VARTOX

 

The Bronze Age (1970-1985) is my favourite period for American comics for lots of reasons, not least because that was the period I grew up in, and I found Marvel, DC, Charlton, Gold Key, Atlas (and other) comics terribly exciting and alluring, especially as they were still quite hard to come by (I don't think I ever read consecutive issues of any US comic until the late 80s). It was also a period when things got weird and groovy and kind of cosmic in a way that dull people might attribute to drugs, but someone more astute might say was the zeitgeist, a time of extraordinary creativity, curiosity, freedom of expression, war, protest, music, film, technology, alternative religions, the occult, and, yes, drugs, and lots of them.

Superman, however, stayed kind of boring. Perhaps wary of besmirching the good name of their golden goose, DC kept Superman safe and stuffily heroic, and the stories that featured him were noticeably more staid and steady than those of most of his competition.

In this issue, from November 1974, the villain is called Vartox (no prizes for guessing what wild film release of the same year inspired this character), and the cover at least offers a hint of deviance that lasts a mere couple of pages before settling into a fairly mundane battle between supreme good and the mildly naughty (Vartox isn't that bad, just a bit of a dick).   

I love Zardoz too much not to appreciate this shameless steal, so I now have two Superman comics*. Purchased from e-bay, the buyer baited the trap by describing it as having a 'slightly gay' cover.

*  The other comic, issue 261, has a cover that references feminism, BDSM and a foot fetish, but goes absolutely nowhere interesting with any of it.

PENNED INSIDE

 

Police Lieutenant Jim Corrigan finds himself in trouble in The Spectre #6 (DC Comics, 1968). You must know it, it's the issue in which he and his supernatural lodger The Spectre battle against a horde of reanimated devil worshipping Pilgrim Fathers. More on The Spectre soon.

ROMANCE - GLAMOUR (LET'S TWIST)

 

Exciting AND glamorous? I'm in!

FUN ON THE RUN

 

From Planet Of The Apes #101

Highlighting the glib, hip, slightly cringey style of dialogue Marvel persevered with well into the 1980s. On page 2, our hero* Derek says '--it's time to make quick like a BUNNY!!' whilst thinking 'Lord knows where I found the flippancy...' or, indeed, why?

* I've never particularly cared for the human characters. I'm in it for the apes.

DEMONS OF THE PSYCHEDROME

Issue 94, week ending August 4th, 1976.

Obviously inspired by the incorporation of Dracula Lives into the Planet Of The Apes comic in issue 88, this cover gleefully ramps up the usually neglected gothic horror aspect of the series to exhilarating effect.

NOW RULE THE APES!

I have a more or less lifelong obsession with the original Planet of the Apes series. As a kid my regular fix of Ape Action was the UK version of the Marvel cash-in comic. Unlike its US counterpart, the UK comic was published weekly, so the British publishers soon ran out of source material and started making up their own stories, some of which were then reused by the Americans when they ran out.

I have many issues of this much-loved (but not particularly good) comic in my possession, so I'm going to share some of the covers with you,  starting with Issue 60, from the week ending December 13th, 1975. There's quite a lot going on with it.

The back cover of the issue is this rather ambiguous exclusive 'pin up' of the great Roddy McDowell. Roddy was a superb and underrated actor and, by all accounts, a  kind and lovely man, but is this the sort of picture anyone, particularly a child, would want hanging over their bed?

No, thought not.

ANGRY GREEN CASSANDRA

Poor Hulk.

INBETWEENERS

Transitions, backgrounds and landscapes from Filmation's Aquaman cartoon that ran from 1968 to 1970. Here's Orin / Arthur Curry in action. Doesn't look much like Jason Momoa, does he? That's not important, of course, but I do wish DC made better films from their extraordinary back catalogue.

THOR THING

Contemporary (well, 1966) cartoon adventures of the Norse God of Thunder. It's categorized as animation but, mainly, just the mouths move.

NEON DREAMS

Benjamin Marra is a hell of a talent, even though most of what he does is pure evil. Night Business is a relentlessly violent and extravagantly sexual cocktail of pulp fiction and porn, a comic strip rendition of the sort of films that Abel Ferrara and Brian De Palma spent much of the 70s and 80s making, although even those distinguished gentlemen would have baulked at having a topless female vigilante motorcyclist as a heroine. All that’s missing is the sound of synths.

MONSTER OF THE DEEP

From Web of Mystery 18, May 1953 (as reprinted in IDW's Haunted Horror, available now)

MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE REAL WORLD...

HIS GODS

Space Riders has but a single issue to go. I'm going to specifically ask to be placed in solitary confinement so that I can cry and nip myself.

ONAMATOPOETIC

 Orange is the new pink. 

SAND SPEED RECORD

Here's The Flash and Kid Flash, whizzing through the desert at several hundred miles an hour, passing a suprising amount of pyramids, careening to a stop every now and again to strike a pose and show off their matching outfits.

This incarnation of The Flash was created in 1956, and Kid Flash arrived in 1959, which is why they are called Barry and Wally, respectively. Aquaman was called Arthur; Batman, Bruce (see also The Hulk); Thor, Donald. I very much like the fact that, no matter how hard and cool and dark and trendy they might become in contemporary reboots, the most legendary characters of the comic world have old men's names.    

CALL ME LIGHTNING

The Flash must be a bastard to animate. 

COMICS IS AN ANAGRAM OF COSMIC

Space Riders (published by Black Mask) is only one issue old but already seems to be leading the pack in a welcome renaissance of scuzzy, hippy trippy psychedelic soaked sci fi comics. I couldn't be happier, and I don't usually like talking mandrills.