It’s all a matter of perspective – Batman Annual #9
It was the painted, “real”-looking cover that made this book memorable when I was a kid (Ed Hannigan handled the pencils, while John Totleben worked the paints). The Batman’s four faces (clockwise from the top left, I’d label them as Serious, Sad, Pensive and Pissed) drew my attention, but I can’t honestly say that I remembered anything from any of the stories until I reread this issue recently. There are four short tales within, and each corresponds to a “face,” or aspect, of Batman’s character. They don’t necessarily match up with the faces on the cover, but whatever.
Of the four faces, I enjoyed the last, “The Man,” the best (though the third has a cool Agatha Christie-like denouement, with all the suspects gathered for the big reveal of the murderer — you almost expect Batman to have a waxed moustache like Poirot). “Perspectives!” is a Rashomon-inspired trip through a small incident in Batman’s crime-fighting career — a hospital fire and a confrontation with an armed hood. We get different accounts of it from a doctor, a young boy patient (on Tiny Tim crutches, no less), the thug, and the Caped Crusader himself.
The doctor remembers the surprising gentleness displayed by this forbidding vigilante:
A little boy (Ralphie), with all the imagination and self-aggrandizement of youth, remembers things a bit differently. Batman is nothing less than a super-powered avenging angel, taking care of business with a little help from Ralphie himself:
And, in case we were doubting Ralphie’s connection to the big guy, he adds a last cherry-on-top fib:
The criminal, who wanted to torch the records-room because of a large bill of his, remembers an easily-bested milquetoast of a Batman:
And he’s only undone by bad luck:
And, of course, there’s the memory of Bruce Wayne:
The story wraps up with a nice character beat for Alfred:
Mike W. Barr, who wrote the four different chapters of this annual, did an excellent job with these stories, and Paul Smith’s art on this final effort had some nice touches — his depiction of the “cowardly” Batman has subtle but effective flourishes, and contrasts with the earlier exaggerated physique seen through the eyes of a child. Viewing this one event through the vantages of two people whose recollections we trust (the doctor, Batman) and two whose (differently motivated) self-promtion renders them unreliable (Ralphie, the thug) gives us some insight into Batman and his impact on the life of Gotham. Even the “fantastic” elements (though it’s all fantasy if you’re a stickler) of the unreliable stories are instructive on how he’s perceived by the different strata of the city.
The more I think about this one, the more I like it. Good stuff.
I don’t think dairy is making all that much of a contribution here – Superman’s “Got Milk?”
Shouldn’t it be “Got Yellow Sun?”
I’m reminded of a scene in the 1978 Christopher Reeve Superman, which had THE MOST OBVIOUS PRODUCT PLACEMENT EVER. Ma Kent, while preparing breakfast, put a giant box of Cheerios on the kitchen table, right in the center of the camera frame. Its shoehorning into the scene (according to the commentary from director Richard Donner on the DVD) was the brainchild of the the producers, the Salkinds, who were trying to make money off that movie every way that they could.
Granted, the Cheerios box bit wasn’t in the original theatrical cut, but it was inserted into both the ABC extended broadcast (a VHS tape of that broadcast became my “definitive version” of the film) and into the 2001 DVD release. Believe you me, my young mind understood the implications of that placement.
Milk and Cheerios — a winning combination.
The Ghost Who Clings to the Sides of Planes – The Phantom #44
I grew up reading the Phantom’s comic strip in the newspaper while I was being driven to school (The Plattsburgh Press-Republican was the paper, FYI), and I remember liking very much those serialized adventures. I also watched the Defenders of the Earth show, which co-starred The Ghost Who Walks:
If you look at that clip, you’ll likely have the same reaction that everyone else who watches it has — “Lothar?”
Unfortunately, this comic lacks the vim of the black-and-white daily stories. The stories within are wooden and sterile despite their lush jungle settings. Its main merit comes from the sequence teased on the cover and illustrated by Charlton’s MVP, Pat Boyette. In a two-page spread, the Phantom channels both the outlandish kick-assery of Jack Bauer and the clinging-to-the-hoods-of-moving-vehicles ability of T.J. Hooker. Enjoy!:
Just in case you don’t get the T.J. Hooker reference, here’s the intro to that old Shatner-infused show — the pertinent bits of action are about twenty and forty-eight seconds in:
The Phantom manages a pretty nice facsimile (though this story was published before the show, so I suppose he may very well have originated this maneuver), but he loses some style points by not keeping a hairpiece glued to his head.
I didn’t stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but I am wearing cheap denim – Lee Jeans Ad
Lee Jeans make young boys into real life cowboy sleuths, or so this ad would seem to indicate. Two observations about this thing. First, Lee (hey…) says that the brand he discovers the rustlers using isn’t a “double diamond.” Um, yeah it is, Lee. Isn’t that the whole point? And second, how dumb does Uncle Frank have to be to have an X as his brand? Isn’t he just asking to have his cattle rustled? Keep smoking your pipe, Uncle Frank.
Hulk hate having hair like Moe Howard! – Tales to Astonish #88
In earlier posts I’ve noted my general loathing of the Sub-Mariner, and, though I’ve softened a little bit on the guy, I still shy away from buying Tales to Astonish issues with him on the cover. It’s a visceral, instinctive reaction, but one that I can usually overcome because, well, I can’t resist buying old ****ing comics. I love them. And I’m still pleasantly surprised by some of the things that I discover inside of them.
More on the pleasant surprise when I get to the Hulk story. First, a few words about the Namor installment, “A Stranger Strikes from Space!” by Stan Lee and Bill Everett. After battling his undersea nemesis, Attuma, and sending him away to lick his wounds (can you lick wounds underwater?), a passing alien spaceship has an “oops” moment and accidentally drops an unstoppable robot into Namor’s corner of the ocean:
It sort of looks like the original Iron Man armor. Kind of? Maybe?
Attuma’s the first one to come across it, and he and his minions battle it while Namor watches on his underwater spy equipment. He’s so into his voyeurism he repels feminine wiles and punctuates the rejection with his catchphrase (which never seems to be used appropriately — kind of like how Ron Burgundy couldn’t quite get the usage of “When in Rome…” down pat in Anchorman):
Attuma manages to subdue the machine and reprogram it, and at the end of this chapter it stands poised to raze Atlantis. Uh-oh…
Enough of that. Here’s what the pleasant surprise was — the artist on the Hulk story:
Gil “Sugar” Kane. Ha ha, Stan. I suppose I knew that Kane did some work on Hulk stories at this time, but I guess I’ve never stumbled across any until now. Or I just forgot. One or the other. Whatever the case, I very much like what Kane did with the Hulkster.
So what did he and Stan Lee treat us to in “Boomerang and the Brute!”?
After defeating the Hulk-Killer, ol’ Greenskin is besieged by spectators and the media with their flashing cameras (much like King Kong). Watching on television is the leader of the free world:
At first I thought that was Nixon, mainly due to the style of the receding hairline, and I was a bit confused because I thought that this issue was published a couple of years before Dick was elected. It’s Johnson, though, as we’ll see clearly in a sec. Maybe they should have shown him talking to his aides while he sat on the can — that would have cleared things up.
Anyway, a brightly costumed villain named Boomerang gets Hulk all riled up:
Hulk (predictably) flies off the handle, smashes stuff, pimp-slaps Rick Jones, and then jumps off. Par for the course. Then General Ross gets a message (proving who the President was):
Do you think Ross is going to give Hulk the benefit of the doubt? Neither do I.
Boomerang confronts Hulk, but can’t match his power. He tries a different non-physical stratagem:
Boomerang bursts a dam to drown him, but Hulk still has enough strength to crush this guy’s rocket packs. Then there’s this last page, where Kane’s art really comes alive. I love this sequence, as Boomerang’s ploy goes horribly awry and he’s undone by his own boomeranging (hey…) dirty deeds:
The look on Boomerang’s face in the third panel is so great.
It’s a real treat to see Kane working with one of my favorite characters at the peak of Marvel’s Silver Age might. His articulate style and detailed inks are a contrast to other (equally talented) artists in the Marvel Bullpen from those days, and if his work isn’t better, it at least has the merit of being different. I’m not the biggest Kane fan in the world, but I really like his stuff here. A lot.
Kane Smash!!!
Legends I had never heard of – Spalding Basketball Ad
The great Jack Davis, primarily of Mad fame, illustrated this nifty little ad. I can remember seeing it in the books I read when I was little (in the mid-80’s), long after some of the stars listed at the end had left the scene. I was a huge basketball fan (Magic Johnson was my main man), and I knew Dr. J, but I had absolutely no idea who the *bleep* Rick Barry was. Being a lanky, gangly white guy myself, perhaps I should have taken some inspiration from him.
The caricature of Barry in this ad reminds me a lot of the Harrison Ford caricatures that I’d see in Mad and Cracked back in the 80’s. Maybe it’s just me…
How did they know what the Blog into Mystery headquarters looks like? – Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #127
I’ll grant that Jimmy’s pad looks like a complete dump, but you really can’t blame the sock hanging out of the drawer on the slumlord.
This book has two stories in it. The second, which finds Jimmy traveling back to Revolutionary War times but not actually traveling back to Revolutionary War times, is so preposterous, the presence of a man in red and blue tights flying around is the most plausible element.
Let’s just stick to the cover story.
Brought to us by Leo Dorfman, Curt Swan and George Roussos, “The Secret Slumlord of Metropolis!” has Jimmy becoming Metropolis’ version of Jacob Riis and uncovering the squalor of that great cities’ less gleaming districts:
The first thing that Jimmy “uncovers” is Terry, a hot babe who doesn’t really fit in with the run down surroundings. She takes him on a tour of her decrepit building, and some of the nigh-unbelievable depths that many of her neighbors have been driven to:
Jimmy starts work on his big exposé, but Perry White proves to be a bit cowardly as an editor:
I guess we should be thankful that Ben Bradlee was made of sterner stuff back in the Watergate era.
Jimmy keeps working on his investigation, and he moves into another ramshackle tenement. When he hears a woman scream across the alley, he leaps into action:
I don’t know what the most ridiculous part of that is — his ziplining between buildings, Terry’s nonchalant reaction to a man crawling in through her bathroom window, or Jimmy expecting us (or himself — to thine own self be true) to believe that he didn’t know Terry lived across from him and that he wasn’t planning to do a little peeping Rear Window-style.
Jimmy and Terry’s friendship grows, and Jimmy keeps working and putting up with his terrible surroundings. It’s only when he discovers roaches crawling all over his food that he activates the ol’ wristwatch:
This doesn’t seem to be the best use of that privilege.
Superman tells Jimmy that he’s on his own with this case (maybe he’s a little peeved at being Jimmy’s personal Orkin man), and young Olsen soon finds himself in over his head and abducted by the slumlord’s thugs. Speaking of heads, they wreak the ultimate indignity upon him:
As a man who’s sported the Yul Brynner look for many years, my advice to Jimmy would be to relax. It’ll grow back if you want it to. But Jimmy doesn’t take to his knew look, and apparently sends away to the William Shatner Hairpiece Repository for some new locks:
“Just trim that toupee, baby!” What, is he Frank Sinatra now?
Jimmy ultimately gets his revenge and exposes the slumlord (with a little help from Superman), and in the end he gets a nice little tribute for all his efforts:
Sometimes I roll my eyes at Silver Age silliness, but the Jimmy Olsen books get a pass — it all seems to work in them. Maybe it’s Jimmy’s Archie-like looks. I don’t know. There’s one thing that I am sure of, and that’s that it’s always a pleasure to read a story with Curt Swan’s art. Great stuff. I recently picked up a nice pile of Jimmy Olsen books, and I hope to highlight more of them in the weeks and months ahead — spaced out a bit, of course. I have a lot of fun with them.
“Just trim that toupee, baby!” Classic. That line reminds me of something — while in law school I clerked in a prosecutor’s office, and one time I was reading a police report (one of many I had to sift through in that job) about a domestic altercation between a man and his girlfriend. What set off this dustup? The “gentleman” got fed up with his woman and, apparentley not satisfied with the quality of his cornrows, screamed out “Bitch, braid my hair!” Much ugliness ensued.
Be careful, Jimmy.
Shattered bones and month-long coma not included – The Further Adventures of Evel Knievel
I can see having an action figure and motorcycle that you can jump off of things, and Mr. Knievel’s persona was certainly well-suited for those activities. Just watching this commercial for these doohickeys makes me want to build some ramps on my living room floor:
It’s the items in the lower right-hand corner that are a bit odd. Mine rescue? Arctic wilderness? Jungle explorer? Huh? I can understand the impulse to “expand the brand,” but those things might have been a bridge too far.
I’ll say this for Knievel — he had a set of balls. Here’s the Caesars Palace crash that made him famous, and it’s not for that faint of heart, especially if you don’t want to see a man’s legs flopping around grotesquely:
I say again — jungle explorer? “Dr. Knievel, I presume.”
I can be a mean bastard, but this cover makes even my icy heart thaw a bit – M-G-M’s Lassie #31
Awwww. I mean, really…
Awwww.
And a big thanks to the mysterious “Suzie” who affixed her signatute to this wonderful cover (from artist Mo Gollub — what a name — who did so many classic painted covers from this era).
Sadly, there’s no Lassie rescue of a drowning fawn in any of the stories inside. Instead we find the world’s most famous dog fighting evil in South America and at one point even racing a train(!). Lassie might not be more powerful than a locomotive or faster than a speeding bullet, but she seems to be faster than a locomotive. I guess that counts for something.
I didn’t scan anything from any of the Lassie stories. They’re a little stiff, and it’s hard to build a lot of drama with a character that just stands around most of the time and has dialogue like “Ruff!” and “Awoo!” Seeing Lassie stalking around, smelling things and warning of danger appears to be best suited to the realm of the moving picture.
I did, however, enjoy a brief four-page story towards the back of the book that’s Lassie-less. Check it out for yourself — it stars a black panther. Not the T’Challa brand, but the real thing:
I also liked the Dell “Pledge to Parents” on the inside of the back cover:
You won’t find any of the pederastic undercurrents of Batman and Robin in a Dell book!
Finally, here’s an ad for a Schwinn bicycle (a Phantom — oooh!):
I like how it’s advertised that it can carry luggage. When I read “luggage,” I think steamer trunks, not the books and baseball mitts that might have been lugged around on one of these.
Man, that’s a cute cover.
What’s a kid to do nowadays? – Fun Factory Junk
Comics don’t seem like comics without an ad for the various accoutrements of juvenilehood. I myself had several of these stupid things: the clacking teeth, the black soap, and a device that brought endless amusement for me and visiting friends, a whoopee cushion. The whoopee cushion may be the greatest invention in the history of humankind. It’s wonderful. I remember mine making the most spectacularly disgusting sounds you could ever possibly imagine, to the horror of my poor mother and the guffaws of my father.
The one thing that strikes me as sort of weird in this ad (well, it’s all weird, but you get the picture) is the “fake cast” in the lower left-hand corner. It sounds like something Milhouse Van Houten would use to “score some pity.” Odd.
Kevin Sorbo was the best that they could find to play this guy? Really? – Kull the Destroyer #13
I always think of Kull as a low-rent substitute for Conan. I couldn’t be more off-base with that historically — Kull was actually Robert E. Howard’s forerunner of the more famous barbarian, and Conan’s first story was a reworking of a rejected Kull tale. It’s sort of like those people who were born too late for the Beatles and thought that they were just cheap knockoffs of the Monkees.
I figured it would be a kind of justice to take a look at a Kull comic on this blog before I tackled a Conan story. So here we go.
“Torches of Hell!” comes to us from Steve Englehart, Mike Ploog and Al Milgrom, and finds the Kull-ster a fugitive, having been deposed from his throne in a previous issue. One of his old courtiers finds him and tells him of the troubles the new ruler has brought to Kull’s former kingdom. It turns out that the usrper is actually the evil wizard Thulsa Doom in disguise, and his arbitrary rule is corrupting Kull’s old holdings.
This does not sit well with Kull.
With Brule, a muscular ally whose physique, along with Kull’s, would seem to indicate that anabolic steroids were easily obtained in olden times, he sneaks into his former capital and uses hidden tunnels to access the palace. There he confronts Doom, who unleashes the pocket Balrog from the cover:
Thank whatever gods Kull worships that Brule tagged along, because he thinks outside of the prehistory box to figure out a way to beat this thing:
The flammable liquid causes the fire creature to burn itself up. Memo to Batman — Add some perfume to your utility belt.
After this debacle, “stealth” is no longer an option. Kull and Brule hightail it out of the city, beating up several guards along the way, and the story ends with Kull contemplating the dismal failure of their mission:
This was sort of a fun issue to read, but I want a little more blood and guts in my Kull (and Conan) stories. I know that was hard to do in comics of this period, but still… I want some “Conan the Librarian” style cleaving:
Is that too much to ask?
I’d like to take a moment, if I may, and deconstruct the logic in this old ad. So a giant chunk of kryptonite landed on Earth, and the good guys got to it and sequestered it before it could be put to any nefarious use. Okay. I’m with them so far. But the next step in the plan is to break that one giant rock into a million pieces and then disperse that kryptonite across the globe for safekeeping? Not to worry, though, ’cause the kryptonite will only be sent to “friends” of the Man of Steel. And apparently the only qualification you need to be a friend of the big guy is to mail in the coupon with the appropriate moolah for the amount of the stuff that you want.
I have a feeling Lex Luthor would have mailed in a lot of those coupons. He would have been like Adam Sandler with the pudding coupons in Punchdrunk Love.
I’m kind of curious as to what this “kryptonite” actually looked like. I can remember a little bit of kryptonite that came with a Super-Friends accessory called the Lex-Soar 7 that I had back when I was a kid — that was just a little green plastic bauble.
And are they using “Kryptonite Rocks!!” in the “chunks of kryptonite” sense, or in the “kryptonite is awesome” sense? I’m thinking it’s the former, but these are the inane sorts of conundrums that keep me up at night.
A while back I looked at one of Charlton’s romance books. It’s time for another foray into this pink-hued realm, and this go around we’ll tackle a Silver Age effort from our friends at DC.
A couple of notes on this cover from John Rosenberger… First, there’s flesh aplenty with this trio. ‘Nuff said. Second, I like the postures of the two young ladies. The brunette’s twisted stance is a nice reflection of her stated anguish, and the blonde’s submission to her man is accentuated by that left arm hanging down. They’re nice touches from the artist. Even a pig like myself can appreciate them.
Now for the interior.
Our first story, “Cindy the Salesgirl” (pencils from Jack Sparling), has a shrewy little tart browbeating her sartorially deficient boyfriend into changing his looks:
She immediately takes him shopping to update his attire. Each outfit is more preposterous than the next, but the people in the story seem to think that they’re just swell, so whatever:
Apparently she wants him to look like Sherlock Holmes.
Thankfully, there’s some comeuppance for this nagging wench — she’s made him irresistible!:
Story number two, “Shadow of Love,” is a turgidly narrated affair. A young girl falls in love with an older man (boy), though they look to be in the same age group to me. The whole thing is replete with him telling her she should find someone her own age and her gnashing her teeth. To wit:
The story revolves around her leaving town, and her older(?) boyfriend not wanting to say goodbye, but coming to say goodbye anyway, and… you know what? I don’t really care. Here’s the last page if you’re curious how these two leave things, and please note the clunky narration:
Need some relationship advice? Here’s Julia Roberts to answer all your queries — no, not that Julia Roberts:
“Don’t Throw Your Love Away!” is the closer. The brunette, Nancy, a girl of modest means, is jealous of the blonde, Susan, because Susan has everything:
Nancy’s “from the wrong side of the tracks,” and in case you missed that, we’re reminded of it on the very next page, after she fantasizes that she’s the rich girl:
Things change quickly. Susan is impressed with an oral report that Nancy gives (that sounds perverted), and soon the two are the best of friends. Nancy’s completely taken in by her more affluent classmate. There follows a dangerous tamping down of Nancy’s own wants and needs for the benefit of her new friend — she denies herself a boy’s affections because he’s Susan’s beau, and she gives up on getting the lead in the school play so Susan will win the role. She really goes 180 degrees in this relationship.
That summer, after graduation, they go to Susan’s summer place on the lake, and bikini-clad cavorting ensues:
Susan falls for a boy named Bill and tells Nancy all about it, and then one day, while swimming alone, Nancy meets her own man. She falls in love in mere minutes, but that’s all before she learns his name — Bill! She immediately tells him that their love can’t be, that he belongs with Susan, and she runs away. Later she sees him with Susan, and she prays that Nancy won’t realize how much she cares for Bill.
But wait — this Bill is Susan’s cousin Bill. Susan’s boyfriend Bill is a different Bill. Do you follow that? Good.
Nancy explains what happened, and why she acted the way she did — Susan has done so much for her (I’d argue that things are actually the reverse, but okay) and she couldn’t do anything that might hurt Susan. Then Susan brings us full circle:
“The wrong side of the tracks” again. Was that phrase just invented when this comic was written? Was its freshness the reason it was so overused in this story?
Anyway, it all ends with one of the Bills saying what would be on any red-blooded heterosexual male’s mind:
This last story was rather interesting — and I’m not sure about the message in coveys. Selflessness is one thing, slavish devotion is another. At the outset I thought it was going to turn into a Single White Female stalk-fest, but I guess that’s just my modern sensibilities imposing themselves.
And one final note — See if you can tell me which of these ads, both of which I scanned from this comic, doesn’t belong in a romance book:
I’m not saying that girls wouldn’t want to go fishing, but it seems that the demographics for that ad are a little outside the romance audience’s purview. It’s kind of like seeing a Tampax commercial during Monday Night Football.
And, as always, if you want more romance comics, head over to Sequential Crush. Tell Jacque I sent you.
I guess this means that Jay Leno has teamed up with the Masters of Evil – The Avengers #239
This is one of those “wacky” Assistant Editors’ Month issues that Marvel published back in the day. Besides the obvious attraction of the guest-star here, there’s the old Silver Age DC chess board pattern and logo at the top of this cover — that may be my favorite part of this one.
So how do the Avengers wind up of the old Late Night with David Letterman show? Why, Wonder Man, of course. In “The Late Night of the Super-Stars!,” from Roger Stern, Al Milgrom and Joe Sinnott, the Avengers’ resident pretty boy schedules the appearance to bolster his own career, and Vision enlists some of the lesser lights of the team to make the appearance alongside him — Beast, Hawkeye, Black Widow and the Black Panther. I happen to love the state of undress Natasha Romanoff is in when she gets the call:
Why can’t I have a sight like that outside my apartment windows? On one side of my place I can look out and see green grass. On the other, a parking lot and dumpsters. Life just isn’t fair, is it?
On to the show.
Dave warms up the crowd before welcoming the heroes:
And Paul Shaffer shows off his fanboy cred:
The appearance goes okay, and the Beast drops a bombshell on everyone:
Before that news can sink in, things start going haywire — cameras and other machines start attacking the Avengers. An old foe, Fabian Stankowicz, a mechanical genius whom the Avengers have bested before, has rigged them to wreak havoc, and he exploits the resulting confusion to seize the spotlight:
All of his devices are clever and unbeatable, but when it’s revealed that there’s a force field around Fabian, he unwittingly gives Dave an idea:
Dave metes out some sweet justice with his old giant doorknob and strikes a pretty nice hero pose:
With the machines depowered, the Avengers take them out quite easily. Sadly, Dave didn’t knock any over with a flying blue index card.
Later, back at Avengers Mansion, the always preening Wonder Man waits for his moment in the spotlight, but… :
Duty never rests.
This is an extremely fun issue, and it’s kind of a trip down memory lane with Letterman on his old, far zanier NBC show. Granted, those are pretty hazy memories for me since I was too young to be staying up that late back then, but I do remember seeing it a few times. And this guest shot certainly ended better for him than it did for his doppleganger (David “Endochrine”) in The Dark Knight Returns.
Oh, and here’s some of the “Camping with Barry White” bits that Dave mentioned in his monologue above:
“Suck out the poison.” Now that’s funny.
Robin stole my thunder – Batman and Robin Magnet Figurines
Robin, your wit never ceases to amaze me.
Take a gander here if you want to see a few good shots of what this Batman Mego figure looked like (with kind of a weird bat symbol on his chest).
I have to say, I wouldn’t mind lashing one of these on to my refrigerator, to go with my three year old Washington Nationals schedule and Marvin the Martian magnet. You know, to hold up the Chinese take-out menus from joints that closed down many moons ago.
Jared
blog into mystery 