Action!!!--Action Comics #1, June, 1938

    So time for the change-up.  As promised (hopefully) some what more concise reviews.  While it is easier for me to read a block of Golden Age comics in a row, for you dear readers, I'll continue to post no more than 3 issues in a post.  This one merits its own.
    4 months and 75 years ago, Action Comics #1 was published.  While it wasn't the issue that started the comic-book industry, it is commonly accepted as the first appearance of what we now consider to be a super-hero, and the issue that served as the cornerstone for the industry we know today.  In Action Comics #1, Superman made his first appearance.

Superman - 'Superman, Champion of the Oppressed'  by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster
     Superman breaks into the governor's mansion to secure a pardon for an innocent woman, gives a wife beater a taste of his own medicine, saves Lois Lane from a kidnapping, and dangles a lobbyist from some power cables to find out which crooked senator with whom he is dealing.  This first chapter moves at a break-neck speed.  Most of the classic trappings are in place: Clark Kent reporter, Lois Lane, and the basics of his origin.  Superman is instantly likeable, Siegel basically writes Superman as Slam Bradley with super powers. Rating: 4.5

Chuck Dawson - 'The A-G Gang' by Homer Fleming
    A western strip about a cowboy who rides into town looking to get revenge on the gang that killed his father.  Chuck ends up the wrong side of the law when he escapes from prison after coming out on the losing end of the fight.  A bland strip that doesn't make a lot of sense.  The main character has such a large chip on his shoulder he rides into town believing everyone must be part of the gang.  He goes out of his way to pick fights with every one he meets.  Rating: 2.5

Zatara - 'The Mystery of the Freight Train Robberies' by Fred Guardineer
     Zatara and Tong investigate and break of the Tigress' train robbery ring.  Even if Superman hadn't of been introduced, Action Comics would have been worth noting because of the Zatara strip.  It's quick paced and fun.  There's good chemistry with Zatara and Tong, and it was fun to see the backwards spell his daughter Zatana would be known for being used. Rating: 4

Pep Morgan - 'The Light Heavyweight Championship' by Fred Guardineer
    Pep is a sports strip about an extremely athletic college student that has bounced around the DC titles.  In this strip, he fends off a crooked promoter who has his champion try to drug Pep during the fight.  Not a bad strip, but in the early days anything was fodder for a strip, so all genres were acceptable.  While they can make for an interesting diversion, the limited story potential prevents real character development.  Still it has serviceable art for the period.  Rating: 3

Scoop Scanlon, Five-Star Reporter - 'The International Jewel Thief'' by John William Ely
    A crusading reporter follows a scoop about an international jewel thief coming to town and aids the police in his capture.  The highlight of the strip is the chemistry between Scoop and Rusty, his photographer.  I also like that it shows some down time as they wait for thief's ship to come in.  Unfortunately its let down by some pretty crude art. Rating: 3

Tex Thompson - 'Murder in England' by Bernard Bailey
    Traveling wealthy Texas oil man, finds a body in the English countryside and is framed for the murder.  A decent enough  adventure/crime strip with decent art. Rating: 3

Overall rating: 4

    

New Adventure Comics #26

(Editor's Note -- Rather than try to put this in the new format I'll be using going forward, I decided to preserve this one in its original format since I started it 4 months ago.)
     I still haven't found the right mix of insight and brevity.  I feel compelled to provide a 'Story so far...' synopsis to every feature.  Here is what I am going to attempt.  I'll list every feature with a 1-2 sentence synopsis and make comments about those that I feel merit additional discussion.  I still feel the need to mention every issue so readers of the blog can get a sense of the chaotic ebb and flow of the Golden Age.  So without further adieu, New Adventure Comics #26:

Captain Jim of the Texas Rangers -- "The Train Robbery, Part 26"
     One of the few strips that's been in every issue of New Adventure (originally New Comics), this is the adventures of an older rancher, his niece and nephew, his best friend, the Captain Jim in the title, and his trusted ranch foreman who are in never-ending trouble with bears, stampedes, rustlers, bank robbers, etc.  It would be exhausting to read in a collection, but it works well in serial parts.  The only problem is the expanse of characters.  The strip gets a good number for this day and age (approx. 6), but by the time you catch up with all the leads who are in at least three different places, the story doesn't advance any more than a 3-pager.

Federal Men -- "The Safety Patrol"
     I find Federal Men to be the oddest of the Seigel and Shuster strips.  Ostensibly, the lead is Steve Carson, an FBI Agent.  Initially the strips were him in gang buster or pseudo Sci-Fi stories toppling gangs, saboteurs, or mad scientists.  Soon there were adds for 'Junior Federal Men' club membership packs, and the strip changed from being about the exploits of Steve Carson to being about kids who become crime-stoppers and good citizens as a result of their emulating Steve and being in the club.  In this strip, Steve is only seen in the beginning talking about road safety to the school, then shifts to how the kids implement his lecture and deal with a hit-and-run driver, then ends with Steve delivering the motto.  Its not bad at all, because it has the Siegel and Shuster energy that was unique to their strips at the time, but I felt it worth noting how the strip had changed, and I'm curious if boy interest in the strip was really that high or if it was a marketing stunt/wishful thinking.

Nadir, Master of Magic  --  "Pearl of the Bleeding Heart, Part 10"
     An adventurer/magician tracks a stolen, cursed pearl.  Not a bad strip, but after the first 3 installments, the magic has all but disappeared (literally) and  Nadir is indistinguishable from other socialite/adventurers.  The pearl however, is seriously cursed.  It now in its third or fourth owner, all of the previous owners being killed and betrayed by the owner after them.

Rusty and His Pals -- "The Pirate Ship, Part 1"
     A group of kids build a raft, play pirates, and run into real pirates.  Notable for being one of the first contributions of Bob Kane to DC Comics and the first of two in this issue.  I won't get into the quagmire (right now) of to what extent Bob Kane was a "real" creative professional, but I think it important to note the milestone considering the contribution he will make in another year.

Don Coyote
    Don Coyote is a humor set in medieval times, but utilizing modern slang and sexual attitudes (well, modern from the perspective of 1938).

Dale Daring -- "The Red Hatchet, Part 4"
    Being named after the female lead, you'd almost expect this to be about a female adventurer Ala Sandra of the Secret Service, but Dale Daring owes more to 'The Perils of Pauline'.  A blonde heiress and her father somewhere in Asia (maybe Tibet) fall afoul of a Mongol tribe with Capt. Don Brewster hurrying to the rescue.  Not very memorable.  In fact, I struggle to remember what was the macguffin or crime that started the whole strip.

Captain Desmo --"Captain Demso Flies Again!"
    A heroic fighter pilot defends an outpost against Mongol raiders. Notable for Captain Desmo's laughable pseudo-super hero stryle outfit.  Considering what was to be published in June, 1938, something was in the air.

Click Evans -- "In the War Zone"
    A newsreel reporter crashes in a war zone, is taken prisoner, and escapes.

Cal n' Alec
    A humor strip about two cowhands who get into mischief.  In this installment, their donkey is stolen by an Indian (nee Native American), and the two try to steal it back.

(Editor's Note --My thoughts for here on out are now 4 months old.  I apologize if I have nothing profound to say...not that I've been profound up to this point.)
Detective Sergeant Carey of the Chinatown Squad
    Sgt. Carey and Sleepy  try to escape the Tong by boat.  Fairly typical 'yellow menace' fare.  The main advantage to the Sgt. Carey serials is they are kept to a respectable 3-4 parts and not 9-10.

Sandor and the Lost Civilization
    Ostensibly a jungle strip, Sandor takes place in and entails intrigue in the court of an Indian rajah.  Unfortunately, I've lost the thread of the plot.  Its been the same serial since the beginning.  Now its devolved to random running around the palace.

The Golden Dragon
    A group of adventurers searching for Genghis Khan's gold route the Mongolian army trying to stop them.  Like Sandor and Captain Jim, The Golden Dragon has been in almost every issue of New Adventure.  I like the serial overall.  Its moving at a slow pace (they've barely made any progress), but unlike Sandor, I can still keep up with the plot.


   

Battle of the Atom, Forever Evil, and Infinity

So, there are currently three events running concurrently in DC/Marvel: Battle of the Atom, an X-Men crossover, Forever Evil a DC line-wide crossover, and Infinity, an Avengers crossover.  I'm relatively current with these, so I'll be presenting my thoughts to-date.  Of course here be spoilers, arrgh!!!


S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S

Battle of the Atom
    Spinning out of All-New X-Men, the synopsis for Battle of the Atom is fairly straightforward: armed with the hindsight of what their continued presence in the present of the Marvel Universe means, a team of X-Men from the future come to the present to coerce/force the original 5 X-Men to return to their time of 1960's Marvel  (okay, okay, whatever passes in Marvel continuity for what was originally the 60's when the early X-Men comics were originally published).  With two Battle of the X-Men bookends, the story runs through All-New X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, and X-Men.  I believe it is 18 parts in all, and it is somewhere around part 9.

While not as "epic" as the other two events, this is currently my favorite.  I've posted a large post here about my love of All-New X-Men, and I feel like with this event, I'm getting a new installment every week.  If you aren't reading All-New X-Men, start right now, and get this in the trades at the very least.  A very strong 4.5 out of 5 for me.

Forever Evil
    Continuing in a lot of ways continuing from Trinity War which was not an event so much as a preamble, Forever Evil chronicles the defeat of the Justice League by the Crime Syndicate of Earth-3 (Pandora's box was a portal to Earth-3) and the rise of the villains who stand in their way.
    While this did have a long preamble, in many ways I have a hard time judging this event yet.  It is a 10 part series with at least 3 6-issue mini-series crossovers.  So far only issues 1-2 and the first issue of Arkham War have come out.  So far, I give it a 3.5 out of 5 with it showing a lot of potential.  While I knew I was right about the Outsider being the head of the Secret Society, it was a clever twist and a wink to the silver age to have him be the Earth-3 evil Alfred, and hearing Luthor saddle up while secretly pining for a Superman to save the day is comics-gold.
    The cost of this is a worry point if you want to follow the tie-ins because you're talking about 30+ issues, but the tie-ins sound so damn intriguing.  The Rogues from Flash refusing to follow the Secret Society's orders and destroy Central City, but rather stand to protect it because of one of their own being in a Central City hospital in Forever Evil: Rogue's Rebellion.  Or Bane trying to conquer a Gotham City that's been divided into fiefdoms by the escapees from Arkham in Forever Evil: Arkham War.  Those two at least, I think I'm going to have to get.

    Infinity is a 6 part mini-series that crosses over with Avengers Assemble, New Avengers, Avengers, Mighty Avengers, and Thunderbolts, with New Avengers and Avengers being the most important to following the through-line with Infinity.  Infinity reminds me a lot of Infinite Crisis in that Infinite Crisis was the culmination of several bad things happening at once.  In Infinity, the majority of the Avengers are in space fighting the builder's armada which is intent on razing Earth and the Illuminati are distracted by both incursions from alternate earth's destroying planets as well as the infighting between Black Panther and Namor.  Thanos picks this moment when most of the heroes are away to invade Earth as a cover for searching for and killing his heretofore unknown about son, Thane.
    Infinity, just the 4 issues do-date on its own gets a 4 out of 5 for me.  There's a lot happening at a brisk pace with some big ideas.  I was worried about the rumors of everyone becoming an Inhuman coming out of this, but I like that the Terrigen bomb only effected those who are partially Inhuman in their ancestry.  It's the build-up and ancillary series that are let down.  Avenger in particular, which has been building to this cross-over for some 15 or so issues has been horrible, so I have include that preamble and the tie-ins, it would fall to a 3 out of 5 (most of the Avengers issues have been around a 2 or 2.5 out of 5 for me since Hickman took over).

...And we're back

Well...
that went off the rails quickly.

For a flotilla of reasons that all amount to life in general taking place (a couple of surgeries for my son, new boss at work, an uptick in workload, etc.), we've been gone for oooh, about four months now.  But we're back, and ready to get at it.  We resolve to try and do better on keeping up with the blog.  Some housekeeping announcements:

• Like the blog, the grand reading experiment(s) have taken a backseat to everything else.  There has been some progress, but I've been playing around with how I read.  For the golden age material, I've stopped reading it by month, but have started reading it by title/year.  However, the silver age, I'm still reading by publication date.  I was starting to struggle with the golden age material in terms of keeping up with all of the serialized parts when a single issue would have 6-10 serials to keep track of and it might be months between reading an issue.  I tried the same with the Silver Age, but on the Westerns in particular, it was too repetitive.  I needed a monster comic in between to break-up the monotony.  I am current on Marvel and DC (maybe a week behind), and I am about 1-2 months behind on the indies.
• Format.  I feel like my posts are still way too long, so here is what I am going to attempt: An overall score for the issue (out of 5), each story or serial with writer/artist, a one sentence synopsis, if merited a a few sentences of commentary, and individual story scores
• Upcoming posts in no particular order:
• A post I saved, but never published, on New Adventure Comics #26
• A post on Action Comics #1-7 (If this becomes overly long it will get broken into multiple posts)
• A post on Gunsmoke Western from 1960 (ditto here)
• A post on recommended indie reads
• A post on my thoughts on the current 3 big events in the big 2

Finally I'd like to cover some items from the geek-sphere that have happened while I was away:

• First and foremost Doctor Who.  I love the casting choice of Peter Capaldi, though I think we may lose some of the geek-girl audience.  I did the Snoopy dance when the recovery of Enemy of the World and Web of Fear from the Troughton era was announced.  Less then 100 missing episodes now, and I hold-out hope that were recoveries will be announced.
• Movies:  The only geek-cred movies I've seen this year are Man of Steel and The End of the World.  I've already talked about Man of Steel.  I liked End of the World and not being part of the stoner generation part deux, I prefer the Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg sensibility of humor than the Judd Apatow/Seth Rogen brand.  However, I felt like this was the weakest of the Cornetto trilogy.  It took too long for the shoe to drop, the plot got very bleak in the last 10 minutes of the film, and I'm not sure how to interpret the denouement for the Gary King character.  I give it a 3 out of 5.  Being the father of a (just turned) 4 and 7 year old, most of my cinema dollars go to kids fare.  Having seen the Croods, Turbo, Planes, and Monster University this summer, the best of the lot was the Croods, the biggest surprise was Planes (I expected a snooze fest and found it quite engaging), and the biggest disappointment/worst was Monsters University.  It had humor, it had a plot that made sense, but it was lacking in charm.  It really suffered from not having a Boo equivalent character.  When it ended, while I was trying to rally my feeling of 'meh' into something positive, my son looked up at me, frowned, and said, "That wasn't a good movie, daddy.  I didn't like it."  At that point, any attempt to justify and positively view what I had just watched went right down the drain.
• Genre TV: 
• Sleepy Hollow has been relatively good so far.  I'd give it an average of 3.5 out of 5.  I don't like the heavy repetition of revelation prophecy (making the female cop the prophesied second witness opposed to someone who is a bystander swept into the horror, I think is too much), but its managed to deliver some pretty consistent chills for primetime television, especially with their use of the always out of focus horned one.
• Agents of Shield I'd give a 3 out of 5 so far, but I'm two episodes behind because of a fall-break vacation last week.  I like the characters and the setup, but I'm waiting for it to break new ground in the Marvel cinema/TV universe, and I'm not sure it's going to be allowed to.  I'm not advocating a villain of the week approach per se, but if new and interesting supers can't be introduced and everything is down to Tesseract/Chitauri/Extremis tech, and they can't play with concepts like Vibranium, Unstable Molecules, etc. for fear of limiting or contradicting with the films, I think it will wear out it's welcome with geekdom quickly.  Using names without the actual characters will only get you so far.
• Once Upon a Time has re-engaged me, and I think the decision to approach it as two mini-seasons as opposed to one long one is wise since it was the feeling of the story being drawn out last year that lost me at the end.  However, if they don't reveal why Pan wants Henry beyond a simplistic "He's the True Believer" within the next couple of episodes, they will lose me again.
• Once Upon a Time in Wonderland:  It has an OK start (3 out of 5), but the danger of spin-offs is the continuity or lack of continuity affecting the audience's appreciation of the series.  I'm not sure if Cyrus is supposed to be the genie from Aladdin, because I think that is Sydney Glass, who I'm hoping shows up here.  Also, I'm not clear on the timeline -- after the flashback to little Alice, it says Present Day, but it appears the curse in Storybrooke hasn't been broken because Cinderella and Grumpy are going by their human identities, however the Knave makes reference to the Hatter being happy and never wanting to come back to Wonderland, which happened after the spell was broken.  Then, Alice is a mortal from the 18th century who is in an asylum in the 21st century.  How?  My last fault with the pilot was the end.  I know that the Once Upon a Time series typically uses CGI for the fantastical backgrounds, but the end-sweep was awful.  I wasn't sure if the tower where Jafar had Cyrus was supposed to be miles away or feet away.  A better choice would have been to pull-back to show them arrayed on chess squares to fit the Looking Glass motif that fits the use of the Red Queen.

More Fun Comics #31 May, 1938

     Continuing the walk through 1938.  In reflection, I think my first 2 reviews/posts were overly long.  I'm going to experiment with this one being shorter.  I would be interested in any readers thoughts which they prefer.  More Fun Comics does not have a specific theme like the other DC titles of the time (Adventure, Detective, and soon to come, Action) so the strip styles are more varied.  Most of these strips don't have a story title, so I'll just list the strip name:

Sandra of the Secret Service: The conclusion of a story in which a woman's jewels are stolen on voyage and Sandra solves the crime.  This has been a very common plot.  Between this and Detective #15, I think I've read 4 stories about a jewelry theft at sea.  Sandra is unique in that it features a capable female protagonist, but if no one knew what the Secret Service really is, which is a bodyguard corps for the government, from this strip you would think they were an all-purpose spy/private eye.

Doctor Occult--"Doctor Occult vs. Master of the Corpses": Doctor Occult and Sgt. Ellsworth investigate a disturbance at a mine and discover a witch doctor building an army of zombies to attack the city.  The synopsis makes this sound awesome, but the shortness of the strip forces too quick of a resolution.  One unintentionally humorous bit: Doctor Occult uses a special almost never used power to stop the plot.  With a wave of his hand, the mine caves in.  One would presume the power is telekinesis, but the writing makes it sound like the little-used power is to cause mine cave-ins.  Of course it's little used.  How often does one need to cause a mine cave-in??

Buzz Brown--An adventure strip about a boy stowaway on a sailboat.  Buzz Brown is the boy.  They capsized and were saved by a boat on the way to Angorra and made servants.  In this installment, the crew plans mutiny and Buzz and Sandy (the owner of the sailboat get caught in the middle).  The strip is by Craig Fessel, who also does Speed Saunders, and the art looks much crisper here.  I don't know if its the addition of color, or the difference between paper and microfiche (my copy is a PDF that was built from microfiche and paper originals), but I'll be curious to see if the art stays the same high-caliber.

Wing Brady -- An ongoing adventure strip about a soldier in the foreign legion.  In this second installment, after saving a woman from an Arab laver, they find her uncle dead.  She relates how her uncle had given her to the slaver to prevent her from getting her inheritance.  This, and the rest of the strips suffer from brevity.  The stories aren't necessarily bad, but they're moving at snail's pace.

Salphappy and his Pappy -- A humor strip focusing on a dim-witted prize-fighter and his father.

The Magic Crystal of History -- I admit I don't read this strip, because I don't really consider it a comic.  It's all text boxes and no dialogue.  Two children have a magic crystal which relates tales from history.

Mark Marson of the Interplanetary Police -- One of two strips in the Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon vein.  Mark is investigating a series of murders conducted with "forked cobra venom".  One suspect throws suspicion on another.  Its literally 2 pages so it doesn't go any further then "Did you do it?, No, he did.  No I didn't" The End.

Johnnie Law - Johnnie Law is a story about beat cop solving crimes and moving up through the detective ranks.  Johnnie bring in a suspect in an extortion case who is alibied free by his confederates.  The art on this is poorer than in previous installments, and I refer black and white to the red, black, and white color palette used here.  The first part in a multi-part story.

Radio Squad -- Sandy Keen and his partner stop a warehouse owner from committing arson.  Another 2-pager.  The strips hook is that Sandy drives a radio car.  I need to do more research, but a radio car is a police car that can receive radio directives from headquarters.  Common place now, but the strip treats  it like cutting edge technology, so I'm wondering when they first put them into service.

Three Musketeers--Another strip I don't read.  An illustrated adaptation of the novel, also with no dialogue.

Ginger Snap-- A humor strip about a little girl.  It's kind of like an ancestor of what Little Dot would become for Harvey comics

Brad Hardy-- The second science fiction strip also handicapped by only being two pages.  Brady and his sidekick, an alien prince whose name I can't remember and isn't mentioned in the strip in this issue, have trekked through many adventures to get back to a castle to confront the villain, Porgo.  Literally all that happens is that Brad tries to get Porgo's sword without waking him and fails.  Most of the other strips you can kind of pick up what is going on or the main plot if you've missed an issue or its been awhile since you read the last one.  Not, Brad Hardy.  As you can tell, it badly needs a recap panel.

Jack Woods -- A Western.  Jack helps his fellow ranchers prevent a mining company from diverting a river off of their property.  This one is also in red, black, and white, but here it works.

Biff Brody and Pop Beaner  -- A new strip.  Kind of a detective strip.  Biff and Pop have a near miss with a milk truck, then some crooks plow into the milk truck demolishing it while leaving the scene of a crime.  Biff and Pop track down the rest of the gang and capture them, using the reward to buy a new milk truck for the farmer.  This seems like an attempt to mimic the success of Slam Bradley with a vague detective sort with a comedy sidekick.  This also treated something like a lead feature getting 8 pages.  The tory could have been done in 6 giving some needed breathing room to others.

Red Logan -- A crusading crime reporter gets an anonymous tip of a crime at the museum where a murder happens.  Red chases the thugs and is caught and thrown in the river.  Another, new adventure/crime strip.  This one looks promising.  The art is clean and distinctive from a golden age standard, and so far, the plot has avoided some of the standard tropes.

This issue is rounded out by some Algier strips, but none that feature ongoing characters.

Man of Steel - The spoiler-free review

    I'll post a more spoiler-filled, in-depth review in a week or so, but I wanted on the weekend of release to give a spoiler-free review.
     As my profile states, I have two kids, so most of my movie-going is on all-family affair.  My film card for the rest of the summer is most likely: Monsters University, Turbo, Despicable Me 2, and Planes.  I make sure that every year, I get at least one adult movie, normally whichever comics movie I'm most anticipating.  I spent my pick for the summer on Man of Steel, and boy am I glad I did.  I really, really liked it.  Like 4 out of 5 stars liked.  I put it below Avengers and the Dark Knight, but on par with Spider-Man 2, X2, and Iron Man.  Definitely above all of the others.  The action and scale of the action is great.  A lot of people have complained about the level of destruction in the film, but it s what you would expect of beings of this power.  Cavill makes a great Superman. 
     What stops the film from reaching the heights of Avengers or Dark Knight, is while the acting is good, no one is giving a Heath Ledger, Mark Rufallo, or Robert Downey Jr. - level character defining performance, and the film is very heavy--not dark--but heavy.  I get why they avoided comedy after the farces the past three films have been, but there was very little humor in the movies to lighten the mood, and it could have used it in some spots.

All-New X-Men #12, June, 2013

                The issue I wanted to talk about this post I wanted to write about as soon as I could.  Therefore, don’t assume that this is the only book out of what was published last week that merited commentary (I haven’t finished last week’s books), but it was definitely top of my reading stack and has been since it started.  As always, Spoiler Warning in full effect.

 

                Some background information is needed to understand the purpose and ground being covered in All-New X-Men.  Let’s set the Way-back Machine to November 1989 and Avengers West Coast #51, “I Sing of Arms and Heroes…”  The Vision and Scarlet Witch have been happily married since 1975 and in 1986 have twins.  It was explained at the time that the unusual birth was result of Wanda (aka Scarlet Witch) using her powers to alter the odds in the favor of her getting pregnant.  In Avengers West Coast #51, Wanda learns that her children were never “real”.  They were constructs made of wild magic and errant souls that belonged to a demon.  The demon reclaims the souls and her children vanish, having never really existed.  The resulting trauma unhinges Wanda, and she spends the rest of the 80’s overcoming her loss.

Some 13 or so years ago, the X-Men and Avengers titles began to undergo some drastic changes.  In an Avengers storyline entitled ‘Avengers Disassembled', the Avengers essentially, have the worst day ever: Jack of Hearts, thought dead, appears, and when greeted by Ant Man II, Scott Lang, blows both of them up, Vision crashes a Quinjet [the aircraft the Avengers fly around in] onto the grounds and starts releasing a miniature Ultron army, She-Hulk goes into a ‘Hulk-Smash!’-type rage ripping the Vision apart [This is uncharacteristic for She-Hulk; her defining characteristics that separates her from her cousin is that she can control her changes, enjoys being She-Hulk, does not fly into mindless rages, and has a set strength level], and the Kree invade.  Hawkeye is killed making a kamikaze attack with the remaining Quinjet into the Kree warship.  Meanwhile, Tony Stark acts drunk at a political event and threatens to kill an ambassador.    All of this is a result of manipulation by the Scarlet Witch who unknown to readers at the time, sought out Doctor Doom and enlisted his aid in trying to get back/re-create her children.  The resulting ritual summons an unnamed cosmic/mystic entity which possesses Wanda.  It resurrects her children but hides the knowledge of their existence and whereabouts from her (all of this would be revealed in Avengers: Children’s Crusade #7, November 2011).  The entity provokes her to blame the Avengers for the loss of her children and subconsciously lash out at them.  This leads to the Avengers disbanding, their mansion destroyed, and their funding pulled (As a result of his “drunken” escapades, Tony Stark has to choose between funding the Avengers or keeping Stark International a going-concern; he picks his company).  Magneto, Scarlet Witch’s father, shows up and takes her into his custody taking her to Genosha to be tended to by himself, her brother Quicksilver, and Prof. Xavier.

A new, smaller team of Avengers forms from the ashes of the old, and Prof. Xavier is unable to help Wanda keep her powers in check setting the stage for the ‘House of M'storyline.  Xavier reaches out to both the Avengers and X-Men and proposes a summit on what to-do to help the approaching out-of-control Scarlet Witch.  Hearing talk of killing her, Quicksilver rushes to her side and urges her to create a perfect world where everyone can be happy.  A white flash occurs and the world is rewritten as a world where mutants are the dominant power led by his royal family: Magneto, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, her children, and Polaris (Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch’s half-sister).  While most of the major heroes are given happy lives, a few start to remember and seek out the Magneto family to force them to return reality back to the way it was.  Having the truth revealed to him, Magneto turns on his son Quicksilver who he blames for manipulating Wanda.  Wanda can’t take it anymore and blames her father for choosing mutants over their family and with the words “No more mutants!” there is another white flash and reality is returned to the way it was, except the mutant population has dropped from millions to just over 200.

                The sudden decrease in the mutant population would be the first blow to the mutant community.  Shortly after the House of M event, it is revealed that Prof. Xavier sent a heretofore unknown group of X-Men to rescue the original X-Men from Krakotoa, including Cyclop’s third, younger brother, Vulcan (also not known to exist before this story) in ‘Deadly Genesis'.  Prof. Xavier wiped the knowledge from Cyclops’ mind resulting in Cyclops abandoning his brother when the third team (Storm, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Banshee, Sunfire, and Thunderbird) were formed and sent to rescue the original team.  Based on what is viewed as a violation of trust, Prof. X is banned from the X-Men and Cyclops takes over the X-Men fully, going into full-survival mode.  Cyclops pushes a bigger visibility for the X-Men in the super-hero community becoming the official heroes of San Francisco, authorizes a black ops group to deal with the militant extremists they can’t publicly fight, and establishes a mutant nation off the coast of California using one of Magneto’s old bases.   During this period, the child Hope is found, rescued, and sent to the future with Cable in the ‘Messiah Complex' story.  Cyclops takes the birth of a new mutant after House of M as a sign and bases all of his survival strategies around his faith in her and belief that she will somehow rekindle or revive the mutant race.  It is also during this period that the Beast learns of Cyclops’ black ops group X-Force and leaves believing Cyclops has betrayed the dream of Xavier and his own moral compass.

                Hope does come back during the ‘Second Coming’ storyline which draws every bigoted anti-mutant group out of the woodwork for a massive assault on Utopia, the nation Cyclops has founded.  Cyclops’ faith in Hope proved to be well-founded as she had two mutant abilities: the ability to mimic the mutant powers of any nearby mutants and the ability to trigger the latent mutation in mutants suppressed by Wanda’s spell.  During a class field trip, a group of Utopia students are attacked by a squad of Hellfire Club soldiers.  Wolverine tells the kids to hide and wait for him to come and save them, Cyclops tells them to do whatever it takes to protect themselves.  One of the students kills the entire squadron.  Wolverine believes Cyclops has stopped treating their charges as kids and started treating them like soldiers, putting them in situations they shouldn’t be in.  Wolverine leaves and takes a good bit of the X-Men with him, including some of the younger members and reforms the school.  It is during this period that the Scarlet Witch, with the aid of the Young Avengers including her sons, cast out the entity that had been corrupting her.  The Avengers and X-Men existed in an uneasy truce, Captain America viewing Cyclops as his man in the mutant camp while Cyclops reminded Captain America that he would not let Utopia become another reservation.  All of this changed with the arrival of the Phoenix.

                The Phoenix is a cosmic force of death and renewal.  It has potent meaning for the X-Men as the Phoenix possessed Jean Grey aka Marvel Girl one of the original X-Men.  It corrupted her, and she consumed a planet under its influence.  Jean committed suicide by causing a laser cannon to shoot her (Well it wasn’t really Jean, but the exposition in this post is already past a sane limit.  If you want to know more about this, read the Dark Phoenix Saga).

                Cyclops believes the Phoenix force is coming for Hope and she will be able to use it to reignite the mutant race at a global scale.  The Avengers are made aware of it and believe it to be an extinction level-event.  The Avengers come to forcibly take Hope triggering the Avengers vs. X-Men storyline.  After kidnapping Hope (she later stayed with them willingly, but I still contend she was kidnapped), the Avengers send a contingent into space to destroy the Phoenix, while Cyclops leads a group to stop them.  Iron Man fires his Phoenix-killer weapon, which splits it and sends it into five hosts, the X-Men team in space: Cyclops, Namor, Emma Frost, Colossus, and Magik.  Each becomes incredibly powerful, and they set to restore and fix the world while looking for Hope.  They have multiple skirmishes with the Avengers and as each host falls the power is integrated into the remaining hosts, with the remaining becoming more powerful each time.  Finally, the sum total of the Phoenix host is in Cyclops.  Magneto, who fears Cyclops is becoming overwhelmed reaches out to Prof. Xavier.  Xavier confronts the Phoenix-controlled Cyclops and is struck down dead.  Hope and the Scarlet Witch confront Cyclops.  The Phoenix force moves to its intended host, Hope, who reignites the mutant race, then casts the Phoenix force back out into space.  Cyclops is arrested for being a terrorist and murdering Prof. X.  Once he discovers he is being gitmo’d , he has Magneto break him out and he, Emma, Magneto, and Magik immediately goes on the offensive tracking down and taking in the new mutants as they appear to protect and train them while trying to re-learn how to fix and use their “broken” powers after having been possessed in an ill-fit by the Phoenix.  Which finally bring us to All-New X-Men.

                The premise of All-New X-Men is that Beast seeing and experiencing all of this has enough.  He brings back the one person who can talk some sense (from his perspective) into Cyclops and that’s Cyclops himself.  Beast goes back in time and brings the X-Men from X-Men #8, November 1964 to the present-day.  He wants either Cyclops to realize how far he has strayed when confronted by his younger self or the younger X-Men be so repulsed, they take actions upon return to never turn out like this.  Hoo-boy.  The only two who seem mostly unaffected from the original X-Men are Beast and Iceman. Cyclops comes to a time where everyone accuses him of killing Prof. X and hates him for it, Angel discovers that something horrible has happened to him resulting in his present-day self being a man-child, and Jean Grey gains her telepathic powers early, discovers that the boy she loves supposedly grows up to be a horrible person, she’s dead, and something of a mutant martyr.  The original X-Men (which I will abbreviate as OXM from here on out) decide to stay, learn what they can, and see if they can make a difference before returning to their original time with Kitty Pryde taking it upon herself to be their guardian and teacher.

                All-New X-Men #12 (whew, mountain of exposition over), by Brain Michael Bendis and Stuart Immonen revolves around a confrontation between the Uncanny Avengers and the OXM.  The Uncanny Avengers are a team conceived by Captain America to put his spin on Xavier’s dream and support integration.  It is purposefully made up of mutants and non-mutants.  As a PR move to counter Cyclops’ propaganda, he has appointed Cyclops’ brother Havok to lead the team, and among its members is the Scarlet Witch.  For her own mysterious purposes, Mystique is leading a team of Sabretooth and Lady Mastermind to commit a series of robberies, using Lady Mastermind’s powers to make it look like the culprits are the OXM.  Now let me tell you what I love about this issue and this series as a whole.  The writing is top-notch.  I’ve had problems with Bendis’ writing in the past and thought outside of the events, he was ill-suited for the Avengers, but here he shines.  Bendis is best with talking heads, and this book is about ideas and conflicting ideologies.  He’s brought back a spirit to Marvel that I don’t think most people, including myself had realized was gone.  You see Marvel, in its hey-day was always rebellious and anti-authoritarian.  It was the cool teenager to the staid adult that was DC Comics.  What I like about this comics is that the OXM, by-and-large, have not had the reaction the Beast and the others expected them to have.  They question everything.  They question what they are told and they question the decisions the “adults” are making.  There are actually only 4 OXM in this book, because Angel left and joined the present-day Cyclops because he doesn’t trust what the grown-ups have been telling them.  There are really only two things that happens in this issue: Alex (Havok) gets to see his brother unencumbered by the weight of the world the future would bring and Scott (Cyclops) gets to see his brother is alive and doing really well.  The familial love is palpable.  The second is that Jean Grey “accidentally” reads Scarlet Witch’s mind and learns about “No More Mutants”.  Now remember, these are the X-Men from 1965.  At that point in Marvel continuity, the Scarlet Witch was part of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, the arch-nemesis to the X-Men.  To see her standing with the Avengers and learn that she was responsible for the decimation of the mutant race, and her to be almost rewarded for it in Jean Grey’s eyes is just unbearable.  And what do the adult X-Men and Avengers do when their asked “Why? Why is she here? Why is she free?”  They sweep it under the rug.  They deflect.  It wasn’t her fault.  She wasn’t in control.  That’s not important, what’s important is these robberies.  Not more important than near racial extinction and sterilization?!?  It’s not possible for Cyclops to be absolved of his actions while possessed by a cosmic entity, but it is for Scarlet Witch?!?  The hypocrisy hangs heavy in the air, and the kids know it, and I’m waiting for it to explode.  I’m not expecting them all to defect to Cyclops’ side, but I’m expecting all the dirty laundry to get aired and hopefully for there to be an accounting.  Anyway, there you have it, All-New X-Men, the best Marvel comic being published today.

Batman: The Dark Knight Annual #1 & Justice League of America #4, 5/29/2013

I’m going to do something a little different with the books that I’m reading that are coming out each week.  For my historical reading, its my intent to comment on everything I read.  For the publications that are coming out each week, I’ll only comment on those that merit it.  Issues that are either in the comics news for a particular reason, or anything I found to be particularly good.  The ‘meh’ and the bad I don’t plan on commenting on as a general rule unless it falls under the noteworthy category.  Just like with the historical readings, I will be summarizing the issue and discussing specific plot points so as always beware of Spoilers.

Batman The Dark Knight Annual #1, written by Gregg Hurwitz and pencils by Syzmon Kudranski

"Once Upon a Midnight Dreary"

Three of Batman’s villains whose issues stem from their childhood, Mad Hatter, Penguin, and Scarecrow, are lured to an abandoned psychiatric hospital for children on Halloween night and face their worst fears.  But is what haunts them at the hospital the Batman, their past, each other, or something else?

Annuals can be a fickle beast.  The best matter, are a part of continuity.  They present  a story with ‘oomph’.  The worst are throwaway filler or manufactured linked together event to make you think they matter.  This issue is the best annual in a week of them with a tightly-plotted creepy story.  The ending comes close to ruining the atmosphere of the majority of the story, but still, this issue comes highly recommended.

Justice League of America #4, written by Geoff Johns and pencils by Brett Booth

"The Good, the Bad, and the Shaggy"

           Catwoman signals her compatriots in the League who trace her position.  She slips free from her bonds and starts to snoop around the Secret Society’s headquarters.  Catwoman meets Prof. Ivo who is thought dead and the mysterious leader of the Secret Society who reveals he knows that she is a spy.  The League is ambushed by the Shaggy Man who keeps them busy while the leader of the Society kills Catwoman then teleports away.

            Almost 10-years ago, in Kurt Busiek and George Perez’s JLA/Avengers, Busiek contrasted the two publishers by having the JLA on Marvel-Earth comment on how tumultuous and untrustworthy everyone seemed to be and the Marvel heroes commenting on how they couldn’t believe how orderly and accepting everyone was on DC-Earth.  Its now a year after the ‘New 52’ and it seems a big part of the change was to emulate the style and attitude of Marvel.  This can even be seen in some of the hiring choices as the most influential editors and new writers read like a Who’s-Who of 90’s Marvel editorial.  The main plot point, leading into their next event Trinity War, a conflict between the three different Justice League teams [Justice League, Justice League of America, and Justice League Dark – a group of magic-based characters], is that the American government, fearful and not trusting of the Justice League (Batman, Superman, Cyborg, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, and Aquaman), have commissioned their own Justice League of America (Vibe, Katana, Hawkman, Stargirl, Martian Manhunter, Steve Trevor, Catwoman, and Green Arrow) to act in American interests.  The mission that they are aware of is to infiltrate and investigate a group called the Secret Society which appears to have subverted the Justice League [in reality they have created robot duplicated of the Justice League] while they are really being trained to fight and defeat the Justice League.

            This story isn’t bad, but its clearly a chess piece issue, setting the board for Trinity War and Forever Evil following that.  Getting the issue out of the way that made this a news story in the comics world, no, Catwoman is not really dead, not with solicitations for her own series continuing through August and a major Gang War storyline kicking off in her own title.  Heck, she has her own spotlight issue as part of Forever Evil.  I think this issue sets up the New-52 version of Dr. Light.  I’m pretty confident the leader of the Secret Society is the Outsider, or a version of him close to how he was presented in Flashpoint. That event “caused” the New-52, and he was one of the characters focused on unique to that event that has not been seen since.

Detective Comics Comics #15 May, 1938

Spoilers warnings (as always)

Detective Comics #15, cover-dated May, 1938, sale date April 1938, 68 pages, 8 features:
Speed Saunders - "The Mystery of the Darby Pearls"
     Speed escorts a female friend on a cruise ship and helps her fend of a ship-wide conspiracy to rob her of the Darby pearls she was gifted by her uncle.  Speed Saunders' adventures have by now fallen into a theme, Speed meets or is travelling with a female companion, the female is involved in trouble or the victim of a plot, Speed intervenes.  I find Speed interesting because, in a magazine devoted to detectives/cops, he has at this point lost the distinction that set him apart, the dubious distinction of being part of the River Patrol, the write quickly finding the milieu of a police detective only involved in crimes on boats, wharves, and harbors too tight of a restriction.  However, I do admit Speed is typically my second favorite feature in Detective at this point, and other must also seen potential in him, as he was used as Kendra Saunders, Hawkgirl IV's, grand-father and retconned to be the cousin of Shiera Saunders, Hawkgirl I, in the late 1990's relaunch of JSA.  Also somewhat unusual for this feature, this is the first of two parts.  The theft of the pearl's is thwarted, and the apparent gang's ringleader is killed, but a continuation of the 'The Mystery of the Darby Pearls' is promised next issue.

     Buck Marshall - "Heels and Toes"
The lone western-style strip, Buck Marshall features a travelling 'Range Detective' who typically stumbles on some plot or arrives in town in time to help the local sheriff solve a case that perplexes him. In this installment, Buck catches a hold-up man who frames an ex-convict Apache Indian for the wagon train robberies.  The tip-off to Buck is that the real thief left tracks that didn't mimic an Indian's gait.

Larry Steele - "The Plot to Kill Larry Steele"
     Larry Steele is a non-descript generic private eye type.  The somewhat unique angle on this story is the gangsters invite trouble by deciding to pre-emptively assassinate him.  This is the first of a multi-part story.

Bruce Nelson - "To Many Crooks"
     Bruce Nelson is another generic private detective.  His first two serials in Detective both involved running afoul of the Tongs in Chinatown.  In this, the second part of his third serial, Bruce is on-board a yacht investigating a smuggling operation.  He's foiled two robbery attempts of a jeweler who is traveling with diamonds, only to apparently kill him to protect his cover.  This is actually a pretty good story with the jeweler's partner who has seemingly swapped the diamonds with fakes without the jeweler knowing it, the multiple attempts to steal the diamonds from different parties, and the faked murder.  It suffers a little bit from being the second story in the same issue to involve a jewel theft at sea and being the second part in a three part story, but I'm actually looking forward to its conclusion.

Spy - "Mr. Death"
     Aaah, Spy.  Before I get into the story, let me talk just a little bit about Jerry Seigel and Joe Shuster.  At this point in their career, their ultimate legacy, Superman, has not yet been published.  I have some opinions about Siegel and Shuster that probably aren't very popular.  I try to view things in the context of the era and times in which they occur.  I don't believe Siegel and Shuster by the great martyrs of comics.  They sold their rights to Superman several times for significant values at the time in relation to when the deals occur.  I don't believe they are inherently owed anything because their creation grew to be more successful and worth more to DC, then they ever could have predicted.  All of that said, it so often gets overlooked how prolific they were in the early Golden Age.  At the main company (which at this time only had 3 titles) producing original, non-licensed comics work, they had 5 strips that were regular features: Steve Carson-Federal Agent, Spy, Radio Squad, Dr. Occult, and Slam Bradley.
     Spy has a unique flavor, reminding me of Hart-to-Hart or Remington Steele, in that the premise is a former police office and his fiancee are government agents, his fiancee, Sally, being inducted after helping him on a few cases when she refused to believe he broke off their engagement.  Sally in many ways is a proto-Lois Lane.  She is rarely the damsel-in-distress, and is often the brains in the operation, with Bart doing most of the fighting.  In this story, their tasked with bringing in a serial killer, and its Sally, not Bart, that conceives a way of goading the killer into revealing himself.

"Bring 'Em In Brannigan"
     A nice little mystery.  Though never featuring the same characters, Russell Cole, writing and drawing under his pseudonym, Alger, has a feature with little mystery vignettes done in the same humor style as Ol' Oz Bopp and Sam the Porter and the other humor features he was doing for DC.  This mystery involves the kidnapping of two bankers carrying a large sum of money for a stock purchase.

Cosmo, The Phantom of Disguise - "The Plane Crash Mystery"
     Cosmos's shtick is that he is a master of disguise.  What makes this story unique is that it does not involve Cosmo adopting a disguise.  Cosmo is on a plane that crashes.  Cosmo gets help, then solves the mystery of the death of the pilot, some missing gold, and the cause of the crash.  The story telegraphs in the beginning the villain of the piece, but it was still a good read despite the abandoning of the feature that makes Cosmo unique among the other detectives featured in Detective.

Slam Bradley - "The Lady-Killer"
     Slam and Shorty are accused of a woman's murder by Sergeant Gage when they report it and our found at the scene.  They find a book of women's names and race to get ahead of the killer and clear their names by beating the killer to the last victim.  Slam Bradley is probably the best known character among those in this issue, primarily thanks to Ed Brubaker's use of him in Catwoman, and clearly at this time he is the lead feature.  Among 5-8 page features, Slam merits 13 pages.  A rough and tumble private eye who seeks out trouble and fun with his wisecracking partner, Shorty.  Slam's stories are always energetic and move at a break-neck pace.  I also love how Slam doesn't take crap from anyone.  Sgt. Gage accuses them of the first murder, simply because they were on-hand and when he gets a tip that they are at a warehouse, he waits until the killer confesses and has fallen in the same trap he has Slam and Shorty put in--a pit filling with water, before attempting to help Slam and Shorty.  When Sgt. Gage says he waited because he thought they deserved it, Slam promptly shoves him to see how he likes it!

Tales to Astonish #8, March 1960

As with all of my posts, a reader should consider Spoiler Warnings in full effect.

Tales to Astonish is one of Marvel's Monster books.  During this period, Marvel published quite a few Monster titles which contained monster-hunting stories or science-fiction/horror morality plays in the tradition of Twilight Zone and the Outer Limits.  The monsters were always aliens or giant monsters resulting from science gone wrong since the Comics Code forbid most real horror elements including vampires, werewolves, and zombies.

This issue contained four stories:

"I Dared Defy the Floating Head!", art by Paul Reinman, is the story of an alien invasion that wasn't.  A giant floating head demands the evacuation of New York City, and destroys a warehouse as proof of his powers, but an enterprising young boy figures out, its the plot of criminals, doing it all with mirrors to clear the way for a crime wave.  The story wasn't bad, but the ending was telegraphed.

"I Live Again", art by Steve Ditko was probably my favorite tale from this issue.  "I Live Again" is a continuation/sequel of Ditko's "I Spent Midnight With the Thing from Bald Mountain" from the previous issue.  In that story, a sculptor creates a beautiful, golden statue embodying all that is good and a crude leaden statue embodying all that is evil.  The two come to life and engage in a brutal fight throughout the castle which culminates in the "The Thing", the evil statue, falls from a battlement into the ocean.  When "I Live Again" begins, the Thing, survives and surfaces.  He studies mankind to prepare to dominate it, and makes his way to America to take it over.  He proves his strength and power repeatedly on his trip, but chooses to rest in the wrong place and traps himself forever.  The ending I did not see coming with this once, and Ditko's Gothic art style, is a thing of beauty.  The panel in which upon arriving in a Florida swamp, the Thing purposefully engages a giant alligator is my favorite.  There is just something about the way Ditko drew reptiles.

"I Am the Genie", pencils by Kirby, inks by Ditko, is about a criminal who finds a genie.  He uses it for acts of terrorism in preparation of ransoming the world, before making a critical error in wishing.  Anyone who has seen Disney's Aladdin has a good guess as to how this ends.  The art is very good, but Ditko's art overrides Kirby's.  I wouldn't have known it was him without the credits from The Grand Comics Database.

"Mummex--King of the Mummies!" is the cover story.  A giant mummy, dubbed by the porters on a dig, "a demon mummy--Mummex!" rises from a tool and travels across Egypt searching various other tombs and dig sites.  Only a lone brave archaeologist follows Mummex to try and determine why Mummex is searching all of the tombs.  He never finds out, but he does discover after it leaves earth that Mummex is not from this world.  While talking to another member of his race, we discover that Mummex, whose people wear bandages as a space suit, was looking for stranded members of his race.  I like the cover, but the story itself was fair.  The non-talking Mummex has no personality and doesn't interact with anyone, and the reveal that he was an alien was no surprise as even though we are only on issue 8, its well-established that the monsters are almost always aliens. 

The next issue on the Marvel Silver Age track will be Strange Tales #74 as I enter April, 1960.

Marvel: The Silver Age; Jan, 1960-Mar, 1960

It's January 1960, and comics are ruled by DC and Western Comics.  DC is the premier publisher of Silver Age having successfully reigniting the super-hero craze in July, 1956 with the launch of the Silver-Age Flash, Barry Allen.  Western held all of the merchandising rights for the Warner Bros., MGM, Hanna-Barberra, and Disney properties, and as such were the creators of Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Yogi Bear, and Tom and Jerry comics.  A few other publishers still existed.  Warren had picked up the torch from EC and were publishing a line of horror comics as magazines to bypass the Comics Code.  Charlton had a small line of science-fiction, war, and super-hero comics.  And then their was Atlas...

Timely/Atlas/Marvel had gone through many name changes as Martin Goodman restructured his company numerous times over the years.  Headed by his main writer/editor, his nephew Stanley Leiber aka Stan Lee, Timely was publishing a healthy roster of Romance comics, Monster comics, and Westerns.  But change was coming.  Legend has it that Irwin Donenfeld was bragging to Martin Goodman over a game of golf the success DC was having with a new team title that combined their biggest super-heroes into one book.  Martin Goodman was not going to listen to Donenfeld crow and not respond.  But that apocryphal golf game is in the future.  The titles that Marvel publishes that I have that I have started reading in this period are Gunsmoke Western, Kid Colt Outlaw, Journey Into Mystery, Strange Tales, Tales to Astonish, Tales of Suspense, and Two-Gun Kid.  I picked January, 1960 because most of these titles would later be a part of the Silver Age and contain concepts and characters that would be incorporated into the Silver Age continuity at Marvel.  The next issue I have to read on this track is Tales to Astonish #8.

1935-May, 1938: The Story So Far

Having set the stage of my mission, and seeing that you're still here, I'll bring you up to speed on what progress I've made so far.  I've been doing this for the better part of 2013 to-date.  I started with the earliest comics I had access to, which were scans of microfiche of some of the first DC had to offer.  The first comic to contain non-newspaper strip re-prints, New Fun went on sale January 1935.  It was followed by New Comics November of 1935.  Over the next year, their titles would change.  New Fun would become More Fun and New Comics would become New Adventure before settling on Adventure.  March, 1937, they would be joined by what to me, would become their flagship title (at least for a year) and the inspiration for the company, National Periodicals eventual name, Detective Comics [the DC in DC Comics standing for Detective Comics].  More Fun and Adventure run predominately action strips of the Jungle, Crime, and Western variety with a few humor strips, while Detective, being true to its name, is mostly crime and mystery strips in different venues.

During this period in the real world Hitler has assumed power in Germany, Warner Bros. has started releasing Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies with their new headlining characters, Porky Pig and Daffy Duck.  Hot on the radio are Fibber McGee and Molly.  FDR is ending his first and beginning his second term, and the heat wave that caused the dust bowl is coming to an end.  I'm up to May 1938, and the next issue to read is Detective Comics #15.

Eventually new publishers will start to fold into my reading, Dell, Timely [Marvel], Fox, Quality, and Fawcett, but not until I reach 1939.

The Mission....

As I've studied the history of comics as an amateur, I found several "truths" to be considered to be self-evident:
     - That there are the big two DC and Marvel
     - Both have existed since the Golden Age
     - DC was by-and-large number one until the Silver Age of Marvel
     - There were key distinctions that led to the Marvel style: more dramatic, realistic characters, more dynamic villains, and a shared universe/continuity that was unique. 

I wanted to challenge these truths.  In my personal reading, I've always been a Batman fan, but in my school years, I was primarily a Marvel fan, and in my adulthood, my preference has been DC.  Maybe I wanted to justify my tastes, but I felt like it couldn't have been that pat.  I discovered Mike's Amazing World of Comics and based on the information there and on The Grand Comics Database built large spreadsheets chronicling what was published by each publisher by year, who appeared in what issue, etc.  And it wasn't enough....

I've collected comics for almost 30 years.  I have issues, trades, bound copies, microfiche, digital comics.  I could see trends, but I wanted to experience the history of comics the same as a person plunking down their dime (yes kids, comics were once a dime).

So that's the mission, to read my comics and any comics I can get access to in chronological order based on when they were published.  Sounds complicated?  It gets worse...

I love Comic Geek Speak, especially the spotlight podcasts.  Listening to the Spotlights on Spider-Man, Avengers, and X-Men, made me yearn to experience the Marvel Silver Age now not later.  The solution?  Two tracks (actually three):
- Comics history in chronological order starting with 1935 (I'm up to April, 1938)
- Marvel Silver Age starting with 1960 (I'm up to April, 1960)
- Recent comics (I'm about a week behind with Marvel and DC; as far behind as a month for some of the independents)

I try to read at least some every night.  I hope on this blog to post my observations and thoughts about what I'm reading.  Along the way we may take detours to discuss recent comics news.