I know I’ve been posting a lot of black and white reprints of American comic book stories from the 40’s and 50’s from Australian comics but here’s one morel; the marvelously named Super Adventure Comic.

Along with some very nice funny fillers from the always reliable Henry Boltinoff Super Adventure Comic #54 featured…

From Superman #54 “Superman Vs. The Wrecker” by Bill Finger and Wayne Boring. When I think about the quality of various eras of Superman’s career I don’t tend to think very highly about the Superman stories of the 50’s. That is until I actually come across a solidly professional effort one like this. And as always seeing familiar artwork usually seen in color in b&w is something of a revelation; guys like me tend to think of Boring’s work being ‘ugly’ but, gosh, his art here sure is pretty.

And from Batman#47 “The Crime Crazy Clown” by Jerry Robinson and Dick Sprang, where The Joker “pretends” to be crazy (which, frankly, I think would be a great reveal for the modern version of the character; “You know all that crazy crap I do? I don’t do it because I’m crazy; I do it because I like it”). I’ve always been a fan of Dick Sprang’s work and I believe the first time I saw this story it was in b&w (in the 1966 Signet mass market paperback Batman, The Best Of The Original Batman) but it’s still lovely seeing his artwork this way.