Reading Room: NATURE BOY "Jiver from Jupiter"

Before Percy Jackson was...Nature Boy!

...the early Silver Age teen hero with amazing powers granted by the ancient Gods!

If this story from Charlton's Nature Boy #5 (1957) has the "feel" of some of the wackier Superman Family stories of the Silver Age, there's a very good reason!
It was written by Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel!
The dynamic art was by John Buscema, shortly before his return to Marvel Comics, where his renderings became the "house" art style for over 20 years!
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Reading Room: NATURE MAN "Terrible Torrent" & NATURE GIRL "Trapping the Trapper"

Jerry Siegel followed the pattern established by his biggest hit...

...Superman, when he did Nature Boy, including an adult incarnation...

...along with a distaff version...

Nature Man appeared in Nature Boy #3, Nature Girl in #5.
Both strips were written by Jerry Siegel and illustrated by John Buscema.
While Nature Man is obviously a grown-up David Crandall, there's no explanation as to who Nature Girl is, how she got her powers, or why she has a pet elephant!
(Although I note, as an adult, Crandall finally puts on a pair of tights!)
These were their only appearances.

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Reading Room: BLUE BEETLE "UnMasked"

We start our original Blue Beetle run with his final tale...

...where he does a credible Superman imitation, complete with nosy girl reporter!

Gee, Clark...I mean Dan...to think that crook thought you were Super...I mean the Blue Beetle...

Yeah, it's pretty lame.

You'll note the Blue Beetle has pretty much the standard range of super-powers at this point, including strength, flight, and limited invulnerability, all apparently due to the Vitamin 2-X he had been taking since Mystery Men Comics #1 (1939).

Though the art is credited to Charles Nichols (pencils) and Sal Trapani (inks), I seriously doubt Trapani did the inking.

This story in Charlton's Nature Boy #3 (1956) was the last appearance of Dan Garret, the Golden Age Blue Beetle.

The next appearance (with totally-new origin) of any Blue Beetle, would be eight years later in Blue Beetle V2 N1 (1964) with the debut of archeologist Dan Garrett (note the extra "t"), who would discover a mystic scarab that transformed him into The Blue Beetle!

Garrett passed his Blue Beetle identity (though not the scarab-based powers) on to student Ted Kord only two years later.

But when you next see the Blue Beetle here, it'll be his first appearance, from Mystery Men Comics #1, with a radically-different costume and modus operandi!

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Before Katniss was...Diana the Huntress!

Long before Katniss Everdeen strung a bow, there was another archer-heroine...

...an ancient Greek/Roman deity who received her own comic series in 1944...Diana the Huntress!

While the unknown writer/artist confuses Greek and Roman mythology (The Roman goddess "Diana" should be the Greek goddess "Artemis". "Mercury" should be "Hermes", etc.), his heart was in the right place, and, admittedly, "Artemis" was a less-familiar name to kids of the 1940s than "Diana".

The series debuted in Yellowjacket Comics #1 (1944), ran in all ten issues of the title, then disappeared!

It's never been reprinted, but we'll be running all ten segments over the next few months!

Watch for them.

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Reading Room: NATURE BOY "Origin of Nature Boy"

Long before pro wrestler Ric Flair usurped the name...

...Nature Boy stood for truth, justice, and ancient gods (Huh?) as seen in his first appearance.

Rescued by "gods" who control various aspects of nature, he's given a portion of each of their powers, ala the Golden Age Captain Marvel...
Neptune--water
Gusto--wind
Furo--fire
Eartha--earth
Electra--lightning
Allura--love
Azura--skies
Friga--cold
...and he didn't have to say something like "SHAZAM!" to do it!
(Yeah, I know a couple of the deities overlap, and only one was an actual mythological god, but why quibble?)
Nature Boy only had three issues of his own title (which started with #3) at Charlton Comics before he disappeared from the comics scene..until now!But, within those three issues, the seeds were planted for an entire superfamily of Nature-heroes including Nature Man (an adult version of the hero from the future) and female counterpart Nature Girl.
This isn't surprising, since he was conceived by Jerry Siegel (co-creator of Superman) who knew a thing or two about that sort of thing.
To add to his hero cred, Nature Boy was drawn by John Buscema, who later did Conan, Avengers, and damn near everything at Marvel from the late 1960s thru the 1990s, so even if the stories were a bit silly, they looked damn good!

Nature Boy should be considered one of the first Silver Age heroes since his premiere was in 1956, just a couple of months before The Flash re-emerged in Showcase #4!
On that basis, we at Atomic Kommie Comics™ have revived Nature Boy as part of our Lost Heroes of the Silver Age of Comics™ line, on t-shirts, messenger bags, mugs and other kool kollectibles!
He was one of the first, but hardly one of the worst...

Reading Room: "Introducing CAPTAIN ATOM"

He co-created Spider-Man and Dr Strange...

...but this is Steve Ditko's first co-creation (with writer Joe Gill), exactly as it appeared in Space Adventures #33 (1960)!

Captain Atom has enjoyed the longest career of any Charlton character, still going today in his own title (from DC)! (Note: The Charlton version of the Blue Beetle didn't come along until 1964, and the Ditko-revised version first appeared in 1967!)

Note that despite the blue/silver coloring on the interiors, Captain Atom was shown on the cover in his orange/yellow garb.

Also, his trademark hair-color change from red to white when he "powers up"  isn't shown.

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Reading Room: ONE-SHOT HEROES SpookMan

Before continuing with more Frankenstein fun, let's look a character who only appeared once...

...but bears some uncanny similarities to a couple of later (and more famous) characters!

As we said, SpookMan appeared only once, in Charlton Premiere #1 (1967), written and illustrated by Pat Boyette, a writer/artist with a distinctive style and almost 900 stories to his credit from 1966 to 1998, mostly at Charlton Comics, which explains why most fans today are unaware of him, except as the creator of The PeaceMaker, now owned by DC Comics. and the inspiration for The Comedian in Watchmen!

As to Spookman's similarities to other characters, let's see...

Art/antiques dealer with a white streak in his hair who turns into a demonic figure (1972)...

Jason Blood aka The Demon by Jack Kirby

Supernatural figure garbed in Puritan/colonial garb operating in the present (1975)...

Matthew Dunsinane aka The Grim Ghost by Ernie Colon

And, both of them are currently being published!

In addition, the character was initially called SandMan, but both Marvel and DC had (non-supernatural) characters with that name, so...the name was changed before publication to the extremely-odd and not very accurate SpookMan.

A sorta-supernatural Sandman would come along in 1974...

..and finally, a really-unearthly Sandman debuted in 1989!

...and that's a story for another time...like next Halloween!

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