Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
Okay: this is where I get to wax disgustingly nostalgic over all the great characters I couldn't convincingly shoehorn into any of the other pages.
Obviously, we have to start with the great-granddaddy of them all: the Man of Steel -- Superman.
By now,it's a cherished aspect of the Silver Age DC canon: how SUPERMAN editor Mort Weisinger would come up with the plots for the next month's worth of titles by gathering together his young children and all of their neighborhood chums -- all of whom, natch, were well-indoctrinated members of the faithful, re: Kryptonian lore -- and ask them: what do you think should happen in the next issue...?
The "up" side of this approach, of course, is immediately obvious: with the Superman stable of titles (SUPERMAN; SUPERBOY; ACTION COMICS; ADVENTURE COMICS; WORLD'S FINEST; LOIS LANE; and JIMMY OLSEN) so rigorously tailored to the juvenile tastes and concerns of their intended audience... the books all regularly sold in amounts that, quite often, equal what the entire monthly lines of DC or Marvel move nowadays.
"Pandering," of a sort, perhaps; certainly, it was asbrazen and shameless an attempt to subvert the creative process (in favor of financial gain) as has ever been witnessed in any medium, before or since. However: the sales figures for the Superman titles of the day -- all a matter of public record -- clearly indicate that the ten- and twelve-year-olds who comprised the bulk of the comics readership of the day dug 'em... and there's something to be said, surely, for Keeping the Customer Satisfied, year in and year out.
The down side, however, is as just as readily apparent (as the entirely representative covers of the period accompanying this text make manifest). The "tastes and concerns" of said juvenile audience were... well... juvenile. And whereas there's certainly nothing inherently shameful or wrong in a child's worldview reflecting his (relative) lack of storytelling savvy -- one mustn't demand old heads atop young shoulders, after all -- the end result, while professional and (frequently) entertaining, often seemed... well... cornball, I suppose, when held aloft alongside the Marvel comics of the day.
The SUPERBOY comic, of course, exulted in precisely the same pre-pubescent storytelling curiosities and fetishes as itsmore "grown-up" counterparts... and yet, they do not seem (even in retrospect) as antiquated or out-of-place here as they often do now, in the other SUPER-titles. Perhaps such fairy tale conceits as giant, alien jack-in-the-boxes, or robot schoolteachers from outer space, simply don't grate as badly when their heroic protagonist pals about regularly with a caped and flying uberdog; and whose greatest source of ongoing angst is the pretty little red-haired girl living next door who suspects he may be a super-powered prince in disguise.
In any event: once he began hanging out with the 30th century band of teenage adventurers known as "the Legion of Super-Heroes" on a regular basis... the entire question became, largely, an academic one. As improbable as it may have seemed at the time, the Superboy section of DC's "Super"-franchise (SUPERBOY and ADVENTURE COMICS) became the best-written and most ingenious of the "Krypton Korner"... and (often enough) of the entire DC line, as well.
The aptly-named Legion
was an entire phalanx of super-powered teens, hailing from an Earth 1,000 years
in the future. Pick a super-power -- any super-power -- and, chances
are, it was being adequately represented in the person of a Legionnaire: "super-magnetism" (Cosmic Boy)... "super-intelligence" (Brainiac 5)... even
such oddities as "super-inflating and bouncing" (the damned-near-close-to-useless
Bouncing Boy).
There were
so many things so impossibly right about those Silver Age LSH
stories -- the shiny and optimistic future in which both characters and
readers clearly reveled; the strong "science fiction" slant brought to the proceedings
by its authors; the incessant drumbeating of the themes of Teamwork, Shared
Responsibility and Exuberant Camaraderie which informed every panel and page
-- that, really, they couldn't help but win themselves an increasingly
devout (read: fanatical) following amongst the comics readership
of the day.
Perhaps the most admirable aspect of DC's LSH, however, was (and still is, to this day) its ongoing commitment to the promulgation of big-"D" Diversity... as in racial and/or ethnic.
Nearly every Legionnaire, you see, was an alien -- with the Earth of the 30th Century serving as a sort of high-tech Ellis Island for other-worldly representatives of every shade and stripe imaginable. Brainiac 5, for instance, was a wholly uncaucasian shade of green; the second Invisible Kid was a young black man; Shadow Lass was a totally fetching shade of blue; and Chameleon Boy was not only orange, but sported pointed ears and highly prominent attenae, as well!
The subtle
(and all the more powerful for it) underlying message in all of this, obviously,
was: in the future... Race. Doesn't. Matter. Valor,
Honor and Compassion, on the other hand... do.
It is a message which
has, alas, proven a bit too subtle for some, in these contentious times.
During the tail end of the Silver Age (i.e., the early 1970's), the LSH was graced by several superior artists (such as Mike Grell, and the underrated James Sherman)... but none of them so uniquely suited to the heady admixture of science fiction histrionics and slam-bang spandexed heroism as Dave Cockrum [see accompanying covers, above and below]. Redesigning the (by this point) stodgy costumes that had rendered most of the team's members looking oddly "retro" -- something of a disadvantage, surely, for a super-group intended to represent the far future -- Mr. Cockrum laid the groundwork for such (later) celebrated Legion interpreters as Steve Lightle and Keith Giffen.
OTHER CLASSIC DC/MARVEL
HEROES of the Silver Age
PAGE FIVE (More On THE
LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES)
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