Category: Comic Books

I watched this Dragnet episode when it first aired in 1969. Being an overweight comic book fan and collector, it made me squirm.

The pitiful fan taking his cosplay too far was Tim Donnelly, who has passed away. He is best known as a regular on another Jack Webb production, Emergency!.

Today is Batman Day. How or when or by whom that was declared, I don’t know, but HBO Max has something nifty to celebrate the occasion. I’m listening to it now.

A comic book fan on Facebook has been posting Sunday installments of the original Superman comic strip, in sequence, from the 1940’s and 50’s. They were illustrated by the highly competent and prolific Wayne Boring.

In 1968, Boring was one of the DC artists whose drawing style was considered old-fashioned, and the publisher stopped giving him work. After a brief and unsuccessful stint at Marvel, Boring eventually settled for working as a security guard in Florida. A very un-super fate for one of Superman’s premier artists.

Wayne’s run on Superman, both in comic books and the syndicated strip, pre-dated The Adventures of Superman on TV, and it extended past the end of the series. This installment appeared on Sunday, June 14, 1959. Two days later, George Reeves committed suicide.

I was watching the TV show when I learned that Reeves had killed himself. I don’t know how old I was, but it’s unlikely I knew about it right away, because I was not quite yet four years old. I couldn’t have been older than six, because we were living in Wisconsin.

What I remember is my older brother telling me that Reeves thought he really could fly and had jumped out of a window. However old I was, I didn’t believe him, partly because I didn’t want to stop watching the show, and partly because my brother liked to tease me.