I Love The 40's!!

So...pretty much what I said in the rant that capped off the last one, I guess...

So, when we left off, Superman had just premiered on the scene in Action Comics #1...

This immediately led to...

Superman #1

The book-

This was the first time a superhero had had his own named comics title.
We take this for granted now, but, this started it all off.

The history-

N/A

Supes was immediately followed the same year by....


Detective Comics #27, and Batman #1

The book-

Yep, from the beginning, Batman was never far behind ol' Supes.

They've been the yin and yang all along.

Note, how in the early days, he was called "The Bat Man".

So, that's where they got that from in the reboot that spawned "The Batman vs. Dracula".
Guess that universe was supposed to be a direct return to the Bob Kane days...

Anyhooo....

The history-

Whelp, I fast-forwarded Tarzan, Zorro, Buck, Flash, Shadow, etc, etc, etc, to modern times...

Okay, so, in the 60's, you had the Adam West Batman, and then, in 1977, when I was a kid, came...

...."The New Adventures of Batman", by Filmation, which was actually a continuation of the Adam West show, and even starred Adam West and Burt Ward in the key roles.

Then, it merged with Tarzan into "The Batman/Tarzan Adventure Hour", which would morph along the way, and lose Batman in favor of Zorro.

I missed Batman, but Zorro was cool too.

And, in 1979...

...dad gave me my very first comic, and it was Batman #307.

And the rest is history.


Marvel (Mystery) Comics

The book-

All right, so really, we're still in 1939 here...

But this, was really the birth of Marvel Comics.

The company was called Timely, but Marvel was their first book, and it introduced their first superheroes, The Human Torch, and The Sub-Mariner.

That second cover there is issue 4, just to show Subby.

The original Human Torch was an android, and Subby was...pretty much a misanthropic version of Aquaman before Aquaman.

And from the start, Marvel was edgy, like "Gladiator".
Sub-Mariner hated mankind, and Torch roasted people.

Later on, in the 60's, when Stan Lee revived the superheroes, he had Johnny Storm from Fantastic Four be a mutant human version of The Human Torch, and then Johnny located Prince Namor as a smelly bearded hobo with amnesia, and burnt off his beard, and showed him a mirror, and Namor was shocked back into his memory, became Sub-Mariner again, and found out humans had blown up Atlantis with H-Bomb tests, and hated humanity more than ever.

Later still, in the 70's, android Human Torch's scrapped body was located, his brain was essentially cold-rebooted (to use today's techno-jive parlance), losing his original personality forever, and he was upgraded with new powers, and turned into The Vision.

So, that accounted for everybody.

Well,...except for one other, but we'll get to him....

The history-

Well...I grew up a Marvel kid, more than DC, but...I've told all those stories....


Will Eisner's The Spirit

The book-

The first one to premiere in 1940.
And, the one book at the time to have an exceptionally good artist doing the thing!

He was the guy the other fellas in the business looked up to, and he's who The Eisner Award is named after.

Fast-forward to 2007, and Spirit became part of the DC Universe, first with a Batman crossover, and then...

...a stinky-winky movie a year later.

Well, at least poor Will didn't live to see it...


Meanwhile...

...Superman came to radio!

The show-

So, the radio show writers actually came up with a lot of Superman's backstory.

His childhood in Smallville, Kryptonite, The Daily Planet, lots of stuff.

And they had balls, they had Superman fight the fuckin' Klan.
See? Even back then, good people knew what assholes the Klan were.

The history-

N/A

Meanwhile...

....The Flash was premiering....

...as was Green Lantern...

....as was Captain Marvel...

They were all coming out of the woodwork.

And Captain Marvel was immediately given...

....the Republic Serial treatment.

Course, National/DC sued Fawcett for 12 years claiming their guy was a ripoff of Superman, and eventually, Fawcett gave in, they went under, and DC bought Captain Marvel.
And now, no one knows any better, they think he was always a DC guy.
If they know him at all.
Tch, lawyers again...

Meanwhile....

...in 1941, Timely/Marvel created Captain America!

And again with the balls, there's Cap punching fucking Hitler in his slobbedy chops right on the muthafuckin' cover....and we weren't even in the fucking WAR yet!

...I love it, I miss this level of pluck.

I dunno, Frank Miller thinks he's aping this kinda stuff with "Holy Terror", but, fuck off, you missed your spot, "24", did all that anti-Muslim pro-torture shit already.
Too slow, old man.
Too slow.

Anyhoo...

The history-

So, yeah, Stan Lee also revived Cap in the 60's by having him frozen in the arctic, and thawed back out, and this has been updated in the latest movie.

As for my personal Cap stories, I told 'em all here.


Meanwhile...

...still 1941, Wonder Woman premiered in "All-Star Comics #8".

Course, up there is "Sensation Comics #1", her first cover feature.

But man, imagine that, woulda?
from 1938 to 1941, every month, literally, you had a new hero pop out, and each one was one of these timeless classic heroes that are still here in the 2010's!

What times those must have been for kids!

The history-

Right, and then, in the 70's, the Wonder Woman TV show, A.K.A "Tuts".

Meanwhile...

...still 1941, Superman made his debut in animation in theatrical shorts from Fleischer studios, makers of Betty Boop, and Popeye, and voiced by Bud Collyer, who also voiced Supes on the radio show.

Also, this is where Superman started flying, instead of leaping.
Why? The animators thought the jumping looked silly.

2 years later....

...in 1943, Batman became the first DC hero to make the transition to live-action.

...man, you'd think it'd be Superman, wouldn't ya?
Nope.
T'wasn't.
T'was Batman.

So, I've generally heard pretty good things about this incarnation...except for the blatant anti-Japanese racism...
...you were pretty hard-pressed to find stuff without such sentiments back then though...

Oh, and these invented The Batcave, and the look of Alfred as a skinny mustached guy.

These are out on DVD now if ya wanna check 'em out.
Gotta admit, I'm curious.

1 year later...

...in 1944, Cap got the Republic Serial treatment.

These were kinda goofed on in the new movie.

And the cornball patriotic Cap was goofed on in the 90's movie.

4 years later....

....in 1948, Columbia finally coughed up a fuckin' live-action Superman serial!
Jesus Christ!!

A decade after the premiere of the comic, what were they fuckin' waiting for??
Captain Marvel got one the same year as his comic debut!

Anyway...this introduced Lex Luthor into the Superman canon.

And Kirk Alyn, and Noel Neill (Supes, and Lois, here) played young Lois Lane's parents in a deleted scene of the 1979 Superman movie, that's been reinserted on the DVD.

And Noel Neill would later play Lois on the George Reeves Superman show.

And, she played the dying old lady who leaves Lex her fortune in "Superman Returns".

And, she was interviewed for "Look, Up In The Sky! The Amazing Story of Superman",

1 year later...

...in 1949, and leading all the way to 1953, the "Rocket Man", character first appeared, and evolved into "Commando Cody".

These were the last Republic serials leading into the television era, and the character inspired...


The Rocketeer

See here.


And...that was the 30's and 40's.
Or, "The Golden Age".

All the players were pretty much in place...

The guys like Hulk, and Spidey would come in "The Silver Age".

I might do a thing on that someday...

But next....

TeeVee Three! (some stuff I forgot)