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Post by Ish Kabbible on May 24, 2014 10:54:15 GMT -5
You see,I noticed that Superman issue had a story titled "Superman's Mermaid Girlfriend" and just assumed it was Lori's 1st appearance without checking.Just like they say in Atlantis-"If you assume,you'll get it bass-ackwards"
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Post by Hoosier X on May 24, 2014 11:21:09 GMT -5
Lori's first appearance is a few months earlier and I think it's called "The Girl from Superman's Past."
It's in The Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told, so I've read it! Yay!
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Post by Hoosier X on May 24, 2014 14:20:38 GMT -5
I was looking at CBDB for the comics with the same cover date as Action #252 (May 1959) and I discovered that Supergirl, Lori Lemaris and Bat-Mite all debuted the same month.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on May 24, 2014 16:33:03 GMT -5
I always dug the Gardner Fox Justice League because it seemed like there was a cool underlying concept in each story - Everybody fights their evil twin! Everybody's costume came to life! Everybody gets transformed into fat midgets by carnival funhouse mirrors! It was the best high concept superhero comic ever, for my money. (And Starro is still my favorite JLA villain.)
For the record: My favorite DC Silver Age strips -
1) Enemy Ace
2) Sugar & Spike
3) Secret 6
4) Hawkman (Kubert)
5) Sgt. Rock
6) The Atom (Kane)
7) The JLA/JSA Team-Ups
8) Captain Action
9) Mademoiselle Marie from Star Spangled War Stories
10) Metamorpho
11) The early Jim Mooney Supergirl Stories
12) Leave it to Binky
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Post by wildfire2099 on May 24, 2014 17:07:43 GMT -5
 Great cover, but nothing whatsoever to do with the comic.. maybe it does to another issue? Anyway, here we have the 1st appearance of the Challengers of the Unknown (Showcase #6 Feb. 1957). 4 guys shocking survive a plane crash, and decide to wear matching purple outfits and 'dare anything' to discover the secrets of the world. No superpowers here. Their first adventure involves a wizard Morelian, who claims to be a decendant of Merlin. He has a box with four chambers, and wants the Challengers to open it.. and will pay them 1 million dollars to do it. Gee, that's not suspcious at all! They at least are skeptical as well. They draw straws to open the first section, and a giant stone trojan comes out, and storms through the ocean. Two of the challengers give chase, while Rocky (who opened the box) decides it's a great time to open the next section, even though the 1st one held a deadly monster. The 2nd one contains a weird energy being that feeds on heat, and freezes lots of things. Meanwhile, the giant turns out to be invincible, then the Prof reasons that means there's only one way to stop it... he wishes it away, and it vanishes (yup). Back on the Island, Red is running from the freezy energy thing... he figure out the container it was in was a vacuum tube, and tricks it into a metal box, then sucks the air out... 2 for the good guys! And that one even sorta made sense! Not the the freezy thing has scared everyone else off, they opent the 3rd box, and a thing zips out and starts wrapping everything in plastic. They give chase, and figure out that it's remote controlled (they turned it up to 11 by accident), and they shut it off. Back at the island, the wizard has opened the 4th box to get the ring of Immortality! He taunts the challengers, pays them, then flies off.. only it turns out it's the box that give immortality, not the ring, the ring causes the wizards plane to crash and he dies... the irony! The end! Funny, even with no superpowers, a team book still follows the 'split up and deal with threats one at a time model'. For the most part, the story was pretty decent, only the giant stone monster that could be wished away was really heinous.. the rest was pretty fun.. definitely felt more golden age the silver age, though. The Art (Kirby) is excellent, though the subject matter isn't the most exciting, he does alot with it. My knock is that the Challengers themselves aren't very different, especially in Showcase black-and-white. I assume 'Rocky' is meant to be the tough guy, and 'Prof' the smart guy, but that didn't really show through, Rocky was just impulsive and ineffective, and Red was really the brains of the operation... perhaps as the series goes on that will change. Historical Context: 7/10 Story: 7/10 |
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Post by Action Ace on May 24, 2014 17:20:41 GMT -5
I have never read this one, but I do remember the ads for it. I probably didn't have an extra 60 cents that week. It is one of the best Justice League stories of all time. It's kind of DC: New Frontier crammed into one issue. |
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Post by Action Ace on May 25, 2014 20:00:23 GMT -5
Here's some notes I have for Brave & the Bold #28 Batman misses the case because he has to track down two archenemies working together in Gotham City. If it were a Marvel comic a few years later there would be note on what issue to read for this adventure. If it was a modern day DC comic it would direct you to a five issue mini-series as to why Batman isn't there, because Rao knows the rest of the JLA isn't capable of making a ham sandwich without him. Fact I uncovered while reading Archive Volume 1: This was Salman Rushdie's favorite comic book growing up in England. Panel I wish was in the book: When Hal presents the bill for the lime to Bruce. I love this splash page...  Even after all these years, they are still seven out my eight favorite JLA members with The Atom taking up the other slot. You can't blame/ credit Gardner Fox or Julie Schwartz for Snapper Carr. Snapper was forced into the book by DC Executive Whitney Ellsworth (of Adventures of Superman tv fame) to give the JLA a "hip" character. He was based on 1950s tv personality Edd "Kookie" Byrnes of the show 77 Sunset Strip. I never saw the show even in reruns so my first appearance of Mr. Byrnes was on an early episode of Married With Children. Here he is with the group Anthrax. Starro seems very similar to the monsters in the 1956 Japanese movie Warning From Space. Although these starfish are only seven feet tall unlike the one seen on the poster.  Julie Schwartz admitted that the name Starro The Conqueror was derived from one of his favorite Sci-Fi novels Tarrano the Conqueror by Ray Cummings in 1925. Starro's next appearance isn't until Adventure Comics #451 in 1977 against Aquaman. My ratings Historical importance: A+ Story: B+ Art: C (I like Sekowsky's layouts, but not so much the actual lines on the page) Cover: A |
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Post by Action Ace on May 25, 2014 21:52:24 GMT -5
My notes on Showcase #6 and the debut of the Challengers of the Unknown
Three pages and the origin's done with one panel more for their early exploits. Bendis could stretch that into three years worth of issues easily.
"Welcome, my reckless guinea pigs!"-- Morelian
How many of these bad guys (comics/ tv/ movies) had their castles shipped over from Europe stone by stone and rebuilt anyway?
They don't want to endanger lives opening the box and releasing something like the plague, so they airlift the box from "a remote wooded area in Northern Canada" to an uninhabited atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
My guess is Ace was challenging the all time record for frequent flier miles and needed the extra flight.
Rocky opens up the first chamber and its a giant egg. It has an inscription they try to translate, but first let's get some shut eye.
Prof gives us the answer to the translation just as the giant stone Greek soldier rises out of the sea. (kind of like Time Bandits)
The next chamber has a telepathic freezing sun (!) that Red stops by cobbling together a vacuum tube and trapping it inside. It takes most of the day using the supplies scattered around the island, but he gets the job done. If he was on the S.S. Minnow, that show would have been over by the first commercial break.
The giant is unscratched by an A-bomb and Godzilla's trapped in an iceberg at this point, so Prof uses his 9th level Wish spell and the problem's solved.
Ace opens up the next chamber and an orb wraps him up in a plastic sheet and takes off to web up Sydney. Prof finally notices some controls on the tube the orb popped out of and they take the orb back to the atoll. Meanwhile the citizens of Sydney will just have to clean up the mess themselves.
Morelian takes the ring of immortality out of chamber number four and tries to fly off with it. The plane crashes right into the box destroying it. It seems the chamber made you immortal and not the ring. I'd figure a master sorcerer like Morelian would have a fly spell or scroll handy, but he must have used them up already.
Fun adventure all around. I would definitely have been back for the next issue as a kid in 1956.
my ratings
Historical Importance: B
Story: B- Dave Wood (he would also have a hand in creating Animal Man and Mr. Freeze)
Art: B (still not that big a Kirby fan, but a few panels are awesome)
Cover: B-
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Post by wildfire2099 on May 25, 2014 23:54:03 GMT -5
 I (mostly) relevant cover this time, and a very cool robot design, IMO. This one very much reads like a classic sci-fi short story. A former Nazi Scientists teams up with a American in prison and builds the ultimate 'calcuating machine'... only it develops intelligence and forces the crooks to work for it. Back at Challengers HQ, they're about to do the 'open letters to see what we do next' thing (Perhaps for the 1st time?). When the Nazi, Felix Hesse, bursts in and tells the Challengers is story. They go to a robotics expert, Dr. June Robbins, and she tells them one of them will die subduing Ultivac. Meanwhile, Ultivac just wants to be at peace with man, si he builds thousands of Felix Hesse robots to steal resources for him.. how he had the resources to build the Hesses to begin with (and his snazzy underwater HQ, for that matter) isn't clear. Dr. Robbins goes with Red to investigate (after a failed diving effort by the Prof), and it turns into a King Kong movie. Hesse ends up blasting Ultivac after everyone has agreed to live peacefully, with Rocky getting caught in the crossfire. Ultivac ends up no longer intelligent, but just a supercomputer in Dr. Robbins lab. Rocky dies on the operating table, but they bring him back a minute later, thus fufilling the prediction, but not before the other 3 agree to make Dr. Robbins a Challenger. The End! Once again a sci fi story, with no superheroing... I'm not seeing the FF similarities so far. Again, Rocky is useless cannon fodder, and Ace only shows up in group shots... so not much team going. Fun story, though. Ultivac turns up again a couple times, toward the end of the Challengers run, and in a 'forgotten Heroes and villians' 2 parter in DC presents. No particular comic book science here, other than 'radiation' making the 'calculating machine' have intelligence. Story: 7/10 Historical Importance 7/10 (having a female scientist as a character seems unique for the time, and it's her first appearance) |
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Post by wildfire2099 on May 28, 2014 22:15:49 GMT -5
 This time not only is the cover appropriate to the store, but it's an actual panel! Weird, actually. Anyway, the Challengers are sent to Antarctica to investigate the disappearance of a couple scientists, and they find the Tyrans, aliens with 2 brains trying to take over the Earth... their only problem is they have blo a big chunk off it to lower the gravity first. The Challengers are quickly captured, and a Tyran scientist nicely does some monologing. They trick him into getting hypnotized (someone on the creative team much have been into Hypnosis), and they turn up the gravity, thus making the Tyron unable to move. Two of the Challengers use the Tyran transporter to go back to Washington to stop the guys planting the explosives, while the other two say at the base and watch the scientists they saved figure out a way to blow up the base. After some drama, the good guys win. While this was a pretty fun story, there are some painful logic holes. The gravity thing is the big one. Changing it stops the Tyrons, but doesn't effect the humans... if it was low, they should have been hopping about. Then the 'gravity machine'... they hit a button to shut it off in particular rooms, but it was 'too complex' to shut it off all together... what? I hate plot device science. Also, no explanation why they can work in regular Earth gravity to attack the east coast, but on their base it incapacitates them. Also, the hypnosis thing was pretty silly. For a storytelling standpoint, it was kinda odd.. it was almost as if they had covers for each 'chapter' (like the other stories, the book was broken into 4 chapters).. nice pages, but kinda jarring. Overall, a fun alien invasion, even if it was a little overly 50s. Story: 7/10 Historical Signifigance 3/10 |
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Post by Hoosier X on May 29, 2014 0:19:55 GMT -5
That is an awesome cover! I think that if I'd ever seen it at a convention, I would have bought it right then!
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Post by Ish Kabbible on May 29, 2014 1:24:56 GMT -5
Challengers of the Unknown,Sea Devils,Cave Carson-besides the halfway decent stories Kirby did of the Challs,I never met anyone who was a fan of these series.You can throw Space Ranger into the same pot.All monster of the month mediocrity
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Post by Cei-U! on May 29, 2014 8:08:01 GMT -5
Sea Devils at least had Russ Heath in its early issues. And you should add Blackhawk and the pre-New Look Bat-books to that list, more Jack Schiff-editeds title forced to follow Schiff's monster/alien/lamoid costumed villain formula.
Cei-U!
I summon the tedium!
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Post by wildfire2099 on May 29, 2014 10:54:47 GMT -5
So far, three issues in, I'd call them pleasantly medicore. The art is nice (occassionally great), but the characters themselves are pretty visually boring... in fact they're pretty boring all around. I think that's a biggest down side.. the Challengers themselves have very little personality. I'm hoping that changes in the issues to come, or reading another 400 pages of them is going to be a trial.
My additional material came in yesterday (Atom, Hawkman, and Elongated Man showcases), so I'll start mixing it up when I get back to it this weekend. Sadly, Flash will have to wait until the summer (when the omnibus comes out)... be nice to have it in color, though!
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Post by Ish Kabbible on May 29, 2014 10:58:39 GMT -5
Sea Devils at least had Russ Heath in its early issues. And you should add Blackhawk and the pre-New Look Bat-books to that list, more Jack Schiff-editeds title forced to follow Schiff's monster/alien/lamoid costumed villain formula. Cei-U! I summon the tedium! There's not enough derision exhibited for Jack Schiff books.You can feel the brain cells die off as you read the books he was in charge of.Little kids who grew up reading his paplum graduated to staring at the TV screen and drooling into senility. Jack Schiff-change the f to t and it sums it up |
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