Shadow of the Bat

BEFORE I DISCOVERED MARVEL COMICS IN THE MID-1960s, I was something of a Batman fan, specifically the stories of the 1950s which I enjoyed in the Batman Annuals of the period and last years of the Jack Schiff era in the early 1960s. Back then, the go-to artist for Batman was Shelley Moldoff, who had jettisoned his Golden Age, Alex Raymond influenced style and aped the rather limited and cartoony abilities of Bob Kane.

As a direct literary descendant of the pulp hero The Shadow, Batman did quite a bit of shadow-casting himself, being that he was a "creature of the night, dark, terrible" and all.

Moldoff didn't start as Bob Kane's ghost-artist until the late 1950s, but while I was researching Batman covers for an earlier post, I noticed another strange trope that would crop up again and again in Moldoff's cover art - a weird, Bat-Signal style shadow, cast by Batman.

Forged in simpler times, The Shadow spent quite a bit of his time casting weird shadows, something often referred to in the text as well as being depicted frequently on the covers.

Now, because Batman was largely inspired by the long-running pulp and radio star The Shadow, Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger appropriated quite a lot of the tricks and gimmicks from The Shadow stories. Blending with the darkness, impenetrable disguises and of course, casting weird shadows.

Some examples of Batman shadows on covers of the 1940s. Curiously the cover for Batman 16 is essentially the same as that of Batman 9, just flopped.
Click the image to enlarge.

So it seemed only natural that Batman should do a lot of the same. And indeed, he cast many a shadow on the Batman and Detective Comics covers of his 1940s heyday.

Pencilled by Jim Mooney, this cover to Detective Comics 132 (Feb 1948), does kind of foreshadow the odd, Bat-signal inspired shadows Shelly Moldoff would start drawing on Batman covers almost a decade later.

Then, around the middle of 1956, Curt Swan, who'd been pencilling the Detective Comics covers, and Win Mortimer, who'd been providing pencils for the Batman covers, were both replaced by Sheldon Moldoff. I couldn't find any reason for this in any interviews given by Moldoff, but he does mention that Kane had told him the gig didn't pay much, but would be steady work. My suspicion is that Kane was trying to save himself some money.

Batman 102 was the first to use the stylised shadow trope. It's not immediately obvious, because the colourist used a pastel shade, but it's there. Batman 108 (Jun 1957) and Batman 129 (Feb 1960) would follow.

It wasn't long afterwards that Moldoff started slipping these stylised shadows of Batman into the covers he was knocking out for the Bob Kane studio. The earliest one I found was for Batman 102 (Feb 1956). Then there was a short break until Batman 108, then a longer one until the next example on Batman 129.

As these covers were a little later, the Bat-Shadow is a little more pronounced, solid black instead of an outline filled with colour. Along with Detective 242, there was Detective 246 (Aug 1957) and Detective 286 (Dec 1958).

Over on Detective Comics, the same gimmick was showing up. Detective 242 (Apr 1957) was the first to use the stylised shadow on the cover art, then in the months that followed, the trope would show up several more times.

These early 1960s covers are Batman137 (Feb 1961), Batman 139 (April 1961) and Batman 154 (Mar 1963) - all still rocking the Bat-Signal shadow motif.

As we moved into the early 1960s, Moldoff was using the trick even more frequently, especially on the Detective Comics covers. Though it might just have seemed that way because Detective was a monthly and Batman came out eight times a year.

Detective Comics 298 (Dec 1961), 302 (Apr 1962), 304 (Jun 1962), 306 (Aug 1962), 315 (May 1963) and 320 (Oct 1963).

Then a curious thing happened. Faced with declining sales, DC were considering cancelling the Batman title. It has been reported elsewhere that DC had been thinking about cancelling Batman, but it seems unlikely that anyone would think discontinuing the flagship title - the very comic that gave DC its name, Detective Comics - could ever be a good idea. Whether the story is true or not, it does seem like DC used it to get Bob Kane to loosen his grip on the character, allowing incoming editor Julius Schwartz (replacing Jack Kirby's old nemesis Jack Schiff) to give the character a sleek makeover, getting rid of the aliens and mutations and placing Batman in a more realistic environment. Carmine Infantino was drafted in to redesign the look, and although Sheldon Moldoff would survive the cull, he'd start drawing more like Infantino and less like Bob Kane.

But that's not all. The strange Bat-Signal shadow would continue to show up ... even on covers pencilled by Infantino. The idea was like chewing gum - impossible to shake off. The earliest instances were on the Detective Comics covers ...

Detective Comics 328 (Infantino art, Jun 1964), 344 (Infantino art, Oct 1965), 349 (Kubert art, Mar 1966), 351 (Infantino art, May 1966), 354 (Infantino art, Aug 1966), 358 (Infantino art, Dec 1966).

But later, it started showing up on the Batman covers, too, albeit a little bit later and on covers pencilled by a variety of artists.

Batman 195 (Infantino art, Sep 1967), 203 (Infantino/Adams art, Jul 19168), 204 (Novick art, Aug 1968), 214 (Novick art, Aug 1969), 216 (Novick/Giordano art, Nov 1969), 217 (Adams art, Dec 1969).

And finally, even Batgirl started getting in on the Bat-Signal shadow action, though curiously Robin never rated a special shadow of his own.

Detective Comics 358 (Infantino art, Jan 1967), 369 (Gil Kane art, Nov 1967).

The weird Shadow of the Batman device continued up until about 1970 or so, then pretty much died out as new artists came in and regard for the character's history naturally waned away.

Even so, there are a few examples of this phenomenon during the 1970s as well, but as this blog has the phrase "Silver Age" in its title, I don't like to wander too far into the Bronze Age.

If you want to see more, you can always go to the Grand Comicbook Database and have a browse through the covers stored there ... I'm not going to do all the work for you.

Next: Ads in the comics

My Top Ten DCs of the Early 1960s: Part 2

IN THE EARLY 1960s I EXPERIMENTED WITH DC COMICS. It was only for a couple of years before I moved on to the good stuff - Stan Lee's Marvel Comics - but for those first tentative steps into the four-colour world, I knew only the implausible coincidences and plot-driven stylings of Mort Weisinger and Julius Schwartz. And while I still much prefer Marvel to DC, especially the comics of my youth, there are a few DCs that I still remember with love and affection.

It's true ... there's a lot of Mort Weisinger books in my top five, but these stories were pitched perfectly at my age-group at the time. I would have been nine when I was picking up those early Action Comics. Click image to enlarge.

Last time on this blog I looked at the lower half of my top ten most fondly-remembered DC stories of my formative years - around 1963 to 1965 - then ran out of room (and time) because I found I had more to say than I'd thought ... so here, then, are the top five. Again, I stress these are not the "best" DC comics of that era, just the ones that struck a chord with me and that I still remember to this day.

5. JUSTICE LEAGUE 21 & 22

OK, maybe this DC story is one of the best of the era. It was so successful that it became an annual event and established the whole DC multiple-universe thing. In the story it's explained that the Golden Age DC characters from the 1940s actually exist in a parallel universe on Earth-Two. The Silver Age DC superheroes all live on Earth-One. OK, it's a tad more complicated than that, as Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman continued straight on from the 1940s to the 1960s, but if you need to know more about that, you can Google it yourself.

Unusually for an early 1960s comic, the Crisis on Earth One/Two story unfolded across two complete issues of Justice League of America, created by the regular team of scripter Gardner Fox and artists Mike Sekowsky and Bernard Sachs.

For me, the first glimpse I had of DC's alternate Earths - and indeed of Golden Age characters - was in the Justice League of America stories, "Crisis on Earth-One" and "Crisis on Earth-Two" in issues 21 and 21 (Aug & Sep 1963) of that comic. And despite the spotty distribution we had to deal with in the UK, I distinctly remember buying both issues from a spinner rack at the same time, probably in the autumn or winter of 1963. Then I pretty much read them to pieces ...

New readers get an introduction to not only The Justice League but also The Justice Society in the first three pages of the tale. And there's an explanation of how the parallel Earths are related to each other and a reference the Flash 123 (Sep 1961) where DC first introduced the concept.

The plot is a little complex, but scripter Gardner Fox has fifty pages for explanations. Essentially, two trios of criminals, from two different Earths, plan to commit crimes then escape justice by immediately fleeing to the alternative Earth. So Earth-One's Felix Faust (from JLA 10, Mar 1962), Chronos (from The Atom 3, Oct 1962) and Doctor Alchemy (from Showcase 13, Mar 1958 - though he was "Mr Element" back then) conspire to commit crimes on their native Earth-One then hide out on Earth-Two ... while The Fiddler (All-Flash 32, Dec 1947), The Wizard (from All-Star 34, Apr 1947) and The Icicle (from All-American 90, Oct 1947) will carry out million-dollar robberies on Earth-Two then cross over to Earth-One to escape. Then, to further complicate things, the Earth-Two villains plan to disguise themselves as their Earth-One allies, rob Las Vegas (called "Casino Town" in the story) and defeat Earth-One's Justice League heroes.

Here's a montage of my favourite scenes from Justice League of America 21 ... I love the panel where the JLA and the JSA meets for the first time. Check out the two Atoms in the foreground shaking hands.

Highlights of Justice League 21 for me were the two scenes in Chapter Two where the "weaker" heroes save their more powerful colleagues. The Atom rescues Martian Manhunter from a shower of fiery pebbles by literally kicking them into touch, while Green Arrow saves Superman from a fire hydrant transformed into Kryptonite by dowsing it in lead paint from a well-placed trick arrow. I also loved the scene where the JLS summons the JSA with a good, old-fashioned seance ... and the following iconic scene where the Justice League members shake hands with their Earth-Two counterparts. All magical memories for me, even after more than fifty years.

The issue ends with the JLA, trapped in their own secret sanctuary by the magic of The Wizard, escaping to Earth-Two via Dr Fate's magic and preparing to chase down the Earth-One villains there.

So complicated is this tale that the splash page of Justice League 22 is given over almost entirely to a recap of the story so far. It's exactly the sort of thing I would have skipped over as a nine-year old. But here is is, in case you really need to read it.

Is this the busiest Intro page you ever saw? The verbiage has literally crowded the splash art off the page. It's a pretty brave move, when the format of the day was to have a big eye-grabbing image at the start of every chapter.

There then follows an epic 17-page battle as the combined might of the Justice League and the Justice Society defeat their foes, one-by-one. And just when it seems their victory is complete, the superheroes are trapped by another of the villain's machinations, this time ending up floating in space, trapped in cells tailor-made to negate their powers. Of course, our heroes escape in a cunning and clever way and congregate on Earth-One to beat the tar out of the cross-dimensional baddies in an epic double-page spread by Sekowsky and Sachs.

Absolute chaos - The Justice League and the Justice Society gang up on a handful of villains and whoop their behinds from one dimension to another. When you look at it like this, it hardly seems fair, does it?

Much as I love this comic - and bear in mind this is regarded as a classic by many Silver Age fans - there's not really a great deal of story here. An incredible 35 pages of the 50-page tale is devoted to battle scenes. More than two thirds. With a few chat scenes interspersed. It's no wonder that later fans criticised the Justice League of America comic for portraying the DC heroes as having scant personality and interchangeable dialogue.

Stan Lee's more populist approach in the Marvel Comics of the same period would very quickly start stealing sales from DC, while the DC editors scratched their heads and wondered why.

I don't think Gardner Fox and his DC contemporaries were bad writers, but they were of another era. And what was sufficient back in the 1940s Golden Age of Comics just didn't fly in the youth-culture driven 1960s, something I've discussed in other chapters of this blog. A cool name, costume and clever super-powers weren't enough, on their own, to sell comics. The new breed of comic fan wanted characterisation, wisecracks and a good storyline as well. And that's what, in the end, drove me away from DC and towards Marvel.

But hokey though they may be ... my nine-year old self still loves those old Justice League comics ...

4. BATMAN ANNUAL 4

This was one of the earliest American comics I can remember owning. It certainly wasn't bought new - it was coverless - and I wasn't one of those kids who likes to rip the covers off comics. I have a feeling someone might have given it to me, because the cover was missing. But wherever I got it from, I loved this comic, literally to pieces.

In the early 1960s, Superman editor Mort Weisinger realised there was a market for 25 cent comics packed with old reprints. With double the cover-price and no editorial costs, it was a no-brainer and Batman editor Jack Schiff soon followed suit.

Two stories in the bumper crop of Batman reprints from the character's silliest period still stand out in my memory... "The First Batman", in which Batman discovers his father fought crime in a bat-costume before he did, and "The Man Who Ended Batman's Career" in which Batman develops bat-phobia and changes his identity to Starman. So much did I love the latter story that, when I was nine, I tried to make myself a Starman costume, so I could help Batman.

We all know Bruce Wayne became Batman when a bat flew in his window one night and he was inspired to disguise himself as "a creature of the night, dark and terrible." as described in Detective Comics 33 (Nov 1939). But this story suggests that another Wayne had the same idea two decades earlier.

"The First Batman" originally appeared in Detective Comics 235 (Sep 1956), story by Bill Finger and art by Sheldon Moldoff and Stan Kaye, though the first page carries Bob Kane's signature. The story recaps the origin of Batman and reveals the final fate of Joey Chill, the murderer of Bruce Wayne's parents. But a chance discovery of a Batman-like costume in the attic of stately Wayne Manor prompts Bruce to recall the time when his father wore a Bat-costume. Attending a masquerade ball in the costume, Wayne senior is grabbed by gangsters who need his medical skills to remove a bullet from crook Lew Moxon. Dr Wayne fights back though, and Moxon is arrested and sentenced to ten years. When Moxon is finally released, he wants to get even, but isn't prepared to kill Dr Wayne himself. Thus it's revealed that Joey Chill was only the trigger-man. It's Moxon who was behind the murder of Bruce Wayne's parents. The rest of the tale has Batman track down Moxon and ring a confession out of him.

It's a memorable tale for me because it reveals essential back story to Batman's origin. I don't know whether those plot details became canon ... I suspect not, but I quite like the way Bill Finger revises Batman's history in an interesting way.

As a kid, I liked Starman even more than Batman, for some reason. It never occurred to me to wonder how Batman managed to get a Starplane built so quickly ... and by whom? But I really liked the star-darts Starman used to pin baddies to a wall.

The second memorable tale in that Annual was "The Man Who Ended Batman's Career", which appeared originally in Detective Comics 247 (Sep1957). Another Finger/Moldoff extravaganza, this time inked by Charles Paris, this story had Batman afflicted with a morbid fear of bats by mad Professor Milo. Unable to even look at the emblem on his Batman costume, Bruce Wayne is forced to adopt a new costumed identity ... Starman. Starman's gimmick is that he can fling ninja stars with deadly accuracy. Only Robin's intervention gets Batman over his phobia and back to his bat-fighting self.

Of course, the crooks soon figure out that Starman is just Batman in another costume ... but it was a fun ride while it lasted, and my nine-year old self was disappointed that Starman didn't get his own comic. Plus, I knew about ninja stars long before anyone else did.

Despite Shelly Moldoff's idiosyncratic art style, I was a big fan of the Atomic Age Batwoman. Though she was initially treated as Batman's Lois Lane - more an annoyance than an ally - she quickly became an integral part of the extended Bat-family. Her last appearance was in Detective 318 (Aug 1963), after which she disappeared with no explanation.

What I had completely forgotten about Batman Annual 4 was that it also reprinted the first appearance of Batwoman. Now anyone who has followed my blog over the years will know that my favourite female comic characters typically have dark hair. So as a kid, I loved the 1950s version of Batwoman and thought she was a wonderful partner for Batman ... much better than that daft Robin. 

Of course, given the times, Batwoman was portrayed as a "typical female". Her Bat-weapons were sneezing face powder, charm bracelets that doubled as handcuffs and a compact mirror she used to dazzle crooks, all carried in a handbag ... At one point, when Batwoman tries to help, Batman observes, "This is no place for a girl". A few pages later, some crooks say, "Batman and Robin ... and Batwoman. There's only two of them, the girl doesn't count." Finally, Batman figures out her secret identity as Kathy Kane, trapeze artist-turned-socialite, and tells to end her career as a crimefighter. "If I found you out," says Batman, "crooks could too, eventually! Once they learned your real identity, you'd be in mortal danger." Batwoman capitulates. "I never thought of that," she says, "I guess you're right. I - I'll quit my career as Batwoman." Thank goodness she didn't, eh? 

Here's some of my favourite Batwoman covers. Batman 105 was her second appearance. Batman 102 (Mar 1959) had the pair marry. Detective 276 (Feb 1960) teamed Batwoman up with Bat-Mite. In Batman 131 (Apr 1960) we find out what happens in the future when Batman marries Batwoman. In Batman 133 (Aug 1960) it's that pesky Bat-Mite again. And Batwoman's final appearance was in Detective 318.

I'll round out this section with a selection of my favourite Batwoman covers, ranging from her second appearance in Batman 105 (Feb 1957) to her final outing in Detective Comics 318 (July 1956).

3. SUPERBOY 89

Another comic I really enjoyed as a pre-Marvel child was Superboy. Incredibly, there are no collected editions of the Silver Age Superboy stories. I can't only surmise that there some sort of rights problem that prevents it. However, The Legion of Superheroes collections from DC include many stories from the original Superboy comics, including one of my favourites, "Superboy's Big Brother" from Superboy 89 (Jun 1961).

The cover of Superboy 89 depicts perhaps the daftest scene in the comic, where Superboy and his new "big brother" discover a "Jack-in-theBox monster left behind by a weird race of space people who make crazy toys."

My earliest exposure to Superboy would likely have been through one of those old black-and-white Superboy Annuals that were published in the UK during the late 1950s and early 1960s. I definitely recall having an Annual that had about 80 pages of George Papp-drawn Superboy reprints with Rex the Wonder Dog as a backup, but I can't identify which one it was because it was coverless. And I can't rightly say whether I read "Superboy's Big Brother" in the colour comic or in the B&W reprint, but the story stuck with me over the decades ...

These black-and-white albums were produced by a company called Atlas Publishing (no relation to Marvel Comics) during the late 1950s and early 1960s. They also published Superman and Batman Albums, and several ongoing comics like Space Ace, Lone Star and Diamond Adventure Comic. 

Written by Robert Bernstein and drawn by George Papp, behind a cover by Curt Swan and Stan Kaye, "Superboy's Big Brother" was a rare, 19-page tale at a time when DC typically filled their books with eight and 13-page stories. And it's probably Bernstein's highest-profile story.

The story begins joyously, with Superboy enjoying the company of his "big brother" as they use their super-powers to "play ball" together and perform other super-feats, but will soon descend into mistrust and suspicion.

The tale begins when a mysterious rocket crash-lands near Smallville. Superboy investigates and discovers a lad slightly older than himself among the wreckage. The teenager has no memory of who he is, but a plaque round his neck inscribed with Krytonian characters. Superboy immediately assumes that the newcomer is Kryptonian and probably related. This is confirmed when "Mon-El" proves to have super-powers, just like Superboy. However, further discoveries - Krypto doesn't recognise Mon-El and Mon-El is immune to Kryptonite - make Superboy suspect there's another explanation for his brother being on Earth.

Ultimately, Superboy causes the near-death of his newly-found "brother" when he fears that Mon-El has some sinister motive for pretending to be from Krypton, despite Mon-El never making any such claim. It's interesting that Bernstein's script makes Superboy the baddie and Mon-El the innocent victim.

As Superboy's suspicions grow, he lays a trap for Mon-El and disguises some lead boulders to look like Kryptonite and arranges to have them rain down on Mon-El and himself. Superboy pretends the "Kryptonite" is killing him, and when Mon-El appears to have the same reaction, Superboy thinks he's exposed Mon-El's deception. But it turns out there's an explanation.

"Mon-El" is actually from the planet Daxam, where the inhabitants are super-sensitive to lead, a substance that kills them with only one exposure. Superboy's only recourse is to send Mon-El into the Phantom Zone until a cure for the lead poisoning can be found.

It's a story full of loss, loneliness and recrimination, a rare emotions-driven story in DC's Silver Age. Superboy's feeling of isolation - as the last survivor of Krypton - makes him ready to accept Mon-El as his older brother. Mon-El is also a connection to Superboy's lost parents, and as a teenager rather than a grown man, Superboy would still feel that loss keenly. And it is Superboy's suspicions that cause him to lay the fatal trap for Mon-El, dooming his best friend because he thought Mon-El was trying to cheat him.

All these story elements I recognised as important and resonant, even as a nine-year old child. Even back then, I was looking for stories about human emotions, something that most of the DC line didn't offer.

Of course, later - probably due to reader reaction - a cure was found for Mon-El and he was able to join the Legion of Superheroes in the 30th century. But it was this story that started it all and still remains in my memory more than fifty years after I first read it.

2. ACTION COMICS 300

My second-favourite DC comic of my pre-Marvel years is another Mort Weisinger spectacular, "Superman under the Red Sun", which appeared in Action Comics 300 (May 1963).

Behind this iconic cover by Curt Swan and George Klein is an equally classic Superman story, in which Superman is trapped in the far-flung future where the Sun has turned red, robbing him of his powers. How will Superman escape this unescapable trap? My nine-year old self really needed to know.

Though only running 14 pages, this story - written by Ed Hamilton and drawn by Al Plastino - was able to give us a sense of Superman's isolation as a stranger in a strange land.

It starts with Superman investigating a spaceship in Earth orbit, which turns of to be a craft of the criminal organisation, The Superman Revenge Squad. The spaceship tries to flee, going so fast it cracks the time barrier into the future. Superman gives chase, but suddenly loses his powers and plummets to earth, a million years in the future under a red sun.

Though Mort Weisinger (along with Julius Schwartz) came from a science fiction background, the science here is wobbly. A star like Sol may have started as a red dwarf, and later in its cycle might become a white dwarf, but it doesn't have enough mass to end up as a red giant. So in the far flung future, Sol wouldn't become red. Plus, a million years is but a moment in a star's evolution. It would take around 10 trillion years for a star like Sol to enter its next phase. But I didn't know that when I was nine.

The story has a couple of plot holes ... the chief one is that one million years isn't enough time for the sun to evolve to another state. Secondly, when our sun does change, it will become a white dwarf. And thirdly, a red sun is lower-powered than a yellow one and therefore wouldn't cause the Earth's oceans to dry up.

The main point is that Superman finds himself alone and powerless a million years in the future where all his friends are long-dead. Using only his wits he must figure out how to escape from this time and return to 1963. Accompanied only by an android duplicate of Perry White, Superman sets off to reach his Fortress of Solitude at the North Pole, where he believes he may find a way to escape his predicament.

Along the way, Superman and Robo-Perry encounter some exotic life forms, like a land whale and land octopi (which again wouldn't have evolved in a mere one million years), which add some further danger to the trek.

Great ... Superman has a plan to allow him to return to his own time. He'll shrink himself with the still functioning reducer-ray, then pilot a tiny Kandorian rocket through the time barrier. But what's the error here? Click the image to expand and read the pages and see if you can figure it out.

Finally, Superman makes to the Arctic, now a desert wasteland, and scales the cliff to the door of his Fortress. But even as Superman gains entry through the door's huge keyhole, he's dismayed to discover that the bottle cit of Kandor is no longer there. I'm not quite sure how that would have helped him, but there's another solution at hand. A miniature Kandorian rocket has been left behind, along with the shrinking ray Superman has used before to reduce his size to allow him to enter Kandor. So that's all fine. He can make himself small enough to climb in the rocket and fly out of there and through the time barrier. But then the plotting gets a little muddled.

Superman also finds a piece of Red Kryptonite he was looking for, thinking "This Red Kryptonite won't affect me till I unwrap it. I once observed its effect on Krypto and it should have the same effect on me." What? What effect? The second to last panel has tiny Superman back in Metropolis musing, "Now to wait until the temporary effect of the Red Kryptonite wears off and I'm my super-self again."

I suspect some incompetent editorial interference. Perhaps some panels were removed from the last page to accomodate the ad. But there's definitely something missing here. Perhaps the original script had Superman shrunk down by the Red Kryptonite. That's certainly the implication in the published text. Maybe Weisinger thought that Red K shouldn't affect Superman when he doesn't have powers, so asked his staff to edit that bit out. They just didn't do it properly.

That notwithstanding ... it's still one of my all-time favourite early 1960s DC stories. It has a melancholy feel to it that other Superman stories of the era didn't have.

1. ACTION COMICS 309-310

My top DC story of the early 1960s is another sad one. "The Untold Story of Argo City" is an expanded version of the origin of Supergirl that appeared back in Action Comics 252 (May 1959). Essentially, the plot points are the same, but the later two-parter, which ran in Action Comics 309 and 310 (Feb-Mar 1964), expands more on the scenes in the doomed Argo City, where the Kryptonians struggle to survive life on a rock of solid Kryptonite.

Five years after Supergirl first appeared, DC Comics gave us an expanded version of Supergirl's origin in the two-part tale, "The Untold Story of Argo City", which would add a dilemma for Supergirl when she must choose between her adoptive parents, The Danvers, and her real parents, Zor-El and Allura.

The story is scripted by Leo Dorfman - expanding the original plot of Action 252 by Otto Binder - and drawn by Jim Mooney, and begins with Linda (Supergirl) Danvers dreaming that her real parents, Zor-El and Allura, are trying to communicate with her. With the help of Superhorse's telepathic powers, Supergirl is led to believe that her Kryptonian parents are alive but trapped in the Phantom Zone. Yet when Supergirl enters The Zone she fails to find any trace of her parents.

Via the ChronoScope, Supergirl can watch the last moments of Argo City, as first survival then doom beckon to the last surviving citizens of Krypton.

Her next plan it to use a handy "ChronoScope" that Superman invented (presumably solely for this story) to watch long-past events in Argo City to discover what happened to Zor-El and Allura. At last it's revealed that Supergirl's parents escaped into a dimension similar to The Phantom Zone, but separate from it. Now it only remains for Supergirl to figure out how to release Zor-El and Allura from The Survival Zone.

Supergirl's quest takes her first to Kandor City, where scientist help track the movements of Supergirl's parents inside the Survival Zone to the implauible "New Krypton", a memorial set up by Superman and Supergirl in tribute to the lost souls of Krypton. From there she then unnecessarily follows the Survival Zone "gulf stream" back to Earth where she can begin the process of extraction using a handy "sensitive view screen for national defence" that's conveniently stowed in the Danvers' basement. A few tweaks and Zor-El and Allura are able to step through the screen and into Supergirl's reality.

The big problem Supergirl faces in the conclusion of this tale is how she can bring her real parents back from The Survival Zone without breaking the hearts of her adoptive parents, The Danvers. In the end, Zor-El takes that decision out of Supergirl's hands.

But after a few joyous scenes of reunion and enjoying each other's company, it's plain that this can't be allowed to go on, so the Els must be sent to Kandor by DC's Dark Overlord Weisinger so that the status quo can be maintained.

I think the reason I still remember this story and how it made me feel when I read it back in 1964 is that once again, it's about emotions. Supergirl's feeling of loss when she believes her real parents are dead, her feeling of hope when it seems possible that they have somehow survived, then the emotional dilemma she faces if her real parents and adoptive parents are living in the same world. I also found the scenes of the Argoans trying to survive quite affecting, especially the scenes of hopelessness when the meteor shower pierces the protective lead sheeting, exposing the Argo citizens to the deadly Kryptonite rays ...

To me, this all demonstrates that the stories that resonate with us and stay with us even decades later are always powered by emotion. I think this was something that Stan realised when he first started trying to craft better stories at Marvel. When DC published the occasional emotion-driven story it was by accident and even as Marvel began to outsell DC in the mid-1960s, the DC editors never made the connection, and continued to stick to their plot-driven tales for the rest of the decade, allowing Marvel to take the top spot and relegate the once mighty DC Comics to second place.

Trapped on live television, as the subject of the show "America's Greatest Heroes" Superman is unable to find someone to pose as Clark Kent, until help arrives from an unexpected quarter. Because, after all, if Superman can't trust the President of the United States, who can he trust? Tragically, President Kennedy was dead before this comic went on sale ...

One final coda ... Action Comics 309 also featured a Superman story where the tv show "Our American Heroes" wants to honour Superman, but as Superman's "best friend" Clark Kent is also on the guest list, Superman's in a bit of a bind. One by one, his solutions are removed until it seems like his identity will be compromised by Clark Kent's "no-show". Then - surprise - Clark shows up. How did he do it? The answer seems so obvious now, leading to one of the greatest final lines in a comic story ever ...

Next: Of Marvel, Magic and Strange Tales

Silver Age DCs: Robin the Boy Bystander

I was going to do an overview of Marvel's Thor, starting from the earliest days of the Journey into Mystery issues, for October's blog entry, but having the builders in the house has meant my scanner is packed away, which was a bit of a roadblock. So I've decided to offer a pictorial special instead.

Back in the early days of my obsession with comics, before I stumbled across Marvel's titles, I was a reader of Batman and Superman comics. Looking back on those early 1960s DC covers I've noticed some weird tropes and trends. One of the oddest was Sheldon Moldoff's ever-present drawings of "Scaredy-Robin". Nearly every cover of Detective Comics from 1959 to 1963 had a profile image of Robin, apparently frozen in terror at the situation depicted on the cover.

Sheldon Moldoff's trademark Robin portrait found its way onto too many Detective and Batman covers at the beginning of the 1960s.

Why this was is anyone's guess. Perhaps it was Moldoff's way of quickly demonstrating to readers that Batman was in terrible peril. Or maybe the artist had a rubber stamp of that Robin drawing. Whatever the reason, the gimmick got pretty old and disappeared when DC revamped Batman in 1964, and the old, goofy sci-fi stories were out, and Carmine Infantino's sleek crimefighter was in.

So enjoy these crazy covers from a time when DC's Batman was more clown than crusader.

1940s

Probably just a coincidence, but the earliest example of Scaredy Robin I could find was from a 1945 issue of Batman. The art was pencilled by Jack Burnley and inked by Charles Paris, who would be a staple inker of the Batman titles right through to the early 1960s.

Batman 28 (Apr 1945) was the first appearance of Scardey Robin, though the image wouldn't become a trope for another 13 years, when Sheldon Moldoff made the image his own.

1950s

We wouldn't see that image on another Batman cover for another 13 years, this time by ... Sheldon Moldoff. Batman 116 (Jun 1958) was one of those classic goofy covers that had Batman and Robin threatened by Bat People on an alien planet.

Here's Robin again, completely useless in the face of a weird threat on a weirder planet. You'd think the queen would be more concerned with the attacking Bat People than she would about the restrained Batman and Robin.

Less than 18 months later, Moldoff again put a scared Robin on a Detective Comics cover. This time the menace was a weird old hermit who projects electric bolts from his fingertips.

"The Hermit of Mystery Island", Detective Comics 274 (Dec 1959), was another of DC's crazy concept covers, that featured Shelly Moldoff's oddly stilted figure drawing. And there's Robin, gauntletted hand frozen halfway to his mouth, being completely useless.

Once the Sixties kicked in, Moldoff, often inked by Paris, cut loose and added Scaredy Robin to just about every cover he could.

WHO THE HECK IS SHELDON MOLDOFF?

Shelly Moldoff was born in Manhattan, New York on 14 Apr 1920, though he was raised in the Bronx, living in the same apartment block as Bernard Bailey who, himself would go on to a stellar career as a DC Comics artist. "I was drawing in chalk on the sidewalk," said Moldoff told Alter Ego magazine in 2000, "Popeye and Betty Boop and other popular cartoons of the day—and he came by and looked at it and said, 'Hey, do you want to learn how to draw cartoons?' I said, 'Yes!' He said, 'Come on, I'll show you how to draw.'"

Sheldon Moldoff pictured during his 1940s heyday.

By the age of 17, Moldoff had begun making money out of his art. "My first work in comic books was doing filler pages for Vincent Sullivan, who was the editor at National Periodicals." This would have been 1937, before National, Detective Comics (DC) and All-American merged to form DC-National Publications. Within a year or two, Moldoff was contributing covers to DC, including the cover of All-American 16 (Jul 1940), the first appearance of Green Lantern.

Though Green Lantern was created by Martin Nodell, with Bill Finger, Moldoff was selected to draw the first cover appearance of the character.

Moldoff would create Black Pirate for Action Comics, but found his natural home when he took over Hawkman from series creator Dennis Neville with Flash Comics 4 (Apr 1940), at the instigation of publisher Max Gaines, and repaid his boss by creating Hawkgirl.

Hawkman's girlfriend Shiera first appeared in a Hawk costume in All-Star Comics 5 (Jun-Jul 1941), but wouldn't officially become Hawkgirl until Flash Comics 24 (Dec 1941).

Though he'd been contributing many covers to DC, he didn't draw his first Hawkman cover until four months into his run. The wings look more like fur than feathers, but the Alex Raymond style is quite apparent.

"Max Gaines took a shine to me ... He's the one who said, 'We're going to put you on Hawkman, and do whatever you want with it. Do a good job; I know you can do it." And that was it! ... But when I looked at Hawkman and read a couple of stories, I said to myself, 'This has to be done in an Alex Raymond style.' I could just feel it ... I'd saved the Raymond Flash Gordon Sunday pages and the dailies for years! ... Gaines liked my style; he liked the realism ... I spent a lot of time on it. I had books on anatomy and shadows and wrinkles; I studied, and I worked very hard on it, and I think it showed."

Pretty quickly, Hawkman became the co-star of Flash Comics, featuring on
more-or-less alternating covers of the series.

Hawkman also became a mainstay of the Justice Society of America, starring is his own chapters in All Star Comics, also drawn by Moldoff.

Shelly Moldoff was one of DC's principle artists until 1944, when he was called up for military service. By the time he returned to civilian life in 1946, his mentor/sponsor had departed DC and set up Educational Comics. So Moldoff rejoined his old boss and created Moon Girl, with DC stalwart Gardner Fox.

Sheldon Moldoff created Moon Girl for Max Gaines at EC Comics. The first couple of issues featured covers by Johnny Craig, even though all the interior art was by Moldoff. This one is the first by Moldoff.

But it all went wrong at EC after Max died and is son Bill Gaines took over. Sheldon Moldoff created the format of the EC horror comics, designing horror hosts for the books, on the understanding that Gaines Jr would pay him a royalty on the books. But Bill reneged and there was an acrimonious split.

A couple of years later, after jobbing for companies like Fawcett and Standard, Moldoff joined the Batman team at DC, ghosting in Bob Kane's style on both the Batman comics and Detective. In fact, it was Moldoff's art that defined the look of the Batman titles during the 1950s, creating Batwoman, Bat-Mite and Ace the Bat Hound. 

"I worked for Bob Kane as a ghost from '53 to '67," Moldoff told Alter Ego magazine. "DC didn't know that I was involved; that was the handshake agreement I had with Bob: 'You do the work, don't say anything, Shelly, and you've got steady work'. No, he didn't pay great, but it was steady work, it was security. I knew that we had to do a minimum of 350 to 360 pages a year. Also, I was doing other work at the same time for [editors] Jack Schiff and Murray Boltinoff at DC. They didn't know I was working on Batman for Bob ... So I was busy. Between the two, I never had a dull year, which is the compensation I got for being Bob's ghost, for keeping myself anonymous."

Even after the Julie Schwartz revamp of the character in Detective Comics 327 (May 1964) and Batman 164 (Jun 1964), Moldoff would continue to pencil Batman stories, ghosting for Bob Kane. In fact, Moldoff also drew the cover for the first revamped Batman issue, though in a much more Infantino-esque style.

DC fired Moldoff in 1967, along with Superman stalwarts Wayne Boring and George Papp - presumably because they were "old-fashioned". Moldoff turned to storyboarding animation for TV and worked on Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse. He also produced promotional comics for the Burger King, Big Boy and Red Lobster restaurant chains. He returned to DC thirty years later to draw a segment for Superman and Batman: World's Funnest in 2000.

1960s

As 1960 kicked in, Moldoff was drawing all the covers and much of the insides of the Batman titles. And in even more of those covers, there was that same illustration, in that same pose - sometimes close-up, sometimes in long-shot - of Robin looking scared and useless.

These Shelly Moldoff covers, published in the early part of 1960, all included Robin in that characteristic pose.

The first half of 1960 gave us three examples. The second half gave us six. It was though Shelly was warming to the idea and wanting to include it on every cover he reasonably could, without raising the ire of editor Jack Schiff.

It did seem that Robin's sole role in these old Batman tales was to react fearfully
to whatever situation Batman found himself in. 

What was curious during this period was that Moldoff's art had become stiff and posed. Where his Hawkman art of the 1940s looked for all the world like it was produced by the Alex Raymond studio, this Sixties art was curiously stilted and lacking in any kind of flow.

These comics were published in October and November of 1960 ... all show Robin in that same pose, all facing to the left, whether in close-up or long-shot. What could Moldoff have been thinking?

Moldoff had mentioned that the page rate for this material wasn't great, so perhaps he was knocking it out as quickly as possible. Or perhaps he was consciously imitating Bob Kane's stiff figure drawing. But whatever the reason, the look certainly defined a particular era of the character.

Between January and April 1961, Scaredy Robin made three appearances. 

The following year brought a  bumper crop of these trademark Robin figures. There were nine of those pesky images included in the Batman titles that year. Just three appeared in the first quarter of the year. The rest featured on Batman covers in the latter part.

Here he is again, reacting to the situation instead of being part of it. It's like the editors thought of Robin as a Damsel in Distress instead of being an active part of the dynamic duo. These covers appeared from August to December 1961.

1963 was Moldoff's last great shout on the Batman titles. Almost as if he knew the countdown had started, he pulled out all the stops and managed to squeeze his trademark Robin image into another seven covers that year.

Another gaggle of goofy early Sixties Batman covers, covering the first half of 1963 ... a catalogue of bizarre aliens, 5th Dimension imps and freakish Batman transformations, all with Robin facing to the right.

But the writing was on the wall for this bizarre era in Batman's career. Sales had been dropping steadily since the late 1950s and the DC bigwigs were giving serious consideration to cancelling the Batman titles. However, they decided to give the character one last shot. Julius Schwartz, who had successfully rebooted the Golden Age characters Flash and Green Lantern - with sleek modern makeovers - to a firm financial footing was drafted in to solve Batman's problems.

The tail end of 1963 would see the end of the space rockets and the whacky Batman transformations. And not a moment too soon. DC's management were unhappy with the sales and were hinting that the character could be consigned to limbo.

Out were the hokey Batman family - Batwoman & Batgirl, Bat Mite and Bathound - the aliens and their planets, and the weird transformations of Batman. In came standard crooks, death-traps and a polished New Look, courtesy of Carmine Infantino.

Though Moldoff wasn't quite out the door - he'd last another three years - he would have to abandon mimicking Bob Kane's style and follow the Infantino template to bring more a fluid grace to Batman.

"Robin Dies at Dawn" in Batman 156 (Jun 1963) was an uncharacteristic break from the hokey claptrap on either side of it, a fondly-remembered masterpiece by the great Bill Finger.

And though it's very easy to mock the naivety of these comics today, they weren't without their charm. There was even the odd classic story. And, of course, in 1966, the fortunes of the character were transformed by that TV show, and once again Batman (898,470 per issue) was a top-selling title for DC, even outstripping his stablemate Superman (719,976 per issue) in sales for 1966.

How differently things might have turned out had Julius Schwartz not turned the fortunes of Batman and Detective Comics around in 1964.

Next: Marvel goes mythical (promise!)