They might have gone in another direction.
DC’s popular revivals of its 1940s superheroes had previously been revamps, stylistically refitting World War II characters like the Flash, Green Lantern, the Atom and Hawkman for the jet age. The trend had been so successful it had kicked off a whole new superhero craze in comics publishing.
But in Showcase 55 (March-April 1965), editor Julius Schwartz, writer Gardner Fox and artist Murphy Anderson decided not to create new “Earth One” iterations of Hourman and Dr. Fate, but instead simply revive the original “Earth Two” superheroes.
After all, Flash 123 had introduced the parallel worlds concept. And in Flash 137, Earth Two’s Justice Society of America — having been rescued from Vandal Savage’s stasis cubes by the Flashes — decided to come out of retirement.
So in Showcase 55, the older but presumably wiser Dr. Fate and Hourman teamed up to corral the original Green Lantern’s formidable archenemy Solomon Grundy.
And in Showcase 56, the Tick-Tock Thunderbolt and the Wonder Wizard battled a new Psycho Pirate who’d learned his skills as a cellmate of the original JSA super villain (something similar happened with Spider-Man’s foe the Vulture).
I loved Hourman and Dr. Fate’s pair of adventures, as well as the subsequent two-issue team-up of Starman and the Black Canary in Brave and the Bold and the revival of the Spectre in Showcase (all of them graced by Anderson’s sumptuous art).
But only the Ghostly Guardian won his own title, and even that was fairly short-lived.
Marvel Comics, which had been born in response to the earlier DC revivals, was by then setting the pace.
One wonders, though. What if Schwartz and company had decided to revamp and update Hourman, Dr. Fate, Black Canary and the Spectre? What might they have come up with?
Michael Fraley said: I actually found the golden agers more interesting as a boy. When I would see ads for books like this in an older cousins old comics, I wanted a time machine so I could go back a few years and scream, "Take my mom's money!"
ReplyDeleteMark Emery wrote: Very interesting thoughts! The SA Flash, GL and Atom had already been popular, established characters like their GA counterparts. (Well, maybe not The Atom, so much.) Dr. Fate and Hourman perhaps weren't popular enough in the GA to merit having updated versions, so their reemergence as Earth Two characters was easier for DC to deal with.
ReplyDeleteWhatever, I always found them to be very interesting because of their uniqueness. JLA #21 was So fascinating with its reintroduction of the JSA!!
Bob Doncaster said: I too loved those try out issues of the GA heroes and hoped for more. I once read where DC thought the 2 earths concept was too confusing for young readers. Wasn't for me, but years later there was Crisis In Infinite Earths
ReplyDeleteMatthew Grossman said: Dan Hagen - one of the things I loved about DC Comics as a kid was the decades of seemingly endless obscure characters with their strange powers and bizarre backstories.
ReplyDeleteKlaus Wolf wrote: This comic is one of my all-time favourites. Murphy Anderson's art is atmospherically superb here. The eerie swamp duel is magnificent. Anderson and Infantino had such a talent to evoke vast, luxurious, sometimes lonely and mystical landscapes.
ReplyDeleteMark Engblom wrote: As a JSA fan from the moment I first spied them on the back of a JLA treasury edition, I hunted down and collected every Silver Age appearance of them, whether as a full team, solo guest stars, or as spin-offs like these Showcase issues.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the Showcase tryouts, as much as I love them, were a very bizarre, mismanaged effort. As cool as it was to see JSA members share an adventure apart from the team, the pairings always struck me as rather random and mismatched. A mystic powerhouse like Dr. Fate with a brawler like Hourman? Street level Black Canary with cosmic-powered Starman? Sure, there’s a bit of an Odd Couple appeal with such power disparities, but for the most part, all it did was draw attention to the lopsided pairing. I’ve often wondered what it would’ve been like to read a pairing of Dr. Fate and Starman, both immensely powerful champions of their respective realms of magic and science. Or Hourman and Black Canary, who could share their mutual expertise with street level crime while truly showing off Rex’s power in a way that’s not overshadowed and humbled by Fate.
So, I still love these issues, but man...DC really dropped the ball on the team selections.
Michael TwentyFive wrote: At first, I thought putting Hourman in the category of "Street Level Crime" was a bit disingenuous to the character. After all, Hourman--while not in the league of the golden age Superman (OR Dr. Fate for that matter in strength)--WAS actually closer to his power level (remember this is the original Kal-L, who didn't actually fly and actually had the ability to LEAP an 1/8th of a mile). I would have considered that Hourman--when taking Miraclo--would have been somewhere between 1/6 and 1/8 of Kal-L's golden age power level.
ReplyDeleteTHEN I read the Wikipedia entry of the character (albeit this is the Rick Tyler power level of the character) and realized that Hourman is a mashup of Marvel "street-level heroes," Luke Cage and Spider-man of the JSA (comparatively in power level). From Wikipedia: "Based on depictions, under its effects, Rick experienced the ability to lift/press 10 tons, run at speeds of 65 miles/hour, agility to leap from windows as high as three stories, reflexes enough to spar with super-speedsters, and durability to withstand superhuman blows."
I'll give Rex this...his real super-power was courage. Based on Showcase #55 (which I read WAY back in the day reprinted in the Brave & The Bold...a moment of silence as we shed a fond tear for the DC comics 100-page Super-spectacular books; the gateway drug through which many of us first experienced the classic work of Joe Kubert, Murphy Anderson, Gil Kane, Nick Cardy, Alex Toth, and Ramona Fradon), Hourman jumped in when he KNEW he was outclassed...again, Spidey jumping in against the Hulk. Especially knowing that the above power levels were probably weaker, as Rick's Miraclo was the result of 40 years of refinements, Rex's Miraclo probably yielded anywhere between 1/2 to 2/3 of that power level.
James Lezala wrote: I can’t imagine it would be much different than what later writers did. Another person (Rex’s son) taking a pill hour 60 minutes of power and another person wearing the Helm of Nabu. I mean, they could have gone with a Dr. Occult/Phantom Stranger-type character and called him Dr. Fate, but with Fate and Spectre’s power levels, it makes more sense to just leave them as they are.
ReplyDeleteEdward Lee Love wrote: It seems to me that once they brought back the JSA in the pages of the Flash and JLA, the revamps slowed down. Why introduce a new Dr. Fate, Hourman, Starman, Black Canary, Wildcat when you can just use the ones you already have?
ReplyDeleteThen when Zatanna and the Red Tornado were created, they were done so with an in-story tie to the past instead of simply being a dusting off of a golden-age name and/or concept.
It was the 70s when we next got a couple of characters with old names (Sandman and Starman) that had no ties to the golden-age characters.
Steve M. Russo wrote: It's interesting how popular Hourman had become - making appearances in several of the JSA/JLA crossovers and the Showcase appearance, the solo in "Spectre", etc.
ReplyDeleteNot bad for the first JSA member to be pulled from All-Star and the first "major" golden age character to lose his feature (3 issues before the "Adventure" page count drop from 64 to 48 in early 1943.) replaced by "Mike Gibbs", and the remaining features all went to shorter stories.