BHOC: DC SPECIAL SERIES #19

Brevoort History of Comics

My new Stationery Store source for new comic books proved itself to be valuable even beyond the typical swath of new releases. It also wound up carrying the relatively few remaining Treasury Editions that came out after this point, as well as the new format that DC was expanding into and testing out: digests. The digest format had been initiated by Tom DeFalco at Archie and proved to be a reliable money-maker for that firm, so it was only a matter of time before the super hero publishers followed suit. DC went at this space harder than Marvel did, and their line boasted two Digests a month for several years. I had missed the first couple, but I was on hand for this SECRET ORIGINS OF SUPER-HEROES release. While the books were relatively tiny (and the stories were reformatted somewhat to make them more readable at this size) they were like a quasi-replacement for my beloved 100-Page Super-Spectaculars of years gone by, each one filled with classic vintage reprints from the past. Like those books, this release was assembled by editor E. Nelson Bridwell, whose encyclopedic memory for stories of the past was invaluable when it came to assembling collections.

Either as a come-on to prospective buyers or because they didn’t have a contemporary origin story for Wonder Woman that could be readily pulled, this volume opens up with ten new pages by Cary Burkett, Jose Delbo and Vince Colletta giving a rundown of the Amazing Amazon’s history. It was entirely serviceable, the sort of material that had been appearing in Wonder Woman’s regular series for some time. One got the impression that creators weren’t especially hungry to be working on the strip at this point, and it showed in the material. The new piece was followed by two pages cribbed from an earlier story by Robert Kanigher and Ross Andru that detailed the specific powers bestowed upon Wonder Woman by the Gods.

The next story in this edition was one that I’d already read when it had been reprinted in an issue of WORLD’S FINEST COMICS in the mid-1970s. It featured the origin of the Superman/Batman team and was produced by Edmond Hamilton and Dick Sprang. In the present-set wrap-around story, Superman severs his relationship with Batman and Robin in favor of a new partner, Powerman. This causes the Dynamic Duo to think back on how they first came to work with the Man of Steel, all the while still working to assist him in the present. Powerman, of course, turns out to be a robot–Superman hadn’t wanted to endanger Batman and Robin as he pursued his deadliest enemy, Luthor.

Next up was the story that made my purchasing this digest an absolute lock: the origin story and first appearance of the Elongated Man, by John Broome and Carmine Infantino. The Elongated Man had initially been devised as a villain, a new addition to the Flash’s expanding Rogue’s Gallery. But writer Broome decided to take the character in a different direction, initially making him seem like a criminal before swerving to reveal that he was as true-blue as the Scarlet Speedster himself. By the end of the tale, the two heroes have formed a warm friendship that would become a recurring feature in the early strip.

Next up was a short Aquaman piece by Robert Bernstein and Ramona Fradon that revealed Aquaman’s backstory, as he attempts to prevent a modern day submarine from conducting atomic tests in a particular area of the ocean. The reason, of course, is that this just happens to be the area above where Atlantis, the birthplace of Aquaman’s mother, is situated, a secret that the deep-sea hero shares with the submarine commander in order to convince him to take his military maneuvers elsewhere.

Editor Bridwell wasn’t above including his own work in this volume, and given that he was the writer who first established the origin of the futuristic Legion of Super-Heroes, that makes sense. The story here wasn’t that initial revelation but rather a later tale in which Bridwell and artist George Tuska pitted Lightning Lad against his evil brother Lightning Lord, while recapping the Legion’s beginnings along the way. Lightning Lad’s sister Light Lass and her boyfriend Timber Wolf also take part in this short adventure.

A longer piece followed, a tale of Hawkman and Hawkgirl by Gardner Fox and Joe Kubert. The Kubert version of Hawkman hadn’t gained enough traction back in the 1960s to graduate to its own series–that only happened after artist Murphy Anderson took over the series. But the Kubert material was well-regarded by older fans, and looking at this story even in its reduced form, it’s easy to see why. This tale isn’t about how the Hawks first came to Earth but rather how the authorities on their homeworld of Thanagar first started using artificial wings and flight gear to combat the threat of strange masked Manhawks.

Nelson also wrote the next story, an updated (and Comics Code-approvable) retelling of the origin of Robin the Boy Wonder, illustrated by Ross Andru. It’s a perfectly fine tale, but as it’s a representation of the 1960s version of the character, it lacks the somber flavor and strong shadowplay of the original on which it was based.

And the final story in this digest was the inaugural adventure of Supergirl, kicking off her long-running back-up series in ACTION COMICS. Otto Binder and Al Plastino joined forces to introduce Kara Zor-El to the world. This is one of those wonderful Mort Weisinger-era stories in which incredible, implausible things just happen one after another, and the reader is left with no choice but to simply accept and go along with it all. By the end, the once-Last Survivor of Krypton has been joined by his heretofore-unknown cousin from Argo City, which itself has been wiped out, causing her to be sent to Earth to join Superman. The Man of Steel wastes no time in pawning her off at an orphanage and securing a promise from her that she won’t use her super-powers publicly until he gives the all-clear sign. All of which seems a bit narcissistic and cruel when viewed through a modern lens. But it left Supergirl in a position where she could have her own adventures without impacting on the Superman strip too greatly.

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23 thoughts on “BHOC: DC SPECIAL SERIES #19”

  1. The only Pocket Books I have are DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest#19 ( March 1982 – George Perez and Frank Giacoia cover ) reprinting My Greatest Adventure#80 ( June 1963 — first appearance and General Immortus ), The Doom Patrol#86 ( March 1964 –The Brotherhood of Evil ), The Doom Patrol#91 ( November 1964 –Mento ) and The Doom Patrol#90 ( September 1964 ) ) and DC Special Series#27 ( Batman vs. The Incredible Hulk –September 1981 ).

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  2. I gobbled up a lot of those digests in the days before trades but lost them all in a move. That Manhawks story remains one of the silliest DC Silver Age stories in a sea of silly DC Silver Age stories. Really Mopee level silly. IMHO Silver Age Hawkman was generally silly and the only revamp that wasn’t an improvement on the Golden Age version.

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  3. What a cornucopia of Silver Age fun! Are they all classics? Of course not. Still, if one story or character doesn’t trip your trigger, don’t sweat. Another flavor for four-color candy is just a few pages away. FWIW, I had that Aquaman story from somewhere. It must have been reprinted in some other issue. I think it was an issue of the Underwater Guy with Superman’s hair curl that dealt with the silly early 70’s question, “Is California Sinking?” As an elementary aged kid living just one state north, I was duly concerned and thought surely the King of Sea’s would have the answer!

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  4. Fun Cover. I too love a good digest from DC back then.

    P.S. The Digests don’t seem to really exist in nice condition today

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  5. Was the Wonder Woman origin really a new tale, or a partial reprint of the similarly-titled story from Wonder Woman #237, by the same creative team? I don’t have my copy at hand to check.

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  6. I bought a bunch of digests, but never really liked the format — the art was too small, and the bindings were always wrinkly. Also, I was never all that fond of reprint packages, particularly reprint anthologies. I wanted the original stories, not a scattering of samples.

    But they often had really nice covers, like this one does.

    The one I bought most regularly was ADVENTURE COMICS when it was reprinting Legion stories in order, since even if they were printed too small, and even if they weren’t that good, I wanted to read them all, and I was glad to be getting them in order.

    I got much more interested in reprint packages when we started to get TPBs that collected whole mini-series or storylines. That was much more my kind of thing.

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      4. It could be Dick working with loose Andru pencils or even a fairly tight Andru rough that Dick didn’t deviate much from. But it’s definitely an Andru layout, and the finishes look like Dick either doing a lot of polish or doing the finished pencils.

        There are other covers of the era that are very clearly laid out by Andru but penciled and inked (and signed, solo) by Dick. This one looks more like Andru than those, but less like full Andru pencils, so it’s somewhere in-between.

        It was normal for Dick to sign the covers, either as “Andru/Giordano” or just as himself. This one has no signature, so maybe it got cropped off somewhere along the way.

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  9. I bought this digest at 14 years old and drove my bike home . Got struck by a car . Spent months in hospital. Someone stole my books at accident scene . To this day never got that book

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  10. I liked the DC digests, and got a lot of them. Picking up back issues of 100 Page Super Spectaculars or the 52 pagers they’d published earlier in the ’70s, the stories in the digests weren’t all new stories to me, but I still enjoyed re-reading them. The small size didn’t bother me in my teen-age years, but I’d hate to try to read them now at my age–my eyesight’s not what it used to be!

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  11. “How Aquaman got his powers ” and swiped Namor’s backstory. Not that I think it was a big deal, since Sub-Mariner had been gone for about four years by that point and was seemingly a dead character.

    Really wish that Kubert had done something a bit different for Hawkman’s costume to differentiate him from the Golden Age hero.

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    1. It really does seem like they just swiped Namor’s origin, figuring he was never coming back.

      But it also seems to me that they were getting the new origin at least partly from the sea chanty “Eddystone Light”:

      “My father was the keeper of the Eddystone Light

      He met with a mermaid one fine night

      And from that union there came three

      A porpoise and a porgy and the other was me

      Yo ho, the wind blows free

      Hurrah for a life on the bounding sea”

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      1. Knew nothing about the “Eddystone Light” so did a little research after reading your comment.

        Thanks

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  12. That Hawkman origin borrows its theme from the Eden myth, with Thanagar as a place that’s never known crime until the Manhawks come along and “foul the nest,” so to speak.

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