Saturday, February 13, 2010

Bring On the Back-ups: "The Hour Hourman Died!"

Greetings, Groove-ophiles! Here's a doozy of a back-up tale starring founding JSA (that's Justice Society of America to you, pal!) member Hourman. While DC had great success revamping Golden Age/Earth-2 heroes and concepts for the newer, more with-it Silver Age/Earth-1, they had less success when resurrecting the Earth-2 heroes themselves. Team-ups like Black Canary/Starman and Dr. Fate/Hourman (in Brave and the Bold) didn't lead to a big JSA or Earth-2 revival during the Silver Age, but the return of The Spectre (in Showcase) was met with a bit more success, running 10 issues. What's that got to do with Hourman? Well, for some reason, there was a little bit of space left from the lead tale in Spectre #7 (September 1968), so editor Julie Schwartz wisely decided to fill the extra space with this groovy little Hourman short by the titanic creative team of writer Gardner Fox and artists Dick Dillin and Sid Greene. Dig it, baby!

For you completists out there, "The Hour Hourman Died!" was reprinted in Justice League of America #91 (May 1971).
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2 comments:

  1. GarnetFebruary 14, 2010 at 11:53 PM

    An unlikely story in the best Gardner Fox tradition.

    ReplyDelete
  2. ykwApril 11, 2010 at 1:53 PM

    Never a Dick Dillin fan when I was little -- hey, all I ever saw was stuff inked by McLaughlin (possibly the worst choice of inker for his pencils), Girodano and Giella. All three, inkers with predominant straight lines and little use of hatching, cross-hatching or shadow to enliven the figure.

    Wasn't until years later when I got to see the likes of Sid Greene and Tex Blaisdell over Dillin that I understood him and was able to go back and look at the later work to see just what Dillin was trying to do (if only he hadn't been strangled by his inkers).

    In retrospect, he's become a favorite. He'd be more of a fav if he'd ever learned to draw the S-shield...

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