“I’m afraid, Ray, that you’re going to need a hip replacement.” The doctor pointed to the scan on the screen in the well-appointed office whose shiny white walls made it look like it belonged in a Star Trek episode, except for the natural light that poured in from the skylight. He sat in a high-backed Herman Miller chair. He gestured with a laser pointer mounted in the left index finger of his metal hand. “You have worn down the joint here, here, and here. Looks like osteoarthritis. Ordinarily we’d see this in someone who was carrying too much weight in their belly for too long, but well, you’ve been carrying another kind, haven’t you?”
Raymond Light looked at the screen and shook his head. “What kind of recovery time are we looking at, Doc?”
“With Argonian technology and ultraviolet healing rays, still at least six weeks.”
“Blast! I can’t afford to be out of action that long. Aren’t there any shortcuts we can take?”
“Oh, sure, there’s Zurn genetic therapy and cloning, but with the wild card effect, there’s a ten percent chance you could sprout a lizard tail.”
Ray stood up, painfully, and walked across to the doctor, trying to conceal his limp just out of habit. “All right, Doc, schedule it for as soon as possible. I need to get this done with as quickly as I can.”
“In the meantime,” the doctor warned, “try to take it easy, eh?”
“You know me, Doc.”
“Yes, that’s why I said it. Oh, and Ray? Happy birthday.”
Ray shook hands with Dr. Improbable and nodded toward the skylight above. The doctor pressed a stud on his Improbability Gauntlet, and the skylight slid open with a near-silent whir.
“I’ll see you soon.” Ray adjusted his leather jacket, fastening it over his white jumpsuit, lowered the aquamarine translucent goggles over his eyes, and launched himself into the sky in a blaze of swirling blue, green, and violet light, which all but vanished against the bright blue sky.
“If not sooner,” the doctor said to himself.
Raymond Light, better known as Borealis, hovered for a moment above the Chicago office, took in the beauty of the skyline, then started climbing while he plotted a course home, following the Lake Michigan shoreline. He transferred the navigation into his heads-up display and did a weather check. It was a nice, clear day all the way home to Traverse City Michigan. It was a bit chilly at seven thousand feet, an altitude that avoided most migrating birds, so he redirected some of his internal energies into life support, crafted a minor multicolored bullet-shaped force field to project in front of him, and put the rest of his considerable power into flight. He accelerated slowly as he hugged the shoreline, passing over Hammond Indiana, then Gary, then Michigan City, but once he crossed the Michigan border and passed Benton Harbor, he poured it on. His force field and ear caps protected him from the sonic boom as he accelerated north, past Mach 1. At this speed, he’d be home in about half an hour. There was no rush.
I shouldn’t need a hip replacement. I’m still young. I’m only—59? That can’t be right, Borealis thought, as he made a minor course adjustment over Holland. That would mean that I’ve been doing this for—41 years? How is that possible?
Ray’s thoughts turned back to the day when he, as a high school senior, first became imbued with power from mysterious charged particles during a particularly strong solar storm.
December 28, 1982
Young Ray Light was on his way back home from the State Theater in Traverse City on a date with his girlfriend, Karen. They had gone to see Tootsie. They were on Christmas break from school, and Ray was thinking about finding a place for them to park. The night sky was filled with the shimmering curtains of the Northern Lights. They held hands as they watched the rare spectacle. They’d been dating off and on for two years and were finally in a place where both felt comfortable. When an oncoming car drifted into their lane, Ray turned the wheel as slowly as he could to avoid it while maintaining control of the car.
The car just missed them, and Ray tried to navigate his way back to his lane, when he hit a patch of ice. The 1974 Chevy Nova with its 350cc engine, started sliding wildly. He overcorrected and caused it to fishtail once, twice, three times. On the third time, the car skidded sideways down into a ditch, sending a wall of snow flying over the windows, then coming to a sudden halt. Ray checked on his girlfriend to make sure she was all right. Karen was shaken up but nodded that she was okay. Ray opened the driver’s side door to get out. His shoe immediately filled with snow, as they were in pretty deep, about 100 feet from the road. He cleared the driver’s side of snow with the shovel he kept in the trunk and found that one tire had been taken off the rim, and the other one was completely flat. He had Karen get behind the wheel, while he pushed the car, and couldn’t get it to budge. They tried rocking it back and forth, but it was to no avail. He had no choice but to change the tire that was off the rim.
He retrieved the jack from the trunk and found the most stable spot he could. He got the car just high enough off the ground to get the back wheel off. As he replaced it with the spare tire, he tried to torque the lug nuts back on with the lug wrench. His hands were freezing. Just as he was pulling the last one on, the jack began to sink into the ground and the tire came down on his foot. He could feel his foot sinking into the hard-packed snow, but then it stopped, pinned against something hard: the frozen ground. The weight of the car continued to bear down on him. Only the air in the tire was preventing his foot from breaking. He realized that he was only moments from having his foot crushed, and in a colossal effort to free himself, he grabbed the car under the wheel well and lifted for all he was worth. It was no good.
Just then, Ray was bathed in shower of green, blue and violet light from the sky, and inexplicably, he hefted the entire rear end of the car into the air to the level of his chest. He could hear the metal of the frame straining. Karen screamed from the driver’s side door. Ray moved his foot to one side and slowly set the car down again. As he stepped back, he saw his reflection in the Nova’s rear window. He was glowing with the colors of the Aurora Borealis.
Karen was terrified. “Ray! Ray, what’s happened to you?” she screamed.
Ray looked confused. “I have no idea, Babe.” He examined his hands, which weren’t cold anymore. He could see light shimmering under the surface of his skin, like a veiled kaleidoscope. “But it doesn’t hurt!” Then an idea came to mind. “Put it in neutral. I want to see something.”
Karen shifted the car into neutral, as much out of fear as curiosity. Ray walked around to the back of the battered old Nova, curled his arms under the rear bumper and lifted. The back end of the car rose right out of the hole that the rear wheel had spun into the snow and dirt, and Ray moved it almost effortlessly, like a wheelbarrow. “Steer toward the side of the road!”
She guided the car toward where they had skidded off, and step by step, Ray’s entire body began to glow, and he nearly carried the car out of the field. And in just a few seconds, it came to rest on the shoulder. Ray tapped on the car’s roof twice. “I’ll be right back!”
Ray walked back to retrieve the tire he had replaced, and behind him, he heard the revving of the 350 engine and gravel crunching as Karen left him behind, running the Nova on a flat tire as fast as it would go. Ray ran back across the short distance to where the car had been and stood on the side of the road in disbelief. She’d left him there in sub-freezing temperatures without so much as a coat.
“AAAAHHhhh!” Ray roared in frustration, hurling the ruined tire like a giant discus. His arm glowed brightly again as he heard the rush of air passing over the surface of the speeding tire as it left his hand, far faster than any baseball he’d ever pitched. The tire sailed off into the darkness over a patch of 20-meter fir trees at the edge of the field. “Why? Why would you leave me here?” He couldn’t believe she had just abandoned him.
Extra-normal people had existed in the world since at least 1938, but Northern Michigan had not exactly been an epicenter for that population. In places like New York, Charm City, Crescent City, they had a presence. But Traverse City? Never. There would be an occasional incident and it would be front page news, but none of the heroes ever stuck around.
Ray started walking toward his hometown, which was about sixteen kilometers away. Though he didn’t have his coat, he wasn’t cold. The strange, colorful energy was still surging through him, coursing through his limbs and torso, but he didn’t feel any ill effects. Just the opposite, really. He felt strong, powerful. And most importantly right now, warm. He imagined that Karen was on her way to her house. If he made it there, he would take his car back. He’d have to figure out how to get another tire on it. The sidewall of the flat tire would be destroyed in just a few miles, the way she was driving.
As he walked, Ray thought, Well, clearly I have some kind of weird powers.I’m really strong and I can stay warm. Wonder what else I can do? I have nothing to lose by testing it out while I walk. It’s about a two-hour walk from here. Unless—what superpower does everyone fantasize about? Ray paused on the side of the road for a moment, held his arms out to his sides, and rose into the air. His entire body gave off a radiant glow as he rose higher and higher. He had felt this once before, as a child playing around with magnets. This was definitely like holding two magnets with the same pole next to one another. They repelled each other just as he was repelling against the magnetic field of the Earth itself.
At about seven meters, he decided he’d better experiment a bit first. He maneuvered over the piled snow on the side of the road in case the power failed. He leaned forward and began moving along the snowbank. The shimmering energy trailed behind him, cascading in undulating curtains of purple, green, blue, and pink. He felt no signs of weakening, so he tried changing directions, over the open field. It was child’s play! The only problem he was having was seeing through the colorful effect. He was flying along an unlit roadway, the Aurora providing most of the light in the night sky. The wind was doing a number on his vision as well, making his eyes water. How did the famous flying heroes deal with this? He had some snowmobile goggles at home. If he could make it back, he would try those out.
If I stick to the main road, he thought, I should be all right. There will be occasional lights I can use to navigate. And the reflective road signs should react to this glow. I wonder if I can make it even brighter.
Ray concentrated for a moment on making the aura brighter, brighter, and brighter still, and for just a moment, he glowed like a multicolored star. Then he dropped like a stone out of the sky, hitting the ground with a cloud of white powder. The snowbank broke his fall, but the impact still knocked the wind out of him. He’d felt like this before on the football field, so he knew not to panic, and to let the breath come back to him in its good time. Good thing I stayed over the snowbanks, he thought, as he remained aglow. He began to shiver in the snowbank. It was suddenly freezing. Ray concentrated on bringing the glow down, and as he did so, he began to rise into the air again, and he felt warm once more. So, I’m strong, I can levitate, produce light, and stay warm. That’s a good start! But it appears I can only do so much at once. Ray focused on two things, keeping warm and levitating, and took a couple of slow laps around the field. Success! He took off in the direction of Karen’s house. Crossing the Manistee River was just a little terrifying. Ray didn’t want to think about what would happen if he fell into the near-freezing waters, heat field or not. He approached the shore slowly and tried hovering over the water to see if it reacted differently to his electromagnetic push. It did not. He then surmised that he was pushing against the electromagnetic field of the planet itself, not just the ground. Ray wasn’t a physicist by any stretch of the imagination, but he understood basic science pretty well. He made his way over the river in safety, and accelerated. He could fly!
Twenty-five years ago this month, my then-long distance girlfriend took me out to dinner in New Orleans. We had only met face-to-face one other time, two months before when I traveled to visit her. We had by this time spent an entire year talking on the telephone, exchanging emails, sending packages with our favorite books, music, and video. Yes, the Internet was still very young. But during that winter recess, at that dinner, I truly fell in love with her.
We had gone Christmas shopping already, and had exchanged gifts. I only had a few days left before I had to go back home to Indiana. Magi wanted to take me to her favorite Chinese restaurant, and who was I to say no to that? As we stood by the host stand at Five Happiness, waiting to be seated, she reached into her jacket pocket and got a strange look on her face. I said, “What’s wrong?” She pulled from her pocket a small envelope. She had forgotten to give me one last gift. I told her she had already spent too much on me, but she put it in my hand anyway.
In it was a gift subscription to Comics Buyer’s Guide, a weekly trade newspaper that used to be published back in those days. Now, I had mentioned to her, in passing, maybe in March, that I had let my subscription run out and that I really missed it. No, I mean it. I mentioned it once. In passing. Months before. And from out of her pocket, she pulls one of the greatest gifts I have ever received.
She listened to me.
Magi listened to me and made note of what I had said, and months later, gave me something that I missed. That was when I knew it was love. If had had any doubts before that, they were instantly erased.
I have always loved both characters, Batman and Superman. When I was first able to walk and talk, the Batman TV show inspired me in myriad ways, starting in January 1966. Later in the same year, in the fall, the New Adventures of Superman cartoon was on CBS on Saturday mornings, and I loved that, too, especially the eight-minute Superboy sequences parked between two eight-minute Superman shorts. There have been times in my life where I have swung like a pendulum from one side to the other. As a small child, I couldn’t help but be swayed by Batmania. It was in full effect, like it was made for me. I had Batman slippers, Batman pajamas, Batman dinnerware. If Batman action figures (besides the Captain Action outift) had existed then, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere without one. As it was, I had a plastic cake decoration that served the same purpose.
1966 Batman cake topper by Wilton
But as I got older and Batmania started to fade from the national consciousness, I started to learn that Superman had an older and deeper public presence. He’d had a radio show from 1940-1949, a series of animated movie shorts from 1941-1943, and a television show from 1952-1958. When the 1966 cartoon show came on, I didn’t have the first clue that it used three of the voice actors from the radio show (as did the animated shorts in the 40s) because I didn’t know there had been one!
As far as I knew, the New Adventures of Superman were the first adventures of Superman. When I found out that Superman had had a radio program, I was eating breakfast in 1976, reading the back of a box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes:
By that time, I had been introduced to War of the Worlds and the Lone Ranger, but I had no inkling that there had been a radio show featuring Superman. I thought for about a second about asking for it, but I might as well have asked for the moon because I was still living with my stepfather, who had burned all of my comic books and forbade any such stuff in his house. Oh yes, I have them now, all four volumes. Of course I do. But I don’t really need them, because we live in a time of wonders. Back in the early 1990s, a company called Radio Spirits really got into cleaning up and preserving old radio broadcasts, including Superman. At first they released them on cassette, then compact disc, and among their popular releases was Superman. I was an early adopter, buying both cassettes for the car and my vintage-appearing radio/cassette player, and later, CDs, and then finally switching to USB drives, I can listen to Superman for pennies per episode. And I do. I listen to it every day on my way to and from work. I guess you could say that I’m swinging back toward the Superman side of my fandom right now. I’ve even gone to the point where I have a reproduction box of Kellogg’s Pep, which was the sponsor for the show, as well as one of the comic buttons that they advertised twice an episode.
Superman had his own sort of Batmania in the late 1970s with the December 1978 release of Superman The Movie. Double-album movie scores, trading cards, t-shirts everywhere, oversized comics celebrating the character’s past and present, movie tie-in novels, quiz books, there was no shortage of Superman.
One of my favorite products of that line of Supermania was (and is) the novel, Superman: Last Son of Krypton, by Elliot S. Maggin. Elliot was one of the prominent Superman writers of the period, and I thought he wrote a wonderful novel. Despite the fact that there were photos from Superman The Movie included in the book, the novel did not share its ice-planet vision of Krypton. It pulled strictly from the mythos of the comics, and their wonderful and sometimes absurd situations, even sometimes adding to them by suggesting that Jor-El sent a telepathic probe to seek out Earth’s greatest mind in order to have someone fitting receive baby Kal-El’s rocket as it arrived. Instead, the anonymous scientific genius, whose not-so-subtle nom-de-voyage was Calvin Eisner, arranged for the elderly Kents to be the first to find the rocket under the illusion that they were at a certain location to buy a used tractor at a good price. “Eisner” had wisely chosen not to raise the child himself, but instead chose the salt-of-the-earth Kents after meeting with Smallville’s Chief Parker and getting the lay of the land, if you will.
Maggin additionally added layers to Lex Luthor, who actually merits some sympathy due to his upbringing in this story, as well as its 1981 sequel, Miracle Monday. Both books really dig into what it was like for Clark Kent to grow up, perhaps implausibly, in the same hometown as the boy genius who would grow up to be his archenemy. A lot of time is spent in both books, especially the second, exploring what it would be like to grow up with superpowers, and even just to have superpowers. That kind of expanded storytelling appealed to me in a more adult way than comics ever could, and did what so few kinds of entertainment of the day did: It made me think. As a kid living in the country without the virtues of streaming entertainment or even cable television, I had pleny of time to think during the day, letting my mind wander into the clouds where Superman could dwell. The memory of the day I met Elliot and shook his hand, telling him what his stories meant to me, will remain with me forever.
Elliot Maggin and me. Of course I was wearing a BATMAN shirt when I met him!
The Superman movie that Elliot’s book supposedly tied into was quite different. It was a very interesting period piece, honestly. The Metropolis of 1978 was supposed to reflect the Manhattan of the time. Now, I visited Manhattan in 2004, and I thought Times Square was incredible. Shops everywhere, a three-story Toys R Us, so much fun! It was a far cry from the downtown of 1978. “Funky” would be the nice word to use. It’s been the setting of many movies that feature the filth and the grit of the area, like Midnight Cowboy, for example. And Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane seems to fit right in with her harsh and cynical no-nonsense attitude.
Right about that time, a book called Superman: Serial to Cereal was published, and went into some detail about the screen history of Superman, including the Fleischer cartoons, the movie serials starring Kirk Alyn, and the Adventures of Superman TV show, starring George Reeves. The Adventures of Superman came back to TV in my area thanks to syndication, and I rushed home to watch it every day after school. I even checked off the episodes that I saw in the checklist in the back of the book.
This was a connection that my dad had with me. This show had started when he was nine years old, and he had watched it faithfully. This, more than even comic books, is where his impression of Superman came from. I find it funny now that he thought Christopher Reeve was too scrawny to be Superman, compared to the obviously padded suit that George Reeves wore.
Yes, I still have the original book!
It was in this same book that I learned of the existence of the Fleischer Studios Superman cartoons, but it would be a few years before I ever saw one. I saw the Fleischer Studios Superman cartoons at my very first comic book convention in 1984. Someone was playing a VHS tape on a tiny portable TV. Since then, I’ve bought them on VHS, DVD, and now on Blu-Ray. As I said above, the connections to the radio show were strong, as they used the voice actors for the radio program when making the cartoons. The Fleischer design of Superman is generally the visual image I use when participating in “the theater of the mind” of the radio show. The Superman of the animated shorts and the radio show is sometimes quite different from that of the comics.
There have been various homages to those incredible pieces of animation history. Some of them are direct, and some of them are more subtle. Such is the modern world where everything is available at our fingertips. I was once one of the very few who appreciated the cartoons. Now, they’re ubiquitous. It’s a great time to be a fan!
Emerging from obscurity: The 1940s Superman cartoons’ influence today
“Kellog’s PEP! P-E-P. That super-delicious cereal presents…The Adventures of Superman! Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!”
Now, if you don’t remember Kellogg’s Pep, that’s okay. I don’t, either. It was discontinued some time in the 1970s. From what I understand they tasted a bit like Wheaties. Pep was one of the first vitamin-fortified cereals, but I know it because of its close association with the Superman radio show, which ran from 1940 until 1949. I listen to the old-time radio show every single day on my way to and from work, and in fact, whenever I’m driving the car anywhere. Some time ago, I bought a 5-CD set that has literally hundreds of episodes of the show on it, and I just let it play and play. For most of its run, The Adventures of Superman was comprised of 15-minute episodes that played every afternoon, the time of day depending on locale. As a serialized story, there was a lot of repetition to keep kids who may have missed an episode up to speed. But the stories move pretty quickly, for the most part. I have a couple of the CD sets released by Radio Spirits almost 20 years ago, as well as a big cassette set featuring Superman along with Batman & Robin, who often guest-starred with the Man of Steel.
As I’ve mentioned before, much of the Superman mythos first appeared on radio. It can’t be understated how much the radio program contributed to Superman’s popularity. But I think my favorite part of the show’s portrayal of Superman is what a complete character he is. He’s no musclebound lunkhead, as he’s sometimes stereotyped to be from the comics. He’s an investigative reporter with as sharp an intellect as Batman’s. Even moreso on this show, because there are times when he makes Batman look simple by comparison. Well, I mean, it’s Superman’s show. He’s the star, right? But the number of times he nearly gives himself away when talking about himself while he’s in his Clark Kent disguise (more on that in a minute) is high. Very high.
It’s a more modern contrivance, thinking of Superman as really being Clark Kent’s disguise. This started in the 80s when John Byrne rebooted Superman. Gone was his past as Superbaby, or even Superboy. Superman simply became the public persona of the adult super-powered farmboy who didn’t even know where he came from. But back in the 1940s, Superman was his true persona, and Clark Kent was the disguise. In fact, it was in the second episode of the radio show when Superman, soon after arriving on Earth as an adult, and after rescuing a professor and his son from a runaway trolley car in Indiana, asks for their help in coming up with a human name for him to use as his disguise: “How about Clark Kent? That’s ordinary enough.” It’s also their idea for him to become a newspaper reporter, at “a great metropolitan.” That way he can learn quickly about where he’s needed.
As the radio program progresses, Superman’s cast of supporting characters solidifies. We have Lois Lane right away, of course, and “grey-haired editor, Perry White.” But when cub reporter Jimmy Olsen comes along, it was a whole new ballgame. Jimmy Olsen was just as important a character, if not moreso than Lois Lane. Jimmy didn’t just get into trouble. Jimmy provided the everyman’s perspective for Superman. He was our window into Superman’s world. He traveled the world with Clark Kent, despite being 14 years old and allegedly living with his mother. At one point I was considering compiling a list of skills that Jimmy picked up on their adventures, but it would be a towering list, only exceeding his injuries by a small margin. That kid would have been the poster child for CTE by the time he was an adult, and he’d have more scar tissue than an Alex Ross image of Batman. He was shot, stabbed, shocked, poisoned, and nearly drowned more times than I can count. He probably developed immunity to a dozen diseases, too. He was like a modern-day Rasputin.
Just like the show, I have to interrupt this blog post to talk about Kellogg’s Pep. When the show began without a sponsor in February 1940, they made dummy commercials to demonstrate what the show could be. “Brought to you by Blankareens!” But it wasn’t long before Kellogg’s Pep became the show’s sponsor for years. Kellogg’s provided premiums with their cereal, including cardboard warplanes, and mail-away walkie talkies that “look like the real thing and really work.” They came with 50 feet of cord so you could talk “clear across the playground.” There was plenty of air given to buying war bonds during World War II was well. But perhaps the best Pep prizes were the comic buttons.
Our pal Dan McCullough was constantly talking to us about our collection of 18 comic buttons that come in Kellogg’s Pep. He’d always start his pitch with, “Hey, gang!” and then he’d launch into how these comic buttons would look swell pinned to our “jacket, or dress, or cap,” and “what a thrill it was to swap duplicates with our pals. Why, they look so real, you expect them to come to life! And you don’t send any money in, not even a boxtop. And you can’t buy them anywhere. Just ask your mom to get you a package of P-E-P, Kellogg’s Pep!” Seriously, that was off the top of my head because I have heard the pitch so often!
Well, Dan had never heard of EBay, because guess what I got in the mail today. Why, Superman himself!
I have to be honest, after all these years of listening to Dan tell the gang how true-to-life these comic buttons were, I was a little disappointed that they were smaller than a nickel.
But hey, I finally have one of those swell prizes from Kellogg’s of Battle Creek!
I guess I kind of REALLY fell down the rabbit hole I described a month ago. I do that sometimes. I get hyperfocused on the new thing in front of me, and I go all the way in, leaving everything else behind. I started repairing, repainting and reselling vintage Mego action figures, and wow! It is so incredibly satisfying. I found myself in over my head before I knew it. Since I last posted about them on August 30th, I went from this:
To this:
And that’s not counting the ones I’ve sold. That Planet of the Apes Ursus I posted about on August 30th? I sold it for $129.99. The risk that I was worried about paid off big time! I used the profit from that sale to do something better with my photography. I really didn’t care for the sunburst background I used. So, I went to Amazon and found a miniature 16″ x 16″ photo studio. Self-lit with a ring of LED lights and a number of plastic backdrops, it did the trick! The next figure I put up was a vintage Scotty figure from the 1974 Star Trek line.
Scotty in the studio
I used a diorama created by my friend Mike Sutter of the Guardian of Forever from the classic episode City on the Edge of Forever to frame my photo. Check out the result!
It really classes up the toy, doesn’t it? I put this Scotty figure together with parts. I got a head and uniform in one lot, the weapons in another, and the type-2 body in a third. I sold it after three weeks for $79.99. But before that, I was able to sell the Lt. Leslie custom figure I had made for $59.99! I couldn’t believe it! I used a printed background on a normal piece of computer paper and a riser that Mike made.
Then a type-1 Spock for $59.99. I was selling the figures just about as fast as I could pull in replacement figures and parts.
I even sold a French Spider-Man figure for which I fixed a broken leg! I bought it for $42.75, and ten days later, I sold it for $79.99. It may have taken me 10 minutes to fix his leg.
Encouraged, I started buying figures and parts like crazy. Then, as I realized I had too many figures on my shelf (as you can see above), I decided to put together a nice set out of reconditioned figures that I had repaired, repainted, and outfitted with reproduction weapons. And last night, after just a few hours, I sold it, my biggest sale yet!
I sold this batch for $180! That’s more than my pristine set cost me a few years ago with vintage weapons and their foil stickers still intact.
The only one that came to me whole was Uhura. I just added a reproduction tricorder to make her complete.
I have to take a step back now, and just be impressed with myself. I am selling my figures for far more than they’re worth. It’s just a pleasant surprise every time one sells, because every single time, I think I’ve overpriced them. But wow, it sure is rewarding.
Learning to read in the 1960s with Batman comics and the Batman TV show, it’s small wonder that I identified with Robin, the Boy Wonder. Always at Batman’s side, Robin gave kids, boys especially, someone to project themselves onto. Wouldn’t it be cool to be Batman’s sidekick? To ride along in the Batmobile? Robin was portrayed as about 16 on the Batman TV show, but in the comics by 1969, he was going off to college, so mark him down as 18 years old. He got aged up just a bit so that Batman would have darker solo adventures. He was still around 18-19 years old in comics in 1980, when the New Teen Titans got started. Time passed oddly in the DC universe. Yet, still, he led a whole superhero team at a pretty young age and had a lot more responisbility than most kids his age. When Marv Wolfman and George Pérez matured him for their book, it was time for a new Robin to be at Batman’s side. Dick Grayson abandoned his Robin identity in New Teen Titans #39, which I bought on my very first visit to a comic book store, mentioned here.
This was an exciting time to be reading The New Teen Titans. Longtime readers had been introduced to their newest member, Terra, and many fans thought she was just great. But when it was revealed that she was actually a spy working for Deathstroke, the Terminator, well, the wheels were about to come off the wagon. Suddenly, Dick Grayson discovered that his entire team had been ambused and were missing, and he was fresh out of yellow capes. By summer, the conclusion of “The Judas Contract” storyline was about to conclude, and Dick Grayson needed a new costumed identity.
So, after 44 years of being Robin, Dick Grayson became Nightwing. Now, before we get too far, here, I just want to point out that many barbs have been thrown toward this costume as somehow being inspired by disco because it has a raised collar. Uh, no, you mooks out there. It was inspired by the circus. You know, like Deadman? The other superhero in a circus costume?
Dick Grayson, having been a circus performer, obviously went back to his history to pull out that costume design. It was 1984, for crying out loud. Disco was gone.
Anyway, the comic where this transformation took place, Tales of the Teen Titans #44, was published in July 1984. I had just finished my freshman year of college, the second semester of which being much more successful and enjoyable for me. I had a steady girlfriend whom I had started dating in February, and I was down in Kalamazoo visiting her, when this comic book came out. But I also had a rare opportunity. My brother and sister were also in southwestern Michigan, with my mother and stepfather. They were staying couple of towns over at my stepfather’s parents’ house. I volunteered to come over and get them, and take them to the movies. My mother agreed. So, my girlfriend and I drove over to pick them up. Let’s see, I was 19 at the time (the same age as Nightwing), so my brother would have been 13 and my sister, 12. I took them to see what every kid that age should have seen that weekend: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Despite the more, uh, terrifying aspects of the Raiders prequel, they had fun and I had the unique feeling of being a true older brother, taking my younger siblings to the movies in the summertime, something I hadn’t really gotten to do, living apart from them as I did.
I enjoyed the Nightwing character, especially the part where Grayson was honoring Superman’s Kryptonian heritage as well. For many, many years of World’s Finest, the Batman-Superman teamup comic, Robin worked closely with both men, and I thought it was a nice touch to make a callback to that time. Nightwing was originally a costumed identity that Superman took on in the bottled city of Kandor, naming himself after a Kryptonian bird. Jimmy Olsen, of course, was his Robin, taking on the name Flamebird.
From Superman #158
Unbelievably, Dick Grayson has been Nightwing now for 39 years, almost as long as he was Robin. There have been some, let’s say, unfortunate choices along the way. The mullet, the ponytail, both a few years after they had been in style, for example. Having him be shot in the head and becoming an amnesiac, leaving a scar that looks like his symbol? That was rough. But more recently, the character has been given a new life, using his inhertiance to make life in his city better than perhaps Batman ever could. It’s good stuff.
