{"id":170,"date":"2022-12-16T15:21:41","date_gmt":"2022-12-16T20:21:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.opendoor-comics.com\/unbagged\/?p=170"},"modified":"2025-01-08T20:39:23","modified_gmt":"2025-01-09T01:39:23","slug":"mail-call-for-12-16-22","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.opendoor-comics.com\/unbagged\/2022\/12\/16\/mail-call-for-12-16-22\/","title":{"rendered":"Mail Call For 12.16.22"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There’s a non-comic book about comic book history that takes us all<\/em> the way back “Before Watchmen” in my latest Mail Call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
The Charlton Companion<\/em>
by Jon B. Cooke
TwoMorrows Publishing<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I read a lot of Charlton comics as a kid – mostly horror comics – but almost all of them came in mystery packs, and I don’t remember ever seeing new<\/em> Charlton comics on the stands along with books from DC, Marvel, Harvey, Archie, or even Gold Key.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a time – probably around the time Charlton actually went out of business – that my parents went away somewhere for a couple of days and when they came back my mom had a big box full of comics that she’d picked up from some secondhand bookstore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were almost all comics from Charlton, featuring colorful characters I’d never heard of before, such as Captain Atom, Judomaster, Blue Beetle, and E-Man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were probably more issues of E-Man<\/em> than anything else, and those were probably the books I enjoyed the most. One of these days I’ll get around to rebuilding my collection of E-Man<\/em> comics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And maybe also my Doomsday + 1<\/em> comics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I most likely missed\/skipped over the Meanwhile…<\/em>column by Dick Giordano that covered it at the time, or else forgot about it, but I was very surprised in early 1985 when I saw Blue Beetle making an appearance in DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths<\/em>, as I wasn’t aware that 1. Charlton had gone out of business or 2. DC had acquired the rights to many of the Charlton characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A bit after Crisis<\/em>, some of those Charlton characters were properly introduced in the new DC Universe with their own books and\/or as cast members in other books, and, of course, they would serve as the inspiration for some of the characters in Watchmen.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plan was to actually use the characters in Watchmen<\/em>, but as I understand it, the late Dick Giordano – who had worked at Charlton and was responsible for introducing their line of “action heroes” before becoming an executive editor at DC – intervened, as he felt there could be a place for the characters in the DC Universe and using them in Watchmen<\/em> would make it impossible to incorporate them into the main continuity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(This idea of keeping Watchmen<\/em> entirely distinct from the main DC Universe is one that people like Geoff Johns and Giordano’s successors at DC would eventually toss out the window.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, I saw this book in my recommendations the other day, so I decided I might as well snag it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Born and raised in the sparsely populated Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Jon Maki developed an enduring love for comics at an early age.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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