Super Stuff in the Bronze Age

Saturday, July 8, 2023

All in Colo(u)r For A Dime

Back when I started seriously collecting American comics as a twelve-year-old around 1971, I quickly became aware that there was thirty-plus years of comics history that I’d missed at that point. Whereas I’d picked various Batman comics back around the time of the Batman TV series, and knew then that I liked the 80-page Giant reprint comics much better than the then currently-new items, it did not really dawn on my seven-year-old brain in 1966 that the stories in those Giants that I really liked (especially Batman drawn by Dick Sprang) came from a previous era.

So when DC began putting reprints into the back pages of 25-cent comics in the period Aug 1971-Jul 1972, my awareness of the depth of comic history became more acute, and I was eager to pick up any book that shed light on that mysterious “Golden” age, particularly if it reprinted comic covers.

The first historical work I purchased was the Ace paperback version of All in Color For A Dime, by Dick Lupoff & Don Thompson. Although the original publication of the hard-back was in 1970, I reckon that I obtained my paperback copy in 1974 from Dark They Were & Golden Eyed in Berwick St, Soho. I certainly enjoyed looking at the colour cover reproductions in the book, but somehow the dense, small print and tightly-bound margins dissuaded me from settling down to read it cover to cover. So the book sat on my bookshelf at my mother’s house well into the late 80s, then moved to a shelf in in our family home in Southampton in the 90s, before being packed away in a crate for the past 23 years.

This week I decided to sit down to read the book - still pristine - but was unwilling to risk cracking the spine. So I looked for a hardback copy of the original publication on eB*y, and was lucky enough to get a decent copy for $25, and have settled down to read the robustly bound hardback.

What a brilliant book! Written at a time before people wrote in terms of the “Bronze Age”, it is essentially a set of eleven essays written by serious comic fans back in the late sixties, covering the genesis of the US comics industry and the various elements of its evolution. Plus some great cover repros! Of the essay writers, it is fun to read Roy Thomas as a fan who became a full-time comics professional, although final essay-writer Harlan Ellison also had some claim to subsequent popular success.

Contents on back cover.

The fascination of the book for me, published in 1970, is that it was written by people who had been collecting comics since the late 30s and early 40s, and had quite a different perspective on the target audience for comics. For example, the introduction by Lupoff & Thompson is quite firm in stating that comics are for children, but also read by adults, whereas newspaper strips were designed for adults, that would also be read by children. It is worth getting the book for their observations alone.

I also highly recommend the chapter called “The Spawn of M.C. Gaines” written by Ted White, which explores the origins of the American comic book from first reprinting newspaper strips to the creation of new material. Many you will be familiar with elements of the history, but I am yet to read a more concise and entertaining account. White writes at a time when Siegel & Shuster were still peripherally involved in the comics business, and is quite objective about the lack of professionalism in their early work, as his is about Bob Kane’s on Batman.

Anyway, if you have an interest (and do not already have the book), I urge you to track down a copy of the hardback version. You won’t be disappointed.

Monday, June 19, 2023

Batman 1966 UK “Black Bat” Trading Card display box

Only a brief SuperStuff post this time around, but one which might give you a chance to re-live those days of seeing Batman trading cards for sale in your local tobacconist/newsagent.

Back in 1966 I bought my first pack of Batman trading cards - the “Black Bat” set - from a sweet shop (candy store) called The Cabin in Highland Rd, Southsea. The first card in the set was “The Riddler”, and I was hooked. I would go back to that sweetshop on a weekly basis along with my Dad, who used to stop by to buy 4oz of Needlers fruit pastilles, a particular favourite of his. Each visit I experienced the thrill of seeing the cardboard box in which unopened wax packets of Batman cards lay. Eventually, I asked the man who ran the shop if I could have the display box when all of the cards had been sold, and he kindly put it by for me.

I then used that box to store all of my Batman cards, as I collected the series of cards, and the four subsequent sets that quickly followed.

I kept that box until 1983, when I sold it (along with a number of other unique collectibles) to the Timeslip shop in Fawcett Rd, as I was amassing funds for a deposit on my first flat.

I’ve seen that box up for sale on eBay for £400 recently - and I’m convinced that it was my actual display box up for sale as it had a slight tear in the lid - and regretted selling it for £1 in 1983.

However, all of that regret is now swept aside as I’ve printed my own version of the box which looks just as good as the original, thanks to information in an article by Jeff & Bob Marks provided is issue #86 of Non-Sports card fanzine “The Wrapper” from October 1986.

By using the image featured in The Wrapper, I was able to locate original colour images of the elements on the box, and create my own box! It now has pride of place on the shelf next to my desk.

I’ve included the image below should you wish to print your own box on photo card.

The dimensions of the box when completed measure 3 3/8” x 7 1/8” x 2”, so you’ll have to figure out how to print at the correct scale. (Remember this display box was designed to accommodate the UK A&BC versions of the cards, slightly smaller than the Topps versions.)

Click to enbiggen

If I have the time and enthusiasm , I may have a go a printing a version with a base and a folding lid, but for now, this satisfies me.

If you have more than a passing interest in Non-Sports trading cards, The Wrapper is still being published. Take a look at The Wrapper website.

Friday, June 2, 2023

Non-Distributed Wonders: Marvel’s Supernatural Thrillers

©Marvel. Cover by Steranko.

Over the past few months I’ve been taking notice of the failed experiments that Marvel and DC conducted in the early seventies; books that exploded onto the newsstand, flared and then failed. The current DC Black Label comic Danger Street, written by Tom King, is an interesting example of picking up discarded DC Bronze Age First Issue Special characters and weaving them into something fresh and new. And I’ve developed something of a fascination for tracking down short-lived Bronze Age books that passed me by back in the swinging seventies.

A couple of months back I wrote a blog entry detailing the development and demise of Marvel title Worlds Unknown a series of eight colour comic books which preceded the Marvel Black & White magazine Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction, set up by Roy Thomas to adapt classic Science Fiction novels in comic format.

These colour books escaped our attention in the UK as they were “Non-distributed” - not selected for distribution to UK newsagents by World Distributors. “ND” books quickly acquired a cachet all their own; their unattainable nature by normal means gave them a halo of exceptionalism, whatever the actual quality might be. Brief snippets of information as mentioned in Comic Media News or “Fox on the Run” or “The Worlds of Emlock” within the pages of Comics Unlimited only served to whet the appetite to an even greater degree.

Of course, ND comics cost 25p from comic dealers, whereas new comics on the stands were still only 9p each. But somehow I just accepted the extortionate pricing on the basis of the axiom that “the quality remained long after the price was forgotten”.

Worlds Unknown was not the only anthology book exploiting classic literature to endure the fate of “Non-distribution”. Equally interesting was the four-colour comic Supernatural Thrillers which we’ll take a closer look at today.

Like Worlds Unknown, comic Supernatural Thrillers similarly was to morph into a Curtis-distributed Marvel Black & White magazine - in this case Masters of Terror, a magazine that was to run for two issues in the Summer of 1975, and be briefly revived as as issue of Marvel Preview in the Autumn of 1978.

I turned sixteen in the summer of 1975, was getting into Horror and SF novels, and would have been the ideal target audience for this book, had it been distributed in the UK. So now forty-plus years later I’ve spent the last few months tracking down actual copies of these books for my own collection (no resorting to digital copies here!).

The concept behind Supernatural Thrillers was to render classic Science Fiction and/or Horror stories into comics format, with the intent of appealing to a wider audience. Unlike Unknown Worlds, the initiative was from Stan the Man himself, who then handed it over to Roy Thomas to run with. Roy later recounted in Alter Ego #70 :

JA: You did that Worlds Unknown color comic—
THOMAS: Yeah, that was a favorite. But it didn’t sell.
JA: —and I forget the name of the other one, that had that great Steranko cover with The Invisible Man.
THOMAS: That was Supernatural Thrillers. Stan had the idea for that one, then turned it over to me, and I decided we should adapt some fantasy/horror classics, like Theodore Sturgeon’s “It” and “Killdozer.” H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man was Stan’s idea. I remember some of those worked out quite well, like Howard’s “Valley of the Worm.”

Despite the revisions in the Comics Code in 1971 which lifted the restrictions on Horror comics, the words “Horror” and “Terror” could not be used on a 4-color comic cover.

General Standards – Part B

No comics magazine shall use the word horror or terror in its title. The words may be used judiciously in the body of the magazine. [Footnote: The word horror or terror in a story title in the body of the magazine has been ruled to be an injudicious use, and therefore is not permitted.]

As shown at the top of this blog entry, the first issue cover dated Dec 1972 arrived with all stops pulled out. It sported a colourful cover by Steranko showing a muck-encrusted Swamp Monster being shot by what appears to be a big game hunter, with a tabloid style banner and sales pitch in overdrive.

The cover promised an exciting pursuit story, but in fact featured a very thoughtful and melancholy adaptation of Theodore Sturgeon’s novella “IT!”, as written by Roy Thomas himself and drawn sensitively by Marie Severin, inked by Frank Giacoia..

Before the sales figures were in, issue #2 hit the stands, which featured an adaptation of H. G. Wells’ “The Invisible Man” by Ron Goulart, with Val Mayerik and Dan Adkins on artistic duties. The cover was again drawn by Steranko. Reading this book now for the first time, my familiarity with Wells’ story took away any real impact of what is a well-drawn and coherent adaptation, giving some allowance for the “Gor Blimey, Guv” British stereotypes present in the book.

©Marvel. Cover by Gil Kane.

Issue #3 was the first signal of a change in direction, from adapting “classic” novels to adapting pulps - an adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s “The Valley of the Worm” scripted by Roy Thomas, and drawn by Gil Kane and Ernie Chan. Thomas commented in Alter Ego #70:

THOMAS: I always thought in terms of bringing pulp-like writing into comics—even Doc Savage, which I was never wild about as writing—and there were a lot of clumsy things about Burroughs, even Howard. It was all pulp-type writing, but I felt that bringing in those characters and those concepts would elevate comics a little. It wasn’t that I didn’t like what Stan Lee, Gardner Fox, and other people had done, myself included... or that everything Howard did was better than most of what, say, Stan Lee did. It’s just that I felt that having a non- comics approach would broaden the appeal of comics and enrich it in some vague way. This is the same motivation that later made me want to bring in science-fiction and to do horror adaptations and not just new stories.

The adaptation was a detailed and thorough Sword & Sorcery adaptation of the REH story. Great artwork and an engrossing story.

"The Valley of the Worm" was to be very warmly received by readers, getting more positive mail than the first two issues combined.

The story was later reprinted in issue #1 of B&W Kull and the Barbarians in the May 1975 issue, a new comic that Roy kicked off, which ran for 3 issues. Issue #1 was a book of reprint material of various Robert E Howard stories previously printed in various colour comics [Read Roy’s comments from zip comic ]

The letter col in issue #3 was full of praise for issue #1, with a letter from future comics pro David Michelinie himself. The editorial commentary from Roy intimated that Marvel had put itself in a bit of a strait-jacket with mandating a supernatural element in each story, as the line between SF and Supernatural was thin. Marvel would shortly be premiering a sister mag called Worlds Unknown for purely SF, so it started to signal that Supernatural Thrillers was still finding it’s feet since the first three issues had adapted first a modern SF novella, then a classic horror story, and then a Sword & Sorcery pulp.

All three issues were strong individually, but there was no consistency of identity across the books, which is especially important in an anthology title. Supernatural Thrillers did not even have an identifiable logo, so each issue appeared to be a one-off.

©Marvel. Cover by John Romita Sr.

Supernatural Thrillers #4 returned to classic out-of-copyright source material with an adaptation of R.L. Stevenson’s “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”. The rendering of Mr Hyde on the cover could have been easily re-coloured to be The Hulk, which of course, may have been John Romita's nod to the original source idea for the Hulk.

But with issue #5, the format departed from existing classic material, becoming an adventure comic - featuring a brand-new story of The Living Mummy, written by Steve Gerber, drawn by Rich Buckler and Frank Chiarmonte. There seems to be deliberate echoes emulating Neal Adams in places - see page 11, and page 12 for example - and the villain is drawn in an eerily similar mannger to those Adams drew in the Batman/House of Mystery team-up from Brave and Bold #93 “Red Water, Crimson Death”.

Issue #11. Rich Buckler channeling Neal Adams?

The villain in The Living Mummy. © Marvel

©DC. The villain from B&B #93, by Neal Adams

The editorial comment in the lettercol in issue #5 makes no mention of the abrupt change of pace with the introduction of the new The Living Mummy. But it does include a plug for the new Marvel B&Ws - Dracula Lives!, Tales of the Zombie!, Vampire Tales!, Monsters Unleashed! and the new prose Horror book The Haunt of Horror (no exclamation make after this title)..

Issue #6 then returns to an established literary property The Legend of Sleepy Hollow as the basis for a brand-new feature “The Headless Horseman Rides Again”, written by Gary Friedrich and drawn by George Tuska. There was no lettercol in this issue, and I found the artwork uninspired, but I was never a particular George Tuska fan.

With issue #7 - with a very nice art job by Val Mayerik - the decision had been made to stick with The Living Mummy, and jettison the idea of a supernatural anthology four-colour comic. Stan Lee had come to the conclusion that the B&W magazine format offered more scope outside the confines of the Comics Code Authority, as well as enabled to cater to a more adult audience.

With issue #10 Roy Thomas handed the editorial reins to Len Wein. The comic continued as “The Living Mummy” until its demise with the Oct 1975 issue. However, three months earlier, in July 1975, in parallel with the new Kull and the Barbarians B&W magazine mentioned above, Marvel decided to issue a new B&W Masters of Terror B&W magazine harvesting early material from Supernatural Thrillers.

As the Marvel Black & White magazine reprints were not under the aegis of the CCA, the word “Terror” could be used in the title without fear of repercussions.

The covers for issues #1 and #2 adapted the original Supernatural Thrillers covers, but were painted versions of the original Steranko artwork, this time by Gray Morrow and Dad Adkins respectively. These are very nice issues, and I think presenting the material in the B&W format brought a more adult sensibility to the content.

The final “Masters of Terror” was a one-off issue of Marvel Preview. The new book shared nothing with its predecessor other than the title, and was an attempt to bring a hybrid Private Detective/Horror title to the market, as explained by editor Rick Marschall.

I really like this magazine, not least for the superb Gene Colan artwork across three separate stories, plus it has a very interesting article by Ron Goulart on "The Rise of the Private Eye" in popular fiction. I would have sought out more if it had been a success, but obviously it did not elicit sufficient reader interest.

In conclusion, Supernatural Thrillers was an experiment that failed. largely due to having insufficient clarity on what it wanted to be. By all accounts, Roy Thomas was far more interested in a hard-SF book, as shown in Unknown Worlds. But these books are not without merit, and worth picking up to experience Marvel trying to push the boundaries of the comic book in the early 1970s.

The Living Mummy is one of the lesser/known Marvel characters, appearing only once more in a team-up with The Thing in Marvel Two-In-One #95 in 1983.

Perhaps the character will re-appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe at some point. It would be an ideal candidate for a Marvel TV one-off, similar to last Halloween’s "Werewolf by Night" film.

Did any of our regular readers collect Supernatural Thrillers? Thoughts?

Tuesday, May 2, 2023

Batman ’66 Trading Cards oddities #4 :Who was the mystery artist?

Batman "Black Bat" Card #14 - Nightly Patrol

The received wisdom of the artist behind the three sets of painted Batman trading cards issued by Topps in the US (and A&BC in the UK) in 1966 was pulp artist Norman Saunders, working to outlines sketched by famed comic artist Bob Powell.

I’ve touched on this subject a few times previously (here, here, etc) , if you’re inclined to read previous posts. But there are a few cards in the first set of 55 cards (the “Black Bat” set) which are obviously not the oils of Norm Saunders. These cards are:

Nightly Patrol - Card #14 (see above)
Monstrous Illusion - Card #48
Decoy - Card #49
Beastly Encounter - Card #50

Two of these cards (#48 and #49) fall within the 22 most common cards of the “Black Bat” set, being printed 50% more times than other cards.

Unlike the remainder of the painted set of cards, these four cards are more obviously cartoons which have been inked and colored, rather than gouache or oil paintings.

So who was the mystery artist?

According to Norman Saunders’ son, David Saunders, all cards were painted by Norman Saunders, Maurice Blumenfeld, Bob Powell, and a fourth unknown artist. Saunders would do the majority of the paintings, as well as providing the final rendering on top of work by other artists, with the intent of bringing a consistency of style.

I’m coming to the conclusion that in fact there were two unknown artists in addition to Saunders, Blumenfeld and Powell.

Saunders and Blumenfeld had collaborated previously on the gory Civil War News set of cards. According to an interview with Len Brown, Creative Director at Topps in 1998, Blumenfeld had a reputation for being very slow.

As the Batman TV series was so phenomenally popular, there became an urgency to get the cards into kids’ hands as soon as possible, necessitating a fourth artist, as mentioned by David Saunders.

That fourth artist can now be revealed to be Ed Valigurski (1926-2009) who painted some of the painted World War II Battle! cards produced by Topps in the 1960s (see https://www.pulpartists.com/Valigursky.html ). Like Blumenfeld, Valigurski had no background in the comic business, pursuing a career in commercial art.

Looking through the set of cards, Valigurski’s contributions stand out particularly in cards #4 Midnight Conference and #51 Flaming Welcome see below. The rendition of Batman is less detailed, and Batman’s costume has a sheen to it not present in Saunders’ artwork. Batman’s stomach musculature is rendered differently, as well.

Blumenfeld and Saunders had a similar style, and I’ve found it difficult to differentiate Saunders’ sole work from Blemeneld paintings finished by Saunders. A look at an unused painting for Civil War News by Blumenfeld shows a strong similarity to Saunders.

Example of Maurice Blumenfeld's work on Civil War News

So who was the second mystery artist, a cartoonist - the fifth contributor - who was responsible for cards #14, #48, #49 and #50?

In addition to Art Spiegelman, Topps’ main staff cartoonist for more than 20 years, creative directors of Product Development, Woody Gelman and Len Brown, gave freelance assignments to leading comic book illustrators, such as Jack Davis, Wally Wood and Bob Powell. Spiegelman, Gelman and Brown also hired freelance artists from the underground comix movement, including Robert Crumb, amongst others.

But in 1966, Topps had another famed cartoonist freelancing with them - Al Plastino. As Plastino told Bryan Stroud in an interview for a TwoMorrows publication Al Plastino: Last Superman Standing “I always had something else on the side. If you don’t have something; and in my business, the comic business, they’ll step all over you.”

Al Plastino had drawn the “Superman In The Jungle” card set for Topps in 1966, where Saunders done the color separations and inks, according to The Kandor Archives (That set was never commercially available in the US, having only been test marketed, but was made available by A&BC in the UK in 1967).

In his discussion with Bryan Stroud, Plastino believed that this small painted Superman work at Topps had damaged his eyesight. “I was doing Topps bubble gum cards……[the paintings] were 3” x 4” and you’d have 60 on a page.”

However, a comparison of the mystery Batman cards with Plastino’s work on Superman in the Jungle is inconclusive. The artwork (to my mind) is not by the same man.

Following the negative experience on the Superman cards, Plastino got his friend and longtime Tarzan newspaper strip artist John Celardo a job at Topps illustrating the upcoming Land of the Giants card set, providing cartoon backs on cards with a photographic front. [Again, this card set was only test-marketed in the US, but made fully available in the UK from A&BC].

Although Plastino was regarded as a good mimic (see 13th Dimensions blog of Plastino’s work on the Batman newspaper strip) , I believe that John Celardo is the mystery artist on cards #14, #48, #49 and #50, with Norman Saunders doing colour separations and perhaps inks.

Celardo had drawn Dollman in the 1940s for the publishers Quality. In the early 1950s, Celardo moved from comics to draw (and eventually write) the Tarzan newspaper strip from 1954 until 1967 when he was replaced by Russ Manning.

John Celardo's work on Tarzan in 1954

Celardo returned to comics (and to DC) in 1969 as a penciller on Romance and Horror/Mystery titles, moving mostly to inking.

I’m inclined to say that Celardo drew the Batman cards in question in the period before joining DC, and it was this work, plus Plastino’s recommendation, that secured the follow-on work on Land of the Giants. Celardo’s angular style of drawing jawlines (see the comparison between this panel from his Tarzan strip and the Batman card #14 Nightly Patrol) makes him a more likely candidate than Plastino, or even the great Wally Wood himself, who rendered this image of Batman for Topps Comic Book Foldees Card #17 the same year of 1966.

Batman by Wally Wood, 1966

I could be way off base here, so please put me right in the comments section below if you know otherwise.

John Celardo