#dc retroactive justice league of america the 70's

[aboutzatanna]

Zatanna, Wonder Woman and Barry Allen go undercover in this issue of DC Retroactive: JLA- The 70's #1 (2011) and Diana is absolutely terrible at it:

For those who don't know DC Retroactive are untold stories set in past continuities mostly by writers from those eras.

This issue was written by Carey Bates with art by Andy Smith.

(Side note: While Diana being 'bad' at going undercover is just a two page gag, it makes more sense for me that Diana, former 'Goddess of Truth' and wielder of the Lasso of True wouldn't be comfortable with secret identities. I never liked the idea of Diana needing a secret identity. )

The plot of this issue mainly revolves around Adam Strange, who is accidentally transported to Earth Prime following a fight with Kanjar Ro so Barry, Diana, Zatanna and Ollie travel to Earth Prime to rescue him while Hawkman and Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) take on the newly empowered Kanjar Ro.

Earth-Prime is basically "our world" where the JLA are all fictional characters and the writers and creators exist on that earth. It's also the world where Superboy Prime originally came from. Since Adam had his mind zapped at a mental institute, the only solution is to find DC editor and Adam Strange super fan Julius Schwartz who can jog Adam's memory.

I'm not really a fan of creators writing themselves or their collegues into the story. It feels very self congratulatory. Especially since WW's lasso could have solved the whole thing. I much prefer how Marvel did it, like an Easter Egg, where Stan and Jack would sometimes appear as themselves in issues of Fantastic Four. But I guess you can look at this issue as Carey's tribute to Schwartz. This issue also came with a reprint of Justice League of America #123 where Carey Bates wrote himself (or rather his Earth Prime counterpart) as the villain of the story.

Adam Strange himself is a character that I have mixed feelings about. He's very much a product of his time but the ordinary guy with a space suit, jetpack and helmet really appeals to the young boy in me who loved the Rocketeer. I don't think anyone has ever quite figured out how to make him relevant today. Tom King tried in his mini but it was the usual trope of 'lets reveal this innocent Silver Age character is actually a horrible person' variety of reinvention.

Anyway, enough rambling, since this is a Zatanna blog, here is a few moments with her that I like:

-The League chilling on the tower, Diana looks like she is oogling at Zee plus Hal being a Pink Floyd fan:

-Zatanna and Barry interactions plus Barry taking a leader ship role:

-This bit about mind wipes:

Knowing how much of a nerd Barry is he probably folded inside when she called him boss.

Also while this was most likely an excuse to bring in Julius Schwartz, Zatanna not tampering with minds is more in character for her during this period especially since the arc with her mom also had a subplot of her being mad that her father played with her mind. Another point deducted from Identity Crisis.

Blink and you miss it panels where the artist is clearly showing off their ability to draw human body in perspective:

And Diana wanting to take a selfie after the League defeats Kanjar Ro:

(also Diana's clearly a history geek, only a history geeks would drop random facts about Incas completely unprompted):

Overall, it's an old school issue. Very much a throwback. Still it's noteable that the writer of this issue didn't do the almost obligatory 'Zee gets gagged or taken out early so other characters can shine' plot. Every one has a role and everyone contributes their fair share to help defeat the villain.

#zatanna #zatanna zatara #wonder woman #diana of themyscira #flash #barry allen #adam strange #green arrow #oliver queen #hawkman #katar hol #green lantern #hal jordan #justice league of america #dc retroactive justice league of america the 70's #carey bates #julius schwartz #andy smith

[studentsofshield]

A Rambling Chronicle of Marvel’s Western Comics

By Vincent Faust - November 27, 2018

Marvel Comics is the most prolific comic book publisher of the Western genre. Despite their near ubiquity in today’s culture with billion dollar box office receipts, even their diehard fans may not know this part of their past.

I may be missing a few scattered things, but by my count Marvel has published 1,192 issues of Western comics through their history. Marvel had published Western stories from their very beginnings with the Masked Raider in 1939′s Marvel (Mystery) Comics 1-12. Though the genre didn't explode until the late 1940s following the war, while superheroes were declining. Timely (Marvel’s name at the time) launched 7 western titles in 1948. 

The "Big Three" of Marvel westerns are Kid Colt Outlaw, Rawhide Kid, and Two-Gun Kid. Each lasting an impressive 229, 151, and 136 issues respectively. 

The star artist of Kid Colt was Jack Keller. Who drew most of the character's stories from 1953-1967. An impressive run. Some have argued he has the honor of drawing the most individual stories for one specific Marvel character. Many of these books had 3-5 short stories per issue, so I wouldn't argue against that. If we only count full issue stories, I'm not sure who would take that title. Probably Mark Bagley for Spider-Man, combining his lengthy 1990s run on Amazing and his history making 2000s run with Bendis on Ultimate.

In 1960, right before the Fantastic Four, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby reinvented Rawhide Kid. After a publishing hiatus the title was brought back with issue 17. The character was now Jonathan Clay and his costume changed. Over two and a half years, their run was revered as the cream of the crop in a waning genre as their own superheroes began to explode. 

As Kirby was needed more and more on the superhero titles selling like hotcakes, a tiny run by Jack Davis followed. Davis was an EC Comics legend who took a pit stop at Marvel before becoming even more of a legend at Mad Magazine. Unfortunately, practically the only classic Marvel Westerns to be reprinted in collections is this span of Rawhide Kid. With issues 17-35 reprinted across two hardcover Marvel Masterworks.

Here is Stan Lee talking to Jack Davis and fellow EC/Mad/minor Marvel contributor Harvey Kurtzman. For Marvel, the legendary Kurtzman did 150 episodes of a one-page filler strip titled Hey Look! from 1946 to 1949. 

Especially as Marvel was finally able to publish more titles, Stan Lee's efforts were being stretched too thin as well. So, Rawhide Kid was handed over to his younger brother Larry Lieber to write and draw. Which he did for almost a decade, to minor acclaim from genre fans. Sounds very reminiscent of the hidden gem Gary Friedrich/Dick Ayers/John Severin run on Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos.

"I don't remember why I wanted to do it, particularly. I think I wanted a little more freedom. I didn't do enough of the superheroes to know whether I'd like them. What I didn't prefer was the style that was developing. It didn't appeal to me. Maybe there was just too much humor in it, or too much something. I remember, at the time, I wanted to make everything serious. I didn't want to give a light tone to it. When I did Rawhide Kid, I wanted people to cry as if they were watching High Noon or something." - Larry Lieber

Lee and Kirby also reinvented Two-Gun Kid for the early 60s, but didn't stick around as long on that one.

Other artists who made a mark on Marvel's western titles include Fred Kida, a notable Golden Age Japanese-American artist known primarily for Airboy. Also Russ Heath, who passed away only recently, and the frequent collaborators John Severin and Dick Ayers. Most of these artists were also prolific in the war genre. The genre is also to thank for the introduction of Herb Trimpe, who would go on to become the definitive Hulk artist.

The true star of the show though was one Joe Maneely. Who Stan considered his best artist before Jack Kirby returned in 1958. The Philadelphia native was skilled and fast, pumping out tons of westerns as well as the Black Knight and Yellow Claw titles, which retroactively tie his work to Marvel continuity. Unlike Kirby, Keller, and Lieber he was not particularly linked to one western title, but his most consistent would be Ringo Kid.

Meanwhile, outside of the genre one of Stan Lee's other top artists was Matt Baker. Considered to be the first African American professional in the field. Also there are reliable reports from friends and family that Baker may have been a gay man. He was one of the primary innovators of the "good girl" art style on Fox Feature Syndicate’s Phantom Lady and countless romance titles. Another milestone was drawing arguably the first graphic novel - It Rhymes with Lust.

Due to some business factors in and out of publisher Martin Goodman’s control, Marvel (at this point known as Atlas Comics) nearly imploded in 1957. The bullpen was completely disbanded, leaving Stan Lee in an empty office. They went from regularly publishing almost 70 titles to only 16. Many of which were filled with inventory stories and reprints as long as Stan could manage not paying freelancers. This situation was further complicated by their new distributor having way too close of a relationship with market share leader National (now DC Comics).

Joe Maneely stepped in front of a train in 1958 at only the age of 32. It may have been a suicide. Matt Baker died of a heart attack in 1959 at 37. As stated above, Jack Kirby comes back to Marvel right around that time and Steve Ditko was quickly growing as an artist. It's tragic how close these two masters were to being on the ground floor of the Marvel Universe as we know it today. What heroes could Maneely and Baker have drawn or created?

The 1970s sees lots of reprints of classic genre comics. An exception is the original title Gunhawks (though an unrelated The Gunhawk title predated it). Though only lasting seven issues, Gunhawks has an interesting distinction. Originally starring Kid Cassidy and Reno Jones, a good ol’ plantation boy and his buddy slave. Who fought willingly for the Confederacy because some Yankees kidnapped his girlfriend. That makes sense... In the sixth issue, Cassidy is shot and killed. The finale was technically retitled to Reno Jones, Gunhawk. Making that 1973 comic book only the second at Marvel to be named after a Black protagonist, following Luke Cage. Black Panther had ongoing adventures, but had taken over the anthology title Jungle Action and wouldn’t get his own series until later. DC lagged behind Marvel in this regard.

In 1979 the western genre at Marvel was basically declared dead, with Rawhide Kid and Kid Colt finally canceled. The latter after over 30 years of continuous publication. Two Gun Kid had been canceled two years earlier. Though for a few years already, almost all of Marvel's westerns (and war books) had been turned into reprint titles.

Of those aforementioned 1,192 issues, 1,146 of them are from 1979 or earlier. Leaving less than 50 across the last 40 years.

A 1980 tryout issue with a new character (and a Frank Miller cover) goes nowhere.

A 1985 miniseries by genre veterans Trimpe and Severin depicts the Rawhide Kid now as a middle aged man, as the West is in its final days. It is kind of depressing.

Backpedaling a bit. As the Marvel superheroes dominate, the western heroes occasionally make crazy guest appearances through the means of time travel. Most notably the Two-Gun Kid becomes an all-but-official member of the Avengers and a close friend of Hawkeye. He gets tied up with time travel generally for years to follow. Later becoming a She-Hulk supporting character and Avengers Initiative leader circa Civil War

With that cover, let's now take another aside to untangle Ghost Rider. Ghost Rider is not originally a Marvel property. The vigilante was created by Gardner Fox (Justice League of America) and Dick Ayers for Magazine Enterprises in 1949 as a horror themed western character. The feature spent time as a backup in Tim Holt and eventually broke out into its own short lived title.

Magazine Enterprises went kapoof alongside the slump in the industry around the implementation of the Comics Code Authority in 1954. The regulation agency set up by industry leaders to avoid government intrusion following moral panic. The over-cautious guidelines severely neutered the crime and horror genres, while superheroes were already dormant, gutting many publishers. The Ghost Rider trademark expired. Marvel picked it up in 1967 for a series drawn by original creator Dick Ayers. Motivated in equal toxic parts by Martin Goodman's obsession with securing trademarks (practically every character Stan Lee created can be traced to an earlier one) and then rising writer Roy Thomas's history nerd leanings.

Obviously the name would be repurposed for the more recognizable Johnny Blaze in 1972. Marvel retroactively renamed Carter Slade as the Phantom Rider. The modern demonic versions of Ghost Rider do rarely touch on western themes. Johnny spent some time as a nomad and Garth Ennis brought in some western connections to expand the GR lore.

The western genre is basically passed over through the whole 1990s.

In 2000, John Ostrander and Leonardo Manco come around for a miniseries integrating all the Marvel western heroes together. Followed by a 2002 sequel. With revelations and deaths. The kind of lore retconning series that tickles the fancy of comic history nerds like yours truly. Ostrander also did Justice League: Incarnations around this time, tracing through the history of the JLA.

2003 comes around and it all that heavy lifting revitalization goes in the toilet. Ron Zimmerman writes a Marvel Max Rawhide Kid series. Zimmerman is some kind of comedy writer and Howard Stern regular. Well, within comics he wrote this and the god awful Ultimate Adventures - the only wholly original Ultimate Universe book, a Batman and Robin parody that was part of the U-Decide bet with Marville and PAD's Captain Marvel.

Marvel Max was a new imprint established in the early 2000s to break away from the aforementioned Comics Code and tell more daring, mature stories. Occasionally this resulted in gold like Jessica Jones. However, most of the time it was cringe inducing dreck.

So what's so bad about Rawhide Kid Max? He's now gay. Umm...OK, as long as it's handled well, maybe? Nope, constant cringey sexual innuendos which border on the protagonist coming off as a sexual predator. Some idiot gave it a sequel years later too.

Since then, we've gotten a bunch of one-shots in 2006, a weird Andy Diggle miniseries in 2012, and then the surprisingly great Marvel 1872 from Gerry Duggan during the patchwork reality crossover event Secret Wars. Which set up the Red Wolf series which was doomed by bad optics surrounding the writer and Marvel's spaghetti on the wall strategy of the time.

One of those 2006 one-shots ended up being legend Marshall Rogers's final published work. He and longtime collaborator Steve Englehart did it while waiting for DC to greenlight Dark Detective III, the second spiritual sequel to their influential 1970s run on Batman.

Here’s hoping we get to see some of these legendary heroes on the trail once more. At the very least we will get another tiny snippet in 2019 with a Gunhawks one-shot being brought back in celebration of Marvel’s 80th anniversary. Written by crime comics duo David and Maria Lapham.

This concludes a rambling chronicle of Marvel's history with the western genre and considerable tangents touching more generally on the history of Marvel and the comic book industry.

[imjustmejca1971]

Yep, I’m a Comic Book Geek

It all began in April of 1978. I was a little shy of my 7thbirthday. We were out shopping in one of those pre-Sam’s Club, pre-Costco warehouse stores in east Wichita, KS. I think it was called David’s. At the checkout line, there was a 3-pack of comics about Superman. The stories were “Laser War Over Metropolis,” “The Man with the Self-Destruct Mind” and “Beware the Eyes that Paralyze- Titano the Super Ape!” I was hooked. There was something about reading words with pictures that made reading so much more fun.

From that point forward every time we went to any grocery store or pharmacy, I asked for a comic book. I went from Superman to Action Comics to Wonder Woman. Then onto Flash and anthology series like World’s Finest, Superman Family and Batman Family. Finally, getting the best of all worlds..the Justice League.

My first Marvel comic was a few months later, Amazing Spider-Man #188. From there, I went on to Hulk, Iron Man and my first Marvel group book, The Avengers. I remember being in the plastic bubble (it was a 1970’s thing) in my elementary school library reading Avengers vol 1 #187.

 The fun part was seeing how all of these characters connected. Was Wonder Woman related to Wonder Man? No. Wonder Woman to Wonder Girl? Yes. The Thing to Swamp Thing? No.  Ms. Marvel to Captain Marvel? Kind of. There was a Marvel Comics’ Captain Marvel, which she was connected to. There was also a DC Captain Marvel (more commonly known as Shazam) that had nothing to do to that character. Eventually I figured out the difference between DC and Marvel universes.

These were all serialized storylines. Marvel’s books had started in the early 1960’s. DC’s had gone back as far as the late 1930’s. Even though there were jumping on points, there were always references to other stories. That was great for me. Anytime I went to a comic store, I looked for the issue I didn’t have that connected the previous story. Sometimes flea markets and garage sales would yield amazing finds, dirt cheap.

As someone with a vivid imagination, I just soaked all this up. I even invented my own alter ego at 9 years old. “Superkid.” I know, not that creative...but the adventures I had in my head were awe inspiring for a child that wasn’t easily able to connect to other people.

The first real-life versions of my favorite superheroes came onto tv and the movies in the late 70’s. Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman in the tv show was amazing. To this day, she’s probably one of the only celebrities I would be a blubbering mess to meet. The other was Christopher Reeve’s Superman. I still get tears in my eyes every time the theme from the movie starts. To me, he was Superman as he nailed the buffoonery of Clark Kent and the humanity of Superman.

I also learned so much from reading comic books. Any time Reed Richards or the Vision used a word I didn’t understand, I looked it up. Reading a comic book expanded my vocabulary nearly every time. When I first learned Wonder Woman and Shazam were based in Graeco/Roman mythologies, I wanted to learn more. Who was Aphrodite? Who was Hermes? Who was Zeus? How did he relate to Jupiter? Wait, didn’t we have a planet named Jupiter?

Who were Mars, Mercury, Saturn, Neptune, Venus, etc.? It opened up yet another world of astronomy including planets, solar systems, stars, galaxies, quasars, pulsars, wormholes and black holes.

Many of the heroes had extrasensory perceptions. Could those be real? Did people in real life have telepathy, telekinesis, pyrokinesis, or clairvoyance? What did those mean? Could anyone get them by using the full potential of the mind? Could you learn to see things others couldn’t? Were ghosts real? Could you get to the astral plane? It opened up another new plane..this time of the paranormal.

So many worlds to explore..all opened up by comic book stories. Here’s a whole list of things I as a pre-teen kid through young adulthood gained exposure to through comic books:

Always do the right thing and help others whenever possible-  Superman

Put love first, but kick ass when you need to-  Wonder Woman

Artificial intelligence- Vision; Red Tornado; Ultron

You can be anything you put your mind to- Batman (granted with $$ and really good trainers)

Life is a series of ups and downs- Spider-Man

With great power comes great responsibility- Spider-Man

Manage your anger properly- Hulk

Multiverse concepts- Flash; Justice League/Justice Society

People can dislike you for just being different- X-Men

Love is more than physical appearance: Vision and the Scarlet Witch

Remaking your own reality/retroactive continuity- Crisis on Infinite Earths

Addiction- Iron Man

Sacrifice- Flash; Supergirl

Mental health issues- Hank Pym

The world isn’t black and white- Magneto

Don’t judge people on how they look- Nightcrawler (X-Men)

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Love wins.- Phoenix

Astronomy- Fantastic Four

The United States of America is the people, not the government- Captain America

More to life than what we see- Dr. Strange; Dr. Fate

And so much more.

The great news is most of the stories are now accessible digitally. Marvel has a subscription service for $10 a month where you have access to decades of stories of nearly 20,000 titles. DC is supposed to follow suit next year. We also have the wonder of the internet. Want to know the story where Jean Grey first became Phoenix? When Superman and Lois got married? When Iceman came out? You’re just a google away to find the source.

There are tv shows, movies, comic conventions, message boards, wikis and so many ways to connect to these characters and the people who love them. My only wish list is for the stories I grew up with as a kid and young adult to be adapted into a new medium in its original content.  Most tv shows and movies pay homage to the source materials, but create their own spin. I’d love to see the original stories brought to life.

When new comic books are published every Wednesday, whether digitally or available at a local comic book store, I get to have a few minutes that are just mine to let my mind soar again. You can be seven. You can be 47. Comics are for everyone.