Flash (and Rogues’ Gallery) fan liabrown found something Flashy in Bat-Manga!: a villain who bears a very strong resemblance to Central City’s own Weather Wizard.
As she puts it:
The Japanese artist said he was given some Batman comics and told to replicate the feel of them in manga style, but he pretty much copied Detective Comics #353 for the Go-Go story…with one major difference (mentioned below). He also used Clayface in a story, and some villains who appear to be fairly original (although one is somewhat reminiscent of Gorilla Grodd), including the awesome Lord Death Man.
It’s not clear why the artist replaced the Weather Wizard with a new villain, though the comment thread speculates that rights may have had something to do with it — or what “Go-Go” has to do with weather control. (Of course, this was the era of go-go checks on DC’s covers.)
Speaking of Detective Comics #353, it’s got a great classic cover showing the Weather Wizard physically stepping out of a Flash comic book and into an issue of Detective Comics.
More scans — of both the original and the manga versions — are available at the flash_rogues post.
Awesome post!! Thanks for the link to the comm 🙂
Hmmm, Wizard looks like a bit of a go-go dancer on that pole there…maybe that’s significant.
😀 I wish I could say the choice of picture was intentional, but it just happened to be the one I had used for the WW’s profile way back when.
That was a really sweet post.
Sweet site… my woman loves comic books and I am going to forward her this to her. Thanks for reading my blog and I appreciate the comment. It’s nice to know that someone reads it once in awhile.
.-= Brett Pape’s latest blog post: New titles =-.
You nailed the source of the Weather Wizard story. But the Lord Death Man story was based on Batman #180, “Death Knocks Three Times.” The villain there was just Death-Man, though, without the honorific.
I haven’t read Bat-Manga yet, so I don’t know which American stories, if any, the Clayface or gorilla stories were based on.