Best Character Motivation of the Silver Age

This again proves to be a very easy choice, but I want to dwell on it for awhile because it is so crucially important. Every character must have a motivation for what he or she does, and although the Silver Age writers frequently forgot about positive characterization for their heroes and negative characterization for the villains, they never forgot that either must have some motivation for what they do.

If you look at the supervillains, they usually start with one motivation: to steal lots of money. But if you watch them closely, you'll see that almost all of them start their second and often later appearances with a different motivation: To defeat the superhero who put them in jail.

Looking at it this way does also emphasize the similarities between Lex Luthor and Dr Doom. Both of them hate their nemesis (Superman and Mr Fantastic respectively), at least partially because they blame them irrationally for botched scientific experiments--which left Luthor bald and Dr Doom hideously scarred.

So now let's look at the major DC heroes' motivation during the Silver Age:

Flash: Barry Allen is already a policeman and he had read the Golden Age adventures of the Flash and this inspired him to be a superhero.

Green Lantern: Hal Jordan was a test pilot who was judged worthy to become the new Green Lantern when Abin Sur died.

Atom: Ray Palmer acts as Ivy Town superhero to help his fiancee Jean Loring become a successful defense attorney so they can marry.

Martian Manhunter: Stuck on Earth so he might as well be a cop.

Hawkman: Sent to Earth to learn our police methods.

Now contrast that with Marvel:

FF: Get superpowers and are generally good people to begin with who are willing to take risks.

Iron Man: Gets a terrific defensive costume and he's already a weapons manufacturer so he might as well fight the commies.

X-Men: Save the humans from the evil mutants.

Daredevil: Fight crime while not being Matt Murdock because he promised his dad he wouldn't fight.

Thor: His motivation is never really explained; he's just a noble god.

Spiderman: He didn't stop a robber and the guy ended up killing his uncle Ben.

Whose motivation in there is compelling? Whose is the most believable? Whose motivation has the reader saying, "That's what I'd do, too!"

It seems pretty obvious to me. Spiderman's motivation is personal. It involves a close family member; family motivations are always compelling. It's directly tied to fighting crime in a superhero costume; nobody else can say that.

Daredevil's motivation is close. Certainly his father's death is what inspires him to break up the Fixer's gang. And the Atom has an interesting personal motivation.

But I think overall Peter Parker's motivation is the best in the entire Silver Age; indeed it is matched only by Batman's for personal drama.

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The Batman Silver Age Cards

Whew! Don't know who did this originally, but kudos to the Beat Down for finding it. Awesome!

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Trivia Quiz #27: Green Lantern

1. What did Pieface collect?

A. Autographs
B. Stamps
C. Coins
D. Comic Books

2. Abin Sur, the prior Green Lantern for Earth's sector, had what job in his non-GL identity?

A. Sports star
B. Newspaperman
C. Physics professor
D. History professor

3. True or false: Hal Jordan was shown smoking a pipe occasionally.

A. True
B. False

4. Who was Abel Tarrant?

A. The Tattoed Man
B. Sonar
C. Star Sapphire
D. Black Hand

5. What was Green Lantern's occupation in 5700 AD?

A. Spaceball player
B. Solar Director
C. Superhero
D. Scientist

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Iron Man Run Part 7--End of the Tales of Suspense Issues

As ToS #95 begins, an intruder has gotten into Stark's main plant. Tony's response?



My response would be more along the lines of "An intruder within those walls? What is this, like the 50th time that's happened?" I haven't kept track of it, but I pointed out that between ToS #52 and #63, the only issues that didn't feature an attack on Stark's facilities or one of his weapons were #58 and #62.

We discover who the intruder is here:



Sitwell was an amusing character. On the one hand you can see him as a poke by Lee at the DC Boy Scout heroes, but on the other hand, who was he really mimicking but Stan himself with the "Don't yield! Back SHIELD!" boosterism?

The villain for the issue is the Grey Gargoyle, an old Thor foe who can fly and turn people into stone for one hour. But when he turns Iron Man to stone he decides to kill him by tossing him off the roof of the factory.

In the next issue, we find that Sitwell, despite his rah-rah attitude, knows what to do in an emergency and saves Iron Man by driving a convenient nearby truck filled with sand under him to break the fall. In a crucial battle, Sitwell intentionally touches the Gargoyle, having seen that the building was about to collapse and he would die if he was not turned into stone. It's a nice little bit of characterization for Sitwell. Iron Man short-circuits the Grey Gargoyle's abilities, even though this incapacitates him.

And Sitwell behaves a little nutty, trying to blow Iron Man's helmet off:



Meanwhile, Morgan Stark is in trouble with the gamblers once again. But after learning that Iron Man is incapacitated, Morgan realizes that he can pay off his debts by delivering Shell-Head to the leader of the Maggia. He bluffs his way into the factory by pretending to be on a mission from Tony, and with some help from the guards gets Iron Man into his car. Fortunately, it's a car with a cigarette lighter in the back seat that Tony uses to charge himself up a bit while being delivered to the Maggia's waiting ship.

Tony tries to capture the hoodlums, but he gets caught behind a sliding door with a new villain called Whiplash. I know, how can a guy with a mere whip beat Iron Man? But it turned out this is a special kind of whip:



Meanwhile Sitwell has finally discovered that Iron Man has been kidnapped by Morgan Stark. He also finds himself confronted by a bevy of Stark's girlfriends, which flusters him. Sitwell eventually tracks down Morgan and learns that Iron Man is on the Maggia's ship (which doubles as a gambling casino. So Sitwell pretends to be a gambler to get on board.

Iron Man manages to defeat Whiplash, but he has run out of power and his heart is giving out again. As the head of the Maggia (Big M) prepares to examine his suit of armor, the ship is attacked by AIM, another criminal syndicate that had battled SHIELD in the past. Water is rushing in and Iron Man is stuck to a magnetic table. How can he survive?

After Tales of Suspense #99, the magazine was changed to Captain America. The story here is continued in Iron Man and Sub-Mariner #1, a stop-gap issue before Iron Man #1. But since this is the final TOS issue, it's a good breaking point.

Comments: Having married off Pepper and Happy, Stan apparently forgot about them; they last appeared in TOS #91. An extended honeymoon? They did eventually return, but eight months is a pretty long absence. It is also around this point that the Marvel Universe really began to interlock. There'd always been connections between the various characters and villain crossovers, but now it became more difficult to read a single Marvel character without being familiar with the other series.

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Catman--Batman's Swipe of Blackhawk?

This one requires a bit of explanation. Last fall, I reviewed Blackhawk #148, and pointed out several areas of similarity between those stories and some earlier/later Batman stories. Given that Jack Schiff was editing both magazines, it seemed reasonable to assume that plots and characters had been swiped wholesale in some cases.

So it is with the Catman. Before we get into the history of the character, let's just post two covers that show the swipe:





In the original, Blackhawk #141 (October 1959), the Blackhawks encountered a boastful pilot/crook called the Catman, who announces he's going to commit a daring crime, and who then gives his location. The Blackhawks arrive just in time to see the Catman crash his plane, but when they land:



Catman conveniently explains that he has already used up four other lives prior to meeting the Blackhawks, so he has four remaining. Whether he is telling the truth or not, the countdown starts at four for the purposes of the story. He intentionally races through a deadly fire (three) and deliberately causes a landslide (2). But when Blackhawk proves that Catman also used up a life getting over the electrified fence, the crook gives up rather than relinquish his final life. At the end there's a bit of a hint that perhaps Blackhawk fooled CM:



Note as well that the credit for the pencils in the Blackhawk issue go to Dillin; want to guess who drew the covers for the first two Catman appearances in Detective? Yep. As far as I know, those are Dillin's only work on the character (outside of the Justice League), although he did not do the cover to Detective #325 shown above; that one's by Moldoff.

The introduction in the Batman mythology came with Detective #311. Catman (yes, they spelled it with the hyphen, and no, I will not) debuted in that issue and more important, he was one of the rare Batman characters of that time who was not created by Sheldon Moldoff:



Jim Mooney did the interior artwork for the first two Catman stories in Batman, while Moldoff did the last issue.

There is a key subplot in the story that appears shortly after the revelation that Catman is attracted to Batwoman. I'm reading Submariner and Sue Storm, but it's especially interesting because the story mentions him being inspired by the Catwoman, who has been gone from the Batman universe for years and would not reappear for another 3+ years (well after her first appearance on TV).



At the end of that story, the Catman (apparently) dies. It's an obvious plot development, and the next appearance, in Tec #318 actually gave us the return of the Catman and a new Catwoman:



In this story, the Catman returns. Batwoman chases after him, but is stymied when his kitty-car jumps over a ravine. She crashes and looks likely to fall from a ledge, when the Catman comes to the rescue:



Batman may be the world's greatest detective, but he clearly doesn't understand women. Batwoman confesses to having mixed feelings about Catman. Part of it no doubt was the truth of what he told her after saving her life:

"Batman will never marry you! You're a fool to waste your time on him!"

Later, a clumsy mistake by Batwoman results in the Catman getting away. This echoes some of the early Catwoman tales, where Batman would apparently allow her to get away. This leads to an argument between Batman and Batwoman, covered enthusiastically by the newspapers. Batwoman bails out one of the Catman's henchmen and asks to be taken to the Catman, so that she can become his Catwoman. But it was all a plot to locate the Catman's hideout, and a homing beacon that Batwoman carried resulted in Batman and Robin arriving. At the end of this story, Catman is again apparently killed.

His third (and as far as I know, final) appearance is in Detective #325, the cover of which is shown near the top of this post. The story is basically a swipe of the idea from Blackhawk #141, that the Catman has nine lives. Instead of getting his extra lives from an African witch-doctor, he gets it from the cloth that was woven into his cape.

But Batwoman learns this secret when she examines the Catwoman costume she had worn in Detective #318:



Somehow she senses that it's nine lives altogether for her and the Catman combined, so she uses up a couple of them while wearing the Catwoman outfit so that next time they face him, he'll be on his final life. And here's a real rarity in the Silver Age: Robin finishing off the villain:



I think I'm going to have to read more Blackhawk issues to see if I can find similar swipes. I seem to recall that the old Boy Commandos and Robin villain, Crazy Quilt, appeared in a Blackhawk story in the 1960s.

Update: See also this terrific post by Bill Jourdain, that we might call, "When Batman Swiped Robin".

Update II: Bill also did a podcast a few years back on the Golden Age Catman, a character from the Holyoke line of comics. I should also note that there was a one-shot Batman villain in the GA called the King of the Cats who turned out to be the Catwoman's brother.

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Elsewhere in the Comicsphere

First off, I should note that I have deleted a few blogs from the sidebar for inactivity. I don't like doing it, but I use the blogroll for surfing myself, and know how disappointed I am to surf over to another blog and see there's still no update. I am particularly sorry to see a few of them go, including Dial B for Blog (officially retired), the Fortress of Fortitude (officially retired) and I Believe in Bat-Mite (no posts in over two months). If you were previously on my blogroll and were deleted because of inactivity, please let me know if you start posting again.

On the plus side, I've added Blinded Me With Comics, the 1980s comic blog of our old buddy the Groovy Agent. If you're familiar with Diversions of the Groovy Kind (and who isn't), you'll find similar posts at BMWC, only focused on the Extraordinary Eighties rather than the Scintillating Seventies.

And although the cobwebs on other blogs resulted in my delinking them, I'm happy to add the House of Cobwebs, another terrific nostalgia zone. I like this post on Blackhawk #189, the famed "cavemen on flying jet-skis" issue.

Longtime blogroll resident Superman Fan has a terrific and blistering review of Superboy #143's The Big Fall. This one does seem like quite a crazy story; I love the Superboy Train.

Fourth of July bloggers: Golden Age Comics has a terrific patriotic Superman cover from the 1940s. Superman Fan has another patriotic pose by the Man of Steel. Mark Engblom shows the many Statue of Liberty covers over the years.

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Flash Gordon - Harvey #2

Flash Gordon (Dec 1950) Harvey #2

All thanks & credits go to Colonel Worobu & unknown person who scanned it.

#3 & #4 are available: Here

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