Customer Reviews

Mighty Crusaders: Origin Of A Super Team (The Red Circle Series)

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Let me start off by saying that reading this book will make you laugh long and hard - not because the stories are intentionally funny, but because they are so overwhelmingly absurd. It's a product of the times, however, and it is an essential part of your comic education.

Every company that could was riding the superhero wave of what is considered the Silver Age of comics. DC, Marvel, Charlton, Gold Key, et al, were drowning us with men in tights. Not to be outdone (in THEIR minds, at least) Archie Comics decided to stray from their standard fare with the creation of the Mighty Comics Group, giving us brightly-garbed heroes such as Fly-Man, Fly-Girl, The Black Hood, The Comet, and The Shield. These characters united to form the Mighty Crusaders. While these stories never touched Mighty's competitors in terms of quality, they more than made up for it in unintentional laughs.

What am I talking about? Well, how about the fact that Fly-Man seems to have more powers than the entire Avengers roster - is there anything he can't do? The Black Hood rides into combat on... a flying robotic horse? The Comet's costume, designed by Peter Max? The hilariously snide comments and forced confrontations between team members that substitute for characterization? I had to put the book down several times in order to compose myself. Don't let this deter you, however: the writing, for all its faults, is very creative, so thumbs-up to Jerry Siegel (yes, THAT Jerry Siegel). Paul Reinman's art is razor-sharp and very reminiscent of Mike Sekowsky, which was a big selling point for me. His layouts could be compared to early '60s Kirby. This collection includes FLY MAN #31 - 33 and MIGHTY CRUSADERS #1, originally published in 1965. The art has been restored, and the coloring is amazingly vibrant on bright white paper.

When I discovered these stories in a used book store in the early 1970's I was 12. I recognized even then that their storytelling style, dialog, and art had been bypassed by the then current relevancy movement, the hyper realism of Neal Adams, and horror stories of Berni Wrightson. But they had a old fashioned charm that made me feel as if I had found some unknown treasure. I had three friends who also read comics, and none of them had ever heard of these characters. Over the next year or so, I was able to pick up the run of FlyMan presented here as well as Mighty Crusaders and Mighty Comics (which continues on Flyman's numbering with issue 40 as I recall). Rereading these comics 30 years later still made me feel like I had discovered a long lost treasure, this time though it was a part of my youth.

These stories are completely appropriate for kids of almost any age (5 and up I would say). Compared to today's comics (or other contemporary comics for that matter), the art is somewhat rough and not particularly pretty. And the stories certainly harken back to simpler times. The dialog is funny, even though I am not sure that it was originally meant to be. But all that said, these stories are like a time capsule back to a different time in the history of comics. A time that is cherished by fewer and fewer fans as time goes on .


Buy it for yourself and think back. Or buy it for a son or nephew, or daughter or niece. They may just enjoy seeing how comics used to be as much as I did as a 12 year old.

Remember the 1960's, and the way the artistic credibility of Marvel Comics, and the startling success of the Batman TV show, led every comics publisher in the United States to launch their own super-hero titles?
Well, the Mighty Crusaders weren't the very worst, but they were pretty darn close. Reviving obscure, in some cases already twice-failed, super-heroes owned by the publishers of Archie Comics, the adventures of "Fly Man" and his compadres - Fly Girl, the Shield, the Comet, and the Black Hood - were written by Jerry Siegel, co-creator of Superman, in an infinitely incompetent pastiche of Marvel Comics' slangy, heroes-with-problems style.
Illustrations were provided by Paul Reinman, whose work at Marvel, chiefly as an inker, was deemed inexplicably to qualify him for the task. His characters possess all the lithe grace and agility of a sack of potatoes as they lumber leadenly across the pages.
It's kitsch; it's naff; it's actually, in parts, physically painful to read. But it's perversely compelling, and for all the wrong reasons, it's a must-have item!
Buy it, read it, and then listen in quiet bewilderment to the sound of your brains dribbling out of your ears...

Ever read a Marvel comic that is supposedly "realistic" because the superheroes have personal problems and agonize over every little decision they have to make, yet all the problems are caused by the characters themselves rather than originating elsewhere, and all would go away if the characters just acted like normal humans do? F'rinstance, if Spider-Man didn't lug around the guilt over his Uncle Ben's death since HE DIDN'T ACTUALLY CAUSE IT? Or if Daredevil just TOLD KAREN PAGE THAT HE LOVES HER TOO? Of if Captain America got over Bucky's death 20-odd years earlier and WHICH HE PLAYED NO PART IN ASIDE FROM BEING PRESENT? Most people have better-adjusted psyches than that.

Well, Archie Comics' Silver Age superheroes were created for those of us who realize that all the tropes of Marvel Comics are ridiculous, and so the Archie characters have over-the-top problems and goof on all the Marvel cliches. Super heroes meet for the first time? They fight! The Web has to sneak out of his own house because his wife forbids him to be a superhero! Steel Sterling can't hold down a job!

All played for fun with a wink at the reader.

What larks!

I have always felt the Archie/Red Circle/Impact set of super heroes were being wasted. These heroes would be better spent integrated into the DC Universe than in the failed Impact line of comics from the early 1990's. These characters have stretched from the Golden Age (The Shield pre-dated Captain America as a patriotic hero) to the modern age, but never have they mattered (except maybe the Golden Age Shield).

This graphic novel is from the Red Circle era and places all the main heroes into one super team. Fly-Man, The Comet, The Shield, The Web, and others are written in high, dumbed down, camp. If you thought the 1960's Batman television series was campy, it has nothing on the Red Circle era heroes. The stories have plot holes big enough to fly a jumbo jet through, the villains and heroes are both laughable, and the comedy is awful. Such of waste of potentially good characters, but you wouldn't know it from reading this.

Ithe book contains the "fly-Man" comic book in which three superheroes from Archie comics/MLJ comics past come to the aid of Fly-Man and Fly-Girl against Fly-Man's ach nemesis The Spider.

The Shield (Comics first patriotic superhero), The Black Hood (Man of Mystery), and The Comet are three superheroes from te Golden Age of Archie Comics back when the company was called MLJ Comics in the 1940s.

The characters were spun off into a superhero team comic book series called "the Mighty Crusaders."

the stories were always written with young readers in mind, bu in January of 1966, the Batman TV series debuted on ABC and hit big overnight. Many of the comic book companies wanted to hop on the bandwagon and decided to go camp with their superhero comic book titles. This included Archie Comics. (Marvel Comics was basically the only comic book company that did not follow this trend).

Included in this book is a Mighty Crusaders story in which suddenly a number of MLJ Comics superheroes from the 1940's come crawling out of the wood works. They all want to become members of The Mighty Crusaders. When The Mighty Crusaders tell them that there are way to many candidates, the candidates erupt into an all out brawl. You have superheroes with similar powers fighting against each other saying how could this cheap knock-off even consider wanting to join The Might Crusaders.

When The craze over the Batman TV series (Batmania) subsided, "The Might Crusaders" like many other comic book titles of the time lost popularity and sales and were canceled.

Like I said, "the Mighty Crusaders" were written back in the 1960's with young readers in mind, so this book is also good for young readers.


SIDE NOTE: The Shield and MLJ Comics was responsible for Captain America's shield being changed to the disc shaped shield in "Captain America #2"

Upon seeing the firs issue of "Captain America," MLJ Comics had their lawyers send a cease and desist order. MLJ Comics claimed that Captain America's original shield looked like the shield on the costume of their patriotic superhero character, The Shield.

This set is a good way to jog the memories of kids who were growing up in the 1960s. While they never reached the popularity or quality of storylines of Marvel or DC superheroes, the adventures of Fly Man and his buddies, the Mighty Crusaders are still fun and pieces of Americana. If you enjoy classic Silver Age comics, you will probably enjoy this collection - or maybe your kids or grandkids will.