The Flashback Holiday Gift Guide

 With the gift giving season looming, here are some gift suggestions for those in your life interested in the sort of media this blog focuses on:

Hey Kids! Comics! by Howard Chaykin: This collects the first limited series by Howard Chaykin about the history of comics from the 40s to the 2000s as seen through the eyes of three (fictional, though clearly inspired by aspects of real people) creators who got their start in the Golden Age. The through-line is the proof of the reputed Jack Kirby adage: "comics will break your heart, kid," or at least leave you embittered and angry, as editors and publishers profit from your work and fandom misunderstands the real history. There are 2 more volumes in the whole series.

The New Adventures of Batman: The Complete Collection: Holy Blu Ray, Batman! Featuring the voices of Adam West as Batman and Burt Ward as Robin (reprising their roles from the 60s TV series), this 1977 Filmation series was likely many young fan's first introduction to Bat-Mite and likely raised the profiles of Clayface, as well.

Wandering the Wild Wild West by Don Presnell: Its subtitle says it's a "critical analysis of CBS series" but I would say it's more a good overview of show. Still, a book well worth it for fans. There just aren't many WWW books out there!

The Atlas Artist Edition vol. 1: Joe Maneely: With this volume, Fantagraphics starts giving the Atlas Comics artists the same lavish showcases they've been giving the EC artists. The woefully under-appreciated Joe Maneely was a great place to start.

These Are the Voyages: TOS Season One by Marc Cushman and Susan Osborn: This volume and its companions are the most comprehensive guide to Star Trek the Original Series available. Cushman's commentary on the episodes as tv drama is limited (though as much as many other guides available), but he presents a wealthy of information on the development of each episode from story idea to final aired version, with quotes from interview with creative staff and memos from producers and network execs. If it has a flaw, it's that you wouldn't call the series concise; Every season is its on volume, and every volume is sizable. 

Flash Gordon: Classic Collection Vol. 1: On The Planet Mongo by Alex Raymond and Don Moore: Mad Cave Studios is the latest company to undertake reprinting the classic Sunday strips. This volume covers January 1, 1934 to April 18, 1937, and includes additional background material and an introduction from Alex Ross. I haven't looked at this version to compared it the IDW or Titan reprints of the past, but hey, this one is in print!

Blake's 7 on Blu

The British sci-fi series Blakes 7 is finally coming to Region A blu-ray--at least the first season. Amazon has it up for pre-order with a projected release date of December 10. It came out this month in the UK. For the uninitiated, it's about a rebel who leads a group of convicts and outcasts in a struggle against the totalitarian Terran Federation. Jason and I reviewed the pilot here.

While the budget of the show leads to some dodgey props and less than impressive special effects, the stories and generally good as well as the acting.

The Resurrection of Atlas Comics

So, apparently it was announced at NYCC back in October that Atlas Comics is coming back. They've got an exclusive partnership with Walmart to distribute merchandise, including a line of collectible action figures with Mego...

There's also the obligatory (these days) movie deal with Paramount.

While I have some nostalgia for Atlas and Jim and I used to bandy around ideas for how Atlas could be relaunched, I think that maybe a third of the characters need to be forgotten, a third could be cool with some revamping, and a third are good "as-is" but unfortunately might not standout in a crowded marketplace. Spawn seems to have nabbed Grim Ghost's schtick, for instance. 

Anyway, there's a good chance they'll get me to pick up a few issues.

Old Time Radio Horrors

Typically, on/around Halloween, the Radio Classics channel on satellite radio runs a series of horror episodes from the Golden Age of radio. Traveling for work back in 2021, I happened to catch a lot of them. I think these were the best I heard:

"Three Skeleton Key": A lighthouse off French Guyana is overrun by thousands of rats from a wrecked derelict. Stars Vincent Price.

"House in Cypress Canyon": A strange tale of something bestial lurking in a new, post-war subdivision.

"Poltergeist": No relation to the film of the same name, other than being a tale of a malign spirit moved to horrible vengeance by a desecration of a graveyard.

"Behind the Locked Door": A sort of Lovecraftian horror story about some discovered in a cave near Lake Mead.

"The Shadow People": They can't be seen in the light, but a young woman finds out their deadly reality. 

The Energon Universe

When Skybound/Image started the Energon Universe back in 2023, I was only mildly interested. And that interest was more curiosity at why they chose to start this shared universe of Hasbro toy properties, named after a substance from the Transformers with a completely original comic, Void Rivals. It was a title whose whole point of existence seemed to be to provide the surprise reveal of a Transformers link--which for marketing purposes had to be spoiled pre-release so it couldn't be a surprise.

Well, I still don't understand the point of that as I haven't read Void Rivals, but when I read a review of Duke #1 written by Joshua Williamson with art by Tom Reilly, I got onboard to the universe in general. 

Cobra Commander #1 followed a month later by Williamson and Milana. 

Both Duke and Cobra Commander have been collected in trade. 

What they're doing is sort of Ultimate G.I. Joe (in the sense of Marvel's original Ultimate Marvel Universe), but the more realistic/modernized version of the cartoon G.I. Joe universe than Hama's original comics. Duke #1 opens at a point before there's a G.I. Joe, where Duke is a traumatized soldier (he saw a bud crushed in the hand of a giant transforming robot who the reader might recognize as Starscream) and his command structure (personified by Hawk) tells him he's mentally ill and dismisses what he saw.

Duke hooks up with a group of conspiracy theorists and discovers a link between the robot alien technology and M.A.R.S., who seem to be building a private army with advanced tech. The conspiracy group is killed, and Duke has to go on the run. Hawk is forced to send other elite troopers to bring him in--a group which the informed reader will recognize as including Rock-n-Roll and Stalker. Duke is renditioned to some sort of secret prison where he meets...

At this point, you are either the sort that this will appeal to, and you are already sold or it doesn't interest you at all, in which case these series probably aren't for you. I will say I think Williamson's stories for both series are a nice balance of fan service and inventiveness. The world is made more "real" in the sense of implications of alien technologies and human motivations, while retaining all the fantasticness (perhaps goofiness) of the source material. I wouldn't have thought he could make Cobra-La work, but he pretty much does.

These series were soon joined by a Scarlett and a Destro limited. Admittedly, I didn't find either of these as engaging as the first two, but I have also circled back at read the first volume of Daniel Warren Johnson's Transformers. All in all, the Energon Universe has me looking forward to what they are going to do next.

The Spider: Corpse Cargo (1933)

Volume 3, Issue 2 of The Spider magazine (July 1934) is as clear an indication as any that Norvell Page (writing as Grant Stockbridge) is not going to pull any punches with his Spider yarns. His first Spider outing saw kids dying from the bubonic plague unleashed by the villain. In this one, we're only a few pages in when a young member of a club of wannabe Baker Street Irregulars, "The Spider Fan Club," is tortured to death by a gang of modern-day pirates using a knife charged with electricity.

This is part of a larger plot where the gang, led by the beautiful villainess who calls herself Captain Kidd, is using a pulpy invention to electrify rails so that that glow with almost magical "green fire" and electrocute all the passengers of trains so their corpses can be robbed without any witnesses. The trains are sent rolling on to their destinations with no one living on board.

It's a hell of a lurid set-up, and Page is up to the challenge of delivering on it. The pirates set some pretty good death traps for the Spider to have to escape from. There's also a bit of a mystery regarding a kidnapped inventors missing granddaughter that isn't a big point but has a nice little payoff. 

The only thing missing, maybe, is any hint of femme fatale regarding Captain Kidd. The righteous and driven Spider finds her utterly loathsome (and with her disregard for human life, who can blame him!), and though Page says she is attractive, he doesn't give her the sort of loving description a Robert Howard would have.

Get The Spider: The Corpse Cargo here. Tim Truman did a loose adaptation of this story in comics format in the 1990s.

Xum's Who in Print

Xum's Who is a fan expansion of the DC Who's Who by Xum Yukinori, artist, podcaster, and comics fan, who unfortunately passed away in 2019. His son Isamu completed some of Xum's unfinished entries and got them all together for a limited print run. They are gorgeous dives into forgotten corners of the Pre-Crisis DCU.

For instance, Volume I gives entries to the Earth-One Superman and Wonder Woman, characters left out previously because of the erasure of their universe.

Characters deemed too minor for the official run like the Mikaal Tomas Starman, the Teen Titan character Golden Eagle, Lady Cop, and the Batgirl villain Lady Viper get their due. There are also characters whose exclusion from the original run seems odd (Giganta) and some whose exclusion points to the agenda behind the original run's compilation (Sugar & Spike).

I'm still waiting for someone to do an entry for the Black Eagle and his squadron of Tuskegee airmen but despite that lack, Xum's Who is a great thing to have in print.