As a kid, my first thought on any Flash team-ups was this: He needs to join forces with someone with actual super powers, otherwise he will end up running circles around his partner.
Sure enough, on this page, he proves the point showing off his super speed to the worlds greatest, but definitely not fastest, detective. (I assume Batman is — wait for it — a speed-reader.)
Bob Brown pencils (pretty much layouts only) the action here, and Nick Cardy provides the inks, which means the art looks like… Nick Cardy.
This of course is consistent with his very specific embellishment style. Almost anything he inked looked like he had penciled it as well. Which, considering he was a terrific penciller, is ok with me.
Fun Fact: Jim Aparo takes over as permanent artist for The Brave and Bold series with the following issue (#100) and pretty much draws the next 100 issues. Whew.
We continue to celebrate Jack Kirby’s legacy at DC Comics with a special two-week look at Jack’s characters and concepts as envisioned by other creators. 2021 is the Fiftieth anniversary of the Fourth World storyline. *
Mister Miracle makes his first appearance outside of the Jack Kirby DC universe in this cool Batman team-up story in the Brave and The Bold, penciled and inked by the legendary bat-artist Jim Aparo.
Ironically, Kirby’s own Mister Miracle title had been cancelled the month previously, effectively ending the Jack’s interconnected Fourth World, a little more than three years after it started.
Think of it as the 19th Bronze Age issue of Mister Miracle; it would take another three years for an actual issue #19 — without Jack’s involvement — to see the light of day.
(The bat team of writer Bob Haney and artist Aparo effectively weave Mr. Miracle into the greater DC Universe, and the two escape artists will team up again in issue #126 as well.)
*Purists will note that some of the characters and titles actually made it onto newsstands before the close of 1970, but the fully integrated series (Jimmy Olsen, Forever People, New Gods, and Mister Miracle) — doesn’t fully materialize until the following year.
The final issue of Mister Miracle (#18) is also the final issue in Jack Kirby’s New Gods saga until he returns to it briefly about 10 years later. But hey, miraculously, our great escape artist shows up right on publication schedule —- albeit as a guest star in a Batman book.
I have a sweet spot for the Spectre, and I love the way he dominates this Alan Davis cover of this issue of the Justice Society. Despite the fact that I am an enthusiastic fan of Davis’ work, this is the first (and only) cover he drew that I own. I should rectify that one of these days.
As a young teen, I was the perfect age for the crazy, but brief, Bronze Age version of the character written by Michael Fleisher and wonderfully drawn by Jim Aparo, which featured woeful fates for the character’s antagonists. This version of Spectre arrives (early 1974) at nearly the exact same time as does another anti-hero, the Punisher, across town at Marvel comics.
Justice is served, indeed.
Comic book historian Les Daniels discussed the origin of this version of the character in DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes:
“Joe Orlando was mugged and decided the world needed a really relentless super hero. The character came back with a vengeance … and quickly became a cause of controversy. Orlando plotted the stories with writer Michael Fleisher, and they emphasized the gruesome fates of criminals who ran afoul of the Spectre. The Comics Code had recently been liberalized, but this series pushed its restrictions to the limit, often by turning evildoers into inanimate objects and then thoroughly demolishing them. Jim Aparo’s art showed criminals being transformed into everything from broken glass to melting candles, but Fleisher was quick to point out that many of his most bizarre plot devices were lifted from stories published decades earlier.”
I had only recently discovered the classic EC Comics horror tiles, and these gruesome fates seemed to meld together the supernatural, horror and superhero tropes into one wonderful blended margarita of storytelling.
Definitely worth my 20 cents.
Fun fact: 1974 is indeed the year of the anti-hero. Wolverine appears for the first time a few months later. It took a while, but in 1982, a catchphrase summed up his personality. “I’m the best there is at what I do, but what I do best isn’t very nice.” Snikt!
The Spectre appears… and reappears. First appearances, Golden Age, Silver Age and Bronze Age.
