Archie Comics anticipated the superhero resurgence of the 1960s. But being ahead of the curve didn’t do the publisher much good.
Archie followed close behind DC Comics in introducing new Silver Age superhero titles, putting The Double Life of Private Strong on newsstands in April 1959. This comic book revamped and revived Archie’s Golden Age superhero the Shield in the same way DC had revamped and revived the Flash in 1956.
Although a lawsuit threat from Superman quickly put this version of the Shield out of business, the new superhero title Archie introduced in May 1959 — Adventures of the Fly — ran for several years, spawning a second, similar title — Adventures of the Jaguar — in June 1961.
Strange as it may seem to younger readers now, I was quite excited to see the Fly and the Jaguar. We superhero fanciers were relatively starved for content before the advent of Marvel Comics. Beyond the handful of superheroes published by DC, all we had were the Fly, Fly Girl, the Jaguar and Charlton’s Captain Atom.
The Fly and Jaguar titles ran out of steam in 1963, but in June 1964, Archie followed up with The Shadow. That comic book remained somewhat faithful to the famous pulp and radio superhero for its first two issues, but then turned its protagonist into a figure in flashy tights who had springs in his boots.
Why? Because by 1964, the colorful figures of superheroes were pushing aside more mundane comics on the newsstands.
In June 1964 alone, DC put 14 superhero-related titles on the stands, and popular new Marvel Comics published 11. Even Charlton Comics got in the act with The Blue Beetle.
So in March 1965, the Fly returned in his 31st issue, now called Fly Man. The name change was undoubtedly intended to suggest a parallel with that immensely popular new character, Spider-Man.
Fly Man acquired some new powers — he could now grow to gigantic size — and a bunch of new partners.
DC and Marvel’s successful revivals of 1940s superheroes had not gone unnoticed, so Archie reached into the archives and pulled out the Black Hood, the Web, Steel Sterling, another Shield and the Comet (who’d originally been murdered, but since when did a superhero let mere death stop him?).
Unfortunately, the art by Paul Reinman was indifferent, and the faux-Stan Lee writing by Jerry Siegel was painful.
Siegel seemed to glory in the sheer absurdity of the twists in the random events that I guess could be described as plots. I have to wonder if this wasn’t an expression of his bitterness toward a thriving comic book genre that he had essentially co-created, and which had given him relatively little in return.
By the end of 1966, Fly Man’s title had become Mighty Comics, featuring rotating stars — the Web, the Shield, the Black Hood and Steel Sterling. That experiment lasted 11 issues before the Archie superheroes went back into limbo, the also-ran victims of an uninspired, haphazard artistic approach as well as the campy “capelash” that followed the Batman TV show.
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