Adventure #231

I'm not much on the Superbaby stories as a rule, but this one is definitely top-notch. Superboy decides as a teenager to repay some kindnesses that he experienced as a boy. For example, Cal Bentley, who now runs an amusement park, once saved baby Clark from destroying a train and revealing his secret identity:

Another man rescued the tot from his first encounter with Kryptonite:

Not surprisingly, Clark refuses payment for helping these men out as a teen. However, one of the men (now a wealthy miser) who saved him from losing Pa Kent gets a nasty surprise when Superboy presents him with the bill for mowing his lawn:

However, it's all for a good cause, as the penny-pincher learns:

Superboy even thinks of the boys he's beating out for the jobs that he takes for the people who helped him out as a baby:

Nice little touch there. And in the end, there are just two people left to thank:

Comments: A superb story, with wonderful characterization for Superboy. The way he repaid the miserly rich man was particularly deft.

The Aquaman story is one of many from the Silver Age about a predicting machine:

As must happen in all such tales, the first two predictions come true. Will Aquaman really experience "dying" at the hands of one of his finny friends? Sort of:

The dye gets all over him, get it? Comments: Cute, if formulaic.

In the Green Arrow story, a local manufacturer is producing mini Arrowcars for sale. The local Green Arrow fan club tries them out:

But some crooks take advantage of the opportunity to steal the original, forcing the Emerald Archer and Speedy to use one of the kiddie-mobiles. The fan club helps out:

And eventually the crooks are caught and the Arrowcar returned to its rightful owners.

Comments: I liked the clever use of the mini-Arrowcars.

More about →

Adventure #280

This story is symptomatic of one of the major problems with Superboy in the Silver Age. Characters that had been introduced in the Superman books often ended up appearing in Superboy, even though that appearance contradicted the Superman tales. Lex Luthor, who for years had bedeviled the Man of Tomorrow, turned out to have been the best friend (however briefly) of the Boy of Steel. Lois Lane and Mr Mxyptlk also appeared in the Superboy chronicles, so it was perhaps inevitable that Lori Lemaris would also pop up in Smallville eventually. Never mind that we had been assured in her first Superman story that she was a girlfriend of his during his college years at Metropolis U.

The story itself is a classically zany Silver Age tale. Superboy decides to help out a local "aquarium" (really an aquatic zoo) owner by bringing him terrific attractions like electric eels, sharks and a giant whale. Lori and her friends observe this from under the sea, and Lori lies a bit shamelessly:

It turns out that Lori is bored with Atlantis. BTW, those who think that there wasn't an explanation for the Lori Lemaris Atlanteans and the Aquaman contingent are wrong:

Lori decides to get Superboy to "rescue" her from a floating mine. When he does, she again indulges herself in a whopper:

But she trips herself up with a bit of "proof":

Of course, this was something of a cliche in the Silver Age; since BC means "Before Christ", nobody would have dated a coin 450 BC; that was the year applied after the birth of Jesus became considered a dividing point.

Lori explains that she wants to live outside the water, as a normal girl, and believes that Superboy will be able to accomplish this. He sets up the experiment, but Lana comes along:

The experiment will take 24 hours, during which time Superboy is away on a space mission. Lori is so confident the procedure will work, that she gets out of the water and drains it off. Bad move:

Say what? Smallville only a mile from the ocean? I guess we can rule out Kansas as the location of Superboy's hometown. Fortunately, Lana remembers that there's a pool inside the cave, and it turns out that the experiment was not to let her live on the land, but:

Still, how do we get to where Superboy and Lori have no memory of ever meeting before their college days? Lori's father goes to work:

Yep, he hypnotizes Superboy, Lori, and Lana into having no memory of the incident.

Comments: It's pretty obvious why this story has never been reprinted (as far as I know). The details are weird, the hypnotism bit makes little sense (except to get Weisinger out of the problem of explaining why the story contradicted Lori's first Superman appearance), and Lori's compulsive lying puts her in a bad light. On the other hand, there is a rare good bit of characterization for Lana Lang, as she saves Lori's life despite fearing that Superboy will prefer the mermaid.

The Congo Bill/Congorilla tale is a fairly pedestrian tale. Congo Bill is hit on the head, and when he changes into Congorilla, he does some oddball things, changing into characters from a nursery rhyme:

Rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief,
Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief.

The story was dusted off and reused a few years later in a Superman story in Action Comics.

The Aquaman story features Aquaman and Aqualad helping out with the TV show, Sea Chase. This is a reference to a popular syndicated TV show of the times called Sea Hunt, starring Lloyd Bridges and two of his sons, Jeff and Beau Bridges.

Update: Commenter Osgood Peabody points out that the story has just recently been reprinted in this volume:

More about →

Single Issue Review: Adventure #227

It's easy to forget about Superboy from the Silver Age; the current Superman apparently never was Superboy, having only gained his powers in manhood. How much of this is due to the longstanding suits over the rights to Superboy can only be guessed, but certainly Superboy was a major DC character of the Silver Age; in fact it is quite easy to argue that he was as important in that era as Batman.

He, like Superman and Batman, headlined one of DC's three monthly anthology magazines. He also had his own magazine, which wildly outpaced Batman's in sales, except during the Batmania years. To give you an idea, here is where Superboy ranked in sales among all comics starting with 1960: 4, 3, 2, X, X, 2, 3, 3, 4, 3. The two years shown as X (1963 and 1964), DC did not report sales but it is not hard to see that the numbers missing are 2 and 2; Superboy outsold the #3 book (Lois Lane as it happens) by over 100,000 copies in both 1962 and 1965, the years bracketing the missing ones.

As you can see from the cover to Adventure #227, he is still a boy in these stories; to my eyes he looks about 10 or 11. In the story, Superboy learns that Smallville has a contest on about who's its most good-hearted citizen. Not surprisingly the tally thus far favors Superboy heavily, but he feels it's unfair given his powers and so he declines via smoke-signal:



Good characterization there. Since he is out of the running, Superboy is given all the letters nominating him for the award, and as shown on the cover, he is surprised when he finds that many people remember events which he knows did not involve him.



As he tracks down the source of each claim he realizes that there's one person present at each incident:





Of course it's the postmaster. Despite a gruff demeanor he has a heart of gold and a small inheritance he's used to help people out anonymously, making it seem like Superboy must have done it. But now Superboy knows his secret, what can be done? Well, fortunately the postmaster is about to retire anyway and:



Comments: Cute semi-Scrooge story; to be honest I did not notice the postmaster in the background of those shots (which were 3 pages apart in the story). Art by Curt Swan is solid but not special; I am one of those folks who think that Swan got better--much better--as he aged.

The Aquaman story I have to show you the splash for:



It's all a plot to get Aquaman too busy to foil a planned "boat job" by some hoods. Aquaman gives his fans a few underwater grooming tips here:



When I feel the need to shower? And not to belabor the obvious, but who would see him naked in the middle of the ocean?

But the hilarity is just getting started. Aquaman feeds soap flakes to blowfishes so they can provide him with a nice lather for washing his hair. Electric eels heat up a plate of "seaweed" food for his meal. Mmmmm, seaweed! And when he wants to relax:



The crooks ask him to show them how he responds to an emergency on a nearby boat. It turns out that Aquaman has a lantern fish following every boat in the ocean. If there is trouble, the skipper signals the lantern fish, who signals a sea hare who signals a flying fish who signals a giant boxing shrimp, who signals A-man. Whew!

With this knowledge, the crooks can pull their job, as they have a man ready with a net to catch the flying fish and prevent the message from reaching Aquaman. But he foils the plot and explains that he suspected something from the first as their camera exuded bubbles of air when they were filming him, revealing that there was no actual film in the camera. And he has a seagull acting as backup if any of the links in the alert system fail.

Comments: Silly, but entertaining as heck. Ramona Fradon does her usual solid job on the artwork.

The final story features The Green Arrow Mystery Cards. Green Arrow has been handing out collectible cards featuring him and Speedy capturing crooks. Even back then, he knew the value of having a few rare cards:



Obviously this is a nod to collectible trading cards which were very popular in the Silver Age. I can remember buying card sets in the early-mid 1960s that featured such themes as astronauts, good guys and bad guys (from the old west), Lost In Space, and Batman. And of course trading to get the rare ones was a big pastime; I remember getting something like 125 baseball cards for one Moe Drabowsky card.

Anyway, the fad has caught the attention of that older fella getting out of the car, and he's quite willing to pay top dollar to get some of the rarer cards in the set. He gets the kid to part with his "Flight of Peril" card for $5 and a toy, but the gal who has "Green Arrow Captures Diamond Thief" is made of sterner stuff and won't trade for anything. But the old man is determined, and one of his henchmen burgles the girl's house to get the card that night.

It turns out however, that Green Arrow and Speedy had not intended for those cards to be particularly rare; it appears that somebody is cornering the market on them. Unfortunately the plates and original photos for those particular cards were destroyed in a recent fire. So Green Arrow decides to duplicate the pictures with the aide of a photographer.

The first two shots go off without a hitch, so the only one remaining is to capture the jewel thief. In the original, a thief had stolen the Sun Diamond and was about to throw it out the window when Green Arrow shot and cleaved the diamond in two, with the two pieces then missing the window. A nearby man scooped up the diamonds and handed them to GA. They reproduce the event with the Moon Diamond (since the Sun Diamond is already cut in two, and the man scoops up the diamonds but:



It turns out that Green Arrow was suspicious all along, and so he intentionally cut the diamond a little off-center and knew something was wrong when the crook gave him two perfect halves.

Comments: Excellent, well-executed premise for a story, with art by longtime GA artist, George Papp.

More about →

Single Issue Review: World's Finest #135

Cover Art by Dillin/Moldoff.

World's Finest #135 features the last appearance during the Silver Age of a new Dick Sprang story. There is some indication that this story may have been inventoried for awhile; if you look at the number of stories Sprang had published by year in the late 1950s/early 1960s, it sure looks like it:

1956: 16
1957: 15
1958: 13
1959: 14
1960: 11
1961: 1
1962: 2
1963: 2

The irony is amusing. Early in his career, Sprang's work had reportedly been inventoried by DC as a hedge against the potential that DC's regular Batman artists, including Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson, might be drafted into the military for World War II. Now late in his (comics) career it was released in dribbles, apparently to keep the hope alive that he was still working for DC.

The story opens with Batman and Robin investigating a report of a strange-looking man digging in a farmer's field. They arrive as he excavates a small chunk of Green Kryptonite. When they confront him, he shoots them with a repulsing weapon and escapes on a flying platform.

Batman chases after him in his Whirly-Bat, instructing Robin to contact Superman.



Interesting; I had always known that Batman and Superman knew each other's identities, but not that Robin knew about Clark Kent.

Batman follows the Future Man's trail back to a cave where he discovers a time machine with a then-current date (June 8, 1963) and a notebook which mentions New Gotham City in 2084 and ancient Norseland in 522. Robin relays the message that Superman and he have found the Future Man at the local "Boy Ranger Museum". He has created Kryptonite bullets with which to stop the Man of Steel. Seeing Batman approaching on his Whirly-Bat, he forces the Caped Crusader to execute a daring maneuver:



Is this the finest moment ever in Whirly-Bat history? I'll leave that one to the experts, but it's surely high on the list.

The Future Man escapes and when Superman, Batman and Robin chase him to the cave, they discover the time machine vanishing. Has he gone into the future, or into the past? Superman will cover the former, while Batman and Robin go back to Norseland.

This of course means another appearance for Dr. Carter Nichols, a longtime Batman family member who was about to disappear as well. I don't think this was his final appearance but the clock was definitely ticking. He sends Batman and Robin back through time. Unfortunately, the Future Man has gotten there first and convinces the villagers that Batman and Robin are here to assassinate the local chieftain.

They are knocked unconscious and transported to learn their fate from the chieftain who turns out to be a surprise:



This is one of several "Thor" appearances in DC comics, and I would guess one of the last. It turns out that the Future Man's objective was to steal Thor's hammer, which he does and vanishes back to the present, with Batman and Robin in pursuit.

Meanwhile, Superman has gone into the future, where he initially faces charges for imitating the great hero of the past, but he quickly proves he's indeed the Man of Steel:



He recognizes the Science Minister as the Future Man, but later discovers it's actually his twin brother. The Future Man's minions capture Superman with the Kryptonite and tie it to him with ropes. We learn that the Hammer of Thor interacts with Kryptonite to cause amazing effects, hence the cover image, which scene appears next in the story.

We shift to the future, where the Future Man's henchmen greet his arrival from the present. Rak disintegrates the Kryptonite holding Superman down, apparently in preparation for destroying the Man of Steel himself. But it's a ruse, as Batman and Robin have defeated Rak already (using robots for the cover sequence), and with Superman free they quickly make short work of Rak's henchmen.

If we look at this story for keys as to when it could have been created, it immediately becomes obvious that it is after Detective #257 (July 1958) as this story features extensive use of the Whirly-Bats, which first appeared in that issue. There are plenty of other clues, however.

Superman is show as using his heat vision, not the heat of his x-ray vision. I am not sure of the exact date and issue that switchover was made, but I'm pretty sure it was around 1960.

The Thor appearance is a surprise. Marvel's Thor made his first appearance in August 1962 and he appeared on every cover of Journey into Mystery thereafter. That strikes me as a strong indication that this story must have been written before that. DC did have another Batman/Thor story before that in Batman #127 (1959), but with the heat vision aspect we're already after that.

I don't buy the date shown in the time machine of June 8, 1963. That's about when the comic went on sale (actually June 13, according to the DC Indexes).

There is one more aspect of the story that I have to comment on, and that is the tributes. This does certainly seem to be a swan song for Sprang, and Alfred/Rex and Commissioner Gordon are shoehorned into the story via a silly subplot about Batman's secret identity:



Alfred gets a line, the commissioner just gets to hold his head:



I tend to think that's intentional; if the Future Man really had Bruce's secret identity (and he did), then why would he contact Batman at police headquarters? Why not send him a message at Wayne Manor? The only answer is to give Sprang a chance to draw Gordon one last time. Bill Finger is credited with the script; did he know this was Sprang's last issue?

Comments: Nice story, excellent art as usual (but never again in the Silver Age) by Sprang.

There is a text story; World's Finest was one of the last superhero titles at DC to get a letters column. This one starts talking about frogmen of history, then switches to a discussion of the aquatic spider, then segues into modern skin (scuba) diving.

The second story is The Creatures that Conquered Aquaman. This one requires a small amount of intro. Jack Schiff had inherited the Aquaman strip from Adventure Comics. Initially he put Aquaman into Detective comics, but that only lasted for seven issues before he shipped it over to World's Finest. Initially both Aquaman and Green Arrow shared duties as backup features but effective with #134 they began alternating issues with slightly longer stories. This only lasted until #140; with the next issue Weisinger took over editorship of the mag and put a reprint story in the backup role. I have previously expressed bafflement at these decisions, especially since Aquaman had already gotten his own magazine by then. But in retrospect it seems obvious that although Aquaman had landed a new home, there was no room for the old Aquaman creative team of Jack Miller and Ramona Fradon over there.

This story is a rather pedestrian "Aliens from another dimension come to loot ours." They have these headbands that give them super-powers (mostly beams from their hands and eyes). Aquaman's finny friends help him out:



Comments: A mediocre story that feels padded even though it's only ten pages long. I've always like Fradon's art.

More about →

Weddings Bells Are Breaking Up That Old Gang of Mine...

Initially, almost all superheroes were single. This is quite common in fiction as it allows for additional storytelling elements like romance and physical attraction.

But the negatives of not being married became apparent when Dr Wertham published Seduction of the Innocent, with its implication of gay themes in Batman's relationship with Robin. So when the Silver Age started, many of the new DC heroes had longterm girlfriends. Ray Palmer had Jean Loring, Barry Allen had Iris West, Hal Jordan had Carol Ferris (more or less; she was mostly interested in Green Lantern). Hawkman and Hawkgirl broke new ground for the Silver Age; they were a married couple right from the beginning.

Aquaman did not have a girlfriend in his Silver Age debut, but he rectified that situation with Aquaman #11, when Mera debuted:



When she returns in Aquaman #13, the Sea Sleuth is not shy about expressing his feelings:



Nor is she timid about pushing matters forward a bit:



And for once there was no extended engagement:



I believe that Aquaman and Mera were the first superhero couple to get married in a comic book; as noted earlier Hawkman and Hawkgirl were married when they first appeared in the Silver Age and the Elongated Man and Sue Dibney were married just prior to their appearance in Detective #327.

However, they were not the only couple to wed during the 1960s. Reed Richards and Sue Storm tied the knot in the pages of Fantastic Four Annual #3 (1965):



The final major wedding of the decade was announced rather tastefully:



In two of the stories, there was a usurper to the groom. The Flash's mortal enemy, Professor Zoom attempted to marry Iris in Barry's place as shown here:



And in the Aquaman story, Oceanus kidnaps Mera and attempts to make her his bride. Oddly, there is no similar effort by the Submariner to prevent Sue Storm from marrying Reed Richards.

Why so many weddings in the mid-1960s after none before? I suspect that the comics writers were taking their cue from TV shows, which had discovered around the time that a marriage (and/or a new baby) gave sagging programs renewed ratings.

Update: Turns out there was another wedding which the baddies tried and failed to break up.



And there actually was one wedding that failed to come off due to the actions of the villains; in Hulk 124 Bruce Banner and Betty Ross were standing at the altar when the Leader's ray transformed Bruce back into the Hulk:

More about →

Adventure #253

The October 1958 issue of Adventure Comics featured a rare team-up of the two major teen stars of DC at the time, Superboy and Robin. Of course, due to the constant timeline problems with Superboy, Robin had to be projected into the past in order to interact with Clark as a peer.

The plot is wildly incompatible with the rest of the Silver Age DC. First, Robin is sent back in time to prevent Superman from getting killed years later. But we know that one of the central tenets of the DC universe is that you cannot go back in time to change history, so presumably this was shortly before DC established that principle. And of course the notion of Lex Luthor being the same age as Superboy/Clark had not been established either, so this scene is not as embarrassing as it would appear only a few years later:

"Young" Luthor looks to be at least 30 in that picture.

That brings up another problem with the whole story. Robin and Superboy appear at a scientific lecture where the marvels of the future are discussed:



That dates the lecture to no later than mid-1945, which means it's taking place 13 years prior to the comic, which means Superman is at that time 13 years older than Superboy. But at this point, Superboy looks to be in his late-teens, which would put Supes at 30, several years older than he's supposed to be at that point in his career.

Still, the story does present some interesting opportunities for DC's Teen Titans of their time to show off:


Among the next set of ads is this terrific and hugely influential house ad.


How much more compactly can you tell Superman's origin than that? It's a perfect little bit of storytelling that introduces the major characters in the Superman family at the time and their relationship to him.

The Green Arrow story is part of the brief (7 issues) run of Jack Kirby on the Emerald Archer. In Prisoners of Dimension Zero, Green Arrow and Speedy find themselves transported to another dimension, of giant aliens. They meet Xeen Arrow, a huge counterpart to GA, who manages to send them back to our own earth:



The Aquaman story is somewhat disappointing; he travels back in time, encounters ancient dinosaurs in a cave, and is constantly attacked by a hungry brontosaurus. Of course, nowadays we know the brontosaurus did not exist, but even back then it was believed to be a vegetarian.



Update: Michael Grabois, who runs the terrific Legion Omnicon, asked in the comments whether the letters column in this issue included any comments on Adventure #247, which of course included the first Legion of Superheroes story. As it happens, Adventure #253 was the first issue that included the Smallville Mailsack, but the letters were mostly general questions/observations about Superboy and the other characters:

1. Why can't Lana Lang learn Superboy's real identity?
2. Where did Aquaman get his name?
3. Having Superboy around the house must be nice for the Kents.
4. Please give Green Arrow his own magazine.
5. Why doesn't Superboy make the Kents rich by squeezing coal into diamonds?

I looked in the next ten issues or so and didn't see a mention of the LSH in the letter columns.

More about →