Miscellaneous Characters


A Page for Non-D.C. Material


     I've demonstrated my fondness for DC's heroines and gave Marvel's their
own page but I've got a few items from other companies like Dark Horse, Image
and other independent companies (several of which are no longer publishing)
that it seems a shame not in include.  There's also a few from DC and Marvel
that don't quite fit into the heroine themed pages but are too good to simply
ignore.  So this page is for everything that doesn't quite fit anywhere else.



April O'Neil














Betty Cooper & Veronica Lodge

















Bombshell


















Bubblegum Crisis
A Made in America Manga based on one of the few anime
series that wasn't based on an original japanese comic.
The series is set in a near future, post quake Tokyo 
dominated by the sinister GENOM corporation and their
biomechanical creations known as "Boomers".  Like the
series title fans have scrambled to find rational 
explanations for the name but the truth is the series
creator just thought it sounded cool.  Anyway the 
series follows the efforts of a four woman team of 
power armoured vigilantes, The Knight Sabers to
keep GENOM under control.  Think cyberpunk mixed with
Iron Man style superheroics. The anime is over ten years
old now and while not too successful in Japan created a fanatical North
American following, first through fansubs then the Animeigo commercial 
release.  Check out alt.fan.bgcrisis for more details.  In October '98 it
was revived as in Japan a TV series with new character designs and a 
revised storyline (which AD Vision released in English on VHS in 1999-2000 and
on DVD in 2002).  Like Adam Warren's comic interpretation it got mixed reviews
from hardcore fans of the original series.


Chakaal






















Creatures On The Loose
After Conan the Barbarian became a hit Marvel went
looking for other pulp heroes who could become superstars.
Tarzan and John Carter were natural choices as Edgar Rice
Burroughs creations were always hits with kids but why 
they picked, "Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria" by Lin
Carter as the source of their next great barbarian hero
I'll never know but Thongor never caught on and has 
long since returned to obscurity.  Anyway adapted by 
golden age great Gardner Fox it's a fun pulpish read 
with Thongor's quest to find the world saving starstone
getting him thrown in a dungeon where he quickly meets 
and befriends the true heir to the throne before they're both sent 
into the arena to stop the giant reptile with the weird name from 
devouring the girl tied to the stake.  Incidentally the girl was only
a redhead on the cover, she's blonde on the inside pages.


Danger Girl
















Death Hawk
I think this one lasted about three issues.  Death Hawk
was an SF gun for hire with a giant, intelligent amoeba
for a pattern.  The lady you're looking at is a 
business rival who wound up merged with an alien 
artifact they were both sent to steal.  Death Hawk 
turned her over to his employers and they examined her 
trying figure out exactly what happened to the first 
artifact while Death Hawk was sent after the second 
one.  This is a bit exaggerated as while she is naked 
for the examination well placed shadows and equipment 
mean the scene is at best PG rated.  Also she's not 
restrained as she is sedated and unconscious.  Later on 
she wakes up chained to a wall but in the meantime some spoilsport has dressed 
her in an all concealing robe.

A striking cover but sadly the art inside is nowhere near as good.  But it  
draws the purchaser's eye and I imagine this sold the most copies of any issue
of Death Hawk, however many there were.




Defenders of the Earth

This scan of Dale Gordon (nee Arden) menaced by
Ming the Merciless was contributed by De Ville Fo.
It doesn't have a happy ending as Ming follows
the Joker's dictum that "I've always felt a hero's life
needs some defining element of tragedy"






Dirty Pair
















Gen 13
















Ghost Rider
This is Johnny Blaze, the original Ghost Rider.  A man
cursed to carry the spirit of vengeance and with a 
knack for encountering villians who use motorcycles.  
In this issue he tangles with a cult of death 
worshippers who get off on immolating one another in
flamethrower weilding motorcycle duels.  The girl is 
the daughter of a senator who wants the cult exposed
and crushed.  So the cult leader decides to send a
personal message about their constitutional right to
freedom of worship.







Kelly Friday












The Last of the Viking Heroes
Great cover but as you've probably guessed it has 
nothing to do with the story inside.  I don't think 
any women appear in this issue, let alone one dressed
like this and the only person chained to a tree is an 
ugly male viking.  Still I picked it up for 50 cents 
in a bargain bin so I can't complain I didn't get my 
money's worth.







Lost in Space


















Miraclewoman













Ms Mystic

















Ms. Tree
Perhaps best known for their work on the "Dick Tracy"
comic strip Max Allen Collins and Terry Beatty teamed
up again to create a female private eye.  Published 
with minimal interior colour the book chronicled the 
adventures of Ms. Tree who had been widowed on her 
wedding night when her PI husband was gunned down.
Following in his footsteps (having been apprenticing 
at the detective agency) she took over his position 
and set about conducting every case with hard nosed
zeal, taking every opportunity it afforded to cut 
down on the criminal population.  In this issue her
investigation of a pornstar's suicide is derailed by the girl's employer who 
add a seasonal touch to this Christmas tie-up.




Monster of Frankenstein
One of Marvel's seventies horror books this incarnation
of the Frankenstein Monster was a misunderstood soul 
made an outcast by his appearance.  Much like the Hulk
he kept running into normal people who were real 
monsters but on this occasion the peasants weren't the
superstitious fools they usually were.
     After rescuing a girl tied to the mast of a burning
boat (who once again was blonde on the interior pages) 
he vowed to protect her from the "man in black" who had 
driven the villagers to try and kill her.  He discovered
that the girl was a murderous werewolf and the "man in 
black" was the local priest who had been been forced to extreme 
measures by her murderous rampage.  Forced to kill her the monster 
strode off musing that misunderstanding was a two edged sword and 
vowed to be more tolerant in future.  Of course all the peasants he 
ran into after that wanted to destroy him because he looked like a 
monster.  So it goes.
    

O.M.A.C. - One Man Army Corps
One of Jack Kirby's seventies DC books OMAC might have 
been bad science fiction but it was a fun Kirby series.
The hapless Buddy Blank is turned into a superhero to 
protect a utopian future which might look nothing like
"The world that's coming" of the series tagline but it
was classic Kirby action from the King.  John Byrne 
actually did a decent job when he revived OMAC as a mini
series a few years back and didn't throw out Kirby's 
retro future but set up a scenario so it could plausibly 
come about.  Anyway back to this issue, OMAC has to 
rescue an unnamed victim during his mission to bust a ring
of organleggers protected by their mutant subterranean gangs. 
 

The Original Black Cat
This series was reprints but with an interesting story 
behind them.  Recollections was founded by Alfred
Harvey, the founder of Harvey Comics (Casper, Wendy,
Richie Rich, ... etc) in 1988 having just turned
75.  According to the blurb in the first issue he had 
been forced to retire from Harvey Comics at age 70 and
was doing this to show he wasn't ready for the old age
home just yet.  The series reprinted the fifties 
adventures of the Black Cat.  Linda Turner was a judo
expert and Hollywood star who had turned crimefighter
out of boredom and found she enjoyed the adventure. 

The series was attacked by old Fredric Wertham in his "Seduction of the
Innocent" for including "how to" judo throw panels as everyone knew little
girls weren't supposed to fight but just take it if they got bullied.  This
lead the original series becoming another victim of the Comics Code despite
lacking anything really objectionable.  But I digress back to the in question,
the Black Cat.  Later on she acquired the obligatory annoying kid sidekick
(Kitten) but she worked solo for the first few years.  The cover to the first
issue was by one of her original artists and has no relevance to the contents.
As to why the title includes "Original" the rather humourless Marvel Comics
Corporation had their own Black Cat and lawyers eager to litigate so "Original"
was added to the title.  Marvel had already forced Marvelman, another revived
fifties comic character predating Marvel's creation, to change its title to
Miracleman and DC's Captain Marvel to be published under the title
Shazam.  The title change seems to have worked and Marvel didn't sue.

 
The series wasn't around long but got out at least
seven issues and made it past the comic stores to 
the drug store comic racks which in the days before
Image Comics was a remarkable feat for a title not
published by the big two.  In this issue the cover is
a bit more relevant as a lynch mob does grab the Black
Cat after a case of mistaken identity gets her
accused of a bank robbery in a western town that wasn't
ready to give up its wild west heritage just yet.  But
Linda was rescued before they got her on horseback, let
alone a noose around her neck.  Spoilsports!  Anyway
she caught the real crook and saw to it he lived to 
stand trial




Outlanders
A translated manga sci-fi title with the obligatory 
stacked superwoman who for no adequately explained
reason falls for the geeky japanese guy.  In this
issue Princess Kahm has a bit of a problem after
her spaceship crashes in Germany.  As her people have
just blown up Japan and laid waste to Europe it's not
too surprising that one of the locals is looking for
some payback.  I suppose it was inevitable that she 
would also fall for the geek and start one of those
love triangles so popular in manga/anime with two
girls fighting over the same boy.  I suppose it just
goes to show that fanboys are a worldwide phenomena.

Anyway this was a multivolume series that was compressed into an hour long
anime by cutting out about 90% of the story and characters.  


Pacific Presents
The first issue of this anthology title from the long
defunct Pacific Comics is probably responsible for
sparking the modern revival of Betty Page fandom.  
Dave Stevens, The Rocketeer made its debut in this
issue and as you can see from the cover so did Betty
the peril-prone lookalike girlfriend of the comic's
hero.  While Dave Stevens drew a great Betty 
throughout the issue I've always suspected this 
picture was the one that really hooked the readers.
Anyway Stevens made no secret about who his Betty was
based on which lead to a revival of interest in the 
original and things built from there.  If you're
interested in pictures of the real Betty Page and seeing more comics featuring
her you might want to check out the Irving Klaw Mailing List on The Links Page.





Plastic Man
While it's a serious looking cover the 1976 Plastic
Man series had the same goofiness as its fourties
predecessor, Plas's eighties run in Adventure Comics
and the ninties miniseries.  I gather he's now in JLA but
hopefully they haven't turned him into a straight man.
Anyway the lady on the cover is Sundae Supplement,
ditzy secretary and agent wannabe at the National Bureau
of Investigation.  For both his seventies and eighties
series Plastic Man was the top field agent of the
N.B.I. though he kept turning up in Brave and Bold
for his teamups with Batman as a hobo hero living
on the streets.  Go figure.  Anyway in this episode Sundae
stumbles across a mad scientist but rather than threatening her he falls madly 
in love with her.  I suppose DC decided a more threatening cover would sell 
better than him getting romantic with her.  Makes sense, in less politically 
correct times a cover with a woman in peril was regarded as a valid marketing
tool.       


Police Action
Not much to say, it's a police comic and nothing like
this scene can be found inside.  Very average.  

Atlas comics are remembered for publishing some early
Howard Chaykin (The Scorpion) but didn't produce much 
else worth reading.








Red Fox
Another one from the discount bin.  Mediocre sword
and sorcery whose art leaves a lot to be desire.  In
this issue the heroine learns the unadvisability of
tackling a gang of slavers when your magic sword is
on the fritz.  Not one of her better days, and 
winding up a captive turns out to be one of the high
points as she gets possessed by a demon queen.  I 
think they stretched that out storyline until the
publishing company collapsed






Sea Dragon
Another one from the discount bin, since I preferred
the interior art to the cover I'll include a link to
the story climax.  This shortlived book concerned the
adventures of a naval officer mutated into an aquatic
creature after stumbling onto a conspiracy.  Naturally 
there were those interested in aquiring his unique 
capabilities and a shadowy organization kidnapped his
girlfriend Crystal in order to control him.  Naturally
Sea Dragon played along with them but a underwater 
explosion convinced the organization that he was dead.
Which meant that Crystal became expendable.  So when
Sea Dragon returned to the base it was just in time for that issue to end on 
a cliffhanger.  If the next issue was ever published I have no idea.  If 
anyone knows one way or the other then let drop me a line.




Star Wars : Prelude to Rebellion













Vampi














Victims












   
Werewolf by Night
One of Marvel's seventies horror titles along with 
Tomb of Dracula and Frankenstein this one concerned a
once average teenager named Jack Russel who had a bit 
of a problem.  His werewolf self wasn't really evil 
but it was a hungry predator.  If that wasn't enough 
there was a secret organization looking to study
lycanthropy for military use that was hunting him.

Jack's only ally was his sister Lisa, luckily for both
of them this issue proved that while Jack's wolf-self
didn't think it could recogise familiar and friendly
scents.  Jack and his sister have since gone their seperate ways but for quite
a while she had to chain him up every full moon.  As she occasionally seems to
mention this in public they must have got a strange reputation, even in LA.



  
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