If you’ve been reading comics newssites recently, Marvel and DC are once again claiming trademark ownership of the term "super-hero." As I recall, this issue originally surfaced in the late seventies when Archie Comics put out their special Super-Hero Digests. The big guys yelled, "Cease and desist!" Okay, so Archie had always referred to their line in the sixties (Fly-Man, Black Hood, Shield, etc.) as "Ultra-Heroes," not "Super-Heroes." Or did they? Seen here is detail from a 1966 Transogram children’s board game called simply SUPER HEROES. Note that these are Archie heroes-Fly Man and Fly Girl, Black Hood, Mister Justice, Captain Flag, the Web, The Shield, the Fox, the Jaguar and Steel Sterling. How they settled on these particular characters for the board, I’ll never know. The Jaguar was from the early sixties and hadn’t even been published during the mid-sixties boom. The Comet would’ve rounded out the appearance of the popular MIGHTY CRUSADERS but he doesn’t appear. In his stead are three 1940’s characters who had only barely been revived in cameos in the nigh legendary Jerry Siegel tale "Too Many Super Heroes" (Hah! There’s that term again!) in MIGHTY CRUSADERS number four that same year. I don’t think there’s any actual lawsuits floating around on this issue and I certainly don’t claim any legal expertise. I know that a trademark gone unused for a certain period of time is considered abandoned and could conceivably be trademarked by others. Perhaps, since Archie hadn’t published hero comics for more than a decade, DC and Marvel’s lawyers felt justified in their legal maneuvering. I will say that at the very least it looks like a precedent to me for Archie to get in on the action!
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Found on BOOKSTEVE'S LIBRARY
Archie Super Heroes GameIf you’ve been reading comics newssites recently, Marvel and DC are once again claiming trademark ownership of the term "super-hero." As I recall, this issue originally surfaced in the late seventies when Archie Comics put out their special Super-Hero Digests. The big guys yelled, "Cease and desist!" Okay, so Archie had always referred to their line in the sixties (Fly-Man, Black Hood, Shield, etc.) as "Ultra-Heroes," not "Super-Heroes." Or did they? Seen here is detail from a 1966 Transogram children’s board game called simply SUPER HEROES. Note that these are Archie heroes-Fly Man and Fly Girl, Black Hood, Mister Justice, Captain Flag, the Web, The Shield, the Fox, the Jaguar and Steel Sterling. How they settled on these particular characters for the board, I’ll never know. The Jaguar was from the early sixties and hadn’t even been published during the mid-sixties boom. The Comet would’ve rounded out the appearance of the popular MIGHTY CRUSADERS but he doesn’t appear. In his stead are three 1940’s characters who had only barely been revived in cameos in the nigh legendary Jerry Siegel tale "Too Many Super Heroes" (Hah! There’s that term again!) in MIGHTY CRUSADERS number four that same year. I don’t think there’s any actual lawsuits floating around on this issue and I certainly don’t claim any legal expertise. I know that a trademark gone unused for a certain period of time is considered abandoned and could conceivably be trademarked by others. Perhaps, since Archie hadn’t published hero comics for more than a decade, DC and Marvel’s lawyers felt justified in their legal maneuvering. I will say that at the very least it looks like a precedent to me for Archie to get in on the action!
If you’ve been reading comics newssites recently, Marvel and DC are once again claiming trademark ownership of the term "super-hero." As I recall, this issue originally surfaced in the late seventies when Archie Comics put out their special Super-Hero Digests. The big guys yelled, "Cease and desist!" Okay, so Archie had always referred to their line in the sixties (Fly-Man, Black Hood, Shield, etc.) as "Ultra-Heroes," not "Super-Heroes." Or did they? Seen here is detail from a 1966 Transogram children’s board game called simply SUPER HEROES. Note that these are Archie heroes-Fly Man and Fly Girl, Black Hood, Mister Justice, Captain Flag, the Web, The Shield, the Fox, the Jaguar and Steel Sterling. How they settled on these particular characters for the board, I’ll never know. The Jaguar was from the early sixties and hadn’t even been published during the mid-sixties boom. The Comet would’ve rounded out the appearance of the popular MIGHTY CRUSADERS but he doesn’t appear. In his stead are three 1940’s characters who had only barely been revived in cameos in the nigh legendary Jerry Siegel tale "Too Many Super Heroes" (Hah! There’s that term again!) in MIGHTY CRUSADERS number four that same year. I don’t think there’s any actual lawsuits floating around on this issue and I certainly don’t claim any legal expertise. I know that a trademark gone unused for a certain period of time is considered abandoned and could conceivably be trademarked by others. Perhaps, since Archie hadn’t published hero comics for more than a decade, DC and Marvel’s lawyers felt justified in their legal maneuvering. I will say that at the very least it looks like a precedent to me for Archie to get in on the action!
I found this on Just Imagin
The Ten Comics That Changed My Life--Part 3
3. Mighty Crusaders #4: ”Too Many Super Heroes!”
By the time this comic book came out, the word was out that I loved the comic books. (Actually, with publishers dating comic books three months ahead of the month they are released, there is a very good chance that this comic, dated “April,” was actually released in January 1966, the month Batman premiered. With the word out, assorted relatives—well, probably just my mother and grandmother—started to buy them for me unbidden.
However, unless I was there, I had no assurance that I would be getting anything that I would actually want. I obtained many a Casper, Dennis the Menace, Hot Stuff, and Archie that way. Now, I admit that I looked at everything I was bought—and Istill have a fondness for Silver Age Casper and Hot Stuff—but given the choice, I would have chosen Doom Patrol over Casper's Ghostland any day.
Eventually, my family began to realize that it was super hero comic books that I really wanted. That resulted in an increase of Detective Comicsand Tales of Suspense coming into my possession. It also resulted in my seeing some less familiar super heroes like Gold Key’s Owl and Magnus.
(I’ll be honest and say that when I was a child I really disliked Gold Key comics that featured realistic humans, as opposed to cartoony humans like Elmer Fudd. I hated the covers, whether painted or, in the case of adaptations, repurposed publicity photos. I hated the stiff art and, when I learned how to read, I hated the stories because they felt pointless. I really only began to appreciate some of these comics within the last fifteen years beginning with Valiant’s reprinting Magnus, Robot Fighter and continues now with Dark Horse’s reprinting of Magnus , Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom, and M.A.R.S. Patrol Total War. If Dark Horse decides the market would support it, I’d like to see a reprinting of Space Family Robinson, which was Lost in Space long before the television series of that name was a twinkle in Irwin Allen’s eye. I still can’t bring myself to pick up the recent reprints of Gold Key’s Star Trek, though. This site provides the story of the relationship between the comic book and television series.)
As I was saying, I was beginning to see super heroes that didn’t come from Marvel or DC. It was during this time that I first looked at Mighty Crusaders #4; like the others, it was a comic that just appeared. I looked at it occasionally, but it never really sparked with me then. The comic languished in the comic book box, a big brown cardboard box in the closet where my brothers and I tossed the comics when we were told to put them away; I use proper comic boxes now, but still eschew the use of bags and boards.)
For anyone who hasn’t heard of this series or comic, Mighty Crusaders was published by Archie Comics under the guise of the Mighty Comics Group. During the Golden Age, MLJ Magazines—the company that would evolve into Archie Comics after the company realized which of their characters was buttering their bread—published straightforward super-hero comic books featuring the Shield, the Web, Hangman, the Comet, the Black Hood, and many others, but dropped them in favor of Archie and his friends by the end of World War II. In the late fifties, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby landed at Archie and produced two new comics, The Adventures of the Fly and The Double Life of Private Strong, the latter a reworking of the earlier Shield now in a Captain America mold.
By 1964, Jerry Siegel and Paul Reinman were working on the super hero line. In his writing, Siegel showed an amazing ability to predict trends as his stories were campy seven months before Batman was on television. He also, in what may have been an attempt to emulate the crossovers Stan Lee was doing at Marvel (in fact, a lot of the trappings of the Archie super-hero line at that time could be construed as having been crafted to copy Marvel), began reintroducing Archie’s Golden Age heroes. In his first issue (#31) of The Adventures of the Fly, now re-titled Fly-Man he brought back the Comet, the Black Hood, and what appeared to be the original Shield (he was actually his son). Those three, along with Fly-Man and Fly-Girl, formed a team, the Mighty Crusaders. After meeting for there for three more issues, the group was given its own title.
The story in Mighty Crusaders is incredibly simple, written by Siegel in his best “coincidence mode.” On the splash page, the Mighty Crusaders are gathering for a meeting, which is going to be broadcast on television, when an enemy attacks them. It is just the first of many such attacks from many different villains that were beaten back by the Crusaders and, my hand to God, every single super hero Archie published during the Golden Age. Alone and in pairs they arrived, for twenty-four pages, many choosing that day to come out of retirement, all of them demanding to join the Crusaders. In the end, none of them joined and the story ended as it began, with the Crusaders needing to hold their meeting.
In retrospect, I don’t know why I didn’t like this comic right away as it as everything I want to in a mainstream super-hero comic: action, soap opera melodrama disguised as character development, and the reintroduction of Golden Age super heroes. Thinking about the comic right now, I wish I had access to my copy so I could read it again, but at the time it did nothing for me. What changed my feeling toward the comic was that by the seventies I was reading books like All in Color For a Dime that introduced me to comic book history. Where else but Mighty Crusaders #4 could I actually see a clear picture of characters like Steel Sterling, Roy, the Mighty Boy, and Bob Phantom?
In that context, “Too Many Super Heroes!” retroactively became my “The Flash of Two Worlds”: It gave me access to “forgotten” characters in a way like no other comic I owned. I know that this comic is the one that helped foster my interest in the history of comic books and for “forgotten” characters, those characters published no longer or sporadically. To this very day, I am still a sucker for every character revival, JLA/JSA team-up, or reprint that comes down the pike and I know a great part of that is due to Mighty Crusaders #4; quite a feat for a comic I didn’t really have any opinion one way or the other when I first read it.
3. Mighty Crusaders #4: ”Too Many Super Heroes!”
By the time this comic book came out, the word was out that I loved the comic books. (Actually, with publishers dating comic books three months ahead of the month they are released, there is a very good chance that this comic, dated “April,” was actually released in January 1966, the month Batman premiered. With the word out, assorted relatives—well, probably just my mother and grandmother—started to buy them for me unbidden.
However, unless I was there, I had no assurance that I would be getting anything that I would actually want. I obtained many a Casper, Dennis the Menace, Hot Stuff, and Archie that way. Now, I admit that I looked at everything I was bought—and Istill have a fondness for Silver Age Casper and Hot Stuff—but given the choice, I would have chosen Doom Patrol over Casper's Ghostland any day.
Eventually, my family began to realize that it was super hero comic books that I really wanted. That resulted in an increase of Detective Comicsand Tales of Suspense coming into my possession. It also resulted in my seeing some less familiar super heroes like Gold Key’s Owl and Magnus.
(I’ll be honest and say that when I was a child I really disliked Gold Key comics that featured realistic humans, as opposed to cartoony humans like Elmer Fudd. I hated the covers, whether painted or, in the case of adaptations, repurposed publicity photos. I hated the stiff art and, when I learned how to read, I hated the stories because they felt pointless. I really only began to appreciate some of these comics within the last fifteen years beginning with Valiant’s reprinting Magnus, Robot Fighter and continues now with Dark Horse’s reprinting of Magnus , Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom, and M.A.R.S. Patrol Total War. If Dark Horse decides the market would support it, I’d like to see a reprinting of Space Family Robinson, which was Lost in Space long before the television series of that name was a twinkle in Irwin Allen’s eye. I still can’t bring myself to pick up the recent reprints of Gold Key’s Star Trek, though. This site provides the story of the relationship between the comic book and television series.)
As I was saying, I was beginning to see super heroes that didn’t come from Marvel or DC. It was during this time that I first looked at Mighty Crusaders #4; like the others, it was a comic that just appeared. I looked at it occasionally, but it never really sparked with me then. The comic languished in the comic book box, a big brown cardboard box in the closet where my brothers and I tossed the comics when we were told to put them away; I use proper comic boxes now, but still eschew the use of bags and boards.)
For anyone who hasn’t heard of this series or comic, Mighty Crusaders was published by Archie Comics under the guise of the Mighty Comics Group. During the Golden Age, MLJ Magazines—the company that would evolve into Archie Comics after the company realized which of their characters was buttering their bread—published straightforward super-hero comic books featuring the Shield, the Web, Hangman, the Comet, the Black Hood, and many others, but dropped them in favor of Archie and his friends by the end of World War II. In the late fifties, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby landed at Archie and produced two new comics, The Adventures of the Fly and The Double Life of Private Strong, the latter a reworking of the earlier Shield now in a Captain America mold.
By 1964, Jerry Siegel and Paul Reinman were working on the super hero line. In his writing, Siegel showed an amazing ability to predict trends as his stories were campy seven months before Batman was on television. He also, in what may have been an attempt to emulate the crossovers Stan Lee was doing at Marvel (in fact, a lot of the trappings of the Archie super-hero line at that time could be construed as having been crafted to copy Marvel), began reintroducing Archie’s Golden Age heroes. In his first issue (#31) of The Adventures of the Fly, now re-titled Fly-Man he brought back the Comet, the Black Hood, and what appeared to be the original Shield (he was actually his son). Those three, along with Fly-Man and Fly-Girl, formed a team, the Mighty Crusaders. After meeting for there for three more issues, the group was given its own title.
The story in Mighty Crusaders is incredibly simple, written by Siegel in his best “coincidence mode.” On the splash page, the Mighty Crusaders are gathering for a meeting, which is going to be broadcast on television, when an enemy attacks them. It is just the first of many such attacks from many different villains that were beaten back by the Crusaders and, my hand to God, every single super hero Archie published during the Golden Age. Alone and in pairs they arrived, for twenty-four pages, many choosing that day to come out of retirement, all of them demanding to join the Crusaders. In the end, none of them joined and the story ended as it began, with the Crusaders needing to hold their meeting.
In retrospect, I don’t know why I didn’t like this comic right away as it as everything I want to in a mainstream super-hero comic: action, soap opera melodrama disguised as character development, and the reintroduction of Golden Age super heroes. Thinking about the comic right now, I wish I had access to my copy so I could read it again, but at the time it did nothing for me. What changed my feeling toward the comic was that by the seventies I was reading books like All in Color For a Dime that introduced me to comic book history. Where else but Mighty Crusaders #4 could I actually see a clear picture of characters like Steel Sterling, Roy, the Mighty Boy, and Bob Phantom?
In that context, “Too Many Super Heroes!” retroactively became my “The Flash of Two Worlds”: It gave me access to “forgotten” characters in a way like no other comic I owned. I know that this comic is the one that helped foster my interest in the history of comic books and for “forgotten” characters, those characters published no longer or sporadically. To this very day, I am still a sucker for every character revival, JLA/JSA team-up, or reprint that comes down the pike and I know a great part of that is due to Mighty Crusaders #4; quite a feat for a comic I didn’t really have any opinion one way or the other when I first read it.
I found this on SwanShadow
Reindeer games
This being the Comic Art Friday that coincides with the unofficial opening of the Christmas shopping season, it's only appropriate that we debut an artwork with a vaguely Christmas-related theme.
The latest entry in my Common Elements series — you know the drill; pairings of otherwise unrelated superheroes who share some factoid in common — depicts a pitched battle in an urban alleyway between a Golden Age hero called the Comet, and the Vixen, best known as a member of DC Comics' Suicide Squad and, more recently, Justice League of America. Suicide Squad penciler Luke McDonnell, also known for his long run on Marvel Comics' Invincible Iron Man, created this action-packed scenario.
What do Comet and Vixen have in common? By now, you should have guessed: They're the only superheroes who share their fighting names with two of Santa Claus's reindeer.
The Comet dates back to 1940, a fertile time for the creation of superheroes. He sprang from the inventive mind of writer-artist Jack Cole, who's best remembered today as the creator of Plastic Man. The Comet's superpowers will be familiar to anyone who's ever read an X-Men comic or seen any of the X-Men movies: He emitted destructive rays from his eyes, much like the much later — but today much better known — X-character Cyclops. The Comet also holds a unique position in comics history, in that he was the first (though certainly far from the last) superhero to be killed in action. Interestingly, the late hero's brother was spurred by the Comet's murder to become a superhero himself, as the Hangman.
The Comet's original adventures were published by MLJ Comics, more familiar today under the name Archie Comics. Archie has revived the Comet a few times over the years, most notably as a member of the Mighty Crusaders, its 1960s takeoff on the Justice League.
As for Vixen, she also merits a special distinction, as the first black superheroine created by DC Comics, which for years lagged behind competitor Marvel in the introduction and promotion of heroes of color. Vixen very nearly became the first character of her ethnicity and gender to headline a comic series in 1978; her book, unfortunately, was canceled before the premiere issue was published — a casualty of a barrage of draconian cutbacks today remembered as the DC Implosion.
Like Marvel's Black Panther, Vixen — real name: Mari Jiwe McCabe — is African-born. She came to America as a young woman, gaining fame and fortune as a successful fashion model. Her powers derive from a mystical totem (shaped like the head of a fox, hence her nom de guerre) that enables her to imitate the abilities of any animal. Following stints in DC superteams Checkmate and Birds of Prey, Vixen recently rejoined the roster of the Justice League of America, to which she belonged once previously in the mid-1980s.
Artist Geof Isherwood, who first inked Luke McDonnell's pencils on Suicide Squad, then followed McDonnell as penciler on the series, places Mari front and center of the Squad's actitivies in this tension-filled scene. Joining Vixen are Suicide Squadders Bronze Tiger, Nightshade, and Deadshot.
The artist known as Buzz captures Vixen's feral temperament in this ink sketch, created at WonderCon 2005.
This being the Comic Art Friday that coincides with the unofficial opening of the Christmas shopping season, it's only appropriate that we debut an artwork with a vaguely Christmas-related theme.
The latest entry in my Common Elements series — you know the drill; pairings of otherwise unrelated superheroes who share some factoid in common — depicts a pitched battle in an urban alleyway between a Golden Age hero called the Comet, and the Vixen, best known as a member of DC Comics' Suicide Squad and, more recently, Justice League of America. Suicide Squad penciler Luke McDonnell, also known for his long run on Marvel Comics' Invincible Iron Man, created this action-packed scenario.
What do Comet and Vixen have in common? By now, you should have guessed: They're the only superheroes who share their fighting names with two of Santa Claus's reindeer.
The Comet dates back to 1940, a fertile time for the creation of superheroes. He sprang from the inventive mind of writer-artist Jack Cole, who's best remembered today as the creator of Plastic Man. The Comet's superpowers will be familiar to anyone who's ever read an X-Men comic or seen any of the X-Men movies: He emitted destructive rays from his eyes, much like the much later — but today much better known — X-character Cyclops. The Comet also holds a unique position in comics history, in that he was the first (though certainly far from the last) superhero to be killed in action. Interestingly, the late hero's brother was spurred by the Comet's murder to become a superhero himself, as the Hangman.
The Comet's original adventures were published by MLJ Comics, more familiar today under the name Archie Comics. Archie has revived the Comet a few times over the years, most notably as a member of the Mighty Crusaders, its 1960s takeoff on the Justice League.
As for Vixen, she also merits a special distinction, as the first black superheroine created by DC Comics, which for years lagged behind competitor Marvel in the introduction and promotion of heroes of color. Vixen very nearly became the first character of her ethnicity and gender to headline a comic series in 1978; her book, unfortunately, was canceled before the premiere issue was published — a casualty of a barrage of draconian cutbacks today remembered as the DC Implosion.
Like Marvel's Black Panther, Vixen — real name: Mari Jiwe McCabe — is African-born. She came to America as a young woman, gaining fame and fortune as a successful fashion model. Her powers derive from a mystical totem (shaped like the head of a fox, hence her nom de guerre) that enables her to imitate the abilities of any animal. Following stints in DC superteams Checkmate and Birds of Prey, Vixen recently rejoined the roster of the Justice League of America, to which she belonged once previously in the mid-1980s.
Artist Geof Isherwood, who first inked Luke McDonnell's pencils on Suicide Squad, then followed McDonnell as penciler on the series, places Mari front and center of the Squad's actitivies in this tension-filled scene. Joining Vixen are Suicide Squadders Bronze Tiger, Nightshade, and Deadshot.
The artist known as Buzz captures Vixen's feral temperament in this ink sketch, created at WonderCon 2005.
I found this on Gorilla Daze
Super-Heroes vs Super-Villains
Super-Heroes vs Super-Villains, one-shot 1966
Published especially “For Collectors” — it says so right there in the indicia — this one shot was a collection of reprints of various Mighty Comics stories. Mighty Comics was an imprint of Archie in the mid-60s when it tried to cash in on the Marvel-led super-hero boom. Archie revived several of its Golden Age characters, gave them a dusting down, and gave them an airing for a whole new audience, along with a few new characters for good measure. The Shield, The Comet, Flyman, The Web and several others were all present and banded together to form The Mighty Crusaders.
Most of the stories were written by Superman creator Jerry Siegel, though it must be said that they are hardly his strongest efforts. Camp was the order of the day, and while that sort of worked on live action shows like Batman, it grates badly on the page. Several covers proudly proclaimed the comics the work of “Dick-Vic-Bob and Paul” though who the heck they were is anyone’s guess. “Paul” might’ve been artist Paul Reinman I suppose.
After about a year, Mighty Comics disappeared back into the ether and Archie went back to solely publishing the adventures of, er… Archie and his pals.
Super-Heroes vs Super-Villains, one-shot 1966
Published especially “For Collectors” — it says so right there in the indicia — this one shot was a collection of reprints of various Mighty Comics stories. Mighty Comics was an imprint of Archie in the mid-60s when it tried to cash in on the Marvel-led super-hero boom. Archie revived several of its Golden Age characters, gave them a dusting down, and gave them an airing for a whole new audience, along with a few new characters for good measure. The Shield, The Comet, Flyman, The Web and several others were all present and banded together to form The Mighty Crusaders.
Most of the stories were written by Superman creator Jerry Siegel, though it must be said that they are hardly his strongest efforts. Camp was the order of the day, and while that sort of worked on live action shows like Batman, it grates badly on the page. Several covers proudly proclaimed the comics the work of “Dick-Vic-Bob and Paul” though who the heck they were is anyone’s guess. “Paul” might’ve been artist Paul Reinman I suppose.
After about a year, Mighty Comics disappeared back into the ether and Archie went back to solely publishing the adventures of, er… Archie and his pals.
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