Johnny Thunder
Johnny Thunder is the title of various comic books published by the US publisher DC Comics since 1940.
DC has in the past published two series with different content, which trade under the title "Johnny Thunder", but both take place in the DC universe : on the one hand a series of adventure - and humor comics about a young window cleaner named Johnny Thunder , who together with living a benevolent spirit in 1940s America; on the other hand, a series of western comics about a cowboy named Johnny Thunder , who has to pass typical western stories in the USA in the 19th century .
Adventure comic: Johnny Thunder
The adventure comic Johnny Thunder is about the experiences of a young man of the same name who experiences all kinds of adventures together with an almost limitlessly powerful magical being made of pink, living energy that serves him - the so-called Thunderbolt . Ultimately, this series represents nothing more than a variant of the Djinn motif of the oriental Middle Ages that has been relocated to modern times and the western world . It was not until much later that it emerged that the genie was actually a prince from the fifth dimension who was trapped in the third dimension .
The first Johnny Thunder story appeared as a backup story in the back of Flash Comics # 1 in January 1940 . The author of the story in question and the spiritual father of Johnny Thunder was the American John Wentworth . The artist Stan Aschmeier took care of the drawings of the story . After Johnny Thunder appeared as a backup story in Flash Comics for a few months, the series - which always delivered a mixture of adventure and entertaining humor - was moved to the Justice Society series . Johnny Thunder stories appeared there until 1949.
The exact functionality on which the connection between the Thunderbolt and Johnny Thunder is based remains largely unclear. All that is explained is how Thunder and the Thunderbolt were spiritually welded together , as it were, through a magical ritual that members of a sect from the fictional state of Badhnesia performed with him as a child on his seventh birthday. This ritual was feasible because he was born on the seventh day of the seventh month at seven o'clock in 1917 as the seventh child of his parents, as was his successor J. J. Thunder later.
As a young man Thunder finally have the magic words Cei-U ( Engl. Discovered pronounced "say you") that make the Thunderbolt appear. He has accompanied Thunder since then as his loyal companion and patient friend. Due to the magic of the ritual, the Thunderbolt Johnny is obliged to unconditional obedience, but on the other hand is also obliged to carry out his commands - which are usually formulated with very little care - word for word: Because Thunder is a little "stupid" and therefore often his commands without careful previous Given thought or not formulated very precisely, this often leads to chaotic entanglements.
Another nodal point of the plot is the intellectual superiority of the Thunderbolt over its "master", which has the consequence that he keeps thinking about him with good-natured sarcastic remarks and instructions and pointing out his mistakes and inattentiveness.
Variant of the fabric: Jonni Thunder
1985 attacked DC to Johnny Thunder fabric after this time more than thirty years had remained largely unused, back on by entitled Jonni Thunder a four-part, by Roy Thomas wrote, miniseries published that the same act premise like Johnny Thunder owned, but instead of a young man, a young private investigator moved into the center of the plot.
Johnny Thunder's substitute: J. J. Thunder
In the 1990s a new master of the Thunderbolt appeared on the scene: J. J. Thunder (actually Jakeem Williams ) got the "magic pen" in which the Thunderbolt stayed after Johnny Thunder fell ill with Alzheimer's and therefore could no longer think clearly could. The first challenge was directly a fight against another prince of the fifth dimension, who was also staying as a jinn in the third dimension. This story, in which the JLA ( Justice League of America ) and the JSA ( Justice Society of America ) also played a role, was a four-part series called "Invasion from the 5th Dimension".
Western comic: Johnny Thunder
DC has been publishing western stories under the title Johnny Thunder since 1948. The first of these stories to appear in All Star Comics established the status quo for all later stories in the series .
John Tane , son of a sheriff and a teacher , has chosen the profession of teacher at the request of his mother, who worried about the son's life and made him promise never to pick up a weapon and has since lived as a schoolmaster in a Mormon settlement in Mesa City , Arizona . When he becomes aware of the injustice that surrounds him, Tane gets into a conflict of conscience. On the one hand, he can no longer stand idly by the grievances he encounters, on the other hand, he does not want to break the word given to his mother. He solves this dilemma by acquiring a second identity as gunslinger Johnny Thunder , masked and camouflaged with soot- blackened hair , who puts down the villains without John Tane having to give up his schoolmaster life.
What was particularly noticeable about these western comics was their social progressiveness , which, for example, in the 1940s and 1950s, criticized the treatment of African-Americans in American society in the 19th century in an unusually sharp manner .
See also
literature
- Scott Beatty et al. a .: The DC Comics Encyclopedia . Panini Verlags GmbH, Stuttgart March 2005, 1st edition, p. 310 (Jakeem Thunder & Thunderbolt, Johnny Thunder I, Johnny Thunder II and Jonni Thunder)