The Gil Kane Punch of the Week 41: I Bend Steel and I Break Braggarts!

DC Comics Presents Annual 3 (1984) is the gift that keeps on giving ... punches, that is! When is it going to stop?



As usual, plot by Roy Thomas, script by Joey Cavalieri.

The Gil Kane Punch of the Week 40: Out of the Panel and through a Building!

Once again, from DC Comics Presents Annual 3 (1984), written by Roy Thomas and Joey Cavalieri. This time, Superman gets backhanded by a Sivana-driven robot:



That's 3 so far from this one comic. Can I go for more? I think so.

The Exciting Return of the Gil Kane Punch of the Week! Episode 39: Knuckle Under!

In an earlier Gil Kane Punch of the Week, supplied by Mike Sterling of Progressive Ruin fame, I featured a page from the 1984 DC Comics Presents Annual 3, written by Roy Thomas and Joey Cavalieri. At the time, I didn't have a copy of the comic, but I have since gotten my own, and I've discovered that the thing is wall-to-wall punches! So, I decided to get some more mileage out of this great issue.

Here's a particularly awesome set of panels, where a Shazammed-up Dr. Sivana fashions some kryptonite brass knuckles (as opposed to brass kryptonite knuckles) and delivers the Earth-1 Superman a devastating blow:



I would not mind seeing more of these kryptonite brass knuckles.

The Gil Kane Punch of the Week 38: All-Request Punch!

In the comments for last week's punch, faithful reader Sea-of-Green made a special request for more Gil Kane Spider-Man punches. And since I desperately want to retain what remaining readers I have, I feel that I need to honor such requests when they come my way.

Unfortunately, I thought I had tapped out the Spider-Man punches I had with this classic, frequently reprinted one from "The Death of Gwen Stacy." However, in going through the trade collection of that story, I came across this flashback panel, from Amazing Spider-Man 96, "--And Now, the Goblin!" written by Stan Lee and inked by John Romita Sr.:


It's a little disappointing that, in this classic story, Gil Kane only included two signature punches, though the later one linked to above is pretty epic. However, this story is loaded with Gil Kane Crazy Floating Heads, so when I get to that feature after the punches run out, you'll be seeing a lot of sweaty, stoned Harry Osborn with pills and heads floating around him.

The Gil Kane Punch of the Week 28: My Presence Has Been Announced!

This week's Gil Kane punch comes from Detective Comics 390 (Aug. 1969; reprinted in Showcase Presents: Robin the Boy Wonder Vol. 1), in a story titled, "Countdown to Chaos," written by Mike Friedrich and inked by Murphy Anderson.

During this period, Robin had a backup series in Detective, usually alternating with Batgirl. In this particular story, young Dick Grayson and his intrepid colleagues at the Gotham High Owl uncover some corruption involving a new school annex and a teachers' strike. The bullies that Robin takes out are really mob enforcers disguised as a gang from a rival high school, but Robin sees through their disguise due to the gang's suspicious ability to grow facial hair.

This story is pretty punch-a-rific, so you'll probably see it come up again in a future entry.

Halloween Countdown Day 20: Gil Kane Style 3!

Following "Comes a Warrior" in House of Mystery 180, readers were treated to a second Gil Kane story, which seemed to be commenting on the previous one. "His Name Is ... Kane!" written by Mike Friedrich and inked by Wally Wood, tells the story of an egotistical comic artist named "Gil Kane," who is too good for the work he is given, and to punish his hubris, he is pulled into his own art!

Kane often drew himself into his stories, especially Silver Age Green Lantern and Atom stories, where Kane would suddenly appear at his drawing board, giving the reader some information during a pause from the action. Here, though, he's clearly letting the piss get taken out of himself for this story.

There's a nice little detail on the splash page, where, in the background, we can see a signed portrait on the wall that reads, "To Gil From Eli." Of course, "Eli Katz" was Gil Kane's real name, so the implication here is that he signed this portrait to himself.

Kane is sucked in to his own story, where he has to do battle with some of the crazy beasts he's created, including what looks like the dragon from the previous story. However, he grabs onto Rangarry's sword and battles the beasts on his own. And while Kane does draw himself as one of his signature screaming floating heads, he does not draw himself delivering a patented Gil Kane Punch, which is the one disappointment in this otherwise awesome story.

The story then flashes back to an earlier time, where editor Joe Orlando is chastising Kane for being late 13 times in a row.

Kane's complaints about his inkers may have been based on real events, as Kane was never very happy with the inkers he had while working for DC in the Silver Age, including Sid Greene and Vince Colletta. However, I can't imagine Kane was dissatisfied with Wally Wood's inks on this or the previous story, as Wood's inks complemented Kane's pencils better than any other inker but himself. And this reference to Kane making it big as a publisher references Kane's failed attempt at self-publishing the previous year, the the awesome comic magazine His Name Is ... Savage! (hence, this story's title as well).

Looking to get away from these harrassing phone calls, Kane finds a quiet place to work at the House of Mystery, where the host, Cain, has a studio already set up for him.

However, Kane can't even find any peace here. as Orlando tracks him down, and they have it out.



I particularly love this reference to Kane's "research for [his] private outside character"--the hyperviolent Savage--which leads Kane to kill Orlando and dispose of the body, causing him to get further behind on his deadlines.

Kane wakes up from an exhausted nap at his drawing board to find a team of small, balding assistants working independently on his art.


(I'm thinking that these miniature assistants are meant to look like DC publisher and former Kane studio-mate Carmine Infantino, but I may be wrong here.)

The artist is then sucked into the page, where he faces a new set of demons, who look a bit like Joe Orlando and Mike Friedrich.

The story ends with Cain entering the studio and finding it empty. Left on the drawing board, however, is an awesome piece of Gil Kane original art, which Cain quickly frames and hangs on the wall, trapping Kane beneath the glass forever!

I've always wondered what the story is behind this story. Kane had to have a good sense of humor to participate in this, yet a lot of the digs at him seem pretty genuine. In a late interview that Gil Kane did with Gary Groth for Comics Journal, Kane suggests that this story, titla and all, was written before he was signed on as artist, but I find it hard to believe that Joe Orlando would have gone with a different artist on it. Still, if anyone out there knows any more about the genesis of this story, I'd be interested in hearing about it.

Halloween Countdown Day 13: More Gil Kane Style

For this week's Gil Kane story, I've picked "Comes a Warrior," from House of Mystery 180 (May-June 1969), and, like the previous House of Mystery story, this one is also inked by Wally Wood. However, unlike any other Gil Kane story I've covered so far, this one features a rare occurence of a Gil Kane script!

Kane, who was an intensive autodidact, taught himself many of the classics and was particularly fond of opera. "Comes a Warrior," therefore, is a bit of a riff on Beowulf and Wagner's The Ring cycle, which Kane would adapt later in his career, with the help of Roy Thomas on scripts.


The story opens with a young Nordic warrior named "Rangarry" (short for "Rangarry Ran Ross") brandishing a sword through a lightning storm, which can't possibly be safe. Rangarry has been riding around for years looking for adventure that would help him build his reputation as a warrior. If it's taken him years to do this, he's either very picky about what constitutes a worthy adventure, or he's just not looking in the right place. I mean, I've technically spent "years" looking for the perfect Philly cheese steak, but my search has been limited to a couple of places in South Carolina. I wouldn't necessarily call that a "quest."

Rangarry arrives in a small, deserted village, where he senses the danger that he's longed for. Suddenly, a man attacks him, claiming the warrior is a demon in disguise.


After being offered a taste of Rangarry's blade, the attacker realizes he's got things wrong, and he goes on to explain that the village was devastated in an attack by an evil dragon and its "foul spawn."

The dragon looks a lot like the Basilisk that Kane and Wood drew in the story I covered from issue 184 last week.

Eager to get his adventuring out of the way, Rangarry sets up an elaborate trap for the dragon. Then, in an awesome full-page spread, he gets the dragon to follow him.


The dragon falls into the trap, and Rangarry puts the beast away with a well-placed sword to the neck.


However, in the usual House of Mystery fashion, there is an ironic twist coming. It turns out, despite appearances, the dragon was a good guy, guarding a temple that was imprisoning demons and keeping them out of the human world. The dude who attacked Rangarry earlier was one of these demons who had managed to sneak out, and now all his bretheren are freed.

Feeling ashamed, Rangarry just lets the demons kill him, thus dooming mankind to their wrath.

"Comes a Warrior" also serves as a set-up for the next story in this issue, which happens to be one of my favorite Gil Kane stories of all time. This, I'll be covering next week!

Halloween Countdown Day 6: Gil Kane Style!

During the Halloween Countdown, I'm going to change up the Gil Kane Punch feature. Instead of just showing a specific punch, I'm going to cover a horror comic that Gil Kane drew. And often, these don't involve punching, but they are still awesome.

The first one is titled "The Eyes of the Basilisk," from House of Mystery 184 (the same issue that featured Alex Toth's story "Turner's Treasure"), written by E. Nelson Bridwell and inked by the great Wally Wood. "The Eyes of the Basilisk" demonstrates that dynamic art can elevate an otherwise mediocre story.

The tale opens in the mythical kingdom of Karinek, where four young herdsmen named Dikon, Jalk, Adro, and Wark are lazing about in a field while their cattle roam free. Suddenly, the cattle are all killed by a frightening, serpent-like creature known as a Basilisk, which has the ability to kill with its gaze.

Three of the stupidly named characters are killed by the Basilisk, while Jalk gets away to warn the rest of the kingdom of the serpent's attack.

The creature terrorizes the town to the point that the king, Lundru, consults his "chief wise man," Canthros (Jesus, I hate these stupid fantasy names). Canthros explains to the king that, while he may have 99 problems, the Basilisk ain't one.

Actually, the Basilisk is one of only two problems the king apparently has, the other being an unmarried daughter, Princess Adeen. Canthos explains that Lundru can kill two birds with one stone: offer the princess as the prize for defeating the Basilisk. Coincidentally, this is exactly how I solved a landscaping problem I had earlier this summer.

Word gets out that any man who kills the Basilisk will score a hot princess, so a bunch of douchebags give it a shot, and they all fail.

Eventually, word of the challenge gets to "Dursus the Clever" and his brother, "Ulfar the Afflicted." It sucks enough being the brother of Dursus the Clever, but then to be stuck with the epigram "the Afflicted," especially when no one goes on to explain what the affliction actually is. It leaves too much to the imagination.

Dursus decides that all the other men failed because they weren't clever enough, and he devises a plan where he will use a polished shield to serve as a mirror, so he doesn't have to look directly into the Basilisk's eyes.

This plan does not work at all.

So, who's the clever one now?

Ulfar is stricken with grief at the loss of his no-longer-clever brother, and he decides to take on the Basilisk in order to get revenge, despite the "affliction." Ulfar then uses a mirror to shine in the Basilisk's eyes, thus turning the deadly gaze back on the creature.

The Basilisk dies, and as promised, Ulfar gets the hand of Princess Adeen. Adeen is excited because Ulfar turns out to be pretty hot himself. He then goes on to explain why he was especially suited to defeating the creature, which gives us the story's ironic twist:

Quietly, the king replaces Adeen with his even-more-unmarriable daughter, Ugleen.

But seriously, Wally Wood's tight inks on Gil Kane's pencils are just fantastic here, and the Basilisk itself looks pretty awesome. Kane did a lot of work for the DC mystery titles in the late 60s and early 70s, even though the bulk of his work at the time was done for Marvel. We'll be picking up some more of these great stories in the coming weeks.

Remember that Time that Batman Almost Fathered the Master Race?

In doing the extensive research required to bring you the weekly Gil Kane punch, I often have to read through Gil Kane stories that are surprisingly punch-free, or, at the very least, light on the distinctive punches that I need. Nonetheless, this research often bears fruit in other ways, as when I recently re-read one of my all-time favorite Batman stories: "Flyer" from Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight 24-26 (1991-92), written by Howard Chaykin, drawn by Gil Kane.

When this story first came out, I had already been a long-time fan of Howard Chaykin's work, especially American Flagg!, which I read when it was first published, despite the fact that I was probably way too young to read it. Needless to say, I was excited to see Chaykin's take on Batman. And this is definitely a Howard Chaykin Batman comic.

"Flyer" opens with an apparently naked Bruce Wayne meditating in the Batcave, when Alfred interrupts to inform him that meditation time is over. The story takes place 18 months after Bruce first appeared as Batman, and Alfred is still treating this like a phase his employer will soon be over. Alfred asks, "Isn't it really time to put away the horned hat, the music hall suit, and get down to some serious heir making?" As we'll see, there is a nice little bit of foreshadowing in Alfred's question. Also, I like that Alfred wants to see Bruce Wayne make some babies.

Bruce blows off Alfred and heads off on patrol instead. After stopping the mugging of a husband, wife, and young son that look oddly familiar, Batman is attacked by a strange, mechanized flying man. Batman defeats him, and in a pretty stupid move, he takes the flyer to the Batcave for study. There, Batman administers sodium pentothal in order to get this guy's story.

It turns out that the flyer is Curtis Eisenmann, whose parents were an American Army officer and the daughter of a Nazi rocket scientist. Anyone who has ever read anything by Howard Chaykin will know that he's got a real thing for Nazi women, so when he introduces Brigit Eisenmann, we have a pretty good idea where this is going.

After her own father died in American custody, she continued his scientific research for the American space program, which was one of the few areas of employment available to Nazi immigrants in postwar America, and thus, there weren't a lot of "Nazis are stealing our jobs" protests at the time.

Being a Nazi and all, Brigit Eisenmann turns out to be a pretty terrible mother. She treats her son like some kind of genetic mistake, so in order to prove himself to her, he becomes a helicopter pilot for the Gotham City police department (huh?).

He has the bad luck to be on the job the night the Gotham PD goes after Batman, as seen in Batman: Year One. The swarm of bats Batman calls up cause Curt's helicopter to crash, leaving him maimed and barely alive. His mother, always ready to to make lemonade out of her worthless failure of a son, decides to use him for her latest cybernetic experiments, and she commands him to capture Batman, with the promise that once he proves himself to her, she will work to make him normal again.

At this point, with all this exposition out of the way, the story moves into batshit crazy Howard Chaykin territory. You see, Brigit Eisenmann has been watching reports of Batman on TV, and these reports have been stirring up feelings in her that she hasn't felt in years.

So, she plans to capture Batman in order to rape him and then breed the perfect Aryan human.

You know, there are many times I say to myself, "They don't make Batman stories like this anymore," but that's mainly in nostalgic reference to Bob Haney Brave and the Bold stories or great Denny O'Neil stories where Batman clocks a bunch of thugs with a bag full of ocelots. This is the only time I've said it in reference to a story where Batman is threatened with rape.

"Mrs. Eisenmann, are you trying to seduce me?"

And, to make matters worse, Mrs. Eisenmann totally fails at the dirty talk.

Clearly she's out of practice, but to be fair, that incest shit used to knock 'em dead back in the Fatherland.

With her efforts to arouse him yielding no results, she decides to get rough.

Yes, Chaykin actually has her say, "Lie back and enjoy it."

Wait a minute! What did that next issue box say?

Oh, man.


That being said, this story does provide us with one of the great lines in Batman history:

Instead of getting down to business, however, Brigit proceeds to torture Batman in order to make him more compliant. It seems that this is her version of foreplay.

Batman's been crucified and electrified, but he still manages to come up with just the right thing to say.

Also, I love Batman's narration on this next page.

Of course Bruce Wayne likes his women a little crazy, but he draws the line at Nazis.

Curt, who feels neglected because his mother is devoting so much attention to her new beau, enters the torture chamber and decides to get all Oedipal up in this place.


Anyway, Batman proves to be more of a man than the Eisenmann family can handle, and he escapes as Curt self-destructs, taking his mother with him. Batman decides, at this point, that his caped-crusading days are no longer fun, and he goes off to compose his letter to Penthouse Forum, from which we get this story's narration.


By the way, Batman, what's you're favorite Rolling Stones song?

Really, I figured you'd be more of a Let It Bleed man.