Fifty years ago today - July 1962.

The sight of people going to work in flippers was enough to tell us that June 2012 was one of non-stop rain. And it's starting to look like July'll be even non-stoppier.

But, fifty years ago this month, were our favourite Marvel heroes suffering from a dampened ardour in their quest to thwart evil? Or were their hearts as full of fire as ever?

Only a  trip back in the Steve Does Comics' time machine will tell us, as we take a look at just what they were up to in July of 1962.

The Fantastic Four's greatest foe makes his first appearance as he sends our heroes back in time to retrieve Blackbeard's treasure.

Even from the start, Victor's got a trick up every sleeve and a robot for every occasion.

It's the obligatory alien invasion storyline that every Marvel hero had to deal with in the early 1960s, as the Incredible Hulk takes on the Toad Men.

It's also the dream combination of Jack Kirby and Steve Dtiko - and you can read my review of that very issue right here.


PS. Please don't forget to vote in the vitally important poll to the right.

Comic book independents.

As we all know, when it came to the 1970s, the American comic book industry was dominated by two companies, Marvel and DC. Like the twin legs of the Colossus of Rhodes, they stood astride the harbour of four-colourdom sheltering us from the threat of boredom.

But, on the very same spinner racks where we found those comics, we'd occasionally discover other ones - comics published by companies far more obscure.

There were publishers like Dell and Gold Key who, in my limited experience of them, seemed to concentrate on publishing licensed properties like Star Trek or Ripley's Believe It Or Not. To be honest, they always felt a little too square for me and I rarely felt moved to buy any of their titles.

In more “mature” directions, there were Warren and Skywald. My only exposure to Warren was issue #30 of Vampirella. My only experience of Skywald was issue #17 of Nightmare which I found to be far too unpleasant for my enlightened tastes.

No. For me, the independents that did most to capture my imagination were Atlas and Charlton.

Atlas didn't last long but, mostly thanks to sheer ambition, made an indelible impression, even if 99% of their output was total rubbish.

But the independent mags I was always happiest to see – and read – were those published by Charlton.

Who could fail to thrill to The Many Ghosts of Dr Graves, Ghostly Haunts, or the inimitable Midnight Tales with Professor Coffin and his lovely niece Arachne?

With their not-quite-glossy covers and strange, ragged edges, Charlton comics had a look all of their own. The stories within, mostly centring on light horror and mystery, had a distinctive feel too; quirkier and more idiosyncratic than those of the Big Two.

But that's enough about me. What're your memories of Bronze and Silver Age independents? Were there any titles you bought regularly? Ones you didn't regularly buy but always wanted to? And who was your favourite independent publisher?

Super-Copycats. When imitation may not be flattering but it can at least be flattening

Being a well-known Sophisticate, you're probably aware I have an incredible gift for mimicry.

For instance, people gasp when they hear my impression of John Shuttleworth.  “How can it be?” they demand, “How can it be you so effortlessly pass yourself off as a middle-aged man from Sheffield?”

“It isn't easy,” I tell them. It takes decades of practise - and a willingness to live in Sheffield for forty-odd years.”

But I'm sometimes reminded I'm not alone in this talent. For, numerous are the super-beings who can copy the powers of others. There's the Absorbing Man, the Super-Adaptoid, the Mimic, Rogue from the X-Men, and no doubt a whole bucketful more that I've either forgotten about or never knew existed in the first place.

Thanks to the nature of their ability, I've always been vexed by the issue of just who'd win a fight between such characters. And so, today's question is this; “Which character with the ability to copy the powers of others is your favourite? And, if they all had a scrap between them, just who'd come out on top?”

Personally, I've always had a soft spot for the Absorbing Man. Then again, I've always had a soft spot for Rogue. To be honest, I've never had a soft spot for the Super-Adaptoid or the Mimic. As for who'd win a punch-up between them all, I have yet to make up my mind.

You, though, may have another viewpoint - and this is where you can share it with the world.

It's make-your-mind-up time! Marvel or DC?

Many have been the great rivalries in human history - Britain vs France, Coe vs Ovett, Earth vs the Flying Saucers - but, for Bronze and Silver Age comic lovers, one rivalry stands out above all others.

That rivalry is Marvel vs DC.

DC came along first but, once the 1960s were under-way, Marvel rapidly caught up with and then overtook their former superiors to become America's biggest-selling comics producer. Since then the pair have merrily slugged it out for the title of that nation's most iconic comics company.

I can't hide it. Although, thanks to Batman and Superman, my very earliest exposure to the world of US super-herodom was dominated by DC, once the Marvel UK reprints came along, it was a no-contest. Each week I could thrill, as people with strange powers smashed up the forces of evil and still had time to fall out with each other at every possible opportunity. With its brawling, confused and not always socially responsible protagonists, Marvel seemed so much livelier, more with-it and surprising than DC ever did.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy DC's output but Marvel gave me warm, fuzzy feelings in a way DC simply never did.

I am aware however that not everyone feels this way. So, Steve Does Comics needs to know, on which side of the Marvel/DC divide do you land?

Marvel Premiere #1. The Power of Warlock

Despite what everyone might think, I couldn't claim I have a lot in common with Adam Warlock. For a start - my local tanning centre having shut down - I don't have gold skin. I can't fly. And, to my knowledge, I wasn't born from within a maggot-like cocoon.

I do of course have a gem embedded in my forehead, with which I can drain the souls from all living beings but I so rarely get to use it these days and fear it may be driving me mad.

More importantly, unlike Adam Warlock, I don't have a Jesus complex.

As far as I can recall, I first came across the character in the pages of Marvel UK's Planet of the Apes comic and was instantly impressed. In his rather stylish outfit, I knew at once he was my kind of hero.

Not my kind of hero is the High Evolutionary who really is the biggest pillock this side of Odin. Showing a remarkable inability to learn from his previous mistakes, he's back and he's decided it's not enough to repeat his earlier error of creating a race of new men by super-evolving animals.

No.

Now he wants to create an entirely new planet, one where everyone's nice to each other.

So, on the far side of the sun, he does just that. And, just like all his other experiments, it all goes disastrously wrong, as his creations all start to kill each other.

Granted, they don't do this off their own bat, they do it at the prompting of his earlier creation the evil Man-Wolf.

Not liking the look of any of this, and for no good reason at all, Warlock volunteers to go to this new Earth and sort out both it and the Man-Wolf.

Those with a keen eye for sledgehammer metaphor'll have noticed certain Biblical overtones to all this and, for this reason, writer Roy Thomas' religious connotations are way too heavy-handed for some of us. It's like being bashed over the head with a bible.

But who cares about writing? Words are for wimps. What matters in life are pictures. And the important thing about this tale is it's a perfect vehicle for the work of Gil Kane.

It's no secret that I'm a Gil Kane fan. I could look up his characters' noses - and at their clawed fingers - all day long. But even I can see that, with his strange ideas on human anatomy, he was better suited to some strips than others - and Warlock is a strip he seemed born to draw, giving free rein to his beautiful combination of action and elegance.

Whether drawing animals with men's head, near-gods in armour, gold-skinned men from cocoons, almighty great punch-ups or Kirbyesque machinery, Kane seems in his element here and I'd go so far as to say it's easily my favourite work I've ever seen by him.

We also get to see Warlock being given his infamous soul-gem by the High Evolutionary. Yep, there he is, making yet another blunder. The High Evolutionary just wasn't safe to be allowed out on his own.

And so, as Adam Warlock heads to Earth to deliver it from the forces of sinfulness, I think we can safely say that, when it came to the subject of drawing men with biblical overtones, Kane proved more than able.

Batman #255. Neal Adams - Moon of the Wolf.

Penicillin, Nuclear fission and space flight are all bums. When it comes to innovation, they may think they're Billy Big-Potatoes but we all know that the greatest invention of the 20th Century was the DC 100-page comic.

And the first 100 page comic I ever had was Batman #255.

As it turned out, it was no ordinary 100 page comic, for it contained both a werewolf and the work of the man Stan Lee once notoriously failed to dub, “Nefarious Neal Adams.”

Admittedly, the presence of a werewolf made a bigger impact on me as a child than did the presence of Adams. The truth is, as a youngster, I tended to see Batman artists of the era as interchangeable, with me somehow lacking any ability to distinguish between the likes of Neal Adams, Dick Giordano, Dick Dillin, Irv Novick or anyone else who got to draw the cowled crusader. In fact, the only Batman artist who stood out as distinctive for me at the time was Jim Aparo.

That was my problem but, in this tale, Batman has an even bigger one.

Why?

Because there's a werewolf loose on the streets of Gotham.

Not being one to hang around, Bats soon leaps into action by getting witlessly knocked out before waking to find himself chained to a building site.

And he's not alone - because the werewolf's there.

And he's after blood.

This is all because Bruce Wayne's friend Anthony Lupus has been turned into a man-beast by the diabolical potions of a mad scientist called Milo who's out for revenge on Batman for past indiscretions.

Happily, Milo gets his comeuppance.

Not so happily, Batman almost gets his - until he's saved by the sort of luck that those of us who live in the real world never experience.

Obviously the first thing anyone's going to talk about with an issue like this is Neal Adams' art and it's ironic that it made no impression on me at the time because - his blink-and-you'll-miss-it stint on Killraven aside - it's now probably my favourite art-job I've seen by him.

While never having had any doubts about Adams' technical ability, my main problem with him at times has been his tendency to distort human figures as though they're made of purest rubber. Here, there's a noticeable lack of such rubberyness and it's all the better for it.

If Adams' artwork's redoubtable, you do fear you can't say the same about our hero's detective skills. He's on the lookout for a werewolf but doesn't seem to draw a connection when he's invited to the home of a man called Lupus.

The tale's not exactly thick on characterisation but it's compelling and has a nice epilogue. Plus it's always good to see Batman up against vaguely supernatural menaces, even if they've been created by science.

Another thing that strikes me is it's a full-length tale. One of the quirks of the 100 page comics is that their greater length meant the new tales at the beginning of each issue always felt shorter than they actually were, meaning you didn't necessarily appreciate them as much as you would've done if they'd been in a normal-length comic.

Then again, I didn't necessarily appreciate Neal Adams as much as I should've done either, so maybe I'm just naturally under-appreciative.

Steve Fights Crime! Putting the boot in.

Those of us of a certain age still recall the celebrations when the Berlin Wall came down, and I suspect tonight'll see similar scenes of joy as probably the worst feature even this blog has ever come up with grinds to a halt. I finally complete my quest to assemble the ultimate costume in which I can battle with darkness.

Over the last few days, I've covered the rest of me in the finest attire a crime-fighter could want. Picking and choosing my favourite elements from the costumes of established heroes, I've covered my head, I've covered my chest, I've covered my torsal antipodes. But now for the most important item of them all.

I've never made it a secret that, as far as I'm concerned, the most important part of a super-hero's costume is the footwear. Just as Waye Rooney'll no doubt be bereft tonight if he's left his boots at home, so I cannot fight crime without the finest cobblery this land can produce.

Well, that's easily said, but what to wear?

I've always had a soft spot for calf-length boots that turn down at the top in the style of Captain America and Conan the Barbarian. Then again, I was the only person who liked Supergirl's short-lived 1970s carpet slippers. The Flash had little wings on his boots. The Green Goblin had boots that turned up at the toes.

These are all, no doubt, fine footwear. But I can't get round it; there's one pair of boots that stand out above all others for me.

And those are the boots of Storm. Her original ones. The thigh-high leather ones with the holes in them.

Who can forget the sense of leggy dignity they lent her - as opposed to her unlikely punk phase that made no sense at all and arrived about ten years too late to be topical?

So, there you have it. I now have my costume - composed of Ant-Man's helmet, Batman's cape, Captain America's shirt, Conan the Barbarian's loin cloth and Storm's boots. I think we can all agree it's the finest costume imaginable to mankind and guaranteed to impress passers-by as I stride through the streets of Sheffield.

Or maybe we can't. Maybe you think an altogether different combination would work the sartorial magic every crime-fighter needs. If so, you're perfectly free to outline what elements would, for you, make up your dream super-hero costume.