A nice 2-page spread of the Map of Krypton shows up in the first Superman Annual (June 1960). To my knowledge this is the first “Annual”, which is an 80-page giant book filled with the best Superman / Supergirl / Superboy / Lois / Jimmy tales of the past.
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Green Arrow gets another rogue with the introduction of the Clock King. He commits crimes related to clocks. In this issue he is not even given a name or an origin, because really why do you need any reason to get dressed up in an outrageous skin-tight costume with a clock face for a mask […]
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Atlas/Marvel comics on sale in May 1960 feature more giant monsters. Bombu the Witch Man, Gorgilla the Monster of Midnight Mountain, and the return of Taboo (originally in Strange Tales #75 in Jan 1960). You can see the desire to create something readers will want to buy with the assertion that Strange Tales this month […]
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The Silver Age Green Lantern earns his own comic magazine with Green Lantern #1 (May 1960). In it, we see Hal Jordan’s mind being transported to the Planet Oa where we meet the Guardians of the Universe for the first time, as the Green Lantern mythos begins to build out. Hal’s memory of this first […]
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In Challengers of the Unknown #14 (April 1960), our heroes get a new long-standing nemesis: Multi-Man. Mult-Man starts out as Duncan Pramble, an archaeologist’s assistant who steals away and drinks “liquid light” while on an expedition with the Challs. Now every time he dies, he is resurrected with a new random power – how convenient. […]
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Marvel/Atlas comics continue to decorate their fantasy/sci-fi books with giant monsters. This month batch brings us Spoor, the Thing That Could Not Die and Monstrom, the Dweller in the Black Swamp – a very Swamp Thing-like creature, but turns out to be an alien who is waiting for mankind to drop their xenophobia and help […]
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Strange Adventures #117 (April 1960) debuts the Atomic Knights. Gardner Grayle is an “exactly average” solider in the Third World War – you know that atomic one that happened in 1986 and lasted a mere 20 days. Anyway, what begins is a really decent bit of world-building. Gardner is being chased by thugs and suffers […]
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In Action Comics #265 (April 1960), Supergirl exposes her existence to Smallville and Superman doesn’t want that to happen yet. So he digs up some old Gas Z “Amnesia Gas”, which he had once buried outside of Smallville as Superboy. What’s interesting here is not the over-use of amnesia-as-a-convenient-means-to-revert-to-the-status-quo, but the back-reference to earlier Superboy […]
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The Justice League returns for their third adventure in Brave and the Bold #30 (April 1960) to battle Amazo, an android created by Professor Ivo that can temporarily steal the Justice League members powers. Superman and Batman are kept busy again so they barely appear in the story. Lame. Martian Manhunter is first to fall […]
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The second story in Flash #113 (April 1960) re-surfaces an old idea: the ancient Greek Gods were actually aliens who interacted with mankind in the past. We have seen this storyline before with Captain Comet back in 1952. This time we have Zus, Po-Siden, Boreas from “the Galactic Universe of Olimpus in the fourth quadrangle […]
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