Back Issue #81 Preview

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Volume 1, Number 81 July 2015 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow

Comics’ Bronze Age and Beyond!

DESIGNER Rich Fowlks COVER ARTIST Nick Cardy (E.N.B. headshot

by Dave Manak) COVER COLORIST Glenn Whitmore COVER DESIGNER Michael Kronenberg PROOFREADER Rob Smentek SPECIAL THANKS Neal Adams Sergio Aragonés Robert Beerbohm Edgar Bercasio Jerry Boyd Pat Broderick Gary Brown Cary Burkett Comic Book Artist DC Comics Steve Englehart John Eury Stephan Friedt Carl Gafford Mike Gold Grand Comics Database Bob Greenberger Jack C. Harris Karl Heitmueller, Jr. Heritage Comics Auctions Dan Johnson Rob Kelly Jim Kingman Paul Kupperberg Paul Levitz

Chris Marshall David Michelinie Martin Pasko Jeff Rovin Bob Rozakis Walter Simonson Steve Skeates Prof. Manuela Soares Bryan D. Stroud Linda Sunshine Laurie Sutton Roy Thomas Maggie Thompson Mike Tiefenbacher Anthony Tollin John Trumbull Michael Uslan Mark Waid Carolyn Wallace John Wells Bernie Wrightson Dedicated to the memory of E. Nelson Bridwell

BACK SEAT DRIVER: Remembering E. Nelson Bridwell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 FLASHBACK: A Look at the Super Specs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 FANTASY COVER GALLERY: The Super Spectaculars That Weren’t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32 PRINCE STREET NEWS: History on the Spinner Rack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34 FLASHBACK: Super DC Giant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 BRING ON THE BAD GUYS: Wanted, the World’s Most Dangerous Villains . . . . . . . . . . . . .42 WHAT THE--?!: The Inferior Five . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46 FLASHBACK: Reprint Madness: DC’s Short-Lived Reprint Line of 1972–1973 . . . . . . . . .47 FLASHBACK: Secret Origins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53 FLASHBACK: DC’s Bronze Age Reprint Giants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56 FLASHBACK: Terminated Classics: The DC Implosion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67 FLASHBACK: DC’s Bronze Age Collected Editions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69

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INTERVIEW: A Fireside (Books) Chat with Michael Uslan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .78 FLASHBACK: DC’s Bronze Age Paperbacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .84 BEYOND CAPES: The Masterworks Series of Great Comic Book Artists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .86 FLASHBACK: DC’s Deluxe Reprint Series . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .89 Our BACK TALK letters column will return next issue.

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 Nick Cardy. Superman and related characters 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, except for Prince Street News, which is TM and © Karl Heitmueller, Jr. BACK ISSUE is a TM of TwoMorrows Publishing. ISSN 1932-6904.

Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING. DC Bronze Age Giants and Reprints

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Bronze Age babies stuffed themselves silly on a smorgasbord of scrumptious super-snacks: relevant superheroes, Kirby is Coming!, Kirby is going, Limited Collectors’ Editions and Marvel Treasury Editions, black-and-white magazines, Shazam!, Super Friends, ElectraWoman and DynaGirl, 7-11 superhero Slurpee cups, Underoos, Megos, Hostess comic-book ads, Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman, Marvel Value Stamps, KISS in the Marvel Universe, Power Records, Fireside trade paperbacks, DC and Marvel calendars—the 1970s witnessed an explosion of comics innovations, comics formats, and comics-related merchandising. These and other favorites cheerfully colored our childhoods.

Amid these pop-culture marvels, the meatiest and mightiest of them all was the DC 100-Page Super Spectacular, DC Comics’ squarebound mega-format offering a super page count and “the Biggest Bargain in Comics” for a price of a mere two quarters (later, 60 cents). The “Super Specs,” as they were affectionately called, afforded readers a super-ability that even the miraculous Man of Steel couldn’t boast: peer-into-the-past vision!

With E. Nelson Bridwell (and other editors) handpicking a selection of Golden and Silver Age gems that our dads or grandpas might’ve read (and a few moms, too), the Super Specs unlocked the vault of DC’s decadesdeep library. Never mind the fact that many of these reprints were crudely etched and often preposterous— we were being made privy to the original adventures of Earth-Two heroes (the Golden Age Flash, Starman, etc.) we knew from appearances in Justice League of America and other Julius Schwartz-edited titles, plus we met old characters new to us (Air Wave, the Boy Commandos, Super-Chief, etc.)! And with their dynamic wraparound (originally, at least) covers by luminaries like Neal Adams and Nick Cardy, it’s no wonder that DC 100-Page Super Spectacular, which first appeared in 1971, soon grew from a worthy successor to the Silver Age’s beloved 80-Page Giants to an exciting new format that, some hoped, might save a sagging industry.

Let us open the covers of these classics (but ever so gently, so as not to break their delicate square bindings) and gaze through those selfsame Super Specs for a clearer view of a group of comics that have become cherished by many longtime fans and highly sought-after by collectors.

LAND OF THE GIANTS Before we dive into the Super Spectaculars, first we’ll take a quick detour to learn how comics Giants came about.

Awhile back I read an online column calling DC’s 80-Page Giants the trade paperbacks of their day.

At face value, that’s true. DC’s 80-pagers, and the 100-pagers we’ll soon explore, did provide a selection of older stories collected in a single volume.

The First Super Spectacular DC 100-Page Super-Spectacular #4 (DC-4), 1971’s “Weird Mystery Tales,” with its spooky cover by Bernie (then Berni) Wrightson.

TM & © DC Comics.

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Michael Eury

Girls Love Super Specs, Too House ad for the first issue of Young Love to appear in the Super Spectacular format, #197.

TM & © DC Comics.

Nick Cardy (DC’s main cover artist of the early 1970s, who would soon become the main Super Spec cover artist as well) with #DC-11.

Neal Adams returned for Superman #252’s unforgettable wraparound cover, with its sky full of “flying heroes.” A few of these Super Specs included fillers and special features (see index following), as well as letters columns. Those lettercols were roundups for reader mail from previous Giants, either for the host hero’s title or for random titles.

Adventure #416’s “Super-Spectacular Fe-Mail” column was a noteworthy catch-all, featuring an eclectic gathering of missives covering everything from Supergirl (regarding Super DC Giant #S-24) to commentary about the Viking Prince (DC Special #12), Plastic Man (DC Special #15), and Aquaman (Super DC Giant #S-26).

And then, once again, the Super Spectaculars disappeared!

YOUR DEMAND IS OUR COMMAND In May 1972, with its issues cover-dated July 1972, DC Comics abandoned its “Bigger and Better” 52-page, 25-cent format, jettisoned its backup reprints, and reduced its page count to 32 and its price to 20 cents. Over the course of the next few months, a handful of 20-cent reprint titles began to appear, including the ongoing Wanted, the World’s Most Dangerous Villains and two issues of The Inferior Five.

Near the year’s end, the tabloid-sized Limited Collectors’ Edition debuted with #C-20, featuring Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

(The super-sized BACK ISSUE #61 was dedicated to tabloid comics, hence their exclusion from this “Giants and Reprints” issue.)

But healthy sales and reader response to the previous spate of Super Specs were sufficient to revive the series for another run.

On the day after Christmas 1972, a new Batman 100-pager was released—with yet another change in the series’ title. The “DC” was dropped from its official title, the series now becoming 100-Page Super Spectacular; the DC-prefixed numbering continued.

“Okay—you asked for us to bring back the Super The “Super Spectacles” lettercol in issue #DCSpectaculars—so here they are—one of ’em, anyway!”

22, the second 100-pager to star the Flash, was wrote editor Bridwell in 100-Page Super Spectacular significant for a few reasons, starting with E.N.B.’s #DC-14, starring Batman, in its “A Look Through the aforementioned remark about the unusual numSuper Spectacles” lettercol. The Batman issue was bering of the Super Specs’ first issue. In response initially planned for a May 1972 release (before DC’s to a former soldier’s lament about missing some decision to drop its page count and cover price), the of the Specs, Bridwell offered a listing of all of the editor wrote. E.N.B. also revealed the series’ next 100-pagers that had thus far been published, wave: “Future Specs will include House of Mystery, including their content. He responded to another Superboy, [Our] Army at War, Shazam!, Superman, reader by contending the reason for the Super archie goodwin Justice League, and Flash, among others—at least, Specs’ publication was “to publish something special those are our current plans.” (Of those plans, only a for you—and … to make money,” hinting that Halloween-released House of Mystery edition, promised in issues subscriptions to 100-pagers might soon happen. That promise #DC-14 and DC-15, did not materialize, although HoM eventually came true, but in a manner unexpected by readers. converted to the 100-page format.) Bridwell invited readers to share their wishes for Super Specs, even asking for input for how many A NEW, REGULAR FORMAT pages the host character should receive. He also stated that the Super That Flash edition, #DC-22, was the last issue of 100-Page Super Specs’ general rule of thumb was that a DC story must be at least five Spectacular.

Yet the Super Specs lived on. Beginning the next month, a variety years old to be considered for reprinting.

E.N.B’s “A Look Through the Super Spectacles” columns were of titles previously published in the traditional 32-page format were almost as entertaining as the reprints themselves. In those days fans retooled as bimonthly 100-pagers mixing new and old stories, starting had few outlets to discover the behind-the-scenes processes of with Detective Comics #438 and Young Love #107. For the time being, comic books, so the intimacy afforded by Bridwell made even the in the traditional started with the Giants, one other ongoing DC title pudgy, pimple-faced kid living in Concord, North Carolina, feel like would also receive a 100-page special issue, starting with Shazam! #8.

This move caught most readers off-guard. For the reasoning he had a seat at the DC editorial table. If there were no letters available, such as in the case of 100-Page Super Spectacular #DC-17, behind this format change, we turn to one of comics’ most eloquent starring the Justice League of America, Bridwell would offer character and talented wordsmiths, the late Archie Goodwin. At that time, histories, as he did in that very issue by providing a rundown of JSA Goodwin had just jumped to DC Comics from Marvel for a short but and JLA members, even citing the issue numbers where they joined celebrated stint and took over Detective Comics from its previous editor, Julius “Julie” Schwartz. their respective teams.

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be choice reprints carefully selected from DC’s thirty-plus years of outstanding comics. It’s as though we took the book you’ve been buying and added three more to it.

Four books rolled into one giant at the cost of less than three bought separately.

Okay. So it’s a bargain. Nice people though we may be at DC, something more must have motivated an experiment like this than thinking, “Hey! What great new bargain can we give the readers this month?” Right? Right.

The answer lies at your local newsstand … or candy store, or super-market, or wherever you go to buy comics and magazines. That newsstand is flooded with material.

So many kinds of periodicals are appearing today, one newsstand couldn’t begin to display them all. So they don’t. And much of the time, what doesn’t get put out is the comic book because there is very little profit for a newsdealer when he sells a 20 cent comic; certainly not as much as when compared to most magazines which go for 75 cents or a dollar. Now, that’s bad, but that’s not all of it.

Newsstands get their books and magazines from distributors who service large areas sometimes comprising many states. The same problems comics have with newsstands, they have with distributors, only on a much larger scale.

If there’s a glut of items to be distributed, what often gets left behind in the darkness of the warehouse is the low-profit article. And that’s the 20 cent comic. What isn’t displayed and distributed doesn’t get sold.

Most people I know involved in creating comics, those at DC and those at other companies as well, enjoy what they’re doing, taking great pride and satisfaction when they do it well. But we still can’t escape the fact that it’s a business and if some sort of profit can’t be made, we can’t continue to do the work we love. So, that’s why this is a very important issue of DETECTIVE COMICS. This, and other larger-sized, higher-priced books from DC, is an attempt to make comics completely competitive with all the other items the distributors and newsdealers handle, so it will be out there where you can find it and buy it if you want it. And, of course, we’re going to be working very hard to make sure DETECTIVE is something you want! © 1973 DC Comics.

In three paragraphs, Archie Goodwin had respected his readers’ intelligence while clearly explaining a complex business scenario—without resorting to “Let’s rap!” jargon. Little did Archie himself realize his comments’ prescience. This 100-page format change would be DC’s first such attempt (the Dollar Comics of the late ’70s being another) to chisel a toehold into a retail environment that was squeezing out comic books. Within a few years the direct-sales market and the comic-book shop would emerge … but that is a story for another day.

Goodwin wrote 20 pages of new material for each issue of ’Tec he edited—a 12-page Batman lead story (except for #439’s “Night of the Stalker,” written by Steve Englehart) and an eight-page backup starring Manhunter, drawn by Walter Simonson, an innovative new take on an old character that would earn its creative team and DC multiple awards and accolades. (See BACK ISSUE #64 to learn more about Manhunter.) Archie’s Batman tales were gloriously rendered by several top and up-and-coming artists, starting with Jim Aparo and including Howard Chaykin, Sal Amendola, and Alex Toth.

As Goodwin noted, Batman, edited by Julie Schwartz, switched to the 100-page format with issue #254, appearing the month after Detective #438. That bimonthly rotation continued, with Young

Love and Young Romance also expanding into Super Specs and appearing in alternating months, as well as being reassigned from editor E. Nelson Bridwell to Joe Simon. The romance Super Specs’ reprints were often retitled (an example: “Believe It Or Not— It’s Love!” from 1966’s Young Love #56 became “Can This Hassle Be Love?” when it reappeared in 1974’s Super Spec Young Love #111), making the indexing of their source material impractical in some cases.

Art corrections were made on many of the romance reprints to update their hairstyles and fashions for contemporary readers.

Within a few months, Super Specs became DC’s new format du jour: Justice League of America, The Brave and the Bold, House of Mystery, Tarzan, Shazam!, The Unexpected, and World’s Finest Comics took the 100-page, bimonthly plunge.

Joining them was one newly created Super Spec title. Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen; Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane; and Supergirl were canceled—actually, they were blended into the bimonthly Superman Family, continuing Jimmy Olsen’s numbering and launching with issue #164 (Apr.–May 1974). Jimmy headlined that issue with 20 pages of new material, backed up by reprints. Superman Family’s assistant editor E. Nelson Bridwell explained the series’ format in that first issue’s lettercol: “The next issue will star SUPERGIRL in a shiny-bright, brand-new 20-page story, which subsequently will be followed by LOIS LANE. Then, JIMMY OLSEN will reappear in this round robin, etc.” Those three Super-stars’ adventures were joined by reprints from various Superman family titles, often rebranded from their original stars’ logos into tales starring Perry White, Krypto, Lana Lang, and even Pete Ross. (Superman Family was explored at length in BACK ISSUE #62.)

DC Bronze Age Giants and Reprints

Coming Attractions Copy-heavy nextissue blurbs like these, usually running 1/3rd of a page, were common in Super Specs.

TM & © DC Comics.

TM & © DC Comics.

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DC 100-PAGE SUPER SPECTACULAR #4: WEIRD MYSTERY TALES 1971 Cover artist: Berni(e) Wrightson (front cover art appears as pinup on back cover) Editor: Joe Orlando Special features: • “Macabre Mystery” intro page by Wrightson (with Wrightson cameo); “The New Arrival” gag 1-pager by Dave Manak; 2 uncredited “Weird Tales” gag pages; 2 “Weird Tales” gag pages by Sergio Aragonés; 4 horror 1-pagers by Wrightson: “Eerie Adventure,” “Monsters,” “Science-Fiction,” “Childhood Haunt”; 1 “Weird Tales” gag page by Lore Shoberg Reprints: • “I Was the Last Man on Earth” from My Greatest Adventure #8 (Mar.–Apr. 1956) • “The Phantom Enemy” from Sensation Mystery #116 (July–Aug. 1953) • “I Fought the Clocks of Doom” from My Greatest Adventure #14 (Mar.–Apr. 1957) • “The Witch’s Candles!” from House of Secrets #2 (Jan.–Feb. 1957) • “I Was Lost in a Mirage” from My Greatest Adventure #12 (Nov.–Dec. 1956) • Johnny Peril in “Horror in the Lake!” from Sensation Mystery #110 (July–Aug. 1952) • The Phantom Stranger in “The Haunters from Beyond!” from The Phantom Stranger #1 (Aug.–Sept. 1952) • “I Was the Last Martian” from My Greatest Adventure #20 (Mar.–Apr. 1958) • “I Hunted the World’s Wildest Animals” from My Greatest Adventure #15 (May–June 1957) • “The City of Three Dooms” from Tales of the Unexpected #15 (July 1957) • “Jungle Boy of Jupiter” from Tales of the Unexpected #24 (Apr. 1958) • “The Mysterious Mr. Omen” from House of Mystery #49 (Apr. 1956) DC 100-PAGE SUPER SPECTACULAR #5: LOVE STORIES 1971 Cover artists: Bob Oksner (front cover), Charlie Armentano (back cover) Editor: Dorothy Woolfolk; Gail Weiss, assistant Special features: • “Laura Penn … Your Romance Reporter” 1-page advice column; “How I Met My Boyfriend” 2-page article; “How to Look Fabulous” 2-page article; “What’s in a Name?” 1-page filler; “Where is Love” 1-page filler New stories: • “How Do I Know When I’m Really in Love?”

• “The Other Girl”

• “The Wrong Kind of Love” • “Goodbye, Lover” • “Happy Ending” Reprints: • “My Shameful Past” from Young Love #60 (Mar.–Apr. 1967) • “My Sister Stole My Man” from Young Love #60 (Mar.–Apr. 1967) • “Made for Love, Chapter 1” from Girls’ Romances #99 (Mar. 1964) • “Love is Forever (Made for Love, Chapter 2)” from Girls’ Romances #100 (Apr. 1964) • “I Didn’t Want His Love” from Girls’ Romances #130 (Jan. 1968) DC 100-PAGE SUPER SPECTACULAR #5: LOVE STORIES REPLICA EDITION 2001 Editor: Dale Crain; Scott Nybakken, associate Same content as original edition above.

DC 100-PAGE SUPER SPECTACULAR #6: WORLD’S GREATEST SUPER-HEROES 1971 Cover artist: Neal Adams (wraparound) Editor: E. Nelson Bridwell Special features: • “A Checklist of DC Super-Heroes” multi-pager, serialized through issue; Key to the Super-Heroes on the Cover (identifying characters on wraparound cover; also lists their alter egos and civilian vocations) Reprints: • Justice League of America (guest-starring the Justice Society of America) in “Crisis on EarthOne” from Justice League of America #21 (Aug. 1963) • Justice League of America (guest-starring the Justice Society of America) in “Crisis on EarthTwo” from Justice League of America #22 (Sept. 1963) • The Spectre in “The Spectre meets Zor” from More Fun Comics #55 (May 1940) • Johnny Quick in “Stand-In for 100 Convicts” from Adventure Comics #190 (July 1953) • The Vigilante in “The Galleon in the Desert” from Action Comics #146 (July 1950) • Wildcat in “Crime Wore a Costume”; unpublished story produced for Sensation Comics #91 • Hawkman in “Strange Spells of the Sorceror” from The Brave and the Bold #36 (June–July 1961) DC 100-PAGE SUPER SPECTACULAR #6: WORLD’S GREATEST SUPER-HEROES REPLICA EDITION 2004 Cover artist: Dick Giordano (wraparound; recreation of Neal Adams’ original cover) Editor: Robert Greenberger Same content as original edition above.

DC 100-PAGE SUPER SPECTACULAR #DC-7: SUPERMAN #245 Dec. 1971–Jan. 1972 Cover artists: Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson (wraparound) Editor: E. Nelson Bridwell Reprints: • Superman in “The Team of Luthor and Brainiac!” from Superman #167 (Feb. 1964) • Kid Eternity in “The Count” from Kid Eternity #3 (Autumn 1946) • The Atom in “The Time Trap” from The Atom #3 (Oct.–Nov. 1963) • Super Chief in “The Crowning of Super Chief” from All-Star Western #117 (Feb.–Mar. 1961) • Air Wave in “Adventure of the Shooting Spooks” from Detective Comics #66 (Aug. 1942) • Hawkman in “Super Motorized Menace” from Mystery in Space #89 (Feb. 1964) • Superman in “The Prankster’s Greatest Role” from Superman #87 (Feb. 1954) DC 100-PAGE SUPER SPECTACULAR #DC-8: BATMAN #238 Jan. 1972 Cover artists: Neal Adams and Dick Giordano (wraparound) Editor: E. Nelson Bridwell Reprints: • Batman in “The Masterminds of Crime” from Batman #70 (Apr.–May 1952) • Doom Patrol in “Origin of the Doom Patrol” from My Greatest Adventure #80 (June 1963) • Plastic Man in “Oh Plastic Man!” from Police Comics #14 (Dec. 1942) • Sargon the Sorcerer in “Trouble in the Big Top” from Sensation Comics #57 (Sept. 1946) • The Atom in “Danger in the Totem’s Eye”: unpublished Golden Age story • Aquaman in “The Aqua-Thief of the Seven Seas” from Adventure Comics #276 (Sept. 1960) • Legion of Super-Heroes in “The Legion of Super-Outlaws” from Adventure Comics #324 (Sept. 1964) • Batman in “Mr. Roulette’s Greatest Gamble” from Batman #75 (Feb.–Mar. 1953) DC 100-PAGE SUPER SPECTACULAR #DC-9: OUR ARMY AT WAR #242 featuring SGT. ROCK Feb. 1972 Cover artist: Joe Kubert Editor: Joe Kubert Special features: • Sgt. Rock in “Infantry” 1-pager

by Robert Kanigher and Kubert; Capt. Storm in “Navy” 1-pager

by Kubert; Johnny Cloud in “Air Force” 1-pager by Kubert; Gunner and Sarge in “Marines” 1-pager by Kubert; Haunted Tank in “Cavalry” 2-page filler by Kubert; “Sam Glanzman’s War Dairy” 2-page filler; “Battle Roster

of Easy Company” 1-page text piece by Kubert Reprints: • “The Rock!” from G.I. Combat #68 (Jan. 1959) • Capt. Storm in “Death of a P.T. Boat” from Capt. Storm #3 (Sept.–Oct. 1964) • “Line of Departure” from G.I. Combat #64 (Sept. 1958) • Johnny Cloud in “Broken Ace” from All-American Men of War #87 (Sept.–Oct. 1961) • Gunner and Sarge in “A Tank for Sarge” from Our Fighting Forces #57 (Sept.–Oct. 1960) • The Haunted Tank in “The Wounded Won’t Wait” from G.I. Combat #108 (Oct.– Nov. 1964) • “The Brave Tank” from G.I. Combat #44 (Jan. 1957) • “Battle Hats” from Our Army at War #58 (May 1957) DC 100-PAGE SUPER SPECTACULAR #DC-10: ADVENTURE COMICS #416 Mar. 1972 Cover artist: Bob Oksner (wraparound) Editor: E. Nelson Bridwell Special feature: • Key to DC’s Fighting Females (identifying heroines on wraparound cover) Reprints: • Supergirl in “The Untold Story of Argo City” from Action Comics #309 (Feb. 1964) • Supergirl in “Supergirl’s Rival Parents” from Action Comics #310 (Mar. 1964) • Johnny Thunder in “The Black Canary” from Flash Comics #86 (Aug. 1947) • Wonder Woman in “Villainy, Incorporated” from Wonder Woman #28 (Mar.–Apr. 1948) • Wonder Woman in “Trap of Crimson Flame” from Wonder Woman #28 (Mar.–Apr. 1948) • Wonder Woman in “In the Hands of the Merciless!” from Wonder Woman #28 (Mar.–Apr. 1948) • Phantom Lady in “Mystery of the Black Cat” from Police Comics #17 (Mar. 1943) • Merry, the Girl of a Thousand Gimmicks in “The Duel of the Gimmicks” from Star Spangled Comics #90 (Mar. 1949) • Supergirl in “The Black Magic of Supergirl” from Action Comics #324 (May 1965) DC 100-PAGE SUPER SPECTACULAR #DC-11: THE FLASH #214 Apr. 1972 Cover artist: Nick Cardy (wraparound) Editor: Julius Schwartz Special features: • “Flash Facts!” science 1-pager; Famous Flash Covers: Showcase #4 and Flash #155 (inside back cover)

TM & © DC Comics.

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All art, characters, and logos TM & © DC Comics.

Many DC Comics characters and titles didn’t make the cut for their own 100-Page Super Spectaculars.

But here in BACK ISSUE land, we can don our Bronzecolored glasses and play make-believe. So enjoy these fantasy Super Specs—their covers written and art-directed by yours truly and ably designed by the always-accommodating, Photoshopperific Rich Fowlks—headlined by some snubbed members of the DC Line of Super-Stars.

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Michael Eury

TM

by

John Wells

In the beginning, there were the 80-Page Giants, and they were good. Much had changed since DC began its series of thick reprint collections in 1960, though, and one of them was that pesky 80. Inflation had trimmed them to 68-page Giants by 1969 in order to maintain their 25-cent price tag. Something that hadn’t changed since 1966 was the group of characters chosen to appear in the Giants’ monthly rotation: Batman and Superman (each twice a year), the Flash, Jimmy Olsen, Justice League of America, Lois Lane, Sgt. Rock, Superboy, Supergirl, and the Superman/Batman team.

The Sgt. Rock annuals were a catchall for DC’s various war series, but every other genre—active or dormant—was virtually shut out by superheroes. In the summer of 1968, DC took its first tentative step toward rectifying the matter when it expanded Young Love #69 to a Giant for that one issue. It was also a stealth introduction of the slimmer 68-page Giants, but no one was pointing that out. Two months later, in August 1968, the quarterly DC Special premiered and delivered precisely the sort of diversity that had been lacking in the Giants: artist spotlights, teen humor, horror, Westerns, and superheroines.

The superhero and war annuals were integrated into whatever title they were appearing in with a secondary number denoting its chronology in the original Giant series. JLA #76, for instance, was also stamped #G-65.

In June and July of 1969, DC carried that principle over to its humor comics. Swing with Scooter #20 and Sugar and Spike #85 were each released as “Summer Fun” Giants with tiny secondary numbering designating them “F-1” and “F-2” (with the F standing for Fun).

The summer part of the equation was important, too.

The months when kids were out of school were typically viewed as gravy time for publishers, a period when comics were bound to sell better because their primary audience was more readily available. If that held true, DC president Carmine Infantino must have reasoned, there’d be plenty to choose from in the summer of 1970.

In July, five separate issues of a 68-page comic entitled Super DC Giant hit spinner racks, and three more followed in August. Although officially assigned to a variety of DC editors, the series was reported in Newfangles #37 to be primarily overseen by E. Nelson Bridwell.

Originally announced by Don and Maggie Thompson in Newfangles #35 (May 1970) as “Giant Summer Fun Magazines,” Super DC Giant was a continuation of the pair of humor issues from the previous year, but its numbering was baffling. Designated with an S (for either Summer or Super), the new series began with issue #S-13 despite the previous year’s Sugar and Spike having been #F-2. Perhaps, the Thompsons joked in Newfangles #36, DC had counted the intervening months. Another theory was that they added up every non G-series Giant of the past two years (Young Love, Swing with Scooter, Sugar and Spike, the eight

“Editors are Merciless Men” Sez who, Bat-guy? Super DC Giant #S-16, “The Best of the Brave and the Bold,” included a reprint-framing story illo’ed by Dillin and Esposito.

TM & © DC Comics.

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It was followed by two issues that represented last chances for their respective stars. Challengers of the Unknown and Aquaman had each been canceled in 1970, but hope sprang eternal. Issue #S-25’s COTU Giant reprinted late-1950s Jack Kirby material and hoped to catch some of the heat generated by the superstar’s recent move from Marvel to DC. In a clever touch, the book also reprinted a generic text filler from COTU #15 and changed the names of its two characters into members of the Challs. A Bob Browndrawn pinup of the team from 1965—originally a premium sent to fans—also appeared in an actual comic book for the first time.

The Ramona Fradon-illustrated Aquaman stories in issue #S-26 were a departure from the more recent Jim Aparo-drawn tales, but the latter series was briefly represented nonetheless. The comic book closed with a two-page prose adventure written by Steve Skeates with spot art by Sal Amendola.

Elsewhere, the last reprint closed with a blank strip that was meant to promote the contents of the next issue. But Super DC Giant was canceled and, two weeks later, the bulk of DC titles would sport a 25-cent retail price in a line expansion that would introduce reprints into nearly every comic book. The long-running Giant series hung on for a few months at a 35-cent pricepoint before it, too, came to a close with issue #G-89 (a.k.a. JLA #93). Two weeks after Super DC Giant #S-26 went on sale, a new kind of reprint anthology debuted and its name was 100-Page Super Spectacular.

The fanzine Etcetera #3 (May 1971) reported that issues devoted to House of Mystery, Three Mouseketeers, and Teen Titans were shelved while a Plastic Man spotlight was rerouted to DC Special #15 (itself the final issue). There was a happier fate for “Weird War Tales,” a concept issue that had been announced a year earlier in Newfangles #37 (July 1970).

As Paul Levitz explained in 1975’s Weird War Tales #36, the series had begun as two reprint issues that Joe Kubert had provided with new covers and framing sequences.

With the material ready to go, DC put a slimmed-down version of the first book on the schedule for July 1971 and green-lighted Weird War Tales as an ongoing Kubertedited bimonthly. [Editor’s note: See BACK ISSUE #78 for the full Weird War Tales story.] Eventually, the series was able to transition into new material and ultimately boasted a 12-year, 124-issue run. It was Super DC Giant’s greatest success, but it never appeared under that logo.

The series’ name wasn’t quite gone, though. As 68page Giants—now retailing at 50 cents—returned to prominence in 1975, Super DC Giant returned to the schedule with a planned inaugural issue starring the Teen Titans (which was mentioned in Four-Star Spectacular #1). At the last minute, though, the reprint series was renamed DC Super-Stars and the old name returned to limbo … almost.

Out of the blue, Super DC Giant #27 popped up on racks in July with an issue devoted to “Strange Flying Saucers Adventures.” Although Julius Schwartz received top billing as editor on the book, associate editor E.

DC Bronze Age Giants and Reprints

Cool Covers Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com), two covers in original art form: (left) Charlie Armentano’s “Love 1971” (#S-21, originally an inventory piece) and (right) Bob Brown and Frank Giacoia’s “The Unexpected” (#S-23).

TM & © DC Comics.

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TM

In this era of villain-centric comics and events, the idea of a supervillain-showcase reprint title might sound routine. But when DC Comics released its first collection of Wanted, the World’s Most Dangerous Villains, it was a bit of a risky proposition.

Comics readers would only root for the good guy, said traditional wisdom. On the rarest of occasions during comics’ earlier decades, a bad guy might get his own series—Yellow Claw, for example. And surely, the industry watchdog, the Comics Code Authority, would frown upon kids’ lit being littered by lawbreakers.

So, in 1970, as the Bronze Age was rising from the ashes of the Silver Age, it might have raised some eyebrows among the stuffed shirts at DC when this “Wanted” concept was selected for issue #8 of DC Special. Mort Weisinger was listed as its editor, but it was probably his associate, E. Nelson Bridwell, who took a deciding hand in gathering the stories that would headline this 64-page Giant.

They were safe bets, culled from the files of DC’s heaviest hitters: Lex Luthor and the Joker, teaming to tackle Superman and Batman; five of the Flash’s Rogues’ Gallery (Mirror Master, the Trickster, Capt. Cold, Capt.

Boomerang, and the Top), trying to trip up the Fastest Man Alive; renegade hero Sinestro, ringing his way into combat against Green Lantern; and the Shadow-Thief, ruffling Hawkman’s feathers. The comic’s cover design was eye-catching and thematically clever, with its “WANTED” logo in cautionary, red-stenciled lettering, and its parchment paper background with push pin-tacked cover segments evoking an FBI poster any kid might see when accompanying his parents to his local post office. Packaged under a beautiful cover by Murphy Anderson, artist extraordinaire and standardbearer for DC’s house style, DC Special #8 (July–Sept.

1970) tried to trick readers into thinking they were buying a comic about villains—but what we were sold was a comic starring heroes battling villains.

Not that I’m complaining, mind you. These were classic stories that made an engaging collection, one that I gleefully revisited lo, these 40-plus years after I bought my original copy at 25 cents. And truth be told, were DC Special #8 issued with the same content but packaged as “Justice League of America: All-Villains Issue,” it probably would’ve lacked the same punch that “Wanted, the World’s Most Dangerous Villains” offered.

That punch was sufficient for a return bout. One year later, DC Special #14 (Sept.–Oct. 1971) paroled “Wanted” for a second outing. In the year between issues, a price increase in comics led DC to truncate its Giants from 64 pages to 52. This smaller format now allowed for only three stories, and Bridwell—now the

Running Wild in Central City This Infantino/Anderson pinup from 1964’s Flash 80-Page Giant reappeared in the first “Wanted” edition.

TM & © DC Comics.

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by

Michael Eury

by

Jim Kingman

In 1972, National Periodical Publications (DC), now DC Entertainment, had genuine reasons for concern, and not just due to the loss of its long-standing status as the #1 comic-book company in the country.

That happened in January when it was announced that Marvel Comics had surpassed DC in sales. Other discouraging factors weighing on the company: DC’s price increase of its books from 15 cents for 36 pages (approximately 22 pages of new material plus ads) to 25 cents for 52 pages (22 to 26 pages of new material plus 12 to 14 pages of reprints) had failed after 11 months (June 1971–Apr. 1972).

(In May, DC returned its comics to the standard-sized format, now at 20 cents for 24 pages of new material.) Also, throughout 1972 and 1973, DC’s superhero line suffered a setback in publishing frequency, as many monthly and eight-times-a-year titles dropped to bimonthly status because sales of most comic books were in decline. These books included previously A-list titles: Adventure Comics, Detective Comics, Batman, The Flash, Justice League of America, and World’s Finest Comics. Finally, the critically acclaimed Green Lantern (co-starring Green Arrow) and two of Jack Kirby’s much-publicized Fourth World entries, New Gods and Forever People, were canceled.

There were some bright spots, however, shining through the dimming. The Superman family of books remained solid sellers, and sales of DC’s mystery line had escalated, resulting in that genre’s books shifting from bimonthly to monthly status. Still, given DC’s drop in popularity and sales, it didn’t seem the time to be introducing a wide range of additional books, all of them reprints and almost all of them hitting the newsstands and comics spinner racks at once.

Yet that’s exactly what DC did at the end of 1972.

Jeff Rovin, who edited half of the reprint line’s eight titles when they debuted in December 1972, tells BACK ISSUE, “In 1972, before the direct market, there was a real battle for rack space to display comics. There were a finite number of slots. Marvel was publishing more titles and DC chief Carmine Infantino had to do the same or risk being squeezed out. The cost of doing all-new titles was jeff rovin prohibitive; reprints were the solution.”

Two other reprint books, Secret Origins and DC Courtesy of Comic Book Artist.

100-Page Super Spectacular, were placed on the December schedule.

Also that month, two new books were introduced, Shazam! and Sword of Sorcery, making December 1972 one of the most productive months DC had seen in years.

Three of the books, Challengers of the Unknown, Doom Patrol, and Metal Men, contained reprints of those eclectic Silver Age teams, well loved by their fans, certainly, but certainly not A-listers. Johnny Thunder, the first Western reprint to debut, was of a genre long past its prime. The first war book, Four-Star Battle Tales, had potential, as DC’s war books still had some clout. The only likely success was Legion of Super-Heroes, as the super-teen team of the 30th Century was undergoing a creative resurgence in Superboy thanks to writer Cary Bates and artist Dave Cockrum. Given the loosening of Comics Code Authority regulations, however, which gave a thrilling edge to the mystery line that it sorely needed, the reprints appeared dated, of a bygone past only a decade removed. As if to add insult to injury, one had to spend eight cents more for a story that had cost 12 cents ten years before.

Something Borrowed, Something New Nick Cardy’s original cover art to Legion of Super-Heroes #1, one of a handful of new covers commissioned for DC’s reprint line. Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com).

TM & © DC Comics.

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TM

by

Michael Eury

What started in 1961 as a “Special Giant Issue” ultimately became a tried-and-true DC Comics brand.

Secret Origins #1 was DC’s fourth 80-Page Giant, preceded by three Superman Annuals (which were released biannually, by the way) and quickly followed by the first Batman Annual. Its ninepanel-grid cover foreshadowed The Hollywood Squares’ set and The Brady Bunch’s title credits, with the blurb “By Popular Demand! A SuperCollection of the Most SoughtAfter Stories Ever Published!” occupying the center spot where Paul Lynde or Ann B. Davis would later be found on TV. Co-edited by Julius Schwartz and Jack Schiff, it trotted out reprints starring DC’s Silver Age headliners—even the Challengers of the Unknown. The rest of DC’s A- and B+-list was rounded up for a sequel, More Secret Origins, which followed a few years later, published as 80Page Giant (Magazine) #8 (Mar. 1965). And a tradition began … yet one whose next phase would be eight years in coming.

Editor E. Nelson Bridwell appropriated the aforementioned blurb to top-mount the Secret Origins logo when DC’s quest for shelf-display dominance green-lighted a bimonthly Secret Origins series, hitting newsstands just before Christmas of 1972 with a Feb.–Mar. 1973 cover-dated first issue. A subtitle (appearing on the cover but not the indicia inside) promised that this comic would chronicle the origin tales “of Super-Heroes and Super-Villains,” and the first issue delivered just that: Joining the three most popular Justice Leaguers—Superman, Batman, and the Flash—was “[the Golden Age] Hawkman’s first battle with the Ghost!” Issue #1’s cover, pulsating at the reader with its vivid primary colors bouncing off a bright white background, featured artist Nick Cardy at his best, delivering a multi-character display that afforded each hero equal stature (Cardy would go on to illustrate the covers for each of Secret Origins’ seven issues). A wash technique employed on the first-issue cover faded the heroes’ and villain’s

May the Source Be with You The Duke of Data, E.N.B., credited reprints’ original sources, either in text pages or, as shown here, on title pages. The Atom’s origin, as re-presented in Secret Origins #2. (inset) The first issue of Secret Origins.

Cover by Nick Cardy.

TM & © DC Comics.

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They were bigger. They were better. They were historical. They were sometimes themed. They reintroduced classic stories and characters.

They also rolled out new material. They were profitable. And they could be had for substantially less than a dollar. They were reprint Giants and their popularity grew and grew.

The reprint Giant at DC can trace its beginnings back to 1960 with the 80-Page Giants. Since there was a substantial history to draw from and eBay and the back-issue bin had yet to be devised, the Giant was a way to provide readers with classic material that would be otherwise unavailable or perhaps even unknown. It wasn’t long before it was realized they were onto a good thing and the concept only gained traction from there.

DC SPECIAL DC Special was one of the first and was kicked off with the “AllInfantino Issue,” published at the end of 1968 and featuring a sampling of some of Carmine Infantino’s best efforts, from Batman to the Flash and Adam Strange to Carmine’s purported favorite, Detective Chimp, all in one neat package for a quarter.

The themed issues continued with offerings such as “All-Teen,” “All-Girl,” and another featured artist with issue #5’s “The Secret Lives of Joe Kubert.” Included in the mix was a reprint edition dedicated to mystery stories (issue #4), and of particular note in that issue is the inclusion of a story by Jack Kirby titled “The Magic Hammer,” reprinted from Tales of the Unexpected from the 1950s. While the setting is the Old West, a mighty familiar-looking leather-strapped hammer is discovered and it’s later claimed by Thor, who explains that it had been stolen by Loki. As a matter of fact, this is not the first appearance of a Kirby-drawn Thor for DC, as “The Villain from Valhalla,” found in a Sandman story in Adventure Comics #75 from 1942 will attest. As you can see, “Ol’ Goldilocks” has a history prior to his debut in Marvel’s Journey into Mystery #83.

DC Special continued on as a series until 1977 and issue #29, though there was a break in the action between issue #15 at the end of 1971 and issue #16 from 1975. Themes bounced around between a particular character like the Viking Prince, Plastic Man, or Green Lantern to collected similar stories like “Strangest Sports Stories Ever Told”; “Wanted, the World’s Most Dangerous Villains”; and “Robin Hood and the Three Musketeers.” Before DC Special faded, however, other reprint Giants were launched, some with runs longer than others, but still carrying on the tradition.

FOUR STAR SPECTACULAR On December 11, 1975, the short-lived Four Star Spectacular hit the newsstands and spinner racks. Edited by E. Nelson Bridwell and featuring four stories showcasing four different heroes, the title mined tales as far back as the Golden Age and had two consistent headliners in Superboy and Wonder Woman with the other two heroes as “guest stars,” as explained by Bridwell in the first issue’s lettercol, “Four Thought.”

Of special interest in issue #1 (Mar.–Apr. 1976) is the Golden Age Flash tale. As explained at the top of the splash page, “This story originally appeared in ALL-FLASH COMICS in 1944—but the art of the original version was too far below modern standards to reprint the tale as it was! So we had a young artist, Edgar Bercasio, re-do the

Returning to Orbit “Super-Stars of Space” became a popular series-within-aseries with the reprint Giant DC Super-Stars. Ernie Chua’s original cover art to issue #6 is courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com).

TM & © DC Comics.

56 • BACK ISSUE • DC Bronze Age Giants and Reprints

by

Bryan D. Stroud

by

Flash and Bat Lash

Dan Johnson

(left) The unpublished Demand Classics #1 would have reprinted 1961’s landmark The Flash #123, while (right) Western Classics #1 was to feature Bat Lash’s first adventure from Showcase #76.

Demand Classics cover by Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin; Western Classics cover

by James Sherman and Maurice Whitman.

TM & © DC Comics.

The infamous DC Implosion occurred shortly after I became interested The idea for the line was to present the very best stories that had in comic books. As a young fan, I didn’t understand the full ramifications shaped DC’s past and forged its universe into what it was by 1978. of the Implosion at the time it occurred. All I knew was that DC Comics For the first time, the reprints presented would have been ones the fans had announced some books that sounded really amazing, and I was wanted to read, as opposed to stories that were reprinted just to serve really looking forward to reading them, but then these comics simply as filler. “…The reprints are sometimes not the best of all possible never showed up on the spinner racks that I frequented. I thought choices, often having to be tailored to the correct length that the editor at first I had just missed out and the books had come and gone happens to need for a specific space,” wrote Mike W. Barr in without me noticing. It wasn’t until I got older, and became the letters column for Dynamic Classics #1 (Sept.–Oct. 1978). aware of the events surrounding the Implosion, that I “Not so with Dynamic Classics and her three sister realized just what had happened in 1978 and just magazines … these are reprints that we at DC are how bad things had been for DC. Sure, missing out proud of, and of the fact that we’re reprinting them.” on a comic book you wanted to read is terrible, This line was also intended to benefit the budding but that pales in comparison to the losses suffered by comic-collector’s market that was really beginning to the people who worked at the company at the time catch fire and come to the public forefront in the late in regard to lost employment and lost opportunities 1970s. This line was an effort on DC’s part to present to have the stories they created published. classic stories for readers who perhaps couldn’t find Of all the books that either never came to be, or afford the comic books these stories originally or were canceled before they had a chance to reach appeared in. As the Barr column indicated, purchasing their full potential, the ones I regret the most were the two comic books that featured the content found the ones in the “Classics” reprint line. These books in Dynamic Classics #1 would have set readers back cary burkett were intended to reprint some of the all-time greatest a whole $3.00 at the time. “They’re good stories stories that DC Comics had ever produced. In 1978, that readers would otherwise have no opportunity the only thing that fired up my imagination more than new comic to see,” wrote Barr. “That’s the main thing, but also [each book] will books were back issues owned by family members and the children of adhere to a specific, pre-chosen theme, thus making them DC’s first my parents’ friends. I always enjoyed reading old comic books, especially foray into regularly scheduled, structured reprints since the demise of the ones that had been printed before I was born. For me, it was like Wanted and Secret Origins, some years ago.” uncovering lost treasure and discovering history, all at the same time.

Only Dynamic Classics and Battle Classics ever made it to their first That being the case, had these reprint books gone forward, they issues before the plug was pulled on the line, and the stories that would have been nirvana for a young and eager collector like myself. were presented in these books, and the ones planned for subsequent DC’s Classics line was to have included four titles: Demand Classics issues, were indeed the cream of DC’s crop. (featuring stories from the 1960s), Dynamic Classics (featuring stories Dynamic Classics #1 reprinted “The Secret of the Waiting Graves,” from the early 1970s), Battle Classics (featuring classic war stories), the first Batman story by Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams, from and Western Classics (featuring classic Western stories). Of the four Detective Comics #395 (Jan. 1970), and “The Himalayan Incident,” books, only two, Dynamic Classics and Battle Classics, ever made it to the first installment of Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson’s awardthe newsstands, and even then they each only had one issue apiece. winning Manhunter series, from Detective Comics #437 (Oct.–Nov. DC Bronze Age Giants and Reprints

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I was in the third grade when I read my first DC Comics “collected edition”—Signet’s 1966 Batman paperback, reprinting in black and white a handful of Golden Age adventures of the Caped Crusader and Boy Wonder. My much-loved, dog-eared copy, along with a few 80-Page Giants from DC’s go-go checks era, introduced me to the earlier adventures of the Dynamic Duo to whom I was devoted, two nights a week, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel. Paperback reprints of comics—from MAD Magazine collections, to popular comic strips like Peanuts, to comic-book superheroes—were the rage in the swinging ’60s, but outside of Jules Feiffer’s seminal collection The Great Comic Book Heroes, first published in hardcover in 1965, superhero reprints were mostly relegated to inexpensive, pulp-paper formats.

As comic books’ content matured in the ’70s, so did the presentation of the stories harvested from their vaults. National Periodical Publications (DC Comics), partially motivated by the increased visibility afforded their characters through television, brokered deals with major book publishers to distribute reprint volumes, in both hardcover and softcover formats, into the traditional book market.

WORLD’S FINEST COLLECTIONS

by

Michael Eury

The first one of these I read as a young fan was Bonanza Books’ (a division of Crown Publishers, Inc.) hardcover Batman from the Thirties to the Seventies, a meaty tome of nearly 400 pages packed with Batman reprints spanning those four decades, reproduced mostly in black and white with a smattering of color pages. Its cover repurposed a pose of the Dynamic Duo rendered by Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson, originally produced as a pinup in DC titles during the Bat-craze of the mid-’60s. With its entrancing purple-orange background and electric-yellow title lettering shrieking at the potential customer, no self-respecting Batman fan could ignore this book. A bonus of the book was its introduction by DC historian extraordinaire E. Nelson Bridwell; here is where I first learned fascinating trivia such as Batman and Robin’s appearances on the Superman radio series, the revelation that Bill Finger was the principal Golden Age Batman scribe, and that actor Conrad Veidt in the film The Man Who Laughs influenced the look of the Joker.

That information may be considered common knowledge by the BACK ISSUE reader of today, but in the early ’70s these were mindblowing discoveries to Bronze Age babies.

Bridwell also wrote the introduction to this book’s companion volume, Superman from the Thirties to the Seventies, which, like the Batman book, first saw print in 1971. E.N.B.’s Superman intro was another treasure trove of trivia, from which I learned about Superman’s roots as a figure of emancipation during the Great Depression, other supermen (including Philip Wylie’s Gladiator) that predated the Man of Steel, George Lowther’s 1942 Superman novel, and Clark Kent and Lois Lane’s brief marriage in the 1950s’ Superman newspaper strip (long before Bobby Ewing stepped out of a Dallas shower, Mr. and Mrs. Kent’s union was erased from continuity as a dream). What I did not learn from Bridwell’s introduction, however, was that Superman was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

When Superman from the Thirties to the Seventies was in production, Siegel and Shuster were suing DC over the ownership of Superman, and Bridwell was directed to omit referencing their names in his text.

E.N.B.’s fingerprints are clearly visible on both DC books, but he did not edit this dynamic duo. That distinction fell to Linda Sunshine,

DC’s First Collected Edition Cover to the ultra-rare, “squishy” hardcover edition of The Great Superman Comic Book Collection. Art by José Luis García-López and Dick Giordano.

TM & © DC Comics.

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78 • BACK ISSUE • DC Bronze Age Giants and Reprints

by

Michael Eury

interview conducted October 3, 2014 and transcribed by Steven Thompson

Batman TM & © DC Comics.

MICHAEL EURY: How did this deal with Fireside originate?

MICHAEL USLAN: This actually begins with—a little background—my teaching the first-ever accredited course on comic books, which was 19—I think it was ’72. As a result of the worldwide extensive publicity that course got, I received a call from Sol Harrison, vice president of DC Comics, who said to me, “Carmine Infantino and I have been reading about you in newspapers, we’ve been watching you on TV shows. We’ve been listening to you on radio talk shows, and we think you’re a very innovative young man. We’d like to fly you to New York to discuss ways we might be able to work together.” And they did. And that led to my job at DC Comics. There was no word “intern” at that point.

They just called us Junior Woodchucks. I started at DC six months after the little scrawny kid, Paul Levitz.

[Eury laughs] Whatever happened to him I don’t know.

We had the Junior Woodchucks at DC Comics, and then they put me on retainer when I went back to school at Indiana University, so it was a really great situation. Sol became my mentor. He also knew that I was absolutely fascinated with the history of comics and often I would pass up lunch with the boys to sit with Sol and Jack Adler and sometimes Julie Schwartz and, oh … [Robert] Kanigher, [Joe] Kubert, or [Murray] Boltinoff. [Joe] Orlando … whoever it was. I was just soaking up their stories and asking a zillion—probably annoying—questions as I could. But that was me.

There were a lot of lunches and I made friends with Gerta Gattel, who was in charge of the archive of the DC library. And knowing my passion for the history, she would often let me go in there and sit in the vault and read volumes of comics so I could eventually say I read every DC comic. That was my world back then.

And very much so.

Through Sol, I wound up acquiring the [motion picture] rights to Batman in 1979. He introduced me to the man at Warner Books that we negotiated the deal with and, on October 3rd, 1979, I acquired the rights to Batman. And the rest, as they say, is history!

But while I was working with Sol, Sol approached me and said, “Michael, I know how you know our entire library. You know all these characters, you know the history, you love all of this. We’ve just signed a new contract with Simon & Schuster. They have a division, Fireside Books,” which, my memory tells me, had already been doing some books with Marvel.

EURY: You’re correct. They started with Origins of Marvel Comics in ’74. But it took several years, as you’re aware, before DC signed on with them.

USLAN: Right. Well, now they had the contract to start to do trade paperbacks and potentially hardback books with Fireside on DC. So he asked me if I would write, edit, and be the guy to work with the editor at Simon & Schuster who was in charge of it and do the series. And I said, “Absolutely!” He introduced me to someone who—while I haven’t seen her in a number of years—we became fast friends. Linda Sunshine, one of the greatest book editors that you’ll ever want to meet. Linda was the queen of Simon & Schuster. She loved the world of comics. She was involved in doing the Marvel books and her assistant at the time, her aide-de-camp, was Bobbi Jackson. Bobbi is the daughter of Woody Gelman, one of the most important figures in the history of comics fandom and even underground comics. He had a lot to do with the Spirit and Will Eisner. Woody was one of the first fan publishers of a lot of great comic-book and comic-strip material.

Fireside Hardcover Joe Kubert’s spellbinding America at War wraparound cover was printed onto the dustjacket of this rare hardcover edition of the 1979 book.

TM & © DC Comics.

EURY: Linda Sunshine also edited those Crown books, the Batman USLAN: Yeah, and it’s a shame because he also had the bestseller and Superman ones in the early ’70s. in the Superman line, Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes, USLAN: She’s just marvelous. Meeting Linda was a great moment for when that was cracking. G.I. Combat was always near the top of the me in my life. We really worked hand-in-hand. Bobbi Jackson would sales chart for DC, so [Murray] had his group of books and he had help do all of this stuff as well. the touch! He really, truly did.

Going in, the overall idea was to do a “Best of DC Comics” series I would sit and talk to Joe Kubert, to Murray, to Bob Kanigher … of books, and I was excited because we would start with these three I was one of the only people I think Kanigher would talk to! [Eury laughs] and I was already planning the “Best of DC Westerns,” and just kind We happened to have a very nice relationship, which was very rare of go through a lot of different genres. They really wanted to put the for Bob with, I think, anybody! Ultimately that was cemented when focus outside the superheroes. So it gave us an opening that he read the introduction I wrote for America at War and felt, even to this day books rarely get. If you look at the entire at last, somebody had given him credit, as opposed to Marvel Masterworks series, you get maybe two volumes just credit going to Kubert and the artists. He was so of Rawhide Kid and Kid Colt, Outlaw and Two-Gun Kid, appreciative of it that he was always willing to talk you know … a lot of these have never even shown with me and share with me, and that was an unusual up! Certainly, in the DC Archives series, it’s the same situation to be in. [with material that has not been reprinted]. You’ve So with input from those guys, and knowing the got all of this beautiful Alex Toth and Carmine books as well as I did, I went into the library to pick Infantino, Gil Kane, Murphy Anderson, etcetera, though it and try to figure out what to represent. etcetera, great work on their Westerns, which really I remember at first I must have had a thousand predated and established the look and quality for pages. That was my initial cut. I knew I could do an what would become the Silver Age of Comics. entire volume just on Sgt. Rock, or an entire volume So we had great and grand ideas for the entire just on Enemy Ace. long-term venture. The decision was made: Let’s In talking with Linda, we mapped it out that bob kanigher start with the war books. So I, then, pretty much off there should be representation from different eras, the top of my head knew a lot of what I wanted. so it wouldn’t simply be the best of DC war comics Courtesy of Bob Rozakis.

EURY: What was the reason for a war book being first? but it really was an overview of the best of DC war comics. We had to USLAN: In the ’70s, Sgt. Rock was a huge seller for DC—a huge seller. deal with the ’40s, and with Vietnam, so Captain Hunter had to be G.I. Combat had consistently been a great seller. [G.I Combat editor] represented. I’d call it more of an overview of the best rather than Murray Boltinoff doesn’t get a lot of attention today from fandom, really the best of the war comics that DC had ever done. the comic-book historians, and I spent a lot of time with him. Murray EURY: You even threw in Superman, as well [“Clark Kent Tries to Join was in the OSS, working with Wild Bill Donovan in World War II. A very, the Army” from the Superman newspaper strip and “I Sustain the very interesting man! The books that he edited really turned out to be Wings” from 1943’s Superman #25]. a lot of sales gold! There was a stretch of time he had the bestselling USLAN: I did, and that was important to me. In the 1970s, that story Batman book with what he was doing with Brave and Bold. was great lore and historians—or people who wanted to be comic-book EURY: As a kid, that was my favorite comic so I’m definitely aware of historians—knew about this story but nobody had any proof of it. They Murray’s golden touch, too, and we do give him a shout-out from couldn’t find the comic book that supposedly had this thing. So I sat time to time in BACK ISSUE. But I agree with you that he’s been largely down to track it down and it turned out it was in the strips! I wanted to ignored by historians, and the contemporary fan, of course, would make sure that finally was visible to people who cared about the history really not know him from Adam. of comics and the history of Superman. It really fit in well. There was DC Bronze Age Giants and Reprints

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Chop Shop An example of the reformatting required to transform a traditional comic book into a paperback. (left) A page from Action Comics #500. (right) That page’s first four panels repurposed as two pages of The Superman Story.

Scans courtesy of John Wells.

TM & © DC Comics.

84 • BACK ISSUE • DC Bronze Age Giants and Reprints

Chris Marshall

If a comic book wasn’t easy enough to take with you anywhere you went, DC Comics made it a little easier in the 1970s with a series of paperbacks—or “pocketbooks”—that allowed classic comic-book stories to fit in the palm of your hand.

In 1972, DC made an arrangement with the Paperback Library to publish two black-and-white paperbacks with reprints of its award-winning Green Lantern and Green Arrow team-up adventures. Measuring four inches by seven inches, these paperbacks were some of DC’s earliest collected editions.

Volume 1 even reprinted Green Lantern Hal Jordan’s origin story from Showcase #22 (Sept.–Oct. 1959).

DC came back to the “pocketbook” format in 1977, this time making a business deal with Tempo Books. Six paperback volumes were published— Batman, Justice League of America, Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes, Superman, Wonder Woman, and World’s Finest—collecting stories from the 1940s, ’50s, ’60s, and early ’70s. Tempo Books also released all six volumes in a hard-tofind slipcase (see inset). Why and how these particular stories were chosen remains a mystery, as there are no discernible themes running through the books, nor is there a focus on a particular artist, writer, or villain.

TM & © DC Comics.

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The series was called The Masterworks Series of Great Comic Book Artists. Its intent was to showcase the DC Comics work of some of the most celebrated artists of the era—Frank Frazetta, Berni (today Bernie) Wrightson, and Neal Adams—and its purpose was to give Phil Seuling an exclusive that no one else had access to, one that highlighted his favorite artists. “This was very early in the evolution of the comic-shop market, and one of the first things done specifically for those stores by DC,” Paul Levitz informs BACK ISSUE. “I don’t recall the numbers any more, but I think a modest quantity was distributed.”

PHIL SEULING Phil Seuling (1934–1984) was a born-and-raised New Yorker.

With a Bachelor of Arts from CCNY he worked as a high school

by S t e phan Friedt English teacher. On the side he bought and sold comic books and ran a bookstore. Without Phil Seuling, comic books and comic-book fandom could very well have looked different today. In 1968, Phil created and ran the first International Convention of Comic Art, which morphed into the New York Comic Art Convention the following year, establishing what we now consider the norm for a comic convention.

In 1972, he established Sea Gate Distributors, the first direct distributor for comic shops and establishing the concept of direct distributing. Soon, Sea Gate was the exclusive distributor for DC, Marvel Comics, and Archie Comics.

By the late 1970s, Phil had established a network of sub-distributors around the United States and held a monopoly on comic-book distribution. That led to a lawsuit against Marvel, DC, and others over their exclusive contracts with Sea Gate, which in turn broke Sea Gate’s monopoly. By the early 1980s, Phil was looking for something that would be an exclusive to his distribution company and set it apart from all of his new rivals. Working with his connections with DC’s management, Seuling brought The Masterworks Series of Great Comic Book Artists to life in 1983. The series ran for three issues, with two issues more in the works that were never published. The only way to get copies wholesale was through Sea Gate.

According to Roy Thomas, Phil Seuling “was both a very generous individual, and a sometimes willfully aggressive blowhard. I personally liked him from the first time we met in person, a couple of weeks after I moved to New York City, and played poker at his home many times, as well as other social occasions … but he often set my teeth on edge because he seemed sometimes to go out of his way to spark an argument. Yet if you needed a guy to come through for you, he’d do it, and I tried to return the favor. He was a visionary of sorts, having come to me in the early 1970s [while Thomas was Marvel Comics’ editor-in-chief] and got me to introduce him to Sol Brodsky at Marvel so he phil seuling could discuss his direct-market plan … but then he seems to have tried to carve himself out a monopoly. I was annoyed at him (though we never discussed the matter) when he broke up his marriage … but I remained friends with both him and his ex-wife Carol. I was very sorry when I learned he had passed away.”

Comics historian Robert Beerbohm says, “Let me think of how to condense Phil Seuling down to a sentence or two. That will be very “The Pride of Any Collection” hard to do. He was larger than life and needs a couple paragraphs to do him justice.” Beerbohm wrote extensively about Seuling and the DC Comics house ad promoting Phil Seuling/Sea Gate creation of direct distributing in his two-part article “Secret Origins of Distributors’ The Masterworks Series of Great Comic Book Artists. the Direct Market” in TwoMorrows’ Comic Book Artist, issues #6 (Fall 1999) and 7 (Feb. 2000).

Shining Knight TM & © DC Comics.

86 • BACK ISSUE • DC Bronze Age Giants and Reprints

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J o h n Tr u m b u l l

In the early 1980s, with DC Comics’ 50th anniversary fast approaching, the occasion became as much about celebrating DC’s past as preparing for its future. Executive editor Dick Giordano teased in his August 1983 Meanwhile… column, “We’re planning a reprint line that I’m excited about! Generally, I think of reprints as being in a class with kissing your sister, something that one does out of obligation.

Not these reprints! More on them in a future column. The businesstypes around here get nervous when I start gushing prematurely about pet projects.”

Giordano certainly had reason to be excited. While most reprints came in the typical newsprint comic-book format, these collections were double-sized, 48 pages (containing two to three issues’ worth of material), and printed on heavier, whiter Baxter paper stock, often with wraparound covers [Author’s note: Marvel Comics’ deluxe reprints of the 1980s will be covered in BACK ISSUE #86].

Giordano explained his reprint philosophy in his June 1984 IF YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW, Meanwhile… column: CLICK “First off, payTO theORDER highestTHIS reprint rates THEwe LINK currently being paidISSUE to creators.

ThisOR means that FORMAT! the difference in IN PRINT DIGITAL cost to us between all-new art, and reprinting existing art has been narrowed to the point where there exists no overwhelming profit motive to reprint, since production and shipping costs are fixed.

Secondly, we choose only material that deserves to be reprinted … material that has stood the test of time and has, in our opinion, earned the status of ‘classic,’ and we’ll only release one title per month. Last, we heap lots of T.L.C. on the best of DC’s past … we give the material the attention that it deserves, and, wherever possible, invite the original creator(s) to join us in the preparing the original material for publication.”

GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW With an October 1983 cover date, DC’s reprint series debuted with a comics milestone: Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams’ Green Lantern/ Green Arrow, where superheroes tackled contemporary problems like race, pollution, overpopulation, drugs.

BACK and ISSUE #81 These stories also Bronze addiction Age Giants and Reprints!”

An in-depth exploration of Green introduced Speedy’s“DC drug and African-American DC’s 100-PAGE SUPER SPECTACULARS, plus: a history of comics Lantern John Stewart.

The new featured textE. pieces, giants, DC indexes galore, editions and a salute to “human encyclopedia” NELSON BRIDWELL. Featuring the new work ofcolors PAT BRODERICK, interviews, an O’Neil/Adams checklist, and

by Cory Adams.

RICH BUCKLER, FRANK FRAZETTA, JOE KUBERT, BOBthe ROZAKIS, DC hired Neal Adams to provide new covers for seven-issue BERNIE WRIGHTSON, and more. Super Spec tribute cover featurseries. As Adams recalls, “They didn’t want them to seem SO much ing classic art by NICK CARDY. like reprints. The thought in mind was it made it seem like a new (100 FULL-COLOR pages) $9.95 $4.95 product. They felt, ‘Well, if we get(Digital NealEdition) to do new covers, of course http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1192 we’re going to sell more copies.’ Which, of course, they did.”

Nevertheless, issue #5 featured a recolored version of his famous “Speedy is a junkie” cover from Green Lantern #85 (Aug. 1971).

Adams states, “I don’t think people really wanted a new [cover] on that one. I think that one pretty much said it.”

Adams didn’t worry about the 1970s stories appearing dated.

“I don’t think people have actually gone beyond those in comic books since then. I don’t see a lot of comic books that deal with topical situations very much. I don’t see comic books that deal realistically with political issues. I see delving into fantasy, I see killing populations of cities in comic books, I see fantasy stories with characters that are totally unbelievable, but I don’t see any appreciable direction toward reality in dealing with social issues. So I think those books are probably as topical today as they were back then. I don’t think that we’ve passed them up, I think we’re trying to catch up to them.”

Kirby’s Coming (Back)!

DC produced this poster to promote its deluxe reprinting of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World anchor, The New Gods. Art

by Kirby and Mike Royer.

TM & © DC Comics.

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