Giant Young Love

Young Love #69 (August-September, 1968 with cover by Dick Giordano) was Young Love's one and only giant, squarebound issue (though the series did have 100 Page Spectaculars towards the end of its run), full of jealousy, rage, heartbreak, rage, loneliness and even love (all as it says on the cover)...all gathered from past issues of other romance comics!

Here's a look at the issues that have stories from them reprinted within...

Tears For A Dream/Heartbreak In Paradise

This cover of Heart Throbs #85 (August-September, 1963) is by John Romita, and actually features the Dream story reprinted in the giant, while the Paradise story was only inside Secret Hearts #91 (October, 1963), but the cover was also drawn by John Romita!

A Shoe For Cinderella/Moment Of Truth and Curtain For A Heart

John Romita provides the covers for both Secret Hearts #88 (June, 1963) and Falling In Love #54 (November, 1962), though A Shoe doesn't feature on the cover, nor Moment or Curtain on its either...but you can definitely see the Romita style on the women's faces!

To Hide From Love/Forgive Me, Forget Me

Arthur Peddy might have started the cover for Falling In Love #56 (January, 1963), with Romita finishes, but John Romita did all of Girls' Love Stories #74 (November, 1960), neither of which were the cover feature of the issue that they came from either!

Plus, the issue had "Mad Mad Modes For Moderns", with fashion art by Jay Scott Pike (creator of Dolphin), and could be considered one of the first dozen Super DC Giants (which oddly started with the number, S-13...and include volumes with Supergirl, Batman team ups, Jerry Lewis and even more romance comics for Valentine's Day!).

Giant Jerry Lewis

Here we are with another collection of reprints, and a little extra...

 ...this time looking back at the lighter side of comics, with a couple of issues of The Adventures of Jerry Lewis in Super DC Giant S-19 (October-November, 1970)....


...all under a cover by Bob Oksner and Neal Adams!

Reprints

The stories in this issue come from Adventures of Jerry Lewis #83 (July-August, 1964) with "Scared Silly" by Arnold Drake and Bob Oksner, featuring Jerry dealing with an old age home of retired horror actors (Boris Killoff/Krankenstein, Bela Le Ghouli/Count Drinkula and Peter Leery/Dog-Boy,  and from Adventures of Jerry Lewis #95 (July-August, 1966 also by Drake/Oksner) with "The Killer Counselor Of Camp Wack-A-Boy", dealing with Jerry returning to summer camp (run by Uncle Hal), with separate camps for the boys and the girls (Jerry brings along his nephew, Renfrew, Witch Kraft and her niece, Zanyia).

Beginnings

The series originally began as the Adventures of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis (July-August, 1952), with work by Howie Post, and featured stories closer to what the duo did in movies, antics and misunderstandings with them and others around them, and this lasted until the Adventures of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis #40 (October, 1957), by which time Bob Oksner had signed on as artist....with the team of Martin and Lewis having split in real life....

On His Own

Jerry's comic counterpart soldiered on, as he took sole possession of the title with Adventures of Jerry Lewis #41 (November, 1957), with Jerry monkeying around, working his way through life, and through many adventures (including some that bordered on the supernatural), with the title ending with the Adventures Of Jerry Lewis #124 (May-June, 1971).

Super Friends

Of course, along the way Jerry did meet a few of DC's super heroes...
 
...including Batman and Robin (with the Joker) in Adventures of Jerry Lewis #97 (November-December, 1966), Superman (and Lex Luthor) in the Adventures of Jerry Lewis #105 (March-April, 1968)...

...Flash, Captain Cold and Abra Kadabra in the Adventures of Jerry Lewis #112 (May-June, 1969), Wonder Woman (in her non-powered guise as Diana Prince) and Queen Hippolyta in the Adventures of Jerry Lewis #117 (March-April, 1970)...

....and even tries his own hand at being a super-hero (the fearless Tarantula) in the Adventures of Jerry Lewis #84 (September-October, 1964), as well as Jerry being the first actor to greet Batman and Robin in the 1966 Batman TV show, as a citizen leaning out a window in the Batman episode "The Bookworm Turns" from April 20, 1966.

Holy "hey, lady", Batman!

Super DC Giant Brave and The Bold

To be fair, this issue was labeled, "The Best of the Brave and the Bold"....

.....a bit of a stretch for the two issues that were featured (and that also hardly made Super DC Giant #S-16 of September-October, 1970....

....a giant; after all, it was little more than two issues!).


Still, it was two pretty interesting issues, with an edge and bottom of the cover by Murphy Anderson, two classic comic covers by Carmine Infantino and Ramona Fradon, and some additional material to make it worth a look back at!

Brave and the Bold #67

"The Death Of The Flash" was featured originally in Brave and the Bold #67 (August-September, 1966) by Bob Haney, Carmine Infantino and Charles Paris, and has Batman and the Flash facing off against "the Speed Boys", a gang of crooks working through Gotham with sneakers that give them super-speed.  This gang helped run the Flash to his death (as he had a heretofore unknown condition that was killing him as he used his speed), forcing Batman to work alone to stop them (though, thankfully, the radiation of the sneakers was enough to revive the Flash, cure him of his condition and allow him to stop his foes).

This story was also reprinted in the Brave and the Bold Annual #1 of 2001, and in black and white in Showcase Presents: The Brave and the Bold Batman Team-Ups #1 of 2007.  This was the first of many Batman/Flash team-ups, and makes one think why is DC not collecting Brave and the Bold Team-Ups: the Silver Age (which could feature stories from Brave and the Bold #50-56, #59, #61-64, to accompany the Brave and the Bold Bronze Age Omnibus, which starts with issue #87)?

Brave and the Bold #57

Why not reprint Brave and the Bold #57 (December-January, 1964/1965) in a B&B team-up collection?  Well, it had a solo story, "The Origin of Metamorpho" by Bob Haney, Ramona Fradon and Charles Paris....which introduced readers to archeologist Rex Mason, who, while agreeing to dig in a forbidden Egyptian temple (to get millionaire Simon Stagg to allow Rex cash, which Rex would use to date Simon's daughter, Sapphire), was knocked unconscious by Simon's caveman Friday, Java, and left for dead in a room with the Orb of Ra.  The Orb changed Rex into Metamorpho, who could control the elements of his body (and leading to another solo appearance in the next issue, then 17 solo issues of his own in the 1960s).

A Metamorpho: Silver Age collection featuring his two solo B&Bs, a team up with the Metal Men, a team-up with Batman and the first 8 issues of regular series would be welcome (or perhaps a Metamorpho: Omnibus, having all 17 of Metamorpho's issues, as well as the B&Bs, including a few later ones, and maybe including his Action Comics and World's Finest Comics back-ups, as well as 1st Issue Special one-shot and Superman team-up from DC Comics Presents), would also not be unwelcome (and would cover most of his appearances before joining Batman's Outsiders).

Plus! 

There were a few additional pages with Batman and Flash, leading into the reprints, and, best of all, a drawing by Dick Dillin, featuring the characters who had been featured in team-ups in B&B up to that point...

...but, that drawing was missing a few folks, like Speedy of the Teen Titans (colored in Green Arrow's original costume colors), as well as having Starman and Black Canary (with Black Canary only recently meeting Batman in B&B), as well as Supergirl (who only worked with Wonder Woman, in B&B #63 at the time...and Wonder Woman was there, but in her Diana Prince look (as Diana had a few team-ups with Batman), also missing Batgirl, who worked with Wonder Woman and Batman in B&B #78 against Copperhead).  Still, it is a great little drawing....

Have A Super DC Giant Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day with this cover from Super DC Giant #S-17 from September-October, 1970 by artist Nick Cardy.



This issue has reprinted stories from Secret Hearts #38 (February-March, 1957), Girls' Romances #107 (March, 1965), Girls' Love Stories #106 (October, 1964), Secret Hearts #40 (June-July, 1957), Secret Hearts #39 (April-May, 1957), Secret Hearts #45 (February, 1958),  and Secret Hearts #41 (August, 1957)....

...all great little romance reads for lonely hearts!