Some DC Comics of the 1960s I did like

BY THE BEGINNING OF 1968, I was a confirmed Marvelite. I devoured every word Stan Lee wrote and had only contempt for the offerings of DC Comics, especially given the bad taste the Batman TV show had left. But as I approached my fourteenth birthday, some NEW comics appeared in the newsagents that caught my attention. And incredibly, they were DCs.

As noted in an earlier blog entry, I had been a big fan of Steve Ditko's version of Spider-Man and had been hugely disappointed when he left the title and Marvel. At the time, I wasn't aware of his work at Charlton Comics on Captain Atom, though I do remember seeing reprints of some of those stories in Alan Class' British black and white reprint comics. So when I came across a copy of Showcase 73 (Apr 1968) in a local newsagent, with the instantly recognisable Ditko cover, I plonked down my shilling without a moment's hesitation.

The first appearance of The Creeper in Showcase 73 (Apr 1968) marked the return of Steve Ditko to big company comics. But as good as the comic was, it just wasn't Spider-Man.

Once I got the comic home and started to look through it, I could see that though this was definitely Steve Ditko artwork and that the character had the same kind of kinetic dynamism that Spider-Man had had on Ditko's watch ... there wasn't anything bad about the comic but it wasn't quite as good as Spider-Man had been. At the time, I had no idea why that was. As a thirteen year old, I didn't analyse any further than whether I liked something or not, and although I kinda liked The Creeper, it wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders. But any Ditko's better than no Ditko, right?

What I hadn't known at the time was that Amazing Spider-Man had been drawn twice-up ... the original artwork was literally twice the size of the printed page, so the original art boards measured about 12" x 18". That changed in 1967 ... DC's Murphy Anderson began working at a smaller sizer - 10" x 15" because he preferred it, and the company's production department realised that they could get four comics pages to a single sheet of film, instead of the two they had been mounting. And because that saved everyone money, 10 x 15 became the new standard. Many of the old school artists - Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby and Ross Andru - struggled to come to terms with the new size, and much of their art of the period shows a discernible downturn in quality.

Many artists of the era, who had been used to the large-size 18 x 12 art boards, struggled to adapt to the new smaller size, and this shows in the greater abundance of large panels in the work of artists who had packed their earlier work with more, and more detailed, panels.

So Ditko wasn't just knocking out his Creeper artwork, it was only that he didn't have enough room to create the kind of detail and sweep he'd been getting into his Spider-Man stories.

Though the story carried no credits - DC weren't quite ready to go there yet - there was a text page headed, "Meet the Men Behind the Creeper" towards the tail-end of the book. In it, just four short paragraphs - about quarter of the page - were devoted to Steve Ditko. And his only quote was, "I never talk about myself. My Work is me. I do my best, and if I like it, I hope somebody else likes it, too."

Ditko's collaborator here was identified as Don Segall, "who wrote the dialogue for The Creeper." So, as with Spider-Man and his Charlton work, Ditko essentially plotted the stories he was drawing, and probably created the character solo. The late Don Segall, who also had some modest success as a script-writer of tv shows during the 1970s, was not the creative force that Stan Lee was and so while the dialogue for The Creeper was serviceable, it didn't jump off the page the way it did in the Marvel Comics of the same period.

It's established here that Prof Yatz' device renders Ryder's Creeper costume invisible, but later in the story, when he switches to Ryder, he appears in his street clothes.

The plot does bear some Ditko fingerprints. When tv host Jack Ryder attacks a liberal anti-violence crusader on air, he's fired, but almost immediately hired by the station's head of security Bill Brane. Assigned to track down some commies who are planning to kidnap government scientist Prof Yatz, Ryder follows a lead and tries to crash a costume party. He buys a box of odd and ends from a nearby fancy dress shop and puts together a car-crash of a costume, with a red furry cape and a green wig. The silhouette isn't a million miles away from Spider-Man villain, Kraven the Hunter. But while snooping around at the party, Ryder is spotted by the bad guys and is stabbed in the ensuing scuffle. This is actually pretty radical for a 1960s comic, though it didn't occur to me at the time. It's surprising that this got past the Comics Code, even though the stabbing in only mentioned in the dialogue rather than being explicitly portrayed in the illustrations.

Ryder discovers Yatz' hiding place and tries to get the Professor away. But with his strength failing because of his wounds, Ryder's in no position to help anyone. Yatz is able to inject Ryder with his "Instant Healing Serum", and conceal his miniature camouflage device into Ryder's open wound. It's this device that will allow Ryder to switch instantaneously from his Creeper identity to his civilian one.However, as Yatz tries to burn his notes, the bad guys start shooting again and the Professor takes a bullet. Ryder just has time to fight his way through a gaggle of bad guys and escape into the night. But rather than heading for safety, Ryder snoops around some more until he stumbles across the bad guys, who've holed up in a nearby garage. The finale is an epic eight-page fight scene in which Ryder beats the tar out of the gang and eludes the police in his civilian identity.

There are similarities between Spider-Man and The Creeper - both are wanted by the police, both swing around the city rooftops, both win fist-fights against impossible odds and both wisecrack while they fight. No doubt, DC thought they were getting their own version of Marvel's wall-crawler, but Ditko has never been one to simply re-hash old ideas and the character took a bit of a left turn when he was awarded his own title just two months later.

Steve Ditko included some more details about The Creeper's abilities in the first issue of his own magazine - the Professor's serum gave him, "the agility of a cat, the stamina of an elephant and bullet-quick reflexes". And a weird side-effect of the camouflage device was that it made the Creeper costume appear to be part of Ryder.

There was no way DC's accountants could have know what the sales were on Showcase 73 before the decision was taken to put The Creeper his own book. Beware The Creeper 1 (May-Jun 1968) was still plotted by Ditko, but this time, the dialogue was provided by Dennis O'Neil, a young writer who had also come over from Charlton Comics. Credited to "Sergius O'Shaugnessy", O'Neil's dialogue has more than a passing resemblance to the tone of the Marvel Comics of the same era, and the villain of the piece strongly resembles the Spider-Man villain, The Looter, but however hard he tried, O'Neill's dialogue just doesn't have the heart that Stan's does. The Creeper's civilian identity comes across more as a hard-boiled private eye, and in the scenes of Jack Ryder's daily life, the dialogue is simple and declarative, moving the plot forward, never dwelling on the characters' feelings the way similar scenes are portrayed in the Spider-Man comics of the Ditko period. It seems as though after the Marvel experience, Ditko was more interested in the action, devoting 11 of the issue's 23 pages to knock-down, drag-out fighting, all of which seem more kinetic, more chaotic, than the fight scenes in Spider-Man.

This an interesting idea that was never fully realised ... because, unlike Ditko's regimented nine-panel grids in his Spider-Man tales, the Creeper pages are more varied, occasionally with diagonal panel borders, so I wondered if this wasn't intended to be a reflection of The Creeper's state of mind. The maniacal laugh - lifted, some might say from Batman's Joker - hints of ominous side-effects of Prof Yatz's untested serum. I wonder where Ditko would have taken the character if it had lasted more than just the seven stories ...

Still, as the series unfolded, Ditko would continue fleshing out the supporting cast, adding pain-in-the-butt TV station weather girl Vera Sweet - who'd always require rescuing - and further new characters with each issue of the ongoing series.

In his first appearance, the villain Proteus silences a former ally who seems set to betray him, right in front of The Creeper. This would set up a battle that would continue for the rest of the comic's run.

But it was with Beware The Creeper 2 (Jul-Aug 1968) that the concept really began to take shape. For this issue introduced the dough-faced Proteus ... a villain with no face of his own, who could look like anyone. Over this and the next four issues, The Creeper would pursue Proteus in all his guises without ever really understanding what the fight was about.

The cover's a real classic, with its kaleidoscope of eyes swirling around The Creeper, though the interior art is a little more subdued, with fewer fight pages. That kind of works, because Proteus is more a villain of the mind than of the fist. During the course of the story, Proteus impersonates The Creeper, Bill Brane and in one memorable scene, Vera, armed with a flame-thrower! That fights ends with Jack's apartment block burning to ground and apparently killing Proteus in the process ... but we readers knew better.

I'm really not sure what the thinking was behind this page ... DC Comics promotional piece? An homage to the roundly detested (by me)  Batman tv show? A calamitous attempt by Ditko at humour? We'll probably never know. And since when was DC Comics a purveyor of "Pop Action"? Even more wrong-headed than Stan's ill-fated 1965 renaming of Marvel comics as "Pop Art Productions".

This issue also contained one of the oddest pages I've ever seen Ditko draw. Whether is was Ditko's idea, or whether it was an editorial edict is lost in the mists of time, but it looked more like a DC House ad than a story page, and may well have been intended for exactly that purpose.

This issue of Beware The Creeper must surely offer Steve Ditko's most dynamic and action-packed artwork ever. The battles with the strange costumed criminals are dizzying in their breathlessness.

There was a bit less Proteus in Beware The Creeper 3 (Oct-Nov 1968), which results in much more fist action - 12 pages of it in this issue. As The Creeper, Jack Ryder shakes down some thugs known to work for Proteus, trying to get information on Proteus' true identity. He trails Vera Sweet - who's mysteriously become a serious investigative reporter - to a remote island where a gang of wildly costumed goons are terrorising the locals. It turns out that the island is a haven for criminals, hiding out from the law, including the very thugs The Creeper was interrogating at the beginning of the comic. Needless to say, The Creeper is drawn into several running battles with the thugs, but severely trounces them all.

Beware The Creeper 4 was marginally more sedate than the previous issue. This time out The Creeper is back battling his bete noir, Proteus, which results in a more cerebral, less punchy story.

With issue 4 of The Creeper (Dec 1968 - Jan 1969), we were back in the fight with Proteus. As might be expected from a villain who seldom takes a direct approach, there is significantly less fisticuffs this time round. Proteus is mainly operating via a network of stooges, a bit like Spider-Man's Crime Master character, so The Creeper is frustrated in not being able to engage directly with his foe. In three separate sequences, The Creeper faces off against a fake swami and his henchmen, a motorcycle punk and his gang and finally against the mute bodyguard of shady diplomat Bulldog Bird, Sumo, who is critically injured in the encounter - but not before the man-mountain reveals that both he and Proteus know that Jack Ryder is The Creeper.

The artwork on the last few pages of the issue look rushed, as though Ditko was struggling with the deadlines - but by this point he was also pencilling and inking The Creeper's sister series The Hawk and the Dove (about which more later).

Beware The Creeper 5 ended with Proteus revealing his true face to The Creeper - though not to us readers. We'd have to wait until the next issue to find out what Jack Ryder already knew.

Beware the Creeper 5 (Feb-Mar 1969) had Jack Ryder finally come face-to-face with Proteus. But bucking the established trend, Ditko this time piled on the action, devoting 10 pages to The Creeper's battles first with the mysterious Bulldog Bird, then with Proteus himself, ending with the cliffhanging defeat of The Creeper by the issue's end, as depicted on the issue's cover.

But for the first time, the cracks are becoming apparent. Editor Dick Giordano mentions on this issue's letter's page that Steve Ditko is "ailing of late" and that former Dell inker Mike Peppe had been drafted in to finish up over Ditko's pencils. A month or two previously, Ditko had given up working on The Hawk and the Dove, handing over to Gil Kane to draw the series from the third issue on.

The Creeper 6 was the last issue of the Silver Age series. Ditko provided pencils for just the first half of the book, leaving Jack Sparling to complete the story. The cover was by DC stalwart Gil Kane.

Issue 6 (Apr-May 1969) was the final outing for The Creeper, and for Ditko on the strip. In fact, he only pencilled the first 11 pages, leaving the final half of the book to Jack Sparling to draw. Mike Peppe's inks try to bring it all together, but though Sparling was a great artist, he wasn't Steve Ditko.

The issue features the conclusion of the story begun in Beware the Creeper 5, and ends - apparently - with the death of Proteus. The Creeper manages to free himself from the deathtrap Proteus left him in last time. Meanwhile, Proteus has impersonated the State Governor to order the city evacuated in the face of rising flood waters so his henchmen can rob and loot at will. But Jack figures out the plan and arrives in time to thwart Proteus' plan.

The second half of the story - all drawn by Sparling - is an epic-length battle as The Creeper tries to prevent Proteus destroying a nearby dam with nitro-glycerine and ending with the villain plummeting from the top of the dam in a screaming death plunge.

There was no letters page in Creeper 6, so readers were left twisting in the wind a bit, unaware that the series had been cancelled.

Left to right: Remington "Rip" Cord, with his good friend Jack Ryder, aka The Creeper; TV weather girl Vera Sweet, The Creeper's Lois Lane; Jack's boss Bill Brane restraining Ryder; the faceless enemy, Proteus.

In case you've not read Beware the Creeper, I'm not going to reveal who Proteus is. In fact, in later incarnations of the Creeper, some doubt was thrown on Proteus' true identity, suggesting that the revelation in Creeper 6 was a red herring.

There must have been some plan to revive The Creeper at DC Comics during the mid-1970s - they sure seemed to put a lot of effort into bringing the character back.

The Creeper would turn up the following decade in a few DC comics, guest starring with Batman in Detective 445-448 (Feb/Mar - Jul1975), co-star with his inspiration The Joker in the third issue of the villain's own title (Sep 1975), then in a solo adventure with art once again by Steve Ditko in First Issue Special 7 (Oct 1975). Finally, there would be a short series by Marty Pasko and Ric Estrada in the back of Adventure Comics 445-447 (May - Sep 1976).

The Creeper starred in a short series of three six-pagers in the back of Adventure Comics when that title was arguably teetering on the edge of cancellation with third string DC character Aquaman in the lead slot.

A couple of years later DC would give The Creeper another short, six-issue run, in World’s Finest 249 (Feb 1978) - 255 (Feb 1979), this time scripted by creator Steve Ditko, after which DC largely gave up on the character for a while.

The Creeper was an interesting experiment by DC. I don't know that they were trying to capture the Marvel lightning in a bottle as such, but by bringing Dick Giordano over from Charlton Comics, where he had worked with Ditko on Charlton's line of Superhero comics, including Captain Atom, Blue Beetle and The Question, perhaps they were certainly at least trying to do something new beyond the familiar machinations of old-school DC-ers like Mort Weisinger and Jack Schiff.

THE HAWK AND THE DOVE - A CREEPER CODA

Around the same time that Ditko was conceiving and drawing The Creeper, the management at DC were trying to find him something else to do to occupy his free time. According the GCD, there are a couple of different versions about how the project came about. DC Publisher at the time Carmine Infantino has said he came up with the idea and gave it to Steve Ditko to develop. But Editor Dick Giordano "came in as editor right in the middle of The Hawk and the Dove story in Showcase. Steve Ditko already had the rough plot worked out. Steve Skeates worked from that plot and came up with a script."

While the artwork was very good, the overall concept of The Hawk and the Dove was repetitive and dull, and altogether too shouty.

According to Steve Skeates, "It was created by committee." As he went on to explain in an interview in The Comics 9 (Sep 1997), "Carmine came up with the title. Outside of that I can't remember who created what ... I wrote a plot which Dick approved. Then I wrote a full script, which was given to Steve. In pencilling it up Steve took out scenes he didn't like and extended scenes he did like. Then, I added dialog and captions to these new extensions."

To be honest, I really only bought the book at the time for the great Steve Ditko artwork, which was every bit as good as what he'd been doing in The Creeper. But the stories were not so good, and the constant arguing over the same issues between the two brothers got very wearing very quickly. Once Steve Ditko left and Gil Kane took over the art chores with issue 3, I had lost all interest and moved on to other things.

I hadn't realised, back in the 1960s, that these Ditko titles, and another comic I really enjoyed at the time The Secret Six, were all edited by Dick Giordano, who had been an editor at Charlton Comics since the 1950s and joined DC around late 1967. According to Giordano himself, his move to DC was brokered by Steve Ditko, who had remained friendly with Giordano since they had worked together at Charlton, beginning in the 1950s.

I'll cover Giordano and The Secret Six in a future blog entry.

Next: Marvel's first mystic hero

Messing with the Logo - A 2000AD Interlude

A COUPLE OF HUNDRED YEARS AGO, I was paid to interfere with the work of others, as member of the editorial team on 2000AD, a British weekly comic that featured mainly science-fiction oriented action stories. Later, I was briefly the Editor, a post I never sought but was rather thrust upon me - though that's a story for another time.

The Galaxy's Greatest Comic has had a long tradition of both evolving and messing with the logo, much of it on my watch, but also stretching back to the dawn of time when 2000AD first began. The original dummy for the comic had the logo rendered as "AD2000", although there's no evidence to suggest that this was intended to be its final title. Dummies were produced as a matter of course for any new magazine back then as a way of demonstrating to interested parties - management, marketers, distributors - what the  final product might look like. In the US comics industry, they called them "ashcans".

The final render of the logo, designed and executed by an un-named "bodger" in the IPC Youth Group art department, bore a slight resemblance to the classic Superman logo of 40 years earlier. I wouldn't suggest this was in any way deliberate, more of an interesting coincidence. The epic, forced perspective style brings an energy to the cover that the earlier version on the dummy lacks.

While the comic was still in the planning stages, it was titled "AD2000", but wiser heads prevailed and for launch it was rechristened 2000AD. The first version of the comics logo had some subliminal similarities to the iconic Superman logo. (Click on image to enlarge)

This first logo managed to survive for more than two years, when it was evolved away from the Superman look. Prog 119 (30 Jun 1979) took a very different approach, though it lacked the power of the original. It was tweaked slightly when Tornado was merged, with Prog 134 (13 Oct 1979). This version only lasted a year or so before it was replaced by the eyesore chrome effect logo that it would sport for the next seven years, or so.

This logo was okay - not terribly inspired and a bit of an awkward shape. The cover lines at this point in the comic's history hadn't yet taken a turn for the comedic. That would come much later.

Prog 178 (20 Sep 1980) featured a masthead that was designed by then art editor Robin Smith, and was still in force when I joined the 2000AD team in February 1987.

This may have seemed like a good idea at the time - what doesn't say "science fiction" like a chrome effect logo, eh? But I thought it was cheesy, and may well have contributed to putting me off 2000AD, which I never looked at before I worked on the paper.

I thought this was the weakest logo in the mag's history. It has a slight echo of its predecessor, with the multiple curved underlines and the same general rainbow shape, but that terrible chrome effect ... it's hard to imagine that this was created by a designer. Consequently, every issue was locked into a logo that used that same chrome-effect pale blue. When the design team did try to vary the colour scheme - by using a darker blue or a red - it just didn't work at all.

The really surprising thing here is that this logo style survived so long. I'd been on the team for a few months when I happened to mention to editor Richard Burton that I thought the logo was incredibly old-fashioned for what was supposed to be the Magazine of the Future. "That chrome effect just shrieks 'early Eighties'", I offered helpfully. I was a little surprised when Richard agreed. He'd been living with it for the preceding seven years, on-and-off, so I'd just assumed he was happy with it. But ... not so much. So we got the wheels in motion to bring some change.

As I recall, it involved a bit of work to get the management enthused, but managing editor Steve MacManus was very supportive. He took the view that an overhaul was overdue and smoothed the path for us. Richard and I anticipated much push-back from the Earthlets, so we kind of pre-empted that - or tried to - by making the change over two consecutive Progs, 554 (26 Dec 1987) and 555 (2 Jan 1988), and trying to build a bit of a story around it.

The first order of business was to get rid of the old logo. So we had Tharg and his droids ceremoniously burn it on the cover of the Christmas Prog for 1987. Then, a New Year, a New Logo. A specially commissioned John Higgins painting perfectly showcased the new logo, making it an object within the cover scene, a visual gag we'd return to more than once over the next few years.

I recall that Richard gave Prog 554 cover artist Mark Farmer quite a detailed brief. The final art shows the Burt droid chiselling the old logo off the wall, watched by an alarmed robin, and the Mac II droid saying "Out with the old, eh, Mighty One?" Tharg carries a gift-wrapped package under his arm in the shape of the new logo.

The following Prog unveiled Steve Cook's redesigned logo, with the cover art showing Dredd preventing a luddite perp from prising the logo from a wall with a crowbar.

STEVE COOK - SUPER-DESIGNER

I had worked with Steve Cook at Marvel Comics a few years earlier and knew he was a smart and creative designer who could come up with something pretty cool. Steve took the tired old Robin Smith design and completely revised it for a new generation of readers. He retained the basic shape, but cleverly elongated it and made the "2000" resemble the badge on the front of Dredd's helmet. Many people didn't spot that until it was pointed out to them. The new shape also gave the cover artists much more room to play with and made positioning cover lines - by this time much more punchy and pun-ny - much, much easier.

The first version of that logo had been rendered by the Fleetway art department, but Steve was never really satisfied with it and re-drew it for Prog 750, to make it bolder than earlier versions.

With Prog 750, Cook redrew the 2000AD logo to make it more symmetrical and bolder. The notorious Summer Offensive of 1991 introduced a new font commissioned by Steve from Rian Hughes called "Scrotnig" and the recurring hexagon motif. A couple of Progs later, Steve brought back the "Starring Judge Dredd" in its own floating panel.

Steve made further tweaks every so often to keep the logo looking fresh, though none of these changes were drastic. With Prog 842 (3 Jul 1991), the corners were rounded off and the Judge Dredd lettering temporarily dropped, but it was back with Prog 844 (17 Jul 1991) floating in its own panel just below the main logo, making it look subliminally like an exclamation mark!

Prog 888 didn't really need the "Starring Judge Dredd" panel. It's pretty obvious who it is kicking down the door. The revision to the logo on Prog 889 brought a slightly more sophisticated look.

The Dredd panel was dropped again for Prog 888 (20 May 1994) - I can't remember why, but probably because it would have been obscured by Judge Dredd's head. Then Steve once again revised the logo for Prog 889 (27 May 1994), adding contoured outlines and bringing the "Starring Judge Dredd" lettering back into the background panel. This style would persist for three years until incoming editor Dave Bishop dumped Steve's logo concept completely for a complete re-think.

HERE'S HOW YOU MESS WITH A LOGO

Once we had Steve Cook's new logo to play with, everyone associated with the comic wanted to join in, but as it was Steve's baby, he got to go first. Prog 584 (23 Jul 1988), expanded the new logo to dominate the whole cover, casting a giant shadow across Dredd's helmet and a sinister splattering of blood. Prog 606 (24 Dec 1988) revived the time-honoured tradition of adding snow to the logo of the Christmas issue, though we were doing it ironically. And Prog 615 (25 Feb 1989) featured Rian Hughes' clever design, celebrating 12 years of Thrill-Power - the really bad pun is mine.

These were some of the milder examples of "messing with the logo" that Richard, Steve and I perpetrated during the early days of our tenure on the Galaxy's Greatest Comics. We took the point of view that the logo could be varied as long as there was a reason behind it.

The following year, Steve Cook celebrated the comic's 13th birthday with an inspired beatnik design with Prog 667 (24 Feb 1990). He followed this with the special "Low Visibility" issue cover for Prog 772 (16 Mar 1991). We'd noticed we were getting a lot of letters from British soldiers serving on the front line in Iraq and, while the 2000AD editorial team had no political views on the war, we were determined to show support for the troops ordered in to harm's way. Needless to say, the soldiers' response to that issue showed us it had been a good call. Then, for Prog 764 (4 Jan 1992), the in-house Fleetway art studio created a montage of Brigand Doom images from the interior strip, but styled it like a (then-current) Macintosh computer interface.

As the editorial team grew in confidence, the level of messing became more daring. Prog 667 took the logo down to the foot of the cover, something few magazines would try then or now. The "Low Visibility" Prog 722 was designed so that soldiers serving in the gulf could read it safely. And Prog 764 played with the idea that if each issue was 'Programme" then it should be run on a computer - we chose the publishing standard, the Macintosh.

Master artist Cliff Robinson was also inspired to create many clever visual jokes using Steve Cook's logo. His first was on Prog 584 (15 Oct 1988), where he depicted Dredd holding up the logo, like a referee's red card. His next visual pun embedded the logo in the side of Dredd helmet, for the cover of Prog 619 (25 Mar 1989). And the cover of Prog 738 (4 Jul 1991) had Dredd using the logo for target practice.

As well as being a superb artist, Cliff Robinson is also a talented graphic designer, and instantly saw the possibilities for incorporating the Robo-Cook design into his cover layouts.

We had a few more instances of messing with the logo during this period. For the 15th Anniversary issue, Prog 772 (29 Feb 1992), Steve produced a gift-wrapped cover, and had the wrapping paper repeating the logo. We could probably have sold that design to Clinton Cards. For the cover for Prog 836 (22 May 1993), Steve worked with the late, great Brett Ewins to produce this tip of the cap to design legend Jean Paul Gaude, who had created the iconic cover and video for the Grace Jones album Slave to the Rhythm. The Valentine's Day heart-shaped logo on the cover of Prog 875 (18 Feb 1994) was especially fun, and showed Tharg had a romantic streak.

Still playing with the readers' expectations, Steve Cook produced a gift-wrapped 2000AD for Prog 772. And, inspired by the Grace Jones ad for Citroen, designed by Jean-Paul Gaude, Steve and Brett Ewins worked up an homage for Prog 836. And who can forget the Valentine's Day Prog 875, with its heart-shaped logo?

Then, my own personal favourite distortion of the logo was on the cover we did for Prog 843 (3 Jul 1994), the second of the Summer Offensive and the first to feature "love him or hate him" Big Dave. The Daily Mirror had been running a billboard campaign that summer with the tagline, "It's a newspaper, not a comic!", which was presumably suggesting that The Sun was a comic. I was a little offended by that, as the editorial team felt that our efforts had far more dignity and sophistication than either The Daily Mirror or The Sun. So our "red-top" cover was created in protest. Steve and I sat together at the computer, with a couple of tabloids for reference, and did our own version, with me writing the text as we went. And, of course, we included the tag line on the logo, "It's a comic, not a newspaper".

There was, of course a precedent for designing the cover of a comic like a newspaper. It was the standard format for the great 1960 tabloid comic TV21, and I later discovered that 2000AD's first art editor Kevin O'Neil had also done a newspaper cover for an earlier issue of the comic. So, not startlingly original, but I do think ours was done better.

TV21's newspaper design was pretty revolutionary for a comic at the time. It certainly captured my attention, and I followed the paper for the first year or so of its life. Later, 2000AD would do a newspaper cover for the story "Ant Wars". The newspaper cover from my tenure was much more of a joke, rebutting a stupid strapline The Daily Mirror had used in its advertising.

Of course, the logo lent itself to merchandising too, and we produced teeshirts, mugs and other assorted paraphernalia that used Steve Cook's logo design. I don't think he ever earned any extra money out of it. I still have my 2000AD enamel badge, though I don't wear it so much these days.

The 2000AD badge, using Steve Cook's logo, was one of the must-have items of the early 1990s. We even did a gold "Contributor" version, of which I think only about 100 were made.

Later in the run of 2000AD, after I'd left, incoming editor David Bishop had Steve redesign the logo again, moving away from the classic logo that had worked so well for so many years. The result, which debuted on Prog 950 (20 Jul 1995), was still an attractive logo, but it lacked the cleverness and versatility of its predecessor.

The revised logo that appeared on Prog 950 was okay, but it didn't lend itself to playful messing the way its predecessor did, and a new version of the classic red-white-and-black logo was back as soon as incoming editor Andy Diggle could feasibly manage it, on Prog 1234.

Tellingly, once David Bishop had left and Andy Diggle took the editor's chair, the logo reverted to an updated version of the classic, specially redrawn by Steve Cook, on Prog 1234 (21 Mar 2001). The cover was an homage to John Higgins' original version on Prog 555 ... and the line Dredd's uttering is an in-joke, as it was the catch-phrase of Fleetway's Managing Director Jon Davidge, who wasn't a great fan of change for change's sake. There was a further revision on Matt Smith's watch, but the exclamation mark style 2000AD branding was retained and is still in use today.

Which sort of goes to show that you can't keep a good logo down.

Next: Some late 1960s DC Comics I did like.

I said, Don't Mess with the logo!

BACK IN THE LAST CENTURY I earned my living in the magazine business ... and the prevailing wisdom at the time was that you didn't ever - under any circumstances - mess with the magazine's logo. In fact, any kind of change to the magazine's masthead was frowned upon, and even re-branding exercises were viewed with much suspicion. In the last entry in this blog, I looked at the many times that Marvel Comics changed their magazine's logos during the 1960s ... it all seemed so much easier then.

But even less acceptable was the idea that you could transform the comic's logo for just one issue for, oh I don't know ... Dramatic Effect. From a marketing perspective, that's an even bigger risk than changing the logo as part of the natural evolution of a magazine's masthead

Strangely, though this blog focusses on Marvel Comics, and I've always maintained Stan Lee was far more willing to experiment with different approaches to comics and storytelling than his rivals, it was DC Comics that seemed more willing to confound the marketers' expectations. Yes, DC's logos had evolved over the decades (admittedly, not much) since their wartime inceptions in the late 1930s and 1940s, but the character logos seemed sacrosanct, not budging one jot during the intervening quarter century. The exception seemed to be Batman.

The Detective Comics logo remained essentially unchanged from its first 1938 appearance right through to the earlier 1960s, when editor Julius Schwatrz was drafted in to give the allegedly ailing title a facelift, beginning with issue 327 (May 1964). (Click on image to enlarge)

"WHOLLY INADEQUATE CIRCULATION, BATMAN!"

Legend has it that Batman was on the edge of cancellation back in 1964. Details are hazy and it does seem very unlikely that DC would have considered shelving their second biggest character. Perhaps they were thinking about shutting down the Batman title and carrying on with Detective Comics? Anyhow, it's easy to believe the legend when you think of all those dopy "Batman in an alien zoo" type stories that Jack Schiff was pushing out during the early 1960s. The facts, however, don't bear that out.

Like Detective, the Batman logo had also stayed the same since its 1940s beginnings. Not even Schwartz's revamp extended to the logo - at least, not at first. Batman 164 (Jun 1964) was the first of the New-Look, but the old-school Batman logo remained for the next five issues until 169 (Feb 1965). With Batman 170 (Mar 1965), the Bat emblem was altered to a more dynamic version, though the calligraphy remained unchanged.

It's certainly likely that the sales on both books were on a downward trend, as DC wouldn't have sidelined long-serving editor Schiff unless the situation was worrying the DC brass. Given that Julie Schwartz had done such a bang-up job with revamping the Golden Age characters Flash and Green Lantern for modern audiences, it seemed a no-brainer to see what Schwartz could do with one of DC's biggest stars. And given the numbers on both titles, there's little doubt that Schwartz achieved what was required of him. But cancellation? I don't see any evidence for that ...

What is known is that DC wasn't that happy with Bob Kane's stranglehold over the title. They were keen to renegotiate the deal Kane had with the company, where Kane did nothing and his team of "ghosts" - Bill Finger, Sheldon Moldoff and Charles Paris - did all the work. Perhaps Schiff was having trouble getting Kane and Co away from the dreadfully old-fashioned and clumsy tales that were being spun in the main two Bat-titles. So perhaps the cancellation story was told to Kane to get him to release his grip and allow DC to move the character in a new direction. Certainly, Kane himself has repeated the cancellation story over the years, for example in Les Daniels' "Batman the Complete History". But if you look at the published sales figures for the two core Batman titles in the first half of the 1960s, the facts don't support Kane's tale.

Batman sales figures
	Detective	Batman
1962	265,000	410,000
1963/4	-	-
1965	304,414	453,745
1966	404,339	898,470

Yes, in 1962, the sales, especially on Detective Comics, were sagging. But still, at over quarter of a million, the title is a long way from being cancelled. There are no figures for 1963/4, but 1965 shows the effect of Schwartz's revised Batman - Detective up by 15% with Batman showing an 11% increase.

Regardless of the background, Julius Schwartz, along with artist Carmine Infantino, managed to revive the fortunes of Batman and though he was permitted to change the style of the Detective Comics logo, the Batman logo - at least at first - remained as it was when the title was first launched in 1940. The thinking behind this is now lost in the mists of history, but looking at the timing of it, I'd speculate that once the DC leadership saw that the new-look Batman was enjoying improved sales, Schwartz was given the green light to give the old Batman logo the makeover it needed.

By the time the Batman tv show had arrived in 1966, it seemed that no one was standing in the way of Schwartz and Infantino and they committed the cardinal sin of messing with the logo. The cover of Batman 194 (Aug 1967) pretty much omitted the masthead altogether and incorporated the word "Batman" - hewn from stone - into the cover art.

A lot of stone would get hewn over the next few years ...

The cover of Batman 194 dropped the traditional bat-shaped logo altogether, so artists Infantino and Murphy Anderson could incorporate the word "Batman" into the artwork. The effect is attention-grabbing, but I doubt that DC Publisher Jack Liebowitz would have allowed this bold experiment without the Batman tv show.

When I saw it in the 1960s - even though I was by then a confirmed Marvelite - I thought it was a pretty cool and striking cover ... and it's pretty much the earliest example I can think of where a comic logo has been altered, or dropped entirely, for dramatic effect. Yet, right on the heels of that, Schwartz did it again with Flash 174 (Nov 1967).

The cover of Flash 174, also by Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson, did away with the traditional logo for a single issue to present cover art that incorporated the hero's name as part of the image.

Whether either change affected sales, it's now impossible to say. I wouldn't seriously suggest that Batman or Flash fans had any trouble finding these issues on the newsstands. Nevertheless, this wouldn't happen again at DC for quite a number of years. Marvel Comics, on the other hand, started messing with their logos on a more-or-less regular basis.

NOW MARVEL'S DOING IT ...

The earliest instance I can recall of a Marvel Comic that departed from the regular logo style would have been on the front cover for Hulk King-Size Special 1 (on sale Jul 1968). That one really messed with the logo in epic style.

This striking cover art was drawn by Jim Steranko. The logo, such as it is, is part of the artwork. But the Hulk's face is not Steranko's. "My Hulk head, they said, was too brutal for the cover," Steranko later reported, "so they had Marie Severin replace it with one of her cute, teddy-bear heads."

Tyro artist and designer Jim Steranko had burst through the "glass ceiling" at Marvel comics as essentially the first new new artist Stan Lee hired during the 1960s. All his previous recruits had been either alumni of the old Atlas Comics or creators from other companies he thought might fit in at Marvel. Steranko was neither. Yes, he'd had a little experience at Harvey, working under veteran editor Joe Simon on Spyman 1 (Sep 1966), though it only lasted three issues before Steranko was out of work again. But not for long.

Steranko's next professional work saw publication in Strange Tales 151 (Dec 1966), just three months later. Working over a Lee/Kirby plot and Jack Kirby layouts, Steranko provided finished pencils and inks for his first episode of Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD. Three issues later, Steranko was doing all the art himself and plotting, with Roy Thomas adding the dialogue. With Strange Tales 155 (Apr 1967), SHIELD had become the Jim Steranko show, with only the lettering being provided by other hands.

JIm Steranko's run on SHIELD - 18 episodes of 12 pages each and four issues of 20 page stories when Nick Fury was spun off into his own comic in May 1968 - was a genuine game-changer. Suddenly, every aspiring artist wanted to draw like Steranko - Barry Smith, Jim Starlin, Paul Gulacy - all owe a larger or smaller debt to him. Neal Adams even included a Steranko tribute in his Deadman strip for Strange Adventures 216 (Jan 1969), where if you squint at the art from the bottom of the page, some pink flames coalesce into the message, "Hey! A Jim Steranko effect!"

It doesn't really work on a computer screen - but if this were a comic book (or you're reading this on a tablet), hold the book out in front of you and squint up the page to fore-shorten the image drastically and you'll be able to read the subliminal message.

Fearing he might miss his monthly deadline on the full-length SHIELD book, Stan Lee had Frank Springer produce a fill-in issue of SHIELD, issue 4 (Sep 1968). Steranko abandoned the strip that had made him famous and cast around for something else to do. He did the cover art for The Hulk King-Size Special 1 overnight when scheduled artist Dan Adkins was unable to take on the assignment. Then he jumped ship to X-Men, pencilling, inking and colouring the cover of issue 49 (Oct 1968), before pencilling the interior art for issues 50 and 51, both inked by John Tartaglione, and redesigning the cover logo. The Steranko X-Men logo would become the standard for the next 30 years.

By 1968, the X-Men logo was looking a little tired. Steranko's revised version is simple, clean and elegant. It was such a strong design that it continued to graced the masthead of the title until March 1998.

After X-Men, Steranko took over Captain America from the departing Jack Kirby, again redesigning the cover logo (covered in the previous entry in this blog), and providing some of the most iconic art of his career.

Right after Steranko's striking and iconic Hulk Annual cover, the regular Hulk comic also broke with tradition to change the logo for a single issue. As noted last time, the Hulk cover masthead was a little uninspired for the first few issues of the run. It took incoming artist Herb Trimpe, possibly taking inspiration from Steranko's Hulk cover which had gone on sale just a month earlier, to incorporate the logo into the artwork for the cover of Hulk 109 (Nov 1968).

The logo used on the first seven issues of The Hulk's own title in 1968 was a rather dull re-working of the one used on the Tales to Astonish masthead. Herb Trimpe's rock-hewn version was a good deal more eye-catching, but was toned down a bit on the logo of the following issue.

The final result was a weird hybrid of the logo that appeared on the very next issue, Hulk 110 (Dec 1968) and the later - and in my opinion less interesting - version that would grace the cover of Hulk 129 (Jul 1970).

There would be other instances of messing with the logo on Hulk down the decades. The rock-hewn masthead would return a few years later with Hulk 340 (Feb 1988), which allowed scope for the artists to once more make the logo part of the cover scene.

As with many new artists, Todd McFarlane evidently wanted to make his mark, as other star-in-waiting artists had, by messing with the logo. This one's okay, but nothing special. I never much cared for McFarlane's monstrous hulk, very much a product of its time. The same idea is explored to even lesser effect in Bill Jaaska's cover art for Hulk 378 (Feb 1991). And as for the cover for Hulk 400 ...

I don't think the cover for Hulk 400 (Dec 1992) really works, as it actually is quite hard to see what the cover logo says. Perhaps if the figure of The Hulk had been stronger they might have gotten away with it. What do you think?

The year following Steranko's ground-breaking Hulk Special 1 cover, DC Comics superstar artist Neal Adams was invited to draw for Marvel. When asked by Stan what title he'd like to work on, Adams recounted, "I asked, 'What‘s your worst selling title?' Stan said, 'The worst selling title is X-Men. We‘re going to cancel it in two issues. So I said, 'I tell you what. I‘d like to do X-Men.' He said, 'But I told you we‘re going to cancel it in two issues. Why do you want to do X-Men?' I said, 'Well, if I do X-Men and I work in the Marvel style, you‘re pretty much not going to pay too much attention to what I do, right?' He said, 'That‘s true.' I said, 'Well, then, I‘d like to do that.'"

It reality, it didn't really turn out that way. Adams completed the interior pencils without incident, then turned his attention to the cover. His first attempt was rejected out of hand by publisher Martin Goodman. Any idea why?

Neal Adams' first version of his cover for X-Men 56 had the main characters lashed to the cover's logo. Martin Goodman felt that this obscured the logo too much and rejected the art. Adams then had to redraw it. Though the logo is still rendered as an object in the final art, no one had a problem with this and the cover made it into print.

Despite the early wobble, as it turned out the X-Men book wasn't cancelled a couple of issues later. Adam's art re-invigorated the title and it trundled on for another year, faltering only after Adams left the title.

Later artists who tried to mess with the X-Men logo had more success, though not always from an artistic standpoint, especially once we got past the 1980s and into the 1990s. Perhaps the Marvel editorial staff felt that the X-Men title was big enough to take the hit, but whatever the reason, the X-Men masthead went on to be come one of the most messed-with in the company's stable.

There was messing with the Uncanny X-Men logo during the 1980s, but it all seemed a bit half-hearted, like someone was waiting to get told off for committing the cardinal marketing sin.

There's three good examples in the 1980s of the artist messing with the logo. Uncanny X-Men 176 (Dec 1983), by John Romita Jr, is a little timid. The logo is rendered as an object being shattered by Cyclops' eye-beam, but it's not especially striking. It probably sounded a lot better on the phone to editor Louise Simonson, but I wonder if the result lived up to the description. JRJR's cover for Uncanny X-Men 181 (May 1984) does exactly what Adams did back on X-Men 56, to less effect and Uncanny X-Men 184 (Aug 1984), doesn't exactly set the logo on fire ... well, it does, but only in the literal sense.

Shattering the logo seemed to be a trend in Uncanny X-Men logo fiddling between 1990 and 2006. Marvel should have been able to come up with more than a single idea in sixteen years, shouldn't they?

The next tranche of logo fiddling came in 1990 and in 2000, where we were treated to some simple logo breaking. Jim Lee did the same trick two issues running as part of the "Extinction Agenda" storyline. Then, on Uncanny X-Men 377 (Feb 2000), Adam Kubert also pulled that stunt as part of the Apocalypse saga. Six years later, Roger Cruz trotted out the same - by now, tired - gag with Uncanny X-Men 474 (Aug 2006).

A bit more rooting around in my back issue box turned up further examples of shattered Marvel logos. Thor offered a couple of examples for your consideration. When Walt Simonson took over the scripting and drawing of Marvel's Mighty Asgardian, on Thor 337 (Nov 1983), the title was in dire need of a shot in the arm. Walt delivered just that and had the new "Thor" shatter the logo on the magazine's masthead. But unlike other applications of this corny old idea, there actually was a reason for it this time. Simonson was signalling his intent to completely re-write the storybook on Thor. Few will argue that he didn't do that. So in this instance, using the image of the logo being shattered actually does work.

Walt Simonson's run on Thor was heralded by this - literally - striking cover. The three year run is considered one of the best in the character's history. The idea was cribbed later on Thor 451 and yet again on Thor 459.

What's especially clever about Simonson's cover is that he doesn't just depict the logo being shattered, but all the "furniture" of the cover. And on the issue immediately after, the old-style Artie Simek designed Thor logo was replaced by a sleek, contemporary design that still managed to evoke the ancient, epic style of Asgard, the calligraphy credited to Alex Jay.

A later issue of Thor, 451 (Sep 1992), repeats the layout of Thor 337, though I haven't read the issue, so I'm not able to say whether there was a reason for this. Then, just a few months later, also for no reason that I'm aware of, the Marvel editorial trotted out the same idea again on Thor 459 (Feb 1993).

The Amazing Spider-Man also had its share of shattered logos. On Amazing Spider-Man 237 (Feb 1983), it works especially well, as cover artist Ed Hannigan has the blast from Stilt-Man's gun shattering not just the logo, but all the other "dressing" on the page, pre-dating the Thor 337 cover by almost a year. Todd McFarlane's cover art for Amazing Spider-Man 328 (Jan 1990) actually pre-figures the same idea he used on Hulk 378 (Feb 1991). It's okay, but as I said, I never cared much for Todd's version of The Hulk. And the idea was used once more on the cover of ASM 382 (Oct 1993), though this is probably the lest effective of the three.

How many ways can you shatter a Spider-Man logo? Not many it would seem. This trope turned up three times during the original run of Amazing Spider-Man, each time slightly less effective than the time before.

And finally, Captain America also got in on the act, using the cliche twice in less than a year. Curiously, the shattered logos on Captain America 354 (Jun 1989) and Captain America 379 (Nov 1990) are identical, barring the colour design. Was there a reason for that? Or was it just the production department taking a short-cut? I wouldn't know as I didn't collect Cap this far into its run.

The only connection I can see between Kieron Dwyer's design of Captain America 354 and Ron Lim's for Cap 379 is the identical logos. Maybe I'm missing something.

WAS IT WORTH IT?

I think if you're going to do something smart and bold with a magazine's cover logo, then the surprise effect will work well. The Batman and Flash covers I talked about at the start of this blog entry are exactly that. But Carmine Infantino was a talented designer as well as artist, so he knew how to break the rules effectively. Likewise with Jim Steranko, whose graphic design skills were a big part of his success, both in his comics of the 1960s and his later publishing efforts in the 1970s. But after a while the messing just falls under the law of diminishing returns.

The list here of messed-with covers not exhaustive, but it is a little exhausting. In many ways, the Marvel editorial made the marketers' case for them. There's probably fewer benefits to be had from messing with the logo than there is from consistency. Evolve the logo, by all means, if it's looking old-fashioned or has just become too familiar. But messing with the logo for dramatic effect - especially when the drama is a bit lame - can only be counter-productive when the same idea is trotted out time after time.

Next: A "mess with the logo" interlude - 2000AD