Though DC just introduced the concept of the multiverse, Gardner Fox didn’t stop reinterpreting Golden Age characters in the Silver Age: The Atom debuts in Showcase #34 (July 1961). Ray Palmer is a graduate student and fellowship physicist who seeks to shrink matter via using white dwarf star material. He has a girlfriend named Jean […]
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Flash Comics #123 (July 1961) has the official birth of the DC multiverse in the landmark story “Flash of Two Worlds”. After super-speed vibrating during a show for charity, Barry Allen’s Silver Age Flash finds himself in a similar-but-different world, where Central City is replaced by Keystone City. Remembering that Jay Garrick, the “fictional” inspiration […]
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Well, June 1961 brings back some wacky Marvel monster names including Zzutak, Klagg, and Moomba!
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In June 1961, DC published a super-collection of many superhero origin stories entitled Secret Origins, a one-shot. I’m a sucker for origin stories and I really liked the 1986+ series of the same name, which helped solidify DC’s continuity in a post-Crisis on Infinite Earths timeline. But back in the 1960s, there was no really […]
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Adventure Comics #287 (June 1961) introduces the story of Dev-Em, a super-bratty teenager who lived on Krypton and used to babysit Kal-El. Dev-Em has a habit of getting into trouble by stealing technology and inventions from the Jor-El’s laboratory. When he discovers Jor-El’s prediction of the end of Krypton, he steals technology to build himself […]
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Action Comics #279 (June 1961) continues the multi-issue Supergirl story arc started last month, where we learn that Supergirl lost her powers due to an evil, jealous, genius inventor named Lesla-Lar who lives inside the bottled city of Kandor and happens to look exactly like Supergirl. Meanwhile, a de-powered Linda Lee tries to make the […]
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No less than 7 months earlier, DC foreshadowed the Legion of Super-Villains and now we get their first appearance of the LSV in Superman #147 (June 1961). In prison, Luthor offers to repair other inmate’s radios, cobbling together a super-scientific device that can project his voice into the future for this hypothesized evil Legion to […]
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Well Marvel Comics is finally here, and by May 1961, all comics by Atlas Comics have the “MC” insignia. I also notice a distinct lack of kooky monster names this month. Other than a revisit of Grogg, Marvel seems to have switched to more descriptive names like “Sandman”, the return of Colossus, and “The Crawling […]
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Action Comics #278 (May 1961) begins a multi-issue spanning Supergirl arc, starting with the revelation that Superman has decided to reveal the existence of Supergirl to the world. It’s been more than two years since the introduction of the Supergirl character and perhaps the writing team has run out of ways to make interesting stories […]
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Green Lantern #7 (May 1961) debuts another long-standing Green Lantern villain: Sinestro. The Guardians explain to Hal Jordan that Sinestro was the Green Lantern of sector 1417 on the planet Korugar. I guess they should have thought twice to give a power-ring and battery to a being with such an obviously-evil name, but oh well. […]
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