CSBG Archive
Silver Age September – The Debut of Magnus, Robot Fighter!
After a month of spotlighting the strange (if endearingly strange) history of comic books (and especially the Silver Age), I think it is worthwhile to show the comic books of the Silver Age that are simply great stories period. Here is an archive of all the Silver Age comics features so far!
Today we take a look at the debut of Magnus, Robot Fighter in the pages of (appropriately enough) 1963′s Magnus, Robot Fighter #1. The comic was written and drawn by the legendary Russ Manning!
Enjoy!
Russ Manning created the character of Magnus and wrote and drew the comic for 21 issues. They were some amazing comic books.
Check out how he begins #1 with the ball already rolling…
As you can tell, Manning was really pushing the Tarzan angle right from the get-go (the comic strip that Manning had become famous for drawing).
Manning was such a brilliant sequential artist – check out the action in these scenes…
It’s amazing how straightforward and simple his lines are, and yet so dynamic and forceful. He was a master.
Here’s Magnus’ origin from the issue, which is also the issue where he first meets his love interest, Leeja Crane…
Fabulous stuff. Really, all of Manning’s Magnus work was top-rate. Heck, pretty much all of Manning’s work PERIOD was top-rate!
14 Comments
Dean
September 5, 2011 at 11:42 pm
Bendis should start more of his comics with guys punching robots in the neck.
P. Boz
September 6, 2011 at 12:07 am
I’ve read some of Manning’s Star Wars strips and they were good. This is even better. Everything just pops.
Rob Schmidt
September 6, 2011 at 12:31 am
In the future, everyone wears skirts.
Travis Pelkie
September 6, 2011 at 12:52 am
Wow, this is great stuff. I love how it melds Asimov’s laws of robotics with a play on the Tarzan story. So cool.
Typo hunter me has to point out that you put her name as “Crane” and not “Clane”.
If you dig this, you should hunt down the Magnus/Nexus 2 issue mini that Valiant and Dark Horse did in, oh, ’93, ’94? Baron and Rude, and The Dude’s stuff is just about as awesome as this.
I wonder, is the way that robots are depicted here an influence on how robots are depicted in Judge Dredd? Not just the shapes and all, but the “naming” of the robots and-the-stilted-way-the-robots-talk.
Third Man
September 6, 2011 at 3:13 am
Good stuff here.
And for anyone that hasn’t read them, I’ve always thought Jim Shooter’s first 11 issues of the Valiant Magnus series are some of the best comics of the 90s. Absolutely fantastic stuff that deserves to be in hardcover.
The Dude
September 6, 2011 at 6:18 am
@Third Man: I agree, they were great! And I’d say that when John Ostrander took over writing duties it got even better.
sandwich eater
September 6, 2011 at 7:03 am
Have these stories been reprinted in any form recently?
I LOLed when 1A called Magnus Man-Child.
Craig B.
September 6, 2011 at 1:14 pm
Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Loved this stuff.
Bill Reed
September 6, 2011 at 9:01 pm
Yeah, this comic is just about a guy in a skirt karate chopping robots to death, and it is excellent.
Travis Pelkie
September 7, 2011 at 1:49 am
@sandwich eater: I believe that Dark Horse has been reprinting a lot of this stuff in Archives books. They’ll run about 50 bucks, but it looks like it’s worth it.
And Bill commenting makes me think: Magnus vs Atomic Robo. ooh!
azjohnson5
September 7, 2011 at 6:09 pm
Russ Manning is criminally overlooked as a creator these days. He was Steve Rude before Steve Rude, Mike Allred before Mike Allred. Nice to seehim get a tiny taste of the recognition he so woefully deserves!!!
David Fullam
September 10, 2011 at 10:56 am
Never forget Gold Key!
F Dawson
September 14, 2011 at 5:08 pm
This … is … gorgeous. I have to ‘fess that I’ve been ignorant of Russ Manning until now. So much to love here … the typeface on the title page, the mise en scene (love the air cars!), the gorgeous girls, the lovely clear lines. If I’m picking nits the one thing I don’t love is the square speech bubbles. Thanks so much for hipping me to this.
Jim Kosmicki
September 18, 2011 at 7:50 am
Dark Horse has published a trade paperback reprinting several of the early Magnus issues at a very reasonable price. I was surprised at how many of the early issues I had read as a youth. It had to have been in the many reprints of the material that Gold Key published in the 70′s.
the one problem is that like many older comic books, there is a formula to the stories. The publishers assumed that their readership turned over every three years or so, and Gold Key published most of their books as bimonthlies or quarterlies, no matter how popular they were. Thus, the stories tended to be similar after a while. So if you get the collections, read them slowly, one story at a time, as they were intended, and you’ll appreciate them even more.