Review: Divas, Dames & Daredevils: Lost Heroines of Golden Age Comics by Mike Madrid

Comic trade paperback, 236 pages
Published 2013 (contents: 1940-48)

Acquired December 2013

Read June 2015

Divas, Dames & Daredevils: Lost Heroines of Golden Age Comics
compiled and annotated by Mike Madrid

I would never had guessed that the Golden Age of comics possessed such a wide range of female hero characters-- most of what's remained in the popular consciousness are fairly straightforward superheroes, like Wonder Woman, the Phantom Lady, or, uh, Firebrand*?

There are definitely superheroes here, but they are probably some of the less interesting heroines on offer. If you've ever read collections of any of the lesser Golden Age superheroes, like Sandman, you'll know what to expect: quick criminal plots wrapped up by personality-less characters. There are still some standouts, though, such as Mother Hubbard, an ugly witch who uses her powers to aid America in the war effort in a story by Bill Madden. Though her magic makes her so powerful there doesn't seem to be much that can stop her! I found most of the war comics similarly generic, though it was neat seeing all the different roles the women held, from super-spies to super-nurses.

There are also a number of tales here of fantasy and science fiction heroines: epic adventurers across time and space. For many of these, the individual tales here aren't so interesting as Mike Madrid's synopses of their publication history-- I want to know about the storied histories of Fantomah, Mystery Woman of the Jungle, who is at various points a goddess, a jungle queen, and an Egyptian ruler; Queen Camilla of the Lost Empire, who goes from being a warrior queen to a lost jungle girl; Gale Allen and the Girl Squadron, who fly through space battle pirates; and the Magician from Mars, exiled from her home planet by the evil Hood. They sound fascinating!

No, the real good stuff here comes in the tales of "everyday" women fighting the good fight against evil. Barbara Hall's "Introducing the Blonde Bomber" does exactly what the title implies, introducing Honey Blake, a newsreel camerawoman who is also a chemist, and uses her reporting and scientific powers to fight crime. Apparently she appeared regularly in a number of comics for about five years; I'd like to seek more of them out. There's also Jill Trent, Science Sleuth who battle crime with her friend/possible lesbian lover, here in the tale "The Freezer Ray!" by Ken Battefield and Frank Frazetta. I like these stories of women are captivating not (only) through their beauty, but through their intellectual superiority to every man around them!

Probably the best story in the book is by Bill Draut, who went on to have a successful career for DC in the Silver Age, especially in horror comics. The Calamity Jane tale "The Man Who Met Himself" has (like, apparently most Calamity Jane tales) an entertaining frame where Jane seeks out Draut to get her to illustrate her most recent adventure. Jane is very much a typical hardboiled detective... only she's a woman, and her condescending attitude to everyone she meets is terrific fun. This is another character I'd definitely seek out more adventures of... if I ever clear out my current backlog of digital comics to read! Since these stories are in the public domain now, most can be read for free online, and I suspect I would enjoy getting to explore this forgotten corner of comics history.

* Not an actual Golden Age heroine, apparently, much like the "original" Fury.

Review: Legion of Super-Heroes Archives, Volume 12

Comic hardcover, 239 pages
Published 2003 (contents: 1975-77)
Acquired November 2012
Read March 2014

Legion of Super-Heroes Archives, Volume 12

Writer: Jim Shooter, Cary Bates, Paul Levitz

Pencils: Mike Grell, Ric Estrada, Mike Nasser
Inks: Mike Grell, Bill Draut, Joe Staton, Bob Wiacek, Bob Layton

I enjoyed this more than volume 11 of Legion of Super-Heroes; the plots felt less insubstantial, the characters more rounded. I mean, some of these are just really not good (one of the stories is resolved via a machine that lets our heroes win by wishing they win, which they then just hide away; another is one of those aggravating stories where the Legion deceives a (potential) member for no good reason; and then there's the infamous one that "explains" the lack of black characters in this 1950s future by revealing the world's blacks all live on one isolationist island), but when it hits, it hits!

I particularly enjoyed "The Hero Who Wouldn't Fight!" (Cosmic Boy is the only member of the Legion available on a day where the people of his planet are forbidden from using their magnetic powers), "The Private Lives of Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel" (that Mike Grell art is probably illegal), "The Super Soldiers of the Slave-Maker" (the Legion tries to save a planet of slaves who don't want to be saved, requiring quick-thinking and heroism from Superboy and especially Phantom Girl), and "We Can't Escape the Trap in Time!" (which has some cool panel transitions). More of the stories in this volume seem to have involved real thought to write, which makes a nice change over volume 11. Nothing amazing perhaps (those days are yet to come), but good outer-space adventure.

Faster than a DC Bullet: The Houses of Mystery and Secrets, Part III: Showcase Presents The House of Secrets, Volume One

Comic trade paperback, 541 pages
Published 2008 (contents: 1969-72)
Borrowed from the library
Read October 2013

Showcase Presents The House of Secrets, Volume One

Written by Mike Friedrich, Gerard Conway, Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, Steve Skeates, John Costanza, Robert Kanigher, Raymond Marais, Jack Kirby, Mark Evanier, Virgil North, Sergio Aragonés, Lore Shoberg, John Albano, Jack Oleck, Mark Hanerfeld
Art by Jerry Grandenetti, George Roussos, Bill Draut, Jack Sparling, Werner Roth, Vince Colletta, Dick Dillin, Neal Adams, Dick Giordano, Alex Toth, Mike Royer, Mike Peppe, Sid Greene, Jack Abel, Don Heck, Ralph Reese, John Costanza, Gil Kane, George Tuska, Gray Morrow, Ross Andru, Mike Esposito, Michael Wm. Kaluta, Frank Giacoia, Rick Buckler, Wally Wood, Sam Glanzman, Murphy Anderson, Bernie Wrightson, Alan Weiss, Tony Dezuniga, Jim Aparo, Sergio Aragonés, Nick Cardy, Lore Shoberg, Bernard Baily, Joe Maneely, Nestor Redondo, Bill Ely, John Prentice, Ralph Mayo, Jose Delbo, Mike Roy, Adolfo Buylla

The House of Secrets begins with a fairly lengthy (for this kind of comic, anyway) origin story for the House of Secrets itself. "Don't Move It!" (written by Mike Friedrich, art by Jerry Grandenetti and George Roussos) tells this whole tale of a house in Kentucky, built by one Senator Sandsfield with his bare hands entirely from materials found in Kentucky, who swore no one who wasn't of "pure Kentucky stock" would ever live in it. Quite what this means, I don't know, but when our story opens, the House's new owner is trying to transport it over state lines. (Presumably into Tennessee, as no river is mentioned, and I believe Kentucky's southern border is the only one not determined by a river.) With the House 200 yards from the state line, the owner dies, and the House stays where it is, and some time later, Abel shows up, recruited as caretaker by a mysterious man who turns out to probably be an embodiment of the House itself. How all this squares with the histories of Cain and Abel given in The Sandman, I don't know.

Like in The Witching Hour!, the reader is often a viewpoint character in House of Secrets, coming to visit Abel and hear his stories-- along with Goldie, Abel's friend that no one else sees or hears. In The Sandman, Abel had a pet gargoyle named Goldie, evidently after this invisible friend. The frame stories are fairly fun. They're never quite as complicated as those in The Witching Hour! at its heyday, but they usually run a few pages and feature Abel and Goldie up to something, often investigating the strange House they live in. Cain pops up a lot, and you can see the seeds of their wonderfully macabre relationship in The Sandman, though Cain never murders Abel here.

I liked the reference to a "wandering wolfman" who told Abel one of his stories-- presumably the wolfman's name was Marv. There's even one story where Abel and Goldie wander into the nearby suburbs for some tale-telling, pass through the middle of a tale currently happening, and end up meeting Mordred from The Witching Hour! (In another, all three witches come over for a visit.) Not to mention that at one point, we readers get to enjoy a comic book that Abel himself is reading: "Reggie Rabbit, Heathcliffe Hog, Archibald Aardvark, J. Benson Babboon and Bertram the Dancing Frog" (written by Len Wein, art by Ralph Reese), who end up mocking their own dialogue balloons! House of Secrets is definitely more inventive than the other series in this way, I think. With time, alas, the frames shrink away to just a page or so, and Cain stops appearing.

As in both The Witching Hour! and House of Mystery, there are some good stories here. I particularly enjoyed "Bigger than a Breadbox" (writer unknown, art by Mike Royer and Mike Peppe), where an elderly woman enjoys a postal romance, "The Ballad of Little Joe" (written by Gerard Conway, art by Bill Draut), where aliens mistake a man's beloved puppet for an Earth life-form, "After I Die!" (written by Jack Kirby and Mark Evanier, art by Bill Draut), about a man determined to find out what the dying see, "World for a Witch" (written by Jack Oleck, art by Bill Draut), about a group of orphans whose orphanage-runner escapes her life's misery in a magic picture, and, of course, "Swamp Thing" (written by Len Wein, art by Berni Wrightson), the beginning of that much-famous character. I also really enjoyed "The Day After Doomsday..." (written by Len Wein, art by Jack Sparling), a recurrent series of two-page shorts about Adam and Gertrude, the last two humans alive after a holocaust (the same as Kamandi's Great Disaster?). They're both kinda hilariously dumb.

Overall, it's another good bunch, and I'm glad The Sandman led me to it, even if the two series don't line up quite precisely. (Well, unless the Dreaming is in southern Kentucky.)