According to biographical information available online for Morris “Mo” Gollub, he worked at Disney in animation, and got into comic books thanks to “his friend, Walt Kelly.”

I must say, Mo moved in the best circles.

Gollub illustrated some comics, including “Leonora the Beautiful,”attributed to him by the Grand Comics Database. It's from Fairy Tale Parade, Four Color #114 (1946). But he is primarily known as an illustrator, and cover artist for Dell. He did some knockout covers, including these for Turok #11 (1955) and Tarzan #121 (1960). Tyrannosaurus lover that I am, these two dramatic covers are among my favorites.

Turok Son of Stone #11, 1956.

Tarzan #121, 1960

Not only did Gollub draw great dinosaurs, but he had a firm grasp of anatomy, as shown in the original art for a Tarzan cover. This striking painting displays his knowledge not only of the human figure, but  animals as well.

Tarzan #71, 1955.

“Leonora the Beautiful” is not a typical comic book story because it is told in captions. I don’t think captions-only always works in a comic book story, but it does here.

Mo Gollub, who was born in 1910, died in 1984.










War of the Green Lanterns: Aftermath is a mixed bag. It added significantly to my enjoyment of War of the Green Lanterns itself, and for that I credit writer Tony Bedard (sharing book credits with Peter Tomasi). Bedard's contributions, however, also contain some troublesome moments; Tomasi delivers solid work, but the majority of it is entirely unrelated to War. In this way, Aftermath is a book headed in many different directions; I'm always glad when DC collects their comics, but the Aftermath collection is an unusual one.

[Contains spoilers]

The beginning of Bedard's two-issue Aftermath miniseries is quite moving. Bedard focuses on fan-favorite Kilowog in the opening scenes, using him as the through-way to depict the Green Lantern Corps's pain and mistrust of their Guardians, and vice-versa. Trauma due to mind control is hard to demonstrate, but Bedard personalizes it. Any time the Guardians's assistant Salaak disobeys them is also notable. Bedard has spotlighted former Guardian Ganthet throughout his Green Lantern Corps run, not always adroitly, but here the scenes believably present the Corps's conflict between their duty and their loss of faith.

But with the good, there's bad. I have never liked Bedard's characterization of Lantern Kyle Rayner. Under Bedard's pen, Rayner speaks with "gottas" and "couldas," becoming an angsty, over-emotional, stereotypical version of himself that other writers, including Tomasi, have written with more care. Bedard writes Rayner's girlfriend, Lantern Soranik Natu, with equal simplicity, such that two characters who came together under Tomasi so thoughtfully, now spend their scenes under Bedard shouting over petty misunderstandings until they break up.

After the initial good scenes, Aftermath focuses on a Lantern plot to kill enemy Sinestro, which any reader knows won't succeed and therefore just takes up pages. It's a vehicle to bring Natu and Rayner to blows, and then the couple fights again in one of Bedard's two Green Lantern Corps issues collected here.

Natu learns that Rayner pretended to see Natu in a Star Sapphire-generated vision of true love, when he actually saw his then-dead girlfriend Jade. It is not Rayner's classiest move, but there's so many mitigating factors, from Sapphire trickery to the fact that Jade was, hey, dead, that Natu's rage is ridiculous. Bedard's angry Natu is also a stereotype of the character at best, and of women at worst, that's less than what the character deserves in her last pre-Flashpoint appearance.


Another Corps issue here is by Bedard, and then there's a third by Scott Kolins with a host of artists. Bedard's issue follows John Stewart and a new Lantern; of all the aspects of War, I find this idea of new, morally-suspect Lanterns chosen by their enemy Krona to be the most interesting and I hope this continues to be explored. Kolins's closing issue offers short stories about various Lanterns, succeeding more when it focuses on Lanterns with whom readers are familiar than it does when it focuses on more esoteric ones.

Tomasi's contribution is three Emerald Warriors issues starring Guy Gardner. These are interesting in the style of Dave Gibbons's early issues of Corps -- Gardner goes on violent, Suicide Squad-style missions, handling them as only Gardner can. Any stories where the writer handles Gardner as a capable-if-hotheaded adult get a thumbs up from me, but two of the three make no mention of the events of War -- they're inventory stories, to be sure. I don't begrudge DC clearing the decks before the New 52 relaunch and I'm glad they collected them, but it's strange reading when, of the closing three issues, the second relates to Aftermath and the first and third do not.

There's not much plot at the center of Tomasi's final issue, teaming Gardner and fresh-from-Batman, Inc. Bruce Wayne, but that's not the point. Tomasi pairs Gardner and Batman as equals; the two have famously feuded, and Tomasi quite purposefully ignores this until the very last panel, where Batman and Gardner joke about it.

I had imagined perhaps that Tomasi might've been able to borrow long-time Gardner writer Beau Smith's imagined final scene for a Batman/Gardner team-up; that's not the case, but what Tomasi writes is still well done. One of Gardner's best-known (and perhaps lowest) moments was Batman knocking him out with "one punch" in Justice League #5, not long after Legends at the beginning of the post-Crisis DC Universe. Even though Gardner continues mostly as is into the DC New 52, Gardner's perfect "final" scene not only shows he and Batman being respectful to one another, but joking about their feud -- it's water so far under the bridge that they can laugh about it. Various heroes are getting their various appropriate endings (or not) as the DC Universe reboots; this is one of the right ones.


War of the Green Lanterns: Aftermath starts strongly and finishes well (if not on topic), but the middle lacks the dynamism we saw from Tomasi's Green Lantern Corps: Emerald Eclipse or Geoff Johns's Green Lantern: Rage of the Red Lanterns. I liked War itself better the second time I read it, but we can all agree War of the Green Lanterns was not of the caliber of Sinestro Corps War. Here on the cusp of the DC New 52 reboot, I hope the new universe serves to reinvigorate these series; I've heard rumblings of such, and that makes me optimistic.

[Includes original and variant covers. Printed on glossy paper]

The green machine rolls on with the Collected Editions review of Green Arrow: Salvation, the final tie-in to Brightest Day. Don't miss it!
[Guest review by Doug Glassman]

In honor of the season premiere of Mad Men, I’ve decided to review a comic which has an inexplicable reference to the series.

Actually, The Fantastic Spider-Man was on my list of comics to get to eventually, but I need a break from the gargantuan Captain America: The Captain trade. I was holding back on this particular trade because it ties into Jonathan Hickman’s run on Fantastic Four and its sequel series, FF. At this point, I haven’t decided whether to go back and read Hickman’s Fantastic Four or just go ahead and start with volume one of FF, which I already have.

So how does The Fantastic Spider-Man fit in with that title? Well, as the cover shows, Spidey has joined up with the Future Foundation, the current incarnation of the Fantastic Four [... Fantastic Four, Inc.? -- ed.].

Mind you, I say current, but I’m a little confused as to the team situation as it stands in March 2012 since the Human Torch has come back. I don’t consider that a spoiler; did anyone really think that Johnny Storm was going to stay dead for more than a year? Still, it seems that Spidey will hang around with the Fantastic Four, and I’m all for that. These are the issues of Amazing Spider-Man tying in to FF and Avengers Academy, amongst some other stories.

With Amazing Spider-Man on the table, the matter of One More Day has to be brought up. I don’t think it’s controversial to say that I didn’t like that story, and The Fantastic Spider-Man hasn’t changed my mind. When Spidey interacts with the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, the Academy students, and even Ghost Rider in a later story, all seems well; you can see how much Spidey has grown up when he fills in at Avengers Academy. It’s when the details of the current era of Amazing creep in that I find the story lacking. Carlie Cooper, Peter’s new love interest, isn’t nearly as interesting as Mary Jane or others. Her most humanizing detail is ... that she plays rollerball. It seems to me all the same stories could have been told here while still preserving Spidey's marriage.

After the two main stories are three short ones. Paul Benjamin does a cute, silent story about how hectic Spidey’s life must be between the Future Foundation, the Avengers and his own solo adventures. The second, by Frank Tieri, tells the tale of Magnetic Man, a small-time crook who is dissuaded from going back to his old life when Peter invites him to work with him. It’s reminiscent of an early Astro City story, or the time when Batman bought off Mirror Master by donating to his orphanage, but it’s a fun little story.

It’s the Ghost Rider back-up story, written by Rob Williams, that loses me. Spider-Man is the Marvel Universe’s premiere quipper; that’s an indisputable fact. But there’s a line between “quipping” and “pointless babbling”, and Spidey crosses it by the third page. At one point, Spidey compares Ghost Rider to Don Draper just because he orders a whiskey (which is Don’s favorite beverage, but that’s still a huge stretch for a gag). As SF Debris once said about the episode “The Outrageous Okona,” “If there’s a joke in there, we need a team of archaeologists with those little brushes to go in there and look for it.”

I’ve been reading The Captain for so long that I’ve forgotten how off-putting it is when the art switches mid-story. Mind you, none of the artists are bad, but there’s a massive, jarring shift between the cartoony art of Javier Pulido and more standard art of Stefano Caselli. From Caselli it goes to Mike McKone in the next issue, whose art I still enjoy, even if everyone’s face looks the same. Only two issues, the Avengers Academy story, have a consistent artist, Reilly Brown. Pulido does get a second artistic turn in the silent story, “Just Another Day.” One writer in the book—Frank Tieri—wrote three of the “Nuff Said” silent event comics ten years ago; I wonder if they got any advice from him.

Would I recommend The Fantastic Spider-Man? Unless you want to know more about FF or Avengers Academy and want to do it through the eyes of a more familiar character, then there’s nothing really compelling. The story and art are nice, but inessential, and the Ghost Rider story really left me cold.

I might check out Spider Island, and New Ways To Die was a pretty good Thunderbolts story which also introduced Anti-Venom, but otherwise, Amazing Spider-Man isn’t impressing me. The biggest problem is that the title is coming out three times a month, making them need to come up with more padded stories at a quicker pace. Despite the varying quality, I actually liked the option of multiple Spider-Man books with numerous stories. With Avenging Spider-Man on the market, we might be seeing a return to that.


It’s an election year in America, and television is full of talking heads. Those are people who sit around a table and endlessly talk politics, political strategy, polls, statistics...blah, blah, blah, blah, BLAH! I’m a voter, and I know for whom I’m voting. I suspect many other citizens are the same, but we put up with these damn talking heads...I wish I had a job where I got paid a huge amount of money to be a gasbag. As it is, I'm doing my gasbagging right here for free.

On to today’s post, which, beyond the title, has nothing to do with my rant on television. “The Talking Head” is a Ghost Rider tale, drawn by Dick Ayers for Best Of the West #4. That title used the four Western stars of the ME Comics line: Durango Kid, Straight Arrow, Ghost Rider and Tim Holt. Best Of the West was a very nice comic book which had a run of twelve quarterly issues between 1951 and 1954.

The Indian babe, Fawn Woman, reminds me of what Harvey Kurtzman once said in Mad: “. . . if they'd had girls like this, the Wild West would have been a lot wilder!”







[Guest reviewer Zach King blogs about movies as The Cinema King]

Now that Superman and Batman have flown off, let's give the ladies a chance and have a look at what's been collected as Wonder Woman: The Greatest Stories Ever Told.

I'll be honest: Wonder Woman is probably the first-string JLA member about whom I've read the least (a handful of Perez and Simone volumes [you've gotta read the Rucka books! -- ed.]).  With her New 52 incarnation hitting it out of the park courtesy of Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang, however, I realize that the problem has been creators not knowing what to do with the character. After reading the "Greatest Stories," I see that it's been a problem for years; the stories here don't all give a sense of who Wonder Woman is, nor are all of the stories particularly great.

The sum of the parts being more than the whole in this series, let's take a look at what's inside this volume.

"The Origin of Wonder Woman" (Wonder Woman: Spirit of Truth, November 2001): Surprisingly this is the first "Greatest Stories" that doesn't collect the original origin story, but throw Paul Dini and Alex Ross my way and I'm game for anything. While I'm a little disappointed that the very first Wonder Woman appearance isn't collected here, I appreciate their successful distillation of Wonder Woman's origin. I fondly remember the oversized graphic novels Dini and Ross did, and the inclusion of this origin over the "first story" approach for Superman and Batman makes me wish each volume had some beautiful Alex Ross art beyond the cover.

"Wonder Woman Comes to America" (Sensation Comics #1, January 1942): This story is essentially "Part Two" of Wonder Woman's origin, her first encounters in America after rescuing Steve Trevor from Paradise Island. The Wonder Woman presented here by William Moulton Marston is fun and a bit flighty, but with a strong moral compass and a slightly hyperbolic desire to do good. I love the art by Harry G. Peter; it's slightly uglier and more blocky than what I'm used to, but his Diana is gorgeous and youthful. This story does a good job introducing a Wonder Woman who is confident but fish-out-of-water, but its last-minute inclusion of a romantic triangle between Wonder Woman, Steve Trevor, and Diana Prince is a bit hackneyed.

"Villainy Incorporated!" (Wonder Woman #28, March/April 1948): I've never thought of Wonder Woman as being defined by her rogues, but this story certainly makes the case. It's essentially the Amazonian version of Knightfall, with all of Wonder Woman's enemies (with the unsubtly-named Eviless standing in for Bane) escaping Transformation Island to wreak havoc on their captor. While this story is considerably longer than anything else in the "Greatest Stories" series (I can't help but feel this would be a year-long event by today's standards), the story is somewhat empty. It's a nice primer on the rogues gallery, but Wonder Woman doesn't do much except fight and get tied up. And oh, does she get tied up; at no point can one forget that Marston had a proclivity for bondage, because the number of times characters are bound is extremely distracting.

"Top Secret" (Wonder Woman #99, July 1958): Writer Robert Kanigher retcons the invention of Wonder Woman's dual identity as a way for the princess to avoid marrying the over-romantic Steve Trevor. Huh? And here I was thinking the "adopting the identity of a nurse who's leaving for South America" plotline was overwrought, but this story simply can't be among the greatest. An absurd wager and an obvious plot device pervade this story, and in the end we're left with Wonder Woman as menaced by the prospect of proposing. The best thing I can say about this story is that it looks like Darwyn Cooke drew it (but alas, he didn't).

"Wanted -- Wonder Woman" (Wonder Woman #108, August 1959): Wonder Woman battles alien psychic possession in this second of four Kanigher stories, and it's slightly better but still by no means "great." The idea of resisting alien possession is a compelling one and should yield a sense of who Diana really is by what she's fighting against, but the story doesn't give us that sense of internal conflict. What's more, the art by Ross Andru is much less consistent than in "Top Secret," resulting in panels like the one where an anguished Diana looks like a constipated giraffe. I'd pondered why it is that Wonder Woman never got a series of collections by decade (as Superman and Batman did), but based on what this volume gives us of the '50s, maybe it's not too difficult to fathom.

"Giganta -- The Gorilla Girl" (Wonder Woman #163, July 1966): Kanigher and Andru redeem themselves (kind of) with this story, a reintroduction of Golden Age foe Giganta as a gorilla turned woman by Dr. Psycho (more grotesque than he looked in Infinite Crisis, if one can believe it). While Wonder Woman is mostly absent from this story, we get a good sense of how Wonder Woman's villains operate and were introduced. And there's that omnipresent fascination with gorillas that comics just can't seem to shake. If there's a complaint, it's that here Kanigher again defines Wonder Woman by her devotion to Steve Trevor -- a staple of the Golden Age origin, true, but an unfortunate stereotyping.

"Wonder Woman's Rival" (Wonder Woman #178, September/October 1968): Ah, Denny O'Neil. Now this is a great story. Wonder Woman has to acquit Steve Trevor of murder, even though it's her testimony which is the most damning. Although the '70s vibe is more than a little dated (Mike Sekowsky's art, though, is not), the emotional and dramatic power of the story still lingers. I like the way O'Neil doesn't stop short with Wonder Woman's devotion to Steve Trevor, instead showing how she's devoted to justice and truth (even if the truth condemns Steve). This is one of the better stories in the volume, memorable with a good sense of who Wonder Woman is and why she's a hero. One complaint, though: the end of the story teases a new look for Wonder Woman, but it's not reprinted here; I would have liked to have seen at least a pin-up or something [what's known as the "mod" look, right? -- ed].

"Wish Upon a Star" (Wonder Woman #214, September/October 1974): Elliot S! Maggin wrote one of the best Superman stories in Superman: The Greatest Stories Ever Told, Vol. 1, but here his entry is less compelling, in part because it's almost more of a Green Lantern story than a Wonder Woman story. With Hal Jordan's ring acting wonky, he goes to New York to ask Wonder Woman if there's a crisis (typical Hal, assuming a crisis must happen when he's powerless), but he's quickly embroiled in a scenario that's equal parts Fail-Safe and Twilight Zone's "Time Enough at Last."

Of course Wonder Woman ends up the undisputed savior of this story, but Green Lantern's narration and attempts at intervention continually raise the question of whose story this is. Additionally, the story makes several points about Wonder Woman being removed from JLA membership, but I can't fathom why [left when she lost her powers with the "mod" look, I think. -- ed]; this continuity conundrum is something the introductions have handled, but Lynda Carter's opener talks more about the TV show than the stories within. With Wonder Woman as a character and not the protagonist, I can't say this is a "greatest" story.

"Be Wonder Woman... and Die!" (Wonder Woman #286, December 1981): The last Kanigher story in the book is indisputably the best. Here we see the ways in which Wonder Woman has inspired a dying woman -- inspiration and legacy being two of the chief guarantees of inclusion in a "Greatest Stories" volume. Wonder Woman's selfless nature is invoked here, but even though she isn't quite the star of the story Diana still gets in some "bullets and bracelets" time to satisfy action fans. Although the story opens with a promised tease that's more of a feint, the rest of the tale is as quintessential as they get.

"Who Killed Myndi Mayer?" (Wonder Woman #20, September 1988): George Perez's historic revival of Wonder Woman is represented by this prose-heavy murder mystery, in which Diana's would-be agent is found dead. While this story is pretty famous and the twist at the end likely familiar to comics readers, this story is remarkable for the same reason Perez's entire run is flagged as iconic: Perez's take on the character is fresh yet familiar, restoring the vivacious and earnest nature of the character as seen back in "Wonder Woman Comes to America!" Additionally, Perez doing double-duty on art is a major credit, since his Wonder Woman is one of the most beautiful (a lot of artists, I've noted, tend to err on the side of "maternal" and not "goddess"). While I'd have to go back to my Perez to see if this was the best of his run, it's certainly one of the most classic.

"She's a Wonder!" (Wonder Woman #170, July 2001): Rounding out the volume, it's Phil Jimenez writing and drawing this one-off in which Lois Lane spends a day in the life of Wonder Woman. This is a great look at what it really means to be Wonder Woman and hangs several important lanterns about the character (How can we relate to her? Is she American? What's her relationship with Superman really like?). While the story is transparent, it's also more than a bit preachy -- a flaw which could be overlooked had Wonder Woman not explicitly said she wants to avoid "a forum where I proselytize and bore you to death." Not that the story is boring; it shifts settings and incidents quickly [and that Wonder Woman/Lex Luthor scene! -- ed again.]. Its artwork is great, but the prose-heavy nature suggests that Jimenez's greater strengths are as an artist (see my Incredibles review for my admittedly excessive fawning over his skills). Nitty-gritty complaint: Diana doesn't appear in her tiara in this story, and while there's an in-continuity reason for it she looks a little without it.

As a single volume, Wonder Woman: The Greatest Stories Ever Told is hit or miss, with enough for devotees to appreciate but without much for new fans to latch onto. Only some of the stories give definitive portraits of the character, and only a handful count as memorable. I would have liked to get a better sense of who Wonder Woman's principal rogues are, and I would have liked to see her interact more with her heritage and her family; as it is, we only see her in relation to her adopted home, America.

I'm actually kind of surprised that we didn't get the story where Wonder Woman breaks Max Lord's neck, only because it was collected in almost every other trade DC printed. I think this volume certainly could have benefited from a clear thematic focus as in the first Batman volume, but what we do get a clear sense of, though, is someone who wants to do right in a world where she recognizes that much wrong already exists.

In my next review, we'll see if there's anything to fear in Green Lantern: The Greatest Stories Ever Told. Stay tuned!


As I mentioned a few days ago, Bob Wood, who partnered with Charles Biro to create and edit Crime Does Not Pay, a few years later was convicted of killing a girlfriend. The story is told in the trade paperback, Blackjacked and Pistol-Whipped: Crime Does Not Pay, from Dark Horse Comics, along with over 200 pages of crime comic book stories from that magazine.

These two stories predate Crime Does Not Pay. They're from Daredevil #11 (1942), which was published soon after war was declared against Japan, and I've included a centerspread board game called "Slap the Jap." Sorry for the racist content, folks. It was wartime, and it's interesting, an elaborate game for a comic book.

Biro's early stuff was as lurid as he could make it. He knew what got attention on newsstands, and he hewed to primary colors to make his stories stand out. Quality Comics was doing much the same thing. Someone once commented that coloring like this is "like taking a potato peeler to your eyeballs." Even so, for emphasis I've given the coloring a little extra push to make it really bright. If any eye damage occurs, well, sorry. You've been warned.

I have shown both these stories before, a few years ago, but these are brand new scans.

Bob Wood's story of The Claw, despite his drawing, has a lot of energy to it, though, just as Biro's tale of a murderous horror movie star does. That kind of energy went into Crime Does Not Pay when that publication began with a date a month later than this issue of Daredevil, July 1942 to the Daredevil date of June.






















Number 1128


Alex Toth in the Land Unknown!

This is one of my favorite Alex Toth art jobs, done for Dell in 1957 as a tie-in to the Universal movie.

Toth penciled and inked. He used a pen, filling in blacks with a brush. See the original art for page 27 (downloaded from Heritage Auctions) I've inserted after the printed page for a good look at his technique. Years later Toth went to felt tip pens for inking, although he probably could have used a toothpick dipped in road tar and come up with something great. He was just talented, regardless of the tools he used.

The lettering looks like his, and—dare I say it?—I believe he could have colored the book, too. Comic book colorists are usually addicted to color filling in any area where white should be, but there's lots of white space in this book, used very effectively, too. The coloring job is excellent, which makes me believe he had something to do with it. That's a guess on my part, so take it for what it's worth. If there's anything I don't like it's the shape of his speech balloons, but that's an awfully small quibble for an otherwise masterful job.