In the 60s, everyone tried superheroes. Harvey had the likes of B-Man, Jack Q Frost, Spyman and a few others. Archie tried their old superheroes again, with a campy tone. Tower launched the THUNDER Agents, mixing superheroes with spies. Both Dell and Gold Key tried the same.
Starting with Dell, we begin with Brain Boy.
Brain Boy is Matt price. His mother has an auto accident, colliding with an electrical tower. Somehow, the electromagnetic energy affects him in the womb. At a young age, he exhibits mental powers, though it spooks other kids. At his senior prom, he is approached by a man (not what you think) who is a telepath and recruits him for a secret government department. Matt becomes an agent for the government travelling the globe.
You know, this isn't half bad. The series is fairly imaginative, has some excellent artwork (Gil Kane did the first issue, Frank Springer did subsequent issues) and features a fairly unique set up. Spies were all the rage, in the 60s; but, Matt Price is no average spy. He is forced to kill and is torn up about it. The series is treated fairly realistically and is surprisingly mature. It is probably the high watermark for Dell heroes.
Next up is Nukla.
Mukla is Matthew Gibbs, CIA U2 Spyplane pilot, who is flying a mission over Red China (which sounds more like a flatware description than a country). The Chinese launch nukes at him, which he is unable to avoid. He seems to be obliterated in the explosion, yet his consciousness remains and is able to reconstitute his body. The whole thing sound rather like Charlton's Captain Atom, not to mention Firestorm. The short-lived series is filled with Cold War battles against evil Commies, in rather cliched stories. What saves it is the art. The first issue is from Sal Trapani, with the next couple from Dick Giordano and Trapani, and the last from Steve Ditko.
The second issue has Nukla fighting Baron Von Zee, who has his own space station and rocket fleet. It sounds rather like the plot of Moonraker, some ten years before the movie came out (the novel was about ICBMs and a German war criminal). The story is nothing spectacular but the team of Giordano and Trapani is.
I've already mentioned the Dell Universal Monster-turned-superhero comics: Dracula, Frankenstein and Wolf Man.
Suffice to say, they are pretty awful. They aren't even goofy fun. Falling into a similar area is Super-Heroes.
The concept is about a set of four androids, in a museum, when a villain blows up the place. The minds of a group of teenagers joins, somehow with the androids and brings them to life. It isn't Metal men and it desperately and unsuccessfully wants to be Fantastic Four.
These all died quick deaths, barely eeking out 4 issues (apart from Brain Boy). Gold Key didn't start out with better luck.
The owl was from Jerry Siegel and Tom Gill. Alas, it didn't have the same spark as Superman. It's fairly derivative Batman material, as Owl and Owl Girl operate from a hidden lair, have an Owl plane, etc, etc.
The later Tiger Girl had a bit more going for it, but only for one issue, with art from Jack Sparling.
Tiger Girl is Tiger Lilly, a circus performer who masquerades as the heroine, helping agents of WAAV (War Against Arch- Villainy) in their struggle against the evil forces of INFAMY. This was also from Jerry Siegel, though far better than Owl. This had a goofy potential; but, Western didn't seem to think so.
Now, let's turn to the Gold Key heroes we know and love (mostly thanks to Valiant, for later generations). First, Russ Manning's Magnus, Robot Fighter.
Magnus is a twist on Tarzan, as our hero is raised by an advanced robot, rather than less evolved apes. He is taken by the robot 1A and raised in an underwater bubble house, trained in sciences and physical talents, until he is the perfect weapon. 1A has sensed problems with the world's robots, which have taken away mankind's sense of striving for things. Robots do everything and man is dependent on them. They are slowly being controlled by their robots, as some have broken free of the laws of robotics, as we see in the first issue.
Magnus saves a pair of kids from police robots, after they push a robot over the edge of a building, after it took away their book about WW@, to "protect" them from repeating history. He then comes across a woman, Lejah Clane, daughter of a senator, who is rebelling against the robots. She is pulled over for speeding and resists. Magnus saves her. They soon discover that the chief polrob (police robot) has warped programing, thanks to radiation. he has a computer powered by human minds and seeks to control mankind. magnus unleashes a can of whoop ass on the robots and frees the humans. He goes on to have a series of adventures, fighting rogue robots (affected by aliens or environmental factors) or conniving humans, like Xyrkol, a recurring baddie.
Magnus is already well covered on this site, so I will just add some thoughts of my own. What really makes this series a classic is the artwork of Russ Manning. manning creates a vibrant future and fills it with floating cars, automated sidewalks, servant robots, big screen TVs, and rogue robots. he also draws the sexiest women this side of Wally Wood and Lejah is a honey. Magnus is the square jawed beefcake, whose skirt is shorter than his girlfriend. Basically, our he-man hero goes around fighting robots in a futuristic Paco Rabanne chain mail dress.
You have to be pretty confident in your sexuality to run around in that outfit. Lejah looks rather like a 60s stewardess, with sci-fi trappings.
Erin Gray later borrowed the look for the second season of Buck Rogers...
Even though we got to see her sexy legs, I always preferred Wilma in her spandex suits.
Magnus would have a huge influence on Steve Rude and the look of Nexus (as did Alex Toth's Space Ghost). You can see much of Manning in Rude's style and he populated Ylum and other worlds in Nexus with the same kind of crowd scenes that Manning had in Magnus, though with a DR Seuss sensibility to alien species.
Next up, we have Dr Solar, Man of the Atom
Bob Fujitani provided the pencils in the early issues, but that wouldn't last. Win Mortimer, a fine, if unspectacular artist, did many of the issues. Solar is Dr Phillip Solar, a nuclear scientist at a research compound. Agents of the mysterious Nuro set of an accident that hits him with radiation, as seemed to happen every other day in the 60s. Solar finds that he is still alive, able to fly and project energy. However, he is radioactive. In early stories he just wears his suit and lab coat, before getting his super-duds. The color choice is a bit of a nightmare, with a pinkish red, to match his green face (a side effect of the radiation, which wears off). It was never great superhero fare; but, the earlier stories are pretty entertaining.
His girlfriend is a bit of a pain in the ass though, always needing rescue. Nuro is a constant presence in the early stories.
Western would revive Dr Solar, in their later days, with little success. The art was fairly generic and the stories rather bland. they also had linework covers, instead of the gorgeous painted covers of the 60s and early 70s.
Now, these weren't all of the heroes depicted by Western. Their licensed comics included several:
The Hanna-Barbera comics adapt some of the tv cartoons and some original material. Western found that Hanna-Barbera could be a pain about their properties. They soon realized that if they did a couple of issues adapting the cartoons, H-B would leave them alone and they could do other things. Space Ghost only had one issue and the H-B TV Superheroes had a handful. Battle of the Planets got 10, with art by Win Mortimer. It was hardly as exciting as the cartoon, and a heck of a lot less violent (and it was toned down from the original Japanese Gatchaman).
The other exception was Super Goof, which I covered previously.
Western's adventure material sold fairly well in the 60s, during the height of the Silver Age. They were aided greatly by the painted covers and the artwork from the likes of Russ Manning and Bob Fujitani. However, as things progressed into the 70s, the popularity waned. They would go by the wayside (apart from brief revivals under the Whitman name, with mostly reprints) until 1991, when Vailant would license the characters and Jim Shooter would create the Valiant Universe, centered around Magnus and Solar, with Turok soon joining. Strangely, they didn't go after the other properties, like Dr Spektor, Dagar, or Mighty Samson.
Next up, we look at Western's science fiction-oriented comics, including Space Family Robinson (and their connection to TV's Lost in Space) and a certain licensed comic, that outlived the series that spawned it.