posted August 07, 2002 01:24 AM    

quote:

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Posted by India Ink:
The heartless bastards at National and Warner were revealed for the cold unfeeling corporate leviathans they truly were.

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I hope I'm right in detecting a note of sarcasm here.

quote:

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The black image in the press was a PR disaster for Warner. And they quickly moved to cut some sort of deal with the creators of Superman, to save their investment from going south. So a modest pension was settled upon Siegel and Shuster.

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Was the "black image in the press" wholly deserved? I don't think it was. There is a case to make that Siegel and Shuster brought a lot of excrement down upon their own heads.

Sure, the story sounds heartbreaking: two clever young men create the number one comic book character and sell the rights for peanuts, then the purchaser gets rich. Hindsight can be a dangerous thing, and I doubt if there was ever any devious calculation by evil businessmen to steal candy from the proverbial baby.

That's how things were done in those days. The creators sold the rights, and they were happy -- at first.

The media has a nasty habit of rewriting history. And -- as we discussed in the 30s to the 50s thread (I think), National did indeed look after the creators pretty darn well, till the boys started looking at things from a new angle.

posted August 07, 2002 01:59 AM    

quote:

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Posted by India Ink:
a three parter (by the usual team of Bates/Swan/Blaisdell), with Lex Luthor fooling Superman into thinking that The Flash and Batman had turned into children--and then fooling Superman into turning himself into a child.

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Things that annoy me about what is, actually, a pretty entertaining story:

1. Bates' describes Superman's punch as, "A punch that could shatter the Earth into a zillion fragments!"

Yep. OK. Settle down, Cary. Have a Valium.

2. Clark Kent is changed into a small, teenaged version of his usual self. So is Superman. This is all public knowledge. No one makes a connection. Except maybe Lois, who decides these strange events reinforce her opinion that Kent is not Superman!!??

3. Lex Luthor correctly deduces how The Batman and The Flash came to be.

He figures out that Batman began his career as a young boy whose parents were shot dead before the child's eyes by a holdup man, in an alley at night.

He figures out that Flash began his career when a young laboratory worker was splashed with a random mixture of electrified chemicals when a lightning bolt shot through a window and struck a cabinet of chemicals.

This is too much, even for a Bates story.

But, like most Bates stories, this one is entertaining.

One thing about this story I really liked: Superman's genuine and moving concern for the boy whose parents were killed. Cary Bates has proven time and again he can write moving scenes in comics.

posted August 07, 2002 12:27 PM    

I said that Pasko wrote a run of 36 stories--his unbroken run was 26. I said he wrote the last stories of the seventies in Superman--not quite, his run was a little over two years, leaving Len Wein to finish off the seventies.

And with Bates, it sometimes seems like one hand doesn't know what the other is doing.

posted August 07, 2002 03:15 PM    

An example I mentioned a few weeks back, of a rotor flying off a helicopter at top speed in the middle of a busy metropolis... once the rotor is out of the panel, Cary forgets about it.

posted August 07, 2002 06:30 PM    

He became the resident Action writer--any other feature stories could be considered guest-written. Or maybe he was the resident writer all along--with Dorfman and Maggin spelling him off.

Is there any hidden meaning to this?

I would expect that like Detective vis a vis Batman in the seventies, Action had poor sales relative to Superman. This being because lots of readers didn't make the connection with Superman--the reason why both Detective & Action had the names of their featured performers splattered across their covers. Yet even then, readers still bought less of those titles than the titular comics (I wonder if Archie had this problem with Pep...).

So it could be that Schwartz kept Bates on Action because he was a solid draw. Julie could afford to gamble with innovative new writers on Superman because its sales were relatively healthy.

posted August 07, 2002 07:04 PM    

Working out when these comics went on sale is a bit difficult. I would say that if you subtract three months from the cover date you get the real on sale date. Meaning the bullet change was probably in November.

However, living in Canada I always seemed to be weeks or even a month behind the on sale dates. This was fustrating to me because I was a struggling letter-hack. Yet my letters inevitably were out of date, never arriving in a timely fashion the way Pasko, Rozakis, or Morrissey managed.

Maybe my writing skills weren't at that level, but with the time-lag I never got to compete on a level playing field for letter column space.

My solution was to usually write letters that were general in nature. Not commenting on a specific issue, but commenting on a theme--in the hope that these general letters would be used. A few were.

But around 1976 or so, I started to wander outside my own neighbourhood and away from the drugstores that I knew. In my youth I had stuck pretty close to home, but then I started going on these long walks and found areas far afield I had never seen before. Checking into drugstores in some of these areas, I found that the comics on sale there were sometimes out weeks ahead of my neighbourhood. It was like travelling to some other space-time continuum where I emerged weeks in advance of my homeworld and then returned back to my own time and place, carrying comics as evidence of my time travels.

Around this time, Superman Family took a break. With the January 1977 issue (no. 180, probably on sale in October), it was announced that the title would return in a new format with the next issue. Ads for this new comic say it was on sale in December ('76), but I'm not sure about just when I found it. But I do remember my long epic journey in search of this comic.

I walked a very far distance along East Hastings, well east of Vancouver into the far reaches of Burnaby. Finally there, in a distant little shop I found the first Dollar Comic--Superman Family 181, April '77.

posted August 07, 2002 07:15 PM    

Although the scan doesn't do it justice. My copy looks much better.

posted August 07, 2002 09:21 PM       

And Big Gay Vartox, and his fellow Village OPeople member Terra Man (both of whom I dearly loved, by the way...)

These are the things I remember from the Seventies. And Steve Lombard. And God Bless Kanigher; ROSE & THORN!

But, really, it's unfair I think to do a critical analysis of a 1970s comic book story in THIS day and age. It was a very different time, indeed, and comics were very much a schlocky 'guilty pleasure.' (Speaking of; anyone catch "WIDOWS" on ABC last night? What a great candidiate for audience participation trashing a la MST3000!)

Anyway, there was a lot of low-brow nature to the beast. It just kinda was part and parcel to a period that...quite frankly...didn't offer much of substance.

The thing I loved about the Seventies was the diversity of all the titles emerging (Horror, sci-fi, fantasy, sword and sorcery, villain books, etc.) Granted, many equally as unimpressive overall. But nobody I knew was planning on TPBs or commemoratives or 'looks back'...they were just vaccuous, light fluff. Take it in mind.

posted August 08, 2002 12:04 AM    

quote:

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It just kinda was part and parcel to a period that...quite frankly...didn't offer much of substance.

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But what substance it did offer, Spangles, was great, and some of my favourite stuff.

So, I don't think it's unfair to do a critical review of a 70s comic, because so much material stands up well. I wouldn't be on this thread if I had a completely disparaging view of the 70s.

posted August 08, 2002 01:21 PM    

quote:

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Originally posted by India Ink:
The February '77 cover dated issues of DC Comics were the ones which sported the brand new DC bullet.

Working out when these comics went on sale is a bit difficult. I would say that if you subtract three months from the cover date you get the real on sale date. Meaning the bullet change was probably in November.

However, living in Canada I always seemed to be weeks or even a month behind the on sale dates. This was fustrating to me because I was a struggling letter-hack. Yet my letters inevitably were out of date, never arriving in a timely fashion the way Pasko, Rozakis, or Morrissey managed.

Maybe my writing skills weren't at that level, but with the time-lag I never got to compete on a level playing field for letter column space.

My solution was to usually write letters that were general in nature. Not commenting on a specific issue, but commenting on a theme--in the hope that these general letters would be used. A few were.

But around 1976 or so, I started to wander outside my own neighbourhood and away from the drugstores that I knew. In my youth I had stuck pretty close to home, but then I started going on these long walks and found areas far afield I had never seen before. Checking into drugstores in some of these areas, I found that the comics on sale there were sometimes out weeks ahead of my neighbourhood. It was like travelling to some other space-time continuum where I emerged weeks in advance of my homeworld and then returned back to my own time and place, carrying comics as evidence of my time travels.

Around this time, Superman Family took a break. With the January 1977 issue (no. 180, probably on sale in October), it was announced that the title would return in a new format with the next issue. Ads for this new comic say it was on sale in December ('76), but I'm not sure about just when I found it. But I do remember my long epic journey in search of this comic.

I walked a very far distance along East Hastings, well east of Vancouver into the far reaches of Burnaby. Finally there, in a distant little shop I found the first Dollar Comic--Superman Family 181, April '77.

For a long time I thought the cover of that comic, by Neal Adams, to be one of the most beautiful comics covers I'd ever seen. It's really kinda simple, though--a shot of a flying Superman holding Lois and a flying Supergirl holding Jimmy, with Krypto floating independently, on a starry backdrop. But that cover held me in its spell. Often I would look at it and stare at it, wondering just what it was that made it so good.

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posted August 08, 2002 04:00 PM    

I recently bought the first part of the "De-Aging Trilogy" you discussed above after having had the other two for quite some time. There were a lot of embarrassing moments there.

For one thing, ACTION #464 features the debut of the Purple Pile Driver, who has probably got to be the most (deservedly) reviled Superman villain of the Seventies. This guy is beyond lame. His whole "gimmick" is a little beanie-hat helmet that spins its "propeller" around really fast to generate blasts of compressed air. That's it. Superman defeats him in about two seconds, but he escapes from the police van on the way to jail... because he had ANOTHER one hidden in his pocket. So Superman defeats him AGAIN in about one point five seconds. Yeesh. I know the de-aged Flash and Batman were the real focus of the story, but couldn't Cary come up with something better than THIS for the main threat? I mean,his only means of attack required him to BEND OVER. That, and his name, must have made him REALLY popular in prison. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Then there was the "Private Life of Clark Kent" backup story in that issue. Bridwell is the writer, and he's had much better days. Morgan Edge assigns Clark to escort an Australian media tycoon around Metropolis for the day (inspired by Rupert Murdoch? There don't seem to be any other similarities, though). This mogul really wants to meet Superman. Of course, Clark has to think of clever distractions like "Hey, look over there!" so he can go into action as Superman without being missed. At one point, Superman stops a drunk driver from crashing into a speeding fire engine. The guy stumbles out of his car and can barely talk or stand up. The Siegel-and-Shuster Superman probably would have pulverized the car and then stuffed this guy's whole body into a beer bottle, but Seventies Supes basically lets him off with a stern warning. Sigh. And, of course, being Australian, the tycoon character says things like "Hopping Kangaroos!" After all, everyone in Australia is always talking about kangaroos. And boomerangs, koala bears, shrimp on the bahbie....

This kind of junk in the same issue that depicts Clark's genuinely touching sympathy for the young orphan is really very annoying.

For me, the one cool thing about this issue's excessive hokiness is the last panel, where the mystery mastermind (Luthor) speaks directly to the readers and warns us to not miss the next issue. Why? Well, in a "serious" story published today, I probably would find the convention of a character breaking the fourth wall pretty ridiculous. But I have this inexplicable fondness for the way the older writers managed to make things like this work even in supposedly "serious" stories. It actually made the plot details seem a little more interesting. Not that you'd want to see the "Hi There, Readers!", Mister Rogers dialogue all the time, but once in a while it reminded me that the writer cared enough about his craft to have a little fun with it by addressing me more or less directly. I'm not sure if I'm stating what I mean clearly enough, but I don't know quite how else to put it. In today's comics, it would seem like a lame attempt at a joke, but the way comics were written back then it didn't seem so forced.

In GREEN LANTERN v1#29, John Broome actually had the artist, Gil Kane, pencil himself into the story at his drawing board to address the reader. Then the scene cuts away to the villain of the piece, Black Hand, who amiably "chats" with the reader about his master plan. I can't tell you how much I LOVE that scene! Broome had Black Hand continue this habit in his next appearance (GL #39), and Cary Bates must have loved it too, since he had B.H. continue it when he brought back the character for a story in THE FLASH (issue #258-259). (I recall reading a piece by comics artist Terry Beatty, who said that GL #29 even made him want to do what Gil Kane did for a living, since he never realized until then that people were actually DRAWING these funnybooks for him).

A lot of Schwartz's writers seemed to get a kick out of the concept. Broome, Gardner Fox, Robert Kanigher, and Mike Friedrich all "appeared" in their stories at times to talk to the readers directly. The whole concept should seem insufferably campy, and maybe most readers think it is. At times it was for me, too. But other times, these guys seemed to make it WORK somehow in a way I can't explain. And I can't imagine it working today. It actually seems more "natural" somehow for the writer or the villain to explain the details of the plot to your face, instead of relying on the "Basil Exposition" Weisinger-Speak with its constant explanation of everything going on. (These days, trying to figure out the plot at all often requires an armload of back issues and a flow chart. Complain complain, grumble grumble kids these days...)

Anyway, things picked up considerably once Luthor showed up on camera, so to speak. Not one of the best Luthor stories of the Seventies, but still, I love that Neal Adams cover with Lex punching Little Superboy in the head. I suppose it just brings out the sadist in me. Or maybe it seems like payback for all that annoying Superbaby baby-talk.

posted August 08, 2002 04:53 PM    

quote:

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Originally posted by twb:
I have the book too, but the cover art is by CURT SWAN / NEAL ADAMS, actually.

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twb

You are so right! When I got home last night I picked up my copy (which I had been looking at very recently) and I looked at the cover and saw the signatures of both Curt Swan and Neal Adams. Yet another stupid mistake--I really was upset with myself for somehow forgetting this important detail.

Although, forgetting isn't always so bad. Like when I was reading that de-aged story and I got to the last part with the off-camera speaker, I didn't remember who it was. And then oh yeah it's Luthor! When I find these kinds of little self-reflexive bits in the old comics, it's like striking paydirt. It's like viewing a Fellini or Godard movie I didn't know existed (talking about two playfully self-reflexive movie-makers). In my view, this stuff is still cutting edge comics story telling. I don't have to adjust for the times--I don't have to think I guess this was good when I was a kid, because it's immediately good as I read it.

posted August 09, 2002 01:06 AM    

quote:

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Originally posted by C-Op:
...the debut of the Purple Pile Driver...

I mean,his only means of attack required him to BEND OVER. That, and his name, must have made him REALLY popular in prison.

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posted August 09, 2002 01:59 AM    

It's called Superman Supacomic, and runs to 324 pages. (The comic book is at least 2cm thick.)

The cover art is the Swan-Adams effort you've discussed.

It's an omnibus of DC stories.

I don't know which original titles some of the stories come from, but they're as follows:

Page 1. Superman vs. Superboy. "Judge, Jury... and No Justice!" Paul Levitz, Dick Dillin + Dick Giordano. (Probably from DC Comics Presents.)

Page 18. Superman. "The Ghost That Haunted Clark Kent." No credits. Could be Dorfman. Art is definitely Swanderson.

Page 25. Superman. "The Great Space-Travel Hoax." Bates, Swan + Chiaramonte.

Page 42. The Private Life of Clark Kent. "The Coupon Caper." Rozakis, John Calnan + Chiaramonte.

Page 49. Lois Lane. "Lois's Dream Scoop." Gerry Conway, Oksner + Colletta. (A sexy Lois here.)

Page 59. Lois Lane. "The Day Lois Lane Walked All Over Superman." Bates, Schaffenberger + Colletta.

This story appears to be rather long, but, as was sometimes done with the reprints, two or three parts of a story from different issues may have been combined to run through without a break.

Page 79. Lois Lane. "The Day Lois Lost Her Mind." No credits. Art is definitely Swan + Klein.

Page 87. Lois Lane. "The Expose Expose!" Conway, Oksner + Colletta. More sexy woman art.

Page 97. Superboy. "Prince of the Wolf-Pack." Bob Haney, Bob Brown + Murphy Anderson.

Page 112. Superbaby. "The Scrambled Egg-Hunt." Rozakis, John Calnan + Dave Hunt. As if Rozakis's writing isn't already bad enough generally, this is a real "me talk like a baby" wincer.

Page 120. Superboy. "This Planet is Condemned." Bates, Schaffenberger + Hunt.

Page 137. Superboy. "The Day of the Alien Scoop!!!" (Superboy's Secret Diary.) Bridwell, Romeo Tanghal + Kim DeMulder.

Page 145. Superboy. "The Super-Dog From Krypton." No credits. Obviously the first Krypto story. I haven't a clue who the writer is. Art? Can someone help me out? George Papp & Curt Swan??? That's a real shot in the dark. I'm struggling here...

Page 155. Supergirl. "Supergirl's Super-Pet." No credits. The first Streaky the Super-Cat story. The art seems to have the input of Jim Mooney.

Page 163. Krypto. "It's a Dog's Life." Rozakis, Calnan + Hunt.

Page 171. Krypto. "A Superman's Best Friend is His Superdog." Rozakis, Swan + Blaisdell.

Page 177. "The Supergirl from Krypton." This old story needs no introduction.

Page 185. Supergirl. "The Earthquake Enchantment." Jack C. Harris. Sexy girl art by Win Mortimer + Vince Colletta.

Page 208. Batman & Supergirl. "Death-Scream from the Sky!" Cary Burkett, Jim Aparo. Obviously from The Brave and The Bold. (Am I right?)

Page 225. Jimmy Olsen. "Hang-Glide to Nowhere." Conway, Alex Saviuk + Joe Giella.

Page 237. Jimmy Olsen. "The Reporter Nobody Knows." Conway, Saviuk + Giella.

Page 249. Jimmy Olsen. "Jimmy Olsen, Boy Wonder." Cary Bates, Pete Costanza.

Page 261. Jimmy Olsen. "The Blackmailed By-Line." Conway, Saviuk + Giella.

Page 273. Superman. "The Viking From Valhalla." Maggin, Swan + Anderson.

Page 287. Superman. "The Miraculous Return of Jonathan Kent." Bates, Swan + Chiaramonte.

Page 304. Superman. "The Secret World of Jonathan Kent." The concluding chapter of the previous story.

posted August 09, 2002 05:55 PM    

quote:

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Originally posted by India Ink:
Hm, yesterday I was using the GCD index to do an advanced search for Pasko stories and I came across these entries called supacomics, I never bothered to check out what they were.

While it seems that most foreign distributed comics were made up of material from domestic (North American) comics, it does seem likely that there were stories that made it into the foreign market comics alone.

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Please explain (that last paragraph). What "stories that made it into the foreign market alone" are you thinking of?

When I was a kid, I loved The Phantom, and I have literally hundreds of comic books (most around 32 pages) by Lee Falk with Ray Moore, Wilson McCoy and Sy Barry. These comic books were incredibly popular in New Zealand and Australia, but I can't imagine they were ever seen in the States. They were albums pasted together from the Lee Falk newspaper strip, edited so that you got a complete comic book story per issue.

In more recent years, a lot of restoration work has gone on by the Aussie publisher, and they have re-issued a lot of the stories. Early editors were heavy-handed, and a lot of stuff ended up on the cutting room floor, as they say.

posted August 09, 2002 06:08 PM    

And I know that Marvel had a bunch of British comics that were produced just for British consumption. I think Alan Davis worked on some of this stuff.

posted August 09, 2002 08:28 PM       

As I was catching up, I noticed you touched on the memorable Maggin/Bates 4-parter (Who Took the Super out of Superman). To me, the 2nd installment is what made this story - to be honest, I can't remember much about the other 3 issues beyond the basic premise, which you already noted is rather contrived.

When you mentioned about them "stepping back from the brink", I couldn't help but fast forward a year and a half to the end of issue 314, and Marty Pasko similarly taking a step back. I won't steal your thunder here - I know you'll get around to that story eventually. The point I wanted to make was that management may have been pulling the reins in on Schwartz during this time, especially with a Superman movie in the works.

posted August 10, 2002 12:51 AM    

quote:

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When you mentioned about them "stepping back from the brink", I couldn't help but fast forward a year and a half to the end of issue 314, and Marty Pasko similarly taking a step back.

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Which story was in #314?!

posted August 10, 2002 10:20 AM       

In the epilogue, a distraught Clark Kent proposes to Lois as she's recovering from the life-threatening "journalist's disease". She uncharacteristically (IMO) responds that she'll say yes only if he admits he's Superman. After some hesitation, he says he can't do that, and slowly walks away - thus ending this phase of the Clark/Lois romance.

posted August 10, 2002 10:39 AM    

Here's the full scoop from Bob Rozakis' online Answer man column as it appeared about a year ago, which can be found regularly at http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/ (I hope the cut and pasting works correctly here, and that Bob wouldn't mind the unauthorized reproduction):

< Here's the story on the lost Parasite story mentioned in last week’s column:
The story that recounted the Parasite’s marriage to a lawyer named Lorna and the birth of their kids, Trini and Troy, was actually published, albeit only in Germany. In 1981, DC began creating original Superman stories for its insatiable German audience at the request of their West German publisher, Ehapa, as related in a comprehensive article by Dave Peterson in THE COMICS BUYER'S GUIDE # 519. The episodes ranged from forty-six page "novels" intended for a quarterly graphic album to thirty-pagers for SUPERMAN HEFT. Unlike Disney, who permitted additional adventures of Donald Duck and company to be produced by foreign publishers, DC generated the additional Superman adventures themselves. Writers included Bob Rozakis, Paul Kupperberg, Cary Bates, E. Nelson Bridwell and Elliot Maggin while artists ranged from Curt Swan and Alex Saviuk to Gil Kane and Alex Toth.
DC published several of the stories in English over the next few years but they never had a chance to publish "The Parasite Curse," which is credited to Cary Bates, Alex Saviuk and Dave Hunt. The installation of the post-Crisis John Byrne-continuity pretty much killed any chances of the story ever seeing print and the hints offered in 1986’s WHO’S WHO # 17 are as close as any American readers are likely to get to seeing that story.
-- John Wells (johnwells99@yahoo.com)

Thanks, guys. A few of the stories that were done for Ehapa actually did see print in issues of ACTION COMICS and SUPERMAN, but the Parasite tale was not among them.>

Personally, I would LOVE to see these lost stories of the "Lame Duck Superman" (as India Ink has termed the era). I mean, DC is sitting on essentially NEW Curt Swan-illustrated Superman stories? But sadly, there would be virtually no audience left for these in the States. The chances of seeing these reprinted in the U.S. are about as low as the chances of throwing a rock in Canada without hitting a guy named Gordon.

Maybe they could show up in the Archives, but by the time the Superman Archives roll around to the mid-Eighties, I'll be lucky to be alive even as a disembodied brain in a jar.