One of the fun things about reading older comics is noticing early versions of things that became popular later. The DC compilation "The Greatest Team-Up Stories Every Told" is filled with firsts. I picked it up for the reprint of the 1961 Flash #123, "
Flash of Two Worlds". That's where the DC multiverse was introduced, a concept that would later be expanded into "Crisis On Earth-One/Earth-Two" (also in that collection), "Crisis on Infinite Earths", and eventually "Infinite Crisis".
I found a fun surprise there when reading "Superboy Meets Robin", from
Adventure Comics #253, October 1958. At one point Superboy throws Robin at a bad guy:
Any good comic book fan can tell you this is a move called the
Fastball Special, where a strong hero throws another one toward a target. It's most associated with Colossus throwing Wolverine in the X-Men comics, going back to
X-Men #100 in 1976. Seems it was already a pretty old move by then though!
Marvel comics used this move before then too. In
Amazing Spider-Man #19, December, 1964, Spidey is fighting a 3 man team of bad guys named The Enforcers. The large muscle-bound one, Ox, throws martial artist Fancy Dan:
This comic is available in some of the Marvel Masterworks collections, such as The Amazing Spider-Man Volume 2.
