Rebirth

Atom #32 (Aug.-Sept., 1967)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Like Wonder Woman, the Atom was one of the last of the Justice League of America members with their own book whose solo adventures I decided to give a try.  I’m not sure exactly what took me so long to get around to gambling twelve cents on the Mighty Mite — his book was another Julius Schwartz-edited book, after all, regularly featuring the art of Gil Kane, whose work I’d been enjoying on Green Lantern since the fall of 1965.  My best guess is that I simply hadn’t been that impressed with the Atom in most of the JLA adventures I’d read featuring him.  Let’s face it — in a team featuring heavy hitters like Superman and Green Lantern, it could be difficult for even the cleverest comic book storytellers, such as JLA scripter Gardner Fox and his editor Schwartz, to find ways for a six-inch hero to shine — and, with the notable exception of 1966’s Justice League-Justice Society two–part team-up story, in which the Atom played a decisive role in helping to save both Earth-One and Earth-Two, the Tiny Titan tended to fade (or perhaps shrink) into the background.   Read More

Justice League of America #51 (February, 1967)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Throughout the 1960’s, as their upstart rival Marvel Comics distinguished itself with the development of a complex and more-or-less consistent fictional universe that linked all of the company’s heroes, villains, and other characters into one ongoing meta-story, DC Comics resolutely continued to operate as a collection of mostly independent fiefdoms, each under the dominion of its own editor.  Sure, all the A-list heroes showed up for Julius Schwartz’s Justice League of America, regardless of who was editing the heroes’ solo series, and they could also pair off in George Kashdan’s (later, Murray Boltinoff’s) The Brave and the Bold — but, by and large, DC’s editors didn’t pay much attention to continuity across the line.

Within an individual editor’s purview, however, there were occasional stabs at crossovers and other signifiers of a shared universe — especially within the books guided by Schwartz.  As we’ve discussed in a previous post, one way Schwartz accomplished this was be establishing close friendships between pairs of his heroes (Flash and Green Lantern, Atom and Hawkman) which provided frequent opportunities for guest-shots in one another’s books.  Another way was to set up a plotline in one book that would carry over into another book — as was done in the classic “Zatanna‘s Search” story arc that ran through multiple Schwartz-edited books from 1964 through 1966, culminating in Justice League of America #51’s “Z — as in Zatanna — and Zero Hour!”.     Read More

Justice League of America #50 (December, 1966)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

The eastern world, it is exploding
Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’
You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’
You don’t believe in war, but what’s that gun you’re totin’?

— P. F. Sloan, “Eve of Destruction”, 1964

Fighting soldiers from the sky
Fearless men who jump and die
Men who mean just what they say
The brave men of the Green Beret

— Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler and Robin Moore, “The Ballad of the Green Berets”, 1966

By October, 1966, United States military forces had been operating in Vietnam for over a decade, though mostly in an advisory role for much of that time.  Beginning in 1961, however, President John F. Kennedy had greatly increased the number of American troops stationed in the region; and his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, had used the authority of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, passed in August, 1964, to escalate the U.S.’s military role in the conflict between North and South Vietnam.  The deployment of 3,500 Marines in March, 1965, effectively began the American ground war there.  By December of that year, the number of U.S. troops had been increased to 200,000.     Read More

Flash #165 (November, 1966)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Comic book superheroes don’t get married very often.  The conventional wisdom is that tying the knot not only puts an end to any dramatic tension in a hero’s current romance, but that it also severely limits the storylines that writers and artists can explore with that hero in the future.  The pull of this idea among modern comics creators is so strong that even superheroes who’ve been married for as long as 15 years (Superman), or 20 (Spider-Man), can find themselves suddenly single — not through anything so mundane as legal divorce, of course, but rather by way of such plot machinations as having the Devil alter the characters’ history (Spider-Man), or rebooting a whole universe (Superman).     Read More

Batman #183 (August, 1966)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

The estimable and invaluable web resource known as the Grand Comics Database, without which the production of this blog would be exponentially more difficult (if not downright impossible), generally confines its content to verified (or at least verifiable) facts.  Its entry for Batman #183, however, contains the following anonymous “Indexer Note”:

“Camp style stories in the fashion of the TV series begin.”

That statement, on the face of it, appears to assert as fact something which, if we’re going to be honest and objective, surely must be reckoned a matter of subjective opinion, no matter how well-informed.  But because it is from the Grand Comics Database — and also because we’ve already noted how, in the letters column of the last non-reprint issue of Batman prior to this one, editor Julius Schwartz dropped a non sequitur reference to “camp” — I think it’s worthwhile to examine Batman #183 in the context of that claim.  Read More

Green Lantern #45 (June, 1966)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

This issue featured the second appearance of the original Green Lantern, Alan Scott, as a guest star in the comic book headlined by his “successor”, Hal Jordan.  Alan’s first guest shot had occurred less than a year previously, in Green Lantern #40’s “The Secret Origin of the Guardians” — a tale that eventually turned out to be one of the most consequential stories DC ever published, at least in terms of fictional universe-building (or, more accurately, multiverse-building).  Although this second team-up of the two Lanterns, “Prince Peril’s Power Play”, was produced by the same creative team of writer John Broome, penciller Gil Kane, and inker Sid Greene, it wasn’t destined to achieve the same fame as the first one; still, it had (and has) several special things going for it.  One of these was a second, different “guest appearance”, of a wholly different sort from Alan Scott’s, which we’ll get around to discussing a little later.  Another was a greatly expanded role for a supporting character who’d only appeared briefly in GL #40 — Alan Scott’s chauffeur and sidekick, Charles “Doiby” Dickles.     Read More