CoronaVirus Comics GIANT-SIZED DOC SAVAGE "The Man of Bronze" Part 1

Who's the superhero whose origin is tied in to deadly disease?

And, ironically, he's one of the few superheroes who's also a practicing MD!

Doc and his buddies go in pursuit of the would-be assassin...
Tomorrow!

at our "brother" RetroBlog, Atomic Kommie Comics!

In the early 1970s, bolstered by the success of Conan the Barbarian, both DC and Marvel attempted to launch other pulp characters who had successful paperback reprint series as comic book titles.

Hoping that the audiences for them would carry over as Conan's had, Marvel acquired the rights to Doc Savage, while DC snagged both The Shadow and The Avenger.

The Doc title lasted only eight issues from 1972-73, but the license remained in Marvel's hands when the George Pal movie came along and Marvel invoked their right to do a comic based on the movie.

Compare with page 7 above.

Since the flick was an adaptation of the premiere novel "The Man of Bronze", which Marvel had already used as the basis for the first two issues of their previous comic, it was decided to repackage that material as a double-sized one-shot to tie-in with the movie's release.

The art was modified to match the appearance of Doc in the movie, substituting an open-collared shirt for his Marvel-created blue vest and a buzz-cut for the James Bama/Bantam paperback "skullcap" (see left).

(I always wondered why Marvel didn't go with the torn-shirt look of the Bantam paperback covers on the comics.

Maybe they didn't want people confusing Doc with their resident torn-shirt aficionado, Nick Fury.

Thankfully, Marvel returned to the torn shirt "look" on the 1975-77 b/w magazine covers by Ken Barr.)

The original two-issue comic adaptation had updated the 1933 novel to the then-present 1970s.

The Giant-Size Doc Savage "re-mastering" modified the technology back to 1930s levels, except the adaptation's replacing of the Mayan assassin's elephant gun with a laser rifle, which remained!

They also re-did Monk's hair from the incorrect black-with-blue-highlights to the red color it had in the pulp stories (and the remainder of the Marvel run).

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Doc Savage

The Man of Bronze

CoronaVirus Comics SPIDEY SUPER STORIES "Spidey vs Mister Measles"

Spider-Man's fought many strange foes...

...but none stranger than the dastardly, diseased TV super-villain whose only appearance was narrated by Morgan Freeman!

(Yes, that Morgan Freeman!)

See what happens when you don't get your inoculations, kids?

Marvel's Spidey Super Stories #2 (1974) takes the tv ep's script and uses it verbatim for this adaptation illustrated by penciler Win Mortimer and inker Mike Esposito.

Ensemble member Skip Hinnant (who played most of the Spidey villains as well as regular character Fargo North: Decoder) portrayed Mister Measles.

Morgan Freeman narrated all the Spidey segments (even ones where he appeared as regular character Easy Reader), including this one.

Unfortunately, there's no extant video of this segment, but the audio from it was taken and used on the Peter Pan/Power Records LP album Spidey Super Stories!

And we have it here!

Note: Spidey didn't speak in the TV episodes!

His dialogue was shown in on-screen word balloons the audience would read...sometimes out loud...sometimes really loud, as my screeching little brother did!

So, ensemble member John Boyd (who also wrote most of the Spidey segments) did the webhead's dialogue for the record album!

Also note: Power Records did combination record album/comic books so kids could read along a comic with the audio...like this!

They adapted a number of existing Marvel comic stories featuring the Fantastic Four, Captain America, Man-Thing, and others...including Spider-Man!

But the comics versions of the stories in this particular album were found only in the Spidey Super Stories comic book!

The album didn't have any comics!

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Best of Spidey Super Stories

(which, sadly, does not include this story)

CoronaVirus Comics HIT COMICS "Red Bee vs the Medical Grafters"

Besides Plastic Man, numerous Quality Comics characters fought to protect America from medical threats...

...whether from other countries or right here in the good ol' USA!

This never-reprinted story from Quality's Hit Comics #2 (1940) was written by Toni Blum (one of the few women writing comics during the Golden Age) and but the artist under the "B H Apiary" pen-name is unknown.

(An apiary is a group of separate bee hives close together)

While other characters like The Crimson Avenger and The Sandman borrowed The Green Hornet's "wanted criminal in a fedora and overcoat" motif, the Red Bee took the "colorful insect wanted by the police" concept and went in a different direction...a skintight costume and actually using live insects!

Besides trained bees (can you actually train bees?), the two-fisted adventurer used a "stinger" gun that shot tranquilizer darts (paralleling the Green Hornet's knockout-gas gun)!

(Note that bees, wasps, yellowjackets, and hornets are all from the same sub-species of insects.)

Quality's editors must've thought the concept was a winner, since the Red Bee was cover-featured on Hit Comics' first issue, plus a run of several consecutive issues a few months later.

(Most of the time, characters were rotated, with each one getting a cover every 3-4 issues!)

Despite the promotional push, the Red Bee disappeared after Hit #24.

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League of Regrettable SuperHeroes

(including the Red Bee!)

CoronaVirus Comics PLASTIC MAN "Fight Against Germ Warfare!"

Perhaps the least-likely superhero to deal with either the Korean War or biological warfare...

...was the usually light-hearted Ductile Detective, Plastic Man!

As you can see, this never-reprinted tale from Quality's Plastic Man #38 (1952) is a loooong way from his usual surreal antics.

After World War II, while most surviving superheroes were going from serious to light-hearted, Quality's characters took a dive into the Dark Side of the pool, following whatever trend was popular at the moment!

Monsters (including vampires, zombies, and werewolves), Korean/Russkie/Chinese Communists, and aliens from outer space became their primary opponents!

For other characters like Blackhawk and Kid Eternity, it wasn't much of a transition since they had battled fairly realistic Nazis and Japanese both on the battlefield and on the homefront, but the usually-fun Plas went through a particularly-jarring change as writer/artist Jack Cole departed his creation early in 1950!

The decidedly non-humorous trend continued until Plas was laid to rest in 1956.

Though DC bought up the Quality Comics line that year, the only titles they continued were Blackhawk, G.I. Combat, Heart Throbs and the short-lived Robin Hood Tales.

Plas languished without even a reprint until he was revived in 1966 in all-new stories in a short-lived series!

(Note: around the same time, IW/Super Comics reprinted several issues of Plas's Golden Age book since they had purchased the actual printing plates from a facility where they had been abandoned by Quality.

The timing appears to have been a coincidence.)

Since then, he's been revived and revamped several times under a variety of creatives including Kyle Baker and Phil Foglio, and eventually incorporated into the DC mainstream universe.

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Plastic Man 80-Page Giant

Featuring classic tales from each of his eras (Golden Age/Silver Age/Bronze Age)

WEREWOLF HUNTER "Priestess of the Spider Death" / "Mistress of the Web"

It's a double-feature Halloween treat...

..with two versions of the same tale, true believers!

The original version of this terrifying tale is from Fiction House's Ranger Comics #15 (1944)!

But, when it was re-presented in Fiction House's Ghost Comics #3 (1952), not only was it partially-redrawn (beginning at page 3) to remove a page of story, it was re-written (from the splash panel onward) as well!

Fiction House did a lot of this sort of editing when reprinting material in the late 1940s since th earlier magazines, like Rangers Comics, were 60 pages, but the later books like Ghost Comics were only 36 pages!

Lily Renee illustrated the original version.

But, judging from the crudeness of the art modifications, she didn't work on the modified reprint!

BTW, we're part of the amazingly-kool CountDown to Halloween 2019 Blogathon!

Click HERE to see the other pround participants!

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Lily Renee, Escape Artist

by

Trina Robbins