Superman's origin according to Ruby-Spears Productions

Ever wonder what happened between the time young Kal-El was adopted by the Kents and his arrival in Metropolis? If I were to assume... and I probably shouldn't, I'd say most folks reading this site already have a pretty good idea. For this piece/series, we're going to put all of that out of our minds, pre-Crisis, post-Crisis, whatever. Where we're going... we have little need for such terms.

In 1988, Ruby-Spears Productions created an animated Superman series that ran on CBS during the Saturday morning time-slot. The episodes would feature an 18-20 minute feature, and be followed by a short Superman Family Album segment which served to fill us in on the Man of Steel's childhood and adolescence. I figure those might be the best place for us to start our coverage!

Let's take a look at the first installment... The Adoption, written by a very familiar name... Marv Wolfman!

We open with Jonathan and Martha Kent sitting in the office of the Smallville Orphanage. They explain that they found the young boy on their farm... and even considered adopting him themselves, after all they'd always wanted a little boy of their own. Gotta mention that the Kents are portrayed as being at least in their 50's, which would put them at over 70 by the time (spoiler alert) Clark becomes Superman. I don't recall them being of the same generation as Aunt May... but, at least in the Ruby-Spearsiverse, they just might.  They are told that the orphanage usually looks for younger folks to give children to, but they'll... erm, keep them in mind. As the young boy is handed over, he begins to fuss.

I really appreciate that Mr. Warner from the orphanage isn't depicted to be evil or malicious in any way. He's just a man doing his job, and has no ill-intent for the boy or his previous guardians. As the Kents leave, the Walters family arrives... they're looking for a sweet young boy with no inclinations toward "roughness"... I never realized picking a child was like picking the flavor of ice cream you want in your waffle cone, but we'll let that slide. Either way, Mr. Warner's got just the lad for you... or does he? [On a side note, Mr Warner *may* have been an homage to Warner Bros (the parent company of DC comics) — there's a later episode with a villain named 'McFarlane'. -JF]

The Walters decide to... go another way. Some time later, The Kenny's (and their cat) arrive. At that very moment, our boy is flying off to visit the nearby Zoo... Mrs. Kenny is hopeful their potential new baby likes pets. C'mon now, all young children like animals. Though, this one might like his cats a bit on the larger side.

With another set of parents fleeing the facility, Mr. Warner must stop to consider the possibility that this young tot is acting in way that would purposefully scare potential parentals away. Thinking aloud, he posits that perhaps the boy has his own idea for proper parents... to which, the baby begins clapping. Warner and Conroy leave the baby alone and unattended to check who is next on their list... which seems a pretty unsafe thing to do. Anyhoo... being left by his lonesome, our tot of steel heads out on a night-flight all the way to the Kent Farm, where he nuzzles in between his would be guardians and goes to sleep.

The following morning, the Kents awaken to the shocking appearance of the baby they'd dropped at the orphanage... um, earlier that day? Busy day, right? Martha asks what they should do, to which Jonathan suggests they go back to the orphanage... and convince Mr. Warner to let them legally adopt the child! They (preemptively?) name the boy... Clark Kent. The baby seems to dig the idea, because he chooses now to utter his first words... Mama and Dada, don't be such a cliché Clark-O.

A touching start to the series... really quite a cute story.

The strange thing about this series, at least to me, is that I have a difficult time reconciling that this hit network television in 1988. I can't say for certain where I mentally "place" this... but the late 80's certainly ain't it. [Just for context: Ruby-Spears was also responsible for 1979's The Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Show, a 1986 Karate Kommandos (starring Chuck Norris) animated feature, Thundarr the Barbarian, a Rambo cartoon, that Police Academy cartoon we all watched on weekdays before grabbing the bus to school and that god-awful 1986 Lazer Tag Academy cartoon. -JF]

I'm not sure what it says about the current comics/entertainment culture where when I sat down to watch this I thought for sure the orphanage's Mr. Warner was going to be revealed as a baby seller and slaver. I was quite pleased to be mistaken... and for the light comedic take we received instead. On a side note,

I find it funny that nobody thinks twice about this baby flying around a room on a rocking horse or abducting a lion from the zoo. It's just accepted! Imagine having to return a lion to the zoo! How would one even go about doing such a thing? Yeah, I'm thinking too hard about it... it's kinda what I do.

Overall, had a decent amount of fun with this silly short. This (somehow) wasn't part of my childhood, so that's not nostalgia talking. Hope this was an enjoyable read... if you dug it, let us know. Also, if this show was a part of your childhood (or adulthood!) please feel free to reach out and share your memories of the series.


-Chris Sheehan

Can't wait for the next installment in this series of articles? For more of Chris Sheehan, check out his highly recommended Chris is on Infinite Earths blog. He also co-hosts the very excellent Cosmic Treadmill podcast with Reggie Hancock!

USENET fandom - Crisis on Captive Earth and the true identity of "Satan Girl"

About a year ago, there was a semi-regular feature here at DC in the 80's called Usenet Fandom... wherein I would dredge up forum posts about comics from the prehistoric internet and, with my own superpower of "hindsight" proceed to dissect and analyze them... making us "future folks" feel quite a bit smarter than all those college students pulling up BBS's and newsgroups via primitive modems.
As I often do, I found myself getting sidetracked... and eventually lost my way with the feature.

Well... let's give it another go, shall we?

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Today we're going to discuss the blockbuster follow-up to Crisis on Infinite Earths... Crisis on Captive Earth! Wait, what?!

In a missive titled, "The 'Next' CRISIS?" on January 28 1986, Usenetter "Mr. B", says:

We'll discuss Crisis on Captive Earth in a bit more detail below, however... this is a portion of the text page from Secret Origins #2 (May, 1986) Mr. B is talking about:

I'll agree somewhat with Mr. B, the origin story was perhaps a bit hokey... but, very likely contorted to fit the existing plot.  The text-piece in the back of the issue discusses the entire history of the character (and plenty of neat Charlton Comics information!). That being said, perhaps DC was trying to tie everything in as neatly as possible. This doesn't always make for the snappiest or most exciting story, but it works.

Gil Kane's artwork here, while not bad... sort of dates the book, and makes it feel much older than it is. I have similar feelings anytime I read pre-Crisis "Trial era" Flash comics with Carmine Infantino on art. Mr. B is mistaken as to the penciller on the Blue Beetle ongoing... that would be Paris Cullins (though, Chuck Patton did draw issue #10).

Crisis on Captive Earth, eh? Well, research indicates that you and I might know this maxi-series better as Crisis of the Soul! Hmm, still nothin' huh? Okay... Crisis on Captive Earth became... Crisis of the Soul... which then became... Legends!

Per Amazing Heroes #62 (January 1, 1985) which served as their 1985 Preview issue, this story was originally envisioned to take place in a twelve-issue maxi-series by Paul Levitz, Len Wein, and Jerry Ordway. Legends would only run six issues, and would feature Wein, as well as John Ostrander and John Byrne in the creators' chairs... and it's finished product may have only matched the scrapped maxis in when it would start hitting store shelves.

Jerry Ordway offered the following:

"The Crisis sequel was Crisis of the Soul, and featured the Corruptors from Legion continuity, I think. It was meant to be very personal to the heroes, showing them the darkness and having them deal with it and reject it or not. The Corruptors basically quarantine the Earth and that’s all I remember off the top of my head. Paul Levitz and I plotted out the main beats, and it was all set to go, until the editor ran into resistance from the other editors who didn’t want to have to cross over with it. Then when the editors changed, I bowed out. It became Legends, but it was fairly different from what we originally planned."

A piece from TwoMorrows Publishing's wonderful Back Issue #9 sheds a bit of light on this subject. The two-pages included below come from their free-preview of the issue... they always put out great work, and are well worth your time.

From Back Issue #9 (2003)

Whoop... Legion of Super-Heroes stuff. That really puts me at a disadvantage. Let's see what we might be able to unpack here without much in the way of context. Satan Girl, from what I have deduced, was created as a dark-mirror of Supergirl (Kara Zor-El) when she had been exposed to Red Kryptonite while on an adventure in the 30th Century.

Adventure Comics #313 (October, 1963)

Since Red-K was no longer a "thing", post-Crisis, this character went away... very quickly, in fact (more on that in a bit) that is, until Zero Hour where she shows up to give the Legionnaires grief as a time anomaly. Not sure why Mr. B included this bit, but I'm pretty glad he did.

For completist's sake, here are a couple of replies I was able to locate... surprisingly, none of which add anything to the CRISIS talk... it's all Satan Girl here...

On February 2, 1986, "CF" answered in a post titled "Sensor Girl=Satan Girl" with:

On February 5, 1986, "TY" followed up with:

So from this, I gather that Satan Girl only lasted the one story... again... not sure why Mr. B included this... but it was a fun education regardless!

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That's all we've got for this installment. I hope folks enjoyed this... and as always, if you have any additions or corrections, please do not hesitate to write-in! Thanks for reading!


-Chris Sheehan

Can't wait for the next installment in this series of articles? For more of Chris Sheehan, check out his highly recommended Chris is on Infinite Earths blog. He also co-hosts the very excellent Cosmic Treadmill podcast with Reggie Hancock!

Rad Ads - Play By Mail, the ROCK T-shirt that is 'sweeping the country', and Mindreading

Welcome back to Rad Ads — the article series in which we look back at comic book ads that ran in DC comics during the eighties (and sometimes the early nineties — depending on how inspired we're feeling). Today's segment is brought to you by Rad Ads alumni Chris Sheehan (of the Chris Is On Infinite Earths blog) and returning contributor Jason Brown (you may remember him for his review of John Ostrander's Suicide Squad from last year.)


Seen sometime in 1981:

Jason: This ad seems to hold promise; play your favorite game ... make new friends ... join a "Society". Chess, Checkers, something called "Pool Checkers" (which sounds like someone who pulls needles and condoms out of the kiddie pool at the local public park), and Othello. That all sounds fine until you get to the "through the mail" part. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that mean a couple weeks minimum between moves? Wouldn't I rather debate world economics with the DMV sloths from Zootopia? I mean, aren't we talking a game time roughly equivalent to time it would take to raise a toddler? Or backpack around the world? Or finish university? "Why yes, I earned my bachelor's degree in theme park engineering, and won that game of checkers."

Hey look, if you can't find one other person to play Chess or Checkers with you might want to invest a little time away from the comic book collection out in the world of people. Start out with "Hi", then if you do OK with that part, try following up with "How are you?" Send your money to 'South Bend, Indiana 46660'? Kind of a red flag.

Chris: The American Postal Game Society... could you even begin to wrap your head around such a thing? I see an insane man standing at a podium making proclamations to an audience of stuffed animals and action figures... maybe his disappointed parents are there too.

Either that, or this is a dude who visits the post office every day to try and "sell them" on his idea. He's got this elevator pitch where he explains that they’ll strike it rich by selling "man sections". The postal employees just smile and nod and tell him that his idea is "pretty good".

Could you imagine sending $10 in the mail to some post office box with an index cards that reads "I want two man sections"... what does that even mean? What do you expect to receive in return? Another index card that says "Okay"? Things like this make me so happy crowdfunding wasn't a thing back in the 1980s.




...and then in 1986:

Jason: "Conquer all of Europe, or even an entire galaxy. Colonize a planet or destroy it ... YOU decide." Raise a civilization, then raze it to the ground. Kill 'em all on my random whim. My people will learn to love their Lord; and fear him! There very fates will be my playthings! The entire galaxy will tremble as I bring down my terrible hammer of judgement! Um ... yes ... every three weeks. But you know, they have been "industry leader" for 16 years, so ... well you know, they must know how to give me the play by mail adventure payoffs I'm looking for. Flying Buffalo sounds about right.

I dabbled in Play by Mail games back in the late 80s. The first one that I played was Duelmasters. You design your gladiators, then fill out these battle sheets, your strategic actions for the whole game. Then you send it off, obsess about it, pine for it, get depressed waiting for it, and about 3 weeks later a computer generated report of your battles comes back and it's the most exciting thing in your life for about ten minutes. The computer generated battle — I guess they fed all the data into a computer (at least that's what they said ... for all I know, they just made it up) - reads like a play by play: "this character did this", "that character did that", "this happened", "that happened". You either win or lose and then can post stuff about it on the newsletter. I remember feeling like a real celebrity reading my own contributions to the newsletter.

I was pretty new and some people were exchanging info on how to crack the code of the game and stuff like that. I made a team of six characters that I named after an Anthrax album called Among the Living, and all my characters named after heavy metal songs. The one character I had that never got defeated — he won 6 times — was called Subjugator. I think it was probably legitimate - I think Subjugator was a well-balanced design, so he kept winning. Now I'm thinking they secretly let you have one character who wins a lot to keep you sending in your money. (I wasn't capable of that level of cynicism back then.) I had this other character, called Nuclear Assault (named after the band), and he was a really speedy character. He had very fast repetitive attacks and won 2 or 3 matches. Then I got cocky and went up against this undefeated opponent, called Rook Lamachine who deflected all of my attacks until I ran out of steam, then finished me easily. I'll never forget Rook Lamachine for giving me the gift of humility.

That same company made another game called Hyborian War which is set in the world of Conan the Barbarian.You rule of a country in Hyborea dealing with politics, finances and all this other boring crap I couldn't get a handle on in high school. So you put in your orders for your country for that turn, and then they send you back the report of what's happening. I ruled Asgard, north of Cimmeria, Conan's homeland, and I basically drove it into the ground. Asgard was half-decent when I started and just a smoldering crater when I finished. I couldn't seem to figure out the politics or finances or any of that stuff. I discovered that ruling a country isn't as easy as one might think.

Before I kicked the Play By Mail habit for good, I played another one where I ran a street gang. The goal was to pull off crimes and take over city blocks. What a great vehicle for the imagination.

The last one was called Alamaze — which was a fantasy world — but I never got around to playing that one (because I think I discovered girls or music or something else legitimate).

I just checked online and these games still exist. What's hilarious is that anyone would want to participate in Play By Mail games now that the internet exists. What's even more hardcore is the fact that I just ordered the starter package for all of them.


[Editor's note: As of this writing, Flying Buffalo is still an existing gaming company, holds a prestigious list of awards for the games they've created and offers Play By Mail/E-Mail games, Smartphone Apps, custom dice, German miniatures, and a Nuclear War card game. Got to hand it to this company to keeping true to the dream.]



Circa 1984:

Jason: This ad looks similar to when they are trying to emulate something North American, but it's actually coming from Kazakhstan or someplace like that. It kinda looks like they reproduced (and by reproduce, I mean they had a ten-year-old draw it), some vague images of ... AC/DC's Angus Young, I think ... wearing his school boy uniform ... yeah, that's definitely Angus Young on the bottom left. I'm pretty sure that's Brian Johnson (the singer of AC/DC) on the top right with some sort of bass guitar that looks like a really big deformed piece of black licorice. And then there's the guy beside him, who has a devil head (that maybe looks like someone put a cigarette out on it), and finally it says "MASTERS OF METAL" by the collar.

Sweeping the country? I'm not totally convinced. Don't get me wrong, I mean it is a pretty rockin' shirt. Personally, I might have first hired a real artist, or maybe at least used some photos. Also, the composition is a little ... oh, I don't know, ridiculous? Hey, let's put these shitty child drawings in a nice display, but leave the bottom right blank. Then we'll cram "MASTERS OF METAL" up by the neck like it's an afterthought. It's like some cement worker had a bright idea to make a killing tricking comic book fans into buying this garbage shirt he threw together with his buddy who owns a printing shop and his artistically talented son (who sketched some pics from a magazine with AC/DC in it he found in a ditch). None of them speak English, so they couldn't read any of the names and by the time their cousin who does know English transcribed the ad, they had already used the magazine for toilet paper. "Ah!", exclaimed the cement worker as he tapped his forehead, "Just say that it features the world's HOTTEST guitarist eh? The Americans will know who it is! We will be rich!" The one part of the ad that I truly respect for being truthful and accurate is the claim that wearing this shirt, you will definitely be the talk of your friends. (Seriously though, can I still buy this?)

Chris: The first time I came across this ad I would have bet money the “Masters of Metal” were carrying rifles and not guitars! It’s as though a third-world insurgency decided that a horrendous t-shirt would sweep whole country and make many many USD’s.

I’d like to think that in the years that followed this shirt morphed into the more iconic (though equally rockin’) "three wolf moon" shirt.

Sometime in 1987:

Jason: 'Mindreading: learn the secrets and amaze your friends!' Wow, what an incredible deal. Keep in mind, they're not just baiting you with a preview - you're getting the complete course for 5 dollars (plus a dollar postage.) Yep. Mindreading for $6. Now I'm thinking this has got to be along the lines of "If she bites her lip and fidgets with her hair it means she likes you," or "If he becomes intensely quiet and you notice his fists are clenched he might be angry, unless he just drank a lot of water, in which case he may just have to go to the bathroom." Where you finally get the thing just hoping and praying or some kind of low level super powers but then it just falls flat. Just like x-ray glasses and Sea Monkeys.You can almost hear old JoJo Deutch laughing at you as you look in the mirror and see nothing but a big sucker. Unless it was a real thing and there is actually a whole alumni of JoJo Deutch mindreaders out there. But if that's true, I hope none of them also bought the MASTERS OF METAL shirt.

Chris: I always wonder why mindreaders and psychics advertised at all… it kinda goes against their whole schtick, right? I mean, if they can read minds and tell the future, advertising is a pretty poor and foolhardy expense to incur. I gotta wonder if the esteemed JoJo Deutch foresaw nobody buying her amazing course? Hell, at the very least… wouldn’t you figure she would just send the course out to the people she knows will be interested?

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If you enjoy reading about the comic book ads of yesteryear, then you're going to enjoy Chris Sheehan and Reggie Hancock's 18th Weird Comics History podcast for the Weird Science DC Comics blog. Chris and Reggie cover the life and times of novelty purveyor S.S. Adams and bodybuilder Charles Atlas and relook at a few of the comic book ads that appeared in the 50s, 60s and 70s. [Chris and Reggie also combo'd last year to bring us one of our first Rad Ad articles.] 

-Justin