June 1975: In a Mirror Darkly

Battling bodies careering into and right through arcane architecture — this superhero feature was clearly something different.

“One of the aspects of early Dr. Strange that Marvel Studios’ eponymous movie got right were the eerie clashes between Strange and various astral plane assassins,” observed comics historian Mark Engblom.  “I felt like I was watching a (Steve) Ditko story come to life!”

In his first recorded exploit, Dr. Stephen Strange fought one of those conceptual, extradimensional entities who’d secretly harry our plane of existence throughout his career.

In his second adventure (Strange Tales 111, Aug. 1963, reprinted in Marvel Treasury Edition 6, June 1975), the Master of the Mystic Arts battled one of the mirror-image foes so common to superheroes — in this case, a treacherous, power-hungry sorcerer of equal ability who’d also been trained by the Ancient One. While Strange is pledged to use his power to protect people, his enemy intends to enslave them.

The villain introduced here had a name that fairly rumbled from the lips, “Baron Mordo” (with its suggestions of “morbid,” “morose” and “mordant”). JRR Tolkien also recognized the ominousness of the sound (“Mordor”), and so did Jim Shooter (“Mordru”). 

Comics historian Jeff Rovin wrote, “Among the countless dark powers (Baron Mordo) has at his command are astral projection … altering his physical appearance; mesmerizing others while he’s in corporeal or spiritual form; summoning up a paralytic vapor and creating another vapor which can remove an entire apartment building from this realm and drop it into limbo.

From his European castle, Mordo projects his astral form to Tibet, where he telepathically commands the Ancient One’s servant to poison his meal. Sensing the danger in his Greenwich Village sanctum, Dr. Strange sends his own spirit soaring to the scene, where he engages Mordo in battle while arguing their philosophical differences. Strange defeats Mordo with shrewdness.

“I really liked the balance between the surrealistic mystic environs and the noir-ish street scenes,” recalled comics historian Vincent Mariani.

May 1967: The Thing that Kept Coming Back

I loved this particular story, and I wasn’t alone.

The tale’s popularity was demonstrated by the number of times it was reprinted — in Superman Annual 2 (Winter 1960), in Superman 196 (May 1967) and in The Best of DC 42 (Nov. 1983), among other places.

In The Thing from 40,000 A.D.!, first published in Superman 87 (Feb. 1954), a shape-shifting blob monster from Earth’s bleak far future invades Metropolis, generally wreaking havoc and finally duplicating even Superman, complete with super powers. 

Writer Bill Woolfolk and artist Wayne Boring gave us a super-battle that remained a thunderous standoff until the Man of Tomorrow maneuvered the Thing to a nuclear test site. In 1938, Superman could be knocked for a loop by a “bursting shell,” but by the 1950s he could shrug off H-bomb blasts. 

The Thing, however, could not.

Science fiction menaces had begun challenging Superman with more frequency during that era — among them The Three Supermen from Krypton in Superman 65 (July-Aug. 1950), It from Action Comics 162 (Nov. 1951), The Machines of Crime from Action Comics 167 (April 1952), the dragon-like Beast from Krypton in Superman 78 (Sept-Oct. 1952), the Return of Planet Krypton in Action Comics 182 (July 1953), the asteroid Menace from the Stars in World’s Finest 65 (Jan.-Feb. 1954, a story also featured on TV as Panic in the Sky).

I suspect it was Hollywood that put the science fiction back into Superman’s stories. Once relegated to movie serials for kids, the genre had reemerged in popular, critically acclaimed films like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and The War of the Worlds (1953). 

Superman’s Thing, specifically, owed a lot to the 1951 Howard Hawks film The Thing from Another World. The menace there was an extraterrestrial vegetable monster played by James Arness, but in the 1938 story on which the film was based, John W. Campbell’s Who Goes There?, the Thing is an alien shape-shifter from 20 million years ago.

January 1967: Once Upon a Midnight

Writer Gardner Fox paid a double tribute to Edgar Allan Poe in Hawkman 17 (Dec. 1966-Jan. 1967).

In addition to costuming Hawkman’s foe to suggest Poe’s most famous poem, Fox crafted an elaborate, long-term revenge plot that resembles a Poe short story. And a Poe manuscript serves as the tale’s MacGuffin.

On one hot summer night in 195o, in a Midway City tenement, young Eddie Powe sees a raven swoop in through the open window to snatch a bag full of rent money. 

Recognizing the trained bird as the pet of neighborhood bully Joey Makk, Eddie confronts Joey and humiliates him in a fistfight in front of his gang.

The boys shake hands and make up, but Joey is only pretending. Seething with rage, the little sociopath poses as Eddie’s friend for 16 years until he gets the opportunity for an elaborate scheme of revenge.

Eddie, a rare book collector, has discovered a priceless, unknown Poe story that he intends to turn over to Midway City Museum director Carter Hall. That puts Hawkman on the scene when the Raven’s gang tries to steal it. 

In the ensuing confusion, Joey — the Raven — substitutes a fake manuscript for the real one so that Eddie will be denounced as a fraud. 

Hawkman sorts matters out by interviewing Joey’s pet raven, whom Joey had used to spy on Eddie and then freed.

“It’s ironic — that the one good deed Joey Makk did all this life, by freeing his raven, should have backfired to bring about his downfall,” Hawkman muses.

This story offers a classic example of the mirror-image enemy that superheroes so often run into — a bird-costumed crimefighter who can communicate with birds confronting a bird-costumed criminal who also has a rapport with birds.

The Raven resembles an earlier Hawkman foe, the Shrike. He is one of several supervillains who use birds to commit crimes, including Marvel’s Scarecrow and DC’s Penguin.

May 1966: Where the Superboys Are

The superhero mirror-image theme inherent in superhero characters’ archenemies, alter egos and sidekicks is obvious, but the comic books didn’t let the doubling concept rest there. They underlined it repeatedly and directly with robot doubles, parallel worlds, mirror creatures, clones and various other such dopplegangers.

Here, this 1966 house ad for a giant-size issue of Superboy celebrates many of the other superboys he had encountered over the decades — and just scratches the surface, really.

March 1966: Home is the Hunter

Many of Spider-Man’s early foes were animal-themed costumed adventurers, like him. And one of them was a thrill-seeking, macho master of such beasts.

“In all fairness, Amazing Spider-Man 34 isn’t a bad comic by any stretch,” observed the Marvel in the Silver Age blog. “It has some great developments — Peter (Parker) trying to strike up a conversation with Gwen Stacy for the first time and getting knocked back, and the plotline with Betty Brant exiting Peter's life —  but it can only compare poorly with the issues that immediately preceded it (the Master Planner plot). It does, however, bring back an old foe.”

Introduced in Amazing Spider-Man 15 (Aug. 1964), Kraven the Hunter was the orphaned son of Russian aristocrats. Living in Africa for 10 years, Kraven acquired superhuman strength and speed from an herbal potion he stole from a witch doctor in the Belgian Congo. Kraven was inveigled into stalking the superhero by one of Spidey’s first enemies, the Chameleon. Capturing Spider-Man represented a kind of ultimate challenge for the jaded swashbuckler.

“The villains Peter fights in the course of (Steve) Ditko’s Spider-Man stories are almost entirely older men who are inventors or scientists: the Vulture, the Tinkerer, Doctor Doom, the Lizard, the Beetle, and on and on,” observed Douglas Wolk in All the Marvels. “In particular, Doctor Octopus, a hilariously nasty old scientist named Otto Octavius, whose eight-limb motif echoes the spider design, represents the most horrible version of what the Peter Parker we saw in Amazing Fantasy 15 could have become: embittered, lonely, angry, condescending, really creepy about women. Kraven the Hunter isn’t a scientist, but he’s the jock-father sort, macho in a way Peter can’t be, and very much a pro-wrestling type in presentation.”

Kraven’s jungle milieu provided variety for the play of Ditko’s imagination.

“The jungle animals that surrounded Kraven the Hunter as he battled Spider-Man fascinated me,” recalled Jack C. Harris. “(T)hese beasts came to life under Steve’s pencil and pen.”

August 1963: Tarzan of the Robots

Gold Key’s Magnus had a strong, specific moral viewpoint — he thought humanity in the 4th millennium AD was being dangerously weakened by dependence on robots.

And because superhero comics always feature mirror images, his archenemies therefore also had their own moral crusades. Whether pro-robot or anti-robot, they were fanatics.

Magnus Robot Fighter 3 (Aug. 1963) introduced Xyrkol, a super-villain who sported a Hindenburg mustache, a haircut like a Brillo brush and a name that sounded as if it had been coined to peddle some pharmaceutical product. 

Deciding that his scientific genius entitled him to rule the universe, Xyrkol sent a giant robot to trash “NorthAm.” Ever-intrepid Magnus tried to stop the conquering colossus with a super-bomb which barely scarred it. 

Dauntless, Magnus ultimately wrecks Xyrkol’s control center with his steel-smashing strength, using a magnetic tractor-beam to fly into the giant’s eye slot and smash it from within.

“Story-wise, Magnus was one of the better science fiction series in comics — but where it really excelled was in (Russ) Manning’s art,” observed comics historian Don Markstein. “The city of North Am (which covers most of the North American continent in Magnus’s time) is a direct descendant of the futuristic cityscapes of pulp magazine artist Frank R. Paul… But Manning's clean, clear touch made it seem even brighter, more open and airy, than usual.”

Manning, who would also illustrate the adventures of Tarzan and his son Korak for Gold Key, was a natural fit for this technological Tarzan.

Like the Lord of the Jungle, Magnus was also raised in isolation from human society, but his foster parent wasn’t an ape but a robot, 1A, who gave him his sense of mission and superhuman skills.

“Physically perfect and expertly trained in martial arts, Magnus was capable of taking on a steel-plated robot with his bare hands,” Markstein noted. “In addition, 1A had built a device into Magnus's head, enabling him to receive robot-to-robot radio signals.”

The title ran 46 issues.

August 1963: Reflection of a Bat

“I leaned over the sink, closer to my reflection, and stare at myself hard,” wrote Nina LaCour. “I don't know what I see. I don’t even know what I want to see.”

We tend to associate mirrors with the mysteries of human identity, and Batman’s archenemy Mirror-Man exemplified that theme.

Mirror-Man — Floyd Ventris — became pretty well convinced that he’d penetrated the secret of Batman’s identity, and came close, more than once, to proving that the Masked Manhunter was Bruce Wayne.

Apparently as omen-prone as Wayne, Ventris was able to escape from prison using the fragment of a broken mirror to dazzle a guard. 

“I broke a mirror, and it brought me luck!” he thinks. “I’ll do a lot of research on mirrors — because from now on I’m going to use them for crime!” (The Mysterious Mirror-Man, Detective 213, Nov. 1954).

Using a “two-way electronic mirror” to see through Batman’s cowl, the mirror-spectacled criminal only gets ridiculed by his gang when he announces his discovery. 

Batman has defeated him with preemptive PR, having written a newspaper article as Bruce Wayne about ridiculous past occasions when people claimed he was Batman.

Mirror Man’s return in Batman 157 (Aug. 1963) began with a storytelling flourish from writer Bill Finger. Four of the characters — Batman, Batwoman, Vicki Vale and Ventris — were shown considering their images in reflective surfaces.

Mirror-Man’s mirror-themed crimes include the use of reflective billboards and a U.S. Army “solar mirror” and the theft of a giant telescopic mirror intended for installation at the Mt. Malador Observatory. 

Twice, Ventris trapped Batman and Robin in mirrored rooms.

Mirror-Man’s impact was undoubtedly diluted by the fact that he was “reflected” in a contemporaneous Flash super villain.  The Mirror Master, who also employed esoteric mirror tricks, debuted in Flash Comics 105 (Feb.-March 1959).

The first line of Wikipedia’s entry on Mirror Man is, of course: “Not to be confused with Mirror Master.”

April 1963: A Ghost in Space

The space race was on, and citizens had understandable apprehensions about what technology might bring. 

In December 1962, the month before Fantastic Four 13 went on the stands, the U.S.’s robotic probe Mariner 2 flew by Venus, becoming the first spacecraft to successfully transmit data from another planet. 

Two months before that, human civilization had stood right at the brink of destruction in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Fantastic Four 13 (April 1963) felt different, as if it were introducing permanent new elements in its storytelling. 

The members of Marvel’s first super-team were explorers from the start, so it seemed natural that their feature might open itself up into the infinite. And this issue piled on the wonders — a totalitarian mirror image of the FF, a dead civilization on the Moon, an omnipotent overseer from who knows where. 

It was as if the House of Ideas might never run out of them. 

For example, what might a Russian Fantastic Four be like during the Cold War?

Well, artistically working that theme, writer/editor Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby reasoned that a secretive, totalitarian society might produce a team consisting of a single ruthless genius and three apes that would be perfect to serve as his super-powered slaves.

“The Blue Area of the Moon, with an atmosphere all its own, is seen to house the remains of a long-dead civilization,” observed comics historian Don Alsafi. “Most notably, however, the FF first meet The Watcher, member of an immeasurably long-lived race that has been witnessing and recording the myriad pockets of the universe for eons, sworn never to interfere.”

With Steve Ditko inking Kirby, the art conveys a sense of real awe not often seen in comic books. 

After all, the Watcher might be regarded as a variation on the theme of the cosmic Guardians that writer John Broome had introduced to DC’s Green Lantern title. But where artist Gil Kane was elegantly lyrical, Kirby was provocatively portentous.

May 1961: Hawkman in the Himalayas

Hawkman tended to tangle with other man-beasts.

In his first 1960s outing, the revamped Hawkman fought a shapeshifter who could become any animal on Earth or his home planet, Thanagar. 

And in his second appearance (The Brave and the Bold 35, April-May 1961), the Winged Wonder ran into “abominable snowmen” while investigating the Valley of Vanishing Men in the Himalayas.

At the time, the Abominable Snowman or Tibetan Yeti — “(A) mythical monster resembling a large, hairy, ape-like being supposed to inhabit the Himalayas at about the level of the snow line,” according to Britannica — was enjoying a flurry of popularity in articles, movies and comic books.

The first story in the issue pitted the Winged Wonders against scientist-turned-alchemist Mark Mandrill, whose accidental discovery of a compound he calls “Mentachem” provides him with a wand he can use to reshape, transmute or levitate any matter. The Matter Master would return many times.

“Gardner Fox’s Silver Age revival of the Hawkman shows similarities and differences from the original Golden Age Hawkman character, whom he also created,” observed comics historian Michael Grost. “Both go after criminals with a ‘variety of ancient weapons’ … Both characters have a secret identity of Carter Hall. By contrast, the Golden Age Hawkman is not an alien being: he is an ordinary Earth human. Nor does he have all the alien technological devices from Thanagar that the Silver Age Hawkman employs for crime detection.”

Reader Roy Thomas expressed his appreciation for the revival and revamping of the characters on the second Hawkman’s Roost letter page. 

“I’m glad you have changed the characters physically as little as you did, for little improvement could have been made,” Thomas wrote. “One complaint, however, which I feel duty-bound to make as my chief (and practically only) disappointment in the issue — I think Hawkman’s mask greatly needs some wings.” 

By his fourth tryout appearance in The Brave and the Bold 42 (June-July 1962), Hawkman had won his helmet wings.

May 1959: Superman Meets Friend and Foe

Action Comics 252 (May 1959) introduced two enduring characters to the Superman mythos — one a foe and the other a friend (in fact, a cousin).

The first was Metallo, Superman’s kryptonite-powered cyborg enemy. And the second was Supergirl.

“Supergirl arrived on Earth in this story, her origin tale,” noted comics historian Michael E. Grost. “It is structured partly as a mystery: Supergirl arrives astonishingly full blown, complete with costume and a command of English, and Superman asks some very logical questions on how this can be, questions that get equally logical answers.”

Yes, Superman had met various “supergirls” before, but this one was clearly intended to stick around. And outside DC Comics, you’d had Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel’s sister. Introduced in 1942, she was an obvious inspiration for Supergirl.

“The primary function served by women was to resist the romantic advances of the superhero’s alter ego, pine for the superhero, scheme to get close to him, screw things up, get captured by the bad guy and await rescue by the hero,” wrote Bradford W. Wright in Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Your Culture in America. “The exceptions were Hawkgirl (who, despite the implied subordination in her name, served as a fairly equal partner to her husband, Hawkman), Wonder Woman and Superman’s teenage cousin Supergirl. The Supergirl character, in particular, seemed to be a concerted effort to appeal to young girls; her stories were whimsical adventures that also featured Streaky the Supercat and Comet the Superhorse.”

“Superman is also much older than Supergirl. She can represent new ideas, imagination; and he can represent established reality,” Grost observed.

A refugee from Argo City, Supergirl would spend a protracted period as orphan Linda Lee before finally being adopted by the Danvers. 

Oddly enough, Salem Village, the place where the witchcraft hysteria happened, was located five miles from Salem, Massachusetts. It’s gone, and in its place is a town called “Danvers” — a name still associated with certain super-powered women.