Just Why WAS Doll Man Popular?

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Doll Man was one of literally hundreds of costumed mystery men, women and superheroes that sprang up from 1939 to 1941 after the success of Superman at National Periodical Publications (DC Comics).

His super ability was, after drinking an untested formula, the power to concentrate and shrink to only 6 inches in height while maintaining his full size strength, or gaining the strength of 20 men, the details kept changing over the years, perhaps it was that having the strength of 20 men and being only 6 inches tall meant he just had his regular seized might, it’s not like comics were ever a media good at setting parameters and staying with them.

Whatever the case Doll Man, written mainly at first by Will Eisner, with art by Lou Fine, (there would be many others over the years) entered the market place to vie for the dimes of the comic book buying public and compete against all the other superheroes out being published at the time from Batman, to The Challenger and Dr. Mid-Night to Wonder Woman and Zero the Ghost Detective.

And for some reason the adventures of Darrell Dane Doll Man "The World's Mightiest Mite,” his girlfriend Martha Roberts, her father Dr. Roberts and occasionally Elmo the Wonder Dog, where a hit.

                                               From Doll Man's first adventure in Feature Comics # 27

While most of the other masked and super-powered characters quickly faded from the scene, Doll Man hung on, outlasting even characters that are better known today, such as Captain America and the original Green Lantern, both of whom had lost their audience after a seven or eight year run and who would not regain their popularity until being retooled in the 60s, as the hundreds of other super-doers went away Doll Man, and later Martha Roberts as Doll Girl, stayed on for 14 full years of continued publication in two different comics.

So what was it what put him in a league with such other long lasting characters as Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Captain Marvel, and Plastic Man? The only others to remain popular for more than a dozen years, I have no earthly idea.

Many psychiatrists, who do it seems dearly love to reduce genres to appallingly simplistic secret meanings for their popularity, i.e. `people read science fiction because they are afraid of the future,’ (bunk! What about the sense of wonder? But I digress) lump the superhero genre into being about power fantasies.

I would have to say that Doll Man pretty much knocks that one down. His power is the ability to shrink down to 6 inches in height, at which point he dashes out in a costume that look like gym togs with a cape and pixy boots! His mainly weakness being the possibility he might get trod on? Seriously Ant-Man and Bouncing Boy come off with more of their dignity intact.

And yet for 14 years people bought his adventures while ignoring or dropping other more conventionally macho super men, and he would have perhaps continued for even longer if Doll Man’s publisher Quality Comics hadn’t stopped publishing in 1954.

                                             Good for you, now shut up, set down and calm yourself.

I’m hoping the reason for that longevity it was not one of the subtle, but still noticeable, things that set Doll Man apart from other comics on the stands at the time. The fact that Doll Man, and later Doll Girl, seemed to spend a lot time on the covers tied up.

Sure, what superhero or superheroine didn’t spend at least a little time hogtied and under treat from some villain?

Doll Man seemed to make a specialty of it, at least on the covers, and the covers were the only advertising comics got back then. I’m not saying it might mean that a large percentage of our grandparents and parents  were budding adherents of the B&D scene, I’m just saying he spent a lot of time conspicuously tied up, and the sales were good, otherwise the adventures were all pretty innocuous, though his co-feature in Doll Man Comics, pin-up artist Bill Ward’s Torchy Todd the Blonde Bombshell, did at times push the boundaries, but as at the time at least one third of all comic sales were in Army PXs they were perhaps just selling to the audience they perceived themselves to have.

Whatever the reason for Doll Man’s popularity, he was gone in 1954, while the rights to the character where brought by DC Comics they never really found a use for him, and while versions have appeared here and there in their comics over the years, his heyday is long gone, it’s reason for being perhaps lost in the alternate world that was the 1940s.  

Silver-Age Image Miscellanea

A random pick of some images from some Silver-Age comics.

From Superman # 282 Dec. 1974, after being depicted for around 20 years as always wearing what looked gray prison garb they gave Lex Luthor his own costume, this is its first appearance. This however would only last until he was remade into the uber evil businessman in the 80s.

Have to admit the Silver-Age drab wear did seem to show he came into the game expecting to lose, showing up already dressed for a return to jail and all.

The Atom vs. the Bat Knights

From The Atom # 22 Dec. 1965, with pencils by Gil Kane and inks by Sid Greene, I’ve altered the picture taking out the dialog balloon to emphasize the art more.

How sharper than a robot serpent’s fang

Scene from Magnus Robot Fighter 4000 A.D. #28 Nov. 1969, again with dialog removed, Magnus has to fight Free Will Robot 1-A, the robot that raised him from a pup and taught him all his robot kung-fu skills, 1-A attacking was like Alfred coldcocking Batman after bringing in lunch to the Bat-Cave. Magnus still kicks his titanium tookus breaking him, good thing for 1-A he also taught “man-child”  robot repair so he was able to bring him back and fix the evil machinations of the villain who hacked him, it, 1-A, whatever.

All Your Bases Are Ours!

Makkar the Ancient from Hawkman # 12Aug. 1966, Who seems to have the Earth on the ropes in a story by Gardner Fox, with art by Murphy Anderson that really impressed my 11 year old self.

The Horror, the horror...

And something from the Adventures of Jerry Lewis that really frightened my 13 year old self two years later. Part of a series one page items that someone thought was a good idea.

 

Lastly from the first appearance of Hawk & Dove from the Jun. Showcase # 75, 1968.

Seriously I don’t think Ditko could come within a thousand miles of depicting the mindset of a conscientious objector if they let him have 600 issues to try and pull it off, and not just the 7 these two appeared in. His `war hawk’ Hawk wasn’t much better, perhaps if he had made both them self-righteous Objectivists it would have come across better… no… probably not.

Whatever the case, it kind of looks like Don Hall here is secretly enjoying his fall a little too much! (note super-underoo partial mishap)

Auto-erotic getting tossed off a roof by a bad guy, Is that a thing? I hope not.

The 6 Long Lasting Originals

In the Golden Age there were a LOT of superheroes and mystery men introduced, hundreds really, and they almost all went just as quickly away.

Even some still around today (mostly in other forms,) such as Green Lantern, The Flash, and Captain America, only lasted 8 or 9 years.

There were a few they tried to revive in the 50’s, such as the Commie fighting Cap and Sub-Mariner that lasted for all of 4 issues, but for the most part even the famous fell by the wayside before they could make it to 10 years.

Many of these characters that were introduced, or remade and reintroduced in the Silver Age of the 60’s, such as the space traveling version of Green Lantern, and the red suited Flash are still around today after more than 40 years, but despite the same names these were really new characters.

However of the originals from the Golden Age starting the 40s there were only six who generated the interest to last 13 years or more, still published even with the bottom falling out of interest in the superhero genre in the mid 40s, and the rise of Horror, Western, War, & Romance comics, and anti-comic campaigns at the start of the 50s.

Those six were Superman & Lois, Batman & Robin, Wonder Woman, The Marvels, Plastic-Man and Doll-Man & Doll-Girl.

I imagine some deep psychological truth can be discerned from the reason those six stayed so popular for so long, I’ve read speculation that Superman was so popular because he was somehow perceived by the public on a subconscious level as the embodiment of the New Deal Era in one persona, at the time heroic female figures in popular media were thin on the ground so that explains Wonder Woman, and Batman… well is Batman, Plastic-man ran on the power of Jack Cole’s creativity, the Marvel family was fun, and back then superheroes were allowed to be fun. As for Doll-Man… you tell me, I guess it was something in the era he was sailing along on, and whatever that was seems to be gone now, because while they have half-heartedly tried to bring him back, they just can’t bring themselves to really try.

Today of course Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are still going and doing quite well, and there are versions of Cap, Cap Jr. Mary Marvel and Plas at DC, but more out of sheer stubbornness on their part than real popularity, as for Doll-Man and Doll-Girl? Well sure, what’s not to love about two people whose sole ability is being able to shrink themselves down to six inches in height so they can go charging into battle on the back of a Great Dane? I mean it worked from 1940 to 1953.

I guess you had to be there. 

Why do the giants stay so small?

In the 70 + year history of the comic book there have been a lot of superheroes and heroines and as such superpowers tend to get reused at lot.


And yet for some reason we see few who have the ability to increase their mass and height, which I think is a little odd what with giants being such a part of myth and fairy tales, two cousins of the comic book, and yet when it comes to star characters they are few and far between.


In the Golden Age there was the Green Giant, which lasted for all of one issue before he left the business and got into frozen peas, while in the 60’s we have Elasti-Girl in the Doom Patrol, who is one of the few supers to die and not come back, Colossal Boy, lost among the crowd of other supers in the Legion of Superheroes, and then there is the whole Hank Pym / Ant-Man / Giant-Man along with all the Goliaths that came after him to be ignored and forgotten quickly at Marvel.


Not an A or B list hero in the bunch.


I wonder why that is.

TRUEVISION!

Lately it seems you can’t go to the theater to see a movie without having to deal… err enjoy… no I’m going with deal, with it being in 3-D.

Love it or hate it, and I personally am one who hates that trend, but that’s not what this is about.

This is not the first era to contract that particular contagion. There was a short flirtation with it back in the early 50s that at the time even roped in such people as Alfred Hitchcock (Dial M for Murder), who really should have known better, and John Wayne (Hondo), which explains why in it’s now exclusively 2-D prints the Duke spends so much time throwing punches directly at the camera, and why so many of the actors playing Indians do so much time jumping right at us.

At the same time this was going on in the movie houses, the comics also produced their share of 3-D comics, with the Three Stooges and Mighty Mouse being two of the first character so treated.

The problem was that in comics the red / green separation needed for the 3-D effect used at the time meant those were the only colors that could be used making the comic, so that when viewed without the glasses they looked just horrid. So that died out even faster than it did at the local Bijou.

However there was one company that made a try at striking balance and producing something like 3-D, but without the glasses and with the full color that American comic book fans demanded.

The company was American Comics Group, or ACG, most noted, along with the distinct style given their comics by their main contributors Ogden Whitney, Kurt Schaffenberger, for publishing `Adventures into the Unknown’, the first comic book devoted to the horror genre, and one of comicdoms oddest characters, Herbie Popnecker.

Their experiment was something they called Truevision “3-D effect No Glasses - Full Color!”

Appearing in seven issues of Adventures into the Unknown, and two issues each of teen comedy comics The Kilroys and Cookie in 1953, this consisted of letting characters and objects slip out of the restraints of the then universally restrictive comics panels and out into the area surrounding them, which instead of being white was now died black, at the same time they had the artists render the background less distinct, like something seen at a distance, while the colorist saw to it that only the close-up main characters were in full color, while the hazy backgrounds where rendered mainly in pastel blues, yellows and off whites.

Compared to the other comic on the stands at the time it was unique, the 50s however was not a time that very much welcomed “unique” and Truevision was gone before 1953 was, leaving it an interesting experiment that made so little impact that the few comics that feature it aren’t even all that more collectable than the average ACG comic of the time, that is to say, not very.

                                           Click pictures to enlarge for that full 3-D effect!

Still at the time it was a bold move by the small company, and was perhaps rather too ahead of its time. I mean just pick up some of the comics today, and there you have limbs and objects flying hither and yon all over the black based backgrounds. Truevision it seems, even if no one would call it that, lives on. 

                                Justice League Dark #6, copyright DC Comics 2012

The Challenger

From the very start of comic books there have been ones that had a theme, detectives, romance, funny animals, science fiction, horror, etc, in 1948 however a rather unique one came on the scene.

Called The Challenger, it was the only thing published by The Interfaith Committee Of The Protestant Digest, Inc and it's mission statement, as spelled out in the first issue, was that it would be “a magazine pledged to fight race prejudice, discrimination and all other forms of fascism in North America."

Featuring artwork by the likes of E.C. Stoner, one of the few African-American comic books artists at the time, Bob Fujitani and a 19 year old Joe Kubert, the comic featured the adventures of Bill Day, who Having, along with thousands of other Americans, participated in taking down fascism in Europe is dishearten on returning home to find that it is alive, well and active in the States.

Deciding to do something about it he calls himself the Challenger and travels the nation fighting American Fascists, race haters, union busters, and hate mongers. He also creates the Challenger Club to bring like minded people come together for his cause. Having no special skills or abilities The Challenger just shows up where he finds himself needed and keeps at it until he makes a difference. At the conclusion of which he makes a speech.

As was the case with other prejudice fighting heroes of the time (see DC comics Johnny Everyman and Fawcett's Radar the International Policeman) The Challenger shunned a superhero type costume and instead wore a snap-brim fedora and trench coat, however unlike many mystery men of the time he was not adverse to carrying heat, with his adventures usually featuring at least one running gun battle with the forces of bigotry.

Along with The Challenger each issue also featured at least two or three general non continuing character stories about understanding overcoming hate, such as `Prejudice' by Bob Fujitani, found in issue # 3 which dealt with Japanese Americans encountering bias in post World War II America, and in a story by Joe Kubert a downed American solider behind enemy lines being told the story of the Golem by the Jewish family hiding him, along with some run of the mill humor strips about nothing much in particular to fill out the rest of the four issues that made up this unique experiment in comics.

                   Typical Challenger villains plot their evil

Having murdered a union organizer they frame a black member of the union, but The Challenger is having non of it

Meanwhile the job creators are creating jobs by hiring thugs to stir up trouble

The Challenger however, having figured out what's really going on goes looking for the real murders, having found them he shows that he as yet is not an adherent of passive resistance.

 

The real murder caught, he confesses, (the rich guys behind it all however are not arrested, giving this comic book fantasy an odd touch of reality) and The Challenger challenges the towns people to stay away during his speech in the final panel.

As for how many kids joined the Callenger Clubs of America, if any did, that I am afraid is a stitistic that will have to remain lost to history.

He ain't heavy, he's a guaranteed boost to sales this month!

The fireman's carry is one of the easiest ways for a person to carry another person without assistance, the superhero carry however is something else altogether.*

The earliest example I can find is in Batman 156, ever the iconoclast Bats does it with the head of Robin, the Is He Dead Again? Wonder, facing to the right.

It has been used a lot after that, from the 50s to I don’t… next week?

Some we have here are

Sergeant Rock in an unusually touchy feelie mood while DC’s Go-Go Check of the time watch on.

Superman practicing with Lois in the 70s with Lois as a stand-in for Supergirl in the future.

Marvel’s Captain Marvel (not be confused with the REAL Captain Marvel!) in a pose I’ve seen somewhere else. Oh yeah, I know, on the cover of an early graphic novel, but I used this one as the earlier version was a little to cluttered for my taste.

See… that practice from the 70s paid off.

Worked so well that it keeps rising from the ashes like a phoenix. Ah heh

They killed Robin again? You bastards!

Still there is just something familiar about this pose… have I seen it somewhere before?

Ooooooh yeah.

* by the way, just for the record, carring someone in the manner above is bad both their and your back.

Superman, Batman & Robin Playerz of 1948.

While as characters they have little in common, one being the fantasy embodiment of hope and optimism and the other being a quai psychopathic obsessive perfection / justice freak with a fetish for a Halloween image (seriously enough already with the bat symbol on everything, I bet he even pays the Charmin people big bucks so he can have toilet paper with it on the rolls in the john in the Bat-Cave even though only he, and perhaps Alfred, ever see it.)

They being the two most popular and iconic characters at DC Comics, and pretty much the only popular characters they have that originated at the formerly named National Periodical Publications, most of the others, from Wonder Woman to Captain Marvel, having been obtained from other companies, (DC sort of being the imperial Rome of comic companies) it stands to reason that they would want to figure out ways to put them together.

In recent years this was complicated by the two just not getting, along and while this in no way stopped DC from still publishing Superman/Batman, the relationship was at best strained.

Contrast this to the 32 years they spent in World’s Finest comics, starting in 1954, where they were best buds. How things will be depicted in DC’s new 52 era remains to be seen.

However there is another era in the relationship between Superman and Batman that even the most dedicated comic book fan is unaware of, taking place from 1947 to 1948, seven years before their official team-up, this took place not in stories, but only on the covers of World’s Finest Comics.

At the time the comic was twice as large as a regular comic and cost 15 cents, and was made up of separate stories featuring various DC characters such as the Wyoming Kid, Green Arrow, and others. However it’s main draw were stories with Superman and Batman in them.

To showcase this they were featured on the covers in images showed up nowhere on the inside, and such images they were, I give you.

Superman, Batman & Robin Playerz of 1948.

All of them showed the Dynamic Duo and the Man of Steel being very undynamic  and non-steel like, mostly just larking about at State Fairs, giving shoe-shine guys a hard time by their red, blue and green boots, and at swimmin' holes, many however show them apparently trying to impress or pick up girls.

Superman can fly faster than the speed of light and make it to moon before and back 523 times before you blink twice and Batman can thread a needle from 100 paces away in the dark using a batarang while doing two other things and yet they feel the need to form a human chain? They were just giving the boy a chance to cop a feel.

So there you have it, the first team-up of Batman and Superman was not them saving the world, but going out on a double dates… unless this was just a publicity campaign by DC to provide beards for them!

Oh my

My Superpower? Why Rollering Skating of Course!"

The idea of putting wheels on your shoes and rolling about on them is, if you really think about it, an odd, bordering on stupid, idea, but we as a people have been doing it for a long time.

No one knows who the first person was to come up with the idea, but it’s been around since the early 18^th century, and the first recorded person to try to improve the whole concept was one John Joseph Merlin in 1760.

And like the original Merlin roller skates have been turning up, if not regularly, at least often enough to get noticed in comic books.*

And despite the fact that comic books are often filled with representations of odd looking humans, in odd looking costumes, when roller skates show up it still looks… well… odd.

For examples see below from World’s Finest Comics in 1948, a one shot from the 80s Black & White mistake… err… explosion featuring a hero called “Skate-man,” Ironman using his always vaguely silly looking armor skates, Barbie on skates (perhaps the only one who pulls it off), a comic from 1957 featuring “the Secret of Roller Skating” (ssssh, don’t tell anyone but `it’s don’t fall down and even a dweeb like that guy can get girls to do stuff like that.’) and the always forgettable Dazzler and her high-heel roller skates, showing that her greatest mutant ability was being able pull off things like that and not regularly break both legs.

*   (You like that? I’ve been practicing my segues)

Who Does Batman Fear?

Being from 1968 I'm sure this scene from above found in World's Finest # 173 is thoroughly out of continuity, heck, stuff from six months ago it out of continuity much less almost 44 years ago!

But still, does it hold? Of his villains over the years whom would Batman be the most afraid of? In that issue it was stated as being Two-Face, would that still hold today? I'm guessing not, what with ones that have broken his back and killed side-kicks... for a while at least.

What do you think?

Who gives the Batman the jim jams?

Why all the Red-Headed Mermaids & Sea Goddesses in Pop Culture?

Ever notice how many redheaded mermaids and sea goddesses there are in pop culture?

I’m not just talking about the one from the `B I G  F I S H’ when talking about pop culture chops, i.e. Disney and the House of the Grand Mouse’s Arial, their take on the little mermaid, I’m talking before and beside that character, or which there are more than a few auburn haired queens of the briny deep.

There are all these bits of mermaid kitsch from the 20’s to the 50’s, also Aquaman’s sweetie and sometimes wife Mera, Queen of the Sea, from the film Ponto there’s cute little Ponyo and her Mum, and the “Woman in the Water” from a less successful film.  

I’m not saying they’re all redheads, there are plenty of depictions of blonde and brunette mermaids and sea goddess, take Dyesebel from the Philippines for instance. That character has been around since 1953 and has been had three or four films and a television series made about her and she’s a brunette.

Dyesebel

I’m just saying the percentage of ginger Ladies of the Sea seems higher than average to me, and I wonder why that is.

Perhaps they get it from their mom? If that is Aphrodite is their mother, she being born from sea foam and all. And I’m just taking her for a redhead based on one famous painting in which she is mistakenly called Venus.

It’s not much to go on, but it’s all I have at the moment.

Oh! And let’s not forget Amy Pond, who while not a mermaid is redheaded and her last name is Pond which are, in order to qualify for that noun made out of water…

I’ll stop speculating here.

Four-Color Sherlock Holmes

With a new Sherlock Holmes film out and about at the moment I’m reminded of the character’s appearances in another media, the comics.

Being so well known, so popular (and so in the public domain) has led to Holmes and Watson having a lot of different comic book interpretations, both close to Canon, and wildly off on their on tangents (I’m thinking of one near pornographic one where those responsible needed a good talking to, and maybe a punch in the face afterward), both color and black & white, serious and humorous takes and a number of different languages.  

With over 150 appearances in graphic media it stands to reason that there would, and should be some variation in those appearances.

Here are just 8 of them, including one of the first from Classic Illustrated, some very stylistic ones, Holmes going up against zombies and vampires (there were at least two different comic series devoted to him battling Dracula) and completely tossing logic out the window having him team up with Batman and in another battling the Joker! 

Need Help With the Bills Lois?

What’s this, Lois Lane muling for Tupperware? I guess plucky girl reporters in the 60s didn’t make as much as I thought they did.


The image above comes from a comic book called, as you can see on the cover, Tupperware Dating Party, which it seems features one Dorothy Dealer. (I can hardly wait for the Post Modern reboot on THAT character!)

A freebie produced something around 1968 that was given to woman thinking about joining the cult of… I mean becoming a Tupperware distributer.

It was published by Common Comics, which was a subsidy of American Comic Group, the comic company known mainly for a long string of mild “horror” comics and a fat little character known as Herbie, or sometimes the Fat Fury.

They got out of regular comics in the 60s, but still produced them for companies like Sears, Tupperware and others.

The art in this one was supplied by Kurt Schaffenberger, the artist who for over ten years was THE artist for Lois Lane, becoming so iconic that he was even brought in to draw her in comics being done by other artists so that she always looked the same.

It seems he also pulled her out for this item as well, despite being called “dealer” Ruby Robins and given a by the unknown colorist a somewhat different hair color, (not Lois’s natural blue from Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane,) that’s Lois Lane, down to the little Jackie Kennedy hat she sported in her adventures at DC at the same time.

Perhaps she needed the extra income to make up for all the time she spent being shrunk, trapped in the Phantom Zone, tossed around in time, being abducted by aliens and going though one weird transformation after another.

Suicide is Easy... it's getting people to buy the title that's hard

Everybody knows DC had the Suicide Squad first in the 60s, as is so often the case with “what everybody knows” everybody is dead wrong. Seems it's been around longer than that, and been used by more than DC. 

First off I personally was a little disappointed to find out where the phrase came from, it seems that it first was used in football, the suicide squad being the squad used on kickoffs, that being more dangerous than other plays, or so they tell me. 

However a expression with umpf like that can't be expected to say on the gridiron. 

The first fictional Suicide Squad appeared from March 25, 1936 to April, 1943 in 22 stories in Ace G-Man Stories featuring 3 tough as nails FBI agents battling gangsters, Nazis, and even the occasional super-villain, a Mr. Zero to name pseudonyms, written by Emile C. Tepperman, the man who gave use Operator # 5, Secret Agent X and a number of the adventures of The Avenger (the one with the gray moldable face) the first Squad fought crime and / or evil in such stories as Mr. Zero and the Suicide Squad, Suicide Squad Reports for Death, The Suicide Squad's Murder Lottery & Blood, Sweat, and Bullets. Mostly forgotten they they have recently had a bit of a revival with the reprinting of all 22 of their adventures just last July.  

The next Suicide Squad was a comic printed in Australia by Frew starting in 1952. I have been unable to find out a single blessed thing about this crew.... however I'm willing to bet the guy with the pipe on the cover of # 1 is the boss. 

Then DC did the Squad, not once but twice, at least one of these teams you probably already know about. The latest version most likely, just like the first two the 60s version, also sometimes known as Task Force X, kind of quickly slipped from the collective mind as well... must have something to do with the name, it is, lets face it, a little bleak.

Back When Snoopy Had a Comic Book

Long in the long ago comic books and newspaper comics were practically joined at the hip, which was logical enough what with comics having their origin starting out as just a bunch of daily and Sunday strips collected, colored if needed, and put into comic book formatting.

However even in the 50s and early 60s, after it had all become original content, Newspaper strips were seen in the spin racks with Beetle Bailey, Allie Oop, the Phantom, and even for a short while the Peanuts gang in comic books written and draw by other people.

Which was one of the problems with those things, the jobbers they hired to do the comic book versions of those well known characters just never got them quite right.

By the 70s, except for the Phantom, who still shows up today he being a superhero and all, that sort of thing was mostly over. I think Charlton did one with Blondie and Dagwood, but things had so changed that the newspaper comics and comic books were just too different, with more items such as Superman, Spider-Man and a short lived DC Universe strip, going from comics to the newspapers than coming from the newspaper's funny pages to Comics.

Such is life, or mass media anyway.

However..... What if they were to do that sort of thing again today?

I mean bring out original Comics featuring some of the newspaper strip characters of today.

Frank Millers' Luann? (guess who’s a killer psycho prostitute now?)

Okay, maybe not.

But still, of the fairly new strips on the scene now which ones might you at least give a look if they had a comic book published doing longer sustained adventures of the characters?

Possibilities:

Cow and Boy

Rabbits Against Magic

Over the Hedge (Heck they had a cartoon already)

Heart of the City

Lio (put that one on my pull list)

Cul de Sac

Non Sequitur with Danae and her family (this one as well, though I doubt anyone other than Wiley would get it right)

Pearls Before Swine

Drabble (Oh Glob the horror! If the artist got the art “right” a full 22 pages of a comic like that would probably cause retina scaring.)

Get Fuzzy (If for no other reason than to see those characters somewhere other than that damned bare, stark apartment he and those psychopathic talking animals live in. Say? Do you think that human in that strip might be crazy and in a mental hospital somewhere and imagining those critter? Nah! If he were crazy it might actually be funny from time to time.)

Or perhaps some sort of team-up comics, you know.... Garfield and Marmaduke together to see who can be the least original?

Any others you think might at least be worth a try?

Eight Decades of Wonder Woman

Not eighty years mind you, but the character has appeared in comics in eight different decades.

Below (just click the picture for a bigger view) you will find an example of one from each decade, from the first Sensation Comic in 1942, through the 3-D fad of the 50s (everything old is new again) to the debacle of the “Mrs. Peel version of Diana, which really started in the late 60s but it went into the 70s so I’m using it for that decade, and ending with the latest issue of Wonder Woman released just a few days ago.

Hey she’s got a dad now!

4 Normals & a Gimmick

Comic Books seem to go through periodic sea-changes where interest in one thing drops off and a scramble then ensues to find the next big thing, at which point everybody jumps on that.

After Superman in 1938 there were more superheroes than you could shake a Cosmic Rod at, after the first superheroes wore their welcome out there was the first scrum starting around 1947 between Western, Romance, War, Crime and Horror comics for the top spot, with horror pretty much winning out.

This led to comics just about being wiped out in the backlash which led to the gray mediocrity that was 1953 to 1957, until things started to perk up with the introduction of the new red suited version of the Flash, the science fiction Green Lantern, and leading to the coming of Marvel.

Until the so-called “Marvel Age of Comics” took over the post of “next big thing” however was still open, and at DC one of the contenders that seemed to be in competition with the return of the superhero was something I call

4 Normals & a Gimmick:

The first such team was the Challengers of the Unknown, which appeared in the January-February 1957 issue of Showcase (# 6), which in the way that comics were numbered back then means it appeared in December of 1955.

With plot and pencils by Jack Kirby; script by Dave Wood and inks by Rosalind "Roz" Kirby, (however it's generally agreed that Jack Kirby was the real creative mind behind it) they would over the years become one of DC Comics most persistent B-team group of characters.

Made up of test pilot “Ace” Morgan, daredevil mountain climber Red Ryan, wrestler (later heavyweight boxing champion) Rocky Davis and “Prof” Haley, a scientist specializing in underwater exploration. These four strangers meet when they get to be the first passengers to fly in an experimental robot airplane (sure, if I had an untried iffy item like that these are just the four sort people I would stuff into it,) the plane however proves to still have some bugs in it and crashes.

If it had instead first shot into space and exposed the quartet to cosmic rays Comic Book history might have been changed, instead what happens is that the four on surviving the crash decide they are now “living on borrowed time” and team up to take on challenges from the unknown.

Fortunately for the Comic Book reading public at the time this leads not, as it would in real life, to some interviews in the paper as they become 90 day wonders to be quickly be forgotten as the next detraction comes along leaving them to get together every year or so in a bar and gas on about “that crash,” but instead fantastic and weird menaces from space, and from various mad scientists fall all over each other throwing themselves at the team.

Along with Kirby’s art  there is another thing that makes the Challengers standout.  At the time they appear in Showcase # 6, all comic books were made up of at least two, but usually three or four separate stories. Kirby's introduction story of the CotU was the first to devote a whole comic to just one group of characters in one story separated into three chapters. (Alright Fawcett tried this most than 10 years earlier with Radar the International Police Man, but it was a flop and no one really remembers it) Which when Kirby took it to Marvel and the Fantastic Four would be one of the major changes to comics in the 60s, and which has become so much a part of comics that most readers today don’t know it was ever otherwise. (Well… except that now it takes around 4 to 38 comics to finish one story, but I digress.)

After three more tryouts the Challengers get their own comic.

Challengers of the Unknown

This setup would also led to perhaps the only challenge, if at best a weak one, to the superhero.

The Challenger's title apparently doing well, DC let things cook for about a year and then came out with four more such teams, only by then things had been tweaked so that it seemed that one editor or another, and they were really the ones who ruled comics back then, not artists or writers, had come up with a template so that these teams would consist of

1.  The competent in-charge strong-jawed leader, his steadfast right-hand pal who was often also a strong man, the leader’s girlfriend, and a fourth spot filled by a kid, or brain.

2.  No superpowers or any impressive gadgets other than…

3.  The one gimmick that lets them do their thing, i.e. mole-machine, scuba gear, time machine, a government license to get in trouble.

4. Normal (for the comics anyway) clothing.

5. The inability to do anything more complicated than opening a can of beans without it turning into the impossibly fantastic with only them standing between whatever came out of that can of beans and the destruction of the world.

The four that came out in quick succession where:

1.      Rip Hunter: Time Master

Showcase # 20

May-June 1959

With Rip Hunter, Jeff Smith, Bonnie Baxter, and Bonnie's young brother, Corky

 Rip has a time machine and the four go tooling around in time getting in a mess everywhere and every when they land.

And while time travel should have its own rewards and dangers they, like most DC characters at the time, seem to spend most of their time dealing with alien invaders, dinosaurs (though almost none of them in say the Jurassic period, but during the days of the knight or in Ancient Rome) monsters and strange transformations (Rip becomes a big blue monster and almost gets turned into a robot.)

After their tryout these character got their own comic which lasted almost three years.

Rip Hunter: Time Master

1.      Suicide Squad

Brave & the Bold # 25

August-September 1959

Lt. Rick Flag, Jess Bright, Karin Grace, Dr. Hugh Evans

As these characters had a vaguely military theme, being a team of experts the army tossed at weird events with the idea being that they probably wouldn’t survive. The fourth slot was filled not by a kid brother, but by someone with a PhD in Everything.

This time the concept didn’t do as well as. After all with a team bearing the rather pessimistic title of the “suicide squad” and yet still insisting on coming back and back again they start to sound like a cheat.

As such they were soon retitled Task Force X (and yet none of them had the decency to be mutants) and only made it for around 5 outings in which they deal with alien invaders, dinosaurs, monsters and strange transformations (they get shrunk to only a few inches in height and have to battle seagulls and stuff.)

They never make it to an on-going series and are soon forgotten, with the name Suicide Squad, and Rick Flag’s son being used years later for a much more successful version involving the government using super-villains for dangerous missions.

1.      The Sea Devils

Showcase # 27

July-August 1960

Dane Dorrance , Biff Bailey, Judy Walton and Judy's younger brother Nicky Walton.

With these we find four people exploring the world’s oceans via the then exotic method of scuba-diving.  

There you go, Jacques Cousteau, Sea Hunt, and all that “frogman” stuff,  that ought to lead a different sort of story and…. They run into alien invaders, dinosaurs, monsters (the giant Octopus Man being one of the more persistent) and at least one strange transformation where a sponge diver gets jabbed by a mutant sponge and turns into a 30 foot tall sponge man who can absorb anything, including color and sound, and who leads to the Sea Devils being in a team-up with the  Challengers of the Unknown.

This team also gets a series that like Rip lasts for about 3 years.

Sea Devils

1.      “Cave” Carson: Adventures Inside Earth!

Brave & the Bold # 31

August-September 1960

Calvin "Cave" Carson, Bulldozer Smith, Christie Madison and Johnny Blake

The last of the 4 Normals & a Gimmick took their adventures underground, they were revolutionaries? No, spelunkers with a mole machine, that looked suspiciously like sports car, a to make things easier.

I’ll give you one guess what that ran into in their only five outings, only now these almost regulation monsters were found in the surprisingly well lit lands beneath our feet, or at least the feet of people in the DC Universe.

They at least did come across something a little different when they ran into a few civilizations hungry to take over the surface and they never got turned into aliens or trees or whatnot.

That however was not enough of a difference to get them a title of their own, and they, and soon the rest of these un-powered adventures, were replaced by the new army of superheroes, heroines and villains that became not just the main thing, but eventually the only thing, comics could tolerate for quite a few years.