In 1984 artist Brian Bolland was putting the finishing touches on an acclaimed maxi-series he had created with writer Mike W. Barr, Camelot 3000, which was about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table being reincarnated in the future to save the earth from alien invasion. With that title ending, Bolland literally had his pick of any project he wanted to do at DC. He decided that he wanted to work on a Batman one-shot with writer Alan Moore, a fellow British comic creator who had recently begun working for DC writing the title Swamp Thing, turning that book into one of the most critically acclaimed comics of the decade.
The resulting work took Bolland a few years to draw (as a particularly detailed artist, Bolland works fairly slowly, which is why he mostly just draws comic book covers these days), but when it was finally released in 1988, Batman: The Killing Joke became very likely the second most influential Batman work next to Frank Miller’s comics.
It was an inspired look into the madness behind Batman’s greatest villain, the Joker. However, a character that did not fare so well was Barbara Gordon, Batgirl. In the comic, the Joker comes to visit Gordon and her father, the police commissioner (and Batman’s longtime ally) James Gordon, and when she answers the door, Joker shoots her in the stomach, paralyzing her from the waist down. He then proceeds to kidnap and torture her father.
While this dark work was highly influential (the late Heath Ledger was given a copy of the book to study for his portrayal of the Joker in the Batman Begins sequel, The Dark Knight), some wondered whether DC really intended to have Batgirl crippled—it seemed a bit over the top. However, not only did the book gain editorial approval, earlier in 1988 DC even hired the last writer to handle Batgirl regularly, Barbara Kesel (who wrote her story when Batgirl was a backup feature in one of the Batman titles), to write a one-shot special where she would wrap up any remaining Batgirl story lines and have Barbara retire at the end of the issue, simply to put the character into place for Moore’s work. DC definitely intended for this work to “count.”
Many readers felt the violence toward Gordon was too much, and even Moore, in retrospect, has expressed his displeasure with how the story turned out. Two writers who were particularly upset were John Ostrander and his wife, Kim Yale. Ostrander was writing a couple of titles for DC at the time, and when he and Yale read The Killing Joke, they were dismayed at how Barbara Gordon was treated. They then set out to “fix” the character, as Ostrander slowly introduced Gordon, now a wheelchair-bound computer expert, into Suicide Squad, one of the titles he was writing.
This new take on Gordon, now calling herself Oracle, soon became a popular DC character; more popular, in fact, than she was when she was Batgirl. She even gained her own title, Birds of Prey, about her and a group of superhero operatives she organizes (sort of like Charlie’s Angels). Birds of Prey was even popular enough to spawn a short-lived television show based on the series. So while Barbara Gordon’s character was for a time heading somewhere rather dark, her story turned out quite hopeful in the end, thanks to Ostrander and Yale.
AS MENTIONED, THE Batman television series was extremely popular and resonant in the popular culture, but few people would have expected the effect it had on a certain group of dolphins at Disney’s Epcot Center in Florida, who were trained by scientists to sing the theme song to the series!
In 2005 the researchers successfully established that dolphins could not only recognize rhythms but then reproduce them. They began the study by taking each dolphin separately and continually playing it six different short rhythms through an underwater sound projector called a hydrophone. They trained the dolphins to associate each rhythm with a certain action, so that when they played one rhythm, the dolphin would toss a ball, and for another the dolphin would wave its fin.
Once they established that the dolphins were actually differentiating between the various rhythms, they then used positive reinforcement to get the dolphins to repeat rhythms vocally on demand. They would show the dolphins a Batman doll and then reward it with a fish.
Soon, with all the dolphins properly trained, they brought them together to produce the rhythms on presentation of the Batman doll. The result was what appeared to be a group of dolphins singing the Batman theme (written by Neal Hefti for the 1966 series), specifically the part that goes “Batman! Batmaaaan! Batmaaaaaaan!” Batman is lucky that the dolphins are friendly; he already has enough aquatic trouble with the Penguin!
SPEAKING OF THE Penguin, while the Batman comics and television series have had a widespread and mostly positive effect on the world, that particular villain may very well have been influential in creating a new way to assassinate people!
Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot, a short, ugly looking man, gained the nickname the Penguin when he was a child, because of his strange appearance and his love for birds. First appearing in 1941, in Detective Comics #58, the Penguin would dress up in fine suits and a top hat, and carry a fancy umbrella, pretending to be the gentleman that he never could be. The umbrellas were his gimmick: he carried a number of different high-tech models with different specialties (one might contain a gun, and others might shoot out poisonous gas, or conceal a blade, etc.). This made for a memorable recurring villain, and the Penguin gained even more fame when he was portrayed on the Batman television series by Burgess Meredith, who would waddle and make a squawking noise. Meredith’s take on the Penguin made the character one of the show’s most popular villains. Danny DeVito would later take on the role in the 1992 film sequel Batman Returns. The character was memorable enough, apparently, to inspire a murder that took place in 1978 using an actual high-tech umbrella!
Georgi Markov was a Bulgarian novelist and playwright who was popular during the 1960s. He was also quite critical of Communism, which led to his plays being banned in Bulgaria, a Communist country at the time. In the late 1960s, Markov emigrated to Western Europe and ultimately settled in England, working at the Bulgarian desk of the BBC World Service and continuing to speak out against Communism. The Bulgarian secret police, Darzhavna Sigurnost, likely with assistance from the Soviet Union’s KGB, made a number of attempts to kill Markov, finally succeeding in 1978.
Markov says that while waiting at a bus stop by Waterloo Bridge, he was jabbed in the calf by a man carrying an umbrella. By the time he arrived at work, he had developed a large red pimple where the man had jabbed him, and the pain persisted. He developed a high fever, was admitted to the hospital that night, and died three days later.
After his death, an autopsy was performed, and a small metal pellet was found in his calf. The pellet contained two tiny holes, and inside them there were traces of the toxin ricin. The holes had originally been coated with a sugary substance that was designed to melt at 37°C (the temperature of the human body). Once the ricin entered Markov’s bloodstream, he was a dead man, as there was not then, nor is there now, a cure for ricin poisoning. The pellet had been fired from a trigger in the top of the umbrella, just like one of Penguin’s umbrella devices; a tragic case of life (perhaps) imitating art.
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DC COMICS MISCELLANEA
As detailed earlier, Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson was the driving force behind the creation of what eventually became DC Comics, but Wheeler-Nicholson was even more influential than that, as he was one of the first persons to create a comic book containing original content rather than reprinted material. Wheeler-Nicholson was inspired to get into the business by the success of Famous Funnies, a series that contained reprints of newspaper comic strips, and in 1934 formed National Allied Publications to publish New Fun: The Big Comic Magazine #1, which included comic strip reprints but also a number of original comics, mostly in the funny animal vein. The new venture was not a highly profitable one at the time, as retailers were wary about selling the new product that Wheeler-Nicholson was peddling.
By 1937 Wheeler-Nicholson was deep into debt to Harry Donenfeld, who ran the printing plant that produced Wheeler-Nicholson’s comics line (which had expanded to a second title, New Comics�
��later titled Adventure Comics), so Wheeler-Nicholson was compelled to take on Donenfeld as a partner for the publication of the next title, Detective Comics. A year later, though sales were doing reasonably well on the three titles, Wheeler-Nicholson was still in debt, and Donenfeld took advantage of that debt to force him out of the company, by suing him for nonpayment on the printing fees. This maneuver led to a settlement and Wheeler-Nicholson’s departure. He left just before the launch of the fourth title in the line, which happened to be the fairly important Action Comics #1.
Taking on forces larger than himself was nothing new to Wheeler-Nicholson, though. During his time in the army, he did no less than take on the entire United States military, ruining his career in the process. Wheeler-Nicholson was a cavalry officer during World War I, but after the war, he was extremely critical of the U.S. Army. Dissatisfied with how the war was handled by the military, and what he felt was the advancement of officers based on nepotism and cliques, in 1922 Wheeler-Nicholson went over the heads of his superiors and sent a letter directly to President Warren Harding, along with a copy to the New York Times.
The U.S. War Department answered in the New York Times, as well, and the Times gave Wheeler-Nicholson a chance to respond, which he did, detailing the areas in which he felt the military was lacking. After a series of hearings, the affair ended with Wheeler-Nicholson’s military discharge, at which point he began using his military knowledge as a gimmick in writing war and adventures stories for pulp magazines. While at the pulps, he came up with the idea to do an original comic book series, and when Donenfeld ended that endeavor, Wheeler-Nicholson simply went back to his war stories and military critiques—once you have been in a fight with the U.S. military, publishing battles likely seem mundane.
WHEELER-NICHOLSON HAD BEEN gone from the company for almost two years by the time the Justice Society of America was formed, in 1940, in the pages of All Star Comics #3. The group represented the first time a team of established superheroes was formed. What is bizarre about the formation of the team, though, is that the heroes were all from different comic book companies!
As noted earlier, in the early 1940s DC Comics was really a partnership of two companies, National Comics (made up of Donenfeld’s Detective Comics and National Publications, which he took from Wheeler-Nicholson) and All-American Comics (Max Gaines’s company), which published under the same banner. In fact for a time, in 1944, before Gaines let Donenfeld buy him out (at which point Gaines started his own company, EC Comics—more on that later), All-American Comics even had its own separate logo. So the Justice Society of America in All Star Comics #3—which featured the Flash, Hawkman, the Sandman, the Atom, the Spectre, Dr. Fate, Green Lantern, and Hour-Man—was made up of characters who did not even belong to the same company!
The team consisted of characters from four different comic anthologies, two heroes from each anthology. The heroes from Gaines’s company were Green Lantern and the Atom from All-American Comics, and the Flash and Hawkman from Flash Comics. Dr. Fate and the Spectre came from National’s More Fun Comics, while Hour-Man and the Sandman were from National’s Adventure Comics.
The other intriguing aspect of the formation of the first super-group in All Star Comics #3 is that its members were not even intended to be a team when the comic was originally produced. As you can tell by the number, this was not the beginning of All Star Comics. The first two issues of All Star Comics were basically a sampler of the four superhero anthologies produced by National and All-American Publications; the book featured two stories from each of the four anthologies. The editor of the title, Sheldon Mayer, however, came up with a winning idea: give the book more of a hook than just “here are eight short stories.”
And that hook was that the heroes were all on a brand-new team together. The issue was originally written as eight solo stories, but Mayer had writer Gardner Fox write a framing sequence that had the heroes form a superhero team, forcing Fox to then come up with a way to tie each short story into the framing sequence (as seen on page 43, Fox has been given some tough assignments).
As a final and interesting twist to the story, Fox has always been credited with writing each of the short stories in the issue, and that’s what he himself has claimed. However, if they were initially written to be solo stories, as Fox himself has noted they were, then wouldn’t they have been written by each character’s regular writer, like they were in the first two issues? Since Fox passed away over twenty years ago, it’s unlikely we will ever have a definitive answer to that question.
THOUGH a FOUNDING member of the Justice Society of America, Green Lantern did not have a particularly dignified end to his career as a lead character. Created by Martin Nodell, Green Lantern made his debut in 1940 in All-American Comics #16. The story featured Alan Scott, a railroad engineer who discovered an ancient green-metal lantern. In it, a magical green flame appeared and told him how to fashion a ring from the metal of the lantern. When he did so, wearing the ring afforded him a series of wonderful powers, like the ability to fly, walk through walls, zap people with energy blasts, and create solid objects out of thin air. In an interesting idea for a costume, Green Lantern wore an outfit composed of a purple cape, red shirt, and green pants. This odd combination of colors was actually justified in the comic—Scott felt the costume would be so garish that it would frighten criminals!
Green Lantern soon became popular enough that he was given his own ongoing series in 1941. Like most other heroes, Green Lantern eventually gained a sidekick, though his sidekick was a bit different from those of other heroes. More of an assistant, his was a cab driver named Doiby Dickles (Doiby is actually Derby, just spoken through a thick Brooklyn accent), who would often assist by hitting crooks in the head with a pipe wrench he carried around with him at all times.
After World War II, superheroes as a whole fell on hard times, and Green Lantern felt the sting just like the others. Always looking for a new hook, the editor of Green Lantern, Sheldon Mayer, felt they should attempt to cash in on the series of popular dog characters in radio and film, like Rin Tin Tin and Lassie, so in Green Lantern #30, in 1948, the superhero gained a dog sidekick, Streak the Wonder Dog. (A few years later, in 1955, “give characters a dog” had a comeback, as Batman would gain Ace the Bat-Hound and Superman would meet Krypto the Superdog.) Streak was a big hit with fans, so much so that soon he became more popular than Green Lantern himself! For three of the last five issues of Green Lantern, including the final issue, Green Lantern did not appear on the cover of his own comic—that honor belonged to Streak!
After Green Lantern was canceled in 1949 (the concept was revived in 1959 with a new Green Lantern character, this time a member of an intergalactic peacekeeping corps, all of whom had magic green rings), Streak the Wonder Dog was eventually revamped and given a new name and his own title in 1952, The Adventures of Rex the Wonder Dog.
WILLIAM MOULTON MARSTON was a noted psychologist who, during the early 1940s, wrote about the positive effects he felt comic books had on children (see pages 42 and 67-69 for what the counterargument did to comics). Seeing the industry dominated by male heroes, though, his wife suggested that he create a female super-hero. He pitched the idea to Max Gaines at All-American Publications. Gaines liked the idea too, and Wonder Woman made her debut in 1941, in All Star Comics #8.
Wonder Woman was Princess Diana, a representative of the all-female tribe of Amazons on Paradise Island, who won a contest to be the tribe’s representative in “man’s world” and help fight the Nazis. Armed with strength, silver bracelets that could deflect bullets, and a golden lasso that could compel anyone encircled by it to tell the truth, Wonder Woman made a formidable hero and is the only character other than Batman and Superman to have had her own title since 1944. What’s most striking about her magic lasso is that Marston was actually the inventor of the first modern lie-detector test (which remains an important component of the current polygraph lie-detector test)!
In 1921 Martson published an
article based on his doctoral thesis for Harvard University, which discussed the lie-detector test he had developed four years earlier. The title was “Systolic blood pressure symptoms of deception and constituent mental states,” and that was Marston’s innovation: the idea that by testing a subject’s systolic blood pressure one would be able to determine whether the subject was lying. Dr. John A. Larson and Sir James Mackenzie also developed work in the field, and Larson’s former assistant, Leonarde Keeler, was the one who successfully combined all of their various work into one device that measured systolic blood pressure, heart rate, respiration, and skin conductivity. This is the device that is used today (although improved upon over the years).
Still, while he may not have created the polygraph test, the inventor of Wonder Woman’s lasso of truth did play a significant part in its origin!
ONE THING THAT Harry Donenfeld made a priority at National/DC Comics during his tenure there was that the company would use the law to protect its rights as much as it could. This was especially important following the explosion in popularity that followed Superman’s introduction in 1938. Suddenly, new comic book companies were starting up left and right, each coming up with its own version of Superman (for one such instance, see pages 217-18). During this time, none of these heroes challenged the sales or popularity of Superman; that is, until Fawcett Comics introduced Captain Marvel, which is why DC Comics fought over the character for years.
Captain Marvel first appeared in 1940, in Whiz Comics #2. He was the most notable character from Fawcett Publications, a pulp magazine publisher that decided to get into comic books in 1939 after seeing the twin successes of Superman and Batman for DC Comics. Writer Bill Parker and artist C. C. Beck created the character, which had an especially novel hook—a young child named Billy Batson, working as a news reporter, was chosen by a wizard named Shazam to be a force for justice. When Billy says the word Shazam (an acronym for six historical figures who would give Billy their power: the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles, and the speed of Mercury) he would transform into Captain Marvel, the World’s Mightiest Mortal.
Brian Cronin Page 5