Sunday, April 6, 2025

Remembering Artist Gil Kane

Remembering artist Gil Kane on his birthday (April 6, 1926 - January 31, 2000) with a special Showcase on two of his most fondly remembered characters...Green Lantern and the Atom....with their Showcase covers!

Green Lantern Hal Jordan began his career in Showcase #22 (September-October, 1959), with the Atom Ray Palmer following with Showcase #34 (September-October, 1961)....and comics were never the same!


Showcase #23 and #24 (November-December, 1959 and January-February 1960)

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Showcase #35 and #36 (November-December, 1961 and January-February, 1962)

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Saturday, April 5, 2025

Celebrating Artist Art Adams

Celebrating artist Art Adams on his birthday (April 5, 1963) with the covers to his 6 issue limited series featuring Longshot, an alien from another dimension who ended up in ours, without his memory but with the power of luck....


....which allowed him to evade Mojo (ruler of the land he escaped from) and Spiral (Mojo's assassin) with the help of Ricochet Rita (Rita Wayword) for a while (and later, hook up with the X-Men).



Longshot #1 and #2 (September and October, 1985)

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Longshot #3 and #4 (November and December, 1985)

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Longshot #5 and #6 (January and February, 1986)

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Friday, April 4, 2025

Remembering Artist Joe Orlando

Remembering artist Joe Orlando on his birthday (April 4, 1927 - December 23, 1998).  Though known more for his editing and work on horror comics, Joe worked on humor comics as well, handling the first 13 issues of Swing With Scooter...the adventures of an English singer who came to America to escape his fame, but wasn't that successful.

Scooter had a group of followers, including redhead Cynthia, brunette Penny, blond Cookie, friendly Sylvester, angry Malibu and hipster Kenny who served to lead him into all sorts of scrapes (at least until issue #14, where the mag turned into more of an Archie Comics clone).

Swing With Scooter #1 and #2 (June-July and August-September, 1966) 

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Swing With Scooter #3 and #4 (October-November, 1966 and December-January, 1966/1967) 

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Swing With Scooter #5 and #6 (February-March and April-May, 1967) 

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Swing With Scooter #7 and #8 (June-July and August-September, 1967) 

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Swing With Scooter #9 and #10 (October-November, 1967 and December-January 1967/1968) 

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Swing With Scooter #11 and #12 (February-March and April-May, 1968)

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Swing With Scooter #13  (June-July, 1968)


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Wednesday, April 2, 2025

Celebrating Artist Todd Nauck

Celebrating artist Todd Nauck (April 2, 1971) on his birthday with a few special covers to Young Justice, featuring the team.

The team started out with Robin, Superboy and Impulse (under the watchful eye of Red Tornado)...grew to add Secret, Wonder Girl and Arrowette...and then even Empress, Slobo and the Ray (and so many more!).


Young Justice #1 and #18 (September, 1998 and March, 2000)

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Young Justice #21 and Dark Crisis: Young Justice #1 (July, 2000 and August, 2022)

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Tuesday, April 1, 2025

Mad April Fools

What better way to celebrate April Fool's Day than with the biggest fool of all...Alfred E. Newman!


Here, from Mad Magazine #39 (May, 1958) with a cover painting by C.C. Beall Jr. and Mad Magazine #114 (October, 1967) with Alfred playing the fool for a cover by Norman Mingo.


Saturday, March 29, 2025

Celebrating Artist Val Mayerik

Celebrating the birthday of artist Val Mayerik (March 29, 1950) with a couple of his covers featuring Frankenstein's Monster...Frankenstein Monster #18 (September, 1975) and Iron Man #101 (August, 1977).

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

Planet DC JSA And Batman

Here are the last two of the 8 Planet DC Annuals of 2000, focusing on heroes you know meeting heroes from foreign lands...

...this time around, the new heroes are Nemesis and the Boggart, who meet with the JSA and Batman.


JSA Annual #1 (October, 2000)

First up is Nemesis (Soseh Mykros) in a story by David Goyer, Uriel Caton and Wade von Grawbadger, as she fights the clones of Sportsmaster (an old JSA foe) as a way to battle the Council.  Soseh was the daughter of Dr. Anatol Mykros (who worked with the Council, which were thought to be defeated by Batman and the Mark Shaw Manhunter long ago.  Mykros experimented and had two daughters, Soseh and Ellina, both of whom had incredible regeneration abilities, as well as Eidetic Kinesthesia (the ability to duplicate any fighting style she encountered).  Meant to lead the Sportsmaster clones, Soseh felt what her father was doing was wrong, and opposed him, drawing her into battle with her sister.  While Soseh defeated Ellina and got away, she was injured and floated away in the Aegean Sea...

...where, in the second story in the annual (by Geoff Johns, Buzz and Jim Royal, as Buzz did the cover as well), Soseh ended up on Themyscira, home of the amazons, where, at the time, Hippolyta was acting as Wonder Woman, and training newer JSA members Black Canary, Star-Spangled Kid and Hawkgirl.  There, she related her tale and, having encountered the Sportsmaster clones before, the JSA decided to help, going to the back to the secret facility in Greece where the Council was cloning Sportsmaster, and destroyed it, with Soseh killing her sister along the way (a setback for the Council, who was allied with JSA foe, the Ultra-Humanite as well).  Nemesis continued fighting the Council with the help of the JSA, but ended up allying with Black Adam, where she was killed by Eclipso (all in the next few years of JSA books).

Batman Annual #24 (October, 2000)

The last of the new heroes from the Planet DC was the Boggart, as detailed in this story by John Ostrander, Jim Aparo and Sal Buscema (with a cover by Michael Kaluta).  On a rare vacation to England, Alfred Pennyworth ran into the beast...leaving him comatose, inviting a visit by Bruce Wayne (and Batman) to investigate.  Going to the place Alfred last was, Elsbeth Fields (call her Gran Puddin) was set to give Bruce her granddaughter, Rosemary....until Bruce was chased from the house by the Boggart.  Having Rosemary calm the Boggart, Gran Puddin explained that her son Harry, and new bride, Diana, had Rosemary with help from Lord Malvern, who, now claimed Rosemary.  

Bruce went to confront Geoffrey, Lord Malvern, who directly shooed Bruce from his mansion and made light of claims of the beast.  Going back as Batman, Bruce encountered security guard Grayle, as Rosemary and the Boggart went to the mansion as well.  When the girl and her imaginary friend got in, they found other children who also had imaginary friends, and found that Lord Malvern was experimenting to give children telekinetic powers....which manifested as imaginary friends.  Grayle, as a security guard representing other interests, tried the formula on himself, manifesting the beast.  Lord Malvern had a cure for the formula, but needed Batman to distract Grayle, and the Boggart to distract the beast, wherein Malvern gave Grayle the cure, and the beast disappeared.  Realizing Malvern was not malevolent, Gran Puddin gave her blessing for Rosemary to be trained at the mansion (with the Boggart reluctantly agreeing).

In the second story, also by Ostrander, Aparo and Buscema, Rosemary (and the Boggart, the manifestation of her powers) met Roland Royce, who was to study the Boggart (but the Boggart would have none of that).  The Boggart manifested badly, and, after being admonished by Rosemary, disappeared for a while.  Rosemary learned why Malvern was so intend on protecting children, having lost his son, William, who was the first recipient of the experiment, and killed himself because he couldn't handle the power.  With the help of the Boggart, Malvern and the spirit of his son reconciled.  Sadly, Rosemary and the Boggart never reappeared.