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.

Iron Man Run, Part 3

The last post took us up through Tales of Suspense #64, so we'll pick up with #65. This is a battle between the old Iron Man and the new Iron Man, as a crook manages to steal Tony Stark's new armor, forcing him back into the old suit.

After another one-off against Sub-Mariner foe Attuma, Tony faces the former Count Nefaria, known now as the Dream-Maker, because he can project his enemies into dangerous nightmares, like this one:



His dreams can be deadly as well. So Iron Man faces a gantlet of many of his old foes, even Gargantus, the robot from outer space. In the next issue, Count Nefaria blackmails Tony's ne'er-do-well cousin Morgan into attempting to drive Stark mad with hallucinations, but Iron Man again saves the day.

ToS #69 begins a longer tale involving another communist version of Iron Man, this time called Titanium Man. His origin is very similar to the Crimson Dynamo; he's an aggressive communist who dreams of taking over the reins of the Soviet Union after defeating Iron Man. He issues a challenge for a battle in a neutral country, to be televised worldwide. Tony's initially reluctant as his heart's been giving him problems, but Senator Byrd puts pressure on his to accept the challenge.

One oddity; Tony agrees to go along to the foreign country, bringing Happy and Pepper with him. But this seems to be a boneheaded mistake as they of course spend a good deal of time while watching the battle remarking on how Tony's not around to see the main event.

Iron Man soon realizes that he needs more power to defeat the Titanium Man. There's a transistor back at his hotel room, where he quickly flees after the first round of the battle is over. Unfortunately, an old flame named the Countess has stolen it from him:



Iron Man tells Happy Hogan to track down the Countess and get back the transistor. He does so, but not before the battle begins again. Happy is not willing to wait for the round to end, so he ventures onto the battlefield and gets hit by a ricochet.



As you can see, he's also figured out that Tony Stark is Iron Man. With the extra transistor power he makes short work of Titanium Man. Meanwhile Happy is undergoing emergency surgery and (not surprising), Pepper's quite frosted that Tony is not there to maintain a vigil at his side (as he has to recharge after the battle).

This creates an oddball situation in that now Pepper respects Iron Man, but not Tony Stark, especially when he explains his absence:

Single Issue Review: Strange Tales #152

Strange Tales by this time was shared by Nick Fury, Agent of Shield and Dr. Strange. The opening story features the former, and is a continuation. Fury had escaped from Hydra in the previous episode, but realized too late that Hydra intended for him to get away. His ship's radio did not work and thus Shield's men may shoot him down. He avoids that trap by flying upside down and wiggling his wings; an international distress signal. But he also realizes that his plane is carrying the Overkill Horn, which will explode every atomic pile on Earth when it sounds, so he can't relax just yet.

The layouts are by Kirby but the pencils are by Steranko, in his second issue.



Sitwell orders that something called the Strato-Mine be launched, even though it will probably kill Fury. Meanwhile at Hydra:



You can see Kirby's influence in there, but the inks are all Steranko. Anyway, Fury aims the plane at Hydra's base, bails out over water and is rescued by a Shield submarine. The Strato-Mine zeros in on the horn and destroys it and the Hydra base.

But the job isn't over yet; Fury's gotta rescue the daughter of the former Supreme Hydra, which he accomplishes with the help of another gimmick: the Electro-Spear, which makes the enemy's weapons too hot to handle. There's a cute little gag at the end as Sitwell celebrates his successful stint as temporary head of Shield:



Comments: Entertaining little story with the usual overload of gadgetry. Steranko was just getting started with his extremely influential run; there are only hints of the psychedelic work that was to come.

The second story introduces Umar, the sister of Dormammu. As you can see, there isn't much of a family resemblance:



In fact, she looks more like the Sub-Mariner, which may be because the art is by Bill Everett (Subby's original creator back in the Golden Age). She explains why she has called Dr Strange to Dormammu's former dimension:



Dr Strange is not fooled by her friendly demeanor; he knows that she's got something planned, but with Clea in danger he cannot avoid facing the Mindless Ones.

Comments: Everett does a decent faux-Ditko in this issue. While the concept of a sister of Dormammu is interesting and works, the story itself seems padded as we wait for Dr Strange to fight his way to her chambers.

A note: These Marvel anthlogy mags really don't work well for the single-issue review concept, especially after about 1965, when Stan started writing more serial stories. I think from now on I'm going to tackle them more like I have been with the Iron Man series lately. Thoughts?

RIP Ric Estrada

Jacque Nodell has a tribute post up to one of the more important romance artists in comics, who passed away last weekend. I did some searching around and came up with a nice Ric Estrada story I'd like to share with you.

The tale is Portrait of Satan, from Eerie #12, dated November 1967. Eerie was an excellent magazine put out by Warren that must have paid well (or reliably), because the artistic talent was extraordinary, including many of the leading EC illustrators from the 1950s. In this issue alone, the artists include Jeff Jones, Johnny Craig, Joe Orlando, Al McWilliams and Estrada.

The story itself riffs off the basic "I'd sell my soul for..." premise. An artist is struggling to meet commercial deadlines but what he really longs for is to do serious art.



As you can see, there is a superficial simplicity to the art but the technique is impressive; it almost looks like he's working with watercolors there and not just pencil and ink. And sequentially, the art looks great:



So the deal is that if Hacker can paint a perfect portrait of the devil, then he doesn't forfeit his soul. When it's completed the devil acknowledges that the portrait is perfect, but he's still going to take Hacker's soul because of an admission that the artist made:



Comments: The story is just okay, with a not terribly surprising ending and a decent twist on the standard "Damn Yankees" plot. But the art adds atmosphere and menace. Interestingly, the style is very much different than the romance art that Jacque includes in her post.

I am trying to track down a Wonder Woman issue that Estrada did the art for (#176) and will update this post if I can locate it.

Update: I'll put a few examples from the WW story. One thing always to remember with superhero titles in the Silver Age is that when a guest artist filled in for an issue, he was expected to draw in the style of the previous artists. For most of the Silver Age that had been the team of Ross Andru and Mike Esposito, who had been pulled off WW after issue #171 (and assigned to handle the Flash at about the same time). The prior few issues had been done by Irv Novick, who went on to some success with Batman. To maintain some continuity, Esposito did the inking on the Novick issues and this one as well.

This was also at the moment in time of DC's silly experiment with coloring in the "pipes" (the normally white spaces between panels). Anyway, here's Ric's take on the Amazon Angel:



Oh, yeah, I should mention that this was the tail end of Batmania as well, which accounts for all the sound effects in the above panel. But a nice, dynamic shot of Wonder Woman like that was not all that common in the Silver Age.

The story... I haven't even the heart to try to discuss it. Sweet mercy, Wonder Woman's stories almost never made sense but this is horrific even for Kanigher. Three geeky brothers are stalking Wonder Woman, trying to get her to marry them. They have a secret formula that turns them into walking stud muffins:



A style more noticeably like Ric's romance artwork comes in in these little bits of Diana Prince:



I'm pretty sure I covered the other time that June 18th rolled around in Wonder Woman #106, but not finding it quickly in my archives. IIRC, the reason I remember it was because that same issue they used another "once a year" gimmick, this time a date that Wondy's various items of equipment--bracelets, lasso, glass plane--were unreliable.

Anyway, you can probably guess the next chapter. Wonder Woman is called on three separate emergencies where she is unable to assist because of her lack of powers, but the three "Star" brothers save the day. However, they also are a little overly aggressive in their approach to romancing her:



His technique reminds me of Muscles in the old BEM ad.

At any rate, Wonder Woman is flattered but cannot give up crimefighting for any of the Star Brothers, especially when it turns out their powers were only temporary.

Comments: As I discussed above, Estrada does well on Diana, but it seems to me that at times his fight scenes with Wonder Woman leave a little something to be desired:



I can appreciate that she's struggling, but it also looks like her neck is growing.

But overall Estrada does a fine job, arguably some of the best art during the otherwise almost uniformly wretched Silver Age Wonder Woman. It would have been nice to see him grow into the character, but fate had other plans, as this was Kanigher's last issue as Wonder Woman's writer and editor. The secret agent Diana Prince was just around the corner.

Iron Man Run, Part II

My previous post on the Iron Man run in Tales of Suspense took us up to issue #49.

In #50, we get the first meeting of Iron Man with one of his principal enemies; the Mandarin. We also get the first look at the new Pepper:



And of course, at this point, Tony starts doing the classic Marvel, "If only I dared tell her that I love her," bit. Meh. At least Happy's reaction shows that he cares for the real Pepper. And as the series develops, Pepper gets less and less antagonistic towards Happy, and even begins dating him, although at first it seems mostly a ploy to try to make Tony jealous.

One other oddity of the series around then. It seems like anytime Stark had to go someplace, Pepper would ask if she could come along, but Tony would say no, then Happy would ask which car he should drive and Tony'd say, I'm driving. And yet, these two remained extremely loyal to Stark.

During a brief period where Iron Man is forced to keep his entire uniform on to prevent dying of a heart attack, Stark leaves orders that Iron Man is to be in charge during his absence. This leads to some weird scenes like this:



You don't see a superhero in full costume sitting behind a desk with his feet up very often. We also get quite a bit less of the Tony Stark, international playboy routine around then. It really never made much sense; how frisky can you get with a metal chestplate under your shirt?

The hit or miss quality to the villains continues. The Scarecrow, from ToS #51 is definitely a miss; he's a former "rubber man" in a sideshow who takes up crime with the aid of some trained crows. On the other hand, ToS#52 introduces the Black Widow, a long-running and terrific villainess who later became a heroine. The Unicorn makes his first appearance in #56, while Hawkeye debuts in #57.

We see continued indications that politicians in Washington are getting impatient with all the attacks going at Stark's defense industry plants. Indeed, Stark's facilities or weaponry are targeted in ToS #52, #53, #54, #55, #56, #57, #59, #60, #61 and #63. In #66, the political opposition gets a name:



Senator Byrd? Now as it happens, there was a Senator Byrd at the time the story was written, and he's still there (in fact he's the longest-serving senator in US history). Byrd first appeared in ToS #46 as an unnamed senator.

Overall, this is a strong era for the character, with some excellent villains and some interesting plots. Don Heck's artwork, while never of the quality of Marvel's two star artists (Kirby and Ditko) is capable; I particularly like this splash:

How Comics Were Marketed in the Silver Age

This is something that came up in a recent podcast I listened to and I thought it might make an interesting post. In the Silver Age, comic books were marketed at newsstands. Not the kind of newsstand you'd see in the big city, which was just a wooden shed on the sidewalk, these were actual stores that were extremely common in smalltown America in the 1950s-1970s, but are mostly gone today. They usually had newspapers and magazines at the front of the store, with a soda fountain and short-order cook to whip up fast food like a hamburger and fries in the back and a pinball machine in the corner. Almost every small town in America had one of these places. The larger towns might have a full rack of comics, while smaller burgs just had a spinner rack or two.

The differential in comic capacity had significant impacts. For example, my hometown of Allendale had a small newsstand with only one spinner rack, which meant that the only comics stocked were DC, Archie or Harvey; it was not until about 1968 that I can recall seeing a Marvel there and that was a stray Silver Surfer issue. The town north of mine had a bigger newsstand (which was also closer to the train station), so they had Marvels and Charltons as well.

Comics were sent to stores with the understanding that unsold copies could be returned to the comics company for a refund. To save money on mailing costs, comics companies had the vendors simply tear off the top 1/3rd of the cover and send that back; they were then supposed to destroy the rest of the comic although it was not uncommon for vendors to turn around and sell those partial cover issues to used bookstores. Hence the fact that all comics dedicated about the top 1/3rd of the cover to the title of the comic, and this exhortation that I'm sure all of you have ignored thousands of times (as have I):



Hence also the numerous older comics that come up for sale on ebay with that crucial top-third of the cover missing. By the way, almost all magazines were sold that way, not just comic books; when I worked at a convenience store in the early 1970s one of my weekly tasks was to pull the TV Guides and rip off that same top third.

How did the comics companies know they had a hit on their hands? It's really pretty simple; on those issues the number of returns were smaller. As a practical matter, I'm sure each of the editors had a few high-volume locations (like Grand Central Station) he could call to check on how many copies were remaining of a particular issue to gauge interest a little quicker.

What were typical returns like? I don't know yet, but I am going to look into the matter. Starting with 1965's reporting year DC began reporting more detailed information on their publications than had previously been available. Here's the Batman report as it appeared in Batman #183:



DC's returns for Batman were about 35% on average with the most recent issue about 30%.

Here's the statement from Challengers of the Unknown #51:



Returns for Challengers were generally around 35%.

World's Finest #158:



Again, returns running generally in the 30-35% range.

This appears to have been intentional. The comics companies back then always made sure that there were excess copies printed, partly on the theory that if something was a hit they could tell (because suddenly returns went down), and partly because if the issue turned out to sell higher than normal, they could then charge their advertisers more. Remember, the money that the comics companies made from sales of the comics was (relatively) peanuts compared to the big money in the books, which came from the ads.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with the way comics are sold now, with the publishers shipping pre-ordered comics to (mostly) comics-only stores which cannot return them. But I thought I would mention it because it's definitely one of the major differences between comics of the Silver Age and comics today.

When I'm the Evil Genius

I will not allow my enemy to live a few moments longer while I tell him a story:



Prior entries in the "When I'm the Evil Genius" series.

Giant Green Ring Things, Part II

We've already hit the Showcase appearances, so now it's time to talk about GL's own magazine. In GL #1 we start out with giant ice tongs:


It's clearly a giant green ring thing; I'll give it three star sapphires out of a possible five. I assume most of my readers are old enough to remember these items although they were on their way out. Back before the refrigerator, every home had an icebox, an insulated container for perishable foods. The iceman would make regular deliveries of large cubes of ice, and ice-tongs were how he carried them.

Green ring thing #10 is:



Umm, I guess that's supposed to be a giant fist, but it's clearly missing a finger. One star sapphire. Correction: As pointed out by Booksteve in the comments, it's a hand, not a fist and the hand is grabbing the crook by the collar between the thumb and (hidden) index finger.

Green ring thing #11 is a giant lock wrench:



It's how GL defuses the menace shown on the cover of issue #1 and thus I award it the full five star sapphires.

In GL #2 we get the first human green ring thing:



Is it giant or not though? The text describes it as huge bulk, but it does not look significantly larger than a normal football player and thus does not qualify.

Green ring thing #13 is a sledgehammer:



But it is not giant, unlike #14



The Giant Green Umbrella only gets two star sapphires out of five as it is not used to combat a menace but to keep people from getting wet.



A Giant Green Chiller Diller Menace to get Green Lantern out of listening to a proposal from Carol? That rings the bell: five star sapphires!

That takes us through the first three issues of GL's solo title. Running tally so far:

Giant Green Net: 1
Giant Green Bird: 1
Giant Green Springs: 1
Giant Green Test Tube: 1
Giant Green Ice Tongs: 1
Giant Green Fist: 1
Giant Lock Wrench: 1
Giant Green Umbrella: 1
Giant Green Chiller Diller Menace: 1

So far, still no Giant Green Boxing Glove!

Back To The Other Comics Blogs

Go over and give a warm welcome to Jacque Nodell, proprietress of Sequential Crush, a look at the romance comics of 1960s and 1970s. As I have discussed in the past, the romance genre gets too little attention from comics bloggers. Romance comics were written for slightly older readers than the superhero fare of the time and thus generally hold up better. I look forward to reading Jacque's posts on this under-appreciated segment of comics history.

Bill Jourdain has a terrific post on the Kefauver hearings on comic books and violence during the 1950s, which led to the Comics Code Authority (and the Silver Age of Comics):

But what about the rest of the industry? Well, the post-Comics Code Authority world was really a new beginning as it signaled the definite end of the Golden Age of Comic Books and the birth of the Silver Age of Comics with Showcase #4, and the introduction of the Silver Age Flash. The superheroes were back!

Comics of Rhodey explains why Captain America's shield is indestructible:

And there you have it. Cap's shield is made of an Adamantium even stronger than that usually used in the Marvel Universe! It's stronger than Wolverine's claws and bones, tougher than Ultron's body, and harder than the Constrictor's coils.

The last time I checked the Steve Ditko comics blog it was pretty much dead (with only one post in January), although I certainly appreciated the link I got from them on my posts on the Question. However I surf over today and find that there were 21 terrific posts in April on all things Ditko. Definitely worth checking out!

Read this fascinating post on death from Pulp Hero:

Superhero violence has become more gory and grotesque as the readers have aged...after all, comics are in competition with other media. And death, the natural byproduct of "real" violence, has become cheap as well. The convention of the superhero story no longer has room for "shorthand" of the superhumanly strong superhero "pulling his punches" to keep from killing his weaker opponent. Only by skill and the grace of the gods does the weaker character escape, and yet lost is the drama of survival beneath an avalanche of horror. Bleeding mouths, gored lips, tattered flesh have replaced the old artist shorthand of crosshatches to indicate bruising and the ripped cape.

As I have discussed in the past, my interest in comics pretty much ends around the mid-1970s. It's not that there hasn't been a lot of quality stuff published since then, it's that too much of it is too coarse for my tastes. And it's not that I dislike violence or sex in comics; Savage Tales #1 was awesome. But not every comic has to be Savage Tales.

The Life of Pie, Part I

I have mentioned the character Pieface in Green Lantern before and always intended to get around to doing a couple of posts on him. At first blush he appears to be one of those racially insensitive (to our modern eyes) comedic characters, like The Spirit's Ebony, or Blackhawk's Chop-Chop.

But he was never really played that way despite the unfortunate nickname. And he has a pretty interesting history, so I thought I'd put together a post or two on Thomas Kalmaku, also known as Pieface.

He did not appear in the initial tryout run for Green Lantern (Showcase #22-24). That series featured Hal/GL and Carol Ferris. In Green Lantern #1, Julius Schwartz published an interesting (and slightly longer than shown) letter from a young man in Missouri:



Is this Roy Thomas' first created character? What do you know, in Green Lantern #2, a mechanic and confidant appears. We learn that Hal's mechanic, Thomas Kalmaku, is planning to resign from Ferris Aircraft. Hal goes off to try to convince him to stay on and:



Hal shows off an interesting fighting technique:



But Pie convinces Hal to stop when the guys run off. We learn that his father had discovered a great gold mine with a partner and they had split up a map to the fabulous treasure. But his father passed away (leaving his half of the map to Thomas) and the partner had not returned, which was why Pie was in the lower 48 to begin with.

Then Pie realizes that he's missing his piece of the map, obviously stolen by the crooks whom he bumped into. Fortunately, GL, who arrives after a convenient absence by Hal, can reconstruct it:



This is a cool and credible use of the Power Ring. GL and Pie resolve to pursue the treasure with only half the map. They come to a deserted mining town that turns out to not be quite as deserted as advertised. And in the heat of battle, Pie notices something:



Non-superheroes in the DC Universe who knew that a particular superhero had a particular secret identity at this time: Alfred. Now it is true that at times somebody had discovered a superhero's secret identity during a story, but traditionally those stories always ended with the discoverer either convinced that he'd been wrong, suffering from amnesia, or dead. Not here:



And having found the mine which will keep his people comfortable, Pieface is free to go on being Hal's mechanic.

In Green Lantern #3, Pieface plays a crucial if somewhat unbelievable role in the opening story. GL's power lamp is stolen, but Pieface happens to be adjusting his landlady's TV antenna and intercepts a broadcast from the thieves to their home world of Qward:



What are the odds that the only person on Earth who knows Green Lantern's secret identity would be the one to intercept that transmission?

In GL #4 Pieface makes a heroic effort to save his buddy:



He becomes poisoned by radiation and GL must visit the evil universe of Qward again to save him.

In GL #5, Pie got some pretty singular honors. His first cover appearance, for starters:



That's not Hal Jordan, but Tom Kalmaku in that spandex as we learn later:



Of course, the enjoyment of that moment is somewhat counterbalanced by this scene:



And a chimp is not the only animal poor Pie is turned into, for in the very next issue:



So if anybody asks you who was turned into a chimp and a seagull in consecutive issues of a DC comic, you know the answer: 3.14161....

The story itself sounds pretty gripping; an airliner under control of a gang of hijackers with both Hal, and Pie's childhood sweetheart Terga aboard. Unfortunately, GL conks himself out and so Pie, the bird, must crash into one of the plane's windows, survive, and... okay, we've established that the plot is a little shaky.

With Pie's considerable assistance, GL subdues the hijackers and eventually returns his Eskimo buddy back to normal. And we see that he and Terga are quite smitten with each other:



This seems like a good breaking point.