One of the books I dug out to scan the other day was HERO FOR HIRE #1.
Damn. One of my FAVORITE series of the early 70's! I figured, why
not... I dug out the first 4 issues (SO FAR!) and have re-read them
all for the first time in decades. There was soooooooo much CRAP
coming out from Marvel around that time. It seems as soon as Martin
Goodman was out of the picture, Stan Lee went on a mad crusade to
FLOOD the freakin' market in an effort to drive everyone else (DC
especially) out of business. But among the junk, there were some
amazing gems, and checking the Bullpen Bulletins page, I see they were
all hitting at once. You had GHOST RIDER (Gary "burnout" Friedrich &
Mike "Will Eisner" Ploog)! You had the REAL Sub-Mariner, courtesy of
his creator BILL EVERETT (20 times better than what came before,
though, I confess, I NEVER SAW a single issue of this until 2 years
ago-- shocking)! And you had this thing...

Now it seems Roy Thomas had SOMETHING to do with it (maybe it was all
his idea??) as did John Romita (let's face it, he had a thing for
shirts open to the waist-- especially on the women-- nudge nudge).
But the people on the front line were ARCHIE GOODWIN (who almost never
wrote a bad story in his life), GEORGE TUSKA (some love his stuff,
some DON'T in the extreme) and the real oddball, BILLY GRAHAM. Man,
I LOVE Billy Graham's work. He inked most of the first 2 years on the
book, and PENCILLED about 1/3rd of them himself. Talk about offbeat
art combos-- I know what Tuska & Graham look like separately, but
together, Graham's inks (finishes?) are SO overpowering, it makes me
wonder, WHAT the heck did it look like BEFORE he inked it? WHOA!

When I think about the comics I was reading back then, it does seem to
me HFH had a HUGE effect on what I was writing, the same way getting
ahold of reprints of the Kane-Finger-Robinson BATMANs did. (An aside:
the origin of Robin-- THE REAL origin of Robin-- to this day is one
of my ALL-TIME favorite Bat-stories. So watching BATMAN FOREVER this
week, it hit me harder than ever before, just what a complete INSULT
that entire movie, every single frame of film, really was!!! DOWN
WITH Joel Schumacher!!!)

My FAVORITE Goodwin episode of HFH was his last-- #4. Yeah, he only
ever did 4, don't ask me why (maybe he got a better-paying job at DC,
I dunno...). "Cry Fear... Cry PHANTOM!" Now this is funny... there
was a purple-robe-wearing villain called "The Phantom" on the 1967 G-L
SPIDER-MAN cartoons, in "Fifth Avenue Phantom" and "The Dark Terrors".
(Another aside: only 2 appearances, and probably the SAME actor gave
him 2 COMPLETELY different voices!!! First he was menacing, then he
had a lisp and sounded rather effeminite... of course, we never saw
his face, maybe it was 2 different guys under the robe?) So, is this
a case of a cartoon villain being re-created in the comics? (Except,
of course, there was a "Phantom" in an IRON MAN episode in SUSPENSE
before the cartoon, so... hmm...) Anyway, it said "The Phantom of
42nd Street", so again you have a street in there somewhere...

Billy Graham did the full art on #4, which no doubt helped make it one
of my favorites. To be honest, as good as the Tuska-Graham team was,
PURE Graham is how I would have preferred it. This was also the only
issue Archie wrote that didn't continue from or into another issue--
and I LIKE stand-alone complete-in-one-issue stories.


I'll probably be pulling out the rest of the run... after all, my
favorite writer of the 70's, Steve Englehart, took over with #5.
EVERY issue was fantastic, in its own way, right up until Steve left
and they renamed the book POWER MAN (yawn). My FAVORITE comic ever
written by Len Wein was the 1st issue after the name change, mainly
for the scenes where Luke Cage is trying to decide on a flashier name
to call himself than just "Hero For Hire". After that, Len fizzled...
then Tony Isabella proved he didn't know what he was doing (yet). I
think Don McGregor DID know, but he went thru so many artists in so
few months, there was NO consistency at all. (Don't you HATE when
that happens?) And Marv Wolfman... don't get me started. Bad writing
dragged even further down by bad art. Oy. It's a miracle the book
wasn't cancelled a lot sooner, and only a brief stint by Claremont &
Byrne and a name and format change saved it.


Anybody else have memories of this series? Or some other early-70's
book that stood above the pack?

smile


Henry