AMSA: The 2004 Mopee Awards!

Here's a blast from the past, 10 years ago in fact,in CBG #1600, to celebrate the holiday weekend and reinforce that, even in the Silver Age, they couldn't all be gems:

The 2004 Mopee Awards!

Cover your eyes! Hide the children! It’s that time once again!

Dear Mr. Silver Age,

I hear talk of comic-book adventures that are called "Mopee Stories." Is that the same thing as a story eligible to win a Mopee Award?

Ultra, T.M.A.

Dalesville, U.S.A.

 

Mr. Silver Age says: There is indeed a huge difference between stories that deserve to be Mopee Stories and stories that deserve Mopee Awards, Ult. And this years Awards are the perfect time to sort out this whole can of worms. Maybe I needed a different metaphor there.

The Awards go to Silver Age stories that feature silly, head-shaking events that leave us rolling on the floor, primarily at the thought that we ate this stuff up with a spoon when we were but tads, dazzled by the wonderfulness of these tales. Now, in the cool, discerning light of (gulp) 50 years later, their wonderful, tight plots seem a bit frayed around the edges. And a big hunking wad of the center ain’t there either.

Mopee Stories, as Captain Comics has dubbed them, are ones that have to vanish for the sake of our sanity. Superboy #158 (Jul 69), in which The Boy of Steel discovered his dying parents were rocketed into space to escape Krypton’s explosion, is a big, honking Mopee Story. Daredevil #3 (Aug 64), in which DD wrapped his civilian clothes in a ball and dribbled them across town, deserves a Mopee Award (and it got one).

You might think that I’d be running out of candidates after five years of handing out these dubious honors to top-of-the-line Marvel and DC Silver Age super-hero comics, the only candidates that qualify. Not in this lifetime, bunky!

I haven’t even gotten up the courage to pry off the lid on my box of Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen comics, from which I can randomly pull any issue and most likely find a story deserving of a Mopee. Don’t dare me to do it, it won’t be pretty.

The Mopee Awards are named, of course, for the little doofus who claimed he gave Barry Allen his super-powers in Flash #167 (Feb 67). We all promptly denied that story’s existence, making it the first Mopee Story. These stories don't quite reach that level, but they certainly deserve to be singled out to show just how few questions we used to ask about the wacky stuff we loved to read so much. 

And at long last, it's time to announce the winners of this year's Mopee Awards, to the delight of all those fans who have waited an entire year to see which six stories I’ve singled out to receive that least coveted of all prizes, The Mopee Award! Well, at least my mom is waiting. Mom? You still there?

Tradition also dictates that, each year, I feature one story that shows the general ickiness of girls. Sadly, they aren’t hard to find. Did I uphold this fine tradition again? You be the judge, as I present this year’s award-winners. And please remember that I don’t write ‘em, I just read ‘em.

 

1. The “Pardon Our Dust” Award to “Enter…Dr. Doom!” in Avengers #25 (Feb 66).

Batman has been known to do some amazing construction projects in the Batcave without arousing suspicions. But he could call on his buddy Superman to help out (ah, the good old days). Doctor Doom didn’t have such super-help, but he accomplished a darned impressive remodeling job this issue.

Doc lured The Assemblers (Captain America, Hawkeye, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch) into an ambush by making Wanda and Pietro think they had an aunt living in Latveria. For some reason, Cap and Hawkeye tagged along in their civilian clothes—and all were promptly arrested upon arrival.

“In all the excitement, none of us stopped to ask: Who is the ruler of Latveria!” Cap bemoaned from behind bars. “And I’ve just realized the answer!” In the immortal word of a much brighter guy: D’oh! “Sufferin’ cats!” Hawkeye exclaimed. “You’re right! This is Dr. Doom’s pocket kingdom!”

That’s something I probably wouldn’t have let slip my mind if I were an Avenger, but that’s just me. That could’ve won the tale a Mopee all by itself, but it didn’t.

The winning moment came when the team escaped from jail, and Doom pulled out his remodeling ace. Upon yanking a lever in the floor, he sealed all of Latveria, including the surrounding mountains, in a “plastithene” dome that rose up out of the ground in two halves and closed over the entire blamed city-state.

Doom explained that the dome made Latveria safe from atomic attack—plastithene was darned impressive stuff—but it served this ambush just as well.

Let’s not really think about where you have to store two half-domes that can rise up out of the ground and encapsulate an entire city and what that would do to the stability of said city's foundations.

Instead, let’s consider that Doom lured The Avengers to Latveria so he could trap them and everyone else under his dome just so he could attract the attention of The Fantastic Four! “Then, fearfully, desperately, they shall come to rescue you!” the deluded doc explained. “And I’ll trap them as easily as I did you!”

Even for an obsessed Doom, that plan seemed a bit iffy, since it took a gigantic dome to trap The Avengers, and that ace was played. Not to mention that the FF didn't need to Google "Latveria" to remember who was in charge.

Needless to say, the bait had more bite than Victor anticipated, so we never got to see how well the plan would’ve worked. But as a consolation prize, Doc, here’s a Mopee! It’ll be a heckuva lot easier to put under a protective dome, but I don’t think anybody’s going to try to steal it.

 

2. The “Science Says It’s Rolling On The Floor Laughing Its Butt Off If You Believe This” Award to “Case of the Real Gone Flash!” in The Flash #128 (May 62).

You’ve gotta love the idea of Abra Kadabra, a 64th-century magician whose powers were based on the concept that any sufficiently advanced science will be accepted as magic. It’s a valid viewpoint, and a darned handy power to point at a super-hero without needing to explain much.

Abra used that power to the extreme in his introduction—but that’s not even the science that gained this story its prized Mopee.

Among Kadabra’s scientific/magical props were a teleportation device in his wand and a ray that could force people to applaud and stamp their feet, giving him the recognition he thought he deserved. That’s sufficiently advanced science to look like magic to me, all right.

His next scientific power was even more impressive. By pointing his finger at The Flash, he shot Barry Allen out of his costume and rocketed him off into space! Yeah, it’ll be a few years before we catch up to that science!

But those were just incidental. What actually copped the Science Mopee for this tale was Barry’s clever way of returning to Earth. As he rocketed through the vacuum of space, he was of course protected from heat (and apparently pressure) by his super-aura. And luckily enough, some oxygen clung to his body, so he could breathe, too. What are the chances?

That didn’t slow his momentum, though. What finally interrupted his race through the cosmos was a super-dense world about 20 feet across and 5 feet deep. Its darned strong gravity pulled him toward it, marooning him.

Trapped on a super-dense world  with the approximate square footage of my bathroom, Barry found a way home. He ran around the world at super-speed and then flung himself off this sliver of dirt at escape velocity. That, of course, landed him right back on Earth!

How he slowed his landing on the planetoid, how this teeny-tiny mudball got so super-dense in the first place, how it generated its own atmosphere, how Barry determined his escape velocity before launching himself into space, how he navigated through the universe, and how he slowed his descent into Earth’s atmosphere are all questions left to our imagination.

Since they involve such significantly advanced cosmology that they make my head hurt, I’m figuring we’ll call them Silver Age magic.

Here’s a Mopee to put beside your other science trophies, Barry. I wouldn’t be surprised if this one got launched into outer space when I wasn’t looking!

3. The “Sixteen Tons And What Do You Get” Award to “Mekano Lives!” in X-Men #36 (Sep 67).

By this issue, The X-Men were in a tight spot. Professor Xavier had been kidnapped by Factor Three to Europe, and our super-teens intended to follow. But they had no way to get there.

As luck and the plotter would have it, the X-jet was fresh out of fuel, and Warren's parents had taken a sea cruise. The team considered applying for a loan using the prof’s Rolls Royce for collateral, but banks kind of frown on using other people’s property to float a loan.

So the teens decided to get jobs. Marvel Girl, Angel and Cyclops headed straight for a construction site. “Got an opening for a girl with telekinetic powers?” Jean cooed to the foreman.

Could you pass up a candidate with those qualifications? He admitted he was behind schedule, so the trio showed how their powers could benefit girder walkers. Convinced, the foreman agreed to hire them—as soon as they showed him their union cards. “Since when do mutants belong to a union?” Angel bemoaned.

The foreman promised to push through their acceptance in a few days, but that would take too long for the X-team—apparently, they figured they were going to get cash envelopes every day. Depressed, they hitched a ride to The Village to hook up with Iceman and The Beast.

Those two X-Men had apparently realized their need for cash rather than a weekly pay check and presented a street show for handouts.

But before they could collect the hundreds of dollars that passersby no doubt were going to shower on them, a villain named them as his accomplices, putting them on the wrong side of the law. Mayhem, of course, ensued.

Fortunately, while catching the criminal, they aided a millionaire and were rewarded with plane tickets. Whew!

So ended the X-teams’ pretty pathetic attempts at walking up to random people on the street to raise enough cash to fly to Europe.

Here’s a Mopee for your Horatio Alger-ish approach to financing transportation, X-ers. I might’ve tried The Avengers or Reed Richards (as Spidey did in ASM Special #5 when he had to get to Morocco). But your approach certainly worked, thanks to the wildest coincidence in years!

4. The “Not A Hoax, Not A Dream, It’s Just Impossible” Award to “The Astounding Separated Man” in The Brave & The Bold #60 (Jun-Jul 65).

After Kid Flash, Aqualad and Robin teamed up in B&B #54 (Jun-Jul 64), they formed the Teen Titans and returned one year later in B&B #60 (Jun-Jul 65). For the team’s first official adventure, they called on Wonder Girl to join them. She flew from Paradise Island as Diana and Hyppolyta waved goodbye and warned her to be careful.

The four heroes teamed with a local town’s teens to battle the dastardly Separated Man, consisting of gigantic, spongy-looking pink body parts including an eye, ear, mouth, hand and foot. The bits finally joined into a gigantic pink guy who was soundly defeated.

It was a rousing adventure that kicked off the team’s formation in grand style, except for one minor problem.

There was no such person as Wonder Girl.

The ponytailed youngster from Wonder Woman’s comic was in fact The Amazon Princess at a younger age. She first showed up in WW #105 (Apr 59), which related Diana’s life growing up, and in #106, she was featured in an adventure of WW when she was a girl.

The young Wonder Woman appeared about a dozen times over the couple of years.

Her popularity led her to co-star with her older self, as well as Wonder Tot, in “The Impossible Day!” in WW #124 (Aug 61). \

To appease reader requests for Diana to appear alongside Wonder Girl, Mom spliced together home movies of her daughter at various ages. And we were treated to a three-part epic starring three sizes of Diana.

These “Impossible Tales” began appearing regularly, sometimes without noting their impossible-ness. That didn’t matter much, and fans enjoyed the impossible tales. At least, it didn’t matter until Wonder Girl waved goodbye to Diana and joined the Titans.

Yikes! Who approved that use of the character? She was a natural addition, except for that being-impossible thing. And it’s not hard to believe that most of the Titans’ readers were not avid Wonder Woman readers, so they may not have known how impossible Wonder Girl was.

No one complained, and she became a well-loved member of the team, especially when rendered by Nick Cardy’s luscious pencils.

But her origin was so nonexistent that when DC listed her in its 1980s Who’s Who book, her first appearance was said to be B&B #60! A short origin was cobbled together for TT #22 (Aug 69), and the 1980s Titans dealt with it in more detail—and many, many more origins (and names) have followed.

So here’s a Mopee Award for using such impressive imagination in your recruitment drive, Titans. We can only be thankful that you didn’t sign up Superboy!

 

5. The “Sacre Bleu! The Infant’s Not The Only Thing That’s Terrible” Award to “The Infant Terrible!” in Fantastic Four #24 (Mar 64). You know a tale probably isn’t headed for immortality when it uses a pun on a French term (l’enfant terrible) for its title.

You’ve gotta figure at least six readers caught that one before Reed explained that the phrase meant, “a child who does dreadful things.” Not as dreadful as this story, though. Zut alors!

Things heated up when our pals flew into a gigantic milk bottle hovering in air, halted a huge top threatening crowds and finally stopped a robot that multiplied itself when The Thing hit it. The source of these amazing apparitions was a green, bug-like alien who used his astonishing mental powers to create flowers and then an ice-cream sundae, which he promptly sat down and ate.

Using his Holmesian-like brain power, Reed deduced that the alien might be an infant. When this was announced on TV, a local criminal mastermind decided to kidnap the tyke for his own nefarious purposes.

So his gang wandered around town until they found him. They offered him candy, he got in their car, and away they went. I hope this teaches you a lesson, kids.

The crooks’ attempts to exploit the alien’s powers were less than successful, as he turned sacks of money into squealing pigs and gave the sacks wings, giggling all the time. But when the FF showed up, the alien threw a tantrum, and all heck broke loose.

Finally, Reed tried a scheme that he admitted was “the biggest gamble of my life—and it worked!” And what was this risky strategy? He tattled to the alien’s Mom!

Technically, Mr. Fantastic used his ultra-powerful electron telescope (second only in viewing power to the mighty lens atop Mount Palomar in California, we were told) and shot an ultra-sonic radio beam toward a space ship he saw wandering around.

That ship proved to be the alien’s parents, searching the cosmos for their lost toddler. They took him home and no doubt gave him a galactic time-out. Reed gambled that the aliens wouldn’t blame everything on the Earthlings who had riled up their little precious and vaporize the planet.

Stan had a knack for smoothly shifting gears to tell off-beat, smaller stories between his cosmic epics. They ensured the larger tales’ scope was appreciated. He achieved that after the Galactus trilogy with the legendary and personal “This Man, This Monster” in FF #51.

This time, he was coming off a cosmic battle in which Doom was thrown into the void of space. And next month, The Thing would battle The Hulk. The team needed a breather—but they didn’t need the head-shaking bizarreness this cosmic interlude provided!

So here’s your Mopee, guys. You better display it proudly on your mantel, or I’ll tell your mother!

 

6. The “My Super-Intuition Tells Me I Shouldn’t Read This Story” Award to “Claire Kent, Alias Super-Sister!” in Superboy #78 (Jan 60).

Our tale began on a foreboding note, as Superboy laughed at the notion of Ma Kent having “feminine intuition.” Things heated up when he discovered an arriving spaceship and was shocked to discover the pilot was a woman.

He wasn’t surprised when the pilot, surprised to see a flying boy, nearly hit a mountain. “Just like a woman to lose control!” The Chauvinist of Steel thought.

But the pilot—Shar-La—had read Superboy’s mind, and she wasn’t pleased with his dismissal due to her gender. Women ran her world, she explained. Superboy, in one of the rudest moments of his career, replied, “If you women run your world the way you run your spaceships…well, I’m glad I don’t live there!” Uh-oh.

Upset by the insult, Shar beamed her ring at Superboy as he flew off. One panel later, he found he’d been turned into—oh, the horror—a girl! Ms. La bolted, and Superboy exclaimed, “Holy Cow! I-I’ll remain a girl even though I still have a boy’s mind!” Let's not wonder about the rest of his organs, okay?

His parents were shocked, but Ma was quite pleased to have a daughter, albeit one with a boy’s, um, mind. Clark was introduced to Lana as Claire, the daughter of relatives that Clark had simultaneously gone to visit in return. Sure, that kind of relative-swap happened a lot. Hello, Lana! Think about it!

But Lana was too busy planning activities like baking cakes and listening to dreamy records with her new gal pal.

When a super-danger arose, Superboy allowed the public to believe he was his own twin sister and asked to be called Super-Sister! Hello, Lana! Do you see a pattern here? No, probably not.

 Most embarrassing for the story, Super-Sister had learned about the danger via an odd alert she’d received in her head.

Ma explained that it was her feminine intuition, “a sixth sense that warns many women of dangers in advance!” Super-Sister was pleased to learn that she/he’d in fact been rewarded for being turned into a girl!

Please, don’t make me go on, describing how her super-intuition alerted her to Lana’s attempts to learn Super-Sister’s secret identity (hello, Lana!) and The Sister of Steel’s realization that her new power helped her only when females were in trouble.

Fortunately,it all turned out to be a hoax by that devious La woman. Superboy promised that he’d learned a lesson about how it felt to be a girl “and meet undeserved scorn and ridicule from men!”

Of course, now he has to meet scorn and ridicule from the Mopee Awards committee (of one), but it’s hardly undeserved. So here’s your statue,Clark!

You’d better check it real closely for cooties, as I’m not sure that we’ve ever established with certainty that Mopee is a boy Heavenly Helpmate. And I’m not going to be the one to lift up that dress to check.

That's it for this time, I'm sure you're glad to see. Be with us again sometime in the future when we present a special edition of the Mopee Awards, presenting these rare (but always deserved) award to some very "special" nominees. You've been warned.

-- MSA 

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  • 1) The Avengers story begins with Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch trying to find their aunt in Latervia but that presupposes that they know who their parents are, which is not always a given in the Silver Age.

    2) It's stories and feats like this that led to the theory that Barry Allen was no longer human.

    3) Apparently Professor X didn't believe in an emergency fund nor did the Worthingtons leave instructions to their staff in case their Soaring Son needed anything while they were on vacation.

    4) Wonder Girl didn't really exist? I had no idea! ;-)

    5) Did the Infant Terrible ever return? As the Toddler Terrible? Or The Teenager Terrible?

    6) Gender-switching? In the Silver Age? Take that, Thor-Lady!!

    btw, did you ever do a column on Jimmy Olsen's cross-dressing antics?

  • Super-Sister always makes me chuckle. She should have poured hot water on her head to see if that worked like it does with Ranma.

    Hoy

  • Jimmy's cross-dressing antics actually received a Mopee in 2005. I'll probably post that column in the near future. It was one of the "special" nominees I mentioned in the column. The 2005 Mopees were given to concepts so goofy they just wouldn't die

    Super-Sister always makes me chuckle.

    Any story in which women can read men's minds is not going to end well for the men. I do love that Lana was stymied in her efforts to figure out S-S's secret identity. Where was her women's intuition? It's surprising that Super-Sister didn't try to cut her hair and pass for Superboy, but with sleuths like Lana around, at least her secret identity was safe.. 

    -- MSA

  • When I read that Avengers tale in the Marvel Triple Action reprint, it just struck me as ridiculously lame that Cap in particular didn't do any research on Latveria before they hurried off to Dr. Doom's pocket kingdom. Cap must've been doing some over-moping about Bucky that week and wasn't thinking clearly.
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