In a recent Comic Book Compulsive I wrote about the British comic Super Thriller #12 which featured the character Ace Hart the Atom Man. So naturally I went off on a digression about British superheroes and wrote about how in the 1950′s after Miracleman stopped production Mick Anglo created stories for the Spanish market about a superhero named Super Hombre. He then went on to resell the same altered strips to the British market, the character now called Miracle Man (in Dutch it was Mirakel Man, in Danish Mirakelmanden).

In my last Compulsive I wrote how I recently spent one night going through half a dozen unmarked DVR discs full of assorted downloaded comics; well on one of them I discovered that I actually had a copy of Miracle Man.

Image via Wikipedia

Just to be sure we’re all on the same page I’m am not talking about that Miracleman…

Image via Wikipedia

…or this one, the villain from the Fantastic Four…

…but rather the bare legged guy on the cover with the short sheeted cape and bullseye on his chest wearing the vaguely Buck Rogers looking leather space helmet (that also kind of looks like the one worn by Kyle Baker’s Al Space).

In reality he was young John Chapman who gains incredible powers upon touching the sun disc around his neck and saying the magic word ‘sundisc’. Not to second guess the author but sun disc is two words plus even if it were one it doesn’t sound all that ‘magic’ to me.

The most interesting thing about Miracle Man is his junior partner. If you went ahead and assumed he was called “Miracle Man Jr.” nobody would blame you, but here it’s where the comic gets creative. Instead he’s called “Supercoat” because he gains Miracle Man level powers when he puts on a special formal suit jacket.

I understand that continuity wasn’t that big a deal for comics back then but not even the stories in this particular issue could get their story straight. In the one called “The Stolen Diamonds” Supercoat also wears a junior version of Miracle Man’s outfit.

But in the next, “The Big Threat”, he doesn’t bother suiting up and goes off to battle evil in the icy void of outer space dressed for the opera.

For the record all we know about Supercoat is he works in some capacity for the Big Top Circus. If he has a Christian name he certainly doesn’t use it.

The rest of the sixty-eight page come is filled with b&w reprints of American comics, specificlaly 60′s era Blackhawk comics. Maybe it’s just me, maybe it’s the exotic novelty of it, but I always like looking at black and white reprints of American comic books which were originally published in color. So for no other than that I present “The Doomed Dogfight”, yet another handsome but really dull Blackhawks story drawn by Dick Dillin (I assume; I’m sure someone will be happy to correct me if I’m wrong) first published in Blackhawk #112.

In 1960 Mick Anglo started his own company, Anglo Comics and published nine issues of Captain Miracle. He was a kid named Johnny Dee, who became Captain Miracle when he said “El Karim” (say it backwards). There may not be anything particularly original about Captain Miracle but you (and by you I mean me) have to admire the simple, elegance of his design, as opposed to the dog’s breakfast that is Miracle Man’s costume.

While searching for an image of that Captain Miracle I came across this Captain Miracle, a web comic that’s the creation of Jason A. Quest and Ozzy Longoria.

It’s a oddly super-Christian take on the Captain Marvel premise that pits “The Most Marvelous Mortal Man” against “villains” such as a peaceful half naked woman eco protester (you really don’t expect to see partial female nudity in a Christian comic). As far as I can tell the only thing she’s guilty of is challenging the author’s worldview.

Here we have Simon and Kirby’s Boy Commandos…although you’d never recognize them-in outer space drawn by later Superman legend Curt Swan!

http://pappysgoldenage.blogspot.com/2011/06/number-967-we-come-in-peace.html

Okay, so nearly everyone seems quite disappointed in the Green Lantern movie-that doesn’t stop Silver Age Comics from presenting a fun look at Sinestro in the sixties.

http://sacomics.blogspot.com/2011/06/sinestro-story.html

Blackhawk fights terrorists and corrupt politicians-much like today but in 1948!-Art here is tip-top from Reed Crandall and the series’ perennial inker, Chuck Cuidera.

http://fourcolorshadows.blogspot.com/2011/06/blackhawk-reed-crandall-1948.html

Finally, I remain absolutely fascinated by the legal coverage of the Siegel family vs DC lawsuit and so, apparently does 20th Century Danny Boy.

http://ohdannyboy.blogspot.com/2011/06/joanne-siegel-and-laura-siegel-larson-v_20.html

Welcome to our second annual Father’s Day posting!

Above, A Happy Father from the February 1857 issue of the American comic monthly Nick-Nax. (These two panels are in fact ripped off from the first two panels of the comic strip The History of “Our Baby” by William McConnell, which in 1853 was serialized in the British comic weekly Diogenes. The two panels pre-sage numerous similar-themed strips, several of which were shown in our Father’s Day posting last year (click here to see those).

Click on any picture, to see a larger version.

Below, after the baby is born, starts the fun… inspiring A Chance for Manufacturers by Frederick Burr Opper. This originally ran as a large color cartoon on the rear cover of Puck magazine. The below scan comes from its later reprinting in the January 1890 issue of Puck’s Library.

Finally, father’s duty is never done, as shown by the two-panel cartoon Parental Strategy by F.M. Hutchins. This, too, from a later reprinting, found in the July 1895 Puck’s Library.

Doug Wheeler

NYPuck NickNax

Here’s one of the first rave reviews of a great new book that I had the privilege to work on behind the scenes recently-Greg Theakston’s Jack Kirby biography-Part one, Jack Magic!

http://ohdannyboy.blogspot.com/2011/06/jack-magic-by-greg-theakston-dont-ask.html

Also at 20th Century Danny Boy, we have Jim Steranko and Mark Evanier going up against Jeff Rovin’s testimony in the Superman lawsuit.

http://ohdannyboy.blogspot.com/2011/06/joanne-siegel-and-laura-siegel-larson-v_18.html

Here’s the 1981 Spirit Jam in which Will Eisner finally agreed to let others do their version of the Spirit…only all at once! Also included-Cerebus and the Spirit!

http://ripjaggerdojo.blogspot.com/2011/06/spirit-jam.html

Finally, here’s a well-done, well-illustrated article/obit on Louise Altson, a wonderful artist who sometimes worked at Timely back in the forties.

http://timely-atlas-comics.blogspot.com/2011/05/louise-altson-1910-2010.html

Image via Wikipedia

I don’t download every comic book or strip I come across, only the ones which interest me. Unfortunately, just about everything in comic book form interests me which is how I ended up with roughly half a hundred DVR discs full of assorted comics. And of course me being me roughly a dozen of them had nothing written on them so I spent last night going through them one by one. This probably sounds like quite the chore but happily I’ve discovered that one sure way to beat the blues is to distract myself with some mindless task well suited to my ADD. Which is how I came to discover that I possessed Bert the Turtle Says Duck and Cover.

Duck and Cover is a civil defense/social guidance/propaganda film that was shown in 1952 that the current generation probably know from the 80′s documentary film The Atomic Cafe…

…and if you’ve seen it you also no doubt no Bert’s catchy theme song:

There was a turtle by the name of Bert

and Bert the turtle was very alert;

when danger threatened him he never got hurt

he knew just what to do…

He’d duck! [gasp]

And cover!

Duck! [gasp]

And cover! (male) He did what we all must learn to do

(male) You (female) And you (male) And you (deeper male) And you!’

[bang, gasp] Duck, and cover!’

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Having been born in 1959 I have vague memories of vague ‘disaster drills” that involved covering your head at your desk at school. But to be sure the threat of mutually assured helped form my generally apocalyptic worldview and generally anxious nature.

Image via Wikipedia

More often than not, this is what the inside of my head looks like.

There’s a nice selection of non-comics art from comics artists over at Illustrateurs that includes a bunch of lovely John Romita pieces.

http://illustrateurs.blogspot.com/2011/06/comics-5.html

I always enjoy Tom Sutton’s work but this may be my favorite example of it! He really seems to have gone out of his way to channel his often out of control imagination and pen to come up with a neat, controlled stylized beauty of a story! Wow!

http://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2011/06/boys-from-derby-weirdest-character-ive.html

With a nod toward the opening of the Green Lantern movie, here’s GL with Batman in a Brave and the Bold story by this year’s Finger Award winner, Bob Haney.

http://mailittoteamup.blogspot.com/2011/06/green-lantern-weekend-brave-and-bold.html

Finally today, Potrzebie plugs a new book by Golden Age artist Irwin Hasen by offering some nice photos and rare illustrations.

http://potrzebie.blogspot.com/2011/06/irwin-hasen.html

The “ME DECADE” wasn’t called that by accident. Around here, as a teenager, it seemed pretty normal to me but in grown-up circles all across the land, the seventies were most certainly crazy, hedonistic times.

Artist/designer/cartoonist and underground comix pioneer Skip Williamson has written a memoir of surviving the decade where excess was expected and applauded in spite of its inherent dangers. Not for the faint-hearted and most definitely NSFW in these more conservative times, FLESH follows Skip out of the undergrounds and into big business, working at GALLERY, HUSTLER and, most importantly, PLAYBOY. There’s no build-up, no back-story and no preparation. We take whatever our preconceived notions of the protagonist might be-if any-and then get to know the real Skip as we read along.

We see Skip working at GALLERY, originally a note-for-note rip-off of PLAYBOY. We follow the folks behind GALLERY through some shady Chicago shenanigans. These end up with strip club owner Larry Flynt being brought in to save the mag but ending up creating his own skin-mag, HUSTLER, instead…and taking Skip to be HUSTLER’s first Art Director…briefly. All along the way, there are more and more shady characters, perhaps perpetuating the myth that everyone in Chicago business or politics has mob connections…or perhaps proving it not to be a myth after all!

And there are drugs. Lots of mind-altering substances of one sort or another. And sex. To read this, one might think that it was almost expected that men and women would just casually sleep with one another in the seventies. Well, in some circles, it kind of was! Again, hedonism was the order of the day-Disco, cocaine and casual sex was everywhere-not just in New York and Hollywood! When reading about the seventies, one should never be judgmental. It might have looked more like today than the sixties-in spite of the leisure suits—but it was very much a different world.

Women play a major role in Skip’s story and, in some cases, his descriptions are quite creatively pornographic. There’s also unvarnished reports of startling violence, a somewhat bitter rant on the worthlessness of people and a uniquely insider view of the workings of PLAYBOY in that weird time between its biggest success and its later attempts at a comeback.

Speaking of PLAYBOY, Hef is one of the few characters, Skip himself included, who comes across relatively unscathed in FLESH. Among the other cast members of Skip’s life in the seventies who put in appearances are Harvey Kurtzman, Robert Crumb, Jay Lynch, Grass Green, Bette Midler, Barry Manilow, Stiv Bators and Deborah Harry. Not a one of them is as interesting as some of our hero’s lesser-known but often more-screwed-up pals and co-workers.

FLESH is only available as an E-book for Kindle but at only $2.99. There are unfortunately a lot of typos and misspellings in some areas along with some repetition that a good editor would have caught. It’s a quick read, though, and well worth the price. The flaws actually add to it in a way, making you feel like you’re just sitting around with the man who brought the world Snappy Sammy Smoot while he regales you with sordid but true tales of debauchery and survival as only a truly good storyteller can relate them.

What’s that you say? You don’t have Kindle? Neither did I but Amazon has FREE Kindle apps that one can download for Mac, PC, IPhone, Blackberry or other forums! That’s FREE! And the books are inexpensive. If E-books are truly the wave of the future, may I suggest you try them out with Skip Williamson’s FLESH!

http://www.amazon.com/FLESH-ebook/dp/B0051PKAJU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1308158791&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=sa_menu_karl3?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771

Fishboy is the very embodiment of the principal that the name for something can be “too on the nose” But once you can get past the title it’s an interesting take on a character who can breathe underwater who isn’t neither an imitation of Namor or Aquaman.

Here’s a genre we just don’t have in America; a band of small town kids who use some kind of super bike or board to fight small town crime in secret, but it repeatedly pops up in British boys comics.

How do you measure success in showbiz? Is it by how many gold records you have on your wall? How many millions you have in the bank? How many groupies you can fit into your hotel room?

The way I see it, you know you’re successful when your record is on the back of cereal boxes!

Can The Beatles make this claim? No, but The Jackson 5 can. And so can The Archies!

Just think. Which would you rather have? This dull, black, plastic single?

Or this colorful cardboard EP?

And don’t forget, you can order “Archie: A Celebration of America’s Favorite Teenagers” right now from Amazon.

This week, we present Jingle Jangle for your listening and dancing pleasure.

Click the link below to listen.

The Archies - Jingle Jangle

Let’s start this Flag Day edition with Captain America co-creator Jack Kirby’s son, Neal, writing in tribute to his late father in anticipation of Father’s Day.

http://www.co2comics.com/blog/2011/06/13/father’s-day-tribute-to-jack-kirby-from-his-son/

Here’s a nice collection of Will Eisner’s final Spirit Section pages featuring the Spirit in Outer Space by Wally Wood.

http://ripjaggerdojo.blogspot.com/2011/06/outer-space-spirit.html

There’s been a lot of coverage of the Kirby lawsuit and the Jerry Siegel family lawsuit but do you remember when Carmine Infantino sued for rights to the Flash? I always wondered whatever happened to that. Here we are.

http://ohdannyboy.blogspot.com/2011/06/carmine-m-infantino-v-dc-comics-et-al.html

Finally today, Stephen Bissette brings his perceptive critiques of the pop culture world to a new book on Rick Veitch’s seminal BratPack series from the 1990′s. I.T.C.H. recommends!

http://www.amazon.com/Teen-Angels-Mutants-Stephen-Bissette/dp/1935558935