Dave Stevens RIP

It seems I write too many of these. I guess it comes from being around since the Silver Age and the fact that the comics industry has been around now for 60 years. The second generation of comics creators that came along in the 60's, well they are all now in their 60s and older if they are still around.

Still, Dave's death is a bit of a shock. He passed away at the age of 53 from Leukemia. A full account of his life and career can be found at the usual great Mark Evanier's
blog

For once I can say I was at the right age when Pacific Comics and the Rocketeer came along. I was old enough and yet young enough to be venturing out of the big two superhero comics and trying out new books. And we had big name creators like Neal Adams, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Mike Grell, Marshall Rogers, and Michael Golden all doing their own things. Amidst all of that was this upstart Dave Stevens bringing a retro strip in the back pages of Grell's STARSLAYER. For me, a long time fan of Doc Savage (and blissfully unaware of how much pulp stuff I knew nothing about) with an intellectual interest in the old serials (as I'd never seen one at this point), it was a dream come true. Stevens dusted off the old King of the Rocketmen concept and streamlined his helmet a bit, rescued a sex-kitten model and a hulking brutish looking actor from obscurity as models for principle characters, peppered with planes, locations and people of the 1930s as well as a few appearances of some un-named pulpish characters and mixed them all together in a wonder strip. The Rocketeer was to comics what Raiders of the Lost Ark was to movies, capturing the fun of the time when adventure was always around the corner and could be had for a dime.

I remember being excited to see the movie and it remains as one of the most best adaptations of a comic character to the big screen. Despite Peter David's rather uncharitable snipe against the beautiful Jennifer Connelly. While there are specific changes to different elements of the comic series, the movie stays true to the spirit and themes of the comic. It doesn't camp things up, dumb them down, make wholesale changes to the costumes. It plays it straight and is just plain fun. Unfortunately, it opened with less than stellar numbers, unfortunately coming out as the same time as a little flick called T2.

Stevens wasn't the most prolific of creators. Nowadays, that doesn't seem to be a problem for creators. After all too few issues, the comic eventually faded from view and Stevens became known for covers and pin-ups, often of sexy scantily clad women. It was something he was very good at. For good or ill, his art sparked a resurgence in what is commonly called "good girl art" as well as a renewed popularity in Bettie Page. Without Stevens, who knows if we'd have seen the likes of Adam Hughes and Frank Cho, both artists not threatening to be accused of being speed demons themselves.

In this day and age of trade paperbacks as secondary markets and habitually late creators, it's a shame that Stevens wasn't able to do more work. He'd be tailor made for limited series with minor characters, counting on long term gains on that secondary market. How much money has DC made from keeping WATCHMEN in print? And how many times have we seen reprints of the Kree-Skrull War, the Avengers-Defenders War, and the Adams Green Lantern-Green Arrow issues? It seems the companies would be wise to develop more properties geared for more long-term publishing in the trade markets. As opposed to things like 52, Civil War, etc that are dependent on being enmeshed in current continuity than able to really stand on their own. But, those are other thoughts.

Here's to ole Dave Stevens. By all accounts a helluva nice guy, a drawer of purty pictures, and a fan of those things from the age of action and adventure. I had to include the pic of the gun toting opossum for the sake of my brother, a big fan of those skittish critters.

Golden-age reviews

The Twelve: Starting with the cover, I'm assuming Legal realized that the proposed cover was all sorts of copyright and trademark infringement (viewed here). This cover isn’t really an improvement. It’s a bit iconic looking but it is ultimately a generic “strike a pose” cover that has little to nothing to do with the issue at hand. At the very least, due to being an “homage”, the advertised cover actually told a story and communicated quite a bit about the character. Overall these covers have been a huge disappointment. The text on the covers and the recap pages are a little bit of artifact creation, but these thoroughly modern computer generated/enhanced feels fight that kind of sensibility. Even if that wasn’t a factor, the style has nothing to do with the themes and sensibilities of the book inside. Reminds me a lot of the incongruous covers to the Hawkeye series a while back. The covers by Scott Kollins were bright and colorful, with a larger than life Hawkeye in full costume. The inside of the book was dark and street level with Hawkeye rarely in costume.

The book itself, JMS shows off his strengths here where we get quite a bit of character development, looking at how a few more of the characters are adjusting or not. This would be fine except for the climactic hook that bridged issues 1 & 2. That tells us there's more to the story than what we're getting but there's no mention of it for most of last issue and none this issue. It's bad storytelling structure. If he wanted to build towards that tragedy in a linear fashion as this and the last issue suggest and not flashing back and forth between the now of the Blue Blade's death and the "weeks ago" of their unthawing, then we shouldn't have gotten the "now" scene. It's bad form to introduce a major plot element like that and then proceed to ignore it as if it was never brought up. It’s one of these things that might read fine in the long form when collected, but month to month it feels as if the title is going nowhere. As a wordsmith JMS does a very good job, but the story structure needs refining, to make sure more is actually happening each issue.

Part of the structure problem this issue stems from multiple narrators. And this is actually going to harm the reading experience if you’re waiting for the trade. The inconsistencies of the last issue in trying to place at what point in time the Phantom Reporter was narrating is undone this issue as the comic expands the character scope and has us see things that the Phantom Reporter wouldn’t be privy to. So, we get to see things from other points of view, but as done here it completely disrupts the narrative flow of the story as the shifts and changes just happen.

In the end, we have a lot of what marred the first issue, for a comic book, very little actual action takes place. The much ballyhooed Fiery Mask vs zombies is a complete cheat. For one, of all of the characters involved, the Flaming Mask has probably been reprinted the most. His origin story was done awhile back, a lot of his adventures in b/w in the complete Jack Kirby volumes (by Pure Imagination I believe) and most recently in the DARING MYSTERY archives. But, even more, his big character moment is recounting his origin where the bad guy basically defeats himself? In other words, we still have the heroes basically doing absolutely nothing.

The look at Mr. E was almost as powerful as the Captain Wonder scenes last month. We find out that he was Jewish but changed his last name to avoid the racism of the times. However, his family had changed their name back and his now elderly son resents him for being such a coward. When he comes back to the compound, he’s still in denial, still more concerned with how he is seen than the truth of his life. It makes Mr. E very human. But, what we don't see is what made him a hero. We only see the condemnation of his actions but not his side of the story (and what flashback we see, it appears he not changed his name but also “covered” by sharing racist jokes). The end result is a character that is more sad and pathetic in its efforts to make the character more three dimensional. And considering the time period, the art form and characters involved, I can only wonder what Jacob Kurtzberg, Stanley Martin Lieber, and Eli Katz would have thought about the one-sided treatment here. I’m all for humanizing characters, but there also needs to be some balance to it. There’s more to rounding out characterization than just giving character flaws. Mr. E could be a really interesting character, but the efforts here between JMS’ script and Weston’s art mires the character more than letting him really explode. And, it’s funny, Mr. E. has become pretty much my personal favorite of the group, I’d like to see him take the place of being Marvel’s equivalent of the ultimate detective hero.

With the Laughing Mask we see a little more action, but it’s JMS just going the obvious "the man is a murderous psycho" route. You can have a hero be a killer vigilante and be compelling, just read the Shadow and the Spider pulps. But you lose it when you have him gun down a villain not only already defeated but actually tied and bound. Now, having read the golden-age story reprinted in the zero issue, in this particular case, this is pretty close to actually being in character. But, it doesn’t really make the character more interesting. It doesn’t even humanize the character any, he’s just reinforced as being unlikeable.

Mr. E is a hypocrite and portrayed as being a bit weak-willed in hiding his heritage, Weston draws him as balding and weak-chinned. Laughing Mask is a cold-blooded and unlikeable killer, his face is that of a brutish thug. Captain Wonder is rather white-bread and simplistic, out of costume he looks like Mr. Incredible including the massive chin.

The Atom: Ladronn’s covers for this series have been nothing short of great. I didn’t really care for Ladronn as a comic artist when he came on the screen, a little too much of just aping Kirby. His covers seem to be from a whole different artist and I love them. Here is a case that even though the cover is a bit generic and symbolic it perfectly captures the feel of the comic.

Gail Simone is gone, but this book still remains an enjoyable read. If I was Marvel, I’d be holding this book up and saying “why can’t we make Hank Pym this interesting instead of always portraying him as acomplete putz?” Even when the story is one that could have been told with Ray Palmer, Darrell Dane or Hank Pym as this one is, it’s still a very fun book. Olliffe is a good choice as artist. He manages to draw heroes very well, grounding them in reality even when in the middle of the fantastic. I loved his work on SPIDER-GIRL and I’m glad to see him on a book that I follow.

The story is even similar to one that would appear in that title as the main character Ryan Choi is a legacy hero, partly through a sense of responsibility and partly because it’s fun and he sets off to investigate something that he feels partly responsible for since he’s the legacy holder. Only, he’s a full blown scientist so we get a dose of science fiction. Gone is a lot of little personal quirks that Gail brought to the book, the story is a bit straight-forward as is the presentation and narration, giving the book a little more of that generic feel that it could have basically starred any of our shrinking scientist heroes. Still, in the sea of depressing books, this one is still good old fashioned superhero fun.



Men of Mystery #70: This particular cover as well as the back one advertising a Black Terror special are good examples of artifact creation. They are in the spirit of the books they are on while still being good clean artwork. Heike draws in an old-fashioned style, so this cover isn’t him dumbing down his work to actually look like it was done in the 40’s. He’s just trying to capture the sense of fun. Even the Black Terror piece which is done in the style of Schomburg doesn’t play up the shortcomings of the time period but more of what actually made his covers so attractive in the first place (and it’s not the yellowing, wrinkling and chips that come with the comics’ ages). Word of warning, if you regularly get these reprints, there’s a good chance that at least half of the Black Terror book will have been reprinted already by AC elsewhere.

The one bad thing is the reference on the front cover to “Major Midnight”. It’s typical Bill Black, he makes changes to things without really addressing the changes or explaining them. For some reason, Captain Midnight has been promoted to Major. I’d assume that it might have something to do with Moonstone announcing a Captain Midnight book or some other silliness. This is carried through on the inside of the book. I get a reprint book, I want as much fidelity as possible to the original stories. Especially as much as these b/w reprints cost.

Second little quibble, the title page uses Mr. Scarlet in the title logo and a figure drawing of the Harvey hero the Zebra! I might be the only person that would get excited about a Zebra reprint, but I’d never seen anything with the character beyond the odd panel here and there in reference books. Only, this is as far as he gets, there’s no Zebra story inside. What we do have are stories of Doll Man (who’s become a regular enough star in these pages that Black could probably make a trademark case with him), Cat-Man & Kitten (which he does claim trademark of, how that affects SUPERPOWERS is anybody’s guess), “Major” Midnight, the Star Pirate, the Reckoner, Crimebuster & Iron Jaw, Lance O’Casey, and supernatural detective Dr. Drew. It’s an interesting mix of characters and publishers. Of minor interest, in back to back stories of the Reckoner and Crimebuster we have villains named Skully. He’s the gang boss in the former and part of a group of villains called the Deadly Dozen in the latter. A little coincidence Roy Thomas would love.

The next issue looks promising as well as we have a team-up on the cover at least of Minute-Man, the Hood and Yellowjacket fighting off some hooded gang.

Never give a Dynamic Man an even break

Superpowers #1 (Dynamite): We’ll start with this little press release blurb from Dynamite: This powerful series is overseen by Alex Ross who has designed every hero within these pages; scripted by Jim Krueger with art by Carlos Paul, this is the most powerful comic book event of the year!

Excuse me? Tweaking the Black Terror's costume, does not constitute designing the hero. The basic original design is still there. And frankly, looking at the changes, I cannot say any of them are necessarily an improvement on the originals, they're just different. His Green Lama “design” is basically the Lama's original look on the pulp covers. The rest of the heroes that appear in costume, from the sketches in the back and the Flame and Dare-Devil on the back cover are all the original designs.

Just to work ourselves through the story, the art and coloring work better together this go around. Maybe part of that is that I’m not familiar with the original pencils so I’m not seeing everything that was lost.

Page 1: Dynamic Man and un-named woman. There’s a reason for Dynamic Man’s aloofness and comments here to be revealed later on. His referring to Dr. Moore, the doctor figured prominently in his origin. In the bottom panel among all the gray statues, we see a golden urn, Pandora’s Box.

Pages 2 & 3: Bruce Carter III (Fighting Yank) & the American Spirit. Carter is speaking figuratively in calling his ancestor Benedict Arnold and striking me as being a bit hard on him, the Spirit just a little less so. It seems to me that Carter the First was as mislead as Carter III was.

Page 4: Tsarong was Jethro Dumont’s manservant dating back to the pulp incarnation.

“Jet” Right away we get into the little things that bother me. This is not the character hating the name Jethro but the creators and imparting their will over the context. The very fact that he was introduced to us with the name of Jethro whether it be in the pulps or his various comic incarnations tells us he doesn’t dislike the name. The original writers introducing us to the character under the name is the same as the character telling us what they prefer to be called. It’s why the id’s of the Blue Beetles are DAN Garrett and TED Kord and not Danny or Daniel and Theodore or Teddy. If he preferred to be called Jet or by his middle name, then that’s what we would have been told his name was at that point in the original stories and not 60 years later.

Page 6: The Green Lama works great as a robed hero here, not an easy look for a comicbook artist to pull off really. We have another reference about him only recently being aware of the “Meta-Natural World” or in other words, the supernatural. This might have worked if the Green Lama we saw last issue was the pulp version who was philosophical and meditative but otherwise used science. However, we saw that the Green Lama was fully the Mac Raboy one who gained super-strength, flight, and invulnerability when chanting his Buddhist phrase. I really like how GL plays a major role and his characterization for the most part, but the execution with him is shoe-horning him into a role that he doesn’t fit.

Such as pages 7 & 8 where we see that he’s become a mystic able to travel through space via greenery. While this makes an interesting counterpoint to the Flame who picked up a similar trick studying in Tibet only with flame while Hydroman does it with water (only through science and not mystical abilities). But, this is pretty much changing the very nature of the Green Lama to fit the story instead of letting the story be directed by the characters involved. For a history of who and what the Green Lama is and has been in the past, I’ll direct you to an older post: The Mighty Return of the Green Lama.

Page 10: The Dynamic Family again. The mask that lets the Fighting Yank see evil, that was given to him last issue, not a power he had in the forties. However, if he always had this mask, wouldn’t he have realized that imprisoning the heroes in the urn didn’t work, that it didn’t make any difference in the supernatural realm in ridding the world of evil?

Pages 11 & 12: The Dynamic Family is beginning to show their true colors, but the motivations are unclear

Pages 14 & 15: The Green Lama shows that he still has some of the powers he had before. Dynamic Man is along the lines of the Golden-age Superman himself (Wayne Boring even worked on the character some).

Page 16 & 17 spread: I already talked about my feelings about the Black Terror re-design but here’s another inconsistency of the story. The Black Terror went into the urn in his original costume and been trapped there. Yet he emerges in his Ross-tweaked costume. I guess you could say the art in the last issue was “wrong” and he was in reality wearing this costume, but then the flourishes that Ross gave the gloves and mask would be anachronistic for the 1950’s.

Pages 18 &19: I always thought that the Yank’s cloak was magical because it was imbued with the ghost of his ancestor. No ghost would imply no powers. The Black Terror in the 40’s was one of Nedor/Standard/Better’s generic powered heroes aka super-strong and bulletproof. Except when done by Mort Meskin and Jerry Robinson where he didn’t exhibit any powers . He wasn’t really as bloodthirsty as portrayed here, assuming the time in the urn didn’t help any. But, every revival of the character has portrayed him as being a darker character than he was originally. Tim also known once as Kid Terror in his one solo outing wore an identical costume as the Black Terror and helped him fight crime.

Page 21: Dynamic Man is revealed as a robot. Android really. The Doctor Moore referred to on page one had built him. He and the Timely Dynamic Man appearing in THE TWELVE are basically the same character with just a few minor changes. However, the Chesler Dynamic Man eventually picked up a kid brother with identical costume and powers and no explanation that I know of was ever given. The implication here is that he built his “brother” like he built all of these Dynamic Family members. Now, whether JMS is likewise holding on to reveal THE TWELVE’s Dynamic Man as an android to explain his also odd behavior or will retcon out that origin we’ll have to wait and see. Personally, I’d have revealed that the Chesler Dynamic Man was alive all along only with amnesia induced by Moore’s experiments and only thought he was an android. And let Marvel keep the android origin.

War Journal pages
Dynamic Man and Family: Curt Cowan is Timely’s Dynamic Man. Don’t know if the Chesler version went by that name but by the time he gained a kid brother, he was going by the name Bert McQuade and he’s called Bert elsewhere in the story.


Sketches Pages:
Hydro (Hydroman): 1940, Re’glar Fellers Heroic Comics 1-29 (Eastern Color Printing). One of Bill Everett’s several water based heroes. A friend of Bob Blake’s develops a serum and antidote that allows one to dissolve into liquid, appear from various liquid sources (once materializing out of an ink pen). Bob allows himself to be injected with it, thinking it’d help him fight forces of evil. He must’ve decided he might need a little more of an edge and also made a bulletproof outfit.

Fighting Yank we know.

Silver Streak: 1940, Silver Streak Comics #3 (Lev Gleason). A racing enthusiast swami is suspicious of drivers’ deaths caused by giant insects. After a man he hypnotized to race for him is killed, the swami resurrects him and instructs him to track down the killer. The driver now has the power of super speed.

Captain Future (2): 1940, Startling Comics #1 (Better). Scientist Andrew Bryant experiments with gamma and infrared rays, discovering that "crossing" them gives him superpowers. He decides to fight crime. His girlfriend is Grace Adams, a detective of the Agatha Detective Agency. Future has superstrength and fires lightning-like bolts from his hands. NOTE: The first Captain Future is a pulp sci-fi space hero from the same publisher. That Captain Future made it into comics called Major Mars, while Bryant co-opted the name for his superhero id.

Woman In Red: 1940, Thrilling Comics 2-18, 20-22, 24-30, 34, 35, 38, 46 (Better). Police Detective Peggy Allen, aka the Woman in Red, helped the police solving tough crimes. The police commissioner was aware of her dual identity. As the Woman in Red, Peggy carried and used a gun. I’m guessing she was a fan of Wilkie Collins’ WOMAN IN WHITE. Woman in Red is one of the first of comics’ first female superheroes, depending on your criteria and whether you consider Fantomah a superheroine or require superpowers for the character to be considered such (which would then kick Batman out of the genre).

Target & the Targeteers: 1940-49, Target Comics vol 1 no 10. Niles Reed invents a bullet proof costume and recruits friends Dave Brown and Tom Foster to help clear his brother’s name and avenge his death. They wear identical costumes except where Niles’ I s yellow, theirs are red and blue. There was briefly early on a Female Targeteer. Of interesting note, some of the non-War years adventures were written by Mickey Spillane.

Cat-man: 1940, Crash Comics 4 & 5, Cat-Man Comics 1-32. 1940. David Merryweather was one of the many heroes who got his start when his parents were killed while in the jungle leaving the orphan to be raised by animals, but one of the few to actually adopt a costumed identity. Early in his career, he had all the attributes of the cat: agility, night vision and nine lives. Eventually, he joins the army and gains a ward, Katie Conn, who dresses in an identical outfit and calls herself Kitten (1941, Cat-Man Comics #5). Katie's parents were killed in a trainwreck and was already a trained acrobat. She also worked with other side-kicks as part of the group Little Leaders. By war's end, Kitten is depicted as pretty much a full-grown woman.

The Owl: 1940, Crackajack Funnies #25 (Dell). One of my favorite characters, I like the simplicity of his costume for one. He’s Nick Terry, a special investigator, who takes up the costumed identity when he feels the law is a bit too restricting in dispensing justice. He eventually confides his identity to his newspaper columnist girlfriend Belle Wayne who shortly takes up a similar costume to help him out as Owl Girl.

Strongman: 1940, Crash Comics #1 (Tem Publishing). Playboy Percy van Norton is given a book of “yogi” which he studies until it gives him a body and mind of a superman (putting him on par with Dynamic Man in the strength and stamina department though Strongman cannot fly). As Percy he pretends to be meek and unadventurous, a playboy Clark Kent to his Strongman Superman.

Major Victory: 1941, Dynamic Comics #1 (Harry “A” Chesler). A soldier is killed and is then brought back to life as the superpowered Major Victory by “Father Patriot”.

Dynamic Man and Dynamic Boy: already went into the history some of Dynamic Man. HOWEVER, this is the wrong Dynamic Boy. See, Chesler also recycled that name and in addition to Dynamic Man’s brother and sidekick, they had two Dynamic Boys that were solo acts, Kent Banning is Dynamic Boy in Dynamic Comics 2 & 3, pre-dating Dynamic Man’s partner and then another one in Dynamic Comics #13 (according to the GCD). I guess the argument could be made is they all are constructs by Dynamic Man, his earliest Dynamic Family. Unless the contradiction is addressed in-story though, it’s still an error.

One of the things missing so far is a sense of fun. It is falling into the same tropes that Alan Moore’s Terra Obscura issues of TOM STRONG and the following two mini’s did by Paul Hogan. The same thing doom that looms over THE TWELVE. And the same thing that helped drive me from the mega crossovers from the companies of late. It’s all about heroes vs. heroes. Heroes cannot be noble, there have to be darker sides to them. The villains are bad, but at least they aren’t hypocritical thus they gain a measure of nobility and respect. To their ownselves, they be true.

It’s especially frustrating when I maintain a site that shows just how many colorful and interesting golden-age villains existed. They weren’t all spies and gangsters. Even I was surprised by just how many I have discovered. In Fox Comics alone where we got the likes of the heroes Blue Beetle, Samson, and the Flame, we had villains with their own strips: the monster creating Dr. Mortal, the Gorilla (a gorilla whose brain was swapped out with that of a conniving scientist), the Sorceress of Zoom who ruled a whole magical city.

Instead, we are still getting watered down versions of Alan Moore Watchmen where superheroes aren’t to inspire us to be better but to warn us against becoming monsters ourselves.

Other books this week, real quick.
JLA: CLASSIFIED #53. The penultimate issue to Roger Stern and John Byrne’s arc and it has been a lot of fun, full of superhero action and a truly worthy villain. The comic has been plagued with coloring issues though. This time out, when the JLA get realized as the gods they could be, Black Canary is colored as if she’s Wonder Woman who’s not in this issue. It’s really confusing when on panel she’s called Black Canary and you see someone that looks like Wonder Woman attacking some perps along with some birds. My first thought was that Black Canary had been turned into some birds and then I realized that WW isn’t in the flashback scenes.

STAR TREK: ALIEN SPOTLIGHT: ROMULANS: Another John Byrne comic and a hoot at looking at the Romulan people in the days of the original tv show. There’s a few flaws in that while JB nails the costumes and designs when drawing from the show, but the designs of the buildings and other space vehicles are more his style which really sticks out. The lead character of the honorable Romulan chosen to captain the first Bird of Prey with the cloaking device and charged with starting a war sets up a nice conflict of personal honor vs duty to one’s government and family.

JSA: CLASSIFIED: Wildcat takes the ring in what looks to be an interesting story as he investigates some suspicious goings ons at one of his old gyms. I could do without the guest-star at the end, but it looks to be a great tale. Based on this one issue so far, I’d love to see them handle a Wildcat ongoing.

JSA: Interesting to note that both JLA:Classified and JSA feature powerful supervillains that see themselves as god-killers. Yet, Stern and Byrne’s been good old-fashioned superhero storytelling and non-stop action and will be complete in 5 issues and Geoff Johns’ story has been building for 13 issues and will continue for a few more. This issue does manage to do what Johns does best which is character moments. As much as I loathe Jakeem Thunder, Johns does a good job with him here and the Kingdom Come Superman paying a visit to the Daily Planet is almost as powerful as JMS’ handling of Captain Wonder in THE TWELVE. Makes me wish Johns was on something like the original Secret Six or Challengers of the Unknown.