Bring On the Back-ups: "The Man Who Skyjacked Hawkman!" by Rozakis, Rogers, Austin, and Adams

Happy Holidays, Groove-ophiles! Here's hoping the cheer of the season is rocking on for ya! We're back today with the final Calculator back-up, this time featuring Hawkman! "The Man Who Skyjacked Hawkman!", from Detective Comics #467 (October 1976), uses a tried-and-true comicbook framing device (utilizing The Batman, himself) not only to tell its story, but to set up the grand finale (which you can read right here). Bob Rozakis is still rocking the writing, Marshall Rogers is making his mark with the art, and inker Terry Austin gets help from none other than Neal Adams. Hoo-hah!

Bring On the Back-ups: "Take Me Out OF the Ballgame" by Rozakis, Rogers, and Austin

Hey, hey, hey, Groove-ophiles! Have we got a good'un for ya today! Not only is this yet another chapter of Bob Rozakis' cool Calculator saga, but it's also penciler Marshall Rogers' dazzling debut (not counting one-page filler stuff), aaaand Green Arrow's first battle with our punchy, purple perpetrator (significant because The Calculator will soon be appearing on the Emerald Archer's live-action TV show)! From Detective Comics #466 (September 1976), here's "Take Me Out OF the Ballgame"! Who loves ya, baby?

Bring on the Back-ups: "The Elongated Plague!" by Rozakis, Chan, and Austin

Hey, hey, hey, Groove-ophiles! We're back with part three of Bob Rozakis' Calculator back-up/mini-series, this time inker Terry Austin is joined by penciler Ernie Chan (then Chua). Aaaaand, this time, our villain meets The Elongated Man! From Detective Comics #465 (August 1976), are you inoculated for..."The Elongated Plague!"?

Bring On the Back-ups: "Crimes by Calculation!" by Rozakis, Grell, and Austin

Dig it, Groove-ophiles! Way back in Detective Comics issues 463-468, writer Bob Rozakis and editor Julie Schwartz hit upon a novel idea: make a super-villain the star of Detective Comics' back-up feature. Rozakis teamed with artist Mike Grell, and they came up with The Calculator, a super-villain based on the then-popular, just made affordable pocket calculator. A fun, if silly (at least in retrospect) villain, the purple outfit with giant buttons and LED headgear looked kinda cool back in the day. The Calculator's powers were very Green Lantern-ish, which, coupled with his extraordinarily high intelligence, made him a pretty formidable baddie. The coolness factor was upped as we saw The Calculator battle a different hero each issue drawn by far-out artists like Grell, Ernie Chan, and that "new kid" Marshall Rogers, all awesomely inked by Terry Austin! Here's The Calculator's debut, featuring The Atom, "Crimes by Calculation!" from June 1976!

Watch for more of The Calculator in coming posts! Oh, and if you want the ending ruined for ya, go ahead and leap to the final showdown from Detective Comics #468...or wait and visit that link once you've read...the REST of the story!

Groovy Christmas' Past: Batman, Green Arrow, Black Canary, and more in "Battle of the Thinking Machines"

This week Ol' Groove is presenting only the best of the best comics published during the Christmas Seasons of the Groovy Age. The stories are not all Christmas or holiday themed, but they came out in December, and are all top-notch comics I bought either on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day (sort of a tradition, you might say). First up, Detective Comics #468's (December, 1976)"Battle of the Thinking Machines".

I love this comic! I mean, it's the full-fledged debut of art-team supreme Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin, man! They return with writer Steve Englehart a couple issues later for their legendary "Dark Detective" run (issues 471-476), but this is their oft-forgotten Batman premiere. Rogers and Austin had been providing the art (issues 466-467) for an innovative back-up series by writer Bob Rozakis in which a variety of heroes (Green Arrow, Black Canary, Hawkman, Elongated Man, and the Atom) each battled an oddball villain called the Calculator (Rozakis' creation). The stories all tied together and lead to those heroes teaming with Batman in this issue's grand finale. It's a really a blast. The kind of story you, sadly, don't see anymore in the regular Batman titles. Get ready to read seventeen pages of heaven featuring the real Batman, baby!