Each week, we post a
limited-edition design, to be sold for exactly 7 days, then replaced with another!
This week...due to popular demand (and pretty good sales), the
first superhero created
specifically for 3-D...
Captain 3-D!
In the early 1950s, "3-D" using red and green prints of simultaneously-shot movie footage from cameras a couple of feet apart. (note: sometimes blue was used instead of green, but the stereotype of 3-D is a red / green lens juxtposition.)
When a viewer wore glasses like these they would perceive the two projected images as a single 3-D image!
Taking comic book line art and modifying it to produce a similar 3-D effect was technically simple, so almost every company attempted at least one 3-D book between 1952-55.
Most were 3-D versions of
existing comics including
Superman,
Batman,
Tales from the Crypt,
Tor, even
Katy Keene.
However,
Captain 3-D was the
Simon & Kirby
team's attempt to jump on the 3-D bandwagon with NEW material.
A disheveled, stranger stumbles into a seedy used bookstore.
He hands a book and pair of weird glasses to the young clerk, warns him to never sell it, just as a gunman comes in and shoots the stranger, disintegrating him.
The clerk, Danny Davis, disarms the gunman, who flees and is shot by an associate waiting outside.
Danny puts on the glasses and looks thru the book, which is blank except for an illustration of a costumed man which jumps from the page and stands in front of Danny.
Before another word is said, the associate gunman returns...with allies!
The costumed man defeats the group with ease and tells Danny to look at them thru the strange glasses.
Danny sees the attackers as cat-people!
As it turns out, the costumed man is the last survivor of an advanced civilization wiped out in a war against the Cat People 50,000 years earlier.
Placed in the book by advanced technology, he is brought to life by the holder of the book and glasses to battle the Cat People, who were all but wiped out, but who now have sufficient numbers to try to conquer the world again!
A cool premise and nice set-up, playing up the use of glasses to both empower the hero and perceive villains. (The movie
They Live!
used a similar gimmick)
Unfortunately, a
legal battle involving the 3-D process all but killed the financial viability of producing 3-D books, and, though material was already finished, there was never a second issue of
Captain 3-D!
Due to your interest,
Captain 3-D will be a permanent part of the
Atomic Kommie Comics™ lineup.
The only question being; where do we put him?
First appearing in 1953, he's definitely
after the Golden Age (1938-1949), but a couple of years
before the earliest of the Silver Age (1955-1969) heroes!
Or, since we're doing an entirely-
new section dedicated to 3-D in movies and comics, we'll put him
there! (Oops! did I say that out loud?)
and Zorro
work I'm constantly plugging) is bringing his pulp/noir-stylings to DC Comics' flagship title...Detective Comics!
translated a few of Silver Surfer's
soliloquies into his native French; and there were also a few pungent paragraphs about our heroes which were intoned by radio personalities Alec Bennett and Earl Doud, by actors Rene Aberjonois and Chuck McCann (you've seen the latter a zillion times as the 'Hi Guy' neighbor on the other side of the medicine cabinet in those Right Guard commercials), and neo-journalist Tom Wolfe
, resplendent in red, white, and blue as he read about - you guessed it - Captain America
.
- but some more Marvel Madmen got into the act, too, as Hectic Herbie and Bashful Barry Smith plunked a couple of wild electric guitars while Rascally Roy Thomas belted out a rousin' rocker or two!
and first Hulk film
are the most obvious aspects, with sound effects spelled out, and the screen broken into panels.
! 
created by the lengendary Go Nagai
) this flick is just as lunatic, just as filled with visual cues derived from comics/manga and video games as Scott Pilgrim!
