{"id":2581,"date":"2016-11-01T11:13:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-01T18:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comic-con.org\/toucan\/?p=2581"},"modified":"2024-01-09T11:16:33","modified_gmt":"2024-01-09T19:16:33","slug":"maggies-world-046-retreads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comic-con.org\/toucan\/maggies-world-046-retreads\/","title":{"rendered":"Maggie\u2019s World 046: Retreads"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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MAGGIE’S WORLD BY MAGGIE THOMPSON<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maggie\u2019s World 046: Retreads<\/h1>\n\n\n
Maggie Thompson<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Travel back with me now \u2026 back \u2026 back \u2026 back \u2026 55 years \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Autumn 1961<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

School had started. Among the attention-getting new series released then was one cover-dated November. How did some of us react?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, when Don and I prepared the second issue of our Comic Art<\/em>, in the issue\u2019s closing remarks, Don wrote a brief couple of paragraphs headed \u201cThe Current Scene.\u201d They read:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[In Showcase #34 (September 1961)] <\/em>DC has revived, in totally different form, yet another old-time costume hero, \u2018The Atom.\u2019 This version owes more to \u2018Dollman\u2019 than the old \u2018Atom.\u2019 I no like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What if they were sister and brother? This Invisible Scarlet O\u2019Neil story was reprinted in\u00a0Black Cat Comics<\/em>\u00a0#24 (August 1950) from earlier newspaper publication. \u00a9 2016 Invisible Scarlet O\u2019Neil \u201cThe Sentence of Death!\u201d with The Human Torch (and Toro) appeared in\u00a0Human Torch<\/em>\u00a0#22 (Spring 1946). \u00a9 2016 Marvel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJoe [Yeah, ouch!] <\/em>Kirby and Stan Lee have revived, again in different form, \u2018The Human Torch,\u2019 with this version appearing as part of \u2018The Fantastic Four\u2019 in a comic book of that title. Other members: Mister Fantastic (derived, minus humor, from Plastic Man), Invisible Girl (similar to Invisible Scarlet O\u2019Neil) and The Thing (derived from the current crop of comic book monsters). I don\u2019t like this one, either.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So there you are. As comics fandom was beginning to get under way, we were not overwhelmed by some of the attempts to revitalize super-heroes for a new generation. Darn that Joe Kirby, anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Retreads<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n
Invisible Scarlet O\u2019Neil<\/strong><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Created, written, and drawn by former Chester Gould assistant Russell Stamm, the daily newspaper strip began June 3, 1940. In a laboratory event, O\u2019Neil became invisible but developed a way of turning visible again\u2014and quickly began to have more adventures. Historian Ron Goulart commented, \u201cAn invisible heroine might have been an opportunity to save on drawing for some, but not Stamm. He drew Scarlet even when she was not supposed to be seen, making her seem more transparent than invisible.\u201d Her newspaper adventures continued into the mid-1950s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Human Torch<\/strong><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Marvel Comics<\/em> #1 (October 1939) cover-featured a threatening Human Torch by Frank R. Paul, but the story\u2014created, written, and drawn by Carl Burgos\u2014introduced the character as a science-created android who soon figured out a way to control his flame. Within a year (in a story also by Burgos), The Torch got a human kid sidekick (named Toro), who just happened to be able to burst into flame. Adventures ensued with some moments of hiatus until about 1954.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Instead of Woozy Winks, what if the stretchy guy had a Marvel monster type as a buddy? \u201cOverworked Genie!\u201d appeared in\u00a0Police Comics<\/em>\u00a0#56 (July 1946). \u00a9 2016 DC Comics \u201cColossus Lives Again\u201d was published in\u00a0Tales of Suspense\u00a0<\/em>#20 (August 1961). \u00a9 2016 Marvel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Plastic Man<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Police Comics<\/em> #1 (August 1941) introduced a number of characters, among them Plastic Man in a story created, written, and drawn by Jack Cole. Eel O\u2019Brian was a crook, who, soaked in acid, developed the ability to stretch and turned over a new leaf to fight crime. His morphing ability was often used for gags\u2014his identity usually revealed to the reader by the retention of a red outfit with a black-and-yellow belt. The last issue of Quality\u2019s Plastic Man<\/em> was #64 (November 1956).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kirby Monsters<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

When did they start? Late 1950s? I\u2019m not going to try to nail it down. They didn\u2019t go away, of course, but they morphed in service of the new team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Onward!<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Mind you, we\u2019d worked past some of that initial dislike and had mellowed a bit by our next issue, produced a few months later. \u201cJack Kirby, whose co-creative efforts are discussed by Herb Beach in this issue, has teamed up with Stan Lee to produce some singularly uninspired comic books dealing with trite monsters with ridiculous names such as Krag, Gorm and (so help me) Fin Fang Foom. Jumping on the bandwagon, they have created two comics dealing with super-heroes. The first, The Fantastic Four<\/em> was panned here last issue. The panning is reaffirmed, albeit more mildly. Despite the fact that two of the four title characters (Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Girl) are less than useless, a sharp improvement in the characterizations of The Thing and The Human Torch brings the book to the fringe of readability. Bringing back the Sub-Mariner helped, too.\u201d We weren\u2019t blown away by the second Marvel superhero series\u2014The Hulk<\/em>\u2014so there\u2019s that. (In contrast, Don singled out the second and third tryouts for The Atom for praise and suggested three other DC characters worth following: Green Lantern, The Flash, and Hawkman.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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All together now! Retreads become the title characters in\u00a0The Fantastic Four<\/em>\u00a0#1 (November 1961). \u00a9 2016 Marvel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Heck, even the concept of the FF itself was a retread of putting together a team of an assortment of differently powered supers. It came more than two decades after a bunch of superheroes in DC\u2019s All-Star Comics<\/em> finally joined forces after getting to know each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was clearly a time of retreads. Superman had been introduced in 1938 and had evolved but without a break, but a new version of The Flash had sped into the Silver Age in 1956\u2014introducing reboots fewer than two decades after superheroes first became A Comic-Book Thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The advantage of producing a retread is that the creators can pick what they consider the best aspects of what has gone before; the disadvantage is that the readers may gripe that the new creators have Messed Things Up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The More Things Change \u2026<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s been going on for a long time. Even the Golden Age itself had accustomed comics fans to a certain amount of variation in tales with which they were familiar. When Frank Coghlan turned into Tom Tyler in Republic\u2019s Adventures of Captain Marvel<\/em>, kids in the know in 1941 accepted Billy Batson\u2019s meeting Shazam in the course of an expedition to Siam\u2014rather than in a city subway system. And that was only about a year after Whiz Comics<\/em> had brought him to newsstands, regularly reiterating the \u201chow\u201d and \u201cwhy\u201d of his origin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it is that, while some among today\u2019s critics may complain that the white character shouldn\u2019t be rebooted as black, the old mystical Asian guy shouldn\u2019t be played by a younger-looking white woman, the\u2014 Yeah, I could just go on. Anyway, we long-timers got used to these sorts of changes more than half a century ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So here\u2019s to 55 years of the FF\u2014and to the retreads waiting to entertain us in the future!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Maggie\u2019s World by Maggie Thompson appears the first Tuesday of every month here on<\/em> Toucan!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Written by<\/p>\n\n\n

Maggie Thompson<\/div>\n\n\n

Published<\/p>\n\n\n