In Fantastic Four #2 (Sept 1961), Marvel starts to gradually expand its mythos by introducing a shape-shifting alien race about to conquer Earth: The Skrulls! Four Skrulls establish a beach-head of tarnishing the FF’s reputation by masquerading as the superheroes and stealing jewelry or destroying property. The plan is to discredit the superheroes and then […]
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Action Comics #282 (Sept 1961) carries on with Part 5 of the continuing saga of Lesla-Lar v Supergirl, which is kind of just all over the place. Superman continues the “debugging” session of why Supergirl’s powers are missing in the present but have resurfaced in the past. He builds her a time machine to visit […]
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In Green Lantern #9 (September 1961), Hal’s nemesis, Sinestro, makes his second appearance, complete with villainous exposition explaining how he escaped that green bubble they trapped him in last time. Our hero, Hal Jordan, is looking forward to the first GL Con… “the first galaxy-wide conference of all power battery possessors”. That’s kind of interesting, […]
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In Superman #149 (Sept 1961), a memorable “imaginary tale” was published: “The Death of Superman”. It starts out kookily enough: Luthor suddenly seems to repent, synthesizing a serum to cure cancer from a meteorite he finds in a prison rockpile. Despite this, the justice system is skeptical of his reformation, and rightfully so, until Superman […]
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It’s important to remember that, just because Marvel launched their flagship Silver Age superhero comic this month, it was still basically an experiment and this superhero transition did not happen over night. Marvel continued to churn out wacky monster stores across all their other wacky supernatural/sci-fi titles with still wackier names: The Creature From Krogarr! […]
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Well, I talked about it for a long time, but we are finally here: the birth of the true Marvel Universe with The Fantastic Four #1 (Aug 1961). Stan Lee and Jack Kirby bring us a full book-length story here that introduces their first true super-heroes of the Silver Age named, of course, The Fantastic […]
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In Adventure Comics #289 (Aug 1961), Superboy is amazed when Pa Kent seemingly acquires super-powers. After several mis-adventures where Super-Pa becomes increasingly evil, he unmasks “Pa Kent” as a Kryptonian criminal, Jax-Ur (making his first appearance). Superboy spares little time in sending Jax-Ur back into the Phantom Zone. The epilogue of the story explains that […]
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In Action Comics #281 (Aug 1961), the fourth installment in the long-running, multi-month story arc continues as Lesla-Lar masquerades as a recently-re-powered Supergirl. She goes with Superman to the Fortress of Solitude, while the de-powered Supergirl continues to live out her best life with amnesia in the bottled city of Kandor. While there, Krypto sniffs […]
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Marvel brings us some more wacky monsters in July 1961: Monsteroso, The Glob, Bruttu, the Abominable Snowman, and Fin Fang Foom, an alien that resembled a dragon. Like Groot before it, Fin Fang Foom is later ret-conned into the Marvel superhero universe as a minor villain.
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The Atomic Knights return in Strange Adventures #132, July 1961. The story picks up where the previous one ended: the Atomic Knights have rescued seeds and fruits from the now-sunken, time-displaced island of Atlantis after their cobalt bomb went off in present-day 1990. Got all that? The scientists in Atlantis learn they have been displaced […]
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