Older readers would have recognized the two superheroes in this January 1961 DC house ad as former roomies who’d shared a title.
The Flash and Hawkman had co-starred on covers of Flash Comics from 1940 to 1949.
Now in the jet age, a streamlined Flash was the star of his own title (which had picked up on the older comic’s numbering after a 10-year gap) and a revamped Hawkman was trying his wings in The Brave and the Bold.
In The Flash 118 (Feb. 1961), the Scarlet Speedster’s cover gimmick — racing to catch a bullet being shot at a scarecrow from a helicopter — turned out to be just that. That incident is revealed to be nothing but a scene from a Flash movie, so writer John Broome didn’t have to twist his plot around to accommodate the unlikely occurrence.
“Broome used a similar approach in The Skyscraper that Came to Life (Strange Adventures 72, Sept. 1956), where he also treated Gil Kane's cover simply as a scene in an SF movie being shot by characters in the tale,” noted comics historian Michael E. Grost.
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| The Flash visits sun-washed California. |
Meanwhile, The Brave and the Bold 34 (Feb.-March 1961) introduces the new space-age Hawkman. Now an alien from the planet Thanagar, he’s pursuing the shape-shifting thrill criminal Byth.
“The shape-changing is not just a gimmick exploited for color; its logical consequences are woven into the construction of the plot,” Grost noted. “This is typical of (writer Gardner) Fox’s looking at the deep science fiction implications of his ideas.”
Vincent Mariani: The very precisely defined inking by Murphy Anderson gives the story that quality of “the art in the story seems unusually real.”
ReplyDeleteAnderson didn't work on many Flash stories, but the ones he did were a treat.
And with The Brave and the Bold #34....
If you were around back then, you had never seen anything like a super-hero comic illustrated in the manner of Joe Kubert's lush artwork. It was dark, rich, dramatic, earthy, and mysterious.
Gil Kane once said that Kubert's inking had the quality of "poured chocolate". Not a bad analogy.
Paul Zuckerman: I am somewhat vague when I actually started to buy Flash. The oldest issue that I can remember reading as a kid was 110, the intro of Kid Flash, but it seems to me that I knew Flash by then. This particular issue I seem to recall borrowing from my friend Steve's brother Benny--Benny was a few years older than us. And he had older comics-and wider range-than I was used to. That's how I first read Adam Strange's intro in Showcase. As well as other stuff. So, even though I know I was buying Flash by the time 118 came out, I don't recall buying it.
ReplyDeleteThe Hawkman intro, on the other hand, was definitely on my buy list! I didn't know Kubert from a hole-in-the-head then but his work had grace, beauty and a kinetic line quality. In some ways, very much the opposite of the Infantino-Anderson look, which I loved though, at this point, at 8 yrs old, I don't think I would have really been cognizant of the different inkers --but that would very quickly change. Memories can be snatches of the past that for some reason stick--and I can remember reading one of the Kubert B&B Hawk issues while with my mom shopping in at a local supermarket that was on Remsen Avenue and which we rarely went into.