Personal Collection // Dick  Dillin // Justice League of America #103 (Dillin/Giordano) (1972)

December 1972, Justice League of America #103, Page #22, Dick Dillin pencils/Dick Giordano inks, "A Stranger Walks Among Us!", Superman vs: Captain Marvel, and Green Arrow vs: Golden Age Flash! This Superman vs: Captain Marvel battle occured four (4) years before the 1st official battle between Superman and Captain Thunder (aka Captain Marvel), which was in 1976; I found this glorious page today at the East Coast Comic Con, in the Meadowlands. It was the first year of the Con, previously being the Asbury Park Con, and it featured mostly comic dealers. But there were a few vendors that had some sparce comic art, and I lucked out being able to find this gem from my collecting focus. You search hard enough and you can find anything. I would like to give a little background of why this story and art is so historically significant in Marvel and DC comic history: The Rutland Halloween Parade is an annual event held on Halloween in the city of Rutland, Vermont since 1960. The parade has a strong superhero theme and has been the setting for a number of comic book adventures. Local officials maintain that it is the largest and longest running Halloween parade in the United States. Tom Fagan, a local writer and comic book fan, is credited with having a hand in the parade's early development and superhero theme. Tom was friends with many comic book authors and artists, most of whom hailed from New York. Fagan persuaded some of them to take part in the Rutland Halloween Parade in comic book character costumes. In the 1970s, the Rutland Halloween Parade achieved a degree of fame when it was used as the setting of a number of superhero comic books, including Justice League of America #103. Tom Fagan was himself featured as a character in a number of these stories, usually depicted as an acquaintance of the title characters. Due to the nature of the masquerade parade, these issues often saw people dressed as Marvel Comics heroes appearing in DC Comics publications, and vice versa, marking some of the first (unofficial) intercompany crossovers in comics. Caution was exercised, however over widespread use of the competition's characters � Tom Fagan, (who hosted the parade dressed as Batman), was typically drawn as Nighthawk in Marvel-published Rutland Halloween stories. Over the Christmas-New Year period in 1972/73, writers Steve Englehart, Gerry Conway, and Len Wein crafted a loose three-part story spanning titles from both companies. Each comic featured Englehart, Conway, and Wein (and Wein's first wife Glynis) interacting with Tom Fagan and Marvel or DC villains (and heroes). One of the three stories is Justice League of America #103.

Personal Collection

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