Tales From My Spinner Rack! Episode 11: DC Comics in the Swingin' 60s: The Go-Go Checks Gambit!
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- Опубліковано 30 вер 2024
- Tales From My Spinner Rack! Episode 11 explores the world of DC Comics in the mid-1960s, focusing on the year and a half when Go-Go Checks appeared on the top of each and every DC comic book!
DC Comics VP Irwin Donenfeld created the Go-Go Checks to make the publisher’s books stand out on the crowded newsstands. They first appeared right around the time the Batman TV show premiered on ABC, and while Go-Go Checks were supposed to help sales, the Caped Crusader was the strongest element on any book in which he appeared; Batman drove a huge sales increase for DC in the mid-‘60s. This video, which had its world premiere at San Diego Comic-Con 2024 on Thursday, July 25th, explores some of the books from the Go-Go Checks era, including my own personal favorite stories and new characters and concepts.
Please check out all of my videos here on the Official Tales From My Spinner Rack! Channel, featuring nostalgic looks back at the comics I loved growing up as a kid in the 1960s and ‘70s … everything from Bat-Baby to my recent two-parter on the Marvel Annuals from 1962 through 1968 (and a little beyond!). Remember … if you subscribe here on UA-cam, you’ll see new episodes up to 24 hours early as I publish the new videos before I post them on my blog. Please subscribe and turn on notifications on UA-cam to know when the latest episode is available. Every new follower helps, and I appreciate your interest!
Visit www.innocent-bystander.com for close to 40 Tales From My Spinner Rack! posts featuring nostalgic essays loaded with art and info about the comics I loved growing up in the 1960s and ‘70s!
Absolutly awesome, fascinating. A gift to ALL comic fans. As a 60 yr old collector myself, never saw anything so good!!
Thank you, David ... great comment!
Miss the 60's comics. They were so fun. The covers bright and beautiful. I miss them. So much darkness these days.
Another Fun episode Thanks
I purchased my first DC Comics in early June of 1966.: Superman #189 and Batman #183. Ten year old me couldn't run home from the candy store fast enough to read them! To this very day, 58 years later, the "Go-Go Checks" will always define DC Comics to me. Within a couple of weeks, I was reading every comic book that had Superman ( Superboy), and Batman on the cover. And then I discovered The Flash, Aquaman, Hawkman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, The Teen Titans, and The Metal Men! And THE JUSTICE LEAGUE of AMERICA! A ton of soda bottles were returned for spare change to support my thirst for these four-color wonders.
Thanks for rekindling some wonderful boyhood memories.
Great comment, thanks Joseph!
I'm more of a Bronze Age fan, but I do enjoy a visit to DC's Silver Age. Well done. Subbed.
Love your videos and this is another fun and informative episode! ❤
`Bwana Beast` sure is `bad`, but you ain`t seen bad until you clock `Brother Power the Geek`. Connoisseurs `o Badness would crawl Ten miles over broken glass for a copy of `Brother Power`!!
Yeah, Brother Power--all 2 issues--are pretty bad, but DC published it outside the Go-Go Checks era, although it would have fit right in!
Thank you for another entertaining video. Many fine memories were recaptured. I was surprised Lee Elias worked for DC, and Bernard Baily was still drawing comics this late. I did not know this until now. I also wonder why DC published Blackhawk monthly when more popular titles such as Superman and Batman were published only eight times yearly. When the checks first appeared, I was annoyed because they interfered with the cover art. Now, the checks are a reminder of a more straightforward and precious time.
Blackhawk was pretty popular! In researching this, it was still selling over a quarter of a million copies around the time of #228, but it quickly sank below the 200,000 mark and at that point in time, was doomed for cancellation. I believe it became a bi-monthly title during the Go-Go Checks era.
Great episode! I'm glad you went over some of the lesser known or appreciated genres like romance, war, and humor from DC during this time period. I hope people will seek these books out to read and collect, as they are quite under- appreciated!
In researching this one, I fell in love (pun intended!) with DC's romance books and was able to pick some up at San Diego Comic-Con, although they were few and far between at decent prices in the Exhibit Hall!
@@TalesFromMySpinnerRack As a fellow collector of these books, I share your pain!
What's with all the criticisms of these comics? It's totally unwarranted. Maybe you do that in all your videos, I don't know. But I do know the Go-Go Check comics were fun, bright, colorful, and everything a good comic should be.
I'm sorry, but I'm offering my opinions of these comics as I grew up reading them. I hope it comes across that I obviously loved them, too, and continue to do so.
And I don't know what you mean by comics disappearing from local stores and being sold in comic book shops in the 60's. I bought my comic books at local mom and pop shops, convenience stores, and pharmacies well into the 80's. We didn't even have comic book shops until decades later.
I believe I stated that they STARTED to disappear in the 1970s. Yes, they were still sold on newsstands, but the mom and pop stores were gradually falling by the wayside and being replaced by chain stores like 7-11 in this era and the comics companies opted to focus on comic book stores for direct distribution. There were very few, if any, comics stores in the 1960s.