November 1962: The Marvel of the Age

Supercar... Supercar...

With beauty and grace,

as swift as can be,

watch it flying through the air.

It travels in space,

or under the sea,

and it can journey anywhere.

Batman’s Batmobile, the Green Hornet’s Black Beauty, James Bond 007’s Aston Martin DB5 (with modifications) — the popular culture of the 1960s was certainly fond of its super vehicles.

Even comedic actor Bob Cummings flew an actual Taylor Aerocar in his CBS sitcom The New Bob Cummings Show (1961-62). One of only six made, the detachable-wing car could be changed into a 110-mile-per-hour aircraft in roughly five minutes.

And let’s not forget the British import Supercar, a Gerry Anderson TV show that premiered in London on Jan. 28, 1961.

“Supercar can function like a hovercraft on land, can travel under the sea — it’s equipped with a periscope and sonar —can fly through the skies, aided by its Clearvu display screen, which allows the pilot to see through clouds and fog, and can journey through space,” wrote comics historian Jeff Rovin.

Based in a Nevada desert lab, daredevil pilot Mike Mercury takes Supercar on sorties to rescue trapped people and thwart global do-badders like Masterspy and Zarin.

I loved the vehicle’s sleek design, which didn’t seem as ridiculous to me as Anderson’s purportedly human marionettes.

In Gold Key’s four issues of Supercar, the wonder-wagon recovers a stolen space capsule, serves as a “magic carpet” in a Middle Eastern exploit, overcomes jungle rebels, frees a submarine trapped in an ice floe, observes a volcanic eruption, soars into space to locate lost satellites, discovers a secret underwater city and battles pirates who raid by hydroplane.

One wonders if Supercar caught the attention of the Stratemeyer Syndicate: 1962’s Tom Swift and His Triphibian Atomicar, a novel in the long-running series published by Grosset & Dunlap, features a highly similar concept. The Atomicar, which can travel on land, water and in the air, even looks like Supercar in Charles Brey’s cover illustration.

October 1960: The Signal in the Sky

Ah, the mysterious, looming Bat-Signal. What a fascination it held for readers.

Batman’s flashy-cool accoutrements — Batmobile, Batplane, Whirly Bats, the Batcave with its massive weird trophies, the ever-so-useful utility belt and especially the Bat-Signal — formed a serious part of his long-term appeal, I think.

Introduced in Detective Comics 60 (Feb. 1942), the Bat-Signal had, of course, been inspired by the Phantom Detective pulp magazine of the 1930s in which a red beacon atop a newspaper skyscraper was used to summon the crime-fighting Phantom. Batman editors Jack Schiff and Mort Weisinger had edited that magazine, and were well aware of the gimmick.

My only disappointment with Batman’s sales-boosting “New Look” in 1964 was the addition of a telephone “Hot Line” to Commissioner Gordon. I thought that undercut the importance of my beloved Bat-Signal.

When the TV show debuted as an instant hit in January 1966, I was pleased to see the producers had been smart enough to include both the Batphone and the Bat-Signal.

Here, in Batman 135 (Oct. 1960), we have one of those rare stories in which the Bat-Signal plays a central role. Criminals summon a super-powered sky creature to battle Batman and Robin using a sorcerer’s lantern as a sort of evil Bat-Signal.

The issue includes one of my favorite sub-series, Alfred’s fictional adventures of the second Batman and Robin team. Dick Grayson has become Batman II, and Bruce Wayne and Kathy Kane’s son has become an earnest, ginger-haired Robin whose inexperience drives the plot.

In the third story, gambling-ring gangster “Wheels” Foster becomes the Wheel, one of those costumed obsessives who were forever being inspired by Batman’s own costumed obsessiveness concerning bats. Like the sorcerer’s lantern, this satisfied the readers’ well-established taste for mirror-image reversal themes.

Meanwhile, that same month over in Detective Comics 284, Robin accuses Batman of being too negative, and he’s right.