In the Superman mythos created by DC editor Mort Weisinger, “the adventures of Supeman when he was a boy” appearing in Superboy and Adventure Comics presented a unique problem. In a letter published in the Smallville Mailsack letter column of the Su
Time-travel stories have always been a tempting device for comics writers. They broaden the vistas and allow fresh backdrops for adventures. The lure of putting the hero in a historical incident is intriguing and it provides the opportunities for t
I have a particular group in mind for this year’s Christmas entry to my Deck Log. Come to think of it, though, it’s probably a pretty large group. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if this one touches, or has touched, all of you.
If you remember the
Read more…The holidays must have been a lonely time for most Silver-Age super-heroes. The adult ones, anyway. For few of them had family to be with. Still-living parents were almost never in evidence. There’s a literary reason for that, of course. The pre
And we’re back!
I was pleased to see a great deal of participation this time around, and I was impressed at the fact that it appeared that all of you answered without consulting any answers posted earlier. I don’t make that a rule because there’s
Read more…After several summers of “theme” trivia quizzes, this year, I’m right back where I started, with a potpourri of questions from Silver-Age DC Comics. I’ve commented before on the increasing difficulty I experience every year in putting one of these c
It was Thanksgiving Day, 1942, and the dinner table at Norman’s house was set for the holiday feast. The good china. Polished silverware. White tablecloth. The fancy salt and pepper shakers. The silver serving dish. Mrs. Wheaton, the family coo
The paramilitary Blackhawks were one of the most closed-door groups in comic-book history. After the admission of Chop-Chop in 1941 (subsequent revisions would set it later in the war), no-one else was awarded a Blackhawk uniform until 1957. That’s
If you wanted to become one of the famed Black Knights of the skies, you pretty much had to be around in 1941.
The story of the man called Blackhawk and the squadron named after him began in Military Comics # 1 (Aug., 1941). During the Nazi invas
Read more…To-day, on this day of days, as you gather around the Christmas tree, or sit down to Christmas dinner . . .
. . . please remember to thank them for their presents.
* * * * *
From Cheryl and myself, to all of you, o
Read more…In chapter seven of that seminal work on the history of comics, All in Color for a Dime (Arlington House, 1970), Jim Harmon wrote:
Now all superheros have their weaknesses, or at least they ought to. Making them totally invincible and invulnerable m
Read more…A trim, athletic man in blood-red tights and a white cadaverous mask stands on a pedestal high above the crowd. The smell of sawdust and popcorn wafts through the great tent as two thousand eyes stare upward in anticipation. Gripping the trapeze ba
“No use . . . fooling yourself, Abin Sur . . . you are dying! You have only a short time left to live . . . .
Not the best way to début as a character in the Silver Age, but that’s the way it goes when you have to die to start the real hero of the
Read more…You don’t have to read too many early issues of The Avengers before you realise that the original Assemblers were a pretty testy bunch. They conducted themselves oh so formally, but often, irritation would leak through their civility. An interrupti
They can’t all be gems.
Between the vast imagination of Hanna-Barbera and the twin super-hero mines of DC and Marvel, there were hit shows enough to go around. CBS, thanks to Fred Silverman’s instincts and ambition, had most of them, but a few nug
Read more…In television, as in all other fields of endeavour, relative status is seldom above dispute. However, one of those rare exceptions has to be the studio created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, who became the dominant producers of television anim
Twenty-eight years ago---ye gods, has it been almost three decades?---I had just started a tour of duty as the executive officer for a large training command in St. Paul, Minneapolis. I was single then, with no prospects for changing that status in
If credit for the upheaval about to hit Saturday-morning children’s programming had to be given to any one man, then it would have to go to television executive Fred Silverman.
Fred Silverman would become more well known as the executive who, in th
Read more…At the request of my pal, Jeff of Earth-J, who is hosting a thread on the Hanna-Barbera cartoons of the mid-1960's, I'm re-running my 2008 seven-part series on Saturday-morning super-hero cartoons from that era. That gives me a chance to polish it an
As difficult as it may be for some of you youngsters out there to believe, there was a time when Marvel Comics wasn’t the overwhelming, cross-media monolith of the comics industry. In the early and mid-1960’s, Marvel was the Avis of comics publisher
