Customer Reviews

Golden Age Doctor Fate Archives Volume 1 (DC Archive Editions)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

So it's all come full circle. My interest in Doctor Fate was piqued with the release of Roy Thomas's All-Star Squadron in 1981 featuring a surprising Doctor Fate with a truncated helmet and reduced powers. I was intrigued by a pair of interesting villains, Wotan and Ian Karkull. Now, over a quarter of a century later all the old Doctor Fate stories from More Fun comics are compiled in one oversized archive edition and appropriately enough the introduction is written by Roy Thomas. I have to say that the introduction was the best part of the book because the stories are a HUGE disappointment.

The collection starts off well enough with a fully powered Fate fighting strange otherworldy foes. These included aliens, mythological beings and Lovecraftian monsters. The stories were a bit flat but they were different. The main problem may have been that they were limited to about 5 to 7 pages which meant there was almost no time to develop the story. About half way through the archive Doctor Fate goes through a dramatic alteration. The writing and art change completely despite the fact that the stories were being produced by the same team. His helmet was chopped in half and over time he lost his shoulder pads, his cape and the little rectangle on his bottoms. I figure they had to stop the series because after another dozen or so stories he would have been naked.

Unfortunately Fate lost more than pieces of his costume. He lost his dignity. Gone were the mystical villains and alien life forms replaced by common thugs. Rather than weave mystical spells the new Fate would rather punch out his foes while spouting some of the worst one liners I have ever read. Gardner Fox is a legend but one of his bad habits was to latch onto a heroes one weakness and exploit it for everything its' worth. In this case after getting his truncated helmet Fate suddenly acquires an Achilles heel. He is unusually susceptible to anything that might impede his breathing. This can include a rope around the neck or even a seltzer bottle aimed at his mouth. Yes, Doctor Fate is taken down by a seltzer bottle and it seems that every single penny ante thug knows his weakness. To compound his problems Fate also seems to have a weakness to being smacked in the back of the head despite the fact that he endlessly crows about his immunity to physical damage including bullets.

Later in the archive Kent Nelson decides that since he calls himself DOCTOR Fate he should literally become a doctor and enters medical school. Around this time Fate started facing gangsters with odd facial features like `The Clock' and `The Frog' and `Mad Dog' McQuaid. So now Fate became a cross between Dr. Kildare and Dick Tracy and everything that set him apart as the master of mysticism was tossed out the window. I'm not even sure if at this point he was capable of flight. Rather than fly he appeared to be running in the air. At one point he was tossed into a hole and had to devise a plan to get out because he appeared to have no ability to fly. In later stories he is clearly able to fly. Go figure.

This collection is beyond bad, it's embarrassing. Just imagine Doctor Fate running around shouting "N'yah N'yah N'yah", getting squirted in the mouth with seltzer bottles and generally looking like a buffoon. He looks silly, he acts goofy and it's painful to read. On the other hand DC comics did a very nice job in compiling the collection. I'll give it a four for the nice hardcover archive and a two for the original material for a final score of three. If you're a big fan of Doctor Fate be warned before purchasing this collection. It's the rare fan that will love this one.

The long delayed Golden Age Doctor Fate is finally out. It's a very handsome volume that's been worth the wait. This one has a higher price point than most of the other DC Archive Editions, but that's only because it's got a much higher page count. Almost like getting 2 books instead of one.

Comparing the content to some of the other Archive Editions; this volume is pretty solid. The artwork is good, esp. the earlier stories, though not as good as the Golden Age Starman (which has the best artwork from the Golden Age books).

The stories are quite different than what we see today. The early Doctor Fate usually defeats his enemies by killing them, and in one story Fate destroys a entire planet of aliens by hurling it into the sun! That's beyond blood thirsty. Still, my vote for the most engaging of the Golden Age volumes story-wise is the Black Canary, whose stories hold up surprisingly well.

Recommended for those delving deeper into the Golden Age. I wouldn't start here, but it's an interesting follow up after reading some of the stronger titles and easily worth the admission price.

Without question, one of my favorite DC Archives. This volume is much larger than most of the other archive editions, and sports almost 400 pages of wonderfully reproduced comic book action.

What struck me immediately about this collection, is how it progressed counter to most of the other golden age super hero comics. Unlike Superman, for instance, Doctor Fate starts out fighting super bad guys and otherworldly threats (not just thugs and hoods). There is some really fast-paced and fun-loving action in the early stories, as Fate faces off against master of science and magic, such as Wotan.

Fate also doesn't play around, either. The doctor has no problem dishing out capital punishment to his adversaries in the earlier stories. He has a death count second maybe only to the Golden Age Hawkman, who was also OK with filling cemeteries, not jails.

The art from the early stories was weird and beautiful; almost a mix between Alex Raymond and Basil Wolverton. As the stories progress, the art becomes a little less interesting, and so do the stories; by the halfway mark, Fate fights less potent villains, and mixes it up more with run-of-the-mill crooks and criminals.

Another interesting element in this book is watching the gradual metamorphosis of Dr. Fate's costume. Like Batman, Doctor Fate's look was often revised during his early adventures. The strange tear-drop shaped golden helm soon melts into the more fin-topped helmet seen today; and his bare hands soon get gloves, to better fit the growing super-hero tradition. At some point, fate reveals some skin, and trades his full-face mask for a mouth revealing version. By the end of the book, he has also shed his yellow cape, and runs around in more of the two-fisted tradition.

There are also a lot of character changes as well. Fate starts off as a lonely, almost otherworldly agent, of mystic power, and speaks with an air of arcane authority. Though he adventures with his female companion and confidante Inza from the very beginning, it takes awhile, before we see the man under the helmet...Kent Nelson. Early in the book, Fate is given an origin, and made more human (and more accessible to readers). About the time he dons the half-helmet, Fate trades his authoritative speech, for a more wise-cracking tone.

This a great read. The stories are generally brief; great for those who don't have a lot of time to read at one sitting, and packed with fun. These stories are very different from today's comic book fare, and their exuberance just made me smile from ear to ear; I hope you do too.

It's great to have the golden age comics available. Some of the early stories are quite good. However, most of the stories here are just plain boring. Why was it so difficult for early writers to understand that it's not fun or interesting to see super-powerful heroes beat the living snot out of typical crooks? I GET IT! HE'S BULLETPROOF! Every story reminds us that Dr. Fate (he is a real doctor - he gets his degree in one of these stories)needs to breathe, just like everyone else. So now muggers come equipped with gas bombs. Dr. Fate jumps into obvious traps, inhales gas, reader gets bored ...

Muscly superheroes and supervillains are often captains; magical superheroes and supervillains are often doctors: so goes the unwritten code of the Golden and Silver Age superhero comic book, with the necessary caveat that there are exceptions (Flash villain Captain Cold being one of those exceptions that prove the rule).

Doctor Fate has one of the great Golden Age, four-colour superhero costumes, all blue and yellow with the yellow standing in (we assume if we're grounded in representational four-colour coding) for gold. He begins life as a sort of science magician, using "lost secrets of the Chaldeans and Egyptians" that are really super-science to battle an array of quasi-supernatural foes.

Fate's golden, full-head helmet stays exclusively on for the first year-and-a-half of his adventures, only coming off when he finally reveals his secret origin to oddly named gal-pal Inza Carmer. The removal of the helmet does not bode well, as Fate quickly gains a new half-helmet (the top half, btw) and a much less interesting career as a two-fisted crime fighter whose primary opponents are gangster types who wouldn't be out of place in a Batman and Robin story from the same era.

Then Fate (real name: Kent Nelson) becomes a 'real' doctor, by which we mean medical doctor and not Ph.D., loses his cape somewhere, and slouches towards a 17-year hiatus from superheroing. The first third of the book, in which Fox exhibits his love of 1930's science fiction and horror, is terrifically entertaining; after that, only the appearances of Professor Hugo Strange-like Mr. Who are really interesting beyond a historical sense. One of the oddest things about early Fate is that nowhere in these stories is there much support for later characterizations of Doctor Fate as a sentient, god-like helmet with a person pretty much just along for the ride. There's the real mystery.

This is a great archives chronicling More Fun Comics #55 - #98. Its a great book for any fan of Doctor Fate.