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Showcase Presents
Showcase Presents: Rip Hunter, Time Master, Vol. 1
Rip Hunter and his band of time-travelling adventurers traverse the ages, delving into the distant past and future to fight strange creatures! In these stories, collected here for the very first time, the Time Masters meet Circe, an island of dinosaurs, "The Bird-Men of 2,000 B.C.," "The Menace of the Mongol Magician."
511 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2012
3 people are currently reading
74 people want to read
About the author
Jack Miller
69 books1 followerLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
October 10, 2012
These are some extremely cheesy, kitschy and predictable stories, and they are fantastic. I almost felt like taking this book for a drive to some small town in Anywhere, U.S.A to locate a Dairy Queen. One of those classic tall pole with the sideways tear drop red and white singed Dairy Queens with the walk up order window. Get myself a double chocolate fudge sundae with extra chopped nuts on top. Go and sit at one of those white plastic topped tables with the red bench seats and crack this book open while enjoying my sundae. Now that would be my style of time traveling. The only complaint I have, what the hell happened to the color! Now when this was printed, back in the late 50's early 60's, you know that this came out in full color. So why the cost cutting cheapskate method of B&W printing? This is some classic artwork and as such needs to be treated properly. That means with color for those folks at DC that do not understand English. Well now it is off to see if I can locate another DC Showcase. These books are so much fun!
February 1, 2020
I'm so glad that DC comics packaged their comics from the 1950s and 1960s in these large volumes. Granted, they're all in black and white, but I understand that it was done to make these tales reasonably priced for the consumer.
This particular volume is such a delight: who hasn't thought about time-travel, and what you would find out by going back in history. Rip, Jeff, Bonnie and Corky do just that, and their adventures from prehistory to a few hundred years ago make for great storytelling. And you just can't beat the illustrations from various artists. I like that each "book" is in three chapters, every one ending in a cliffhanger, making you want to continue on to find out what happened next. Top-notch entertainment.
This particular volume is such a delight: who hasn't thought about time-travel, and what you would find out by going back in history. Rip, Jeff, Bonnie and Corky do just that, and their adventures from prehistory to a few hundred years ago make for great storytelling. And you just can't beat the illustrations from various artists. I like that each "book" is in three chapters, every one ending in a cliffhanger, making you want to continue on to find out what happened next. Top-notch entertainment.
September 17, 2012
Great pulpy sci-fi with the occasional bit of history thrown in.
Rip Hunter is seen as DC's 'Doctor Who', and really in these stories you can see that, as the later stories in this volume are nearly all 'aliens through history' stories.
Aliens are just responsible for every historical event.
Formulaic, but a lot of fun the writers mix bits of history and sci-fi and the art is great, really clean and solid.
Rip and company are the classic silver age team formula: Hero, girl, young kid and second guy.
While the Time Sphere isn't as cool as the Tardis it is pretty close. Definitely in my top five time machines.
Enough science and history to catch a kids attention and then some monsters to keep him reading.
Great stuff. I love that DC has done so many of these that they are starting to collect the stories featuring the second tier and obscure characters.
Rip Hunter is seen as DC's 'Doctor Who', and really in these stories you can see that, as the later stories in this volume are nearly all 'aliens through history' stories.
Aliens are just responsible for every historical event.
Formulaic, but a lot of fun the writers mix bits of history and sci-fi and the art is great, really clean and solid.
Rip and company are the classic silver age team formula: Hero, girl, young kid and second guy.
While the Time Sphere isn't as cool as the Tardis it is pretty close. Definitely in my top five time machines.
Enough science and history to catch a kids attention and then some monsters to keep him reading.
Great stuff. I love that DC has done so many of these that they are starting to collect the stories featuring the second tier and obscure characters.
November 7, 2013
Again, I applaud DC for making these slightly obscure comics available to a new generation. I can only hope that we get other characters like Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis, Sugar n' Spike, the Television Detective and other reprinted in a similar affordable format sometime soon.
July 2, 2013
These time travel stories depend a lot on coincidence, but it still enjoyed them. Solid children's entertainment from the late 50s, early 60s.
January 25, 2017
After the success of Jack Kirby creations The Challengers of the Unknown in 1959, DC Comics took a chance on two other quartets of non-powered adventurers in the pages of Showcase, their try-out comic. The more successful of these was Rip Hunter’s team of time travelers. He is introduced as already having invented a Time Sphere, and with the aid of his friend Jeff Smith built two of them. The only people he’s trusted in his secret laboratory are his girlfriend Bonnie Baxter and her kid brother Corky.
In the first Showcase appearance (#20, May 1959) Rip and Jeff take one of the spheres on its maiden voyage to the Mesozoic Era, 100 million years in the past. Unfortunately, it turns out that two criminals stumbled on the lab some weeks before while the team was absent, realized this could be big, and planted a listening device. The crooks force Bonnie and Corky to take them back to the same era as the first pair, planning to mine deposits of gold, silver and diamonds they know the location of in the present.
Between dinosaurs and active volcanic terrain, the six time travelers have a series of exciting escapes and daring deeds to accomplish before they can return to the present. The tired and sore criminals are dismayed to find their hard-won sack of minerals empty–turns out you can’t bring any objects from the past forward. (This rule was eventually quietly ignored, but no one ever thought to abuse that capability thereafter.)
Much like the later Doctor Who, the second storyline went straight to aliens as Rip and his pals investigated the origin of Atlantis. Another pair of Showcase issues followed shortly, and in 1961, Rip Hunter got his own series. Writer Jack Miller did some research to come up with interesting time periods, but historical accuracy was clearly not a high priority. Each issue followed a three-part structure as a mystery from the past surfaced and the crew checked it out using a Time Sphere. Often complications would arise due to the never-stated but obvious rule that they cannot change the past; attempts to do so would fail, meaning the team has to come up with a new plan.
Characterization is thin; all four main characters are brave and adventurous. Rip is the main history expert, and a very good shot; as the Comics Code prevented him from killing humans, he would use trick shots to bring down awnings and such. Jeff appears to be the mechanic; he’s the one who does the repairs on the Time Spheres and is slightly more muscular looking than Rip. Bonnie and Corky appear to have no special skills beyond being backup sphere pilots. Bonnie is a bit nervous at times, and Corky knows less history than the others, so is the recipient of infodumps. Guest characters have just enough personality to fulfill their plot purposes.
Aliens and hidden civilizations are rife in these stories, and monsters appear frequently. Magic is sometimes mentioned but almost always turns out to be fake or actually alien technology.
There are several art teams in the early going, the most notable of which features Joe Kubert. Eventually it settled down to William Ely, who is decent enough, but perhaps could scale back the worry lines on some of the characters.
My favorite of the stories is their battle against the gods of Mount Olympus, which features Jeff being transformed into a griffin!
Later versions of Rip Hunter have shed the rest of his team; Legends of Tomorrow fans will likely find this early Rip nearly unrecognizable.
Recommended primarily to fans of more straightforward time travel stories as there’s seldom the creative abuses of the concept that have become common in literature since.
In the first Showcase appearance (#20, May 1959) Rip and Jeff take one of the spheres on its maiden voyage to the Mesozoic Era, 100 million years in the past. Unfortunately, it turns out that two criminals stumbled on the lab some weeks before while the team was absent, realized this could be big, and planted a listening device. The crooks force Bonnie and Corky to take them back to the same era as the first pair, planning to mine deposits of gold, silver and diamonds they know the location of in the present.
Between dinosaurs and active volcanic terrain, the six time travelers have a series of exciting escapes and daring deeds to accomplish before they can return to the present. The tired and sore criminals are dismayed to find their hard-won sack of minerals empty–turns out you can’t bring any objects from the past forward. (This rule was eventually quietly ignored, but no one ever thought to abuse that capability thereafter.)
Much like the later Doctor Who, the second storyline went straight to aliens as Rip and his pals investigated the origin of Atlantis. Another pair of Showcase issues followed shortly, and in 1961, Rip Hunter got his own series. Writer Jack Miller did some research to come up with interesting time periods, but historical accuracy was clearly not a high priority. Each issue followed a three-part structure as a mystery from the past surfaced and the crew checked it out using a Time Sphere. Often complications would arise due to the never-stated but obvious rule that they cannot change the past; attempts to do so would fail, meaning the team has to come up with a new plan.
Characterization is thin; all four main characters are brave and adventurous. Rip is the main history expert, and a very good shot; as the Comics Code prevented him from killing humans, he would use trick shots to bring down awnings and such. Jeff appears to be the mechanic; he’s the one who does the repairs on the Time Spheres and is slightly more muscular looking than Rip. Bonnie and Corky appear to have no special skills beyond being backup sphere pilots. Bonnie is a bit nervous at times, and Corky knows less history than the others, so is the recipient of infodumps. Guest characters have just enough personality to fulfill their plot purposes.
Aliens and hidden civilizations are rife in these stories, and monsters appear frequently. Magic is sometimes mentioned but almost always turns out to be fake or actually alien technology.
There are several art teams in the early going, the most notable of which features Joe Kubert. Eventually it settled down to William Ely, who is decent enough, but perhaps could scale back the worry lines on some of the characters.
My favorite of the stories is their battle against the gods of Mount Olympus, which features Jeff being transformed into a griffin!
Later versions of Rip Hunter have shed the rest of his team; Legends of Tomorrow fans will likely find this early Rip nearly unrecognizable.
Recommended primarily to fans of more straightforward time travel stories as there’s seldom the creative abuses of the concept that have become common in literature since.
August 3, 2012
Rip Hunter's first two adventures were just reprinting in Showcase Presents Showcase. This would be fine if that weren't the previous edition of DC's Showcase Presents series, so I could skip the first two issue reprints.
That said, what can we say about Rip Hunter? He's a lot like Adam Strange, in that anywhere (anywhen?) he goes, Rip seems to be the only person capable of coming up with any sort of plans for anything. So, he goes back in time with his nondescript friend Jeff, his possible girlfriend Bonnie, and Bonnie's kid brother Corky (Corky?). As much as I appreciate Silver Age wackiness, it does seem odd that Rip and his friends can never go back in time and just hang out with historical figures, maybe solve problems the way Sam and Al did on "Quantum Leap". Instead, they always end up dealing with magic, or aliens, or magic aliens. Or that even with a Time Sphere (or two) at their disposal, they always have a time limit to return to the present to solve any problem they have. I guess the Sphere doesn't do hours and minutes very well. No trip into the past is complete without some weirdness, though you'd think Rip would learn after the first few times that any time a professor wants to go with him somewhere, the prof is probably up to no good himself.
So, the group, always to a loud "Yippee!!" from Corky (Corky?) go back, have adventures, and so forth. My edition had an issue with a page from an entirely different story in the early going, making me wonder why the professor investigating Leonardo DaVinci went and why there were Indians all over the place. The back of the book promises Rip will face many challenges, the last of which, a death sentence, sounded the most mundane. It was also something that seemed to happen every three issues. Rip could also be occassionally callous, too, like when asked about some bird people they'd just saved from the Babylonian army says their island probably sank when the volcano eventually exploded, meaning the people they just befriended and helped might have been dead within a week anyway.
I don't want to give the impression I didn't care for the book. I absolutely did. I just thought the premise could have been handled a little differently.
(Seriously, his name was Corky?)
That said, what can we say about Rip Hunter? He's a lot like Adam Strange, in that anywhere (anywhen?) he goes, Rip seems to be the only person capable of coming up with any sort of plans for anything. So, he goes back in time with his nondescript friend Jeff, his possible girlfriend Bonnie, and Bonnie's kid brother Corky (Corky?). As much as I appreciate Silver Age wackiness, it does seem odd that Rip and his friends can never go back in time and just hang out with historical figures, maybe solve problems the way Sam and Al did on "Quantum Leap". Instead, they always end up dealing with magic, or aliens, or magic aliens. Or that even with a Time Sphere (or two) at their disposal, they always have a time limit to return to the present to solve any problem they have. I guess the Sphere doesn't do hours and minutes very well. No trip into the past is complete without some weirdness, though you'd think Rip would learn after the first few times that any time a professor wants to go with him somewhere, the prof is probably up to no good himself.
So, the group, always to a loud "Yippee!!" from Corky (Corky?) go back, have adventures, and so forth. My edition had an issue with a page from an entirely different story in the early going, making me wonder why the professor investigating Leonardo DaVinci went and why there were Indians all over the place. The back of the book promises Rip will face many challenges, the last of which, a death sentence, sounded the most mundane. It was also something that seemed to happen every three issues. Rip could also be occassionally callous, too, like when asked about some bird people they'd just saved from the Babylonian army says their island probably sank when the volcano eventually exploded, meaning the people they just befriended and helped might have been dead within a week anyway.
I don't want to give the impression I didn't care for the book. I absolutely did. I just thought the premise could have been handled a little differently.
(Seriously, his name was Corky?)
March 7, 2016
Good old-fashioned Silver Age comics, actually slightly less lunatic in the science division than the superhero comics were. While Rip Hunter predates the arrival of Doctor Who, and it's unlikely that Doctor Who creator Sydney Newman (who was Canadian) saw the comics, there are some fascinating parallels to the TV series and its development -- Rip starts out as a purely historical time travel book, but it isn't too long before the aliens have crept in and are behind assorted historical happenings. Unlike Doctor Who, Rip does occasionally veer into actual fantasy, although the first swerve that way was quickly countered with several stories playing the Man Behind The Curtain trope (usually aliens, of course.)
The Rip Hunter stories are also interesting from another perspective -- Rip's assistant (and, its suggested, girlfriend) Bonnie Baxter is not just a valued member of the team, and present on all of the missions, she's level-headed in the crunch, and absolutely no damsel in distress -- as often as not she pulls Rip's tuchus out of a jam. Alas, we also have Corky, the kid, who's a candidate for booting out into the time vortex. Overall, though, the Time Master has fairly interesting companions...curiously enough, two adults, and a kid; Jeff, the engineer, is a bit dull at times, sadly. The Time Sphere isn't bigger on the inside, though, nor does it cloak itself; however, it can be made to travel through space as well as time. Like the TARDIS, the Time Spheres can be awfully finicky, and break down regularly. Rip and company use translator devices to get around the language issues (these don't get mentioned until around #6 of the main series, though.)
The artwork is okay, nothing great -- the creatures tend to be the worst of it, and the main characters (except for Bonnie) have a certain DC-ish blockiness, much of which is to do with the work of Ross Andru on the interiors -- Alex Toth shows up briefly with much better artwork, while Nick Cardy contributes some very nice covers and interiors. The last few issues in this volume are drawn by Will Ely.
The black and white Showcase Presents volume does a decent job of presenting the stories, although I'm now hoping that we'll see an Omnibus volume with the complete series (this volume stops ten issues short of the end of the series.)
The Rip Hunter stories are also interesting from another perspective -- Rip's assistant (and, its suggested, girlfriend) Bonnie Baxter is not just a valued member of the team, and present on all of the missions, she's level-headed in the crunch, and absolutely no damsel in distress -- as often as not she pulls Rip's tuchus out of a jam. Alas, we also have Corky, the kid, who's a candidate for booting out into the time vortex. Overall, though, the Time Master has fairly interesting companions...curiously enough, two adults, and a kid; Jeff, the engineer, is a bit dull at times, sadly. The Time Sphere isn't bigger on the inside, though, nor does it cloak itself; however, it can be made to travel through space as well as time. Like the TARDIS, the Time Spheres can be awfully finicky, and break down regularly. Rip and company use translator devices to get around the language issues (these don't get mentioned until around #6 of the main series, though.)
The artwork is okay, nothing great -- the creatures tend to be the worst of it, and the main characters (except for Bonnie) have a certain DC-ish blockiness, much of which is to do with the work of Ross Andru on the interiors -- Alex Toth shows up briefly with much better artwork, while Nick Cardy contributes some very nice covers and interiors. The last few issues in this volume are drawn by Will Ely.
The black and white Showcase Presents volume does a decent job of presenting the stories, although I'm now hoping that we'll see an Omnibus volume with the complete series (this volume stops ten issues short of the end of the series.)
January 10, 2015
Ci sono, in queste storie degli anni 50 e 60, alcuni spunti interessanti. Ma per lo più le trame sono troppo ripetitive e poco sviluppate, e la tematica dei viaggi nel tempo non è granché sfruttata: praticamente nessun paradosso, nessun enigma difficilmente spiegabile (a parte una avventura) e tutto sommato, poca fantasia. I disegni, se togliamo la coppia di storie realizzata da Joe Kubert e quelle di Alex Thot sono a livelli no particolarmente buoni.
Nel complesso non credo che rileggerò mai queste storie.
Nel complesso non credo che rileggerò mai queste storie.
October 13, 2013
A Silver Age series that get points for being a lot weirder than many time-travel stories, as the majority of trips involve ETs or sorcerers running around in the past. That said, it's one of the weaker efforts of the era, with little characterization, so-so art and the repeated reuse of plot points.
November 9, 2012
I had expected some Silver Age fun, but this was much more than that. It was genuinely exciting and much better than the usual repetitive mood these Silver Age collections often slide into. Great stuff.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews