Comic Books From January 1976

Welcome to my bi-monthly look back at comic books I bought 50 years ago.

Today our 4 color Tardis takes us back to January 1976.

What did the new year offer us?

Inflation! DC's comic now cost me six nickels instead of 5. 

30 damn cents for a comic book? Why I should stop buying the damn things! 

(I didn't and today the base line lowest price point for a comic book is $3.99. That's a lot of nickels!) 

We'll start today's post with Justice League of America#129 with a story called "The Earth Dies Screaming" written by Martin Pasko with art by JLA stalwarts Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin.  

After Pasko finished up  the 12 Labors of Wonder Woman in.Wonder Woman #222 (Nov 1975), he popped over to JLA for Diana's first official return to the Justice League.  

The villain is Nekron, lord of the unliving and he's threatening the Earth with a solar flare 'cause he loves himself some roasted human! Yummy! (Tastes like chicken!) 

Nekron also has a whammy on the heroes that make them fear death and not want to take the risks associated with doing super hero stuff.  

What editor Julius Schwartz giveth, he also taketh. We get Wonder Woman back but the Red Tornado is destroyed. 

Again!

Don't worry, he'll get better!  

Here's a post by Tom Brevoort about JLA#129.  

A word about the cover by Ernie Chan.

After relying on such great artists as Neal Adams and Nick Cardy as go-to cover artists, DC is turning to Ernie Chan for most of their cover art.

Which begs the question: WHY? My God! WHY?!?!

Ernie was not a bad artist per se but his forte was NOT super hero art. He would later move on to Marvel to act as John Buscema's inker on Conan the Barbarian where Ernie's art was a much better fit. 

But before that happens, we're gonna be stuck with Ernie on covers for awhile.  

Speaking of Ernie, we get 'im on the cover and interior art for Batman#274. 

After the artistic heights of Neal Adams that kicked off the 1970's Batman, Ernie Chan was the principal artist for our intrepid Caped Crusader.  He would not be my first choice for Batman but that's who we had in 1976.   

"Gotham City Treasure Hunt" brings us to part 3 of writer David V. Reed's Underworld Olympics. Batman has figured out, "What the hell? Are international criminals using Gotham City as their arena for some kind of  contest? That can't possibly happening because that's stupid! Well, dammit! I got to deal with THAT now!"  

Meanwhile, Superman#298 brings us to part 3 of an ongoing story line from writers Cary Bates & Elliot S! Maggin and artists Curt Swan & Bob Oskner.  

Superman is dealing with an identity crisis wherein he loses his powers when he's Clark Kent. Thinking the problem is psychological, he spent issue #297 as just Clark and now in #298, he's Superman 24/7.   

Issue #299 will resolve the storyline and the mystery of Clark's sinister neighbor Mr. Xavier who was first introduced like 4 years earlier. 

We get a Silver Age like cover from Bob Oskner.   

Superboy#216 answers the question "Why are there no black people in the Legion of Super Heroes in the 30th century?" with the 12 page lead story,  "The Hero Who Hated the Legion" by Cary Bates and Mike Grell.  

The answer is offensively trite and profoundly stupid.

Here's what artist Mike Grell had to say about this issue: "Their explanation for why there were no black people was that all the black people had gone to live on an island. It's possibly the most racist concept I've ever heard in my life...I mean, it's a segregationist's dream, right? So they named him Tyroc, and gave him the world's stupidest super-power."

It's Stephen Miller's wet dream come true.

Tyroc had a sonic scream that... made stuff happen? Think like Green Lantern's power ring but using sound instead of light.

Or something. His powers made no sense. 

On Tyroc's design, Mike Grell said "I gave him a silly costume. It was somewhere between Elvis' Las Vegas costume and something you would imagine a pimp on the street corner wearing."

Here's how the story ends with a lesson that the Legion ain't racist! Look, we've got blue people and green people and...

So that's how racism was solved in 1976.

The back up is a 6 page adventure with Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel by Bates & Grell.  These two Legionaires got married back in issue #200.  

Bouncing Boy can inflate his body and Duo Damsel can split into two women. Yeah, I know! We really need a story about their sex life! 

World's Finest Comics#237 pits Superman and Batman against an "Intruder from a Dead World" by Bob Haney, Lee Elias and John Calnan with a cover by Ernie Chan & John Calnan.

The "intruder" in question is a creature from the planet Krypton. Also presenting a problem: a horde of space locusts.

Just another goddam day in Bob Haney's corner of the DC universe. 

Lee Elias was born in 1920 and rose to prominence as the artist on The Black Cat published by Harvey Comics in the 1940's.

Lee's previous work on World's Finest Comics was on the Green Arrow back ups from the 1950's.   

Speaking of Green Arrow back ups....

Action Comics #458 brings us to the end of the Green Arrow/Black Canary back up series by Elliott S! Maggin & Mike Grell.  Subsequent issues of Action would have Superman themed back ups like "The Private Life Of Clark Kent".  

The lead Superman story is by Elliot S! Maggin, Curt Swan and Tex Blaisdell and introduces us to the characer of Blackrock.

That's our bad guy zapping Superman on that Bob Oskner cover.  Blackrock is a creation of the United Broadcasting television network to give it a competive edge over Galaxy Broadcasting which gets all the good Superman stories.  

Our look back at the comics I bought in January 1976 concludes with Detective Comics #458 and holy shit! What is with that logo!  

Why is there a Dollar Tree pinata of Batman's head on that Ernie Chan cover? 

"The Real Batman Dies Next" is written by Elliot S! Maggin,  pencils from Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez with Ernie Chan on inks.  

At a charity fundraiser,  Batman dies in Bruce Wayne's arms. 

And after two issues of trying to make his own solo title fly, Man-Bat flaps into the back up slot of Detective Comics for part 1 of

a 2 parter by Martin Pasko, Pablo Marcos & Tex Blaisdell.

And that was that for Man-Bat's solo career until Bob Rozakis and Marshall Rogers made a go of it in Batman Family#11 in 1977.

It seems January 1976 was a slim month for Li'l Dave-El. That extra nickel on the cover price must've hurt more than I thought.

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Thanks to Mike's Amazing World of Comics, The Tom Brevoort Experience, Comic Book Resources and the Grand Comics Database for helping me pull together this post.