Comics need to stop being preoccupied with being "cool" or "serious" or whatever, and start being fun again.

I haven’t seen it, Graeme, but it’s come up before, and I thought I’d mention it: “I am Curious … Yellow” isn’t a porn film, it’s just Swedish. You know those crazy Swedes!

I've misremembered.(I haven't seen it either but was relying on my memory of Kanigher's own description of it) It's not a porn film, but it's certainly not "just Swedish"-- it's a (for the 1960s) a racy movie with explicit sex and full frontal nudity for both genders. It's still an odd choice to base the title of a comic book story on. (But then they also based the title of a Get Smart episode on it as well!)

http://www.tgcomics.com/modified/modcomics/jetdream04.php

Dare you read... "The Haunted Copter?"

I remember pitching Frontier to a couple stratospheric DC execs and trying to explain to them that it was Kanigher, NOT Schwartz that was the soul of DC's greatness.

They looked at me like I was the craziest man they'd ever met.

God bless Bob Kanigher.

Darwyn

Kanigher was certainly prolific and had some stunning moments but while he certainly produced some of comics greatest highs (The Metal Men, Enemy Ace, practically the entirety of his war comics) he also came up with some of the greatest lows as well. Lest we forget, it was Kanigher who gave us the infamous story where Lois Lane turns herself black. (And...titles it--"I am curious...black"--after a famous porn film of the era!) And his Wonder Woman stories had moments of sheer lunacy like Egg Fu and Wonder Tot, but it was also spectacularly mediocre for the most part.

And this was the guy whose idea for the world's first black superhero was for him to be actually a white Archie Bunker type who Jeckyll and Hyde-like becomes a black superhero. As you do. It's batshit crazy, like the aforementioned other aspects of Kanigher, only bad batshit crazy here.

I was fascinated to watch him completely dismantle Mike Sekowsky's "Diana Prince Wonder Woman"-- over four years worth of comics-- IN LESS THAN 8 PAGES. If he hadn't had a small touching moment with I-Ching (who seemed to dodge every single bullet and small ordanance hurled at him except the one that killed him) I would have accused him of being downright cold. And of course, he immediately gave Wonder Woman a black sister. I get the impression Kanigher was working out some issues...

Still, I love Enemy Ace and he also came up with Ragman, who is certainly one of my favourite characters of the 1970s.

If only they had let Kanigher and Kubert do Wonder Woman as a war comic, with frequent guest shots by Sgt. Rock, Cpt. Storm and Cpl. Punishment.

I wonder how close Dinosaur Island is to Themiscyra?

MR. MIND!

A reason to love comics! A caterpillar with designs on ruling the universe!

Incredible detail on the 'clix, too.

**********

DC heard our prayers:
http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=113816

Bob Kanigher AND Bob Haney!

And there is a Showcase for Atomic Knights and Hercules Unbound! That is BEYOND cool!

Best,
Hunter (Pedro Bouça)

He came up with really great plot ideas but had trouble developping them. His style, especially on SGT. ROCK and his war stories, would be to repeat and repeat, hammering down the main idea/theme of the story as if the reader was too stupid to get the first couple of pages. War stories that could have fitted nicely in a 4 or 5 pages story were sometimes spreaded pretty thin into 14 pages (or longer) tales.

But most of the times, I didn't mind at all reading Kanigher's redundant storytelling style because of the great artists that worked on those stories. Who would mind looking at more gorgeous pages from the brush of Joe Kubert or Russ Heath?

Very strong writer.

I'm always fond of Mark Waid's take on Kanigher's Wonder Woman run and its total lack of continuity. He mentions how you could have an issue devoted to the secret origin of Wonder Woman's invisible jet and then, eight months later, you'd have the secret origin of Wonder Woman's invisible jet. And the two stories would be nothing alike.

“Because Bob Kanigher?” Man, I wish we knew who came up with that one!

Eh, probably some loser blogger.

Cheers, mate.

Gerard Jones wrote on his book "Comic Book Heroes" that writers on the Silver Age were divided among those who wrote mundane fare, those who wrote batshit insane stuff and those who wrote really innovative comics (not exact quote). Some, like Stan Lee, could could write comics on more than one of those categories, but only Kanigher did work on all three!

Enemy Ace, for example, is a brilliant war comic, still impressive after all the time that has passed since its original publication, while, say, the War that Time Forgot is quite mad. Kanigher was able to do both things with ease! That's why he rules!

Best,
Hunter (Pedro Bouça)