but be affected when he watched the other men under attack by Allied forces. “Your whole concept of the enemy is changed,” a caption read. “In reality, they are men much like your own. In their last moments, in their time of despair and pain, they do not shout ‘Heil Hitler’ or ‘Fatherland.’ Instead they call for someone by the name of ‘Mama’ or ‘Hilda’…loved ones who can’t do a thing to help them in their time of anguish.” “One of the advantages in Charlton was that we did have a lot of freedom,” Franz explained, “they just wanted to make sure—from what I could gather—that I wasn’t violating the Comics Code. My stories got a little rough, and they were not conventional war stories. […] I didn’t have the good guys winning in the end, smiling, winking, saying ‘The United States Marines are the best fighting men in the world!’ The enemy was war itself, rather than 163

some Japanese wearing Coke-bottle glasses, or a German wearing a swastika on his arm and a scar on his face. I did a lot of research on the German Army, and wanted to do a series from the German point of view” (Cooke, “The Lonely War of Will Franz” 97). By refusing to paint war in black and white terms, the series also grew into a parallel for the Vietnam conflict. Read from the perspective of teenage boys who feared going overseas, Schultz’s fictional moral quandaries couldn’t help but take on deeper meaning. A self-described outsider who’d been diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes shortly before turning 14, Franz was exempt from the draft but that didn’t stop him from empathizing. “I look back on when these stories were written, and yeah, that’s the way I was feeling at the time, depending on what was going on in the news on Vietnam, what was going on with my personal health, personal relationships. There would be times I’d want to blow the world up, so to speak, and there are other times I want to bandage everyone I can find who’s hurt. So ‘Willy Schultz’ took on a very personal meaning for me, unlike the other characters I was working on” (Cooke, “The Lonely War of Will Franz” 99). Most of Charlton’s new series didn’t evoke that kind of passion, certainly not the Joe Gill-scripted trio of lawmen called Riley’s Rangers (beginning in Texas Rangers In Action #60) or embittered one-armed former Confederate soldier Captain Doom (Outlaws of the West #64), both of them blandly illustrated by the Charles Nicholas/

(drawn by Bill Montes and Ernie Bache), a trio of squabbling, telepathically-linked college students named John “Specs” Anders, Warren “Creep” Blaine, and David “Swift” Scott.

Captain Doom debuted in Outlaws of the West #64. TM and © respective copyright holder.

Vince Alascia team. After writing the third and fourth Captain Doom episodes, Steve Skeates was reassigned to the revived Kid Montana feature in Outlaws #68, thrilled that he was now working with star Western artist Pete Morisi. “I relished the chance to give this true artist some scripts he could really sink his teeth into!” the writer enthused (Schwirian 9).

“The Charlton Westerns seemed more adult than those produced by the other comic book companies,” Skeates reflected. “Darker, brooding, good old ‘grim and gritty,’ and with heroes who were often disillusioned and rather world weary—all of which made those babies far, far more fun to write than [Marvel’s] Kid Colt and Two-Gun Kid had been” (Schwirian 9). Skeates declared his days at Charlton as “the most fun I ever had writing comics” (Schwirian 7) and pointed to projects like Charlton Premiere to illustrate his point. A tryout book on the order of DC’s Showcase, the writer noted that the new title generally ran “works that were far more experimental than anything Showcase handled, and, as unfortunately is often the case with really fun ideas, Premiere sold abysmally” (Schwirian 14).

Issue #1 (September 1967) offered three new hero concepts under the banner “Trio.” Fan-turned-pro Grass Green drew and dialogued Roy Thomas’ childlike variation on Plastic Man called the Shape but—to spare Thomas any grief with Marvel Comics—made no mention of his having plotted the story. Elsewhere, Pat Boyette created the timetraveling spirit Spookman. Skeates himself The disparate styles of pencilers Grass Green (The Shape), Bill Montes . (Tyro Team) and Pat Boyette (Spookman) came together in Charlton conceived the Tyro Team Premiere #1. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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The latter, Skeates noted, “is often cited as being my first attempt to show what it would be like to be a superhero in the real world, which actually wasn’t my aim at all. I was simply trying to write something similar to a Marvel comic (and quite a lot of the pacing of this story was, in fact, based upon the way Jack Kirby would plot those great Fantastic Four stories, though the characters here were more like Spider-Man than any of the FF)” (Schwirian 15). Premiere #2’s “Children of Doom” wasn’t really a tryout but it was heralded as a masterfully executed science fiction story. “Tell me the story, father,” a little girl implored in the prologue, the final panel exposing her eyeless face. “Tell me again how the world ended.” Over the course of 25 pages, the people of Earth crawled back from a devastating meteor shower only to have their second chance imperiled when returning astronauts unwittingly triggered a world-shattering doomsday machine. Scripted by Denny O’Neil, “Children of Doom” was a tour de force for Pat Boyette, who toned many of the pages with Zipatone or charcoal that were then published in black and white. Readers who saw the issue never forgot it.

Pat Boyette’s splash page for Charlton Premiere #2. . TM and © respective copyright holder.

sue #41, he flip-flopped that book’s features and replaced it on the schedule with The Peacemaker #1 (March 1967). The Five continued in its back pages, its roster shaken up when the slain Irv the Nerve was replaced with newcomer Sonya.

O’Neil later recalled how speedily the story had come together: “Dick called me and said that something they had planned to publish in Charlton Premiere—at the last minute they discovered that they didn’t have the rights to it, so could I come up with something in two days? That became ‘Children of Doom,’—instant comic book. It didn’t make any difference whether Pat Boyette and I succeeded or failed. What we had to do was get it done and that may have been a very liberating experience” (Brodsky 14). The pleasure that writers and artists received from that sort of creative expression helped offset the Charlton pay-scale. Such was the case with Jack Keller, who was still picking up regular assignments on Marvel’s Westerns. Late in 1966, he recalled, Dick Giordano “offered [him] a very nice package if [he] would go exclusively with Charlton” and focus all his energies on their automotive line. After Stan Lee made a counter offer to go exclusive with Marvel, Keller was in a quandary, particularly since he personally liked both editors a great deal. “I finally decided on going with Charlton for the simple reason that the subject matter was more appealing to me,” he explained. “That was the sole reason. Actually, financially, Stan Lee’s offer was superior, so it was a matter of illustrating what I liked best

Grand Prix regularly featured Jack Keller’s Rick . Roberts feature. TM and © respective copyright holder.

An Action-Heroes ad also touted Charlton’s new “Big C” corporate logo. Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, Judomaster, Peacemarker TM and © respective copyright holder. Peter Cannon TM and © Dynamite Characters, LLC.

and at that time it was auto racing” (Mozzer 11-12). As part of Keller’s subsequent refurbishing of the car books, three were re-titled with Drag-Strip Hotrodders, Hot Rod Racers, and Teenage Hotrodders becoming, respectively, World of Wheels, Grand Prix, and Top Eliminator. Teen parody comic Go-Go offered retitled versions of DC and Marvel’s foremost heroes, beginning with Gary Friedrich and Grass Green’s recreation of Roy Thomas’ Bestest League of America in issue #5 (February 1967). First created for the fanzine AlterEgo, Thomas gave Friedrich his permission to use the Justice League take-off at Charlton in both Go-Go #5 and #6, the latter of which pitted the BLA against the “Marvelous SuperHeroes” known as the Fantabulous Four until the unnamed Julius Schwartz and Stan Lee were forced to stop the brawl. At this point, Giordano still saw Charlton’s “Action-Heroes” as a key component in the line. Cancelling Fightin’ Five with is165

Three months later, Captain Atom’s back-up strip was awarded its own title as Blue Beetle #1 (June 1967). Its second issue finally explained what happened to the hero’s predecessor: On an expedition to stop his mad Uncle Jarvis from unleashing an army of super-androids, Ted Kord had recruited college acquaintance Dan Garrett to help and wound up getting him killed. In the process, Ted learned that Dan had been the Blue Beetle and promised to carry on the name, using his considerable know-how to enhance the hero’s costume and arsenal. Unlike his Spider-Man who’d protected his secret identity at all costs, Steve Ditko had Ted detail all of this to his girlfriend Tracey…and she was okay with it: “To me you were…a hero long before you put on that costume, Ted. I understand everything now.” For the back-up feature in Blue Beetle, Ditko created a character who bypassed the usual skintight costume in favor of a suit, tie, hat, and trench coat. He also had no face. The Question—alias “hard-hitting TV newscaster” Vic Sage—had no special pow-

Blue Beetle #2 revealed the connection between the new . Beetle and his predecessor. TM and © DC Comics.

deserved,” the masked man intoned. BB #4’s installment closed with the Question ignoring the pleas of two killers about to wash away in a sewer tunnel, snorting when one of the men cried that it was his “duty” to save them: “You’re both crazy if you think I’d risk my neck to save the likes of you. As far as I’m concerned, you’re just so much sewage. And you deserve to be right where you are.” Even with a Comics Code-mandated final word balloon that assured readers that the police would pick up the men when they emerged in the river, the sequence caused a sensation. “What a wave of mail I got,” Giordano recalled, “because at the time, that was unheard of” (Thomas, “The Silver Age of Charlton” 12). While Ditko plotted the story, the dialogue was written by Steve Skeates (using the pseudonym “Warren Savin”). Noting how often critics attributed those words to Ditko himself, Skeates laughed, “This quite confirms my longstanding belief that one should never judge an author by what his characters say” (Usher 10). Anyone wishing to see Ditko’s unfiltered thoughts need only order a copy of Wally Wood’s witzend #3 (1967) and read its opening story. Dressed in the same suit and hat as his Charlton counterpart, Mr. A didn’t blank out his features entirely but the full-face mask he used was just as inexpressive. “I don’t abuse my emotions,” he explained. “I have no mercy or compassion for aggressors…only for the victims…for the innocent. To have any sympathy for a killer is an insult to their victims.” Those words came at the end of the five-page story of Angel, a cop-killer whose parents insisted that their son was no criminal while a social worker blamed his environment and declared that he’d have benefited from more playgrounds and recreation centers. Playing on the sympathy of school teacher Miss Kinder, Angel knifed a man in front of her before Mr. A intervened and left the sadist dangling off the ledge of a building. When the wounded teacher begged the masked man to save Angel, Mr. A asked if she seriously wanted to risk bleeding to death while he made the attempt…and then decided for her by carrying Miss Kinder away while her attacker fell to the pavement.

The Question’s atmospheric effects were devised by his friend Professor Rodor. . TM and © DC Comics.

ers other than pure atmosphere and theatricality, most notable an unnerving flesh-colored mask that concealed his features but which “you can see, breathe and speak through.” This was a sharper-edged Ditko hero than readers were used to seeing. As Sage, he refused to back down on airing a tape that exposed one of the TV station executives as a crook and as the Question, he shed no tears when the murderous Banshee was blown out to sea. “He got just what he

Over the past few years, Ditko had begun reading the works of author Ayn Rand, notably her 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged, and found the tenets of her philosophy of Objectivism to be compelling. Her advocacy for individual rights and a rigid, impartial adherence to facts in all matters resonated with the cartoonist and it was now being reflected in his work. In the case of Angel, excuses like those of his defenders were irrelevant to the reality that he smashed a policeman’s skull with a pipe. A killer is a killer or, as Rand put it, “A is A.” “Mr. A is based on Ayn Rand’s theory of justice and on Aristotle’s law of identity, his definition of man and his view of art,” Ditko told filmmaker Ken Viola in 1987. “Aristotle said that art is philosophically more important than history.

The Question TM and © DC Comics.

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what is right no matter in what situation he finds himself. “Where other heroes choose to be selfmade neurotics, the Question and Mr. A choose to be psychologically and intellectually healthy. It’s a choice everyone has to make” (Canterbury). Given witzend’s print run of a few thousand copies, only a tiny fraction of Ditko’s Charlton and Marvel readers saw the first Mr. A story but the unyielding philosophy beneath it triggered a slow shift in how fans saw the artist. Coupled with the cartoonist’s desire for privacy and increasing avoidance of interviews, those non-mainstream works earned him a reputation as a creator seen in some quarters as eccentric and others as a maverick. Those following his Charlton work, though, saw only cool visuals and sometimes unconventional ideas. The pride that Dick Giordano took in the efforts of Ditko and others was reflected in a new corporate logo (dubbed “the Big C”) that referred to Charlton Comics by name on its covers for the first time (beginning with August and September-dated issues). The Action-Heroes line were promoted in house ads, one modestly declaring that “they’re not half bad.” In issues on sale in December of 1967, the tagline on new house ads was disarmingly blunt: “Buy Charlton Comics! (We need the money!)”

Mr. A’s views on justice were as black and white as the pages of witzend #3. TM and © Steve Ditko.

History tells how man did act—art shows how man could and should act” (Bell 111). The cartoonist had previously elaborated on his parallel heroes in Marvel Main #4 (October 1968): “When Blue Beetle got his own magazine, they needed a companion feature for it. I didn’t want to use Mr. A, because I didn’t think the Code would let me do the type of stories I wanted to do, so I worked up the Question, using the basic idea of a man who was

motivated by basic black & white principles. Where other heroes’ powers are based on some accidental super element, The Question and Mr. A’s ‘power’ is deliberately knowing what is right and acting accordingly. But it is one of choice. Of choosing to know what is right and choosing to act on that knowledge in all his thoughts and actions…with everyone he deals with. No conflict or contradiction in his behavior in either identity. He isn’t afraid to know or refuse to act on 167

By then, the Action-Heroes line had been dead over three months, effective with Blue Beetle #4, Captain Atom #89, Judomaster #98, Peacemaker #5, and Thunderbolt #60. The cancellations came with so little notice, in fact, that Blue Beetle #6 was advertised in Judomaster #98 (only adding to the confusion of fans who didn’t realize issue #5 hadn’t been published, either). Shortly before the end, Charlton issued its usual wave of summer one-shots that included Gunmaster #89 and Secret Agent #10 (with Sarge Steel), delivering final issues for two books that had gotten the ax in 1966.

Other last issues that fall were Go-Go #9, Wyatt Earp Frontier Marshal #72, War and Attack #63, and War Heroes #27. The latter two titles continued a pruning of the combat line that had begun earlier in 1967 with Army Attack #47 and Marine War Heroes #18. In typical Charlton fashion, MWH became Charlton Premiere #19 (including Will Franz’s first published work) for its last issue “to help ensure mailing rights for the real first issue” of Premiere two months later (Kaler, “What’s News: 4/67” 4). With superheroes faltering, Charlton turned its eye to other genres for salvation. Ghostly Tales had done nicely enough to spin-off its resident supernatural investigator into The Many Ghosts of Dr. Graves (its first issue dated May 1967). Along with Hercules, the October-dated issues also introduced ongoing science fiction (Strange Suspense Stories) and romance titles (Time For Love) as well as reviving Casper knock-off Timmy the Timid Ghost. A standalone UFOthemed issue of Space Adventures that month led to a full revival of the book in 1968, too. Dick Giordano wouldn’t be there to see it, though. He had improved the quality of the Charlton line enormously in two years but was now publishing fewer ongoing titles than when he began. “The figures showed we sold only 18 percent of the print run,” he said of the publisher’s collective output, “which meant that only 25 percent of the print run saw the light of day.” Giordano eventually discovered distribution warehouses full of bundled Charlton issues that were never shipped at all and simply held until they could be returned for credit. Without recognizable names like Superman, Spider-Man, or Archie, Charlton tended to get left behind by vendors who already favored magazines over comic books (Eury 42). “I had been having so much fun,” Giordano recalled, The Blackhawks didn’t truly become “Junk-Heap Heroes” until they put on these costumes in “but that sort of ruined it for me” (Eury 42). ConBlackhawk #230. Art by Dick Dillin and Chuck Cuidera. TM and © DC Comics. ceding that he’d ics in 1968, the cartoonist was in a position to know that been well treated at the company was in the market for new editors with the Charlton and received visual sensibilities that an artist like Giordano possessed. an outstanding educaDitko “came to my Charlton office to ask me if I had any intion in the finer points terest in working at DC,” the editor recalled. “I said yes, so of comics production, Steve set up an appointment for me with Carmine [Infanthe editor was nonetino] and Irwin Donenfeld” (Eury, Dick Giordano 42). After theless ready for a a few meetings, a deal was struck and, effective December change. “I had reached 1, 1967, Dick Giordano left Charlton Comics for DC. the point where I felt there was no future for me because there was no future for Charlton,” In the year leading up to Giordano’s arrival, DC’s execuhe explained (Cooke, tives had become increasingly paranoid about their com“The Action Hero Man” petition. “Marvel was doing very well,” Carmine Infantino 48). confirmed. “We knew it because DC—Independent News— Aware of his editor’s was handling Marvel at the time and their numbers were frustrations, Steve Ditcoming in. Marvel had books like Spider-Man […] coming in ko took matters into at 70, 80, even 85 percent sales. And we had books coming his own hands. Having in at 40, 41, 42 percent. Something was wrong and [DC’s made a deal to create Pat Boyette’s cover for The Many Ghosts of Docexecutives] didn’t know how to fix it” (Murray 39). tor Graves #1. TM and © respective copyright holder. new series for DC Com-

From the Junk-Heap to Gotham City

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Going into the year, most DC editors were still convinced that superheroes were a surefire ticket to bumping sales. Even the infant stars of Sugar and Spike got into the act in issue #69 (February-March 1967). Recalling his 1940s hero take-off Red Tornado, creator Sheldon Mayer had both the kids and their nemesis Little Arthur take turns as TornadoTot. While Mayer didn’t have plans to revisit superheroes in the book, he recognized that the title was having an increasingly tough time in an ever-flashier marketplace and began a shift toward more fantasy stories beginning with issue #72 and its introduction of baby genius Bernie the Brain. Meanwhile, editor George Kashdan was seeking a new direction for Blackhawk following the 1966 death of writer France Herron. What Herron’s successor Bob Haney delivered was surely one of the great misfires of the decade. In a three-parter entitled “The Junk-Heap Heroes” (Blackhawk #228-230: January-March 1967), the mighty Justice League itself moved in to inform President Johnson that the seven aviators were ready to be put out to pasture. “The Blackhawks are washed-up has-beens,” Batman decreed. “Out of date antiques, a danger to national security. To put it bluntly…they just don’t swing!” Further taken to task by secret agent Mr. Delta (“The man from G.E.O.R.G.E.”), the Blackhawks decided to go the JLA route and put on costumes themselves. As designed by penciler Dick Dillin, the Big Eye (Blackhawk), Doctor Hands (Chop-Chop), the Golden Centurion (Stanislaus), the Leaper (Olaf), the Listener (Chuck), M’sieu Machine (Andre), and the Weapons Master (Hendrickson) were the silliest looking characters this side of Dial H For Hero. The Listener’s purple outfit—imprinted with dozens of ear symbols— may have been the highlight. For all that, President Johnson not only didn’t laugh but restored the team’s security clearance and gave “the new Blackhawk era” his stamp of approval.

B’wana Beast’s Showcase #66 debut—with cover art by Mike Sekowsky and Joe Giella—went on sale three days before Thanksgiving in 1966. TM and © DC Comics.

For Kashdan, the project’s biggest problems had been behind the scenes, noting that Haney and project artist Mike Sekowsky “hated each other” (Amash, “It’s Important That We Don’t Get Forgotten” 50). Years later, while working at Hanna Barbera, Sekowsky told Scott Shaw “that he felt that the storyline of ‘B’wana Beast’ was so racist, he refused to draw it and that editor George Kashdan couldn’t find another cartoonist willing to draw the strip, either!” (Shaw).

Readers did not. Published monthly since issue #33 (October 1950), Blackhawk hadn’t deviated from its schedule even when it moved from Quality Comics to DC in 1956 but “The Junk-Heap Heroes” did what fictional menaces like Killer Shark and the War Wheel never could: it inflicted a mortal injury. The first symptom appeared when the title went bi-monthly with issue #237 (October-November 1967). In the span of a year, Blackhawk had lost an average of 71,000 readers per issue.

Consequently, B’wana Beast ended with Showcase #67 and Kashdan moved on to edit the less troublesome jungle comic book Bomba the Jungle Boy, based on an obscure syndicated TV series repackaged from old B movies that was in turn based on a 1926-1938 book series. After complaints from readers that they’d never heard of the supposed television program, the comic book’s “TV Teen Jungle Star” tag was dropped with issue #3.

Published the same month as Blackhawk #228, Kashdan and Haney’s new creation for Showcase #66 was no less infamous. B’wana Beast the Jungle Master was comics’ latest jungle lord, a white ranger in the African nation of Zambesi who’d imbibed a liquid that simultaneously bulked him up and gave him a more volatile animal temperament. Once Mike Maxwell put on a mysterious red and yellow helmet, he could also command jungle animals and fuse them into bizarre composites. Although Haney took pains to include a prominent black supporting character (Maxwell’s best friend Rupert Kenboya), the concept of a black nation beholden to a white hero (whose “b’wana” name sometimes translated to “master” in Swahili) unavoidably came across as racially insensitive.

Meanwhile, along with his regular Justice League of America assignment, Sekowsky threw his efforts into projects he actually enjoyed like the now-ongoing Inferior Five. He and I5 writer E. Nelson Bridwell collaborated again on the Maniaks, a comical rock-and-roll quartet who got a tryout in Showcase #68, #69, and #71. Though inspired by the Monkees, Bridwell resisted obvious parallels to the group, not the least of which was swapping one of the guys for a platinum blonde named Silver Shannon. 169

simply reprinted stories from 1956, albeit with revisions via the production department that updated fashions and hairstyles. Whatever its faults, the reprint issue outsold the new Maniaks editions and a Binky series was fasttracked for 1968. Even as it mulled teen humor as the next hit genre, DC still profited mightily from the superhero craze that was burning smaller publishers. Sales may have faded from its 1966 highs but Batman was still unequivocally DC’s best-selling title. With The Maniaks were Pack Rat, Silver Shannon, . an average of 805,700 Jangle, and Flip. TM and © DC Comics. copies sold per issue, Although cleverly written, it wasn’t it was the best-selling really as hip as it wanted to be. When color comic book in the the Maniaks performed in a musical United States by a wide directed by real-life comedian-playmargin. Boasting respecwright Woody Allen, the song parotive averages of 537,200 dies all mirrored show-tunes. That Justice League of America #55 original art by Mike Sekowsky and . and 425,700, World’s FinMurphy Anderson, courtesy of Heritage Auctions. . may have worked for Mad and its est and Detective Comics Justice Society of America, Robin TM and © DC Comics. older audience but it seemed rather even saw increases over Robin in a Batman-themed costume stodgy when read by kids more familtheir 1966 figures. The Brave and the as part of Earth-Two’s Justice Sociiar with the Top 40. Bold returned to non-Batman teamety. Likewise, Schwartz eased up on ups for two issues in 1967 before earThere was a similar disconnect in the camp approach to his comics, lier sales figures compelled the resShowcase #70. Conscious of Archie’s opening the door for more dramatic toration of the Caped Crusader as its virtual lock on the teen humor maradversaries like the Scarecrow. In permanent co-star with issue #74, a ket, DC decided to revive its old truth, Batman #189’s revival of that post that he held until the book ended “Leave It To Binky” feature (19481940s villain and most of the year’s in 1983. 1958) in that issue while completely other stories still weren’t particularly missing the point that part of the ArBy now, though, Julius Schwartz felt atmospheric but it was a step in the chie titles’ success was due to their comfortable enough to end Batman’s right direction. constant immersion in current pop dominance on the covers of Justice The promise of what the Batman culture. Instead, young editor BarLeague of America, concluding with series could be was on display in bara Friedlander issue #55’s introduction of an adult “The Round-Robin Death Threats,” a two-part story in Detective #366-367 (August-September 1967) written by Gardner Fox. The plot followed a quartet—including Bruce Wayne— who were each given hypnotic suggestions to set up a death-trap for one of the others in a circular plot to take all of their lives. It was a strong plot in its own right and one that Schwartz wisely handed to artists Carmine Infantino and Sid Greene for maximum effect. Filled with shadows and mood, the visuals were a sharp contrast from the flat quality of the art of “Bob This revision of a 1956 story was typical of the cosmetic . Kane” (actually Sheldon Moldoff). enhancements made to the Binky tales in Showcase #70. TM and © DC Comics. 170

and agreed to continue the show… but at a fraction of its former budget. The series’ trademark cliffhangers were also—with rare exceptions— no more. Instead, Batman would run only once a week (beginning on Thursday, September 14) with a closing teaser featuring the next episode’s villain. Those villains included newcomers such as the Siren (Joan Collins), Louie the Lilac (Milton Berle) and Olga the Great (Anne Baxter) along with the inspired recasting of Catwoman, now played with a distinctive purr by black singer-actress Eartha Kitt. There was, if anything, less dignity in the new season than ever before. Along with the barebones props and thinly plotted stories that needed to fit a large cast into half its former length, the show also subjected viewers to such silliness as Batman facing off against the Joker in a surfing competition…complete with swim trunks over the Caped Crusader’s costume.

Murphy Anderson inked Carmine Infantino’s cover pencils for . Detective Comics #359 while Sid Greene embellished Infantino . on the interior Batgirl origin. TM and © DC Comics.

The Fox/Infantino/Greene team had previously joined forces in Detective #359 (January 1967) with the longterm goal of rejuvenating the TV show. “After the first year of Batman,” Schwartz detailed, “[William] Dozier said, ‘We must do something to hype the program. Can we have a girl on the show?’ I said, ‘What kind of girl do you want?’ He suggested, ‘Well, can we have Commissioner Gordon, for example, have a daughter and she becomes Batgirl?’” (Peel 40). Having expelled the previous Bat-Girl (along with Batwoman and Bat-Mite) from the series in 1964, the editor felt like he was backsliding but agreed to carry out the request. Infantino came up with a typically strong design for Batgirl, one that eschewed the bright colors of the early Bat-women in favor of predominant black and yellow with gray highlights. She “had no ears on her at the time I first drew her,” the artist recalled. “I remember Dozier said, ‘Put ears on her. Make her Batgirl’” (Eury, “The Man Who Redesigned Batman” 23). Fox developed Barbara Gordon as an independent young college graduate who’d affected a studious image

with granny specs and her hair rolled up. Returning to Gotham City as one of its chief librarians, she had grand plans to let her red hair down and shock everyone with a vivacious new look. Creating a Batgirl costume for the Policeman’s Ball, Babs anticipated her unmasking as the grand finale but it never came to that. Instead, she stumbled onto Killer Moth attacking Bruce Wayne en route and leapt in to rescue him. Once bitten by the superhero bug, Barbara changed her plans and embarked on a new career, keeping her father and everyone else out of the loop about Batgirl’s real name. Schwartz and company were understandably wary about a reader backlash but it never really materialized. Fans delighted in the new Batgirl’s sexiness and independence and she made an early return in Detective #363, on sale just a month before Whitney Ellsworth and Joe Giella introduced her into a Batman newspaper continuity (May 1-July 9, 1967). During the summer, Batgirl met Supergirl for the first time in World’s Finest #169. Meanwhile, the TV show’s production team geared up to introduce the new heroine. Hiring prolific film and TV actress Yvonne Craig for the role, Dozier’s team filmed a 15-minute teaser that introduced Batman and Robin to Batgirl during a clash with Killer Moth. Wary about renewing Batman for a third season, ABC executives were won over by the test footage 171

DC stoically supported the third season, ensuring that Batgirl was on the cover of one comic book per month from September through December, culminating with a guest-appearance

Batgirl actress Yvonne Craig in a 1967 publicity photo.

in Justice League of America #60. Echoing the TV show’s new format, the Batgirl-Robin team-up in Detective #369 ended with the much-anticipated return of Catwoman to the comic book and led into a full-length clash between her and the young heroine in Batman #197.

ad and his wife Mera in most episodes. Many of them were written by Kashdan and Haney, who took advantage of their proximity to take villains from the upcoming cartoon and plant them in the comic book first. Such was the case with the Torpedo, Magneto, and Claw (Aquaman #36) and the more enduring Black Manta (Aquaman #35).

Virtually overshadowed by Batgirl in 1967 were two other new feminine variations on a male hero that debuted in George Kashdan-edited/Bob Haney-scripted titles. Element Girl, transformed in a manner similar to Metamorpho, debuted in issue #10 of his eponymous title and stuck around through 1968 before vanishing for the next 22 years. Elsewhere, Aquaman #33 matched Aqualad up with Aquagirl, an underwater party doll named Tula who returned from time to time into the 1970s and beyond.

Mort Weisinger continued to act as script editor on the Superman portion of the series. Along with a lack of writers and general apathy on the editor’s part, those additional responsibilities might have been a contributing factor in the increasing presence of older stories in his books. 45% of the 1967-dated Superman books contained at least one reprint.

The Continuing Story

Weisinger had long been a proponent of continued stories but he notably increased their presence during the year. Whether that was a reaction to Marvel’s own promiAquaman saw a modest sales nent use of serialization or simply spike in 1967 thanks to CBS’ Justice League of America #60 original art by Mike Sekowsky . a means of stretching his limited Batgirl, and Murphy Anderson, courtesy of Heritage Auctions. New Adventures of Superman Justice League of America TM and © DC Comics. resources, it’s impossible to say. cartoon being retooled as The Most notably, Action Comics began regularly serializing its Superman/Aquaman Hour beginning on September 9, Superman stories effective with the June 1967 issue (#351), 1967. Expanded into a showcase for many of DC’s biggest with tales that ran in two, three, and even five consecutive heroes, the series now included periodic shorts featuring installments. The status quo held for two full years, endthe Atom, the Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, and even ing with issue #377 (June 1969). Aside from issue #360 and the entire Justice League and Teen Titans. As indicated by #373’s isolated reprint specials, the period saw only four the title, Aquaman was there every week, joined by Aqualstand-alone Superman issues (Action #354, #361, #367, #370) and three of those contained chapters of Supergirl serials! No one was forcing Jim Shooter to write two-part stories for Adventure Comics and he used the extra space to pen some of the most cherished stories in the Legion of Super-Heroes’ history. The first of them began with a plot germ from his editor. For nearly two years, the entertainment press had been full of stories about the upcoming film adaptation of E.M. Nathanson’s novel The Dirty Dozen and Weisinger suggested that Shooter apply the concept to a Legion story. CBS’ 1967 Saturday morning fall schedule. . Aquaman, Superman TM and © DC Comics. The Herculoids, Jonny Quest, Mighty Mightor, Moby Dick, Shazzan TM and © Hanna-Barbera Productions.

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“No other DC book was set in the future,” Shooter said of the Legion, “so I owned the future! I could do continuity, set things up to pay off months down the road, and really develop characters.” With multiple writers on the other Superman books, he explained, one man’s plot development could be undercut by another in the next issue. “I had a unique situation with the LSH” (Eury, “Jim Shooter Interview” 76).

Bewildered, Shooter flipped through newspapers until he found a story on the project. “That was all I had to see to get the drift that bad guys were recruited for a suicide mission,” he remembered. “That, I thought I could do, and I wrote the first Fatal Five stories based on that concept” (Shooter 165). Published in Adventure Comics #352-353 (dated January-February 1967), the story ended up going on sale more than six months prior to the release of the movie that inspired it.

Weisinger’s experience with Shooter had been successful enough for him to add another teenager to his roster. While in high Going Marvel’s Galactus school, Cary Bates had sucone better, Shooter imagcessfully pitched several ined a celestial threat cover concepts to the edicalled the Sun-Eater that tor between 1963 and 1965 essentially did just that… and now he wanted to try and it was headed for his hand at full scripts. The Earth’s solar system. With 18-year-old college stuhope fading, five Legiondent made early sales with naires desperately reached Rendered by Curt Swan and George Klein, the Fatal Five was comprised of Tharok, the . out to anyone with the Emerald Empress, Validus, the Persuader, and Mano. Legion of Super-Heroes TM and © DC Comics. stories about an alternate Superman-Batman team power to stop the entity Given the scale of the story, Shooter (World’s Finest #167) and a supposed and gathered the Science Police’s had considered a casualty early on. “real” Clark Kent that Superman had most wanted—the Emerald Empress, “I thought that Mort might object if been holding captive (Superman Mano, the Persuader, Tharok, and ValI killed an established, long-term Le#198). Before long, Weisinger was idus—to help. Nothing worked until gionnaire,” he explained, “but what if suggesting plot kernels to Bates as Tharok devised a bomb that could it was one of the new ones I’d creatwell, beginning with a take-off on destroy a Sun-Eater if carried into ed? Maybe that would fly. So I did it. I its core. A weakened Superboy was didn’t ask, I just did it. Why Ferro Lad? poised to deliver the payload only to Because his powers suited the opporbe pushed aside by relative newcomtunity. How would Princess Projectra er Ferro Lad. Eight months into his or even Karate Kid survive the deathLegion membership, the teenage murun into the heart of the Sun-Eater?” tant plunged into his prey, obliterat(Shooter 165). ing them both as the shocked Legion and Fatal Five looked on. Like Menthor in 1966, the death of Ferro Lad resonated with fans for years, in part because (unlike earlier Legionnaire Lightning Lad in 1963) it wasn’t undone. Indeed, in response to another Weisinger request, the very next issue jumped a decade or so into the future to check in on “the Adult Legion” and reinforced Ferro Lad’s fate by including his statue in a hall of the dead. Thinking long term, Shooter also included monuments to other slain heroes like Shadow Woman, Chemical King, and Quantum Queen that he intended to introduce in the teenage Legion’s 30th Century Ferro Lad perished in Adventure Comics #353. . “present.” Adventure #354’s cover featured memorials to four champions who’d yet to debut. TM and © DC Comics.

TM and © DC Comics.

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College student Cary Bates wrote the scripts for Superman #198 and #200 (with covers by Curt Swan and George Klein) while high schooler . Jim Shooter penned issue #199’s Superman-Flash race (whose cover was by Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson). TM and © DC Comics.

Captain Nice and Mister Terrific that ran in Action #354. The editor’s two boy wonders didn’t actually meet for several years but they had plenty to talk about when they did. “One of the first things [Bates] said to me was, ‘I used to hate you,” Shooter laughed. “Mort apparently used to say things to Cary like, ‘Why can’t you write like Shooter? He’s just a high school kid…!’ Of course, Mort was also telling me, ‘Bates always has good cover ideas. What’s wrong with you?’” (Eury, “Jim Shooter Interview” 75). [Teenage writers weren’t restricted to comics, incidentally. 1967 also saw the publication of S.E. Hinton’s novel The Outsiders, whose author was both 18 and female.] While Bates got to write the milestone Superman #200 (an “imaginary tale” with a slight tie-in to Canada’s reallife bicentennial), Shooter’s script for the preceding issue was more memorable. Having long imagined a race between Superman and the Flash, the young writer finally made it a reality in Superman #199 (August 1967) even if he noncommittally ended it in a tie. A Julius Schwartz-edited, E. Nelson Bridwell-scripted sequel in The Flash #175 (December 1967) likewise avoided a definitive outcome.

A similar lack of follow-through was on display in Jimmy Olsen #100. Touted as the wedding of Superman’s pal to Lucy Lane, it was meant to be the real thing but Weisinger changed his mind and had writer Leo Dorfman contrive an annulment on the last page (Wells 9). Likewise, the “death” of Red Ryan in the Murray Boltinoffedited Challengers of the Unknown #55 was undone after six issues. Hoping to repeat the success he’d had with Doom Patrol’s Beast Boy, writer Arnold Drake had brought in Red’s rock-and-roll-singing kid brother as a prospective replacement but it didn’t stick. Nor did Flash #167’s whimsical revelation that a “Heavenly Helpmate” named Mopee gave the Scarlet Speedster his powers.

That misstep aside, editor Julius Schwartz managed to tie up several loose ends in his books. On his first wedding anniversary in The Flash #174, Barry Allen was ready to divulge to his wife that he was the Flash but Iris declared that she already knew: he talked in his sleep! Over in Justice League of America #51, Zatanna’s twoyear search for her father came to an end when she finally rescued Zatara from the elemental Allura. And in Hawkman #18, Schwartz and Gardner Fox (with artist Murphy Anderson) revisited Adam Strange after nearly three years, permanently relocating the hero to the planet Rann with his beloved Alanna.

Adam’s appearance was a reminder of how badly his series had suffered when Schwartz and company were transferred from Mystery In Space to Batman in 1964, a transition that was echoed in 1967. This time, Schwartz, Fox, and Anderson were reassigned to an ongoing Spectre series (its first issue dated November-December 1967) and Hawkman was handed off to George Kashdan with issue #22. Courtesy of Blackhawk’s Bob Haney/Dick Dillin/Chuck Cuidera team, the grace of the Schwartz era gave way to an outrageous Iris Allen had known her husband was the Flash ever since they got married. Script by John Broome with art by Carmine Infantino and Sid Greene. TM and © DC Comics. story in which Carter and 174

Arnold Drake’s Deadman had a harshness and intensity that carried over into Carmine Infantino’s pencils (inked by George Roussos). TM and © DC Comics.

his clincher: “This man who has just been murdered is our hero,” he read from the proposed cover copy. “His story begins one minute later” (Drake 9). Brand, he continued, would survive as a ghost, empowered by an Eastern mystic called Rama Kushna to possess the bodies of the living and search for the mysterious man with a hook for a right hand who killed him. Drake thought he had the deal sewn up until he revealed his star’s stage name: Deadman. Miller backed off instantly, snorting, “You’ve got to be kidding! We’ll never get it past the Code!” Infantino, the writer recalled, immediately “made a fist behind Miller’s back, meaning ‘Go, man, go!’ So I kept arguing with Miller, and finally we got it through” (Mougin 11).

Shiera Hall (a.k.a. Hawkman and Hawkgirl) were outed as extraterrestrials.

“We were going into a somewhat mystical period, where the young people were into the wisdom of the Orient,” Drake explained. “Hare Krishna, the whole Zen movement and all of that was in the air. And I decided to use that as a kind of timely support for the notion of a being that was neither living nor dead” (Mougin 11).

It was about as disappointing as Jack Schiff’s 1964 acquisition of Schwartz’s science fiction titles but the former editor wasn’t there to see it. Still smarting from the loss of prestige he suffered upon losing the Batman books at that time, the 57-year-old Schiff decided to retire early in 1967. In his wake, E. Nelson Bridwell took over his Batman reprint giants, George Kashdan continued House of Mystery (with issue #169), and Murray Boltinoff picked up Tales of the Unexpected (with issue #102). DC’s long-running public service pages, championed by the civic-minded Schiff, also quietly ended in the July-dated issues with “Make Your Summer Count.”

It would only work, the writer believed, if grounded in realistic characterization and his script for the first Deadman tale (Strange Adventures #205: October 1967) represented some of his career-best work. His goal “was to make people sound as much like real people as possible as I could, and give them motives as much like real people’s as I possibly could—which comics kind of avoided. You know, the motivations of comics characters were pretty two-dimensional. So I tried to motivate the characters, as much as I could, as they might be in real life, and I tried to make the stories I was writing smack of the period in which they were being written” (Mougin 11).

Strange Adventures, the last of Schiff’s titles, went to Jack Miller with issue #204 and the new editor was at a loss on how to continue the book. Approached to whip up a new series for the title, Arnold Drake pitched the saga of a bitter circus aerialist named Boston Brand who wasn’t about to let his fellow carnies know how much he cared about them. He scoffed when fortune teller Vashnu saw a special destiny for him but the laughter ceased when he plunged from the big top…not because he’d missed his wire but because someone pulled out a rifle and shot him in mid-air. Drawing in the background within earshot, Carmine Infantino was as entranced as Miller when Drake delivered

Invested in the series through his support of Drake, Infantino agreed to pencil the pilot. It was a bravura performance, its layouts and overall mood fully the equal of the script and startlingly different than anything the artist had done before. “He humanized the death’s head I’d created,” Drake said of Infantino’s costume design, “added a dramatic cowl and designed the ‘D’ logo on his chest.” The writer’s only 175

tions the claim, asking “Can we really imagine Marvel—then, a notoriously frugal outfit—giving someone a contract the equal of Kirby’s when that someone had yet to prove he could work the way Stan insisted his artists work?” (Evanier, “Carmine Corrections”). Regardless, Irwin Donenfeld absolutely believed it was for real and rushed the news to publisher Jack Liebowitz. He, in turn, made Infantino a counter offer: a salaried Art Director position with a $10,000-a-year raise to $30,000. Essentially, Infantino would be laying out covers for the entire DC line and offering input on its interiors (Amash 92).

quibble was the unmasked Boston’s too-handsome face for a man who’d lived such a hard life. “Carmine smiled as his eraser and pencil broke Boston’s nose. Now it was truly perfect” (Drake 10). Drake wrote one more episode of the series before departing over creative differences. His unrealized third installment had dealt with a dying state governor and his power-behindthe-throne secretary but Miller was uncomfortable with both its explicit mention of cancer and the fact that the secretary was black. Moreover, he considered the story too talky. Drake contended “that if the talk was the right kind of talk, it supplants the action, to some degree. I was trying to explain to him that the words were becoming as important as the pictures” (Mougin 12).

His days of regularly penciling stories were over, though. There’d be no more Deadman episodes (although he started plotting the strip when Drake left) and his last Batman story ran in Detective #369 (November Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson’s cover for The Flash 1967). Most historically, after drawAt DC in 1967, that was an argument #174 defied conventional wisdom about logo placement. . ing every adventure of the modern TM and © DC Comics. doomed to failure. Irwin Donenfeld Flash since 1956, Infantino capped was deeply invested in the visual side of comics and parhis run with The Flash #174 (November 1967). ticularly their covers, convinced that a well-executed con-

Changing of the Guard

cept there would grab readers more surely than the stories within. Donenfeld held Carmine Infantino up as his ideal, and could point to sales on the artist’s books as proof that his designs were grabbing readers.

Its cover sported an elongated logo with the Flash lying beneath it—harkening back to many of Will Eisner’s 1940s Spirit splash pages—and typified the artist’s adventurous spirit. Other experimental covers had included one whose villain could only be identified by assembling puzzle pieces beneath the art (Detective #367) and another in which Blockbuster smashed the logo of Batman #194.

According to Infantino, Stan Lee noticed the same thing and made Infantino an offer to come to Marvel in mid1967 at a salary roughly equivalent to what superstar Jack Kirby was then pulling in. Historian Mark Evanier ques-

Without a logo atop the cover for vendors to return for credit, Donenfeld was convinced that distributors would reject the latter issue. “He wanted a new cover,” Infantino recalled. “I refused. It was a gamble there, because where was I going to go? But I just refused and I finally said, ‘Irwin, can’t you trust me once?” And he piped down” (Eury 21).

Infantino and Anderson’s cover for Detective Comics #367 doubled as a jigsaw puzzle that some readers actually assembled. Batman TM and © DC Comics.

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Infantino was succeeded on The Flash by the Ross Andru-Mike Esposito art team, forcing the team to give up their long-time assignments on Wonder Woman and Metal Men. Andru, ironically, had tried to get a raise earlier in the year by threatening to go to Marvel—only to have Donenfeld call his bluff. After a Not Brand Echh satire, two frustrating issues of X-Men, and a disappointing Spider-Man tryout, Andru was back at DC and grateful to still have a job (Esposito 82). Unfortunately, Andru and Esposito’s bulky Scarlet Speedster was a huge change from Infantino’s sleek runner and not well-received by fans. “I was trying to incorporate the Marvel superhero look into the wrong character,” Andru conceded. “He shouldn’t have been that beefy…that muscular. I was trying to create exaggerated camera effects,

Mooney explained, “and a lot of us who were drawing in the earlier, more simplistic style, well, let’s just say it was myself, George Papp, Wayne Boring, Al Plastino. […] Carmine Infantino was in the driver’s seat at that time, and he wanted us to work more illustratively. We tried, and I did do a few Supergirl strips at that time that were beginning to get a little bit more on the illustrative side, but finally, it came to my attention that I didn’t think my services were going to be needed there very much longer. They had let George Papp and Wayne Boring go [by then]” (Knowles 58).

and overdid it. I look back on some of that stuff and I cringe” (Burkett 23). While Infantino hand-picked Andru to replace him on The Flash, he had another artist in mind as the exemplar of the modern, realistic look that DC should be aspiring to. Rejected by the company in 1959, Neal Adams had built an impressive résumé in the 1960s that included a stint in advertising and a run on the Ben Casey newspaper strip but he still longed for a career in comic books. After Casey’s cancellation, Adams finally managed to get his foot in DC’s door, picking up a few war stories from Bob Kanigher (starting in Our Army At War #182 and #183). When Bob Oksner left DC to draw the short-lived newspaper strip Soozi (March 20-November 18, 1967), Adams was there to take over his two humor books, beginning with Bob Hope #106 and Jerry Lewis #102.

Papp, who’d drawn Superboy for a decade and co-created Green Arrow with Mort Weisinger in 1941, saw his last new work published in Superboy #148 (June 1968) while Mooney’s final Dial H For Hero and Supergirl stories ran in House of Mystery #170 (October 1967) and Action #358 (January 1968), respectively. Boring ended his 38-year career with Superman a month earlier

Adams drew the last months of Adventures of Bob Hope, including the . Discovering Adams at work in a final issue (#109) seen here. TM and © respective copyright holder. production room, Infantino was in disbelief. “He was very talented, could draw anything, in Action #357. and was being wasted on a third-string title,” the new Art Director declared, “so I started assigning him covers and The 62-year-old Boring knew that Weisinger considered pushed the top editors to hire him. He had a fresh look that his work dated—even going so far as to have Kurt SchaffenI wanted” (Infantino 71). Along with replacing Infantino berger redraw Lois Lane’s face in some of his stories—but on Deadman starting with Strange Adventures #206 and he still wasn’t prepared to be explicitly let go. “Fired?” the drawing a single Elongated Man story for Julius Schwartz flabbergasted artist asked. “What do you mean? All you’ve (Detective #369), Adams became the Sugot to do is stop sending me scripts!” perman line’s designated cover artist, Weisinger responded, “Do you need beginning with Action #356 and Lois a kick in the stomach to know when Lane #79 and expanding to the rest of you’re not wanted?” (Pachter 33). the titles in early 1968. As badly as he’d handled the affair, “[Mort] Weisinger never wanted to give Weisinger still offered to call Stan Lee in me a cover, and he made it very clear,” the hope that the artist could find work Adams remembered. The 26-year-old at Marvel. The gesture proved unnecartist finally persuaded the Superman essary, though, when Boring received editor to let him try a few with the an offer the next day to assist Hal Fosagreement that he’d bow out if Weister on the Prince Valiant Sunday strip inger didn’t like them. “Within two cov(Pachter 33). Although reported in Fall ers, I had won Mort over, because I gave 1967 to be considering the three fired him what he wanted. If he didn’t like a artists for Marvel work (Kaler, “What’s sketch, I’d make another sketch.” EvenNews: 11/67” 6), Lee ultimately only tually, Adams laughed, “he’d get mad at hired Mooney in the immediate afterme if I wasn’t available to do a cover for math. Boring briefly worked at Marvel him” (Schumer 24-25). in 1972 but the 51-year-old Papp severed his ties with the comics industry Adams’ arrival was a bad omen for completely and never returned. some of the artists already working on the Superman books. “They were tryCurt Swan and Al Plastino survived the An early Neal Adams Superman . ing to establish more or less of a style, artistic purge as did Kurt Schaffenbergcover for Action Comics #359. . the Neal Adams type of approach,” Jim er, who was concerned about retaliaTM and © DC Comics.

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You Everything” 59). Less than a year after Schiff’s departure from DC, Kashdan had vacated his editorial post, too.

tion for a pressure group he’d been involved in during 1966 and 1967. Initiated by Arnold Drake, the effort was a broad outline for providing creators with better page rates, payment for reprints, health insurance, and a profit-sharing program. Brought into the group by his friend Otto Binder, Schaffenberger was the lone illustrator among their number and his involvement was largely concealed from management. “[The writers] were trying to protect me, in a sense,” he explained, “because I was the only artist they’d gotten…so they kept my name pretty much in the background” (Barr 6).

“Every time I came out with a cover idea, Irwin had to change the wording on it to show what a brilliant editor-in-chief we had,” Kashdan recalled. “He’d say, ‘Here, change this word. This word is no good.’ I said, ‘What do you mean it’s no good? It’s aimed at teenagers.’ It went on for another couple of months, until it was agreed that if I was unhappy there, I could leave. I understand that Liebowitz bawled him out for treating me that way” (Amash, “Sales Don’t Tell You Everything” 60). Effectively fired as editor, Kashdan was literally back in the offices the next morning with story pitches and began writing for Murray Boltinoff-edited books like Tomahawk and The Unexpected (Amash, “It’s Important That We Don’t Get Forgotten” 55). When Dick Giordano walked into the DC offices in December, he had no idea that he was Kashdan’s replacement.

“Writers are somewhat more interchangeable than artists in the business,” Bob Haney explained. “If we had had three or four of the major artists, we would have had the clout to go into DC and get some decent conditions, especially in terms of rate.” The sticking point was that most of the company’s popular artists were already making a comfortable income and had no desire to rock the boat. Carmine Infantino attended a few early meetings in 1966 but declined to join because he was “on the other side.” This, Drake added, was well before his promotion but he was already “busy wooing the hell out of Liebowitz” (Barr 6).

Even Murphy Anderson’s announcement that he’d been hired to produce instructional comic books for Will Eisner’s American Visuals was enough to make waves. “I was going to continue doing The Spectre, who had been given his own book,” Anderson explained. “Then Irwin Donenfeld got a little upset with me for leaving and must have said to [Julius Schwartz], ‘Don’t give him any work.’ Fortunately, Will had quite a bit of overtime work” (Harvey 99). Meanwhile, Neal Adams became the new Spectre artist with issue #2 (January-February 1968).

Neither Liebowitz nor Donenfeld had any interest in making concessions to the rabble-rousers and there was brief talk on the writers’ part of a strike. Unfortunately, early participant France Herron had died, Haney was in the midst of building a new house and could ill afford the risk, and Binder was in mourning following the death of his 14-yearold daughter in a March 27, 1967 car accident. Batman and Green Lantern co-creator Bill Finger, now saddled with a reputation for unreliability in delivering scripts, would hardly have made an impression, either. He only had four stories published in 1967 as it was, including the last in his life to feature Batman (World’s Finest #165). That left Drake, Gardner Fox, and Dave Wood…and a three-man strike was no strike at all.

All of this turmoil took place as the fate of the company was being discussed in the financial pages of the United States’ leading newspapers. Since the Batman phenomenon began, much had been made not only of DC’s comic book sales but the incredible success of National Periodical Publications’ Licensing Corporation of America branch. Selling the rights to characters like Batman and James Bond for everyA year after his last Showcase tryout, the Spectre gained his own thing from toys to movies, LCA had title but artist Murphy Anderson only drew the first issue.. been spotlighted in publications TM and © DC Comics. like Newsweek and True Magazine and the business community took notice. There was no point in trying to revive the movement, Drake decided, “because the guys weren’t ready. Once I recNo party was as interested as 40-year-old Steven J. Ross, ognized that, I decided to try to adjust things for myself, to a former classmate of Irwin Donenfeld who’d amassed an make myself as comfortable as possible there… It was not eclectic group of businesses ranging from funeral homes Liebowitz who dunnit, the enemy was ourselves, as Walt to car rental agencies and parking lot companies. His KinKelly said, I think” (Barr 10). ney National Services had become a multi-million dollar enterprise by the time he set his sights on National Peri“It really was a losing cause,” George Kashdan said. He and odical and Jack Liebowitz was receptive to an offer. In late Jack Schiff had been the only editors willing to speak up July, Ross and Liebowitz tentatively agreed to a merger that for the writers, even taking Irwin Donenfeld out to lunch would allow Kinney to acquire National “through an exin a futile effort at getting concessions. “He finally said, change of stock valued at $60 million” (“Kinney Plans to ‘Okay, I’ll think it over, and talk to Liebowitz about it.’ He Acquire…” 6). never said anything after that” (Amash, “Sales Don’t Tell 178

ticulars—informed him that DC would now be assigning Batman stories to artists of its own choosing. In other words, Moldoff was out of a job. “I feel terrible about it,” Kane insisted. “Yeah,” Moldoff snapped, “but not as bad as I do, Bob” (Hill 65). Having already lost a regular inking assignment when Sea Devils was cancelled (with issue #35), the artist discovered that his style was no longer a good fit for any other DC title, either (Hill 65). The last of his stories ran in Batman #199, Detective #372 (both dated February 1968), Adventure Comics #367, and Superboy #146 (both dated April). Things were no better at Warren Publications. On Archie Goodwin’s editorial watch, the content of its twin horror magazines was as strong as ever, highlights including stories by Neal Adams that preceded or overlapped with his first DC work (Creepy #14-16; Eerie #9-11), contributions by stylized newcomers Tom Sutton and Jeffrey Jones (Eerie #11-12), Tom Sutton’s first story for Warren Publications appeared in Eerie #11. TM and © New Comic Company. and the debut of a Goodwin-created barbarWith sales falling in the wake of the Batman craze, DC’s ian protagonist named Thane (Creepy #15-16). By the Seppublisher knew that there would never be a better time tember and October-dated Eerie #11 and Creepy #17, the to cash in. In August, Kinney downgraded its initial offer star artists like Colan, Crandall, Ditko, and Morrow that for National from 0.42 share of its stock to 0.39 share, a characterized Warren’s earlier issues were blinking out development that Liebowitz publicly insisted had nothing and reprints were moving in. On top of that, the titles had to do with a decrease in National’s earnings over the past jumped in price from 35¢ to 40¢. nine months: $2,185,163 vs. $2,348,704 (“Kinney’s AcquisiAn attempt at diversification had also been a disaster. tion…” 2). Each day, though, NPP was looking slightly less Teen Love Stories, a comic book crossed with a confessional lucrative. magazine, lasted three issues and Freak Out, U.S.A., a music In relation to a prospective sale, there was a matter remagazine with no comics at all, fizzled after two. garding the Batman property that Liebowitz had to deal Publisher Jim Warren’s consolidation of his company’s with. Boiled down to a “Batman Being Sold” headline in two-city operation from Philadelphia exclusively to New the July 21 edition of the New York Times, the NPP-Kinney York City during 1967 had taken a toll on finances but it comerger got the attention of Bob Kane and he called his incided with “a downturn in the magazine marketplace.” lawyer. Still retaining partial ownership of the character, The cumulative effect, he recalled in 1999, “hurt us badly. Kane vowed to stop the sale if he didn’t receive a cut of the These pressures were enormous. Nowadays they call it deal. “Liebowitz played hardball, too,” Carmine Infantino ‘downsizing,’ but we called it by its real name: Cutting detailed. “He says, ‘You get a million bucks, $50,000 a year staff for survival. We couldn’t afford to pay the artists $35 for twenty years. That’s it.’ Kane also had a contract that allowed for him to draw so many pages a month, but, as you know, it was really Shelly Moldoff who drew most of them. When Kane sold his stake in Batman, we were out from under that contract, and I got rid of him. And everybody was happy that Bob Kane was gone” (Amash 103). Everybody, that is, but Sheldon Moldoff, the longtime DC artist who’d ghosted Batman for Kane since 1953. “Bob and I never had a contract between us,” Moldoff recalled, “but after working all those years I felt pretty secure.” He was entirely unprepared when his boss—withholding the par-

The barbarian Thane—unrelated to Charlton’s Thane—first appeared in an . Archie Goodwin-Steve Ditko tale in Creepy #15. TM and © New Comic Company.

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a page. On top of all this, we changed distributors which meant additional cash-flow problems” (Cooke, “Someone Has To Make It Happen” 35-36). Along with his best artists, Warren also lost Archie Goodwin himself. As the writer-editor’s wife Anne Murphy recalled, “Archie always identified with creators even while representing management. Warren wasn’t paying on time; the artists, who trusted Archie, were asking for assurance Archie couldn’t really offer; and Archie felt caught in the middle because he wasn’t getting any solid explanations to pass along to the artists. Archie was uncomfortable stringing them along” (Cooke, “Anne & Archie” 54). Goodwin was writing two newspaper strips—Secret Agent Corrigan and the new historical adventure Captain Kate (beginning May 28, 1967)—but the pay didn’t compensate for the loss of his editorial job. An admirer of Marvel Comics’ titles, Goodwin had met Roy Thomas “socially” and received a standing offer to take the Marvel writer’s test if he ever left Warren. The exam turned out to be photostats of four Iron Man pages that Stan Lee was working on at the time but Goodwin was up to the challenge. Lee “liked what he saw,” the wouldbe Marvel scripter recalled, “and said, ‘Okay, you’re writing Iron Man now.’ I assume if he had been working on Sgt. Fury, I’d have been writing Sgt. Fury. Thank God he wasn’t writing Millie the Model when I walked in” (Zimmerman 34).

By the time Goodwin’s story appeared in Tales of Suspense #99 (March 1968), Millie didn’t need a writer at all. Marvel’s girls line had adopted a dramatic soap opera format in 1963 but the approach was going stale. Patsy and Hedy and Modeling With Millie were both cancelled (with issues #110 and #54, respectively) while Millie the Model returned to humor with issue #154 (October 1967). Rather than revise old content as DC had done with Binky, Stan Lee mostly used the titles of 1960-era tales as the inspiration for stories with a “new modern style of drawings” by Stan Goldberg that reflected contemporary fashion…and the Penciler Herb Trimpe made his comics debut with this story in . look of Archie Comics. “In Kid Colt Outlaw #134. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. two issues,” Roy Thomas like O’Neil and Gary Friedrich and a wrote in 1968, the new look “made refuge for older creators who didn’t Millie the Model one of Marvel’s bestreally fit in with the superhero comselling titles” ( Thomas, “What is a ics such as Larry Lieber and Jack Stan Lee?” 175). Keller. “If a longtime pro couldn’t do one thing he used to do,” Roy Goldberg, who’d begun to supplement Thomas noted, “[Stan would] try to his income with work for Archie, was find something else he could do. He certain that his new employer would have issues with him drawing a comfelt a loyalty to guys like [that]; and ic book whose cartoony style was in though he couldn’t make room on direct competition with their own. the Ark for everybody, he felt they Hoping to disguise his involvement deserved a chance. Stan didn’t think in the stories, Goldberg asked Lee “to artists should be tossed on the scrap just put inker Sol Brodsky’s name on heap simply because they might not them.” As he feared, “When Archie be at the top of their form anymore” discovered I was doing those books, (Amash, “Roy the Boy…” 23). they quit hiring me” Having lost his accounts with ACG (Amash, “The Goldberg and Tower, industry veteran Ogden Variations” 30). Whitney was able to continue workNew art aside, there ing thanks to assignments on Millie were no new script asthe Model and Two Gun Kid. 28-yearsignments to be had. It old Herb Trimpe, 20 years Whitney’s was the loss of this subjunior, made the leap from Marvel’s stantial portion of their production department at the same Marvel work that sent time, doing pencils for Kid Colt #134 writer Denny O’Neil to and #135 and launching a nearlyCharlton and prompted 30-year career of drawing for the artist Al Hartley to find company. new employment with Archie.

Old Names, New Lives

The letter column of Millie the Model #154 played up the series’ . cartoony new look. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Like the romance books, Marvel’s three Westerns alternately functioned as tryout books for newcomers 180

The Western comic books were on the verge of going to their last round-up, though, and Stan Lee was looking for a new angle on the genre. Over the course of the decade, the books had

been peppered with costumed crooks and cowboy crossovers but Lee was now thinking about an actual superhero. What he had in mind was someone like Magazine Enterprises’ Ghost Rider (1949-1955), secretly a federal marshal named Rex Fury who dressed all in white when the sun went down and terrified bandits as a haunted horseman. Actually, Lee and publisher Martin Goodman seem to have concluded there was no reason why they couldn’t publish Ghost Rider themselves, what with the character having been out of print for 11 years. They’d done as much a few years early when they grabbed another abandoned trademark and launched Daredevil, although that series didn’t go so far as to feature the same character published by Lev Gleason. With the trademark now registered in Marvel’s name, work began on Ghost Rider #1 (February 1967). “We couldn’t use some of the stillcopyrighted material like Rex Fury,” Roy Thomas added, “so we gave him a new secret identity” (Thomas, “To Keep Busy…” 27). This time around, the hero was school teacher Carter

Slade, who was outfitted by a Comanche medicine man. A fan of both the earlier series and the “Ghost Riders in the Sky” song that inspired it, Thomas had hoped to write Marvel’s version. “Stan wouldn’t let me,” he recalled, “and Gary [Friedrich] ended up doing it all, I just worked with Gary on the first plot or so. He named that Indian Flaming Star after one of Elvis’ movies” (Thomas, “To Keep Busy…” 26). Dick Ayers, whose art had been central to the popularity of ME’s Ghost Rider, had been with Marvel for years and assigning him to draw the revival seemed like a guarantee of recapturing that earlier success. “I was so tickled and pleased,” Ayers said of his reunion with his signature character. “Here I was, doing it again, and my mother-in-law, oh, she thought it was so terrific I was doing it again” (Thomas, “To Keep Busy..” 27). What he didn’t realize was that Marvel hadn’t bought the character outright. Confused as to why the Ghost Rider was no longer Rex Fury, Ayers learned the truth only later. “Otherwise,” he said, “I’d have drawn a different Ghost Rider, not the same Ghost Rider.” For what it’s worth, Roy Thomas added, “I think [Stan] wanted him to look like the first Ghost Rider, though I doubt if he cared about Rex Fury” (Thomas, “To Keep Busy..” 27). Former ME publisher Vin Sullivan cared plenty but his hands were tied. “I didn’t renew the [trademark],” Sullivan explained in 1994, “and I wrote to Marvel about it. […] They said they

were going to use him because they went down to Washington and had somebody search through the files and it had expired, so there was nothing I could do” (Latino 13). Ironically, the original Ghost Rider stories and other ME material were still being published outside the United States, appearing alongside old DC stories in such comic books as Australia’s Tip Top Monthly. Sullivan had apparently brokered a deal with DC to jointly distribute their material to foreign markets. Years later, former DC editor Robert Greenberger told American Comic Book Chronicles, boxes of original art from Magazine Enterprises (although no Ghost Rider stories) resurfaced during a relocation of DC warehouses, presumably related to that earlier partnership. Launched with great enthusiasm, Marvel’s Ghost Rider survived only ten months before it was cancelled with issue #7 (November 1967). Ayers put part of the blame on Vince Colletta’s inking (“He’d take the drama out of it”) but an old-fashioned Western— even with superhero trappings—was a tough sell in the late 1960s (Thomas, “To Keep Busy…” 26). As Stan Lee pursued the Ghost Rider name, Martin Goodman was hunting bigger game. The thought of Myron Fass’ 1966 Captain Marvel comic book (revived for one last issue in 1967) still rankled and the publisher apparently discovered that Marvel could legally trademark the name itself. His desire to secure the rights was entirely understandable. With the Marvel Comics name becoming as recognizable as its characters, how would it look for Fass—or anyone else—to publish a comic book called Captain Marvel?

Ghost Rider #1 reunited Dick Ayers with a hero he hadn’t drawn in over a decade. . TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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ture and its name was “Captain Marvel.” Stan Lee later told a group of college students that the project was initiated by an animation studio that wanted Marvel to create a character by that name so that they could adapt it to television. The new Captain Marvel was accompanied to. Earth by the scheming Colonel Yon-Rogg and . Moreover, Don and Medic Una. Art by Gene Colan and Frank Giacoia. . Maggie Thompson reTM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. ported, the studio had “a list of things that had to be incorporated into the character—outer space origin, member of another race, etc.” (Thompson 4). Lee accepted the assignment grudgingly and grasped for a hook to build a story on. Inspiration came in his and Jack Kirby’s recent Fantastic Four #64-65 (July-August 1967), wherein its quartet of heroes inadvertently triggered the deactivation of an ancient Sentry who, like Dell’s Neutro, had been left on Earth long ago. The unseen Kree were ruled by the Supreme Intelligence—designed by Kirby as a disembodied green face with tentacles jutting from his forehead—who dispatched Ronan the Accuser to pass judgment on the FF. After the FF locked Ronan off the planet, Reed Richards hoped that they’d sent a message to the Kree that Earth wasn’t to be messed with. The response, in “The Coming of Captain Marvel,” was, “No such luck.” A spacecraft full of Kree soldiers—identical to Caucasian humans—arrived in Earth’s orbit and its Captain Mar-Vell was dispatched alone to the surface to check things out. His scheming superior Yon-Rogg hoped he’d die there so that he could have the lovely Medic Una all to himself. By the end of the 15-page pilot, Cap had done nothing more than involuntarily destroy a U.S. missile. There was no reason for anyone to consider him a superhero yet, but that was no longer Lee’s concern. He’d dumped the feature in Roy Thomas’ lap.

The fact that the name and particulars of the defunct Fawcett Comics hero were still instantly recognizable to most American adults in their thirties and forties was just a bonus. Each week on CBS’ Gomer Pyle, Jim Nabors’ declaration of “Shazam!” reminded viewers of Cap’s magic word. In an Alex Toth-created cartoon Shazzan debuting on the same network on September 9, 1967, it was hardly a coincidence that its similar name was used by a genie summoned by two kids. Even as longtime Fawcett writer Otto Binder was collaborating with Cap co-creator C.C. Beck on Fatman, he was also writing a veiled “Superman vs. Captain Marvel” story for Action Comics #351-353 (June-August 1967). Cap’s role was played by Zha-Vam, a strongman empowered by six mythological gods just like his inspiration. Elsewhere, former Marvel Family artists Kurt Schaffenberger and Pete Costanza separately recalled the hero’s chief nemesis Sivana by drawing lookalikes into Lois Lane #75 (July 1967) and Adventure Comics #362-363 (November-December 1967).

The new writer had his work cut out for him. Dressed like a generic spaceman, the green-and-white-uniformed MarVell wore a flight-belt, carried a ray-gun, and had a helmet with a fin on it. Even the feature’s artist Gene Colan didn’t like it. “It was awful,” he admitted. “Just an imitation of any of the other costumed characters I’d ever done” (Field 78). Thomas was willing to accept the challenge, though, and began giving Mar-Vell ties to Earth in Marvel SuperHeroes #13. Assuming the identity of a rocket guidance expert killed in a plane crash, “Walter Lawson” infiltrated a key missile base and began forging personal ties with the humans there, including its head of security Carol Danvers.

Inevitably, another publisher was going to follow in Fass’ footsteps, and Goodman vowed that it was going to be Marvel. The 25-cent Fantasy Masterpieces reprint giant— previously used to blunt Joe Simon’s Captain America lawsuit—was pressed into service again for the mission. Re-titled Marvel Super-Heroes with issue #12 (December 1967, on sale in October), the book now included a new lead fea-

When Marvel’s Captain Marvel made his debut, Myron Fass immediately filed a trademark infringement suit. Unfortunately for Fass, it went nowhere. “We own the rights to the name Marvel and related uses of the word, including Captain Marvel,” Goodman’s son Chip told the Wall Street Journal on November 11, 1967, “and we consider Mr. Fass’ publication of Captain Marvel as an infringement on our 182

Whether facing a cosmic powered Dr. Doom or learning of Susan Richards’ . pregnancy, the Fantastic Four and friends had a momentous 1967. Art by . Jack Kirby (with inks by Joe Sinnott and Frank Giacoia) from FF #57 & #60 . and FF King-Size Special #5. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

the back pages ran the first Silver Surfer solo story. (The issue’s big news, incidentally, had been the announcement that Susan “Invisible Girl” Richards was pregnant.)

trademark” (Hamerlinck, “Split! Xam!” 77). Once the Goodmans offered Fass $4,500 to back off, Fass got out of their lives (Howe 87). Also never seen again was the animation house that supposedly initiated the project.

A month later, the Inhumans moved into Thor #146 as its new back-up series, replacing the four-year-old “Tales of Asgard.” Set in the distant past, the short stories filled in the back-stories of the characters, even tying them to the newly-introduced Kree in the second installment. The mysterious group’s young Crystal, now romantically involved with the Human Torch, stuck around in Fantastic Four, already being positioned for a bigger role in the series.

The fact that even an unseen alien race from Fantastic Four could be used as the basis for a new series was testament to the power of Marvel’s flagship title. Lee and Kirby continued to nurture the Inhumans as prospective lead characters, essentially placing them in one adventure in Fantastic Four #57-60 (December 1966-March 1967) while the stars of the book took part in another. The grandiose four-parter saw Doctor Doom steal the cosmic power of breakout star Silver Surfer and proceed to clean the clock of anyone who came at him. Duped by Reed Richards into flying into outer space, the mad doctor hit the invisible barrier that kept the Surfer confined to Earth and the stolen powers reverted to their rightful owner. That August’s Fantastic Four King-Size Special #5 brought all of Lee and Kirby’s prospective stars under one roof. The Inhumans and the Black Panther confronted the evil Psycho Man in the lead story while

It was the Silver Surfer that Lee loved the most, though, and he even pulled the character outside of Kirby’s purview for a Marie Severin-illustrated Hulk guest-appearance earlier in the year in Tales to Astonish #9293 (June-July 1967). For the writer-editor, the gleaming alien was becoming a vehicle to sermonize on man’s inhumanity to man and Lee extended that message to Fantastic Four’s next cosmic character in issues #6667.

Tales to Astonish #93 cover art by . Marie Severin and Frank Giacoia. . TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Readers didn’t actually see “Him” (as the latter issue’s cover called him) until the very end of a story that had followed the

fellow man, declared that humanity wasn’t ready for him, and headed into space with an explosive burst of energy. Kirby’s intentions, according to the cartoonist’s friend and biographer Mark Evanier, had been rather different. Intrigued by Ayn Rand’s Objectivism tenets, he’d imagined the alien presence as the philosophy’s ultimate outgrowth, a being who saw things in logical absolutes. He would not compromise his principles and his every action would be for his own welfare. Helping others was anathema to him and the fact that his creators saw him as a means of helping civilization was an abomination (Gartland 15). Receiving Kirby’s pencils for FF #66, Lee wasn’t satisfied with the story that his partner had detailed in the margins and reinterpreted the art Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had different ideas of what sort of being in a way that cast the scienshould emerge in Fantastic Four #67. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. tists as villains who plotted to use their creation for evil ends. scientific Enclave’s efforts to create Kirby, reportedly, was horrified when the perfect human being. As in early the dialogued pages were returned to Silver Surfer stories, the Thing’s girlhim but was forced to revise his confriend Alicia Masters became an emclusion to accommodate Lee’s new pathic example of humanity’s virtues direction. As historian Mike Gartland but the circumstances were wildly wrote, “the story that Jack wanted: different. Here the alien presence was ‘Create a superior human and he just strictly off-panel, his presence first might find you inferior enough to get foreshadowed by a strange glow and rid of,’ became through Lee another physical effects and then held back ‘bad guys try to take over world and again by the revelation that he was get their comeuppance’ story” (Gartmetamorphosing within a cocoon. land 15-16). Emerging on the last page, the glowing golden Adonis condemned the It was at this point, Gartland continEnclave for conspiring against their ued, that Kirby concluded that he’d

“given enough new characters, devices, and situations to Marvel. He had seen one after another of his creations and/or stories changed against his wishes or taken away from him. He didn’t really want to stay at Marvel anymore, but at this particular time there weren’t any avenues open to him that would offer him any better working conditions; so he figured he’d have to make the most of it. He just wouldn’t give them anything new anymore, or at least anything that was to him substantial” (Gartland 17). “Him” and Kirby’s other notable 1967 characters—including Ulik the Troll (Thor #137-139), Blastaar, the Living Bomb-Burst (Fantastic Four #62-63), the Growing Man (Thor #140), the grotesque Modok (Tales of Suspense #93-94), and Thor’s Asgardian girlfriend Sif (Thor #136)—wouldn’t literally represent the last new ones he designed for Marvel. Still, the bulk of Kirby’s stories over the next years consisted of return visits from old favorites.

The New Faces of 1967 Beyond Kirby’s drawing board, of course, there were plenty of other writers and artists developing new characters for Marvel, if not as prolifically. On Avengers, Roy Thomas was joined by artist John Buscema effective with issue #41 (June 1967), launching one of the company’s most

Lee and Kirby’s 1967 creations included Him (Fantastic Four #67), Modok (Tales of Suspense #94) and Blastaar (FF #63). TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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celebrated creative partnerships of the next decade. In Avengers #43-44, the duo introduced the Red Guardian, both the Soviet counterpart to Captain America and the husband of Avengers ally Black Widow. (In her defense, she thought he was dead…and he really was by the end of the story.)

“This one was ‘Kingpin of crime—master criminal.’ When Stan did this, I’d do up some sketches and bring them in and ask him what he thought.” Modeling the Kingpin on oversized actor Robert Middleton, Romita thought “ultrapowerful and ultra-rich” and dressed him in a crisp white suit with a cigarette holder and jewel-tipped walking stick (Salicrup 40).

Simultaneously, Buscema’s predecessor Don Heck joined Thomas on Avengers King-Size Special #1 for a one-issue return of big guns Iron Man and Thor who’d quit the team in 1965. Stan Lee still resisted making them full-time Avengers, preferring his line-up of second-tier heroes to Justice League-style headliners, but Thomas was able to bring Hercules in with Avengers #38 as a gregarious alternative to Thor. (Similarly, when Otto Binder was commissioned to write a prose novel about the team—The Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker—the paperback’s cover strictly featured the new team even though Iron Man figured prominently in the story itself.)

“I did the standard cartoon rich man version but I made him extra strong,” Romita continued. “Now, I don’t know if Stan told me to make him strong; I think what happened when he and I were working on the plot, Stan suggested that Kingpin be working out and that a couple thugs would come in and he’d clobber them” (Salicrup 40). The villain, Lee declared in issue #52, was “three hundred pounds of solid muscle.”

Over in X-Men #28 (January 1967), Thomas and Werner Roth introduced a shrieking Irish mutant named the Banshee as part of a year-long plot that pitted the team against a mysterious organization called Factor Three. In the aftermath, the X-Men finally traded in their matching school uniforms for unique outfits. Professor Xavier remarked in issue #39 that “it’s time they looked like individuals—not products of an assembly line.” Thomas did regret Lee’s decision to make the Banshee a male, contradicting Irish mythology, but accepted that “the character seemed pretty popular from the beginning even among the people who knew it was supposed to be a woman“ (Sanderson 35). The hero returned later in the Factor Three saga, something that the writer noted wasn’t really a surprise. “At Marvel at that stage, you never created a character just intending it to be a one-shot character, because you knew they had a way of popping back, even the most unpopular characters in the world” (Sanderson 34). The Abomination, created by Stan Lee and Gil Kane for Tales To Astonish #90-91 (April-May 1967), could be counted in the very popular category. Exposed to the same gamma radiation that transformed Bruce Banner, the creature had been a foreign agent who turned out much uglier than the Hulk but also far smarter. As one of the series’ standout adversaries, he put the Hulk’s own comparatively defensive actions in perspective. On the post-Ditko Amazing Spider-Man, Lee was once again responsible for creating villains for the strip like the John Romita-designed Shocker in issue #46. Two issues later, he decided to “fix” one of the book’s earliest creations. “Stan didn’t like my thin, gaunt Vulture,” Ditko remarked. “Stan believed the most effective villain was the heavy set one. He once mentioned the movie villain Sydney Greenstreet [Casablanca; The Maltese Falcon; and others], as a villain model” (Ditko 1). Consequently, Lee imagined that replacing the old bald Vulture with a muscular younger model would be a hit. Readers quickly told him otherwise. He and Romita had better luck with a Greenstreet-type introduced in Amazing Spider-Man #50. “Stan would come in and sometimes just pin a piece of paper with a name on it on my drawing board when I was out,” the artist recalled.

Amazing Spider-Man #48’s new Vulture got a tepid reception from . fans but issue #51’s Kingpin was a lasting favorite. Pencils by John Romita. . TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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By the time he met the Daily Bugle’s new city . editor Joe Robertson in Spider-Man #54, Peter Parker had overcome the misgivings he felt about his alter ego in issue #50. Art by Romita and Mike Esposito. . TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

reason to Jameson’s reactionary one and the first person who could seriously challenge the Bugle publisher’s Spider-Man bias.

The Kingpin, who’d consolidated all of New York’s gangs under his control, emerged just as Peter Parker declared “Spider-Man No More” (Amazing Spider-Man #50). In an accelerated variation on issues #17-19, the young man succumbed to the cumulative effects of Aunt May’s poor health, his love life, his slipping grades, and J. Jonah Jameson’s unceasing rants against Spidey. An iconic full-page image by Romita got to the heart of the matter: His back to the reader, Peter walked into the pouring rain as his SpiderMan costume hung limply from a garbage can. Learning of his nemesis’ retirement, an exultant Jameson went on the talk show circuit to gloat

but his “victory” was short-lived. Recalling the death of his Uncle Ben, Peter reignited his sense of responsibility, retrieved his costume, and proclaimed “Spidey’s back in action!” The Kingpin story moved forward in the next two issues, climaxing when the series’ conflicted crook-turnedcrime-reporter Fred Foswell took a bullet meant for Jameson and died a hero’s death. Even as Foswell was headed out, a landmark new member was coming in. First seen briefly in issues #51 and #52, gray-templed, pipe-smoking Joe “Robbie” Robertson was the Daily Bugle’s new city editor. As developed over the next several months, he was the quiet voice of 186

Robbie was also black, a detail that passed virtually without comment. Arriving in the midst of a so-called “long hot summer” that saw race riots pepper the United States, such subtlety was even more admirable. That same year DC had published commendable, well-intentioned anti-racism stories in Our Army At War #179 (“A Penny For Jackie Johnson”) and Justice League of America #57 (“Man, Thy Name Is Brother”) but Robbie Robertson sent a more powerful message by delivering no message at all. He wasn’t Marvel’s first recurring black character but, as part of the company’s best-selling series, he was arguably its most prominent and respected for years to come. “A lot of times I would put so much personality into secondary characters that Stan would make them major characters,” Romita recalled. In the case of Robertson, he said, “I was thinking of an ex-fighter who became a newspaperman. I gave him a broken nose and in one sketch he had a cauliflower ear.” Viewing the ex-boxer detail as a cliché, Lee ignored it and painted the city editor as a stable family man (Salicrup 41). While readers greeted the new character warmly, they were divided on the post-Ditko series as a whole. “Who is this imposter who claims to be Peter Parker?” George Gambino

demanded to know in issue #52’s letter column. Lee and Romita’s version, he insisted, had it way too good. Kristi Turnquist concurred in issue #55, remarking “It’s these problems and worries that make Spider-Man the unique character that he is. This ‘apartment of his own bit’ is not at all right for Pete’s personality. Neither are these flip slang remarks. Let’s face it—basically, Peter is a square. But you’re trying to make him so hip and so popular that it’s laughable. When he has so many friends and dates, it gives the reader a feeling of euphoria which is all wrong for the magazine.” Other fans insisted things were just fine but Lee took the criticism seriously. Scenes like the one in Spider-Man #47 where Mary Jane Watson and Gwen Stacy had a virtual dance-off for Peter’s attention never happened on Ditko’s watch. “I was making Peter Parker too self-sufficient,” Romita admitted. “I couldn’t help myself; when I do a hero, I try to make him as good looking as I can. The way I saw the character was not a skinny, narrow-shouldered kid with hives. I just thought of him differently. And Stan hounded me on that. I tried to make him thinner, but Peter never stayed that way” (Salicrup 41). None of it affected the series’ popularity, which soared even higher with the September 9, 1967 premiere of Grantray-Lawrence’s Spider-Man cartoon on ABC. Best remembered for its catchy theme song (“Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can…”), the series was inevitably far more juvenile than the comic book

but it was a step up from the production studios’ syndicated Marvel Super Heroes. Rather than using comic book panels as its template, SpiderMan employed actual animation as did Hanna-Barbera’s Fantastic Four cartoon that debuted the same day. Billing their new Saturday line-up as “America’s Best TV Comics,” ABC arranged to have Marvel produce a 64-page 25-cent comic book by the same name, one that was advertised for mail-order on TV as well as being available on newsstands. The harmonious line-up in the issue’s pages would’ve made the United Nations proud, including as it did not only edited FF and Spider-Man reprints but also an adventure of Harvey’s Casper the Friendly Ghost and plugs for ABC’s other cartoons and primetime offerings, including Batman. Things weren’t nearly as cordial in Brand Echh (or Not Brand Echh, as the cover read in answer to the question “Who says a comic book has to be good?”). Marvel’s new parody book was born during a lunch meeting in which Stan Lee abruptly promoted Roy Thomas to associate editor and Gary Friedrich as assistant editor. While brainstorming ideas for new titles, Thomas and Friedrich suggested something like Harvey Kurtzman’s color version of Mad in which Marvel could cut loose with mockeries of its competition’s greatest heroes. It seemed only fair, since DC’s now-ongoing Inferior Five comic book was making fun of theirs, most recently the Fantastic Four (I5 #2) and Thor (I5 #4).

The ad for Not Brand Echh #1 spotlighted Jack Kirby and Mike Esposito’s cover art. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

“Stan loved it,” Thomas recalled, “but instantly decided that, rather than poking fun at rival companies’ heroes, or putting out a general satire/ spoof title, it should be specifically devoted to burlesquing Marvel’s own characters.” Thomas and Friedrich were initially disappointed with the decision but eventually recognized it as “a far better choice commercially.” Not only would the company’s fans be more apt “to buy a comic featuring ribald renditions of Marvel heroes,” he explained, but those parody versions could be endlessly reused unlike those based on the competition’s characters (Thomas, “‘Echh’ Marks the Spot 4).

Not Brand Echh’s targets included the Fantastic Four (by Lee, Kirby, and Giacoia), the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents (by Gary Friedrich and Marie Severin), . Batman (by Lee, Severin, and Giacoia), and Magnus Robot Fighter (by Roy Thomas, Don Heck, and Dan Adkins). TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Named after Lee’s term for Marvel’s imitators, Brand Echh #1 (August 1967) split the writing duties between Thomas, Lee, and Friedrich for a quartet of stories that tickled the company’s Golden Age reprints (“The Human Scorch Versus the Sunk-Mariner”), Westerns (The Too-Gone Kid), war comic (Sgt. Furious and His Hostile Commandos), and its flagship title (The Fantastical Four). Lee and Kirby produced the FF parody themselves, its artist offered the rare opportunity to do comedy. (Rarer still was Kirby’s script and pencils on a parody of the Lee-Kirby team in FF King-Size Special #5.) An issue later, the competition finally reared its head as Gnatman and Rotten, Magnus, Robot Biter, and the B.L.U.N.D.E.R. Agents faced off against Spidey-Man, Ironed Man, and Knock Furious, Agent of S.H.E.E.S.H. Amidst Kirby, Ross Andru, and John Severin in that first issue, it was the latter’s sister who proved to be the book’s break-out star. Having started in comics in the early 1950s as a colorist and occasional artist at EC, Marie Severin had come to Marvel in 1964 and more recently had the unenviable task of following Steve Ditko on Doctor Strange. Her Western parody in Brand Echh #1 had been a revelation to Stan Lee, its pages so wellexecuted and funny that he made certain she was well-represented in its pages from then on, even assigning her the origin of mascot ForbushMan in issue #5. Severin, Roy Thomas later wrote, was “the one who gave it, most of us feel, its soul, its best moments, and its prime justification for existence (Thomas, “‘Echh’ Marks the Spot 6). Severin also continued to draw Doctor Strange in Strange Tales, notably creating the cosmic Living Tribunal with Lee in issue #157, but the star attraction of the book was undeniably Jim Steranko’s S.H.I.E.L.D. series. The man who penciled issue #151’s installment (January 1967) had grown into a star by the time issue #163 (December 1967) went on sale. His confidence growing with each issue, Steranko was plotting, penciling, and inking the series by Strange Tales #154, scripting it with issue #155, offering color direction with issue #156, and assuming full colorist duties with #157. Even Kirby and Ditko hadn’t achieved that.

It’s a Mod, Mod World What Steranko did, with more confidence and skill in each successive 12-page installment, was pour the Kirby influence into a blender with other legends like Wally Wood, Will Eisner, and Bernard Krigstein, mixing liberally with the flamboyance of the Pop Art movement and the high-tech coolness and sexiness of the best spy movies. “More sophisticated readers found a series with a bold new take on design, layout and perspective,” A.M. Viturtia wrote. “What was important to Steranko was the delivery of the greatest amount of information and sensation in the smallest amount of space. If he had to draw impossible perspectives, he did it. If he had to disarrange, superimpose, or break panels within a page, he did it. And it worked” (Viturtia 4).

Nick Fury’s comparatively conservative girlfriend Laura Brown, the writer-artist also brought in a sexy new S.H.I.E.L.D. agent named Contessa Valentina Allegro De Fontaine—Val, for short—who had more than a professional interest in Fury herself. Billed in the previous issue as “Mighty Marvel’s first venture into psychedelic artwork,” issue #167’s climax (on sale in January 1968) blew readers’ minds right from page two when Steranko documented the huge battle on “a powerful, panoramic four-page

Having concluded the lengthy S.H.I.E.L.D.-Hydra war that he’d inherited when he took on the series, Steranko dived into one of his most celebrated works in Strange Tales #159-167 (August 1967-April 1968), a nine-part story (running into 1968) that revealed the real cause of the East Coast’s 1965 blackout and embroiled the super-spies in an all-out war on a mastermind named the Yellow Claw…the same menace who’d starred in a four issue Atlas series in 1956 and 1957. As a counterpoint to

The menaces in Jim Steranko’s S.H.I.E.L.D. series included the Prime Mover (Strange Tales #167) . and Baron Strucker (Strange Tales #156). TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Originally published as four individual pages, this panorama from Strange Tales #167 was reprinted as a single fold-out spread in a 2000 book collection. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

spread” that was, given the limits of the time, actually a pair of back-toback two-page spreads. Trippier still was Fury’s final confrontation with the Claw…who turned out to be a robot. The scene cut to a final two-page spread in distant Latveria where a chess board filled with figurines representing Fury and company was spread out in front of a familiar Fantastic Four rogue who’d just lost the game. Putting on a good front, he declared, “Never let it be said Dr. Doom was a poor loser.” The pop sensibility that Steranko brought to color comic books stood out sharply against the rest of the industries’ more superficial attempts at keeping pace with the cultural revolution. The trendy fashions of the British Mods subculture that had inspired Swing With Scooter and prompted the relocation of Marvel’s Millie the Model cast to London had become a full-on media fascination. As “mod” evolved into an all-purpose description for anything hip, DC trotted out villains like the Mad Mod (Teen Titans #7), the Metal Mods (Metal Men #26), and the Mod Gorilla Boss (Strange Adventures #201). Elsewhere, Dell set its Fab Four up against Mr. Mod and his Bird (Superheroes #4). The Modniks #1 (August 1967), a Gold Key humor comic drawn by Lloyd White, merged Mods fashion with beatnik patter in its tales of three guys (Wheels, Lump, Li’l Bit) and a girl (‘Scot) who formed a band and tried to help squares like Cube and Reject join the in-crowd. Unlikely as it seems, Gold Key was actually able to make a go of the series a few years later, albe-

it only by rejecting its entire premise. After returning in 1970’s Modniks #2, the cast was transferred to a 1971 automotive adventure series called Mod Wheels that sustained them until the end of 1975. The Modniks had fun with the long hairstyles now being sported by men in the counterculture movement and it was far from alone. In 1967 and for years thereafter, countless cartoonists delighted in telling variations of the gag that appeared on the cover of Archie’s Madhouse #55: Presented with a shaggy-haired man and woman, an alien snapped, “You idiots! I told you to bring back two earth creatures of the opposite sex!” At their best, some of the attempts by middle-aged men to transcribe modern slang were rather charming. “The TT’s Swingin’ Christmas Carol” (Teen Titans #13), which added kid superheroes and a dump called Junkorama to Dickens’ perennial favorite, was endearing in a way the Titans series

The Modniks were Lump, Li’l Bit, ‘Scot, and Wheels. . TM and © respective copyright holder.

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had never been before. And when 44-year-old Stan Lee added a “Stan’s Soapbox” feature to the Marvel Bullpen Bulletins pages (starting with the June 1967-dated issues), phrases like “hang loose, heroes” and “that’s it, pussycat” only strengthened his trademark style and his bond with readers. Those same speech patterns, when coming out of the mouth of the Leescripted “Mike Murdock” in Daredevil #25, seemed a little silly, though. Admittedly, the entire premise of the character was outrageous: In an attempt to convince his friends that he wasn’t Daredevil, Matt Murdock concocted a fictional, hip-talking twin brother (played by himself) whom he claimed was the real hero. If Murdock hadn’t already been blind, Mod Love #1 might well have done the job for him. Reaching beyond the mainstream confines of its Gold Key imprint, Western Publications bypassed the traditional comic book format for a 50-cent color romance magazine aimed at teenage girls. Scripted by Michael Lutin, the three stories were set in exotic locales like Paris, London, and Venice but the scripts almost didn’t matter next to the artwork of Michel Quarez. Best known for his psychedelic posters, the French illustrator brought their surreal imagery and vibrant colors to every page of the comic book. While it lacked Steranko’s amalgamation of influences and experimentation, Mod Love was still mesmerizing in its sheer novelty…if not enough to support any further issues.

rescued thanks to a fire hose being turned on her attackers: “The one certain way to break up a hippie riot is with pure water!” Similar sentiments were expressed in Al Capp’s Li’l Abner where parents, jealous of their kids “who pay no taxes and take no baths,” formed a Middle-Age Power movement of their own.

The explosion in psychedelic imagery was a direct outgrowth of the burgeoning drug use in the counterculture, an attempt to put down in print the sights that users saw when they were in a state of altered consciousness. Lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD, was a key supplier of those hallucinogenic trips. The fact that the drug was now banned or, at the least, restricted had no appreciable impact on its usage.

Capp, who’d savaged anti-war folk singer Joan Baez as the hypocritical Joanie Phoanie in an early 1967 story, was just being true to Whether governed by the Comhis confrontational nature. Caniff, ics Code or not, no color comic on the other hand, wasn’t trying book publisher was going to to pick a fight but his defense of touch that subject in 1967. Even mainstream college students and in newspaper strips, references the soldiers fighting in Vietnam to drug abuse were relatively rare came across as both shrill and although a Kerry Drake sequence simplistic. A February 6-April 4 near the end of the year dealt with sequence revolved around a visit a pusher and detailed the effects to Southeast Asia by an industriof LSD on a young girl. Within the alist and his out-of-control teenswelling small-press newspapers age daughter who called Canyon of the new subculture, though, “a hired killer.” After the couple cartoons that both referenced and A vibrant page by Michel Quarez from Mod Love #1. . TM and © respective copyright holder. was captured by the Viet Cong, supported drug use were prolifthough, they learned the error of erating. In Bill Spicer’s high-end their ways. The implied moral was, in part: Discipline your fanzine Fantasy Illustrated #7 (Spring 1967), cartoonist kids now and they won’t be protesters later. George Metzger’s psychedelic “Master Tyme and Mobius Tripp” came across as nothing so much as a drug trip. Television had given the Vietnam conflict an immediacy and horror unlike any war in U.S. history but there was still a perception in many quarters that the coverage was Drugs were part of the United States’ larger youth movesomehow biased. Hence, “The War Criminals” in Charlton’s ment that saw the concept of the long-haired, flower-wearFightin’ Marines #77 (November 1967). Shadowing soldiers ing hippie enter the mainstream vernacular. Fueled by a in the Mekong Delta, reporter Talbot Cleeves was described voracious news media, tens of thousands of teenagers and as “the kind of writer who thinks Americans have no busiyoung adults flooded San Francisco and its Haight-Ashbury ness in Viet Nam…who believes the charges made by Comdistrict to throw off the conventions of society in favor a mie propagandists.” As in the Caniff story, Cleeves eventusimpler communal life. The sheer number of participants ally had a change of heart after close encounters with the in the so-called Summer of Love made it impossible to deny Viet Cong and declared himself “a gullible fool” by the time that attitudes on everything from sex outside marriage to the story ended. acceptance of war were being turned upside down. Charlton very nearly had the war all to itself. DC’s VietnamIn the eyes of their detractors, the countercultural youths based Capt. Hunter came to an abrupt end in Our Fighting were dirty, lazy, and self-indulgent. A Fall sequence in MilForces #106 when the hero finally rescued his twin brother. ton Caniff’s Steve Canyon sent young reporter Poteet CanThen the action switched to the less controversial World yon undercover as a flower child to investigate an outbreak War Two and a Dirty Dozen-style series starring Hunter’s of “Hippietitis” at Maumee University. The hippies (deHellcats (led by Capt. Hunter’s father). Noting that “anyscribed as “give-ups, thing dealing with drop-outs”) were the Viet Nam was sufvillains of the piece, fering on the newsplotting to sabotage stands,” Dave Kaler the college’s football quoted DC’s Irwin team and painted Donenfeld as saying as frauds when “the “This is not a popular supposedly ‘gentle’ war in the sense that people” roughed up it is not backed 100 Poteet at one point. percent by the public” In the November 30 (Kaler, “What’s News: strip, the reporter was Milton Caniff’s Steve Canyon was one of many features to mock hippies’ supposed aversion to bathing. 3/67” 3). TM and © Estate of Esther Parsons Caniff.

All You Need Is Love

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If anything, the subject became even less appealing on June 30 when the Military Selective Service Act of 1967 moved the draft age from 21 to 18. Boys facing military induction didn’t need further reminders about Vietnam in their comic books. Even war comics with no particular connection to Vietnam were being cancelled, notably DC’s Capt. Storm (with issue #18) and Harvey’s Sad Sack’s Funny Friends and Harvey Hits (the latter a vehicle for rotating military humor series). The original Sad Sack comic book endured but, after fifteen years on a monthly frequency, it went bi-monthly with issue #197 (dated January 1968 but on sale in October 1967). The military-themed newspaper strip Dan Flagg was discontinued on July 15 while others like Terry and the Pirates began pulling their forces out of Southeast Asia. Buz Sawyer dropped Vietnam entirely in June to reunite its hero with his amnesia-stricken wife (missing since 1964) and then pit him against “safe” enemies like neo-Nazis. Frustrated with the overtly prowar scripts for the Green Berets comic strip, Joe Kubert quit that feature late in the year (effective January 8, 1968) and handed it off to John Celardo. Increasingly, cartoonists who referenced the war did so with thoughtful consideration. Gasoline Alley cartoonist Dick Moores was opposed to the conflict but he’d inherited a comic strip whose primary cast aged in real time. For the sake of realism, he set his opinions aside and had 22-yearold Chipper Wallet join the Naval Reserve in 1967 before sending him overseas (Carroll 14). Sgt. Fury King-Size Special #3 sent the present-day Howlers to Vietnam for a mission and Iron Man paid a visit of his own in Tales of Suspense #92-94 but stories like that were becoming a rarity at Marvel. Asked earlier in the year if he’d be sending the StarSpangled Avenger overseas, Stan Lee wondered whether “it’s really in good taste to take something as serious as the situation in Vietnam and put a character like Captain America [into it]” (Hodel 162). Reiterating the message in his October 1967 edition of Stan’s Soapbox,

Lee said, “Many Keepers of the Faith have demanded that we take a more definite stand on current problems such as Viet Nam, civil rights, and the increase in crime, to name a few. We’ve a hunch that most Marvel madmen pretty well know where we stand on such matters—and we’ve long believed that our first duty is to entertain, rather than editorialize.” The trick was in figuring out what kind of entertainment audiences were looking for. Lee had been excover for Bill Spicer’s Graphic Story Magazine #8. traordinarily suc- George Metzger drew this trippy TM and © Bill Spicer. cessful in selling the Marvel brand as a fresh, contemdustry would be left for that next genporary spin on superheroes but there eration. The fear, as the Batman buzz were others who were thinking bigwore off, was that even comics’ most ger. Small-press publisher Bill Spicer, recognizable names would become irechoing fellow fan Richard Kyle’s adrelevant in their original medium. vocacy of more substantial “graphic Buck Rogers was a case in point. novels,” saw greater things for the enLaunched as a comic strip in 1929, tire comics form than a specific genre its very name became shorthand for and changed the name of his Fantasy referring to the United States’ everIllustrated to Graphic Story Magazine more-advanced technology and its with issue #8 (Fall 1967) in support space exploration program. Visit a toy of that ideal. “The pages of Graphic department in the fall of 1967 and Story Magazine,” historian Bill Schelly you’d find a Buck Rogers outfit to put wrote, “offered not only the most inon your Captain Action figure. But if novative amateur comic strips, but you wanted to read the comic strip, possibly the most challenging and you were out of luck. It ended on July provocative articles ever written 8, with artist George Tuska taking refabout the medium itself. For this reauge in the pages of Marvel’s X-Men. son, Spicer’s fanzine is considered one of the zeniths of fan achievement, For the executives at DC and Marvel, and is undoubtedly responsible for at least, the fact that names like Batinspiring the development of many man and Spider-Man still had great who would go on to become leading power was enough. Whether or not writers and artists in future comics” that power continued to extend to (Schelly 105). comic books ultimately didn’t matter. Jack Liebowitz and Martin Goodman With so many publishers falling or each intended to cash in long before stumbling in 1967, though, there was that happened. some question of how much of an in191

1968

A Hazy Shade of Winter

When Kinney Services completed its acquisition of National Periodical Publications in March of 1968 (“Kinney National Acquisition” 14), it became yet another publishing merger in a decade of publishing mergers. From National General Corp. acquiring Grosset & Dunlap and its Bantam Books imprints to CBS’ expanded presence in the book field with its purchase of W.B. Saunders, more than three dozen enterprises either expanded or were consumed over the course of the year (Altbach 239). Ironically, while book sales in general showed a five percent increase, “magazine revenues were down in 1968, particularly among the general weekly and twice-monthly publications” (Merritt 468469). NPP’s Jack Liebowitz had no regrets. As part of the deal, he became a Kinney director and chairman of its executive committee, staying put with each new acquisition and merger for the next two decades. Editorial director Irwin Donenfeld was another story. He and his sister Sonia had collectively held the majority of NPP stock and Donenfeld was aggressively courted to go along with the deal. “They made me all kinds of promises of what I would be in this new company,” he recalled. “And none of those promises came to be.” Frustrated at being marginalized and distracted by the break-up of his marriage, the 41-year-old took the news of Kinney’s impending move of National to New York City’s 909 Third Avenue as the last straw. “I’m not going,” he declared (Evanier, “There’s a Lot of Myth Out There” 27).

“Uncle Jack, I can’t take this anymore,” Donenfeld remembered saying. “I’ve got to leave.” Walking out of the office, he left everything behind, including his personal copies of Action Comics #1, Superman #1, and the other DC comic books he’d accumulated over the years. “I just left and I never moved into that new building, and that’s what happened” (Evanier, “There’s a Lot of Myth Out There” 27). A stunned Carmine Infantino recalled approaching Liebowitz “because I wondered who I reported to now. ‘I said, ‘Who’s running this thing?’ He said, ‘You are.’ I’m thinking, ‘Who’s he talking to?’ [chuckles] And thank you, that was the end of that. That’s how I became editorial director” (Eury, “The Man Who Redesigned Batman” 25). Arguably, even Marvel Comics benefited from the merger. Distributed by National’s Independent News, Marvel had been restricted in the number of issues it could publish per month although it had been allowed to release progressively more comics during each year in the 1960s. Approaching IND during the sensitive Kinney-National negotiations, Marvel publisher Martin Goodman pushed for a higher per-month cap and was delighted when he got

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Sub-Mariner #1 (art by John Buscema and Sol Brodsky), Incredible Hulk #102 (art by Marie Severin and Frank Giacoia), Captain America #100 . (art by Jack Kirby, Syd Shores and Joe Sinnott), and Doctor Strange #169 (art by Dan Adkins). TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

it. Whether it was a case of Independent recognizing Marvel’s great profitability or just a matter of keeping its clients happy while a bigger deal was being made, Goodman benefited from the results.

Even Sgt. Fury got a spin-off in the form of Capt. Savage and His Leatherneck Raiders #1 (January 1968), a Pacificbased series by Gary Friedrich and artists Dick Ayers and Syd Shores intended to contrast the Howling Commandos’ European base of operations. The Western genre wasn’t as lucky. Kid Colt Outlaw #139 and Two-Gun Kid #92 (both dated March 1968) marked the end of two of the Marvel’s three Old-West titles, leaving Rawhide Kid as the last cowboy standing until the 25-cent Mighty Marvel Western series (comprised of Kid Colt, Rawhide, and Two-Gun reprints) premiered during the summer.

Plans were immediately put into place to eliminate Marvel’s trio of double-feature titles and replace them with six full-length comic books. Captain America #100 (maintaining the numbering of Tales of Suspense) and The Incredible Hulk #102 (continuing from Tales to Astonish) went on sale in January along with an Iron Man and Sub-Mariner one-shot that preceded the ongoing Iron Man #1 and SubMariner #1 in February. Captain Marvel #1 spun-off from Marvel Super-Heroes that same month while Strange Tales was divided into Doctor Strange #169 and Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #1 in March. The 25-cent Marvel Super-Heroes continued as part reprint book/part tryout vehicle, with issues devoted to a Ross Andru Spider-Man tryout (MSH #14), Medusa of the Inhumans (MSH #15), a Herb Trimpe-created World War One-era costumed aviator called the Phantom Eagle (MSH #16), and Roy Thomas’ new version of the Black Knight (MSH #17).

Intermingled with the early launches were three issues of something called Groovy, one of the great examples of false advertising in comic book history. Edited by Robert Mende and Chris Johnson under the supervision of Goodman’s son Chip, each issue was composed almost entirely of colorized gag cartoons—some dating to the 1940s—that had first run in the company’s men’s magazines. Hopelessly out of touch with the very audience it was trying to reach, Groovy mostly avoided besmirching the Marvel imprint, only using it on its third and final issue.

Iron Man #1 (art by Gene Colan and Mike Esposito), Captain Savage #1 (art by Dick Ayers and Syd Shores), Captain Marvel #1 . (art by Gene Colan and Vince Colletta), and Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #1 (art by Jim Steranko). TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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TIMELINE: 1968 A compilation of the year’s notable comic book history events alongside some of the year’s most significant popular culture and historical events. (On sale dates are approximations.) January: With their output no longer restricted, Marvel Comics begins expanding its line. Captain America #100 and The Incredible Hulk #102 are followed in February by Captain Marvel #1, Iron Man #1, and The Sub-Mariner #1. January 22: Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In begins on NBC.

March 4: 40-year-old Charlton artist Rocke Mastroserio suffers a fatal heart attack. March 11: Mort Walker and Frank Johnson’s Boner’s Ark comic strip begins its 32-year run.

April 2: Stanley Kubrick’s epic 2001: A Space Odyssey makes its theatrical debut, eventually becoming the year’s top-grossing film.

May: Marvel’s Silver Surfer #1, by Stan Lee and John Buscema, is ambitiously launched as an all-new 25-cent color comic.

April 4: Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

June 12: Ira Levin’s occult horror novel Rosemary’s Baby is adapted as a movie starring Mia Farrow.

May 10: Little Orphan Annie creator Harold Gray dies of cancer at age 74.

March 14: The last original episode of the Batman TV series airs. May 21: Gold Key successfully reestablishes the digest comic format with the release of Walt Disney Comics Digest #1.

January 30: The Viet Cong and North Vietnam’s series of surprise attacks known as the Tet Offensive is a blow to the United States’ war effort.

JANUARY

May 2: Jack Lemmon and Walter Mattheau are The Odd Couple in the theatrical adaptation of Neil Simon’s play.

FEBRUARY

MARCH

APRIL

M AY

JUNE June 19: John Wayne stars in the criticallylambasted—but commercially successful— movie The Green Berets.

April 22: The National Cartoonist Society’s annual Reuben Award is presented to its legendary namesake Rube Goldberg for humor in sculpture. Other winners for 1967 include Johnny Hart (humor newspaper strips, B.C.), John Prentice (story newspaper strips, Rip Kirby), Bil Keane (newspaper panels, The Family Circus), and Will Eisner (comic book category, P.S.)

January 13: 47-year-old Laredo Crockett and Jane Arden cartoonist Bob Schoenke dies during a bout with the flu.

February 8: Charlton Heston and Roddy McDowell star in the film adaptation of Pierre Boulle’s Planet of the Apes.

April 20: Katzenjammer Kids creator Rudolph Dirks dies at the age of 91.

January 23: The Creeper, a garish superhero created by Steve Ditko, debuts in DC’s Showcase #73.

June 5: Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is critically wounded by a gunman in Los Angeles, dying the next day.

The Creeper, Doom Patrol, Wonder Woman TM and © DC Comics. Silver Surfer TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. The Archies © Archie Comic Publications, Inc. Peanuts TM and © Peanuts Worldwide LLC.

named Perfect Film, he’d spent much of the decade buying and selling businesses and he’d recently developed an interest in publishing. After purchasing the holdings of paperback publisher Popular Library in December 1967, Ackerman turned his attention to the Curtis Publishing Company in April. Faced with mounting debts and a line of struggling magazines that included The Saturday Evening Post, Curtis agreed to the millionaire’s offer of a loan in exchange for Ackerman becoming the company’s president.

The year also saw the departure of Stan Lee’s secretary— immortalized in print as “Fabulous Flo” Steinberg—on March 8 (Hanerfeld, “News: 3/68” 2). “It was probably because I couldn’t get a $5 raise,” she recalled. “This was Magazine Management, not Stan—they didn’t believe in giving raises to people in certain jobs because they could be so easily replaced. So after thinking about it for about two years, I decided to leave for my own good. And I got a whole bunch of wonderful letters from fans who wrote in when they heard I was leaving. They were really touching” (Salicrup 68).

Popular Library founder Ned Pines had also published a line of comic books in the 1940s and 1950s under various names, and characters like the Black Terror, the Fighting Yank, Miss Masque, and Pyroman may have been included in Ackerman’s purchase. Whether he was aware of that or not, the businessman had no interest in dormant heroes. He preferred the live wires of Marvel and approached Martin Goodman about buying the company in June 1968.

Not long after Steinberg’s departure, Bantam Books released the prose novel Captain America: The Great Gold Steal. By most accounts, Ted White’s story was well-done but it had the misfortune of following Otto Binder’s badly executed Avengers book that had been a sales flop. “Bantam sat on my book for a year,” White recalled, “publishing it in the late spring of 1968. By then the boomlet of interest in such books had peaked and declined. It never sold more than its first printing (maybe 95,000 copies), although I think it did sell that printing out eventually” (White).

Agonizing over the decision, Goodman finally agreed to sell. “He wanted everything in cash,” historian Sean Howe reported. “Ackerman came back with an offer for just under $15 million—roughly the amount that the company pulled in annually in sales—and threw in some Perfect Film bonds.” Goodman would stay on as publisher while his son Chip was named editorial director with the expectation that he’d eventually succeed his dad (Howe 92).

Missteps aside, Marvel was still doing very well, moving an estimated five million more comic books per year than it had in 1961 (Tolworthy). For Martin S. Ackerman, a gregarious 36-year-old with deep pockets, it was an irresistible target. The president of a photo processing company 194

July 2: Wonder Woman #178 inaugurates a radical new look for its star that drops costumed heroics.

September 9: The Lockhorns, Bill Hoest’s cartoon panel about an eternally bickering couple, premieres as does Howard Post’s The Dropouts, a comic strip set on a remote island.

November: Beetle Bailey, Blondie, Flash Gordon, Jungle Jim, The Phantom, and Popeye return to comic books as Charlton Comics picks up the King Features license.

October 1: George Romero’s zombie horror movie Night of the Living Dead debuts. October 8: Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey star as Romeo and Juliet in a movie adaptation of the Shakespeare classic.

September 14: CBS’ The Archie Show boosts sales on Archie comic books and launches the musical career of The Archies.

November 1: The MPAA unveils a modernized quartet of movie ratings for consumers.

October 17: Bestremembered for its influential car chase scene, the theatrical police thriller Bullitt stars Steve McQueen.

July 15: The ABC soap opera One Life to Live begins.

November 5: Richard Milhous Nixon is elected the 37th President of the United States.

July 16: DC’s Doom Patrol ends with a bang when the heroes sacrifice their lives to save a small town at the end of issue #121.

J U LY

AUGUST July 31: African-American youngster Franklin debuts in the Peanuts comic strip.

July 20: The first Special Olympics competition, open to children with intellectual disabilities, is held in Chicago.

The potential deal-breaker was Stan Lee. Ensuring that Marvel’s celebrity spokesman wouldn’t bolt, Goodman signed him to a three-year contract with the promise of a raise. Despite the bargaining power he had in the position, Lee naively refused to be “some money-grubbing ingrate who’s gonna take advantage of the situation” and accepted the offer from a man he considered a friend. The promises of financial security, Lee later sighed, came to nothing: “No bonus. No bonds. No [stock options], either worthless or otherwise. Zilch” (Lee 179-180). Even then, Lee rated better than his collaborator Jack Kirby. According to historian Mark Evanier, “Kirby’s lawyer contacted the new owners to tell them that Marvel had two creative geniuses. The response was along the lines of, ‘Don’t be silly. Stan created everything and the artists just drew what he told them to draw.’ [Kirby’s wife] Roz recalled the attorney saying

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

September 27: The Blondie comic strip becomes a short-lived TV series that ends on January 9, 1969.

he’d even spoken to one high exec at Perfect Film who thought Stan drew all the comics, too” (Evanier, Kirby: King of Comics 150). Ultimately, there wasn’t much Kirby could do about it. He not only needed a job but—as of May 22—he was literally indebted to Martin Goodman. With his daughter Lisa suffering from asthma, the cartoonist hoped that a move from New York to more hospitable California would help her breathing…but he needed money for travel expenses. A $2,000 loan from Marvel took care of that but it also became one more reason for Kirby to hold his tongue when it came to his frustrations.

Mighty Marvel Marches On One of them was Silver Surfer #1 (August 1968), the culmination of Stan Lee’s effort to spin-off what had become one of his favorite Marvel characters. Two years after his creation, the Surfer was revealed to be Norrin 195

NOVEMBER

October 22: President Johnson signs the regulatory Gun Control Act of 1968 into law.

September: TV premieres include Julia, starring African-American actress Diahann Carroll (9/17: NBC), Hawaii Five-0 (9/20: CBS), Adam-12 (9/20: NBC), Land of the Giants (9/22: ABC), Here’s Lucy, Mayberry R.F.D. (9/23: CBS), 60 Minutes (9/24: CBS), and The Mod Squad (9/23: ABC).

December 3: Elvis Presley reignites his career with a comeback special airing on NBC.

December 24: The Love Bug, a Disney comedy about an anthromorphic Volkswagen, arrives in theaters.

DECEMBER November 22: Nine days after the U.S. premiere of the Beatles’ animated Yellow Submarine film, the group’s so-called White Album is released, its two discs featuring tracks such as “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” “Ob-La-Di, Ob-LaDa,” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”

November 11: John Saunders and Alden McWilliams’ Dateline: Danger newspaper strip draws attention for its African American co-star Danny Raven.

December 24: As Apollo 8 becomes the first manned spacecraft to orbit the moon, its three man crew reads the first ten verses of the Book of Genesis to an enrapt TV audience on Earth.

Radd, a bored inhabitant of the utopian planet Zenn-La who had persuaded Galactus to spare his home in exchange for becoming the worldeater’s cosmic-powered herald. The account also effectively whitewashed the Surfer’s implicit role in the destruction of uncounted planets in the service of his master. The Silver Surfer who had never experienced humanity in Fantastic Four #48-50 had been made over as a compassionate soul who had strictly steered Galactus away from inhabited worlds before he led him to Earth. This wasn’t Jack Kirby’s vision of the character but then again, Kirby wasn’t attached to the project. Rather the series was assigned to penciler John Buscema and inker Joe Sinnott. Roy Thomas notes the reason why Kirby wasn’t tapped for the assignment was because Lee “may not have wanted to push Jack to turn out still more pages a month. […] Stan probably didn’t think Jack would care, which in retrospect turned out to be an error.

People often make certain decisions because they’re expedient, with no malice at all, but the other person feels slighted” (Amash, “Roy the Boy…” 13). That was certainly the case with Kirby. “Upon learning of Lee’s origin for the Surfer,” historian Mike Gartland wrote, “Jack disavowed any relation to the character. This wasn’t his Surfer, as far as he was concerned” (Gartland 40).

Mephisto TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Instead, it was Lee who took the character as his own, protectively limiting other John Buscema and Joe Sinnott’s Silver Surfer writers’ use of the Surfer #1 original cover art, courtesy of Heritage Auctions. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. into the early 1980s, long after he’d quit writing comic nemesis. Marvel’s books regularly. In Silver Surfer, the version of the writer-editor had free rein to phiDevil—Mephisto, losophize on mankind’s hair-trigger by name—wore a temper and unceasing wars. Such obcape and costume servations were neither profound nor (all red, of course) controversial but they played well to befitting a superthe 1960s teenage audience, particuhero comic book larly in a year marked by terrible vioand spent his first lence both domestically and abroad. outing trying to tempt the pureLee publicly insisted that he wasn’t hearted Surfer with making allusions to Jesus Christ with a reunion with his his stories of a noble, persecuted hero, lost love Shalla Bal. but it was hard to avoid comparisons when Satan himself was introduced In a further move in issue #3 as the Surfer’s foremost to elevate the title from its brethren, Marvel published Silver Surfer as a 25- cent giant with 38-40 of its 64 pages devoted to the title character along with another 10-13 allotted to a Lee-scripted secondary series starring the Watcher in which penciler Gene Colan drew reworked versions of early 1960s fantasy stories. Despite the failure of other publishers’ all-new giants, Marvel had had good luck with its reprint-free King-Size Specials in 1967 and 1968 and gambled that readers would respond to an ongoing series in the format. The company took a greater risk with The Spectacular Spider-Man, though. Titles like Mad, Creepy, and CarToons had spent years building a presence for black-and-white comics on the nation’s magazine racks and reports of forthcoming titles from creators like Gil Kane and Jerry DeFuccio only 196

fueled Marvel’s desire for a piece of the action. Retailing at 35¢ with a painted cover, the black-and-white Spidey comic book went on sale in April with a 52-page lead story (by Lee, John Romita, and Jim Mooney) and a 10-page recap of the hero’s origin (courtesy of Lee, Larry Lieber, and Bill Everett). The idea was to do a series aimed at a slightly older readership and, despite the presence of a rampaging monster, much of the story focused on the more grounded threat of a charismatic-but-corrupt mayoral candidate. Evoking the lush look of Warren’s horror stories, Romita recalled, “we envisioned a somewhat photographic art style with halftones and deep shadows that were just Spider-Man. […] Looking back, I wish we’d had more time to develop the tone tech-

tive plans for publication in 1987’s Spectacular Spider-Man Annual #7—were never completed (Sodaro 83).

Washtones enhanced John Romita and Jim Mooney’s art in the black and white Spectacular Spider-Man #1. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

nique, but having a full schedule of comics to put out on a monthly basis limited us. Since we didn’t want to wait too long, we put in the extra hours and struck while the iron was hot” (Romita vii).

Side projects or not, Romita didn’t lack for things to do. “Since I was on staff all this time,” he explained, “I was the guy Stan called on for emergency corrections. He would put up a sign on my door saying, ‘Do Not Disturb.’ In two minutes, he was the first guy to violate his own sign and come in and bother me. I was supposed to be working on SpiderMan and bang, he would come in. He would constantly disturb me for covers and corrections. I would change whole panels on Kirby, I would change whole panels on Colan, and would do sketches for covers or I would pencil covers, and then I would talk to other people about their covers. I ended up indoctrinating people. When Stan was too busy to give them the Marvel spiel, I would do it” (Ridout 41-42).

Aiming at a different audience, Martin Goodman also approved Pussycat #1 (October 1968), a one-shot collection of short stories—with art by Bill Ward, Bill Everett, Wally Wood and Jim Mooney—that had appeared over the past few years in editions of Male, Stag, and Men. With story titles like “The Cavortin’ Case of the Booby-Trapped Bra,” the Little Annie Fannie-inspired feature was obviously not aimed at kids. Meanwhile, early reaction to Spectacular Spider-Man was good, but letters like those from frat brothers at Cornell University (“Taking the color out of Marvel is like taking Santa Claus out of Christmas”) made Martin Goodman antsy. The 58-page return of the Green Goblin in issue #2, he decreed, would be in color. It was an impressive issue, complete with a timely climax that found both hero and villain suffering the hallucinogenic effects of the Goblin’s psychedelic bombs. Despite an ad for issue #3’s “Mystery of the TV Terror,” it was also the end of the series. Marvel’s publisher, Romita later recalled, declared that the magazine “was too difficult to distribute” and cancelled it on the spot. “When the final sales figures came in,” the artist continued, “the magazines had sold extremely well, but Mr. Goodman could not be convinced to resume publishing the title. We can only guess what we all missed” (Romita vii). Lee, Romita, and Marie Severin’s partially-illustrated TV Terror pages—despite abor-

Meanwhile, Goodman’s son Chip scuttled plans for another project that had been mentioned in the spring (Hanerfeld “News: 4/68” 2). “Stan and I did two weeks of dailies and a year’s worth of plots for a Spider-Man newspaper strip,” Romita remembered. “We gave it to Chip in a big envelope; he was supposed to try to sell it to a syndicate. [After Goodman left Marvel a few years later], we found the envelope still on his desk, still sealed” (Thomas, “Fifty Years on the ‘A’ List” 34).

On Amazing Spider-Man itself, Romita abandoned penciling for blue pencil breakdowns that Don Heck then completed (AS-M #57-64, #66). Jim Mooney—settling in at Marvel after DC let him go—performed similar honors on Spectacular and succeeded Heck on Amazing with issues #65 and #67. Meanwhile, Larry Lieber did full pencils on Amazing Spider-Man King-Size Special #5, whose 40-page lead story finally revealed the secret of the hero’s unseen parents: Richard and Mary Parker had been government agents who were killed by the Red Skull when their son Peter was a baby.

Bill Everett painted the racy cover of Pussycat #1. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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The year’s other notable introduction took place in Amazing Spider-Man #56 when readers met retired policeman George Stacy. Thoughtful and observant, Captain Stacy was equally intrigued by the mysterious Spider-Man and his daughter Gwen’s boyfriend Peter Parker, an interest that would grow over the next few years. Gwen’s increased presence in the

Girl’s official replacement on the team during Sue’s maternity leave. Amusingly, Baby Boy Richards didn’t acquire a proper name—Franklin Benjamin—for another fourteen months (FF #94: January 1970). Those issues were the highlights in a year that otherwise consisted mostly of reprises. Just as Amazing Spider-Man saw return visits by Doctor Octopus, the Kingpin, Mysterio, and the original Vulture, Fantastic Four largely entailed renewed conflicts with the Mad Thinker, the Wizard, Galactus, and the Psycho-Man, the latter two figuring into FF #74-77’s four-parter that built up to the new Silver Surfer book.

Mary Jane Watson got a new look in Spider-Man #64 while Peter Parker learned the secret of his parents’ demise in Spider-Man King-Size Special #5. . TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

series left Stan Lee at a loss on how to use would-be rival Mary Jane Watson. After having Romita give MJ a new short hairstyle to distinguish her from Gwen, Lee opted to just drop the redhead from the cast after AS-M #65 until he could figure what to do with her. She didn’t return until 1970. Family units and girlfriends also figured into Lee and Kirby’s Fantastic Four in 1968. A year after the announcement that Susan Richards was pregnant, she finally gave birth to a son in FF King-Size Special #6 (November 1968) but not before husband Reed and the rest of the team had to make a rush trip to the Negative Zone in search of precious technology that would save her life. Soon after in FF #81, the Human Torch’s elemental girlfriend Crystal (from the Inhumans) stepped in as the Invisible

Lee and Kirby could boast perhaps four notable creations that year: a thug with an enchanted crowbar called the Wrecker (Thor #148-150), the god-killing immortal Mangog Crystal joined the Fantastic Four in FF #81. Kirby/Sinnott original art courtesy of Heritage Auctions. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. (Thor #154-157), Negative Zone solid enough but the series became overlord Annihilus (FF Kingsomething more in 1968, taking eleSize Special #6), and a mind-bending ments from earlier stories and replenevil psychiatrist named Dr. Faustus ishing the book’s cast with new faces. (Captain America #107). Elsewhere, Lee created Whiplash (Tales of SusThe first of those faces had been inpense #97) and the Jester (Daredevil troduced in Avengers #48, a lone issue #42) with Gene Colan and a group of penciled by George Tuska. Enamored evil aliens called the Badoon (Silver of Marvel’s 1950s Arthurian hero Surfer #2) with John Buscema. called the Black Knight, Thomas ar-

Look On My Works, Ye Mighty Avengers It was Buscema’s collaborations with Roy Thomas, though, that were some of the most satisfying and fruitful of the year. The early months of their joint run on The Avengers had been

ranged to kill off his villainous 1960s successor and replace him with a young hero named Dane Whitman who rode a winged white horse (in contrast to the dead crook’s black one). He returned periodically over the next few years, initially helping

The Fantastic Four’s bond strengthened with the birth of Reed and Sue Richards’ son in FF King-Size Special #6. . TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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the Avengers on the sly by playing a double agent in the ranks of the Masters of Evil (Avengers #54-55).

While Thomas was happy to have the Panther aboard, he remained frustrated at Lee’s edict that powerhouse By that point, the team had made hisoriginal Avengers Iron tory as the first group of superheroes Man, Thor, and—effective to include a black member in its ranks. with issue #47—Captain The Black Panther replaced Captain America could no longer be America on the Avengers’ roster in official members since they issue #52. Buscema drew the hero had their own series. As his with his traditional full-face mask but confidence increased, the Thomas recalls that “Stan decided we young writer grew bolder should make certain readers could see and began contriving ways he was black. So we had to redraw the to return the trio—individwhole book to show his face” (Thomually or collectively—to the as, “An Avengers Interview…” 18). book whenever possible. All three showed up briefly in Avengers #52 when it appeared that the new team The Vision emerged in Avengers #57. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. had been killed by the Grim Reaper (brother of the late tron-5, ultimately destroying the evil Wonder Man). Avengers King-Size Speentity. In a memorable epilogue, a cial #2 (penciled by Don Heck) set the boy discovered the robot’s decapipresent-day team against the original tated head, playing with and discardroster (or so it seemed) while the time ing it as Percy Bysshe Shelley’s sonnet travel yarn immediately preceding it “Ozymandias” was recited above each (Avengers #56) expanded on Captain panel. The narration hadn’t occurred America’s final mission in the 1940s. to Thomas until he saw Buscema’s pencils but he realized the words “fit It was Thomas’ new creations that ideally” and hand-lettered them in were ultimately the most memorable, upper/lower-case script for letterer though, starting with a villain visuSam Rosen to finalize (Amash, “Roy ally based on an indestructible robot the Boy…” 18). called Makino from Fawcett’s Captain Video #3 (1951). Avengers #54 and #55 Avengers #58 resolved most of the indirectly pitted the heroes against lingering questions, including the an evil robot called Ultron-5 who had revelation that Ultron had been crebrainwashed their own butler Jarvis ated by Hank Pym himself. Acquiring into attacking the team as the Crimsentience, the robot immediately conson Cowl. The question cluded that it had to kill its “father” to of why Ultron wanted gain true independence and stripped to destroy the group Pym of his memories as it prepared to was left hanging but the evolve. The Vision, brooding over the mystery resumed when fact that he seemed to possess human an unfamiliar figure in memories despite his artificial form, green and red attacked learned that Ultron had implanted the heroes in Avengers the brain patterns of the late Wonder #57 (October 1968). The Man—preserved by Pym—into his being known as the Vibody. sion—who could vary Despite it all, the Vision clinically his density from imobserved that he still didn’t have a material to steel-hard— brain but simply “a maze of printed wasn’t as overtly robotic circuits…of a mind long dead. I wonas Ultron but he wasn’t der…is it possible to be…‘basically huhuman, either. Rather, he man.’” The Avengers—including the was a synthezoid, Hank visiting Captain America, Iron Man, (Goliath) Pym’s name for and Thor—would have nothing of the an android. synthezoid’s insecurities and declared Once in the Avengers’ him the newest member of the team. As the Vision left the room, Hank custody, the Vision overGeorge Tuska drew the debut of the latest Black Knight in Avengers #48 Pym observed that, despite their new came his programming and inked John Buscema’s pencils for the new Masters of Evil in issue #54. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. member’s outward coldness, he was and led the team to Ul199

Based on a humorous 1940-1944 character, the new character was adopted into the JSA’s—and eventually JLA’s—ranks just as the Vision was embraced by the Avengers. Thomas tweaked the original Vision’s 1940s costume with a diamond emblem based on Fawcett hero Spy Smasher’s old outfit and—as a point of distinction from Marvel’s green Hulk and blue Atlanteans—gave the hero a crimson face. Despite Lee’s contention that “nobody’s going to like a character with a bright red face [because he] looks like a clown,” Thomas prevailed. “The Vision was popThe fondly-remembered conclusion of Avengers #58, as rendered by . John Buscema and George Klein. Vision TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. ular enough that had undoubtedly touched by the gesture. we really wanted to I Indeed, as the full-page image that think we could have probably made a closed the issue confirmed, “even an series for him. But he always seemed android can…cry.” to function so well in Avengers that I had no great desire to take him out of The story came about, Thomas exthere” (Mougin 21). plained, because Stan Lee “wanted a new Avenger and, for reasons that to Thomas and Buscema seemed to this day I do not know, he decreed it bring out the best in each other durmust be an android. I wanted to bring ing that run of stories, the dialogue in the original 1940s Vision [1940increasingly confident and witty and 1943’s Marvel Mystery Comics #13-48], the artwork bolder and more dramatwhom I’d seen in a couple of stories, ic. The team was further enhanced light green skin and all. He was from by the polished brushwork of George another dimension, so I was going to Klein, whose departure from DC as have him come into our dimension part of its Superman shake-up made and be stuck here. But Stan said, ‘No, I him available to ink Buscema’s penwant an android. I don’t care how you cils beginning with Avengers #55. handle it, but make it an android.’ So Not resting on its laurels, the creative I made the new Avenger an android team followed the Vision adventure and called him the Vision, and evwith Avengers #59-60’s debut of a eryone was happy” (Amash, “Roy the swaggering hero called Yellowjacket Boy…” 18). who claimed to have killed Hank In a strange coincidence, the Vision Pym and somehow convinced Janet story was published immediately af(Wasp) Van Dyne to marry him. Even ter a Gardner Fox-scripted story in with party-crashers like the Circus DC’s Justice League of America #64-65 of Crime, the wedding took place (August-September 1968) wherein and Jan revealed afterwards that her the villainous T.O. Morrow sent an new husband was really Hank! A android called the Red Tornado to inlab accident had inflicted him with filtrate the ranks of the Justice Society. a split personality but she knew her 200

boyfriend of five years too well to be fooled for long. Hank was back to normal by the end of the story but he held on to his new look when he returned from his honeymoon in 1969. In a case of art imitating life, Thomas decided to elope with Jean Maxey in July of 1968 and wrote the Yellowjacket two-parter right after he was married. Thomas and Buscema also joined forces on the new Sub-Mariner comic book, picking up where the Gene Colan-illustrated series in Tales to Astonish #101 and Iron Man and Sub-Mariner #1 had left off. As he pursued the mysterious Destiny who had killed his mother and grandfather, Prince Namor also fought the genetically enhanced villain Tiger Shark (SubMariner #5) and found an ally in the form of surface-dweller Diane Arliss. Like the policewoman Betty Dean whom Namor had met in 1940, Diane was someone that the aquatic brawler came to like and respect but—romantically speaking—he only had eyes for the Lady Dorma. In a coda to the events of the previous year, Sub-Mariner #8 (December 1968) threw Namor and the Thing together in a massively destructive fight that ultimately required an old woman named Mrs. Prentiss to step forward and insist that it come to an end. The rage draining from his face, Namor agreed and returned to the sea. Mean-

Introduced in Avengers #59, Yellowjacket represented the latest new look for founding member (and former Ant-Man) Hank Pym. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

while, recalling that Diane had prevailed on her to intercede, the gray-haired stranger mused that “perhaps no one on the police force could have stopped their battle from laying waste to a city. No one but a widow named Mrs. Prentiss… whom the eternally young Sub-Mariner once knew as…Betty Dean.” And she buried her face in her hands, the parallel between Peter Pan and Wendy unmistakable. Along with Avengers and Sub-Mariner, Thomas was also writing the new Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange, and Incredible Hulk books, a slate full enough that he had to give-up the saleschallenged X-Men. Before he left, though, he followed Stan Lee’s instructions to reinvigorate the series by splitting up its five members, a turn of events triggered by the death of their mentor Professor X at the hands of the beast-man Grotesk in issue #42 (March 1968). Indicative of the fact that the stunt was a blatant bid for readX-Men briefly promoted individual members in its cover logos before the experiment . ers, the wheelchair-bound teacher’s demise was was judged a failure. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. announced on the cover. Aware that the ProfesThe series’ trade dress was revised at the same time to emsor might need to return one day, Thomas also built a way phasize individual characters, e.g. The X-Men Featuring: to bring him back into the same plot (Sanderson 39). The Angel. “Since The X-Men wasn’t selling,” Thomas explained, “Stan had this idea that we’d be the first company to have a different title above every issue [of a magazine], heralding a different character. And so we did that for [seven] issues. I don’t remember how well it worked; obviously it didn’t work very well for very long” (Sanderson 39). Thomas left with X-Men #44, plotting a revival of one-shot Timely hero Red Raven (1940) that he turned over for dialoguing to new scripter Gary Friedrich. He, in turn, departed within a few issues, handing the series over to DC expatriate and Doom Patrol creator Arnold Drake with issue #48. In Drake’s hands, the dispersed X-Men were reunited thanks to the emergence of a green-haired mutant named Lorna Dane whose newly-manifested magnetic powers seemed to mark her as the daughter of Magneto. That turned out to be a hoax perpetrated by Magneto’s acolyte Mesmero and a relieved Lorna happily returned to obscurity (X-Men #49-52). The middle two chapters of the Lorna Dane saga sported covers and interior pencils by wunderkind Jim Steranko, who also designed an enduring new logo for the series that debuted in issue #50. The issues came at the end of Steranko’s run on Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., a title for which he was ultimately only able to draw four interior adventures (issues #1-3 and #5). “Jim was no slower than some others,” Roy Thomas observed, “but that book often ran late because he put so much into the stories, which backed everything up” (Amash, “Roy the Boy…” 23). Breaking away from never-ending serials, Steranko now put his emphasis on stand-alone stories, pitting Fury and company against mysterious adversaries like Scorpio (S.H.I.E.L.D. #1 and #5) and Marvel’s first black super-villain Centurius (issue #2). “Today Earth Died,” his final short story for Strange Tales #168 (May 1968) about a seeming alien incursion gone horribly wrong, even won a 1968 Alley Award for Best Feature Story. Steranko also beat out

The mysterious Mrs. Prentiss quelled Namor’s rampage in Sub-Mariner #8, . as drawn by John Buscema and Dan Adkins. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Jack Kirby as Best Pencil Artist while his Wally Wood-esque image on the front of S.H.I.E.L.D. #6 was proclaimed Best Cover. The series continued to overflow with surreal imagery and boundarypushing storytelling, one instance of which got Marvel in trouble with the Comics Code. A nearly wordless 11-panel page in S.H.I.E.L.D. #2 cut from close-up to close-up in Fury’s apartment as Val drew closer to Nick before they ultimately wound up on their knees and locked in a passionate embrace. The Code objected to Val’s cleavage in one panel and an off-thehook phone in another, both of which John Romita was able to alter in the Marvel offices. That final panel had to be eliminated entirely so a desperate Roy Thomas photostatted the image of a holstered gun from the background of the first panel and recycled it as a close-up in the last panel. As historian Richard Arndt noted, “it wasn’t until Steranko called him up to congratulate him on his cleverness in getting around the Code’s objection by replacing the clinch scene with a post-coital holstered gun that Thomas thought consciously about the sexual symbolism of a romantic interlude ending with a gun in a holster” (Arndt, “Tales from the Code” 20).

Steranko’s last S.H.I.E.L.D. story ended with a haunted Nick Fury contemplating the shocking true identity of the evil Scorpio—a secret withheld from readers. . TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Thomas noted that Steranko’s efforts on the series “had an influence on Stan, who started telling artists that they should experiment a little. Sales of Strange Tales and S.H.I.E.L.D. were never spectacular, but it’s nice to have a couple books that attract attention simply because they’re different. Suddenly, Stan started wanting more psychedelic effects, as long as they didn’t get in the way of the storytelling, which Jim would never allow them to do anyway. I think Jim’s major legacy to Marvel was demonstrating that there were ways in which In his effort to accommodate the Comics Code’s objections over a provocative page the Kirby style Roy Thomas unconsciously made its last panel more suggestive could be mu- from Nick Fury #2,than the original. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. tated, and many a community.” When the artist drew artists went off increasingly in their a distorted effect in Strange Advenown directions after that” (Amash, tures #216 that—when carefully ex“Roy the Boy…” 23). amined—read “Hey, a Jim Steranko effect,” Adams considered it a way Visual Thinkers of “tipping his hat” to a worthy peer If Steranko had an equivalent at DC, (Schumer 35). it was surely Neal Adams although Although initially endorsed as a cover the latter’s photorealistic style was artist by Carmine Infantino, Adams unique in its own right. “I was coming swiftly began picking up interior sefrom a more traditional background ries. Along with Deadman in the Jack and direction,” Adams explained. Miller-edited Strange Adventures and “I tended to do a better drawing. He Julius Schwartz’s Spectre, the young decried realism except where it reartist was also assigned the Superlated to graphics. Graphics were not man-Batman team-ups in World’s my only focus. They weren’t his only Finest Comics in partnership with focus either, but they were certainly writer Cary Bates. It was, all told, a bit overpowering. I was doing many too much for the artist to handle. He other things, level after level. I was dropped WFC after two episodes (isthrilled with the page, thrilled with sues #175 and #176) and The Spectre the opportunity to experiment, as after four (issues #2-5), the last two of was Steranko. He was, in some ways, which he scripted. much more aggressive” (Schumer 35). “I never felt in any way competitive,” Adams insisted. “I felt we were 202

Almost immediately, though, Adams regretted giving up his chance to draw

Batman in World’s Finest and lobbied to draw interior stories in the Caped Crusader’s own book. Julius Schwartz— resentful, Adams claimed, because the artist chose Deadman over his own Spectre—said no. Undeterred, Adams approached editor Murray Boltinoff about drawing writer Bob Haney’s Batman team-up stories in The Brave and the Bold and received the enthusiastic response that Schwartz had denied him. Adams signed on with issue #79 (AugustSeptember 1968), bringing Deadman along for the ride as its guest-star. Rather than draw the generic costumed hero he’d done previously, Adams intended to play up Batman’s long lost sense of mood. With Boltinoff’s blessing, Adams departed from Haney’s scripts in only one key detail: “I would take sequences that were clearly written for the daytime and have them happen at night” (Cooke, “A Quiet Pitched Battle…” 40). The cartoonist also campaigned for a broader color palette. “Marvel Comics had twice as many colors as DC,” Adams explained. “64 as opposed to 32, simply because they had two additional yellow tones, 50% and 25%. [Production manager Sol Harrison] told me Marvel was paying extra to get tone yellow. That didn’t make any sense to me. So I ‘suggested’ to Carmine and editors like Joe Orlando that they ask Jack Liebowitz […] why Marvel was getting twice as many colors as DC.” At Liebowitz’s insistence, Harrison called DC and Marvel’s color separator and discovered that

Beginning with his Batman/Deadman team-up in The Brave and the Bold #79, Neal Adams brought more atmosphere and menace to the rendering of the Caped Crusader. Original art courtesy of Heritage Auctions. TM and © DC Comics.

the yellow tones had always been available to DC at the same rate. They’d simply never asked. “On that very day,” Adams declared, “DC Comics had twice as many colors as they had the day before” (Schumer 36, 40). Beyond the look of his comics, Adams also had aspirations of broadening his storytelling in the pages of Strange Adventures. In his view, each episode of its series had become “a generic ‘Adventures of Deadman’ story. That wasn’t necessarily wrong, of course—that’s how it had always gone: invent a character, then put them through the standard adventures. But the more I worked on Deadman, the more I realized he would be just another character unless someone did something about it. […] For the first time in my comics career, I felt that we could do a series concentrating on a character’s actual character with Deadman” (Adams 8). Impressed with Adams’ vision, incoming editor Dick Giordano agreed to let him write and draw the series. In Strange Adventures #215 and #216 (respectively on sale in September and November 1968), Adams dispensed with the human interest stories and American locales for the exotic far east and a mysterious Society of Assassins led by an aged but deadly Sensei. Once there, Deadman—and the 203

reader—made an amazing discovery: far from a premeditated killing, Boston Brand’s murder had been nothing more than an initiation exercise for a prospective member of the Society. Even cheated out of revenge on his killer (who was slain instead by the Sensei), a frustrated Deadman now fixated on protesting his fate to the celestial Rama Kushna who had held him back on Earth. Discovering the Society’s plans to destroy a hidden Tibetan paradise called Nanda Parbat, Deadman raced there ahead of them and abruptly—euphorically—discovered that he was flesh and blood once more within its idyllic borders. Modeled on fictional Shangri-La, the hidden valley was also a focal point for Rama Kushna, and Deadman wasted no time in renegotiating his deal as a ghost. “You’re supposed to be in charge of the balance of good and evil in nature,” he snapped. “Well, look, Jack, you’ve done a crummy job!! Give me a shot at it. I’ll clean things up. Then, and only then, will I rest easy.” Rama agreed to the terms and Deadman left Nanda Parbat, reverting to a ghost as he made his exit. The climax represented Adams-the-storyteller at his most adventurous. Like Steranko, Adams’s pages bypassed the familiar grid approach to comics pages, tilting at odd angles and twisting into strange shapes. The tack simultane-

Neal Adams’ boundary-pushing layouts for Strange Adventures #216’s Deadman story wowed some readers and confused others. TM and © DC Comics.

ously inspired adoration in fans and occasional befuddlement amongst the average reader. A case in point was a page in Deadman’s psychedelic encounter with Rama. Echoing an earlier Ben Casey Sunday page, Adams drew it as five panels whose individual layouts formed the image of Deadman’s face when the page was viewed as a whole. It was a clever device but also inevitably distracting from the actual story. That may have partly contributed to the cancellation of the Deadman series with Strange Adventures #216. Adams’ influence on the industry’s superhero comics was seismic, supplanting the cartoony Kirby ideal for a realistic one and influencing uncounted artists of the next generation. In this early phase of his comic book career, though, he was a little too different for the average comic book consumer and sales reflected it. For the sake of the evolving superhero genre, though, change had to come and the Adams covers spreading across the DC line reflected Carmine Infantino’s vision. DC’s new art director believed that the company’s editorial direction was too writer-driven, reflecting editors like Julius Schwartz and Mort Weisinger who had come to comics from the pulps. Intent on moving in the op204

Joe Kubert’s promotion to editor didn’t stop him from drawing the revived Enemy Ace feature and the covers and Sgt. Rock stories for Our Army At War. TM and © DC Comics.

posite direction, Infantino looked to men who—like himself and recent hire Dick Giordano—had substantial credits as artists. Before long, Joe Orlando and Joe Kubert had also been installed as editors. Awkwardly, Kubert replaced Robert Kanigher, the man for whom he’d drawn hundreds of stories and covers since 1954. After suffering a breakdown, Kanigher reportedly asked to be released from his editorial responsibilities and Infantino agreed. Kubert had no intention of abandoning his old collaborator, though, and assigned the bulk of the scripts for his newly-inherited war books to Kanigher (Schelly 179). Discontinuing the War That Time Forget feature in Star-Spangled War Stories, Kubert also revived his and Kanigher’s critically beloved Enemy Ace series in issue #138 (April-May 1968). For a young audience who no longer saw war in black and white terms, Enemy Ace’s World War One stories from the German point-ofview was timelier than ever. While avoiding any stories actually set in Vietnam, Kubert was nonetheless able to subtly reference it in Sgt. Rock stories like Our Army At War #200’s tale of a peace-loving hippielike soldier named Troubadour. In issue #196’s “Stop the War—I Want to Get Off” (written and drawn by

Kubert), Rock even suffered a hallucinatory breakdown on the battlefield. On the other hand, Kubert dropped Kanigher’s recently-created kid guerrillas of Unit 3 (OAAW #189-197) as Sgt. Rock’s co-stars, perhaps viewing the idea of teenage soldiers as hitting too close to home now that America’s draft age had dropped to 18. Before they left, though, the kids appeared on the conceptually iconic

cover of Our Army At War #195 (July 1968). With a frame of hidden Nazi soldiers peering out a window, readers saw Sgt. Rock on the street declaring, “No sweat, Unit 3…it’s a dead town.” Variations on the idea had been used on several DC war covers dating back to the 1950s but Kubert’s specific layout and ironic “we’re all alone” word balloon crystalized it. Whether the issue sold extremely well or Kubert was just taken with the concept, the artist eventually drew five dozen variations on that cover between 1968 and 1984. Kubert and his fellow editor-artists also presided over a fundamental change in the opening of a comic book. Traditionally, the first page of an issue was a splash that effectively functioned as a second cover to further entice browsers to buy the issue. Kubert, Orlando, and Giordano all opted to begin opening their issues with a typical fouror-five-panel story page that led into a second-page splash that was part of the plot rather than simply symbolic.

A graphically-adventurous Kubert story in Our Army At War #196 saw Sgt. Rock experience a breakdown. TM and © DC Comics.

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Moreover, Kubert favored that splash as a spread covering pages two and three. Thanks to Jim Steranko and Neal Adams, such spreads had become a popular novelty with the latter artist even including several throughout one Deadman story (Strange Adventures #214). DC’s

conservative production department insisted spread pages couldn’t be done because the two pages wouldn’t match up when printed. Dick Giordano, who had worked in production at Charlton, assured them that it could be and proceeded to show them how (Cooke, “Along Came Giordano” 34). With Carmine Infantino’s encouragement, the double-page splash proliferated across DC’s line, used regularly in Kubert’s war books and seen occasionally in everything from The Flash to Challengers of the Unknown to Young Romance.

All Along the Watchtower The primary editorial holdout was Mort Weisinger, who persisted in using the traditional symbolic splash pages even as Infantino tried to revitalize the flagship hero starring in them. A full-page house ad promoting issues on sale in January 1968 depicted a familiar heroic outline and these words: “There’s a new kind of Superman comin’!”

A house ad obliquely touted the arrival of the Ross Andru/Mike Esposito art team on Superman, . as seen in this example from Superman #204. TM and © DC Comics.

story pages per month and getting no cover assignments at all. Convinced that the cutback was retaliation for his involvement with the earlier creators’ rights conversations, he remarked, “I was not happy drawing Supergirl, but it was an assignment” (Voger 51).

Reflecting Infantino’s artistic sensibilities, the new look was primarily visual. Along with Neal Adams on covers and—briefly—the World’s Finest interiors, Ross Andru and Mike Esposito became the regular Superman art team with Action Comics #362 (April 1968), also contributing the lead story for Superman #204. The same month, Esposito inked Irv Novick as the artistic makeover rolled into Lois Lane with issue #82, bumping Kurt Schaffenberger after a decade on the feature.

Meanwhile, Curt Swan—who had exemplified the Superman look for a decade—was shifted primarily to the Legion of Super-Heroes, illustrating a run of stories that saw scripter Jim Shooter reach his peak on the series. A twoparter in Adventure Comics #365-366 revisited the Fatal Five and introduced new member Shadow Lass (foreshadowed in Shooter’s 1967 Adult Legion story) and issue #367 saw the rise of the Legion’s new headquarters (replacing the quaint previous model that resembled an inverted rocket).

During the previous year, Schaffenberger had worked valiantly to make the Lois feature more contemporary, updating her prim hairstyle in issue #75 and illustrating a Leo Dorfman-scripted two-parter in issues #80-81 (January-February 1968) that allowed its star to model hip fashions. The point of that particular story—wherein Lois broke up with Superman and started a new life elsewhere—was to convince jaded readers that DC was shaking things up. By its conclusion, though, the status quo had been restored. Reassigned to the Supergirl feature in Action Comics effective with issue #359, Schaffenberger succeeded its own veteran artist Jim Mooney. Although Schaffenberger brought new life to a series that had gone stale, the artist was personally dismayed that he was now drawing half as many

Adventure Comics #369 ended with a cliffhanger pitting the outmatched Legion of Super-Heroes against Mordru the Merciless. Art by Curt Swan and Jack Abel. TM and © DC Comics.

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“Mordru the Merciless” (Adventure #369-370) may have been the most beloved of all. Brought to their knees by an unstoppable sorcerer, a quartet of Legionnaires fled 2968 A.D. for refuge in Superboy’s rustic 20th Century and tried to blend in with the teenage Clark Kent’s friends and family to escape the notice of Mordru. Details like culture shock and unrequited love enriched a heroes-onthe-run story that was suspenseful in its own right, elevating it as one of the highlights in the series’ entire history. Swan’s layouts broke away from the mold over the course of those 1968

issues, something he credited to Carmine Infantino for working with him to update his storytelling (Zeno 61). Inevitably, Swan was back on the core titles (returning with Action #367, Superman #208, and World’s Finest #177) but his primary inker George Klein was dropped, an evident victim of Infantino’s desire for a new look. Instead, Mike Esposito and, more prominently, Jack Abel were brought in to give a different sheen to Swan’s pencils. Andru and Esposito’s tenure on Superman primarily consisted of a single Dorfman-written story (Action #362-366) that was a sequel to 1962’s classic “Last Days of Superman.” In the earlier story, the Man of Steel thought he was dying of the incurable Kryptonian plague Virus X; in this account, he really was. The “Death of Superman” story culminated with the hero’s funeral and replacement by several impersonators (all Justice Leaguers) before the genuine article—cured by exposure to White Kryptonite—flew in to relieve them. Amidst stories like that and an immediately-ignored adventure in Superman #205 that claimed the planet Krypton was really destroyed by an outlaw called Black Zero, one Weisinger-edited Superman book did make a lasting change to its status quo. Since the beginning, Clark Kent’s adoptive parents had consistently been portrayed as an elderly white-haired couple. For the typical young readers whose parents were in their thirties or forties, it was a subtly antiquated depiction that made DC seem a bit out of touch. In a fanciful story by Otto Binder and George Papp in Superboy #145, those opinions were echoed in the demographics for an extraterrestrial Superboy TV series. To regain his audience, the show’s producer slipped youth serum to Ma and Pa Kent and made them look like spry forty-year-olds. Breaking the fourth wall in the last panel, Clark assured readers that “the youth serum’s effect is permanent.” Not everyone was happy with the development, issue #149’s letter column confirmed, but “the majority definitely go for the younger Kents.”

The Frank Robbins-scripted Superboy—with art by Bob Brown and Jack Abel—had a darker tone, as demonstrated by this page from issue #151. TM and © DC Comics.

ous strangers and the seeming murder of Lana Lang at Superboy’s hands (Superboy #150-151)—immediately had a darker, more suspenseful tone than the lighter fare that preceded them. The 50-year-old Robbins was no stranger to comics, having written and drawn the Johnny Hazard comic strip since 1944. Like most newspaper adventure features, Hazard had seen better days and Carmine Infantino became aware that his cartooning acquaintance was hoping to supplement his shrinking income: “I think I called him, or [Julius Schwartz] called him—somebody called him—and he just came up [to the DC offices]. And I sat him down with Julie and they clicked” (Eury, “The Man Who Redesigned Batman” 25).

It’s entirely possible that Weisinger might have backed out anyway but he never had the chance. In an editorial shift, Superboy was handed off to Murray Boltinoff with issue #149 and gradually underwent a more meaningful change of direction than any of the past year’s cosmetic stunts. Although it would be 1969 before the new creative team found its voice, the first stories by incoming writer Frank Robbins and penciler Bob Brown—with mysteri-

Much of Robbins’ DC scripting work was done for Schwartz, who instantly had him doing much of the writing on The Flash, Batman, and Detective Comics. Unfamiliar with costumed heroes, the newcomer seemed to have expected something more on the order of the Batman TV show and wrote accordingly, seasoning his early scripts with jokes, pomp seriousness, and cliffhangers. Robbins’ debut on Flash #180 and #181—set in Japan—was particularly cringe-worthy, jammed with flip remarks and all of its local dialogue—“difficurty of pronouncing “l’s” in Japanese ranguage”—rendered in a fashion that came across as racist even to many 1960s readers. The more realistic Batman fit him better, though, and Robbins—ditching the camp—became one of the series’ pre-

Ma and Pa Kent got a facelift in an attempt to make the Superboy . series more relevant to young readers. TM and © DC Comics.

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eminent writers for the next seven years. The writer’s arrival in Batman #204 and Detective #378 (both dated August 1968) followed the final departure of Bob Kane from the series. With the stiff Kane style (ghosted by Chic Stone in his final stories) out of the picture, Schwartz assigned Batman to penciler Irv Novick and Detective to Bob Brown and laid the groundwork for a darker, more serious version of the Caped Crusader. When the final new episode of the Batman TV series aired on March 14, the editor was privately grateful that its campy antics would no longer be undercutting his comic books. According to Batgirl actress Yvonne Craig, the show’s production team considered shopping Batman to other networks after ABC cancelled it and, when no one spoke up, had its $800,000 sets bulldozed. By the time NBC expressed an interest two weeks later, it was too late (Eisner 163). Instead, the Caped Crusader 1940s/1950s Blackhawk artist Reed Crandall was unable to return to draw the final issues of wound up in animation that September as When classic the series, editor Dick Giordano assigned them to Pat Boyette. TM and © DC Comics. part of the latest configuration of CBS and Filinherited the latter title from George Kashdan, made a valmation’s Saturday morning superhero series, now called iant attempt to save Blackhawk, dumping the team’s illThe Batman/Superman Hour. (Mirroring the cartoons, the advised superhero costumes in favor of their original black Batman and Robin newspaper strip ran back-to-back stouniforms (in a story plotted by young fan-turned-pro Marv ries guest-starring Aquaman and Superman that year.) Wolfman for issue #242). Despite that turn and fresh artwork by Charlton favorite Pat Boyette, it was too little too Before Batman took precedence, DC still had hopes that late. Metamorpho and the Blackhawks might be integrated into the Filmation cartoons. With that possibility extinguished, Giordano had arrived at DC with the intention of using the comic books bearing their names were cancelled, Metasome of his star players from Charlton—Jim Aparo, Denny morpho with issue #17 (March-April 1968) and the 24-yearO’Neil, Steve Skeates—but was a bit humbled when Irwin old Blackhawk with issue #243 (October-November 1968). Donenfeld remarked that his connections to them were the New editor Dick Giordano, who had reason they hired him (Cooke, “Along Came Giordano” 32). Consequently, Giordano assigned Skeates and Aparo to Aquaman. “What I think needed to be replaced was the look of the book,” the editor explained, “because it was thought of as being a silly, childish, TV rip-off (though it was the other way around as TV had gotten the character from us). […] I wanted something a little bit more serious in order to chase Marvel. In many cases the changes I made were changes for their own sake” (Cooke, “Along Came Giordano” 33).

Despite trying to evoke the style of his predecessor Nick Cardy, artist Jim Aparo brought a very different . look to Aquaman. Original art from issue #41, courtesy of Heritage Auctions. TM and © DC Comics.

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What Skeates came up with for his and Aparo’s debut in issue #40 (July-August 1968) was the abduction of the underwater monarch’s wife Mera and the beginning of a quest that extended well into 1969. “When I was taking over Aquaman,”

the new writer recalled, “Dick told me to ‘make it a Western.’ I really liked the idea of Aquaman going from one undersea community to another. The sea itself became incidental in later issues as the stories grew more complex—often interweaving two or more subplots within a story” (Brodsky 22).

Mayer wrote a pilot that neither Infantino nor Orlando cared for. “Carmine’s idea,” Orlando explained, “was a tough Western gunfighter with a gentleman’s soul who liked good food, flowers and women. So we both rewrote the premise” (Cooke, “Orlando’s Weird Adventures” 23). Noted as a satire in the vein of the 1967 Western Waterhole #3 (Hanerfeld, “News: 4/68” 3), Bat was not unlike the Lewton Cole character played by James Coburn in the film.

Maintaining continuity, outgoing illustrator Nick Cardy stuck around as cover artist, casting a shadow that intimidated his successor. “When the word came down The Nick Cardy-illustrated Bat Lash was embraced by fans but ignored by mainstream audiences. TM and © DC Comics. that I was going to be on the Aquaman feature,” Jim Aparo recalled, “about two Recalling that his friend Sergio Aragonés was seeking or three issues before I got my first one published, [Cardy] work at DC to supplement his Mad cartooning, Orlando opened up. […] When I saw those books, I was sick.” Inidrew him into the development process and had the Mextially attempting to evoke the Cardy look, Aparo gradually ican-born cartoonist plot the series, creating rough layouts started easing in “my own style until I was accepted as the that Nick Cardy could follow or ignore as he saw fit. “At the Aquaman artist” (Harris 52). time my English was even worse than it is now,” Aragonés For his part, Cardy had no qualms about leaving. “I had laughed in 1998, “and [scripter Denny O’Neil] added that been doing Aquaman for seven years,” he explained, “and wonderful Western slang” (Stewart 17). was ready to try new things like magazine art” (Coates 56). Premiering in Showcase #76 (August 1968), Bat Lash had Along with his semi-regular Teen Titans assignment, Carhis own comic book two months later and it became one of dy was also tapped to draw DC’s new Western title. Havthe more critically beloved series of the 1960s. Along with ing abandoned the genre in 1961, the company tested the Cardy’s lush, open artwork, there was the central conceit of waters with a “Top Gun” reprint issue of Showcase #72 but its ladies’ man star veering far from the upstanding model Carmine Infantino envisioned something more unconvenof his predecessors. “Bat Lash was one of the first anti-hetional for an ongoing series. roes in comics,” O’Neil noted, “reluctant to do good unless Sketching out a house ad for a grizzled, vaguely defined pressed or paid. I really liked that aspect of his character” character called Bat Lash (named by series editor Joe Or(Stewart 17). lando after Bat Masterson and Lash LaRue), Infantino addInfantino’s quick promotion of Bat Lash to an ongoing seed the tagline “Will he save the West—or ruin it?” Sheldon ries was in complete defiance of Irwin Donenfeld’s trademark caution. The new editorial director couldn’t afford to wait for sales figures to slowly trickle in and determine a new project’s viability. In the race to compete with Marvel, it was better to throw caution to the wind and put the new features on comics racks immediately. For Bat Lash and four other 1968 premieres, an appearance in Showcase had been a mere formality. They included the Howie Post-created Anthro, a comedydrama about a teenage caveman that echoed the modern generation gap (Showcase #74) and Angel and the Ape, a farce about a detective agency run by platinum blonde Angel O’Day and her gorilla/cartoonist partner Sam Simeon (Showcase #77). The latter was a joint creation of Infantino, Orlando, writer E. Nelson Bridwell, and artist Bob Oksner and provided yet another opportunity for digs at Marvel. For the first few installments, Sam drew comics for an egomaniacal editor called Stan Bragg before moving to a competitor. Any resemblance between Sam’s new boss Morton Stoops and DC’s Mort Weisinger was purely intentional.

Showcase #73 and #77 covers by Howie Post and Bob Oksner, respectively. . Anthro, Angel and the Ape TM and © DC Comics.

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The most anticipated of the new series represented Steve Ditko’s first substantial work for DC. Showcase #73’s “Beware the Creeper” starred an opinionated TV talk show host-turned-security investigator named Jack Ryder. Attempting to infiltrate a costume party where a kidnapped scientist was being held, Ryder came up with a garish yellow, red, and green costume composed of remnants and was wearing it when he got shot attempting to facilitate a rescue. The grateful scientist didn’t make it out alive but he did treat his rescuer with a healing serum that endowed him with modest super-strength. Declaring himself the Creeper, Ryder affected a maniacal persona that simultaneously helped him intimidate crooks and got him branded an outlaw by the police. Like his Question for Charlton, Ditko put the new hero in the news business, explaining that newsmen have “an easier, more natural way of getting involved with all types of crime. They are not restricted with set routines or limited in their scope of activities. I prefer conflicts that are based on reality rather than based on fantasy. When you get wound up with super villains, super fantastic gadgets and super incredible action,

Steve Ditko’s first major post-Spider-Man creations were the Creeper and the Hawk & the Dove. TM and © DC Comics.

everything has to be made so deliberately that it all becomes senseless. It boils down to what you want a story to stand for” (Canterbury). Taking a stand was the premise behind Ditko’s follow-up in Showcase #75 (June 1968). Plucking the media buzzwords for pro-war forces (hawks)

and anti-war ones (doves), Carmine Infantino suggested incorporating the names into a new series (Cooke, “Director Comments” 9). Ditko came up with the story of two philosophically opposed teenage brothers— Hank and Don Hall—who carried their beliefs into fighting injustice as the Hawk and the Dove when they were mysteriously endowed with superpowers. Occupying a middle ground was the boys’ court judge father who was able to see things from both perspectives. “Ditko was unsure of the source of the Hawk and the Dove’s powers,” editor Dick Giordano noted. “I said flippantly, ‘just have a voice give them their powers—and that’s what we did” (Eury, Dick Giordano… 49). Brought in to script the feature from Ditko’s rough plot, Steve Skeates noted that “part of the concept was to directly appeal to, I don’t know, the counter-culture.” From the start, those efforts were undercut by both Ditko and Giordano. Skeates would have the Dove “do brave stuff and then it would be changed by either Dick or Steve into the Hawk doing that stuff. They’d say it was out of character for the Dove. They seemed to be equating Dove with wimp, wuss, coward, or whatever” (Cooke, “Skeating on Thin Ice” 73).

Detail from the splash page of Showcase #73’s first Creeper story. Original art . courtesy of Heritage Auctions. TM and © DC Comics.

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“Also,” Skeates added, “I think Dick was a tad overly intimidated by the

ical science had advanced significantly since [Ditko’s] last attack and antibiotics hastened his return” to comics (Bell 118). Beware the Creeper scripter Denny O’Neil—along with artists Jack Sparling and John Celardo—finished Ditko’s partially-completed sixth issue (March-April 1969) of that title. After an inauspicious DC debut writing Bomba (cancelled with issue #7), O’Neil had quickly come into favor among the company’s movers and shakers. Infantino liked the modern punch of his dialogue, remarking that “he was like having a Stan Lee in my pocket” (Amash, Carmine Infantino: Penciler. Publisher. Provocateur 109) while Julius Schwartz characterized him as “very promising” in a March 1968 letter to John Broome (Barr 13). Impressed by O’Neil’s early scripts for Green Lantern, Schwartz named him the new writer of Justice League of America effective with issue #66 (November 1968). After eight years of plot-driven stories and a cast of heroes who always acted in harmony, “Divided—We Fall” was a marked departure. A JLA meeting sank into bickering and sarcasm as the ground-level members argued over whether to investigate a case that the more powerful heroes believed was beneath them. Inevitably, the group mended fences but the mere presence of dissension and individualized characterization of each Leaguer evoked the Marvel tone that Carmine Infantino was now seeking in the DC line. Completing the new approach to the series was longtime Blackhawk penciler Dick Dillin, who was transferred to the book effective with the debut of the android Red Tornado (JLA #64-65). Original JLA artist Mike Sekowsky was moving on to bigger things but Gardner Fox—who had written every Justice League story since its inception—was on his way out, soon losing his recurring assignments for Batman, Green Lantern, and the Spectre, as well. “I was writing for [National Comics] before Superman and Batman came along,” the veteran writer later remarked, but Fox firmly believed that his earlier involvement in asking for benefits from management had finally resulted in retaliation from Jack Liebowitz (Morrissey 46). Fox’s five-year old Elongated Man back-up feature was discontinued altogether with Detective Comics #383 (January 1969), replaced with more commercial Robin or Batgirl two-parters that were promoted in a revised cover logo. With sales floundering, the Murray Boltinoff-edited Hawkman had been cancelled with issue #27 (August-September 1968) and the character returned to Julius Schwartz for a merger with one of his own struggling books as The Atom and Hawkman #39 (October-November 1968). Fox wrote issues #40 and #41 of the composite title before losing that assignment to O’Neil, too.

In his first Justice League of America script (with art by Dick Dillin . and Sid Greene), Denny O’Neil depicted a team that was more quarrelsome . than it had ever been before. TM and © DC Comics.

Comics Code and their rule about not having characters question those in authority. How can you have a dove that objects to the Vietnam War yet doesn’t question those in power? It’s ridiculous. Dick’s answer was to take all my references within the Dove’s dialog to the U.S. government and change the brunt of those complaints to some sort of nebulous ‘they’” (Skeates 66).

Arnold Drake—perhaps the most vocal of the DC writers seeking benefits—could empathize. His sales-challenged humor titles had been cancelled one by one, beginning with Adventures of Bob Hope #109 (February-March 1968) and Plastic Man #10 (May-June 1968). Following several transitional issues framed as a double-feature, the longrunning licensed Fox and the Crow comic book morphed into the Drake-created Stanley and His Monster with issue #109 (April-May 1968).

The personality conflict was at least partially resolved but under circumstances that none of the creators wanted. A resurgence of the tuberculosis that had plagued Ditko in 1954 forced him to curtail his comic book work and he dropped The Hawk and the Dove after issue #2 (October-November 1968). In his absence, Gil Kane became the book’s new artist. “Fortunately,” historian Blake Bell wrote, “med211

Drake intended to write fulllength stories for the book but Joe Orlando—replacing Murray Boltinoff as editor with issue #110—preferred three short episodes that he could assign to different artists and “speed up the creative process.” A battle ensued and Orlando wound up kicking Drake off the book he’d conceived, a decision upheld by Irwin Donenfeld (Cooke, “Orlando’s Weird Adventures” 20-21).

a plot rather than a full script and “having to write according to the drawing.” Feeling “constricted” by the approach, Drake later remarked that, from his perspective, “Stan [Lee] was sitting on your back all the time. He was not particularly interested in bringing out the best in you” (Mougin, “Arnold Drake” 13).

Meanwhile, Drake was informed that his cult favorite Doom Patrol was getting the TM and © DC Comics. ax with issue #121 (September-October 1968). “They only gave me two weeks’ notice that they were going to cancel it,” he recalled. “If I had been warned four or five weeks before, I might have had time to build up a tide. I was appealing to the readers: ‘Buy this book and get others to buy this book. If you want Doom Patrol to continue, you have to help us’” (Browning 41). Lacking even that desperate option, Drake decided to go out in a way that no one would ever forget.

20-year-old Cary Bates, for instance, managed to move beyond the Superman titles for one issue in 1968, selling his first story to Julius Schwartz in The Flash #179 (May 1968). In a fresh spin on Schwartz’s parallel world stories, “The Flash—Fact or Fiction” had the Scarlet Speedster land in the so-called real world (dubbed “Earth-Prime” in 1975) where he was a comic book character and had to work with guest-star Julius Schwartz to get home.

Young Adults For all his insight into why Marvel was beating DC in sales, Drake was still coming at his scripts from the perspective of a professional, without even the personal investment in the Marvel heroes that he’d had in the Doom Patrol or Stanley. His prospective competition came at established properties with the point-of-view of fans eager to shape the destinies of characters they’d once read about.

Stanley and His Monster #112 cover art by Bob Oksner and Tex Blaisdell. .

The first young writer that Schwartz hired came from the ranks of his letter pages and was someone the editor

In that final issue, the quartet of heroes was cornered and captured on an explosives-laden island by the evil Captain Zahl and Madame Rouge. They could have their freedom, Zahl promised, if they agreed to let the citizens of tiny Codsville, Maine (pop. 14) die in their place and prove themselves to be self-interested frauds. The Patrol’s Chief knew there was no question but he asked his comrades to sound off on whether they’d give their lives for strangers. “Strangers, Chief?” Negative Man asked. “Didn’t you teach us—all men are our brothers?” “The Pilgrims,” Elasti-Girl declared, “they were just ‘ordinary’ men, too. Not a genius among them.” “And the Hebrew children,” Robotman continued, “who wouldn’t bow to the Pharaoh—just ordinary shepherds and farmers.” “Here is our answer, Captain,” the team shouted. “Fire away!” And he did. As Elasti-Girl’s husband Steve (Mento) Dayton dropped a rose into the still-boiling waters where his wife died, the scene shifted to artist Bruno Premiani and editor Murray Boltinoff. Addressing the readers, Boltinoff declared that only they could work a miracle that would bring the Doom Patrol back: “You always wanted to be a super-hero, didn’t you? Okay, Charlie, let’s see you try!” Boltinoff’s figure had been intended to be Drake himself but, in a fit of pique, Donenfeld had the images redrawn at the last minute (Mougin, “Arnold Drake” 11). As the writer of DC’s most Marvel-esque series, Drake seemed a logical fit at Marvel itself. He quickly picked up regular assignments on their X-Men and Captain Marvel titles but was frustrated with having his stories drawn from

The Doom Patrol’s defiant response to their captors in DP #121 became . their finest moment. Art by Bruno Premiani. TM and © DC Comics.

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Echoing his earlier discoveries of Pat Boyette and Jim Aparo at Charlton, Dick Giordano had rummaged through his newly-acquired files and discovered a story pitch that Wolfman had made to George Kashdan (Arndt, “Cry Wolfman” 8). The new editor assigned the young man the task of undoing the “Junk-Heap Heroes” aspect of Blackhawk (in issue #242)—with dialogue by Bob Haney—and opened the door for both Wolfman and Wein to sell more short stories to Joe Orlando (Cooke, “An Illegitimate Son of Superman” 81-82).

The Flash visited the “real world” and comic book editor Julius Schwartz in Flash #179. . Art by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito. TM and © DC Comics.

regarded as “a correspondent—and darn good critic—who writes wellconceived letters in a breezy, almost flip style” (Friedrich 5). Although he’d invited the teenager to try his hand at a comics script in 1966, the veteran editor had no intention of treating him with kid gloves. “To pick out its faults,” Schwartz said of one early effort, “I’d need a derrick” (Friedrich 5). Enduring nine months of brutal criticism, Mike Friedrich finally made a breakthrough with a plot that pitted Robin against a motorcycle gang. Excising a marijuana scene that horrified Schwartz, the 18-year-old recalled that he “threw in an overly dramatic scene at the end and had some good, real modern slang that Fox/Broome were usually devoid of.” Days later, Friedrich received a $100 check from Schwartz ($10 per story page) and this message: “Please cash it—don’t frame it! The revised Robin story was a definite improvement—and while it still had faults and shortcomings, I decided to accept it—which no doubt is the greatest encouragement an enterprising writer could hope for—his first sale!” (Friedrich 9). By the time “Menace of the Motorcycle Marauders” was published in Batman #202 (June 1968), Friedrich had seen two follow-up scripts precede it in print (in The Spectre #3 and Batman #200) and was well on his way to becoming a trusted part of Schwartz’s stable. When Fox’s Elongated Man ended in Detective Comics #383,

Schwartz chose Friedrich to write the alternating Robin and Batgirl twoparters that moved in to replace it. The logic of having young adults write young adult characters extended to Teen Titans, where new editor Dick Giordano dropped Bob Haney from the scripts and replaced him in issue #18 (NovemberDecember 1968) with New York City duo Len Wein and Marv Wolfman. Their first story was a Cold War plea for brotherhood as the Titans— particularly Kid Flash— bristled at having to work alongside young Russian superhero Starfire before rising above their differences. The 22-year-old Wolfman and 20-year-old Wein were veteran fanzine contributors by this point and had aspirations of being a writer-artist team. Their first professional comics credit (“The Conjurer and the Man Called Armageddon”) in the movie magazine Castle of Frankenstein #12 (1968) had even been a joint collaboration in that vein. At DC, though, they each wound up as writers but credited their comparatively amateurish art skills at enhancing their ability to think visually in their scripts. 213

The duo worked with Giordano on a character for Showcase #78 (November 1968) about a hard-luck private eye named Jonny Double whose visuals were designed by Neal Adams but whose debut was actually drawn by Jack Sparling. Wolfman’s plot was ultimately dialogued by Charlton workhorse Joe Gill while Wein’s alternate pitch for the detective was rejected (Arndt, “Cry Wolfman” 9). His concept—a man who impersonated his clients; hence, the Double name—was eventually put to use in 1972’s Action Comics #419 as the Human Target .

Editor Dick Giordano drew the cover for Jonny Double’s tryout in . Showcase #78 but Jack Sparling penciled the interiors. TM and © DC Comics.

As a student at Manhattan’s High School of Art and Design, Wolfman also had the background to become an unpaid intern in DC’s art department. That primarily involved doing color separations on covers but Sol Harrison also assigned him to slice up and destroy pages of original art to keep them out of the hands of other publishers. Two years earlier, Wolfman and other teen fans had been touring the DC offices when Harrison wheeled past them with a cart of never-used pages stamped “written off” and asked if the boys would be interested in any as keepsakes. Wolfman went home with most of an unpublished Siegel and Shuster Superman story and was horrified that such treasures were being blithely destroyed (Thomas, “How Marv Wolfman…” 20). Consequently, Wolfman sliced those pages apart but— when Harrison wasn’t around—did so on his terms. Cutting the pages into thirds between tiers of panels, the young man was able to smuggle them out of the offices and reassemble them when he got home. He couldn’t save everything—Gil Kane’s origin of the Atom (Showcase #34) is one he specifically recalls being destroyed—but Wolfman tried his best. In his estimation, he salvaged about 500 pages. His goal, he explained, “was to preserve as much of this art as possible. Many of the 1940s pages [that exist today] exist only because they were rescued from incineration” (Thomas, “How Marv Wolfman…” 20). One of the fans who had helped Wolfman retrieve the art was Mark Hanerfeld, a 24-year-old who had graduated from taking tours of the DC offices to conducting them (with no difference in pay). Although he didn’t sell a comic book script until a bit later, Hanerfeld nonetheless managed to get a writing gig in many of DC’s titles over the course of 1968 (Cooke, “Mark Hanerfeld” 17). Frank Springer’s cover for Secret Six #1 doubled as the story’s first page.

Seeking a livelier counterpart of Marvel’s Bullpen Bulletins to replace its Direct Currents coming attraction pages, Carmine Infantino asked Hanerfeld to write a monthly fan-oriented text page called “The Wonderful World of Comics” that ran in most DC books. A mix of nostalgia, fanzine reviews, and promotions of new series, the feature was meant to attract diehard fans as was the companion “Fact File” series—comprised of biographies of 1940s DC heroes—that soon followed. Both pages were entertaining but fandom was increasingly less about the Good Old Days than the Here and Now. Hanerfeld himself knew that well, having taking over publication of the comic book industry’s preeminent news fanzine with On the Drawing Board #66 (which soon reverted to its original name, The Comic Reader).

Logo of DC’s short-lived fan page. TM and © DC Comics.

TM and © DC Comics.

It certainly wasn’t apparent to their young replacements. “It was really strange,” Steve Skeates remarked. “None of us knew at that time that the profit sharing and other stuff was going on. It was almost like we were scabs that were brought in, but we didn’t know it” (Brodsky 21).

Haunts, Humor, and Hearts Working quietly amidst the changes and upheaval, mildmannered editor Murray Boltinoff accepted whatever came his way, whether watching Ditko’s Creeper pulled from his office to Giordano’s, having his face pasted on Arnold Drake’s body in Doom Patrol #121, or taking control of Superboy. When he acquired the moribund fantasy book Tales of the Unexpected, Boltinoff made plans to introduce a more adult series in its pages…only to see it, too, yanked away for Giordano to edit. That feature—Secret Six—premiered with issue #1 (AprilMay 1968), not even bothering with the pretense of a Showcase tryout. It stemmed, writer E. Nelson Bridwell explained, from an idea that Carmine Infantino had about “a group of heroes with a leader who was secretly one of them—but no one knew which. He had saved the life of each, but had other holds on them as well, so they dared not disobey him.” Bridwell expanded on the leader, dubbing him Mockingbird, “a character who set out not only to stop criminals, but to hold them up to ridicule” (Rozakis 8).

With so many items about new and retooled DC series in those news columns, it was easy to miss the fact that some of DC’s long-standing writers were being dropped. 214

radio shows. For House of Mystery, I used the host to make fun of the story. I’d say, ‘Wait until you see the ending of this piece of drek,’ referring to the reprint” (Cooke, “Orlando’s Weird Adventures” 22).

DC returned to the horror (or “mystery”) genre with The Unexpected #105 (art by Bob Brown) . and House of Mystery #174 (art by Joe Orlando from an Infantino layout). TM and © DC Comics.

The bearded, bespectacled Cain—visually based on Len Wein and introduced in HoM #175—never actually insulted the reprints as Orlando recalled but he became enormously popular nonetheless. “His name always stood for evil, which gave him the proper horror twinge,” the editor noted. “Originally, I used to write all his dialogue and it was all pseudo-hip. I was very surprised by the reaction it got from readers, particularly the girls who associated him with their grandfather” (Levitz 8). A month after Cain’s debut, Unexpected #108 introduced his female counterpart, a crone with an eye-patch, skull earrings, and fishnet stockings: the Mad Mod Witch.

Every cover of House of Mystery—illustrated by Neal Adams from issue #175-on—featured children being menaced in some way, Orlando’s callback to Bill Gaines’ observation “that the best-selling covers he had published were ones that depicted boys in danger” (Cooke, “Orlando’s Weird Adventures” 22). Whether it was the covers, the host, or the concept in general, horror was a hit for both Orlando and Boltinoff.

With a roster that ranged from fashion model Crimson Dawn to African American nuclear physicist August Durant, the Frank Springer-illustrated series had a more realistic feel than the typical DC action comic and Bridwell took pride in his role in its creation: “Nothing I’ve written in comics had the originality, maturity and daring to try new fields that Secret Six possessed” (Rozakis 8). With the Secret Six taken out of his hands, Boltinoff quickly re-thought the direction of Tales, abbreviating its title to The Unexpected with issue #105 (February-March 1968) and redirecting it as an episodic horror book of the sort that Charlton and—until recently—Dell had had a bit of success with. Boltinoff still liked the idea of a continuing lead character, though, and had cartoonist Howard Purcell revive his Johnny Peril occult hero (1947-1953) in Unexpected #106. George Kashdan and artist Jack Sparling continued the series after that but the longterm health of the magazine ultimately owed more to its general suspense shorts than a regular feature.

The two editors also shared the remainder of DC’s humor line, with Boltinoff editing Jerry Lewis and Sugar and Spike and Orlando handling Inferior Five (cancelled with issue #10), Stanley and His Monster (ending with issue #112), Angel and the Ape, Leave It to Binky (revived with issue #61), and Swing With Scooter. Encouraged by Carmine Infantino to aggressively compete with Archie Comics on the latter two teen humor comics,

On the heels of Boltinoff’s relaunch, Joe Orlando did the same with House of Mystery, dropping Dial “H” For Hero and the Manhunter From Mars in favor of horror short stories starting with issue #174 (May-June 1968). Aside from a Sergio Aragonés humor filler (“Page 13”), the first issue was all-reprint and the immediate follow-ups managed only one new story per issue. “I read the [old] stories and most of them were 1940s hokey,” Orlando recalled. “I had to use the stuff because of budget. I decided that I would use one page to present a new character that would introduce the book, which is, of course, from my many discussions with Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein. I knew that they had gotten their ideas for hosts [in the 1950s EC Comics] from the old

The horror books offered comic relief in the form of grizzled hippie Cain (seen here in . House of Mystery #177) and the Mad Mod Witch (Unexpected #108). TM and © DC Comics.

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Orlando looked at their output for points of distinction. With Binky comprised of stylistically-edited 1950s reprints, the editor put most of his emphasis on Scooter, downplaying its humorous adventures and British origins in favor of more generic teen hijinks. Its more realistic art style was replaced with an Archie-esque look (courtesy of artist Henry Scarpelli) in issue #14 (August-September 1968). The most superficial—but highly effective—change was applied to Scooter, Binky, and even Stanley, all of which simultaneously acquired rounded Archie-style cover logos with the same primary colors.

and shorts, the isolated heroine could breathe underwater and endeared herself to the crew of the U.S.S. Arabesque as they taught her English and introduced her to delicacies like chocolate ice cream. Although remembered with enormous fondness by many fans, the issue didn’t lead to an ongoing series. Pike contended that DC was interested but he was unable to get them “to either let me own the copyright or at least let me have a piece of it. […] I wasn’t going to write and draw it, with nothing extra for my creation. I could make more money [in advertising art]” (Amash, “Comic Artists…” 39).

Orlando laughed that those issues Meanwhile, Joe Orlando opened of Binky and Scooter “sold like crazy! Young Romance #154-156 (June-Ju80-90 per cent sales on a print run. ly to October-November 1968) with It got to the point where the puba tragic trilogy about the love affair lisher of Archie called up Liebowbetween a social worker and a poitz and started yelling, ‘You tell liceman, a story that was fresher Orlando to stop using our red and and more contemporary than any blue in the Binky logo!’ I laughed DC romance material short of the when Carmine told me about that Leave It To Binky #63 cover art by Bob Oksner and Tex Blaisdell. Jack Miller-edited serials. call, thinking what a great Supreme TM and © DC Comics. Part of its appeal was penciler Mike Court case it would make: ‘Archie Sekowsky, a longtime contributor to the love books who Comics sues DC Comics over the use of the colors red and broke away from the conservative layouts he used there blue’” (Cooke, “Orlando’s Weird Adventures” 23). and in JLA to deliver some of his most striking work to date. Orlando regarded the teen humor titles as DC’s “girl’s Equally inspired was the decision to have his pencils inked books” (Cooke, “Orlando’s Weird Adventures” 22), but he by Dick Giordano, bringing out a prettiness in the characand Dick Giordano each picked up a female-centric roters unlike anything seen in earlier Sekowsky art jobs. mance comic book to edit, too. “The romance covers were the books I was allowed to design,” Giordano enthused, “and they were the love of my life!” Taking over Young Love with issue #68 (July-August 1968), Giordano introduced a serial about an aimless heiress entitled “The Life and Loves of Lisa St. Claire.” Inspired by an unrealized newspaper strip proposal (with its heroine named after Giordano’s daughter), the editor gave the material to Jack Miller and had him write the series. Jay Scott Pike—the editor’s “favorite romance artist”—drew the feature (Cooke, “Along Came Giordano” 33). Giordano also edited a Pike creation called Dolphin that ran in Showcase #79 (December 1968). A platinum blonde wearing only a cut-off shirt

A Mike Sekowsky/Dick Giordano spread from Young Romance #156, concluding a tear-jerking trilogy. TM and © DC Comics.

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Thoroughly Modern

Steve Trevor but she decided she rather liked the makeover.

The Sekowsky-Giordano team was immediately moved to the pages of Wonder Woman #178 (September-October 1968), setting the stage for perhaps the most radical change in the character’s history. The industry’s best-known super-heroine comic book hadn’t approached the stellar sales figures of Superman or Batman since the 1940s but its numbers were becoming a particular concern for DC. After hitting a 1960s peak in 1961 (with an average of 230,000 copies sold per issues), WW had seen its sales drop to 166,365 by 1968. Consulting new Wonder Woman editor Jack Miller, Carmine Infantino began work on saving the title.

That was fortunate because the following issue required her to give up her red, white, and blue costume altogether. With her mother and Amazon sisters obligated to leave the Earthly plane to renew their power, Wonder Woman could either go with them or stay behind— minus all of her extraordinary abilities and accessories. With Steve once again in grave danger, Diana opted for life as a mortal. She was barely back in the United States when a blind, aged Asian man approached her with the news that they had a common enemy called Doctor Cyber.

Mike Sekowsky had indepenDiana’s new mentor called himdently been working on a new self I Ching, after the ancient heroine, one that he saw as evChinese philosophy texts, and erything that Wonder Woman scripter Denny O’Neil—who was not. “I felt girls might want to created the character—subseread about a super female in the quently regretted the name. real world,” he explained, “some“I didn’t realize I was being thing very current.” Having done patronizing to a book that is Wonder Woman went mod in a big way when the Sekowsky/Giordano . so, the cartoonist learned that his venerated by a culture that far art team arrived in WW #178. TM and © DC Comics. ideas were going to be integrated predates ours,” he explained. “I into Wonder Woman itself, which have great respect for the I Chhe would pencil (Daniels, Wonder Woman 126). ing as a book now, but at the time there was a hippie vogue for it” (Daniels, Wonder Woman 128). The cover of the milestone WW #178 showed a poster of the star-spangled heroine and her strait-laced Diana Prince alDiana’s own hip image and mod jumpsuits seemed to ter ego in the background, an “x” painted over the image by come straight from Sekowsky’s design of the 1966 Gold Key a woman in the foreground who wore black leather boots spy heroine Jet Dream but the cartoonist credited a more and a mod purple smock. This, the copy shouted, was “the prominent influence. That was Diana Rigg’s portrayal of new Wonder Woman.” The story inside required Diana’s fashion-conscious British operative Emma Peel on TV’s adoption of modern fashions to infiltrate the hippie comThe Avengers. While not a ratings blockbuster in its Unitmunity and investigate a murder charge against boyfriend ed States airings, The Avengers had a cult following and Sekowsky counted himself as one of its fans. “We were all in love with Diana Rigg,” he later declared (Daniels, Wonder Woman 129). The final stage of the transition took place in WW #180 (dated January-February 1969 but on sale in November 1968). After more than a quarter-century as Wonder Woman’s increasingly neglected boyfriend, Steve Trevor was gunned down by the forces of Doctor Cyber (who was unmasked as a beautiful woman). Although the early plots of the revamped series were a collaborative effort between Carmine Infantino, O’Neil, and Sekowsky, it was the artist who took credit for the landmark death. “Steve Trevor was dull and boring and I didn’t like him much,” he later snorted in WW #195’s letter column, “so I disposed of him.” The cumulative effect of the changes was stunning. At its core, the idea of stripping away Wonder Woman’s costume and powers seemed antithetical—like doing a Superman comic book starring Clark Kent—but it struck a chord with

Wonder Woman #179 and #180 stripped its star of both her powers . and her boyfriend. TM and © DC Comics.

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readers who had long ago dismissed the heroine as stodgy and irrelevant. The new Wonder Woman had vulnerabilities and doubts and adversaries closer to the real world, all details that pushed the same buttons that Marvel Comics did. The early Sekowsky issues, Infantino later enthused, had “a 60-65 percent sell through” (Murray 39).

separated from their now-comatose creator Doc Magnus. In contrast to Wonder Woman, the darkening of the oncewhimsical feature smacked of desperation but it enabled Metal Men to survive into 1969. That was more than could be said for the ill-fated Brother Power the Geek. The title was the brainchild of Joe Simon, invited to develop a project for DC after Jack Liebowitz published a book of fumetti (A Funny Thing Happened to Me on the Way to Tel Aviv) that the veteran editor had put together in 1967 (Cooke, “The Man Behind the Prez” 25). Co-written by Simon’s brother-in-law Jack Oleck and penciled by Al Bare, Brother Power managed to make the Simon-produced Harvey heroes of 1966 seem positively conventional.

Sekowsky, whose influence on the series expanded the following year, had no apologies for those who missed the classic look and cast. “The old Wonder Woman was dropped because the sales on the old WW were so bad the book was going to be dropped,” he asserted in issue #189’s letter column. “The new Wonder Woman was given a chance—(a last chance for the book)—and it worked! […] I can honestly say that I am quite pleased to have taken a sow’s ear and turned it into a silk purse. […] I personally feel that too many of DC’s stories are still being written and plotted for the year 1940 instead of 1970.”

“Here,” the cover to its first issue had proclaimed, “is the real-life scene of the dangers in Hippie-land!” That assumed that a definition of “real-life” included a tailor’s dummy brought to life in the blood and sweat-stained clothes of a band of hippies. Brother Power’s origin, incidentally, was straight out of a 1952 story (“A Rag, A Bone and a Hank of Hair”) from the Simon-edited Black Magic [Vol. 2] #7.

Alongside Wonder Woman, Sekowsky was also penciling a retooled Bob Kanigher creation, dubbed The New Hunted Metal Men on its covers effective with issue #33 (AugustSeptember 1968). Having temporarily left the book following his breakdown, Kanigher returned under editor Jack Miller to launch a series that saw the sextet of robots targeted for acts of wanton destruction and

“The lazy ways of the hippies are not for Brother Power,” a caption told readers early on, maintaining the older generation’s characterization of flower children. The protagonist spent two issues trying to better himself even as he was confronted by all manner of sinister forces. Influenced by his zeal for life, the hippies ran him for Congress in issue #1 and joined him on the assembly line at a missile plant in issue #2 after Brother Power assured them the rockets were strictly for space exploration. By the end of the issue, Brother Power—“Please don’t call me geek, sir.”—had been branded a saboteur by California Governor Ronald Reagan and fired into space by the evil Lord Sliderule. And there he remained. The series had been a hard sell from the start, beginning with DC’s rejection of Simon’s original title—Brother Power the FreakOut—because it was slang for an LSD trip. Once the comic book actually went on sale, Mort Weisinger got a load of it and informed Liebowitz that Brother Power was a hotbed of drug innuendo (Groth 108). The third issue—reportedly completely drawn—remains unseen to this day. Ironically, despite tepid returns on the first issue, Infantino said that sales had begun to rise with issue #2 (Cooke, “Director Comments” 11). Instead, Brother Power the Geek went down in comic book history as one of the industry’s greatest flops.

Original splash page for Brother Power #1—courtesy of Heritage Auctions—before DC demanded that the Freak-Out name be replaced because it was a drug reference. TM and © DC Comics.

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A month after Brother Power #1, Weisinger delivered a more respectable hero in the form of Captain Action #1 (October-November 1968). Based on the hugely popular toy figure who could be posed in the costumes of multiple action heroes, the

to thwart the cyborg General Simon Mace from murdering President Lyndon Johnson. Blood flowed freely in the story, punctuated by moments of shocking gore like a hand being crushed to an oozing pulp or a gun shattering a man’s teeth as it was shoved into his mouth.

comic book filled in gaps that manufacturer Ideal had never needed to work out. Cap, the first issue elaborated, was archaeologist Clive Arno and his acquisition of several ancient enchanted coins enabled him to channel the powers of whichever mythological god was on their face. Joined by his teenage son Carl as Action Boy, the hero faced off against his former colleague Krellik, who was using the coin of a god of evil.

“When I first started to do Green Lantern and the Atom,” Kane recalled, “they wouldn’t allow me to do more than one panel of action, of fighting action in a fight.” With Savage and “stuff I had total control over, I just let loose. I indulged myself in every way. Obviously, I tried to conform to the requirements of the character, but still I didn’t practice too much restraint” (Catron 49).

“Mort called me and asked if I’d like to create a new character,” Jim Shooter recalled. “I said yes—then he said, okay, his name is Captain Action (?!). He has an Actionmobile, a kid sidekick named Action Boy (??!!), a pet Action Panther and a secret Action Headquarters (???!!!) and, by the way, he’s also a G.I. Joesized action figure. He went on: Superman must make an appearance in the first issue, because the cover was going to feature Captain Action pushing Superman aside to take on whatever menace I concocted. Sigh. Okay” (Eury, “Jim Shooter Interview” 74).

The project grew out of an unrealized Archie-style teen magazine that James Warren had commissioned Kane to draw. Although that series never came about, the veteran artist felt liberated by the thought of working from a studio rather than Captain Action pulled rank on Superman in this Wally . Wood-illustrated page from CA #1. TM and © Captain . at home (Catron 49). Mulling the Action Enterprises, LLC. Superman TM and © DC Comics. possibilities, Kane became excited about doing a comic book in the black and white format as a long-form story rather than the collection of shorts that As he’d done since 1966, Shooter rendered the story as were typical of everything from Creepy to Mad. Creating an fully drawn pages and Weisinger delivered them to issue imprint called Adventure House Press, Kane worked out a #1’s official artist Wally Wood. The legendary penciler used distribution and funding deal with Kable News and signed the teenager’s layouts only as a guide but the fact that the a contract to produce three 35-cent issues. Archie Goodyoung man had drawn them at all was enough to prompt win, using the pseudonym Robert Franklin so as not to risk Wood to ink credits for both of them onto the splash page. his Marvel assignments, co-plotted While most of Jim Shooter’s writand scripted Savage #1’s “Return of ing credits were known via letter the Half-Man” while Robert Foster columns if not fanzines, Weisinger painted the cover. was still strictly Old School when it came to identifying creators on the In the long-term, Kane found the stories themselves. More than two experience both fulfilling and years after he began writing for DC, transformative, one that initially Shooter finally had his first splash gave him the confidence to sign page credit (Eury, “Jim Shooter Inwith Bantam Books in 1968 to proterview” 74). duce the graphic novel Blackmark (released in 1971). Savage “had Savage Tales genuine power,” the cartoonist beEffective with issue #2, Wood was lieved. “It was more than simply succeeded on Captain Action by Gil the violence. I think there were Kane, returning to DC following a scenes there and ideas at play…afsix month sabbatical. After drawing ter all, I’m not claiming anything The Atom #37 and Green Lantern profound for the material. I felt it #61, the co-creator of those two Silwas freeing. Not only that, my work ver Age champions left to develop began to improve by leaps and an action hero whose world was as bounds. […] All of a sudden in doing violent and ugly as the typical su[Savage and Blackmark] I organized perhero’s was sanitized. Over the a whole set of exercises for myself course of a forty page story in His to teach myself how to draw. WithName Is…Savage! #1 (June 1968), a in six months I was ten times the Before taking a sabbatical from Green Lantern, Gil Kane and jailed U.S. spy was returned to action artist, and within a year I was doing writer John Broome created back-up GL Guy Gardner for issue #59. TM and © DC Comics.

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gal repercussions for its use of actor Lee Marvin’s image (based on a character in the movie Point Blank) as the basis of Savage (Hanerfeld, “News: 7/68” 1). While Kane did alter his lead character’s visage for a 1982 reprinting, he later insisted “we never had any trouble from Lee Marvin” or anyone else (Groth 86).

some of the best work I ever did in this business” (Catron 52). For a moment in 1968, it seemed as if magazineformat dramatic comics were the new trend. Along with Warren’s Creepy and Eerie (now edited by Bill Parente) and Adventure House’s Savage, Marvel tried its Spectacular Spider-Man, Charlton released a magazine of Gilbert Shelton’s Wonder Warthog had been a cult favorite but it bombed as a nationally-distributed Hercules (reprintmagazine. TM and © Gilbert Shelton. ing content from the color comic), and Myron Fass claim-jumped the title of EC Comics’ famed 1950s horror comic for one reprint issue entitled Tales From the Crypt under the Eerie Publications imprint.

The problem was all in distribution. “Out of 200,000 copies printed,” he noted, “only 20,000 copies got on the newsstands. There wasn’t any chance” (Catron 50). Kane put the blame indirectly on the Comics Code, whose strictures Savage violated throughout. “There were individuals who were involved with the Code who decided to act in order to suppress publication of the magazine,” he insisted. “I lost three of the printers I had by having people make phone calls and suggest that I was turning out a pornographic book, something that would bring great disreputation to the entire field and threaten the publishing of comics, by all the legitimate publishers” (Catron 50). Incidents like that notwithstanding, the stamp of approval of the much-maligned Comics Code didn’t seem to matter as much in 1968 as it had a decade earlier. The various magazine-format comics had bypassed it, Dell and Gold Key never signed up, and two squeaky-clean small publishers dropped out. George A. Pflaum’s Catholic-oriented Treasure Chest left the Code with its September 7, 1967 edition and Fawcett did the same with Dennis the Menace #96 (May 1968).

On the other hand, sales on Millar Publishing’s two issues of Gilbert Shelton’s Wonder Wart-Hog magazine (launched in 1967 with a 50-cent retail) were so bad that publisher Pete Millar was forced to sell the rights to his flagship Drag Cartoons to his printer and leave the United States (Bass). “The thing was too weird for the distributors and most of the [140,000] copies stayed in the warehouses,” Shelton remembered. “Only 40,000 of each number were sold” (Rosenkranz 91). Mad writer Jerry DeFuccio planned a slick 75-cent color comics anthology that would touch on all genres and include a failed newspaper strip (Alias the Owl) that he and artist Mart Bailey had worked up in 1966 (Kaler, “What’s News: 11/67” 6; Hanerfeld, “What’s News: 1/68” 4). Despite assembling several stories for the book, DeFuccio was never able to get it off the ground (Hanerfeld, “On the Drawing Board: 5/69” 3). Gil Kane met with disappointment of his own. As work began on His Name Is…Savage! #2 and #3 with contributors Neal Adams and Gray Morrow, word spread that the series was facing le-

Gil Kane’s His Name Is Savage was a shocking departure from the artist’s Code-approved comics. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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This infamous Dick Tracy strip was published one day after Robert F. Kennedy’s death. Original art courtesy of Heritage Auctions. . TM and © TMS News and Features, LLC.

For the publishers still submitting their pages for approval, the Code sank its editorial teeth in with a vengeance. “The Code people object to ghost stories as a genre and are going over panels carefully,” Don and Maggie Thompson reported in the fall. “A number of panels have had to be redone for [DC’s] Spectre and Creeper, for instance, narrowing eyes which had been wide with horror, tightening up mouths to eliminate the ‘all-the-better-to-eat-you-withmy-dear’ effect and eliminating a fire effect around the Devil” (Thompson, “Code Cracks Down” 1).

Walter Cronkite that the war was unwinnable and its escalation brought the world “closer to the brink of cosmic disaster.” Six months after original artist Joe Kubert was succeeded by John Celardo, the Tales of the Green Beret newspaper strip was discontinued on July 20. Meanwhile, a March 18-May 27 Steve Canyon story—which culminated with Dogie Hogan launching a furious aerial assault on North Vietnam—effectively ended cartoonist Milton Caniff’s syndication in Canada when its nationally distributed Toronto Star Weekly dropped the strip.

The development came in the wake of a nationwide debate on violence in the media. From 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde— which set a new film benchmark for bloody realism—to Clint Eastwood’s dark Westerns, popular entertainment was displaying an intensity that many found deeply troubling in a cause-and-effect sort of way.

“The loss of a couple dozen papers out of a client list of over 600 was not in itself cause for alarm,” Caniff biographer R.C. Harvey wrote, “but it was the first time he had lost significant numbers. And most cancelled for the same reason—Caniff’s apparent support of the Vietnam conflict.” As U.S. papers continued to drop Canyon, the cartoonist pulled its hero out of the war zone (Harvey 762).

That national sense of unease sprang from some of the 1960s’ bleakest headlines. On April 4, 1968, not quite five years after proclaiming his dream of a better nation, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed on a Memphis motel balcony. King’s murder and Lyndon Johnson’s decision not to seek reelection led many in the nation to turn their eyes to Presidential nominee Robert F. Kennedy as a symbol of hope for the polarized nation. Tragically, assassin Sirhan Sirhan gunned down Kennedy following a June 5 rally in Los Angeles and the 42-year-old Senator died the following day.

The furor was enough to prompt a “Violence in the Comics” symposium on September 26 courtesy of the Newspaper Comics Council. In the course of the meeting, Dr. Joyce Brothers noted that 30% of doctors at an American Psychiatric Association conference believed that fictional violence inspired the real thing while another 24% thought that it was cathartic and helped ease tensions. Milton Caniff scoffed that violence was around long before cartoons, declaring the scapegoating was “a schluffing [sic] off of responsibility on long-suffering comic artists” (Walker 123).

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times was running a Dick Tracy continuity in which its hero—deep in the throes of his science-fiction phase—was on the verge of vaporizing Intro with a laser gun. On June 7, a symbolic panel declared, “Violence is golden, when it’s used to put down evil.” The reaction to the ill-timed strip—produced weeks before Kennedy’s death—was immediate, with many papers condemning it and some dropping the feature altogether. Charles Hauser, executive editor of North Carolina’s Greensboro Daily News, cancelled both Tracy and Little Orphan Annie. “It wasn’t that the strips contain a great deal of violence,” he explained, “but rather that they advocated it” (Wichert 16).

On November 12, Stan Lee entered the fray, engaging in a radio debate with Hilde Mosse, a child psychiatrist who was as zealously anti-comics as her better known colleague Dr. Frederic Wertham. “One function of literature and art is it makes us recognize things in the world around us,” Lee observed. “It gives us a better perspective.” “The thing that I fear is a fanatical do-gooder,” he continued. “I fear that terribly. I fear the person who knows what’s right and what’s wrong for my child. I fear the person who, when I write a story that I think is amusing and entertaining, and I really think I’m as good a judge as anyone else, and I know I’m not a villain, I fear the person who says, ‘That’s bad because I say so’” (Farber 66).

Advocacy of Vietnam was also a concern, amplified by the February 27 editorial declaration of renowned newscaster 221

August 1, 1968: The second of black youngster Franklin’s first three appearances in Charles Schulz’s Peanuts. TM and © Peanuts Worldwide LLC.

Undeterred by such arguments, Comics Code administrator Leonard Darvin put forth an amendment in July to ban advertising of “war toys” in comic books—everything from BB guns to flash paper to toy tanks—“almost to the point of nonexistence” (Van Gelder 1). There’s no indication that anything came of the proposal but many in the children’s entertainment industry were sensitive to public concern.

schoolteacher who inspired his creation was a bit disappointed that the cautious Schulz never allowed the wellmannered youngster to develop the distinctive failings of the white cast members but she was nonetheless proud of his existence. “I always refer to Franklin as my fourth child,” she later said (Gertler 74). The ground-breaking TV series I Spy—which, ironically, went off the air in 1968—inspired no less than three comics pitches, each of them focusing on the partnership of black and white adventurers. The Don Perlin-created “Focus: Danger” (Charlton’s Strange Suspense Stories #3, on sale in May 1968) owed the most obvious debt to the TV show. The visuals for globetrotting photographers Johnny Briggs and Kirk Richards were unmistakably based on I Spy stars Bill Cosby and Robert Culp. Although clearly meant to be a series, “Focus: Danger” never appeared again.

The National Association of Broadcasters reminded people that it had banned advertising for realistic toy guns a year earlier while retailer Sears, Roebuck & Co. quietly removed the war toy section from its 1968 Christmas catalog—although it continued to have the product available (“Battle to Ban War Toys Gains” 11). Even the Motion Picture Association of America bowed to pressure, introducing a ratings system that initially included the classifications of G (for general audiences), M (parental discretion advised), R (children under 16 prohibited without adult guardian), and X (adults only).

Nor did Deadline, a comic strip proposal by African American commentator Louis Lomax and white artist Don Sherwood. Touted in the October 19, 1968 edition of Editor & Publisher, the National Newspaper Syndicate feature was said to follow the adventures of black reporter Ron Curtis and his white partner Frank Hilton.

Black and White Along with the focus on violence came a renewed emphasis on integrating the mostly white population of comics. In the wake of Dr. King’s assassination, a white schoolteacher named Harriet Glickman wrote to Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz and urged him to consider “the introduction of Negro children into the group.” In a letter dated April 26, Schulz conceded that it was an idea that he’d long considered but had never acted on out of fear of “patronizing our Negro friends.” Maintaining her correspondence, Glickman included other letters of support—including one from Los Angeles councilman and future mayor Tom Bradley—and finally won over the cartoonist (Gertler 72-73).

No evidence exists to indicate that the strip actually made it to newspapers but a similar feature called Dateline: Danger—distributed by Publishers-Hall Syndicate—premiered less than a month later on November 11. Al McWilliams—artist on Gold Key’s I Spy comic book—drew the strip, which was written by John Saunders with input from Saunders’ African American friend Art Edgerton. The reporter team in this version was the black Danny Raven and white Theodore Randolph Oscar Young (“Troy”). The strip picked up more than 100 subscribers in its first year but, like an increasing amount of newspaper adventure features, it was unable to sustain those numbers for long and was ultimately discontinued on March 17, 1974.

In the Peanuts dailies for July 31-August 2, Charlie Brown met a black youngster named Franklin during a trip to the beach. The newcomer made a return visit in October and continued to return at intervals in the years ahead. The

The only known sample of Louis Lomax and Don Sherwood’s unrealized Deadline comic strip. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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One of the year’s most touching stories didn’t mention race at all. In “Brother, Take My Hand” (Marvel’s Daredevil #47: December 1968), Stan Lee and Gene Colan told the story of discharged soldier Willie Lincoln—blinded in Vietnam—and his encounters with Daredevil and the hero’s lawyer alter ego Matt Murdock. Disheartened that he could never resume a nor-

We Can Be Happy Underground Many in the counterculture might have argued that it was they who were living life to the fullest. That lifestyle was actively being promoted in a growing network of so-called underground newspapers ranging from New York’s East Village Other to California’s Berkeley Barb. Discussing their broad mission statement, historian Les Daniels wrote that “certain positions were obvious: opposition to the draft and the war in Vietnam, opposition to drug prohibition, support for oppressed minority groups, demands for sexual freedom including women’s liberation, and a general mistrust of government and academic institutions” (Daniels, Comix 168). A highlight of those papers were their cartoons and a rising star named Robert Crumb. Following his ill-fated experience with Help! in 1965, the cartoonist had eventually returned to his job at American Greetings in Cleveland. In 1967, though, stories of the freewheeling hippie movement on the west coast were enough to convince him—and eventually his wife Dana—to make the move to San Francisco. “When Crumb arrived,” historian Patrick Rosenkranz wrote, “rents were low, food was cheap, and people got by dealing drugs and living on welfare” (Rosenkranz 70). The final panel of Daredevil #47’s “Brother, Take My Hand.” Art by Gene Colan . and George Klein. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Under the influence of LSD and other drugs, Crumb declared, “My comic thing flowered in this fertile environment. I figured it out somehow—the way to put the stoned experience into a series of cartoon panels” (Rosenkranz 70). The cartoonist quickly became a contributor to the underground papers, notably the Philadelphia-based Yarrowstalks edited by Brian Zahn. Its first issue (May 5, 1967) introduced Crumb’s Mr. Natural, a bearded robed guru who mocked the current fascination with eastern mysticism. Meanwhile, the mainstream men’s magazine Cavalier took an interest in Crumb, as well, publishing his “Stoned” in its October 1967 edition and serializing a Fritz the Cat story (“Fritz Bugs Out”) from February to October 1968.

mal life, Lincoln was stunned when Murdock revealed that he was blind himself and had persevered through hard work. By the end of the issue, the young man had hope again and he mused that Murdock “never made a big deal” about reviving his spirit. “Maybe,” he concluded, “that’s what brotherhood is all about.” Incidental to the story was the fact that Willie was black. Brotherhood, Lee had explained in Stan’s Soapbox just three issues earlier in DD #44, was the one subject that he considered universal enough to extol in the pages of Marvel Comics. Otherwise, he elaborated, “we seek to avoid editorializing about controversial issues—not because we haven’t our opinions, but rather because we share the same diversity of opinions as Americans everywhere.” Lee and Kirby did weigh in on the subject of hippies, though, at least the ones they regarded as slovenly. In Thor #154 (July 1968), the Thunder God met a trio of dropouts who conceded that they liked his long hair and “the guru getup” but that his enchanted hammer was “from nowhere.” Lecturing the hippies, Thor declared, “’Tis not by dropping out—but by plunging in—into the maelstrom of life itself—that thou shalt find thy wisdom.” If they failed to live to the fullest, he concluded, “thou be unworthy of the title— man!”

Crumb received some of his greatest reactions to strips he drew for the East Village Other. “These 1967 strips of mine contained the hopeful spirit of the times,” he explained, “drawn in a loveable big-foot style. The stuff caught on. They wanted more. Suddenly I was able to churn it out” (Rosenkranz 71). What he produced was 48 pages of new comics that he intended to self-publish in two issues of a series he dubbed Zap Comix.

Vaughn Bodé original cover art for the October 25, 1968 edition of The East Village Other, courtesy of Heritage Auctions. . TM and © respective copyright holder.

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Would-be publisher Brian Zahn disappeared with the artwork for the first issue but Crumb was determined to get his remaining 24 pages into print. Working with new publisher Don Donahue and printer Charles Plymell, the cartoonist man-

aged to get 3500 copies of Zap #1 published via outmoded machinery. Priced at 35¢ and bearing an Apex Novelties insignia, that first issue also cautioned that it was “for adult intellectuals only!”

creator, becoming both hugely popular and repeatedly used on unauthorized product without his permission or compensation. On February 25, 1968, though, Crumb was just happy if anyone would buy a copy. Loading up copies of Zap #1 into a baby carriage, he, a pregnant Dana, and Don Donahue strolled San Francisco’s Haight Street and tried to sell copies to mystified hippies who had never seen a comic book like that before. The bulk of the print run, Donahue added, was sold to Haight Street’s Third World Distribution and began to spread across the country from there (Rosenkranz 74-75).

Among its features were a new Mr. Natural story, the debut of the tightly-wound Whiteman, and perhaps Crumb’s best known image: “Keep On Truckin’.” Inspired by Blind Boy Fuller’s song, “Truckin’ My Blues Away,” the short featured a group of beaming men walking with cartoonishly exaggerated legs and feet stretched out before them. The page’s central image went on to haunt its

Befitting its name, Zap electrified the counterculture’s artistic community. There had been underground comix before it—Frank Stack’s Adventures of Jesus (1964), Jack Jackson’s God Nose (1964), and Joel Beck’s Lenny of Laredo (1965) among them—but none of them lit the fire that Crumb’s issue did. “Here was this whole medium of expression that had been neglected for so long or relegated to this very inferior position and nobody had done much with it,” Don Donahue declared. “And all of a sudden someone did start doing something with it, and then there was this explosion” (Rosenkranz 75). “When Crumb did Zap, that was a surprise to me,” Wonder Warthog creator Gilbert Shelton declared. “I’d never thought of doing a comic book, I just thought of doing pages for newspapers. I didn’t like comic books.” Inspired, Shelton printed his own 24-page comic book in Austin, Texas (Rosenkranz 92). Along with Wonder Warthog, Feds ‘n’ Heads Comics also featured an early appearance of the Shelton-created stoners known as the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. As he worked on the issue, Shelton heard from Jay Lynch, a contributor to Chicago’s underground papers. Frustrated that “the hippies [reading his cartoons] just didn’t seem to grasp the concept of satire,” Lynch was inspired by Zap to produce the 32-page Bijou Funnies #1 with contributions from Crumb, Shelton, Skip Williamson, and Jay Kinney (Lynch 14). Lynch’s contributions included an appearance by his signature man and cat duo Nard ‘n’ Pat.

The smoldering underground comix. movement caught fire with the release of . Robert Crumb’s first issue of Zap. Zap Comix TM and © ZAP Comix. Keep On Truckin’ TM and © R. Crumb. Feds ‘n’ Heads TM and © Gilbert Shelton.

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tation for sexually-charged twisted artwork. The transformation, he noted, “immediately drove away most of the female readers” (Rosenkranz 88-89). Moscoso, the savviest businessman in the group, urged them to properly register the Zap trademark. “I used my business experience, which included deals, copyrights, distribution, and I just dropped Zap right into it. That’s probably the most valuable thing I did for Zap, that and keep it artist owned” (Rosenkranz 86). The team also made a deal with the Print Mint—a psychedelic poster marketer—to distribute Zap. Shelton, Lynch, and others soon made arrangements of their own to have the Print Mint disseminate their comix, too. The distributor unexpectedly got to publish Crumb’s earlier work when photocopies of the original Zap #1’s 24 pages surfaced. Rather than confuse fans, Crumb had it published as Zap Comix #0. Jay Lynch noted that the distribution process was revolutionary: “The underground comix weren’t typically newsstand items. They were sold in head shops and had a wholesale distribution system more akin to the way cigarette papers or bongs were being sold. They weren’t consigned. They were wholesaled. This method of distribution later became known as ‘direct sales.’ And with the advent of original material being distributed to comic shops, it was this method of distribution, devised by the under-

Meanwhile, Crumb was looking to expand the content of Zap beyond his own work and one of the first artists he approached was Rick Griffin. Renowned for the psychedelic posters and imagery he’d been producing over the past few years, Griffin had not only been profiled with other pop artists in the September 1, 1967 issue of Life but had designed the logo for the new Rolling Stone magazine. Griffin’s 1967 Sunday Funnies poster—broken down into cartoon panels—had inspired Crumb and he hoped the artist would join him. Griffin agreed to be a contributor and suggested his friend Victor Moscoso—also featured in Life— take part, as well. S. Clay Wilson completed the Zap Comix quartet and, in some ways, influenced the direction of underground comix just as much as Crumb had. Their content was undeniably not for children, interwoven as it was with profanity, drug usage, nudity, and innuendo. Wilson, though, pushed barriers that shocked even his colleagues, creating images of grotesqueries, mutilation, and sexual deviancy. His work “either delighted or appalled comic readers,” Patrick Rosenkranz wrote, “but certainly caught their attention” (Rosenkranz 87). The cartoons broke something loose in Crumb. “I had always had this built-in censor in my head because I was always trying to do something that had popular appeal, you know?” he explained. “And this censorship was so deeply ingrained in me that I never thought of it. It was just there.” Crumb vowed to break those self-imposed taboos and—beginning with comix like Snatch #1—acquired a new repu-

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ground comix publishers, that eventually saved the entire comic book industry because in 1968, comic book shops were essentially used magazine stores. It wasn’t until [later] that the ‘straight’ publishers thought to print original material for direct sale to the comic shops” (Lynch 15).

was its delivery system. Wood had sold mail order subscriptions to the title through issue #8 but, by the time issue #4 was published in 1968, the treasury was tapped out. In a burst of enthusiasm, the cartoonist’s assistant Bill Pearson—gainfully employed by a Manhattan art studio called Admaster—offered to take over. “For the sum of one dollar,” he recalled, “I inherited a title, a file of unused artwork (much of which Wood had accepted but I didn’t like at all), and that four-issue commitment. Magazines that had already been paid for” (Schelly 42).

Although it shared the same spirit of personal expression as the undergrounds, Wally Wood’s prozine witzend also differed from them in many ways, not the least of which

Pearson’s first issue (dated October 1968) was as eclectic as those that preceded it. Along with a story by underground cartoonist Vaughn Bodé, there were art portfolios by Reed Crandall and Jim Steranko (the latter featuring the swordwielding Talon) and material by Roger Brand, Ed Paschke, and James Frankfort. Wood himself contributed “Pipsqueak Papers” and the Tolkien-esque “World of the Wizard King” but the new publisher found it a challenge to get anything else out of Wood. “Once he was out from under,” Pearson noted, “he disengaged completely” (Schelly 42). Wood’s new challenges were diverse. He’d recently done a Christmas newspaper continuity (Bucky’s Christmas Caper: December 4-23, 1967) and produced an award-winning Alka-Seltzer print ad (“Stomachs get even at night.”) that he was storyboarding for a 1968 TV commercial. A March 23, 1968 TV Guide cover showed a Wood-illustrated army of TV superheroes thundering toward animated funny animals. He was also approached about creating a four-page color comics insert for a proposed tabloid called Military News that was intended for servicemen. Wood came up with several humorous features—“Joe’s Bar and Grill”; “Lt. Q.P. Dahl and the Filthy Five”; “Private Keeper”; “Wild Bill Yonder”—but his favorite was “Sally Forth, W.A.C.” Enchanted with Sally’s name, the cartoonist returned to the character in the 1970s as a vehicle for pure cheesecake. Until his return in DC’s Captain Action #1, though, Wood’s presence in color comics was slight. He did show up during the summer when Tower burned off its remaining inventory with two more editions of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents (issues #18 and #19).

A sampling of material by Vaughn Bodé (witzend #5) and Wally Wood (witzend #4 and Military News). Junkwaffel TM and © Mark Bodé. Pipsqueak Papers, Sally Forth TM and © Wallace Wood Properties, LLC.

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Holding On

plays on everything from soap opera melodrama (“Can a traveling salesman from Sirius Five find happiness as an Earthling?”) to Clint Eastwood western movies (“The Bad, the Worse and the So-So!”). “I just needed to come up with eight pages a month,” writer Denny O’Neil said of the strip’s creation. “It didn’t get much more complicated than that” (Brodsky 15).

Dell did the same thing in August, releasing October-dated reprint editions of the previously discontinued Bewitched, Combat, Ghost Stories, Mighty Mouse, Outer Limits, and Thirteen along with final inventory issues of Daktari and Mission Impossible. The company had gone into the year with a handful of new TV tie-ins—The Flying Nun; Garrison’s Gorillas; Gentle Ben—but they and The Monkees (with issue #16) were gone with the November-dated issues. While still committed to producing a handful of licensed titles and periodic reprints, Dell officially shut down its comic book department on July 5, 1968 (Hanerfeld, “News: 7/68” 1).

The prolific O’Neil turned out more conventional Westerns for two other titles—The Man Called Loco, with artist Pete Morisi (beginning in Texas Rangers In Action #65: March 1968) and Bounty Hunter, with Pat Boyette (Billy the Kid #66: May 1968)—while Joe Gill teamed up with Bill Montes and Ernie Bache to create Captain Rufus Archer By contrast, Charlton was doing much “and his Seminole sidekick Cpl. Jack” better but it, too, unloaded some of its for Army War Heroes #24 (March 1968) unused 1967 material during the sumand Shotgun Harker and the Chicken mer of 1968. Fans of Dick Giordano’s for Fightin’ Marines #78 (January 1968). Action-Hero line were delighted to see Mysterious Suspense #1 marked Steve Ditko’s farewell In complete defiance of the rest of the Blue Beetle #5 and Mysterious Suspense to the Question. TM and © DC Comics. cartooning community, the latter se#1 (a compilation of unpublished Ditko ries featured a pair of soldiers in Vietnam, a hard-nosed Question back-ups) amidst other one-shots Attack At Sea sergeant and a wise-cracking private who didn’t want to #5, D-Day #6, Konga’s Revenge #1, Outer Space #1, and War die there. The feature ultimately ran a full five years before Wings #1. Giordano had, in fact, left an entire six months of ending in issue #108 (January 1973). material behind when he moved to DC (Hanerfeld, “News: 3/68” 2) but that didn’t prevent Charlton from taking a Tragically, Bache was not there to see it, having died at brief hiatus anyway, publishing only three March-dated the age of 45 in August 1968. His passing came just five issues and none for April. months after 40-year-old Rocco “Rocke” Mastroserio had suffered a fatal heart attack on March 4. A prolific Charlton When the line returned, it included a refreshing series by cover artist, Mastroserio had only recently begun to receive Denny O’Neil (still calling himself Sergius O’Shaugnessy) recognition for his work on Warren’s horror magazines and and Jim Aparo starring Wander, a charming alien (real was poised to begin assignments on DC’s own supernatural name: Wnndwar) with Shakespearean speech patterns books (Hanerfeld, “News: 4/68” 1). Instead, Charlton’s new who had been stranded on Earth. Naturally, it ran in the Ghost Manor title represented some of his last published Western comic book Cheyenne Kid (beginning with issue work, with Mastroserio’s full art or inks seen throughout #66: May 1968). In fairness, Wander was stranded in the its first three issues. th 19 Century Old West but the feature wasn’t meant to be taken seriously and it pulsed with charm and good huAlong with the addition to its supernatural line, Charlton mor. Readers who stumbled across the hidden gem found also expanded its love titles by one (Secret Romance #1: October 1968) and revisited science fiction via the ongoing Space Adventures and Strange Suspense Stories titles. The latter was something of a catch-all, including everything from sf to ghost stories to straight adventure like Don Perlin’s “Focus: Danger.”

In Doctor Graves #5, a couple was trapped in a comic book and realized readers were looking at them. . Art by Jim Aparo. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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The cancellation of the Giordanoedited Charlton Premiere with issue #4’s “Unlikely Tales” (May 1968) left an unusual final story in limbo that ultimately ran in Strange Suspense #4. Illustrated by Jim Aparo, “Race Unto Death” had been conceived as something of a challenge. “I wrote the first half of the story, basically a hard-boiled murder mystery, leav-

The editor “would buy virtually anything I’d write and then only publish the stories he really liked,” Skeates explained. “By [A&C] #4, though, Sal Gentile had taken over, wasn’t buying anything, and […] used up all the good stories Dick hadn’t yet published. […] For issue #5, all Sal had left that he could shove together were all the clunkers, and that’s just what he did—crammed all my worst attempts at humor (at least as far as my sixties standards were concerned) into one truly egregious issue” (Usher 2).

Gold Key Digest Skeates’ efforts were at least new, which was more than could be said for most of Hanna-Barbera’s other comic book licenses at Gold Key. By 1968, the contents of Huckleberry Hound, The Jetsons, Top Cat, and Yogi Bear had essentially gone to reprints and they were far from alone. As Gold Key tightened its belt in the face of slipping sales, titles such as Bonanza, Bugs Bunny, The Lone Ranger, Marge’s Little Lulu, Porky Pig, The Three Stoog-

ing all sorts of threads dangling,” Steve Skeates explained. “Then Denny O’Neil had to write the last half.” To Skeates’ annoyance, new Charlton managing editor Sal Gentile included no writer credits on the published story “and therefore no indication of the game we were playing” (Usher 41). Skeates took considerable pleasure in flexing his creative muscles on The Many Ghosts of Doctor Graves, pointing to issue #10 as a particular favorite. Along with the title character’s active presence in each of the issue’s stories, the writer also cited his “experimenting with storytelling techniques with points of view” throughout (Usher 28). A highlight for many fans was his collaboration with Jim Aparo on Doctor Graves #5’s “Best of All Possible Worlds,” wherein a comic book fan was pulled into the pages of a Charlton comic and he had to decide whether to go back to the real world with his girlfriend. A personal high point for Skeates—an opinion shared by Dick Giordano— was his work on Abbott and Costello #1-4 (February-September 1968), based on the current Hanna-Barbera cartoon and illustrated by Henry Scarpelli. Skeates turned out parodies of modern college life (A&C #1), folk singers (A&C #2), and superheroes (A&C #3), each of them cherry-picked by Giordano before he left for DC.

Several of the cartoons on CBS’ 1967-1968 Saturday morning schedule got a shot at . comic books courtesy of this Gold Key title. TM and © Hanna-Barbera Productions.

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es, Tom and Jerry, and Woody Woodpecker were also running mostly or entirely old stories from the 1950s or early 1960s. Hanna-Barbera’s TV Super Heroes #1 (April 1968) was all new, though, and devoted to Saturday morning TV’s explosion of action heroes. Birdman and the Galaxy Trio, the Herculoids, the Mighty Mightor, Moby Dick, Shazzan, Space Ghost, and Young Samson and Goliath all took turns appearing in the new series, typically in stories that were no more than five or six pages apiece. The title replaced the Disney hero parody Super Goof, which went on a fifteen month hiatus with issue #10 (March 1968). The one that got away was Super President #1, a prospective 25-cent giant based on the bizarre DePatieFreleng cartoon that had run on NBC since 1967. Illustrated by Joe Certa, the project had referenced candidates in the 1968 Presidential election—including Robert F. Kennedy—and was cancelled in the wake of RFK’s death (Hanerfeld, “News: 7/68” 5). The cartoon itself wasn’t far behind, dropped by NBC in December along with Birdman in an early reaction to viewer complaints over violent cartoons. As that controversy loomed, Gold Key had tested the waters with its own superheroes again, releasing a second issue of Jerry Siegel and Tom Gill’s The Owl and unleashing Siegel (with artist Jack Sparling) on Tiger Girl #1 (September 1968). The adventures of circus animal trainer-turned-costumed heroine Lily Taylor—who fought the forces of I.N.F.A.M.Y.—left few readers clamoring for an encore. Nor did Jet Dream #1 (June 1968), a one-shot by Dick Wood and Joe Certa that offered the star of Man From U.N.C.L.E.’s backup feature her sole opportunity to be a leading lady. Captain Venture and the Land Beneath the Sea #1 (October 1968) gave a similar chance to Space Family Robinson’s back-up feature but its contents were all reprint. The company’s other original properties—Doctor Solar, M.A.R.S. Patrol, Mighty Samson, Space Family Robinson, and Turok—persevered but Magnus Robot Fighter keenly felt the loss of creator Russ Manning. Attempting to maintain the book’s signature look for a little longer, Gold Key

reprinted his first Magnus story in issue #22 but Dan Spiegle (Magnus #23) and the Paul Norris-Mike Royer team (Magnus #24-on) were ultimately assigned to continue drawing the book. Gold Key also reprinted Manning’s Tarzan #155 origin (in issue #178) before Doug Wildey stepped in to the continue Gaylord Dubois’ adaptations of the Burroughs’ novels. Although they’d dropped the tie-in issues to the soon-to-be-cancelled Ron Ely Tarzan TV show, the publisher still had a final Alberto Giolitti-illustrated entry on hand and had it revised by Mike Royer into a story starring the apeman’s son that ran in Korak #22 (Hanerfeld “News: 3/68” 2).

celled in 1968 but a revival of Wild, Wild West and a new series devoted to ABC’s Land of the Giants were notable among the titles rising to fill the void. Along with one-shots devoted to TV series The High Chaparral, The New Adventures of Huck Finn, and Secret Agent, an original 25-cent giant UFO Flying Saucers #1 went on sale during the summer. Spearheaded by writer Leo Dorfman, the title returned for single issues in 1970 and 1972 before being promoted to an ongoing series in 1974 with UFO #4.

Giolotti (with penciler Giovanni Ticci and writer Gary Poole) also produced a 25-cent adaptation of King Kong. Contractually restricted to the details of the 1932 novel, the creative team was unable to include any scene that was unique to the 1933 movie that followed it (Hanerfeld “News: 3/68” 2). Elsewhere, Gold Key couldn’t play up the name of British import The Avengers in a one-shot reprint comic book thanks to Marvel having the U.S. rights to the name. Instead, the issue was titled John Steed-Emma Peel after its stars. The licensed I Spy, Invaders, Munsters, and Zorro comic books were all can-

Cover art for Tiger Girl #1 (by Jack Sparling), King Kong, and Captain Venture #1 (both painted by George Wilson). TM and © respective copyright holders.

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Specials devoted to Baloo and Little Britches and King Louie and Mowgli (both in support of the recent Jungle Book film) as well as The Three Little Pigs (all reprint) weren’t so honored. Indeed, sales on Disney comics in general—while still stronger than many industry titles—were a far cry from their glory days at Dell. In a frank 1968 interview, Disney Publica-

tions Department head George Sherman noted that flagship title Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories had hit a circulation pinnacle of 3,038,000 copies in September 1953. “In January 1967,” he continued, “it was 317,000. In January 1968, 298,000, which is about one-tenth of what our sales were at the peak” (Willits 32). Gold Key had long recognized that the market for the traditional comic book format was diminishing and it went to work again in 1968 to find a hybrid format that might offer salvation. One of them—in collaboration with the Young and Rubicam advertising agency—was Western’s The Wonderful World of Disney, a colorful, slick magazine filled with photo articles and illustrated prose stories starring the likes of Mowgli, Chip ‘n’ Dale, and Uncle Scrooge. Tapping into the material produced for its overseas market, the magazine also featured an original comics story in each edition with characters like Fethry Duck and Hard Haid Moe. Promoted on the Wonderful World of Disney TV show and launching with a print run of six million copies (Thompson, “Last Minute News” 12), the 25-cent quarterly was sold exclusively through Gulf Oil stations and that limited distribution doomed it to a brief six-issue existence. Gold Key was vastly more successful with Walt Disney Comics

Digest #1 (on sale May 21, 1968). Priced at 50¢ for a hefty 192 pages, the square-bound color paperback measured 4.75” x 6.5” and overflowed with classic Disney characters. The star players were all there—Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, and Carl Barks’ Uncle Scrooge—but so were the likes of Bambi, Dumbo, and Super Goof. A good percentage of each issue was reprinted but there were new stories throughout, including a regular feature starring Mowgli that was maintained into 1969. Even Carl Barks came out of retirement long enough to draw a single Daisy Duck story for issue #5. Other publishers had attempted a digest comic book—notably Harvey and Parents’ Magazine in the early 1940s and Nation-Wide a decade later—but none of them had the collective Disney name recognition and Western publishing clout to capture lucrative space like checkout stand racks typically reserved for Reader’s Digest or TV Guide. Gold Key quickly realized they were onto something big, promoting Walt Disney Comic Digest to monthly with issue #2 (August 1968) and making plans for a companion title in 1969. As Gold Key’s West Coast division threw its resources into the digest, East Coast editor Matt Murphy was making plans to leave comics to become executive editor of the struggling kids periodical Golden Magazine. His Autumn 1968 succession by former assistant Wally Green (Hanerfeld “On the Drawing Board: 12/68” 5) came in the wake of a mid-1967 organizational shift at Western that saw the comic book division relabeled Periodicals Publishing and handed off to a man named Richard Eiger.

Western’s 1968 forays into magazines and digests included new stories featuring the likes of Mowgli and—in Wonderful World of Disney—Fethry Duck (by writer Dick Kinney and artist Al Hubbard). TM and © Disney Enterprises, Inc.

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“Dick had no editorial experience and was accounting oriented,” Murphy declared. “I was very disappointed at not being considered to head up comics after being at Western for fifteen years. I found working with Dick Eiger frustrating because I could not believe any-

thing he told me. I could also see that comics were in trouble because of uncertain distribution going through hundreds of independent distributors, and high returns (unsold copies) were making comics unprofitable” (Murphy 32).

Color’s price was right and, in 1968, Gold Key started sending its comics to Sparta, concluding that cutting expenses trumped cutting quality.

Profits were also being undercut by the 12-cent comic book price-point that had been an industry standard since late 1961. That retail price hadn’t kept pace with production expenses and every comics publisher was aware that an increase was inevitable. In early 1968, then, Gold Key began regional testing of 15-cent copies of its titles in New York City and other metropolitan areas (Hanerfeld “News: 4/68” 2). By the time its August-dated issues were on sale, the company had taken the new price nationwide. The rest of the industry, recalling the disastrous results of Dell’s solitary increase from 10¢ in 1961, held fast to the 12-cent price-tag.

The trinity of pop culture humor comic books also turned their attention to costs that year, each of them raising prices from 30¢ to 35¢ within two months of one another. Mad #119 (June 1968) played it for laughs, working with that issue’s Bonnie and Clyde cover theme to replace the traditional word “cheap” beneath the price with the phrase “highway robbery!” When Cracked went to 35¢ with issue #70 (August 1968), it tried to soften the blow by increasing its page count from 44 pages to “Highway robbery!” Norman Mingo’s Bonnie and Clyde cover for 52 in the process. Sick followed Mad #119 appeared on the same issue that the magazine raised its price. TM and © DC Comics. suit with its own price increase asked that his colleagues no longer do in issue #61 but only after creator Joe so. “I am disturbed when the characSimon nearly lost the eight-year-old ters are misused,” he explained, “and title. I know of one case in Chicago where Earlier in 1968, Simon had discovered the characters were used in a cartoon that Crestwood publisher Teddy Epwhich was in direct opposition to my stein was planning to sell Sick to Pyrown political views” (Schulz 5). amid Books to make good on losses Schulz couldn’t have anticipated that that other Crestwood magazines were he’d next be targeted by satirist Al incurring. Watching her husband’s Capp in an October Li’l Abner Sundespondence over the news that he’d day sequence. The story painted carreceive no profits from the sale, Hartoonist Bedly Damp as a man who riet Simon urged her spouse to pull couldn’t draw and who had created out his original contract and was dehis comic strip under the influence lighted with what they found: Joe of a psychiatrist. Stunned at what he Simon—not Teddy Epstein—owned saw as a personal attack, Schulz cried Sick and he had no intention of selling foul and the adversarial Capp—reuntil he got a fair deal. When the dust markably—apologized. “I wouldn’t settled, Simon shared the sale price do that for Joan Baez or Lyndon Johnwith Epstein equally and retained a son,” Capp declared to the press, “or contract to produce Sick—effective for any other group in the world but with issue #63—for Pyramid imprint cartoonists” (Schumacher 207). Hewfred Publications in a Madison Avenue suite (Simon 179-181). Mad ran two separate Jack Rickard-

Along with the higher price and the increasing reliance on reprints, Gold Key also began delivering a physically less impressive product. Since its 1962 break from Dell, the publisher had taken pride in the superior printing that its comics had courtesy of the Western printing plants in Poughkeepsie, New York. In contrast, much of the industry’s comic books— printed at Sparta, Illinois’ World Color Press—were less crisp and sharp… and an eighth of an inch narrower than Gold Key’s product. But World

Getting Sick, Feeling Yvoorg

If any cartoonist was the toast of Madison Avenue in the 1960s, it was Charles Schulz and the Peanuts cartoonist was growing weary of some of the attention. He particularly objected to the use of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and company in editorial cartoons “with merely a little quote, ‘Thanks to Charlie Schulz,’ in the lower right-hand corner.” In a July 1, 1968 letter to the National Cartoonists’ Society, the cartoonist respectfully

respective copyright holders.

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illustrated Peanuts parodies in 1968 itself, starting with issue #117’s “Will Success Spoil Charlie Brown?” In that one, 1950s Peanuts cast member Shermy checked in on the old gang only to find Lucy covered in furs and jewels, Schroeder a rock star, and Charlie Brown a business magnate. A second bit in Mad #123 looked at Snoopy’s World War One parodies from the Red Baron’s perspective. Schulz took the sequence more graciously than Capp’s attack, sending a

drawing of Snoopy that ran in issue #125 and read, “We flying aces like your magazine. I find it in all the trenches.” Given Mad’s focus on current events, it was almost inevitable that they would be caught unaware by Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination. Still, issue #122—on sale little more than a month after the Senator’s death—showed no indication that its Presidential candidate cover might have been revised. Only the previous Mad #121’s magazine parody back cover—which showed RFK, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan as a long-haired rock group—struck an awkward note. The parody in question was Sik-Teen, a take-off on fan magazines like Sixteen. In some ways—and not intentionally—Harvey’s Bunny was doing the same thing for 1960s teen culture in general. The bland beauty queen who debuted in 1966 had let her hair down and embraced the mod, psychedelic scene even if she didn’t quite seem to understand it. “Even if [DC’s] Teen Titans were similarly afflicted at the time,” historian Don Markstein wrote, “Happiness Is Ein Kleine Kaput Beagle.” So said writers Frank Jacobs & Bob Muccio . “[Bunny] did it more and worse—in fact, it’s as if and artist Jack Rickard in Mad #123’s Snoopy parody. TM and © DC Comics. her entire raison d’etre was to parody the decade of student activism and radical youth fashions, even metaphorical depiction of an LSD high—complete with the while living it. To make matters worse, this teenage girl addicted kids trying to keep Yvoorg Nam with them forcomic was edited, written and drawn by middle-aged men ever—was surely one of the strangest moments ever pubwho were probably, like most middle-aged men, unable to lished in a Harvey comic. Issue #5’s Sooper Hippie (alias communicate with their own daughters. To vary the diaStanley Humbert) had to rank right up there, too. logue, in which everything that wasn’t ‘groovy’ was ‘outaBunny featured fictional rock groups like the Beagles and sight,’ they made up their own slang. Things could also be the Marmalade Mirage but the one-shot Harvey Pop Com‘zoovy’ or ‘zoovers’ or even, in extreme cases, ‘yvoorg’— ics #1 (October 1968) went that one better by spotlighting which was obviously ‘groovy’ spelled backward, but no a real band whose biggest hits were “The Rain, the Park & hint was ever given as to how it might be pronounced” Other Things” and “Indian Lake.” The Cowsills—a clean(Markstein). cut group of teenage and preteen siblings—seemed ideally In a bizarre story in Bunny #4 (March 1968), the Bunny Ball suited to the Harvey brand, affecting an image that was In Club welcomed the mysterious Yvoorg Nam who waved simultaneously cool and safe. his hand and sent the teenagers on a psychedelic trip. The The approach was evidently finding an audience because the irregularly-published Bunny was promoted to a bi-monthly schedule effective with issue #5 (October 1968). Harvey also reassessed the titles it had cancelled in 1967 and revived Hot Stuff Sizzlers, Little Audrey and Melvin, Little Dot Dotland, Sad Sack’s Funny Friend, and Baby Huey throughout the year.

The Archie Show Archie Comics saw no need to copy Bunny’s direction in its own teen titles but it did introduce a makeover of Archie’s Madhouse effective with issue #61 (June 1968), adding a psychedelic backdrop to its cover trade dress. In a matter of issues, the series was populated with characters like Lippy the Hippy and—in issue #64—a peace-loving version of Frankenstein (illustrated by Wally Wood) who wore mod fashions and played electric guitar in a discotheque. Harvey’s Bunny went psychedelic in issue #4 of her comic book while the Cowsills went on a trip of their own in Harvey Pop Comics #1. TM and © respective copyright holders.

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Life With Archie, the publisher’s other notable venue for experimentation, mostly played it safe during

One of Filmation’s key decisions was the incorporation of The Archies into the cartoon, enabling them to air virtual music videos in every episode of the series. The Archies—whose animated incarnation included Betty and Veronica—had been born as a take-off on the Monkees so there was distinct irony in the fact that the man hired to produce the cartoon group’s music had previously overseen…the Monkees.

the year with the exception of the Bob White-illustrated “Archie One” (LWA #71: March 1968) that reimagined the cast as cave-people with ironic contrasts to the modern world. First introduced in Archie #9 (1944), the concept had been revived at intervals throughout the 1960s in Madhouse #4 (1960), Archie #137 (1963), Archie #153 (1965), and Life With Archie #60 (1967) but the alternate reality gained traction with the acquisition of an official series title. Several more caveman stories—variously titled “Archie 1” and “Archie the 1st”—soon followed (including LWA #72, #81 and Archie #183, #188, and #192) and the feature recurred in various Archie titles for decades.

Don Kirshner had assembled songs and musicians for the earlier TV show but he progressively came into conflict with the Monkees themselves as they demanded more control over the material they performed. Fired from the project in February 1967, Kirshner came to The Archies secure in the knowledge that these singers would not rebel.

The same couldn’t be said for the new character that premiered in Life With Archie #80 (December 1968). A handsome newcomer named Angel Angelino took over the entire issue, even receiving his own Archie-style logo, and quickly proved himself tougher than Moose and more attractive to women than Archie or Reggie. In the third act, Archie and Angel faced off in the boxing ring, working out their differences and declaring themselves pals. Reggie—who had just picked up a new comic book called Reggie’s Wise Guy Jokes—bemoaned the fact that he now had another rival. He needn’t have worried, though. Despite the implied expectations for Angel, he never appeared again. That may have been a matter of Archie Comics not wanting to rock the boat now that the established cast was making the leap to television. Having become a well-established presence thanks to its hit DC-based cartoons, Filmation was able to sell publisher John Goldwater on the idea of an animated Archie Show. Amidst a Saturday morning line-up glutted with adventure programs, the series was an inspired bit of counterprogramming. Filmation’s Lou Scheimer recalled their presentation to CBS’ Fred Silverman as one of the easiest sales he ever made. The programmer “starting laughing and clapping,” Scheimer noted, “and he never did that at anything” (Scheimer 64). Emblematic of animators’ desire to introduce cute animals for reader identification, Scheimer arranged to

The producer assembled a number of lightweight pop songs—dubbed bubblegum—and gathered several studio musicians led by Ron Dante to perform them. Within weeks of The Archie Show’s September 14, 1968 debut, its tie-in product was bearing fruit. The Ed Sullivan Show promoted The Archies’ “Bang-Shang-A-Lang” with an animated clip on its November 17 episode and the song hit its peak on Billboard’s Hot 100—ranking at #22—on December 7 (Scheimer 67).

The still-formative Archies included Moose on guitar in Archie’s Pal’s ‘n’ Gals #47 while the handsome Angel threatened the group dynamic in Life With Archie #80 (art by Dan DeCarlo and Rudy Lapick on each cover). TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

have a shaggy white dog named Hot Dog added to the cast. “He literally became the voice of the characters on occasion,” the producer explained, “because you could hear him speaking through what he was thinking. It gave us a vehicle to talk about the kids and the show” (Scheimer 65). Hot Dog debuted in comic books in Pep #224 (December 1968) although the Archie team didn’t immediately understand that the animal was Jughead’s pet and not Archie’s. 233

The effect on comic book sales was equally impressive. Of 1968’s top twenty best-selling comic books, seven of them were published by Archie Comics. Namesake title Archie posted its best sales of the entire decade that year, selling an average of 566,587 copies per issue and beating out every title but Superman (Miller). The tide had been building for a few years— hence, DC, Marvel, and Tower’s own efforts in the genre—but the TV show pushed the popularity of the Archie style to new heights. Whether teen humor was enough to sustain the comic book industry was another matter. At 1,301 individual issues, fewer mainstream color comic books were published in the United States in 1968 than any year since 1945 and its total of 1,131 (Stevenson). With price increases a virtual certainty, one had to wonder how much longer the traditional comic book was going to be a viable option for consumers.

1969

Bad Moon Rising

“Who knows what mysteries will be solved in our lifetime, and what new riddles will become the challenge of the new generations?” Neil Armstrong wondered aloud to a joint session of Congress on September 13, 1969. “Science has not mastered prophecy. We predict too much for next year yet far too little for the next ten. Responding to challenge is one of democracy’s great strengths. Our successes in space lead us to hope that this strength can be used in the next decade in the solution of many of our planet’s problems.”

Less than two months had passed since Armstrong had emerged from his Apollo 11 spacecraft on July 20 and set foot on the Moon. The Moon. “That’s one small step for man,” he proclaimed to a television audience in excess of 700 million. “One giant leap for mankind.” After a decade filled with strife and division and violence, the extraordinary achievement of astronauts Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins became one of the world’s great feelgood moments not only of the 1960s but of the 20th Century. Harvey Comics’ friendly ghost waved to the astronauts on the cover of Casper #138 (on sale in December) while Marvel’s Fantastic Four #98 (released in February 1970) purported to tell a behind-the-scenes mission that preceded the lunar landing. May 1969’s earlier Apollo 10 mission even had an official comics connection when its astronauts gave their Command/Service Module and Lunar Module the respective nicknames of Charlie Brown and Snoopy, resulting in promotional material from Charles Schulz. Ironically, the moon landing also prompted cartoonist Chester Gould to end his science fiction era in Dick Tracy and specifically any further appearances by the alien inhabitants of Moon Valley. Reality had caught up with him. Amidst the social changes taking place in the U.S., it was easy to take technological advances in stride. The scourge of polio had been nearly eliminated. Satellites were making strides in communication—like the Moon broadcast— and color television had gone mainstream. Heart, lung, and liver transplants were in their infancy. Even the internet could be seen on the horizon when the first message was transmitted on a computer network called ARPANET on October 29, 1969. The comic book industry’s own success stories of the 1960s seemed comparatively fleeting in 1969. Grappling with rising costs, color comics publishers were forced to follow Gold Key’s lead and increase prices to 15¢. By the end of May, Archie, DC, Fawcett, and Marvel had all taken the hit while Charlton and Harvey followed in June. Dell, which had produced only four 1969-dated issues to that point— including two devoted to the Mod Squad TV show—went

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expectedly produced a pair of 25-cent issues containing all-new material in 1969—the first in seven years. “In Freedom’s Cause” (CI #168) and “Negro Americans: The Early Years” (CI #169) weren’t a new beginning for the 22-year-old title, though, but a last gasp. Within a few years, even the reprint editions of Classics Illustrated ceased, a casualty of consumer disinterest and distribution woes.

to 15¢ later in the summer when it released 19 mostly reprint titles in a one month burst (all dated October). Maintaining a slimmed-down version of its 25-cent giant format to the end, Tower offered one last all-reprint edition of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents (issue #20) and a dozen Tippy Teen-related titles before definitively going out of business. The Frawley Corporation, which had been publishing reprint editions of Classics Illustrated since it acquired the title from Gilberton in 1967, un-

At Gold Key, the first casualties of the price hike were the adventure titles. The Man From U.N.C.L.E., which had been the company’s best-selling comic book only two years earlier, ended with issue #22, a year after the TV series it was based on. It was joined in cancellation by Daniel Boone #15, Hanna Barbera TV Super Heroes #7, Land of the Giants #5, Lassie #70, and Wild Wild West #7. A 1969 title devoted to TV’s long-running Gunsmoke lasted six issues, twice as long as a book devoted to the more obscure Western Lancer. Meanwhile, the Saturday morning-based Hanna Barbera Hi-Adventure Heroes—starring the Arabian Knights, Gulliver, and the Three Musketeers from The Banana Splits Adventure Hour—and Fantastic Voyage ended after two issues apiece. The most painful loss may have been Gold Key’s original titles. Even without the licensing fees involved with most of the publisher’s series, the features created to compete with DC and

The final new issues of Classics Illustrated featured interior art by George Evans & Reed Crandall (CI #168) and Norman Nodel (CI #169). TM and © respective copyright holders.

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Unburdened by Comics Code restrictions, Gold Key was free to publish a comic book starring a vampire. . Dark Shadows TM and © Dan Curtis Productions, Inc.

Marvel’s superhero comics were no longer commercially viable. Doctor Solar ended first with issue #27 (April 1969), followed by M.A.R.S. Patrol #10 (August 1969), Space Family Robinson #36 (October 1969), Magnus Robot Fighter #28 and Mighty Samson #20 (both November 1969). Filling the void on the schedule were Judge Colt, a dark Western/vigilante feature by writer Leo Dorfman and artist Jose Delbo, and Dark Shadows, a series by D.J. Arneson and Joe Certa based on the cult ABC gothic soap opera featuring vampire Barnabas Collins. With the TV series then at the peak of its popularity, the comic book quickly became a success, something that was all the more impressive when considering that its first and third issues retailed for 25¢. The price deviation was the result of another Gold Key innovation that saw slick pull-out 14” x 20” posters—“4-times the size of the comic”— inserted into a handful of its titles. Aware that the higher ticket issues were a gamble, the publisher chose the Christmas 1968 season to try the experiment with its film adaptations of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Yellow Submarine (each dated February 1969) in the hope that adult gift shoppers would pick up copies even if cash-strapped kids balked. There’s no indication of how well Poster-Comics sold but Gold Key revisited the exper-

TIMELINE: 1969

May: Archie, DC, and Marvel all raise prices on their standard comic books to 15-cents.

A compilation of the year’s notable comic book history events alongside some of the year’s most significant popular culture and historical events. (On sale dates are approximations.) February: An all-star line-up of underground cartoonists appear in the new monthly Gothic Blimp Works.

February 3: Longtime Donald Duck comic strip artist Al Taliaferro dies at the age of 63.

March 10: The Godfather, Mario Puzo’s best-selling novel about a Mafia crime family, is published.

April 7: A Lassie comic strip by John Celardo begins.

May 10: Longtime DC and Marvel artist George Klein dies at age 52.

January 20: The final edition of The Saturday Evening Post ends the magazine’s 148-year run.

JANUARY

June: African American hero the Falcon debuts in Captain America #117.

June 15: Hee Haw, a country music variation on Laugh-In, premieres on CBS.

June 22: Troubled singer-actress Judy Garland dies of a drug overdose at age 47.

FEBRUARY

MARCH

APRIL

M AY

May 25: Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman star in Midnight Cowboy, a movie that earns an X-rating and a subsequent Academy Award for Best Picture.

March 30: The 45-year-old Boots and Her Buddies comic strip comes to an end.

January 30: The Beatles’ last public performance takes place on the roof of London’s Apple Records.

March 17: Golda Meir takes office as Israel’s first female prime minister.

January 22: The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour—hosted by the eponymous country-pop singer—premieres on CBS.

JUNE

April 21: Editorial cartoonist Pat Oliphant wins the 1968 Reuben Award at the National Cartoonists Society annual festivities. Other winners include Al Smith (humor newspaper strips, Mutt and Jeff), Alex Kotzky (story newspaper strips, Apartment 3-G), Bob Dunn (newspaper panels, They’ll Do It Every Time), and Will Eisner (comic book category, P.S.).

June 24: Gasoline Alley creator Frank King dies at the age of 86. June 24: Green Arrow gets a hip new look courtesy of Neal Adams in The Brave and the Bold #85.

June 28: The Stonewall Riots in New York City’s Greenwich Village is a landmark in the gay rights movement.

The Falcon TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. The Archies © Archie Comic Publications, Inc. Scooby-Doo TM and © Hanna-Barbera Productions.

iment beginning with Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #351 (December 1969) and continuing through issue #360 (September 1970). Significantly, though, each WDC&S issue was offered in two formats—a 25-cent poster version and a 15-cent standard edition.

which was working up a script before the movie was completed. Indeed,

“I’d written [Dell’s] Life of the Beatles book, so they asked me to do another one, too,” Newman recalled. “They wanted it to be on sale when the movie opened. But I had to improvise an ending. The script really didn’t have one—just a song. I’m too tight a plotter for that so I came up with something dramatic and visual” (Calhoun 19).

The 64-page Yellow Submarine boasted an even steeper 35-cent retail, albeit one that matched the price on Dell’s 1964 Beatles one-shot. The Fab Four’s highly anticipated animated theatrical film was produced by King Features Syndicate and the resources that the company might have otherwise channeled into reviving King Comics were instead focused on promoting the film (Hanerfeld, “News: 7/68” 1). King’s Bill Harris, for one, made a point of sharing animation stills for use in The Comic Reader. For Paul S. Newman, charged with adapting the cartoon along with artist Jose Delbo for Gold Key, there were several challenges, not the least of

the writer had to work from an earlier draft that included a character called Rita the Meter Maid—based on the Beatles song “Lovely Rita”—who didn’t make it into the actual movie.

The Yellow Submarine comic book reflected the psychedelic style of the film’s art director Heinz Edelmann. The Beatles TM and © Apple Corps Ltd.

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Historian Michael Naiman found the end result disappointing. “Apart from the main cast of characters, the comic had the minimal story linkage necessary to mirror the movie sequencing,” he observed. “Most importantly, the movie’s rich layering of photographs and animation was completely missing from the four color presentation” (Naiman 29).

July 14: Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper play motorcyclists-drug smugglers who explore the American counterculture in the film Easy Rider.

September 1: Golden Age comic book artist Alex Blum dies at the age of 80.

December 17: Novelty singer Tiny Tim marries Miss Vicki on a highly-rated episode of Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show.

October 24: Paul Newman and Robert Redford play Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in 1969’s top-grossing motion picture. November: Within weeks of President Nixon’s appeal to America’s “silent majority” to lend their support to the war effort in Vietnam, news reports shine a spotlight on 1968’s My Lai massacre of unarmed Vietnamese civilians by U.S. forces.

September 4: After nearly twenty years, the Dynamic Duo splits up when Dick (Robin) Grayson leaves for college in Batman #217.

July 20: An audience of 720 million people exults as the crew of Apollo 11 lands on the Moon and astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on its surface.

J U LY

AUGUST August 9: Followers of Charles Manson murder pregnant actress Sharon Tate and others in a savage Los Angeles home break-in.

SEPTEMBER

August 15-18: In upstate New York, the Woodstock Festival draws scores of young people to hear some of pop music’s biggest names.

July 26: “Sugar, Sugar,” The Archies’ biggest hit, is released.

OCTOBER

September 13: A quartet of hip young adults and their Great Dane begin solving weird mysteries in the Saturday morning cartoon hit Scooby Doo, Where Are You?

NOVEMBER

DECEMBER November 26: Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams join forces on their first Batman story (“Secret of the Waiting Graves”) in Detective Comics #395.

November 19: Astronauts of Apollo 12 become the next men to set foot on the Moon.

September: Primetime TV premieres include Room 222, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (both 9/17, ABC), Marcus Welby, M.D. (9/23, ABC), Medical Center (9/24, CBS), The Brady Bunch (9/26, ABC), and Love, American Style (9/29, ABC). November 10: The trailblazing children’s program Sesame Street premieres from National Educational Television.

Gold Key was less concerned with the reaction to the one-shot, though, than they were with the progressive dropoff in sales on its core Disney titles. Hoping to halt the descent that followed Carl Barks’ retirement, the publisher starting reprinting his old Donald Duck shorts at the front of each issue of Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories (beginning with issue #342: March 1969) and did the same with his classic Uncle Scrooge adventures starting in US #82 (August 1969). Chip ‘n’ Dale, having tested well in previous years’ tryouts, was promoted to an ongoing reprint series in 1969 while Beagle Boys, Scamp, and Super Goof each made tentative returns to the schedule for an issue or two apiece. Outside the Disney line-up, Hanna Barbera’s Quick Draw McGraw resurfaced for one last reprint issue, Jay Ward and Bill Scott’s George of the Jungle earned two issues, Good ‘n’ Plenty candy spokesman Choo-Choo Charlie appeared in

a comic book by the celebrated John Stanley, and The Banana Splits and Wacky Races both appeared in oneshots that were green-lit as ongoing series in 1970 and 1971, respectively. Picking up a lapsed license from Dell, the publisher also revived New Terrytoons as a reprint title with issue #4. One of Gold Key’s more unusual offerings was The Colossal Show #1 (October 1969), a humor title based in ancient Rome and inspired by a Total TeleVision cartoon that NBC had agreed—in a handshake deal—to put on its Saturday morning schedule in September 1969. As one of the production company’s founders Buck Biggers related, their agent Jack Sobol contacted Gold Key “and told them to quickly get a comic book out to take advantage of the debut. Then, when the comic book was already in the works, NBC backed out of the handshake. We never knew quite why that happened” (Arnold 116). 237

The bright spot at Gold Key in 1969 was Walt Disney Comics Digest, whose continued success and comparatively low overhead—via reprints—virtually demanded a companion title. That comic book was the monthly Golden Comics Digest #1 (May 1969) and the title’s line-up spanned the publisher’s diverse licensed properties. MGM’s Tom and Jerry rubbed shoulders with Warner Bros.’ Bugs Bunny and Walter Lantz’s Woody Woodpecker in some issues while the roster of Hanna-Barbera characters got other editions all to themselves. In issue #4, even Tarzan took the spotlight, complemented by episodes of Korak and Brothers of the Spear. Only Fawcett, with its own considerable ties to paperback publishing, followed Gold Key’s lead, launching its own 50-cent Dennis the Menace Pocket Full of Fun digest in 1969. The original Dennis comic book, which reached its 100th issue with the January 1969 edition, remained one the country’s fifteen best-selling titles,

Golden Comics Digest was the most successful of Gold Key’s 1969 new releases although The Banana Splits eventually ran eight issues. Tom and Jerry TM and © Turner Entertainment. Woody Woodpecker TM and © Walter Lantz. Bugs Bunny TM and © Warner Bros. The Banana Splits TM and © Hanna-Barbera Productions. George of the Jungle TM and © Bullwinkle Studios. The Colossal Show TM and © respective copyright holder.

American colleague named Marcy Sweete who was revealed to be the lead singer of a rock group called the Soular System. The entire group continued to appear at intervals in the comic book but they also joined forces with the series’ other fictional pop groups—the Beagles and the Marmalade Mirage—to fill out Harvey Pop Comics #2 (November 1969). Unlike issue #1’s Cowsills, there were no pesky licensing fees involved with these bands.

its 321,000 average per issue putting it well ahead of Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories and every Marvel book short of Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four. Buoyed by a strong sales resurgence in 1968, Fawcett not only pursued the digest option but supplemented its Dennis Giant line with a quartet of specials devoted to characters like Mister Wilson and Dennis’ dog Ruff. Harvey Comics had long employed a similar strategy with spin-offs devoted to various Sad Sack characters but they shrank by one in 1969. Sad Sack’s Funny Friends— “featuring the General”—was cancelled with issue #75 (October 1969), its faltering sales perhaps the result of growing disdain for military authority figures. Meanwhile, the thoroughly uncontroversial Tuff Ghosts Starring Spooky—cancelled in late 1967—was revived with issue #33 (June 1969), beginning an 11-issue run that ended for good in 1972.

Archie and the Pussycats That was something that Archie Comics knew very well. Unlike Harvey, though, their fictional Archies were releasing real records and one of them was on its way to being a monster hit. Radio programmers and disc jockeys had been horrified at the prospect of including a song in their rotation that was performed by cartoon characters but the catchy-if-lightweight “Sugar, Sugar” wore them down. Actually performed by studio musicians Ron Dante, Toni Wine, and the song’s co-writer Andy Kim, the tune—fueled in part by the CBS cartoon—didn’t just top the Billboard charts for four weeks (September 20 to October 11, 1969) but became the best-selling single of the entire year!

Bunny inspired two 25-cent one-shots, one of them a showcase for the eccentric heroes featured in the book. If reprints of every episode to date of the Jewish grocer who could transform into produce weren’t enough, Fruitman Special #1 also reran the first Sooper Hippie story and a new tale about another comedic hero called Captain Flower. The other spin-off grew out of a story in Bunny #7 (February 1969) wherein the book’s model/star met an African

A bit of that success was reflected in Archie #189 (March 1969) and a story entitled “The Music Man.” Pulling some strings with her wealthy father, Veronica Lodge convinced him to get The Archies an audition with their real-life record producer Don Kirshner. “I know you don’t want to hurt their feelings,” Mr. Lodge told his friend, “but please level with them!” So he did. “You’re the most exciting group I’ve heard in years!” Kirshner decreed. “I’d like to record you for my Calendar Records.” In 1970, Archie offered readers a poster of the producer presenting the band with its first gold record. Within the pages of the comic books, though, The Archies’ success was more confined. The image would hardly have fit with the everyman nature of the series and stories still regularly centered on high school and teen culture. Reggie got a Nehru jacket and love beads (Pep #225), Betty and Veronica wore maxi-skirts (B&V #160), and Archie

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himself played mind-games with Mister Weatherbee by wearing a long blond wig (Pep #229).

that “only Archie Series comic books carry this trademark!” Also appearing beneath that trademark was an unhinged group of singers called the Madhouse Maads, debuting in Madhouse Ma-ad Jokes #67 (April 1969), the latest mutation of Archie’s Madhouse. Series mascot Clyde Didit was reinvented as the member of a rock quartet that included his brothers Dan, Dick, and Dippy while secondary features included male model Rod the Mod and a groupie called Fran the Fan. The Didit siblings changed their name from the Ma-ads to the Glads in 1970 but kept on singing through 1974.

Still, the publisher was never one to let a craze go unexploited. By the end of 1969, there were no less than three other pop groups in the Archie lineup, the first of which debuted in That Wilkin Boy #1 (January 1969) by writer Frank Doyle and artists Dan DeCarlo and Rudy Lapick. The boy in question was high school senior Woodrow “Bingo” Wilkin III and he was the lead singer in a garage band called the Bingoes with Buddy Drumhead and Tough Teddy Tambourine.

If Archie didn’t have enough boy bands already, Josie #42 (August 1969) added another: Alan and the Jesters. Its lead singer was a musclebound blond who was poised to become Josie’s new boyfriend. According to artist Dan DeCarlo, Alan M. was added at the direction of John Goldwater as the namesake of “a friend of his who did him a big favor. […] This is the way he wanted to repay him. But he [didn’t] want his last name used” (Curtis 42).

In some ways, the cast seemed designed to be a hipper version of the Archie principals with all of the males sporting longer hair and modern fashions. There were notable departures, though, particularly the absence of a BettyArchie-Veronica love triangle. Bingo only had eyes for Samantha Smythe but their romance was complicated by her overbearing father Samson. Filling out the cast was Rebel, a beagle who—like The Archie Show’s Hot Dog—offered human-style thoughts on the action.

Alan M.’s debut came one issue after Josie’s sharp-tongued friend Pepper was dropped from the feature, also at Goldwater’s insistence. “You don’t have a girl like that at Riverdale,” DeCarlo recalled him saying. “At Riverdale, everybody respects authority, respects everyone.” As originally conceived by DeCarlo, the cast hadn’t lived in Archie’s Riverdale in the first place but he didn’t press the issue (Curtis 42).

One can only speculate on the reason why Archie created a new teen series but it may have been motivated by DC’s efforts to go head-to-head with them via several teen humor books of its own using the same style of logo and primary colors. If kids were going to buy an Archie-style series, publisher John Goldwater may have thought, it was better if Archie published it themselves. By the summer of 1969, Archie’s entire line was running a slug beneath various stories that spotlighted the company logo and declared

Continuing the series makeover, Frank Doyle wrote a story for Josie #43 that dug into the ancestry of the strip’s antagonist Alexandra Cabot and revealed that she had latent powers of witchcraft. Using her cat Sebastian as a familiar, Alexandra took magical aim at Josie over the next several issues but ditzy blonde Melody was usually able to counteract her with the snap of her fingers. Rejecting Alan and the Jesters, the creative team went back to the drawing board for issue #45 (December 1969) and a story where Josie and Melody decided to form a musical group of their own. Refusing a spot to Alexandra (who wanted to call them “Alexandra’s Cool Time Cats”), the girls conceded that they did need a third singer. Thanks to their nemesis’ brother Alex breaking ranks with his sibling to manage the band, a young woman named Valerie Smith— the first black character in Archie history—was recruited and Josie and the Pussycats were born. The title of the comic book changed accordingly. DeCarlo recalled that the group’s distinctive spotted costumes—complete with cat’s ears and tails—were modeled on an outfit that his wife Josie had worn circa 1963. “We

Josie unveiled the first Pussycat outfit to her bandmates in Josie and the Pussycats #45 while rival Alexandra smoldered. Art by Dan DeCarlo and Rudy Lapick. . TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

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ing a Laugh-In-inspired “Funhouse” section of jokes in the middle of the show, the series added Sabrina stories to the mix and the young sorceress immediately leapt from a third-tier filler to a star. On sale shortly thereafter was Archie’s TV Laugh-Out #1 (dated December 1969), an ongoing 25-cent giant that officially played up the entire cast of the cartoon but was really intended as a risk-free means of giving Sabrina a high-profile venue for a solo series. The first issue, for instance, opened and closed with longer stories starring the heroine while its middle was mostly comprised of brief “Funhouse”-style gags.

DeCarlo and Lapick’s unusual cover for Everything’s Archie #1 reflected fan reaction to the pop stars rather than spotlighting the Archies themselves. TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

were having a costume party,” he explained. “I designed the outfit, and Josie had a friend who was a great dressmaker and made the costume later used in Josie and the Pussycats” (Curtis 43). What DeCarlo was unaware of at the time was that all the changes being made in Josie were aimed at building the foundation for a prospective new companion series to The Archie Show. For the 1969-1970 season, though, another female character was getting a shot at the big time.

Earlier in the year, Everything’s Archie #1 (May 1969) was launched as a spotlight for The Archies musical group, even taking the title of the comic book from their second record album that featured “Sugar, Sugar.” Like Laugh-Out, it was a 64-page giant retailing for 25¢, a format that represented—along with Archie Giant Series, Archie’s Pals ‘n’ Gals, and Little Archie —nearly a quarter of Archie’s ongoing line-up once Jughead’s Jokes and Reggie’s Wise Guy Jokes were converted to that design in 1969. Samm Schwartz, who had embraced the 25-cent format while at Tower, found himself in the awkward posi-

tion of having to ask for work at Archie again. His old bosses agreed and Schwartz’s work began popping up in various titles in 1969, culminating with his return to his signature title Jughead in early 1970. According to Dan DeCarlo, Terry Austin reported, “Samm was now branded a traitor and at the mercy of his former tormentors, who wasted no time making his life more miserable than before” (Austin 97). Part of Archie’s motivation for rehiring Schwartz may have been a simple matter of keeping him away from the competition. When DC released its latest teen humor book—Date With Debbi #1 (January-February 1969)— they’d assigned Schwartz to draw the feature but his contributions to the series ended with issue #5 once he’d formally returned to his old employer. With her freckles and red hair, Debbi Baxter resembled no one so much as a female Archie Andrews, particularly when illustrated by Schwartz. John Goldwater and company couldn’t have been happy. Bursting with optimism following early sales reports, Carmine Infantino authorized an expansion of the DC teen humor line that included not only the Dick Giordano-edited Debbi’s Dates #1 (April-May 1969) but Joe Orlando’s Binky’s Buddies #1 (JanuaryFebruary 1969). Like their other teen

Noting the continued popularity of primetime’s Bewitched sitcom and the adventures of its enchanted housewife Samantha Stevens (Elizabeth Montgomery), Filmation’s Lou Scheimer looked into doing an animated version of the TV series but came up empty. CBS children’s programmer Fred Silverman, though, offered him an interesting bit of trivia: “Did you know your friend Goldwater already has a teenage witch character in the Archie books?” (Scheimer 70). Featured in increasingly rare shorts in Archie’s Madhouse since 1962, Sabrina the Teenage Witch was far from a star in the Archie domain but that all changed when The Archie Show was expanded for the 1969-1970 TV season as The Archie Comedy Hour, first promoted in a September 13, 1969 primetime special. Along with insert-

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humor books, DC used rounded logos on each title that were evocative of Archie, enough so that they may have been on legally shaky ground. Effective with August-dated issues, more angular, less derivative logos began appearing instead. Although Binky’s Buddies and Leave It To Binky still employed a good percentage of cosmetically altered reprints going into the year, most of the teen books had gone to all new material drawn by artists like Win Mortimer and Henry Scarpelli as 1970 neared. The last holdover was a strange title named Windy and Willy. Premiering in Showcase #81 (March 1969), the feature amounted to doctored reprints from 1963-1964-vintage Dobie Gillis issues, its two stars transformed into late 1960s hippies. Promoted to its own series immediately, Windy and Willy lasted just four issues, the last of them dated November-December 1969.

Scare Tactics One of the more creative uses of reprinted material came in Showcase #80 (February 1969). In that one, Joe Orlando selected two short-lived characters from the early 1950s, reprinting each of their first appearances and commissioning a new framing sequence by writer Mike Friedrich and artists Jerry Grandenetti and Bill Draut wherein the heroes met.

The ongoing skepticism of Dr. Thirteen—seen here in Phantom Stranger #4—grew tiresome since . it was clear that the Stranger was a genuine mystic. TM and © DC Comics.

The twist was that the two characters were conceptual oil and water. The Phantom Stranger—who got star billing—was a man of mystery with real if undefined supernatural abilities. Doctor Thirteen, on the other hand, was a self-described “ghostbreaker” who had made a career out of debunking supposed paranormal activities as frauds and hoaxes. In the Phantom Stranger, Thirteen had met his match. The ongoing Phantom Stranger comic book maintained the reprint/framing sequence set-up for its first three issues until an exasperated Orlando finally convinced Carmine Infantino to give him the budget to deliver allnew content. When Bob Kanigher began scripting the series with issue #4 (November-December 1969), he made the conflict a triangle by bringing in an evil sorceress named Tala who could give the Stranger a real run for his money. She also made Doctor Thirteen’s protestations that magic didn’t exist seem even sillier. The makeover wasn’t perfect—marred as it was by purple dialogue and a quartet of teenagers added to make the series seem more hip—but it was an important start, enhanced by Neal Adams’ dramatic pencils on Kanigher’s first story. “For a while,” Orlando recalled, “the mystery books were the best-selling books at DC, better than the superheroes” (Cooke, “Orlando’s Weird Adventures” 24). In fact, when Julius 241

Schwartz’s Spectre title was cancelled with issue #8, a last minute decision was made to revive it as an episodic horror book overseen by Dick Giordano. Building on events in Schwartz’s last issue, the series put a cap on the ghostly hero’s vast powers and chained him to a cosmic Journal of Judgment that tended to reduce the character to little more than a narrator. Remembered mostly for a short story in issue #9 by a young Bernie Wrightson—destined to be a star horror artist—the relaunch was a stark comedown from the scope of the series’ early issues and The Spectre was discontinued for real with issue #10 (May-June 1969). Giordano had far greater success with The Witching Hour #1 (February-March 1969). Following the host template of Cain in Orlando’s House of Mystery and borrowing from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the new series starred a trio of witches, two ancient—tall, slender Mordred and short, heavy Mildred—and one a young blonde “child of today”— step-sister Cynthia—who bickered and joked in seven pages of a visually electrifying framing sequence drawn by Alex Toth. Each issue featured three stories tailored to each of the witches—Cynthia’s, for instance, dealt with characters like surfers or fashion models—but Giordano declared they “were just incidental. […] The fun I had was with the bridges” (Cooke, “Along Came Giordano” 36).

Orlando in developing a companion book for House of Mystery, with Carmine Infantino agreeing to revive House of Secrets with issue #81 for the purpose. The obvious companion for Cain was Abel and the editors came up with an image and personality based on Orlando’s assistant Mark Hanerfeld. “Mark stuttered when he got nervous. He was short and heavy so Abel was short and heavy,” Orlando explained. “Abel was a good counterpoint to Cain who was tall and thin” (Cooke, “Orlando’s Weird Adventures” 24). After an introduction in DC Special #4 during May of 1968, Abel unlocked the doors of his new home in June.

“Most of them were written by Marv Wolfman, Len Wein and Gerry Conway,” Giordano continued. “They used to hang around the office all of the time. Even those issues look like they have themes; they weren’t written as a book. I used to order a bunch of stuff and then I would go through the inventory and compile this month’s The Witching Hour. I would find three stories that had some kind of thematic connection and add up the page count. Then I’d say, ‘I need a one-page intro, a twopage bridge between these stories, a onepage bridge between these, and a half-page close-off,’ and give the three stories to one of the writers” (Cooke, “Along Came Giordano” 36).

The premise, as established in Mike Friedrich, Jerry Grandenetti, and George Roussos’ origin story, was that the House of Secrets was alive. It “thinks Abel is just stupid and silly,” Giordano explained. “So it would slam windows on his fingers and he knows the house is after him all the time” (Cooke, “Along Came Giordano” 36). The only traditional horror short in House of Secrets #81 was “Aaron Philips’ Photo Finish,” a tale drawn by the prolific Jack Sparling that also happened to be the first published work of 16-year-old Gerry Conway. Taking advantage of Giordano’s easygoing nature, the teenager had “[made] a pest of myself for a year” with various story pitches and did that for

so long that fellow editor Murray Boltinoff came to the conclusion that the teenager was actually on the payroll (Groth, “Gerry Conway” 71). Asking Conway if he’d write a story for The Unexpected, too, Boltinoff likely suspected something was up when the young man spent “about three weeks of writing and rewriting the same story about six times. […] He asked me what my rate was, and I told him, ‘I don’t know because I don’t have a rate yet.’ Murray realized that he’d bought my first story. I think that’s the only time Murray Boltinoff bought a writer’s first story.” The editor never actually used the three-pager, though, but the assignment did open a door and Conway became a regular contributor to Giordano, even serving as “an unofficial assistant on [House of Secrets], assembling the issues with Dick” (Groth, “Gerry Conway” 71). In 1969, Don and Maggie Thompson told a story about how “one of the brass at DC recently began chewing out some of the editors for permitting delivery boys to sit around in the outer offices all day. It looks bad, he said, for those kids to be hanging around all the time. The editors were baffled, until Dick Giordano took a look at the delivery boys—[Denny O’Neil and Steve Skeates, by name]—and announced, “Those aren’t delivery boys; those are our writers!’” (Thompson, “One of the brass…” 3).

Cain and Abel were hardly an example of brotherly love. Art by Bill Draut from House of Secrets #80. . TM and © DC Comics.

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His offer to Conway notwithstanding, Boltinoff didn’t typically employ such “delivery boys.” He preferred wellestablished creators on The Unexpected and offered most of his writing assignments to men like George Kashdan, Carl Wessler, and Dave Wood. Wood—along with artist Curt Swan—had even created the “dangerous eccentric” Judge Gallows as another recurring host in issue #113 not long before Abel debuted. Noting the proliferation of such characters, Boltinoff realized his own book was losing its identity. Effective with issue #116, then, he dropped the Mad Mod Witch from the title and used the Judge only four more times between 1970 and 1972. “Having a narrator run through each story,” he noted, “was an all too familiar format” (Snyder 134). Boltinoff also hoped to break Challengers of the Unknown from its routine, working with Denny O’Neil and Jack Sparling to give the series a more horrific supernatural tone over the course of 1969. Issues #69 and #70 shook things up even more, sidelining founding member Prof and replacing him with a woman named Corinna Stark who also gave the Challs a new set of purple and yellow uniforms. Green Arrow and Black Canary—seen here in JLA #75—formed a romantic . bond in the 1970s. Art by Dick Dillin and Joe Giella. TM and © DC Comics.

O’Neil was more aggressive with his changes in Justice League of America, beginning with a scene in issue #69 (February 1969) where Diana Prince—the now de-powered Wonder Woman—was granted a leave of absence from the team. Two issues later, the writer turned his attention to the Manhunter From Mars, a character who had appeared increasingly rarely in JLA and no longer had a solo series to call his own. Deeming the character redundant alongside Superman, O’Neil decided that it would be properly dramatic to write J’onn J’onzz out of the series.

and green Martians that all but decimated the alien people. In the wake of the catastrophe, J’onn bid his farewells to the League to join the surviving refugees en route to a new home. More tragedy followed in the culmination of JLA #74’s annual Justice League-Justice Society crossover. Drawn into the heroes’ conflict with the cosmic villain Aquarius, private eye Larry Lance was killed before the eyes of his wife— and JSA member—Black Canary. The scenario had been orchestrated specifically to find a replacement for Wonder Woman as the book’s token female member and the grieving Black Canary left with the Justice Leaguers at the end of the story to make a fresh start on their native Earth-One.

Unfamiliar with the character outside of a recent origin reprint in World’s Finest #175, the writer penned a story in which the Manhunter finally returned to his native Mars— unaware that the milestone had already taken place in 1962’s Detective Comics #301. JLA #71 was far from the happy event that earlier issue had chronicled, though, instead detailing a horrific race war between white

The problem was the fact that the heroine was simply a skilled martial artist who was no more powerful than Diana Prince. O’Neil’s solution was to have Black Canary develop a difficult-to-control sonic scream—a consequence of her other-dimensional trip—that would theoretically improve her stature among the likes of the Flash and Green Lantern. It didn’t really work that way, though, and the writer had the character quit using the scream five issues after she acquired it in issue #75. The true significance of Justice League of America #75 (November 1969) pertained to Green Arrow. Since his back-up feature ended in 1963, the 28-year-old archer had appeared almost exclusively in JLA and he was arguably as redundant as J’onn J’onzz. The book already had a millionaireturned-crime-fighter in Batman but O’Neil—who favored more earthbound heroes—saw potential in the Emerald Archer. Consequently, he opened JLA #75 by immediately stripping Oliver (GA) Queen of his fortune via corrupt businessman John Deleon and forced the bankrupt hero to examine his motives for putting on a costume, a situation that soon drew in his League teammates. By the last page, Green Arrow had rediscovered his desire to champion the too-often-ignored common man and realized he was a bet-

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ter man for it. In the process, he also kindled a spark with the widowed Black Canary and the first hint of a budding romance could be seen. O’Neil’s inspiration for the makeover had come from the recent Brave and the Bold #85 (August-September 1969), wherein Green Arrow had joined forces with Batman. Recognizing the potential of a character with no series of his own, artist Neal Adams made a request of Murray Boltinoff: “Could I give him a new costume? Murray said sure, and had [Bob] Haney write it into the script. […] In my mind, GA was a modernday Robin Hood—like, duh—so that’s what I made him into. Leather jerkin, Robin’s hat, Al Williamson boots, and a neat beard” (Schumer, “Neal Adams: The DC Years” 47). The facial hair—in an era where virtually every superhero was cleanshaven—contributed as much as anything to making Green Arrow immediately seem cooler than his contemporaries and O’Neil ran with it in JLA. “I’d been granted permission to do this because none of the editors at DC seemed to care about him,” the writer explained. “Nobody had a vested interest in GA’s status quo. […] Green Arrow had a new wardrobe and a new lifestyle already. Why not give him a new characterization, particularly since the old one was so un-

defined that nobody knew what it was?” (O’Neil 2) Although conceived as a showcase for DC’s best and brightest superheroes, Justice League of America was in the first stages of becoming a haven for characters without their own books. Once The Atom and Hawkman was cancelled with issue #45 (October-November 1969), half the active JLA roster was exclusive to the team book much like the Justice Society in All Star Comics circa 1949-1951. O’Neil used that to his advantage, pushing Green Arrow and Black Canary to the forefront of every issue and playing up interpersonal relationships that mirrored Roy Thomas’ work on Marvel’s Avengers in some ways. In the last 1969-dated Neal Adams’ modernization of Green Arrow in The Brave and the issue, though, O’Neil Bold #85 defied the tradition of maintaining a hero’s status quo . when he guest-starred in the title. TM and © DC Comics. engaged in some final housecleaning. One of the but it was nothing compared to the characters he’d inherited had been clamor that arose when Carmine InSnapper Carr, the youth identificafantino empowered Mike Sekowsky tion character who had been part of to be writer-editor on Metal Men the series since its inception. “Snap#37 (April-May 1969). Flush with the per seemed to me, already then, to be success of his makeover of Wonder dated, to be a ‘50s version of a teenWoman (which he began writing and ager,” O’Neil explained. “And I didn’t editing with issue #182), Sekowsky see what we were going to use him employed essentially the same apfor. The other way to handle it would proach to the sextet of robots. On the have been benign neglect, which I ocdirection of a millionaire named Mr. casionally did later. Instead of botherConan, the band was given new huing to write somebody out, just don’t man personas with mod fashions to use them. But for whatever reason, I blend in with society. decided to write him out” (Eury 130). It was an intriguing development but The exit struck many longtime readit was also stripped the series of the ers as cruel, inasmuch as it required wild flights of fancy that typified its Snapper to turn on his friends and early years. The reaction from readers betray the location of the League’s was so divisive that Sekowsky wound cavernous headquarters to the Joker up splitting each letter column in in JLA #77. Even O’Neil later conceded half, devoting one part to detractors that the twist may have been overly and the other to supporters. Eviharsh. “I don’t think you should allow dently, there were more of the former [fans] to dictate what you do,” he notthan the latter. Metal Men was caned. “On the other hand, you shouldn’t celled with issue #41. go out of your way to insult them, eiIt wasn’t alone. Along with The Atom ther” (Eury 130). and Hawkman, The Spectre, and Some fans were also dismayed to see Windy and Willy, most of 1968’s prethe dormant hero Sargon the Sorcerer mieres were also kaput. Anthro, Be(1941-1949) revived by Mike Friedware the Creeper, and The Hawk and rich as a villain in The Flash #186 244

Bernie Wrightson soon realized he was ill-prepared for drawing his first full-length comic books when he was assigned to draw the final two installments of Nightmaster in Showcase #83 and #84. Completing the two issues with inking assistance from Jeff Jones and Michael Kaluta, the young artist came to a mutual agreement with Carmine Infantino to focus his efforts on short stories in DC’s horror comics in order to develop his craft. Showcase #83 original art courtesy of Heritage Auctions. TM and © DC Comics.

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Dove were killed after six issues, Bat Lash and Secret Six with seven, and Captain Action—now written and drawn by Gil Kane—following issue #5. Angel and the Ape—whose covers began to play down its simian co-star with issue #4—ultimately changed its name to Meet Angel for its final seventh issue.

Dynamite’s Coming! In a tacit acknowledgment of the fact that many of the failed books had been greenlit without a proper test phase, Carmine Infantino restored the old Showcase template in 1969 and began running three-issue tryouts again for prospective features. First up was Nightmaster in issues #82-84 (May-August 1969), the story of a rock singer named Jim Rook who was pulled into the other-dimensional land of Myrra to pick up the Sword of Night and fight assorted warlocks and other menaces. Denny O’Neil scripted the trilogy with the Jerry Grandenetti/Dick Giordano team

drawing the first chapter and newcomer Bernie Wrightson crafting its moody follow-ups. The genre known as Sword and Sorcery had gotten considerable play in the mid-1960s thanks to a prose revival featuring the likes of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. Despite much talk and the occasional story buried in an anthology title, though, no publisher had devoted an entire comic book to S&S until Nightmaster. In some ways, the series was ahead of its time, representing a category that really needed a higher profile property like Conan to blaze the trail. As it were, Sword and Sorcery wouldn’t flourish in comics until the 1970s. As evidenced by the failure of the finely-crafted Bat Lash, Westerns weren’t doing well in comics during the late 1960s either and Showcase #85-87’s Firehair (September-December 1969) was no exception. Written and il-

lustrated by Joe Kubert (with developmental input from Infantino), the series was set in the early 1800s and told of an orphaned red-haired boy who had been raised by a tribe of Blackfoot Indians but was never truly accepted by them because of his white skin and fiery hair. His Native American trappings left him equally ostracized by whites and the feature emerged as a metaphorical look at discrimination in modern America… whether due to the color of one’s skin or the length of his hair. Historian Bill Schelly observed that Firehair’s lack of success was not due to lack of quality. “Panoramas of the Great Plains, scenic mountains and valleys gave the comic an epic quality, and are quite obviously the result of extra effort on Kubert’s part,” he wrote. “His use of the grease pencil for textured gray-tones is particularly effective, sometimes yielding visual effects of uncommon beauty, even for him” (Schelly, Man of Rock 183).

Joe Kubert’s Firehair—seen here in a spread from Showcase #87—never won his own comic book but he returned a . year later in 1970’s Tomahawk #131 in a short-lived back-up series. TM and © DC Comics.

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Kubert’s contributions to the rest of the DC line were typically diverse. Those included a career spotlight in DC Special #5 and covers for series like The Atom and Hawkman, where Bob Kanigher revived his and Kubert’s 1947 adversary as the Gentleman Ghost in issues #43 and #44. In his editorial capacity, Kubert oversaw Kanigher and Russ Heath’s consolidation of several former DC war stars—Capt. Storm, Gunner & Sarge, and Johnny Cloud—alongside the

Haunted Tank’s Jeb Stuart as the Born Losers in G.I. Combat #138 (OctoberNovember 1969). Minus Stuart and the word “Born,” the Losers were on the fast track to replace Hunter’s Hellcats in Our Fighting Forces #123 just two months later. The surefire source for Kubert’s art remained the Enemy Ace feature in Star Spangled War Stories, winner of the 1969 Alley Award for Best War Title. Its highlights for the year ranged from a novel collaboration with Neal Adams in issue #144 to the awkward “Luck Is a Puppy Named Schatzi” in issue #148. The plot involved the stoic German pilot adopting a cute dog and taking him on each flight until, inevitably, Schatzi fell out and plunged to his death. Although erroneously credited to Kanigher in many sources, the veteran writer disavowed scripting it and insisted Kubert had done so himself. Nonetheless, Kanigher sighed, “I was attacked from all sides for that story as a murderer” (Kanigher 78). A collection of older Kanigher war stories (Our Army At War #203: February-March 1969) represented another sort of ending as DC quietly shrank its recurring series of 25-cent 80-Page Giant reprint specials and let the page count slip to an unheralded 64 with Action Comics #373. It was an early hint of the rising costs that would force DC’s regular 32-page titles to rise to 15¢ in a matter of months.

Reprints themselves were looked on increasingly as a panacea. In a last ditch effort to save Strange Adventures, for instance, Deadman was dropped and the comic book converted to old material, devoting itself to the early exploits of the Julius Schwartz-edited Adam Strange and Atomic Knights features starting with issue #217 (March-April 1969). The cost-effective strategy paid off well enough to justify a second title devoted to non-episodic reprints from the Schwartz science fiction books— From Beyond the Unknown—late in the summer. Since the Deadman series had ended on a cliffhanger, Neal Adams prevailed on Murray Boltinoff to feature the ghostly hero in The Brave and the Bold #86 (October-November 1969) and tie-up loose ends in a Batman team-up. Writer Bob Haney was fine with that but not the end result. “My script was changed from about halfway through into something new and strange,” he recalled. “[Adams] had taken it upon himself to ‘improve’ my script without consulting me or ye ed. […] Allow that Adams’ rewrite had a certain flashy style, it had nothing to do with my script and I informed him never to change any more scripts.” In support of his writer, Boltinoff removed Adams from the book (Haney 24). “You Can’t Hide From a Deadman” wasn’t the first story that Adams had rewritten for DC but the other was done with the approval of Dick Giordano. It stemmed from Marv Wolfman and Len Wein’s ambitious plans to introduce the company’s first black superhero in the pages of Teen Titans #20 (March-April 1969). As Wolfman described it, the plot involved “the Mob taking advantage of black anger by using and manipulating a teen gang.” Opposing them alongside the Titans was a hero dressed all in white called Jericho who advocated Martin Luther King’s principles of non-violence and who was ultimately unmasked as “the brother of one of the gang kids” (Cooke, “The Battle Over ‘Jericho’” 58).

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Approved in the concept stage by Irwin Donenfeld, the completed story

came across the desk of his successor and Carmine Infantino declared that DC couldn’t publish it. He “was afraid that we wouldn’t be able to sell the book in the South,” Wein declared, “and that all these terrible things would happen.” A week before publication and with the cover already printed, Teen Titans #20 required new contents. Overhearing the conversations, Neal Adams volunteered his services for a salvage job. He conceded that the script was overwrought—“full of racist remarks, reverse racism, with a tremendous amount of lashing out by young, white liberals”—but believed that its excesses could be toned down (Cooke, “The Battle Over ‘Jericho’” 58). With Wein and Wolfman’s blessing, Adams offered to rewrite the script but that offer, too, was rejected. “At that point,” Wolfman concluded, “we all understood that it wasn’t being killed because of bad writing, but because it had a black superhero in it.” With the clock ticking, Adams ultimately just came up with a new story, using as many of Nick Cardy’s original pages as he could and drawing new ones to bridge the gap. In the new account, the costumed hero was a Caucasian with the alter ego of Joshua (Cooke, “The Battle Over ‘Jericho’” 60). Adams continued the new story in Teen Titans #21 and #22, even bringing in the Hawk and the Dove for a guestappearance in a futile cross-promotional effort for their soon-to-be-cancelled book. Although he and Wein had burned their bridges on Teen Titans, Wolfman was still able to return for a short story in TT #22 (drawn by Gil Kane and Nick Cardy) that finally answered the fan conundrum of who Wonder Girl really was. The young writer explained that she’d been an American infant rescued from a burning building by Wonder Woman and endowed with Amazonian powers while raised on Paradise Island. At the end of the story, the ponytailed heroine let her hair down and left behind her star-spangled costume for a sharp new red outfit that was refreshingly modern. For the most part, though, Wolfman and Wein weren’t getting many assignments outside of a few offers from Giordano and Orlando. The Jericho imbroglio overlapped with an unfounded belief on DC’s part that the two young men and others “were stealing original art from the archives” (Arndt, “Cry Wolfman” 13). The true culprit, according to Carmine Infantino, was veteran editor Jack Miller. In the fall of 1968, Infantino was approached by young comics dealer Phil Seuling, who claimed that “Miller offered him the first couple of editions of Superman from the office.” The horrified editorial director relayed the news to Jack Liebowitz, who demanded that the offender be fired immediately (Amash, Carmine Infantino 93).

The stigma surrounding the replacement of DC’s first black superhero Jericho in Teen Titans #20 prevented Joshua from ever appearing in another comic book. Art by Neal Adams and Nick Cardy. TM and © DC Comics.

Neither Wein, who recalled Miller as “a very dear man” (Cooke, “An Illegitimate Son…” 81), nor his writing partner bore him any ill will. Learning that the editor was fighting cancer, Wolfman noted that he’d been stealing bound volumes and original art “to raise money for hospital treatments. […] He was a good man, despite inadvertently being responsible for our blacklisting” (Cooke, “Breaking Into the Ranks” 80). Sadly, Jack Miller died on January 9, 1970 (Thompson, “Obituaries” 6). In the aftermath, Miller’s Metal Men and Wonder Woman both went to Mike Sekowsky while his romance books were split between Murray Boltinoff, Dick Giordano, and Joe Orlando. Before moving in their own directions, though, Orlando and Giordano both made a point to properly cap off Miller’s pair of three-year-old serials. Karen Wilder Sommers achieved her “Reach For Happiness” in Secret Hearts #138 (September 1969) when her doctor sweetheart agreed to marry her while “3 Girls” concluded in Heart Throbs #123 (December 1969-January 1970) with its stars each finding true love.

Nick Cardy’s redesign of Wonder Girl’s costume—seen here on Teen Titans #23—not only gave her a more contemporary look but served to distinguish her from Wonder Woman. TM and © DC Comics.

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Despite the fact that the vocal, overwhelmingly male contributors to comic book fanzines were indifferent at best to such series, “girls comics” were clearly a genre with

of Steel displaced the Legion of Super-Heroes who had starred in the book for the past seven years. In turn, the Legion moved into Supergirl’s old spot in Action Comics. As a series with a cast of 20plus heroes, the Legion was almost inevitably going to be cramped when it dropped from 23-pages a month to 10 but readers were assured that the series would now “emphasize one or two heroes at a time, with heavier reliance on character development” (Hanerfeld, “On the Drawing Board: 3/69” 2).

Premiering in 1968, DC Special was a quarterly reprint giant with a different theme for each issue. Issue #3 art by Nick Cardy and Neal Adams. TM and © DC Comics.

untapped potential. In a year when the new 15-cent price point sent DC’s sales plunging across the board, the teen humor titles were booming and the revamped Wonder Woman actually saw an increase over 1968 figures (which was more than could be said for DC’s other superhero titles). Small wonder, then, that DC Special #3 was devoted to a spotlight on DC’s costumed heroines and that Supergirl—on the tenth anniversary of her debut—was spun off into her own comic book.

Exit the Young Technically speaking, Supergirl’s book was Adventure Comics (effective with issue #381: June 1969) and her arrival came with a price. The Girl

The mind-altering impact of drugs made its way into Action Comics

#378’s Legion of Super-Heroes story, but not without a fight. . Following an initial reprint TM and © DC Comics. episode in Action #377, Jim Milton Caniff was able to address Shooter (with artists Win Mortimer the subject directly that same year in and Mike Esposito) did his best to dea September 27-November 30 Steve liver. In issue #378’s “The Forbidden Canyon continuity. Like Shooter, Fruit,” the Legionnaire known as TimCaniff understood that an exploraber Wolf was tricked into imbibing tion of drug abuse would have more the juice of the Lotus Fruit and found immediacy and impact if it focused himself addicted to it. Experiencing on a character that readers already psychedelic highs and a crushing knew and cared about. In Caniff’s hunger when the buzz wore off, the case, he chose teenager Oley Olson, hero was on the verge of a breakdown when his girlfriend Light Lass interthe son of Canyon’s future wife Sumvened and helped him overcome his mer and a boy that longtime readers craving. had watched grow up over the past two decades. That history gave added As a clear statement on the late weight to scenes where Oley tried to 1960s’ rampant drug abuse, the script get drug money from his mother and was rejected by the Comics Code later faced charges of vehicular homibut editor Mort Weisinger stood by cide, incidents that imbued the entire the story. He “wielded great influstory with a topical relevance. ence,” Shooter recalled, “[and] I

had to write a couple of additional panels where, at the end, the guy is redeemed and renounces drugs […] to shut up the Code. [The story] ran and didn’t get any publicity or attention” (Cadigan 60).

Weisinger’s attempts at topicality didn’t come off as well. In response to multiple requests from soldiers overseas, he commissioned Bob Kanigher, Ross Andru, and Mike Esposito to create a story in which Superman visited

October 29, 1969 strip: Milton Caniff had done a previous story on drug addiction in Steve Canyon but his decision to use members of the strip’s own cast gave . his new account more impact and enabled him to reference the long-term repercussions throughout the 1970s. TM and © Estate of Esther Parsons Caniff.

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vel as an assistant editor under Stan Lee and his first day was enlivened by an angry call from his old boss. Mort “felt I’d betrayed him…‘after all I’ve done for you,’ etc.” Shooter recalled. “I left Marvel after a few weeks for personal reasons, and was out of mainstream comics altogether for a few years so my ‘betrayal’ of Mort was short-lived” (Eury, Jim Shooter Interview” 77). As Weisinger fretted, the lone Superman family book no longer in his control was prospering under the supervision of Murray Boltinoff. Having already established Frank Robbins and Bob Brown as the new writer-penciler team of Superboy, Boltinoff further enhanced the series by hiring Wally Wood to bring his polished inks to the title effective with issue #153 (January 1969). It’s unknown whether Robbins had any familiarity with Marvel Comics’ trailblazing series but he nonetheless brought some of Spider-Man’s teenage angst to Superboy and made readers empathize with the character in a way that seemed fresh. A recurring school bully named Bash Bashford was brought in with issue #157 to create conflict, most notably in issue #161’s story where a tormented young Clark Kent—trying to prove himself on the football field—actually fractured the kid’s skull. Elsewhere, Superboy #160 made a dark exploration into a high school love triangle that led to seeming acts of murder in a jealous rage.

the Vietnam war zone (Superman #216). In contrast to the more sober war stories published even in Kanigher’s other series, though, this particular tale of a beautiful South Vietnamese mastermind and a mutated soldier called King Cong just seemed a little silly. The same was most assuredly true of the Otto Binder-scripted “Hippie Olsen’s HateIn” (Jimmy Olsen #118), wherein Superman’s pal grew long hair and a beard to infiltrate the set-up of the mysterious Guru Kama and wound up getting suckered by the villain into attacking his friends.

The audacious “Superboy’s Darkest Secret” (Superboy #158) even asserted that the Boy of Steel’s Kryptonian parents had survived the explosion of their planet, albeit in a kryptonite-irradiated vessel where they were held in suspended animation. After an agonizing battle to retrieve the craft, the young hero activated a pre-recorded message and discovered that his family—forced into the chamber against their will—had been dying of radiation poisoning when Krypton was destroyed. “Do not restore us to life,” the message concluded, “ a n d the lingering, horrible years that will surely follow.” Tearfully taking his parents’ virtual last will and testament to heart, Superboy thrust the vessel back into space.

The 18-year-old Shooter—who had begun picking up Olsen assignments since his Legion pages were cut—was growing tired of it all. “I was going to NYU—I had a full scholarship—and I wanted to work part-time,” he explained, “preferably doing something less taxing than writing, preferably an office gig. Having worked my way through high school writing for Mort, I just wasn’t ready to do another four years under that kind of pressure. Mort turned me down cold. He said he needed me as a writer” (Eury, “Jim Shooter Interview” 77). And with that, Jim Shooter retired from comic book writing, his last script appearing that November in Action Comics #384. In the short term, he found work at Mar-

Superboy #158’s tragic expansion on the fate of the Boy of Steel’s Kryptonian parents . drew raves from fans. Cover art by Neal Adams. TM and © DC Comics.

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Purists would later take issue with the revelation and disavow its place in the Superman canon but at the time of publication, it was a big hit. “Never in our vast experience with comics mags,” Boltinoff declared in issue #161, “has a story drawn so much laudatory mail.”

Robbins was also drawing accolades for his work on Batman, which was gradually becoming more serious as he understood that this wasn’t the Camp Crusader of the TV series. As many diehard fans reminded editor Julius Schwartz in his letter columns, though, the current hero wasn’t exactly the fearsome creature of the night that he’d been in 1939, either. Celebrating Batman 30th anniversary in Detective Comics #387 (May 1969), Schwartz had Mike Friedrich write

a new version of the first Batman story, reframed to reflect modern times. It was immediately followed by a reprint of that original tale from Detective #27 and perhaps that’s one of the things that got the veteran editor thinking. After the highs of 1966 and 1967, sales on Batman had fallen to their lowest point on record. By 1969, Schwartz had concluded that many prospective buyers were now dismissing the series out of hand, assuming it was filled with the silliness of the TV show without ever bothering to look past the surface details. Why not, he wondered, get rid of all the elements that such nay-sayers associated with the show—or at least as many as possible? No more Aunt Harriet or Hotline or Stately Wayne Manor or Batcave or costumed crooks or Batgirl… and no more Robin. Batman had, after all, started out as a solo act and had been at his darkest before the Boy Wonder made the scene in 1940. Working with Robbins, Schwartz laid the groundwork. The Catwoman, the Joker, the Scarecrow, and Batgirl each made what were— for the moment—final appearances in the series while Robin began disappearing from many covers (if not the stories themselves). Sidelined with

The 30th anniversary issue of Detective Comics included a cover by Irv Novick and a lead story by Mike Friedrich, Bob Brown, and Joe Giella that modernized Bill Finger and Bob Kane’s 1939 first Batman story. TM and © DC Comics.

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Detective #393’s Novick cover and the issue’s lead . story teased that it was Batman and Robin’s last case as a lead-in to Dick Grayson’s departure for college. . TM and © DC Comics.

a cold, Robin sat out Batman #216 entirely but nonetheless offered a tweak at the TV show’s bits. Flipping the lid on a Shakespeare bust in Wayne Manor, Dick Grayson revealed that it held not an access dial to the Batcave but a vault containing the original manuscript for Romeo and Juliet. By the time, Detective Comics #393’s cover proclaimed that “the team-up is finished” and “this is goodbye for Batman and Robin,” even the densest reader had to realize that something big was in the offing. The answer came in Batman #217 (dated December 1969 but on sale in October). Opening with the sight of a gloomy Bruce Wayne in Dick Grayson’s empty bedroom, the story soon revealed that the millionaire’s young ward was headed upstate to attend classes at Hudson University. “Young Master Dick” was now a man (“’Least—that’s what my draft card says…”) and Robin would no longer be at Batman’s side. The shakeup in his comfortable status quo led Bruce to entirely reevaluate his crime-fighting operation. “We’re in grave danger of becoming—outmoded,” he told Alfred. “Obsolete dodos of the mod world outside.” Starting at that moment, he declared that he was going to shutter the Batcave and move from suburban Wayne Manor into a penthouse deep in the heart of Gotham that was closer to

A Murphy Anderson-illustrated ad played up Batman and Superman’s role in the ground-breaking Sesame Street TV series. The divide between selling DCs heroes . to their traditional younger audience in other media while courting an older . demographic in comic books became more pronounced with each passing year. . TM and © DC Comics.

Premiering on public TV stations throughout the United States on November 10, 1969, Sesame Street combined a succession of fast-paced scenes with the express goal of educating young kids in such basics as letters, numbers, and words. Along with an integrated cast of adults and children in a welcoming neighborhood, the daily series employed tools such Jim Henson’s Muppets—starting with Bert and Ernie—and various live-action and animated shorts to get its point across. Maintaining the same style and vocal casting as its CBS cartoons, Filmation produced the Superman and Batman sequences for Sesame Street on such subjects as the letter “S” and using caution when crossing the street. Licensing—as much as the comic book themselves—was increasingly important to DC’s ongoing profitability and an important milestone took place on July 8, 1969 even if its significance was only evident in hindsight. That was the day that Steve Ross paid $400 million to buy the Warner Bros.-Seven Arts film studio. Once a giant in the entertainment industry, Warner had seen better days and Ross took advantage of its struggles to add it to his Kinney National Services. As Warner bounced back and mergers begat mergers in the 1970s, its connection to the heroes of DC Comics would become increasingly important as its muscle helped propel the four-color characters into other mediums.

In an effort to shake the stigma of the campy TV show, Batman #217 stripped the series to its darker, more solitary core. Cover art by Neal Adams. TM and © DC Comics.

the criminals he fought against. In short, he was “streamlining the operation [and] reestablishing the trademark of the ‘old’ Batman—to strike new fear into the new breed of gangsterism sweeping the world.” The crimes that Batman investigated now would be rooted more in the real world, focused more on murder mysteries than on clever clues and theme crimes. In support of that, the look of Batman itself became darker, with Dick Giordano coming aboard (effective with issue #215) to provide more shadowy, full-bodied inks over Irv Novick’s pencils. It would be 1970, though, before the full impact of the darker Batman was realized.

New Kingdoms, Lonely Wars

As for Robin, Schwartz wasn’t naïve enough to assume he could simply drop a character who was still so commercially recognizable. As he’d done since 1968, the Teen Wonder would continue to appear in the back pages of Detective Comics, each two-part story alternating with the Batgirl series.

As larger publishers coveted the prospect of selling their characters to television, Charlton Comics was relishing the fact that it had scored the rights to license an entire library of familiar names to comic books. Struggling with bad publishing experiments and resources diverted to the development of the Yellow Submarine movie, King Features had allowed its King Comics line to sit in limbo for a year. Aware of the money being lost by having no new content to sell overseas, someone at King finally made the executive decision to license the titles to another publisher in the latter half of 1968 and Charlton was delighted to sign the contract.

However much the editor wished to gear the series to an older reader, he appreciated the fact that superheroes had great appeal with younger ones. Indeed, despite the controversy over violence in TV cartoons, Batman and Superman were both selected to be part of one of the most revolutionary series in children’s television history. 252

and asked, and screamed again—but no deal. ‘We need you to keep doing what you’re doing’” (Johnson 23). With Bud Sagendorf now entirely engaged in producing the Popeye newspaper strip, Charlton also needed someone to draw the sailor’s comic book. George Wildman, a one-time contributor to the company, leapt at the prospect of drawing a character he’d loved since childhood, particularly since he’d just suffered setbacks in both his advertising business and personal health. The Popeye assignment, he explained, grew out of an offer from managing editor Sal Gentile to work as an assistant editor:

Since Charlton’s Phantom and DC’s Aquaman . each had bi-monthly schedules, Jim Aparo could . draw both titles in alternating months through 1969 and into 1970. TM and © King Features Syndicate, Inc.

Picking up where they’d left off in 1967, Beetle Bailey #67, Blondie #177, Flash Gordon #12, Jungle Jim #22 (having counted King’s JJ #5 as issue #21), The Phantom #30 (skipping issue #29), and Popeye #94 all went on sale in November of 1968 (cover-dated February 1969) under the Charlton imprint. A certain amount of the material—notably a Reed Crandallillustrated Flash Gordon and a Wally Wood-produced issue of Jungle Jim— was held over from the King Comics inventory but the scripts and art were soon being produced strictly by the Charlton staff. Pat Boyette was assigned to draw both Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim (the former written by Bill Pearson, the latter by Joe Gill) while Jim Aparo illustrated The Phantom, beginning with issue #31. Aparo’s Phantom quickly became a fan-favorite—perhaps the most popular visual interpretation since Sy Barry took over the newspaper strip in 1961—but the title wasn’t the artist’s first choice. “I wanted Flash Gordon,” he admitted, “but I never spoke up and said I did” (Harris 52). Meanwhile, Pete Morisi—a huge fan of all the King heroes—groused to Glen Johnson at the time that he wouldn’t be considered for any of the books “due to the value of my work in Westerns, and deadline considerations. […] I screamed, yelled, pleaded

“I said, ‘But the price is low on the salary,’ and so they said, ‘Would you like to take the Popeye strip? King Features has called us and we need a Popeye artist. You want to submit samples?’ So I did. I submitted samples; King okayed them, so I had all systems go. With King’s money and Charlton’s meager amount, I had a living” (Pitchford 7). As far as Wildman was concerned, the King deal was a turning point for Charlton and one that was successful enough to warrant two additional titles—Hi and Lois and Ponytail—before 1969’s end. “On top of this coup,” he declared, “in [1970] we also landed the rights to produce the comic books featuring the Hanna-Barbera characters […]—The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Top Cat, The Jetsons, Huckleberry Hound, etc. […] These acquisitions opened a lot of distributors’ doors for us. You know that when a salesman for a comic book publisher arrives in a town and approaches a big magazine distributor, that distributor is primarily interested in whether the salesman has some titles in his line that will really sell on the newsstands and in other outlets” (Hurd 12). 253

For those not actively contributing to the new titles, the news wasn’t necessarily good. Charlton’s premier automotive artist Jack Keller remarked, “They bought that allotment and with that […] they decided to chop two of the hot rod books off” (Mozzer 12). Indeed, Grand Prix and World of Wheels were both cancelled in early 1970. Surf ‘n’ Wheels—a novel 1969 hybrid title devoted half to Keller’s motorcycle-riding White Angels and half to Joe Gill, Bill Fraccio, and Tony Tallarico’s Surf Kings—only made it into mid-1970 itself. Preceding them all in cancellation were Hercules #12, Space Adventures #8, and Strange Suspense Stories #9, each of them succumbing by mid-1969. Charlton’s supernatural titles endured, though, and writer Steve Skeates found great amusement in the fact that one of his contributions to The Many Ghosts of Dr. Graves #11 (February 1969) was a variation on another script he’d just done for DC’s Spectre #8 (January-February 1969). Naïve as to Julius Schwartz’s method

“simply possessed too much affection for what [he] was producing” to work exclusively for the better-paying DC (Skeates 49).

Steve Ditko’s art in The Many Ghosts of Doctor Graves #11 conjured up visions of the artist’s . earlier work on Doctor Strange. TM and © respective copyright holder.

of working up stories, Skeates had come into his office with a detailed plot that the DC editor promptly threw out. “The two of us set about constructing what basically amounted to a brand-new plot based on those couple of ideas of mine that Julie liked,” the writer detailed, “ideas that had somehow gotten his creative juices flowing” (Skeates 48). Skeates still liked his original idea, though, and resolved to use it again for Dr. Graves. In each, he noted, “the Spectre and Dr. Graves sensed an evil approaching Earth. […] They both shot up to confront this being (Graves employing an astral projection of himself just as [Marvel’s] Dr. Strange would have done, the two of them having to grow, to enlarge themselves, in order to properly battle this giant baddie” (Skeates 52). The plot required making Graves—

typically but not exclusively employed as a benign host—considerably more powerful than he’d ever been depicted as before but the writer saw no reason why that would be a problem. Skeates was astonished, though, when the story was assigned to Dr. Strange’s originator Steve Ditko. Looking at the visual similarities between the two heroes, Skeates briefly fretted over whether Marvel might sue but ultimately he just delighted in how good the pages looked: “Ditko’s art did indeed make my story sing” (Skeates 51). “Unlike DC, Charlton didn’t require that I first submit a plot outline, get it approved, and then write my story,” Skeates noted. “Instead, I could just suddenly turn in a finished product, on spec, a way of working I very much preferred.” Enamored of the creative freedom he had at Charlton, Skeates

Will Franz had a different story to tell regarding a “Lonely War of Capt. Willy Schultz” episode entitled “The Partisans” (Fightin’ Army #88: November 1969). The tale involved Schultz— the fugitive American officer posing as a German—working with Italian partisans to free a captive town only to see his allies execute their captive Nazi prisoners. “Franz knew the massacre subject matter would be sensitive to handle and was careful to have it approved by editor Sal Gentile in advance,” historian Richard Arndt detailed. Despite Gentile’s assurances, Franz was horrified to discover that the climactic scene was whitewashed with new dialogue by Joe Gill on the final pages (Arndt, “Tales…” 22). Gentile blamed the Comics Code for the changes while the Code’s Leonard Darvin—in a personal meeting with Franz—insisted they’d received the story exactly as published. The young writer didn’t know who to believe. “I was 17 years old with a botched storyline to repair,” he noted. “I had done all I could at the time and had to let the matter drop” (Arndt, “Tales…” 22). The incident was the beginning of the end for Will Franz’s comic book career. “In 1969,” he remembered, “a fan of mine (who was the son of someone famous) registered for the draft, and he registered as a conscientious objector. He put my name down as an influencing factor. […] Shortly after that, I got a call from the editor’s secretary, saying they were dropping the titles, and that I should send in whatever I’d done on the series, and they’d pay me” (Cooke, “Lonely War…” 102). The writer’s series did stop—Iron Corporal in Army War Heroes #37 (April 1970) and Willy Schultz in Fightin’ Army #92 (July 1970)—but the latter comic book continued being published with no disruption. Had the FBI complained to Charlton because of the conscientious objector? Franz would never know.

In the published account of Fightin’ Army #88’s Willy Schultz story, the execution of German prisoners by . Italian partisans was altered to a firefight between the partisans and Nazis. TM and © respective copyright holder.

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Still, he was gratified by the impact that his stories on the brutality and complexities of war had had on many readers of the time. “There was one

truly horrifying story [1969’s “Huertgen Minefield”: Army War Heroes #32] which I remember nearly fifty years later,” former Comic Reader editor Mike Tiefenbacher told American Comic Book Chronicles. “Even if I’d bought into the ROTC hype I had to sit through in the first month I went to college in ‘69, I’d been properly disabused of the ‘positive’ aspects of joining the Army, and I credit Franz’s stories more than anything else.”

Among the horrors of Will Franz’s “Huertgen Minefield” (Army War Heroes #32) was a soldier . whose face was blown off and another who lost the use of his arms. TM and © respective copyright holder.

Franz himself told the story of his appearance at a 1990 comic book convention. “This dejected looking guy comes in, about my age, carrying a whole stack of my books. He asked me if I’d autograph them. I had no problem doing it, and [Schultz artist Sam Glanzman] was there, I said Sam would autograph them, too, and he just said to me, ‘Willy Schultz meant a lot to me when I was in the ‘Nam, man.’ And I almost started crying. You never know what you do, how it’s going to affect somebody, somewhere” (Cooke, “Lonely War…” 102). As Franz continued his lonely campaign against warfare, Wally Wood was putting together a comic book aimed directly at United States servicemen. Building on the comic strip insert he’d created for Overseas Weekly in 1968, the cartoonist put together a full-color 32-page comic book entitled Heroes, Inc. with an estimated print run of 18,000 copies (Hill 200). Despite his audience, though, Wood made a point of avoiding any references to Vietnam. “I don’t think a straight war book would be popular even with servicemen,” he acknowledged in a 1969 letter, “and I’m afraid it would be sudden death on the newsstands” (Hill 199). “I’d like to keep the variety of an oldtime comic book,” he admitted in the first issue’s editorial, and to that end he included three distinctly different features. Dragonella, co-written with Ron Whyte, was a lighthearted sword and sorcery farce while the Misfits— composed of the android Mystra, alien Shag, and mutant Glomb—was pure science fiction. The star of the book, though, was the military-esque Cannon (penciled by Steve Ditko), a Cannon was the most enduring of . Wally Wood’s creations in Heroes, Inc. #1. . TM and © Wallace Wood Properties, LLC.

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ror books are a good example of what’s wrong with this business. The regular, 15¢ comic books are trying some tame ‘Mystery’ books, with fake ghost stories that wouldn’t scare a five-year-old. But there are at least a half a dozen 35¢ black and white comic books […] so they must be doing fairly well, and have established a new form of comic book, which dealers and distributors seem able to move. And with Mad and its imitators, it’s a fairly sizeable category, with quite a few years of acceptance” (Hill 199). Despite Wood’s hopes for bigger things, Heroes, Inc. stalled after one issue and he ultimately retooled Cannon as a comic strip feature for Overseas Weekly in 1971. Meanwhile, the pages intended for Heroes, Inc. #2 sat in a California warehouse until the summer of 1974 when a Wood fan named Gregg Hazen discovered the material while he and his wife organized the facility (Hill 197-198). Convincing the distribution manager to allow him to take the rarities, Hazen helped facilitate the eventual publication of that second issue by CPL Gang Publications in 1976.

The Wild Bunch Meanwhile, Myron Fass’ Eerie Publications was contributing mightily to the burst of black and white horror comics that Wood spoke of. Although he’d evidently been disabused of using the Tales From the Crypt name, Fass (with editor Carl Burgos) came back with five new titles for 1969—Horror Tales, Tales From the Tomb, Tales of Voodoo, Terror Tales, and Witches Tales—that, along with the three-year-old Weird, would endure well into the 1970s. Comprised mostly of reprints from early 1950s Ajax-Farrell and other publishers’ horror stories, the newly-commissioned covers for the magazines broke new ground in their depiction of undisguised gore—filled with explicit imagery of severed limbs, cannibalism, and copious amounts of blood. Stanley Publications’ own 1969 contributions to the newsstand bloodbath—the bi-monthly Chilling Tales of Horror and Shock—were only slightly more tasteful.

Following a brief foray in comics, Dragonella co-writer Ron Whyte became a playwright and advocate for the disabled. TM and © Wallace Wood Properties, LLC.

squarejawed hero who had been stripped of all emotions and became the perfect, clinical soldier. The common thread in all three stories was well-endowed women, often scantily clad. Discussing the nature of the comic book—touted on the cover as “amazing adult adventure”—in his 1969 letter, Wood saw “sex, violence, and horror” as the key components that would attract readers to the title. Envisioning the book achieving distribution beyond the military, he emphasized that it could not adhere to Comics Code strictures: “If we made it conform to the Code, who would want to buy it? The stands are full of nice, wholesome comics with no sexy girls and no violence, and they’re in trouble. The super-hero boom is over, and everyone is sort of floundering around waiting for someone to start something so they can copy it. The Hor-

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They were hardly the sort of thing that would make James Warren worry but Major Magazines’ Web of Horror #1 (December 1969) was another matter. At a time when Warren was cutting corners, filling the pages of Creepy and Eerie with reprints and raising its retail price to 50¢, the 35-cent Web (from the publisher of Cracked) was offering all new content from a fresh group of creators like artists Bernie Wrightson, Wayne Howard, Ralph Reese, Michael Kaluta, Frank Brunner, and Jeff Jones and writers Nick Cuti, Marv Wolfman, Mike Friedrich, and Bruce Jones who were just beginning to make their mark in comic books. Along with old pros like Otto Binder and Syd Shores,

it made for an impressive package of short horror stories.

For James Warren, Web’s existence had been a wake-up call. He included fewer reprints in his two horror titles and he got to work on a new title that would introduce his publishing house’s best known character. He and renowned science fiction fan Forrest J. Ackerman—also the editor of Warren’s Famous Monsters of Filmland— had recently seen the Jane Fonda sf movie Barbarella and the publisher envisioned a heroine of his own.

Conceding that he was normally “turned off” by the black and white horror books, Comic Reader editor Mark Hanerfeld gave the series his endorsement after seeing the first issue. “There seems to be an attempt to produce something other than sheer horror for the sake of horror,” he explained. “The writing in the first issue is passable in the main, and two of the stories even come close to the standards of the EC science fiction line” (Hanerfeld, “On the Drawing Board; 11/69” 3). Historian Richard Arndt added that Web’s threat was significant enough that Jim Warren “issued an edict that stated that you could work for Jim Warren or you could work for his competition, but you couldn’t work for both” (Arndt, “Caught…” 5). Warren needn’t have worried. After Web’s third issue in 1970, editor Terry Bisson—later to become a science fiction and fantasy novelist—abruptly left to join a commune while Bernie Wrightson and Bruce Jones stayed behind to compile issue #4 (Arndt, “Caught…” 8). Arriving at the Major Magazines office one day, Wrightson recalled, they discovered that “the place was empty. All the desks, all filing cabinets, everything was gone! There were only scraps of paper blowing across the floor—it was like the Twilight Zone— and we never learned where [publisher Bob Sproul] went and what happened to him” (Cooke, “Wrightson’s Warren Days” 86). It’s unclear whether the situation coincided with Sproul’s move to Florida or Major’s shift to a Park Avenue address but, regardless, Web of Horror was no more. Cracked, however, continued without interruption.

“I carefully outlined exactly what I wanted,” Warren remembered. “A modern day setting but something with a mystique of vampires, Transylvania; something legendary—and Vampirella was born. I said, ‘Forrey, I know exactly how she’ll look; don’t worry about that. Her colors will be bright red for excitement and pitch black for mystery. Just give me something I can build on’” (Cooke, “Someone…” 36). Frank Frazetta was tapped to paint the cover of Vampirella #1 (October 1969) and establish her look but the artist wasn’t grasping what Warren was describing. Visiting the offices at the time, underground cartoonist Trina Robbins drew her own sketch of what the publisher was detailing and Warren declared that she should speak to Frazetta herself. “He gave me the phone and I described in minute detail to Frank exactly what I had drawn (never did I meet him in person!),” Robbins reported. “My payment was a lifetime subscription to Vampirella, which actually ended in 1973 or thereabouts” (Robbins 38).

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“Nowadays, when some people hear I designed Vampi’s costume, knowing what a feminist I am and how much I hate ‘bad girl’ comics, they’re confused,” Robbins

her to oppose (the Cult of Chaos) and some supporting characters (Conrad and Adam Van Helsing, Pendragon) for her to play against.” The arrival of artist Jose Gonzales with issue #12 completed the makeover with his version of the character, in Goodwin’s estimation, becoming “the definitive Vampirella for the comics series” (Goodwin 10). The teasing imagery of Vampirella was mild in comparison to the blossoming underground comix scene where its foremost creators were enthusiastically breaking every taboo, particularly in Mike Royer original art from Vampirella #2, courtesy of Heritage Auctions. . regard to depicting explicit TM and © DFI. sexual activities. Robert Crumb’s Snatch, among others, was cited twice for obscenity charges, circumstances that historian Patrick Rosenkranz reported “increased their notoriety and immediately boosted demand.” In one trial, jurors read copies of the offending comix and voted to acquit while in the other, the evidence disappeared—stolen from police storage (Rosenkranz 133). Meanwhile, Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, and Spain Rodriguez were among those pushing the limits in 1969’s Zap Comix #4, whose content was deemed so twisted that retailers in possession of the issue were arrested on both coasts. New York’s Judge Joel Tyler pronounced it “ugly, cheap, and degrading. Its purpose is to stimulate erotic responses, and does not, as claimed, deal with basic realities of life. It is grossly shocking, demeaning the sexual experience by perverting it” (Rosenkranz 143).

continued, “until I point out how much more she wore in those days, and how [the later] Vampi is nothing like the original one” (Robbins 38). That said, the early Vampirella stories were full of racy poses, starting with a shower scene in the Tom Sutton-illustrated origin. While Vampi starred in the opening story of each issue, she was reduced to a hostess for science fiction and horror shorts in the rest of each edition. Jim Warren was disappointed with the end result. “It was too frothy, too light, too satirical—and the only artist I could get at the time was Tom Sutton,” he remarked. “In retrospect, Tom’s drawing style was not right for Vampi, just as Forrey’s writing style was not hitting the mark I wanted. The first issue was awful—and the second issue was just as bad; it just wasn’t what I wanted. I struggled with various writers and artists for many issues” (Cooke, “Someone…” 36). It wasn’t until issue #8 (November 1970) that Warren finally sought out Archie Goodwin to rethink the character. “I still retained Ackerman’s original concept of the character being from a planet of vampires [Drakulon] and relocated through circumstance to Earth,” Goodwin noted, “but grafted on a Lovecraftian cult of villains and demons for

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en to You) and decided to try selling them to the tens of thousands watching the July 4 Schlitz Circus Parade. When plainclothes policemen caught sight of what the cartoonist described as a “really innocuous” panel of a topless woman, they advised him, “If we see you selling this to anyone under 21, you’ll be in the clinker” (Rosenkranz 156). Kitchen did manage to sell 3,500 issues before his partner Bill Kauth sold the rest to the San Francisco Comic Book Company for distriAlthough Robert Crumb and other . contributors preferred Jive Comics for the bution. By 1970, Kitchen name of their underground monthly (as . would take the name of seen on issue #1’s cover), Vaughn Bodé . won out with Gothic Blimp Works. . Kitchen Sink Press, first TM and © respective copyright holder. as a cooperative of local artists and eventually as a full-fledged publishing house. Kitchen’s eventual formation of his own business had stemmed in part from his initial decision to have the Print Mint do a second printing of Mom’s #1 and to publish Mom’s #2. When he finally received a check, there was “no breakdown of how much money was for each book or how the royalty was calculated, no note about how many copies were printed, nothing.” Frustrated that the publisher wasn’t willing to offer such details, he realized he was better off doing things himself (Schreiner 12). That was also the conclusion that cartoonists Jack Jackson and Gilbert Shelton came to in 1969. Joining forces with their friends Fred Todd—a computer programmer—and Dave Moriarty, they bought a printing press that they didn’t know how to run and set up shop as Rip Off Press in San Francisco. “At first we were doing posters for the Avalon Ballroom for Soundproof Productions,” Shelton noted. “Then we started doing comics after the Avalon Ballroom shut down for good in ’69” (Rosenkranz 93-94). Rip Off’s earliest books were reprints—including R. Crumb’s Comics and Stories and Jackson’s God Nose—but they were soon publishing original material as well, including Fred Schrier and Dave Sheridan’s Mother’s Oats Comix and Crumb’s Motor City Comics.

The proliferation of undergrounds continued thanks to creators like . (clockwise) Denis Kitchen, Fred Schrier & Dave Sheridan and Robert Crumb. .

A veritable Who’s Who of the underground comics movement could be found in the pages of Gothic Blimp Works, a tabloid on the order of a Sunday comics section. Noting the incredible popularity of comics in his underground paper, East Village Other editor Joel Fabricant began looking at the possibility of creating a magazine devoted exclusively to them. The magazine had no lack of contributors, not only featuring Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, Spain Rodriguez, Jay Lynch, Trina Robbins, George Metzger, Bill Griffith, Art Spiegelman, and others but also such soon-to-be “above ground” cartoonists like Larry Hama, Michael Kaluta, Ralph Reese, and Bernie Wrightson.

Alerted that the Berkeley police were going to be raiding his store and warehouse in September, Print Mint co-owner Don Schenker was able to transfer all copies of Zap #4 to his garage. For the next several years, that one issue exemplified “underground” more so than any other as “clandestine sales were arranged for trusted customers” (Rosenkranz 143-144). Even comparatively benign content came under scrutiny. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 22-year-old cartoonist Denis Kitchen had produced 4,000 copies of a local-flavored issue called Mom’s Homemade Comics (Straight From the Kitch259

ended shortly thereafter with its eighth issue (September 1, 1969). In some ways, the undergrounds had become the new fanzines, the outlet for artists too unconventional or unpolished for—or simply uninterested in—the mainstream. The traditional superhero fanzines still existed in abundance but they were increasingly being overshadowed by the pro-zines, publications that offered material by recognizable names. “Offset printing is no longer a mark of distinction,” Jan Strnad declared in an ad for his 1969 fanzine Anomaly. “It’s simply a way to charge fifty cents to a dollar for the same old 15 cent crud. So we’ve made sure Anomaly contains … professional work by Reed Crandall, Harlan Ellison and Archie Goodwin (Schelly, Golden Age… 116). Even Alter-Ego, the publication from which all other superhero fanzines sprang, had essentially gone pro. Four years after Roy Thomas began working for Marvel Comics, AE returned for its tenth issue and a thought-provoking interview with Gil Kane conducted by John Benson. Meanwhile, the early 1960s comic book essays published in Xero were being assembled by Richard Lupoff and Don Thompson for an Arlington House paperback entitled All In Color For a Dime. Originally scheduled for publication in the final quarter of 1969, the book ultimately didn’t go on sale until 1970. Historian Bill Schelly observed that the nature of fanzines changed at that time. With prominent exceptions like Martin Greim’s Comic Crusader and Robert Jennings’ Comic World, the well-researched historical articles that proliferated earlier in the decade were being supplanted by artcentric ‘zines and interviews (Schelly, Golden Age… 116). Along with that was a fading sense of the camaraderie and “fannishness” that had come from the simple joy of sharing one’s hobby.

Kim Deitch, the son of animator Gene Deitch, contributed this page to Gothic Blimp Works #2, which includes his signature characters Uncle Ed the India . Rubber Man and cartoon cat Waldo. TM and © Kim Deitch.

Cartoonist Vaughn Bodé—awarded the World Science Fiction Society’s Hugo Award for Best Fan Artist in 1969—was named the magazine’s editor and ignored many of the contributors’ preferred title of Jive Comics in favor of his own Gothic idea. Bodé quickly found the process exhausting and quit in the midst of issue #2, forcing Kim Deitch to pick up where he left off with a weekly paycheck of $90. “That was the top dollar I ever made in art, for a weekly thing,” Deitch declared. “But I was actually burning myself out because I was taking so much speed. It took so much work, I was making less than a dollar an hour” (Rosenkranz 128). Nor was he getting much support from his publisher Peter Leggieri. “The artists were putting their energies into it and Kim was too,” Trina Robbins observed, “but it was a losing battle because this guy didn’t care.” Deitch ruefully recalled Leggieri’s plan to have issues of Gothic sold at August’s historic Woodstock rock festival. “They ended up getting seized and grabbed,” he sighed. “It was a perfect failure” (Rosenkranz 128-129). Gothic Blimp Works

“So great was fans’ delight in discovering this unexpected brotherhood,” Schelly noted, “that it was considered unseemly to try to make money from one’s friends—at least, on fanzines. This highly personal aspect of fandom, which had at its heart the spirit of the amateur, and was responsible for getting comicdom off the ground, gradually seemed to seep away by the decade’s end. Not so much among fans themselves, but in the pages of the magazines that everyone was buying” (Schelly, Golden Age… 117).

Cover art by Rich Buckler (Comic Crusader #7), Harry Thomas (The Comic World #10), and Marie Severin . with a Gil Kane frame (Alter-Ego #10). TM and © respective copyright holders. Alter Ego TM and © Roy & Dann Thomas.

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Out of the Shadows The line blurred even further when a fan club called Marvelmania International was announced in the October 1969-dated edition of Marvel Bullpen Bulletins. Marvel’s in-house Merry Marvel Marching Society had recently fallen by the wayside—Martin Goodman saw it as a drain on profits—but Chip Goodman had made contact with a man named Don Wallace in California who was interested in licensing the Marvel heroes for products he’d sell through the mail. Once Wallace agreed to absorb the MMMS membership kits into his catalog, a deal for $10,000 was struck and Marvel began loaning the entrepreneur artwork— most of it by Jack Kirby—for illustration purposes. Early Marvelmania employee Steve Sherman added, though, that he believed Wallace never paid more than half of the agreed-upon fee (Ro 136). Wallace benefited greatly from the expertise of prominent Los Angeles fan Mark Evanier, a 17-year-old whose claims to fame then included the creation of a ranking system for Marvel collectors—i.e., “Real Frantic One” or “Fearless Front Facer”—that the company had adopted in 1967. “[Wallace] thought he was buying the rights to the Captain Marvel that Billy Batson turned into,” Evanier sighed. “That’s how much he knew about comics and why he needed me” (Jones 72). The young man was installed as editor of the Marvelmania fan magazine and Steve Sherman was named production supervisor. “At the time, Marvel was claiming, I believe, that they published six million comics a month,” Evanier noted. “Well, that meant that they had about 25 titles that were selling 200,000 to 300,000. But [Wallace] had this notion that there were six million Marvel fans out there” and ordered product to sell accordingly. Once he realized that he was losing money on the deal, “Uncle Don”—as Evanier sarcastically called him—“began siphoning money from the company to set up his next Get Rich Quick scheme and, suddenly, no one was getting the Silver Surfer posters they’d ordered” (Jones 72).

Following this October, 1969-dated test issue with a Jack Kirby cover, . a different Marvelmania #1 was sent to club members in 1970. . Captain America TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Incidents like Wallace’s payment to fans of loaned Jack Kirby art had raised Evanier and Sherman’s suspicions and they finally made a clandestine examination of their boss’ files. “We found hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of unpaid bills for previous companies under various permutations of his first and last names,” Evanier revealed. “We cleaned up our ends of things as much as we could and quit—but not before we’d called everyone who was doing business with Marvelmania (Like Stan Lee, Jim Steranko and, of course, Kirby) and advised them of what was going on.” The fan club was officially disavowed in the December 1971-dated Marvel Bullpen Bulletins page and Don Wallace—a day before he was to appear in court regarding an earlier scam—vanished into the night (Jones 72). In 1969, though, no one in the New York offices had any inkling that something was amiss. At that point, Martin Goodman and Stan Lee were only exulting over the fact that their decade-long distribution deal with Independent News was finally at an end. Effective with the same October-dated issues that announced Marvelmania, Marvel had its comics distributed by the Perfect Film-owned Curtis Circulation…and it could publish as many of them as it wanted. A few years earlier, the news would have generated a huge expansion of the company’s superhero line but this was 1969 and there was every reason to believe that some other genre was going to ascend. The 1968 restoration of Millie the Model to a teen humor title, for instance, had been a hit, enough so that Mad About Millie and Chili companion

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New cover art by Stan Goldberg (Mad About Millie #1; Chili #1) alongside reprinted 1950s work by Dan DeCarlo (Homer, the Happy Ghost #1) and Joe Maneely (Peter the Little Pest #1). TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

ly,” Peter DePree wrote. “In the Tower of Shadows story, for example, he inserts two ‘memory’ panels and distinguishes them from real time by eliminating color, thus reducing the substance of their reality” (DePree 40).

titles were placed on the schedule early in 1969 (with Not Brand Echh being cancelled in the trade-off). Once the Curtis deal began, Marvel tackled other categories, too, devoting places on the schedule for a returning Western (Kid Colt, Outlaw #140, with 1950s reprints), kid humor (Homer the Happy Ghost and Peter the Little Pest, both also reprinting 1950s stories), romance (My Love and Our Love Story, with former love artists John Romita, John Buscema and Gene Colan among those pressed into service for new material), and horror (Tower of Shadows and Chamber of Darkness, with the seemingly requisite hosts Headstone P. Gravely and Digger).

“Irritated by captions requiring six-sided or ‘notched’ panels,” DePree continued, “Steranko writes each precisely to the width or measure of its accompanying panel—and matches the feat with dialogue balloons. […] The result was a tight geometric quality that elevated non-title lettering to the status of a design element” (DePree 40). Editor Stan Lee saw only a seven-page story that looked too different. He fiddled with the captions and word balloons— undercutting the effect Steranko was shooting for—and rejected the artist’s stark red, white, and black cover for a comparatively more ordinary image. Nor did Lee care for the cartoonist’s proposed Lovecraftian title “The Lurking

Kid Colt—which lasted another ten years—and the romance books—another five—were the most successful with the general public and the kid comics the least but it was the horror series that most Marvel fans recall the best. Roy Thomas—offering an H.P. Lovecraft adaptation—and Stan Lee both contributed scripts as did Gary Friedrich, Denny O’Neil, and others, while a mix of regulars like Buscema and Colan mingled with relative Marvel newcomers such as Neal Adams, Johnny Craig, Barry Smith, and Tom Sutton. Still, it was the lead story in Tower #1 (October 1969) that earned the books their claim to fame: Jim Steranko’s Alley Award-winning “At the Stroke of Midnight.” The plot—about a couple’s search for a dead relative’s treasure in an old mansion—was almost incidental to its intricately paced execution, encompassing pages that held as many as 20 panels and single backdrops divided into four frames. “Many of [Steranko’s] graphic innovations were so ingenious in their simplicity that readers absorbed them subconscious-

As rendered by Jim Steranko in Tower of Shadows #1, Marvel’s horror host Digger bore little resemblance to the official character design used by every other artist (such as Syd Shores in Chamber of Darkness #2). TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Fear of Shadow House,” initially suggesting “Let Them Eat Cake”—a nod to the story’s conclusion—before settling on “At the Stroke of Midnight.” It was the second occasion in a year’s time that Steranko had been confronted by what he viewed as artistic interference. “I had been after Captain America for awhile,” the cartoonist recalled, and he was delighted when Lee assigned the book to him effective with issue #110 (February 1969, on sale in November 1968). The sole request of his editor—who continued to dialogue the feature—was that the Hulk’s old sidekick Rick Jones be worked into the series as a new version of Cap’s wartime partner Bucky. “It slowed up the ideas that I wanted to do for Captain America, myself,” Steranko acknowledged. “It was a gratuitous story to get this kid working as Cap’s pal again, took up too much storyline, although I was pleased to accept the challenge of it” (Groth, “Jim Steranko” 13-14). The cartoonist’s misgivings aside, the material he produced for Captain America #110 and #111—with inks by Joe Sinnott—electrified fans. From the boundary-pushing storytelling to a thrill-packed plot that included the hordes of Hydra and their greenhaired new leader Madame Hydra, few elements failed to make an impression and readers were breathless with anticipation when Cap was seemingly killed at the end of the second issue. Unfortunately, they

had to hold their breath a little longer because Lee decided that his writerartist wasn’t going to make his deadline and inserted a Jack Kirby-drawn adventure into Cap #112. Steranko was back for Captain America’s funeral and spectacular return from the grave in issue #113 but he quit the feature in protest immediately thereafter. “I simply didn’t want my issues broken up with the others,” he explained. “I thought it lessened the impact—of the month after month, continuous storyline. […] It was a lifetime ambition of mine to do that strip. I enjoyed doing it. I don’t think I ever got it precisely right, the way I saw it in my head, but each issue was getting closer to the way I wanted to see Captain America” (Groth, “Jim Steranko” 13). The Tower of Shadows incident was the last straw. “We had disagreements about the way I told stories,” he declared in a November 14, 1969 interview, “I simply insisted that they go in my way, or they wouldn’t go in at all. I mean, I don’t have to draw comics to make a living. I can do other things. So, I don’t need the aggravation. If you’re a publisher, and you Jim Steranko’s most enduring contribution to Captain America was a new cover logo, which appeared on every issue from #110 to #274 in 1982. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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want my work, you get it my way or you don’t get it at all. It’s as simple as that” (Groth, “Jim Steranko” 12). Coincidentally, Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.—which the cartoonist had left a year earlier, was cancelled with issue #15 two months after Tower #1 was published. Steranko did return to Marvel for a visually groundbreaking story in Our Love Story #5 (June 1970), but his days of regularly drawing comic books were over.

The X-Men Triumphant

logo while the Monolith grasped it with his hands. Martin Goodman wouldn’t hear of having the book’s title obscured, however, and the artist was forced to draw an alternate version that all involved looked on as inferior. “By Neal’s own account,” Thomas noted, “he began to just do what he referred to as either ‘throwaway covers’ or covers that he just didn’t think much about. As a result, the most important page in the book was often quite lackluster. The worst conceived stuff on most of the issues were the covers […] and as result that book just lacked that extra couple percent of sales” (Sanderson, “Roy Thomas” 38).

Neal Adams was only picking up speed, though, and he approached Stan Lee in 1969 about the possibility of doing some work for Marvel on top of his DC assignments. Possibility became reality when the young artist was assigned to X-Men effective with issue #56 (May 1969). The title was one that Lee frankly admitted was in trouble. Never a strong-seller, the book had continued to decline in sales with Arnold Drake as writer, and Lee finally asked Roy Thomas to return to the title in the hope of turning it around.

There were no complaints about the interiors, though, where the Alex Summers plot spilled into a new story involving the mutant-crushing giant robots called the Sentinels. Recalling a line from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (“Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war”), Thomas dubbed Alex “Havok” (Thomas, “Mutant Memories…” 7) and Adams came up with his elegantly simple black costume with concentric circles reflecting the power he channeled (XMen #58). “It is a kind of energy container through which you can actually see the energy inside of his body,” the designer explained. “You’re supposed to be able to see in the middle of his chest the energy no matter where he turns” (Schumer, “Neal Adams: The Marvel Years” 21).

Signing on one issue before Adams, Thomas continued Drake’s story of Cyclops’ previously-unseen brother Alex Summers and built to the payoff that the newcomer—like his X-Men sibling—was also a mutant. Illustrated by Don Heck, Werner Roth, and Vince Colletta, X-Men #55 had been comfortably, professionally drawn, but the next issue gave readers a taste of what the series could really be. “I was continually knocked out by the pencils I received from Neal on X-Men,” Thomas enthused, “and having worked by now with the likes of Colan, Buscema, and others, I was less easily impressed than I would have been a few years earlier. In that first 15-pager alone there were powerfully realistic faces which brought the X-Men alive in a whole new way—a truly dramatic debut of the Living Monolith—even a beautifully-detailed camel that added to the atmosphere. I saw at once that Neal would stint at nothing” (Thomas, “Mutant Memories…” 5-6). “Once Roy got to believe in me, we would sit and throw ideas back and forth,” Adams recalled. “They were not necessarily story ideas but Roy […] had this font of knowledge that he could throw at me. We would have these conversations and they never would really be involved with the story, but when I would walk away from them, I would feel that I had enough information to put these pieces together” (Schumer, “Neal Adams: The Marvel Years” 18). Completing the effect was the detailed embellishment of 26-year-old Tom Palmer, a proponent of the same realistic school of artwork that Adams belonged to. “I remember taking a day or more to ink one page,” Palmer marveled. “Not every page, but certain pages. It wasn’t something you knocked out in a couple days. […] Maybe it was because of my youth, or the ‘golly-gee-whiz’ point of my life—but I slowed down and put every ounce of whatever skill I had at that moment [into Adams’ pencils]” (Schumer, “Tom Palmer” 24). The effort paid off for all three creators in the 1969 Alley Awards, where Thomas, Adams and Palmer respectively won as Best Writer, Best Pencil Artist and Best Ink Artist. Both Thomas and Lee were delighted with Adams’ cover for that first issue, which depicted the book’s five heroes strapped to the X-Men

Neal Adams’ original cover for X-Men #56 was rejected because its . logo was too obscured. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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The Sentinels story climaxed with Cyclops playing on the robot’s literal-mindedness. If they truly wanted to kill all mutants, he told them, they should eliminate the source of all mutation. In a full page scene, the Sentinels flew into the heart of the sun. Threat eliminated. Chris Claremont, then an 18-year-old “gofer” in the Marvel offices, recalled suggesting the plot twist to Thomas (Sanderson, “Chris Claremont” 90). “I’ve no reason to question Chris’ sincerity,” Thomas later remarked, “but I don’t consciously recall his being involved in any way with X-Men #59. […] Neal, for his part, feels very strongly that the sundeath concept was his idea, not Chris’ or mine, and that he’d had it two issues earlier!” (Thomas, “Mutant Memories” 7) That story led directly to a four-parter that grew out of Thomas and Adams’ desire to do a vampire story. Such creatures were still forbidden by the Comics Code, but Thomas hoped that their variation—a human-sized bat who fed on emotions rather than blood—would be permissible. The Code’s Leonard Darvin quickly assured Thomas that it was not. Instead, the duo tweaked the idea by making X-Men #60’s villain a human pterodactyl and—in a nod to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings—called him Sauron (Thomas, “Mutant Memories” 8).

X-Men #62 was one of the Roy Thomas/Neal Adams team’s . best-selling issues on the series. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

The action eventually shifted to the prehistoric Savage Land in X-Men #62, where Adams took the opportunity to give the winged Angel a sleek modern blue costume with a white stripe down the middle, “What I had in mind was a bird with a white breast,” he explained, “sort of like an eagle” (Schumer, “Neal Adams: The Marvel Years” 19). The hero received the outfit from an ostensibly benevolent white-haired man who mused on the last page of the issue that the Angel had failed to recognize him. “Perhaps it is true what they say,” he remarked as he rested his hand on the helmet of the XMen’s greatest foe Magneto, “perhaps clothes do make the man.” Adams delighted in how Thomas’ words complemented his pictures and often deliberately left open spaces on the artwork to see how he’d fill them. Faced with one such scene in X-Men #60 and the words, “Write pretty, Roy,” Thomas penned the following: “X-Man! Mutant! Homo superior! Words that pale the cheek of a doubt-plagued humanity, which has ever hated the new…the strange…the different…feared it as creatures have always feared those who may one day replace them. And, who is to say mankind is wrong? What did the last NeSauron vs. Angel from X-Men #60. Art by Neal anderthal say to the first Cro-Magnon…?” Adams and Tom Palmer. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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“I enjoyed the challenge,” Thomas admitted, “although […] when [Neal] did the same thing in a Thor story a few months later, Stan was decidedly less than appreciative” (Thomas, “Mutant Memories” 8). The challenge of reviving X-Men’s sales appeared to be insurmountable. Following the showdown with Magneto in X-Men #63 (December 1969), separate deadline pressures split the creative team up and Martin Goodman ordered the series cancelled with issue #66. He changed his mind, though, once sales figures came in on issue #62. “With its huge figures of Ka-Zar and his sabertooth Zabu,” Thomas recalled, “that issue’s cover eventually made it the best-selling of all the Neal-drawn X-Men comics for which he drew the cover” (along with issue #65, whose cover was by Marie Severin) (Thomas, “Mutant Memories” 8). Given those late sales reports, X-Men got a reprieve later in 1970, albeit only as reprint title.

ary 1969), Strange was compelled to adopt a variation on his own look with a skintight costume and a passive face mask in order to fight the villainous Asmodeus who was impersonating him. The supernatural hero decided to keep the new look but inadvertently revealed his real name to the throngs in Times Square in issue #180. The cosmic entity Eternity, sympathetic to his plight, fixed the problem by tweaking reality and giving Stephen Strange the new civilian name of Stephen Sanders.

The Marvel Family Last chances were the order of the day for Thomas in 1969. “Doctor Strange had never been a big seller,” he noted, “not even under Stan and Ditko,” and the title was now in sufficient sales distress that the writer decided that some mainstream superhero devices might be in order (Amash, “Roy the Boy…” 27). In issue #177 (Febru-

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Complementing the new look was penciler Gene Colan (inked by Tom Palmer), who had joined the series in mid-1968 and whose impressionistic style was poles apart from Steve Ditko’s larger than life approach. “As a writer, I had to adjust,” Thomas admitted, “because now there were things you couldn’t do in Doctor Strange that you could’ve done with a Ditko-influenced artist. At the same time, Gene’s work opened up possibilities for the characters to become more human, because he made everybody—Doc, Clea, Wong, even the

mansion—look so real. As an ‘accommodating’ writer, I started plotting the stories differently, finding ways to bring in more human elements. I think that’s why those issues are remembered fondly today: Gene and I established a little different grammar for Doctor Strange than before” (Amash, “Roy the Boy…” 26-27).

tain Marvel in recent issues,” Thomas admitted in issue #17’s letter column, “and frankly decided we weren’t entirely satisfied with what we saw.” Although unacknowledged at the time, his inspiration came from Fawcett Comics’ original boy-turned-man hero Captain Marvel, “only with science-fiction trappings this time, and with young Rick Jones as his ‘Billy Batson’” (Thomas, “Remembering Gil Kane” 38).

“I wanted to give [Doctor Strange] a secret identity,” Thomas acknowledged of the new look, “but I didn’t want to change him too much. I seem to recall a better sales figure or two coming in after that, but I don’t think it was anything permanent.” Consequently, the series was cancelled abruptly with issue #183 (November 1969), “selling only 42% of a 400,000 print run” (Amash, “Roy the Boy…” 27). Left with an unresolved storyline, Thomas had Strange guest-star in late 1969’s Sub-Mariner #22 and early 1970’s Incredible Hulk #126 to wrap it up.

With that goal in mind, Thomas designed a new costume for the hero that was predominantly red like Fawcett’s hero but with entirely different design elements including a blue mask. Revising the last pages of Archie Goodwin’s story for Cap #16, the writer unveiled the new outfit and added a cliffhanger in which the Kree warrior Mar-Vell was trapped in the otherworldly Negative Zone. When Thomas picked up the story in Captain Marvel #17 (October 1969), Rick Jones—late of Captain America—had entered the picture and was lured into a cavern where he discovered a mysterious set of Nega-bands and put them on his wrists. Striking them together, Rick vanished into the Negative Zone in a flash of light while Captain Marvel stood in his place on Earth. Now psychically linked, the man and the teenager worked out an agreement that would allow Rick to return to Earth but still trade places with Mar-Vell as needed.

Meanwhile, Thomas prepared for emergency surgery on Captain Marvel, a virtual hot potato of a book that had bounced from Stan Lee to Thomas to Arnold Drake to Gary Friedrich to Archie Goodwin in the space of two years. “We took a long, hard look at what had happened to Cap-

Serendipitously, Gil Kane had visited the Marvel offices and remarked to Stan Lee that—in Thomas’ words—“he’d really like to take over the Cap-

Unlike his 1940s namesake, the new Captain Marvel and his young counterpart Rick Jones were in mental contact during their adventures. Art by Gil Kane and Dan Adkins from Captain Marvel #17. . TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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tain Marvel book, an obvious loser, and see what he could do with it.” At that point, issue #17’s plot was in the hands of Don Heck, although the penciler had not yet started work on it. Quickly arranging an alternate project for Heck, Lee and Thomas assigned the relaunch to Kane (Thomas, “Remembering Gil Kane” 38). “Gil and I conferred,” Thomas detailed, “and I let Gil finetune my costume re-design slightly before he started drawing the story. I doubt if he was particularly thrilled to be working with me, whom he hardly knew, but we got along from the start.” Still, the collaboration quickly became an exercise in mutual admiration. Thomas marveled at the “structure and movement and dynamism” of Kane’s pages. “And when Rick slammed those Nega-bands together and exchanged places with Mar-Vell, Gil Kane became—even more than before—one of my favorite artists. And I’ll admit that, when he pronounced my plot synopsis one of the best he’d been given in years, it did a lot to cement our comradeship” (Thomas, “Remembering Gil Kane” 38-39). The book was cancelled with issue #19 (December 1969) but sales and reader acclaim for the Thomas-Kane revitalization made it evident that the judgment had been premature. Another two issues—for the express purpose of confirming those sales—were put on the schedule in 1970 and then Thomas folded Cap into Avengers in 1971 before the ongoing Captain Marvel title finally returned for a sustained run in 1972. Although Rick Jones was written out of Captain America, the star-spangled Avenger wasn’t alone for long. A multipart story involving the Red Skull, the Cosmic Cube and body-swapping landed Cap on a remote island where he met a black man named Sam Wilson who was trying to inspire an uprising of its natives against the Skull’s forces (Captain America #117: September 1969, on sale in June). Cap suggested his efforts might work better if he made himself a symbol. Noting Sam’s almost psychic link with a falcon called Redwing, the hero recommended that his new ally call himself the Falcon and worked with him to create a green costume to cement the alter ego. Successfully defeating the Skull, Captain America and the Falcon went their separate ways at the start of issue #120 but they wouldn’t be apart for long.

John Romita—who embellished Captain America’s figure on Gene Colan . and Joe Sinnott’s cover for CA #117—later designed a new red-and-white . costume for the Falcon in issue #144. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Neal Christensen forwarded the EVO article to Marvel, the Falcon had already been born, but the essay’s point was well taken. Despite Marvel assistant Alan Hewetson’s response to the Other that “we think we have approached a decent start with these characters” (Howe, “How An Underground…”), The Comic Reader’s Mark Hanerfeld still worried when he reported in early May that the Falcon would be “an American Negro super-hero, not the king of some far-off kingdom. I hope this means no more cop-out!” (Hanerfeld, “On the Drawing Board: 5/69” 2).

The Black Panther may have been the original black superhero, but the Falcon was the first who was an African American. Created by Stan Lee and Gene Colan, his forthcoming arrival was first announced by Lee in early 1969 during a visit to Duke University. The writer-editor also confided to the crowd that he’d intended to give the Panther his own comic book but the coincidental existence of a prominent militant group with the name had effectively made such a prospect commercial suicide (Thompson, “Last Minute News” 12).

The Amazing Spider-Man, which Latimer declared “the best Marvel comic,” introduced two black characters in 1969-dated issues, the first of whom was Randy Robertson, son of the Daily Bugle’s city editor and a classmate of Peter Parker at ESU. His debut came in the midst of issue #68’s story on campus unrest—students were protesting the lack of low-rent dorms—and the repercussions filtered over several issues as a subplot in which Randy was briefly jailed for his activities. “He’s troubled…rebellious…full of the angry impatience of youth,” a worried Joe Robertson remarked to his wife in ASM #71. “He wants to take the world in his hands…and shape it into something better. That’s what’s important, Martha. That’s what really counts.”

The announcement was followed by a March 19 essay in the East Village Other. Sketching out “a short history of the Token Negro in American Comic Books,” D.A. Latimer devoted a fair amount of favorable space to the Panther and Joe Robertson. Despite the lightness of his tone, the writer’s goal was to encourage more prominent black characters (Howe, “How an Underground…”). By the time fan 268

The Falcon and his winged partner Redwing from Captain America #117. Original art by Gene Colan and Joe Sinnott, courtesy of Heritage Auctions. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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“We just drifted into using the tablet as a thread to run through a few issues while bringing other villains into each story as it suited our needs. This gave us the ‘complete’ monthly stories we were always striving for, and it saved us from having to wrap it all up because we had no idea how we were going to do it! […] We never even thought up Silvermane until the seventh issue, let alone a ‘socko’ ending” (Romita, “Introduction: 2006” vi). Enter (and exit) the Prowler. John Romita cover art from Amazing Spider-Man #78 and interior panels by John Buscema and Jim Mooney from issue #79..

Along with Silvermane and the Prowler, other new faces of the year included the Controller (Iron Man #12), the Grandmaster (Avengers TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. #69), the Man-Ape (Avengers #62), Stunt-Master (Daredevil #58), and the Torpedo (Daredevil #59) as well as aquatic hero Stingray (Sub-Mariner #19). Others were more derivative, as in Avengers #63 when the archer Hawkeye used Hank Pym’s growth formula to become Goliath or when Roy Thomas and Herb Trimpe decided to create a shambling adversary for Incredible Hulk #121 (November 1969) who was based on the memorable 1940s swamp creature called the Heap. Thomas wanted to call their version the Shape, but Stan Lee rejected that name as too feminine. Despite the writer’s insistence that men and women both had shapes, Lee “insisted on changing it to the Glob, which was a name he’d used before, for a different character,” Thomas remembered. “It was a better name. The Glob was the first real character of that type in a Silver Age superhero type story, at Marvel or DC or anywhere” (Khoury 26).

Frustration also motivated Hobie Brown, a young AfricanAmerican window-washer with a flair for science who couldn’t generate any interest in his inventions and had alienated his girlfriend. Using his scientific prowess to whip up a costumed alter ego, Hobie considered becoming a superhero but decided that posing as a super-villain— whose stolen goods would be recovered by his civilian identity—might be a quicker trip to notoriety (ASM #7879: November-December 1969). The Prowler’s short career ended with his unmasking by Spider-Man but the put-upon web-slinger recognized a kindred spirit and let him off with a warning. Hobie wouldn’t forget the favor.

Another first of sorts was a crossover between Marvel and DC, albeit one that few at the time picked up on. During a party, Mike Friedrich suggested to Thomas and Denny

The character was inspired by John Romita’s 13-year-old son John, Jr., whose sketch for a villain called the Prowler prompted his dad to show it off at the Marvel offices. “To my surprise, Stan said he liked the name,” Romita recalled, but “the costume was too sci-fi to fit.” On the other hand, the artist still had his designs for the Stalker, the villain intended for the never-published Spectacular Spider-Man #3. Combining the Prowler name and the Stalker outfit, Lee and Romita had their character (Romita, “Introduction: 2007” vi). Many of the year’s Spider-Man issues (ASM #68-75) devoted themselves to a larger story about a mysterious stone tablet whose secrets were sought by everyone from the Kingpin to a wizened crime boss named Silvermane. The so-called “Tablet Saga” became a favorite of many fans but John Romita admitted that he and Stan had had no master plan.

Sal Buscema—brother of John—began a long, impressive career as a . Marvel artist in 1969, including Avengers #69’s debut of the Squadron Sinister . (with inks by Sam Grainger). TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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O’Neil in a subversive moment that they ought to do a tie-in between their team-up books. The respective writers of Avengers and Justice League of America were up for the challenge. Thus, the Squadron Sinister—a quartet whose Hyperion, Nighthawk, Dr. Spectrum, and Whizzer bore a striking resemblance to Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, and the Flash—showed up in Avengers #70 (November 1969) following a tease at the end of issue #69. O’Neil’s half (JLA #75: November 1969) was considerably more generic, simply featuring evil versions of the Justice League with only the vaguest allusion to the Avengers—such as the anti-Batman wielding a garbage can lid like Captain America’s shield. “I didn’t have any great problem [executing the crossover] as long as I took care of the legalities, because I was my own de facto editor” Thomas noted, “but Denny wasn’t. He was working for Julie [Schwartz], and I suspect, but I couldn’t swear to it, that he never really found the right words or time to suggest this idea to Julie. And without doing that, it was a little hard to work it into a story” (Eury, “Android Analogs” 72).

team of heroes set in the 31st Century. The Guardians of the Galaxy consisted of enhanced soldier Charlie-27, the diamond-skinned Martinex, the blue-skinned bowman Yondu, and a millennia-old, cryogenically preserved astronaut named Vance Astro. With the entire solar system now under the heel of the alien Badoon, the quartet vowed that “Earth shall overcome—someday.” Developed by Arnold Drake and Gene Colan, the feature was triggered by Roy Thomas. “‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ started out as an idea of mine,” he explained, “about super-guerrillas fighting against Russians and Red Chinese who had taken over and divided the USA. I got a sort of general approval from Stan (I think), and gave the idea to Arnold Drake, since I had

Marvel’s counterpart to DC’s Showcase was on its last legs in 1969, with Marvel Super-Heroes’ final original tryout (issue #18: January 1969) featuring a

The Guardians of the Galaxy were meant to be followed a few issues later in Marvel Super-Heroes by Starhawk, the cover of which (by Dan Adkins) ultimately ran in Marvelmania #3 instead. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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no time to write and research it. Arnold went in for a conference with Stan, and Stan (maybe Arnold, too) decided to change it to an interplanetary situation. All the characters and situations in ‘Guardians’ were created by Arnold and/ or Stan” (Buttery 25).

The notorious cover eventually wound up on the front of the licensed Marvelmania Monthly Magazine #3 in 1970— with half of the story running in issue #6—but the character was never officially used. Eventually, inspired by the house ad for the feature that had run in MSH #20, writer Steve Gerber created a different Starhawk in 1975.

In the short term, the feature was a flop and the Guardians weren’t revisited until the mid-1970s. The next two issues of Marvel Super-Heroes offered safer prospects with spotlights on the pre-established Ka-Zar and Doctor Doom but it was issue #21’s intended subject that proved to be the last straw. Created by Roy Thomas and Dan Adkins, Starhawk was another futuristic hero, a man born Mark Wilde who operated in the post-apocalypse world of 2137 A.D. “A striking cover was done by Dan and sent to the office of publisher Martin Goodman,” Thomas remembered, “and that’s what did us in” (Thomas, “From the Desk…” 79).

The Illusion of Change Marvel Super-Heroes itself got an immediate reprieve, though, and was converted to an all-reprint title devoted to the mid-1960s exploits of the X-Men, Daredevil and others. It joined Marvel Tales and Marvel’s Greatest Comics—the latter a retitled version of Marvel’s Collectors’ Item Classics—as a resource for younger readers to catch up on the early adventures of the publisher’s heroes. Those reprints even extended to Marvel’s annual King-Size Specials in 1969 when, after years of headlining original content, virtually all of them ran stories from the mid-1960s. Still priced at 25¢, the giants were no longer economically viable with new stories and that extended to Silver Surfer, which shrank to a standard 15-cent title with issue #8 (September 1969), its final 40-page adventure divided between that issue and the next.

Goodman, the writer was soon to discover, “had no faith in science-fiction comics” and specific elements in particular. “Dan’s cover for MSH #21 showed Starhawk amid all three,” Thomas reported. “Rockets, robots and ray-guns. By sheer accident, we hadn’t missed a trick in including all three of the elements which Martin Goodman considered deadly. So he canceled the book. Period. End of story” (Thomas, “From the Desk…” 79).

Roy Thomas confirmed that Marvel had seen “a slight down-turn” following the 1968 line expansion “and sales

Later slimmed down to standard 32-page titles, Marvel Super-Heroes and Marvel’s Greatest Comics reprinted older adventures of, respectively, the Hulk and the Fantastic Four, until 1981. Cover art by Marie Severin and John Romita (MSH #21) and Jack Kirby & Chic Stone (MGC #23). TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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In 1940, Steve Rogers was recruited by the government, became Captain America, and took Bucky as his partner in eight tight pages by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. . In 1969’s Captain America #116, Gene Colan devoted five pages to Cap (in the . body of the Red Skull) outrunning the police in a stolen car. Comics storytelling, . for better or worse, was decompressing. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

dipped briefly.” That was enough to get Martin Goodman “talking about cutting expenses. Stan had been through that before,” Thomas noted. “Goodman’s idea of cutting expenses was to go to Florida and have Stan fire everybody. At the time, I recall Stan toying with the idea of asking some of Marvel’s best artists to find other work—people like John Severin and John Buscema, who Stan figured would have less trouble finding other companies to work for—in order to spare the artists who couldn’t switch over quite as easily. In the long run, though, you have to keep your most important people. Luckily, as it turned out, Stan didn’t have to do anything too drastic” (Amash, “Roy the Boy…” 13). Paranoid that all of Marvel’s incredible success could go away, Lee made another pronouncement to Thomas and Gary Friedrich. “He didn’t want things to change in the books from that point on,” Thomas remembered. “We were to give ‘the illusion of change,’ but then bring them back to the status quo ante. We weren’t wild about that, but it was Stan’s decision. When you get something going just right, you can become reluctant to meddle with it. Do you keep on evolving and hope your readers follow you, or do you figure at some point you’ve pretty much got the thing right? If you keep changing it, you may end up undoing what you did right in the first place. It’s hard to know” (Amash, “Roy the Boy…” 15).

a similar sequence and was read the riot act by Lee when he turned the pages in (Thomas, “So You Want a Job…” 11). “Gene Colan often ran out of room,” Roy Thomas remarked, “because even if Stan gave him a written plot, Gene tended not to read the whole thing before he started drawing. I remember Stan asking him once how he was going to handle something later in the story, and Gene answering, ‘I haven’t gotten to that page yet.’ Starting to draw without reading the whole plot seems to me like a prescription for disaster” (Amash, “Roy the Boy…” 17). Among those impacted by the done-in-one edict was the man who spearheaded the whole approach to more freeflowing storytelling. Working with Lee, Jack Kirby had spent the year turning out such multi-parters, ranging from a new perspective on Galactus (Thor #160-162) and a Doctor Doom story inspired by the Prisoner cult TV series (Fantastic Four #84-87) to the return of Him (Thor #165166) and the adventures of the Thing on a gladiatorial planet modeled on gangster-era Chicago (FF #90-93).

Conflicted even over Marvel’s now heavy reliance on serials, Lee made another announcement in the October 1969 Bullpen Bulletins page: “Starting as soon as possible, we’re abandoning our policy of continuing stories! Yep, that means we’ll try to make every Marvel masterwork complete in each issue! […] It’s gonna make our job much tougher—we’ll have to shorten our plots—perhaps tone down our sub-plots, and tighten our pacing. But it’s the least we can do for our rollickin’ readers, and it’ll be fun to see how it works out.”

That came to an end with Kirby’s latest opus, which promised a more sympathetic look at the world-devouring Galactus. The story ran three issues (Thor #167-169) before Thor took off to fight the Thermal Man in issue #170 but Kirby historian John Morrow notes that the adventure was evidently intended to be at least an issue longer and mark-

Part of Lee’s concerns stemmed from artists whose interpretation of Marvel’s plot-first method of creating stories resulted in issues where not a whole lot happened. Gene Colan—enamored of the 1968 movie Bullitt and its famous car chase—devoted a quarter of Captain America #116 to 273

home in the hope of meeting one of the men who had created their favorite comic books. Whatever the imposition, Kirby was a generous host and he couldn’t help but light up in the presence of that youthful energy.

edly different in one respect. While the published Thor #169 (October 1969) devoted itself to the origin of Galactus, a number of alternate pages for the issue featured the cosmic being showing Thor events on Earth and ultimately offering to go there with him to defeat the Thermal Man. In the actual Thor #170, Galactus stayed behind (Morrow, “End of an Era” 42). After all that, Lee changed his mind and multi-part stories made a comeback in 1970.

A further bright spot came when, seeking an artist who could ink a self-portrait he was penciling for Marvelmania, the cartoonist made the acquaintance of Gold Key illustrator Mike Royer (Morrow, “A Brush…” 10). Royer’s fine work made it clear that the New York expatriate had options beyond his East Coast embellishers. Against all reason, Jack Kirby had hope.

The editorial changes from Lee were one more reason to fuel Kirby’s bitterness over his association with Marvel. Now living in California, he was more isolated than ever from the company he’d helped put on the map and less in a position to make his presence known as corporate bosses continued to shift. Sheldon Feinberg, who took charge of Perfect Film in mid1969, was even less sympathetic to those under him than Martin Ackerman had been (Howe, Marvel: The Untold Story 104-105).

Back east, Stan Lee continued to soak up adulation of his own as he struggled to oversee a company whose success he couldn’t have foreseen a decade earlier. It had been simpler in some ways, then. There was a freedom in being at the bottom that one didn’t have when they were on the way to the top. Receiving a copy of Denis Kitchen’s first underground comic in the mail that year, Lee wrote back, “In a way I envy you. It must be a gas to just let yourself go and do whatever tickles your funny bone” (Daniels 180). Lee no longer had that luxury.

Then there was the denouement of Joe Simon’s legal fight over ownership of Captain America. After a similar challenge by Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) against Liberty magazine had gone in favor of the latter in 1968, Simon and his legal team saw the writing on the wall. “We finally agreed on a price Marvel would pay me to surrender my claim to the copyrights,” he said (Simon 205).

Still, his worries were for naught. A month after prices rose to 15¢, the company’s sales actually went up, an outcome that may been a partial consequence of A Jack Kirby quartet: Fantastic Four #86 & #91 (inks by Joe Sinnott) and . Marvel’s simultaneous Thor #161 & #165 (inks by Vince Colletta). TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. move to Curtis CirculaKirby—who had sided tion (Thompson, “Miscellany” 5). Most titles did see overall with Marvel in exchange for half of any eventual settlesales declines for 1969 but Marvel’s losses were mild comment—saw nothing of the November payout. It was years pared to those suffered by DC when they raised their own before he received the money and, even then, he’d unwitprices (Miller). tingly been cheated. A portion of Simon’s money had been paid to him directly but the majority was channeled via his News like that all but guaranteed that the rivalry between lawyer. Per the deal, Kirby only received a portion equivathe two publishers wasn’t going to cool down anytime lent to what his former partner got upfront (Simon 205). soon. Much like President Nixon’s November 3, 1969 plea to America’s “silent majority” to support the war effort in For all the indignities, the 52-year-old cartoonist was emVietnam, it was easier to talk about “the goal of a just and boldened in some ways by his change of address. Kirby’s lasting peace” than to make it a reality. move to California had been well-publicized in fanzines and the first trickle of young fans began a trek to his new 274

Still, creators from both DC and Marvel came together to mourn when veteran artist George Dunsfort Klein died on May 10. Renowned for his inking on Curt Swan’s Superman earlier in the 1960s and more recently embellishing John Buscema in Avengers and Gene Colan in Daredevil, the artist had also been a landscape and portrait painter who was a member of New York City’s Salmagundi Club. Sadly, Klein had been married for only a few months before he died of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of 52 (Amash, “Pat and Mike” 13).

Of course, comics’ movers and shakers knew none of this in 1969. What they did know was that the old ways weren’t working anymore. The timeless kids comics and media tieins that had prevailed a decade earlier were increasingly passé, many of them reduced to repackaged old stories now that purchasing new ones wasn’t cost effective. Marvel aside, superheroes were anything but the sure thing they’d seemed before the post-Batman TV show freefall. Was the next craze going to be horror comics? Sword and sorcery? Teen humor? Best to try them all and see what sticks.

A more heartening item ran in the March 1970-dated Bullpen Bulletins page:

What was selling was material that seemed relevant to a young readership whose passions ran the gamut from the death toll in Vietnam to whether the Beatles would break up. The Archie line and Mad, in wildly different ways, were adept at keeping their finger on the pulse of American culture. The flourishing underground comix did the same for the voice of the counterculture. And Marvel Comics, supported by a sustained media barrage, had virtually cornered the market on superhero comics that were hip, so much so that innovative work from other houses often failed to find an audience.

“Stan Lee and his old friend Carmine Infantino (our leader’s counterpart at National Periodical Publications) shared a lively lunch together recently. They got all misty-eyed talking over old times and speculating about what might have been—what could have been—and what new excitement is still in store for all of comicdom. And, in this dog-eat-dog world of ours, it’s kinda nice to know that a couple of all-out competitors can still retain their longtime respect and affection for each other. And now, while we pause to dry our eyes… Onward!”

It was a dilemma much like that faced by the 148-year-old Saturday Evening Post magazine, now owned by Marvel’s Perfect Film and Chemical. With a readership skewing increasThe Long and Winding Road ingly toward older, small town In hindsight, one sees what an readers, the publication underextraordinary fertile period in went an aggressive makeover American comic book history to compete with contemporary the 1960s had been. In particumagazines over the course of lar, the superhero archetype the 1960s. “In spite of these efhad been so fundamentally forts, and in spite of some of modernized and popularized the best magazine writing of that the genre had become synthe decade,” journalist Allan onymous with “comic book” in Davidson reported, “the Post the mind of the general pubimage of complacency and irlic to say nothing of scores Jack Kirby amidst Marvel Comics’ greatest superheroes in a self-portrait . relevancy remained; and of fans. And an increasing inked by Mike Royer and sold as part of a portfolio through Marvelmania. . urban readers continued to TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. number were fans, not simply shun it. On February 8, [1969] the traditional readers whom it published its last issue” (479). publishers expected to outgrow comic books as a new generation replaced them. The fan segment of the readership, which continued to follow its favorite titles and creators well into adulthood, would help sustain the industry in the lean years that lied ahead and served as the pool from which new comics creators would be drawn.

National Periodical Publications—DC Comics—was still the number one comic book company in the United States, but its parallels with The Saturday Evening Post were unavoidable. If it intended to stay on top, its leaders would have to do more. Virtually every U.S. color comics publishers’ roots extended back to the 1940s if not further and none of them could afford the reputation of being a relic. For all the talk of television and rising prices encroaching on sales, “the pastime of reading [in general] grew at a faster rate [in 1969] than did the U.S. population” (Merritt 480). The audience was there. It was just a matter of finding it. If the United States could put a man on the moon, how hard could it be to sell comic books to its citizens?

And they would create that product without the veil of anonymity that had, to a great degree, been lifted during the preceding ten years. Comic books would always be a significantly character-driven medium, but the most popular writers and artists were now potentially empowered by their own names to strike something beyond the blackand-white deals that had kept their earnings low for so long. 275

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Chapter Three: After the Gold Rush

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Field, Tom. Secrets In the Shadows: The Art & Life of Gene Colan. Raleigh, North Carolina: TwoMorrows Publishing, 2005.

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Harvey, R.C. The Life and Art of Murphy Anderson. Raleigh, North Carolina: TwoMorrows Publishing, July 2003.

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Irving, Christopher. “Rise & Fall of Tower Comics.” Comic Book Artist (No. 14). July 2001: 12-16. Kaler, Dave. “What’s News.” On The Drawing Board (No. 55). December 1966: 3-5. ---. “What’s News.” On The Drawing Board (No. 57). February 1967: 3-4. ---. “What’s News.” On The Drawing Board (No. 58). March 1967: 3-4. ---. “What’s News.” On The Drawing Board (No. 59). April 1967: 3-4. ---. “What’s News.” On The Drawing Board (No. 62). August 1967: 3-5. ---. “What’s News.” On The Drawing Board (No. 63). November 1967: 2-6.

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Thomas, Roy. “‘‘Echh’ Marks the Spot.” Alter Ego (No. 95). July 2010: 3-47. ---. “‘The Silver Age of Charlton.” Alter Ego (No. 106). December 2011: 3-22. ---. “What is a Stan Lee?” The Stan Lee Universe. Raleigh, North Carolina: TwoMorrows Publishing, 2011: 174175.

Browning, Michael. “The Doom Patrol Interviews: Arnold Drake.” Back Issue (No. 65). July 2013: 38-41.

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ic Publications, Inc.

284

American Comic Book Chronicles: 1965-69 Index

Abel, Jack 93, 124, 207 ACG (American Comics Group) 61-62, 145, 147 Ackerman, Forest J. 257 Ackerman, Martin S. 194 Adams, Neal 25, 115, 125, 177-179, 202-206, 213, 215, 220, 241, 244, 247-248, 250, 262, 264-266 Adkins, Dan 102, 106, 127, 154, 159, 272 Alter-Ego 14, 29, 260 Anderson, Murphy 30, 74, 114-116, 174, 178 Andru, Ross 33-34, 120, 176177, 188, 193, 206-207, 250 Animal-Man 36 Aparo, Jim 162, 208-209, 227-228, 253 Aquaman 35, 121, 172, 208209 Aragonés, Sergio 135, 209, 215 Archie Comics 8, 52, 62-64, 77-79, 158-159, 232-233, 238240 Arneson, D. J. 58-59, 104, 129, 160-161, 235 Avengers, The 44-45, 185, 198-200, 270-271 Ayers, Dick 41, 85, 99, 181, 193 Bailey, Ray 104 Bails, Jerry 14-15, 29, 32 Barks, Carl 57, 139-140, 156157, 230, 237 Barry, Sy 152 Bates, Cary 10, 111, 173-174, 202, 212-213 Batgirl 171-172

Batman 31-32, 68-77, 145146, 170-172, 176, 203, 207208, 244, 251-252, 271 Batman (television show) 6877, 145-146, 171, 208 Beast Boy 10 Beck, C.C. 147-149, 182 Binder, Otto 98, 112, 128, 147-148, 150, 178, 182, 185, 194, 207, 250, 257 Blackhawk 169 Black Panther 89-90, 183, 199 Blazing Combat 22-24 Blue Beetle 132-133, 165 Bodē, Vaughn 226, 260 Bolle, Frank 55, 142 Bolling, Bob 79 Boltinoff, Murray 10-11, 114, 122, 174-175, 178, 203, 207, 211-212, 214-215, 242-244, 247-248, 250 Boring, Wayne 112, 177 Boyette, Pat 134, 162, 164165, 208, 227, 253 Brave and the Bold 9, 30, 76, 120, 170, 203, 244, 247 Brodsky, Sol 41-42, 50, 80, 94, 107, 180 Broome, John 30-31, 73, 119120, 211 Brown, Bob 207-208, 250 Bridwell, E. Nelson 17-18, 39, 74, 112-113, 116-117, 169170, 174-175, 209, 214-215 Buckler, Rich 16 Burgos, Carl 94-96, 256 Buscema, John 92-93, 185, 195-196, 198-201, 262

Caniff, Milton 13, 125, 189, 221, 249 Captain Action 218-219, 246 Captain America 44-45, 9192, 94, 193, 198-199, 263, 268, 274 Captain Atom 59, 132-133, 165 Captain Marvel (Marvel Comics) 181-182, 267-268 Cardy, Nick 35, 209, 248 Celardo, John 155, 191, 211, 221 Certa, Joe 153, 229, 235 Charlton Comics 8, 17, 5961, 124, 130-135, 161-168, 190, 227-228, 252-254 Claremont, Chris 265 Classics Illustrated 235 Cockrum, Dave 16-17, 60 Colan, Gene 39-40, 47, 84, 93, 115, 118, 127, 182, 193, 196, 198, 200, 222-223, 262, 266-269, 271, 273 Colletta, Vince 50, 181, 264 Colon, Ernie 150, 159 Conway, Gerry 242-243 Costanza, Pete 62, 112, 147, 182 Cracked 12, 65, 136-137, 231, 257 Craig, Johnny 127 Crandall, Reed 19, 54, 127128, 152, 226, 253, 260 Creeper, The 210-211, 244 Creepy 19, 21, 126-127 Crumb, Robert 21-22, 223225, 258-259 Daredevil 40, 51, 93, 189, 198, 222-223, 270 285

Dark Shadows 235 DC Comics (National Periodical Publications) 8-11, 17, 26-39, 72-76, 108-125, 168-179, 190-192, 202-219, 240-252, 275 Deadman 175-176, 202-204, 247 DeCarlo, Dan 52, 64, 79, 239-240 Deitch, Kim 260 Dell Comics 8, 58-59, 124, 128-130, 160-161, 227, 234235 Dennis the Menace 66-67, 158, 220, 237 Detective Comics 31-32 Dick Tracy 221, 234 Dillin, Dick 169, 175, 211 Ditko, Steve 8, 41-44, 4647, 59-60, 80-82, 84-85, 103, 105-106, 115, 127-128, 130, 132-135, 159, 165-168, 185, 210-211, 227, 254, 256 Doctor Solar 55-56, 155, 235 Doctor Strange 46-47, 82, 188, 193, 266-267 Donenfeld, Irwin 9, 35, 72, 113-114, 116, 168, 176, 178, 191-192, 208-209, 212, 247 Doom Patrol 10-11, 119, 212 Dorfman, Leo 39, 54, 74, 108, 112, 137, 174, 206-207, 229, 235 Doyle, Frank 64, 79, 158, 239 Dozier, William 68, 71, 145146, 171 Drake, Arnold 9-11, 38-39, 108, 113, 119, 122-123, 174176, 178, 201, 211-212, 264, 267, 271-272 Dubois, Gaylord 56, 138, 155, 229

Eerie 127 Eisman, Hy 137 Eisner, Will 12, 100-103 Elias, Lee 35-36 Enemy Ace 27-28, 247 Esposito, Mike 33-34, 40, 54, 92-93, 113, 120, 176, 206-207, 249-250 Evanier, Mark 261 Evans, George 127 Everett, Bill 82, 92, 95, 196197 Falcon, The 268-269 Falk, Lee 56 Fantastic Four 8, 44, 49-50, 86-90, 182-184, 198, 234, 273 Fass, Myron 95-96, 122, 127, 182-183, 220, 256 Feiffer, Jules 12-13, 92, 100 Fine, Lou 67, 150 Finger, Bill 32, 38, 108, 178 Fitzgerald, Bertram A. 144145 Flash, The 31, 119, 123, 174, 176-177, 207, 212-213, 244 Flash Gordon 141-142, 151152, 253 Fly-Man 62-63, 77-78 Fox, Gardner 29-30, 35, 75, 115-116, 121, 170-171, 174, 178, 200, 211 Fraccio, Bill 129, 253 Fradon, Ramona 9, 120 Franz, Will 163, 254-255 Frazetta, Frank 21, 23, 100, 103, 127-128, 257-258 Fredericks, Fred 56, 152 Friedlander, Barbara 118, 170 Friedrich, Gary 133, 165, 180-181, 187-188, 193, 201, 262, 267, 273 Friedrich, Mike 16, 213, 241242, 244, 251, 256, 270-271 Fury, Nick 41, 48, 91, 93 Gaines, William 136 Gentile, Sal 228, 253-254 Ghost Rider 181 Giacoia, Frank 104 Giella, Joe 74-75, 98, 171 Gill, Joe 59-61, 134-135, 162-163, 213, 227, 253-254

Hughes, Richard 61-62, 145147 Hulk, The 14, 46, 92, 183, 185, 193, 270

Giordano, Dick 59, 104, 130135, 162-163, 165-168, 178, 203, 205-206, 208, 210-211, 213-214, 216-217, 227-228, 240-242, 246-248, 252 Gladir, George 65, 136 Glanzman, Sam 160-163, 255 Goldberg, Stan 90, 180 Gold Key Comics (Western Publishing) 8, 54-58, 137141, 153-157, 189, 228-231, 235-238 Goldwater, John 52, 62-64, 79, 233, 239-240 Goldwater, Richard 77, 79 Goodman, Chip 84, 183, 193194, 197, 261 Goodman, Martin 47-50, 63, 80, 84-85, 89-90, 94-96, 181182, 191-195, 197, 261, 264, 266, 272-273 Goodwin, Archie 19, 22-23, 77, 103, 125-128, 142, 151152, 179-180, 219, 258, 260, 267 Gorelick, Victor 52, 62 Grainger, Sam 133 Green Arrow 243-244 Green Goblin 43-44, 82 Green, Grass 164-165 Green Lantern 30-31, 120, 123, 211, 219 Griffin, Rick 225 Griffith, Bill 259

Infantino, Carmine 31, 35-36, 73-76, 120, 168, 170-171, 175179, 192, 202, 204-207, 209211, 214, 216-218, 240-242, 244, 246, 248, 275 Iron Man 44, 84, 93, 180, 185, 191, 193, 199, 270 Jackson, Jack 259 Jaffee, Al 64-65 Joker, The 32, 69-70, 76, 145146, 171, 244, 251 Jones, Bruce 256-257 Jones, Jeffrey 179, 256 Justice League of America 9, 29, 76, 121, 169, 172, 174, 200, 211, 243-244, 271 Justice Society of America 29, 200, 243

Hamilton, Edmund 39, 109, 112 Hanerfeld, Mark 214, 242, 257, 268 Haney, Bob 9, 34-36, 108, 120, 169, 172, 175, 178, 203, 213, 244, 247 Harris, Bill 141-142, 151152, 236 Harrison, Sol 114, 203, 214 Harvey Comics 8, 65-66, 97102, 125, 137, 159, 191, 232, 234, 238 Hawk and Dove 210-211, 244, 246, 248 Heath, Russ 28, 123, 126, 247 Heck, Don 45, 84-85, 90, 115, 141, 185, 197, 199, 264, 268 Herbie 62, 147

Kaler, Dave 17, 32, 41, 133134, 162, 191 Kane, Bob 32-33, 179, 208 Kane, Gil 30-31, 54, 92, 98, 103-104, 107, 115, 122, 142, 185, 196, 211, 219-220, 246, 248, 260, 267-268 Kanigher, Robert 9-10, 26-29, 33, 74, 114, 120, 123-124, 177, 205, 218, 241, 247, 249 Kashdan, George 34-35, 40, 108, 169, 172, 174-175, 178, 208, 213, 215, 243 Keller, Jack 134, 165, 180, 253 Kelly, Walt 143-144 King Comics 141-143, 150152 Kinney National Services 178-179, 192 Kirby, Jack 8, 40-41, 45-50, 65, 84-94, 100, 103, 115, 123, 182-184, 188, 195-196, 198, 223, 261, 263, 273-275 Kitchen, Denis 259, 274 Kubert, Joe 25-28, 115, 124, 191, 205-206, 221, 246-247 Kurtzman, Harvey 21-22, 103

286

Lee, Stan 8, 13, 18, 40-51, 63-64, 80-94, 107, 113, 125, 176, 180-189, 191, 194-202, 221-223, 250, 261-264, 266268, 270-275 Legion of Super-Heroes 109112, 172-173, 206, 249 Lichtenstein, Roy 13 Lieber, Larry 180, 196-197 Liebowitz, Jack 176, 178179, 191-192, 203, 211, 216, 218, 248 Lightning Comics (Milson Publishing) 147-149 Lucey, Harry 79 Lynch, Jay 224 Mad 8, 51, 64-65, 135-136, 158, 231-232 Magnus, Robot Fighter 16, 155, 229, 235 Manning, Russ 16, 56, 138, 155-156, 229 Marsh, Jesse 56 Marvel Comics 8-9, 13-14, 40-51, 80-95, 180-189, 191202, 222-223, 261-275 Masulli, Pat 17, 60, 130-131 Mayer, Sheldon 169, 209 McLaughlin, Frank 61, 133 Metal Men 9, 76, 120, 176, 189, 218, 244, 248 Metamorpho 76, 120-121 Meyer, Helen 58-59, 129130, 161 Mickey Mouse 57, 139, 230 Mighty Crusaders 63, 77-78 Miller, Jack 39, 116-118, 121, 175-176, 202, 216-218, 248 Moldoff, Sheldon 74-75, 110, 179 Monkees, The 158, 161, 227, 233 Mooney, Jim 121, 177, 196197, 206 Moore, Robin 23 Morisi, Peter Anthony 131, 164, 227, 253 Morrow, Gray 19, 103, 127, 220 Mortimer, Win 122, 241, 249 Moscoso, Victor 225 Murphy, Matt 153, 230-231 Murry, Paul 55, 139-140, 157

Newman, Paul S. 236 Norris, Paul 152, 229 Novick, Irv 29, 124, 206, 208, 252 Oksner, Bob 38, 177, 209 O’Neil, Denny 18, 41, 82, 90, 93, 162, 164-165, 180, 208209, 211, 217, 227-228, 242244, 246, 262, 270-271 Orlando, Joe 19, 23-24, 103, 117-118, 120, 125-126, 161, 205, 209, 212-213, 215-216, 240-242, 248 Palmer, Tom 264, 266 Papp, George 39, 177-178, 207 Peanuts 29, 67, 145, 222, 231-232, 234 Pearson, Bill 103, 142, 152, 226, 253 Perlin, Don 222, 227 Phantom Stranger 241 Pike, Jay Scott 119, 216 Plastic Man 96, 122-123 Plastino, Al 39, 178 Pogo 143-144 Post, Howie 209 Powell, Bob 65, 95, 99 Premiani, Bruno 9, 34-35, 119, 212 Print Mint 225, 259 Quarez, Michel 189-190 Question, The 165-166, 227 Reinman, Paul 63, 77 Riddler, The 32 Rip Off Press 259 Robbins, Frank 207-208, 250251, 259 Robbins, Trina 257-258, 260 Rodriguez, Spain 258-259 Rogofsky, Howard 16 Romita, John 39-40, 51, 8283, 92, 185-187, 196-198, 202, 262, 270 Ross, Steven J. 178-179, 252 Roth, Werner 185, 264 Royer, Mike 16, 229, 274

Sagendorf, Bud 152, 253 Schaffenberger, Kurt 39, 62, 74, 147, 177-178, 182, 206 Scheimer, Lou 108, 120-121, 233, 240 Schelly, Bill 14 Schiff, Jack 35-36, 69, 121122, 175, 178 Schwartz, Julius 8, 29-35, 6970, 72-76, 114-115, 120-121, 170-171, 174, 178, 202-204, 207, 211-213, 241, 247, 250252, 254, 271 Schwartz, Samm 52, 104, 240 Sekowsky, Mike 54, 76, 98, 103-105, 115, 118, 121, 138, 169, 211, 216-218, 244, 248 Seuling, Phil 248 Severin, John 12, 136, 188 Severin, Marie 183, 188, 197 Sgt. Rock 26, 29, 123, 205 Shelton, Gilbert 220, 224, 259 S.H.I.E.L.D. 47-48, 91-92, 107, 188-189, 193, 201, 263 Shooter, Jim 109-111, 172173, 206, 219, 249-250 Showcase 9 Shuster, Joe 112 Sick 65, 97, 137, 231 Siegel, Jerry 39, 63, 77-78, 109, 112, 115, 154, 229 Silver Surfer 86-88, 183, 195196 Simon, Joe 49, 65-66, 94, 97100, 218, 274 Simonson, Walter 16-17 Sinnott, Joe 50-51, 85, 195, 231, 263 Skeates, Steve 18, 93, 103, 105, 160, 162, 164, 166, 208211, 214, 227-228, 242, 253254 Smith, Barry 262 Sparling, Jack 36-37, 65, 99, 137, 160, 211, 213, 215, 229, 242-243 Spicer, Bill 15, 18-19, 190191 Spider-Man 8, 13-14, 42-44, 80-83, 125, 185-187, 196-198, 268, 270 Spiegle, Dan 137-139, 153, 155, 229 Spiegelman, Art 259

Spirit, The 100-102 Springer, Frank 215 Stallman, Manny 107 Stanley, John 59, 150, 237 Star Trek 145, 154-155 Steinberg, Flo 194 Steranko, Jim 99, 107, 188189, 201-202, 205, 226, 261263 Sullivan, Vin 181 Supergirl 39, 112, 123, 206, 249 Superman 8, 39, 108-113, 172, 174, 177, 206-208, 250, 252 Sutton, Tom 179, 258, 262 Swan, Curt 39, 110, 115, 178, 206-207, 243

Walt Disney Comics and Stories 57-58, 140, 157, 230, 236

Tallarico, Tony 58-60, 99, 129, 253 Tarzan 56, 138, 155-156, 229, 237 Taylor, Dexter 79 Teen Titans 34-35, 76, 123, 189, 213, 247-248 Thomas, Roy 14, 17-18, 29, 32, 41, 60, 80, 85-86, 90, 93-94, 107, 113, 164-165, 180-182, 185, 187-188, 193, 198-202, 260, 262, 264-268, 270-273 Thompson, Don and Maggie 14, 221, 242 Thor 44, 46, 48, 50, 84, 9091, 183-185, 198-199, 223, 273-274 T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents 5254, 103-107, 159-160, 226 Torres, Angelo 19, 127 Toth, Alex 19-21, 41, 108, 127, 182, 241 Tower Comics 52-54, 77, 99, 103-107, 159-160, 226, 235 Trapani, Sal 59, 120, 160 Trimpe, Herb 180, 193, 270 Turok, Son of Stone 140, 155 Tuska, George 54, 99, 105, 107, 127, 191, 198

Wilson, S. Clay 225, 258-259

Vampirella 257-258 Vosburg, Mike 16

287

Warren, Jim 19, 21-23, 126127, 179-180, 219, 256-258 Warren Publications 19, 2124, 125-128, 179-180, 220, 256-258 Wein, Len 213, 242, 247-248 Weisinger, Mort 17-18, 34, 39, 62-63, 74, 108-113, 172173, 177, 204, 206-207, 209, 218-219, 249-250 White, Bob 64, 233 Whitney, Ogden 62, 104-105, 180 Wildman, George 253 Williamson, Al 19, 99-100, 103, 141-142, 151-152 witzend 102-103, 166-167, 226 Wolfman, Marv 16, 31, 208, 213-214, 242, 247-248, 256 Wonder Woman 33-34, 120, 217-218, 243, 248-249 Wood, Dave 35-36, 122, 178, 243 Wood, Dick 55, 138, 154155, 229 Wood, Wally 51-55, 85, 99100, 102-107, 127, 142, 149150, 154, 159, 166, 197, 219, 226, 232, 250, 253, 255-256 Wrightson, Bernie 16, 241, 245-246, 256-257, 259 X-Men 44-45, 48, 93, 185, 201, 212, 264-266 Zap Comix 223-224, 258

COMICS MAGAZINES FROM TWOMORROWS ™

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It was the last half of the

1960s

It was a five-year span that saw the superhero revival become a fad as would-be conquerors like the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and Charlton’s Action-Heroes struck amidst the incredible growth of Marvel Comics and the phenomenal response to the campy Batman TV show. It was a time that saw horror comics scream back on the scene, often in stark black-and-white. It was a period of heightened creative expression that led to an explosion of adults-only underground comix and creator-owned content such as Wally Wood’s witzend. It was an era when new platforms delivered comic characters into homes via the digests of Gold Key and the animated cartoons and pop music singles of the Archies. And it was a transitional phase that saw beloved creators leave signature properties—not always by choice—and a new wave of writers and artists like Neal Adams, Jim Shooter, Roy Thomas, and Jim Steranko enter the field. It was 1965-1969. American Comic Book Chronicles documents every decade of comic book history, from the 1930s to today. Each volume presents a year-by-year account of the comic book industry’s most significant publications, most notable creators, and most impactful trends.

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