Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Law & Order--The Silver Age!!

The other day I wrote about Dell's comic book adaptation of the long-running radio show Mr. District Attorney.

But long-time reader Wayne pointed out that I was somewhat derelict in my research, as I completely missed the fact that DC later picked up the property, and published their own Mr. District Attorney comic...for a mind boggling 11 years and 67 issues!!

I don't know whether they eventually gave the title character a name, like the TV version did. I like to think that they just kept calling him Mr. District Attorney the whole decade plus.

One thing I can tell you, though, just by looking at the covers: as the Silver Age dawned, well, the covers sure became more and more Silver Age-y, slowing transforming from a straightforward crime book into a fantasy landscape of insanity before our very eyes:








It's sort of the same transformation that Blackhawk made when DC took over...

It strikes me as interesting, that while Marvel has long had a foothold in the world of courtroom drama--Matt Murdock, She-Hulk--aside from Harvey Dent, DC doesn't really have any hero lawyers. Do they? Am I missing someone?

Which is a shame, because the DC Universe (well, at least some DC universes) could be a fun place for legal hi-jinks....

3 comments:

Nate Winchester said...

Yes! A chance to post one of the funniest podcasts ever, Law and Order in the DCU by the Dollar Bin.

I've been saving it for you, snell. ;)

Green Luthor said...

If I'm not mistaken, Adrian Chase (the second Vigilante) was a DA before becoming a judge. (But he's also been dead since 1988, and it doesn't look like DC is in any rush to bring him back.)

I think Red Bee was also a DA, but... well, he was the Red Bee...

Pre-Crisis, Earth-2 Robin and Huntress were lawyers, but... I have no idea what their status would even be any more, and I really don't feel like trying to sort through current DC continuity to figure it out. (Heck, I can't even figure out why I did as much research as I did just for this comment!) :)

Seems that DC also had a series Resurrection Man about a (probably former at this point) lawyer who would always return from the dead, with a new power set based on his previous cause of death. (I'm guessing with all those deaths, he's probably not practicing law at this point. But one never knows.)

Which means that the best hope DC has for a lawyer-based comic is probably... Jean Loring! Y'know, I'm sure *nothing* could go wrong there!

Wayne Allen Sallee said...

Red Bee was D.A. Richard Raleigh. RESURRECTION MAN was set in Viceroy SC (home of Soder Cola! Remember that in the old DCU?) and Mitch Shelley was a lawyer who was killed in an explosion caused by his partner. He kept remembering parts of his past and by the sixth issue that part was resolved, and the rest of the series involved him trying to figure out how he got his powers. There was a great guest appearance by Hitman where he kept shooting Shelley until he had the right power to fight some bad guy.
They tried RM in the nu52 only having the enhanced powers come from Mitch being an Iraq vet or something and last eight issues because DC nu52.

Glad you circled back to this, snell. I always thought of MY GREATEST ADVENTURE when it came to these crazier issues.