| Author | Topic: Superman in The Sixties |
| Lee
Semmens Member |
 posted November
27, 2002 05:58 AM 
quote: India, for some months now I have been noting details of all Superman
stories both from his own book, Action Comics and World's Finest Comics
between 1938 and the early seventies, at least. The data I have collected
includes issue number and date (obviously, you might think), plus cover
artist/s, story title, story writer and artist/s (where available), and
page counts. (I am often finding differences in the credits given in
various sources, but I am duly recording any and all that I
discover.) IP: Logged |
| Aldous Member |
posted November
28, 2002 04:17 AM
Yes, India... I'm still around. Thanks. Life has been a little tumultuous lately. Very busy -- no time to read the board, let alone post anything. That story certainly has its charms. I think you would like it. Another one from the same era (a little earlier time-wise), "Superman's New Face," is a wee classic I've always really liked. (Action #239, April 1958.) The story is by Edmond Hamilton, I believe; art by Wayne Boring. While saving lives, Superman is caught in an atomic explosion which drives particles of Kryptonite into his face, scarring him to the extent that he must, from then on, appear in public with his face completely covered (firstly with bandages, then later with a steel face-plate). Public speculation over his damaged face goes wild. It's such an odd little story, and very entertaining. IP: Logged |
| India
Ink Member |
posted November
29, 2002 11:27 AM
I remember Rich making reference in his posts to a partner of his. This partner may have even posted after Rich passed away. I believe this fellow has all of their research--so it is still possible that Morrissey's information will find publication (electronic or otherwise) at some point. IP: Logged |
| Aldous Member |
posted November
29, 2002 01:46 PM
I wrote a full run-down of "Superman's New Face" on the 30s to the 50s thread. IP: Logged |
| Aldous Member |
posted December
10, 2002 03:41 AM
At some stage I'd like to have a bit of a discussion about Edmond Hamilton. He was a clever and prolific writer who wrote some of my favourite stories. IP: Logged |
| Lee
Semmens Member |
posted December
10, 2002 05:34 AM
quote: In my view also, Edmond Hamilton seems to have written a large
proportion of my favorite Superman stories from the 1960s, usually in
collaboration with Curt Swan. IP: Logged |
| Aldous Member |
posted December
10, 2002 11:41 PM
For a start, Lee, here is a bullet-point run-down on Edmond Hamilton I've distilled from various pages of information from different sources:
WIFE: Leigh Brackett FIRST PUBLISHED STORY: "The Monster-God of Mamurth" in "Weird Tales", August 1926. NICKNAMES: The "World-Wrecker" and the "World-Saver". ONE OF THE FIRST: To attempt a living at writing Science Fiction. PEN NAMES: Alexander Blade, Robert Castle, Hugh Davidson, and Robert Wentworth, among others. Also, pen names shared with "house" writers include Will Garth, S.M. Tenneshaw and Brent Sterling,. A MAJOR CONTRIBUTOR TO: The formative years of Science Fiction. CREATED: "Captain Future" for the pulps around 1939-1940, which still enjoys a following today. Appears in Japanese anime and European comics. MARRIED: Legendary SF writer Leigh Brackett on New Year's Eve in 1946. Leigh was born in 1915 in Los Angeles. Her early efforts at writing fantastic adventures brought her into contact with other SF personalities then living in California, such as Robert A. Heinlein, Julius Schwartz, Jack Williamson, aspiring writer Ray Bradbury, and... Edmond Hamilton. HIS WIFE: Collaborated with William Faulkner on the screenplay of "The Big Sleep". HIS WIFE ALSO: Wrote the screenplays for "Rio Bravo", "El Dorado", and "The Long Good-Bye". Shortly before she died, Leigh submitted the first draft sceenplay for "The Empire Strikes Back", and this film is dedicated to her. EDMOND and LEIGH: Loved to travel, and Edmond was skilled in photography. Each would edit the other's major Science Fiction and Fantasy literary collections. Guests of honour at the 1954 and 1959 World Science Fiction Conventions. FROM WHAT I'VE READ: It appears the Hamiltons were very fond of animals. HIS POPULARITY PEAK: May have been in the 1920s and 1930s when he proved as popular with the readers of "Weird Tales" as authors like Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft. MOST POPULAR STORY: Is possibly his serious look at the colonisation of space, originally written in the 1930s as "Colonists of Mars" but rejected by editors as "too grim". After advice from his wife, Leigh Brackett, he revised this story into "What's It Like Out There?" which appeared in the December 1952 issue of "Thrilling Wonder Stories". This story demonstrated that Edmond could write solid, serious Science Fiction. HIS ORIGINALITY: Reportedly declined in the 1930s, prompting H.P. Lovecraft to call him "One-Plot Hamilton". INSPIRED: A pre-World War II-era teenage fandom that bought his works religiously. HE WAS INCREDIBLY PROLIFIC: Fans may never find all of his stories. It has been asserted that no pulp writer sold more stories than Edmond Hamilton. FOR SILVER-AGE GREEN LANTERN FANS (like Aldous here): Edmond's tales of the "Interstellar Patrol" are credited as being the first depiction of a galactic peacekeeping force. DIED: 1 February 1977 in California IP: Logged |
| Lee
Semmens Member |
posted December
11, 2002 07:43 AM
It would be interesting to see a checklist of Edmond Hamilton's comic book work, Aldous. He must have written an enormous number of stories for DC alone between about the early 1940s and 1966, when he retired. His output for DC in this period is probably only exceeded by Gardner Fox, Bill Finger, and possibly Robert Kanigher and John Broome. Apart from his well-known Superman, Legion of Super-Heroes and science fiction stories (not to mention a lot of other stuff I have probably overlooked), he also wrote a large number of Batman stories, proving he could handle various genres. One could research Hamilton's work through the Grand Comics Database, but even their records up to the early 1960s are far from complete with reference to writers. IP: Logged |
| Aldous Member |
posted December
11, 2002 12:06 PM
quote: It would. A way to do this, or a way to begin it at any rate, would be for a few of us to list favourite stories in DC Comics written by Hamilton. I don't have time to start a list at the moment, but I'll come back to it. There are other guys on this board who are probably carrying around in their heads a lot of data on creators like Hamilton. They know who they are! For me, it's just really interesting to put a real human face to the name Edmond Hamilton (or to any creator of those much-loved comic books). I know India Ink has that Curt Swan book that came out not so long ago, and it would be interesting to hear points of interest about Swan's life or career... I don't think exhaustive details are necessary, but the odd bit of human information adds so much to an understanding of where such-and-such a creator was coming from. I'm not putting Hamilton on a pedestal, because there are stories of his I just don't care for at all. We've covered one or two of these in posts from a while back, I think. IP: Logged |
| Continental Op Member |
posted December
11, 2002 03:32 PM
Hamilton was, in my estimation, the top of the heap among Superman writers in the mid-60s... especially when he was teamed with the Swan/Klein art team. Their great talent for facial expressions suited the way he would inject these little moments of pathos (and bathos)into even very formulaic stories. His Superman was a very emotional one, and his often "cosmic" plots are probably the most sweeping in the scale of their adventures through time and space. The "red sun" series of tales, for example, were usually Hamilton's. He also did a great deal, for example, to build on the historical background of Kandor and Krypton, as well as giving much more interesting personalities to the top villains... Luthor and Brainiac. He probably considered his comics work little more than an amusing sideline, and he probably didn't like working for Mort Weisinger any more than any of the other Superman writers did, but it seemed like he always put just a little extra effort into his stories. Of course, he recycled story elements and even entire plots as much as anyone did back then,and he was working under the same Weisinger-imposed restrictions of style, but I would bet that the lion's share of acknowledged "classics" from the era came from Hamilton's typewriter. In addition to Lovecraft's "Single-Plot Hamilton" tag (HPL very much admired Hamilton's early pulp stories, though, and insisted he was whoring his talent to the pulp editors who wanted hackwork... which Hamilton would probably cheerfully admit), I believe he was nicknamed "Planet-Destroyer Hamilton" for the epic cosmic scale of his pulp science fiction. That was later amended to "the Universe-Smasher" when he got even more cosmic. All this way before CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS of course. I don't have time now to post about a lot of Hamilton stories, but I'm going to try and recollect some of my favorites soon... it'll save me the trouble of having to write up full reviews for 'em which I've kept putting off. As for a checklist of his comics work... I assume India Ink came across
this already,but the rest of you might like to see this:
IP: Logged |
| Lee
Semmens Member |
posted December
12, 2002 05:39 AM
Thanks for the Edmond Hamilton link, Continental Op. I would make at least one correction to the stories credited to Hamilton there. It credits "The Weirdo Legionnaire" to Hamilton - The Legion of Super-Heroes Archives Vol. 5 TOC credits it to Hamilton or Jerry Siegel - but I would suggest that this story reads much more like a Siegel story than a Hamilton one. In particular, some of the more banal dialogue as coming from a computer is more in keeping with the Siegel style, as are a lot of the exclamations used. IP: Logged |
| Aldous Member |
posted December
12, 2002 03:25 PM
quote: "Classics" such as "Superman Under the Red Sun" come to mind, which is a real stinker as far as I'm concerned. One of the poorest Silver Age comics I ever read. Sometimes I wonder how certain stories become "classics".
quote: That's a great list, C-Op. Thanks for the link. IP: Logged |
| India
Ink Member |
posted December
14, 2002 04:22 PM
I hadn't checked this topic for awhile, so it was a great surprise to see one of my favourites writers being talked up. When I started reading Superman comics, they didn't usually have writer credits. So it wasn't until Superman 239 (Giant G-84), June-July 1971, that I actually "discovered" Edmond Hamilton. By then they were starting to give credits on the reprints, so I realized that "The Showdown Between Luthor and Superman" reprinted in that issue was written by Hamilton. That was the first time I read that story (which originally appeared in Superman 164, October 1963--an issue I now proudly own), and it remained for me the single greatest Superman story ever! And after that Giant, there were lots more reprints, and that name Edmond Hamilton kept coming up. Over the years I'm continuously surprised to find how many other stories he wrote, stories I read as a kid not knowing who the writers were. For instance I loved to get World's Finest Giants in the sixties, and I now find (as reprinted in the World's Finest Comics Archives vols. 1 & 2) that Hamilton wrote almost all these stories. For me Hamilton is one of the greatest Superman writers byfar (not to mention his work on other members of the Superman family, the Legion, and Batman). He may have had his share of clunkers, but at their best his stories could take you places. As a side-note, I wonder how much Hamilton's better half contributed to his comicbook stories? Not to take anything away from Hamilton himself, but I expect Leigh Brackett would give him feedback on anything he was working on, even Superman. As a lover of Howard Hawks movies, it's kind of a thrill to think that the writer of "Rio Bravo" and one of my favourite comic book writers were in bed together. IP: Logged |
| Aldous Member |
posted December
14, 2002 04:47 PM
Yes... Seems as though they had a successful marriage and a very successful partnership in terms of their "professions"... I wonder if Mrs Hamilton ever sat with a cup of tea and read a couple of Superman comics. A possible first instinct is, "Probably not -- she was too sophisticated." But that's a mistake... The people of the mainstream bleat on about how the audience, particularly the young audience, of today is "more sophisticated" than in past eras. It may seem that way, but it probably isn't. In a lot of ways, pertaining to real life and the real issues of life, the latest generation is probably one of the more unenlightened. I notice, and these threads are a constant reminder, that very intelligent, sophisticated people, who have excellent command of the English language, seem to have a special appreciation for simplicity and innocence in fiction... Silver-Age Superman springs to mind. The attraction of material that appears "unsophisticated" doesn't put its fans into the "simple & innocent" category... Rather, I think it says something much more subtle and intriguing about the Silver-Age fan. So I have no problem picturing Leigh Brackett having a cup of tea and reading an Edmond Hamilton Superman comic -- and enjoying both. IP: Logged |
| India
Ink Member |
posted December
14, 2002 05:03 PM
That's funny. => IP: Logged |
| Lee
Semmens Member |
posted December
15, 2002 06:01 AM
Leigh Brackett apparently plotted "The Lord of Batmanor" in Detective #198 (reprinted in Batman Annual #2), which husband Edmond Hamilton scripted. As far as I am aware this is her only comics' work. Just thought you might be interested, Aldous and India. IP: Logged |
| Aldous Member |
posted December
15, 2002 03:27 PM
quote: Thanks, Lee. And, in relation to that...
quote: Well, yes, that's the question. ***** Leigh and Edmond at the breakfast table sometime in 1963... EDMOND: I've been toying with the idea of an "Imaginary" story. I'm going to show what might have happened if Kal-El, instead of coming to Earth and becoming Superman, had actually taken on the roles of The Flash, or The Atom, or Batman... LEIGH: Sounds intriguing, dear. But wouldn't Superman always be Superman, just by virtue of coming to Earth? He might have called himself "Batman", but he would still have the super powers. EDMOND: Er... yes, you're right. Well, I'll send him to other planets then. And when he gets to those other planets, instead of the super-powers we're used to, the baby Kal-El grows up having to adapt in different ways, so that he becomes "Aquaman" or "Green Arrow". LEIGH: You could have a series of little vignettes, showing how on each different planet he became The Flash, or Batman, or whoever... EDMOND: Great idea! I'll do it! But... why are you frowning, dear? LEIGH: There's no plot. There's nothing tying the vignettes together. You have to have a plot, Edmond. EDMOND: Well, yes, I realise that. How about if I have a third party tell the story, and I could set that third party in "real" time, in the normal continuity? LEIGH: Good. And your storyteller should be someone who would have a genuine curiosity in wondering what baby Kal-El would have turned out like if he'd been sent to different planets. EDMOND: I could just have Superman tell the story. You know, like if he was day-dreaming... "What would have happened to me if..." LEIGH: Oh, Edmond, please! Stay with the third party idea. No, it has to be a person with a genuine concern over the fate of that baby in the rocketship. EDMOND: Someone like Jor-El! LEIGH: Now you're getting somewhere. Pass the salt, dear. IP: Logged |
| bizarro
brainiac zero Member |
posted December
25, 2002 05:50 PM
[I posted this over on ODCUT, but saw this topic was still active too, so I thought I dupe it here because there are a number of Superman listings!] I was surfing around and saw that this topic I created was still active. Amazing! Coincidentally, because it looks like I’m getting out of comics (after 41 years!,) I compiled a list of my thirty favorite comics/stories of all time. Since there’s year-end lists coming out now, I might as well post this here! These are not what I consider the best comics, but simply my favorites without regard to popular or anybody else’s opinion. These are simply the comics I like the most. It took me five drafts and a month to get to this final list after 41 years of collecting! (BTW, I’m only keeping 100 comics total.) There are no Marvels here. After quitting collecting Marvel in mid-80s, even their classics no longer hold charm for me. My fave series (Legion, Silver Age Superman, and Thunder Agents) dominate this list. [I hope the spacing comes out okay on this list.] Can you compile a ranked thirty favorites list? It’s not that easy if you’ve been collecting for awhile! MY THIRTY FAVORITE COMICS OF ALL TIME! [Rank - Comic & # - Date - Story Note - Creators] 1 ADVENTURE 352,353 - - - 1,2/67 - - - SUNEATER - - - SHOOTER/SWAN
6 SUPERMAN ANN 4 - - - 1961 - - - TIME & SPACE - - - MISC 11 GOLDEN AGE 1-4 - - - 1993 - - - DYNAMAN - - - ROBINSON/P.SMITH 16 FLEX MENTALLO 1-4 - - - 1996 - - - THE FACT - - -
MORRISON/QUITELY 21 ANDROMEDA 3 - - - 9/78 - - - EXILE OF AEONS - - -
NICHOLS/RIVOCHE 26 XYZ - - - 6/72 - - - CUBIST BE-BOP - - - CRUMB IP: Logged |
| India
Ink Member |
posted January 02,
2003 04:24 PM
Does this mean you're selling off your collection BBZ??? Getting out of comics could mean one of several things. I can see myself getting out of buying new comics--my buy list keeps decreasing and one day I may eventually only concentrate on vintage comics. But I can't see myself getting out of comics in any time soon, however, as the size of my collection is substantial and it would take years of effort to sell it all off. As long as I still have one box of vintage comics (and some archives on my shelves) I will still consider myself to be "in comics." Yesterday I was at the annual New Year's Day comic sale. And flush with the consuming fever I bought a copy of Detective 211 (which features "The Jungle Cat Queen"--and HEY while typing this post I just checked the GCD index for this issue and found that it credits Edmond Hamilton as writer--a fact I never knew before this instant--wow!). That's now the oldest comic (barring things like Famous First Editions and Millennium Editions) that I have. 'Tec 211 has to be up there in my list of all time favourite comics given it features "The Jungle Cat Queen." The art by Sprang and Paris is holy. I was looking at it again last night--in the original comic--and welling up with emotion. It's one of the most beautiful works of art I've ever seen in my life. Most of the other issues that would make it onto my list of favourites have already been mentioned on this thread or the Superman in the Seventies thread. Superman 164 for certain. And a few issues of Detective from the New Look period--as much for the Elongated Man stories as the lead Batman stories by the likes of Fox, Infantino, and Greene. At the New Year's Day sale I saw one guy buying up Daredevil back issues. And I guess that's the thing to do right now for any speculators out there, but thinking about this I realized I have little attachment to my Marvels. I should probably be selling them off right now, given that the speculators will likely pay top dollar for them--whereas a couple years from now they might not be so hot. If I was to begin the process of getting out of comics, I would probably start by unloading my 70s, 80s, and 90s Marvels. As artifacts they have little meaning for me and I'm just as happy with the trade paperback collections. But as artifacts, DC comics have much more meaning for me. My next stage in getting out of comics would require me to sell off my DCs from 1987 onward. After that though it would get a lot harder, but the third stage would require selling off 70s and early 80s DC--everything but Superman and Batman. Fourth stage, selling off 70s to early 80s Supermans and Batmans. Final stage, selling off my vintage comics from the sixties and earlier. But, as I say, I don't see myself doing that any time soon. IP: Logged |
| India
Ink Member |
posted January 15,
2003 12:02 AM
Here's an impressive site re: Superboy that came up on the archives board-- http://darkmark6.tripod.com/superboyind1.htm IP: Logged |
| Osgood
Peabody Member |
posted January 30,
2003 12:59 PM 
By way of bumping this thread, here's a great site I stumbled into the other day that has some classic Superman stories, including "Superman under the Green Sun", which I've never had a chance to read before: http://www.reading-room.net/
IP: Logged |
| Aldous Member |
posted January 31,
2003 12:33 PM
Thanks, Osgood. Great stuff... IP: Logged |
| Continental Op Member |
posted February
01, 2003 11:20 AM
(bump) IP: Logged |
| Lee
Semmens Member |
posted February
02, 2003 05:58 AM
quote: A couple of sources I have checked credit this story to Bill Finger
(Hamilton wrote "Superman Under the Red Sun"), with inks by Stan
Kaye. IP: Logged |
| India
Ink Member |
posted February
22, 2003 06:52 PM
^ IP: Logged |