Julius Schwartz edited both The Flash and Green Lantern, which meant that at some point somebody was going to notice the two men worked in the same building.
Flash #131, cover-dated September 1962, is where that noticing becomes visible on a cover. A yellow tractor beam has Barry Allen off his feet. Hal Jordan is watching it happen with his ring up, and the thought balloon says what he cannot do about it — the beam is yellow. His single weakness has become the Flash’s problem. Two solo franchises, suddenly load-bearing for each other.
“Captives of the Cosmic Ray!” runs as a book-length novel rather than the title’s usual pair of shorter stories, which tells you how much the issue was meant to matter. John Broome writes. Carol Ferris and Tom Kalmaku come along from Coast City, so it is not only the hero crossing over but the world attached to him — the thing that turns a shared publisher into a shared universe.
Carmine Infantino and Joe Giella draw it, and Infantino’s cover is a study in leaving things out: a washed pale sky, a single hard wedge of yellow light, two figures, no clutter anywhere. He had a designer’s instinct for what could be removed.
The interior ads date it precisely — Superman Annual #5, Batman Annual #3, Lois Lane Annual #1, and a half page for Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey, with Superman personally recommending the rides.
This copy grades CBCS 8.5, Very Fine+, with off-white to white pages, which is a considerably better state of preservation than most 1962 newsstand comics managed.
Julius Schwartz edited both The Flash and Green Lantern, which meant that at some point somebody was going to notice the two men worked in the same building.
Flash #131, cover-dated September 1962, is where that noticing becomes visible on a cover. A yellow tractor beam has Barry Allen off his feet. Hal Jordan is watching it happen with his ring up, and the thought balloon says what he cannot do about it — the beam is yellow. His single weakness has become the Flash’s problem. Two solo franchises, suddenly load-bearing for each other.
“Captives of the Cosmic Ray!” runs as a book-length novel rather than the title’s usual pair of shorter stories, which tells you how much the issue was meant to matter. John Broome writes. Carol Ferris and Tom Kalmaku come along from Coast City, so it is not only the hero crossing over but the world attached to him — the thing that turns a shared publisher into a shared universe.
Carmine Infantino and Joe Giella draw it, and Infantino’s cover is a study in leaving things out: a washed pale sky, a single hard wedge of yellow light, two figures, no clutter anywhere. He had a designer’s instinct for what could be removed.
The interior ads date it precisely — Superman Annual #5, Batman Annual #3, Lois Lane Annual #1, and a half page for Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey, with Superman personally recommending the rides.
This copy grades CBCS 8.5, Very Fine+, with off-white to white pages, which is a considerably better state of preservation than most 1962 newsstand comics managed.
