THE SANDMAN
My first Sandman was the 1940s DC hero, his gas-masked face first shown to me on the cover of Justice League Of America # 47. That was also the first issue of JLA I had ever seen, spied on the spinner rack at a grocery store in Aurora, Missouri during the summer of 1966. The summer of BATMAN! As a six-year-old on vacation, I was allowed to pick one twelve-cent four-color treasure off the rack to have for my very own. I was torn between this, the latest Batman, and an issue of Marvel's Tales To Astonish. Mom said to buy the Batman and be done with it. Thus was my introduction to The Sandman deferred.
That issue was, of course, one of the annual summer team-ups of the Justice League and their alternate Earth counterparts The Justice Society of America. I followed the JLA/JSA crossovers with religious devotion from 1967 on. The Sandman made a cameo appearance in the first part of the 1968 crossover (JLA # 64), which must have been the first time I saw the character. Even though he wasn't used all that much, The Sandman quickly became one my favorite JSA heroes, and I immediately wished that I could see more of him.
(And, although I preferred The Sandman in his original Green Hornet-inspired wardrobe of green business suit and a gas mask [plus cape], I did very much enjoy reprints of the Joe Simon-Jack Kirby version, decked out in traditional skintight superhero costume, proudly presented in early '70s issues of The Forever People.)
THE SEVEN SOLDIERS OF VICTORY
In the late '60s, DC Comics published a series of text pages called "Fact Files." These pieces told the back stories of various DC characters from the '40s, and they were my introductions to Sargon the Sorcerer, Tarantula, and The Seven Soldiers of Victory. The Fact File for The Seven Soldiers of Victory stirred an interest beyond any of the others: a super team I didn't know! Of its members, I was familiar with Green Arrow and Speedy, of course, but the others--The Vigilante, The Shining Knight, The Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy, The Crimson Avenger, and unofficial eighth Soldier Wing--were all new to me. A gorgeous Murphy Anderson pinup page of these Law's Legionnaires (published in the giant-sized Justice League Of America # 76 in 1969) served to further whet my appetite to read the adventures of The Seven Soldiers of Victory.
The Vigilante returned as a guest star in a two-part JLA story in 1970, though I only saw the cover for the first part and a coverless copy of the second part at the time. In 1972, the original Seven Soldiers of Victory returned for a three-parter in JLA # 100-102, another JLA/JSA crossover that remains my favorite Justice League story. A pair of JLA 100-Page Super Spectaculars in 1974 reprinted one of the team's original Golden Age stories, and a previously-unused '40s SSOV script was assigned to new artists to run as a back-up strip in Adventure Comics. The entire 1940s Seven Soldiers of Victory chronicles were eventually reprinted in a series of three DC Archives hardcovers. Of course I own them all. Victory at last!
THE SILVER SURFER
House ads in 1960s comic books were both a treat and a tease, enticing me with tempting images of far, far more comic books than I was ever going to be able to own as a kid. I don't remember seeing Fantastic Four # 55 in any stores in 1966, but I remember seeing its cover in a Marvel Comics house ad, and thinking a six-year-old's equivalent of COOL! I don't think I saw The Silver Surfer in an actual comic book until he got his own title in 1968.
In the mean time, following that house ad for FF # 55, my first real exposure to the character was in the animated Fantastic Four TV series, which adapted the story of Galactus and his spacefaring herald. In the summer of 1970, I had the chance to read all of the original comic book stories when my sister's boyfriend gave me all of his old comics. Surf's up!
THE SPIDER
Nostalgia was big in the '70s, and this boom in the art of looking back gave me all manner of opportunities to discover superheroes and adventurers from the '30s and the '40s. I fell hard for 1930s pulp heroes, especially Doc Savage and The Shadow. I believe I first read about The Spider in Steranko's amazing two-volume reminiscence The Steranko History Of Comics. Since Marvel and DC had respectively licensed Doc Savage and The Shadow for new comic books, I hoped one or the other would also see fit to revive The Spider. But it was not to be.
So, after Steranko taught me about The Spider, and after I saw some photos from the two '30s/'40s Spider movie serials in the pages of Screen Thrills Illustrated, my first chance to experience the action-packed (and bloodthirsty) adventures of The Spider was in a paperback reprint of one of the original pulp stories. I adored superpulp paperbacks as a teenager, and snapped up a copy of the Spider novel Death Reign Of The Vampire King in 1975. The cover art depicted The Spider as a more generic paperback adventure guy, rather than the strangely-garbed mystery man of the pulps, but it was The Spider, Hadda start somewhere.
SPY SMASHER
Ah, Spy Smasher was a hero to me long before I ever had a chance to see him in any sort of adventure. Like The Spider (but earlier in my timeline), my interest in Spy Smasher was ignited by the comics histories I was absorbing in the '70s. My first glimpse (and probably first awareness) of Spy Smasher was in the book All In Color For A Dime, and its full-color reproduction of the cover of Spy Smasher # 1 from 1941.I saw the book on the shelf at World Of Books in North Syracuse some time in the early '70s, flipped through its pages, and I was hooked on all of these heroes of the past.
My interest in Spy Smasher was subsequently reinforced when I learned that--like his comrade the original Captain Marvel--he'd starred in his own movie serial in the '40s. More comics histories (especially the Steranko books) continued to feed this interest. Other than his part in the 1976 JLA/JSA crossover (JLA # 135-137) and the reprint of his first appearance in DC's tabloid reproduction of Whiz Comics # 2, I didn't get to read an actual Spy Smasher comic book until years later, nor see his serial until decades later. But I was and remain a fan. It all started with All In Color For A Dime.
STAR WARS
To paraphrase both Josie & the Pussycats and TV ads for Virginia Slims cigarettes: we've come a long way, baby. In these days of summer movie blockbuster events, it seems a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away that such things didn't exist. In the '70s, my friends and I all saw lots of movies in the summer, but the idea of any individual popcorn flick becoming a pop culture flashpoint was...well, fantasy.
Until Star Wars rewrote the rules in 1977. I can't tell you objectively if the movie holds up now, but when I was 17, freshly graduated from high school? Star Wars was unlike anything any of us had ever seen. I knew comic books and science fiction, from the most basic space opera through attempts at more intelligent and mature storytelling, Buck Rogers to Harlan Ellison. I'd seen the first Flash Gordon movie serial, doted on TV reruns of Star Trek, ogled Valerie Perrine in the film version of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, turned my nose up at Space: 1999. I wanted more. I wanted serious science fiction and high adventure.
Star Wars was definitely not serious science-fiction, but it was the full-screen realization of every pulp, serial, and superhero fantasy up to that point. Good versus evil, confident in its cosmic skin, with none of the self-consciously campy ooze that characterized so much of '70s genre films (lookin' at you, Doc Savage: Man Of Bronze). It was fun, it was fascinating, and everyone I knew saw it several times. The dawn of the era of the summer blockbuster was upon us.
But the film was not my introduction to Star Wars. I had picked up the first issue of Marvel's licensed Star Wars comic book, written by Roy Thomas and illustrated by Howie Chaykin. The first issue was cover dated July 1977, but it was on the stands months before that, and I believe several issues had been published before the film's opening scroll promising CHAPTER IV: A NEW HOPE appeared on any theater screen. I don't think I was quite blown away by the comic book, but it was interesting enough that I stuck with it for a little while. And when a bunch of us made plans at Faith Berkheimer's graduation party to see that new sci-fi movie opening the following week, I was the only one of my pals to already know a thing or two about Luke Skywalker and company.
And still, I had no idea how big Star Wars would be. I've yet to see any of director George Lucas's prequel movies, and I've only seen one of the latter-day Star Wars efforts (The Force Awakens, which I did enjoy). But those first three Star Wars movies were events, the precursor to the Marvel movies of today. Pass the popcorn. May the Force be with you.
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