This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist comic book post from Balladeer’s Blog takes a look at the early stories of a 1970s DC Comics series.
SECRET SOCIETY OF SUPER-VILLAINS Vol 1 #1 (Jun 1976)
Title: Attend – Or Die
Villain Roster: Captain Cold, Sinestro, Gorilla Grodd, Copperhead, Mirror Master, Star Sapphire II, the Wizard, Manhunter III, Shadow Thief and Captain Boomerang
Comment: “What are we, some kind of Secret Society of Super-Villains?” (Had to be said.)
Synopsis: Captain Cold and Mirror Master pull off a large jewel robbery and while dividing up their loot they get an invitation to join the title “Society” at a place called the Sinister Citadel in San Francisco.
Identical invitations are received by the supervillains called Gorilla Grodd, Copperhead, Sinestro and others. Everyone but Catwoman accepts. When they are all assembled in the aforementioned Citadel they meet the new woman using the Star Sapphire nom de guerre. They also meet their butler, Carstairs.
Suddenly, the Justice League members burst in and attack, but the villains fight and destroy what turn out to be robotic duplicates of the League. The costumed Manhunter III enters the room and tells the villains they passed their initiation by wiping out the robots. He calls himself a representative for their anonymous “host.”
NOTE: Their host is really Darkseid, as will be made clear soon. This third person using the Manhunter alias is one of the “evil” Paul Kirk clones whose organization the Council was thwarted by the lone “good” Paul Kirk clone, who also destroyed all the evil clones. (Paul Kirk was the original Manhunter from DC’s 1940s comic books.) Continue reading
WONDERWORLDS (Wunderwelten) (1911) – Written by Friedrich W. Mader. This novel was published in its native German in 1911 but not translated into English until 1932 under the title Distant Worlds. Some sources mistakenly list 1932 as its original year of publication. 
3. SILA – The god of the weather and of the animating life-force, frequently manifested as the winds, which were looked on as the “breathing of the world.” For this reason he was also the deity governing the breathing of humanity and animals as well, since breath flows like wind in and out of us all. The life force was said to come from Sila and flow back into Sila after death, and then, through the lesser deities, was eventually sent back into the world via reincarnation. Because singing, humming and tale-spinning are also done with the breath Sila was also seen as the god of songs, tales, music and other creative inspiration. 
What Meet the Beatles was to the British Invasion, The Banqueters was to Attic Old Comedy. (Yes, I love silly comparisons) This play was the first comedy written by Aristophanes, the leading light of ancient Greek comedy, and was performed at the Lenaea festival of 427 BC when Aristophanes was nineteen years old. The Banqueters won second prize, making it a very auspicious debut for the man often considered the greatest political satirist of the ancient world. 
THE GHOST RAILWAY BRIDGE ON THE SHAHO – Our masked hero and his crew on their Luftschiff are in the sky above the River Shaho. They observe the Russian and Japanese armies preparing for another monumental battle. NOTE: The Kapitan Mors tales are like the Sherlock Holmes stories in that they often jump around in time. This one is set during the Russo-Japanese War, so much earlier than most of the Mors stories. 
THE GREAT ADVENTURE (1963-1964) – This hour-long series presented dramatizations of well-known and obscure events from United States history. 
THE HUNLEY – In February of 1864 the Confederacy launched the experimental submarine Hunley, named after its inventor Horace Lawson Hunley. Two previous crews had drowned on test runs but on its final voyage the eight-man sub used a torpedo to sink the Union Navy’s warship the USS Housatonic. The Hunley was also destroyed by the blast and the crew killed. 
Balladeer's Blog 