Comics
I’m wondering which writer on “Futurama” is a closet Magnus Robot Fighter fan.
This occurred to me recently after reading “Russ Manning’s Magnus Robot Fighter 4000 A.D.” Vol. 3, the last of the hardback Dark Horse Archives collecting the Gold Key title of the same (unwieldy) name. (For the record, it contains “Magnus” #15-21, Aug 66-Feb 68.)
For the uninitiated, Russ Manning was a brilliant artist who died relatively young (52), best known for his sleek and beautiful work on Tarzan, especially adaptations of the first 11 Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novels. Manning illustrated the Sunday “Tarzan” newspaper comic strip from 1965 to 1979, the daily “Tarzan” comic strip from 1969 to 1972 and Gold Key’s “Tarzan” comic book from 1965 to 1972.
Dark Horse has collected some of this work, but I have yet to see it. But I have devoured the three volumes of “Magnus Robot Fighter 4000 A.D.”, which was Manning’s labor of love. Manning created the concept (of a tough guy in white go-go boots and a red chain-mail mini-dress saving the future by karate-chopping his way through hordes of robots), drew the first 21 issues and wrote most of them as well. And while Magnus’ outfit was, um, odd (even by SF standards), the art was magnicent: The men were manly, the women were drop-dead gorgeous and the robots were slick, shiny and seriously stupid. If the stories weren’t exactly Shakespeare, I never noticed when I first read most of these stories as a child and don’t care now as an adult. Because, frankly, it’s too much fun watching Magnus’ girlfriend’s dress get smaller and more transparent with each successive issue. (Well, it was the swingin’ sixties, you know, and it doesn’t appear that tiny Gold Key submitted their work to the draconian Comics Code of the time.)
Comics
If you were around when DC Comics first published Enemy Ace (which would have been in “Our Army at War” No. 151 in 1965), you probably had the same sense of breathless disbelief I did.
The series broke some of the unwritten rules of war comics, first by setting the series in World War I (WWII is much more popular, thank you ), and also by starring a German – one of the bad guys! (A pilot named Baron Hans Von Hammer, to be specific, who flew a blood-red Fokker triplane.) How on earth, the Li’l Capn wondered, could they make this work?
Actually, it’s debatable that they did. Written by Robert Kanigher and drawn by Joe Kubert, Enemy Ace had only three stories of varying length in “Our Army at War” and two full-length tryout issues in “Showcase” in 1965, before disappearing for three years. Kanigher and Kubert were back for another run in “Star-Spangled War Stories” #138-150 (Apr 68-Apr 70), but that was pretty much it for Enemy Ace as a headliner. He did continue to appear sporadically as a back-up in “Star Spangled War Stories,” even after the book was re-named for its new lead, “The Unknown Soldier.” Plus, there were some undistinguished short stories in “Men of War.” But Von Hammer’s ouevre, at least through his first couple of decades, isn’t what you would call lengthy.
Which is why it was easy for DC to put the bulk of it in “Showcase Presents: Enemy Ace Vol. 1,” which I just finished. It collects all the Von Hammer appearances from 1965 to 1982 (including a 1970 issue of “Detective Comics” where it was implied Von Hammer’s ghost saved Batman’s life), about 500 or so pages in crisp black and white.
And reading all these stories back to back, it’s pretty clear to me why Enemy Ace never, ah, took off.
Quick quiz! Who said the following in the 1950s:
1) “Americans play not to win, necessarily, but for the sake of good sportsmanship and fair play … which Nazis and Reds know nothing about at all!”
2) “Real Americans never turn Red!”
3) “If we can only teach [the Chinese] the rest of the real truth — that their own masters are the real killers … and that the United Nations are the only ones who can cure what ails them … with freedom and democracy!”
4) “I can’t believe an American boy would fall for Red hogwash!”
Was it Roy Cohn? Sen. Joe McCarthy? Vice President Richard Nixon? Elvis?
Nope — it was “Captain America … Commie smasher!” Or so said the legend on his comic-book covers of the ’50s, part of a brief superhero revival at Atlas Comics that lasted from 1953 to 1955.
I learned all this from “Marvel Masterworks: Atlas Era Heroes Vol. 2″ ($59.99, Marvel Comics), which is the recently released second hardback (of three) collecting all the superhero stories published by Atlas Comics in the 1950s.
Which wasn’t many. Atlas (which was Timely Comics in the ’40s and became Marvel Comics in the ‘60s) was like most other publishers in the ’50s — it published few, if any, superhero books after most of them were canceled in the late ’40s.
And what few Atlas did publish mostly starred the three best-selling characters from its Timely incarnation during World War II: Captain America, Sub-Mariner and the Human Torch. But instead of fighting Nazis and Japanese, as they did in the ’40s, the “Big Three” were fighting Communists — which they usually called “rotten skunks,” or “dirty Reds,” or when they were really agitated, “dirty rotten Red skunks.”
There’s not a lot to recommend about “Marvel Masterworks: Ant-Man/Giant-Man Vol. 2″ ($54.99, Marvel Comics), which features the most important early Marvel Comics superhero you’ve never heard of. Still, it’s got its charms.
This hardback collection contains those stories from “Tales to Astonish” #53-69 (Mar 64-Jul 65) that featured scientist/superhero Henry Pym and his partner (later his wife, even later his ex-wife) Janet Van Dyne. And, as early ’60s Marvel Comics go, they’re pretty mediocre.
Which was also true of the character in his early days. Henry Pym (named for the Edgar Allan Poe character) began life in a one-shot SF story in “Tales to Astonish” #27 (Jan 62), called “The Man in the Ant Hill.” He was a typical late ’50s-early ’60s square-jawed, pipe-smoking scientist who discovered a shrinking gas, and then accidentally shrank himself. (So in addition to being heroic, square-jawed and pipe-smoking, he was also a klutz.) He spent the bulk of this short story fighting ants before figuring out how to un-shrink himself. That should have been the end, with Pym going off to comic-book limbo with all the other heroic, square-jawed, pipe-smoking scientists who fought giant monsters, exposed alien invasions and dealt with science gone awry in the bland “suspense” anthologies of the late ’50s and early ’60s.
There probably isn’t anybody more important to the history of American comic books than writer/artist Jack Kirby, and probably nobody better suited to write about him than former Kirby assistant and award-winning TV/comics writer Mark Evanier. Which is one reason why “Kirby: King of Comics” ($40, Abrams), literally years in the promise, has been a greatly anticipated book — especially by me.
And I wasn’t disappointed. Surprised a little, because I was able to whiz through it in an evening. Surprised, but pleased. Evanier doesn’t do a lot of talking; he lets Kirby’s art do most of the talking. And, as any comics fan will tell you (until you physically force him or her to stop), Kirby’s art is incredibly eloquent.
Especially the rarely seen, autobiographical, 10-page “Street Code” from the mid-1980s, printed here in its entirety in staggeringly detailed pencils. It is a jaw-dropping tour de force — and a heartstring-tugger. Kirby’s true story in “Code,” amid the hurly burly and street fights of 1920s New York City, is one of loving moms and fierce honor and youthful hope. Jack “King” Kirby, whose name is synonymous with action/adventure comics, managed to touch the heart of even this jaded, cynical old fanboy.
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