When I decided to bring back the Fortress as a daily Superman blog one of the ideas I had as far as content goes is scanning bits of business from my collection and sharing them with y’all. On Wednesday of this week I posted a handful of covers from a Superman Family lot I had won on eBay, which I was sixteen different types of excited over.
As I was scanning the covers to those comics I noticed that about ten or so of them had Daily Planet pages on the back of them. For those not in the know there was a point in the late seventies and early eighties where DC had what they called the Daily Planet page, which was essentially a Bullpen Bulletin for DC and was usually quite cool. The most interesting aspect of the Daily Planet pages on the back of these issues of Superman Family is that they are all Superman centric, which leads me to believe that they had different Daily Planet pages for different books based on the characters appearing in that book. So every once in a while I post another scan of these pages complete with some commentary.
Click on the image to make it easier to see. Commentary below the cut.
I must admit that I don’t remember the issue of DC Comics Presents that is pimped here. I’ve read it but I guess it didn’t make much of an impression on me because I have no memory of it so I can’t speak to that story as much as I would like to. I really can’t talk about the Super Friends story either because I haven’t read any of that series, though I do have two of the trades, which have sat on my shelf for years. The New Adventures of Superboy issue mentioned, though, was quite good. I am a fan of that series though some of the issues could get a little wonky. The person Clark meets on the west coast was a real treat. I won’t reveal who it is here because I think it is worth tracking down.
The one piece that really grabbed my attention was the one about Vandal Savage in Action Comics. Marv Wolfman’s first run with Superman on Action Comics was amazing and I especially liked his use of Vandal Savage as a villain for Superman. From what I understand Marv Wolfman and Cary Bates were both asked to turn in revamps for Brainiac and Lex Luthor and Wolfman’s idea for Lex Luthor was to remold him as an evil business man type character. That idea was turned down (for the moment) in favor of Cary Bate’s pitch but Marv didn’t let go of the idea and used Vandal Savage instead. These stories are fantastic and I highly recommend them.
Well that’s it for this week, folks. Have a nice weekend and come back on Monday for more Superman goodness.
More to follow…
The “Super Friends” trades are fun enough, but mostly for the younger set. It’s much like the current (and apparently now canceled?) “DC Super Friends,” only minus the current title’s humor and occasional in-jokes and hat tips to DC lore. I will give “Super Friends” props for lots of well-intentioned efforts in the direction of racial sensitivity and inclusivity. You should review one of them for your “Bailey’s Bookshelf” sometime!
You have a good weekend, too — really enjoying the “rebooted” Fortress blog!
I have the feeling you’re gonna bring back a lot of memories for me, if you keep posting stuff like this.
Not the specific one you posted, but I remember the Superman Family title, and a lot of the New Adventures of Superboy from time spent at my grandparents’ going through Grandpa’s collection…I’m sure I saw the Daily Planet pages and didn’t pay much attention to ’em…or if I did, at the time I certainly lacked context.