ALTER EGO #151

It’s The Owl! The Eye! Dr. Hypno! Solarman! Fantom of the Fair! These are just some of the fabulous Golden Age heroes drawn by Frank Thomas, whose life and times are celebrated by Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt’s Michael T. Gilbert! Also: from Captain Midnight to Korak—from Magic Morro to Magnus, Robot Fighter—the scintillating (and often offbeat) Golden & Silver Age super-heroes of Western Publishing’s Dell & Gold Key comics, annotated by Stuart Fischer! Art by Manning, Ditko, Kane, Marsh, Gill, Spiegle, Springer, Norris, Santos, Thorne, et al.! Plus FCA, Bill Schelly, & more!

Frank Thomas is a nearly forgotten artist who really did some great work in the Golden Age. The Owl was a great hero, cover featured on dozens of issues of Crackajack Comics. His daughter helps fill us in on his comics career and beyond.

Every single superhero of Dell and Gold Key gets a full page feature on their origins and career. From the 1940s to the 1980s, these two companies created some of the most unusual heroes in comics.

My Life in Little Pieces continues the off-beat autobiography of legendary DC writer John Broome, whose work on characters from Green Lantern to Adam Strange is amongst fans’ favorites. Bill Schelly wraps up his interview with sci-fi author Ted White about his early days as first a comics fan, then as a professional in the field, writing paperback adaptations of superheroes like The Avengers and Captain America, as well as his first fan pieces in the early days of fanzines in the 1960s.

Tributes to fallen creators this issue look at Rich Buckler, Len Wein, John Calnan and Doug Fratz. In The Fawcett Collector, long-time fan Mike Tiefenbacher simplifies the complex but fascinating subject of "Comic Copyrights, Public Domain, and the DC That Might Have Been." When Fawcett gave up in 1954, what if DC had simply picked up the entire line and continued Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family under their auspices. It's not as far-fetched as you might imagine. How it would have changed the Silver Age origins!

This is THE magazine about the Golden Age and Silver Age of comics...from behind the scenes. It features fine new interviews with creators, new discoveries in the world of comics history, eulogies to artists who have left us, and much more.

Additional regular features include author Bill Schelly, who explores fandom history in his ongoing Comic Fandom Archive. And The Fawcett Collector explores all things about the world of the Marvel Family and Fawcett comics, the company who gave DC a run for their money from 1940 to 1955.