Posts Tagged ‘Robert Kanigher’
Hi, folks! Jonny here. The Underrated Underdogs feature has always been one of my favorites at High Five. Rob and Maggie know a lot about that stuff and I always love it when they review some old character I’ve never heard of. I have always wanted to review my own underdog, and a year into High Five I’ve finally found my guy.
In 1952 DC Comics broke with common practice and introduced a new character without testing his/her popularity in one of their existing on-going titles. Since the success of any new character is uncertain, most new heroes are brought along side an existing character (IE Wolverine in Hulk #181) or receive a showcase slot in a short story magazine like More Fun Comics. Apparently the word of John Broome (Elongated Man, Detective Chimp) was enough to entice DC to take a few risks, and in August or September of 1952 the world met the Phantom Stranger in his very own six issue miniseries. Likely the gambit didn’t pay off because the Phantom would not reappear until February 1969 in Showcase #80 along side Doctor Thirteen. From this rebirth we come to know our hero.
The original concept behind the Phantom Stranger was quite simple: a crime with inexplicable causes would be perpetrated and the mysterious Phantom Stranger would appear from no-where, expose the supernatural as a hoax, and vanish leaving the audience to debate his true nature. Usually he was working along side Doctor Thirteen who was consistently annoyed at the mystery surrounding Phantom Stranger.
Apparently this concept targeting young boys didn’t work for DC and in issue 4 The Phantom Stranger received a new creative team, a new costume, and some badass powers that quickly settled the question of natural vs spiritual. Beyond aesthetic alteration, the changes wrought by Robert Kanigher (creator of Barry Allen) and Neal Adams (who’s drawing an upcoming Batman book this summer YAY!) demonstrated a shift in target demographic. No longer did our hero spend his time mystifying 7 to 10 year-olds with disappearing acts. This new Phantom Stranger’s friends were teens, and hippies at that. His enemies were no longer simple-minded murderers or thieves, but rather the Forces of Evil themselves. This series continued throughout the first half of the 1970s and boasted such creators as Len Wein, Jim Aparo, and Tony DeZuniga. Check out the cover art for the first issue of Phantom Stranger under Kanigher and Adams below:
By 1973 the Silver Age was over, and the Bronze Age was in full swing. This shift saw a population with little interest in many of the once popular characters. Phantom Stranger was a casualty of this shift and he largely faded into Limbo until Alan Moore reminded us of the mysterious hero in 1982’s Saga of the Swamp Thing.
Here, we saw the beginnings of Phantom Stranger’s third and current interpretation. To Moore, and all subsequent writers, the Phantom Stranger was not a being of power. Rather, he was an all-knowing sage who transcends time, space, and continuity. No matter where you are in the DCU, The Phantom Stranger can find you, and he can guide you to a better path. This concept was beautifully illustrated by Grant Morrison in Animal Man #22 when Phantom Stranger met a time-displaced Buddy Baker and helped him find the path to his lost family.
What I find remarkable about the Phantom Stranger is that the character holds up perfectly despite all the ret-cons and reinterpretations. Since the character was built on a simple platform of perpetual mystery the changes have not affected DC’s immortal sage to any detriment. In fact, the changes have made him even cooler. DC has issued 4 theories as to his origin. None are to be taken as fact, and all are meant to further the mystery. But, in my mind, The Phantom Stranger represents some overreaching Power in the DCU that has sent its messenger to earth in 3 phases: first to observe, second to fight, and third to guide.
I love this interpretation for a few reasons. One, it gives Phantom Stranger a certain realism of character in that he has matured rather than simply aged. Second, and more importantly it mirrors the path of humanity as we begin, live, and complete our lives. This is, of course, my own interpretation for my own amusement, but the fun of any mystery is in the guessing.
Happy readings,
-Jonny
[Liked this post? Vote it up on reddit!]
There’s no denying it, we’ve pretty much concluded that Silver Age comics are completely bizarre. They all seem to follow the same formula: villain does something nefarious, hero intervenes, hero appears to fail miserably, hero totally psychs everybody out and saves the day. This happens every fucking time and somehow it never gets old. April 1962’s Showcase #37 (which, by the way, is the first appearance of Will Magnus and the Metal Men) took this formula to a whole new level, though. It has been a long time since a Silver Age book actually managed to throw me a curveball and leave me shocked at the end. Yeah. It’s probably better if I just explain this with a recap.
Our story starts out in a jungle millions of years ago, where radioactive fire rains from the sky, wiping out everything on the planet with the exception of one creature: a giant flying manta ray with both heat and ice powers! Suddenly, without explanation, the ray is frozen in a glacier that was in a jungle for whatever reason. And then, years later, global warming melts the glacier and the ray is free to wreck shit up! After using his heat ray to melt a lighthouse, his freeze-y ray to crash a jet, and setting the entirety of the fucking Empire State Building on fire, the military decides to intervene. But who can they get to help?
Colonel Henry Caspar takes a quick helicopter ride to the headquarters of none other than Will Magnus, who he finds slow dancing with a shiny silver woman. Magnus invites the colonel to dance with her and he discovers that she is made of metal! What kind of sorcery is this? Before the colonel has time to recover, Will goes, “Oh shit, yeah, I got a whole bunch of these guys.” The Metal Men proceed to introduce themselves and bore readers with random facts about metal (yes, yes, mercury is liquid at room temperature, we know!). The colonel asks Magnus if he can send the Metal Men to help defeat the marauding freezing and burning manta ray. Magnus agrees. Oh, except he doesn’t want to send Platinum because she’s a useless woman. That’s not a joke, he explicitly states that. She ties Magnus up with her power to turn into wire and he relents with, “Fuck, fine, whatever. Everybody into my thought-controlled hovercraft.”
They come across the giant manta ray fucking up some bridge and go into a huddle. After arguing about which of the robots can do the job better, Magnus determines that Iron should shape Lead into a giant ball covered by Tin and throw it at the ray. Perfect! Except when they do that, the ray slaps the giant metal ball back at the hovercraft, knocking out Magnus and crashing it into the rooftops. The ray circles around to shoot his heat ray but Tin jumps in the way, melting to death. Way to go, Metal Men!
Lead turns into a shield against the ray’s rays, allowing Magnus to wake up. He devises a new plan, using super-stretchy Gold as a lasso with Iron acting as an anchor. Surely the ray can’t lift both of them off the ground! Except he does. And then he drops them into the ocean, rusting Iron to death and killing Gold somehow. Way to go, Metal Men!
Fortunately, Will Magnus always has a backup backup plan. What would happen if they cut off the ray’s oxygen? Using Lead as a shield again, Mercury throws his liquid-y self at the ray, coating it completely. Yeah, it doesn’t die. Magnus realizes that it doesn’t breathe air, but draws it’s life from radioactivity! Suddenly, the ray whips its tail around, grabbing the hovercraft! To save her beloved creator, Platinum turns herself into wire, tying up the ray. Lead takes the opportunity to jump at the ray, blocking it from it’s radiation lifesource. The ray wrapped in Mercury wrapped in Platinum wrapped in Lead crashes into the sea, killing them all. Way to fucking go, Metal Men!
Now, this is (one of) the thing(s) that weirds me out. The very last panel of the comic is Will sitting at his desk, bumming out at little statues of his now dead Metal Men. Colonel Caspar stands behind him and does something that I have never ever seen before: in a precursor to the Jason Todd phone poll, he addresses the reader directly, asking us to send postcards to Julie Schwartz about whether or not we want them to bring the Metal Men back to life. The end!
Now, I don’t know how long it took to write a Silver Age comic, because the very next month’s issue of Showcase also starred the Metal Men. Unless the poll was just some weird way of giving the fans a sense of interacting with the story, it doesn’t really seem possible to conduct a survey of that magnitude, plus script, draw, print, and ship a comic all in the course of a month! You know what this seems like to me? Remember in Peter Pan when he makes the kids slow clap to bring Tinkerbell back to life? Replace Tinkerbell with potentially killer robots and Peter with DC Comics’ editorial staff, and it’s the same fucking thing. Whoa, I think I just blew my own mind.
Robert Bazz
zzz
Maggie_C
ianchant
jdcrymes
HavaB
High Five! Comics 