The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 291: Adventure Comics #414, January 1972

I don't want to make it sound like I've not been enjoying the comics I've been reading for almost the last 300 days, but I actually thoroughly enjoyed every story in this comic a great deal. Bob Oksner is now my absolute favourite Supergirl artist. And not just because of the hotpants! It's also cool to see some Len Wein stuff from around the same time that Swamp Thing is taking off - he writes a pretty decent superhero story as well as his more famous horror stuff.

Unlike yesterday's Adventure Comics, this issue takes up the anthology nature of the title that I think continues until the series ends. We've got a couple of gorgeous Supergirl stories, a Zatanna story by Gray Morrow and Wein, and the second Animal Man story with art by Gil Kane (and written by Dave Wood, about whom I can find almost no information except that he co-created Animal Man - I probably should have heard of him sooner). And all of them were excellent. There's definitely a EC Horror comics vibe to a couple of the Len Wein-scribed stories, which makes a pretty cool combination with the superheroes (SG and Zatanna) that he's playing with. The stories are also less-bombastic than what one might expect from 70s DC, and you can see the transition from goofy 60s television Batman-inspired shenanigans to writers who are thinking through the ramifications and ways of telling superhero stories. I'm definitely going to have to see if some of this old stuff has been collected so I can get a better idea.

Strangely, this comic was in my Supergirl section in the collection, even though it prominently features an Animal Man story. It's going to go back into the AM collection now. Animal Man's earliest adventures originally appeared in Strange Adventures, and were reprinted years later as back-ups to Supergirl's Adventure Comics run. They're not easy to come by, but as of this writing I'm only missing one of Animal Man's earliest adventures. What's interesting is the recolouring job that some of the stories undergo in the 6 or so years between publication. Such decisions, though, are best left to the mysteries of the universe.

A bit more Adventure tomorrow, I think. I'm enjoying the crap out of the Supergirl stuff, and it's great to revisit the early Animal Man adventures. See you then.