Category Archives: Superheroes

April 28, 2015 · 11:19 pm

AVENGERS VS ULTRON

An August 1969 Avengers cover featuring one of the team's earliest battles with Ultron.

An August 1969 Avengers cover featuring one of the team’s earliest battles with Ultron.

With Avengers: Age of Ultron out in theaters it seemed a good time to take a break from a very ugly world with some escapism. Thor, Iron Man and the Vision are the only Avengers from this cover that will appear in the movie, but if you want to get technical the blonde giant is Hawkeye from the period in which he abandoned his bow and arrows and had replaced Hank Pym as Goliath.

This was waaaay back when Ultron was still numbering his iterations and this time he went by Ultron 6. It was the first time he used adamantium for his android body. Continue reading →

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February 20, 2015 · 9:47 pm

PAT PATRIOT: FORGOTTEN SUPERHEROINE

Pat PatriotPAT PATRIOT – Last time around I examined the forgotten Golden Age superheroine Fantomah. Since Liberals and Conservatives have to inject their bickering into everything my look at Fantomah prompted Conservatives to accuse me of secretly being a Liberal because, after all, only ONE of Fantomah’s villains was non-white. For my look at Pat Patriot I’m sure Liberals will stage an “AHA” moment and accuse me of being a Conservative because of the heroine’s all-American, red white and blue nature.  

Pat Patriot 3Introduced in Daredevil Comics in August of 1941 Pat Patriot – “America’s Joan of Arc” – was, in reality, Pat Patrios, a Greek-American woman who by day worked on an assembly-line. By night she pursued her dream of show-biz stardom by appearing in a minor stage musical, costumed like a female Uncle Sam for a patriotic song and dance. One night Pat was walking home after the show with her boyfriend Mike Brown (no relation to the thuggish robber of convenience stores).

The pair stumbled across a plot by “European” conspirators (America had not entered the global war yet so even though the villains were clearly supposed to be German they weren’t openly identified as such) to steal airplane motors and smuggle them to the Axis Powers. Still clad in her stage outfit Pat used her fists and some brutal high kicks to thwart the evil plan. The press mistook her name for “Pat Patriot”, but our heroine happily embraced that as her nom de guerre.   Continue reading →

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February 4, 2015 · 11:37 pm

FANTOMAH: PART TWO

Fantomah 2Balladeer’s Blog’s examination of the neglected Golden Age superheroine Fantomah concludes with a look at the final eight stories penned by the one and only Fletcher Hanks under his pseudonym Barclay Flagg.

VII. JUNGLE ACTION #8 (August 1940)

Locale: The Temple of the Boiling Mud, hidden deep within Fantomah’s jungle territory.

Villain: Mister X, another Great White Hunter type, who plans to steal the sacred relic in the Temple of the Boiling Mud then ransom it back to the natives for a fortune.  

The Tale: Fantomah discreetly follows Mister X as he makes his Indiana Jones-ish way to the Temple. After he succeeds in crossing over the boiling mud pit that surrounds the tiny patch of land that the Temple stands on, he penetrates into the Temple itself. Fantomah appears to Mister X and warns him against stealing the relic. The natives believe that if the relic is removed the boiling mud will rise up and flood the entire jungle, wiping out all life. Continue reading →

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February 4, 2015 · 1:16 am

NEGLECTED SUPERHEROINE: FANTOMAH

latest (353×379) Balladeer’s Blog presents the first in my new series about neglected comic book superheroes and heroines of the distant past. With superhero movies and television shows being so popular right now it put me in the mood for some of the obscure and forgotten figures from the Golden Age. Here are my pithy story-by-story takes on our debut figure.

FANTOMAH – This superheroine was created in February of 1940 by Fletcher Hanks under one of his pseudonyms – Barclay Flagg. Hanks is a piece of work all by himself and is described as anything from “a primitive who created Outsider Art” on the good side to “the Ed Wood of comic books” on the bad side.

All of Fletcher Hanks’ comic book creations read like the chronicled psychotic episodes of a not particularly skilled ten year old artist, but his Fantomah stories are my all-time favorites. In the works of Hanks perspective, relative sizes and coloring can all change from frame to frame and the text often doesn’t even match what is being drawn. Continue reading →

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December 24, 2014 · 3:36 am

THE MICRONAUTS: WHEN STAR WARS MET THE GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY

Micronauts 1Christmas time is largely about toys. Selling toys is largely what George Lucas, the man behind the Star Wars franchise, is all about. The Micronauts was one of those oddly conceived Marvel Comics titles from the late 70s and early 80s that were about forcing a continuing storyline around an already-existing toy franchise. (Rom: Spaceknight was another example of this ultimate in ass-backward storytelling.)

And a young Joel Schumacher mused "Nipples on black armor, eh? Hmmmmm."

And a young Joel Schumacher mused “Nipples on black armor, eh? Hmmmmm.”

The above example of Six Degrees of George Lucas or whatever you want to call it was just my odd way of pointing out my reasoning for posting this item on Christmas Eve. The Micronauts (First Issue: January 1979) was mostly a strained imitation of the Star Wars universe but also had a few similarities with Marvel’s ORIGINAL Guardians of the Galaxy. Those Guardians – Vance Astro, Charley-27, Yondu and Martinex – were freedom fighters waging a guerilla war to free 30th Century Earth from the dictatorial rule of its alien conquerors, the lizardlike Badoon race.

Baron Karza horseThe Micronauts was set in the Microverse (now called the Quantum Realm), a sub-atomic universe which was being ruled by the evil, black-armored Baron Karza, one of the most blatant Darth Vader ripoffs this side of Japan’s Swords of the Space Ark movies. Karza could detach his arms and legs and could transform the lower half of his body into that of a black horse (think of Centaurs) for no better reason than the fact that THAT was the gimmick of the Baron Karza toys. Kids could move around the arms and legs or replace his regular body with the horse-like lower body. Oh what fun! (?) Continue reading →

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May 30, 2013 · 9:05 pm

WYNONNA EARP: THE NEGLECTED HEROINE WHO DESERVES A MOVIE

Wynonna EarpBalladeer’s Blog’s Frontierado holiday is rapidly approaching! For newbies I’ll point out that that holiday is the 1st Friday of every August. I’m kicking off this year’s countdown to Frontierado with a look at a comic book heroine who should not be overlooked in this mad barrage of superhero films of the 21st Century. The fact that she falls into Weird Western territory is what makes her perfect for the Frontierado season. 

WYNONNA EARP – December of 1996 saw the comic book debut of Wynonna Earp, a descendant of Frontier Marshal Wyatt Earp. Wynonna worked in present-day law enforcement in the American southwest. What separates her from her more well known ancestor is the fact that Wynonna was a United States Marshal, Black Badge Division.

The Black Badge Division was a top-secret branch of Federal Marshals established by President Theodore Roosevelt to deal with paranormal menaces. That’s right, Wynonna Earp was as sexy as Barb Wire or Xena and fought werewolves, mummies, zombies, gremlins and all other manner of supernatural foes just like Kolchak or the X-Files crew. In her earlier adventures Marshal Earp was drawn as a drop-dead sex-bomb who often gouged out the eyes of her opponents with her impossibly high heels while in her final few escapades she was drawn as a more sensibly-dressed heroine.

Wynonna Earp was the Continue reading →

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March 14, 2012 · 8:35 pm

FORGOTTEN TELEVISION: THE SPIRIT (1987)

 This often-forgotten telefilm from 1987 was a pilot movie for a series that never panned out, but Spirit purists who complained about the 2008 movie version may actually prefer this unassuming little flick to the big- budget 21st Century version.

The Frank Miller movie from 2008 changed  the Spirit’s iconic costume to black instead of blue and “Millerized” him, making him a kind of Dark Knight clone instead of the lighter, quirkier hero that Will Eisner fans remembered him as being. For Spirit novices, the superhero  was detective Denny Colt of fictional Central City. In his origin story he ran afoul of the mad scientist Dr Cobra, and in the resulting struggle got drenched and drowned in one of the good doctor’s experimental chemicals.

In the “embalming-free” world of superhero fiction, Colt was buried in Wildwood Cemetery, but, as it turned out, Dr Cobra’s chemicals had Continue reading →

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