This isn’t a (very) late review, it’s a look at a recent facsimile edition, saving this website from a pretty dull fifth week of comics. There’s no obvious reason Action Comics #454 is getting the reprint treatment – there’s no big character debut, or anniversary – but I’m told people are amused by the glorious Bob Oksner cover illo. Why, I don’t know, it seems perfectly serious to me.
Which is exactly what I thought when I bought this as an 11 year old in 1975. I had no idea the arches in the background were nodding to McDonald’s. Heck, I was no wiser when an undisguised McDonald’s appeared in Iron Man #130 five years later, we didn’t have many in the UK back then. Inside this comic, printed on paper stock resembling the Bronze Age standard – it feels a little thicker – the eatery is called McTavish’s, and its mascot, Donald, looks for all the world like the Joker.
First though, the set-up. The then-new Toyman is robbing a bank in Metropolis and WGBS News has all the details.
To no one’s surprise, Superman makes the scene – but Toyman makes a monkey out of him.
The bad guy gets away, meaning Clark Kent has to tell two million viewers – station owner Morgan Edge says so! – about his other identity’s mild humiliation.
After work Clark embarrasses Lois Lane at a banquet…
…and later comes up with a theory.
And that’s how Superman winds up at the fast food outlet that would one day be replaced by Big Belly Burger.
Is Superman correct? Has Jack B Nimble come up with a way to keep Superman off his back? Or is the Metropolis Marvel missing something? If you don’t know, check out this hugely entertaining Superman story. Cary Bates’s typically tricksy script has all the hallmarks of Seventies Supes – a grabber of a gimmick, fun with the WGBS folk and a frankly nutty solution.
The story title, ‘Superman’s Energy Crisis’, is a nice reminder of then-current affairs – the need for scads of food is a one-off problem here but post-Crisis it became a regular thing for new Flash Wally West.
The art by penciller Curt Swan and inker Tex Blaisdell is a huge nostalgia bullet, comforting in its familiarity and calm. Swan’s mastery of naturalism along with occasional experimentation with layouts – panels within panels, a silent slice of Superman introducing a flashback, a moody cityscape implying pollution – makes for a wonderful visual experience.
One thing I can say about this story is that there’s more pooping than I’ve ever seen in Metropolis – if someone were to tell me Bates wrote this tale to win a bet I’d not be surprised.
The issue has a second feature, starring the Atom. Given it’s written by Marty Pasko, who went on to a terrific run on the Superman title shortly afterwards, I’m surprised it’s not better. To be fair, Pasko had only recently graduated from his longtime role as hyper-critical letterhack ‘Pesky’ Pasko, and was now working for Action editor Julie Schwartz.
‘The Campus That Swallowed Itself’ picks up a plot strand from the previous issue; Ivy Town Professor Ray Palmer, aka size-changing hero The Atom, has co-invented a machine that can make subconscious desires real. Here it’s the thoughts of a campus gardener that run riot.
What’s lady lawyer Jean Loring up to? Well, the school buildings are being crushed by rampant ivy, and Ray theorises that if Jean – who talks to her plants – can think enough good thoughts while being hit by his veeblefetzer, the crisis will go kaput. Of course, it’s not that simple, with a riot breaking out.
‘Rambuctuous (sic)’? The Tiny Titan is rather understating things.
Pasko’s narrative technique, directly addressing the reader, is pretty annoying, but at least it’s not second-person, a favourite with many Seventies writers, and he dropped it by the time he was writing Superman.
Worthy of comment is the fact that Jean Loring is allowed to be something other than nagging girlfriend, she’s rather a hoot.
The big surprise for me here is how much more life the art of Jose Delbo has compared to his simultaneous work on Wonder Woman. Here he’s doing pencils and inks, there he was inked by the likes of Joe Giella and Vince Colletta – there may just, possibly, be a connection.
With some wonderful house ads, a Hostess Batman strip and a fun letters page, this issue could barely be more fun. Whatever the reason, I’m delighted DC has put it out there for fans old and new.
Too Dangerous For a Girl 2 
I loved the Delbo-Colletta team but I know I’m probably an outlier. I even like Colletta om Kirby! And that dialog Jean has is further proof that the insanity that eventually led her to kill Sue Dibny had long roots!
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I adore Colletta on Kirby Thor, I bought a whole trade paperback!
Aw, be fair to Jean, she was turning the talking-to-plants dial to 15 at Ray’s behest.
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Then I guess the Super Tea Family book is the start?
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I’d say Atom & Hawkman #45 in 1969, the last issue of the run, in which Jean was driven mad by aliens; at the end of the issue she was still in a terrible state. She was cured in an issue of Justice League the next year, #81… for a while.
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There is only one truism left in comics though. ‘Jean Loring stays crazy and evil’. I guess it helps she was the one Silver Age love interest that came off as truly awful. Iris West just didn’t have all the facts and Carol Ferris was fighting for respect for doing a ‘man’s job’ better than any of the men around her but Jean just came off as mean. I guess they could say she was replaced with a duplicate from the future because of something she had to do or not do but I’m posting that here and will do so elsewhere when it comes up so no writer can use it without being accused of stealing fan ideas.
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I agree on the Colletta issue. Hoe was a great penciler in the 50s and 60s and a great inker in the following decades.
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I must find his romance work, I can imagine it’s rather lush.
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Jean Loring got the rawest deal of the Silver Age love interests.
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Didn’t she just.
Justice for Jean?
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But she was an unpleasant piece of work who emotionally tortured Ray even without the excuse that she loved his alter ego! Who can blame Meltzer for growing up on that and seeing insane murderess as the next logical step for her?
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I was sort of shocked when I read the Showcase volume at how reasonable she was. Jean was a 25 year old graduate of Law School. Of course she didn’t want to get married. Ray would’ve knocked her up in a few months and her career would have been over.
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That justification only works by dragging down Ray.
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Atom Baby, though, how great would that be?
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There’d be no complaining about how big the baby’s head was at least.
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A very fair point!
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Not within the context of the time.
What Jean wants (to have career) is reasonable, but so is what Ray wants. The poor guy just wants to have sex with his long-term girlfriend. In 1961, the birth control pill was not yet available in many US States. So, sex required marriage for young professionals.
It is a premise that obviously did not age well as the sixties wore along and the culture radically changed, but it is an interesting subtext.
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This is all so fascinating, I read those early Atom stories as a little kid and I just took it he wanted to marry her because he was really, really in love with her. The extra layer is great.
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Thanks.
Maybe it was coming to those Showcase volumes after watching MAD MEN and reading about the “long 50s” in America, but those Silver Age love interests seemed different to me once I had some context. They had always seemed like bummers. But, the times were so different!
Everyone forgets that there was a sexual revolution in the 1920s when the average number of lifetime partners for women went from 1 to 2. Then later in the 60s, it jumped from 2 to (I think) 5 after broad adoption of the Pill. Writers, like Gardner Fox and Robert Kanigher, were adults writing about other adults for children. It is interesting to wonder how much of the context of the time got into those stories.
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I’ve seen Mad Men, but don’t know about the Long Fifties, I’m off to have a read. And I’m going to have another look at those comics to see what subtext I can find. Early Barry Allen and Iris West were a ridiculously sexy couple, I wonder…
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But being with the Fastest Man Alive, Iris should have been meaner than Jean and the one with the wandering loins.
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A couple of books that I read were Fred Kaplan’s 1959 and David Halberstam’s THE FIFTIES.
I’ve messed around with training AI on old Carmine Infantino drawings and it stunned me what Iris West looked like.
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