Tracers: The Ape Cover Limit

I have read in several different places that Julius Schwartz had a file in his desk which proved that DC comics featuring apes on the cover sold better in general than comics without simians.  I believe that Schwartz even mentioned this in his autobiography, Man of Two Worlds.  It has also been claimed that to avoid overexposure, the number of ape covers was strictly limited by DC management to one per month.

This latter claim has never made a lot of sense to me.  If your objective as an editor or a publisher is to sell as many comic books as you can (and I suspect that is, or ought to be the goal), then why would you refrain from doing something that has been proven to work in the past?  And DC generally published 30 comics a month, would two gorilla covers really saturate the market?

So I decided to take a look at the matter.  I started with 1960 and used the DC Indexes Time Machine to look at all the covers for a given month quickly.  Note that the default option is for comics on sale in a given month, not cover dates.  It seemed reasonable to use that option, since the concern was not to have to many ape covers on the newsstands at once.

First observation: If DC was worried about saturating the market with similar covers, it sure doesn't show.  In 1960, as many others have noted, DC had an almost endless variety of covers featuring aliens, monsters and dinosaurs.  It was not until looking at comics on sale in April that I located an ape cover:

Okay, so it's a gorilla; I suspect that Schwartz meant ape as a very generic term.  The next month featured one of DC's most famous apes:

After an absence of apes in June, July included an alien ape:

DC then resisted the siren call of the apes until December:

Strange Adventures thus becomes the first series to hit two apes in one year.

And then came 1961.  I am astounded to report that I can find no comics that went on sale from DC in that year which included apes, gorillas, or monkeys on the cover.  There appears to be only one sensible conclusion; at this point, Schwartz had not yet developed his evidence about simians on the cover boosting the sales.

In January 1962, Grodd made his first cover appearance:

This is further evidence that Schwartz had not yet discovered the link between sales and gorillas, as Grodd had appeared four times already inside the comics.

The following month saw the debut of Bizarro Titano:

After three months's hiatus, a simian was prominently featured on the cover of Batman Annual #3:

And once again, there was a gap all the way to March 1963.  You might think it would be hard for Tomahawk, a revolutionary-era hero to encounter an ape.  You would be wrong:

In June of that year, we got one of the classic ape covers:

Let me tell you, if an gorilla is sliding into third base, it's a pretty brave fielder standing there waiting for the throw.

Grodd popped up on the first Flash Annual in August:

And the Great White Ape appeared in October's Star Spangled War #111 that same month, the first time we've seen two in the same calendar period.

But that's it for 1963.  Monsieur Mallah appeared on the cover of Doom Patrol #86 in January 1964:

Tomahawk's giant ape returned in May:

But then there was another gap until November when Jerry Lewis #86 featured a King-Kong type cover.  In December there were two ape covers: Hawkman #6 and Fox and Crow #90.

By this point I was getting pretty skeptical.  Out of 60 months and about 1800 comics, only 16 covers had featured an ape or a gorilla.  And 1965 was not much different, with only two ape covers.

Ah, but then came 1966, and suddenly the African invasion.  In January, came Strange Adventures #186:

In February there were two covers:

And Monsieur Mallah appeared on the cover of Brave & Bold #65.

After a couple months gap, an ape popped up on Sea Devils #30 in May, and Bob Hope #100 in June.  Nothing for July, but August saw Hawkman #16, September had King Colosso yet again in Tomahawk (this time shooting a bow and arrow no less), October had Jimmy Olsen marrying a female gorilla, and November's Showcase #66 had Bwana Beast duking it out with an ape.  All told, there were nine different covers with the simian theme in 1966.

And if you think about it, it makes sense that the editors at DC were pulling out all the stops that year.  Although the company as a whole did well with Batmania, the gains were very uneven.  Batman sales skyrocketed, but the Superman-related titles all dipped as did many other books.

In 1967, there were seven more ape-featured covers, with only two coming in one month: September had Jerry Lewis 103 and Plastic Man #7.

Overall impressions:

1. The number of ape covers do not seem excessive.  However, there certainly was a jump in 1966-67; those two years saw as many of those covers as had been seen in the six years previous.

2. There is little evidence for a hard and fast rule against two ape covers in one month.  There were three months where apes did appear on two covers.  I suspect that the real edict was not to overdo it.

In 1968, the number of simian covers did drop, at least until this series launched:

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Number 1045


A heretofore untold story, now told


Here's a story I have never told publicly. In 1962, at age 15, I wrote DC editor Julius Schwartz a suck-up letter. I told him he was my favorite comic book editor, I loved all his comic books, and hoped someday to write for him. Could I please get a look at a script to see how it's done? After I sent the letter I told Big Pappy, thinking he'd congratulate me for my cleverness. He snorted, "He'll see right through that, boy. Your letter will just get thrown away." I burned crimson with the realization that Big Pappy was right. I had humiliated myself and my name would be forever branded onto Julius Schwartz's brain as a brown-noser looking for a freebie.

A couple of weeks later I got a Gardner Fox Hawkman script in the mail, inscribed by Julie himself. I took it to Big Pappy and, gloating, showed him. He didn't react as I expected. He just shrugged. Oh well. I got what I wanted. While still embarrassed by my ploy to get it, it's time to show you what Mr. Schwartz sent me nearly 50 years ago. (When I scanned it I removed my name.)

Julie rewrote a lot of Fox's captions and dialogue. He was the editor, so he edited. The only copy of the finished story I now have, beautifully drawn by Joe Kubert, is in the DC Hawkman Archive, so I scanned it from that volume. I'm not showing you the script and finished product page-by-page for comparison, but take it from me: it was published word-for-word from the Fox/Schwartz script.

P.S. I never submitted a script to Julius Schwartz or any other comic book editor. Big Pappy saw what Mr. Schwartz apparently didn't: I was just a brown-noser looking for a freebie!

From The Brave and the Bold #44, 1962:

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The Luckiest Character Ever?

My vote goes to the Black Canary. She got a very late start, debuting as a guest star in the Johnny Thunder feature in Flash #86. Johnny Thunder had a long history in the DC universe at that point, having appeared in such historic comics as NY Worlds Fair Comics #2, Flash Comics #1, and All-Star #3, in which he became a charter member of the Justice Society of America. And yet just six issues after her debut as a guest star, she not only bumped Johnny Thunder from Flash Comics, but she was granted a cover appearance:

With the exception of some small insets, it was the only time a feature other than Flash or Hawkman was highlighted on the cover of that magazine.

But even before her own series debuted, she appeared with the Justice Society of America in All-Star #38, and with the next issue she began appearing on the cover:

By #40, she had replaced Johnny Thunder in the JSA; he never again appeared in the Golden Age. She appeared on every cover until #45.

At that point, she found herself without a feature as Flash Comics had been canceled by DC. By rights she should have disappeared like Starman and Dr Fate and many others had. Except... she got lucky. You see, she was not the only JSA member without a feature; longtime members the Flash and the Hawkman had their series canceled at that time as well, and Green Lantern was on his last legs. All-American had been converted to a western comic title the year before, and GL's own book mostly featured Streak the Wonder Dog on the cover for the last few issues. So she continued appearing in every issue of All-Star and occasionally popped up on the cover as well, until the JSA made its last appearance in #57.

Fast forward 12 years. In Flash #137, the JSA made its first appearance since that last issue of All-Star. Although the bulk of the story concerned Jay Garrick and Barry Allen teaming up against Vandal Savage, at the very end the two Flashes freed the old JSA members who'd been captured by that villain:

Ironically, as you can see, the Black Canary did not appear there. Instead Johnny Thunder returns. Note as well that Wonder Woman is in that scene; that's the Earth-2 (JSA) Wondy. She has a suggestion:

And sure enough, only a month or two later, JLA #21 appeared on the newsstands, inaugurating the annual "Crisis" teamups between the JLA and the JSA. But guess who did not make an appearance?

The GA Wonder Woman vanished and in her place was:

The Black Canary. There would appear to be two possible, non-exclusive reasons for her appearance rather than the GA Diana Prince:

1. DC was still unwilling to acknowledge the notion of the GA and SA Wonder Woman being separate people, as it raised uncomfortable questions about whether the GA Superman and Batman were not the same characters we were reading in the 1960s. I note that the GA Superman and Batman did not appear for several years in these teamups (although oddly enough the GA Robin was prominently featured in the 1967 crossover).

2. There was little to differentiate the GA Wonder Woman and the Silver Age version (at the time). The GA and SA Green Lanterns had markedly different costumes, as did the two Flashes. The SA Hawkman hadn't entered the JLA as yet, so his similarity with the GA version didn't matter.

At any rate, Black Canary got lucky and was tapped for that very important team-up. And the next one:

She missed the next one, but there was a big consolation prize, as she was featured in Brave and Bold #61 in a Starman teamup:

In which, by the way, we learned that she had married her longtime sweetheart, detective Larry Lance, who had appeared with her back in the Golden Age Flash stories.

The Starman/Black Canary pairing got a second outing the following issue (with a guest appearance by Wildcat). Those two issues are superbly entertaining, with terrific art by Murphy Anderson, but for whatever reason they did not result in a solo book for either character, and so it might appear that her luck had run out. Still, she got back into the JSA/JLA teamups with JLA #46-47, but then she got a bad break; in JLA #55 not only did the Earth-2 Robin appear, but so did that world's Wonder Woman. A big reason why the Black Canary had been featured in all those team-ups save one so far was that she was the only other female member of the JSA.

And then she got lucky again, and this time it was really a big break. In Wonder Woman #178 Diana Prince lost her super-powers and became an Emma Peel clone. A few months later, in JLA #69 WW left the Justice League to pursue her non-super career. This left the JLA as an all-male bastion, and in 1969, that was becoming an increasingly untenable situation. So a few issues later, when it comes time for the annual JLA/JSA teamup, a couple of things happen:

1. Larry Lance dies, heroically.

2. Black Canary decides to switch to our world:

We'd love to see you bare, but we can understand why you can't bear to go on living on Earth-2. And so she becomes a JLA member effective with the next issue, JLA #75. But there is one little problem. Black Canary never had any super-powers on Earth-2; like Batman she was just a good fighter. So she got lucky again; it turns out that the trip over to Earth-1 gave her some sort of sonic scream that was quite effective (if hard to control):

And you can even argue that's not the end of her lucky streak. In the Crisis on Infinite Earths series, one of the very notable casualties was the Barry Allen Flash, who had been responsible for opening up the whole Earth-1, Earth 2, Earth X+1 can of worms. And yet the Black Canary survived, and even thrived beyond that. Of course, she did have to put up with the insufferable Green Arrow for awhile as a boyfriend....

But all that is beyond the scope of this blog. Black Canary, you must be Irish!

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