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Post by MDG on Mar 18, 2016 12:31:40 GMT -5
Bat Lash was another of those wonderful out-of-the-box DC titles from 1968 when DC, in a kind of mini-Renaissance, was throwing different ideas against the wall in the face of Marvel's domination. Great ideas, great talents: Howie Post on Anthro; Ditko on Hawk and the Dove and Beware the Creeper; Cardy and Aragones on Bat Lash; Oksner and Wally Wood on Angel and the Ape, etc., etc. Old titles were being rejuvenated; new approaches were being tried. Even an old warhorse like Tomahawk was suddenly relevant, years before O'Neil and Adams tried it with GL, Robert Kanigher and Frank Thorne were way out in front on race relations, imperialism and what constitutes a just war. You could see, even as a kid, that they were flailing at times, treading water in some cases (Mort was still around), but the influx of new talent, like Adams, Giordano, Aparo, Skeates, O'Neil and the usual excellent work of the old reliables like Kubert, Kane and Cardy made a trip to the newsstand a thrill. Yeah--this is probably my favorite period at DC (and maybe in comics). Besides what you mentioned, Secret Six, Novick's run on Lois Lane, Oksner doing amazing work on Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis, the new House of Mystery, Sekowsky's Wonder Woman--even things like colored gutters in the Superman titles showed DC trying to shake things up. |
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Post by Prince Hal on Mar 18, 2016 13:16:54 GMT -5
Bat Lash was another of those wonderful out-of-the-box DC titles from 1968 when DC, in a kind of mini-Renaissance, was throwing different ideas against the wall in the face of Marvel's domination. Great ideas, great talents: Howie Post on Anthro; Ditko on Hawk and the Dove and Beware the Creeper; Cardy and Aragones on Bat Lash; Oksner and Wally Wood on Angel and the Ape, etc., etc. Old titles were being rejuvenated; new approaches were being tried. Even an old warhorse like Tomahawk was suddenly relevant, years before O'Neil and Adams tried it with GL, Robert Kanigher and Frank Thorne were way out in front on race relations, imperialism and what constitutes a just war. You could see, even as a kid, that they were flailing at times, treading water in some cases (Mort was still around), but the influx of new talent, like Adams, Giordano, Aparo, Skeates, O'Neil and the usual excellent work of the old reliables like Kubert, Kane and Cardy made a trip to the newsstand a thrill. Yeah--this is probably my favorite period at DC (and maybe in comics). Besides what you mentioned, Secret Six, Novick's run on Lois Lane, Oksner doing amazing work on Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis, the new House of Mystery, Sekowsky's Wonder Woman--even things like colored gutters in the Superman titles showed DC trying to shake things up. Ditto, ditto, ditto. I'll take that period from '68 till, oh about late '74, early '75 any time. Nice run for DC. A few years later came the Ernie Chan Era and reams of mediocre comics. |
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Post by Action Ace on Mar 18, 2016 16:17:28 GMT -5
Yeah--this is probably my favorite period at DC (and maybe in comics). Besides what you mentioned, Secret Six, Novick's run on Lois Lane, Oksner doing amazing work on Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis, the new House of Mystery, Sekowsky's Wonder Woman--even things like colored gutters in the Superman titles showed DC trying to shake things up. Ditto, ditto, ditto. I'll take that period from '68 till, oh about late '74, early '75 any time. Nice run for DC. A few years later came the Ernie Chan Era and reams of mediocre comics. Now I didn't read the comics until decades later, but for me most of DC's superhero line descends into "Hell in a handbasket" territory in 1968. And I don't have any interest in the "new ideas" from the era either. Give me the "Ernie Chua" era. |
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Post by MDG on Mar 18, 2016 18:23:41 GMT -5
Ditto, ditto, ditto. I'll take that period from '68 till, oh about late '74, early '75 any time. Nice run for DC. A few years later came the Ernie Chan Era and reams of mediocre comics. Now I didn't read the comics until decades later, but for me most of DC's superhero line descends into "Hell in a handbasket" territory in 1968. And I don't have any interest in the "new ideas" from the era either. Give me the "Ernie Chua" era.  |
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Post by Prince Hal on Mar 18, 2016 21:18:02 GMT -5
Ditto, ditto, ditto. I'll take that period from '68 till, oh about late '74, early '75 any time. Nice run for DC. A few years later came the Ernie Chan Era and reams of mediocre comics. Now I didn't read the comics until decades later, but for me most of DC's superhero line descends into "Hell in a handbasket" territory in 1968. And I don't have any interest in the "new ideas" from the era either. Give me the "Ernie Chua" era. You may have it, sir. |
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Mar 18, 2016 22:35:15 GMT -5
Bat Lash was another of those wonderful out-of-the-box DC titles from 1968 when DC, in a kind of mini-Renaissance, was throwing different ideas against the wall in the face of Marvel's domination. Great ideas, great talents: Howie Post on Anthro; Ditko on Hawk and the Dove and Beware the Creeper; Cardy and Aragones on Bat Lash; Oksner and Wally Wood on Angel and the Ape, etc., etc. Old titles were being rejuvenated; new approaches were being tried. Even an old warhorse like Tomahawk was suddenly relevant, years before O'Neil and Adams tried it with GL, Robert Kanigher and Frank Thorne were way out in front on race relations, imperialism and what constitutes a just war. You could see, even as a kid, that they were flailing at times, treading water in some cases (Mort was still around), but the influx of new talent, like Adams, Giordano, Aparo, Skeates, O'Neil and the usual excellent work of the old reliables like Kubert, Kane and Cardy made a trip to the newsstand a thrill. Couldn't agree more. Don't forget Deadman, The Inferior Five, Unknown Soldier, The Shadow, Swampthing, early Phantom Stranger. Even things that didn't pan out like Brother Power The Geek, Jason's Quest, Nightmaster showed DCs willingness to experiment and break the stale formulas previously entrenched. New and young talent finally entered DC after almost 2 decades of, essentially with rare exceptions, a closed shop of talent. And then by 1974 or so, DC fell back to predictable and safe stories. Mediocrity ruled again. I left DC as so many other did for a number of years as Marvel firmly established itself as the number 1 publisher. |
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Post by Prince Hal on Mar 19, 2016 9:45:31 GMT -5
Bat Lash was another of those wonderful out-of-the-box DC titles from 1968 when DC, in a kind of mini-Renaissance, was throwing different ideas against the wall in the face of Marvel's domination. Great ideas, great talents: Howie Post on Anthro; Ditko on Hawk and the Dove and Beware the Creeper; Cardy and Aragones on Bat Lash; Oksner and Wally Wood on Angel and the Ape, etc., etc. Old titles were being rejuvenated; new approaches were being tried. Even an old warhorse like Tomahawk was suddenly relevant, years before O'Neil and Adams tried it with GL, Robert Kanigher and Frank Thorne were way out in front on race relations, imperialism and what constitutes a just war. You could see, even as a kid, that they were flailing at times, treading water in some cases (Mort was still around), but the influx of new talent, like Adams, Giordano, Aparo, Skeates, O'Neil and the usual excellent work of the old reliables like Kubert, Kane and Cardy made a trip to the newsstand a thrill. Couldn't agree more. Don't forget Deadman, The Inferior Five, Unknown Soldier, The Shadow, Swampthing, early Phantom Stranger. Even things that didn't pan out like Brother Power The Geek, Jason's Quest, Nightmaster showed DCs willingness to experiment and break the stale formulas previously entrenched. New and young talent finally entered DC after almost 2 decades of, essentially with rare exceptions, a closed shop of talent. And then by 1974 or so, DC fell back to predictable and safe stories. Mediocrity ruled again. I left DC as so many other did for a number of years as Marvel firmly established itself as the number 1 publisher. Oh, yes, indeed. And they brought out a reprint titles like WANTED and Secret Origins, introduced the much loved 100-pagers and the tabloid series, brought Tarzan and Korak into the fold, published Chaykin's Ironwolf, Kaluta's Shadow and Cockrum's Legion. and so on. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a similar attempt by one company to branch out into as many gebres as DC did during those years. To its credit, Marvel was trying new stuff, too, especially in the magazine series like Savage Sword and Dracula, but I have to tell you, for all the griping some do about the stodginess of DC, the Marvel seemed to be playing catch-up with DC. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Mar 19, 2016 10:19:43 GMT -5
So I guess the question is, why didn't it work? Why do we as a group of consumers like the same old stuff so much more?
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Post by Prince Hal on Mar 19, 2016 10:29:52 GMT -5
So I guess the question is, why didn't it work? Why do we as a group of consumers like the same old stuff so much more? Maybe part of the problem was that they were putting out so much that they couldn't afford to keep a title going until it found a niche. A lot of the titles we were talking about only lasted a handful of issues. And I think Marvel had an advantage as it had established itself as the "hip" altenative to DC, and they could afford to match DC title for title, whether it was reprints, horror, whatever. |
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Crimebuster
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Post by Crimebuster on Mar 19, 2016 12:14:05 GMT -5
I also think that while DC was putting out a ton of interesting new ideas, the actual comics weren't always that great. Ideas are not stories. Marvel's stuff from the time was just done better. I love this era of DC for its inventiveness, and I love reading the weird stories that came out of it, but a lot of them are more untapped potential than good comics.
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Post by Batflunkie on Mar 20, 2016 17:38:19 GMT -5
Off the top of my head, I can't think of a similar attempt by one company to branch out into as many gebres as DC did during those years. To its credit, Marvel was trying new stuff, too, especially in the magazine series like Savage Sword and Dracula, but I have to tell you, for all the griping some do about the stodginess of DC, the Marvel seemed to be playing catch-up with DC. Agreed, even if Marvel came blazing into the silver-age like a bat out of hell, DC's attempts at broadening both it's characters as well as it's genres are certainly admirable. Deadman and Hawk & Dove were probably the most "out there" in terms of plot and scope, and were probably some of the better attempts at one-upping Marvel |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Mar 23, 2016 22:08:53 GMT -5
 Hawkman #3 Great cover.. though it's the back up story. Really good art in this one. 'The Fear that Haunted Hawkman' Shiera is gardening near a creepy Egyptian statue, and she sees a weird sight... I woman suddenly runs away terrified from her fiance! Then the same thing happens to her dog Penny (who I guess we're supposed to know?). Very odd. Later, Hawkman and Hawkgirl are called on to capture some crooks on 'Pogo Flyers'.. the do so easily... until the leader ends up in front of that same statue... and Hawkman is terrified of him! Shaken by the experience, Hawkman does lots of manly policing while the newly encouraged crime boss improves his Pogo Flyers and gets a new gang. Hawkman takes out the gang easily in the rematch, but is still terrified of the leader. Luckily, Hawkgirl takes him down. Hawkman admits the fear thing (since he had no choice) and his wife tells him about the statue. Rather than a curse or magic or something, there's actually pretend science at work! They reverse it, and all is well! Really good story, if a little over the top in the 60s gender role department. I love how every crook that can take to the air in the DCU ends up in the Hawks' town. Lucky for them the bad guy designs are always so much fun! 'Birds in the Guilded Cage' The Hawks find some crooks on their way to visit Hawk Valley, and are forced to fight them unarmed. No problem, really, though, until a superintelligent alien owl slaps a giant bird cage around them. It's a NICE super-intelligent alien owl, though.. it has a forcefield around the cage so the mobsters can't shoot them. It then tells the Hawks' they are welcome for the save and flies off... apparently it's thoughts are on too high a wavelength for it to listen.. it can only send. Yeah, you can't make this stuff up! (or I guess you can if you're Gardner Fox!) Of course, Carter was able to pretty much read it's mind and get it's origin story for us, so that's nice. Too bad he couldn't say 'we got this'. But all is not lost! Hawkman sent some birds after the mobsters, so they know exactly where they are! The alien owl thingy is there to protect them again, but luckily, Hawkman has sussed out their aerial manuver sign language from watching them for like 10 seconds before, so he gets them to back off, the catch the bad guys, and the alien owls go home. The end! Clearly, this is one of those 'build a story around this cool cover' stories. Pretty high on the silver age crazy, but in essence the usual DC silver age story. Bad guy gets found, gets away, gets caught the 2nd time. |
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Post by Prince Hal on Mar 23, 2016 22:57:04 GMT -5
I also think that while DC was putting out a ton of interesting new ideas, the actual comics weren't always that great. Ideas are not stories. Marvel's stuff from the time was just done better. I love this era of DC for its inventiveness, and I love reading the weird stories that came out of it, but a lot of them are more untapped potential than good comics. If that's so, it may also be that for whatever reason (I suspect financial), many of those comics were gone within just a few issues. I'm guessing that DC couldn't keep paying the bills for them, especially when the big guns (and I'm guessing here) weren't selling as well as they had before the Marvel surge. Certainly GL and Flash were floundering; the former lost its direction despite some nice Gil Kane art and the latter lost Infantino's art -- nuff said. And I'm sure that the noticeable difference between Weisinger's stable and the rest of DC didn't help because DC's mainstay, that in many ways established its brand, was still seen as oriented toward younger readers. Deadman was a notable success, artistically anyway, as was Bat Lash. It probably helped that they both kept their original creative teams together. Maybe DC tried too much at once and stretched their dollars and their talent too thin? They were putting out about 8 more books a month than Marvel, and even so were playing catch-up. Marvel was hitting its stride in 1968 with the new distribution deal and thus, new books hitting the stands. But theirs were of already proven commodities like Iron Man, Captain America, Sub-Mariner and Hulk. Meanwhile, DC had to combine two heroes in one book (Atom and Hawkman) to try to keep both alive. SHIELD only lasted a year or so, but the spy thing had run its course. Don't know why Dr. Strange didn't make a go of it, but they were the only notable casualties I remeber for Marvel. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Mar 24, 2016 17:06:46 GMT -5
Hawkman #3 Great cover.. though it's the back up story. Really good art in this one. 'The Fear that Haunted Hawkman' Shiera is gardening near a creepy Egyptian statue, and she sees a weird sight... I woman suddenly runs away terrified from her fiance! Then the same thing happens to her dog Penny (who I guess we're supposed to know?). Very odd. Later, Hawkman and Hawkgirl are called on to capture some crooks on 'Pogo Flyers'.. the do so easily... until the leader ends up in front of that same statue... and Hawkman is terrified of him! Shaken by the experience, Hawkman does lots of manly policing while the newly encouraged crime boss improves his Pogo Flyers and gets a new gang. Hawkman takes out the gang easily in the rematch, but is still terrified of the leader. Luckily, Hawkgirl takes him down. Hawkman admits the fear thing (since he had no choice) and his wife tells him about the statue. Rather than a curse or magic or something, there's actually pretend science at work! They reverse it, and all is well! Really good story, if a little over the top in the 60s gender role department. I love how every crook that can take to the air in the DCU ends up in the Hawks' town. Lucky for them the bad guy designs are always so much fun! 'Birds in the Guilded Cage' The Hawks find some crooks on their way to visit Hawk Valley, and are forced to fight them unarmed. No problem, really, though, until a superintelligent alien owl slaps a giant bird cage around them. It's a NICE super-intelligent alien owl, though.. it has a forcefield around the cage so the mobsters can't shoot them. It then tells the Hawks' they are welcome for the save and flies off... apparently it's thoughts are on too high a wavelength for it to listen.. it can only send. Yeah, you can't make this stuff up! (or I guess you can if you're Gardner Fox!) Of course, Carter was able to pretty much read it's mind and get it's origin story for us, so that's nice. Too bad he couldn't say 'we got this'. But all is not lost! Hawkman sent some birds after the mobsters, so they know exactly where they are! The alien owl thingy is there to protect them again, but luckily, Hawkman has sussed out their aerial manuver sign language from watching them for like 10 seconds before, so he gets them to back off, the catch the bad guys, and the alien owls go home. The end! Clearly, this is one of those 'build a story around this cool cover' stories. Pretty high on the silver age crazy, but in essence the usual DC silver age story. Bad guy gets found, gets away, gets caught the 2nd time. Hey, I have that one! (I don't remember anything about it, but this is the first comics you've talked about on this thread where I own the orignal.) |
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Post by Batflunkie on Mar 24, 2016 18:06:01 GMT -5
I also think that while DC was putting out a ton of interesting new ideas, the actual comics weren't always that great. Ideas are not stories. Marvel's stuff from the time was just done better. I love this era of DC for its inventiveness, and I love reading the weird stories that came out of it, but a lot of them are more untapped potential than good comics. Let me preface this by saying that this is a wildly outlandish hypothetical, but I think that using Gardner Fox as the measuring stick for the "company's artistic standard"/what the fans wanted might have hampered them from getting on an even playing field with Marvel sooner That being said, I love Gardner's stuff |
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