Mad Man

Between the ages of about 9 and 13, virtually every kid in the country went MAD, and I was certainly no exception. Unlike the comics, I didn't hang onto my collection, but fortunately the folks at EC put out a massive CD set about 10 years ago, with something like 500 issues of the seminal American humor magazine. Here are some of the bits I remember reading back then.

For some reason, the song parodies always worked with me:

I remembered that one virtually word for word except that in the first stanza I recalled it being "then you know you've got..."

The Spy Vs. Spy series was always hilarious, and I suppose most of us remember that the morse code under the splash reads "By Prohias". But how many remember that there was a short-lived third spy, the grey woman?

I suspect she was eliminated because she always won, upsetting the general balance between the black and white spies. Of course, after awhile, even the dullest reader must have figured out that whoever won the splash battle clearly lost the panel bout, and the guy who seems to be winning in the first three panels always dies in the last one. BTW, there was a pretty entertaining computer game for the Commodore 64 back in the 1980s featuring Spy Vs. Spy.

Everybody remembers the terrific movie and TV parodies, often illustrated by the incomparable Mort Drucker:

There were lots of funny bits involving photographs. For some unknown reason, this one just popped out at me:

For the life of me, I can't imagine why I remember that.

The covers were mostly forgettable; even though I bought lots of issues in the 1964-1967 timeframe, this is the only one I specifically remember:

And it's not because I got the joke; it's because I saw it at a friend's house and somebody had poked holes in poor Alfred's eyes.

Of course, MAD did lots of stuff we didn't understand; a lot of the political humor went right over my head. But that was okay; we were used to not getting the joke all the time, and MAD prepared us for National Lampoon in the 1970s, where, for the most part, we did.

MAD had so much more; those terrific little gags in the margins that I'd need a magnifying glass to see nowadays. Or Dave Berg's endless "The Lighter Side of..." series. Or MAD's maddest artist, Don Martin. Or those amusing fold-ins on the inside back cover.

I'm sure that most of you know that MAD actually started as a regular-sized comic book. One thing that I was not aware of until recently was just how many imitators there were. Everybody remembers Cracked, but there were easily a dozen others.

More about →

Trivia Quiz #45: Answers

1. In what year did Ray Palmer graduate from college? In the Atom #10, we learned that Ray was a 1954 grad of Ivy University. That would have made him about 32 in 1964, or a geezer of 79 today.

2. What do Lois Lane's lips taste like? Clark Kent discovered at a Christmas party in Action #306 that her lips tasted like peaches:

3. What holiday do people on Thanagar celebrate on the same day Americans celebrate the Fourth of July? Folks on Thanagar celebrate Impossible Day, on which they are supposed to do three impossible things. BTW, for a really cool treat, check out Pappy's Golden Age Blogazine post on this story; he has the original Gardner Fox manuscript for the tale, complete with Julius Schwartz's editorial changes, plus scans of the actual story so you can see how it went from script to finished product.

4. What was Jay Garrick's address? When Barry Allen discovered that he'd vibrated onto an Earth-like planet where Central City was known as Keystone City, he looked up Jay Garrick in the phone book:

And discovered that he lived at 5252 78th Street.

5. What was Perry White's favorite TV program? Perry White loved to relax at home and check out Allan Funt and Candid Camera:

These were intended to be really tough, but Jim got four out of the five correct. I stumped a couple folks who usually do quite well. Nobody got the question about Lois' flavor of lipstick.

More about →

Trivia Quiz #45: DC Grab-Bag Toughies

1. In what year did Ray Palmer graduate from college?

2. What do Lois Lane's lips taste like?

3. What holiday do people on Thanagar celebrate on the same day Americans celebrate the Fourth of July?

4. What was Jay Garrick's address?

5. What was Perry White's favorite TV program?

More about →

Fatal Attraction

It's kind of a minor thing, but did you ever notice that a lot of Stan Lee's male characters tended to fall for bad women? Let's see, we can start off with Hawkeye:

He starts out wanting to be a hero, and before you know it he's betraying his country:

Foggy Nelson met an old high school crush:

But it turns out she was just playing him for a sucker:

Balder the Brave was under no delusions about Karnilla, Queen of the Norns:

And yet he still falls prey to her charms:

Jasper Sitwell was apparently fooled by Whitney Frost, secretly the head of the Maggia:

Or was he?

But when it came down to the nitty gritty:

Observations:

1. Note that it is never the leading male character who falls for the bad girl. Stan senses that this is bad characterization for his heroes, even though it never really hurt Batman in the case of Catwoman, for example.

2. It tends to be the main supporting actor. Hawkeye doesn't fit that pattern, but Foggy and Balder certainly qualify and by that point Happy Hogan had largely disappeared from Iron Man, so Jasper Sitwell was the number two.

3. Most of the evil women "reformed", although you can make an argument that some of them never really were quite as bad as they appeared. It turned out that the Black Widow's parents were being held hostage in the Soviet Union and eventually she rebelled against her communist masters and became a heroine. Debbie Harris did reform and began dating Foggy again, eventually becoming his wife. I am unsure about Karnilla; at one point she did help Asgard due to her fondness for Balder, and Balder eventually admitted his love for her. Whitney Frost's tale is more complex; in that original Iron Man saga we learned that she was genuinely conflicted in her role as the head of the Maggia, having taken it over from her father, Count Nefaria.

4. Stan used these relationships to open up new plotlines or to add new dimension to his characters. Hawkeye was allowed to become a temporary villain while leaving open the possibility that he would reform and become a hero, as in fact he did with the Avengers. Debbie was paired off with Foggy to clear the decks (twice) for Matt and Karen Page to become an item, although in neither case did it last for the latter couple. Balder and Sitwell had both been pretty much portrayed as Boy Scouts (quite literally in Jasper's case); this was a way of humanizing them.

5. Aside from Batman, I can't think of a comparable situation in the Silver Age DC, and even his relationship with Catwoman was more of a Golden Age and late Bronze Age affair.

6. Marvel only reversed the roles once; you can make an argument for Sue Storm and the Sub-Mariner setting the template for what came later. DC did have Wonder Woman and Supergirl fall for a few rats at the end of the Silver Age, although in both cases that was more due to short-term plot demands than long-term characterization.

Update: Johnny Bacardi points out that Archie Goodwin actually did the scripting for the Iron Man series by the time of the Sitwell/Frost affair.

Update II: Debbie Harris was apparently introduced during the one issue that Wally Wood scripted of Daredevil, per Fraser Sherman.

More about →

Silly Panel Saturday

If Perry White ever tried this stunt today, he'd be facing a sexual harassment lawsuit:

More about →

Tracers: The Ape Cover Limit

I have read in several different places that Julius Schwartz had a file in his desk which proved that DC comics featuring apes on the cover sold better in general than comics without simians.  I believe that Schwartz even mentioned this in his autobiography, Man of Two Worlds.  It has also been claimed that to avoid overexposure, the number of ape covers was strictly limited by DC management to one per month.

This latter claim has never made a lot of sense to me.  If your objective as an editor or a publisher is to sell as many comic books as you can (and I suspect that is, or ought to be the goal), then why would you refrain from doing something that has been proven to work in the past?  And DC generally published 30 comics a month, would two gorilla covers really saturate the market?

So I decided to take a look at the matter.  I started with 1960 and used the DC Indexes Time Machine to look at all the covers for a given month quickly.  Note that the default option is for comics on sale in a given month, not cover dates.  It seemed reasonable to use that option, since the concern was not to have to many ape covers on the newsstands at once.

First observation: If DC was worried about saturating the market with similar covers, it sure doesn't show.  In 1960, as many others have noted, DC had an almost endless variety of covers featuring aliens, monsters and dinosaurs.  It was not until looking at comics on sale in April that I located an ape cover:

Okay, so it's a gorilla; I suspect that Schwartz meant ape as a very generic term.  The next month featured one of DC's most famous apes:

After an absence of apes in June, July included an alien ape:

DC then resisted the siren call of the apes until December:

Strange Adventures thus becomes the first series to hit two apes in one year.

And then came 1961.  I am astounded to report that I can find no comics that went on sale from DC in that year which included apes, gorillas, or monkeys on the cover.  There appears to be only one sensible conclusion; at this point, Schwartz had not yet developed his evidence about simians on the cover boosting the sales.

In January 1962, Grodd made his first cover appearance:

This is further evidence that Schwartz had not yet discovered the link between sales and gorillas, as Grodd had appeared four times already inside the comics.

The following month saw the debut of Bizarro Titano:

After three months's hiatus, a simian was prominently featured on the cover of Batman Annual #3:

And once again, there was a gap all the way to March 1963.  You might think it would be hard for Tomahawk, a revolutionary-era hero to encounter an ape.  You would be wrong:

In June of that year, we got one of the classic ape covers:

Let me tell you, if an gorilla is sliding into third base, it's a pretty brave fielder standing there waiting for the throw.

Grodd popped up on the first Flash Annual in August:

And the Great White Ape appeared in October's Star Spangled War #111 that same month, the first time we've seen two in the same calendar period.

But that's it for 1963.  Monsieur Mallah appeared on the cover of Doom Patrol #86 in January 1964:

Tomahawk's giant ape returned in May:

But then there was another gap until November when Jerry Lewis #86 featured a King-Kong type cover.  In December there were two ape covers: Hawkman #6 and Fox and Crow #90.

By this point I was getting pretty skeptical.  Out of 60 months and about 1800 comics, only 16 covers had featured an ape or a gorilla.  And 1965 was not much different, with only two ape covers.

Ah, but then came 1966, and suddenly the African invasion.  In January, came Strange Adventures #186:

In February there were two covers:

And Monsieur Mallah appeared on the cover of Brave & Bold #65.

After a couple months gap, an ape popped up on Sea Devils #30 in May, and Bob Hope #100 in June.  Nothing for July, but August saw Hawkman #16, September had King Colosso yet again in Tomahawk (this time shooting a bow and arrow no less), October had Jimmy Olsen marrying a female gorilla, and November's Showcase #66 had Bwana Beast duking it out with an ape.  All told, there were nine different covers with the simian theme in 1966.

And if you think about it, it makes sense that the editors at DC were pulling out all the stops that year.  Although the company as a whole did well with Batmania, the gains were very uneven.  Batman sales skyrocketed, but the Superman-related titles all dipped as did many other books.

In 1967, there were seven more ape-featured covers, with only two coming in one month: September had Jerry Lewis 103 and Plastic Man #7.

Overall impressions:

1. The number of ape covers do not seem excessive.  However, there certainly was a jump in 1966-67; those two years saw as many of those covers as had been seen in the six years previous.

2. There is little evidence for a hard and fast rule against two ape covers in one month.  There were three months where apes did appear on two covers.  I suspect that the real edict was not to overdo it.

In 1968, the number of simian covers did drop, at least until this series launched:

More about →

The Luckiest Character Ever?

My vote goes to the Black Canary. She got a very late start, debuting as a guest star in the Johnny Thunder feature in Flash #86. Johnny Thunder had a long history in the DC universe at that point, having appeared in such historic comics as NY Worlds Fair Comics #2, Flash Comics #1, and All-Star #3, in which he became a charter member of the Justice Society of America. And yet just six issues after her debut as a guest star, she not only bumped Johnny Thunder from Flash Comics, but she was granted a cover appearance:

With the exception of some small insets, it was the only time a feature other than Flash or Hawkman was highlighted on the cover of that magazine.

But even before her own series debuted, she appeared with the Justice Society of America in All-Star #38, and with the next issue she began appearing on the cover:

By #40, she had replaced Johnny Thunder in the JSA; he never again appeared in the Golden Age. She appeared on every cover until #45.

At that point, she found herself without a feature as Flash Comics had been canceled by DC. By rights she should have disappeared like Starman and Dr Fate and many others had. Except... she got lucky. You see, she was not the only JSA member without a feature; longtime members the Flash and the Hawkman had their series canceled at that time as well, and Green Lantern was on his last legs. All-American had been converted to a western comic title the year before, and GL's own book mostly featured Streak the Wonder Dog on the cover for the last few issues. So she continued appearing in every issue of All-Star and occasionally popped up on the cover as well, until the JSA made its last appearance in #57.

Fast forward 12 years. In Flash #137, the JSA made its first appearance since that last issue of All-Star. Although the bulk of the story concerned Jay Garrick and Barry Allen teaming up against Vandal Savage, at the very end the two Flashes freed the old JSA members who'd been captured by that villain:

Ironically, as you can see, the Black Canary did not appear there. Instead Johnny Thunder returns. Note as well that Wonder Woman is in that scene; that's the Earth-2 (JSA) Wondy. She has a suggestion:

And sure enough, only a month or two later, JLA #21 appeared on the newsstands, inaugurating the annual "Crisis" teamups between the JLA and the JSA. But guess who did not make an appearance?

The GA Wonder Woman vanished and in her place was:

The Black Canary. There would appear to be two possible, non-exclusive reasons for her appearance rather than the GA Diana Prince:

1. DC was still unwilling to acknowledge the notion of the GA and SA Wonder Woman being separate people, as it raised uncomfortable questions about whether the GA Superman and Batman were not the same characters we were reading in the 1960s. I note that the GA Superman and Batman did not appear for several years in these teamups (although oddly enough the GA Robin was prominently featured in the 1967 crossover).

2. There was little to differentiate the GA Wonder Woman and the Silver Age version (at the time). The GA and SA Green Lanterns had markedly different costumes, as did the two Flashes. The SA Hawkman hadn't entered the JLA as yet, so his similarity with the GA version didn't matter.

At any rate, Black Canary got lucky and was tapped for that very important team-up. And the next one:

She missed the next one, but there was a big consolation prize, as she was featured in Brave and Bold #61 in a Starman teamup:

In which, by the way, we learned that she had married her longtime sweetheart, detective Larry Lance, who had appeared with her back in the Golden Age Flash stories.

The Starman/Black Canary pairing got a second outing the following issue (with a guest appearance by Wildcat). Those two issues are superbly entertaining, with terrific art by Murphy Anderson, but for whatever reason they did not result in a solo book for either character, and so it might appear that her luck had run out. Still, she got back into the JSA/JLA teamups with JLA #46-47, but then she got a bad break; in JLA #55 not only did the Earth-2 Robin appear, but so did that world's Wonder Woman. A big reason why the Black Canary had been featured in all those team-ups save one so far was that she was the only other female member of the JSA.

And then she got lucky again, and this time it was really a big break. In Wonder Woman #178 Diana Prince lost her super-powers and became an Emma Peel clone. A few months later, in JLA #69 WW left the Justice League to pursue her non-super career. This left the JLA as an all-male bastion, and in 1969, that was becoming an increasingly untenable situation. So a few issues later, when it comes time for the annual JLA/JSA teamup, a couple of things happen:

1. Larry Lance dies, heroically.

2. Black Canary decides to switch to our world:

We'd love to see you bare, but we can understand why you can't bear to go on living on Earth-2. And so she becomes a JLA member effective with the next issue, JLA #75. But there is one little problem. Black Canary never had any super-powers on Earth-2; like Batman she was just a good fighter. So she got lucky again; it turns out that the trip over to Earth-1 gave her some sort of sonic scream that was quite effective (if hard to control):

And you can even argue that's not the end of her lucky streak. In the Crisis on Infinite Earths series, one of the very notable casualties was the Barry Allen Flash, who had been responsible for opening up the whole Earth-1, Earth 2, Earth X+1 can of worms. And yet the Black Canary survived, and even thrived beyond that. Of course, she did have to put up with the insufferable Green Arrow for awhile as a boyfriend....

But all that is beyond the scope of this blog. Black Canary, you must be Irish!

More about →