Machine Man - Mister Kirby!

Not unlike his stint at DC, Kirby found himself with something of a second wave in his Bronze Age stay at Marvel. He'd landed with the comics Captain America, Black Panther and Eternals, but later found that sales were against his efforts.

That meant new comics and we got two new ones from Kirby, a brand new romp called Devil Dinosaur and a spin-off from 2001: A Space Odyssey called Machine Man. Machine Man had been called "Mister Machine" in that three-issue run but the name was made more straightforward for this own magazine.

In the first two issues of the run we meet X-51, the last of the robots created in a secret government project. These robots had proven to be unstable and ultimately dangerous to their creators and so there was a relentless effort to destroy them. X-51 was saved when his "father" Dr. Abel Stack pulled his auto-destruct mechanism and sacrificed himself. Now an orphan of sorts the highly capable but somewhat naive X-51, dubbed "Machine Man" by those who chase him dodges the military who seek to end him. He is helped by a psychiatrist named Peter Spaulding in his efforts to understand his role in the world. He is pursued by Colonel Kragg, a man who has lost men and and eye to the other robots in the program.

That musing is interrupted when Spalding and Machine Man help to save an alien robot named "Ten-For". He is an "Autocron", a space-spanning race of robot beings who seek conquest and Ten-For is an advanced scout who has claimed Earth for his destructive fellow Autocrons.

The next several issues of the comics detail Machine Man's efforts to stop Ten-For's plots and despite some momentary doubts he ultimately is able to stop the threat to Earth and end the menace of Ten-For. That doesn't make his life any sweeter though.

He still must battle for his own salvation and that means facing up to the government which seeks his destruction. He confronts a Congressman named Brinkman who will become a longtime nemesis and for his own reasons Brinkman seeks to use Machine Man.

A secret organization called "The Corporation" seeks to gain control of Machine Man and fending off their plots occupies the next several issues of the comic.

Despite seeming atomic destruction Machine Man is able to survive intact and finally gains a measure of security as he is released into the custody of his friend Peter Spalding and as Jack Kirby steps away from the series it goes on hiatus with a new status quo established.

My thoughts on Machine Man are somewhat changed over the decades. When it was first appearing on the stands I was rather cool to Kirby's latest effort, finding it relatively small potatoes to the epic schemes of many of his other efforts. This one alongside Devil Dinosaur were not top of the line for me. But I've matured and I see the more subtle aspects of this story (as well as DD). I was particularly enthralled by the Ten-For saga, a truly awful villain who seems to almost be winning before he's not. It was a really interesting outing and I plugged into Machine Man's plight a bit more this time around. When he comes back, he will be very different, but I find this one works for me after all these years.

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100 Days Of The King - Day 16

DC was famously unhappy with Jack "King" Kirby's rendition of the Man of Steel. You'd think that giving a proven talent like Jack Kirby a title like Jimmy Olsen would pretty much indicate carte blanche with the approach, but it was not to be. DC conspicuously kept its editorial hand in and infamously used artists Al Plastino and Murphy Anderson to alter the Kirby Superman heads to make them conform to DC's then standard house look. Those alterations were jarring at the time and still stand out in modern reprints of those stories. I'm generally speaking a fan of blending artistic styles, and frankly would not have had any big issue having Anderson ink Kirby's work, but just altering the heads really made them stand out in a weird way.

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Greatest JLA Stories Ever Told!

Let's be clear. These are likely not the "Greatest Stories Ever Told" about the Justice League,  but they are pretty good ones indeed from across a wide spectrum of League stories both before and after the Crisis. These volumes all featured an Alex Ross cover and I'm a big fan but this one isn't his best to my mind, as Wonder Woman doesn't look sufficiently on model for me.

We start off with an updated version of the origin story with George Perez artwork from the pages of the stellar two hundredth issue of the comic. This was one of the best centennial issues ever, but we only get a few pages in this reprint. After that there's a terrific introduction to the team by Mike Tieffenbacher who puts the stories into some great context. I feel a good intro can make a tome like this much better, hate the ones that don't have anything.

We get a dandy from the original JLA team of Gardner Fox, Mike Sekowsky and Bernard Sachs as Doctor Destiny returns to send the Leaguers off the planet. Beautiful Murphy Anderson cover art. 

We quickly skip forward to an important early story by Denny O'Neil, Dick Dillin and Joe Giella, a story in which Snapper Carr the League's "Mascot" faces a crisis of conscience.  This story sported another Murphy Anderson cover with great drama.

This rare Mike Grell cover advertises an exceedingly clever story by Marty Pasko with artwork by Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin which relates the then untold story of how the Leaguers decided to share their secret identities with one another.

The centerpiece of this collection is a three-issue story pitting the League against the Secret Society of Super-Villains. This is a rousing rockem' sockem' League adventure from the heart of the satellite years with some neat twists and turns. These were the first issues under the helm of Ross Andru who took over as editor after Julie Schwartz left the title after a few decades at the helm.

A new post-Crisis League is introduced when the team was rebooted to meet with the changed conditions of the altered DCU. The addition of Blue Beetle is the most telling detail,but including heroes from other worlds and planes does give this League a more varied appeal, hence the loss of other of the evocative "America" from the title. This is not my League by any stretch but these are by and large pretty good stories by Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis with great artwork by Kevin Maguire and Terry Austin.

They meet up again in this special issue by Grant Morrison and Howard Porter, a team which revived them successfully at the end of the 90's. This story features a clash with Starro himself.

And finally we get a story from a later period of the team , when Plastic Man was a member in good standing. The story by Joe Kelly is a good example of what was then current and shows the team as effective and efficient. The artwork by Greg Mahnke and Joe Nguyen is pretty decent for the time.

Good stories all, exciting even. The "Greatest"? Close perhaps but no cigar!

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A League Of Their Own!

The double-page poster shot below of the 1970's Justice League of America is perhaps my all-time favorite image of the team. Here we see handsome heroes gathered for noble purposes to protect mankind. Here we see a team of heroes who are for the most part genial and friendly with one another, who overcome differences of origin and background and perspective to work together for the greater good.

(Terry Austin & Dick Giordano)
There's no "action" in this shot, only people between crisis points taking time to deal with the day-to-day of life. This poster says these are regular people.

These are heroes.

I found this wonderful scan here

Dick Giordano is credited with the great covers to this over-sized classic.


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