More World's Finest Weirdness

I'm working my way through the early Weissinger issues and I have to admit, I didn't realize how odd it gets. Batman exposing his secret identity is just part of it. Both Batman and Superman are characterized horribly in several stories, and some of the wacky stuff that works for Jimmy Olsen or Lois Lane is completely misplaced with Batman as the co-feature.

Consider the topic of mental illness. In WF #143, Batman is accidentally struck by a bullet that ricocheted off Superman. At the hospital, he shows signs of depression:



Superman decides to cheer him up by letting him solve a mystery. So that Batman will believe he's really needed, the mystery is set in Kandor, where Supes doesn't have his powers. A friend of Superman there is in on the gag. But does Batman brilliantly deduce that he's being patronized?



Of course, something's gone wrong and suddenly the menace they're facing is real, but Supes can't convince Bats, who snaps:



Eventually Batman is convinced of the reality of the menace, defeats it, and manages to shrug off his "inferiority complex".

Weissinger appears to have been copying a bit from the Marvel comics, which often featured the heroes bickering. The difference was that in the DC Silver Age universe, everything had to be restored to normalcy at the end of the story, so it was always some sort of temporary mania.

Or alien hypnosis as in WF #145:



Which causes Superman to snap:



In WF #148 Superman decides to check the security of his secret identity. He uses a "selective amnesia ray" to eliminate Batman and Robin's knowledge of his secret identity, so that they can try to crack the mystery. They do this fairly easily, wounding his pride. So he uses the ray on himself to create a challenge to discover Batman's real identity. But the obsession becomes a distraction from his real work:



So Batman decides to let Superman win:



In WF #150, Batman decides to check out Gambler's Isle, a legal offshore casino. He suspects something's crooked because people are losing their life savings. But get how he checks whether the roulette wheel is fixed:



It's not, and so Batman engages in a little "mathematical" gambling:



And:



Hitting on 17? Apparently the great game theorist didn't play a lot of blackjack!

It all turns out to be a plot by gambling-mad aliens to lure Superman and Batman to their world. As all aliens must be, they are a different color:



But (conveniently for plot purposes) their women are not:



Yep, another LL girlfriend for Superman.

Worst Mistake Ever?

Well, a pretty bad one, anyway. In 1964, DC decided to team up their two biggest teenage characters, Robin and Jimmy Olsen. So in World's Finest #141 we got the origin of the "Olsen-Robin Team":



It's a classic DC puzzle cover. Why are Robin and Olsen faking their deaths? Well, it's a little complicated. Some crooks were planning to kidnap them so that Batman and Superman couldn't capture them when they robbed the bank. And they couldn't just hide out in the Batcave or the Fortress because:



Yep, too obvious. The crooks would figure out that they're in the Fortress, go there, pick up the giant key and... okay, it doesn't make any sense. But at any rate, they go out to Stone Island, rig up the graves to convince Batman and Superman that they're dead, but the latter don't broadcast the news to the world, so the crooks go the Fortress, pick up the giant key... errr, we'll just ignore that plot hole for now.

While they're off on their own, Robin and Olsen set up their own little hideaway:



Eventually the crooks are caught and Robin and Olsen plan a surprise return to the living. But (as must always happen in such cases) Superman and Batman had figured out that the lads were still alive.

But that's not the worst mistake ever. No, the worst decision came a few issues later, in World's Finest #144. In that story, Jimmy is temporarily contaminated with Green Kryptonite, just when he's "needed" to help Superman battle Brainiac, heh. Supes gets the brilliant idea of switching junior partners with Batman, who needs a bow-tied cub reporter to help him handle Clayface. So Batman heads off with Jimmy, and a few panels later, it happens:



Oh, my! I suppose what happened is that Mort Weisinger (the editor) was planning on doing more with the Robin-Olsen team and thought things would go easier if Jimmy knew their secret identity, but it's an absurd moment. First, remember that Jimmy's big friends with Superman, not Batman & Robin, and yet he doesn't know that Clark Kent is actually the Man of Steel. If his best friend doesn't trust him with the secret, why in the world would Batman?

Second, it was a cliche of the comics that anytime anybody knew a superhero's secret identity, he would immediate find himself blabbing it accidentally, somehow. I would be very surprised if there wasn't a Jimmy Olsen story out there with that exact theme, but here's a bit from Batman #71 as a placeholder:



DC had sold us on the idea that the secret identity was sacred, that it had to be protected at all costs. Part of this is to give the hero an additional way to lose, since the ultimate loss (death) is basically out of the question. So to have Batman just casually tell Jimmy is completely out of character.

And as it happened, the Olsen-Robin team was basically through at this point:



Update: I should add that there was actually at least one more major Robin/Olsen teamup in World's Finest #147 (February 1965). Jimmy and Robin withdraw from their respective partnerships with Superman and Batman and join forces with each other. However, they accept rewards and use the money to build a rocket ship. Eventually Superman figures out that it's because of some alien jewel lifeforms who have taken over the two boys.

Random Cover of the Day: Showcase #20

Not too hard to guess who the editor was for this issue; if there's a monster, a dinosaur or an alien on the cover, odds are it's a Jack Schiff comic. Yep.

Another hungry brontosaurus who hasn't been told he doesn't exist and is a vegetarian anyway. It's pretty obvious what the "one way to save Corky and Bonnie" is; given that Rip has torn his shirt off, I'd guess that he's going to blindfold the dinosaur.

Rip Hunter was a reasonably successful title for DC; although it took him four tryouts to land his own mag, he lasted 29 issues or almost five years. This is his first appearance. He used one of DC's classic time traveling bubbles, and frequently encountered famous figures from the past including Adolf Hitler, Cleopatra, Helen of Troy and George Washington.

Silly Stuff

In Superman #145 (May 1961), Clark and Lois attend "The Interplanetary Circus", which has mysteriously arrived on the outskirts of Metropolis. After observing some of the exhibits, they get a mite hungry:



Gee, you think you could make a whole meal out of that, Lois?

A Little Tribute to Murphy Anderson

Murph is probably my favorite artist of the Silver Age, since Dick Sprang was only around for the first half of the era. And among inkers, Anderson had no peers, only envious rivals.

Anderson was probably best known in the Silver Age for his work on Hawkman. Here's an example of his work from the first issue of that magazine:



Notice the intricate work that Anderson adds to his pencils; the inks on the jacket of the man in the background of the first panel really stand out. That's one thing noticeable about Anderson's artwork; he had lots of little bits in the background that make you feel like you're really there, like the hangars, the flight control tower, and the cityscape in the second panel. Of course, he does blow one small detail; more about that later.

Anderson was a master of sequential art; do we need any words here?



And look at the beautiful scenery in these panels:



Because Anderson was so solid at detail, he could draw smaller figures to give us more of a "wide-screen" feel to his panels:



In 1965, DC made an effort at bringing back some of the GA heroes. In Brave & Bold #61 and #62, we got a teamup of Starman and Black Canary:





You definitely get the impression that Anderson was a master artist working extremely diligently to make sure that everything is perfect. Notice the reflection of the house in the water. That is beautiful.

Anderson spent the early years of the Silver Age laboring on DC's science fiction magazines, mostly on one-shot stories and characters, although he did create the terrific Atomic Knights series.

Blown detail. Look at the second panel of the first picture I posted. Notice the plane coming in for a landing without its landing gear down?

Sockamagee!

This was a post I had been planning to do for some time, but given the passing of Jim Mooney, it's especially apt.

Mooney was a terrific artist for DC during the Silver Age of Comics. He was originally hired as a Batman artist and did some terrific work on Batman in the late-1940s. He became the regular artist for the Robin solo stories in Star Spangled Comics. Later he moved on to Tommy Tomorrow, an early DC science fiction hero.

His most famous work in the Silver Age was on Supergirl, who was at the time the backup feature in Action Comics. He drew her until the great DC shake-up in 1968. In the meantime he filled in on World's Finest after Dick Sprang left DC. And in House of Mystery #156 (January 1966) he created (along with writer Dave Wood) the character Robby Reed, in Dial H for Hero.

Robby was a young genius living in Littleville, a rural community. As he and some friends observe a robbery being executed by a giant robot, he suddenly falls into a cavern, where he finds a mysterious dial:



He deciphers the writing, which tells him to dial H-E-R-O. Of course this is something of an anachronism; I doubt if anybody under the age of 30 has used a dial phone, and they were headed out the door at the time. Being a red-blooded teenager, he does as suggested and finds himself transformed into Giant Boy, in which guise he saves a plane about to crash and foils another attempted robbery by the giant robot. Then he returns to his normal teenage form by reversing the order of the letters on the dial (O-R-E-H).

Things get really interesting the next time a hero is needed. Robby dials the letters but he is not transformed into Giant Boy again, but to the Cometeer:



And later in the story to the Human Mole:



That pretty much became the formula for the series; Robby would be transformed into three new heroes in every story, and his challenge would be to figure out their powers and how to use them best in the situations he found himself in.

Robby, as is pretty typical with superheroes, is an orphan (see Superman, Batman, Robin, Spiderman, etc). He lives with his grandfather and a housekeeper named Miss Millie. His early opposition is the Thunderbolt gang, led by Mr Thunder.

It's a cool concept for a hero, but with one obvious drawback; the requirement that three new superpowers (or more) be created for every story. Not surprisingly, Dave Wood began recycling some Golden Age favorites, as here:



Bulletman was a long-running feature in the 1940s in the Fawcett line.

In House of Mystery #157 we learned one of the drawbacks of the dial; after using it, Robby couldn't change into a different hero for another few hours. In #160, there were three very interesting heroes for different reasons. Giant Boy returned, marking the first time that Robby had been turned into one hero twice. His second transformation was into King Candy, who has magic lollipops (like Herbie Popnecker), and his third metamorphosis was truly historic: Plastic Man.

Plastic Man was, of course, a major hero for the Quality Comics line from the 1940s-1950s. His solo book lasted until 1956, making him one of the very few heroes to make it through to the end of the Golden Age. I cannot do justice to the character in a post about Robby Reed, but I can put up a few pix from the story that will give you a feel for Mooney's version of the character:





As a side note, a few months later, Plastic Man was given his own magazine by DC, although it only lasted for ten issues in this incarnation.

Littleville seemed a bit small in scope for Robby, so we quickly learned it was near Zenith City, allowing the heroes to act in an urban environment where the astonishing array of criminal activity might not be so stunning.

In House of Mystery #160, we met Robby's love interest, a gal that lives near one of his cousins, named Suzy:



In HoM #166, the romance angle was pushed forward a bit, as Suzy and her parents moved to the same block as Robbie and his grandfather. In #169, Suzy discovers Robby's secret:



And being naturally curious, she wonders what would happen if she dialed H-E-R-O-I-N-E. In the obituary for Jim Mooney, they mention that he was noted for his exceptionally beautiful women, and they weren't lying:



Unfortunately for us, Suzy suffered the convenient amnesia that afflicted most characters who discovered a superhero's secret identity during the Silver Age, so we didn't get to see her in more outfits as a heroine. Robby was canceled after House of Mystery #173 (along with Martian Manhunter), as the magazine returned to its (tame) horror roots; the last few stories weren't drawn by Mooney.

About the title: Sockamagee was Robby's expression of delighted surprise.

The Secret Agent Wore a Bowtie

Comic publishers were ever alert for the latest trends among adolescent boys. When the secret agent craze hit in the mid-1960s with James Bond and his many imitators the comics were not far behind. Marvel made a terrific entry with Nick Fury, Agent of Shield.

DC responded with... Jimmy Olsen.


Now, you can probably see the problem here already. James Bond was suave, cultured, handsome and the epitome of cool. Whereas Jimmy was naive, unsophisticated, homely and as square as the Bizarro World.

The story (from Jimmy Olsen #89, December 1965) starts with Jimmy and Lucy on a date to see a movie featuring "Jamison Baird, Agent .003". As was common in the DC universe, things were changed just enough to avoid lawsuits, although it seems a bit odd in this case. DC had published a story featuring James Bond only a few years earlier (Showcase #43).

As Jimmy and Lucy watch the movie, he provides running commentary about the gimmicks that Bond--errr, Baird--uses in the movie. After the show, they see a man get shot trying to escape from a ship. He dies on shore, but not before he gives Jimmy a clue. Tell Superman to find a Doctor Juarez in the Latin America country of Andulia.

But in his typically zany fashion, Jimmy decides to become a secret agent himself and pursue this great mystery on his own. He comes up with a kit full of gimmicks and dubs himself Secret Agent Double-5, because... try not to laugh now, both his first and last names have five letters.

Jimmy shows up in Latin America, where a comely senorita gives him a very friendly greeting:

Hey, maybe there's something to be said for this secret agenting business. But of course she tries to kill him:

This gives Jimmy a chance to use his "parachute flashlight", one of the gimmicks he created. It somehow doesn't get ripped out of his hands when it deploys.

He changes his hair color, but now that he's in Latin America he needs something more of a disguise than his green suit and red bow-tie, so he does the noble thing:

Say what? Jimmy stealing clothes from a "peon"? Couldn't they have had him dropping a fiver in front of the poor guy? Terrible characterization, and even worse the poncho disguise works for about five seconds. Jimmy's thrown in a cell with another lovely senorita (one admires the unisex nature of Latin American prisons), and they escape as shown in the splash panel at the top. But of course, she betrays him as well (this spy business is starting to resemble my love life in college), and so he must escape yet again using one of his gimmicks:

Jimmy and Superman eventually solve the mystery, and free Dr Juarez, who turns out to have been working on an artificial heart that the dictator of his country wanted because it would let him rule for another hundred years as a despot. And in the end, Jimmy encounters another "dazzler":

It is this constant tension between the notion of Jimmy as the hero of his magazine, and yet a buffoonish teenager like Archie that creates some of the charm of the Silver Age Jimmy Olsen. They would show him being ultra-competent in one panel and goofing off in the next; gee, can't imagine how that might resonate with adolescents. ;)

Well, Agent Double-Five returned in Jimmy Olsen #92, and this time they showed him kicking some pretty iconic DC superhero butt:

An agent of S.C.A.R. has broken into Jimmy's apartment. But our hero reveals one use for his bow-tie:

I'd try to explain this story but it's virtually incomprehensible. Jimmy catches his double trying to burgle the apartment, then pretends to be the double, then encounters the Robin double who warns him to stay away from a particular location before being disintegrated, where of course Jimmy immediately heads and gets an operation that puts a deadly device in him like the one that killed Robin. Errr, the Robin double. And there are Superman, Supergirl and Batman doubles as well, but they're just basic crooks with similar features, which explains the front cover when they fight him, but the main villain, an alien, (who calls himself Nero) wants to burn the Planet Earth. Jimmy manages to save civilization by preventing Nero from killing the ersatz double superheroes.

Stanhope's Libraries

Most of DC's teen heroes showed some signs of aging, although obviously at nothing like the calendar's pace. In Action #270, (November 1960), Supergirl celebrated her 16th birthday. Four years later, in Action #318 (November 1964), Supergirl graduates high school and begins to attend Stanhope College, so she's aging at about half the normal rate.

Stanhope would be her home for the next seven years. It was a nice, small college, with apparently quite a substantial building budget. In Action #318 Linda Danvers (Supergirl's secret identity) pledges to Alpha Lambda sorority. But she has to pass several initiation tests, one of which involves the new library:



She has to find some way to transport the books from the old library to the new one. Linda implores students to each withdraw ten books from the old building and return them to the new one. A neat little solution, although some might be a little concerned at a library which only has ten books for each student.

But given that, what are we to make of this panel from Action #349 (April 1967), only two and a half years later:



Okay, so Stanhope had three libraries during Linda's undergraduate years. And it was lucky that was all; in Action #366-368 a pair of futuristic fiends named Alpha and Beta threatened to blow up the entire campus with a bomb.

And I'd suspect some substantial repairs to the third building were required after this incident in Action #371 (January 1969):

Jimmy Olsen's Ape Girlfriend

DC played lots of tricks on Jimmy Olsen, but this certainly takes the cake:


And on the splash panel for the story it's played for comedy, but there's a disturbing subtext:


It may seem hard to believe the CCA let this stuff through, but this sort of offbeat humor was a staple of country comedy in the USA at the time. We do learn that yes, it is a "bride" for Jimmy, so it's not like this is "unnatural" love, heh. Let me add here that despite the timeframe (late 1966), this does not appear intended racially. It's just an attempt at a normal goofy Jimmy Olsen story placing him in an embarrassing situation, which ends up looking either perverted or racist to us today, but would not have been seen as such at the time.

The Fortress of Stalkertude

Mark Engblom has been covering Superman's rather creepy Fortress of Solitude in a series of entertaining (and revealing) posts. Highly recommended!

Slightly Off Topic, But

I had to comment on this comic:



The Incredible Hulk #141 is dated August 1971, so it's just outside my normal focus, but it's such a gas that I couldn't resist talking about it anyway. Done as an homage to Tom Wolfe's Radical Chic, it's a superb collaboration between Roy Thomas, Herb Trimpe and Johnny Severin.

In the story, we meet Malicia and Reggie, a wealthy liberal couple who are looking for a socially responsible cause that they can support. Their daughter has the obviously trendy one featured on the cover, but:



So they decide to take up the cause of the poor, misunderstood Hulk. Now that is a positively brilliant premise for a story, and the execution is near perfect. Severin's inks help set the lighthearted tone, and before you know it, the charity fundraiser for old Greenskin is under way:



I get the feeling the gal in the blue dress is supposed to be Barbra Streisand. The blond-haired fella in the background is Tom Wolfe himself, making his second guest appearance in a Marvel comic.

But you can tell that the bull is about to start knocking over the china. Sure enough, the daughter, who turns out to be pretty good at fighting, leads a protest.



The Enchantress has been watching all this and decides to lend a hand, turning Samantha into the Valkyrie:



Val became a regular in the Defenders series as well, although this issue ends with both her and the Hulk transformed back into their normal, socially-oppressed selves.

Highly recommended!