Captain America Lives!

So my old friend Dan Hughes sends me this link today(Spoiler Alert):Shocking event for Captain America - CNN.com Captain America is Dead. Yeah, right! Bucky was dead, too…for 60 years! In fact, the phrase, "Bucky Dead" came to symbolize someone in the Marvel Universe who was not ever coming back. Not nohow, no way! Being Bucky Dead was the equivalent of having the dead parrot sketch read at your funeral. You had "joined the choir invisible" as it were. Still, a talented writer named Ed Brubaker found a way to bring Bucky back…this time for real. So what does "Bucky Dead" mean now? Is Cap "Bucky Dead?"

It would be easy to write this all off as yet another attempt at getting some mainstream publicity via a cheap marketing ploy. You could even say that it plays into what I believe is a still-ongoing rights dispute with Cap’s original creator, Joe Simon. The fact of the matter is, however, that World War II is getting further and further back and Cap’s revival by the Avengers (after being frozen in ice) is getting more and more recent! Look, I absotively guarantee you that Marvel is NOT permanently killing off Captain America. As a licensing property alone the character is worth no small fortune to the company. That doesn’t, however, mean that they have to keep Steve Rogers as Cap. Steve Rogers has never been an easy character to write, In fact, even the best writers chose to define him simply as "the man who became Captain America." As a man out of his time, he is anachronistic and hopelessly old-fashioned. Anyone can wear the Cap suit. The Punisher, maybe? US Agent…again?? That’s probably the route they’ll take.
What Marvel sometimes seems to forget is that in the Marvel Universe Captain America represents not a government or its military but a timeless ideal. In real life, the character has come to mean the same thing. He doesn’t stand for the flag but for what the flag truly means—freedom, hope, safety, security and the dreams of a better world. What they’ve definitely forgotten on the corporate level is that that’s what the character has come to represent in our real world, also. Steve Rogers IS Captain America! It's not the suit, the shield, the super-soldier formula or the Red Skull or the snakes or the Falcon or anything else that make him Cap. He just IS Cap.
Captain America may be gone for now…for awhile…but Cap and what he stands for endures and I have every faith that the one, true Captain America will return yet again. As his creator, Joe Simon, said so accurately in the CNN piece, "We really need him now ."

Namor's Secret Identity

Our Net friend Kevin recently ran a surprising shot of Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner wearing a costume from the early 1940's at BeaucoupKevin(dot)com. BlogMachineGo. This, of course, was a revelation that we ourselves had run across some time back. To be precise, here: http://booksteveslibrary.blogspot.com/search?q=golden+age+sub.

Now, today, we reveal the Prince nattily attired for a weekend in the country with his police officer girlfriend, Betty Dean. Not really a "secret" identity but he's definitely attempting to pass. In fact, he wears the clothes through much of this story (from HUMAN TORCH # 9) which is a landlocked haunted house story!

Mad Poster

Came across this ad from MAD # 27 just a day after posting the SCOPE with Alfred on the cover. Here the EC gang was offering a framable picture of the still nameless "What? Me Worry?" boy by mailorder. Interesting how much and yet how little the character's look progressed in the intervening decade and a half plus.

Scope Visits Mad

This one hasn’t survived the ravages of time in very good condition but this April 1973 issue of SCHOLASTIC SCOPE was the first time I really got to know anything about the folks behind MAD Magazine. I probably saw my first issue of MAD around 1965 (it was at my friend Greg’s house down the street) but I never really read it regularly as it somehow seemed for older kids. Around 1969, I did discover the paperback of THE MAD READER and was introduced to Harvey Kurtzman’s earlier MAD COMICS stories but that’s a whole different kettle of worms (or is that can of fish?). BY ’73, though, I had become familiar with and intrigued by MAD and here was this great article right in my classroom. Come to think of it, didn’t kids get in trouble for reading MAD in class? Now here SCOPE was telling us it was okay! These may well be the first pictures of Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein that I ever saw. The article was like a walk through the offices with quotes from Meglin, DeFuccio and Len Brenner along with the first two of a gazillion Sergio Aragones anecdotes I would hear over the years. It even touched briefly on EC and the horror comics scandal, a subject that would later form the basis of my senior class thesis just a few years later.

The Spectre Interviews Neal Adams

From the second issue of the ghostly guardian's own mag in the swingin' sixties, here's a fun, informative one page interview with the comic's then-new artist as supposedly conducted by the comic's star himself.

Strange Adventures Ad

Here's a nifty looking early ad for Julius Schwartz's STRANGE ADVENTURES (issue # 2 to be exact!). Note the rare use of author credits on the cover. Gardner Fox, of course, was a DC mainstay for decades as well as a sci-fi writer (and a western writer and a romance writer and...). Edmond Hamilton was a longtime sci-fi writer who would later create the Legion of Super-Heroes. Although not as well-known, David V. Reed was still writing Superman stories for DC in the seventies. Virgil Finlay was a truly legendary pulp illustrator. Not sure who the other gentleman is/was. Anyone? Note also the foreshadowing in the ad line "You'll thrill to the challenge of the unknown."

Dan O'Neill and Odd Bodkins

I almost hesitate to mention Dan O’Neill because his story deserves much more time than I intend to give it here today. He’s been on my mind lately, however, as I read through some early underground comics. Undergrounds as we know them (or DID as the distinction really doesn’t exist anymore) appeared in the late sixties and flourished through the early seventies serving as a showcase for the countercultural artistic/political/psychosexual talents of scores of young illustrators including Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Justin Green, Gilbert Shelton and Bill Griffith. The thing is, though, that Dan O’Neill was there when they got there. In fact, his deceptively simplistic ODD BODKINS strip had been around since the early sixties. The collection seen here is from early 1965!

In the tradition of POGO, ODD BODKINS features cute little characters in gag-a-day strips that slowly and not always subtly begin to make political statements and/or social commentary. This, of course, got the artist some flack and he eventually went underground taking his strip with him. All of that was overshadowed eventually by his participation in the so-called Air Pirates, the loose knit group of UG creators who published several issues of Disney parodies that were amazing but…according to Disney lawyers…too close for comfort. The case became a cause celebre and dragged on for ages in the courts. There have been in-depth books and articles and websites on the whole mess but let’s just say that O’Neill held his ground and he and his career had to pay the consequences for it.
In the eighties Dan himself (or someone claiming to be him. For some reason I’ve never been certain) sold me a copy of the banned AIR PIRATES FUNNIES # 1 for only 50 cents at a San Diego Con. Dan O’Neill (looks like the same guy to me) appears in the 1988 feature documentary COMIC BOOK CONFIDENTIAL playing pool with some scantily clad women for no apparent reason. He is STILL doing ODD BODKINS to this day as well as marketing merchandise related to the strip. His site at Dan O'Neill Comics Original Odd Bodkins and Comic Book Art Paranoia is the fear of unreal weirdos.Who has time for that,when ...doesn’t seem to be kept up but here ‘tis anyway along with a quick but somewhat more in-depth look at the Air Pirates case: Disney vs the Air Pirates. Whatever else you want to say, the man was a pioneer.