The Night of March 31st!--Updated

Superman #145 contained an interesting surprise for its regular readers; an oddball little adventure:



As you can probably see (click to expand pictures), the story featured lots of intentional goofs; for example, in the last panel above, Clark thinks about his "telepathic powers", which we know don't exist. This panel gives an idea of the goofiness going on:



The explanation wasn't forthcoming until the very end of the story, which featured Luthor and Brainiac saving Superman from a villainous Lana Lang. After the action was over, you were supposed to turn the final page over for the solution to the riddle:



The results were announced in Superman #149:



One hopes that Linda Strickland went on to become a great editor of Time Magazine or something similar. 456! And note one of the winners was at MIT--who says comics aren't educational?

Let's see how many errors we can find in the eight panels of the story I posted above:

First Panel:

1. Lori Lemaris has legs.
2. Superman is wearing a normal shoe on his right foot.
3. Superman is wearing a sock or something on his right foot.

Second Panel:

4. Wouldn't Clark include the year in the date at the top?
5. Clark doesn't need his glasses when he's at home alone.

Third Panel:

6. Superman doesn't have telepathic powers.
7. Even if Clark did wear his glasses at home, he wouldn't wear them in bed.

Fourth Panel:

8. The description says the storeroom is empty but there are two men inside (possibly Weissinger and Swan?).
9. Superman changes in front of the two men.
10. They show no surprise at Clark changing into Superman
11. Clark is not wearing his glasses.

Fifth Panel:

12. Superman wearing glasses.
13. Superman not wearing cape.
14. Hollow red krytponite meteor
15. Which is not affecting Superman

Sixth Panel:

16. Mr Mxyzptlk not wearing his hat.
17. Mr Mxyzptlk wearing Clark's glasses.
18. Superman wearing Mr Mxyzptlk's hat.

Seventh Panel:

19. Mr Mxyzptlk would never voluntarily say his name backwards.
20. Superman is wearing Clark's glasses.
21. Lois falls far from Mr Mxyzptlk.

Eighth Panel:

22. Would Superman feel the need to investigate if Lana took a job selling ice cream?
23. Jolly Ice Cream Company should probably be "Good Humor".
24. Superman wearing Clark's glasses.
25. Superman logo backwards.

See the problem? We're about a quarter of the way through the story and we've got less than 1/18th of the errors that Linda Strickland found. You can argue for a couple more, but basically there should be about 10 errors per panel, which I'm having a tough time finding.

DC did a couple more contests during the Silver Age, including "The Great DC Contest" in Superman #169 and "Puzzle of the Wild World" from Action #388. The latter was another run at the "how many errors can you find" story, while the former in an oddity did not have the letters D or C anywhere in the text of the story, except for one place, which you were supposed to find. It turned out to be one of those "Continued on fourth page following" notices.

While we're on the topic of contests, Dial B for Blog has one involving my personal hero, BEM!

Update--Commenter StevenR points out that the MIT student who finished in the top 5 turned out to have an abiding love of comics. Frederick Norwood, we salute you!

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The Dev-Em Made Me Do It!

The first superhero comic I can remember reading (Adventure #320) featured Dev-Em. I am reasonably sure that it was not actually the first superhero comic I read, but it was the first one that I can remember. It's my recollection that I read it in the basement of my cousin Larry's house.

Dev-Em was a teenage boy who lived with his parents next door to Jor-El and Lara. First appearing in Adventure #287, he was a juvenile delinquent, as we can see here:



He likes to steal inventions from other people. Sensing that perhaps Jor-El is onto something with predictions of doom for Kryton, Dev-Em secretly steals scientific equipment to turn the lead-shielded bomb shelter in his backyard into an escape pod, at one point getting caught by Kal-El and vowing revenge on the tyke. When the planet finally explodes, he survives in suspended animation along with his parents until they reach Earth. Discovering that Superboy is the planet's greatest hero, he decides to get even.

The story continues in Adventure #287. After luring Superboy back to his pod, Dev-Em surprises the Boy of Steel with a Phantom Zone projector (aka Punishment Ray). He disguises himself as Superboy and commits nasty acts both great and small, earning his enemy a despised reputation in Smallville and beyond. Then he allows Superboy to return, knowing that he's ruined the lad's life. Dev-Em flies off with his parents "to a bright future".

Superboy tries to explain to the townspeople about his double, but they don't want to hear about it, and he prepares to leave earth forever. But then Chief Potter discovers that an award Superboy had received contained a small amount of red Kryptonite which he claimed had caused Superboy's wild behavior. Since red Kryptonite never affects him the same way twice, the people know he won't go wild again and they forgive him. Afterwards Chief Potter admits privately to Superboy that there was no red K, that he just faked it because he believed Superboy's story. In the end, Superboy vows to pursue Dev-Em into the future someday.

Oddly this did not happen for quite some time. In fact it wasn't until Adventure #320 that Dev-Em returned, this time 1000 years in the future during the era of the Legion of Super Heroes. Superboy and Mon-El catch him trying to break into the Legion HQ. When they threaten to turn him into the ICC (apparently a CIA successor), Dev-Em laughs:



Dev-Em's assignment is to locate and capture Molock, the leader of a criminal spy organization called the Cosmic Spy League. But since Superboy now knows of the operation, the ICC decides to put him in Dev-Em's place. Is Dev-Em jealous? Superboy notes an odd look on his former enemy's face.

It turns out that when Superboy (disguised as Dev-Em) meets Molock, the crook has a surprise for him:



Fortunately it was not really Gold K in the box, but Proty II (See comment below), who had changed himself to look like the power-stealing metal and gotten rid of it. As a result of this deception, Superboy is easily able to defeat Molock and bust the spy ring. It turns out that Dev-Em had worried about the Gold K, and Proty II had read his mind and realized the potential danger.

There is an amusing bit at the end where Dev-Em is offered membership in the Legion, but turns it down in favor of continuing his career as a spy. Mon-El is shocked, so shocked that his memory is faulty. He thinks: "Sizzling comets! This is the first time in the Legion's history that anyone ever turned down a chance to join it!"

Of course, that is not true; in Adventure #315, Stone Boy of the Legion of Substitute Heroes had been offered a chance to move up to the big club, but decided to stay with his former mates.

Dev-Em had a major "appearance" in Superboy #128. Superboy has a series of dreams where Krypton survived, so Kal-El grows up next door to Dev-Em. Somehow Dev-Em doesn't age, so when Kal becomes a teen, Dev is only a couple years older. In the next dream, Dev turns Kal to evil with the help of a special gem, and Kal is eventually sent to the juvenile wing of the Phantom Zone. In the following dream, Jor-El decides to send Dev-Em to Earth as Krypton's sole survivor. But Superboy finally realizes what is happening; an evil dog that Dev-Em had on Krypton is imitating Krypto and using its telepathic powers to influence Superboy's dreams. So Dev-Em does not really appear or resume his life of crime in this issue.

He did not appear again in the Silver Age. DC had reformed a few characters before this, including the Catwoman/Selina Kyle and Mr Element (Al Desmond), but those conversions were tenuous. Dev-Em's transformation appeared to be complete and thus to a certain extent he ceased to be an interesting foil for Superboy.

Comment on Proty. It seems obvious that Proty I and Proty II should have been full-fledged members of the Legion of Super-Heroes. The two had performed heroically, with one laying down his life for Lightning Lad and the second saving Superboy's powers. The only reason for them not being in the Legion was that Proty I had behaved like a pet in terms of showing affection for Chameleon Boy. But both Protys showed high levels of intelligence and the ability to communicate that intelligence. Indeed, in Adventure #323 Proty II devises a puzzle to determine the next leader of the Legion. I suspect that Proty suffered from rank speciesism, that the Legion could not contemplate a member who wasn't basically humanoid.

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A Team of Freaks and Outcasts

Led by a man in a wheelchair. Sound familiar? Well, yes, it describes the X-Men. But it also describes a group who debuted months before the mutants: the Doom Patrol.



Sounds a bit like Marvel ripped off DC for the X-Men, but then again they were just returning the favor, since DC had clearly ripped off Marvel when creating the individual members of the Doom Patrol. Compare the DP to the Fantastic Four:

Elastigirl: Mr Fantastic
Negative Man: Human Torch
Robotman (Also referred to as Automaton): Thing

Elastigirl, despite the name, does not really stretch so much as she can vary her size from huge to tiny. Negative Man is charged with energy which means he can leave his body and fly around much like the Torch. And Robot Man is very comparable to the Thing in that he's constantly griping about his exterior appearance. Of course, there is no comp for the Invisible Girl; I suspect DC did not find her interesting enough to copy.

In addition, the members of the Doom Patrol frequently bicker among themselves. This was clearly inspired by the FF's continual taunts between the Torch and the Thing. No other DC team of the time had that pattern. Indeed one could virtually guarantee that if two DC heroes argued in an issue it meant either a) they were deceiving somebody; b) one was an imposter, or c) they were under some weird influence like magic or red kryptonite.

The Doom Patrol debuted in My Greatest Adventure #80, the June 1963 issue. MGA was a long-running title that previously had features stories written in the first person, with titles like Free Me from the Bewitched Bell or The Creature We Dared Not Kill In the early 1960s it had turned into the monster of the month club, much like the other DC mags edited by Jack Schiff at the time.

By #80, Murray Boltinoff had taken over the reins, and obviously felt a shake-up was needed on the title. Much as the FF had been inspired by the success of the Justice League of America, so too was the Doom Patrol inspired by the success of the FF.

The story began with three people summoned before a mysterious stranger in a wheelchair. The Chief (as he is known) explains that he has trained himself to be an expert in virtually every field of knowledge (shades of Doc Savage!) and that he goes on adventures of the mind. But there are adventures he cannot undertake because of his physical limitations. He wants the three to undertake those adventures for him.

We meet Rita, the actress who inhaled volcanic fumes while filming a movie which gave her the power to change her size dramatically (and uncontrollably at first). We meet Larry, who was subjected to radiation while testing an experimental plane which caused Negative Man to appear. We learn of Negative Man's, err, negatives--while active Larry's human body is weak, and if he doesn't return in 60 seconds Larry will die. And we meet Cliff, who destroyed his body in a racing car accident, but was saved only by transplanting his brain into a robot--a transplant performed by the stranger in the wheelchair. Cliff hates his new body because he was a former world class athlete and now nobody will compete against him because he's not human.

The second part of the story shows the crew in action. A bomb has been left at the docks; can the Doom Patrol find and deactivate it in time? Negative Man searches for a bomb with a device made by the Chief. Once it's there, Elastigirl shrinks down and defuses it. Robotman shows his value by holding the bomb against himself to shield the Chief. Errr.

And in the third part of the story we see them up against a real villain. General Immortus was described as "as old as time". When the Doom Patrol battles him, he claims to have weapons that will nullify each of their powers. Sure enough, as Robotman attacks, a polarization ray shuts him down. Similarly General Immortus has a radio interference gun that allows him to trap Negative Man outside Larry's body. But there is one thing he hasn't counted on:



Rita is able to shut off the polarization ray, freeing Cliff, who can then save Larry by crushing the radio interference gun. It's a neatly designed ending to an interesting debut. DP would be featured in the next five issues of MGA, with the title changing to Doom Patrol effective with issue #86.

In something of an oddity, MGA #82 features both Rita and the Chief smoking cigarettes, which is required in order to introduce a camera that has been concealed in Rita's lighter.



Several DC characters had smoked over the years; Bruce Wayne's early appearances often showed him with a pipe. But I can't recall another female character who smoked. Is Rita a trailblazer (and a trailender)? Of course, the story about the Chief being from another planet is just a trick.

Doom Patrol made it to #121, but it was cancelled after that Sept-Oct 1968 issue. Their knockoffs, the X-Men, would last another year and a half before also slipping into hibernation.

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The Hulk #1-3

As I have remarked before, there was a vast difference in the origins of DC heroes and Marvel Heroes. The Marvels, perhaps reflecting early 1960s paranoia, frequently owed their amazing powers to radiation--The Fantastic Four and Spiderman, for example.

The second major Marvel hero was the Hulk. Yes, I know the Ant-Man technically debuted before him, but that's trivia. The Hulk stepped right into his own magazine, while Ant-Man appeared in just one issue of Tales to Astonish before disappearing until a few months after the Hulk's debut.

The story begins in Hulk #1. Dr Bruce Banner is supervising a gamma ray weapon's testing. His assistant, Igor (Lee never was one for subtlety), is jealous that Banner has guarded the details of the weapon. As the device is about to be tested for the first time, the scientist is horrified to spot a teenager driving his jalopy onto the range. He races out to rescue the boy, but his assistant, seeing his opportunity, makes sure the ray is fired before Banner can get out of the way.

At first there seems to be no significant ill effects, but then suddenly Banner feels a weird change coming over him:



He escapes from the army facilty. He and the teenager (Rick Jones) catch Igor trying to steal the secret of the gamma ray weapon. But then we discover what has turned Banner into Hulk and vice versa:



This explanation would not last long, for it would have made the Hulk's transformations far too predictable.

The Hulk was obviously inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. In the first issue he and Rick are kidnapped by a hideous mutant named the Gargoyle, but when Banner offers to help him live a normal life, he lets them escape.

The second issue is a rather pedestrian alien invasion story. Marvel seemed to do this with a lot of their heroes in the second issue--the FF faced the Skrulls, Spiderman battled the Terrible Tinkerer (who turned out to be an alien) and The Avengers battled the Space Phantom. The aliens in this Hulk story turn out to be the Toad Men, whom Banner is able to defeat with his gamma ray weapon.

The interesting part of this adventure is that Rick Jones and Banner come up with a way to apparently lock up the Hulk at night. He's buried behind a 10-foot wall of concrete until the sun comes up in the morning.

In the third issue, there are three separate stories. In the first, General Thunderbolt Ross, who's always hated the Hulk (and Banner) tricks Rick Jones into decoying the Green Giant into a rocket ship. The General then sends the rocket into space, getting rid of the Hulk forever. He turns into Banner briefly, but then is bombarded by radiation. Apparently this transforms him so that his switches from Hulk to Banner are no longer governed by dawn and dusk. The second story is simply a brief retelling of the Hulk's origin.

The third story is more interesting; it features the first appearance of the Ringmaster and his Crime Circus; they would later appear in two issues of Amazing Spiderman and one issue of Journey into Mystery/Thor. The Ringmaster has the ability to hyptnotize people with his tophat; but Rick is quick enough to send a mental message to the Hulk for help, who busts up the crime scheme.

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Bat Lash

Will he save the West? Or ruin it?

That was the tag line for DC's rather interesting Bat Lash series from the late 1960s. First off, I don't have a clue as to why DC named a series Bat Lash in the summer of 1968. Batmania had died down, the show was canceled and so there did not seem any obvious reason for the name of the character.

Bat Lash is interesting because he's really the first DC anti-hero. He reminds me of Maverick, in that he's as likely to cheat at cards as he is to defend a lady from being kidnapped:



(Art by the amazing Nick Cardy, story by Sergio Aragones and Denny O'Neill)

The comic appears to be aimed at a slightly older demographic than most of DC's other titles given this gag:



Amusingly, Bat Lash professes to hate violence (and wears a flower in his hat), although he engages in it with appalling frequency. One notable thing about Bat Lash: There seems to be a lot of killing going on. He kills three or four men at least in the first issue of his own magazine. This is fairly atypical in a Silver Age comic.

I'll try to read a couple other issues and see if there's anything substantial I've missed with the character.

Update: I read Showcase #76, the only tryout issue for Bat Lash. Same general theme, with the guy who wants to be a poet and a lover forced to fight for his life. Oddly the Bat Lash #1 story doesn't quite mesh with this issue. The debut ends with Bat Lash locking up his new girlfriend for trying to poison him, while Bat Lash #1 starts with him in jail and her busting him out. Maybe different women, same look?

Bat Lash #6 might be considered the origin tale of Bat Lash. He was the son of a farming couple with a young sister and a girlfriend next door. His family is excited when a traveling preacher discovers oil on a desolate section of their land. The preacher suggests that they sell the farmland for the money needed to develop the oil wells. Of course, it all turns out to be a scam, there was no oil. When Bat goes into town he discovers that the preacher and the sheriff were in on the deal. He confronts them and shoots the sheriff in a gun battle.

After evading a posse, he heads back to his family's farm, where he discovers that his parents and his girlfriend's parents have been killed by Rickett, the man behind all the land purchases. His sister and his girlfriend were fortunately out picking berries, but his brother is missing. After seeing the girls to a convent, he starts avenging his parents' murders. Eventually he tracks down the final man, the preacher who started it all. Then he heads back to the convent, only to learn that his sister and his girlfriend have decided they want to become nuns. They are afraid of him, because he's become so violent and so hard.

Overall I enjoyed the three books I read in this series. The art is by Cardy and the stories are entertaining and lighthearted (except for that origin issue, which is pretty grim). Bat Lash was a much better character than I had remembered.

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Supergirl, Sadist

Here's an amusing post along the lines of "Superman is a Dick", but using Kara Zor-El instead.

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Ace, The Bathound

Of all the characters in the Batman Family, it is safe to say that the two which draw the most scorn from the fans are Bat-Mite and Ace, the Bathound. I am not going to deny that some of that scorn is well-deserved. Both characters had their grating moments, and neither was really missed when they disappeared from the Batman family in 1964.

But... Ace was really much more of an important character in Batman than even I realized until I started to check out his adventures. Remember, this was at the time that Lassie was a major TV star. DC had a comic book during the 1950s called The Adventures of Rex, the Wonder Dog; it lasted for 46 issues and over 7 years.

Ace, the Bathound appeared in 15 different stories. He appeared on the covers of Batman #92, #97, #103, #123, #133, 143, 158, as well as Detective #254. It's pretty safe to say that Bathound appeared on more Batman covers than any other character than Batman, Robin, Batwoman and the Joker during the entire Silver Age; he'd probably appeared on more covers than stalwarts like Commissioner Gordon and Alfred had in their entire histories to that point. No, he's not as important a character as either of those men, but there's strong evidence that DC thought he could sell comics better than they could.

Ace first appears in Batman #92, June 1955. An aside: Superboy/Superman's dog Krypto had debuted in the March 1955 issue of Adventure, so both of DC's main characters added dogs to their families within a few months of each other. In the story, Ace is needed to track down his owner, an engraver named John Wilker who has been kidnapped by forgers who plan to use him to create bonds. At one point, Ace rescues Batman and Robin from captivity, and at the end of the case they express hope that he will help them out again sometime.

Batman #97 features The Return of the Bathound. Discovering that a criminal mob is using a highly trained dog to commit crimes, Batman borrows Bathound from its master in order to assist on the case. In this story and the following one, Ace's mask is colored blue and black, much like Batman's cowl, but usually it's just plain black.

In Batman #103, Ace becomes a movie star. He and Batman and Robin are recruited for a Hollywood movie in return for a large donation to charity. What they don't know is that the prop man is secretly an escaped convict looking to get revenge on Batman. Fortunately Ace recognizes the man's scent and they capture him.

Ace helps track down a missing high explosive in Detective #254's One Ounce of Doom. In typical Bathound fashion, he saves Batman as shown on the cover:



In Batman #123, Batman is a fugitive from justice, being pursued by Robin and Ace. Of course, in typical Silver Age fashion, it's all to fool some crooks into accepting Batman as one of them. Ace helps by preventing one crook from getting a shot off at Batman.

In Batman #125, DC finally got rid of Ace's former owner altogether; at this time John Wilker had probably appeared in more Batman stories than anybody other than Commissioner Gordon, Robin, Alfred, Professor Nichols, and the villains and girlfriends/love interests.

Ace's new role in Batman's life is reflected in some changes:



He leads Batwoman to Batman and Robin, saving them. Later, while chasing the villain of the story, he's confronted by a challenge:



In Batman #133, Ace is featured on the cover, but his role is mostly a cameo. Batmite falls in love with Batwoman and decides to help out her career. Unfortunately, as always Batmite finds it unsatisfying when his hero seems likely to win too easily, and so to make things fun, he shrinks them and the crooks down so that normal-sized props seem enormous (an interesting twist on the traditional Batman stories where Batman's normal sized and the props are huge). However, he didn't shrink Ace, who proves the difference in the fight.

In Batman #143, Bathound saves an alien, and it then saves Batman and Robin.

Ace gets a good workout in Batman #152's Formula for Doom. First he is specifically called for over police radio, the first (and perhaps only) time I can recall this happening:



Of course, the old Batsignal wouldn't have done much good as far as telling Batman that Ace was needed too. Ace saves Robin from being separated from his legs:



And prevents disaster here:



Ace had a starring role in Batman #158's Ace--The Super Bathound. Batmite turns Ace into Krypto for a story, but somehow coal gas interacts with Ace's power and makes him susceptible to control by crooks, so his super powers must be given up.

Ace had a cameo appearance in Batman #162.

(Note: I'd like to acknowledge the use of The Encyclopedia of Comic Book Heroes Vol 1, Batman, by Michael Fleisher, as a source of information on appearances and background of Ace, the Bathound. This is the premier source of information about Batman prior to about 1966, and a terrific read if you can find it.)

Previous Posts on Batman & Robin:
Robin's Romance with Batgirl
Worst Batman Story of the Silver Age
A Salute to Batman Annual #1
The Disappearance of the Catwoman
Gay Batman?
Favorite Covers of the Golden Age: Batman #23
The Horrifying Batman Era in Covers: Detective
Batman 1957
Batman and Guns
Batman 1956
Batman 1955
Classic DC Sagas of the 1960s
The New Look Batman

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