Murphy Anderson

Jimmy Olsen #136 (March, 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In early 1971, when the subject of today’s post blog first showed up on spinner racks, Jack Kirby had been producing new comic books for DC Comics for almost half a year.  Not only had three issues of Kirby’s debut project, Jimmy Olsen, been released by this time, but so had the premiere issues of his three brand new titles — Forever People, New Gods, and Mister Miracle (the latter actually hitting stands on the very same day as Jimmy Olsen #136, January 14).  He was becoming established (or, more accurately re-established) at the publisher, in other words.  Perhaps that’s the main reason that this fourth Olsen outing, unlike the first three, didn’t feature Kirby’s name anywhere on the cover; after five months, DC may have figured they no longer needed to tell us readers that Kirby Was Here — by now, we must know that, surely.  Read More

Flash #203 (February, 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

When I originally started buying comic books back in 1965, The Flash was one of the first titles I picked up;  over the next couple of years, it was one of my most regular purchases.  But my interest in the title fell off sharply following the end of Carmine Infantino’s tenure as penciller, and as of December, 1970, I hadn’t bought an issue of the Scarlet Speedster’s own title in over two years.  I still liked the character, and enjoyed reading about him in Justice League of America and elsewhere (I’d especially relished seeing him win his third race with Superman in World’s Finest #199, published just a couple of months previously), but his solo series had lost its appeal for me.

Until Flash #203 hit the spinner rack — and its stunning Neal Adams-Jack Adler cover grabbed me by the eyeballs, not letting me go until after I’d plunked my fifteen cents down on the Tote-Sum counter and taken that bad boy home.  Read More

Superman #233 (January, 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As a kid, I was a big fan of Superman.  But I wasn’t all that crazy about Superman comics.

Oh, I bought ’em, at least occasionally.  Indeed, the very first comic I remember buying for myself was an issue of the “World’s Best-Selling Comics Magazine!” (as the blurb on each issue’s cover confidently assured us).  But they tended not to make a terribly strong impression, especially as my experience of comics widened; to me, at least, it seemed that for every Superman #199 (which featured the first race between Superman and the Flash, and which my then ten-year-old self enjoyed very much), there was a Superman #198 (see left) which centered on an “impossible” (but not really all that exciting) situation, or a Superman #200 (see right), which devoted all of its pages to an “imaginary novel” whose events didn’t even happen to the “real” Man of Steel, and thereby didn’t count.  (Yes, I was that kind of comics fan, pretty much from the get-go.)  Read More

Justice League of America #84 (November, 1970)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

According to the Mike’s Amazing World of Comics web site, Robert Kanigher scripted 2,707 comic book stories in his five-decade career, the vast majority of them for DC Comics.  But despite the fact that I’ve been reading DC comics myself for over five decades — three of which overlap with those during which Kanigher was working — I’ve never really felt like I had a handle on the guy.  Read More

Jimmy Olsen #133 (October, 1970)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

By August, 1970, I’d been buying and reading comic books for a full five years.  Somehow, however, in all that time, I hadn’t yet sampled an issue of Jimmy Olsen.

I’m not really sure why that was.  My very first comic book had been an issue of Superman, after all, and I’d picked up a couple of Lois Lanes pretty early on, as well.  And I don’t recall having anything particularly against the red-headed cub reporter (in comics, anyway — I think I always considered the version played by Jack Larson on the live-action TV show to be kind of a doofus).  Indeed, as best as I can remember, I actually kind of enjoyed Jimbo’s appearances in World’s Finest, where he basically functioned as the Robin to Superman’s Batman, as well as having his own team-up thing going with the genuine Boy Wonder on the side (the Olsen-Robin team even had their own secret HQ, the Eyrie).  Read More

Justice League of America #83 (September, 1970)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As regular readers of this blog know, I went through a brief period at age 12, lasting roughly from the fall of 1969 through the spring of 1970, when, for one reason or another, I became disaffected with comic books.  By June, 1970, my interest in them was again on the increase, but I wasn’t quite all the way back yet; and one unfortunate consequence of this was that I failed to buy Justice League of America #82 off the stands when it was released that month.  Why was missing this one comic such a big deal?  Simply because it featured the first chapter of that year’s two-part team-up between the Justice League of America and their counterparts on “Earth-Two”, the Justice Society of America — an annual summertime tradition at DC Comics ever since 1963, and one in which I’d faithfully participated ever since 1966.  That mean that not only had I been buying and enjoying these mini-epics for most of the time I’d been reading comics, but for a significant chunk of my life, period.  Four years is a pretty substantial period of time when you’re only twelve years old, after all.  Read More

Justice League of America #79 (March, 1970)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Justice League of America was my first favorite comic book.  As I’ve written about here before, it was the first series I subscribed to through the mail (my first USPS-delivered issue being #44, in 1966), and even after my sub ran out, I managed to score every new issue when it hit the spinner racks — up until issue #69, that is, which I either missed or intentionally passed on (the former seems a bit more likely, but who knows).  A couple of months later, I missed (or skipped) #72 as well; and then, after #74, I apparently more-or-less dropped the book.  In any case, I didn’t buy another issue of JLA until the one I’m writing about today, which arrived on stands in January, 1970.  By this time, as regular readers of the blog know, I had entered a period in which comic books in general held less appeal for me, and I was buying hardly anything at all.  So what could have grabbed me about Justice League of America #79 so much that I felt compelled to pick the book up?  Read More

Spectre #9 (Mar.-Apr., 1969)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As of January, 1969, The Spectre was one of only two DC Comics titles I was still buying regularly (the other one was Justice League of America) — or maybe I should say I was trying to buy them regularly.  Somehow, I managed to miss Spectre #8 on the stands — and since the book only came out bi-monthly, that meant that I hadn’t spent any real quality time with the Ghostly Guardian since the previous September.  Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem in terms of picking up where I’d left off, storywise (though it was always irksome to miss an issue, of course), because Spectre — like most other DC titles of this era — had very little in the way of issue-to-issue continuity.  That wasn’t entirely the case with this issue, however, as we’ll see in a bit.  Read More

Avengers Annual #2 (September, 1968)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Fifty years ago, the decision to spend twenty-five cents on the comic book that’s the subject of today’s post was pretty much a no-brainer for my eleven-year-old self.  I had already bought and read that month’s regular monthly issue of Avengers, which I had enjoyed a great deal — and while that issue’s main plotline was mostly resolved by the story’s last page, there were some tantalizing loose ends left hanging, that a caption in the last panel assured readers would be tied up in the title’s “1968 Special — now on sale!”

But even if that hadn’t been the case, I expect I would have snatched up Avengers Annual #2 simply based on its spectacular John Buscema – Frank Giacoia cover.  “The New Avengers vs. the Old Avengers!”  Two superhero teams for the price of one (even if it did look like a couple of the heroes were doing double duty on both teams).  How could I pass up a deal like that?  Read More

Spectre #5 (Jul.-Aug., 1968)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In May, 1968, I was a regular buyer and reader of The Spectre — or at least as regular as I could be, short of shelling out for a year’s subscription by mail, considering the state of comic book distribution at the time (as well as my ten-year-old self’s lack of reliable weekly transportation to a comics-selling outlet).  I had first come on board in 1966, with the Ghostly Guardian’s third and final tryout appearance in Showcase, and had bought the first issue of his own self-titled series when it finally appeared over a year later.  I’d failed to score issue #2 (the first drawn by new regular artist Neal Adams), but otherwise, I had ’em all.  Read More