After quite a few fits and starts, The Flash feature film is making its way into theaters this week, so naturally here’s a great Flash page… minus the Flash.
But all the classic Flash rogues are here in a story which focusses specifically on them. If you’re a fan of the classic Silver Age Flash (guilty) this splash by my pal Sean Chen is definitely the pen and ink version of comfort food.
As far as I can tell from the trailer, The Flash movie will be light on the rogues, so this is good way to get our fix.
Rogues, nothing but rogues. Comic book professional and historian Peter Sanderson — as a fan — wrote an amazing summary with pros and cons of each character, which Julius Schwartz published in Flash #174
Formerly Known As The Justice League #3, November 2003
Mary Marvel beats the nuclear daylights out of Captain Atom in this innovative, and terrific action page, by Kevin Maguire.
Everything about this page works for me: Storytelling, composition, movement, and the absolute rage on Mary’s face.
She’s pissed.
Of course, since it’s comics, and we know Mary is an otherwise lovely person, she’s clearly under some sort of mind control. Everything will eventually be fine, yes? Well, in this reunion of the classic 80s JLA creative team (Writers J.M. Dematteis and Keith Giffen, Maguire, and inker Joe Rubenstein) who can say?
Or maybe she’s just upset that the collection of this Eisner-winning series is unavailable. That annoys me, too.
Ring of the Nibelung #2, (The Valkyrie), February 1990
Gil Kane tackles Richard Wagner’s The Ring of The Nibelung opera series (adapted here by Roy Thomas) with dramatic results.
It’s a prestige format series, so Gil employs a large art format, and, unlike the majority of his DC work from this period, it’s primarily pen and ink, as opposed to marker. Therefore, the pages — pretty much all terrific — are collectible and displayable without worrying about the art fading to nothingness.
(Ask anyone — myself included — who has owned a page from either Sword of the Atom mini-series and they can explain further.)
What would Gil himself say about this dynamic page? I’m not exactly sure, but it would begin this way:
Commission, All-Star Squadron #1 Mash-up with Avengers #150 and #151, 2007
Bob Layton has some fun reimagining the cover of DC’s All-Star Squadron #1 (Rich Buckler, artist) as an Avengers “changing of the guard” issue.
Also fun — Bob uses the trade dress for issue #150 (1976) of the Avengers own comic book, a fill in issue that primarily features a reprint of the first major line-up change in issue #16. The actual line-up changes in #151.
It was clearly all meant to be a single story in #150, but… the dreaded deadline of doom strikes again.
Dave Berg loved to draw his friends, neighbors and colleagues into his Mad Magazine “Lighter Side” series. On this great strip, Mad Publisher William (Bill) Gaines and other staffers get the full Berg treatment. I love this.
Mad staffers here are —
Leftside, front to back:
Lenny Brenner, Tom Nozkowski, Charlie Kadau, Joe Raiola
Rightside, front to back:
Nick Meglin, John Ficarra, Sarah Friedman, Andrew Schwartzberg
(Thanks to my pals Joey Cavalieri and Charlie Kochman for filling in the names of folks I didn’t know.)
Left: Still one of my favorite biographies of all time. Right: A fun ad parody featuring the Mad gang further back in the day.
It’s surprising — and definitely a miss — that only a few “Christmas” superhero stories have had made much impact in the comic book format.
But of the ones that do exist, Batman’s “Silent Night, Deadly Night” (Denny O’Neil) is one of the key holiday classics for Silver Age/ Bronze Age fans.
I’m not sure I had ever seen an original page from this story prior to acquiring this one, a few short weeks ago. None have ever been offered by Heritage Auctions for sale, and their database is a reasonable bellwether for historical availability, at least in this century.
Did I wildly overpay? Probably. Did I pay the right price? Possibly. Do I want to get into a bidding war with someone else who wants this page and find out?
Nope.
And that, my friends, is how you have unexpectedly large bill come due during holiday season.
Great page, legendary story, and the sweet spot of my superhero comic book reading era.
There was nothing I could do.
Welcome to Day 11 of the 12 DC Days of DeCember.
Oddly, you can only find this classic story in two reprints beyond the original — this 1974 DC treasury, and the sixth and final volume of DC’s Batman Showcase black and white reprint series.
Neal Adams pencilling and Bernie Wrightson inking? Seems like an impossible combination. First thought, one would overpower the other, or, even worse, combine into some sort of Frankenstein’s monster (pun intended) of comic book art.
Well, not only is it possible, its terrific — at least in this one specific issue of Green Lantern. (Bernie himself said he was extra careful not to dominate Neal’s pencils here.)
And on this great page, you can clearly see the result — both styles complement each other. (The coloring in the printed issue unfortunately diminishes the impact of that last great panel. But heck, it is dark out.)
I’m delighted to own a page from this classic issue — and classic series.
Wallace Wood revisits his Mad comics chops with this terrific parody of Lord of the Rings.
Terrific, but little seen, because it appears in a later issue of Plop, when sales were low, and… it’s only been collected one other time — in digest format — a few years later.
With the exception of (perhaps) the title splash this is the best page in the issue, mashing up gags about hobbits, the seven dwarves and Prince Valiant — all in the distinctive Woody style. (And yes, one word balloon is definitely not PC in the original, but it was nearly 50 years ago, and appears to have been modified.)
Welcome to Day Nine of the 12 DC Days of DeCember.
The 80s digest reprint did a much better job of promoting of what you received when you plopped down (ouch) your dollar.The classic Harvard Lampoon satire of LOTR has gone though multiple printings since it first appeared in 1969, and unlike most parodies, has stayed in print since first publication.
