Number 1202: Star of radio and television

As a feature, “Roy Raymond, TV Detective,” lasted a long time in Detective Comics, 1949 to 1961. For the first few years the feature was called “Impossible -- But True!” with art chores handled originally by Ruben Moreira. The strip's name change came in 1953. Roy Raymond had a busy career, spanning radio and then television. He was a professional debunker, whose investigative powers would be used to expose fakers. In his very first tale, shown here, Raymond is challenged by stories of a valley where people instantly age fifty years (gee, the story of my life!) and the second puts Roy underwater with a group of mermen.

Moreira, who also used the name Rubimor to draw the Sunday comic strip Tarzan in the mid-'40s, both penciled and inked. Moreira was born in Puerto Rico. He moved back in 1958 and mailed in his work. In 1962 Moreira quit comics. He died in 1984.

From Detective Comics #153 (1949) and #252 (1958):

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Detective #288

On the most obvious level, this issue is part and parcel of the horrific "monster of the month" era in Detective Comics that characterized a good part of Jack Schiff's tenure as editor of the Batman family of magazines. And make no mistake about it, that's the primary (and exceedingly silly) plot.

The story starts with a lightning bolt hitting a pool of chemicals causing a strange transformation:

The bit about life arising from chemical wastes is probably inspired by the movie, Godzilla. Batman and Robin encounter the creature and their initial attempt to defeat it reveals that it is more powerful than it looks:

So by this point in reading the story, I'm already yawning at the transparent absurdity. But then something interesting happens. The creature heads towards the house of an old actor who's become wheelchair-bound. Batman moves to help him, while sending Robin to the town to get help.

The actor is somewhat fatalistic, until he sees Batman in trouble:

And in town, Robin discovers that the only official around is a mere clerk, who doesn't think he can handle the crisis until:

There are quite a few Batman and Robin tales from the Golden Age that follow this pattern, and they are among the classics of that era. While the stale art and the monster focus prevent this story from reaching those heights, the subplots did make it quite a bit more entertaining than I expected.

The third subplot involves a bank robbery featuring an ingenious method of escape:

"Nothing can stop us now," is of course begging for trouble, and the creature flies into the blimp, grounding it. Batman and Robin capture the crooks, and help the clerk calm the local citizenry, then electrocute the creature. And in the end:

The Roy Raymond story (one of the last in that long-running series) sees Roy solve the case of an heiress who has been cursed with the gaze of Medusa, causing anyone she glances at to be turned to stone. Of course, it's all a plot by a guardian to steal her inheritance.
The Martian Manhunter story is rather bizarre. MM's good friend Larry Loder has fallen for a swindle. A bunch of crooks sold him some treasure-finding inventions, with which he hopes to pay back the investors who lost money with him earlier. And when you see the inventions, it's not hard to believe that he's a pretty poor financial advisor:

J'onn takes pity on him and makes the inventions seem to work. But it turns out that this was stage two of the crooks' con job:

So the Martian Manhunter makes sure that the final invention works in such a way that the crooks are caught by Larry. The reward money ensures that Loder will have enough funds to pay back all his investors, who presumably reinvested the funds with him in a bagful of magic beans.

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The Skeptic

DC published any number of backup features during the Silver Age. One of my favorites was Roy Raymond, TV Detective. Raymond was the host of a TV show called Impossible But True, and the focus of the stories was how he managed to keep from being hoaxed by people wanting to get on the show for one reason or another.

The stories were always tight, as was the artwork by Ruben Moreira, who handled the feature from its debut in Detective #153 (November 1949) (where it bumped the long-running Slam Bradley) to its last appearance in Detective #292 (bumped in the next issue by the arrival of Aquaman).

Just to give you the flavor of this series, I'm going to present the supposed impossible but true thing, and Roy's solution for a few issues in a row:

Detective 255
Impossible But True: A man from Saturn arrives and shows Roy that it is safe for earthlings to live on his planet. A murderer arrives and plans to hijack his way aboard the alien ship.

Roy's solution: It was all a plot for the murderer to make his getaway on Earth, secure in the knowledge that everybody would think he had departed for Saturn. Roy suspected the man from Saturn was a phony because of a mistake he made in drawing Roy:



Detective 256
Impossible But True: A native African can protect people from attack by animals with special branches from a tree he has blessed.

Roy's solution: It's a plot by one of the partners in a diamond mine to convince his partner to go out in the jungle with little protection other than a useless branch:



Detective 257
Impossible But True: An actress in a movie drinks a potion that is supposed to be able to turn her into Cleopatra. After drinking the potion, she suddenly is able to locate ancient ruins that only Cleopatra would know.

Roy's Solution: The whole think was a scheme by the Egyptian government to flush out an illicit dealer in rare antiquities. He knew the actresss didn't really turn into Cleopatra because:



Detective 258
Impossible But True: An auditor is hexed after touching a stone idol hundreds of years old, with pearl eyes.

Roy Raymond's solution. The whole thing was a plot to prevent the auditor from checking the books of two companies whose bosses have been embezzling funds. He knows the idol is fake because:

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The Modern Silver Age

Although the Silver Age of Comics ended (in my estimation) about 38 years ago, the market is still served via Archive Editions (DC) or Masterworks (Marvel). In addition, several modern comic book series have been produced to provide new looks at the Silver Age characters. Three that I have specifically in mind are the Silver Age series produced by DC around 2000, 1963 by Alan Moore, and The New Frontier, released by DC in 2004.

I thought I would take a look at that last series over the next few days. I will say right up front that while the series has a few unfortunate flaws, it comes with my highest recommendation. It is a fine achievement in storytelling and captures the essence of the Silver Age while clearly reflecting modern sensibilities as well.

The name, "The New Frontier", refers to a phrase used by John F. Kennedy in his acceptance speech at the 1960 Democratic National Convention:

We stand at the edge of a New Frontier—the frontier of unfulfilled hopes and dreams. Beyond that frontier are uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered problems of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus.

In the title it evokes the same era in comics, as DC began the great revival of superheroes that became known as the Silver Age.

The story begins with the Losers, several of DC's Silver Age WWII characters, stranded on an island with a T-Rex. This evokes the rather oddball "WWII and dinosaurs" era of Star Spangled War Stories in the mid-1960s, although the Losers (Captain Storm, Gunner, Sarge & Pooch and Johnny Cloud) came along later. The T-Rex kills all but Johnny Cloud, who avenges his fellow losers:



It is basically a digression from the real story, but isn't that the point? The DC war comics of the 1960s are certainly nowadays considered a digression from the really interesting superhero era. Which gets underway in the second part of the first book, when a young man meets Colonel Chuck Yeager:



There is a moment in every great comic where the reader suddenly realizes that this is going to be really good. For me it came a few panels later, when it is revealed that the young lad who idolizes Col. Yeager is Hal Jordan. It's the missing piece of the puzzle, the moment where we understand why Hal became a test pilot for Ferris Aircraft in the Silver Age. It may seem minor, but an additional piece of characterization for one of DC's major SA characters that fits what we already know and yet adds depth to the character? Priceless.

This highlight is followed by a bit of tedious political correctness that has apparently become part of the DC mythos. We are told through an Iris West feature article that the Golden Age comic heroes of the DC Universe were banned and either retired or hunted down during the McCarthy-inspired "Red Scare" of the 1950s. This merges Earth-1 with Earth-2. We hear that Roy Raymond got caught up in the blacklist and that's why his show was canceled. We also learn that Richard Nixon was behind it all, and Superman was the enforcer of the edict against superheroes.

The negative of this nonsense is that it wasn't true. DC's Golden Age Superheroes were not forced to take a dirt nap by anything other than consumer (lack of) demand. Roy Raymond's series was canceled in 1961, well after the Hollywood Blacklist had been broken.

When this tedious bit is followed by the revelation that Hal has become a young fighter pilot in Korea, but that he refuses to shoot down enemy pilots, I resumed my skepticism that the story was going to prove pleasing. Fortunately I was wrong, but this was a silly attempt to shoehorn in the prohibition against killing. Perhaps we can buy Hal's refusal to become an ace, but how do we understand his commanding officer's acceptance of same?

The last part of the first issue weaves in Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen. Hal actually does kill an enemy soldier, but solely because he cannot remember Korean for "The war is over."

Comments: This issue has some terrific moments but also slips into an annoyingly PC view of comic history at the end that actually had me wondering if it was worth continuing. If you get through the first book and are wondering as well, definitely read on. There will be more annoying moments, but the good parts outweigh the bad by a large margin.

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Dying Features

We've talked a lot about the rebirth of old features in the Silver Age, like the Flash and Green Lantern, and of course Captain America, Namor and the Human Torch. But many, many features did not survive to the end of the Silver Age, and I wanted to touch on a couple of these.

Green Arrow was one of the few superheroes to make it all the way from the 1940s to the 1960s. He had started out in More Fun #73, and by that issue's #77 began a run as the cover boy and lead feature. He was also included immediately in Leading Comics #1's feature, The Seven Soldiers of Victory, and added to the World's Finest lineup with #7.

He was bumped out of More Fun after #107, when that title went more to a humor format, and the feature moved over (along with the new Superboy stories) to Adventure #103, where it replaced Starman. But after that, Green Arrow settled down for a very long time. Although he was not an original member of the Justice League of America, he was added to that cast with issue #4. Unfortunately, about the same time, he was dropped from Adventure comics after a 167-issue run. He did get to appear in the first superhero teamup in Brave & Bold, along with another doomed hero, the Martian Manhunter.

Green Arrow continued in World's Finest until #134, a 128-issue streak, then alternated with Aquaman for a few issues before DC decided to go with reprints behind the Batman/Superman teamups. And with that, Green Arrow found himself with no regular feature for the first time in 23 years. Oh, he still had the appearances in the Justice League, but even those were irregular. Speedy, his longtime sidekick, eventually caught on with the Teen Titans, and that was essentially it for their relationship, as is well-documented.

Of course, Green Arrow would change dramatically at the very end of the Silver Age; I have talked about that in the past.

Roy Raymond initially appeared in Detective Comics #153, where he replaced Slam Bradley, which was at the time DC's longest running feature. Roy was a "TV Detective", with a show called Impossible But True that exposed frauds. Ironically, the name of the program was deceptive, since usually it turned out to be Impossible But Phony.

Roy Raymond lasted until Detective #292, when he was bumped to make way for Aquaman's brief run (7 issues) in 'Tec.

Ant-Man was one of the earliest Marvel Superheroes, as I have discussed before. After a tryout in Tales to Astonish #27, Hank Pym returned in #35 for a fairly long run, both as Ant-Man and Giant Man. He held down the cover position until #59, when the Hulk joined TtA. However, effective with TtA #70, Giant Man was bumped in favor of Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner.

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