Solar Reflections - Nuclear Nightmares!

In the third volume of Doctor Solar Man of the Atom from Dark Horse, we are treated to a fully-realized superhero. Gold Key had been reluctant to dive into the superhero pool, clearly showing a disdain for the underwear crowd which commanded so much attention in the field. But eventually they follow the patterns and give us a Doctor Solar who functions in many ways like a hero in the classic modes.

Paul S. Newman, the ubiquitous writer for Gold Key continued to handle the chores on that end and Frank Bolle had successfully taken over the art, if his style was somewhat less dynamic than what had come before. With this team we continue to get stories which are rock solid science fiction such as when Doctor Solar is forced to travel back in time to stop a deadly doomsday device by going to before it began, and later he confronts a sun spun out of control and threatening to destroy the Earth itself.

Then the stories begin to focus more on the machinations of Solar's arch enemy Nuro, an obscure behind-the-scenes villain akin to many masterminds from the Bond films and other such tales. Nuro employs a robot dubbed "Orun", one who'd battled Solar before and makes of him a steady henchman and persistent threat to Doctor Solar. We get a glimpse of Nuro's face after many years of shadows and see that he has a rather porcine countenance. Nothing much is made of this, but it suggests a slight change in the tone of the series.

Those changes continue when Dick Wood takes on the writing and veteran Al McWilliams steps into do some art on the series and we meet Hamilton Mansfield Lamont, who is Gale's nephew. This brilliant young man joins the cast which had long been comprised of love interest Gale and Dr. Solar's longtime boss and confidant Doctor Clarkson and soon becomes a nerdish Snapper Carr/Rick Jones like figure. You can for sure say that the Man of the Atom becomes a bona fide superhero when he gets a teen sidekick.

We also get a new villain, sort of when King Cybernoid is birthed as Nuro's intellect becomes entrapped in the robotic form of his henchman. This new more physical opponent again creates a more pure superhero dynamic for the book and draws it away from its sci-fi roots, though of course those notions still function to supply threats.

Here are the covers of the issues included in this volume.

Next time Doctor Solar really goes through some changes, and we chase the character through the decades of the 70's and the 80's.

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Atlas-Seaboard Comics - July 1975!

This is the mother-of-all-months for Atlas-Seaboard. Lots of titles, lots of changes of direction, and sadly lots and lots of cancellations. This month marks the great collapse of the edifice that Martin and Chip Goodman built to spit in the face of their former success story, Marvel. Let's begin.

IRONJAW #4 gives us the "origin" of the barbarian, and this tale by Gary Friedrich and Pablo Marcos is a somewhat overdone saga of a young minstrel who is tortured and maimed by some jealous thugs. A witch tries to save him at the cost of her own immortality, and she is the one who first gives the young man his new jaw and his new name. Ironjaw was the flagship of the Atlas line, the only character to appear in five stories, but this issue is the last. We will never know the second part of Ironjaw's origin. The Atlas-Seaboard tragedy begins to unfold.

GRIM GHOST #3 gives us a Tony Isabella script with more Ernie Colon artwork. This story introduces Brimstone, a demon from Hell who wants to take over the operation. He gives powers to two thugs the Ghost encounters, and the battle is on. Brimstone offers G.G. a role in his revolution, but Dunsinane sees the flaw in Brimstone's plan and rejects him. Satan gives the Ghost some help in the form of Lady Braddock, the same woman who betrayed him in issue #1. It's a clever twist, and it gives the story some real depth. The battle with Brimstone has some neat twists, and I wonder if a young Todd McFarlane ever read this issue. I heard whispers of Spawn throughout. Alas this was the last issue, as despite an excellent Russ Heath cover and a logo change, sales must have not been there. It won't be the last cancellation of the month.

WULF the BARBARIAN #3 offers a change of talent and direction. A Steve Skeates written story with superb Leo Summers artwork, gives us Wulf and his new partner Rymstrydle saving some nobleman and his beautiful daughter from Kangroo-riding Rat-Men (shades of Kamandi) only to find themselves drawn into a struggle between a Master of an Industrial-Wonderland city-state and Wulf's arch-enemy. There is some great derring-do, before the battle is won, and by tale's end Wulf is again alone looking for revenge. There is also a map of Wulf's world in this issue. There will be one more issue.

BRUTE #3 gives us a change of talent and direction as Alan Weiss under Jack Abel inks takes the art chores. The new story by Gary Friedrich (who seems to have taken over all of Mike Fleisher's assignments at this point) puts the Brute in conflict again with the police before he eventually meets up with an android super-agent named Doomstalker. The story ends in a cliff-hanger with the Brute (now possessed of the limited ability to speak) having taken a terrible and fall, and the Doomstalker threatening all of mankind. Alas this is the last issue, and as far as I know the Doomstalker is still standing there.

MORLOCK 2001 AND THE MIDNIGHT MEN #3 (formerly known as simply Morlock 2001) is the saga that gets one of the sharpest twists in direction. Steve Ditko with some Berni Wrightson inks gives the book a new look, and the story involves a scientist horribly burned who leads a revolution against the same oppressive government that gave birth to Morlock. Morlock is taken underground where the newly dubbed "Midnight Man" seeks to enlist him in the war. The Thought Police attack and the battle rages. Morlock seems to fall, even to be dead as the story closes with the Midnight Man vowing to fight on. Issue #4 might have been retitled I suspect, but this series ends with this issue.

PLANET OF VAMPRIES #3 features delicious Russ Heath artwork under a very bland cover. The story by John Albano broadens the saga beyond the limits of the city and gets our hero into the wilderness. The death count is brutal in this issue as of our five astronauts (one was killed in the first issue) only two survive by the last page of this story and they are not together. The wives of both Chris and Craig meet tragic deaths, and a two-page ad by Larry Lieber suggests they will be together again battling more vampires. But this is the last issue.

THE SCORPION #3 tells of the death of Moro Frost, the Scorpion of the previous two issues. The immortal hero has moved on into the then-modern world of 1975 and has become a superhero. This Jim Craig drawn issue is typical superhero stuff with the Scorpion doing a Daredevil thing across NYC battling neo-Nazis who want to revive assorted Nazi villains from the Big One. The battle takes place under the Twin Trade Towers, then new, but it does give the comic a poignancy that it otherwise lacks. This is the last issue of this totally transformed comic. The panic in the Atlas editorial offices is becoming apparent with this particular comic.

WEIRD SUSPENSE #3 featuring THE TARANTULA offers another good dose of Boyette beauty, but the story is a rambling mess with a villain who ineptly used mind-over-matter to battle the star of the book. There are threats and danger, but the book lacks emotional direction. Rich Buckler offers both the cover and the splash page as there seemed to be some rewriting of the original story along the way. This is the last Tarantula story despite the fact #4 is advertised with cover art. Apparently, the next story would have explained the Tarantula was part of some alien invasion early in man's history. But we'll never know for sure.

TARGITT #3 gives us another episode of his war against crime, this time finding him against a ghastly character named Professor Death, neatly drawn by Howard Nostrand. There's nerve gas involved and Targitt's exposure seems to give him some powers of some sort, though this is vaguely explained. There is also something about his outfit giving him mechanical abilities of strength, but again it's vague. By the end of this story Targitt is renamed Man-Stalker and he's left his Magnums behind. Like the Scorpion another superhero is born. But like some many titles this is the last issue. Even the Buckler cover doesn't help things.

TALES OF EVIL #3 gives us the MAN-MONSTER, an Isabella-Buckler effort that has an abrasive Olympic swimmer overcome by weird sparkly stuff and change into a big old monster. Some reporters save him, take him to a hotel, where a costumed villain assaults him and sets fire to the hotel. The hero's father is an equally abrasive rich guy who happens to own the hotel and the Man-Monster is accused by story's end of torching it and his own dad is ordering the cops to shoot him. What happens next? We'll never know. BOG BEAST shows up for another (and final) turn with good art by Romero. Tales of Evil pulls the hat-trick and offers a werewolf for him to battle, making three werewolves in three issues of the abruptly cancelled series.

SAVAGE COMBAT TALES #3 gives us the last SGT.STRYKER'S DEATH SQUAD tale as Goodwin and McWilliams offer up another somewhat tepid story of the usual WWII mayhem. The team goes after Rommel, but miss, though through a complicated network of mistakes by all sides they think they've succeeded. I don't want to be there when they discover they screwed up. But we won't as this is the last issue. The second story is a pretty good tale of WWII with Jack Sparling artwork. It tells of a black vet and a white raw recruit who pull dangerous duty on a dangerous ridge and overcome both danger and racism, if only for the moment. It seems to be the start of a new series, but it's unclear. And sadly it's moot.

THE COUGAR #2 is another tale of Hollywood stuntmen battling supernatural menaces. With worthy Frank Springer artwork, this is a rather bland comic book. Our hero is Jeff Rand, is a Louisiana boy we discover and there's a werewolf in his past. That werewolf might just be his own brother and further seems to be on the loose killing folks all around our hero. We learn the Cougar identity is the result of a failed starring vehicle for our wannabe stuntman, but little is shown beyond that. This a wide-ranging story with little direction, but it does offer a climactic battle and the potential for a change of direction in issue #3 as by story's end the Cougar is paralyzed. We'll never find out, as this is the last issue. Sigh.

The lone debut of the month is...

BLAZING BATTLE TALES #1 starring SGT.HAWK. Hawk is the usual hard-nosed battle-weary hero and he goes after his mission in this effective one-shot story with the stereotypical Native American and Jewish soldiers at his side. I think their names are White Cloud and Goldberg, but any cliche names would have done. There's some decent Jack Sparling art over what claims to be Pat Broderick layouts, though I don't see it myself. Sparling certainly dominates. The second story features a fighter pilot with a six sense about attack targets and might be the beginning of a series, but its unimpressive despite typically good McWilliams artwork. John Severin puts in a two-page offering detailing the heroic efforts of a real soldier. This issue has it all it seems for the war comic fan. Atlas seemed to be clutching at straws by the time this one hit the stands, and even a rather nice Frank Thorne cover doesn't help much.

That's July from Atlas-Seaboard. With this wave of final issues, it's pretty much all over but the crying. Atlas will linger for a few more months, but there will be precious few more comic books from this company that promised so much, but sadly delivered so little in the final analysis. August awaits.

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Atlas-Seaboard Comics - April 1975

Atlas-Seaboard's big month for sure! The company's last big stand really before the fragmentation sets in. Actually, that fragmentation is already evident in the books from this month.

WULF THE BARBARIAN #2 is a grand tale of adventure and in it, Wulf meets some compatriots. After a tussle with an evil and mad king, a monstrous elemental creature from beyond, and his own conscience, Wulf finds himself with a buddy, Rymstrdle, a theif and swordsman who puts me in mind of the Grey Mouser from Fritz Leiber's excellent stories. This is decent fantasy story, but the clear vision of the first issue is has disappeared somewhat. The book is no longer written by Larry Hama, and the artwork is one of those hodgepodge Continuity Associates group-jobs that were not uncommon during the Bronze Age. It's good but uneven material.

THE BRUTE #2 continues right where it left off with more Sekowsky-Marcos artwork. The Brute runs across a mad scientist and what are referred to as Reptile Men, though they all seem clearly amphibian to me. The scientist apparently transforms people into these monsters, and he has plans for the Brute as something of a lackey to kidnap other scientists who have offended him. The lady doctor from the previous issue makes another appearance, and there's a hint that the Brute might be able to speak. The story ends with the Brute presumed dead...and with Atlas-Seaboard's publishing history who knows.

 

THE DESTRUCTOR #2 continues under the multiple hands of Goodwin, Ditko, and Wood, but there seems to have been more haste in the artwork. The story gets Jay Hunter, The Destructor out West where he is manipulated into a battle with Deathgrip, a hitman for the Combine, a criminal organization that wants control of the rackets. Jay runs across a possible love interest and gets himself insinuated in a mod organization so he can destroy it from within. Good intrigue.

THE PLANET OF VAMPIRES #2 offers up our astronaut heroes as leaders who gather together the various street gangs for a dramatic battle against the "Domies", the high-tech vampires. The battle rages and our two heroes Chis and Craig survive only to find that their wives have been kidnapped and taken to the Dome. The Vampires, deprived of their high-tech solutions begin to revert to the more traditional fanged variety most of us are familiar with. The cover by Adams is okay, but its image has almost nothing to do with the story. The interiors are drawn by Broderick and McLaughlin again.

 

MORLOCK 2001 #2 continues the tale of the plant-man, and we get a Fleisher-Milgrom-Abel tale that demonstrates the true horror of his condition. The government wants to harness him, but he eludes them and eventually ends up killing a young girl. One detail is that Morlock battles some thugs who are very similar to those famous thugs from A Clockwork Orange. The sci-fi sources are various and sundry as this tale unfolds.

 

WEIRD SUSPENSE #2 gives us another TARANTULA story, and the witch that first put the curse on Count Lycosa returns and a battle of the spider-people erupts. More, great Boyette artwork, and a pretty good Fleisher script make this one of the most reliable reads in the Atlas-Seaboard canon so far.

POLICE ACTION #2 offers more LOMAX and LUKE MALONE stories. The former shows the police detective taking on kidnappers at the airport, while the latter gives us the "origin" story which concerns...surprise...kidnappers in a bank. There is a strange similarity to these stories, but again the better one is Malone by Ploog, though once again Sekowsky's and McWilliam's Lomax is sturdy work.

TALES OF EVIL #2 offers a gem of a three-pager by Grandenetti about a train of death; it's a real highlight. Another story about a Werewolf by some guy named Marvin Channing and the much-missed Tom Sutton rounds out the issue. The headliner though in this issue is the BOG BEAST, with Jack Sparling artwork. This series actually began in the B&W magazine Weird Tales of the Macabre #2, and like another comic this month finds its way into the color books. This is a clear indication that things are changing at Atlas. The Bog Beast is another attempt to tap that Man-Thing idea, but this is a really inferior effort.

 

SAVAGE COMBAT TALES #2 gives us another SGT.STRIKER'S DEATH SQUAD story where the squad is formally given its name by a notorious general the Squad saves then transports to his date with destiny. There is clearly some Patton influence in this story of the war in North Africa. The story by Goodwin and McWilliams is sturdy and worthwhile, but not great. The second story in this issue features WARHAWK, a mysterious pilot in the Burma air war who saves a young pilot from whose perspective this excellent Alex Toth story is told. (Note: Warhawk was apparently one of two stories Toth did in this era, and both are discussed in the current Alter Ego issue.)

 

Two new books debut this month. They are very different from each other, but sadly show the fragmentation of the Atlas line at this point.

 

THE COUGAR #1 is an oddball mix of elements. This comic featuring the adventures of a movie stuntman with story by Steve Mitchell and artwork by Dan Adkins and Frank Springer doesn't deny its source, The Night Stalker TV movie. In fact the creator of that movie is credited as an inspiration for the comic book. The story offers us a movie about a vampire that discovers a real vampire and similar to the famous TV flick, there's a blend of disbelief and mayhem. The Cougar is a weird comic, trapped between genres and oddly uncomfortable in neither. It wants to be a superhero book in places and a horror book in others. Clearly this book was supposed to have been drawn by Dan Adkins, but he must have been unable to finish it and the reliable Frank Springer stepped in to finish it up. The Frank Thorne cover is energetic but seems to have been produced quickly.

TIGER-MAN is another character that debuted in the B&W books before finding colorful glory. The story of Dr. Hill begins in THRILLING ADVENTURE STORIES #1 and he's a researcher in Africa inspired by the instinct for survival that seems to thrive in animals and people of the region.

 

A few scientific experiments and an injection later he is imbued with those instincts and lots of other powers. He's attacked by a a tiger and later gets its hide to use as a totem. He does so months later in the big city when he takes on muggers and rapists. His sister is attacked and killed and Tiger-Man takes to the streets to seek vengeance. He finds it, and then promises to keep at it. The artwork is decent Ernie Colon, but doesn't have the energy of his Grim Ghost work. The cover for this issue by Colon is one of the strangest in the whole Atlas line, and seems to me to be a very quickly produced item. 

There are of course some B&W magazines this month (more on those later this year) as well as more Vicki's but by and large, the company has reached its zenith. After this month, Atlas-Seaboard will continue to lose its focus as books are abruptly cancelled and directions are changed. But not all of them, not yet. 

More Atlas-Seaboard to come in May.

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Justice Inc. Files One!

Justice Inc. #1 is titled "This Night an Avenger is Born!" and purports to adapt the novel of The Avenger by Kenneth Robeson. This time "Kenneth Robeson" was Paul Ernst who wasn't the creator of Doc Savage, but just one of several men who wrote under the house name devised by Street and Smith. Having just read the original, this is pretty concise adaptation of the original, though of course they had to drop several details. The script is by Shadow veteran Denny O'Neil and the artwork this time is by Al McWilliams, an artist while somewhat lacking in dynamics was pretty good at street level realism. The cover is by Joe Kubert.

The story begins as Richard Benson and his wife and daughter board a plane. Mysteriously during the flight Benson's wife and daughter disappear and he is knocked out during a fight with thugs on the plane. He wakes up three weeks later in hospital with his skin having gone ghostly pale and his facial muscles paralyzed. Quickly he uses his skills as a world adventurer arming himself with "Mike" his slender gun he keeps hidden and "Ike" his throwing knife. He returns to the airport, but soon is in struggle with a giant who turns out to be the Physicist Algernon Heathcote Smith or "Smitty". Smitty is a fugitive, wrongly convicted and he agrees to help Benson. They board the plane, gunplay ensues, and they find a map to a distant island. Getting into disguise as an old man the Avenger boards the ill-fated plane again and off they go until he's threatened to be thrown out of the plane sans parachute. It seems the scheme is to kidnap and drop certain controlling shareholders in Acme Motor Company to coerce them to sign over control of the company. Benson learns his wife and daughter were thrown from the plane and killed. He himself is thrown from the plane but he has a hidden parachute. He confronts the thugs who killed his family and the mastermind a man he thought was at first a victim. He is saved from killing the man in revenger by Smitty who then bonds with The Avenger to form Justice Incorporated.

There is a text piece by Allen Asherman about the history of The Avenger. Next time will see more on this DC comics series when Jack "King" Kirby takes the helm. But even before that we got to enjoy The Avenger guest-starring with The Shadow. 

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Star Trek - The Key Collection Volume Five!

The fifth and alas final volume of Star Trek - The Key Collection from Checker brings adventures of the Enterprise crew from 1975 to 1977.  The series from Gold Key goes through some profound changes during this time with a new artistic approach being brought to the series. To this time the Alberto Giolitti studio had been handling the artwork as they had done for any number of Gold Key projects, but a new artist Al McWilliams will become the mainstay of the series. Arnold Drake becomes the the regular writer of the series and wrote all the scripts in this volume. 

Drake and Giolitti tell the story of a world of crystal people who are also artists who eschew the sciences. Sadly this has made them prey to a deadly crystal dragon who can read their thoughts. The Enterprise crew fights to save them despite the distrust of the natives. A weakness in this story is the oddly cartoonish way the crystal people are rendered. 

Following a reprint issue the next new Star Trek story is a wild adventure that finds Scotty traveling back in time to the wild west and Kirk heading to the movie-making capitol of the world Hollywood in the 20th century. They are chasing some deadly weapon stolen and taken into the past, but to be honest the story was difficult to fathom at all times. Giolitti's art is inked by McWilliams giving an indifferent result, but pointing to the future changes. 

After yet another reprint issue Drake is joined Alden McWilliams, and the duo are the mainstays on the series from then on. This is a weird story which as Kirk tapped to go undercover on a planet being infiltrated by Klingons and a new captain taking command of the Enterprise. It all works out in the end, but it's a roundabout path indeed. 

The Enterprise chances upon a the body of a famous Earth scientist who was renowned not only for his intellectual accomplishments but also famous for his leadership of peace movements to end unpopular wars. No names were mentioned, but this seems clearly to be a spin on Albert Einstein and the war seems clearly to be the Vietnam conflict. But it turns out this scientist is not dead and the truth of his survival is even stranger still and poses a significant threat to the safety of Earth itself which the crew visit. 

It's back to Earth again when the Enterprise needs repair and the crew gets some shore leave. Kirk is introduced to Dr. McCoy's daughter, a lovely xenobiologist who is working with a large telepathic creature which becomes crucial in saving the Enterprise, Mr. Spock and solving an old crime. It's a topsy-turvy story but the characterizations do seem legit to the series. 

Now almost all of Gold Key's painted era were by George Wilson, but this one is not credited to him and the artist is unknown to me. The story is probably the heaviest in the volume and my favorite premise. A planet worships a god who is given credit for creating their civilization when suddenly a giant space ship arrives and their god is there before them, a member of a race who claim the planet itself because of prior occupancy. They are repelled, but not before it makes the people of the planet nearly mad because of the loss of their religion. 

This is a zany story about a race which due to a strange radioactive deposit is aging backwards until at the time the Enterprise arrives the world is occupied exclusively by children and led by same. The team tries to help but fall victim quick de-aging themselves before they can solve the problem. 

The final story in this final Key Collection is issue forty-three dated February 1977. It deals with a race of people who voluntarily turned themselves into water-breathers to escape deadly stellar radiation and carefully monitor the birth of all children not adapted to the sea. But it seems some do survive and a small but growing group of air-breathing folks do point to a new way forward. This story brought back McCoy's daughter who was specifically assigned to the Enterprise for this mission. This time however she brings with her an enmity for her father for his dedication to his career which deprived her of his attentions as a child. There was no hint of this in her first appearance. 

When this series began it was a full decade before in 1967 and the world was much different. In the time of these issues the United States has suffered through Watergate, an OPEC oil crisis, and a generally downward trending economy. Despite even a bicentennial celebration the mood of the U.S. was not all that great. I'd matured, gone to high school, started college and had gotten married in that time. I quit buying Star Trek comics after the first issue mentioned in this review, perhaps because of the change in artists, or more likely the need to economize. I wouldn't buy a Star Trek comic again until I picked up the adaptation of the movie, a movie made possible by the stalwart support of the fans over many years and the success of Star Wars. I have followed Star Trek over the years, but in the final analysis I'm a fan of the original series and these days pretty much ignore the successors. 

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