Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Wanted TPB: Super Powers Omnibus

Writer: Joey Cavalieri, Jack Kirby, Paul Kupperberg, and various.
Artist: Adrian Gonzales, Jack Kirby, Carmine Infantino, and various.
Publisher: DC Comics (1983, 1984, 1985, and 1986)
Includes:  Super Powers Mini-Comic Collection, Super Powers #1-5, Super Powers #1-6, and Super Powers #1-4

Description of each mini-comic can be found at these links: 1-8, 9-16, and 17-23

Clipped from Wikipedia 
History: In 1984, DC Comics awarded the master toy license of their characters to Kenner Products, hot on the heels of Mattel's "action feature" heavy He-Man toy line. The initial pitch seemed to be heavily influenced by Kenner's popular Star Wars toyline with multiple playsets with individual franchises for Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Teen Titans, Lois Lane, and the Super Jrs. Winning the license away from Mego Corporation and Mattel with their emphasis on action and art, Kenner devised hidden mechanisms within the figures that would trigger an action when the figure's legs or arms were squeezed. This emphasis on each figure's "super power" led to the naming of the line - The Super Powers Collection. Each figure in the first two series were also packaged with a mini-comic featuring that character's adventures.

DC Comics produced three comic book mini-series featuring characters from the toyline, one during each year of the toyline's existence. The first series of comics in 1984 was plotted by Jack Kirby, who also provided covers, who went on to pencil the second series. The third and final series was penciled by the legendary Carmine Infantino.


These comics were separate from the continuity of the regular comics featuring the characters. Hanna Barbera also produced two animated series (a refreshing of the venerable Super Friends concept), called Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show and The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians.

Fun Fact: With his Apokolipsian New Gods characters like Darkseid judged ideal antagonists for the line, comic creator Jack Kirby received some of the only royalties of his long career for redesigning his characters for Kenner. Artist George Pérez also received royalties for his design of Cyborg and redesign of Lex Luthor. Ed Hannigan had already redesigned Brainiac in Action Comics the previous year (June 1983). Most other designs (and much of the packaging artwork) were based on José Luis García-López' classic DC Style Guides (other artwork used appears to be the work of Dick Giordano, who was known to ink Garcia-Lopez' art for the publications, and Mike DeCarlo). 


Dork Note: The Jack Kirby Omnibus Vol. 2 does include - Super Powers #1 - 5 (Vol. 1) and Super Powers #1 - 6 (Vol. 2), but not the third volume or the mini-comics!

2 comments:

Snapper Carr said...

Yes! I'm surprised DC Comics doesn't do this particularly because they just released updated toys and the return of different flavor stories/universes via Convergence.

Neil A. Hansen said...

I would get this collection if ever available!