The Commandos Have Landed

Here then is the opening salvo of The Boy Commandos, from Detective Comics #64, June of 1942 — written by Jack Kirby, art by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.

Below, the cover for this issue, one of my all-time favorites of the Golden Age—by the great Jerry Robinson. No camp, no corn, just another risky adventure for the Batman and his young protege.

The Boy Commandos

Can you believe it's been 40 years since The Steranko History of Comics was published? And it still is as informative and entertaining as ever.

Steranko has a section called The Kid Players, showcasing informative bits about Simon and Kirby's 'kids'. He quotes Kirby, "I spent all my early life drawing on the sidewalks of the lower East Side. In my kid strips I was only duplicating the atmosphere I knew. . . I knew all the kids in my comics; I'd grown up with them. I wore the baggy pants and the turtle neck sweaters myself." He applied that knowledge to The Newsboy Legion in April of 42, 'initiating the real sidewalk and slum genre in the comics.'

Quoting Steranko extensively from this point:

Exactly 3 months after the Newsboy Legion appeared, DC premiered their second kid gang series in Detective 64. Created for the sole purpose of battling the fascist menace, THE BOY COMMANDOS sprang like juggernauts into the enemy's midst. Under the watchful eye of Captain Rip Carter, the young freedom fighters cut a violent swath through spies, enemy soldiers, subversives and SS men like a gang of international street brawlers, which indeed they were.

By some phenomenal coincidence each member of the group personally represented one of America's wartime allies. Alfy Twidget came from Great Britain, Andre from France, Jan from Holland. And who chould typify America better than the irascible Brookly, decked out in his green turtle-neck sweater and rakish crimson derby in the style set by Wallace Beery.

In an early adventure,

'Marshall Goering has arrived to inspect a Nazi tank factory in occupied France. The machinists deplore his presence. "If the British knew of Goering's visit, they'd come over in swarms! But no chance of that! The Gestapo conceals everything only too well!"

'Suddenly, "Listen! Do you hear that? It sounds like...it cannot be...it—it is! Planes!"'

'The main body of their troops guarding the beaches, the resistance of the Nazi force at the factory is rapidly broken as the Commandos sweep onward...wreaking death and destruction!'

In another early classic, Nostradamus, 16th century prophet has been summoned by Catherine, Queen of France, to learn the fate of her country. Amidst a dramatic monologue Nostradamus states: "There will be child warriors among them, innocents of great courage, who, led by a soldier from the new world across the sea, will write a glorious chapter in the annals of free men!

"They will come to France in armored ships...they will land in monstrous, fire-spewing machines...yea, even drop from the skies!" the prophet declares, robe fluttering in the wind, arms upraised like the man in the first panel. Sweeping across the sky from a point on the horizon are great silhouettes in the shape of bombers, reinforcing Nostradamus' vision of the future. The deafening roar of planes blots out his voice. CUT!!

'The next wordless panel is drawn from behind the engine of a bomber with Commandos parachuting into space from the open hatchway, undoubtedly one of the greatest transitions in comic history.'
That is what I read as text when I first bought Steranko's History, and 40 years later I finally get to see it all in context in glorious color.

And, if you haven't, now you do too. IF most of you are inclined to want to see these adventures. The next post is their first adventure, and you must let me know if I should continue with others.

And I must be emphatic for clarity: I will still continue posting eclectic treasured images of ALL SORTS—illustration, graphics, photography and such that I have been guilty of collecting and foisting. I just want to know if there is enough interest to include even more golden age comics amidst my haphazard meanderings.

In any event, for the next post: THE COMMANDOS ARE HERE!!

A reminder that all images and characters of The Boy Commandos are copyrighted by DC Comics and their respective affiliates, and I am showcasing them here for educational and informative purposes only.

A Gift of the Golden Age

As busy as my schedule has been, the time has come to write about something really special.

Last Christmas season, a gift of sorts fell into my lap—in the form of a (big) sheaf of tearsheets of Golden Age comics. This was a comic stash saved through the years by a friend of mine who, now in his eighties, lived through the golden age of comics, forever enamored with graphic storytelling.

At a time when comics seemed (and were) worthless, his technique for archiving was to literally tear out the stories and covers that caught his fancy and trim them to fit into binder sleeves. Unfortunately, the way to make them fit was to, many times, trim them up to and into the inked border lines! But yet, all the art was there, and most all the stories that he has held onto, lo these 70ish years. It was actually refreshing and fun that these stories weren't in slabs, hiding away, trying to protect their value. The value was evident—these pages were loved!

Even at his age now, he talks about this stuff with a twinkle, evoking fan boy talk, about this artist or that character. There’s a pretty wide range of material, but the pages that caught my eye the most were those by Simon and Kirby.

Joe Simon and Jack Kirby were the golden age dream team, and their work from that era is the defining gold in our notion of the term ‘golden age’. Wild action, bold colors, in-your-face characters—each page is a gem, with facets that dazzle and charm.

Well, I had to archive them, there was no doubt. But with so many pages trimmed so tightly, I wasn’t sure of the best method. Finally, only recently, I decided that since very little art was affected—only the borders, that I would digitally restore the margins, so as to give the pages the honor they deserved—rather like giving pristine matting to great masters’ old drawings (which is just what they are).

So there are some Superman and Batman, some Planet Comics stuff, some Jungle comix, some Barks Duck comix, etc. But most of all there are the Simon and Kirby stories—Manhunter, Sandman, even a couple of Captain America . . . and a really nice stash of Boy Commandos. I didn’t think I’d like the Boy Commandos stories, but I was so wrong. They are, well, commanding! I already shared one story at Christmas time, and I don’t think I got any comments on that. I’ve got, I think, 15 more of their adventures.

BUT, it’s a lot of work getting them in shape archivally, and I need to know if it’s worth it to any of you to do so. Over time, I will be doing it for myself, but I’d like to know specifically if any of you would enjoy seeing, not only the S&K Boy Commandos, but also Manhunter, Sandman, as well as other artists’ isolated stories from Planet, or Jungle, or Superman or Batman and others.

Above and below are a few images isolated out to give you a taste of the overall spectrum.

The very next post will introduce the Boys, and the following post will show the opening salvo of the Commandos, and by the end of that story, I need you to tell me yes or no, would you like to see more. Not just, ‘sure if you want to’, but ‘YES I’m a fan of golden age Simon & Kirby and others’ or ‘NO, I’m not into comix that much, I want to see only illustrations’. Please, I need to hear from a bunch of you (c'mon, take the time) for me to afford the time it takes to make it happen regularly. I won’t be able to do the stories back to back. Between them would be lots of the regular posts of favorite images, but there are lots of stories in the ‘to be scanned’ bin. This blog doesn’t tend to get a lot of comments , but this site has had over half a million hits in the last 9 months, so I know you’re out there — I can hear you breathing.

Above, Judy of the Jungle

Above is a splash page only, but there are a couple of full Cap stories

Above is an example of how old, and what kind of shape some of these pages are in

Above, some really interesting stand-alone pages

Above and below, some really nice panels hiding in the pages

There are some nice old, old ads.

And below an ad for the story's book that will come up in the post after next.

The Commandos are Coming! and please leave a comment when that story posts.

Not Kidding. The Commandos Are Coming!

The Commandos Are Coming

Analog Memories

As an early teen I collected as many Analogs that I could find in dusty 2nd hand bins, all for Kelly Freas art, and of course I would then read the fiction. I daydreamed over it all and I have pleasant memories now of all those teenage galactic excursions.

Battle Zone: ETERNITY

Joe Kubert and his DC battalion sure knew how to shake up their books. Even when they were in a rut, they made the most it the most Dynamic Combat they could dream up.

Gosh I love Joe Kubert covers.

Planet Probability

Frank Kelly Freas had a quality that was indefinable for me. I associated most all his sci-fi work with my love of galactic empires because, well, so many of his covers were for galactic empire stories. His style teetered on the edge of caricature, yet veered away enough to create a sense of other-worldly exoticism, full of magic and mystery.

I collected his work avidly in my early teens, and his covers led me into some mighty toothsome galactic adventures by intrepid authors.

Plenty of his covers will be popping up here and there in the next couple of weeks.

Below, the working sketch for the cover above.

A Princess in Peril

This nifty painting of A Princess in Peril was painted by Clyde Caldwell and was a nifty signed and numbered print back in 1994.

Give Me a Break

One of the better comic strips in our paper's comic pages is Pickles by Brian Crane.

Some people have comic strips affixed to their refrigerator doors. My wife had taped this one to the bathroom door for awhile. Hey, it's the one place where I can get away from deadlines!

Usual Lament

Time for my usual lament that newstand magazines used to be glorious, and now nothing but dreck. How can it be smart for publishers of today to have their covers look not only like clones of their competition, but like themselves over and over and over?

To say it again, oh how glorious newstands used to be.

Dark (K)night

It's pretty hard for a good artist to NOT make a good pin-up drawing of the Batman, but some artists make great pin-up drawings of the Dark Knight, in this case by Walt Simonson.

Visualists

Who knew in the late 70s that Computer Generated Imagery would become the backbone of feature film production? Well, Steven Lisberger did, and from some team vision the movie Tron was conceived and produced, with ground-breaking visual effects.

But as most always is the case, before motion pictures are put into motion, artists are called upon to be visualists, taking high-flying concepts and bringing them to earth, visualizing a semblance of reality, allowing them to truly take flight. In this case a terrific team of technical artists came together to give life to a new way of making films.

Final logo design by Syd Mead, using backlight composite technique by Richard Taylor, John Scheele, Marta Russell and Douglas Eby

An earlier design by Syd Mead

An even earlier concept by Chris Lane

Illustration by Richard Taylor of the carrier bridge in Sark's map of domains

Concept drawing of an electronic cave interior by Harrison Ellenshaw

A background by Peter Mueller

A helmet design by Moebius

And more costume designs by Moebius

A Peter Lloyd colorization of a Moebius character concept

A circuit pattern costume design by Syd Mead

A costume design for 'Yori' by Syd Mead

A costume design for 'Yori' by Moebius

A preproduction illustration by Peter Lloyd based upon Syd Mead's design

Concept design for a Solar Sail by Moebius

The final design for the Solar Sail by Moebius

The Solar Sail parked in its hangar

The concepts go on and on, but this is a good sampling

Sea of Simulation

Tron, a 1982 Walt Disney production, was not only a movie ahead of its time, it helped create the time it was ahead of.

The pre-production art was leading the way as well, with concept designs by—among others—Moebius, John Norton, Peter Mueller, Syd Mead and Peter Lloyd. Below is Lloyd's pre-production illustration of a solar sailer traveling through a domain in the Sea of Simulation.

I will pull up some more Tron art, as I get the time.

Schweppervescence

This has been one of the most grueling 10 days of my career, with overlapping, intertwined, complex and difficult deadlines. I'm exhausted, and yet still not out of the woods. When I catch up a little, I'd like to explain just a little of what I do, if anyone could possibly be interested.

In the meantime I'm taking a tiny breather and wanted to post something so as to keep any of you coming back. I was refreshing myself with a tumbler of Schweppes effervescent water, and I got to remembering this refreshing advertising image from oh so long ago.

Schweppes Royal Table Water

Advertising just isn't what it used to be.

The Schweppes brand has sort of an interesting history, but an especially complicated licensing and distribution arrangement around the world. Check out Wikipedia here for a quick rundown.

I'll be back as soon as I can. I miss having spare time, but oh well, at least I'm sorta making a living.