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Saturday, September 1, 2012

Adventure Comics # 285, June, 1961


Okay, here we go. A whole new era for ADVENTURE. Already there's lots of bizarro references on the letters page. Business as usual in the Superboy tale though as Lana gets super powers for the wheteverth time.

  Interesting that a black and white reprint of one of the earliest SUPERMAN pages is reprinted to promote the upcoming special issue of SUPERMAN. This marks the first time in about two decades that the Siegel and Shuster team appear in ADVENTURE. Siegel himself had returned to DC by this point and writes the first Bizarro World story here.




DC went all out with this, getting premier Superman artist for the past 15 or so years, Wayne Boring, to do the art on the new TALES OF THE BIZARRO WORLD series.













George Reeves was now dead for nearly two years but TV's SUPERMAN continued on quite successfully in syndication.


Friday, August 31, 2012

Adventure Comics # 284, May, 1961


A rather pedestrian cover but this issue is important in that it marks the finale of Aquaman as a back-up character after more than a decade and a half of faithful service. He was already appearing in the new JLA title and then-currently in SHOWCASE. It wouldn't be long before he started a healthy run on his own title, even picking up a hit cartoon series along the way in just a few short years. Meanwhile, the character's final outing here is uncharacteristically by Jim Mooney and not longtime artist Ramona Fradon. 




How excited was DC to finally give the wacky Bizarros their own series? Well, this is, if I recall correctly, the first time we've ever seen a next issue cover in any regular ADVENTURE issue!


 





Thursday, August 30, 2012

Adventure Comics# 383, April, 1961



With Aquaman off in SHOWCASE, this is a fairly routine--in fact, dull--issue. The most exciting news is seeing that our long-time ADVENTURE COMICS co-star, Green Arrow, is now in the JLA!






Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Adventure Comics # 282, March, 1961


The title's a misnomer as Lana doesn't meet the Legion at all...except for Star Boy who debuts here. And he's not even associated with the Legion except in a one-panel cameo where they supposedly sent for him. He would, of course, become a member eventually--the unluckiest member of them all. First he loses the powers he shows here and gets different mass and weight-related abilities. Then he's expelled for accidentally killing someone. The he comes back in disguise. Eventually he grows a beard, loses his mind, goes back in time again and becomes a gibberish-spouting member of the Justice Society of America! It's...complicated.














Note the constant hammering of the price point. Little by little the pages of comics were cut from nearly 100 for an average issue to 32. This enabled the publishers to hold the line at ten cents for ages but eventually, it got to the point where they didn't want to cut any more. So prices went up!

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Bizarro in the letters page yet again and from the ads we see there's now a bizarro Lois Lane. It's almost time.


Rip Hunter survived a couple of SHOWCASE trial runs before being given his own mag. In spite of a healthy run, it never really captured the fans the way the super heroes did.



Speaking of SHOWCASE, Aquaman was getting his second outing as well as his first long form story here in ADVENTURE.