Thunder Agents Archives Volume Seven!

I haven't the strength to revisit the whole meandering odyssey of the THUNDER Agents after their Tower days were done. The saga of their ownership is a confusing and at times quite dark tale. A chap named John Carbonaro got the rights from Tower to publish the T-Agents (although some say that those rights never existed and remained with Wally Wood and afterwards his estate -- it's murky). 

Carbonaro's first foray with the Agents was in the form of a black and white magazine which lasted exactly one issue. It was put together by Pat Gabriele and featured some decent art by Mark Texeira. The Adams and Kirby art advertised was vintage stuff from years gone by. It's not a sterling effort by any means, but it was new THUNDER Agents. 

Next Carbonaro took the Agents into the direct sales marketplace under his own brand of JC Comics. We got a few new tales of decent quality and a reprint series under the "Hall of Fame" title. The second issue featured a brand-new Steve Ditko cover starring Noman. 

Somehow this was tied into Archie Comics, and the short-lived run was finished under their banner in an issue of Blue-Ribbon Comics. This comic featured a new Noman story by Ditko. 

And that brings us to Deluxe Comics, the stories reprinted in the seventh and final volume of DC's THUNDER Agents Archives series. Another fellow named Dave Singer and former associate of Carbonaro claimed that the Agents were in public domain and set about to use them in a brand new spanking line despite Carbonaro's objections and eventual lawsuit. Singer seems to have been a dodgy character at best and though he promised big money to big name talents such as George Perez, Dave Cockrum, Keith Giffen, Steve Englehart and others his promises were more impressive than the reality. 

So after a couple of stunning issues the talent began to walk away and the books trudged along. There are some really sweet stories in these, such as nifty hard-edged Raven stuff from George Perez, fan-pleasing artwork from Dave Cockrum and some really weird but fascinating stuff about Lightning by Giffen. There is a definite grimness to some of it, but for the most part the characterizations rang true since most of the creators were drawn to the work by their fondness of the original Tower Comics. The storylines even recognized the old Tower days and built upon them. 

Some of the stuff had real fanboy appeal such as the exceedingly physical encounter between Dynamo and the Iron Maiden. The two had danced around one another in the 60's but here in the 80's that dance took a highly erotic turn, something the old Comics Code would not have approved of I have little doubt. Undersea Agent is incorporated into the T-Agents properly and after he's forced to be voyeur to the Dynamo-Maiden love scene he might have wanted to change his name to "Unsee Agent". 

Despite great covers right to the end, the books insides became less and less impressive. Though Perez is still around there is even in his art an unfinished quality. 

The fifth and final issue has some Jerry Ordway art and its quite handsome and the story picks up embers from the Tower days yet again, but it's too little to late. Other stories in this issue are not nearly so professional in their aspect and the writing seems to be handed off to lesser known names. Singer's venture falls apart even as his claim to the Agents turns to ashes in the courts. 

The THUNDER Agents tumble around for several more years becoming guest-stars in several Indy books before Carbonaro is able to land a deal (of sorts) with Bob Guccione's Penthouse outfit.

He has a guy named George Caragonne in charge of them now and he  proves another less than reliable fellow. There is a stunning story done with Paul Gulacy and Terry Austin but only the first chapter of three ever sees publication in an issue of Omni Comix due to the suicide of Caragonne among other factors. The Agents are in limbo yet again  until many years later DC picks them up and later still IDW takes a stab at them. 

A few more pages of the Gulacy material gets published in The THUNDER Agents Companion from Twomorrows but it's still less than satisfying not see the whole story, which may or may not still exist. This Twomorrows book has been a ton of fun to read as I've tumbled along with the Agents on this read. There are many many interviews and profiles of the talent involved with the creation of the T-Agents over the many years. The book is a bit out of date now having been published in 2005 or thereabouts. But it still makes one hunger for more good THUNDER Agents stories and I for one believe there are more of those to tell. 

Note: Only the Deluxe material and the single story for Omni Comix is included in this particular Archives edition. 

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The Futurians Day!

Dave Cockrum was born on yesterday's date in 1943. Cockrum was an active artist in the fan community of the 60's and an assistant to Wally Wood. He made his first big breakthrough in the back pages of Superboy on the Legion of Super-Heroes feature which soon took over the comic. Cockrum's redesigns of the classic characters was sleek and fascinating. He came over to Marvel and applied the same magic to The Uncanny X-men. One of his most personal projects was The Futurians which he both wrote and drew. 

If you're a fan of the X-Men and the Legion of Super-Heroes, you know that Dave Cockrum was the man largely responsible for the revived interest in both teams during the Bronze Age. He first redesigned the Legion for DC in the pages of Superboy, and then found himself at Marvel where he got to do pretty much the same thing with the X-Men. When Cockrum took over both teams, they were largely defunct, when he left them they were much much more successful. Cockrum left the X-Men and was replaced by John Byrne and the rest (as they often say of course) is history. But back to the Futurians. After Byrne left the X-Men, Cockrum was asked back. Here's what happened later in his own words:

"The only reason I left the book the second time was because I had previously put in a proposal for The Futurians. It sat on Jim Shooter's desk for about a year, and he finally said, "Yeah, you can do this if you want." I was in some doubt whether I should quit the X-Men and do that but I really wanted to do it. Chris and Louise Simonson, the editor, talked me into giving up the X-Men because they thought I was more enthused about The Futurians. That was probably the biggest mistake of my life! That was about the time they started paying the royalties and reprint money. It takes nine months after an issue goes on sale before you get a royalty check so I hadn't received one yet by the time I quit the X-Men. When the first one came it was $2000 right out of the air! I thought, "Geez!" And it got better, and from what I heard, people like Jim Lee were making $40,000 a month on royalties. (That's why they could afford to go off and start Image.) If I had known about that kind of money coming in (even the $2000 a month)you couldn't have pried me off that book with a crowbar. The Futurians was never that successful." (CBA Interview)

The Futurians showed up later at Lodestone, the ill-fated company that also revived the THUNDER Agents, and then there's a much later one-shot which was the up-to-then unpublished fourth issue of the series from Aardwolf which was produced at the time to some extent help out Cockrum with medical bills I believe.

Cockrum's designs largely informed the Bronze Age. They were at once sleek, elegant, and sexy. He was very good with younger heroes, as he did a handsome idealized youthful figure. Personally, I've always preferred Cockrum's X-Men to Byrne's but that's a close call. Certainly 

both men are much better than the talent that has handled the team since their heyday.

He was a great talent.

Apparently The Futurians have been revived for a modern comic. Here's a link. It doesn't have that magic though that Cockrum brought to the feature alas.

 

No matter when or where you found a Cockrum image, it was almost invariably smitten with delicacy and featured an idealized hero or heroine, especially the latter. Dave Cockrum broke into my consciousness when he took hold of the somewhat weary DC Legion of Super-Heroes series and injected it with some new fashions and once in a while new characters. It was a series for a hungry audience which leaped to embrace it and the popularity which the feature had once had, kindled again as these young heroes from the far far future eventually took control of Superboy's comic. Then,  Cockrum left it for greener pastures and allowed another stellar talent by the name of Mike Grell to make a name for himself.

Then it was Marvel which had young heroes of its own to revive and brought forth a new and as it turned out lasting assembly of Uncanny X-Men. Once again Cockrum was the darling of the fanboy set as he drew his marvelous and delightful costumes in stories which struck a chord. Eventually though Cockrum left it for greener pastures and allowed yet another stellar talent by the name of John Byrne to make a name for himself. Eventually Cockrum returned to the mutants and admitted in interviews that leaving might have been a career mistake, but there was no denying that Cockrum was a hit. Cockrum gave us a new Ms. Marvel, the lady currently heating up the theaters and revived at least for a bit. Eventually he gave us his own heroes dubbed The Futurians who tumbled around the Indy marketplace for a few years in an attempt for him to get more remuneration for his hard work. But as much a master of revivals as Cockrum was he couldn't overcome the challenge which we all face and he died much too young leaving a legacy of handsome smiling heroes in his wake.

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Seeker 3000!

This evocative and graceful 1978 Marvel Premiere cover by Dave Cockrum and Joe Sinnott dropped out of nowhere. The saga of Seeker 3000 immediately put me in the mind of those classic Star Trek adventures, a dynamic captain and his determined and varied crew in a sleek spaceship poised to cruise across the depths of space. That was doubtless intentional.

The actual comic book story by underrated scribe Doug Moench and painfully underrated artist Tom Sutton gives us something a bit stranger still. It's rather high-concept sci-fi. 

In 1998 Marvel decided to finally exploit this lost gem. First, they reprinted the story from Marvel Premiere #41 under a new cover by Andrew Currie and Art Nichols, which intentionally evokes the Cockrum original. This was done to promote the four-issue limited adventure written by Dan Abnett and Ian Edgington. Here is the complete cover gallery.

Apparently, the series never caught on, and these six comics are all that exist of the intriguing universe of Seeker 3000. I've never read the follow up stories, but I suspect they might be found in many a back issue bin. Might be worth the time, or perhaps not.

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Showcase Corner - Legion Of Super-Heroes Five!

The Legion of Super-Heroes had really been one of DC's more organic successes. The team started out in the late 50's in a one-off story guest-starring with Superboy in Adventure Comics, but soon they were showing up in Action Comics with Supergirl and more and more often in Adventure Comics, Superboy, and elsewhere. That led to their own feature in Adventure Comics, replacing Superboy's feature which had introduced them and they thrived, especially among the young fans of the 60's looking for a fresh take from DC. But as they grewand devleoped and added a seemingly endless cast of characters,  they also began to dwindle in popularity and gave over Adventure Comics to an updated Supergirl. They went on to take up residence in Action Comics, hidden behind the main Superman stories. Then they were shifted over to Superboy's main title and history began to repeat itself as they came to absorb it as well. Superboy was still a significant part of the proceedings but there was no doubt the Legion was the rising star.

DC also was not experimenting with different size comics featuring reprints but also offering up complete reprint comic books. The Legion of Super-Heroes was given a four-issue run which might've been an attempt to test the waters for a push into a title of their own or perhaps DC was just trying to defend its position on the spinner racks with the myriad Marvel comics hitting shelves in droves. Despite the long history of the Legion this was first self-titled series. 

That revival was largely the result of the art of Dave Cockrum. He came to the strip as an inker working with longtime DC great Murphy Anderson, but soon was doing all the art, and bringing some fresh design ideas to the series. 

The Legion was a wonderful Silver Age comic, but Cockrum tooled it to become a wonderful Bronze Age comic. New sleek costumes for heroes such as Colossal Boy, Shrinking Violet, Element Lad, Star Boy and many more. Cockrum had a knack for drawing young characters with fresh handsome faces. He gave Timberwolf a ferocious new look. And new legionnaire Wildfire was designed by him. One of his neatest contributions was giving the Legion a sleek new cruiser evocative of a certain enterprising starship from another franchise which had its ups and downs. In conjunction with writer Cary Bates, they made the Legion exciting again. But Cockrum was only there a little while before jetting over to Marvel to pull off a similar trick with a new set of X-Men. 

Mike Grell stepped in to fill his shoes and he did so wonderfully. Grell's work was not as sublimely elegant as Cockrum's, but it was more dynamic and a bit more exciting to read. His girls weren't as pretty, but they were sure pretty enough. In tandem with Bates and returning writer Jim Shooter, Grell made the Legion a must read. Heroes married, moved into new careers, and even died in these Legion stories, and the stakes were always seemingly higher than in other DC comics. With all of space and time to play with, it's no wonder the Legion of Super-Heroes became a hit all over again. 

Below are some of Cockrum's costume designs alongside some classics. 

The Legion was so successful in the 70's that Val Armorr, the Karate Kid was granted a spin-off title making late advantage of what Kung Fu craze was still left in 1976. Karate Kid featured art by Ric Estrada and one of my favorites Joe Staton. Paul Levitz wrote the initial scripts, his first connection to the Legion as far as I know. This story has the Kid shift his work to the 20th Century where he found life at once more challenging and more fulfilling, at least for a time. 

Here are the covers from this run on which the Legion appears. Many feature the creamy art of Nick Cardy. The rest are by Grell. 

And that wraps my month-long read of the Showcase Legion tales. I've been hankering to get to this one for a long time and it's a pleasure finally get it completed. These are fun stories which speak of their respective eras delightfully. 

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