The Mighty Crusaders-Rick, Jerry, Paul and Vic-1966

From the "So bad it's GREAT" department, here's one of the worst but most enjoyable comic book stories of the sixties...by request yet! When Simon and Kirby crated the Fly in 1959 for Archie, the Black Hood hadn't really been gone all that long but the other MLJ heroes were all in the distant past.  The Black Hood soon joined the Fly and Fly-Girl for a few adventures, though, as did a very modernized version of the Comet, the first super hero ever to die in comics. Supposedly. Within a few years they had formed a super hero team alongside the son of the original Shield--The Mighty Crusaders! With DC having such success with their Golden Age revivals, writer Jerry Siegel (along with Rich Goldwater, Vic Gorelick and artist Paul Reinman) decided to go all out and revive 90% of the MLJ heroes...in one tightly squeezed story! Now the Hangman and the Wizard had already been revived...but as villains! So they were the villains here in TOO MANY SUPER HEROES! An accurate title if ever there was one! Still, much fun if you know the characters, many of whose Golden Age adventures we've already presented here at 4CS.

Sparky Watts-Boody Rogers-1948

Sparky's always good for a few silly minutes and this particular story has him in full screwball nonsense mode that would make SMOKEY STOVER creator Bill Holman quite happy indeed. BIG SHOT COMICS is definitely one of my very favorite Golden Age comic titles.

The Wizard-Shield/Wizard Comics-1943

Here's a fun wartime episode of The Wizard and Roy the Copyright Infringement Boy. To be fair, Superboy had yet to debut and when Roy was revived in the sixties, it was as "Roy the MIGHTY Boy." Of course by then the Wizard was a bad guy so...

Millie the Model-Sol Brodsky and/or Stan Goldberg-1967

Here we have not just the "origin"of Millie the Model but also her first story as she returned to her Archie-style art after more than a half decade of soap opera style art from such artists as Ogden Whitney and Stan Goldberg. This, in fact, may BE Stan G as GCD has Mark Evanier revealing that Stan ghosted for Sol Brodsky who signed this one. Stan was actually better at this style of art than the more serious stuff and would go ion to decades of it for Archie Comics.

Charlie Chan-TV Crimebusters-1962

Here's an unusual one--not just back and white but augmented with photographs from ten 1957-58 TV series, THE NEW ADVENTURES OF CHARLIE CHAN. Although that series was adapted at the time by DC, this is a UK version from a  couple of years later when the series, presumably, was running there. The show starred J. Carroll Naish (better known at the time as the lovable Italian Luigi from TV and radio) and James Hong and both appear in the photos.

Deep Seas and Devil Rays-Frank Bolle-1952

Frank Bolle is one of those artists whose work is uniformly well-done and yet almost criminally ignored. He drew lots of westerns and soap style strips and later anonymous stuff for Dell and Gold Key. I particularly like his faces.

Elizabeth Blackwell-Alfonso Greene-1946

My son, age 17, is studying various aspects of feminism in history (for fun) and one name that keeps coming up is that of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell. Here's here story from the "Wonder Women of History" back-up series that ran in early issues of WONDER WOMAN. 

African-American artist Alfonso Greene is interesting as well. This was some of his last work before ending up in prison in 1946! Go here for the story:  http://thecomicsdetective.blogspot.com/2010/02/re-alfonso-greene.html