Super Weird Heroes

SUPER

!

WEIRD

AN D

OMG

!!!

!

!

S E O R E H

328 GIANT

EDITED by

pg.

FULL COMIC STORIES!

CRAIG YOE TM

OUTRAGEOUS BUT REAL! BULLET GIRL

KISMET MAN OF FATE

THE HAND

A Perfect GIFT!

YOE BOOKS PRESENTS THE

WACKIEST WONKIEST WILDEST

SUPER WEIRD HEROES

RAINBOW BOY

OF THE GOLDEN AGE AND BEYOND!

FULL COMICS STORIES!

THE KITTEN

IN THIS MUST-HAVE BOOK!

KANGAROO MAN

NATURE BOY

MADAM FATAL

ISBN: 978-1-63140-745-1

idwpublishing.com $49.99 US

V isit YoeBooks.com

KANGAROO MAN

THE MOTH

...AND

MANY MORE!

Dedicated to

Super Griffin & Super Grace With all our love, —Mama & Papa

WE’RE TALKING TALKING WE’RE

WEIRD WEIRD “As long as young boys doubt their masculinity, there will be a need for superheroes.”

—Will Eisner “WHAM! BAM! NO THANK YOU!” —Mom

This book is over six years in the making. The stories are the best examples for each super weird hero chosen on the basis of their historical importance, artistic merit, and entertainment value.

We encourage cosplayers to find inspiration in this book and to send us photos of their resulting costumes for us to share on social media.

Spoiler alert: the Super Weird Heroes text may give away plot points. You might want to read the comics first.

If you like this book, please blog, post on Facebook, Tumblr, Amazon, and Goodreads, podcast, and tweet about it!

Join the Facebook group, Super Weird Heroes Become a fan of YOE Books on Facebook! Friend Craig Yoe on Facebook!

We are, as always, deeply indebted to our good friends Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. and Bud Plant for sharing their comics and expertise with us!

Our heartfelt thanks to Bill Stewart for creating the stupendous Super Weird Heroes video. Watch it at YouTube.com/TheYoeTube.

Super Weird Heroes graphic design and production associate: James Barrett.

Super Weird Heroes logo design: Zavier Leslie Cabarga and Craig Yoe. Super thanks to: Giovanna Anzaldi, Nick Bruel, David Burd, Robert Carter, Shaun Clancy, Tillmann Courth, Comic Book Plus, Digital Comics Museum, Justin Eisinger, Huw Douglas Evans, Greg Goldstein, Alex Grand, Grand Comics Database, Paul Gravett, Jim Halperin, Heritage Auctions, Nancy Higdon, Brian House, Jon Ingersoll, Denis & Stacey Kitchen, Dale Lazarov, Jeffrey Lindsey, Mitch Maglio, Rosalind Morehead, Michelle Nolan, Ken Quattro, Brad Ricca, Roy Thomas’ Alter Ego, Dan Savino, Kahlil Schweitzer, Steven Scott, Soothsayr, Steven Thompson, Carol Tilley, Jeff Trexler, Peter Wallace, Dirk Wood, Yoc.

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hey were violent. They wore strange costumes. They weren’t published by that “good” comic book company,

Dell. In my preteen years, Mom forbade me to have superhero comic books. Mickey Mice and Donald Ducks were reluctantly tolerated but even Mighty Mouse or Super Duck were not permitted in our home. Once, on a train from Ohio to Kansas with my family, benevolent soldiers gave me a towering stack of comics they had just polished off.

Mom immediately confiscated the Supermans and Batmans from the pile. I was allowed to keep the Dell funny animals but was required to give those unacceptable comics to my older cousins the second I walked in their door. I protested but was told I was too young for the superheroes.

Later, I was too old. When Mom found a box of the very first issues of the Marvel Age of comics hidden under my bed when I was 14, she cried tears for fear that I was stricken with some kind of horrible arrested development—or worse. Dad stepped in as mother wept. He told me I could keep these funny books or I could

YoeBooks.com Craig Yoe & Clizia Gussoni, Chief Executive Officers and Creative Directors • Jeff Trexler, Attorney • Mark Lerer, Peter Sanderson, and Steven Thompson, Proofreaders and Fact-checkers • Steven Thompson, Publicist.

put away the childish things and become a man. He was going to let me make the

IDW Publishing Ted Adams, CEO & Publisher • Greg Goldstein, President & COO • Robbie Robbins, EVP/Sr. Graphic Artist • Chris Ryall, Chief Creative Officer/Editor-in-Chief • Matthew Ruzicka, CPA, Chief Financial Officer • Jeff Webber, VP of Licensing, Digital and Subsidiary Rights • Jerry Bennington, VP of New Project Development • Dirk Wood, VP of Marketing • Lorelei Bunjes, VP of Digital Services.

to blow this. Dad and I did a grim death

Front endpapers: Wow Comic #6, April – June 1942; back endpapers: Meteor Comics #1, November 1945; Small title page: America’s Best Comics #27, August 1948.

Please note: some depictions of people and material thought acceptable for readers in times past has changed as our culture has become more enlightened. For historical purposes we present this material as it was originally published, but we advise readers to proceed with understanding, sensitivity, and caution.

ISBN: 978-1-63140-745-1 19 18 17 16 1 2 3 4 November 2016. First printing. Super Weird Heroes is TM & © 2016 Gussoni-Yoe Studio, Inc. All Rights Reserved, including the digital remastering of the material not held by copyright owners. Yoe Books is a trademark of Gussoni-Yoe Studio, Inc. Yoe is a registered trademark of Gussoni-Yoe Studio, Inc. IDW Publishing, a division of Idea and Design Works, LLC. Editorial offices: 2765 Truxtun Road, San Diego, CA 92106. Any similarities to persons living or dead are purely coincidental. With the exception of artwork used for review purposes, none of the contents of this publication may be reprinted without the permission of Idea and Design Works, LLC. Printed in Korea.

decision. A gangly 90-pound weakling and awkward around girls, I was already doubting my masculinity and did not want march out to the backyard incinerator.

I put the verboten comics on the brick structure to make a funeral pyre. I lit the wooden stick match and started the blaze.

The first comic books with Spider-Man, ABOVE The two dreaded archenemies of superhero comics: Dr. Fredric Wertham [left], who wrote Seduction of the Innocent and testified against comic books before the Senate’s Hearing Before The Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, and Mom [right].

RIGHT Comic book burnings of the 1950s served as a model for my parents in the early 1960s.

IDW Publishing does not read or accept unsolicited submissions of ideas, stories, or artwork.

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ATLAS ATLAS W

hat costumed, muscle bound, bigger-than-life superman appeared in more comic books than

any other figure and was published by nearly every company in nearly every one of their issues over numerous decades? Charles Atlas, that’s who!

Atlas even had a secret identity! He was born Angelo Siciliano (1892 – 1972) and legally changed his name in 1922. In his leopard-skin scanties and with muscles on his muscles, the comic strip ads and sales spiel from the “World’s Most Perfectly Developed Man” gave hope to many 97-pound weaklings enamored with the idea that they could bash bullies at the beach and win comely lasses’ hearts. The ubiquitous ads for Charles Atlas appeared on prime real estate: the inside and back covers of thousands of comic books from the 1940s to the 1970s.

At the end of 1945, publisher C.H. Albrecht

had an idea for Atlas Comics, featuring a superhero named after Charles, but Albrecht wasn’t able to bring it to fruition. On the Pulp Artist website, historian David Saunders shows a striking Atlas Comics unpublished cover with its leopard skin-patterned logo to complement the body builder’s briefs. The curtains matched the rug. The cover strongly resembles Action Comics #1 (June 1938, DC Comics), where Superman lifts a car.

The inside cover proof, which has a March 1946 date, shows a letter from the “editor”—Charles Atlas himself!

“Welcome to ATLAS COMICS—to a brand new, sparkling comic book that’s DIFFERENT… I want you to feel that I’m YOUR friend—that your problems are mine.”

Aside for the unpublished cover and inside cover proofs from Albrecht’s files, no other

ABOVE Our leopard-skinned undies-clad hero, Atlas.

RIGHT Charles Atlas, the World’s Most Perfectly Developed Man, from one of his ubiquitous comic book ads. Joe Shuster was a fan of Charles Atlas and copied photos from bodybuilding mail order courses for the first Superman comics. Things would have come full circle at the time if C.H. Albrecht had successfully published Atlas Comics, turning Charles Atlas into a super man. Brad Ricca, author of Super Boys: The Amazing Adventures of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster—the Creators of Superman (St. Martin’s Press, 2013), says, “Joe couldn’t believe it when he met Charles Atlas at the awards ceremony” held at the New York World’s Fair’s Superman Day festivities on July 3rd, 1940.

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content for this proposed comic book was known. However, I realized that content had been produced. The stories had been unearthed and printed in I.W. Publishing/ Super Comics’ Daring Adventures #18 (1964) nearly 20 years after having been created. “I.W.” were the initials of Israel Waldman, a publisher that scrounged around print shops and storage facilities for abandoned printing plates and proofs for published, and sometimes unpublished, materials. Waldman would take this scrap and cobble together comics, sometimes throwing on newly commissioned covers and, with his minimal investment, sell the results with deep discounts to distributors.

In Daring Adventures #18, the scavenger publisher commissioned a new cover and dropped Charles Atlas’ letter, which would have linked the body-builder to the comic book. If Charles Atlas, who was alive at the time, had known about Waldman’s bootleg, he might have given him a bill—or a sock in the jaw!

APPEARANCES I.W. Publishing: Daring Adventures #18 (1964).

LEFT The very Action Comics number one-esque unpublished Atlas Comics #1 cover (March 1945). Art by George Tuska.

RIGHT The cover of the comic book that the Atlas Comics material eventually appeared in (Daring Adventures #18, 1964, I.W. Publishing).

Pencils: Ross Andru, inks: Mike Esposito, lettering: Joe Rosen.

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Daring Adventures #18, 1964. Art attributed to George Tuska. I.W. Publishing.

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content for this proposed comic book was known. However, I realized that content had been produced. The stories had been unearthed and printed in I.W. Publishing/ Super Comics’ Daring Adventures #18 (1964) nearly 20 years after having been created. “I.W.” were the initials of Israel Waldman, a publisher that scrounged around print shops and storage facilities for abandoned printing plates and proofs for published, and sometimes unpublished, materials. Waldman would take this scrap and cobble together comics, sometimes throwing on newly commissioned covers and, with his minimal investment, sell the results with deep discounts to distributors.

In Daring Adventures #18, the scavenger publisher commissioned a new cover and dropped Charles Atlas’ letter, which would have linked the body-builder to the comic book. If Charles Atlas, who was alive at the time, had known about Waldman’s bootleg, he might have given him a bill—or a sock in the jaw!

APPEARANCES I.W. Publishing: Daring Adventures #18 (1964).

LEFT The very Action Comics number one-esque unpublished Atlas Comics #1 cover (March 1945). Art by George Tuska.

RIGHT The cover of the comic book that the Atlas Comics material eventually appeared in (Daring Adventures #18, 1964, I.W. Publishing).

Pencils: Ross Andru, inks: Mike Esposito, lettering: Joe Rosen.

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Daring Adventures #18, 1964. Art attributed to George Tuska. I.W. Publishing.

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