Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
...
in the DC Silver Age
(Part 2)
Another such hastily-improvised super-hero duo -- redoubtable Golden Age stalwarts Starman (who channeled "stellar energy" through a "Cosmic Rod" of his own invention) and the Black Canary (a martial arts mistress supreme, who -- inexplicably -- chose to make fishnet stockings an integral part of her crime-fighting ensemble) was, perhaps, marginally less interesting... but benefited from the same exciting and meticulously-detailed artistic renderings (of Silver Age artist extraordinaire Murphy Andserson) as did the Dr. Fate/Hourman tag-team [see accompanying cover].
(One noteworthy aspect of the Starman/Black Canary stories, however, was the re-introduction -- into Silver Age canonical "lore" -- of classic Golden Age nemesis the Mist: a calculating madman who utilized a "potion of invisibility" to often diabolical ingenuity and effect. The character has often been utilized by successive writers since then -- most notably in the modern-day STARMAN title, where the original character's son now carries on his father's super-heroic legacy -- and often with considerable storytelling success, as a result.)
.. and -- speaking (as we were, scant moments ago)of the Black Canary: she eventually migrated from her "Earth" to our own (upon the death of her husband, reporter Larry Lance) and joined up with the aforementioned Justice League of America, winning herself a firecely devoted "cult" fan following amongst the readership in so doing.
Over the ensuing years, various writers have attempted to "modernize" the character (giving her additional super-powers; a spandexed "love interest" in the person of fellow JLAer Green Arrow; frequent -- and, frequently, ludicrous -- costume changes; and so on, and so forth)... but the character appears all but impervious to the changing fashion dictates of an increasingly-fickle fan readership.
No matterhow far any given curator of the character may have her stray from her baseline conceptualization... sooner or later, the original article (fishnets and all) returns once more... and that much, at least (in the eyes of her afficianados) is right with the world, once more.
Possibly the most successfully revitalized of all theGolden Age characters, however -- given the number of times he's held his own ongoing series in one venue or another, with varying degrees of artistic and/or commercial success -- was the bleak, unsmiling ghostly avatar known only as: the Spectre.
As the accompanying covers below reveal, the character has been treated with varying degrees of High-Minded Seriousness vs. High Camp over the years... but certain fundamentals remain constant.
Formerly a normal, flesh-and-blood police detective by the name of Jim Corrigan -- who was ruthlessly eliminated, gangland-style, by a crime boss whose illicit activities he had followed (in retrospect) perhaps just a shade too assiduously -- the Spectre was the Spirit of Vengeance, incarnate. Granted his powers by none other than God himself (which -- let's face it -- is one heck of a mandate, any way you care to slice it), he roamed the earth in search of injustices gone unredressed, and -- inevitably -- visited ruinous retribution upon those found guilty within his sight.
A wordabout those "powers" of his, by the way: given that the Spectre was -- for all practical intents and purposes -- omnipotent (he could travel instantaneously through time and/or space; create and transform matter into any semblance or substance of his choosing; was invulnerable to practically everything in the known universe; etc.), the writers were forced to come up with a particularly clever means by which the character could be rendered "manageable." To wit: the Spectre -- for all of his god-like puissance -- was completely and thoroughly vulnerable, so long as he was incarnate in his fleshly "secret identity" of the mysteriously resurrected Jim Corrigan. (I place the quotation marks around that phrase because -- over the years -- there appears to have been some confusion on the parts of one or more successive writers as to whether or not the Spectre was, in fact, Corrigon's own "ghost"... or, rather, a ghost who chose to inhabit. for mysterious reasons of his own.
As with so many other such conundrums inmodern-day comics "continuity": which one you swear allegiance to is -- ultimately -- a matter of personal preference.)
("Continuity," by the way -- for those of you reading this who may not be stone comics junkies -- means, in this instance, the quaint folles de many that each and every published story and/or appearance of every comics character for any given company -- no matter how wildly contradictory or numbskulled -- Should and Must "interlock" with every other published appearance of said character, in a seamless, unifying and glitch-free "whole."
Given that even comics involving the same title(s) are frequently conceived of, created and published by different writing, art and editorial teams -- often with "takes" on the character(s) in question as wildly variegated as jungle flora -- this belief, in practice, proves roughly as tenable as the notion that if one is wearing a bathtowel "cape" while leaping from the roof of the garage, one Can and Should float downwards, unharmed, as if eiderdown.)
To end (for now, anyway) this reverie with a personal favorite Golden Age "revitalization"... there was the decidedly odd but in a fun sense, surely) example of DC's quasi-"Wild West" super-hero: the Vigilante.
Tricked up in stereotypical "cowboy" gear -- complete with Stetson hat and a red bandana masking his identity, "B"-movie western style -- the self-styled "Prairie Peacekeeper" strapped six-guns to his hip and scooted amongst the sagebrush on a motorcycle, seeking out the modern-day equivalent of the old-time "owlhoot" upon which he could demonstrate his marksman- ship and pugilistic skills.
You may well deride such a concept as (depending upon your relative degree of charity in such matters) "cute"; "childish"; or "blatantly ludicrous"... but it was precisely such elements as these, I submit, which went so far as to explain (at least, in some measure) the fundamental appeal of so many of the classic Golden Age super-heroes. One loses sight of the essential truth -- that the super-hero adventure story is, at base, nothing more than a wish-fulfilment "fairy tale" -- at one's own risk, after all.
It's one thing, surely, to accord these characters their requisite portion of "respect"; another thing, entire, to forget -- in so doing -- that they're also meant to be fun, as well.
GOLDEN AGE DC HEROES in the Silver Age
PAGE ONE (Flash,
Green Lantern, Dr. Fate and Hourman)
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