E-MAN!
What is E-Man?
E-Man is a
fictional comic book superhero created by
writer Nicola Cuti and
artist Joe Staton for
Charlton Comics in 1973. Though the character's original series was short-lived, the lightly humorous hero has become a
cult-classic sporadically revived by various independent comics publishers.
Charlton Comics
The character premiered in
E-Man #1, the first of ten issues (
cover-dated Oct. 1973 - Sept. 1975) published by the
Derby,
Connecticut-based Charlton Comics.The stories were humorous and lighthearted, in the style of
Plastic Man, especially as E-Man could form himself into anything he wanted.Backup features were Cuti and
Tom Sutton's "The Knight", starring a
superspy agent of C.H.E.S.S.;
Joe Gill and
Steve Ditko's "
Liberty Belle"; two stories of writer-artist Ditko's superhero "
Killjoy"; the time-traveling "Travis", by Cuti and Wayne Howard; and, in the color-comics debut of
John Byrne, three stories of "
Rog-2000", written by Cuti and starring a wiseacre, cigar-smoking robot Byrne had created in his fan-artist days
.
First Comics
In 1983, during a period of financial uncertainty for Charlton,.
[4] the company sold independent publisher
First Comics the rights to E-Man. First's
E-Man ran 25 issues (April 1983 - Aug. 1985), with the company also publishing a seven-issue
miniseries,
The Original E-Man and Michael Mauser, that reprinted those characters' Charlton stories.
[5]
Staton did the artwork, with stories written by
Martin Pasko,
Paul Kupperberg, Cuti, and Staton himself.
[5]
In the course of the run, Staton acquired certain rights to the
character from First, although First Comics retained ownership of those
stories that had been published by them. As Staton described in an
interview published in 2001,
The deal with E-Man was that I had an arrangement with First Comics
so that they bought the rights to E-Man from Charlton, and then I was to
repay First all their expense out of my royalties. The rights to E-Man
were then supposed to revert to me completely. But some of us needed
more lawyers than we knew, and the end result of how it stands, as I
understand it, is that I have the right to do any new E-Man stories I
want to, and I have the right to license any new E-Man material I want.
Ken Levin, the lawyer for First, controls the rights to what First
published. To keep the rights unified, Ken and I decided he would
represent the whole E-Man package. ... [W]hatever I get in, Nick [Cuti]
gets 50%, but so far, it's been nothing.
Fictional character biography
E-Man is a sentient packet of energy thrown off by a
nova.
Traveling the galaxy he learned about life, how to duplicate the
appearance of life, and good and evil. Reaching Earth, he met
exotic dancer/grad student Katrinka Colchnzski (who attended Xanadu University), also known as
Nova Kane (
novocaine), and formed himself into a superhero dubbed E-Man, with a civilian identity dubbed "Alec Tronn" (
electron). His emblem was the famous
mass-energy equivalence formula "E=mc
2",
and his powers included firing energy blasts from his hands, changing
his appearance, and transforming part or all of his body into anything
he could envision (e.g., turning his feet into
jet engines so he could fly).
Nova would later be caught in a nuclear explosion and gain the same
powers as E-Man and become his partner; later still, she would lose her
powers and become a normal human being again, only to regain her powers
sometime afterward. During their early adventures they picked up a pet
koala named
Teddy Q, whose intelligence grew to the point where he had a job waiting tables in a cafe.
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