9 X 13

Weird Legacies (1977) edited by Mike Ashley, containing the following stories: "Skulls in the Stars" (1929) by Robert E. Howard; "The Three Marked Pennies" (1934) by Mary Elizabeth Counselman; "He That Hath Wings" (1938) by Edmond Hamilton; "The Distortion Out Of Space" (1934) by Francis Flagg; "The Utmost Abomination (1973) by Lin Carter and Clark Ashton Smith; "Eternal Rediffusion" (1973) by Eric Frank Russell and Leslie J. Johnson; "The Ducker"(1943) by Ray Bradbury; "The Black Kiss" (1937) by Henry Kuttner and Robert Bloch; and "The Survivor" (1954) by H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth.

Enjoyable, brief anthology of stories previously published in the venerable Weird Tales (originally 1923-1954, with several brief revivals since then). Robert Bloch supplies a nice little introduction while anthologist Mike Ashley gives the reader lengthy, informative notes before and sometimes after the nine stories. The two 1973 anomalies in the story appearance dates come from Lin Carter finishing a much older Clark Ashton Smith fragment for the brief 1970's revival of Weird Tales and a rejected 1940's Eric Frank Russell/Leslie Johnson story that also appeared in the 1970's revival.

For such a short anthology, Weird Legacies possesses impressive range. All of the original Weird Tales writers who got high marks in the readers' polls in the magazine appear here with the exception of Seabury Quinn, whom Ashley promises will appear in a later (non-existent, so far as I can tell) anthology. 

Kuttner and Bloch's "The Black Kiss" is a revelation, an excellent, unsettling bit of aquatic horror with certain similarities to H.P. Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" from two correspondents with H.P.L.. August Derleth's literal-minded expansion of a Lovecraft fragment, "The Survivor," is perhaps too similar, and inferior, to the Bloch/Kuttner piece to profitably appear here. Lin Carter's Smith expansion offers an interesting pastiche of Smith's ornate, baroque writing style, but it too offers too much of the same thing as it concludes.

The other stories are more in line with the excellence of "The Black Kiss," with a solid Solomon Kane story from Robert E. Howard and Edmond Hamilton's elegiac tale of a winged mutant leading the way. "The Three Marked Pennies", one of the most popular Weird Tales stories ever, seems like a Twilight Zone bit super-collided with a conte cruel. It is indeed memorable. The Francis Flagg piece is interesting as a Lovecraftian riff with an ending more suited to the Horta episode of Star Trek. A somewhat atypical Ray Bradbury story set on the battlefields of WWII and the truly odd, metaphysical "Eternal Rediffusion" round out the selection. Recommended.

Guest-starring Congorilla and Dr. Phosphorus

Showcase Presents Superman Volume 3: written by Jerry Siegel, Edmond Hamilton, Bill Finger, and others; illustrated by Curt Swan, Wayne Boring, Al Plastino, and others (1961-62; collected 2007): Superman's Silver Age adventures move forward into more absurdity, cosmic happenings, and classic tragedy. 

The last is thanks to an Imaginary Story written by Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel and illustrated by the great Curt Swan, who drew Superman adventures in five decades. It's The Death of Superman, and it puts all other stories about the Man of Steel's death on the back-burner. But it's Imaginary -- it didn't really happen, dear reader!

We also get non-Imaginary stories featuring the Man of Tomorrow battling the mischievous 5th-dimensional imp Mr. Mxyzptlk, arch-enemy Lex Luthor, and various forms of Kryptonite. Ah, Kryptonite. Invented for the radio show back in the 1940's and meant to give Superman a weakness, by the early 1960's it had metastasized into a Krypton-sized headache. There seems to be more Kryptonite on Earth than actual Earth elements, and every two-bit hood has at least one chunk stashed in his pocket. Honestly, it's amazing that every issue wasn't The Death of Superman.

As a bonus, Krypto the Super-dog teams up with Titano the giant, Kryptonite-eye-beam-wielding gorilla back in dinosaur days because Why Not? Lois Lane tries to learn Superman's secret identity on a number of occasions. Superman reveals Supergirl's existence to the world after several years as his 'secret weapon.' 

The citizens of the Bottle City of Kandor, a Kryptonian city shrunk by Superman villain Brainiac and now housed in Superman's Arctic Fortress of Solitude, help out Superman on numerous occasions. And in the final story of the volume, Superman believes he's dying for real in a tale that heavily influenced Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's All-Star Superman and Alan Moore and Rick Veitch's Superman/Swamp Thing team-up, "The Jungle Line." Highly recommended.

Batman: Strange Apparitions: written by Steve Engelhart and Len Wein; illustrated by Marshall Rogers, Walt Simonson, Al Milgrom, Terry Austin, Dick Giordano, and others (1977-78; collected 1999): This Batman reprint volume spans the entire tenure of 1970's Batman greats Steve Engelhart and Marshall Rogers on Detective Comics. And it really is great. And unlike other previous and subsequent reprints from this run, it starts with Engelhart's arrival and ends with Rogers' departure, neither of which were synchronized. Thus, Walt Simonson does the penciling chores early and Len Wein writes the last two issues included.

Despite the shortness of both their tenures (the whole volume spans about a year's worth of issues), Engelhart and Rogers generally get ranked as one of the top-five Batman creative teams of all time. And I think I agree. Engelhart writes Batman as a sympathetic hero who's not completely bonkers and not an absurd control freak (as he would become in the 1980's). 

And he gives us fresh takes on Batman villains mainly old -- in some cases really old. Engelhart brought back Deadshot, unseen for nearly 30 years and redesigned by Rogers with a costume that's pretty much used verbatim now in stills from DC's upcoming Suicide Squad movie. He also resurrected Professor Hugo Strange, unseen also for decades and one of the early Batman's pulpiest mad-scientist foes.

We also get nifty takes on old foes that include the Penguin back before movies and TV and comics started portraying the Penguin as a character only slightly less insane than the Joker. And the Joker himself appears in a great two-parter about... copyright law? Rogers and Engelhart nod to various Batman tropes throughout, most notably the Giant Versions of Ordinary Household Objects beloved by the late writer (and uncredited Batman co-creator) Bill Finger.

The art of the late Marshall Rogers was almost never better than it was here. I prefer this more realistic (though eminently stylized) Rogers to his later, more cartoony stuff. Moreover, Rogers' attention to the details of Gotham City is second to none. And in a full-page panel that may have imprinted upon a young JJ Abrams, Rogers throws in... a lens flare. Oh, that Rogers! 

The work in which Engelhart and Rogers aren't paired isn't quite up to the same standard, but it's still solid stuff. Len Wein and Rogers' legacy villain Clayface (III) is one of the most horrific creations in Batman's Rogues Gallery, beautifully and occasionally grotesquely rendered by Rogers and inker Dick Giordano. Terry Austin inks the rest of Rogers' run, and he's a perfect, sharp-edged complement to Rogers' style. Highly recommended.

Everybody Loves Kryptonite

Yes, the original is in here.

Showcase Presents World's Finest featuring Superman and Batman Volume 3: written by Edmond Hamilton, Jim Shooter, Leo Dorfman, Cary Bates, and Bill Finger; illustrated by Curt Swan, George Klein, and Al Plastino (1965-67; collected 2010): An often gloriously loopy example of DC's superheroes in the late Silver Age. Superman and Batman team up, often with Robin and Jimmy Olsen along, to face a variety of menaces that range from the sinister to the ridiculous.

The great Curt Swan, for many people The Superman Artist, draws all but one of the stories collected here, giving even the craziest of events a grounding in reality. Edmond Hamilton, a science-fiction writer who started his career in the 1930's but also wrote a ton of comics for DC in the 1950's and 1960's, writes about the first half of the book. It's Silver Agey super-science and sketchy characterization throughout. And comics were for kids, so that's fine.

Superman and Batman get a little more psychologically complex once the young, Marvelesque Jim Shooter starts contributing scripts, along with long-time-to-be Superman scribe Cary Bates and Leo Dorfman. The heroes show more doubt and have more problems, sometimes to a ridiculous extent. The final story in the volume features an astonishingly underwhelming villain who nonetheless figures out the location of the Bat-cave in about two minutes...and gets inside. It also features Batman and Superman telling a Q&A group what villains they most fear and why. Really? This is not a particularly good thing to get all carey and sharey about!

The 1950's and 1960's were also a period when everyone on the planet seemed to have several pounds of Kryptonite lying around the house. It's a good thing these were stories for children -- otherwise, Superman would have died a thousand times over. One can see by the rote use of Kryptonite by every bloody criminal on the planet why the editors tried to wipe the Kryptonian menace out during the soft Superman reboot of 1970.

Or John Byrne's hard Superman reboot of 1986, for that matter, which initially reduced the amount of Kryptonite on Earth to one fist-sized chunk. Having learned nothing from 63 years of Superman history, the producers of Smallville re-introduced Kryptonite in mass quantities and upped the ante by having it give human beings super-powers as well. Because as Bizarro-Superman (who also appears here) would say, Hollywood am smart!

In order to introduce non-Kryptonite-centric drama, the creators of World's Finest resorted several times in the three years spanned by this collection to two recurring story models. One is the 'Imaginary Story', in which out-of-continuity events such as Bruce Wayne being adopted by Jonathan and Martha Kent and being raised as Clark Kent's brother could occur. These Imaginary Stories often represented the best DC stories (for adult readers, anyway) of the 1950's and 1960's, as people could actually change and even die in them.

The other old stand-by involved the magical pair of transdimensional tricksters Mr. Mxyzptlk and Bat-Mite getting up to magical shenanigans to test the character of Superman and Batman. Because the effects of their magic -- up to and including mass death -- would cease to exist once they were banished back to their magical other-dimensional worlds, their stories could also involve a lot of danger and humiliation for the World's Finest team. Cartoonist Evan Dorkin took the Bat-Mite/Mxyzptlk stories to their logical conclusion in 2001's World's Funniest, which I thought was pretty funny.

All in all, this volume is a weird delight. Is it sophisticated graphic entertainment for adults? No. But it's more fun than a barrel of Kryptonite. And barrels of Kryptonite must be fun because everyone's got one! Also, King Arthur and his knights had super-powers in the DC Universe at this point! And the Superman of the 30th century can be brought low by... sea water, all of which is now deadly radioactive! Because Kryptonite wasn't pervasive enough! Highly recommended.

Weird!

Weird Tales Volume 1 edited by Peter Haining, containing the following stories: The Man Who Returned by Edmond Hamilton; Black Hound of Death by Robert E. Howard; The Shuttered House by August Derleth; Frozen Beauty by Seabury Quinn; Haunting Columns by Robert E. Howard; Beyond the Wall of Sleep by H. P. Lovecraft; The Garden of Adompha by Clark Ashton Smith; Cordelia's Song by Vincent Starrett; Beyond the Phoenix by Henry Kuttner; The Black Monk by G. G. Pendarves; Passing of a God by Henry S. Whitehead; and They Run Again by Leah Bodine Drake (1923-1939; collected 1978):

Solid anthology (well, the first half of a hardcover anthology, divided for paperback publication) of stories from the first 15 years of Weird Tales, the pulp magazine that got its start in 1923. This half is quite heavy on the novella-length story, with lengthy entries from Robert E. 'Conan' Howard, Seabury Quinn, Henry Kuttner, and Henry S. Whitehead.

The Howard piece is an interesting, intensely racist story of supernatural revenge set in the two-fisted South. Kuttner's story features his sword-and-sorcery hero Elak of Atlantis. Seabury Quinn's supernatural detective Jules de Grandin tackles Bolsheviks and suspended animation in a fairly un-supernatural outing.

Solid shorter stories come from H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth, and Edmond Hamilton (the latter Quinn's only real rival for the title of 'Most popular writer among the then-readers of Weird Tales). Clark Ashton Smith's entry is a grotesque humdinger. And the now-little-known Henry S. Whitehead contributes a truly bizarre piece about voodoo and...stomach tumours??? It's not a tumour!!! Recommended.