#1969-1971

[mia-seth-adventures]

🎶 Humble Pie (1969-1971): Steve Marriott, Peter Frampton, Greg Ridley and Jerry Shirley. At Wikipedia

▲ Red Light Mamma, Red Hot! (Steve Marriott on lead vocal)

"There's fire in your loins but you're cold inside"...

[thechronologicalsuperman]

The Chronological Superman 1969-1971:

Mike Sekowsky had been writing and drawing a handful of titles at DC -- including, most recently, Wonder Woman. He had a hip but sleek sensibility, and his work skewed “young.” Before taking the reins on Supergirl, for instance, he’d created Jason’s Quest in DC’s Showcase title -- a motorcycle drama which hinted at Skeowsky’s late-night cinema tastes.

Supernatural horror, murder, suspicion, and costume changes, costume changes, costume changes! Starting with Adventure Comics vol. 1 No.381, Kara Zor-El’s whole world gets groovy. Sekowsky makes more mature themes and a jazzier wardrobe de rigueur for the Girl of Steel. What liberties he has to slip slightly-bowdlerized drugs-and-hedonism into her stories is one of the privileges of editing your own work.

One of the most memorable changes was simply to get her out of her dowdy little Super-dress and into something with style. Adventure Comics vol.1 No.397 teases the audience with some of Supergiirl’s potential new looks -- and they are hip as hell. Sekowsky proceeds to introduce a sizable assemblage of costumes (as far as your average superhero goes, anyway) of contemporary fashions, including hip hugging ornament belts, thigh-high boots, and even modern hairstyles. In fact, outfitting Linda Lee Danvers with her new uniforms is no one other than Wonder Woman, who is running a fashionable clothing boutique at this time.

The costume changes in part mask an unreliable set of super-powers. This was Sekowsky’s way of adding additional threat to the book without removing the potential for super-powered antics (In fact, it closely mirrors exactly what was happening over in Superman’s eponymous title around the same time). 

[torrid-wind]

Benares, India, 1969-1971 - photo © by William Gedney

(***Click image or title link to view in high resolution***)

[thechronologicalsuperman]

The Chronological Superman 1969-1971:

The level of invention which Jack Kirby brought to the struggling Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen cannot be overstated. Kirby is alleged to have specifically asked to be placed on DC’s worst-selling comic, to allow himself the liberty of throwing everything he wanted to throw at the wall.

Above, a small selection of Kirby’s exceptional output.

[thechronologicalsuperman]

The Chronological Superman 1969-1971:

Left pretty much to his own devices in the pages of Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen, Jack Kirby quietly introduces the most important antagonist in the entirety of DC’s whole publishing history. Not Luthor, nor Joker, nor Gorilla Grodd or even the whole Legion of Doom presented quite the existential threat that Darkseid did to the entirety of the universe.

Darkseid - A strongman tyrant, a god of nihilism who seeks the subjugation of the universe. He wasn’t the first universe-threatening villain to trod the boards at DC, but he was instantly the most important. Arriving with an entire universe of new characters, places, technologies and conflicts, Darkseid was immediately placed in his own context. Among the four books Kirby was producing for his Fourth World line, every one of them acknowledged Darkseid as the ultimate evil in the universe. It was unanimous! 

Along with Darkseid came a court of operatic, cartoon supervillains, as well as hench-creatures on every corner of the globe. Besides Simyan & Mokkari, the Four-Armed Terror, and other products of the monster-making Evil Factory, the hell-world of Apokalips was discreetly served on Earth by capitalist media mogul Morgan Edge -- Clark Kent’s new boss at WGBS (or at least an evil clone).

(It always kind of cracks me up a little to remember that the lasting legacy of Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen on canon is the Signal-Watch, Elastic Lad, Turtle Boy and the God Of All Evil In The Multiverse)

[thechronologicalsuperman]

The Chronological Superman 1969-1971:

But please -- call her Nasty.

Supergirl has practically had more interactions with the Luthors than Superman has*. 

*I’m being facetious, please don’t @ me.

Besides frequently fighting -- and sometimes fighting alongside -- Lex Luthor, she’s also tied up with Luthor’s sister Lena Thorul and Lena’s occasionally super-powered nephew Val Colby. Now along comes Nasty, the daughter of Luthor’s sister -- no matter how the timeline works out. Sekowsky was famous for ignoring the continuity of the other Super-titles when writing his Supergirl stories.

In his world, Nasthalthia worked -- in part because his version of Lex Luthor was middle-aged, wealthy, stocky, dressed in a dark suit, and wielding power through his connections in the world of finance and influence. Yes, in 1971, Mike Sekowsky invented the Post-Crisis Lex Luthor. He deserves some credit for this.

Nasty draws her own focus, though. A suitably scheming enemy for Supergirl, her modus operandi largely involved using her wealth and privilege to cause chaos and disaster --of which she then takes opportunity. She’s portrayed as spiteful, vain, prickly -- a Veronica to Supergirl’s Betty. Nasthalthia is, in fact, very much like the antagonists in so many girls’ comics -- the vicious frenemy. 

[thechronologicalsuperman]

The Chronological Superman 1969-1971:

With big changes coming, it seemed wise to get some of the canon in order. Superboy takes on the burden of organizing the family heirlooms in a series of one- and two-page “The Superboy Legend” features. 

[thechronologicalsuperman]

The Chronological Superman 1969-1971:

The Daily Planet’s daring girl reporter finds herself the object of distrust and suspicion when she comes to Little Africa, Metropolis’ almost-exclusively black community. The snub seems to have struck a nerve, because Lois immediately hatches a plan. Deciding to get to the bottom of all of this racism business once-and-for-all, she seeks Superman’s help in using an alien sarcophagus to become, for twenty-four hours only -- black.

The notorious I Am Curious (Black) from Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane vol.1 No.106. What else is there to say?

The book’s title was inspired by a pair of award-winning Swedish films, both of which contained political content involving the civil rights movement. They were also infamously erotic -- did Lois know what she was getting into?

Lois uses Kryptonian technology to briefly become black, experiencing everything from petty bigotries to the indignities of systemic poverty. It’s slightly bowdlerized and “crooks” do a lot of heavy lifting, standing in for authorities and institutions which victimize black communities.

The book is frequently made fun of, largely on the basis of the cover and the title. 

White journalists had done something much like this in the real world (Ray Springle in 1948 and Black Like Me author John Howard Griffin in 1961).