Tag: silver age

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World’s Finest Silver Age Volume Two

This is a review of World’s Finest Silver Age Volume Two. You can read my review of the first volume, here. These aren’t the worst comics I’ve read by any means, which isn’t the same thing as saying they’re good. I plowed through them because I bought both volumes on sale at the same price.

If you want to see Batman, Robin & Superman team up in sci-fic inspired scenarios from the Silver Age, then this volume is for you. A few examples: Superman loses his memory and becomes the chief of a lost Indian tribe. A man with a salad colander on his head (i.e., a crackpot inventor) gains super-powers/uses an invention to torment the Dynamic Trio (there are many variations of this story). After making a million dollars, Batman becomes a big spender, buying looney inventions that don’t work. Superman makes a new friend, a bizarre little alien that goes berserk when it’s not around him. Bat-Mite and Mr. Mxyzptlk duke it out! Red kryptonite makes Superman behave strangely! Aliens of all kinds: invading earth, kidnapping Batman & Robin, asking the Dynamic Trio for help!!!

If this all sounds good, then by all means buy this volume. If it doesn’t, you’ve been warned.

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Green Lantern: The Silver Age Volume One

This is a review of Green Lantern: The Silver Age Volume One. For the most part, this is fun comic book science fiction. The writer introduces many characters and concepts – the Green Lantern Corps, Sinestro, Hector Hammond, The Weaponeers of Qward – and lays the groundwork for future stories here. There’s a story about a group of people who live underground hooked up to the Matrix – er, machines, but their minds wander about in a dream city.

Green Lantern is Hal Jordan, hotshot test pilot. He’s summoned to the spaceship of a dying alien, who gives him his power ring. This ring can manifest anything into existence, as long as you have enough willpower. I’m unsure what ‘willpower’ means in this context. Does it mean resisting second helpings or double desserts, or maybe holding it in when you have to use the bathroom? After reading this volume, I figured it means being decisive and quick-thinking, but what do I know?

Anyway, Hal becomes the equivalent of a cosmic cop. He fights evil with his power ring, which has a single vulnerability – it can’t affect the color yellow. Of course, Hal’s boss/love interest Carol Ferris falls in love with Green Lantern, while giving Hal the cold shoulder. BTW, Hal is the type of employee who gives Human Resource Departments migraines.

The episode I’ll always remember is when Green Lantern, trying to avoid Carol’s marriage proposal (it’s Leap Year, which means it’s okay for Carol to propose!), creates an enormous green monster with his power ring so he’ll have something to fight. When he bumps his head, the jolly green giant almost destroys the earth. Boy, they don’t make comics like that anymore!

My issue with this graphic novel has to do with Green Lantern’s sidekick, Thomas Kalmaku, who goes by a nickname that I will not use here. Thomas is written as a racial stereotype who’s used mostly for comic relief. Back then, people might have thought that was funny, but today it’s cringeworthy, and mars an otherwise good graphic novel.

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Flash Silver Age Volume One

This is a review of Flash: The Silver Age Volume One. I am behind on my reading, because last week I self-diagnosed with COVID. The good news is that after a miserable few days, I am ramping up my reading again. Anyway, The Flash is the first superhero comic I ever read. It wasn’t my first comic – I read a bunch of those Archie digests you used to be able to find at supermarkets – but I have a soft spot in my heart for the character.

The Flash is Barry Allen, police scientist. One night Barry is proudly examining his collection of chemicals (he’s that type of guy), when a bolt of lightning strikes, saturating him with a hodgepodge of those selfsame chemicals. Instead of being transported to the burn unit, Barry discovers that he has super speed. He dons a red costume with yellow lightning bolts, and the Flash is born!

 So far, so good. How are the stories? Well, they’re less stupid than the Batman & Superman stories of that time period, but that’s a low bar to hurdle. What we get is a heaping dose of junk science, wherein Barry’s speed allows him to do anything you can imagine. Forget faster than light travel; The Flash can break the time barrier!

 The Flash’s rogue gallery is a menagerie of bizarre characters. Thus far, the people’s champion is Gorilla Grodd, a super-intelligent talking gorilla with awesome mental powers. There’s also Captain Cold, The Pied Piper, The Weather Wizard, and Mr. Element. We have a fair number of invaders from outer space stories, along with tales that are plain weird. In one issue, the Flash fights a group of sentient thunderheads by cloud-skipping from cloud to cloud.

I’d be remiss in not mentioning Kid Flash, DC’s version of a teenager of the late 50’s. Wearing a bow-tie to school, calling every adult sir or ma’am, young Wally West is doomed to never have sex. I confess that I’m sort of surprised that Barry himself ever gets sex. When we first meet him, he’s in the police cafeteria drinking milk, which is as perfect a character moment as you will ever see. Barry is always late for his dinner dates with his girlfriend Iris, so she thinks he’s the slowest man on earth. Of course, she adores the Flash. The hero’s love interest disliking or being meh about him while adoring his alter ego is a tired trope, but to be fair, this was the 60’s.

A good read for Flash fans.

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World’s Finest Silver Age Volume One

This is a review of World’s Finest Silver Age Volume One, featuring the adventures of Superman, Batman, and Robin. Special shout-out to Lois Lane, who appears in most of these issues. These comics were produced in the fifties. They’re not good but if you’re a Batman/Superman fan I’m sure you’ll like them.

Or maybe you won’t. The plots are relentlessly weird – in one issue Batman, Superman, and Robin travel back in time and become the Three Musketeers, complete with tricorn hats and ruffled shirts! In another Batman and Robin gain Superman’s powers, while The Man of Steel must contend with being a mere mortal! In yet another story, Batman and Superman switch secret identities in order to fool Lois Lane, who has gone from hating Clark Kent to thinking he’s Superman!

Reading these comics is like having a midlife crisis – stay with me, here. Say you decide to take your vacation at a nudist camp. Your kids are horrified, the neighbors are bemused, but you need to show everyone you still got it. Except when you go, it sucks. Everyone is flabby, middle-aged, and out-of-shape (just like you!), mosquitos are everywhere, you burn yourself sunbathing on the beach, get poison ivy playing nude volleyball, and end up with food poisoning.

When you go back home, you’d just as soon forget the whole thing, but there’s that one person who took photos and videos of everything and posted them on Instagram & Facebook and now he keeps on cc:ing you and won’t go away. That’s what reading these issues is like.

Batman & Robin and Superman were created in the late 30’s. By the 1950’s, they’d reached middle-age and their creators were regularly jumping the shark, pick your reason. Which is to say: these comics aren’t good, which isn’t the same thing as saying I didn’t like them. Because I did like them, even though they were bad and when I finish this graphic novel I won’t remember any of them.

YMMV.

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Justice League of America The Silver Age: Vol. 1

This volume collects the first twelve appearances of the Justice League of America. I’ll start by saying that the title is wrong, as the League consists of two aliens from outer space (Superman & the Martian Manhunter), an Amazon (Wonder Woman), and the ruler of the undersea kingdom Atlantis (Aquaman). That’s right, half the team isn’t even American, but why quibble? The other members are! We’re talking The Flash, Batman, Green Lantern, and Green Arrow. There’s also honorary member Snapper Carr, a teenager who snaps his fingers and says things like Daddy-O because that’s how young people talked back then.

The Justice League of America fights alien conquerors, invaders from the future, mad scientists, and gangsters. Standout villains include Starro the Conquering Starfish, Amazo the Super Android, and Kanjar Ro, the would-be alien conqueror who channels Charles Atlas. Character development is minimal, but if you like your superhero comics with a heaping dose of pulpy science fiction you’ll enjoy this.

I myself don’t have a favorite issue, because the stories are all the same. Here’s the basic template: the League splits up to confront whatever new menace they are facing. Despite their superpowers they are captured, only to turn the tables on their captors. And then it’s on to the next adventure! I liked these stories – which are all one-shots – but they do blend together. I complained about the issues in the first volume of the X-Men all being the same, but this is even worse – or better, depending on your tastes.

Random observations: Superman and Batman barely appear in this volume. I think that’s because Superman and the Martian Manhunter have similar powers, and Batman has no powers at all. Batman doesn’t even have trick arrows like Green Arrow, who is way too clean-shaven. I like my Green Arrow with a bushy, fulsome beard! The Martian Manhunter looks like the Jolly Green Giant and uses his Martian super breath at least once an issue. They also give him new abilities (Martian eyebeams!), whenever the plot requires it. The less said about Snapper Carr, the better.

Bottom line: there are worst ways to kill a few hours.