Wanted 5 from January 1973 was another spinner-rack purchase "back in the day".
Wizard of the Light-Wave Weapons is an airy and elegant-looking strip, dynamically delineated by Gil Kane and Sid Greene. Unfortunately, it's Green Lantern and therefore a bit dull and silly. There are scenes where the Lord of Luminescence creates his VIBGYOR army of coloured warriors and then, in true Silver Age style, giant cymbals and xylophone(!) But I can't help thinking of the crimes of sleazy Didio-era Dr. Light.
Gardner Fox includes Light in a roll-call of JLA villains on the splash page: Starro, Despero, Prof. Fortune, Kanjar Ro and "I". I had to go back to Amazing World of DC Comics 14 to identify "I": An "omnipotent being without name or substance"; "a shimmering curtain of life". Despite the Lovecraftian echoes, I don't recall that one being revived in the last forty-odd years. It also goes to show that the JLA rogues gallery was less than stellar (apart from, er, Starro).
I don't think Light's assault on individual League members continued after this story. Nor can I see how the female Japanese Dr. Light from the Crisis/ New Titans/Justice League can ever really escape the sordid reputation of her predecessor, especially with the added burden of an abrasive personality..
I never enjoyed the Doll Man story when I originally owned this comic; his campy strongman outfit is almost as flamboyant as that of his teammate, Black Condor. Uncomfortably, like Wonder Woman, he also seems to feature in bondage scenes. In this story, Doll Man gains a yellow Dollplane- a step up from riding Elmo the Wonder Dog like a horse (as he did in the Transport 100-page Super Spec). However, this 1948 tale is also a gritty and violent noir and the villain is a proto-Dr Doom, but a sadistic and brutal one. There's no artist credit but the pencils are very detailed and there is a variety of panel designs. I also suspect this was the inspiration for the Atom's "Man in the ION Mask".
The letters page largely praises the Joker/Penguin story from issue two and there are more requests for Golden Age reprints, including the JSA.
Now, as a small boy in the early 70s, the most frightening comic I owned was this issue of House of Mystery. The cover has two of the hallmarks of a classic DC supernatural book: the child protagonist and the cool vampire bat logo. My aunt and uncle bought this one for me (and an issue of Phantom Stranger) and the realism of the artwork really unsettled me.
The second -most- scary comic I ever read was one I chose myself from the rack- in East Kilbride, I think. The story of a swamp creature using the corpses of people's loved ones like an angler's lures was so horrific that I think I voluntarily binned it. For many years, I wondered who published this existential nightmare. Then, thanks to the internet, I found it a few weeks ago.
Looking closely at Haunted , the text looks like it's been typed straight on to the Tom Sutton cover, as a poorly-designed afterthought. Inside, it mimics the DC format: there's a romantic "ghost story" by Ditko, which has a somewhat paranoid tone to begin with. That's followed by a Gothic romance with elements of costume drama. The cover feature is crudely drawn by comparison but that adds to its morbid fascination. The two billion-year old (!) "Eternal Fisherman", a "fetid mass of primeval waste" has a sadistic twist to its predation. The blood of its lures is drained, replaced by swamp water and its victims are aware of it. Having rescued his dying wife, the hero Ezekial swallows eight bottles of rat poison and so destroys the creature through suicide as it feeds off him!
"The Lure of the Swamp" appears to have been reprinted in 1979 in Baron Weirwulf's Haunted Library. It's interesting that in my memory, the artwork was better than in reality. The idea of the "fisherman" isn't too different from the Living Island Krakoa, in G-S X-Men 1.
Apart from one issue of Kung Fu rip-off Yang, the only other Charlton book I bought in the 70s was this issue of John Byrne's Doomsday +1, which was the kind of sleek, apocalyptic stuff popular post-Logan's Run.
I bought no more Charlton books until late 1981. This art in this issue of Charlton Bullseye was also crude and fanzine-like but I loved the designs of Cerebra, Corona and Celestra. They seem inspired by Cockrum's LSH and X-Men, with a touch of Star Wars and Claremont and Byrne's strong female leads thrown in. The Vanguards would have made a nifty animated series, I think.
In future posts, I must get around to looking at my brief flirtation with Atlas Comics; we'll return to the Golden Age with the next issue of Wanted.
Next: Art for Art's Sake
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Dougie, I often leave a comment just so you know that at least one person has read something you've taken the time to write. Do your posts get quite a few hits regardless of comments, and are you ever disappointed that you don't get more? Also, as an average, how many of the covers that you post do you actually still have?
ReplyDeleteI write for myself ,to be honest, like my diary. I feel compelled! It's nice that people take the time to read it but it wouldn't be the end of the world if no one did. It's not my livelihood and I would feel very uncomfortable to ask people for donations to support something I do largely for my own amusement.
ReplyDeleteI own an impractically large number of old comics. Several boxes here in the Highlands and far, far more in Glasgow. It's a worry, sometimes.
I do appreciate, of course, the fact that people DO read the posts. It's very nice to be included in the, er, blogroll of others. But ultimately, I'm a teacher not a professional writer and I think of blogging as modelling the skills I teach.
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