Differently Abled

It is no secret that the comics of the Silver Age ignored lots of human beings in the real world. The characters were almost always Caucasians and invariably perfect specimens of humanity. It was a Lake Woebegone world, where all the children were above average. Oh, there were a few times that "different" people slipped in, but it was mostly in the public service announcements.

In Flash #133, we got a hint that was about to change:



(Note: Yes, there is a huge, glaring error in there, which I'll note at the end of the post.)

Kid Flash is supposed to appear at a camp for handicapped kids, who have dreamed up various tests of his abilities. Some of them seem a little odd, such as this one:



Maybe the kids were inspired by the race because they sensed that Kid Flash could have beaten them even if they were world-class athletes? And it turns out that the inspiration is going both ways:



Excuse me for a sec, I seem to have gotten something in my eye. But it gets even better, as it turns out that three of the boys have independently figured out that Kid Flash is actually Wally West (whom they all know from living in Blue Valley, his home town).



What will happen now? It was an almost ironclad law at DC that nobody could know any superhero's secret identity. In fact, if somebody discovered it, there were three different possible endings to the story:

1. They die
2. They get amnesia
3. They become convinced that they were wrong

Well, this time there was a fourth option:



Wow. Terrific story by John Broome and kudos to Julius Schwartz for allowing an unconventional ending to a secret identity tale. And this response a few issues later must have been very gratifying:



Error: See the splash page for the story, with the third kid saying "I can't speak..."? Obviously that was supposed to be a thought balloon.

The Legion Rejects: Part II

In Part I of the Legion Rejects, I noted the four basic reasons that the Legion rejected applicants:

1. Fake powers.
2. Undependable powers.
3. Useless powers.
4. Limitation on powers.

Bizarro Superboy was rejected in Adventure #329 for reason #2. Of course, it wasn't so much that his powers were undependable as that he himself was undependable.

The next group Legion tryout after Adventure #325 came in #330.



Ethel was an eyeful, alright! And the Mess seems obviously a rip-off of the old Charlie Brown character, Pig-pen. Both were clearly rejected for reason #3. Update: Norman points out in the comments that the Mess probably took his rejection with a "What, me worry?" attitude. ;)

In Adventure #331, Dynamo Boy (a villain) has successfully gotten rid of all the members of the Legion, and conducts his own tryouts. He adds a reason #5 for rejection:



5. Incorruptibility.

Obviously, this is not normally a disqualifier for the Legion. I'm not sure if Animal Lad (whose powers were changing humans into animals, and taming animals) ever came back for a tryout after Dynamo Boy was captured and expelled.

However, Dynamo Boy does use the normal criteria for some of the other applicants:



Golden Boy is a reason #3 reject, as is the Polecat:



The Tusker:



Rejected for reason #2 after he found himself unable to withdraw his tusks from the tree.

The next Legion tryouts came in Adventure #337. Four Legion members had gotten married (Lightning Lad/Saturn Girl and Ultra Boy/Phantom Girl), and replacements were needed. This was all a plot to get three evil aliens to join the Legion, and so the rejects were just Night Girl and Chlorophyll Kid again being rejected for reason #4 and #3 respectively:



In Adventure #342, Calamity King got gonged for reason #2:



While Color Kid was a #3 reject:



He later proved that his power had some value. In Adventure #351, a green Krytponite cloud surrounded earth during the Legion era and Superboy and Supergirl were forced to resign temporarily. However, he came up with a solution in #352 by turning the cloud to blue Kryptonite, which only affects Bizarro.

Adventure #346 introduced a new wrinkle.



Qualifying tests presumably meant that there would be fewer rejects, and indeed the four applicants show above (Princess Projectra, Ferro Lad, Karate Kid and Nemesis Kid) were all accepted into the Legion, although Nemesis Kid could arguably have been rejected for reason #4:



Indeed, I remember one occasion where he was captured by Duo Damsel, precisely because while he could defeat any one opponent, he was a wimp when facing multiple foes.

That takes us through Adventure #350, another good breaking point.

The Other Woman

I had a fairly good collection of the Flash in either original or reprint, but I confess I had never read the first two stories about Daphne Dean earlier, so I thought I would discuss them here. We learn in Flash #126 that Barry is on his way back to his hometown of Fallville to visit his parents, which means that Mr Allen is one of the very few heroes of the Silver Age with a living mom and dad.

By plan, a young Hollywood starlet who grew up in Barry's hometown and who was his childhood sweetheart is also on the train. Her publicity agent thinks it would make a great story for her to fall in love with her former beau. So they are thrown together and revisit some places they used to frequent in the past:



But when they see a tree behind the schoolyard where Barry had carved their initials, they become lost in a weird sort of daydream:



What the heck? But actually this turns out to be a night-time dream that Barry's having in his parents home. The next day, a masquerade ball is planned at which there will be a reenactment of a key scene from Daphne's latest movie (which sounds like a mixture of Gone with the Wind and Mata Hari). A band of union soldiers captures her at the ball and takes her away with them.

But it turns out the reenactment has gone awry, as crooks have taken the place of the actors playing the soldiers, kidnapping Daphne to steal the fabulous jewels she's wearing. Fortunately the Flash comes to her rescue. In the end, Barry tells Daphne about his engagement to Iris and she accepts it, but:



Comments: Barry's parents only appear as shadowy figures as Barry is having his dream about Daphne in the pasture with the bull.

Daphne returned in Flash #132's The Farewell Appearance of Daphne Dean. Iris is initially worried to see that Barry's former girlfriend is in town, but learns that she is not longer in love with Barry, but with the Flash. This may relieve Iris, but it still leaves her fiance in hot water, as we know he's really the Flash.

Reasoning that Daphne's probably in love with his powers, Flash decides to convince her that he's not really all that fast:



But trouble arises as the Flash spots some crooks about to rob a bank. He distracts Daphne:



And takes care of the crooks, but Daphne suddenly decides to leave Central City. It turns out that she saw Flash dashing off in the reflection of the store window, and realized he was fibbing about his speed in order to let her down easily.



She did pop up one final time in the Silver Age:

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.

Lois Lane, Dominatrix?

I try to keep it pretty much G-rated around here, but that has always struck me as a weird cover. "Why is Lois Lane lashing a wooden puppet of Superman?" The answer, pretty obviously, is "Because the CCA wouldn't let her lash Superman himself!"

Craig Yoe has a more interesting take on the matter, which is already making headlines. Caution: R-Rated, but amazing material. I'm completely flabbergasted.

Something to Chew On

You know how Stan used to give us a hint about something that was coming an issue or two away?

Well, here's a little clue for you all: The Cash, Aquariuman, and Lean Arrow.

Great Posts on Other Blogs

Our buddy Chris is dedicating the entire month of March to the Bat-Mite canon. Bat-Mite is one of the characters that disappeared with the New Look Batman of 1964, but he was a fairly regular character, and was introduced in the 20th anniversary issue of Batman's first appearance in Detective Comics.

While we're on the subject of Batman, go check out Building Batman, the most unique concept I have ever seen for a blog. "Bruce" is training himself in the various Batman skills, from boomerangs to lock-picking to knot-tying. If you always dreamed of being Batman, this guy is living the dream!

Sticking with the Batman theme, the Comic Treadmill has another one of his "Prop Star" posts about the giant props that Bill Finger used to feature in his Batman stories. It's an interesting and different way to look at the Silver Age Batman.

Bill Jourdain has a long and informative post on the first year of Batman. As you probably know, Batman is approaching his 70th anniversary either on April 18th (the date Detective #27 went on sale), or in May (the cover date of that issue).

Highly recommended for inside dope is Funny Book Fanatic, the blog of Dave Olbrich, the former publisher of Malibu Comics. I know, their output was minimal in the Silver Age (probably because they didn't start until 1986, the slackers), but Dave's not just interested in the modern stuff and he's got some interesting tales about the inner workings of the biz as well as trivia quizzes and the like. Hat Tip to the Groovy Agent for pointing me to Dave's blog.

Comics of Rhodey has a reminiscence of his own history with comic books.

I pretty much ceased purchases after college as marriage soon beckoned. During my second year of teaching (the early 1990s), my wife told me she wanted me to get rid of some of those boxes of comics I had lying around.

Nicholas Cage had something similar happen to him as I recall. ;)

Classic Letters of the Silver Age

Mom, what does it mean that a marriage was never consummated? Hat tip to Mark Engblom for finding this one; I had read it years ago but could never find it, probably because I was looking for it in old Lois Lane issues.

How did Julius Schwartz and Gardner Fox--Doh, Robert Kanigher as pointed out in the comments--come up with the name Barry Allen?



Barry Gray is considered "The Father of Talk Radio". Allen, of course, was a pioneer of talk TV, hosting the Tonight Show back in the 1950s.

Here's a kid bucking for the editor's job:



And of course he eventually got it!

Here's how to wheedle the editor out of some original artwork:




At least he had the good sense to stop before he thanked the Donenfelds for taking the trouble to publish the magazine. Anyway, this blatant job of sucking up had its desired effect:



Oh, yeah, that was really going to help some kid in his cartooning. Snort!

Well, you know, it just might have:



Yep, old Funky Winkerbean himself. Batiuk would have been about 14 at the time this letter appeared; his strip began about 11 years later.

Dr Strange Versus Dormammu

Up to this point, there was no particular reason to consider Dr Strange as one of Marvel's more interesting characters. Yeah, Ditko's art was psychedelic, but the series suffered from fairly mundane villains and supporting characters. There were hints that Dr Strange was becoming more popular; at first the character did not even appear in every issue. That quickly changed, and he even began to share cover space with the Human Torch.

But the series really took off with the battle between Dr Strange and Dormammu starting in Strange Tales #126. Here's the memorable splash page:



Dr Strange is summoned by the Ancient One. The Dread Dormammu is planning to leave the Dark Realm and come to Earth. The Ancient One is unable to face him, so the Doc is drafted as a replacement:



Now there's a villain worthy of facing Dr Strange. And a durable companion is introduced a short while later:



The actual confrontation between Doctor Strange and the Dreaded One takes place in the following issue. We learn that Dormammu is the only thing keeping the Mindless Ones from breaking through into the Dark Realm.

In the battle itself, we see signs of Ditko's influence on the character:



And when the Mindless Ones break through, we see that Dr Strange is a man of honor:



He lends his support to Dormammu and together they repel the invaders, putting the Dreaded One in Dr Strange's debt:



This highlights one of the odder aspects of some of the Marvel villains. There were several who possessed a moral code despite their essentially evil nature--Dr Doom, the Sub-Mariner (back when he was played as a villain) and Galactus were notable for this supposed trait. In a sense this is just another out for the writer, which may explain why Lex Luthor underwent a similar transformation in the 1960s.

Superboy Saves The Economy!

Just happened across this story last night and I thought it would make a very topical post. In Superboy #59 (September 1957), the Lad of Steel is asked to help out the government with a new missile, called the Mole. As the name implies, it attacks by burrowing underground and then surfacing in enemy territory. The military wants Superboy to track the missile with his x-ray vision to make sure it does not go off course:



However, when Superboy returns to the military base, he does so by burrowing underground. Did the explosion affect him in some weird way, turning him into a mole?

Then the story turns even stranger. Underground, Superboy starts hoarding gold:



He finds ingenious ways to use the gold to help maintain his position underground:



But it's all for a good reason as we learn here:



Ironically, Superboy himself had caused the problem when he was tracking the Mole Missile:



Yep, that reverse-alchemy vision of Superboy's is surely his most useless ability, which may explain why it's one of the superpowers that time forgot.

Superboy fantasizes about what would have happened had he not rectified his mistake:



Sounds depressingly familiar. Maybe the US economy could use a little Superboy stimulus package!