The World's Finest Teamups--Part I

In the Golden Age, DC put out a couple oversized, omnibus books. Comic Cavalcade (initially) was dedicated to the All-American superheros: Flash, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman, while World's Finest (called World's Best for the first issue only) featured Superman, Batman, Boy Commandos and several other features. These comics cost a little more (15 cents instead of a dime), but they contained 92 pages, so it was worth the extra nickel.

Initially, there were no Batman and Superman teamups in World's Finest, with the notable exception of the covers, which generally featured Batman, Robin & Superman behaving like, well, teenagers. Here's a particularly amusing example:



But inside the book there would always be a Batman story and a Superman story, with no crossover.

That changed with World's Finest #71, July-August, 1954. DC decided to slim down the book to the standard 36 pages (including covers), and pare the price back to a dime. They maintained a couple of the backups (Green Arrow and Tomahawk), so to fit the other two features they were combined into one story.

This was not technically the first crossover of Batman and Superman. There was a one-shot teamup in Superman #76, in which (improbably) Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent share a room aboard a ship and accidentally discover each other's identity. However, outside the comics Superman and Batman had often paired up in the Superman radio series.

The first seven issues (WF #71-77) were illustrated by Curt Swan, who would go on to the great Superman artist of the 1960s and 1970s. But in WF #78 the series was (mostly) turned over to Dick Sprang. Sprang had been a longtime penciller of Batman stories and his style worked with Superman as well.

Sprang's specialty was perspective, and he always seemed to have the "camera" aimed in the right direction to give the reader the most entertainment. Here's a terrific example from WF #80:



Note that in the first shot, we get the crowd looking up at Batman and Robin, and in the second, we get almost exactly the opposite angle. This was a continuing theme with Sprang.

Sprang would go on to do the lion's share of the next 40 issues of World's Finest. Along the way there were a couple of significant stories.

In WF #88, Luthor and the Joker teamed up in Superman and Batman's Greatest Foes, a story in which the respective nemeses apparently go straight and set up a robot-building business together. Of course, it's just a front for a new criminal endeavor. This is the first super-villain team-up of the Silver Age and one of only a handful in DC history at that point.

World's Finest #90 featured The Super-Batwoman, the story where Batman decides to allow Batwoman to continue her crime-fighting career. He had forced her to retire in Detective #233 by discovering her secret identity, but now he was convinced that she had what it took to handle criminals.

In World's Finest #113, Bat-Mite and Mr Mxyzptlk teamed up. Although neither was truly a villain, this is still a significant early crossover. The Joker and Luthor got together again in WF #129, while Bat-Mite and Mr M renewed their acquaintance in #123.

By this time the editorial reins had been handed over to Jack Schiff and the stories suffered for a number of years with the same monsters, aliens and weird transformations that plagued Batman and Detective of the era. Dick Sprang only did three stories after WF #119, including WF #135's The Menace of the Future Man, his last work in the comics for many years. Schiff's own finale as editor was #140; in the next issue Weisinger took over this book, and that's a pretty good breakpoint.

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Number 114


Ghost Gallery #1


In his Senate testimony EC Comics publisher Bill Gaines* claimed the horror comic as his invention, but that claim itself was an invention. The EC-style horror comic that became popular in the early 1950s was his and Feldstein's, but horror comics had been around in one form or another since the earliest comic books. Even the superhero titles had their share of horror elements: vampires, witches, and monsters.

This story, the first of the Ghost Gallery By Drew Murdoch series from Jumbo Comics #42, August, 1942, fits into the earlier mode of horror comic, a gothic story: old dark mansion in the swamp, ghosts, and a mysterious, murderous thing.

Grand Comics Database identifies the artist as Bob Hebberd. Fiction House, publisher of Jumbo Comics, utilized the Jerry Iger comic book shop so often several artists worked on one story. Most of the stories in Fiction House Comics were just excuses to put sexy, leggy girls into the panels.** They were popular with their readership, servicemen and teenage boys. The stories didn't have to make much sense, and they often didn't.

This first Ghost Gallery story seems fairly well done, even for Fiction House. It's full of clichés, but it actually has a story that propels it for six pages, and it's done without most of the panels showing a half-dressed girl. Ghost Gallery must've been a popular series. It continued for over 120 issues of Jumbo Comics.

*Gaines' testimony is on film in the excellent documentary, Tales From The Crypt From The Comics To Television on the DVD, Tales From The Crypt, Season One.

**Hey gang, I don't have anything against sexy, leggy girls.

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Kid Flash

The DC Silver Age superheros appeared to have teenage sidekicks almost at random. Batman did certainly, Superman did sort of, but Green Lantern, Atom and Hawkman all eschewed the buddy combination, as did later DC heroes like the Spectre, Metamorpho and the Creeper.

But Flash got Kid Flash, and since it became so significant an event in the DC Universe, it is worth looking back on. Kid Flash first appeared in Flash #110. Wally is Iris West's nephew and Barry feels an affinity for the young lad, who's clearly one of the Flash's biggest fans. But when the Flash appears himself (of course Barry slipping away), lightning does strike twice.



I suspect what happened was a suggestion from the publisher for a Kid Flash character, because that is one of the lamest origins for a DC character ever. Oh, by a wild coincidence he got hit while by lightning standing in front of some beakers and test tubes, just as Barry did? That's lame and intentionally so.

Like all of DC's young heroes, he starts out as a boy and quickly becomes a teen. In Flash #110 he looks to be about 8 years old; by the end of the 1960s he will be clearly a man.

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Number 113


The Weapon To Win The War!


Wow, gang! A genuine Buck Rogers Sonic Ray, with uranium power chamber, fission heat eliminators, cyclotron chamber and sonic resonator…only $2.50! A bargain like that you won't find from the Pentagon, where a weapon like this would end up costing at least $250,000 each.

This ad came from a coverless early 1950s issue of Boy Comics, and looks to be like what we need to win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Arm our G.I.'s and Marines with one each of these and in no time we'll have our enemies throwing up their hands in surrender and screaming for mercy as the sonic rays cook their brains and turn their internal organs to molten liquid.

Wonder if J. Whitford Gordon Sales Co is still around in Chicago? I'll have to check it out. Maybe I'll send the Secretary Of Defense a link to this blog.

Or this "weapon" could be just a fancy flashlight. But then, you don't think anyone selling ray guns in comic book ads would do anything but sell the real article, would you? I mean, look at the explanation of how this deadly little piece works in the essay, "Here's What Happens When Buck Fires His Sonic Ray." You'll be a believer in no time, just like me. No one would just make this stuff up, would they?


Click on pictures for full-size images.

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The Five Most Important DC Comics of the Silver Age

This is not really a hard thing to work out. First, of course, is Showcase #4, the comic that started the superhero revival that is probably the biggest aspect of the Silver Age. To give you an idea, during the 1950s, DC Comics published 3,397 different comics, of which 849 were superhero-oriented (including Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen). In the 1960s, DC published 3,579 different comics, of which 1,629 were superhero-oriented. The return of the Flash kicked off that surge.



Next up is Adventure #247, which introduced the Legion of Superheroes:



The Legion was one of DC's best features during the Silver Age. The combination of a futuristic setting with super-powered characters proved irresistable to readers of the time and provided seemingly endless plot possibilities.

The third major DC comic of the Silver Age is Brave & Bold #28. Now that DC had brought back Green Lantern, DC combined him with the Flash, Martian Manhunter, Wonder Woman and Aquaman into a fighting team called the Justice League of America. This served as a marketing gimmick for the individual magazines featuring those heroes (although at the time both Aquaman and Martian Manhunter were backup features in Adventure and Detective respectively), but it also apparently sold very well on its own, leading Marvel Comics' head honcho Martin Goodman to instruct Stan Lee to create a superhero team, which of course became the Fantastic Four.



The next major DC comic of the Silver Age may not be as apparent as the others, but it's a key to understanding the appeal of the superhero titles during this era:



Prior to this, DC had reprinted almost none of their older stories. Superman Annual #1 gave recognition to the fact that comics had a back story that it was important to understand in order to get the most out of current issues. It also represented a promise from the editors to you, that if you didn't know the back story, DC would fill you in over the years with reprints of their older tales. DC did a phenomenal amount of reprinting in the 1960s and early 1970s. Even Marvel got into the act once their comparatively recent tales were old enough to attract new readers.

The final major issue is obvious:



In the very first appearance of the Flash in Showcase #4, we learned that Barry Allen had read comics featuring the Jay Garrick Golden Age Flash. So it seemed only logical to pair the two up. But there was a problem; Jay Garrick (the gentleman on the right) had been a fictional character only on Barry Allen's Earth. The solution hit upon by Gardner Fox was to postulate an alternate Earth, called Earth-2, where the Golden Age superheroes had reigned.

This opened the door for a slew of Golden Age/Silver Age crossovers, about which I have a post planned for the future. It also created numerous headaches for DC's editors as time wore on, but that was not apparent in the 1960s.

Other comics that were crucial to the Silver Age DC, but perhaps not as critical as these:

Showcase #22, featuring the origin of the Hal Jordan Green Lantern. Lost in the memory of the Silver Age is the fact that it took three years after Flash's debut issue for DC to bring back its second GA hero in a new form. After this the pace quickened, with Aquaman, Atom and Hawkman all getting new launches.

Detective #225, with the first appearance of the Martian Manhunter, which actually predates Showcase #4. However, MM was a new character, not a rebirth of an old one.

Detective #327, with the "New-Look" Batman. Certainly the Batman TV series had a huge impact on DC Comics, but it is hard to say that this really spawned the show. Indeed, it is arguable that far more influential was Batman #155, which started the practice of bringing back Batman's Golden Age rivals (in this case, the Penguin).

Action #242, with the introduction of Brainiac. This is arguably the beginning of the Silver Age Superman under Mort Weisinger, although his name would not appear as editor for another few months. Weisinger's tenure running the Superman books was extremely influential, as he standardized the looks and mannerisms of the characters and presided over a substantially more serious hero than had been the case in the past. Superman in the 1940s and 1950s, perhaps influenced by Captain Marvel, had a touch of whimsy to it. Under Weisinger most of that was gone (with the notable exception of the Lois Lane series).

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Number 112


The Ghost Rider and the Fire Ghost!


This is story number two from Ghost Rider #1, 1950, published by M.E. Comics.

Gardner Fox, who wrote hundreds, maybe thousands, of comic book scripts in his life, wrote the Ghost Rider stories. Fox loaded the balloons with comic book sound effects. On tier one of page three, for example, we get "Aieeee!" "Ayah!" and "Waughhhh!" There's no record of what English novelist Evelyn Waugh thought of his name being used as onomatopoeia in a comic book.

The artwork by Dick Ayers is up to the usual standards of excellence for this series. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Ayers, who freelanced for several of the major publishers, and did outstanding work for each and every one.

I'm not glossing over the racist attitudes toward the Native Americans in this story. There actually were some comic books that used Indians in respectful ways, but not in this story.

Previous postings of Ghost Rider stories were in Pappy's #95 and Pappy's #50.

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Number 111



Popped Wheat's Giveaway Smilin' Jack


Smilin' Jack was a popular newspaper comic strip which ran from 1933 to 1973. Forty years is a respectable run for any strip, especially one that was centered around aviation. That field seemed much more exotic in the early 1930s than it was in the early 1970s. The creator/artist was Zack Mosley (1906-1994).

This posting is of a 16-page Popped Wheat giveaway comic book from 1947, with reprints of a 1938 Smilin' Jack continuity. There were four titles in the Popped Wheat series, Terry and the Pirates, Little Orphan Annie and Dick Tracy, all strips from the Chicago Tribune Syndicate. There was only one issue of each title.


This issue of Smilin' Jack seems to be pretty typical of the comic strip I read from the late 1950s until its demise in '73; it has its soap opera elements mixed in with comic relief. The gimmick of the lothario Downwind Johnson keeping his face away from the reader was used with great effect for the life of the strip. The gimmick of Fat Stuff popping his buttons into the mouth of a waiting chicken seems like something that should have been ended right after it began. Fat Stuff--and his girlfriend--are pretty awful racial caricatures, but that sort of thing was more acceptable in that time.

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