The Greatest 1950's Stories Ever Told (Dc Comics) by Mike Gold

The Greatest 1950's Stories Ever Told (Dc Comics) Reviews

• 
  Adam Graham

  This book collects a wide sampling of 1950s comics when Superheroes were in decline. Given that, its a little surprising how many superhero tales made the cut: There are stories for Superboy, Superman and Batman, Batman (alone), Green Arrow, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, the Silver Age Flash and Green Hornet, and also stories featuring Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen.
  
  The superhero tales are mostly very good. The "Super-Batman" is certainly one of the better team ups in World's Finest, the Green Arrow two parter features art by Jack Kirby and one of the most solid stories of that somewhat lackluster title. The Wonder Woman story is a bit more so-so with Steve Trevor being extra-creepy in a revised origin for Diana Prince.
  
  Outside of superheroes, the book features westerns, science fiction, fantasy, comedy pieces, horror comics, one spy comic, and one romance and one war comic. The Westerns ranged from forgettable to pretty good. The most bizarre one was with a character named Johnny Thunder (not the same as the Justice Society character of the same name) a school teacher whose father wanted him to be a Deputy Sheriff. Instead, our hero pretended to be a school teacher and helped his father fight injustice as Johnny Thunder, leading his father to be ashamed of his son. What was the reason for this? Maybe, that could be explained in the intro rather than complaining about McCarthy in the intro.
  
  Tommy Tomorrow was entertaining silver age style science fiction while Captain Comet was boring. Both Shining Knight and Viking Prince were both enjoyable. The Viking Prince piece was notable for having DC incorporate Thor and his hammer into a story, seven years later before the Norse gods became a Marvel thing. The comedy pieces were cute and worth a chuckle. I did wish they could have reprinted some Adventures of Jerry Lewis or Adventures of Bob Hope comics. The horror comics in Phantom Stranger and Johnny Peril seemed to be typical of tehe era. The Spy comic featuring King Farraday was one of the highlights of the book as a nice action thriller. The romance comic was good but I felt that as a genre wasn't well-represented and deserved more than one story. The war comic featuring Sergeant Rock was a great World War II story. Rock does a good job in the era before DC's greatest war characters (such as Haunted Tank) would come along.
  
  Beyond that, the book featured a couple miscellaneous Adventure comics. Given that the Blackhawks stories were published throughout the 1950s, it's hard to believe that the best DC could find was the oddball tale included in this volume. This also features the first Challengers of the Unknown Story from Showcase #6. The Challengers with their lack of individual personality can be a little bit boring. However, the first story is actually a lot of fun and certainly worth including the whole 24-page story.
  
  Overall, this book is not a perfect collection of 1950s DC comics but it contains of good comic reading with generally strong stories from well-known series that it highlights as well a lot of forgotten series that are worth a read.
• 
  Michael P.

  Hard to call this one. The greatest DC stories from the fifties are not very great, unless the actual best were not included in this collection. There are a few nice discoveries, especially the Phantom Stranger and King Faraday stories. There are a few disappointments, especially the Captain Comet and Challengers of the Unknown stories. Several were not as good as in memory, but still fun, especially the Flash, Green Lantern, Batman, and Superman/Superboy stories. A few exceeded my memory of them, notably the Viking Prince and Sgt. Rock stories. The Sugar and Spike story is flawless and the Tomahawk story unreadable. The Green Arrow and Congo Bill stories are just stupid, but it was nice to see underreprinted tales drawn by Alex Toth and Carmine Infantino. So, a mixed result, really a two star collection, but this book makes it possible to revisit these stories at all and that has some value, plus my best friend is quoted on page 284. Those are worth an extra and very subjective star.
• 
  Nicolas

  This has a deceptive cover. What's contained is actually a mix of stories featuring well-known DC heroes and others featuring lesser-know heroes and some that are not even in the superhero genre. It was interesting to read some of DCs more obscure works, but it was pretty clear why some endured and others didn't. (I'm looking at you Shining Night.) All in all, a good snap-shot of 50's DC Comics.
• 
  Max

  A few good stories, and a lot of not-so-good stories. The commentary in the introductions and end notes was pretty interesting, though.