Nick Cardy

Omega the Unknown #1 (March, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’re probably already aware that this post is the fourth I’ve published this month.  If, in addition, you’re already familiar with its subject, you may also have noted that it’s the third out of that four to be devoted to a comic book featuring the writing of Steve Gerber.

Of course, if you are a regular reader, you may not consider that latter fact to even be all that notable, as your humble blogger has made it pretty clear that Gerber was (and is) one of my two favorite comics writers of this era (the other being his fellow Steve, Englehart).  And it probably wouldn’t have surprised my eighteen-year-old self, either, back in the waning days of 1975, to learn that Steve Gerber’s work would continue to hold my admiration, half a century on.

What did in fact surprise me way back then, however, was that, per the credits given on the first page of his latest project — a new superhero series called Omega the Unknown — Gerber was sharing the authorial byline… and with a woman, at that, at a time when female comics professionals in general were hardly numerous, and female writers even less so:  Read More

Man-Thing #22 (October, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

When we last checked in with the Man-Thing back in March, at the end of his 18th issue, it was for the finale of the three-part “Mad Viking” trilogy — one of the most intense and memorable storylines to have yet appeared in the feature, perhaps matched only by “The Kid’s Night Out!” (which had in fact been published concurrently with it, in the Man-Thing’s quarterly Giant-Size vehicle).  As you may recall, Man-Thing #18 concluded with Manny, his human friend Richard Rory, and a distressed teenager named Carol Selby abandoning the small Florida town of Citrusville in the wake of a book burning incident at the town’s high school in which people as well as pages had perished.  That downbeat ending presaged a significant change in direction for the series — one which writer Steve Gerber and artist Jim Mooney would manage to explore in depth for only three issues before having to abruptly wrap up everything as best they could in the title’s terminal release, Man-Thing #22. Read More

Justice League of America #123 (October, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

1975’s team-up between the Justice League of America and the Justice Society of America was the thirteenth such event since the annual tradition had begun in 1963.  Over the years, DC Comics fans had been privileged to vicariously visit such parallel worlds as Earth-One, Earth-Two, Earth-Three, Earth-X, and even the short-lived Earth-A.  But there was one particular Earth that had been established as existing in what would eventually be known as “the DC multiverse” that had yet to be glimpsed in any of the JLA-JSA summer shindigs… though readers of those comics could hardly claim to be unfamiliar with the place.  After all, they lived there.

Of course, I’m talking about Earth-Prime.  Read More

Phantom Stranger #33 (Oct.-Nov., 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Cover art by Michael W. Kaluta.

Cover art by Nick Cardy.

It’s been quite a while since we covered an issue of Phantom Stranger on the blog — more specifically, since May, 2023, when we took a look at PS #26.  As I wrote at the time, that issue’s crossover between the comic’s lead and backup features (the latter then being “The Spawn of Frankenstein”) represented the end of an era for the Joe Orlando-edited title, as the very next issue, #27, would bring a complete overhaul of the creative teams for both strips.

Gone from the front of the book were writer Len Wein (who’d written every Phantom Stranger story since issue #14) and artist Jim Aparo (whose association with the character went all the way back to #7); replacing the duo were Arnold Drake and Gerry Talaoc, respectively.  Meanwhile, writer Marv Wolfman and artist Michael W. Kaluta had departed the back pages, leaving the chronicling of the modern adventures of Mary Shelley’s classic creation to Steve Skeates and Bernard Bailey.  Read More

Justice League of America #113 (Sep.-Oct., 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Beginning in 1963 and continuing through 1973, the June issue of Justice League of America had featured the first chapter of the latest team-up event between the JLA and their Earth-Two counterparts in the Justice Society of America.  It was an annual summer tradition that no DC Comics fan would have expected to see change in June, 1974.

And indeed, the Nick Cardy-drawn cover for JLA #113 gave nary a clue that anything was different this time around, what with its blurb trumpeting “A New JLA-JSA Shocker!”  But I suspect that for many readers (your humble blogger most definitely being among them), the real “shocker” would come when they got to the end of page 20 of “The Creature in the Velvet Cage!” and discovered that they’d just finished reading a complete story.  There would be no second serving of joint Justice League-Justice Society adventuring this year (let alone a third, as we’d had in 1972); rather, they (and we) were one-and-done, until next summer.  Read More

Batman #255 (Mar.-Apr., 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As of December, 1973, it had been seventeen months since my younger self had bought an issue of Batman.  For the record, that issue had been #245, in which the lead story (as well as the cover) had been drawn by Neal Adams.  The last issue I’d bought before that had been #244, which had also had a lead story illustrated by Adams; the last one before that had been #243, which was drawn by (you guessed it) Neal Adams; and before that came #242, which didn’t feature the art of Neal Adams, but did continue the Ra’s al Ghul saga begun in issue #232 by writer Denny O’Neil and artist… Neal Adams.  You see the pattern, right?  Adams’ art wasn’t the only factor that came into play when I stood at the spinner rack and pondered over whether to buy the latest issue of the Masked Manhunter’s title — but it was definitely the largest factor, and the presence of the artist’s work made it pretty much a no-brainer that I would buy that particular comic book.  Read More

Justice League of America #110 (Mar.-Apr., 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

From a creative standpoint, 1973 had been a very stable year for Justice League of America.  Everyone who’d been working on the book as the year began — writer Len Wein, penciller Dick Dillin, inker Dick Giordano, cover artist Nick Cardy, and (of course) editor Julius Schwartz — remained in place as 1973 neared its end.  From a business perspective, however, it was a rather different story.  After having been published on a nine-times-a-year schedule from 1965 to 1971, DC Comics’ premiere super-team title had dropped back to eight issues per year in 1972; and then, with the first issue of 1973, had its frequency reduced even further, to a bimonthly status.

And then, December, 1973 brought a change that was even bigger (in more ways than one), as JLA joined several other DC titles in transitioning to the “100 Page Super Spectacular” format — a giant-sized package that featured some three pages of reprints to every one of new art and story, at a cost of 50 cents — more than twice that of the “standard” format comic JLA had been prior to the change, which sold for 20 cents.  (With the following month, the price of the “Super Spectacular” format would go up to 60 cents, making these comics a full three times more expensive than DC’s standard size books… but of course we fans of the time didn’t know that yet.)  Read More

Justice League of America #109 (Jan.-Feb., 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Nick Cardy’s cover for Justice League of America #109 is interesting in that it completely ignores the conflict that drives roughly 80% of the plot of this issue’s story.  Rather, it seeks to hook the prospective buyer by way of a tantalizing mystery — who is leaving the team?  It’s not a bad strategy, really, since even casual fans of the JLA would likely be curious to learn the answer.

The only real problem with hanging the cover’s whole pitch on this mystery is that the answer is given immediately, on the story’s very first page.  So if our hypothetical prospective buyer was only interested in that bit of information, and they so much as flipped past the cover while still standing at the spinner rack, they might well have opted to put the comic back rather than spend two dimes on it.  But, hey, see for yourself:  Read More

Weird Worlds #8 (Nov.-Dec., 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Fifty-one years after the fact, it seems at least possible that the DC Comics title Weird Worlds might never have come into existence at all, had that publisher kept up its “Bigger and Better” experiment — i.e., a standard comic-book format of 48 pages, which sold for 25 cents — for a while longer than it did.  After all, the earliest DC issues of Tarzan and Korak had seemed to have ample space not only for the adventures of author Edgar Rice Burroughs’ famous jungle hero and his somewhat less well-known son, but also for backup features based on what were arguably even less familiar ERB properties, such as “John Carter of Mars”, “Carson of Venus”, and “Pellucidar”.

But with the shift back to 32-page comics as DC’ standard size (“Now Only 20¢”), Tarzan and Korak could no longer accommodate all of those backups — let alone add any of the other properties that DC had access to via their Burroughs license.  And so, while “Carson of Venus” continued to appear in Korak (and a new feature, “Beyond the Farthest Star”, took up residence in the back pages of Tarzan), John Carter and David Innes (the protagonist of “Pellucidar”) each found a new home in a brand new title: Weird Worlds, the first issue of which arrived on stands in June, 1972.  Read More

Justice League of America #107 (Sep.-Oct., 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Back in June, 1973, there was very little chance that my fifteen-year-old self, upon seeing Justice League of America #107 in the spinner rack, would have passed on buying the book.  For one thing, I was following the series regularly during this era (although I’d somehow managed to miss the previous issue, #106); for another, I’d been partaking of the annual summer get-togethers between the JLA and their Earth-Two counterparts, the Justice Society of America since 1966’s iteration, and I wasn’t about to stop now.  (Indeed, I’d continue to follow the JLA-JSA team-ups even through periods when I was otherwise ignoring the JLA title, all the way up to the last one in 1985, when Crisis on Infinite Earths rang down the curtain on the tradition.)  Read More