Fantastic Four Fridays: Mind Meld

The story opens with a bit where the Thing has summoned the rest of the FF to Alicia's apartment with a 4 flare. They have some trouble however, as the "nuclear lock" has jammed. Eventually they make their way to the scene, where they learn it's not an emergency:

Now that you mention it, yes, Reed it's a little amazing that a blind girl can create such accurate statues. Sue does a little moping over the fact that the Sub-Mariner is included, apparently forgetting that he tried to kill Reed and Johnny last issue.

The scene switches to the offices of "Kirby and Lee" where the creators are debating whom to have battle the FF next. Too bad that Dr Doom was lost in space in #6, eh. And then he enters the room:

This breaking of the fourth wall is pretty unusual for Marvel; I can't think of another example, although DC did it several times. Doom has Lee summon Mr Fantastic to his office. From the context, we can see that the FF has licensed Marvel to publish their adventures. When Reed arrives, Doom kayos him with a sleeping gas and they vanish together.

Dr Doom explains his survival to Reed awhile later in his laboratory. He was rescued from the meteor by some aliens in a ship. He stole their technology, including this:

And Doom switches bodies with Reed. The concept of body-switching dates back at least to the John Carter of Mars series by Edgar Rice Burroughs; it's a major plot point in Mastermind of Mars.

The rest of the FF arrives (summoned by Lee and Kirby) and quickly subdues Doom (really Reed as we know). He tries explaining what's happened, but Reed (really Doom) reminds them of what a tricky character he is. They put him in an airtight chamber (Reed assures them he will have enough air to survive, but he's lying).

Later, Reed (Doom) tells the FF of his latest experiments. He plans to reduce them in size, while they retain their full powers. Then, when he enlarges them again, their powers will have grown tremendously. Johnny will be able to flame on for longer, while Ben will be able to change back and forth into the Thing.

We learn that his real plan is to shrink them out of existence. Meanwhile, Doom (Reed) has escaped from the airtight chamber and heads to Alicia's apartment. He pleads with her, not knowing that Sue is sneaking up behind him to bash him on the head. Johnny and Ben arrive and the three of them take Doom back to Reed's lab. Frantic, Reed (Doom) tries to get them in front of his reducing ray, but:

Johnny and Ben smell a rat, and the Torch causes a mirage of a stick of dynamite to appear in the room. This reveals the true characters of the two men:

In the shock of being revealed, Doom releases his mental control, and Reed and he switch back to their normal bodies. He tries to shoot them with the atomic blast gun in his finger, but all he does is turn the reducing ray on himself:

And he vanishes into nothingness.

Commments: Excellent story, one of the strongest so far in the FF series. Doom has clearly become the FF's greatest enemy by this time.

Doom Patrol #99: Beastie Boy

The story begins with the Doom Patrol putting on an exhibition at a stadium. As with the X-Men in their Battle Room, this serves to introduce us painlessly to the characters and their powers. Interestingly, we learn that Larry Trainor does not consider himself Negative Man; rather Neg Man lives inside him:

As they are leaving the stadium, they are attacked by a crook inside a giant robot dragonfly.

The Bug-Man manages to make his getaway, at least partially because Larry insists on fighting him without using Negative Man. This carries over into the second battle:

This time the crook makes off with Rita. He imprisons here in a box that is slowly reducing itself in size:

The Chief arrives in his "Battle Chair", but:

As the rest of the DP shows up, Bug-Man decides to kill Rita personally. Fortunately for her, the box had a safety pin inside and:

The Doom Patrol make short work of the villain after this.

Comments: Silly story, but as always I love the Bruno Premiani artwork. Correction: Bob Brown filled in on this issue as noted by Tom Brevoort in the comments. Dang, my readers are sharp!

The second story features the intro of Beast Boy. The DP's headquarters has been broken into by some weird animal; they find evidence of a giant cat, a bird, a tiger and an elephant. What can it be? They lie in wait he following night, hoping to trap him. And they succeed but:

He changes into a lion, and then a kangaroo, all the while battling them:

But when the fighting's over, we learn the reason for his appearing:

Of course, this calls to mind the story in Amazing Spiderman #1, where Peter attempts to join the Fantastic Four. Feeling sorry for the lad, the Doom Patrol agree to let him come along on one mission. We learn that he does have trouble fitting in because of his appearance:

A bunch of crooks are attempting to steal the crown jewels of Dusenberg from a parade. Beast Boy shows off his abilities:

They make reasonably short work of the crooks.

Comments: An interesting introduction, although I confess, the squabbling between Beast Boy and the Doom Patrol seems a bit forced. Then again, so did the fighting between Spiderman and the Fantastic Four.

Showcase #37: Heavy Metal

Metal Men was an interesting and entertaining feature during the 1960s, with some interesting characters and some relatively painless lessons in chemistry. The story here starts back in the dinosaur era, with a radioactive storm wiping out the giant lizards (not actually how things happened, of course). One creature managed to resist the devastation and survived until it was trapped in a glacier. But now the glacier has melted and the creature (shown on the cover) is freed. As you can see, it looks like a giant manta ray, but it flies instead of swimming.

It first attacks a lighthouse, with rays from its eyes. Then it heads to the big city:

The building shown is the Chrysler Building in New York City:

As an aside, my aunt and uncle lived in New York City around this time and I went in to visit them for a few days. I remember walking with my uncle to visit the United Nations and him pointing out to me that we were right in front of the Chrysler Building. I looked up and got dizzy, the building was so amazingly tall. At the time it was the second tallest building in the world, after the Empire State Building.

The military decides that it needs help and calls on Doc Magnus, a genius inventor, who's perfecting something new:

He decides to create a team of such robots, each with its own element and individual personality:

As you can see, the chemistry lessons started early.

Tin was always my favorite character in the group because of his heart, as I discussed here. He was nervous and frightened and yet he always managed to overcome his fear to display great heroism.

The newly formed band of Metal Men are to face the flying manta ray. But there's one argument to be settled. Doc doesn't want Tina (the platinum robot female) to go along. She convinces him:

They come upon the creature and we see how the combination of elements can be used to best advantage. Iron uses his strength to form Lead into a giant ball and:

But the creature bats the giant ball back at the team. They regroup and the monster comes after them:

Wow, that's a powerful scene! Doc has Gold lasso the creature, while Iron holds onto him with great determination:

And he doesn't let go; he and Gold are pulled into the air by the manta ray. They're eventually dropped into the ocean where:

Two of the problems we all deal with in reading these comics today is that we're not kids anymore, and that we've become somewhat inured to the idea of characters being killed off and later resurrected. But in 1962, when this was published, those would be startling sequences for youngsters.

Dr Will next thinks of using Mercury to coat the monster and cut off its air supply. But it turns out that it doesn't need to breathe, surviving on radioactivity. Platinum binds it, and then Lead covers it, and the creature dies, taking with it the last of the Metal Men. Are they all dead? The story ends here:

Not to ruin the drama, but the Metal Men were robots, so of course Will could bring them back from the "dead". While this was a cool concept it did hamper the drama a bit.

Overall, this was a solid and interesting story, with two very strong characters (Tina and Tin). I am not a fan of DC's monster of the month club, but the heroes in this story overcome the less-intriguing antagonist.

Guest Post: More Jack Schiff "Recycling"

Here's an solid post from commenter Jim building on some themes we have discussed here in the past:

In an interesting post (December 16, 2009), Pat pointed out how several Silver Age Superman stories appear to have been deliberately "synchronized" with Batman stories published around the same time, and he invited readers to send in other examples. His post inspired me to look more closely at something I'd noticed a few years ago, but hadn't bothered to investigate further. Here's what I found.

Submitted for your consideration: the cover of Blackhawk #151, dated August 1960 and edited by Jack Schiff.

Here we see Lady Blackhawk, with super-powers, "flying through the air -- and smashing [a] boulder" (as Blackhawk rather superfluously points out to the reader).

Now let's move ahead a few months and look at the cover of another comic edited by Jack Schiff -- Tales of the Unexpected #56 (December 1960).


I don't need to belabor the similarities between the two covers.

Now what might have given Schiff the idea of running two covers featuring female supporting characters -- pretty blondes in short skirts -- demonstrating super-powers to the consternation of their male counterparts?

For an answer, let's go back a year or so and take a look at the iconic cover of Action #252 (May 1959) -- the issue that introduced Supergirl:


It was obviously important for Silver Age editors to come up with eye-catching covers. There were a lot of comic books being published, and they were competing for the limited pocket change of their (mostly) juvenile readers. I'm sure Julius Schwartz wasn't the only editor who assumed that if a particular issue sold well, it was on account of the cover.

I'm guessing that Action #252 sold well -- at least well enough to justify keeping Supergirl as a regular "second feature." And I'm speculating that its strong sales inspired Schiff to put super-powered blondes on the covers of two of his titles at the earliest opportunity.

At this point, I began wondering about another book edited by Schiff -- Challengers of the Unknown. June Robbins was an "honorary Challenger" who regularly joined Ace, Rocky, Red, and Prof on their adventures. I didn't recall any story in which June gained super-powers, but I thumbed through my longbox and came up with this issue -- dated August/September 1960:


June's a brunette, but as a "lady giant" she has superhuman strength -- and she's using it to save her male partners from danger. (And we have another one of those charmingly redundant word-balloons that were such a common feature of Silver Age covers.)

As Pat said: "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and the third time it's a trend." I believe I spotted a trend -- and an example of the working of a comic editor's mind during the Silver Age.

Comments from Pat: This ties in with several of my past posts. I talked about Jack Schiff's habit of recycling covers and story elements between Blackhawk and Batman on two separate occasions. And I also talked about the sudden influx of women into the comic book superhero world of the late 1950s here.

Great job, Jim!

Fantastic Four Fridays: Bankruptcy!

In a story torn from today's headlines, the Fantastic Four went belly-up in Fantastic Four #9. The simple truth is that Reed Richards may have been a scientific genius, but when it comes to the markets he was a raw amateur:

Hmmm, wonder what Reed invested in that could have cratered in 1962? Doo-wop music? Black and white TV? A church fire hazard insurance company in Mississippi?

Of course there was some history. Detective #105 posited a similar theme for Batman:

Although in Bruce (Batman) Wayne's case it was embezzlement by a shady treasurer.

The FF members suggest that they should use their abilities to make money, but Reed's unimpressed by their talents, suggesting that they would only be useful in a carnival sideshow. Way to add insult to injury, Stretcho!

In fact, if you think about it, there probably would be quite some value to the Thing; I'd assume he'd have no trouble becoming the heavyweight champion; the Great Orange Hope, they could call him. Johnny could race cars and do some spot-welding on high-rises. Sue would have no trouble getting on TV with her fabulous looks. Reed could become the alltime dunking and blocking leader of the NBA.

But as it happens they get a sudden offer of a million bucks to star in a Hollywood movie. Hilariously, they have no option but to try to hitch a ride:

The scene conveniently changes to their arrival on the West Coast. As was typical in DC, Marvel put a lot of stars in the shot; James Arness and Amanda Blake from Gunsmoke, Alfred Hitchcock, Bing Crosby and Jackie Gleason are obvious. Eventually they are introduced to their new producer:

Subby explains that he has all the treasures of the sea, so he's independently wealthy:

"He's so masterful--so confident. And he has a big... wallet!"

There follow some amusing scenes with Johnny impressing some starlets, and the Thing showing the pumpers at Muscle Beach what real strength looks like. Oh, and Sue goes out to dinner with the Sub-Mariner. The next day filming begins. Mr Fantastic is assigned to battle what's supposed to be a Cyclops robot, but instead turns out to be the real deal. And it looks like the whole "movie" bit is just a dodge to kill off Reed:

Beware of Altanteans bearing gifts! Reed manages to defeat Cyclops. Meanwhile Johnny is supposed to battle with some natives in a village. But it turns out they are immune to fire, and thus they capture him. But he later escapes and destroys their immunity potion.

Ben is supposed to fight the Sub-Mariner along the shoreline. He quickly realizes that the Atlantean draws his power from the water, and drags him away from it. But then a bolt of lightning hits him and turns him back into Ben Grimm, whom Subby quickly kayos. Flush with victory, he heads back to claim his prize:

Subby shows he's no gentleman:

As you can probably guess, it's the rest of the FF come to save Sue from a fate worse than death. But she won't let them gang up on him, so they reach an agreement: the film will be made and released and the FF will get their money.

Comments: An entertaining and engrossing story with some real humor (and not just at fickle Sue's expense). The trick of offering a superhero money to appear in a supposed film (but it's really just a trap) was also used in Spiderman #14 a year or so later by the Green Goblin, and I think also by Pluto against Hercules in a Thor story a little after that.

A side note: I had to change the comments system from Haloscan and hence the old posts' comments aren't showing. I may be able to get them back manually, but it's going to take some time and effort with 700+ posts and about 18,000 comments here and on my other blogs. Your patience is appreciated!

Go Check Out

A new blog focusing on the Charlton and the Mighty MLJ Heroes. I have touched briefly on the Charlton heroes the Question and the Blue Beetle, but I have not covered the MLJ heroes like the Fly, the Web and the Jaguar, all of whom were active in the Silver Age. There are very interesting posts over there highlighting some similarities between the two sets of characters. I laughed out loud when I saw how the Web convinced IronFist that there was no fun in being an "ultra-villain" anymore. Now that's unique!

Superboy #123

As I have mentioned in the past, if DC had two top stars prior to the arrival of the Batman TV series in 1966, they were Superman and Superboy. Superboy held down two series in that era; his self-titled magazine and Adventure Comics, much as Superman and Batman had their own series and Action Comics and Detective Comics respectively.

But really there was no comparison between Superboy and Batman. Superboy regularly outsold Batman by about 150,000-200,000 copies per issue, as did Adventure over Detective. Of course, the way things developed Batman became a huge star, and Superboy (at least, Kal El) mostly faded away in the comics, possibly because DC's ownership of the character is tenuous at best.

This particular issue was (briefly) the oldest comic in my collection. As I have mentioned I first really started collecting comics in 1968, although I had a few issues left over from the start of Batmania in 1966.

The opening story is An Untold Tale of Superboy, called There Is No Superboy. The tale takes place in that brief period of time after Superboy's existence was known to the people of Smallville, but not the world at large. He travels to the nearby (but old western) town of Gulchdale, where the local sheriff needs some assistance. As it turns out, some outlaws from other states have taken up residence there, but the sheriff is frustrated in his attempts to run them in because:

The humor in the piece comes because the local residents have never heard of Superboy, so they do as crooks would in the Golden Age with Superman:

As it turns out, Superboy is cooperating with the sheriff to get a total of 25 prisoners in jail, because the governor of the state has promised a new jail if he can get that number. And although the crooks had not broken the law against attempted murder (because Superboy was invulnerable), they had violated many other ordinances:


Comments: Entertaining tale playing on the unknown Superboy, which arguably makes it a very early story in the Superman chronicles. Of course, Superboy is played as a teenager, which conflicts with many Silver and Golden Age Superboy tales where he was show as an early adolescent at the oldest.

The second story features Ronnie Vayle, in When Krypto Was Sold. We learn that Vayle's money doesn't buy him friendship:

But it buys just about everything else, from his imported cloth jacket to his 25-jewel watch. So Clark and Krypto decide to teach him a lesson. Clark shows off his amazing pet:

Which Ronnie, needing the best in everything, offers to pay $100 for. Krypto starts giving him lessons:

Which cures him of his habit of driving too fast. And when he brags about how brave his dog is, Krypto pulls him in front of some chained elephants:

Krypto uses a sound amplifier to let Ronnie know what other people think of him: spoiled and conceited. And he resolves to change his ways:

And, thanks to the sound amplifier, he hears some crooks breaking into Smallville High to steal the school athletic fund. He tries to stop them but they knock him out, and Superboy and Krypto foil the robbery, but let Ronnie take the credit:

And in the end he gives "Spot" back to Clark, showing that he has indeed learned his lesson.

Comments: A nice little morality play; there were quite a few stories about rich brats being brought down a peg in the Superboy canon. I particularly liked that Krypto got to be the agent of change in this story.

The final story in the issue is the cover feature, and it's definitely a wild tale. It starts back in Egypt, with the weakling son of the local magician, and his gal pal, Neferti, daughter of the Pharaoh. Ahton, the mage, consults the goddess of magic, who reveals a secret in her magic shield:

She tells him how to mix up a potion that will give him the powers of Superboy, and before you know it, Ahton's son is flying around in a Superboy costume (with the S remade as a snake). And Neferti starts acting like Lana Lang:

She consults with a rival magician as to how to get Ahton's son to fall in love with her. He gives her a magical scarab, which will doom the lad:

They both die. Ahton inscribes a warning to the Superboy of the future on their tomb, but is unable to complete his message.

Fast forward to the present day, where Clark and Lana are working on an archaeological dig for Professor Lang. They uncover the tomb shown on the cover:

Superboy finds himself subconsciously endangering Lana, and every time he saves her he gets a pain in his heart.

Lana translates the hieroglyphics and realizes she's in danger. Meanwhile, Superboy consults the shield and finds out the real truth:

Comments: Entertaining, but wacky as heck. The death of Seth and Neferti comes as something of a surprise, especially as there is no indication in the text that the rival magician paid for his part in their passing. Of course, Neferti was probably named after Queen Nefertiti of Egypt, who (by some theories) was the mother of King Tut. The art on all the first two stories was done by longtime Superboy artist George Papp, with Curt Swan on the finale. The writers were (respectively) E. Nelson Bridwell, Edmond Hamilton and Leo Dorfman.