Number 514


Matt Baker's Leg Show


Man, Matt Baker could draw girls. Voluptuous girls: girls with headlights on high beam and girls with legs. Long, long legs and he made sure you got to see them. If Baker hadn't died in his thirties he could have gone on to pin-up art, a la Gil Elvgren or Peter Driben, or even another ex-comic book man, Jay Scott Pike.

Sky Girl, who finds a way to show off her perfect pins in nearly every panel, is from Jumbo Comics #93. Flamingo, who also gives us a peek beneath her skirt, is scanned from Pacific Comics' Jerry Iger's Famous Features #1, July 1984. It's a previously unpublished story. Baker worked for Jerry Iger's comic book shop. Flamingo was a property developed by Iger, Baker and writer Ruth Roche for a daily newspaper strip.

Here's to Baker, here's to Baker's babes, here's to Baker's babes' legs!

I'd like to have been in comics shops in 1972 when Jack Kirby's New Gods #7, "The Pact," hit the shelves just the same as I'd like to have been standing outside movie theaters after the first showing of Empire Strikes Back. Now, we take "The Pact"'s genealogical revelations for granted, but back then it must have been astounding.

In his afterward, Kirby apprentice Mark Evanier talks about the stories collected in Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus Volume 3 as being reflective of the time where the Fourth World began to slip away from Kirby, but in "The Pact" and others we also find the Fourth World at its most powerful.

"Pact," however, is certainly not the only gem in this volume. The Newsboy Legion explode the Evil Factory and ride around for a while with Angry Charlie strapped to the Whiz Wagon -- in a bit of reverse nostalgia, I remember all of this very fondly from Karl Kesel's later Superboy run which took its cues from Kirby's work.

Ditto the issue where "Terrible" Dan Turpin faces off against Darkseid's son Kalibak, which later became most of an episode of Superman: The Animated Series; I couldn't help but hear Michael Dorn's voice as Kalibak. And Forager makes his debut here, the "Bug" I first encountered in Jim Starlin's Cosmic Odyssey.

I also have to say I enjoyed the Deadman appearance in Forever People. Evanier suggests these were some of Kirby's least favorite stories because DC Comics editorial forced Deadman upon the series, but -- and this may just be the continuity wonk in me -- I liked seeing the Forever People interact with the larger DC Universe beyond just Superman.

I am perhaps too used to tripping over New Gods around every turn in the modern DC Universe, but at some point these stories begin to feel hollow, story-wise; when Mantis leads rampaging hordes of bugs across Metropolis and no one shows up but Orion and Lightray, it felt empty when the Justice League didn't show up. (Nor did I mind the changes to Deadman's character here, benefitting from the perspective of knowing they'd be later reversed.)

Kirby's portrayal of Darkseid also continues to impress me. Far from Darkseid's recent portrayal with sidekick Desaad as a take on Pinky and the Brain -- oft-defeated and spouting Ming-the-Merciless cliches -- Kirby limits Darkseid's screen time, and as such makes his every appearance crucial. And indeed Darkseid's motivations are often an enigma, even from the reader -- he lectures the Forever People on the nature of war, and the the previous volume, takes a philosophical walkabout among an earth amusement park.

Darkseid decries Desaad's lust for violence, and at times seems almost bored by the proceedings around him, so intent is he on attaining the Anti-Life Equation. It's this depth, that Darkseid has likes and dislikes which differ from his underlings or what one might otherwise expect, that makes him so riveting to watch. My hope is that Final Crisis can restore some of Darkseid's stature as something more than just a cosmic villain-of-the-week.

I'm interested in stories and arcs, and what makes a certain event right for a certain story at a certain time. We enter the third Fourth World Omnibus with many of the characters in peril, the right thing for a third act -- Darkseid has dispersed the Forever People with his Omega Beams, Jimmy Olsen has been transformed into a caveman, and Mister Miracle revolves to take his fight to Apokolips. Only New Gods doesn't start with a cliffhanger, but rather sets the tone for this volume with the flashback story "The Pact," followed up with the Mister Miracle flashback "Himon."

If there's a theme of introspection here, we see it again in the Jimmy Olsen story "A Superman in Supertown" which begins the end of the Jimmy Olsen series, and also in "The Death Wish of Terrible Turpin," which solidifies Orion's role as protector of humanity while at the same time suggesting his growing comfort with the more violent, Apokolips-bred violence of his personality (I'm increasingly reminded, say what you will, what a terrible job Grant Morrison did with Orion in JLA, portraying him as a one-sided grump rather than Kirby's noble warrior). These items established, the story then shifts with the appearance of Forager -- not quite of humanity, not quite of New Genesis -- who will seemingly draw Orion into his final conflict with Darkseid. The story, we know, isn't going quite how Jack Kirby wanted it, but I remain enraptured as we move to the fourth volume.

[Contains full covers, introduction by author Glen David Gold, afterword by Mark Evanier]

I reviewed Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus some time ago, and now I'm picking up with volumes three and four as we continue on the road toward Final Crisis. Up next, volume four, and then Death of the New Gods. Stay tuned!

Number 513


You've gotta be a football hero...


It's baseball season, so I'm showing you a football strip.

Our teenage buddy, Dudley, is the hero of his high school football team, much to the chagrin of his "friend", Milt (and haven't we all had a "friend" like Milt?) Dudley does his football derring-do without a helmet! What a guy! The story is the last from Dudley #1, 1949, drawn and written by the great Boody Rogers. Dudley was a short-lived comic book which competed with Archie.

It's pretty good and deserved a longer run, but it doesn't have the maniacal plots Boody showed in his other comics like Sparky Watts or Babe, Darling of the Hills.

And speaking of those comics, Craig Yoe's Boody, a book of Sparky Watts and Babe strips, is available now. Don't pass it up!

Number 512


London calling!


London, a hero with a blue suit, bowtie, cowl and cape, was created by Jerry Robinson for Charles Biro and Bob Wood, because as I explained in last Sunday's Blackout posting, they wanted some of that Batman magic. Jerry Robinson, one of Kane's assistants, created London, just as another assistant, George Roussos, created the short-lived Blackout.

I don't know how long London went about his business. This story, drawn by Robinson, is from Daredevil #11, published in 1942. I'm sure by the end of the war, if not sooner, London would have gone back into the inkwell, or wherever it is that secondary comic book characters go when their services are no longer required.

Number 511


Give me my dope, you damn dirty ape!


Dynamic Boy, a short strip from Major Victory #2, 1944, battles a drug ring that uses a real gorilla for an enforcer. It's one of those wild Golden Age strips that has to be seen. The splash panel is suitable for framing.

I got these scans from a Golden Age Comics website in 2003. I'm unable to locate the site again. Some of you may know it. The author of the site would use three or four strips in a composite online "comic book" called Spotlight, or some other names I've forgotten. It was based on Golden Age hero stories, but there were some good ones. Unfortunately it was a couple of hard drive crashes ago for me, so most of the downloading and swiping I did of stories is lost. If you are the originator of these scans please let me know so I can give you credit.

Dynamic Boy looks like he belongs in that blackheads ad. "Gee, Sis, why don't I ever get invited to parties?" "Frankly, D-Boy, it's those ugly blackheads." Whoever did the artwork had a style that is familiar, but I don't know who drew it.

Catwoman: The Long Road Home ends on a note that is irreverent, difficult, disturbing ... essentially, many of the things the Catwoman series has been all along. Throughout his run, writer Will Pfeifer's portrayed Catwoman Selina Kyle as just this side of self-destructive, and he finishes the story with the same wonderful ambiguity he's provided all along.

At the end of Long Road Home, we find a Catwoman returned to her thieving roots -- not, even she admits, because she wants or needs to steal, but because it's her nature -- and, we sense, because she's a little mad at the world. And yet, the world may not even be her target; when Selina admits that she gave up her baby Helena not because she had to, but because Helena interfered with Selina's Catwoman identity, we understand in the end Selina's truly angry at herself.

Pfeifer and artist David Lopez do an admirable job ending their Catwoman run. Pfeifer, who's had his stories interrupted by no less than One Year Later, Countdown, Amazons Attack, and Salvation Run ends the Catwoman/Salvation Run crossover with breakneck speed (with no ending, really), and someone who hadn't read Salvation Run would be largely confused.

Instead, Pfeifer turns quickly back to the story of Catwoman's hunt for the Thief, an essentially anonymous character with a grudge against Catwoman. It's readily apparent that Pfeifer intends the Thief as a symbol more than a character; Selina's beating of the Thief suggests a break with her old life just as she, in contradiction, perhaps becomes an even more devious thief herself than before.

There's much to be considered here, and much we won't really understand the implications of for years to come. I always thought giving Catwoman a child was a bad idea, since we all knew the writers would never let her keep it; now we find a Catwoman -- maybe good, maybe bad -- who takes as much of her own motivation her guilt over giving that child up. Will Catwoman remain a petty thief, forgetting her East End hero days? Will Helena ever be seen, heard from, or mentioned again? Has this past storyline been the next step in the natural evolution of the Catwoman character, or a sign of this character returning to the Batman-villain status quo? It'll be a while before we know the answer.

I congratulate Will Pfeifer and David Lopez on a steady, respectable run on the Catwoman title. Ultimately, I feel perhaps the concept ended up being greater than what any writer could plot for the character, but Pfeifer and Lopez's consistent quality on this title is something to be admired.

[Contains full covers]

Next up, we're heading back toward the Countdown to Final Crisis with a stop first to finish the Jack Kirby Fourth World omnibuses. See you next time!

Number 510


2 x Forte


John Forte was an artist who worked in comics from 1941 until his death in 1965 at the young age of 47. I was familiar with his work in ACG Comics where he did a steady stream of supernatural stories for editor Richard E. Hughes. Imagine my surprise when I saw that he drew Tales of the Bizarro World strips in Adventure Comics. I enjoyed his work with writer Jerry Siegel on that feature. I was disappointed when it was replaced by The Legion of Superheroes.

Here are a couple of fifties Forte strips from Atlas. The pre-Code "Come In and Meet the Folks" is from Astonishing #26, August 1953. "The Darkroom" is from the Code-approved Mystery Tales #42, June 1956. Both of the strips feature pretty young wives, and husbands who have problems with them.