Reading Room: THE SHADOW "Shiwan Khan's House of Horrors" Part 1

In the 1960s, many classic comic and pulp heroes were revived...

...some not quite as successfully as others!

Be here tomorrow for the campy conclusion,

and, as they used to say on Batman...

"The worst is yet to come!"

Penned by Jerry Siegel and illustrated by Paul Reinman, this tale from Radio Comics' The Shadow #3 (1964) is easily one of the low points of the career of He Who Knows What Evil...!

Apparently seeing The Shadow adapted to a high-adventure/spy format was not selling in comics as well as it did in paperbacks like this...

...the staff at Radio Comics (Archie Comics' 1960s superhero line) decided to go into full campy superhero mode instead, dumping the cloak and slouch hat and giving him a hideous costume and some gimmicks, while retaining the ability to "cloud mens' minds".
Unfortunately, we still remember these never-reprinted stories...

Check out the

 Comics Collectibles Shop 

for goodies featuring other Silver Age heroes, besides The Shadow!

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: THE SHADOW "Princess of Death"

When Last We Left The Shadow...

...we promised you  a look at the purple and green-garbed Silver Age version...

You'll note a number of changes since The (Silver Age) Shadow's last appearance...

He's now a brunette, not blonde.
He's no longer using hypnotic powers to cloud mens' minds, preferring stealth.

He's wearing a green and purple skintight costume!

The art style has changed, and not for the better.
(Paul Reinman, who was also illustrating Archie's other superhero titles, has replaced John Rosenberger.)
However, the writer was still Robert Bernstein. In fact, either this tale, or its' companion from this never-reprinted issue was his last comic book work.
We'll be re-presenting the other, longer tale from Archie's The Shadow #3 in the near future.
I can hear the screams of anguish already!

Check out the

 Comics Collectibles Shop 

for goodies featuring other Silver Age heroes, besides The Shadow!

And check out the Shadow goodies from Amazon below...

The OTHER Hero from the Creators of Superman!

 

What do you do after you've created the ULTIMATE comics character...and lost the rights to him?
Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster faced that problem in 1947!
When they sued DC Comics (then National Periodicals Publications), they lost all the assignments (both individually and as a team) they were working on.
To pay the bills, they solicited work from other comics companies both on existing characters and, in one case, creating a NEW character...FunnyMan for Magazine Enterprises!

FunnyMan was Larry Davis, a comedian looking for a shtick.
His girlfriend / agent June suggested a publicity stunt with Larry dressing in his trademark clown outfit, "accidentally" coming upon a (staged with actors) "crime scene" and disarming and capturing the "criminals" using his props, all the while being photographed by conveniently-placed cameramen.
As you might have guessed, Larry stumbled on a real crime in progress, and thinking it was the stunt, captured a real criminal!
When he discovered he had captured an actual criminal, Larry decided to continue battling crime, using mocking humor and embarrassing tricks to punish evildoers!

Trivia:
The editor at Magazine Enterprises who bought FunnyMan was Vin Sullivan, who also bought Superman from Siegel & Shuster when he was an editor at National Periodical Publications!
Larry Davis was based on movie / radio comedian Danny Kaye!

It was a clever idea, and pretty well executed.
Unfortunately, it didn't catch on.
The book only lasted six issues.
There was also a short-lived newspaper strip.
After FunnyMan failed and Siegel & Shuster lost their lawsuit, they went their separate ways.

But...FunnyMan has NOT been forgotten!
There's a NEW book about the character--Siegel & Shuster's Funnyman: the First Jewish Superhero from the Creators of Superman by Thomas Andrae and Mel Gordon!

Besides the actual comic stories, there's a wealth of background info about Siegel & Shuster, the Danny Kaye connection, as well as the cultural influences that inspired the character!

Plus: we've brought FunnyMan back with a line of kool kollectibles (including mugs, t-shirts, iPad bags, etc.) in our Lost Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics™ collection!

So why not get a gift set of the new book and one of our collectibles for the pop culture aficionado in your life?
What could it hurt? ;-)

Bonus: a cool review of the new book at Publishers Weekly.
Extra FREE Bonus: the 6-issue FunnyMan run in PDF form!