August 1964: Behold a Pale Shadow

The first time I saw the Shadow was in 1964, when I was 10 and the aging crime-fighter was at a low point in his fabled career.

My parents and grandparents knew the Shadow well, but had never seen him, having listened to his adventures as an invisible superhero on radio in the late 1930s through the early 1950s.

Archie Comics began publishing a Shadow comic book, and its August 1964 cover depicted the Shadow in traditional pulp magazine form, lurking hawk-nosed in a cape and slouch hat. But inside, artist John Rosenberger had sleekly “modernized” the character.

Now a prettified blond with three identities but no hat (like the late JFK), he used his role as millionaire playboy Lamont Cranston as a cover for his activities as an American secret agent (James Bond had just become immensely popular). And his spy missions were a cover for his superhero activities, an identity he assumed simply by slipping on a black cloak and “blending into the shadows.” No one knew he was the Shadow, not even his girlfriend Margo Lane.

His vaguely defined powers included stealth, ventriloquism and a kind of super-hypnotism, and his opponent was his recurring arch-foe from the pulps, Shiwan Khan, restyled as a Bondesque freelance spy villain. The Shadow also displayed a hint of 007’s ruthlessness, hurling one of Khan’s henchmen down a shaft to his death.

The story wasn’t as good as the pulp or radio Shadows — disjointed, but not terrible.

In later issues, however, penned by Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel, the character would hit bottom — tricked up in a superhero’s mask and tights, and armed with gadgets that might have embarrassed even Batman (a “power beam,” “weakness gas,” boot-heel jumping springs, and so forth).

Batman was based on the Shadow in any number of ways, and then in the early 1960s the Shadow was “Batman-ized.”

So spins the cycle of popular culture.

January 1962: Brainiac By Any Other Name

An alien invader who shrinks and collects your civilization? That would be Brainiac, right?

Well, no, it’s Grq, at least in the Archie Adventure universe of 1962.

When the Fly and Fly Girl ran into the planet-shrinker in The Test Tube Flies! (Adventures of the Fly 17, Jan. 1962), they were, ironically, reduced to the size of insects. But nevertheless, eventually they taught Grq just how formidable insects can be.

Robert Bernstein, a writer who worked for both DC and Archie, was well familiar with Superman’s exploits, and clearly used Otto Binder’s The Super-Duel in Space! (Action Comics 242, July 1958) as his inspiration. 

But then, DC Comics was perfectly capable of copying their own stories, as in The Alien Who Doomed Robin! (World’s Finest 110, June 1960). In that tale, written by Jerry Coleman, Superman, Batman and Robin fought to stop a green, tentacled alien from shrinking and stealing buildings to use as exhibits on an asteroid amusement park.

“The Fly stories largely consisted of our hero doing battle with various menaces: giant robots, alien invaders, prehistoric monsters and gangs of crooks were favorite opponents,” recalled comics historian Michael E. Grost. “In this way, his stories resembled those of the Green Lantern, who also spent much of his time fighting monstrous menaces from outer space and other dimensions.”

“The Fly was a superhero who had the powers of insects,” Grost noted. “He could fly, glow like a firefly, employ the immense strength of an ant, weave silk cocoons and bind his enemies, etc. He could also command hordes of insects to do his bidding.”

“John Rosenberger, most of whose comics work was in the romance genre, became the regular illustrator,” noted comics historian Don Markstein. “He delivered dependable, routine work until 1964, when the title ended. Along the way, only one more notable thing happened — in the 14th issue, the Fly picked up a female counterpart, Fly Girl, who was in reality actress Kim Brand.”

October 1961: Mayhem in Miniature

In order to tell a good superhero story, writers must constantly come up with ways to undermine their protagonist’s built-in advantage in power.

So why not cut the all-powerful superhero down to size?

Literally.

Among the many superheroes who’ve been reduced to insect size and imperiled are Superman (both as an adult and as Superboy), Batman, Marvel’s Fantastic Four, Archie Comics’ Jaguar and the Fly and Fly Girl. The latter were rocketed to a planet where germs were gigantic, so that amounted to the same thing.

I remember particularly enjoying The Battle of the Bacteria Brutes! from Adventures of the Jaguar 2 (Oct. 1961), penned by Robert Bernstein. Artist John Rosenberger created an array of fascinating and colorful bacteria — both humanoid and non-humanoid — to menace the superheroic master of the animal kingdom.

All these stories, I suspect, own something to the 1940 science fiction film Dr. Cyclops — based on a short story by Henry Kuttner from the June 1940 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories — as well as Richard Matheson’s 1956 novel The Shrinking Man, which was adapted into the film The Incredible Shrinking Man and released in February of 1957.

Good concepts can often be inverted in superhero comics, and shrinking is no exception. Doll Man, the Atom and Ant-Man all turned that condition into a crime-fighting advantage.

September 1961: The Earlier Animal Man

A new superhero soaring through the air? A giant reptilian monster on a rampage? Red-skinned aliens invading Earth?

I’m in.

So I was happy to buy the first issue of The Adventures of the Jaguar (Sept. 1961), which appeared on the stands in June 1961 — a nice present for my 7^th birthday.

And yes, even at age I could recognize the character as being heavily derivative of Archie Comics’ other superhero, the Fly. But the Jaguar also shared the artist John Rosenberger with the Fly, and I enjoyed his clear, clean-lined work.

“It really does seem as though the character was created just to fill a space — he’s a simple knock-off of the Fly himself, but with the powers of all mammals rather than the more exotic and interesting ones of all insects,” observed comics historian Don Markstein. “He uses a magic belt instead of a magic ring, is a zoologist named Ralph Hardy instead of a lawyer named Thomas Troy, and unlike the Fly, has no female counterpart.”

Empowered by Incan magic and/or super-technology, Hardy flies with the aid of his “nucleon-energy belt” rockets and defeats an ancient serpent.

The Jaguar’s exploits, penned by Robert Bernstein, appeared for 15 issues in his own title and as back-page stories in Archie comedy titles like Laugh and Pep.

A little later, when the Archie superheroes formed the Mighty Crusaders, the Jaguar reappeared for a single issue as a member of a rival super-team, the Terrific Three. Mr. Justice and Steel Sterling were the other two.

We had several creature-totemic superheroes knocking about then, not just the Fly and the Jaguar but also Aquaman, Hawkman and Ant-Man. All of them had not just costumes and powers inspired by their biological namesakes, but also an intimate connection with the creatures themselves, whom they could communicate with and command.

In this, they resembled a certain ape man — the ubiquitous afternoon-movie hero Tarzan, who was forever summoning elephants to his aid.

July 1961: When Women Take Wing

Comic books, like television, are a generally conservative mass medium, reflecting social change only after it’s taken hold in the culture at large. And that makes it interesting to track the course of women’s rights in comics.

Mary Marvel, Bulletgirl, Miss America, Namora, Golden Girl, Doll Girl, Batwoman, Batgirl, Supergirl, Superwoman, Aquagirl, Miss Arrowette, Fly Girl, Hawkgirl, Power Girl, Ms. Marvel, Spider-Woman, even She-Hulk … the female knock-off of the dominant male superhero was a venerable tradition from the 1940s on, one that paradoxically paralleled American society’s growing recognition of female power even as it kind of condescended to the idea.

Take Fly Girl, for example.

Introduced in Adventures of the Fly 13 (July 1961) as a traditional damsel in distress, actress Kim Brand didn’t play that role for long. In Adventures of the Fly 14 (September 1961), she was granted a magic ring by extra-dimensional emissary Turan that enabled her to duplicate the powers of attorney Thomas Troy, the Fly. She co-starred with him thereafter while appearing in solo stories in the Archie comics Laugh and Pep.

The trend even continued outside comics, with Six Million Dollar Men spawning Bionic Women.

Those female copies sometimes served as guinea pigs, trial balloons for plot developments that would later be visited on the more established male hero. Supergirl was “killed” before Superman, and Batgirl was physically disabled before Batman.

The 1979 movie Alien featured a female lead besting a space predator after her male crewmates had failed. And Joss Whedon’s innovative 1997 TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer marked a shift in the culture, featuring a no-nonsense superheroine in the lead who had copied no one, and whose adventures balanced the traditionally male mission of monster hunting with traditional female concerns about high school relationships.

And the permanent cultural shift that has taken place is even more apparent now. Thor’s original love interest, Jane Foster, gained the powers, the hammer and the name of the thunder god.