Volume Three, Number Twenty-six

EVERYTHING'S SUPERHEROES!

A Historical Overview

of the

MLJ Magazines/Archie Comic Publications

Superhero Lines!

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PART FIFTEEN

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While there was lots of costumed-hero activity taking place at Mighty Comics Group in the mid-1960s Archie and his pals were also jumping onto the superhero bandwagon. For a brief period between 1965 and 1967 Archie, Jughead, Betty and Reggie would occasionally put on costumes and become "Pureheart the Powerful", "Captain Hero", Superteen" and "Evilheart". These adventures took place in a number of Archie Series titles including Life With Archie, Betty and Me and even The Adventures of Little Archie. As well as appearing in these titles the costumed Archie characters appeared in six issues of Archie as Pureheart the Powerful and seven issues of Jughead as Captain Hero between 1966 and 1967. For the most part their adventures were just plain good old fun reading but occasionally the tales got quite interesting for Mighty Comics Group fans (most of whom by the way won't buy an Archie Series title if their lives depended on it deeming them to be too juvenile) when characters such as "Black Hood" or "Fly Man" would pop in for a visit (eg: "Jughead" #132 May 1966).

Meanwhile, back at Mighty Comics Group, a month after Mighty Crusaders was canceled (#7 cover-date October 1966) Fly Man also vanished from the scene and was replaced by a new anthology titled Mighty Comics which picked up its numbering from Fly Man (beginning with number forty, cover-dated November 1966). The title ran as a monthly with its final issue being number fifty (cover-dated October 1967).

While Fly Man seemingly vanished the same time his comic left the stands other Mighty Comics Group characters continued to appear in Mighty Comics including "Steel Sterling" (#44 & #49), "Mister Justice" (#47), "Hangman" (#45 and #48) and "The Web" (#40, #43, #45 and #50) who, in his last appearance, teamed up with "Inferno The Flame Breather".

In the opinion of most Mighty Comics Group fans the stories which ran in Mighty Comics #s40-50 were the best superhero tales published by Archie Comic Publications in the 1960s and were all, coincidentally, written by Jerry Seigel. Unfortunately by mid-1967 interest in superhero comics was beginning to drop both by the folks at Archie and the public as a whole resulting in the Mighty Comics Group line to vanish without a trace after Mighty Comics #50 October 1967. While this imprint was never to return The Comet, The Shield, The Fly, The Black Hood and other MLJ/Archie superheroes would not be permanent residents of comic book limbo.

NEXT: The 1970s' Red Circle Comics Group!!

Volume Three, Number Nineteen

EVERYTHING'S SUPERHEROES:

A

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

OF

THE

MLJ MAGAZINES/ARCHIE COMIC PUBLICATIONS

SUPERHERO LINES!

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PART NINE

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In the early 1960s Archie Comic Publications-sometimes referred to in the indicia of some of its comics as "Radio Comics"-published a line of paperbacks under the name of "Belmont Paperbacks" which, among other things, reprinted under license the pulp prose adventures of The Shadow. As these paperbacks were relatively successful Archie/Radio decided to also publish a comic book featuring the legendary pulp hero. The potential for an exciting hero genre comic reminiscent of the quality material MLJ Magazines published in its early days was clearly evident, but once placed in the hands of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel the result was a comic that ranks high among the worst comics published in the 1960s (sharing top honour with MF Enterprises' Captain Marvel and Dell's Werewolf and Dracula).

Actually the first two issues of Archie's "Shadow" (which debuted November, 1964) weren't all that bad. While the artwork was somewhat pedestrian and the stories for the most part bland both issues stuck pretty close in concept to the pulp Shadow. But beginning with issue number three not only was a new artistic direction taken (with former 1940s Green Lantern artist Paul Reinman at the helm), but a whole new direction for the comic itself was introduced. Gone was the cloaked version of The Shadow and replacing him was a costumed superhero version of The Shadow who in his purple and green outfit battled such threats as "The Radiation Rogue", "Dr. Demon", "Attila The Hunter" and "The Princess of Death"; none of whom would have given even Captain Sprocket a difficult time, but under the direction of Jerry Siegel became deadly foes against the new version of The Shadow.

This is not to say that Jerry Siegel was a terrible writer. He wasn't by any stretch of the imagination. However, as with many writers from the golden age of comics-Joe Simon immediately comes to mind-he lost touch with the times resulting in comics scripts that did not in any way reflect his true talents.

The artwork was not Paul Reinman's best either. In the 1940s he was extremely innovative and had an excellent visual storytelling ability but by the 1960s he was nearing the end of his career and basically was only going through the motions. All in all the potential of this comic was nowhere realized, and after issue number eight it vanished from the newsstands. A couple of decades later in an interview in "Comics Interview" #3 (May, 1983) Dick Goldwater, son of one of the company's founders John Goldwater, stated that the reason for the failure was because the comic was not well distributed. As the same distributor that handled the company's Archie titles-which were found at every outlet-handled "The Shadow", this statement by Mr. Goldwater is extremely dubious at best. The most likely case is that the comic just didn't sell and after eight issues of bad sales Archie Comic Publications simply pulled the plug. That's the most likely scenario but in "Comic Reader" No. 200 (April, 1982) Lou Mougin, in an an article about the 1960s Archie superhero line, put forth a hypothesis that is much more to my liking. According to Lou, what REALLY happened was that the pulp version of The Shadow got so fed up with the abomination that was appearing in the comics that he pulled out his 45s and blew him away. Makes sense to me.

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NEXT: Final days of The Fly and an eye toward the future.