The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 354: DC Comics Presents #12, August 1979

Read it. Will blog it on the morrow!

I think the last time I read a DC Comics Presents, I waxed lyrical about the wonderfully silly Silver Age shenanigans that happen in this Superman team-up title. In fact, it may have been his team-up with Santa Claus that was the last one I read.

This one's not quite as good. Mr. Miracle, for some reason, decides he needs to be more popular than Superman, so he decides to become a hero in Metropolis.

That's the entire plot. And I like Mr. Miracle as much as the next person, but he's a total dick in this comic.

Sigh. I guess they can't all be winners.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 305: Starriors #3: Honor, 1984

Not quite a Christmas comic, but a comic that I got for Christmas. One of the other things that I really enjoy doing is garage saling, and for the last decade or so I've been trying desperately to track down toys from the Starriors line. I've had very, very little luck, having only found a single toy (though it's the largest one in the collection) in all the time I've been looking. I used to have a number of these when I was a kid, and I loved them, and looking back, it makes sense that I glommed onto Bionicle the way I did.

So yesterday morning, as we were finishing off our Christmas presents, my wife pointed to a Godiva Chocolates box and said I should open that - I'd assumed, naturally, that it was simply a box of chocolates. When I opened it, there was a Starrior looking back up at me, accompanied by this comic. There's a great picture Tara took of my face as I opened the box showing a genuine look of shock. She really managed to surprise me with this.

Starriors is a post-apocalyptic narrative, following the adventures of a group of sentient robots who were tasked with protecting and rehabilitating the Earth for humankind after a series of solar flares forced the species into hibernation. There's a four-issue comic series from Marvel that came out around the same time as the toys, with gorgeous covers by Bill Sienkiewicz, and a really intelligent script from Louise Simonson. Toy tie-in comics are always a bit of a gamble, but this one tells a great story, and the characters are actually characters, with flaws and strengths, rather than simply advertisements. The stories in these promotional comics take place during the action of the main series, and I'd be surprised to find that they're not written by Simonson, given that they, too, are relatively intelligent little tales.

I think one of the things I really appreciate about Starriors is that the relationship between antagonists and protagonists is very complicated. They acknowledge that they need to rely on one another (the Protectors are programmed to be pacifists, and thus cannot use their tools as weapons, whereas the Destructors are programmed to guard and be vigilant, but don't seem to have the requisite skills for maintaining their environment). One of the Protectors, named Cut-Up, wrestles through the whole series with overcoming his programming in order to combat the Destructors, and some of the Destructors worry that the actions of their leader are less than laudable. There's some real grey area explored in the story, which, again, raises it up above some of the other toy tie-ins of the era. Try reading the original Transformers series without feeling like you're just reading a 20-page ad.

I've just re-read the series from Marvel, so it probably won't show up in the project for a little while, but having received this toy for Christmas has renewed my interest in the franchise, so we'll see.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 304: DC Comics Presents #67, March 1984

The sun was rising. Tara had been up for hours, and had convinced me with a cup of coffee that I should probably get up too. Sage was still asleep. We puttered, and then sliced some Zopf, warmed up our tea and coffee, and settled onto the couch to read comics, this one for me, Castle Waiting for Tara. Some old crooner carols were playing softly in the background, the day was turning from dusky grey to brilliant white and blue. The lights in the tree twinkled, the cats slumped down next to us after their Christmas breakfast.

And Superman and Santa Claus saved Christmas from the Toyman, with the help of a young lad named Timmy Dickens.

So far, pretty great. Happy Christmas from me to you. May whichever of our Winter celebrations you hold dear be full of warmth and joy.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 303: Marvel Treasury Edition #13, 1976

I thought I'd give this one an extra-sized picture, since it's a Treasury edition. In the Seventies, Marvel predicted the appeal of over-size comics (a la Absolute editions) with this quarterly series. Many, like this, were reprints, but just as many contained original stories. Jack Kirby's adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey was Treasury-sized, and certainly showcased the artistic freedom this large format affords.

This particular issue is a reprint one, and not quite the Christmas-y comic I was hoping for. There's a series of bridging stories that visit the Avengers, Fantastic Four, Defenders, Champions, Daredevil, and Spider-Man during the Christmas season, but these are used primarily to introduce a fairly random selection of stories. We have the induction of the Vision into the Avengers, Daredevil's final battle with The Ox, a clash between The Hulk and the Silver Surfer, and a Spider-Man/Thing team-up. None of the stories are even remotely holiday-themed, which I'll admit I was a bit disappointed in.

That said, the stories that are presented are a lovely selection of some of the best Silver Age comics Marvel has to offer. We see luminaries such as Gil Kane, George Tuska, John Buscema, Marie Severin, Gene Colan, Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway, Roger Stern, and Stan Lee plying their trades in the most early-Marvel way possible. I'll admit that, in the wake of the Quitely's and Cassaday's of the world, I forget just how good a lot of these older artists were at what they do, and that it's their innovations that give us the comics art that we see now. So in that sense, this was a lovely little Christmas gift to read.

More tomorrow!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 302: 1st Issue Special #1, April 1975

Oh, Jack Kirby. Will you ever be done mining the past for the future?

Say what you will about Kirby, he understands the superhero. His dialogue may be shaky. His plots might verge on the adolescent. Every now and again, he's kind of racist and sexist. (I'm really selling you on him, right?) But his artwork is always, always, gorgeous, and his conception of the superhero as god is sophisticated and beautiful, if occasionally naive.

After finishing this comic, I looked to see where the story continues, and it turns out that it doesn't. I had a quick look through the 1st Issue Special entries at the GCD, and from the looks of things not many of them got a second glance. I'm surprised that this Kirby creation didn't, but the mid-Seventies is moving into his more grounded Marvel work, so perhaps the gods were being put on hold in that decade. Considering that Howard the Duck makes his debut not to much later into the decade perhaps upholds this notion.

The other thing that may have kept the series from continuing is its "meh" factor. There's nothing new here, even for a comic that is drawing on mythology. We have a child, orphaned by evil raiders. We have a quest for vengeance, pursued by a heroic altruist. We have a lizard-like antagonist. Kirby seems to me to have been a champion of the Platonic notion of the outer appearance reflecting the inner nature of a person. His villains are always ugly and disgusting, his heroes always 50s movie star pretty. Frye notes that myth, in its underlying of literature, is akin to geometrical objects as underlying visual art - I think the problem with this story is that the underlying geometry is just too obvious, and the flourishes that one desires in these mythic variations are too thin to conceal the foundation upon which the story is built.

That does it for my recent dollar bin finds. Some Christmas stuff for the next few days. See you then.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 301: Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds #36, June 1963

The lead story in this comic, entitled "Dominant Species!", revolves around a rescue attempt by space marines of a stranded crew member on a hostile alien world. After a brutal battle, and after capturing the alien general, it is revealed that so much effort has gone into rescuing Officer Crandall because she's the only woman in the space army, and she's hot.

I'm not kidding.

The Sixties really were a different planet, weren't they?

This comic is a lovely (a qualified lovely, though) example of the sort of neutering comics underwent under the Comics Code Authority. I imagine if this had been published by early EC, there'd be much more blood and gore, and the twists and surprises would have been much more shocking. However, coming from the time it does, this one's fairly gentle with its stories. Only one, "Crew," really, actually produced a shiver, and I think it might make it into the next installment of "Giant Box of Comics Breaks the Law." A nice little piece of science fiction, and a couple of really chilling panels close to the end.

Aside from that, though, I've not much to say about the content. But, as I'm constantly saying, this comic goes to show that the dollar bin is a fantastic place to find the weirdest, most obscure titles. I'd never have picked this up if it was in better shape (even my old price guide says that a "fine" copy goes for about $12), but I'm glad to drop a buck for a look at a weird, horrendously sexist, but strangely vanilla piece of old school Sixties science fiction.

One last little bit from the dollar bin tomorrow, and then I think it's probably time to dig out some Christmas comics, at least for a couple of days. See you tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 300: World's Finest Comics #269, July 1981

300 days!

Not that I want to give the impression that I can't commit to anything, but I'm surprised that I've managed to do a consistent 300 days of posting to this blog. As the old saying goes, "Practice makes perfect," and this amount of writing is certainly great practice. But after 300 days, I'm only in the early stages of my journey toward perfection, I think.

From sentient viruses to being buried alive. It seems this stack of comics from the dollar bin is demonstrating Jungian synchronicity. As I noted yesterday, the idea of a virus that takes over one's body is amongst my greatest fears. Perhaps the greatest, at least in terms of irrational terror, is of being buried alive. I'm quite claustrophobic, and what happens to Batman in the cover story of this issue is just about one of the worst things I can imagine. Thank goodness he remains more calm and collected than I would in the same situation.

This issue, arriving 4 years before the tumult of Crisis, offers a showcase of some of the best artists of the last years of the Silver Age. Rich Buckler is a great exemplar of the DC style of the late 70s and early 80s. Trevor Von Eeden, in the "Green Arrow" story in this issue offers one of the more realistic depictions of breasts that I've seen in superhero comics (it's the little details that matter). In the "Hawkman & Hawkgirl" story, Alex Saviuk gives Shayera Hol wonderful muscle definition, showing us that it's not only the male superheroes that have to be "ripped" in order to do the job they do. Of all the art in this issue, the Saviuk/Rodriguez stuff in this story is probably the best. Don Newton's "Captain Marvel, Jr." work offers a nice combination of the more realistic art toward which DC moves in this era and the stylized art that's characterized the Marvel Family work through its existence. In particular, Newton captures facial expression in a way that many comics artists cannot.

The writing is less impressive than the art, unfortunately. Gerry Conway is a capable writer, and his deployment of the 70s address to the protagonist in the caption box is effective, but the story as a whole is relatively tame. The same goes for the rest of the stories - tame. It's hard to feel like there's really anything at stake in any of these adventures, hence my concentration on the art, rather than the writing. Oh, and if I can just offer an opinion here, too, this version of Green Arrow, roving reporter for the Star City "Daily Star" is a complete dick. As a poor woman relates the story of her incarcerated brother, GA is trying to decide if she's a "10" or an "11." Total. Dick.

What I actually found the most interesting about this comic was the inside back cover, which features "The Daily Planet Feature Page." The creator profile on this page is for one Laurie Sutton, a woman who scripts the "Adam Strange" adventures of this era. It's always great to hear of women working in the industry at this time (and at any time, really). Mainstream comics still struggles with the "boys club" mentality, though greater strides are taken with each passing year to quash that notion. In the late 70s and early 80s, however, I imagine the idea of a woman working prominently in comics was even less likely, so to see Ms. Sutton profiled is lovely. I'm curious to read some of her Adam Strange stuff.

We've almost worked through the dollar bin comics I recently procured. It's probably time I pulled out my holiday comics and read one or two, in the spirit of the season.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 299: Superman #328, October 1978

There was something sinister going on in this comics. A strange Kryptonian virus capable of fusing different kinds of matter with living tissue comes to Earth, intent on fusing with Superman. The virus is a semi-sentient micro-organism that becomes sentient and craves power. I'll say, from a very early age, the idea of a disease that becomes sentient and starts taking over the body has terrified me. In fifth grade, the teacher read to us at Halloween from a collection called The Headless Roommate and Other Stories. It was gory and silly, but I was a sensitive kid, and one of the stories was about that very thing. And every since I've had it in the back of my head when I get sick.

So here, Superman is taking on a very personal fear of mine. It would be fascinating to go back through the history of villains he's confronted and see how many actually are manifestations of deep set fears. Perhaps that's better as a thought experiment than an actual one.

The second feature is a weird little mystery tale, a bit gothic actually, in which Clark helps to expose a decades old murder at a creepy old house. Corrupt lineages, seemingly magical occurrences - sort of the same era as the Wrightson/Wein Swamp Thing. Was there a strange, superheroic Gothic revival at DC in the mid to late Seventies?

All signs point to yes.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 298: Action Comics #500, October 1979

From issue #0 yesterday, we travel exactly 15 years back in time to issue #500. These things do happen in comics.

There have been numerous retellings of Superman's origin, from Siegel and Shuster's opening page of Action Comics #1 to Morrison and Quitely's minimalist opening page to All-Star Superman #1. Literary theorist Erich Auerbach, in his work Mimesis, discusses the differences between a tale like that told in the Jewish Testament of the Bible and that told in Homer's Odyssey or Iliad. He notes the differences in the amount of detail, in the nature of the narrative's focalization, in order to draw conclusions about why particular stories get subsumed into the culture, while other remain simply stories. All myth, of course, gets retransmitted time and again, but only a few of them become culturally constitutive narratives. Auerbach suggests that it is because of gaps in these stories that they are more easily turned into kerygmatic stories than entertaining narratives. (That's a very basic breakdown of the idea. I'm going to be exploring it more fully in my dissertation) So the Superman story from today's issue is interesting in that it, barring series that tell the story over the course of a number issues, is the most detailed retelling of his origin and life that I've yet come across. And considering that it's a full 68 pages, it's technically the equivalent of 3 full regular sized comics.

While the detail is nice, and there's a remarkably effective moment where Superman relives the destruction of Krypton and has a breakdown in front of an audience of tourists, it bears out Auerbach's contentions about something like The Odyssey. Very basically, it adds so much detail, leaves so little room for the insertion of the reader's imagination, that it ceases to be a story that is atemporally relevant. This version of the story, published at the end of the 70s, cements this particular version of Superman in the 70s. Instead of a temporally-flexible narrative, like either the original or the Morrisonian, this story takes that single page, expands it by sixty-eight times, and demonstrates how, in a particular time and place, a myth comes to exemplify underlying cultural mores.

What those mores are differs with each expanded origin, and rather than go into it here, I'm going to see about doing a series that looks at each of these sorts of stories and what it says about the character, the time, and ourselves, the readers.

Because I don't have nearly enough things to do already.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 297: Action Comics #0, October 1994

A short one today. The problem with Superman having been in publication for so long is that, every now and again, you'll run across a really mediocre run of stories. The 90s, for the most part, are this. This is a part of the Zero Hour crossover, which was middling at best, but 90s Superman was trying way too hard to capitalize on the Image Comics successes, so his hair's long, and he's got that Image grimace going on there on the cover. Oooo...gritty.

My other bone of contention with this comic is that I'm not entirely certain how it's meant to link into the Zero Month crossovers. I've just read the Flash one, as I prepare for my long-delayed next part of "On the Run," and it actually functioned as an introductory piece for the hero. This one, rather, talks about someone Clark went to school with, and though it does show some of his past, it's more an origin story for Conduit than for Superman. But, again, 90s Superman stuff is really pretty bad.

I'd kicked around the idea of reading a bunch of Superman stuff for a while for this project, but for a long while it was impossible to follow a Superman story without reading every one of his monthly titles. You'll notice the triangle up in the top right corner, which indicates this issue's reading order for that year. Though it does allow for the telling of large-scale stories, it makes reading one issue every now and again a bit hard. The Bat-titles were doing this around the same time, and if must have worked for a while because this practice continued for most of the decade and part of the next. I'm glad, however, that the titles separated eventually. Joe Casey's Adventures of Superman is pretty fabulous, and, importantly, self-contained.

So, Superman fights this guy Conduit who's apparently secretly funded a covert intelligence agency, and how really has it in for Clark Kent.

Meh.

More tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 296: DC Comics Presents #46, June 1982

When I sat down to read this comic this morning, I was not expecting it to be quite so stellar. The story itself is slightly trite, with Superman being sent from country to country to stop 8 evil magicians from raising an ancient enemy of Dr. Mist. Along the way, the Man of Steel has to team up with heroes from each of those countries. One of the difficulties I've always had with the DCU is that international heroes, inevitably, are somehow stereotyped to their particular land of origin. In this comic, for example, Greece has The Olympian. Denmark has The Little Mermaid. And while this could have been a really terrible, utterly mediocre story, E. Nelson Bridwell manages to pop so much mythic resonance into these characters that it was like I was reading basically everything I've been teaching my class this term.

The Seraph, Israel's superhero, wields both the Staff of Moses and the Ring of Solomon. The Olympian's cowl and cape are fashioned from the Golden Fleece retrieved by Jason and the Argonauts. Jack O'Lantern has a companion who is a tiny member of the fairy race. Their nemeses are similarly inflected, with the Mermaid's enemy a troll, obviously culled from Danish myth. The Green Fury's opposite number is El Dorado, who commands a pair of ghostly jaguars. In Bridwell's hands, what could have been the clash of the stereotypes instead becomes a lesson in how our myths travel down the years and into our popular culture. The question it really begs, and one that I've spent far too long pondering, is where does this put Superman? He's obviously not emblematic of the myths and legends of Native Americans, so his mythic status is not quite the same as those of the Global Guardians. What he is then, I would (briefly) argue, is a consolidation of exile/immigrant myth. He takes notions wrapped up around displacement, about adopting a homeland, and puts a bright blue suit on them. This is not to say that there's not some deeply problematic things going on if we consider him a representative of American myth, but he's definitely got the qualifications to stand with the rest of these heroes.

So, rather than simply stereotypes, the Global Guardians turn out to be distillations of the myths of their respective countries.That's pretty cool.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 295: Superman v.1 #365, November 1981

I have a soft spot for superhero stuff, specifically Superman, from the early 80s. In Supreme, Alan Moore offers the conjecture that as a universe approaches a particular point, one where it is about to be revised, it begins to throw out all the ridiculous and bizarre variations on characters and stories that it can, in order to find something to save it. This issue of Superman appears a few years before the large-scale reordering of the universe that was Crisis on Infinite Earths, and, as with many of the DC books in the 80s, it's gloriously weird and bizarre. Supergirl's rocking the Farrah-hair, Superman is shrunk, and puts "super" before just about every noun in the book (I'm surprised he didn't say "super-mad" on the cover there). There's a back-up story that proclaims it's identity, in bold, epic lettering, as part of "THE IN-BETWEEN YEARS," perhaps the least epic title of a series of stories I've ever heard.

This said, there's something wonderfully innocent about these comics. This is pre-Watchmen and Dark Knight, pre-Moore's Swamp Thing. There's dark corners out there in the DCU, but for the most part it's mad, colourful superhero shenanigans, even over in Gotham. It's like the writers and artists understand that there needs to be just a bit of the camp of the old Batman television series, wrapped up in epic stories, with just a dash of soap opera and human interest story mixed in. Not a bad recipe for a superhero story.

What makes all of these stories from the last few days that feature Supergirl quite sad is knowing that Kara is destined to die in Crisis, just a few short years from this point. While Supergirls have shown up in the comics since, including new versions of Kara, this particular Supergirl, the one with a direct lineage to that first appearance, never comes back. There's something sweet about her, about her struggles with balancing a normal life and a super life, with her interactions with the feminist movement in the 70s (there's many comparisons in the older series to the depowered Wonder Woman stuff from that era), and with her relationship with Superman. I see a lot of this reflected, albeit in and iPhone screen, in the new TV series.

In other news, I'm planning some theme weeks in the coming year. So far I've decided on westerns, romance, kid's comics, adult comics, and war comics, but if there's a particular theme you'd like to see, let me know. I'm also working out how to get the graphic novel portion of this project back off the ground. It may go to a monthly basis, since my reading time's at a bit of a premium these days. And, over the Winter break, I'm hoping to get some of my Wednesday features written and queued up so those'll become a bit more regular again. So many plans, so little Tom. More from the dollar bin pile tomorrow!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 293: Adventure Comics #420, June 1972

What was that I was saying the other day about Supergirl being lured to alien worlds to fight battles for their inhabitants? This one's even stranger as we never actually learn why there's a war being fought, or between whom. Instead, we're told the story of a group of wizards who join their minds together to protect themselves and their people, and who manipulate Supergirl into attacking their enemies. Who those enemies are, we're never told - the story is more about the collateral damage of war. Togran, son of one of the wizards, tries to stop Supergirl from falling for the plot, only to be killed by his own father. Sometimes I think it would be best if Supergirl just stayed on Earth.

The Animal Man story in this issue is one of his earliest costumed appearances. It's not the greatest story, but what it does highlight is the difficulties associated with becoming a superhero. Animal Man (or "A-Man" as he's called in the story) pursues the same gang of crooks repeatedly in this story, always failing to capture them until the very end. Though he's enthusiastic, his experience with his powers is slight, and it's kind of fascinating seeing how he gets around the limitation of having to be around animals to absorb their powers. I'm glad that that aspect of his power set gets retired eventually, though having such limitations does force some creative thinking, both on the part of the hero and on the part of his creative team. Regardless, it was nice to see the old orange and blue again.

The other stories are typical 60s and 70s fare. The "Star-Men" story read like an old EC sci-fi story, and, according to the GCD, the second Supergirl story is actually a reprinted Superman story that's had his name replaced with hers to make her seem like the star. And, though it hardly bears repeating, Supergirl sports very different costumes in both stories. I wonder if anyone's ever collected the various fashions she's sported over the years into one place. It would be interesting to see where she's been.

Perhaps more Supergirl tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 292: Adventure Comics #412, November 1971

I'm reading these comics slightly out of order, I know, and I certainly don't have anything close to a complete run, but it really seems like Supergirl has a new costume every single issue. While I really loved Oksner's art yesterday, I think this version of the Supersuit is the one I like most - in a lot of ways it prefigures the contemporary Superman design, though the colours are much brighter, as they should be.

The story's okay, but not great. I think the best part is that the champion Supergirl is stolen away to combat on an alien world is also a woman, which makes a nice change to this kind of challenge story. When I was chatting with Bart a few months back, he was explaining to me how he noticed particular archetypes of stories in Archie comics over the decade he was writing about - I think we could make a similar argument for Supergirl stories. It seems she's often pulled away to some alien planet to stop a mad conqueror. Unfortunately this plays into the same kind of imperial rhetoric that's got the U.S. in so much trouble in the Middle East these days, so, as I've been telling my students all term, we see the culture reflected in the literature. Supergirl's trials, however, turn out to have a far more satisfying end (or, indeed, an end at all) than the current situation(s) in the Arab world.

Backing this one up, though, is the very first story of one of my favourite superheroes, Animal Man. When I did my one hundredth post on the Doom Patrol, I noted that even though the story is over 50 years old, it still holds up as very readable. Animal Man's inaugural adventure doesn't fare quite as well. It's very dated and, to be honest, not a great piece. One can see that it was originally intended as a on-shot science fiction story, not as a superhero origin piece. There's none of the hallmarks of such a story, and Buddy Baker, though he proves his heroism, is hardly superhero material. Which, perhaps, is why he makes such a good one.

I'm running out of Supergirl comics to read, but I'll keep going for a bit. It's nice to be dipping into the Superman and related titles portion of the collection. I have 4 short boxes of Super-stuff, and there's some really interesting comics in there. More tomorrow!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 291: Adventure Comics #414, January 1972

I don't want to make it sound like I've not been enjoying the comics I've been reading for almost the last 300 days, but I actually thoroughly enjoyed every story in this comic a great deal. Bob Oksner is now my absolute favourite Supergirl artist. And not just because of the hotpants! It's also cool to see some Len Wein stuff from around the same time that Swamp Thing is taking off - he writes a pretty decent superhero story as well as his more famous horror stuff.

Unlike yesterday's Adventure Comics, this issue takes up the anthology nature of the title that I think continues until the series ends. We've got a couple of gorgeous Supergirl stories, a Zatanna story by Gray Morrow and Wein, and the second Animal Man story with art by Gil Kane (and written by Dave Wood, about whom I can find almost no information except that he co-created Animal Man - I probably should have heard of him sooner). And all of them were excellent. There's definitely a EC Horror comics vibe to a couple of the Len Wein-scribed stories, which makes a pretty cool combination with the superheroes (SG and Zatanna) that he's playing with. The stories are also less-bombastic than what one might expect from 70s DC, and you can see the transition from goofy 60s television Batman-inspired shenanigans to writers who are thinking through the ramifications and ways of telling superhero stories. I'm definitely going to have to see if some of this old stuff has been collected so I can get a better idea.

Strangely, this comic was in my Supergirl section in the collection, even though it prominently features an Animal Man story. It's going to go back into the AM collection now. Animal Man's earliest adventures originally appeared in Strange Adventures, and were reprinted years later as back-ups to Supergirl's Adventure Comics run. They're not easy to come by, but as of this writing I'm only missing one of Animal Man's earliest adventures. What's interesting is the recolouring job that some of the stories undergo in the 6 or so years between publication. Such decisions, though, are best left to the mysteries of the universe.

A bit more Adventure tomorrow, I think. I'm enjoying the crap out of the Supergirl stuff, and it's great to revisit the early Animal Man adventures. See you then.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 290: Adventure Comics #408, July 1971

Last night I spent a bit of time trying to catch up on the Supergirl television series, which I'm still on the fence about, or was, so I decided that today I should have a look at some of the Supergirl stories I have in the collection. It turns out I don't actually have very many. Most of what I do have is old issues of Adventure Comics, and this particular issue features perhaps the ugliest version of Supergirl's costume that I've yet to behold, at least from the waist down. From the bright yellow lines down the front of her tights to the little tiny Peter Pan shoes, I've not idea what the designers were thinking with this one, though it is far less-revealing than the typical super heroine costume, so perhaps that's what was behind this redesign. The upper part of the costume is fantastic, though.

This story is kind of a cool little gothic tale about bodies concealed behind walls in creepy old houses. It's really interesting to see a genre like the Gothic taken up in a comic from the 70s. Supergirl hardly fits the typical mold for a protagonist from such a tale, but the weirdness of the setting and the other characters with whom she interacts seem to have been pulled directly from a short story by Poe, and their interaction with other levels of reality (i.e., the afterlife) keep the Maid of Steel just off-balance enough that the story is effective.

I had a weird "oh, I live in the future" moment as I was reading this comic. Linda Danvers is part of a television crew in this iteration of the character, and at one point she films what looks like a little girl's face at the window of a creepy house. She promises to show, rather than tell, what she saw, but only after she has the chance to "develop about ten frames [she] shot" back at the studio. Of course, in my mind, her camera was digital, and they should have been able to look at the film right away. I wonder if there's a difference between film and digital when it comes to takes movies of ghosts.

Not sure what we'll get up to tomorrow. But it'll be neat.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 289: Wonder Woman v.1 #270, August 1980

Occasionally I will hear stories from friends about inheriting a cool collection of old comics from a relative, or (and this is true) just finding a box of comics chucked in a dumpster. More often than not these troves contain treasures, though slightly tarnished, that I would dearly love to add to my collection. Alas, it's never happened to me. However...

While tidying my basement the other day, I came across a stack of old comics and I have no recollection of where they came from. I think it might have been a 50-cent bin at a local comic store, but none of them have been entered in my database, so I've no record of where, or when, they found their way into my lair. Today's comic is one of them.

Wonder Woman is so often over-looked that even to say that has become a cliche. Part of me wonders (pun intended) if it's because she's undergone so many metamorphoses over the course of her existence (which sort of links her back to her Greek roots, I guess), many of which have been quite short-lived, that no one's really got a good sense of her. For myself, I think the original version, and some of the original comics, are probably the best version of her. But this issue, by Gerry Conway and Jose Delbo, seems to be yet another reboot, a few years after the de-powering feminist issues, and a few years before the George Perez Crisis-inspired reboot. And while such repetition can be troubling in a periodically published story, I wonder if these retellings of her origins don't actually bring her closer to her mythological roots.

I've recently finished teaching an introductory literature course, and the linking facet of the texts was their hearkening back (and forward) to myths of the past. One of the things I told the class very early one was that myths become myths because we keep telling and retelling the stories in different forms for different times. Is this why we see so many retellings of Wonder Woman's origins, why there's so many different versions of her? Perhaps. Maybe there's something fundamental going on in this tale of the girl made of clay who becomes a paragon of peace. Okay, not maybe. There definitely is. So, I suppose the question becomes, when will we actually see a version of this story burst into the popular culture and be regarded as every bit as good and important as the other members of the DCU trinity?

Hopefully soon, but, much as I like to remain optimistic, I'm not holding my breath.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 284: Archie Giant Series Magazine #529: Betty and Veronica Summer Fun

Read this today. Will blog tomorrow.

Tomorrow:

I was quite inebriated when I posted that last night. I picked up the comic at a thrift shop yesterday with some Bionicles, and I read it in the car waiting for Tara at the Bulk Barn. A typical summer Archie special, replete with pin-ups of Betty and Veronica in summer wear, and lots of bathing suits. One of these days I'll do a count of the number of Archie comics covers that feature Archie staring wide-eyed at scantily clad beauties on the beach. I get the feeling that numbers don't go that high yet.

The stories are pretty typical, though "A Word to the Wise," about a Scrabble game between Archie, Jughead, and Veronica is really pretty atypical. There's the same slapstick, but it's an iteration of the Archie story formulas that I've not seen before. Last year, when I was indexing Bart Beaty's The Twelve-Cent Archie, he pointed to a few of the formula stories that happen over the course of the decade he was reading. The stories in Archie comics that really stand out are the ones that don't follow these formulas, I find, but then they're also the ones that feel the least like an Archie story. My favourite all-time Archie story is from an issue of Pep (that I'll get around to blogging one day) where a weird plant falls to Earth one night, and Archie wears it on his shirt for a day and experience some very strange behaviours. It's almost like an old EC science fiction story, though with less blood and mayhem.

Anyway, a little beach comic goodness is a nice thing at this point in the year, especially in Calgary. Maybe I'll have to make summer-y comics a regular thing while Winter's holding sway over Western Canada.

The 40 Years fo Comics Project - Day 263: Adventure Comics #492, October 1982

Not quite a random selection. Last night I was continuing to make my way through DC One Million, and I came across the Legionnaires tie-in, and realized that I haven't spent much time at all in my 30 years of comics fandom on the Legion of Super-Heroes. So I pulled out one of the old Adventure digests and got some Legion action. Oh, and Black Canary, Shazam, Aquaman, Spectre, Superboy, Sandman, and Supergirl.

It turns out that the project of this digest-sized version of Adventure was to reprint all of the Legion stories in the order they appeared, so this issue has their third and fourth appearances, one featuring Supergirl and one featuring Superboy. They were so-so superhero stories, very much indicative of the gentle, somewhat neutered story-telling of the early sixties. The Legion are still back-up characters in these tales, but later issues feature them on their own. I must admit that part of the draw of the One Million issue was the fact that Tom Peyer wrote it. He's one of those comics writers that I find mysterious. I've read other comics writers singing his praises, but I know next to nothing about the man himself. Though his run on Hourman was absolutely wonderful.

I may perhaps read a bit more Adventure tomorrow. They're 100 pages each, so it's a bit of a time commitment, but you get a lot of stories for such a little package. The ones in this collection featured such luminaries as Alex Toth, Jim Aparo, Jim Mooney, Gardner Fox, amongst others, which is also kind of a nice draw. I will say, however, that the Spectre story in this issue was completely flat. Did not enjoy it at all. But that's the nice thing about an anthology. There's always something else to read. See you tomorrow.

The 40 Years fo Comics Project - Day 262: Urth 4 #1, May 1989

I, honestly, have no idea what was going on in this comic. There's such a thing as in medias res, but this was ridiculous. I think that it's maybe continuing on from another comic, but this is number one of this series, and there is a reference to Ms. Mystic, another of Continuity's characters, but that's about it.
There's these four people, they've been given elemental powers (and goofy codenames - Fyre, Ayre) and have to fight four evil elementals because...the Earth said so.

I am kind of struck by the environmentalist attitude in this comic and in Ms. Mystic. I'll have to keep my eyes open when I hit some of Continuity's other titles. Late 80s environmentalist comics?  Neat.

But I still have no idea what happened in this comic. Sorry. More random weirdness tomorrow.