KAMANDI, BATMAN & JIMMY OLSEN

BACK TO BACK IN THE

JULY 1973 B-7 DC SUPER PAC
 
 
 
 
At the same time as the superhero genre was enjoying a hugely successful comeback in the early 1960s, the comic book industry was rapidly losing its traditional sales points. Small stores that had carried comic books were being pushed out of business by larger stores and supermarkets, and newsagents started to view the low cover prices and therefore tiny profit margins comics had to offer as a nuisance. Comic book publishers desperately needed to open up new sales opportunities and tap into new customer bases, and some of these potential buyers could be found at the very supermarkets and chain stores that were threatening the traditional sales points. But in order to be able to sell comic books at these locations, the product had to be adjusted.
 
Handling individual issues clearly was no option for these outlets, but by looking at their logistics and display practices, DC Comics found that the answer to breaking into this promising new market was to simply package several comic books together in a transparent plastic bag - so they came up with the Comicpac concept in 1961).

This resulted in a higher price per unit on sale, which made the whole business of stocking them much more worthwhile for the seller. The simple packaging was also rather nifty because it clearly showed the items were new and untouched, while at the same time blending in with most other goods sold at supermarkets, which were also conveniently packaged.

  
 
Supermarkets were even supplied with dedicated Comicpac racks, which enhanced the product appeal even more since the bags containing the comic books could be displayed on hooks in an orderly and neat fashion.
 

  It almost became an entirely different class of commodity, and offered parents (and their kids) the opportunity and convenience to pick up a few comics at the same time they were doing their general shopping.

"DC's focus [for the Comicpac] was on both the casual reader and the parents and grandparents who were looking for gifts." (Wells, 2012)

DC's "comicpacks" were a success, and other publishers quickly started to copy the concept.

"The DC [comic packs] program lasted well over a decade, with pretty high distribution numbers." (Paul Levitz, in Evanier 2007)

By the early 1970s, DC relaunched their comic packs, calling them DC Super Pacs, and they continued to sell well, containing regular news stand editions.
 
 
DC handled its multi-comic packs in a very structured and organised manner, and a specific pack would always carry the same titles and issues no matter where or when it was sold (rare packaging errors aside). The digits (1-12) referred to the month and the letters (A through D) marked the four different packs produced each month. "B-7" therefore denotes the second July SUPER PAC, in this case from 1973. Up until April 1973 the cover dates of comic books would match up - a March SuperPac would contain comic books with a March cover date (or either a February/March or March/April cover date for bi-monthly titles). But the 1973 B-7 SuperPac was different - it contains Kamandi #28 with a July cover date along with Brave and the Bold #108 and Jimmy Olsen #159, both with a cover date of August 1973.
 
Cover dates had always been a tricky thing, being around two to three months ahead of the actual month of publication in order to provide a longer shelf life at the newsagents, but things got even more confusing at DC when the May 1973 production run rolled around.

"Cover dates on comics didn't match magazine dating norms, and by 1973 Marvel's cover dates made them appear newer than DC's, so DC decided to skip using May 1973 and go straight to June." (Levitz, 2010)

By dropping May cover dates completely, DC extended the gap between cover month and actual sales month from two to three months (as was the case with Marvel's titles). This little tweaking procedure of course meant that there were only 11 monthly cover date slots for 1973 titles - the SuperPac coding, however, continued without any change and thus made it fall out of sync with the cover months as of SuperPacs A/B/C/D-5..

  
 
The SuperPac coding sequence was in fact never adjusted, creating a continuous ripple effect which meant that as of the May 1973 SuperPacs the code referring to the month was off by one month - a situation that would continue until April 1975, when DC, after a four month hiatus, relaunched its SuperPac comicpacks as "DC Super Stars".
 
No titles had permanent slots in the SUPER PACs, although there was a high level of consistency with DC's flagship characters (the SUPER PACs of 1973 contained complete runs of Superman and Batman as well as the Batman team-up title Brave and the Bold). But since sales points could vary a lot with regard to their supplies and selection of SUPER PACs, the availability of specific titles was never guaranteed - but that was something many comic book readers in the 1970s had to put up with anyway, whether their comic books came packaged in a plastic bag or as single issues from a display or spinner rack. But since DC's editorial at large still very much embraced the "single issue, done in one" storyline principle during the early 1970s (rather unlike their major competitor Marvel), it often didn't even matter in which sequence you read your copies of Batman or Superman.
 
 

 

KAMANDI #8

August 1973
 (monthly)
On Sale: 10 May 1973

"Beyond Reason" (20 pages)
 Story - Jack Kirby
Pencils - Jack Kirby
Inks - Mike Royer
Colours - Jerry Serpe*
Lettering - Mike Royer

Editor - Julius Schwartz
Cover - Jack Kirby (pencils) & Mike Royer (inks)

*suggested by letters page in Our Fighting Forces #159 (September 1975)

PLOT SUMMARY - Kamandi encounters a captive human being treated as a pet, which provokes his angered frustration - and also puts him on the wrong side of authority in the Lion-Men's realm. Sent away, Kamandi meets a marauding bear-man...and old friend Ben Boxer.

 
 
Jack Kirby's post-apocalyptic epic adventure featuring "the last boy on Earth" portrays a world devastated by a largely unspecified "Great Disaster" which thereafter is ruled by bipedal animals altered by radiation and the after-effects of previous genetic experiments. Whilst a few scattered groups of mankind remain, they have regressed into savagery and lost both language and intelligence, and are now mostly kept as slaves or pets by apes, tigers, dogs, rats and others. Kamandi and a few others have survived in shelters and retain the traits of homo sapiens - but face an alien and dangerous new world.

The concept proved a great framework for presenting stories which were at the same time almost stand-alone and yet set in a developing overall saga.

"The sprawling, innovative series is a real gem, one of the most creative and underrated comics of the 1970s, and perhaps the best of Kirby's DC canon." (Parker, 2011).

It certainly was the longest running of Kirby's DC titles, lasting from October 1972 to September 1978 over the course of 59 issues before falling victim to the infamous DC Implosion.

  

 

  Jack Kirby had left Marvel Comics in 1970 for DC Comics, increasingly frustrated and ultimately angered by what he perceived to be an intentional and continuous denial of credit for his share in creating much of the Marvel Universe. DC promised him not only full credit but also full artistic freedom, the result of which was Kirby's "Fourth World" meta-series, a blend of classic mythology and science fiction.

For some it was the ultimate comic book saga, whilst others perceived it to be overly convoluted and confusing. Ultimately, the latter group seemed to be in the majority at the time, as Kirby's work didn't sell near as well as DC needed it to (Stump, 1996).

Kamandi however was popular and a good seller from the get go (Sacks & Dallas, 2014), and the title went from bi-monthly to monthly publication as of issue #3.
 
Also right from the start, Kamandi's overall concept was likened by many to the core elements of Planet of the Apes, sometimes leading to accusations that Kirby had plagiarised the movie - which were entirely unfounded, as Mark Evanier (Kirby's California-based assistant and adjunct script writer at the time) points out.

"I was actually in the room for most of the creation of Kamandi and I wrote up the presentation and first issue plot synopsis based on Jack Kirby's ideas - and they were Jack Kirby's ideas. Carmine [Infantino] asked Jack to give him something similar to Planet of the Apes, Jack hauled out an unsold newspaper strip he'd done in the fifties called Kamandi of the Caves and proceeded to alter it to suit Infantino's request." (Evanier, 2013)

Using the famous Statue of Liberty scene from the movie on the cover of the first issue didn't help in any way, but this was entirely Infantino's idea (Evanier, 2022). Jack Kirby had initially planed Kamandi to be a title he would edit, produced by another writer and another artist (Evanier, 2022), but by the time Kamandi #8 rolled around, Kirby was still doing both - and would continue to do so up to Kamandi #37 (January 1976).

  

 


Jack Kirby
(1917-1994)

   Having witnessed the cancellations of his Fourth World titles, Kirby's disappointment with DC grew, and in March 1975 he signed a contract to return to Marvel once he would have fulfilled his remaining obligations with DC.

Aware that Kirby was leaving, DC assigned Gerry Conway as editor as of Kamandi #34 before making him full writer/editor on Kamandi #38-40, which would be Kirby's last three issues on the title. DC would also no longer commission covers from Kirby from this point on, most likely to lower any association of Kirby with DC on newsstands and keep his deaprture as silent and low-key as possible.

Kamandi #59 (September–October 1978) was the final issue to be published, whilst two additional issues, completed but not released due to the DC implosion (which saw 40% of the publisher's line cancelled), were ultimately included in Cancelled Comic Cavalcade #2 (Fall 1978).
 
  Kamandi was an ideal candidate for DC's comic packs and was included regularly. 10 issues of the title were published in 1973 (#3-12), of which seven (#4 and #8-13) were included in a DC SuperPac.
 
 

 

BRAVE & THE BOLD #108

August/September 1973
 (bi-monthly)
On Sale: 8 May 1973

Editor - Murray Boltinoff
Cover - Jim Aparo (pencils & inks)

"The Night Batman Sold His Soul!" (22.5 pages)
 Story - Bob Haney
Pencils. Inks & Lettering - Jim Aparo
Colours - Tatjana Wood

PLOT SUMMARY - During a hostage situation at a farm far away from Gotham, Batman is shot and left for dead in a well - from which he is however saved by a mysterious shadowy being right after Batman had thought he would give his soul to get out of the situation alive. When he meets the mysterious old man - whose face he cannot see clearly - again in Gotham as Bruce Wayne, he is not only told that the shadowy figure knows his secret identity, but that a bargain was struck at the farm and that he now owes his soul to evil.

 
Chasing down the limping figure (who nevertheless moves very fast) down an alleyway he bumps into a now silver-haired Sgt. Rock - who to Bruce Wayne's utter disbelief reveals that he believes that Adolf Hitler is still alive - and that he is in fact that shadowy figure. Batman and Rock track him down to Germany, but although the two manage to destroy his operations and a secret hideout, the mysterious figure manages to make his escape, leaving a frustrated Rock to continue his hunt - and having a broody Batman wonder if it wasn't Hitler but rather the Devil himself...
 
 
Robert G. "Bob" Haney started working in the comic book industry in 1948 and joined DC in 1954, where over the next 30 years he scripted just about every sort of comic book DC published (Evanier, 2004).
 



Bob Haney
(1926-2004)

   Sometimes called "Zany" Haney, he was actually one of the few people at DC who already by the mid-1960s

"understood that Marvel was successfully reinventing the super-hero comic for the current generation" (Evanier, 2004)

Haney tried to bring some of that "Marvel flavour" to the stories he was writing for DC, and that included his very own (and sometimes completely off-beat) version of Stan Lee's hyperbole. But most importantly he understood that readers expected the comic books they were buying to connect with them. Whilst he could not make DC look like an exclusive secret club the way Marvel portrayed itself, addressing readers as "faithful ones" was definitely a step in the right direction.

Haney was also keenly aware of the fact that the content itself had to change, and as a result his stories often cared very little about the conventionalities of the DC Universe and would sometimes even write stories which outright contradicted them.

 
 
In doing so, Haney could whip up tightly plotted scripts just as easily as throwing out extremely loose plots with more holes in them than overall sense. The yarn he conceived for Brave and The Bold #108, however, is undoubtedly a showcase piece highlighting both his unconventional ideas and the prowess he could apply to pull off something completely outside of the box..
 

 

"The Night Batman Sold His Soul!" (spread out over the three chapters "The Old Man from Nowhere", "Under Evil's Banner", and "Welcome to Hell!") starts out with a conventional Batman situation, but then quickly turns into a fog-shrouded mystery.

Haney then sends the Batman and Sgt Rock on a wild chase with plenty of punch and action, before finally not really ending at all, as the Batman ponders the philosophical and moral question of whether we sometime do the devil's work with the best of intentions - and evil therefore never really goes away.
 
It is, of course, slightly ludicrous, but Haney keeps the plot tight and carries the mystery and the suspense at the core of this story right up to the final panel: who is this mysterious figure? Could it really be Hitler, as Rock has us all believe? Or is it some manifestation of evil (perchance even the devil), as Batman seems to think? Haney doesn't supply readers with an actual answer, but this never feels like a cheap way out of a plot corner - it actually elevates it.
 
It was also the way Haney felt readers wanted the Batman to be, and he found the perfect artist for this venture in Jim Aparo.

"I wanted the spooky dark night Batman image of his original days. Such artists as Neal Adams and the redoubtable Jim Aparo brought this vision to panelled reality." (Bob Haney in Best of the Brave and the Bold #5, 1988)

  
 


Jim Aparo
 (1932-2005)

   Haney was always greatly helped by Jim Aparo, who provided reliably stellar artwork which made the stronger plots shine and often rescued the weaker ones.

Brave and The Bold #108 was definitely different in terms of settings and storytelling, but since Aparo was no stranger to mysteries (illustrating, for example, the Phantom Stranger) it all came together just perfectly.

Jim Aparo had started working for Charlton Comics in 1966 (as one of very few artists who would pencil, ink, and letter their work) before moving on to DC in 1968 (where he worked almost exclusively for the remainder of his career).

What started out as a fill-in job for Brave and the Bold #98 (October 1971) turned into an impressive run as the principal artist for the title throughout the Bronze Age - ultimately pencilling almost all of the second one hundred issues of the title.
 
 
  Brave and the Bold was included regularly in DC's SuperPacs, and all 6 issues of the title published in 1973 (#105-110) could be found in a DC SuperPac, potentially providing a full 1973 run if you could find the corresponding comic packs (A-1, A-3, A-5, B-7, A-9, and A-11).
 
 

 

JIMMY OLSEN #159

August 1973
 (monthly, with the exception of April, May, July and September)
On Sale: 10 May 1973

Editor - Murray Boltinoff
Cover - Nick Cardy (pencils & inks)

"The Arena Of Death" (10.5 pages)
Story - Leo Dorfmann
Pencils - Kurt Schaffenberger
Inks - Kurt Schaffenberger

"A Grave-Digger For Jimmy Olsen" (5 pages)
Story - Leo Dorfmann (as David George)
Pencils - Kurt Schaffenberger
Inks - Kurt Schaffenberger

"The Day They Unmasked Mr. Action" (7 pages)
Story - Leo Dorfmann (as David George)
Pencils - Kurt Schaffenberger
Inks - Kurt Schaffenberger
 
 
PLOT SUMMARIES - (1) The Star of Cathay magically transports Jimmy back to ancient Rome where he becomes Spartacus and leads a gladiator revolt. (2) Jimmy Olsen is accidentally saved from three different attempts to end his life by a gang named Gravediggers Inc. (3) Jimmy Olsen and the Masquerade Squadron capture Max the Actor.

Jimmy Olsen made his debut not in a comic book but the Superman radio show in 1940, before appearing for the first time in Superman #13 (November-December 1941). In September 1954 he got his own title, Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen, which ran for a total of 163 issues up until March 1974. In tune with the period, the series initially revolved around its protagonist undergoing all kinds of transformations, including Elastic Lad and Giant Turtle Man.

"Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen is a resolutely strange series, albeit one that was incredibly successful for two decades thanks to the lasting appeal of Superman (...) In keeping the series vital for so long, editor Mort Weisinger steered directly into the strangeness of things, regularly deforming his lead character in absurd ways and having him face plots whose dreamlike logic doesn’t stand up to even a cursory examination." (Brevoort, 2023)

Rather famously, Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen was the lowest selling DC title of all when Jack Kirby came to DC from Marvel in early 1971, prompting Kirby to pick it for himself because the series was without a stable creative team and he did not want to cost anyone a job (Wallace & Dolan, 2010).

Kirby had hoped to give his new Fourth World concepts greater exposure to potential buyers through Jimmy Olsen. But it also proved to be the first of many instances where Kirby came to realise the limitations which DC would put on his (promised) artistic freedom, as all of the Superman and Jimmy Olsen faces were redrawn by Al Plastino and later by Murphy Anderson:

"Infantino authorized re-drawing Superman’s head as drawn by Kirby, claiming that it was necessary to preserve the value of the licensed Superman characters, and noting that Kirby himself had no qualms with DCs decision to change his work." (Stump, 1996)

This evidently all happened before Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #159, at which moment in time Kirby had been off the book for a good year (he left the series with issue #148 in April 1972). DC then tried to get Jimmy Olsen back on track, because

"The sales of the Kirby issues plummeted and we hastened to revert to our traditional artists." (Carmine Infantino, in Stump, 1996)

  

 
Judging by the letter pages of that period, most readers wanted Jimmy Olsen to move away from both the pre-Kirby "gets himself in trouble, is saved by Superman" mould and the extravagant Kirby plots, and Leo Dorfman (who also used the name David George to hide the fact that he penned almost all Jimmy Olsen stories at the time) did seem to consciously try and move the stories back to a more conventional DC style.

It did work for readers to some degree, but not enough for the sales figures, and in less than a year's time Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #164 (April-May 1974) would be merged with Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane (launched in 1958) to form a new title, Superman Family (which continued the numbering from Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen). In that title, Olsen would finally become a more serious character who battled criminals as an urban investigative reporter known as "Mr Action", in crime stories that would rarely feature Superman.
 
  Jimmy Olsen was included frequently in DC's SuperPacs, and all but one (Jimmy Olsen #160) of the title's 7 issues were included in the 1973 production output of SuperPacs..
 
 
There were many things that set DC apart from Marvel in the early 1970s, but one very salient point was DC's lack of any regular editorial feature across its titles through which editors would communicate with their readership (as Marvel and Stan Lee did with their famous Bullpen Bulletins and Soapbox). DC's interaction with its fans and readers was mostly limited to the letters pages, whilst plugs for other titles almost only featured in in-house ads, as with these examples taken from Kamandi #8.
 

 

  But if you picked up this July 1973 B-7 SuperPac (or any of the three titles it contained individually from a news agent), things were slightly different as you were also promised a look "Behind the Scenes at the DC Comic World".

This was the second appearance of this one-page editorial feature (published in various DC titles from the July 1973 cover date run to the January 1974 cover date run), which clearly was one of several attempts made by DC at the time to catch up with Marvel and fill the communication gap with its readers.
 
Whereas the first "Behind the Scenes at the DC Comic World" featured information on DC's "Junior Bullpen Project", this time readers were filled in on what Jack Kirby and Joe Simon were doing at the time, with references to titles already published (such as Shazam, Kamandi, The Demon, Young Love, and Young Romance) as well as several plugs for up and coming new titles such as Prez, Black Magic (actually a reprint title edited by Simon, and part of DC's (futile) attempt to hit back at Marvel during the "war of the shelves"), and Sandman.
 
 
FURTHER READING ON THE THOUGHT BALLOON
 
 
  "Comic packs" not only sold well for more than two decades, they also offer some interesting insight into the comic book industry's history from the 1960s through to the 1990s. There's more on their general history here.
 
  An overview and analysis of all the 1973 Super Pacs is available here.
 
  You can read more about the 1973 "war of the shelves" between Marvel and DC here.
 
 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY
 
BREVOORT Tom (2023) "WC: Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #77", tombrevoort.com, published online 4 June 2023

EVANIER Mark (2004) "On the Passing of Bob Haney", published online 7 December 2004 on News from Me

EVANIER Mark (2007) "More on Comicpacs", News From Me, published online 2 May 2007

EVANIER Mark (2013) "More about Carmine Infantino", News From Me, published online 6 April 2013

EVANIER Mark (2022) "Team-Up Comics and Kamandi", News From Me, published online 3 October 2022

LEVITZ Paul (2010) 75 Years of DC Comics - The Art of Modern Mythmaking, Taschen

PARKER John (2011) "Comics we love: 'Kamandi, the last boy on Earth'", Comics Alliance, published online 28 September 2011

SACKS Jason & Keith Dallas (2014) American Comic Book Chronicles: The 1970s, TwoMorrows Publishing

STUMP Greg (1996) “Infantino Raises Questions About CBG Letters Policy Following Kirby Controversy Flare-Up”, in The Comics Journal #191 (November 1996)

WELLS John (2012) American Comic Book Chronicles: The 1960s (1960-1964), TwoMorrows Publishing
 
 

 
 



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uploaded to the web 24 October 2026