... in an attempt to mimic
Marvel Comics.
The Archie Adventure Line was renamed Mighty Comics Group (with a corner box graphic similar to Marvel's), and a new writer-artist team took over the book trying to match Stan Lee's scripting and Jack Kirby's penciling...
Writer "Jerry Ess" was
Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel, who replaced Robert Bernstein, the initial scripter of the revamped
Mighty Comics Group titles.
Artist "Paul Arr's" real name was Paul Reinman, whose one saving grace was that he was incredibly-fast since he became the primary artist for
all the
Mighty Comics titles* including
Fly-Man (which became the anthology
Mighty Comics Presents as of #40),
Mighty Crusaders, and
The Shadow!
Now if you thought
this was bad, as soon as the
Batman TV series hit in January, 1966, and "BatMania" swept the country,
Archie Comics' editors forced Siegel to add exaggerated "camp" dialogue and plotlines to the titles.
Unfortunately, Jerry was no better at writing those elements, then he was at mimicking Stan Lee's style.
By mid-1967, the
Mighty Comics Group and
Fly-Man were gone from newsstands.
There have been several revivals of the characters since then, but
The Fly was never called
"Fly-Man" again.
When Belmont Books brought out a paperback reprinting some of the tales in mid-1966, Siegel wrote a new intro and finally received a credit for his scripting under his real name instead of the "Jerry Ess" penname.
BTW, you'll note that Fly-Man is not on the cover!
That's Turan, from the Fly-Man #36 (1966) cover at the top of this post, which makes some sense, since this tale from that issue is the only Fly-Man story in the book!
*Mike Sekowsky ghost-penciled a couple of stories, Joe Giella inked one.
