Back Issue #61

Legion of Super-Heroes TM & © DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Dec. 2012

No.61

$10.95

Volume 1, Number 61 December 2012 EDITOR-INCHIEF Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow

Comics’ Bronze Age and Beyond!

DESIGNER Rich Fowlks COVER ARTIST Alex Ross COVER DESIGNER Michael Kronenberg PROOFREADER Rob Smentek

FLASHBACK: The Perils of the DC/Marvel Tabloid Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Pitfalls of the super-size format, plus tantalizing tabloid trivia

SPECIAL THANKS Dan Jurgens Jack Abramowitz Rob Kelly and Neal Adams TreasuryComics.com Erin Andrews Joe Kubert Mark Arnold Paul Levitz Terry Austin Andy Mangels Jerry Boyd Jon Mankuta Rich Bryant Chris Marshall Glen Cadigan Steven Morger Leslie Carbaga John Morrow Comic Book Artist Thomas Powers Gerry Conway Alex Ross DC Comics Bob Rozakis Paul Dini Zack Smith Mark Evanier Bob Soron Jim Ford Roy Thomas Chris Franklin John Tinkess Carl Gafford Len Wein José Luis Brett Weiss García-López Grand Comic-Book John Wells Database Hassan Yusuf Glenn Greenberg Eddy Zeno P.C. Hamerlinck Merrily Mayer Harris Heritage Comics Auctions Carmine Infantino The Jack Kirby Collector

BEYOND CAPES: You Know Dasher and Dancer: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 The comics comeback of Santa and the most famous reindeer of all

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BEYOND CAPES: DC Comics’ The Bible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 Kubert and Infantino recall DC’s adaptation of the most spectacular tales ever told FLASHBACK: The Kids in the Hall (of Justice): Super Friends . . . . . . . . . . . . .24 A whirlwind tour of the Super Friends tabloid, with Alex Toth art BEYOND CAPES: The Secrets of Oz Revealed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29 The first Marvel/DC co-publishing project and its magical Marvel follow-up FLASHBACK: Tabloid Team-Ups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33 The giant-size DC/Marvel crossovers and their legacy INDEX: Bronze Age Tabloids Checklist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41 A complete listing, with covers, of the era’s tabloids from all publishers FLASHBACK: Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46 Jack Kirby’s celebration of America’s 200th birthday FLASHBACK: Kryptonian and Amazonian: Not Living in Perfect Harmony . .50 The Superman vs. Wonder Woman clash that rocked Earth-Two FLASHBACK: Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55 The wedding of Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl, comments from Paul Levitz, and more FLASHBACK: Superman vs. Muhammad Ali . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59 Neal Adams steps into the remembrance ring to discuss this unforgettable crossover FLASHBACK: When Worlds Collide: Superman vs. Shazam! . . . . . . . . . . . . . .65 The colossal-sized confrontation between the Action Ace and Big Red Cheese PRO2PRO: Paul Dini and Alex Ross Discuss a Treasured Format . . . . . . . . . . .69 How nostalgia inspired a line of specials showcasing DC’s greatest superheroes BACK SEAT DRIVER: Guest Editorial by Alex Ross . . . . . . . . . .Inside Back Cover BACK ISSUE™ is published 8 times a year by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: BACK ISSUE, c/o Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief, 118 Edgewood Avenue NE, Concord, NC 28025. Email: euryman@gmail.com. Six-issue subscriptions: $60 Standard US, $85 Canada, $107 Surface International. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office.

Cover art by Alex Ross. Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes TM & © DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2012 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows Publishing. BACK ISSUE is a TM of TwoMorrows Publishing. ISSN 1932-6904. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

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FLASHBACK: The Amazing World of Superman Tabloids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 A planned amusement park, two movie specials, and your key to the Fortress

by

John Wells

For many 1970s comics fans, few things were as wonderful as the tabloid editions. Measuring 10" x 14" (versus a standard comic’s 7" x 10"), every issue wrapped a cardboard cover around a thick collection of carefully chosen stories that popped as much because of their content as the huge size at which they were printed.

As a young engraver and color separator, DC Comics vice president Sol Harrison had worked on many of the industry’s earliest comic books and recalled publisher Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson’s New Fun (1935), whose 10" x 15" issues were at odds with the 8" x 10" comics that became the industry standard. Other publishers had dabbled in oversized comics since then, but no one had made a real go of it. Recognizing that readership was declining, Harrison believed that tabloids could be a lifesaver.

“We were looking for a new format,” he explained in The Amazing World of DC Comics #10 (Jan. 1976), “because our magazines weren’t getting proper placement among the 120 magazines on the newsstand at the time. Returning from a trip to the World Color Press plant at Sparta, Illinois, I began to play around with different sizes for comics. None of the sizes seemed to work, since they couldn’t be put on a newspaper high-speed color press. But by opening the comic up, with one less fold, we could create a tabloid size comic that would stand out on the newsstand.”

There were obvious attractions to the format. A thick 80-page $1.00 package made more money for retailers than a slim 20-cent comic. The permanence of a sturdy cardboard cover invited comparisons to more respectable children’s books and offered an entrance into mass-market retail chains and variety stores.

(Some outlets, unaware that these were magazines whose unsold copies could be returned for credit, racked them with coloring books and gave a few early volumes a shelf life of years.)

THEN ONE FOGGY CHRISTMAS EVE… With publisher Carmine Infantino’s blessing, Harrison assembled a trial issue starring Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Composed entirely of reprints from DC’s 1950s Rudolph series, the 80-page issue went on sale October 24, 1972, and evidently had a strong sellthrough by the end of the Christmas season.

Shazam!, a hugely anticipated Captain Marvel revival, was launched the same season and Golden Age reprints from the feature were gathered for DC’s second tabloid in May 1973. Under the umbrella title Limited Collectors’ Edition (curiously beginning its numbering with C-21), the series continued in the late summer and fall with issues devoted to Tarzan, House of Mystery, and another Rudolph. Intent on expanding the readership, Harrison tried out a variety of genres rather than simply spotlighting fan-favorite superheroes.

Their turn came soon enough when the tabloids went bimonthly in 1974 with a pair of issues arriving every two months and filled with reprints chosen by editor E. Nelson Bridwell. Batman (LCE #C-25), Shazam! (#C-27), and Superman (#C-31) were followed by

Direct to Your Door DC’s house ad for its first superhero tabloid, Limited Collectors’ Edition #C-21 (Shazam!).

TM & © DC Comics.

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Christmas with the Super-Heroes (#C-34), that year’s counterpart to the 1974 Rudolph annual (#C-33). By now, each set of new issues was delivered to retailers with a cardboard shipper that could be unfolded as a display rack that held 80 copies.

Running parallel to Limited Collectors’ Edition was another trailblazing tabloid. It was one thing to read reprints of Superman and Batman’s debuts but quite another to see them in the context of the original Action Comics #1 (1938) and Detective Comics #27 (1939) with all the other original features and advertisements. That’s what Famous First Edition provided: exact replicas of key Golden Age DC issues. Partnering with Lyle Stuart, Inc., DC released $5 hardcovers of its first six replicas.

Don’t Be Fooled Some dishonest folks removed the outer cover to Famous First Edition’s reprinting of Action Comics #1 (a full-sized Action #1 cover repro was inside) and sold the replica as the real deal.

TM & © DC Comics.

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They were pitched to libraries as historical landmarks and to diehard fans as rare collectibles.

The series debuted in the midst of a wave of blackand-white fan-published replica editions like Comic Reprints’ 1974 releases of Whiz Comics #2 and All-Star Comics #3. There was ample incentive for DC to offer official color versions.

The Action #1 reprint came just months after teenager Mitchell Mehdy paid an unprecedented $1,800 for the real thing and DC played that up in its house ad.

Ironically, copies of the Famous First Edition have sometimes been advertised as the genuine articles. The earlier FFE issues included slick cover reproductions (later eliminated by cost-cutting) and, with the cardboard outer cover detached, they were not obvious reprints… other than their large size. When asked about that detail, some gullible buyers were advised that comics were just bigger in the 1930s. Ahem.

DC’s tabloids got competition when Marvel Treasury Edition premiered in the summer of 1974. At 96 pages, the square-spined books were thicker than DC’s editions but priced accordingly at $1.50. Aside from Conan the Barbarian (MTE #4, 15, 19, 23), there was no genre-busting. Superheroes were Marvel’s trademark and that’s what they published.

Marvel aggressively promoted its inaugural SpiderMan volume, offering signed and numbered copies of the first thousand issues for $5 each. Mail order was a key component in the tabloids’ success. Both DC and Marvel stockpiled each issue and pitched them relentlessly in house ads.

The House of Big Ideas (below right) Marvel got into the tabloid game in 1974 with Marvel Treasury Edition #1, starring your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. (below left) This Daily Bugle mockup was included in that issue. © 2012 Marvel Characters, Inc.

PRODUCTION JUNCTION (WHAT’S YOUR FUNCTION?) Carl Gafford did production work on DC’s earlier volumes and tells BACK ISSUE that the modern comic-book page dimensions didn’t match the tabloid space. “Ironically, the old Golden Age art (done on ‘twice up’ pages and printed slightly bigger) fit the tabloid size perfectly,” Gafford explains. “There was a Batman tabloid done in 1973, and the first half was Golden Age (that fit perfectly), and the second half was Silver Age, narrower than the first half of the book. I pointed out the size difference to Sol Harrison.

This was on a Friday, and we sent the first half (the Golden Age) to Chemical Color Plating in Bridgeport, Connecticut, to start the separations, and I—over a weekend—had to expand the width of the Silver Age stories.”

Artist Neal Adams’ experimental panel sizes made it easy for Gafford to revise a reprint from Detective Comics #404, but he had a tougher time with Carmine Infantino’s Hooded Hangman story from Detective #355. “Carmine’s layouts were so precise and balanced, it was hard to expand without doing massive paste-ups and doing new art,” Gafford says. “One panel had the Hangman pinning his wrestling opponent to the mat, and we see the ringside crowd yelling for blood. In expanding that panel, I drew myself into the story.”

Marvel took a different approach, Gafford continues, and “cut about an inch from the height of the page, resulting in some tight fits as the lettering from the bottom of a panel was moved up into the art area, cramming things.”

In one interesting way, the stories reprinted by DC and Marvel did not need editing. Technically classified as a magazine, the tabloids bypassed the Comics Code Authority and could show the knife in the back of a murder victim (in Batman’s debut and previously censored in a 1969 reprint) or a bullet passing through a crook’s head in a Dick Tracy issue (LCE #C-40).

Chop Shop Artwork often had to be altered to fit the larger print dimensions of tabloids. (top two images) Note this panel from Detective Comics #355 and its expansion for its publication in the Batman-starring LCE #C-25— including the cameo (at right, in hat) by production artist Carl Gafford. (bottom two images) Marvel’s method of resizing often meant trimming art from the bottom of the page, as seen in this page from Amazing Spider-Man #90 and its reprinting in MTE #1.

Batman TM & © DC Comics. Spider-Man © 2012 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Hot Tub (top) Conan the Barbarian #24’s love scene, with its John Romita-added, Comics Coderequired softening, and (bottom) the way Barry Windsor-Smith drew it, from its reprinting in Marvel Treasury Edition #15. © 2012 Conan Properties.

Marvel was able to republish several non-Code stories from the Savage Sword of Conan magazine in color along with (in MTE #23) the opening sequence of the character’s newspaper strip.

Then there was the reprint of Conan #24’s “Song of Red Sonja.” The CCA had previously objected to a scene with Conan and Sonja up to their waists in a pool and the barbarian’s submerged hands obviously clasping the woman’s rear end. A censored revision drawn by John Romita elevated the Cimmerian’s hands several inches up Sonja’s back. When reprinted in MTE #15, however, Barry Smith’s original rendition of that panel was restored. Roy Thomas tells BACK ISSUE, “I’m pretty sure that running the uncensored version was an accident.”

The tabloids were filled out with bonus features. For Marvel, that included a Daily Bugle mockup in the first Spider-Man issue, original pinups, and introductions by the likes of Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, and Len Wein. DC also offered centerfold posters along with puzzles (most by Bob Rozakis) and stills from superhero film projects. Most Limited Collectors’ Edition back covers featured an interactive Table-Top Diorama that usually divided the front cover drawing into two pieces that could be reassembled as a 3-D frame. First conceived by editor Joe Kubert for his war comics, the dioramas were a staple of LCE through 1976.

ALL-NEW STORIES

Stocking Stuffer (left) LCE #C-34’s holiday cover by “Saint” Nick Cardy provided no clue that its contents included (right) a previously shelved, all-new Angel and the Ape tale by John Albano, Bob Oksner, and Wally Wood.

TM & © DC Comics.

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The goal of introducing more substantial new content began with DC’s first Superman edition (LCE #C-31), touted for its Neal Adams-illustrated feature on a proposed theme park and the first color printing of a new Superman origin story. The latter had been produced for a special black-and-white Amazing World of Superman—itself a tabloid—that was created for a Metropolis, Illinois, celebration. A Ghosts issue (#C-32) included four new stories, an unpublished 1969 Angel and the Ape tale was used in LCE #C-34, and a new framing sequence by E. Nelson Bridwell and Alex Toth highlighted a Super Friends issue (#C-41).

1974’s Rudolph issue (#C-33) featured all-new stories and art courtesy of industry legend Sheldon Mayer. The prolific cartoonist also collaborated with Joe Kubert and Nestor Redondo on issue #C-36’s ambitious The Bible.

Mayer’s subsequent adaptation of The Wizard of Oz was scuttled when Marvel confirmed they were working on their own version. The two companies buried the hatchet, agreeing to co-publish Marvel’s Oz production as a precursor to the milestone 96-page $2.00 company crossover Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man that rang out 1975.

TABLOIDS TRIVIA According to The Comic Reader #114 (Jan. 1975), DC’s Dick Tracy tabloid was intended to be the first in a series reprinting classic stories from the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate.

Had the Tracy book been a success, the next volume was to spotlight Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates.

The fourth episode of the Welcome Back, Kotter TV series (“Whodunit?”: September 30, 1975) ended with Gabe Kaplan in bed reading a copy of DC’s first Secret Origins of Super-Villains tabloid. I haven’t confirmed it but this was presumably a result of Mark Evanier’s connection to the series during its first season.

The first Best of DC tabloid (1977’s Limited Collectors’ Edition #C-52) was supposed to be followed by a 1978 edition in LCE #C-61 before the series’ cancellation. Its contents would have been “Menace of the Dragonfly Raiders” (The Brave and the Bold #42), “The Hundred Dollar Deal” (All-Star Western #11), “Must There Be a Superman?” (Superman #247), and “No Evil Shall Escape My Sight” (Green Lantern #76).

CARL GAFFORD comments from February 19, 2012: • “I colored the FF Treasury Edition reprinting the Silver Surfer and Galactus story drawn by John Buscema; it was great fun.

I also colored the 1980 Summer Olympics tabloid that was later released in the smaller format. By then, I’d gotten a reputation as ‘the super-team colorist’ because—in the days before DC’s Who’s Who and Marvel’s Handbooks—I was one of about three walking encyclopedias on characters and costumes, along with Tony Tollin at DC and Andy Yanchus at Marvel. I added the Hanna-Barbera characters to my résumé by coloring them (and the tabloid) when I lived in Hollywood, working on H-B comics for Mark Evanier.”

• “The artwork for a JLA all-new tabloid story was photostatted and was among the files I came upon when I went back to my job as DC’s proofreader (the greatest job I ever threw away—repeatedly).

Along with them I found the stats for that unfinished Stanley and His Monster story that I finished the inks on and ran in that Binky digest.

JLA was running behind schedule when I presented the tabloid story to then-editor Len Wein. We had some cutting and pasting to do, shooting the reduced pages up to regular comics-page size (and, don’t forget, the tabloid pages were different dimensions), when Len had a brainstorm and called the artist, Rich Buckler. Turns out he still had the penciled pages to part two (the stats were from pages inked by Romeo Tanghal for part one), which he brought in and we re-sized for Romeo to ink. Part three was only in script form, and Paris Cullins penciled that part, also inked by Romeo.

The first lesson of a fanboy is: ‘Never throw anything away.’”

Missing in Action Pages from two Shelly Mayer DC tabloids intended for March 1976 that never saw print: (left) layouts from The Story of Jesus and (right) a page from Rudolph’s Easter Parade. Scans courtesy of John Wells (who provided most of the images for this article—thanks, John!).

TM & © DC Comics.

DC’s aggressive plans for several all-new tabloids in 1976 began with Mayer-generated issues slated for March, one devoted to The Story of Jesus and the other to Rudolph’s Easter Parade. The Joe Orlandoedited Legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (by Gerry Conway and Nestor Redondo) was meant to follow in May. [See BACK ISSUE #11 for a look at King Arthur, including artwork.] Ultimately, none of them saw print.

Marvel was more successful in that regard, releasing two all-new Jack Kirby Marvel Treasury Specials featuring Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles and movie adaptation 2001: A Space Odyssey. Marvel Treasury Edition #13’s third annual Christmas edition wove a new Roger Stern/George Tuska sequence around its reprints.

MTE #12’s original content had the most unusual explanation. The Howard the Duck issue’s reprints were preceded by 28 new story pages, a five-page Howard tale and a 23-page story teaming Howard with the Defenders. According to creator Steve Gerber in BACK ISSUE #19, the recently launched Howard the Duck title had been targeted so heavily by profiteers that regular readers couldn’t find copies. The treasury reprinted issue #1, Gerber said, “specifically because readers couldn’t get their hands on that first issue at a reasonable price.”

The potential for collecting previously serialized stories in a single package was demonstrated early when LCE #C-22 and C-27 edited Joe Kubert’s recent adaptations of Tarzan and The Return of Tarzan into seamless units. Marvel Treasury Edition #10 (1976), #21 and 24 (1979), to cite three examples, devoted entire issues to arcs from Thor #154–157, Fantastic Four #121–124, and Incredible Hulk #175–178, respectively.

LCE #C-51’s compilation of key chapters of 1971–1972’s Batman/Ra’s al Ghul saga was especially Tabloids & Treasuries Issue

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Big Surprises New content occasionally peppered Marvel Treasury Editions, including (left) MTE #12’s (starring Howard the Duck) 23-page story teaming “The Duck and the Defenders” (by Steve Gerber, Sal Buscema, and Klaus Janson), and (right) MTE #24’s (starring the Hulk) six-page Hercules tale by Mary Jo Duffy and Ricardo Villamonte. © 2012 Marvel Characters, Inc.

well-remembered thanks to Neal Adams’ vivid wraparound cover.

Carl Gafford, who colored Star Wars #2–4, tells BACK ISSUE that The collection represented new publisher Jenette Kahn’s viewpoint when Marvel reprinted recent issues, “they simply enlarged the film that DC needed to be showcasing more contemporary fan favorites negatives of the color so as not to pay for new separations. That was rather than older material. fine when the color was separated at Chemical Color, even though the No longer on a regular schedule, the series was renamed All-New dots—now enlarged—made it look like everyone had the measles.”

Collectors’ Edition with issue #C-53’s Rudolph volume and shifted Marvel Treasury Edition was now almost entirely a vehicle for toward newly commissioned adventures like Superman vs. Wonder characters also appearing on TV or in newspaper strips: Spider-Man, Woman (#C-54) and a Legion of Super-Heroes extravaganza (#C-55). the Hulk, and Conan. When there were a few pages to fill at the end The Limited Collectors’ Edition title resurfaced for the mostly reprint of those tabloids, short stories from Marvel’s inventory padded out Welcome Back, Kotter (#C-57) and all-reprint Batman’s the issues. Hence, new episodes starring Hercules (MTE #24, Strangest Cases (#C-59).

26) and the Angel (MTE #27).

By the end of 1975, Marvel and DC’s treasuries had Issue #25’s rare full-length new story featured the Hulk slimmed down to 84 and 68 pages, respectively. (LCE and Spidey at the 1980 Winter Olympics. A Summer #C-43’s Christmas issue dropped a Captain Marvel, Jr. Olympics sequel was derailed by President Jimmy story to compensate, but the reduction was abrupt Carter’s boycott of the event and the adventure was enough that the original cover appeared in a house ad cannibalized in 1982’s standard-format Marvel Superwith Junior still riding on Santa’s sleigh.) Harsher still was Hero Contest of Champions #1–3. [See BACK ISSUE #44 DC’s decision to raise its tabloid prices from $1.00 to a for the full story.] blood-curdling $2.00 effective with 1976’s Rudolph For all intents and purposes, 1981 was the tabloids’ issue (LCE #C-50). Marvel held out until mid-1978 last hurrah. Superman and Spider-Man were reunited carl gafford before going to $2.00.

(Marvel Treasury Edition #28), Superman II was comNeal Adams’ stunning 1977 Superman vs. Muhammad memorated with two tie-ins (DC Special Series #25 and Ali edition (ANCE #C-56) was the most expensive tabloid to date at 26), and Batman and the Hulk joined forces (DC Special Series #27). $2.50. A non-returnable Whitman-logoed variant edition was released Marvel published the Tabloid Age’s licensed last gasp—issues devoted to mass-market retailers on a non-returnable basis with questionable to Annie, G.I. Joe, and The Smurfs—in 1982. success. I can personally attest to seeing shopworn piles of them—some Roy Thomas believes that Marvel’s tabloids—and likely DC’s, as well— clearanced to a dime—at places like Target in the late 1970s. never sold as well as management hoped they would: “As I was told, It was no great surprise when DC’s giant comics were dropped the stores didn’t have a good way to display tabloid-sized books near during mid-1978 corporate culling of its weaker titles. Its last tabloids other comics, and if they weren’t placed with the comics, tabloids of went on sale in December to support Superman: The Movie’s release. Spider-Man, et al., weren’t going to sell well. What the price of the Stories intended for other all-new tabloids showed up in Action Comics tabloids might have had to do with it, as well, in that day when comics #500 (1979) and Justice League of America #210–212 (1982), while were still relatively cheap, I have no idea.” material for the final Rudolph Christmas issue appeared a year later in Carl Gafford recalls, “When we did those, it was more from love of 1979’s digest-sized Best of DC #4. (Ironically, DC now hoped that a the material than to make any money. I spent smaller format would expand its audience.) more money hiring folks to help work on the Dick During 1977 and 1978, Marvel had used the tabloids for Tracy tabloid than I made on it.” That love of the licensed properties like funny animals (the Mark Evanier-scripted giant treasuries was shared by many fans and pros, Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera #1–3: $1.25 for 48 pages), and as evidenced by the periodic revivals of the format science-fiction movies (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Battlestar in the years since. For them, the old cliché is Galactica). Marvel’s spectacular success with the standard format absolutely true: Bigger is better!

Star Wars comic led the company to repackage it in multiple formats.

JOHN WELLS, the so-called Mark Waid of Earth-Two, is a A pair of 56-page $1.00 tabloids reprinted Star Wars #1–3 and comics historian specializing in DC Comics. He’s written for a #4–6 in 1977 while a third treasury combined them as one $2.50 variety of publications over the past quarter-century ranging from The Comics Buyer’s Guide to Alter Ego. volume in mid-1978.

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The character of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was originally created by Robert L. May in 1939 for a series of ads for retailer Montgomery Ward. May’s brotherin-law Johnny Marks turned Rudolph into a hit song that was popularized by cowboy singer Gene Autry.

A Rudolph theatrical cartoon was released in 1947 by Max Fleischer independently after he was ousted from his own Fleischer Studios in 1944. (Ironically, Sheldon Mayer worked as an opaquer for Fleischer in the early 1930s before entering the comic-book field, and funny-animal cartoonist Rube Grossman was a Fleischer animator as well, but neither worked on this cartoon.)

This version became a Christmas perennial in the early days of television until the Animagic Rankin-Bass version superseded it in 1964, which still airs to this day.

by M ark Arnold Rankin-Bass recruited original songwriter Johnny Marks to write more songs to bring the project more authenticity, but the Rankin-Bass version also created a number of other characters not associated with any previous versions of the story and redesigned Rudolph to make him more cute and cuddly.

Rankin-Bass’ success was so great that they came back with two other shows: a 1976 TV special called Rudolph’s Shiny New Year and a 1979 theatrical release called Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July. Despite these latter-day shows being produced concurrently with the DC treasuries, there was no crossover or connection whatsoever, other than the Rudolph name and the facts that he had a red nose and was a reindeer that hung around with Santa Claus.

Sheldon Mayer (1917–1991) was already known for his work on Scribbly and Sugar and Spike when the DC Comics assignment came through to take on a sheldon mayer new version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which had previously appeared in 12 annual standard-size and one giant-size comics from 1950 through 1963. These earlier editions were all drawn by Rube Grossman (1913–1964), who also did a comic-strip version.

Grossman and Mayer had worked on similar assignments before, most notably many DC funny-animal humor titles such as Peter Porkchops, The Three Mouseketeers, Funny Stuff, Leading Screen Comics, Nutsy Squirrel, Flippity and Flop, Hollywood Funny Folks, and many others. They had similar drawing styles, but many consider Mayer the better of the two and Mayer had created many of these characters including Doodles Duck and J. Rufus Lion.

Merrily Mayer Harris, Sheldon’s daughter and the inspiration for Sugar of Sugar and Spike, says, “My father was born on April Fool’s Day in a poor Jewish neighborhood in Harlem.”

Harris says of Grossman, “I met Rube Grossman when I was six or seven. He was a short, fat, Jewish bald

Midnight Riders Santa Claus takes a red-nosed ride on this original cover painting by Sheldon Mayer for Limited Collectors’ Edition #C-53, the 1977 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer annual.

Original art scan courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com).

TM & © DC Comics.

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guy who took over The Three Mouseketeers from my father. My dad was really upset about that. Eventually, Rube pulled the plug on the series, but it would have died a natural death anyway without my father on it.

They wanted my father to concentrate on Sugar and Spike. Anyway, Rube came over to the house and was always sweet to us kids.”

Rueben “Rube” Grossman was born in New York and worked in advertising and was also an animator for the Fleischer Studios in the 1930s during the studio’s glory years of Betty Boop and Popeye. After Fleischer folded in the early 1940s, Grossman went into the comic-book industry working for National Periodical Publications (DC), drawing their many funny-animal comics. He also worked on the Linus, the Lionhearted and Mighty Hercules animated series shortly before his death.

Rudolph came back to comic books in the first of many over-sized treasury editions published by DC. There was no number associated with the first edition, which was released in 1972 and predates Limited Collectors’ Edition, Famous First Edition, and the All-New Collectors’ Edition. Rudolph became an integral part of the new treasury series, eventually appearing in seven editions through 1978. This 1972 version makes no reference to Limited Collectors’ Edition, nor does it have an issue number, but the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide assigned it the number #C-20. The contents were reprints by Rube Grossman. This edition was first released on October 24, 1972 and was a tremendous success, prompting an annual tradition for the next seven years.

Mayer was still recovering from the eye surgery that prompted the cancellation of Sugar and Spike just a year earlier. Says Merrily of her father’s operation: “He had cataracts and in those days, they took the entire lens out and they gave him these thick glasses. He couldn’t see very well, but he could draw. He didn’t want anyone else working on Sugar and Spike, so they canceled it.”

The 1973 Rudolph edition also featured reprints by Grossman. This issue was part of the Limited Collectors’ Edition with the number #C-24 assigned. This edition features the first of many table-top dioramas that became a popular back-cover feature of many a DC treasury, and also was the cause of many children to deface their treasuries by clipping them out and assembling them.

First Flight (above) Front cover of the 1972 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the first of what was to become DC’s Limited Collectors’ Edition treasury series.

There is no number assigned to this issue, but is assumed to be #C-20. (below left) Front cover and (below right) ad for #C-24, the 1973 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer treasury, now part of the Limited Collectors’ Edition series.

TM & © DC Comics.

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Happenin’ Holidays (right) A Fleischer Christmas card featuring Rube Grossman long before he worked on Rudolph. Courtesy of Leslie Carbaga. (below) Rudolph rivals the X-Men’s Cyclops on this Mayer layout from a story conceived for the scrapped 1979 Rudolph tabloid.

Courtesy of John Wells.

TM & © DC Comics.

The 1974 edition again featured reprints by Grossman, but starting with that edition, Sheldon Mayer returned to his art duties and began writing and drawing completely new stories.

The 1975 edition was a treat as it was completely written and drawn by Sheldon Mayer, as would be all succeeding editions. The inking of these new Mayer stories was handled by Tenny Henson.

Henson was born Quintin M. Henson in the Philippines. From 1975 to 1980, Henson did artwork for DC Comics and Western Publishing for their short stories, mystery, horror, space stories and coloring books. Among the popular characters that Henson illustrated included Batman, Superman, Captain Marvel (Shazam!), and Plastic Man. He was alternately known as Teny and Tenny. He also worked for the Filmation Studios in Los Angeles, doing layouts for Blackstar, Gilligan’s Planet, and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.

The 1976 edition is also fun for the inclusion of a full-color, fold-out, glossy poster, and again has new work by Mayer and Henson, as do the remaining editions.

The 1977 edition was the final Christmas edition because for the 1978 edition, a change of pace occurred as the volume was released during the summer with the appropriate title of Rudolph’s Summer Fun. This 1978 edition was the final treasury-sized Rudolph issue. There was no Rudolph comic issued at all during Christmas 1978 and when Rudolph did make his return to comics for Christmas 1979, it was for the diminutive Best of DC Digest #4, which featured reprints and new material originally designed for the aborted 1978 Christmas treasury.

All-New Collectors’ Edition had run its course, though two final issues did appear during 1979 and later three treasury-sized comics were issued in 1981 as DC Special Series #25–27, but Rudolph was not among those latter-day issues.

So, Rudolph has appeared in comic books published

by DC in three different formats. It would be nice if DC would compile all of these books into a multi-volume archival set, similar to what they’ve done recently with their Sugar and Spike series.

All of the Rudolph comics are highly collectible as some issues contain all-new material that has never been reprinted, especially since the final 64-page comic-booksized edition from 1962–1963 is considered rare and the first Limited Collectors’ Edition from 1972 is considered scarce. In fact, virtually all of the Rudolph issues are valued higher than any of the other DC treasury editions apart from the Superman vs. Muhammad Ali issue and the Superman vs. Spider-Man editions.

MARK ARNOLD is a comic-book and animation historian and has written many books and articles including ones on Harvey Comics, Archie Comics, Underdog, Hanna-Barbera, Cracked Magazine, and more. He is currently at work on a book about Walt Disney Productions.

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RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER TREASURY EDITIONS AND DIGEST INDEX RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER (nn, assumed to be Limited Collectors’ Edition #C-20) (1972 Christmas edition) • Cover (Rudolph and Santa on a rocket): Artist – Rube Grossman • Contents Page: Artist – Rube Grossman • Rudolph Saves the Day (28 pages): Artist – Rube Grossman • Rudolph Meets the Sandman (25 pages): Artist – Rube Grossman • The King Who Outlawed Christmas (21 pages): Artist – Rube Grossman • Funland (7 pages): Artist – Rube Grossman • Back Cover (Rudolph places a star atop a Christmas tree with Santa, Winky, and Blinky’s help): Artist – Rube Grossman LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-24 (1973 Christmas edition) • Cover (Rudolph and Santa using a road map in the sleigh): Artist – Rube Grossman • Contents Page: Artist – Rube Grossman • Uncle Bloogle Visits Rudolph (21 pages): Artist – Rube Grossman • Two Heads Are Better Than One (22 pages): Artist – Rube Grossman • Rudolph Pin-Up Calendar for 1974 (2 pages): Artist – Rube Grossman • Rudolph and Grover Join the Circus (26 pages): Artist – Rube Grossman • Funland (10 pages): Artist – Rube Grossman • Back Cover: Table-Top Diorama (Rudolph says “Merry Christmas!” with Santa flying off in his sleigh in the background): Artist – Rube Grossman LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-33 (Feb.–Mar. 1975, 1974 Christmas edition) • Cover (Santa, Winky, and Blinky put a wreath on Rudolph): Artist – Rube Grossman • Christmas Won’t Wait (45 pages): Script and Pencils – Sheldon Mayer; Inks – Tony (Tenny) Henson • Giant Pin-Up (2 pages): Artists – Rube Grossman and Sheldon Mayer • Cousin Dodie Gets Lost (28 pages): Artist – Rube Grossman • Funland, Games, Hand Puppets (6 pages): Artist – Rube Grossman • Back Cover: Table-Top Diorama (Rudolph on a rocket): Artist – Rube Grossman LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-42 (Feb.–Mar. 1976, 1975 Christmas edition) • Cover (Rudolph on skis pulling Santa’s sleigh): Artist – Sheldon Mayer • Contents Page: Artist – Sheldon Mayer • Christmas By Computer (33 pages): Script and Pencils – Sheldon Mayer; Inks – Tenny Henson • Pin-Up (2 pages): Artist – Sheldon Mayer • Humperdink and the Ding-a-Ling Bird! (17 pages): Script and Pencils – Sheldon Mayer; Inks – Tenny Henson • Funland (5 pages): Artist – Sheldon Mayer • Back Cover: Table-Top Diorama (Rudolph and Santa flying in a plane with Winky, Blinky, Grover, and Baddy waving): Artist – Sheldon Mayer 10 • BACK ISSUE • Tabloids & Treasuries Issue

RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER #C-50 (part of Limited Collectors’ Edition numbering) (1976 Christmas edition) • Cover (Rudolph helping Santa in a hot-air balloon): Artist – Sheldon Mayer • Contents Page: Artist – Sheldon Mayer • Christmas Magic! (27 pages): Script and Pencils – Sheldon Mayer; Inks – Tenny Henson • The Land Beyond the Sky-Holes! (21 pages): Script and Pencils – Sheldon Mayer; Inks – Tenny Henson • ’Twas The Morning After! (8 pages): Script and Pencils – Sheldon Mayer; Inks – Tenny Henson • Funland (9 pages): Artist – Sheldon Mayer • Back Cover: (Rudolph shining a light on a letter with Santa looking on): Artist – Sheldon Mayer • Giant Rudolph Poster (4x size full-color glossy fold-out poster): Artist – Sheldon Mayer ALL-NEW COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-53 (1978 cover date, 1977 Christmas edition) • Cover (Rudolph and Santa jumping over the moon): Artist – Sheldon Mayer • Contents Page: Artist – Sheldon Mayer • Only Two Days to Christmas (43 pages): Script and Pencils – Sheldon Mayer; Inks – Tenny Henson; Colorist: Anthony Tollin • Pin-Up (2 pages): Artist – Sheldon Mayer • Giant Problem (12 pages): Script and Pencils – Sheldon Mayer; Inks – Tenny Henson; Colorist: Anthony Tollin • Funland (8 pages): Artist – Sheldon Mayer • Back Cover: (Rudolph and Santa jumping over the moon): Artist – Sheldon Mayer ALL-NEW COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-60 (1978) (Rudolph’s Summer Fun) • Cover (Rudolph and Grover riding a bicycle helicopter by the Statue of Liberty): Artist – Sheldon Mayer • Contents Page: Artist – Sheldon Mayer • Summer Travel (56 pages): Script and Pencils – Sheldon Mayer; Inks – Tenny Henson; Colorist: Adrienne Roy • Funland (9 pages): Artist – Sheldon Mayer • Back Cover: Table-Top Diorama (Rudolph and Grover riding a bicycle helicopter by the Statue of Liberty): Artist – Sheldon Mayer THE BEST OF DC #4 (digest) (Mar.–Apr. 1980, 1979 Christmas edition) (Features material originally intended for the canceled Christmas 1978 treasury edition and some reprints.)

• Cover (Rudolph and Santa skiing): Artist – Sheldon Mayer • Contents Page: Artist – Sheldon Mayer • Christmas Magic! (27 pages): Script and Pencils – Sheldon Mayer; Inks – Tenny Henson (reprint from #C-50) • The Land Beyond the Sky-Holes! (21 pages): Script and Pencils – Sheldon Mayer; Inks – Tenny Henson (reprint from #C-50) • Will a Stitch in Time Save Christmas? (9 pages): Script and Pencils – Sheldon Mayer; Inks – Tenny Henson • The Secret of the Lucky Dragon Egg! (31 pages): Script and Pencils – Sheldon Mayer; Inks – Tenny Henson • Funland (9 pages): Artist – Sheldon Mayer • Back Cover: (Rudolph pulling Santa’s sleigh around a table of contents): Artist – Sheldon Mayer

Was there any character more deserving a showcase in comics’ biggest format than its first superhero, Superman? In addition to the reprint editions headlined by the Action Ace, Superman starred in four exceptional tabloids of interest to virtually every Fan of Steel.

THE AMAZING WORLD OF SUPERMAN

by

Michael Eury

Superman theme-park rides are common today, thanks to the Six Flags franchise, but they certainly didn’t exist during the BACK ISSUE era. So imagine the fervor among comics readers in 1972 when plans were announced for an amusement park solely dedicated to the Man of Steel: Superman Land!

DC had floated such a concept almost 20 years earlier: The 1955 opening of Disneyland inspired the story “Superman in Superman Land,” by writer Bill Finger, penciler Wayne Boring, and inker Stan Kaye, in Action Comics #210 (Nov. 1955). That didn’t fly, and most DC readers in 1972 weren’t even aware of that earlier notion of a Superman park when a small Midwestern town with the good fortune of sharing a name with one of pop culture’s most famous fictional cities, Metropolis, Illinois, brokered a deal with DC Comics to market the town (population: roughly 7000) as “Superman’s hometown.”

The Metropolis Chamber of Commerce proclaimed January 21, 1972 as “Superman Day” and invited Carmine Infantino, then-president of National Periodical Publications, Inc. (now DC Comics) to the ceremony, as Superman was officially designated a “Distinguished Son of Metropolis.” An ambitious goal of building a Superman Land amusement park there was announced.

To commemorate the event, in 1973 DC published a tabloid-sized one-shot titled The Amazing World of Superman: Metropolis Edition. Edited by DC’s production manager Sol Harrison (abetted by Superman editor Julius Schwartz and assistant editor E. Nelson Bridwell), Amazing World instantly became, at the time, the must-have sourcebook for all things Super! Published in black-andwhite (with washtones), this 68-page treasury opened with the story that first presented the dream: the 12-page classic “Superman in Superman Land.” It was followed by a “How to Draw Superman” page by artist Curt Swan and reprints of the “Guide to Characters in Superman Family Portrait” and “How the Super-Family Came to Earth” features from Silver Age Superman Annuals.

BACK ISSUE readers would definitely appreciate the photo-heavy article “How a Comic Magazine is Created,” depicting the process, from script to printing press, of the production of a DC comic book. Depicted therein are Infantino, Schwartz, Swan, Harrison, Nick Cardy, Denny O’Neil, Murphy Anderson, Gaspar Saladino, Jack Adler, and many other DC staffers, allowing readers a rare glimpse of the people behind their favorite comics. This fascinating feature even includes photographs of the engraving plant at Chemical Colorplate in

“Official Metropolis Edition” This 1973 tabloid not only engendered enthusiasm for the Superman theme park that never was, it also created an “Amazing World” brand used by Superman comics, a Carmine Infantino biography, and a comics website. Superman art by Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson.

TM & © DC Comics.

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Simply Amazing! (left) If the contents of Amazing World of Superman don’t excite you, you’re certainly not a Superman fan! (right) Lead-in page for the article “How a Comic Magazine is Created.”

TM & © DC Comics.

Bridgeport, Connecticut, and the printing presses at World Color Printing in Sparta, Illinois.

Next up is the 15-page comic story “The Origin of Superman,” written by Bridwell (ENB), with layouts by Infantino and illustrations by Swan and Anderson. While this oft-reprinted tale is best remembered in color, seeing the “Swanderson” art with washtones is quite an experience.

The center of the tabloid presents the “bonus supersize” four-fold Map of Krypton, suitable for framing, courtesy of Bridwell and artist Sal Amendola. Following that is a page of Superman syndicated newspaper strips from the 1940s and 1950s; a four-page feature with photos about Metropolis’ Superman Day; a two-page introduction to Superman’s Rogues’ Gallery (by ENB and Anderson, from Action #389, June 1970); the Swandersondrawn two-pager “The Secrets of Superman’s Fortress” (from Action #395, Dec. 1970); a two-page feature on the stage play It’s a Bird … It’s a Plane … It’s Superman, including photos; a “Superman Salutes NASA” page (remember, moon landings were taking place during this time); an “Important Dates in Superman’s Life” timeline; two pages of excerpts from the landmark tale “Superman’s Mission for President Kennedy” from Superman #170 (July 1964); five pages of Superboy Legend material from Superboy #153 (Jan. 1969), written

by ENB and drawn by Bob Brown and Wally Wood; a three-page “Superman’s Photo Album,” a hodgepodge of everything from photos from TV’s The Adventures of Superman to Superman public-service announcements; and topping it all off on page 64, a full-page Superman pinup by Swan and George Klein.

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Shortly after this one-shot was published, Neal Adams revealed his conceptual drawings for Metropolis’ proposed real-world Superman Land, a park which was to be called the Amazing World of Superman. Artist Rick Bryant, who worked on DC’s production staff at the time the Amazing World of Superman one-shot was assembled, vaguely recalls the tabloid but cannot forget the day Adams presented his commissioned drawings: “I did see the Neal Adams art as he brought it in, and there was excitement for this to actually be built.” Adams’ designs included a giant statue of Superman, standing arms akimbo, at the entranceway, and attractions representing a voyage to Krypton, the Bottle City of Kandor, Smallville, Superman’s Rogues’ Gallery, and a Fortress of Solitude.

Despite these grand plans, Bryant laments, “it just did not go forward.” The theme park was stalemated by economic setbacks including the oil embargo of the early ’70s, and the concept was eventually scrapped.

Metropolis, Illinois, which now boasts a Superman statue in its town square and a Superman Museum, has since continued the tradition of an annual Superman Celebration each June, blending the excitement of a comic convention with the intimacy of a small-town street fair. Each Celebration features special guests from the world of Superman comics and cinema. I had the honor of being a guest in 2008, after the publication of my book, The Krypton Companion, and had a wonderful time.

The disappointment of the implosion of the amusement-park project aside, the Amazing World of Superman tabloid is the perfect complement to the Superman reader’s library. Seek it out.

SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE MAGAZINE The 1970s might have started with dashed hopes for Superman fans as the theme park fizzled, but nearing the end of the decade, director Richard Donner and actor Christopher Reeve convinced millions that a man could fly in the 1978 box-office hit, Superman: The Movie. Commemorating this milestone was Superman: The Movie Magazine, published by DC Comics—in the tabloid format—as All-New Collectors’ Edition #C-62.

“I vaguely recall there being some talk about the fact that ‘movie magazines’ were cashing in on the Superman movie and DC had nothing at all coming out,” says then-DC staffer Bob Rozakis, who contributed

AMAZING WORLD OF SUPERMAN

Amazing World of Contents (top left) Superman model sheets by Swan. (top right) Superman’s origin, with washtones. (bottom) The Krypton Map, an insert.

TM & © DC Comics.

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the “Great Superman Movie Contest” feature to the tabloid. “It may very well have been someone in Warner Publishing or Independent News who decided DC should get on the bandwagon.”

Publishing the movie magazine in the tabloid format was a curious decision in late 1978, since that format had passed its peak by that time. Rozakis surmises this was done “to ‘up-price’ it and get it into places that were not carrying comic books.”

Edited, designed, and written by Joe Orlando, Jack C. Harris, and Michael Fleisher, Superman: The Movie Magazine treats its subject matter with respect and reverence, as did the film itself. Its title page sets that tone with a pull quote from director Donner: “I have taken the responsibility of trying to visualize Superman for people from eight to eighty….”

This profusely illustrated 64-page full-color volume serves as a promotional companion to the film, introducing readers to the movie’s versions of Krypton, Smallville, the Fortress of Solitude, and Metropolis. It also embraces the film’s source material by comparing movie stills to compatible excerpts from Superman comic books and, in the case of Superman’s secret hideaway, showing comics’ Fortress in a two-page cutaway guide. One of the standouts of the edition is “The Actors—The Comics,” pairing headshots of the principal actors with carefully selected drawings from the comics by Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson, showing just how much everyone from Jor-El to Lex Luthor looked like they did in print (at least when rendered by Swan, the Superman artist of the day).

The last third of the book offers a closer look at the production of the movie, with storyboard reproductions, biographies of the cast and crew (with welcomed inclusions Yvonne Blake, the costume designer, and John Williams, film score composer), and on-the-set doodles by comics artist Ric Estrada.

This is a marvelous publication, adroitly soaring through both Superman’s comics and cinema worlds.

“I presume there was a professional working relationship between [DC and Superman: The Movie studio Warner Bros.],” Rozakis says. “Keep in mind that DC was under Warner Publishing at the time, so the studio was not the boss, but a licensee. On the other hand, since there was no comic-book adaptation of the movie, the two sides couldn’t have been working that closely.”

“He looks like Curt Swan drew him”… …is what a lot of folks said back in 1978 when then-unknown Christopher Reeve was selected to play the Man of Steel. By the looks of this feature (right), that could be said of the entire cast.

From the Superman: The Movie Movie Magazine. (top) The crash landing from Krypton, in film and comics.

TM & © DC Comics/Warner Bros.

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SUPERMAN II AND THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE Superman: The Movie’s sequel spawned not one but two tabloid editions, both shipping on June 18, 1981: Superman II: The Movie Magazine and Superman and His Incredible Fortress of Solitude.

Co-editors/designers Joe Orlando and Michael Fleisher (sans Jack C. Harris) returned to familiar territory to edit Superman II, released as DC Special Series #25 (Summer 1981), among the last tabloids published by DC during the Bronze Age. (Originally an umbrella title for Dollar Comics, DC Special Series became a formatting catchall, vacillating between 60-cent giants to digests and back to Dollar Comics before settling upon the treasury format for its final three issues.)

“The Adventure Continues” in Superman II: The Movie Magazine, as it offers information about the film’s antagonists—Phantom Zone escapees General Zod, Ursa,

and Non, plus Lex Luthor—and ushers the reader through photographs depicting the movie’s action, including its awe-inspiring super-battle on the streets of Metropolis (actually New York City). Included are a behind-thescenes segment and interviews with the cast members.

While a keepsake for the Superman and Christopher Reeve fan, Superman II: The Movie Magazine doesn’t quite match the excellence of the Superman: The Movie edition. There are fewer photos, and many of them are in black and white; there are fewer representative panels from comic books; the behind-the-scenes section is a mere three pages; and six pages of advertisements seem intrusive in this large format. However, the editors apparently relished the opportunity to show Lex Luthor as comics fans know him: bald. Actor Gene Hackman did not shave his head for the role and wore a variety of wigs in the first film, only revealing his hairless head (a bald toupee with makeup) in the final scene of Superman: The Movie. Luthor is shown as bald in Superman II’s prison breakout, a relatively minor scene in the film but one getting four pages in print in the Movie Magazine, including five photos of bald Luthor.

Since Kal-El’s Krypton-inspired home-away-fromhome was a recurring location in Superman II, the one-shot Superman and His Incredible Fortress of Solitude (published as DC Special Series #26) was a natural companion piece to the film, touting, on its back cover, “Learn all the astonishing secrets of Superman’s spectacular sanctuary!” It might have confused the new reader that only recognized the Fortress as an ice palace representative of the antiseptic environment of the movie Krypton; the tabloid’s front cover (by Ross Andru and Dick Giordano)

Tabloids & Treasuries Issue

The Adventures Continue (left) The tabloidsized Superman: The Movie and Superman II movie magazines brought these biggerthan-life box-office blockbusters to life. (below) This page from the Superman II tabloid shows a pre-production illo for the first movie’s “Can You Read My Mind?” romanic flight.

TM & © DC Comics/Warner Bros.

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Your Key to Superman’s Sanctuary (right) The Ross Andru/Dick Giordano cover to 1981’s DC Special Series #25, better known as Superman and His Incredible Fortress of Solitude. (left) Thomas, Andru, and Tanghal reveal the “most unexpected chamber” of the Fortress— Superman’s man cave!

TM & © DC Comics.

shows the mighty Man of Steel effortlessly hoisting his lair’s giant key over his head with one hand while pushing open the monolithic door to the Fortress with his other.

The back cover reveals some of the Fortress’ mementos archived by Superman, a colorful, lively place looking nothing like the movies.

Fortress was one of the first projects written by Roy Thomas after leaving Marvel for DC for a long stint that would include such ’80s favorites as All-Star Squadron; Arak, Son of Thunder; Infinity, Inc.; and Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew. Joining Thomas on the 64-page story “Fortress of Fear!” were penciler Ross Andru, inker Romeo Tanghal, and editor Len Wein. It introduces the menace of Dominus, an armored conqueror presumably of alien origin, who intends to obliterate Earth through an explosion originating somewhere within Superman’s Fortress. After a few pages of set-up, an anxious Action Ace begins a frantic search through his sanctuary in an effort to stop the destruction of his adopted planet in a fevered tale that resembles a locked-room mystery. Superman’s quest for the source of the impending explosion offers the reader an up-close-and-personal glimpse at virtually every nook and cranny of the Fortress, and flashbacks peppered throughout keep the story’s pulse throbbing while filling in the details for fans thirsty for such data.

“The main action was fairly static,” Thomas tells BACK ISSUE, “but I didn’t worry about that, because there was plenty of action in the various flashback sequences, so the pages weren’t going to look dull.” Penciler Andru’s energetic layouts also buoyed the story’s brisk pacing.

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The writer and penciler “didn’t work especially closely together—far as I recall, I just did a lengthy plot synopsis and sent it off to him, along with a lot of reference material,” Thomas says. “I suspect most of the latter was provided to me by DC, because otherwise I wouldn’t have had to amass a collection of all that stuff on my own. Of course, I also had Michael Fleisher’s Superman Encyclopedia to refer to. Ross and I may have talked once or twice on the phone about some point on which he was unclear … but that would’ve been it, especially since I was not the editor of the special. As always, I was enthusiastic about working with Ross, whom I’ve always felt has been undervalued by fans (and some pros).”

While many of the flashbacks are told in multi-paneled pages, Thomas allows Andru to exploit the tabloid format on big reveals, such as a two-page spread featuring the Cosmic Ark (sadly, the majesty of the treasury format is neutered in the story’s 2012 reprinting in DC’s The Secrets of the Fortress of Solitude trade paperback). No stone goes unturned in this tour through Kal-El’s crib; readers even witness, for the first time, Superman’s private living quarters, including a mega-sized hundred-pin bowling alley and a studio where the hero oil paints alien landscapes.

The weapons room, the giant diary, exhibits dedicated to Superman’s allies and enemies, they’re all included— as well as “the most unexpected chamber of all: his living room,” a cozy hangout with a fireplace and an arctic view.

Regarding the tabloid’s newer embellishments to the canon, Thomas admits, “I’ve no idea of what minor additions I might have made, with Ross’ help, in that particular mythos. I was given the assignment to come up with a story which, over its course, would give us a chance to ‘show and tell’ about virtually every facet of the Fortress of Solitude, and that’s what I tried to do.”

And do that he did. Superman and His Incredible Fortress of Solitude is a fun read, relishing the sometimes-silly continuity of Superman’s Silver and early Bronze Age adventures while couching them in a riveting adventure.

BACK ISSUE editor-in-chief MICHAEL EURY has written numerous books on pop-culture and comics history, including The Krypton Companion and The Justice League Companion. He has at times claimed to be Myk-El of Kandor.

by

Eddy Zeno

Forbidden Fruit In the Garden of Eden, Eve is tempted by the Serpent in this sequence from DC’s The Bible, lushly rendered by Nestor Redondo, over Joe Kubert layouts and a Sheldon Mayer script.

TM & © DC Comics.

A unique, tabloid-sized comic book appeared on magazine stands in 1975. Dated June-July of that year, its full title was The Most Spectacular Stories Ever Told .. from fhe Bible. It will hereafter be referred to as The Bible, or as Limited Collectors’ Edition (LCE) #C-36. Carmine Infantino, Sheldon Mayer, Joe Kubert, Nestor Redondo, and Sol Harrison were listed as contributors. On the inside back cover, editor/writer E. Nelson Bridwell was also acknowledged for his expertise as “DC’s resident Biblical scholar.” Planned as the first in a series of Old and New Testament illustrated tales, unfortunately, no sequels appeared.

THE GENESIS OF AN IDEA In a sense, one can trace the 1975 Limited Collectors’ Edition back to M. C. “Max” Gaines. A youthful Sheldon “Shelly” Mayer worked for Max at McClure Syndicate, joining him in 1936. Mayer followed the boss when Gaines left McClure to partner with Harry Donenfeld and more directly with Jack Liebowitz, forming All-American Comics.

The year was 1939 and Mayer became editor of the line. Max sold his interest in All-American in 1946 to Donenfeld and Liebowitz. He left his

superheroes to merge with theirs but took Picture Stories from the Bible with him and began Educational Comics (EC).

Picture Stories from the Bible began in 1942. It had primitive art, nor were the events dynamically portrayed. Perhaps it was at this time when Mayer stored the thought in the back of his mind that he would like to play the lead on such a project one day using the best available talent.

Gaines was killed in a boating accident in 1947. Mayer had stayed at All-American but gave up his editorship in 1948 to return to his first love, cartooning. He would go on to create features like Sugar and Spike, babies whose language was perfectly intelligible to them but babble to adults. Though the mischievous tykes became as well known as his semi-autobiographical boy cartoonist, Scribbly, Sheldon was hardly limited to humor. When cataracts began affecting his sight, he wrote horror, mystery, and superhero stories for DC Comics. By the early to mid-1970s, he was also considered a consultant to the company—not as official as, say, Bill Gaines (Max’s son), whose MAD

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Long Before Limited Collectors’ Edition #C-36… …Picture Stories from the Bible presented Old and New Testament tales to comic-book readers.

Don Cameron was the cover artist for this third New Testament issue (Mar. 1946). (below) From DC’s The Bible, a page from the story of Creation. © 1946 EC Publications.

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magazine had been so profitable that he officially went over DC’s financial records and kibitzed with thenpresident and publisher Carmine Infantino, but enough that DC paid for Mayer’s health insurance while continuing to benefit from his advice, a win-win for both corporate and creator.

Infantino played a primary role in pushing 1975’s Bible project toward publication in large-size format. In Comic Book Artist # 1 (vol. 1, Spring 1998, TwoMorrows) he remembered: “I called him [Shelly Mayer] once in a while and we just talked. I remember asking him about doing the Bible tabloids and he wrote those for Joe Kubert. He also wrote about the New Testament but that was never printed. It was in script form—he wrote his carmine infantino scripts with little pictures.

He did them all that way.”

In Amazing World of DC Comics #5 (Mar. 1975), Mayer said, “I … completed an assignment to convert ‘Genesis,’ (the first book of the Old Testament) into a 64-page comic book. I rough-sketched that script rather than typed it because I needed the advice of several theologians, and it was easier to look at pictures than to wade thru the scene descriptions.”

SHOP ARTIST IN THE PHILIPPINES

LAYOUT MAN

Infantino recalled being worried about a comic-book illustrators’ strike The book Man of Rock: A Biography of Joe Kubert by Bill Schelly in the early 1970s. The threat motivated him to travel with Joe Orlando (Fantagraphics Books, 2008) discussed the talented and prolific comics and Tony DeZuniga to the Philippines. “We went to Manila and met all creator’s rough year in 1975. From his editor’s chair, Kubert had to fire his these wonderful artists,” Infantino said. “Some of them came shoeless to longtime friend and fellow war artist Russ Heath for missing deadlines. show their work. It was a remarkable scene!” About a dozen artists were He also refused to use an Enemy Ace tale drawn by Alex Toth when the recruited, a shop was set up, a fair wage was paid, and the art was mailed veteran delineator altered the story after Joe warned him not to. Early that to the States for publication. When Carmine was no longer getting year, there was the more personal tragedy of losing his father… work from “the top talents like Alex Nino and Nestor Professionally, there was another disappointment. Due to Redondo,” the executive learned that they were only being licensing fees paid to Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB), Inc. and paid a pittance of the $45 to $50 per page they had diminishing sales, Joe was no longer able to pencil and ink contracted to receive. Infantino then contacted Redondo the interior stories for DC’s adaptation of Burroughs’ Tarzan. directly and said, “‘Nestor, can you organize getting A dream project handed to him by his old friend Carmine scripts and art back and forth with the artists there?’

Infantino in 1971, Tarzan was a feature Kubert had loved He agreed and handled the thing for a while.” Eventually from the time Hal Foster brought the ape man to Sunday the shop was discontinued, but it served its purpose. newspapers in 1931. The also-editor was relegated to doing A strike was averted. (Source: The Amazing World of scripts and story breakdowns for several Filipino artists who Carmine Infantino, Vanguard Productions, 2000.) received a lesser page rate than American freelancers.

Redondo continued to work for DC. Besides some oneThough he continued to draw almost all of the covers, joe kubert off stories for editor Joe Orlando’s horror and mystery titles, Joe’s level of satisfaction diminished: “I wouldn’t take he took the art reins from Bernie Wrightson after the latter anything away from Nestor Redondo or the other people left Swamp Thing in 1974. Nestor was actually Orlando’s third choice, but who worked over my layouts, but … it just wasn’t the way I saw it in he turned out to be one of the few who could follow Wrightson’s macabre my head, and therefore it was kind of a bummer for me.” and exquisite run without a fan-based mutiny. Swamp Thing and Rima the The Bible arrived that same year. During a phone call on February 8, Jungle Girl (May 1974–May 1975) were probably Redondo’s best-known 2012, Mr. Kubert was kind enough to discuss with BACK ISSUE his works in this country. According to the Grand Comics Database, Joe Kubert editing/art roles on that project: “I did very detailed breakdowns provided covers and interior layouts on Rima (he edited the title as well). because there was minimal contact. At that time [Nestor Redondo] Nestor drew the main stories in the first six (of seven total) issues in the was still living on the Islands. He had a whole crew working with him; run. [Editor’s note: See BACK ISSUE #43 for the story behind Rima.] they were recommended.”

“First of a Series” Sadly, DC’s Bible was the only edition in this series—but the astounding edition now lives on in a 2012 hardcover deluxe reprint edition. Wraparound cover to LCE #C-36 by the legendary Joe Kubert.

TM & © DC Comics.

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DC’s Other Cain and Abel (left) Most DC readers of 1975 knew Cain and Abel as the hosts of The House of Mystery and The House of Secrets, respectively, but LCE #C-36 adapted the biblical tale starring their namesakes for a comic-book audience. (right) From the story of Noah’s Ark. TM & © DC Comics.

When asked if this time he knew in advance that imagine? [laughs] Every project demands my complete he’d be doing layouts and not full illustrations, Joe and total concentration. I invest myself so completely answers, “Yes. I didn’t have time to do it. It wasn’t that I’m in another world. It’s an absolute lifesaver.”

DC’s fault, but I had so much work to do I had to spread Did it have any effect on his religious outlook—any myself out.” bearing on how it shaped his later life—especially when Was Kubert happy with the result? “Nestor normally he began producing some very personal graphic novels worked with a whole bunch of guys but, without telling written from a Jewish standpoint? “People ask me why me, I recognized immediately that he did it all himself,” I use a lot of Jewish subject matter,” Kubert remarks. he reveals. “He did a magnificent job! It was obvious “I write things that I know about—people I know—and that he poured everything he had into it.” That being circumstances. It’s not because of newfound religion.” said, Mr. Kubert notes that “there is something through When I mentioned that DC Comics was about to the years that has preyed on my mind. I would have publish The Bible again after 37 years (and in hardcover loved to have done the whole job.” for the first time), Mr. Kubert laughed, “I thought Kubert continues, “I [finally] met Nestor way the Bible was always in print.” [Good one, Joe; after we had been working together. I think it’s on me.] it was at a convention. Sadly, his eyes were PRODUCTION GUY starting to fail him.”

In Amazing World of DC Comics #10 Recalling how closely Joe had worked (Jan. 1976), Sol Harrison revealed that with All-American editor Sheldon Mayer creating tabloid-sized comics “…by soon after he got into comics: “Shelly opening the comic up, with one less was a mentor to me and to a bunch of fold,” was his idea. Convincing other guys like Carmine, [Alex] Toth, and Carmine Infantino to give them [Frank] Giacoia.” Did the two have much a test run on newsstands, LCE contact on the Limited Collectors’ Edition? #C-36 meant more to him nestor redondo “Ironically, I spoke to Shelly Mayer very than most: “The Bible was fleetingly. At the time, he was not feeling the first issue to use all-new so hot and came into the city very infrequently.” material…

The results were favorable, Why wasn’t the follow-up completed? “Shelly so we’re preparing further Old was the writer and was also scheduled to do the Testament stories and the New New Testament. I can’t recall exactly why that never happened, but I got wrapped up in a bunch of things Testament for next year.”

Listed as vice-president and didn’t have the time.” in charge of production, Was The Bible especially momentous at a time (1975) Harrison deservedly received that Kubert’s biographer, Bill Schelly, called “a year from a credit along with hell?” “The subject matter of The Bible at that time didn’t Mayer, Redondo, Kubert, hold any special meaning,” Kubert says. “But I’m a very and Infantino on the lucky guy. I get paid for doing something I love. Can you inside front cover.

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BACKGROUNDS In Amazing World #10, Harrison also spoke of the antiSemitism in the 1930s that blocked him from getting a job in advertising. However, he was able to transfer his previously gained engraving skills to comic books, beginning with the seminal Famous Funnies #1 (July 1934). Just as the movie industry had largely been started

by Jews with limited employment opportunities earlier in the 20th century, so did the burgeoning comic-book industry hold opportunities for them in pre–World War II America. In approximately 1942, both Shelly Mayer and M. C. Gaines wanted Sol as art director at All-American Comics. When their production manager was fired a few weeks later, he assumed those duties as well.

From Amazing World #10: “Sol Harrison’s dedication is not limited to his profession. He also shares a deep human dedication for the health and treatment of brain injured children.” One of Harrison’s “mitzvahs” (acts of human kindness) in that regard was to organize specialized education programs in New York City schools. Another was to establish singular three-week camps that brought together brain-injured youngsters, parents, teachers, and medical personnel to discover how the children functioned in different environments.

Self-esteem was fostered by giving the kids responsible jobs at which they excelled.

Shelly Mayer was Jewish but rejected the ritualism associated with his religion. Married to a Christian, he celebrated Christmas with his children and proved to be the biggest kid of them all at that time of year. (From interviews with his two children, Merrily and Lanney, in Comic Book Artist #11, vol. 1, Jan. 2001, TwoMorrows.)

Teaching is a noble profession. Mayer never cared about making a lot of money; he did, however, desire to teach from the time he was a very young man. Bill Schelly, in an interview conducted by Jason Sacks for Comic Bulletin at Comic-Con International 2011, takes us back to the All-American days: “Mayer taught [Kubert], really, about storytelling. How to position characters. How to make dramatic effects more emphatic. How to orchestrate your visuals. Mayer really impressed on him, and even to this day, when Joe talks about it, he always talks about how you’ve got to tell the story. You’ve got to tell the story. That is what it’s all about. And that comes from Sheldon Mayer drilling that into his head.” This makes Mayer the unsung third artist on The Bible—not because he turned in sketches with his script, but because every decision Kubert made with his story breakdowns had a little Shelly Mayer behind it.

It is Joe Kubert’s spirituality that has allowed him to share so much with his family, his students at the Kubert School, and with the comic-book industry that he adores. While not overtly religious, he has a profound appreciation for his Jewish heritage. Joe emphasizes to BACK ISSUE how important it was to finally journey to the ancient land he helped bring vividly to illustrated life almost four decades ago. A Kubert exhibit was unveiled in August 2011 at the Israeli Museum for Comics and Caricature. Not only was the great diversity of art from throughout his career featured, but so were works by his sons Adam and Andy. Guest of Honor Joe shook Israeli president Shimon Peres’ hand on August 17, 2011 when the two met at the museum in Holon, a suburb of Tel Aviv. Adam and his wife Tracy accompanied the reigning Dean of American Comic Books, who spoke of the joy experienced in visiting sites like the cliffs of Masada and swimming in the Dead Sea below.

The 1928-born Nestor Redondo’s comic beginnings were likely in the late 1940s, long before he contributed to American comic books starting in 1971. Nestor was described by biographer/publisher Manuel Auad as “a deeply religious man, and prior to [the 1975 #C-36 Limited Collectors’ Edition], he had illustrated The Bible for one of his comic books in the Philippines, so it was only fitting that he was chosen to do this book.” Auad also wrote, “He was a good friend, a good, honest, and gentle man. I can’t remember a time when he maligned or spoke ill of anyone … he remained one of the most humble people I’ve ever known.” [Source: Comic Book Artist #4,

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The Creation by Kubert, Version 1 Joe Kubert drew his own version of the Creation as a Tor newspaper tryout, circa 1959.

Incidentally, Carmine Infantino was the writer. The tryout was unsuccessful and two weeks’ worth of the strip first saw print in Alter Ego vol. 1 #10 (1969). Courtesy of Eddy Zeno. © 1959 Joe Kubert.

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vol. 2, Sept. 2004, Top Shelf.] The Christian Comics International website states that Nestor rededicated his life to Christ in 1982, some years after his Old Testament Treasury masterpiece. In fact, Redondo was later scheduled to deliver a talk at the First International Christian Comic Book Training Conference in Tagaytay, Philippines. When he died shortly before the January 1996 event, copies of his speech were given to attendees at that and successive conferences. Titled “On Realistic Illustration,” it was a primer that could have been given to any group of aspiring comics artists, not just those of specific religious convictions. The only time he alludes to a higher power was when he wrote eloquently about portraying the human form: “The comics illustrator must learn how to draw the structures of things, real and imagined from the tiniest amoeba to the most gigantic creatures, existent or not. And, of course, the anatomy of man, the masterpiece of God’s creation. This includes all the varying expressions and attitudes of man, the similarities and differences of the genders, the races, in motion or static, viewed from all angles the clothed or unclothed, in all of man’s poses.”

CONVERGENCE OF ART AND STORY Not only did Sheldon Mayer consult theological scholars of various denominations, but there is an impressive bibliography at the conclusion of LCE #C-36. Again, the old master was interested in teaching to the best of his abilities. Shelly opens the book with the narrative device of having an old man telling Bible stories to his two grandchildren. When the elder is first pictured, every crease and crinkle of experience is nuanced by Redondo, giving him the look of a prophet. The children represent innocence, though the oldest is initially skeptical about what he has learned in Sunday school.

By the end, however, it is as if both he and his sister have heard the stories for the first time. This places The Bible in fitting context. Its goal, stated on the inside front cover, is for the tales to be “told in a contemporary style that would have as much validity today as it has had for thousands of years.”

Redondo’s penchant for illustrating age lines in the grandpa-narrator was put to equally good use delineating the tiny skin crevices in Biblical characters who sometimes lived for hundreds of years.

Comic Art Fans (www.comicartfans.com) is a website for fans to showcase their collections of original comicstrip and comic-book art. One of the premiere gatherers of Nestor Redondo originals is attorney Steven Morger.

He has nine pages from LCE #C-36 and many more from Rima the Jungle Girl. Steve explained his reasons to BACK ISSUE: “My true love is Rima, since it combines [Nestor’s] lush art with his exquisite ability to draw animals. The Bible also strikes me as just a bit better than the other projects he worked on, likely as a labor of love. I love other Redondo art, but Rima and Bible seem to be a notch above everything else.” (The male protagonist in the Rima series was named Abel, by the way.)

Rima the Jungle Girl # 2 (June–July 1974) contained the Redondo-finished tale “Flight from Eden.” The verdant Venezuelan jungle and its striking animals were a terrific warm-up for both “The Garden of Eden” and the “Noah and the Flood” portions of the large DC’s LCE published one year later. The artist’s gift for rendering long-tailed birds with gorgeous plumes in all of these stories was

Pop’s Holy Hints (bottom) Mayer used a wise grandfather as the narrator of The Bible. (top) The frightening story of Sodom and Gomorah.

TM & © DC Comics.

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perhaps inspired by the more than 600 resident and migratory species found in the Philippines.

The same fine lines that etched “The Flood” were used in drier climes to draw every stone and desert crag of The Bible. Whether he was erecting “The Tower of Babel” or the cities of “Sodom and Gomorrah,” Nestor’s inks were a chief reason he was hailed as a great classical illustrator in his home country and abroad.

Though Bible editor Joe Kubert wishes he could have done more than provide the elaborate art breakdowns which elevated Nestor’s accomplishment, a taste of his unbridled talent was provided nonetheless. Hearkening back to earlier times when comic books contained filler pages spotlighting sports figures, science facts, or entertainment news, Joe got to fully illustrate four separate asides. He drew robed students being schooled while sitting on rocks, ancient weapons and other artifacts, and even the first ziggurat, believed to be the model for the Tower of Babel. His history lessons of life in ancient times were a fabulous bonus.

The wraparound cover for the Limited Collectors’ Edition is also entirely penciled and inked by Kubert.

Six horizontal background panels recreate scenes in the book. The weapon Cain uses to kill his brother Abel, the design of Noah’s Ark, the ramp leading up the Tower of Babel, even the celestial bodies formed during Creation to divide day from night; they show how influential Joe’s story interpretations were to Redondo. Yet it is the large foreground character of Moses, holding a staff in one hand and the Ten Commandments in the other, that most clearly highlights Kubert’s artistic power. (Since Moses does not appear in the Bible until the Book of Exodus, conceivably his cover appearance was to preview tales to come had the series continued.)

THE MOST EXPENSIVE COMIC EVER PRODUCED Now that greater than three decades have passed since Carmine Infantino was in charge of DC Comics, he has become more appreciated as an innovator. Nurturing a diversity of titles that took comics well beyond the superheroes, perhaps his decision to publish DC’s LCE #C-36 was his biggest gamble. During phone calls on

the 6th and 14th of March 2012, Carmine informs BACK ISSUE, “It was a great book, but sales weren’t that good. Maybe it was the distribution.”

Why did he okay the project? “I’m not that religious a person, but though people shied away from it, I wanted to see enough get interested because religion is important.”

Known as a very moral individual, Infantino was asked who mentored him in that regard. “My father. He was one of the most moral people I’ve known; very strict.

Solid. To this day I love him.”

A blurb on the inside cover alleged, “When Carmine Infantino, the publisher of DC, and Joe were neophytes in the business of cartooning (too many years ago to mention) they had envisioned the possibility of this publication.” Today Carmine says, “That’s not true. It was mostly Bill Gaines who came up with the idea.” Nestor Redondo was chosen to illustrate, “not because he was religious but because he was so talented. [And] Joe did a great job editing.”

Sol Harrison noted at the time that he thought the tabloid-illustrated version of the Book of Genesis “was the most expensive comic ever produced.” It is hoped that The Bible will be appreciated anew through its 2012 hardcover reissue for what it was: an experiment which was not continued, but brought together an assemblage of talent whose skills shone from every page.

Kubert Contributions In addition to the wraparound cover, Joe Kubert art graced this epic via supplemental “Bible Features.” [Editor’s note: As this issue was in its final stages of production, we learned of the death of Joe Kubert on August 12, 2012.

BACK ISSUE extends its condolences to the Kubert family.]

TM & © DC Comics.

With special thanks: Carmine Infantino, Joe Kubert, and Steve Morger.

EDDY ZENO is the author of the must-have volume Curt Swan: A Life in Comics (Vanguard Productions, 2002).

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“In the great Hall of the Justice League, there are assembled the world’s four greatest heroes…”

In late 1975, an even greater assembly occurred at said Hall of Justice, as those three junior Super Friends— Wendy, Marvin, and Wonder Dog—were introduced to the entire Justice League of America!

HI, I’M ROBIN, AND I’LL BE YOUR TOUR GUIDE Fans who picked up the Super Friends tabloid (actually Limited Collectors’ Edition #C-41) with the rainbowblasting cover held the very first Super Friends comic in their hands. The Hanna-Barbera-produced television series had been airing for over two years, with no tie-in comic offered by DC. The logo and art style on the cover demonstrated just how closely this comic would be related to its television counterpart. Cover artist Alex Toth was the chief character designer on the series, so the heroes looked just like their animated versions, minus a redrawn Superman face. DC’s production department infamously pasted a ten-year-old Curt Swan/George Klein-drawn Superman head over Toth’s Man of Steel.

Toth was in good company, as DC did the same thing to no less than Jack Kirby’s art during the decade!

The SF vibe continued in the interiors, with Toth handling the art chores on the contents and first pages, and series consultant E. Nelson Bridwell providing the script. Robin, the Teen Wonder was e. nelson bridwell leading created-for-television characters Wendy, Marvin, and Wonder Dog to the Hall of Justice (HOJ) for a secret surprise.

When the Teen Wonder opened the doors to the HOJ (and readers turned the page), the meddling kids and their dog were astounded to find the entire Justice League greeting them!

Aside from the main Super Friends—Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman—the junior trio had also met Flash and Green Arrow over the course of the television series. They (and readers) got their first glimpse of what the Atom, Hawkman, Red Tornado, Green Lantern, Elongated Man, and Black Canary would look like if Toth had designed them for television.

The Leaguers then gave the kids a tour of their trophy room. Having worked as an editorial assistant under both Mort Weisinger and Julius Schwartz, Bridwell’s superpower of continuity shined through here, as old JLA members and foes were discussed, from Snapper Carr to Amazo.

Marvin even tried on Green Arrow’s original, pre–Neal Adams uniform, which managed to get a chuckle out of the Man of Steel. Marvin’s masquerade reminded him of a JLA case, and as he reminisced, on the next page, the true nature of this book was revealed…

It was mostly a bunch of JLA reprints!

Rainbow Coalition TV’s Justice League, the Super Friends, in their first comic-book appearance in Limited Collectors’ Edition #C-41 (Dec. 1975–Jan. 1976). Note the Swan-patched Superman face, and that cover artist Alex Toth’s interior content is blurbed in the text.

TM & © DC Comics.

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by

Chris Franklin

CREATED FROM THE COSMIC LEGENDS OF THE UNIVERSE Now, this wasn’t the kind of bait-and-switch DC pulled a year later in the Superman Salutes the Bicentennial tabloid, which contained nothing but stories of Revolutionary War hero Tomahawk, with the Man of Steel only appearing on the cover [see BACK ISSUE #41]!

No, at least these tales did feature the same characters from the Super Friends TV series, and after all, the Super Friends and Justice League names were used interchangeably on the show.

Superman’s memories gave way to a reprint of “Operation: Jail the Justice League!” from Justice League of America #61 (Mar. 1968) by Gardner Fox, Mike Sekowsky, and Sid Greene. In it, the entire JLA masquerades as Green Arrow, when the real GA mysteriously quits the team and abandons his superhero career, warning his fellow Leaguers that to question his decisions or Wendy’s feminism is riled by the lack of women, and follow him would be disastrous. Determined to solve this mystery and help their friend, each of the heroes she asks Wonder Woman and Black Canary if any other disguise themselves as the Ace Archer and run afoul women have worked with the JLA. All she had to do was of Dr. Destiny, who was masquerading as their turn around to see statues of Batgirl, Mera, Supergirl, individual foes. He uses his Materioptikon weapon to and Zatanna, as Toth depicted them right behind her! switch the disguised Justice Leaguers with their Hawkman then proudly steers Wendy toward a statue of actual enemies, and then incarcerates them as Green his wife Hawkgirl, who at that time hadn’t yet become an official League member. She would later make a Arrow himself. The actual story is just as confusing few guest appearances in the next incarnation as it sounds, but it culminates in a final of the SF television series, The All-New Super battle with the assembled heroes and the Friends Hour. real villains duking it out, and in some Wendy and Marvin had taken the ways presages the later Challenge of floor, but what of the canine component the Super Friends incarnation of the of these junior Super Friends? In an television series, fondly remembered imaginatively rendered sequence, for featuring a similar villain grouping Wonder Dog pantomimes a question known as the Legion of Doom, and for the JLA, and Wendy and Marvin play plots that are just as ambitiously interpreter for him. Superman answers nonsensical but fun! the question, noting that no other dog Following the reprint, the book alex toth has ever been a member of the JLA, not segues back to the new Bridwell/Toth even Krypto, Kal-El’s own Dog of Steel. material, where Marvin asks about a set of statues that include Robin and a few heroes Bridwell again manages to sneak another continuity unknown to him. The Teen Wonder tells Marvin that name-drop here, and shows readers that there is a they are “heroes who, like me, aren’t JLA regulars but precedent for canine superheroes in the DCU, have helped out from time to time.” Continuity-cop despite Wonder Dog’s creation as a stand-in for a Bridwell couldn’t resist pointing out Robin’s non–JLA Scooby-Doo–type character.

Batman points out that although Wonder Dog is the status, despite his permanent place on the Super Friends roster. Super Friends guest star Plastic Man is first four-legged Leauger, he himself had, once upon a depicted with non-members Metamorpho and time, four legs, and the Flash only had one! Wonder Sargon the Sorcerer, neither of whom appeared on Dog is aghast and perplexed at the details of Batman’s strange tale. Time for another JLA reprint!!! the TV show but had been seen in JLA. Tabloids & Treasuries Issue

JLAers, Sound Off! The Junior Super Friends meets the entire Justice League.

Words by Bridwell, art by Toth.

TM & © DC Comics.

TM & © DC Comics.

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AND TO SERVE ALL MANKIND Batman relates “The Case of the Disabled Justice League!,” lifted from JLA #36 (June 1965), by Fox, Sekowsky, and inker Bernard Sachs. The tale begins with five members of the League voting to change Batman into a monster! The Caped Crusader happily agrees to become a hideous creature and Green Lantern accomplishes the task with his power ring. The Emerald Gladiator muses, “Too bad Snapper couldn’t be here for this! But he’s bedded down with a cold!” This fact is mentioned several times in the story, but it’s almost certain most JLA fans didn’t miss him. Justice League mascot Snapper Carr was added to the series for reader identification, just like Wendy, Marvin, and Wonder Dog (and later, the Wonder Twins and Gleek) were added to Super Friends. In both cases, many fans agree these cloying sidekicks added little but aggravation to the proceedings.

But why was Batman turned into a monster and left to lurk at the Secret Sanctuary? All is revealed when Superman, Flash, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and Hawkman pay a visit to a hospital ward for handicapped boys. The despondent boys immediately perk up upon seeing their heroes, just as their doctor suspected. The boys ask the JLA to display their powers, and to show them their Secret Sanctuary headquarters. Green Lantern creates a TV screen showing the interior of the HQ, and the monstrous Batman rearranging the furniture! The JLA rush off to combat their foe in a scripted battle, the boys none the wiser that this has all been a setup so their heroes could show off for them.

The ensuing fight goes horribly wrong as the huge, four-legged reptilian creature that was once the Masked Manhunter attacks his teammates with powers never before displayed. He somehow smacks Superman so hard he goes blind; he magically melds Flash’s two legs into one; his eye beams blast Green Arrow, who loses both arms; Green Lantern soon suffers from both vocal and mental stuttering; and Hawkman gets asthma!!!

Despite their new handicaps, the Leaguers manage to subdue Batman, and GL’s ring returns him to normal. But the encounter has left the heroes with disabilities mirroring those of the boys at the hospital, who are still watching this on GL TV. As the Leaguers ponder the hows and whys of this strange scenario, a radio message informs them that their old foe Brain Storm has broken his brother Fred out of prison.

They quickly conclude that Brain Storm and his deus ex machina stellar helmet are likely to blame for their predicament. Hawkman muses that this will be a great lesson to those kids still watching at the hospital.

If the League can overcome their handicaps, so can they.

The heroes take off after Brain Storm with much difficulty, but as luck (and Silver Age comics) would have it, the villain and his brother Fred are soon flying straight toward them on their Air Car. Although stymied at first, the JLA manages to use their special skills despite their new limitations. Having temporarily run out of brainstorms, the helmeted villain returns the JLA to normal upon their demands.

As the story cuts back to the hospital, we see the boys have been joined by other members of the League—Atom, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, and Martian Manhunter. As the handicapped heroes had hoped, the boys were inspired by what they saw on the screen, and happily vow to overcome their obstacles as their heroes did.

But, of course, the story isn’t over yet. Brain Storm changes the formerly handicapped Leaguers into mind-controlled copies of himself, and then into copies of each other, but the rest of the League manages to overcome their foe, and they round up him, his helmet, and his brother Fred.

The entire team returns to the hospital, where the boys inform them that they were going to “use our handicaps as you used yours—as an incentive to make us even better than we would have been without them.” Flash tells boys that this case was very similar to one the Justice

The Irregulars (this page) From the Super Friends tabloid, looks at auxiliary JLAers and Wonder Dog’s zany antics. (opposite page) Terrific Alex Toth original art from the Super Friends tabloid, signed by the artist and presented to fan/fanzine publisher Marty Greim. Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com).

TM & © DC Comics.

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How to Make Cartoons, the Toth Way (above and right) Three sample panels from Alex Toth’s animation how-to. (below) The artist’s self-caricature.

TM & © DC Comics.

Society of America had once been involved in (All-Star Comics #27, Winter 1945), and makes a duplicate of the pact the JSA had made. Those who agree to the pact pledge to treat others with handicaps as equals, and not pity them. It mentions several famous individuals of history who overcame handicaps, such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Helen Keller, and Beethoven.

Despite its heavy-handed message, Fox’s story never fails to entertain as a standard superhero story. The same couldn’t always be said for Super Friends, which in its first few seasons was more concerned with message stories, and villains that were almost always misguided souls who were trying to help the world in some way. Superheroics were sacrificed for life lessons, and the hour-long format sometimes seemed to drag. The show became less preachy when it returned from endless reruns in 1977, with shorter stories closer in tone to normal comic-book fare.

On the last page of the reprinted story, a pasted-in Batman converses with Marvin about the lesson to be learned: “Brain Storm failed to defeat us by handicapping us—even trying to confuse us by making some of us doubles of each other!” Thickheaded Marvin seems to totally miss the true message of the tale and obsesses about transforming into JLA members as Brain Storm had done.

On the next Toth-rendered page, Marvin daydreams about being Aquaman, Hawkman, Atom, Batman, and Superman, while readers get to witness the visualization of his beautifully drawn, but frightening thoughts. Green Lantern reminds Marvin that it’s not powers or weapons that conquer evil. “Oh, yeah—I dig, Green Lantern! It’s brains and teamwork that won for the JLA—even when you were handicapped!” Marvin says this despite the fact that in the story, the JLA mention that they must overcome their handicaps individually, to inspire the similarly challenged boys to do the same.

The new Super Friends material ends with Marvin and Wendy in agreement that “If we stand together, nothing can put us down!” An excited Wonder Dog barks (speaks?), “ME TOO! ME TOO!” and manages to overrun his masters, while the assembled JLA laughs in the background, wrapping things up with a heartfelt chuckle, just like most SF episodes.

THE COMIC STRIPS THAT MOVE! The final leg of our tour is of the animation process itself, brought to you by Alex Toth himself (with the aid of Bob Foster). Anyone familiar with the late Toth’s lengthy letters published in various magazines like Alter Ego and BACK ISSUE would recognize the format: lots of hand-lettered text flowing around small vignette illustrations. Toth packs the next ten pages with everything you could possibly ever want to know about

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the animation industry circa 1975. The details are exhaustive, but fascinating nonetheless.

The issue ends with a one-page autobiography by Toth, in the same text and graphics style. Toth is his usual frank self, beginning the article with self-deprecating humor, and ending it with his critique of some others he’s encountered in the comic and animation industry: “I detest stupidity, ignorance, and arrogant disregard for craft in a ‘professional’—and I’ve made enemies of such people through the last 33 years! Much to my own disadvantage, I might add—! But I am what I am, and it’s the only way I know of to live a life, in as honest a manner as is possible! Play it, and say it, ‘straight’!” Such candid articles were rare in comics then as now, and their inclusion says volumes about Toth’s stature as an artist’s artist amongst his peers and successors.

TO RIGHT THAT WHICH IS WRONG The back cover of the tabloid serves as a pinup of the regular Super Friends. This time Toth’s art goes unchanged, his Superman face intact. It’s almost certain no child’s head exploded from seeing this Superman instead of Curt Swan’s. After all, this version of Superman and his allies was more widely known than any comic published after the heyday of the Golden Age. Super Friends continued on TV in one form or another for the next ten years, with only a few years off between seasons. A regular comic series began roughly a year after this treasury hit the stands, with Bridwell at the typewriter, and lasted into the early ’80s. But no other issue quite captured the charm and feel of the TV series like this one. The treasury is a time capsule of an era when the World’s Greatest Super-Heroes would take time to show some kids around their clubhouse, tell some stories, have a laugh or two, and even send their fans “Best Wishes, from your Super Friends.”

CHRIS FRANKLIN is a graphic designer, cartoonist, husband, and father of two. He still has his childhood set of Super Friends bed sheets, but he doesn’t use them. He swears!

by

Jack Abramowitz

Follow the Yellow Brick Road … to Co-Publishing Marvel and DC Comics present …

MGM’s Marvelous Wizard of Oz #1 (and only), from 1975. Detail from its cover by John Romita, Sr. TM & © MGM.

A QUIZ FOR YOU

WHY TWO TITANS?

Here’s a simple quiz for the longtime comics fan: What was the first comic jointly published by Marvel and DC? Just to be fair, we’ll throw in a hint for those who need one: It was a tabloid-sized comic released in the mid-1970s. If you said 1976’s Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man … you’re wrong! The first Marvel/DC joint venture was actually a year earlier and it featured neither DC nor Marvel superheroes. What third party’s tale was so huge it took both of these comics giants to tell it? It was an adaptation of the MGM film version of The Wizard of Oz. Nowadays, Oz-themed comics are commonplace. Marvel has been adapting L. Frank Baum’s novels in a series of miniseries. From Dorothy to Oz/Wonderland Chronicles and from The Legend of Oz to No Place Like Home, there have been over a dozen Oz-based series since DC’s 1986 Captain Carrot miniseries, The Oz-Wonderland War. When the Marvel/DC tabloid came out, however, it was untapped potential. Classics Illustrated Junior #535 had adapted the original book five years earlier, but the MGM film has not been adapted before or since.

An adaptation of MGM’s The Wizard of Oz differs from adapting its source material, L. Frank Baum’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, in more than just character likenesses. Some differences are cosmetic in nature. One obvious example is that, for the movie, Dorothy’s silver shoes were changed to the more visually exciting (and now iconic) ruby slippers. An example of a major plot change is the consolidating of Glinda and the Witch of the North into a single character. Perhaps the most significant change occurs in the dénouement. The idea that “it was all a dream” is not found in Baum’s original work. Far from a dream, Oz was always meant to be a real place, visited by Dorothy and many others repeatedly over the course of numerous sequels.

The first question about the Oz adaptation is why Marvel and DC saw fit to collaborate on such a project. Roy Thomas, who scripted and edited both Oz tabloids, sheds some light on this. “I forgot a lot of details, since it’s well over 35 years ago now,” Thomas says, “but the basic thing is that [then-Marvel publisher] Stan [Lee] and I came up with the joint notion to adapt L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz as a new entry in Marvel’s brand-new tabloid line of comics. John Buscema was chosen as artist, and he liked the idea. He did a few designs, a more realistic rendering than W.W. Denslow’s art for Wizard. Then, from the book and my suggestions, John had broken down just the first eight pages or so, which just got Dorothy and Toto to Oz, when suddenly, Stan learned that DC was just beginning work on its own adaptation, which, I’ve learned since, was being done by Shelly Mayer of Sugar and Spike fame.”

This information came to Lee’s attention at an event in which “some toy company” was promoting the launch of a line of Oz figures based on the movie versions of the characters. Timing suggests that this was Mego, best known for its “World’s Greatest Super-Heroes” figures. Not only did Mego release a series of Oz movie figures at this time, they also hosted a gala event at Toy Fair to promote the line.

“I never saw any pages or thumbnails of that,” Thomas continues, “and for a time Stan and I believed that [DC publisher] Carmine [Infantino] was bluffing when he told Stan that work had already been begun, but apparently not. By some weird coincidence, Marvel and DC were poised to launch dueling Wizard of Oz adaptations, book and movie. The two men decided to join forces and make it the first inter-company collaboration.

For reasons that escape me, Marvel wound up totally producing the issue— John as artist, me as writer, and Tony DeZuniga, then working for Marvel, as inker, with other Filipino artists of his studio. I’ve no recollection of DC seeing the job before it was printed, though you’d think they must have.”

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BACK ISSUE • 29

The Conan Team Heads to Oz A peek inside The Wizard of Oz, where Roy Thomas’ script was brought to life

by John Buscema and Tony DeZuniga.

Thanks to Jack Abamowitz for the scans.

TM & © MGM.

THOSE PRE–INTERNET DAYS

to give the writers credit? I explained, keeping as calm as I could when Thomas was awestruck at Buscema’s artwork—not just for the quality of it, dealing with this idiot, that since virtually all the words I’d be putting but for the creative process as well. “I’ve said before and I’ll say it again into balloons in the comic would have been written by those scripters, that John Buscema absolutely astounded me on this project,” Thomas not made up by Garland and company or even by L. Frank Baum, who reminisces. “I had recently watched the Wizard film at the home of John was also getting due credit, I felt they deserved recognition and I was Verpoorten, who owned a 16mm copy of it, and I offered to write up a determined to give it to them.” While Thomas never convinced the detailed synopsis for him. John said, ‘Nah, I’ve seen the movie.’ Apparently, aforementioned “idiot” as to the rightness of his cause, he was ultimately as I realized later, he’d seen it a time or three but not anything like able to acquire the names so that Noll Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allen Wolfe are all prominently credited on the splash page. recently, and certainly not with the idea of adapting it into comics form The Marvel/DC Wizard of Oz tabloid does an admirable job in mind. I seem to recall that he told me later that it had been adapting the film. For example, while the first ten pages have several years since he had last seen it. And yet, without any yellow caption boxes and red sound effects, the art is colored written notes from me, he drew the entire story perfectly— in blue-and-purple knockout, simulating the sepia tones of the except that one or two minor scenes were transposed in film’s first 20 minutes. The only part of the MGM experience order. I was able to have those few panels re-pasted in the truly conspicuous by its absence is the music. “We had no proper sequence, and the pencils were just as you would right to use the songs,” Thomas laments. “This was not glean them from seeing the printed book. Amazing!” something about which we had a choice. Me, I’d have The creative process was different in other ways. found a way to work in pieces of the songs if I could have.”

Nowadays, we could download a copy of the script The tabloid also includes a number of featurettes. from online or transcribe the dialogue just by pausing Among these are movie stills, biographies of Baum and The Wizard of Oz on our Blu-Rays. Thomas’ workload, roy thomas the cast, and a map of Oz. The last page, labeled however, was more labor-intensive, he explains: “In those “Coming Oztractions,” announces the second issue in pre–VCR days, and lacking a copy of the screenplay, I had to buy audio cassettes of the movie, which had been made what was being called the “Marvel Treasury of Oz”—a clear indication privately, and play them over and over and over and over to get the that DC was onboard for the first volume only. dialogue just right, which is the way I wanted it. I did that late at night on a number of occasions, while my first wife Jeanie was trying to sleep A SEQUEL OF SORTS in the same room of our Manhattan apartment. That’s probably why I There are some continuity bumps between the two tabloids because The Marvelous Land of Oz is a sequel to the book and touches on aspects refer to her now as ‘my first wife.’” completely absent from the film. For example, the cast members must Another amusing anecdote involves Thomas trying to get the names don sunglasses before entering the Emerald City, ostensibly to protect of the screenwriters in order to give them proper credit for their dialogue: their eyes from the glare. (In actuality, it is the glasses’ green tint that “I phoned the MGM people I was instructed to phone about this, and the makes the city appear to be emerald.) This is a detail omitted from the person I talked to just couldn’t seem to get his tiny mind around the fact MGM musical and its comic-book adaptation. Similarly, the Tin that I would care who had written the Oz screenplay. Like, I knew about Woodsman calls upon the Queen of the Field Mice for assistance.

Judy Garland and the actors, and I knew the director, why should I want 30 • BACK ISSUE • Tabloids & Treasuries Issue

Land of Layouts (left) Cover rough and (right) Romita’s cover to 1975’s Marvel Treasury of Oz #1, the Land of Oz tabloid, continuing the Oz saga, with film favorites the Tin Man and the Scarecrow prominently featured with other Baum characters Tip, Jack Pumpkinhead, and the Gump. (bottom left) Front cover rough for The Wizard of Oz. Note that character placement changed in the printed version. (bottom right) Back cover rough for The Land of Oz. TM & © MGM.

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BACK ISSUE • 31

Ozma Sneak Peek Courtesy of Roy Thomas, two pages of original art from the unpublished Ozma of Oz. Says Roy: “One page shows the Tin Woodman, Scarecrow, and Cowardly Lion— AND the Hungry Tiger, whom we had to have walk on two legs to be consistent with the earlier Wizard of Oz adaptation. A little bit is trimmed off one side or another on these drawings, because the photocopier at the time wouldn’t quite take in the whole page.

Alfredo Alcala was the artist, with Mary DeZuniga saying she supervised. Joe Rosen is the letterer, and some of the pasted-on balloons have fallen off.”

TM & © MGM.

In Baum’s original novel, it was the Queen of the Field Mice who saved Dorothy from the poppies. In the movie and the Marvel/DC tabloid, Glinda performs that task, leaving readers of Marvelous Land to wonder how, exactly, the Tin Man comes to be so chummy with this lady mouse.

What may be most surprising about the follow-up is that it continues to use character likenesses from the film.

The Scarecrow and the Tin Man are featured players in this tale but Ray Bolger and Jack Haley are not the only actors portrayed. Judy Garland and Bert Lahr also appear in flashback. (For some reason, the flashbacks of the wizard himself do not resemble Frank Morgan, but he is depicted on the text page.) There are two ramifications to this decision, Thomas explains. The first is that MGM “got a share of the profits, such as they might have been.”

A more practical consequence for readers is that the character likenesses “make reprint more difficult—Marvel, DC, and the current MGM-properties owner would all have to get together to reprint Wizard.” Similarly, it would take both “Marvel and MGM to reprint Land.”

Another major impact of the character likenesses on the series did not end up seeing the light of day. The third tabloid, announced but never released, was to be an adaptation of the book Ozma of Oz. The Cowardly Lion returns in that tale along with a new friend, the Hungry Tiger. As Thomas explains, “it became necessary to draw the Tiger, like the Lion, walking around on two legs like Bert Lahr in the film, rather than on all fours as in the book’s illustrations.”

NO RETURN TO OZ Ozma of Oz was finished, down to the word balloons being pasted on the art. Even if it had been published, it would have been the last in the series anyway, as Marvel’s lawyers discovered that the fourth book, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, was not yet in the public domain. Aside from that, the tabloid-sized comics were doing poorly.

“Apparently, dealers didn’t know where to put them,” Thomas explains. “They were too big to go on the comics

32 • BACK ISSUE • Tabloids & Treasuries Issue

rack, and yet if they were put elsewhere they wouldn’t sell.

Whether the Oz books would have sold well if they had been packaged at regular size, I don’t know … nor does anyone else. I do know that I consider it a real shame that Marvel and DC never tried to reprint that first book in particular. With the movie appearing on TV around Christmas for years, it could have been a perennial seller.”

The future of these tabloids is iffy at best. Getting all the stakeholders on Wizard together might be too tall an order but it would take minimal edits for Marvel to “de-MGM” Land. Of course, the interest might be lacking now that Marvel has taken its Oz adaptations in another direction— one that very nearly had Thomas at the helm again.

“I was jazzed when editor Ralph Macchio invited me, a few years ago, to adapt The Wizard of Oz for the Marvel Illustrated series,” Thomas says. “But a day later he had to call me to tell me that his superiors had, without his knowledge, decided to offer it to Eric Shanower, who certainly had Oz chops. The funny thing is, since Eric only writes the Oz series for Marvel and doesn’t draw it as he did with his earlier Oz books, the Marvel Illustrated editions would look about 95% the same no matter who wrote them, since I’m sure I’d have adapted them almost exactly the way Eric has … few captions, etc. But I certainly wouldn’t deny that Eric has done a fine job.”

Finally, does Thomas have any thoughts on the average fan’s ignorance of the place The Wizard of Oz holds in comics history? Indeed he does!

“Naturally, fans discount this book as the first inter-company team-up because they want to believe Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man was … but, of course, it wasn’t!”

JACK ABRAMOWITZ knows way more about Oz than a grown man probably should. He even wrote an unpublished young adult Oz novel that he still has in Rich Text Format on floppy disks.

by

Glenn Greenberg

It had long been a story that existed solely in the imaginations of comic-book fans: Superman and Spider-Man sharing an adventure. Of course, reality dictated that such a tale could never actually happen.

After all, Superman was DC’s flagship character. Spider-Man was Marvel’s. Weren’t the two companies bitter rivals, slugging it out at the newsstands month after month for dominance of the comic-book industry? How could they possibly put that animosity aside and cooperate on a project that would bring together their two most valuable properties?

But in 1976, it happened. DC and Marvel co-published Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man, a 92-page tabloid-sized epic entitled “The Battle of the Century!”

Written by Gerry Conway and illustrated by Ross Andru and Dick Giordano (with uncredited art contributions

by Neal Adams, John Romita, Sr., Terry Austin, Joe Rubinstein, and Bob Wiacek), it was inarguably one of the biggest events in the history of the industry. Making it a reality was actually not as difficult as one might think. [Editor’s note: For the full story behind the uncredited artists’ contributions to Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man, see BACK ISSUE #11.]

BIRTH OF A DREAM For one thing, DC and Marvel had already been involved in a joint publishing venture the previous year: 1975’s MGM’s Marvelous Wizard of Oz, a tabloidsized adaptation of the classic 1939 movie, scripted

by Roy Thomas and illustrated by John Buscema, Tony DeZuniga, and “the Tribe.” [Editor’s note: See previous article.]

There was also the fact that when the idea of bringing Superman and Spider-Man together was pitched to both companies, their top creative executives were amenable. Conway notes that this would not have been the case just a few years earlier: “Before Stan [Lee] became Marvel’s publisher, you had people like Martin Goodman and his son Chip who were the ultimate business people there, and who would tend to hold a grudge. And at DC, you had [publisher] Carmine Infantino, who also tended to hold a grudge! So this was not a good mix.”

The atmosphere changed a bit when the Goodmans were out of power at Marvel and Lee was in the publisher position. “Stan was a total pragmatist,” Conway recalls. “If it was a matter of making his characters more popular, he had no problem with it.”

But how did the idea of Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man come about? It’s of note that the project

Were You There?

If you were one of the tens of thousands of fans who bought this landmark one-shot when it arrived at newsstands on January 2, 1976, you probably still remember that exhilarating moment! Front cover to Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man by penciler Ross Andru and inker Dick Giordano (with Neal Adams “inking with a pencil” over the Superman figure and Terry Austin on background inks).

Cover design by Carmine Infantino.

Superman TM & © DC Comics. Spider-Man © 2012 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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BACK ISSUE • 33

Rock ’em, Sock ’em Heroes Luckily, DC’s publisher Carmine Infantino was also one of the industry’s top cover designers. Note the evolution of his cover roughs, building to a balanced composition where both companies’ characters get equal weight. Special thanks to Jerry Boyd for the art photocopies.

Superman TM & © DC Comics.

Spider-Man © 2012 Marvel Characters, Inc.

was proposed not by any of the people who actually worked on it, but by an outside source.

“Around 1973 or ’74, the writers Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein—this is how oblique this gets— wrote All the President’s Men,” Conway explains. “They were actually approached to write that book by a New York agent named David Obst. He then set it up with a Hollywood studio and he was the toast of the town, seen as this incredibly smart agent. Stan was looking for ways to develop himself outside of comics, and I guess he and Obst had lunch. Obst … was someone who knew the comic-book business in a general sense [and] asked why there had never been a crossover or team-up between [Marvel] and DC. And Stan said that Marvel would be happy to do it but those guys [at DC] would never do it! And Obst said to him, ‘Look, if I could set it up, would you be willing?’ And Stan said, ‘Sure.’

So Obst then went to DC and again, he’s this guy with this incredible credibility, because he represented Woodward and Bernstein, and he offered to negotiate between DC and Marvel, and that’s how it happened.

He was the guy who made it happen.” (Attempts to reach David Obst for comment were unsuccessful.)

THE ART OF THE DEAL As Obst, Lee, and Infantino negotiated the deal, Conway moved from Marvel, where he had risen to become one of the company’s top writers, to DC, where he would work as an editor.

“As a result of their negotiations, they came up with a formulation whereby Marvel would provide the artist and DC would provide the writer,” Conway explains. “As I said, Carmine was a guy who had this kind of tendency to carry grudges and liked to poke people in the eye.

He was really proud of the fact I had left Marvel and come over to DC, where I was writing things like Superman stories for Julie Schwartz and so on. So he told Marvel he was going to put me on as the writer, which was kind of like a poke at Marvel, because I had just left Marvel! And I had just left writing Spider-Man! But, from a practical point of view, it actually made perfect sense.

I was a guy who knew both sets of characters.”

The same logic applied to choosing the artist.

“I wanted to work with Ross Andru, who I had worked with on Spider-Man,” says Conway. “And Ross was a brilliant choice by Marvel, because Ross had also worked for DC and had drawn Superman. He was a really smart guy and a really good storyteller.” (Andru passed away in 1993.)

34 • BACK ISSUE • Tabloids & Treasuries Issue

BALANCE OF POWER

WELCOME TO CROSSOVER EARTH

According to Conway, once the deal was signed and the members of the creative team were hired, the business people and the editors at both DC and Marvel stepped aside and let the storytellers do their stuff.

“We produced the story pretty much independent of both companies,” he recalls. “DC’s only concern was that Superman look good and Marvel’s concern was that Spider-Man look good. And my concern was that we produce a book that was fun to read and would fit my fanboy needs, which were fairly basic and simple— and it was a hoot!”

Conway adds, “We did know we wanted to be completely fair in terms of the amount of pages each character had, how many of the background characters from each [hero’s] book would get featured; it was almost mathematical… And I think it worked, because you don’t get the sense either character predominates in the book.”

“In my mind, this was not the Marvel Universe and it was not the DC Universe,” says Conway. “It never was intended to fit in [with continuity]. This was a story just for the fans. It was one for fun… It needed to reflect the continuities of both companies, and it needed to be true to those continuities, but it’s a world in which Clark Kent knows about the Daily Bugle and Spider-Man knows about Clark Kent and the Daily Planet, and there’s a certain rivalry between these two newspapers from these two big cities that in all likelihood are the same place!”

Conway says that the big problem with having the characters living in separate universes is that “you waste so much time on the nonessential information.”

Having everyone together on the same Earth allows the writer to jump right into the story and not have to devote valuable space to showing how the characters cross over into each other’s BRING ON THE BAD GUYS realities.

Conway says that the creative freedom he “The big argument against the enjoyed extended to selecting the villains.

Superman/Spider-Man book was, there gerry conway “Once we decided we wanted to were the fanboys who said, ‘No, no, have equal weight for both characters, this isn’t rationalized,’” Conway recalls. that meant they had to have equal villains. Superman’s “And then there were the people like me, who said, only villain at that point that stood out was Lex Luthor; ‘You can’t rationalize this. And you should never try, Brainiac was also important, but I don’t think he really because that takes the magic out of it, sucks the life had much impact on the [Superman books] back then, out of it, and just kills it dead.’” certainly not the way he has today. On Spider-Man’s side, the only comparable character, it seemed to me, was Dr. Octopus. Then I started thinking about the main differences between these two characters and their approaches.”

Conway continues: “The main difference, in my view at that time, was that Lex Luthor—and this was the concept of Lex back then, not the concept of Lex today— had a world where he was a hero (the planet Lexor, introduced in Superman #164, Oct. 1963). As far as he was concerned, his relationship with Earth was that it was the place that had rejected him and honored his archenemy Superman. So Lex didn’t have much of an investment in the Earth. Dr. Octopus, on the other hand, is totally an Earthbound character and, again, this is the Octopus of that particular era, he was kind of a venal, petty sort of guy. His relationship with Spider-Man was almost childish—he just hated this guy Spider-Man and would do anything to bring him down and make as much money out of it as he could. I realized you had these two characters whose entire worldviews, even if they team up, are going to be at odds. And the question for me became, at what point do they realize this? I felt that in all likelihood, Luthor always knew he was going to sell out the planet and he was manipulating Dr. Octopus as much as he was trying to manipulate everybody else.

So from there, the story sort of developed itself.”

In the story, Luthor and Octopus meet in prison and agree to join forces to kill their respective super-foes and blackmail the world. They soon escape and set their plans in motion. Eventually, inevitably, Superman and Spider-Man cross paths, initially as adversaries—Spider-Man is considered an outlaw, after all. The two heroes soon realize, however, that they have to work together—Luthor and Octopus have seized control of an orbiting communications laboratory and are using it to trigger powerful hurricanes and massive tidal waves to threaten Earth’s ecology. The villains’ demand: $10 billion. But as Conway notes above, it turns out that Luthor isn’t as concerned about money as he is about punishing his homeworld.

Perhaps the most startling thing about the story, at least initially, is the fact that the Man of Steel and the Web-Slinger, along with their respective casts, are all living in the same universe.

Tabloids & Treasuries Issue

Super-Villain Team-Up Luthor and Doc Ock bust out of the big house on page 35 of Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man. Lex Luthor TM & © DC Comics.

Dr. Octopus © 2012 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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BACK ISSUE • 35

THE WEIGHT OF TWO WORLDS

The Secret Team Behind the Team-Up Terry Austin contributed background inks—as well as the photocopy of this page—to 1976’s Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man. He wasn’t alone: Bob Wiacek and Joe Rubinstein assisted him, John Romita, Sr. inked some of the interior Marvel characters, and Neal Adams touched up the Superman images.

Superman and related characters TM & © DC Comics. Spider-Man and related characters © 2012 Marvel Characters, Inc.

As much fun as Conway wanted the project to be for fans, and as much fun as he wanted to have working on it, he says he always took it very seriously. This was not just another writing gig for him.

“I knew this was a momentous, historic project,” he says. “My goal was to hit it out of the ballpark. I really wanted it to be the best thing I had done up to that point. I certainly tried to put everything I knew about writing comic books into that story.”

Even beyond fandom, Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man was considered a Big Deal, a Major Event.

“The animosity between these two companies in those days was so great that [freelancers] literally had to choose who [they] were going to work for,” Conway explains. “The sense of exclusivity was such that it was huge that these two companies were doing [this project].

And I think from the point of view of others in the business, some people may have thought, maybe things will start being more rational, maybe we’re going to have more opportunities for work. From a professional point of view, it was, I think, a hopeful sign.”

Conway also notes that, given the state of the industry at the time, a huge, attention-getting project like Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man was sorely needed.

“Sales [throughout the industry] were really weak, and we were looking for ways to find the next big thing,” he says. “The idea of this big-format book made everybody excited, as a possibility for a whole new way of doing stories and reaching a larger audience. We were

all rooting for it, I think, on the basis of the possibility of expanding the marketplace. It made a ton of money for both companies, so from a financial point of view if nothing else, it was really worth it.”

More than 35 years later, Conway looks back on Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man with pride, though he notes, “Some of the dialogue, I wouldn’t write it that way today … but it would probably be plotted pretty much as it was plotted back then, because I think the story is what I believe that kind of story should be. The amount of screaming and shouting from the characters, the overblown threats, the basic hyperbole—that I would tone down. But the truth is, that’s part of the charm of material from that era!”

And thanks to some of the biggest names of that era, Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man became a reality— and a huge success. It was a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Or was it?

DO IT AGAIN During the five years following the publication of Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man, new people rose to power at the big two comic-book companies. Jenette Kahn became publisher at DC. At Marvel, Jim Shooter ascended to the editor-in-chief position, working under the company’s president, James Galton, and Michael Hobson, vice president, publishing. These new power players were apparently interested enough in recreating the shared success of 1976 that a new deal was reached: DC and Marvel would produce a whole series of crossovers. It would kick off with a reunion between Superman and Spider-Man. Published in the tabloid-sized Marvel Treasury Edition #28 (1981), Superman and Spider-Man was written by

Reunited Superman and Spider-Man was the final issue of Marvel Treasury Edition, #28 (and can you blame ’em for ending the title there? How could they hope to top this?) Cover layouts by John Romita, Sr., and cover painting by Bob Larkin.

Superman and Parasite TM & © DC Comics.

Spider-Man and Dr. Doom © 2012 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Shooter (with Marv Wolfman receiving a credit for “plot entries entitled “The Secret Origin and Gooey Death suggestions”) and penciled by John Buscema. Character of the Marvel/DC Crossovers” at www.jimshooter.com. figures were inked by Joe Sinnott, with backgrounds (Those particular entries are now accessible through the inked by Terry Austin, Klaus Janson, Bob McLeod, Al Blog Archive section of the site.)

Milgrom, Steve Leialoha, Walt Simonson, Bob Layton, John Buscema was asked for his recollections about Joe Rubinstein, and Bob Wiacek (whew!). the book in 1988, during a panel discussion at the The 62-page story, titled “The Heroes and the annual I-Con science fiction/comic convention held in Holocaust!” was set on the same “Crossover Earth” seen Stony Brook, New York. Buscema’s response: “I hated in the original team-up—a direct reference is made every minute of it. I don’t like superheroes. I don’t like to the previous adventure. This time, the DC villain drawing people wearing costumes and capes. I’m not was the Parasite, a character created by Shooter interested in Superman. I was never comfortable and introduced as an enemy for Superman in drawing Spider-Man. The only thing I’m really Action Comics #340 (Aug. 1966). Interestingly, interested in drawing is Conan.” the Marvel villain was Dr. Doom, who Despite his professed lack of enthusiasm could hardly be considered a member of for the project, it’s difficult to dispute that Spider-Man’s rogues’ gallery. The book Buscema did a masterful job. His version also includes appearances by the Hulk of Superman is particularly impressive, and Wonder Woman, both of whom had exuding youthfulness, strength, toughness, their own primetime network TV series and nobility. (And he’s a damn imposing at the time. figure, too—Buscema’s Man of Steel is The plot revolves around Doom secretly taller than even the seven-foot-tall Hulk!) forging an alliance with the Parasite and It should be noted that whenever john buscema launching another attempt at world this story has been reprinted, as in the domination. This new scheme, if successful, trade paperback Crossover Classics: The would put Doom in total control of all the remaining Marvel/DC Collection Volume 1 and a 1995 standard-size energy on Earth, thus making everyone on the planet comic book, Superman has been colored incorrectly— beholden to him. As part of the plan, Doom manipulates the blue portions of his costume appear dark, dull, and the Hulk into attacking Metropolis. Superman shows up to bluish-gray. However, this egregious error is not present stop the Hulk’s rampage, resulting in a brief but memorable in the original tabloid-sized edition. clash between the two powerhouses. Similarly, Spider-Man Superman and Spider-Man was another success, and Wonder Woman find themselves on opposite sides and fans didn’t have long to wait for the next DC/ before they realize that they face a mutual threat. In the Marvel book. Just a few months after the Man of Steel end, of course, it falls to Superman and Spider-Man, and the Web-Slinger saved the world from Dr. Doom working together, to shut down the two villains. and the Parasite, a brilliant crimefighting detective with An interview request was sent to Jim Shooter for this no superpowers was pitted against the most powerful article, but Shooter now chooses not to participate in creature to ever walk the Earth. It was without a interviews for TwoMorrows publications. However, in doubt the biggest mismatch of all the intercompany July 2011, he wrote about some of his experiences crossovers. By all rights, it shouldn’t have worked— working on Superman and Spider-Man in a series of blog but somehow, it did.

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Big John Draws the Big Red “S” (left) This Superman and Spider-Man cover preliminary

by John Buscema didn’t become the crossover’s actual cover, but still, it’s fun to look at, don’tcha agree? (right) A page from the Hulk’s cameo, featuring the Man of Steel vs. Ol’ Jadejaws! This page comes from the Crossover Classics reprinting, where Superman’s costume is colored incorrectly.

Superman TM & © DC Comics. Spider-Man and the Hulk © 2012 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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A TALE OF TWO BRUCES

When Bruces Battle (right) Bruce Wayne vs. Bruce Banner— Batman vs. the Incredible Hulk! Cover to DC Special Series #27 (Fall 1981) by José Luis García-López. (left) García-López’s evolution of the Batman/Hulk cover, with notes by DC’s and Marvel’s project caretakers, Dick Giordano and Al Milgrom.

Batman and Joker TM & © DC Comics.

Hulk © 2012 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Batman vs. the Incredible Hulk was published in the tabloid-sized DC Special Series #27 (Fall 1981), as a 64-page tale entitled “The Monster and the Madman.”

Len Wein was the obvious choice for writer.

“I was somebody who had extensive experience writing both characters,” Wein explains. “So, like Gerry (on the first Superman/Spider-Man book), they came to me and said, ‘Do you want to do this?’ And I said, ‘Are you kidding?! They’re my two favorite characters— I would love to do this!’”

Like its predecessors, the story takes place on a “Crossover Earth” where Batman and the Hulk and their respective casts co-exist. (Ahhh, but is it the same Earth as the one in the Superman/Spider-Man books? You’ll have to decide that for yourself.) As far as continuity was concerned, Wein’s approach was the same as Conway’s: “These things were outside continuity. They didn’t count for anything except for fun.”

The Dark Knight and the green-skinned behemoth cross paths when the Joker strikes a deal with the Shaper of Worlds, an alien being who can reshape reality based on the dreams of others. It turns out that the Shaper, who first appeared in The Incredible Hulk #155 (Sept.

1972), is rapidly losing his abilities and in danger of going insane. His only hope: a prototype “gamma-gun” that could replenish him. The Joker steals the device from Wayne Enterprises—much to the dismay of Dr. Bruce Banner, who’s been working there disguised as a janitor so that he can gain access to the gamma-gun and use it in an attempt to cure himself. The Batman arrives on the scene as the Joker is making his getaway and finds himself face to face with an angry Hulk, who decides he wants to smash “pointy-ears.” Things get even worse when the Shaper, eventually rejuvenated by

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the gamma-gun, lives up to his end of the deal by agreeing to reshape all of reality based on the Joker’s twisted imagination. The Batman must convince the Hulk to work with him to end the chaos.

Having the Joker in the story was pretty much a nobrainer. But why did Wein select the Shaper over one of the Hulk’s better-known adversaries?

“The Abomination, to me, was always more of a henchman type,” he explains. “He’s muscle, not brains.

You’ve got brains with the Leader, but I never liked him until Todd McFarlane made the top of his head look like it was a brain and I said, ‘Finally, an interesting visual!’

My feeling was, what happens if you take the Joker, who’s utterly insane, and let him do whatever he can possibly think of? I thought that would be fun.”

Amongst fans, probably the biggest controversy is the way in which Batman and the Hulk’s first encounter is resolved. Batman, desperate to end the woefully one-sided fight, releases knockout gas—but the Hulk holds his breath. Then, with all of his might, Batman kicks the Hulk in the solar plexus, causing the creature to gasp and inhale the sleep-inducing fumes. Down goes the Hulk. Some fans have argued that there’s no way a non-powered human being could ever be strong enough to do such a thing to the Hulk. Wein disagrees.

“Trust me, someone punches you in the solar plexus, it’s an involuntary reaction—you gasp for breath,” he insists.

“And that’s what Batman does. He puts everything he’s got into one perfect shot at the Hulk’s solar plexus and it forces the Hulk to gasp and he breathes in the gas and falls right over.” As Wein correctly notes, the Hulk had long been established as being susceptible to knockout gas—as long as you could get him to breathe it in.

It’s also important to note how humanely Batman is portrayed. He shows real sympathy for Bruce Banner and bestows kindness and compassion upon him, despite the great danger posed by Banner’s brutish alter ego. It’s a stark contrast to the harsh, judgmental Batman of recent years, who condemned Green Lantern Hal Jordan for the atrocities Jordan committed while he was possessed by Parallax.

“There’s a great deal of humanity and compassion in Batman,” says Wein. “He does what he does as much out of compassion for his fellow man as he does out of a sense of obligation—at least my Batman does.”

Mismatched?

On a physical scale, the Hulk may be more of a match for Superman than Batman, but the Darknight Detective shows he’s no pushover with this controversial kick to the solar plexus on page 17 of Batman vs. the Incredible Hulk.

Words by Wein, illos by García-López and Giordano.

Batman TM & © DC Comics. Hulk © 2012 Marvel Characters, Inc.

SMASHING ART Wein says he felt like he’d won the lottery when he found out who would be penciling the book: José Luis García-López.

“I’ve always thought he’s one of the great unsung heroes of this industry,” Wein says. “He’s one of the best artists we’ve ever seen and I don’t think he gets half the credit he deserves for the quality of his work.”

According to García-López, he became involved after getting a call from Dick Giordano, who was DC’s editor on the project, as well its inker.

“I was astounded with Superman vs. Spider-Man by Ross Andru and Giordano, I’d say I was haunted by that book for a long time,” he says.

“When I got Dick’s call I was afraid but said yes anyway.”

The book marked the first time that García-López ever drew Marvel characters.

“It was another world I knew nothing about it,” he says. “My only previous exposure to Marvel was John Romita’s Spider-Man and Conan drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith.”

García-López had already drawn Batman many times. But with the Hulk being uncharted territory for him, he says he used a story illustrated by John Buscema and Alfredo Alcala and written by Jim Shooter as visual reference. Presumably, it was the lead story in The Hulk! magazine #23 (Oct. 1980).

“That specific book was my only source of inspiration for the character,” he recalls.

The artist says he particularly liked the fact that Batman vs. the Incredible Hulk was published in the and paid homage to the origin of the Fantastic Four. tabloid-sized format.

Henshaw had filled the Mr. Fantastic role—though he and “Sometimes in the regular format all the little details his three companions suffered a far more tragic fate. you put in a page get lost, but in a bigger size, you can In bringing Henshaw together with the characters see everything—the good, the bad, and the ugly!” len wein that inspired his creation, Jurgens says he set out “to García-López calls the project “highly entertaining accentuate whatever differences could possibly be and with a good sense of humor. I liked it a lot. I’m proud of it, but you know, Superman vs. Spider-Man still is visually the best for me.” drawn out. Certainly the fact that by that point he’d become a Len Wein also looks back on the book with great pride. “It turned heavy-duty villain in the DC Universe made him different and a nice out to be one of the most perfect stories I ever worked on. I was counterpoint to what the altruistic Fantastic Four were.”

According to Jurgens, Superman/Fantastic Four was years in the working with some of the most talented people in the business, on two making—and always intended to be done in the larger format. of the characters I love most.”

“I was working on the Superman books and Mike Carlin was editing Batman vs. the Incredible Hulk wouldn’t be the last DC/Marvel crossover, but it would be the last one published in the tabloid-sized format for the them and I would always talk about various stories and ideas and next 18 years. It took a team-up between the world’s first superhero different concepts, discussions of, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if…?’” he explains. “We’d kind of gotten the crossover bug earlier, when we did and comicdom’s First Family to bring the format back one last time.

Superman/Aliens (1995), and at that time, we had a conversation where MAN OF STEEL, FANTASTIC FOUR(MAT) I said, ‘You know, all crossovers should be treasury-sized editions.’”

Written and penciled by Dan Jurgens, with inks by Art Thibert, Superman/ Jurgens says that the original Marvel/DC crossover was a major Fantastic Four (1999) was a 64-page epic entitled “The Infinite Destruction.” source of inspiration. “That first Superman/Spider-Man crossover really In it, Superman discovers that the infamous world-devourer Galactus is, I think, one of the high points of the industry. I remember buying it may have been responsible for the destruction of his homeworld Krypton. and just thinking, ‘This is the greatest thing ever!’ So when we did To find out the truth, Superman visits the Fantastic Four to learn more Superman/Aliens, [Carlin and I] kind of talked about it and said, about their longtime god-like adversary. But then Galactus shows up and ‘What other crossovers would be fun to do?’ I’ve always had a fond spot captures Superman. Mr. Fantastic, trying to help the Man of Steel, is also in my heart for Superman as well as the Fantastic Four, and we said, taken. Both heroes end up on Galactus’ world-ship, heading for deep ‘Boy, if we ever did that, we should do it treasury-sized.’ Those converspace. Superman, transformed into the new cosmic-powered herald of sations took place years [before we actually did the book]. But the key Galactus, is tasked with finding other planets for the world-devourer to those discussions were always two points: Superman would become to consume. The rest of the Fantastic Four—the Invisible Woman, the a herald of Galactus, and we would do it as a treasury-sized edition.”

Human Torch, and the Thing—set out to rescue their teammate and Superman. To further complicate matters, the evil Cyborg Superman CROSSING UNIVERSES accompanies them, having convinced the trio that he can help them Superman/Fantastic Four breaks from its predecessors in one very significant locate Galactus. But the Cyborg Superman’s true goal is to gain access way: Superman and the Fantastic Four don’t live in the same universe. to Galactus’ vast cosmic power. In the end, Superman’s fate will hinge, When Superman decides he needs information from the FF, he has to in part, on the bond he formed with a very special child back on Earth: travel from the DC Universe to the Marvel Universe to get it. It means that Galactus is also able to cross over from one universe to another at Franklin Richards, son of Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman.

The Cyborg Superman—Hank Henshaw—was an appropriate choice will. (Which would seem to suggest that Galactus never really has to for the DC villain, given the character’s backstory. He first appeared in The worry about going hungry, since he has twice as many planets to Adventures of Superman #466 (Apr. 1990), which was written by Jurgens choose from! Wonder if he ever considered eating the DC-Earth…)

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Return of the Treasury (right) The Cyborg Superman encounters the FF on this two-page spread from Superman/Fantastic Four, by Jurgens and Thibert. Signed original art courtesy of Heritage. (below) Cover art by Dan Jurgens and Alex Ross.

Superman TM & © DC Comics.

Fantastic Four © 2012 Marvel Characters, Inc.

According to Jurgens, this wasn’t the original plan. But the advent of the 1996 Marvel vs. DC crossover event, which had established that the two companies’ characters live in separate universes, and had introduced a plot mechanism that allowed them to cross over, prompted a change in approach. Jurgens dealt with it when he was writing the dialogue for the book.

“We had talked about Superman/Fantastic Four long before the Marvel vs. DC crossover existed,” Jurgens says. “But Marvel vs. DC came out first.

When we first talked about Superman/Fantastic Four, it was going to be set in the same universe where Superman and Spider-Man met, and where Batman and the Hulk met each other. As a writer, you want to get into the story and not spend ten pages explaining how they go from this universe to the next universe. To a certain extent, these are all conceived as something that would appeal to the general public beyond the hardcore comic-buying crowd, and they don’t want to be burdened with separate universes and stuff… In generating the dialogue, it was a matter of, we have to give a nod to [what had been established in Marvel vs.

DC], let’s get into it and out of it as quickly as we possibly can.”

At the end of Superman/Fantastic Four, it’s revealed that Galactus wasn’t really responsible for Krypton’s destruction.

But had the story taken place on the out-of-continuity “Crossover Earth” of the early DC/Marvel books, Jurgens says things probably would have been different. “In my wildest dreams, it would have been a story where Superman finds out that Galactus [really did eat] Krypton.”

Still, Jurgens looks back at the project with a lot of fondness and affection. “I’m very proud of that book,” dan jurgens he says.

At this writing it’s been nearly ten years since the last DC/Marvel crossover, JLA/Avengers (2003–2004), and even longer than that since a comic book has been published in the tabloid-sized format—JLA: Heaven’s Ladder (2000). Will the crossovers—and the format—ever return? If history is any indication, nothing that goes away in comics is ever gone forever.

While on staff at Marvel Comics, GLENN GREENBERG conceived and edited the much-acclaimed The Incredible Hulk vs. Superman (1999) by Roger Stern and Steve Rude—a project that made him one of the very few non-DC editors in history to edit a project starring Superman.

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by

DC COMICS

THE AMAZING WORLD OF SUPERMAN, METROPOLIS EDITION Date: 1973 Cover Artists: Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson Reprints selected stories from Action Comics #210, 239, 389, 395; Superman #170; Superman Annual #6; Superboy #100, 153, 161, 169; and selected newspaper strips from 1940 and 1955

Chris Marshall

FAMOUS FIRST EDITION #F4: The original Captain Marvel Date: 1974 Cover Artist: C. C. Beck Reprints Whiz Comics #2

LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-22: Tarzan Date: Fall 1973 Cover Artist: Joe Kubert Reprints selected stories from Tarzan #207–210

FAMOUS FIRST EDITION #F5: Batman Date: 1975 Cover Artist: Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson Reprints Batman #1

LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-23: House of Mystery Date: Winter 1973 Cover Artist: Nick Cardy Reprints selected stories from House of Mystery #175, 179, 180, 182, 186, 202

DC SPECIAL SERIES #25: Superman II Date: Summer 1981 Photo Cover News, notes, and photos from Superman II

FAMOUS FIRST EDITION #F6: Wonder Woman Date: 1975 Cover Artist: H. G. Peter Reprints Wonder Woman #1

DC SPECIAL SERIES #26: Superman and His Incredible Fortress of Solitude Date: Summer 1981 Cover Artists: Ross Andru and Dick Giordano An original Superman story

FAMOUS FIRST EDITION #F7: Justice Society of America Date: 1975 Cover Artist: Everett E. Hibbard Reprints All-Star Comics #3

DC SPECIAL SERIES #27: Batman vs. the Incredible Hulk Date: Fall 1981 Cover Artist: José Luis García-López An original story with Batman and Incredible Hulk; co-published with Marvel Comics FAMOUS FIRST EDITION #C-26: Superman Date: 1974 Cover Artist: Joe Shuster Reprints Action Comics #1 FAMOUS FIRST EDITION #C-28: Batman Date: 1974 Cover Artist: Bob Kane Reprints Detective Comics #27 FAMOUS FIRST EDITION #C-30: Wonder Woman Date: 1974 Cover Artist: H. G. Peter Reprints Sensation Comics #1

Interested in collecting these oversized comics? Here’s an alphabetical checklist of Bronze Age Treasury and Tabloid Editions courtesy of Chris Marshall of Collected Comics Library (www.collectedcomicslibrary.com). [Editor’s note: DC’s All-New Collectors’ Edition is listed alphabetically after Limited Collectors’ Edition, since it continues the same numbering.]

To discover more about tabloid comics, visit Rob Kelly’s fantastic Treasury Comics website (www.treasurycomics.com).

FAMOUS FIRST EDITION #F8: The Flash Date: 1975 Cover Artist: Sheldon Moldoff Reprints Flash Comics #1 FAMOUS FIRST EDITION #C-61: Superman Date: 1978 Cover Artist: Joe Shuster Reprints Superman #1 LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-20: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Date: Christmas 1972 Cover Artist: Rube Grossman Reprints selected stories from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer #2, 4–7 LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-21: Shazam!

(The original Captain Marvel) Date: Summer 1973 Cover Artist: C. C. Beck Reprints selected stories from Captain Marvel Adventures #19, 68, 115, 121; Captain Marvel, Jr. #11; and Marvel Family #85

LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-24: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Date: 1973 Cover Artist: Rube Grossman Reprints selected stories from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer #3, 5, 8; and 80-Page Giant Rudolph Annual #13 LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-25: Batman Date: 1974 Cover Artist: Neal Adams Reprints selected stories from Batman #4, 14, 24, 221; and Detective Comics #355, 404 LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-27: Shazam!

(Captain Marvel) Date: 1974 Cover Artist: Bob Oksner Reprints selected stories from Captain Marvel Adventures #25, 53, 121, 127; Captain Marvel, Jr. #54; and Marvel Family #2, 20, 21, 82 LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-29: Tarzan Date: 1974 Cover Artist: Joe Kubert Reprints selected stories from Tarzan #219–223 LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-31: Superman Date: 1973 Cover Artist: H. J. Ward Reprints selected stories from Action Comics #22, 29; Superman #60, 142, 204; and Amazing World of Superman, Metropolis Edition

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LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-32: Ghosts Date: Dec. 1974–Jan. 1975 Cover Artist: Nick Cardy Reprints selected stories from Ghosts #1, 3–6

LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-40: Dick Tracy Date: Dec. 1975–Jan. 1976 Cover Artist: Chester Gould Reprints selected stories from strips from December 21, 1943–May 17, 1944

LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-33: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Date: Feb.–Mar. 1975 Cover Artist: Rube Grossman Reprints selected stories from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer #2, 9 LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-34: Christmas with the Super-Heroes Date: Feb.–Mar. 1975 Cover Artist: Nick Cardy Reprints selected stories from Batman #239, Captain Marvel Adventures #69, Teen Titans #13, Action Comics #117, and Sugar and Spike #62 LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-35: Shazam!

(Captain Marvel) Date: Apr.–May 1975 Cover Artist: Photo Reprints selected stories from Captain Marvel Adventures #100, 129, 148; and Marvel Family #17 LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-36: The Bible Date: June–July 1975 Cover Artist: Joe Kubert All-new comic adaptations of stories from The Bible, mostly from The Book of Genesis LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-37: Batman Date: Aug.–Sept. 1975 Cover Artist: Jim Aparo Reprints selected stories from Batman #8, 43, 45; World’s Finest Comics #3; and Batman and Robin Sunday strips #138–146 (June 23, 1946–August 18, 1946)

LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-41: Super Friends Date: Dec. 1975–Jan. 1976 Cover Artist: Alex Toth Reprints selected stories from Justice League of America #36, 61 LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-42: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Date: Feb.–Mar. 1976 Cover Artists: Sheldon Mayer and Tenny Henson Reprints selected stories from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer comics LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-43: Christmas with the Super-Heroes Date: Feb.–Mar. 1976 Cover Artist: Curt Swan and Bob Oksner Reprints selected stories from Superman’s Christmas Adventure #1, Batman #219, House of Mystery #191, Sensation Comics #14, and Adventure Comics #82 LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-44: Batman Date: June–July 1976 Cover Artist: Wally Fax Reprints selected stories from Detective Comics #329, 397; and Batman #31, 83 LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-45: More Secret Origins Super-Villains Date: June–July 1976 Cover Artist: Dick Giordano Reprints selected stories from Batman #62, The Flash #105, Superboy #78, and Wonder Woman #6

LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-38: Superman Date: Oct.–Nov. 1975 Cover Artist: Bob Oksner Reprints selected stories from Superman #40, 48, 157; and Action Comics #315, 316 LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-39: Secret Origins Super-Villains Date: Oct.–Nov. 1975 Cover Artist: Dick Giordano Reprints selected stories from Detective Comics #168, Adventure Comics #271, Showcase #8, Whiz Comics #15, and Superman #249

LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-46: Justice League of America Date: Aug.–Sept. 1976 Cover Artist: Dick Giordano Reprints selected stories from Justice League of America #24 and 34 LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-47: Superman Salutes the Bicentennial Date: Aug.–Sept. 1976 Cover Artist: Fred Ray Reprints selected stories from Star Spangled Comics #121, 126, 127; More Fun Comics #70; and Tomahawk #45

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LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-48: Superman vs. the Flash Date: 1976 Cover Artists: Carmine Infantino (layout), José Luis García-López and Bob Oksner Reprints selected stories from Superman #199, Flash Annual #1, and The Flash #175 LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-49: Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes Date: Oct.–Nov. 1976 Cover Artist: Mike Grell Reprints selected stories from Adventure Comics #367, 369, 370, 403; and Superboy #200 LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-50: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Date: Christmas 1976 Cover Artist: Sheldon Mayer Reprints selected stories from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer comics LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-51: Batman Date: Aug. 1977 Cover Artist: Neal Adams Reprints selected stories from Batman #232, 242–244 LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-52: The Best of DC Date: 1977 Cover Artist: Neal Adams Reprints selected stories from Batman #237, House of Mystery #201, The Flash #148, Our Army at War #241, Tomahawk #136, and Superman #156 ALL-NEW COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-53: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Date: Jan. 1978 Cover Artist: Sheldon Mayer Reprints selected stories from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer comics ALL-NEW COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-54: Superman vs. Wonder Woman Date: 1978 Cover Artist: José Luis García-López Original story ALL-NEW COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-55: Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes Date: 1978 Cover Artist: Mike Grell Original story

ALL-NEW COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-56: Superman vs. Muhammad Ali Date: 1978 Cover Artists: Joe Kubert (layouts) and Neal Adams Original story LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-57: Welcome Back, Kotter Date: 1978 Cover Artist: Bob Oksner Reprints selected stories from Welcome Back, Kotter #1, 3, 4 ALL-NEW COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-58: Superman vs. Shazam!

Date: Apr. 1978 Cover Artists: Rich Buckler and Dick Giordano Original story LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-59: Batman’s Strangest Cases Date: 1978 Cover Artists: Neal Adams and Bernie Wrightson Reprints selected stories from The Brave and the Bold #93; Swamp Thing #7; Batman #250, 227; and Detective Comics #410 ALL-NEW COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-60: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Date: 1978 Cover Artist: Sheldon Mayer Reprints selected stories from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer comics ALL-NEW COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-62: Superman: The Movie Date: 1979 Cover Artist: Photo News, notes, and photos from Superman: The Movie SUPERMAN VS. THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #nn Date: Jan. 1976 Cover Artists: Ross Andru and Dick Giordano, with Neal Adams and Terry Austin An original story with Superman and Spider-Man; co-published with Marvel Comics

MARVEL COMICS

MARVEL SPECIAL EDITION #1: STAR WARS Date: Aug. 1977 Cover Artist: Rick Hoberg Reprint of Marvel’s Star Wars #1–3 (Episode IV: A New Hope)

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY #1 TREASURY EDITION Date: 1976 Cover Artists: Jack Kirby and Dan Adkins Comic adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey

MARVEL SPECIAL EDITION #2: STAR WARS Date: 1977 Cover Artist: Tony DeZuniga Reprint of Marvel’s Star Wars #4–6 (Episode IV: A New Hope)

ANNIE TREASURY EDITION Date: 1982 Cover Artist: Photo Reprint of Marvel’s two-issue Annie movie adaptation

MARVEL SPECIAL EDITION #3: STAR WARS Date: 1978 Cover Artist: Ernie Chan Reprint of Marvel’s Star Wars #1–6 (Episode IV: A New Hope)

BUCK ROGERS GIANT MOVIE EDITION Date: 1979 Cover Artist: Photo Comic adaptation of the Buck Rogers movie starring Gil Gerard (which was continued as a TV series); originally published by Western Publishing, second printing by Marvel Comics Group

MARVEL SPECIAL EDITION #2: STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK Date: 1980 Cover Artist: Bob Larkin Comic adaptation of Star Wars #39–44 (Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back)

THE FUNTASTIC WORLD OF HANNA-BARBERA #1: THE FLINTSTONES CHRISTMAS PARTY Date: Dec. 1977 Cover Artists: Kay Wright and Scott Shaw!

Anthology of stories starring Hanna-Barbera characters

MARVEL SPECIAL EDITION #3: CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND Date: 1978 Cover Artists: Walter Simonson and Klaus Janson Comic adaptation of Close Encounters of the Third Kind

THE FUNTASTIC WORLD OF HANNA-BARBERA #2: YOGI BEAR’S EASTER PARADE Date: Mar. 1978 Cover Artists: Dick Bickenbach and Lee Hooper Anthology of stories starring Hanna-Barbera characters THE FUNTASTIC WORLD OF HANNA-BARBERA #3: LAFF-A-LYMPICS Date: June 1978 Cover Artists: Willie Ito and Scott Shaw!

An original 48-page story G.I. JOE #1 SPECIAL TREASURY EDITION Date: 1982 Cover Artists: Herb Trimpe and Bob McLeod Reprints G.I. Joe #1 (Marvel) and several profiles MARVEL SPECIAL EDITION #1: THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN Date: June 1975 Cover Artist: John Romita, Sr. Reprints selected stories from Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1 and Amazing Spider-Man #6, 35

MARVEL SUPER SPECIAL #8: BATTLESTAR GALACTICA Date: 1978 Cover Artist: Dave Cockrum Reprint of Marvel’s Battlestar Galactica #1–3 MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #1: The Spectacular Spider-Man Date: 1974 Cover Artist: John Romita, Sr. Reprints selected stories from Amazing Spider-Man #8, 14, 42, 72, 90; and Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1 MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #2: The Fabulous Fantastic Four Date: Dec. 1974 Cover Artist: John Romita, Sr. Reprints selected stories from Fantastic Four #6, 11, 48–50; and Fantastic Four Annual #3 MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #3: The Mighty Thor Date: 1974 Cover Artist: John Romita, Sr. Reprints selected stories from Thor #125–130 and Journey into Mystery Annual #1

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MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #4: Conan the Barbarian Date: 1975 Cover Artist: Barry Windsor-Smith Reprints selected stories from Conan the Barbarian #11, Savage Tales #2–3 MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #5: The Hulk on the Rampage Date: 1975 Cover Artist: John Romita, Sr. Reprints selected stories from Incredible Hulk #3, 139, 141; Tales to Astonish #79, 100; and Marvel Feature #11 MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #6: Doctor Strange, the Most Mystical Hero of All Date: 1975 Cover Artist: Frank Brunner Reprints selected stories from Dr. Strange #170, 177; Strange Tales #111, 146, 148, 157; and Marvel Premiere #10 MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #7: The Mighty Avengers Date: 1975 Cover Artists: Jack Kirby and Frank Giacoia Reprints selected stories from Avengers #52, 57, 60, 83 MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #8: Giant Superhero Holiday Grab Bag Date: 1975 Cover Artist: John Romita, Sr. Reprints selected stories from Dr. Strange #180; The Incredible Hulk #147; Luke Cage, Hero for Hire #7; Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #10; and Amazing Spider-Man #24 MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #9: Giant Superhero Team-Up Date: 1976 Cover Artists: Gil Kane and John Romita, Sr. Reprints selected stories from Sub-Mariner #8, Journey into Mystery #112, Silver Surfer #14, and Daredevil #43 MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #10: The Mighty Thor Date: 1976 Cover Artists: Jack Kirby and Frank Giacoia Reprints selected stories from Thor #154–157 MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #11: The Fabulous Fantastic Four Date: 1976 Cover Artists: Jack Kirby and Frank Giacoia Reprints selected stories from Fantastic Four #4, 23, 51, 94

MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #12: Howard the Duck Date: 1976 Cover Artists: Gene Colan and Tom Palmer Reprints selected stories from Howard the Duck #1, Giant-Size Man-Thing #4–5, and Adventure into Fear #19; includes a new story teaming Howard the Duck and the Defenders MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #13: Giant Superhero Holiday Grab Bag Date: 1976 Cover Artists: Gil Kane and Joe Sinnott Reprints selected stories from Marvel Team-Up #6, Avengers #58, Tales to Astonish #93, and Daredevil #86 MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #14: The Sensational Spider-Man Date: 1977 Cover Artists: Gil Kane and Frank Giacoia Reprints selected stories from Amazing Spider-Man #100–102 and Not Brand Echh #6 MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #15: Conan the Barbarian Date: 1977 Cover Artists: John Buscema and Ernie Chan Reprints selected stories from Conan the Barbarian #24, Savage Sword of Conan #2, and Savage Tales #4 MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #16: The Defenders Date: 1978 Cover Artists: Gil Kane and Bob Wiacek Reprints selected stories from Marvel Feature #1 and Defenders #4, 13–14 MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #17: The Incredible Hulk Date: 1978 Cover Artists: Bob Budiansky and Tony DeZuniga Reprints selected stories from Incredible Hulk #121, 134, 150, 158 MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #18: The Astonishing Spider-Man Date: 1978 Cover Artists: Bob Budiansky and Ernie Chan Reprints selected stories from Marvel Team-Up #4, 12, 15, 31

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MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #19: Conan the Barbarian Date: 1978 Cover Artists: John Buscema Reprints selected stories from Savage Sword of Conan #4, 6 MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #20: The Rampaging Hulk Date: 1979 Cover Artists: Bob Budiansky and Jack Abel Reprints selected stories from Incredible Hulk #136–137, 143–144 MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #21: Fantastic Four Date: 1979 Cover Artists: Bob Budiansky and Joe Sinnott Reprints selected stories from Fantastic Four #120–123 MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #22: The Sensational Spider-Man Date: 1979 Cover Artists: Bob Budiansky and Joe Sinnott Reprints selected stories from Marvel Team-Up #13, 19–21; and Amazing Spider-Man Annual #5 MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #23: Conan the Barbarian Date: 1979 Cover Artists: John Buscema and Joe Sinnott Reprints selected stories from Savage Sword of Conan #5 and a 16-page newspaper strip MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #24: The Rampaging Hulk Date: 1979 Cover Artists: Bob Budiansky and Bob Wiacek Reprints selected stories from Incredible Hulk #175–178; includes a new Hercules backup story MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #25: Spider-Man vs. Hulk at the Winter Olympics Date: 1980 Cover Artists: Al Milgrom and Jack Abel An original story featuring Spider-Man and Hulk MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #26: The Rampaging Hulk Date: 1980 Cover Artist: Al Milgrom Reprints selected stories from Incredible Hulk #167–170; includes a new Wolverine backup story

MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #28: Superman and Spider-Man Date: 1981 Cover Artists: John Romita and Bob Larkin An original story, the sequel to Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man #nn; co-published with DC Comics MARVEL TREASURY OF OZ #1: THE MARVELOUS LAND OF OZ Date: 1975 Cover Artist: John Romita, Sr. Published solely by Marvel Comics Group MARVEL TREASURY SPECIAL FEATURING CAPTAIN AMERICA’S BICENTENNIAL BATTLES #1 Date: 1976 Cover Artists: Jack Kirby and Frank Giacoia, with Marie Severin and John Romita. Sr. An original story with Captain America MARVEL TREASURY SPECIAL: GIANT SUPERHERO HOLIDAY GRAB-BAG Date: 1974 Cover Artist: John Buscema Reprints selected stories from Marvel Team-Up #1, Daredevil #7, Fantastic Four #25–26, and Amazing Adventures #5 MGM’s MARVELOUS WIZARD OF OZ Date: 1975 Cover Artist: John Romita, Sr. Comic adaptation of the 1939 movie starring Judy Garland; co-published with DC Comics SMURFS TREASURY #1 Date: 1983 Cover Artist: Peyo Reprints selected Smurfs stories

SPECIAL COLLECTOR’S EDITION MARVEL #1: SAVAGE FISTS OF KUNG FU Date: 1975 Cover Artists: Gil Kane and Dan Adkins, with John Romita, Sr. Reprints selected stories from Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #1–2 and Special Marvel Edition #15

OTHER PUBLISHERS AN ARCHIE SPECIAL EDITION, CHRISTMAS AND ARCHIE #1 Date: Jan. 1975 Publisher: Archie Comics Cover Artists: Dan DeCarlo and Al Hartley Reprints selected Archie Christmas-related stories CAPTAIN CANUCK #4 [Limited Edition] Date: 1975 Publisher: Comely Comix Cover Artist: Richard Comely Limited edition of 300 GIANT COMIC ALBUM: BARNEY GOOGLE AND SNUFFY SMITH Date: 1972 Publisher: Modern Promotions Cover Artist: Fred Laswell 52 pages; reprints King Features comic strips GIANT COMIC ALBUM: BEETLE BAILEY Date: 1972 Publisher: Modern Promotions Cover Artist: Mort Walker 52 pages; reprints King Features comic strips GIANT COMIC ALBUM: BLONDIE Date: 1972 Publisher: Modern Promotions Cover Artist: Chic Young 52 pages; reprints King Features comic strips GIANT COMIC ALBUM: FLASH GORDON Date: 1972 Publisher: Modern Promotions Cover Artist: Dan Barry 52 pages; reprints King Features comic strips GIANT COMIC ALBUM: HENRY Date: 1972 Publisher: Modern Promotions Cover Artist: John Liney 52 pages; reprints King Features comic strips GIANT COMIC ALBUM: THE KATZENJAMMER KIDS Date: 1972 Publisher: Modern Promotions Cover Artist: Joe Musial 52 pages; reprints King Features comic strips

GIANT COMIC ALBUM: LITTLE IODINE Date: 1972 Publisher: Modern Promotions Cover Artist: Bob Dunn 52 pages; reprints King Features comic strips GIANT COMIC ALBUM: MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN Date: 1972 Publisher: Modern Promotions Cover Artist: Lee Falk 52 pages; reprints King Features comic strips GIANT COMIC ALBUM: POPEYE Date: 1972 Publisher: Modern Promotions Cover Artist: Bud Sagendorf 52 pages; reprints King Features comic strips KING KONG Date: 1968 Publisher: Whitman Publishing Cover Artist: George Wilson Reprints 1968 adaptation of original King Kong movie adaptation [Editor’s note: Although this predates the Bronze Age by two years, one might argue that King Kong paved the way for tabloid comics for Bronze Age readers.]

MICHAEL JACKSON AS CAPTAIN EO 3-D SPECIAL SOUVENIR EDITION Date: 1987 Publisher: Eclipse Comics, co-published by Walt Disney Productions Artist: Tom Yeates The official 3-D comic-book adaptation of the George Lucas 3-D musical motion picture directed by Francis Ford Coppola SOJOURN #1 Date: Sept. 1977 Publisher: White Cliffs Publishing Co. Cover Artists: montage featuring Joe Kubert, Dick Giordano, Doug Wildey, John Severin, Sergio Aragonés, Lee Elias, and Steven Bissette Anthology series edited by Joe Kubert SOJOURN #2 Date: 1977 Publisher: White Cliffs Publishing Co. Cover Artist: Joe Kubert Anthology series edited by Joe Kubert

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All covers © their respective copyright holders.

MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #27: All-Time Greatest Team-Ups starring the Sensational Spider-Man Date: 1980 Cover Artists: Mike Zeck and Jack Abel Reprints selected stories from Marvel Team-Up #9–11, 27

The bicentennial celebrations of 1976 serve as a reaffirmation of what makes the United States of America a great country. In the wake of the controversial Vietnam War and President Nixon’s resignation, Americans were looking to the glories of the past in order to shape their beliefs and goals for the future of the country and themselves. To express these ideas in comic-book form, what more worthy creator was there than Jack “the King” Kirby? And what better character than Captain America himself, Kirby’s most iconic co-creation (along with writer Joe Simon), could have served as the creative lens for the King’s patriotic love of America at its two-century mark in the landmark June 1976 Marvel Treasury Special, Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles?

In the opening splash page for “Chapter One – Mister Buda,” the reader immediately beholds the image of Captain America entering the eastern-tinged sanctuary of Mister Buda, a bald, diminutive man who is sitting in the lotus position within a golden, triangular-shaped structure. If one were to substitute Dr. Strange for Cap, the image would not be as incongruously striking to a reader who would sooner be expecting Captain America to be infiltrating a Hydra fortress or engaged in fisticuffs with the likes of the Red Skull or Batroc the Leaper at the beginning of his tales. Then again, this is 1976, not 1964 or 1941, and comics have moved on to embrace a worldlier, multicultural perspective in their storytelling. Buda, subsequently, serves as the catalyst for Captain America’s stunning journey across the landscape of America’s past, present, jack kirby and future. Mark Evanier, longtime friend and biographer of Jack Kirby with Kirby! – King of Comics (Abrams 2008), offers his thoughts on why Kirby chose this Buddha–like character to expand Cap’s perspective on America. “I’d just be guessing,” Evanier admits, “because Jack operated on a lot of instinct and hunches. But I’d say he wanted a figure who would have the importance of a religious icon but didn’t want to be as obvious as to make the guy God.” If indeed Kirby was ambiguous about his feeling regarding the place of religion in a Captain America comic, he was not so uncertain in asserting his position on the Nazis three decades after the end of World War II. Even though Captain America rejects Mister Buda’s offer to help him view his role as a symbol of America with a newfound universal eye, Buda opens a hidden fold in the universe, into which the departing Cap unwittingly steps. Finding himself in a mysterious fortress, Captain America quickly infiltrates an interrogation of his long-dead partner Bucky that is being brutally conducted by a few Nazis, the Red Skull, and Adolf Hitler himself! What reader, consequently, would not feel a nostalgic rush in witnessing Cap knocking

A Star-Spangled Celebration Cover to Marvel Treasury Special featuring Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles (1976). Cover pencils

by Jack Kirby, inks by Frank Giacoia. The Grand Comic-Book Database (www.comics.org) notes that Marie Severin and John Romita, Sr. made art corrections to the background images, Mirthful Marie drawing the colonial characters on the left, and Jazzy Johnny adding the Cap figure on the right. © 2012 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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by

To m P o w e r s

out the Red Skull and smashing Hitler’s face directly into the book, the 2001 special, and not much else, Jack finally got mug of one of his henchman’s while rescuing Bucky from the chance to draw pages that would be printed big.” certain doom? Once Captain America returns to his foe’s Kirby’s perception of his co-creation, Captain America, trippy domain, Buda does not reveal whether or not had obviously shifted by the time he had returned to what Cap experienced in that brief excursion to World Marvel in the mid-’70s and was producing Bicentennial War II was an illusion or some sort of alternate reality. Battles. John Morrow, editor of The Jack Kirby Collector, Nevertheless, concerning Cap’s mini-adventure, Buda comments on this creative shift in Kirby’s focus: “My sense does reveal to him, “You believed in what you saw with all of Jack’s 1970s Marvel work is that he just because it truly existed in that place.” While this wanted to be left alone to produce the kind of comment encapsulates the idea that what we material he enjoyed, within the confines of believe to be true defines the moments of our whatever established characters he was lives, it could also be interpreted as Kirby’s working on, such as Cap. He totally ignored wry view of comic books in general and the continuity just prior to his return to how adventures such as Cap’s become the Cap comic with #193 (Jan. 1976), something more than an illustrated and, in typical Kirby fashion, set out on fantasy world in the reader’s mind! his own to produce something different. But A man of perplexing wisdom indeed, in the several years since he’d last handled Buda secretly plants a glowing psychic Cap, he’d changed and evolved in his talisman upon the Star-Spangled Avenger’s storytelling, concentrating on more epic mark evanier palm while Cap once more tries to part storylines in his work. He also seems to ways with the man. As he is leaving have lost touch a little with the character, Buda’s building, however, upon the walls and ceiling which is to be expected after so long away from him.” he beholds a series of visions of what appear to be Civil Morrow adds, “By this point, you can also tell he was War soldiers engaged in battle. Kirby depicts this dramatic affected by some of his recent commercial failures and and fearsome scene of American fighting American in a wasn’t trying to produce quite as deep of concepts as he two-page spread running across the top two-thirds of had in the past, in most cases. While the ‘Madbomb’ storypages 14–15, visually essaying “widescreen” action to a line had a lot of potential leading up to issue #200 (Aug. generation of readers years before the term would be in 1976), the subsequent stories mostly seemed to fall short. vogue! Touching upon the epic scope of the treasury Even the two Captain America Annuals Jack did seemed to format for Kirby’s storytelling, Evanier exclaims, “You know be a little padded, pulling together a story that could’ve what I like about this book? The size of it. When Jack first been done pretty effectively within one regular-size issue. heard about the treasury-sized format, he was excited “But this lengthy Bicentennial Battles treasury was a very because he liked the idea of drawing big pages. He was satisfying read from start to finish for me. I loved seeing horrified when he saw that what DC and Marvel initially different inkers on Jack in that book, especially Barry wanted to do with their treasuries was to run enlarged Windsor-Smith, and seeing Cap run through various eras reprints of comics drawn for the smaller format. With this in time was a great plot idea. What better way to celebrate Tabloids & Treasuries Issue

Cap vs. Nazis A before-and-after, pencils-to-print comparison of a Bicentennial Battles page featuring Bucky, Hitler, and the Red Skull. Inks are by Barry Windsor-Smith (yes, you read that right!). Penciled page courtesy of John Morrow and The Jack Kirby Collector. © 2012 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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our nation’s birthday than to send the character back through US history? “You mystify me. For in your face I see the Great Spirit, which binds I have trouble picturing any other creator of that time taking that plot idea, all men…” In this moment, the meaning of Captain America is thereby and not making it preachy or unauthentic. Kirby took great advantage succinctly and poetically defined as Kirby reaffirms the message of of the larger size and seemed to be having an awful lot of fun with it.” his co-creation: that he is a man who transcends any notions of race, Outside of the Buda’s building in “Chapter Two – The Lost Super- religion, and class in order to be a champion of all people.

Hero,” Cap hops in a taxi, which transforms into a coach as he finds Although Cap attempts to dissuade Geronimo from engaging in battle himself in Revolutionary War-era America. Soon encountering with the US Cavalry, his words are futile, and then the Cavalry arrives, Benjamin Franklin, Cap serves as a visual inspiration as the brilliant shooting at the warriors. With a dramatic closeup encompassing page 32, inventor takes the design of Cap’s costume and reconfigures it into the a distraught Captain America shouts at the bellicose troops, “There is original 13 stars and stripes version of the American flag for seamstress another way!!—Another way!!—We’re all Americans!” At this point, the Betsy Ross! A befuddled Cap runs from this headache-inducing time reader realizes that Kirby is emotionally invested in exploring how not only paradox, comically exclaiming on page 21, “It isn’t possible! It just isn’t war but also the heinous treatment of Native Americans has affected the possible! I-I’ve been ripped-off by Benjamin Franklin!”

United States historically and culturally. When asked why it was important Moving from Colonial America, Cap lands in the middle of New for Kirby to produce this special in celebration of the bicentennial, Evanier York City during the Great Depression. He begins to talk to a boy selling replies, “Jack was a fervent believer in America and what it represents. He was, newspapers. Gangsters immediately arrive on the scene and try to after all, a World War II veteran and there’s no one more patriotic than steal a newspaper from the boy, but Cap thwarts their dastardly a guy who put his life on the line in that one. Others can equal but deed by roughly yanking one of the thieving gangsters out none can top. And by virtue of being the co-creator of Captain of the vehicle, which results in Cap having to shield the America, Jack had an almost-unique connection to the underboy from a hail of gunfire. After the cops show up and pinnings of the character and the history he represented.” the gangsters flee, the boy, on page 24, promises Cap, For the remainder of Chapter Three, Cap helps a group “When I get to be a big-shot artist, I’m gonna plaster of trapped miners find safety, and then, in “Chapter Four Lefty’s ugly mug all over the comic pages!” As for the – Stop Here for Glory,” Cap finds himself in a WWI identity of this child, Morrow says, “My favorite chapter dogfight, in another philosophical argument with Mister is the one where Kirby drew himself as a thinly disguised Buda regarding the tragic and emotional events he has young newsboy selling papers to gangsters on a street experienced so far, and in a fistfight with famous boxer corner and Cap has to rescue him.” Ultimately, for many John L. Sullivan. Cap next helps a slave escape from john morrow fans, Kirby is just as historically significant as Franklin in bounty hunters in a pre–Civil War South and witnesses the this chapter, as both men are geniuses whose ideas still destructive fury of the first atomic bomb test explosion shape our worlds—real or fantasy—today! in Alamogordo, New Mexico, which leads into him rescuing people Comedy and tongue-in-cheek creator cameos aside, Bicentennial from the great Chicago fire of 1871. From there, Cap ends up in the Battles takes a more serious turn with “Chapter Three – My Fellow ocean—not jumping a shark but fighting one—meeting an underwater Americans.” In this chapter, Captain America encounters a group of research scientist, and talking to Mister Buda once again!

Native-American warriors. Thinking Cap is their enemy since he wears the As we process these lightning-fast events, we should take the time to colors of the American troops pursuing them, the warriors try to capture acknowledge Kirby’s artistic collaborators for Bicentennial Battles, as the him. Cap, however, fights back and then puts his life in the hands of their King is inked by comic-book legends Barry Windsor-Smith, Herb Trimpe, leader, the legendary Geronimo, who spares Cap, telling him on page 28, and John Romita, and the book is colored by Phil Rachelson and lettered by John Constanza. Trimpe’s and Romita’s inking easily works toward a similar style in accentuating Kirby’s bombastic pencils. Windsor-Smith’s embellishments, conversely, on the first 11 pages of the comic, arguably lend a look to Kirby’s art that is somewhat reminiscent of the former’s work on his early Conan stories. Regarding this jam-style approach to the art, Evanier laments, “I wish [only] one person had inked it—and it could have been any one of the many, credited and uncredited, who did. It’s so brilliantly and single-mindedly of one mind in story and visual storytelling that it jars me to see the art change in cosmetic ways from page to page.”

After witnessing a future moon battle that may involve Americans at the beginning of “Chapter Five – The Face of the Future!,” Captain America finds himself in the middle of a Golden Age Hollywood set. While looking like just another costumed actor amidst the many other colorful figures there, Cap bumps into two movie moguls, J. B. Shmeltzer and his son-in-law, Melvin Grubber, whose comedic names easily reflect Kirby’s feelings toward Hollywood movers-and-shakers. These men quickly push Cap into the center of a grand finale production number for a Hollywood musical! Surrounded by a throng of dancing girls garbed in sailor–like skirts, Cap is understandably baffled by his predicament, which is perfectly rendered by Kirby in an energetic splash page. A similar scene would later occur on the actual silver screen in 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger, as an uncomfortable Cap serves as a touring patriotic figure surrounded by beautiful females as they entertain US troops. Although the film gradually depicts Cap evolving into the fearless WWII fighter he was predestined to become, one must credit Kirby for originally fashioning the scene of Captain America as a hapless entertainer on the comic page!

Frustrated by his Hollywood experience, Cap shouts out to his unseen guide on page 72, “It was you who spoke of America and the truth of it!

Hey, that newsboy looks familiar…!

That’s because it’s a Kirby cameo, with the King adding himself as a young man into Bicentennial Battles. Original art courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). © 2012 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Kirby’s Other Tabloid (right) Cover to Kirby’s Marvel Treasury Special, adapting the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, which spawned an ongoing series by the King—from which the character Machine Man was a spin-off. We purposely sidestepped that treasury in this issue since Kirby’s 2001 will be explored in a future edition of BACK ISSUE.

“A Dangerous Dude” Kirby’s cowboy Captain America was a teaser pinup closing out

2001 © 1976 MGM.

Bicentennial Battles.

I’ve still got to see it, Buda!” In response, Buda returns Cap to his mysterious domain, reminding him on page 74, “The child remembers what the man forgets!” He subsequently tells Captain America, “When you reach your next dilemma, sir, reach not for Mister Buda in your frustration, but speak to the child who grew up to become Captain America!” Echoing Romantic poet William Wordsworth’s astute words that “the Child is father of the Man,” Kirby, through the voice of Buda, thus reminds all readers, either young in years or at heart, that children are oftentimes the wisest people of all. The King then brings this message home to the reader when he finishes the story with a touching two-page spread in which Captain America finds himself surrounded by a group of children reflecting America’s beautiful multicultural heritage.

Some Kirby fans will probably cite the coming of Galactus or the King’s portrayal of the Celestials as some of his most powerful splash pages for Marvel. It is this simple image of Captain America surrounded by the youth of the future America, nevertheless, which delivers the profound truth that, as long as there exists a generation of children in America, this nation possesses the innate capacity to renew itself! Kirby’s message may have felt hokey for certain readers in 1976, but, as with many of the King’s efforts, the prism of time, mixed with the sweet vibes of nostalgia, had to slowly mix together to take their magical effect. On this note, Evanier reveals, “I find that unlike so many, perhaps most, comics of that period, this one gets better with repeated reads and stands the test of time. I wasn’t as wild about it when it first came out as I am now. There’s something quite timeless about it, in part because Jack’s writing style wasn’t tethered to any one period.”

Closing out Bicentennial Battles is a series of pinups on pages 80–82, upon which Morrow remarks, “I was really blown away by the pinup at the end of the ‘Western’ Captain America, and I still think someone ought to take that idea today and run with it. Typical Kirby: he produces one image, and it has the potential to easily spawn a lengthy ongoing series!” Morrow’s appraisal of Kirby’s brilliant power to create issues’ worth of potential stories is likewise echoed in the other two pinups: one depicting a colonial Captain America stalked by a bomb-wielding Red Skull “Hessianazi,” and the other showing Cap standing on a lunar landscape garbed in an astronaut-suit modification of his iconic red, white, and blue ensemble. Kirby, as he shares these playful and intriguing visions of potential Captain Americas, is also keen to invite a collaboration of sorts with his readers as he asks them at the bottom of the lunar-Cap pinup, “This is my effort—What’s your idea?”

With this generous challenge, Kirby reminds Captain America writers and fans that the process of writing and enjoying Cap’s adventures requires enthusiasm and creativity—an idea given continual form by the enduring legacy of the star-spangled legend in comic books and on the silver screen—and well into the future!

We’re thinking this version of the Star-Spangled Avenger would find a partner in an Old West Falcon—an ancestor of Wyatt Wingfoot, perhaps? © 2012 Marvel Characters, Inc.

TOM POWERS is a college composition instructor. He would like to thank Mark Evanier and John Morrow for graciously commenting upon Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles.

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by

Andy Mangels

You Wouldn’t Hit a Girl, Wouldja?

Detail from the Superman vs. Wonder Woman cover. As the signatures read, art by José Luis García-López and Dan Adkins.

TM & © DC Comics.

No young comic-book fan has ever failed to engage in flights of wild fancy about which superhero or superheroine is stronger or faster or just plain better. Marvel Comics storytellers traded on this trope almost monthly, with guest-star heroes battling the star heroes of whichever book they appeared in, before they both realized they had a common enemy. But at DC Comics, the tendency from the 1940s forward was that the heroes worked together for common goals; they would become the World’s Finest or the Brave and the Bold. By the 1970s, DC’s heroes were even branded in the public eye as the “Super Friends.”

Readers had to feel astonished, then, when DC announced for summer 1977 release an all-new book-length treasury All-New Collectors’ Edition called Superman vs. Wonder Woman. But how and why would the Man of Steel and the Amazing Amazon be at each other’s throats, and who could truly win this match?

The tabloid release was the second of DC’s books that pitted Superman against a popular hero, following Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man, also the first cross-company team-up between DC and Marvel. Released in 1976, the epic tale was scripted by Gerry Conway and illustrated by Ross Andru and others. [Editor’s note: See this issue’s article on this and the other DC/Marvel team-up tabloids.]

Conway had been one of Marvel’s star writers from 1970–1975—when he was age 18–25—before defecting to DC in 1975, and causing a tug-ofwar to ensue between the companies. “I was actually at Marvel in ’76 for about six months,” Conway says today. ”I originally left Marvel in 1975 after 50 • BACK ISSUE • Tabloids & Treasuries Issue

being passed over for the position of editor-in-chief. At the time I felt I’d been promised it by Stan Lee, when I’d filled in for Roy [Thomas] a few times when he was on vacation. Rightly or wrongly—probably wrongly — I felt betrayed by Stan, so I took my ball and bat and went home. Or, to be more precise, back to DC, where I’d worked at the beginning of my career.”

It was then that Conway wrote Superman vs. Spider-Man. “When I came to DC in 1975 Carmine Infantino considered me a ‘catch’ because I’d been writing Marvel’s top books, and Carmine was a very competitive man. The Superman vs. Spider-Man book was a highprofile project, and I was a natural fit for it, having scripted both Superman and Spider-Man in the past. And Carmine wanted to stick it to Stan. Like I say, he was a competitive guy.”

That book was quite a success, and Conway found himself courted by the company that he felt had spurned him. “In early 1976, I was offered the editor-in-chief role at Marvel, and because it was what I thought I wanted at that point in my life, I left DC and grabbed it. Turned out it wasn’t what I wanted after all. Along with the obvious fun of getting to participate in the management of Marvel Comics at a high level, I found myself at the center of an office-politics nightmare. I alienated people whom I considered to be friends, and was alienated by people I considered to be friends. After five or six weeks I couldn’t stand it anymore, and decided to return to DC. Stan asked me to remain at Marvel and offered me a contract, and we negotiated over it for a few months, but ultimately I felt I’d be happier at DC.”

A PLAN COMES TOGETHER

Chosen to illustrate the story was Spanish-born artist Back at DC in 1976, Conway conceived of an idea José Luis García-López, who actually began his comic art career at the age of 13, penciling comics for with fellow ex-Marvelite Roy Thomas to do another Argentinean publishers. At the age of 18, he got DC tabloid titled Superman vs. Shazam! through an agent his first American work for After all, Captain Marvel was the star of Charlton Comics, drawing several romance Filmation’s popular Saturday morning comics. In 1974, he moved to the United live-action series, and the two heroes States and began freelancing for DC did share a combative history in the real Comics and Western Publishing, as both a world, if not in the comic-book realm. penciler and an inker. He produced series But DC had another hero on TV—and such as Hercules Unbound and Jonah Hex, one who was a much bigger hit: Lynda as well as backups and inventory stories.

Carter was capturing ratings and racing García-López recalls today that he was pulses on the New Original Wonder fairly green when it came to major superWoman series on ABC. josé luis garciá-lopez heroes when he got the treasury job in the Plans were quickly put into place to spring of 1976: “I had less than a year make Superman vs. Wonder Woman a reality. Joe Orlando had recently been made managing in the States, working for DC. I think my first and only editor at DC, and he shepherded the project, choosing Superman story until then was with Bob Oskner. Joe Conway to script the 72-page story (the equivalent of Orlando brought me to Carmine Infantino’s office and they about five monthly comics). The decision had already been made to move the adventures of Wonder Woman to World War II to reflect the milieu of the TV series, necessitating the tales to be set on Earth-Two, where the iconic heroine had existed since World War II and been a member of the Justice Society.

The chronological change in the main Wonder Woman comic came with issue #228 (Feb. 1977), and Conway was pleased that this would give him a unique setting for his tabloid story as well. “Even before the TV series was set in WWII, I thought Wonder Woman— like Captain America—was a more successful character in that milieu. So I was glad for the opportunity (or excuse) to set stories in that time frame.” Still, as he crafted his tale, Conway didn’t concentrate overly much on the TV series tropes, leaving aside the famous “Wonder Spin” for the heroine’s costume change. Because nobody knew what the upcoming Superman film would be like—it was then filming with star Christopher Reeve—Conway wasn’t influenced by that media venture either. Finally, despite the fact that the story was set on Earth-Two, that fact is never mentioned in the book. “This was a new format book intended to reach a different audience than the comic-book fan,” Conway explains, “so if we thought about it at all, we probably felt that discussing the Earth-Two mythology would have unnecessarily confused a new reader.”

Tabloids & Treasuries Issue

She’s a Wonder (left) The popularity of TV Wonder Woman Lynda Carter (with Lyle Waggoner) paved the way for her tabloid tango with Superman. (top right) Borrowing a carhoisting cue from Action Comics #1, and (bottom right) a costume change.

TV image © 1975 Warner Bros. Television.

TM & © DC Comics.

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The Kid Gloves Are Off Writer Conway and artists García-López and Adkins embraced the treasury super-size for big, boisterous pages like these two.

TM & © DC Comics.

showed me the Superman vs. Spider-Man tabloid. They asked me if I could do something like it. I was in shock just looking at the book, and said, ‘No, can’t even approximate the quality of Andru’s art.’ But they flattered me a lot and convinced me. Joe Orlando always pushed projects to me that—at that time—I thought I was not prepared to assume. I’m forever in debt with his trust in my work.”

Not the fastest of artists, García-López was given a long deadline, and he recalls that the Superman vs. Spider-Man story influenced him, especially in the use of cinematic double-page spreads. “Of course, I had to be influenced

by Ross Andru! The double pages and big panels were a characteristic of Gerry’s story plots and perfect for big format books like this.” Andru was a more straightforward artist, whose work on the Superman figures was partially redrawn by Neal Adams at his Continuity Studios on that previous book. Having previously done conservative layouts, García-López says that “both styles serve the story, but while Ross Andru gets straight to the point, Neal Adams gets you distracted with his flashy style and sometimes with layouts that interfere with the storytelling.

Nevertheless, both are masters in what they do.”

The final piece of the artistic puzzle was Dan Adkins, who was brought in as the inker and finisher. Adkins had begun his comic-art career at Tower Comics in 1965, inking the legendary Wally Wood on T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1 (Nov. 1965). Adkins had been a draftsman in the Air Force, and got involved in the early days of fanzine publication, before blossoming into a long career in comics.

INSPIRED BY HISTORY Conway’s story was set on June 10–11, 1942, and mixed real-world characters and settings into the fantasy of Earth-Two. It was divided into six chapters, each presented as if they were a confidential government report that had been filed and hidden away for decades. In “Report One,” after the Battle of Midway, Superman shows up to fight off Japanese Zero fighter planes—piloted by 52 • BACK ISSUE • Tabloids & Treasuries Issue

robots—that are attacking a US aircraft carrier. He soon finds out that the Germans and Japanese are planning to disrupt something called “the Manhattan Project,” and he flies to Washington, D.C., to find out more.

“Report Two” is concurrent with Superman’s adventures, as Wonder Woman stops Nazi agents who are attempting to abduct a professor in Washington, D.C., and scientist Albert Einstein at New York’s Grand Central Station.

Hearing of the mysterious “Manhattan Project” in her secret identity of as Yeoman Diana Prince, she also vows to get to the middle of the mystery.

“Report Three” introduces the two supervillains of the story, a Nazi strongman called Baron Blitzkrieg (whose first appearance, also written by Conway, had been in a recent Wonder Woman story in the World’s Finest anthology issue #246, Sept. 1977), and a “Super Samurai” named Sumo. The pair are looking to capture two components of an atomic fission reactor. In “Report Four,” Diana Prince is horrified to learn the truth behind America’s development of plans for the atomic bomb, and consults her mother on Paradise Island. Meanwhile, in Metropolis, Clark Kent is getting a dressing down by Lois Lane and Perry White, until he hears that Wonder Woman is rampaging in Chicago!

Superman attempts to stop Wonder Woman in “Report Five,” as she attempts to destroy a nuclear reactor hidden on the University of Chicago campus. Superman proposes a “trial by combat” to decide their differences, and they fly to the moon’s Tycho Crater to combat each other, engaging in an epic battle! Meanwhile, at Los Alamos Research Compound in New Mexico—and at another site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee—Sumo and Baron Blitzkrieg seize the two atomic components and escape. The story wraps up in epic style in “Report Six,” as Superman and Wonder Woman disengage from their battle and return to Washington. There, they agree to recover the two missing components—which are now revealed as not the real atomic bomb, but a dangerous prototype. Wonder Woman

Historic Cameos (left) Real-world figures Henry Lewis Stimson, Albert Einstein, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt appeared in Superman vs.

Wonder Woman. (below) If you couldn’t find the comic on the stands, you could order it by mail via this DC Comics house ad.

TM & © DC Comics.

is duking it out with Sumo in Japan, and Superman is battling Blitzkrieg in New Orleans. The heroes prevail, but when they reunite on a remote island in the pacific, with the two villains and the two atomic prototypes.

Blitzkrieg manages to activate the prototypes, but Sumo attacks Blitzkrieg. The heroes attempt to save the two villains, but barely escape before the island blows up, becoming the “real” first atomic explosion in history. Later, Superman brings Wonder Woman to the White House, where President Roosevelt promises her that as long as he is president, the atomic bomb will never be used. But Wonder Woman fears that, some time in the future, the atomic bomb may one day become a reality.

A history buff, Conway’s used real historical figures—including Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Secretary of State Henry Lewis Stimson, Albert Einstein, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt—but he jokes that any anachronisms should be swept aside. “The broad strokes of the story are based on historical fact, but it wasn’t intended to be absolutely historically accurate,” he says. “For one thing, I’m pretty sure there were no superheroes at Midway! I wasn’t trying to write a history book—I was telling a story, and since the introduction of superheroes into anything throws ‘real history’ out the window, I felt perfectly free to fudge facts to make for a better story. Call it ‘inspired by history,’ not ‘based on history.’”

In those days in which the concept of an Internet was an even larger fiction, García-López relied on doing extensive visual research at “the New York Public Library and its fantastic Pictures Collection. Until the Google era, the library was the first and last recourse for any artist. I did the research in the library and took everything with me to Argentina [to visit family]. I spent three months there and mailed the first pages to Joe Orlando. He knew how to motivate an artist, and he understood that I was a little insecure about my own capabilities. I was not brought up with superheroes and had less than a year’s experience drawing them. I got a telegram and a phone call from him. It was great to know that he liked the job so far; in the following years I learned that he was not easy to please. Being an accomplished artist himself, he was very critical of every work that artists submitted.”

García-López penciled the first 20–25 pages very tightly, and incontinuity. “I didn’t jump around. I don’t like to work that way, unless it’s for a special reason. The first 20 or 25 pages were tight pencils, but there was a deadline, obviously, and I was getting behind, so I had to change to layouts. These were pretty tight anyway and the only thing I left for interpretation were the shadows or solid blacks.” Adkins finished the remaining pages over García-López’s layouts. “He did a wonderful job, adding [on top of his skills] his ample experience with superheroes,” José says. The artist also recalls that the first six pages were drawn at printed size, while later pages were done on much larger art pages.

The design of Baron Blitzkrieg, with his garish yellow-purple-orange armor, was likely the work of Don Heck, who had illustrated him for the World’s Finest story, but García-López recalls that he designed Sumo, who was alternately called “the Super Samurai” in the tale. He notes that DC didn’t instruct him to use the Lynda Carter show as any point of inspiration, however: “I didn’t see the show regularly and nobody at

DC told me to use it as reference. The only thing that was presented with was the Superman vs. Spider-Man tabloid as a point of departure.”

Although he appeared to die in the treasury, Conway brought back Sumo in Wonder Woman #241 (Mar. 1978) for a one-shot story in which he killed the character for a second time. Of the confusion over Sumo’s character name, Conway says, “Honestly, I don’t remember, but in any event it’s obviously sloppy thinking on my part, since the sumo and samurai traditions don’t have anything to do with each other.” He also notes that he doesn’t recall setting up any future stories with the alien ruins Wonder Woman and Superman discovered in their moon-crater battle. “It was a trope designed to motivate Superman’s conversion to Wonder Woman’s anti-nuclear point of view.”

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Uncle Sam Doesn’t Want You… …to fight like this! Detail from the back cover of Superman vs. Wonder Woman.

TM & © DC Comics.

A STORY TOLD Although first announced for release in the summer of 1977, Superman vs. Wonder Woman was finally released as All New Collectors’ Edition #C-54 on October 13th, 1977, the same day as the year’s Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer tabloid (ANCE #C-53).

García-López’s cover featured an element homaging the famous Uncle Sam illustration based on the classic World War I poster by James Montgomery Flagg. Mike Gold wrote a text piece for the inside back cover, profiling the book’s creators, and ads ran in the comics of the day. The treasury would be translated for several foreign-language editions.

After, both of the book’s creators found themselves in demand. Conway would continue writing Wonder Woman’s adventures for some time, as well as the aforementioned Superman vs. Shazam! (1978).

García-López would later draw Batman vs. the Incredible Hulk (Sept. 1981), another popular intercompany slugfest.

In the post–Crisis DC years, writer Roy Thomas took the story of the Superman/Wonder Woman fight and retold it, but since the characters had ceased to exist in the 1940s in the new continuity, he reimagined the story with new characters in The Young All-Stars #21–25.

Some pages feature settings and dialogue lifted directly from Conway’s tabloid.

Conway recalls the Superman vs. Wonder Woman story as a fun job: “Not having to work in contemporary continuity was incredibly liberating. I had a lot of fun working with one of my favorite artists—José Luis GarcíaLópez, who always made anything I wrote look a lot better than it was.” García-López famously illustrated DC’s longrunning style guides, but jokes, “For me, anything related to Superman has been a challenge until the present day!”

Still, he’s glad the tabloid is popular with fans. “I had no idea [then]. Nowadays, going to conventions, I realize how a lot of fans identify me by that Superman and others books I did with the same character. I suppose it was well received by the industry, because at the same time Marvel was also showing an interest in my work.”

Today, Conway notes that he is semi-retired, though he is “working on a novel, dipping my hand in now and then with a comic-book script here and there, and writing introductions to Marvel Masterworks collections of my comics from the early ’70s.”

García-López is still at DC, where he says he is mostly doing licensing work for Warner Bros., including recent art for Batman and Bane for the Dark Knight Rises movie, the Justice League, “and I’m now working on a style guide based on 1966’s Batman TV show. In comics, I did a short story for Bat Lash that’s not published yet, and a variant cover for Before Watchmen. My next thing will be another short story, this time featuring Madame .44.”

All interviews were conducted in Spring 2012. Artwork is courtesy of the collection of Andy Mangels.

ANDY MANGELS is the USA Today bestselling author and co-author of 20 books, including the recent TwoMorrows book Lou Scheimer: Creating the Filmation Generation, as well as Iron Man: Beneath the Armor, and a lot of comic books. Additionally, he has scripted, directed, and produced Special Features for over 40 DVD releases. His moustache is infamous. www.AndyMangels.com

54 • BACK ISSUE • Tabloids & Treasuries Issue

®

by

Jim Ford

Mr. and Mrs. Ranzz A double-page spread from All-New Collectors’ Edition #C-55 (1978), featuring the wedding of founding Legionnaires Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl.

Note the none-toosubtle cameos of Legion writer Paul Levitz and penciler Mike Grell in the lower left and right corners, respectively.

Words by Levitz, pencils by Grell, and inks by Vince Colletta.

TM & © DC Comics.

The Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes tabloid has everything!

It is a gigantic comic with an electrifying wraparound cover and interior artwork by fan-favorite Mike Grell! It has several pages highlighting “The Origins and Powers of the Legionnaires,” reminiscent of the best bonus features of the Silver Age! It has a poster-sized double-page pinup of all the Legionnaires, past and present! Paul Levitz wrote the story that finally revealed the secret of the Time Trapper at the End of Time, and best yet, he fulfilled a divination from the very beginnings of the Legion as Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad got married!

Officially entitled All-New Collectors’ Edition #C-55 and published in 1978, this was the first and only Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes tabloid to present original material. “You have to remember,” Levitz said in an interview with Glen Cadigan in The Legion Companion (2003, TwoMorrows Publishing), “once you get to ’76 or so, part of my job was at least to be in the room in all of those discussions, and over time it evolved into more and more of my responsibility, so whether it was the double-sized format or going monthly or getting a tabloid, the Legion had a pretty good advocate in the room. The book was doing fairly well at that time, so it wasn’t unreasonable to argue for it, but it also had somebody there really with definite interest in promoting it.”

THE WEDDING OF SATURN GIRL AND LIGHTNING LAD Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad, along with Cosmic Boy, were the only Legionnaires seen in many of the Legion of Super-Heroes’ earliest appearances beginning with Adventure Comics #247 (Apr. 1958).

They were later acknowledged as the team’s founders many years later in Superboy #147 (May–June 1968). Although Lightning Man was shown to be married to Saturn Woman in early Legion stories where they appeared with Superman as adults, the relationship between their teenaged counterparts was nothing more than that of devoted comrades. Saturn Girl, as team leader, learned that one Legionnaire was destined to die in Adventure Comics #304 (Jan. 1963).

Despite her every effort to ensure that she was that Legionnaire, Lightning Lad was killed. It was from a deep sense of guilt at her failure, and not any evident emotional attachment to Lightning Lad, that she again plotted to sacrifice herself so that Lightning Lad might be revived from a death-like coma in Adventure Comics #312 (Sept. 1963). Proty, Chameleon Boy’s telepathic and shapechanging pet, died in her place.

Nothing more was intimated about their deepening relationship until, in Adventure #337 (Oct. 1965), Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad were married. Although the ceremony was actually a hoax perpetrated to draw enemy spies out into the open, the event nonetheless Tabloids & Treasuries Issue

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Legion Under Fire Mike Grell’s breathtakingly beautiful wraparound cover for All-New Collectors’ Edition #C-55. Note the placement of Superboy and the three founding Legionnaires on the front cover, with the other LSHers on the back.

TM & © DC Comics.

crystallized their romance in the minds of readers and editors alike. THE FUTURE ISN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE By the time writer Jim Shooter crafted an Adult Legion story in Taking place immediately following the regular monthly comic series Adventure #354–355 (Mar.–Apr. 1967), which would foretell Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes (SLSH) #236 (Feb. 1978), “The upcoming events in the Legion’s future that subsequent writers Millennium Massacre” opens as Superboy speeds one thousand years might feel obligated to follow, their marriage was ordained by a into the future to attend the long-anticipated wedding of Saturn Girl higher power. “Then I got a call, not from Mort [Weisinger], but to Lightning Lad. He finds 30th-century Metropolis is nothing like he from E. Nelson Bridwell, and I’m not sure to this day that it was a remembers. The city he knew had been at the center of the peaceful call that was authorized by Mort,” Jim Shooter said in an interview United Planets. Now, Metropolis is a fortified military garrison with Hassan Yusuf, in the fanzine Interluk ’93: The Seven constantly under bombardment from enemy starships.

Year Itch (1993). Bridwell was an editorial assistant to The Legionnaires gather in front of the Legion Adventure Comics editor Weisinger at the time. “I think Headquarters for the second Legion wedding. The small that when Nelson heard I was doing this story, his ceremony is attended by a handful of special guests, heart leapt into his throat, and he wanted to make including the Legion’s benefactor R. J. Brande, Duplicate sure that certain things came about ‘right,’ the way Boy, the Legion of Substitute Heroes, and comic creators he wanted them to,” Shooter said. “So I think he Paul Levitz and Mike Grell. The celebration is short lived. As took it upon himself to make the call, ostensibly at the newlywed couple departs, their small cruiser is captured Mort’s behest, and said, ‘Now, look; Saturn Girl by attacking Lunite Raiders from Earth’s own Moon. marries Lightning Lad’ … like all the obvious ones, The Legion splits into two factions, following either he dictated to me.”

Wildfire on a rescue mission to the Moon or Superboy paul levitz Paul Levitz was a long-time reader of the Legion into the past to find the source of the altered timeline. who found Shooter’s stories deeply inspirational.

Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl escape their captors only “Memory: a child of ten, sitting on the stoop a summer’s day in to find themselves stranded on the Moon. Wildfire’s team locates 1966, reading a subscription copy of Adventure Comics #346 [July them at the last instant before the life-support system in their small, 1966], enthralled,” Levitz wrote in his autobiographical sketch in commandeered craft fails. Elsewhere in the past, Superboy and his the back pages of the tabloid, referencing Shooter’s first published team track a mysterious man whose actions are key to instigating the story. Levitz continued, writing of his childhood self in the third disastrous events that will lead to nuclear warfare and a militaristic person, “…a child of ten, on that same stoop a few months later, future. Observing helplessly from outside the time stream, Superboy as he learned that the story that had so deeply affected him was watches his team defeated by the mysterious Time Trapper. written by [Jim Shooter, who was] only three scant years older.

And deciding that maybe he could do that … someday.” It is not OUT OF TIME at all surprising that when given the opportunity to write the An impenetrable “Iron Curtain of Time” erected by the enigmatic Time adventures of these heroes he would draw again and again from Trapper always prevented the Legion from travelling into their own future, the events foretold in Shooter’s Adult Legion story. “Once we until recently. Rond Vidar, an honorary Legionnaire whose knowledge of decided to do a Legion tabloid, to try and do something that time travel rivals that of Brainiac 5, uses the hypertime travel device he had would make it an event, that was the most logical first major event recently tested in SLSH #233 (Nov. 1977) to send the Legionnaires to the in the Legion, [to] come back to fulfilling the beginnings of where very End of Time. They find themselves outside the fortress of the Time the book came from,” Levitz said of the wedding of Saturn Girl to Trapper on the burnt-out husk of Earth. Having had millennia to prepare Lightning Lad in The Legion Companion. Levitz tells BACK ISSUE that for their arrival, the Time Trapper effortlessly entraps the Legion.

The Time Trapper first appeared as a shadowy, cloaked villain in he “probably decided on the story after the opportunity came up Adventure Comics #317 (Feb. 1964), who committed crimes in the … seemed ‘large’ enough to justify the event,” and that he was, Legion’s own time but always retreated into the future beyond their “probably influenced by Stan [Lee] and Jack [Kirby]’s wonderful FF reach.

He plotted to destroy the Legion from behind his “Iron Annual wedding of Sue and Reed,” which took place in Fantastic Curtain,” and had once tried to steal an early precursor to the Four Annual #3 (1965).

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reality-altering Miracle Machine called the Concentrator. THAT [EXPLICATIVE DELETED] TABLOID At first an intriguing and formidable foe, he slipped into Fans of the Legion of Super-Heroes have always felt obscurity and neglect following a feckless story in unprecedented ownership in “their” Legion. Early on, Adventure #338 (Nov. 1965), in which he was foiled by Adventure Comics editor Mort Weisinger gave readers the sinister Super-Babies. a letters column forum in “Bits of Legionnaire At the End of Time, the Time Trapper reveals to Business” to suggest new members to the team; the powerless Legionnaires that he is an exile from some actually saw print as the Legion of Substitute the ancient race of Controllers. Through the mechanism Heroes, the Heroes of Lallor, and other characters. of his time alteration, he has stolen the Miracle When the Legion lost its regular home as the backup Machine from its vault in Legion Headquarters and feature in Action Comics and languished for years schemes to use its power to rule all existence, beginning with only sporadic appearances in Superboy, Legion with the destruction of the Legion. He does not count fans banded together in a letter-writing campaign on the raw force of the Legionnaires’ combined to DC editors demanding that the series be restored willpower turning the Miracle Machine’s energies to its rightful prominence. They succeeded, against him, and as he disappears, his altered and the Legion soon enough took over timeline corrects itself to the future Superboy. So it was that a well-organized Superboy remembers. and vocal fan base existed, principally Levitz tells BACK ISSUE that his idea within the pages of the Amateur Press to make the Time Trapper a renegade Alliance (APA) fanzine Interlac, to make Controller was “possibly the influence of their opinions known when the Superboy ‘The Death of Ferro Lad’—one of my and the Legion of Super-Heroes tabloid favorites of Jim [Shooter]’s stories.” “The was published.

Death of Ferro Lad” was a cycle of According to Bob Soron’s article in stories from Adventure Comics #352–357 Comics Feature #15 (Jan. 1981, New (Jan.–June 1967) that included the Media Publishing, Inc.), Legion fans refer mike grell aforementioned Adult Legion stories. to All-New Collectors’ Edition #C-55 as The Controllers are a race of highly “that [explicative deleted] Tabloid.” advanced beings from another dimension whose origins Some fans negatively compared Grell’s staging of were detailed in Adventure Comics #357. One Controller the second Legion wedding to that of the first had not been content with returning peacefully to his wedding between Duo Damsel and Bouncing Boy in own dimension. With his weapon, the awesomely Superboy #200 (Jan.–Feb. 1974, above). Lacking powerful Sun-Eater, he would have dominated the subtlety, Grell depicted both himself and Levitz at Legion’s dimension had it not been for the sacrifice of the ceremony obtrusively staring out at the reader Ferro Lad in destroying the Sun-Eater. The Controllers in the foreground. Other fans complained the gave the Miracle Machine to the Legion as a gift for artwork appeared rushed, perhaps understandably. their heroism in Adventure Comics #367 (Apr. 1968).

Grell had already passed on his obligation to work

Tabloids & Treasuries Issue

TM & © DC Comics.

Topsy-Turvy Time (left) Superboy discovers an altered future during his visit to the Legion. (right) Of course, the culprit is the Time Trapper, who writer Paul Levitz transformed into a formidable menace.

TM & © DC Comics.

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The Wrath of Khan Retired Legionnaires Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl attempt to reason with Oselden Khan on this double-page spread opener for Chapter Two. Original Grell/Colletta art courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com).

TM & © DC Comics.

on SLSH in late 1976, as the demands of writing, penciling, and inking his own comic-book creation Warlord had increased with its forthcoming promotion to monthly publication. Despite his heavy workload, Grell was assigned the tabloid by his mentor and editor Joe Orlando, attesting to his popularity among the fans. To his professional credit, Grell turned in a 64-page story featuring some 25 costumed characters, and provided an astonishingly dynamic cover that was among the finest example of his artistry outside the Warlord.

Fans also complained that Tyroc, the only black member of the team, was given short shrift by Levitz. “I always thought he was just such a stupid character,” Levitz said in the Legion Companion interview. “The idea of using a sound-based character is, I think, intrinsically futile in a silent medium. He just never worked for me, so I did my best to dodge him over the years.” Levitz elaborates to BACK ISSUE, “I despised the original construction of Tyroc, feeling it was basically a ‘blaxploitation’ character, and did my best not to use him. When I finally worked with the character, in the most recent run, I hope we successfully eliminated those elements.

“And,” Levitz continues, “I think part of the fan issue with the tabloid was the difficulty in getting hold of it, which shouldn’t be confused with dislike of the material. It remains a very scarce back issue by comparison to most of the work of that period.”

58 • BACK ISSUE • Tabloids & Treasuries Issue

LONG LIVE THE LEGION! Much of what is known about the Legionnaires, such as their real names and planets of origin, was presented in bonus text features that were common to the Silver Age. The first of these “The Origin and Powers of the Legion” features dates back to the very earliest days of the Legion and appeared in Superman Annual #4 (1961) when the team had only 14 members. At first a basic identification key to the multitude of costumed characters, the features expanded to provide additional details sometimes only hinted at in the stories.

Levitz and regular SLSH artist James Sherman contributed an eight-page feature in the back pages of the tabloid describing the membership of the Legion, their Honored Dead, honorary members, and the Substitute Heroes. Levitz also described the Legion’s technology, much of which he had recently introduced in his own stories.

The final panel of the feature shows an anachronistic tome and piles of old comic books. With it Levitz invites new readers to explore the rich history of the Legion, and with it he implies that stories about the Legion of Super-Heroes will continue to fascinate readers into the far future.

Special thanks to Glen Cadigan, Bob Soron, and Hassan Yusuf, and very special thanks to Paul Levitz.

JIM FORD is a database administrator for a national health insurer. He was a member of Interlac and APA-LSH. His favorite Legion memory is of sleeping on Ken and Mercy’s floor where so many of the Greats had slept before.

®

by

®

Brett Weiss

“Floats Like a Butterfly” Meets “Bends Steel in His Bare Hands” The iconic handshake that wrapped up one of comics’ greatest epics, Superman vs.

Muhammad Ali (published in 1978 as All-New Collectors’ Edition #C-56). Art

by Neal Adams and Dick Giordano.

Superman TM & © DC Comics.

Muhammad Ali © 2012 Muhammad Ali Enterprises LLC.

The tabloid-sized Superman vs. Muhammad Ali is much more than a big, bold, brash, beautifully illustrated comic book. At least it is to me.

Before I break down the storyline and pepper you with fresh quotes from the great Neal Adams, who penciled and co-plotted this bulky bad boy, let’s hop aboard the Tardis and travel back in time to 1978, to a small suburb of Fort Worth, Texas, where Superman vs. Muhammad Ali graced me—free of charge—with its four-color goodness.

As a kid I loved comic books more than just about anything in the whole wide world. During the long, hot Texas summers, when I wasn’t riding my bicycle, building models, digging in the dirt, or playing basketball, I was usually planted on my bed, the couch, the front porch, or anywhere else I could find some solitude, thrilling to the exploits of such stalwart arbiters of justice as Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, the Flash, and Green Lantern.

Money was pretty tight in those days—my buck-a-week allowance was enough to purchase three new issues, give or take a few cents.

To supplement my collection, I would trade with my best friend, who lived next door. Better yet, my mom would take me to a couple of used bookstores in the area, where comics were typically half of cover price. Still better was the local thrift store that sometimes had comics for just ten cents each—score!

When Superman vs. Muhammad Ali hit the stands, I was mesmerized by its now-classic cover, its massive size (I was unfamiliar at the time with any previous tabloid releases), and its pitting of two of the world’s most well-known figures against one another. I wasn’t much of a boxing

fan, but everyone knew Muhammad Ali was a great fighter, and I was intrigued by the premise.

However, as with the AMT KISS van model kit that came out the previous year, Superman vs. Muhammad Ali was something I desperately wanted, but couldn’t afford. The $2.50 cover price was a dealbreaker as I just couldn’t bear spending two-and-a-half weeks’ worth of allowance on a single comic book, regardless of its size or its overall awesomeness.

Enter my older cousin Randy, who, at the age of 16, owned thousands of comic books, mostly Marvels, DCs, and Warren magazines (his mom paid for subscriptions to several titles per month). When my family would visit his family, the big kids would run off to who knew where, and the adults would sit in the kitchen talking, leaving me with hours and hours of reading time in what I considered to be the greatest library in the history of humankind. I was like Henry Bemis in the classic Twilight Zone episode “Time Enough At Last” (1959), but without the tragic ending.

One day during the summer of ’78, while Randy’s family was visiting my house, he walked in the front door, Superman vs. Muhammad Ali in hand. After the obligatory hugs and “hellos” and such, Randy asked me if I wanted to borrow the sacred tome. My eyes must have bugged out of my head because Randy, the kind soul that he was (and still is), asked if I’d like to keep it. Needless to say, I took him up on his offer, plopped down on the nearest chair, and devoured the issue like a man in the desert chugging a cold glass of Gatorade. Brain freeze had never felt so good.

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THE PLOT

The Man of Bruises (left) A bloodied Superman, after his bout with Ali. (right) Our hero shows a tidal wave who’s boss.

TM & © DC Comics.

(“float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,” the real-life Ali After a brief introduction of the two far-famed contestants, famously said, describing his fighting style), pummeling Superman vs. Ali begins in Metropolis, with Clark Kent, Superman to a bloody pulp.

As an impressionable 11-year-old, the image of Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen searching for boxing great Muhammad Ali in order to do an exclusive interview. Superman lying unconscious on a stretcher, his face They find the Louisville Lip shooting hoops with some bruised and swollen, shook me up considerably (I was neighborhood kids, but before the interview can get equally stunned—but in a good way in this case—by an underway, the fabulous foursome is interrupted by the earlier scene in which Superman stopped a tidal wave by crashing his fists together). sudden appearance of Rat’Lar, the green-skinned Crowned Earth’s champion, Ali must now leader of a savage alien species called the Scrubb. face Hun’Ya, a big, bald, blue, musclebound Backed by an armada of 100 powerful bruiser. Paying homage to Ali’s cocky warships orbiting the planet, Rat’Lar reputation for predicting the round in demands that Earth’s greatest champion which the fight will end, Rat’Lar asks the battle the mightiest Scrubb warrior. Ali and famous fighter to do just that. For those Superman each argue that they should who haven’t read the issue, I won’t reveal be chosen as champ, with Rat’Lar insisting the final round or the victor, but it’s a that the dueling duo fight one another to close, dramatic fight, with Ali and Hun’Ya determine Earth’s true champion. To make each getting in his share of punches. things fair for Earthling Ali, the match takes During the epic bout, Superman, place on Rat’Lar’s home planet, Bodace, muhammad ali having quickly recovered from the beating which has a red sun. As Superman fans dished out by Ali, disguises himself as well know, the Man of Steel requires the Bundini Brown, Ali’s corner man, and energy of a yellow sun to have superpowers.

Ali trains Superman on the finer points of the “sweet steals the Scrubb command ship, sabotaging the alien science” at the Kryptonian Crusader’s vaunted Fortress armada in the process. The space battle takes its toll, of Solitude, but when the actual match begins, it quickly however, and Superman is once again down for the count.

Naturally, the heroes—along with a surprise helpbecomes clear that Ali is the vastly superior pugilist.

With Jimmy Olsen acting as broadcaster, and with mate—eventually save the day, with Ali proclaiming at citizens of thousands of intergalactic worlds looking on, the end of the issue (via a striking two-page spread): Ali dances around the ring, connecting blow after blow “Superman, WE are the Greatest!”

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ADAMS HAS THINGS COVERED

it,” Adams says, laughing. “If you’re gonna have this Drawn by Neal Adams, the cover to Superman vs. fight between Superman and Muhammad Ali, aren’t Muhammad Ali is one of the most iconic in the history celebrities going to come, just like in a regular of the industry. As the People’s Champion and the fight? Dumbest idea I ever had. [laughs] It was a whole lot of extra work.”

Man of Steel duke it out in the ring, no less than 172 According to Adams, it wasn’t a legal celebrities, politicians, comic-book creators, requirement to get a celebrity’s blessing superheroes, and other luminaries look on, to put his or her likeness on the cover, including such diverse figures as Andy but DC, much to his chagrin, did it Warhol, Gerald Ford, Bernie Wrightson, anyway. “You didn’t really need to and Donna “Wonder Girl” Troy. get celebrities’ permission, but DC The inside front cover features a was becoming a little bit corporate number code identifying each member of by that time, so that’s the route they the audience. As a kid I had a great time took,” Adams says. “The problem going through the list of names and finding with asking people is that some of the corresponding images on the wrapthem will turn you down.” around cover. I was especially delighted to neal adams Celebrities who said “no” to discover a number of TV and movie stars being featured on the cover created in the mix, including Lucille Ball, Raquel Welch, and Ron “Horshack” Pallilo. Adams’ detailed more work for Adams. “Out of a given number illustrations are uncannily lifelike, meaning most of the of celebrities, certain people turned us down, so DC comes back to me and says, ‘Can you patch over more famous people are instantly identifiable.

The legendary Joe Kubert was originally slated to this,’ and I said, “Come on, I got a hundred people draw Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, but things didn’t here, and now I’ve got to start making patches?” quite pan out.

“Joe did a wraparound cover, and it was submitted to the Muhammad Ali people,” Adams revealed to me in a recent phone interview. “Apparently Joe’s rough style didn’t translate into likenesses that the honorable Elijah Muhammad [Ali’s manager] was happy with. I’m quite sure that DC was happy with what Joe was doing, and I’m sure he would have done a fine job, but everything had to be run past Elijah, and he didn’t like what he saw.”

Best known for his work on Hawkman and Sgt. Rock, Kubert wasn’t accustomed to drawing Superman, and his sketchy style wasn’t the ideal fit for drawing recognizable faces. “Maybe Kubert wasn’t the best direction to go,” Adams says. “For likenesses, you need someone who draws a little bit more realistically, so I was then approached. I agreed to do it, but I didn’t want any contributions that Joe had made to be wasted, so I took his layout and traced it for the double-spread cover.

So that cover is really Kubert’s layout.”

While it may have been Kubert’s layout, Adams had the idea to put famous folks in the audience. “I suggested

© ESPN.

Where’s Waldo? (above) The Joe Kubert original, where it all began. (left) Working from Kubert’s layouts, Neal Adams’ remarkable wraparound cover for Superman vs.

Muhammad Ali, featuring a host of real-world luminaries from politics, Hollywood, sports, pop culture, and comics, as well as DC Comics characters in their alter egos.

Superman TM & © DC Comics. Muhammad Ali © 2012 Muhammad Ali Enterprises LLC.

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anyone either. He was just grumpy. He must have read something about editors in a book somewhere that said that that was how editors were supposed to be. [laughs] He was kind of like Perry White. [more laughter]” Adopting a more serious tone, Adams continues, “Superman vs. Muhammad Ali was Julie’s pet project, but he couldn’t act warm and caring about it, because Julie was Julie. But you could tell that it warmed the cockles of his heart, and he didn’t mind giving me the extra work of putting people [celebrities] in and taking people out.

He couldn’t find more money for me to do it, but he didn’t come begging for me to do it either. He was a pain in the ass from beginning to end, but without that attitude, we couldn’t have gotten a project like this done.”

SIZE TRULY DOES MATTER According to an interview published in The Amazing World of DC Comics #10 (1976), Sol Harrison, DC’s vice president of operations at the time, played a key role in launching the oversized format used for such special projects as Superman vs. Muhammad Ali. “We were looking for a new format, because our magazines weren’t getting proper placement among the 120 magazines on the newsstand at the time,” Harrison said. “Returning from a trip to the World Color Press plant at Sparta, Illinois, I began to play around with different sizes for comics. None of the sizes seemed to work, since they couldn’t be put on a newspaper high-speed color press. But by opening the comic up, with one less fold, we could create a tabloid size comic that would stand out on the newsstand.”

For Adams, the new format didn’t pose any special problems in terms of illustrating the story. “I didn’t have a problem with it because the original art was practically the same size,” he says. “My stuff I tend to draw detailed, so you’re going to get a pretty good product no matter what.”

IT’S IN THE DETAILS

Ali in the Arctic Superman invites Muhammad Ali to his sanctuary, the Fortress of Solitude, on the lusciously rendered page 16.

Courtesy of its background inker, Terry Austin.

Superman TM & © DC Comics. Muhammad Ali © 2012 Muhammad Ali Enterprises LLC.

To disguise a certain cowboy actor known as the Duke, Adams employed a creative, yet quick and easy fix. “I started putting mustaches on people,” Adams says. “So John Wayne is in the audience [to the left of Johnny Carson, above and to the right of Lex Luthor’s bald head], only he’s not identified as such because he has a mustache.”

In the year 2000, ESPN Magazine contacted Adams about producing a similar cover for a special “100 Greatest Athletes of the Century” issue. Their art director called him and said, “I don’t want to take a hundred photographs of these various people and put them on the cover. Do you think you could do that cover over again and put those people in the audience?”

Adams quickly agreed and was very happy with the results.

“Ali and [Michael] Jordan were number one and number two,” Adams said. “So in place of Superman, we have Jordan fighting Ali, with the other 98 greatest athletes of the century looking on. Unfortunately, a lot of fans didn’t get to see the cover because all three million issues went to subscribers. I got a lot of money to do that, and the cover actually turned out better than the cover on the comic book, as unbelievable as that sounds. [laughs]”

JULIUS SCHWARTZ—LARGE AND IN CHARGE The late, great Julius Schwartz edited Superman vs.

Muhammad Ali, which suited Adams just fine, even though Schwartz was a known taskmaster. When I asked Adams about Schwartz’s reputation as a tough, but fair editor, Adams says, “Julie was my favorite editor. He didn’t put up with any crap from anybody, but he didn’t hurt 62 • BACK ISSUE • Tabloids & Treasuries Issue

Adams is clearly the star of the Superman vs. Muhammad Ali show, adapting and expanding upon the story and penciling the entire issue. However, he gives ample credit to his collaborators, particularly inker Terry Austin, who was a fan favorite during the late 1970s and early ’80s for his work embellishing John Byrne’s pencils on The Uncanny X-Men. Austin, along with the late, great Dick Giordano, inked the star-spanning tale.

“Terry Austin had become Dick Giordano’s assistant at that time, and he was a geek-out,” Adams says.

“Every time I would indicate something, he would put even more in. You know that double-page spread that looks like Queens or the Bronx, where the characters are walking down the street and you see all that stuff?

Nobody else would have done all that. I indicated it, but I’m doing it thinking that somebody—one of Dick’s assistants—is going to screw it up. They’re just going to quickly ink it, and that’ll be the end of it. But suddenly there was Terry Austin, and he just went crazy.”

The city scene Adams referred to is spread over pages two and three, and it is indeed a wonder to behold. The setting is a summer day in Metropolis. The sidewalks and store fronts bustle with activity, from a kid bouncing a basketball to a clerk manning a fruit stand to Lois, Clark, and Jimmy looking for Ali. Birds, signage, garbage cans, windows, antennae, traffic lights—it’s all there, clearly indicating that Austin went above and beyond the call of duty.

“And it wasn’t just that,” Adams continues, praising Austin’s work on the rest of the issue. “There’re multiple spaceships and all kinds of stuff that he put in. That’s standard practice for today, to put all that stuff in, but that’s if somebody’s making a lot of money. In those days, the inking went for probably $25 or $30 per page, and the background guy probably got $10 a page if he was lucky. Now, try to imagine putting all that background stuff in for $10 per page. He was totally insane.

That’s not even minimum wage.”

THE PLOT THICKENS

SUPER SOCIAL RELEVANCE

As mentioned earlier, Adams is credited with adapting Denny While it was Julie’s idea to pit the Last Son of Krypton against the O’Neil’s original story. Adams explains, “Julie came up with the original Louisville Lip, Adams takes personal pride in having worked on the conflict. Denny and I both did outlines—we went off and plotted. project, especially considering how few African Americans were Mine was a little bit more direct. Denny’s kind of meandered around portrayed in comics as positive role models in those days. a bit. Julie liked my outline better and pushed it on to Denny, which Seven years prior to the release of Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, wasn’t a great situation because he did it right in front of me. Adams and O’Neil brought more color to the world of four-color [laughs] I didn’t like that.” graphic fiction with the introduction of John Stewart in Green Lantern According to Adams, O’Neil tried to make the best of things. #87 (Dec. 1971–Jan. 1972). “There are a lot of people who consider “Denny agreed to the job and started working with the combination the creation of John Stewart to be one of the breakthrough moments outline, but he kind of got lost in the story. He was going through a in the culture of America,” Adams said. “I have black guys coming up difficult time with all the work he had—his tremendous workload. to me all the time at conventions—even now—with tears in their eyes, It was not a good time for Denny. He started the story, but it went because of John Stewart.” south. Julie and I had a meeting, and by the end of the meeting it was Adams is only a casual sports fan (“If the World Series is on, I might determined that I was going to finish the script. It was the one time watch three games,” he says, “and I paid attention when Mike Tyson Julie became a little bit heartless during the project; at a certain was knocking everyone out”), but he’s admired Muhammad Ali point he took the whole catfish boat and threw it in my face for years. “If you look at the first comic Dennis O’Neil and I and said to just do it.” did with a black Green Lantern—that guy, John Stewart— Adams didn’t particularly care for the way the whole was another Ali, he just happened to be an architect thing went down (he described the script changing instead of a boxer, and he became a Green Lantern.” hands as “rough” on both he and Denny), but he was TURBULENT TIMES certainly up to the task at hand. “It was the proper Muhammad Ali, the only heavyweight champion to solution,” he says. “Julie was running into problems. hold the lineal championship three times, is one of The story was running into problems. Denny needed a the two or three most famous athletes in the history break, and he got the break. I finished the story, and it of professional sports, while Superman, the first-ever was no burden.” superhero, is one of the most recognizable fictional Adams elaborates, “It was easy for me. Denny denny o’neil characters on the planet. had written a bunch of stuff along the way, and I just Sales of Superman comics have fluctuated over the took every bit of his stuff and molded the dialogue years, but he’s always been considered a good role model and a from his to mine. You don’t see a break in the continuity. You can’t popular figure.

Since shortly after the publication of his first appearance tell what Denny wrote and what I wrote. At the end of the day you’d in Action Comics #1 (1938), Superman has remained in the public eye have to call the writing of the script a collaboration between three as one of the country’s brightest, most beloved pop-culture icons, people: myself, Denny, and Julie.” helping the helpless, protecting the oppressed, and fighting the good As most anyone who has read Superman vs. Muhammad Ali will fight for “truth, justice, and the American way.” attest, the final product was a success, despite some difficulties Muhammad Ali, on the other hand, while he’s a beloved hero and along the way. “Superman vs. Muhammad Ali was a big load,” an American institution nowadays, was a controversial figure during Adams says. “It seems like a nice, simple book, but it was a big his time in the ring, dividing the general public along racial, cultural, load, and it’s better for something like that to be in the hands of political, and religious lines. one person. It turned out to be easier for me to simply finish it up Born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. on January 17, 1942, Ali changed by myself. I don’t see me solving the problem so much as relieving his name in 1964 after joining the Nation of Islam, a black Islamic sect Denny of the burden. He was just so busy with other writing projects. founded

by Wallace D. Fard in Detroit in 1930. In 1934, Elijah I don’t normally collaborate with people in terms of script-writing.

Muhammad assumed leadership of the group, which espoused I either do the story, or someone else does the story. If someone economic, political, and social independence for black Americans. else does the story, I leave it alone, and I don’t have an opinion.

Such controversial figures as Malcolm X (circa 1960s) and Louis Other people are comfortable working together on a script, but Farrakhan (who leads the Nation of Islam today) followed.

I’m really not.”

Street Life Terrific Terry Austin, as background inker for Dick Giordano, ensured that no stroke of Neal Adams’ graphite glory went unrealized.

TM & © DC Comics.

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The Trunks and the Tights (top) Our pugilistic paragons, from Superman vs. Muhammad Ali. (bottom) Cinematic staging highlights this original art page, signed by Adams and courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com).

TM & © DC Comics.

In addition to his unorthodox (relative to the average American citizen) religious beliefs, Ali staunchly opposed the Vietnam War and refused to take part in the conflict. In fact, his religious faith kept him out of the military altogether. He was eventually arrested and found guilty of draft evasion (though he didn’t spend any time in prison), losing his boxing title and license in the process. His appeal, which made it to the US Supreme Court, was successful, but he didn’t fight for nearly four years during the process.

Ali’s vocal opposition to the Vietnam War escalated in 1967, when he said, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong… No Viet Cong ever called me nigger.”

“Ali’s stance against the Vietnam War was a big deal and had a lot to do with the public’s negative attitude toward him,” Adams says. “He was willing to give up his title to not fight in a war that he didn’t believe in. His braggadocios nature and Islamic faith were also sore points with some people. In America he was considered an anti-hero. As a result, Superman vs. Muhammad Ali sold better overseas that in did in the States.”

ORIGINAL OR REPRINT? At this writing, Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, which was published under the All-New Collectors’ Edition imprint as #C-56, goes for $30–$50 or so in near mint condition.

Good reading copies can be found online or at any number of comic-book conventions around the country for $5–$10 each.

In 2010, DC re-released Superman vs. Muhammad Ali as a hardcover graphic novel. This new edition includes a brief forward from Adams, an afterward by Jenette Kahn (DC’s publisher when the comic book was released), 11 pages of pencil sketches by Adams, and a reproduction of the wraparound cover with corresponding key code. The Deluxe version ($19.99 suggested retail) is the standard size of a graphic novel while the Facsimile edition ($39.99) is larger to more faithfully evoke the original tabloid-sized issue.

“We recolored the story for the reprinting, but we followed the color scheme that we originally did,” Adams says. “We just souped it up and rounded it and made it better. Everybody loves it.” And, of course, instead of newsprint, the story has been reprinted on sturdy white paper stock.

From Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1943) to King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) to Avengers vs. X-Men (2012), pop culture is riddled with titanic tussles between famous formidable foes. Superman vs.

Muhammad Ali, with its larger-than-life characters, larger-than-comics format, and lavishly detailed art, is one of the more memorable entries in this always dynamic subgenre.

BRETT WEISS is the author of the Classic Home Video Games book series (McFarland Publishers) and of Filtered Future, The Land of Oz and Other Dark Tales of Science Fiction and Horror (2012, Amazon Kindle). For more info, check out brettweisswords.blogspot.com.

64 • BACK ISSUE • Tabloids & Treasuries Issue

by

P. C . H a m e r l i n c k

“The Battle Nearly Four Decades in the Making!” declared a 1978 DC Comics advertisement for the tabloid-sized, maladroitly titled comic-book epic, “Superman vs.

Shazam!”—more formally known as All-New Collectors’ Edition #C-58—which marked the first genuine full-length fracas between Superman and Captain Marvel that restless readers had patiently anticipated since DC acquired the publishing rights to Captain Marvel, due to the heroes’ harried history together.

The conflict first began during ostensibly simpler times when the two found themselves at odds in a courtroom— where one hero’s probably only true crime was outselling the other one. After the lengthy litigation concluded, roundabout rematches would tease readers over the ensuing years, with “Superduperman” and “Captain Marbles” trading jabs in MAD #4 … a decked, dazed and confused Marvel’s succinct and subtle slot in Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane #42 … a faux Big Red Cheese’s scuffle with the Big Red “S” in Justice League of America #103 … a thunderous CM-doppelganger meeting the Man of Steel in Superman #276 … an Earth-One/Earth-S showdown in Justice League of America #137 … Superman scoundrel Lex Luthor involuntarily transporting himself to Captain Marvel’s universe in Shazam! #15 … and the World’s Mightiest Mortal’s mêlée with a Sivana-designed Superman robot in Shazam! #30. But by 1978, writer Gerry Conway, artist Rich Buckler, and inker Dick Giordano finally made the two superheroes’ worlds collide in a big way over the course of 72 over-sized, potent pages.

After being treated to a comparison chart of our two heroes, we’re introduced to an eyeball earring-wearing Martian named Karmang the Evil. Formerly an ancient scientist known as Karmang the Good, he devises a way to resurrect his dead race by colliding the parallel worlds

Heroes Behaving Badly Rich Buckler and Dick Giordano’s cover to AllNew Collectors’ Edition #C-58, Superman vs.

Shazam! Note that the cover features the story’s co-stars, Supergirl and Mary Marvel.

Cover art by Rich Buckler and Dick Giordano.

TM & © DC Comics.

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Not Playing Nice Both villains—(left) new baddie Karmang and the so-called Sand-Superman, the Quarrmer—and heroes—(right) Superman and Captain Marvel— were punchy in the Conway/Buckler/ Giordano opus, Superman vs. Shazam!

TM & © DC Comics.

of Superman (Earth-One) and Captain Marvel (Earth-S) and thereby amassing the remnants of energy released by the two world’s big bang. But in order to do so, he needs to sidetrack both of each world’s foremost superheroes by fooling them into fighting each other while he plants his deadly space-time devices on each of the Earths.

In order to accomplish his deviltry, Karmang enlists Black Adam—disguised as Marvel—to go after Superman … and the Quarrmer—disguised as Superman—to bother Captain Marvel. They each begin their skirmishes and employ a “judgment ray” upon the heroes to infuriate and cajole them into attacking each other.

Under the mind-controlling mechanism, Superman and Captain Marvel begin a drawn-out slugfest. Supergirl and Mary Marvel notice something is off with their boys and join forces to realize the reason behind the ruse. Black Adam and the Quarrmer give up Karmang’s scheme to the heroines and the gals fly off to Mars and take care of Karmang once and for all. Back on the home front, Marvel and the Man of Steel had finally refrained from further thumping of one another and instead focus on dismantling Karmang’s volatile apparatuses on both Earths. With the tasks duly fulfilled and both Earths spared, Mary Marvel kisses Superman, Supergirl kisses Captain Marvel, and a new alliance is formed at long last.

The big book’s Bronze Age superstar writer, Gerry Conway, discusses the origin of the project for BACK ISSUE: “There had been the ‘Crisis in Eternity’ trilogy a couple of years earlier in Justice League of America that introduced Earth-S, which had left many people dissatisfied. Roy Thomas had a whole bunch of suggestions of things for me to do when I returned to DC, including a Superman/Captain Marvel encounter. (Roy ended up fulfilling a lot of those ideas himself when he later came to DC.) Roy and I talked a lot … we were good friends and had very similar points of view about what would be fun to do in comics.”

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From a marketing position, DC saw their large-sized comic books as a way to reach a different and larger audience. Reprints, table-top dioramas, pinups, and puzzles were ultimately scrapped for all-new material.

From a creative standpoint, Conway—who says his pay scale remained the same on big editions as it did on regular-sized comics—found the format “fun for writers and artists because we were able to work with a ‘bigger screen’ … it was to comics as Cinemascope was to television in the ’50s, where you had a larger canvas to do your stories on.” Almost immediately after the success of the Conway-written Superman vs. the Amazing SpiderMan, and with the imminent release of the Superman movies, DC sought to further capitalize on the format.

Julie Schwartz, who facilitated the “Collectors’ Editions” format from their beginning (and who considered Captain Marvel to be the “lowlight” of his career), was chosen to edit Superman vs. Shazam! How did Conway like working with DC’s prominent editor? “When I first started writing for DC back in late ’60s-early ’70s, everyone was heavy-handed with me because I was just a kid. When I came back to DC for about a year in the mid-’70s I did some work under Julie’s editorial control, which led to one confrontation between us over a Justice League script I had written where almost every single line had been rewritten. I later discovered that Julie wasn’t even doing it himself because he was handing off scripts to Bob Rozakis to edit. At the time I blew up at Julie, which was really shocking to me because he was a hero of mine. Julie’s comics were the kind of comics that I had always wanted to write.

But then, from that point on, we got along very well and did some really good work together.”

Conway also praises Rich Buckler’s artistry on the book: “The beauty of Superman vs. Shazam! was that it really gave Rich an opportunity to go hot and do the kind of work that he was capable of doing.”

The writer was already well-versed in Superman Rich Buckler, in my 2009 Alter Ego interview with the mythology before taking on the project … but did he artist, remembered his excitement in receiving the encompass the same knowledge of Marvel Family history? Superman/Shazam! job: “I got the assignment from “To be perfectly honest, I was not a big Captain Marvel Dick Giordano. Dick was thinking at the time that I fan,” Conway acknowledges. “I probably wouldn’t have could be groomed to be the new regular Superman artist thought of the book if Roy Thomas hadn’t suggested it … I remember thinking, ‘This has got to be the biggest because he was the big CM fan. I might’ve asked Roy and most intimidating assignment I have ever gotten! for some advice, and read a few of the comics that were How the hell am I going to do it?’ Remember, this was available, but that was pretty much the amount of around the same time as Neal Adams’ Superman vs. research I did, which probably shows in the lack of Muhammad Ali … that was what I had to measure up to!” depth of understanding of the material. But it was fun As with most of the covers Buckler designed for both book to do … and also played into the whole young- Marvel and DC, the Superman/Shazam! cover was a hero-in-a-big-hero’s-body concept that I later took and “one-off” he sketched up at the office—the first thing developed into Firestorm.” that came to his mind, and the only one that was created Conway also weighs in the differences between was the one used. Buckler confidently applied an writing a book like Superman vs. Shazam! as Adams-feel in his artistic approach to the book. opposed to Superman vs. Spider-Man. “As a “At the time, DC was evolving a Neal Adams writer, I felt a great deal more pressure to look for Superman,” he recalled. “I did a balance the story between Superman and lot of commercial comics work for Dick Spider-Man than I felt between Superman Giordano, and Dick was scheduled to and Captain Marvel. There was also a ink Superman vs. Shazam! What ‘style’ to real historic quality to the Superman/ use? For me, it was a no-brainer.”

Spider-Man story, and it was also the first And, just as Conway was pleased with time I had done anything in that larger the artwork, Buckler was equally delighted format. By the time I got to Superman/ with the narrative: “…Gerry was probably Shazam!, I was fairly comfortable with the the best choice for this book. He was rich buckler format and knew how to better pace it. (and is) one of my favorite writers. The There also wasn’t as much writing with script read like a movie. I had no idea Superman/Shazam!, so I think I felt a bit more free to how I would be able to plow through 72 art pages, but have fun with it without feeling the pressure of history Gerry’s writing was beautifully paced and structurally standing on my shoulders, even though writing solid. After the pages were drawn, I would take time out Superman vs. Spider-Man was a fan’s dream come true. to read them from the art pages, having penciled in all Superman/Shazam! would’ve been another fan’s dream the word balloons and lettering; everything fit perfectly come true, but I wasn’t a fan of Captain Marvel so it didn’t [and] read smoothly. And the story was excellently quite have the same impact for me as it would have for crafted—which made my work that much easier.”

Roy Thomas. Roy actually should’ve been the guy to In storytelling techniques and layout, Buckler was also have wrote it, but he was still at Marvel at the time.” given total creative freedom from Julie Schwartz. “I had

Tabloids & Treasuries Issue

Ladies’ Might Supergirl and Mary Marvel in action against the “SandSuperman” and Black Adam, as seen in the original art to pages 50 and 51. Script

by Gerry Conway, pencils by Rich Buckler, inks by Dick Giordano. Original art scans courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.comics.org).

TM & © DC Comics.

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Clobbering and Cuddling (top) Buckler in fine form on the trabooming splash, page 62. (bottom) The super-ladies offer their own brand of thank-yous on the story’s final page.

TM & © DC Comics.

absolutely no editorial supervision,” Buckler said. “I even made minor changes here and there, but for the most part, I kept to Gerry’s descriptions in the script.”

Conway neatly referenced Earth-S heroes and the Marvel Family’s earlier appearance in JLA … and he had established the generally accepted “the mind of a young boy—in the body of a mighty man” interpretation of the Cap/Billy persona which was to be utilized by subsequent Shazam! writers. Furthermore, Mary Marvel appeared somewhat out-of-sync with her flirtatious infatuation towards Superman … and the heroes could have easily faced off against the likes of Luthor and Sivana, but Conway designated to invent a fairly standard villain with Karmang instead. Buckler had no problem with the villain: “The eyeballs were my idea (all-seeing eye, take over the world, rule the universe … it just seemed to fit).

All supervillains are generic, in a way. They’re coming from the ‘New World Order’-global-fascism-Dr. Doom school of Empire. It’s the artist’s job to jazz them up and make them fun.”

Conway supplied Buckler with plenty of reference material when it came to the Marvel family characters, and made use of DC’s extensive library. “I made tons of photocopies, mostly from the Captain Marvel titles,” Buckler remembered. “Also, I could get on the phone if I was in a pinch … anything I asked for, they supplied it. Julie was a stickler for details. [E.] Nelson Bridwell …

Julie’s executive assistant (and one-man human encyclopedia of comics), was indispensable.”

A few inconsistencies occurred art-wise: Captain Marvel’s facial features were sometimes a little off, as well as the over-extended length of Marvel’s cape and boots, yet Buckler’s pencils with Dick Giordano’s inking proved to be a well-functioning collaboration. “ …There was always the deadline to consider,” Bucker noted about the book. “Everything was drawn under tremendous pressure. I remember doing ten to 15 pages a week ... a real crunch. There were bound to be inconsistencies.

I’m amazed that there were so few of them. Nowadays, they would probably give an artist six months to do a project like this. I had more like six weeks. I recall [when] the inked pages by Dick started coming into the office when I was about halfway through the pencil stage, and I was amazed. It totally worked.”

Buckler took on no other projects during Superman/ Shazam! so he could devote all his time and concentration on it. He reportedly received approximately 20% more per page pay rate than regular-size art, and poured everything he had into the book. The artist believed it was a test for him from the editors to see if he could really handle the big characters. “It was definitely a challenge, Buckler admitted. “…Creatively, it was a dream. I had absolutely no supervision and was allowed to experiment … of course, I took full advantage! …

Everything in the book would be printed big—and that especially required getting everything right. The fullpagers and double-pagers, though, were planned out

by Gerry … the rest I played around with a bit— changing the pacing slightly, using an extreme closeup when I felt it was needed. ‘Camera angles’ and ‘acting’ of the characters were left up to me. I felt like a movie director! Yeah, it was really big fun!”

By the time Superman vs. Shazam! was published, the tabloid-sized Collectors’ Edition comics were already on the tail end of their brief heyday. “Yeah, they were a bit of a novelty,” Buckler mused. “I knew they wouldn’t last.

But they sure were cool!”

Captain Marvel historian P.C. HAMERLINCK is the editor of FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), appearing in the pages of our sister publication, Roy Thomas’ Alter Ego magazine.

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by

The tabloid-sized treasury format was a beloved staple of 1970s comics, offering both reprints of classic stories and the occasional new epic tale in an oversized package.

But times change and printing costs go up, and by the mid-1980s, the format was virtually dead.

But nostalgia is powerful, and so are proven creators.

And in the late 1990s, two of the most acclaimed names to come up that decade teamed up to revive that classic format with some of DC’s most classic characters.

Writer Paul Dini, who’d become an Emmy-winning fan-favorite for his work on Batman: The Animated Series and other DC animated series and tie-in books, teamed with Alex Ross, whose photorealistic painted artwork on such series as Marvels and Kingdom Come had made him one of the most in-demand artists in comics.

From 1998 to 2003, they produced a series of fully painted, oversized books featuring DC’s biggest heroes: Superman: Peace on Earth, Batman: War on Crime, Shazam!: Power of Hope, Wonder Woman: Spirit of Truth, and the JLA books Secret Origins and Liberty and Justice. The books featured more character-based, contemplative looks at DC’s icons,

and have since been collected in the (alas, slightly-reducedin-size) volume The World’s Greatest Super-Heroes.

We got Dini and Ross on the phone to discuss their collaboration, what made these works special, and of course, their love for the treasury format.

– Zack Smith ZACK SMITH: I was curious about how familiar you were about the treasury format, and what it meant to you, and if there were any editions that were particularly meaningful to you growing up.

PAUL DINI: Well, I remember as a kid, if a story was in a treasury edition, that meant you had to sit up and take notice, because this was a story you couldn’t get in any other format. There was the Spider-Man/Superman book— there was something about the biggest character at Marvel, meeting the biggest hero at DC, and that format reflected how big it was. I had to have it.

ALEX ROSS: I remember when I was a teenager and had missed out on buying the various treasury editions that came out when I was younger—and I found out Tabloids & Treasuries Issue

Zack Smith

World Watch Four Justice Leaguers (five, counting the uninvited Batman, seen in the last panel) inside the Pentagon.

From JLA: Liberty and Justice (2003), Alex Ross’ art, sans Paul Dini’s script.

Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com).

TM & © DC Comics.

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most were extremely affordable, because they were reprints and seen as having no back-issue potential.

DINI: Neal Adams was my favorite artist, and I’d try to get regular-sized back issues he’d drawn, and I’d go to a comic shop and they were like, eight, nine dollars.

And I bought Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, thinking, “This is great, and it’ll be worth like a hundred dollars someday.” [laughs] SMITH: That’s actually going for a few hundred these days.

Superman: Peace on Earth (top) Cover to Peace on Earth (Jan. 1999). (bottom) Alex Ross’ pencil art featuring the Man of Steel speaking to the US Congress about world hunger.

Courtesy of the artist.

TM & © DC Comics.

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DINI: [stunned] Really?

ROSS: I’ve got two or three copies of that in decent shape! I should cash in!

I think the format was great in particular for Adams and Jack Kirby—for appreciating what their artwork was to this medium. Comics pack you into a tight format— I know I was always screaming for whatever larger formats were available, and why I hoped to revive this one.

DINI: I remember I was disappointed Adams didn’t draw Superman/Spider-Man—they had Ross Andru, who was great, but he was the regular Spider-Man artist. I wanted to see Adams take on Spider-Man. ROSS: Actually, he did do a little of it. He was in the studio at the time and did some touch-ups. I believe BACK ISSUE revealed this! [Editor’s note: Alex is right! See BI #11.]

SMITH: When I first discovered treasury editions, what I loved were reprints, like the Galactus Saga in Fantastic Four, or the Mordru story with the Legion of Super-Heroes, and how it made these stories seem even more big and epic. Did you ever discover any classic stories through these editions?

ROSS: Well, those were some of the first reprints, aside from a few things like 100-page Super-Spectaculars and stuff like that. So the way I got knowledge of many characters—of their powers, their personalities, their histories—were from books like the ones they did with the origins of supervillains.

DINI: It became more of a special occasion to see them—at the time, I remember what I really loved was the Howard the Duck/Defenders crossover. Gerber was firing on all cylinders, and that was a fun book. That was sort of when they were moving away from those big, world-ending stories, though—like if they’d done something like Howard vs. Donald Duck, that would have been huge. [laughs] I understand the need to maximize the characters’ appeal by doing something in a magazine format, moving them off the spinner rack, but I miss how these formats would have that special punch.

And I love Christmas comics, so let me throw this in— ROSS: [laughs] Yeah, I don’t know if they would have DC would do Rudolph comics every Christmas! So in a fair necessarily wanted to use the character for such a world I would be doing Jingle Belle in that format each year. major project, but given he was third in the four books, SMITH: So how did you guys come together for these and we were coming off Kingdom Come, they allowed it. treasury editions?

They knew we were also using Wonder Woman, so it ROSS: It originally came up in talks with my editor at might have been a kind of indulgence.

DC, Charlie Kochman, who was in charge of licensed DINI: Yeah, they talked us out of B’Wana Beast, so they books at that time, and we were trying to come up with had to let us do Captain Marvel! something that could be the next graphic novel I ROSS: It was an indulgence, but it was also an would be working on in this format, that could experiment, to see if this lit a spark that would be released in comic shops and bookstores show there was an audience for more books at the same time. And we were looking for in this format. And there were … only two something that could be a format similar other books in this format by creators other to a children’s book, for people who were than us. There was the Superman/Fantastic not accustomed to reading word balloons Four crossover, which I have no idea and typical panel-to-panel action in how it came out in that format, and JLA: comics. It was really Paul that came in as Heaven’s Ladder, which built into the the saving grace—it might never have been Mark Waid/Bryan Hitch run on JLA. approved if he hadn’t come in.

I would have thought they’d have done DINI: Alex and Charlie told me what more books like that—maybe not painted, paul dini they wanted to do, and I thought this was but big event books, self-contained a great opportunity to use the format to stories. But they at least let us do two tell stories that weren’t traditional comic-book stories. more books after these specials, involving the Justice That was paramount with Alex—he wanted to explore League. I would have loved it if they would have gone what had made these characters iconic in the early days further with the tabloid format overall, though. of comics, before all this continuity, when characters like SMITH: They reprinted Heaven’s Ladder in a shrunk-down Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman represented very format recently, and it loses something in the translation. specific things, and became the standards that super- ROSS: Yeah, when they’ve reprinted books from the 1970s heroes were created around. that were originally in that format, like Superman/Spider-Man There weren’t master criminals or aliens—they were extensions of adventure stories. So we wanted to do stories about how Superman represents the hope of the little guy, not about fighting Darkseid or Brainiac.

At the time of his creation, Superman represented social justice. He’d discover a bad situation as Clark Kent, reporter, but he couldn’t do anything about it, because the people involved were being ignored by the police or in high office or something like that. And then as Superman, he could take the law into his own hands. He was a vigilante, but he was someone who tried to stop an unreasonable situation, as opposed to saving the universe.

Batman represented one man’s lonely vigil against crime, and how street crime took his parents, and his struggle against that night after night. The Penguin and Catwoman and those characters added a lot to that concept, but they wouldn’t have worked without that basis—this idea of society needing help, and someone coming to fix that.

ROSS: The publishing of the 1990s involved so many crossovers, and big events, and mash-ups of characters, and infighting, and so much that was self-absorbed into the concept of a superhero universe and what these characters had become, that almost none of it related to the simplicity of human life. That disconnect seemed like a good thing to get away from, and to move into the opposite direction.

In a different time period, it might have been a good idea to go back to Superman vs. Muhammad Ali. I go back and ask, “Why didn’t I do a big punch-up story?”

But at the time, that goal was to do something that was a 180 from what was going on.

DINI: We wanted to remind readers of who these characters were, and are. They’re not just these guys and girls in weird costumes beating on each other.

Yeah, it didn’t fit into fan mentality to not show their favorite good guys beating their favorite bad guys. But over the years, we’ve had so many people tell us about how they rediscovered those characters, and found hope in those stories. These characters can move planets, yeah, but they can also inspire.

SMITH: Was there any resistance from DC for the format, or doing stories that weren’t as action-based, or even just using Captain Marvel? I admit I’m a bit cynical on their use of that character.

Tabloids & Treasuries Issue

(Super)Man of the People The Metropolis Marvel dives headfirst into a humanitarian mission in Peace on Earth.

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Batman: War on Crime (top) Cover to War on Crime (Nov. 1999). (bottom) No evil shall escape his sight (with apologies to Green Lantern). Original Ross art to page 7 of War, courtesy of Heritage.

TM & © DC Comics.

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or Batman/Hulk, they very much suffer in that smaller format. They’re not meant for the format of the comic-book shape, and they don’t even bother to make the format a little more square—they just add a little more white to the top and bottom of the page, which looks ridiculous.

SMITH: They did two versions of Superman vs.

Muhammad Ali, a special edition that was shrunk down, and a “replica edition” in the original format.

I had to get the latter.

ROSS: Yeah, and the special edition, they have that problem, not formatting the pages correctly. That replica edition, that almost didn’t happen. That had to be fought for. For some reason, I was offered to do a new painted cover, and then that was rescinded a week later. [laughs] The rumor I heard was that Neal Adams was thinking of doing a new cover, and then the book came out and there was no new cover.

So I have no idea what occurred there. I desperately wanted to do the job—that would have been one of my greatest fan delights, to redo that painting. To make it easier on them, I offered to rework it—with their blessing, of course—to basically remove all the celebrities DC didn’t own, to make it easier for them to reprint. But it never happened.

SMITH: So how did you create the first story, with Superman?

ROSS: The genesis of how I wound up creating this particular story for Superman—and this entire batch of projects—started with the goal of just doing a Supermanfocused project following my use of him in Kingdom Come.

I’d originally envisioned a graphic novel that would adapt an unused, unpublished 1940 script by Jerry Siegel.

There was one that was illustrated by Joe Shuster, but it was never published because it involved the introduction of kryptonite and Superman revealing his secret identity to Lois Lane. This script was introduced to me by Mark Waid, and it was this moment in history that, if it had happened, would have been a game-changer for the entire nature of how superheroes don’t seem to actually evolve or change in their lives. That would have changed that aspect very early on for the prototype superhero.

The reason I didn’t go forward with it was that it didn’t read very well. It had an older style to the writing; it just wouldn’t have seemed special to an audience at large.

That prompted the idea: Why not create something new, that relates more to what I would want to say with the character of Superman? And that led to the idea of Superman feeding the hungry, and this pitch that would have originally involved my writing and drawing the book.

Why it turned out the way it did was because the editorial regime at the time took a look at it, and was mostly just skeptical. My feeling at the time was feeling threatened by having to go through so many hoops to tell a story that I felt I had very clearly within me.

Because I knew I could work closely with a collaborator and I knew Paul already, it all fell into place with him, and he could shepherd this vision into something that wound up becoming a much larger and long-running project.

SMITH: How did your collaborative process work?

ROSS: Well, Paul wrote a full outline that was specific when it came to page details and breakdowns. It was very Marvel-style. The art was designed so that free-flowing sections of text could be put into the background without word balloons or with caption boxes. I was trying to create something people hadn’t seen before.

Ever since I broke into the industry, I’d struggled to create something that people would take seriously and not see as comical, and I felt one part of that was word balloons. That’s why those four graphic novels didn’t have word balloons. Not all experiments work out well, but that was the reason for it.

DINI: We’d get together in the fall, around Thanksgiving time, and we’d talk about what each book should be. Alex would have ideas about what the book should be about,

like Batman’s war on street crime. We’d come up with ideas story in the Wonder Woman book, for example. back and forth, and then sort of agree on the general ROSS: That was still intended as more of a broad commendirection of the story, and then I’d write an outline. tary than a tale about something specific. That particular Alex would take the outline and break it down into story was also intended to comment on what was going on a sequence with thumbnails, and then I would start with the character in the comics at the time, because they writing dialogue and narrative sequences. had excised a good 10 or 15 years before her dual identity, ROSS: One of the things that doesn’t work well with and we took the path of trying to establish the worth of that style with the free-flowing lettering was that I a dual identity for someone like a Superman or a Wonder would sometimes leave too much space for narration, Woman, about being able to walk among other people because I didn’t know how much would be as though normal, about being where you want to coming. So sometimes you’d have a disprobe and to fight injustice wherever you find it. portionate amount of space for a sequence SMITH: When you’re doing stories with these that wound up not being all that wordy. iconic characters, when you’re dealing So that’s why you have some advantage with their identities and their interacting with caption boxes—you can lay out with regular humans and problems, what things however you like and place those was the biggest challenge in keeping boxes over anything. There are some each story and the voice for each sequences that look emptier than I character distinct? intended, because I expected lettering ROSS: I’m forgetting what a bit of my coming in to those places. broad outline was; I think there was a alex ross DINI: I’m not a very prosaic writer—I tend graphic that showed how Superman to write shorter passages for greater impact, represents science, and Batman represents and for this I wanted the greatest amount of impact mystery, Captain Marvel represents magic, and Wonder with the fewest amount of words. I hope no one felt Woman represents myth. These stories were meant to shortchanged by those books, but I wanted to write incorporate these ideas conceptually, and, of course, it toward the impact of the pictures. doesn’t quite work out that way, but the idea was also that ROSS: Well, we were writing in a very distinct style. they would face off against aspects of the human condition, Modern comics have a very wordy style, and that process and show how we can take care of one another. has been taken to the nth degree for the last 30 years.

Superman takes on hunger, Batman takes on street At least here, we were trying to do something different. crime and the roots of crime, Captain Marvel takes on In some places it worked perfectly, and maybe not so much the frailty of humanity and being alive, and Wonder in others, but at least we were trying something new.

Woman takes on the problem that is us, how we are all DINI: And the dialogue complemented the artwork. kind of troubled with the different ways we see each Alex had such striking images that I wanted to write other. It was the superhuman response to humanity and dialogue that supported that. its many ills. That was what we were trying to show.

SMITH: Did you find that collaborative process evolved SMITH: Which character was the easiest to get a handle as you went through the series? There’s a more involved on depicting, and which was the hardest?

Tabloids & Treasuries Issue

Who He Is, And How He Came to Be Double-page origins like this one from Batman: War on Crime were a highlight of the first four Dini/Ross tabloids.

They inspired the creative team’s first follow-up treasury, JLA: Secret Origins (Nov. 2002), which included origins for the other JLAers.

TM & © DC Comics.

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DINI: Captain Marvel seemed the easiest for me. The Captain Marvel and Billy Batson relationship is a lot of fun. And I liked that one personally, because it spoke to the child in me, and the fan in me.

And my dad loved Captain Marvel an awful lot—I never saw Captain Marvel comics as a kid, but he’d tell me Captain Marvel stories, recapping the old comics. For me, that had a power, hearing the oral story, and it took on that mythology like other stories you hear as a kid.

For me, Wonder Woman was very hard to do, because she is a tremendous character and a female icon, but her origins are not rooted as deeply in social conflict—well, maybe that’s not true. The women’s struggle for equality is very valid.

But Superman was about social change, Batman was about fighting crime, Captain Marvel was about wish fulfillment as a child. Wonder Woman was a big, awesome idea for a character that kind of grew out of the same background as Batman and Captain Marvel, but looking at her roots, it was harder to discover what she was, and to build that story around her.

And there were some social changes in the real world at that time, because that was the year 9/11 happened, and terrorism was on America’s shores. The world had changed a lot from the days of the US going to war with a clearly defined superpower. We had to keep Wonder Woman a strong and positive character without falling into old WWII jingoism.

And for whatever reason, she’s been a harder character for me to get a handle on personally. Of all the characters, she’s the one that’s least familiar to me, and while she’s fun to write, she’s a challenge.

It’s easier for me to write a Superman or a Batman story, because I feel akin to certain elements of their original personalities, i.e., alienation or outrage at injustice, but with Wonder Woman, her origins are more obscure—am I telling a story about women’s attitudes toward men, men’s

Shazam!: Power of Hope (left) Captain Marvel is about to meet “a special child in despair.” (inset) Cover to Power of Hope (Nov. 2000). (below) Cap circles the Rock of Eternity. Pencil art courtesy of Alex Ross.

TM & © DC Comics.

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fantasy perceptions of women, or mythology? But I still think the story Alex and I created for her was a good one.

SMITH: Was this your first time writing the “official” DC Universe versions of these characters outside of the cartoons?

DINI: Yes, I think it was. I’d written issues of Batman Adventures and some other scattered pieces, but this was my first time writing the “real” characters. But I found it pretty easy for the most part, because I didn’t have to jump out in the middle of a big story with a lot of continuity behind it.

With these stories, I was trying to go into the mindset of people who know the basic elements of Batman, like his having a Batmobile and a butler named Alfred, but who perhaps were not up on the current beats of continuity. I wanted stories a parent could read to a child and neither one could be lost.

When you get into something like the Justice League, you’re really into fan territory, because you’re dealing with characters whom the lay audience might have very little awareness of beyond perhaps their names. They might know Hawkman or Plastic Man, but they are unlikely to have read or seen anything with them in, like, 20 or 30 years.

SMITH: What type of research did you have to do for these issues, and did this research change the way you felt about any of these issues?

ROSS: I’m not sure I have a good answer for that! [laughs] This was an indulgence in Paul and me getting on a soapbox: “Let us show you how screwed up the world is and have a superhero fix it!” There’s some worth in that, but we knew we ran the risk of crossing that line into preachiness, and even we might find it off-putting if it came from other talents using these characters this way.

The thing I was doing for myself, which most people wouldn’t know, is that the time spent doing these various books felt like eating my vegetables to get to the dessert

that I wanted to eat. I would have loved to spend all my time only drawing superhero characters running around in a superhero universe with nothing of the real world reflected, but I honestly felt I had to earn my time in this fantasy place by representing more of the world that I felt wasn’t being seen in comics at the time.

Now, over the last decade, I feel like I can be indulged with more superhero artistry and characters punching each other in the face, but back then, I felt like I needed to earn that by showing more of the world and what this medium can reach out for.

SMITH: Do you feel the last decade in superhero comics has reflected more of the real world than was being depicted back then?

ROSS: There has been a shift. It might be because of all the films based on comic properties. Compared to the 1990s, there was a greater separation into a fantasyland back then. But we wanted to represent something that reflected the problems of the real world as it is, as opposed to the harshness of the real world being reflected by a greater harshness in the world of superheroes and their goings-on.

SMITH: Are you for that, against that, or neutral toward that depiction?

ROSS: Certainly as a kid, I wanted to see more harshness and toughness and what I perceived as my growing understanding of it. But like anything else, you can become exhausted by anything done to excess.

And this kind of material, the superhero material, can go a completely different way. They don’t all have to be the most brutal depictions of vigilantes that we see today.

But right now we’re in one of the most extreme periods of what might be called the Dark Age of comics. It’s hysterical that that’s seen as the age that overtook the 1990s, but it’s alive and well if not worse Tabloids & Treasuries Issue

Wonder Woman: Spirit of Truth (left) The Amazon Princess volunteers to be a human shield on this page from (inset) Spirit of Truth (Nov. 2001). (right) Cover art to the 2010 softcover collection of the Dini/Ross tabloids, The World’s Greatest Super-Heroes.

Courtesy of Alex Ross.

TM & © DC Comics.

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than before. I believe that if you’ve got a medium that can’t be read by a great amount of people outside of those already reading comics, like women and children, then you’re taking on a losing proposition, and need to examine what you’re doing. Just trying to hit men and boys—well, men and younger men—who love their fantasy violence, that’s a small market, and you’re going to see it getting smaller.

SMITH: One thing I thought might be fun for our readers is if you could point out some of the Easter eggs and visual basis for some of the characters in these books. I know Sal Abbinanti [Ross’ art dealer] was Captain Marvel, for example, and your art school teachers were the board members in the Batman one…

ROSS: There’s a load of that kind of stuff, so let me just pick out a couple— as you mentioned, I went back to my old art school looking for models, and wound up using not just my old teachers, but many students as well.

Much of that Batman book was loaded with people I was just meeting on the fly who were suitable models. I could make these young punks look like real punks, even though they were actually college students.

And like I usually do, people I know provided the basis for many characters in the books.

In the Captain Marvel book, I used some friends of Paul Dini’s, such as Eddie Gorodetsky, who’s one of the producers on Two and a Half Men, as one of the guys trying to dynamite this closed mine.

There are not a lot of famous pros in there, though in the Batman book, we knew we were going to create a character you see in a lot of Batman stories, someone Bruce Wayne knew years before. In this case, it was someone to represent the kind of rich guy Bruce Wayne could have turned into if he hadn’t had the experience of losing his family and becoming Batman.

We knew we wanted this sort of self-important, effete rich guy, and I thought of a face I knew from comics to use. James Robinson had recently been at a convention I was at, and he was a good sport to agree to pose for me. So that’s James Robinson as the sort of villain of the story, who’s buying up land to build a project that will displace a lot of people. His name was “Randall Winters,” which is such a comic-book name! [laughs] After the initial four books and we went into the Justice League stuff, there was a guy we used as a model for Aquaman who went on to become a personality on the “ghost-hunting” circuit when he did this show called Dead Famous on the Biography Channel. I also used him in the Justice series. There are many more anecdotes like that…

SMITH: When you and Paul did the Justice League book and the Secret Origins book, was it a sigh of relief to get to draw some action at last, or was that less fulfilling than the more down-to-earth stories of the previous books?

Defenders of the Earth In this stunning two-page pencil spread courtesy of Alex Ross, from Liberty and Justice, the League observes widespread panic in the streets and calls in “a few friends.”

TM & © DC Comics.

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ROSS: Well, it was probably like anything, a desire to do something more fun that had been in me for so long that I couldn’t let go of. [laughs] Because I loved that format, that desire had been building in me in the previous four books to assemble a team of superheroes like in Kingdom Come.

That more traditional use of things like word balloons was me kind of conceding that one of the things that makes comics come alive is the direct interaction of dialogue in the traditional form of how it is displayed. I used to feel the directional tails from these round balloons looked kind of silly, which is why I did something different, but it didn’t necessarily open a better door.

I was still trying to walk the line of not making it a traditional superhero/supervillain conflict, just because I felt like these projects should be reflecting more of the issues the real world faces. But we were trying to be somewhat seditious with the versions in the current DC continuity— Hal Jordan and Barry Allen were dead, and Aquaman was in a state very different than the classic image. It was a way of saying, “Everything you’re reading in those current books will revert to the original, classic style eventually, so why not skip back to that version with these?”

SMITH: I’m guessing you weren’t a fan of drawing Superman with the mullet?

ROSS: It was awkward because I had long hair myself at the time, and it made me realize, “I don’t want to see him like that, it’s not part of the DNA of the character.” A lot of characters had been altered because it was felt they were somehow unhip and my feeling was, “No, it’s not broken, don’t fix it. Maybe the creative vision is broken, but not the characters themselves.”

DINI: I think DC, for better or worse, arrived at a permanent visual identity for those characters in the late 1970s or so, what I’d call the “DC Primary Design,” the Dick Giordano or José Luis García-López designs you’d see in the licensing. That look got a lot of exposure, and fixed those images in a lot of people’s minds. And I think getting too far away from those is asking a lot of the mainstream audience, to accept them in a new form.

ROSS: But I think the week-to-week comic-book audience had a greater sway for the last 20 years, in terms of altering things for some intended permanence. And that’s what we were rebelling against: We believed that you can’t change something from what it was classically intended to be, even if you’re tired and jaded and want to see whatever aesthetic mucked with.

SMITH: Would you guys like to collaborate on something in the future, another special like these, or something with characters you haven’t worked on before?

ROSS: Definitely. The idea was never floated seriously, but it would have been fun to do something like this with the Marvel characters, maybe

A Treasured Format (right) The Justice League’s first battle, against Starro, as recapped in Liberty and Justice. (inset) Cover to Secret Origins. A big BACK ISSUE thank-you to Paul and Alex for this interview … and for reviving the tabloid format for these timeless adventures.

TM & © DC Comics.

not in the same way, but in a similar format or one-shot of that type. I know now at this point in [comics] publishing there’s not a lot of love for things that don’t embrace continuity. If you’re not embracing whatever ongoing storyline is rolling forward, you’re out of place.

DINI: The moment you say, “We’re not doing this anymore,” that’s when the exceptions to the rule pop up.

We’re not doing the treasury books anymore, but that’s not to say we wouldn’t do them again—if a publisher was interested, and more importantly, we were interested and had a story to tell.

ROSS: One thing that should be mentioned about going anywhere near this format again: The marketplace was not incredibly supportive. We certainly heard from people who were supportive of this format and what we were trying to do, but DC was constantly telling us that they were receiving complaints from retailers across the US who didn’t know how to shelve it or where to put it.

DC also had the good sense to send out special holders that put the book on the counters, but what failed was there wasn’t that real enthusiasm on the part of the retail community for this or really any new kind of format. There was a sense of “don’t change the way we do business.”

I was surprised there weren’t more fan-retailers who didn’t remember the format fondly from the 1970s.

But we were hearing that it wasn’t a favorite from the retail community. We did more with it than probably anyone thought was reasonable, but it was a passion project for both of us, and for DC. There was a great support for the Superman book, but for each book afterwards, the numbers would slide.

SMITH: But overall, how would you rate the experience?

DINI: I just really enjoyed doing them. They were a lot of fun, they were a lot of work, but I look back at them and I have a lot of fondness.

ROSS: It was a really warm feeling seeing them come out the same time every year. I would take on different projects like covers throughout the year, but it was nice to know I was still contributing to storytelling every year, that that was still part of my output. There were times I felt like I’d hit a wall, trying to please everyone at the same time, but this was a way to do what I wanted and what I thought the fans wanted, all at the same time.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES BACK ISSUE is on the lookout for the following comics-related material from the 1970s through the 1990s: • • • • • • •

Unpublished artwork and covers Commissions (color or B&W) and professional-quality specialty drawings 1970s–1990s creator and convention photographs Character designs and model sheets Original art: covers and significant interior pages Little-seen fanzine material Other rarities

If you have any of the above materials, please query the editor via email prior to submission. Art contributors will be acknowledged in print and receive a complimentary copy of the issue.

Since BI is a full-color publication, preference is given to color artwork.

Random convention sketches and “quick sketches” that do not reflect an artist’s best work and were not intended for print will no longer be considered for publication.

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BACK ISSUE does not read or consider unsolicited manuscripts. However, we routinely welcome new writers to our magazine, and have done so since day one!

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Contact BI at: Michael Eury, Editor, BACK ISSUE 118 Edgewood Ave. NE Concord, NC 28025

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BACK ISSUE • 77

THE RETRO COMICS EXPERIENCE!

Edited by MICHAEL EURY, BACK ISSUE magazine celebrates comic books of the 1970s, 1980s, and today through recurring (and rotating) departments like “Pro2Pro” (dialogue between professionals), “BackStage Pass” (behind-the-scenes of comicsbased media), “Greatest Stories Never Told” (spotlighting unrealized comics series or stories), and more!

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(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “Thrilling Days of Yesteryear!” The final DAVE STEVENS interview, Rocketeer film discussion with DANNY BILSON and PAUL DeMEO, The Phantom, Indiana Jones, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ heroes, Dominic Fortune, Sherlock Holmes, Man-God, Miracle Squad, 3-D Man, Justice, Inc., APARO, CHAYKIN, CLAREMONT, MILLER, VERHEIDEN, and more, Rocketeer cover by DAVE STEVENS!

(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “Dead Heroes”! JIM (“Death of Captain Marvel”) STARLIN interview, Deadman after Neal Adams, Jason Todd Robin, the death and resurrection of the Flash, Elektra, the many deaths of Aunt May, art by and/or commentary from APARO, BATES, CONWAY, GARCIA-LOPEZ, GEOFF JOHNS, MILLER, WOLFMAN, and a cosmically cool cover by JIM STARLIN!

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(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “1970s Time Capsule”! Examines relevance in comics, Planet of the Apes, DC Salutes the Bicentennial, Richard Dragon–Kung-Fu Fighter, FOOM, Amazing World of DC, Fast Willie Jackson, Marvel Comics calendars, art and commentary from ADAMS, BRUNNER, GIORDANO, LARKIN, LEVITZ, MAGGIN, MOENCH, O’NEIL, PLOOG, STERANKO, cover by BUCKLER and BEATTY!

Special 50th Anniversary FULL-COLOR issue ($8.95 price) on “Batman in the Bronze Age!” O’NEIL, ADAMS, and LEVITZ roundtable, praise for “unsung” Batman creators JIM APARO, DAVID V. REED, BOB BROWN, ERNIE CHAN, and JOHN CALNAN, Joker’s Daughter, Batman Family, Nocturna, Dark Knight, art and commentary from BYRNE, COLAN, CONWAY, MOENCH, MILLER, NEWTON, WEIN, and more. APARO cover!

(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “AllInterview Issue”! Part 2 of an exclusive STEVE ENGLEHART interview (continued from ALTER EGO #103)! “Pro2Pro” interviews between SIMONSON & LARSEN, MOENCH & WEIN, and comics letterers KLEIN & CHIANG. Plus JOHN OSTRANDER, MICHAEL USLAN, and longtime DC color artist ADRIENNE ROY! Cover by Englehart collaborator MARSHALL ROGERS!

Bronze Age Mystery Comics! Interviews with BERNIE WRIGHTSON, SERGIO ARAGONÉS, GERRY TALAOC, DC mystery writer LORE SHOBERG, MARK EVANIER and DAN SPIEGLE discuss Scooby-Doo, Charlton chiller anthologies, Black Orchid, Madame Xanadu art and commentary by TONY DeZUNIGA, MIKE KALUTA, VAL MAYERIK, DAVID MICHELINIE, MATT WAGNER, and a rare cover painting by WRIGHTSON!

“Gods!” Takes an in-depth look at WALTER SIMONSON’s Thor, the Thunder God in the Bronze Age, “Pro2Pro” interview with TOM DeFALCO and RON FRENZ, Hercules: Prince of Power, Moondragon, Three Ways to End the New Gods Saga, exclusive interview with fantasy writer MICHAEL MOORCOCK, art and commentary by GERRY CONWAY, JACK KIRBY, BOB LAYTON, and more, with a swingin’ Thor cover by SIMONSON!

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“Liberated Ladies” eyeing female characters that broke barriers in the Bronze Age: Big Barda, Valkyrie, Ms. Marvel, Phoenix, Savage She-Hulk, and the sword-wielding Starfire. Plus a “Pro2Pro” interview with JILL THOMPSON, GAIL SIMONE, and BARBARA KESEL, art and commentary by JOHN BYRNE, GEORGE PEREZ, JACK KIRBY, MIKE VOSBURG, and more, with a new cover by BRUCE TIMM!

“Licensed Comics”! Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Man from Atlantis, DC’s Edgar Rice Burroughs backups (John Carter, Pellucidar, Carson of Venus), Marvel’s Warlord of Mars, and an interview with CAROL SERLING, wife of ROD SERLING. With art and commentary from ANDERSON, BYRNE, CLAREMONT, DORMAN, DUURSEMA, KALUTA, MILLER, OSTRANDER, and more. Cover by BRIAN KOSCHACK.

“Avengers Assemble!” Writer ROGER STERN’S acclaimed 1980s Avengers run, West Coast Avengers, early Avengers toys, and histories of Hawkeye, Mockingbird, and Wonder Man, with art and commentary from JOHN and SAL BUSCEMA, JOHN BYRNE, BRETT BREEDING, TOM DeFALCO, STEVE ENGLEHART, BOB HALL, AL MILGROM, TOM MORGAN, TOM PALMER, JOE SINNOTT, and more. PÉREZ cover!

JENETTE KAHN interviewed by ROBERT GREENBERGER, DC’s Dollar Comics and unrealized kids’ line (featuring an aborted Sugar and Spike revival), the Wonder Woman Foundation, and the early days of the Vertigo imprint. Exploring the talents of ROSS ANDRU, KAREN BERGER, STEVE BISSETTE, JIM ENGEL, GARTH ENNIS, NEIL GAIMAN, SHELLY MAYER, ALAN MOORE, GRANT MORRISON, and more!

“JLA in the Bronze Age”! The “Satellite Years” of the ‘70s and early ‘80s, with BUCKLER, ENGLEHART, PÉREZ, and WEIN, salute to DICK DILLIN, the Justice League “Detroit” team, with CONWAY, PATTON, McDONNELL, plus CONWAY and GEOFF JOHNS go “Pro2Pro” on writing the JLA, unofficial JLA/Avengers crossovers, and Marvel’s JLA, the Squadron Supreme. Cover

by McDONNELL and BILL WRAY!

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #60

DRAW! #24

BRICKJOURNAL #22

• Digital Editions available: $2.95-$3.95!

• Back Issue & Alter Ego now full-color!

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FANTASTIC FOUR FOLLOW-UP to #58’s THE WONDER YEARS! Never-seen FF wraparound cover, interview between FF inkers JOE SINNOTT and DICK AYERS, rare LEE & KIRBY interview, comparison of a Jack and Stan FF story conference to Stan’s final script and Jack’s penciled pages, MARK EVANIER and other columnists, gallery of KIRBY FF ART, pencils from BLACK PANTHER, SILVER SURFER, & more!

GLEN ORBIK demos how he creates his painted noir paperback and comic covers, ROBERT VALLEY discusses animating “The Beatles: Rock Band” music video and Tron: Uprising, plus Comic Art Bootcamp on “Dramatic Lighting” with MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS, Crusty Critic JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews art supplies, BOB McCLOUD gives a Rough Critique of a newcomer’s work, and more!

LEGO PLANE BUILDING! Top builder RALPH SAVELSBERG takes off with his custom LEGO fighter models, there’s a squadron of articles on Sky-Fi planes by FRADEL GONZALES and COLE MARTIN, find instructions to build a Sky-Fi plane, plus our regular feature on minifigure customization by JARED BURKS, AFOLs by GREG HYLAND, other step-by-step “You Can Build It” instructions, and more!

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THE BEST IN COMICS AND LEGO MAGAZINES!

BACK ISSUE #59

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“Toon Comics!” History of Space Ghost in comics, Comico’s Jonny Quest and Star Blazers, Marvel’s Hanna-Barbera line and Dennis the Menace, behind the scenes at Marvel Productions, Ltd., and a look at the unpublished Plastic Man comic strip.

Art/comments by EVANIER, FOGLIO, HEMPEL and WHEATLEY, MARRS, RUDE, TOTH, WILDEY, and more. All-new painted Space Ghost cover by STEVE RUDE!

“Halloween Heroes and Villains”! JEPH LOEB and TIM SALE’s chiller Batman: The Long Halloween, the Scarecrow (both the DC and Marvel versions), Solomon Grundy, Man-Wolf, Lord Pumpkin, Rutland, Vermont’s Halloween parades, and… the Korvac Saga’s Dead Avengers! With commentary from and/or art by CONWAY, GIL KANE, LOPRESTI, MOENCH, PÉREZ, DAVE WENZEL, and more. Cover by TIM SALE!

“Superman in the Bronze Age”! JULIUS SCHWARTZ, CURT SWAN, Superman Family, World of Krypton miniseries, and ALAN MOORE’s “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?”, art & comments

by ADAMS, ANDERSON, CARDY, CHAYKIN, PAUL KUPPERBERG, OKSNER, O’NEIL, PASKO, ROZAKIS, SAVIUK, and more. Cover by GARCÍA-LÓPEZ and SCOTT WILLIAMS! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

“British Invasion” issue! History of Marvel UK, Beatles in comics, DC’s ‘80s British talent pool, V for Vendetta, Excalibur, Marshal Law, Doctor Who, “Pro2Pro” interview with PETER MILLIGAN & BRENDAN McCARTHY, plus BERGER, BOLLAND, DAVIS, GIBBONS, STAN LEE, LLOYD, MOORE, DEZ SKINN, and others. Fold-out triptych cover by RON WILSON and DAVE HUNT of Marvel UK’s rare 1970s “Quadra-Poster”!

“Bronze Age Backup Series”! Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Metamorpho, GOODWIN and SIMONSON’s Manhunter, PASKO and GIFFEN’s Dr. Fate, “Whatever Happened To…?”, Nemesis, Rose and the Thorn, Seven Soldiers of Victory, art and commentary by CARY BURKETT, JOHN CALNAN, DICK GIORDANO, MIKE GRELL, ELLIOT S! MAGGIN, DAN SPIEGLE, cover

by GRELL and JOE RUBINSTEIN.

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ALTER EGO #111

ALTER EGO #112

ALTER EGO #113

ALTER EGO #114

ALTER EGO #115

GOLDEN AGE NEDOR super-heroes are spotlighted, with MIKE NOLAN’s Nedor Index, and art by MORT MESKIN, JERRY ROBINSON, GEORGE TUSKA, RUBEN MOIRERA, ALEX SHOMBURG, and others!

Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, more 2011 Fandom Celebration, and part II of JIM AMASH’s interview with Golden Age artist LEONARD STARR! Cover by SHANE FOLEY!

SUPERMAN issue! PAUL CASSIDY (early Superman artist), Italian Nembo Kid, and ARLEN SCHUMER’s look at the MORT WEISINGER era, plus an interview with son HANK WEISINGER! Art by SHUSTER, BORING, ANDERSON, PLASTINO, and others! LEONARD STARR interview Part III—FCA—Mr. Monster—more 2011 Fandom Celebration, and a MURPHY ANDERSON/ARLEN SCHUMER cover!

MARV WOLFMAN talks to RICHARD ARNDT about his first decade in comics on Tomb of Dracula, Teen Titans, Captain Marvel, John Carter, Daredevil, Nova, Batman, etc., behind a GENE COLAN cover! Art by COLAN, ANDERSON, CARDY, BORING, MOONEY, and more!

Plus: the conclusion of our LEONARD STARR interview by JIM AMASH, FCA, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

MARVEL ISSUE on Captain America and Fantastic Four! MARTIN GOODMAN’s Broadway debut, speculations about FF #1, history of the MMMS, interview with Golden Age writer/artist DON RICO, art

by KIRBY, AVISON, SHORES, ROMITA, SEVERIN, TUSKA, ALLEN BELLMAN, and others! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER and BILL SCHELLY! Cover by BELLMAN and MITCH BREITWEISER!

3-D COMICS OF THE 1950S! In-depth feature by RAY (3-D) ZONE, actual red and green 1950s 3-D art (free glasses included!) by SIMON & KIRBY, KUBERT, MESKIN, POWELL, MAURER, NOSTRAND, SWAN, BORING, SCHWARTZ, MOONEY, SHORES, TUSKA and many others! Plus FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, BILL SCHELLY, and more! Cover by JOE SIMON and JACK KIRBY!

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A COMICS HISTORY GAME-CHANGER!

AMERICAN COMIC BOOK CHRONICLES

THE

Order the first volume (covering 1960-64) IN OCTOBER’S PREVIEWS!

This ambitious new series of FULLCOLOR HARDCOVERS documents every decade of comic books from the 1940s to today!

Each colossal volume presents a year-by-year account of the comic book industry’s most significant publications, most notable creators, and most impactful trends.

This ongoing project enlists TwoMorrows’ top authors, as they provide exhaustively researched details on all the major events along the comics history timeline! Editor KEITH DALLAS (The Flash Companion) spearheads the series and writes his own volume on the 1980s. Also in the works are two volumes on the 1940s by ROY THOMAS, the 1950s by BILL SCHELLY, two volumes on the 1960s by JOHN WELLS, a 1970s volume by JIM BEARD, and more volumes documenting the 1990s and 2000s. Taken together, the series forms the first cohesive, linear overview of the entire landscape of comics history, sure to be an invaluable resource for ANY comic book enthusiast!

JOHN WELLS leads off with the first of two volumes on the 1960s, covering all the pivotal moments and behind-the-scenes details of comics in the JFK and Beatles era! You’ll get a year-by-year account of the most significant publications, notable creators, and impactful trends, including: DC Comics’ rebirth of GREEN LANTERN, HAWKMAN, and others, and the launch of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA and multiple earths! STAN LEE and JACK KIRBY’s transformation of superhero comics with the debut of FANTASTIC FOUR, SPIDER-MAN, HULK, X-MEN, AVENGERS, and other iconic characters! Plus BATMAN gets a “new look”, the BLUE BEETLE is revamped at Charlton Comics, and CREEPY #1 brings horror back to comics, just as Harvey’s “kid” comics are booming! This exhaustive, full-color hardcover ships NOVEMBER 2012!

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LOU SCHEIMER: Creating the Filmation Generation The co-founder of Filmation Studios tells all about leading the last American animation company through thirty years of innovation and fun!

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MATT BAKER: The Art of Glamour The fabled master of glamour art finally gets his due!

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by

Alex Ross

This recreation of Mike Grell’s cover for the Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes Limited Collector’s Edition is a labor of love that I’ve been yearning to do for some time. Mike Grell’s work on the Legion was on the first comics I saw of that group, and his style made me a fan immediately. I was particularly drawn to the designs for this ’70s era of the Legion’s costumes that Dave Cockrum had contributed, which were well handled by great artists like Mike Grell, James Sherman, and Mike Nasser (Netzer).

Some years ago I did a large print of Superboy and the Legion that paid tribute to this era with an original composition. Still feeling an attraction to that special cover of the oversized Collector’s Edition, I had mocked up a pencil rough recreating the composition for a two-cover connecting piece that I pitched for a JSA story arc that I was involved with. It didn’t work out there, so it remained in the back of my mind as one of the unfulfilled ambitions I hoped to make happen one day.

I’m very grateful to Michael Eury for giving me the opportunity here with this special oversized edition of BACK ISSUE to realize a dream. I’m thrilled to see the subject matter of the issue be covered as well. To my fellow Legion fans, I hope you will indulge the augmentation I’ve taken to Mike Grell’s original design, where I hoped to elaborate on the ’70s era of Legion members, even to include dead Legionnaires.

Deconstruction of the Recreation We owe Alex Ross a BIG debt of thanks for illustrating what has become the most-talkedabout BI cover ever! (top) Alex’s inspiration, Mike Grell’s Legion cover for Limited Collectors’ Edition #C-49 (Oct.–Nov. 1976). (center) His mock-up using the cover from a Justice Society project. (bottom) This cover’s pencils, with logo blocking. Compare this against our published cover and you’ll note that Ferro Lad was added to the final version!

TM & © DC Comics.

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Legion of Super-Heroes TM & © DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Dec. 2012

No.61

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