Magicmaster was one of several 1960s comic book features that tried to recapture some of Captain Marvel’s lost lightning in a bottle. And this one vanished in a flash.
Creator Jim Steranko had originally called the character Sorcerer, but Harvey Comics editor Joe Simon apparently considered that name to be too difficult to trademark. So the character became Magicmaster, an ancient, powerful superhero conjured up by a boy, Jimmy Apollo.
“With the aid of the ‘magic dagger of Dharath,’ without which he loses his sorcerous skills, Magicmaster shows off his powers of levitation, invisibility (thanks to a magic cloak) and hypnotic illusion,” noted comics historian Jon Morris.
The pair’s pair of exploits appeared in Double-Dare Adventures 1 and 2 with art by Jack Sparling.
“Per company policy, Harvey test-marketed single issues of the Harvey Thriller line during the previous summer and they sold well enough to justify several ongoing series that began going on sale in June of 1966,” noted John Wells in American Comic Book Chronicles. “The 12-cent Jigsaw 1, Spyman 1, Thrill-O-Rama 2, and Warfront 37 appeared first, followed by 25-cent giants Fighting American 1 and The Spirit 1 in July, and finally two more giants — Double-Dare Adventures 1 and Unearthly Spectaculars 2—in August. Their contents — a mingling of superheroes, generic supernatural tales and the occasional 1950s Jack Kirby reprint — can accurately be described as random.”
Nevertheless, as the Beach Bum Comics blog said, “Magicmaster was one of the first published works of Jim Steranko. It was a shame Harvey Thrillers didn’t last longer than it did.”
Michael Uslan:
ReplyDeleteOtto Binder did a lot of the writing for Joe during this period and co-created Bee-Man.
Burns Duncan:
ReplyDeleteIn 1970 my brother's wife's younger brother had turned 25, had recognized he wasn't enjoying comics so much anymore, and resolved to divest his collection ((except for his original collection).
My brother persuaded him to keep the collection intact by giving it to them or to extend it, by letting them give it to me. Turning 8 in December 1970, I was already a kid who'd learned to read on comic strips in the papers and by then was imploring my dad to bring home not just the local papers but ones from out of town.
It took my brother many weekly visits to transfer dozens of short boxes to my bedroom, where, to our parents' dismay, they occupied 1/3 of the space.
How is this relevant? Eventually, I read all his collection, way over 2,000 (never counted) items and added thousands more, almost every American comic, 1970 1987. By 1988, I had turned 25, and mostly gave up adding any more. I still have it, occupying much of the space in my parents' (now my) home.
I used to say that I spent all my spare time for three months reading my acquisition. The truth is that at first I concentrated on reading stories that belonged to the shared DC universe and to the Marvel universe. I came back to all the rest later, taking more than a year. These Silver Age Harvey Comics were just about the last ones I read. From the covers, I was not sure that I wanted to read them. Querying, I learned that my brother had not read them; my sister-in-law had read them but hardly remembered them (my own experience); her brother had picked them up as a collector but thinks that he never read them.
Obviously, I knew the artist on this, but I think that this is the first time that I knew of Jim Steranko's involvement.
Michael T. Gilbert:
ReplyDeleteActually, Magicmaster wasn't the first Steranko work in comics. In the late 50s, Jim did some background work for Vince Colletta's Charlton love comics assignments.
Iamthe Bringer:
ReplyDeleteMagicmaster and all the other Harvey Comics heroes, given the right creative minds, could be reimagined and revived for present day audiences.
Joseph Lenius:
ReplyDeleteDoomed to failure for sure with Sparling art, and I didn't like any of the Harvey hero concepts. Joe Simon behind the times and Steranko not good enough yet.