Mention the name Flash Gordon to me and you conjure images of the lithe, clean-lined figures…
Dan Hagen
Dan Hagen is a retired newspaper journalist and editor, a former journalism professor, and a mighty comics presence in print and on the web. You can find Dan's work at... danhagengreatcaesar.blogspot.com, justimaginedanhagen.blogspot.com and captaincommentdanhagen.blogspot.com
JUST IMAGINE! May 1958: Saving Time in a Bubble
In the 1950s and 1960s, every reader of DC Comics knew exactly what a time machine…
JUST IMAGINE! March 1956: A Strange Visitor from Earth
Writer Jerry Siegel had already co-created a Superman who came from outer space, and a super-ghost…
JUST IMAGINE! May 1940: The Persistent Problem of Fate
In his 1977 essay It’s Magic, Dick O’Donnell noted that, like the Spectre, “Dr. Fate also…
JUST IMAGINE! February 1969: The Magician Masked
Some legendary Marvel superheroes took their own sweet time to become legends. Take Dr. Strange, for…
JUST IMAGINE! December 1963: The Senior Citizen Soars Again
The first old enemy to demand a return bout with Spider-Man was a really old foe…
JUST IMAGINE! March 1986: When Men of Tomorrow Meet…
Given that Captain Comet was a 1950s makeover of the 1930s Superman concept, emphasizing the mental…
JUST IMAGINE! February 1954: The Two Fates of Two-Face
Appropriately enough for a character who is obsessed with duality, Batman’s rogues’ gallery has included two…
JUST IMAGINE! April 1963: Nothing Could Stop the Radio Raiders
Ed Farr had two problems, and the global one solved his personal one. As a circus…
JUST IMAGINE! August 1948: Fiddling while Keystone City Burns
By the end of the 1940s, the Flash feature approached the form it would take in…
JUST IMAGINE! October 1962: That’s the Way the Boy Bounces
A superhero with an inferiority complex? It’s a counterintuitive idea that has interesting, dramatic possibilities. And…
JUST IMAGINE! June 1969: Playing with Perfection
I liked Adam Warlock better before he had a name. Introduced by Jack Kirby and Stan…
December 1941: Black Hood Hits the Jackpot
The headlines shouted about the Imperial Japanese Navy’s devastating surprise attack on the U.S. fleet at…
JUST IMAGINE! May 1959: How to Hurt a Man of Steel
Superman’s first great romance seemed a little fishy. Actually, that bad pun doesn’t do justice to…
JUST IMAGINE! February 1961: The Straw Man’s Argument
Marvel’s monsters frequently moved with moral force. The giant monsters that lumbered through Marvel’s titles in…
JUST IMAGINE! November 1959: Cosmic Man and Underestimated Girl
Either main story in Action Comics 258 (Nov. 1959) might have been the cover feature. In…
JUST IMAGINE! June 1964: The Legion in Triplicate
Readers got a triple dose of the Legion of Superheroes in comics on newsstands in April…
JUST IMAGINE! September 1955: The Mouse That Poured on the Speed
What Mighty Mouse was to Superman, Speedy Gonzales was to the Flash. “Possessing the speed of…
JUST IMAGINE! October 1978: The Monster in the Funny Pages
He was as much a 1940s Universal Pictures monster as he was a 1960s Marvel Comics…
JUST IMAGINE! September 1960: Adam Strange, Space Angel
A red-suited, rocket-belted spaceman firing his ray gun at some kind of twin-headed plesiosaur that’s attacking…
JUST IMAGINE! January 1947: Cat in a Hot Pursuit
In the late 1940s, Marvel’s Human Torch battled DC’s Wildcat. Well, okay, not really, but it…
JUST IMAGINE! August 1948: The Postwar Power of the Atom
By 1948, the bantam champion Al Pratt could out-muscle a steam shovel. I really should look…
JUST IMAGINE! October 1966: The Man with the Midas Touch
Because of the lines around the block to see the movie, Goldfinger references were ubiquitous in…
JUST IMAGINE! January 1947: Marvel’s First Wall-Crawler
He might have been Marvel’s first wall-crawler. The postwar Captain America, out of the Army and…
JUST IMAGINE! September 1941: The World’s Mightiest Mortal, Nothing More
The creative forces behind Fawcett’s million-selling Captain Marvel had their own explanations for his considerable success.…
JUST IMAGINE! December 1962: Fire in the Fifth Dimension
As long as Jack Kirby was drawing the Human Torch feature in Strange Tales, reading the…
JUST IMAGINE! September 1958: The Sword that Stabbed Superman
For one, brief shining moment, DC Comics had something of an Arthurian ambience. Even Superman ran…
JUST IMAGINE! October 1960: The Style of Things to Come
The first time I saw Captain Atom, I was at my grandparents’ home in bed with…
JUST IMAGINE! July 1939: The Green Hornet in Four Colors
When we later Baby Boomers, first met the Justice Society of America in Flash 123 (Sept.…
JUST IMAGINE! September 1963: Marvel Was Crawling With ’Em
Some ideas in the Marvel Bullpen found expression on more than one cover simultaneously. For example,…
JUST IMAGINE! November 1963: The Amazing Snake-Man
In Journey Into Mystery 98 (Nov. 1963), the Mighty Thor faced a reptilian replica of Spider-Man.…
May 1962: The Strangest Man of All Time
The company that would become Marvel Comics was a small, tight-knit affair without editorial fiefdoms, and…
JUST IMAGINE! October 1962: The Batwoman of the 1940s
We had the Huntress in the 1970s, Batgirl in the 1960s, and Batwoman in the 1950s.…