The Lone Ranger starred in a popular newspaper comic strip. So why not his grand-nephew, the…
Just Imagine!
JUST IMAGINE! March 1975: DAK on the Loose
Man-Wolf and She-Hulk may have been David Anthony Kraft’s favorite Marvel Comics characters to write back…
JUST IMAGINE! March 1941: Faster than a Speeding Deer
Not every title could be a Marvel Mystery Comics,and not every hero could be a…
JUST IMAGINE! January 1961: Meet Mental Man
A superhero called Mental Man rivaled Superman in both the 1950s and the 1960s, without ever…
JUST IMAGINE! September 1967: Telepathy Times Three
For whatever odd reason, they decided to advertise their status as crimefighting beginners right in the…
JUST IMAGINE! June 1966: The Magic and the Machine
Whether by accident or design, Marvel’s mid-1960s dual hero titles were subtly thematic. You had Tales…
JUST IMAGINE! October 1958: The Revolutionary Reptile
I remember when Saturday Night Live’s Jane Curtin announced a supposedly upcoming program: “What if the…
JUST IMAGINE! May 1965: The Old Order Changeth
The Avengers were originally the Justice League of Marvel — a team composed of powerful superheroes…
JUST IMAGINE! October 1983: A Champion by Chance
A kind of latter-day Fly Girl, AC Comics’ heroine Nancy Arazello was appealing and unassuming, feeling…
JUST IMAGINE! November 1943: The Movie Star Who Said ‘Shazam!’
Fred MacMurray could fly, even without the hot rod he super-souped up in Disney’s The Absent-Minded…
JUST IMAGINE! November 1960: Still No Superheroes in Sight
Marvel offered four genres on the newsstands in November 1960, and superheroes weren’t among them. Readers…
JUST IMAIGINE! October 1940: “So You Want to Play Rough, Eh?”
The founding members of the Justice Society of America ranged from a crime-crushing ghost who was…
JUST IMAGINE! August 1955: An Abundance of Super Bunnies
The first superhero to which an American child of the 1950s was likely to be exposed…
JUST IMAGINE! October 1948: Wings Against Wall Crawlers
“You say Professor Garvey has been working on a new invention?” Shiera Sanders asked. “Yes,” replied…
JUST IMAGINE! February 1940: The Doctor Is Strange
Strange doctors have been prowling around superhero comics almost from the beginning. The first Dr. Strange,…
JUST IMAGINE! September 1960: The Fast and the Flexible
By The Flash 115 (Sept. 1960), the title had become almost a team-up book, with other…
JUST IMAGINE! October 1935: From the Supernatural to Superman
Caped, in flight (in another dimension) and drawn by Joe Shuster, Dr. Occult might easily be…
JUST IMAGINE! March 1945: The Titanic Teenager
Teenagers were in vogue in the 1940s, and were even something of a new concept. After…
JUST IMAGINE! April 1972: Superman and Machine
He threw all his strength into his legs, felt them hammering the water behind him. In…
JUST IMAGINE! January 1964: Gold Key Finds Tarzan’s Son
The immense popularity of Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan movies from 1932 to 1948 tended to overshadow Edgar…
JUST IMAGINE! April 1962: A Super Spy Ahead of His Time
In 1962, while what would become Marvel Comics was evolving the superhero concept in a more…
JUST IMAGINE! December 1957: The Law of Diminishing Superheroes
In order to tell a good superhero story, writers must constantly come up with ways to…
JUST IMAGINE! September 1975: Back in the Day Before Dark
The short-lived Atlas line was dark before dark was cool, let alone done to death. One…
JUST IMAGINE! November 1962: Do Commies Think They’re Playin’ With Kids?
Marvel Comics’ second groundbreaking title, The Incredible Hulk, was very much a work in progress. In…
JUST IMAGINE! March 1966: The Weary Web of Middle Age
One of the things that made Robert Mayer’s 1977 novel Superfolks work so well was that,…
JUST IMAGINE! July 1941: Fliers and Funnies
In the 1990s, Britcom Keeping Up Appearances, Hyacinth Bucket’s dotty old dad sometimes dashes about performing…
JUST IMAGINE! July 1968: Politics and Power
Even then, I recognized it as a milestone of Marvel’s success. The magazine appeared on the…
JUST IMAGINE! October 1939: Frankenstein on Fire
At first, he was the Frankenstein monster on fire, an inhuman torch. But that was before…
JUST IMAGINE! April 1940: The Joker is No Joke
In his seminal 1965 hardcover The Great Comic Book Heroes, cartoonist Jules Feiffer featured the Masked…
JUST IMAGINE! November 1960: The Riddle of the Rival Spacemen
Even when I was 6 years old, in 1960, I was clear on the fact that…
JUST IMAGINE! February 1961: The Monster Who Became a Superhero
Early on, Marvel Comics had a Thing and a Hulk. So why not an It? Actually,…
JUST IMAGINE! September 1976: The Short Flight of the Human Rocket
What do you get when you cross Spider-Man with Green Lantern? Nova, the Human Rocket. Introduced…
JUST IMAGINE! February 1963: Cryll, the Alien Wonder
When the cosmic situation looked particularly dire, DC Comics’ “spaceman/Batman,” Space Ranger, had two deus ex…