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COMICS’ BRONZE AGE AND BEYOND!

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FROM CHARLTON TO DC: ACTION HEROES IN THE BRONZE AGE Blue Beetle • Captain Atom • Peacemaker • Thunderbolt • Blockbuster Weekly • Dave Gibbons Watchmen interview with Bates • Broderick • Collins • Cullins • Kupperberg • Wein & more

THE RETRO COMICS EXPERIENCE!

Edited by MICHAEL EURY, BACK ISSUE magazine celebrates comic books of the 1970s, 1980s, and today through recurring (and rotating) departments like “Pro2Pro” (dialogue between professionals), “BackStage Pass” (behind-the-scenes of comicsbased media), “Greatest Stories Never Told” (spotlighting unrealized comics series or stories), and more!

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“1970s and ‘80s Legion of Super-Heroes!” LEVITZ interview, the Legion’s Honored Dead, the Cosmic Boy miniseries, a Time Trapper history, the New Adventures of Superboy, Legion fantasy cover gallery by JOHN WATSON, plus BATES, COCKRUM, CONWAY, COLON, GIFFEN, GRELL, JANES, KUPPERBERG, LaROCQUE, LIGHTLE, SCHAFFENBERGER, SHERMAN, STATON, SWAN, WAID, & more! COCKRUM cover!

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“Batman’s Partners!” MIKE W. BARR and ALAN DAVIS on their Detective Comics, Batman and the Outsiders, Nightwing flies solo, Man-Bat history, Commissioner Gordon, the last days of World’s Finest, Bat-Mite, the Batmobile, plus Dark Knight’s girl Robin! Featuring work by APARO, BUSIEK, DITKO, KRAFT, MILGROM, MILLER, PÉREZ, WOLFMAN, and more, with a cover by ALAN DAVIS and MARK FARMER.

“Bronze Age Fantastic Four!” The animated FF, the FF radio show of 1975, Human Torch goes solo, Galactus villain history, FF Mego figures… and the Impossible Man! Exploring work by RICH BUCKLER, JOHN BUSCEMA, JOHN BYRNE, GERRY CONWAY, STEVE ENGLEHART, GEORGE PÉREZ, KEITH POLLARD, ROY THOMAS, LEN WEIN, MARV WOLFMAN, and more! Cover by KEITH POLLARD and JOE RUBINSTEIN.

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Volume 1, Number 79 April 2015 Celebrating the Best Comics of the '70s, '80s, '90s, and Beyond!

Comics’ Bronze Age and Beyond!

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow DESIGNER Rich Fowlks COVER ARTIST Allen Milgrom COVER COLORIST Glenn Whitmore COVER DESIGNER Michael Kronenberg PROOFREADER Rob Smentek

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BACK SEAT DRIVER: The Action Heroes: They’re Not Half-Bad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 A quick history of Charlton Comics and its hodgepodge-heroes FLASHBACK: Inaction Heroes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 Charlton Spotlight editor Michael Ambrose examines the Action Heroes’ pre–DC purgatory GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: Blockbuster Weekly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 Bob Greenberger goes behind the scenes of DC’s aborted Action Heroes revival FLASHBACK: Re-Meet the Beetle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 The Blue Beetle is rebooted at DC Comics FLASHBACK: Quantum Entanglements: Captain Atom’s Rebirth in the 1980s . . . . . . . . .37 This atomic hero leapt from 1968 to 1986—and from Charlton to DC FLASHBACK: Getting Down and Dirty with Peacemaker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .57 Paul Kupperberg and Tod Smith’s blast(er) from the past FLASHBACK: Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63 Mike Collins relocates Pete Morisi’s reluctant hero to the UK INTERVIEW: Dave Gibbons: Drawing the Watchmen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69 The artist of one of comics’ most celebrated projects discusses its connections to the Action Heroes GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: Moore and Gibbons: Before Watchmen . . . . . . . . . .76 In a coda to his interview, Dave Gibbons reveals some projects he had hoped to do with Alan Moore BACK TALK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77 Reader reaction to our FF issue and more

BACK ISSUE™ is published 8 times a year by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: BACK ISSUE, c/o Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief, 118 Edgewood Avenue NE, Concord, NC 28025. Email: euryman@gmail.com. Six-issue subscriptions: $60 Standard US, $85 Canada, $107 Surface International. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Cover art by Allen Milgrom. Captain Atom and the Ghost TM & © DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2015 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows Publishing. BACK ISSUE is a TM of TwoMorrows Publishing. ISSN 1932-6904. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING. Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age •

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Back cover of Americomics #3 (Aug. 1983), by Rik Levins and Bill Black. Blue Beetle TM & © DC Comics.

SPECIAL THANKS James Kingman Michael Ambrose Ted Kord Cary Bates Paul Kupperberg Bill Black Kevin Maguire Pat Broderick Robert Menzies Michael Browning Allen Milgrom Mike Collins Comic Book Resources Elizabeth Millsted Corpus Christi College Ian Millsted Dennis O’Neil Cambridge Bob Rozakis Paris Cullins Tod Smith Andrew Czekalski Anthony Snyder DC Comics Andrew Standish Daniel DeAngelo Roy Thomas Michael Dunne Len Wein Scott Dutton Greg Weisman Excelsior Comics John Wells T. C. Ford Michael Zeno Dave Gibbons Grand Comics Dedicated to the Database Robert Greenberger memory of Dick Giordano Heritage Comics Auctions Dan Johnson

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Michael Eury

Long before Watchmen’s Nite Owl, Dr. Manhattan, Rorschach, Silk Spectre, Ozymandius, and the Comedian, there were Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, the Question, Nightshade, Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt, and the Peacemaker. And let’s not forget Sarge Steel, Judomaster, and Son of Vulcan. If you started reading comic books in the Bronze Age or later, you missed the original appearances of these so-called “Action Heroes.” And even if you were reading comics during the Silver Age, you still might have missed their titles, due to the spotty and unpredictable distribution of their publisher’s releases. “Spotty and unpredictable” might also describe this company’s product. Quality often took a back seat to volume, as its presses were primed to crank, crank, crank, rarely slowing down. These printed comic-book pages might be poorly trimmed, with ragged edges, or their staples might be misaligned, or their artwork marred with ink blotches. Sometimes word balloons and captions were typeset to save the cost of paying a letterer (earning the credit “Lettered by A. Machine”). And in the battle for newsstand rack space, since it lacked the name recognition boasted by the majors, this company’s comics sometimes remained bundled and stacked in warehouses or storerooms, only seeing the light of day after their logos were torn off to earn retailer credit. To top it off, its founders started their company after meeting in prison! Such was the wild, but wonderful, history of Charlton Comics, that little-comics-house-that-could, which turned out everything from Abbott and Costello to Zoo Funnies from its frantic funnybook factory in Derby, Connecticut.

MAKING MAGAZINES FOR A SONG Actually, comic books weren’t Charlton’s primary product, at least not in the beginning. In the early 1930s, Italian immigrant brick mason John Santangelo, in an effort to impress his music-loving girlfriend, started publishing inexpensively produced magazines that printed the lyrics of popular songs. Little did he realize that he was breaking the law, and he was convicted of copyright infringement and sentenced to one year in prison. There he met a disbarred lawyer named Edward Levy, and after their release, Santangelo and Levy started Charlton Publishing, legally obtaining the rights to song lyrics and publishing several successful music magazines including Hit Parader, as well as puzzle magazines. For their

Ready for Action (opposite) Son of Vulcan (art by Dick Giordano), Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt (art by Pete Morisi), Judomaster (by Frank McLaughlin), and Peacemaker (by Pat Boyette). (this page) Sarge Steel (by Giordano) and the Question (by Steve Ditko). Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt TM & © Peter A. Morisi estate. All other characters TM & © DC Comics. Hit Parader © Hit Parader Magazine.

Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age •

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Blue Beetle in the Golden and Silver Ages (left) Fox’s Blue Beetle #2 (May–June 1940). Cover by Lou Fine. (right) BB’s kindasorta mid-1950s revival, in Charlton’s Space Adventures #13 (Oct.–Nov. 1954). Cover by Al Fago. Blue Beetle TM & © DC Comics.

venture they operated on the cheap, headquartering their enterprise crusading commodities (mainly Superman, Batman, and Wonder not in the nation’s publishing capitol of New York City but instead Woman) remaining in print. in Derby, Connecticut, a hamlet that at one time housed a corsetWhat a weird time to release a title starring a costumed character! manufacturing plant (its current motto is “Connecticut’s Smallest City”). But that’s exactly what Charlton did by publishing the adventures of Blue Expenses were further cut by Charlton’s purchase of a used printing Beetle. The character first popped up at Charlton on the Al Fago-drawn press. Charlton’s plant was a seven-and-a-half-acre facility, where every cover of Space Adventures #13 (Oct.–Nov. 1954). BB returned in the next aspect of the company’s business was located under one roof. issue, quickly followed by four issues of Blue Beetle, beginning with issue Charlton trickled into the comics game in the mid-1940s, with Zoo #18, cover-dated February 1955. This was really more of a product Funnies and Marvels of Science among its first entries. It wasn’t until the mop-up than a genre experiment; at the time Charlton was engulfing 1950s that Charlton’s comic division picked up its pace, with properties from publishers that were going belly-up. Also, it was editor Al Fago (and later, editor Pat Masulli) grinding out more economical for Santangelo to keep Charlton’s printing generic fare that capitalized on whatever trend would presses spinning 24-7 than to turn them off and on, so sell: Westerns, hot rods, crime, girls’ romance, funny this Blue Beetle comic-book revival was little more than animals (with its own version of Casper the Friendly product to be churned out between the printing of Ghost, titled Timmy the Timid Ghost) … you name the latest music and crossword periodicals. it, even “superheroes” (with its Mighty Mouse Blue Beetle was a familiar character to readers imitation, Atomic Mouse). In March 1955, company who had been around for a few years. He was one of owner Santangelo concocted a new way to pinch the many colorful crimefighters rushed into print pennies: He offered his freelance artists staff after National (DC) Comics’ Action Comics #1 (June employment with some benefits, but reduced their 1938) starring Superman proved an instant sensation. page rates from $20 to $13. Many artists rejected Fox Features Syndicate, not Charlton, was the original this offer and sought work elsewhere, but a young home of Blue Beetle. He was actually policeman journeyman illustrator named Dick Giordano, who Dan Garret, who donned a blue suit and fedora for dick giordano was one month shy of walking down the aisle, opted after-hours crimebusting when first spied in Mystery in for job security. (Santangelo sliced page rates even Men Comics #1 (Aug. 1939). Soon he would appear in more later that year after flood waters from Hurricane Diane destroyed blue chain-mail tights and a cowl, sporting a scarab motif and superhuman inventory. As Giordano related to me in the 2003 TwoMorrows strength as well as many comic books from Fox and Holyhoke Publishing, biography Dick Giordano: Changing Comics, One Day At a Time, “At this plus a radio serial and short-lived comic strip. In 1950, his heyday had time we didn’t know John had full flood insurance—and had collected passed … until Charlton picked up his publication rights and released on it.” Page rates soon inched back up to $13.) those 1954 and 1955 issues, which reprinted Golden Age material.

A MYSTERY MAN RETURNS

MAN IN SPACE AND MEN OF ACTION

The mid-1950s were a miserable time for the comic-book industry: Television was robbing comics’ readership by providing an enticing new form of entertainment, delivered for free right into the family living room; Dr. Frederic Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent indicted comics as the root of juvenile delinquency and sparked a witch hunt that nearly torched the entire business; and the superhero boom of the Golden Age had sputtered to a near-halt, with only the best-known

By the mid- to late 1950s, science fiction was a fad, prompted in part by the United States’ “space race” with Russia. Satellites, dogs, and chimps were being rocketed into orbit, and Americans were fed the expectation that jetpacks, flying cars, and lunar hotels would one day be the norm (ahem … we’re still waiting). Charlton blasted off into this trend with titles like Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds, anthologies whose stories took readers to the Moon—and beyond.

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In Space Adventures #33 (Mar. 1960), artist Steve Ditko—working with writer Joe Gill, a workhorse whose smoking typewriter spewed out thousands of comic-book pages— introduced the superhero Captain Atom. Originally Allen Adam, the hero gained nuclearbased superpowers after miraculously surviving an atomic explosion in a sabotaged rocketship. Captain Atom, in his sparkling gold-and-red costume, appeared as a cover feature in a handful of issues of Space Adventures in 1960 and 1961. Soon thereafter, superheroes were back in fashion: DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz had steered successful, updated revivals of The Flash, Green Lantern, and the Justice Society of America (as the Justice League of America), among others, and Marvel Comics’ quirky, quarrelsome superheroes were taking off, starting with Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four and including a new sensation, The Amazing Spider-Man, scripted by Lee and drawn by Captain Atom co-creator Steve Ditko. Charlton’s John Santangelo ordered editor Pat Masulli to create superhero books for their line. In 1964, Charlton revived Blue Beetle—now Dan Garrett (note the change in spelling from the Golden Age’s “Garret”)—reimagining him as an archaeologist who received superpowers from an Egyptian magic scarab. He headlined five new issues (Blue Beetle #1–5), then continued the run the next year with an additional five issues, resuming another title’s numbering and being released as Blue Beetle #50–54. Blue Beetle was produced by writer Joe Gill (!) and artists Bill Fraccio and Tony Tallarico. Next up came two reality-based concepts with superhero-like elements. Essentially Charlton’s version of the Blackhawks, the Fightin’ Five (Fightin’ 5 on their covers) premiered in their July 1964 cover-dated first issue, actually #28, one of Charlton’s many series renumberings. Editor Masulli snuck misleading copy onto the series’ premiere cover (by Giordano) to lure superhero readers: the team was billed as “America’s SUPER SQUAD!” and each of its heroes was labeled on the cover with bold “FF” I.D.s that might have made Marvel’s lawyers shout “It’s clobberin’ time!” had they been paying attention. And to prove that no hot trend was beyond milking, in the spirit of the acronym-named international threats SMERSH and SPECTRE popularized in the ultra-hot James Bond secret-agent franchise, another of Masulli’s cover blurbs stacked the first letter of each of the Fightin’ Five’s names to spell out “F.I.G.H.T.” (that fall, television’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E. would continue this much-copied craze). Writer Joe Gill (!!) was joined by penciler Bill Montes and inker Ernie Bache on Charlton’s FF. Following later that year was Sarge Steel, a concept credited to editor Masulli on the splash page of Sarge Steel #1 (Dec. 1964). Here Charlton once again exploited the spy craze while sprinkling in something you might find in a Marvel comic: a metal hand for its hero. Even the series’ logo conveyed the book’s knack for existing in two worlds: its “SARGE” depicted a smoking firearm crowning its letter “A,” while its “STEEL” was forged in riveted lettering that might have tricked an inattentive Iron Man reader into buying a copy. Dick Giordano, who by this time had gone freelance but still commanded a wealth of Charlton assignments, teamed with scribe Joe Gill (!!!) to introduce Sarge Steel under editor Masulli; Fightin’ 5’s Montes and Bache later took over as artists. The character’s adventures were related in a casebook fashion, with file cards and case numbers assigned to each story. Sarge Steel started as a private-eye book, but by issue #6 its “Private Detective” cover subtitle was replaced by “Special Agent,” signaling a shift to more fantastic adventures. (For the record, Sarge Steel predates Marvel’s “Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.” feature, which bowed in Strange Tales #135, cover-dated Aug. 1965. However, Fury—introduced in early 1963 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in a World War II-based combat title—first appeared in 1960s Marvel continuity as a CIA agent in Fantastic Four #21, Dec. 1963.) Masulli also created Charlton’s next superhero, Son of Vulcan, parroting Marvel’s Thor. Instead of employing the Thunder God’s Norse pantheon, Masulli turned to the Roman gods. In Son of Vulcan’s origin from Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds #46 (May 1965), newsman Johnny Mann angrily condemned the gods for the horrors of warfare. He was summoned to Mount Olympus, where the flame god Vulcan took him under his wing and allowed him to use his powers on Earth to right wrongs. Fraccio and Tallarico were the Son of Vulcan art team, with Joe Gill (!!) replacing Pat Masulli as writer beginning with the hero’s second adventure. Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds was retitled Son of Vulcan with issue #49, but was canceled with issue #50—an issue written by then-newcomer Roy Thomas, his first professional script. Judomaster leapt off of editor Masulli’s desk starting in, of all places, Special War Series #4 (Nov. 1965), which during its four-issue run appeared to be a Showcase-like battle book, each issue featuring a different theme and logo (#1: D-Day, #2: Attack, and #3: War and Attack). Written by Joe Gill (no surprise there!) and illustrated by Frank McLaughlin, Judomaster was set during World War II. Its star, Army sergeant Rip Jagger, was taught martial arts by an island chieftain after Rip saved the chief’s daughter in the South Pacific. A revival of Captain Atom was the next superhero book from Masulli, picking up with issue #78 (Dec. 1965)—continuing another series’ numbering—with Gill and Ditko reuniting, joined by inker Rocke Mastroserio. The last superhero book to originate as a result of Santangelo’s mandate to Masulli was Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt, created by Peter (Pete) A. Morisi, a police officer who moonlighted as a comic-book writer/artist, hiding behind the “badge” of the pseudonym “PAM.” Peter Cannon

Atomic Ace and Charlton’s FF (top) Meet Captain Atom, in Space Adventures #33 (Mar. 1960). Cover by Steve Ditko. (bottom) With all the “FF”s on this Dick Giordano cover to Fightin’ 5 #28 (July 1964), you’d almost expect ol’ Doc Doom to stick in his armored head from off-panel. Captain Atom TM & © DC Comics. Fightin’ Five © 1964 Charlton Comics.

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Charlton’s Champions Wraparound cover to the Charlton Portfolio (1974), by Don Newton and Bob Layton. Unless otherwise noted, all scans in this article are courtesy of Michael Ambrose. All characters TM & © DC Comics, except: Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt TM & © Peter A. Morisi estate. E-Man TM & © Joe Staton and Nicola Cuti. Yang © 1974 Charlton Comics Group.

The year 1974 was pivotal in the history of the Charlton Action Heroes. Or maybe it would be more accurate to call them “Inaction Heroes.” By that year, those characters were but a fond, distant memory in the minds of comics fans. Until 1968, Charlton had made an honest if halting effort to enter the blossoming superhero comics field with Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, the Question, Judomaster, Sarge Steel, Peter Cannon– Thunderbolt, and Peacemaker, along with the various minor characters, some of which had only a single outing. Fan reaction was favorable, but as Michael Eury discusses in his history of the Action Hero line elsewhere in this issue, there simply weren’t enough kids buying the comics, because Charlton’s own distribution was so ineffective. The last appearances of any of the characters had been in Mysterious Suspense #1 (Oct. 1968), an all-Question one-shot by Steve Ditko, and Blue Beetle #5 (Nov. 1968), also by Ditko,

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Michael Ambrose

and featuring a Question backup story. That was it for the Action Heroes—or so it would seem. In 1974, two Action Hero characters made a cameo appearance in Ghost Manor #21 (Nov. 1974). The first page of “Death in a Darkroom,” by Nicola Cuti and Steve Ditko, depicts a parade scene with E-Man, Blue Beetle and the Bug, and a Captain Atom–like figure in the background. We don’t know whether Cuti specified those characters in the script or if Ditko simply felt like drawing them (in any case, it may be the only known instance of Ditko depicting E-Man), but likely only a few readers at the time were aware that the Beetle and the Captain were actually Charlton characters from a previous comics generation—which, in those days, was reckoned to be every three to five years. Far more important in 1974 was the appearance of CPL Special Double-Issue #9 and 10 from CPL/Gang Publications of Indianapolis, Indiana, a magazine better known as the Charlton Portfolio.

CHARLTON PORTFOLIO AND THE CHARLTON COMICS SURGE Fans Bob Layton and Roger Stern started a fanzine they grandiloquently titled CPL—Contemporary Pictorial Literature—in the early 1970s after graduating from high school in Indianapolis. Fellow fan Duffy Vohland, at the time a mover and shaker in the fanzine world, was able to convince many semipro and pro comics artists to contribute to CPL, among them John Byrne, P. Craig Russell, Paul Gulacy, Bob Hall, and Alex Toth. CPL ran for a total of 12 issues and was one of the more highly regarded fanzines of the era. It was Vohland who arranged for CPL/Gang to hook up with Charlton. According to an interview with Layton in Comic Book Artist #12 (Mar. 2001), “Duffy was really the one who got us connected with Charlton” in 1974. “Stern gave us a call from Duffy saying that I should talk to somebody up at Charlton, and how would we like to publish the unpublished material they had left over from the Dick Giordano days. And, of course, we lost our minds! Even at the possibility of it!” What resulted was the stunning Charlton Portfolio, a 48-page black-and-white magazine professionally printed on coated stock. Behind a wraparound cover by Don Newton and Bob Layton, spotlighting the 1960s Action Heroes along with some of Charlton’s 1970s characters, were pinups by Dick Giordano, Pete Morisi, Frank McLaughlin, Warren Sattler, Joe Staton, Pat Boyette, Jim Aparo, Dave Cockrum, John Byrne, and others, plus a variety of Charlton-centered articles. But the meat of the Portfolio was the complete, unpublished Blue Beetle #6

by D. C. Glanzman and Steve Ditko. “We got it pretty much with no strings attached,” said Layton. “They had no use for it! It never occurred to them to actually publish it themselves.” One of the most important features in the Portfolio was the inside-back-cover commentary, “The Last Word.” Here, managing editor George Wildman detailed how he was going about making changes at Charlton Comics. This article forms a kind of “Charlton Manifesto” and is key to understanding how Wildman was trying to transform Charlton’s low-tier industry image at the time. Among other improvements outlined in the article, Wildman pointed out that the comics were no longer a “closed shop” but were now open to new talent, that he was now providing information and material to fans, and that Charlton had reentered the superhero field with the introduction of E-Man and Yang. He acknowledged that he had “a lot of catching up to do but we have created a momentum that is constantly gathering speed and shows no signs of slowing.” Wildman was in charge of some four-dozen titles and continued to expand the line during his tenure, dropping deadwood and adding new titles. During this latter heyday, 1972 to 1976, Charlton published around 250 individual comic books per year. The Portfolio was a major financial loss for CPL/ Gang, but as Layton said, there was a silver lining: “Charlton came back, very impressed with the effort.” At that time the two major comics companies were producing in-house fanzines: Marvel Comics introduced FOOM in spring 1973, and in summer

Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age •

Familiar Faces (left) Title page to “Death in a Darkroom,” by Nicola Cuti and Steve Ditko, from Ghost Manor #21 (Nov. 1974), showing Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, and E-Man in the background. (right) Splash page to “Showdown in Sunuria,” a previously unpublished Captain Atom story by Ditko, from Charlton Bullseye #1 (1975). Anyone recognize the newbie who inked and lettered the story for Bullseye? Blue Beetle and Captain Atom TM & © DC Comics. E-Man TM & © Joe Staton and Nicola Cuti.

BACK ISSUE • 13

There was always something a little different about Charlton Comics. Charlton published scores of titles just like Timely/Atlas/Marvel, utilized some of the best artists in the field such as Steve Ditko, and today remains beloved by many despite being gone for three decades now. During the 1960s, when everyone was jumping on the Silver Age superhero bandwagon, Charlton offered up a line of Action Heroes that were fun, quirky, and different … but never got licensed, made into cartoons, or found their way off the four-color page. Still, as Alan Moore told Jon B. Cooke, “There were some very good little strips, and then, of course, there was that big Charlton revamp where we got the new Blue Beetle, the new Captain Atom, and so forth, which was a shot in the arm. All of these things contributed in pushing Charlton higher up my league titles of which comics to buy first. They never quite ousted Marvel or DC, but during that golden period, Charlton was up there with the best of them.” In 1983, Charlton was a dying company, and DC Comics’ Paul Levitz acquired the Action Heroes for $5000 a character as a present for executive editor Dick Giordano. Dick was delighted, of course, then pocketed them, figuring out what to do with them. As he revealed to BI editor Michael Eury in the 2003 biography Dick Giordano: Changing Comics, One Day at a Time, his first thought was reprinting their Charlton tales to reintroduce them to fans before launching new stories. DC’s marketing department nixed that idea, so Dick went in different directions. It was a tricky task because even then, plans were being made to upend the DC Universe in less than two years with Crisis on Infinite Earths. Yet these Action Heroes were Dick’s babies, and he guarded them until he could figure out the best way to reintroduce them. By then, the direct-sales market had proven able to support direct-only titles while newsstands were showing considerable signs of weakening. As a result, experimentation in terms of page count, format, and price was growing. At some point, Dick hit upon the idea of a weekly title featuring the Charlton heroes— Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, Judomaster, the Question, and Peacemaker—treating them like extended Sunday newspaper comic strips. To tie it in with the DC line, he and Levitz concocted the idea to reprint in comic form the syndicated newspaper strip The World’s Greatest Superheroes from its 1978 beginnings. Writer/artist Pete Morisi still owned Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt and was interested in doing more with his character, so a deal was struck allowing him to contribute.

Super Friends Dave Gibbons’ cover for the unpublished Comics Cavalcade Weekly (a.k.a. Blockbuster Weekly) cover, colored by and courtesy of Scott Dutton (catspawdynamics.com), who also added the Charlton bullet and cover graphics. All characters TM & © DC Comics, except Peter Cannon-Thunderbolt TM & © Peter A. Morisi estate.

18 • BACK ISSUE • Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age

Robert Greenberger

While Frank McLaughlin didn’t own Judomaster, he felt proprietary about the character, so it wasn’t hard to convince Giordano to give him the feature assignment. Giordano knew he wanted to keep Blue Beetle lighthearted and upbeat, running counter to the developing grim-and-gritty trend in comics, something that can be traced back a few years to Frank Miller’s influential run on Daredevil. He asked writer Steve Englehart to tackle the feature, and Englehart responded with some nifty touches including introducing Blue Beetle’s wife, who not only knew his secret identity but was a supportive spouse. Dick tapped newcomer David Ross to pencil the four-page feature and then asked veteran artist Alex Nino, who had resurfaced to do some work for the company, to ink the feature. At his website, Englehart has noted, “For years, DC wanted to do a weekly book … they worked up a prototype that never made it out the door. The lead feature in that one was Blue Beetle. I wrote seven fourpage chapters in BB’s serial.” Giordano also gave the Peacemaker gig to Keith Giffen to both write and pencil based on the strength of his co-plotting work with Levitz on Legion of Super-Heroes. Giffen was given two pages an issue to work with and rose to the challenge, using mostly six- or ninepanel pages, with many silent panels keeping things moving. In Giffen’s version, protagonist Christopher Smith, a man who man who loved peace so much that he fought to preserve it, was now haunted by his dead father’s spirit, whom he believed haunted the Peacemaker helmet. Giffen teamed with dialogue partner Robert Loren Fleming and inker Gary Martin. They produced the longest run of chapters for the weekly, at least a dozen, if not more, and I remain sorry they were never collected since it was strong enough to stand on its own. A hint of what might have been came with the Giffen/Martin Peacemaker Who’s Who page. By now we were well into 1984, and Giordano was increasingly busy running the growing line of comics, so his line-editing kept getting backburnered. As a newly hired assistant editor, working with Len Wein and Marv Wolfman on Crisis and Who’s Who, I found I had time on my hands. Dick asked for my help first on The Dark Knight and later on what was being dubbed Blockbuster. (Back in the early 1970s, comics fandom was buzzing when someone let slip that the company was considering a mammoth title by the name Blockbuster. More on this subject will be presented when BI #81 explores DC’s 100-Page Super Spectaculars.) Very quickly, Giordano got even busier and gave me the entire project with the mandate to create a lineup of features and talents, get them rolling, and produce a dummy first issue for Levitz and publisher Jenette Kahn to approve. That meant I had a budget for logo and cover, so I needed to get those up and running. Thankfully, writer Mike W. Barr approached Dick and me about taking on the Question assignment, and we agreed. We partnered him with Stan Woch, who was graduating from the pages of New Talent Showcase (see BI #71). Giordano, of course, wanted Sarge Steel, his steelfisted private eye, to be in on the fun. Much as he wanted to pencil it, he knew he couldn’t manage a weekly schedule atop his busy inking and management responsibilities. He and special projects editor Andy Helfer had gotten to talking about Andy doing some comics writing and they decided to work together on Sarge. Having recently drawn Thriller, artist Trevor von Eeden was now looking for work and was thrilled at the notion of doing

street-level action and had confidence that Dick’s inks would keep his work looking sharp. That left the assignment of Captain Atom, the line’s sole superpowered hero, and boy, was he powerful with his atomic energies! This proved a challenging assignment, but Paul Kupperberg, a fan of the Charlton incarnation, was up for bringing the hero to a modern audience. He was first partnered with Paul Chadwick, just at the beginning of Paul’s celebrated career. [Editor’s note: If you missed Paul’s cover for BACK ISSUE #75, spotlighting the issue’s article about his unforgettable Concrete series, you can still get a copy via twomorrows.com.] His work looked great, but Chadwick couldn’t manage the weekly demand and withdrew after one installment. He was replaced by Denys Cowan, a recent find who had been knocking around from assignment to assignment and got to stretch. When that didn’t work out, Jose Delbo stepped in. Similarly, while Englehart wrote seven chapters of Blue Beetle material, Ross didn’t work out and we cast about for a replacement. Chas Truog, who had worked Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age •

Give Peacemaker a Chance A panel-rich Peacemaker page by Keith Giffen, with Gary Martin inks. TM & © DC Comics.

BACK ISSUE • 19

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Jim Kingman

“Ahh, isn’t recognition grand? And here I thought I’d be forgotten after all this time.” With those spoken words in panel 4 on page 18 of Crisis on Infinite Earths #1 (Apr. 1985), the Blue Beetle, formerly of the Charlton Comics Action Hero universe, dropped from his solarpowered flying (and aquatic) craft, “the Bug,” into the DC Universe for the first time. Months later, the Beetle’s first full-length solo appearance as a permanent DC character was published in Secret Origins #2 (May 1986), released in February. Blue Beetle began publication in March of 1986. A new level of maturity in comic-book storytelling was produced throughout 1986, and it is a year now considered by many to be the beginning of the Modern Age of Comics. It’s hard to argue, as during that year Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Art Spiegleman’s Maus were published, while Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen began its year-long serialization. Watchmen was originally conceived to feature Blue Beetle and other Charlton superheroes acquired by DC, but that decision was nixed so that the company could use the characters for years to come within DC Universe continuity. Moore and Gibbons created new superheroes (and a heroine) based on the Charlton characters, and the rest is significant comic-book history. So instead of Blue Beetle being in on the ground floor of the Modern Age through Watchmen (the Beetle became Nite Owl), BB’s own book leaned heavily on a traditional form of superhero storytelling reminiscent of Marvel since its Silver Age superhero inception and later DC during the 1970s; entertaining but no longer groundbreaking. Subsequently, the series, which lasted 24 issues and also tied into two crossover events (Legends and Millennium), has been overlooked by comic-book historians. Meanwhile, Blue Beetle’s active participation and character development in 1987’s relaunch of the JLA in Justice League America garners most, if not all, of fandom’s attention. This is a shame, because Blue Beetle, plus Secret Origins #2, is a lot of fun, and deserves its due. That starts right now!

THE CREATORS Len Wein, whose comics career is so vast and influential it would require a year’s worth of BACK ISSUE to properly overview, wrote Blue Beetle, plus Secret Origins #2. RJM Lofficier provided plot assists on issues #14, 15, and 17–22. Gil Kane illustrated the introductory tale in SO #2 with a rawness reminiscent of the Golden Age but with ten times the len wein dynamism. Paris Cullins was the main artist on Blue Beetle, having established himself on DC’s Blue Devil. Cullins penciled issues #1–9, 11–14, and 17 and penciled and inked his swan song in #18. Bruce Patterson inked Cullins on issues #1–6, and was replaced by Dell Barras, who inked Cullins on issues #7–9

The Beetle is Back Paris Cullins and Bruce Patterson’s incredible, inyour-face cover for DC’s Blue Beetle #1 (June 1986). TM & © DC Comics.

Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age •

BACK ISSUE • 23

Big Bang Look closely and you’ll find Blue Beetle amid the worldshattering chaos of George Pérez’s iconic cover for Crisis on Infinite Earths #1 (Apr. 1985). TM & © DC Comics.

and 11–14. Ross Andru penciled issues #15 (inked by Barras), 16, and 19–22, and Don Heck wrapped up the series with pencils on #23 and 24. Danny Bulanadi inked issues #16, 17, and 19–24. In addition, Chuck Patton penciled issue #10, Joey Cavalieri assisted on issue #12’s script, Pablo Marcos assisted on inks in issue #13, and Gil Kane returned for five pages of pencils on issue #22. There were three editors on the book: Julius Schwartz (Secret Origins #2, Blue Beetle #s 1–4), Karen Berger (BB # 5–13), and Denny O’Neil (BB #14–24). A wide array of talent produced Blue Beetle, but it was clearly Wein’s series to develop. Wein explains, “When I heard Dick Giordano [then-vice president and executive editor at DC] was planning to do monthly books with several of the Charlton characters, I told him I wanted to do the Beetle. He was fine with that. I had pretty much my own

editorial control. This was right after DC discontinued the writer/editor program, but I had to have an editor just to keep me on schedule.” Bob Rozakis, who provided text pieces for the early Blue Beetle letters columns, concurs. “Len and Julie had been working together for many years, so he may just have asked Julie to do it. I suspect that Julie did little more than read through the scripts and process the bills.” This was also toward the end of Schwartz’s long and distinguished career as a comic-book editor, which dated back to the 1940s. “I think Julie became a bit more flexible,” continues Rozakis. “His editing style had always been to punch up the dialogue and he did some heavy rewriting on the scripts of some of his writers, but he tended to let Len have his way. I know that his editing seemed lighter on my scripts as the years went by, but that might just be that I learned to write to his tastes. I don’t think Paris had ever done any work on Julie’s books, so it was more of ‘Bring in your work and bob rozakis a bill and I’ll get you a check.’”

SECRET ORIGINS #2 (May 1986) “Echoes of Future Past!” Wein brilliantly condensed 40+ years of sporadic Blue Beetle history into an approximate ten-year time frame within the post–Crisis DC Universe. This is a very involved 23-page origin story that blends history with action and adventure while setting the stage for the all-new Blue Beetle series. Archaeologist and Professor Dan Garrett, along with his girlfriend and fellow archaeologist Luri Hashid, are awarded a dig in northern Africa. Together they unearth the long-lost tomb of Kha-Ef-Re. Atop the tomb Dan discovered a blue scarab. The spirit within the scarab placed Dan into a trance and explained to him the heroic mission he would undertake and the powers he would wield. By speaking the chant “Kaji Dha!,” Garrett would instantly be transformed into Blue Beetle. After battling the resurrected mummy of Kha-Ef-Re, BB proceeded to dump his relationship with Luri and go on to become a noteworthy superhero, battling many villains, including Mr. Thunderbolt, Mentor the Magnificent, and Mr. Crabb. Then he abruptly retired. Years later, a desperate Ted Kord, who once was a student of Professor Garrett, comes to visit Dan seeking help. Kord explains that he discovered a film strip in the ruined laboratory of his allegedly deceased Uncle Jarvis. Upon viewing the damaged reel he saw that he had unknowingly aided his uncle in creating the prototype for a robot army that would allow Jarvis to rule the world. Kord believes Jarvis faked his death and traveled to Pago Island in the Atlantic Ocean to complete construction of the robots. Kord and Garrett travel to the isle by boat, where they are captured by a group of robots and taken to Jarvis. To escape, Dan transforms himself into Blue Beetle. Garrett is able to defeat Jarvis, but is mortally wounded. As Ted holds him in his arms, Dan tells him to carry on as Blue Beetle. Suddenly the cavern collapses and Dan disappears into it. With the mystical blue scarab falling with Garrett, Ted realizes he must reinvent Blue Beetle’s look and operations. He trains vigorously, builds the Bug, and constructs a “BB” gun that acts as an intense strobe light and fires compressed air. He designs a new costume. Several months later, he begins his crimefighting career.

24 • BACK ISSUE • Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age

BLUE BEETLE #1 (June 1986) “Out From the Ashes!” Blue Beetle comes out of a self-imposed retirement (it’s never explained why Ted put the Beetle into retirement, but it does allow his previous Charlton adventures to be part of the new DC continuity), and battles Firefist, the Incendiary Man. That’s in the first seven pages. Firefist escapes, and we’re off to establish locales and a supporting cast. Blue Beetle’s home base is Chicago, and as Ted Kord he is the CEO of KORD Industries (KORD is an acronym for Kord Omniversal Research and Development). Ted built KORD into a major research corporation after his father, Thomas Kord, left the business to travel throughout the world. As Blue Beetle, Kord’s secret superhero headquarters is under KORD Industries and is affectionately known as the Beetle’s Nest (because the Beetle Cave just won’t do), which he accesses via the Bug through a reinforced tunnel constructed into the lakebed of Lake Michigan. Once he changes from Blue Beetle to Ted Kord, he enters a secret elevator that takes him to his office on the top floor of KORD (its architecture resembling, for all you Bronze Age Flash fans, the buildings of the 30th Century). Home for Ted is a luxurious penthouse a few miles away. Kord is a well-respected scientist, inventor, and established entrepreneur; but, maintaining a secret identity will soon pose some difficulties in his personal life and how he runs his business. Those difficulties are not, however, the thematic issue that runs throughout the series; they are the consequences of Ted hoping and proving to himself that he is worthy of being Blue Beetle. Although he is a good friend, a good boyfriend, an accomplished professional, and a very smart and rich man, all of this is overshadowed by his doubt and determination to live up to the legacy of a different identity. By the time Ted (and the reader) has the feeling he’s reached that goal, he loses almost everything. While there is action galore in Blue Beetle and Wein, Cullins, and Paris’ fellow artists do a splendid job depicting heroversus-villain battle sequences, the heart of the series is its supporting cast. Most of the cast is introduced in issue #1, and each of them has an intriguing storyline that gradually unfolds over the course of several issues until it takes center stage and Blue Beetle takes over. Without these characters Blue Beetle would be, well, just a series of splendid battle sequences! At KORD Industries, there is Angela Revere, Ted’s receptionist and a woman with a hint of a secret; Melody Case, KORD’s computer analyst and Ted’s girlfriend; and Jeremiah Duncan, KORD’s chief chemist and eccentric inventor. In the city, there is Murray Takamoto, head of the Chicago branch of S.T.A.R. Labs and Ted’s best friend, who requests Kord’s aid in successfully completing his troubled promethium bonding project; and Lt. Maxwell Fisher, Chicago

detective, who is obsessed with the mysterious circumstances surrounding Dan Garrett’s death (but don’t be swayed by this particular obsession; Fisher has issues, but he’s a good, tough cop). Finally, half a continent and half an ocean away, there is archaeologist Conrad Carapax, who has arrived on Pago Island, not the least bit interested in the mystery of Garrett’s death, but rather why the professor came to the island in the first place. (The secret, by the way, is an immobile robot in Jarvis Kord’s ruined lab waiting for someone, anyone, to come along and activate it. We’re privy to its existence at the end of each sequence involving Carapax. Carapax is not.) Oh, and there’s a sinister red-haired janitor at S.T.A.R. Labs who is simply up to no good. So in this first issue you have six storylines: Blue Beetle versus Firefist, first and foremost, and five others jockeying for position. This frantic but enjoyable story structure, with a few exceptions, also runs throughout the entire series. Steve Ditko had illustrated Blue Beetle at Charlton, and his depiction of the character was still fresh in the minds of both Beetle and Ditko fans. While Ditko did not return as artist, Paris Cullins did not disappoint, delivering a Ditko flair while maintaining his own style, already well established from his prior work on Blue Devil. “I worked with Paris the same as with most of my other artists,” notes Wein. “I’d give him a detailed page/panel breakdown of the script, he’d pencil, I’d dialogue over the pencils. He was a great guy to work with.”

BLUE BEETLE #2 (July 1986) “This City’s Not For Burning!” Firefist’s origin is revealed in flashback by the deeply disturbed and disfigured villain. He recounts how, as Lyle Byrnes, he was involved in a lab explosion at his apartment. When the Chicago firefighters arrived at the building to extinguish the blaze and rescue as many as they could, Byrnes was tragically overlooked. This is why he hates all firefighters, and is determined to have them and their stations burn. Blue Beetle’s escape from a collapsing building pays homage to a classic sequence published in The Amazing Spider-Man #33 (Feb. 1966). At story’s end, Firefist is presumed consumed by fire after setting ablaze a newly opened firefighters museum.

Now in the DCU Predicated upon his Crisis appearances, Blue Beetle was included in Who’s Who #3 (May 1985), which was released just over a year before the Beetle’s own series debuted. Art by Steve Rude. TM & © DC Comics.

Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age •

BACK ISSUE • 25

Recommended Reading Want more about BB? Chris Irving’s Blue Beetle Companion, with this awesome Cully Hamner cover, is available digitally at twomorrows.com. Blue Beetle TM & © DC Comics.

any of my questions? “Sadly,” Wein confesses, “after over 25 years, I have absolutely no memory about how those storylines were going to play out.”

“The Final Adventure” Courtesy of Mike Dunne, an original art page from the Beetle vs. Carapax clash in Blue Beetle #24 (May 1988), the last issue of the run. That’s Dashing Don Heck’s pencils, folks, under Danny Bulanadi’s inks. TM & © DC Comics.

Inc. from the ground up once, Dad! Guess now it’s your turn!” With those words, Ted Kord turns and walks away from family, friends, and colleagues, his future as Blue Beetle uncertain. This is certainly no happy ending.

THE UNRESOLVED Had the series been more successful and allowed to continue beyond issue #24, numerous questions could have been answered: Did Angela survive the collapse of the KORD building? Would Melody and Ted get back together? Would Jeremiah return to—well, never mind, Jeremiah would not be returning to KORD anytime soon. How would Murray’s new job eventually involve Blue Beetle? What of Dan Garrett and Dr. Beryl’s son, the boy known as “File 13,” what was his fate? Would Ed Buckley at least get a job at S.T.A.R. Labs after being released from prison? Would Blue Beetle seek out and find Curt Calhoun? Would Klaus Cornelius ever have the opportunity to activate Agent Axis? What became of Catalyst and his search for Compound XD-3? Does Wein have any answers for

36 • BACK ISSUE • Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age

In my opinion, Blue Beetle is a good comic book— at over 500 pages a novel, really, with a series of short stories blended in—and while that’s meant as a compliment, it’s also intended to defuse any high expectations going into reading the series. It’s meant to entertain, and although I certainly took seriously this assignment, there were times I caught myself having settled back in the chair, no longer a researcher and writer, merely a content fanboy enjoying a good comic. Blue Beetle would continue to appear in Justice League International and the book’s subsequent title changes, “Bwah-ha-ha”ing all the way, developing a strong friendship with Booster Gold, fluctuating in weight, and eventually meeting a violent, bloody demise in 2005’s Countdown to Infinite Crisis, a fate impossible to imagine 20 years earlier. The Azure Avenger eventually left a significant mark in the grim-and-gritty Modern Age of comics after all. JIM KINGMAN purchased his first comic book, DC’s World’s Finest Comics #211, on a family road trip in March of 1972, and has been reading and collecting comic books ever since (with no end in sight).

John Wells

“John Wayne is dead.” “The Duke? Not the Duke—he beat the big C!” “Martin Luther King is dead.” “Memphis. Six, seven weeks ago. Some sniper. What is this, a disorientation test?” “Robert Kennedy is dead.” “That’s a lie!” “Lyndon Johnson. Hubert Humphrey. Jack Benny. In the ground. Anwar Sadat! Indira Gandhi! John Lennon! Gone. All of them, dead and gone.” “My wife. I want to call my wife.” “Your wife is dead too.” For Nathaniel C. Adam, this was no dream. One minute it had been 1968; the next 1986. And there was more to absorb. Convicted of treason nearly 20 years earlier, the disgraced Air Force captain had agreed to a radical experiment to commute his death sentence … assuming he survived. The United States had acquired a malleable alien metal at a UFO crash site and wanted to see if it could be used to protect a human being shielded within it. Specifically, they wanted to see if the silver shield would withstand a 50-megaton thermonuclear blast. In the short term, the answer seemed to have been no. Captain Adam and the metal appeared to have been vaporized and Colonel Wade R. Eiling (rhymes with reeling)—the cold-blooded man who’d supervised the project—moved on with his life, going so far as to marry Adam’s widow and becoming a stepfather to the convict’s young children Randy and Peggy. Now a two-star general, Eiling was alive, well, and prepared to turn the screws when a disoriented, metallically bonded Nathaniel Adam materialized in 1986. Adam found more sympathy with Dr. Heinrich Megala, the scientist who’d spearheaded the 1968 project. Suffering from a motor-neurological condition triggered by initial contact with the alien metal, Megala was now a virtual paraplegic kept mobile by a sophisticated wheelchair with mechanical arms. It was the wizened physicist who understood what had happened to the silver-plated Adam. The nuclear blast “was more energy than the UFO alloy could absorb all at once,” Megala theorized. “The excess energy became the ‘fuel’ which propelled the captain across 18 years of space-time.” In short, the doctor declared (more than two years before the premiere of a certain TV show starring Scott Bakula) that Nathaniel Adam had made “the damndest quantum leap in history.” A testing program administered by Megala and his bodyguard Babylon confirmed that the time-displaced 28-year-old could now tap the awesome power of the quantum field. From Superman-style flight, strength, and invulnerability to the firing of energy blasts, Captain Adam ranked high on the power scale, but he was most grateful for a more subtle attribute. Through concentration, he could shrug off his metallic appearance

Blast from the Past Nathaniel Adam’s wild ride began here, in DC’s Captain Atom #1 (Mar. 1987). Cover by Pat Broderick. TM & © DC Comics.

Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age •

BACK ISSUE • 37

and regain his human form, only his once-brown hair impact. In the span of two weeks, the noble—and remained snow white. publicly autonomous—Captain had snagged the cover of If Adam had any hope of resuming his old every major news magazine and was scheduling life, General Eiling soon set him straight. TV interviews to divulge his “true” story. The clemency deal cut under the Johnson Even the superhero community—with the Administration was null and void, but notable exception of the jealous nuclear President Reagan offered the prospect man Firestorm—was enchanted, Blue of a new pardon in exchange for a Beetle going so far as to declare Cap tour of duty as a United States secret a “kindred spirit” as he mulled the agent. Off the clock, he could continue feeling that “I already know the guy to seek out proof that he’d been from somewhere.” framed 20 years earlier. SEEMS LIKE OLD TIMES Still, the existence of a superhuman Most fans, of course, knew full well that government agent was too politically the Blue Beetle did share a common sensitive to risk public exposure, so lineage with Captain Atom when Steve the government devised an elaborate pat broderick Ditko drew both of their adventures diversion. With “gloves,” “boots,” for Charlton Comics in the 1960s. and an atomic chest emblem laserEven after DC purchased the heroes dyed onto his silver skin, Captain Atom emerged as the and inserted them into 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths, country’s newest superhero … carefully crafted by his behind-the-scenes handlers and publicists for maximum there was still a sense that their Charlton-documented past would be preserved in their post–Crisis adventures. That certainly seemed to be the case when Cap showed up alongside Superman and Firestorm in late 1985’s DC Comics Presents #90. Ditto for the Blue Beetle, who had a new supporting cast in his ongoing 1986 comic book but maintained the previously established backstory. As the Question, Peacemaker, and Sarge Steel showed up fully formed in guest-appearances throughout 1986, there was an unstated assumption that their Charlton canon still counted. In the year since Cap’s team-up with Superman, though, much had changed. Galvanized by John Byrne’s restart of the Man of Steel’s adventures, other editors began to act on the possibilities that Crisis’ potential clean slate offered. Hence, Greg Potter and George Pérez’s Wonder Woman. And Cary Bates, Greg Weisman, and Pat Broderick’s Captain Atom. Broderick’s highest-profile assignment of the 1980s had been an impressive run with writer Gerry Conway on DC’s original nuclear man in The Fury of Firestorm, but the artist wasn’t certain he wanted a second act. Deeply invested in the Charlton heroes that were dear to him, DC’s Dick Giordano had reached out to him, though. “[He] called me to see if I would be interested in working on the

Cap, Take One The “old” Captain Atom was shoehorned into the DC Universe before his titular series redefined him. Cap got a page in Who’s Who #4 (June 1985, art by Denys Cowan and Rick Magyar). (inset) Squint and you can find Cap on the cover of DC Comics Presents #90 (Feb. 1986, cover by Cowan and Bob Smith). TM & © DC Comics.

38 • BACK ISSUE • Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age

Captain Atom series,” Broderick told Rik Offenberger in a 2003 interview at mightycrusaders.net. “I’ll admit, I was hesitant to accept the job. But he had expressed to me that he really needed me on that book so I agreed to do it for a year. It turned into three.” Bates, still a few years shy of his 40th birthday, was an industry veteran with more than 20 years of DC Comics credits, but the characters he was best known for—Superman and the Flash—were Greg Weisman. Silverblade, Bates now in the hands of others as the details, was “a series that was set company embraced new directions. entirely in real-world Los Angeles, The vanishing assignments left Bates which at the time I wasn’t too familiar with projects like DC’s TV adaptation with. Back in those pre–Internet V and his first Marvel Comics work— days, there was a lot more to doing Spitfire and the Troubleshooters— research or digging up reference before the Captain Atom relaunch material than a few mouse clicks. emerged. “I can’t recall if I volunSince Greg had spent his whole life teered for the assignment,” Bates in L.A., it wasn’t long before he cary bates tells BACK ISSUE, “or if it was offered became my go-to consultant for all to me.” story matters that pertained to the In his estimation, those post–Crisis years were L.A. locale.” [Editor’s note: See BACK ISSUE #24 for creatively liberating. “With Captain Atom I was basically more about Silverblade.] starting from scratch (the Charlton backstory not Greg Weisman adds, “When [Cary] got the Captain withstanding), so the book offered far more creative Atom assignment, we began collaborating on that as freedom than I’d experienced on Superman or Flash, well. Cary wanted me to share plotting credit on given their extensive legacies as DC mainstays,” Bates Captain Atom from the get-go, but Cary’s editor explains. “Also, Captain Atom coincided with a general didn’t think that would be a good idea promotionally, resurgence of creativity in my career at the time, since so on issue #1 (Mar. 1987) I received a ‘special the other books I was writing—Silverblade (with Gene thanks’ or something like that. But I continued to Colan) and Video Jack (with Keith Giffen, for Marvel’s co-plot the book. Then, on issue #10, Cary had a Epic imprint)—were both my own creations on which time crunch for some reason or other, and I did the I had comparatively unlimited freedom.” dialogue for the book as well, at which point Cary Silverblade, whose first issue premiered seven insisted I share credit from then on. Initially, I was months after Captain Atom #1, had been the project co-plotter. Then it was just by both of us, though that connected Bates with young DC assistant editor basically I was still only co-plotting.” Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age •

Coming Attractions (left) Captain Atom (art by Pat Broderick and Bob Smith) and the Question (art by Denys Cowan and Rick Magyar) made the cover of 1986’s Amazing Heroes #108. Cover colors by Tom Zuiko. (right) Cap gets plugged in DC’s promo sheet. Captain Atom, the Question, and DC bullet TM & © DC Comics. Amazing Heroes © Fantagraphics.

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Across the DC Universe Four Captain Atom sightings outside of his own title: (above) Fury of Firestorm #63 (Sept. 1987), Secret Origins #34 (Winter 1988), and Wonder Woman #26 (Jan. 1989). (below) Young Justice #9 (Dec. 2011). TM & © DC Comics.

Television. Reflecting on the show’s complex human villain, Weisman notes that “[General] Eiling was definitely a precursor to the David Xanatos character.” The writer got a chance to reunite with both of the series close to his heart in 1999’s JLA Showcase 80-Page Giant #1. “Dan Raspler, who had been the associate editor on Captain Atom back in the day, wanted to reunite old teams to do stories for it,” Weisman explains. “He wanted to reunite Cary and Pat and myself on an untold tale of Justice League Europe featuring Captain Atom. Cary wasn’t interested, but I was. Pat [Broderick] was initially on board to do the pencils, but that never happened. So Chris Jones got the nod. It was a pretty self-indulgent story, frankly, since it involved a parody of Gargoyles. But I thought it matched the sardonic tone of the old Justice League Europe book, which was the goal. So I’m unashamed. “Years later, working on Young Justice, Brandon Vietti and I were building our 16member Justice League. And we wanted it to be a very powerful team, like a pantheon of gods down from Olympus. Cap fit right in, of course. And that allowed me to do some fun stuff with him in the comic book as well.” Notable in that regard was 2011’s Young Justice #9–10 (co-written by Weisman and Kevin Hopps with art by Christopher Jones and Dan Davis), wherein the teen heroes helped Nathaniel Adam clear his name in a plot that in spots echoed Captain Atom #26–28. Similarly, the comic book’s finale (YJ #20–25) included a reprise of CA #46’s Kylstar story as one of its plots. In yet another venue (a 2011 episode of the Batman: The Brave and the Bold cartoon), Weisman, Hopps, and Todd Casey used CA #33’s story as the inspiration for a Batman team-up. Looking back on the series, Cary Bates declares, “All things considered, I think we were able to keep the character true to its classic Charlton roots while still turning out a book that was quite progressive for its time. To my knowledge, Captain Atom was the first major title to integrate a government conspiracy into a superhero’s DNA. It was not only published decades before Marvel’s “Civil War” crossover, but also predated the primetime government conspiracy wave on TV that The X-Files would usher in a few years later.” For his part, Greg Weisman emphasizes, “I still very much love the character and the great supporting cast we created. I’ve tried to pitch doing him again at various times at DC, but there doesn’t seem to be any interest in matching me back up with him. But that’s the business when you’re working on characters you don’t own or control. But even now, I’d jump at the chance to work with him again.” JOHN WELLS is a comics historian specializing in DC Comics who has served as resource for projects ranging from Kurt Busiek’s The Power Company to Greg Weisman’s Young Justice animated series. He is the author of the TwoMorrows books American Comic Book Chronicles: 1960–1964 and 1965–1969.

56 • BACK ISSUE • Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age

Dan Johnson

In the mid-1980s, after DC Comics’ Crisis on Infinite Earths maxiseries wrapped up, the company set about integrating the recently acquired Charlton Action Heroes into its new, streamlined universe. Some characters, like Blue Beetle and Captain Atom, quickly became fan favorites thanks to their own series and inclusion in the Justice League. Meanwhile, the Question, who seemed made for the dark-and-gritty realism that was injected into comics during the latter half of this decade, also gained a loyal following. One of the lesser-known Charlton Heroes that DC worked into the ranks was Peacemaker, a character that would also embrace the violence that comics were trading in heavily towards the end of the 1980s. The character, created by writer Joe Gill and artist Pay Boyette, was never as big a hit as his Charlton cohorts, but Peacemaker did have his moments at DC, most notably as the star of his own miniseries that was written by Paul Kupperberg and penciled by Tod Smith. In this four-issue miniseries (cover-dated Jan.–Apr. 1988), Peacemaker is a troubled man who is trying to come to grips with the sins of his father, a Nazi war criminal that “talks” to him through the helmet that he wears, while he maintains a fragile grip on reality. All the while, he is also trying to stop a plot to throw the world into utter chaos by an old foe of the Dark Knight.

UNDER THE HELMET A few years before the miniseries was published, Peacemaker was slated to appear in another comic-book project, a weekly anthology that would showcase him and the other Charlton Action Heroes, Blockbuster, a.k.a. Comics Cavalcade Weekly (see Robert Greenberger’s “Greatest Stories Never Told” article elsewhere in this issue). Had that book been published, Keith Giffen and Robert Loren Fleming would have handled Peacemaker’s adventures. Even though this version of the paul kupperberg character never saw the light of day, Giffen and Fleming’s take on Peacemaker was well received by all involved and, in the end, several elements from it were incorporated into the 1988 Peacemaker miniseries which eventually saw print. “It was Keith Giffen and Robert Loren Fleming who conceived of the Peacemaker helmet talking to our hero,” says Greenberger, who was originally slated to be the editor for the weekly comic book. “They produced about a dozen two-page strips for the aborted weekly project. Everyone fell in love with the notion and despite those stories never seeing print, it became the character’s concept going forward.” Paul Kupperberg concurs: “It’s always easy to spot a Giffen idea … Ambush Bug? Yeah, you know Kupperberg didn’t come up with that one. [Peacemaker] was one of the first characters to take the idea of the psycho-severe and run it off the rails.”

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Ian Millsted

When DC Comics purchased the Charlton Action Heroes line of characters, Peter Cannon, alias Thunderbolt, was something of an odd man out. For a start, the character was owned by creator Pete Morisi (who had written and drawn the original Charlton series under the pseudonym PAM). Secondly, he was something of a reluctant hero type, so where other Action Heroes fit smoothly into the DC Universe, Peter Cannon waited on the sidelines. The vehicle by which the Charlton Action Heroes were introduced into the DC Universe was the Crisis on Infinite Earths maxiseries by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez. Peter Cannon sneaks in with a one-panel appearance in issue #7 (Oct. 1985) alongside other Charlton characters. A more substantial appearance might have followed soon afterwards if Alan Moore had been able to persuade Dick Giordano to let him use the Charlton characters in the series that would become Watchmen. Instead, as is chronicled well elsewhere, Moore created analogs of the Charlton characters with Peter Cannon being the basis for Ozymandias, another character who stands apart from the other costumed “heroes”; and if anyone is unaware of how then go and get yourself a copy of Watchmen—now. Having protected the characters he once edited from the finite role they would have had (or so everybody thought until a couple of years ago) in Watchmen, Dick Giordano encouraged their re-emergence in ongoing series. As documented elsewhere in this BACK ISSUE, the charge was led by Blue Beetle (from June 1986) followed by The Question (from Feb. 1987) and Captain Atom (from Mar. 1987). There were plans that Peter Cannon– Thunderbolt might have followed soon after. In his text piece in the first issue of the recent Peter Cannon– Thunderbolt revival from Dynamite, Mark Waid explained, “In 1988, I was an editor at DC working under Giordano, my friend and mentor. Dick liked Morisi a lot. And he loved Thunderbolt. He asked me to develop a new series with writer Robert Loren Fleming, a move Morisi blessed—if he were allowed to be involved creatively somehow. At age 60, he couldn’t handle full art on a monthly series, so Dick suggested Pete do a special ‘reintroduction’ story for my Secret Origins anthology series. It was in the DC offices that I met Pete, who looked and sounded for all the world like a Mickey Spillane character, and he graciously listened to me (the snot-nosed whelp) explain what I was looking for in a yarn. Pete was genial, good-natured, shook my hand, and a few weeks later made his deadline on the dot, handing in 19 completed pages, fully lettered and illustrated and ready to go.” Unfortunately, Secret Origins was canceled before Morisi’s work could see print, and the Fleming series did not happen.

The “Reluctant Hero” Cover to DC’s Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt #1 (Sept. 1992), penciled by its writer, Mike Collins, and inked by Jose Marzan, Jr. The cover montage shows his Cannon’s primary supporting cast, Cairo de Frey and Tabu Singh. Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt TM & © Peter A. Morisi estate. DC logo TM & © DC Comics.

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Evila Lives Again, Too Our hero encounters his longtime foe Evila on this stunning page from Dynamite’s Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt #9 (May 2013). Story by Steve Darnall and Alex Ross, art by Jonathan Lau, and colors by Vincius Andrade. Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt TM & © Peter A. Morisi estate.

Morisi made a point of owning the character … when I first started talking to Dynamite about this, we talked about the fact that since the Morisi family owned the character, what would we do if we created a new character for this book? In effect, would the Morisi family own that? And as I thought about it, I realized that was okay with me. Heaven forbid, if I create something for this book that had a shelf life beyond what we’re doing now, I’d just assume it went to the Morisi family.” The Dynamite series ran for ten issues from September 2012 to June 2013. Alex Ross and Steve Darnall are credited as writers on all issues and Jonathan Lau is the artist throughout. Ross also contributes covers for each issue along with alternative covers, as is the Dynamite way of doing things, from John Cassaday, Jae Lee (first three issues only), Adrian Syaf (first three only), Stephen Segovia (first seven), and Jonathan Lau (issues #8–10). Of particular note for old-time Charlton

fans is the “classic retro” style cover by Dave Gibbons (see inset below). In terms of story, the series is a new take on the original concept. None of the cast of the DC series appear and the two series are not designed to fall into line with each other in continuity terms, although there is nothing massively contradictory, either. Ross and Darnall are writing their own story featuring Morisi’s creation. In one aspect, though, they do echo the DC series as Tabu is portrayed here, as he was by Mike Collins, as a conscience for Cannon, to keep him true to the teachings of the monastery. Peter Cannon is slightly more of a willing action hero but is shown denying that he is a superhero. Indeed, the cover titling is designed to show the name “Peter Cannon” much larger than the word “Thunderbolt.” This is a brave and admirable move by Dynamite, showing a willingness to focus on human character rather than going for what would probably be the more commercial choice of using “Thunderbolt” for impact and for marketability to the superhero audience. The series travels all around the globe— to Japan, Egypt, New York— and is well drawn by Lau. Those who find some modern comics too quick a read will be pleasantly surprised by the writing and storytelling, and it is a shame that the series stalled at ten issues with no sign of any continuation. One particular treat in the first issue is that the story done by Pete Morisi for DC’s Secret Origins finally sees print as a bonus backup strip. It is indeed a far cry from the grim-and-gritty approach that was in vogue at the time it was completed, but Morisi’s storytelling skills and imagination are enjoyably evident. Having failed to last beyond 12 issues in any of the three attempts at an ongoing series, it seems unlikely that Peter Cannon will ever become the next big thing in comics. However, all three series have advocates and both the DC series and the Dynamite series are worth hunting down. It would be nice to see collected books of either of them, but that doesn’t seem imminent in either case at the moment. Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt is an intelligent character that has been produced by a series of intelligent creators and seems to appeal to intelligent readers. Who knows? Perhaps, as is fitting for a character steeped in Buddhist concepts, the thunderbolt might live again, somewhere, someplace. With thanks to Mike Collins, Paul Kupperberg, Comic Book Resources, Excelsior Comics, Corpus Christi College Cambridge, and Elizabeth Millsted. IAN MILLSTED is a writer and teacher living in Bristol, England. His recent contribution to the steampunk genre can be found in the anthology Airship Shape and Bristol Fashion.

68 • BACK ISSUE • Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age

One of biggest events in the history of the comic-book industry was the publication of Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. The 12-issue maxiseries provided a reality-based look at superheroes and explored how men and women in capes and masks shaped their world for both the good and the bad. The book was violent and groundbreaking, shocking and revolutionary, and the creative impact of its publication is still felt to this day. Recently, I was privileged to speak with Dave Gibbons, the artist of Watchmen, and discuss this landmark series and its connection to this issue’s stars, the Charlton Action Heroes. – Dan Johnson

Dan Johnson

DAN JOHNSON: Tell us how Watchmen came about. DAVE GIBBONS: I had known Alan Moore for two or three years and we had written some stories for 2000 AD. I had been recruited by DC Comics a little bit before Alan was, and I quite liked the scripts I had been given at DC, but I knew Alan wanted to work for them and I wanted to work with him. Then one night, I got a call from Len Wein, and he wanted to know if I could put him in touch with Alan because he had read the stuff he had been writing in Warrior on Miracleman and thought he might be able to do something with Swamp Thing, which he was obviously able to do. I actually heard about Watchmen through a mutual friend of mine and Alan’s, a guy named Mike Collins. I believe he was the one, although Mike and I are a little bit unsure. We think that was how the word got to me. I immediately phoned up Alan and said, “Hey, this sounds really interesting. Maybe this is the thing we can do together.” And he said, “Yeah, that’s fine.” It just so happened that only a few weeks after that, I was going to a comic convention in Chicago where I dave gibbons was going to see a lot of DC people, and I clearly remember going up to Dick Giordano at a party DC had and saying, “Hey, this new thing Alan is doing, I’d really like to draw it.” Dick said, “Well, how does Alan feel about that?” I said, “He’d like me to draw it,” and Dick said, “It’s yours.” JOHNSON: Were you a fan of the Charlton Heroes before coming onto the project? GIBBONS: I was kind of a fan of the Charlton Heroes. They were always a little second-rate, in the way that the books looked. [Charlton] didn’t have the best production value. There were a lot of interesting artists working for them, people like Rocky Mastroserio, Pat Boyette, Pete Morisi, [but Charlton] just didn’t seem to have the budget and the stories were a little bit overwritten. I did particularly like Steve Ditko’s Captain Atom, particularly the one that had the golden chainmail. I thought that was a really great character design. As always, Ditko added a lot of magic to the stories. We did pay a little bit of a tribute to that [uniform] when [the government] is trying to design a costume for Dr. Manhattan. At one point, he’s got kind of a chainmail costume on and that was our nod to Steve Ditko’s Captain Atom. JOHNSON: What can you tell us about the decision to not use the Charlton Heroes in Watchmen? GIBBONS: Dick had worked for Charlton and I think he bought the characters from Charlton to use in the DC Universe. [Editor’s note: As stated earlier in this

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Back Issue #79