Review: "Man-God!" by Roy Thomas and Tony DeZuniga

The Young All-Stars was not the first time Roy Thomas had adapted Philip Wylie's Gladiator for comics. In 1976, he scripted a 52-page adaptation of the novel that was illustrated by Tony DeZuniga in atmospheric black and white. Despite the fact that the story was published by Marvel, it's easy to imagine it fitting into the continuity Thomas established in Young All-Stars. In fact, DeZuniga draws Hugo Danner with a white streak in his hair, evidently patterned after how Joe Shuster drew "The Superman" on the cover of an otherwise lost 1933 comic book (you can see a copy of the cover here), though probably on that cover the white is just meant to indicate a glare from a light source. It's fitting: a proto-Superman drawn to resemble a proto-Superman. The artists on Young All-Stars would draw Hugo Danner and his son Arn "Iron Munroe" Munroe the same way. (DeZuniga actually drew a couple issues of YA-S, but not, I think, any that Hugo Danner actually appears in.)

Anyway, how is the actual comic? Roy Thomas is, you know, gonna Roy Thomas. Obviously the premise prevents him from packing the page with continuity, but one definitely gets the feeling that Thomas is more interested in Hugo's superpowers than he is Hugo as a character. In the novel, Hugo's college years especially are a source of deep emotion, as he struggles to find his place as a young man; here, it seems like Thomas is trying to speed through them so he can show off Hugo doing super-things during the first World War. The way Hugo left his girlfriend was sad and tragic in the novel, but she barely resonates here.

What does work is Tony DeZuniga. DeZuniga has long been a favorite of mine, since I first came across his work in DC's 1970s horror comics; his lavish work on The Secret House of Sinister Love especially impressed me. Those comics were originally color but presented in black and white in the Showcase Presents editions I read them in, and my guess was they probably looked better in moody black and white than their actual original appearances. All that is to say that though his color work is always good, black and white is definitely DeZuniga's métier, and a comic designed to be in black and white is even better than ones that only ended up that way inadvertently. He makes great use of shading, and the lack of color is especially effective in the sequences set during the Great War, lending them a grimness despite Thomas's focus on the vaguely superheroic antics.

The adaptation was, alas, incomplete; the second half of the novel was promised for a later installment of Marvel Preview but it never came to pass even though the title lasted another four years. If you have an interest in Gladiator, though, and/or if you like Tony DeZuniga as an artist, this is worth tracking down. (I got a used copy for $3.60, so it's not exactly hard to come by.)

(I could be mistaken, but I actually think that with this story, I say goodbye to Roy Thomas. As far as I know, The Young All-Stars and Secret Origins were his last JSA/Earth-Two works for DC Comics, except for All-Star Comics 80-Page Giant, which I already read out of publication order. For a decade, he shaped the JSA's role at DC, and even though he will never be in the pantheon of great writers of dialogue, and his continuity predilection sometimes annoyed me, his contribution to the idea of the JSA as a heroic legacy shaped the JSA's role in the DC universe for the next two decades, and is what made me want to undertake this whole project to begin with. He might be the man who had to kill the JSA off, but he also gave them a way to maintain their relevance even in a post-Crisis universe. Go Roy!)

"Man-God!" originally appeared in issue #9 of Marvel Preview (Dec. 1976). The story was written and edited by Roy Thomas and illustrated by Tony DeZuniga.

 

This post is a supplement to a series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers volume 2 of Justice Society of America. Previous installments are listed below:

1. All Star Comics: Only Legends Live Forever (1976-79)
2. The Huntress: Origins (1977-82)
3. All-Star Squadron (1981-87)
4. Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume One (1983-84)
5. Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume Two (1984-85)
6. Showcase Presents... Power Girl (1978)
7. America vs. the Justice Society (1985)
8. Jonni Thunder, a.k.a. Thunderbolt (1985)
9. Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 7 (1983-85)
10. Infinity, Inc. #11-53 (1985-88) [reading order]
11. Last Days of the Justice Society of America (1986-88)
12. All-Star Comics 80-Page Giant (1999)
13. Steel, the Indestructible Man (1978)
14. Superman vs. Wonder Woman: An Untold Epic of World War Two (1977)
• Wonder Woman: Earth-Two (1977-78)
15. Secret Origins of the Golden Age (1986-89)
16. The Young All-Stars (1987-89)
17. Gladiator (1930)
18. The Crimson Avenger: The Dark Cross Conspiracy (1981-88)
19. The Immortal Doctor Fate (1940-82)
20. Justice Society of America: The Demise of Justice (1951-91)
21. Armageddon: Inferno (1992)