By Lou Mougin
Honest and truth…when I was a kid, I didn’t
read much of Charlton.
Even in my funny-comics days from 1959-63,
I was a connoisseur. Occasionally I’d check out a Li’l Genius or Atomic Mouse,
but they weren’t competition for the Dells, or Dennis the Menace, or Sugar
and Spike. There wasn’t a lot to interest me there.
Later on, in ’65, at a second-hand shop
where I bought comics for a nickel apiece, my snobbery continued. Charlton’s
had intriguing covers sometimes—a guy as a pin in a giant bowling alley, or two
beauties in bathing suits seducing a diver underwater—but the interiors were
too bland to bother with. ‘Druther spend my nickel on Marvel, DC, or whatever
else looked state-of-the-art.
However...
…In 1965, at the same store, I saw a copy
of Strange Suspense Stories #75 with
the big “featuring CAPTAIN ATOM” on the logo, and a yellow-and-orange-suited
guy rocketing away from Earth into space, the power of an A-bomb in his hand.
The art looked familiar. Could it be…?
Yup. I looked inside and it was drawn by
Steve Ditko. The same guy who was pounding out the incredibly great adventures
of Spider-Man every month. Ditko was the one guy at Marvel it was impossible to
mistake for Kirby. His stuff was eerie, moody, emotional, and tough. In a room
full of slick DC characters, only those drawn by Kubert wouldn’t step away from
his guys.
The stories inside were somewhat neat, too.
Captain Adam, a USAF guy, gets trapped in an experimental missile, shot into
space, and blown up. He reintegrates on Earth with atomic powers a la Dr. Solar
(only I didn’t know he came along a year or so before Dr. Solar, and about 15
years after Atoman), gets the Air Force to design him a special suit, and goes
off to beat the hell out of Commies. I liked him from the start.
There was another Charlton title I somewhat
enjoyed: Sarge Steel. A tough private
eye whose hand had been blown off in Vietnam and replaced by a steel one. He was drawn by Dick
Giordano, Charlton’s other mainstay man, and written then by Joe Gill (who was
also writing Cap Atom), and his tough-guy stories pitting him against the
Smiling Skull and Ivan Chung got me hooked a bit. I didn’t collect him, but I
enjoyed reading his books.
As for the Blue Beetle and Son of Vulcan,
forget it. Compared to the likes of the Avengers or the Justice League, they
were definitely low-rent.
But we were on the cusp of two events: Ditko
getting ready to leave Marvel, and the Batman
TV show in 1966 getting all comics publishers interested in super-heroes. Sturdy
Steve started drawing new Captain Atom stories even before he left Stan Lee.
Before long, Charlton was bustin’ out all over with what they called
“action-heroes”: Thunderbolt,
Judomaster, Peacemaker, and a new guy they called Blue Beetle. It took me a
while to succumb, though. I had to
buy all of Marvel and Tower every month, and that left very little for DC and
the others.
…I got my hands on Blue Beetle #3 and found it had nothing in common with the 1965
model Beetle. Ditko was at work on this one, too, and his funky foemen, the
Madmen, made me think of Spider-Man adventures of a year or so past. The
writing was better than what I expected of Charlton, too. And the backup strip,
featuring a faceless guy called the Question, won me over.
Before long, I was hooked on all the action-hero books. Since they turned up a lot at the second-hand store, I managed to accumulate most of the five titles, Peacemaker, Judomaster, Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, and Thunderbolt, without too much trouble. The art might not be up to the slicker standards of Marvel and DC, but the writing…well, that was second only to Marvel’s. These books were getting high B’s in my rating.
Just as good were some of the science
fiction titles. They’d left the cheesy Space
War stuff behind and went for intelligent, sometimes humorous, fare in the
renewed Space Adventures and Strange Suspense Stories. Denny O’Neil
and Steve Skeates refined their craft in these books, and the likes of
“Children of Doom” and the Paul Mann stories proved it.
About that time, almost the whole thing fell
apart.
No more action-heroes. A migration of most
of the staff to DC (where they still produced excellent stuff). Charlton
produced the enjoyable short-run Hercules
and extruded single issues of Blue Beetle
and Mysterious Suspense with the
Question in 1968. That was about it. My love affair with Charlton pretty much
ended.
I wasn’t there for E-Man or Doomsday +1 when
they came out. But later, for a series of articles on mid-60s second-string
superheroes for The Comic Reader, I
wrote up the long-gone action-stars of Charlton. And almost before the ink was
dry, some of those characters I wrote of started coming back. The T.H.U.N.D.E.R.
Agents, the Mighty Crusaders, even the likes of Herbie and Magicman. The
Charlton heroes couldn’t stay away for much longer.
In 1985, during the Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Blue Beetle showed up in the cast. Before
long, all of them returned…Thunderbolt, Captain Atom, Peacemaker, Judomaster,
Nightshade, the Question. Old home week. They had a new chance to shine. Actually,
before long, they were revised. But at least the old gang was there for awhile.
I’ve lost a lot of my snobbery in that time
and gone back to investigate the good stuff from Charlton, of which there was
no lack (though there was, of course, a lot of dross as well). Not long ago, I
got patched into the Charlton Arrow
effort through Roger McKenzie. It led to my first published comic story in
years, and to further writing work from them and others.
Charlton Neo can’t use the Action-Heroes.
So what? There’s a ton and a half of other stuff to explore out there, and I’m
exploring it. Having a heck of a time, too.
I hope it shows.
© Lou Mougin
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