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.