In one of those strange coincidents that happens on this forum, I went to my storage unit to retrieve my ROM, Spaceknight only to discover that my brother filled my room up with his baby furniture so I had neither the time or the energy to dig them out! However I did get DC the New Frontier, Wrath of the Spectre, Hourman (in which I had a bunch of letters printed in) and, more to the point, Red Circle AKA Archie's The Mighty Crusaders. This was before George brought them up in the "End of the Silver Age" thread. Now I don't know if he meant this series but it was on my mind, especially after the latest fiasco over at DC with the characters and Archie hinting at future plans for them.
The Mighty Crusaders #1-3 (Ma-Jl'83) was a Rich Buckler production (Written, Drawn and Edited). He picked the gamut of 40s, 50s and 60s Archie/MLJ heroes:
The Shield: the first patriotic super-hero, not the son from the 60s but the original. Gets into a wee bit of legal trouble!
The Comet: reflecting his 60s revival with vague powers and mundane costume.
The Black Hood: black leather motorcycle riding cousin of the first Black Hood. Sticks out like a sore thumb!
The Web: no longer "hen-pecked". Flat origin. Cool costume.
Lancelot Strong, the Shield: briefly had his own book in the 50s. Has energy powers. Rivalry with the (other) Shield!
The Fly and Fly Girl: the star of the 60s version, the Spider-Man that wasn't. Had the oddest assortment of powers. Plus the obligatory girl!
The Jaguar: beyond his animal powers, could make his mustache disappear!
Buckler does his Neal Adams impersonation here with touches of Kirby. He tries to make this book as "Marvel" as possible. The heroes argue, don't get along but fight as one. Surprisingly no one thought-confesses their love for Fly Girl, not even the Fly!
Maybe if their villains weren't named The Brain Emperor or Eterno, they would have had a better shot.
Surprisingly, they do reference the 60s comics often, though we should ask why tie in this new series with that campy, pseudo-bad, Marvel-lite schlock, for want of a better term!
And I will swear on a stack of Miller's Daredevil that they had an action figure line! And a board game!
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Red Circle was #1-5, then it was the Archie Adventure Line with #6.
The Shield got his own book but that was taken over by Steel Sterling. The Fly also got a solo book. There were three issues of Black Hood with the Fox. Plus Blue Ribbon Special as their Showcase!
The Comet was supposed to be a six-issue mini but it lasted only two but it had the final fate of the Hangman with Carmine Infantino art!
As part of the Archie Adv. Line, they published The Original Shield.
Buckler is a creator I've only really discovered recently. He created Deathlok the
2000ADMarvel hero and worked with the great Sy Barry on the Phantom strip for a time, so muchos respect to the man from this quarter.Still, MC is a bit of a misfire. It seemed to be aimed at the readership of 5-10 years earlier, rather than the readership of 1983. The art/writing would have been first rate on mid-70's JLA or Avengers. Part of that feeling is that, just like those works, it depends on the readers being familiar with the concepts and caring about them going in. Sadly, neither criteria would have applied to most of the potential readership, so a different approach was needed.
The big mis-step, and indication that this comic was behind the times, was picked up by two of the letter-writers in issues 2 & 3. They asked why Fly-girl had virtually no lines in the first few issues, no origin back-up strip as the others had, no character to speak of and a role as a pale acquiescing echo of a main male character. Buckler twice replies that it is because of his burning passion for equality (that he learned in the army)!
I gather that Buckler might have been a bit of a maverick. His bloody-mindedness in handling the gender gap here and addressing the questions on it may be an aspect of that. He’s a fine artist though, and it is our loss if he didn’t do as much mainstream work as he could have.
When you think of how deeply Claremont was into his gender-savvy X-Men at this time and even how the blockbusting New Teen Titans had been freshening up old genre tropes by spinning them around central female characters, Buckler did himself a disservice by dropping the ball so badly on Fly-Girl. (Maybe making her the point-of-view character in an all-male super-group might have addressed a lot of the problems at a stroke?)
I think this series might be a useful lesson in how not to do a superhero strip that isn't with established characters from DC/Marvel. There are good in-story reasons why the DC/Marvel guys dress and act like they do, and have their liaisons with the government etc. There is no reason a handful of super-people popping up in a world like our own would result in a set-up that seems so like the MU/DCU, which is what we get with the Mighty Crusaders.
A new superhero world is a chance to do all sorts of interesting things that the set-up of the Big Two’s worlds don’t allow. A new superhero world should exploit that differentiator. There are lots of examples, but for some reason the recent Umbrella Academy jumps to mind as a way to do a superteam story away from the conventions of Marvel/DC. BTW, I’d love to know what you made of that series, Philip. It cleverly uses the tropes of the classic comics we love, but ends up as something that is all its own thing.
With a bit more thought, Mighty Crusaders could have been more of its own thing. As it is, it’s just Fly-Girl to the big two’s Fly!
I thought Mighty Crusaders had the potential to be successful but it tried to be too much like a Marvel book, plus I'm not sure how committed Archie was to it.
To be honest, until Mister Silver Age wrote an article about the Fly/Fly-Man, I had no idea of how Fly-Girl came to be. But they did add a new female character in the Darkling and had an African-American scientist friend of the Web accompany the team. I thought that he would gain powers but that never occurred.
As Figs said, they jumped into this series as if everyone knew the heroes' backstories but all it did was make these original characters seem like imitations of the more popular DC/Marvel heroes.
Fiasco meaning that the Archie heroes were hyped as major additions to the DCU and in their original forms but they were altered and new versions of the Web and Inferno got more play than the Comet, Jaguar, Steel Sterling, etc. The Fly wasn't included at all!
The only crossover was with Magog, of all titles. The two sole books, The Shield and The Web were cancelled fairly quickly and replaced by a hard-to-follow Mighty Crusaders mini. But that doesn't matter! None of it does! Because Archie merely leased its Heroes to DC and now they have them back!
We now have to see what Archie intends to do with its heroic legacies. History warns us to be cautious and the DC interpretation left much to be desired! It would have been better if they brought back the Impact variations! All-in-all, a very disappointing venture, IMHO!
...Well , first , for a fact you obviously do not know , Archie no longer has the rights to the Fly ( Though - yes - Fly Girl , about whom more later , 'Homes , yo ! ) , Joe Simon , supposedly on a " friendly " basis , re-obtained the name , and all concepts and stories from the first four issues ( Which Archie still has as a TPB . ) , tho' I believe Archie can still reprint all in-between stories .
The " Fly " name and all stuff rooted in those first four issues are Joe Simon's now , in other words .
Was Inferno a creation of the early-80s version ?
As a point in fact, I do know that Joe Simon has the rights to the Fly but DC has Time Warner behind them. My contention is, if they wanted the Archie characters to succeed and they were leasing them anyway, that they could have leased the Fly as well. It's not like Simon is putting out a Fly book now!
And I'm afraid that I don't know of any early 80s Inferno revival beyond the robot version of Mighty Crusaders #2. He was a MLJ Golden Age hero (who began as a villain, IIRC).
...Okay , but you did not say that you knew that the Fly was J.S.'s now , so...
( Incidentally , I recall reading somewhere of a French comics magazine having published a new story , done by them on liscence from Simon , of the Fly , maybe one other Simon character...and a version of the " web-gun "-carrying hyphenless Spiderman that Joe claims credit to ( Perhaps the name - Well , maybe not in French ? - changed a little bit . ) , He DID , evidently , pitch this version of the character ( Who was closer to the Archie Fly . ) in the early 50s . )
Thank you for answering my question re: Inferno . I didn't know where he came from .
Presumably , the 1978 Castro clone/" bear daddy " appearance was a design decision of the present team ?????????
I was looking at the back page of Mighty Crusaders #7 (My'84) and saw the Geppi's ad. Its list of Red Circle titles still included cancelled ones like Black Hood and The Comet and the never published nor advertised books, Hangman and The Jaguar!
Plus its DC list contained something called Zero Man!
Gray Morrow did work on Black Hood with Alex Toth doing the Fox back-up.
The Fly had Dikto art in some stories and the two issues of The Comet were drawn by Carmine Infantino.
Never heard about The Web but who wouldn't want to read about a Hen-Pecked Hero?