Adventures of the Fly #9

The first new superhero created by Jack Kirby in the 1960s wasn't one of the members of the Fantastic Four. It wasn't a character created for DC or Marvel. It was the Fly, an Archie Comics superhero. Unfortunately, Kirby's association with the magazine ended after the first issue, and this story is illustrated by John Giunta.

It's not hard to figure out the inspiration for the Fly. In 1958, Vincent Price starred in a movie called the Fly, where a scientist experimenting with teleportation, accidentally gets his body scrambled up with that of a fly which had entered the device with him. In this series, the Fly appears to have the various powers of flying insects, which he activates by rubbing a ring.

The opening story is pretty banal. Thomas Troy (secretly the Fly) is on a business trip to Havana, with his pretty secretary, Donna Morse. Havana? Yep, the comic has a cover date of November 1960, which is shortly after the US embargo on Cuba after the revolution. The comic was obviously written and drawn prior to that, but well after Castro took power. However, there is no mention in the book that Cuba is anything other than a fun-loving Latin American country. Of course, that implies some things we modern audiences would look askance at:

The Fly has left Donna at a swanky nightclub with its owner, a handsome American businessman named Kent, who is selling the business (good timing!), while he goes in search of some criminals who fled to the island nation. Donna wishes she was with the Fly instead. But when some criminals kidnap Kent, she follows after, at great peril to herself:

Apparently, some fun-loving Latin Americans, in the carnival atmosphere, tip over the gangsters' car, saving her. When she finally tails them to their hideout, she's shocked to discover that Kent is actually their boss. The Fly arrives in time to save her. He mentions that he actually was responsible for overturning the car earlier.

The second story features a team-up with the Shield. A yogi has been thrilling crowds with his illusions:

Yes, apparently a "phony performance" is illegal in the Fly's hometown. Tom Troy volunteers to defend him from the charges, but the yogi is not content to let justice take its course:

One deplores the laxity of the local jail, which allows criminals to retain their masks and burn giant pots of incense. The yogi gets away with the help of some demons from the spirit world, and goes on a criminal rampage. This scene with the Shield gives us an idea of how he succeeds:

But it isn't until someone wearing a gas mask is unaffected that the Fly and Shield catch on that the yogi is using a hallucinogenic gas and suggestions to convince people that they are seeing monsters and demons.

The third story is the cover tale. Obviously the Cat Girl is based on the Catwoman, who at that time hadn't been seen for some six years at DC and wouldn't appear for at least another six outside of reprints (and the Batman TV show). She first appears at the zoo, where she frees all the big cats. The Fly uses his various powers to entrap them:

Later, he encounters her with a panther and a tiger, which she sics on him. But after subduing the animals, the Fly must save her:

Curious as to who she is and how she controls the big cats, he lets her take him to a cave which serves as a lair. There he discovers her secret. The story ends like many a Batman-Catwoman tale:

Comments: Entertaining stories and competent artwork. The Fly continued through issue #30 and then the series was renamed "Fly Man", which lasted for another nine outings.

By Request: Challengers of the Unknown #5

A longtime commenter sent me an email requesting a review of this issue, so I thought I'd tackle it. For starters, the pencils are by Jack Kirby, with inks by Wally Wood, so we're talking two legends of the medium here. Although I am not a huge fan of Kirby's artwork personally, I do think he was the absolute master of page construction. His pages demand that you read them, drawing you through the story like nobody before or since.

I do not classify the Challengers as superheroes, but as an adventure team, much like Sea Devils or Rip Hunter, Time Master. But this issue shows that the line between the two can be rather blurry indeed. As the story begins, a South American train is attacked by a super-powered being. When the guards try to intervene:

Throwing balls of fire would be the hallmark of a character that Kirby would assist in resurrecting a couple years later: the Human Torch of the Fantastic Four.

The Challengers hear about this from June Robbins, who is down in South America on an archaeological dig. It turns out that Vreedl, another member of that party, had stolen a "Star-Stone" from the dig:

So the Challenge in this issue is to prevent Vreedl from getting all four stones (he's already collected one, which accounts for his flame power. But when they pursue him in the jungle, they run into problems. Vreedl starts a fire:

He also starts a stampede, but Red saves them by using an old circus trick. Still Vreedl gets the next gem, and then it's off to India to save a rajah from losing his special diamond. Vreedl's new power from the second gem is that of flight:

But his flying ability is only temporary, and when the Challs close in, he's not above using the superstition of the natives to get away:

The crowd quickly subdues the Challengers and imprisons them. It looks as though they will be unable to get word to the rajah that they are there in time to prevent Vreedl from obtaining the last gem. But, in an amazing coincidence:

She diverts the guards' attention and the Challengers are able to escape. They chase Vreedl to the final gem:

But he escapes with the pearl needed and so (after a battle with some sharks) they chase him onto the land, where he demonstrates his new powers (as shown on the cover). But Ace points out a flaw:

So Vreedl destroys the star stone, and unfortunately for him:

Is Ace making an observation about villains in general, or about comic-book villains?

Comments: Solid, entertaining story with lots of exotic locales and perilous situations. I wouldn't put it down as a classic, but it clearly deserves note as an above-average yarn with way, way above-average art. I like that June plays a fairly prominent role in the story, even if it does seem just a little too convenient for plot purposes.

The GCD does not have a guess for the writer. One thing I noted was the use of the word "fellers". It's not the correct spelling (fellows) or the usual vernacular (fellas). I know I've seen that in other comics but a specific citation is escaping me right now.

Showcase #6: Challengers of the Unknown

Jack Kirby had created a few memorable series for DC in the Golden Age, including the Boy Commandos and the Newsboy Legion, before moving back over to Timely/Atlas. For awhile in the later 1950s he worked again for DC, creating the Challengers of the Unknown, who quickly graduated to their own long-running series.

As the story begins, four men are winging their way towards a radio program. Rocky Davis is an Olympic wrestling champion, Prof Haley is a master skin (scuba) diver, Red Ryan is a circus daredevil, and Ace Morgan is a war hero and fearless jet pilot. However, their plane runs into some rough weather, and:

Despite Ace's efforts, the plane crashes. Miraculously the four men emerge from the wreckage uninjured. Red notices that even his watch is still working, and Ace comments that the men are "living on borrowed time". This phrase becomes the signature of the Challengers series. Figuring that they should be dead anyway, the four men decide to band together and take risks that nobody else would. And in short order, they become famous for their daring.

They fly to northern Canada, where they are greated by a mysterious man named Morelian. He's obviously quite wealthy, having had a castle disassembled brick by brick in Europe and brought to North America and reassembled. Morelian reveals that he's a descendant of the original Merlin, and that he too dabbles in black magic. He explains their task:

It is obvious that danger awaits within the box, or else Morelian would open it himself. The Challengers confer:

They decide to open the box on a deserted island, to minimize the risk to humanity, and settle on a small isle near the Bikini Islands. An aside: Did you know that the name of the bikini swimsuit was based on a pun? From Wikipedia:

Bikini Island is well-known for being the subject of nuclear bomb tests, and because the bikini swimsuit was named after the island in 1946. The two-piece swimsuit was introduced within days of the first nuclear test on the atoll, and the name of the island was in the news. Introduced just weeks after the one-piece "Atome" was widely advertised as the "smallest bathing suit in the world", it was said that the bikini "split the atome".

Rocky gets first crack at the box. The Challengers' safety precautions are not exactly impressive:

Inside the first chamber, Rocky discovers a giant egg. Translating from Ancient Greek, Prof reveals that an inscription says something about a dragon seed. Ace speculates that this may have something to do with the Greek legend of Cadmus, who supposedly planted dragon's teeth in the ground and grew a crop of fighting men. The men decide to let Prof continue attempting to translate the innscription, while they break for the night. But while they are sleeping, the egg begins to crack open.
They discover the egg has opened and a giant has emerged, which grabs Red:

Ace and Prof fly off in pursuit of the giant, leaving Rocky behind to safeguard the box. But Rocky finds the temptation to open another chamber irresistible. As Prof machine-guns the giant, it lets Red go in frustration. He's picked up in a lifeboat of a ship that had been abandoned when the giant came upon it. The men on the lifeboat row Red to the island where the box is located. Red discovers Rocky frozen on the ground. As he explores the island, he discovers:

Red tricks it into following him:

He slips out the side, then seals the sun inside, trapping it.

Meanwhile, Prof figures out how to defeat the giant:

Despite the great dangers they have barely defeated, the Challengers are determined to open the final two chambers of the box. The third chamber contains a "whirling weaver" which quickly spins a cocoon around Ace, then takes off for the mainland. When the Challengers follow, they discover the weaver has already hit Australia:

Note that atypically for DC in this era, a real city is named. Prof notes that there's a dial on the container that held the weaver, and deduces that it's actually a control device. With the weaver under their power, the Challengers head back to the island, where they discover Morelian has already arrived:

But when he flies away, his plane suddenly veers out of control and crashes into the box, killing Morelian and destroying the box. The Challengers realize that the box itself granted immortality, not the ring.

Comments: An interesting and entertaining story. Kirby's art still looks like his Golden Age work, and not like the Silver Age style he made famous. It's notable that the story is broken into five "chapters". This was unusual for comics in the Silver Age; about the only other comic series that had that same format was the early Fantastic Four (which Kirby also drew and plotted).

Oddities: At one point, Rocky is referred to as "Rod" by Prof. And it seems unusual that there is no real villain per se in the story; although Morelian is clearly something of a strange duck, there's none of the usual "Bwahahaha, you fools, you have given me the key to eternal life! Now I shall kill you!"

Single Issue Review: Strange Tales #100

Marvel didn't spring out of thin air in the early 1960s; rather it developed slowly, evolving out of the Atlas line, which mostly consisted of so-called "horror" titles like Strange Tales, Journey into Mystery, Tales to Astonish and Tales of Suspense. This was the last all-horror Strange Tales issue; with #101 the magazine began featuring the Human Torch series.

The issue leads off with The Man in the Crazy Maze, drawn by Jack Kirby and inked by Dick Ayers. An unscrupulous carnival operator decides to make a maze where no route leads to the exit. By promising anybody who can reach the exit $10,000, he gets a lot of suckers to try to solve the maze. Indeed, it becomes a financial drain to the locals:



Then a new maze opens up in town. This one doesn't offer a prize, but it's fun and costs less than Charlie's maze. Losing business, Charlie accepts a deal from the new maze owner; if he can find his way out of the new maze, the new owner will pack up and leave town. Charlie agrees, but as he searches the new maze, he cannot find the way out. In the end we learn there is one exit: down to Hell, and the new owner is the devil himself.

Comments: Nice ending, overall an entertaining story. Charlie had killed a newspaper reporter who was onto him, so there's no question he deserved his fate.

The second story is The Imitation Man, again with Kirby/Ayers art. Zarago is a dictator of a Central American republic who looks to be patterned on Fidel Castro. As he rules with an iron fist, he's subject to occasional assassination attempts. He learns that an inventor has invented a machine that will duplicate any living creature exactly. Deciding that this will enable him to clone a double who can take risks by appearing in public, Zarago orders the inventor to copy him. Of course, you can guess the problem:



Realizing that his duplicate is just as power mad and greedy as himself, Zarago kills him. But in the meantime, the machine has spit out a dozen more dopplegangers, and the army, in the confusion, rises up against the multiple Zaragos and destroys them all, including the original. A democracy is instituted. And the inventor discloses to the reader that he planned this all along because Earth has no room for men like Zarago.

Comments: A clever story, although it would have been stronger if we knew who the inventor was. Was he a CIA agent sent to overthrow Zarago? Was he someone who lost a family member in the revolution that brought Zarago to power?

The third story is Beware the Uboongi. A US survey ship lands on Uranus, but fails to last the 24 hours required to establish it as our territory, as they are chased off by the fearsome Uboongi. The Soviets take advantage of the opportunity to send their own spaceship to Uranus, despite being warned that one of the two species of animals on that planet is deadly while the other is peaceful. The Soviets reason that the beast that looks like a rhino must be the dangerous one, while the sheep-like looking creatures are safe. But it turns out to be the wrong decision:



Comments: Entertaining, but entirely predictable. Art by Don Heck.

The final story is The Mighty Oak, drawn by Steve Ditko. An oak tree near the site of an atomic blast suddenly finds itself sentient, and capable of moving about.



The oak begins planting little acorns wherever it goes, knowing that they will grow up to be intelligent oaks as well, and one day, when they have sufficient numbers they will take over.

Meanwhile, what of the humans? It turns out that the people who ran the atomic exercise are not surprised to learn of the intelligent oak, and his plans:


Comments: Surprising ending. There were a lot of "mankind has screwed things up royally," plots around in the early 1960s; it seemed like a rare episode of the Twilight Zone that didn't have that as an underlying theme. Still it's hard to believe that not only would scientists welcome our new oak overlords, but that they'd actually create them.

Single Issue Review: Thor #159

In Thor #158, Marvel reprinted the origin of Thor story from Journey into Mystery #83. While on vacation in Norway Don Blake had heard strange stories of an alien invasion. Investigating, the lame doctor found himself being pursued by the aliens. He managed to find his way into a cave, where he found a cane. He discovered that by tapping the cane, he was suddenly transformed into the mighty Thor, with extraordinary powers and abilities. He repelled the alien invasion and began fighting crime while maintaining his secret identity.

While it is certainly a very unusual origin, it presented some problems, especially since early on Stan introduced the concept of Asgard, where Thor was a god with his father Odin and numerous friends and enemies. It wasn't long before the fans noticed the problem with this. If Thor had existed all along, who was Don Blake? What had happened to the mighty Thor that his magic hammer/cane was sitting in that cavern?

This was the subject of an almost endless series of letters to the editor speculating on possibilities, and in Thor #159, Stan decided to finally settle the matter. Thor had been exiled to Earth by Odin as a punishment for his lack of humility. We learned that Don Blake had only actually existed for a few years, having been created by Odin with a lame leg in order to humble the Thunder God.

Of course, the idea that he had learned some real humility is rather silly; if ever there was a character who was full of himself, it was Thor. This is part of his character as a god, so maybe Odin was grading on the curve.

The story is solid, with new details about the origin of a major character in the Marvel Universe. At last we understand why Don Blake himself has no life aside from his doctor's office. Indeed, Blake had no friends or continuing characters from his earthly life, with the exception of Jane Foster, who of course was gone by then.

On the art side, I am not a huge fan of Jack Kirby's Silver Age work, but I must acknowledge that this issue was terrific. Check out this full-pager:



What's not to like there? Simply beautiful, as is the rest of the book.

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.

Secret Agent Man

Comic publishers have always dutifully scanned popular culture for clues as to topics that appear to interest teenagers. In the 1950s, comics were produced to capitalize on the appeal of Westerns at the movie theatre. When monster movies were popular, monster comics were not behind. And when spies and secret agents became hip in the mid-1960s, the publishers rushed to fill the demand.

Marvel made a particulary strong entry into the secret agent genre with the paranoia-tinged Nick Fury, Agent of Shield series. NFAS took over the lead feature in Strange Tales that had previously belonged to the Human Torch (and briefly, Torch and the Thing team-ups) effective with issue #135, featuring a terrific cover by Jack Kirby:



(Note: Fred Hembeck has a cool takeoff on this cover and some memories of the NFAS Saga in the January 17, 2006 edition of his blog.)

Fury had been a character in the Marvel universe for several years already, albeit as a historical character. He was Sgt. Fury, leader of the Howling Commandos, a World War II fighting squadron. Now Marvel decided to age him a few years (but not quite the 20 that the calendar called for) and make him a secret agent.

S.H.I.E.L.D. of course was a direct swipe of U.N.C.L.E. (which was probably a swipe itself of S.P.E.C.T.R.E.) and stood for Supreme Headquarters International Espionage Law-Enforcement Division. Shield's chief enemy was a group called Hydra, which mercifully does not stand for anything, but does have some cool rituals:



NFAS was blessed with great stories and artwork. After handling the introductory story in Strange Tales #135, Jack Kirby did layouts for the amazing Johnny Severin for the next few issues, followed by a year or so of rotating artists including Ogden Whitney (!). Finally in Strange Tales #151, a new artist was hired for the feature who would define Agent of Shield for the next few years: Jim Steranko. Steranko's style was unlike most comics artists of the time; he was heavily influenced by the psychedelic posters and album art of the late 1960s as this cover shows:



In early 1968, Marvel decided to quit doing anthology magazines. Strange Tales was changed to Dr Strange with issue #169, and Nick Fury Agent of Shield was given its own title starting with #1. Unfortunately the title struggled a bit on its own apparently, possibly because of the inevitable decline of the secret agent genre after the initial fad died down. The first twelve issues of NFAS were published on a monthly basis, but with #13, the frequency was changed to bi-monthly and the title only lasted to #15. A year later Marvel published three more issues but they were reprints of the early Strange Tales stories.