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Monday, April 02, 2007

The Official Adventures of Aquaman LP - 1967

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This is a very odd album of all-new, full-cast recordings of the origin stories of Aquaman, Flash, and Green Lantern. It's funny to think about how Aquaman is the selling point here; Flash and GL are playing back-up. My, how times have changed.

I call this album odd because of its contents. The Aquaman origin is pretty much the one we all know from the comics, but the Flash one is a hybrid of the origins stories of both Jay Garrick and Barry Allen. And the Green Lantern one is flat-out the Alan Scott GL origin story--so why in the name of Qward is Hal Jordan pictured on the sleeve? And shooting a yellow beam from his ring, no less!

My pal and F.O.A.M. member Craig Wichman--who not only knows all things Old Time Radio but actually participates in new audio drama recordings for the web--tells me these were "full cast" shows featuring actors who had extensive experience with classic radio. Even with the confused origin stories, this album is still a whole lot of fun to listen to!

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Update: I had done a previous post concerning a display box of Super Friends pencil sharpeners that featured Aquaman as one of characters. Having never seen an Aquaman sharpener per se, I wondered if it actually exists.

A few weeks ago, I found this picture accompanying another seller's display box auction, with some of the sharpeners thrown in. As you can see, there were at least two each for Superman, Wonder Woman, and one Captain Marvel. The Supermans are clearly traces of Neal Adams, and the good Captain looks to be by Kurt Schaffenberger.

The search continues for Aquaman...
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One final thought: A number of you were kind enough to say something nice about my attempt at an April Fool's Joke yesterday, transforming The Aquaman Shrine into The Sub-Mariner Shrine.

I had originally intended to go all the way, and get rid of all the Aquaman content and replace it with Subby stuff. But I ran out of time, as well as barely being able to find enough Namor stuff to fill a page! So I had to go with my very stripped-down version, which I still thought worthy of doing.

One of my favorite blogs, Chris' Invincible Super-Blog, did go all the way with the same idea and the execution was flawless. Maybe next year I'll turn this into The Pirana Shrine (with his two sidekicks, Bara and Cuda!).

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks like the album cover artist was digging Murphy Anderson's Captain Action Aquaman costume box. Even the same swordfish-sword!!!

I know Flash is lifted from a 60s comic cover too, but I'm too lazy to look. ;-)

Chris

Art Williams said...

You're from Marlton, huh? I'm from Medford. Do you buy any comics from Stormwatch or do you go to Echelon mall (if its still open)

rob! said...

there's a new(er) store, just down the road from Stormwatch, called All Things Fun (www.allthingsfun.net), and i get all my comic SWAG there!

Dixon said...

You're right, Chris. This particular portrait of the fastest man alive is lifted from The Flash #170 from May of 1967--an issue that likely appeared just prior to this record's release--and it's the work of Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson.

Bob Buethe said...

I thought it was odd at first, but then I realized what must have happened. The album came out in 1967. In 1965, "The Great Comic Book Heroes" by Jules Feiffer was published; a harcover volume that reprinted, among other Golden Age stories, the origins of Jay Garrick and Alan Scott. Also in 1965 was 80-Page Giant #8, the second Secret Origins collection, reprinting "How Aquaman Got His Powers" and "The Origin of Flash's Masked Identity." The producers of the album muust have read these two books, and assumed that the current Green Lantern was the original in a new costume. The Flash story in the 80-Page Giant made it clear that there were two Flashes, as it opened with Barry Allen reading an old Flash comic book. Given that, the record followed the stories pretty closely.