Creepin' Creeps

"Meet the Men Behind the Creeper," a text piece from 1968’s Showcase #73, the issue that introduced DC’s jester of justice himself - the Creeper! As usual, Steve Ditko is ridiculously tight-lipped about his personal life, so instead we get an in-depth look at Creeper’s co-creator, Don Segall. So far as I have discerned, “The Coming of the Creeper" and a single Inferior Five story were Segall’s only work at DC, with the rest of his time in comics spent at Tower and Dell (where he wrote about half of Kona, Monarch of Monster Isle, and may have created Dell’s bizarre superheroic versions of Dracula and Frankenstein).

After the initial Creeper story, Segall apparently left comics for television writing. Sadly, he passed away in 1994, but master comics historian Mark Evanier has a lovely write-up on him here.

Andrew Reads Batman: Pt2 -Knightfall vol 1

Yeah, I ain't listing all
the creators on this
thing...

Knightfall... Well... yes.

Knightfall is not the first Batman thing I've read for this little project (see episode one here, if you want some background)... but it's the first Batman stuff I've felt really compelled to write about. Knightfall was something I was really looking forwards to reading because, of course, Bane is the main villain in the series. Bane was also the main villain in Dark Knight Rises -- so it all comes together, right?

Well... I guess. This is a review specifically of the trade paperback Knightfall Part One: Broken Bat. This trade is what I would like to call a mixed bag. It's a very 1990s mixed bag too. So why don't we start up our engines and take a closer look at this thing, after the jump?

Andrew Reads Batman: Pt1 -My entire collection.

So I was watching the Dark Knight Rises surrounded by a bunch of other comic geeks and I realised -- I really haven't read much Batman. In fact what I realised while watching DKR was that I've actually seen more Batman movies than I've read Batman comic books.


A quick check of my collection reveals that I own a grand total of 3 Batman comics, and I've only read 1 of them. I have a couple of trades, but not enough to 'get' a lot of the references the other comic geeks were raving about when they saw DKR. This made me sad, because I think it was my favourite Batman movie ever. (That's not saying much, I only really like the original Burton movie otherwise.)

My impression of who Batman is, it seems, is mostly shaped by the handful of  major stories I've read -- Batman: Cult, The Killing Joke, and The Dark Knight Returns -- and of course by his guest appearances or secondary-starring roles in other things I've read like the JLA or Kingdom Come. If I'm totally honest my main impression of Batman is from my Batman in the Fifties TPB that I bought almost a decade ago.

Let's talk about He-Man.

Ever notice how in some action sequences in comics involving birds to show agitation or intensity they'll have feathers flying off from the bird? I know someone who's noticed this: penciller Phillip Tan on DC's new He-Man and the Masters of the Universe series.

For some reason He-Man has no eyes...
I thought this was an 80s concept not a
90s one...

Oh, you haven't heard of DC's new He-Man and the Masters of the Universe series? Oh, well let me quickly do a synopsis of the first issue for you. In issue one a young woodsman named Adam dreams of being a hero, so he sets out into the wide world only to find it's more dangerous than he expected.

Actually, y'know what? Stuff the synopsis stuff, I'm gunna do a summary of EVERY SINGLE THING that happens in the issue. Let's get started!

Zoning Issues

So it's safe to say that we like toy comics around these parts. Having picked up a bunch of different titles over the years, I noticed that DC's licensed comics in the '80s had one thing over their brethren at Marvel: the inclusion of "extras". Text pieces often appeared in the back pages of these books to provide world-building material, usually character bios, sometimes more. Across the four issues of the Tonka Spiral Zone tie-in, these were done as memos to the U.N. Security Council, all four of which are included here. Whether the information in these memos jibes with the show itself, I don't know - Spiral Zone has been one of the harder shows of the '80s for me to track down.

As an aside, possibly the strangest thing about the Spiral Zone mini was that it was drawn by ex-DC Comics editorial director Carmine Infantino, the man responsible for ushering in the Silver Age Flash and "New Look" Batman. I'm not sure if it's more or less weird than Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko being on Chuck Norris and the Karate Kommandos, though...

Green With Evil

"Yellow fear space-bug, you say? Sure, Hal! All is forgiven. Here, have a movie starring Ryan Reynolds."  

Zero Hour #1, by Dan Jurgens and Jerry Ordway.

Avengers #90 And the Stream of Consciousness.

Spoiler: This cover references
the LAST PAGE of the comic!

Avengers #90 is a Silver Age Super Hero comic. In fact it's probably one of the most Silver Age Super Hero comics I've ever read. A lot of people try and describe what makes a Silver Age comic. They usually use words like "Goofy" or "Silly" or even "Unrealistic", and I think that's missing the point, really.

Silver Age Super Hero comics had a certain style of writing to them which for various reasons is very stream-of-consciousness. Reading a lot of old DC and Marvel comics is like reading an Axe Cop story. Things flow from one idea to the next without even a sign of how the ideas connected in the writer's mind. Things travel from point to point at breakneck speed, and if you don't keep up you'll be completely freaking lost.

This can be the most glorious thing ever, or it can be horrible.

So, before we talk more about the origins of this writing style, and the differences between Marvel and DC let's take a little looksee at Avengers #90.

UnCOVERED Secrets

The art of the classic comic book cover is dying. It may, in fact, already be dead.

This might be a case of me being old before my time, but I feel that a strong comic book cover should sell you on the events that are going to transpire within the book it is attached to. It should not be a generic image of a single character standing there looking cool. That is not a good cover - that is a pin-up, and it does nothing to tell you about the story except that the character on the cover might be in it, a fact which is itself not even guaranteed.

In this letter column piece from DC's Secret Origins #40, then-editor Mark Waid discusses what went into making a classic DC Comics cover, describing what elements Silver Age editors knew would entice kiddies to give up their dimes.

This is knowledge, I feel, that has become lost over the years. Maybe, with the state of comics being what they are, and the tendency to "write for the trade", covers have lost their importance as sales tools. However, I still feel that covers are an important part of the craft of comic-making, and that the knowledge in this article needs to be passed on - even if, ironically, I didn't think artist Bill Wray's cover for this issue was actually very good.

(That is probably not in fact irony.)

Advertainment: Kryptonite Rocks!

Rocks were apparently a thing in the '70s. I don't know this first-hand, because I was negative four in 1978, but I have heard stories of pet rocks here and there - most of them along the lines of "wait, seriously, rocks?". So, what happens when an inexplicable fad meets a seminal icon of pop culture?

Yes, friends! Kryptonite rocks! Merchandise that combines the excitement of pet rocks with the implied promise of giving Superman a slow, agonizing death! They glow in the dark! It's KRYPTONASTIC, and I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!

What makes this particular ad even better is that I scanned it out of a Marvel comic, though I can no longer remember what one it was. I guess if a comic publisher would take money from the guys selling x-ray specs, they'd take it from anybody...

UK vs. USA #1: Make Sure It's Formatted

This is gunna be a big, long, rambling one folks. I wanna talk to you about the super interesting topic of comic book formats. So brace yourselves! Just a quick note up front that this article will basically be ignoring newspaper comic strips (and their reprints), and internet comics (and their reprints) just for simplicity's sake.

Can you guess which are the UK and which are the US comics?

THE BASICS
So let's talk about the essential difference between American comic books and British comic books. Not the stories or the characters. Not the themes, or style, or tone. Let's talk about the difference in format.

That Hilarious Racism and Xenophobia in Old Comics!

I'm glad you can tell they're not Korean or Chinese, Bucky.

There's a kind of strange attitude that I've noticed when people are reading old comics that says, "Well, they're old comics, of COURSE they're like that!" Sometimes this attitude is levelled against the structure of the plots, the art, and sometimes it's levelled against the social values represented in those old comics.

Of course they're racist! It's old comics!

This attitude tends to render these comics camp -- we laugh at the racism and xenophobia represented because, well, they're old! When talking about comics from the Super Hero 'Golden Age' (we'll talk about why I think the term 'Golden Age of Comics' is bullshit at another time) this dismissive attitude becomes heightened

It's hilarious when Superman tells us to slap a Jap, because it was World War II and that sort of attitude was acceptable back then. Of course it was okay to say all Germans were bad, or all Italians, or all Japs. After all, we were at war, weren't we?

A little look at 1940s Wonder Woman

So lately I've been reading my friend Andrew Hobart's copy of Wonder Woman Chronicles #1. It reprints Wondie's Golden Age stories from her very first appearance onwards.

I'll be perfectly honest, I'm not a fan of Wonder Woman. This has definitely coloured my reading of these old... ahhh... classics. I'm far, far, too aware of... well... the fact that Wonder Woman is a bondage fantasy. I can't help but speculate on what it must have been like to read these stories as a kid in the 1940s, completely oblivious to the cliches and visuals of bondage. Fetish inducing probably.

At least according to some doctors.

The Queer Case of the Gay Joker

First off, given the potentially volatile content related herein, I apologize in advance for the pun-title of my post. I don't mean any harm by it, but likewise could not resist referencing The Queer Case of the Murdering Butterfly.

I've had this nugget of information for a while, but only recently got the relevant scans done to illustrate that I didn't make it up, given the evidently obscure nature of the info. I don't want to misrepresent anything, so this post will take a little bit to get to the point. But, please, read on.

I've owned this one Batman book called the Comics Files Magazine Spotlight On Batman Files for a few years. It was published in 1986 by an independent group called Heroes Publishing Inc., who also put out guides to other comic properties along with sci-fi and horror TV shows. To the left and right are the front and back covers to their Batman book - click the thumbnails to enlarge.

The book describes Batman's history up to the time of publication, with chapters about the Golden Age, the New Look, the "Englehart/Rogers Age" and "the Miller Revolution". It covers creators who worked on the series, supporting cast members and villains, and includes interviews with Steve Englehart and Frank Miller (who gives insight into his "upcoming" Batman: Year One project).

But one factoid contained in the Batman Files book has always held my attention, and I've been curious about it ever since I first read it. It's buried in the introduction, which talks about what influenced Bob Kane, Jerry Robinson and Bill Finger. You can read it - highlighted - below.