The Adventures Of Superman!

Superman looks singularly heroic but still quite human in the drawing by Steve Ditko above. It was produced for an anniversary celebration of the Man of Steel. Though not technically an "atomic hero", I plan to revisit the most famous superhero, one powered by the radiation of our Sun itself. 

I want to look at the absolutely exquisite cartoons produced in the early 40's by the Fleischer and Famous Studios for Paramount. I'm always blown away by the craftsmanship in these earliest of adaptations of the hero to the big screen. 

Superman gets a bit more real when Kirk Alyn is tapped to portray the hero in two movie serials from Columbia. The animation is still important as it is used to showcase Superman in flight. The first introduces the hero and the second pits him against Lex Luthor, who also doubles as the "Atom Man" of the title. 

 

Most of my time though will be spent revisiting the classic Superman TV show starring George Reeves. These wonderful vintage shows are among the most pleasant and heartwarming adaptations of the great DC hero. I haven't watched these in nearly a decade or more and it will be great fun to dive into them again. 

And if time permits, I also want to take a look at those early 60's Superman cartoons created by Filmation. These were, along with a few well-handled comic books, my introduction to the character. 

I'll be using the 1976 tome Superman - Serial to Cereal to give me some background insights to these shows as the month rolls along. I'll not be reviewing them, so as to keep the focus on Captain Atom and Doctor Solar, but below is a review I did some time back of my favorite George Reeves outing as Superman. 

If you forced me to pick a single Superman feature as my all-time favorite, Superman and the Mole Men would get the nod. I love this delightful introduction to the George Reeves Superman which functions very effectively as a fable of mankind's fear of the unknown.

The Mole Men are small people who rise up out of a oil well hole which has sunk too far down. They emerge and are deemed hostile as humans get injured around them through a combination of fear and the innate radiation which emanates from the creatures themselves. They explore the small town in which they emerge and are met with fear by adults and ease with a small girl who warmly welcomes them into her bedroom.

This scene of the Mole Men lurking around the window scared the bejeezus out of me when I was a youngster. It seems a pretty naive scene today, but back then I was most affected by it. I love to revisit that tiny terror memory when I watch this one over and over. Phyllis Coates is effective as Lois Lane, though she is a particularly bitchy version of the character. No other regulars from the eventual Superman series appear.

This is a very good entertainment and gets my highest recommendation. So up, up and away amigos. 

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Nuclear Fiction - Atomic Heroes!

This month is all about the mighty atom. Steve Diko's first superhero creation was Captain Atom. Joining forces with the indefatigable Joe Gill, Ditko created a hero born of his era in the 1960's, a time besotted with concerns and fascinations with atomic power. It was a time when atomic doom could arrive anytime, but also a time when naively folks thought that atomic power could create a future filled with wonders and with little or no cost. It was a dream and Captain Atom was born of that dream, a military man who was both destroyed and resurrected by an atomic blast. 

A few years later Gold Key designed and presented their own version of an atomic superman in the form of Doctor Solar - Man of the Atom. Like Captain Atom, Solar was subjected to lethal atomic energy, only to have that energy reconstruct him in impossible ways giving him vast powers but also isolating him from his fellow man. Expect weekly excursions into the long career of Doctor Solar as the month goes on. 

I've collected Captain Atom stories many times over. I have all of them in their original comic book form, which we will take a look at as the month rumbles along. But I will be reading rereading them in the sundry collections I have from DC Comics, Famous Comics and elsewhere. The Captain Atom stories, both the earliest yarns from the 60's and the later material from the middle of the decade have fascinating aspects to explore. 

I'll be using the Dark Horse reprint collections to read the Doctor Solar stories. Doctor Solar ran for quite a long time and was handled by some of the best comic artists of the time. I'm very much looking forward to diving into these again. 

So, this month should be fun as the Dojo lights up with atomic power. 

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The Return Of Gorgo - Ditko At Charlton 1961!

This collection titled The Return of Gorgo gathers together all of the fantasy work by Joe Gill and Steve Ditko produced during 1961. This is the year in which both Gorgo and Konga were launched. The team produced three Gorgo stories in this time as well as three Konga stories. Ditko drew three Gorgo covers and one Konga cover in that year. 

In addition, there are the remaining Captain Atom stories produced by the team, the last until the good Captain's revival some years later. (Much more on that next month.) We also get a nifty assortment of fantasy tales, most with a whimsical flavor. Ditko was working for Marvel at this same time, so his output in 1961 was incredible. It was about to get even more so in the coming year. But more on that later still. The volume also includes a biography of Joe Gill and an informative timeline of the work of Steve Ditko, some of it by Ditko himself. 

Below are the covers reprinted in this handsome volume from Famous Comics.  

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Kongo And Gorga Strike!

Konga and Gorgo make a cameo of sorts in 1990 in Marvel's Web of Spider-Man Annual #6. That appearance is Steve Ditko's final take on these two monsters in a story by fan of those 60's comics Tony Isabella. Renaming the two monsters "Kongo" and "Gorga", Isabella has the two Charlton giants appear as a product of the nigh unlimited power of Captain Universe, a power that endows various individuals with that power. This time in a story titled "Child Star" it's a kid who gets the power and he uses it to save the world from two demons. The page above shows the appearances of the Charlton monsters in their Marvelized forms. 

 

I read this story in the Captain Universe collection Marvel issued some years ago. 

Steve Ditko drew several Captain Universe stories. The character was a spin-off of The Micronauts series. 

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Ditko's Monsters!

Konga and Gorgo is a pretty nifty trick for two monsters who each starred in one-off feature B-movies over fifty years ago. They survive because each of them luckily fell into the nimble hands of Steve Ditko and Joe Gill, two yeoman talents who worked for the little comic company that could, Charlton. The latest package is a flip-cover affair from Yoe Books.

The two monsters met (sort of) for the first time when in celebration of the great Ditko, Charlton promoted him atop the two monsters in a special issue dubbed Fantastic Giants, another incredible one-off. That comic was one of my earliest acquisitions and no doubt contributes to my abiding love of monsters to this very day. That  special issue brought together the debut appearances of Konga and Gorgo alongside some spectacular horror short-stories drawn by Ditko.

Sadly the new package does include Gorgo #1 but for some reason doesn't give us Konga #1. We get some darn fine Konga stories from issues six and thirteen but the lack of the debut for me makes this handsome two-cover flip book a tiny bit of a disappointment. But that's very very tiny. This one is pure old-fashioned monster-loving fun.

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Charlton's Fantastic Giants!

Fantastic Giants #24 (t is a continuation of the numbering of Konga) was one of the earliest comic books I ever got my little mitts on and it's a book that has at its center not a character but an artist. Steve Ditko (shown enigmatically as a quasi-human ink bottle) is what this book is about, his artwork on some vintage projects as well as two new stories by the maker of so many fascinating Charlton yarns. 

Konga was of course once upon a time a movie and then Charlton adapted it to comic book form. Ditko drew the adaptation and many of the better Konga stories from the reasonably long run of the title. This volume showcases that wonderful Joe Gill written and Ditko drawn debut story. 

On the other side we have Gorgo, another very successful giant monster flick adapted by Charlton using the same team. The oddly touching tale of an enormous monster and her giant offspring taking a walking tour of London is exceedingly well told. Given the price of special effects, both the Konga and the Gorgo stories add to the luster of the cinematic renditions. 

In addition to the classic giant monsters we get a then-modern Ditko tale called "Mountain Monster" which might've fit into Ghostly Tales or The Many Ghosts of Dr. Graves, but is given special prominence here. This story written by Dave Kaler gives us Ditko at the top of his powers just as the lead character of this story is at the top of that mysterious mountain. 

And finally, there's the secret gem of this set, the other new story scripted by Dave Kaler called simply "With the Help of Hogar" which set in the depths of Africa offers Ditko the chance at a splash page, one of his best. Ditko didn't create impactful splash pages like his colleague Jack Kirby and but for Kirby might never have done. But when he was given the nod, he created some of my favorites such as the outstanding splashes in the first Spider-Man Annual and the debuts of the redesigned Captain Atom and Blue Beetle. This image above really lives up to the book's title, and gives us a "fantastic giant", a creature which seems to lumber out of the pages of a Lovecraft story brimming with utter weirdness. All this heady stuff indeed for a youngster just shaping his initial impressions of what comic book art should be. A Steve Ditko special indeed and the true "fantastic giant" in this tome is the artist himself.

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