Phil Seldon Day!

Kurt Busiek was born on this date in 1960. He first came on my radar with his stunning limited serries Marvels with Alex Ross. He and Ross then went on to give us Astro City. Busiek went on to utterly save The Avengers from the ruination of the Image folks. The Avengers run by Busiek and George Perez was the last-great run I enjoyed in a mainstream comic. It was superb. 

There are good comic book series, great comic book series and then there are transformative comic book series. Marvels by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross is the latter. One can look back and see comic books before Marvels appeared and after and nothing is the same. To me 1994 seems not that long ago, but then that happens as one gets older. We are nearly twenty-five years into the 21st century and still the 90's feels like last week. Marvels covered a time period from 1939 to 1974, some key years in the development of the Marvel Universe. The series brings at once a warmth of nostalgia and a shock of the new, bringing fresh ways of seeing all-too-familiar yarns by great writers and artists from earlier decades. The story is almost literally told through the eyes of Phil Sheldon, a rather reflective news photographer who is on the spot when the superhero age began. 

"A Time of Marvels" takes us back to the Golden Age, to the very beginning when the Human Torch is first exhibited by his creator Professor Horton. We see him ignite and we see the reaction of fear spread across the room of reporters called in to witness this new creation. Sheldon himself is terrified of this new thing. Later the Sub-Mariner appears, and the world is turned upside down as he brings mayhem to the streets. He and Torch battle across the city, the average citizen represented by Sheldon is helpless, reduced to being a witness as beings not unlike gods battle overhead. Captain America comes to lead the fight against the Axis powers and before you know it a squad of mystery men have gathered. 

The story "Monsters" skips ahead to the 1960's and Sheldon and his wife Doris have two daughters. The "Marvels" have not stopped, the latest being the popular Fantastic Four who live largely public lives and are hailed as heroes by the people. Less understood are the Mutants, specifically a band of mutants dubbed the X-Men who seem fundamentally different and herald change, a change which the regular man and woman dread and fear. Sheldon falls victim to this bigotry and fear, as he tries to glean a living working for J. Jonah Jameson's The Daily Bugle and other newspapers. When a frightened young girl comes into his life thanks to the kindness of his daughters his attitude changes. 

In arguably the most bombastic of the installments is the story "Judgment Day" which shows how the world almost ended at the hands of impossible gods from space. The people of the world have become inured to superheroes, treating their presence casually, often with disdain as much as reproach. But things change when a gleaming silver figure arrives from out of space and behind comes a giant being who wants to destroy the entire world the people merely to satisfy its hunger. Sheldon like so many is terrified as he watches from a distance and struggles to remain confident the Marvels can save the day. His trust is warranted, but no sooner have the heroes saved the city than the citizens return to their old ungrateful attitudes. Sheldon is disgusted. 

Shifting forward to the 1970's and Phil Sheldon is a man looking to retire. But in the story "The Day She Died" he is bothered that the heroes he celebrates in his book of photographs titled Marvels are again treated with a casual disdain. His own confidence is shaken when a beautiful young girl he encounters dies during a battle between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin. He rejects his own life's work which documents the rise of the superheroes, though his young assistant pleads with him to appreciate that work. In the end he decides that his time documenting the "Marvels" is done and hands the task off to the young woman he'd trained. He and his family prepare to leave the city to enjoy their golden years. 

In 2019 Alex Ross and Kurt Busiek revisited the Marvels project with another story in which Sheldon and his daughters see the battle between the X -Men and the Sentinels in Rockefeller Center. 

I have not actually read this story, but it's apparently available in the 25th anniversary edition of the series. Like the Beatles, the boys and girls at Marvel are always trying to jerk another quarter or two out of my pocket. They are really good at it. 

As I said at the beginning this was a transformative series when it first appeared. I had never seen anything like the work Alex Ross was producing. His more realistic presentations of the heroes I was so familiar with made them much specifically human in my eyes. The idea of a normal human being feeling in awe of them had been dealt with, but never with such clarity and soulfulness. Through the lens of Phil Sheldon we were able to see the Marvel Universe again for the first time, and it was glorious. 

But there were imitators, and some were often okay, but rarely has an artist been able to bridge the gap between the fantastic and the mundane as effectively as Alex Ross. That's why he was Kurt Busiek's perfect choice to fashion the covers for the series Astro City which he produced with the help of Brent Anderson. The trio of Busiek, Anderson and Ross went on to give us ever more fascinating insights into the secret minds of heroes and those who live beside them. 

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Sandman Mystery Theatre Compendium One!

For all its popularity, I've never read Sandman from DC...with a few exceptions. I've read the Golden Age stories by Simon and Kirby and the later reboot by that same team. I've read a few of the Golden Age stories by other talents as well. And I've read a few installments of the DC/Vertigo series Sandman Mystery Theatre. I was searching for some variety in the 1990's in my comics reading after years of steady Marvel consumption and found this weird dark comic among many others. It deals with the established Golden Age hero but transforms him into an exceedingly mortal Wesley Dodds, living in a gritty urban environment filled with crime and bizarre murder. Dodds gets dreams and is forced to act upon those bewildering messages, to find the answers and solve the puzzles those dreams present. He is aided by Dian Belmont, the daughter of the District Attorney and in many ways the center of many of the stories. All the stories with a few exceptions are transmitted in four-issue arcs, giving the creators a good expansive canvas to spin their creepy yarns. 

The first four-issue tale is titled The Tarantula and offers up an exceedingly creepy series of murders and tortures committed by a weird, hooded individual. We meet a strange family and realize they are connected in perverse ways to the deaths. It's in this first sequence that we first meet Wesley Dodds, a wealthy man fresh from the Orient who is taking over his recently deceased father's expansive businesses. He's a quiet, even meek man who puts on a gas mask and invades city hall to gather data for his investigations. We meet Dian Belmont, a well-to-do young woman who is seeking not only pleasure but meaning and she and Wesley seem attracted to one another. Also on hand in this first one is police detective Lieutenant Burke, a hard-nosed racist and sexist cop who brings a distinct edge to the storytelling. All the stories in the series were written by Matt Wagner and Steven T. Seagle and drawn by Guy Davis, with some exceptions I will take note of as necessary. 

The Face shifts the action into Chinatown and involves both Dian Belmont and The Sandman with the Tongs. Actually, the villain is a killer who can shift his looks. We learn a great deal about Dian and about her former romances. The art by John Watkiss offers the reader a much more idealized hero than Guy Davis presented. 

The Brute gets The Sandman involved with the boxing game, in particular with a boxer named Ramsey who refuses to take a dive and is forced to flee with his ill daughter to escape the revenge of some mobsters. The titular "Brute" in this story is an enforcer with a particular secret. This story does an excellent job of counterpointing the extreme poverty present in the 30's with the creature comforts of the world both Dian and Wesley inhabit. The art on this sequence was by R.G. Taylor. 

The Vamp focuses on Dian Belmont again, this time her friends. Bodies drained of blood are turning up all over the city and getting to the bottom of this lurid mystery is The Sandman's focus. The repressive social morals of the era are highlighted in a story which gives us a villain who operates as do so many from pain and regret. 

The Scorpion brings the "Wild West" into the urban world of The Sandman. We are treated to a range of characters, from country singers to grasping oil executives. Wesley is pressured to participate in a financial scheme he has grave doubts about, meanwhile as The Sandman he attempts to stop a killer who leaves a scorpion brand and uses scorpion venom to slay his victims. 

The Sandman Mystery Theatre Annual is a treat as we get many chapters focusing on a mugger in Central Park. Each chapter gets a distinctive artist all its own. The talents in this one are John Bolton, David Lloyd, George Pratt, Alex Ross, Peter Snejbjerg, Stefano Gaudiano, as well as regular series artist Guy Davis. 

Dr. Death offers us a killer who uses perverse medical skills to do in his victims. The social ill focused on in this sequence is sexism and the brutality of men to women. These issues are counterpointed nicely by the increasingly complex relationship between Dian and Wesley. 

The Butcher, as the name implies, is to date the most gruesome of the sequences in the series. It is in fact the first of the storylines I followed back in the 90's when I plugged into the series. Burke gets a focus as he attempts to bring to ground a brutal killer who seems to wander the city at will unseen. What he leaves behind is nauseating. The Sandman is up against it when he finally has to confront the killer. 

The Hourman is about exactly what you think it's about. The broader DC Universe is tapped into as Rex "Tick Tock" Tyler debuts in the series as "The Man of the Hour". I've always liked Hourman and it was nifty to see this "origin" story. Tyler is a man who seems to genuinely want to help people with the talents his "Miraclo Pill" has granted him. He is unclear how to do that. He and Sandman do a proper team up and it's great to see. 

The Python closes out this first of two volumes reprinting the series. The Sandman finds himself investigating a strange series of bizarre strangulations, and the search takes him into the world of celebrity and the health industry. Dian for her part becomes integral to the story when she ends up at a remote health farm, one in which clothing is optional. It's all handled with taste. The art for this sequence was produced by Warren Pleece. 

I haven't commented on the covers for these stories. Art and photography are combined by Gavin Wilson for all the covers with the assistance of Richard Bruning on some. These offbeat covers give the series a bizarre but distinctive look. I'm not sure how effective they were, because I likely hesitated originally on the series by judging the book by its covers. I've come to appreciate them more as the years have rolled by. 

More to come in volume two later this month. 

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Space Ghost Day!

Alex Toth was born on this date in 1922. Toth is one of the true masters of the comic form. He was a famously difficult personality, but he constantly worked to tell his stories with as effectively and efficiently as possible. Overshadowing his comics work though is his definitive work for Hanna-Barbera where he designed such heroes as Birdman, the Herculoids, Shazzan, and many, many more. Today's focus is his finest effort -- Space Ghost. 

(Steve Rude)

Space Ghost might well have started it all for me and my love of heroes and comics and such. I was ideally ripe for the picking when Space Ghost burst onto the TV screens in the 60's and heralded a surge of superheroes on television and a revival of the same in comics and elsewhere. The burst was relatively brief, but I was woke in its wake and never have gotten over the thrill of the adventures.

Space Ghost was designed by Alex Toth and in comics no one ever drew him better than the great Steve Rude, a talent who seemed to have imbibed the same elixers that I did back in the heyday. Space Ghost is enigmatic, assisted by two upbeat teenagers named Jan and Jace and an improbable monkey named Bleep. They sail across the deeps of darkest space in the Phantom Cruiser helping those they find and finding those they help all the while defeating weird menaces from across the void.

Here are a gaggle of sketches showing a somewhat different Space Ghost, a more wan figure with some distinctive styling differences.

Apparently, they were going to show his face too.

Here the design is in color.

But these designs didn't do the trick, and Toth went back to the drawing board. He came up with this look.

And the rest as they say is history.

      I'm not much collecting particular back issues anymore. I've gotten most of the comics that I've really hankered for over the decades. That doesn't mean there aren't others I'd get if I found them, especially nice-priced Charlton books from time to time. But I'm not really casting about for special books.

Save for one.

1967's Space Ghost #1 from Gold Key has been my grail comic for a few years now, the one I always look for. And yesterday I got hold of one. It's not an ideal issue, but then I rarely get those, preferring a solid reading sample of a classic bit of history.

As luck had it, I'm visiting my girls and took the opportunity to check out a local comic shop, The Great Escape which just happened to be having a 30% off sale. I was looking for a particular trade, which they didn't have, when I spotted the Space Ghost comic on the wall. I don't see them very often, if at all, and always at a price that brings tears to my eyes. This one was priced nicely and after confirming 30% was coming off I knew I had to act. I snapped it up and I'm eager to get it home where in a controlled environment I can break out the book and give it a good reading. The artwork by Dan Spiegle is lush as usual for the overlooked veteran. He did the artwork in the Big Little Book adaptation of Alex Toth's Space Ghost, a book I've cherished since my boyhood. (More on that tomorrow.) And it was very nice indeed to add his other great Space Ghost contribution at long last.


Now what do I look for?

Archie Comics had the Hanna-Barbera brand for a bit when the Cartoon Network was up and running. Space Ghost got in on the action. I am purposely ignoring Space Ghost to Coast. I am not a huge fan.  

DC Comics got the franchise and for the first time offered up a six-part origin story by Joe Kelly and Ariel Olivetti for Hanna-Barbera's classic animated superhero Space Ghost. Reading it for the first time in trade, I tried to let go of my preconceptions of this tale, and of my previous opinions and give the story a fresh tumble.

It proved worthwhile. Ariel Olivetti is still not my first choice to illustrate this tale. Both Alex Ross (who does provide covers) and Steve Rude are better suited, especially the latter. But I don't want a desire for the perfect to become an enemy of the good in this case. Olivetti is far from the worst choice, in fact given the seemingly endless drones who sketch comics in the modern day, his lush images at the very least have real character and a boldness.

His Space Ghost is overly muscled, a bit too thick for my tastes, but I suggest this is a work in progress. He will become sleeker over time, less a body builder and more a spaceman.

Space Ghost's face and name are revealed. He is a cop named Thadeus Bach, a married man who aspires to be the best cop he can and the best husband and father. His dreams are at once fulfilled and dashed when he gets invited to join "The Wrath", an elite special ops team for the interplanetary police force. He quickly discovers they are corrupt, especially their leader Temple, but before he can report what he's discovered they take action, killing his wife and their unborn child. They left Bach for dead on a distant planet ravaged by an ancient plague. Bach does survive, nurtured by the last living resident of the "Ghost Planet", an engineer who specializes in weapons, the plague which wiped out the planet was violence and war. Bach rejects a lifetime of penance and reflection, choosing instead revenge using the equipment the planet provides. Armed this new Bach seeks out and destroys the Wrath, but the leader escapes. Bach's vengeance is forestalled by the arrival of the Bugs on a slave world the Wrath operate.  The Bugs, led by the hive-mind named "Zorak" exterminate humans and anything else living they chance upon. Bach rescues two orphans named Jan and Jace who dub him "Space Ghost" after a faceless myth from their culture. He eventually realizes his quest for vengeance is inferior to his original search for justice and takes the orphans with him back to the Ghost Planet to begin his work.

It's not a bad tale at all. Full of classic tropes from scores, if not hundreds of similar tales from practically all adventures genres. A single man seeking vengeance is the classic tale, but often he is demolished by his quest. Space Ghost survives and is transformed into something greater and more hopeful. Straightforward and not what I've imagined all these years, but noteworthy.

They could've done much worse.

Below are Alex Ross's outstanding covers for this series.

Some years later DC again took a stab at adding Hanna-Barbera icons to their universe. 

Space Ghost for his part teamed up with Green Lantern. That made sense. We were treated to a lot of great Space Ghost action as part of Future Quest, a comic which teamed up many of the Saturday Day morning favorites. Out of that we got a short-lived Space Ghost comic, a very good one. 

The first three-issue story arc in the Future Quest Presents series is a nifty three-part tale starring Space Ghost, Jan and Jace and of course Blip. Along for the ride this time are the Herculoids, though only Igoo the Rock Ape gets a major role. The writer Rich Parker continues to develop the Hanna-Barbera continuity begun in the pages of the maxi-series Future Quest in which we have a universe of heroes who are forced to confront a genocidal menace called Omnikron. The "Ghost Planet" we learn is the remnants of a world Omnikron has descended upon and the Space Force of which Space Ghost was once a part was destroyed attempting to stop Omnikron's advance.

Now Space Ghost is working alone to police the spaceways and at the same time trying to rebuild that force by getting more ore from the neighboring planet Amzot (home of the Herculoids) which can be used to create more power bands. He hopes that Jan and Jace, two orphans he rescued from a black hole event will mature to become the nucleus for a new Space Force. To that end they go to Amzot and employ Igoo who is made of the ore they need and they enter a mine closed for many years since the arrival of Omnikron.

Inside they find a deadly menace and we learn the secret origin of longtime Space Ghost foe Metallus. I won't spoil it anymore, but this is a humdinger of an adventure by Parker and Ariel Olivetti, the artist who drew Space Ghost's origin many years ago for DC Comics. The comic looks outstanding and reads with the deftness of understanding that Parker brings without fail to his projects. Get this series.

Here are the alternate covers. The Steve Rude one is stellar! No artist gets Space Ghost better than Rude.

For me this has been the most properly developed and interpretation in comics, second only to the 1987 Evanier and Rude collaboration for Comico. 

Today the brand is being published by Dynamite Comics and it's not bad. Not as good as DC's Future Quest version, but still pretty decent. As with all things Dynamite you can have over one hundred and forty covers for a dozen issues if you wish. 

But nothing beats the original cartoons with those magical Alex Toth designs. 

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