Earth-Prime Day!

Julie Schwartz was born on this date in 1915. He was among the earliest science fiction fanboys and published a sci-fi fanzine called The Time Traveler with buddy Mort Weisinger. The two ended up working in the comics business as editors primarily for DC Comics. Schwartz oversaw the updating of the DC Universe in the Silver Age. 

When I was a new fan my comic book tastes were broad and inclusive, limited only by my meager cash resources. I read Marvel, Charlton, Harvey, Gold Key, Archie, and of course DC. The first DC character I latched onto was the Flash and the very first Flash story I read had him go to Earth Prime, and not only was I not confused by this parallel Earth story, I was utterly fascinated, and it remains one of my all-time favorite DC stories.

"The Flash--Fact or Fiction?" is not strictly a crossover tale, but this 1968 classic does introduce the world of Earth Prime, our world where comic book heroes are just that, the stuff of comics. The Flash ends up here after clashing with an alien creature named the "Nok" which has escaped from a space zoo transport. The Nok attacks the Flash propelling him into another dimension and another Earth on which he discovers he's just a comic book hero like Jay Garrick is on Earth-1. Flash needs his Cosmic Treadmill to return home but has no resources so he visits the DC Comics offices and meets up with Julie Schwartz. Schwartz is soon convinced of the fantastic situation and helps Flash, who quickly puts together a treadmill and rushes back to Earth-1 to defeat the Nok. I've not mentioned Schwartz in these reports, since his role as editor is largely an invisible one, but as it turns out none of the crossover stories would have happened without him. All of the stories I've taken a look at happened in books he edited and he had a hand in plotting all of them I'd reckon. So it's fitting that he actually turns up in one of the crossovers, and it all started so to speak with this Flash story.

 

Later in the Flash series, Cary Bates, the book's writer ends up on Earth-1 also, where he helps out the Flash too. This 1974 story sets up in a manner of speaking the big crossover which would happen only a few months later in 1975.

 

"Where On Earth Am I?" was written by Cary Bates and Elliot S! Maggin and drawn by the ever reliable Dick Dillin who is joined by his longtime inker Frank McLaughlin. The cover is by Ernie Chua/Chan. The story begins in the office of Julie Schwartz where Bates and Maggin are hashing out the latest Justice League plot. They are stuck but Bates remembers the Cosmic Treadmill that Schwartz has and soon enough has used it and has disappeared. He turns up on Earth-2 and he is changed, having villainous thoughts and superpowers as well. He uses his new powers to help some robbers escape Johnny Thunder and Robin. Back on Earth Prime Schwartz and Maggin decide to send Maggin to get Bates, but Maggin ends up in the ocean on Earth-1 where he is saved by Aquaman. Quickly Aquaman gets him to the League satellite headquarters where Maggin convinces the League members Batman, Hawkman, Green Arrow and Black Canary of the truth of his story by revealing their secret identities. His story is confirmed by the Flash who turns up. On Earth-2 the Justice Society (Hourman, Wonder Woman, Dr.Mid-Nite, Johnny Thunder, and Robin) are battling some out of control plants and defeated by same controlled by the evil Bates. The League meanwhile decides to go to Earth-2 after it is determined Bates has gone there and they immediately encounter six villains (Icicle, Sportsmaster, Huntress, Gambler, Shade, and Wizard) stealing some aircraft from a Navy carrier. They quickly subdue the villains only to discover that the baddies are the Justice Society members in disguise and further that the defeated heroes are dead. Cary Bates takes credit for the scheme in the final panel.

 

"Avenging Ghosts of the Justice Society!" is again by the Bates, Maggin, Dillin, and McLauglin team. Ernie Chua/Chan supplies one of his best ever covers for the series. The story picks up with the League members memorializing the fallen JSofA members. Cary Bates is still in the middle of his crime spree and we discover that he works for the six villains seen in part one. A mysterious misty presence though makes itself known and plans vengeance for the fallen Society. The League is filling in for the dead Society members until they can figure something else out. Elliot S! Maggin is captured by Bates and imprisoned in a gigantic bubble gum bubble. The League is attracted to a black portal which takes them to the villains while the Spectre makes his presence known. A battle rages between the heroes and the villains with the heroes losing because they are haunted by the guilt of the fallen Society members who they killed while in the guise of the very villains they now fight. The Spectre implores the highest powers to allow him to revive the fallen JSofA members while Maggin tries to undermine the powers of Bates by insulting his writing skills. The combined efforts weaken the effects of the guilt on the Leaguers and the Society members suddenly appear hale and hearty. Quickly the villains are beaten and even more quickly Bates and Maggin are sent back to Earth Prime where Julius Schwartz is waiting anxious to get the next story out.

This is not the greatest story ever told by any means. The writers seem a bit too intrigued with showing off their wit and not clearly hammering out the plot details such as they are. Perhaps they considered the story just so absurd that there was no need to sweat the small stuff, but it hurts. The motivations of the characters are poorly examined. It is the Wizard who is controlling Bates, but that is not at all really clear and is supposed more than stated. Further the League and the Society don't come off in these stories looking all that competent. The Spectre's role is very offbeat, with him essentially performing a deus ex machina ending which solve the whole mess. Maybe the writers were playing with the cliches of the storytelling and making these elements explicit, but the whole story is a jumble.

But that doesn't undermine for me, the sheer fun of Earth-Prime, the comic book universe that exists right out my window. 

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Showcase Corner - Legion Of Super-Heroes Five!

The Legion of Super-Heroes had really been one of DC's more organic successes. The team started out in the late 50's in a one-off story guest-starring with Superboy in Adventure Comics, but soon they were showing up in Action Comics with Supergirl and more and more often in Adventure Comics, Superboy, and elsewhere. That led to their own feature in Adventure Comics, replacing Superboy's feature which had introduced them and they thrived, especially among the young fans of the 60's looking for a fresh take from DC. But as they grewand devleoped and added a seemingly endless cast of characters,  they also began to dwindle in popularity and gave over Adventure Comics to an updated Supergirl. They went on to take up residence in Action Comics, hidden behind the main Superman stories. Then they were shifted over to Superboy's main title and history began to repeat itself as they came to absorb it as well. Superboy was still a significant part of the proceedings but there was no doubt the Legion was the rising star.

DC also was not experimenting with different size comics featuring reprints but also offering up complete reprint comic books. The Legion of Super-Heroes was given a four-issue run which might've been an attempt to test the waters for a push into a title of their own or perhaps DC was just trying to defend its position on the spinner racks with the myriad Marvel comics hitting shelves in droves. Despite the long history of the Legion this was first self-titled series. 

That revival was largely the result of the art of Dave Cockrum. He came to the strip as an inker working with longtime DC great Murphy Anderson, but soon was doing all the art, and bringing some fresh design ideas to the series. 

The Legion was a wonderful Silver Age comic, but Cockrum tooled it to become a wonderful Bronze Age comic. New sleek costumes for heroes such as Colossal Boy, Shrinking Violet, Element Lad, Star Boy and many more. Cockrum had a knack for drawing young characters with fresh handsome faces. He gave Timberwolf a ferocious new look. And new legionnaire Wildfire was designed by him. One of his neatest contributions was giving the Legion a sleek new cruiser evocative of a certain enterprising starship from another franchise which had its ups and downs. In conjunction with writer Cary Bates, they made the Legion exciting again. But Cockrum was only there a little while before jetting over to Marvel to pull off a similar trick with a new set of X-Men. 

Mike Grell stepped in to fill his shoes and he did so wonderfully. Grell's work was not as sublimely elegant as Cockrum's, but it was more dynamic and a bit more exciting to read. His girls weren't as pretty, but they were sure pretty enough. In tandem with Bates and returning writer Jim Shooter, Grell made the Legion a must read. Heroes married, moved into new careers, and even died in these Legion stories, and the stakes were always seemingly higher than in other DC comics. With all of space and time to play with, it's no wonder the Legion of Super-Heroes became a hit all over again. 

Below are some of Cockrum's costume designs alongside some classics. 

The Legion was so successful in the 70's that Val Armorr, the Karate Kid was granted a spin-off title making late advantage of what Kung Fu craze was still left in 1976. Karate Kid featured art by Ric Estrada and one of my favorites Joe Staton. Paul Levitz wrote the initial scripts, his first connection to the Legion as far as I know. This story has the Kid shift his work to the 20th Century where he found life at once more challenging and more fulfilling, at least for a time. 

Here are the covers from this run on which the Legion appears. Many feature the creamy art of Nick Cardy. The rest are by Grell. 

And that wraps my month-long read of the Showcase Legion tales. I've been hankering to get to this one for a long time and it's a pleasure finally get it completed. These are fun stories which speak of their respective eras delightfully. 

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Showcase Corner - Legion Of Super-Heroes Four!

The fourth volume of Showcase Presents Legion of Super-Heroes gathers together the Legion's final appearances in the pages of Adventure Comics where they'd debuted a decade earlier, created by Otto Binder. Thanks to the writing of Jerry Seigel, Edmond Hamilton, E. Nelson Bridwell and Jim Shooter with art by John Forte, Curt Swan, George Klein among others the team had found brilliant success in the fan community. But apparently sales were sluggish as the 60's wore on and the wacky Silver Age nonsense of the DCU was waning in appeal to readers wanting a richer experience such as supplied by Marvel. The team would find success in the coming decade, but in the interim they were consigned to back-up status first in Action Comics and later in Superboy, a title they'd overtake just as they'd done with is feature in Adventure Comics. But that's for next time. 

I try to be gentle in my reviews about artists, but there's just no way to say it other than Win Mortimer's arrival on the Legion scene indicated a severe downturn in the quality of the images. His first few issues are dreadful, but later the arrival of inker Jack Abel helps things enormously. The Legion features a lot of characters and making them recognizable is key to good storytelling and Mortimer fails that test in his first few issues. He's not helped by Shooter's increasingly wonky stories which seem more interested in finding new settings than developing characters. An exception to that would be Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel, two of the sillier heroes who eventually seem to find comfort in each other's company.  Shooter also focuses a lot on heroes he'd created, which is not unusual, but some of the classic heroes suffer. Karate Kid gets a lot of attention. Things in that area are not helped by the introduction of Chemical King and Timber Wolf. As good as these heroes might be, they become just more for the fire in the melee of these last Adventure Comic episodes. 

The Shooter-Mortimer-Abel team move over to Action Comics where the Legion becomes a back-up feature switching places with Supergirl who took over the cover feature in Adventure Comics. The Legion stories ranged from seven to twelve pages and given the limitation began to focus more on a few Legionnaires at a time. We learn about Matter-Eater Lad's unfortunate family life, we learn of Duo Damsel's lack of confidence and see her find comfort with Bouncing Boy for the first time, Shrinking Violet has boyfriend problems as her beau Duplicate Boy is always away, and we see Duplicate Boy seek love again, among other stories. Superboy takes on Reserve status when the ranks of the Legion grow too large to keep a tax-free status. One story uses the Legion Espionage Squad in a style reminiscent of Mission Impossible. 

E. Nelson Bridwell takes on the writing chores and is joined by Cary Bates. George Tuska becomes the artist when the strip moves to the back pages of Superboy. We begin to see new costumes for some of the heroes and heroines using designs sent in by fans. (See the bottom of the post for more on that.) Saturn Girl is the first to feature a fresh new look.  And then the most momentous event occurs when Cary Bates is joined by the art team of Murphy Anderson and Dave Cockrum. Soon the art is just by Cockrum and the Legion is on the verge of its next bright era. More on that next time as I take a gander at the fifth Showcase volume,

Here are the Adventure Comics covers in this volume and the Action Comics and Superboy covers which featured the debut of the back-up Legion tales. Most of these are by the late great Neal Adams. 

Adventure Comics interrupted the Supergirl feature to give us a Legion reprint volume. These are all classic Legion tales, but there were some fascinating pages featuring outfits designed by fans. Some of these would actually make their way into the comic. 

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