Dynamo #1

In addition to launching the THUNDER Agents as a group, Tower also published a few solo books for Dynamo (four issues) and NoMan (two issues).

This one starts out with a Wally Wood-illustrated story. Somebody is bombing radar installations and space observatories. We can rule out the commies:

So it appears to be coming from space. They decide to send NoMan on a one-way trip to the moon, as he can always beam his mind back to another android body on earth. This is an imaginative use for NoMan's powers. They've even planned for the possibility of the rocket crashing early:

However, he does not report back immediately, and so Dynamo volunteers to go on a second rocket:

Just after he blasts off, NoMan returns. He radios Dynamo to land on the light side of the moon, as the dark side is crawling with aliens. However, even on the exposed side there's a welcoming committee:

Using his strength, he hurls a boulder at the alien ship. When robotic tanks arrive, he hops into one of them and gets a ride to the alien HQ. But he is captured and imprisoned in a glass tank without a helmet, so he can't escape. But NoMan pops back up to his android body that is already on the moon and gives him a helmet. Dynamo defeats the aliens and rides back to earth on one of their flying saucers.

Comments: An entertaining story featuring good use of the NoMan character.

The second story is A Day in the Life of Dynamo, drawn by Mike Sekowsky. Len Brown wakes up and decides to ask for a raise due to all the risks he's taking as Dynamo. His boss sends him via a teleporter to Hong Kong, where the local THUNDER office turns out to have been taken over by a communist hero:

The reds have planned this so that Dynamo will be unable to prevent a giant robot from running amok in New York City. But then some apparent THUNDER Agents come up through the floor and chase off the communists. Unfortunately for Dynamo, they're not really with his group:

They have an old acquaintance of his with them:

But when she learns that the Subterraneans' plan is to start a global thermonuclear war, the Iron Maiden frees him. She sends him back to New York via a missile, and he defeats the robot to save the city.
Here's a little cultural reference that non-Boomer readers might miss:

In the 1950s and 1960s, "Made in Japan" meant that the product was shoddy and of inferior workmanship. Of course, ironically in the intervening years it became synonymous with high quality and dependability.

But he gets little respect from his boss:

Comments: Clearly intended to be an off-beat tale. Len never does ask his boss for that raise.

We get a super-villain team-up by Crandall and Wood in the next story, as Demo and Dr Sparta meet:

Dr Sparta's assistant has an interesting way of springing them from jail:

The villains manage to send Dynamo to a valley that time forgot, with cavemen and dinosaurs. But he convinces the cavemen that he's a legitimate god with the strength he gets from his belt and they show him the way out of the valley to where Demo and Dr Sparta are.
Comments: Solid, entertaining story and Crandall and Wood work well together.

The fourth story came as a bit of a surprise. Here's the splash:

I have to admit, I was unaware that Ditko worked for Tower. What a treat the art is in this story! We learn that 20 years earlier, the Subterraneans had captured a human orphan, and raised it to have incredible strength and mental abilities:

But despite his supposed cold-hearted nature, he reacts instinctively to save a young woman:

Who just happens to be a THUNDER agent, getting him into the headquarters, where he attacks Dynamo:

And Dynamo looks doomed until:

Andor returns to the Subterraneans, where he kills the scientist responsible for raising him.

Comments: Beautiful art and an entertaining story. There are hints that Andor might return, but if he did, it was not during the 1960s run, according to the GCD. Correction: As pointed out in the comments by Earth-Two, Andor does return in Thunder Agents #9 in a Lightning story. Discussion here.

The final story is another offbeat tale about Weed, a THUNDER agent with no special powers. He senses this is causing him trouble with the ladies:

Fortunately for him, it's an urgent call requiring the services of Lightning, who was just about to drive away with his "beautiful chick". She decides to go out with Weed instead, and they stop at a nightclub for a magic act:

The magician is a hypnotist, and convinces Weed that he has super-powers like flying and enormous strength. Obeying the comic book law of delusions, the other THUNDER agents humor him:

They follow him back to the hypnotist, but a caught off guard by a sleeping gas.
Meanwhile, Weed has discovered that he doesn't really have super-powers. But:

He rescues Dynamo and Lightning, and in the end he even gets the gal:

Comments: Amusing ending. Weed must surely be one of the very few heroes to smoke cigarettes.

Trivia Quiz #38: Answers

1. Which of Jor-El's official duties did he hate?

Jor-El hated being Krypton's official executioner. Of course, by "execution" what they meant was putting the prisoner into suspended animation and shooting him into space. It was his distaste for this duty that led to him inventing the Phantom Zone projector (aka Punishment Ray).

2. When the young Jor-El was cramming for his exams, what trick did he use to maximize his study time?

Jor-El used the Time-Stretch Globe.

3. What invention of Jor-El's led to him being elected to the Science Council?

The Phantom Zone projector (aka Punishment Ray) resulted in Jor-El's election to the Science Council.

4. Jor-El was stuck in the Phantom Zone twice when the projector failed to bring him back. What two people repaired the projector on those separate occasions?

The first time, Lara repaired the machine, from which baby Kal had removed a necessary part:

The second time, Lex Luthor (temporarily reformed by a ray that Jor-El had invented) saved him:


5. When Jor-El first got married, where did he work?

Jor-El worked at a missile base.

David got part of #4 correct. Blaze contributed the other part of #4 plus #2 and #5. Michael Rebain gets #3 plus part of #4. I stumped my readers with #1, although Michael Rebain was close.

Adventure #231

I'm not much on the Superbaby stories as a rule, but this one is definitely top-notch. Superboy decides as a teenager to repay some kindnesses that he experienced as a boy. For example, Cal Bentley, who now runs an amusement park, once saved baby Clark from destroying a train and revealing his secret identity:

Another man rescued the tot from his first encounter with Kryptonite:

Not surprisingly, Clark refuses payment for helping these men out as a teen. However, one of the men (now a wealthy miser) who saved him from losing Pa Kent gets a nasty surprise when Superboy presents him with the bill for mowing his lawn:

However, it's all for a good cause, as the penny-pincher learns:

Superboy even thinks of the boys he's beating out for the jobs that he takes for the people who helped him out as a baby:

Nice little touch there. And in the end, there are just two people left to thank:

Comments: A superb story, with wonderful characterization for Superboy. The way he repaid the miserly rich man was particularly deft.

The Aquaman story is one of many from the Silver Age about a predicting machine:

As must happen in all such tales, the first two predictions come true. Will Aquaman really experience "dying" at the hands of one of his finny friends? Sort of:

The dye gets all over him, get it? Comments: Cute, if formulaic.

In the Green Arrow story, a local manufacturer is producing mini Arrowcars for sale. The local Green Arrow fan club tries them out:

But some crooks take advantage of the opportunity to steal the original, forcing the Emerald Archer and Speedy to use one of the kiddie-mobiles. The fan club helps out:

And eventually the crooks are caught and the Arrowcar returned to its rightful owners.

Comments: I liked the clever use of the mini-Arrowcars.

Trivia Quiz #38: Jor-El

These should be fairly tough:

1. Which of Jor-El's official duties did he hate?

2. When the young Jor-El was cramming for his exams, what trick did he use to maximize his study time?

3. What invention of Jor-El's led to him being elected to the Science Council?

4. Jor-El was stuck in the Phantom Zone twice when the projector failed to bring him back. What two people repaired the projector on those separate occasions?

5. When Jor-El first got married, where did he work?

Giant Superboy Is Watching You!

That is strange on many levels. Who wound the key after Superboy moved to Metropolis? Was Smallville's main drag so small that it was effectively alternating one-way? Was there another giant Superboy statue at the other end of town?

Around the Horn With Some Contributions

Superman Fan has been doing a series of posts on the Greatest Imaginary Story You've Never Seen (Part I and Part II). Actually, I have seen it; I have a coverless copy in my collection. It is a very cool story in which Jor-El and Lara escape to Earth with baby Kal-El when Lara (surprise) gets the brilliant idea of enlarging the test rocket ship with a ray she's been working on.

The rest of the story is kind of a Jor-El Ex Machina; with Superman's father solving all of the problems that his son would face in the "real" stories. Lex Luthor goes bald? Not with Papa El's magical hair restoring ray. Mxyzptlk creating constant annoyances? Jor erects a shield preventing him from entering our dimension. Kandor stuck in miniature? Jor-El rebuilds Lara's enlarging ray. Superboy in love with Lori Lemaris, the mermaid? Daddy gives her a pair of legs. But amusingly, when Superboy first encounters Kryptonite, Jor-El has a senior moment:

Yes, don't lift my son who probably weighs 150 pounds, instead drag that several-ton boulder of Kryptonite! Of course, after that he designs a Kryptonite disintegrator, so his reputation as a super-genius remains intact.

So far Osgood hasn't covered the final part of the story, but I will mention that it's another one of those endings where the inexorable nature of fate is once again highlighted.

Over at the Comic Treadmill, Mag notes the futility of Captain Boomerang attempting to send the Flash on a boomerang to the Moon; surely it would just return? What I find amusing, however, is that in each of Captain Boomerang's first three appearances, he had essentially the same deathtrap for the Flash. In Flash #117:

You can see that's not substantially different from the setting in Flash #124. Ditto with Flash #148:

Incidentally, in that last story, the Flash escapes by grabbing hold of the flag atop Mount Everest:

Bill Jourdain appeared on Comic Geek Speak to discuss the early days of DC comics (from about 1935-1947). Bill's always worth a listen due to his vast knowledge of Golden Age Comics.

The House of Cobwebs analyzes the horror that was Freddy, Charlton's attempted knock-off of Archie Comics. The post is much more entertaining and humorous than the actual Freddy Comics. I'll have to dig around and see if I can pull up an issue of that comic for a review.

This Looks Like a Job for... Superman!

Mort Weisinger's Superman: Key Dates and Issues

I have written about this previously, but sometime in 1958 Mort Weisinger and his writers and artists set about creating the character that would come to be known as the Silver Age Superman. It was an era of tremendous creativity, that saw many terrific stories and innovations. Here are some of the most important:

April 1958: Adventure #247 introduces the Legion of Super-Heroes.
July 1958: Action #242 introduces the Silver Age Fortress of Solitude..
September 1958: Action #244 introduces Brainiac and the bottle city of Kandor.
October 1958: Superboy #68 introduces the teen-aged Bizarro.
December 1958: Adventure #255 introduces Red Kryptonite.
February 1959: Superman #127 introduces Titano, the Super-Ape.
April 1959: Jimmy Olsen #37 introduces Lucy Lane.
May 1959: Action #252 introduces Supergirl (Kara Zor-El); Superman #129 introduces Lori Lemaris and Atlantis.
July 1959: Action #254 introduces adult Bizarro.
August 1959: Superman #131 introduces Mr Mxyzptlk (Silver Age version).
April 1960: Adventure #271 introduces the teen-aged Lex Luthor, and establishes the motivation for his hatred of Superboy/Superman.
January 1961: Superboy #86 introduces Pete Ross.
April 1961: Adventure #283 introduces the Phantom Zone.
June 1961: Superboy #89 introduces Mon-El. (Corrected the intro of the Fortress and Brainiac/Kandor).

When I'm the Evil Genius

I will not leave my enemies their free will:


Prior Entries in the "When I'm the Evil Genius" Series.

Action #314

This is one of the few Action issues from around this era that I didn't have in my collection until recently, and all I can say is, good Lord, I didn't know what I was missing. It starts with Aquaman and a few other JLA members signaling Superman to visit them on a remote island, where we learn:

Of course, Jor-El sent dozens of such messages to Superman during the Silver Age; indeed it would be a chore to catalog them all. At any rate, Jor-El wants to tell his son how Earth was chosen for his new home. It turned out that there were six possible worlds he could be sent to. Fortunately, one of Jor-El's friend has a future predictor:

It turns out that on the first world of Xann, he would be tiny compared to the other inhabitants, although he would retain his super-powers. Jor-El decides not to send him to Xann, because there he'd have nobody to marry. The second world, Valair, has no land, only water, and Kal-El's unhappy living his life under the seas. The third world has a red sun, so Kal would not have any super-powers there, but he does learn to compensate:

But he finds that some of the natives want to use his arrow-inventions for evil and leaves society to live on his own. Obviously that world is out. On the next one, it's always night and Kal-El takes on a lawman role:

On the penultimate world, Superman's adoptive father invents a ray that would give him super-speed, but the scene shown on the cover occurs when he gets a little too enthusiastic about trying out his powers. So Earth it is:

Comments: A silly story, obviously set up to deliver that surprise at the end where we realize that Superman would have been a one-man JLA. It does leave me feeling a little sad that he didn't end up getting sent to the planet of Amazonia, where he could have become Wonder Woman with the aid of a gender-transforming ray invented by his adoptive mom. ;)

But it is in the Supergirl story that things really get wacky. Remember, when Supergirl originally arrived on Earth, her parents had supposedly died when meteors struck Argo City. However, in Action #309, it was revealed that they had survived by beaming themselves into the Survival Zone, a dimension much like the Phantom Zone. Zor-El and Allura decided that they wanted to live among their fellow Kryptonians in the bottle city of Kandor, while Supergirl remained on Earth with the Danvers. However, all was not well:

As you can probably guess, she's heart-sick for her daughter, who never visits, never calls. Then one day:

So you can see she's gone completely mentally unstable. The authorities take back the android, without apparently considering that maybe, just maybe, they could make a similar doll for Allura that would ease her pain. They decide to contact Supergirl, but as it happens, she's out and the Danvers receive the call. Realizing that Allura's health is more important than their love for their adopted daughter, they decide to, wait for it, practice mental cruelty on Supergirl so that she will rejoin her natural parents. No, I'm not kidding:



But eventually Kara overhears the Danvers tearfully discussing how hard it is to be so mean to their daughter and discovers the reason why they've been treating her badly. She visits Kandor and suggests that she should stay their permanently, but apparently Mom realizes Earth needs its Supergirl. The only solution is for the Danvers to move to Kandor while the exchange ray brings out Zor-El and Allura. At first this looks like a great solution, as Supergirl's parents can join her in protecting Earth. But what of the Danvers?

The Chief Healer comes up with a solution:

The story ends as a cliff-hanger; will Supergirl's parents be happy on Earth? Can the Danvers find love in their heart for Dar-Lin?

Comments: Wow, what a wild story. I confess that I always enjoy these psychological dramas more than the run-of-the-mill secret identity stories, but this tale was completely wacked-out.

Reach For Happiness

In March 1966, DC started a serialized story in their Secret Hearts romance comic. The story is set in Danville Corners, a small town somewhere in the US, with plenty of intertwined lives and romances. We initially see the town through the eyes of Karen Wilder, who is returning after a tragic end to a two-year marriage to a Hollywood movie star:

As you can probably guess, the curve was "deadman's curve" and Frankie bought the farm.

We get occasional glimpses in that first episode of how complicated the various relationships are. Karen's sister, Peggy, is bitter over something to do with their mother. A friendly older couple (Lila and Roger), blame Lila's rich but irresponsible father for their son's youthful wildness. Karen had formerly been engaged to the young local doctor (Greg Marsh), but now he's involved with Rita, who'd previously been engaged to Ray Silva, a ne'er-do-well nightclub operator.

The story ran for an amazing 29 issues. When you consider that each installment was probably 15 pages or so, the story becomes easily DC's longest in the 1960s. The earliest issues were illustrated by Gene Colan, so the art is definitely a treat. And the characters are complex. For example, Rita comes off as a bitch in the first issue:

But in the second issue we get a deeper feel for her character:

She grew up on "the wrong side of the tracks" and so she's always felt inferior. She may not be a "good" girl, but she's not a cardboard cutout villainess, either.

Over the course of the first five issues (the only ones I've been able to read so far) we see just how interconnected everybody is in the story. Ray Silva owes his success to Lila's wealthy father, who does indeed seem to be spoiling his grandson. Rita's success is as a singer, and it only came about because Ray gave her a chance to sing at his club. As the five issues come to a close, Rita demands that Greg marry her or lose her forever, and he makes his decision:

Comments: Excellent opening to this series, with complex characters and terrific art (although Colan apparently left for Marvel by Secret Hearts #114, as he did only the cover and splash for that issue). Yes, the story follows all the soap opera tropes, with tears coming more often than kisses. But that's the nature of the genre, and I heartily recommend the early issues of this series as worth the read.