Number 937


I'd walk a camel for a mile


All American Western was the continuation of DC Comics' All American Comics. Western comics were popular in the late '40s and superheroes had lost their audience, so All American added "Western" to its banner and covered another genre entirely. This issue, #126, is the last under that title. In 1952 All American Western was canceled and replaced by All American Men of War, a title that lived on until 1966.

The last we see of Western action hero Johnny Thunder he and his girl are watching their horses return to them in the desert. They had just had an adventure with some Arab raiders on camels who tried to kill them. It's probably a story not likely to decrease tensions between our cultures. But camels in the Southwest, imported as pack animals, were a reality. The experiment of using them in the deserts of the United States territories just didn't work and by the Civil War the experiment was essentially over. As Western historian Will Bagley writes:

It wasn't that the camels couldn't adapt to the West; the West couldn't adapt to camels. They were not friendly animals, even to fellow camels, and they held grudges. Despite their bad temper and ability to spit the contents of their stomachs with the accuracy of a Kentucky marksman, it was camel stench that helped do them in. Odor usually was not an issue for Western muleskinners, but the slightest whiff of camel stench played havoc with a mule train. Sometime in 1865, camels stampeded a pack train bound for Missoula and turned the whiskey-bound town's Fourth of July celebration into Montana mud. It was not long before camels were banished from northern mining camps.

Their vast advantage as pack animals notwithstanding, it was America's affection for horses that doomed Western camel caravans. Camels and their legends long survived among the boomtowns and ranches of Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Utah. A grizzled sideshow camel with a U.S. brand turned up in San Antonio in 1903. Arizona declared camels extinct in 1913, but hunters reported seeing them in the desert around Yuma into the 1950s.

As interesting as the history is, and it probably influenced this Johnny Thunder episode, it wasn't noted by the writer or editor Julius Schwartz, who loved to drop these types of facts into stories in the form of footnotes.

"Phantoms of the Desert" is written by Robert Kanigher, drawn by Carmine Infantino and Seymour Barry, from All American Western #126, 1952.

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Number 418


Toth's Thunder


The headline of this posting has a double meaning; not only am I showing you a 12-page Johnny Thunder story from All American Western #108, 1949, but an opinion piece artist Alex Toth wrote 30 years later for Philippine Comics Revue Magazine #1. Never one to hide his displeasure, Toth rumbles forth like a force of nature with his views on the then-current state of comic book art.

The Johnny Thunder story was penciled by Toth, inked by Frank Giacoia and written by Robert Kanigher. In the postwar era, one of my favorite periods from the history of comics, there was a lot of talent. Toth had major talent and was also working with some gifted contemporaries at DC Comics. In 1979 when Toth threw down lightning bolts and shook the firmament with his thunderous opinions, you know he knew what he was talking about.

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Number 370


"Dragged to your death!"


I'm not a big Western fan, not of movies, books or comics, but I do enjoy the occasional story if it's well done. Robert Kanigher, editor, scripted this story for Alex Toth, artist, and Frank Giacoia, inker. It appeared in All-American Western #107, April-May 1949. I love Toth's dynamic, action-filled artwork. Giacoia inked it in DC's late-1940s house style, borrowed from Milton Caniff.

The Indian characters are treated the same way they were treated in movies, as stereotypes.

I like Johnny Thunder's rock 'n' roll hairstyle, anticipating the look of a decade hence. Something that bugs me is how a white horse can be called Black Lightning. And wasn't Johnny Thunder a name borrowed from another DC character of a couple years earlier? And wasn't Black Lightning the name of a superhero two or three decades later? I guess comic books were the original recyclers: plots, art, names, everything used again and again!

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Thunder And Lightning

In JLA #37-38, DC brought back the JSA for the third teamup with the Justice League. Once again, they continued to rotate the characters.

In this story, Johnny Thunder and his Thunderbolt appeared for the first time since the 1940s. Johnny is probably the least famous JSA member. He effectively had a genie (the Thunderbolt) who would appear whenever he spoke the words "Say you". The humor arose because Johnny apparently didn't know those were the magic words, although of course he managed to say them by accident many times. He was a major DC character of the 1940s, appearing in many issues of Flash Comics (including #1) and All-Star (including as a charter member of the JSA in #3), as well as the first three issues of World's Best/World's Finest and World's Fair Comics 1940.

Fate was not very kind to Johnny. In Flash Comics #86, a backup character was introduced named the Black Canary. Six issues later, Thunder was out and the Canary was in; she also fairly quickly eased him from of his role in the Justice Society.

In this story, Johnny does know the words "Say you". He has been invited to a meeting of the JSA once again. However, upon learning that there are Earth-1 counterparts to some of his old mates, he becomes curious as to what his doppelganger is like. It turns out that the Johnny Thunder of Earth-1 is a small-time crook who remembers reading the old Johnny Thunder comics in the 1940s. He kayos Earth-2's Johnny and takes over control of the Thunderbolt.

Realizing that the JLA will be tough to beat, he commands the Thunderbolt to arrange things so that none of the JLA heroes will arise. The Thunderbolt prevents Krypton from exploding, keeps the lightning from breaking through the window of Barry Allen's lab, stops Abin Sur's rocket from crashing, etc. Sadly, Bruce Wayne's parents are not rescued:



Since Johnny has not shown up for the JSA reunion, his old mates are worried. They track him down to Earth-1 where they are stunned to learn that the JLA does not exist. They battle Johnny and his Thunderbolt, but are unable to prevent them from getting away with magic. They discover from interviewing Thunder's henchmen that there are no superheroes on Earth-1 and never have been. So they decide to mimic the JLA themselves, using their powers to fake the Earth-1 heroes' abilities.

They trounce Johnny and the Thunderbolt, but the former soon figures out that it was the JSA members in disguise. In response, he tells the Thunderbolt to arrange for it that five of his cronies become the JLA heroes Batman, Superman, Flash, Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter. Thus his criminal henchmen become supervillians, setting the stage for a battle in the following issue.

In JLA #38, the heroes of Earth-2 battle the villains of Earth-A (since Earth-1 is now an alternate world). But the heroes prove too much for the villains because they are accustomed to using their powers while the villains are still new to the experience. Of course, this makes little sense given that the Thunderbolt had gone back in time to make them super-powered beings:



(Update: Now that I think of it, this is probably why Gardner Fox did not have the Thunderbolt rescue Bruce Wayne's parents, because if they had, what Hawkman would be suggesting here is to allow them to die again.)

Johnny escapes to the moon where he forces the Thunderbolt to create three new villains, but in the end they are defeated, and so it's a battle of the T-Bolt and Dr Fate. But Johnny gets caught up in the fight and is being battered, so he finally wishes that none of this had ever happened.

And so:

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