Comic Book Reviews - DC Archives Golden Age (Slipcue e-Zine)

Hands down, DC Comics Archive series is the single best Golden Age reissue effort available to date. Multiple, chronological, full-color restorations of hundreds of Holy Grail titles from the late 1930s and '40s, as well as a healthy dip into Silver Age titles such as the Teen Titans and the Legion of Super Heroes. On one hand, the fifty bucks per volume price tag may seem a bit steep for the average reader, but compared to the market rate for a single original comic from that era, these generous anthologies seem pretty reasonable.

I have a friend -- who is a big DC fan -- who laments the glossy, high quality of the paper used in the Archive series; he thinks they're too swanky and perfect, and wishes they'd opted for a more pulp-y feel, with more muted, matted colors which would be closer to the original comics. My personal quibble is that I would love to see more of the backup features from books like Action and Detective, not just the better-known Batman and Superman stories. DC has made tentative stabs at reissuing facsimiles of complete old books, like a random issue or two of More Fun and the like. I buy them all, and wish DC would take the leap and publish some of these titles sequentially. Likewise, Marvel has put out a few GA reproductions as part of their Golden Age reissue efforts. Ditto on the desireability of more books in this vein.

Other Pages of Interest:

DC Archive Series

"The Atom Archives, v.1"
By Gardner Fox, Gil Kane, et al
(DC Archives, 2002)

"The Black Canary Archives"
By Carmine Infantino, et al
(DC Archives, 2001)
This collection includes adventures from her entire solo career, from 1947 to 1972, starting with a support role in the comedic crime strip, "Johnny Thunder" (a minor character in the WWII-era DC lineup), and moving on up to a brainlessly goofy hippie-era plotline involving a women's lib group that was actually a front for a criminal mastermind. It's all good stuff; not too substantive on the writing side of things, but nice light fun nonetheless. The best part is Carmine Infantino's artwork, which was highly imitative of newspaper cartoonist Milton Canniff, with a rugged yet stylish flair -- very different from the fluid, slapdash style Infantino adopted later in the '50s and '60s. I really enjoyed reading this one, and found it less repetitive than other volumes in the series... It's also nice to see one of the lesser, neglected Golden Age characters finally get their due... Wish they'd do one for Wildcat, as well!

"The Blackhawk Archives"
By Will Eisner, Reed Crandall, et al
(DC Archives, 2001)

"The Doom Patrol Archives, v.1"
By Arnold Drake and Bruno Premiani
(DC Archives, 2002)

"The Flash Archives, v.1"
By John Broome and Carmine Infantino
(DC Archives, 2000)
The so-called "Silver Age Flash", the revival of the famous WWII character into the world of the 1960s, found a superhero fully formed and well defined. The Flash was, quite simply, the world's fastest man, capable of outrunning both bullets and beams of light, of vibrating fast enough to have solid objects pass through his body, or to slip between the very fabric of time and space. Or to clean up the house really quick, before his wife got home from her bridge club meeting. Yep, he was pretty sooper-dooper, alright, but by the time they brought the Flash back out of mothballs, the comicbook industry had evolved enough to match this impossibly powerful hero up with villains and calamities that were dire enough to truly challenge him. The plots and gimmickes dreamed up by author John Broome were consistently entertaining, although I have to confess that artist Carmine Infantno's sketchy, blocky style has never really appealed much to me. Still, these are classic stories, and hopefully the reissue series will continue to bring forth more forgotten memories for old-time comic fans to enjoy. Fun stuff -- recommended!!

"The Flash Archives, v.2"
By John Broome and Carmine Infantino
(DC Archives, 2000)

"The Flash Archives, v.3"
By John Broome and Carmine Infantino
(DC Archives, 2002)

"The Golden Age Flash Archives, v.1"
By Gardner Fox, et al
(DC Archives, 1999)
Of DC's first-string Golden Age superheroes, the Flash was one of the first titles to find really find its feet and hit a good a rhythm in which the powers and possibilities of the character were understood right away. The guy was fast -- super fast -- and that meant he could literally run rings around his opponents. As with Superman in his early years, the Flash's powers were gradually expanded on and increased, but while there was some herky-jerkiness to these initial stories, they are generally of a higher calibre and more consistently entertaining than many contemporary titles. This collection includes his adventures from January, 1940 to May, 1941; hopefully DC will be able to put out additional volumes of this title soon, so we can get to the really good wartime stories.

"The Golden Age Green Lantern, v.1"
Ed. by Cub Coda, Michael Erlewine, et al
(DC Archives, 1996)
Green Lantern was one of the coolest characters to come out of the early DC explosion of the late 1930s and early '40s -- a wise-cracking mystery man who could do almost anything using the power of his magic ring and its weird green energy beams. However, like Superman in his formative years, the early Green Lantern stories from the 1940s suffered from lack of direction. Without a preestablished tradition of supervillains to pit against their omnipotent hero, the publishers struggled with how to keep the stories going when pitting the Lantern against garden variety gangsters. Thus, the original GL would almost always have an initial encounter with the bad guys and then, inexplicably, let them go so that they could battle again, a few pages later. Sometimes this was so that the petty thugs could lead him to the "big boss," or to uncover their "real" plot (as if trying to murder a judge, or whatever, wasn't reason enough to apprehend them...) This problem was never really resolved in these prewar episodes; later, the Nazis at least provided opposition on a large enough scale that the Lantern could cut loose a bit more with the zap-'em power. It wasn't until much later in the '40s that he got legitimate supervillains to contend with, notably his demented nemesis, the swamp-born super-zombie, Solomon Grundy. At this point, however, it's mostly crooked politicians and supposed criminal "masterminds" that bedevil the emerald guardian of justice. Somewhere along the line, though, he got paired up with his scrappy cabbie sidekick, Doiby Dickles, as irritating a supporting character as ever hit the comics. Oh, well. Doiby doesn't really do much to diminish the good, old-fashioned fun of these classic sock'em-up comics. Clumsy at times, but still a fun read.

"The Golden Age Green Lantern, v.2"
Ed. by Bill Finger, Irwin Hasen, et al
(DC Archives, 2000)
This second volume, which covers xxxxxx to xxxxxxx, is pretty similar plotwise to the first -- GL fighting non-super bad guys of various stripes, and making sure that his Lois Lane-ish coworker never suspects that he and radio announcer Alan Scott are actually one and the same. One point of interest is the propensity of the writers for having Green Lantern stick up for the working men in trade unions, usually against fixed politicians or crooked union leaders... This working-class, socialistic bent comes up in several of these old stories, and is pretty unusual for the times, when one would imagine it might be seen as a bit too left-leaning or subversive. The last story in this volume was a full-issue epic from 1941, which pits the Lantern against a bunch of nasty Nazis -- World War II beckons, and promises to pick up the pace a bit. Can't wait for Volume Three to come out!

"Green Lantern Archives, v.1"
By John Broome & Gil Kane, et al
(DC Archives, 1996)

"Green Lantern Archives, v.2"
By John Broome & Gil Kane, et al
(DC Archives, 1996)

"Green Lantern Archives, v.3"
By John Broome & Gil Kane, et al
(DC Archives, 1996)

"Green Lantern Archives, v.4"
By John Broome & Gil Kane, et al
(DC Archives, 1996)

"The Hawkman Archives, v.1"
By Gardner Fox, Joe Kubert, et al
(DC Archives, 2000)

"The Supergirl Archives, v.1"
By Jerry Seigel, Diana Schutz, et al
(DC Archives, 2002)

"The Wonder Woman Archives, v.1"
By William Moulton Marston, H. G. Peters, et al
(DC Archives, 2002)
One of the most iconic protofeminist Golden Age superheroines, Diana Prince, (aka Wonder Woman) hailed from Paradise Island, home of the legendary Amazons. In her origin story, she was (temporarily) banished by her mother, Queen Hippolyta, to live in "the world of men," in an interesting twist on the Biblical tale of the fall from Eden. The character was apparently created specifically to provide a positive role model for little girls to identify with, a function it's been filling for decades ever since! From the very start, the classic '40s Wonder Woman stories had a great look, with a very distinctive, rounded, semi-cartoonish art style. The stories are more problematic, however, especially when read back to back, as you are able to do in these handsome reprint collections. Invariably, as with many of the early superhero stories, the episodes are often padded out with implausible pitfalls and delays; instead of mopping up the floor with her un-super opponents (mostly gangsters and spies), WW frequently let them get away, so that she could "catch" them later. Just as often, she would get clonked on the head or tricked somehow into an untimely capture that would lead to her being briefly tied up, before breaking free and bringing the baddies to justice. This sort of bondage plot device was a longtime staple of WWII-era comics, and indeed increases the collectibility of any given issue; however, it was used so repetitively in the Wonder Woman stories, it quickly loses its campy appeal and becomes a drag on the otherwise finely-rendered stories. That being said, the WW stories were definitely among the best written and best illustrated of the Golden Age books -- other than the plot devices mentioned above, there was little of the slapdash functionality that pervaded most of the contemporary superhero books of the same era. Plus, the feminist undercurrent of the stories -- which is frequently made explicit -- is another interesting thematic touch. These books are definitely worth checking out!

"The Wonder Woman Archives, v.2"
By William Moulton Marston, H. G. Peters, et al
(DC Archives, 2002)

"The Wonder Woman Archives, v.3"
By William Moulton Marston, H. G. Peters, et al
(DC Archives, 2002)
Episodes from June-December, 1943.

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