The Astounding Atom-Wolf!

Showcase Presents The Atom Volume 1: written by Gardner F. Fox; illustrated by Gil Kane, Sid Greene, and Murphy Anderson (1962-65; collected 2007): DC's Atom of the 1940's was a short guy who could fight well. For the 1960's Silver Age reimagining of the character, size became more of an issue. 

Now, thanks to white-dwarf matter, the Atom could shrink. He could also control his mass at any size. This being the Silver Age and not the 1990's, that last bit never resulted in him punching a hole in anyone's head (or collapsing into a miniature black hole).

The smooth and dynamic Gil Kane keeps the art fun and imaginative, even when the adventure simply involves boring bank-robbers or Soviet spies. Ray Palmer, the Silver-Age Atom, was a university professor with a lawyer for a girlfriend. And really, a research professor isn't a bad secret identity for a superhero, especially as Ray seems to be high-powered enough in academia to never have to teach a class!

The best adventures herein play with science fiction, fantasy, and the perennial weirdness of the Silver Age as imagined by writer Gardner Fox. The Atom gets trapped in light bulbs, ironed out as flat as a pancake, and used as the battery for a gun. Thanks to the 'Time Pool,' he also teams up with Jules Verne and Edgar Allan Poe. It's a full, rich life.

Probably the most emblematic story included here pits the Atom against his own suddenly sentient and malevolent costume. And the revelation of who (or what) is behind the costume's criminal shenanigans makes things even weirder. In an era of comic books in which a benevolent chunk of Kryptonite once narrated a story, anything can happen and probably will. Recommended.

Captain America: Man&Wolf: written by Mark Gruenwald; illustrated by Rik Levins and others (1992-93; Collected 2011): Probably the second-most-maligned Captain America adventure in comic-book history (the first being the Heroes Reborn year of stories), Man&Wolf... really isn't that bad. Mark Gruenwald wrote Captain America for about a decade, and his Cap is always interesting even when the material gets a bit weird. 

Pretty much every werewolf or werewolf-like character in the Marvel Universe shows up (the most famous being J. Jonah Jameson's former astronaut son John, cursed to become Man-Wolf by a rock he picked up on the Moon, and Marvel's designated Werewolf, Werewolf by Night; wolf-like characters from X-Force and X-Factor also appear). Someone wants to make more werewolves! A werewolf army! Wolverine shows up too!

And Cap gets turned into a werewolf. But he's a heroic werewolf. The plans of evil will soon be thwarted. Will Cap be cured? Oh, probably. Rik Levins does a nice job on the action sequences, though he struggles with the actual drawing of the werewolves. 

A couple of ongoing plot threads that won't be resolved in this collection could probably have been excised so as not to confuse the reader. An Infinity War crossover can't really be excised, but it's damn peculiar anyway. This certainly isn't a high point for Cap, but Gruenwald's version of the character is always fun to hang out with, furry or not. Lightly recommended.

Justice League of Amnesia

Justice League of America: The Greatest Stories Ever Told: written by Gardner Fox, Denny O'Neil, Martin Pasko, Gerry Conway, J.M. DeMatteis, Keith Giffen, Grant Morrison, Mark Millar, and Joe Casey; illustrated by Mike Sekowsky, Dick Dillin, Kevin Maguire, Doug Mahnke, Howard Porter, Terry Austin, and others (1962-2005; collected 2006): Brad Meltzer and Rags Morales' popular and controversial Justice League miniseries Identity Crisis had just come out when this volume was assembled. The selection criteria for this 'Best-of' collection thus became slanted to earlier Justice League stories that led somehow into Identity Crisis. It would have been a much better idea to create some sort of Justice League: Prelude to Identity Crisis volume, but no one ever accused DC of being sensible.

This assortment of Justice League stories is enjoyable, but very, very, very heavy on the Identity Swap trope that Identity Crisis would explore. And the first story seems to have been included because it introduces the handy element Amnesium to the Justice League (the memory-erasing substance had previously appeared several times in Superboy and Superman comics). Good old Amnesium. Lightly recommended.

Superboy: The Greatest Team-up Stories Ever Told: written by Leo Dorfman, Frank Robbins, Cary Bates, and others; illustrated by Kurt Schaffenberger, Dave Hunt, Bob Brown, Murphy Anderson, and others (1951-1981; collected 2011): Herein lies the template for Smallville and Arrow: early stories of a hero's career in which he meets pretty much everyone we thought he met much later. Aquaboy! Green Arrow, Green Lantern, and Batman before they were Green Arrow, Green Lantern, and Batman! Young Lex Luthor! Young Jor-El! Young Lori Lemaris! Time-travelling Jimmy Olsen!

The 1950's and 1960's material is especially breezy and occasionally very, very odd as it attempts to have its earlier meet-up cake and eat it too, or whatever. So teen-aged Jor-El gets his memory erased by Amnesium so that he doesn't remember meeting his own son on Earth. Superboy gets his memory erased so that he doesn't remember Supergirl's visit, a story which seems to also have a disquieting level of protosexual longing by Superboy for (first) cousin Supergirl. Lori Lemaris, Lana Lang, and Superboy all get their memories erased by Atlantean super-hypnosis so that none of them remember their earlier meeting. DC really should do a volume of the greatest memory-erasure stories ever told! Recommended.

Morning Wood

Came the Dawn and Other Stories (The Fantagraphics EC Comics Library): written by Al Feldstein, Gardner Fox, and others; illustrated by Wally Wood and Harry Harrison (1951-53; 2012): These recent Fantagraphics volumes of legendary EC Comics material arranged by writer, editor, and/or artist are absolutely splendid. The black-and-white reproduction is crisp, allowing the details of the artwork to stand out. And detail is one of the keys to the greatness of that tragic giant Wally Wood.

This volume presents Wood's horror and suspense work for EC Comics, the 1950's American comic-book publisher that towered above all others in terms of the quality of its writing and art. Over the course of about three years represented in this volume, Wood rapidly becomes the detailed, evocative artist he would remain for the rest of his career. It's a stunningly fast development of an artist.

Despite the appearance of a few werewolves and ghosts early on, the volume mostly focuses on Wood at his most realistic. The lion's share of the stories come from EC's Shock Suspens-Stories title, which offered thrillers and pointed social critiques which often resembled the Warner Brother agit-prop movies of the 1930's. And while Wood was a gifted science-fiction and superhero artist, he really shines in rendering the (relatively) ordinary in all its detailed, shadowy, and often big-bosomed glory. No one drew women like Wood.

Many of the stories here are what the writers and artists and editors of EC themselves referred to as "preachies", stories meant to teach a point. The handful of anti-racism stories still pack one hell of a wallop because of both the writing and Wood's exquisite artwork, capable of both beauty and brutality in the same panel. The editors are correct in noting that EC did stories that television and movies wouldn't tell, at least in such graphic and wrenching detail.

In all, this volume is a wonder, as was Wood when he was operating at full capacity. This is marvelous stuff, and a revelation to anyone who believes that all American comic books ever did or can ever do is superheroes. Highly recommended.

Hawks of the North Star

Showcase Presents Hawkman Volume 1: written by Gardner Fox and Bob Haney; illustrated by Joe Kubert, Murphy Anderson, Gil Kane, and Carmine Infantino (Collected 2008): While he was never an A-List hero at any point in comic-book history, Hawkman nonetheless wears one of the five or six best-looking costumes a superhero ever put on.

Initially designed in the 1940's by Sheldon Moldoff doing a fair imitation of Flash Gordon writer-artist Alec Raymond, the costume would be tweaked a bit by the great Joe Kubert when Hawkman was rebooted in the early 1960's. Every re-design after Kubert has been a falling away from greatness.

DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz, the guiding light behind DC's 1950's and 1960's 'Silver Age' reboots of 1940's 'Golden Age' superheroes, does with the 'new' Hawkman something similar to what he had his writers and artists do with the reboot of Green Lantern: he switches the character's origins from magical to science-fictional. Instead of a reincarnated Egyptian hero, Hawkman is now a police officer from the planet Thanagar, which orbits the North Star.

He comes to Earth with his wife and police partner Shayera (then-Hawkgirl) in pursuit of a dangerous criminal and subsequently stays on Earth to study human police methods. Schwartz and company preserved some of the flavour of the Golden-Age Hawkman by having the new character's secret identity be a museum director, and by having Hawkman and Hawkgirl fight many criminals using ancient weapons rather than scientific ones, with the explanation being that the two police officers don't want to run the risk of having sophisticated Thanagarian technology fall into criminal hands.

So the Hawkman costume, once an emulation of the hawk-headed Egyptian god Horus, becomes the standard uniform of the Thanagarian police officer. Schwartz and Fox are to some extent borrowing from another of Schwartz's Silver-Age reboots, Green Lantern, whose one-off Golden-Age costume would be reimagined and redesigned to be the uniform of an entire galaxy-spanning Green Lantern Corps.

In several issues, they also borrow from the Silver-Age Flash's idiosyncratic method of costume storage, as Hawkman gains a ring from which can expand an entire uniform, wings and all. This last borrowing is one of those things that we should pretend never happened, and never speak of it again.

Fox's stories are his loopy brand of faux science-fiction that often works a lot more like fairy-tale magic. They're fun without being memorable for the most part. Kubert's art on the first ten appearances or so of the new Hawkman, though, is terrific -- he makes even fairly dopey concepts such as the Man-Hawks look believable and strangely menacing, and another Hawkman villain, the Shadow Thief, is a weird triumph of comic-book design and execution. Once Kubert leaves, the solid and dependable Murphy Anderson takes over. The flair is gone, and the series really becomes a fairly standard DC offering for the time.

One of Kubert's original designs -- that for Hawkgirl's costume -- is also quite striking, possibly because the eyes of her mask make the character look insane. It's a design that has persisted into modern-day comics and animated cartoons with fewer alterations than Hawkman's. Though she does wear more clothing on top than Hawkman's X-crossed, wing-bracing belts. Recommended.

Fun-Sized Superhero

The Atom Archives Volume 1: written by Gardner Fox; illustrated by Gil Kane, Murphy Anderson, and Mike Sekowsky (1961-63; collected 2005): When the great DC editor Julius Schwartz decided to reboot the humdrum Golden-Age Atom for DC's ascendant Silver Age, he wisely gave the character actual super powers.

The Golden-Age Atom had been a short guy who was pretty good in a fight. The Silver-Age Atom was a scientist who figured out how to shrink himself while also controlling his mass.

This latter ability -- which allowed the Atom to be light as a feather or to weigh his full 180 pounds when he was six inches tall -- really could have been dangerous, as he could conceivably have been the first superhero to be constantly in peril of collapsing into a black hole. But apparently the Atom kept good track of his mass-to-size ratio and avoided this terrible fate.

This new Atom allowed for Gardner Fox and Schwartz to play with size and perspective within a quasi-scientific framework. The explanation for how the Atom could travel down phonelines required a half-page of text, and actually explained to me how the sound of a voice or what-have-you supplied power to analog phone lines. Science!

The elegant and dynamic Gil Kane and the detailed Murphy Anderson made a really nice art team on these early adventures. As with most Silver Age reboots, the Atom eschews a cape. And Kane makes the little fellow quite balletic and acrobatic, just as he did the Silver Age Green Lantern. A lot more fun and engaging than I expected. Recommended.

Undead Puritans in the Hands of an Angry God

Showcase Presents The Spectre Volume 1: written by Gardner Fox, Neal Adams, Steve Skeates, Michael Fleisher and others; illustrated by Murphy Anderson, Jerry Grandenetti, Neal Adams, Jim Aparo, Jim Starlin and others (1966-1983; collected 2012): The first collection of the Spectre's Silver- and Bronze-Age adventures at DC Comics is quite a bargain at over 600 pages for less than $20. It's also a bargain because of the 20-year period spanned by the collection. It's like a miniature cross-section of DC Comics in three different decades.

The Spectre was created in 1940 by Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel and artist Bernard Baily. He began as a murdered detective -- Jim Corrigan -- who was brought back to a sort of un-life by a mysterious voice whom most writers have strongly hinted was God.

Charged by the voice with seeking revenge on evil, Corrigan found himself host to one of the odder-looking superheroes of any age of comics, the Spectre. He seems to be dressed in white with green trunks, cape, hood, and boots. He isn't. The white part is the Spectre's body colour, ectoplasm or dead white flesh, depending on the writer. Yeesh.

The Spectre started off as judge, jury, and often very creative executioner. But he wasn't all that popular, though I've always been a bit confused about how companies assessed popularity in the 1940's comic-book industry. The Spectre never had his own book, and his adventures were usually eight to ten page shorts published in the anthology book More Fun Comics. They don't title comics the way they used to!

In any case, the powers that be at the comic-book company that would eventually be known as DC Comics soon changed the tone of the Spectre's adventures and paired him with a comic sidekick who eventually became the lead in the strip, with the Spectre as a helpful ghost. It was quite a comedown. The Spectre continued to act more like his original self in the Justice Society's adventures, but the late 1940's and early 1950's would soon end the ghostly creature's adventures.

Then came the Silver Age, and two Earths of DC characters, one being established as the home of the Golden-Age versions of everyone from Superman to Green Arrow. And finally the Spectre returned in the mid-1960's, less vengeful and more cosmic, in what seemed to be an attempt to emulate Marvel's supernatural hero Dr. Strange. The literal-minded Murphy Anderson was mysteriously chosen for the first few adventures collected here, written by the high-speed human typewriter of DC's Silver Age, Gardner Fox. They're certainly interesting stories, though the Spectre is a bit off a stiff. And not in a good way.

Different artists and writers followed in relatively quick succession, all sticking to the Spectre's new role as loveable cosmic avenger. Only towards the end of the Spectre's short-lived 1960's series does the character's vengeful streak come out, resulting in the hero being reprimanded by that Voice again just prior to cancellation.

There's some splendid cosmic art here from Neal Adams, along with some weird stuff from Jerry Grandenetti, who seems to be channeling the art of Dr. Strange's Steve Ditko in some of his more outlandish character designs, and the spirit of unintelligibility in some of his weirder page and panel layouts. Grandenetti can't make undead Puritans scary but he gives it the old college try, God bless him.

Five years after that 1969 cancellation came the character's post-Golden-Age career highlight: ten adventures in Adventure Comics (briefly retitled Weird Adventure) written by Michael Fleisher with help from Russell Carey and mostly illustrated by perennial Batman artist Jim Aparo. Fleisher returned the Spectre to his violent roots, in the process getting away with a surprising amount of graphic violence for a 1970's comic book.

The Spectre turned people into wood and then buzz-sawed them into pieces. He reduced them to skeletons. He melted them into screaming pools of dying goo. He cut them in half with giant scissors. He chopped them up with flying cleavers, fed them to alligators, and had magically animated stuffed gorillas tear them limb from limb. It was awesome.

Aparo illustrated all this with a weirdly unsettling matter-of-fact style augmented by suggestion rather than illustration at certain points due to the censorious Comics Code Authority: scissors man, for instance, is shown as being cut in half at the waist, but curtains are wrapped around the character below that waist. The empty area where the legs were is just a deflated expanse of curtain. Fleisher also works around things by having a character turned to wood before being segmented into pancakes of flesh, though Showcase's B&W reprint eliminates the colouring that made the character woody in the original publication. Now he's just a pile of flapjacks made out of person. Mmm.

After Fleisher and Aparo's delightful run (also collected on its own, in colour), the Spectre returned to a slightly less violent form of himself, guarding the boundaries of the universe and playing nice with other superheroes. The character's recurring omnipotence and near-omnipotence always seems to make him a hard sell. Later attempts at Spectre solo books have run longer than the attempts here, but none of them for that long.

The character has been rebooted an astonishing number of times, with different characters (including Green Lantern Hal Jordan during his dead phase) acting as hosts for the Spectre. Different explanations have been given for the Spectre's role in the universe, and why he needs a human host in the first place (short explanation: the Spectre, God's second attempt at a cosmic spirit of vengeance, goes completely loopy without a human host to ground him). As of 2012, he seems to be back again as the deceased Jim Corrigan, and sorta pissed about it. At least he's not comic relief. Yet. Recommended.

Fast Company

Showcase Presents The Flash Volume 3: written by John Broome, Gardner Fox, and Robert Kanigher; illustrated by Carmine Infantino, Joe Giella, and Murphy Anderson (1963-66; collected 2011): The Flash was always the jauntiest of DC's Silver-Age reimaginings of Golden-Age characters, sleekly drawn by Carmine Infantino and written with a flair for the oddball, mostly by John Broome. As with other DC titles of the 1950's and 1960's, psychology is mostly absent and rapid-fire superheroics are the norm. Also, there are a lot of aliens.

There is some Marvel-Age influence here as the volume moves to the mid-1960's. A cover with the Flash abandoning his uniform and his superheroing seems pretty clearly inspired by a classic Spider-man cover of the same time period. Some personal angst slips into a couple of the stories -- being the Flash does occasionally play havoc with the Flash's relationship with reporter Iris West -- but the overall tone is usually light. One story has the Flash participating in bizarre, tearful conversations with his costume. The mental stability of superheroes often seems pretty precarious.

And then there's the Flash's host of supervillains. Captain Cold, the Trickster, Captain Boomerang, Heatwave, the Top, Abracadabra, the Reverse-Flash, and numerous others may be occasionally homicidal, but for the most part they're either trying to steal things or seemingly obsessed with playing tag with the Flash. And there are a lot of aliens from both space and other dimensions trying to destroy the Earth, or conquer it, or whatever.

The Flash's superspeed, so advanced as to give him complete control over every atom in his body, comes in handy. Occasional 'Flash Facts' explain why our hero can do certain things (like run straight through a brick wall) that one might think would kill him. Thankfully for Earth, relativity doesn't seem to apply to the Flash, as his jogs at the speed of light don't make him so massive as to destroy the Earth. Seminal Flash artist Carmine Infantino draws everything with an angular, lunging quality that highlights the speed of the Flash and the occasional slowness of everything around him. Phew! Recommended.

When Men Were Superheroes and Women Were Secretaries

All-Star Comics Archives Volume 2; written by Gardner F. Fox and Sheldon Mayer; illustrated by Jack Burnley, Bernard Baily, Sheldon Moldoff and others (1941-42; collected 1992): In the 1940's, the Justice Society of America was what would later be DC Comics's first group of superheroes, created in part to boost interest in the lesser-known characters of the infant DC superhero community (Superman and Batman were honourary members who didn't really participate in the adventures, while other characters that included the Flash and Green Lantern would also become honourary members once they became popular enough, though both those heroes would eventually return to active status as the superhero boom of the early 1940's started to bust at the end of World War Two).

The first few appearances of the JSA involved members meeting to tell stories about recent cases. Quickly, though, All-Star Comics would showcase the evolution of the superhero group, with members first doing solo duty in individual stories oriented around a common quest and then members actually fighting together against a common foe.

The main JSA members at work here include Johnny Thunder, Dr. Mid-nite, Hawkman, Dr. Fate, the Atom, the Flash, the Spectre, and Green Lantern. We also get the first 'bonus' insert story in superhero history, as Wonder Woman gets introduced in a solo story in one issue. Eventually, the JSA would deign to make her their recording secretary, a skill I'm pretty sure life as an Amazon didn't prepare her for.

In this second archive edition, the stories are firmly in the second mode, with the heroes teaming up at the end for the sake of closure. Gardner Fox and editor Shelly Mayer were inventing a sub-generic form on the fly, with no real antecedents unless you want to get goofy and claim Jason and the Argonauts as the first superhero group. Wartime concerns form the motivation for the cases in this book, as the heroes seek to raise money for European war orphans, bust saboteur rings, and secure America from aerial attack with a super-secret 'bomb shield.'

This last quest -- and the last story in the book -- sees Fox finally start to write stories with a certain amount of fanciful 'oomph' to them. The JSA gets dispatched singly through a time-portal in order to retrieve plans for the bomb shield from several hundred years in the future. This allows Fox to finally play with exotic locales (cities in the sky and beneath the sea) and a certain amount of humble-pie for the JSA members, who discover that the average man of the future can mop up the floor with all but the most powerful of them.

Comic-book art in the 1940's could often be pretty awful (the page rates of the time didn't exactly make for a rewarding work situation), though the craftsmanship of the artists would increase as the months flew by. Jack Burnley, a longtime 'ghost' on the Superman comics, draws the Starman episodes here with skill and a certain degree of professional slickness, while Bernard Baily on the Spectre remains one of the more idiosyncratic artists of the early Golden Age. Recommended for superhero fans.

Make the Warrior Princess Take Notes...

All-Star Comics Archives Volume 1, introduction by Don Thompson, written by Gardner F. Fox, illustrated by Sheldon Moldoff, Bernard Baily, Everett Hibbard, Howard Sherman, Howard Purcell and others (1940-41; collected 1992): A combination of exhilaration and exasperation accompanies my reading of most Golden-Age (that is, 1937-1949) American superhero comic books. One can see both a genre and a medium being defined and refined, sometimes boldly, sometimes wrongly, sometimes ineptly. And as per Sturgeon's Law, at least 90% of it is crap. Maybe 99%.

Before the Avengers, the Justice League of America, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the X-Men -- before all other superhero teams and superhero groups -- was the Justice Society of America, debuting in 1940 in issue 3 of All-Star Comics, just less than 3 years after the appearance of the first American superheroes. The group comprised the company now known as DC's Golden Age superhero stable, with a few notable exceptions: Superman and Batman were honorary members who almost never appeared, as the Society was used to help promote 'DC's' less popular heroes, while Wonder Woman would generally only act as recording secretary and not an actual fighting member of the group.

The most active original members of the JSA would range from the fairly famous (the original Green Lantern and original Flash) to the more obscure (comic relief Johnny Thunder and Red Tornado, the original Atom, Hourman, Dr. Fate, and the Spectre). Heroes with earth-shaking cosmic powers (the Lantern and his magic ring, Flash, Fate, Spectre and, surprisingly perhaps, Johnny Thunder and his magical intelligent pink thunderbolt) sat beside heroes with limited powers (Hourman, whose Miraclo pills gave him an hour of enhanced strength), powerful gadgets (Starman, Dr. Midnite, Hawkman, Sandman) or no powers or gadgets at all (the dreary Atom, whose power was that he was really strong for a height-challenged person. And he wasn't a really strong dwarf or midget -- he was maybe 5'2". Really, every JSA adventure should have ended with the dead body of the Atom being taken to Paradise Island to be revived with the super-healing Purple Ray, his revival being accompanied by the other heroes standing around laughing about how he got killed in every adventure by someone with a handgun or just a pointy stick. It wasn't until the Silver Age that a character named Atom got appropriate, and appropriately awesome, super-shrinking powers).

The first two issues of All-Star Comics published individual adventures of what would soon be Justice Society members; the third issue featured the origin of the Justice Society. And what an origin! A bunch of superheroes decide to get together in a hotel banquet room and talk during dinner!

OK, dramatic it's not. In the 1970's, writer Paul Levitz and artists Joe Staton and Bob Layton would give the JSA a truly awesome origin story, complete with Batman and Superman, but for now they are a jovial, joking sausage party (Wonder Woman was still a year away). They don't even fight crime together in that first issue, instead telling tales of individual heroism. But by issue 4, they were fighting crime in what would be the first model of a JSA story, individually tackling criminals in stories drawn by different artists (but all written by Gardner F. Fox) before coming together at the end of the story. Eventually, they'd do more teaming up, at least in pairs or trios, prior to the final gathering.

The art ranges from awful through competent to interesting. Sheldon Moldoff, later a Batman artist with a much different style, here does his best Alex Raymond impersonation on Hawkman; Bernard Baily does some really peculiar work on the Spectre; Howard Sherman does his typically weird, offbeat stuff (including the oddest lettering of the Golden Age) on Dr. Fate. The only real greatness here is the core concept of heroes getting together. As one can see from the hype surrounding next year's Avengers movie, that's still a concept with a lot of pop-cultural heft. Recommended.

Imaginary Gods in Real Gardens

Promethea Volume 2, written by Alan Moore, illustrated by J.H. Williams III, Jose Villarubbia, and Mick Gray (2000-2001): Moore's loopy, brain-twisting, gorgeously illustrated metasuperheroine series continues, as fictional god Promethea and her human host Sophie Bangs learn more about how magic works, and what the nebulous realm of the Immateria really is in relation to the material world.

The whole thing basically plays like Neil Gaiman's The Sandman on magic mushrooms...or maybe peyote...as written by someone who really does believe in, and practice, magic. After we finish our tour of Promethea's past incarnations, Moore takes us on a jaunt through the history and theory of magic, and the history and theory of Everything as represented by the 22 face cards of the Tarot deck. You don't have to believe this stuff to enjoy it.

Moore's probably the only comic-book writer alive who can make what amounts to a crazy-ass essay about the Tarot deck both enthralling and dramatically satisfying. Magician Jack the Faust gets fleshed out more (somewhat literally), looking for all the world like an extremely weathered Harvey Pekar. We also find out that the private parts of a goddess have sparkly stars floating around them. Good to know. You never can tell when knowledge like that can come in handy. Are those stars around your vagina or are you happy to see me? Boom! Highly recommended.

Golden Age Doctor Fate Archives Volume 1, written by Gardner F. Fox, illustrated by Howard Sherman and others (originally published 1940-44): Muscly superheroes and supervillains are often captains; magical superheroes and supervillains are often doctors: so goes the unwritten code of the Golden and Silver Age superhero comic book, with the necessary caveat that there are exceptions (Flash villain Captain Cold being one of those exceptions that prove the rule).

Doctor Fate has one of the great Golden Age, four-colour superhero costumes, all blue and yellow with the yellow standing in (we assume if we're grounded in representational four-colour coding) for gold. He begins life as a sort of science magician, using "lost secrets of the Chaldeans and Egyptians" that are really super-science to battle an array of quasi-supernatural foes.

Fate's golden, full-head helmet stays exclusively on for the first year-and-a-half of his adventures, only coming off when he finally reveals his secret origin to oddly named gal-pal Inza Carmer. The removal of the helmet does not bode well, as Fate quickly gains a new half-helmet (the top half, btw) and a much less interesting career as a two-fisted crime fighter whose primary opponents are gangster types who wouldn't be out of place in a Batman and Robin story from the same era.

Then Fate (real name: Kent Nelson) becomes a 'real' doctor, by which we mean medical doctor and not Ph.D., loses his cape somewhere, and slouches towards a 17-year hiatus from superheroing. The first third of the book, in which Fox exhibits his love of 1930's science fiction and horror, is terrifically entertaining; after that, only the appearances of Professor Hugo Strange-like Mr. Who are really interesting beyond a historical sense. One of the oddest things about early Fate is that nowhere in these stories is there much support for later characterizations of Doctor Fate as a sentient, god-like helmet with a person pretty much just along for the ride. There's the real mystery. Recommended.

Golden Age Plastic Man Archives Volume 2, written and illustrated by Jack Cole (1943-44): With all due respect to Will Eisner and company's The Spirit, Jack Cole's Plastic Man is the greatest superhero comic of the 1940's, and one of the ten best of all time. Maybe five best. Cole's talent was only matched by his life-long dissatisfaction with being a comic-book writer/artist, and once he made the "big time" of slick magazine cartoons and a syndicated comic strip, he would try to minimize his comic-book days in his CV.

But more than fifty years after his somewhat mysterious death, Cole's enduring legacy is that comic-book work on Plastic Man. It burns with the hard, gem-like, crazy-ass flame that denotes real art, absolutely serious in its committment to anarchy, hilarity, thrills, and the often untapped potential of the comic-book panel and comic-book page.

'Plastic' in this case comes from its original meaning -- fluid, changeable, protean -- and not how we understand the word now; Cole was originally going to go with 'India Rubber Man' until someone pointed out that this was the stupidest superhero name ever. Unlike later stretchable heroes that include the Fantastic Four's Mr. Fantastic and DC's risibly named Elongated Man, Plastic Man stretched and compacted to almost absurdist degrees -- he could compact himself to the size of a rubber ball, or alter his appearance.

Somewhat presciently, he was also the first superhero that I know of to work for a government agency (in this case, the FBI). His adventures had serious consequences, with murder and mayhem abounding, and yet it was all delivered with an anarchic, light-hearted flair: it's almost like one is looking at the model for much later pop culture confections such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in which comedy and melodrama co-exist productively.

In any case, this is serious fun: it zips by, effortless to read, overstuffed with strange and comic images, a work of unduplicated genius from a genius who seemed to actually despise what he had created. As real-world Frankenstein stories go, it's a doozy. Highest recommendation.