Murphy Anderson

The Brave and the Bold #112 (Apr.-May, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

By my reckoning, DC Comics’ The Brave and the Bold was one of the first comic book titles I ever spent my own money on (for the record, it was preceded only by Superman, Detective Comics, Green Lantern, Justice League of America, Flash, and Lois Lane).  I bought my first issue, #64, in December, 1965 — drawn in, no doubt, by its irresistible Gil Kane cover — and BatB soon became one of my most consistent regular purchases as a nascent comics fan.  No, I didn’t buy every single issue, but that was true of virtually every other title as well (the sole exception in those early days being Justice League of America, to which I quickly subscribed).  The ongoing appeal of the book, of course, was that you were always guaranteed at least two superheroes for the price of one (sometimes, as with issue #65’s team-up between the Flash and the Doom Patrol, you got even more).  That wasn’t quite as good a deal as JLA, which might give you as many as ten costumed crusaders cavorting in the same story… but it was still pretty sweet.  Read More

Justice League of America #108 (Nov.-Dec., 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In August, 1973, the second half of the 11th annual team-up event between the Justice League of America and the Justice Society of America led off with a cover (by Nick Cardy) that clearly called back to a particular predecessor — namely, the cover that had graced the second half of the 5th such summertime event, way back in July, 1967.  And why not?  That Carmine Infantino-Murphy Anderson number is an all-time classic, which, aside from its own individual excellence, arguably established the motif of “two line-ups of superheroes charging each other” that has been a staple of super-team comic book covers ever since.

That said, it rankled me just a bit at the time — and, what the hell, I guess it still does — that to make the idea work in the context of JLA #108’s story by writer Len Wein and artists Dick Dillin and Dick Giordano, editor Julius Schwartz had to fudge the cover copy a bit.  After all, there aren’t just “two different Earths” represented among the eight costumed stalwarts heading towards blows whom we see on the cover above — there are three.  The JLA’s Earth-One, the JSA’s Earth-Two, and — as had been introduced to DC Comics’ readers just one issue before — Earth-X.  A world inhabited by yet another team of heroes, newly dubbed “the Freedom Fighters”, who had been published during the Golden Age of Comic Books by DC’s now-defunct rival, Quality Comics… and also a world where the Nazis had won World War II.  Read More

Wonder Woman #202 (Sep.-Oct., 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In July, 1972, I bought my second-ever issue of Wonder Woman.  My first issue had been #171 (Jul.-Aug., 1967) — and as I wrote here on the blog back in May, 2017, my nine-year-old self hadn’t been all that taken at the time with Robert Kanigher’s silly scripts, nor had the art by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito held much appeal for me.  So, what motivated me to finally get around to giving the title another go, five years later?

It wasn’t the whole “New Wonder Woman”, white-jumpsuited Diana Rigg Prince thing, for sure; that had been around since 1968, and if it hadn’t inspired me to lay down my coin to check it out yet, it wasn’t going to.  No, it was the appearance on the Dick Giordano-drawn cover of perhaps the two most unlikely guest stars I could have imagined — science fiction and fantasy author Fritz Leiber’s sword-and-sorcery heroes, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.  What the heck were those guys doing on the cover of any DC comic book — let alone Wonder Woman?  Read More

Tarzan #207 (April, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

I’m not sure if it would have been possible for an American kid of my generation to grow up not knowing who Tarzan was.  Even if you never once heard the name “Edgar Rice Burroughs”, you’d inevitably learn to recognize that author’s most famous hero by sight, as his loincloth-clad form swung by on a vine — or by sound, per his distinctive, (literally) trademarked yell.

Your humble blogger was no exception in this regard.  Still, I may have been in a minority among my peers in at least one Tarzan-related area: I never saw a single Tarzan movie in my formative years, despite their showing up regularly on television.  How come?  I’m not 100% sure, but I figure it was probably because of my dad.  Read More

Justice League of America #97 (March, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

During the nearly yearlong period (June, 1971 through April, 1972) that DC Comics published most of their books in a giant-sized, 25-cent format, Justice League of America presented a particular sort of challenge for its editor, Julius Schwartz.  The problem arose from the fact that the new, larger format called for a certain amount of reprint material — generally, 13 to 15 pages’ worth — to fill out each issue.  And whereas for Schwartz’s other books, such as Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, and Superman, there was a ready archive of suitable old stories featuring the titular stars, the same wasn’t true for JLA, which from the beginning had been devoted to issue-length tales of more than 20 pages.  Such stories weren’t going to work as backups in the new format without being either cut in half or severely abridged, neither of which options seems to have appealed to the veteran editor.  Read More

Jimmy Olsen #147 (March, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As the year 1972 began, Jack Kirby had only two issues left to go in his Jimmy Olsen run.  According to Mark Evanier (one of Kirby’s two assistants at the time), the writer-artist-editor hadn’t been enjoying the assignment all that much, and it’s probably safe to assume that he wasn’t sorry to see the end of it.  Nevertheless, before making his exit from the “Superman family” of DC Comics titles, Kirby would take the opportunity to deliver on an implicit promise regarding the Man of Steel which he’d made his readers at the end of Forever People #1, published a little over a year previously…  Read More

Jimmy Olsen #146 (February, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In considering the last third of Jack Kirby’s run on Jimmy Olsen — a run of five issues beginning with #144 that starts out pretty well, but finishes up rather anticlimactically, with a number of tantalizing plot threads left simply dangling — it’s probably worth remembering that Kirby was never all that excited about chronicling the adventures of “Superman’s Pal” in the first place.

In a 2011 blog post concerning JO #144, Mark Evanier (one of Kirby’s two assistants in 1971) wrote:

Jack didn’t much like working on Jimmy Olsen. It was someone else’s character, someone’s else’s book…and when you worked on the “Superman family” comics then, you had to coordinate with a half-dozen other editors who also had Superman (and sometimes Jimmy) in their comics…  Many at DC hated the way Jack drew Superman and Olsen and his renderings of those characters were being redrawn by others… and Kirby was just sick of the assignment.

Read More

Lois Lane #118 (January, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

With this post, we continue our coverage of Lois Lane‘s forays into Jack Kirby’s Fourth World, courtesy of editor E. Nelson Bridwell, scripter Robert Kanigher, penciller Werner Roth, (primary) inker Vince Colletta, and uncredited Superman/Clark Kent head-finisher Murphy Anderson.  As you may recall, the intermittent usage of Kirby’s concepts and characters in the title had begun in #111, then resumed in #115 before continuing into #116.  Read More

Jimmy Olsen #144 (December, 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed, and perhaps even wondered at, the absence of Jimmy Olsen in recent months.  After all, beginning with the advent of Jack Kirby as writer-artist of the adventures of Superman’s freckle-faced pal with JO #133, we’ve devoted an entire post to each and every issue of the series, sans one (that one being #139, featuring the first half of the “Goody Rickels” two-part storyline) — or at least we had done so, up through #141 (the second half of said two-parter).  Since July, however, there’s been no sign of the red-headed reporter for the Daily Planet around these parts.  So, well might you wonder: what’s up with that?  Read More

Lois Lane #116 (November, 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

A little less than half a century ago, in the letters column of Lois Lane #119 (Feb., 1972), reader Karl Morris of San Diego, CA commented favorably on the title’s recent use of elements from Jack Kirby’s Fourth World mythos, but expressed concern that writer Robert Kanigher might be treading on dangerous ground: “Unless he keeps a very close check on Jolting Jack, Rapid Robert might find himself out of sync with Kirby’s Fourth World.  (Though God only knows how anyone keeps up with it!)”

Not to worry, responded LL‘s editor, E. Nelson Bridwell: “…the way we keep up with the Kirby epic is that yours truly proofreads all his mags when the artwork comes in from California, where Jarring Jack lives.”  From there, Bridwell segued into a plug for the then-current issue of New Gods (#7) which, though obviously well-intentioned, arguably gave away more of that comic’s monumental Big Reveal than Kirby, or most of his readers, might have wished.  But, hey, water under under the bridge; and besides, that’s not why we’re bringing all this up.  Read More