Suddenly, fourteen months later….
So anyway, when I felt off back in January of 2024, we were talking about The Most ’90s Comics. in the series of posts under this category, we’d talked about such contenders as Deathmate Red and Turok Dinosaur Hunter #1 and Spider-Man #1 and Doom Force an’ other goodies. My personal choice for Most ’90s Comic was, as a reminder, was the original X-Force #1 with its polybags holding one of five different trading cards (plus a mail-away offer card that was the same in each).
While I covered most suggestions, and that linked post implied I was going to continue to talk about this…um, I forgot, I think. Thus, better late than never, let’s dive back in and wrap things up, first off with Dave‘s suggestions.
Dave was taking the high road with his ideas for Most ’90s Books, starting with DC’s Sandman. …Look, it was a more innocent time then, and knowing what we know know about The Author, the Sandman franchise as a whole has lost its sheen, and possibly cost DC Comics one of its most reliable cash cows. But for many decades, it was The Tops, signifying the crossover between regular ol’ comic readers and the ever-elusive Bookstore Market that the Big Two companies are always hoping to bust into.
And that may represent the “1990s sin” that I’m using to identify these posts. I mean, Sandman itself was a net positive (until, well, you know), attracting readers beyond the usual Direct Sales marketplace. But its success certainly pushed DC and Marvel and others along into putting everything into collections and possibly, in its way, encouraging the Writing for the Trade (in which stories are purposefully created in five or six issue installments, idea for reprinting as a book) or Waiting for the Trade (in which buyers eschew the singles in favor of the paperbacks, forgetting that without the sales on the singles, the seris will die off) strategies.
Which “1990s sin” category would I put this under? Not sure. “Bookstore Break-In?” “Waiting for the Trade?” It seems unfair because Sandman wasn’t really the main offender here, but it was the most visible. (And yes, Dave acknowledges this series actually started in the very late ’80s, but its impact was really heavy in the ’90s.)
Another of Dave’s suggestions is Jeff Smith’s Bone:
Another positive spin on the traditional (at least around these parts) take that the ’90s were all bad for comics, which of course they weren’t. Bone was a real success story, a self-published book that grew more popular in the regular comics world over time, before getting that Scholastic book deal and becoming a beloved classic for kids everywhere of all ages.
Again, despite being in our “1990s sins” posts, it’s not really…well, “sinful” in that fashion. It’s a good book, the success of which is greatly deserved, and I’m glad it continues to entertain a whole new generation after generation of kids. Maybe “D.I.Y,” not a bad thing in this particular case but surely inspirational to other creators who met with less success both financially and artistically. Kinda like the 1980s black and white boom iknspired by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but on a smaller scale.
Okay, got a couple more to cover here, and hopefully this time I won’t drop the ball for another year and change. Come back Wednesday to find out if I do…actually, I have something else probably planned for Wednesday, so come back Friday and find out!
“in which buyers eschew the singles in favor of the paperbacks, forgetting that without the sales on the singles, the seris will die off”
But isn’t my job to support a format I view as inferior! I spent way too long and far too much money double dipping. I’m essentially done with it.
Marvel and DC should be looking at both sales COMBINED to determine whether or not it’s worth keeping a series going, and yet we keep hearing from creators they don’t do this. It makes no sense! It’s a different story for not as well-heeled indies, but the big two should be able to take a longer view.
@Joe Gualtieri: Ugh, I hate feeling like I’m defending the Big 2 and their practices, but I think there’s no way to gauge if a series will do well in trade unless it at least builds some buzz in singles. Comics operate on a thin profit margin most of the time (I’m not taking corporate ownership and resources into account, admittedly), especially untried/less popular properties. There was a time in the early ’00s in which they reprinted *everything* in tpbs a few months after publication, and I don’t know if that gave them the results they hoped for. I get why Marvel and DC get gun shy when single issue sales don’t pass a minimum threshold for continuation.
That said, I agree that series should be given more of a chance to find an audience. Avengers, Inc., for example, didn’t sell very well so it didn’t make it past issue 5. It had good buzz online, however, and should have been given a marketing push and a chance to continue.
DC’s never really collected everything. Close, but not quite everything, and they have a bad habit of cancelling solicited collections. One of the best examples recently is probably Christopher Priest’s Black Adam run. It ran 12 issues, the HC of #7-12 was cancelled.
If you look around online, you can find comments from Sina Grace talking about the 2017 Iceman series. It was cancelled after 11 issues, but the trades did well enough that Marvel brought him back for another five. Maybe the book would have done better overall if Marvel hadn’t cancelled it, creating a gap between trades.
Marvel and DC clearly use single sales to gauge trade sales, but the Iceman case shows how wrong they can be. How much sales data did DC have on the first Black Adam volume before they pulled the plug? Single issues are temporary, collected editions aren’t supposed to be. The goal of the single issues should be to amortize costs of permanent editions.
I’m curious to know, since I dipped out of comics fandom from circa 1990 until 2011, how early Vertigo and proto-Vertigo titles are regarded today–beyond the Sandman-verse, Swamp Thing, Constantine, Animal Man, and Doom Patrol.
I have often seen copies of Shade The
Changing Man (vol.2–not the original Ditko series), Enigma, Sandman Mystery Theater, various Ted McKeever Vertigo titles, etc., in dollar boxes. I have picked up some random ones here and there but many of them really seem like time capsules of Post-Punk angst, from what I have seen–not that there is anything wrong with Post-Punk angst, but I wonder if a lot of Vertigo fans feel that many of the titles still hold up or if it is more a nostalgia thing of re-reading them and it taking one back to one’s teenaged or twenty-something self from the ’90s?
I will say that despite Gaiman (pre-scandal), or Morrison, or Milligan, or Wagner, etc. being considered very talented writers, one critique I have is that some of the Vertigo books have really muddy coloring; I particularly noticed that in Sandman Mystery Theater.
Also, how do readers now regard the Marvel
Shadowline imprint that also was being published in the late ’80s/early ’90s with Archie Goodwin as editor? I can’t recall all of the titles, but I think there was St. George, Doctor Zero, and a few other titles.
Lastly, I don’t know much about Bone, but has Jeff Smith ever acknowledged being influenced by Walt Kelly artistically? His critters look a lot like Pogo Possum.
“I have often seen copies of Shade The
Changing Man (vol.2–not the original Ditko series), Enigma, Sandman Mystery Theater, various Ted McKeever Vertigo titles, etc., in dollar boxes.”
Don’t forget what print runs were back in the early 90s, even for “alternative” books. I wonder how often your just seeing early issues of some of those titles, and not the ones with lower print runs that were hard-ish to find when I read them 20 years ago.
Enigma is still in-print, and the rights have actually reverted away from DC back to Milligan and Fegredo. The current edition is from Berger books.
Shade seems to still be somewhat beloved. DC recently announced an omnibus. Maybe they’ll collected the whole thing this time, unlike with the trades in the 00s.
Sandman Mystery Theatre received a compendium edition the year the first season of Sandman released on Netflix, and I can tell you that people in FB groups I’m in are still pissed the second volume hasn’t been released.
I can’t recall the last time I saw anyone talk about McKeever. Maybe in more alternative circles? According tohis wikipedia entry, he quit comics in 2015.
@Joe Gualtieri
Thanks for the info. regarding various Vertigo titles. Sometimes it is the earlier issues that are in the dollar boxes–and I probably have a third of the Shade vol. 2 run from dollar boxes that I need to read someday. Although I have a feeling that the original run by Ditko will remain my favorite iteration of the character.
I tried to get into Sandman Mystery Theatre, but really didn’t like the art–and muddy color palette– at all; it’s too bad Wagner didn’t draw as well as write it–or else a pulp-influenced artist like Mike Kaluta might have been a good choice.
Actually, it would be cool if DC would reprint a facsimile edition of Sandman’s first appearance in New York World’s Fair Comics or Adventure Comics. Or even an 80-Page Giant of vintage Sandman stories from the ’40s would be cool.
Also, Happy Birthday to Mark Evanier! I always enjoyed his writing and really loved the DNAgents comic back in the ’80s.
https://ripjaggerdojo.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-dnagents-day.html?m=1#comment-form
@Sean Mageean
https://www.tcj.com/the-jeff-smith-interview/4/
This is one of many, many places where Smith indeed acknowledges a debt to Kelly, among others. In fact, I think Smith even helped design or write forewords for some editions of Walt Kelly comic book reprints in the 90s, but I can’t find any proof at the moment.
Epic Comics’ Shadowline titles would’ve worked better as a planned maxi-series from the outset.
Marvel’s New Universe had already failed; with all due respect to Archie Goodwin’s many talents, what made him think Epic’s own superhero universe would succeed?
The more time passes, the more it’s evident that the Marvel and DC Universes were halfway-accidental assemblages that are unlikely ever to be repeated.
@Michael Grabowski
Thanks for the information and the link.
@Oliver
I don’t know, I think Archie Goodwin was very talented and during the ’80s there was a comics boom. Maybe the thought process was that if First Comics, Eclipse Comics, and Comico Comics were trying to create indy superhero universes unfettered by the Comics Code Authority, Marvel should try as well.
Regarding “half-way accidental assemblages,” as far as DC goes, it had all of its Golden Age characters–including the big three (Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman)–to build out from. And it created the first superhero team with the JSA. And then, thankfully, it had Gardner Fox and Julius Schwartz to revamp a lot of those characters (Flash, Green Lantern, Atom, Hawkman, etc.) and bring about the Silver Age iterations and also bring in new, original characters, and bring in the concept of parallel Earths and keep expanding the DC Multiverse.
As far as Marvel goes, it had its own big three characters from the Golden Age Timely Comics era (Captain America, Namor, and the original Human Torch) that it was able to bring back–or, in the case of the Human Torch, to repurpose as a new version of the concept. Beyond that, it had Jack Kirby’s boundless creative imagination and Stan Lee’s knack for recycling a lot of character concepts/power sets or even character names from defunct Golden Age publishers and organically insert them into the ever expanding Marvel Universe.
Fawcett was a top seller in the 1940s, and if it wasn’t for the DC/National Comics lawsuit, it might have continued to publish superhero titles well into the Silver Age and beyond, and expand its cast of characters. And, of course, in the Bronze Age DC first licensed and then bought outright the Shazam/Marvel Family and other Fawcett superheroes, including Spy Smasher, Ibis, Bulletman and Bulletgirl, Mr. Scarlet and Pinky, Minuteman, etc.
Quality Comics was also a top publisher during the Golden Age and has a pretty great cast of superhero characters. Again, arguably, if it hadn’t sold its characters to DC in the 1950s, it might have made a comeback in the Silver Age. But we did get a long run of Blackhawk from the Golden through the Silver Ages under Quality and then continued under DC, and many Plasticman revivals, and the creation of The Freedom Fighters, who have been featured in various iterations over the decades. Also, there were legacy character interpretations of The Ray, The Black Condor, Phantom Lady, and Doll Man.
At least at the beginning of the 1940s MLJ had a pretty good superhero cast of characters as well, before Archie caught on and the publisher rebranded and pivoted to the teenage humor market. And it has made several attempts over the decades to bring back its superhero characters, as well as licensing them out to DC at one time. I think it would be cool if Archie would hire Roy Thomas or Jim Shooter to be the Editor in Chief of the Red Circle/Dark Circle line of superhero characters. Even cooler would be to just run it as a sub-imprint called “MLJ Comics” in homage to the original company. They could create a retroactive continuity of the 1940s characters as a team called the “Mighty Legion of Justice” or something like that. Let Roy Thomas and Jerry Ordway do a limited series featuring those characters set during the 1940s. Concurrently, have a limited series featuring the newer characters and legacy characters set in a story arc in the present. Let Jim Shooter have a crack at it. Or Paul Levitz. Or Chris Claremont. No disrespect to the various writers who have had goes at it recently, and, actually, there was a fun run of The Fox about a decade ago by Mark Waid and Dino!, but, either bring back Waid, or get people with a proven track record like Shooter, Thomas, Claremont, Levitz, Gerry Conway, etc. on board to really try to grow that universe.
A few other companies that had some good characters/concepts and top talent include Gold Key–Magnus, Turok, Solar, Dr. Spektor, etc.; Charlton–The Action Heroes; Tower– T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents; and Atlas-Seaboard. If things had panned out differently, some of those companies might still be around with expanded universes, instead of being subjected to having their characters bought or licensed by various other companies including DC, Valiant, Dynamite, and Dark Horse. And I think Atlas-Seaboard is trying to make a go of it again. And, again, why not consider having Jim Shooter or Roy Thomas as an Editor-in-Chief or a revamped Atlas-Seaboard, or at least as writers, to bring some vintage Marvel flavor to the titles? Why not give Larry Lieber and Jeff Rove stipends, call them Editors Emeritus –Editors Emeriti?–and at the top of each splash page it could say: “Jeff Rove and Larry Lieber Present” (A la the old “Stan Lee Presents.” But the main thing would be to try to create an integrated universe as much as possible with the Atlas-Seaboard characters, including time travel stories or crossing into parallel Earths or whatever.
Sean Mageean @9
I’m way over halfway across the world and in the 80s, distribution/LCS were kind of hit or miss. I remember not being able to buy LotDK #1 despite being a LCS day of/weekend on sale cos I hadn’t reordered and all copies were allocated in the LCS I went to.
The timing of Eclipse(Total Eclipse in may 88), First(Crossroads in Nov 88) and Comico(unknown to me any shared universe[s] in 80s/90s) don’t seem to fit Shadowline’s gestation from May 1987! I read of it probably in Amazing Heroes but by 88-90 I was into Nexus, Zot, Cerebus, Miracleman, Empire Lanes, Dreadstar, Jon Sable – probably more than any Marvel/DC/potential new Epic/Shadowline shared universe. Still bought a DC’s Legends, Millennium and Invasion though.
My thinking today is that Shadowline is a years too early precursor of Image/Dark Horse, Malibu shared universe but without the hype of McFarlane, Lee, Liefeld and the rest of Image leaving Marvel for Image/Malibu. Most of the 90s series except Spawn/Savage Dragon are moribund/defunct so I don’t think any differences in execution or concept would have lasted much longer than they did. Only difference would be if McFarlane, Larsen, Sakai or Aragones stuck with it for 30/40s years which they have. Even Smith(Jeff) or Moore(Terry) haven’t made a 30 year long series from the 90s that lasted continually till the 2020s. I may have missed others.
Which leads to the quote from William Goldman: “nobody knows nothing” about movies(may be paraphrased/wrongly quoted). Any What Ifs(not to do with Marvel) I just don’t see the point of any argument as its all just throeing stuff a0 the wall and seeing what sticks the longest.
In fact DC is a case in point, National merged(or bought/took over) other comics companies and wasn’t planned to be one giant conglomerate. Or conned its way to taking over other comics company somehow. It’s more likely survival of the biggest when post-1945 the superhero comics faded out except Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman titles. DC hung on until Flash struck a zeitgeist moment with the kids and it took off from there. My question remains how did 40-something Kirby and Lee hit a nerve with FF and Spider-Man which lasted till, arguably today.(OK maybe mostly Spidey). Ditto wasn’t near teenage/20s age and I doubt he felt anywhere what Peter Parker did in AF 15 or ASM 1-38, as I read what he stated regarding how as PP aged he believed that he should be adult in his actions/thoughts which would have alienated the readers/fans. The wonder is that he plotted the latter ASM that he did and still resonated with readers/fans as much as it did!
Which is why I believe that more marketing/different possible execution of eg Avengers Inc is just an exercise in What If. We got what we got and while I would love a Wasp + whoever starred in it, I would just as much love a Wasp + Paladin 1980s/1990 limited series but not a retroactive one. They threw stuff at the wall and it didn’t stick(as much as hoped for) and that’s it, the end(for now at least).
Same for a 2025(2026?) LoSH series, I have no idea what would work for me(or Legions of fans, if any still around). All In LoSH or Absolute LoSH, anyone? One thing is that originally it was created in 1958 and any updates/reboots have to deal with creating the LoSH of 3025 or 3015/3020. And whoever does it doesn’t own/control it!
Sorry for rambling/going off topic.
@Joe Gualtieri
I would also love to have the second volume of the Sandman Mystery Theatre compendium.
I would also love to have an omnibus of The Dreaming series and a collection of all the Sandman Presents mini-series but I imagine the current horrible situation will prevent that from happening for the forseeable future. It’s a shame for all the writers and artists who worked on them.
“Bone”
All I have to say is that BONE should only be read in the original Black & White!
“I have often seen copies of Shade The
Changing Man (vol.2–not the original Ditko series), Enigma, Sandman Mystery Theater, various Ted McKeever Vertigo titles, etc., in dollar boxes”
And sometimes random issues of Doom Patrol will show up.
“have really muddy coloring; I particularly noticed that in Sandman Mystery Theater.”
i always assumed that was intentional. It was supposed to look DARK, or whatever.
“St. George, Doctor Zero, and a few other titles.”
All I know is they didn’t last long, nor get a lot of attention.
“Marvel’s New Universe had already failed; with all due respect to Archie Goodwin’s many talents, what made him think Epic’s own superhero universe would succeed?”
Yeah, THIS. And the line that included Lawdog (a title I liked) also didn’t last very long. Unless those were just under the EPIC imprint, I can’t remember.
“I remember not being able to buy LotDK #1”
Crazy! I swear I used to see a half dozen of that issue sitting aorund, all the time.
“Sandman Mystery Theatre compendium.”
I’m surprised there hasn’t been- Gaiman had nothing to do with that series, as far as i can remember.
@ Snark Shark
I find Bert Christman’s rendering on Golden Age Sandman infinity more satisfying than Guy Davis’s scratchy, reductive Sandman art, along with the character redesign of Wesley Dodds, and the willfully ugly color palette of those stories. It’s a pity that Howard Chaykin, Mike Kaluta, or Gene Colan didn’t draw those stories instead. I’m not against art looking “dark,” or “atmospheric” but when there are puke green, mustard yellow, and muddy brown throughout stories featuring a Golden Age Shadow knock-off Pulp-inspired character, I wonder why?
@MixMat
You make lots of good points. I guess Total Eclipse and Crossroads might have happened after Shadowline, but the fact that Eclipse and First existed as independent publishers, outside of the Comics Code Authority, meant that Marvel and DC had to compete with them for market share by creating more “R” rated superhero stories in sub-imprints like Epic or Vertigo. Also, Comico had The Elementals and The Justice Machine interact with each other, and First had Nexus and Badger interact with each–demonstrating the capacity for both publishers to have shared universes. And I think both of those interactions occured before Shadowline. Also, over at Eclipse, the DNAgents world was building out by Mark Evanier and Will Meugnoit creating Crossfire as a spin off character in his own comic; and, I believe Coyote also interacted with Scorpio Rose at some point–both characters were Steve Englehart creations, so he was building out his own universe as well. And at Pacific Comics Jack Kirby was building out through both Captain Victory and Silver Star–although I don’t think that Kirby had them meet. Neal Adams, too, was building out his own universe with Ms. Mystic, and Urth 4 at Pacific Comics, which he then used, along with Megalith, to build Continuity Comics. So, my point is that it made sense for Marvel to try something like Shadowline, even if it wasn’t ultimately successful. Also, a lot of talented artists worked on those Shadowline titles, including Klaus Jansen, Denys Cowan, and Grey Morrow.
DC was always going to have the advantage for the first thirty or so years of American comics publishing due to owning Superman. I think slowly Marvel chipped away and became the top publisher at some point in the ’70s, surpassing DC in sales. By then DC was considered boring–except for the Denny O’Neil/Neal Adams Batman, and Green Lantern/Green Arrow stuff, Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson’s Swamp Thing, and maybe Kirby’s Fourth World titles, and Kamandi, The Demon, and OMAC.
One of Lee’s great strengths, like I said, was in digging through the characters from defunct comics publishers from the Golden Age and repurposing them or recycling the names: Daredevil, Electro, The Owl, Doc Strange, as but a few examples, were all originally names of Golden Age characters from other publishers. Even the Fantastic Four is basically a pastiche of Jack Kirby’s The Challengers of the Unknown mixed with Plasticman and/or Timely Comics’ Thin Man, an Atlas Comics “monster of the week,” Invisible Scarlet O’Neill (she was a newspaper comic strip character from the 194Os who could turn invisible), and a repurposed use of Carl Burgos’s The Human Torch. So, I think Stan was very good at using other people’s origin nal concepts and creations, tweaking them a tad, and then claiming they were all his brain-children. Even Spider-Man has some roots which stretch back to Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s character The Fly, created for Archie Comics in the late ’50s. There was also a character called The Spider Widow or the Spider Woman or something along those lines from a defunct Golden Age publisher. She shot webs from a contraption on her wrists, and she was a photographer for a newspaper in her civilian identity–decades before Peter Parker was.
“but when there are puke green, mustard yellow, and muddy brown throughout stories featuring a Golden Age Shadow knock-off Pulp-inspired character, I wonder why?”
I can’t argue with that!
“Bert Christman’s rendering on Golden Age Sandman infinity more satisfying than Guy Davis”
I don’t know if I ever saw that other artist’s work-I stopped reading before the series ended, I think.
“Thin Man”
OK, we need a MOVIE Thin Man comic book!
“Invisible Scarlet O’Neill”
Invisible Girl… and MAYBE Scarlet Witch?
“Even Spider-Man has some roots”
And Lee was certainly aware of the Pulp SPIDER character, and it being successful for years.
“a character called The Spider Widow or the Spider Woman or something along those lines from a defunct Golden Age publisher. She shot webs from a contraption on her wrists, and she was a photographer for a newspaper in her civilian identity–decades before Peter Parker was.”
Interesting!
As Johnny Carson said, “I did not know that.”
@Snark Shark
For clarification, Bert Christman is considered the co-creator of The Sandman, along with writer Gardner Fox. He drew The Sandman’s early adventures in 1939. I think Craig Fleissel took over the art after Christman. Christman was also a pilot and he died while flying for the Chinese, fighting Japan, after Japan had invaded Manchuria. His plane was shot down over Burma.
But my point was that I prefer the Golden Age Sandman art from 1939 through the 1940s to what Guy Davis drew. And actually, Alex Toth would have been a great artist for Sandman Mystery Theatre. Russ Heath would have been another great choice. Steve Ditko could have done something interesting with it as well. Oh, well.
Agreed that a movie “Thin Man” comic series would be cool! For that matter, why doesn’t DC/Warner Bros. recruit top talent to make movie comics of old classic Warner Bros. films? I would love to see someone like Jerry Ordway or P. Craig Russell illustrate comic adaptations of classic Humphrey Bogart films. Maybe let Frank Miller, Max Collins, Ed Brubaker, or Don McGregor adapt the original screenplays and write the comics.
Regarding the pre-Spider-Man characters that Stan Lee most likely was aware of and borrowed some elements from, I have posted a link below. The Golden Age public character I was thinking of was called The Spider Queen. She had web shooters and a blue and red costume. I was mistaken about her being a newspaper photographer, however. It was actually a different Golden Age character, The Fox, from MLJ/Archie Comics, who was a newspaper photographer and rigged a camera into his costume so he could get good photos while fighting crime. And there were several Golden Age characters called Spider Woman–one was a heroine, and one was a villainess who fought the Golden Age Hydro-Man who was created by Bill “Sub-Mariner” Everett (and Hydro-Man was yet another character concept that Stan Lee recycled–as a Spider-Man villain!).
So, some of these “spider” characters might have seeped into Stan Lee’s (and Steve Ditko’s) subconscious mind or some of them might have been deliberate attempts to repurpose stuff from the past.
My guess would that as Stan Lee was a teenager when he joined Timely/Marvel Comics in the early ’40s, it is very likely that he and/or publisher Martin Goodman would regularly buy a bunch of comics by rival publishers to see what the competition was producing, what seemed to be popular, and what was driving the industry. And I would guess that various editors and publishers at National/All-American/DC, Fawcett, Quality, MLJ, Fox, Fiction House, etc. were all buying comics from rival publishers as well.
Then, after Fantastic Four no. 1 and Amazing Fantasy no. 15 sold very well, and Goodman wanted Lee to create a bunch of superheroes, a lot of old public domain character names and power sets just got recycled and repurposed–including the name “Captain Marvel,” after Fawcett had stopped publishing Captain Marvel comics for “x” number of years. And the Marvel Universe took off!
But I think that early on, Ditko’s contribution to Spider-Man made the huge difference, not only in terms of the costume and idiosyncratic art style, but also in terms of Peter Parker. I think Peter Parker had a bit of Ditko’s misfit loner Randian persona–while J. Jonah Jameson was a bit of a satire on Stan Lee. After John Romita replaced Ditko, Parker started to change into a much more down to earth and even handsome character. There was still melodrama and pathos, and worrying about Aunt May, but there was a shift in the character. And he got Gwen and Mary Jane.
https://www.spidermancrawlspace.com/2015/09/cobwebs-golden-age-spider-man/
@ Snark Shark
Here is more info. regarding Invisible Scarlet O’Neil. Apparently she was the first super powered female character (according to the linked article). Although I wonder if Fantoma came first?
https://www.hoganmag.com/blog/not-seen-but-not-forgotten-the-invisible-scarlet-oneil
Oh, OK! I don’t think I’ve seen more than one or two Golden Age Sandman stories.
“it is very likely that he and/or publisher Martin Goodman would regularly buy a bunch of comics by rival publishers to see what the competition was producing”.
I’d almost BET on it.
@ Snark Shark
Here is some more info. about Sandman artist Bert Christman. Besides being part of “The Flying Tigers,” he had also drawn the Scorchy Smith comic strip in the mid 1930s–aftet Noel Sickles quit– before co-creating The Sandman.
Interestingly, Frank Robbins, George Tuska, and Alvin Hollingsworth were among the artists who also drew Scorchy Smith. Alvin Hollingsworth was one of the first African American comics artists and he later participated in the March on Washington during the Civil Rights era.
Personally, I think a cool film could be made about Bert Christman’s life, despite his tragic death. For that matter, a cool film could be made about Alvin Hollingsworth and Matt Baker as well.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Bert_Christman
Here is a cool article about Golden Age Sandman with some examples of Bert Christman’s artwork:
https://classiccomics.org/thread/8710/bring-sleep-deeds-justice-sandman?page=1
So much stuff I didn’t know!