Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Thanksgiving Turkey: BLACKHAWK "A Blackhawk a Day" Part 1

We previously brought you the notorious revamp...
..of Golden Age aviator-hero Blackhawk and his team into Swinging '60s superhero/spies!
However, things didn't work out quite as DC Comics had hoped!
13 issues later, the book had gone from monthly to bi-monthly and the final tale of the "New Blackhawk Era" was about to be told...
BONUS: Here's the original art for the book's cover.
Layout by Carmine Infantino, pencils by Dick Dillin, inks by Chuck Cuidera.
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Thursday, October 27, 2016

Halloween Special: How Batman Got His Groove Back: "THE Batman Returns!"

Art by Neal Adams
The Caped Crusader and Boy Wonder are flabbergasted as criminals they encounter react in terror to their mere presence, the way such fiends did in the early days of their crime-fighting careers!
Have criminals once more become "a superstitious, cowardly lot"?
An anonymous call to the Mantled Manhunter inviting him to discover the answer may hold the key...
Written by Frank Robbins, penciled by Bob Brown, and inked by Joe Giella, this tale from DC's Detective Comics #389 (1969) began the deliberate attempt to restore Batman to the Dark Knight of the 1940s!
From this point onward, both the writers and artists worked towards restoring the "creature of the night" motif that had disappeared in the late 1940s.
(Neal Adams had begun to do that on covers, but, once this story was published, he was able to go all-out on stories as well, with other artists like Irv Novick following suit!)
Considering how this tale changed the orientation of the character (and actually gave an explanation for his alteration of Method of Operation, restoring the bat as a symbol of avenging justice), it's odd this tale had never been reprinted in the US until 2006...and only in black and white!
Bonus: the cover from a Swedish reprint...
...taken from the story itself (as shown HERE!)
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
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featuring the tale we'll be running...but in black and white!

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Halloween Special: How Batman Got His Groove Back "From BRIGHT Knight to DARK Knight!"

In 1969, the Batman TV series had been cancelled...
...and Bat-titles' sales were dropping!
The "camp" approach had been phased out of the comics, but Batman was, at this point, just another costumed character.
While artists like Neal Adams and Irv Novick had been incorporating "darker" bat-imagery into the art, the writing hadn't reflected what they were trying to do, staying with the "costumed detective" plots of the pre-tv stories of the early 1960s.
Until this story...
Will Batman Bite the Bait?
Will the Scarecrow Use Batman's Own Motif to Destroy Him?
For the Astounding Answer to These and Other Questions...
One Hint...the Scariest is Yet to Come!
Written by Frank Robbins, penciled by Bob Brown, and inked by Joe Giella, this tale from DC's Detective Comics #389 (1969) began a deliberate attempt to restore Batman to the Dark Knight of the 1940s!
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featuring the tale we'll be running...but in black and white!

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Halloween Special: How Batman Got His Groove Back!

How did Batman go from...
...the campy Bright Knight to...
...the terrifying Dark Knight in 1968-69?
(We don't normally do entries on the "big-name" DC and Marvel characters, but this particular story hasn't been seen in color since its' initial publication, and it is horror/terror-themed, so we decided to make an exception.)
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featuring the tale we'll be running...but in black and white!

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Reading Room PLASTIC MAN "Dirty Devices of Dr Dome" Part 3 (Conclusion)

It seems there's a lot of people who would wish harm upon happy-go-lucky Plastic Man!
Super villains like Dr Dome and Professor X!
The elitist (and extremely rich) Mrs DeLute and her butler Fawnish!
The arrogant (and inept) police Captain McSniffe!
And the conflicted daughter of Dr Dome, Lynx, who both loves our Stretchable Slacker and continually tries to kill him!
With this set-up in place, the title ran nine more issues.
Arnold Drake would remain as writer for the entire series.
Win Mortimer would take over interior art from 2-7, with Jack Sparling finishing the series from 7-10.
Carmine Infantino and Joe Orlando would contribute covers.
This being the 1960s, Plas would battle both mod-dressed characters and gorillas!
After an issue presenting three different origin tales, Plas' pliable pappy, the Golden Age (Quality Comics) Plastic Man appeared along with sidekick Woozy Winks!
There was a campy cross-over with Batman in Brave and Bold.
Then he disappeared for several years before being revived as an amnesiac involved in a romance with a villainess.
But that's a story for another time.
Speaking of stories, I believed this tale had never been reprinted, but it appeared in DC's Plastic Man 80-Page Giant (2004), which reprinted several of Plas' "famous firsts".
The rest of the 1960s series has not been reprinted, and we may present them here...
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by Art Spiegelman and Chip Kidd