Carmine Infantino – Wis[s]e Words

Sunday Showcase: The Flash

Published on May 3, 2015Leave a comment

cover of Showcase Presents: The Flash Volume One

Showcase Presents: The Flash, Volume 1
Carmine Infantino, John Broome, Robert Kanigher, Joe Giella, Murphy Anderson, Frank Gaicoia, Joe Kubert and friends
Reprints Flash Comics #104, Showcase #4, #8, #13, #14, The Flash #105-119
Get this for: The comic that kickstarted the Silver Age

Once upon a time, in the cultural wasteland men call the nineties, getting to read Silver Age comics was actually kind of hard. Not as hard as it had been in the seventies or eighties, when it was basically getting the back issues themselves or hope for a reprint series to come out, but still the only really comprehensive reprint programmes were the Marvel Masterworks and their counterpart at DC, the DC Archive Editions. These were expensive, library quality hardcovers, fifty bucks for ten issues of a key Silver Age series, not very accessible for the average reader. That all changed when Marvel came up with their Marvel Essentials line, big black and white trade paperback slabs of comics, anywhere from twenty to twentyfive or more issues of a series, or comics featuring a particular character, from all parts of their history. As an idea it was of course ripped off from the way Manga publishers in Japan published their collections, by way of the Cerebus phonebooks, but it was still a great step forward in making comics history available. Longtime readers may remember I did a fifty Essentials in Fifty Days review series back in 2010.

Now DC only started its comparable reprint series in 2005 and unlike Marvel, they mostly focus on Silver Age titles. And until recently, I only had a few Showcase titles myself, not having run across them much here in the Netherlands. Comics retailers seem to dislike them for the same reasons I like them: they’re big and relatively cheap, hence less attractive to stock. However, I recently discovered a new source of cheap comics online and splurged out on a job lot of Essentials and Showcases, so I thought why not do a regular series of Showcase reviews like those earlier Essential ones? Not at the same insane rate, but why not a weekly series? Hence Showcase Sunday.

And what better title to start with than the one that kickstarted the whole Silver Age in the first place? The Flash’s appearances in Showcase, followed by his own series, numbered from the original Golden Age Flash Comics (which in fact only ended seven years before the S.A. Flash’s first appearance), is what sparked the interest in resurrecting other old DC heroes, culminating in the Justice League of America, which in turn made Marvel start a copycat title to which Stan Lee and Jack Kirby put their own unique touches, The Fantastic Four. There are other candidates for first Silver Age superhero like the Martian Manhunter, but the Flash was the one that really lit the touchpaper. It took a couple of years though: his first appearance in Showcase was in October 1956, his last before he got his own title was in June 1958, with The Flash 105 coming out in February 1959. Guess things moved slower in those days.

Reading these stories more than sixty years after first publication it’s both easy to see why these strips were so successful back and realise they’ve aged badly, much more so than their Marvel equivalents. On the whole, these are simple stories: a criminal or supervillain causes havoc in Central City, has some gimmick that defeats Flash the first time they meet, but in the last two-three pages Flash has the upper hand and explains why. Inbetween the battles there’s some soap opera with Iris West, Barry Allen girlfriend, complaining that he’s never on time and comparing him unfavourably with his alter ego. Nothing really changes in these stories and reading them back to back in a day really shows that. It doesn’t help that each issue has two 11 to 12 page stories, rather than one story per issue, as in the early Marvel titles. There’s less room for characterisation and plotting in such a limited space, let alone proper continuity, though there is a rudimentary form of it here, with villains returning for a second shot at the Flash.

Mostly though these are standalone stories, reinforced by the fact that e.g. in this volume there are half a dozen or so stories in which Flash has to deal with undersea or subterrean invaders, that none of the villains know of each other yet, or the fact that many of them have roughly the same order: criminal with engineering bend tinkers his way into supervillainy by inventing some sort of superweapon. That’s Captain Boomerang, Mirror Master, Weather Wizard, Mr Element/Doctor Alchemy and Captain Cold. All already established criminals, all inventing their signature weapon in their first appearance.

Now these are actually enjoyable stories, for all their simplicity. None of the nonsense you’d associate with Silver Age DC like in the worst Superman/Superboy stories; they are actually remarkable modern save for their approach for continuity. And what I also found noticable is that Barry Allen and Iris West are clearly adults, with adult responsibilites even if those aren’t milked for soap opera like Marvel would do. John Broome has a knack both for creating villains and for creating scenarios in which to showcase their powers, without cheating.

As for the art, if there’s one artist who is synonymous with the Silver Age Flash, the penciler on all of the stories in this volume, it’s Carmine Infantino. Now I first encountered his artwork on a much later title of his, the Marvel Star Wars series, where his elongated, rubbery characters and blocky space machinery where actually the perfect match for the movies’ aesthetic. His version of Star Wars is still the one in my head when I think about it. Here however his style is much more realistic, missing the trademark elongations and perspectives he’d become infamous for. It is gorgeous though and you can see it evolve through the stories, as well as the influence his various inkers: Joe Kubert, Frank Gaicoia, Joe Giella and Murphy Anderson have on the finished art. Joe Giella especially seems to have a positive influence on his faces, much more expressive even than with Murphy Anderson inking, no slouch himself. The black and white printing shows up the line work beautifully. Though straitjacketed in a fairly conservative page layout there’s plenty of gorgeous work to keep your interest.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 48: Essential Spider-Woman Vol. 01

Published on October 28, 2010

cover of Essential Spider-Woman Vol. 01

Essential Spider-Woman Vol. 01
Marv Wolfman, Mark Gruenwald, Michael Fleisher, Carmine Infantino and friends
Reprints: Marvel Spotlight #32, Marvel Two-in-One #29-33, Spider-Woman #1-25 (February 1977 – April 1980)
Get this for: quite good for a trademark grab — four stars

Spider-Woman, like fellow late seventies heroes Ms. Marvel and She-Hulk is one of those superheroes who you suspect to have only been created only to safeguard a trademark. This may be a bit too cynical and certainly her solo series was actually quite good, if suffering from some of the usual defects common to series with a female lead. One point that worked in her favour from the start is that she might share her name with Spider-Man, neither her powers nor herself were related to him; she was more than a weak copy of him. She managed a quite respectable run on her series, fifty issues and Essential Spider-Woman Vol. 1 collects half of it, as well as her first appearances in Marvel Spotlight #33 and Marvel Two-in-One #29-33.

Spider-Woman was created by Archie Goodwin and Sal Buscema, but it was Marv Wolfman who guided her through her early days, first in Marvel Two-in-One and the first eight issues of her own title. He makes her into Jessica Drew, a somewhat confused young woman, with barely any knowledge of her own past, which is explained by her having been in suspended animation for years, having almost died from radiation poisoning and been injected with a spider venom serum to save her. For the first two issues of her solo series she still runs around in England, where she was left after having teamed up with the Thing in Marvel Two-in-One, but from the third Wolfman relocates her in L.A., far away enough from other superheroes to not let them crowd her style.

Something a SHIELD agent supporting cast member by the name of Jerry Hunt does enough already, playing the clinging love interest disapproving of Jessica’s activities as Spider-Woman. He sticks around for about sixteen issues, though less and less so even when Wolfman was still writing it. He’s just annoying and dull and like Magnus, the mysterious older magician gentleman also hanging around Jessica, he takes away some of her lustre. Another thing that hampers her appeal in these early issues is how often Spider-Woman has to play the victim: be knocked out, tied up and having to be rescued by others, compared to what male heroes go through. Once Mark Gruenwald and later Michael Fleisher took over, this fortunately happened much less.

Villainwise Spider-Woman has a reasonable rogues gallery here, mainly with brandnew villains like the Brothers Grimm, the Hangman and the Needle, the Gypsy Moth, not to mention Morgain Le Fay, who would become her personal nemesis. Her villains tend to be either somewhat on the grotesque side like the lot I just mentioned, or more mundane gangsters and crooks. The latter start to dominate once Spider-Woman starts her career as a bounty hunter. Few already established villains paid a visit to Spider-Woman, the most important one being Nekra, the old Steve Gerber Daredevil villain, who hoped to use Spider-Woman’s powers for herself.

The stories are fairly simple, with few subplots. Characterisation changes a lot between writers, Marv Wolfman having established her as being sexually alluring to men but hideous to women, which Gruenwald did away with by getting her a special medicine that suppressed the pheremones that supposedly had this effect.

On the art front, the series starts with Carmine Infantino, who’s a long way down from his sixties DC heights, but still a consumate professional. There are a few fillins by Frank Springer and Trevor von Eeden as well, none very good. Sadly the best art is in the last issue presented here, by Steve Leialoha, whose fluid, stylised Michael Goldenesque art style works well with Spider-Woman.

Essential Spider-Woman Vol. 01 is a decent collection of stories, none of which really set the world on fire when first published and with the best of her series yet to come.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 18: Ms Marvel Vol. 01

Published on September 28, 2010

cover of Essential Ms Marvel 01

Essential Ms Marvel 01
Gerry Conway, Chris Claremont, Jim Mooney and friends
Reprints: Ms. Marvel 1-23 and more (January 1977 – April 1979)
Get this for: seventies feminist superheroics — Four stars

Now for a complete change of pace, from the heart of the Silver Age taking a giant leap forward into the Bronze Age, long after the people who had laid the foundations of the Marvel Universe had left (and had come back and left again) and some of the creativity and magic had gone out of it. The mid to late seventies were a rough patch for both Marvel and DC, as the old newsstand distribution networks were in upheaval, inflation and economic depression made comics expensive and there was little room to experiment with new titles. So what you get is attempts to play it safe, through either cashing in on some trend or by creating a spinoff — Ms. Marvel is a combination of both: a spinoff of Captain Marvel and an attempt to cash in on the resurgence of second wave feminism, as seen through a comics prism. Despite this the title would last barely two years, being canceled with #23 and with the last two issues, already prepared only seeing print two decades later, in the early nineties Marvel Super-Heroes Magazine.

I don’t know why M.s Marvel failed the first time around: perhaps it could never find an audience out on the newsstands, or people didn’t buy it because it featured a girl (Marvel never having had much luck with female headliners) or just because not enough newsstands stocked it. But one thing I know, quality couldn’t have been the issue. True, it took a couple of issues for Ms. Marvel to find its feet, but once Chris Claremont comes onboard with issue 3 it settled into a nice rhythm. I’ve certainly read much worse titles from that time which were much more succesful.

Ms. Marvel is Carol Danvers, an old supporting character from the sixties Marvel Captain Marvel series, reintroduced in Ms. Marvel as the eponymous superheroine, in the first three issues suffering from amnesia and not knowing she’s Carol. Carol meanwhile gets a job as the editor of Now Magazine, Jolly Jonah Jameson’s woman’s magazine. He wants the traditional subjects: cooking, fashion, gossip, she wants it to make a hardhitting, proper news magazine: soap opera gold, though as per usual with superhero jobs it plays second fiddle to Carol’s other career and its complications.

The whole amnesia/two people angle doesn’t really work and is quickly abandoned once Claremont takes over the writing. He does keep the conflict between Carol and Ms. Marvel however, each with a distinctive personality and not always liking the other that much. Personally I never like this sort of forced conflict or handicap so I’m glad to see this slowly disappearing over time here.

On the supervillain side of things, Conway introduces A.I.M. as a recurring foil and Claremont keeps them around, as well as adding MODOK to the mix. Other established villains, including the Scorpion, obscure X-Men foe Grotesk as well as a couple of badniks from the old Living Mummy series from Supernatural Thrillers also appear. Claremont had a knack for getting tough, physical threats for Ms. Marvel to actually beat with her fists like any other strong male hero would do, rather than the usual non-physical threats reserved for superheroines. There are few original creations here, with Deathbird introduced in #9 and Mystique from #16 the most significant, Claremont using both of them in Uncanny X-Men later on. For the most part however Ms. Marvel is mutant free.

But Claremont was leading Ms. Marvel into that territory though, through the long running subplot of some unknown enemy (which turned out to be Mystique) targeting both Carol Danvers and Ms. Marvel. However Ms. Marvel before that subplot reached fruition and it took Avengers Annual #10 two years later to tie up these loose ends. That one starts with Carol being thrown off the Golden Gate Bridge, rescued by Spider-Woman (who Claremont was also writing) and brought to Prof Xavier to be examined mentally. Meanwhile the Brotherhood of Evil, led by Mystique attack the Avengers and its newest member Rogue turns out to have stolen Carol’s powers.

Apart from housecleaning however and revealing the final fate of Ms. Marvel Claremont had an ulterior motive for writing this annual. Between the end of her own series and the annual Ms. Marvel had been a member of the Avengers and in a particularly bad storyline had been raped and impregnated (all off panel), gone through the full pregnancy and given birth in a day to a boy who turned out to be her rapist, using her to be able to live on Earth, but when this fails he takes her with her to Limbo, where they live happily ever after, or so the Avengers think, never having spent a minute to think things through. Claremont had done this, had gotten offended and used the final part of the story to spell it all out. It’s one of the best “fuck you” moments in comics I’ve read.

Claremont would return to Ms. Marvel even later, in the early nineties in the anthology title Marvel Super-Heroes, which reprinted both the final finished but never published issue, as well as a followup bridging the gap between her series and Avengers Annual #10. Here they’re presented in chronological order, before the annual.

The final verdict is that this was a perfectly enjoyable series, nothing much out of the ordinary, but never bad either. The art, first by John Buscema, followed by Jim Mooney, Keith Pollard, Sal Buscema, Carmine Infantino, Dave Cockrum and finally Mike Vosburg is decent to good, but with so many artists in such a relatively short period it’s hard to create a real style for Ms. Marvel. Essential Ms. Marvel vol 1 is a nice view of what a lesser title of the seventies looked like.