Back Issue #79 by TwoMorrows Publishing

COMICS’ BRONZE AGE AND BEYOND!

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FROM CHARLTON TO DC: ACTION HEROES IN THE BRONZE AGE Blue Beetle • Captain Atom • Peacemaker • Thunderbolt • Blockbuster Weekly • Dave Gibbons Watchmen interview with Bates • Broderick • Collins • Cullins • Kupperberg • Wein & more

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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“Heroes Out of Time!” Batman: Gotham by Gaslight with MIGNOLA, WAID, and AUGUSTYN, Booster Gold with JURGENS, X-Men: Days of Future Past with CHRIS CLAREMONT, Bill & Ted with EVAN DORKIN, interview with P. CRAIG RUSSELL, “Pro2Pro” with Time Masters’ BOB WAYNE and LEWIS SHINER, Karate Kid, New Mutants: Asgardian Wars, and Kang. Mignola cover.

“1970s and ‘80s Legion of Super-Heroes!” LEVITZ interview, the Legion’s Honored Dead, the Cosmic Boy miniseries, a Time Trapper history, the New Adventures of Superboy, Legion fantasy cover gallery by JOHN WATSON, plus BATES, COCKRUM, CONWAY, COLON, GIFFEN, GRELL, JANES, KUPPERBERG, LaROCQUE, LIGHTLE, SCHAFFENBERGER, SHERMAN, STATON, SWAN, WAID, & more! COCKRUM cover!

TENTH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE! Revisit the 100th, 200th, 300th, 400th, and 500th issues of ‘70s and ‘80s favorites: Adventure, Amazing Spider-Man, Avengers, Batman, Brave & Bold, Casper, Detective, Flash, Green Lantern, Showcase, Superman, Thor, Wonder Woman, and more! With APARO, BARR, ENGLEHART, POLLARD, SEKOWSKY, SIMONSON, STATON, and WOLFMAN. DAN JURGENS and RAY McCARTHY cover.

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“Incredible Hulk in the Bronze Age!” Looks into Hulk’s mind, his role as a team player, his TV show and cartoon, merchandising, Hulk newspaper strip, Teen Hulk, villain history of the Abomination, art and artifacts by SAL BUSCEMA, JOHN BYRNE, PETER DAVID, KENNETH JOHNSON, BILL MANTLO, AL MILGROM, EARL NOREM, ROGER STERN, HERB TRIMPE, LEN WEIN, new cover by TRIMPE and GERHARD!

“Tryouts, One-Shots, & One-Hit Wonders”! Marvel Premiere, Marvel Spotlight, Marvel Feature, Strange Tales, Showcase, First Issue Special, New Talent Showcase, DC’s Dick Tracy tabloid, Sherlock Holmes, Marvel’s Generic Comic Books, Bat-Squad, Crusader, & Swashbuckler, with BRUNNER, CARDY, COLAN, FRADON, GRELL, PLOOG, TRIMPE, and an ARTHUR ADAMS “Clea” cover!

“Robots” issue! Cyborg, Metal Men, Robotman, Red Tornado, Mister Atom, the Vision, Jocasta, Shogun Warriors, and Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot, plus the legacy of Brainiac! Featuring the riveting work of DARROW, GERBER, INFANTINO, PAUL KUPPERBERG, MILLER, MOENCH, PEREZ, SIMONSON, STATON, THOMAS, WOLFMAN, and more, behind a Metal Men cover by MICHAEL ALLRED.

“Batman’s Partners!” MIKE W. BARR and ALAN DAVIS on their Detective Comics, Batman and the Outsiders, Nightwing flies solo, Man-Bat history, Commissioner Gordon, the last days of World’s Finest, Bat-Mite, the Batmobile, plus Dark Knight’s girl Robin! Featuring work by APARO, BUSIEK, DITKO, KRAFT, MILGROM, MILLER, PÉREZ, WOLFMAN, and more, with a cover by ALAN DAVIS and MARK FARMER.

“Bronze Age Fantastic Four!” The animated FF, the FF radio show of 1975, Human Torch goes solo, Galactus villain history, FF Mego figures… and the Impossible Man! Exploring work by RICH BUCKLER, JOHN BUSCEMA, JOHN BYRNE, GERRY CONWAY, STEVE ENGLEHART, GEORGE PÉREZ, KEITH POLLARD, ROY THOMAS, LEN WEIN, MARV WOLFMAN, and more! Cover by KEITH POLLARD and JOE RUBINSTEIN.

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“‘80s Independents!” In-depth looks at PAUL CHADWICK’s Concrete, DAVE SIM’s Cerebus the Aardvark, and RICHARD AND WENDY PINI’s Elfquest! Plus see ‘80s independent comics go Hollywood, DAVID SCROGGY remembers Pacific Comics, TRINA ROBBINS’ California Girls, and DENIS KITCHEN’s star-studded horror/sci-fi anthology Death Rattle. Cover by PAUL CHADWICK!

“Let’s Get Small!” Marvel’s Micronauts, The Atom in the Bronze Age, JAN STRNAD and GIL KANE’s Sword of the Atom, the rocky relationship of Ant-Man the Wasp, Gold Key’s Microbots, Super Jrs., DC Digests, and Marvel Value Stamps. Featuring the work of PAT BRODERICK, JACKSON GUICE, ELLIOT S! MAGGIN, BILL MANTLO, AL MILGROM, ALEX SAVIUK, ROGER STERN, LEN WEIN, & more. Cover by PAT BRODERICK!

“When Comics Were Fun!” HEMBECK cover and gallery, Plastic Man, Blue Devil, Marvel’s Star Comics imprint, VALENTINO’s normalman, Bronze Age’s goofiest Superman stories, and the Batman/Dick Tracy team-up you didn’t see! Featuring MAX ALLAN COLLINS, PARIS CULLINS, RAMONA FRADON, ALAN KUPPERBERG, MISHKIN & COHN, STEVE SKEATES, JOE STATON, CURT SWAN, and more!

“Weird Issue!” Batman’s Weirdest TeamUps, ORLANDO’s Weird Adventure Comics, Weird War Tales, Weird Mystery Tales, DITKO’s Shade the Changing Man and Stalker, CHAYKIN’s Iron Wolf, CRUMB’s Weirdo, and STARLIN and WRIGHTSON’s The Weird! Featuring JIM APARO, LUIS DOMINGUEZ, MICHAEL FLEISHER, BOB HANEY, PAUL LEVITZ, and more. Batman and Deadman cover by ALAN CRADDOCK.

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Volume 1, Number 79 April 2015 Celebrating the Best Comics of the '70s, '80s, '90s, and Beyond!

Comics’ Bronze Age and Beyond!

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow DESIGNER Rich Fowlks COVER ARTIST Allen Milgrom COVER COLORIST Glenn Whitmore COVER DESIGNER Michael Kronenberg PROOFREADER Rob Smentek

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BACK SEAT DRIVER: The Action Heroes: They’re Not Half-Bad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 A quick history of Charlton Comics and its hodgepodge-heroes FLASHBACK: Inaction Heroes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 Charlton Spotlight editor Michael Ambrose examines the Action Heroes’ pre–DC purgatory GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: Blockbuster Weekly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 Bob Greenberger goes behind the scenes of DC’s aborted Action Heroes revival FLASHBACK: Re-Meet the Beetle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 The Blue Beetle is rebooted at DC Comics FLASHBACK: Quantum Entanglements: Captain Atom’s Rebirth in the 1980s . . . . . . . . .37 This atomic hero leapt from 1968 to 1986—and from Charlton to DC FLASHBACK: Getting Down and Dirty with Peacemaker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .57 Paul Kupperberg and Tod Smith’s blast(er) from the past FLASHBACK: Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63 Mike Collins relocates Pete Morisi’s reluctant hero to the UK INTERVIEW: Dave Gibbons: Drawing the Watchmen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69 The artist of one of comics’ most celebrated projects discusses its connections to the Action Heroes GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: Moore and Gibbons: Before Watchmen . . . . . . . . . .76 In a coda to his interview, Dave Gibbons reveals some projects he had hoped to do with Alan Moore BACK TALK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77 Reader reaction to our FF issue and more

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 Allen Milgrom. Captain Atom and the Ghost TM & © DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2015 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows Publishing. BACK ISSUE is a TM of TwoMorrows Publishing. ISSN 1932-6904. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING. Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age •

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Back cover of Americomics #3 (Aug. 1983), by Rik Levins and Bill Black. Blue Beetle TM & © DC Comics.

SPECIAL THANKS James Kingman Michael Ambrose Ted Kord Cary Bates Paul Kupperberg Bill Black Kevin Maguire Pat Broderick Robert Menzies Michael Browning Allen Milgrom Mike Collins Comic Book Resources Elizabeth Millsted Corpus Christi College Ian Millsted Dennis O’Neil Cambridge Bob Rozakis Paris Cullins Tod Smith Andrew Czekalski Anthony Snyder DC Comics Andrew Standish Daniel DeAngelo Roy Thomas Michael Dunne Len Wein Scott Dutton Greg Weisman Excelsior Comics John Wells T. C. Ford Michael Zeno Dave Gibbons Grand Comics Dedicated to the Database Robert Greenberger memory of Dick Giordano Heritage Comics Auctions Dan Johnson

2 • BACK ISSUE • Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age

Michael Eury

Long before Watchmen’s Nite Owl, Dr. Manhattan, Rorschach, Silk Spectre, Ozymandius, and the Comedian, there were Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, the Question, Nightshade, Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt, and the Peacemaker. And let’s not forget Sarge Steel, Judomaster, and Son of Vulcan. If you started reading comic books in the Bronze Age or later, you missed the original appearances of these so-called “Action Heroes.” And even if you were reading comics during the Silver Age, you still might have missed their titles, due to the spotty and unpredictable distribution of their publisher’s releases. “Spotty and unpredictable” might also describe this company’s product. Quality often took a back seat to volume, as its presses were primed to crank, crank, crank, rarely slowing down. These printed comic-book pages might be poorly trimmed, with ragged edges, or their staples might be misaligned, or their artwork marred with ink blotches. Sometimes word balloons and captions were typeset to save the cost of paying a letterer (earning the credit “Lettered by A. Machine”). And in the battle for newsstand rack space, since it lacked the name recognition boasted by the majors, this company’s comics sometimes remained bundled and stacked in warehouses or storerooms, only seeing the light of day after their logos were torn off to earn retailer credit. To top it off, its founders started their company after meeting in prison! Such was the wild, but wonderful, history of Charlton Comics, that little-comics-house-that-could, which turned out everything from Abbott and Costello to Zoo Funnies from its frantic funnybook factory in Derby, Connecticut.

MAKING MAGAZINES FOR A SONG Actually, comic books weren’t Charlton’s primary product, at least not in the beginning. In the early 1930s, Italian immigrant brick mason John Santangelo, in an effort to impress his music-loving girlfriend, started publishing inexpensively produced magazines that printed the lyrics of popular songs. Little did he realize that he was breaking the law, and he was convicted of copyright infringement and sentenced to one year in prison. There he met a disbarred lawyer named Edward Levy, and after their release, Santangelo and Levy started Charlton Publishing, legally obtaining the rights to song lyrics and publishing several successful music magazines including Hit Parader, as well as puzzle magazines. For their

Ready for Action (opposite) Son of Vulcan (art by Dick Giordano), Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt (art by Pete Morisi), Judomaster (by Frank McLaughlin), and Peacemaker (by Pat Boyette). (this page) Sarge Steel (by Giordano) and the Question (by Steve Ditko). Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt TM & © Peter A. Morisi estate. All other characters TM & © DC Comics. Hit Parader © Hit Parader Magazine.

Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age •

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Blue Beetle in the Golden and Silver Ages (left) Fox’s Blue Beetle #2 (May–June 1940). Cover by Lou Fine. (right) BB’s kindasorta mid-1950s revival, in Charlton’s Space Adventures #13 (Oct.–Nov. 1954). Cover by Al Fago. Blue Beetle TM & © DC Comics.

venture they operated on the cheap, headquartering their enterprise crusading commodities (mainly Superman, Batman, and Wonder not in the nation’s publishing capitol of New York City but instead Woman) remaining in print. in Derby, Connecticut, a hamlet that at one time housed a corsetWhat a weird time to release a title starring a costumed character! manufacturing plant (its current motto is “Connecticut’s Smallest City”). But that’s exactly what Charlton did by publishing the adventures of Blue Expenses were further cut by Charlton’s purchase of a used printing Beetle. The character first popped up at Charlton on the Al Fago-drawn press. Charlton’s plant was a seven-and-a-half-acre facility, where every cover of Space Adventures #13 (Oct.–Nov. 1954). BB returned in the next aspect of the company’s business was located under one roof. issue, quickly followed by four issues of Blue Beetle, beginning with issue Charlton trickled into the comics game in the mid-1940s, with Zoo #18, cover-dated February 1955. This was really more of a product Funnies and Marvels of Science among its first entries. It wasn’t until the mop-up than a genre experiment; at the time Charlton was engulfing 1950s that Charlton’s comic division picked up its pace, with properties from publishers that were going belly-up. Also, it was editor Al Fago (and later, editor Pat Masulli) grinding out more economical for Santangelo to keep Charlton’s printing generic fare that capitalized on whatever trend would presses spinning 24-7 than to turn them off and on, so sell: Westerns, hot rods, crime, girls’ romance, funny this Blue Beetle comic-book revival was little more than animals (with its own version of Casper the Friendly product to be churned out between the printing of Ghost, titled Timmy the Timid Ghost) … you name the latest music and crossword periodicals. it, even “superheroes” (with its Mighty Mouse Blue Beetle was a familiar character to readers imitation, Atomic Mouse). In March 1955, company who had been around for a few years. He was one of owner Santangelo concocted a new way to pinch the many colorful crimefighters rushed into print pennies: He offered his freelance artists staff after National (DC) Comics’ Action Comics #1 (June employment with some benefits, but reduced their 1938) starring Superman proved an instant sensation. page rates from $20 to $13. Many artists rejected Fox Features Syndicate, not Charlton, was the original this offer and sought work elsewhere, but a young home of Blue Beetle. He was actually policeman journeyman illustrator named Dick Giordano, who Dan Garret, who donned a blue suit and fedora for dick giordano was one month shy of walking down the aisle, opted after-hours crimebusting when first spied in Mystery in for job security. (Santangelo sliced page rates even Men Comics #1 (Aug. 1939). Soon he would appear in more later that year after flood waters from Hurricane Diane destroyed blue chain-mail tights and a cowl, sporting a scarab motif and superhuman inventory. As Giordano related to me in the 2003 TwoMorrows strength as well as many comic books from Fox and Holyhoke Publishing, biography Dick Giordano: Changing Comics, One Day At a Time, “At this plus a radio serial and short-lived comic strip. In 1950, his heyday had time we didn’t know John had full flood insurance—and had collected passed … until Charlton picked up his publication rights and released on it.” Page rates soon inched back up to $13.) those 1954 and 1955 issues, which reprinted Golden Age material.

A MYSTERY MAN RETURNS

MAN IN SPACE AND MEN OF ACTION

The mid-1950s were a miserable time for the comic-book industry: Television was robbing comics’ readership by providing an enticing new form of entertainment, delivered for free right into the family living room; Dr. Frederic Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent indicted comics as the root of juvenile delinquency and sparked a witch hunt that nearly torched the entire business; and the superhero boom of the Golden Age had sputtered to a near-halt, with only the best-known

By the mid- to late 1950s, science fiction was a fad, prompted in part by the United States’ “space race” with Russia. Satellites, dogs, and chimps were being rocketed into orbit, and Americans were fed the expectation that jetpacks, flying cars, and lunar hotels would one day be the norm (ahem … we’re still waiting). Charlton blasted off into this trend with titles like Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds, anthologies whose stories took readers to the Moon—and beyond.

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In Space Adventures #33 (Mar. 1960), artist Steve Ditko—working with writer Joe Gill, a workhorse whose smoking typewriter spewed out thousands of comic-book pages— introduced the superhero Captain Atom. Originally Allen Adam, the hero gained nuclearbased superpowers after miraculously surviving an atomic explosion in a sabotaged rocketship. Captain Atom, in his sparkling gold-and-red costume, appeared as a cover feature in a handful of issues of Space Adventures in 1960 and 1961. Soon thereafter, superheroes were back in fashion: DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz had steered successful, updated revivals of The Flash, Green Lantern, and the Justice Society of America (as the Justice League of America), among others, and Marvel Comics’ quirky, quarrelsome superheroes were taking off, starting with Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four and including a new sensation, The Amazing Spider-Man, scripted by Lee and drawn by Captain Atom co-creator Steve Ditko. Charlton’s John Santangelo ordered editor Pat Masulli to create superhero books for their line. In 1964, Charlton revived Blue Beetle—now Dan Garrett (note the change in spelling from the Golden Age’s “Garret”)—reimagining him as an archaeologist who received superpowers from an Egyptian magic scarab. He headlined five new issues (Blue Beetle #1–5), then continued the run the next year with an additional five issues, resuming another title’s numbering and being released as Blue Beetle #50–54. Blue Beetle was produced by writer Joe Gill (!) and artists Bill Fraccio and Tony Tallarico. Next up came two reality-based concepts with superhero-like elements. Essentially Charlton’s version of the Blackhawks, the Fightin’ Five (Fightin’ 5 on their covers) premiered in their July 1964 cover-dated first issue, actually #28, one of Charlton’s many series renumberings. Editor Masulli snuck misleading copy onto the series’ premiere cover (by Giordano) to lure superhero readers: the team was billed as “America’s SUPER SQUAD!” and each of its heroes was labeled on the cover with bold “FF” I.D.s that might have made Marvel’s lawyers shout “It’s clobberin’ time!” had they been paying attention. And to prove that no hot trend was beyond milking, in the spirit of the acronym-named international threats SMERSH and SPECTRE popularized in the ultra-hot James Bond secret-agent franchise, another of Masulli’s cover blurbs stacked the first letter of each of the Fightin’ Five’s names to spell out “F.I.G.H.T.” (that fall, television’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E. would continue this much-copied craze). Writer Joe Gill (!!) was joined by penciler Bill Montes and inker Ernie Bache on Charlton’s FF. Following later that year was Sarge Steel, a concept credited to editor Masulli on the splash page of Sarge Steel #1 (Dec. 1964). Here Charlton once again exploited the spy craze while sprinkling in something you might find in a Marvel comic: a metal hand for its hero. Even the series’ logo conveyed the book’s knack for existing in two worlds: its “SARGE” depicted a smoking firearm crowning its letter “A,” while its “STEEL” was forged in riveted lettering that might have tricked an inattentive Iron Man reader into buying a copy. Dick Giordano, who by this time had gone freelance but still commanded a wealth of Charlton assignments, teamed with scribe Joe Gill (!!!) to introduce Sarge Steel under editor Masulli; Fightin’ 5’s Montes and Bache later took over as artists. The character’s adventures were related in a casebook fashion, with file cards and case numbers assigned to each story. Sarge Steel started as a private-eye book, but by issue #6 its “Private Detective” cover subtitle was replaced by “Special Agent,” signaling a shift to more fantastic adventures. (For the record, Sarge Steel predates Marvel’s “Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.” feature, which bowed in Strange Tales #135, cover-dated Aug. 1965. However, Fury—introduced in early 1963 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in a World War II-based combat title—first appeared in 1960s Marvel continuity as a CIA agent in Fantastic Four #21, Dec. 1963.) Masulli also created Charlton’s next superhero, Son of Vulcan, parroting Marvel’s Thor. Instead of employing the Thunder God’s Norse pantheon, Masulli turned to the Roman gods. In Son of Vulcan’s origin from Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds #46 (May 1965), newsman Johnny Mann angrily condemned the gods for the horrors of warfare. He was summoned to Mount Olympus, where the flame god Vulcan took him under his wing and allowed him to use his powers on Earth to right wrongs. Fraccio and Tallarico were the Son of Vulcan art team, with Joe Gill (!!) replacing Pat Masulli as writer beginning with the hero’s second adventure. Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds was retitled Son of Vulcan with issue #49, but was canceled with issue #50—an issue written by then-newcomer Roy Thomas, his first professional script. Judomaster leapt off of editor Masulli’s desk starting in, of all places, Special War Series #4 (Nov. 1965), which during its four-issue run appeared to be a Showcase-like battle book, each issue featuring a different theme and logo (#1: D-Day, #2: Attack, and #3: War and Attack). Written by Joe Gill (no surprise there!) and illustrated by Frank McLaughlin, Judomaster was set during World War II. Its star, Army sergeant Rip Jagger, was taught martial arts by an island chieftain after Rip saved the chief’s daughter in the South Pacific. A revival of Captain Atom was the next superhero book from Masulli, picking up with issue #78 (Dec. 1965)—continuing another series’ numbering—with Gill and Ditko reuniting, joined by inker Rocke Mastroserio. The last superhero book to originate as a result of Santangelo’s mandate to Masulli was Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt, created by Peter (Pete) A. Morisi, a police officer who moonlighted as a comic-book writer/artist, hiding behind the “badge” of the pseudonym “PAM.” Peter Cannon

Atomic Ace and Charlton’s FF (top) Meet Captain Atom, in Space Adventures #33 (Mar. 1960). Cover by Steve Ditko. (bottom) With all the “FF”s on this Dick Giordano cover to Fightin’ 5 #28 (July 1964), you’d almost expect ol’ Doc Doom to stick in his armored head from off-panel. Captain Atom TM & © DC Comics. Fightin’ Five © 1964 Charlton Comics.

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Before They Were “Action Heroes” Examples of Charlton’s superheroes from the editorial desk of Pat Masulli: (top) Original cover art by Bill Fraccio and Dick Giordano to Blue Beetle #5 (Mar.–Apr. 1965). Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). (inset) Son of Vulcan #49 (Nov. 1965), featuring the hero in a new costume designed by future Legion of Super-Heroes/ X-Men artist Dave Cockrum (note his cover credit). Cover art by Fraccio and Rocke Mastroserio. (bottom) An undated pinup by Pete Morisi featuring his three most noteworthy Charlton characters: Montana Kid, Peter Cannon– Thunderbolt, and Johnny Dynamite. Courtesy of Heritage. TM & © DC Comics. Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt TM & © Peter A. Morisi estate.

was an American orphan raised in the Himalayas and taught the secrets of Eastern mysticism. He premiered in Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt #1 (Jan. 1966), which was followed by a ten-issue run continuing the Son of Vulcan numbering, starting with Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt #51 (Mar.–Apr. 1966).

CREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE DEPARTMENT While it’s tempting to repeat the common mantra that Charlton was the comics biz’s greatest copycat, most of the aforementioned heroes eschewed the campy humor or larger-than-life drama that permeated other publishers’ superhero titles. Charlton’s was a realm of action, not fantasy. Also, Dick Giordano is often credited for being the editor behind the Action Heroes. Dick was indeed a driving force, but editor Pat Masullli was responsible for many of the characters’ launches and for coining the term “Action Hero” (on Son of Vulcan’s first cover). It’s also interesting to note that Charlton was a forerunner in another comics trend: mystery titles with horror hosts. Many fans point to the Joe Orlando-edited House of Mystery #174 (May–June 1968), with Cain as the House’s caretaker, as the springboard for the soft-horror/story-host fad that was hot in the late ’60s through the mid-’70s, but Charlton beat DC to the punch by two years with May 1966’s Ghostly Tales #55 (which continued Blue Beetle’s numbering), originally hosted by Mr. L. Dedd. The Many Ghosts of Dr. Graves followed a year later, also predating House of Mystery. In fairness, however, Ghostly Tales—a color comic book—was no doubt a response to Warren Publishing’s black-andwhite horror comics magazines, which started with the Uncle Creepyhosted Creepy in 1964; of course, Warren’s horror mags, and their respective hosts, were updatings of EC’s uber-graphic spookfests of the 1950s, such as Tales from the Crypt. What’s old is new again….

THE ACTION HEROES BRAND Changes were afoot at Charlton during this period of random costumedhero titles. John Santangelo’s son, Charles, assumed management of the company and promoted Pat Masulli to the position of executive editor. Masulli now oversaw and art-directed Charlton’s magazines as well as the comics line. He clearly needed help, and Dick Giordano, who had been working as a freelance artist for five years, returned to Charlton’s staff as its managing editor. While Dick had to get up to speed on production matters, he brought a creative sensibility to the company’s comic-book line that had not previously existed. He nurtured and supported talent, slowly increased their page rates, and stitched together Charlton’s rag-tag superhero properties into a cohesive universe. “I always preferred heroes who could do things that we supposedly would be able to do,” Dick told me in one of our interviews for his 6 • BACK ISSUE • Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age

biography. These characters were not superheroes, but instead Action Heroes. “That name was not an accident,” Giordano claimed. In addition to catering to his own personal preference, he felt that branding Charlton’s characters as Action Heroes differentiated them from the characters of DC, Marvel and other publishers. Only Captain Atom violated his dictum, and Dick responded by reducing the hero’s power level (and changing his costume). By the time he was entrenched into his desk at Charlton in early 1966, Dick had a workload of 34 bimonthly titles—17 books a month—which he handled without an assistant editor. His willingness to allow writers and illustrators artistic exploration and creative indulgence attracted talented newcomers like writers Denny O’Neil and Steve Skeates and brought a smile to the face of plotter/artist Steve Ditko, who was bolting from an unhappy relationship with Marvel Comics on The Amazing Spider-Man and on the Dr. Strange feature in Strange Tales. Giordano also was the first comics editor to hire artist Jim Aparo. The first Action Hero series to bear Giordano’s editorial credit was Judomaster #89 (May–June 1966), a spin-off from the high-kicking hero’s one-shot a half-year earlier in Special War Series #4. Written and drawn by Dick’s sometimes-art partner and friend Frank McLaughlin, Judomaster introduced hallmarks of Giordano’s Action Hero tenure: lively letters columns and backup features. Judomaster initially starred in his own book’s backups, but by Giordano’s third issue, #91, the editor himself returned to the drawing board for a Sarge Steel backup series

written by Joe Gill (of course!). Judomaster’s sidekick, Tiger, was also introduced during Dick’s tenure, in issue #91. Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt #53 (Aug. 1966) was Giordano’s first issue of that title as editor. In issue #54, the Sentinels, a sci-fi feature written by Gary Friedrich and drawn by Sam Grainger, became its backup (with one-hit wonder the Prankster, an oddball costumed hero created by O’Neil and Aparo, appearing as the backup in the last issue of the title, #60). Pete Morisi eventually left the book and was replaced by Charlton stalwart Pat Boyette. Dick took over Captain Atom with issue #82 (Sept. 1966), which guest-starred Nightshade, in her first appearance. This “Darling of Darkness” was actually Eve Eden, a US senator’s daughter, who donned a wig— not unlike Black Canary—to fight crime. She eventually became Captain Atom’s backup, starting in issue #87 (Aug. 1967), written by David A. Kaler and drawn by Jim Aparo. But before Nightshade’s feature, another Captain Atom backup caught readers’ attention… …Blue Beetle. Starting as the backup in Captain Atom #83 (Nov. 1966) and running through issue #86, this version of Blue Beetle, the sinewy swinger with bug-eyed goggles, is the one most recognized by BACK ISSUE readers. The brainchild of plotter/artist Steve Ditko, this BB was inventor Ted Kord, a legacy character who followed in Dan Garrett’s superheroic footsteps. Meanwhile, between Giordano’s first and second bimonthly Captain Atom issues, an old favorite of the editor’s squeezed itself back onto Charlton’s schedule. Sarge Steel, which had disappeared from Charlton’s

Bronze Age Prototypes? Fans of Master of Kung Fu and The Punisher, take note—these Action Heroes were there first! Original art to the splash pages of (left) Judomaster #89 (May–June 1966), written and drawn by Frank McLaughlin; and (right) Peacemaker #1 (Mar. 1967), written by Joe Gill and drawn by Pat Boyette. Courtesy of Heritage. TM & © DC Comics.

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schedule after the Masulli-edited issue #8 (Apr. 1966), was back—but now retitled as Secret Agent, riding that still-popular craze. (Around this time, Gold Key Comics published two issues of its own Secret Agent series, based upon the TV show of the same name, a US-renaming of the British import Danger Man, starring Patrick McGoohan.) Gill, Montes, and Bache were back, with a Giordano-drawn cover. The next— and final—issue would not appear until one year later. Editor Giordano returned to the drawing board to illustrate the Sarge Steel tale in Secret Agent #10 (Oct. 1967), which featured a Steve Skeates script. That issue’s backup was Tiffany Sinn, “The C.I.A. Sweetheart,” by Kaler and Aparo. The same month Blue Beetle hopped into the back pages of Captain Atom, Giordano took over Fightin’ 5, with issue #40 (Nov. 1966). While the FF were ostensibly separate from Charlton’s costumed champions, a full-fledged Action Hero—the Peacemaker, a precursor to weapons-loaded anti-heroes like the Punisher—bowed as the backup in Fightin’ 5 #40. That feature’s artist was Pat Boyette and its writer was the omnipresent Joe Gill. Giordano’s Action Hero universe continued to expand with 1967cover-dated books. Fightin’ 5 was axed with #41, but it traded places with its backup as The Peacemaker #1 (Mar. 1967) premiered, with Fightin’ 5 short stories bringing up the rear. That same month, Captain Atom #85 introduced the zany villain team of Punch and Jewelee. Steve Ditko’s buggy crimefighter got his own series starting with Blue Beetle #1 (July 1967), making way for Nightshade to take his berth in the back of Captain Atom. Blue Beetle’s backup feature was the Question, Ditko’s faceless objectivist who would achieve great acclaim two decades later. Among the house ads pushing the Action Heroes was one where editor Giordano, playfully mocking Stan Lee’s hyperbolic promos at Marvel, touted his five not-quite-superhero books as being “not half bad.” Despite this exciting expansion, the Action Hero line was about to be abruptly derailed. While he was being flooded with “overwhelmingly positive” fan mail about the Action Heroes, Giordano was disheartened to discover that his titles were selling at only around 18 percent of their print run. He nosed around and discovered that approximately 75 percent of Charlton’s comic books were remaining bundled in warehouses, succumbing to a crowded magazine marketplace where recognizable titles were selected for distribution over lesser-known ones. Most comic-book consumers were not even getting the chance to try an issue of Captain Atom or The Peacemaker.

“Not Half Bad” (top) Giordano’s jokey 1967 house ad. (bottom) Under Giordano, backups were often coverblurbed, such as Blue Beetle in Captain Atom #85 (Mar. 1967) and the Question in Blue Beetle #1 (June 1967). Ditko pencils on both, with Mastroserio inks on the Cap cover. Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt TM & © Peter A. Morisi estate. All other characters TM & © DC Comics.

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Other factors were also in play to siphon creative energy away from Charlton’s Action Heroes. In an effort to ward off Marvel Comics’ rapidly increasing popularity, DC Comics publisher Irwin Donenfeld tapped Carmine Infantino, best known as the artist of The Flash and for his dynamic cover designs, to become DC’s art director. Several DC editors deemed obsolete were slowly being squeezed out of the company, replaced by artist/editors like Joe Orlando. A sect of writers that had the courage (or, from the perspective of DC’s then-management, the audacity) to stand up for royalties and benefits was similarly put out to pasture. The recruitment of new blood was DC’s goal, and Infantino lured Steve Ditko to come to DC to create new series (Beware the Creeper and The Hawk and the Dove). Ditko “came to my Charlton office to ask me if I had any interest in working for DC,” Dick related in Changing Comics, One Day At a Time. “I said yes, so Steve set up an appointment for me…” Soon, Dick Giordano became a DC Comics editor, not realizing that longtime editor George Kashdan was getting the boot to make room for him. Giordano admitted to me in his biography that his talent pool was, it seems, DC’s primary objective. When he announced to Donenfeld that he was bringing Jim Aparo, Denny O’Neil, and Steve Skeates with him from Charlton, the bossman retorted, according to Dick’s recollection, “Of course. Why do you think we’re hiring you?” (That ego deflation aside, DC management never regretted hiring Dick Giordano. After another freelance detour in the 1970s and his co-establishment of the Continuity Associates graphics-arts studio with Neal Adams, Giordano returned to DC as an editor in the early 1980s and soon became its editorial director for a long and fruitful stint.)

MEANWHILE, AT CHARLTON COMICS Sal Gentile took over Giordano’s editor’s desk at Charlton, and the Action Heroes withered away by the end of 1967; George Wildman was later hired by Gentile as his assistant, and Wildman eventually took

over as the company’s main editor. Charlton Comics started to reinvent itself as a publisher of licensed titles, snatching up a host of King Features properties such as The Phantom, Popeye, and Beetle Bailey. Beginning in 1970, Charlton brokered a deal to produce Hanna-Barbera comic books, a license previously held by Gold Key Comics. TV favorites such as Huckleberry Hound and Magilla Gorilla became Charlton books. The Flintstones was a particularly popular Charlton franchise, spawning a line of spin-offs including Barney and Betty Rubble, Dino, and The Great Gazoo. Charlton continued to publish its own war, Western, romance, and mystery books (the latter enjoying an expansion during the horror/monster craze of the 1970s), but for most of the ’70s Charlton’s lineup was torn from the pages of TV Guide: Bobby Sherman, David Cassidy, The Partridge Family, Bugaloos, Speed Buggy, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, and Underdog were among its books of the day. The mid-1970s witnessed several creative flourishes at Charlton, most notably E-Man, Nicola Cuti and Joe Staton’s atypical superhero book which premiered in 1973 and ran for ten issues before being canceled … then revived in the early 1980s at First Comics, followed by several other publishers (Cuti was also a Charlton editor beginning in the early 1970s). Yang, by Joe Gill (who else?) and artist Warren Sattler, bowed in 1973 and wooed many martial-arts fans. Gill’s hard-hitting detective series The Vengeance Squad, drawn by Frank Bolle, began its short run in 1975. The Charlton Bullseye was a fanzine produced by Bob Layton and the CPL gang starting in 1975; while not published by the company itself, it was Charlton’s answer to DC’s The Amazing World of DC Comics and Marvel’s FOOM, and gave the Action Heroes another few outings. Another Bronze Age favorite that launched in ’75 was the sci-fi title Doomsday+1, which put artist John Byrne on the radar of many readers. Charlton’s non-cartoon TV tie-in titles of the mid-1970s are fondly remembered, especially short-lived magazine

I Spy A triple shot from editor Giordano’s Secret Agent #10 (Oct. 1967): (inset) Dick drew its cover and added its Marvel-esque cover blurb. (left) This Skeates/ Giordano original art page (courtesy of Heritage) explains, in panel 2, Sarge Steel’s dual role as a P.I. and secret agent. From the story “The Case of the Third Hand” (File #113). (right) The splash panel to its Tiffany Sinn backup, by Kaler and Aparo. Sarge Steel TM & © DC Comics. Tiffany Sinn © 1967 Charlton Comics.

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versions of The Six Million Dollar Man, Space: 1999, and Emergency!, with their gorgeous painted covers by the likes of Neal Adams, Earl Norem, and Gray Morrow. The 1980s were unkind to Charlton Comics. With the advent of the direct-sales market, Charlton’s market share shriveled. Its line shifted to all reprints, edited by John Wren, and after a few near-death experiences Charlton finally closed its doors in 1985, its final comics appearing with January and February 1986 cover dates. Many fans are unaware, however, that a Charlton reboot was planned at that time. According to T. C. Ford, Charlton’s last editor-in-chief, “That Fall was to have seen a rebirth of Charlton as a Direct-only line of comics, produced by me: Charlton Bullseye Special, Return of the Vengeance Squad (with early art by Amanda Conner), Atomic Mouse by Steve Hauk (who later drew the Fish Police spinoff Fish Schticks), and other projects.” A variety of circumstances led to Ford’s exodus from Charlton prior to the publication of those series, leaving the aforementioned reprints as Charlton’s last hurrah. (T. C. Ford will be sharing details of the unrealized Charlton-Direct projects in a “Greatest Stories Never Told” installment in a future edition of BACK ISSUE.) Charlton’s Derby plant was razed in 1999. However, the publisher has lived on, at least in spirit: Argo Press’ Charlton Spotlight, a fanzine edited and published by Michael Ambrose, has been in print since 2000; for more details, visit charltonspotlight.net. And the tribute comic book The Charlton Arrow, an anthology masterminded by editors Fester Faceplant, Mort Todd, and Roger McKenzie, premiered in 2014; it features creators and characters familiar to longtime Charlton readers. Positive response led to Charlton Neo Media, a resurrection of the Charlton Comics line under the direction of editor-in-chief Mort Todd, executive editor Paul Kupperberg, managing editor McKenzie, and assistant editor Dan Johnson (yes, the same Dan Johnson who frequently writes for BACK ISSUE). Among Charlton Neo’s upcoming projects is the return of E-Man, reuniting Nick Cuti and Joe Staton. For more details, visit http://charltonneo.blogspot.com/.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE ACTION HEROES? As you’ll see in detail in the pages that follow, most of Charlton’s Action Heroes were purchased by DC Comics in 1983, while the rights to Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt eventually became copyrighted to creator Pete Morisi’s estate. Before they migrated to DC, Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, and company made scattershot Bronze Age appearances, as you’ll read in Michael Ambrose’s “Inaction Heroes” article, following. While this issue surveys the “afterlives” of the Action Heroes’ major players, some readers will notice the absence of an article about the Question. Since he was covered in BACK ISSUE #20, the Question is only mentioned in passing in this edition—but hopefully this article’s closing image will satisfy fans of the faceless fighter. Arguably DC’s most famous use of the Charlton Action Heroes occurred in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ 1986 magnum opus, Watchmen. This issue’s interview with Gibbons examines how a project starring Captain Atom and company evolved into one of comics’ most influential series. Many of the Action Heroes’ secondary characters were also absorbed into the post–Crisis DC Universe. An article in a future issue will further explore the DC careers of those Charlton minor leaguers. But for the record, here’s a quick look at their DC Universe whereabouts, pre–New 52: Sarge Steel became a Nick Fury-like front man for a top-secret government agency, starting with Legends #3 (Jan. 1987). Nightshade became a long-standing member of the Suicide Squad, then popped up in several books, including Eclipso, Day of Vengeance, and Shadowpact. The wacky his-and-her troublemaking team of Punch and Jewelee also became operatives in Suicide Squad. The 1999–2000 miniseries L.A.W.: Living Assault Weapons, written and inked by Bob McLeod and penciled by Dick Giordano, gathered together most

Ghost of a Chance (top) From the Heritage Archives, an unpublished Steve Ditko cover originally intended for Captain Atom #89 (Dec. 1967)—which, incidentally, turned out to be the series’ final issue. (bottom) This 1975 house ad promoted the new Charlton Bullseye magazine, which dusted off the Action Heroes. Note that Bullseye #1’s cover art is also the cover of this issue of BI. And the subscription form lists Charlton’s mid-1970s lineup. Characters TM & © DC Comics.

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Not Your Father’s Action Heroes Courtesy of Heritage, Alex Ross’ character studies for Kingdom Come’s versions of four Action Heroes. Thunderbolt’s look harkens back to the Golden Age Daredevil (Pete Morisi originally intended to revive Daredevil in the 1960s before DD artist Charles Biro’s royalty demand influenced him to instead create an original character, Peter Cannon). Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt TM & © Peter A. Morisi estate. All other characters TM & © DC Comics.

of the Action Heroes, and transformed Judomaster’s one-time sidekick Tiger into the menace Avatar. Judomaster himself was also kicked around in DC books, poor guy. Once 1985–1986’s Crisis on Infinite Earths streamlined DC’s multiple worlds (including the newly acquired Charlton Universe, a.k.a. Earth-4) into one DC Earth, Judomaster and Tiger’s World War IIbased adventures made the duo tailor made for writer/editor Roy Thomas’ All-Star Squadron. Thomas tells BACK ISSUE, “Neither ever appeared in All-Star Squadron, though I did intend to include them eventually.” Roughly a year after Crisis, however, All-Star Squadron was canceled, dashing that hope. A second version of Judomaster was introduced in 1994’s Justice League Quarterly #14 (see the Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt article), and yet another Judomaster, a female, was seen in late 2006 in Birds of Prey #100. Alternate versions of Judomaster, Peacemaker, Thunderbolt, and other Action Heroes also appeared in Mark Waid and Alex Ross’ 1996 epic Kingdom Come. Son of Vulcan made a don’t-blink-or-you’ll-misshim cameo in Crisis on Infinite Earths #12 and got a nod in both (comic and loose-leaf) incarnations of Who’s Who. Roy Thomas, who penned the hero’s last Charlton story, included Son of Vulcan in two 1986

comics he wrote, All-Star Squadron #55 and in issue #9 of the writers’ round-robin series DC Challenge. The hero met his demise in DC’s 1991 crossover series War of the Gods (which we’ll cover in BI #82). A second Son of Vulcan, Miguel Devante, starred in a six-issue miniseries in 2005 and later made a few random appearances. And since he’s too recent to be included in Jim Kingman’s Blue Beetle article, I’ll mention Jamie Reyes, a teenager with an alien suit of armor, who became the third BB beginning in 2006. He remains the current version of the character in DC’s New 52 Universe. Those of you following the New 52 are aware that Captain Atom and the Question are among the other Charlton Action Heroes that have returned. No doubt there will be more. Lastly, in November 2014, writer Grant Morrison and artist Frank Quitely produced the one-shot The Multiversity: Pax Americana, part of Morrison’s broader infinite-earths storyline, The Multiversity. Evoking Moore and Gibbons’ Watchmen, Morrison’s page-turner, set on Earth-4, depicted the Question investigating a political murder conspiracy involving Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, and other former Charlton characters. Somewhere, Dick Giordano is smiling, saying, “See? I told you the Action Heroes weren’t half bad!”

This One’s for the Question’s Fans Denys Cowan and Bill Sienkiewicz combined talents in 1988 to produce this ab-so-lute-ly gorrrrrgeous Batman/Green Arrow/Question poster. TM & © DC Comics.

MICHAEL EURY wishes to thank the indexers and historians behind the Grand Comic Database (www.comics.org) for their invaluable website, without which the research for this article would have been much more difficult. Special thanks go out to Michael Ambrose, T. C. Ford, and Roy Thomas, and to the late Dick Giordano, whose body of work is still changing comics, one day at a time.

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Charlton’s Champions Wraparound cover to the Charlton Portfolio (1974), by Don Newton and Bob Layton. Unless otherwise noted, all scans in this article are courtesy of Michael Ambrose. All characters TM & © DC Comics, except: Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt TM & © Peter A. Morisi estate. E-Man TM & © Joe Staton and Nicola Cuti. Yang © 1974 Charlton Comics Group.

The year 1974 was pivotal in the history of the Charlton Action Heroes. Or maybe it would be more accurate to call them “Inaction Heroes.” By that year, those characters were but a fond, distant memory in the minds of comics fans. Until 1968, Charlton had made an honest if halting effort to enter the blossoming superhero comics field with Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, the Question, Judomaster, Sarge Steel, Peter Cannon– Thunderbolt, and Peacemaker, along with the various minor characters, some of which had only a single outing. Fan reaction was favorable, but as Michael Eury discusses in his history of the Action Hero line elsewhere in this issue, there simply weren’t enough kids buying the comics, because Charlton’s own distribution was so ineffective. The last appearances of any of the characters had been in Mysterious Suspense #1 (Oct. 1968), an all-Question one-shot by Steve Ditko, and Blue Beetle #5 (Nov. 1968), also by Ditko,

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Michael Ambrose

and featuring a Question backup story. That was it for the Action Heroes—or so it would seem. In 1974, two Action Hero characters made a cameo appearance in Ghost Manor #21 (Nov. 1974). The first page of “Death in a Darkroom,” by Nicola Cuti and Steve Ditko, depicts a parade scene with E-Man, Blue Beetle and the Bug, and a Captain Atom–like figure in the background. We don’t know whether Cuti specified those characters in the script or if Ditko simply felt like drawing them (in any case, it may be the only known instance of Ditko depicting E-Man), but likely only a few readers at the time were aware that the Beetle and the Captain were actually Charlton characters from a previous comics generation—which, in those days, was reckoned to be every three to five years. Far more important in 1974 was the appearance of CPL Special Double-Issue #9 and 10 from CPL/Gang Publications of Indianapolis, Indiana, a magazine better known as the Charlton Portfolio.

CHARLTON PORTFOLIO AND THE CHARLTON COMICS SURGE Fans Bob Layton and Roger Stern started a fanzine they grandiloquently titled CPL—Contemporary Pictorial Literature—in the early 1970s after graduating from high school in Indianapolis. Fellow fan Duffy Vohland, at the time a mover and shaker in the fanzine world, was able to convince many semipro and pro comics artists to contribute to CPL, among them John Byrne, P. Craig Russell, Paul Gulacy, Bob Hall, and Alex Toth. CPL ran for a total of 12 issues and was one of the more highly regarded fanzines of the era. It was Vohland who arranged for CPL/Gang to hook up with Charlton. According to an interview with Layton in Comic Book Artist #12 (Mar. 2001), “Duffy was really the one who got us connected with Charlton” in 1974. “Stern gave us a call from Duffy saying that I should talk to somebody up at Charlton, and how would we like to publish the unpublished material they had left over from the Dick Giordano days. And, of course, we lost our minds! Even at the possibility of it!” What resulted was the stunning Charlton Portfolio, a 48-page black-and-white magazine professionally printed on coated stock. Behind a wraparound cover by Don Newton and Bob Layton, spotlighting the 1960s Action Heroes along with some of Charlton’s 1970s characters, were pinups by Dick Giordano, Pete Morisi, Frank McLaughlin, Warren Sattler, Joe Staton, Pat Boyette, Jim Aparo, Dave Cockrum, John Byrne, and others, plus a variety of Charlton-centered articles. But the meat of the Portfolio was the complete, unpublished Blue Beetle #6

by D. C. Glanzman and Steve Ditko. “We got it pretty much with no strings attached,” said Layton. “They had no use for it! It never occurred to them to actually publish it themselves.” One of the most important features in the Portfolio was the inside-back-cover commentary, “The Last Word.” Here, managing editor George Wildman detailed how he was going about making changes at Charlton Comics. This article forms a kind of “Charlton Manifesto” and is key to understanding how Wildman was trying to transform Charlton’s low-tier industry image at the time. Among other improvements outlined in the article, Wildman pointed out that the comics were no longer a “closed shop” but were now open to new talent, that he was now providing information and material to fans, and that Charlton had reentered the superhero field with the introduction of E-Man and Yang. He acknowledged that he had “a lot of catching up to do but we have created a momentum that is constantly gathering speed and shows no signs of slowing.” Wildman was in charge of some four-dozen titles and continued to expand the line during his tenure, dropping deadwood and adding new titles. During this latter heyday, 1972 to 1976, Charlton published around 250 individual comic books per year. The Portfolio was a major financial loss for CPL/ Gang, but as Layton said, there was a silver lining: “Charlton came back, very impressed with the effort.” At that time the two major comics companies were producing in-house fanzines: Marvel Comics introduced FOOM in spring 1973, and in summer

Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age •

Familiar Faces (left) Title page to “Death in a Darkroom,” by Nicola Cuti and Steve Ditko, from Ghost Manor #21 (Nov. 1974), showing Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, and E-Man in the background. (right) Splash page to “Showdown in Sunuria,” a previously unpublished Captain Atom story by Ditko, from Charlton Bullseye #1 (1975). Anyone recognize the newbie who inked and lettered the story for Bullseye? Blue Beetle and Captain Atom TM & © DC Comics. E-Man TM & © Joe Staton and Nicola Cuti.

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Back in Action, Heroes (left) Frank McLaughlin’s Judomaster cover to the zine Charlton Bullseye #3 (1975). (right) Alex Toth’s Question cover to Charlton Bullseye #5 (July–Sept 1976). (bottom) From Charlton Bullseye #3 (1975), photo from a panel at the 1975 New York Comic Art Convention. Left to right: Bob Layton, Roger Stern, Joe Staton, Nicola Cuti, Paul Levitz, and Marv Wolfman. Photo by Hilarie Staton. Courtesy of Michael Ambrose. Judomaster and the Question TM & © DC Comics.

1974 DC launched The Amazing World of DC Comics. The importance of these professionally produced “fanzines” was not lost on Wildman. Recognizing how useful a Charlton fanzine would be to support increased visibility for his comics, he authorized the CPL crew to produce the Charlton Bullseye magazine. Charlton partnered with CPL by giving them ad space in the comics on its in-house subscription page. CPL, in turn, promoted the entire Charlton Comics line and carried a regular Charlton subscription ad in Bullseye. According to Layton, printing costs for the first issues of Charlton Bullseye were advanced by Bud Plant and Phil Seuling. “Phil made a deal with me that he and Bud would put the money up front, and buy X-amount of copies,” said Layton. This arrangement was critical to the new magazine’s success, freeing the gang to concentrate on content and promotion without worrying about the budget. The first issue of Charlton Bullseye appeared early in 1975, carrying news of forthcoming Charlton comics on sale in March. The issue started out with a bang: a

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Captain Atom vs. the Ghost cover by Al Milgrom [repurposed, with Glenn Whitmore colors, as the cover of this edition of BACK ISSUE—ed.], and part one of the previously incomplete and unpublished “Showdown in Sunuria” from what would have been Captain Atom #90 (early 1968). The story existed as penciled pages by Steve Ditko with no surviving script. Stern (credited as Jon G. Michels) created a script from Ditko’s layouts of original writer Dave Kaler’s plot, and John Byrne inked and lettered. “Sunuria” co-starred Nightshade and featured the return of Captain Atom’s archenemy, the Ghost. Part two appeared in Bullseye #2 that summer, sporting full-color covers. In the course of Bullseye’s five-issue run, other Action Hero appearances included a Judomaster cover on #3 by Frank McLaughlin and an eight-page Question story and cover in #5, drawn by Alex Toth from a script by Michael Uslan. Other features were an unpublished martial-arts story by Sanho Kim, a new E-Man and Nova adventure by Nicola Cuti and Joe Staton, an early Jeff Jones fantasy tale, a Doomsday+1 story by John Byrne, and an unpublished science-fiction short by Ditko, along with numerous articles, pinups, interviews, and regular Charlton Comics news. Charlton Bullseye was a Charlton fan’s dream come true. But Charlton abruptly stopped publishing all-new comics in September 1976, scaling back to a mere handful of reprint titles. Suddenly there was no longer any need for a Charlton fanzine. By then most of the people involved—Layton, Stern, Byrne, Don Maitz, Roger Slifer, et al.—were all beginning professional comics careers of their own, and it’s debatable how much longer

Last Outings at Charlton (center) Peacemaker illustration by Walter Simonson. Inside front cover to Charlton Bullseye #4 (Mar.–Apr. 1976). Covers of (top) Charlton Bullseye #1 (June 1981), with Blue Beetle and the Question by Dan Reed and Bob McLeod, and (bottom) issue #7 (May 1982), with Captain Atom by Reed. TM & © DC Comics.

Bullseye would have lasted, or what new directions it would have taken, even if Charlton had continued as a serious comics force. The Charlton Bullseye outings were the last appearances of the Action Heroes for the next half-decade—almost. In 1977 and ’78, more than fivedozen reprints of random Charlton comics were released under a promotional arrangement bearing the Modern Comics imprint. Among them were Blue Beetle #1 and 3; Captain Atom #83–85; Judomaster #93, 94, 96, and 98; Peacemaker #1 and 2; and Thunderbolt #57 and 58. The Modern reprints had large press runs and were widely distributed, often as bagged sets in department stores. It’s likely that for many kids coming of comics-reading age in the late 1970s, these comics were their first encounters with the Charlton Action Heroes.

CHARLTON BULLSEYE (ROUND TWO) AND THE ACTION HEROES REBORN The next new appearance of the Action Heroes came about at least partly through the efforts of young fan artist Dan Reed, who, like so many up-andcomers, just wanted to get published. Rejected by DC, Marvel, and every other major comics company, Reed thought of Charlton. In 1980 he visited Derby, met with editor Wildman and assistant editor Bill Pearson, and proposed that the company publish new stories by him featuring the old Action Heroes. By this time the Charlton line numbered fewer than 20 titles, consisting almost entirely of reprints and a small amount of unused inventory material from its 1970s glory days. There was no budget for new content. But Reed had an answer for that obstacle: he proposed to work for free. Charlton liked the idea and created a new comic book, Charlton Bullseye (appropriating the defunct fanzine title), to feature Reed’s work and that of other young creators. Assistant editor Pearson sent notice to The Buyer’s Guide, The Comics Reader, and other major fanzines of the day, inviting submissions from fans and semipros. Accepted contributors would be paid 50 copies of the issue in which their work appeared. “We received an average of two or three samples of artwork from aspiring cartoonists every week,” Pearson recently recalled. “Dan Reed was just one of them. George had no problem with starting the Bullseye title, so long as I handled the whole project.” Charlton Bullseye #1 (June 1981) carried a 22page story teaming Blue Beetle and the Question, scripted by Benjamin Smith, penciled by Dan Reed, and inked by Reed, Al Val, and Bill Black. The story itself is no great shakes, but is serviceable: Blue Beetle and the Question collaborate to retrieve the hijacked Bug and must face a series of deathtraps to do so. Far more important than the quality of story and art was the fact that the Action Heroes (two of them, anyway) were back in a Charlton comic. The next five issues of Bullseye offered a variety of features, including funny animal, sword and sorcery, and science fiction.

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The Haunting (left) The return of Nightshade in the backup story in Charlton Bullseye #7 (May 1982), by Bill Black. (right) Unpublished Charlton Bullseye comics cover for the BB vs. BB story by Rik Levins that eventually appeared in Americomics #3 (Aug. 1983); from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Bill Black. TM & © DC Comics.

Issue #7 (May 1982) featured the return of Captain Atom, again by the team of Smith and Reed, in a 17-page nonstop-action thriller that pitted the Captain against mutants in a distant galaxy. A six-page backup story, written and drawn by Bill Black, featured the return of Nightshade fighting the Ghost, Captain Atom’s old nemesis. Charlton Bullseye ran through issue #10 (Dec. 1982) before succumbing to poor sales. “I remember having to return a lot of material I had accepted for more issues,” Pearson recalled, “so it obviously wasn’t my idea to cancel the title. I was really enjoying the possibility of encouraging young talent.” The two issues noted above would be the final appearance of any of Charlton’s original Action Hero characters in its own comic books.

ONE LAST DANCE BEFORE PUMPKIN HOUR: AC COMICS With the cancellation of Charlton Bullseye, much unpublished material (as much as 250 pages, according to a memoir by Bill Black in Comic Book Artist #12) remained in inventory. Assistant editor Pearson began calling around to other publishers to find a home for this material. “I sent two or three guys to Bill Black,” Pearson stated. Black had drawn a few new covers (without pay) for Charlton’s Billy the Kid and Gunfighters in 1981 and ’82. He had also been publishing his own line of independent comics under the Paragon Publications

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imprint since the early 1970s. But by the end of 1982, he was ready to expand into a new color comics line, which he would initially call Americomics and later AC Comics. The cancellation of Charlton Bullseye came at an opportune time for both Black and Charlton, because Black would need a lot of pages in a hurry and a stable of artists and writers to create new content for his rapidly expanding Americomics line. Black negotiated taking over not only all the remaining Bullseye inventory but also the further use of the Action Hero characters. “I dealt with Bill Pearson, George Wildman, and the Charlton legal department,” said Black in an interview in Charlton Spotlight #2 (Summer 2002). “The legal work gave AC Comics the rights to the Charlton material for the year 1983.” Black also bought or licensed several older Charlton properties the company had abandoned decades before, including Nyoka the Jungle Girl and Western characters Lash LaRue, Sunset Carson, and Rocky Lane. He would make extensive use of these assets in the years ahead, including a series of reprint comics (Best of the West, Men of Mystery) and even a few live-action film shorts. The new Americomics/AC color line was diverse, and successful enough that the company is still in business to this day as one of the longest-running independent comics publishers. In the end, Black managed to publish only two comic books featuring the Action Heroes: Americomics Special #1 and

Pre–Crisis Action Heroes (left) Cover of Americomics #3 (Aug. 1983), with Blue Beetle vs. Blue Beetle, by future Captain Atom artist Pat Broderick. (right) Cover of Americomics Special #1 (Aug. 1983), by Greg Guler and John Beatty. (bottom) Alternate, unpublished cover for Americomics Special #1 (Aug. 1983), by Guler and Beatty; from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Bill Black. Characters TM & © DC Comics.

Americomics #3 (both Aug. 1983). Both books used material originally intended for Charlton Bullseye. Americomics #3 has the new Blue Beetle (Ted Kord) meeting the original Blue Beetle (that is, the 1964 Charlton version, Dan Garrett). In the 12-page “Return from Pago Island,” by Rik Levins and Bill Black, the original Beetle bitterly accuses Ted Kord of abandoning him to die when they went together to Pago Island to fight Kord’s mad Uncle Jarvis and his army of monster robots, the occasion upon which the Blue Beetle mantle passed to Ted Kord, as recounted in Charlton’s Blue Beetle #2 (Aug. 1967). Kord learns that this miraculously returned original Beetle is not his old friend Dan Garrett (who really did die on Pago Island) but rather a superrobot created by Jarvis, which he defeats. The backup story, by Leo Laney, Neal Stannard, and Bill Black, re-teams the Garrett and Kord Beetles in a friendlier setting. Americomics Special #1 features Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, Nightshade, and the Question as the “Sentinels of Justice” super-team. The 25-page story by Dan St. John and Greg Guler has the Action Heroes fighting a league of super-criminals consisting of Ironarms, Fiery-Icer, the Madmen, and the Banshee, all under the control of the mysterious Manipulator, himself under the further control of a shrouded background figure whose identity we never learn. These final two outings of the Action Heroes in the Americomics/AC Comics line would be their last as recognizably Charlton characters. In a blurb on the last page of the Sentinels of Justice story, Black laments that we will never know the identity of the mysterious figure behind the Manipulator, announcing that “the Charlton characters have been sold to another publisher.” That publisher, of course, was DC Comics, and the “Inaction Heroes” would shortly gain a new and longer lease on life—with plenty of action—that continues to this day. MICHAEL AMBROSE publishes Charlton Spotlight, an occasional fanzine devoted to the history of the Derby, CT, comic-book publisher. For more information, visit www.charltonspotlight.net.

Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age •

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There was always something a little different about Charlton Comics. Charlton published scores of titles just like Timely/Atlas/Marvel, utilized some of the best artists in the field such as Steve Ditko, and today remains beloved by many despite being gone for three decades now. During the 1960s, when everyone was jumping on the Silver Age superhero bandwagon, Charlton offered up a line of Action Heroes that were fun, quirky, and different … but never got licensed, made into cartoons, or found their way off the four-color page. Still, as Alan Moore told Jon B. Cooke, “There were some very good little strips, and then, of course, there was that big Charlton revamp where we got the new Blue Beetle, the new Captain Atom, and so forth, which was a shot in the arm. All of these things contributed in pushing Charlton higher up my league titles of which comics to buy first. They never quite ousted Marvel or DC, but during that golden period, Charlton was up there with the best of them.” In 1983, Charlton was a dying company, and DC Comics’ Paul Levitz acquired the Action Heroes for $5000 a character as a present for executive editor Dick Giordano. Dick was delighted, of course, then pocketed them, figuring out what to do with them. As he revealed to BI editor Michael Eury in the 2003 biography Dick Giordano: Changing Comics, One Day at a Time, his first thought was reprinting their Charlton tales to reintroduce them to fans before launching new stories. DC’s marketing department nixed that idea, so Dick went in different directions. It was a tricky task because even then, plans were being made to upend the DC Universe in less than two years with Crisis on Infinite Earths. Yet these Action Heroes were Dick’s babies, and he guarded them until he could figure out the best way to reintroduce them. By then, the direct-sales market had proven able to support direct-only titles while newsstands were showing considerable signs of weakening. As a result, experimentation in terms of page count, format, and price was growing. At some point, Dick hit upon the idea of a weekly title featuring the Charlton heroes— Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, Judomaster, the Question, and Peacemaker—treating them like extended Sunday newspaper comic strips. To tie it in with the DC line, he and Levitz concocted the idea to reprint in comic form the syndicated newspaper strip The World’s Greatest Superheroes from its 1978 beginnings. Writer/artist Pete Morisi still owned Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt and was interested in doing more with his character, so a deal was struck allowing him to contribute.

Super Friends Dave Gibbons’ cover for the unpublished Comics Cavalcade Weekly (a.k.a. Blockbuster Weekly) cover, colored by and courtesy of Scott Dutton (catspawdynamics.com), who also added the Charlton bullet and cover graphics. All characters TM & © DC Comics, except Peter Cannon-Thunderbolt TM & © Peter A. Morisi estate.

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Robert Greenberger

While Frank McLaughlin didn’t own Judomaster, he felt proprietary about the character, so it wasn’t hard to convince Giordano to give him the feature assignment. Giordano knew he wanted to keep Blue Beetle lighthearted and upbeat, running counter to the developing grim-and-gritty trend in comics, something that can be traced back a few years to Frank Miller’s influential run on Daredevil. He asked writer Steve Englehart to tackle the feature, and Englehart responded with some nifty touches including introducing Blue Beetle’s wife, who not only knew his secret identity but was a supportive spouse. Dick tapped newcomer David Ross to pencil the four-page feature and then asked veteran artist Alex Nino, who had resurfaced to do some work for the company, to ink the feature. At his website, Englehart has noted, “For years, DC wanted to do a weekly book … they worked up a prototype that never made it out the door. The lead feature in that one was Blue Beetle. I wrote seven fourpage chapters in BB’s serial.” Giordano also gave the Peacemaker gig to Keith Giffen to both write and pencil based on the strength of his co-plotting work with Levitz on Legion of Super-Heroes. Giffen was given two pages an issue to work with and rose to the challenge, using mostly six- or ninepanel pages, with many silent panels keeping things moving. In Giffen’s version, protagonist Christopher Smith, a man who man who loved peace so much that he fought to preserve it, was now haunted by his dead father’s spirit, whom he believed haunted the Peacemaker helmet. Giffen teamed with dialogue partner Robert Loren Fleming and inker Gary Martin. They produced the longest run of chapters for the weekly, at least a dozen, if not more, and I remain sorry they were never collected since it was strong enough to stand on its own. A hint of what might have been came with the Giffen/Martin Peacemaker Who’s Who page. By now we were well into 1984, and Giordano was increasingly busy running the growing line of comics, so his line-editing kept getting backburnered. As a newly hired assistant editor, working with Len Wein and Marv Wolfman on Crisis and Who’s Who, I found I had time on my hands. Dick asked for my help first on The Dark Knight and later on what was being dubbed Blockbuster. (Back in the early 1970s, comics fandom was buzzing when someone let slip that the company was considering a mammoth title by the name Blockbuster. More on this subject will be presented when BI #81 explores DC’s 100-Page Super Spectaculars.) Very quickly, Giordano got even busier and gave me the entire project with the mandate to create a lineup of features and talents, get them rolling, and produce a dummy first issue for Levitz and publisher Jenette Kahn to approve. That meant I had a budget for logo and cover, so I needed to get those up and running. Thankfully, writer Mike W. Barr approached Dick and me about taking on the Question assignment, and we agreed. We partnered him with Stan Woch, who was graduating from the pages of New Talent Showcase (see BI #71). Giordano, of course, wanted Sarge Steel, his steelfisted private eye, to be in on the fun. Much as he wanted to pencil it, he knew he couldn’t manage a weekly schedule atop his busy inking and management responsibilities. He and special projects editor Andy Helfer had gotten to talking about Andy doing some comics writing and they decided to work together on Sarge. Having recently drawn Thriller, artist Trevor von Eeden was now looking for work and was thrilled at the notion of doing

street-level action and had confidence that Dick’s inks would keep his work looking sharp. That left the assignment of Captain Atom, the line’s sole superpowered hero, and boy, was he powerful with his atomic energies! This proved a challenging assignment, but Paul Kupperberg, a fan of the Charlton incarnation, was up for bringing the hero to a modern audience. He was first partnered with Paul Chadwick, just at the beginning of Paul’s celebrated career. [Editor’s note: If you missed Paul’s cover for BACK ISSUE #75, spotlighting the issue’s article about his unforgettable Concrete series, you can still get a copy via twomorrows.com.] His work looked great, but Chadwick couldn’t manage the weekly demand and withdrew after one installment. He was replaced by Denys Cowan, a recent find who had been knocking around from assignment to assignment and got to stretch. When that didn’t work out, Jose Delbo stepped in. Similarly, while Englehart wrote seven chapters of Blue Beetle material, Ross didn’t work out and we cast about for a replacement. Chas Truog, who had worked Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age •

Give Peacemaker a Chance A panel-rich Peacemaker page by Keith Giffen, with Gary Martin inks. TM & © DC Comics.

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Courtesy of the writer, Paul Kupperberg’s synopses for weekly Captain Atom installments. TM & © DC Comics.

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TM & © DC Comics.

Atomized

with Englehart on Coyote for Epic and Eclipse, took a turn before newcomer Deryl Skelton received the feature. Unbeknownst to me, once he heard the rights had been acquired, Skelton pitched a Beetle feature to Giordano but it was rejected. After Ross and Truog failed to measure up, Skelton’s time finally arrived. He went on to draw six installments before the plug was pulled. As 1984 chugged along, so did the various creators, all working at varying paces, with Morisi and Giffen/Martin producing a rapidly growing number of pages. I worked with art director Neal Pozner on commissioning a logo but continued to dislike the title Blockbuster. After years of thinking of that name as a 500-page extravaganza, a 32-pager just didn’t feel right. Also at the time, the legal department was issuing lists of titles we would lose rights to if they were not plastered on at least one cover or another. After DC’s loss of the name Strange Sports Stories, it became incumbent on all to protect our heritage, so in a fanboy moment, we decided to use Comics Cavalcade for our weekly series. Comics Cavalcade was All-American’s answer to World’s Finest Comics, with stories featuring their three biggest stars— Green Lantern, Flash, and Wonder Woman—along with a variety of other features. It felt right, although it proved to be too much of a mouthful. Todd Klein did what he could and a logo was produced. [Editor’s note: During the early Golden Age, All-American Comics was a

Re-Atomized (top) Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com), original Captain Atom art page by the feature’s new artist, Jose Delbo. The series was still called “Blockbuster” at this stage. (bottom) Unpublished Frank McLaughlin Judomaster Blockbuster page. Scan of original art courtesy of Andrew Czekalski, via Michael Ambrose. TM & © DC Comics.

sister line to DC, then called National Comics. Later in the Golden Age, All-American’s characters were officially acquired by DC.] By this time, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons were well into producing Watchmen, and since Gibbons couldn’t draw the Charlton heroes there, I thought he would be perfect for our first cover. Mark Hanerfeld, DC’s librarian at the time, found the Tribune Media Syndicate stats of the World’s Greatest Superheroes newspaper strip that was produced by Marty Pasko, George Tuska, and Vinnie Colletta, and I began figuring out how to lay these out, fitting a week of dailies and a Sunday across two pages. As the year wound down, a first-issue dummy copy was readied and was given to Tom Zuiko to color. The hand-colored pages were then passed on to Dick for approval and in turn he showed it to Jenette and Paul. Given what was being planned for Crisis and beyond, and by then the notion of rebooting Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman was already under consideration. While solid, Comics Cavalcade Weekly was unspectacular and certainly not something they felt could sustain weekly readership. It was wisely suggested to suspend work on the features and let Giordano find post–Crisis roles for the heroes. That began with establishing their Charlton status quo on Earth-5 in Crisis and involving Blue Beetle as their representative in the initial story beats. The creators were justifiably disappointed and the project was long forgotten until interest in Charlton resurfaced. Fans discovered the existence of this unpublished title through the pages of Comic Book Artist #9, where I revealed the backstory. Cooke was loaned the colored pages for reference and unfortunately they were lost, so a keepsake vanished. Looking back, a rookie like me should never have been assigned anything so complex or challenging. Giordano loved these heroes so much he needed to look beyond expediency to someone with more experience and the company needed executive or marketing input earlier to get a better sense of what might have thrived in a changing marketplace. As it was, post–Crisis, it took each of the heroes a few years to find their footing, but to readers it was worth the wait as Cary Bates’ Captain Atom and Len Wein’s Blue Beetle were quite entertaining and Denny O’Neil’s Question (illustrated by Cowan) was revelatory. I got to steal Nightshade for Suicide Squad (and looking back, I have no recollection if she was planned to guest in any feature or rotate in at a later date). These were followed by Kupperberg and Tod Smith tackling Peacemaker, and DC licensed Thunderbolt, which was written and drawn by Mike Collins and edited by Kupperberg. Unfortunately, a Sarge Steel project written by hardboiled master Max Allan Collins, with art by Dick Giordano, was discussed but never materialized. Giordano was clearly intrigued by the notion of a weekly comic, and when Mike Gold similarly came up with the idea, they got giddily excited and decided to revamp Action Comics into Action Comics Weekly, a project worthy of a look at another time. DC’s Millennium was a bold, weekly crossover and elaborate marketing stunt, but it nearly killed all involved. [Editor’s note: Millennium and other crossovers will be covered in BI #82.] It really wasn’t until DC’s 52 event before they figured out how to make a weekly book work. As for the New 52, it’s interesting to note that while Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, and the Question have appeared, most of the other Charlton heroes have been shoved out of sight, almost rejecting Giordano’s beloved Action Line outright. That’s a real shame, because the potential for greatness remains within these characters. Keep up with writer/editor/teacher ROBERT GREENBERGER’s comings and goings by following his blog, bobgreenberger.com.

Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age •

BACK ISSUE • 21

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Jim Kingman

“Ahh, isn’t recognition grand? And here I thought I’d be forgotten after all this time.” With those spoken words in panel 4 on page 18 of Crisis on Infinite Earths #1 (Apr. 1985), the Blue Beetle, formerly of the Charlton Comics Action Hero universe, dropped from his solarpowered flying (and aquatic) craft, “the Bug,” into the DC Universe for the first time. Months later, the Beetle’s first full-length solo appearance as a permanent DC character was published in Secret Origins #2 (May 1986), released in February. Blue Beetle began publication in March of 1986. A new level of maturity in comic-book storytelling was produced throughout 1986, and it is a year now considered by many to be the beginning of the Modern Age of Comics. It’s hard to argue, as during that year Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Art Spiegleman’s Maus were published, while Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen began its year-long serialization. Watchmen was originally conceived to feature Blue Beetle and other Charlton superheroes acquired by DC, but that decision was nixed so that the company could use the characters for years to come within DC Universe continuity. Moore and Gibbons created new superheroes (and a heroine) based on the Charlton characters, and the rest is significant comic-book history. So instead of Blue Beetle being in on the ground floor of the Modern Age through Watchmen (the Beetle became Nite Owl), BB’s own book leaned heavily on a traditional form of superhero storytelling reminiscent of Marvel since its Silver Age superhero inception and later DC during the 1970s; entertaining but no longer groundbreaking. Subsequently, the series, which lasted 24 issues and also tied into two crossover events (Legends and Millennium), has been overlooked by comic-book historians. Meanwhile, Blue Beetle’s active participation and character development in 1987’s relaunch of the JLA in Justice League America garners most, if not all, of fandom’s attention. This is a shame, because Blue Beetle, plus Secret Origins #2, is a lot of fun, and deserves its due. That starts right now!

THE CREATORS Len Wein, whose comics career is so vast and influential it would require a year’s worth of BACK ISSUE to properly overview, wrote Blue Beetle, plus Secret Origins #2. RJM Lofficier provided plot assists on issues #14, 15, and 17–22. Gil Kane illustrated the introductory tale in SO #2 with a rawness reminiscent of the Golden Age but with ten times the len wein dynamism. Paris Cullins was the main artist on Blue Beetle, having established himself on DC’s Blue Devil. Cullins penciled issues #1–9, 11–14, and 17 and penciled and inked his swan song in #18. Bruce Patterson inked Cullins on issues #1–6, and was replaced by Dell Barras, who inked Cullins on issues #7–9

The Beetle is Back Paris Cullins and Bruce Patterson’s incredible, inyour-face cover for DC’s Blue Beetle #1 (June 1986). TM & © DC Comics.

Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age •

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Big Bang Look closely and you’ll find Blue Beetle amid the worldshattering chaos of George Pérez’s iconic cover for Crisis on Infinite Earths #1 (Apr. 1985). TM & © DC Comics.

and 11–14. Ross Andru penciled issues #15 (inked by Barras), 16, and 19–22, and Don Heck wrapped up the series with pencils on #23 and 24. Danny Bulanadi inked issues #16, 17, and 19–24. In addition, Chuck Patton penciled issue #10, Joey Cavalieri assisted on issue #12’s script, Pablo Marcos assisted on inks in issue #13, and Gil Kane returned for five pages of pencils on issue #22. There were three editors on the book: Julius Schwartz (Secret Origins #2, Blue Beetle #s 1–4), Karen Berger (BB # 5–13), and Denny O’Neil (BB #14–24). A wide array of talent produced Blue Beetle, but it was clearly Wein’s series to develop. Wein explains, “When I heard Dick Giordano [then-vice president and executive editor at DC] was planning to do monthly books with several of the Charlton characters, I told him I wanted to do the Beetle. He was fine with that. I had pretty much my own

editorial control. This was right after DC discontinued the writer/editor program, but I had to have an editor just to keep me on schedule.” Bob Rozakis, who provided text pieces for the early Blue Beetle letters columns, concurs. “Len and Julie had been working together for many years, so he may just have asked Julie to do it. I suspect that Julie did little more than read through the scripts and process the bills.” This was also toward the end of Schwartz’s long and distinguished career as a comic-book editor, which dated back to the 1940s. “I think Julie became a bit more flexible,” continues Rozakis. “His editing style had always been to punch up the dialogue and he did some heavy rewriting on the scripts of some of his writers, but he tended to let Len have his way. I know that his editing seemed lighter on my scripts as the years went by, but that might just be that I learned to write to his tastes. I don’t think Paris had ever done any work on Julie’s books, so it was more of ‘Bring in your work and bob rozakis a bill and I’ll get you a check.’”

SECRET ORIGINS #2 (May 1986) “Echoes of Future Past!” Wein brilliantly condensed 40+ years of sporadic Blue Beetle history into an approximate ten-year time frame within the post–Crisis DC Universe. This is a very involved 23-page origin story that blends history with action and adventure while setting the stage for the all-new Blue Beetle series. Archaeologist and Professor Dan Garrett, along with his girlfriend and fellow archaeologist Luri Hashid, are awarded a dig in northern Africa. Together they unearth the long-lost tomb of Kha-Ef-Re. Atop the tomb Dan discovered a blue scarab. The spirit within the scarab placed Dan into a trance and explained to him the heroic mission he would undertake and the powers he would wield. By speaking the chant “Kaji Dha!,” Garrett would instantly be transformed into Blue Beetle. After battling the resurrected mummy of Kha-Ef-Re, BB proceeded to dump his relationship with Luri and go on to become a noteworthy superhero, battling many villains, including Mr. Thunderbolt, Mentor the Magnificent, and Mr. Crabb. Then he abruptly retired. Years later, a desperate Ted Kord, who once was a student of Professor Garrett, comes to visit Dan seeking help. Kord explains that he discovered a film strip in the ruined laboratory of his allegedly deceased Uncle Jarvis. Upon viewing the damaged reel he saw that he had unknowingly aided his uncle in creating the prototype for a robot army that would allow Jarvis to rule the world. Kord believes Jarvis faked his death and traveled to Pago Island in the Atlantic Ocean to complete construction of the robots. Kord and Garrett travel to the isle by boat, where they are captured by a group of robots and taken to Jarvis. To escape, Dan transforms himself into Blue Beetle. Garrett is able to defeat Jarvis, but is mortally wounded. As Ted holds him in his arms, Dan tells him to carry on as Blue Beetle. Suddenly the cavern collapses and Dan disappears into it. With the mystical blue scarab falling with Garrett, Ted realizes he must reinvent Blue Beetle’s look and operations. He trains vigorously, builds the Bug, and constructs a “BB” gun that acts as an intense strobe light and fires compressed air. He designs a new costume. Several months later, he begins his crimefighting career.

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BLUE BEETLE #1 (June 1986) “Out From the Ashes!” Blue Beetle comes out of a self-imposed retirement (it’s never explained why Ted put the Beetle into retirement, but it does allow his previous Charlton adventures to be part of the new DC continuity), and battles Firefist, the Incendiary Man. That’s in the first seven pages. Firefist escapes, and we’re off to establish locales and a supporting cast. Blue Beetle’s home base is Chicago, and as Ted Kord he is the CEO of KORD Industries (KORD is an acronym for Kord Omniversal Research and Development). Ted built KORD into a major research corporation after his father, Thomas Kord, left the business to travel throughout the world. As Blue Beetle, Kord’s secret superhero headquarters is under KORD Industries and is affectionately known as the Beetle’s Nest (because the Beetle Cave just won’t do), which he accesses via the Bug through a reinforced tunnel constructed into the lakebed of Lake Michigan. Once he changes from Blue Beetle to Ted Kord, he enters a secret elevator that takes him to his office on the top floor of KORD (its architecture resembling, for all you Bronze Age Flash fans, the buildings of the 30th Century). Home for Ted is a luxurious penthouse a few miles away. Kord is a well-respected scientist, inventor, and established entrepreneur; but, maintaining a secret identity will soon pose some difficulties in his personal life and how he runs his business. Those difficulties are not, however, the thematic issue that runs throughout the series; they are the consequences of Ted hoping and proving to himself that he is worthy of being Blue Beetle. Although he is a good friend, a good boyfriend, an accomplished professional, and a very smart and rich man, all of this is overshadowed by his doubt and determination to live up to the legacy of a different identity. By the time Ted (and the reader) has the feeling he’s reached that goal, he loses almost everything. While there is action galore in Blue Beetle and Wein, Cullins, and Paris’ fellow artists do a splendid job depicting heroversus-villain battle sequences, the heart of the series is its supporting cast. Most of the cast is introduced in issue #1, and each of them has an intriguing storyline that gradually unfolds over the course of several issues until it takes center stage and Blue Beetle takes over. Without these characters Blue Beetle would be, well, just a series of splendid battle sequences! At KORD Industries, there is Angela Revere, Ted’s receptionist and a woman with a hint of a secret; Melody Case, KORD’s computer analyst and Ted’s girlfriend; and Jeremiah Duncan, KORD’s chief chemist and eccentric inventor. In the city, there is Murray Takamoto, head of the Chicago branch of S.T.A.R. Labs and Ted’s best friend, who requests Kord’s aid in successfully completing his troubled promethium bonding project; and Lt. Maxwell Fisher, Chicago

detective, who is obsessed with the mysterious circumstances surrounding Dan Garrett’s death (but don’t be swayed by this particular obsession; Fisher has issues, but he’s a good, tough cop). Finally, half a continent and half an ocean away, there is archaeologist Conrad Carapax, who has arrived on Pago Island, not the least bit interested in the mystery of Garrett’s death, but rather why the professor came to the island in the first place. (The secret, by the way, is an immobile robot in Jarvis Kord’s ruined lab waiting for someone, anyone, to come along and activate it. We’re privy to its existence at the end of each sequence involving Carapax. Carapax is not.) Oh, and there’s a sinister red-haired janitor at S.T.A.R. Labs who is simply up to no good. So in this first issue you have six storylines: Blue Beetle versus Firefist, first and foremost, and five others jockeying for position. This frantic but enjoyable story structure, with a few exceptions, also runs throughout the entire series. Steve Ditko had illustrated Blue Beetle at Charlton, and his depiction of the character was still fresh in the minds of both Beetle and Ditko fans. While Ditko did not return as artist, Paris Cullins did not disappoint, delivering a Ditko flair while maintaining his own style, already well established from his prior work on Blue Devil. “I worked with Paris the same as with most of my other artists,” notes Wein. “I’d give him a detailed page/panel breakdown of the script, he’d pencil, I’d dialogue over the pencils. He was a great guy to work with.”

BLUE BEETLE #2 (July 1986) “This City’s Not For Burning!” Firefist’s origin is revealed in flashback by the deeply disturbed and disfigured villain. He recounts how, as Lyle Byrnes, he was involved in a lab explosion at his apartment. When the Chicago firefighters arrived at the building to extinguish the blaze and rescue as many as they could, Byrnes was tragically overlooked. This is why he hates all firefighters, and is determined to have them and their stations burn. Blue Beetle’s escape from a collapsing building pays homage to a classic sequence published in The Amazing Spider-Man #33 (Feb. 1966). At story’s end, Firefist is presumed consumed by fire after setting ablaze a newly opened firefighters museum.

Now in the DCU Predicated upon his Crisis appearances, Blue Beetle was included in Who’s Who #3 (May 1985), which was released just over a year before the Beetle’s own series debuted. Art by Steve Rude. TM & © DC Comics.

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The supporting cast have their stories nudged along: Angela’s hint of a secret is that she’s stealing items from KORD Industries; Melody is noted here as second-in-command of KORD; Jeremiah has noticed some of the items missing; Murray travels with the promethium by truck to KORD, and is involved in an unexplainable incident along the way; Lt. Fisher is now spying on Ted at Kord’s home (becoming a bit of a voyeur as he’s viewing Melody and Ted romantically inclined); Carapax makes camp on Pago Island and investigates a strange noise from deep in the cavern he’s

Blue Times Two Dan Garrett’s Charlton history was absorbed into the post–Crisis DC Universe in Secret Origins #2 (May 1986), which shipped one month prior to the premiere of the new Blue Beetle monthly, featuring Ted Kord. (right) SO #2’s cover, by Gil Kane and Ricardo Villagran, over an Ed Hannigan layout, showing both Beetles. (above top) Interior sequence from that origin ish, by Len Wein and Gil Kane, with colorist Anthony Tollin. (above bottom) “New” Blue Beetle artist Paris Cullins (inked by Robert Campanella) drawing the “old” Beetle on this 1991–1992 DC trading card. TM & © DC Comics.

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nestled in; and the sinister janitor, now also appearing in shadow, summons an ebbing power (a clue to the janitor’s true identity) that can’t keep the four tires flat on the truck transporting Murray’s promethium.

BLUE BEETLE #3 (Aug. 1986) “If This Be Madness…!” The sinister janitor at S.T.A.R. Labs hires the Madmen to infiltrate KORD Industries and act as a diversion while he changes into his true identity to locate the promethium that will aid him in ruling the world. Lt. Fisher is also on hand at KORD, visiting Ted to learn more about the mysterious death of Dan Garrett. Curt Calhoun is introduced, hired by Ted to help with the promethium project. In their civilian identities, the Madmen are harassing Jeremiah. Meanwhile, Angela’s evil uncle is introduced (the second evil uncle in the series!). Angela is stealing items for him so he can construct his revenge on the world. At KORD Industries, the Beetle and his supporting cast work separately and together to defeat the Madmen (well, Melody and Jeremiah try to help; they eventually get tied up by the villains). The story ends with an intense cliffhanger as the janitor, in battle with Blue Beetle, is revealed as long-time Flash foe Dr. Alchemy. Also, the befuddled men at the KORD loading docks are introduced (they sign for the crates containing the Madmen), and one of them will play a larger role in Blue Beetle’s life further along in the series. A brief aside on this issue’s villains: The Madmen are strange. They are seven men who dress in multicolored costumes and paint their faces in bright colors and are quite acrobatic. Their leader is named Fleeter and they also hang out together in their civilian identities, where they are just as villainous. They’ve battled Blue Beetle before, in the Charlton universe. And that’s about all we learn of these Madmen.

Hot Stuff Blue Beetle #2 (July 1986) stoked the nostalgic flames of 1966’s Amazing Spider-Man #33 in pitting its bug-like hero against, among other threats, an inferno. TM & © DC Comics.

BLUE BEETLE #4 (Sept. 1986) “The Answer is Alchemy!” With the promethium melded with the power of his philosopher’s stone, Dr. Alchemy is near invincible, with one catch: All that power is in the stone alone, and won’t do him any good unless he holds the stone. So Alchemy decides to take matters a step further—further into madness, actually. He makes himself become one with the stone. It becomes too much power for him to handle, and he realizes that it’s killing him. He brazenly and desperately enters Chicago’s S.T.A.R. Labs so he can utilize an ion generator to siphon the power out of him. Blue Beetle arrives and the two battle once again, but it’s too late for Dr. Alchemy as he is transformed into gold. Meanwhile, broadcaster Vic Sage interviews Murray Takamoto and learns that Blue Beetle is on hand again. Sage is curious, and intends to locate BB as … the Question! Melody doesn’t want to take on the responsibility of marrying Ted Kord; she’d rather be carefree. While carefree is the attitude she exhibits early on, Melody eventually takes on the responsibility of dealing with Ted’s disappearances and insufficient handling of KORD Industries’ interests. Meanwhile, on Pago Island Carapax hears a dull humming from behind a caved-in cavern. He is drawing closer to the sinister secret of Pago Island!

BLUE BEETLE #5–7 “The Muse Saga” BB #5 (Oct. 1986): “Ask the Right Question!” BB #6 (Nov. 1986): “Face-Off!” BB #7 (Dec. 1986): “Gang War!” There’s a new criminal in Chicago, and he calls himself the Muse. He is banding together the youth gangs of Chicago to form an army that will topple the established underworld order of the Windy City, run by Don Vincent Perignon. Blue Beetle teams with former Charlton pal the Question to apprehend the Muse. Perignon is not taking the coup lightly, enlisting his son to deal with the usurper. Lt. Fisher is also on the case. The Muse rallies his troops at the abandoned Globe Theatre, where Blue Beetle and the Question are captured and almost killed. Fortunately, Fisher and the police arrive in time to break up the party and allow our heroes to escape. The Muse even has the audacity to visit Perignon in the crimelord’s own mansion. Leave it to the youth gangs, however, to really pull off something spectacular: They hold a rally of their own at Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs, to further their Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age •

“Guaranteed to Drive You Buggy” 1986 house ad for the new Blue Beetle series. TM & © DC Comics.

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cause by banding together without the Muse’s help. Blue Beetle and the Question, Perignon and his mob, and Fisher and the Chicago police all converge on the baseball field and a melee of gangs versus law and order ensues. The Muse is shot and mortally wounded by taking the bullet fired at Perignon, and unmasked and revealed to be Perignon’s son, whose only desire was to be an actor and not carry on his father’s legacy. The ending is a little over the top with its quote from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and fade to black amidst growing applause. Even with a gang war, you can’t keep good subplots down. Murray and Calhoun continue on the promethium project, with Curt noticeably more optimistic than Murray. Angela has stolen the last piece of machinery from her boss that her uncle requires, and it has driven her to the thought of murder. She actually comes close to killing her uncle, then pulls back, accepting blame for the horrible things her uncle plans to do. Melody can’t seem to get Ted to spend time with her. Finally, Jeremiah delivers a mysterious package to a mysterious recipient. Duncan believes his equally mysterious obligations have been met, but he has been lied to, and the silhouetted figure intends to meet Duncan again in one week.

BLUE BEETLE #8 (Jan. 1987) “Henchman!” In arguably the series’ most moving episode (BB #18 is also a contender), reformed prison convict Ed Buckley takes center stage and Blue Beetle is shifted to a supporting role. Why? Because today is Ed’s birthday, the first day of the rest of his new life. He’s finally out of jail, he has a wife and daughter who love and support him, and he has a potential job at KORD Industries. Things are looking up for Ed. Enter trouble, as an old “buddy” hopes Ed will join him in a caper planned by the Calculator. Ed takes the high road and declines. Then disappointment punches him in the gut: There is no job waiting for him at KORD after all. This time Ed takes the low road and joins the Calculator’s gang for what he hopes is one last heist to net him enough money to support his family. The Calculator has targeted a Computer Convention downtown, where KORD Industries is represented by Ted and Melody. Ted crosses paths with Ed, who unknown to our hero is preparing to play his role in the Calculator’s heist. He tells Ed that he’s reconsidered his position and wants to give Ed a job at KORD. Ed is thrilled, but he realizes that he has to ditch the heist without being noticed. Unfortunately, he encounters the Calculator, who is immediately suspicious of Ed’s behavior. He tells Ed to do his job or his family’s life will be endangered. And so Ed becomes part of the crime, and is recognized by an incredulous Ted (who has changed to Blue Beetle to thwart the heist). BB defeats the Calculator, while Ed takes a violent blast meant for BB. Ted is sympathetic, and tells a wounded Ed that he’ll vouch for him in court and there will be a job waiting for him when he once again gets out of jail. Ed is grateful as the ambulance carries him off. This generosity on Ted’s part goes a long way in explaining the ambiguity of issue #8’s cover. Blue Beetle is almost completely in silhouette, and in large letters to the reader’s right is the statement, “You’ve seen him all your life … but you’ve never really known him … until now!”

BLUE BEETLE #9–10 BB #9 (Feb. 1987): “Timepiece!” Crossover Legends Chapter 11 BB #10 (Mar. 1987): “Time on His Hands!” Crossover Legends Chapter 15 This was the first of two company crossovers Blue Beetle was involved in, Legends and Millennium. When asked how he went about complementing the big crossover pictures with his own directions on the book, Wein replies, “Pretty much like most of the other DC writers. I’d shoehorn in the crossover plots so they would screw with my ongoing continuity as little as possible. None of us were really thrilled with having to interact with these crossovers.” As part of Darkseid’s plan to rid Earth of its superheroes, the word of G. Gordon Godfrey has incited negative sentiment toward superheroes (it’s also incited a few anti-superhero riots). President Ronald Reagan has declared an executive order requiring all superheroes to cease activities until the crisis has

Where’s Don Draper? Bearing no resemblance to TV’s stylish ad men of the almost-same name, the Madmen, introduced by Steve Ditko in (top) Charlton’s Blue Beetle #3 (Oct. 1987), returned in (bottom) DC’s Blue Beetle #3. TM & © DC Comics.

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passed. Angela’s uncle reveals himself as Chronos and freezes her in time. When Melody becomes concerned that Angela hasn’t come to work, Ted goes to her house to investigate. Ted rescues Angela and learns from her that her uncle is David Clinton, also known as Chronos, longtime foe of the Atom. Despite the president’s orders, Ted Kord knows he must become Blue Beetle to defeat Chronos. Ted calls an ambulance to have Angela transported to a hospital where she will undergo treatment for Chronos’ attack, but before its arrival he discusses a cover story with her so that she will not be seen as an accessory to her uncle’s evil scheme. She explains to the doctor that she has had epileptic seizures. Later, Kord returns to Angela’s house as Blue Beetle, despite being deemed an outlaw by breaking the president’s executive orders. A neighbor witnesses his entry and calls the police. The Beetle gets away from the law and soon locates the warehouse where Chronos will conduct his mysterious master plan. Chronos returns and sits down to eat a sandwich (even villains gotta eat!). The Beetle interrupts him and is soon triumphant in defeating Chronos, although with no aid from Chicago citizens who have become anti-Beetle. The Beetle takes off in his Bug and into the pages of Legends #5. Meanwhile, a mysterious abduction takes place in Death Valley, California. Amateur geologist Cassandra Sharp is caught in a sandstorm and left unconscious in a mound of sand. A helicopter finds her body and lifts her away to an unknown location. The promethium project is not garnering results, and Murray is seriously concerned with the situation

Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age •

Fighting a Flash Foe Dr. Alchemy mixed it up with Ted Kord in Blue Beetle #4 (Nov. 1987). (top left) Original Cullins/ Patterson cover art to that issue, courtesy of Anthony Snyder (anthonyscomicbookart.com). (top right) From the backside of the cover art, Paris Cullins’ sketches, including a couple of recognizable Marvel heroes. (bottom) The cover in color. Blue Beetle and Dr. Alchemy TM & © DC Comics. Captain America and the Falcon TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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That is the Question! (right) Charlton’s enigmatic crimebuster, the Question, reappeared in the pages of Blue Beetle #5 (Oct. 1986). Cover by Cullins/Patterson/Tollin. (left) Five months later, the hero returned in his own series by Dennis O’Neil, Denys Cowan, and Rick Magyar. Shown here is Cowan’s original art (courtesy of Anthony Snyder) to a promotion for DC’s The Question series. (For more on The Question, see BACK ISSUE #20.) TM & © DC Comics.

now that Garrison Slate, the head honcho of S.T.A.R. Labs, will soon be paying a visit to see firsthand how the project is progressing. On Pago Island, Carapax has discovered a locked door deep in a cavern. On the other side of the door is the island’s secret. He’s on the verge of reaching the secret! In issue #10, Melody has her purse snatched from a young thief on a Chicago street. Melody gives chase, thinking the hoodlum a young man, but when she catches up to the thief and knocks him down, the thief turns out to be a young girl. Melody is startled by this, allowing the girl the instant she needs to run off. The girl runs into a moving truck. Melody has an ambulance called and the girl is rushed to the hospital, where the doctor who treats her tells Melody that the girl will not last the night. Melody is allowed to see her, but when she enters the room she finds two men have placed the dying girl into a container and are carting her off. They taser Melody and escape in a helicopter, a similar incident to the young geologist being abducted in Death Valley the issue before. This intriguing subplot will not take several issues to unfold. In fact, it takes center stage in the next issue.

BLUE BEETLE #11–13 “The Hybrid Saga” BB #11 (Apr. 1987): “Havoc is … the Hybrid!” BB #12 (May 1987) “Man in the Middle” BB #13 (June 1987): “Prometheus Unbound!” The three-part Hybrid storyline, which begins here, is a turning point in Blue Beetle’s career. It is a “crisis”: A friend of Ted Kord is grievously injured on our hero’s home turf, subsequently kidnapped, and eventually transformed into, sadly, a villain. Then he disappears, and Blue Beetle has no idea how to find him. Up until now, all the Beetle’s exploits have ended, for the most part,

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on the upbeat. Even in the case of Ed Buckley, there area, threatening to return to battle another day. This is hope. But at the end of issue #13, Ted leaves the is Calhoun’s last appearance in Blue Beetle. scene of battle empty-handed. He knows it, he feels it, Meanwhile, Lt. Fisher hires Captain Josiah Sledge and so do we. and his crew to take him to Pago Island, a haunted, The abductions by helicopter have been conducted by desolate “spit of rock” according to Sledge. On Pago Steve Dayton—Mento—who is transforming individuals Island, Carapax blasts open the locked door and enters to beef up his small army—the Hybrid—for battle the ruined laboratory of Ted’s Uncle Jarvis. In the against the New Teen Titans. presence of a solitary, stationary robot, Carapax In an attempt to protect Ted from molten believes he can control the robot utilizing promethium pouring from a slipping a cybernetic helmet. The results are cauldron, an accident orchestrated disastrous for Carapax as his body is by Dayton, Curt Calhoun is covered fried and his mind is transferred into the in the liquid, and soon rushed by robot. The robot opens its eyes, but it ambulance to the nearest hospital. is Carapax who sees his tragic fate. The ambulance is blocked by The strain is showing on Ted and Dayton’s men and hijacked with Melody’s relationship, but both are Calhoun on board. Blue Beetle follows, optimistic about working things out, and soon finds himself alone in battle although Ted hopes he’s not forced against the Hybrid. Fortunately, the to choose between his girlfriend and Teen Titans arrive to substantially his mission as Blue Beetle. even the odds. Angela returns to KORD expecting paris cullins On the splash page of issue #12, to leave the corporation for good, Blue Beetle quickly brings the readers but Ted insists that she stay. At least Photo by kordindustriesblogspot.com. up to speed on the situation and then we return to the her story has a happy ending. battle commencing between the Teen Titans and the In a house ad appearing in all January-released Hybrid. Ted’s main concern, however, is rescuing DC books, the new Justice League is revealed with Calhoun from Mento’s clutches. The battle between Blue Beetle as a member alongside Batman, Martian the Titans and the Hybrid is fierce. Mento completes Manhunter, Captain Marvel, Dr. Fate, Guy Gardner, Calhoun’s drastic transformation, and the young man Black Canary, the new Dr. Light, Mister Miracle, and emerges from the ambulance as Prometheus! Oberon. Justice League #1 (May 1987) would debut With Blue Beetle and the Titans on the verge of in February. [Editor’s note: BACK ISSUE covered the victory over Prometheus and the Hybrid, Mento “Bwah-ha-ha” Justice League series waaaaaay back transports his team, along with Calhoun, from the in issue #3.] Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age •

A Pair from Paris (left) You gotta admit that the Beetle’s Bug is one of comics’ coolest modes of transportation! (right) Blue Beetle gets his kicks. Two 2013 sketches by Paris Cullins, from the collection of Daniel DeAngelo. TM & © DC Comics.

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BLUE BEETLE #14–15

A League of His Own DC’s follow-up to Crisis on Infinite Earths, Legends (by John Ostrander, Len Wein, John Byrne, and Karl Kesel), further cemented Blue Beetle’s status within the new DCU. (left) Beetle suggests a team name in this sequence from 1987’s Legends #6, and (right) poses with his teammates on the now-legendary (and often replicated) Justice League #1 cover, by Kevin Maguire and Terry Austin. TM & © DC Comics.

“Return to Pago Island” BB #14 (July 1987): “The Phantom of Pago Island!” BB #15 (Aug. 1987): “In Combat with … Carapax!” Lt. Fisher, Captain Josiah Sledge, and the crew of a tramp steamer arrive on Pago Island. As Fisher is being dropped off for a week, a mysterious robotic figure practically capsizes the small freighter from undersea, and the entire crew is shipwrecked on the island. Beginning with Sparks, the radio man, the crew is killed one by one. By the time Blue Beetle—who, as Ted Kord, learns by chance Fisher has traveled to Pago Island—arrives on the island, Fisher is the sole survivor (although I like to think Capt. Sledge somehow survived; he was a tough, old sailor). Fisher is in the process of explaining to Kord what has happened on the island when a robot arm crashes through a cave wall. A giant red-and-orange robot emerges, declaring that it is not a thing, but a man—Carapax, the Indestructible Man! Meanwhile, enter Dr. Klaus Cornelius. He is the co-founder of Cornelius/Kreig, a pharmaceutical company whose Research Center #5 is based in Nice, France. He has many concerns, this sinister Dr. Cornelius, but first and foremost is the progress on retrieving Compound XD-3. It is soon revealed that this is actually Jeremiah Duncan’s story as seen from a different perspective. Jeremiah discovered XD-3 while working for Cornelius/Krieg, and took its secrets with him when he fled the company. It has been Cornelius’ lab staff, headed by a scientist known only as Cinq, that has been blackmailing Jeremiah over the past few months, but Duncan has not capitulated. Cinq has a new idea, the agent called Catalyst, the “Living Pharmacopoeia.” Jeremiah is abducted and drugged by Catalyst, who can generate any drug through his fingertips. He is taken by plane to Research Center #5 in Nice. There, Dr. Cornelius is informed that Duncan is en route, and he is pleased. Back at KORD, Melody is furious that Ted is neglecting his work and their relationship. She meets Randall Truman, a new employee at KORD, and is impressed with his work. She hopes he can step in where Ted has stepped off, in possibly more than a

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work capacity given Melody’s reaction upon being introduced to him. Unseen atop KORD, Inc., the mysterious Overthrow stalks and proudly boasts how the corporate moguls will soon fear his name. On Pago Island, Catalyst seeks to destroy Fisher and Blue Beetle, but they have other plans. Kord hopes to reach Jarvis’ ruined lab to find something that he can utilize to take down Carapax. Ted lets slip a comment that causes Fisher to realize that Kord and Blue Beetle are one and the same. But that information will get him nowhere if they can’t successfully get off the island. It takes some doing. Burying Carapax doesn’t work; he just digs himself out. Utilizing the Bug to fly off the island isn’t immediately successful; Carapax just finds a way onto the flying craft. But tricking Carapax to stand over an escape hatch as Blue Beetle jostles the Bug causes Carapax to fall and sink into the Atlantic Ocean. Fisher and Ted head home, although Fisher wants to see Ted in his office first thing Monday morning because they still have issues to resolve. Finally, in the aftermath of the disastrous promethium project, Murray resigns from S.T.A.R. Labs. He seeks employment elsewhere but finds himself overqualified. Not for Murray to worry, as later, via snail mail, an outfit called Statistical Occurrences Limited (SOL) requests his presence in England! Beginning with issue #14, RJM Lofficier was credited with a creative assist several times late in the series. I asked Wein what Lofficier’s actual role was on the book. “Well, first,” Wein clarifies, “he is actually a they: Randy and Jean Marc Lofficier. They were writer friends when I first moved to Los Angeles. They live in France now. When I got very behind on my schedule, they jumped in and helped me co-plot the issues where they get credit.”

BLUE BEETLE #16 (Sept. 1987) “Anywhere I Can Hang My Hat is Home!” Wein kind of/sort of deals with urban homelessness in this story, raising some questions, supplying no answers, really leaving it up to the reader to think about it. He completely bypasses the mental issues involved, but there’s no doubt of the mental condition of the serial

killer Blue Beetle is tracking through Chicago’s ugliest streets. An unnamed masked man is murdering the homeless in search of a vial he dropped while being pursued by BB. Ted later deduces that the man had stolen the vial from S.T.A.R. Labs. The killer believes its contents will cure him of his leukemia. He is eventually captured by BB. Wein puts the subplots aside for this tale, with only Fisher on hand, back from “vacation” and back on the beat investigating the killings.

BLUE BEETLE #17 (Oct. 1987) “The Way the Brawl Bounces!” Blue Beetle battles the anti-corporate Overthrow. Overthrow has targeted KORD, Inc. as his first corporation for destruction, bypassing bigger fare such as General Motors, IBM, Exxon Mobil, and AT&T. There’s a reason for KORD being targeted, although it won’t be revealed until a few issues down the line. Honestly, everything feels like a main storyline in Blue Beetle #17: the resurrection of a disoriented and deranged Dan Garrett on Pago Island; the mysterious disappearance and torture of Jeremiah; Melody’s encounters with Ted (who she’s mad at) and her new assistant, Randall (who she’s happy with); Garrison Slate’s discovery of a concealed S.T.A.R. experiment dubbed “File 13”; Murray’s arrival at SOL in England; all leading up to the original Blue Beetle’s attack on Chicago in search of his usurper! Action and events are relentless in this issue, and yet what resonated with me the most was a passage in the narration noting that with the departure of Dan Garrett, Pago Island had become truly lifeless.

Bwah-Ha-Ha (top) Blue Beetle marker sketch by Kevin Maguire. From the collection of Michael Zeno. (bottom) Ross Andru, one of the Amazing Spider-Man artists of the Bronze Age, took a brief turn at another Ditko-drawn do-gooder, Blue Beetle. Original cover art to BB #16 (Sept. 1987), inked by Danny Bulanadi. From the collection of Mike Dunne. TM & © DC Comics.

BLUE BEETLE #18 (Nov. 1987) “…And Death Shall Have No Dominion!” File 13 has been activated and escapes from S.T.A.R. Labs. This young lad now roams the streets of Chicago, while his experimenters and captors scour the city for him. For months, Dan Garrett, the original Blue Beetle, had been kept alive and imprisoned on Pago Island by the powers of the mystical scarab, but during Ted Kord and Lt. Fisher’s battle with Carapax, Garrett was released, and the scarab, still in control of Garrett’s mind, ordered him to journey to Chicago and slay the “imposter,” Ted Kord. As the battle of the Beetles rages, File 13 stumbles upon the fight and recognizes one or both of the combatants. As Garrett nears defeat and Kord acquires the scarab, the scarab offers Kord the “precious gift” that is its power. Kord refuses, but Garrett hungers for it. File 13 exhibits a powerful mind control over Garrett, allowing him to see his once-heroic self. Garrett turns on the scarab and destroys it, once again sacrificing his life, but this time permanently. He begs Kord again to carry on as Blue Beetle in his stead, and Kord is left to mourn the loss of his friend a second time. Jeremiah finally breaks under torture, divulging to Catalyst the information Cornelius had been seeking. Meanwhile, much to Melody’s dismay, Randall exhibits behavior as flaky as Ted’s.

BLUE BEETLE #19 (Dec. 1987) “A Matter of Animus!” In the wake of the death of the original Blue Beetle, the unnamed boy, File 13, is swiftly reclaimed by Garrison Slate and S.T.A.R. Labs. Ted vows to get to the bottom of this mysterious matter. Blue Beetle confronts Slate that evening, but there isn’t much he can do now that the boy is back in S.T.A.R. Labs’ custody. Ted does some detective work and learns more about the boy. He discovers that File 13’s “mother,” former S.T.A.R. employee Dr. Rose Beryl, had spliced her genes with Dan Garrett’s to create the prototype of an improved human race. She was apparently killed in a lab explosion. Blue Beetle locates Animus Explorations on the west coast, where the

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woman formerly known as Dr. Beryl resides. In the aftermath of the explosion that destroyed her laboratory and devastated her body, she transferred her mind into something more robotic than human, and now calls herself Dr. Animus. They battle, Blue Beetle escapes, and Dr. Animus plunges into the Pacific Ocean, apparently to her death. The subplots continue to race along: Murray learns more about his position at SOL, an insurance company that specializes in “policies that involve the area of super-risk.” He is also introduced to Alfred W. Twidgett, a former member of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s Boy Commandos! Meanwhile, in Nice, we learn that Jeremiah had mailed the secret of Compound XD-3 to the Iranian branch of KORD, Inc., but when the Ayatollah and his forces overthrew the Shah, KORD was evacuated, abandoned, and the secret left behind. Catalyst is ordered to Iran to retrieve the compound. Enter Belphegor, administrator at the Dome, a United Nationsfinanced headquarters for the Global Guardians. She assigns Guardian member Fleur-de-Lis to shut down Cornelius/Krieg’s Research Center #5 by any means necessary. Finally, fed up with Ted Kord’s lackadaisical work behavior and the strain on their relationship, Melody Case makes a phone call to a mysterious individual she was ordered not to contact. “But I had no choice,” explains Melody. “It’s time!”

BLUE BEETLE #20–21 BB #20 (Jan. 1988): “Iran Scam!” Millennium Week 2 BB #21 (Feb. 1988): “If This Works, It’ll Be a Miracle!” Millennium Week 6 Yes, it’s the Millennium factor, and, boy, does this two-part tale require a scorecard (actually, a scorecard is required for most issues of Blue Beetle). First, an attempt to make a long plotline short: In Millennium, the last Guardian and the last Zamoran arrive on Earth and announce that ten persons have been selected to become the new Guardians of the Universe. Earth’s superheroes are instructed to gather them. The Manhunters, a robotic cult, learn of the search for “The Chosen” and set out to prevent it, also awakening their planted sleeper agents that they have sprinkled throughout the superhero community. Second, the reader is encouraged at the bottom of the first page of issue #20’s “Iran Scam!” to read Millennium #2 before going any further with this issue. So let’s break away from BB for a moment. Blue Beetle’s sequence in Millennium #2 is all of 13 panels as he swings into confrontation with Lt. Max Fisher in the detective’s Chicago office. Because Fisher is blackmailing Ted to do his “bidding” in the name of the law (although their arrangement doesn’t come across as so severe in Blue Beetle), BB believes that the lieutenant is a Manhunter. Fisher convinces him otherwise, and as a confused Beetle returns to the Bug he is greeted by Overthrow. With that, we can pick up the story in Blue Beetle #20. Blue Beetle briefly battles Overthrow, now revealed as a Manhunter. The Azure Avenger also believes Overthrow to be Randall. BB is then delegated by Justice League International to travel to Iran to convince one of the Chosen, Salima Baranizar, to adhere to the Guardian and Zamoran’s wishes. There, he battles Catalyst, who is in Iran to locate the compound that Duncan had mailed to the now deserted KORD branch. BB defeats Catalyst (never learning the intent of his mission) and locates Salima. He tries to convince her to come to America. She takes to the streets of Iran, pleading the Guardian’s mission, and is stoned

to death. Having failed in his mission, a devastated Ted Kord returns to America. In BB #20, two Global Guardians assault Research Center #5 and destroy the laboratories. Jeremiah has survived and is rescued. Cornelius Krieg retaliates by shutting down the Dome with a single phone call (who needs Compound XD-3 when you have a phone that powerful?). Blue Beetle #21 picks up from where Millennium #6 left off. Blue Beetle and Mister Miracle team up to prepare a craft for travel to the Earth’s core. They are intercepted by Overthrow and a group of Manhunters. There’s a ferocious battle, Blue Beetle and Mister Miracle both escape death traps, Overthrow is defeated and revealed as one of the dock workers at KORD Industries (although he bears no resemblance to those introduced in issue #3), and BB and Mister Miracle secure the craft that will allow the duo and an assortment of their fellow superheroes to travel to the Earth’s core and battle the Manhunters in their headquarters. But for that adventure you need to read Millennium #7. Also in BB #21, the Murray Takamoto/SOL/Boys-to-Men Commandos story simply disappears after this issue. Jeremiah is on the road to recovery, having a meal with Belphegor of the deactivated Dome. This is Jeremiah’s last appearance in the series. Finally, Melody, whose story will continue, has a date with Randall, and she lets Ted know it. The budding couple draw closer over dinner.

Blue and Gold Blue Beetle and Booster Gold—rendered here by Booster’s creator Dan Jurgens and inker Norm Rapmund—became one of comics’ most popular buddy teams in the pages of Justice League and beyond. For the full story of their partnership, see BACK ISSUE #22. TM & © DC Comics.

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When Swingers Clash Courtesy of Daniel DeAngelo, a 2013 Paris Cullins illo pitting BB vs. DD. Blue Beetle TM & © DC Comics. Daredevil TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

BLUE BEETLE #22 (Mar. 1988) “A Question of Time!” Once again, time is on Chronos’ side, as the Time Thief’s master plan is finally revealed. Chronos shifts the entire city of Chicago to an unknown location, and in its place is the past, 200 million years ago, where Chronos hopes to mine technetium, a metallic, anti-corrosive element that he intends to market and make lots of money. Not exactly revenge on the world, but sometimes extreme capitalism is a better option. Fortunately, Blue Beetle saves himself and Chicago, and Chronos is stuck 200 million years in the past.

BLUE BEETLE #23 (Apr. 1988) “Don’t Get Mad, Get Even!” You can’t keep those Madmen down: They return to thievery and Blue Beetle is right there to stop them. BB easily defeats them all, which doesn’t say much for this flamboyant bunch, but during the melee the Beetle is scratched on the chin by Fleeter. Later, when Ted starts seeing everyone as Madmen, he realizes he has been poisoned. He seeks aid from Fisher and together they devise a plan to trick Fleeter into revealing where he’s hidden the antidote. Meanwhile, Carapax survived his plunge into the ocean, and has spent the last few issues walking along the floor of the Atlantic, through the Saint Lawrence Seaway, and into Lake Michigan, where he is on the verge of reaching … the Beetle’s Nest! Finally, a mysterious gentlemen arrives at KORD, summoned a few issues back by a desperate Melody. He is Ted’s father, Thomas Kord, and he wants his corporation back!

BLUE BEETLE #24 (May 1988) “If At First, You Don’t Succeed…!” Blue Beetle ends as hectic as it began: Ted and his father, already in a brittle relationship, engage in a dispute over control of KORD Industries, and when Melody chimes in it only adds insult to Ted’s emotional injury. Ted leaves, changes to Blue Beetle, and soars away in the Bug to sort out matters. Melody’s budding relationship with Randall Truman comes to an abrupt end when she discovers Randall in the arms of another woman, his wife. Carapax reaches the KORD building via the Beetle’s Nest and immediately goes on a destructive rage. As the building shakes violently, Thomas orders an evacuation. Ted returns to confront his father only to see his cooperation under siege. Thus begins the final battle between BB and Carapax, with stunning consequences. The KORD building collapses and Ted sacrifices the Bug to destroy Carapax. In the midst of so much rubble, Ted makes a fateful decision and tells his father: “I already built KORD,

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Recommended Reading Want more about BB? Chris Irving’s Blue Beetle Companion, with this awesome Cully Hamner cover, is available digitally at twomorrows.com. Blue Beetle TM & © DC Comics.

any of my questions? “Sadly,” Wein confesses, “after over 25 years, I have absolutely no memory about how those storylines were going to play out.”

“The Final Adventure” Courtesy of Mike Dunne, an original art page from the Beetle vs. Carapax clash in Blue Beetle #24 (May 1988), the last issue of the run. That’s Dashing Don Heck’s pencils, folks, under Danny Bulanadi’s inks. TM & © DC Comics.

Inc. from the ground up once, Dad! Guess now it’s your turn!” With those words, Ted Kord turns and walks away from family, friends, and colleagues, his future as Blue Beetle uncertain. This is certainly no happy ending.

THE UNRESOLVED Had the series been more successful and allowed to continue beyond issue #24, numerous questions could have been answered: Did Angela survive the collapse of the KORD building? Would Melody and Ted get back together? Would Jeremiah return to—well, never mind, Jeremiah would not be returning to KORD anytime soon. How would Murray’s new job eventually involve Blue Beetle? What of Dan Garrett and Dr. Beryl’s son, the boy known as “File 13,” what was his fate? Would Ed Buckley at least get a job at S.T.A.R. Labs after being released from prison? Would Blue Beetle seek out and find Curt Calhoun? Would Klaus Cornelius ever have the opportunity to activate Agent Axis? What became of Catalyst and his search for Compound XD-3? Does Wein have any answers for

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In my opinion, Blue Beetle is a good comic book— at over 500 pages a novel, really, with a series of short stories blended in—and while that’s meant as a compliment, it’s also intended to defuse any high expectations going into reading the series. It’s meant to entertain, and although I certainly took seriously this assignment, there were times I caught myself having settled back in the chair, no longer a researcher and writer, merely a content fanboy enjoying a good comic. Blue Beetle would continue to appear in Justice League International and the book’s subsequent title changes, “Bwah-ha-ha”ing all the way, developing a strong friendship with Booster Gold, fluctuating in weight, and eventually meeting a violent, bloody demise in 2005’s Countdown to Infinite Crisis, a fate impossible to imagine 20 years earlier. The Azure Avenger eventually left a significant mark in the grim-and-gritty Modern Age of comics after all. JIM KINGMAN purchased his first comic book, DC’s World’s Finest Comics #211, on a family road trip in March of 1972, and has been reading and collecting comic books ever since (with no end in sight).

John Wells

“John Wayne is dead.” “The Duke? Not the Duke—he beat the big C!” “Martin Luther King is dead.” “Memphis. Six, seven weeks ago. Some sniper. What is this, a disorientation test?” “Robert Kennedy is dead.” “That’s a lie!” “Lyndon Johnson. Hubert Humphrey. Jack Benny. In the ground. Anwar Sadat! Indira Gandhi! John Lennon! Gone. All of them, dead and gone.” “My wife. I want to call my wife.” “Your wife is dead too.” For Nathaniel C. Adam, this was no dream. One minute it had been 1968; the next 1986. And there was more to absorb. Convicted of treason nearly 20 years earlier, the disgraced Air Force captain had agreed to a radical experiment to commute his death sentence … assuming he survived. The United States had acquired a malleable alien metal at a UFO crash site and wanted to see if it could be used to protect a human being shielded within it. Specifically, they wanted to see if the silver shield would withstand a 50-megaton thermonuclear blast. In the short term, the answer seemed to have been no. Captain Adam and the metal appeared to have been vaporized and Colonel Wade R. Eiling (rhymes with reeling)—the cold-blooded man who’d supervised the project—moved on with his life, going so far as to marry Adam’s widow and becoming a stepfather to the convict’s young children Randy and Peggy. Now a two-star general, Eiling was alive, well, and prepared to turn the screws when a disoriented, metallically bonded Nathaniel Adam materialized in 1986. Adam found more sympathy with Dr. Heinrich Megala, the scientist who’d spearheaded the 1968 project. Suffering from a motor-neurological condition triggered by initial contact with the alien metal, Megala was now a virtual paraplegic kept mobile by a sophisticated wheelchair with mechanical arms. It was the wizened physicist who understood what had happened to the silver-plated Adam. The nuclear blast “was more energy than the UFO alloy could absorb all at once,” Megala theorized. “The excess energy became the ‘fuel’ which propelled the captain across 18 years of space-time.” In short, the doctor declared (more than two years before the premiere of a certain TV show starring Scott Bakula) that Nathaniel Adam had made “the damndest quantum leap in history.” A testing program administered by Megala and his bodyguard Babylon confirmed that the time-displaced 28-year-old could now tap the awesome power of the quantum field. From Superman-style flight, strength, and invulnerability to the firing of energy blasts, Captain Adam ranked high on the power scale, but he was most grateful for a more subtle attribute. Through concentration, he could shrug off his metallic appearance

Blast from the Past Nathaniel Adam’s wild ride began here, in DC’s Captain Atom #1 (Mar. 1987). Cover by Pat Broderick. TM & © DC Comics.

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and regain his human form, only his once-brown hair impact. In the span of two weeks, the noble—and remained snow white. publicly autonomous—Captain had snagged the cover of If Adam had any hope of resuming his old every major news magazine and was scheduling life, General Eiling soon set him straight. TV interviews to divulge his “true” story. The clemency deal cut under the Johnson Even the superhero community—with the Administration was null and void, but notable exception of the jealous nuclear President Reagan offered the prospect man Firestorm—was enchanted, Blue of a new pardon in exchange for a Beetle going so far as to declare Cap tour of duty as a United States secret a “kindred spirit” as he mulled the agent. Off the clock, he could continue feeling that “I already know the guy to seek out proof that he’d been from somewhere.” framed 20 years earlier. SEEMS LIKE OLD TIMES Still, the existence of a superhuman Most fans, of course, knew full well that government agent was too politically the Blue Beetle did share a common sensitive to risk public exposure, so lineage with Captain Atom when Steve the government devised an elaborate pat broderick Ditko drew both of their adventures diversion. With “gloves,” “boots,” for Charlton Comics in the 1960s. and an atomic chest emblem laserEven after DC purchased the heroes dyed onto his silver skin, Captain Atom emerged as the and inserted them into 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths, country’s newest superhero … carefully crafted by his behind-the-scenes handlers and publicists for maximum there was still a sense that their Charlton-documented past would be preserved in their post–Crisis adventures. That certainly seemed to be the case when Cap showed up alongside Superman and Firestorm in late 1985’s DC Comics Presents #90. Ditto for the Blue Beetle, who had a new supporting cast in his ongoing 1986 comic book but maintained the previously established backstory. As the Question, Peacemaker, and Sarge Steel showed up fully formed in guest-appearances throughout 1986, there was an unstated assumption that their Charlton canon still counted. In the year since Cap’s team-up with Superman, though, much had changed. Galvanized by John Byrne’s restart of the Man of Steel’s adventures, other editors began to act on the possibilities that Crisis’ potential clean slate offered. Hence, Greg Potter and George Pérez’s Wonder Woman. And Cary Bates, Greg Weisman, and Pat Broderick’s Captain Atom. Broderick’s highest-profile assignment of the 1980s had been an impressive run with writer Gerry Conway on DC’s original nuclear man in The Fury of Firestorm, but the artist wasn’t certain he wanted a second act. Deeply invested in the Charlton heroes that were dear to him, DC’s Dick Giordano had reached out to him, though. “[He] called me to see if I would be interested in working on the

Cap, Take One The “old” Captain Atom was shoehorned into the DC Universe before his titular series redefined him. Cap got a page in Who’s Who #4 (June 1985, art by Denys Cowan and Rick Magyar). (inset) Squint and you can find Cap on the cover of DC Comics Presents #90 (Feb. 1986, cover by Cowan and Bob Smith). TM & © DC Comics.

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Captain Atom series,” Broderick told Rik Offenberger in a 2003 interview at mightycrusaders.net. “I’ll admit, I was hesitant to accept the job. But he had expressed to me that he really needed me on that book so I agreed to do it for a year. It turned into three.” Bates, still a few years shy of his 40th birthday, was an industry veteran with more than 20 years of DC Comics credits, but the characters he was best known for—Superman and the Flash—were Greg Weisman. Silverblade, Bates now in the hands of others as the details, was “a series that was set company embraced new directions. entirely in real-world Los Angeles, The vanishing assignments left Bates which at the time I wasn’t too familiar with projects like DC’s TV adaptation with. Back in those pre–Internet V and his first Marvel Comics work— days, there was a lot more to doing Spitfire and the Troubleshooters— research or digging up reference before the Captain Atom relaunch material than a few mouse clicks. emerged. “I can’t recall if I volunSince Greg had spent his whole life teered for the assignment,” Bates in L.A., it wasn’t long before he cary bates tells BACK ISSUE, “or if it was offered became my go-to consultant for all to me.” story matters that pertained to the In his estimation, those post–Crisis years were L.A. locale.” [Editor’s note: See BACK ISSUE #24 for creatively liberating. “With Captain Atom I was basically more about Silverblade.] starting from scratch (the Charlton backstory not Greg Weisman adds, “When [Cary] got the Captain withstanding), so the book offered far more creative Atom assignment, we began collaborating on that as freedom than I’d experienced on Superman or Flash, well. Cary wanted me to share plotting credit on given their extensive legacies as DC mainstays,” Bates Captain Atom from the get-go, but Cary’s editor explains. “Also, Captain Atom coincided with a general didn’t think that would be a good idea promotionally, resurgence of creativity in my career at the time, since so on issue #1 (Mar. 1987) I received a ‘special the other books I was writing—Silverblade (with Gene thanks’ or something like that. But I continued to Colan) and Video Jack (with Keith Giffen, for Marvel’s co-plot the book. Then, on issue #10, Cary had a Epic imprint)—were both my own creations on which time crunch for some reason or other, and I did the I had comparatively unlimited freedom.” dialogue for the book as well, at which point Cary Silverblade, whose first issue premiered seven insisted I share credit from then on. Initially, I was months after Captain Atom #1, had been the project co-plotter. Then it was just by both of us, though that connected Bates with young DC assistant editor basically I was still only co-plotting.” Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age •

Coming Attractions (left) Captain Atom (art by Pat Broderick and Bob Smith) and the Question (art by Denys Cowan and Rick Magyar) made the cover of 1986’s Amazing Heroes #108. Cover colors by Tom Zuiko. (right) Cap gets plugged in DC’s promo sheet. Captain Atom, the Question, and DC bullet TM & © DC Comics. Amazing Heroes © Fantagraphics.

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MAN AND SUPERMAN The series was edited by Denny O’Neil—newly returned to DC after several years at Marvel—and there was no small irony in the fact that someone who openly preferred the human-scale heroics of Batman and Daredevil was now overseeing someone on Captain Atom’s scale. It was, he told Barry Dutter in 1987’s Comics Buyer’s Guide #692, unavoidable. Having devised the quantum field device as a point of distinction from other nuclear heroes like Firestorm, O’Neil noted that Bates “did a lot of homework in terms of reading in physics—admittedly the wilder shores of theoretical physics—and came up with a consistent explanation for what the character does—and how he does it. “He ended up being one of the most powerful characters in the DC Universe,” O’Neil continued. “We went the opposite way people usually go in creating characters: We started with a rationale, and then let it go to its logical conclusion. Its logical conclusion was a very powerful character indeed. Usually you start off thinking, ‘I want him to fly, and be invulnerable, and be able to whistle through his teeth,’ and you figure out a rationale for doing that.”

Quantum Leap, Quantum Creep (top left) Splash page to Captain Atom #1 (Mar. 1987), setting up the hero’s origin. By Bates/Broderick/ Smith. (bottom left) Bad guy Dr. Megala is revealed, in Captain Atom #1. (above) The last page of Captain Atom #2, revealing superheroic reactions to the nuclear new guy. TM & © DC Comics.

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Consequently, very little of the original series Brother Randy—now an Air Force pilot himself—was a remained with even the feature’s first two supporting different story, convinced by his stepfather that his cast members remodeled for the 1980s. Sgt. “Gunner” biological dad was a traitor who “lost us 20 years Goslin was still Captain Adam’s best friend but, in a ago when he betrayed his family” (CA #7). Neither first for comic-book history, the formerly Caucasian they nor Jeff Goslin—whose reunion with Nate took character was reborn as the African-American Jeff place in issue #2—had any idea that Cameron Scott Goslin, godfather of Nate’s children. The benevolent was also Captain Atom. General Eining from 1960’s Space Adventures #33 “The spine of the so-called ‘B story’ throughout became the scheming Wade Eiling. the series’ run dealt with the many obstacles Nathaniel “I had strong feelings about how to present Adam encountered during his ongoing efforts General Wade Eiling,” Weisman recalls. to repair his relationship with his estranged “We talked about him being Captain Kirk children Peggy and Randy,” Bates tells if Captain Kirk had no real moral center.” BACK ISSUE. “Difficult enough for a “Wade Eiling made our hero’s life father who had missed out on his kids’ a living hell,” Bates declares. “Not childhoods to be seen as a complete only was he the military’s point man stranger … add to that the fact this for the blackmail scheme that was young guy they’re supposed to look up forcing Nathaniel Adam to do the to as their real Dad was approximately government’s bidding … he also the same age as they were (thanks to became the scourge of his private life, the 18-year quantum time jump).” since he literally stole Nate’s family by marrying his wife and becoming stepfather to his children during his dennis o’neil two-decade absence.” Nathaniel Adam’s now-grown kids were a wrinkle never imagined in the original series, nor was the entire man-out-of-time element. They were endearing touches, though, and central components in building reader sympathy for the new/old hero. “One idea that will run through the book will be the importance of the family unit,” Bates told Andy Mangels in 1986’s Amazing Heroes #108.” He’s really a single father and a widower, and he has to deal with the very different relationship he has with his children.” Discovering that Air Force intelligence agent Cameron Scott (Adam's new government-given name) was really her long-lost father in issue #4 (June 1987), Margaret “Peggy” Eiling was elated to have him back.

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A Charlton Flashback (left) Broderick’s cover to Captain Atom #3 (May 1987), depicting Cap’s Charlton costumes. (right) TV’s Ted Koppel Tod Donner hosts a look into the hero’s past. TM & © DC Comics.

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why anyone would be a superhero. We’ll also be looking into what the government’s role is in dealing with superheroes—or what it should be. The fact that [Captain Atom’s] children are the same age as him is also inverting the standards for superhero comics.” That didn’t mean that they couldn’t have fun with the old history. In devising a false backstory for America’s new hero, publicist Theresa Delgado gave Captain Atom literally years of experience that had been carried out in secret. Sifting through old news stories of miraculous survivals and meteorological crises that fizzled, Delgado gave all the credit to the publicity-shy hero. Those accounts— including Cap’s supposed birth in a nuclear explosion— were just an inspired means of working the old Charlton tales into the DC canon after a fashion. “Even though our Captain Atom was going to be a 90% reboot,” Bates notes, “we wanted to find a way to pay homage to his Charlton roots. And because an alternate origin that could serve as a cover story to feed the public would be needed for a new Captain Atom who secretly functions as a government operative … it was just one of those instances where everything dovetailed perfectly.”

RETROFITTING CHARLTON HISTORY

Daddy’s Girl A tearful reunion with Peggy, seen in original art form from issue #4. Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). (inset) A nuclear-man meltdown in Captain Atom #5 (July 1987). TM & © DC Comics.

The hero’s humanity was a far cry from the previous retooling of Captain Atom as the cold, clinical Dr. Manhattan in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ recently completed Watchmen. If that landmark maxiseries was the 1980s’ glass-half-empty approach to a more realistic spin on superheroes, Bates and Broderick’s series was the glass-half-full version. Amidst the cynicism and scheming of Eiling and his cohorts there was an underlying sense of optimism and hope in Cap’s quest for answers and reconciliation that kept the series from bogging down in depression. The heart of book was the man, not the superman. “Eventually, we want to have a book that can deal with Adam/Scott on a personal level and maybe not even have Captain Atom in it at all,” Bates declared to Mangels in 1986. “We may not do that, but we want to be able to. “We’re trying to do a book with a lot more realism than your ‘average newsstand’ book,” Bates remarked in the 1986 interview. “We’re trying to give it a slant to appeal to older readers, while not snubbing the younger readers. We’ll be seriously questioning the validity of being a superhero at all, so we’ll be examining

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Cary Bates continues, “As I recall, all three DC Charlton adaptations (Captain Atom, The Question, Blue Beetle) were conceived as reboots, although I suppose on balance Captain Atom was the most radically changed. Though Nathaniel Adam was given an entirely new origin, we also paid deference to the original Charlton version by incorporating it into the series as a phony cover story used to hide the fact this new superhero was actually a government operative. “The Charlton cover-story, the time-jump from 1968 to 1986, and the quantum powers were the ideas I had going in when I had my first sit-down with Denny. He was very receptive and that first day he recommended I read The Tao of Physics, which we would use for research.” The time-jumping, incidentally, recurred a few times in the series, as early as the conclusion of issue #3, wherein the absorption of energy from a leaking nuclear submarine thrust Cap a week into the future. The development took place right after the hero had divulged his supposed life story to Ted Koppel on Nightline (or, rather, Tod Donner on Nightzone). Cap had no idea how much that false history would haunt him. A novel story in 1988’s Secret Origins #34 detailed how actors were coached to reveal their close encounters with Cap in the 1960s while Cap himself was forced to concoct a close friendship between himself and the now-deceased original Blue Beetle in order to recruit the current Beetle (CA #20). Worst of all, though, were the efforts of reporter Mabel Ryan to track down Cap’s fictional arch-nemesis Dr. Spectro (who’d originated in Charlton’s Captain Atom #79 and 81). Noting a connection between Spectro’s powers and those of former Flash foe Rainbow Raider (created by Bates in 1980), Ryan theorized

that the Raider’s former lab assistant Tom Emery was the man she was looking for. Emery understandably thought the reporter was insane—right up to the point when he was offered $100,000 for his side of the story. After that, he agreed to full disclosure. Tracking down the Raider’s old equipment in CA #5, Emery was forced to use it to kill Ryan when she realized she was being scammed. By that point, “Doctor Spectro” was ready for bigger game, making a brief public appearance in costume before he approached General Eiling about a huge payout to buy his silence about the big lie. Captain Atom captured his “old enemy” easily enough in issue #6, but Emery’s knowledge still earned him some of the hush money he wanted.

FRIENDS AND FOES Few of Cap’s adversarial relationships were as black and white as they appeared on the surface. Plastique, a literally explosive Canadian terrorist who debuted in the Broderick-illustrated Fury of Firestorm #7 (Dec. 1982), was the first super-criminal defeated by Atom (CA #2), but things got complicated when they met again in Cambodia (CA #7–8). Seeking a molecularenhancing device called an x-ionizer, they both crossed paths with a seven-foot-tall armored warlord called the Cambodian whose enhanced sword was able to cut Atom’s silver skin. Taking flight with the fallen hero, Plastique cauterized his wound and stayed by his side in—she told herself—the name of self-preservation. Even she couldn’t explain why she passed on the

chance to flee and helped Atom when the Cambodian returned. Whatever her reasons, Cap turned a blind eye when Plastique slipped away afterwards. Captain Atom similarly got off on the wrong foot with Plastique’s old nuclear nemesis Firestorm. When they first met in the no-longer-canonical DC Comics Presents #90 (Feb. 1986), the two heroes had gotten along fine, but their differing atomic structures made it impossible for them to be near each other without toxic repercussions. In Captain Atom #4 (June 1987), though, the problem was pure jealously, with the hot-tempered Firestorm miffed that this atomichero-come-lately was getting all the glory. A pair of rematches soon followed, one in Fury of Firestorm #63 (Sept. 1987), when its eponymous hero threatened to wipe out the world’s nuclear arsenal, and another in Captain Atom #11 that seemed to mend fences. A change in Firestorm’s psychological matrix following the nuke crisis had left the flame-haired hero essentially amnesiac and easy prey for the alien Manhunters who were swarming over Earth during DC’s Millennium crossover in late 1987. Cap’s history of lies did him no favors when trying to convince Firestorm of the Manhunters’ evil intent, but the Nuclear Man was finally won over by the sincerity of Atom’s profession of love for his family. In the aftermath, Firestorm declared Cap to be a friend. No such sentiment existed between Atom and Major Force, a newcomer introduced in CA #12 (Feb. 1988) and Captain Atom Annual #1. There had been a Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age •

Colorful Criminal (left) Dr. Spectro premiered in Charlton’s Captain Atom #79 (Feb.–Mar. 1966). Cover by Steve Ditko and Rocke Mastroserio. (right) DC’s Doc, from Who’s Who in the DC Universe #11 (July 1991). Art by Pat Broderick, colors by Anthony Tollin. TM & © DC Comics.

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The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful (left) Another Firestorm fly-by, part of the “Millennium” crossover, in Captain Atom #11 (Jan. 1988). Cover by Jerry Bingham. (right) Lovely Nightshade appears, in #14. Cover by Broderick. (below). Sequence from Major Force’s origin, from issue #12. TM & © DC Comics.

second experiment with the alien metal following Nathaniel Adam and its subject had also blinked out of existence. Now aware of what really happened, Eiling and company were ready when Clifford Zmeck materialized in 1987 and took him into custody before he could get his bearings. Unlike the falsely accused Adam, Zmeck was every inch the monster that his record described, a murderer and rapist who’d killed a mother before the eyes of her young son … a son—Lt. Martin Allard—who now served as assistant to General Eiling. “We wanted to come up with a worthy adversary who’d be Capt. Atom’s opposite in virtually every respect,” Bates declares. “While Nathaniel Adam was an innocent man framed for treason, Clifford Zmeck was guilty of both rape and murder; Major Force could control quantum matter in a manner similar to the way Capt. Atom controlled quantum energy. And, of course, he had a name also prefaced by a military rank. I’ve always thought ‘Major Force’ was one of the coolest names for a character I’ve ever come up with.” Frustrated that Captain Atom had fallen out of his control, Eiling saw Zmeck as the means of reining in the hero—by recasting him as a “hero” in his own right. Making a promise to Allard that he could serve as Zmeck’s executioner when the time was right, the general activated Major Force. Pressured into selling the Major to the public as his new super-ally, Atom soon realized he’d attached his name to a psychopath. Publicly disavowing the “hero,” Cap delivered a smackdown to Force and etched the words “I quit” on his chest. His days with the Air Force and Project Atom were—for the moment—over. More or less. Cap had been obligated to join the Justice League International several months earlier in JLI #7 to serve as the government’s stealth eyes and ears on the team. In CA #14 (Apr. 1988), President Reagan convinced him to continue to stay with the League while an old friend from Atom’s Charlton’s days dropped by for a visit. A regular in Cap’s series during 1966 and 1967, Eve “Nightshade” Eden had been the closest thing Charlton’s version of the hero had to a girlfriend and there was clearly still a spark when their DC incarnations first met. Nightshade freely admitted she’d made contact with Nate to keep an eye on him for the government, but her obligations to the Suicide Squad necessitated that their first meeting was a relatively brief one. Echoing their first meeting in 1966’s Captain Atom #82, the duo once again faced a white-cloaked mystery man called the Ghost. Also calling himself the Faceless One, the villain had been a weapons-physicist named Alec Rois with teleportation capabilities who now commanded a 44 • BACK ISSUE • Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age

cult of fanatics. Like his Charlton counterpart, the Ghost would be the quantum hero’s most implacable opponent, but with a more personal connection than had existed in the past.

CROSSING OVER Before the Ghost returned, Cap did more soul-searching, beginning with an unusual encounter on the spiritual plane opposite Justice Leaguer-turned-elemental Red Tornado (CA #16–17). Watching as Tornado tried to “cleanse” the planet of mankind’s blight and Atom worked to counter his hurricane-force wind, the Earth elemental Swamp Thing pulled them both to the spiritual plane to mediate a truce. With Cap’s mortal body dying, the Jack Kirby-created angel of death known as the Black Racer emerged to claim him and forced the trio of spirits to put aside their differences for the sake of Atom’s survival. Elsewhere, General Eiling and Doctor Megala were playing a game of cat-and-mouse. On the eve of launching a satellite intended to keep global tabs on Major Force, Megala realized his necessity to Project Atom was coming to an end. With Babylon carrying out wishes, the doctor arranged for Eiling and Lt. Allard to be “kidnapped” by one of Captain Atom’s fictional enemies just long enough to ensure no disruption in the launch. Confronted by the general, Megala explained that the satellite was keyed by microwave pulse to his own heartbeat. And when his heart stopped, a pre-recorded message would be broadcast across the globe that officially exposed the entire Captain Atom fiction (CA #18, Aug. 1988). Cap did his own part to sabotage his reputation in issues #21–22 when the cash-strapped Cameron Scott hired himself out as a mercenary in a Central American country. Unable to discern the “good guys” from the “bad guys,” Scott took to the skies as Captain Atom and

began obliterating weapons on both sides as the rest of the world went into an uproar over the American superhero’s intervention in foreign affairs. Sent abroad to extract Cap, Nightshade crossed paths with Plastique and was on hand when the naïve Atom witnessed the opposing armies—even without conventional weaponry—still fighting each other with torches, shovels, and anything else they could lay their hands on. There was little time to worry about political fallout because the entire planet was soon engaged in a war against an alien alliance. Documented in a three-issue miniseries entitled Invasion! and a multitude of crossover issues late in 1988, the story thrust Captain Atom onto the frontlines as commander-in-chief of Earth’s superhero forces. Old nemesis Wade Eiling stood awkwardly beside him as leader of the planet’s conventional troops. Despite the late-in-the-game detonation of a “gene bomb” that wreaked havoc with superhumans across the globe, Earth’s forces were victorious. In issue #25 (Jan. 1989), Captain Atom earned a private meeting with President Reagan, who offered

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Enough is Enough! (left) Broderick’s cover to the 1998 Captain Atom Annual. (right) Cap leaves behind a message on the Annual’s final page. TM & © DC Comics.

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A Major Pain Original art to the cover of Captain Atom #15 (May 1988), by Pat Broderick, featuring that super-freak with a flattop, Major Force. From the collection of Michael Browning. Note that Broderick’s background scene of a forest was replaced by a special effect on the published version (below). TM & © DC Comics.

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the hero a full pardon for Nathaniel Adam. Respectfully declining, Atom insisted on finding the proof that definitively cleared his name. Suspecting that might be the reaction, Reagan presented the silver-plated hero with an alternative: Cameron Scott’s reinstatement in the Air Force with a promotion to major and a “personal guarantee that Wade Eiling will never harass you again.” From that point forward, Major Scott’s commanding officer would be General John Thomas Hillary, a colleague of Steve Trevor and Etta Candy who’d appeared in Wonder Woman over the past two years. Recalling the various crossovers and guest-appearances, Bates notes that “Greg was particularly instrumental here, since his day job as an assistant editor required that he was always up to date with whatever was going on in other books across the entire DC line.” “I think Cap’s relationships with other DC heroes (Batman, Firestorm, Blue Beetle, Red Tornado, Swamp Thing, Black Racer, etc.) and supporting characters (Steve Trevor, Catherine Cobert, General Hilary, Death, etc.) was something that I drove a bit more than Cary,” Weisman admits. “I was reading everything in those days, and I don’t think Cary always had the time.”

EVOLUTION With his life on an upswing, Nathaniel Adam vowed to find the answers that had dogged him for two decades. It had begun with a virtual suicide mission in Vietnam that had claimed the lives of everyone in Mayday Company but Adam and Jeff Goslin. Storming into the office of the man who’d sent them on the operation, Nate began raging at General Lemar only to collapse on his desk. He awoke to find his knife sticking out of the general’s chest—and a murder charge against him. Adam’s defense attorney Henry Yarrow believed that Lemar had been part of a Southeast Asian drug cartel and that Nate had been set up as a fall guy to eliminate him. With no proof, though, Adam was convicted. Over the course of Captain Atom’s two-and-a-half-year existence, the mystery had regularly risen to the surface as Nate and an older Henry Yarrow continued to track down leads on a case that still seemed to threaten several highly placed individuals. It culminated in issues #26–28 in early 1989 just as a trio of Justice Leaguers decided to confront their silver-plated comrade over the lies they were certain he was telling about his origins. Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, and Mister Miracle were sympathetic to Nathaniel Adam’s dilemma—even joining him in a fight with the armored Cambodian now implicated in the conspiracy—but they agreed to stand back when Cap insisted on bringing the case to an end on his own. Jeff Goslin wouldn’t hear of that, though, revealing to his old friend in issue #28 that he’d long ago discovered that Nate was Captain Atom and insisted on helping him clear his name. With Goz’s help, Nate discovered the existence of the Green Elite, the long-theorized group of Air Force officers who were coordinating the drug supply in Vietnam. They’d been joined by Alec Rois—then a C.I.A. operative—and the Cambodian, who engaged in dirty jobs like leading the slaughter of Adams’ unit … and murdering Elite member Lemar when he became a liability. It came down to three-on-three. Wade Eiling—having survived an assassination attempt—joined Nate and Jeff against the Ghost (Rois) and his agents Bolt and the Cambodian. The surprise was the revelation that Nate’s own defense attorney Henry Yarrow had been part of the drug ring, too, and that he was prepared to thrust the Cambodian’s enhanced sword into Captain Atom’s chest. Thanks to a bullet through the head courtesy of General Eiling, he never got the chance. Captain Atom and General Eiling shook hands and declared they’d misjudged each other, the latter emphasizing that “Nathaniel Adam’s record will be publicly cleared of all charges.” The Ghost was still out there, though, and he wasn’t alone. As Captain Atom #28 closed, the villain conferred with the hitherto unknown leader of the Green Elite and a man who’d just indebted himself to the quantum hero: Wade Eiling.

Brave and Bold (top) Broderick’s cover to Captain Atom #20 (Oct. 1988), co-starring Blue Beetle. (bottom) Its splash page, featuring a Silver Age flashback. Art by Pablo Marcos and Frank McLaughlin. TM & © DC Comics.

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Adam and Eve (right) Nightshade vs. Plastique, on Broderick’s cover of Captain Atom #22 (Dec. 1988). (left) Courtesy of Heritage, an interior art page from that issue, featuring Suicide Squad operative Nightshade and her bosslady, Amanda Waller. TM & © DC Comics.

a Marvel-style plot was written by Cary (for at least part of it) and some rough pencils of a few pages were done by Pat. I have vague memories of both, but I don’t have any of it in my possession anymore. I wrote some dialogue for those first few pages.” Circumstances were working against the pitch, with both Broderick and the writers increasingly committed elsewhere. In the beginning, Bates recalls, he and Weisman “would work out basic story beats and discuss them with Denny O’Neil. Then I would go off and write the script. By the book’s second year Greg had moved from New York THE CAPTAIN ATOM back to the west coast so we’d plot GRAPHIC NOVEL by phone. By the third year I had Creatively speaking, Captain Atom relocated to Florida to work on staff #26–28 also represented a turning at the Salkind/Viacom Superboy series point for the series. Although he’d being shot in Orlando.” At that rafael kayanan continue to serve as cover artist on point, Weisman continues, “I more most issues through #50, Pat Courtesy of Comic Vine/ryonslaught. or less took over the book, with our Broderick was gone as the series’ interior penciler. As roles reversed. Cary was co-plotting, and I was writing Rafael Kayanan stepped in to replace him (much as the thing. But we just shared credit.” he’d done a few years earlier on The Fury of Firestorm), Broderick made plans to begin work on the high-profile SPIES LIKE US “Batman: Year Three” for Batman #436–439 … and a The changeover preceded an 11-part 1989 crossover called “The Janus Directive” that crossed over in books Captain Atom graphic novel. Bates has forgotten the particulars of the pitch, but like Checkmate and Suicide Squad before concluding Weisman is able to recall some details: “It was set in the in Captain Atom #30 (June 1989). A byzantine plot distant future, the year 2888. It featured a mercenary centered on Kobra’s terrorist organization involved a who had stolen Cap’s name, but didn’t really get what war between the government’s various superhuman it meant or what it meant to be a hero. He eventually divisions that was fomented by Amanda Waller and encounters Nathaniel Adam, who is still alive, though her Suicide Squad. A newly elected President George we were intentionally vague as to the why and how. (H. W.) Bush was appalled by the whole affair and, in Had he time-traveled to the future? Was he immortal? Suicide Squad #30, ordered an immediate reorganization Both? (Cap could definitely be killed, but we posited at that included a censure and demotion for Waller. some point that perhaps he no longer aged.) I do think General Eiling, on the other hand, was charged with

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overseeing “all military use of metahumans. The day to day operations of the Atom Project [would] be assigned to Captain Allard.” This, an undercover agent of the Ghost would later declare in Captain Atom #39, was “a joke. Eiling is in full control of every paper clip. He’s his own right-hand man.” For his part, Cap had grown weary of government intrigue. With his name cleared, Nate told his children the whole story about his superhero alter ego (CA 30) but wasn’t prepared for their reaction. The previously hostile Randy was impressed with his dad’s heroics, but Peggy—who’d supported her father unequivocally through his quest for vindication—was taken aback by these new lies he was a part of. Seeking some distance, she abruptly left Washington, D.C. for parts unknown in issue #33. In an odd and unusually subtle move, Margaret Eiling’s next port of call was Metropolis, where she first showed up as an unnamed Daily Planet employee four months later in Superman #39 and #40. When finally identified in issue #40, she gave her name as Peg Adam. Peggy’s move also brought an end to her engagement to Jeff Goslin, a relationship that had thrown Nate for a loop when he first learned of it in CA #23. Although he’d prided himself on his progressive attitudes, Nathaniel had a difficult time wrapping his head around the fact that his daughter wanted to marry a man old enough to be her father … who was, in fact, her godfather. And he was angry with himself for being bothered by the fact that they were an interracial couple. “Goz was never a ‘black man’ to me before,” he told himself in CA #30. “Just my best friend in the world.” Remarkably, the pairing even earned an angry letter in CA #26 from a reader who believed the depiction of an interracial romance was “irresponsible.”

Within the comic book itself, there was more intolerance to be found in the form of one-time flower child Sally “Starshine” Stone, the proprietor of a memorabilia shop who’d first taken a shine to Cameron Scott when he demonstrated his razor-sharp knowledge of the 1960s in CA #16. The ensuing romance had been charming but it struck a roadblock when Scott rejoined the Air Force. Upset that her “kindred spirit” had rejoined the establishment, she essentially cut things off in CA #31. Ironically, though, she’d soon find love with another military man while commiserating with Goz over his own split with Peggy.

JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE Cap hardly lacked for affection, though. Along with the distant Nightshade and Plastique, he gained another prospective girlfriend when he was assigned to lead Justice League Europe in a 1989 spin-off series. When he wasn’t playing exasperated parent to a group of troublesome heroes, Atom was dealing with the team’s often-flirtatious liaison Catherine Cobert. “Looking back, I guess there’s no question Nate liked to play the field,” Bates admits. “Speaking for myself, it was a welcome change of pace from the domesticity of the perennial Clark/Lois, Barry Allen/Iris West relationships that figured into so many of the Superman and Flash stories I wrote over the years.” The Cobert relationship—like Cap’s involvement with the League and in various company crossovers— was sometimes tricky for his solo book’s creative team to stay on top of. “We didn’t always get it right,” Weisman acknowledges, “though we certainly tried. In the Justice League titles, we had all agreed that Cap was spying on the League for the US Government. But I think at some point, without anyone ever telling

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The Graphic Novel Courtesy of Greg Weisman, a peek the unproduced Captain Atom graphic novel’s script. Captain Atom TM & © DC Comics.

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You Can’t Handle the Truth! The Feds spin a fake history (using Charlton stories) for Cap in Secret Origins #34 (Winter 1988). Art by Alan Weiss and Joe Rubinstein. TM & © DC Comics.

Cary or myself, the JL creative team decided that Cap had stopped doing that. So then we did an issue that showed he was still doing it, and folks were not happy with us. So we then did the issue [CA #38, Feb. 1990] where Cap came clean. And there was more stuff like that here and there. But that stuff happens in a shared universe. In the end, I think the series benefitted from those crossovers more than not. Though we always tried to write the issues so that you could enjoy them even if you weren’t reading anything else.” Between League guestappearances in his book, Cap was having big problems. In the process of the Air Force’s transfer of the Silver Shield artifact that powered the duo, the long-dormant UFO seemed to wake up with swift consequences. Major Force collapsed into a kind of cocoon and Captain Atom reverted to human form. A few years earlier, Nate would have been delighted with the prospect, but he’d grown to like the idea of being a superhero more than he realized. Determined to stay in the business even without powers, he put on his Charlton-vintage yellowand-red costume and headed to Gotham City for “a crash-course in non-powered heroics.” Batman was skeptical, but he concluded by the end of CA #33 that the depowered hero was still a capable crimefighter. By the end of a fight with Dr. Spectro in issue #34 (Oct. 1989), Cap’s abilities had made a limited return, prompting a switch to the blue-and-red second Charlton costume. With a revived Major Force at his side, Atom spent the next two issues getting the answers that had eluded him for years. Flashing back to 1967, the story detailed how Heinrich Megala, Anton Sarrok, and husband-and-wife Damon and Ashana Long trekked to the Nevada desert to investigate the UFO soon to be dubbed Silver Shield. The study went well until Damon used an “x-ionized knife” to cut away a sample of the metal. The reaction was instantaneous: Sarrok was rendered catatonic and Damon was

burned to death by a radioactive burst that triggered Megala’s degenerative condition. Ashana—the only one to emerge unscathed—was reported dead herself when the plane carrying her was shot down in Vietnam in 1969. Damon and Ashana’s teenage son Robert—Babylon—was left in the custody of Dr. Megala. Only the recently recovered Sarrok had partly understood what happened: Silver Shield wasn’t a spacecraft; it was a living being that reacted in pain when it was cut and went into shock. Now awake and taking the form of a featureless human with aquatic fins, the childlike Silver Shield telepathically explained to Atom and Force that it had swum across the quantum field to Earth out of pure curiosity. Thanks to the damage he’d incurred, Silver Shield was now trapped on the planet but neither the revitalized Captain nor the Major had any intention of letting Eiling and Megala know, lest they begin experimenting on the quantum curiosity. Instead, the duo plotted a scenario in which Silver Shield seemed to fly into space. Instead, Chester King, a man who’d been indebted to Cap since issue #29, took the being into his own home. An unusual but loving family unit emerged, one that also included King’s wife, motherin-law, newborn daughter, and—effective with issue #38—the Red Tornado. The rehabilitation of Tornado, who’d been recast as a villain during 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths, was spearheaded by Weisman, who declares that he was— and is—a great fan of the android hero. “We did a Red Tornado arc in Young Justice [the 2010–2013 cartoon created by Weisman and Brandon Vietti] and I had wanted to do a second one. There was no room for it in Season Two, so I was going to put it into the Young Justice comic. But then both the show and the comic were canceled.” Another Weisman favorite—the Black Racer—“would have likely shown up in Season Three, but now we’ll never know.” In Captain Atom, though, the silent angel of death appeared five times between issues #17 and 50, including a notable story that began in CA #41.

A BRUSH WITH DEATH The occasion of his 50th birthday—however old he was in reality— inspired Nate to finally come to terms with his wife Angela’s death. Recalling his earlier trip to the spiritual plane, Cap convinced a reticent Red Tornado and a comparatively enthusiastic Silver Shield to assist him in returning long enough to make peace with his lost love. The plan did not go well. Nate’s earthly body effectively died, sustained only in a vegetative state as his soul traversed the path to

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Heaven and reunited him with Angela. She, along with the others he’d met on the road (including the Phantom Stranger, Destiny, and Neil Gaiman’s recently created Death), insisted that Nate must return to Earth because someone evil had taken up residency in his body. That someone was Henry Yarrow, intent on resuming his partnership with the Ghost in his new quantumpowered body. Fighting past the ghastly Nekron, the so-called “lord of the unliving” who’d previously appeared in 1981’s Tales of the Green Lantern Corps miniseries, Nate regained his body, but not without making a proper goodbye to Angela. “She made me promise to get on with my life,” he told Wade Eiling. “But she also told me that her love for you was real … and I respect her enough to believe that somewhere inside you … she recognized the soul of a decent man.” The three-parter in Captain Atom #41–43 (May–July 1990) was overshadowed by a mini-controversy that erupted over Bates and Weisman’s use of Gaiman’s Death. While the Black Racer had been the book’s resident personification of death, this story went a step further by also including Nekron and the female incarnation recently seen in Sandman. “It’s a big concept,” she declared. “There’s room for more than one of us.” Neil Gaiman was not pleased with the appearance, insisting that there were not different aspects of Death but only his ultimate version. “I made a tremendous effort to be careful and respectful,” Weisman insisted in 2003 on his online “Ask Greg” forum. “It certainly was okay with Karen Berger, Neil’s editor on Sandman, who

Sign Me Up! (top) Bart Sears’ cover to Justice League Europe #1 (Apr. 1989). (bottom left) Catherine Cobert recruits Cap in JLE #1, where Sears is inked by Pablo Marcos. (bottom right) Cap on a JL postcard, by Kevin Maguire and Joe Rubinstein. TM & © DC Comics.

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Dynamic Duo Captain Atom had many poster-worthy covers by Pat Broderick, but here in the BACK ISSUE Batcave we’re partial to this one, from issue #33 (Sept. 1989), which riffs the classic (and oftrepurporsed) Silver Age Batman and Robin pose by Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson. TM & © DC Comics.

was shown the appearance before it was published. In my defense, I had permission and we were all working in a shared universe. I would have been happy to talk to Neil about the appearance in advance. But all I got from Karen and Denny O’Neil (my editor) was a go-ahead, so I figured it was all right.” While Captain Atom had escaped death, there was a growing sense of finality as various subplots moved forward. With the true story of his degenerative condition now known, Dr. Megala convinced Cap to help him arrest it in issue #39. The treatment did strengthen his body, but the trade-off left the scientist totally blind. Elsewhere, a conflicted Plastique was reunited with Atom in issue #44. With her explosive powers out of control and no meaning in her life, the tortured woman wanted nothing more than to die. Wrapping her in his arms, Cap promised there

was still hope. In issue #49, the hero finally admitted that he’d fallen in love with the woman otherwise known as Bette Sans Souci and proposed marriage. She declined—as a test of her resolve not to escape when she received her prison sentence—but admitted that she loved him, too. Issue #46 tied up two loose ends. Awakening as prisoners in crystalline shells, Superman, Captain Atom, and Major Force discovered that they and super-beings from other worlds had all been secured by a being called Kylstar to help him overthrow the dictator who terrorized his home planet. Conceding that he should have just asked, the alien got several willing participants … including Major Force. Tired of Eiling’s threats and anxious for the chance to cut loose, Force was more than ready to leave Earth. In the course of the adventure, Superman had seen Cap’s true face and recognized it from a picture he’d seen as Clark Kent on a certain greg weisman Daily Planet employee’s desk. On a tip from the Man of Steel, father and daughter had a happy reunion on the last page. (Peggy wasn’t smiling so much several months later in 1991’s Superman: The Man of Steel #1 when she was laid off.) These events took place under the shadow of three abductions. Babylon, Martin Allard, and Jeff Goslin had all been kidnapped by forces of the Ghost in issue #40 and were being subjected to months of brainwashing. The plan’s goal began to play out in issue #45 when Allard was manipulated into escaping. Structurally unlike any other story in the series (or most comic books of the day), the dense 22-pager relied heavily on captions to relate a story that detailed the progressive downfall of General Eiling’s one-time second-in-command.

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LEAPING FORWARD Given the all-clear to return to work, Allard had wed publicist Theresa Delgado even as his obsession with Major Force led him to discover that his mother’s killer had been hired by his unknown biological father. Conditioned to believe that man was Wade Eiling, Allard agreed to an alliance with the Ghost that transformed him into an x-ionized behemoth called Ironfire. And it was all for nothing. In the climax, Ironfire discovered that his true father had been Green Elite member Martin Lockleed, a man slain by the Ghost in CA #23 and whose son Homer had been murdered by Allard himself to cover up his misdeeds. Weisman emphasizes that Martin Allard’s stark descent into madness was never something he’d intended to play out gradually as a subplot. “The structure was unusual—but intentional. This was not me crushing tons of story into one issue because I was running out of issues. This was me being experimental to try to show in one issue the origin of a supervillain psychosis.” Captain Atom #50 (Feb. 1991) pulled all the threads together at Randy Eiling’s wedding to Allard’s ex-wife Theresa when the brainwashed Babylon and Jeff Goslin returned to murder their former friends. Goz’s brainwashing hadn’t taken, though, thanks to Sally Stone’s courageous infiltration of the Ghost’s cult. Babylon couldn’t go through with killing his mentor Megala, either. Recruiting Red Tornado and a fully pardoned Plastique, Captain Atom took Randy, General Eiling, and a handful of others directly to the Ghost’s court. Dr. Megala himself managed to sever the Ghost’s teleportational link to the quantum field but his heroism cost both men their lives. And with Dr. Megala’s passing, the clock started counting down on his pre-recorded confession. Said admission, as it turned out, was nothing more than “Wade Eiling wears combat boots.” It had all been a bluff and Captain Atom could have walked away … but he chose not to. Instead, on the same Nightzone TV show where he’d recounted his “secret origin,” Cap went public with the broad strokes of the fraud he’d been party to for the past five years. With Peggy, Randy, Theresa, and his new fiancée Bette by his side, Nathaniel Adam walked off into the sunset. “Right now,” he mused, “I feel good. Clean for the first time in ages. I’m a happy man.” General Eiling wasn’t feeling the love himself but he had plenty of plans for the future. His newest crony, Lt. Douglas Eliot, was already reporting that Charles Hendel—the new Dr. Spectro who’d killed the old one in issue #49—was prepared to cut a deal. Anton Sarrok believed that Ironfire could still be redirected to serve them. And Babylon’s mother—still alive despite the claims of her 1969 death—was cryptically referenced when Eliot declared that “Project Ashana is ready for activation.” Along with the ominous conclusion of issue #36— wherein Silver Shield’s people began a long journey to Earth to “destroy whatever caused him pain”—they were loose ends that would never be resolved. Cary Bates and Greg Weisman, the men who had guided the series since its relaunch, were ready to move on. “Cary was just too busy on Superboy to do the comic,” Weisman explains. “He had time for a phone call now and then for me to bounce ideas off, etc. But at that point, the writing was all on me. Meanwhile, I was working at Disney TV Animation fulltime, and had fallen behind, deadline-wise. Plus, I didn’t feel I was getting much support from DC. The latter probably wasn’t true, but it felt that way. I suggested I call it quits with issue #50, and no one objected.” Asked whether he approached those final issues with a catalog of subjects to resolve, Weisman remarks, “There’s probably some truth to the bucket-list notion. Though, of course, I also intentionally left some threads hanging at the end of our run (Silver Shield, Project Ashana, etc.). There were plenty more stories to tell.” While he no longer recalls the particulars of “Project Ashana,” Weisman notes that “the idea was that the original Silver Shield encounter had affected the four people present [in 1967] in different ways. Heinrich Megala lost his body (or the use of it). Anton Sarrok lost his mind. Damon Long lost his life. Ashana Long ... lost her soul.”

Growing Cast (top) This scorecard splash page to Captain Atom #39 (Mar. 1990) identifies many of the characters mentioned in this article. (bottom) When Death drops in, there’s always trouble— even in the DC editorial offices. From CA #42 (June 1990). Art for both by Rafael Kayanan and Romeo Tanghal. TM & © DC Comics.

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ALMOST A VILLAIN

Statuesque Beauty Broderick evokes Michelangelo’s La Pieta on his cover to Captain Atom #44 (Aug. 1990), revisiting the same theme he used on the cover to issue #8 (inset), with Cap and Plastique in the opposite positions. TM & © DC Comics.

Then there was the engagement of Nathaniel Adam. “The love of his life was, of course, his late wife Angela Randall Adam Eiling,” Weisman says. “And I think we showed that. He was very attracted to a number of women, who reciprocated to one degree or another. But he was raised Catholic in a different era. He’d only ever slept with Angela and only after they were married. So in the 1980s and ’90s, that made it tough for him to make that final connection with a modern woman. Ultimately, I was setting up a long-term plan for him and Bette (Plastique) to get married and have a kid. In a strange way, I think Nate and Bette had a lot in common.” With the departure of Bates and Weisman, Captain Atom was conspicuously marking time. Kelley Puckett delivered a dark one-off story in issue #51 (illustrated by Colleen Doran and Terry Austin) that focused less on Cap than his influence. Dan Raspler-scripted tales in issues #52 and 53 were considerably lighter and also cemented Mike Gustovich (as “Michael Adams”) as the book’s new regular penciler (following earlier fill-ins for Rafael Kayanan in CA #46 and #49).

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A year after the cancellation of Firestorm, writer John Ostrander stepped in to revisit elements of that series, notably the mysterious Rasputin and Firestorm’s evil twin. Over the course of issue #54–57’s “Quantum Quest,” Nate created an idyllic fantasy world for himself on the quantum plane only to unearth repressed memories about the father who abandoned him and the alcoholic mother whose car accident took her own life and that of Nate’s sister. Vowing to rein in the chaos that had dogged his life “by whatever means necessary,” Captain Atom returned to Earth to destroy the raging Shadowstorm. The singularly odd last page portrayed the hero silently standing amidst the still-burning buildings in the African city ravaged by his enemy. “All around the man, the city moans,” a caption reported as Cap flew away. “In the rubble are the dead and the wounded. He does not hear them. Or, if he hears, he does not heed. His destiny now lies … elsewhere.” On cue, a slug at the bottom of the page screamed, “Follow Captain Atom’s destiny! Buy … Armageddon 2001 #2. On sale now!” Launched the same month that Captain Atom #52 went on sale, “Armageddon 2001” was one of DC’s big events of the year, a six-month-long event that would continue through all of the company’s 1991 Annuals. The hook was that—ten years in the future— one of DC’s heroes was destined to snap, kill his contemporaries, and become a global tyrant called Monarch. Forty years later, the evil Monarch’s true name was lost to history but a time-traveler named Waverider vowed to get the answer. Arriving in 1991, he systematically approached many of the planet’s foremost superheroes and used his abilities to project their fate ten years in the future. With the list of participating Annuals reported in advance, Captain Atom was conspicuous in its absence. Add the facts that Cap’s own book was running a succession of fill-ins and the announcement—early into the crossover—that Captain Atom was being canceled and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the true identity of Monarch. Convinced that someone had leaked the twist, editor Jonathan Peterson suggested they change it. “I thought this would be a great stunt,” Peterson told Bill Walko in 2005’s Titans Companion. “Let everyone think they know the ending, and we’ll create a secret finale.” Thus, when Waverider examined Captain Atom’s future at the start of Armageddon 2001 #2, he discovered that the quantum hero was not Monarch. Rather, the culprit was the Hawk—co-star of Hawk and the Dove— a hero who’d previously been eliminated as a suspect and, coincidentally, a Ditko-created hero like Captain Atom. Most fans were admittedly surprised, but not necessarily in a good way, objecting to details like Hawk’s out-of-the-blue murder of his partner Dove. Meanwhile, Captain Atom had already been dropped from upcoming issues of Justice League Europe in anticipation of his turn to the dark side, so the revised story also had to take his absence into account. The story concluded with both Cap and Monarch

being thrust into the time stream and stranded in the distant past. An echo of Armageddon 2001’s original ending could be found in that week’s JLE #31, though, which opened with a nightmare of Catherine Cobert that found her attacked by an evil Captain Atom. “Having seen Barry Allen sacrificed for the sake of the Crisis crossover a few years earlier,” Bates remarks, “I hated to see history repeating itself with Captain Atom, although by the time the Monarch dust-up took place I was pretty much out of the picture.” “It was admittedly tough for me,” Weisman adds. “Especially since we had just cleansed him of sin only a few issues previous. And I really didn’t care for how they ended up changing his backstory, giving him abusive parents, etc. I think that makes things too easy. We all have darkness inside us. You don’t need a history of abuse for that.”

INSTABILITY Although spared the indignity of becoming a supervillain, Captain Atom was left adrift in the aftermath. Concluding in January of 1992, the Armageddon: Alien Agenda miniseries followed Cap and Monarch’s progressive trek back to the present-day and promised the “all-new Captain Atom” would return in his own series soon. The Comics Buyer’s Guide #962 described it as a six-issue miniseries scripted by Jonathan Peterson with art by Michael Netzer and Art Nichols but the project went

unpublished. When Cap finally resurfaced a year and a half later in 1993’s Justice League America #80, though, all thoughts of a solo series were gone. Instead, he was working on behalf of the US Government and increasingly combative toward his one-time costumed allies. Now defined more as a soldier and less as a family man, Captain Atom experienced one interpretation after another over the next two decades. From combative leader of the offshoot Justice League West in Extreme Justice #0–18 (1994–1996) to a participant in a team of former Charlton heroes in The L.A.W. #1–6 (1999) to a Dr. Manhattan-esque turn in the New 52’s Captain Atom #1–12 and #0 (2011–2012), no version stuck around. That even extended to a pair of attempts at shoehorning Nathanial Adam into the role of Monarch that he was originally meant for (1995’s Extreme Justice #6–8 and #12–14 and 2006–2007’s Crisis Aftermath: Battle for Bludhaven #6 and the Countdown weekly series). Reflecting the industry trend, very little of this had anything to do with Nathaniel’s private life. He married and divorced Bette off-panel while Wade Eiling was co-opted as a clean-shaven version of Silver Age villain Shaggy Man in 1998’s JLA #24–26. Randy and Peggy Eiling never appeared in mainstream continuity again. For Greg Weisman, memories of his and Cary’s run on Captain Atom still lingered when he helped develop the Gargoyles animated series (1994–1997) for Disney

Close Call The 1991 DC crossover Armageddon 2001 nearly took ol’ Cap to the dark side! (left) Waverider sizes up Captain Atom; (bottom right) the storyline’s climactic clash as depicted in a 1991 DC trading card; and (top right) its follow-up. Pencils by Dan Jurgens, with inks by Art Thibert (except for the Alien Agenda cover, which was inked by Dick Giordano). TM & © DC Comics.

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Across the DC Universe Four Captain Atom sightings outside of his own title: (above) Fury of Firestorm #63 (Sept. 1987), Secret Origins #34 (Winter 1988), and Wonder Woman #26 (Jan. 1989). (below) Young Justice #9 (Dec. 2011). TM & © DC Comics.

Television. Reflecting on the show’s complex human villain, Weisman notes that “[General] Eiling was definitely a precursor to the David Xanatos character.” The writer got a chance to reunite with both of the series close to his heart in 1999’s JLA Showcase 80-Page Giant #1. “Dan Raspler, who had been the associate editor on Captain Atom back in the day, wanted to reunite old teams to do stories for it,” Weisman explains. “He wanted to reunite Cary and Pat and myself on an untold tale of Justice League Europe featuring Captain Atom. Cary wasn’t interested, but I was. Pat [Broderick] was initially on board to do the pencils, but that never happened. So Chris Jones got the nod. It was a pretty self-indulgent story, frankly, since it involved a parody of Gargoyles. But I thought it matched the sardonic tone of the old Justice League Europe book, which was the goal. So I’m unashamed. “Years later, working on Young Justice, Brandon Vietti and I were building our 16member Justice League. And we wanted it to be a very powerful team, like a pantheon of gods down from Olympus. Cap fit right in, of course. And that allowed me to do some fun stuff with him in the comic book as well.” Notable in that regard was 2011’s Young Justice #9–10 (co-written by Weisman and Kevin Hopps with art by Christopher Jones and Dan Davis), wherein the teen heroes helped Nathaniel Adam clear his name in a plot that in spots echoed Captain Atom #26–28. Similarly, the comic book’s finale (YJ #20–25) included a reprise of CA #46’s Kylstar story as one of its plots. In yet another venue (a 2011 episode of the Batman: The Brave and the Bold cartoon), Weisman, Hopps, and Todd Casey used CA #33’s story as the inspiration for a Batman team-up. Looking back on the series, Cary Bates declares, “All things considered, I think we were able to keep the character true to its classic Charlton roots while still turning out a book that was quite progressive for its time. To my knowledge, Captain Atom was the first major title to integrate a government conspiracy into a superhero’s DNA. It was not only published decades before Marvel’s “Civil War” crossover, but also predated the primetime government conspiracy wave on TV that The X-Files would usher in a few years later.” For his part, Greg Weisman emphasizes, “I still very much love the character and the great supporting cast we created. I’ve tried to pitch doing him again at various times at DC, but there doesn’t seem to be any interest in matching me back up with him. But that’s the business when you’re working on characters you don’t own or control. But even now, I’d jump at the chance to work with him again.” JOHN WELLS is a comics historian specializing in DC Comics who has served as resource for projects ranging from Kurt Busiek’s The Power Company to Greg Weisman’s Young Justice animated series. He is the author of the TwoMorrows books American Comic Book Chronicles: 1960–1964 and 1965–1969.

56 • BACK ISSUE • Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age

Dan Johnson

In the mid-1980s, after DC Comics’ Crisis on Infinite Earths maxiseries wrapped up, the company set about integrating the recently acquired Charlton Action Heroes into its new, streamlined universe. Some characters, like Blue Beetle and Captain Atom, quickly became fan favorites thanks to their own series and inclusion in the Justice League. Meanwhile, the Question, who seemed made for the dark-and-gritty realism that was injected into comics during the latter half of this decade, also gained a loyal following. One of the lesser-known Charlton Heroes that DC worked into the ranks was Peacemaker, a character that would also embrace the violence that comics were trading in heavily towards the end of the 1980s. The character, created by writer Joe Gill and artist Pay Boyette, was never as big a hit as his Charlton cohorts, but Peacemaker did have his moments at DC, most notably as the star of his own miniseries that was written by Paul Kupperberg and penciled by Tod Smith. In this four-issue miniseries (cover-dated Jan.–Apr. 1988), Peacemaker is a troubled man who is trying to come to grips with the sins of his father, a Nazi war criminal that “talks” to him through the helmet that he wears, while he maintains a fragile grip on reality. All the while, he is also trying to stop a plot to throw the world into utter chaos by an old foe of the Dark Knight.

UNDER THE HELMET A few years before the miniseries was published, Peacemaker was slated to appear in another comic-book project, a weekly anthology that would showcase him and the other Charlton Action Heroes, Blockbuster, a.k.a. Comics Cavalcade Weekly (see Robert Greenberger’s “Greatest Stories Never Told” article elsewhere in this issue). Had that book been published, Keith Giffen and Robert Loren Fleming would have handled Peacemaker’s adventures. Even though this version of the paul kupperberg character never saw the light of day, Giffen and Fleming’s take on Peacemaker was well received by all involved and, in the end, several elements from it were incorporated into the 1988 Peacemaker miniseries which eventually saw print. “It was Keith Giffen and Robert Loren Fleming who conceived of the Peacemaker helmet talking to our hero,” says Greenberger, who was originally slated to be the editor for the weekly comic book. “They produced about a dozen two-page strips for the aborted weekly project. Everyone fell in love with the notion and despite those stories never seeing print, it became the character’s concept going forward.” Paul Kupperberg concurs: “It’s always easy to spot a Giffen idea … Ambush Bug? Yeah, you know Kupperberg didn’t come up with that one. [Peacemaker] was one of the first characters to take the idea of the psycho-severe and run it off the rails.”

Bang Bang, Shoot Shoot Tod Smith’s cover to Peacemaker #1 (Jan. 1988). TM & © DC Comics.

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First Shots (left) Peacemaker had two “tryouts” in two story arcs in Vigilante, making the Mike Grelldrawn cover of issue #36 (Dec. 1986). (right) Writer Paul Kupperberg’s Peacemaker featured a level of realistic violence rarely seen in DC series of its time, as evidenced by this page from issue #1. Art by Tod Smith and Pablo Marcos, with colors by Gene D’Angelo. TM & © DC Comics.

Characters that were struggling with reality were Not only did Peacemaker make his first major nothing new in comic books. What made Peacemaker appearance in the DC Universe in Vigilante, it was also different and dynamic, though, was the source of his in that book that the more violent and brutal take on madness. “The character had demons he was working the character was cemented. “Vigilante was a total through from his past,” says Kupperberg. “Especially psycho-kitty comic book, and we brought Peacemaker regarding his father, who was a Nazi war criminal and in and just cut him loose,” says Kupperberg. “I don’t who killed himself in front of his young son. know why he was just laying around, but we We were looking for something horrendous. were able to use him. I was a big fan of all To my thinking, being Jewish, and being the old Charlton characters. I loved that born in the 1950s, right after World War stuff and I was happy to be able to II—what was the worst thing a person work with the character and he could be? A concentration camp worked well with Vigilante.” commander. It was still fresh in everyAnyone familiar with Vigilante one’s mind. Everyone’s dad was a should have known full well what veteran. It remains the epitome of the kind of character Peacemaker was most horrible thing people can be.” going to be when he showed up Before the miniseries was published, there. After all, the book already had Kupperberg and Smith used a reputation for its violence and Peacemaker as a guest-star for six sexual content. “Vigilante had some of issues in the book they were working the earliest nudity for a mainstream tod Smith on at the time, Vigilante (in #36–38, comics title,” says Smith. “And I Dec. 1986–Feb. 1987, and #41–43, think I illustrated the first ‘hero May–July 1987). “The miniseries was a spin-off of that drinking too much and puking his guts out in the appearance,” says Tod Smith. “Paul and I had been toilet’ scene that DC ever published. That was a working together for a while on that series, so for major milestone.” some reason it was decided to team us up again on the When it came time to write the miniseries, miniseries. Paul, being the originator of the storyline, Kupperberg came up with a story that involved a may be able to shed further light on that and all scheme by an old Batman villain, Dr. Tzin-Tzin, who related subjects.” plans to destabilize the Soviet Union and thus cause

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turmoil and instability in the parts of the world that this superpower controlled. In a case of life imitating art, not too long after this miniseries came out, the Berlin Wall came down and East and West Germany reunified, and the event marked the beginning of an era where the Soviet Union did indeed begin to lose influence in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. As a result, a whole new world of trouble began to brew in those regions. “I love history and I keep abreast of the news,” says Kupperberg. “Back then, if you didn’t use Nazis, the great enemies were the Russians. It just seemed to be a topic that I picked up on. It was something in the news I picked up on and went in and played with that. I don’t think you had to be a genius back then to know Russia was in deep doo-doo, we just didn’t quite know the extent since they kept everything as secret as they did. They were obviously in a bad place and that was being talked about. I used to play off the news all the time in Checkmate.” As Kupperberg points out, the Peacemaker miniseries also gave him an opportunity to further show his distrust of authority figures in general. “[The miniseries] comments on my endless and boundless cynicism about government as well,” says Kupperberg. “Of course, they’re going to take someone who’s totally insane and just kind of keep him in the ballpark there. Keep him on a leash—he’ll be okay and he’ll be useful. Then, of course, he slips the leash. A lot of that plays into it as well. Those types of books I write are very cynical about authority figures.” “I pretty much just got the script and took it from there,” says Smith when asked about his input into Peacemaker. “I would think that Paul and [editor] Mike Gold worked out the storyline between them; I usually don’t have much story input, I leave that to the writers. If I think I can improve the pacing of a sequence I’ll do that. It seems to me this was done more ‘Marvelstyle,’ i.e., from an outline rather than a full script, so I was able to contribute some pacing and storytelling elements at that point, but I had nothing to do with the formulating of the plot.” While Smith may not have had a hand in creating the plotline for the miniseries, the task of keeping it grounded in the real world fell on him as its artist. Drawing Peacemaker’s arsenal, as well as his weapons and vehicles, was no small task, though. “Yes, in the days before Google, you had to keep what we called a ‘swipe file’: pictures clipped from magazines of weapons, locales, aircraft, different types of characters, etc.,” says Smith. “You’d look through magazines, again, pre–Internet, before print went out of style, and save anything that you thought you might use sometime, and stick it in a folder. I had shots of planes and helicopters, some Nazi memorabilia, army uniforms, etc. There were also movies and TV shows you could record on your VCR for reference. I think I used Hogan’s Heroes for some of the Nazi uniforms, and maybe films like The Great Escape. There was also the library, and it took time to find what you were looking for. Nowadays it’s so much easier. God bless Google!”

THE DOCTOR IS “IN” When asked why he chose Dr. Tzin-Tzin, a rarely used Batman villain, to be the antagonist of this storyline, Kupperberg offers the simple response, “I was looking for a Fu Manchu kind of [villain]. I quite literally sat down, as we often did, with Who’s Who and looked for inspiration there and I came across this character, this Asian man of mystery, this conquering ‘Fu Manchu’ I was looking for, and picked him.” Spoiler alert: Another reason for using the character is that his fate could be sealed at the end of the miniseries. Since he wasn’t a major bad guy in the DC Universe, Kupperberg killed off the bad doctor at the conclusion of Peacemaker, and this miniseries marked his final appearance. Killing off the antagonist of your story is pretty hardcore to begin with, but that was just the tip of the iceberg where Peacemaker was concerned. Peacemaker had already gone to some dark places in the pages of Vigilante, but then DC wanted Kupperberg and Smith to up the ante as much as possible for the miniseries. “[They said,] pretty much, ‘Go in there and go nuts with it,’ ” says Kupperberg. “ ‘Go mayhem! Go psycho! Have this guy be a crazy shoot-’em up.’ And I went and did that. I had been doing that for several years on Vigilante and I like to think I was on the cutting edge of the whole grim-and-gritty psycho comics universe.” When asked if DC had given any him suggestions for how graphic they wanted the book to be, Smith says, “I wasn’t given any particular guidelines or suggestions editorially. The story spoke for itself. It had an edgy feel to it, and that’s what I tried to present. DC had recently adopted a rating system of their own, with certain titles being designated ‘for mature readers,’ so there was a deliberate decision to ‘push the envelope’ on those books.” The envelope-pushing that DC demanded was part of a darker tone that the industry as a whole was taking at the end of the 1980s. Sadly, this wasn’t a tone that was usually handled as well as it should have by the writers and artists who were making comics. Thankfully, Kupperberg was one of the few writers who knew how to strike the right chord of mayhem and restraint. “With Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, the grim and gritty was being done by people who were using it to make a point,” says Kupperberg. “Everybody else who interpreted it didn’t see the point, they just saw the blood and guts and gritted teeth and what became the whole Image look. They just

Dropping in on Tzin Smith’s adeptness at drawing weaponry helped root Peacemaker in reality. (However, if the artist had had his way, the anti-hero’s unwieldy helmet would have been redesigned.) Page 2 from issue #2. TM & © DC Comics.

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Familiar Face First seen in 1966’s Detective Comics #354, Batman foe Dr. Tzin-Tzin was cut from the cloth of the “Yellow Peril” villains borne of the World War II and Red Scare eras. Among Dr. Tzin-Tzin’s few appearances was (above) Batman #284 (Feb. 1977, cover by Jim Aparo). (left) The diabolical doc pops up again on Tod Smith’s cover to Peacemaker #3 (Mar. 1988). TM & © DC Comics.

missed the whole point and went off in the wrong direction. I know everybody thought it was the coolest thing, but not everything calls for that.” When it came time to put the art onto the page, Smith found his own sense of restraint kicking in and also helped keep the book from being turning into just another mish-mash of violence and blood. “There was no specific discussion that I recall,” says Smith when asked if he had received a mandate from DC to test the limits of the miniseries. “If it was there in the script, I tried to do it as tastefully as I could, without being shockingly graphic. That was never my style, portraying graphic violence and gore; at art school some guys thrived on that—flying body parts and splatter. That never appealed to me, but I kept winding up on these gritty anti-hero titles [like] Vigilante, Peacemaker, and Punisher, because comics were changing, and if you wanted to work that’s what you wound up drawing. I’m really a much more mellow type myself.”

GRIM-AND-GRITTY Indeed, Peacemaker came out at a time when the comics industry was losing interest in producing books suitable for what should had been its primary audience: kids. It was a trend that didn’t escape the attention of its creators. “If you’re looking to broaden your scope as a publisher and appeal to a wider audience, that’s fine,” says Smith, “as long as you

remember your younger readership and what attracted them to comics in the first place, and have books which continue appeal to them as well. ‘Grim-and-gritty’ was taking over, I suppose as a result of writers like Frank Miller and the popularity of characters like Rambo at the box office, and for me, a lot of the innocence and fun was going out of comics. Isn’t ‘comics for mature readers’ an oxymoron? They’re supposed to be for kids; grown men in spandex with underage sidekicks going out and beating up the bad guys is a juvenile concept to begin with, and having them act psychotically doesn’t make it more mature, but more ridiculous, as far as I’m concerned. Best not to examine why Bruce Wayne fights crime dressed up as a bat, or why his best friend is a young boy; I personally don’t want to go there. Kids accepted it at face value, and that’s what works best. If you want sex and violence and twisted characters, read a novel, or graphic novels aimed at an older audience. My guess is sales were slipping and comics have always latched onto the latest trend to try and boost sales. So, no, I was not a big fan of comics’ ‘darker’ new direction, and the fact that kids no longer get into comics at an early age anymore may be a result of it. I’m in favor for comics geared to a variety of audiences, and I think that’s a good thing. There are fewer books geared to younger readers these days (and they’ve also gotten too expensive) so they are less appealing to kids, and sales figures would seem

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Not Exactly a Negotiator (top) Tod Smith’s cover to the miniseries’ explosive finale, Peacemaker #4 (Apr. 1988). (bottom) Peacemaker goes all “Bane” on an adversary on page 6 of issue #3. TM & © DC Comics.

to reflect this. The older reader has more disposable income, so the demographic for comics is now an older group who developed the comics habit years ago, which to me seems strange, and a little sad. I loved comics as a kid, and would like to see more books geared to the new reader that are not so violent and overtly sexual. Let’s remember whom this medium was originally designed to appeal to. There should be something for everyone, and every level. As a fantasy medium it can’t be beat, and different age groups have different fantasies.” While Peacemaker may have been riding the trend of being dark and grim, the character had more going for him than just random acts of violence. Fighting against what his father had been made Peacemaker a very powerful and empathetic character. Having him win out in the end gives the ending of the miniseries a much-needed sense of hope, as well as “redemption,” adds Kupperberg, “that you have to redeem the family. You have to redeem yourself. Peacemaker is trying to find out if he inherited that horror from his father. You can inherit alcoholism, you can inherit any number of genetic disorders. You can inherit being a monster. And this monster—the father—left all kinds of extra scars on his son. Not only was he a monster, he killed himself in front of the kid, knowing his son was watching. His final act was using the gun, regardless of who was there. In this case, the trauma left the scars and turned him into the man he became.” Again—and this cannot be stressed enough, in spite of the mandate to go dark and gritty—Kupperberg avoided the trap that too many writers of the time fell into. He ended his story with a sense of hope. Throughout the miniseries, Peacemaker wrestles with his demons and by the end of the fourth issue, he appears to have them under control. “That’s a double-pronged thing,” says Kupperberg. “First, you need a beginning, middle, and an end. You wrap it up and give the guy a happy ending. Second, with that happy ending, you now have something to tear down in the sequel. I’ve written [Life with Archie] for several years now, and people who love Archie comics, and who are used to regular teen Archie comics, come up to me all the time and say, ‘Why do you do all this terrible stuff to these characters? We love them.’ I go, ‘I love them too, but happy characters are pretty dull. Happy people are not very interesting. Happy people having their lives turn to sh*t is fascinating. The unhappier you can make your characters, the more fodder for stories you’ve got. I guess with Peacemaker, I could have gone on for a long, long time.” The ending for the miniseries seemed to scream for a sequel, but alas, Peacemaker would be a one-time affair, something Kupperberg regrets. “I don’t remember there being any talk of a [sequel],” says Kupperberg. “The miniseries did all right for the time. It did, like, 110,000, 120,000 [copies], which sounds more impressive today than it did back in 1988. It’s a shame, because I would have loved to continue playing with the character. There were a lot of stories to tell.” Kupperberg is not alone. “I want to make clear that I enjoyed Paul’s take on the Peacemaker: slightly deranged, and off his rocker,” says Smith. “It was all tongue in cheek, and I remember enjoying the scenes where [Peacemaker] had conversations in his head with the Nazi Gestapo officer. So that was cool, because this character had never really been explored, at least by DC, and Paul had fun pushing the envelope of the fanatically obsessed hero. The guy’s a nut, so let’s have fun with it.” So, had the character been given a second outing, what might we have seen? The biggest concern for the future on the part of Smith at least was Peacemaker’s wardrobe. “I never felt comfortable with the costume,” says Smith. “Let’s face it—that helmet was clunky and awkward, and I would have liked to redesign it, but didn’t feel I had the leeway to do that, their having just brought him over from Charlton as-is. Maybe if he’d stuck around a while, with a series of his own, we could have done that. But it was fun to do, and we did the best we could at the time. And that’s my final word on that.” DAN JOHNSON is a comics writer whose works include Herc and Thor for Antarctic Press and several books for Campfire Graphic Novels. He is also a gag writer for the Dennis the Menace comic strip and a contributing author to the short story anthology, With Great Power.

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Ian Millsted

When DC Comics purchased the Charlton Action Heroes line of characters, Peter Cannon, alias Thunderbolt, was something of an odd man out. For a start, the character was owned by creator Pete Morisi (who had written and drawn the original Charlton series under the pseudonym PAM). Secondly, he was something of a reluctant hero type, so where other Action Heroes fit smoothly into the DC Universe, Peter Cannon waited on the sidelines. The vehicle by which the Charlton Action Heroes were introduced into the DC Universe was the Crisis on Infinite Earths maxiseries by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez. Peter Cannon sneaks in with a one-panel appearance in issue #7 (Oct. 1985) alongside other Charlton characters. A more substantial appearance might have followed soon afterwards if Alan Moore had been able to persuade Dick Giordano to let him use the Charlton characters in the series that would become Watchmen. Instead, as is chronicled well elsewhere, Moore created analogs of the Charlton characters with Peter Cannon being the basis for Ozymandias, another character who stands apart from the other costumed “heroes”; and if anyone is unaware of how then go and get yourself a copy of Watchmen—now. Having protected the characters he once edited from the finite role they would have had (or so everybody thought until a couple of years ago) in Watchmen, Dick Giordano encouraged their re-emergence in ongoing series. As documented elsewhere in this BACK ISSUE, the charge was led by Blue Beetle (from June 1986) followed by The Question (from Feb. 1987) and Captain Atom (from Mar. 1987). There were plans that Peter Cannon– Thunderbolt might have followed soon after. In his text piece in the first issue of the recent Peter Cannon– Thunderbolt revival from Dynamite, Mark Waid explained, “In 1988, I was an editor at DC working under Giordano, my friend and mentor. Dick liked Morisi a lot. And he loved Thunderbolt. He asked me to develop a new series with writer Robert Loren Fleming, a move Morisi blessed—if he were allowed to be involved creatively somehow. At age 60, he couldn’t handle full art on a monthly series, so Dick suggested Pete do a special ‘reintroduction’ story for my Secret Origins anthology series. It was in the DC offices that I met Pete, who looked and sounded for all the world like a Mickey Spillane character, and he graciously listened to me (the snot-nosed whelp) explain what I was looking for in a yarn. Pete was genial, good-natured, shook my hand, and a few weeks later made his deadline on the dot, handing in 19 completed pages, fully lettered and illustrated and ready to go.” Unfortunately, Secret Origins was canceled before Morisi’s work could see print, and the Fleming series did not happen.

The “Reluctant Hero” Cover to DC’s Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt #1 (Sept. 1992), penciled by its writer, Mike Collins, and inked by Jose Marzan, Jr. The cover montage shows his Cannon’s primary supporting cast, Cairo de Frey and Tabu Singh. Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt TM & © Peter A. Morisi estate. DC logo TM & © DC Comics.

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Reincarnated (top) Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt #2 (Nov. 1992) flashes back to Cannon’s tests to assume the mantle of the Tibetan champion Vajra. (bottom) In issue #3, longtime readers rediscover another character from the Charlton series, the villainess Evila. Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt TM & © Peter A. Morisi estate. DC logo TM & © DC Comics.

PETER CANNON POST–PAM While Captain Atom progressed through 57 issues of his own title, as well as a couple of Annuals and regular Justice League appearances, and Blue Beetle, the Question, Nightshade (in Suicide Squad), and even the Peacemaker became embedded in the DC Universe, Peter Cannon seemed to be left in development limbo. The creative initiative now came from British writer/artist Mike Collins. Mike Collins had in common with the aforementioned Alan Moore that he had been encouraged as a young creator by the late Steve Moore. Collins was born in West Brom, England, in 1961 but by the early 1990s was resident in Wales. Collins related the sequence of events in a text piece printed in DC’s Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt #1: “I met with Dick Giordano. I said I was interested in writing as well as drawing for DC. He asked what ideas I had for new series. Justice League International was doing well, so I suggested a JL UK—a natural! Dick and [DC talent coordinator] Pat Bastienne smiled benignly and told me that yes, it was a good idea. So good that DC was going to be doing it. It’s called Justice League Europe. Dick asked for anything else, so off the top of my head, out of that mental drawer marked ‘one day,’ I pulled Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt. Dick asked how I’d revive him and I promptly swamped him with all the ideas festering in my head since way back when. Instead of doing the sensible thing and forcibly ejecting me from the room, he told me to go write up a proposal—a proposal that eventually made it way to the desk of then-editor Mark Waid, which was just the beginning of its journey down the pipeline. In the meantime, I’d taken on work here in the UK, moved house, my wife and I had another daughter, I did some work on those books with ‘X’ in the title, then took on Spelljammer … and waited for news on Thunderbolt. I asked Barbara Kesel. She suggested I call Michael Eury, who passed me on to Mike Gold. And, by a process editors go through, Mike became Katie Main, who became Paul Kupperberg.” Paul Kupperberg confirms that he “had just come on staff as an editor at DC and the Peter Cannon series was already in development, so they pushed Mike Collins proposal at me and told me to make it into a comic book.” Kupperberg was a suitable choice for editing the series. He explains, “I did— and still do—have a great affection for Peter Cannon, as well as the rest of the Charlton Action Heroes. They were favorites from my childhood, so as far as I was concerned, getting to be creatively involved with them, whether as a writer or an editor, was as big a thrill as getting to work on any of DC’s major characters. I got my professional start writing for comic books with Charlton in 1975, and I wrote an unpublished Captain Atom serial in the 1980s and had made use of Peacemaker in my run on Vigilante, as well as in a subsequent miniseries, so this was all very fannishly cool for me.” Mike Collins explains his approach to the character for BACK ISSUE: “I think DC had a problem, because at the core of the character is a conflict: He only goes into action because no one else can. He is the ‘reluctant hero.’ Fine, when you live in a world where you’re the only hero—but in the DCU, where you’re one of hundreds, why would you ever go into action? I think earlier writers struggled with that particular circle, which probably delayed the series being launched. My solution (and the concept which I managed to sell it to Dick Giordano on) was to move him to the UK, a land not so populated with hero folk, where he now needed to live up to his promise. To add to the tension, I suggested opening on a traumatic sequence where Peter found himself entirely outclassed. We are on his side as he struggles to get past the haunting shadow of that early defeat.“ The final member of the creative team was inker Jose Marzan, Jr. “Paul picked Jose,” says Collins, “and I couldn’t’ve been happier. I think we worked well together and we’re still friends today.” Kupperberg adds, “I knew Jose’s work and had used him on some other projects and I guess I thought, apparently rightly so, that his line would work well over Mike’s.” A 12-page backup story by Collins and Marzan, Jr. was published in Justice League Quarterly #8 (Autumn 1992) to help promote the new series. Peter Cannon appears alongside Flash and Power Girl; in terms of chronology, this story takes place after the fourth issue of the ongoing Peter Cannon series. 64 • BACK ISSUE • Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age

THE DC SERIES BEGINS With the full team in place, the ongoing series finally started with a first issue cover-dated September 1992. Although Collins’ proposal had been for a UK-based series, the introduction is more complex, with a one-page prologue set 25 years before the main story and located in Tibet. This is followed by a scene set five years earlier in New York. In the Tibetan sequence, Collins shows a willingness to include references to the politics of both China and Tibet, and this was a time when the uprising in Tiananmen Square and its violent reaction by the Chinese authorities was fresh in mind. When one of the characters declares, “If it takes turning my land into an abattoir to save it from Communism, that is what they shall do,” we are reminded of the tanks rolling along. Mike Collins elaborates: “My background is in law and political history, not art. I was conscious that I was working on a mainstream newsstand book, not a political tract, but I felt there were things that needed to be addressed in Peter’s background—you can’t just ignore the Chinese occupation of Tibet. Had the book continued, I would have gone into more detail, and explored the ideas of entitlement and responsibility.” In the New York sequence, two interesting things happen for which Collins deserves credit. (Spoiler alert: Most of this article is written without giving away key plotlines, as readers will hopefully hunt down this series for themselves, but I make a reluctant exception here.) First, not only is Peter Cannon shown to be a reluctant hero—“Why do they all insist on fighting me?” —but also an unsuccessful one, who not only loses to the villain Trydan but suffers genuine trauma as a result. The second thing is the use of Green Lantern Hal Jordan in a cameo that is not shoehorned in gratuitously in order to put an extra hero on the cover—he isn’t. Instead, Hal Jordan is present to pick up the pieces, taking Peter Cannon to hospital and sharing a nicely written, short scene that philosophizes on the role of the hero. It should also be noted that Collins’ Green Lantern is very well drawn. The first issue also introduces some of the supporting cast, some new and some familiar to old-time readers of the character. In the latter category was Tabu Singh, who fills the role of conscience to Peter Cannon. In his text piece in the first

Walk Like an Egyptian (inset) Evila, as rendered by her creator, Pete Morisi, on the cover of Charlton’s Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt #51 (Mar.–Apr. 1966). (above) The wicked witch from the Nile triumphs over our hero in Collins and Marzan’s DC issue #4 (Dec. 1992).

issue, Collins explained: “I’d wondered why Tabu was around in the original stories. He and Peter Cannon had been contemporaries at the monastery, yet in the ’60s stories he was almost a servant. The introduction of a reincarnation element to the origin justified a lot of what had gone before.” Tabu is there to encourage, or even cajole, Peter Cannon into living up to the role of the reincarnation of the heroic Thunderbolt (Vajra). The new characters included mystery woman and potential love interest Cairo de Frey and aspiring tabloid journalist Anne-Marie Brogan. Cairo is a relatively rare example of a mixed-race—in this case, FrenchArabic—character in the DC Universe and she is colored somewhat darker than that ancestry would suggest. Brogan, while a sympathetic character in and of herself, is part of an ongoing sub-theme in the series which pokes fun at the deficiencies of the gutter press in the UK. In addition, there is room for humor and more serious insights into religious belief. Throughout the series Collins puts playful references into the background such as the mention here to astrologer Grant Russell, which British readers would have recognized as a reference to largerthan-life breakfast-television astrologer Russell Grant. The question of religious belief is raised when Cannon’s father, a Christian, is among Tibetan Buddhists—do we really get one life, as he believes, or is reincarnation possible, and which offers him the most in a desperate situation?

POP CULTURE POP-UPS The main action continues into issue #2 (Oct. 1992) complete with an airship heading for a crash. (Everyone loves an airship, don’t they?) There is also a cameo by the Elongated Man and further flashbacks to fill out the history of both the Cannon and Thunderbolt personas. Collins was clearly having fun with characters and language. There is a lot of English slang dropped in, including use of the word “bugger,” which somehow slipped past the watchdog Comics Code— probably because it’s not used in this case as a word for a sexual act but as a more general expletive. An ongoing subplot about cockney gangsters includes references to the bafflingly popular BBC television soap opera EastEnders’ fictional setting of the London borough of Walford, and even a character quoting from the 1960s comedy movie Carry on Cleo (“Infamy, infamy— they’ve all got it in for me”). The third issue (Nov. 1992) sees the return of a villainess from the old Charlton series which, interestingly for a post–Crisis series, is meant to be viewed as in continuity, albeit with some qualification. Evila, a.k.a. Hatshephut II, is a sorceress/queen of ancient Egyptian origins. Collins presents her as an interesting and effective character but based on strong concepts from Morisi. In an interesting text piece in lieu of a letters page, Paul Kupperberg describes a dinner with Pete Morisi in which Morisi admits he based all his Tibetan references on “old movies, Lost Horizon, etc.” Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt #4 (Dec. 1992) continues the Evila storyline with a dynamic fight scene. Elsewhere in the issue, an elderly magic-shop proprietor joins the supporting cast (“I get results, even if in looks I’m no

Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt TM & © Peter A. Morisi estate. DC logo TM & © DC Comics.

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A Little Help from My Friends (left) Thunderbolt is abetted by the Crusader, one of the Checkmate knights, and Power Girl (during her fashion nightmare phase of the ’90s) in his battle against Andreas Havoc, Trydan, and Evila on the Collins/ Marzan cover to Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt #11 (July 1993). The issue also features Justice League Europe and other cameos, including Peter Cannon’s fellow Charlton Action Hero, Sarge Steel. (right) Collins, as penciler, reunited with his former editor Kupperberg, as writer, of a team-up between Peter Cannon, Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, and Nightshade in Justice League Quarterly #14 (Spring 1994). Inks by Eduardo Barreto. Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt TM & © Peter A. Morisi estate. Other characters TM & © DC Comics.

Zatanna”; and there is a reference to Zatanna appearing as a guest on the Jonathan Ross chat show, Ross being well known as a comic fan even back then) and Evila is revealed to be a student of the wonderfully named wizard Djedi. This issue also introduces a new British superhero, Crusader, who acts as contrast to Peter Cannon by being a jobbing travelling salesman who seems to get little attention in either his civilian or hero identity. Collins was perhaps commenting on the comics scene of the early 1990s with issue #5 (Jan. 1993), wherein the title page credits Mike “Crusher” Collins and Jose “Marauder” Marzan, Jr. as the creators of the story featuring Krater the Demolishing Man as the main villain. Krater is a publicity seeker who decides to pick on Thunderbolt because he knows he wouldn’t stand a chance against Superman. While Peter Cannon is increasingly secure in his role as hero, he is less assured in the world of romance, admitting while on a date with Cairo that he lacks knowledge of women. In Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt #6 (Feb. 1993), new protagonist Shard, like the aforementioned Krater, is a product of the genebomb event that permeated the DC Universe at that time. Both are essentially McGuffin villains while the really interesting story is developed in the background. By this time, several ongoing subplots were bubbling nicely. The East End gangsters are shown to be in conflict with international crime organization Scorpio in a manner possibly inspired by 1980 film The Long Good Friday. One lot of gangsters are based in a warehouse with the description “Ball Bearings and Shearings Ltd.” posted on the outside wall. The tabloid news reporters make reference to rival paper as “scum,” which is how critics of the Rupert Murdochowned Sun often referred to that paper at that time. The Crusader is off fighting crime in that renowned hive of villainous activity, Cumbria. It is also established that the stories of the original Charlton run are considered

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to have happened prior to the five-years-previous flashback shown in issue #1. In Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt #7 (Mar. 1993), Collins pays subtle tribute to one of the all–time greats of British comics in a graveyard scene where the name Hampson is shown on one of the gravestones, Frank Hampson being the artist on classic SF comic series Dan Dare for most of the 1950s. The political aspect of the series is continued as Peter Cannon is put under pressure about Tibet in order to keep things smooth with China in the run-up to the handover of Hong Kong from the British to the Chinese. With Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt #8 (Apr. 1993) we are back to more interesting villains with the return of Evila and Lord Havoc. There is a cameo from Justice League Europe and the Crusader finally arrives in London. The JLE take a more prominent role in Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt #9 (May 1993) and the moral compasses of Peter and Cairo are shown to be in deep contrast to each other. Peter Cannon is reluctant to kill an animal, while Cairo shows herself willing to kill a human being. There are links to interesting corners of the DCU with references to Arion the Immortal and Skartaris (setting for The Warlord). Further reference to China is made: “Throughout the world cries for democracy, for fairness, have arisen. Old, decaying regimes have crumbled, brought low by those they had callously oppressed. But some rulers hang on, claws digging deep into the fading, tattered fabric of their social order.”

CANNON FODDER By now the creators were aware that the series was about to be canceled and the last three issues attempt to resolve plotlines that were clearly intended to be developed further. In Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt #10 (June 1993), there is more JLE plus the winning combination of dinosaurs and gangsters. The Crusader appears again and the espionage team Checkmate enter the series. Peter

Cannon–Thunderbolt #11 (July 1993) has noticeably more panels per page and more exposition as many plotlines are being tied up, which indeed they are, for the most part, in Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt #12 (Aug. 1993). There is something in the way Collins develops the idea of Vajra/Thunderbolt that is reminiscent of the controversy surrounding the Panchen Lama in Tibetan Buddhism, and after earlier criticisms of the Chinese regime there is a case made for a differing view: “I was trained to respect order … to create a society in which all are equal.” However, the mix of well-drawn actions scenes, mystical backgrounds, and modern politics did not catch on sufficiently and issue #12 was the final issue. Paul Kupperberg reflects: “Sales on Thunderbolt never really did take off, which was a shame. Mike and I were having fun on it and there were things planned for the book—although don’t ask me what now, 20-plus years later. The marketplace was crowded at the time, but for whatever reason, none of which had to do with quality, I hope, the book just never caught on with enough readers. Maybe it had to do with the fact that it was off in its own corner, with little or nothing to do with the rest of the DC Universe at a time when everything was turning in the direction of mass crossovers and endless guest appearances.” Things were not quite over yet for either creative team or Peter Cannon. In Justice League Quarterly #14 (Spring 1994), Kupperberg scripted and Collins drew a further Thunderbolt story in which Peter Cannon co-stars with fellow Charlton alumni Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, Nightshade, and Judomaster. With inks by Eduardo Barreto, this is a fun story that should be sought out by anyone interested in these characters (or anyone intrigued by reading this issue of BACK ISSUE). Looking back on Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt, Mike Collins’ thoughts remain positive: “I’ve always seen

myself as a storyteller, rather than just a writer or an artist. I’ve often written for other artists, as well as working from [others’] scripts. On Peter Cannon– Thunderbolt, I had a great time running the show. Though, even though I was writing and drawing, I wasn’t just doing this on my own: I think the reason it worked was down to the stewardship of Paul Kupperberg, who marshalled my scripts, pointing out weaknesses, helping me make them stronger. Best editor ever.”

CANNON AT DYNAMITE Peter Cannon is seen briefly in the 1996 Kingdom Come series by Mark Waid and Alex Ross, but the next time he appeared in his own title was outside of the DC Universe. In 2012, Dynamite Entertainment announced a new Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt series overseen by Alex Ross and Steve Darnall. In an interview with the Comic Book Resources website in June 2012, Steve Darnall explained how the unique ownership of the character partly informed the creative approach: “I’ve always admired the fact that Pete

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Peter Cannon Lives Again (right) Original art page by Jonathan Lau from Dynamite Entertainment’s Peter Cannon– Thunderbolt #1 (Sept. 2012). (left) Among the series’ many cover variants was this Alex Ross sketch cover to issue #7 (Mar. 2013). Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt TM & © Peter A. Morisi estate. Dynamite logo TM & © Dynamite Entertainment.

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Evila Lives Again, Too Our hero encounters his longtime foe Evila on this stunning page from Dynamite’s Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt #9 (May 2013). Story by Steve Darnall and Alex Ross, art by Jonathan Lau, and colors by Vincius Andrade. Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt TM & © Peter A. Morisi estate.

Morisi made a point of owning the character … when I first started talking to Dynamite about this, we talked about the fact that since the Morisi family owned the character, what would we do if we created a new character for this book? In effect, would the Morisi family own that? And as I thought about it, I realized that was okay with me. Heaven forbid, if I create something for this book that had a shelf life beyond what we’re doing now, I’d just assume it went to the Morisi family.” The Dynamite series ran for ten issues from September 2012 to June 2013. Alex Ross and Steve Darnall are credited as writers on all issues and Jonathan Lau is the artist throughout. Ross also contributes covers for each issue along with alternative covers, as is the Dynamite way of doing things, from John Cassaday, Jae Lee (first three issues only), Adrian Syaf (first three only), Stephen Segovia (first seven), and Jonathan Lau (issues #8–10). Of particular note for old-time Charlton

fans is the “classic retro” style cover by Dave Gibbons (see inset below). In terms of story, the series is a new take on the original concept. None of the cast of the DC series appear and the two series are not designed to fall into line with each other in continuity terms, although there is nothing massively contradictory, either. Ross and Darnall are writing their own story featuring Morisi’s creation. In one aspect, though, they do echo the DC series as Tabu is portrayed here, as he was by Mike Collins, as a conscience for Cannon, to keep him true to the teachings of the monastery. Peter Cannon is slightly more of a willing action hero but is shown denying that he is a superhero. Indeed, the cover titling is designed to show the name “Peter Cannon” much larger than the word “Thunderbolt.” This is a brave and admirable move by Dynamite, showing a willingness to focus on human character rather than going for what would probably be the more commercial choice of using “Thunderbolt” for impact and for marketability to the superhero audience. The series travels all around the globe— to Japan, Egypt, New York— and is well drawn by Lau. Those who find some modern comics too quick a read will be pleasantly surprised by the writing and storytelling, and it is a shame that the series stalled at ten issues with no sign of any continuation. One particular treat in the first issue is that the story done by Pete Morisi for DC’s Secret Origins finally sees print as a bonus backup strip. It is indeed a far cry from the grim-and-gritty approach that was in vogue at the time it was completed, but Morisi’s storytelling skills and imagination are enjoyably evident. Having failed to last beyond 12 issues in any of the three attempts at an ongoing series, it seems unlikely that Peter Cannon will ever become the next big thing in comics. However, all three series have advocates and both the DC series and the Dynamite series are worth hunting down. It would be nice to see collected books of either of them, but that doesn’t seem imminent in either case at the moment. Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt is an intelligent character that has been produced by a series of intelligent creators and seems to appeal to intelligent readers. Who knows? Perhaps, as is fitting for a character steeped in Buddhist concepts, the thunderbolt might live again, somewhere, someplace. With thanks to Mike Collins, Paul Kupperberg, Comic Book Resources, Excelsior Comics, Corpus Christi College Cambridge, and Elizabeth Millsted. IAN MILLSTED is a writer and teacher living in Bristol, England. His recent contribution to the steampunk genre can be found in the anthology Airship Shape and Bristol Fashion.

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One of biggest events in the history of the comic-book industry was the publication of Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. The 12-issue maxiseries provided a reality-based look at superheroes and explored how men and women in capes and masks shaped their world for both the good and the bad. The book was violent and groundbreaking, shocking and revolutionary, and the creative impact of its publication is still felt to this day. Recently, I was privileged to speak with Dave Gibbons, the artist of Watchmen, and discuss this landmark series and its connection to this issue’s stars, the Charlton Action Heroes. – Dan Johnson

Dan Johnson

Watchmen TM & © DC Comics.

DAN JOHNSON: Tell us how Watchmen came about. DAVE GIBBONS: I had known Alan Moore for two or three years and we had written some stories for 2000 AD. I had been recruited by DC Comics a little bit before Alan was, and I quite liked the scripts I had been given at DC, but I knew Alan wanted to work for them and I wanted to work with him. Then one night, I got a call from Len Wein, and he wanted to know if I could put him in touch with Alan because he had read the stuff he had been writing in Warrior on Miracleman and thought he might be able to do something with Swamp Thing, which he was obviously able to do. I actually heard about Watchmen through a mutual friend of mine and Alan’s, a guy named Mike Collins. I believe he was the one, although Mike and I are a little bit unsure. We think that was how the word got to me. I immediately phoned up Alan and said, “Hey, this sounds really interesting. Maybe this is the thing we can do together.” And he said, “Yeah, that’s fine.” It just so happened that only a few weeks after that, I was going to a comic convention in Chicago where I dave gibbons was going to see a lot of DC people, and I clearly remember going up to Dick Giordano at a party DC had and saying, “Hey, this new thing Alan is doing, I’d really like to draw it.” Dick said, “Well, how does Alan feel about that?” I said, “He’d like me to draw it,” and Dick said, “It’s yours.” JOHNSON: Were you a fan of the Charlton Heroes before coming onto the project? GIBBONS: I was kind of a fan of the Charlton Heroes. They were always a little second-rate, in the way that the books looked. [Charlton] didn’t have the best production value. There were a lot of interesting artists working for them, people like Rocky Mastroserio, Pat Boyette, Pete Morisi, [but Charlton] just didn’t seem to have the budget and the stories were a little bit overwritten. I did particularly like Steve Ditko’s Captain Atom, particularly the one that had the golden chainmail. I thought that was a really great character design. As always, Ditko added a lot of magic to the stories. We did pay a little bit of a tribute to that [uniform] when [the government] is trying to design a costume for Dr. Manhattan. At one point, he’s got kind of a chainmail costume on and that was our nod to Steve Ditko’s Captain Atom. JOHNSON: What can you tell us about the decision to not use the Charlton Heroes in Watchmen? GIBBONS: Dick had worked for Charlton and I think he bought the characters from Charlton to use in the DC Universe. [Editor’s note: As stated earlier in this

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Charlton Action Heroes Reimagined (this page and opposite) A sextet of beautiful color plates by from a 1986 French Watchmen Portfolio. TM & © DC Comics.

issue, it was actually Paul Levitz who brokered the deal for DC to purchase the Charlton Action Heroes.] I think that while they liked the story that Alan had written, they didn’t want the Charlton Heroes to be killed, or shown to be insane, and they felt it was better to invent some new characters for the Watchmen story. I remember Alan telling me that was the case and [he] told me to stop doing anything with the Charlton Heroes, which frankly I don’t think I had done anything at all. I think this was really early on in the process. JOHNSON: How much did the decision alter the plans you and Moore had for the initial story? GIBBONS: It was actually very liberating because it meant we didn’t have to follow the continuity of the Charlton characters. We could actually create characters that exactly served the purposes of our story. It actually gave me more to do. I was able to design the characters, which was great, and I’m really happy with the character designs I came up with. I basically designed characters that I would enjoy drawing. That isn’t always the case with comic-book characters. You have to draw things you’re not quite comfortable or don’t come easily. I think Watchmen was a much stronger concept because we had new characters than if we had gone ahead with the Charlton originals. Having said that, the story stayed, more or less, the same. Alan had to come up with new origins [for the characters]. In fact, the thing a lot of people don’t know is that originally Alan thought Watchmen was going to be a six-issue series. When he was told it had to be 12 issues, the fact that he could tell these origin stories meant it was a little bit easier to fill the space up. If you look at Watchmen, it’s kind of an issue of character, an issue of plot, an issue of character, an issue of plot. The fact that we had to show how new characters came to be actually ended up with Watchmen having the shape that it does. JOHNSON: Watchmen changed the way people looked at comics and masked adventurers. It addressed the idea that some people honestly wanted to make a difference, but others dressed up for kicks and others used masks to hide damaged psyches. Do you think you and Alan could have explored these ideas if you had stuck with the Charlton Heroes? GIBBONS: I’m sure we could have retrofitted the Charlton characters and looked into areas that hadn’t been explored before. Clearly, the Question had a lot of the traits of Rorschach. Indeed, a lot of those Steve Ditko characters like Mr. A, and the Creeper even, there was that darker side to them. I think what we really wanted to say was that if costumed characters were real, what would they really be like? We were able to give the reasons for [them] being and the reasons for developing the way they did that were completely ours and completely fit the narrative that we had to tell, and we didn’t have to mess around with existing continuity or graft bits on and cut bits out. We were able to do it fresh from the ground up, which was a huge advantage. JOHNSON: Before the call was made to use all-new characters for Watchmen, did you redesign or alter the look of any of the Charlton Heroes for this project? For example, while Rorschach does have a similar look to the Question, Dr. Manhattan is radically different in appearance from Captain Atom. GIBBONS: I didn’t really do much with the Charlton Heroes. I think Rorschach was inevitably going to have a trench coat and fedora, although if you look at early sketches I did, you’ll see that he had a full-body Rorschach blot suit on underneath the trench coat, which would have looked a little bit stupid when I look at the design now. We seemed to be married to the idea for a long time and I really don’t know why now. As for Dr. Manhattan, we were able to show

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Questionable Tactics (top) This “Rorschach’s Journal” page from Watchmen #5 (Jan. 1987) views events from the character’s distorted perspective. Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). Steve Ditko’s objectivist forerunners to Rorschach were (bottom left) Charlton’s the Question and (bottom right) Ditko’s creator-owned Mr. A. Watchmen and the Question TM & © DC Comics. Mr. A TM & © Steve Ditko.

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his disassociation from the world by his gradual reluctance to wear any kind of costume at all, you know, to fall in with any of society’s ideas of propriety by eventually ending up butt-naked. You know, the Charlton characters, in many ways, were archetypal comics characters. There was the detective, there was the nuclear superhero, there was the Batman/ Blue Beetle playboy kind of character. So we were dealing with archetypes anyways, it was just my chance to fine-tune them into a specific look. For instance, the original 1940s Nite Owl was very much based on a character that I had created when I was a kid, when I was 12 or 14. That’s where the name came from, so I was able to have a bit of input there with that character. JOHNSON: The idea that Watchmen went from a six-issue miniseries to a 12-issue maxiseries is very interesting. Would the six-issue format have meant that there wouldn’t have been as much done with the Minutemen, the superheroes from the 1940s, and would we have not gotten the chance to see this alternate world before the main characters came into play? GIBBONS: Well, I suspect we still would have referred to them, because the history of how they came to be was essential to the plot to show how the world had changed and also to give the backstory a bit of gravitas. Obviously, with only half the issues, the plot would have had to take a much larger part of the space available, so I don’t think we could have gone as much into the Minutemen. I think a lot of the biographical stuff, say on Nite Owl, would have had

to be abbreviated, and I think it would have been a much poorer thing without that [material]. Frankly, we would have been pushed to get the plot into six issues. Even the character issues of Watchmen have got quite a lot of plot in them, so I think we would have got to the point of saying to DC, “Hey, how about making it a couple of extra issues or how about making it a 48-page final issue?” I think the thing would have been less rich because we would have had less space to explore the underpinnings of the backstory. JOHNSON: Likewise, were the scenes featuring Tales of the Black Freighter also a result of the need to fill out 12 issues? GIBBONS: I don’t think it was so much needing to “fill it out.” It was, by the time we got to issue #3, we realized that we could have a look at the actual comics set in the world of Watchmen and actually read over the kid’s shoulder [at the newsstand]. Then I think it became evident that rather than this be just an indulgence where we go off into an unrelated comic book, somehow we should relate it to the story. I think what it became was an allegory for what Adrian Veidt was doing, a kind of paranoid fantasy that involved the deaths of many people and the hero joining up with the dark side of things. He got so far from being the innocent, shipwrecked sailor who just wanted to get home to his wife and family, he actually became one of the pirates. Finally, his only place was onboard the Black Freighter. So it did give a kind of allegorical sidebar to the whole thing. So again, if we tried to do this in six issues, we never would have had the chance to explore that, and I think it’s something that really enriched the whole series. JOHNSON: How did you and Alan come to decide that pirates would be the dominating genre in comic books in a world that had real-life superheroes? GIBBONS: Right back when we were conceiving what the world of Watchmen might look like, the question of popular culture came up. I think this was very much an area that I kind of busied myself with the idea of thinking about different fashions, different music, fast foods, and different comics. I remember thinking, “If there really were superheroes in the world, would it be necessary to have fantasy versions of them?” and it probably wouldn’t. And I thought, “What would be a good alternative to superhero comics?” [It had to be something] that had

melodrama and excitement, and I just thought pirates and suggested that. In the very first issue of Watchmen, we have the detectives exiting Edward Blake’s apartment and they walk past a newsstand and there is a kid reading a pirate comic book. This isn’t the newsstand we incorporated into the main story and it isn’t the same kid, but even in the first issue, we were thinking, this will flesh a bit of the background out. It was more of a throwaway idea at the time, but that was really the thinking behind Tales of the Black Freighter. JOHNSON: Besides a lack of superhero comic books, the alternate world of Watchmen also had other radical differences: the United States won in Vietnam, Nixon never resigned and is still president, and the Soviet Union was held at constant bay by Dr. Manhattan. When you and Alan set out to imagine this alternate universe, what kind of discussions did you have about the differences that superheroes would have on this world? GIBBONS: That is one of the main things Watchmen asks: “If costumed characters existed, what would the

Legacy Heroes Dave Gibbons’ astoundingly gorgeous original cover art to Watchmen #8 (Apr. 1987), featuring the original Nite Owl, of the Minutemen. Courtesy of Heritage. (inset) Nite Owl was Watchmen’s Blue Beetle analog, and as this Steve Ditko cover to Charlton’s BB #2 shows, Action Hero Beetle also had a crimefighting predecessor. TM & © DC Comics.

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world really be like?” There would be changes; there would be differences. To that degree, Watchmen is an alternative-universe/science-fiction story. When we started to think of it that way, it was a big breakthrough for me. It freed me from all the clichés of superhero comics and made me think of it more as being a Dystopian science-fiction story. I remember writing down ideas of how the world might have been different. For instance, it occurred to me that if Dr. Manhattan really existed, he would be able to transmute elements and create them in any quantity. I had read somewhere that the main obstacle to having electric cars having lightweight electric batteries that would make them feasible was there wasn’t enough lithium in the world. I figured, “Hey! If there was someone who could transmute matter, he could make as much lithium as he wanted.” That was why we had electric cars [in the maxiseries]. That was one way things might be different. If you had a walking god on your side, you could resolve conflicts more quickly, so the obvious candidate [to show this] was Vietnam. The fact that there was this nuclear god would make the Soviets twitchier and that would lead us more and more towards the possibility of a nuclear Armageddon, in particular as we showed Dr. Manhattan absenting himself from the situation. It might make the United States weaker if they relied on this one character. Once you start to think about it, there are all kinds of ramifications to how history might have been changed. Alan and I talked about the differences that the superheroes would have quite extensively. JOHNSON: I know Alan had a huge falling out with DC over Watchmen. Before all that, I had heard there was talk of a Minutemen spin-off. Is there anything you can tell us about that? GIBBONS: Immediately after we finished Watchmen, we thought, “Is there anything more we can do with these characters?” The only idea that occurred to us was to do some kind of prequel, but what we wanted to do was something that felt like a Golden Age comic book. It would be just one or maybe a couple of thick, 64-page comics printed on real pulp paper with quite crude coloring done in the naive style of a Golden Age comic. The thing that would have been dramatically interesting alan moore is that we knew where everyone was going to end up, but we’d get a look at the innocent bit before everything Photo credit: Pruneau. went bad. We only talked about it very briefly and it became apparent to us that maybe it would be better just to leave Watchmen alone and leave it to the readers to sketch in their minds what might have happened. There were hints in Watchmen regarding the history [of the Minutemen] and that glimpse was probably better than going through and spelling everything out. It must have been around then that Alan did start to fall out of love with DC. I remember we had a discussion where we said we would only ever talk about this proposed series in letters, we would never say the words. Then what we would do is to deliver to DC the artwork that had tiny little superhero figures in the pictures. When DC would wonder what was going on, we’d say, “You must have misread the letters. We weren’t talking about the Minutemen, we were talking about minute men.” JOHNSON: Had things been ironed out between Alan and DC, were there any other stories the two of you had discussed that we might have seen set in this universe? Any other prequels or sequels? GIBBONS: No, it was really only Minutemen we had talked about. We absolutely didn’t want to do any other prequels or sequels. In fact, one of the pivotal moments in the relationship between Alan and DC was when we discovered that it had been mooted that they would do a spin-off series, like Rorschach’s Journal or the Comedian’s Vietnam Diaries. We didn’t want that to happen, and that was actually a very bad suggestion from DC on many levels.

The End of the World As We Know It (top) Dave Gibbons’ original art to page 5 from Watchmen’s final issue, #12, and (bottom) John Higgins’ accompanying color guide. Both courtesy of Heritage. TM & © DC Comics.

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JOHNSON: I’m curious, when did you and Alan know that you had a hit with Watchmen? What was the first feedback that you got that made you stop and say, “We nailed this one”? GIBBONS: I don’t think we ever thought, “We nailed this one.” We started off wanting to do the kind of heroic adventure comic we always wanted to read and that was really our guiding light, not to get a hit. And I don’t think DC thought it was going to be a huge hit. They were doing lots of things outside their normal established characters and there wasn’t much risk. We were doing a series much the way Brian Bolland did Camelot 3000 with Mike Barr and I think DC looked at it like that. Alan and I just thought it was a chance for us to get some ideas we were excited about in print. When we sent the artwork in for the very first issue, we got a very positive response from DC. Then Alan and I went over to New York, and we went to the DC offices, and it felt almost like some kind of royal progression down the halls. The whispers went out, “It’s Alan and Dave! It’s Alan and Dave!” and editors and freelancers were coming out of doorways and shaking our hands and saying, “Watchmen is great! It’s one of the best things we’ve ever seen! Congratulations! It’s going to be huge!” Specifically, Howard Chaykin was there, and Chaykin can be quite acerbic and speaks his mind. I remember him coming up to me and Alan and shaking us by the hand and saying, “I’m only going to say this once: Watchmen is f***ing-A!” Knowing Howard as we did, we thought, “Well, if Howard says that, he probably means it.” I think that was the point where we first thought we were on to something. At that point, we had done maybe three issues and the pressure was on us then to keep the standard up. JOHNSON: To say Watchmen was a game-changer for comics is a huge understatement. It radically changed how readers looked at comics and how creators went about making them. As one of the men responsible for it, what do you think has been the greatest impact this maxiseries has had on the industry? Above everything else, what is the legacy of Watchmen? GIBBONS: It had one bad, immediate legacy, which was that the rest of the comic-book industry seemed to think that the only way to go was grim-and-gritty, and that wasn’t at all what Alan and I were suggesting was the future of comics. We were just saying that we had this idea to look at comics in a particular way, and it just so happens that if you take a realistic look at what this might be about in the real world, you can come to some quite depressing and upsetting conclusions. Why would anybody put a costume on anyway? It’s not just because he has powers and he wants to do good. It might be he is psychotic or she might be trying to keep up the family tradition or it could be a rich kid who is after adrenaline thrills. The message that was perceived by a lot of creators was, “Oh, yeah! We gotta get really dark! We gotta make all our characters mentally ill and emotional wrecks.” We didn’t ever intend that to be the case and we felt very sorry for all the depressing comics that came in the wake of Watchmen. If we had done something else together, one of things we had talked about was doing something like Captain Marvel, something that was almost fairy tale and very light and very wish-fulfillment and very different from Watchmen. And indeed, Alan got to

do a lot of that with his Supreme. That was the kind of Silver Age Superman pastiche he did later. I suppose also we were one of the very first graphic novels and that was both a blessing and a curse from a business point of view. Looking back, we could have gotten a better deal than we did. Obviously, if we were going to come up with something like that again, we’d try and retain ownership of it. But this was a different time, but I think building on what we did, creators nowadays who produce things like Watchmen, who do their own books, are standing on the shoulders of people like me and Alan, and good luck to them. I’m really pleased that people are retaining ownership of their work and aren’t being pushed around by a company. Not that I feel like I’ve been particularly pushed around, but it’s much better to keep control of what you create for everybody concerned. I’d like to think that’s one of the legacies of Watchmen.

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From the Watchmen Movie Gibbons and Higgins reunited to produce several illustrations of scenes from the 2009 Watchmen film, including this moody Rorschach portrait. TM & © DC Comics.

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Dan Johnson As Dave Gibbons mentioned in his interview, he and Alan Moore pitched several ideas to DC before working on Watchmen. It boggles the mind to think of how different things might have been had the company taken up these gents on their original proposals. For one thing, their work on these other projects might have sidelined Watchmen indefinitely or even kept it from even seeing the light of day. Secondly, the ideas that Moore and Gibbons pitched would have surely redefined the way readers saw many of their favorite DC characters. So, what did fans miss out on exactly? Dave Gibbons gives BACK ISSUE a brief overview of each pitch that was made and rejected. They included:

CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN Moore and Gibbons wanted to put the men who were living on borrowed time through their paces. Indeed, it seems this was a project that Moore was very keen to write. “There was a Challengers of the Unknown story that Alan had in his head since he was a kid,” says Gibbons. “Before we could send them the pitch for that, [DC] told me that the Challengers had been promised to someone else, so there was no point in pursuing it.” Given the new layers and unexplored angles that Moore was famous for bringing to characters, it is fascinating to think what he would have brought to the Challengers. “This was an idea that took in the whole of the DC Universe,” Gibbons says. “[It would have gone] right back to the destruction of Krypton and Superman coming to Earth and the ramifications of that. The Challengers would have [been] pivotal detective characters, getting involved and figuring everything out. I can’t remember exactly what the specifics were, but it would have taken in the whole of the DC Universe and explored [the Challengers’] backstory.”

J’ONN J’ONZZ, THE MARTIAN MANHUNTER In the early 1980s, J’onn J’onzz returned as a member of the Justice League of America that was led by Aquaman (which is better known as Justice League Detroit by fans of this run). J’onn was also a member of the League during the creative run by Keith Giffen, J. M. DeMatteis, and Kevin Maguire. His tenure with both Leagues proved that the character had a lot of untapped potential, which Moore and Gibbons obviously saw as well. Yet, this character was also off limits to them. “[We had the same problem with] J’onn J’onzz, Manhunter from Mars,” reveals Gibbons. The Martian Manhunter was promised to another creative team. But this time, Gibbons did get as far as doing some character sketches for this project and the concept was a bit more fleshed out before shelved. “[This idea] was set in the 1950s and it was about small-town paranoia,” says Gibbons. “It was along the same idea of, ‘What if your next-door neighbor was a communist?,’ but instead it’s, ‘What if your next-door neighbor is an alien from Mars?’ It was quite creepy and a real period piece and set in a McCarthy witch hunt with J’onn still being a police detective.”

SUPERMAN

One of the greatest Superman stories of all time is Superman Annual #11’s “For the Man Who Has Everything,” written by Moore and drawn by Gibbons. Fans of the Man of Steel can only imagine how wonderful it would have been to see more stories by this creative team. “Alan had this idea for a pre–destruction Krypton for quite a long time,” says Gibbons. “It featured Lois Lane and it had a ‘Superman’s Return to Krypton’ kind of feeling. I think a lot of Alan’s ideas for [this story] found their way into ‘For the Man Who Has Everything’ and ‘Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?’” As Gibbons also indicated, a lot more of Moore’s ideas found their way into Supreme. Still, there was one idea that has to have Superman fans wondering what they missed out on. “Alan did write a ‘Superman Goes to Hell’ synopsis for Julie Schwartz,” according to Gibbons. “[In it], Superman goes to Christian Hell and battles Satan.”

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Send your comments to: Email: euryman@gmail.com (subject: BACK ISSUE) Postal mail: Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief • BACK ISSUE 118 Edgewood Ave. NE • Concord, NC 28025

Find BACK ISSUE on

CAPTAIN WHO?? AND ELECTRIC BLUE I’m guessing that most of you aren’t aware that before Charlton Comics introduced Captain Atom, two other companies released comics starring heroes with that name, both during the Atomic Age. The first hailed from the UK’s Atlas Publishing; its Captain Atom headlined 64 issues between 1948 and 1954. Meanwhile, here in the US, Nation-wide Publishing (insert your own “…is on your side” joke here) produced seven issues of its own Captain Atom series between 1950 and 1951. But many of you Bronze Age babies do remember the other Blue Beetle, the goofy go-getter who appeared in live-action bits on PBS’ The Electric Company during the 1970s. In the screen cap below, the TV Blue Beetle hangs out with another of The Electric Company’s super-stars, the one and only Spider-Man!

P.S. The book I’d like to read most of all is Roy Thomas’ personal account of his time at Marvel in the ‘60s/’70s. I know he’s done plenty of articles on the subject, but I await the definitive tome. Please twist his arm for me. Dave, consider Roy’s arm twisted. And on behalf of BI’s writers and crew, thank you for your letter.

STILL PLAYS WITH FF MEGOS

Just finished BI #74. It was another great one, and I’m not even that big of an FF fan (pauses to dodge a pile of bricks). I especially enjoyed the one-pager about the Mego figures (boy, can I relate to that one!), as well as the article on Galactus. Very thought-provoking, and brought back fond memories of Englehart’s great run on Silver Surfer! Well done, everyone, and bring on the indies!! – Tim Moen, via Facebook

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FF ISSUE A WINNER Sorry I haven’t written for a while but, after all, you’ve been gracious enough to publish a couple of my previous missives and I don’t want to monopolize the “Back Talk” pages. However, I absolutely had to write and tell you how much I loved (and I mean ADORED) BACK ISSUE #74 and its coverage of the Fantastic Four in the Bronze Age. I’ve told you before what joy I felt when my mother brought home my first-ever American comic: FF #118. I proceeded to get hold of as many subsequent issues as I could (though the availability of the title in the UK at that time was somewhat sporadic). Particular favorites of mine included #137’s “Rumble on Planet 3” (so I was thrilled to see the magnificent splash page reproduced on page 6 of the latest BACK ISSUE) and the infamous Femizon tale from issues #151–153. I must admit to being primarily a 1970s fan as that was “my” era, but I enjoyed the whole issue, and read it in record time. Any criticisms are minor. For instance, tenses change in one or two of the articles, and I think Stuart Fischer’s very interesting piece on the FF’s TV history would have been even better if he’d written it totally in the first person. I’d have been happy for him to refer to “Dad” or “my father,” rather than saying “Sy Fischer” every time. You can tell from how trivial those quibbles were how much I enjoyed #74. As always with BACK ISSUE, nostalgia was simply flowing through me, as if I was holding my youth in my hands and 40 years had rolled away. The best analogy for the way I feel can be found in the incomparable Field of Dreams, when James Earl Jones states that “it will be as if they’ve dipped themselves in magic waters, with memories so thick they have to brush them away from their faces.” Your magazine has that magic quality. I keep thinking that BACK ISSUE can’t get any better, but then the next edition arrives and you’ve proved me wrong once again. It must be so hard to constantly come up with interesting new angles, then put such love and care into ensuring that the results are entertaining. To your enormous credit, Michael, and that of your colleagues, you achieve that every single time. I have read a LOT of publications during my life, and I can assure you that BACK ISSUE is the very best of those. I know nothing whatsoever about any of the subject matter promised for next month’s edition, but I’m certain that I’ll find the articles intriguing and enlightening. Thank you, sincerely, from me and, I’m sure, all the other children (and adults, of course) of the Bronze Age. Very best wishes and kind regards, – Dave Barker Wakefield, England

UK FF BONUS

REED AND SUE’S BALANCING ACT

Rollickin’ Robert Menzies frequently shares with BI readers artwork produced for Marvel’s Bronze Age UK series, illos which most of us here in the USA have never seen. Here’s a Doc Doom vs. the Fantastic Four centerspread (above) by an unidentified artist that saw print in Super Spider-Man with the Super-Heroes #169 (May 8, 1976). Special thanks to Andrew Standish for his art restoration.

I thoroughly enjoyed BI #74, which covered the Fantastic Four’s adventures in the Bronze Age. Out of all the magazines I subscribe to, BI is the one I look forward to reading the most. All of the stories on our quartet were informative, and a great trip down memory lane, as I remember each one! I was especially fond of Marv Wolfman’s recollections, as his run is my favorite from MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE this time. Re: Impossible Man story. No mention of his Issue #200 is still a high-water mark on ’90 and ’91 Summer Vacation Specials? POP!! how to do an anniversary issue, and is – Opus still my favorite Dr. Doom/Mr. Fantastic confrontation. Maybe the cover shown here will smooth things There is, however, one thing that I wanted over until Impy pops into BI again… to respond to, and that being Gerry Conway’s thoughts on Reed and Sue’s marriage. THE “STARTER” PILE Conway feels that their relationship hurt I’m only adding to the praise that other folks the book, and that it changed things too much have offered on here, but congratulations in the basic fundamentals of the title. on the last (FF) issue to Michael and all the While ironically this does seem to be people who provided content and put it the case with many other comic-book together. It’s magnificent. marriages (I have always felt both Spider-Man My “starter” in comics was a pile of Marvels and Superman getting married did zero (and a handful of DCs) given to me by an older to add to their respective titles), in this case, school friend in the very early ’80s. It included it works. quite a few of the Thing’s Marvel Two-in-Ones Reed and Sue are the rare comic couple (with characters like Wundarr, Thundra, and even who are perfect for each other. They the Yancy Streeters), plus a few disconnected complement each other in nearly every way: ’70s issues of FF featuring characters like Agatha Sue is pragmatic and helps anchor Reed to Harkness, Darkoth, and the Seeker. I was able to Inc. cters, TM & © Marvel Chara the present when he starts dreaming too slightly match these up with some of the UK B&W reprints that came into my hands (the FF had a weekly), but much of the future, Reed has never lost his sense of wonder never really saw the whole continuity picture—so even now, over things that mankind can still achieve, and neither are the Jarrod’s article was really helpful. I appreciate the FF a lot more now same apart for too long. This marriage has lasted decades in our time, so it’s important than I did then, having read much of Stan and Jack’s work (and then more recently, Hickman’s phenomenal run). This was a great to see it still going strong. – Mike McCullough edition of the mag. – Martin James Flanagan, via Facebook 78 • BACK ISSUE • Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age

Thanks for writing, Mike! I’m a Reed-and-Sue booster, too.

ONE THING TO SHARE Apologies for not writing back in sooner. Enjoying BACK ISSUE as always, but various minor health problems have combined to leave me low on energy, and letters kind of drifted back to the end of the to-do list. I did, however, want to comment on the article covering, among other things, the old Fred and Barney Meet the Thing cartoon in issue #74. For some reason completely unknown to me, everyone seems to think that the Thing segment completely ignores the Fantastic Four origins of the character to turn him into a typical television transforming teenager. Actually, if anyone takes the trouble to watch the show’s opening credits (readily available on YouTube), the title character actually starts out as the monstrous Marvel mainstay who gets transformed back into human form thanks to scientist Dr. Harkness and his young daughter (?) Kelly, only instead of his old adult Ben Grimm self he finds he has accidentally been turned into scrawny teenager Benjy Grimm. Thus the “Thing Rings” do NOT turn Benjy into the Thing, they turn him BACK into the Thing. Apparently there is an episode where Harkness discovers a way to turn Benjy back into his original grown-up form, but only if he doesn’t transform into the Thing for 12 hours. Flash and Green Lantern TM & © DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. Alter Ego TM & © Roy and Dann Thomas.

Of course, as one might expect events conspire to force him to do just that… True, the existence of rest of the Fantastic Four is ignored by the show, but a flashback in one episode does reveal that Grimm had been a test pilot exposed to cosmic rays, so at least the original origin is largely kept intact … which is more than you can say with the live-action Marvel adaptations of the time period! (Although I must admit all the criticism of Captain America not being given the right costume in his initial TV pilot flick kind of has to go by the wayside considering how many gosh-darn different outfits Steve Rogers is seen wearing in his 21st-Century movie appearances...) For whatever faults it might have, the ’70s Hanna-Barbera version of the Thing is quite fun. I mean, what kid wouldn’t want to be able to turn into a big, friendly rock monster in order to deal with local bullies like the Yancy Street Gang? I personally would love to see Warner Archives put this shortlived show out on DVD like they have with other classic animated series of the period. Unfortunately, what with the Hanna-Barbera cartoons being owned by Time Warner, Marvel being owned by Disney, and the film rights to all Fantastic Four characters being owned by 20th Century Fox, the various copyright complications make it unlikely we’ll be seeing a video version anytime soon. Oh, and while we’re talking about ’70s Marvel TV shows, here’s a bit more information on the live-action Human Torch pilot: According to an article published way back in issue #12 of the late, lamented Starlog magazine, pilot writer/producer Alan Balter claimed the series was going to focus on the Golden Age android version of the character and not Johnny Storm, and one of the major sticking points for doing the series was quite understandably the special effects, with the idea being to use one of those blue/ green screen full-body suits and then superimpose a blazing fire into his silhouette via something similar to the old Chroma-key process, adding animated flames within and without to complete the effect. – Jeff Taylor Coming next month: an ALTER EGO/BACK ISSUE CROSSOVER celebrating the 75th anniversaries of THE FLASH and GREEN LANTERN! Editor ROY THOMAS kicks it off on April 15th with Alter Ego #132, covering the Scarlet Speedster’s and Emerald Crusader’s Golden and Silver Age adventures (with a nod to Hawkman, too). Then, one week later, in BACK ISSUE #80, join us for Flash and Green Lantern in the Bronze Age! In-depth spotlights of the 1970s and 1980s adventures of the Fastest Man Alive and the Green Gladiator, plus MARK WAID’s look at the Flash/GL team, PAUL KUPPERBERG’s Lost GL Fill-ins, and sci-fi superstar LARRY NIVEN and JOHN BYRNE’s GL: Ganthet’s Tale. Bonus feature: We commemorate DC Comics’ move to the West Coast with a star-studded oral history revisiting DC’s New York offices. Featuring the work of ROSS ANDRU, MIKE W. BARR, CARY BATES, DAVE GIBBONS, DICK GIORDANO, JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, MIKE GRELL, CARMINE INFANTINO, IRV NOVICK, LEN WEIN, and more. Cover by GEORGE PÉREZ! Don’t ask, just BI it! See you in thirty! Your friendly neighborhood Euryman, Michael Eury, editor-in-chief

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Then there was Aurora Plastics Corporation’s infainfa mous guillotine model kit.

Aurora Witch kiit; the wifee posed) and Aurora’s

Aurora had been enjoying great successBama’s box art forr The Witch (for which his Voger Forgotten Prisoner kit photo by Mark Witch kit photo courtesy of Polar Lights; The Witch box photo by Kathy Voglesong; with its model kits based on movie monsters, themselves often based on classic literature. Its Hunchback of Notre Dame set depicted a scene of outright torture — a chained Quasimodo with whip marks on his exposed back — but no one batted an eye. After all, the Hunchback was a character from classic fiction (Victor Hugo, yo!) and the kit was based on a rel relatively recent Hollywood hit. Buoyed by its monstrous suc success, Aurora brought out a decid decidedly gruesome kit: a working guil guillotine. “Victim loses his head! Really works!” proclaimed one ad. Added another: “Harmless fun!” The kit worked like this: The blade came down; the head of the bound man was “cut off”; it landed in the basket. Kids across America painted blood stains on the kit’s blade, head and gener basket withsgenerAddam ’s “The a Milton ous Bradley dabs of Testors red enamel. Game” offered FamilyACard colleagueto of minethe built the nity see kit,opportu way back when. Said he of the rare in color. show of the of reliability the guillotine’s funcstars TV Productions © Filmways Addams Family” “Thetion: “It worked fine except that I covered and re-covered that poor little man’s head in so much red paint, it did occasionally stick.”

WITH HIS LONG BEAK, COMIC MANNERISM and distinctly Noo Yawk S accent, Al Lewis seemed the least likely actor to be cast as Count Dracula. But in some ways, Lewis was a better-known Dracula than his forebears Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr., Bela John Carradine and Christopher That’s because even non-horror Lee. fans know Lewis’ thanks to his role as Grandpa Dracula, Munster. Lewis with There is confusion over Lewis’ year of birth, apparently created stogie at his by the actor himself, who claimed to New York be older than he was (!). Many sources eatery in put Lewis’ birth in 1923, but he indeed 1989. told me he had been a circus performer Photo by Kathy in 1922. Oh, that Grandpa ... Voglesong Lewis died in 2006. I interviewed him at his Greenwich Village restaurant, Grampa’s Bella Gente Street, in 1989. Good conversationon Bleecker ... not to mention, good pasta. Q: What happened during your audition for Grandpa Munster? LEWIS: I never auditioned. They just called me and told me they were pilot, and would I be interested? doing a They sent me some scripts, and then I flew out. Q: Would you say you created Grandpa? For instance, did you elaborate on the character in the scripts? LEWIS: Yeah. Of course I created it. Sure! I mean, there was no previous mold.

Forgotten Prisoner of Castel-Maré kit. The clearest example of Bama’s use of a movie still was his Dracula box art, which mirrored a publicity photo of Bela Lugosi from “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein” (1948). Again, it seems odd didn’t go with a still that from the 1931 “Dracula” Bama yet again, Bama’s — and instincts were spot-on. © Universal Studios; box photo by Kathy Voglesong

row for an hour and a half every night, and I’ll just watch movies. I’ll watch the horror movies in sequence, or Sherlock Holmes movies or whatever I’m in the mood for. Q: Did you see your box art in stores at the time of release? BAMA: I never saw them. and I wasn’t interested I was 35 years old at the time, in kids’ model kits. They weren’t offered to me, and I didn’t ask for them. I was 82 before I saw them! But almost everyone I know who says to me, “I put is in their 50s together those monster models when I was a kid.” So it was tremendous exposure. escape it. For all of But I can’t the beautiful Western paintings I’ve done since 1968, I’m better known for the monster kits and Doc Savage. I did 62 Doc Savage covers. That’s a lot of covers. I told my wife (Lynn), “The world will come to an end, but the monster models will still be know, my wife posed around.” You for one of my Aurora her, posing for The jobs. That was Witch. Q: Was she prettier than The Witch? BAMA: A little bit. I always thought of her as an Margret, Lee Remick type. She was gorgeous. AnnAs I get older, my She still is. eyes get weaker, so she still looks beautiful to me.

“Harmless fun!” proclaimed a 1965 ad for Aurora’s Chamber of Horrors Guillotine model kit. Parents begged to differ. Photo courtesy of Polar Lights

Disturbing as the guillotine kit was, Aurora seemed to think it had an “out.” The company hedged its bet by naming the kit “The Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors Guillotine.” In other words, this kit didn’t depict an actual beheading — it was a depiction of a depiction. And that depiction was from a famous attraction at a respected wax museum. Madame Tussaud’s originated in London, you know. And London is a classy place. It didn’t work. Parents freaked, and Aurora discontin discontinued the product. Not that Aurora exactly dialed down the nightmarish thereafter. The Witch cooked rat stew. The Forgotten Prisoner of Castel-Maré kit implied torture of a most insidious kind — a poor soul chained by the neck and ankles to a prison wall, defenseless against non-human appar visitors (there’s a nearby snake and a rat), who apparently starved to death over a lengthy period. Compared to that, a beheading sounds downright merciful.

Famous Monsters of Filmland made Zacherle its cover boy twice, with issues #7 (1960), in a painting by Albert Nuetzell, and #15 (1962), in a painting by Gogos. Zacherle’ Basil s national profile was also enhanced by coverage in Life, TV Guide and The Evening Post. © Saturday W arren Publishing

200 out of the first three designs So there were a track record. not too bad of news. That’s phenomenon? you a national Q: What made What broke “Big Daddy”? when ROTH: It was Revell said, “We a want to make your model out of cars.” And then, of course, they out made models , too. of the monsters into That broke me the big time. on the Q: You worked but did you model designs, 3-D realizawork on their tions? ROTH: Yeah. them in clay? Q: Did you do in clay, and ROTH: Did ’em at Revell the model-makers plasticarb. made ’em into different Q: How many had kinds of products on your monsters were them? There decals, T-shirts, patches … ROTH: Emco of made a bunch ’60s. decals in the That was a big a lot one. There’s naof old parapher lia that I’ve licensed out through the years. you Q: Which do prefer, drawing monsters or working on cars? tosROTH: It’s a real worksup. I suppose where I ing on cars is but I’ve make good at, money with the gotta make the monsters. a car called Q: You designed the Druid Princess for “The Addams

that were bad

ever used? show. Was it never on the the next Family.” It was speculation. And use it, it for them on can’t ROTH: No. I built and said, “We called me up gonna quit the thing was, they because we’re I thought “The series.” And so successful Munsters” was Family” that “The Addams have I still would be. But the car. of the Rat Q: In the wake the Weird-Ohs Fink kits came r. Were and Freddy Flypoggestyle? of your those a ripoff es were three compani ROTH: There kits. One of them putting out monsterwith the (mascot) m, was Monogra There was Hawk Mouse’s stuff. models. It seemed with five or six company went like every model collection. I think into a monster had the best the Revell ones assembly. character called Q: There’s a by Sid Big Daddy played a Bikini Haig in “It’s … World” (1967) a couple ROTH: They had those in of Big Daddies Bingo” “Beach Blanket (Don) things, where the Rickles played Big Daddy. They need a Big Daddy those of in all movies to show y’s in that somebod charge, you know? make Q: How did you Did out in the ’60s? share of you get your pie? the Rat Fink lly, I ROTH: Financia statedon’t have any wealth ment, but my in the is in my wife, built all fact that I’ve the fact those cars, and the with straight that I’m These are my man upstairs. to dollars seem wealth, and the es, you take care of themselv d on any go overboar know? I don’t Life is drugs or stuff. you one thing. No affordable if watch your Ps and Qs.

113

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #65

BRICKJOURNAL #34

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TOMMY WILLIAMSON on the making of his YouTube LEGO sensation BATMAN VS SUPERMAN, BRANDON GRIFFITH’S COMICBRICKS PROJECT recreates iconic comic book covers out of LEGO, JARED BURKS and his custom Agents of SHIELD minifigs, step-by-step “You Can Build It” instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK, BrickNerd DIY Fan Art, MINDSTORMS robotics lessons by DAMIEN KEE, and more!

“Flash and Green Lantern in the Bronze Age” (crossover with ALTER EGO #132)! In-depth spotlights of their 1970s and 1980s adventures, MARK WAID’s look at the Flash/GL team, and PAUL KUPPERBERG’s Lost GL Fillins. Bonus: DC’s New York Office Memories, and Green Lantern: Ganthet’s Tale by LARRY NIVEN and JOHN BYRNE. With BARR, BATES, GIBBONS, GRELL, INFANTINO, WEIN, and more. Cover by GEORGE PÉREZ.

“DC Bronze Age Giants and Reprints!” An indepth exploration of DC’s 100-PAGE SUPER SPECTACULARS, plus: a history of comics giants, DC indexes galore, and a salute to “human encyclopedia” E. NELSON BRIDWELL. Featuring the work of PAT BRODERICK, RICH BUCKLER, FRANK FRAZETTA, JOE KUBERT, BOB ROZAKIS, BERNIE WRIGHTSON, and more. Super Spec tribute cover featuring classic art by NICK CARDY.

“Bronze Age Events!” With extensive coverage of the Avengers/Defenders War, JLA/JSA crossovers, Secret Wars, Crisis’ 30th anniversary, Legends, Millennium, Invasion, Infinity Gauntlet, and more! Featuring the work of SAL BUSCEMA, DICK DILLIN, TODD McFARLANE, GEORGE PÉREZ, JOE STATON, LEN WEIN, MARV WOLFMAN, MIKE ZECK, and more. Plus an Avengers vs. Defenders cover by JOHN BYRNE.

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #66

ALTER EGO #132

ALTER EGO #133

ALTER EGO #134

ANYTHING GOES (AGAIN)! Another potpourri issue with a comparison of Jack Kirby’s work vs. the design genius of ALEX TOTH, a lengthy Kirby interview, a look at Kirby’s work with WALLY WOOD, MARK EVANIER and our other regular columnists, unseen and unused Kirby art from JIMMY OLSEN, KAMANDI, MARVELMANIA, Jack’s COMIC STRIP & ANIMATION WORK, and more!

DOUBLE-TAKES ISSUE! Features oddities, coincidences, and reworkings by both Jack and Stan Lee: the Galactus Origin you didn’t see, Ditko’s vs. Kirby’s Spider-Man, how Lee and Kirby viewed “writing” differently, plus a rare KIRBY radio interview with Stan, MARK EVANIER and our other regular columnists, unseen and unused pencil art from FANTASTIC FOUR, 2001, CAPTAIN VICTORY, BRUCE LEE, & more!

75 YEARS of THE FLASH and GREEN LANTERN (a crossover with BACK ISSUE #80)! INFANTINO, KANE, KUBERT, ELIAS, LAMPERT, HIBBARD, NODELL, HASEN, TOTH, REINMAN, SEKOWSKY, Golden Age JSA and Dr. Mid-Nite artist ARTHUR PEDDY’s stepson interviewed, FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, BILL SCHELLY on comics fandom history, and more!

Gentleman JIM MOONEY gets a featurelength spotlight, in an in-depth interview conducted by DR. JEFF McLAUGHLIN— never before published! Featuring plenty of rare and unseen MOONEY ART from Batman & Robin, Supergirl, Spider-Man, Legion of Super-Heroes, Tommy Tomorrow, and others! Plus FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

Celebrates SOL BRODSKY—Fantastic Four #3-4 inker, logo designer, and early Marvel production manager! With tributes by daughter JANA PARKER and son GARY BRODSKY, STAN LEE, HERB TRIMPE, STAN GOLDBERG, DAVID ANTHONY KRAFT, TONY ISABELLA, ROY THOMAS, and others! Plus FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, BILL SCHELLY, and more! Cover portrait by JOHN ROMITA!

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #6 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #7 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #8

DRAW! #30

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SWAMPMEN: MUCK-MONSTERS OF THE COMICS dredges up Swamp Thing, ManThing, Heap, and other creepy man-critters of the 1970s bayou! Features interviews with WRIGHTSON, MOORE, PLOOG, WEIN, BRUNNER, GERBER, BISSETTE, VEITCH, CONWAY, MAYERIK, ORLANDO, PASKO, MOONEY, TOTLEBEN, YEATES, BERGER, SANTOS, USLAN, KALUTA, THOMAS, and others. FRANK CHO cover!

BERNIE WRIGHTSON interview on Swamp Thing, Warren Publishing, The Studio, Frankenstein, Stephen King, and designs for movies like Heavy Metal and Ghostbusters, and a gallery of Wrightson artwork! Plus 20th anniversary of Bart Simpson's Treehouse of Horror with BILL MORRISON; and interview Wolff and Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre's BATTON LASH, and more!

MIKE ALLRED and BOB BURDEN cover and interviews, “Reid Fleming, World's Toughest Milkman” cartoonist DAVID BOSWELL interviewed, a chat with RICH BUCKLER, SR. about everything from Deathlok to a new career as surrealistic painter; plus the late STAN GOLDBERG speaks; the conclusion of our BATTON LASH interview; STAN LEE on his European comic convention tour, and more!

We focus the radar on Daredevil artist CHRIS SAMNEE (Agents of Atlas, Batman, Avengers, Captain America) with a how-to interview, comics veteran JACKSON GUICE (Captain America, Superman, Ruse, Thor) talks about his creative process and his new series Winter World, columnist JERRY ORDWAY shows his working process, plus more Comic Art Bootcamp by BRET BLEVINS and Draw! editor MIKE MANLEY! Mature readers only.

How-to demos & interviews with Philadelphia artists JG JONES (52, Final Crisis, Wanted, Batman and Robin) and KHOI PHAM (The Mighty Avengers, The Astonishing SpiderMan, The Mighty World of Marvel), JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews of art supplies, JERRY ORDWAY demos the “ORD-way” or drawing, and Comic Art Bootcamp by MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS! JG Jones cover! Mature readers only.

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