Perhaps the comic book world has achieved a higher level of respectability. According to WCBS radio in New York, military recruiters have discovered two new and potentially lucrative areas to ply their trade, as they have started targeting shopping mall food courts and comic book stores.
Whereas at first this might seem like a clever (or, given the nature of shopping mall food, desperate) approach, at least three groups of people are upset with the practice: parents who don’t want their kids to go to Iraq, mall managers who are accustomed to renting space to recruiters, and comic book collectors who are concerned about receiving their alternate cover editions in Falusia in mint condition.
It’s hard to say if this approach has been worth the effort, but many readers have noticed the increased level of military recruitment advertising in DC and Marvel comics. I’ll have to check to see if such ads have been appearing in Rick Veitch’s Army @ Love.
Over the weekend, I read the entire trade paperback collection of The Amazing Transformations of Jimmy Olsen. I had anticipated a rollicking journey through my childhood, since I’d read most of these stories as a kid.
Alas! It was not to be.
The stories are fun, don’t get me wrong. Jimmy Olsen, the Everyboy of the DC Universe, is transformed from a working guy into a futuristic genius, a fat man, a werewolf, a porcupine, a turtle boy, a giant, a Bizarro and more. He travels to the future with the Legion of Super-Heroes, and he’s courted by two separate beauties from other worlds. As a kid, even a girl-type kid, I identified with Jimmy, and wanted to be Superman’s Pal.
Now, reading these stories as an adult, I still find them funny, but also oddly bleak. Jimmy Olsen is a lonely, lonely man. Superman may be his pal, but their interaction in these stories seems limited to story set-ups. Superman brings Jimmy a collection of stuff he found in outer space, leaves it for the young reporter to write about, and mayhem ensues. Sometimes Superman saves him, sometimes the bad stuff wears off, and sometimes Jimmy is sharp enough to save himself. In every case, he’s terrified that he won’t fit in, and his friends will shun him.
Professionally, Jimmy is on thin ice. He gets fired time after time, and often is forced to go and join a carnival freak show to earn a living. For some reason, there is always a freak show conveniently in town, with a side-show slot for him. Maybe things were different when these stories were written, but I thought most newspapers required at least a high school diploma to get a job. Doesn’t Jimmy have any other marketable skills? Why doesn’t he consider a related career, maybe in advertising or public relations, where his writing ability and photography skills would earn a more reliable income?
According to Cinematical, Laura Vandervoort will be joining the cast of Smallville next season as Kara, also known as — well, we can’t call her that name if we can’t call Clark that name.
Smallville‘s co-creator, Al Gough, says of Ms. Vandervoort in People: "She’s a combination of beauty, intelligence, a certain warmth, and great attitude. We’ve wanted a character to shake things up."
And you gotta admit that she certainly looks the part. Certainly more than some artist’s drawings of late…
"Pauline" Kahn, a.k.a. Carrie Fisher, is no longer editor of The Daily Planet. Oh, Pauline, we hardly knew ye.
She’s being replaced on the Smallville series by Hidden Palms / The O.C.‘s Michael Cassidy. According to TV Guide.com, Cassidy will appear in at least six episodes and will be the next love interest of Lois Lane, doubtlessly leaving Oliver Queen all a-quiver.
Don’t know if he’ll be playing Perry White. The character was previously on Smallville a couple seasons ago, as played by 60 year-old Michael McKean, who just happens to be married to Martha Kent herself, Annette O’Toole. Since Cassidy is a mere 24 years old, such casting will look a little bizarre.
Hmmmm. Bizarr-o?
Artwork copyright DC Comics and/or Warner Bros. Animation. All Rights Reserved.
Every weekend, when I walk by the newsstands, I see cover stories in gossip magazines about Brad and Angelina, Jennifer, Reese, Lindsay, Britney and others. Although I only read these magazines at the hairdressers, I am fascinated by the lifestyles of people I will likely never meet. On Sunday, I enjoy the Real Estate section of The New York Times, looking at pictures of homes that can cost tens of millions of dollars.
And then, there are my favorite comics.
Batman has always been one of my favorite characters, at least in part because of Bruce Wayne. I am moved by the image of that little boy, watching his mother’s pearls scatter on the street as his parents are murdered. As a child, I was afraid the same thing could happen to my parents. As a parent, I wanted to spare my child from that tragedy.
(To his credit, my son wanted to do the right thing. “Don’t worry,” he assured me when he was five years old. “If you’re ever gunned down by criminals, I promise to avenge your death.”)
Most of the people who have written Batman over the years have concentrated on the Caped Crusader and his underground Bat Cave, not the billionaire playboy who lives in the manor above. Most of the more recent writers believe that Bruce Wayne is the disguise, that the little, traumatized boy grew up to be Batman, not Wayne.
That premise allows for many interesting stories, and I understand that it’s more fun to play with the driven, rage-filled Batman, the character with the high-tech equipment and the regimen of martial arts training. A person who fights bad guys is more likely to work in stories that require a beginning, a middle and an end than a single man rattling around in a mansion.
Greg Burgas of Comics Should Be Good! (and can’t we all agree with that, hm?) dives into the musty longboxes to findRagman #4, from 1977 by Bob Kanigher and “the Redondo Studio,” and proceeds to review the heck out of it.
In last week’s installment of what some of you may be beginning to think is an endless blather, when I was discussing movie serials I neglected to mention that serials were among the first non-comics forms to use superheroes. During that decade, lucky young popcorn eaters could see Superman, Batman, Captain America and, in my opinion the best of them all, Captain Marvel in the continued chapter plays that were a staple of Saturday matinees. (That probably doesn’t exhaust the list, but memory is not my greatest gift… At least I don’t think so…) Having seen some of the above-mentioned entertainments, and having, within the past two weeks, seen the Spider-Man and Fantastic Four movies, I realize that the serial makers were born too soon.
Because, let’s face it, some of the serialized costumed do-gooders look kind of silly. That’s because the directors lacked the technology to make them not look silly. It takes an army of costumers, model makers, CGI wizards, animators and, probably, guys whose jobs I’ve never heard of to produce, on the screen, what cartoonists produced with ink on paper in large quantities for lousy pay. Of course, we comics readers had to bring some of our own imaginations to the artists’ static, silent images, but that was okay, we could do that.
Consider the preceding two paragraphs a digression, please. And now we return to our regularly scheduled topic –
What about these continued stories, anyway? Good or bad? Pro or con?
Let’s begin with the obvious con. If you come in late, maybe you’ll have trouble understanding the story. There are remedies for this problem. The serial makers mentioned in the opening digression showed the last minute or so of the preceding chapter before getting on to new material. The old radio serials used a similar technique, and a lot of current television shows begin with a voice over intoning something like, “Previously, on Your Father’s Moustache…” and then we get brief takes of the scenes that will escort us into the new action.
Warner Bros. Consumer Products has awarded Mattel, Inc., the master toy license for the complete DC Comics Universe of characters and properties. In addition to the rights to existing DC Comics characters/animation/movies, the multi-year pact provides Mattel with the rights to produce toys based on future DC Universe film and animation projects that are developed and produced during the term of the agreement. Mattel will support the DC Universe characters across all of its key brands including Hot Wheels, Radica, Fisher-Price, Tyco and Mattel Games.
The financial terms of the deal were not released, and there’s no word how this will impact the DC Direct brand.
Me, I’m waiting for the Wonder Woman merchandise to start showing up in American Girl stores.
This past month has been a very busy one for me. I’ve been out of town three times, twice on business, and I’ve attended two trade shows and three comics conventions. It’s a lot of time to be thrust into crowds of people, whether waiting at an airport, a synagogue, a taxi line or a display booth.
This past month has exposed me to a variety of interpretations to the phrase, “customer service.”
I first started to think about this nearly 20 years ago, when I saw a presentation by Peter Glen, the author of It’s Not My Department: How to Get the Service You Want, Exactly the Way You Want It. At the time, I was working in the special events department for a large retailer, and we were just starting to feel the first effects of Wal-Mart and other discount stores. According to Glen, the way to compete was not by cutting prices, but by offering more service.
He doesn’t just mean stores need to hire more sales assistants. He means the customer must be treated with respect, as if her time has value, and her needs are important. Customer service includes displays that feature all available sizes, quality merchandise that doesn’t break, and efficient check-out. This shows the customer that the merchant understands her, and provides the best value.
“Value?” you say. “How can you say value is important when you first said stores shouldn’t compete on price alone?” Well, I’m glad you asked. Would you rather shop at Wal-Mart, where costs are kept so low that they won’t hire a security guard to patrol their notoriously dangerous parking lots, or at another store where the management demonstrates a concern for your safety? Would you rather by a cheap coffee-maker (or other small appliance) that you need to replace every year, or a good one that lasts a decade or more?
As a comics reader, would you rather buy a comic that has a cover that’s teasing or unclear, or would prefer one that clearly represents the story inside?
When I worked at DC Comics, I was astounded at how obscure some of the covers for the trade paperback collections could be. “Where’s the title?” I’d ask. “How can I tell who wrote and drew the story?” Often, this information would be on the back of the books, invisible to the customer looking at the display. “It doesn’t matter,” I was told. “By the time the book is racked, we’ve already been paid for it.”
In the first part of our extensive interview with publisher Anthony Tollin (yesterday), we learned how a story that apepared in The Shadow Magazine some two and a half years prior to Batman’s debut, proved to me the template for the Cpaed Crusader’s debut in Detective Comics #27. This is fodder for the historians who have studied what Bob Kane and Bill Finger each brought to the table during the creation of DC’s second successful super-hero. The story will be publsihed this summer in the ninth volume of Shadwo facsimiles being publsihed by Tollin.
Greenberger: How will you celebrate this discovery in volume nine?
Tollin: By pairing it with Doc Savage #8, which showcases Doc’s utility belt (which Bill Finger acknowledged was the inspiration for Batman’s).By the way, Doc’s utility belt was introduced by ghostwriter Harold A. Davis, Newsday‘s first Managing Editor. (Davis ran the paper through its first four years, and was succeeded by Alan Hathway, another Doc Savage ghost, who headed the paper for 30 years. Will Murray also provides a dynamite article on the real-life inspiration for both Doc Savage and The Avenger—Richard Henry Savage. The real Savage was a fascinating, larger-than-life American hero, a West Point graduate who served in the U.S. and Egyptian armies before joining the diplomatic corps. In his later years, he wrote more than 40 novels, many of which were based on his own adventurous life. Street & Smith published one of them in 1898, and Henry William Ralston, a recent addition to the Street & Smith staff, never forgot the charismatic Savage. Decades later, as S&S’ circulation manager, he launched The Shadow Magazine and developed the characters for Doc Savage and the Avenger, basing elements of all three pulp superheroes on Richard Henry Savage’s adventurous life.
And The Shadow #10 will be a super-villains issue, featuring The City of Doom (the second Voodoo Master story which inspired Batman’s Doctor Death storyline), The Fifth Face (featuring a master of disguise called Five-Face) and "The Immortal Murderer," a 1944 Alfred Bester Shadow radio script which pits The Shadow against an immortal Neanderthal (and yes, it was a rewrite of Alfie’s earlier Vandal Savage story from Green Lantern #10). Along with Sax Rohmer, Walter Gibson pretty much originated the concept of super-crime, and the villains he called super-crooks. In 1933, Gibson introduced a slew of super-villains including The Red Blot, The Wealth Seeker, The Black Falcon and Gray Fist. Others soon followed including The Cobra and Dr, Rodil Mocquino, the Voodoo Master; and years later, Shiwan Khan. Early on, Gibson realized that a superhero like The Shadow needed something more than garden-variety crooks and gangsters to test his mettle, just as Jerry Robinson would later realize that Batman needed his own Moriarty when he created The Joker. In fact, The Shadow’s Dr. Mocquino appears to have inspired Batman’s first recurring villain, Doctor Death.
Greenberger: What else will be in the book?
Tollin: The Shadow #9 , our special "Foreshadowing The Batman" volume, reprints "Lingo," one of Walter Gibson’s all-time classics which inspired the Batarang, Theodore Tinsley’s "Partners of Peril" (the novel that inspired Detective Comics #27’s "The Case of the Chemical Syndicate," plus a bonus Tinsley novelette: "The Grim Joker" (featuring a murderous, white-faced crime clown). Next spring, we’ll be releasing a special "Foreshadowing The Joker" volume that will reprint Ted Tinsley’s "Death’s Harlequin" and the 1940 Shadow radio script, "The Laughing Corpse." The latter, broadcast six weeks before Batman #1 debuted, featured a chemical that caused victims to laugh themselves to death, quite similar to The Joker’s original M.O. "Death’s Harlequin" was on sale the same month as Detective Comics#27 (when we can be pretty sure that Bill Finger was paying close attention to The Shadow Magazine) and pitted The Shadow against a murderous clown who like The Joker was a vision of madness: "The thin lips were drawn away from skull-like teeth. The cheeks were sunken and leathery. Dank black hair lay matted thinly on a baldish scalp the color of old parchment. A living corpse in the costume of a gay Harlequin! With a wide-muzzled gun. And a jeering laugh that made the silence in the room crawl with menace."
Greenberger: Any idea what DC’s reaction was when you made them aware of this?
Tollin: Actually, Paul Levitz was quite interested and very cooperative with my request to reprint panels from Detective Comics #27 in the historical articles. Paul recognized that his story was part of Batman’s history, and basically just wanted some copies for DC’s library.
Greenberger: Do you think this will change people’s perceptions of Batman’s origins?
Tollin: Actually, my hope is that it alters people’s perceptions of The Shadow. Finger and Kane As I observe in my supporting historical article: "The Shadow was a master of disguise. Perhaps his greatest masquerade was transforming himself into Batman, and in that guise continuing his reign as the world’s greatest detective superhero into the twenty-first century."
I find it quite interesting that at nearly the same time that DC Comics was taking legal action to eliminate Victor Fox’s Wonderman because it was an imitation of Superman, they were about to launch a new character who was a far more blatant imitation of The Shadow, right down to the plots, bat-motif, surroundings, villains and supporting players. At that time, The Shadow was still far more prominent than the recently-launched Superman, since he was featured in the only twice-monthly hero pulp as well as the weekly radio thriller, which was the #1 daytime series in the radio ratings. As pulp publishers of the Spicy line, Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz and their editors had to realize that Batman was based on The Shadow, even if they didn’t know that the plot of the first Batman story was a recycled Shadow novel.
While I want to give proper credit to Walter Gibson and Theodore Tinsley for their part in inspiring Batman, I’m certainly not out to tarnish Batman or Bill Finger. I have no animosity towards Batman. I’m actually very fond of the character, and Adrienne [Roy] and I used to jokingly refer to our New Jersey home as "the house that Batman bought." While Batman started out as a clone of The Shadow, the feature came into its own with the introduction of Robin, which added a touch of humanity to the formerly grim Batman that was lacking in The Shadow. Robin was almost certainly inspired by Junior Tracy, but it was just what the feature needed at the time. And of course, the succession of wonderful villains that began with The Joker and Catwoman in Batman #1 and continued with The Penguin, Two-Face, The Scarecrow, Clayface and The Riddler made Batman a very special feature. While Finger’s first Batman story was a blatant swipe of a Shadow novel, he quickly developed into one of comics’ greatest and most-innovative scriptwriters.
Greenberger: Are there other parallels between The Shadow and Batman?
Tollin: Certainly. I’ve recently spotted several more early Bat-stories that were lifted from Shadow novels. Readers will be able to compare for themselves when I reprint "Serpents of Siva" in The Shadow Volume 12. The Golden-Age Batman lifted The Shadow’s suction cup climbing device, autogiro, and "yellow boomerang," along with the friendship with the Gotham police commissioner. But the most lasting influence is to be found in Batman’s talent for escaping deathtraps, which started in his debut story when he escaped from the same glass gas chamber that The Shadow escaped from in "Partners of Peril." This mastery of escape was The Shadow’s most lasting legacy to Batman, a legacy from Houdini to his biographer/ghostwriter Walter Gibson and on to Bill Finger’s Batman via The Shadow.
Greenberger: How is this line performing and what’s coming after this?
Tollin: Each Shadow and Doc Savage volume has outsold the previous, and sales are still building. This is most unusual within the Diamond and comic collectors market, where sales usually drop after the first issue. This seems to indicate that our sales are actually generated by people who are actually reading and enjoying the books, and encouraging others to do the same.
The Shadow and Doc Savage reprints are available from most full-service comic stores, and also Borders and some Barnes & Noble stores. They are also being tested in double-packs at a small number of Costco and Sam’s Club outlets. They’re also available directly from me (sanctumotr@earthlink.net or www.shadowsanctum.com), with six-issue subscriptions available within the USA for $72 via first class or $66 via media mail. They’re also available in Manhattan at The Mysterious Bookshop, and in Minneapolis at Dreamhaven Books and Uncle Hugo’s Science Fiction, The books are also available individually via mail order from me, and from Bud Plant, Vintage Library, Adventure House, Mike Chomko, and in Canada from Girasol Collectables,
Greenberger: Beyond Doc Savage and The Shadow, are there any other pulp figures you’re looking to resurrect?
Tollin: The Avenger and Nick Carter, and hopefully The Whisperer as well. Do you think readers would like to discover the secret life of Police Commissioner James Gordon, aka The Whisperer?
Greenberger: With Moonstone’s recently announced Spider anthology and your facsimile reprints, why do you think people remain interested in the pulp heroes?
Tollin: Hopefully.It definitely seems to be the case.But there are many pulp heroes that always seem to be with us.Don’t forget that Zorro, Tarzan and Conan all originated in the pulps, as well as Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe.
Greenberger: Anything else you’re working on?
Tollin: Well, two double-novel pulp reprints a month is keeping me pretty busy, and this will only increase when The Avenger and some of the other S&S characters are added as quarterlies. I am expanding a Shadow coffee table history that I wrote a few months back. And at this year’s Friends of Old-Time Radio Convention, I’ll be directing an X-Minus One cast reunion. We’re thrilled that this year we’ll be reuniting the series’ scriptwriters, Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts, who haven’t seen each other in 40 years. Kinoy of course went on to win an Emmy for his screenplay for the landmark TV miniseries Roots.
Perhaps the comic book world has achieved a higher level of respectability. According to WCBS radio in New York, military recruiters have discovered two new and potentially lucrative areas to ply their trade, as they have started targeting shopping mall food courts and comic book stores.
Over the weekend, I read the entire trade paperback collection of The Amazing Transformations of Jimmy Olsen. I had anticipated a rollicking journey through my childhood, since I’d read most of these stories as a kid. 
According to 
"Pauline" Kahn, a.k.a. Carrie Fisher, is no longer editor of The Daily Planet. Oh, Pauline, we hardly knew ye.
Every weekend, when I walk by the newsstands, I see cover stories in gossip magazines about Brad and Angelina, Jennifer, Reese, Lindsay, Britney and others. Although I only read these magazines at the hairdressers, I am fascinated by the lifestyles of people I will likely never meet. On Sunday, I enjoy the Real Estate section of The New York Times, looking at pictures of homes that can cost tens of millions of dollars. 
(To his credit, my son wanted to do the right thing. “Don’t worry,” he assured me when he was five years old. “If you’re ever gunned down by criminals, I promise to avenge your death.”)
In last week’s installment of what some of you may be beginning to think is an endless blather, when I was discussing movie serials I neglected to mention that serials were among the first non-comics forms to use superheroes. During that decade, lucky young popcorn eaters could see Superman, Batman, Captain America and, in my opinion the best of them all, Captain Marvel in the continued chapter plays that were a staple of Saturday matinees. (That probably doesn’t exhaust the list, but memory is not my greatest gift… At least I don’t think so…) Having seen some of the above-mentioned entertainments, and having, within the past two weeks, seen the Spider-Man and Fantastic Four movies, I realize that the serial makers were born too soon.
Consider the preceding two paragraphs a digression, please. And now we return to our regularly scheduled topic –
Warner Bros. Consumer Products has awarded Mattel, Inc., the master toy license for the complete DC Comics Universe of characters and properties. In addition to the rights to existing DC Comics characters/animation/movies, the multi-year pact provides Mattel with the rights to produce toys based on future DC Universe film and animation projects that are developed and produced during the term of the agreement. Mattel will support the DC Universe characters across all of its key brands including Hot Wheels, Radica, Fisher-Price, Tyco and Mattel Games. 
This past month has been a very busy one for me. I’ve been out of town three times, twice on business, and I’ve attended two trade shows and three comics conventions. It’s a lot of time to be thrust into crowds of people, whether waiting at an airport, a synagogue, a taxi line or a display booth.
In the first part of our extensive interview with publisher Anthony Tollin (
