FLASH #221
I Don't Recall...
Nick Cardy was a legend. I was so happy to have met him at HeroesCon a year or two before he passed away. Super great guy.
This is another awesome cover of his - just an expert at cover art. People can talk Marvel Marvel Marvel all they want - Nick Cardy should have a collected book of nothing but 100 of his greatest covers. I’d buy that in a HEARTBEAT and I rarely buy ANY comic related books anymore…
(FLASH #221 - cover-dated May 1973, on newsstands February 20th, 1973, with cover art by Nick Cardy)
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As a kid… I compare this splash page to that of a Spider-Man comic and… this didn’t appeal to me. This was one of my earliest comic books I remember, and… I don’t remember much about this story. Or really ANY of it. I just remember that cover.
And I certainly didn’t have the same respect for Irv Novick as I do now - another legend - this dude started in 1939, he was 57 years old when he did this book!
(FLASH #221 - cover-dated May 1973, on newsstands February 20th, 1973, with art by Irv Novick & Frank McLaughlin)
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The idea of Barry Allen always being late is a bit absurd.
(FLASH #221 - cover-dated May 1973, on newsstands February 20th, 1973, with art by Irv Novick & Frank McLaughlin)
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Flash can create a Super Sonic Boom (when he’s not paying attention) but has trouble being on time. This is what kind of turned me off to some of these stories - I mean…. The science doesn’t EVER really match up, but in circumstances like this it just seems REALLY silly.
(FLASH #221 - cover-dated May 1973, on newsstands February 20th, 1973, with art by Irv Novick & Frank McLaughlin)
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3 pages of Flash reeling in a circus stampede…ho hum.
(FLASH #221 - cover-dated May 1973, on newsstands February 20th, 1973, with art by Irv Novick & Frank McLaughlin)
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What the hell is going on in this goofy story?
(FLASH #221 - cover-dated May 1973, on newsstands February 20th, 1973, with art by Irv Novick & Frank McLaughlin)
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I would… enjoy many of Cary Bates’ Legion of Superhero stories, but… this Flash story….
(FLASH #221 - cover-dated May 1973, on newsstands February 20th, 1973, with art by Irv Novick & Frank McLaughlin)
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This is kind of the extent of the ‘characterization’ we’d get in DC Comics, a page early on, setting up the story premise and then the payoff at the end for a page.
(FLASH #221 - cover-dated May 1973, on newsstands February 20th, 1973, with art by Irv Novick & Frank McLaughlin)
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Total Paid Circulation down to 152,221, ouch. Flash ranked 43rd of all the books that had a Statement of Publication for 1973 (about 53 of them I’ve found so far), and they ranked 19th out of DC’s 25 books with Statement of Publication numbers.
DC’s Sad Sack and Harvey’s Little Lotta sold more copies per month.
It’d be a little bit before Flash got his mojo back again…
(FLASH #221 - cover-dated May 1973, on newsstands February 20th, 1973)
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Denny O’Neil was still writing it, but Green Lantern was now back in outer space… Dick Giordano does a decent job on the art. He’s no Neal Adams (though he’s quite well known for his inks on Adams’ work), but it looks pretty good here on his own.
(FLASH #221 - cover-dated May 1973, on newsstands February 20th, 1973, with art by Dick Giordano)
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Speaking a bad Statement of Publication numbers, Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams Green Lantern had finished 58 out 58 in the Statement of Publication numbers I found for 1970, with only 134,272 copies per month (Superman was still doing almost half a million).
Now I’ve read plenty on the shenanigans that were going on with newsstand distribution, so I on’t doubt there was something there, but DC canceled it regardless and now Green Lantern was relegated to back up feature in Flash’s comic.
Who’da thunk the two characters that kicked off the Golden Age would ended up HERE, 17 years later…
(FLASH #221 - cover-dated May 1973, on newsstands February 20th, 1973, with art by Dick Giordano)
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Again, I remember absolutely nothing about this story… Green Lantern was a character I just never got into. It’s pretty amazing what Geoff Johns was able to do with the book… he made Green Lantern relevant again for a while there.
(FLASH #221 - cover-dated May 1973, on newsstands February 20th, 1973, with art by Dick Giordano)
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I’m going to explore the comics that I loved and that made me like what I like as a kid (and still like).
And along the way, show the one’s I read that I DIDN’T like (some I later changed my mind about, and some I STILL don’t care for…)
I hope you’ll join me!