Tuesday Two-fer: "Duel at Dawn" and "The Vampire King" by Fallberg (?) and Arens(?)

Hey, hey, hey, Groove-ophiles! Today just happens to be the 50th anniversary of the debut of Batman on ABC-TV! It's Li'l Groove's love of that show that grew into the all-out fanatic that blogs for you five days a week as Ol' Groove, so I hadda do something to celebrate! Of course, being who I is, of course we're not gonna celebrate in a way that you'd expect.

Of course I MUST share a cool Adam-West-as-Batman pic!

Nope, to celebrate the impact Adam West and company made on moi, I'll use this time to show just how quickly the love of Batman grew into a love for comicbooks, cartoons, and superheroes. Y'see, as much as Li'l Groove loved Batman, when he learned that there were other superheroes (most of the following wouldn't have existed had it not been for Batman), he went a little bit bonkers. Absorbed everything from Archie's Mighty Comics line to shows like Captain Nice to (of course) Marvel Comics (and their cartoons) to (of course, again) Hanna-Barbera's line of cartoon superheroes, which included such luminaries as Space Ghost, Atom Ant, the Herculoids, Frankenstein Jr., the Impossibles, Young Samson, and today's focuses (foci?), Birdman and Mighty Mightor!

Both of these tales first appeared in Gold Key's Hanna-Barbera Super TV Heroes #1 (January 1968), and one (or both) were written and/or drawn by Carl Fallberg and Mike Arens (even the magnificent Grand Comics Database doesn't know for sure).

First up, here's Birdman in "Duel at Dawn"!

And here's Mighty Mightor battling "The Vampire King"!