June 1967: The Luck of the Drawing

I suppose DC thought if one Joker was successful, why not put a whole deck of criminal cards into play?

But the Royal Flush Gang struck me as a rare misdeal by writer Gardner Fox and artist Mike Sekowsky. People dressed up like playing cards never seemed like they should be much of a menace when pitted against the immensely formidable Justice League of America.

This playing-card pack was the creation of the portly Prof. Amos Fortune, who had attacked the Justice Leaguers’ “luck glands” (?) in Justice League of America 6 (August–September 1961). Fortune turned his childhood criminal cronies into the Royal Flush Gang in Justice League 43 (March 1966), and played the same cards again in Justice League 54 (June 1967).

The latter issue actually has an intriguing setup, with Hal Jordan mugged, hospitalized, comatose and close to death. Only his invisible power ring (which had a standing order to automatically protect him from mortal harm) was keeping him from death — temporarily.

Also on the plus side was Sid Greene inking Sekowsky, a team that produced what I regard as some of the best-looking issues of the JLA in the 1960s.

By then, you could see from DC’s promotional page that the company was hearing Stan Lee hot on its heels, coming up fast from behind. The whole “what’s up Tiger Lily” tone of their pitch for this issue is a somewhat strained imitation of Lee’s breezy, cheeky editorial voice.

The Martian Manhunter was then slowly being eased out of the DC universe. His solo feature would soon be discontinued (House of Mystery 173, May–June 1968). And the Manhunter would appear only twice more in new JLA adventures before issue 71, when Denny O’Neil would banish him to outer space with other surviving Martians. 

The JLA always seemed a bit deflated for me after J’onn J’onzz left. In retrospect, it was one of those milestones marking the end of the Silver Age.

January 1967: The End of the Jungle Trail

The superhero fever that had been accelerated by the surprise success of the Batman TV show in January 1966 was already starting to break, but delirium had apparently set in. 

Ads in the early 1967 Showcase issues featuring a new “Jungle Master” promoted the new feature Dial H for Hero (featuring a superhero who becomes everybody) and Mattel’s Captain Action doll (featuring a superhero who becomes everybody).

The two issues spotlighted B’wana Beast, a new character concept created by writer Bob Haney and artist Mike Sekowsky that had late-night coffee stains and cigarette ashes all over it. 

Take Tarzan, slap a gaudy superhero helmet on him and give him the power to telepathically command animals and — to make it all just a little weirder — to COMBINE animals into OTHER, LARGER animals. 

Give him a secret hideout on top of Mount Kilimanjaro and a purple gorilla pal, Djuba. Shrug off any uncomfortable feelings you may have about yet another white jungle god, and ignore the fact that “B’wana” is an East African term meaning “master, or boss.”

And for good measure, wrap things up with a James Bond clinch in which a beautiful girl moans, “Beast … you beast!”

“B’wana Beast started out as game warden Mike Maxwell, who got stuck in a cave on Mount Kilimanjaro,” noted comics historian Don Markstein. “First, he drank water that had reached the cave by being filtered through rock, which made him suddenly bulk up like Bruce Banner turning into the Hulk, ruining the clothes he’d been wearing. Then his pal Djuba, a gorilla, gave him a helmet that enabled him to order beasts around like the Jaguar, or like the Fly could command insects. He's frequently been compared to Aquaman, who did that with underwater fauna.”

“B’wana Beast was apparently scheduled for the usual three (tryout issues). But reportedly Sekowsky quit after two, citing racism in the concept as his reason for wanting no more to do with it."

September 1966: This Looks Like a Job for Spiritual-Magnetic Attraction

In Justice League of America 47, writer Gardner Fox was undoubtedly aware of the thematic similarities between Solomon Grundy and Blockbuster. He’d created one of them and scripted the other. 

The swamp zombie Grundy and Blockbuster, DC’s version of the Hulk, were both super-strong, dim-witted brutes who had an idée fixe about a superhero — Green Lantern in Grundy’s case, Batman in Blockbuster’s.

Fox created Blockbuster for The Blockbuster Invasion of Gotham City! in Detective Comics 345 (Nov. 1965). And he’d previously scripted Solomon Grundy, a character created by Alfred Bester, in All-Star Comics 33 (March 1947) and Showcase 55 (March-April 1965).

The spotlighting of a Batman villain is a signpost of the era. When you’ve got a giant Batman on the cover of the JLA, that means the Batman TV show has already premiered (in January that year) and is a big hit in the ratings. 

Once upon a time, the JLA tended to leave poor powerless Batman behind. No more. 

Still, this situation is something more than a utility belt can handle. Even when supercharged by Dr. Fate’s magic, the Spectre can no longer hold the two Earths apart. 

So who’s the only one who can help DC’s biggest superhero? DC’s smallest superhero, naturally.

Using his dwarf star technology, the Atom shrinks the Spectre down to an inch in size and then suddenly explodes him back into cosmic vastness, seemingly destroying the Ghostly Guardian in the process, but hurling the Earths back into their proper places.

Luckily, to the Atom’s surprise, the Spectre is able to reform himself.

“Though the psycho-matter of my spirit body was explosively flung to all corners of this warped universe, I still maintained control of its elements,” the ghost tells the Atom. “Just before I exploded the smithereens, I imbued my body with spiritual-magnetic attraction — so that no matter how far apart  it was flung, it would be drawn back to normal after a while.”

Glad he straightened that out.

April 1966: The Fateful Lightning

 

In the best superhero concepts, superheroic status comes at a cost — a damaged heart, radiation-induced blindness, the murder of parents or a beloved uncle, the destruction of an entire planet. But though terrible, those are usually one-time costs. 

In the case of THUNDER Agent Lightning, that cost was ongoing and fatal.

“Perhaps the most ambitious and successful non-DC or Marvel superhero comics of the Silver Age were published by Tower,” wrote comics historian David W. Tosh. “The company was founded in 1965 as a division of Tower Books (paperback publishers), and lasted throughout the remaining Silver Age, finally ending in 1969.”

“Tower publisher/editor Harry Shorten gave (Wally) Wood freedom to do his thing, and the result was THUNDER Agents.”

Guy Gilbert, a part of the title from the beginning, didn’t get his super speed until the 4th issue.

“The weak sister of an otherwise excellent group of strips, the (THUNDER) Squad was drawn in all four issues by Mike Sekowsky,” wrote Lou Mougin in TwoMorrows’ THUNDER Agents Companion. “It starred a group of five (later four) non-super specialists who cooled off hot spots around the globe. Each one was pretty stereotyped: Guy Gilbert was the squad leader and matinee idol.”

Then, having bravely volunteered for the job, Guy got a makeover in the form of a canary-yellow super-suit and exposure to a speed-inducer beam that would accelerate his movement even as it shortened his life.

“Dynamo was the brawny guy of the group — he had a high-tech belt that could make him invulnerable and super strong,” recalled comics historian Don Markstein of THUNDER’s nod to Superman. “NoMan was a spook type, similar in appearance to a DC character, the Spectre, and with spook-like super powers as well — but again, with high-tech rather than mystical sources for his abilities. Lightning was a knock-off of the Flash, and Raven one of Hawkman.”

If would have been interesting, if grim, if they'd had serial Lightnings as each one died.

March 1961: For Whom the Gamma Gong Tolls

World War II was only 16 years past when Justice League of America 3 was published in February-March 1961. And Gardner Fox’s plot makes it clear that dictatorship can cause not just world wars, but wars between worlds. 

The Slave Ship of Space!, drawn by Mike Sekowsky, was the second JLA exploit I was able to buy (those early issues sold out quickly on the newsstands). 

I would have picked this one up in late December 1960, a holiday treat. I must have read it dozens of times.

The theme of dictatorship against liberty was echoed in Murphy Anderson’s striking cover scene, which depicts the Justice Leaguers as space galley slaves.

The plot forced the JLA to face not just one but four colorful, warring alien despots — an insectoid alien, a metal being, a plant woman and a lizard humanoid.

Fox comes up with some creative uses of the heroes’ powers, having the Flash employ the falling rocks scattered by an explosion as stepping-stones to reach the endangered Green Lantern. Aquaman uses his control of alien undersea creatures to effectively counter Hyathis’ command of all plant life.

As is usual with Fox, the Martian Manhunter functions as a green Superman here, what with his super-strength, super-breath and “Martian super-vision.” 

Early on in his Detective Comics feature, he didn’t seem to be able to fly at all, but here J’onn J’onnz is zooming around the planet literally at missile speed. Fox ignored the bulk of the Martian Manhunter’s unique powers, maybe because he was unfamiliar with them.

“This is one of the most science fictional of the Justice League tales, and it benefits from this,” wrote comics historian Michael E. Grost “All of Kanjar Ro's poetic sf concepts are created here: his galley ship that rows across space, his immobilizing Gamma Metal gong, his wand. These will recur in this story's immediate sequel: the Adam Strange tale The Planet That Came to a Standstill (Mystery in Space 75, May 1962).”

January 1961: You Had Me at ‘Orange’

A disguised Space Ranger menaced by a huge red cat-bear thing in Tales of the Unexpected 68?

Okay, fine.

A guy with a solar orb for a head melting and burning everything around him in My Greatest Adventure 52?

Even better. Made sense that the guy seemed wearing only his briefs, because having a sun for a head must be a sweaty business.

But the most tantalizing cover in that 1961 ad was for Strange Adventures 124, which spotlighted a giant, orange, blank-faced alien who was firing lightning beams at state cops.

I had to know what that was about — but wouldn’t for several years. Such were the vagaries of newsstand distribution in those days.

I’d learn later that his “Face Hunter” wasn’t just from Saturn, but from Klaramar, a sub-atomic world within an atom on Saturn that operates within a different temporal field than Earth.

The first Faceless Creature was Klee-Pan, a benevolent alien who seems to steal the faces from terrestrial monuments. In fact, he is seeking a bomb that will destroy the solar system, one that has been locked by the evil Chen Yull into a vault that can only be opened by some giant head.

Visiting Mount Rushmore (where else?), Klee-Pan teamed up with two South Dakota highway patrolmen, Jim Boone and Bob Colby, to save our worlds. As a reward, Klee-Pan enabled the two police officers to telepathically communicate with each other. The pair would come back in Strange Adventures 142 (July 1962) to battle Chen Yull himself, and then Chen Yull would return to threaten humanity again in Strange Adventures 153 (June 1963).

Mike Sekowsky, Carmine Infantino and Gil Kane did the artistic honors for the Gardner Fox stories.

Come to think of it, as a kid I had a particular affinity for giants, for things colored orange and for blank-faced characters (the Human Torch and Negative Man were favorites). No wonder the Faceless Hunter from Saturn was a shoo-in.

June 1960: All In Color for a Dime

The Justice League of America tryout issues of The Brave and the Bold flew off the newsstand shelves and supermarket spinner racks in late 1959 and early 1960.

And one of several reasons for that was the appeal, to small children, of the superheroes’ colorful costumes.

These superheroes had the same gaudy glory that delights children in hummingbirds and goldfish. And if their adventures finally made no sense, well, neither do fairy tales or dreams. The superheroes were surrealism for kids.

I recall being almost hypnotized by the flashing primary colors of those covers — one character scarlet and canary yellow, another emerald green and jet black. The blond man was in green and bright, scaly orange, while the woman wore a swimsuit of red, white, blue and yellow. A blue cape, boots and trunks contrasted with the vivid green skin of the team’s fifth member.

The cover for Brave and the Bold 30  — written by Gardner Fox and drawn by Mike Sekowsky — also featured a fascinating muscular, genie-like figure dressed in horizontal bands of light and dark green, glowing blue with the superheroes’ absorbed powers being poured into him by the double-barreled ray gun of a lab-coated mad scientist.

Irresistible — if somebody had one left to sell to you!

Professor Ivo, the villain who created the power-stealing android Amazo, turned out to be an early adopter of the preferred method of imprisoning and displaying captured superhero teams. You line them up in large, individual transparent tubes.

It’s so showy, you know.

Meanwhile, in Showcase 26, ancient Egyptians were facing green-skinned, big-eyed alien invaders while Rip Hunter’s time travelers watched. The handsome Joe Kubert cover for The Aliens from 2,000 B.C. was made more intriguing by the fact that the “ancient astronauts” idea was still novel at the time. It wouldn’t be done to death until a decade later.

May 1960: Giant Robots and Colorful Crusaders

The first time I saw the Justice League of America I was 5 years old, at a newsstand in the spring of 1960, looking at the cover of Brave and the Bold 29.

This second appearance of the team was a first for me in several ways — the first time I saw a number of soon-to-be iconic superheroes, and the first time I was introduced to the thrilling concept of a superhero team. I’d missed their first, instantly sold-out appearance.

The Martian Manhunter I recognized from the first issue of Detective Comics I’d purchased, number 277, two months before. I considered him to be kind of a Superman, but green.

I probably also recognized Aquaman from his back-up features in Superman family magazines. But the thrilling, brightly colored figures of the Flash, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman were delightfully new to me, and I lost no time in running them down.

Brave and the Bold 29, cover-dated May 1960, was on the newsstands in March. By April 1960, I’d be buying my first issue of The Flash. My first Wonder Woman followed in May, then Green Lantern in September.

As if five cover-featured superheroes weren’t enough, the issue also offered some of the attractions that could be seen in DC’s sleek science fiction titles like Strange Adventures — multicolored interstellar dinosaurs and, joy of joys, a giant yellow robot with a futuristic criminal inside his glass tummy cockpit.

The fact that the robot also seemed to have a ray gun for a penis is something of which I was not consciously aware.

I would have been thrilled beyond containment if I had known that this team was a space-age iteration of one from the Dark Ages of the 1940s, the Justice Society of America, and that even this cover idea had been used before by the earlier team.

To a child of 5, a decade ago might as well be a time when dinosaurs roamed the planet.

January 1960: Big Purple Beasts and the Borg

I wonder if the purple simian-ish creature in I Was a Bodyguard to a Beast (My Greatest Adventure 39) counted toward DC’s monthly maximum quota on gorilla covers?

I’m guessing not.

Meanwhile, in the Space Ranger story in Tales of the Unexpected 45, artist Jim Mooney shows us a criminal’s “army of specially trained interplanetary beasts” that might have made appropriate foes for the Legion of Super-Pets a couple of years later.

Come to think of it, Space Ranger’s Cryll and Chameleon Boy’s Proty were a lot alike. Cryll and the Martian Manhunter’s Zook might have fit right in with the Legion of Super Pets.

Such are the kinds of thoughts that jolt me awake at night.

Strange Adventures 112 includes a Gardner Fox/Mike Sekowsky cover story and a Space Museum story, Revolt of the Spaceships!

“The Space Museum tales center on a 25th Century museum filled with objects commemorating heroic deeds leading to the conquest of space,” noted comics historian Michael E. Grost. “Each tale would involve a visit by Howard Parker and his young son Tommy Parker. Howard would tell Tommy the story behind one of the objects in the museum.

“The Space Museum tales sometimes contained science fiction mysteries; near the end of each tale, Howard would pause, and urge Tommy to find a clue that would solve the mystery. The effect is similar to Ellery Queen’s Challenge to the Reader.”

The issue also includes a John Broome/Sid Greene story intended to underline editor’s Julius Schwartz’s running theme about celebrating the intellect. 

In Tomorrow’s Hero, mutant Ral Grayson has the ability to understand things instantly by just seeing a portion of the process, a power he employs to stop an alien invasion.

The invaders’ name? The Borg.

November 1958: The Thinking Man’s Superhero

Adam Strange was the thinking man’s superhero of the late 1950s, rendered with a sleek, space-age elegance by Carmine Infantino and written with reassuring intelligence by Gardner Fox.

“Strange, an adventuring archeologist, is caught in an alien experiment and hurled through 25 trillion miles of space to Planet Rann in the Alpha Centauri system,” comics historian Matthew Grossman said, summarizing Showcase 17 (Nov. 1958).

“Strange falls in love with beautiful Rannite Alanna, daughter of the scientist whose experiments with Zeta-Beam technology resulted in his extraplanetary teleportation, and — armed with a jet pack and a ray gun — becomes Rann’s champion against a series of bizarre science-fictional menaces.”

I was an adult before it suddenly dawned on me that Adam Strange worked as an exact mirror-reversal of the same company’s flagship character, Superman.

Instead of someone sent to Earth from an exotic planet to act as a savior with his superhuman powers, we have someone sent to an exotic planet from Earth to act as a savior with his human powers.

Art by Mike Sekowsky

Superman overcomes all obstacles with his superior physical powers, but Adam Strange has none. Thanks to his access to alien technology, he does have a rocket belt and a ray gun, but they provide little or no help in fending off the overwhelming alien menaces that appear whenever he returns.

Lacking Superman’s brawn, Adam Strange relies solely on his brain, reasoning his way out of every dilemma, no matter how difficult.

“In many ways the character was a crowning jewel of the Silver Age vision, an adventurer whose courage and intellectual skills embodied an optimistic view of moral action wedded to science,” Grossman observed.

“And while close in essence to pulp science fiction figures like John Carter and Flash Gordon, two other Earthmen whose adventures began with otherworldly abduction, Adam Strange operated within a fully superheroic universe, as observed by his sleek costume, frequent visual depictions in flight, and the ways his stories followed classic genre rules.”