The one real immediate benefit of finding my new Stationery Store source for new comic book purchases is that suddenly all of the thicker books that my 7-11 had quietly stopped carrying at some point in the past were now readily available to me. Case in point: ADVENTURE COMICS. I would have been interested in sampling the series ever since it moved into the Dollar Comic format given the strips that it was headlining. But I never saw a copy of the Dollar Comic ADVENTURE COMICS before this issue showed up at the Stationery Store. By this point, page count reductions were already beginning to have an effect, and the book’s five features had been reduced to four. But given that two of those features were the Flash and the Justice Society of America, I was definitely going to purchase this issue once I saw it.
For whatever reason, ADVENTURE COMICS had a tougher time attracting an audience than the other stories anthologies such as ACTION or DETECTIVE. And that really boils down to it not being able to field a star character on the level of a Superman or a Batman. Superboy had anchored the title throughout much of the 1940s, 50s and 60s (with the Legion of Super-Heroes buoying his position there towards the end) and thereafter Supergirl took over the lead spot. But after she moved into her own short-lived series, ADVENTURE couldn’t quite land on a headline act that brought readers in consistently–the Spectre, Aquaman, and a return engagement for Superboy hadn’t done the trick. And the Dollar Comic assortment approach wouldn’t either–only two issues after this, the book would return to being a regular-sized comic, with Starman and Plastic Man as the split-book leads. The Dollar Comic approach worked on me but apparently there weren’t enough other like-minded readers to keep it afloat in this format long-term.
The book opens with a short stand-alone adventure of the Flash, written by the Scarlet Speedster’s regular scribe Cary Bates and illustrated by veteran Don Heck. Heck would soon rotate onto the Flash’s ongoing series as the regular artist, replacing the green Alex Saviuk in those pages. The story’s a trifle, suggesting the sort of gimmicky one-offs that editor Julie Schwartz had often overseen for the character. In this one, after having been forced to generate a sonic boom of his own to counteract one generated by a low-flying jet aircraft in distress, Barry Allen’s hearing is rattled, and he begins to hear voices from nowhere that are terrified about an impending invasion. After some frantic investigation, the Crimson Comet deduces that what he’s actually hearing are the thoughts of the dolphins in the Central City Aquarium, who are distressed because a band of criminals keeps stashing their loot at the bottom of their habitat. The flash shuts the bad guys down with the help of the dolphins, and all is well.
The next story is a Deadman adventure produced by Len Wein an Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, the team that would soon thereafter pair up on the BATMAN VS THE INCREDIBLE HULK inter-company crossover book. Deadman was a character that wasn’t hugely appealing to me, particularly after he’d sorted out the question of his own murder and instead wound up just flitting around and getting involved in the lives of regular random people. As you’d expect, this story is incredibly well drawn, despite some unfortunate period stereotypes. In it, Boston Brand helps the members of an urban community get out from under the criminal protection racket that is bleeding them dry. he does so by leaping into different people and fighting, mostly, when you’d think it would be the simplest thing to leap into the criminals themselves and make them turn themselves in with all the evidence needed to convict them. But I guess if Deadman did that sort of thing, the strip wouldn’t be very exciting. Not that there was ever all that much jeopardy given that the titular star is already himself demised, so nothing truly bad is ever going to be able to happen to him.
As we’ve covered in the past at length, I had a real love for the Justice Society of America, the original formative super heroes from the Golden Age of Comics. I ad followed their strip in ALL-STAR COMICS religiously up until the point where it ceased showing up at my local 7-11. So the tale in this issue was my first check-in with the team in several months. it was produced by the same creators who had been working on the strip when last I was able to read it, Paul Levitz and Joe Staton. By this point, the Huntress, who was in the process of being introduced at the point where I was forced to check out, had been added to the ongoing team roster, but otherwise the series was materially unchanged. it was still set in the parallel reality of Earth-2 where all of the formative versions of DC’s heroes resided, their ages reflecting at least somewhat the passing of time since that halcyon era.
This time out, the JSA isn’t dealing with some would-be dictator or crazed super-villain. It’s got a much more mundane, though no less lethal, situation to deal with. A capsule containing a powerful and potent poisonous element has been stolen and will crack open in five hours, killing people for miles around. So the JAS heroes scour Gotham City, attempting to track down the purloined capsule before it triggers and wipes out everybody. At a certain point, with options running out, Hawkman journeys to Salem to beg the assistance of doctor Fate in their search. Fate, though has his own pressing business and has to beg off, much to the consternation of the Winged Wonder. But in the end, Fate does turn up in the eleventh hour when, having located the capsule, the assembled JSA members aren’t sure what to do with it as it begins to crack open. Fate is able to banish it to another dimension, fortunately, saving Gotham City. At the end of this story there’s a brief one-page lead-in to this year’s JLA/JSA crossover adventure, which would begin in the next issue of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA. So the cross-continuity, at least, was on point.
The final story in the issue, an Aquaman adventure, was also very well drawn, in this instance by the late Don Newton. Newton is one of the undersung creators of this period. he started out as a popular fan cartoonist then made the transition to being a pro, where his somewhat Gene Colan-esque approach made a big splash with readers of the time. In Bob Rozakis’s story, while playing escort to a submarine, Aquaman stumbles across an oceanic colony set up by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. While the people appear to be friendly at first, a Nazi is always going to be a Nazi, and it’s no time at all before they want to use the Sea King to annex Atlantis. There’s some fighting and running around, and eventually the main Nazis are all blown up. So the whole thing isn’t especially memorable, but it is really nicely illustrated.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 