Author: Aaron Rosenberg

On This Day: The Trickster!

On This Day: The Trickster!

  • News
  • March 23, 2008

Giovanni Giuseppe was a con artist and circus acrobat before he decided to turn to a life of crime. He changed his name to James Jesse and created several clever but dangerous gag devices and a pair of shoes that let him walk on air.

Calling himself the Trickster, James embarked upon his new career, only to encounter and be defeated by the Flash. The two clashed frequently throughout the years.

For a brief period, the Trickster reformed and worked with the FBI, but he later reverted to his criminal ways.

On This Day: Princess Diana/Wonder Woman

On This Day: Princess Diana/Wonder Woman

  • News
  • March 22, 2008

The Amazons of Paradise Island lived in peace for hundreds of years, safe from men and their cruelty. But their queen Hippolyta was not completely happy. She longed for a child of her own.

Shaping clay from the island into the statue of a little girl, Hippolyta begged the gods to grant her request and bring the statue to life. The gods took pity upon their beloved servant and the statue became a little girl who leaped into the arms of her “mother.” Hippolyta was overjoyed.

She named the girl Diana and raised her as her daughter and heir. Years later, when Captain Steve Trevor crashed on Paradise Island, Diana fell in love with him and saved his life. Trevor informed the Amazons of the war going on in the world beyond, and the goddess Aphrodite decreed that an Amazon should go forth and battle the Nazis on Paradise Island’s behalf. Hippolyta held a contest to select their champion and Diana secretly entered and won.

She journeyed to the outside world and became known as Wonder Woman. Since then Princess Diana has been a force for good throughout the world.

On This Day: Mark Waid

On This Day: Mark Waid

  • News
  • March 21, 2008

Born on March 21, 1962 in Hueytown, Alabama, Waid entered the comics industry in the mid-1980s as an editor and writer for Fantagraphics Books’ fan magazine, Amazing Heroes.

He soon moved to DC as an editor on Secret Origins and Legion of Super-Heroes. In 1990, he shifted from full-time editorial to freelance writing, and in 1992 DC hired him to write The Flash. Waid stayed with The Flash for eight years and can be credited with establishing Wally West as a worthy bearer of the Flash name and costume. Waid then moved to Marvel to work on Captain America.

In 1996 he went back to DC to produce his best-known work, the mini-series Kingdom Come with Alex Ross. He also wrote the follow-up series, The Kingdom, and has since written JLA, Impulse, Empire, Fantastic Four, and others.

In July 2007 Waid joined Boom! Studios as Editor-in-Chief. He’s stated since that all of his future creator-owned work will be with Boom!

On This Day: Ned Buntline, Dime Novelist

On This Day: Ned Buntline, Dime Novelist

Edward Zane Carroll Judson was born on March 20, 1886 in Stamford, Delaware County, New York. He ran away from home as a boy and took to the sea, taking on the name Ned Buntline, which he would use for the rest of his life—a “buntline” is the rope at the bottom of a square sail.

Buntline stayed at sea several years, fighting in the Seminole Wars and achieving the rank of midshipman, before retiring and creating various eastern newspapers, including Ned Buntline’s Own. While in Fort McPherson on a lecture tour, Buntline crossed paths with Wild Bill Hickock and tried to interview him for a dime novel. Hickock refused and ordered Buntline out of town at gunpoint. Instead, the reporter located Hickock’s friend William Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill, and decided to write about him instead.

The Buffalo Bill Cody-King of the Border Men dime novel series was an enormous success and Buntline followed it with a play, Scouts of the Prairie, which opened in Chicago in December 1872. The two men had severe differences of opinion and temperament, however. As a result, the show closed in June of the following year, and Buntline and Cody went their separate ways.

Buntline continued to write dime novels, but none matched his earlier success—he was close to penniless by the time he died of congestive heart failure in 1886.

On This Day: Josef Albers

On This Day: Josef Albers

  • News
  • March 19, 2008

Born on March 19, 1888 in Bottrop, Westphalia, Germany, Josef Albers was a designer, photographer, typographer, printmaker, and poet, but he is best remembered as an abstract painter and theorist.

A professor at the prestigious Weimar Bauhaus for many years (from 1922 to 1933), Albers moved to the U.S. and joined the faculty of Black Mountain College in North Carolina after the Nazis shut the Bauhaus down. He took a job teaching design at Yale in 1950, and taught there until his retirement in 1958.

Albers continued to paint and write in New Haven until his death in 1976. His work is often considered a bridge between traditional European and new American art, and he heavily influenced the Op artists, among others.

 

On This Day: Planet Earth

On This Day: Planet Earth

  • News
  • March 18, 2008

On March 18, 3952 B.C., the world was created, according to the Venerable Bede.

Bede was a Benedictine monk of Jarrow, a biblical scholar, and the first English historian. He lived from 673 to 735 and is best known for His Ecclesiastical History of the English People (H.E.), which he finished four years before his death.

Bede was officially sainted (as St. Bede the Venerable) in 1899 and named Doctor of the Church, but his followers were proclaiming his miracles only 50 years after his death.

On This Day: The National Gallery of Art

On This Day: The National Gallery of Art

  • News
  • March 17, 2008

The National Gallery of Art opened in Washington, D.C. on March 17, 1941.

Financier and art collector Andrew W. Mellon established the A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust just before his death in 1937, and it was this trust that worked with Congress to establish the art museum. John Russell Pope, who later designed the Jefferson Memorial, designed the original building, and I.M. PEI designed an East Wing addition that was completed in 1978.

The gallery was centered around twenty-one masterpieces originally owned by Catherine II of Russia—Mellon purchased the collection in the early 1930s.

 

On This Day: Dan Adkins

On This Day: Dan Adkins

  • News
  • March 15, 2008

Born on March 15, 1937, in Midkiff, West Virginia, Dan Adkins grew up in rural areas where he could indulge his love of wandering and exploring. When he was 11, however, rheumatic fever left him paralyzed from the waist down for six months.

He passed the time by reading comics books and became fascinated with the artwork in particular. Adkins joined the Air Force after high school and became a draftsman, then an illustrator. It was during that time that he started the fanzine Sata, in 1956.

After leaving the Air Force Adkins moved to New York, where he did freelance illustration for several years before joining Wally Wood Studio in 1965, which gave him his start in comics. Since then he’s worked for DC, Marvel, Eclipse, and others, and done many magazine covers as well. Adkins is probably best known for his work on T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, Strange Tales, and Doctor Strange.

On This Day: Catwoman

On This Day: Catwoman

  • News
  • March 14, 2008

The daughter of Brian and Maria Kyle, young Selina had an unpleasant childhood. Her mother loved cats more than her own children and eventually committed suicide, while Selina’s father was an angry layabout who drank himself to death a short while later.

Selina wound up on the streets of Gotham City, in an orphanage, and then in juvenile hall in rapid succession. At 13, she discovered that the hall administrator was embezzling funds, and almost died when she threatened to expose the woman. Escaping the trap, however, Selina stole enough evidence to incriminate the woman and enough money to keep herself going for a while, and then disappeared.

Mama Fortuna, who ran a gang of young thieves in Alleytown, took Selina in and taught her to steal properly. Selina grew up and became an accomplished thief, but had to lay low after a burglary went wrong. A pimp named Stan offered her a job posing as a dominatrix and conning information out of her “clients.” Selina accepted.

It was while she was at this job that she first saw Batman and, inspired by him, created her own costume to become the renowed masked, cat burglar, Catwoman.

Since then, Selina has vacillated between villainess and heroine, and has had an off-again, on-again relationship with Batman himself.

On This Day: The Flash!

On This Day: The Flash!

  • News
  • March 13, 2008

Born in Fallville, Iowa, Barry Allen grew to be a meticulous man and an excellent police scientist with one notable flaw—he was always late.

That changed, however, on the night that he was working late in his lab in Central City and a lightning bolt shattered a case full of chemicals and doused Barry with the supercharged contents. After that accident, Barry discovered that he could move at superspeed. He adopted a costumed identity, donning a red costume with a gold lightning bolt motif, and became the Flash, the Fastest Man Alive!

Barry would become one of the greatest heroes in the world, a founding member of the Justice League of America, and Central City’s protector, before his untimely death during the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Even death could not stop the Flash, however, and he has reappeared several times since to aid his family and friends.

It’s important to note that the Flash is one of the DC heroes whose birthdate has been changed. Before the Crisis, his official birthday was six days later, on March 19. Now that’s fast!

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