Our annual summer tradition continues with a twist...PROSE!
Novels featuring superheroes/superheroines were extremely-rare before the 1960s.
Besides Big Little Books, the only books based on superheroes were several reprints (in hardcover) of pulp heroes Doc Savage and The Shadow and one original hardcover novel about Superman based on both the comics and the radio show.
In the 1960s, paperback publishers unleashed reprint series of every pulp superhero/adventurer they could get their hands on!
Doc Savage was joined by The Shadow (with reprints and a series of new novels set present-day), Operator 5, The Spider, The Phantom Detective, G-8 and his Battle Aces, and Captain Future, among others!
DC and Marvel had already been reprinting comics in b/w paperback form.
But Marvel decided to go the next step, joining with Doc Savage's publisher Bantam Books to create two novels, not based on previous comic stories!
DC joined in with a couple of novels, an adaptation of the 1966 Batman feature film and an original novel!
We'll be re-presenting one of Marvel's titles, Captain America: the Great Gold Steal by Ted White in July!
(If the response is good, we'll run the other 1960s book, Avengers vs the Earth-Wrecker by Otto Binder, next summer!)
August will see Batman vs the Three Villains of Doom by Winston Lyon (William Woolfolk) once more available for fans to read after 55 years!
Note, it's an interesting amalgam of the comic and TV Batman with elements of both!
If that one attracts an audience, the novelization of the '66 Batman movie, Batman vs the Fearsome Foursome will be next!
Next week we'll have the exact dates and info on our other, comics-oriented Summer Blogathons
Marvel Masterworks
art from the Silver Age by Jim Steranko
(above) and the character's co-creator Jack Kirby
(all the rest).
