The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2099: Jughead #169, June 1969

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The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2094: Double Dare Adventures #1, December 1966

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The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2089: Tales to Astonish #84, October 1966

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The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2079: Action Comics #369, November 1968

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Honestly, some really rather mediocre stories today. Superman manages to screw up an alien plan to bring peace and harmony to Earth (though the aliens don't really give anyone a choice, so it's a bit weird to begin with), and Supergirl decides to use her powers to win over a womanizing toxic male because...reasons. Honestly, the guy's a total crapsack and every woman in the story thinks he's just great. Like they know he's a player but they still want to get played? It's really no wonder that we have a culture that's as fucked up about gender dynamics as we do when you see some of the nonsense that got pumped out into peoples' formative years.

There's a weird little meta moment at the beginning of today's comic, where we get a full-page shot of 5 kids gathered around Action Comics #369, debating how Superman could possibly blunder. They never reappear, and it really is a strange moment - did they need another page filled for the issue? I suppose it creates a sense of disbelief, or reminds readers of the ways in which a story of Superman making a mistake could take place, but there's surely better ways of doing that than this Greek Chorus-esque gathering of pubescent boys ruminating on how the story might unfold.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1967 - 1974

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 Ugh. Doing my best to stay on top of my project, but apparently not the blogging. Here's what I've been reading for the last week or so.

 Back to blogging regularly with a week of Latinx creators. I'll try to keep up with it, promise.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1711: Strange Tales #155, April 1967

A blast from the past, from a Marvel Universe only 6 years old. The lead Nick Fury story is from the classic Jim Steranko era, and it's pretty awesome. I kind of want to read more of this earlier version of Fury, more James Bond than super-spy. He's a lot less jaded than writers treat him now.

But Ms. Severin's contribution to this issue is a Doctor Strange tale, and it's pretty great. The story is a concluding episode to a longer tale, and the Stan Lee script is, as usual with him, a bit stilted. There's just too damned much exposition. But the art has a wonderful Golden Age feel to it. As I read more pre-1955 comics, I'm gaining a much greater appreciation for the style of that era, and also for the influence it casts over comics. While the EC horror comics influence is fairly obvious, sometimes we fail to look for, or perhaps include, influence from the early superhero tales. They were simple and often very quickly produced, but the stylization that seems a staple of the era manages to convey fantastical situations with very little detail. Contemporary comics, to a large extent, are about spectacle, sometimes to the detriment of story. Comics from the 30s and 40s aren't, as the production standards were so much lower. Or rather, the production technology was so much less-sophisticated. This Doctor Strange story is beautiful to look at. I kind of wish the overly-verbose Stan Lee speech bubbles weren't there.

(For example:)

"For, only I possess the knowledge--only I possess the power--only I possess the consummate skill--to withstand so deadly a blow--and summarily repel it!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1659 - 1664: Playing Catch-Up

I honestly don't know why I've been having such trouble keeping up with my blog over the last little while. Being unemployed (or rather, partially employed) is difficult. I find I have little energy for much these days.

So, here's what I've been reading over the last little while:

A pretty diverse week, all things considered. Some really cool comics, though that last Marvel one was so very, very early 90s.

What Were We Reading When Humans First Walked on the Moon?

(First, and foremost, today is my 23rd wedding anniversary. She remains the love of my life. Well, she knows she shares me with comics. Happy Anniversary, my love.)

To paraphrase The Beatles, it was 50 years ago today. Neil Armstrong’s momentous step down the ladder ushered in what was hoped to be a new era of human exploration of space. Suffice to say, that didn’t happen, we’re still planet-bound, although NASA is saying we’ll be back there some time in the near future. Unfortunately, I’ll believe it when I see it.

For me, one of the best ways to put myself into another era is through comic books. I’ve a relatively deep knowledge of them, and looking at trends and events from various historical periods tells one a lot about the industry and the readers at the time. So in celebration of the 50^th anniversary of this incredible human achievement, I think we should have a look at what was going on in comics at the same time.

The first thing to bear in mind is that the cover dates on old comics were not actually the dates of publication. More often than not, these were the dates upon which the comic should be removed from shelves, freeing up space for incoming product. Before 1973, cover dates were about 2 months in advance of publication dates. What this means is that comics published in July of 1969 likely bore a September 1969 date. To be safe, I’ve had a look at comics published between August and October of that year, but I’ll focus on September.

Honestly, the biggest thing, I think, is the first appearance of Sam Wilson, the Falcon and eventual-Captain America, in Captain America #117, cover dated September. Sam has become a fixture in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but we should never forget that he was so important to the Captain America title that “and the Falcon” was added to the comic’s title between issues 134 and 222. Although there are some problems with early depictions of Sam, specifically some stereotyping that reads quite uncomfortably in contemporary times, he represents something very important as far as African-American representation in superhero comics. Note that, unlike many African-American superheroes, he did not have the word “black” in front of his superhero name, unlike Black Panther, Black Goliath, Black Racer, etc. Instead, he is just “The Falcon,” and he becomes Captain America’s best friend. Bearing in mind when this happened, just 1 year after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Sam really is a major step forward for representation at a time when the conversation around diversity and representation was virtually non-existent. 

There were some other notable first appearances by characters as humans took their first steps on an extraterrestrial body. Along with The Falcon, September-dated comics saw the first appearances of Sauron (Uncanny X-Men #60), Titanium Man (Tales of Suspense #69), and Digger, a host character a la the Crypt Keeper (Tower of Shadows #1).

In Justice League of America #73, cover-dated August so likely on stands June – July, fans were introduced to the Superman of Earth-2 for the first time, reasserting that the Golden Age happened on a parallel world introduced 8 years earlier in the pages of The Flash. The story continued over into the September issue. The Earth-2 Superman, of course, comes to play a pivotal role in many major DC events up to the present day.

Marvel’s horror/fantasy title Tower of Shadows debuted with a September cover date, featuring work from luminaries such as Neal Adams, Jim Steranko, and Bernie Wrightson. The title lasted 6 years, shifting to Creatures on the Loose as of the 9^th issue, and, later in the run, featured John Jameson, a one-time astronaut, in his new guise as “Man-Wolf.” Other comics released this month include the second issue of the underground magazine Bijou Funnies (though whether or not undergrounds used the same dating system as mainstream comics is unknown), Marvel’s My Love #1, featuring art by John Romita, Sr. and John Buscema, and, famously, the first issue of Warren Publishing’s Vampirella. Thor #168 pitted the God of Thunder against the World-Eater himself, Galactus. The Brave and the Bold #85 saw an update of Green Arrow’s costume, thanks to artist Neal Adams. This marks the first depiction of Oliver Queen with his trademark beard and his Silver Age costume.

Along with the Falcon, Vampi and Green Arrow are characters who have weathered the last half century quite well, only rarely, if at all, being out of print in the past 5 decades.

While perhaps not a huge year for comics, there were definitely some memorable titles and characters to have come from this momentous month. As Armstrong and company gamboled about in the lunar dust, Sam Wilson took his first flight in Marvel Comics, Vampirella terrorized and titillated horror fans, and Green Arrow left behind his Golden Age self. One wonders, 50 years from now, what moments and characters from this year will resonate when we celebrate the 100-year anniversary of our first steps on another world.

Other Things You Might Like Reading:

Captain America of Earth-H!: The Earth-H Files - Captain America and "The Red Skull"

The 60s - When Veronica Met the Devil: Giant Box of Comics Breaks the Law! - Veronica in "The Devil You Say?"

The Giant Box of Comics Book Report: The Fantastic Four in The House of Horrors, Western Publishing, 1968

Let's dive back into the past, a mere 7 years since the fateful rocket ride that turned these unlikely (and, in some cases, totally unqualified) astronauts into the Fantastic Four. The Big Little Books are, to be fair, not very good. These are simple stories, never, I think, intended for an adult audience.

That said, some of the art is actually quite nice.

The format of the book is one page of text, one page of art, illustrating something that has happened on the preceding page. This puts the Big Little Books far more in the realm of the picture book than the comic. It's one of the fundamental ways of differentiating the picture book from the comic book - in the picture book, the picture illustrates a moment, rather than adding to the narrative in the way that the art complements the text in a comic book. Some picture books straddle this border, but then so do some comics. Is Martin Vaughn-James' The Cage a comic, or a very weird picture book?

I honestly find discussions like that pretty boring. I include this book in my comic collection, as it is a publication whose existence hinges fundamentally on a comic book.

Again, unfortunately, that doesn't mean it's very good. The art has a Jack Kirby quality to it, but it's not Kirby. I found, somewhere on the web, the suggestion that it was Gene Colan doing a Kirby style. But try as I might I can't find that article anymore. If I do, I'll pop a link in here somewhere.

Our story is literally the team following a villain, at what seems like a very slow pace, around a house filled with rooms that are only traps - nothing else, no kitchens or bedrooms. Just death trap rooms. And Dr. Weird is using these traps to try to convince the team to work with him? Every few chapters, he confronts them, asks them to join him, and when they refuse drifts off as a cloud of smoke. Then the FF face some more death traps, and then he asks them again. It was a bit difficult to get through.

So I suppose my recommendation would be that if you love the Fantastic Four, maybe you should check it out, at least for the art, but the story will only make you feel embarrassed for our usually much more competent quartet.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1475: The Doom Patrol #121, October 1968

Honestly, we weren't the ones who decided. The series was cancelled, and had there been a surge of interest maybe the characters would come back, but, honestly, how often does that happen? In comics, at least?

This is a great issue. It pulls together so many threads and ends the series on a note entirely in keeping with the rest of the run. This is a very rare circumstance in comics, the suiting ending. Usually when a series ends, there are questions left and threads left unpulled. But we have a nice wrap up of the Madame Rouge story, of the Brotherhood, and of the Doom Patrol themselves, showing that outcasts from society can be every bit as noble as the super-gods that surround them.

The Patrol has a weird publishing schedule until about 1977. For some reason in 1973 there were three further issues of this series published, all reprinting older stories from the run. Then four years later the New Doom Patrol debuts in Showcase, though they're relegated to guest roles for about the next 10 years. It's been a while since I read the new DP, and I don't actually remember enjoying it that much. It's one of the times in the history of the team that the writers tried to make them more mainstream, flashier and more superheroic. It doesn't really work.

On to something different tomorrow, though I may come back to the Doom Patrol sooner rather than later. With the new show on the air, they're in my head all the time these days.

"The we're agreed -- Codsville is dead! But our renamed village, Four Heroes, Maine, is just beginning!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1474: The Doom Patrol #120, August 1968

Oh, Cliff. If only you knew what was coming in the next issue.

The team (well, Larry and Cliff) investigate the absence of space debris in orbit around the Earth, and Rita and Steve go dancing. Have I mentioned that this is a very weird series?

The coolest part of today's comic is that Cliff switches around through a number of different bodies when his main one is destroyed. Though no one turns away from as this cover suggests. Sometimes the covers of these old issues really have very little to do with the story inside. It's a bit of false advertising, really, though the story turns out to be pretty good anyway. Cliff goes through a number of bodies over the years, though the "heavy metal" design of Caulder's from the Morrison run seems to have become the default. I'm glad of that, though his weird spider-body from the Insect Mesh storyline (seriously, just read it) is pretty sweet too.

"There goes the Wrecker's base -- rocketing home! And I wanna meet him in my Sunday body!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1473: The Doom Patrol #119, June 1968

This is a weird one. Well, they're all weird ones, but this one is really weird. The team falls victim to a "guru" who hypnotizes Cliff into being kind, Larry into being scared, and Rita into an infant. For...reasons.

Well, okay, he does it to distract the Patrol away from Madame Rouge so that he can undo the Chief's cure and return her to the Brotherhood. Again, because Brain and Mallah miss her so much, I guess?

This is an interesting take on the craze for gurus that seemed to sweep the late 60s in the US in the wake of Eastern philosophies making their way into the consciousness of Vietnam-era America. There was a lot of mistrust, with good reason, though I have to believe that there were some decent individuals out there who simply believed they'd found a better way to live. I keep looking for one!

It's at this point in reading through the series that I realized that the entire plot of the Chief curing Madame Rouge is set-up for the explosive finale of the series. I have to wonder if this had already been plotted and there was meant to be a follow-up, had the series continued, but that the death issue also made for a good final issue for a book with flagging sales. I wonder if Mr. Drake had any ideas for how the Patrol would have continued had sales improved. Would Rita have spent all those years dead?

"Me very little now...me just baby girl..."

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1472: The Doom Patrol #118, April 1968

Madame Rouge shows some backbone in this issue, though I'm still not entirely certain why the Brain and Mallah want her back so badly. Especially in light of their single appearance in Morrison's run. (Just go read it.)

Once I'm done reading through these comics, I'm going to go back and have a look to see how many of the Patrol's villains only ever show up the one time. I'm pretty sure Videx, today's Brotherhood wannabe, never shows again, though I could be wrong.

I'm not sure if it's the same for other heroes, but it seems to me that their villains became more iconic than those of the Patrol. This likely has something to do with them be relegated to B-list status for much of their existence, though someone like Videx never shows up again in any of the subsequent series. Gargax only shows up in the mediocre Kupperberg years, and the Brain and Mallah become Titans villains. Well, until their finale. (Seriously, just go read it.)

I like to think that after being defeated by the Patrol these villains avoided crime again altogether because the heroes that stopped them were so much more weird and angry than they were.

"See you later, Interior Decorator Man!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1471: The Doom Patrol #117, February 1968

Niles lets his heart run away with him, and it costs him the Doom Patrol.

It's amazing to me how many times this "team" breaks up or dies over the course of their 4+ year run. And how many enemies Niles makes that come back to wreak havoc on his life. Perhaps we need to see a series called "Young Niles Caulder" - though given the Chief's propensities, perhaps that would be too dark a read.

I'm glad to see that Rita is getting her time to shine in the new television series. As you may well know, we're coming up on the last issue of this initial run, and poor Rita dies at the end of the issue. Ostensibly, all of them die, but Rita is the only one who stays dead, pretty much from 1968 to the early 2000s and John Byrne's reboot of the team. I'm glad she's about in the Young Animal stuff now. Well, I'm assuming she is. We'll see if we get more Young Animal.

Another thing I'm grateful to the show for is for giving Rita a character. She's much less-developed in the original series, but reading her as a haughty, though soft underneath, movie starlet makes so much more sense. Even her marriage to Steve Dayton smacks of the celebrity marriages we see nowadays. Rather than the mother figure of the Doom Patrol, Rita is the occasionally shitty, but very often right, older sister.

One last thing - this is the first time in a long while in the series that the back-up feature has been a stand alone story, separate from the Doom Patrol. "The Man with 100 Wigs" tells the story of a thief who gains the powers of historical persons by wearing facsimiles of their hair.

Oh, and then there's the Native Americans in the story. They charge in, on horseback in the middle of a city, to rescue the team from the Black Vulture and have all the hallmarks of a disgusting racial stereotype. Until Rita speaks broken English to her rescuers, only to have them reply in proper English. It's revealed that the leader of the group is a teacher at Cal Tech. So we have a terrible visual representation, but a relatively nuanced narrative representation. The tribe owes Niles a debt for helping them to keep their land from falling into the hands of the Black Vulture. I wonder if Drake and Premiani did this purposefully - one of the major themes of the Doom Patrol is not judging books, and people, by their covers.

"Man, I pulled a real Custer! I underestimated the Indians!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1470: The Doom Patrol #116, December 1967

Another misleading cover, in that this character shows up in the last 5 pages or so, and doesn't really get into it with the Doom Patrol. He does beat on them slightly, which is weird given who this actually is (I'm not telling!).

The three nuclear mutants end up having to dive into Halley's comet to destroy it from within, which I think means that, canonically, Halley's comet does not exist in the DC universe. Well, reboots aside, I suppose, though I tend to think of the events of the Doom Patrol series as having taken place in all versions of DC reality, just as the team themselves seem to transcend reboots.

Not much else to say about this one. It was okay. But we're nearing the end. Only 5 issues remain of the original run.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1469: The Doom Patrol #115, September 1967

I should address something: we never get Rita's story. Of the five main characters in the series (I'm including Beast Boy), we get flashback stories for all but Rita. I've always felt that to be quite unfair, and I'm glad that the television series has attempted to rectify this error. Well, hopefully it will. Again, we've seen flashbacks for all of the characters thus far, except for Rita. And the revelation that prompts her blob attack in the first episode offers an intriguing glimpse at her story. Hopefully they'll do her justice in a way that she never really was in the comic.

But that's the thing about Rita's powers in the comic - I've never really understood how it keeps her from being a film star. I suppose the idea that her first transformation happens in front of an entire crew could be her reasoning for feeling outcast. And we see, in Larry's back story, that no one wants to hire him for him, but rather for his powers. The same would have been likely with Rita, and being a Hollywood starlet, she probably understood this better than most. By adding the complication that maintaining a human form is difficult for her, we start to understand her power as damaging rather than empowering. (I do hope they have her stretch or become giant at some point in the series.)

This is a terribly dated comic. The nuclear mutants (why does radiation always give these guys powers, rather than horrible, horrible burns?) attempt to destroy the Earth by telekinetically flying Halley's comet into it. A comet that is a burning ball of flame. And the U.S. government just decides to fire scores of atomic missiles at it. It amazes me that in a scant 52 years  our understanding of the world around us increased so immensely. Today's comic reminds me more of the old EC science fiction comics and all of the things they got wrong.

Oh, and one more thing. In the back up story, a Nazi scientist tries to restart the Reich by making gorillas into Nazis.

Yep.

"Then it was raining -- pouring -- gorillas!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1468: The Doom Patrol #114, September 1967

This story is kind of cool in that it has shades of Crisis on Infinite Earths. The Patrol must stop a rampaging Neanderthal with a laser gun (sounds like a bad B-movie) who emerges through a gateway that is combining time periods. This kind of combination occurs in the latter issues of Crisis, so I head-cannoned that this was a ripple of that, which made an otherwise run-of -the-mill story a bit better.

Though I should clarify the term "run-of-the-mill." There is nothing normal about any of the Doom Patrol's adventures. In his text piece as he takes over the series, Morrison says that they're a team that he found scary. And they kind of are. They don't fight the usual supervillains. They fight a brain in a jar and a talking Gorilla. Or the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man. Or a caveman with a laser gun. They fought the weird stuff that you really can't imagine Superman or Wonder Woman dealing with. If we consider the runs of the series that have been less-successful, they're the ones that forget this and treat the team like any other superhero team. But they're not a superhero team. They're a support group who, by virtue of their weirdness, get sucked into very bizarre situations.

Which is, of course, what we love about them so much.

"A genius, a man of peace -- and your caveman!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1467: The Doom Patrol #113, August 1967

I'm going to be a bit snarky here - the cover should read "Who cares who dares to challenge the Arsenal?" Though it's the main story, and has some nice action pieces with the team, the far more interesting story in this issue is the Chief's infatuation with Madame Rouge. And it really due to the reasons I pointed out yesterday - SPOILERS!!!! -




If you've read Morrison's and the subsequent versions of the DP, you have a different take on Niles. It's one of the things I'm finding most interesting about watching the current television series with my wife. She's never read the comics, so her take on Timothy Dalton's (masterful) interpretation of the character is different from mine. I'm suspicious, whereas she sees him as kind and benevolent. And, of course, we don't know who he is, or who he's going to be, really. But reading Niles' experiments on Madame Rouge, regardless of the excuse he makes of righting a wrong, as simply a continuation - it's chilling.

Oh, just for completion's sake, the back-up stories have been sort of "Meh" thus far. Larry's stuff was okay, and actually kind of cool read as the experiences of a gay man in denial. Note that Larry's story is happening at the same time that the original series was being produced, so it's easy to read the character as the original Larry Trainor. But the Beast Boy baby-in-the-jungle stories are just bad. I really think it's the pseudo-toddler dialogue that's given to Gar. It's almost as bad as his pseudo-hip lingo in main stories. Comic characters in the 60s talk to themselves too much. Action makes just as good an exposition.

"Thank you, Mr. King -- but me want no new Daddy! Me live here in own tree house with monkey friend!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1466: The Doom Patrol #112, June 1967

Can it possibly be? The Brotherhood and the Doom Patrol working together?!

Actually, this is the result of one of the more realistic moments in any Doom Patrol comic ever: an alien overlord decides to destroy the Earth. In response, the Brotherhood realize that they need to team up with the Patrol because otherwise everyone dies. And, to top it all, the Brotherhood actually sticks to the deal, and doesn't try to undermine the Patrol in some way while also saving the world. It's a nice touch, showing that regardless of the differences they have, both teams have a vested interest in saving the world they inhabit. It's just for very different reasons. This, I think, is a lesson conservatives around the world (and especially the oil-hungry pieces of garbage here in Alberta) could stand to learn. We're all in this together.

What confounds me about this story is that Zarox-13 literally does everything for himself, even though he's ostensibly got an army awakening on his ship. We see his soldiers very briefly at the beginning of the previous issue, and again at the end of this one. And they're useless, very A New Hope Stormtrooper.

As I noted yesterday, the more interesting story is Madame Rouge's story. We get an origin for her this issue, and it seems she is a victim of some evil science. A car accident victim left with two personalities, she is tricked into thinking that a new procedure will remove the evil personality. Of course, she is tricked by the Brain and Mallah, and they erase her kind personality. Or do they? Perhaps it's returning, thanks to her smittenness with the Chief.

Okay - SPOILER time. If you're not familiar with the events of Morrison's run, you should probably stop reading.



This is really a pretty great revelation, especially if we inflect the earlier stories with the events from later comics. And with the Doom Patrol, there's no reason not to. They seem to exist through revisions, maintaining their history despite universal resets. Niles' wonder at the Brain's experiment with Madame Rouge can be read very sinisterly here. The two are linked by a shared history, so it's not a stretch (ha! Madame Rouge humour!) to think that they'd have similar approaches to their experiments. This one looks an awful lot like what Niles does with the original members of the Patrol. He's a difficult character to read in these early stories. Even though there's no hint of the betrayal he perpetuates, he's not the most trustworthy character, despite what the team says.



One last thing: nothing even remotely like that cover happens in this issue. The Brain never commands the Doom Patrol to do anything, and much of the action takes place at a uranium mine. Not entirely sure where this cover image comes from, apart from the brain of Bob Brown, I suppose.

"'Dear reader' -- no, make that 'Greetings fellow swingers--' No!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1465: The Doom Patrol #111, May 1967

Apparently, there's no rest for the weird. Hot off the heels of their rescue of Beast Boy, the DP are faced with another (another!!) alien invasion. And it's an invasion being facilitated by the Brotherhood of Evil, so apparently they don't take any days off either.

Zarox-13 is a fairly standard world-conquering/destroying alien villain, though in some of his appearances his facial design actually makes him look like he's in a perpetual state of surprise. This could be intentional, as he does encounter the Doom Patrol as his first exposure to human beings. But you'd think he'd stop being surprised eventually.

This last run of 10 issues introduces a very interesting subplot dealing with Madame Rouge, the Brotherhood's shape-shifter, and the Chief. Rouge begins to develop romantic feelings toward Niles, seemingly out of the blue, though next issue we'll get a better idea of where all that comes from. For now, though, it's as if an aging Romeo and Juliet thread has been introduced into the series, one that, honestly, is far more interesting than the random villains of the month that menace the Patrol in each issue. And given how the whole thing ends up playing out, Romeo and Juliet isn't a bad comparison.

I was talking with my son about these old Doom Patrol comics the other day, and how, though there's definitely acknowledgment of the shared universe, it's weird that none of these alien invaders on Earth are ever dealt with by Green Lantern, who's sole purpose is to defend this sector of space from alien incursions. Perhaps he was helping another planet on those days.

More of Zarox and his crew (more Zarox than crew, actually), more romance, and a strange team-up next issue.

Pretty sure this is meant to be JFK speaking:

"Now tha's what ah call a real fahn cookie, son! An' for so worthy a cause!"