0 6 1 82658 27762 8 Volume 1, Number 81 July 2015 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michael Eury Comics’ Bronze Age and Beyond! PUBLISHER John Morrow DESIGNER Rich Fowlks COVER ARTIST Nick Cardy (E.N.B. headshot by Dave Manak) COVER COLORIST Glenn Whitmore COVER DESIGNER Michael Kronenberg PROOFREADER Rob Smentek SPECIAL THANKS Neal Adams Chris Marshall Sergio Aragonés David Michelinie Robert Beerbohm Martin Pasko Edgar Bercasio Jeff Rovin Jerry Boyd Bob Rozakis Pat Broderick Walter Simonson Gary Brown Steve Skeates Cary Burkett Prof. Manuela Soares Comic Book Artist Bryan D. Stroud BACK SEAT DRIVER: Remembering E. Nelson Bridwell . .2 DC Comics Linda Sunshine Steve Englehart Laurie Sutton FLASHBACK: A Look at the Super Specs . .4 John Eury Roy Thomas Stephan Friedt Maggie Thompson FANTASY COVER GALLERY: The Super Spectaculars That Weren’t . .32 Carl Gafford Mike Tiefenbacher Mike Gold Anthony Tollin PRINCE STREET NEWS: History on the Spinner Rack . .34 Grand Comics John Trumbull FLASHBACK: Super DC Giant . .37 Database Michael Uslan Bob Greenberger Mark Waid BRING ON THE BAD GUYS: Wanted, the World’s Most Dangerous Villains . .42 Jack C. Harris Carolyn Wallace Karl Heitmueller, Jr. John Wells WHAT THE--?!: The Inferior Five . .46 Heritage Comics Bernie Wrightson Auctions FLASHBACK: Reprint Madness: DC’s Short-Lived Reprint Line of 1972–1973 . .47 Dedicated to the Dan Johnson FLASHBACK: Secret Origins . .53 Rob Kelly memory of E. Nelson Bridwell Jim Kingman FLASHBACK: DC’s Bronze Age Reprint Giants . .56 Paul Kupperberg Paul Levitz FLASHBACK: Terminated Classics: The DC Implosion . .67 FLASHBACK: DC’s Bronze Age Collected Editions . .69 If you’re viewing a Digital INTERVIEW: A Fireside (Books) Chat with Michael Uslan . .78 Edition of this publication, PLEASE READ THIS: FLASHBACK: DC’s Bronze Age Paperbacks . .84 BEYOND CAPES: The Masterworks Series of Great Comic Book Artists . .86 This is copyrighted material, NOT intended for downloading anywhere except our FLASHBACK: DC’s Deluxe Reprint Series . .89 website or Apps. If you downloaded it from another website or torrent, go ahead and Our BACK TALK letters column will return next issue. read it, and if you decide to keep it, DO THE RIGHT THING and buy a legal down- load, or a printed copy. Otherwise, DELETE IT FROM YOUR DEVICE and DO NOT BACK ISSUE™ is published 8 times a year by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, SHARE IT WITH FRIENDS OR POST IT Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: BACK ISSUE, ANYWHERE. If you enjoy our publications c/o Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief, 118 Edgewood Avenue NE, Concord, NC 28025. Email: enough to download them, please pay for [email protected]. Six-issue subscriptions: $60 Standard US, $85 Canada, $107 Surface them so we can keep producing ones like this. Our digital editions should ONLY be International. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. downloaded within our Apps and at Cover art by Nick Cardy. Superman and related characters TM & © DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. www.twomorrows.com All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2015 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows Publishing, except for Prince Street News, which is TM and © Karl Heitmueller, Jr. BACK ISSUE is a TM of TwoMorrows Publishing. ISSN 1932-6904. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING. DC Bronze Age Giants and Reprints • BACK ISSUE • 1 Bronze Age babies stuffed themselves silly on a smorgas- bord of scrumptious super-snacks: relevant superheroes, Kirby is Coming!, Kirby is going, Limited Collectors’ Editions and Marvel Treasury Editions, black-and-white magazines, Shazam!, Super Friends, ElectraWoman and DynaGirl, 7-11 superhero Slurpee cups, Underoos, Megos, Hostess comic-book ads, Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman, Marvel Value Stamps, KISS in the Marvel Universe, Power Records, Fireside trade paperbacks, DC and Marvel calendars—the 1970s witnessed an explosion of comics innovations, comics formats, and comics-related merchandising. These and other favorites cheerfully colored our childhoods. Amid these pop-culture marvels, the meatiest and mightiest of them all was the DC 100-Page Super Spectacular, DC Comics’ squarebound mega-format offering a super page count and “the Biggest Bargain in Comics” for a price of a mere two quarters by (later, 60 cents). The “Super Specs,” as they were M i c h a e l E u r y affectionately called, afforded readers a super-ability that even the miraculous Man of Steel couldn’t boast: peer-into-the-past vision! With E. Nelson Bridwell (and other editors) hand- picking a selection of Golden and Silver Age gems that our dads or grandpas might’ve read (and a few moms, too), the Super Specs unlocked the vault of DC’s decades- deep library. Never mind the fact that many of these reprints were crudely etched and often preposterous— we were being made privy to the original adventures of Earth-Two heroes (the Golden Age Flash, Starman, etc.) we knew from appearances in Justice League of America and other Julius Schwartz-edited titles, plus we met old characters new to us (Air Wave, the Boy Commandos, Super-Chief, etc.)! And with their dynamic wraparound (originally, at least) covers by luminaries like Neal Adams and Nick Cardy, it’s no wonder that DC 100-Page Super Spectacular, which first appeared in 1971, soon grew from a worthy successor to the Silver Age’s beloved 80-Page Giants to an exciting new format that, some hoped, might save a sagging industry. Let us open the covers of these classics (but ever so gently, so as not to break their delicate square bindings) and gaze through those selfsame Super Specs for a clearer view of a group of comics that have become cherished by many longtime fans and highly sought-after by collectors. LAND OF THE GIANTS Before we dive into the Super Spectaculars, first we’ll take a quick detour to learn how comics Giants came about. Awhile back I read an online column calling DC’s 80-Page Giants the trade paperbacks of their day. At face value, that’s true. DC’s 80-pagers, and the 100-pagers we’ll soon explore, did provide a selection of older stories collected in a single volume. The First Super Spectacular DC 100-Page Super-Spectacular #4 (DC-4), 1971’s “Weird Mystery Tales,” with its spooky cover by Bernie (then Berni) Wrightson. TM & © DC Comics. 4 • BACK ISSUE • DC Bronze Age Giants and Reprints Girls Love Super Specs, Too House ad for the first issue of Young Love to appear in the Super Spectacular format, #197. TM & © DC Comics. Nick Cardy (DC’s main cover artist of the early 1970s, who would soon become the main Super Spec cover artist as well) with #DC-11. Neal Adams returned for Superman #252’s unforgettable wraparound cover, with its sky full of “flying heroes.” A few of these Super Specs included fillers and special features (see index following), as well as letters columns. Those lettercols were roundups for reader mail from previous Giants, either for the host hero’s title or for random titles. Adventure #416’s “Super-Spectacular Fe-Mail” column was a noteworthy catch-all, featuring an eclectic gathering of missives covering everything from Supergirl (regarding Super DC Giant #S-24) to commentary about the Viking Prince (DC Special #12), Plastic Man (DC Special #15), and Aquaman (Super DC Giant #S-26). And then, once again, the Super Spectaculars disappeared! YOUR DEMAND IS OUR COMMAND In May 1972, with its issues cover-dated July 1972, DC Comics abandoned its “Bigger and Better” 52-page, 25-cent format, jettisoned its backup reprints, and reduced its page count to 32 and its price to 20 cents. Over the course of the next few months, a handful of 20-cent reprint titles began to appear, including the ongoing Wanted, the World’s Most Dangerous Villains and two issues of The Inferior Five. Near the year’s end, the tabloid-sized Limited Collectors’ Edition debuted with #C-20, featuring Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer. (The super-sized BACK ISSUE #61 was dedicated to tabloid comics, hence their exclusion from this “Giants and Reprints” issue.) But healthy sales and reader response to the previous spate of Super Specs were sufficient to revive the series for another run. On the day after Christmas 1972, a new Batman 100-pager was released—with yet another change in the series’ title. The “DC” was dropped from its official title, the series now becoming 100-Page Super Spectacular; the DC-prefixed number- ing continued. “Okay—you asked for us to bring back the Super The “Super Spectacles” lettercol in issue #DC- Spectaculars—so here they are—one of ’em, anyway!” 22, the second 100-pager to star the Flash, was wrote editor Bridwell in 100-Page Super Spectacular significant for a few reasons, starting with E.N.B.’s #DC-14, starring Batman, in its “A Look Through the aforementioned remark about the unusual num- Super Spectacles” lettercol. The Batman issue was bering of the Super Specs’ first issue. In response initially planned for a May 1972 release (before DC’s to a former soldier’s lament about missing some decision to drop its page count and cover price), the of the Specs, Bridwell offered a listing of all of the editor wrote. E.N.B. also revealed the series’ next 100-pagers that had thus far been published, wave: “Future Specs will include House of Mystery, including their content. He responded to another Superboy, [Our] Army at War, Shazam!, Superman, archie goodwin reader by contending the reason for the Super Justice League, and Flash, among others—at least, Specs’ publication was “to publish something special those are our current plans.” (Of those plans, only a for you—and … to make money,” hinting that Halloween-released House of Mystery edition, promised in issues subscriptions to 100-pagers might soon happen.