Captain Atom # 89 (1967), Re-creation By Frank McLaughlin, 2012
Concluding our series on the roots of the Watchmen characters.
Charlton’s haphazard and often erratic publishing strategy certainly didn’t help sustain its line of superheroes. (Or “Action Heroes,” since technically, superhero is a joint trademark of Marvel and DC. But I digress.) Captain Atom #89 is the final issue of that series, and within a year all of the (mostly short-lived) action heroes were toast.
They wouldn’t return until about seven years later, when Charlton deciphered the burgeoning fan market. The company endorsed the superhero-themed Charlton Bulletin in 1975, a fanzine that included among other things, Steve Ditko’s unpublished penciled story for the cancelled Captain Atom #90. They asked a young Charlton freelancer by the name of John Byrne to ink it.
Byrne is among many talents with early careers at Charlton. Others include Dick Giordano, Jose Garcia Lopez, Jim Aparo, Bob Layton, Denny O’Neill, and Mike Zeck, Also on that list: Inker (and Charlton Art Director) Frank McLaughlin, who inked Ditko’s original #89 cover and re-created this version above.
As for Captain Atom? DC purchased him and the rest of the Charlton superheroes from the financially struggling Charlton in 1983, and they made their first DC appearance in Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985). Since then, he (and the rest of the gang) ultimately lived on in the pages of DC, of course, which was the point of Editor Dick Giordano not letting Alan Moore use those exact characters for Watchmen.
Alan, as we have discussed, was not deterred, and created his own versions of the characters.
Ironic, since those original Charlton characters could barely raise an eyebrow, and yet we are still talking about Moore’s Watchmen today.
The original and published art for Captain Atom #89. Frank’s red-do is faithful, but makes a few changes.
The first and last pages of Steve Ditko’s Blue Beetle re-do, from a backup story in captain Atom Atom #83.
The introduction of Nightshade. 1966 or not, the handling of the character earns an “ouch.”
Thunderbolt makes an entrance, and exits a short time later. He precedes the re-dos of Captain Atom and Blue Beetle in 1965. (And he takes over the Son of Vulcan title, who is never truly considered part of the Charlton main superhero universe.)Meanwhile, the rights reverted back to creator Peter Morisi, and Thunderbolt now has a home at Dynamite Publishing, where he feels a lot like… Ozymandias.
The Peacemaker steps up and Captain Atom celebrates his new uniform and power abilities. And The Question makes his final appearance in Blue Beetle #5 (1968), which inexplicably appears on the newsstand nearly a year after issue # 4.
Final tally Watchman —
Nite Owl 2 – Blue Beetle 2 Silk Spectre 2 – Phantom Lady/Black Canary/Nightshade Comedian – Peacemaker/Shield Dr. Manhattan – Captain Atom Rorschach – The Question Ozymandias – Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt
Steve Rude delivers a nicely designed splash page for the one-shot Dollar Bill comic from the Before Watchmen series. Len Wein wrote the issue, and Steve penciled, inked and hand-lettered the entire issue himself, a definite rarity. It’s one of the better-looking Before Watchmen comics.
As Watchmen fans know, Dollar Bill is a member of the Golden Age Minutemen — tragically gunned down when his cape gets caught in a revolving door, as described/depicted in the comic book, film and television series.
His role in the series is pretty much limited to that one tragic moment, so this one-shot gives the creative team a nearly blank slate to flesh out his character.
Definitely a unique creation, he is sponsored and employed by a bank as an actor, and pressured by his employer to work with the Minutemen as an actual costumed crimefighter. Any derivation from an existing character would be in design only — and his costume is in fact similar to Archie’s (MLJ’s) Golden Age Captain Flag.
And Flag did reappear in the Archie superhero revival (Mighty Crusaders #4 and #5) in the 1960s, so Moore would have definitely seen him since he has already discussed his interest in those characters.
Not that aren’t enough patriotic-themed red and blue costumed superheroes to go around.
The published splash page flanked by the Rude painted cover and by a variant cover by the late, great Darwyn Cooke.
Captain Flag in three different incarnations: Golden Age introduction, Silver Age introduction, and in an ironic Modern Age introduction he stands front and center. Why ironic you ask? This 1989 version of the MLJ/Archie superheroes, despite the ad, never actually appeared. Archie’s management got cold feet over the potential mature themes conflicting with the company’s wholesome image and pulled the plug. .
Continuing our series on the roots of the Watchmen characters.
Alan Moore, on his original idea for Watchmen:
“I wanted more average super-heroes, like the Mighty Crusaders line … [the] original idea had started off with the dead body of the Shield being pulled out of a river somewhere.”
Although the Watchmen eventually morphed out of Charlton heroes instead, elements of the Crusaders and the other MLJ/Archie Superheroes found their way into Watchmen lore. Perhaps most notable is the Hangman, a Golden age Archie character who along with Black Hood, becomes the obvious inspiration for Hooded Justice, a member of the original Golden Age Minutemen in the Watchmen series. (And has a critical role in the Watchmen HBO show.)
Also notable is the Mothman, an obvious derivation of Archie’s (Simon and Kirby’s) Fly / Flyman.
The original MLJ superheroes disappeared into the mists after World War 2, which didn’t impact Archie financially as the title character and his teenage friends transformed the company, including the published actual name which changed from MLJ to Archie in 1946.
But Archie’s management seeing the giant superhero success down the road at DC and Marvel took another stab starting in 1959 with the Shield and the Fly. Ultimately, many of the golden age characters reappeared, forming a team, the Mighty Crusaders.
Superhero artist Mike Sekowsky was first a Timely (nee Marvel) staffer and then a long-time DC mainstay. He is perhaps best known for his work on Justice League of America, where he could draw almost any character.
So he is well suited to tackle the Mighty Crusaders, a team-up book developed to compete with Justice League and other superhero team books of the day.
But Jerry Siegel’s (yep, Superman’s creator) writing style had most definitely not kept up with the style of the day, and the book was cancelled after seven issues. In fact, the entire Archie superhero experiment fizzled out by late 1967.
But… not before they managed to bring together nearly all the dusty MLJ heroes and put them in one comic book. Issue #4 of Mighty Crusaders, is a goofy favorite, entitled “Too Many Heroes.”
Too many, perhaps, but certainly enough to reach into for character ideas twenty years later.
Issue #4 of the Mighty Crusaders is a… gas. Pretty much every MLJ/Archie hero (as seen twenty years later in this house ad) mysteriously reappears to apply for membership into the Crusaders. The Crusaders themselves disappear after a short-lived series in 1966, but re-emerge multiple times starting in the 80s.
The classic Minutemen team shot as drawn by Dave Gibbons and recreated by the late Darwyn Cooke 25 years later, and the nearly identical PR photos from the 2009 film and 2019 television series.
Final Scorecard — Minutemen and their original counterparts:
Silhouette = Completely unique. (Maybe an amalgam of Black Canary, Black Cat and a female version of the Fox if you want to stretch out the derivations…)
Mothman = Flyman
Dollar Bill = Captain Flag
Nite Owl 1 = Blue Beetle 1 (Dan Garrett)
Captain Metropolis = Shield (with some Steel Sterling thrown in)
Silk Spectre 1 = Phantom Lady (with some Black Canary thrown in)
Hooded Justice = Hangman (with some Black Hood thrown in)
Comedian = Peacemaker (with some Shield thrown in)
Continuing our series on the roots of the Watchmen characters.
Isn’t the Silk Spectre actually Nightshade, the only female superhero in the Charlton superhero line-up? After all, all the other main characters are derived from silver-age Charlton heroes.
Or, if not, perhaps she is an altered version of DC’s Black Canary, who, thanks to retconning, became a mother/daughter Golden Age/Silver Age legacy character?
What does Alan Moore say? He said at one time that she’s based on the Phantom Lady (Sandra Knight), created by the Eisner Iger studio in 1940, and first published by Quality Comics in 1940. (Moore says Nightshade was “boring.” I’m not sure what, if anything, he’s said about Black Canary.)
Phantom Lady had quite a few incarnations in the Golden Age, moving from publisher to publisher, ultimately becoming yet another casualty of the Golden Age.
She is perhaps best known for the cover of Fox Features issue #17 (by Matt Baker), prominently featured in Frederic Wertham’s infamous anti- comics tome Seduction of the Innocent as an example of titillation (costume) and sadism (bondage.)
She first appeared in the DC universe as part of the Freedom Fighters, a group of superheroes fighting Nazi domination of an alternate Earth (“X”), in Justice League #107 (October 1973.) The rest of the Freedom Fighters are also superheroes from Quality Comics — DC obtained Quality’s characters in 1956, but with the exception of Plastic Man, had kept the characters in limbo.
Between her multiple iterations and publishers in the Golden Age, and her (at least) four incarnations at DC, there are likely more versions of Phantom Lady than any other secondary character in comics history.
In this post-crisis version, she is retconned as Starman’s cousin, helping him fight crime in the “Golden Age.” In fact, this great action page by Mike Mayhew is from the classic James Robinson Starman series.
As for Charlton’s Nightshade? She can’t catch a break. She was briefly introduced as a partner for Captain Atom and received a short-lived back-up feature in his title just prior to its cancellation. Despite some fine early art by Jim Aparo, those stories have never been reprinted — other than public domain press.
Silk Spectre 1 and 2 from the 2009 Watchmen film, plus SS 1 from the Before Watchman series.
Phantom Lady made the wrong kind of headlines when Matt Baker’s cover appeared in the sensationalistic and dunderheaded Seduction of the Innocent.
Phantom Lady’s original costume, above, which was modified only slightly when she first appeared in the DCU, below. The illustration for the DC Who’s Who entry below right is by the legendary Dave Stevens (Rocketeer).
Key Black Canary appearances include her first solo story in the Golden Age, along with her reintroduction in the Silver Age, culminating in her moving from Earth-2 to Earth-1 to join the Justice League. Got that?
Post Crisis and Post Watchmen, Black Canary ultimately becomes officially two characters, mother (original) and daughter (modern), as outlined in Secret Origins #50, leftand Who’s Who in the DCU, right.
Nightshade made her first appearance alongside Captain Atom in issue #82, and they received her own back-up feature a few issues later. Despite being Charlton’s only female character, Alan Moore says she is not the model for Silk Spectre.
HBO’sWatchmen was an unexpected television smash of 2019, and it has landed on a number of best of lists. This series of posts explores the Watchmen characters, which have roots in the more traditional superhero universe.
Steve Ditko creates the iconic and mature character Mr. A (with moral absolutism as his trademark) in 1967 for the prozine Witzend, published by Wally Wood.
A few months later, Ditko tones down the violence and moral
absolutism just a bit, and creates a more comics-code friendly character, The Question,
for Charlton Comics.
In 1983, DC acquires the Charlton superheroes from the
financially strapped publisher. The characters first appear in 1985’s mega-event
Crisis on Infinite Earths as inhabitants of “Earth Four.”
In 1986 Alan Moore retools the Question/Mr. A as Rorschach for Watchmen.
Even before Watchmen concludes, the Question receives his first
own ongoing (and very mature) DC series by Denny O’Neil and Denys Cowan.
In issue #17 of that series, the Question (Vic Sage) reads a
Watchmen comic and dreams that he is Rorschach.
A most meta series of events.
Ultimately, The Question series ran 36 issues, ending in 1990. 20 years later, DC added an extra issue as part of the Blackest Night storyline that brought back additional issues of previously cancelled comics.
Which brings us here: In this issue, Bill Sienkiewicz, who
drew or inked nearly all of the covers for that original series, inks an entire
issue for the first time over Denys Cowan’s dynamic pencils. (Cowan had
penciled all but one original issue.)
This is the last page (Renee Montoya is The Question here) from
the story. But, of course, certainly not the last of The Question. As he/she
has already appeared a few times since, most recently notably in Grant
Morrison’s Multiversity: Pax Americana on a new version of Earth Four.
And, in this universe, Vic Sage sounds a lot like… Rorschach.
And the circle continues….
Ten years ago, in Blackest Night, the original Question, Vic Sage, is resurrected to fight the then current Question, Renee Montoya.
The first appearances of Mr. A and The Question, along with the cover of the first and only feature-length Question comic from Charlton.
We meet Rorschach in Watchmen #1, and then the Question meets him in his dreams in Question #17, the first time a Watchmen character appears in any other DC comic.
A recent incarnation of the Question and his Charlton colleagues in the DCU.
HBO’sWatchmen was an unexpected television smash of 2019, and it has landed on a number of best of lists. The next few posts explore the Watchmen characters, which have roots in the more conventional superhero universe.
Most fans of the original 1986 graphic novel know that the main group of (five of the six) Watchmen characters have direct antecedents from the “Charlton superhero universe.” Since DC had recently acquired those characters from the financially strapped competitor, creator Alan Moore’s idea was to use them for his Watchmen concept. But Dick Giordano, DC’s editor at the time, nixed the idea, knowing that Moore’s concept would mean that those characters would be rendered unusable in the greater DC Universe.
Moore, undeterred, simply turned the Charlton characters into his own.
Some more literally than others.
Steve Ditko renders a dynamic action page featuring the original Dr. Manhattan, Captain Atom.
Ditko is the unofficial godfather of the Watchman, having created or revamped Captain Atom, The Blue Beetle and The Question (plus Nightshade) all in a short period in 1966/67. With little in the way of material changes, the three appear as Dr. Manhattan, Nite Owl, and Rorschach in Watchmen. (Nightshade is not so obvious — more on that in a future post.)
Ditko had left Marvel in 1966, returning to Charlton in the immediate period after his departure. His return there launched a brief, but ultimately futile attempt at a fuller Charlton superhero universe. By 1968, none of the books survived.
Ditko is co-creator (with writer Joe Gill) of the original Captain Atom character, and his origin story (March 1960) is extremely similar to Dr. Manhattan’s, minus the blue skin. In Space Adventures #33, he is seemingly atomized, but he ultimately reappears — with super powers. President Dwight Eisenhower asks him to become the military’s greatest weapon.
On this page from the final issue of the original series, Captain Atom fights “Thirteen” a (surprise!) super-villain with supernatural powers. Inks are by Frank McLaughlin, who was Charlton’s Art Director at the time. Finding a decent inker for Ditko — other than Ditko — could often pose a challenge, but McLaughlin delivers here.
Upon Ditko’s return to Charlton in 1966, Captain Atom and The Blue Beetle are revamped, and The Question and Nightshade are introduced in a flurry of activity.
Captain Atom (1960) becomes… Dr. Manhattan (1986).
Fantastic Four #100 (Jack Kirby), July 1970, Re-creation by Fred Hembeck, 2010
50 years Ago, Marvel Comics celebrated its first ever milestone issue, with Fantastic Four #100, redrawn here 10 years ago by the very talented and affable Mr. Hembeck.
But the milestone proved bittersweet — because 50 years ago, one of the biggest stories in comic book history shook the industry: Jack Kirby was leaving Stan Lee and Marvel Comics to head to DC.
In March of that year, Jack turned in the pages for FF #102 and told Stan he was out. The most accomplished creative team in comics history was done. In comic book fan circles, it was as if the Beatles had broken up.
Which, actually, they had, with Paul making the announcement official just a few weeks later.
A dramatic beginning to a new decade of pop culture.
More on Jack and the move to DC later on; In the meantime, Happy New Year, and welcome to 2020!
The ironic final panel of Fantastic Four #100. The Lee / Kirby team may have been the greatest ever, but they were a team no longer. Plus, pop culture’s other superteam calls it quits, too.
Classic Jack Kirby action highlights this dynamic page from the extremely short-lived Double Life of Private Strong in 1959.
Here though, “Classic” suggests a Kirby Golden Age look and feel. (As an example, The Shield is jumping out of a panel — very similar to earlier Simon and Kirby techniques.) Definitely a time warp, since we were theoretically a few years into the Silver Age at this point.
When did the Golden Age end, exactly? I devoured all the comics’ history books I could get my hands on as a youngster. (Steranko, Feiffer, Daniels, Lupoff / Thompson, et al.) I’m not sure they all agreed on, or even in some cases, identified, the exact point of the “end.”
So my youthful brain filled in the blanks: If the first appearance of Silver-Age Flash (Showcase #4, 1956) launches the Silver Age, then Flash #104, the final issue of the original Flash Comics (1949) obviously ends the Golden Age. (Let’s just call the in-between period the “EC Age.”)
Very neat and tidy, but it only took a short while before I realized it was much more complex than that.
If not Flash, then, how about when All-Star Comics kicks out the Justice Society and switches to All-Star Western (1951)? Perhaps the last issue of the Spirit newspaper supplement (1952)? Or maybe when Captain Marvel and Whiz Comics ceased publication (1953)? And what about the brief return (1954) of Marvel’s “Big Three” (Sub-Mariner, Torch and Captain America). Are those Golden Age Comics?
EBay defines Golden Age Comics as any published through 1955. The well-known back-issue retailer Sparkle City Comics says the era ends in 1956, leading directly into the Silver Age.
See, it gets complicated.
But, if we consider Golden Age as a style of superhero storytelling rather than a timeframe, my vote goes here: The final Simon and Kirby team-up.
Archie Comics, seeing DC’s success at re-introducing superheroes, hired Joe Simon, who in turn hired Jack Kirby (they were no longer partners at this point) to help create some new super suits for themselves.
Two titles came as an immediate result of that ideation: The Fly, and The Double of Life of Private Strong, featuring an updated version of their original patriotic superhero, The Shield. Both characters were Simon and Kirby superheroes. And both looked and felt like Simon and Kirby superheroes. (Even if Simon himself didn’t ink the page.) The page and the story don’t in any way capture the modern feel of DC’s sleeker and slicker Flash, Adam Strange, et al — or especially Kirby’s own Challengers of the Unknown.
The Fly buzzed around for a few years, although Simon and Kirby left after a few issues. Private Strong? A mess from the start, with a terrible title, retro trade dress that appears borrowed from Simon and Kirby’s Golden Age Speed Comics, some obvious knock-offs from Captain America, and a background story that seemed so similar to Superman, DC sent a cease and desist letter to Archie.
After two issues, The Shield was done. Shortly thereafter, the temporary reunion of the Simon and Kirby team was also finished.
A few months later, Kirby and Stan Lee, already churning out monster stories at Marvel, would collaborate for the first time on an ongoing character with Rawhide Kid #17. Although no one knew it at the time, the “Marvel Age” had begun, and the Silver Age was about to rev into high gear.
And the Golden Age of Comic Books was definitively over.
With some pretty great old-school art by Jack to usher it out.
Archie’s original version of the Shield predates Simon and Kirby’s Captain America. Not to ever give the patriotic superhero concept a rest, the two star creators develop Captain Freedom (below) for Harvey, and Fighting American, an early creator-owned series in the 50s.
Apparently Joe and Jack couldn’t decide on Captain Freedom’s costume from issue to issue. Notice the star on the mask that disappears and reappears, not to mention the proportions of the stars on the chest, and the belt too.
Meanwhile… Across town at DC, Kirby’s Silver Age Challengers of The Unknown look like… Jack Kirby in the Silver Age! Giant robots, futuristic cities, et al, are a sign of things to come.
It’s a Red Hulk / Green Hulk Walter Simonson-themed Christmas, and Green Hulk takes his turn.
Green Hulk takes out his frustration on one of the Metal Master’s lethal robots in this action-filled story, pencilled by Walter Simonson with inks and wash-tones by Alfredo Alcala.
Original art for stories from black and white magazine titles often has more depth, because tonal quality was necessary to make the art pop without color printing. Alcala was one of the best of the artists working regularly in this medium.
Word balloons on many of the Marvel Magazines were done on tissue overlays, hence the “word-free” artwork. But a good action page, like a well directed fight scene in a film, should be void of most speaking parts anyway. (Even as a young reader, I disliked inner monologue masquerading as outer dialogue.)
Who has the breath to talk during a fight? (I know, they’re super-powered beings. But still…)
