New Blue Beetle #6 - The Specter!

When the Blue Beetle series was abruptly cancelled, Steve Ditko already had a full issue ready. Titled "A Specter Is Haunting Hub City!" this story pits our azure hero against a strange chap who uses a stolen gizmo to make himself mostly invisible. It's a weird visual as the cover above attests. Below is the complete story which did finally see publication in 1974. More on that after the story itself. 

And that's a wrap on Steve Ditko's final Blue Beetle yarn. Note that Professor Rodor from The Question series is featured in this tale. 

This story first saw publication in the Charlton Portfolio which was in actuality issues nine and ten of Contemporary Pictorial Literature, a fanzine published by the CPL Gang headed by Roger Stern. The cover for this publication was done by Don Newton who produced a delightful wraparound image featuring not only Blue Beetle, but other Charlton heroes as well such as Captain Atom, Peacemaker, Judomaster, Thunderbolt, as well as E-Man and Yang. Horror hosts get a look as well. It's a beauty and I picked up a copy somewhere long ago and added a second copy to my collection from Roger Stern himself at a convention many years later. Stern had a box full of these in prime condition. 

The story was published again for a wider audience in The Action Heroes Archives - Volume 2 from DC. For some reason they did not include the story in their more recent DC Finest Blue Beetle volume. 

This vintage ad shows us the cover in color and also reveals how close we came to getting it in real time way back in 1968. But it was not to be. 

A little more Blue Beetle tomorrow as we wrap up this look. 

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The DC Blue Beetle!

I picked up the recent Showcase Presents Blue Beetle volume from DC. I never got this title when it first ran in the mid 80's but I have in more recent years collected up the issues, though truth told I have never gotten around to reading them all through. With this purchase hopefully the hand nature of the phonebook reprint will encourage me to give them a proper read.

Of all the Action Heroes who DC picked up, Blue Beetle was the one least changed from his Charlton persona. What we have are the further adventures of Ted Kord as they pretty much left off nearly two decades earlier. Steve Ditko's The Question is a frequent guest-star and the other Charlton Blue Beetle, Dan Garrett gets lots of page time as well.

Here are the issues in this volume.

What put over the top on this reprint was the inclusion of the second issue of Secret Origins with some stellar Gil Kane artwork. This was a very neat series and this is one of the best issues, reprising the convoluted history of the character. Even though it preceded the series it's the last issue in the reprint.

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Thunder Agents Classics Volume Four!

More utterly wonderful THUNDER Agents action in this fourth installment of the reprints from IDW. This one showcases my favorite agent NoMan. The idea of a an old man who injects his mind into an army of potentially immortal androids and who uses a cloak of invisibility is fantastically rich stuff. Of course the other agents are around, especially Dynamo and Lightning.

Apparently Tower Comics hit a snag after the publication of the first NoMan comic and several months pass before we get another trio of comics from the company. I don't know what caused the hiatus, but I doubt it was part of some master plan.

The superhero and spy fads which sparked the creation of the THUNDER Agents was beginning to wane a bit and despite the push to expand with new titles, the folks at Tower might've begun to see the whole enterprise was becoming less tenable. We'd get only two issues of NoMan's self-titled comic, both are here in this one volume, and only one more Dynamo after the one included here.

The artwork in these is a veritable who's who of Silver Age greatness with notable efforts by Gil Kane, Ogden Whitney, John Giunta, Manny Stallman, Chic Stone, George Tuska, Dan Adkins, and of course Wally Wood. The scripting for these stories is largely uncredited, but Steve Skeates does appear many times.

It's perhaps easy to say that the high point of the Agents has already passed by this time in the series, and there's validity to that assessment. But nonetheless these are hearty Silver Age yarns, and pretty entertaining to boot with some lovely artwork as the team battles the forces of SPIDER. 

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