30 Tuesday Jul 2013
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This week, we have a quartet of zany superhero tales from vintage issues of The Brave and the Bold to share with you. We found these scans while looking for something else entirely, but a few stories caught our eyes.
Today, the Atom and the Flash star in “The Challenge of the Expanding World.” The real stars of the story: bogus atomic science and a psychedelic journey through matter itself!
Collector’s Guide: From The Brave and the Bold #53; DC, 1964. Script by Bob Haney, art by Alex Toth.
22 Saturday Sep 2012
Posted in superhero
Tags
DC Comics Presents, end of time, Flash, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, Martin Pasko, Superman, superman races flash, superman vs flash, time travel, who is faster flash or superman
Here’s the second half of the story we looked at yesterday, where Superman and the Flash get roped into racing to the end of time by some freaky aliens.
Once they get there, though, they have to travel all the way forward in time to get back to where they started. Why? Because time is a circle! Didn’t you learn anything from yesterday’s post? Anyway, Pasko and Garcia-Lopez give us all of human history in a single splash page. It’s full-flavored Bronze Age DC goodness, Martians. Enjoy!
Collector’s Guide:
– From DC Comics Presents #1-2; 1978, DC Comics.
– Reprinted by Whitman, which might save you a few bucks, and in the collection Superman Vs. The Flash.
– Reprinted in Showcase Presents DC Comics Presents TPB, 2009.
21 Friday Sep 2012
Posted in first issue, superhero
Tags
Chase to the End of Time, DC Comics Presents, first issue, Flash, flash races superman, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, Martin Pasko, Superman, superman vs flash, time travel, who is faster superman or flash
Superman and the Flash get roped into racing to the end of time by some freaky aliens. If that doesn’t sound like a premise for greatness, you may be at the wrong website! We’ve got Martin Pasko scripting. Swamp Thing fans might recall he was on the book for the inception of the second volume. Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez really hits the perfect look for this book; just the right balance of cartoon silly and sci-fi awesome.
But maybe I’m biased. I first read this as an impressionable little Martians close to the time it came out in 1978. So impressionable, in fact, that Pasko’s explanation of time as a circle still seems completely reasonable to me. His aliens explain that if you went to the end of time, you would actually be at the beginning of time… Screw Stephen Hawking, I’m going with Pasko cosmology!
Collector’s Guide:
– From DC Comics Presents #1-2; 1978, DC Comics.
– Reprinted by Whitman, which might save you a few bucks, and in the collection Superman Vs. The Flash.
– Reprinted in Showcase Presents DC Comics Presents TPB, 2009.
19 Thursday Jul 2012
Posted in superhero
The death of Barry Allen, The Flash, in Crisis #8 marks the last time a mainstream superhero death meant anything – to us at least, and maybe you feel the same. Maybe you’re sick of everyone from Superman to Colossus coming back to life over and over again. (F@$& you, Jean Grey!!!) But here, in the ten-page scene we share with you today, Marv Wolfman and George Perez kill off the Flash like they mean it. For good. (Or at least for 23 years until the next Crisis thingie brought him back in 2008. Sigh.) And, they do it in a way that makes his death matter.
To say this scene affected us in 1985 would be putting it mildly. It burned an intense trajectory across our 12-year old brain. In fact, we used it to get into Drama Club in 7th grade. For the try-outs, we converted the scene into a monologue for Flash, giving it a ‘dramatic reading.’ We may not have been a great actor, but we could memorize lines like nobody’s business – and had no fear of the stage.
So, yeah, we got the lead in the first school play of 7th grade: a singing role as Rumplestiltskin. Not only did Barry Allen save the universe, he got us a part as a mad dwarf. This cemented our involvement in drama club throughout junior high. Thank you, Flash. Without your noble sacrifice, we would have never played Rumplestiltskin, Gandalf, a crazed serial killer, and a kid who dressed up as a maid to get the girl.
Come to think of it, Flash – if you could use your time powers and erase that last one for us, that’d be swell.
Collector’s Guide:
– From Crisis on Infinite Earths #8; DC Comics, 1985.
– Reprinted in Crisis on Infinite Earths Absolute Edition, 2005.
– Reprinted in Crisis on Infinite Earths Hardcover, 1998. Limited Edition, includes Poster and Slipcase.
– Reprinted in Crisis on Infinite Earths TPB, 2000.
Mars Will Send No More 