I have a specific project brewing for a week-long launch, this coming Saturday. It has involved careful selection of themes, rearranging my preplanned schedule... and in the process, probably created the need for "softball" topics for today and tomorrow. But trust me, the wait for the results will be WELL worth it! (I'll even give you a tease: the subject of my week-long exploration is the first word of yesterday's blog entry subject.) I also consider today a continuation of a more detailed exploration of the DC Dollar Comics/Explosion format of the 1970's, by diving into the contents of one book that I've grown interested in exploring over the past year or so. I'm not going to go to such extremes as to say my exploration has been "positive" or "negative", but it's been a little bit of column A and B. The nice thing about an anthology format title like I'll be talking about, today, is if something rubs you the wrong way, you have OTHER things to explore. So unless you're "VHS", it's a safe bet you'll find something you'll enjoy!
"Superman Family" began life as the "Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen" book. Hence, when it became officially known as "Superman Family", it was numbered FAR in advance of a traditional "Number One" issue. (You could say it became an anthology strictly because by the 70's, Jimmy Olsen's disgusting ego couldn't support a book on his own.) But during the DC 100-Page Super Spectacular phase, this book delivered to readers one BRAND NEW story, and at least 8-10 separate reprint stories, along with fact pages and games for readers to play. In a way, these 100-Page Super Spectaculars were kind of like a rough early format of the trade paperback, scattering in stories from 10 to 30 years of publishing past. That all changed during the DC boom period, and this brings us into the Dollar Comics era!
Granted, the book... as pretty much ALL Dollar Comics... did not hold strictly to the 80-Page format, they all did live up to the promise of a book that presented readers with all new material, and a higher page count than your average comic title, justifying the OUTRAGEOUS cover price. (Man... if only new comics cost a single dollar in this day and age...) Following for the rest of this blog are a listing of the various characters that were highlighted with extended runs in the history of "Superman Family", before it was extinguished in 1984 for "The New Adventures of Supergirl". (I WILL write about that for a latter date, because... Hoo boy... I've got things to say about that title...)
SUPERMAN: He didn't often feature in his own self-titled stories in the book, but c'mon... Like you were expecting Superman to NOT figure into a book based around his family of characters? More often than not, his appearances was as a side-character to assist in another main featured characters' adventures. But he did get some rare feature stories, including one that immediately springs to mind about an intergalactic plague weapon, illustrated by Kurt Shaffenberger.
CLARK KENT: "The Private Life of Clark Kent" was a concept that was occasionally explored further in the earlier years of the 70's through either "Action Comics" or "Superman", but the civilian identity of the Man of Steel did pop up on occasion to showcase his humanity-based abilities in solo stories. Including the memorable one I posted a picture of, where Clark has to thwart a terrorist threat to... a disco dancing contest. (Yes, because terrorists want to make an impact on the world by destroying an establishment dedicated to "The Hustle"...) And he does so by cutting a rug with his own killer dance moves, disabling the bombs with his floor impacts. ... Reading this story made me REALLY wish for an 80's update, where Clark had to breakdance to save Metropolis from the menaces of Brainiac!
SUPERBOY: The adventures of Superman when he was a boy. If you aren't familiar with this period of Superman's publishing history, these stories basically centered around the concept that Clark/Kal became Super...er...being from the moment he was adopted by Jonathan and Martha Kent. And up until they died, he served as the Boy and Teenager of Steel to the city of Smallville. Hence, a lot of his adventures focus on quelling menaces to his small-town life, and featuring occasional appearances by the Kents, or his teenage friends, Pete Ross... the ONLY Smallville-ian who knew his secret identity... and Lana Lang... who was in a contest with her future self in the "Smallville" television series over who was the most annoying lady in existence.
SUPERBABY: I stated it in another blog entry, and I'll state it again, here. I. HATE. SUPERBABY. STORIES. Thank goodness those stories didn't last any longer than three issues into the "Superman Family" run. We all began as babies, I understand, but I do NOT want to know there's adventures of Superman when he was an annoying little munchkin. But that slot for annoying personalities was reserved for longer runs with this character...
KRYPTO THE SUPERDOG: Krypto is kind of like Garfield, in that the concept may have been fun for a while, but the character WAY overstayed their welcome, and that funny animal characters that you can read the thoughts of are FAR less amusing than you originally thought. The main beef I have with Krypto from this time period is that his stories dealt with him being so insufferably smug about his abilities. He did feature in a protracted story arc involving a human detective trying to clear the bad reputation of his nephew. who was implicated in murder. The human detective angle? I have no issues with that. A super-smart mangy mutt that "pities" our struggles, and wants to help... while in one issue LITERALLY chasing some female canine tail? Ugh... I think I like Krypto MUCH better when used sparingly, and NEVER when we're given a window to his thoughts. Sigh... And next to the character whose title was transformed into "Superman Family".
JIMMY OLSEN: I will give Jimmy Olsen a pass in this series, because he's a LOT more grounded than his Silver Age persona. Instead of being a schmuck that was granted super-powers on occasion, and constantly hassled his "Pal" Superman for help, we had a self-capable reporter who often featured in his own stories with rarely a Superman appearance. There's still going to be a small side of me that thinks Jimmy Olsen was only at his most acceptable in the post-"Crisis" timeline, but this run for the character was a lot easier to stomach. A personal highlight involved a story arc that involved Jimmy teaming with the Newsboy Legion to find out what happened to The Guardian, and it was a story that actually included threads from Jack Kirby's "Fourth World" Saga.
LOIS LANE: Another character that gets a pass, because this version of Lois Lane's adventures was also more easy to accept. Mainly because she was allowed to be her own woman, and because she wasn't spending every other story trying to figure out a way to weed out Superman's secret identity, or to become Mrs. Superman. (I'll just say that was a change for the EARTH-ONE version of the character. More on her EARTH-TWO counterpart in a few...) But with Lois becoming more of a believable reporter character, there was still room for rampant ridiculousness on her part for stories. For example, while she wasn't exactly "Superman's Girlfriend" for her character motivation, she still carried some odd baggage, like being the only person on Earth that knew the Kryptonian martial art of Klurkor. ... Yes, in this time line, Kryptonians had Kung-Fu. She also had an on-and-off again interaction relationship with a schmuck of a amateur superhero called Cannonball. Basically, his costume looked like a stolen Lex Luthor purple-and-green jumpsuit, and he wore a hard cannonball helmet on his head, looking like the Magic 8-Ball version of Bob Ross.
MR. AND MRS. SUPERMAN: In the 70's, OF COURSE we can't have our regular continuity Clark and Lois develop an actual relationship with evolution. But who's to say DC couldn't tinker around with the Earth-Two versions of the characters? Describing the multiple Earths is a blog entry of itself, but I'll try to bullet point the basics for you:
- Earth One is the regular DC Universe
- Earth Two is the DC Universe that existed in the company's beginnings
- Earth Two's heroes are generally older than Earth One's
- Both Earths exist together, entwined by a vibrational plane that can be breached by characters that possess super-speed
... Are we okay on that? So, these stories featured a mature Clark and Lois in wedded bliss. Eventually Clark becomes editor of the Daily Star... not Planet... and is more close to the basic power set of his Golden Age existence. So he wasn't essentially "Super-God". And this title, while generally a fluff piece of material, did showcase that Clark and Lois COULD exist in domestic bliss. Because usually there was NARY a supervillain showing up at the front door to try and off Lois because Clark actually was mature enough to start a relationship with her...
NIGHTWING AND FLAMEBIRD: Batman and Robin are SO AWESOME, they even inspired a duo of rip-offs for the bottle city of Kandor! ... Okay, that's only partly true, but that's basically what the Nightwing and Flamebird stories boiled down to. What began as a masquerade by Superman and Jimmy Olsen to become crime fighters for the shrunken Kryptonian city of Kandor, became its own identity under the involvement of Van-Zee, scientist and relative to Kal-El... and Ak-Var, former convict. Since we're talking the bottle city of Kandor, there are no super powers involved in any of their stories, because NO citizen of Kandor is super powered. So what you get are Batman stories in an alien setting, with different costumes and identities. One GENUINE highlight I could give the generic duo's run in "Superman Family" is that some of the stories involved the artistry of Marshall Rogers. When he was alive, there was NO character that wasn't made that much more awesome under the artistry of Marshall Rogers.
SUPERGIRL: Kara Zor-El... You can't help but feel a bit sorry for her. Sure, she's existed near continuously in the DC Universe since her creation, but Supergirl has had an amazing streak of cancelled runs and titles. By the time she made the regular "Superman Family" cut, she had exhausted a run in "Adventure Comics", and blazed through a short-lived self-titled book that lasted less than 20 issues. But she settled into "Superman Family" nicely, until she overtook that book with her "New Adventures" title. So, what do you need to know about Supergirl? She's basically the same as Superman. Same powers. Same maintenance of a secret identity as Linda Danvers. But Linda Danvers was a different person by far. At this stage of her life, Linda was a student counselor at a Florida university. As if that wasn't nutty enough, when her time on the book ends, Linda Danvers becomes a SOAP OPERA STAR. ... Both careers are essentially in-line with each other, right? The other main difference between her more famed cousin is that she REALLY didn't have any regularly developed villains of her own. The most developed I've noticed, so far, is having an arc involving the Superman Revenge Squad... AKA "Random Aliens You've Never Met Before, and Will Never See Again, but have a REAL MAD ON for Kryptonians".
Sounds like a mixed bag, eh? Again, for paying a dollar for more content than you would normally receive in a regular comic book, I still think the "Superman Family" was a justifiable book to have such a long life-span. It gave you a chance to explore all the goods... and outright sillies... of the Superman universe without sacrificing coverage in the regular Superman titles. And harkening back to my thoughts about anthologies, you're STILL going to find appeal to a mixed-bag of stories!
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