Greetings, Groove-ophiles! Well, it looks like the celebration of
Superman's 75th Anniversary has begun, and if there's anything Comicdom needs to celebrate it's definitely the debut of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's
Man of Steel in
Action Comics #1 (April 1938). But what has that to do with the Groovy Age, you wonder? Nothing really. Ha! Got'cha, didn't I? No, seriously, we appreciated
Superman's
Action Comics debut mightily during the Groovy Age. In 1971, t-shirts with that iconic debut cover were sold via ads that ran thru most of the DC Comics line...
...but most of all, t'was the coming of
Famous First Edition # C-26 in January 1974 that really turned us on!
FFE C-26 allowed us to experience what our parents and their siblings had been able to experience back in 1938 (albeit in a much larger--making it even more awesome!--format):
Action Comics #1 in its entirety. For a young comicbook fiend like Young Groove, this tabloid-sized reprint was a revelation. Not only did we get to thrill to the very first
Superman mini-epic (which we'd later learn was cobbled-together newspaper strip samples), but we got to see all the other non-superhero (there were no others!
Superman was the first!) features starring an exciting array of cowboys, cops, reporters, boxers, adventurers, and magicians. We experienced some "big-foot" humor and were taken back to a virtual "who's who" of Depression Era celebrities. Comics were more than super-heroes, silly teens, scary tales, barbarians, and child-friendly supernatural characters. And they could all appear in one mag! It definitely made its mark on moi, baby! Read that giant-mag over and over. I still have it and pull it out from time to time. I s'pose now would be another good time to check it out!
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| The ad that got the heart racing! |
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| I never dreamed of taking the outer cardboard cover off of my copy! | |
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| Neal Adams' in-freakin'-credible back cover |
