Retro-Comics Return with a Bang!

Category: Retro-Comics
Last article published: 13 November 2011
This is the 4th post under this label

When I created the Retro-Comics tag, it was always with the intention of covering some Big Bang Comics, and then... I just didn't put my back into it. 10 years later, I'm ready to try. The brainchild of Gary Carlson, this anthology series, originally published at Caliber, was a pastiche of Golden and Silver Age comics (mostly), that was meant to retroactively feel like a universe that had been brewing since the 1940s. It seems natural that it be most analogous with DC Comics (and constituent parts, like Fawcett and Quality), with the only Marvel characters really referenced being those that existed in the days of Timely Comics. The last issue of the Caliber run did do a pastiche of 90s Image Comics to bring things into the present - just before the series would be picked up BY Image where it stayed for many years - but generally, the stories stuck to past eras.

And I do mean pastiche and not parody. While we could call Big Bang the DC version of the Alan Moore-penned 1963 series' Marvel, Big Bang really doesn't have the sort of mocking tone 1963 had. If not for the modern ads that helped pay the printing costs (and the price), most issues would believably pass for the real thing, even down to the slightly off 4-color separations it sometimes featured, fan club ads, one-page humor features, etc. It plays these comics straight.

But let's look at some of the characters from the first couple issues, set in the Golden Age of comics. First up is the Knight Watchman. He and his nemesis, Mr. Mask, sure do look familiar.

Of course, in reality, Mr. Mask is a guy who, after a chemical bath, becomes very pale, but can model his face like clay, so he's a combination of two Batman villains. That's obviously the elephant in the room - fashion designer Reid Randall is essentially the Dark Knight, out to avenge the deaths of his brother and sister-in-law rather than parents, keeping Midway City (but not THAT Midway City) safe. Like Batman, he would get a sidekick, Kid Galahad, and join both the Round Table of America on Earth-B (so, the JSA) and the Knights of Justice on Earth-A (the JLA). Batmania even helped him become Big Bang's most prominent hero, even getting modern-day comics in the modern style, where he's a dark anti-hero.

Next up is the Badge and his Rookies, which is sort of a Captain America riff, but by way of Guardian and the Newsboy Legion.

Roger Ryan is a Fed, recruited by J. Edgar Hoover as the first state-sponsored costume hero. There's a super-soldier serum (sorry, an "Ubermann formula") and a "shield" like a cop's. Of his sidekicks, Bobbie and Trooper, the latter looks a lot like Bucky, but the larger cast is definitely Newsboy-like. Amusingly, the Badge goes on to become Big Bang's answer to Nick Fury when Hoover's dream becomes a reality as B.A.D.G.E.

Wrapping up the first issue is Venus. Now, Timely had a Venus, but she's really Big Bang's Wonder Woman:

Like Diana, she springs out of Greek mythology (despite the Roman name) and even takes some of her iconography from Botticelli's famous painting - her sea-shell bracelet can turn into a protective shield (which is also a riff on WW's bracelets).

The first issue also had an ad for Thunder Girl - a Mary Marvel analog and member of the Whiz Kids (natch!) who shouts out the magic word "Alakazam!" - and a prose story starring the Beacon - Green Lantern with a magic lamp on his miner's hat - but what about the blue and yellow fella on the cover of Hi-Octane Comics? That's Big Bang's Superman, named Ultiman, and he doesn't get a story until issue 2.

Yeah, I know, he looks like Triumph. Though his origin story owes more to that of the Fantastic Four (at least on Earth-A, the Earth-B version was hit by a meteor while he was driving his car), Ultiman has the Kryptonian power suite with the numbers filed off - ultrastrength, laser vision, fluoroscopic vision, etc. His archenemy is a bald mad scientist who has a computer-linked brain (Luthor/Brainiac), but he's also fought Reverso (Bizarro).

Does the Big Bang universe have a Flash? Of course it does, one for each Earth as proper. He's caled the Blitz.

The Earth-A version is more Flash-like in appearance (yellow and red with lightning motifs), but they both get their powers from a Nazi lab. GA Blitz when he as captured and experimented on, SA Blitz when he found the lab in an abandoned cave.

One last one! Every superhero universe needs an Aquaman!

Looking very much like Bulletman, the Human Sub (so a touch of Sub-Mariner), later the Atomic Sub, is actually an android (ahhh there's our Human Torch) with the ability to fly and survive underwater.

And so it goes. Dr Weird? Dr. Fate and the Spectre. Blackjack and his Flying Aces? The Blackhawks. Mr. Martian? J'Onn J'Onzz. Protoplasman? Plastic Man. The Sphinx? Hawkman. The ol' JSA/JLA team-ups? The Criss-Cross Crisis. Big Bang Comics are like funny books from another dimension.

Have you ever experienced the Bang?