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 It seems that I AM the Zeitgeist! In this blog a few weeks ago, I suggested incorporating Rac Shade and John Constantine into the JLA. The new DC book Justice League Dark is doing exactly that and I, Vampire is being relaunched. It remains to be seen if the Phantom Blonde will join the Avengers. However, the horrible new Goth version of the Titans and the return of Rob Liefeld sent me howling back to the Disco Era.

  Recently, I blogged about patching my DC reprint collection with back issues of 70s series Wanted: the World's Most Dangerous Villains. Wanted spawned a companion series, equally short-lived, entitled Secret Origins (of Super-Heroes and Super-Villains).

 Check the Nick Cardy Batman! Stunning.

I got this early Seventies premiere issue on its original release but never warmed to it at the time. As a kid, I found 40s stories too primitive in the main. I also felt I'd read the Kubert Ghost story before -when the Gentleman Ghost had debuted in Atom/Hawkman in the late 60s. In spite of the masthead, the Ghost tale is the only super-villain story that appeared in the series- it was an odd inclusion anyway, given the existence of Wanted but maybe editor E. Nelson Bridwell just over-estimated the popularity of reprints.

Anyway, I snapped up the rest of the series

  It's really the Cardy Supergirl and Wonder Woman I like best about these issues. I'd never read these Golden Age stories before but Hal Jordan and Ray Palmer- Kane notwithstanding- bore me stupid. Wildcat was a cult favourite in the early 70s, thanks to his appearances in Brave and Bold. I'd like to see a reworked Wildcat strip nowadays- there's something compelling about that visual. Later SO issues starred the Vigilante, Kid Eternity, the Spectre, Blackhawk, the Legion, Robin and Aquaman (quite a different take from the stodgy, married Silver Age Sea King). Apart from the Kid and the Blackhawks, these characters would all have back-up strips in the early Bronze Age.

Given the reprint of Bridwell's late-60s Legion origin tale (a bland thing with old-fashioned pencils by Pete Costanza), what really surprises me is how many popular characters in the early 70s didn't have a reprinted origin in the first SO series: Batgirl, Metamorpho, Hawkman, Zatanna, Dr. Fate or Black Canary (While the "Girl Gladiator"s debut in Johnny Thunder had turned up in the 1972 100-page "World's Greatest Super-Females" issue of Adventure, she didn't get an origin until the mid-70s).
Issue 7 in late 74, at the height of the energy crisis was the last gasp for SO. Reprints still appeared for a few more months  in the 100 page Super-Spectaculars. But it was a Crisis on Infinite Earths about a decade later that saw Secret Origins return...

 These were no reprints; they were re-imaginings of stories: twice-told tales, if you fancy John Byrne's description of his Spider-man series of the late 90s. The first issue I bought was a gorgeous story by Gil Kane (there will be more gushing about "Sugar Lips" in a future blog!)

There were several more issues that caught my eye, usually because of the artist but occasionally for the character:

 The Atom/LSH cover is an homage to Neal Adams's Superman Museum.

 The one drawback to the series was Roy Thomas's insistence on introducing each Golden Age or Earth-2 character in chronological order. This meant wading through pretty but dull stories about Doll Man or the Star-Spangled Kid.

 The 80s series soon became devoted to trying to repair the shattered continuity, especially where E-2 Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman had been retconned away: vide the second Fury and Miss America. In its final issues, however, elements of the humour and craziness of the Silver Age and the early Bronze age returned:

 That 50th issue featured a touching reowrking of the bizarre history of the Black Canaries and an early Grant Morrison story, retelling the legendary "Flash of Two Worlds". It seems to mark the end of one era for me and the beginning of another: the darker, more sensational world of the 90s.

The late sixties and early seventies, however, represents a great period of experimentation and celebration for comic artists at DC and special issues commemorate that time. It's really great to be able to re-discover the work of a legendary artist through reprints: in this case, Joe Kubert.

The comic begins with an utterly charming vignette which parodied House of Mystery and features the artist's kids- including widdle Adam Kubert the Flashpoint artist!

The Sgt. Rock tale was mildly interesting and I'd read the rather silly Hawkman/Matter Master story before, in the Hawkman Showcase volume 1 and the 1989 Kubert Hawkman tpb. Kubert's moody rendition of the Winged Wonder isn't quite as iconic for me as Murphy Anderson's but it's still amazing. The real stand-out for me was the Viking Prince. I'd seen the character once before, in the early 70s (in an issue we'll see below) but that was prior to my obsession with sword-and-sorcery. The Ice King story is pure S&S, however, and the Mute Bard was an enigmatic sidekick.

 In a week when Dr. Fate's Helmet of Nabu reappeared in Smallville, I wanted to post this Kubert image, another recent ebay win, which I now own for the second time:

 I must have bought that issue one lunchtime, during First Year at Strathaven Academy; I would have been around twelve and a half years old! I re-read it six years later, when it was reprinted in a JSA digest. Walter Simonson was trying to develop a new visual aesthetic for Fate's magic- the first use of the Egyptian ankh motif which Staton would employ in All-Star Comics a couple of years later.Simonson had also redesigned that weird blank mask, as we can see below:

 This look wasn't used in the end. The helmet is too much like Hawkman's mask but it might work on a Mayan or Aztec hero.
In any case, I know what I want my next Kubert purchase to be:

 Through the magic of Tesco and the Post Office, last weekend I watched Josh Brolin as DC's Western bounty hunter, Jonah Hex. I'm only familiar with Hex from his appearance in JLA comics, like these:

 That Justice Rangers story is a favourite and it features the Original El Diablo!

I've written before about my first hospital visit in Stonehouse as a nine-year-old. This image of Hex, in the Superboy/Jules Verne story I was given during that stay, haunted me for years:

I never got into Western comics however but I remember reading that Jonah Hex's stuffed corpse winds up as a carnival attraction in the end; probably one of the most eerie and ignominious ends for a comic-book anti-hero.
 The Hex series of the mid-80s was highly derivative of the Mad Max movies but while slated in the States, it was popular in the UK and Europe. Later, the character appeared in a couple of Western/Horror miniseries.

The movie was fairly entertaining and quite short, which is a plus in my book. In addition to a rather unappealing animated sequence, I also found the supernatural trappings unnecessary; I would have preferred the Victorian Bond-style thriller tone throughout. But Brolin was as good an avatar of Hex as Jackman was for Wolverine; and Malkovich, an understated master villain.

Incidentally, Hex's ghoulish fate appears to have been inspired by the discovery in 1976 of the mummified body of a real Western outlaw. Elmer McCurdy, a none-too-bright Oklahoma train robber, was embalmed after a shoot-out and his corpse spent 60 years displayed in wax museums and funfairs. It was finally rediscovered in California during the shooting of an episode of "The Six Million Dollar Man"! Wouldn't you rather see that movie?

Next: Dracula, Frankenstein and Friends...
The Legal Bit: this is a blog for nostalgia and comment. All images are presumed copyright of their respective owners.