force of july

Happy Fourth of July, where applicable!

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If you’re among the folks who celebrate the Fourth, I certainly hope you have a fun and relaxing day. And, if you’re anything like me, you’ll be celebrating Independence Day in that most patriotic of t-shirts:


…while speeding around city streets and hanging with your pal Huggy Bear, as our country’s forefathers intended.

Happy Fourth of July, or happy Wednesday for you international types, and I’ll see you…Thursday? Friday? One of those days.

At least it’s red, white, and blue.

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So this is Mad #217, cover date September 1980, and it’s pretty close to the end of my original Mad-readin’ days. I started reading Mad probably in late ’76, and I think I mostly stopped by about 1981…from about 7 years old ’til I was about 12, which is pretty much the right age span for one’s initial exposure to Mad.

Anyway, I’m posting it here today because 1) it’s red, white and blue, and it’s the Fourth of July, and, uh, well, this is what I’ve got, and 2) it’s a cover that’s always stuck in my head…I thought it was pretty neat looking way back when, and I still think it’s pretty neat lookin’ now. Kind of wish I still had my copy…though the likelihood of my copy still being nice enough to replace the scan of the slightly-raggedy example shown above would have been pretty slim. (I, ahem, “borrowed” that scan from one of the comics database sites…both the Grand Comics Database and the Comic Book Database have the same image.)

Well, there you go…my holiday post. Happy Fourth of July, where applicable, and I’ll see you all tomorrow.

Happy 4th of July, where applicable.

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Well, this didn’t last long:


In issue #50 of The Spectre (February 1997), John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake introduced a new incarnation of DC’s patriotic superhero Uncle Sam named, appropriately enough, “The Patriot.” You can see him above, in all his giant winged helmet glory.

To the best of my knowledge, his only appearance in this form was in Spectre #50. (EDIT: I was wrong, he appeared a couple more times…check the comments.) Soon enough, Uncle Sam was back to his old American icon self, and if this reversion was ever explained, I must have missed it.

All respect to Ostrander and Mandrake, who were trying to do something different, but really, it’s hard to top this for a superhero concept:


Fantastic.

I know I’ve posted it before (a couple years ago, in fact), but I really like this particular sequence from DC Comics Presents #62 with Clark Kent and Uncle Sam, and wanted to share it again.