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Thứ Hai, 3 tháng 5, 2010

Number 730

That's "Baily" without an "e"

Bernard Baily, whose last name is often misspelled as the more common "Bailey," began work in the comics in their earliest years. His claims to fame included the Spectre, which he co-created with writer Jerry Siegel, and the Hourman, which he drew during that era.

These covers of More Fun, scanned from the DC Archives edition of the Golden Age Spectre, are from the first two episodes of that spectral superhero.

Baily went on to do several other features, was a publisher in the 1940s and had an art service that produced issues of horror comics like Mister Mystery and Weird Mysteries, among others. When it came to gruesome and horrible, Baily was up there with the best horror artists in the business. These covers are from that period.

The story I'm showing is from Suspense Detective #5 from 1953, the last issue of a series of mystery/horror comics from Fawcett. In the latter part of Baily's career he went back to DC Comics. I showed one of his unique and distinctive DC stories in Pappy's #495.

Chủ Nhật, 2 tháng 5, 2010

The Legion of Super-Romances

In their first several appearances, the members of the Legion of Super-Heroes were somewhat asexual. This is not that surprising, since they initially encountered Superboy, who almost never acknowledged an interest in girls.

However, we learned over time that they could be just as hormone drenched as real teenagers. The first hint appears to be in Action #276, where Supergirl and Brainiac 5 are inducted into the Legion together. Later:

In Action #289, we learned that at least one Legion romance led to the altar:

In Adventure #311, we learned that Night Girl, a member of the Legion of Substitute Heroes was sweet on Cosmic Boy:

In #316, Phantom Girl expresses her admiration for Ultra Boy:

The very next issue of Adventure features the first appearance of Dream Girl, and all the boys go gaga over the platinum blonde:

Especially Star Boy (with fateful consequences much later).

In Adventure #321, Bouncing Boy loses his powers, slims down, and picks himself up a plumper:

Of course, much later he'd, err, pair up with Duo Damsel.

Shrinking Violet didn't shrink away from Duplicate Boy, even though he was supposedly the leader of a gang of crooks:

In actuality, however, Duplicate Boy and the rest of his group had been duped into attacking the Legion, and in the end of the story, Violet and he appear to be starting a romance.

Adventure #326 featured The Revolt of the Girl Legionnaires, a zany story where the girls are hypnotized into destroying their male counterparts. As part of their plot, the gals pretend to be interested in some of the boys. For example:

But the romances are all phony, and none of the gals were later romantically linked to their chosen victims in this case. In fact, Light Lass (shown kissing Element Lad there), met her chosen beau in the next issue:

In Adventure #329, a reader wrote in requesting more romance:

That takes us through the first 30 issues of the Legion in Adventure, and seems like a good breaking point. Still more Legion love to come!

Number 729

Airboy and the Great Plane From Nowhere!

The Great Plane referred to on the cover of Airboy, Volume 8 Number 5 from 1951, isn't really from "nowhere." It's from another planet. It's a city-sized airplane carrying surviving members of a civilization looking for a new home. There's no explanation as to how it got to Earth on propeller power.

Flying saucers were big stuff in the late '40s and '50s, and as a kid I read everything I could about them. Books on flying saucers sometimes mentioned motherships, which brought the saucer craft to Earth, and that's what the Great Plane is.

The artwork is by Ernest Schroeder, who had a nice illustrative style even if the eyeballs on his characters look weird. What the hell. I like weird.