A New Year and a new Superman, 1970’s style

1971 was an important year for myself as it was the year that I left the comfort of primary school to undertake my secondary school education. 1971 was also an important year for Superman as this was the year that he shed his Silver Age trappings and became a “modern character” for the 1970's. This transformation would see Superman lose some of his powers , the numerous multi-coloured Kryptonite’s that affected him were changed to iron, his boss changed from Perry White at the Daily Planet to Morgan Edge at Galaxy Broadcasting and the reliance on silly storylines, twists, hoaxes and flashbacks ended. To announce these changes, DC ran several 2 page house ads with the final one appearing (as the one page ad above) in Superman issue 233, an already impressive issue with that wonderfully iconic Neal Adams cover.

The second page of the DC house ads showed how Superman had evolved from the Golden age the Silver age and onto the then current Bronze Age. This page also summerised other changes that would take place across the entire DC Superman Family line of books with Jimmy Olsen being taken over by Jack Kirby, Lois Lane evolving into a more rounded character with a new back up feature "The Rose and the Thorn", Supergirl got a new costume and the Legion of Superheroes started to appear more regularly in the Superboy title.

The core of the new Superman storyline arc was the excellent “Sandman Saga" which appeared in Superman issues 233 - 235, 237 - 238, 240 - 242 (the latter 2 issues being my all time favourite Superman comics) . Following his memorable runs on the Batman books and Green Lantern/Green Arrow Denny O'Neil was brought in to write the new Superman tales. Along with Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson, one of comics greatest ever art teams (and Neal Adams on covers) they produced arguably the best Superman tale of the bronze age. Beginning with issue 233 the story began with an archetypal situation where a scientist is trying to create an engine powered by kryptonite, when the experiment suddenly goes wrong all kryptonite on Earth becomes harmless iron. However this accident also allows a Superman “double” to emerge from the dimension of Quarm. Superman discovers that this duplicate of himself is draining him of all his powers and that the duplicate is also intending to take over as Superman. Sadly after this excellent storyline concluded, DC pulled the plug on this "new" version of Superman and Cary Bates became the new writer from "Superman" #243 returning Superman for the most part, to his silver age roots. But those short lived stories of the NEW Superman were wonderful and the stunning Neal Adams covers below (issue 238 being by Infantino and Anderson)in no way outshine the great scripts and the wonderful art of the Swan/Anderson art team. This is "my" Superman and sometimes we simply shouldn’t let “auld acquaintances be forgotten”.

Tales of Jesus ....as a superhero!

National Lampoon was an American humour magazine that ran from 1970 until 1998. The magazine itself featured long text pieces of surreal satire with some actual news items and (more importantly) also featured some amazing comic strips with art by the likes of Ralph Reese and Barry (Windsor) Smith. It would be fair to say that the humour of the magazine often went way beyond what was considered acceptable even for the 1970’s. It was in 1972 that the cheerfully blasphemous National Lampoon magazine introduced the superhero comic strip “Son O God” , written by Sam Kelly and Michael Choquette with art (on most issues) by the legendary Neal Adams. The strip featured 2 or 3 page parody’s/ satires of religion with something to offend everyone with our hero fighting Catholicism, the antichrist Pope and even the “scourge” of Islam (their title not mine). Possibly not the most Christmassy of items to feature a few days before the big day, but it is interesting to see that this type of work was published in the 1970's and that people then seemed to be strong enough in their own beliefs not to blow up the National Lampoon offices. Or maybe they just had the sense to know that this was only a daft wee comic strip.

Best of British: Snow covered logos and frozen milk bottles

As a child of the 60’s/70’s there were many signs that Christmas was on its way - Milk bottles would freeze on the doorstep, Blue Peter showed you how to make a Christmas candle decoration out of a coat hanger and tinsel (that had a 50% chance of burning your house down), strange aftershave adverts started to appear on TV showing wimpy men fending off the amorous attack of buxom women, and you started to make miles of Christmas chain decorations at school out of coloured paper. But it was the arrival of the weekly comics sporting festive and snow covered logos that always remind me of my earliest childhood Christmas days. Below is a selaction of some of my favouite British Christmas comic covers.

This 1960 Beezer is before my time but I picked this one up a few years ago just for the excellent cover by the great Tom Bannister.

I would have to admit that "Giggle" was not a great comic. I only added this cover as "Giggle" is not a well known UK comic and it may be of interest to others. From memory only one character "Captain Swoop" (half man, half bird, half wit) moved to the Buster when the two comics merged.

It's hard to believe that this issue of WHAM! from December 1964 is nearly 60 year old. The cover by Graham Allen is one of my favourites just for the sleigh -full of of Wham!" characters on the masthead. I always loved these little touches that the artists used to add back in the day.

Favourite Christmas covers

With the festive season rapidly approaching I thought I would show some of my favourite Christmas themed US comic covers. Not all these books were classics but the covers are pretty good. The above issue of "Witching Hour" issue 28 from 1973 sports yet another great cover by the legendary Nick Cardy. Sadly there’s not a lot of Alex Toth art (who was the feature artist in the early days of the comics run) in this issue (only 1 page) but the cover makes up for that.

DC’s “Hot Wheels” comic was of course based on Mattel's highly successful Hot Wheel die cast model car line. The entire comic series only ran for 6 issues and even for those not interested in cars (let alone the die cast versions) it's a fantastic series art wise featuring some of Alex Toth’s best ever art especially in issue 5 "The Curious Classic". This cover is by the great Neal Adams who also provided the art on the main story "The Humbug Run".

As a kid I was a big fan of DC's “Teen Titans” comic and I am currently picking up as many of these early (first 30) issues that I used to own as I can. This issues story "The TT's Swingin' Christmas" is very much of its time, which for me is part of its charm. Of course the stunning art by the great Nick Cardy is also a big plus in collecting these comics

Another classic cover by Neal Adams and Dick Giordano from 1972. The story itself "Silent night, deadly night" by Denny O'Neil was illustrated by the regular Batman team of Irv Novak and Dick Giordano and is a standard but fun Christmas superhero tale.

To be honest I haven’t read this issue of “Justice League Unlimited” issue 28, I only bought this for Ty Templeton’s great cover.

Finally, we end on a wonderfully painted cover by Ken Kelly from the 1964 edition of Creepy issue 68. I only bought my copy of this magazine a few months ago on a visit to Lanark. Sadly it's a pretty tatty copy (a badly ripped cover and 2 misisng pages) so I used this picture from the internet. Still it only cost me £2 and has some great John Severin and Richard Corben art along with a nice front piece by the great Bernie Wrightson.