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[MarkWarner]

I really do have a head for a sieve. It is official. I went to put up this weeks reading group (a day late) and:

Q) What did I discover?
A) I had not put up the previous weeks. That is despite sitting down to post it and making the image

So anyway a week after schedule we are reading a Captain Marvel. But not Marvel as we know him Jim. This is the M.F. Enterprises version. All very intriguing.

Oh before I forget Captain Marvel #1 can be found here  https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=70786.

Now all i have to do is click on the button beneath and I should have managed to post this. Fingers crossed!

Happy Reading!

[lyons]

Every time I check into this site, I am in awe of its beauty, and historical significance.  Thank's to everyone involved in compiling these vast canyons of digital books.  My reading group comment will come later.   

[mr_goldenage]

Ahh the M.F. version of Captain Marvel! bought these as a kid and still have 4 of the 5 of them. So bad they are good? Well yes. Given what had come before (remember the Blue Beetle before Ditko?) this wasn't that bad. Art was serviceable and the stories were short and somewhat dull and predictable it was an ok effort from a marginal publisher. I still have them so that gives you an idea that I am a fan of these, maybe it is just nostalgia. But that is just me I guess.

Richard

[POWPUCK]

Did this comic inspire Trump's hairdo?

[Captain Audio]

Did this comic inspire Trump's hairdo?

Yes, yes it did.

Interesting idea for a character, a robot built by aliens who were identical to Earth humans. The last gesture of a dying race intent on preventing the tragedy that befell them from destroying another intelligent race. Has a Outer Limits or TZ feel to it.

[SuperScrounge]

Introducing the All-New Captain Marvel - Ehh, not as terrible as I've heard, but nothing especially exciting either.

The Invisible Aliens - The aliens are enemies, then they need help. Yeesh, writer, pick one and stick to it.

The Blue Men of Venus! - Sounds like an Edgar Rice Burroughs title.  Gee, Venusians come to warn Earth, but the captain has a bad attitude, but oh, it's okay because he had suffered a tragedy before leaving. Also they just happen to have a criminal aboard the ship that was supposed to be making peaceful contact. Bwah???  Sheesh, the writer seems to have a Shroedinger's Cat attitude to guest stars, they should be both villains and not-villains at the same time.

If later issues are like this I can see why it didn't last long.

[lyons]

I would not have bought Captain Marvel as a kid, but I was pleasantly surprised to find the novelty of having a super-hero with the ability to split apart, entertaining.  But I wouldn't have paid money for the title when I was a boy. Nope.  When I was a kid, I was a die-hard Marvel fan.  When everyone else bought candy, I bought a comic.  And the comics I spent my nickels and dimes (and eventually pennies on when the price jumped to 12 cents), was anything with Iron Man on the cover (I remember how disappointed I was when they replaced his golden armor) and Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos. I also bought DC's Metal Men and Gold Key's Phantom when I could afford them, but other than that it was 'make mine Marvel.'  Good concept and story in Captain Marvel, though.             

[crashryan]

It's ridiculous how much animosity I have stored up about this single comic. It's all because of my childhood,  Dr Freud...

It's 1966. I'm a high school nerd passionate about drawing comics. It's a great time to be reading comics, even if your parents and schoolmates ridicule you. John Romita on Daredevil! Kirby on the FF creating the Silver Surfer! Ditko on Dr Strange! Gene Colan on Sub-Mariner! Ballantine Books' paperback Tales of the Incredible reprinting EC science fiction classics by Williamson and Wood! Giolitti on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea! MARS Patrol by Wood! THUNDER Agents! Every week I rush down to the Rexall drug store to discover new wonders. And I find...this.

Captain Marvel #1 so offended my adolescent sensitivities that I made it the poster child of Lousy Comics. I can't tell you how many times I invoked it during lectures about comics for adults, the stylistic supremacy of Steranko and Adams, and so on.

Well, I've worked hard and consulted my therapist (just kidding) and striven mightily to give this b

[Morgus]

I know I'll never hear it, but I bet the back story to just how they pulled this comic book off would be better then the product itself. I mean, DC usually guards their copyright as jealously as a mother bear protecting her cubs. And THESE guys not only high jacked Captain Marvel, but also PLASTIC MAN?? Who, at the time would pop up in DC comics?? Wow. THAT'S larceny.
Powbuck and Captain Audio, I liked the exchange about the Trump hair genesis . But the guy I was REALLY reminded of was...Dean Reed! Reed made spaghetti westerns in the 60's and his story is pretty fascinating. Check out AMERICAN REBEL...a documentary that is usually on youtube. You won't believe it.)

Last week, Crashryan put up some art from Michael Gilbert's Mr. Monster from Eclipse. Gilbert also did a series of reprints and an issue or two did 'best of the worst'. This could have been a crown jewel. I mean parts that fly off and act independently? I really want to know who thought this was a good idea.

Funny thing. The art reminds me of Charlton's bottom tier war or western comics for some reason. And to my mind, the whole issue seems to be just glad it was successfully made at all. There seems to be a real air of desperation and teeth gritting to me.

[lyons]

Morgus, here is a little more info on the Captain Marvel title - DC Comics sued Fawcett Comics for breach of copyright.  DC claimed Fawcett's Captain Marvel was too similar to Superman, and Fawcett Comics stopped publishing Captain Marvel. In the late sixties, Marvel Comics gained the trademark 'Captain Marvel' with their first series. To retain their trademark, Marvel has had to publish a Captain Marvel title at least once every two years.  The Captain Marvel title was also available for MF Enterprises when they released this comic, but they let their trademark slide and Marvel Comics snapped up the title.

[narfstar]

It was the best of times to be nine/ten. I was young enough to not let logic get in the way of my comic enjoyment. Batman TV show made it a comic book cornucopia of craziness. I loved all the stuff including CM. So much that he will be appearing in future InDELLible comics. He is renamed Captain Xam. His ability is more easily understood as blue tooth these days. Like Red Tornado mentored Young Justice, the good Captain Xam will be the instructor of many public domain teen heroes.

I read somewhere that it is likely that Marvel paid MF for the full rights to Captain Marvel. They hit at the right time that the character had lapsed so by publishing it they would have had the rights.

[paw broon]

Obscure heroes really are among my favourite genres in comics, and Captain Marvel certainly counts as obscure.  I've made a study over the decades of obscure heroes - although there's no rigid definition and members on CB+ will know a lot of these odd characters, whereas the casual comics fan probably wont have heard of them.  This Captain Marvel is good fun and has always looked to me like it should have been a Charlton invention from around the pre Ditko Blue Beetle time.
When I first saw and read this around '67, it piqued my interest as I was used to the DC heroes of the time and British heroes like Ace Hart etc. and that's part of the attraction. It was new, different, with a weird power and not mainstream. It's not that well drawn and the stories are daft. Actually, they're not well thought out.  Doesn't matter to me, nor to some others it appears.
But don't you think that there have been other characters like this one, or at least ideas that sort of remind you of him?  Triplicate Girl, later Duo Damsel, doesn't split bits of her body off but she splits of duplicates of herself.  That X-Men character, Legion?, does similar.  The Marvel villain who could blow himself up and re-assemble. And there's another one but buggered if I can remember who.
A cautious thumbs up from me.

[Morgus]

Oh man, I had forgotten about Triplicate Girl!!! Nice memories...speaking of such, I dug out the hardcover DC archive series and went through the CAPTAIN MARVEL, but it made me wonder something you old pros might know...DC also did the BOB HOPE and JERRY LEWIS comics in the 60's, right? With both stars now dead, do the rights  stay with DC, go back to the heirs, or what? And for how long? I remember talking to an animator for Pixar once (Sheridan college here in Ontario is a hot bed for teaching them) and he said; "Copyright is anything Disney says it is." He laughed, but only sort of. "If The Kingdom of the Mouse played by the rules, LADY AND THE TRAMP would have been public domain by now."

[lyons]

Morgus, both the Jerry Lewis organization and the Bob Hope estate own the copyrights to their images, but DC owns the actual stories.  Copyright problems have been the reason both series have never been reprinted. 

[POWPUCK]

Check out AMERICAN REBEL...a documentary that is usually on youtube. You won't believe it.)

Oh wow, you weren't kidding. Shame how his life ended, though perhaps inevitably.

But don't you think that there have been other characters like this one, or at least ideas that sort of remind you of him? 

Off the top of my head, there is Plok and Rayman, both video game protagonists. I think TVTropes has a page on detachable limbs, but they seem to have a malware problem at the moment.

[The Australian Panther]

The M.F. Books leave me scratching my head. Immersing myself in the material on this site and becoming more familiar with the work of creators I knew better from the silver age has brought me to conclude that there was a cultural change involved, which some creators were never able to make.  Some were inspired and did notable work, (Kirby, Kubert, Ditko, Kane, for example and others did not. (Paul Reinman for example.) The writing was generally of a better standard. DC took longer than Marvel to change. Max Finkelstein aka Carlos Burgos, was definitely one of those who didn

[lyons]

paw broon, another minor hero that comes to mind, (post Captain Marvel) would be DC's 'Arm-Fall-Off-Boy', who makes four appearances in three different DC titles and has the ability to detach his own limbs and use them as blunt weapons.  He is a Legion reject but a member of the Heroes of Lallor.  Saddled with his odd handle, he was doomed to play on the DC sidelines.   

[Captain Audio]

Just realized that the detachable limbs bit was used in the recent Iron Man films. In his case its the limbs of the armor that detach and perform tasks instructed by the pick up implants driven by Tony's nervous system.

There's actually a real world analogy, a nerve signal booster used to bridge the gap of a severed spinal column to drive either the muscles or an artificial limb.  These have been successfully tested in recent years.
A robot would be far better adapted to remote control of limbs by wireless connections.

[SuperScrounge]

Immersing myself in the material on this site and becoming more familiar with the work of creators I knew better from the silver age has brought me to conclude that there was a cultural change involved, which some creators were never able to make.  Some were inspired and did notable work, (Kirby, Kubert, Ditko, Kane, for example and others did not. (Paul Reinman for example.) The writing was generally of a better standard. DC took longer than Marvel to change.

A few years back I was reading one of the Showcase Presents Superman books, and I realized that the stories in that collection were printed at the same time as the stories I had in the Showcase Presents The Flash, and Showcase Presents Green Lantern, but was stunned at the difference between the art and writing. Then again Flash & Green Lantern were new characters, at the time, and trying to build an audience whereas Superman had long ago built an audience and was still successful, so making drastic changes to the writing and art wasn't as important.

Likewise the Marvel universe was new, at the time, and had to be different to get attention.

[lyons]

Stan Lee was the revolutionary behind the cultural change within the comic industry.  He did to comics what the Beatles did to music.  He took super-powered characters and made them react the way normal men and women might react if they had super powers.  Consider the Fantastic Four - constantly fighting among themselves...the Torch wants to quit because he's not making enough money.  The Thing wants to get out because he's not getting enough glory and he thinks Reed Richards is hogging all the headlines.  Occasionally a crook gets away or beats them up.  They're evicted from their skyscraper because they can't pay the rent because Reed Richards has invested all their reward money in stocks and the market takes a nosedive.  All had fallible features.  Spiderman?  Sure, he's got the proportionate powers of a spider, but he could also get halitosis, dandruff and acne, have money problems and wasn't a hit with the girls.  Iron Man, with his weak heart, and the fact that he's a munitions maker and a capitalist have people hating him and thinking he's a fascist.  And Captain America felt he was an anachronism because he was a patriotic figure at a time when patriotism really wasn't in vogue.  Lee created heroes who didn't always win and weren't always 100% right.  And Lee's informal, breezy Bullpen Bulletin Page made the reader feel they weren't just a fan or reader, but an intimate club member; and more importantly, a friend.       

[K1ngcat]

Coming in on this a bit late, I can't say I'm a great fan of this Captain Marvel, but I wasn't that keen on the Marvel comics version either and I'd rather have the big red cheese any day. What I'd like to know is, what happened to number 4 of this comic where The Bat turns into The Ray (another great hero's name taken in vain) and features a size-reducing villain called Tiny Man who tries to reform? It was posted on CB+ under the title Henry Brewster no.4 for about a day then removed never to return. It's not that I miss it you understand, I thought it was dreadful beyond belief, I just wondered what happened to it!

[narfstar]

Some of the issues had the copyright on the first page as required.

[Superman]

Harvey Jigsaw (man of a 1000 parts) was somewhat similar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jigsaw_(Harvey_Comics)
http://www.dialbforblog.com/archives/161/

[Captain Audio]

Not to be entirely off topic but the discussions of off the wall super heroes reminds me of a spoof comic in the National Lampoon.
A wealthy recluse wanted to be remembered by all as a noble adventurer. On the occasion of his death his faithful servants slipped the corpse out of the casket and dressed it as a super hero "Dead Man". They then staged interventions in crimes using the corpse in imaginative ways. They dropped him from a walkway onto fleeing bandits, and propped him up in the way of others as an obstacle. of course bullets had no effect on him other than a few more holes in the suit. A sort of "Weekend at Bernie's" situation.

[narfstar]

Strange but interesting CA.