Kickin It Old School

Here's the deal, over the past few years my girlfriend's (now fiance's) dad has been giving me some really great older comics. We're talking everything from New Adventures of Superboy, pre-Crisis Teen Titans, very early Avengers books and so on. Each week I'll pick a book based on it's weirdness or coolness and give a little write up with at least a cover scan.

This week's selection is Brave and the Bold #50 from November 1963. As with most books from this time, credit is not given to a writer or artist, but some digging found that Bob Haney wrote this gem, while George Roussos drew the interiors and covers. I also found that this is actually the first issue of Brave and the Bold, though I'm not sure why it started with #50. I can guess it was another series that they changed the name of and kept the numbering though.

As you can tell by the cover, the issue boasts the team-up of two emerald characters: Green Arrow, along with Speedy, and The Martian Manhunter. The story goes like this, there are super-powered criminals running around in Star City, GA and Speedy realize they're aliens and call in old J'Onn for an assit. It turns out that they are, in fact, Martians and their leader, who flies around in a giant, red golfball-looking ship, is trying to construct some sort of Martian weapon using parts they hid on Earth years ago. After Green Arrow is sucked up into the ship and mind-controlled by the Martians to attack J'Onn, he switches identities with J'Onn to thwart the mind control and take the Martians down.

You learn a lot about comics when you read these stories. Like the fact that Green Arrow was basically a Batman rip-off with arrows. He's got the teen sidekick, an arrowcar and plane, as well as an arrow cave, and the knolwedge to come up with any kind of arrow for any kindof situation (think Batarangs). What's interesting is that many of these elements have been put in continuity by Brad Meltzer and others. As far as Martian Manhunter goes, he's just a green skinned Superman clone who looks like Kujo. He lacks the telepathy, phasing, and shape-changing abilities we've come to expect. What sets him apart from Superman in this story is that he is not the last of his kind, there are a ton of Martians on Mars and he can go there whenever he wants. It's not really clear why he stays on Earth. All in all the story wasn't too bad, as far as Silver Age stories go (yes I'm biased because I'm younger). I'd like to see it retconned in some way, though it would be difficult because there are no more Martians. There's always the white ones though.